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reconstructwriter · 6 months

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So I Finally Finished Attack of the Clones

...for the very first time. When did this movie come out again? I am late, is there still room on this bandwagon? Anyway more thought vomiting on this movie...

Sith Pattern: I do appreciate that Palpatine is old, rich, white male fascist. Dooku is old, rich, white male fascist. Anakin shakes things up a bit by starting out young and poor but he’ll get there and has the rest down. Meanwhile our heroes are Padme Amidala, Mace Windu, Yoda, Bail, etc. Would have loved for George Lucas’ original casting of Obi Wan to have gone through! This does make Mirror!verses and morality flip AU's very weird because the Galaxy is being saved from aliens by three white guys? Unfortunate implications aside I can suspend a lot of disbelief about laser-swords and magic IN SPACE but I gotta draw the line somewhere.

Anakin’s attachment: Is well-shown here with convenient comparison to Cleigg – her husband and her son, the two who should love Shmi the most. At her funeral Cleigg is all ‘you’re in a better place. Thank you for the time we had,’ vs Anakin’s ‘I wasn’t strong enough to save you, I won’t fail again’ and ‘I miss you’. Exact opposites. Cleigg was entirely focused on Shmi while Anakin was focused on himself.

Also Anakin’s focus kinda screwed up Obi Wan’s mission when he wasted precious moments FINDING Anakin to get his galactically-important message through.

Mace Windu Not Killing Dooku: Shatterpoint, along with some fanfics, has Mace beating himself up for not ending the war by killing Dooku but my man you’re too hard on yourself! You only killed Jango when he decided to fuck around and find out with you in the death arena. Dooku did not fuck around and find out so your only chance would’ve been to throw away all your Jedi morals and stab him in the back! Thus risking becoming Darth Tyrannus 2.0 and screwing the galaxy.

Jango why did you fuck around and find out? I get Mace held a laser sword to your throat and you had a working jetpack going into the arena…but that arena is No Man’s Land. Even if Galidraan was canon you could’ve stayed back and taken pot shots.

The scene with Boba giving one last keldabe kiss to his father’s helmet is heartbreaking! Ouch!!!

Padme: So I kinda get being willing to confess her terrible taste in men on Space Fantasy Death Row. She doesn’t want to live a lie and is straight up expecting to die so what does it matter if she confesses? And then she does live so consequence time! Still feels like she’s ignoring the genocide – or George Lucas is ignoring the obvious implications. Genocide does work for foreshadowing Jedi genocide and Nazi comparisons (boy howdy does it!!!). But murdering every single member of an entire tribe down to the babes in arms doesn’t work for ‘Anakin doesn’t Fall here, he just dips his toe in the Dark’.

Padme otherwise doesn’t seem too terribly out of character throughout. She stands her ground against Anakin and where she does give in – rescuing Shmi – or chooses to go after Obi Wan? Well both did do her immensely big favors it’d be weirder if she brushed them off. Plus, rescuing both comes with additional benefits – no assassin will look for her on Tattooine (it worked before) and Obi Wan’s rescue could offer the opportunity to discuss peace with the Separatists before war happened.

And it did – in the cut scene :P

Dual with Dooku: So Anakin did put his duty first when Padme fell in the (barren, sans enemies) sand with an ally but damn if his attachment to her wasn’t still affecting him. The hot-headed idiotic attack was the worst possible timing! Why does everyone beat Mace up (including the man himself) for not killing Dooku but give Anakin a pass when he had every chance of ending the war Right There if he’d been able to keep his head on straight for two minutes.

The End: As with the first movie, we end with Mace and Yoda clearly knowing what the Sith are doing, though they're split with Mace believing Dooku while Yoda thinks its a trick. And I think they’re both right because I read somewhere Dooku and Palpatine were hoping to sow doubt between the Jedi and the Senate but also was telling the truth – from a certain point of view. Anyway, they aren't oblivious. Yoda straight up says the Shroud of the Dark Side has Fallen.

The last scene really drives that home! How the beginning of the war is the beginning of the Empire. The war kills the Republic and this is repeatedly smacked into our brains with the imagery of Palpatine standing at the head of everyone else, the most powerful Supreme Chancellor ever as the army of white-clad troopers marches out into the galaxy below him. The Destroyers lift off. The Empire’s freaking theme music plays.

Overall the movie had its high points and stinkers but that was a damn fine end!

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syn0vial · 3 years

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important question number 3 what do you have on boba and sintas vel 👀 - lekkui

i have... some things! honestly, i wish sintas’s portrayal had been a little more solid in the EU. it varied wildly between writers and in certain comics, she had little more characterization than “beautiful, tough bounty hunter chick.” i hope if they revisit her in new canon, they give her a more nuanced, more consistent depiction. also i’ll be ignoring said comics for the purposes of this post bc it’s my blog and i’m too sleepy for salt right now

but yes, onto the bullet points!

for those unaware, sintas vel was a female kiffar bounty hunter who boba tried to start a new life with when they were teenagers. they both got out of the bounty hunting game and settled down on concord dawn, where they got married and had a daughter, ailyn. boba was 16 and sintas was 18 at the time.

one of the things i find most interesting about the two of them, especially when they were teenagers: ailyn was consistently the more logical and level-headed of the two of them, while boba was always more emotional and impulsive. tragically, it’s this impulsivity that leads boba to fuck up so badly and, ironically, to transform into the emotionally detached asshole we know later on.

but yeah, this dichotomy is seen pretty early on in a flashback-by-proxy, in which we learn that the whole romantic run-away-together-and-get-married-and-start-a-new-life-somewhere-far-away plan? 100% BOBA’S IDEA.

in particular, we get the briefest snippet of an exchange where boba is trying his hardest to convince sintas that this would be a good idea. and, no exaggeration, it goes like:

sintas: “i mean, it’s kind of very obvious that you don’t know what you’re doing--” boba: “THINGS I KNOW: YOU’RE GOOD AT SHOOTING THINGS. YOU’RE PRETTY??? I TRUST YOU A LOT. see this is a good idea :)”

TEENAGE BOBA FETT: PURE OF HEART, DUMB OF ASS

anyway, boba fett and noted-morosexual sintas vel make their way to concord dawn. here’s some things we know about their relationship before everything went to shit:

nicknames! they referred to each other with the first syllable of each others’ names: bo and sin. very cute :)

they got married using a traditional mandalorian wedding vow. neither of them had any idea what the mando’a meant, bless their hearts.

as a marriage token, boba gave sintas a small red heart-of-fire gemstone tied on a simple leather cord. it was the best he could afford which, at the time, wasn’t much. however, it had significance to sintas as a kiffar; kiffars are near-humans whose members possess an unusually high occurrence rate of telemetry, or the ability to read memories from objects. heart-of-fire gemstones were said to be among the best for storing such memories.

