#i see rei-rei and just— lose all common fucking sense

[pinkmirth]

i’ve never been bold enough to say this before, but . . . smash.

#i see rei-rei and just— lose all common fucking sense #this man got me wanting to ride a titan tongue and shit… im too far gone! #i want the titan AND it’s wielder #finally in my monsterfucking era . . . #— harmoni rambles #— (.reiner) #reiner braun

[ideas-4-stories]

Headcanons for the Roger Pirates

The Roger Pirates as a whole

Pretty goofy people and quite chaotic group of misfits.

You know damn right that why Shanks and Buggy party so much is because of the Roger Pirates. (Especially Roger)

Had harder time watching over those gremlin-like balls of chaos (a.k.a. children) than fighting most foes.

They all helped raised Buggy and Shanks at some point. If they were there when Shanks and Buggy came aboard. Most of them are like Uncles and Aunts to Buggy and Shanks.

Gol D. Roger

Bisexual energy or Pansexual energy or hell both vibes

The only way he can comfort somebody is if he keeps his mouth shut. Usually trying to comfort somebody with words makes everything worse. Example: Buggy.

This man would sleep with only boxers or nothing at all, which is unfortunate when someone decides to attack the Roger Pirates when Roger was sleeping. Cause this man would jump into battle with a second thought. He'll be like, "Welp they couldn't of attack when I was sleeping" Roger is shameless, cuz he doesn't care.

That comes into this is that I totally seeing him getting drunk and losing his clothes. Waking up with a hangover, walking through town without a care in the fucking world. To the dismay of Rayleigh and many of the Roger Pirates.

Roger is a man-child, and that should be a fact in life. This man would rather stare a wall, making weird faces, alongside Shanks than do the captain things of taking care of pricing and just things captains do that's not his type of fun.

There's a lot of similarities with Roger and Luffy, but one thing that's different is that Luffy doesn't think. Roger does, but decides to do that crazy thing anyway, because why the fuck not

Silvers Rayleigh

Straight energy but seems to have platonic relationship with Roger and Gaban like 'Buggy Daddies' Rei and Kazuki.

Rayleigh has many pairs of glasses for the reason of his captain. From the crazy fights he wants to fight and the crazy islands he wants to go to. Rayleigh learned early on that he needs a lot of glasses. Even now that he's retired, he still has another pair of glasses with him. Shakky got him down to five instead of ten.

Rayleigh sometimes just swims for no rest but to destress, which stresses Gaban out because it leaves him in charge of their captain. Which isn't a thing at anyone wants to do. Expect for Shanks and Buggy wanting to be "responsibility", but everyone knows they would all just cause chaos together.

Scopper Gaban

Gay energy, and the reason for one of the unofficial mottos of the Red-Haired Pirates 'Smashed as many brewskis as you can in under a minute. Then try your best not to blackout and just start walking in a straight line, whoever is the best at all wins'

One of the only people in the Roger Pirates that have a sound mind or a person that is sensible and has common sense (alongside Rayleigh and few other people) But of course he has his moments as being as crazy as Roger, this goes as well with Rayleigh.

He was the one that had to always change Buggy and Shanks diapers, when it was just Roger, Rayleigh, him, and the kids. Hell, even with the other Roger Pirates, would try their best to nope out.

#one piece #one piece headcanons #roger pirates #maybe I'll do more parts for the other Roger Pirates #gol d. roger #silvers rayleigh #scopper gaban #red haired shanks #buggy the clown #roger one piece #rayleigh one piece #gaban one piece #shanks one piece #buggy one piece #ideas~4~stories says

[proudfreakmetarusonniku]

fucking like. i think realising that the children are all like, actively victims of child grooming is vital to understanding their character. what nerv is doing to them is grooming, even if it’s not sexual. they’re not only in insane danger, but actively being abused and manipulated in soul destroying ways. and i don’t think it’s an accident that they also display behaviour that’s also consistent with sexual grooming either.

shinji loses his sense of boundaries. he explicitly ties his worth to the actions he is forced to perform and engages in them out of fear of abandonment, believing he is worthless without them, and while this is most prominent in piloting he also struggles with sexual boundaries, nearly assaulting asuka in her sleep because he's been taught that he and the other children do not have any say over their bodies and choices, not really, and therefore he doesn’t even understand why asuka was upset over him admitting it. i haven’t gotten to it yet, but i do know about that scene, so COCSA is also explicitly explored in the show through him, which is very common for children and teenagers who are sexually abused- they recreate their trauma onto others.

asuka behaves in an overly sexual manner around people she finds safe, like kaji and shinji. she sees love as something sexual, and expresses herself in a hypersexual manner to gain that love from people she feels are safe and kind, and doesn’t understand why they don’t immediately like her- after all, she’s always been told that putting herself into inappropriate situations to please the adults around her makes her cool and special. when they don’t conform, she gets mad at them, because it’s easier than examining that what’s happening to her is also wrong. she lashes out and acts aggressive to hide the fact she’s not as perfect and happy with this as she thinks she aught to be.

rei is disconnected from her own body and mind. she’s in a near constant state of disassociation, and sees herself as merely a thing to be used. she's developed a traumabond with her abuser- which, y’know, forcing kids into dangerous and deadly situations is abuse- to the point she’s even aggressive and angry at the insinuation that he is anything but perfect, because she’s been isolated and groomed for what must be years at this point. she has no regard for her body, and has zero reaction to being touched inappropriately, acting if it was normal, and she also seems to have no idea that being nude around others is something abnormal. she's quiet and obedient, because she knows nothing but. she's just a disposable body, in her own mind.

like, this might be me having read way too much about child abuse, but this was something that i have been noticing and thinking about since the start and i really don’t think the parallels are unintentional, at least not entirely. since, y’know. they are like. canonically grooming victims just into violence and not sex. idk. this is just like what i've got as far as symbolism as of episode 20 I guess.

#neon genesis evangelion #grooming tw #csa tw #abuse tw

[burnedbyshoto]

cravings & needs

— Even Natsuo has cravings and needs that demand relied even when you, his wife, is pregnant.

⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆

pairing: todoroki natsuo x pregnant fem!reader

warnings: 18+, nsfw, smut, pwp, pregnant!reader, pregnancy hormones, slight daddy kink, lactation, breeding kink, natsuo platonic!calls reader mommy.

word count: 2,825

a/n: i am like: breed but no pregnant. but sometimes im like: pregnant but no baby. so basically, I lose.

kinktober day 16 main kink: lactation | kinktober masterlist

⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆

You were going to strangle Todoroki Natsuo until his face turned blue and purple.

Then you will cry.

Then you will profusely apologize as he splutters for breath.

Then you will kiss him soundly, fingers ripping his clothes off, raging hormones simmering your blood. 

Then you’ll shove him off of you, calm once again, and ask if he wanted to go get some ice cream as his pale skin flushed red.

To say the least, you absolutely hated your stupid, good for nothing, utterly super-fertile husband who just had to carry the Todoroki breeding kink gene. You were nine months pregnant, nine months after finally agreeing that both of you were ready for children. Your belly was so large and swollen with your future son that you often cried when seeing yourself in the mirror. Not because you were insecure, but because you didn’t think the skin on your stomach should stretch that much.

“Are you sure he won’t accidentally pop out of my stomach like in Alien if he presses against me too hard?” you had cried to your doctor of a husband who looked like he wasn’t sure if he should be laughing or mortified of your lack of common sense.  “I promise,” Natsuo smiled, pressing a kiss to your swollen hands, but you didn’t believe him.

But your entire body hurt at the moment. Every piece of flesh and contracting muscle was swollen to its max. You didn’t feel cute. You didn’t think you were cute as you lay in your bed with a million pillows fluffed around your body because you could no longer lay on your back. Your lips were pulled into a pout, your eyes shining with tears as you sniffled.

“Natsuooooo!” you wailed, your feet kicking against the mattress pathetically, calling out to your husband, who was doing who knows what. “Natsuoooooooo!”

There wasn’t even a response back to that, and for some reason, it infuriated you. Hormone and pain-fueled anger shot through your pregnant veins as a demanding cry left your lips. “TODOROKI NATSUO!”

“Yes?!” came the distant faraway voice, the scuffing of a chair on the floor and the pittering of feet as you remained on the bed, suddenly feeling guilty and sad. “Coming!”

So when Natsuo peeked into the room, his glasses sitting on the crown of his head telling you that he was probably looking through his research, you began to bawl. You had the audacity to tell Natsuo that you weren’t crying as your face burned with your embarrassing tears and as you soaked not only your pillows but your face with your tears.

“No, no, baby, what’s wrong?” Natsuo asked his face swimming with concern and sympathy for you, his nine-month pregnant wife. He approached the bed, sitting at the edge, but that made you cry harder as you turned away from him, your back to him. You felt his hand touch your shoulder, soothing your shaking shoulders as he let you stay unresponsive as you continued to cry.

“I hate you,” you eventually spat, the guilt no longer sitting in your collection of feelings because this was his fault. You sat up on the bed, or well, tried to. You allowed Natsuo to help you into a sitting position that made his damn bastard kid sit directly on your bladder. You had just peed!

“What did I do?” Natsuo asks, his mouth twitching in that annoying way that told you he was trying to take you seriously, but given all your outbursts lately, his expectations were low.

“You put this stupid fucking bastard demon little fucking shit in my stomach!” you raged, grabbing him by his collar and shoving his face to your stomach where the stupid kid was trying to play open the damn piñata on your stomach! “He has been in here for nine-months too long. My entire body hurts, and my tits feel like they’re about to fucking explode with this milk I fucking can’t even fucking save because this little shit isn’t coming for two more weeks. I want him gone. I want your stupid fucking little not so cute breeding kink demolished,” you hissed, your eyes glaring into his grey eyes that glistened with emotions that made the raging fire of hatred and anger flicker and evolve into one that went straight to your cunt. Fuck.

“You don’t like being pregnant?” Natsuo asked, his hands slipping under yours and manages to push them off of his person. Your mouth runs dry as you stare into his darkened eyes, and you’re subject to his thoughts and actions as your sore back comes in contact with your pillows. His voice is in a soft drawl, each word coming out slow and thick like honey. “Fuck, baby, that’s too bad because you look so fucking bred with my son. You have no idea how excited I get whenever people get to see my pregnant little wife, stuffed with my child.”

His lips are brushing against your collarbone as he says that, the heat of his breath making you pant. Your fingers curl into his shirt, your mewls pathetic and needy.

Stupid fucking hormones. 

“Where do you hurt most?” he asks, lips trailing down the cleavage of your swollen with milk tits.

“E-Everywhere,” you gasp when his hands slip underneath your shirt that barely fits anymore. His weathered hands trailing up the swollen mountain of your belly, you can feel the little shit in you reaching out after his touch too. “N-Natsuo! Don’t t-tease me!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, my love,” Natsuo tuts as he pulls away from your collarbone, and you shiver as he manages to bring your shirt over your swollen stomach and past your aching breasts. “Do you need daddy’s cock to make you feel better? Maybe we’ll get lucky, and I can impregnate you again right now, so you don’t have to stop being my cute pregnant wife.” The thought of that sends your mind over the cliff. Realistically, you know that would be horrible, but the way his voice spoke in such a husky manner, and knowing that he is fucking obsessed with your pregnant, successfully bred body, a part of you hopes it happens. You watch with horny need and desire, ready for your husband’s mouth, fingers, and cock to please you and your horny state. But as you try to get your hands to his pants, the strain of his cock evident to you, you realize he hasn’t moved. “You’re lactating.”

You blink, and you peer down at your breasts, and you shriek at the murky white liquid dripping from your enlarged, swollen nipples. Through your entire pregnancy, you had managed to never leak milk in front of Natsuo. More often than not, you were with Fuyumi or Rei or your own family when it happened when he was at work, but for the past month, when milk was starting to leak out without your spoken permission, he had never been around. 

Natsuo tilts his head, his tongue pressing between his lips as he coyly looks up at you, grey eyes suddenly appearing jet black. 

You breathing piques.

And you don’t have the time to question why your husband looks like a predator cornering a prey as he sinks down, mouth suddenly enveloping a single nipple.

“NATSUO!” you shriek, your eyes rolling to the back of your head as his hot, wet mouth latched onto your nipple. 

His tongue twirled around your leaking nipples, lapping at the liquid that was coming out on its own, his hand on your other breast, keeping it upright, and you realized with a distant thought that he was somehow preventing the milk from spilling from your unlatched onto breast. You trembled under his hold, body feeling like it was being electrocuted as his teeth slowly sunk into your nipple, and he began to suck on your swollen, inflamed skin. It wasn’t anything different from how he usually sucks your breasts while the both of you fuck, but it felt to a greater degree of intensity and fervor for some reason. A rush of liquid, a slam of electricity slammed through your nerves as you wailed for Natsuo, your legs managing to hook over his waist as he sucked and sucked on your nipple.

Milk flowed from your free nipple, filling Natsuo’s mouth like a bottomless pit. Natsuo drank the sweet, warm liquid in his mouth, some of the murky fluid dribbling from the corner of his mouth as he sloppily drank you. Entirely obsessed with the taste of you.

“That’s so dirty of you!” you cried beneath him, hands weakly beating on his shoulders. “You’re so dirty, daddy! So d-dirty! You stupid, breeding idiot doctor pervert! D-Don’t you know that m-my milk isn’t — nghhh, oh my fuck, yes, yes just like that!!!! The milk — aaaahhhh!!! oh my god — the milk’s for the baby!!! N-Not… fuck, fuck, fuck, not for you!”

You tried to stare him in the eye but found the raw lust and want in his eyes to be overwhelming, your body trembling as you looked away from his gaze. The slight discomfort of having the milk being ejected from your nipple in such greedy, powerful sucks soon fades into throbbing pleasure. Your head knocked back into your once tear-stained pillows as you cry for Natsuo, the milk in your breasts leaking out even more now that there was a hungry mouth waiting to be feed. 

Your cheeks pounding with embarrassment. But you had to admit the feeling of his mouth, wholly and greedily consuming your milk made your cunt throb with heated need, and you were more than delighted to find that even in this position, your cunt ground against his hard cock.

He pulled away with a wet pop, his lips and chin absolutely wet with your milk, and you whimpered at the sight. If you knew any better by the way your breast no longer hurt, you’d say he sucked you dried.

“It’s my responsibility as a doctor, the father of your child, and your husband to make sure your milk is suitable for my child,” Natsuo calmly almost wickedly explained, his mouth suddenly against yours. “It’s my job to fulfill your body’s every little demand and need until you’re fucked and sucked satisfied.”

The sweetness of your milk suddenly invaded your mouth, and you cried at the taste of your milk.

“See,” Natsuo grinned, and you panted as he pulled away. He began to remove his pants and underwear, sliding down his boxers to reveal his beading, swollen cock, and tore your undies, unfazed by your scream of dismay as he spoke the entire time. “How can you hate when I put a baby in you. Especially when you can produce milk that fucking sweet, my love. I can’t wait to stuff you full with another kid, see you this fucking pregnant again. So soft, so cute, absolutely helpless and needy for anything and everything I can offer.”

Your cunt scorched and clenched in need, your panting, barely open eyes focusing on how Natsuo rutted his cock through your soaked folds, and how he had another hand to your other breast, pinching, almost milking your nipple.

Horny fury throbbed deep within you.

“Todoroki Natsuo, if you don’t fuck your pregnant fucking wife right now, I swear to go—aaahhhh!!! Shit, fuck!” you screamed as Natsuo’s incredibly thick cock finally entered your pulsing walls, stretching you out beyond what you were ready for as your body twisted and writhed against your pillows. Jaw slack open, tumbling heaving breathes, and half formulated curses escaping your mouth as his cock entered you.

Your eyes fluttered impossibly fast, your eyes rolling to the back of your head as Natsuo shifted his hips further into you. It seemed that while being pregnant, your cunt had become stupidly tighter, and Natsuo’s cock, which you could take without even breaking a sweat nowadays, had come to absolutely wind you like some blushing virgin as of late. 

“Shhhh, shhh,” Natsuo whispers against your cleavage, his hips rocking into you at a slow speed, teeth skimming and biting alongside your still swollen with milk tit. “Be a good mommy and let your daddy fuck you while drinking your milk, okay?”

You couldn’t even come up with an articulate word to say. Your head nodded, you think, you couldn’t even tell as his cock dragged up your walls, making your head spin just a bit as his mouth enveloped your thus far ignored nipple. 

There were moments where you felt like you’ve come to orgasm without actually orgasming. The sensation of his cock shifting in your cunt that was absolutely so tight, you could feel the pulsing veins on his cock beating against your walls with his pounding blood. But it was that wordless sensation of the milk being sucked from your swollen breast that made your toes curl with satisfying lust, the heat of his mouth, and bite of his teeth on your throbbing muscle and flesh that had your hurting hips shifting for more friction.

Pounding, blissful pleasure washed over you as the slurping noises of Natsuo greedily, hungrily drinking in your milk.

“Faster,” you cried when the not quite an orgasm faded from your skin but left a static sensation in the tips of your fingers and toes. Your hands went from his shoulders to thread and yank at his hair. “Faster, daddy, fuck me faster, drink my milk more! Do it harder, please, please, I need you more! I want to feel this more!”

And Natsuo, true to his belief what a doctor, a husband, and the father of your child should do, did what you demanded.

His hips rocked into you, the squelching noises of your wet pussy were loud and demanding. The rocking juices and essence from your legs seeping out with every rocking slam, splattering onto your lower stomach that Natsuo dutifully avoided. His mouth that was nursing on your nipple sucked and sucked; loud smacks and massive gulps you swore you could feel on your breasts made your thighs tremble with lewd need. You tugged at his hair, absolutely riveted with the way he drank you, shaken with the fact that found this attractive.

Natsuo drank your milk mouthful by mouthful, his blackened eyes piercing through you completely, making your lust haze gaze feel weak and absolutely shallow as the glinted with glee with every successive slam of his hips into your cunt. 

“Fuck, your milk is so fucking sweet,” Natsuo growls against your breast, his mouth taking a break from your breast as you pant wildly. “Gonna take all that I can before the pup shows up.”

The words curl and pulse in your core, and you can barely manage to stammer out his name at the thought of him feeding himself with your milk for the next two weeks before your child finally came. You shake with the need, your head nodding pathetically with the agreement to let him do as he wants as you slowly whine out a verbal response, but there’s no reason to answer. For when you do, your words heavy on your tongue, his teeth sink into your nipple, his cock brushes against your cervix, and the throbbing, heated pit in your stomach, so dense and heavy with your satisfied need and lust, exploded with the peaked wanton need. An orgasm ripped through your body, your heels digging into his hips as you screamed his name. Your body trembles as you can feel that all too familiar heat of his seed spilling within you, the sticky fluid swimming in you as he continues to feed on your milk.

Your nipples ache with the overstimulation, but you can’t muster anything more than a few pathetic whines as Natsuo continues to drink. He sucks and sucks and sucks until he pulls away. The final gulp of your milk loud and sends a shiver down your spine as he wipes the back of his hand to his wet lips. 

Tears somehow explode into your eyes as you stare up at your beautiful husband, who, now that his own hormones have faded looks entirely scared.

“Oh fuck, what’s wrong, my love? Do you need me to go get ice cream? I’ll get the bath running, and we can go soak—?”

“I’m s-so h-happy,” you smile, a watery grin on your face as you grab onto your husband’s jaw that is still slightly wet with your sweet milk. “You make me feel so happy, so good. You make me feel like the best person in the w-world, and I wouldn’t m-mind being pregnant with more kids as long as you keep doing that.”

Natsuo stills, his scared expression melting into one of fondness and slight cockiness, “I think I can make that work.”

#todoroki x reader #todoroki natsuo x reader #todoroki smut #natsuo smut #bnha #bnha x reader #mha #bbs kinktober 2020

[cizzisblog]

things that piss me off about dabi and fans’ reactions to this arc:

-Dabi is definitely, absolutely not justified in going after Shouto (who deserves none of this!! this boy deserves only love and support and some gotdamned therapy) ima just say that now.

-It’s also shitty of Dabi to say he didn’t care if Natsuo was hurt/killed.

-The canon characterization may very well be Dabi is so far down the path of revenge and has spent so long suffering alone away from his family members that he no longer cares for them/feels anything and is willing to proceed with plans to hurt Endeavor even if they are caught in the crossfire. However, I also feel it’s worth mentioning that right now, he very much seems to be caught up in a manic episode/meltdown/basically losing his shit. Think about it- he’s spent however many years plotting this moment and his chance to get revenge on his father and expose him to the world is finally here, and I think the likelihood that he’s saying whatever shit he thinks will hurt everyone the most is likely. That, or he’s so caught up in the mania he’s just lashing out at fucking everything. I think to some extent he means it, because he’s shown signs of being severely depressed and there’s a numbness that comes with that, but I also think deep down there is still some care there, even if small, or at least some acknowledgment that the other members of his family aren’t the main target and source of his suffering. He literally hasn’t seen them in years and it’s easy to say ‘I don’t care’ when it’s not to their faces. (Why send a tape specifically to Rei and keep track of her? Why not hurt Shouto at the summer camp when he so easily could have?) I think it’s also clear he didn’t mean to kill Endeavor with the previous Nomu attacks, but wanted him to succeed (in a ‘Build him up bigger so when I bring him down he falls even harder’ type of way. After all, Dabi obviously wanted to be the one to take down Endeavor, not a random Nomu.) Again, shitty he didn’t care that Natsuo/Shouto got caught up in it, but I think he didn’t think Natsuo would die due to Endeavor saving him. (Again, that doesn’t justify it, and is some twisted logic, but this is complicated.)

-I want to make very clear I’m not absolving Dabi of his actions, but as an abuse victim and someone who’s intimately familiar with familial abuse, his actual feelings do not make him a bad person and are actually more common than you’d think if you’ve never experienced abuse. When you’re suffering that kind of trauma for so long, you lash out at and feel angry at other people in the household, even other targets of abuse, because your abuser fucks you all up so bad and turns you against each other (even if not intentionally). It becomes a sick competition for attention even from a person who’s horrible and terrible. Dabi undoubtedly felt like he’d been thrown away and jealous of Shouto, the ‘perfect child’ Endeavor finally succeeded in getting (again, this doesn’t excuse him actually hating Shouto, but I can see why he might feel bitter). In a perfect world he would’ve dealt with those feelings with therapy and realized Shouto was just as much a victim and not murder attempts, but this is bnha lmao. Him wanting to hurt Shouto- a fucked up urge, but in a trauma-inducing environment as a mentally ill teenager, you can understand why he felt it. Acting on it is what’s truly fucked up. I also find it unlikely he doesn’t care for Natsuo at all. Natsuo, who he went to specifically for comfort for his whole childhood, not even his mother but his brother?

