#if anyone wants to know which eps the quotes are from lmk

[yourockthebeatofmyheart]

Aesthetic Drawfee quote lockscreens (and by "Drawfee" I mean "mostly Karina" lol)! Feel free to use!

[praecurokat]

Ted Lasso Finale Thoughts- So Long, Farewell... (I do not know what to think!)

this episode being an hour and 15 minutes..after being released at midnight... that's just cruel.. my brain cannot operate properly under such conditions..

congrats Tedbecca shippers! oop watched more.. sorry Tedbecca shippers...

most normal Beard and Jane appearance in the series at Rebecca’s house in the beginning

writers were bringing the dramatic flair in this episode! first that thing with Isaac dressed as a judge in the beginning, and then a musical number! idk how i feel about that..

speaking of the musical number, i must regretfully inform the masses that idk what the song is from.. pls lmk in the comments.. i see that it relates to the episode title

ah yes Jane acting totally normal by shredding Beard's passport.. total ✨ marriage material ✨

Trent's shirt says sat 17 may.. could this be significant?? everything in this show is..

"You know, that might be a tasty little treat for the diamond dogs.” “No. No. No. No!”-Roy, soon to become a Diamond Dog in a moment of desperation

wait did Trent name his manuscript the lasso way awww

“I only got into this to ruin Rupert's life, and he seems to be doing a pretty good job of that himself.”- Rebecca

So. Many. Throwbacks. Keeley saying “Is everybody decent?”, Jamie using lots of axe body spray like S1, the cleaner walking in on everyone, and way more i can’t think of

the complicated web that is royjamiekeeley is still being spun.. in the last episode..

“Must be awful for them, lying awake at night, haunted by how fucking easy they’ve had it!”- Mae, to Rebecca’s mom

Trent watching Ted read his book.. heart eyes emoji

the way Ted looks at him.. i meannn is this even subtext anymore?

“So you do laugh, but you don't do it until page.. 43?! And it wasn't even a big laugh!”- Trent, while Ted is reading his manuscript

"Whatever happens on Sunday, I want you to know I’m proud of you. All the work you’ve put in this year."- Roy to Jamie, before proceeding to fistfight with him later

Both Roy and Jamie seem very contemplative this ep. What are they thinking??

i am so concerned about the current royjamie feud over Keeley... what is gonna happen here???

“Would you please stay?” and “I know, I just had to try.”- Rebecca, about Ted

lmao Keeley kicking both Roy and Jamie out after they asked her to choose

“You stay put, Trenthouse magazine. You’re part of the squad now.”- Ted, to Trent

“Yeah. Someone better. Can people change?”- Roy, also this is a central tenet of this damn show

“I don’t think we change per se, as much as we just learn to accept who we’ve always been, you know?” -Trent’s most beautiful quote thus far

aww Nate finally got his diamond dogs reaction to Jade

George being Rupert’s coach sent me.. like you Really couldn’t find anyone else?

I hate Rupert but I love his dramatic slay coat swish moments.. again reminds me of Uther’s drama queen antics

“I prefer rugby, there’s just more grown men throwing other grown men into the air like children. And blood. Which is nice." - Barbara

Bloodthirsty and mysterious? Barbara is a serial killer or vampire confirmed.

“Never forget, I am always inside you.” -Zava’s note, which also came with a giant avocado

Zorro has truly entered his superhero arc and Dani Rojas is his genius creator

the fourth thing has to be 'Believe'.. aand it was? Right?

AFC Richmond Women’s club.. i sense a spinoff show opportunity…. or they could just do a show about Trent

George has begun a redemption arc!! (Telling Rupert to fuck off)

Rupert's desperation and misery at the end is not entirely unreminiscent of Rebecca at the start of S1

yesss Colin got his kiss on the pitch!!

haha the same? person from S1E1 taking pics w Ted in the airport

damn so Beard’s going home too, thought Jane would've locked him away in a safe or smth… nvm

omg Amsterdam man has a child.. hmmm Rebecca’s prophecy may still be fulfilled

Roy becoming manager feels natural

Ofc Trent renamed his book ‘The Richmond Way’… never let them know your next move

that montage at the end…so much to process....

beardjane wedding marking the end of the series.. good or bad omen for the future? i think bad

seems very fitting the series ending the opposite of how it began.. Rupert's life ruined, Rebecca in love and not owner of the club, Roy and Jamie healing and bonding w others around them, and Ted back in America with family.

