I'm a slayer, ask me how.

After the disappointment (for me) that was TROS, I didn’t line up to sign up for Disney+ when it launched. I will say that the streaming service was very smart to release each episode on a weekly basis, keeping the hashtag alive on Twitter and reminding me that it existed long after most other shows that drop in one day on Netflix. Unfortunately, Twitter has no chill when it comes to spoilers, so my feed was filled with “Baby Yoda” gifs and I was even more turned off, thinking that the series was yet another prequel.



Eventually, a friend set me straight that people were just referring to the mysterious “Child” as “Baby Yoda” because it was easier. And also I needed a Christmas present for my parents and I pulled a Homer bowling ball, buying them a year long subscription to Disney+. And, of course, they wanted my help setting up their account and I happened to get their password so…yeah I could watch it now. After catching up on The Expanse and The Witcher, last week we finally dived into this series.

I thought the episodes that focused on the main arc of The Mandalorian and The Child were the strongest (1,2,3,7,8) but the episodes in between were just missing something for me. While all of the episodes were heavy on homages/tropes to all things samurai/cowboy, I found that the stand-alone episodes were so cliche heavy, they became tedious to me. Maybe I’ve watched too much TV at this point so I’m familiar with too many stories? I just know episodes 4,5,6 almost lost me as fatigue set in with seeing things play out exactly as expected.

It’s funny, usually with streaming services, the problem is that there is no time limit and shows go crazy by going long and meandering too much. Mando had the opposite problem to me – sometimes I wished they had loosened up from their 30 minutes limit and gone a full hour with episodes to allow us more time with characters, to do a bit more world building or lore exploring.

I will say that the last two episodes were very strong and had a lot of good character and story reveals. This bodes well – most of the shows that I am a big fan of had uneven first seasons. This is actually for the best! When shows have flawless first seasons, they tend to not know what to do after that, floundering for direction and ways to make their characters interesting again. The Mandalorian might not be perfect, but there is a lot of room for it to stretch and grow. There is a lot of story to play around with. And knowing that The Child won’t “grow up” any time soon, the show can keep milking those big brown eyes and green ears.

Speaking of The Child – yes, this Chibi Yoda is designed to be adorable, I also wonder if the reason people love it so much is that it has a face, to make up for the Mandalorian’s lack of one. The Child is your viewer point of view in this series. (I was really hoping the finale would be the end of the helmet but alas. Maybe next season. Pascal is doing a wonderful job using his body to act, but it seems like a waste to keep him hidden away forever. Plus, as someone who has taken a few child development classes, it is important for the baby to see faces to understand emotions. Otherwise he will end up force choking someone at another awkward moment…

So I will tune in for Season 2 to see where this is all going. Now with the main character in search of The Child’s species and The Child growing stronger in its force powers, there is plenty that can happen. Now that they have played with all the tropes, they can start doing their own thing.

So, it's been a few weeks now and I've had time to ruminate a bit more on the latest Star Wars movie. If you didn't see my previous thread that linked to my twitter post, I can boil most of my feelings toward this movie as this:



And if you liked the movie - good on you. We all like different things. It doesn't make us less friends or more friends, we just have different tastes in films and how we approach certain stories.

I've talked with plenty of people that liked it and I think that it all boils down to what you wanted from this trilogy and this movie specifically.

( I promise I won't ramble too long )

Rose minifig and Kylo Ren's ship!

You know, I will never argue that 'Last Jedi' was a perfect movie - it was not. It was far too long, needed a lot of tightening up in some of the plot lines. BUT I never had a problem with Rose and I really liked what they were doing with her and Finn up to a point (because omg that whole plot line got out of hand, where was the editor? And was the editor related to Benicio and just didn't want to take him out of the movie? Because he was unnecessary on so many levels).

Anyway, I was happy to see this minifig! Yay Rose!