-At first glance, it may seem many “fanon” interpretations of Dabi are now ‘invalid’ or whatever but I disagree. Sure, we do know that he wasn’t secretly skulking about watching out for his siblings from the shadows- clearly. But narratives that involve him reconnecting with his siblings, remembering or learning to care for them again, realizing he’s hurting them and he isn’t the only one with trauma, reconnecting with his want to protect them as his family, etc. still make sense. People are not static. They still hold the capacity for change and healing given the proper circumstances. Most fanfic are AUs, given they don’t follow canon exactly and word for word, and characters can make different decisions and feel differently if different events happen. Even if you do want to write a very different characterization for Dabi, that’s fine, especially if bnha ultimately ends up doing the whole Todoroki narrative dirty.

-In conclusion: yes, currently Dabi is acting a madman and doing some very reprehensible things. He is a severely traumatized individual who grew up in a home involving copious amounts of violence. However, I do not think the point of all this family drama is just to say “fuck it, Touya’s dead now he was too far gone whoops! But heroes are good anyway!” I think it’s likely we’ll get some scene with him arrested and being confronted by Rei or Natsuo or something along those lines and see some regret. (Why spend so much time on this arc and show their reactions if they aren’t going to be involved at all?) Simultaneously, it’s also possible the story will go the “he’s too far gone” route and basically have him end up as a mirror of Endeavor: so obsessed with his own trauma he threw his own family under the bus for his own revenge plan. While possible, I think that’s a shitty and lazy way to go and disrespectful to Touya himself as an abuse survivor. He is definitely extremely deep in his revenge right now, but I do not want that to be the end of his character.

-I want Dabi to have to face up to his own actions. I want him to realize he fucked up and hurt people he shouldn’t have. I don’t think we’ll get some mushy apology montage, but we have not once seen all the Todoroki siblings together at one time, and I want Dabi to have to deal with the repercussions of seeing his family again and realizing oh, they were never the ones I should have hurt, and I don’t think he’s too far gone to do that.

-I think it’ll be really shitty if Dabi, an abuse survivor, is ultimately depicted as the insane lunatic that needs to be put down and has no chance for any kind of redemption while his abuser who bought his wife for eugenics and neglected/abused his entire family gets to walk free with a shitty redemption arc. Don’t get me wrong, I’m aware Dabi is a villain and as such is going to be on the losing side in a story where heroes win (I mean, it’s technically all a flashback from number one hero Deku) but he still has very valid points about hero society and how fucked up Endeavor truly was, and throwing it all away would be such a cop out. If bnha does truly go with the most insulting route for Dabi I feel it shows a lack of understanding for abuse and abuse survivors and fanfic authors are justified in ignoring and changing that for fics, especially if they’re abuse survivors themselves. I guarantee they’ll write better narratives about abuse lmao.

-Lastly: Dabi is a morally grey character. He’s a villain. But people who like his character or want to look at the why and how of his actions in a nuanced way are not just ‘dumb villain stans’ or whatever weird shit the bnha fandom has come up with. We just want this narrative to actually make some goddamned sense. Dabi’s actions are not all justified but do make sense in the context of his backstory and motivations and current mental state, I just hope to god hori doesn’t ruin it completely from here.

Edit: this post is also highly likely imo and also explains Dabi’s behavior (but as a reminder for those who don’t read closely, explaining something is not the same thing as justifying it.) “I can’t feel anything anymore” is a hallmark of being depressed/suicidal and his supposedly not caring for his siblings anymore most likely has to do more with his own suicidal state than aggression towards them. Dabi acting as manic as he has these last few chapters makes sense if he isn’t planning on living.

#dabi #Todoroki Touya #bnha #Touya #bnha 292 #Todoroki #touya todoroki #bnha spoilers #character meta

[commanderbensolo]

I Don’t Want To Lose You

Here is the fic that I posted recently on my ao3. On my ao3 it was split into two parts, but here it is just one whole oneshot. If you guys have any requests please don’t hesitate to ask. 

Pairing: Kylo Ren x Reader 

Warning: Some strong language (and by that I mean a few words), mentions of abuse by very minimal 

Y/N stood there in the cockpit, blinking slightly as the harsh blue tones of hyperspace slowed down in front of you until all you could see was the Supremacy in front of you. Turning towards the back of the ship, you walked slowly to where the rooms were situated on board, knowing full well that Kylo had passed out as soon as you entered hyperspace. "Kylo?" You asked softly, knocking on the door so as not to startle him. Not getting a response, you knocked again, a little harder this time, and you heard a groan from within the room. Taking this as a cue to come in, you pressed the button by the side of the door and watched as it slid open with a slight hiss. As you peered inside the room, you noticed that Kylo had discarded his cape, gloves, shirt and boots at the side of the room, and was now lying face down on the bed wearing just trousers. Seeing that he was shirtless, you blushed a little, feeling like you had invaded his private space. I've seen him shirtless before, what's the big deal? You thought to yourself, annoyed that the man in front of you could have such an overwhelming and dizzying effect on you just by taking his shirt off. "Hey, Y/N?" Kylo grunted from being face down into the pillows. You gathered yourself quickly. "Y-yeah?" You said, cursing yourself for stuttering, and hoping he didn't notice. "Your thoughts are terribly loud you know." He looked up at you as he said those words, and you swore you could see a hint of a blush on his cheeks while he smirked at you. You cursed yourself again, this time for letting your mental shields down so he could have a peek inside your mind. You could yourself blushing, and willed yourself to stop, knowing that would give him even more of a reason to look like the cat got the cream. "I actually just came to tell you that we came out of hyperspace like 5 minutes ago, so get prepared for an ass-whipping from Snoke." You said with a smirk, and he rolled his eyes and groaned as he face-planted the bed once more. You heard him say something, but since his face (read here: handsome as hell face) was buried in layers and layers of quilts, you couldn't hear what he said for the life of you. "I'm sorry, what was that?" You say with a smirk, a teasing lilt to your voice knowing full well that it was a complaint of some sort about what Snoke was going to say. " I said..." He replied as he pulled himself upwards with a grunt into a sitting position, "that this is kriff. We succeeded this time, so he literally has nothing to complain about."

"Well, you know Snoke. Apparently something could always be done better. I don't see how Hux can get away with being such an ass with him, to be honest." You hear a chuckle escape his lips, and look at him, raising an eyebrow. "What?" You question, as he stands up and begins to redress. "I think Snoke probably keeps him around and in one piece for entertainment purposes, you know. I mean, the arguments between you two are honestly hilarious." You gasp at him in mock offence and reach up to flick his forehead. "I take offence to that Kylo Ren! You know full well that the arguments are not meant to be funny."

"But they kinda are." You laugh at his words, replaying the many, many spats you've had with Hux in the past and instantly forcing yourself not to escape into peals of laughter. You didn't think either Snoke or Hux would like it if you landed in the hangar bay of the Supremacy and emerged from the Command Shuttle splitting your sides. A series of beeps come through your earpiece that's connecting to the ship's circuits and you turn towards the front of the ship, where the cockpit controls are alerting you that you've reached the Supremacy and that you've landed in the hangar bay. Turning back to see Kylo fully dressed and with his helmet on (possibly just so he could his bed head), you walked towards the side of the ship, where the loading ramp was, Kylo close behind you. Turning to him before the doors open as you land with a slight bump, you grasp his hand in a friendly way, your other hand on your saber at your side. "Ready?" You send through the Force Bond towards him, and you see him nod his head in response. Pressing the button near the ramp, it opened to reveal the usual chaos and turmoil of the hangar bay, a sight which comforted you due to being around it for so long. You both walked down the ramp with long and confident strides, meeting General Hux at the bottom, which was a common occurrence after a mission. Pulling down your hood, you looked at Hux as he disregarded Ren with the usual distaste that he always seemed to carry in his expression. "General Hux, a pleasure to see you." You say with a hint of sarcasm in your voice. Truth to be told, you didn't like this man at all. He was arrogant, aggravating, and always seemed to act like he knew best for everyone in the First Order when you knew for a fact that wasn't true. "Y/N, lovely to see you too. Supreme Leader Snoke requires your presence at 2000 hours, so don't be late." He says with a sneer, and you fight the urge to punch the infuriating man in the face. Sensing your anger, Kylo sent a wave of calming emotions through the Force to you, and as you felt them pass through your body you relaxed, grateful that Kylo was able to restrain you even though he shared the same opinions about Hux. "We won't be late Hux, now go about your day." You hear Kylo say through his modulator, and Hux just turns away and walks through the hangar entry doors, leaving you and Kylo at the bottom of the ramp. "Well, I'm gonna go shower and take a nap, meet you at 2000?" You say through the bond as you two begin walking. "Yes, I'll see you then. Are you going to have dinner beforehand or after?"

"I think I'll have it after, we don't know what Snoke has in store yet. I'd rather not end the night puking my guts up over my quarters because he decided that we weren't good enough, you know?" You feel a shudder of sorts through the bond, and you know that you're both reliving memories of seeing what Snoke put you both through over the years, especially when he had decided in his own warped view that you both had 'failed'. In the last couple of years, you had begun to doubt that he even knew what the word meant and whether he just used the term as an excuse to inflict punishment on you and Kylo instead. "Kylo, I won't let him hurt you, not again. I'm sorry I wasn't there last time."

"It's fine, it wasn't your fault. I was the one who let the scavenger get away." By the time, you've arrived at your quarters, which are just over the hall from Kylo's, and he finally takes his helmet off. "God I hate wearing that thing sometimes, it just gets so stuffy in there." You laugh lightly at his words, inputting your door code into the panel beside it, and turn around to see him doing the same. "Anyway, I'll see you in a bit, I suggest getting some more sleep because we're going to be shattered as kriff after the meeting. You know what he's like." You say with a roll of your eyes at the last part. He rolled his eyes in response with a smirk, mumbling a 'see you in a bit' as he stepped into his quarters. Doing the same, you put your lightsaber down on the coffee table in the middle of the lounge area, hanging up your cloak on your way to the bathroom. Taking your Y/C hair out its braid and shaking your hair loose, you pick out some more comfortable (but still appropriate) clothing and lay it on the bathroom counter before stripping out of your grimy combat clothes and boots and stepping into the hot shower. Turning around to grab your shampoo, you started wondering about what would happen at the meeting. Would Snoke be okay this time? Would he hurt Kylo again? Would he hurt both you and Kylo this time? The thought of Kylo being hurt in front of you made your stomach twist into apprehensive, worrying knots, knowing for a fact that even though Snoke demanded obedience, you wouldn't be able to just kneel there and see Kylo being tortured. Not Kylo, not the man you loved. You caught yourself on that last word, gasping to yourself sharply and muttering a 'fuck' as you knocked your head against the tiled wall. Love? Is it love, or just infatuation? Or am I just attracted to him physically? You cut yourself off during your ramble by scrubbing down your body and turning the shower off quickly, stepping out and drying yourself off with a towel and dressing in the clothes you had laying on the counter. Looking at yourself in the mirror, you quickly threw your wet hair up in a bun, deciding to let it air dry so you could have more time for sleep as you dragged your fatigued body to your bedroom, quickly setting an alarm on your datapad for 7:30 before deciding to face-plant the bed and falling asleep in a matter of seconds, knowing full well that you would be dragged from the sweet world of dreams far too soon.

"Y/N, I'm asking you once, and once only," Kylo said to you as you stood in Snoke's throneroom, the room flickering with fire and sparks every few minutes. His hand was outstretched, and you could see the scavenger girl (Rey, you think her name was, though you had no idea how you knew that) standing to the side, looking at Kylo as though trying to plead with him. "Kylo, what do you want to ask me?" His chest rose and fell with heavy breaths as his panted, and you assumed (though you had no recollection) that a fight had just taken place. Looking around, you saw no sign of Snoke's Praetorian Guards clad in their scarlet armour, and when you looked over at the throne, you saw that Snoke's body had been cleaved in two, and was now no longer upon the throne. Instead of feeling horror at such a sight, you felt relief. The days of Snoke torturing and punishing you and Kylo were finally over, and you were finally free to do as you wanted. "Y/N... I want you to join me. We can rule together and bring order to the galaxy!" You looked at the tall, dark man in front of you, and instead of feeling apprehension and fear at his request, you felt joy and excitement. Rule together? Was this his version of admitting you were more than a friend to him? Was this his way of finally, finally, admitting he had feelings for you too? "Please don't do this Ben, please don't go this way." You heard Rey's voice cut through your train of thought, and with the mention of his old name, you made up at your mind. You stepped forward, and place your hand in his outstretched one, whilst your other hand came up to cup his face. "Yes, Kylo Ren, I will join you."  With this, it was a split-second before his lips were crashing into yours, and suddenly you two were engaged into a heated, passionate kiss, bringing your arms up around his neck to grip at his hair whilst his arms found their way around your waist, holding you close to his body as he continued to kiss you. As you broke apart to breathe, you put your foreheads together and looked into his hazel eyes, and finally turning to face Rey, who was looking at you both partially scared and broken. She had been counted upon to bring Kylo back from the Dark side and to return as Ben Solo, and she had failed. "I suggest you start running scavenger if you want a chance of living at all." You say to her and you move into a fighting stance, your hand coming to rest on the saber at your belt. Suddenly, she thrust her hand out, Force-pulling the lightsaber that was in Kylo's hand towards her. Kylo, his reflexes being quicker than his senses, instantly raised his hand as well to bring it back, until the lightsaber stopped in mid-air between them and started to vibrate from the Force that was being exerted on it. Reaching your hand out also, you tried to use the Force to bring it towards you and Kylo, but Rey put in more effort. You sensed that she was untrained fully, having only spent a small amount of time with Luke Skywalker before returning to try and turn Kylo back towards the Light, but despite being untrained, she was undoubtedly strong, and she was being guided by her natural instincts within the Force. You let out a yell with the amount of energy you're exerting, and distantly you hear both Kylo and Rey utter sounds of the same kind until the lightsaber snaps in two and creates an explosion of energy so powerful it knocks you, Kylo and Rey backwards, where you pass out.

Bolting upright from your bed, you realise you're gasping for air and breathing heavily, you're skin covered in a thin sheen of cold sweat. You look at the clock on the far wall and realise it's 1900, an hour from when you have to meet with Snoke. You fall back down on your bed, feeling like you've just fought a battle and breathing heavily. You think back to the dream, and your eyes widen. As you continue to stare at the ceiling, you continue to think only one thought. What the actual fuck was that?

Throwing on her standard cape as well as ankle-high black boots, Y/N pressed a combination onto the control panel of her door to allow her to be let out and across the hall to Kylo's room. Before knocking, she sent a quick "I'm outside, you ready?" to Kylo, and when the grunt of a "Yes" was heard, you took that as an indication to input his code and let yourself in. Since you two were extremely close, you had decided years ago to give each other your room codes, as it was just easier for the both of you to let yourselves in than to wait for the other person to finish what they were doing. Basically, another explanation is that you two were extremely impatient.

Stepping into Kylo's quarters, your eyes are suddenly met with the sight of (yet again) shirtless Kylo. Your eyes grow as wide as dinner plates as you realise that you're also blushing, an act which has become much too common around Kylo in the past year. "Kylo, I swear you're doing this on purpose." You say in a scathing tone as you sit down on the plush leather black couch in the middle of his lounging quarters. Tugging on an undershirt (much to your dismay) as well as his normal padded tunic, you hear him chuckle as you close your eyes. "Doing what, Y/N?" You hear him say with a teasing lilt in his voice. You crack one eye open to shoot him a withering look, but the effect was not the same when you couldn't stop a smirk from creeping its way onto your face. "Never mind, let's just go. It'll be worse if we're late."

You stand up and Force-pull his lightsaber from the counter, throwing it to him before making your way over to where he was standing. "Hello." He says with a smile as he looks down at you. You feel your heart flutter with emotions you can't explain, and on sheer impulse, you wrap your arms around his neck as you stretch to give him a hug. He's surprised for a second, not expecting such an intimate action, but he soon reciprocates it, holding you tightly in his arms, almost as if he's afraid to let you go. "I'm really sorry Kylo." You mumble into his shirt, not minding that his lightsaber is sticking into your stomach harshly or that your toes hurt from standing upon them. "For what, Y/N?" He murmurs softly in your ear, and you can't help the shivers that run down your spine at the sound of his deep voice. "Just... everything. Every time I wasn't there for you. Every time I wasn't there to help you after you were hurt, either on the battlefield or by Snoke. I don't want to have to worry about the fact that I could end up coming back from an assignment and face never being able to see you again." All your words came out in a single breath, a little rushed and hasty, and a deep red glow made its way onto your cheeks. You could feel a soft chuckle vibrate through his chest, and you smiled into his tunic. "Y/N, you're not going to lose me, I promise." You look up into his hazel eyes and find yourself falling even deeper into the hole that you had made for yourself. Retracting your arms from around his neck, you lower yourself down, trying to control the rapid beating of your heart. Walking towards his door, you both enter into the corridor, making your way towards the elevator that would take you to Snoke.

Upon arriving, you put the elevator into emergency stop mode, and feel Kylo grasp your hand tightly. His helmet is currently in his arms, and his eyes were dilated. You could sense that he was nervous, you didn't need a Force connection with him to feel that, it was coming off him in thick waves, and you could tell he was desperately trying to calm down. "Kylo..." you whispered to him as he gripped your hand even tighter. "Kylo, it's going to be fine. I'm here now. I won't let him do anything to you. I promise." He looks at you with dilated pupils and quivering lips, and you grasp his hand firmly in order to calm his nerves, to show him that someone was there for him when he needed it most. And Force, you would always be there for him. "Now, we've gotta see him, unfortunately, so let's just get this meeting over with, and then we can go and crash in my quarters and watch one of those really old holonet cheesy series that you pretend not to love." He laughs at this, a clear sound despite what he was feeling, and you felt his emotions become more balanced and levelled. He squeezed your hand again, but this time it had a meaning behind it as you made the elevator come out of emergency stop mode. This time, it meant 'thank you'.

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

Coming to kneel before the throne in the dark red room, you could see why Kylo was scared. Although you had met Snoke many times, he took special attentiveness and observation over Kylo, possibly because he was proven to be stronger with the Force due to his legacy. You could admit honestly that you were thankful for the reduced attention, but it pained you to think that Kylo was subjected to his disapproval and anger more often. That wasn't fair. "My apprentices, you have returned." He says in a slow and meaningful manner, something which was not common for Snoke and made your stomach flip. Something wasn't right here. "Yes, Supreme Leader, we have returned." You say calmly and clearly, lifting your head to look directly at him. "How was the mission?" He asked, yet another question that made you confused. Usually, he would just question whether you succeeded or not, not how it was or what happened. "Very good, Supreme Leader. No complications were met, traitors and other people of the same regard were taken care of, and we succeeded."

"Good, good. This is wonderful news, my apprentices. You have done well." You look up at him again from your kneeling position and murmur a 'thank you' before bowing your head again. "Before I dismiss you, my young apprentices, I have something I must ask of you both." You could feel Kylo let out a ripple of fear through your Force bond, careful to not let Snoke know, and in return, you sent a wave of calming memories towards him. The time you both decided to pilot a TIE Silencer, and you had decided to sit on Kylo's lap so that you could be in the same one. The time where you both were sent on your first mission together after becoming Knights Of Ren and getting drunk and just spending the night on the ship laughing and talking, learning more about each other before finally drifting off to sleep next to each other, firmly becoming best friends, not that you weren't already. You felt him smile, and send another 'thank you' through the Force, to which you responded with just a sense of serenity and peace, something that he needed when in times of turmoil and overwhelming emotions. "Yes, Supreme Leader, what is it?" You hear Kylo's modulated voice speak beside you, confident and clear. "I need you to find the scavenger girl and bring her to me, alive. She could be of great use to us in the future." You stiffen at the mention of her, thinking back to the dream you had experienced a little while ago. Determined not to let Snoke see what you had dreamt about, you put up your mental walls, blocking anyone (apart from Kylo) from seeing anything inside your mind. "Yes, Supreme Leader, we will see to it straight away." You hear Kylo say from beside you, and you're praying to the Maker and the Force that this is nearly over. Because something feels wrong. Something feels tense, and you were not keen to find out. "Very well, my apprentices. You are dismissed. If I gather any more information on this... girl, then I will send for you both at once." You both stand up hastily and walk towards the elevator so quickly you're surprised that Snoke doesn't call you back under suspicion.

Once inside the elevator, with the doors shut, you both breathe a heavy sigh of relief. "Well, that was oddly uneventful. Not that I'm complaining." You say to him, but then you notice something. He's trembling. "Kylo, what's wrong?" He breathes a heavy sigh before tears begin to well up in his eyes, making them sparkle and shine in the elevators harsh white light surrounding you both. "I'm just- FORCE!" He shouts as tears begin to make their way down his face, creating patterns on his pale skin that were both beautiful and heart-breaking. "Kylo, calm down. It's okay. You're okay." You say to him softly, holding him as he begins to sob silently, his head becoming buried in your shoulder. Out of instinct, your hand comes up to stroke the hair at the nape of his neck, and you hear him breathe a sigh and shudder of relief, in knowing that someone was there for him. That he wasn't alone.

"I'm just... I'm terrified." He admitted into your neck, and you become confused. You knew that he had a hard time processing emotions, unfortunately, that's kind of what happened when you had a mother who was more concerned with her job than her son and a father who wasn't able to stay in one place for a long time. But you had never felt this before. This was his emotions being sent into overdrive. "About what? Talk to me, Kylo. Please." You feel him take in a deep breath, and let it out slowly, hot air fanning your skin as he tried to calm down. He brings his head up to look at you directly, and you see something you've never seen before in his eyes, and it scares you because you don't know what it is. "I'm terrified of losing you." He says in a small voice, as though afraid to admit something like this, as though admitting his feelings were going to make a monster or something else that you couldn't bear to be around. "I'm terrified of losing you too. I told you that earlier." You say with a confused frown, knowing for a fact that there was something more beneath that simple phrase. "There's something else isn't there?" You ask him quietly, and you hear his breath hitch. "Don't make me say it, Y/N. Please don't make me say it. I don't want you to think any worse of me." He whispers to you. By this time, you've reached your quarter's floor, and you both step out.

