what would you have me do?

Feeling a lot of feelings about how Hadestown doesn't present the story as "Orpheus turned around and everything fell apart and there was nothing anyone could do to fix it" and instead presents a story that says "he turned around, he doubted, he failed, but if we keep telling his story maybe one day Orpheus won't" and it's not just about Orpheus as a single character, it's a bout every Orpheus, everyone who runs up against a system they can't change and fails and everyone who sees that failure and gets back up and says "maybe I can change it now" and tries again. That Orpheus failed isn't the takeaway of the story. The takeaway is that one day he might succeed.

Realistically I could never get rid of tumblr because it gives me the illusion of a community of strange young women all around my same age, all slowly figuring out how to live too

It’s them

Absolutely amazing how AO3 is a part of the internet that doesn't sneak in any ads and doesn't have an algorithm and doesn't watch you or record how much time you spend looking at each fic or whatever. It's just right there to use for free. Legend

Kylo Ren and Rey, like Luke Skywalker, ran away from the Empire and the Resistance, found themselves an uninhabited planet and began to live there happily ever after.

the thing about star wars is that it’s a world populated by unquestionably cool objects side by side with the most deeply uncool characters you’ve seen in your life

lucas went here is my oc luke he whines and plays with spaceships until he’s nineteen and believes in the power of love and here is his LASER SWORD made of PSYCHIC CRYSTAL that is CONNECTED TO THE FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE

the main antagonist of the OT is a cyborg with asthma who regularly cries about his dead wife who also runs a space station the size of the moon that can kill a planet

the thing about Star Wars is that it wants you to understand that the Power of Love is the coolest thing in existance, more powerful and incredible than all the other cool things it shows.

That’s why its beautiful.

dude you should have been at the club last night it was insane. the dj was playing the lament and funeral of hector from the iliad and everyone was beating their breasts and tearing open their garments. at the end we all built up a funeral pyre in the middle of the dance floor and set it aflame. we were all feeling the inherent human connection through millennia old poetry, it was wild

bars

She was so real for this

Let him be a silly guy again please

it’s the no notes blanket fort! climb on in

all i want is for bryke to make maiko canon in the zuko movie. everyone else can do whatever they want. in fact, make the entire movie maiko. all of it.

Ezra bridger is an amazing Jedi and you cannot tell me otherwise. I have seen so many people say that he is annoying or that he isn't as great as other rebellion age Jedi and I hate it. Jedi were never supposed to be exactly like one another. What makes o iwan great is different than what makes say windu or kit fisto great. Ezra has overcome challenges and has shown his strength differently than other Jedi. For example the dark side has been a part of Ezra's life since he was born and he has always managed to fight it. His life has been full of loss and betrayal and yet he was still able to hold onto his light and his hope. Ezra is one of the only people in canon that was manipulated and almost seduced by the dark side that beat it. Now obviously he had Kanan to help him but he still made the choice to come back to the light. Ezra bridger is one of my favorite star wars characters and I better see him get all the love when we see him in live action.

He had a loving family and excellent master to support him and love the darkness away. But can we talk about the fact that after Kanan is gone and he's literally about to lose his second family, that he resists the Emperor himself directly trying to manipulate him by dangling his real live parents in front of him?? The loss of his parents is one of the biggest if not the main driving force in Ezra’s story. We see how greatly that loss affects him throughout all four seasons. And then Palpatine says hey. You can have them back right now if you simply leave (and open my portal in the process). They're right in front of you, just go to them. This isn't just the idea or promise of saving his parents like Anakin was given the possibility of saving Padme. They're right there, they can see each other. And what does Ezra do? He uses that moment to finally say goodbye, and then he lets go without hesitation even though it clearly hurts so much. Every thing Kanan taught him about love and loss culminated in that moment. If you ask me Ezra should been knighted on the spot right there. He's a fantastic Jedi.

Ezra was never the whiny, annoying brat that people on the internet thought he was. He was always the tormented, abandoned young child who had to teach himself to survive beyond what a 7 year old should know. If that manifested as being a bit childish or immature then so be it! He didn’t have anyone to teach him how a kid his age is “supposed” to behave, and in the age of the Empire, a Force-Sensitive kid is definitely not supposed to behave in any specific way anyway.