SHIPPY FIC WRITERS TAKE NOTE. three words to describe boba in a committed relationship: PROTECTIVE. AS. HELL. absolutely unwilling to tolerate so much as a dirty look towards sintas. maybe even a little paranoid. kind of understandable given how much grief he’d already endured in his short life.

it didn’t save them

ok, fair warning, here’s the point where shit gets traumatic, so if you want to know nothing but the relatively happy stuff, STOP READING HERE. also, CWs for manipulation, sexual assault, murder, and imprisonment, bc nobody in this canon is allowed to be happy :(

last chance to turn back!

ok. onto the traumatic shit.

so! boba and sintas are doing fine. operation stop-being-teenaged-bounty-hunters-and-try-to-pass-for-normal is going pretty well! not only do they have their own functional little family unit, but boba has a job as a journeyman protector. basically think of them as like. mando frontier lawmen. and on top of that, boba has been taken under the wing of his superior officer and son of a local magistrate, lenovar.

we don’t know much about lenovar (like, is that his first or his last name, for example...) but we know that boba and sintas trusted him and that boba in particular looked up to him as both a friend and mentor.

however, lenovar was not what he seemed. once he had the young couple’s trust, he managed to get sintas alone and raped her.

in the aftermath, sintas performed some brutally pragmatic mental calculus: lenovar was a high-ranking journeyman protector and son of a magistrate. she and boba were two struggling teenagers with a baby, escaping checkered pasts. retaliating against lenovar would likely destroy them. which meant not only that she couldn’t retaliate against lenovar; she had to make sure boba wouldn’t, either.

so. how do you keep your extremely protective, impulsive former-bounty-hunter husband from flying off the handle and murdering your rapist?

you don’t tell him about it. you don’t tell anyone about it :(

argh just reading this i’m feeling salty that we get so little of sintas’s perspective on any of this. it’s all just “how did this make boba feel? how did it affect boba’s life?” and it’s like GOOD GOD. this woman is now maybe 20 years old, making the absolutely-gutting decision to keep her sexual assault a secret from her closest friend bc it’s the only way to protect her and him and their daughter from being steamrolled by the system. and like, nobody thought to expand on that?

nope, we just get a comic where she’s needlessly sexualized and drawn to look young enough to be boba’s daughter despite the fact that she’s older than him and ugh

OKAY. enough salt. moving on.

sintas’s plan works for all of a year, at which point boba somehow finds out the truth. and everything goes straight to hell.

boba, finding out that sintas kept her sexual assault by lenovar a secret for a whole year (and remember, boba was probably continuing to work under and look up to lenovar during this time), is utterly furious. of course, he wants nothing more than to murder the shit out of lenovar and is only further enraged when sintas tries to logically talk him out of it. in his anger, he proceeds to verbally torch ALL the bridges in their relationship, at one point even cruelly questioning if ailyn is even his daughter. he then storms off and makes good on his threats to kill lenovar

in the aftermath, boba was branded not just a murderer, but the murderer of his superior officer—an even more serious crime. yet, despite repeated interrogations, he refused to say why he had done it, fearing that doing so would drag sintas down with him. he only insisted that he felt no remorse for killing lenovar and that lenovar deserved to die.

in the end, his efforts didn’t save sintas—the courts seized all of what meager assets they had, leaving them all penniless. boba was then exiled from concord dawn and wouldn’t see his wife and daughter again for fifty years.

after everything that happened, boba was a changed person. it’s as if that spark of optimism and dare-i-say goodness that had survived his father’s death was snuffed out, leaving only a cynical, angry shell, laser-focused on violence because it was the one part of his father’s legacy he hadn’t yet failed.

sintas and ailyn, meanwhile, struggled to pull themselves out of poverty, with sintas reluctantly returning to bounty hunting to support them. ailyn never forgave her father for abandoning them, which led to its own equally-disastrous tragedy some decades down the line.

moral of the story is to listen to your wife and don’t make her sexual assault all about your stupid need for revenge. like, i get that the rapist needs to die but maybe like... work with your wife and make it look like an accident? don’t be an impulsive fucking inconsiderate idiot? maybe realize that your wife probably just endured the most hellish year of her life to protect YOUR dumb ass?

honestly, as frustrating as teenage!boba is, you can’t even be that angry at him bc like... he and sintas were both victims reacting imperfectly to absolutely shit circumstances. lenovar is the real villain here.

never going to be over how tragic it is that these two kids tried so fucking hard to derail their villainous origin stories, only to be forced onto even more brutal tracks bc the one adult they should’ve been able to trust in their situation ended up being a predator :(

#snowberry-pie #sintas vel #boba fett #lenovar #the fact that sintas was never spotlighted as a perspective character in the EU....... criminal

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tortuerex · 3 years

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My honest, humble, and not-objective-at-all opinion about THE CLONE WARS : STORIES OF LIGHT AND DARK

THE CLONE WARS : STORIES OF LIGHT AND DARK by various authors, published in 2020 (canon)

To be really honest, this book wasn't supposed to be the next on my « to-do » list. I'm currently reading Lords of the Sith and enjoying it, and was willing to make my next review about it, but the last two weeks has been a rough time and I couldn't manage to read a single page.

So instead of making you wait longer, I'll use the Clone Wars book as a filler, because I think I can be quick on this one (I think ? Let's see how many pages I'm going to write then).

In case you're not aware, Stories and Light and Dark (let's just call it SLD) is a short stories collection about the Clone Wars, each different story being about a set of Clone Wars episodes you already know about, but from a different point of view, focusing on one character being the narrator.

