#love as a destructive force

[jeanmoreaux]

— jamie ford, from the many daughters of afong moy

[applepi00]

I am cooking Something in my head about love and poison. It’s in Mabel, it’s in This Is How You Lose the Time War, some facet of it is in The Locked Tomb. I don’t have it in words yet but uuuuuuhhhhhhh love is devotion is destruction is unmaking is re-creation is revival is reconstruction

[marclef]

kinda drew these guys for fun but ehhhh screw it i’m posting them. having too much fun toying with Don’t Starve Fakey’s design 😅

(also hey i finished dialogue before i left on Thursday so i get to start on spritework when i get home!!!)

[heartslobbf]

people will be like ‘yeah it’s really relevant that utena is an orphan haha’ and then not even recognise how utena being a character without living blood relatives is hugely significant in a show where almost all of the most atrocious relationships are ones that have been spurred on by the notion of familial/blood obligation. and utena herself clings so tightly to what is essentially a romantic ideal of ‘the family’, ‘the blood relative’, telling anthy she’s jealous of her relationship with akio, insisting to nanami that she should persevere with her relationship with touga because you’re still siblings. in ohtori, family is something you can only be born into. in ohtori, family is the way you gain power. i mean for the love of god it’s right there, revolutionary girl utena is a family abolitionist masterpiece and it makes me claw at the walls!!!!!!!!! read the palace perspective!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! engage more with these aspects of the show!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! kill any and all people who go ‘why are there so many weird sibling dynamics i only came for the lesbians’ her NAME is kiryuu nanami and she does both!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[leomssis]

on the haunting of fc barcelona

[soracities]

What is the hozier thing? Ty

because of the nature of his music and the imagery he uses (myth, death, nature being used to explore love and devotion explored in various forms, how his music sometimes moves between the twin poles of the celebratory and the dark) people talk about him as though he's some mythical elvin fairy king and its increasingly uncomfortable. not just because he's simply an artist drawn to particular themes (like literally any other artist) but also because a lot of his music is addressing and exploring v real historical and social issues. people fixating on him as "the bog man" is very reductive and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth because he's not silent on the politics in his music either.

[muzzleroars]

thinking of minos referring to v1 as "creature of steel", acknowledging its creation by mankind but how he may possibly view it as almost animalistic in nature now (he cannot judge its actions necessarily and does not blame it really for its imparted instincts, but it must be destroyed as it threatens what little is left of human souls) vs sisyphus calling it "child of man", a phrase used to either emphasize humanity's lesser status toward god/angels or as the title for the one who would usher in the end of days...and simply, purely, "weapon". it is an unthinking harbinger of destruction on any level - it will come, it will destroy, whether as an animal, as a tool, or as an entity. both a force of nature and the result of human hubris...ouughhaaa

[s0fter-sin]

metalhead ghost who’s been in moshpits since he was a kid and is now a veteran of the scene and the self appointed look out. he keeps an eye out for anyone falling or passing out, kicks the shit out of anyone crowd killing or putting their hands where they shouldn’t

and he’s been keeping an eye on the punk in the kilt since he saw him throw himself headfirst into the wall of death

he looks like the type to start shit - loud and aggressive as anyone else here but a punk doesn't end up at a metal show for no reason - but there's also something niggling at him that he's gonna end up getting himself hurt. and ghost can’t tell if he’s going to do it on purpose

if he does, ghost needs to know. he uses these places as an escape - the music, the violence, the community - always has and he knows all to well how easily an escape can curdle and become destructive. he’s seen too many people lost to the darker parts of the scene, almost lost himself to it; he doesn’t want it to happen to anyone else if he can help it

so when he sees the punk sweating his mohawk off, his movements becoming looser and uncoordinated, he has no issues with yanking him out of the pit and pulling him away from the crowd; pushing him up against the venue wall and ordering him to open his mouth

the glaze that falls over his eyes concerns him even as he obediently lets his mouth fall open. he was right; the punk’s severely dehydrated, tongue and gums far to pale and along with the look in his eyes, he half-thinks he’s about to drop

he reflexively tightens his hold on his jaw to keep him up and the punk shivers, a flush creeping up his neck. an almost confused arousal joins the haze in his eyes and ghost smirks beneath his mask

looks like metal shows aren’t the only thing the punk is new to

[krakenshaped]

Character requests? How about... the supreme king judai....

Look at 'im... Look at his wittle face. Does this look like a little guy who could kill thousands and unleash an unholy interdimensional onslaught? I think not! He's a good boy

[merrysithmas]

Anakin Skywalker as a tragic hero

To be an Anakin apologist about it haha there are a lot of Takes recently because of the new show that seem to be missing an important POV about his role in Star Wars. Everyone's interpretation is valid but this is another to consider! Re: the concept of Fate in Star Wars as a genre of Tragedy.

Anakin was a demi-god and literal agent of the Force's Will (as per the actual narrative he was conceived from the Force to fulfill a prophecy). He was tortured by his tragic fate to enact the Prophecy (balance the Force). This prophecy ended up being predictably misinterpreted by the Jedi (hence the Tragedy genre) to mean "end the Sith" when it ended up meaning "end the Sith & the Jedi". This was Yoda's entire realization in RotS and why he painfully & memorably admits, "Failed, I have." So caught up was the Council in attachment to the war's outcome, to being warriors, to the Senate's will, to ending the Sith, that the Jedi forgot their principles.

The Sith, naturally, also failed. They manipulated and groomed Anakin from childhood - proving their evil.

Anakin was DESTINED to fall no matter what he tried (hence the genre of Tragedy), because he was DESTINED to enact the prophecy based off the actions of the Galaxy itself & Republic & Sith.