[twilightofthe]

So...about that Obitine Anidala rant. Also, you said something about how Sidious and Obi-Wan are foils. I would love it if you elaborate. (Also, I love your blog.)

Awwwww thank you anon!  I just be yelling on here!

*wheezes* okie doke!  Tho I stress that this won’t exactly be a rant because I adore Obitine and Anidala and rant kinda implies aggression towards them, this is more of just a long-ass ramble because while I love them, I don’t always love the way canon portrays them in the narrative, particularly in relationship to each other, because I often do not feel that what the show is trying to push us to think about them is accurate to how they actually act and come across.  Notably, the show attempts to draw comparisons to the two relationships that really don’t exist below surface level similarities.  Again, these are my own personal opinions, and in fact, I welcome discussion!  I truly do!  Please politely debate me on this if you disagree!

(god dammit it got long again, so long I’ll actually put ur Sidious and Obi Wan as foils part in a separate post)

I’ll get to why exactly the show compares the relationships very strangely in a moment, but first we gotta explore the reason why it does this in the first place, which is that the Clone Wars show has decided to make Obi Wan and Anakin narrative foils to one another.  Narrative foils, by the literary definition, are two characters that contrast one another.  They don’t have to be the protagonist and the antagonist, these characters can be on the same side, basically the thing is that they have “opposite” personalities where if one character is hot, the other is cold, if one character chooses to go right, the other will go left.  It’s usually used to show one character’s qualities as more favorable for the situation as opposed to anyone else’s.

TCW does this whenever they possibly can with Anakin and Obi Wan.  I get its reasoning behind it.  I do.  The reasoning is that while Anakin is supposed to be a main character, he makes questionable decisions quite often and for the kiddies watching, those decisions must be seen as Bad even if the hero does it, so they have Obi Wan, the unquestionable good guy, encounter the exact same scenarios Anakin makes his questionable decisions in, and then has Obi Wan make the Right(TM) decision to teach the kids a valuable lesson.  They turn Obi Wan into the voice of reason for the entire show, which turns basically almost everything Obi Wan and Anakin do into a constant competition in the narrative in a way the movies do not do (and I’ll get to the movies later).  I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad thing, making them foils, but it’s definitely more of a show-only thing and it does it quite, quite often.

So yeah, TCW likes to compare Obi Wan and Anakin to the point that sometimes they try and use Obi Wan to diminish Anakin’s genuine trauma and struggles by going “well why didn’t you do it like THIS?” and I think that writing parallel plotlines for the purpose of shaming/criticism is kinda ://////, but that’s another rant for another day that again, if y’all wanna hear about, lmk

Anyway, the need to compare them absolutely made its way into their romantic relationships as well, as they acknowledge the similarities in the show, and Filoni and the crew explicitly compare the two relationships in interviews.

Basically my problem with how they try and draw said parallels can be boiled down to one quote by Filoni that a cursory Google search could not find but I know exists so y’all can take my word or not, that went along the lines of “Obi Wan and Satine are like Anakin and Padmé but better because they know how to stay unattached and let each other go.  They’re a success story.”  I disagreed with this quote so much it inspired me to write a whole-ass fic about it (Mutuals update: yes, it is coming soon, Darth Maul is just himself and therefore an utter pain in the ass to do a POV on and is fighting me like the bitchass he is)

My thesis that I will be arguing today is that while TCW tried to create Obitine as an Anidala parallel, they’re really not similar in the way the writers think they are.  Obitine is not a success story to Anidala, they’re a goddamn tragedy too; the real parallel to Anidala is that Obitine also ended in death and tears despite making all the “right” decisions instead of all the “wrong” ones, and that is what is sad about them.

Like, on the surface level?  Yeah, the crew-intended parallels are there.  A fancy politician and a Jedi get together after the Jedi is assigned as the politician’s bodyguard.  The first time they see each other in over a decade the guy’s first words are basically “damn girl you’re still hot”, there is Conflict(TM) and the choice to try and be together or stay yearningly apart because they are Forbidden(TM) to be together, and ultimately a Sith Lord fucks them both over because he’s obsessed with the Jedi and uses Politician Lady to his advantage, finds and exploits a vulnerability of hers, destroys her life’s work, and then lets her die to make Jedi Man sad.  The difference is all that one pair said “yeah we aren’t gonna break the rules to be together” and the other said “fuck it yeah we are, let’s do this”