He then takes this horrible life experience he’s been through for 7 years, and, with the help of Kanan and the rest of the Spectres, transforms into a kind, caring young Jedi, whose goal is to finish what his parents started and liberate the galaxy - so that no one else has go through what he did.

He has the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders. I think that gives him a bit of an excuse to be slightly annoying, and even still, that “annoyingness”, if you still want to argue he is, doesn’t detract from the fact that he is an amazing Jedi who beat all the odds and is doing something great for the people of the galaxy.

Jedi telekinesis makes me feral because this is a thing.

The fact that they can hold without holding. The fact that they can cradle their own crystal souls without touching. Like the crystal is a firefly they're cupping with a grip so light it's actually light itself.

They can hold butterflies without killing them. The hands wielding the unfathomable power of the universe can be the gentlest of hands, gentler than a breeze.

It looks so magical and soft and peaceful qsdfghgfdfghfds I love them

OH HEY THERE'S A PARALLEL WITH ATTACHMENT AND HOW THEY LOVE BUT DON'T POSSESS

(they hold people with their hearts and souls and feelings but their hands are always open and they're always mindful not to be crushing)

Star wars is so [emphatic hand motions]. No, listen, Star wars has [bigger, more emphatic hand motions].

no but these kind of posts make me remember how much i love star wars even if it’s all gone to heck now. It’s just *sobbing while making wild hand gestures* you know?? 

imagine having to travel the world with your little sister and two twelve year olds who are all extremely powerful, traumatized, and stubborn, and you have very tangible goals with real stakes but to get them to do anything you have to know how to apply a very delicate touch. and you have to do that for months with absolutely no one to vent to. the fact that sokka didn’t lose every single shred of sanity he had is a testament to his fortitude and strength of character. im just saying.

and then the second you’re about to spend a nice, romantic evening with your awesome girlfriend who is your peer, zuko fucking barges in and demands you describe to him in vivid detail how your mother was murdered. like that won’t kill the mood. smh

everyone always goes on about how katara had to grow up too fast and was so motherly for being a very young teenager and that kind of thing has real psychological consequences but like also: goddamn, sokka was a fifteen year old boy who had the care and feeding of three deeply wounded kids who each had the capacity to kill him on accident, plus zuko. water tribe culture might have some rigid, sexist bullshit to get past, but holy shit does it apparently raise good boys. 

this is a cold take imo. i don’t mean to piss anyone off, but i think that you are attributing many of katara’s struggles to sokka. any person would probably have issues like this in his situation, but sokka is a fictional character and a lot of this stuff is never explicitly shown to be something that he has to deal with, but it IS explicitly shown that katara has to deal with all of this.

sokka didn’t have to do anything to care/provide for the gaang besides try (and usually fail) to hunt or fish. it’s a consistent joke that he rarely succeeds at that. in jet he even claims to be the leader and katara shoots him down. he kept them on task while travelling, sure, because he was the map guy, but it was katara who did all the cooking, grocery shopping, caretaking, mending, laundry, chore delegation/emotional labor, etc. sokka straight up says that katara has been caring for him like a mother since kya’s death, to the point that he barely remembers her face. 

and sokka is usually having a blast going shopping for belts and bags and joking around and goofing off with aang and toph, whereas katara has a whole episode exploring how she never gets to do that and what a huge emotional toll it takes on her. she’s consistently the one keeping everyone together, to the point that the show has her outright say so in the desert. even her tale of ba sing se revolves around her putting in an effort to connect with toph and soothe her insecurities instead of simply having a fun adventure like sokka and aang. sokka does goofy stuff like drinking cactus juice and climbing in appa’s mouth and scamming people because he doesn’t have to be the mature one all (or even most) of the time. his development from mostly comic relief to a mature leader is striking because he spends so much time not having to be the adult in seasons 1 and 2. sokka has a rough time of it, because they all do, but he’s not a caretaker for the gaang like katara is. he’s smart, he’s strong, and they all admire and look up to him, but he’s not their replacement dad like katara is everyone’s replacement mom.