"Right. Let's go to my quarters okay?" Seeing him nod in response, you grasp his arm with your hand and pull him over to your door, where you input the code and allow the door to slide open with a slight hiss. You pull him inside, instructing him to go and sit on the couch while you go freshen up. After locking yourself inside the bathroom, you take a couple of deep breaths before pulling out sleeping shorts and an old black t-shirt, whilst wearing knee-high socks. Pulling your hair of its bun, you brush it out quickly before returning to the lounging area, where Kylo was sat, cape and boots discarded and lay down on the couch with his eyes closed, chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm. You sit down next to him on the couch and take his hand in yours, his eyes fluttering open suddenly as he looks down at your entwined hands. "You wanna tell me what's going on inside that head of yours Ren?" You say to him softly. You feel his hands move to your waist and suddenly lift you up until you're straddling his hips. Blushing at the position, you realize it's so he can sit up and hold you while he talks, something he does when he's in need of comfort. It happens a lot on missions when he's not conked out from pure exhaustion. He closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath, as though steeling his nerves for something that he doesn't want to. "I need to tell you something, Y/N. But I need you to promise me something before I do so." You cock your head to the side, confused at to what he's asking, but nod your head in response. "I need you to promise that after I tell you this, you won't think any worse of me, nor will you leave."

Now, you know that to a lot of other people, saying that kind of thing would make them want to immediately do the opposite, but you know Kylo, and that he's only saying these things as a precaution, because on the inside, behind that terrifying Commander and Master of the Knight of Ren exterior, is a scared man who has seen way too many people abandon him because of who he is and what he's done. You know Kylo, and you would never leave him. No matter what happened. After repeating this sentiment to him, you see his shoulders visibly relax a fraction, though still tense. "I've been... feeling something unusual to me for quite some time, Y/N. It's scary, and I don't know what to do. But I don't want to keep you in the dark about it. You're my best friend, and I don't want to lose you because you felt I was keeping something from you, which I never would unless it was for your own safety. Hence, why I've kept this from you for so long." Taking another deep breath, he continues. "I'm just going to admit it outright because there's no other way I can do it really. Y/N, I think I'm falling in love with you, and I can't stop it. It's scaring me so much because I'm absolutely terrified that you won't feel the same towards me." His words are flooding out now, as though he's afraid that he's going to be stopped from saying them. "I really, really like you, Y/N. Even if you don't feel the same, I just wanted you to know how I feel. I can't keep it a secret anymore, and I refuse to." You realize that you've been holding in a breath since he started his expression of feelings, and you slowly let it out. You feel him tense beneath you, and you know he's thinking that you're going to bolt after what he just said. Grabbing his hands, you pull them around your waist and clasp them together at the small of your back, and your hands make your way around his neck as you bury your face in his neck. You feel him breathe a sigh of relief, and you reciprocate the action.

Lifting to look at him again, you bring your head down until your lips collide in a soft and sensual kiss. There's no effort or intention of deepening the kiss, it's just something that allows you two to feel closer than you ever have before. Pulling away, you say "Was that enough of an answer for you?" He chuckles at that and plants a small peck on your lips again. Bringing your head down to rest in the crook of his neck again, you both manoeuvre yourselves so you're laying down on the couch. You both lay there silently, just holding each other. Because even though there will be a war to fight tomorrow, and enemies to hunt down, and a million other things that could go wrong, you'll have each other. And that's something that you'll forever be grateful for.

Thank you all for reading! If you want to reblog please ask me first and if I say yes please give me credit as this is my own work and it took a lot of effort and time to write. I hope you all enjoyed it and thank you for reading :)

#kylo ren x reader #kylo ren #tension #happy ending #kissing #fluff #kylo ren x reader fluff

[an-angels-blessing]

Song Prompts #2

“They say that love kills, it ain’t quite what it seems, don’t be shocked when you lost what you called ‘meant to be’.”- StayLoose, Bryce Fox, Sociopath

“When they come for You, I will shield Your name, I will field their questions, I will feel Your pain.”- Kanye West, Ultralight Beam

“Two steps forward, one step back and it won’t be long til my heart attack, yup! And common sense falls second place to the way it feels when you kiss my face, yup!”- The Band CAMINO, 2 / 14

“Leaving empty souls when he avenged, evil spirits flowed, he drank the blood like lemonade.”- Morcheeba, Blood Like Lemonade

“Your smile will become a classic; the brilliance of sunlight, the haziness of the moonlight exist for the sake of promises.”- WayV, Moonwalk

Dear God, I hope you got the letter and I pray you can make it better down here. I don’t need a big reduction in the price of beer, but all the people that you made in your image- see them starving on their feet.”- Lawless, Sydney Wayser, Dear God

“Down below, sandy, like the ocean floor, quiet, like I like it; here I’ll never be alone.”- slenderbodies, anemone

“I love everything, fire spreading all around my room, my world’s so bright, it’s hard to breathe but that’s alright- hush.”- Sub Urban, Cradles

“I’m telling myself, I’m telling myself, ‘I don’t need you anymore’.”- Lia Marie Johnson, Cold Heart Killer

“So I moved to California, but it’s just a state of mind, it turns out everywhere you go, you take yourself, that’s not a lie. Wish that you would hold me or just say that you were mine- it’s killing me slowly.” Lana Del Rey, Fuck it I love you

“See, she knows that I love her, but I don’t think she’ll stay and she knows that I need her, but my love’s lost its weight. Spend my days longing for something real, spend my days stuck in the way I feel.”- JOBA, Sad Saturdays

"Am I going crazy? Would I even know? Am I right back where I started fourteen years ago? Wanna guess the ending, if it ever does. I swear to God that all I've ever wanted was, A little bit of everything all of the time, A bit of everything all of the time. Apathy's a tragedy and boredom is a crime. I'm finished playing and I'm staying inside."- Bo Burnham, Goodbye

"We had that dumb love, The kind that cuts you up inside. My blood was your love. We had that you jump and I'm jumping. Crazy kind of something, that dumb love"- Mimi Webb, Dumb Love

“I hope he treats you better than I ever could. ‘Cause you deserve the world times two, and our simple Sunday afternoons.“- Clinton Kane, CHICKEN TENDIES

“I don’t think I’m painting high expectations. Just want good conversation. Over mornings making bacon with a guy with good intentions”- Lauren Weintraub, Makeup Is Expensive

“You'll always have my heart though all you are is a poster in my room. You're my one and only, but I'm one of many to you”- Will Jay, One of Many

“Don't you know that I cried tears of gold for you” Faouzia, Tears of Gold

“I spent all of the love I've saved. We were always a losing game. Small-town boy in a big arcade. I got addicted to a losing game” Duncan Laurence, Arcade

"She knows, she knows. And I know she knows, and I know she knows. And deep down she knows, she knows. And I know she knows, and I know she knows."- J. Cole, She Knows

Prompts 1-100

#prompts #song prompts

[myaekingheart]

132. Stakeout Paradise

read the scarecrow and the bell on ao3 index | from the beginning | < previous | next >

Arai watched with curious amusement as Rei paced the back of the briefing room. There was a certain level of focus on her face, a deep-seated concentration. She looked as if she was desperately trying to solve a math problem, or as if she was constipated. Arai wasn’t sure which was the case but either way, she was intrigued.

Without breaking her gaze, the blonde leaned over the table toward her comrades. “Alright, how much you wanna bet she’s going to lose it in five minutes?” she whispered, a sly smile touching her lips.

“Are you really going to gamble on our captain’s sanity?” Hitsuji asked. He glanced to Rei and frowned. Nothing about this felt right.

Kikkake abruptly slapped a ten dollar bill on the table. “Make it two minutes” he said.

The head of the ANBU, Meishu, cleared his throat as he shuffled his paperwork at the podium. “I guess that just about covers it” he concluded gruffly. He shot Arai a fierce, momentary glare as if to warn her about the dangers of interrupting his briefings. Arai merely smirked back at him, unaffected.

Meishu was a raspy and apathetic man. It was obvious that he had seen some shit. Scars dappled his body and dark circles bloomed under his eyes. His hair was stringy and graying, but his body remained muscular and agile. No one knew how long he had been in the black ops for and no one dared to ask. As he shoved his papers into a bent manila folder and approached the door, he grumbled and then pointed across the room to shout, “Oh, and Natsuki! Fuck off with that pacing shit. You’re giving me a migraine.”

Rei immediately froze, eyes wide and unblinking, and her face turned bright red. Arai stifled a laugh. “There’s an outcome we didn’t plan for” she whispered to the others. Yugao grimaced and whacked both her and Kikkake on the backs of their heads. As much as she enjoyed seeing their little team finally getting along, she wished their camaraderie did not have to be at Rei’s expense.

As the rest of the ANBU filed out of the briefing room, Yugao rose to her feet and patted Rei lightly on the back. “It’s showtime” she whispered with a soft, reassuring smile. Rei nodded, huffing, as she mentally prepared herself for what was to come. This mission could make or break her reputation in the black ops. They could not afford to fail.

“Alright, this is who we’re looking for” Rei said, slapping a stack of case files in front of them. The pages outlined all of the intel thus far gathered about a rogue shinobi by the name of Shuncho. He was a tall, sleepy looking man with drooping eyes and greasy brown hair.

Sukui immediately cringed. “Well, he certainly has no sense of style whatsoever” he complained.

Arai smirked. “Yeah, because that’s why we’re out to arrest him. Crimes against fashion” she jested.

“No, actually he’s accused of murder” Yugao corrected.

“Well, if you have to commit a crime, you might as well look good” Sukui remarked. “The cameras we take mug shots with certainly don’t do anyone any favors.”

Kikkake rolled his eyes. “No one gives a damn what you look like when you’re in jail.”

“Whoa, hey, wait a sec, that’s not entirely true” Arai countered. “They care if you look like a little bitch. Then you get beat to a pulp every day by the bigger guys.”

“And how would you know?” Kikkake asked. “Have you been to jail? Because I don’t think the black ops take kindly to reformed criminals.”

“I heard Meishu-sensei will have your guts just for trying to break protocol, let alone anything worse” Sukui interjected with an airy laugh.

Arai rolled her eyes, paying no mind to Sukui’s comment. “I don’t have to go to jail to know how it works, smartass” she argued to Kikkake. “It’s common knowledge.”

Sukui pursed his lips. “But how do you know it’s the same for women’s prisons as it is for men’s? Not to sound sexist, of course, but there has to be a difference” he countered.

Hitsuji chewed his lower lip. “I’ve heard women’s prisons are actually more dangerous than—”

“Guys, focus!” Rei interjected, slamming her fist heavily on the table. The whole group silenced, staring back at her with wide eyes full of mild embarrassment. They had all noticed it—the recent surge of fury in her eyes. It was undeniable, growing ever clearer with each passing day. Her newfound angst sprung up seemingly out of nowhere. She was harsh, stern, tense. Her tolerance for their shenanigans had waned to absolute zero.

Yugao rose to Rei’s side and fed the group a reassuring smile. “This is a very serious assignment, so I expect all of you to bring your best. Is that understood?” she asked. Her delivery was far more encouraging, much to her subordinates’ relief. Yugao glanced to Rei, to her tired eyes and her clenched jaw. She hoped, perhaps selfishly, that she would not remain this uptight throughout the entire mission. Bad moods made for long, rough nights and now was not the time to be unpleasant.

Konoha had gained intel of their target heading toward an outpost on the edge of town, someplace trashy and rife with tourists. It was the type of place known for gambling and attractive women—the exact opposite of Rei’s comfort zone. Other anonymous tips recalled seeing him around a rundown inn in the center of town, hood up and back hunched like he was clearly hiding something.

The venture to the outpost was torturous enough on its own. Arai and Kikkake argued constantly about heaven only knew what, Hitsuji was constantly sneezing and coughing from the “heightened pollen count,” and Sukui decided that their trip was far too boring and required an acapella concert. Clad in plainclothes disguises, they looked like the most ridiculous ragtag group of civilians to ever exist. Rei could only hope that they’d blend in well enough with the equally ridiculous types of people that the outpost tended to attract. Or at the very least, they’d be mistaken for traveling musicians. At least Sukui could play that part well. His voice, though refined, was beginning to give Rei a migraine. She sucked in a sharp breath and swallowed back her own unease.

Try as she might, however, Rei's sanity grew progressively more unstable as they journeyed further. Yugao's concern mounted as Rei paled and insisted they stop for the fifth rest of the morning. Her constant breaks were starting to irk the others, growing impatient with their drawn-out trip.

"We should've already gotten there by now" Kikkake grumbled under his breath.

Arai crinkled her nose. "Yeah, isn't this kind of a time sensitive thing? What if he gets wind that we're coming for him and books it before we can even show up?"

"Th-that's not a very comforting thought" Hitsuji stammered, picking at his lower lip.

Sukui sighed and replied, "Well, I for one am enjoying this relaxing little stroll."

"Yeah, no shit" Arai muttered under her breath.

"You just want to take advantage of forcing us to listen to you sing" Kikkake added.

"Excuse you!" Sukui shouted. "Sorry for thinking our trip would be better with a little music!"

"If you can even call it that" Kikkake snarked. Sukui gasped, offended, before lunging at his comrade. Arai immediately swooped in and grabbed him by the back of the shirt, tugging him back hard as he swatted at the bald man and complained that Kikkake wouldn't know good music if it boxed his ears in.

Amid the chaos of their escalating argument, Rei snuck away to a nearby tree to catch her breath. When leaning her forehead against the trunk was not enough, she slid down to the gnarled, exposed roots and tucked her head between her knees. Her face was hot and numb and her stomach churned. She sucked in a deep, sharp breath and willed her body to cooperate.

“Hey, are you sure you’re alright?” Yugao asked, kneeling down in front of Rei. “You look terrible.”

Rei swatted at the air dismissively, pursed her lips. “I’ll be fine” she lied. “I think I just got food poisoning from my mom’s cooking last week, it’s really not a big deal.” Yugao paused, furrowing her brows as she counted the days on her fingers—did food poisoning usually last this long? She wasn’t sure. She had, admittedly, been rather lucky in avoiding digestive ailments over the years. Her lack of expertise was of no help to her now, though.

Even the mere thought of her mother’s cooking made Rei gag into the crook of her elbow. She squeezed her eyes shut tight and dug her nails into her palm, her breathing growing evermore labored and desperate. Yugao pursed her lips and an overwhelming anxiety began to fill her stomach. This was not going to end well, she was sure of it.

By the time they reached the outpost, Rei’s head was beginning to throb. Her clammy hands tightly gripped the straps of her backpack and she could feel the world begin to sway as if she was on high seas. The sun had just started to set, welcoming in the dark, vivid nights when Komaeda Outpost truly came alive.

The inn was actually far nicer than Rei had expected. The mucus-colored linoleum had been polished nicely and the spackled walls were adorned with abstract paintings. Large potted ficuses stood guard at the creaky double doors. The night auditor, a greasy young man with a crack addict’s fidget, awaited them at the counter.

Rei was not necessarily the type of person to actively find disgust in unsuspecting people, but there was something about this man specifically that made her stomach churn. She immediately froze by the doorway, clapping her hand over her mouth. The others paused and glanced back at her suspiciously. “Yugao?” Rei croaked. “Do you mind?” She handed Yugao a folded piece of paper from her pocket and swatted her hand toward the counter. Yugao cocked a brow but slowly turned to oblige. Again, this was not going to end well.

Yugao smiled politely as she approached the counter. “I believe we have a reservation?” she greeted, discretely sliding the rogue-nin’s wanted poster across the counter. The auditor wiped his nose with the back of an unclean hand as he glanced down at the paper. It took him a moment to recognize the face but once he did, he immediately knew that these were the guests that he had been waiting for.

“The hokage sent a message earlier!” he whispered enthusiastically, winking in a rather obvious fashion. He then spun around to the display of keys hanging on the wall and plucked one from the rack. “Your room will be number 402 up the flight of stairs and around the corner” he explained.

As Yugao hesitantly reached for the key, however, Arai stalked forward with an expression of sheer disgust and disbelief. “Whoa, wait a second: are you telling me we only get one room? For the six of us?!” The thought of having to sleep with everyone was completely unacceptable. Rei and Yugao she could accept. After all, they were all women. They saw each other naked in the locker rooms every day. They were of no concern to her. It was the men that she struggled to accept. Hitsuji was a wimp, insignificant, so she didn’t expect much issue from him but Kikkake and Sukui? The thought of it made her nauseous. She’d hate to think of Sukui clinging to her in the night or Kikkake’s morning breath. A shiver ran down her spine. Unacceptable.

The night auditor’s eyes widened and his face went pale. “W-well your supervisors only paid enough f-for one room!” he excused.

Kikkake scoffed, patting Arai on the shoulder condescendingly. “You should be lucky they paid for our room at all” he said. Arai glared up at him and swatted his hand away.

“We’ll be fine!” Rei shouted angrily from across the lobby. She had since doubled over, hands on her knees and hair falling in her face. Sweat beaded on her brow and her breathing had grown significantly heavier. “Just don’t fucking argue about it, it’s not imp—“ she continued, but suddenly all of the color drained from her face. Her composure had finally broken. Whipping around, she leaned over behind the potted plant and violently vomited onto the lobby floor. The night auditor’s face went from shock-white to sick-green.

Yugao winced in both concern and embarrassment. “We’ll, uh…we’ll pay for any additional cleaning charges for that" she said to the auditor. He nodded weakly, clearly disturbed by such a vulgar display. Hitsuji seemed to share in the sentiment, his heart rising into his throat as he instinctively grabbed Kikkake’s strong arm for support. Frowning, the bald man shoved him off in distaste.

Meanwhile, Arai chuckled under her breath and invited herself behind the counter. She kicked down the door to the janitor's office, rummaged around, and then resurfaced with a pathetic little mop.“Here you go, good sir” she grinned, shoving it into Kikkake’s hand.

“What the fuck?” Kikkake grimaced. “Why is it my job?! I don’t fucking work here!”

Arai looked back at him as if it was the most obvious answer in the world. When it became clear to her, however, that it was not, a sickening grin spread across her lips. “Sorry, I thought you were Mr. Clean” she sassed.

Kikkake shot her a fierce glare, throwing the mop across the room violently and complaining under his breath about how this was absolutely ridiculous and that at this point he might as well just buy a fucking wig. Frustrated, he snatched the key from Yugao’s hand and made his way for the stairs.

The night auditor sucked in a sharp, uneasy breath as they departed. Perhaps his expectations had been shattered—after all, the thought of elite ninja should garner images of badassery. Instead, he was stuck with a bunch of dysfunctional misfits. He should’ve known better.

Pressing a button on the phone, the night auditor brought the receiver up to his mouth. “We’re gonna need a janitor in the lobby ASAP. We’ve got another puker.”

Yugao cocked a brow as she made her way toward Rei. “Does this happen often…?” she asked cautiously, wrapping an arm around her captain to provide support.

The night auditor sighed. “Every other day.” And it’s no less disgusting every time it happens, he thought to himself. If he knew he would see vomit this often in this career, he never would’ve pursued it.

Yugao fed him an apologetic smile. She pitied him, really. His job had to be far from easy, especially in a town such as this. Despite the danger of her own career, she was certainly not above acknowledging the challenge of other people’s jobs, as well.

Yugao helped Rei to her feet and something in her chest tugged. Rei looked so pathetic, so flushed and weak. “I think you ought to get some rest” Yugao whispered.

As much as Rei wanted to protest, deep down she knew her lieutenant was right. She fed a sheepish smile to the night auditor as they passed, croaking out a pained, “I’m so sorry” as they disappeared up the stairs. She knew it didn’t mean anything, but she felt obligated to say it anyway. A courtesy, if nothing else.

Their room was, as expected, kind of a dump. The sheets were stiff and almost crunchy, the carpet looked like ground beef, and there was overall the faintest hint of cigarette smoke despite this very clearly being a non-smoking room. But it had a perfect view of the hotel’s west wing where the rogue-ninja was rumored to be staying. Between the two areas was a large courtyard with dying grass and complimentary hot springs. Yugao didn’t even want to consider what kind of germs were floating around in that water.

As they all settled in, Rei slumped down on the edge of the bed and buried her face in her hands. Arai glanced to her curiously, cocking a brow. “You really don’t look so good, boss” she commented. “Are you sure you’re gonna be okay?”

Raking her fingers through her bangs, Rei nodded but her affirmation wasn’t all that convincing. “I’ll be fine. Like I said, it’s just food poisoning. I’m sure I’ll be good as new by the time we’re back home” she replied.

Hitsuji twiddled his fingers anxiously, his voice rising an octave. “B-But by the time you get home, the mission will be over already!” he exclaimed. “A-are you going to get sick again? Are you going to be sick th-the entire mission?!”

Arai tilted her head back to view Hitsuji from upside-down, furrowing her brows. “And what’s got you so fucked up?” she asked.

“I-I just don’t have a very strong stomach…” Hitsuji replied sheepishly.

Sukui settled into the wobbly chair at the room’s complimentary desk, propping his legs up on the desktop. “Isn’t your sister a nurse? Shouldn’t you have a better tolerance for these sorts of things?”

Hitsuji shook his head rapidly. “She’s got the stomach, I’ve got the brains” he explained. “I could never handle stuff like this.”

Sukui pouted in thought for a moment. “It is pretty disgusting” he confessed. Turning to Arai, he then asked, “How can you stand to handle it?”

Shrugging, Arai leaned back on the bed casually. “What can I say? I’ve got a sister who’s a lightweight” she replied. “I’ve seen my fair share of puke.”

Hitsuji shivered and shook his head. “C-can we please stop talking about this?” he begged.

Rei reached across the bed and rested a gentle hand on Hitsuji’s shivering shoulder. “I’ll be fine. Promise” she assured him. He nodded with wide-eyed panic, glancing to her hand as if she could transmit her illness through touch and had just risked infecting him. The moment Rei recognized this, she inched away and shot him a small, apologetic smile.

Kikkake cocked a brow with crossed arms, not entirely convinced by his captain's words. “And how long have you had food poisoning for, exactly?” he asked.

Rei shot him a fierce glare, a threat for him to not go there. She was so sick and tired of people asking her that same exact question. What did it matter? She was sick, and she had been sick, and all that meant was that she was nearing the end. Disgruntled, she snapped, “I don’t fucking know. Maybe a little over a week or something?”

“That doesn’t sound right” Arai snarked. “As far as I know, most cases of food poisoning clear up in, like, a few days. Right?”

Yugao raised her hands in surrender. “Don’t look at me, I wouldn’t know” she replied.

Hitsuji’s fingers twitched. His body needed a release, a distraction, since his mind by now was too far-gone. “A-are you sure it’s food poisoning?” he stammered out. “I-It could be a parasitic infection, like Cyclospora. Or something internal! Have you had any pain? Fatigue? D-Diarrhea?”

