#he never had a choice

[tragedy-for-sale]

The Point of no Return

Because I will never shut up about the Hardeen arc- I really need to emphasize the importance of this moment right here. When we think of the Hardeen arc, we only ever think about the aftermath, after the lie and after the pain. But I have never thought about the before. The moments right before.

Obi-Wan takes a deep breath, he brings his lightsaber to his chest and he gathers himself. He has to take a moment to think about what he's about to do.

This is a complete turn of feelings from when we see him wittingly ask how his funeral was, it's that simple and easy commentary that makes them all think this was easy for him to do. He shoves down what he's feeling right here and instead he jokes and laughs. He's fun and easy, he's funny, he's great, but he's not, he's not, he's in a lot of pain and he hurt everyone close to him in the worst way. Obi-Wan would never hurt them, but he has, and he'll never be forgiven.

He made this choice for the greater good, but the greater good is seldom so. It's in this moment we understand his full awareness of the deception he is about to undergo, how there is no forgiveness for the action he is about to commit, how after all this is over, Obi-Wan cannot expect forgiveness and understanding because this is for the greater good, this is for the Jedi and all they protect.

This isn't a choice for Obi-Wan. It is an assignment to a Jedi Master. Attachment is forbidden, become a part of the cosmic force, and the galaxy will benefit from your sacrifice. But the undercurrent of remorse is there, and all the people he left behind will never forgive Obi-Wan for dying.

So, Obi-Wan holds his lightsaber to his chest because it is his life, it's a silent goodbye to who he is because of what he is. He chooses the Jedi and that choice kills him. It's in that moment that he says goodbye to Anakin and Ahsoka, to Cody and himself. His identity, his lightsaber, are about to no longer exist. Obi-Wan would willingly sacrifice who he is for the sake of the Jedi but that doesn't mean it is easy for him to do. So he holds his lightsaber close because he's not becoming a part of the cosmic force, he's becoming something much worse.

[ofovertime]

You know. It would just be one huge cuddle pile on nanami.

I'm pretty sure any of his friends would see him down and kind of just force him to sit in one place and it's just a huge cuddle pile. Haibara first, shoko andthe gojo and geto.

and all nanami wanted to do was be alone.

[5ummit]

still thinking about this scene and these tags by @fuckyeahisawthat

[rookeryyy]

REINVENT

YOURSELF

tumblr HATES my 44.1mb image swag so it has SO MUCH COMPRESSION and downsizing here. :') peep the actual intended size & quality (or as good as i could get it exported)

post-return Q!Tubbo :] Tee hee.

un hamburgesa para tubbo (he lookied ungry)

[alusart]

This might be the most beautiful parallel in young royals.

[turtleblogatlast]

Man “Battle Nexus: New York” was a great episode but I do have one major gripe with it.

Like. Raph being paired up with Ghostbear? Makes sense. Works great. Works amazing, even.

Mikey being paired up with Meatsweats? Yeah that checks out!!

Donnie getting…Hypno…? I mean. I guess Donnie doesn’t like magic so it kindaaa works but Kendra would have been a much better choice to me personally. Maybe Big Mama didn’t wanna include a human or something…

And Leo getting…uh…one of the Sando Brothers???? Of all villains? Nah let’s be real, his main villain is more Big Mama herself (or Leo could be considered his own worst enemy lmao-). Hell Hypno would have probably worked better here considering their shared love for magic tricks and stuff, but Carl Sando????

[haunted-xander]

Sometimes I think about Urianger's role in and feelings on the Thancred-Ryne dynamic and I think watching it kills him a bit inside. For several reasons.

Like, to begin with there's the guilt he's been carrying with him since he ushered Minfilia to the first, how he effectively killed the person Thancred cared about the most in the world and who's "death" ended up causing Ryne's entire Situation. He looks at what's happening between them and can only think "I caused this" even though that's not really true. No one person is responsible for this outcome, it's a culmination of several circumstances and the consequences of them. Logically, Urianger knows this. But it doesn't matter, because his guilt is overpowering his logic.

And also, like. What Thancred is doing here, the way he's knowingly letting Ryne be and stay hurt because he literally cannot bring himself to tell her his feelings, is the exact same mistake Urianger made with Moenbryda. Of course, the circumstances are vastly different, and the potential consequences to Thancred telling Ryne the wrong things or her misinterperating it is far greater (being a matter of literal life or death), it's still the same sort of paralysis they are trapped in.

And he knows it. He sees it. But he can't say or do anything about it, he doesn't have the right to. He acknowledges the mistake, but he hasn't really improved upon it yet. He still doesn't voice his thoughts and feelings as he should. He's also non-confrontational by nature, he doesn't argue or try to change peoples minds, he probably doesn't think he has any place to.

