Okay, so we all know that Poe went around the Resistance base telling everyone about the Handsome Stormtrooper that saved his life – but what about BB-8? Imagine BB-8 coming back to base and promptly telling everyone about the good brave human who saved his Poe. This is Finn he is so lovely, he is the best of all humans, look at him, be nice to him – he’s a little bit slow – doesn’t understand droid at all but he’s a quick learner.
And imagine ALL THE DROIDS falling into line, looking after Finn, and Finn is just so nice to them because he remembers what it’s like to be treated like you’re nothing, like you don’t have a personality. And they just adopt him: Finn the best human, they designate him, and R2-D2 – battle-hardened war vet that he is – teaches him binary but teaches him the bastardised sweary binary that all the older droids speak and BB-8 is innocent and oblivious and C3-PO is scandalised because Finn is going round saying things like fuck me this is hot in this little whistle-beep.
And whenever Finn sits down he’s surrounded by happy young droids who absolutely adore him, and he is just so nice and all the droids go out of their way to do things for him.
And yes. Give me sweet lovely Finn with his droid ducklings.
OMG I NEED THIS ARTED. Just. Finn. Droids. WHAT ARE YOU DOING FINN CAN WE HELP WE’LL JUST WATCH IF YOU DON’T NEED US. FINN IS SLIGHTLY THIRSTY. FIND WATER.
If y’all ever thought Minerva was anything short of stunning when she was young, you have been fooled. This witch was a heart breaker, and could spell circles around anyone. Brains and beauty with that lovely lady.
ok but
have you ever googled
a young dame maggie smith
Ok, but didn’t JK Rowling say that she has this whole unused back story where McGonagall had a tragic muggle love in her past?
When Bucky was missing in action, Steve thought he was dead. But it’s interesting to consider that Steve went missing, too, and Bucky didn’t know what had happened to him.
Steve signed up for a secret government experiment. I doubt they let him have contact with anyone he knew, or tell anyone where he was going. And when he became Captain America, his real identity was hidden. So Steve Rogers just disappeared. Letters from Steve must have abruptly stopped. Bucky would have thought something terrible had happened to Steve, like he was arrested for forging documents, or he picked a fight with the wrong person. Maybe Steve wrote Bucky once, to say he was accepted into the army, and then Bucky never received another letter. He would have assumed the worst.
In this moment, it looks like Bucky is realizing Steve is really alive.
Everyone writes Sam as the replacement Bucky but guys, Bucky is trying to go into hiding because there are now TWO Steves on the loose.
TWO of them.
The only thing that makes him seem relatively sane is the lack of super abilities but anyone who thinks it’s a reasonable idea to attach a LIVE JET ENGINE ten inches from his asshole is nOT SANE.
Bucky went into cryogenic sleep because there were two Steves on the loose. He spent an hour or two with Sam, saw where this was going, and was just like “I’m out.”
Those two are probably giving Clint an ulcer right now. And being a terrible influence on Scott and Wanda.
I wonder if anyone ever told Clint who T’Challa is. T’Challa seems like he actually would be a Responsible One, but he’s got his own country to deal with so he doesn’t usually get involved unless it’s potentially world ending.
They fix up Bucky within months of putting him under because Sam and Steve haven’t sat still for even like, ten??? minutes?
T’Challa raises him from the artic like uhm, you gonna need to go collect ya mans.
Bucky is like “Oh gOD what did Steve do????”
“No not that one, he’s been too Sad and Lost™ without you but the cute one has decided to try his hand at decentralizing the corrupt governance of Klaegia like, four hours plane ride south. Come on the jet’s already packed”
The Dora Milaje have to keep Bucky from smashing the refrost button to go back under he’s Done.
Sam Wilson met Steve THREE TIMES and was like, “oh you want to overthrow the American government great LET’S DO THIS.” Sam Wilson’s first act in that effort was to suggest that they steal his backpack jet, right from where he KNEW IT WAS GOING TO BE, almost as if he’d kept his eye on it the whole time and was maybe, y’know, planning to nab it himself at some point. Sam Wilson never met a superassassin or a king or a government agent that he didn’t want to sass and antagonize.
