#but in a different world I guess where Luke was a little smarter as a villain

[ofswordsandpens]

im rereading the lightning thief and I forgot that the other campers were so freaked by Percy after he had been claimed + decimated those Ares kids that they wouldn't train with him anymore and he had to have solo sword lessons with Luke

#oh the fear the drama the tragedy of being a child of the big three #(I love it) #also not to think from the point of view of a villian #but Luke bestie baby this was prime manipulation time to try and convince percy to willingly side with kronos #and sew more seeds of doubt in percy's head #(I mean Luke clearly wanted him dead so that he would be the specialist boy) #but in a different world I guess where Luke was a little smarter as a villain #its interesting to think about

[meta-shadowsong]

Quick response to Mandalorian season finale

Behind a cut because, well.

Okay, yes, I am in this show for Dadalorian and Found Family etc. But I am at least as invested in the plotline this season about various factions of Mandalorians and their, for lack of a better word, sectarian disputes. Which frequently result in barfights. Because Mandalorians.

(AKA that scene where they picked up Bo and her minion was. A Delight.)

(Also, I love my girl Bo-Katan. Even if she’s very much a blunt instrument/not a politician going at this in all the wrong ways and was Very Rude to Boba but tbh I wasn’t 100% sure she was going to show up in this episode and I would’ve been Sad if we hadn’t gotten to see them meet. Either here or next season.)

(Still Sad at the lack of Sabine, though :( )

Leaving aside anything re: Gina Caranno (because that has been discussed by people much smarter and better-informed than myself), I’m kind of thrilled that the strike team was Almost Entirely Ladies.

(On that note. Uh. Does anyone else kinda. That little “Anyone else, we can take” smirk. And I just. Uh. Bo/Fennec, anyone??????)

(I kind of already ship Bo with Ventress tbh but a) multishipping ftw and b) threesome??????)

(Hi I’m shallow sometimes lol)

Anyway moving on.

Also the sound/almost-music when the Cylons Dark Troopers were activating was Excellent I approve.

And that Visual of the one trooper Din set on fire. ...honestly that whole hallway fight sequence was pretty Brilliant.

And the sort of...almost casual layer of the scene in the elevator. Even if these women haven’t worked together before, just that, “sure you don’t need any help with that?” “I got it. Excuse me.”

And that whole thing where Gideon was trying to Manipulate Din and he was like “...dude, I legit just care about the kid. I’ll fight for/with Bo-Katan because she’s pretty badass and I Might As Well plus she gets me what I want but I don’t...actually...Care about her Greater Cause?”

(Side note, I’ve spent a lot of time writing Bo-Katan/figuring out how her head works and literally all she cares about is Mandalore and its survival. It’s why she broke away from her sister in the first place, and has informed every single thing she’s done since. A lot of why she makes the specific choices she does goes back to the Mandalorian Civil War and her experiences there--especially since all the evidence indicates she was not with Satine and Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon. The way that separation and their different experiences of that conflict probably contributed to the eventual destruction of what seems likely to have been a Very Close Relationship before that is fascinating to me. And the subject of a fic I’ve been working on off and on for a couple years now, lol.)

(...anyway, where I was going with this was--I mean, yes, Gideon knows everything in terms of facts, but he doesn’t always interpret them correctly. IMO, Bo-Katan’s desire to rule Mandalore is less about power (for herself) than it is about Mandalore. Especially given some of what she says to Sabine in Rebels--if there was someone else she genuinely trusted to take the throne and rule her world, she’d be willing to cede her claim and be one of their generals. Especially since she’s very much not a political animal. She’s an excellent war leader, but not so much in terms of actual Governance.)

(insert long ramble about the Parallels between her and Anakin, which I touched on in one of my fanfics, lol; and will probably do more with in my BB project which involves the two of them and Padme as the main characters)

(And, yeah, she does want to fight Din for the right, but if she thought Din would be a good Duke/King of Mandalore, I think she would seriously considering swearing allegiance to him? Again, witness how she handled things with Sabine. Also she would probs prefer to avoid a third (fourth?) civil war in her lifetime. But, I mean. I love Din but he is. He is not a Leader. Not like her people need.)

(And I think the way things played out with Sabine affects her decisions here, too--she did accept the Darksaber as a gift/tribute then, but proceeded to lose it. Maybe she does need to fight for it the way Maul and Viszla did (presumably; we don’t know how he got the Darksaber; it may be something he inherited/have been held by House Viszla for a while, even if they never used it to dethrone the Kryzes until now).)

(But, then again, I mean, this has been her life for at least a decade, so...well, maybe she wouldn’t quite step aside. Even if an Absolutely Perfect candidate came along. But WRT Din specifically--given who he is and what he’s capable of, while she absolutely wants him in her camp (and on a personal level isn’t super thrilled about having to fight him like this; she seems to genuinely like this kid), my guess is she doesn’t want him ruling. Not without some more actual leadership training/experience. Because, well, he’s been either a follower or a loner in everything we’ve seen him in, and given Bo’s opinion of (possibly experience with?) the Watch/the group who raised him, and the fact that he’s consistently shown himself to have super-narrow priorities and not really caring about much outside of them...yeah, she probs has some Concerns.)

(Plus, he clearly doesn’t want it. And you have to Want It on some level in order to be an effective ruler--that Wanting can be from genuine altruism/wanting to make the world better, like we see with Bail and Padme; it can be from single-minded determination to Make Things Right, like Satine and I would argue Bo-Katan (Leia falls into either the first or second category, depending on the point in her storyline); and it can come from a desire for personal power and advancement (as we see with Pre Viszla and, of course, Skeev Palpatine himself; to be fair, rulers in this third category tend to be bad in other ways lol). But someone who genuinely doesn’t want power generally kind of Sucks when they’re unexpectedly handed it. Which I could cite several IRL historical examples of. And, I mean, obviously, this isn’t the only factor in play for what makes a good ruler/leader (see above re: Palps and Pre Viszla), but it is a factor.)

(Also, to clarify: none of these are bad qualities/traits, necessarily? Like, traits are good or bad depending on whatever context a person/character finds themself in. And in Din’s current context, with his current life and mission--even in situations where he has to coordinate with other groups in the service of a larger goal--these are excellent traits to have. But for someone who’s responsible for an entire nation? Not so much.)

(One could argue that Bo has some Issues there, too, albeit different ones, which is why I think she might be willing to step aside and cede her claim to a Genuinely Good/Better Alternative, if she found one. She’s a war-leader, not a ruler, and the two jobs require overlapping but different skillsets.)

(..........honestly? I don’t think the show would go there, but I think the two of them as a team/partnership ruling Mandalore would actually be really effective? Either on an equal footing or with one as the Official Ruler and the other as a second-in-command/right-hand. She has the leadership expertise and the actual will and drive to pull this off, and he has the diplomatic skill, as we see with the Tusken Raiders, among others.)

(Not a romantic partnership, lol, that would be Weird, but a political and probably eventually platonically affectionate one. Especially with how Mandalore feels about family of choice/adoption, and the fact that they’re both kind of alone now (whatever happened to Korkie, anyway??) even if no formal adoption is likely in their case...)

(Anyway. Uh. Long tangent aside...)

(also if there’s anyone who didn’t see Gideon trying to decapitate Din when his back was turned...IDEK what you were expecting. Like. I am All About guys like Pellaeon in the Imperial ranks, and the fact that there might be a few people who would make that offer/deal and be on the level. To say nothing of my best beloved Alexsandr Kallus. But. Uh. Gideon is. Not one of them.)

(Also, I thought it was a Nice Touch when the spear started turning red--because, no, the Darksaber can’t cut pure beskar. But it does generate heat, as we’ve seen in, say, TPM. And beskar does melt.)

Also, called it on tossing the Cylons Dark Troopers out the airlock Not Working in the long term.

While it’s not Cool or Flashy like a bomb or slicing, the Cylons Dark Troopers pounding the doors down with their goddamn fists was Cool and Terrifying in all the best ways.

Side note--I think even if I hadn’t been spoiled (forgot to mute the spoiler channels on the SW Discords I’m on before going to bed, and checked on autopilot), X-wing + Grogu perking up would’ve probably clued me in and I would’ve been SHRIEKING. I was still vibrating super hard even though I knew who was coming, but it probably would’ve been slightly more XD

(and then a moment of HAHA GIDEON KNOWS WHAT’S COMING)

(and so does my girl Bo)

(and then the green ‘saber and the glove and other costume details and IF YA DIDN’T SCREAM BEFORE YOU SURE ARE NOW!!!!)

(Kind of cool that they waited until the last minute before showing his actual face though)

NO MY GIRL BO-KATAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(IF YOU DIE WHO WILL GET DRUNK AND SWAP WAR STORIES AND MAYBE HAVE VICTORY SEX WITH FENNEC)

(shut up i’m shallow)

(also I love her she’s legit one of my favorite characters in this series I don’t want her to die DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD:)

OH GOOD SHE GOT UP

(yeah that was my actual real-time reaction to her getting shot lol)

“Talent without training is nothing.” ::insert Obvious/Tired joke about Luke having all of three months’ training At Best::

(also, I mentioned this in my last quick reaction, as well as elsewhere, but I’m...still kind of uncomfortable with the continuing implication that the Jedi path is the only option other than Darkness. Not because it’s a bad one, either in the PT-era or with Luke’s reconstruction. But the idea that the only way to achieve the mindset/emotional stability/whatever needed to wield the Force without Falling is through adapting the Jedi philosophy sits wrong with me. especially the implication that you can only do so from an early age/in isolation from other influences or bonds; which is a word I’m using very specifically because there’s a difference between Attachment as defined by the Jedi and interpersonal bonds which they clearly have and I don’t want this to get derailed by that particular Discourse(tm) That doesn’t even super hold up on Earth, with a single species, let alone in a galaxy with trillions of beings of multiple different species. Basically, people and the galaxy--and by extension the Force, which is in part created/influenced by living beings--are way too complicated for there to be only one right answer.)

(Also, it...doesn’t really hold up with the core message of Star Wars, which is about Choice? If the only way you can be a Good Force Adept is by meeting this extremely narrow set of criteria, most of which are outside your possible control......but I should probably save this for a separate post, lol.)

(The point is, I mentioned earlier in the post how much I’m LOVING the throughline in this season about different factions/sects among Mandalorians, and I think it would be Great if we got more of that with Jedi/Light adepts.)

(Anyway. Uh. Back to the episode...)

That FACE MOMENT had me legit crying omg

ARTOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!@@21!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

omg had they MET

I...don’t know what I was expecting from the credits but Welp. I wonder who the body double was...

(And before you ask, I didn’t really get the Uncanny Valley effect from Rogue One, not even Tarkin, so.....yeah, I guess I don’t always pick up on that, or it hits me from weird directions, lol. Because I sometimes get that from the Rebels animation, especially in stills/gifsets, because everyone’s faces are all so Smooth...)

.........Jabba’s palace, okay.

.......Bib Fortuna, Okay.

(those fingernails, however, are Not Okay)

YAY RESCUE THE GIRL.

Good on you, Boba, just shooting him in the face instead of letting him posture!

although why you want to rule Tatooine is...okay then.

LOL at Fennec perching on the arm of the chair, sipping her booze all casual-like.

Right! So that was an Experience! Overall, I liked it. Looking forward to how Din and Bo handle things moving forward, in particular! Because, like I said, I’m in this series for Dadalorian (so IDK how I’ll feel with it no longer being the Core Story since Grogu left with Luke) and in this season for the Mandalorian factions/sects and how they interact.

I’m also not sure how I feel about three interconnected series leading up to a Major Finale Event? Disney’s Star Wars has not had a super great track record with giving all the information needed to follow things in the core product (see: the ST worldbuilding lol, and also some of the cameos/appearances in this season, even), so I’m Skeptical of how well they’ll do explaining what is Necessary in each of the three series, in case someone only watches one or two.

What were your thoughts?

