Nutjob427 - Brain Likes This

Luke Skywalker is proof that vulnerability and gentleness can be sexy as hell.

Art by Elliot Lang

Indeed

did I ever mention that I know someone whose family owned a zombie dog because that’s some real shit that I get to delight with at parties

Amazon is being sued by the FTC and 17 states for being an illegal monopoly

AP News

Amazon sued by FTC and 17 states over allegations it inflates online prices and overcharges sellers

The Federal Trade Commission and 17 state attorney generals filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon on Tuesday, alleging the e-commerce be

Cal wakes up from a nap. Oops, fell asleep on the couch again. He's so dozy, so comfy, maybe he'll drift off again and...

Wait.

Something feels different about his head. He stirs, brushing the blanket pulled up to his chin.

"Shhh. Go back to sleep." It's Merrin. She must be sitting next to his head. "I am not finished yet."

Her fingers are in his hair, brushing through and separating small handfuls into trios. The feeling is familiar, a distant memory from so long ago. He feels himself relaxing. "Why're you braiding my hair?" he asks, although it sounds more like "whyybraidnmuhheyh?"

Somehow, Merrin interprets his mushy words. "It is shiny. And pretty."

"S'not."

"Oh, yes, it is." There's a gentle tug as she deftly braids. "Fiery. Like my magicks."

"S'green."

"Hush, Cal. Let me finish."

Cal zones out, drifting into memories of Master Tapal patiently plaiting his braid, tying it off with the finest of thread. It never seemed possible for someone with such huge hands, and yet Master Tapal managed it every time. Sometimes he would tug on it to get Cal's attention. Other times, if he couldn't grab the hood of Cal's robes fast enough, he'd grab Cal's braid instead, and that never failed to bring Cal to a sudden and complete halt - usually before he wandered into traffic in the Brave's landing bay. He smiles at the memories, at the warmth, the tradition, the simplicity.

Merrin probably isn't going in for simplicity. Maybe he'll look like Cere did in that echo he picked up from Trilla's lightsaber. She looked so awesome with her hair like that. Could he grow his hair out that long? His pictures it - autumn reds, oranges and golds trailing all the way down his back, tied in intricate braids...

...who is he kidding? He'd sling it back in a ponytail and be done with it.

He giggles to himself.

"You are strange, Cal," Merrin tells him.

She has no idea.

A few minutes later, Merrin's fingers pull away. "Done. You may wake up. BD? You can come and look now."

Familiar feet tippy-tappy their way over. BD gives a long, slow beep of awe, and then the light of his scanner shines through Cal's eyelids.

Pretty, BD declares.

"I am not pretty," Cal grumbles.

"You are. You are a pretty princess," Merrin says. "BD, quick, make a recording."

"Excuse you, I'm no princess, I am a queen," Cal corrects.

"Forgive us, Your Majesty," Merrin says.

Curiosity wins and he opens his eyes, sits, frees his hands from the blanket, and explores his head. What he finds is a series of small, tight braids encircling his head - much like a crown. He leans forward and catches a glimpse of his reflection on the table. "Huh."

"You like it?" Merrin asks. "Cere explained to me how to do it, but it is easier to practice on somebody else."

"I do like it," Cal says. "It's really practical. Keeps it out of my eyes, too."

The hatch opens. Cere and Greez board the ship, both carrying several grocery bags. Cere clocks Cal first, nodding in approval. Greez does a double-take, puts down his bags, and moves in for a closer inspection.

"Well?" Cal asks, moving his head to really show it off.

"I love it!" Greez gushes. "I mean I really love it. I want it. I want that style right now."

"When you have more hair, I will teach you how," Merrin says.

He grins. "It's a deal. You heard it here, folks, Greezy is officially growing his hair out."

Plot armor but it’s Bruce Wayne’s wealth.

Bruce is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce does not want to be one of the richest men in world.

He starts by implementing high starting salaries and full health care coverages for all levels at Wayne Enterprises. This in vastly improves retention and worker productivity, and WE profits soar. He increases PTO, grants generous parental and family leave, funds diversity initiatives, boosts salaries again. WE is ranked “#1 worker-friendly corporation”, and productively and profits soar again.

