Magical Mondays: Facing Your Fears

Fear is a powerful thing, and creatures that terrify, from the Nazgul of Lord of the Rings to Septimus Heap’s magogs and the Sidhe of The Call, are ubiquitous throughout fantasy literature. The characters who face these creatures don’t simply stroll onto the battlefield and take them down; they are afraid, and in overcoming their fears are able to defeat their monsters.

In many series, magic is used to help characters face their fears without necessarily having to face down the actual thing causing the fear. Consider the boggart in Prisoner of Azkaban, for example: while it takes the shape of the things it senses that Lupin’s class fears, it doesn’t progress past that. A boggart-turned-dementor cannot Kiss away a soul, for example. While learning to face a fear does not always remove a character’s fear entirely, being able to recognize and acknowledge what they are afraid of can help them grow and develop as characters. Genre fiction is ideally placed to allow characters to do this because of the magic involved, and in doing so, it can offer us important guidance for dealing with our own fears.

(via LA Times)

Throwback Thursdays: Return of the Jedi

I still have Star Wars on the brain, and even if I was cooling down from the Star Wars hype, it was immediately rekindled by the Rogue One trailer and the recent release of the The Force Awakens DVD. But I’m not here to talk about any of the new Star Wars movies. A while back I talked about my favorite Star Wars installment in the franchise, The Empire Strikes Back, and now I am here to talk about my second favorite, Return of the Jedi.

Star Wars: Shattered Empire Continues to Fight the Good Fight

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m nothing these days if not Star Wars trash, and I’m especially obsessed with one Poe Dameron. When I heard that his family’s backstory was featured in the prequel/tie-in comic Star Wars: Shattered Empire, it was a matter of course to pick it up and check it out. What I found inside was three parts awesome tie-in story, two parts giant question mark.

Spoilers for the whole comic below.

Fanfiction Fridays: Rey Day

Spoilers for The Force Awakens and potential future plot points above and beneath the cut.

January 1^st was an important day for me. That day was the day I remembered that I loved Star Wars.

This is how Rey deserves to be, y’all.
(via nonbinarygayrey @ Tumblr)

My reaction to The Force Awakens was roughly the same as Saika’s in that I have way too many feelings about everything. As such, everyone in the movie is now my child (except Leia, who is still, and will always be my queen). However, there’s no denying that I have a strong affection for Rey. Back as a child, when I watched the original trilogy with my parents, there was always a small emptiness in watching the daring feats of Leia, Luke, and Han. While Leia was a fantastic character, I realize now that I was always wondering where the other ladies in the galaxy were, especially Jedi. Since I never watched either of the animated series (and I barely remember the prequels), Rey is the first lady Jedi I’ve seen—and probably the first lady Jedi many people have seen. And she’s fantastic; she’s intelligent, brash, emotional, flawed, and perfect. So, of course, I had to look up fic.

Unfortunately, people thus far seem determined to ship Rey with Kylo Ren, the new face of the Sith. Even beyond their less-than-pleasant encounters, and the fact that they dislike each other, what’s the worst about this is that most of these fic are straight up rape fic. While I can go into a tirade about how our female protagonist deserves so much better than this—and how it reveals something terrifying about fans and how we’ve been conditioned to read romance in straight up abuse—instead, I’ll rec several fics starring my favorite ship: Rey x Healthy Relationships.

The Force Awakens All My Emotions

Guys!!!! Girls!!! Everyone else!! This is the movie we as Star Wars fans deserve!! If you haven’t made plans to see it please reconsider your entire life and go see it instead.

Okay, so serious spoilers in this post. Serious, the spoileriest of spoilers. Snape-kills-Dumbledore spoilers. If this post were in my refrigerator I’d be throwing it out with one hand pinching my nose because it’s so spoiled. Consider. Yourself. Warned.

Fanfiction Fridays: i wouldn’t leave you, i would hold you when the last day comes by tragickenobi

Star Wars Episode VII comes out next month, and it’s not soon enough. I can hardly contain my excitement, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that I’ve been spending my days googling all things Star Wars and reading up on every fan theory that I can find. So fic and potential movie spoilers are ahead.

In Brightest Day: George Lucas Sucks at Emotions

In April, I wrote a piece on Luke Skywalker’s emotional problems, specifically relating them to his father Anakin’s anger management issues.

However, I missed a key part of Skywalker’s mental and physical health that, let’s be honest, I shouldn’t have missed.

Whoops.

In Brightest Day(ish): Luke Skywalker

So yesterday, I focused on the anger issues with Star Wars’ Anakin Skywalker. I said that Anakin’s problems seemed to border on a disorder, and named IED as an example of a possible disorder that Anakin had to deal with on the road to the Dark Side of the Force.

On the other end of the scale is Anakin’s son, Luke Skywalker.

Fanfiction Fridays: Shattered by CWBasset

This Star Wars fic review is in no way yet another apology for not getting my next Animated Series post up.

Honestly.

Everything about this fic makes me happy, and I hope it makes all of you happy as well. Like, were any of you upset about the prequels? No problem, because CWBasset’s Shattered adds a great deal of emotional depth to it, so you can actually care about what happens. Did you think the prequels were filled with unexplained plot holes and made no sense? That’s okay, because once again, we have an author who actually knows how to tell a story.