#fandom #star wars #originally posted december 2020

[queenlua]

radicarian said: how dumb are we talkin'

under a cut because the diehards can’t find me there

(note: um this got long, apparently i have a lot of art-criticism-y thoughts about this)

so there’s this subreddit that was created for “respectful” negative critiques of The Last Jedi, right?

and i find this amusing for a bunch of subtle inside-baseball reasons.

to dump my cards on the table:

* i keep Star Wars discourse at forty-foot-pole length, and

* while i really enjoyed The Last Jedi, and thought it did a lot of interesting things,

* it managed to attract a fanbase that seemed to love it for really dumb/cringe-y lefty/SJ reasons—if i see another “TLJ is about punching nazis” take i will scream, and yet

* of course the haters hated it for even dumber, bad-at-watching-movies reasons (“wah i don’t like that Luke was a depressed old dude wah” omfg y’all do you just want Ep4 re-released forever and ever—okay, yes, that’s what Ep7 was, you’ve made your point)

obviously this “respectful critique” subreddit is more palatable than like, idk, nerds screaming at Disney or whatever, but it embodies this fascinating faux-intellectual discourse that i see creep up time and time again on the internet.  i’m familiar with this subculture because these are totally the forums i would’ve hung out in when i was twelve, haha :P

scroll through the archives and you’ll find endless weird, obsessive, nitpicky critiques of the new movies.  people are salty because some obscure point of Force lore/mythos were rendered inconsistent by the new films, people are salty because Anakin’s sacrifice was “undermined” by the new baddies, and also Rey is a Mary Sue, blah blah...

and it feels like when you’re a kid, and you learn about the list of logical fallacies for the first time, and then spend the next several years pointing out the fallacies in every political debate, as if the problem with election cycles is the words ad hominem and non sequitur.  like, yeah, kinda?  but you are missing the forest for the trees, buddy.

similarly, so often what people assert is “bad writing” is this annoying memetic thing, where one dude launches their contrarian take on Why [X] Sucks, and maybe they’re even right that the piece feels unsatisfying, but often their critique amounts to a bunch of obnoxious nitpicks and checkboxes rather than a compelling narrative of what, on the whole, isn’t working.

but then a bunch of contrarian nerds latch onto that take, and parrot the same boring nitpicks back at each other forever, and because they’re being “contrarian”, they’re convinced that they’re Smarter Than Those Other People, and they end up forming a whole weird negging version of the fandom based around pseudo-intellectual gamesmanship.

and again: i get it.  i wrote my fuckin’ 80-page takedown of every single page of Eragon as a twelve-year-old, i get why people find it fun, i’ve engaged in my share of it over the years, but nowadays it just bores me.

in general, as i’ve gotten older, i increasingly cringe whenever someone describes something as “categorically bad game design” or “bad writing” or whatever—not because i think all writing is equally good; of course it isn’t.  but, (1) usually other adjectives are so much better for describing what exactly is happening—writing can be subdued, flat, frenetic, brash, stilted, hollow, uneven, etc, and these all tell you so much more than “dumb” or “stupid” or “illogical” or “bad”.  and (2) other descriptions often give a better sense of what was being attempted, so you can actually judge the piece by what it was aiming for—and sometimes, the answer is “this isn’t bad, it just wasn’t meant for you,” a thing that fans often find intolerable but i think is actually kind of neat.  (random example: ff13 was not flawed merely because it lacked open-world exploration.  it was trying to tell a different story and give a different experience, and you can have an interesting discussion about whether that experience works, but if you spent the whole time being pissed that it’s not ff7 then of course you’ll hate it.)  and finally (3) the rare stuff that i just find bad bad bad is usually not worth raging about at any particular length.   i don’t learn much or feel good about doing exhaustive takedowns of every Eragon-tier novel on the market; i haven’t even got enough time to read all the good stuff.

(as a sidebar, you’ll notice that very little of my engagement in fandom is via “meta” essays, and this is kind of why—while there’s lots of interesting and wonderful meta that i adore reading, i’m personally uncomfortable writing it, because so often it gets embroiled in these weird fanwarish arguments about “good writing” and i just disengage.

the nice thing about writing fanfic is that it often embeds my feelings about the piece i’m responding to—but in a way that isn’t an argument or a game, it’s a here’s how this worked for me & how it made me feel, and you can write both fanfic that’s furious at canon and fanfic that’s elated with canon while still having something compelling and interesting and new to say, i guess.)

for another perspective on it: one of my favorite takes on TLJ was from a friend of mine, who was pissed because to her, it felt half-assed.  it tried to do something bold, but flinched at the last moment: it didn’t go far enough to truly be a subversive weird arthouse film, nor did it nail any of the fun popcorn-cinema things you want from a blockbuster, and thus it failed at both.

that’s a fascinating perspective, one i don’t share but one i’m very glad to hear about.  but i assure you that that’s not a take you’ll ever see posted on that subreddit, because it’s just a totally different tenor than the obsessive, nitpicky arguments they’d rather have.

and i find the “forum debate” style of argument staggeringly emotionally tone-deaf at times—like, here’s someone pissed that Rey somehow didn’t try hard enough to redeem Kylo in TLJ and that’s what made it bad, and just, wow.  if you couldn’t hear—feel—the heartbreak in Rey’s voice when she says “please don’t go this way,” if it didn’t remind you of a time when someone let you down in the most brutal possible way, if you didn’t feel that moment of “oh, fuck, this isn’t what i thought it’d be”—then idk.  uncharitably, i’d say you’re just going out of your way to be annoyed over even the bits that really really worked—but at the very least we’re just not really relating to this piece in an emotionally compatible way at all and our conversation stops there.

anyway, yeah!!! tl;dr sometimes i pass the time by eating popcorn and watching nerds who assert they are Better Than Other Nerds doing “takedowns,” basically

#this is only kind of about star wars #and mostly about why i don't do fandom discussions most of the time #ANYWAY YEAH THAT WAS A LOT TO TYPE #radicarian

[widobravely]

"and they all lived happily ever after” “but how?”

i’ve been trying to think of endgame for the mighty nein and can’t really figure out their happily ever afters. i mean, i hope campaign 2 goes on for a long long time because i fucking love them, but like. how will it work, after. on what page do we close the book?

nott/veth can have a happily ever after. it’s all wrapped up in a beautiful ribbon and button flowers: she gets turned back into a halfling, she goes back to felderwin, she and yeza give luke another two or three siblings, as well as a pet or two that she claims to despise but they all adore her anyway. it’s beautiful, it’s perfect, it’s easy--and i’m not sure if, after all that character development, it’s what’s supposed to happen? 

nott/veth has discovered that all the things she thought she wasn’t--brave, pretty, capable--she absolutely is. i haven’t caught up yet so i don’t know all the details, but those are just details. i imagine that veth grew up thinking all she was going to be was a housewife, or not being a wife of any sort at all, and then she married yeza and she had a son and she was content. yes she still carried around her crippling insecurities, but she was content. and i imagine if the goblins hadn’t come, she’d remain so--unaware of her magical talent, friendless-except-for-yeza, but a damned good mother and content, content, content.

she’s more than who she thought she could be, now. she’s growing into herself. she’s making decisions. she has a group of friends who would die for her. and somehow the thought of going back to a quiet farming town...doesn’t seem right for her, anymore?

she deserves to be happy. i wonder if her old life can make her so, now?

caleb--oh caleb. we know what his ultimate goal is: to turn back time, to change his past, to save his parents. we are terrified of what will happen if he does. i hope very much his happily ever after is instead him choosing to let the past be in the past, apologize to his parents’ ghosts, and move forward with his found family. where does he end up, after? where does he go?

imagining a caleb slotted into the brenatto family: a beloved brother slash uncle figure to luke, often the center of a kitty cuddlepile, warm and safe and loved. that would be nice, wouldn’t it? and maybe a library. or multiple libraries, where he can just. indulge. in his passion for learning and knowledge. he never has to go into combat again, he can just be. learn for the sake of learning. maybe he’d like to teach? who knows. 

but what if he does manage to accomplish his goals. what if he does manage to turn back time. what happens then? bren aldric ermendrud probably never goes to the academy. then what? he’ll never become caleb widogast, either, and he isn’t going to be in a jail cell with a goblin girl and he isn’t going to meet a bunch of lunatics in a bar in trostenwald and--

say for example he intervenes in the raid on felderwin, saving veth. what then? veth doesn’t know him. veth doesn’t need him. caleb and nott: i’m sticking with you ‘cause i’m made out of glue. veth doesn’t have that need because she was never hungry or tired or desperate or a halfling turned goblin. will they still be friends? he saved her and her family’s lives. i don’t know. people smarter than me can meta that. but it will be changed. it will be bren and veth, not caleb and nott. 

say he saves veth. what then? is he going to hunt down beau and jester and fjord and molly and yasha and caduceus? is he going to form an adventuring party without veth? why would he? what drives him? after saving his parents, is he just. going to leave them?

i don’t think caleb has thought out his plan completely, or how his life is going to change after he Accomplishes his Goal. you see, the goal isn’t to bring his parents back to life. it’s to erase what he did. he can’t forgive himself for killing his parents, and it’s not enough to make them live again, he can do that with true resurrection. he wants to make sure he’s never done it. 

but in unmaking that, he unmakes caleb, and thus the mighty nein.

but enough about a hobo wizard who hasn’t thought about the consequences of his actions.

caduceus. i’ve always thought that After Everything, he goes back to the blooming grove. that’s his goal: save the grove. he’s going to be the one to save the grove. he’s going to read the book caleb gave him and he’s going to find something that heals cursed, blighted lands and the nein are going to go on a quest, a caduceus arc, and they’re going to save the blooming grove. 

maybe this: maybe all his family comes back, maybe nila’s firbolg tribe comes to stay, maybe he spends the rest of his long long life making tea and gossiping with nila about how to grow mosses.

but we run into the same problem as we did with veth: is he going to be happy there, in the stillness? in the silence? after his growth, is he going to be able to fit back into the pot?

i don’t know. i guess we’ll see.

beauregard. where does she fit. where does she go? the mighty nein is the only family she’s ever really had. i think if it were up to beau, she’d want to keep going, keep adventuring. but that’s reliant on what the others want, isn’t it? if veth stays with yeza and luke. if caleb unmakes the world. if caduceus, after solving his problem, goes home.

jester i think will want to keep going, too, because she wants to see the whole world, you guys. jester wants to compensate for all those years in a locked room. jester is going to roam and explore and discover and spread the word of the traveler--and it’s the traveler, it isn’t the guy who has a temple in just one place that’s boring. in that case i see beau and jester staying together. they drop by nicodranas every so often to say hey to mama lavorre. yes, of all the nein i can see beau and jester’s happily ever after the clearest: they’re not going to settle down, they have wandering feet, there’s an entire world to see.

it’s not going to be the same, without everyone else. but it could be good, too. 

(point for beaujesters, maybe?)

there are undefined things, there are questions. what about the cobalt soul? what about the expositors? can beau ever go back to the empire? what about her family, her brother? 

but in the end, well. i don’t think beau will ever want to settle down in kamordah and run a vineyard, so. adventuring with jester and spreading the word of the traveler it is! 

i had a wild thought: what if jester takes over the gentleman’s criminal empire? but naaaah, i don’t think jester would like that, so let’s not.

yasha--yasha has no defined goals, no defined end. zuala is dead. zuala could possibly be true-resurrected, but what happens after? do they stay in xhorhas, or go off to explore like beau and jester? actually i can see that happening, too: beau and jester and zuala and yasha, just off to see the world. and what a lovely image: zuala comes back to life, and the first thing she sees is yasha and a book of flowers: i brought you flowers, love. i have so many flowers to show you.

if they true-resurrect zuala. i think a pretty important theme in the nein is moving on, putting the past behind them. nott needs to reconcile with veth’s insecurities and realize she’s more than what she thought she was; caleb needs to forgive himself and let his parents go. i don’t know if zuala’s resurrection would be a good thing or a bad thing. again, smarter people than me can probably meta that.

fjord fjord fjord. what is he going to do, what does he want? he was so happy on the sea. it was like coming home, for him. i don’t think he’ll ever unlock uk’otoa, no--fjord isn’t stupid enough to mess with a scary god-snake i hope, so. what happens to him? 

maybe he finds vandren, maybe together they make amends, maybe they go back to the ball-eater and go sailing off with orly and marius and the rest? that would be nice, too. beau and jester hitch a ride every so often. fjord i think has gotten used to a life of adventure, and sailing is probably never boring. and fjord and vandren can always go diving for treasure. they’re chosen by a water deity, after all.

and molly?

there are two courses of action, i think, and here’s the one i like the most:

all is said and done, after the nein kill the bbeg or solve the ancient mysteries or whatever, jester attempts true resurrection on molly.

and fails.

molly’s main thing is that he hates change. he lives wild and free and hedonistic and he wants to stay exactly that way forever. he disdains lucien/nonagon as someone who occupied this body before him. and his friends? will have grown and changed so much. he only knew them for thirty-nine days and now they’re all so different. i think molly was good with the life he lived, all two years of it, and was happy to go out as he did.

i bet he’s hanging out with vax in the afterlife, trashtalking everyone. and when the nein start dying for real, he’ll be in the welcome party.

but he isn’t going to come back.

the other course of action is of course the happy fairytale ending wherein molly comes back and there’s lots of hugging and he slots in perfectly in the nein, which--doesn’t seem possible to me, but why not! it’s great! molly can go adventuring with his best friend yasha and yasha’s wife, and beau, who has developed a worrying attachment to him, and jester who is so happy to have him back. he’ll go back to living wild and free and hedonistic. 

that story feels a little empty.

no, i much prefer molly staying dead and hanging out with vax and zuala and maybe bren’s parents? and they all watch the nein live happy lives and trash talk them and. just. be at peace. 

to end, let me paint you a pretty picture:

there is a house in nicodranas, not too far away from the lavish chateau. inside of that house are multiple teleportation circles, linking to the blooming grove and zadash and hupperdook and alfield and other places that are important to the nein.

there’s a kettle on the stove and a bunch of teas caduceus left during his last visit. luke is at the table, doing his homework--yeza is in the lab, mashing something, making something, while veth is testing some acids in the other lab.

caleb is curled up in front of the fire, frumpkin purring, reading a book on luke’s current homework so he can answer any questions his nephew(?) might throw at him.

just then the door bursts open and beau, jester and yasha flood in. “heeeeey everyone!” jester calls. “we’re hooooome!”

luke jumps up from the table. “did you bring me presents? did you, did you?”

“so many,” beau says, and mimes staggering under the weight. “little man, you’re getting spoiled.”

jester hugs caleb and says, “you don’t smell stinky!! did you take a bath?” and caleb says dryly, “ja, nicodranas has some very nice bathhouses.”

yasha doesn’t say much, but she smiles at luke, and when veth bustles in and hugs her hello, she drops a crown of exotic, fragrant flowers on her friend’s head.

there’s a knock on the open door, and fjord peeks in. “space for another one?” he asks.

“NO!” veth cries out, and everyone laughs.

just then, the teleportation circle activates, and caduceus steps out, bearing more mosses and tea. “i’m just in time,” he says. “that’s great. that’s really nice.”

and the water is hot, and the tea is made, and everyone’s around the table and laughing and tripping over all the stories they want to tell. jester saw kiri and taught her some new songs! she’s still very sweet. luke misses bryce so they’re going to alfield tomorrow. shakaste stopped by the blooming grove and sends his regards; there’s a letter for beau from keg on the mantle, she finally learned to spell her name. 

there are enough rooms in the house in nicodranas, but somehow everyone ends up bedded down on the floor in the living room, right by the fire. it’s not the tiny hut, but it’s close, what with everyone’s snoring and snorting and occasional kicking.

and they all lived happily ever after. the end.