“Ew, gross!” Arai shouted, lopping her shoe at Hitsuji’s head. Maybe he did belong on her hit list after all. “I thought you said you had a weak stomach!”

“I-I do!” Hitsuji countered.

“Then why are you asking nasty shit like that?!” Arai asked.

Kikkake smirked, smacking Arai on the back of the head in response. “I thought you said you had a strong stomach” he jested back. Arai frowned up at him and slapped his hand away, muttering at him to get away from her.

Hitsuji pursed his lips. “The health and wellness of every team member is important. Besides, it’s good to know whether what Captain Rei has is contagious or not.”

“I knew we should’ve gotten separate rooms” Arai grumbled.

Sukui shook his head. “Do you really think we have to ask such ridiculously invasive questions?” he asked.

Tenting his fingers, Hitsuji dropped his gaze to the floor and replied, “Well, yes, sometimes asking unpleasant questions is necessary.”

Rolling his eyes, Sukui leaned back in his chair so that the front legs rose up off the ground. “This whole thing is unpleasant” he pouted.

“Oh, big words coming from the guy who decided our road trip needed a soundtrack!” Arai fired back, laughing incredulously. “You know, you’re not as good a singer as you think you are!”

“Guys…” Rei whined, desperate. Their voices were too loud, the room was too bright, and yet again her stomach began to churn. No one seemed to hear her.

Offended, Sukui gasped in exaggerated, but unfortunately genuine, offense. Kikkake, however, burst out laughing and slapped Arai amicably on the back. “Now there’s one thing we can finally agree on!”

Sukui pouted and tilted his chin away from them like an arrogant little child. “I’ll have you know, I was the runner-up for the school talent show back in the academy. At least back then people appreciated talent!”

“Were the judges tone-deaf?” Kikkake asked.

Arai erupted in hysterical laughter. “You were a kid!” she shouted. “People always lie to little kids that they’re the best so they don’t bitch and moan. They probably just thought you were too pathetic to be honest with.”

“That’s not true!” Sukui shouted, his voice rising in pitch.

His shrill remark rang through Rei’s head, unbearable. “Oh god…” she groaned, clapping a hand over her mouth. Hitsuji’s back went ramrod straight at the sight, squeezing his eyes shut tight and clapping his hands over his ears. The tension was becoming too much.

Sucking in a sharp breath, Yugao launched a kunai for the wall, whizzing right past Hitsuji and Arai’s heads. “Guys” she interjected, voice firm but not loud. The whole room fell silent. “Now is not the time. Have we all forgotten we have a job to do here?” She motioned toward the large window in their room, to the west wing across the way. Sighing, she brushed her hair back and continued. “Listen, I know that we all think Rei being sick is an inconvenience”—here, Rei whimpered in offense— “And should she have stayed home? Probably. But it’s too late to turn back now so we all just have to make the best of a bad situation, okay?” She strode toward the bed then, resting a soothing hand on Rei’s shoulder, a show of support to the others. She locked eyes with the four of them and pursed her lips. “I’m sure everything is going to be fine. No one is going to get sick or contract some deadly disease. Rei just needs to rest up and part of that means no more arguing. Do I make myself clear?”

The others remained silent as they stewed in Yugao’s words. For only a lieutenant, she certainly had a commanding presence. If they didn’t know any better, they would’ve even mistaken her for their captain. Rei’s current state was, unfortunately, not boding well for her leadership skills. The moment the thought crossed all of their minds, however, they unanimously felt guilty about it. It wasn’t her fault that she was sick. And really, pursuing the mission regardless spoke volumes for her dedication to her career, didn’t it? It may not have been the smartest choice, but her determination was admirable enough.

Placing her hands on her hips then, Yugao surveyed the group and asked, “Alright, who wants to take night watch?”

The sun had already set and the chatter of tourists echoed through the halls, eager for a night on the town. They all knew full well what kind of environment was awaiting them in the coming hours. The more chaos the enemy had to camouflage himself within, the more dangerous he became.

Hitsuji’s hand immediately shot up in response. There was an eagerness on his face that no one had actually expected of him. “Please let me do it!” he said. “I want to do it. I need to do it!”

Kikkake narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “And what if something happens? You’re too weak to take down the bad guy on your own” he argued.

“Mm, yeah, that’s true” Arai replied. “If he gets to us, he’ll kill Hitsuji in a split second.”

Hitsuji sighed, muttering under his breath, “Thanks for having so much faith in me.”

“What about you, pretty boy?” Kikkake asked. He wadded up a piece of paper from the notepad by the phone and tossed it at Sukui’s head. “Why don’t you make yourself useful for once?”

“As if!” Sukui exclaimed. “I need my beauty sleep. You don’t become this attractive by pulling all-nighters, you know.”

“God, you’re so conceited” Arai complained under her breath.

Kikkake shot her a glare. “Then what about you? Why don’t you do it?”

Arai matched his fury in her stare. “Why don’t you?”

“I never said I wouldn’t!” Kikkake shot back.

“Guys, come on!” Yugao called. “If Hitsuji wants to do it, then I say let’s give him a chance. Teamwork is important and we have to trust in our comrades' abilities or else we’ll never succeed as a squad.”

A soft smile fought it’s way through Hitsuji’s panic as he climbed over the beds and settled down in front of the window. His hands moved dexterously as he began assembling the little telescope from their arsenal of supplies. He paid no mind to the instructions. “I won’t fail you guys, I promise” he said softly as he worked.

“I hope not” Arai muttered.

Once she was finished organizing their weapons on the floor, Yugao stepped lightly across the room and rested a hand on Rei’s back. She had hardly moved over the past fifteen minutes, leaning forward with her face buried in her hands. “Rei? I really think you need to get some rest. Come on” she said softly. Rei gave a minute nod and allowed Yugao to help her shift back onto the bed, curling up on her side. Yugao pushed the trash can dutifully beside her just in case.

The others watched in subtle intrigue—it was kind of refreshing to see that not only was Yugao a formidable leader but she also possessed a very tender, maternal side to her, as well. It was comforting to know that she would look after them should anything happen in the field. I bet she'd make a great medic-nin, Arai thought to herself.

Meanwhile, Sukui readjusted in his desk chair and plucked a room service pamphlet from the document holder. A sly smile touched his lips as he idly flipped through the extensive menu. “Well, while we’re here, who’s hungry?” he asked. “I think I’m going to order some room service! I’ve heard that that’s about the only thing this hotel is good for: their food.”

Arai shook her head, sprawled out like a starfish on the bed. “I don’t even know how you can eat at a time like this” she groaned.

“Don’t worry” Kikkake replied. “Sooner or later we’ll get hungry again.”

“God, I don’t even want to know how much the food here costs” Arai replied. “I’d probably go broke. Good thing I brought snacks, at least.” Here, she rolled over onto her stomach and dug around in her backpack, fishing out a pack of peanut butter crackers…that had since crumbled into nothingness. She frowned, disappointed, before tossing them over Rei’s hunched body and into the trash can. “Well, there goes that idea.” Frustrated, Rei grabbed one of the decorative throw pillows and launched it squarely at Arai’s head, but missed and hit the ceiling light instead. One of the three bulbs cracked and shattered across the floor. Again, Rei groaned.

Yugao sighed and rubbed her forehead, muttering, “If the food doesn’t eat up all of our money, I’m sure the custodial fees will.”

By midnight, the group’s energy had significantly dwindled. Rei had passed out, her hair sticking to her dewy face. Meanwhile, Yugao sat cross-legged on the floor indexing their weaponry and polishing their kunai. It was always important to keep track of your supplies just in case. The last thing they needed was to return to Konoha only to discover a shuriken was missing. In contrast, Kikkake had idly waded halfway through the complimentary copy of Our Lady Kaguya tucked into the nightstand drawer, and Arai had zoned out tossing a wad of paper—the same one launched earlier at Sukui’s head—up and down toward the ceiling. Sukui snuck out hours ago and was nowhere to be found.

“You think we ought to go look for him or something?” Arai asked. “Maybe the enemy found him and killed him. The least we could do is retrieve the body.”

“And have a dead guy in our hotel room?” Kikkake asked boredly. He licked his fingertips, turned the page. “I’d rather not.”

Yugao looked up from her work and grimaced. “She has a point. If something happens to him, Rei and I are responsible. Losing a comrade in the line of duty doesn’t reflect very well on us” she replied. Let alone the emotional toll. She’d hate to think of the chaos that would ensue should another comrade die on Rei’s watch. Not that she was watching anything other than the inside of her eyelids, but Yugao did not fault her for that. She just wanted Rei to be okay.

From his post, Hitsuji gave the smallest shake of his head. “I think he’ll be fine” he said. “Sukui’s not stupid. He’s stronger than he looks, too. And besides, I haven’t seen anything questionable the entire time I’ve been sitting here.” If anything, he was sure Sukui disappeared among the party animals to both gain intel and flirt with the local women. If there was ever a member of their group who could effortlessly blend in here, it would be Sukui. Hitsuji had faith.

“How are you holding up?” Yugao asked him, a sympathetic smile touching her face. Hitsuji had been sitting there for nearly five hours straight now. “If you want to switch out, just say so. I’m sure the others wouldn’t mind the change of pace.”

Hitsuji, however, protested. “I’ll be just fine, don’t you worry about me” he reassured and though he did not turn around, it was clear that he was smiling. “One time, I had a panic attack so bad that I stayed awake for 36 hours straight, no problem. This should be a breeze for me.”

“Are you still panicking?” Arai asked in disbelief. Hitsuji made a mild noise to indicate that, somehow, yes, he was.

“Well, if and when you pass out, I’m not carrying you to bed” Kikkake snarked.

Just then, there was a knock at the door. The whole group went stiff. Rei groaned and creaked her eyes open, curious. She reached for the kunai in her back pouch just to be safe. An anxious electricity filled the air.

“I’m sure it’s nothing” Yugao whispered in reassurance. She rose to her feet, grabbing a kunai of her own as she approached the door. “It’s probably just Sukui. I doubt the enemy would figure out what room we’re in.”

“Unless he got it from the night auditor” Arai whispered.

Kikkake shook his head. “I don’t think he’d be that stupid.”

“Unless he’s in on it, too!” Hitsuji replied.

“Or maybe…” Arai started, hunching her back and curling her fingers in a creepy stance. “They killed the night auditor!” She peppered in her best spooky, evil villain laugh for extra pizzazz. Hitsuji’s back went ramrod straight. Rei reached behind her to slap Arai hard on the thigh.

“Don’t say that, that’s not funny” the redhead grumbled.

“Look who’s awake!” Arai jested, poking Rei in the side. Rei swatted her hand away, grumbling under her breath.

Yugao shot them all a sharp glare and rose a finger to her lips, shushing them. Her opposite hand hovered over the doorknob. She stood on tiptoes to peer through the peephole. Relief washed over her as she recognized who was on the other side and opened the door.

“Did you miss me?” Sukui asked, sliding into the room. A wide grin spread across his face and his cheeks were flushed. Kikkake wondered if he had been drinking.

“Where the hell have you been?” Yugao asked, taking hold of his shirt. “You had us all worried sick.”

Sukui swatted at the air dismissively as he wiggled out of Yugao’s grasp and plopped back down in his desk chair. “Oh, I was checking out the kitchen!” he replied. “It might not be the fanciest place to cook, but damn do they mean it when they say this place has great food!”

Yugao shook her head as she bolt-locked the door. “I’m just glad you’re not dead.”

“So, what have I missed?” Sukui asked, making himself comfortable.

The five of them replied in unison, “Absolutely nothing.”

“Well, then it’s a good thing I went to go make my own fun then!” Sukui grinned.

Grimacing, Arai launched her wad of paper at his head then and sneered, “I hope you didn’t go poking around where you’re not supposed to, you little creep.”

“Yeah, we don’t need you out blowing our cover” Kikkake agreed.

Sukui rolled his eyes. “Have a little more faith in me!” he plead. “I think you’ll all find that my poking around will do us quite a bit of good.”

Yugao froze, eyeing him. “I don’t like the sound of that.” What had he gotten into? What damage had he done? She knew she never should’ve let him wander on his own.

Sukui, however, seemed completely unaffected and unconcerned. “Just hang on. You’ll see” he mused, a playful smile toying on his lips. Yugao swallowed back her fear and tried to remain calm. She glanced to Rei, rolling sleepily over onto her side and burying her face in her pillow. For a moment, Yugao hated her.

Another uneventful hour passed. Yugao’s worry only mounted further. Hitsuji hadn’t reported any movement in the west wing whatsoever and at first, she accepted the quiet. She was almost relieved, even. Regardless of her experience in the field, she always felt a sense of anxiety whenever she was confronted with the enemy. She was too aware of the dangers, of the possibilities, of her own mortality. It was like stage-fright before a big recital—even if you were well-rehearsed, there were still so many things that could go wrong in the moment. But unlike a recital, in this case lives were at stake.

The longer they went without a hint of action, however, the more Yugao began to fear that they had, in fact, been misled. After all, the enemy was not stupid. If he caught even slightest murmur that he was being watched, he could bail in an instant and Team Ku would never know. Yugao hated to think of how long they would last before they realize that this was all for nothing, that they had been duped. For a moment, she even caught herself praying for something in an effort to relieve her own anxiety. Anything to assure her that they were not wasting their time.

And then, as in direct response to her prayers, there was a knock at the door. Yugao’s heart skipped a beat, her breath hitching in her throat. Sukui immediately leapt to his feet and raced to the door. He was a little too confident for Yugao’s comfort. “Be careful!” she called after him. He wasn’t even armed, or at least not that she could see.

Sukui swung the door open excitedly to greet the rather tired-looking man hunched on the other side. In front of him was a heavy, undecorated metal cart. “Your room service, Mr. Yukio” he droned, wheeling the cart inside. It clattered and clanked as it went, cluttered with food. Yugao’s eyes widened.

Rei furrowed her brows, disrupted by the noise, before rubbing her eyes and slowly sitting upright. “What the hell is all of this about?” she yawned.

Sukui grinned proudly as he tucked a few dollars into the man’s pocket as a tip before sending him on his way. “Well, I figured since we’re all working so hard and need to keep up our strength, I’d order everyone dinner!” he explained. “I got all of your favorites.”

And truly, somehow he had gotten all of them their favorites. Tsukimi udon for Yugao, broiled saury for Kikkake, vegetable stir fry for Hitsuji—who evidently was a vegetarian—and tonkotsu ramen for Arai. Sashimi for himself and for Rei, a platter of gyoza alongside a bowl of miso soup. Sukui distributed everyone’s food one by one, face beaming with satisfaction and delight. Perhaps he wasn’t as self-centered as he seemed, after all.

He served Rei last, being very careful with the hot bowl of soup. “Now I don’t know if miso is necessarily your favorite” he started, “but I thought maybe it might help your stomach.” He set the bowl down on the nightstand with a napkin and a little spoon. The steam wafted up into Rei’s face, the scent of the warm, salty broth hitting her nose, and she was instantly overwhelmed with a welcome sense of calm. “My mother always used to feed me miso soup when I had to stay home sick from school, and I know it always made me feel better so I hope it does the same for you, too” he added.

Rei was, quite frankly, awestruck. She thanked him softly, exercising great care in cradling the bowl in her lap. With each tiny sip of broth, her entire body was further drenched in a tranquil warmth. She shivered, but out of delight rather than cold. Her stomach finally began to unclench.

“How did you even know what we all liked, anyway?” Arai asked, slurping her noodles.

Sukui merely shrugged. “I pay attention” he replied bluntly.

As grateful as Yugao was for such a kind act, there was one point of contention that she could not seem to shake. “Did you pay for all of this out of pocket?” she asked. She could only imagine how expensive this all was. Where did he get that kind of money?

Shaking his head, Sukui replied, “I just put it on our room’s tab.”

Yugao’s face immediately went stark white. “Y-You did what?!” she exclaimed.

Sukui popped a piece of sushi in his mouth, unbothered. “I don’t see what the big deal is” he replied. “It’s not like the room is in any of our names to begin with. We’re not paying to stay here.”

Yugao sucked in a sharp breath, prayed for peace. “That’s not the point” she replied. “Someone has to pay for this.” And it’s likely Lady Tsunade, she thought to herself. She already knew the hokage was deep in her own debt. Surely this was not going to help. Besides, Konoha’s good civilian tax dollars were not meant for luxurious meals to the ANBU. Now Yugao was the one getting a migraine.

Arai paused before spitting her noodles back into her bowl. “Should we not be eating this then? Should we send this back?” she asked.

“No!” Sukui demanded abruptly, pointing at her. “No, you put those noodles back in your mouth right now!”

Arai blinked in shock—she had never seen Sukui so assertive before. Without breaking eye contact with him, she slowly lifted the noodles back up to her mouth and slurped them down at an obnoxious volume. For what it was worth, Sukui had been right about the food being incredible. Even if she had to, she didn’t particularly want to give her ramen back to begin with. Not that they would want it back anyway. It had already been in her mouth, they had no way of repurposing it.

Defeated, Sukui dropped into his chair and rested his chin in his hands. “I just wanted to do something nice for everyone” he sighed. “I wanted to show how much I appreciate you guys.”

“We know” Yugao replied, resting a hand on his shoulder. “I just need to make sure that we’re doing things right.”

Suddenly, Rei interjected herself into the conversation. “Fuck it” she said. “Like he said, we’re not paying for it. It’s not our problem. Let’s just…try to enjoy this while we can, alright?”

And while they were all still relatively uneasy about the subject, Rei had a point. They had a big mission ahead of them, they had been working long and tiresome hours. It was exhausting being on guard all the time and certainly they were all feeling the strain. But that was no excuse for slacking on self-care. Heaven forbid if anything happened, starvation and sleep-deprivation did not make for triumph in battle. Clearly, Sukui knew this. He was only trying to keep everyone’s morale in check. He had no obligation to go to such lengths to provide for them, but he did. The least they could do was accept his generosity and enjoy the good food.

They ate in silence, at first slow and cautious. As they fell into comfortable acceptance of the meal, however, their hesitancy transformed to ravenous and messy. By the time they had finished, a sleepy haze swept over the lot of them. Arai fell back onto the bed and patted her stomach, full and satisfied. Kikkake smirked and gathered everyone’s dirty dishes. He veered away from Rei, her bowl still half-full, and then slipped into the bathroom to rinse everything in the sink.

While Rei did not scarf down her meal like the others, simply nursing her soup had soothed her and seemed to ease the tension out of her bones. It was perhaps the only thing she could really keep down for the past five days and for that, she was grateful. She hadn’t realized just how weak she had become until now. She chewed her lower lip, squeezed her hand around her wrist. The tip of her thumb overlapped with the nail of her middle finger. She swallowed back a lump rising in her throat, prayed for her stomach to remain calm.

On her way back from the bathroom, Rei rested a gentle hand on Hitsuji’s shoulder and gazed out at the view. It was truly breathtaking: flickering technicolor lights lined the streets, the bubbling of the hot springs echoed from below, and in the distance the craggy mountains faded into the night sky. She lifted the glass in her opposite hand to her lips, the water from the tap tasting metallic and rotten. “You should get some rest” Rei whispered. “I’ll stand guard.”

Hitsuji shook his head in protest. “Like I said, I’ll be fine” he smiled up at her.

“But you’ve been at this for almost seven hours now” Rei argued. “You need to take a break.” If nothing else, she felt obligated to take over in an effort to feel productive. All she had done this entire mission was puke and sleep. It wasn’t fair to pass the work off to all of her subordinates. After all, she was their captain. She wasn’t doing a very good job of leading them this time around—a fact that left a rancid taste in her mouth.

Hitsuji reached out and halted Rei’s hand from adjusting his telescope. His grip was tighter than she had expected. “Captain Rei, please” he murmured, voice level and sure. “I need you to let me do this. I’ll be fine. Besides, you still need your rest, too.” His voice cracked slightly on this last sentence, a hint that he was still paranoid about Rei’s sickness. Perhaps his tolerance for vomit really was nonexistent. So long as she kept sleeping, and so long as he kept his focus squarely on something else, he would have no problems. He knew it was selfish, but he was willing to sacrifice his own energy stores for the protection of both his comrades and his own sense of sanity.

Not wanting to argue, Rei gave a single nod before trudging back toward the bed. Arai had since sprawled out across the lower half, passed out and drooling on the duvet. Rei maneuvered around her and curled up on the right edge, closing her eyes. She felt the mattress shift yet again as Yugao settled in beside her. The light flicked off.

“Hey, Rei?” Yugao whispered after a long stretch of silence. “Can I ask you something?”

Rei rolled over, though she knew she wouldn’t be able to see Yugao in the dark. It just felt right to face her anyway. “Yeah, what’s up?”

“Are you sure you have food poisoning?” she asked. The question was unexpected, to say the least.

Rei blinked, dumbfounded, as she tried to process the question. She opened and closed her mouth for a solid minute, attempting to formulate a response. “W-why do you ask?” she finally stammered out.

Yugao rolled onto her side, head propped up on her arm. “I’m worried about you, Rei” she confessed. “Food poisoning doesn’t last this long. You’ve been down for the count all night. I don’t think I’ve been doing a very good job of holding down the fort without you. I need your help. I can’t do this by myself but…I also don’t want to push you past your limits.”

“Yugao…” Rei murmured. She instinctively reached out to take her lieutenant’s hand in hers. “I promise, I’m perfectly fine. And…I’m sorry. I know I need to be there for you—for all of you, really. This is as much of an inconvenience for me as it for all of you. Believe me, I don’t want to be fucking sick like this. But I’m already feeling tons better. I’m going to be fine.”

Yugao gave a single nod, rolled over onto her back. She stared up at the ceiling, chewed her lower lip. She should’ve taken comfort in Rei’s words but…she was still unresolved. “And Rei?” she asked. Rei made a small noise to ensure that she was listening. “If something was genuinely wrong, you would tell me, right?”

Rei blinked. “O-of course” she admitted. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know” Yugao replied. She knew something was going on. She knew that Rei had been acting differently—saw it in the way she avoided meals, in the way her temper flared so much easier now. Perhaps it was just the stress. Taking on the role of a captain was a lot of added responsibility. It had only been a month. Surely Rei was still struggling to adjust. Especially after what she had been aiming for beforehand. Yugao instinctively rested a hand atop her own stomach, wondered if thoughts of parenthood still circulated through Rei’s mind. “Just promise me one thing” Yugao finally whispered.

“What is it?” Rei asked.

Yugao sucked in a sharp breath, closed her eyes. A promise. “Don’t keep me in the dark.”