Sam Wilson is not the Sane One. You have been lied to.
“no not that one”
L M A O ACTUALLY I HAVE AN ENTIRE SOULMATE AU THEORY BASED ON THE FACT THAT SAM AND STEVE ARE BASICALLY TWINSIES AND BUCKY SPENDS HIS ENTIRE LIFE LIKE “WHAT IF THAT RILEY GUY HAD SURVIVED AND I HAD SOMEONE TO HELP ME RUN HERD ON THESE DUMB ASSES”
ok so Leia was heading to Obi-wan before the Battle of Scarif, and before she ever knew she or anyone would have the plans. It wasn’t just a last resort, “vader’s bout to get us we gotta go somewhere” decision. the fact that she was going to Obi-wan is probably the reason she was with the rebels and not on Alderaan.
so think in the context that a) Bail was knowingly sending his daughter, who has the genes of one of the most powerful force users ever, to go get a Jedi, b) Bail knew that he was sending the biological child of Anakin to Anakin’s former master and friend, c) Obi-wan definitely would knows who Leia is, d) Bail knows that Obi-wan is keeping an eye on Luke.
I’m not saying Bail Organa knowingly sent his force sensitive daughter to the only fully trained Jedi he knew how to get in touch with and also her force sensitive brother, but Bail Organa knowingly sent his force sensitive daughter to the only fully trained Jedi he knew how to get in touch with and also her force sensitive brother. Because he and Mon Mothma decided things had gotten to this point.
Someone in the tags said “Bail didn’t send the plans to Obi-wan. Bail sent Leia.”
YES. The Death Star plans were a last minute bonus. Bail’s actual plans for dealing with the Empire and the Death Star was LEIA
Could you imagine being Bail and making that decision, though?
There he is, sitting on basically the last hope of the galaxy. Or rather, she’s sitting on him, because she’s two-and-a-half years old and her adopted father’s shoulders are the very best place in the world. They’re listening from Alderaan as Palpatine announces that the senate will be stripped of even more power, that the never-ending series of emergencies across the galaxy will continue.
Time feels broken, somehow. The planet rotates, the sun rises and sets, but the galaxy is frozen in a slow slide into oblivion.
Not yet, is all he can think. He’s working with the young Senator from Chandrila, spinning the wheels, trying to buy more time. Years and years more time.
~
There he is, introducing his family to a man with a black uniform and absolute control of the sector. Leia is six, and looks up at him suddenly serious, a far cry from her normal mischievous self.
“And my daughter, Leia,” he says, while his thoughts race between please don’t question her adoption and please get off my planet and the Jedi were insane to start training so young, she isn’t ready.
Bail has trouble sleeping. He’s waiting for a signal from Obi-Wan, that the time has come for him to give up his daughter. It doesn’t appear.
~
There he is, watching as his dark-eyed daughter hurls a datapad across the room in a sudden fit of rage. He’s tried to teach her peace and calm, she’s learned the watchful patience and silent stalk of a hunter.
She’s nine. He hasn’t beaten her at Dejarik in a year.
He takes her for walks, out into the parts of Alderaan where the downtrodden live and the refugees gather. He shows her what suffering is, what the Empire means. He tries to avoid thinking about her father. He tries to give her the education he thinks Jedi needed more of.
~
There he is, lying to Tarkin’s face as they walk through the halls of the palace. Leia, thirteen, is following them. Bail knows it. Tarkin does not.
See who he really is, Bail is wishing, even as he says words that toe the line of compliance with Tarkin’s demands.
The Rebellion is starting to rise. He keeps telling Mon Mothma he needs more time, that they’re moving too fast. He doesn’t tell her why.
~
There he is, welcoming his daughter back from Coruscant. She’s a rising star, already accumulating power as a junior legislator. She’s fifteen – one more year before she can run for Senate, and he knows she’s already planning it.