#under the cut #critical role #critical role spoilers #critical role meta #but mostly like awful rambly meta #dont mind me im just word vomiting #mighty nein #widojest has not evolved to the point where i can see them having a happily ever after YET #a couple dozen episodes might do it #all depends on how caleb evolves as a person #caleb literally cant. be romantic rn. he's still healing

[takerfoxx]

Gonna knock off some big ones here! The fav(s) of the day are...

BOBA FETT!

Okay guys, let’s get this out straight out of the gate. I grew up as a major Star Wars fan. My dad is an old-school sci-fi nerd and it really rubbed off on me. Classic science fiction was our bread and butter growing up, and the Star Wars movies were no exception. We must’ve watched those suckers a gazillion times.

And the expanded universe? Oh, I was all over that shit! And I mean the old stuff! The Truce at Bakura, the Heir to the Empire trilogy, the Kyp Durron trilogy, both the Han Solo and Lando Calrissian trilogies (there were a lot of trilogies), Darksaber, Planet of Twilight, Shadows of the Empire, The Courtship of Princess Leia, Young Han Solo, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, the Young Jedi Knight series, all of the Tales books, Galaxy of Fear, even less well regarded stuff like The Crystal Star. All that and more filled my bookshelves.

But like many young Star Wars fans, my boy was the guy that got like four lines of dialogue and quickly gets killed off in the first half of the third film.

It’s hard to really articulate what made Boba Fett so appealing. I think it’s part of the air of mystery around him. In Empire, he strides in with a totally badass design, is the guy to track down and capture the heroes, backtalks Darth Vader and gets away with it, and escapes with one of the main characters in tow. I guess that caused people to become intrigued by him and want to see what he would do in the last film. And sure enough, he shows up looking all cool and mysterious, flies into a direct confrontation with both Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, seems to get the upper hand...and is summarily dispatched by a fluke accident.

Lame.

So I guess many who would become Star Wars writers were, like myself, let down by this, and sought to “correct” this by giving ol’ Boba his own mythos, complex history, cast of closely-related characters, and make it so that he escaped the damn worm and would go on to cross paths with the heroes in every obligatory “The one with Boba Fett!” entry in every long-running Star Wars book series ever.

And boy, did I eat it up!

The Bounty Hunter Wars! An entry in both Tales From the Bounty Hunters and Tales From Jabba’s Palace! Endless comics! The aforementioned obligatory Boba Fett books! All of this created a character that became almost revered by the fandom, who cast a shadow over the whole multi-verse. I bought the books, played with the toys, and even wrote a short little Boba Fett story in sixth grade. I mean, this guy was just cool.

Needless to say, I’m not the Star Wars fan I once was. I mean, the only one of these movies since RotJ that I’ve actually liked is also one of the least popular, so that’s a thing. Hell, I was debating putting up a Star Wars entry to begin with. But man, even if I’m not all that into Star Wars anymore, it can’t be denied that for a time it reigned supreme, and Boba Fett was, in my world, the king.

(Though lowkey, it was kind of hilarious watching writers try to reconcile the already established Boba Fett origin with the one created by the prequels after Attack of the Clones dropped)

He’s no good to me dead.

Also...

DARTH REVAN!

So I went from almost not doing a Star Wars entry to doing one with multiple characters. Yeah, go figure.

All right. So, Knights of the Old Republic is probably my last great foray into Star Wars before sort of slipping out of the fandom. It was recommended to me by a work friend, so I popped over to EB Games (remember them?), grabbed up a used copy, popped it into my X-Box, and...

I think I averaged about eight hours a day on those games. Each of them.

It was one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had, a wholly new Star Wars story taking place centuries before the films (and yet somehow still having the same technology level) that features none of the classic characters, but still felt very much Star Wars, but also its own thing: a sprawling space adventure as you, the apprentice Jedi, joins up with a ragtag group of companions and travel the galaxy trying to thwart a rogue Sith Lord from finding some long lost superweapon. The worlds you visit! The characters you meet! The quests, the leveling, the force powers, the plot, everything was just so fresh and so cool!

And then you get to the twist, a twist that is now notorious for being one of the best twists in gaming history: finding out that you aren’t just some new Jedi rising up to stop a Sith Lord: you are actually DARTH MOTHERFUCKING REVAN, the Sith Lord that was the master of the current Sith Lord, long thought dead but had actually been captured, mind-wiped and reprogrammed by the Jedi! What do you do with this new information? Well, that’s up to you!

Needless to say, when this was revealed in the game, I started screaming, and screaming loudly. What a twist! What a game-changer! 

Now granted, being the PC of an RPG means that Revan’s personality was decided by the player’s choices, so he didn’t get much of a canon personality of his own, but that still doesn’t change the fact that he’s the centerpoint of one of the coolest pieces of the Star Wars EU that there is, and that’s worth a lot in my opinion.

Also, Bastila was bae, just sayin’. Sort of a proto-Serana, if you ask me.

(note: yes, I know about his role in SWTOR and don’t care for it. No, I haven’t read the novels yet, but I do intend to)

Honor is a fool's prize. Glory is of no use to the dead.

And finally...

GRAND ADMIRAL THRAWN!

The Heir to the Empire is the granddaddy of the OG Expanded Universe. I mean, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye technically came first, but no one remembers that. No, it was all about Timothy Zahn’s epic follow-up to the original Star Wars trilogy, which set the gold standard for the series for years to come and also introduced several of its most iconic characters. Mara Jade? She came from here. Talon Kardde? Also here.

And then you have the trilogy’s centerpiece, Grand Admiral Thrawn.

It’s sort of interesting how iconic Thrawn has become as a Star Wars villain, given how different he is from all of them. I mean, he’s not a Sith. Hell, he’s not force sensitive at all. He’s a military officer, in a series where they tend to be treated as expendable underlings. But through actually using his brain, studying his opponents’ strategies and cultures, making use of the resources available to him, and actually being fair to his subordinates, he’s gone on to almost rival Darth Vader in popularity in some circles. A brilliant tactician who managed to (mostly) overcome the Empire’s prejudice against non-humans through sheer efficiency, he came incredibly close to bringing the New Republic to its knees simply by outplaying them at every turn. His knack for figuring out his opponents’ thought process simply through studying their cultures’ works of art was inspired, and those who tried to outsmart him often came to regret it. What was more, he also was surprisingly honorable, having a strict moral code. He simply believed that the Empire was the best way to run things, and acted accordingly. Though don’t let that fool you into thinking that he wasn’t just as ruthless as anyone else in the Empire. He was just smarter than most about it.

While there was admittedly a lot of crap in the EU that Disney was wise to get rid of, losing characters like Thrawn was a major blow, which was why it was so awesome to see him return in the Rebels tv show. I literally have seen videos of grown men crying with joy just through watching his reveal trailer. And while I don’t have the time or means to watch Rebels for myself, I do want to give it a go sometime in the future, and Thrawn is a big part of that.

But it was so artistically done.

#star wars #knights of the old republic #heir to the empire #boba fett #darth revan #grand admiral thrawn #fav of the day

[tessatechaitea]

Team Titans #16

I'm fairly certain that this is some of that 3-D art that was popular at the time. I'm also fairly certain it's a dick.

"Oh no! My horse was shot straight up the asshole!"

Image Comics changed the face of the comic book industry in many ways that smarter people than me actually know about. But one of the ways that people don't talk about as much (unless they do. I don't have time to actually read about comics or research them or interact with other comic book fans in any way except to make a disgusted face when they try to speak with me!) is how, immediately following Image Comics push for creator's rights, DC decided to create and trademark characters by every name they could think of. "Here are a bunch of characters created by committee that we can get our writers to use instead of creating their own and then expecting royalties on those stupid characters we own and don't legally have to pay extra for, you Goddamned vampires! Fucking Image Comics! Suck our dicks!" Team Titans had to be a reaction to this new mindset. The premise of this terrible comic book was that thousands of superheroes from the future were sent back in time to save their future. And most of those characters had terrible names, like Redwing and Gunsmoke and Battalion and Sparkle Boy. Evidence from the letters pages suggests that this comic book was expected to last long enough that audiences would see what happened to hundreds of these teams. About the same time this series was hitting the shelves, DC put out their summer blockbustr, Bloodlines, which was just a blatant attempt to create as many new heroes as they could come up with before writers began expecting created by paychecks. I'm not sure how well it worked though since Hitman is probably the only hero created at that time that anybody could now name. And also, maybe Garth Ennis gets a created by paycheck for him? I don't know! How should I know?! Remember that part about how I don't do research?! In conclusion, Team Titans can be criticized harshly because it was never meant to be a work of art or a coherent story or entertaining at all. It was just a repository for new characters that DC editors could later mention to new writers when they came on board. "Oh, you don't want to create your own character that you would really be into and thus probably write a terrific story about which would help make DC a lot of money even if we had to pay you creator's rights on it! Maybe you'd rather write a story about Loose Cannon or Joe Public or Cardinal Sin?!" Years later, that editor might be wind up looking at the top selling comics of the month to discover the writer who they drove away was writing a hit comic book with Image Comics because it was the story they wanted to tell but didn't know how to tell it using Loose Cannon as the main character. Meanwhile, Terry and Donna had a baby that didn't grow up to be an evil narcissistic time traveling world conqueror. I sort of forgot about that.

"Stop being hysterical, Donna! Listen to me, a failed history professor, when I downplay our child's potential illness!" -- Terry Long, typical man.

I can't wait until Donna's child's skin sloughs off and he's revealed to be a mutant lizard monster. Then Donna can be all, "I told you something was wrong!" And Terry can be all, "You just live for these moments, don't you?! Wonder Girl! Always right! Can't do anything wrong! Won't let her husband live it down that he failed to write his book on mythology that would have given him a tenured position at NYU!" And Donna would be all, "I never bring that up! You need to let that shit go, you stupid bastard!" And then Terry can be all, "Our child is a lizard because you probably fucked some mythological creature during those months I couldn't get an erection because I felt like such a failure!" And then Donna can be all, "Why are you still even in these comic books?!" And then my writing teacher can be all, "Is this really how you want to write dialogue? With all the 'so-and-so can be all's?!"

Oh look! I was right about Lobo still being used to increase sales. I think this was right around when Lobo was being used on any series that wanted to prove that their hero could beat the unbeatable Lobo, thus turning Lobo into a punching bag and a loser. Which maybe he always was but look at how cool he looks! And at least he's only a genocidal monster and not a pedophile like Deathstork!

The rest of the comic book seems to be Jeff Jensen's attempt at art. That's my guess because he's doing something different and that means it must be art! The final nineteen pages are narrated by Nightrider, the vampire, as he's shot by a neighbor, crawls off to die, and then infiltrates the dreams of the other members of the Team Titans. That's not the artsy part though! That's regular comic book stuff. The artsy part is that Jensen tells the narrated story through the second person point of view. I always think of it as the Choose Your Own Adventure perspective. Maybe Jensen thought the reader would actually give a shit about Nightrider if they were put in Nightrider's bloody shoes? It's a decent attempt since if Nightrider were telling the story through the first person, I would read it while constantly thinking, "Is his name really Nightrider? Did I misread that? I should go back and check where Terry says his name. Let's see. Yep! It's really Nightrider. What a terrible name! Although I'd read a comic book where he teams up with Gunsmoke, sort of like Iron Fist and Luke Cage." But since the story is told in the second person, I completely forgot to think about Nightrider's dumb name because I was distracted by the use of the second person. Instead, my thoughts were these: "What the fuck is Jensen doing?! This is so awkward! It's like when my cousin began writing essays and stories at Mission College and he wrote them all in the second person because I'm pretty sure the only books he ever read were The Cave of Time and The Mystery of Chimney Rock!" So congratulations, Jeff Jensen, on completely succeeding at taking my mind of Nightrider's name which, I guess, means I cared a little more about his story? Not that this story where he crawls into a cave to die concentrates on him and his pain anyway. It's more a storytelling trick to catch up the reader on all of the angst and pain and turmoil the other Titans are suffering through. Poor Nightrider! He's not even interesting enough to carry the story when he's dying!

Yeesh. Mirage dreams she "gives birth" (quotes because I don't think this portrays normal birth!) to her baby, conceived when Deathwing raped her, after which her baby threatens to rape her.

After a bunch of mysterious images and bits of story that make the reader believe they've seen some clues as to the future direction of this comic book (but actually haven't seeing as how none of the dreams mentioned how they'd be cancelled in nine more issues), the neighbor who shot Nightrider clambers into the cave and cradles him in his arms. "I won't let you die," he screams to the Gods! "Even if I have to let you suck my dick!" He glances around furtively. "That's probably how your life will be saved, right?" he says as he unzips his jeans. Team Titans #16 Rating: A+ because it was artists making an effort, I guess. But this comic book wasn't for me.

#Comic Book Review #Comic Book Reviews #DC Comics #DC #Team Titans #Teen Titans #Titans

[notbecauseofvictories]

FIC | another city (better than this one)

[READ ON AO3]

“It’s ‘Solo’ now.”

Ben offers it up before Lando can even open his mouth; abrupt and with a whole mess of badly-hidden nerves. For the moment, the kid is sitting cross-legged on a drum of tibanna gas, picking at a hole in his leggings despite the bulky stun-cuffs binding his wrists together. He keeps darting black looks at the patrolmen flanking him on either side, and scowling. He’s fifteen, Lando guesses; give or take a few years (Lando hasn’t been keeping track) and has mastered the art of scowling with his whole body, every inch of him lending itself to the effort.