So, he tries to help in what little ways he can. Because he doesn't want it to become Monebryda again, he doesn't want to know he stole not one but two people from Thancred. So he does what he can. He tells Ryne little tidbits about Thancred, things that help her understand him but are safe to share. Nothing too deep, nothing too personal. Just small things, things that are purely factual, because he can't afford to give her a false image of who Thancred is. He teacher her fun and interesting things, because Thancred isn't in the mindset to provide her with non-essential skills.

I like to think Urianger has brought it up with Thancred at least once, during one of his stays. But nothing would've come of it. Not really. Unlike Y'shtola, Urianger isn't pushy, he'll bring it up once or twice and when he sees this won't go anywhere, he gives up. He wants to help, but he knows that persistance only does do much, and he is not the person who has the resiliance needed to push and push until Thancred finally budges (because he won't budge, it won't help anything but to sour things further by adding aditional stress to an already strained dynamic).

And like. Urianger gets it. He gets it because he's been the same way- not saying what he should to someone he loves more than anything else because she was meant to figure her life out herself, and 'steering' her in any direction by telling her his feelings (regardless of if the 'steering' is intention or not) will go against that. He gets it. He gets it and it's all the more painful for it. He knows it can't just be fixed by acknowledging it or with encouragement, something needs to happen to break the stasis.

I think this is probably why he stayed behind while they went off to Nabaath Areng. This is the very last chance they have to say what they want to, and he can't afford to be the anchor anymore. This is about them, not him, he can't let their resolution be buffed by his presence, so he stays behind. Which was probably for the best. Ryne got nervous when Urianger said he's staying behind, probably not too excited about being alone with Thancred (well, not alone, but WoL doesn't count) so soon after she had ran away crying. But she needs to be nervous. For anything positive to come out of this Thancred and Ryne both can't afford to be too relaxed. As sad as it is, the stress is necessary for anything to happen. He knows it. Does he like it? Absolutely not, but nor does he like his other plots. At least no one dies this time if it goes right.

[canisalbus]

To me, Machete kind of has the energy of a secondary villain/coldhearted side character in someone else's story that a lot of fans latch onto, moreso than the protagonist. Question is, would he be the villain in anyone's story?

Why, thank you! I'm actually glad to hear he gives off that vibe. I don't think he set out to become a villain but a lot of people certainly view him as one.

[royalarchivist]

Fit: [In the animatic] Did I steal anything else before I have to go to work?

Phil: [Snorts as he realizes what conversation this was]

Fit: [In the animatic] Did I steal else from you?

Phil: [In the animatic] Just my heart.

Phil: [Laughs]

Cucurucho: Hahaha.

Mike: WTF FIT?! I'm gonna tell Pac, bro!

Cucurucho: Hahaha.

[lukecastellanshandholder]

"Luke made the choice to join Kronos. Luke made the choice to betray everyone at camp. Luke made the choice to-." Blah, blah, blah.

Anyways, given that Kronos obviously manipulated Luke into believing that he wanted what Luke wanted (and that was to make life for demigods better and to hold the gods accountable for their actions), only to get Luke to say yes and join him… did Luke really have a choice? It’s states multiple times throughout the first series, by various characters, that Kronos could manipulate even the person with the strongest will power. Hell, Kronos even manipulated Ares! A literal god!

You think that Luke really had any chance of turning Kronos down, especially right after his quest when his emotions were all over the place?

Then let’s not forget that it’s stated right in the books that Kronos would straight up torture Luke with nightmares when he would "fail" or he felt Luke’s loyalty to him wavering. So, if he was punished/tortured whenever he may have wanted to disband the alliance with Kronos… did he really have a choice? Or was he stuck in that awful predicament because of one bad decision that wasn’t even truly his very own decision?

Luke may have thought that he had a choice in the beginning and it may seem that way to Percy and the others. However, it’s made perfectly clear in TTC that all of the "power" that Kronos had given Luke (as far as letting him see over the army in SoM and everything) was really just to pacify Luke and keep him compliant and unquestioning until he was ready to use him as his vessel if things didn’t work out with the fleece.

As far as I see it, Luke stopped having the true ability to make choices after he agreed to join Kronos and that happened before we even see him in TLT. In this essay I will-…

[mxtxfanatic]

Fandom Gripe #23: I know that fandom is in some deep denial about its treatment of female characters that are canonically involved with fan favorite m/m ships, but do y’all realize that when you disappear female characters from the narrative wholesale to push the idea that your canonically straight fav was “secretly gay all along!” you’re making several bad implications? That 1) bi men don’t exist, 2) bi men do exist, but those who have genuinely loved a woman before cannot genuinely love a man after that (therefore bi men don’t exist in practice), 3) women cannot inspire genuine love and devotion in men, therefore any relationship with a woman is “lesser” than the one they later have a man (see previous parenthesis), or 4) to acknowledge the existence of a lovable woman who isn’t a terrible person, where if a relationship previously existed, it did not end because of “incompatibility,” is enough to destabilize the present relationship between two queer men?