By morning, everyone had rearranged into one catastrophic dog pile. Arai’s foot in Kikkake’s face, Sukui’s arm draped across Arai’s eyes. And all the while, Hitsuji still sat guard by the window. His eyes were droopy and bloodshot, his mouth dry, and his hands began to shake. Fatigue weighed his body down, slumping his shoulders and hunching his back, but regardless he did not falter.

Kikkake swatted Arai’s foot away as he groaned awake, rolling the tension out of his neck and stretching his arms out in front of him. Somehow, he was the first to wake up. The moment he noticed Hitsuji, he trudged toward the window and slapped a hand amicably on his back. “Man, come on, you’ve got to go to sleep” he croaked. Shed of his hardened exterior so early in the morning, there was something almost heartwarming about Kikkake now. He was more palatable, kinder.

Meanwhile, Sukui sighed in his sleep and muttered something about a pretty woman, rolling over and hugging Arai close. Arai furrowed her brows and shifted in her sleep, her mind immediately waking up to a question of what, exactly, was pressed against her thigh. As she blinked her eyes open, it became all too clear to her.

“Get off me, you little freak!” she shouted, shoving Sukui away from her. Sukui scrambled awake, his blonde hair sticking up in all different directions. Arai aimed a pillow for his crotch and shouted, “Go get a cold shower, you fucking pervert!”

Sukui blinked and then looked down to find an unfortunate case of morning wood. His cheeks burned bright red as he hid behind the pillow and apologized profusely.

“God, it’s so early for fighting” Rei groaned, pressing the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. “Can you guys please tone it down?”

“I’m with Rei” Kikkake groaned. He dragged his tired body to the mini fridge in the corner, started a pot of coffee. The coffee maker hissed, gurgled, and then inconsistently spat lumpy liquid into the glass urn.

Yugao rolled over onto her side, furrowing her brows toward Hitsuji. How he managed to stay awake this long was beyond her. She was grateful for his dedication, of course, but not at the expense of his own health.

“Hitsuji, you really ought to get some sleep” she said, slowly sitting upright. Rei nodded as she reached for the glass of water on her nightstand.

“You’ve been up all night” Rei added. “Sooner or later, you’re going to start seeing things. Come on, get some rest.”

Hitsuji, however, shook his head. “I can’t” he protested. “Not now.”

“And why not?” Arai asked sourly. She hated to admit that even she was desperate to see him sleep.

“Because” Hitsuji began, narrowing his eyes, “The enemy is looking right at me.”

Kikkake choked on his coffee, gasping for breath. “I’m sorry, what?” he asked.

Hitsuji gave a single nod. “He’s right there, across the courtyard. Third floor, fifth window from the corner” he explained, staying innately still.

“You sure you’re not just seeing things?” Arai snarked, restraining an incredulous little laugh. After an uneventful night, she would’ve more readily believed he was hallucinating than anything else. If the enemy was really going to make waves, he would’ve done so already. The entire mission was a sham.

Arai stretched her arms out in front of her, releasing the tension from her body. As she reached up to the sky, however, the window shattered and a kunai came whizzing past her ear to stick in the wall. The entire room went still and silent.

Hitsuji sucked his teeth. “Yeah, I’m sure.”  

Rei gasped and ducked, narrowly avoiding a stab to the eye. The kunai just barely grazed her fluffy ponytail, a few strands of fiery hair falling onto her pillow. The blade stuck in the wall with a metallic thud, a paper bomb dangling from the handle. Fuck.

In one swift motion, Rei knocked back a large gulp of water, puffing her cheeks out as she held it in her mouth. Meanwhile, she crumpled the paper bomb tight in her opposite hand.

“Rei, hurry up!” Kikkake shouted. He had since dropped his coffee and grabbed one of the many weapons off the floor.

Rei grimaced at him, making a frustrated whine, as she worked. She focused on the tag in her hands, on separating the chakra from the paper like removing dye from a scrap of fabric. Once she had separated as much as she could manage, she let the enemy's chakra seep into her palm, willed it to siphon faster and faster up through her own network. She leapt across the room as she infused the chakra with the water in her own mouth, the strength of it burning like mouthwash. Rei leaned over the windowsill then, cupped her hands around her mouth, and shot the water across the courtyard in a projectile attack. The enemy shouted in shock, pummeled with the exact level of power he had intended to hit them with.

The scream had, understandably, attracted a fair amount of attention. The bathroom door bust open at the sound and in raced Sukui, covered in soap and water with a towel around his waist and a shower cap on his head. “I heard screaming! What’s going on?!”

Yugao and Kikkake immediately raced out the door, fully prepared to apprehend their suspect. Rei's attack had immobilized him enough to grant them extra time. As Arai followed behind them, she shoved a set of clothes against Sukui’s chest and demanded, “Get dressed, idiot. It’s go-time!”

It took Sukui only a few seconds to understand what was happening but once he had, he quickly mopped the suds off his body and scrambled to step into his clothes. He wasn’t a very fast dresser, however, nor was his balance very great, so he ended up falling over and faceplanting straight into the nasty carpet instead. Now I’m going to need another shower, he complained in the back of his mind. He didn’t even want to know what kinds of vermin were burrowing deep within that carpet.

“W-what do you need me to do?!” Hitsuji asked as Rei raced out the door.

Glancing back at him over her shoulder, she responded simply, “Stay here.”

It was a reasonable enough request. He wasn’t particularly in the best state to fight right now and besides, they couldn’t leave the room unsupervised with their weapons and other belongings scattered everywhere. Hitsuji was good at keeping watch anyway. Involved in the battle, he would only get in the way.

The arrest went as smooth as any arrest can go. The man fought back, and hard, but a couple rides on the lightning (courtesy of Arai) and a genjutsu to further subdue him seemed to make him manageable enough. If only his resistance had not caused the eventual destruction of the entire west wing of the hotel.

Rei coughed into the crook of her elbow and leaned against a broken pillar as she surveyed the damage. “Fuck…we’re really gonna rack up the custodial fees, aren’t we?”

“Well, think of it this way, boss” Arai grinned, slapping a hand on Rei’s shoulder. “Puking in the lobby is far from the worst thing we’ve done here.” Rei glared at her in periphery, swatting her hand away. One did not negate the other—rather, they only made each that much worse.

The night auditor, sleep-deprived and likely nearing the end of his shift, came racing onto the scene then with the hotel's manager in tow. “What have you done?!” the auditor shrieked, gripping at his hair and trying to comprehend the immense volume of damage.

Kikkake smirked. “We got the enemy” he said, nodding his head toward the rogue ninja now unconscious and slung over his broad shoulder.

“Th-th-that’s not the point!” the auditor argued. “You’ve destroyed the hotel! We’re ruined!”

Yugao pursed her lips. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, this guy was the only occupant in any of the rooms so it’s not like anyone lost their lives today” she said.

Arai snorted in amusement. “Hey, listen, if half of your hotel was empty, I think you were already ruined.”

Neither the night auditor nor the hotel manager found this funny. Grimacing, the manager shook his head in disdain. “Well, you all better be fucking loaded because this is going to cost you all a fortune” he grumbled.

A delighted smile touched Sukui’s lips, apparently viewing this as a challenge. Sliding forward, he lightly grazed the manager’s arm and batted his eyelashes. “We may not have tons of money, but I’m sure we can work out alternative methods to repay you” he cooed.

The manager was a rather burly man with thinning hair and a stubbled face. His belly protruded out over his waistband and he seemed to wear a permanent scowl. He eyed Sukui suspiciously, the young ANBU’s charms clearly having no effect on him.

Sensing the rising tension, Sukui backed away dutifully and muttered under his breath, “He must be straight.”

Arai rolled her eyes and whispered back, “Good eye, Sherlock.”

Sighing, Yugao stepped forward and projected her best business voice. “I promise, we’ll have all the damages paid in full by our supervisors in a timely manner” she assured. “In the meantime, is there anything we can do to help?”

The manager huffed gruffly and shook his head. “The best thing you can do now is get the fuck off my property.”

Yugao blinked, taken aback by the bluntness of his reply. “Duly noted” she murmured. Then, turning to her team, she made a motion with her hand and shouted, “Alright, time to go.”

The others nodded in agreement, bowing their heads as they scurried past the manager and night auditor in embarrassment. Really, the six of them were just trying to do their jobs. If only their jobs did not cause so much damage. Rei trailed behind them, dragging her feet. Her face had since grown pale and her hands unsteady and clammy.

“You alright?” Yugao asked her, waiting by her side.

Rei nodded weakly. “Y-Yeah, I’ll be fine” she replied. “Just took a lot out of me.”

“Maybe you’re not as better as you think you are” Yugao said softly. Her attempts at comedy were overthrown by the concern deeply laced in her voice. Rei hated to admit that she might have been right.

Together, the six of them trudged back to their hotel room, gathered their things, and went on their way.

The journey back to the village seemed far quicker and more tolerable than the journey there. Perhaps it was the adrenaline of the moment, or the promise of sleeping in their own beds, that fueled them further. Or maybe it was just the anxiety of having to face Lady Tsunade--a desperation to get the confrontation over with.

After sending the criminal off to the Intelligence Division for questioning, Team Ku slipped into the hokage's office to submit their mission reports.

“Well? How did it go?” Tsunade asked. Though there was no explicit malice in her voice, Rei shuddered with the fear that she knew something. Perhaps the manager had called her on their way back and outlined the disaster they had caused. Either way, she had a bad feeling about this. Her gut twisted.

“We did the job we set out to do” Yugao replied, hoping to present some level of positivity to the situation.

Tsunade smiled. “And you did a fine job, at that” she replied. “You’re all turning out to be a splendid group of shinobi. You’re really progessing wonderfully, which must be attributed to the strong leadership of your captain.” Here, she eyed Rei with a proud gaze. Rei smiled weakly, arms wrapped around her unsettled stomach. If anything, this mission only proved how weak her leadership truly was. After all, she had barely been conscious the entire time. The guilt was overwhelming.

Shizune, standing dutifully at the hokage’s side, cleared her throat then and whispered, “Uh, Lady Tsunade, there is one thing that should be addressed."

“Hmm? What is it, Shizune?” Tsunade asked. Whatever it was, she didn’t think she wanted to know. She didn’t want to put a damper on her good mood.

Anxious, Shizune slid the bill face-down across Tsunade’s desk. The entire team simultaneously shuddered. This was it: the ultimate end.

Tsunade skimmed over the bill, her expression initially uninterested but quickly transforming into utter shock and disbelief. “What is the meaning of this?!” she shouted, slamming the receipt down on the table. “How the hell did you all manage to spend a million dollars?!”

The six of them peered forward cautiously in disbelief. There, plain as day, sat six figures with a note that read “for fine food and campus destruction.”

“A million dollars?!” Kikkake shouted, automatically turning to Sukui.

Sukui blushed and laughed nervously, swatting at the air as he replied, “Well, it wasn’t entirely my fault.”

Hitsuji nodded, pointing at the receipt. “Only about 25% of that is the food. Everything else was the destruction.”

All the color drained from Rei’s face as she leaned on the arm rest of the office couch for support. “I think I’m going to be sick” she murmured.

She knew that it was going to be bad. That much was obvious. But a million dollars? The figure far exceeded her expectations, and not in a good way.

Without missing a beat, Arai bounced forward and presently snatched the bill right off of Tsunade’s desk. Displeased, Tsunade narrowed her eyes. “And what do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

Arai grinned at her, unadulterated and proud, as she replied, “Don’t worry about it. I’m going to take care of everything.” Truly, there was no way Arai could afford this but she did not allow any time for protest. Receipt in hand, she skipped happily--suspiciously--out of the office. Rei and Yugao exchanged concerned glances. Again, there was no way this was going to end well.

Gloomy clouds hung low overhead as the heavy double doors of Root’s headquarters screeched open. A hawk cawed in the distance. Danzo Shimura looked to the sky. With an arm extended, he summoned the messenger hawk to land upon him and carefully took the note strapped to his leg. He hadn’t been expecting mail but the thought of a promising new opportunity invigorated him. He unraveled the note quickly and as he skimmed the page, his face fell. Staring back at him was the receipt to a trashy hotel, the total of which reached a million dollars “for fine food and campus destruction.”

Danzo, baby, Here’s a little gift from me to you! Make sure you pay it in full, k? Love, a secret not-very-admirer <3

Grumbling under his breath, he ripped the receipt in half and stomped it into the ground before hobbling back inside.

#rei natsuki #kakashi hatake #kakashi x oc #the scarecrow and the bell #naruto #naruto oc #fanfiction

[kylorensdestroyingthings]

Sunshine | Reylo

ao3 link

a/n: I really love AU reylo sue me okay? requests are open!!

warnings: fluff, BAND AU, Soulmate AU

Rey sat in the middle of her physics lecture, listening to her professor drone on and on about a topic she'd learned in high school. Beside her, Rose was scribbling words onto her arm. After each word she'd wait a moment until more appeared on her opposite arm. It was her soulmate. Rey rolled her eyes at the girl as she giggled silently at something Finn had said. They'd been writing each other since they first turned 18. Rose and Finn were madly in love and it made Rey want to barf, just the thought of it made her gag. Sure she was happy that her best friend was in love, but the thought of writing endless love notes on her body never appealed to her.

Typically, when people turned 18 the first thing they did was write on their skin- to see if they'd get a response. Just about everyone had a soulmate, but there were the few rare occasions that someone was born without their other half designated by the stars. Rey never wrote on her skin because everyone left her. She didn't want to be reliant on someone's handwriting. She wanted to be her. Luckily, she never got some type of declaration of love and she was fine with that. Nobody could leave her if they didn't reach out. That was her philosophy in life.

She'd always been very careful not to write anything on her skin, for fear of a response. Anytime she accidentally got marker on her hands called for an immediate trip to the bathroom to scrub the ink from her skin. As soon as the lecture ended, Rose and Rey walked to the local coffee shop on campus, their daily routine in order to study. Rose claimed them a spot in a booth away from the door while Rey went to stand in line to order their coffee and tea.

___

Kylo Ren was about to lose his mind, or commit a felony. It was only the second week of the First Order tour for his band Knights of Ren, and he was contemplating if it would be worth looking for another bassist if Hux didn't just shut the fuck up. Seriously, the pale red head was way too loud on their cramped tour bus. Phasma gave him a glare before shaking her head. "It's not worth it." She had told him. "It might be if it gets us some peace and quiet." He grumbled throwing one of Hux's own drumsticks at his head. The red head grumbled. "I fear for whoever has you as their soulmate." Hux scoffed rubbing the back of his head tenderly. "And I mourn for Phasma, considering her's will be dead in a matter of seconds." Kylo snapped angrily. Hux knew soulmate's where a tough topic with Kylo, yet he brought them up at every single god damn opportunity he had.

Kylo didn't mind not having a soulmate. Well, he didn't know if he did, they never reached out and he had no desire to himself. He just tended to assume that he didn't have one. His parents were soulmates, but they seemed to be pretty bad parents. His nights as a child were spent listening to his parents fight thinking he couldn't hear them. Maybe they were in love before him, that was a good bet but growing up they seemed to hate each other.

"Ha, yeah right Ren." Hux said throwing a marker at Kylo. Catching it, he looked around for a piece of paper. Once he couldn't find it he decided his skin worked best, somewhat forgetting that it wouldn't just appear on his own. "Yeah, look it's on my to do list." Kylo said showing his wrist.

To Do

1. Murder Hux

___

Rey returned with her tea and Rose's coffee. She handed the cup to Rose whose eyes suddenly widened.

"Uh Rey, have you talked to your soulmate lately?" Rose asked cautiously, knowing the subject was touchy for the young adult.

"Jesus Rose, you know I've never spoken to them in my life and have no desire to." Rey said with a scoff sitting down in the booth directly parallel to her. "Well, um you might wanna look at your wrist?" Rose squeaked and Rey's eyes snapped to her wrist where a simple to do list was written out.

1. Murder Hux

"Oh my god." Rey said almost spitting her tea out. "I didn't write that"

"Yeah no shit! What kind of name is Hux!" Rose almost yelled. "You gotta write back man."

"Hand me a marker." Rey said shocking herself. All of this defiance of not writing her soulmate and for what? To give that up the moment they wrote her? Rose quickly scrambled for the pen she used to write Finn all the time. Once in her hands, Rey wrote out a simple question. "God, I hope they're not a psychopath."

Does this mean I'm an accessory to murder?

Rey waited a moment, her heart rate had accelerated. She'd never done this before. It was a foreign feeling like no other. Talking to her soulmate. The thought even felt weird, nonetheless when the words appeared on her skin this time, she felt a tingle. Maybe it was because she was consciously focusing on the words, who knows.

So you do exist came the mysterious reply. Rey laughed rolling her eyes as she scribbled on her arm again. Maybe she could understand the appeal to it now.

You never answered my question. Rey replied, dodging how her soulmate knew of her negligence to reach out. But technically the blame could go two ways.

No, I'm just threatening my Bandmate. He's annoying.

Rey let out a hearty laugh, as if that made sense. Rose watched on in awe, still completely shocked at what was happening.

___

Kylo was surprised when a response showed up, he'd completely forgot about the chances that someone out there was made specifically for him. He felt like he didn't deserve a soulmate. The fates decided otherwise. Maybe he was worthy of someone.

You're in a band? They asked and he felt the tips of his ears growing red. What if this person was an obsessed super fan? He felt narcissistic even thinking that, but it wasn't rare that people drew the same words on their arms thinking he'd be stupid enough to believe them. He hesitated answering, almost scared it would be someone who knew him.

We're actually on tour currently he wrote. Plenty of bands were on tour, surely whoever they were wouldn't single his out.

Anything I might know? The words appeared on his skin. Surely whoever it was had to know who they were. They'd been on every radio station, youtube interview, and all over social media. They blew up pretty much overnight, and went from playing in small venues barely selling tickets to sold out concerts at arena's.

It's an Emo/Alternative band, nothing too special. His arm was covered in writing at this point, he was receiving strange glances from Phasma who, thankfully had managed to keep Hux quiet.

My roommate is super into that stuff, always dragging me to shows with her whenever they come to town.

"Let's go pretty boy, rehearsal in 10." Hux said calling to him. He hadn't even realized when the bus stopped moving.

"Be right there." Kylo said looking back down at his arm. Hux only scoffed and walked away from the scene, as if he hadn't been this enamored the first time him and Phasma made contact in high school.

Sorry to cut this short, but I have rehearsal he wrote apologetically. He genuinely did want to stay here and talk to the stranger all night if he could. And I have a show tonight

Oh no worries, I have an exam to study for. Break a leg :) For the first time in ages, a genuine smile crossed Kylo's face. That was a rare occurrence, and a complete stranger managed to make it happen.

Thanks :)

___ The two chatted over the next two months, growing closer. He told her about concerts, groupie's, and of course Hux and his never ending mission of annoying Kylo. She told him about her exams, her classes, how much she worked because she was stressed about money. He always offered to help her, but every time she declined, telling him that she needed to work for it herself.

He admired her for that, but let her know that if she ever needed help, he'd find a way. She still didn't know the name of his band, and he didn't mind that. She knew him as Ben. Something to differ her from the rest of crazy fans. As he was thinking about her, he felt the familiar tingle on his skin.

Today's been absolutely horrible. He frowned at that. Every once and while, she had bad days but his were more common. Knowing she felt bad made him want to destroy whoever made her feel that way.

What happened sunshine? He asked her awaiting the response. Slowly each word showed up, and when the ink smudged almost like someone was wiping it away in certain places he could tell she was crying, it smeared the ink.

I went to turn in my paper, only my computer crashed and i lost everything so I wrote a horrible paper just to meet the deadline, and then someone stole my wallet at the coffee shop so I have to get a new card and then a bird pooped on my backpack, and it's just not a great day.

Hey don't cry sunshine. He wrote the words down quickly, his heart physically aching at the thought of her crying. Kylo wanted to hold her and never let go. Unfortunately, being soulmates didn't mean you could find one another physically quickly. Another thing was that any attempt at getting a phone number or basically anything other than a first name was off limits. It just meant, there was someone out there made especially for you. Everything is going to be okay, you're strong, your paper is amazing, and you can wash your backpack.

I wish you were here love Kylo's heart fluttered at the words.

Me too, sunshine He wanted more than anything to be there. To finally know what the girl he loved looked like. To hold her in his arms, and keep her to himself. Enough about the bad, what's good that's happening soon for you?

They did this a lot when one of them had a bad day. It tended to help and get their minds off of whatever was feeling wrong to them. Typically, Rey was always the happy one who was making Kylo feel better.

Rose is dragging me to a concert this weekend that she won tickets for, I don't know who but they're always fun. He smiled at that. For some reason, Rey was always letting her roommate drag her everywhere but she always had fun doing whatever Rose's plan was for the week. He was thankful for the girl because from what he could tell, Rose always looked after Rey well.

That will be fun, try not to fall for any of the band members ;) He laughed at his own joke, startling Phasma.

"Talking to your girl again?" She asked looking up from her book. "Yeah," Kylo said smiling. "I want to write a new song, for our next show."

"About her?" Phasma said cocking a blonde eyebrow. "Fan's will certainly love that."

"They all know they never had a chance anyways." Kylo said rolling his eyes.

"Tell them that." She spoke flipping a page in her book. "But I like the idea."

___

That Saturday night, Rey stood in front of her mirror looking over her outfit with uncertainty. The green overall dress and black shirt she wore under it were out of her comfort zone, but she knew she didn't want to stick out like a sore thumb if she wore something else. She borrowed some of Rose's boots that were always for these concerts they went to. They were hard would prevent her feet from getting smashed when they were at the barricade.

She tucked a pen into her pocket, just in case,  she had told herself. That was a lie, she always wanted to talk to Ben. Suddenly she felt the familiar tingle, looking down at her wrists Ben's handwriting appeared.

Be safe tonight sunshine <3.

Always am love <3.

___

The crowd for Knights of Ren was dense. Their first album had been what got them on to the top 100 charts. Rose made Rey listen to them on the ride over, and Rey completely understood why. The lead singers voice was one of an absolute angel. The bassist was pretty amazing too. Somehow, they'd manage to get tickets about 3 rows away from the right side of the stage.

Rose squealed from beside her. "Dude this is going to be so amazing!"

Suddenly the lights went down, suggesting the concert was about to begin. Kylo Ren was absolutely gorgeous and she could tell he loved being on stage. After playing through the entire album Kylo spoke into the mic for a little bit.

"Okay, so I actually have a surprise for you guys here." He spoke, his deep voice traveling through the arena. "We're playing a new song, one I wrote very recently, for someone very special. This is Sunshine."