He’s grown another foot since Lando saw him last; it adds up to a lot of scowling.

“You really should be more creative with your aliases,” Lando says mildly. “I’ve had every anagram of ‘Skywalker’ flagged since the first time you tried to run away from home.”

“Yeah, well, the droid was recording the manifest,” Ben mutters. “Can’t mind-trick a droid into letting you slip by.” 

He shrugs, though it looks more like an awkward twitch. The kid’s all awkwardness, from the absurd slope of his mouth to the way he hunches his shoulders in, like he’s somehow attempting to make himself smaller. The effect is like a bantha trying to pass for a housecat.

Lando snorts. “My advice is the same, pick smarter aliases. Something random, next time.”

Ben shoots him a look and Lando sighs, gesturing for the patrolmen to remove the stun-cuffs. “Why ‘Solo’ all of a sudden?” Lando asks. “You and Leia fighting again?”

Ben hunches over further, the ragged mop of his hair hiding his eyes. It must have been bad, whatever argument he and Leia got into; Ben only cuts his hair when it’s bad. 

Most of Lando’s memories if Ben feature a kid wearing complicated braids—it was an Alderaanian tradition, and it had been a point of pride for Leia to pass on something to her son, Lando knew. He also knew that before being shipped off to Luke, Ben had screamed and screamed and when that didn’t work, he took a pair of scissors and sheared off every strand of hair long enough to braid. Leia had been devastated, and since then, the length of Ben’s hair has become a reliable indicator of how long it’s been since the last serious fight with his mother. 

Lando wonders if it’ll ever be long enough to braid again.

Ben is silent, even when the patrolmen move take off the cuffs. (He clenches his fists when they move in close, and Lando panics, dizzily thinking, if he tries anything—

Ben abruptly flattens his hands out again, as though he can hear Lando thinking it. No one ends up choking on air, or thrown off the dock by a vast, invisible strength; it’s enough and Lando forces himself to relax, breathe.)

“I can handle things from here, thank you,” Lando says to the patrolmen after the cuffs have been removed. He dismisses them with a weary smile, making a private note to follow up after and ensure the paperwork for this particular incident disappears into the ether. 

It’s not the first time Ben decided stow himself away on a ship headed for Cloud City, but it had been easier when he was younger. Leia could call in favors to keep transport grounded, and Han could follow the trail, catch Ben before he got off-world. Captains were suspicious of a child trying to talk his way onto a freighter. The kid only managed to get off Chandrila once before, and then only because he’d snuck in through the exhaust and wedged himself beneath an empty tibanna tank, unnoticed until the freighter was already in hyperspace.

Now that Ben’s come into his inheritance as a Jedi, Lando doubts anyone but Luke could stop him from going wherever he pleases. And clearly, Luke’s falling down on the job.

Lando studies the sullen line of Ben’s mouth. “Does Luke even know you’re here?” he asks.

Ben has gone back to picking at the hole in his leggings. “No,” he says finally. “He probably hasn’t even noticed I’m gone. The---school keeps him busy.”

Lando’s never heard anyone say ‘school’ with as much venom as Ben manages to fit into that single word.

Briefly Lando shuts his eyes, imagining the evening he had planned—the nice decanter of Kuat sherry, minimal paperwork, the sweet possibility that the mine’s handsome new investor would stop by, as he’d suggested he might. It had been a beautiful dream, Lando had been looking forward to realizing it.

Lando sighs, and scrubs a hand over his face.

“Okay, kid. Okay. Here’s the plan. First, we’re going to comm Luke and let him know that you’re not dead. Then you can fill out the application for a temporary residency permit, so you can actually stay in the City longer than a standard day. After that’s finished, I’m having someone fix your hair, because people are going to think you’re some sort of spice-addled vagrant if you walk around like that.”

Ben doesn’t actually smile, but the hard line of his scowl softens a little. “Okay,” he says.

He signs the temporary residency permit ‘Ben Solo’. Lando decides not to mention how uncertainly he scrawls that name, like it belongs to someone else.

.

.

Lando comms Leia himself, after making sure that Ben is asleep in the guest room. “Hey, Princess,” he says, propping his chin up on his hand, and he has the distinct pleasure of watching her smile.

It’s a strange sort of friendship, between him and the wife of a man he once thought was his; but a friendship, nonetheless. “Baron,” Leia laughs, revealing new lines on her face. (Not a very close friendship, or a reliable one. But they both have loved Han Solo, and that sort of ruin demands companionship---and worse, understanding.)

“Your son is here,” Lando says, and the laughter vanishes from her face like a fried lamp, electricity shorting out.

“Oh,” she says weakly.

“I thought I’d tell you. I made him comm Luke, but...”

Leia shuts her eyes, shaking her head heavily. “We fought. Again.”

“I figured.”

Leia sighs, and Lando can hear the strain in her voice. “Thank you for letting me know. I’ll pass it along to Han, he has a new frequency now. I’m sure...we can arrange for transport back to Endor, or reimburse you, I just---”

“That’s not why I’m comming, Leia, don’t worry about---”

“I know,” she bites out, and Lando is sorry for bring it up, for saying it like that, like his holdson is some sort of shipment he’s expecting reimbursement for. There’s a gods-fucking lake of things they don’t talk about when it comes to the wake of the Civil War---the Rebellion, though no one calls it that any longer. In those early days of peace, Lando had been the only one with money, squirreled away in Hutt vaults and shady Outer Rim banks. He’d funded Leia’s first senatorial campaign, and shelled out for Han’s racing modifications to the Falcon; he’d even underwritten Luke’s school on Endor, and that was just a few years ago.

He’d seen it all as...a gift, to the only family he suspected he’d get in this life. It wasn’t as though his money was doing anything meaningful sitting in a bank.

It wasn’t until Han got spectacularly drunk one evening that he let slip Leia uncomfortably considered it a debt, one she could never repay. (She’s royal, you know, Han had said. He’d been drunk and loose, flushed with love and new fatherhood, and Lando hadn’t envied him, except maybe a little. They’re...funny about credits, they don’t like to think about what life costs. She doesn’t like to think about it.)

“Leia,” Lando says, feeling very old. “That’s....he’s my holdson. I’m happy to have him. He’s always welcome here, you all are. You know that.”

Even through the wavering blue veil of a comm transmission, Leia looks dubious. (Her son is---perhaps it’s cruel to think it, but her son is not welcome in many places. They both know that.) Lando grins, and then tries softening it to a smile. Something gentler, sincere. 

“Really. Let him stay for a few weeks, hide out with his other uncle and review contracts and itemized shipping lists until his eyes bleed. He’ll demand to go back to being a Jedi, I swear.”

Once, long ago, Lando had met the previous Senator Organa---by accident, mostly. He and Han had been smuggling tech to Alderaan, and the Late Senator Organa had been on his way off-world. Lando couldn’t remember why. But the Late Senator had stopped and talked with them for a moment, asked what they were transporting, and where they were from. Lando had been twenty-seven and mostly hopelessly infatuated; he remembers a lot of awkward, stuttering pauses as he tried to think of something impressive to say to the beautiful man in grey-and-purple robes.

(Han had noticed, and he’d fucked Lando into the co-pilot’s seat afterwards, hot with jealousy. Lando had been delighted.)

Lando knows Leia is not the Late Senator Organa’s biological child. Nevertheless, there’s something about her eyes, it registers as the same sort of sinuous pressure on his skin.

“All right,” Leia says at last, as though she’s grinding out transparisteel. “I won’t interfere.”

He laughs. “Princess, you were spying on the Imperial Senate when you were his age. Maybe he’s just restless, looking for his purpose.”

She shoots him a sour look. “He has a purpose.”

“I know,” Lando says. It doesn’t surprise him that Leia got a blindspot there, can’t see the difference between a purpose and your purpose. He doubts anyone ever asked her if she wanted to be Princess of the Rebellion. “I know. But let him...I mean, he’s fifteen. Let him have some room to run.”

They talk for a little longer, back and forth---she complains about the glacial pace of the Senate, he throws in some anecdotes about the dysfunctional Cloud City Board of Trustees that have her crying with laughter. By the end, she’s smiling again, and when Lando says, “Let him stay,” she ducks her head and says, “Yes.”

Ben’s door is still open when Lando goes by. The kid is a dark shape in a room of darkened shapes, and Lando looks at that strange and familiar outline for a minute, thinking about Han, and Leia, and Tatooine and Luke wearing black. How oddly contented he is, watching Ben Organa Solo’s chest rise and fall.

Lando falls into to his own bed, after, and doesn’t dream.

.

.

Lando will forever treasure the look on Ben Solo’s face when he sets the stack of datapads down in front of him. “What?” Ben says, and Lando grins, his best grin, the kind he typically saves for investors, foremen, and pleasure cruisers who really just get off on watching people grovel.

“You’re a temporary citizen of Cloud City now. Technically, that means you work for Cloud Securities Limited Incorporated, which means you’re not allowed to remain planetside for longer than twenty-four hours without the approval of a Cloud City Securities Limited Incorporated supervisor.” Lando leans in, until he’s close enough that Ben’s eyes have gone wide and panicked, and the kid’s leaning back dangerously in his chair. “I’m you’re supervisor, Ben.”

Lando will give him this: Ben Solo is quieter than Ben Organa ever was.

(They have lunch together afterwards. Lando takes him to the canteen as a kind of test, but Ben Solo accepts the hydrated meal pack with a minimum of fuss, says thank you, and keeps his head down in the mess hall. With his hair cut, Lando can watch his eyes, and Ben’s are wounded, but not hard. It’s enough. Lando decides it’s enough.)

This goes on, pretty much. Ben Solo has a head for numbers---”Your dad was good at math too,” Lando says, and Ben’s ears go an ugly crimson color---and he’s not bad company if you don’t mind pointed, angry silences. Awkward as all hells, yes, absolutely. Every time a pretty girl even just walks past them he goes silent and panicky, then sulks for hours afterwards; but Han was always like that too, Lando remembers. Too much, too soon, showing all your cards. (Leia had had more dignity, refusing to reveal how far she’d fallen until there might not be another chance.)

“Aren’t you going to ask me what we argued about?” Ben asks during the third week. Lando’s genuinely surprised he managed to hold out.

“You can tell me, if you want,” Lando says, keeping his expression something bored, blank. “But I figure it’s not really my business.”

Ben has to slouch to fit in Lando’s shadow. The realization makes Lando feel pathetically tender towards him, this boy with hands like plates and feet like skimmers and a perpetual scowl. Sometimes, Lando looks at Ben Solo and it’s all he can do not to remember Han, Han at not much older than Ben is now, and he thinks---

It’s not important.

.

.

The story Lando heard goes like this:

Ben was nine, all scabby knees and cute, probably. (Han wouldn’t shut up about his son being a handsome devil, but Lando’s seen holos of Ben when he was younger---‘interesting-looking’ is being generous.) Anyway, he was a kid. He got in trouble sometimes, like kids do. Especially when they’re Han Solo and Leia Organa’s kid.

But one day, the school commed Leia, and said, come immediately.

Ben was sitting outside the head teacher’s office, pale and shaking and babbling about an accident, a mistake, he was sorry. He was so sorry. And Ben reached for his mother with blood all down the front of his shirt, on his arms, and dried like black paint on his hands. 

It wasn’t his blood.

Ben was nine, and Lando doesn’t know what Leia promised the parents of the little girl he almost-killed but it must have been something else, because nothing about the incident ever hit the holonews. This next part of the story gets elided, or maybe Lando’s just not remembering it all. He guesses Leia commed Luke and talked with him about the fact that her son was beyond meditation and floating rocks now; that her son needed help.

Han wasn’t commed until afterwards. (Lando knows because he and Leia fought about that, the first of the last; Han hid out with Lando in the wake of it. I’m his dad, Han had said after too much whiskey, and Lando’s blood had run cold. Han’s voice had never been that hollow and hopeless. He’d looked...so much older in that moment, an old man already.

I’m his dad, and I can’t even---I can’t protect him. I can’t help him. What’s the point of a father who can’t help his son?)

One month later, Luke arrived to take Ben to the Outer Rim and teach him how to be a Jedi. And that was that.

.

.

Ben can be coaxed into talking about Jedi stuff, at least in the theoretical. Lando will admit it’s all a bit beyond him, and boring as all hells, but it’s nice to see the kid get excited about something. Even if it’s just knowing shit Lando doesn’t.

He never talks about Luke or the other students at the school unless Lando asks directly. Even then, his answers are clipped, monosyllabic if he can manage it. The angry poison has faded from his voice, but underneath is a well of something uglier, a hardened sort of bitterness that Lando wouldn’t begin to know how to chip away at.

There were gamblers on Canto Bight who talked like that---old men, spice-addled and ranting, convinced the system had cheated them. Those imagined fortunes curdled their insides, turned them into something monstrous. What a man felt he was owed...

Lando decides it’s none of his business, and stops asking.

.

.

Sometimes---not often, but maybe out of the corner of Lando’s eye---Ben doesn’t look like Han at all.

.

.

The dining room where Darth Vader once used Lando to bait his trap was torn out on Lando’s orders, remodeled into a solarium. Folirian snowdrops and new, green hyranith trees grow there now, rising up from neat beds. One of the foremen leads exercises there in the morning and Lando knows that it’s a popular place for the younger workers to go after curfew---the cleaning droids keep complaining about empty bottles, and fluids.

There’s nothing to mark the place as anything more than that.

(”Did you save Cloud City from Darth Vader?” Ben asks, and it takes Lando fifteen minutes of cajoling to figure out that the stupid accounting interns have been gossiping with the Baron’s new assistant.