If you haven't seen the Clone Wars TV show yet, this book will probably be very confusing most of the time, because clearly what's at stakes isn't the story itself but what's going on in the head of a certain character. You'll probably end up thinking « yea that was cool I learnt about what was thinking Kenobi at this point but I haven't had any idea what was going on. »

Since every story is independant and was written by a different author, I can't give you a summary of the whole book. I'll give my opinion on the book at the end of the ticket but I'll take a bit of time to say what I thought about each story first.

Get your seatbelt on because we're going to start the SLD rollercoaster now :)

SHARING THE SAME FACE by Jason Fey

Not bad but no overly interesting. The whole point is to tell us how Yoda feel about the Clones, but to be honest we don't learn really much more in the story than in the episode.

I liked how Yoda compare the Clones to children and how different from each others he make them feel, reassuring them that they are all different and they all matter for him. That was nice.

Not much more to say about it.

DOOKU CAPTURED by Lou Anders

Probably the most goofy story of the book, based of some of the goofiest episodes on the show. It's telling us from Dooku's point of view the story of how he was captured by Hondo Ohnaka and had to team up with Obi-Wan and Anakin to escape.

It was really funny to read but also really awkward (faithful to the show...), and in my head I was constantly thinking « there's no way he's going to tell all of this stuff to his master without being slowy burned by his own shame ». At the end of the story, when Dooku changes his mind and decides to delete his holorecording and never tells his master about this whole story, I was like « yas boy I would have done the same, just keep it to yourself ».

That's the kind of story that put a smile on your face but leaves you with a bit of « wtf did i just read »

HOSTAGE CRISIS by Preeti Chhibber

This story suffers from what will a major problem in others stories : telling us something we already know without sounding redundant. It's the whole «Cade Bane and his crew taking the Senate hostage » but from Anakin's pow, and... the show was already mostly on Anakin.

It wasn't bad, not gonna lie, I liked reading how Anakin was feeling about Padmé, their relationship and her job. But it was only the first pages of the story. Once the hostage-taking has begun, it's just about describing us Anakin trying to save the day (and I've seen the show, I know how it goes) and not much about how Anakin feels. Yet it could have been interesting, Anakin being under the urge of saving his wife, the stress and the anger against Bane... but I didn't feel any of that. Just a Jedi doing Jedi stuff and being the hero at the end of the day.

To me, this story is a missed opportunity to show us how the Dark Side of the Force is strong in this one.

PURSUIT OF PEACE by Anna Ursu

Before reading this story I wasn't sure about how I felt about this whole book. This was the first one allowing me to make my mind and to think I was glad I bought it.

Unpopular opinion (depending on how you feel, of course) : I'm not a fan of Padmé. I liked her in The Phantom Menace, because she's a young, fierce, and powerful girl trying to make her way as the queen of Naboo. In Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, I feel like she has been switched from « young powerful woman » to « Anakin's love interest in need of being saved ». I know that's not completely true and I know she can still make her way with a lasergun, but like a lot of female characters in stories, once she is completing her role as a love-interest, there's not much left for her except waiting for her husband at home and making children.

That being said, that's not her fault if her character was poorly written in the AotC and RotS. I feel like The Clone Wars is trying to correct it and make her a stronger character, even leading some episodes of the show.

And because this review is already longer that the other ones, I'll try to make the rest of it short : I can say I loved this story. It's about Padmé meeting her separatist friend Mina Bonteri with Ahsoka, and how she tries to stop the war.

We see how strong and determined she is, how aware she is of the mask she has to wear in public as a senator, how far she's ready to go to stop the slaughter. How hard it is to be a female senator wanting peace.

I liked that, like the matching episodes, this story isn't all black and white with bad separatists and good republicans. I liked having a glimpse at Star Wars politic too (not-so-unpopular opinion : I'm not a fan of politics either).

Over all the rest, I loved that this story made me appreciate Padmé more that before.

Big thumb up.

THE SHADOW OF UMBARA by Yoon Ha Lee

As you could guess, this is the Umbara quadrilogy episodes, and it's from Rex's pow. And my biggest disappointment of the book. I loved The Umbara quadrilogy, even though I feel like it could have been a trilogy instead because sometimes it's a bit repetitive, but I loved it.

This story is nothing more that the description of the TV show. I'd love to say « no more no less » but it won't be true, since in the show we can see the sacrifice of Hardcase. The only bit you'll get is « Rex wanted to mourn Hardcase properly, but there was no time. » That's all, case closed, move along.

Oh, and when Clones realise they were shooting each others and were fooled by Krell ? « Rex clenched his hand as Waxer took his last breath. » Not a SINGLE word about how he FEELS.

The episodes was more effective in showing us Rex's dilemma with facial expressions than this story is with words.

So this story would be better called « No more than the Umbara quadrilogy, only less ».

It made me really angry because so more could have been said. I still wonder how this story passed the quality test to make it to the final book.

BANE'S STORY by Tom Angleberger

Or, as I like to call it, « Bane's story, by Bane, with Bane as the hero »

This was sooo fun and good to read. Bane is one of my favorite Clone Wars characters and I really felt like Bane was the one telling me the story. A breath of fresh air after the Umbara failure.

It's about these episodes when Obi-Wan disguise himself as Hardeen, a bounty hunter, to foil Dooku's plan to capture Palpatine, but all from Bane's pow. And he's so sassy about it.

I could hear Bane talking directly to me, with his words and his personality. Some of my favorite sentences of the book are in this story.

When they get chased by Anakin and Ahsoka and he tells us « I always heard Jedi were supposed to be in control of their feelings, but the two crazies on our tail sure weren't in control. » and « She had two lightsabers and was swinging them around to much I thought she was going to cut off her own horns. »

Or when he met Dooku : « I hope he wasn't expecting me to kneel like Eval. That's one thing I won't do. Another is call some old man my lord just because he's got a long beard and a big house. »

And a last one that made me laugh so hard, when they're about to abduct Palpatine during his speech on Naboo : « If you ask me, listening to that old bag of wrinkles run his mount ain't no festival. If we could kidnap him before he started, the Naboolians or whatever they're called would probably give us a medal ».

That's what I wanted from this book. Episodes I already knew about but told from a new perspective. And it was such a pleasure.

THE LOST NIGHTSISTER by Zoraida Córdova

Another bet won for SLD. It's about Ventress joining the Boba crew to earn some money, by protecting a certain box on a certain train (you know what I'm talking about if you saw the Clone Wars).

