Littlewinnypsyco - Sugar-free Cookie

Ben Solo did N O T H I N G wrong!

Feeling the blues now Game of Thrones has wrapped as a series? Don’t worry, I’ve got your jonsa recovery fic list right here. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the great fic out there, just the best of the best I’ve read. If there are any other fic you think should be on this list that I missed reblog and tag them.

Season 8 Fix Its

In Love and Death We Don’t Decide [Link] | @pardonmymannerssir | Her siblings arrive like leaves carried on a sudden breeze, alighting upon the placidity of her life and casting wide ripples before being swept away again. Their movements are cyclic, changing and shifting like the seasons, but one thing will never change: Winterfell is home.

Come out of hiding (i’m right here beside you) [Link] | @noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth​ | After the death of Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow goes to live beyond the Wall, while Sansa Stark, the newly-named Queen in the North, marries a Dornish prince. Three years later, when Jon finally gathers the courage to return to Winterfell, he finds that while many things have changed, one hasn’t: he’s still in love with Sansa.

We are buried in broken dreams [Link] | @snowsinthenorth​ | Prompt: Sansa and Jon sleeping together before he goes to Dragonstone and when he comes back he finds out she is pregnant. A full on s8 fix-it fic at this point.

Essential Reading

The Cold Inside Our Bones [Link] | @xylodemon | 1,904 | The Wall is no place for a woman, but Jon looks at Sansa’s gaunt cheeks and hollow eyes and knows he will not send her away.

At a Funeral [Link] | @justadram | 5,231 | There’s something about the funeral that makes Sansa need Jon more than ever. Too bad she threw it all away.

What a Disappointment [Link] | @justadram | 7,836 | Sansa Stark and Jon Targaryen are married and neither of them is pleased about it. Set in a world where Rhaegar lives and Jon was raised in King’s Landing as a legitimized bastard.

Tree of Hearts [Link] | @uchihabat​ | 7,239 | It was a secret, shameful thing. The more he denied it, the more unruly it had become within him: a sleeping dragon, around which he tread carefully. There was nothing good about his half-sister, he told himself, but her beauty. “I am not beautiful anymore,” she told him through teeth clenched. “It is ugly inside my heart. I am ruined.”

Subject: La Bamba [Link] | @ghost-of-bambi | 16,441 | Trust Margaery Tyrell to turn Sansa Stark’s 21st birthday party into an exercise in matchmaking.

More fics under the cut.

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Let me get this straight…

They decided to make a movie taking into account feedback and complaints that certain fans had about the first two films in the trilogy. That resulted in a fan service and nostalgia filled mess that made little cohesive sense and has been slammed by critics and fans and is now the worst reviewed Star Wars movie.

They had a stellar cast, in particular Academy Award Nominee Adam Driver, one of the best actors of this generation.

He played Kylo Ren/Ben Solo, arguably the best and most popular character of the ST.

They gave him no dialogue in the second half and completely underused this immensely talented actor yet he still gave it his all and stole the movie.

They killed off his character in the most tragic, unsatisfying way.

Now, a month after the movie was released, this character they killed unceremoniously is all anyone can talk about. The one thing everyone can agree on is that Ben Solo and Adam’s portrayal of him was the highlight of the film and the ST.

#BenSoloChallenge was trending.

In memory of this character over $80k has been raised for Adam’s non profit organisation, Arts in the Armed Forces.

Reylo has skyrocketed in popularity and the fandom has created so much new content.

The Rise of Kylo Ren #1 was one of the best selling comics of 2019, even though it was only released on December 18, two weeks before the end of the year.

Adam Driver has been nominated for an Academy Award for the second year in a row.

No one is talking about the trio, Palpatine’s return, Rey Skywalker or any of the nostalgic fan service. It’s all about Ben Solo.

They in no way did this character’s journey justice. They threw him under the bus for their own selfish reasons even though it didn’t make sense for the narrative. They tried to throw him into a pit never to be seen again but the jokes on them because now Ben Solo is more alive than ever!