“I don’t like to talk about it,” Lando says sharply enough that he sees Ben flinch from him. “That was a dark time, we did what we had to do.”)

Once, late into the fourth shift, Lando is making his way from the office block to his rooms and---it’s out of the corner of his eye, he doesn’t know why he looks but he does. There’s a tall humanoid standing in the center of the solarium, swathed in shadows and starlight and Lando’s heart, it stops dead, everything stops dead, he stops dead, staring at---at what---

Luke said he saw ghosts. Luke said---

Lando must drop his datapad, because the shadowy figure startles at the crunch of the casing. A moment later, Ben emerges from the solarium, barefoot, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and shadows beneath his eyes.

He’s just a boy and yet Lando is frozen, watching him move like a thing apart from the galaxy as it is---still somehow cloaked in shadow-blue, dangerous. Ben frowns, reaching out and taking Lando’s arm. His hand is hot, through the silk of Lando’s shirt.

“Lando?” Ben says. There’s rare concern on his face, but Lando only makes a choked-off noise, jerking his arm out of Ben’s grip like it burns. (Maybe it does.)

“Uncle Lando?” Ben repeats, and it’s that. Lando is---uncle. This is his holdson, his nephew, his. It’s fine. They’re all fine.

“I’m---I’m fine. It’s...it’s fine.” Lando forces himself to exhale, to bend down and pick up the cracked datapad and smile, weakly. “What are you doing in the iota east sector this late anyway? Come on, let’s...go back.”

Ben walks a step or two ahead of Lando, the tail of the blanket trailing behind him like a cloak. Lando swallows a rising tide of nausea and shuts his eyes, walks the rest of the way blind. Listening to the sound of Ben’s bare feet on the stone, and taking comfort in its humanness.

.

.

“Kid’s too pale to be yours,” Umlale says, and Lando doesn’t have to turn his head to know she’s smirking. He rolls his eyes, though he knows she won’t be able to see it through the thick protective goggles.

It’s easy to track Ben through the maze of the processing plant, taller than any of the other techs, the bright green trainee helmet bobbing amid the flow of grey-blue. He’d given Lando the blackest, nastiest look when Lando announced he was being reassigned. Lando had definitely not enjoyed that more than he should have.

“Son of some friends from the war.”

“Must not be very good friends,” Umlale says, and Lando does turn to look at her then. Her luminous eyes wink out from behind the goggles, yellow-green and still uncanny, even after fifteen years of being head of plant operations. Lando always thinks he should be used to it by now; he never actually is.

“What do you mean? He’s my holdson, the kid’s basically family.”

“And you couldn’t get him some swank job in the upper levels?” Umlale asks, her long antennae flicking forward. “Holdson of the Baron, you’d think you could have him making rounds in the casino or overseeing the resorts, working on...outreach, or whatever slick word you’ve come up with to sell the City as more than just a mining colony.”

Lando tries to imagine Ben outreaching to anyone, about anything.

(He pictures...fire. A lot of fire. And people screaming.)

He plays it off with a smirk. “Are you saying that plant tech maintenance isn’t solid work?”

Umlale’s eyes blink, and her whole thorax twitches, in the way Lando knows is as good as a shrug. “It’s solid work. But it’s dirty, and hard. Not the kind of work a Baron gives to family.”

“Unless,” she added after a moment, “you don’t like your family very much.”

“The boy could stand to get his hands dirty,” Lando says, but Umlale is still watching him with bright eyes. Lando flashes a thin smile, turns away. Ben’s green helmet is nowhere to be seen; he must have moved on with the others, into another sector of the plant.

“His pheromones are strange, I noticed when you introduced him. Like something dead and rotting. I know humans aren’t very good at detecting chemical trails, but I wonder...is that what scares you so much?” Umlale asks, and Lando---

---isn’t quick enough to hide it. 

“Oh,” Umlale says, and Lando isn’t sure if it’s his face or his pheromones that give it away. Umlale’s spent enough time scenting chemicals and working with humans, it could be either. “You didn’t know. You thought you distrusted him for no reason?”

Lando opens his mouth, and absolutely does not say, no, I thought I was just terrified that he’d raise his hand up like Darth Vader and wipe out half my city, and there would be nothing I could do to stop him.

“Just make sure he doesn’t accidentally burn the place down, all right?” Lando says instead. “He’s my only holdson, but this is my city. I’d hate to have to choose between the two.”

.

.

Lando can hear Ben crying at night sometimes, thrashing in nightmares Lando has stopped trying to wake him from. Lando lies awake those nights, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what in all the hells he’s supposed to do, how---

“I liked him,” Ben says one morning, of the handsome investor who has stopped coming over because he can’t stand the howling cries of Lando’s holdson.

“Did you,” Lando snaps. He promised himself he would not get angry at Ben, he would understand, he would understand because he’d slept with Luke Skywalker a few times, back when Luke was young and less in control. Lando can remember the gold-touch of Luke against his mind, the fundamental strangeness of all that alien power pushing through to his skin. And that was just sometimes---he imagines it’s worse, weirder, having that crazy-making thing in your head all the time. Since before you were born. 

(Like something dead and rotting, Umlale had said.)

He has sympathy for the uncanny strength collected in Ben’s hands. It isn’t irritation. It isn’t.

But Ben only flinches and then stares down at his hands for the rest of the meal. Lando isn’t sure what’s in that look. It exists. It probably shouldn’t. That’s all.

.

.

“It’s been almost three standard months,” Luke says. He’s pacing, and the holoimage keeps flicking in and out of focus trying to track him. It’s making Lando’s headache worse.

“It’s only been eight weeks,” Lando says, shutting his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to get the headache to ease a little. “Anyway, I don’t know what to tell you. He’s a pretty decent plant maintenance tech now, though. Give him another month, I think he may even be eligible for level two clearance.”

“Lando,” Luke sighs, and Lando wants to laugh at how similar they sound---Ben and Luke, that same tone of disapproval from on high. Maybe it’s Force thing.

“You said he’d be begging to come back! You told Leia!” Luke says, and it’s Lando’s turn to sigh.

“I guess I was wrong.”

“He belongs---”

“I’m not going to force him to leave, Luke. He’s an employee of Cloud City, I can’t fire him without cause, and his residency permit only expires upon his death, criminal conviction, voluntary departure, or termination by the City.”

Luke makes a derisive noise, and Lando cracks open an eye, grinning ruefully. “Sorry, Master Jedi. Some of us have to abide by the bylaws.”

Luke is quiet for a long moment. When Lando opens his eyes, Luke is staring off somewhere into the middle distance, looking---grave, maybe. A little sad. “This is his home,” Luke says finally. His voice is quiet. “This is where he’s safe.”

Lando is silent.

He coaxes Ben to talking to Luke himself, after Lando’s done. He gets a shattered comm box for his trouble, the cracked holoprojector throwing out alarming sparks.

“You can take it out of my pay,” Ben snarls as he stalks out of the room, and the air in his wake Lando can taste electricity, like a stormfront moving in.

.

.

Most nights, Lando teaches Ben to cheat at sabacc. “Han didn’t do the honors?” Lando asks, shuffling the deck. Ben shrugs.

“He didn’t want to pass on---that sort of thing.”

For someone who’d always loved the weightless speed of hyperspace, Han carts a lot of shame around. “Well, I was always a better cardsharp than he was anyway. The trick,” Lando says, flicking a card from one hand to the other and back again, “is not to be too flashy, trust your instincts, and never get caught.”

Lando takes him to the Cloud City casino, once he deems Ben acceptable. He makes Ben give all his winnings back afterwards, “Since technically, when you beat the house, it’s me you’re stealing from.”

“Thanks,” Ben mumbles, late one night when he’s sprawled out on the couch and already mostly asleep. Lando is just shuffling the deck back and forth between his hands, thinking about storm season, and whether they’ll make their number for the quarter. 

In the dimmed light, his expression smoothed out and hair falling in his eyes, The kid looks much younger this way---like a boy, a child.

“No problem,” Lando says quietly. “Anyway, I imagine using the Force makes this sort of thing easy for you.”

“Yeah,” Ben says. His eyes are shut. “But it’s nice.”

.

.

Lando’s finalizing the new durasteel supplier contract---it’s been in the works for over a year and he wants it done; they have some major structural repairs to complete before storm season---which is maybe why he doesn’t notice. He’s distracted, running on a haze of caf and uneasy sleep; it makes sense that the rest of the baronetcy staff are also drawn and quiet, focused on pushing through the deal.

It’s a pity when Eroll quits abruptly, claiming a sick mother on Mygeeto, but Lando understands. And it’s a shame that Onrtia decides to use her vacation time just then, given that she’s one of Lando’s best assessors, but she couldn’t be persuaded to wait until the deal closed. Fedyn asks to be reassigned to a lower level, and so does Geem, but Lando always privately thought they didn’t have what it took to work in the baronetcy. 

He doesn’t think anything of any of it until he wishes one of the accounting interns a mild good morning, and she promptly bursts into tears. A meddroid has to be called to sedate her.

(The durasteel supplier contract is put on hold.)

“I had an interesting conversation this morning with Saytini Raum, in the accounting offices,” Lando says to Ben that night at dinner. They’re in Lando’s suites, alone; Lando didn’t want to risk this conversation in the mess hall. He’s still not sure he wants to risk it at all, but all he can think about is Fedyn’s haunted expression, the panic in Onrtia’s voice as she insisted, no, everything was fine, why wouldn’t everything be fine?

Saytini, dosed with sed and her eyes still wide, terrified, saying, I can feel him in my head, moving around. Like maggots.

“What did you talk about?” Ben asks nonchalantly. Or what Lando imagines is supposed to be nonchalantly, the kid has a face like a pane of transparisteel, every emotion reflected there. 

For a moment, Lando allows himself hate him, Ben Organa or Solo or whoever he wants to be right now, clumsily affecting innocence. For that moment, Lando hates him with all the fire of Bespin’s burning core.

Then he exhales, and lets it slide away. It’s replaced by a vast weariness. “Why did you do it, Ben?”

Ben smiles. He actually smiles, and Lando wants to be sick. He sets down his silverware with a clatter, but the smile on Ben’s face doesn’t falter. “I wanted to help,” Ben says proudly, and Lando shakes his head, uncomprehending. Ben just smiles. “To repay you for everything you’ve given me.”

“A---what?”

“I wanted to help you, help Cloud City. Eroll was talking about you behind your back, complaining about your leadership, so I convinced him to leave and go home. Onrtia isn’t loyal to you, she just wants to make money before she goes, so I made sure she wouldn’t get commission for the supplier contract. You don’t like Fedyn and Geem, they were the previous Baron’s staff, so I convinced them to get reassigned. Saytini was just...I needed information, and she’s a gossip, she knows about stuff.”

“You...convinced them?”

“With the Force, Luke calls it a mind-trick. I even convinced the other workers at the plant to put in more hours, work harder, without asking for any more pay.”

Ben is still smiling, like he’s expecting praise, a pat on the head. Lando dizzily remembers that he had noticed the uptick in safety incidents at the plant; he’d put it down to a learning curve with the new tech, or maybe the weather---everyone tended to get restless and careless during calms. He’d told the safety director to keep an eye on it and determine if it was a trend, then report back.

Of course it’s a trend. His people---his techs, his miners, his processors and ops staff---have been working until they’re too tired not to hurt themselves.

Lando really will be sick.

“Will it fade?” he asks, keeping his voice as light and neutral as he can.

“Fade?”

“What you---convinced them to do, will that fade on its own or do you have to give them new, different order?”

“I mean, I guess it fades on its own if I’m not around, but I don’t understand, why would you want it to fade? Everything’s going so well! Your profits are up, you’re producing more and purer tibanna than before!”

“Ben, you can’t do that, you can’t...”

“I didn’t make them do anything they didn’t want to, it wasn’t even for me. I was helping!”

The worst part is that Ben looks...genuinely confused, hurt and overeager and it’s too much, it’s all too much. (I can feel him in my head, moving around. Like maggots. Like something dead and rotting.) Lando told Umlale that he would hate to choose between his holdson and his city, but he’s made this choice before. Han or Ben, Darth Vader or no---

It’s the City, every time.

Lando squeezes his eyes shut and braces his hands against the table. The wood is cool against his skin. “Mr. Solo. As of now, your employment with Cloud Securities Limited Incorporated is terminated. Your temporary residency permit will expire twenty-four hours from the processing of termination. You therefore have twenty-four hours to leave the City, or---”

Ben shoots to his feet, knocking his chair to the ground with a crash. “You can’t do that! You promised I wouldn't have to leave! I’m helping!”

“This was wrong, Ben. You...you’ve made yourself a threat to Cloud City and my people,” Lando says, staying seated. He’s not as tall as Ben, but he’s broader, and he suspects he can throw a better punch if Ben gets close enough for it. If Ben decides to use the Force, though---

Ben is breathing shallowly, and all the blood has gone to his cheeks, two spots of blotchy red stark against his paleness. “I’ll stop,” he says wildly. “I’ll stop, I won’t...don’t make me go. I’m sorry. Please, Lando, please, don’t make me---”

Ben doesn’t cry, at least not like Saytini had---he’s white-lipped and gritting his teeth through it, as though outraged that he can’t stop himself. “I was helping,” he says again. "You just don’t want me here, like---everyone else, you’re just like the others, you just---”

Lando sits there and lets him rage, doesn’t even flinch when an invisible strength picks up his plate and hurls it to the wall, smashing it in a thousand pieces. Lando watches his dinner slide, forlornly down the wall; Ben is still yelling. Lando isn’t paying much attention to the words, just the---sound, the boy hurting and lashing out. (When he shuts his eyes Geem is there, trying to smile and failing, just looking twitchy and anxious and uncertain.)