Maybe not as insightful as Bane's Story (definitively not as fun, but clearly it wasn't the point), but really intersting too. It takes us into Ventress's mind after the Dathomir massacre and the despair is palpable. And while the show leaves us uncertain about why Ventress is saving Pluma, the story is very clear about it and gives us some introspection about Ventress, her sisters, her family.

It could have been a little further, but still it was really good to read. I honestly don't have much to say about it, not my favorite but I genuinely liked it.

DARK VENGEANCE by Rebecca Roanhorse

or The true story of Darth Maul and his revenge against the Jedi known as Obi-Wan Kenobi

(just to be clear, this subtitle isn't by me, it really is in the book :D )

I hated to admit it, but it was a liiiitle bit of a disappointment too, but that's just because I expected so much from it (in case that's not clear by now, Maul is my absolute favorite and I got his face tattooed on my leg okay?).

I'll focused first of what I loved from that story. Maul talking directly to the reader, as if he was talking to a child. That gives a strong feeling of power from him, good characterisation. He apologizes when his description are too bloody, justifies his slaughter of innocents, really talking like he was relating what was going on in his mind, sometimes interrupting or correcting himself. That was good. Like Bane's story, I felt like the character was adressing to me directly.

So, why the mitigated opinion, why the disappointment, you'll ask ? Maybe because the story was uneven. Sometimes I really was into Maul's mind, but sometimes it was just plain descriptions of the episodes I already saw. I may be hard on this one. I liked Maul's reactions to Kenobi teasing, how he want to crush him and make him swallow back his words.

I liked the fact that Maul sincerely, deeply, thinks the Jedi are liars and hypocrites.

I didn't really like the fact that sometimes Maul was sounding just like he was complaining. Like, you know, in Clone Wars, when someone is like « Hey Maul, how are you today ? » and he's like « MY PATH HAS BEEN SO DARK ».

… well, after all I guess it's faithful to the show :o

Don't believe everything I wrote before. This story was good, it's about Maul. Go read it.

ALMOST A JEDI by Sarah Beth Durst

About how a bunch of kids and Ahsoka escape pirates, then Grievous.

Another usually unpopular opinion : I don't like kids in stories or TV shows (nor in real life). I always feel like kids are supposed to be the comic relieves, or the cute factor, making you say « aaaw look how adorable and naive and dumb that little kid is » and I'm always rolling my eyes and thinking « get your shit together kiddo, that's an adult story and you're ruining it ». (I might be a little excessive on this one, I'm not always doing it).

In the quadrilogy about the young apprentices and Ahsoka, most of the kids were going on my nerves, and I'm glad I didn't felt this way about Alsmot a Jedi. I'm so glad Katooni was chosen to be the narrative instead of Petro.

Overall it was a good story. Katooni's insecurities were touching, her admiration for Ahsoka was too. Like in this passage, « I wanted to scream. But I didn't, because Ahsoka wasn't screaming ». She's so afraid, so petrified to be unworthy. I really cared for her. And her relationship with Hondo is great too. (And Hondo is great, what did you expect?)

That was cool and refreshing to read.

KENOBI'S SHADOW by Greg Van Eekhout

This. This is my favorite story from the whole book. It was so dark, so growling with sadness and anger and pain.

I don't think I can describe how it was to read it. That is how I wanted to feel. I wanted to know how Obi-Wan felt when Maul murdered Satine before his eyes. Now I know and I want to hide in a hole and not mess with that Jedi, ever.

Obi-Wan is usually used as a fun character in Clone Wars, with his deadpan sens of humour. It was heartbreaking to see him in the Mandalorian episodes, and reading it... well it was heartbreaking but frightening too.

An absolut must-read. Believe me. I was shocked.

BUG by E. Anne Convery

Bug is a original story, not an adaptation of a Clone Wars episode, thus it can't be treated like the other stories.

Real real quick plot summary ? Bug is about a little girl called, well... Bug, living with her parents, running an inn on a planetoid, near an abandoned military relay tower. One day a witch from Dathomir comes to the inn and wants to use the tower in hope of finding tracks of her disappeared daughter.

It was good.

Ok that's the end of that review, thanks for reading and nah I'm kidding.

Why was Bug good ? First of all, because it was the only original story of the book. And even though some of them were really really good, it didn't bring the curiosity of discovering something new. You lack suspens and surprises. Bug brings them back. I wanted to learn so much more about this young girl and the witch ! And Falta's story was hypnotizing. Litteraly. Hooray for learning more about Dathomir, about their culture, their history and the relation between the witches's clans. (Not hooray for learning that loving for the sake of love and not power is unthinkable for Talzin. I wouldn't have wanted her as a mother if you see what I mean.)

I hope so much that we'll see more of Bug and Falta in the future. This was too interesting to be left apart as a one-short story.

So, if I had to FINALLY resume my opinion on The Clone Wars : Stories of Light and Dark ?

PRO :

- getting involved inside the mind of characters in situations I already knew about

- some really fun, dark and/or insightful stories

CON :

- an overall mixed feeling about the books because some stories are not up to the rest.

- you'll have to get through some passages that are just formal descriptions of what happened in the TV show

TO CONCLUDE :

This took way more time than I expected and I should definitively not have called that review « a filler ».

As I aleady said, SLD is an rollercoaster. You'll get stunned and you'll get disappointed, and go through all the emotions between.

Was the book worth the money ? Well, the hardcover is pretty and some illustrations are cool, but the quality is irregular.

If you're short on time or money, I'll suggest you find a way to read only the stories that are really interesting you, based on any review you'll find on the internet.

Cheers to everyone reading me, thanks so much for all the notes, follow and reblog. It means a lot. Take care of you and your relatives during these hard times.

Tagging @maulpunk <3

#starwars #star wars books #theclonewars #storiesoflightanddark

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not404error1 · 4 years

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Modern AU Bakoda

do you need me? (or do you need somebody else?) by zeitgeistofnow (ao3, G, pining, domestic fluff, toddler sokka, writer bato)

the apartment is small and warm, the vague smell of meat browning on the stove drifting around the dining table in the living room where bato sits. he’s across from kanna, watching her inspect her hand of cards. he bounces kya and hakoda’s baby girl- katara, droplet, a name that kya had insisted on- on his hip and she gurgles happily. her brother sokka is on the floor, playing clumsily with duplos from goodwill.