He nodded at Phasma who began to strum the first couple cords. Rey listened to the song carefully. It was really beautiful, and one of the best songs she'd ever heard of.

The words appeared on my skin

you said baby i've had a bad day

and I told you

Sunshine don't cry

I'm only a couple thousand miles away,

and love, you wish I was there

but I'm right here in your heart

always there to chase the rain away.

Sunshine, don't cry.

Rey's eyes widened. Remembering the conversation she had with Ben meerly days ago. One of the first things he told her was that he was in an alternative band. She scrambled for her pen in her pocket looking at Kylo with certainty before writing on her arm.

I'm right here

____

As he finished the first chorus, he felt the tingle. Subtly, he looked down towards his wrist where the words appeared. Frantically, he looked up searching the crowd, his leather gloves with the fingers cut off clutching the mic tightly.

____

She noticed his eyes searching the crowd as soon as he looked at his wrist. The same one she had wrote on. His eyes screamed one question Where? Quickly, she wrote down her location within the crowd.

My right, third row.

Despite there being thousands of people in that arena and the crying girls throughout the entire row her and Rose were in, she locked eyes with Kylo, well to her he was Ben, immediately. His eyes widened, almost in disbelief before he hopped off the stage, walking straight towards the barricade. Rey found herself pushing through the crowd of screaming girls to reach for him, Rose following hesitantly behind her. When they finally were face to face, he let the last line of the song fade away before speaking quietly, away from the mic.

"Sunshine" He spoke, making her heart burst into flames. For the past two months, she'd been imagining his voice saying his name for her. Finally, here they were. Staring at each other face-to-face in a crowd of thousands of people.

"Ben." She whispered and he put a large hand to her face cradling her cheek.

"It's you."

"Yeah, it's me love." With those words she kissed him deeply and lovingly. His arm came to the small of her back, holding her against the barricade as close as he could get her. Her hands held the back of his neck softly, but hungrily. He was finally in her arms and she never wanted to let go. Suddenly, the sound of fans screaming excitedly broke them from each others trance.

He turned to Rose quickly. "I owe you so much for bringing her here. Anything you want."

"Name your firstborn after me." Rose said in her typical fashion but also getting over the shock of what was happening.

"Sure, anything." Ben said before looking back to the crowd awaiting him. "I'm bringing you backstage, wait for me to finish?"

"Of course." Rey spoke grabbing his hand gently. Ben nodded towards security and then towards Rey before lifting her over the barricade and pressing his lips firmly against hers once more.

"I'll see you soon, Sunshine."

#reylo #reylo fic #reylo au #ben solo #kylo ren #rey #star wars fic #star wars fanfic #reylo fanfic #soulmate au #band au

[mbti-notes]

Would you mind explaining why you see Rey as ESFJ and Kylo Ren as INTP from the new Star Wars? I've always seen Rey as a stereotypical ISFP action hero (quick to adapt to new situations, hands on, a fierce sense of 'moral right' borne of self), and I'm undecided on Kylo, but thought he exhibited FP tendencies -- a struggle between self-identity and rationality, that indicates a F/T imbalance.

[con’t: In reading Leonore Thomson’s book on personalities, the Fi-dom section brought Kylo to mind – unless prone to developing Se/Ne, the IFP fiercely guards their sense of ‘identity’ / self against outside influences and becomes rigid. Isn’t that what he’s doing, in differentiating himself from his parents and refusing to see reality any other way than what he has decided it is, based on his feelings / experiences?]

Judging by the debates I saw online, there doesn’t seem to be any general consensus on either character, which is interesting. It’s a trilogy and the character development beats are scattered and difficult to piece together. And there were several blanks that I had to fill with my own speculation. I didn’t really enjoy the process of typing these characters, but I did it because I kept on receiving requests week after week ever since the first movie came out. I found the character development arcs shallow and poorly paced, and the resolutions were too pat to be very interesting. I reviewed the Kylo and Rey scenes several times, with different personality types in focus each time, in order to ensure that the function pieces fit together to my satisfaction.

      ***** Major spoilers ahead! ******

Kylo

Although I think there are weak points in her book, I don’t take issue with Thomson’s description of Fi doms. I mainly disagree with the motive that you ascribe to Kylo. I don’t think he’s being protective of his identity, I don’t think he cares about identity, in the way that Fi doms do. I will concede that he gives the impression of being a rebellious teenager in defying his parents/mentor/birthright, but defiance alone does not make him Fi dom. Pretty much everyone (even some animal species) goes through a stupid teenage phase of rebellion at some point in their life, and some people never properly get past it. To me, he looks like a stuck-in-adolescence INTP: entirely too full of himself and blind to everything else.

One little point made it difficult for me to settle on a type. Leia was absolutely convinced that Kylo was “manipulated” by Snoke/Palpatine to join the dark side, but there was little indication from Kylo, Luke, and Han that this was actually the case. Should we trust Leia, since the movie portrayed her as being much more powerful than meets the eye, or should we trust Kylo’s subjective experience of himself as being fully and completely the master of his own fate? I go for the latter. If anyone’s going to be prone to blind belief, it’s a mom who doesn’t want to admit that she’s lost her son to her enemies. And I see no compelling evidence that he is a person who’s easily manipulated, emotionally or otherwise, which is a big strike against F. If you see such evidence, please present it.

The most revealing aspect of Kylo’s development was found in the conflicting and exaggerated accounts about what happened with Luke that led to the destruction of the Jedi academy. If you grow up being fed a constant diet of legends about galactic warfare from the Alliance, you’re naturally going to think of the Jedi as the good guys and the Empire as the bad guys (as we, the audience, are supposed to). However, if you’re Ben Solo, you don’t experience the Jedi as good guys, at all. He was “abandoned” by parents who were too busy/neglectful/high-minded to properly care for him and he was “abandoned” by a supposedly saintly mentor/uncle who wanted to kill him (even if the urge was fleeting). Additionally, Jedi training is essentially martial arts training in that you’re not supposed to use it violently unless you absolutely have to, which leaves the Jedi looking like total wusses much of the time, politically, always leading from behind and allowing evil to get a foothold over and over again.

Therefore, my theory is that Kylo turned, completely willingly, because he saw nothing but pathetic posturing and hypocrisy around him. It was an extremely deep cynicism (the belief that “good”, “love”, “happiness”, or anything that makes humans noble, don’t really exist) that allowed him to fully embrace his own darkness to very powerful effect - no manipulation necessary. This wouldn’t work with Fi-Te but fits with Ti-Fe. I postulate that his conception of morality was extremely reductive and childish. Essentially, “good guys should be totally free of bad”, so any whiff of anyone feeling conflicted or making dumb choices and they no longer get the privilege of being labeled as a “good” person. Accordingly, any hint of conflict in himself cements the fact that he is bad, irredeemably bad, because he’s full of conflict. 

But I argue that the reason he’s full of conflict is not because he’s bad or a Feeler, it’s because the way he was being taught was not well-suited to his personality at all, in fact, it was quite damaging to him, which pushed him into skepticism and alienation. Here’s the blank I’m filling in: Luke is Fi dom. Fi and Ti do not communicate easily. Being forced or shamed into being good with no proper reasoning process by Fs tends to really aggravate inferior Fe grip problems in young Ti doms (it’s a common relationship dynamic). Fi doms construct beliefs from their feelings and it’s easy for them to expect that everyone should feel-believe the same. How is a person supposed to react when you keep telling them to Fi everything but they simply can’t or have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about? External manipulation or not, I speculate that Kylo was already in a deep state of doubt about whether he was in the right place. Luke’s intense fear and disgust in that fateful moment only confirmed Kylo’s suspicions that he didn’t belong there, and that Luke was no “good” guy. 

Seeing oneself as irredeemably bad is a big blow to the ego, so one must engage in self-defense. The fact that turning dark allowed him to realize the full potential of his force capabilities, to him, meant that the Jedi were completely wrong in their conception of what is “good”. Therefore, he doesn’t consider himself to be bad per se, rather, he believes that he has discovered the truth about what it means to be great - being great via T is better than being good via F. He was trying to discover his true self through dominant Ti, perfectly normal part of development, but he chose the wrong path, because it was a reactionary decision that was merely rebelling against all the people who were trying to force him into being F. This poor choice meant that he had to keep trying to sever his connection to everything good in himself = disowning F. In his mind, the Jedi were stupid, weak, and deluding themselves all along, but he knows what’s up, and that granted him a high degree of confidence in his decisions. He saw himself as the real deal because he was smart enough and strong enough to be brutally honest about what he is. In essence, he’s no faker, and that makes him superior. These mental gymnastics happen with Ti, not Fi. 

When Fi doms (even just start to) see themselves as bad, it ruins them and renders them impotent and dysfunctional (see previous post about Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender as a great example). Yet I see no compelling evidence that Kylo’s identity, feelings, or conflicts held him back, rather, they only served to fuel his rise. Despite appearances, he didn’t lust for power and validation like Te loop/grip, rather, he was only interested in self-mastery, and was willing to do whatever it took to achieve it, because he had no other ideal outside of himself to believe in. Nothing could really stop him unless he decided to stop. When he was frustrated, he would let it out in a quick burst, and then continued on as though it never happened (Fe). He was actually very disciplined in growing his abilities by setting consistent and logical challenges for himself to overcome (Ti), and he always succeeded in achieving his goals and reaching whatever potential he had envisioned for himself (Ne). Furthermore, someone who is very “defensive of their identity” wouldn’t be able to change themselves on a dime, as he did at the end. When faced with the right counter-evidence, he did a whiplash 180 without hemming or hawing or performative self-flagellation or whining about “losing myself”, etc. Would that be possible for Fi-Te?

Rey

Is she introverted? She is unapologetically assertive, she gets involved even when it doesn’t/shouldn’t involve her, she never balks at interacting with people/objects, she always faces situations immediately, she has trouble holding her tongue, she has difficulty introspecting (as evidenced from Luke’s training sessions), and most importantly, she exhibits no sign of needing a lot of down time to recharge. I’ve never known an introvert like that, let alone an ISFP, as they often dwell in their feelings away from the world and dislike taking on too much responsibility due to inferior Te. If she’s introverted, provide me with evidence, since I seem to have missed it.

I don’t think that there’s any evidence of N. She’s resourceful to a certain extent, but she seems to rely very heavily on other people to generate positive ideas and possibilities for reassurance, because she starts to panic when thinking on her own about “what could happen” (low Ne). She doesn’t easily come to intuitive insights about anything, let alone the future (no Ni). One scene in particular made me LOL. Luke was training her and asked her to close her eyes to meditate. He instructed her to “reach out” (to feel the energy of the force), and she extended her hand out physically into the air. That is the exemplar of being too literal. Furthermore, she spent how many freakin’ years following the same set routine day after day, in the same crap dump of a town, waiting obediently for her parents to pick her up? That’s the exemplar of Si discipline. Would SPs be capable of that patience or living in the dreary past for so long? 

I agree that she is primarily motivated by her feelings when making judgments and decisions, which means F. She had to fend for herself since childhood, so her skills are unsurprising. Yet she irrationally lacks self-confidence despite the fact that she’s proven over and over again to be quite scrappy and capable, and people even tell her as much all the time - this is likely to indicate an inferior T insecurity. She has great difficulty (i.e. is unconsciously resistant to) probing around within herself, which is common for inferior Ti in not wanting to feel one’s own darkness. The fact that introspection results in her discovering that her deepest, darkest fear is being completely and utterly “alone” as a “nothing” in “nothingness” is very compelling evidence for inferior Ti.

If inferior Ti, then dominant Fe is a must. I see lots of evidence. She is inexplicably able to communicate with anyone, of any species of bot or animal, with effortless empathic understanding? Her first stance is to give people the benefit of the doubt, no matter how strange or wayward they seem. She has a very naive trust in the goodness of people despite dealing with crooks all the time. She takes it upon herself to bring out the good in people whenever she is in a position to. I don’t think she’s always sure of her feelings (Fi-Ni), rather, she’s always sure that there is goodness to be found if one only looks hard enough (Fe-Ne). A lot of people have strong moral feelings and values, so I’m a bit tired of the lazy stereotype that Fi doms have the monopoly on morality. If you’re going to reference a person’s morality, go deeper to see what exactly it is they believe, how they came to those beliefs, and how they express those beliefs in detail, as that would be more revealing of their functions.

For such a goody-goody-two-shoes, her response to Kylo wasn’t the judgmental disgust that Luke barfed up (Fi-Te) but rather a scary desire to figure him out (Fe-Ti). She seemed quite UNcertain about her personal feelings about him (not Fi), which made their relationship one-sided for quite some time, as she struggled with the push-pull dynamic. ESFJs are often attracted to “dark and mysterious” people due to the unconscious yearnings of inferior Ti, even when Si-Ne warns them that these people are bad news. And it doesn’t get more mysterious than some powerful dude dressed in black donning a mask that shows up in random visions. When avoiding him was no longer possible, she made an admirable effort to dive deeper into his perspective, even when she rightfully feared losing herself in the process. She felt compelled to “get both sides of the story” in typical diplomat fashion before deciding what to do, in hopes of “fixing” Kylo through repairing his relationship with Luke.

Although there seemed to be constant teasing about the possibility of Rey turning dark, I never really saw any possibility. She gave no major indication of being afraid of turning, and it seemed that she never lost touch with her strong desire to be good. She only ever indicated a fear of failing to perform her duty capably (Si) and of failing all the people who were relying upon her powers to succeed (Fe). Discovering her true lineage didn’t really shake her because her parents were good in spite of their bloodline, so there was already an “exception to the rule” for her to follow and emulate. Turning dark would sever and betray her emotional connection to her parents - totally out of the question.

As far as I can tell, the only reason she survived her horrible childhood relatively unscathed was because she held on to the belief that her parents loved her enough to come back, i.e., emotional connection to others is her lifeline. I don’t think it’s an accident that, in her moment of greatest need, it was the connection to past Jedi and their encouragement that saved her butt. She was existentially SHOOK when Kylo claimed that her parents were horrible and abandoned her. And she was only able to find her footing again by inserting herself (i.e. “belonging” to) the Skywalker clan, essentially by being the model of a kid that Ben should’ve been. What self-respecting ISFP would be happy latching on to someone else’s mom, riding someone else’s coattails, and literally defining their identity through someone else’s name and legacy? 

I’ve heard some people critique Rey as a flat mary sue character, and I see where they’re coming from. But which type is most likely to resemble a mary sue at first glance? She is supposed to be the hero in a fairy tale after all, so one would expect her flawedness to be minimized.

Relationship Dynamics

In the final movie, the audience is bludgeoned over and over again with the claim that Kylo and Rey are meant to be a dyad. This all but guarantees that they will be exact functional opposites, otherwise, there would be no strong sense of complementary forces pulling them together into one perfectly harmonized and united front. Although the chemistry between them wasn’t properly developed IMO, I think I saw on paper what was meant to be happening in terms of the writer’s intentions.

Luke was unsuited to helping either of them with questions of identity and morality because, being Fi dom, he took these things for granted, presumptive, already settled non-issues, which amounts to him being closed to any real questioning and discussion. As a result of lacking good guidance, what drew Kylo and Rey together was an underlying need to help each other make sense of themselves, with the unconscious suspicion that the other person held the missing piece of the puzzle. 

Rey was only able to reach her potential by confronting the full extent of her own darkness within (inferior Ti), which was what Kylo forced her to do in incremental steps, as he kept nudging her to question her fundamental beliefs about who she is and what she stands for, presumably in the same way that he had done for himself. But it’s not as easy to twist someone’s sense of morality when F is at the top and healthy versus the bottom of the stack. By making it through his gauntlet of tests and critiques and facing down her fears, she was able to develop into a stronger and more self-assured person to eventually achieve inferior Ti closure. Don’t forget how her eyes would light up when hearing stories of Jedi masters and their achievements. It is mainly EJs who run headfirst toward responsibility rather than away from it. We see, in the end, a picture of Rey as a beaming, confident, and self-possessed person who feels like the world is her oyster, fully inhabiting her role in the hero story that she had always wished to be a part of. The audience is meant to believe that she’s the rightful heir when she finally believes in herself.

By questioning Rey’s identity, Kylo eventually had to question his own as well, since he was the one who wanted to believe that they shared a similar path to feeling lost. Kylo is stuck in adolescent cynicism as explained above, with Si loop resentment from the past preventing him from seeing other, better possibilities for himself. Late in the trilogy, I see in his face that he’s probably suffering from the sunk cost fallacy of thinking that he is past the point of no return. Perhaps he believes that he has no choice but to resign himself to the fate he has chosen (parallel to Vader) since Ti doms strongly believe in personal responsibility. He’s not wrong. If he wasn’t irredeemable at first, he certainly was after the profound destruction he had wrought. Ti doms are rarely wrong as their logic is usually impeccable, but they tend to lack perspective. E.g. He’s not wrong in believing that people are hypocritical because they really are (Ti factual judgment is spot on), but then he defines his terms too narrowly in dismissing all people as unworthy of being called “good” (Fe value judgment is very immature).

What finally broke the mental confinement of Si loop? IMO, three contributing factors: 1) He started to suffer the same skepticism about the dark side as he had with the Jedi, since Ti promotes impartial judgment, which opened him up somewhat to questioning his choices. INTPs deeply dislike sheep mentality and blind ideology, so being constantly asked to prove his “allegiance” and quietly “submit” all the time by his superiors only served to reveal their flawed mentality in the same vein as Luke, which gave him the logical justification he needed for eliminating one boss after another. 2) He was drawn deeper and deeper into Rey’s psychology, which backfired on him, because it proved to him, again and again, every which way, that goodness is indeed possible, as Rey easily aced every temptation and challenge that he was able to fling at her. For NPs(Ne), believing in possibility can’t help but create a strong desire to actualize it. 3) Leia intervened with what I’m assuming was one last-ditch attempt to communicate how much she truly loves him despite what he’s become, which perhaps served to expand his thinking about what it means to love. 

In the end, he redeemed himself on his own terms (even if he was not fully redeemed for the audience). As a result, he discovered something resembling happiness in his last moments of connection with Rey. You can’t tell a Ti dom to be good “just because”, or take goodness as default without question, or present a fake and idealized image of goodness for them to live up to, because that will never satisfy Ti. At the same time, morality cannot remain an abstract concept or else it is very easy to twist upside down. Goodness must be deeply FELT in order to be a motivating force, and he, at long last, felt goodness in his bones, through his decision to place the greater good above himself - inferior F often means arriving very late to the feeling party. He finally caught a glimpse of what he could be and should be through Rey’s, and possibly his mother’s, eyes, which allowed for inferior Fe closure. He had always gotten by okay without love and only believing and trusting in himself, but he realized that he was far better off for opening himself up to something more. 

That’s my take anyway. Or perhaps that’s what I needed to see to make the story more interesting for myself, lol.

#star wars #rey #kylo ren #fiction #fictional depictions #esfj #intp #ask

[kyluxtrashpit]

TROS Review

Okay here is my extremely long (almost 4k words >.>) review of tros. And that’s without the 2k meta on redemption arcs I also have filed away lmao. First off: I am not leaving the kylux fandom. It’s not a good enough movie to warrant that. Second: I might make a post of things I wished we’d gotten later, but this is already WAY too long lmao. Warnings for spoilers, opinions, and general negativity

EXPLICIT RISE OF SKYWALKER SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT

So. I have watched the thing. I went in knowing the spoilers and oh boy, am I glad I did. Still, overall this movie was… not great lmao. It’s messy and the pacing is off and there are some very weird and straight up Bad moments, but I’m not actually upset about it anymore. It’s more like ‘there’s a lot to unpack here’ except we’re not going to unpack it or even throw away the whole thing, it’s just gonna become that one box that’s still packed and untouched from when you moved 3 years ago. It’s there, but you rarely think about it beyond the occasional ‘maybe I should finally unpack that? Nah, too much effort’

I see a lot of people writing fix it fic and that’s totally valid but tbh… I don’t think it’s worth the effort for me. I think I’m just going to pretend it never happened and write my kylux the way I always have. Maybe I’ll do something with tros at some point, maybe some mean!Hux + redeemed!Ben because I’m awful lmao but for now, it hasn’t changed my plans at all. Which is actually a good thing tbh

Anyway. I’ll start with the good simply because there’s less of it lmao. Best thing about the movie? Everyone in it is looking like a fucking snack. It’s great. These people have always been hot, but this movie really nailed that. Also the trio stuff was fun and felt genuine. I LOVED the hints that Finn is Force sensitive, and I liked him in this movie even though I wish he got more story/time. I enjoyed Rey at the beginning, but her actions and plotline made less and less sense as the movie went on. Kylo was fun; I had gotten worried after that interview that said he’s calm now but he wasn’t lmao, like at all, so that was good. Also I didn’t like how Hux died but I’m endlessly grateful Kylo wasn’t the one to kill him. That might’ve actually ruined the ship for me

The visuals were excellent (save that strobing near the beginning; I’m not epileptic, but I had to close my eyes because it was too much). Some of the jokes hit will, as did some of the emotional bits (Chewie’s “death” was very well-executed and Rey’s scream broke my heart). Weirdly enough, C-3PO is kind of the heart of the movie, which I did not expect at all. Lando’s appearances were too brief but good. I also loved D-O a lot and he’s very cute. I liked seeing a bunch of new planets and environments, however briefly. The acting was also really great throughout on most accounts. I really enjoyed 2 of the Hux scenes (when he’s sitting in that board meeting making a face like he’s mentally eviscerating everyone in the room and when he gets so excited to finally get to blow something up and then Kylo shuts him up with the Force BUT WITHOUT HARMING HIM!!!)