I hope Disney realises they made a huge mistake in killing off this character and prioritising their childhood nostalgia over a well written story.

Why the ending of ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ hurts you so damn much right now

In a post from a few days ago, I wrote about how a big part of why Ben Solo’s death is causing intense grief and sadness is the success of the film’s depiction of the Reylo dynamic and Ben’s progression from selfish to selfless love. But there’s more to the ending of the film than Ben’s death, and I would say the scenes that follow and how they are framed carry the bulk of the responsibility for the emotional devastation people are experiencing right now.

Ultimately, what The Rise of Skywalker lacks in its ending is a sense of catharsis - since we see no meaningful emotional resolution for Rey, the viewer is robbed of any real sense of peace or closure. We witness Rey’s stunned shock in the moment that Ben slips away from her, but the emphasis is then immediately shifted to Leia (we are to understand that she only allows herself to fade when her son passes on, with mother and child leaving the world together). 

It’s possible to understand the reasoning behind this (by having Leia’s spirit hold on for so long, suggesting she desperately wanted to be there to guide him into the afterlife, they are clearly attempting to sell the viewer on the extent of her devotion to her child), but it doesn’t work due to the sad reality that the sequel trilogy simply never built up the relationship between Leia and Ben. It’s well known that the original vision for Episode IX was that it would be Leia’s movie, presumably giving her a critical role in her son’s redemption, and it’s clear that J.J. attempted to honour this intention with The Rise of Skywalker despite having very limited footage to work with. In a world where Carrie Fisher were still with us and able to act face-to-face with Adam Driver, convincing us of Leia’s abiding love for her only child and her renewed investment in his redemption (a necessary development, given her despondency regarding Ben in The Last Jedi), the juxtaposition of her ‘passing on’ with Ben’s would have had a much greater emotional impact. 

But as it stands, Ben Solo’s last meaningful human connection, as established over three films, is with Rey - and we never really get to see her mourn for him. This not only makes Ben’s fate sting that much more - it also shortchanges Rey herself. Ben’s joy and relief during as he held Rey in his arms were matched only by her jubilation at finally finding herself able to squeeze the hand of Ben Solo, the man she had loved and seen even when he was at his darkest as Kylo Ren. While Ben at least got to die knowing he had saved the life of the woman he loved, secure in the knowledge that she loved him as he loved her, Rey is left bewildered and alone in the crumbled ruins of her grandfather’s sin. She has nothing left to hold on to other than her almost-lover’s clothes.

When Rey returns to the Resistance base amidst the celebrations, we see her looking utterly grief-stricken as she embraces Finn and Poe. But the shots are fleeting and ambiguous, open to the viewer’s projections due to the chronic indecision that cripples the whole film - who are Finn and Poe crying for? Leia, who they had previously mourned? Snap, who only Poe had any sort of tangible relationship with? And what about Rey? Is she crying for Leia? Ben? Her own parents, now she knows they actually cared for her? All of the aforementioned? This sort of ambiguity is great when we can expect a continuation, an answer, but this is meant to be an ending. In view of that, it’s a serious problem that we don’t even know who our leads are expressing sadness for. 

This issue is only compounded by the final sequence on Tatooine. Rey travels there with BB-8 alone, undercutting the sense that she has found her family and belonging with the Resistance - she chooses to travel alone with a droid, which is a particularly striking decision when it’s remembered that Rey is shown repeatedly identifying with the suffering of droids throughout the film (specifically, she recognises how D-0 is skittish because he has been treated badly by a past owner). The decisions made surrounding Rey on Tatooine recall how she was in the earliest sequences of The Force Awakens, sledding down slops and trekking the desert with BB-8 - it really feels like she has regressed, becoming a child again instead of achieving maturity. This impression is heightened by the characters she is shown to interact with across the sequence - specifically an extremely rude old woman, who demands her name, and the benevolent Force ghosts of Luke and Leia, who gaze upon her contentedly from a distance. 