“ready when you are, kanna,” he says, and katara points to the older woman and says buh.

*would love a sequel one of my faves*

a shared life by iamnotalizard (AO3,NR, 3232w, trans Bato, friends to lovers)

It takes longer than it should for Hakoda to realize how much of his life he shares with Bato.

Ready to Tell Us by Odae (AO3, G, 1452w, coming out)

Hakoda and Bato are finally ready to tell Sokka and Katara about what's been going on between them. And it's a huge surprise. Shocking, really. They had no idea! (They did.)

Crash by FandomsMJ (AO3, G, 786w, angst)

The phone call came in the middle of the night. Sokka didn't know what it was about, but he didn't like how his sister wouldn't stop shaking. "Dad's hurt," was all she managed to say before she was darting out the door to the car.

Haunting Sucess by FandomsMJ (AO3, T, 471w, hurt/comfort, car crash)

He'd succeeded, he'd saved Bato. So why did the nightmares haunt him?

tucking in by @bakodads (Tumblr, G )

little one shot about Bato tucking in the kids for bed

I Have Two Kids and You're Our (cute) Awkward Neighbor. Let's Date? by myheroesrbands (AO3, G, 2317w, fluff, teacher hakoda)

Where Hakoda is a high school teacher with two teenagers, and he may have drunkenly stumbled upon a very important relationship.

Coffee and Croissants meteor-sword by (vaenire) (AO3, G, 2900w, secret relationship, relationship reveal, baker bato, coffee shop au kinda)

“Katara, have you noticed Dad being kind of weird?”

Katara almost choked on her first sip of her tea.

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged, still sprawled halfway over the counter, and looked over his shoulder toward where their Dad sat with Bato. “I don’t know... if you haven’t noticed, maybe I’m just…”

“They’re flirting,” Katara cut him off with a sharp whisper, leaning in so no one else would overhear. “Aren’t they?”

Bato owns a bakery, and Katara works for him. It's a good job, apart from having to watch her Dad obliviously flirt with her family-friend-turned-boss every single day.

To Build a Home by TheNightComesDown (AO3, T, 1522w, parenting, mild angst, fluff)

A series of short fics for Bakoda Fleet Week, all of which fit into the Sephora Zukka AU.

*shows how they got together *

would ya bail me out if I need it? by dyoxyys (AO3, T, 2444w, Bato is tophs dad, The kids are activists, fluff, awkward hakoda)

Most of the time, having to bail your teen daughter out of jail (again) would constitute a bad day. This was decidedly not most times.

Bakoda Fleet Week Day One: Modern AU (+) With Kids

of boba and holding hands by leoperidot @katarahairloopies (AO3, G, fluff just fluff, and awkward Hakoda, Zuko is an awkward turtle duck)

Sokka swears by the boba at the Jasmine Dragon, near his college campus, so much that he insists his dads try it for themselves.

Even In Your Darkest Hour by mistynights (AO3, T, 2411w, Modern AU with bending,Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Sharing a Bed, Getting Together, Angst with a Happy Ending)

After Kya's death, Bato is by Hakoda's side, picking up the pieces of his life.

i've been with you such a long time by Pretentious_Procrastinator (Ao3, G, 1796w, Bato/Hakoda/Kya, Modern au with bending)

Bato and Hakoda rarely travelled for work, with Kya the one taking fairly regular trips, mostly to Kyoshi Island, but sometimes further afield. Having Bato move in full-time made child-care much easier, although as Sokka and Katara got older and more independent that became less important. When Kya was away, as much as she missed everyone, she very much enjoyed her time alone. Despite her bubbly nature, she was an introvert at heart, and liked to sprawl out in bed without fear of kicking him or Hakoda. Both he and Hakoda were fully understanding, but for the two of them a lifetime of living in each other’s pockets was only exacerbated by spending so much time together. They still spent time apart of course – work and hobbies and a slightly differing circle of friends – but on the whole Bato would admit they were rather…clingy.

Bato is away and finds himself missing Hakoda more than he thought he would. An exploration of their life in a modern world, and a phone call that is a thinly veiled excuse to have Bato and Hakoda be both sickeningly sweet and call each other dickhead.

your love is sunlight by acezukos (purplefennels7) (AO3, G, 2356w, fluff)

Sokka is running late to meet Bato and Hakoda when they come to visit him at university. The lakeshore proves to be a fine distraction in the meantime.

or: bato does not want to run around on the rocks. unfortunately, he loves his husband too much to say no.

meditations on grief (i will love again) by @goldlyboing (AO3, G, 2908w, modern au, friends to lovers)

Hakoda stops then, his eyes widening. His whole body stills.

'Oh.' Hakoda thinks. 'Bato is courting me.'

#bakoda fic #bakoda fic recs #bakodafleetweek #bakoda fleet week #bakoda

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rinrinp42 · 4 years

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Since tomorrow is Teaching/Learning for Jedi June, and Sunday is the Force, I thought I'd offer up a snippet from one of my AUs, but let you guys choose:

Time Traveling Husbands AU (JangObi are from Revan's era)

Sailor Moon Obi/Power Ranger Jango AU (exactly what it sounds like, but they're all on one planet)

Boba Adopts A Dad (Obi saves Boba who decides that Obi is perfect for his Dad)

Drunken Time Travel (drunk Obi sends himself, some Jedi friends and some Clones back in time)

The RvB x SW AU (though this would be before RvB canon and Tucker's Padawanship era (but, there'd be Sway most likely so....))

#star wars #about my writing #which do you all think? for Jedi June #i feel like I'm forgetting one...

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intergalactic-zoo · 6 years

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So, lo: A Star Wars Story.

Spoilers Ahead!

For a long time, my preferred explanation for the "how could Han make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs when parsecs are a unit of distance?" question was that Han is a liar. He lies. He talks fast to get out of bad situations and get into good ones, and that fast talking often plays fast and loose with the truth. He's not always very good at it...

...but it's what he does. And I maintain that the look (seasoned starfighter pilot) Obi-Wan gives him when he makes that boast is one of quiet disbelief. Han is BSing them and Obi-Wan knows it, because Obi-Wan is the Jedi Master of BS.