Ok, so clearly investing his workers isn’t the profit-destroying doomed strategy his peers claim it is. Bruce is going to keep doing it obviously (his next initiative is to ensure all part-time and contractors get the same benefits and pay as full time employees), but he is going to have to find a different way to dump his money.

But you know what else is supposed to be prohibitively expensive? Green and ethical initiatives. Yes, Bruce can do that. He creates and fund a 10 year plan to covert all Wayne facilities to renewable energy. He overhauls all factories to employ the best environmentally friendly practices and technologies. He cuts contracts with all suppliers that engage in unethical employment practices and pays for other to upgrade their equipment and facilities to meet WE’s new environmental and safety requirements. He spares no expense.

Yeah, Wayne Enterprises is so successful that they spin off an entire new business arm focused on helping other companies convert to environmentally friendly and safe practices like they did in an efficient, cost effective, successful way.

Admittedly, investing in his own company was probably never going to be the best way to get rid of his wealth. He slashes his own salary to a pittance (god knows he has more money than he could possibly know what to do with already) and keeps investing the profits back into the workers, and WE keeps responding with nearly terrifying success.

So WE is a no-go, and Bruce now has numerous angry billionaires on his back because they’ve been claiming all these measures he’s implementing are too expensive to justify for decades and they’re finding it a little hard to keep the wool over everyone’s eyes when Idiot Softheart Bruice Wayne has money spilling out his ears. BUT Bruce can invest in Gotham. That’ll go well, right?

Gotham’s infrastructure is the OSHA anti-Christ and even what little is up to code is constantly getting destroyed by Rogue attacks. Surely THAT will be a money sink.

Except the only non-corrupt employer in Gotham city is….Wayne Enterprises. Or contractors or companies or businesses that somehow, in some way or other, feed back to WE. Paying wholesale for improvement to Gotham’s infrastructure somehow increases WE’s profits.

Bruce funds a full system overhaul of Gotham hospital (it’s not his fault the best administrative system software is WE—he looked), he sets up foundations and trusts for shelters, free clinics, schools, meal plans, day care, literally anything he can think of.

Gotham continues to be a shithole. Bruce Wayne continues to be richer than god against his Batman-ingrained will.

Oh, and Bruice Wayne is no longer viewed as solely a spoiled idiot nepo baby. The public responds by investing in WE and anything else he owns, and stop doing this, please.

Bruce sets up a foundation to pay the college tuition of every Gotham citizen who applies. It’s so successful that within 10 years, donations from previous recipients more than cover incoming need, and Bruce can’t even donate to his own charity.

But by this time, Bruce has children. If he can’t get rid of his wealth, he can at least distribute it, right?

Except Dick Grayson absolutely refuses to receive any of his money, won’t touch his trust fund, and in fact has never been so successful and creative with his hacking skills as he is in dumping the money BACK on Bruce. Jason died and won’t legally resurrect to take his trust fund. Tim has his own inherited wealth, refuses to inherit more, and in fact happily joins forces with Dick to hack accounts and return whatever money he tries to give them. Cass has no concept of monetary wealth and gives him panicked, overwhelmed eyes whenever he so much as implies offering more than $100 at once. Damian is showing worrying signs of following in his precious Richard’s footsteps, and Babs barely allows him to fund tech for the Clocktower. At least Steph lets him pay for her tuition and uses his credit card to buy unholy amounts of Batburger. But that is hardly a drop in the ocean of Bruce’s wealth. And she won’t even accept a trust fund of only one million.

Jason wins for best-worst child though because he currently runs a very lucrative crime empire. And although he pours the vast, vast majority of his profits back into Crime Alley, whenever he gets a little too rich for his tastes, he dumps the money on Bruce. At this point, Bruce almost wishes he was being used for money laundering because then he’s at least not have the money.

So children—generous, kindhearted, stubborn till the day they die the little shits, children—are also out.

Bruce was funding the Justice League. But then finances were leaked, and the public had an outcry over one man holding so much sway over the world’s superheroes (nevermind Bruce is one of those superheroes—but the public can’t know that). So Bruce had to do some fancy PR trickery, concede to a policy of not receiving a majority of funds from one individual, and significantly decrease his contributions because no one could match his donations.