Anakin Skywalker is a tragic hero because his "heroic" destiny was to be an antagonist - to both the Jedi and the Sith until the Force was balanced, which, ultimately, was something the Force~ determined to be a necessary action - not him.

Anakin both is and isn't the Force, Anakin both is and isn't Vader. Microcosmically he has a crisis of personality, but macrocosmically his personality struggle is representative of the Force's response to the actions of the Galaxy at large. He is presented narratively as a messianic figure. He is not entirely human and not entirely beholden to human concepts of morality. He is a reactionary gauge of the moral health of the Galaxy as surely as he is an individual - and this is something he struggles with immensely. His human soul struggles with his fate and the tragedies that befall him and handling them. He is also not entirely in charge of his own free will.

His own free will is actually secondary and although his actions are important because he propels the narrative, from this POV Star Wars is ultimately about the other characters' reactions to Anakin as an agent of fate - Anakin is essentially the Old Woman appearing at the Castle in Beauty and the Beast, and the Jedi, Sith, Galaxy, and his friends are the people tasked with letting him in from the cold.

They almost all fail this test and display the darkness of the Galaxy towards the Innocent: Anakin was enslaved as a child, his mother murdered, the so-called compassionate Light-wielding Jedi made no exceptions for him as a young boy, the Sith took advantage of and manipulated him, Padme & Obi-wan had their own issues and were unable to see him entirely for who he was etc etc. This isn't to say they were all bad or even bad people at all! Or that the Jedi were bad~. But they failed the test anyway.

From this literary POV: Anakin was a test from the Force. And the Galaxy failed. Yet, despite this, Anakin's human half still fought for them, he was desperate to be a Jedi & truly believed in them and even returned to be one after the Prophecy was fulfilled and he was finally free. He mourns Padme (even as Vader) and cannot truly ever let go of Obi-wan as his partner (because he doesn't want to). His human half also burned for 20 years in the purgatory sarcophagus of Vader (it needed to "pay" for the human evil he took to enact the Prophecy).

Anakin wept when destroying the Temple and falling to the Dark. He knew becoming Vader would bring pain and suffering. He did not want to fall. Yes, he made choices that ensured he would because of his circumstances, but the tragedy is any of his choices would have lead him there. He was meant to fall in both the eyes of the Sith and Jedi, and to cast the Force's will upon them. This is why he was allowed to be a Force Ghost and reunited in everlasting life with Obi-wan. Because he was a tragic hero not a true villain.

Anakin Skywalker is a tragic hero who was in fact a slave his entire life. He is a tragic hero because his actions taken as per destiny (The Force at work) were engineered to cast him as a villain. No, he wasn't "evil" and yup... one could even argue... neither was Vader as a demi-god (though of course he commited evil). Anakin/Vader was merely an, sometimes unwilling, sometimes willing, always-tortured agent of the Force. One to be helped (Anakin) or defeated (Vader) as per the Force's test for the Galaxy.

This isn't anti-Jedi, either! Anakin loved the Jedi. You could argue importantly that the Force wanted the Jedi to prove themselves post destruction. It wanted the Galaxy to stop fighting one another (the War!) and focus on the true evil right under their nose (the Sith). It even gave them a target... Vader. One who stole their former future (symbolized by the younglings). And was then regifted as a second chance by Luke and Leia (younglings who represented a new Senate and Jedi Order) by Anakin.

For these reasons Anakin Skywalker is a tragic hero. He is not a villain and was not inherently evil, his destiny, one he fought valiantly against, was tragically to be an antagonist.

This meta isn't to say other's interpretations of Anakin's fall are wrong. They are all valid and fascinating (and often complement one another) - but this is simply another to add to the pile. One to consider when looking at the lore of Star Wars through the lens of the macrocosmic lens of "Fate" in a Tragedy.

[ask-fgod]

Ink, do you know anything about Freshes current state?

[heytheredeann]

I don’t want to learn how to control it. I want it gone.

[iviin-855]

The funniest thing about taking the i am hero terminal at its word and interpreting the security officer as the ethernal champion is that between durandal and him durandal is the one who is just a guy. Yes he is an insanely powerful ai who has a good shot at becoming god by surviving the end of the world but that hasn't happened yet. And on the other side you have a constantly reincarnating force of violence and change, the anthropomorphic representation of the pre modern concept of heroism. Who is in a mortal shell, yes (as mortal as battleroids get anyway) but still

[vinyatar]

the burdens of the father are set upon the shoulders of the son

[jasmancer]

sometimes I'll think abt rem from death note too hard and make myself sad

[quietwingsinthesky]

Irks me a little bit whenever Dean torturing in Hell is positioned as his own fault, or even really his choice to do. We get given the solid number, 30 years of torture for him and 10 inflicting it on other people (which was also more torture for him because it’s Hell, the torture evolves, it doesn’t stop), and we get told that wasn’t long enough. That John held out longer. That angels were going to pull Dean out of Hell and if he’d just held on a few years more, the seal wouldn’t have been broken.

But that isn’t true, right? We know Heaven wanted the seal broken, ergo Dean wasn’t getting saved until it was. Until it, and he, we’re thoroughly broken and usable by Heaven to achieve their own ends (ie to make him into a good (obedient) Michael sword.) So, it wouldn’t have mattered how long he held out in Apocalyptic terms because the game (that he didn’t know he was playing) was rigged against him.

But more importantly for Dean, the amount of time he managed not to break literally does not matter. Because it was never going to be long enough. Thirty years, forty, a hundred, a thousand, it does not matter how long he held out because the breaking itself is the unforgivable part to him and the breaking was always inevitable.

Anyway. There’s my Dean meta for the year. Eat up, I guess.