you know who actually puts herself in great physical danger whenever aang has a meltdown just to calm him down? katara. who’s the one who actually got hurt by aang while he was training because he was too powerful? katara again. sokka never does that because he doesn’t have to. he’s protective of his sister when she’s in physical danger and he’s supportive after this shit happens and we love him for it, but he is not the one consistently putting himself in harm’s way to meet the emotional needs of traumatized children. katara is.

again, i love sokka, but i’ve noticed a recent trend where people attribute katara’s very specific issues and struggles to him and it makes me uncomfortable. a lot of katara’s traits ring so true to people because there are so many teenage girls who get pushed into that motherly role of caring for people, especially their brothers and fathers and love interests. i’m not saying sokka had an easy time of it or that his contributions matter less, but they’re different contributions than katara’s.

i can see from my notes that this post has been circulating with these additions, and while i usually just let shit like this go on this blog because i have too many followers on here to get into arguments with people, i actually read this whole response and i’m just kind of..... shocked by it?

first of all, it makes a bunch of points i never actually said. “he kept them on task while traveling, sure, because he’s the map guy.” well....... that was basically the whole point of my post. the fact that he had to keep them on task. they all care more about whatever is happening in the moment than the big picture, and sokka is the one who reminds them of their timeframe and goals.

[id: screencaps from "the library" of sokka interrupting aang to say "even if you do master all of the elements, then what? we need some intelligence if we're gonna win this war."]

[id: screencap from "the painted lady" of sokka's extremely detailed and thorough schedule.]

sokka basically acted as the de facto chief of his tribe since he was 13, and was not only tasked by hakoda with looking after the tribe but specifically with protecting katara.

[id: screencaps of hakoda talking to sokka in a flashback in "bato of the water tribe," who tells him that "being a man is knowing where you're needed most, and for you right now, that's here protecting your sister."]

[id: screencaps of hakoda talking to sokka in "the guru," who puts his hand on sokka's shoulder and smiles as he asks him "why do you think i trusted you to look after our tribe when i left?"]

once aang and toph are brought into the picture, he also becomes responsible for them and their safety. and they are all more significantly powerful than he is, so this is a very difficult job.

i am not undermining katara’s role in the group, the emotional support she provides for aang, her heroism, the way she steps up in the desert, her pain, toph’s maturity, toph’s pain, aang’s maturity, aang’s pain, or the fact that all of them provide unique and essential resources to the group in their own significant ways.

this is a post about how sokka cannot catch a fucking break, which is explicitly a recurring joke in the show. im really not stating anything but what’s obvious in the text here. which is why I am so absolutely confused by this response (the second, longer one, I mean. I’m not even gonna bother unpacking the first response).

like..... a lot of the points made in defense of this (needless) argument are just.... very reductive, at some points even straight up incorrect? and again, there was really no point in making them, since the original post said nothing to contradict the fact that katara is integral to the fabric of the group. of course she is. but as you acknowledge, it is sokka’s job to keep them on track. and they are very opinionated, powerful children who enjoy resisting his meticulously crafted schedules and cannot bother to learn how to read a map.

[id: screencaps from "the painted lady" of sokka pointing to his finagled master schedule – adjusted for the extra time katara has spent in jang hui – telling them that "if we want to make up the time and stay on schedule, we have to wake up early," to which toph replies "well i'm not waking up early," as aang and katara nod.]

[id: screencaps from "sokka's master" of katara saying "sokka's in charge of the schedule. i'm not sure what we should be doing," as well as toph saying to aang and katara upon their failure to read a map, "you noodle-brains don't know what you're doing. i miss sokka."]

i’m gonna go through each point made in order now, but i'm putting it under the cut, because it's fucking long. that said, if you read the above response and agreed with it, i implore you to read the rest of my post and take my analysis into account (especially because it took me a while to compile both moments from the show and additional analyses i've made in the past to further back up the points i make here. sidenote: there were actually a lot more images i wanted to use as examples, but tumblr only allows 30 images per post, so i had to be economical. please assume i have more sources i could cite, because i do).