At his wits end, Bruce hires a team of accounts to search through every crinkle and crevice of tax law to find what loopholes or shortcuts can be avoided in order to pay his damn taxes to the MAX.

The results are horrifying. According to the strictest definition of the law, the government owes him money.

Bruce burns the report, buries any evidence as deeply as he can, and organizes a foundation to lobby for FAR higher taxation of the upper class.

All this, and Wayne Enterprises is happily chugging along, churning profit, expanding into new markets, growing in the stock market, and trying to force the credit and proportionate compensation on their increasingly horrified CEO.

Bruce Wayne is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce Wayne will never not be one of the richest men in the world.

But by GOD is he trying.

okay so I’m having a lot of feelings about the parallels between Anakin and Bode’s fall to the dark side and I need a place to scream about it so here it is

putting the rest under a cut because I already KNOW I’m about to go off

alright and before I go any further, I want to clarify that I don’t imagine the writers for Survivor sat down and went “hmm what kind of character can we make to rival the tragedy of Anakin? I know! we’ll just make the same character… but different…” I just think that the general path to the Dark Side tends to be similar for a lot of people. there just happens to be a lot of overlap for these two characters specifically. and if the similarities WERE intentional. well. honestly that would be very Star Wars-core of the writers. the overlapping rings and parallels between trilogies has been important to the storytelling of Star Wars from the beginning.

moving right along tho. I think it’s impossible to say when their actual journey to the Dark Side TRULY begins (I imagine Anakin growing up a slave and Bode living through the Purge might have been the whisper of wind that eventually blew over the first domino) but I think it’s safe to say that the Big Moment for Anakin was when his mother died in his arms. and his heart was so filled with grief and anger that he was driven to revenge. not just the men… but the women and children too. we all know the story.

and it’s harder to know for sure with Bode, since we don’t actually see his reaction, but I’d wager losing his wife had a similar effect on him. even Kata herself says that losing her mother changed her father. and we know from the post-game Force echoes that, aside from protecting Kata, Bode’s work for Denvik was also to learn the identity of the Inquisitor who killed his wife. he’s been living with this burning seed of rage in his heart, this desire for vengeance even though revenge is not the Jedi way.

so then you just have these two people, living with the GUILT of not making it in time to save the one they loved. these two people who have been so traumatized by their loss, that the thought of losing anyone else is unbearable. the love that these two hold for those still living that are closest to them— for Anakin it’s Padme, for Bode it’s Kata— is corrupted by fear and turns into attachment. slowly but surely, they are consumed by one impossible goal: protect Padme/Kata AT ALL COSTS.

enter The Cost. at a certain point, Anakin becomes convinced that Palpatine is the only one who can help him save Padme. he’s willing to throw away EVERYTHING ELSE for that one chance. he’s willing to kill younglings, he’s willing to execute the entire Jedi order for it. he’s willing to break Padme’s heart. meanwhile, Bode becomes convinced that Tanalorr is his one salvation for Kata and he’ll do whatever he has to in order to get her there. he’s willing to kill Cordova, he’s willing to lead the entire Hidden Path to their doom for it. he’s willing to trap Kata in a life of isolation— as long as she’s still ALIVE.

and all throughout this, these two have formed this brotherhood with a certain someone. a bond formed through the hell of fighting a seemingly endless war. for Anakin, it’s Obi Wan. for Bode, it’s Cal. it’s so interesting to me to think about the last interaction these two pairs had with each other before Everything Happened. Anakin seeing Obi Wan off before he takes on Grievous. Dooku was already dead. after all this fighting, the war was SO CLOSE to being over. Obi Wan tells Anakin he’s grown to be a greater Jedi than he could ever hope to be. and then contrasting Bode’s last night with Cal. after all this fighting, they’re so close to finally being SAFE. the guilt of what Bode’s about to do weighs so heavily on him, yet Cal can only see a brighter future. he tells Bode that they couldn’t have done it without him. these quiet moments of connection before they lose everything.