It takes him almost an hour for Ben to wind down again, at which point most everything in Lando’s dining room has been tossed or hurled or smashed. 

Ben sinks back into his chair breathing hard, blotchy-red from his neck to his ears.

“I’m sorry, Ben,” Lando says quietly. “I really am, kid. And of course we’ll get you passage to Endor, I’ll take care of it---”

“I hate you,” Ben says with that same ugly, hardened bitterness. “I hate you more than any of them.”

Lando swallows the protest. “You’re still---family, my holdson.”

Ben huffs, his mouth curving into a sneer, and staggers to his feet again. “Family,” he says with that familiar ugly, hardened bitterness. “Sure.”

Lando watches him go and then exhales, puts his forehead down on the table. The woodgrain is cool, and comforting. He shuts his eyes, and simply breathes.

.

.

“What did you and Leia fight about?” Lando asks, as they’re standing on the wharf, waiting for Ben’s ship to board. It’s a cold, clear morning, and the sun is brilliant white over the clouds.

Ben doesn’t look at him. “I thought it wasn’t any of your business.”

Lando hums, squinting into the light. “Maybe it should have been.”

The freighter captain calls for boarding, and Ben hefts his pack on his shoulder. He looks at Lando for a moment, then swallows and turns away. Lando watches him go, and says nothing.

#the warry stars #star wars #originally this was going to be ben/lando but uh. I wanted to go much much darker for that so instead you have ben & lando #also #this was.....extremely cathartic to write for personal reasons that I'm trying not to examine too much #ANYWAY #long post for ts #this is a thing I made

[margarittet]

SPN Season13 in the Galaxy not so Far Away, aka Supernatural vs Star Wars

We all know how important “Star Wars” are in the SPN universe, but I just had a revelation yesterday: we are now in the point of the story that literally just arrived at the doorstep of “a new hope”, and everything just fell into place. 

(To the fellow SW fans: I am drawing parallels here only to the first six movies, excluding everything else, because I realised this is a topic that you can write about for hours and hours - with this thought in mind, I have limited myself to the very basic character overview. If anyone wants to add plot analysis, philosophy, more future speculation or whatever else, please feel encouraged to do so!)

The classic “Star Wars” is a franchise that is an archetypical, medieval adventure/fairy tale/coming-of-age story set in space, with magic, romance, religion, philosophy, knights, dark lords, orphaned heroes, a princess, wizards and scoundrels, a quest, epic battles, a war between good and evil, love, choices and redemption. It also talks a lot about free will, nature vs nurture, found family vs blood family, the power of love, faith, hope, self-understanding, and self-acceptance.

It’s a perfect parallel to Supernatural. So, let’s have a look:

1) Lucifer is Anakin/Darth Vader. The one with amazing powers, the one who stood out among the Jedi/angels, who was supposed to be “the bringer of light”, but who was brought to the Dark Side due to hubris and hate, and to rules he didn’t agree with, the rules given from above. The moment love was gone from his life, Anakin/Lucifer went bye-bye, gave in to the power of evil, and became the Dark Lord. 

Once Luke/Jack came into the picture, Anakin/Lucifer started looking for him to lure him to the Dark Side, because Vader, just like Lucifer, doesn’t understand the concept of love above blood, and of free will that can steer our innate nature. Luke does not give in to the dark side, and in the end he manages to draw his father back to the side of light because of love and light he chose for himself - and Anakin dies redeemed. I’m not sure if this is Lucifer’s path, but since he “was not a villain” in his story either, we’ll see.

Anakin/Lucifer used to be the Chosen One, the one destined to change Jedis/angels, but he went astray. Luke/Jack is now the one set to repair the damage he has done.

2) So, Jack is our Luke Skywalker now. At the beginning of our story it was Sam who was Luke’s parallel, but Sam has grown and can now be the older, smarter “Jedi” who has seen it all before, and can use it to educate his young padawan. That just underlines the similarities between Jack and Sam that will play a big part in the future. 

Jack/Luke. A young kid, who has humongous amounts of power/magic/Force inside of him, who is “a new hope” for the universe, but who needs outside influences that would keep him away from the Dark Side. He will need his teachers and friends to stay on the path of light, to fight for the right cause, and to help restore the Republic (balance). They will also help him understand the new world he was thrown into with all the politics and family drama behind it - his dad is the Prince of Darkness after all (Lucifer/Darth Vader), his mom was a sweet, innocent soul who loved purely, but is now dead (Kelly/Padme Amidala), he himself posseses the potential to build or destroy, and now the question is how he will choose to use his abilities.

(Ok, since we don’t yet have gifs of Jack, here you have a preview from another show:)

He will figure out where he will put his power, faith and heart, with a little help of his friends:

3) Dean/Han Solo - an actual human, with no superpowers of his own, but by no means unimportant or without special traits. Just as Han, Dean is the epitome of charm, courage, skill, quick wit, friendship, love and humanity. He doesn’t need the Force/magic/angelic powers to be one of the most important people in the Galaxy. He would happily die for his friends/family, and he is also the lover in the story, a BAMF fighter and a great pilot/driver with a cool vehicle.

4) Cas is part Yoda, part Leia. Yoda is Cas’ supernatural - “angelic/alien” - side. Leia is Cas’ human side.

He is paralleled to Leia in the fact that he is the newly found family to Luke (Sam/Jack), and a lover to Han (Dean). He also resembles Leia in the way that, even though she has a very strong Force heritage (that would be angel powers in this analogy), she is not really interested in her skills, and prefers more down-to-earth activities, like fighting for the cause, and enjoying love/family life. 

Oh, and the sass.

As for Yoda - he just now is becoming a Yoda parallel. He is being separated from Sam and Dean, going through his spiritual awakening into self-awareness, and gaining knowledge (his own Buddha-like path), so that he can emerge again, more prepared to take a role of a teacher. I almost can see some kind of Dagobah-like scenario where Jack and Cas go away for some time, so that Cas can show Jack something connected to his angelic side - the light side of the angelic “Force”.

Life lesson to be taken from this: never take the dorky little guy at face value.

5) Sam, who used to be Luke, swinging between the light and dark inside of him, can now become Obi-Wan, being half a teacher-philosopher, half a warrior - not unlike Cas, but I think Cas is definitely more Yoda. Castiel is”alien”. Sam is fully human, only with special powers, so he’s Obi-Wan. Additionally, in another parallel, Sam has a past with Lucifer, something that can be used now when he will try helping Jack.

Sam, as a mirror to Jack, has always been the HOPE in the show.

(Just a side comment: the sass is strong with this one.)

Angel!Cas/Yoda and Sam/Obi-Wan are very similar to each other in a way that they are both a bit hermit, they have no problems being alone, studying new things, or just spending hours doing things that people like Dean/Han Solo or Jack/Luke would find deadly boring. They have few earthly possesions. They don’t nest. They prefer knowledge/faith/spiritual growth to material things and strong emotions (of course Cas is slowly breaking out of this, becoming Leia). It’s a very Buddhist approach to life that Jedis preached as well.  

(I guess Sam is a bit of Chewie, too.)

Human!Cas will be different. He will be earth bound, love bound, and mission bound - and once the mission is done, and balance is restored, he will find his place, his home with his lover, and he will be very happy with it. Love will be a huge part of his character story, but not the defining part - just like Leia, he will be a fighter, a strategist, a soldier, and in the end, a lover.

Sam and Cas, paralleling Yoda/Obi-Wan, once they teach Luke/Jack about everything he needs to know, will die (figuratively) which means that they will finally be able to ”rest in peace” - settle down in their final endgames - Sam a scholar and a hunter, and Cas a lover, a hunter and a human. Jack will be settling down, too, after his job is done and Lucifer is dead - like Luke.

It’s going to be a good ending. There will be music, dancing, kissing and ILYs. 

And, hopefully, some Ewoks.

#supernatural #parallels #star wars #character analysis #dean winchester #castiel #Sam Winchester #jack the nephilim #destiel endgame #jack kline #luke skywalker #princess leia #han solo #obi wan kenobi #yoda #spn meta #long post

[brishu]

My Week At Sea - Part 2

Day 5

Several years earlier, one of my closest friends visited Jamaica and came back more disturbed than relaxed. He said the Jamaicans at his resort were so insistent on servility that they left no room for him to relate to them as people. Knowing enough about the Jamaica not enmeshed in the vicious net of tourism, he would have loved to penetrate the hotel workers’ subservience, but nothing he said or did could disrupt their forsaking their own dignity, and he was never going to align himself with the kind of racist, paternalistic assholes who enjoy a dynamic like that. I felt like I had already experienced something similar on the boat with Addy (even though she was Trini) and I was bracing myself for a flow-going day where, for the sake of my family, I settled into the role of passive oppressor as quietly as possible. I understood that all concerns like this were predicated on acknowledgement of the inherent unfairness of American foreign policy, resulting in this dark-skinned person working harder and being smarter than me, but my portion still being much greater than his. And what little he does have is far too dependent on my caprices. I guess this makes me a “snowflake” because, upon confronting poor foreigners, rather than leverage my financial power for maximum enjoyment, I would rather abrogate belief in the Manifest Destiny and deal apologetically with the Jamaican, as though that restores any balance whatsoever.

And maybe for the cruisers who opted for a high tea on a plantation or a day in the life of Bob Marley or 18 holes on Cinnamon Hill, Rastafarian minstrelsy was a welcome aspect of the experience. But again, thanks to the superior research of my wife, we had a fantastic, and perfectly comfortable excursion. Latenya, our guide, and Desmond, our driver, were kind but hardly subservient. In fact, on the bus ride to our first stop, I asked a question about Michael Manley and when my wife said, “Now you’re just showing off,” Latenya chimed in with a confirming, “Mmm hmmm.”

Throughout the ride of about 80 minutes, on the left side of the road with Desmond’s steering wheel on the right, Latenya told us about Jamaica’s history, economy and education system. Jamaica has six National Heroes and one National Heroine. Bob Marley ain’t one of them, Marcus Garvey is. Latenya also invited everyone on the bus to introduce himself in Jamaica patois: “My niem a’Brian. Me come from Brooklyn.”We were a smaller group, with only three other families: one group from Quebec, one from Mexico and one from Rochester. Guess which group asked every Jamaican we met if he knew Usain Bolt.

Again it bears remarking what an excellent job my wife did picking excursions. Ours was a two stop trip. The first was Mystic Mountain, where we rode a sky tram from the bottom to the top, gliding higher and higher, away from road noise and above the tree canopy to the summit.

That is my parents with one of our daughters in the car ahead of ours. To the left is Dolphin Cove Bay. At the top we had the opportunity to ride a self-braking roller coaster modeled after Jamaican bobsleds. I thought it might be some kind of kiddie ride but I was thrillingly wrong.

After the ride, one of the older Quebecois dudes asked me about Brooklyn and mentioned that it seemed to be the epicenter of political activity these days. My father took this to mean the guy was anti-Trump, but, considering Quebec’s reputation for cultural purity, I was more cautious in my replies. He asked me if I thought people were really going to start moving to Canada in droves and I said that I doubted it. I did not ask him his feelings about Trudeau, nor Stephen Harper because I could care less. And there was something opaque about his line of questions, as if he didn’t want me to know whether he was looking for kindred anti-Trumpism, or trying to coax forth the specious arguments of a, well, snowflake. For whatever it’s worth (not much), I think he came away respecting me, as much for avoiding hairtrigger political opinions as for the contrast between our interactions with our kids throughout the day’s adventures and those of the people from Rochester with their little boy. “Look at this Dylan! Look at that Dylan! Hey Dylan! Do you like this? What about this? Dylan! Dylan!” At some point I arrived at the belief that he was neither named after Robert Zimmerman’s stage name, nor his Welsh namesake’s, but rather after Luke Perry’s character on Beverly Hills 90210 and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise.

Our second stop was Konoko Falls. This is us at the bottom:

And we all made it to the top, some of us with a greater sense of accomplishment than others:

Above Konoko Falls was part of an old tea plantation now converted into a nature preserve, replete with caged tropical birds, towering ginger blossoms, two snapping turtles named Pretty and Ugly and the resting place of one of my compatriots whose visit didn’t go so well:

We got jerk chicken and pork with pigeon peas and rice for lunch and Latenya and our Konoko guides ate with us. I thought about complaining to them that the jerk wasn’t spicy enough, because it wasn’t, but then it would be all “Oh look at the white boy eating like an islander!” so I skipped it.

The bus ride back to the pier was fascinating for its foreign mundanities. I’ve noticed that every country seems to have dinstinctly shaped curbs along its roads, and that the grass can be a different species too. This may seem like nothing, but it etches different borders into your field of view, giving you the abiding sense that you really are somewhere else. And then there are the commercial accents that give you some sense of a place’s imperatives:

The silhouetted animals suggest Central Dealers is a great shop for hunters. But what about the explosion behind the bullet? Come on down to Central Dealers and fuck that nice blue sky up real good! Was this the area’s biggest munitions depot, asserting dominance via advertising a la Coca-Cola? Or was it a fledgling endeavour, betting the store on a billboard’s pyrotechnics? Whatever security Central Dealers offered its customers, here’s the sign that’s supposed to assure citizens of their official safety:

Pierside at excursion’s end, Latenya and Desmond bade us all farewell with their hands held out. At the outset of our tour, they had said they would take care of us and hoped we would take care of them. So everybody hunched over, trying to keep their larger bills out of sight, extracting what they felt was appropriate and stashing the rest away to let the money they held represent the pinnacle of generosity. I gave Latenya $20 and Desmond $10 and that seemed acceptable to them. As I got back on the boat, I wondered how long the guilt would have lasted if I had tipped poorly or even not at all. But, deprived of the opportunity to savor that regret, I resumed the grim business of enjoying a high state of privelege as we set sail for Hispaniola.