She has staff now, and her pretty smiles and polite manners almost perfectly hide the casuality with which she issues orders.
He’s not sure if she reminds him more of her mother or father.
Obi-Wan remains silent. Bail’s agents tell him that Tatooine is quiet, a backwater, no Imperial activity. He doesn’t find it reassuring. He waits.
~
There he is, talking to Mon Mothma. She’s laughing, charmed by his daughter, the Senator, the rebel. It’s a rare moment of levity – the Senate’s days are numbered, even as the token body it has become. The Empire’s stranglehold on the galaxy is unquestionable now.
And his daughter is nineteen. Her father had been a Jedi by now, roaming the galaxy and falling, falling towards the darkness.
The galaxy is full of darkness now, and Bail makes up his mind. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe it’s too early. He’s not Jedi, he doesn’t know, but it feels right.
“Go to Tatooine,” he tells his daughter. “Find Obi-Wan Kenobi. He can save us all.”
I don’t think I’ll ever be over the blood donation scene in Fury Road. The way Furiosa’s dying, and she uses her last moments of consciousness to tell Max “get them home.” That she, ferocious warrior, imperator, stolen child, is, in her last moments of life, so loved, and so full of love and the selfless need to protect these women and get them home. The way Max’s hands are huge, rough and dirty – hands that have snapped necks and fired guns – but they are so gentle when he cradles her. The way he mutters “I’m so sorry, sorry” every time he has to hurt her to make it better. That he’s barely spoken all film but now he’s feverishly muttering to her, “there you go, okay” and stringing together as many syllables as he can muster because the silence is just unbearable. That his body has been abused and exploited and drained of blood without his consent so many times, but now at last he’s free, he has a choice and he chooses to giveher his blood. The way his name – his identity – was the last thing he could call his own, but as he holds her in his arms and waits for his blood to run into her and fill her with life again, as he finally fixes what’s broken, he goes, here, you can have it, Max. My name is Max. That’s my name. And it’s yours.
Because before he met her, he was a man reduced to a single instinct: survive. He was a muzzled animal, a raging feral, and treated as such. But then he got caught up in their escape and she gave him the tools to free himself. She asks him “what’s your name? What do I call you?” She treated him like a human being and in protecting and loving Furiosa and these abused women without asking for anything in return, he recovers his humanity, so of course, here, it’s yours, my name is Max, it’s the last thing I have and it belongs to you.
It’s an extraordinarily beautiful scene visually too, and I honestly think it might be the most profound declaration of love that’s ever occurred in an action film.
Somewhere in the Leverage universe, there is a conspiracy theorist trying to prove that a certain minor league baseball player, a Canadian hockey player, and an American country music singer are all the same person. They have a file with various news printouts, and keep trying to upload them to a website, but every time they do, the site mysteriously crashes, threads go missing on discussion boards, and all electronic records of this man have simply vanished.
Three years later a man comes to Portland and settles down in this brewery, cuz somebody said it wasn’t a half-bad place to get food. And then he sees the chef.
Turns out he’s a half-decent researcher and very good at finding people who desperately need help, and he eventually gets hired as a “marketing associate” for the pub.
The order’s wrong. He gets a job offer from Leverage International, that’s why he goes to Portland in the first place.
He doesn’t understand why they picked a brewpub for the interview (and what the hell is up with the house beer? Weird name, weirder flavor, but the server just smiles and says it’s an acquired taste and he may want to start acquiring it…), until the chef is his second interview of three.
“I wasn’t even looking for a job,” Bobby said, checking to make sure his charging cords were all secure in the flap of the laptop carry-on case as they pulled up to the airport drop-off zone. “I’m still not sure it’s not a scam.”
“Lot of effort to go to for a scam,” his sister pointed out, deftly flinging the car across three lanes to try and get a good spot at the curb.
“I mean I guess even if it is a scam they paid for my flight out to Portland. I hear it’s a nice town.”
