Ms. Pickle @pickleprickle - Tumblr Blog

Welcome to my fics. Currently all Star Wars. Asks are open.*

All works are 18+ only. 18+ Minors DNI.

I have some lingering paranoia, but I think this bipolar 2 episode is nearing its end. Was ok Saturday night, most of yesterday, and most of today. Didn't wake up angry or sad today.

Might have helped that on Saturday evening we hung out with a friend we rarely see since he and his wife moved to Nebraska. It's nice seeing someone other than the two people I interact with most (The bf and Roomie). Went to FanExpo and bought more art.

Might have helped that I cooked two nights in a row (first with the bf, then on my own last night when I made a banger pork tenderloin with crispy Brussels sprouts and creamy orzo).

Might have helped that, out of 200+ schools, my campus was ranked in the district's top ten for data and document compliance.

Maybe I just needed some things to go my way when they haven't in so long. Regardless, I'm on the mend.

#hopefully nothing shitty happens tomorrow #mental health #I gotta get back on my gym shit #I gotta get back on my nightly cross stitch shit #brains are stupid

I was today years old when I learned that I don’t have to fight with garlic skins. I can just a clove with the flat side of my knife. Idk how I’m alive sometimes

#I’m still buying jar garlic tho #jar garlic for life

I’m so sad today that I’m eating lunchables in the grocery store parking lot.

#haven’t cried yet #but I can tell it’s coming #I hate feeling like this #i hate it here

Bitches be watching Project Hail Mary for a fourth time. It’s me. I’m bitches.

#project hail mary #I’m sad #I feel hopeless #this makes me feel better

Amina al-Fucking Sirafi!!!!!!

I am in dire need for anyone to talk with me about The Tapestry of Fate, the second Amina al-Sirafi book. I finished it yesterday and it's all I can think about.

#even the first one #someone please talk with me about these #amina al sirafi #tapestry of fate #shannon chakraborty #I read books

My theory of the conversation that led to The Mandaloian & Grogu getting made (spoilers and a new hottie after the cut)

#mando #the mandalorian #the mandalorian and grogu #grogu #mandalorian spoilers #mandalorian and grogu spoilers #star wars embo

I think "Do you know how to code?" is the tech douchebag equivalent of "Do you even lift?"

Two Coast Guard helicopters have been circling low over the city for an hour. They’ve gone over my house four times. Philly does not have a coast.

wookieejamcrew

my favorite underlying theme of maul shadow lord is denialism; the denialism not only of impulse, but denialism of our cast's new lived reality in the empire. this is undoubtedly, in my mind, one of the more deliberately written themes of this series as it is the heart of season one's core conflict, and that is because daki, almost verbatim, quotes blanche dubois in tennessee williams's a streetcar named desire.

for those unfamiliar with tennessee williams's works, one of his favorite avenues to explore character flaws was through illusion and delusion. blanche dubois, a well-to-do southern belle recently loses her family's inherited plantation to foreclosure, though the audience should understand in the changing shape of the modern world, belle reve is in truth lost to progress and modernity. blanche appears to us as a relic, entirely out of place and out of time in 1940s louisana. she cannot accept her newly lived reality, always stricken with panic at the "vulgarity" of the new world with its clamor and temptation. daki, of course, shares few superficial traits with blanche, but both remain suspended in time, unable to adapt, even going so far as to deny themselves not only their reality, but base needs, base impulses.

daki is a creature of habit and tradition. he is long-lived and has lived long. he cannot be anything but suspended in time, suspended in the stage of grief that denies reality. it is a loyalty to his culture, a devotion to himself, his identity as a jedi. his was a life and a trauma we, as humans, cannot fathom. but devon is not daki, and she cannot fathom his process for grief either. if daki is akin to blanche, devon is akin to the wingfield children in williams's the glass menagerie. tom wingfield is a warehouse worker, confined to a small apartment with his mother and sister whom he supports financially. his mother often recounts her past, much like blanche, from time immemorial, antiquated stories that feel more like fairytales they'd heard as children. expectedly, it drives both of her children to mania. tom escapes to art, while his sister, laura, escapes to her glass menagerie. both are fragile means to cope with their reality, both inside and outside the apartment. the new world is described as just as suffocating as their mother's bygone babbles:

"[...] one infused mass of automatism."