With two days left, we began to get elegiac. For some, that meant the trajectory of sloth had hit its nadir and it was time to start rousing back to the surface of baseline real world functionality. For others it meant make your memories now before you part ways from all of these other fine folks. For my daughters it meant writing a thank you note to Addy for bringing them cookies one night and a towel gorilla another:

Initially I was touched, but then my older daughter told me she just wanted to let Addy know “how great her service has been.” I was not the first parent, drunk or sober, to have to measure out the proper combination of approval and correction, but somehow I did manage to mask my horror at her blithe superciliousness, and suggest she say, “Thanks for taking such good care of us” instead.

The first time we saw Addy after we’d left the note in the room, she said thank you but I sensed that she actually felt put upon by the gesture, as though it demanded a stronger connection with us than she was comfortable making. It also occurred to me that she was worried we might leave a sweet note in lieu of a healthy tip, which seemed to impel her to convey that our kids’ note didn’t mean very much to her. I tried to signify to her that I totally got her cool reception of the note, but whether she got my wordless message, I really don’t know. The next night after I stuffed the envelope she had left in our room, she greeted me far more warmly. I guess the proper way to hold up my end of this interaction would have been to smile, pat her gently on the shoulder and move on, thus concluding our business together. But I’m afraid what I did, in some tiny way, was needlessly assert some kind of superiority, silently expressing “We coulda been friends but I guess all you care about is money. Oh well.” But of course, I only pulled that shit because I fell into the older and grosser dynamic of the little white snot who can’t get enough of mammy’s loving forebearance. This all happened quickly enough to play it off, as though we’d had a vanilla interaction without wrinkles or subtext, but I felt the gnarls and, no matter how professionally dispassionate Addy might have been, she must have felt it too. But before I took my millisecond plunge into the depths of racism, we went to Haiti.

Day 6

Royal Caribbean has the lease on Labadee, Haiti until 2050. It’s a peninsula they tout as a private island, but Haitians are barred entry by company employees with paramilitary backgrounds reinforced by rolls of razorwire. When ships aren’t in port, the only people there are maintenance crew and the aforementioned mercenaries. When ships do make landfall, a village comes to life. Crowds fill the beaches, giant palapas become cafeterias, trams convey cruisers to various recreations, and rows of stalls are filled with authorized merchants’ authentic Haitian wares. The excursions we booked for the day included one ride on the Dragon’s Tail roller coaster, which, like the previous day’s bobsled ride, was an alpine coaster. I actually liked this one better than the Jamaican one because on the bobsleds, you start at the top, hurdle down through the rainforest and then get hauled back up. The Dragon’s Tail pulls you up first and then you shoot down the tracks, careening through the mountainside forest, curving out over the sky-colored sea, applying the brakes as infrequently as you dare.

As our older daughter and I swooped to the bottom, we could hear her younger sister squealing gleefully from the shuttle behind us. Our ride ended about a minute before my wife’s and hers. My parents also rode, but they were more liberal with their brake application and finished long after we had all dismounted the ride.

Following this, we had tickets to spend an hour in Labadee’s aqua park, which was like a floating inflatable obstacle course. This was a lot less fun. The inflatable slides were very difficult to climb and our daughters were whining about the discomfort of the water. At first I just thought they needed to toughen up, but then my own skin began to crawl. My wife asked the lifeguard on duty and he said the water was teeming with micro-organisms that stung but the pain was only brief. Oh. We did not last the full hour.

Delivered from the duppy-infested cesspool masquerading as tropical amusement, my wife found a more secluded spot on the beach, away from a lot of the noise our boat had brought to the “island.” My parents parked on lounge chairs closer to the pop-up cafeteria and I took the girls to a playground with a sprinkler system not unlike that in the onboard kiddie pool area. I sat on a curb and watched them play with a group of other kids. To the left of them a 6 on 6 beach volleyball game was taking place. Some of the guys’ torsos were right out of the Top Gun scene(Did they lower the nets for the shots of Mav spiking it? I think they lowered the nets). Others were right out of Dollar Night at Molly Brannigans. But interphysique comeraderie was in full effect and all the players were having fun, possibly even more fun than my children were getting spouted on by a fiberglass hippo. I wanted to play. I wanted my kids to make lasting friendships so I could leave them and go make friends of my own. But I could neither dump them on some other unsuspecting parent at the playground, nor did I want to. They were so happy they’d lost track of time. And watching their industry flare up, even for something as trifling as dumping cupfuls of water down seasawing flumes ad nauseum, was its own pleasure, even if I had to miss a few sandy, heartfelt high fives for the marvelous plays I definitely would have made if I’d gotten into the game.

Back on the boat, we gathered for our penultimate dinner together. Something about the semifinality of the it, whether the extra snappy service from our waiter Richard or the table circulating of the executive chef, raised expectations that this meal would be special. So I was actually relieved that even the big night food was so mediocre because, spoiled as I am by my wife’s cooking, I was looking forward to getting back home rather than being sad that this wonderful journey couldn’t last forever.

After dinner my wife took our daughters to a show in the ship’s large theater while I took my parents to the Schooner Bar to play trivia. Seats were scarce so one man holding a whole table invited us to sit with him. He was a very friendly man and his name was Guy, so obviously he was Canadian. Guy was like the mayor of the boat. This was his and is wife Linda’s 13th day at sea and they seemed to know everyone- cruisers, waiters, vendors and officers. I felt assured that, for all of Guy and Linda’s good fortune, tonight was their lucky night because they got to be on my trivia team and few people alive knew more trivia than me. The subject that night was movie themes and just as the game began, Guy and Linda introduced us to Eric and Samantha, a couple from Atlanta. My smugness about my encyclopedic knowledge might have seeped out a bit as I assured all four other adults that they were in good hands on my team. But as the game went on and we got better acquainted, it became apparent that whatever winning ways I embodied were paltry compared to those of Eric and Samantha. A popular subject among cruisers meeting on cruise ships is their cruising history. With neither cockiness nor abashedness, Eric showed me a picture of him, Samantha and several other relatives crowded around Steve Harvey on the set of Family Feud. Then he explained that while on the cruise they had taken with 27 other family members on the steam of their Family Feud winnings, they wandered into a Bingo game and won the cruise they were on with us. So, while I doubted Eric could identify movie themes as quickly or accurately as me, I made sure he saw that I understood that, contrary to initial impressions, me wagon, him star. Though when we did not win (19 out of 20 I could answer within two bars, but I am not ashamed of my unfamiliarity with the soundtrack from Divergent), I took responsibility while still ceding leadership to Eric and Mayor Guy.

Eric told us that his free cruise did not include drinks, so he was probably the soberest of our lot. Guy explained that he had purchased one of the beverage packages and then greased a few waiters with $20 apiece. Now they brought Linda and him whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. I think Guy put away more than I did, so it seemed unwise for my father to try to keep up with him. On the other hand, once the trivia game was over, Guy, Linda, Eric and Samantha insisted that my parents join them at something called The Quest. They actually discouraged me from coming along and warned me that my wife and children should definitely skip it, as whatever The Quest was was decidedly NSFW. But they didn’t know my kids, who were as proud of their grandpa as Guy and Linda were for how game he was:

The Quest was sort of a concentrated scavenger hunt where the entire auditorium was divided by seating area into teams while the cruise director commanded each team to bring him a man in drag, a man with a hairy back, a picture of a woman in front of the White House, etc. I’m still not entirely sure why Guy and my dad were barefoot, but I think Linda wanted them prepared to drop trou. Samantha, Eric, my mother, wife (elbow pictured to my left) kids and I were less competitive about The Quest than my father and his new Canadian bff’s, but no less amused.

By some dubious criteria, a different section was proclaimed the winner of The Quest, but we didn’t care. We had laughed hard and expressed unabashed fondness for folks we just met, and at some point, my wife did a headstand in her seat, which garnered evening-long admiration from our neighbors in the seats. It all felt like the postmodern equivalent of the conga line, a postmodern letting down of the hair and kicking up the postmodern heels. I have no idea what postmodern means, nor any interest in learning. What I do understand is that socially, this was the most fun we’d had all week. We drunkenly struck up new acquaintances and took each other to new heights of enjoyment. I was so glad this had happened and deeply appreciative of Linda, Guy, Samantha and Eric for enfolding us so easily into their little band. As we parted ways, Linda asked for my personal info so she could send me some of the pictures and videos of my father’s antics. In the spirit of the moment I envisioned remaining in touch with our new friends for years to come.

Throughout the cruise I had been missing my brothers and cousins, who had made the family cruises we’d taken 15-20 years ago so much fun. And probably because that evening was really the only time we had been truly sociable with other cruisers, it was at that moment that I started thinking about my grandma and aunt, who were no longer alive. I know that part of what evoked their memories was the surrogacy assumed by my parents, now grandparents themselves, and Guy, with his Canadian Jimmy Buffet avuncularity. But of course, I was also thinking about mortality, and that if my departed relatives could have been on this trip with us, they’d have known from their time on the other side of the grass not to spend one second wallowing or actively seeking despair aboard the world’s second largest ocean liner. So ultimately, their specters were conjured to goad me into maintaining the warmth I felt toward our new friends before relapsing into dyspepticism, to stand vigil over my own happiness until it became more habitual. Weeks later, Linda did email me several pictures and videos from The Quest. And they were nearly all of Guy. I am still wondering whether I should reply with a slideshow of our trip. Or a link to this account…

Day 7

At sea all day. Spiritually too. I think at one point I saw Eric at some distance and found myself retreating the other way. I felt too much pressure to recapture whatever bonhommie we had established the night before. It occurred to me that I’d had a platonic one-night stand. But I also just wanted to be comfortable and relaxed and standing around, maintaining eye contact while chuckling about last night’s zaniness could not compare to finding somewhere to lounge, read and nap.

For the kids’ benefit I rode the zipline, one last time, delivering on a promise I had made weeks earlier, that I would invert myself while zipping, and hang like a bat, a feat I’d performed at summer camp 30+ years earlier, and presumed I still remembered how to do.

I made it about 10 feet before the lifeguard yelled “Don’t go upside down!” and I immediately complied. In retrospect, I doubt they would have thrown me off the boat for disobeying the guy, and even a ban from future zipline use would have been meaningless since the zipline was 10 minutes away from shutting down for the rest of the cruise. Maybe I wanted the younger, world-traveling recreation specialists to think I was cool, and, zipping along 80+ feet above the ground, my version of cool was readily obedient rather than daringly rebellious. So, while I can say I stopped my stunt because the boat made me, a braver man would have held his pose a bit longer.

As we gathered for our final dinner together, nobody else in my family had seemed eager to track down our friends from the night before, opting instead to drink, read and relax free of recent entanglement. And while we did little to reinforce whatever social bonds had been forged during The Quest, I wondered how many lasting friendships had been struck up that week, how many Facebook and Instagram connections made, how many romances burgeoned, or breached. How wide did the spectrum of emotion, from sadness that this magical time was ending to eagerness to get home, stretch? I had been surprised throughout the week by how many people I talked to who owned their own business. Maybe I shouldn’t have been. But I could understand why they would value a week of lethargic gluttony more than somebody whose real life entailed fewer pressures and better food. Just to steer clear of consequential decisions, to be able to screw up without harming anyone, must have been quite a tonic. I didn’t have those worries to leave behind, so I was less likely to embrace the daze.

All week long I had been pressuring myself to blow past whatever gulf there was between my personal inclinations and the style of indulgence that seemed to make my fellow cruisers the happiest. I tried convincing myself that transcendant pleasures were available if I could just ignore my myriad reservations. And even though I felt like the social version of a picky eater, I found plenty onboard to enjoy. I just didn’t have a deeply restorative experience, nor did I need one, nor did I need to care about as little as possible to enjoy being with my family. And I should note that when we left the dining room after dinner that night, the number of faces basking in the glow of devices, sometimes 10 out of 10 people at one table, was staggering. Throughout the cruise I had posted a few pictures on Instagram, but nobody in my family had taken their phone out at dinner. The tv in our room never went on, and the iPad I brought for the kids to watch on the plane stayed in my backpack all week. Surveying the dining room, I felt considerably less guilty for not connecting with more people who seemed to prefer remote electronic relationships to the friends and loved ones right in front of them. I was cautious not to milk too much superiority out of the tableau of ghostlit faces atomizing families’ last night together, but I also felt vindicated and relieved, that by remaining aloof of the vapidity, I really hadn’t missed much. Meanwhile, I knew that while the onboard sense of community had felt robust to some and anemic to others, I was so ready to return to my village of snowflakes that my departure felt like more of an escape than my arrival had.

Day 8

We got off the boat with considerably less fanfare than than we had boarded it. As the massive Port Everglades processing center spit us back out into the world, I wondered whether the feel of unceremonious credential-stripping was intentional, a touch of unpleasantness designed to make you long to return to the company’s care and good graces. Or was it simply the jarring difference between being active paying customers and former paying customers? I don’t know much about branding, but I know that Royal Carribean is a multi-billion dollar corporation and I could intuit that hundreds of suits were working every angle they could think of to open new revenue streams, and then it was another department’s job to integrate these ideas into the unified identity of a bona fide Royal Caribbean product, which was something like island pleasure,  sanitized by Scandinavian experts. Based on their financial performance, these initiatives were well-executed. But held up to the scrutiny whose discouragement I so zealously ignored, the swarm of photographers, dangling of status upgrades, nutritionists of obscure nationalities selling secret fat cures in the spa, licensced gemologists convincing cruisers that this boat was among the world’s finest jewelry shops, delighted welcome vs. slightly disgusted goodbye, felt unified only by the anchor logo and the feel of aggressive upsell. Woe be unto any of these poor bastards who found themselves in Marrakech.