Peggy’s first Christmas season in New York is
both delightful and depressing – it’s so lovely to see America’s bounty
and good cheer on such vivid display, especially after how England spent
the last few Christmases. But she misses her family and she even misses
the way misery and fear of the Jerries so close by made every bright
spot shine all the more. Her own preoccupation (self-absorption, if she
must be honest) leaves her only surprised and curious when the
candelabra appears in the one window in the main lab that’s not bricked
over from the outside. It’s high up – they’re underground, after all –
and needs a ladder to get to, although they keep a ladder handy because
this is a lab with chemicals and there are times when extra ventilation
is ideal. The candelabra is not a fine one; it’s tarnished silver of a
low quality, battered and dented, and Peggy’s embarrassed that she has
to be told that it’s a chanukia and not someone’s odd attempt at giving
the lab a touch of class for the Christmas season.
Gloria, who is the one to tell her, does not know whose it is.
Most
of the scientists are Jews here, but their relationship with their
faith is complicated and Peggy generally chooses to say nothing lest she
inadvertently poke at a sore spot. And that goes for Howard, who views
his Jewishness as an annoying childhood nickname he can’t get rid of, as
much as it is for Abe or any of the other refugees who have lost
everything – up to and including their families – because of it. Yiddish
might be the unofficial second language of Project Rebirth and the lab
was unofficially closed in the fall for the Jewish New Year and Yom
Kippur, but most of the men work into the night on Fridays and the
biggest dogmatic disagreements usually end up being about food – what is
the appropriate method of preparation of a brisket, not whether Walker
should eat his ham sandwich at his workstation.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again: the colonization of Pacific Islands is the greatest human adventure story of all time.
People using Stone Age technology built voyaging canoes capable of traveling thousands of miles, then set forth against the winds and currents to find tiny dots of land in the midst of the largest ocean on Earth. And having found them, they traveled back and forth, again and again, to settle them —all this, 500 to 1,000 years ago.
But one huge mystery, sometimes called “The Long Pause” leaves a gaping hole in this voyaging timeline.
Western Polynesia—the islands closest to Australia and New Guinea—were colonized around 3,500 years ago. But the islands of Central and Eastern Polynesia were not settled until 1,500 to 500 years ago. This means that after arriving in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, Polynesians took a break—for almost 2,000 years—before voyaging forth again.
Then when they did start again, they did so with a vengeance: archaeological evidence suggests that within a century or so after venturing forth, Polynesians discovered and settled nearly every inhabitable island in the central and eastern Pacific.
Nobody knows the reason for The Long Pause, or why the Polynesians started voyaging again.
Several theories have been proposed—from a favorable wind caused by a sustained period of El Niño, to visible supernovas luring the stargazing islanders to travel, to ciguatera poisoning caused by algae blooms.
Enter Moana, the latest Disney movie, set in what appears to be Samoa, even though most American audiences will see it as Hawaii.
Moana—pronounced “moh-AH-nah,” not “MWAH-nah” means “ocean,” and the character is chosen by the sea itself to return the stolen heart of [the island goddess] Te Fiti. An environmental catastrophe spreading across the island makes the mission urgent. And despite admonitions from her father against anyone going beyond the protective reef, Moana steals a canoe and embarks on her quest.
Moana’s struggle to learn to sail and get past the reef of her home island sets the stage for her learning of true wayfinding. It also shows traces of Armstrong Sperry’s stirring, classic book Call It Courage, and Tom Hanks’s Castaway.
But it is at the end of the film that a different and powerful angle of the story is revealed: Moana’s people had stopped voyaging long ago, and had placed a taboo—another Polynesian world—on going beyond the reef.
With the success of Moana’s mission and her having learned the art of wayfinding, her people start voyaging again.
And so the Long Pause comes to an end, Disney style, with a great fleet of canoes setting forth across the ocean to accomplish the greatest human adventure of all time. I admit to being moved by this scene.
As someone who lectures on traditional oceanic navigation and migration, I can say resoundingly that it is high time the rest of the world learned this amazing story.
Steel Phoenix Studios 