But beneath all of that, they real similarities are different and not at all focused on by the narrative.  Obi Wan and Anakin are extremely different people, as are Padmé and Satine, so their relationship dynamics together will not be the same.  You want to try and compare Obi Wan and Anakin and then compare Satine and Padmé like the crew attempts to, and you can’t, they have the same job but not nearly the same life.  Namely, the funny coincidence is that Obi Wan and Padmé are much more similar in personality, while Anakin and Satine are also much more similar in personality, so the first time they meet again, it’s both Anakin and Satine as the one who’s been pining for over a decade and the one more actively pursuing the relationship, while Obi Wan and Padmé who are more like “uh, hi, wow, you’re hot and this is a Problem because I have a job to do pls don’t look at me like that but also I will Cause Problems On Purpose and flirt with you anyway because I can’t help it”.  I get the Corruption TCW ep with Sati and Pads was mostly intended just to help Satine pass the Bechdel test and also show how similar the two leading lady love interests are, but it was a genuinely creative episode that actually ended up showing how much Satine and Padmé compliment each other instead of mirroring each other, much like Obi Wan and Anakin do.

And, onto my next point, despite the character parallels being wrong, the parallels in the relationship are different too.  Like I said, the parallel isn’t that Obi Wan and Satine aren’t attached like Anakin and Padmé are.  The parallel is that Obitine is actively running from what that attachment means instead of embracing it like Anidala is.  The show would argue that since they try to avoid it, that they are able to live without one another, means they aren’t attached like the Jedi define it, but I argue that they definitely still are attached to a degree because they cannot give each other up.  They held torches for each other from a timerange of 15 YEARS.  Yes I know they spent an entire year together at a young and emotionally volatile point in their lives, but I stand that NO ONE is that hung up on their ex for that long unless there is some serious emotions involved.  Anakin was hung up on Padmé for ten years, and that was because Palpatine was constantly bolstering those affections and reminding him of Padmé.  Obes and Sati both-- or at least Satine, the show always makes Obi Wan’s feelings for Satine in return much more vague --held on to their feelings for five years longer without the influence of a Sith Lord.

And the thing is, they know it.  Obi Wan and Satine are both fully aware that they haven’t been able to shake each other off like they should and that that is a Problem, that’s why they’re both a mite venomous with each other beneath the flirting at first, they’re both extremely frustrated with themselves for not being able to get over this thing they have, and frustrated with the other for being there as an active temptation.

And yet, they still are attached to each other.  They try to avoid it, they definitely try, and that’s what makes them different from Anidala, but they are definitely still attached.  You can see it in Obi Wan’s actions in Voyage of Temptation when Merrik is threatening to blow the ship, the way he hesitates in attacking him because that would be “striking an unarmed man”.  Obi Wan Kenobi does not prefer violence, no, but he has never hesitated to cut a bitch before if it’s for the good of the many.  This is the man who stabbed someone with a fork and threatened to eat him just to maintain his cover as a dangerous criminal.  This is the guy who had no problem killing Zam Wessel for information to protect Padmé.  This is a pragmatist who prefers peaceful solutions, but he does not hesitate if he feels it is a justified offense.  But this time, when an entire shipful of people is at risk, Obi Wan hesitates.  Because he doesn’t want to upset Satine.  Because he’s probably thinking on how she told him that if he had killed the last terrorist they encountered, she wouldn’t speak to him, how she had criticized every time he used violence to escape Death Watch before.  He hesitates because he’s putting her happiness, just for a second, over the sake of duty.  Do I think that if Anakin hadn’t shown up to save their moral compasses, Obi Wan would have eventually taken out Merrik?  Absolutely; hell, I honestly think Satine might have done it.

But the matter was, Merrik could have pressed the kill switch any second of Obi Wan’s hesitation, and Obi Wan knew that, and was hesitating anyway.

I am calling this attachment solely because if the situation was reversed, if this was Anakin and Padmé in this situation, with Anakin not taking out a dangerous criminal because he doesn’t want to upset Padmé (lol ignoring the fact that Pads 1000% would have shot that bitch, and even if she didn’t, Anakin would because he is perfectly fine with hurting his loved ones’ feelings if he feels it’ll keep them safe), god, the narrative would have eaten Anakin alive.  