Because why is the tgcf fandom allergic to acknowledging that He Xuan had a whole ass fiancée that he loved? Why does no one ever seem to remember that the kidnappings and murders of He Xuan’s sister and fiancée were the final straws that sent him on his rampage, and he still keeps a shrine to them in the present-day of the story? Why is her entire existence and significance to He Xuan as a man, character, and to his character arc disappeared in favor of pushing Shi Qingxuan—the brother of the man responsible for his fiancée’s death—into that same role, as if to say that her impact on He Xuan is significant... just not when it's from her? Why does He Xuan’s life in fandom essentially begin not just after her death but because of it?

[iguessricciardo]

jimmy kimmel live show

[schrodingers-slut]

Roger being included in so many ‘deadbeat dads of one piece’ lineups is always so fucking funny to me. The man died. He didn’t abandon his kid so much as his pulse abandoned his body.

[bonefall]

Maybe I'll make a post on this at some point but like, something deeply fucked up about TNP and Po3 that people have totally forgotten about is how badly they try to whine that "Tigerstar Had Good Traits :("

Firestar does it, Brambleclaw does it, and they keep doing this after it becomes this GRAND irony that Firestar almost gets Tiger'd to death in a fox trap because he was too trusting. Bramble gets his pity award of keeping deputyship and then cries to his son about how No One Saw The Good In Tigerstar :(

And it's wiiiiild that no one else in this fandom has done anything with the fact that Leopardstar broke the Warrior Code to appoint Hawkfrost, who had no apprentice, an extremely aggressive and warmongering Tigerclone who says things like "Tigerstar wasn't the worst cat to look up to." ONLY qualifying trait was being kinda like Tigerstar.

And she practically did that the SECOND Mistyfoot went missing. And then Leopardstar continued to be one of the most violent and xenophobic leaders through Po3, joining with WindClan to attack ThunderClan.

What I'm getting at is that like, a few years ago, with books like "Blackfoot's Reckoning" and "Shadow in RiverClan" it's like they suddenly decided to retcon in a bunch of "redemption arcs" in hindsight. They just pretended like there was this grand high reckoning with TigerClan, when there literally wasn't, and if anything that caused SERIOUS problems for the cast that the authors didn't fully acknowledge as such.

And now ppl haven't actually read the main series and are just working with their recent memory of all these retcon books.

But TNP and PO3 are still there, and you can go and see the ACTUAL timeline where Leopardstar is really not apologetic at all, and Blackstar is a useful stooge for the very next wannabe dictator that strolls in, in spite of the new side content that COMPLETELY mischaracterized them for their plots to work.

[jade-of-mourning]

sorry sometimes i think about mako and my heart hurts so much. this kid raised himself and his brother on the streets in homelessness and utter poverty from eight through fifteen, promptly after seeing the violent death of his mother and father. he turned to the triple threats because they couldn't survive as a pair of wretched kids without any adult support, and the environment forced him to turn into the exact character that killed his parents in a terrible twist of irony. and after sheer-fucking-luck hits and they aren't homeless anymore, their livelihood wavers on the outcome of what's a literally game to everyone but them; and after things are finally starting to look up and their team is going places and things just might be okay, his gradually stabilizing world unceremoniously expands and everything goes to shit.

and the city that chewed him up and spat him back out, ruined him as a child and took away his ability to stay afloat in a true sense of normalcy as an adult — when it's on the verge of destruction and falling to pieces before his eyes, he gives himself to save it with the full expectation to die. he went from the kid who didn't and couldn't care about anything outside of himself and his brother, to finding redemption for his younger self in his police work despite its injustice against him, to willingly sacrificing himself to a world that had never loved him.

he's a desperate people pleaser, socially and emotionally stunted for the adult he had to be as a kid, unable to navigate interpersonal relationships easily yet still trying his damned hardest. he's intensely and entirely devoted to the things that matter to him and for so long it was only him, bolin, and ensuring their survival — yet by the end, that devotion has expanded to protecting the rest of the world. he starts out entirely self-reliant and ends in trusting the people he cares about to know their own needs, to be able to take care of themselves, to be okay without him despite having spent so much of his life defined by his role in others' well-being.

just. what the fuck i'm such a big fan of this fictional guy and i'm unashamed about it at this point. also let him cry please (if you won't i'll do it i'll let him cry)

[jellycass]

my prediction for genloss 2