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[oh-great-authoress]

SET IT UP (2018) dir. Claire Scanlon

[oh-great-authoress]

“If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you had asked almost any of the great Christians of old, he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self- denial, but not about self- denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half- hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

— C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (via zacheway)

Good stuff.

(via aladylostinlove)

[oh-great-authoress]

neurodivergent headcanons - autistic and borderline personality disorder kylo ren (star wars: the force awakens)

[oh-great-authoress]

I am once again thinking about digging holes

It's so fucked up that digging a bunch of holes works so well at reversing desertification

I hate that so much discourse into fighting climate change is talking about bioenginerring a special kind of seaweed that removes microplastics or whatever other venture-capital-viable startup idea when we have known for forever about shit like digging crescent shaped holes to catch rainwater and turning barren land hospitable

[oh-great-authoress]

[oh-great-authoress]

Anakin & Letting Go

I always found it to be a little skeptical that Anakin could become a force ghost after it took Yoda, Qui Gon, and Obi-Wan learning and training how to do it, and I always thought “really? Anakin? Finding that level of peace and letting go?” But after this episode, seeing the care and lesson that he imparts upon Ahsoka that he learned so painfully, I understand it from him so much better. Vader was so stuck in his complete self-hatred that he allowed nobody who had known him before as Anakin to reach him (most notably Obi-Wan and Ahsoka) because of the overwhelming extent of his shame. It took his son, who had never known him and yet who still stood before him and believed in him, loved him, sacrificed himself for him, to call Anakin back from the depths of Vader. And this Anakin, let everything go to save his son and to allow his son to save him.

And it felt so impactful to get to see this mature post-Vader Anakin reaching out to Ahsoka to teach her this very hard-earned lesson that he took the very hard road to get. Because she has Vader in her. She is everything Anakin taught her, and we saw the behaviors that led Anakin to becoming Vader—the fear of losing his most cherished relationships—reaching out of Anakin very early in the clone wars (and before) and the two of them are both very aware that he imparted those lessons on her. And then we've seen across this season—and overtly in her clone wars flashbacks—that she believes she is inextricable from these traits.

I’ve always loved Anakin as a fictional character, getting to see his earnestness, his flawedness, and his intensity (to borrow Huyang’s very accurate adjective), but this episode brought a level of humanity to him that has moved me so deeply. Life is HARD, loss gets forced on all of us no matter what, and the lessons that we learn through mistakes that we made can be extremely painful because acknowledging and taking responsibility for hurting people is actually really painful for humans (not owning up to our actions is the emotionally easier choice and George Lucas has stated time and again that the Dark Side is about taking the short-term easier choices). But it ultimately means that learning from your mistakes is an actual choice you have to MAKE. And this is the core of Anakin’s lesson. He is teaching Ahsoka that she has to choose which lessons he has taught her that she will live by, but more than that, that she is empowered to be able to choose. Yes, she has everything that he taught her—the good and the bad—but she is not condemned to live out all of the lessons. 

And the beauty of it isn't just the lesson, but that Anakin gets to be the one to teach it to her. The betrayal that she experienced in discovering his fall, the taintedness that she has been portraying that she feels about herself, gets specifically addressed because if he figured it out, then she definitely can too. If he is more than just Vader, then she is too. And THAT is what the "Is that what this is about?" line is actually about. It's so so important that we get to see pre-Vader, Vader, and post-Vader across her vision because the point is that yes, Vader is a part of him, and that brilliant shot of the two of them glaring Sith eyes across the blade at each other did it's job in conveying that Ahsoka is capable of that darkness too, but you are not only the darkness. You get to choose. ("You're more than [death and destruction] because I'm more than that"). And more to the point, you have to choose. Because if you don't specifically choose to fight the dark, then you're ultimately choosing to fall into it. "Fight or die."

So for Anakin to be able to reach out to her one more time, to be able to love her the way he, as Vader, had refused to the last time when they met on Malachor, and to open with “you’re never too old to learn”, because god if he didn’t learn that the hard way too. And to be able to pass on to Ahsoka how to actually let go because he himself had only just finally been able to learn it as well, feels so powerful and poignant.

And that look of pride and wistful sadness that he gives her at the end? That both she and Luke were able to learn so quickly what took him so long? And that maybe, he may have helped save her from the worst traits that he imbued upon her? That’s him having let go of his own shame. He feels grief, he feels guilt—we can see it on his face—but what has happened has happened and he has accepted that, and finally learned that letting go doesn't mean it didn't happen, it means it doesn't have to define your actions going forward.

And finally, it’s also him letting go of ahsoka. By teaching her that she will choose her destiny, he has to accept that he cannot control it either. And he has. “There’s hope for you yet.” 

So yeah, Anakin learned to let go, and getting to see him here, in this headspace of acceptance and peace, practicing and understanding what it means to be a Jedi, was so unexpectedly cathartic and revelatory for me as viewer. 

[oh-great-authoress]

Cyclone: *shudders*

Hondo: *backs out of Cyclone’s office*

Five minutes later…

Hondo: Admiral Bates, what is the jellyfish incident?

Cyclone: Don’t let Maverick tell you he’s supposed to have class off base. We put a stop to that after the jellyfish incident. Hondo: Oh, that’s so sweet! He took the squad to the beach again? Cyclone: No beach. Just jellyfish. Don’t ask.

[oh-great-authoress]

“My mother—she is in the ship below. How urgently the sense of her doth come— Her sorrow and her love in equal measure. My scope is set to strike upon the bridge Wherein I know she waits with baited breath. Can I set fire upon the woman who Did give me life, did raise me as a child? Shall I play murderer, ply matricide? I shall not do it, cannot.”

— Ben Solo, Jedi The Last, Act I Scene 5

[oh-great-authoress]

[oh-great-authoress]

F-14 FUN FACT OF THE DAY #27

The back of an F-14 Tomcat was nicknamed the “Tennis Court” due to the sheer amount of surface area on the top of the aircraft. I guess it was so big they joked you could play tennis on it. The Tomcat is by no means small and is hard to miss in a dogfight, which is why it shares the nickname with the F-15 Eagle.

[oh-great-authoress]

a month ago i picked up a book on stage directing in my school’s black box and opened to a random page and it was something about making shakespearean actors rehearse by adding the word fuck to their lines to turn the archaic language into something familiar for the emotional resonance (of course taking it out as rehearsals move along to fix rhythm/etc but just to start off) and the example it gave was the solid flesh speech. like. iirc it was specifically “but two fucking months dead”

and like. im obsessed with this. as a concept. not even for acting i just think it’s so fucking funny. to be or not to be, that’s the fucking question. is this a fucking dagger i see before me. this is the excellent fuckery of the world -

[oh-great-authoress]

I promised a video of sunrise at the lake.

[oh-great-authoress]

today, we are canceling the apocalypse!

happy 10th anniversary pacific rim!

[oh-great-authoress]

Goose: I mean, the man’s motto is literally “Don’t think, just do.”

Ice: what does Mav think he's doing? Goose: bold of you to assume Mav thinks about what he is doing.

[oh-great-authoress]

More of Bridget in the sheets for Feline Friday. Sometimes she’s just super cute.

[oh-great-authoress]

Made this

[oh-great-authoress]