No, I won’t take criticism.  I know how the show handles the Anidala dynamic.  It would have shown Obi Wan popping up to take out the baddie as him doing the right thing and saving the day, and then Anakin would have been shamed for letting his feelings for his wife get in the way of protecting a shipful of people.  THAT would be the Vader foreshadowing, none of this “only a cold-blooded killer” shit, no way would they ever stick that label on Obi Wan.

So yeah, I’m going off of the fact that if that would have been classified as attachment for Anidala-- which, it would, then. it counts for Obitine.

And then Obi Wan and Satine continue to be hung up on each other for the rest of the eps they’re in, Satine saying in words multiple times how much she loves and cares about him and wishes things could be different, and Obi Wan performing it in actions, risking his own neck and political standing to help her even when she’s a fugitive, probably personally putting in to send his own grandpadawan to help her later.  Right up to the time when Satine decides that she is going to call Obi Wan when she is deposed.  Not the Senate.  Not any powerful politician friends.  Not even the Jedi Order or the Council as a whole.  She calls and addresses her distress call to Obi Wan alone.  And Obi Wan, as now revealed to us by TCW S7, defies Council orders and breaks a century old neutrality treaty to try and bust her, a convicted murderer in the eyes of the Republic and Mandalore, out.  He didn’t even know Maul had her.  Just knew she was in danger and came running to her aid.  He risks starting a potential war to come save her.  They acted so in love that Vizsla was able to guess from being around them for like five seconds, and was able to tell Maul exactly who he would need to bait Obi Wan.

That is where the attachment comes from.  It’s the fact that Obi Wan and Satine tried so, so hard to give each other up and do the right thing, but when it came down to it, they couldn’t lose the other one so they put them first when logically they shouldn’t.  And thus, Satine ended up dead.

Now I know most people will argue with me that actually Filoni means that since they didn’t stay together after the year on the run, THAT is what makes them able to give each other up, and also the fact that Obi Wan didn’t go dark side and murder everyone when Satine died.

But I still think that at least the murder front is a fairly low bar to cross, and anyway, that just because they could live without each other didn’t mean they weren’t still attached.  Anakin and Padmé were apart for 10 years and then even after that, they were apart almost constantly during the war.  Just because they could live apart or even past the other’s death didn’t mean they weren’t attached, as they both still had not let the other go mentally and also broke rules to try and ensure the other would not die, even if the rules said they should let it happen.

So yeah, that’s my big theory.  We can’t compare Obitine with Anidala by saying Obitine was a success story, we compare them by acknowledging that both struggled with attachments and letting the other go, but Obitine at least tried to the bitter end to do the right thing while Anidala didn’t really bother, and both ended up with dead women and broken men regardless, and that is the true sad parallel to me.

[sapphoshands]

if you're still up for the DVD commentary meme (& no worries if you aren't!), i'd love to hear you talk about the moments of physical intimacy between grace & babe in "The Mark." i won't quote them all, but here's one: "Babe laughs heartily, and Grace joins in, placing a hand on the small of Babe's back to steer her inside. Thank God, she thinks again, thank God, thank God. Thank you, God."

whee, happy to!  this got suuuuuuper long, because this kind of touches (ha) on questions like was grace a little in love with babe and why could she be friends with babe and not frankie and what’s grace’s type and probably others. :P  also i’m writing much of this after midnight while watching the women’s hockey final so uh, lmk if it goes incoherent at any point.

tossing it under a cut just for length.

i think of grace at this point in time - this is set in my timeline around 2003 and their sixtieth birthdays, about ten years into robert and sol’s affair, probably the first year both girls are away at college - as very, very isolated and touch-starved in a way she absolutely does not let herself think about.  she probably was never particularly touchy-feely with robert or the girls, but even the casual parenting-type touches are gone for her now, and robert’s touch is never going to be warm and meaningful (another thing she doesn’t think about).  

the intro about grace in the empty house comes from the s2 ep where she says she used to go to the bar after work to avoid going home.  which is, of course, also where she met up with phil.  in the timeline i put together last summer, i pegged grace-and-phil as somewhere between 1999 and 2001 (i do not remember why, now).  so this is set between two and four years later.  ish.  long enough that grace has probably done a pretty good job avoiding those memories.  recent enough that the details are probably not too far away from her subconscious.  because that bit you’ve quoted is definitely a callback to grace saying, about phil, that he put his hand on her back and she felt something she’d never felt with robert.

so, okay, in this story where grace is obviously queer, how does she feel about babe?  and why does she react to babe so differently than she does with frankie?