(i'll get to maul in a moment)

devon and daki are confined to living in sewers, to panhandling, to debasement common of... commoners in the wake of congested industrialization. this is not the future devon saw for herself. the empire robbed her of her clean air, her castle in the sky, her knighthood, her privilege. that fantasy is all it is now. because unlike her master, devon knows only an axial existence, her life caught between justice and injustice, peacetime and war, fantasy and reality. tom wingfield recounts to his sister an escape artist magician he saw who inspires his eventual escape from the apartment:

and let's speak of con artists because maul is not exempt from the williamsisms. when we are reintroduced to maul in this series, he is swallowed by memory. a spy droid, not dissimilar from the probe droid he employed in the phantom menace; a pair of dathomiri zabraks resembling his brothers; and a coterie of fractionally loyal mandalorians. it isn't until they are plucked one by one from his side that maul can operate unimpeded by his past. there is a line in scene one of the glass menagerie: this scene is a memory, and is therefore non-realistic. when the wingfield siblings are forced to face their lived reality, it came accompanying violence: tom's outburst shatters laura's glass figures, and the object of laura's interest, in his clumsiness, breaks her favorite of her menagerie: a lonely unicorn.

the last of its kind, with the ability to adapt.

[enter: devon]

after maul is maimed by the inquisitors, he recalls his own fractured past, all parts voiced entirely by sam witwer, all signaling to the audience, in williams's words, what funny tricks your memory plays. maul's denialism is unlike daki and devon's. maul is too shaped by tricks to not see the empire for what it really is, the tragedy lies in his inability to decode the precise reality of his trauma. and this is why maul is an expert con artist, because he was the stage magician's apprentice. he can continue to mouth palpatine's propaganda but shape it to deceive a young jedi cloistered in her own "2 by 4".

the season ends on an admission and its core conflict is resolved. devon declares to maul, to herself, that she is finally ready to confront reality and abandon the menagerie, the 2 by 4, belle reve. but the hairline crack in the glass cannot be sealed, the violence that came with her "emancipation" will continue to shape her reality like it shaped maul's. the questions i'm asking going into season two are: will devon go mad by her own proficiency to adapt, or will she invent for herself a new reality founded on illusion?

the lawsons are the civilian perspective. brander thinks he can outwit reality, continue operating unimpeded as not just a rogue law enforcement officer, but as a nominally present father. his ex-wife being an imperial loyalist is no accident. the writers are forcing conflict in brander's already volatile life by introducing "constancy" in the form of an imperial occupation. rylee misses his mother, he asks to be with her, the portrait of their family sits at brander's desk, in flames in their 2 by 4, but his father denies them both the reality of her position in their lives. she, for now, serves as a proxy for the empire, but she comes to rylee as a kind and grounding presence. she comes to brander as a reminder that the institution he serves cannot be divorced from the strongarm of the empire. its laws have always been an extension of theirs, just as drea is an extension of the lawsons.

#maul shadow lord

coldones66

Posting this to balance out all the suffering on the Maul Tumblr timeline rn

#maul and his pet droid #who he thinks is a dog #darth maul #maul shadow lord #maul #star wars gifs

I am so burnt out on everything. School. The world. The bf. The roomie. Stressing over a friend group that seems to forget I exist. This mixed episode I've been in. I just want to get away out of town by myself for a couple nights or even just one night. Therapist said to just do it. Problem is I have to explain to the bf and he won't understand unless there's a retreat or something and I'm not paying for those. The only time I'm ever fully by myself is in my car or at the gym. Or when school is out and the roomie is at work.

I'm so tired.