“When I was your age, all I cared about was not starving. I was living in a hole in the ground, and a Jedi found me. She may have been desperate and ragged like me, but she told me I had potential. And that was…Well, she only taught me a little before they hunted her down. And they made me watch whilst they killed her.”
Just thinking about how, even in this Jedi’s darkest hour, even when she was as run thin and desperate as a starving kid on the streets, even when she was being hunted down just for existing, this Jedi still saw a starving kid and took him under her wing, still told him he was worth something, still taught him about not hurting innocent people.
This Jedi would have had so little left to her, but still saw someone she could help and took the chance. That this is who the Jedi are–even when they’re ragged to the bone, they still look to help others, they still look to care for a kid they find on the street that they can teach things to, they still care so much about a kid that probably had no one who ever cared about him before, that her effect on Jod’s life STILL shapes who he is. He tries so hard to be a murderous pirate who doesn’t care about anyone, but you can see that he never actually wants to hurt anyone innocent and even lets his plans go down in flames rather than truly attack any of the parents or the kids.
This Jedi may not have been with Jod for long, but even decades later, you can still see the echoes of how much she meant to him, how her loss shaped him, but also how her philosophy still rings in his ears.
This article describes some really disturbing accounts of sexual assault in graphic detail so please keep that in mind if you want to read it yourself.
you are a tar pit
As a journalist, those tags are unbelievably fucking terrifying to read.
I am literally begging people to understand that LA is not filled with “rich elites”. It’s mostly filled with people just like me – people with extremely modest success in an industry they’ve probably been passionate about for their entire lives; people who work hard and grind every single day to have (or probably rent) a home in one of 2 cities the nation where their dreams even have a microscopic chance of becoming a reality. Actors whose names you wouldn’t recognize, screenwriters who are writing pilots that don’t get picked up, camera operators for mid tier reality shows, musicians who have had one song in the background of a commercial, makeup artists who get hired for a C-list celebrity red carpet appearance once in a while. Just ordinary fucking working people with dreams.
I don’t think it’s likely anyone who follows me agrees with the fucked up shit I’m reading atp, but as someone who lives in NYC for my career and could just as easily live in those neighborhoods in LA (and I have almost moved there many times), it’s so fucking difficult to read comments about “rich people” and categorize the entire entertainment industry – which is largely comprised of exciting but otherwise average trade jobs – as “out of touch elites whose houses deserve to burn” when it couldn’t be farther from the truth. To wish such horrible things and have so little empathy to people just like me. For my peers, and my colleagues, and my friends. To be reading unfounded disdain about them (and again by extension me and everyone like me) everywhere, and to have the struggles of my industry be this misunderstood, have who we are generalized this much, have people laughing or not caring that these working people are losing their homes, losing their dreams, having everything they’ve made happen for themselves reduced to rubble… it is the absolute worst shit fathomable. It is fucking crushing to a degree I cannot even describe.
The Happy99 worm, also known as Ska or i-Worm, was a worm for Windows, appearing in 1999. The worm would display a gif of exploding fireworks in a window titled “Happy New Year 1999!″. This was the first worm known to spread via e-mail and usenet. Other than attaching itself to the user’s computer, this worm did no damage.
Biggest disappointment of the year:Deadpool and Wolverine. Oh, how I HATED Deadpool and Wolverine. A pointless cameo-fest that deliberately set out to ruin Logan, a far superior film. I resent it massively.
Second-biggest disappointment of the year:Blitz. I was really looking forward to Blitz, especially since Saoirse Ronan was in it. But it was just… alright? The main child actor, Elliot Heffernan, does a very good job but it was just a depressing drag to watch him go from horror to horror.
Favourite animated film:The Wild Robot. Everyone raved about it and yep, they were right to. A really good and heartfelt movie. I hope it gets a sequel.
Favourite musical: I was ready to hate the musical version of Mean Girls but I actually really liked it. “Apex Predator” is one of my new favourite songs.
Favourite film based on a true story:Young Woman and the Sea. I love Daisy Ridley in everything. Same with Christopher Eccleston, who plays a positively moustache-twirling villain in this.
Hated film that I actually liked: Joker 2. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but I appreciated that the film actually had something to say and was trying to do something different.
Film that brought me closest to tears: Inside Out 2. I have anxiety, so it was inevitable.
Film I have not seen yet despite wanting to:Wicked. I love musicals but I was just never really into Wicked. I will catch it on streaming eventually, I promise! I’m glad it did so well because clearly a lot of people really love it.
My favourite film of the year:Fly Me to the Moon. As a kid who grew up being told amazing space stories and visiting space centers, I was always going to love a space-race-based love story. It’s a incredibly charming film. You should check it out!