On the bus from Port Everglades back to the Miami airport, I recognized an older Israeli couple I had overheard speaking Hebrew at breakfast one morning. They seemed strangely un-Israeli in that they were A) Befuddled by travel and B) Polite. At the airport a large line formed outside to check bags. My wife went inside and came back telling us the lines were shorter. The Israeli couple asked where we were going and in Hebrew I told them about the smaller lines inside. On our way in, they asked my parents why I spoke Hebrew and they didn’t and, though the answer wasn’t that complicated, I think my parents were just happy to interact with fellow Jews who weren’t from Long Island. And maybe the Israelis were happy to talk with us for our hamishness, though at the moment our most attractive feature seemed to be my ability to explain the various options a typical airport kiosk offered them, and to help them make their choices. In a way, their cluelessness about airplane security gave me great hope for Israel’s current safety situation, but conversely, a grim outlook on Israel’s regional prospects, since her progress in security had not been accompanied by commensurate diplomatic strides.

We had several hours to kill before our flight. My wife’s AmEx platinum card got us into the Miami Airport Centurion Lounge. This was a lavish prospect, and one that I was somewhat reluctant to enjoy because it extended our access to food and drink at a time when I had already shut the door on such perks. My wife’s card granted admission for the four of us and at her insistence, we bought guest passes for my parents. My father almost never lets me treat him to anything, but in this case he did, for which I was glad. And it was nice to have this extra time together, relaxed, needs met, surrounded by traveling Miamians who may or may not have been drug lords.

After nearly three hours passed pleasantly in the lounge, it was time to go to our gates. My parents and daughters exchanged warm goodbyes and then my wife and I covered whatever shortcomings lace through our expressions of gratitude with vague but intentional maneuvers meant to convey that we deserved a great deal of credit for the joy they got from their granddaughters. It could be something as outwardly innocuous as, “Hope y’all had fun with the girls, “ but subtle as it was, I could neither deny the ulterior motive in saying it, nor harness my identification of this shittiness as means of surmounting it.

Our gate was full of crying children, which tested my inner saint. On one hand, I genuinely cared about these kids, and felt confident that I could cheer them up in short order. I often did just that with funny faces or even conversations if the sad kid was close enough that it didn’t seem weird. But on the other hand, I felt helplessly triumphant that my kids were such sanguine travelers, and the attendant feelings of parental superiority were hard to avoid.

We had purchased our tickets with an American Airlines credit card, which I was led to believe accorded us some type of boarding priority. But by the time active military, first class, business class, diamond star medallion, platinum status and American Airlines Advantage Preferred had been invited to traipse planeward across the special carpet, we were one of maybe 10 families left to board. Once again the special feeling extended on point of sale was withdrawn post-purchase.

I had booked the aisle and window on both sides of the same row, knowing it would give us flexibility to offer an aisle or window to whichever middle-seater was willing to switch so we could sit three on one side and one on the other. Instead, we got entangled with a scattered group of elderly Italians and again I felt like an unacknowledged superhero for being able to help another family in their mother tongue. The Italians reunited, our family contiguous across the aisle and a formerly middle-seater on the aisle ahead of us, we were seated comfortably and the plane took off.

On our flight down to Miami, each seat had its own entertainment system. The older plane we rode back to new York was equipped with monitors hanging intermittently from the ceiling, all broadcasting a long-form infomercial for a new show on NBC. Mostly I read or napped, but sometimes I would look up at the screens and watch behind the scenes clips about a show called Emerald City which was set in Oz well before Dorothy’s arrival. Cast members were interviewed in full costume, while special effects experts and producers wore t-shirts and stubble. Even though I couldn’t hear any of it, it was clear they were speaking with great seriousness. But a sublte aspect of their postures betrayed network brass compulsion. The cast included unknown actors plus a few “prestige ones” like Vincent D’Onofrio and Joely Richardson and there was something performative about the passion they exuded, which in some respects I found comforting, since it showed a tiny but perceptible leaking of the awareness that they were all involved in something expensive, derivative (it was clearly meant to be Wizard of Oz meets Game of Thrones) and preposterous. Maybe some of the younger cast extolled the show without irony, just young beef- and cheesecake thrilled by the chance to be on TV. But while the older actors and creative types all seemed engaged in a chaarade, it struck me that the millions of people who might be interested in watching this drek would have to actively ignore the micro-signals emitted by the more aware members of the show’s creative team. And this more effortful form of ignorance, this determination to elude the minefield of buzzkills that spoil superficial entertainment, even at the expense of sensitivity toward loved ones’ feelings, was as prevalent on land (or in the air) as it was at sea. Millions of enormous people geared up to consume, consume, consume, happy to think as little as possible, all while remaining vigilantly unaware of even their lack of awareness that no amount of material plenitude would turn them away from devices and toward the friendly people at the shore at whom they had such a hard time waving.

But what did that say about me, flogging the same distinctions over and over again, careening headlong into the buzzkills, coopting any human foible I could find as an excuse to remain aloof of the fray? Was I afraid of what might happen if my brain just shut up and let me enjoy the festivities too? Yes. I was.

Back home that night, we settled in to watch the Oscars. I imagined a Monday to Monday voyage at sea, where we attended an onboard Oscar party. My musings got specific as I pictured cruisers name-checking the Vanity Fair party as proof of their cinematic sophistication,  and then my own parsing why their citation felt obtuse while my own impassioned takedown of Whiplash signified a superior comprehension of what was good and bad about movies. But why was I still litigating arguments that never even took place out loud? Surely I didn’t think the Quebecois from the Jamaica excursion, or the guys I’d watched a basketball game with one night, or even Linda, Guy, Samantha and Eric were sitting at home now wishing we’d gotten to know each other better. And neither was I. So what the fuck was my problem? Well, I have many. And it’s not a cruise’s job to solve them. If I didn’t fit in on the boat as snugly as other folks, I needn’t see it as a loss, nor justify it philosophically. I’m me, they’re them, and none of them will read this anyway.

#Cruise #Cruise Ship #Royal Caribbean #Family Vacation #Family #Neurosis #Homegoing #Yaa Gyasi #Allure of the Seas #Oscars #Vacation #Winter Break #Brooklyn

[highintensitybusiness]

#127: Craig Hubert - How to Start and Grow a Mobile In-Home HIT Business

A certified personal trainer since 1997, and a Licensed Kinesitherapist since 2002, Craig started his career in the fitness industry after being mesmerised watching his own ACL surgery. He started seeing clients in small gyms and private studios before embarking on his own to run a successful in-home training business that would eventually offer in-home High Intensity Training. He finally opened his first studio in a 600 sq/ft office space in 2011, and now operates in his own 1400 sq/ft space in Quebec, Canada - Book Here

Email Craig - craig@gethit [dot] ca

This episode is a master class on how to start, deliver and grow a mobile in-home HIT business. A mobile HIT business can be a cost effective (low entry) and high-profit business. On it's own or with online coaching (distance training) it can become a great way to make a living and help people doing something you love. Also, if desired, it can become a great stepping stone to starting a strength training facility further down the line.

In this episode, we cover:

  How to get started from scratch with no qualifications or personal training experience

How to deliver and instruct an in-home HIT workout step-by-step

The importance of centralising and finding a high-profit area

Finding the right clientele

How to market

How to figure out pricing

Scaling and online coaching

How to transition to opening a HIT facility

... and much more

Below is a blog post from Craig on how to start a mobile in-home HIT business. The blog post is very entertaining and useful. I've added my own notes with "[LN: ....]"

Enter Craig Hubert

  The fitness industry is an interesting place, kind of one big contradiction. On one end, it represents the picture of what we all strive to be, vibrant, active, strong, agile, sporting a lean physique, with perfect blood markers from cholesterol to sugars. Yet on the other end, the industry is littered with bad information, dangerous training techniques, questionable diets, and looks more like one large, incredibly bad, infomercial.

Below are my suggestions to get you started in the industry, as well as how to go about starting your own in-home HIT centered training business.

Getting Started

Most people getting involved in personal training think they’ll be doing 40+ sessions per week making $100/ session. The reality is, for most, getting to a solid income takes work - if you want the gold, ya gotta dig.

Get certified. This is a no brainer. As most people will start in a big box gym, a certification is required. ACSM, NSCA, ACE are the more well known, but if HIT is your goal, HITUNI is a solid program - Use CW10 to get 10% off - LINK

Immerse yourself! Read everything, In HIT, this includes the Nautilus bulletins, books by McGuff, Little, Darden, Westcott, to name a few. Read books from authors outside HIT, Poliquin, Pavel, Dan John for example. And attend seminars - lots of ‘em. The good ones will teach you things no university can. I heard there’s a pretty good one each year in Minnesota ... [LN: Craig is referring to the Resistance Exercise Conference, use CorporateWarrior10 to get 10% off - LINK ]

You need to work with people, so to Globo Gym you go! The benefit to working in a large gym is not the pay, it generally sucks, but you get to work with a ton of people, with different shapes and sizes, interests and abilities. This is where you learn the craft. You’ll also be highly entertained by dumb shit.... Oh yes, stupidity is rampant in the big box gyms.

Find a mentor. This is key IMO, find that person doing what you want to do and reach out - everybody is different, so do your homework and approach them in a courteous, respectful manner.

In-Home Training

A HIT centered In-home business fit together like OJ’s glove (wait, no... they actually fit... ) so maybe more like Taylor Swift and Kanye West (wait...nope) any ways, it works. [LN: I'm British and don't understand this reference ... ]

Define your market. Who will be your primary client? Seniors, Executives, Housewives? (it doesn’t mean you can’t train all walks of life, but in my experience, referrals are key, and like refer like). Once defined then...

Tailor your message - HIT has plenty of benefits, but not everybody cares about the same things. A retired senior might not care that a sessions is 20-30 minutes, as time may not be an issue. However the emphasis on safety may resonate to there failing ears (me being funny, not offensive).

Pick your area to work based on your target market, and do not leave it. In-home training does not work well if you’re spending all of your time driving out of your way from one client to the next.

Schedule for traffic and road condition issues. Have to cross train tracks to get to aclient? Leave yourself some extra time to accommodate a possible wait for passing trains. Nothing will stress you out more than falling behind early in your day, causing you to be late for most clients.

Add about 15-20% over the standard price for a training session in a gym. This is a soft number, as your experience as well as your model will influence your price points.

Other Considerations

Get your house in order first - Try to start debt free, there is nothing worse than making business decisions based on short term personal financial needs that will negatively impact the long term vision of your business. This can be as simple as setting your pricing too low to make the quick buck now, but makes raising your rates much harder in the future (people get very accustomed to a low price, and tend to be very resistant to increases.)

Bootstrap - It’s easy to think that borrowing money will help you out, but please try to avoid both banks and private lenders. I know lots of people borrow successfully, I just feel that when it’s all on you, you’ll think smarter, and be way more creative. It’s easy to throw money at problems, being creative to find work arounds is what creates lasting businesses. [LN: this is huge and important to underscore. Low budgets force you to do the hard thinking and pick the RIGHT things to do with the highest impact].

Keep distractions to a minimum - It is way easier to think big, doing the things necessary to grow a large business (if that’s the goal) when you don’t have a family or a serious relationship that can potentially draw your attention away from the big picture - it’s a harsh statement, but something I’ve experienced first hand. My decisions don’t just affect me, they can have lasting consequences on my family, as such, I second guess more, and riskier plays that had large potential upsides tend to get shelved. I’m not saying that it can’t be done, just that the emotional strain is much harder.

In-Home Training can be very lucrative, at $50/ 30 minute session price tag, doing a reasonable 40 sessions per week (amounts to 20 hours of actual work) brings in $2000/week. Which is good money in many areas of the world. Keeping in mind that your price reflects the market you’re in - NYC would most likely be closer to $100 or more per session.

Treat you In-Home business like you would any other, with professionalism and integrity, and the sky's the limit.

This episode is brought to you by Hituni.com, providers of the best online courses in high intensity training that come highly recommended by Dr. Doug McGuff, Dr James Fisher and Luke Carlson. Course contributors include world-class exercise experts like Drew Baye, Ellington Darden and Skyler Tanner. If you want to become an excellent HIT Personal Trainer, create a great team of trainers or build a successful fitness business, I highly recommend you use CW10 to get 10% off a PT Course – HERE

This episode is also brought to you by Health IQ: A life insurance company that helps health conscious people like runners, cyclists, weight lifters, HIT participants and more, get a lower rate on their life insurance.

Go to healthiq.com/cwarrior to support the show and see if you qualify. If you take care of yourself: do smart strength training, eat well, and you’re life insurance company doesn’t seem like they care, there’s an answer for you: Health IQ actually gives savings to people who take care of themselves. About 56% of Health IQ customers save between 4-33% on their life insurance. Health IQ customers can save up to a third because physically active people have a 56% lower risk of heart disease, 20% lower risk of cancer and a 58% lower risk of diabetes compared to people who are inactive, but your life insurance company probably just doesn’t care, you care, and there are companies out there that care.

To see if you qualify, get your free quote today at healthiq.com/cwarrior or mention the promo code CWarrior when you talk to a health IQ agent.

FREE HIT workout progress sheet and 20 podcast transcripts with guests like Dr. Doug McGuff, Drew Baye, and Bill DeSimone – Click Here

For all of the show notes, links and resources - Click Here

Check out this episode!

#Fitness #HIT #High Intensity Training #Productivity #Business #Life Hacking #Lifestyle Design