All of this creates dissonance when viewed in relation to the culmination of Rey’s dynamic with Ben, since we are seeing a young woman who has had her first great love and counterpart in the Force snatched away from her having that massive loss completely erased. Instead of giving her space to grieve and recover, Rey’s final scene is used to serve the legacies of the heroes of a previous generation. When she assumes the Skywalker name, she is also assuming responsibility for the Skywalker legacy. The Skywalker legacy is also Ben’s legacy, but the film has no apparent interest in reminding the viewer of that - there is no allusion to Ben, let alone an appearance by his Force ghost. It’s a bizarre and baffling decision because it’s essentially J.J. Abrams undermining the mythic power of his own characters. Their victories and losses are brushed into the margins of the film, sacrificed at the altar of phoney nostalgia.

I wish J.J. had made different decisions and quite simply made a different film, but he did not. However, I am optimistic. I am already seeing fans, particularly female fans, recognise the omissions and gaps in the narrative, taking steps to fill them with their writing, art and discussion. Transformative fandom has rarely been more critical than it is right now, and I’m grateful to everyone that is, to mangle a quote from J.J. Abrams’ own movie, beginning to make things right again.

Why Ben Solo Alive Was Cut Out In Editing Very Last Minute

and where is this scene: Allegedly the ending Daisy said only her, Naomi and Driver knew

Why the cast was describing it as: hopeful, and believing you would leave the theatre feeling happier. A satisfying end to the Skywalker’s they said.

I love how bitter you are about Zutara b/c honestly like same. So much same

F O R E V E R  B I T T E R.

i mean…

classic ‘enemies to lovers’ beginning

also ‘opposites attract’ to the max…. “you rise with the moon, i rise with the sun” coME ONNNN

aLSO both have SECRET IDENTITIES that mirror eaCH OTHER AS HERO / ANTI-HERO whose COLOR THEMES are the OTHER ONES main COLOR JFC

“zuko kept her necklace to track her” UH-HUH “TRACKING” PURPOSES suuuuuuuuure (this little moment for sure launched a thousand fics of him starting at it wondering why he didn’t want to give it back uGH my heart)

um LOCKED TOGETHER IN A CAVE?? WHERE THEY START TO UNDERSTAND WHERE EACH OTHER ARE COMING FROM / HOW THEY HAVE STRUGGLED AND/OR MESSED UP??? AND HOW ZUKO HAS CHANGED???

um um uMMMM then he betrays her / them and it is heARTBREAKING and aAAAANGST AF (which is just *kisses fingers* shipping perfection)

and tHEN zuko EARNS (***EARNSSSS****) her forgiveness for all of his mistakes and then teaches HER about how to know the difference between justice and revenge…THEY COMPLIMENT EACH OTHER SO WELL DAMNIT

zuko becomes part of their Found Family and lOOOK AT THEM FIGHTING PERFECTLY AND COMPLIMENTARY IN SYNC AHHHHH

and then.

AND THEN.

AAAAANNNNNDDDD.

TTTTHHHHEEEEENNNNNNN.

This sequence in the finale. This stunning, emotional, heartbreaking sequence that in addition to be just UNBELIEVABLE animation also has Azula pinpoint that Katara is a WEAK POINT for Zuko and targets that weak point and zuko juMPS IN FRONT OF A DEADLY LIGHTENING BOLT TO SAVE KATARA I CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANT

EVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN

BELIEEEEEEEEEEEVE

them my goSH !!!!!!!

If there is ONE ship I will fight to the death for, it is them. 

we. WERE. R O B B E D.

awwww, what a cute reunion! I'm sure this will last and they will live happily ever after. (click smaller images to see them bigger!)

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Contrast: A Zutara Coloring Book is OUT NOW and free to download! Grab your copy here and start coloring! @zutaracoloringbook

Here is my piece, Fragile Line. I’m so happy to have been a small part of this wonderful project. 🤗

The finished product is absolutely beautiful y’all. ZK fandom, I hope you enjoy, and don’t forget to tag us artists with your colored pieces ❤️‍🔥

Just a dream.