The people in charge of the Expanded Universe and the new Star Wars films apparently disagree. There have been a lot of tortured explanations for how the boast is actually possible over the years, and Solo canonizes one of them. But Solo goes a step further by telling us that, no, Han's an honest guy. When he lies, he's consistently bad at it. When he tells you that Wookiees are known to pull people's arms off when they lose, that's not just an intimidation tactic, Wookiees actually love to dismember people. By all appearances, the script for Solo: A Star Wars Story began with a list of things we know about Han Solo, and the mandate that every single one of them needed to be explained in the runtime, from his acquisition of the Falcon to his relationships with Chewie and Lando to his gold hanging dice to his thing for self-reliant brunettes to his tendency to choose altruism over self-reliance to his frigging last name, making explicit a thing that was otherwise just symbolic. As though in The Phantom Menace, Palpatine had said "I'll call myself Darth Sidious, because of the insidious way I've manipulated the Senate and the Trade Federation all right under the noses of the Jedi Order." Watching Solo feels like reading through a checklist, like you read the "Background" paragraph on the Han Solo article on Wikipedia. It's the first ten minutes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade drawn out to feature length. Everything you know about Han Solo happened over the course of about a week. It's not great, is what I'm saying.

There are certain structural risks any time you decide to do new stories in a shared universe. One of the biggest is the tension between giving fans what they think they want, and giving fans a good story that captures what made the original stories compelling. I think Star Wars is a great example of this tension, because the Prequel Trilogy and original Expanded Universe lean really far in the former direction, and I think the sequel films have generally stuck to the latter. What the fans think they want is to see all their favorite characters, have all the mysteries explained, and get clean happy endings for everyone they care about. But that doesn't always make for good storytelling, and it certainly doesn't capture the magic of what made the original stories compelling. The fact that things weren't always explained was tantalizing, the fact that events didn't always go the way you expected made the stories exciting. Nobody needed the secret origin of how Anakin Skywalker built C-3PO or how Boba Fett was secretly the most important man in the galaxy. And while a lot of die-hards might not be happy with Han and Leia breaking up, with the New Republic and the new Jedi Academy failing, there's a lot more compelling drama there than in the immediately-successful New Republic and ascendant Jedi Knighthood crushing the last remaining pockets of Imperial resistance and discovering a new lost Imperial superweapon every time Kevin J. Anderson needs a paycheck. With prequels, there's the additional structural risk of character development. You've got a character or characters in the original story, and over the course of that story, the characters grow and change. In the prequel, then, we're seeing characters in a more raw state, before they've gone through that growth and change. We have to see how they get to the place they started in the original story, before they did their growth there. In that regard, the Prequel Trilogy actually did fairly well by characters like Obi-Wan and Anakin (Yoda less so), who go from friends and colleagues and Jedi Knights to a hermit and a Sith Lord, respectively. The journey wasn't always good or coherent, but it ended with the characters as we recognized them from A New Hope.

Someone probably should have sat the Solo filmmakers down and explained this concept to them.

Hey, remember in Star Wars: Special Edition, that change that everyone hated? The one that you can reference with three words and literally any Star Wars fan knows what you mean and has a visceral reaction?

The Solo filmmakers remember this scene too. There's a bit toward the end of the movie where Han shoots his mentor, Tobias Beckett (which is just a real world name not a Star Wars name come on guys get it together), before Tobias can get off a shot. Look everyone, Han shot first! So, what's the actual problem with the Special Edition scene? Why does it inspire such anger and vitriol, even now, twenty-one years later? It's not just the ludicrously unnatural way that Han's head moves to the left, it's what it says about Han Solo as a character.

When we meet Han, he's hanging out in a wretched hive of scum and villainy. His partner is a giant alien bear monster, not all that dissimilar from the walrus man who just accosted Luke and lost an arm for it. Han is greedy, egotistical, and arrogant; he puts the "smug" in "smuggler." He's in debt to a gangster, and he's got a price on his head. He kills Greedo out of self-preservation more than self-defense, and casually tosses a coin to the bartender to make up for "the mess."

In short, Han's a scoundrel. He's not obviously a good guy or a bad guy (as evidenced in part by the way he wears black and white; color is important in A New Hope), and we don't know where he stands. Of course, that changes over the course of the movie; he grows to care about Luke and Leia, and he gets pulled into the battle against the Empire when that's really the last thing he needs. The sign that he's grown as a character is when he eschews payment and throws self-preservation out the airlock to come back and rescue Luke during the Death Star assault.

Greedo shooting first undercuts that. It makes the moment one of self-defense rather than self-preservation, and it makes Han's action less morally ambiguous. He doesn't look as cold or ruthless when Greedo gets off the first shot. It's a more defensible action.

If I had to guess at the reason for the change, I'd suspect that Lucas was a different guy in 1997 than he was in 1977. He's said about The Phantom Menace, two short years later, that he was making Star Wars movies for his kids, and I suspect he was less comfortable with one of his hero characters acting in a morally questionable way as a result.

The Han of Solo: A Star Wars Story comes from that same place of discomfort. According to Solo: A Star Wars Story, Han was never actually a scoundrel at all. If you were to watch Solo before A New Hope, you'd never have any question as to whether Han was going to reject the reward and come back to save Luke, because that's literally all he ever does. He's not a space pirate with a heart of gold, he's a knight in shining armor riding a slightly dirty horse.