And Kylo's ship is cool too. I always had a soft spot for it because the design was clearly inspired by the Imperial shuttle from RotJ. Something about those big, ridiculous wings raising and lowering. Again, there is a reason Star Wars is considered fantasy and not sci-fi - pretty sure this ship makes no sense.

(Thanks for your supportive comments on my previous post. I'll come back and comment on them soon.)

We saw the KONOSUBA movie tonight, it was a special event at the theaters. The anime is ridiculous, about a jerk guy who dies on his way home after buying a video game and ends up being resurrected by a crap goddess and living in a world that is pretty much a JRPG. The other two members of his party are a mage whose main spell renders her unconscious or unable to move after casting and a crusader/warrior who is a bit of a sadist and gets turned on by really random stuff during battle. So, it was already sort of stupid/edgy/overtly sexual humor. But I felt like the movie had one too many rape or at least lack-of-consent jokes. At first I thought maybe it was just me, but when we got in the car to drive home, Tim said "That might have been one too many rape jokes". Just...why Japan, why??? But the other bits were funny and we had a good time. It was fun to watch it with a room full of people laughing. I just wish they hadn't laughed at those bits...

And I couldn't resist getting a picture with the Rise of Skywalker display:



Little over a month until the premiere! OMG gonna cry so hard. Have managed to avoid the new trailer so far. Had a moment of panic in the theater tonight when I wondered if they would show trailers but thankfully they did not.

How is it only Tuesday? Ugh this week is already long. Anyway, need to get to bed because I am tired and also my laptop just popped up to tell me the battery is about to die so I guess it needs to get to bed too! TTYL!

Rey comes in tall, grande, and venti.



I have more Reys than this...I should put them all together for a photo op.

I just bought the one up front at Target today. She might come to live with me at work.

One of my coworkers from my previous library surprised me this week with a present!



( all the angles )

Submitted by icecoldrain



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You guys sick of my face yet? I think this is the furthest I have ever gotten on a monthly challenge! It is probably because I just need my face and I tend to have that with me at all time. :P



*star wars theme intensifies* nothing makes me happy the way Star Wars does. It has been a constant in my life, the fandom I snuggle up with when I just need some adventure. I love the new trilogy, even with it’s faults, and I am so excited to see the conclusion. I had to snag both of the Vanity Fair covers for Rise of Skywalker, though I don’t know if I will read the article - want to stay as spoiler free as possible.

So glad I was able to find these! There were only a few left at the grocery store. I couldn't resist getting both covers. Some day I should frame the Vanity fair magazines I have, though the problem is that I don't want to cut them all up to fit in a frame so it would be kind of bulky? Ah well. For now, they will just sit with my other Star Wars magazines.

Someone "donated" a copy of the OT on VHS to the library today. I fished it out of the trash to take to my Star Wars club meeting, figured someone there might want it for the box art. It says 1992 on the box so they should be the pre-Special Edition films. If someone has a VCR to watch them on. I still have my VHS tapes but the VCR is long gone.

My Star Wars club had their meeting on Sunday! It was a great turnout, a post Celebration run down. I haven't been to a Star Wars Celebration since CIII and I'm fine with that - I prefer my conventions to be multi-fandom where possible because I love too many things. But I did enjoy listening to everyone talk about their weekend. It's a great group of nerds and we have fun.

Couple of highlights - I picked up this little lady for $1

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I am calling myself an Expanse Evangelist now. Every time someone starts to talk to me about tv shows, I immediately bring it up. One of my Star Wars buddies was chatting with me about Firefly, which I was also praising like crazy back in the day, telling everyone to go see 'Serenity' and he did and he loved it and now he was the one telling me that there were Firefly books out. So of course I had to ask if he had watched Expanse LOL. I really feel like it is a perfect fit for Firefly fans.

Hope everyone else had a good weekend!

Sidenote: I realized that I never posted about my PAX East adventures!!! I will do something soon because I had a lot of fun and there were a bunch of game I think many of you would enjoy!

But now, TO BED! Because Monday was a Monday. Why did I schedule a program the first day of the week????