That’s kind of it tbh. The movie overall is really messy. I’ve seen people say it feels like a fever dream and it really does. I’ve seen descriptions of people dreaming the plot of tros and they’re less weird. The pacing in the first chunk is way too fast and there’s way too much to take in. Then things get weird in the middle. Then, well, that ending. It feels like it’s trying too hard to be liked. It’s ‘joke’, ‘reference to past movie’, ‘joke’, ‘reference to past movie’, ‘mention of hope without showing it’, etc. etc. on and on throughout it. Some of those are fun, but it got tiring very quickly. And it made it impossible for me to suspend disbelief long enough to actually get into it

I also saw a lot of reviews saying if you didn’t like tlj, you would like this one. That was not correct. I disliked this for many of same reasons I disliked tlj, but it also managed to hold tfa’s weaknesses as well. Honestly, tros feels like the worst aspects of tlj mixed with the worst aspects of tfa, mixed with way too much nostalgia and then blended up with a good heaping of mania and desperation to keep it going. It tried so hard, wanted to be liked so badly, and you can feel that watching it. It doesn’t feel genuine

It also feels like every single movie in the ST was actually from a different trilogy. None of the 3 connect to each other. You can’t say tros is a successor to tlj or tfa; it’s totally on a different path, which I’m honestly not sure how they managed that. As much as I felt tlj wasn’t a true continuation of tfa, tros feels like its own trilogy mashed into one movie. There wasn’t one consistent plot or character thread to follow between all 3 movies

I think bringing palpatine back was the first fundamental mistake. It didn’t fit. And after creating Kylo and Snoke to be very specifically Not Sith, why bring the Sith back all of a sudden? Palpatine has had his day and he didn’t need this. No one did. Much as he was creepy as hell and that was well done, it didn’t feel right to have him there. Also, I really don’t like the implication he procreated at any point skdfjskldjk

As for Rey… I know I’m in the minority here, but I never found here to be a good narrative foil for Kylo. The connection between the two doesn’t really interest me at all (and this was one of the reasons I didn’t like tlj). It worked better if they were related, which was the biggest reason I was a proponent of Rey Skywalker, but that didn’t happen. The commonalities they have are just: 1) can use the Force, 2) have been lonely. The contrasts are: 1) light vs dark (sort of; this is less explicit in tfa and I miss that greyer view of the Force) and 2) had a family vs didn’t. And that’s pretty much it. In order for 2 characters to contrast and hit the ‘complimentary opposites’ sweet spot, you need much, much more than that. Finn has and always will be a better foil for Kylo and it’s a damn shame they abandoned that in tlj and even more so in tros. I have more thoughts on her that I’ll get to later too

I did like Rey in the beginning, but the longer it went on, the less I could rationalize her actions. Why is she doing that? Why is she trying to ditch her friends all the time? Why does she heal the cave snake? Why does she stab Kylo when he’s just become a non-combatant? Why does she heal him after? Why is she trying to reach out to the spirits of past jedi? Why did she Do That after she wakes up in the end? Why did she then seem to not even care that Kylo died right after? None of this is explained. Show, don’t tell, is great, but you can’t just make massive leaps like that. I didn’t get it. None of this felt like the character I’ve gotten to know over the last few years, nor did it feel consistent within the movie itself

That said, I want to discount one complaint I’ve seen: I got no impression she’s exiling herself on Tatooine at the end. It’s very clear she’s just doing a quick funeral ritual for Luke and Leia. The Falcon is still there, ready for when she’s done. I don’t get where the ‘she’s all alone in the desert again forever and ever’ comes from because it’s clear she’s not. It’s just a private ceremony (plus obvious fanservice). That’s it

For Finn: I liked that his character got to be a lot cooler here. I’m sad that he didn’t get half the attention and plot he deserved, but at least he wasn’t treated as a joke and a coward. My tlj complaint for Finn was that he went through the exact same arc he did in tfa over again; here, he doesn’t. He’s clearly grown into himself. That I liked. But damn, he was supposed to be a main character and he really got sidelined hard. It’s also very clear finnrey was planned at some point but didn’t end up in the final cut. The tease with that felt cruel tbh. He deserved to get to tell Rey he loved her on screen

And Poe: Poe was okay in this one. He felt to me like a different character in tfa and tlj, but this one managed to mesh the two characterizations well. He’s a bit of a hothead who doesn’t think (tlj), but he also really cares about people and is trying his best to lead (tfa). That was very successfully done. However. Poe is the one character with the most backstory. He’s got novels, comics, all of it. Where in the fuck is this history of being a spice runner in all that??? Sketchy as hell to make your one Latino character being a drug runner but you know. It also felt like a HUGE retcon of the one character that actually has fully revealed backstory. Also his thing with Zori was just weird and forced and exhaustingly heterosexual. Completely pointless tbh

As I was rereading this, I realized I forgot Rose but really, that’s because she does pretty much nothing. She has very few lines, never comes along. It’s like they forgot she was there. Or just didn’t care. It was really sad and a huge disrespect to everything KMT has gone through. Both her and her character deserved more

For Hux: I liked the 2 scenes I mentioned above, but other than that I was disappointed. I said this on twitter already, but the biggest crime they committed was getting rid of his fanaticism. Tlj may have turned him into a joke, but at least he was still a zealot. Here, it’s clear he gave up his last fuck like a year ago. It’s 9 am and he’s had 6 glasses of wine because he’s lost the will to live and it’s all pointless. Might as well fuck around and give the Resistance info that might lead to the end of everything he’s worked for his entire life because nothing matters and at least Kylo will lose. That’s dumb and violently ooc. I get him being a traitor to Kylo, I am DOWN for that, but not to the FO. He cares about the FO. He is fanatically devoted to the FO. That was ridiculous and wildly out of character. Also the FO is just gone in favour of Palpatine’s fleet as soon as Hux dies? What happened to them? Are they still out there? Who even knows? WHAT A FUCKING WASTE

Also Pryde? Fuck that guy and fuck JJ/LF/Disney for thinking it’s okay to have an old imperial kill Hux. Especially since the visual dictionary today confirmed Pryde knew Brendol and our Hux had known him for years. The possible implications are gross as fuck. If anyone was going to kill Hux one on one, it should have been Finn (with a wonderful stormtrooper rebellion arc involved) for the sake of both characters. I’m personally going to choose to believe Hux was wearing a blaster proof vest (thank you, Delilah Dawson, for putting those into Black Spire as canon) and faked his death. He’s living in blissful exile with Millie now or rebuilding the actual FO and ready to take over as the Emperor he deserves to be

Oh and Leia’s scenes did feel weird. I appreciate them trying to incorporate her, but it didn’t quite work. I feel like having her be offscreen yet present would’ve worked better than most of what they used. Some worked better than others though. I also have some Thoughts about her death but I’m about to get into the second half of the movie stuff and I’ll cover that there

Now Kylo. My darling, sweet, disaster boy. So. Okay. I knew no matter what happened his end would be controversial. And I have a lot of feelings on redemption arcs that can be distilled into one thing: if they’re written well, I like them, no matter how much bad the character has done; however, they are almost never written well enough. One of the first things I said coming out of tfa back in 2015 is ‘that’s going to be a disappointing redemption arc in a few years’. It was never about what ending I wanted (I actually favour something more grey than simply ‘oh he’s good now’ or ‘dies evil’, but that was way too ambitious for them to attempt so I never bothered to hope for it), because I knew it was coming. So this didn’t really bother me beyond the fact that it was too sudden. I do blame that partially on tlj, because it took Kylo from conflicted and torn apart to ‘yeah, I’m in charge now’, but I still think this was not the way to do it. Anyway. I have a 2k word rant somewhere about redemption arcs and when they work and when they don’t that I never posted and this is the much, much shorter version of that

Also. Okay. One more thing on this. So I usually don’t like redemption arcs because they’re written badly, but my least favourite redemption arcs are those that end in death. The only one I can think of that actually worked was Vader’s, but it doesn’t work as well with Kylo. Why? Because redemption is about making amends, not being punished. It’s about choosing to stop doing bad shit and instead to do good things to make up for what you’ve done. In self-sacrifice, not only does it send the message that the only path to redemption is death, but also it means you do literally one thing and then die. That’s it. One good deed, die, you’re done. That’s too fucking easy. True redemption is waking up every single day, for the rest of your life, and continuing to choose to do good. You know that evil is easier, feels better; you’ve done it. But you’re making the choice to keep doing good and to make amends instead. And you do that for years. Decades, even. That is SO MUCH harder to do than just one good thing and then immediately dying without showing if that change is lasting or not. That is how redemption is achieved: in making that choice not once, but again and again and again. So yeah. I didn’t like that. Death redemptions aren’t convincing to me because one choice is easy; consistently making that choice over the rest of your life is much, much harder

End of point: if they were going to redeem Kylo, he needed to live and work to make up for his past mistakes in order to make it impactful. It’s a damn shame he didn’t

Also: having Leia die for the sake of a man, son or not? FUCK THAT. And, even worse, if we follow the movie’s logic: Leia died trying to reach and save her son. Which lead to… him dying anyway?! Which means Leia’s death is meaningless and she died for literally nothing. Fuck that. FUCK THAT. What the fuck. That’s bullshit

Again on the redemption: Kylo just… kills his good friends the KOR without a shred of hesitation? Also the KOR literally never speak? And Kylo says literally one word (‘ow’) after the redemption? I admit, it was fun watching him fight and also watching him get hurt. If I ignore the context of it, watching him crawl out of the pit, scrabbling on the ground, so hurt he can’t even stand up? Fuck. That was good shit tbh. Also those big, desperate puppy eyes. They’re even worse with him as Ben instead of Kylo. Bravo to Adam for playing such a convincing sad boy. I hate that his scar got healed though; I liked it

Now. The whole ending and the plot stuff. Rey being a palpatine is… okay. Fine. I don’t like it but whatever. Seems like an unnecessary excuse to bring him back. Also Luke and Leia knowing? How? Luke knew Rey for literally 1 day. And how would Leia know? And why not tell Rey, who was so desperate for answers to her past when they thought Palpatine was dead? It makes no sense. It’s just very unnecessary. Not to mention the line “you’re a palpatine” is not a thing any real human being would ever say, jfc that was clumsy and unrealistic dialogue. I don’t mind Rey going a bit dark for some time, but this was not the way to do it. Also I was really hoping for a resolution beyond ‘dark siders dead, light sider alive’ because the dichotomous nature of the Force MAKES NO SENSE. Balance is needed. Leaving the only Force user alive a light sider means something dark will come again for the sake of it – Rey should’ve gone grey and tbh tfa made me hope this trilogy would end with all surviving Force users grey. So that was disappointing

Now. The kiss. Straight up: I do not ship it. I don’t mind if other people do, but I do get touchy when they go out of their way to prove there’s nothing inherently problematic about it. I ship kylux; it’s problematic as hell. That’s a good part of why I like it. So I’m fine with r*ylo shippers as long as they do the same. Problem is: most don’t and go around insisting it’s actually the highest romance possible while leaning on incredibly misogynistic and racist tropes to prop up that argument rather than accept their ship has some questionable parts to it (like kyluxers do). It’s more a problem with the fandom for me than it is the ship in theory. Still, I don’t like it and that’s what matters for this

The fact of the matter is it felt extremely sudden and out of place. The entire first half of the movie is Kylo being an aggressive, creepy asshole to Rey. I can theoretically entertain the idea of Kylo having feelings for her (though I don’t), but I cannot see the other way around, not when Rey has so many kind, wonderful people around her. Which is why this feels so weird. There was not enough build to it. I saw a cam clip off reddit before I went in, so I had accepted it was happening but I expected a lot more lead up to it to make it not seem so sudden. None of that was there. There was no build up or reaching of understanding so it reads exactly like those versions of it I dislike: there is nothing wrong with a man berating you and insulting you and attacking you and you should love him for it. That is not enemies to lovers. That’s just abusive bullshit

And then the death. Both of them. Rey dies from… what exactly? It’s never shown at all. And same with Kylo. The leaks said it was Force exhaustion, which a) why? And b) that’s not clear in the damn movie. You need to explain things!!!! And also that means Leia, Luke, Kylo, and Rey all died (even if one didn’t stick) from using the Force too hard. Meanwhile Darth Maul survives getting cut in half and Palpatine survives falling down a shaft in a space station that explodes 2 minutes later (and, you know, all the wacky Force shit he did in this movie too). The fuck? It’s dumb. I hate it

Also the dyad thing was weird. I know the early leaks had it more explained, then the leaks said they cut it, but now it looks like they left in 3 lines of dialogue with it and cut the rest. Again, explanations people! This is not a thing in previous canon! Maybe in the EU, but that’s not canon anymore! The fuck!!!! The idea is dumb and forced to begin with, but the execution made it worse

And now for the final, largest criticism I have. A confession: I am not a star wars fan by nature. I’ve always liked them, but I preferred other sci-fi more. I’m more of an invasive species who forcibly carved my way into this fandom ecological niche because I really loved Kylo lmao. But if there is one thing star wars is defined by, I don’t think it’s love or family or any of those common themes people say. It’s hope. That’s the thing star wars does well. Even when things are darkest, it keeps the hope alive and it makes you feel that. Good will triumph. There is reason to believe in heroes, even when they stumble

This movie is not hopeful. Rogue One, a masterful tragedy, still manages a message of hope despite every single lead character dying. This one doesn’t. And tbh, I think tlj missed on this a bit too (a lot of talk about having hope, not a lot of showing us reasons to be hopeful), but it was still there. Tros does not feel hopeful. The Skywalkers are all dead. Rey has decided to download the legacy (why? No idea! The whole message was ‘don’t be afraid of who you are’ and she just then decided to become someone else? Makes no sense!!!). Anakin’s sacrifice meant nothing because Palpatine came back (and it is CRIMINAL we never got an Anakin and Kylo scene). Han and Leia’s and even Luke’s (a bit) deaths meant nothing because yeah, Kylo turned back in the end, but then he died anyway. They all gave their lives to save him and it was all for nothing. He’s still dead. Palpatine is gone and so is his fleet, but what about the FO fleet? Are they still out there? Are there brainwashed stormtroopers still trapped in its clutches (also, they were so close with Jannah and Finn to adding depth here, but nope, the stormtroopers are still cannon fodder in every fight scene even though they’re literally slaves!!!!)? Who knows!

This movie only feels conclusive in that so many characters we love are dead. That’s it. There’s more questions than answers and so much left unresolved. There’s no sense of hope in it. There’s barely a sense of victory. It’s not satisfying. Even the celebration at the end feels weird and like it’s trying to force you to be happy. The jedistormpilot hug was good, but the lesbian kiss was such a cheap attempt at trying to appease people calling for representation. The moment with Lando and Jannah at the end was probably the most hopeful part of the movie and neither of them are lead characters

Idk. I know this is pretty negative. But I didn’t really enjoy this movie. Some parts were fun, or funny, or exciting, or emotional. But overall? No. This was not a satisfying conclusion for any of these characters, either the new or the old. They missed. Hard. Not one character was truly done justice. And it’s disappointing. But it’s over now and I have no intentions of letting it dictate my fandom activities. I’m just going to pretend it didn’t happen and call it a day

#how! did! this! get! so! long! #lmao I just hope it's coherent #you know #unlike the movie skdflfsj #but anyway #I did not love it #some things were okay and others were good #but oh god the consistency #the writing #the characters #why???? #also keep in mind these are my opinions and you're allowed to not share them #anyway #enjoy I guess? #shut up nerd #text #long post #meta #tros spoilers #rise of skywalker spoilers #spoilers

[mysterious-prophetess]

4 AM thoughts on the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy-A Rant

So, firstly I’ll say this: If you like them-More power to you. You do you. 

My thoughts are mine and I will not claim that they are the only opinion to have because that’s a wrong way to be.

Secondly: It is literally 4 AM as I write this. So, I will probably go off on tangents and there won’t be a lot of structure to this.

So, approx eight and a half months since I was dragged to The Rise of Skywalker and I go back to a trilogy and a franchise for that matter that I was kind of DONE with. 

Yeah. Disney Star Wars ruined my love of Star Wars in general and I even liked the Prequel trilogy!

I liked The Force Awakens when I first saw it, but I think it was my nostalgia goggles blinding me to its issues.

One of which it was almost a beat-for-beat remake of Episode 4. Being that 4 is my favorite of all the Star Wars films, this also worked in its favor as it was just fresh enough for the nostalgia and partiality to its predecessor to work in its favor.

Also, the new trio--Finn, Rey, and Poe-- had a lot of great potential. Especially Finn. Former Stormtrooper & taken from his home to be raised as a soldier to find he no longer could stay with the First Order, but terrified of them. Yet, despite that fear deciding to go save Rey--who was one of his first real friends. That was a character’s journey with so much potential and the marketing made it seem like he’d be a jedi. 

Yet, I wasn’t too upset when it was Rey. 

In retrospective, Rey winning against Kylo Ren was dumb. She should have been decent at the weapon since she was able to protect herself and Kylo was injured but, the planet falling apart could have happened sooner to prevent her from going on a ass-kicking spree of Kylo Ren.

Then we get to 8 which had an opening crawl it didn’t need since it was literally just after 7. 

I hated that btw

Then we get Poe who was shown as a smart ass in 7 but talked up as this great pilot but shown to be an IDIOT in 8. Rose’s whole storyline was badly handled.

People were shitty to Kelly Marie Tran over shit out of her control. Rose Tico was a terribly written character and the actress did what she could with what they gave her. 

What they did to Finn was undid ALL of his character development from 7 and turn him into a joke for the rest of 8 and nothing in 9. I’ve recently learned that this was done to appeal to a certain market that has never liked Star Wars anyway. Way to go, Disney. You fucked up your new character with the most compelling backstory to appease a market that hates this product in the first place. Bra-fucking-vo. 

The Light Speed tracking thing was bullshit. Canto Bite was a pointless side quest. Cut that stupid shit out of the movie and you lose nothing of value. You could cut from them landing on that pointless planet to them ending up in jail for parking illegally and saved the audience around 20 minutes of wasted time.

It didn’t advance the plot. It didn’t make Rose any more sympathetic. It just felt preachy. Also, Rose x Finn was so fucking forced. Kelly Marie Tran tried to sell it but again, she was given shit to work with.

I recently found out that who Rey was kept changing and It’s SOOO fucking stupid to not have a solid plan for a fucking trilogy. (and to find out my favorite idea of Rey as a Kenobi was the first one before Johnson came in and she was No One also is irksome)

Idk what Abrams planned but by not having it implemented over all and letting Johnson piss all over it with his ideas for a subversive mould-breaking story ruined any flow the films had.

Yeah, I am aware 4 was all but stand alone, but it was set up so it could connect to 5 & 6 just in case it was successful enough for 5 & 6 to be made. It was very stand alone because there was a chance nothing would come after 4.

7, 8, & 9 however, could be planned for there to be three because it was fucking STAR WARS. Which meant, they should have had people fucking plan out what they were doing. Instead, they didn’t, it shows, and it also seems to take an almost savage glee at pissing on the past.

Ruining Luke I-see-the-good-in-my-Father-who-committed-genocide Skywalker by having him give up on Ben/Kylo was one of the biggest betrayals of character I’ve ever fucking seen. 

Trying their best to get all the other OT characters out of the way so their new shiny replacements can take center stage without any nuance was also irritating. And this is at the parks too. It’s apparently all Sequel shit now with no legacy characters. 

Killing off Luke in 8 in a stupid way in how the force does not work. Continuing the force bullshit in 9. Wasting our time on a redemption arc for Kylo Ren/Ben only to KILL HIM AT THE END. 

No. Make him face what he’s done and atone as a living person. No more redemption=death. Death is too easy.

And I hate that they brought Palpatine back in a corporal form. Nice way to piss on the BEST moments of the OT where Anakin, finally throwing off the ties of bondage to Palpatine and the dark side and destroying the man to save his son, sacrificing himself in the process, dying at peace. Nope. That now means NOTHING. Palpatine survived.

Force Ghosts fucking exist. Sith Ghosts FUCKING EXIST TOO. Just make him a force ghost possessing some fucker and I might not have been as pissed off.

That force diad shit? Either play it up more or cut it out.

Snoke being a Palpatine puppet was fucking dumb. If he’d been Darth Plageius’s creation then that might have been better than “it was palpatine all along.”

It’s just such a waste. Star Wars was a film series about hope. The first film was retitled to have its subtitle be “A New Hope.” These films? Are not about hope at all. They’re about cynical cash grabs and trying to signal the right virtues to try to exploit the movie going public of their money and attempt a moral high ground. 

One more thing that bugs me: the fact they shunted a lot of shit per film to the novelizations. Fuck that shit. If your medium is FILM, you tell all your shit in that damn film. I shouldn’t have to read your tie in materials to understand your fucking film.  e.g. Palpatine’s son is really his clone is in the last film’s novelization. That stupid casino world allegedly has a full explanation too. 

No. It’s a sign of really poor planning and command of storytelling that you shunted this information into your peripheral materials. Then agian, we know the planning was shit because they couldn’t even fucking settle on who Rey was WHILE FILMING THE DAMNED TRILOGY AND EVEN DURING 9 THEY WERE CHANGING THEIR MINDS. 

And there are lots of other things but better minds than mine have talked about them-like everything wrong with Poe’s backstory. That can of worms I won’t touch because I don’t have the expertise beyond wondering if Disney has a single person with any sort of common sense or any awareness of optics on staff.

Final mini-rant: 

I fucking hate the way they’re trying to push their oh-so-special OC’s as better than the original cast at times. Luke and Leia were presumed to have been born the same day the empire was founded because THAT’S THE FILM’S APPARENT TIMELINE. But now. Now, somehow that took 2 days and now their new special snowflake character from Rebels Ezra Bridger has that Empire Day birthday and is force sensitive too and has a jedi teacher. 

Like, I’m sure that the character isn’t as Gary Stu-ish as I just bitched about there, but from the outside looking in, it pisses me the fuck off because of all the other shit Disney’s been pulling with Star Wars to distance themselves from legacy characters and push the new characters at all costs.

It’s just I hate what they’ve done in their corporate greed.

#rant #anti-disney star wars

[jessicafurseth]

Reading List, Beautiful Things (double) edition.