Which means that every bit of Han Solo's character growth from A New Hope up through The Force Awakens is totally moot. It doesn't happen. He was born a fast-talking goody-two-shoes and he went out a fast-talking goody-two-shoes, and the only thing he ever really lied about was that he was a bad person. Qi'ra literally in dialogue tells him that he's "the good guy," and that's right up there with "From my perspective, the Jedi are evil" and "I hate sand" in the annals of bad Star Wars dialogue. The story of Han Solo in the Original Trilogy is that of a loner who becomes part of something bigger, to the point where he's willing to sacrifice himself to help the cause and save his friends. The story of Han Solo in The Force Awakens is that of a guy who feels like he failed at being a hero and a father and a husband, so he lost his faith in himself and slid back into old habits, failing at those too until he found someone who believed in him again. When you add Solo in there, the story of Han Solo is that of a hero with a solid moral compass who only thinks of others, but who desperately wants to pretend to be a selfish criminal and just can't stick with it for very long. He doesn't grow in A New Hope, there's no question of his sacrifice in The Empire Strikes Back, and his return to smuggling in The Force Awakens isn't the backsliding of a failed hero but a hero retreating back into his childhood fantasy. It inverts Han's entire character arc. Which is better than I can say for Chewie, whose reasoning for staying with Han when his stated goal is to free his people, is never actually explained. This movie feels the need to reference Teräs Käsi, but never bothers to mention the Wookiee Life Debt. We see a rare instance of Chewie interacting with another Wookiee, we even get a mention of his family, but it never goes anywhere. I could have taken less of Han painfully speaking Wookiee (with subtitles, no less) and more of Chewie showing some agency. Or, you know, if we're going to reference bits of deprecated canon that are probably better left forgotten...

Oh, and Darth Maul shows up. I don't know what it is about the moment that feels less like a Star Wars-style twist and more like a MCU-style sequel hook, but it certainly didn't feel necessary or earned. Like the bit where Lando disparages mining colonies, it just feels like the filmmakers elbowing you in the ribs and saying "eh? eh? Recognize that?" But Darth Maul is a fan-favorite character and Emilia Clarke is kind of a big deal right now, so I suspect we'll be seeing more of those characters. Hopefully in an Obi-Wan solo movie where Ewan McGregor can act his damn heart out. There are moments I really liked in Solo, and I think the actors generally did really well. Not surprisingly, Donald Glover kind of steals the show. I definitely enjoyed a lot of the more subtle nods to older Star Wars stories, and I know I missed most of the ones from the Han and Lando novels that I never read. I really liked Beckett's crew as characters, even though the writing was on the wall for them from the moment they talked about retiring. But overall, Solo: A Star Wars Story was just less than the sum of its parts. It's a movie that I've disliked more the more I've thought about it, which is kind of the opposite of my reaction to The Last Jedi. And, frankly, I think that's because Solo is a repudiation of what The Last Jedi stood for. The message of The Last Jedi was that our heroes are more complicated than we think; the message of Solo is that people behave in predictable ways. There's not much excitement or drama in that latter message, and it ultimately cheapens its protagonist by making his growth into stasis. It's a tremendous step backwards.

#IFTTT #Blogger #TheFortressOfSoliloquy

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houseplant-central · 3 years

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This post will contain spoilers about the entirety of the Star Wars Christmas Special, if you’ve never seen it I HIGHLY recommend you do so with fresh, unknowing eyes because it is an absolute experience. Link here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hH8rxarVG8&t=1278s

This post will also contain spoilers for other Star Wars films, but if you've uhhh ever been on the internet you will have already seen such things.

We open on a black screen and a straight to TV movie announcer voice establishing that Chewie needs to get home to his family for life day (Wookiee Christmas). We seen Han and Chewie in the falcon for like, 5 seconds, and then we sit through 5 minutes of including an add for General Motors. Apparently Chewie’s father’s name is “Itchy”, his son’s name is “Lumpy”, but his wife gets the normal name of Mala.

Also, Chewie having a family completely changes the moral values of his character. Sure, after the events of the first film he’s involved in war so he has to be away, but before the first Star Wars film are we to presume that Chewie is a dead beat father who left his wife with their young son to go be a smuggler with Han? Or is the economy on the Wookiee planet so bad that this was a necessary move? Mala’s house seems quite middle class but perhaps that’s only because she’s been provided with Chewie’s smuggling money? But him and Han are in debt? Or is only Han in debt? There are a few ways this could shake out but it’s more likely than not that Chewie willingly chose a life where he rarely sees his kid, Lumpy (I can’t type Lumpy without laughing) and, what the hell, man?

!!! After writing this I remembered than Chewie has a life debt to Han as of the recent Solo movie canon. So in fact it is Han who's dragged this poor man away from his family and allows him to visit only once a year. The questions about the wookie economy remain however.

Then we get like ten minutes of the three Wookiees speaking Wookiee to one another with no subtitles. This will set the tone for the film, I’m afraid. Lumpy watches a hologram circus for a few minutes and then refuses the do the dishes. Mala checks the TRAFFIC report even though Chewie and Han are? In space? And being chased by imperials? And then skypes Luke on a hidden tv that seems to be just for Skyping Luke’s garage.

Luckily for us, Luke is in his garage, in an orange jumpsuit and ten pounds of eyeshadow. He’s condescending to the Wookiees for about 5 minutes while staring directly into the camera and not blinking and then tells Mala to smile which she does, in a terrifying manner, and then I guess Mark Hamill had to go because something explodes in his garage and then Skype connection is conveniently lost. (And no, we don’t ever check on him until the final scene, which is more likely than not a communal drug trip and not an actual confirmation that Luke is okay).

Mala checks the traffic again and this time gets direct footage of the Wookiee planet trading post? There, a discount Vader says “I hate fish” very passionately, after being handed a minuscule aquarium which is just apparently for if you want a pet fish you can keep in your pocket at all times?

We cut directly to actual Vader, who says he’s going to search “every household in the system for the rebels”. The implication here is that this could ruin Mala’s Life Day, which is HILARIOUS because what about the other implications of Vader having enough men to search “every household in the system”?

We cut directly from the enemy starship to mala cooking. Not in a juxtaposition way, but in a “we forgot what genre this film is”, “four minutes of Chinese medical drama inserted into iron man three for the Chinese release” kind of way.

(https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/news/iron-man-3-china-scenes-450184)

Mala watches a cooking show which features a British drag queen, and Chewie and Han fight a handful of imperial fighters in the middle of nowhere in space.

An imperial soldier skypes the Chewbacca residence reminding them that he’ll be coming around to look for rebels (and WHY is Chewie coming home if he’s going to endanger his family?) The guy who runs the trading post arrives with a part so they can tell him about how Chewie’s late. He also makes Chewie’s wife kiss him on the cheek which is.... a little weird. Lumpy gets a present that’s basically space lego, Mala gets some sort of sewing machine and old man Itchy gets a virtual reality headset that shows him 10 minutes of some lady in space posing, whispering and singing erotically and saying things like “I am your fantasy, I am your pleasure”. Which we of course have to watch as well for 10 minutes. Occasionally we cut back to Itchy’s face in the VR and he is concerning my into it.

