I’ve Got You Under My Skin

THIS IS PERFECT

This is how I always imagined a kiss between Batman and joker would be, this is my favorite video right now and I’m fuckin shameless 💓👏

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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how 7x05 should had went

jon: *reads the message that says arya and bran are on winterfell*

jon: *gets on a boat*

davos: your grace, what are you doing?

jon: my siblings are back on winterfell

davos: your grace, you can't leave...

jon: it means you can adopt them

davos: *jumps to the boat*

gendry: what are both of you doing?

jon: my brother bran and my sister arya are back on winterfell

gendry: arya is alive?

jon: yes

gendry: *jumps to the boat*

gendry: four years of rowing are worth for something

Final Thoughts on Mons(TROS)ity

I’m not even just upset that Ben died. That’s the rotten cherry on top of how every single character in the entire Skywalker Saga was fucked up in this film.

As much as I love Rey, the fight against Palpatine was most certainly Ben’s. This man has been mentally torturing him and manipulating him since he was in the fucking womb. He poisoned his relationships with his family. He convinced him that he had to kill his own father in order to ever be or mean anything. Yet he gets yeeted off a cliff in the final fucking battle. He doesn’t get revenge for all that’s been done to him and the past two generations of his family before him. Not to mention he only holds the legacy saber for all of 3 minutes at most. He doesn’t even set foot on the Millennium Falcon or talk to Uncle Lando and Uncle Chewie. He doesn’t get to hear the real voice of his hero/grandfather. He’s a mentally ill abuse victim that ended up killing himself. That leaves a really shitty taste in my mouth despite the fact that he did it for the girl he loves.

Am I really supposed to believe that Rey being sold into slavery to an extremely abusive guy on a desert wasteland is a good thing??? And what about the message that she made herself who she is and the Force chose her to be powerful because she is strong and compassionate despite how terribly she’s been treated her whole life? That she didn’t get her power from a legacy bloodline, but from herself?? Nope. She’s powerful because she is a Palpatine. And despite surviving in the desert all her life so that she could someday have a family, she ends up all alone in a different desert. Exactly where she began, but now she has trauma and the loss of her soulmate to deal with. Fuck everything.

Why didn’t Leia train Ben herself if Luke had trained her? She gave her son away when he was a kid because she just didn’t have time to deal with her only child while he was struggling with depression and anxiety? His powers reacting to his inner turmoil was just too inconvenient to her career?? Yeah, sure, totally sounds like Leia Skywalker Organa Solo to me.

Finn being a former stormtrooper that’s defected to the resistance is more of an after thought than a real plot line?? This is something we’ve never seen before. We’ve seen desert kids become powerful Jedi. We’ve seen powerful Jedi fall to the dark side and “redeem themselves” through death. We’ve seen Palpatine be defeated and killed before. Finn’s story was fresh and interesting and in the end all he does is make eyes at Rey and provide occasional comic relief.

What the hell is the point of Poe’s story? He doesn’t really have one. He was supposed to die in the first film and it shows because he hasn’t served much purpose at all since the first 10 minutes of TFA besides being attractive and acting like an ass most of the time. So inspiring.

Rose barely exists in this movie. She’s more of a cameo than anything. Her beautifully heartbreaking story about her sister, her kindness in the face of evil and destruction, her strong will and determination to do the right thing, her passion for justice, and her inspiration to a whole new generation of rebels and Jedi are all thrown out the window.

Luke, Han, and Leia all died so that Ben could live and finally feel light and happiness in his life. Well that didn’t work. He died. And why would Rey take the name Skywalker instead of Solo? She was in love with Ben Solo, her personal hero is Han Solo, and her real Jedi master was Leia Organa Solo. The Millennium Falcon is her ship and her best friend is Chewie. But she goes with fucking Skywalker?? Ok.