“The pleasure of the streets and London itself unfolding in the autumn chill; everything tingling with newness and risk, glitter of frost and glow of body heat, the shock of finding and holding what he wanted among millions of strangers.“ [Alan Hollinghurst, 'The Line of Beauty']

[Image by Neon Talk] 

* 

“People don’t want to be human, they want to be right. I wanted to be right.” On the joy of being wrong about yourself. [Stephanie Georgopulos, Human Parts at Medium] 

"Everything is fun and everything is light and everything is rancor. Until suddenly, you are the one in danger.” Kelsey McKinney played the goose game [Deadspin] 

"I almost died of happiness every time I saw him. I couldn’t believe a person this attractive and this smart and this nice existed and that we actually liked each other. I realized that I had never really liked 95 percent of the people I had dated. Though I didn’t believe in soul mates and still don’t, I finally understood what people meant when they talked about really loving someone and feeling close to them. I had always thought of men as these sort of things that, if you were straight and wanted to have sex, you just sort of had to contend with. Tor was like an actual person.” Fuck I loved this. [Sarah Miller, The Cut] 

“Cora [Brooks] taught me that there are worse things than dying — that getting older is a process of losing your children to distance and coping with incontinence and memory loss, yes, but also of becoming more unapologetically yourself." [Devi Lockwood, The New York Times] 

“There is very good research showing that if you attain extrinsic goals, like financial success, fame, or popularity, it’s actually like doing drugs: you need a bigger and bigger dose to get high.” On ambition [Katie Heaney, The Cut] 

"I don’t spend a lot of time high-fiving, just like I don’t spend a lot of time agonizing when something goes wrong. I play the long game.” Kara Swisher on ambition [The Cut] 

On eating a lot of sugar to stay off booze [Grace Lavery, Vice] 

"The 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' Doublemeat Burger walked so Beyond Meat could run” [Madeleine Davies, Eater] 

Van-life fail [Chris Wright, Outside] 

"I am now terrified and deeply suspicious of edibles and heartbroken that my mother may have been right about drugs all along.” Today in “just because it’s legal doesn’t make it harmless” [Roxane Gay, Gay Mag at Medium] 

In praise of the women who made the era of the erotic thriller [Abbey Bender, The Outline] 

"My change of circumstance made me hyperaware of what I wanted everyone to see: a woman in charge of herself. A Strong Woman Doing Well On Her Own. A woman (I’m sorry) thriving.” Monica Heisey goes spinning after getting divorced. [The Guardian] 

"But Sundays are no longer a day of forced noncommerce—everything’s open—or nonproductivity. Even if you aren’t asked to pull a weekend shift, work intrudes upon those once-sacred hours. The previous week’s unfinished business beckons when you open your laptop; urgent emails from a colleague await you in your inbox. A low-level sense of guilt attaches to those stretches of time not spent working.” On the loss of communal downtime [Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic] 

Tourism has never been “authentic” [Kyle Chayka, The Goods by Vox] 

"iI I live another 41 years to avenge what has happened, it still won’t be enough.” This longread on chemotherapy is incredible [Anne Boyer, The Guardian] 

"In my final few months of being 29, I’ve become obsessed with the gap between how special I thought I was – a typical by-product of being raised by loving parents – and how ordinary I’ve turned out to be. I’m taking driving lessons, but I’ve come to resent talking to anyone about something so common. So predictable.” [Jessica Brown’s TinyLetter] On perimenopause and the best fan money can buy [Jolie Kerr, The Goods at Vox] 

The revolutionary pleasures of Lana Del Rey [Emma Garland, Vice] 

"No longer dyeing my hair was like suddenly swallowing a million Valium. The shift in how people treated me was immediately palpable, but whatever sense of alienation this resulted in was balanced by a newfound lack of anxiety about the arrival of middle-agedness. No more fear about what it would be like. It was here now! I started noticing all the women around me who were naturally gray. I used to be like, Oh my God, do I look like that?and now I was like, Yeah, I do. Oh well.” [Sarah Miller, The Cut] 

On being very excited about a piece of news that’s of little general interest [Rosa Lyster, Popula] 

On falling asleep while watching Friends [Sarah Manavis, GQ] 

Paintings by Frank Laws, documenting the architecture of East London housing [Huck Magazine] 

50 horny photos of Bruce Springsteen [The Cut] 

Jenny Odell at the Longform Podcast - I’ve been thinking about this for weeks.

#reading list

[emperorren]

1/2. It's interesting watching SW as an ESL speaker and seeing the reactions of people who aren't ESL speakers to the same movie, because I feel like my experience of the movies relies on visuals, tone and music cues more than the substance of the dialogue. Especially when I was younger and my English wasn't as good, I couldn't understand half of what the characters in US movies were saying, and even with subtitles, I still paid more attention to how the characters spoke than what was said.

2/2. I've been thinking about this lately because of the discourse over "You're nothing but not to me": after I saw the movie, I saw interesting debate over whether the line was cruel, it was badly phrased, and some people thought Kylo was being an abuser...but I hadn't noticed it, and my nephew who I took to see TLJ didn't notice it either. The music, the scene and Kylo's face all looked sad and honest and romantic, so that's what we thought. I wonder if other ESL fans have similar experience.

YES. Focusing too much on this alleged attempt at manipulation that would be inherent in Kylo’s words is losing the forest for the trees. Instead of overthinking his sentence structure, people should look at his face. Because Adam’s body language conveys much more than his actual lines do. (you’re also spot on about the music and the way the scene is staged and directed. There’s nothing that says “ominous manipulation” about it. The camera is crying for, and with, Rey and Kylo.)

Kylo’s expression in the throne room scene is the most earnest, heart-on-your-sleeve thing I’ve ever seen in these movies. There’s trepidation, anticipation, anxiety, hopefulness. He swallows hard and his eyes are so genuine and pleading and sweet. He’s saying things he’s never said to anybody else, praying and begging like he’s never done before, knowing that whatever the answer he gets from Rey, his life is never going to be the same again.

I just said on Twitter that both his “love declarations” in TLJ are phrased as negations. He can’t express his feelings affirmatively, so he resorts to periphrases and double negatives (”you’re not alone”; “you’re nothing but not to me”), because they’re more indirect and they require a bit of deciphering on Rey’s (and the audience’s) part. He’s trying to say the thing without actually saying the thing. This is typical of someone who is pathologically insecure, who’s used to feel worthless and is stuck in knee-jerk negative thinking. Beneath the surface of his aggressive posturing and apparently assertive demeanor in the throne room scene, there’s a man who has no idea how to keep Rey with him and is blinded by his own desperation. He thinks himself worthy, but he’s barely holding it together for fear of rejection. He acts like he’s making Rey an offer she can’t refuse, but deep down he has no real faith in the substance of that offer. The best part of him knows he’s selling smoke.

Kylo’s words to Rey sound like he has a low esteem of her because he has a low esteem of himself in the first place. If he’s nothing, how can someone he loves be everything? It’s absolutely common for people who have a fucked up notion of themselves to say fucked up things to their loved ones, often in an attempt to be bluntly sincere, or even as misguided praise. Their sense of worthlessness and negative thinking affects their worldview and poisons their attempts to connect with other people.

But healing is possible. I firmly believe TLJ gave us Kylo’s “negative” love declarations to create a contrast with his “real” ones in TROS. He’ll go from “you’re not alone” to “I’m here with you, for you.” From “you’re not nothing to me”, to “you’re everything to me”---or maybe “you’re everything”, period. He’ll go from a boy who hides behind words to a man who owns them, and who is no longer afraid to speak the bare truth, with no safety net or parachute to buffer his fall.

#kylo meta #the throne room #you're not alone #you're nothing but not to me #the proposal #anon #asks

[ggoldstein-blog1]

❝ In my mind I am eloquent; I can climb intricate scaffolds of words to reach the highest cathedral ceilings and paint my thoughts. But when I open my mouth, everything collapses. ❞

RILEY HAYES-GOLDSTEIN really is the spitting image of MARGARET QUALLEY, right? For someone only 23 years old, RILEY has been forced to endure so much. Yeah, that HALFBLOOD has been scraping by at the sanctuary since MARCH, 2028, working as a SUPPLY RUNNER in the DIVISION OF FORAGE. SHE is a CIS-WOMAN and is known to be SARDONIC and PESSIMISTIC but also WITTY and MORALLY RESPONSIBLE. Best of luck surviving through this. ⊰ JINX, 24, PST, SHE/THEY ⊱

CHARACTER PARALLELS: Daria ( Daria ), Seth Cohen ( The OC ), Veronica Sawyer( Heathers ), Ron Swanson/Ben Wyatt ( Parks & Rec ), Quentin Coldwater ( The Magicians ), Pam Beasley ( The Office ), Zari Tomaz ( Legends of Tomorrow ), Nadine Franklin ( Edge of Seventeen ), Lindsay Weir ( Freaks and Geeks )

PINTREST: [ x ]

When you meet Riley Hayes, a picturesque childhood in a picturesque suburbia is not what you would expect and yet it was exactly what she had. Born on the cusp of summer and fall, Rachel and Christopher were over the moon to have their daughter born on August 28, 2010. Finally, a child to complete the perfect family unit. Maybe they had hoped for a boy despite what science said ( hence the name Riley & a full name for a boy they had prepared ) but, they had a daughter and for the first ten years of her life they pampered her greatly. Trips to the coast every summer to visit his side of the family where Riley was praised for being such a pretty, good girl, and what seemed like infinite love from her father was doled out as long as she was what he wanted her to be. The younger girl was cooperative, it was in her nature it seemed, because she loved seeing her parents happy with each other. As long as Riley stayed within the lines, stayed within Christopher’s lines at least, everything would be well. Even when Riley started to develop a few habits and interests that were off the wall, he brushed them aside as childhood obsessions. Never could he accept his family for what they were which is exactly why he left.

[ PARENTAL ABANDONMENT TW ] The ugly truth was, Riley was an accident and the picture painted had been a lie – not that Riley knew until then. While she knew they had gotten married young she’d never known how much exactly her mother had given up to be with her father. Rachel Hayes had left her family, forsaken her religion ( as Christopher was a very religious Christian man ), the semi famous Goldstein Wizarding name, and moved down south into this suburbia all with the promise of a family. The biggest thing? Magic. When Christopher left a year before Riley entered Hogwarts school, Riley was forced to grow up and pick up the pieces of a broken lost woman who simply couldn’t find herself in the rubble that was the aftermath of her father leaving. But finding out she was an accident was the least of her worries. No matter how much poetry she wrote trying to figure out her mind, oftentimes thinking she was losing it, something within her was different, something within her felt different. [ END PARENTAL ABANDONMENT TW ] 

It took a few months to coax the why from her mother, and truly she was her caretaker. It wasn’t until her 10th birthday when she got the letter from Ilvermony that she realized what exactly was off. When she confronted her mother – her mother just poured everything out to her. Who Riley was, who her family was, what she was doing with her life before she met Christopher. At first, Riley couldn’t believe it – – she’d grown up hiding comics under her bed, hiding anything about the supernatural away. Even if her whole life she had felt a weird pull to these people who didn’t belong in her comics, these freaks, she never in her wildest dreams thought she’d have something in common with them. It all made sense though, and finally the pieces of her life started to come together. Riley knew what she had to do, so at the age of 10, she went with her mother to Wizarding NYC to try to find out more. To try to find the family her mother left behind.

After that, everything fell into place – her family was beyond accepting, even if they gave her shit, more than she’d ever known from her dad’s family and her mom started to get better as she become more true to herself. The family reconciled, helping Riley and Rachel move into a flat in NYC, in Chinatown. Rachel got a job at the American Ministry as an assistant and with the help of some family members and Riley started to prepare for school wizarding school. She’d never been more happy in her life. New York City was her home, more than her podunk shitty town ever had, and she felt a freedom that made her wander the city, she felt a freedom to finally be herself. The only issue then? Riley wanted to go to a school far away from everything, because even if New York was her home, she needed to a break from being in the states. A break from all these people who knew who her family was & really, a place that was her own to find her own in the world. Easily, she picked Hogwarts and was delighted when they accepted her no matter how far she was. Hufflepuff was the perfect house for her, even if she wasn’t the most conventional or stereotypical kind of one.

For years, she pushed away a lot of the pain she felt – she figured her pain was her own, it was selfish of her to dwell on it or even think about it when she had this new fantastic life. Only in her poetry would she divulge her feelings, only her poetry knew that she felt inexplicably lost in the world the more she saw it. Around her 14th birthday, she met two boys in school who were a bit older than her but the twins ended up being her half-brothers – as they found they shared a father. A scumbag father who’d also been horrible to them. It was then that Riley wanted to distance herself from her father even more, fiercely signing and writing her last name as Hayes-Goldstein or just Goldstein when she could get away with it.

[ DEPRESSION MENTION ] The thing was, the reminder of her father, the reminder that he was out there ruining more people’s lives, that he was out there spawning more children really intensely messed with Riley’s head. Why wasn’t she good enough for him to stay? Why couldn’t they have been enough? It was stupid, but the thoughts started to consume her and the lost feeling just got bigger. [ DRINKING, DRUGS MENTION ] Picking up vices like smoking, smoking pot, drinking beer after a long day of work, anything to escape the feeling that she didn’t really have a place in this world. Not one she could see. What was she even going to do with her life after school? What did she have to offer the world? A loneliness she could not shake slept with her at night like any blanket did, every day felt like she was smothered. [ DRUGS, DRINKING, DEPRESSION MENTION END ] Every day there was a new realization that she didn’t know what the hell she wanted to do with her life, that she didn’t really have a place in the world.

After graduating she lived in a tiny shitty flat by herself in muggle London ( but she loved it ) with her cat Bogart the 3rd, worked at a book store in Diagon Alley and focused on her own writing, attempting to get it published. When the Inferi outbreak happened she had just gotten her first non-rejection from a publishing press, at 23, but as fate would have it the world fell apart. When the climate in the Wizarding World of England became a developing war zone, Riley wanted nothing to do with it but because of who she was – because of what her religion reminded of her – she couldn’t just stand idly by. Riley knew that even if she was Neutral, she would fight & die with her friends if need be, but nothing prepared for a zombie outbreak. Riley is beyond fucked up and freaked out by the idea of zombies, finding comfort in her religion but questioning it even further – how could G-d allow this? She did what she could for the effort at Hogwarts, angry, scared, and simply trying to make sure the people she loves survives as well as herself. 

LIKES & INTERESTS: Cult Classics - Movies ( Heathers, Dead Poets Society, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Buellers Day Off, Cruel Intentions, The Breakfast Club, Almost Famous ), Blue raspberry Slushies, Donuts, Judaism, Arctic Monkeys, Lana Del Rey, The Smiths, the color blue, writing poetry, e. e. cummings, art museums, greek mythology, rmemes, Rolling joints on her favorite books, biblical mythology, astronomy, astrology ( she finds it very entertaining in a mocking way and would never admit there’s a small part of her that enjoys it ), Star Wars, black cats, black cats named Boggart, black nail polish, tattoos, carnivals, comic books, ferris wheels, puns, the sea, jellyfish, NPR every morning, going to the beach at twilight, 4 am drives, 5am runs, spliff.

POSITIVE TRAITS: Observant, Cooperative, Strategic, Witty, Intelligent, Resilient, Responsible.

NEGATIVE TRAITS: Reserved, Pessimistic, Sardonic, Secretive, Curious ( it will get her into trouble ), Awkward, Suspicious.

#inferiintro #reduce....reuse...recycle INTROS #let it be known riley misses her memes and netflix the most out of anything

[dalekofchaos]

Villains better suited for The Rise Of Skywalker instead of Palpatine

The problem with Palpatine’s return is it undermines the entire story of the  Prequel and Original Trilogies. Palpatine outliving Anakin, Obi-Wan, Padme, Han Luke and Leia is the ultimate desecration of Star Wars. “it was always the plan to bring Palpatine back” and that is the problem. The mere thought of bringing back Palpatine back undermines Anakin’s sacrifice and redemption. It also undermines the story of The First Order, instead of bothering to make Snoke the big bad or focusing on Kylo Ren as an absolute tyrant as Supreme Leader, they choose to instead go backwards, thus giving a giant fuck you to all 3 trilogies. So here are how I think the villain of Episode IX should have been handled.

Rae Sloane. Rae Sloane founded The First Order! Sloane was loyal to the Empire, so much so, rather than allowing it to cease to exist, she recruited other loyalists and they fled to the Unknown Territories beyond Jakku. She founded the First Order. Together with Hux, she could usurp control of the First Order and become Supreme Leader, which would start a civil war, those loyal to Sloane and those loyal to Kylo. We can have someone who could be a great antagonist to Leia. The founder of The First Order and the mother of the Resistance. What makes Rae a compelling character is the fact that she believes what the Empire is doing is right. In her eyes, the Empire is doing the right thing, purging lawlessness from a galaxy overrun by bureaucrats that care little for the common people. She’s wrong, but like great villains before her, audiences can see where she’s coming from even if they don’t agree with it. Throughout her many appearances in the supplemental Star Wars narratives, she is constantly pushing for the Empire to be “just.” When things start to fall apart after the Battle of Endor, Rae struggles to keep the remnants of the fleet playing by the unspoken rules of warfare and is frustrated to see the Empire careen into backstabbing and incompetence. You can see Rae’s influence in the First Order with its strict hierarchy and minute by-the-books stringency that makes Palpatine’s Empire look positively laissez-faire by comparison. Supreme Leader Rae Sloane would make The First Order a force to be reckoned with and what better way to end it than with the First Order’s founder?

The Grysk. The Grysks were introduced in the new canon novel Thrawn:Alliances. They are what brings Thrawn to the Empire in hopes of co-existing to fight this threat in the Unknown Regions. Grysks are a species living somewhere in the Unknown Regions. Creatures half of myth, whom few have ever seen. It is said that they are nomads, with no fixed home, traveling in spacecraft so numerous they blot out the stars. They are said to be terrifying warriors, overwhelming their opponents by sheer numbers and ferocity. The fact that these intergalactic conquerors are not the main threat in the Sequel Trilogy is baffling. You could've had Ben Solo sense they were coming during his Jedi days and made the ultimate sacrifice to become Kylo Ren and join The First Order because he knew the New Republic was not ready to face such a threat. It wouldn’t make what he was doing the entire trilogy right, but it would make explaiin why he turned and what his motivations are.

Supreme Leader Snoke. Killing off Snoke was a mistake, everyone knows that, so why not reveal he survived. Even Andy Serkis believes he should've lived and why waste such a talented actor? The perfect way to end the saga is to bring Snoke back. I know just how Snoke could have been brought back. The Darth Momin comics could've been the way to bring him back. Darth Momin kept his spirit within his helmet, so who's to say Snoke could not have done the same with his ring? Snoke's ring is from the catacombs of Vader's castle. It was made of gold and was enscribed with glyphs from the Four Sages of Dwartii. Ancient force users and Palpatine had the statues. When Snoke was cut with the lightsaber, everything but his hand with his ring fell off the thrown. It just sits there, untouched. And when Kylo puts the ring on, he becomes possessed by Snoke. It was all apart of the plan to transfer his soul into Kylo Ren, a younger and more powerful vessel.  Or even better, reveal Snoke as Darth Plagueis. It makes sense and ties the three trilogies together. Darth Plagueis was a powerful Sith Lord who could influence the midichlorians to create life and also save others from dying. He taught everything he knew to his apprentice, Sheev Palpatine (aka Darth Sidious), but he eventually lost his power and young Palpatine killed him in his sleep. How could Plagueis not foresee his own demise at the hands of his ambitious apprentice? Why did Plagueis suddenly “lose his power”? The truth is, he didn’t lose his power and he knew Sheev planned to kill him. It was part of the plan. By dying, I believe Darth Plagueis was able to transmit himself into Sheev and assume control of his body, almost like an infectious disease. Ever notice his name? Darth Plagueis. Plague, as in an infectious disease. Darth Plagueis unlocked the secret to immortality by moving from one body to the next, continuing his lifespan through multiple hosts over countless years. Ever wonder why Palpatine was so obsessed with training a powerful young apprentice? Surely he knew that one day the apprentice would want to overthrow him, so why train his own murderer? In Return of the Jedi, Emperor Palpatine continually provokes Luke to strike him down. Why would Palpatine want to be killed if the goal is longevity? Because Emperor Palpatine was assumed by Darth Plagueis and, through his death, he would then be able to transmit himself into a new host body. He wasn’t just looking for an apprentice, he was looking for a new body since Palpatine’s body was growing old. Luke Skywalker was meant to be the next host body for Darth Plagueis. But unfortunately for Plagueis, Darth Vader had a change of heart and defeated the Emperor. Snoke was Plagueis. It’s the only way to make things work. StarWars.com describes Snoke as a seeker of arcane and ancient lore, and the Last Jedi Visual Dictionary shows that he is a collector of rare memorabilia. At some point, Snoke must have found the wreckage of the Death Star on the forest moon Endor, and was infected by Darth Plagueis when he came upon the corpse of Palpatine. Did you ever wonder why Snoke thought it was so important to complete Kylo Ren’s training? It’s because Snoke was Darth Plagueis and he was training his next host body. Plagueis didn’t have a choice but to infect a really old political influencer like Snoke. Kylo was being groomed to become the next host body. Remember the infamous(ly terrible) scene in The Last Jedi where Snoke is “predicting” how Kylo Ren will kill Rey? Wasn’t it a little too obvious? Wouldn’t Snoke have been able to foresee Kylo’s treachery? See through his conflict? It’s because he wasn’t predicting Rey’s death, he predicted his own. He knew Kylo would kill him. He deliberately bullied and provoked Kylo in order to stir his anger into hatred to further fuel his dark side and lead him to completing his training.  So let's say Kylo puts on his ring for his official coronation as Supreme Leader and Plagueis take's full possession of Kylo Ren, Plagueis had an apprentice who has fully cemented himself into the dark side and now a new and more powerful body. Darth Plagueis has everything he needs to way waste to the Resistance and the final destruction of the Jedi.

Kylo Ren and the Knights Of Ren. This entire trilogy has been building up Kylo Ren as the villain and the Knights Of Ren have been built in mystique ever since. Kylo Ren has fully embraced the dark side and The First Order, his story is not of redemption, but condemnation. We need to see his motivations. Show us why he chose The First Order and why he chose to rule it as The Supreme Leader after killing Snoke. Show us his tyranny as the Supreme Leader. We need to see that the Knights Of Ren being completely loyal to Kylo Ren. We need to see them as the only survivors of Luke’s Academy. Show us companionship between Kylo and his knights. We need to see them as being Kylo’s personal army and trump card. Unlike The Praetorian Guards who were faceless Guards who all just die. Let the Knights Of Ren be people and only unmask in the presence of their Supreme Leader and show them as Kylo's only true family in his eyes. We know that the purpose of The Knights Of Ren will destroy The Resistance and finally destroy The Last Jedi. Show us what reasons Kylo has that he thinks he can justify what he’s doing. And show us that Kylo Ren is wrong. Show us that Kylo believes that he’s right, but that his belief doesn’t justify what he’s doing, the people he’s hurt, the lives he’s destroyed, the damage that he thinks will be justified if they can only get what he really wants. Show us that Kylo Ren is wrong, show that his fall will be hard and that he has to suffer with the consequences of his actions.

The climax of the movie should be at Vader's Castle on Mustafar. The new Jedi have risen, The Skywalkers. Rey, Finn, Poe, Rose and Jannah have become the Skywalkers and will face Kylo and the Knights Of Ren. It ends in Kylo's defeat and Rey severs his connection to the force and live the rest of his days out imprisoned for war crimes against the galaxy.

#Anti Lucasfilm #Anti TROS #Anti JJ Abrams #Star Wars #Rae Sloane #The Grysk #Grysk #Grysks #Supreme Leader Snoke #Kylo Ren #Knights Of Ren #The Knights Of Ren