As one review aptly pointed out “I wonder what Chewie’s father fantasizes about is not one of the things I wanted to know after watching A New Hope”.

Sexy space hologram actually has quite a powerful singing voice, but watching old man Itchy watch VR erotica while Han and Chewie are fighting for their lives is.... weird.

We immediately cut to Leia and C3PO who Skype in the Wookiee residence. Leia ends up speaking to the guy who runs the trading post who’s.... still at Mala’s house, because she’d rather speak English than have C3PO translate for Mala and her. Leia decides Mala is in “good hands” with this trading post guy, and Carrie Fisher’s first cameo is over.

They turn on the TV and an imperial reminds them that he’ll be coming around soon to check their houses for rebels (why is Chewie coming home if he’s a wanted man here?). As the man on the tv says this him and storm troopers show up at the door (so I guess it was recorded). There’s some casual anti-Wookiee racism and then they guy from the trading post covers for them by saying the husband of the house ran out after a fight. The imperials decide to wait for the man of the house.

The trading post guy shows them mala’s sewing machine which is, in fact, a small tv shaped like a sewing machine. We watch the imperial soldier watch a music video on the mini tv. This goes on for 6 minutes and even I skipped ahead.

The music video is so dope the imperials deicide they’re going to leave, and then they don’t. And then they search upstairs. The leader loudly announces he wants them to find evidence to connect this house to the alliance (even though they don’t even know chewy lives here, I guess they just don’t like Lumpy and Itchy?)

One of them nearly shoots Lumpy just for being annoying (which, fair, his childish Wookiee noises are annoying as hell). Mala turns on a cartoon for him, which is A CARTOON ABOUT THE REBEL ALLIANCE, which Lumpy then watches WHILE THE IMPERIALS ARE IN THE HOUSE SEARCHING IT I...???

And also when was a cartoon about the rebels produced and how was it distributed when the empire is still in charge. It’s only been a few months since the distraction of the Death Star— even if they were going to make a propaganda cartoon about the rebel leaders wouldn’t they? Make it about what happened? Why make a cartoon about events that didn’t happen?

Also the cartoon just feels like somebody by was vaguely described the original Star Wars franchise while drunk.

Boba Fett is in the cartoon too, for some reason, and is actively working with the empire as opposed to Jaba.

The imperials search through ONLY Lumpy’s room, and find nothing (who would hide their rebel alliance stuff in their kid’s room anyways?) Mala is undisturbed by this destruction, happy that Lumpy will be busy cleaning for a bit, which is pretty fucking cold if you ask me.

Then we get to the famous instruction tape scene. Lumpy watches an instructional video for a “transmitter” part that does not exist in real life and we watch him watch it for 8 minutes.

We switch to an “imperial made” program about the moral evils of Tatooine, which is actually a short rom-com about the canteena. This naturally spirals into an anti-empire musical number.

Chewie and Han arrive just in time to save Lumpy from a stormtrooper and then Han tells Chewie’s family they’re “like family to him” with the deadest eyes and they all stare at each other for an uncomfortably long amount of time.

Mala and Chewie have as sentimental of a reunion as two Wookiees can have. We transition directly from the threat of the empire to the Wookiee family of four holding their life day candles which, of course, cues up the weird psychedelic music video that is all the Wookiees of the planet singing silently and then walking slowly in their red robes through space into the light.

The Wookiees of the planet then, all sharing this fever dream together, greet in front of the great tree to murmur and hold their candles. Unclear whether there was a quick costume change or if they’re all astral projecting together. We get a small speech from C3P0 and then the main trio absolutely steal the spotlight, with Leia singing a long song and Han staring into the middle ground like he has no idea where he is. The Wookiees, whose holiday this is, get to say basically nothing. A Wookiee baby seems to have been baptised, but it’s unclear. Leia also stands next to Chewie and pets his chest weirdly even though we have literally just spent the last hour and a half establishing that he’s a married man. As the Wookiees all gather at the tree, Chewie has a flashback that basically recounts the first film, including events he was not present for.

Chewie and his three family members pray over life day dinner, and credits roll over the drawing of his house.

So what does all this actually change about the Star Wars canon? Not much, especially considering that the actors involved genuinely refuse to admit that it ever happened. It was an obvious cash grab after the success of the first film, that much is obvious. But it does imply a few things about the characters in canon, and it has created a few good memes.

The implications:

- Han is a uncle-ish figure to Chewie's kid, despite being a terrible influence

- The economy on the wookie homeplanet is NOT GOOD considering they only have one trading post. Either nobody has thought of the concept of exporting raw materials like all the funky trees with funky lumber that they have, or the empire is just exporting what they need without paying the wookies anything.

- Either Han or Chewie is responsible for Chewie's kid having an absent father figure.

- Leia learned how to sing at one point

- Between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back when they reach Hoth Luke went to live somewhere with a garage? Instead of training for imminent war? And Han and Chewie fucked off to go back to smuggling.

- Leia is like, a little racist? Possibly unconsciously because of her upbringing? But she calls Chewbacca's house to say hello and then when no English speakers are there says she might as well go despite having a translator. Which is weird because as a diplomat you would think she'd sit through translated conversations all the time.

- Owning a pet fish is still a thing in the future. (If you're about to say "actually it's all set in the past, not the future, because it says "a long time ago"!" screw off, you know what I mean).

- VR softcore porn exists.

- Hair metal, as a musical genre still exists.

- There is a cartoon about Luke, Leia and Han in canon which presumably Luke, Leia and Han would be able to watch.

- The empire is able to keep tabs on how many Wookiees live in each residence on the Wookiee home planet, but are not able to keep tabs on which Wookie it was that was spotted with the rebels.

- Han is even more of an asshole in A New Hope than previously established, because he says he doesn't by into religion and that anyone who does is stupid but he KNOWS Chewbacca is a religious man, and Chewie is sitting right there.

The memes:

- THIS lovely face from Lumpy:

- The Wookies all walking into the light.

- Mark Hamill not blinking for 5 straight minutes.

- Bantha Loin.

- Life day itself.

- and of course, Harrison Ford denying this movie ever existed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7TGWOHTdac

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