All the Jedi rushed to the aid of Rey in her moment of need but not a single one of them could be bothered to ever help Ben throughout his entire life despite being the grandson of the Chosen One. No one ever raised so much as a finger when he needed help, not even his grandfather that he loved and admired deeply to the point of following him down the path of his mistakes.

Anakin couldn’t talk to him and convince him to stay good or return to the light, but he gives his power to Rey and tells her to Rise?? A girl he doesn’t know at all??? Obi Wan “BEN” Kenobi couldn’t help and teach the child named after him?? A name that is synonymous with HOPE in SW. What a joke.

The Chosen One means nothing. The Skywalker bloodline means absolutely fucking nothing even though this entire universe was built around them. They aren’t the Balancers of the Force. They aren’t super powerful Force demigods despite having the Force literally woven into their DNA because of how Anakin was born, not just in midi-chlorian form. They’re all dead. The “Rise of Skywalker” indeed. Cruel irony at its finest.

In conclusion, this is how I feel about the movie. Take it away George:

JJ singlehandedly ruined an entire lifetime of lore and storytelling for who the fuck knows or cares why. Rian is the one who truly respected SW and handled the lore beautifully while also introducing new concepts to the franchise.

I will always love Reylo, Star Wars, and the Skywalkers. I hope they get Ben back in canon books or something, but I’ll always be bitter about the awful way every single fucking character in the Skywalker Saga has been so completely disrespected.

This fandom is wonderful and very inspiring and I can’t wait to see what gorgeous art and fanfics y’all come up with. I’m truly so grateful to be part of something so much bigger than myself; something JJ Abrams will never understand.

Completely forgot to post this sketch here. I got bogged down by the school year coming to a close and finishing off my Thesis and Thesis show. But drawing for these two definitely helped me keep my head on straight in the midst of everything.

A comic, loosely based on a real conversation

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON (2022-) S02E06 | "Smallfolk"

#24 seconds of happiness

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.

Have you read these KakaSaku Classics?

So much exciting stuff is going on in the fandom these days, but have you had the chance to read these old multi-chapter KakaSaku “classics”? All were written in 2010 or before and were plenty popular (just check out their review counts!).

Will of Fire by cynchick (M, 222k words, complete)

Respect and Understanding by ronny-of-yore  (M, 93K, complete)

His Fault by ronny-of-yore (M, 52k, complete)

Feeling You by cutecrazyice (M, 65k, complete)

Dirty Deeds by Serenanna (M, 250k, incomplete)

Fated by leafygirl, @leafytoo (M, 125k, complete)

A Lesson in Chemistry by leafygirl (M, 73k, complete)

A Poor Imitation by leafygirl (M, 89k, complete)

The Nature of the Game by leafygirl (M, 112k, complete)

The Last Hirameki by leafygirl (M,168k, complete)

Coffee Shop by leafygirl (M, 28k, incomplete)

Duty Before Honor by Silvershine, @silvershiner (M, 157k, complete)

The Window by Silvershine (M, 165k, complete)

Seven Days by Silvershine (M, 69k, incomplete)

House of Crows by Silvershine (M, 401k, complete)

Scarlet Scroll by Silvershine (M, 95k, incomplete)

Simple Things by Caitiy (T, 224k, complete)

Stripped Bare by J-Pop Princess (M, 295k, complete)

Some Light Reading by J-Pop Princess (M, 46k, complete)

Double Edged by nimblnymph (M, 347k, complete)

Winner Takes All by clearheart (M, 98k, complete)

Underwear by thatreevesgirl (M, 47k, incomplete)

A Marriage Inconvenienced by lulu42, @itslulu42 (M, 101k, complete)

Sinch in Time by Blade Rewind (M, 298k, complete)

Fade In by hasu86 (M, 69k, complete)

What the New Year Brings by Shippertrish (M, 140k, complete)

Which have you read? Which do you want to check out now? Let me know! And don’t forget to leave reviews for these OG KakaSaku authors! :D

Thanks to @raizagabriel for the beautiful gif.