then everything just comes to a head when these brother figures finally confront Anakin/Bode. Anakin flies off to a fiery hellscape. Bode flies off to a lush paradise. they both believe they’ve left their brother behind for good. and then Padme unintentionally brings Obi Wan to Anakin. Kata very deliberately takes Cal to Bode. I think it’s at this moment where both Anakin and Bode go from agitated to full on enraged. there’s such a clear moment where the both of them snap and it’s no longer about “protecting” their loved one, it’s about destroying this one person who stands in their way. Anakin Force chokes Padme. Bode lashes out with the Force at Kata TWICE. (At one point, Kata may have even fallen to her death if Merrin hadn’t been there to save her.)

the tragic ending to both Anakin and Bode’s story happens when they lose themselves and fight to kill their brother. the tragic ending to their story happens when they become the very danger they fought so hard to protect their loved one from.

I think there are two main differences between Bode and Anakin’s story. the first is from an audience perspective. I mentioned before that we don’t actually SEE a lot of Bode’s story leading up to his fall. Anakin, however, we see from the very beginning. except we KNOW he’s doomed. we KNOW he’s going to end up as Darth Vader. we just don’t know HOW. and it’s heartbreaking in its own way to see Anakin be so fundamentally GOOD knowing how he’s going to end up. Bode on the other hand…

from the beginning, Bode is just a guy. he’s Cal’s new friend. he’s a great fighter and he immediately fits right in with Cal’s family of strays. you have no idea what’s coming. personally, when I first played, my only suspicion of him was that he was beginning to doubt Cal’s vision of Tanalorr. and I thought maybe he’s right? a running theme of the game is that Cal just doesn’t know how to STOP FIGHTING. perhaps Bode just thinks this supposed safe haven from the Empire isn’t the place to… continue the fight against the Empire. and even after Bode blatantly betrays everyone, the extent of his motivation wasn’t clear to me until the confrontation on Nova Garon. before then, I was doubting everything he’d ever said. did he actually have a daughter named Kata? was his name even really Bode? these kinds of questions never come up in Anakin’s story. we know everything about him and WHY he’s doing it. but I think this unknown factor around Bode is what makes his betrayal just… sting more. it makes US want to shout, “you were Cal’s brother, Bode! he loved you!”

and finally the second difference which is from a narrative perspective. and it’s the fact that, at the very end, Anakin DID return to the light. Bode never got that. and I think it mostly hinged on the fact that people still BELIEVED in the good in Anakin. it was one of Padme’s dying words. there’s still good in him. Luke was ready to DIE for that belief. Luke absolutely REFUSED to give into fear, to strike down the Emperor or his father in anger. at the most critical moment, Luke resisted the Dark Side. he chose love and THAT’s what saved Anakin and brought him back to the light.

for Bode… he didn’t have that. I’m not sure if anyone really believed in him by the end. which is… understandable. as I said earlier, I myself was questioning everything about Bode after his betrayal. I can’t imagine how Cal, who trusted Bode with HIS LIFE, would feel. Merrin herself told Cal it was kill or be killed. Cal even admitted that he has so much hatred for Bode. hell, he even straight up “embraces the darkness” to win his fight against Bode. Cal gave Bode multiple chances to surrender, but his motivation to give those chances were all about Kata. it was all about how Cal and Merrin know what it’s like to lose their whole family and don’t want Kata to go through that. not once does Cal say “I know this isn’t you, Bode. I know there’s still good inside you.”

this isn’t a criticism on Cal, by the way. he’s walked a very different path than Luke. he’s at a very different point in his journey than Luke was when he confronted Vader. Cal was (understandably) in the middle of battling the Dark Side in HIMSELF at the time. he wasn’t in a place where he could pull someone ELSE from that path. and honestly, I think it just makes this story that much more heartbreaking. maybe there WAS a chance for Bode, but the stars just, very tragically, weren’t aligned for him.

I don’t really have a conclusion for all these thoughts, just that it’s so fascinating that their stories are so similar despite such different circumstances. it’s so fascinating that they still somehow ended the same yet so differently. I’m really going to be thinking about Bode’s story for a long time. I haven’t felt this way about a character’s arc in… awhile. it’s such peak Star Wars to me, to be honest, and it’s really disappointing knowing that the audience for this story is limited to just gamers and people who enjoy watching gaming videos. it really deserves the attention of a mainstream movie, in my opinion.