i actually see phil, frankie, and babe as along a continuum of very similar types of people.  while phil is just not as intense as either of the women, he’s also willing both to ignore convention in favour of his own desires and to be silly, at least in concert with grace.  (they laugh, he teases her, but i’m thinking particularly of the way he goes along with her declaration to the room service guy that she’s renting him by the hour.  can you imagine robert’s response to something like that?)  so grace has a type.  but in 2003 she’d never even consider the possibility of being queer.  so why does she touch babe this way?

the fic begins with sensory details that emphasise solitude and space - echoes, immobile air, silence - and the first things that touch grace are the beach air and the blanket, both comforts she has to find for herself.  and then when babe arrives, grace has to be invited to touch.  or, rather, there’s a progression: babe asks grace to touch (“Six months of chemo and forget a hug, I don’t even get a hello?”), grace and babe mirror each other (“How are you, lady?” Grace demands, stepping back a little to get a good look at Babe but keeping firm hold of her shoulders, clinging to their solidity. / “I’m all right!” Babe laughs, gripping Grace’s arms in return.), and grace makes an overture and then waits for permission to complete it (Grace reaches out, waiting for Babe’s nod, and rubs her hand over the soft bristles.).  all of this while they’re still embracing, and sensory details are becoming more vivid and intimate, if not always positive (The wig still smells plasticky, memories of vomit and disinfectant clinging to it, but Babe’s own scent is there again under it all, vanilla and baby powder and one of the obscure expensive perfumes she had to leave off every day she had a hospital visit. Grace breathes it all in.).

that little dance of invitation and mirroring is really central to my thoughts about babe versus frankie.  because babe, for all she lives large and unapologetically, doesn’t demand that grace change to accommodate her.  this is only part of what i think about babe-versus-frankie, but it’s an important part.  we know that grace is actually rather more willing to be silly and daring than she seems - think of the bowling alley and sock-full-of-cocaine stories - as long as she has some backup.  so when babe does meet grace’s boundaries, she tests them, checks them, but doesn’t force them, and that makes grace more likely to bend to accommodate her.  frankie, though, doesn’t understand the concept of boundaries, bless her.  her excitement overcomes pretty much anyone else’s interests: ‘do these things look right to you,’ the way she is with pregnant mallory, looking phil up online, and so on.  babe, on the other hand, is willing to let grace be grace even to the point of missing a final goodbye.  so grace is able to reach out and ask babe for permission to touch, and then she’s emboldened to take it further.  

phil’s touch to grace’s back.  to someone who is rarely touched, it’s seismic.  it’s ‘something she’d never felt with robert.’  what does that mean?  what, exactly, does she feel?  there are a lot of possibilities.  desired is only one of them.  but i think grace is probably quite used to being the object of desire.  that’s a very surface-level type of desire, though.  (think of the way she knows how to react to nick.)  so to me, the touch is an acknowledgement of mutuality.  it’s about being wanted for herself.  it’s about feeling precious.  

grace is definitely not thinking about this in any conscious fashion.  but she is thinking about how wonderful it is to have babe safe.  saved.  and she wants babe to know how happy grace is about that, and how important babe is to grace.  so grace’s hand on babe’s back is protective, intimate.

if touch is connection, then what babe is asking - for grace to get a tattoo that connects them, on her skin - is a deeper, more lasting kind of touch.  and the last exchange reflects that, and babe’s ability to encourage grace to shift her boundaries (rather than trampling them as frankie might): Babe wiggles her fingers, and Grace reaches out slowly. Babe's hand is warm in hers, firm and comforting and there. Grace tightens her grip. Babe holds fast. And after a drawn-out pause, Grace stands up.

babe asks, offers: grace accepts, extends herself.  

touch comes back again in the coda to the story, when grace is with frankie.  frankie discovers grace’s tattoo via physical exploration of her body, and their intimacy is enhanced by the normalisation of touching each other: But Frankie's touch stops on her hip, tracing a circle. / Her fingers run gently up and down Grace's hip. / She reaches down to touch the tattoo, brushing Frankie's fingers, even though there's no difference between it and the surrounding skin any more.  touch conveys information, but also, they get to be sweaty and sticky, naked and exposed, share reassuring kisses and sleepy cuddles, and it’s all very, very healing for grace.

As she drifts off, she feels Frankie pressing a kiss to her forehead, and she falls asleep with a smile.