#mY CHILDHOOD

[denerturee]

Me with TMNT Bayverse:

Everyone hates you but I love you

[mayhaps-a-blog]

There's something about how it's Padme who suggests running away that just makes the most terribly tragic sense.

In the novelization, we start with Anakin, and he's so ready to leave, so ready to up and leave the order and has... no plan as to what's next. He'll be with Padme, and that's all that matters. He promises that he'll walk out, right this minute, if she just says the word.

And she doesn't. There's a war on, they're a Senator and a Jedi, they're needed - the Jedi need him, and the Republic needs her.

So they stay.

But then it's Anakin's turn to have a crisis. He needs to stay a Jedi to figure out his visions, but he needs to stay a Jedi to please Palpatine, but he needs to stay a Jedi because the Jedi need him... but it's all falling apart. The Jedi are being secretive, Palpatine's being manipulative, he hasn't slept in days and Obi-Wan is gone...

Padme is his only rock, and she can see that he's drowning.

So her solution? They run away. Take off, leave, get out, figure it out from there. They'll be away from the Jedi, from the war, from it all; they can figure it out. Together.

And you can see it, can't you? That fourteen-year-old queen. Still just a kid, but her planet needed her, and she refused to turn away. How many times did she dream of throwing it all away, running off into the stars? How many times did she dream, like teenagers so often dream, of that starry-eyed prince sweeping her off her feet, taking her away from all that? The pressure, the responsibility; freely taken, but sometimes knowing that you can't put it down only increases the burden.

And Anakin comes to her, drowning, like she once drowned, under it all - too much responsibility, too much pressure, too much everything. And she offers him the only thing she has: her dream. Her childhood dream, that carried her through so much: run away with me. Be my starry-eyed prince, and I will be your beautiful princess, and together we can be anything, far away among the stars.

The tragedy is that, in the end, that was never his dream. Padme dreamed of running away with a starry-eyed prince; Anakin dreamed of being the hero, saving the princess, saving the world. Padme dreamed of freedom - but Anakin dreamed of safety. Security. Power.

Neither were ever going to give the other what they wanted, no matter how hard they tried.

[multifandominfj]

He gave me Hope that the remaining 5% of men were worth not giving up on love.

[juniperarts]

Bratz were my childhood ✨️

Were you a Bratz or Barbie kid growing up? (Poll below)

[greetings-inferiors]

[nostalgia-folder]

multicolored blank CDs with matching cases

[bemusedlybespectacled]

because I sound like an absolute lunatic when I talk about the shows I watched as a kid and have no gauge for what normal children watched (because we didn't have cable and I wasn't allowed to watch most adult shows until I was 13)

[akonoadham]

Uncle Phil & Uncle Carl

[dymitre]

Millie and Geo ✨🤍💗

[spookietrex]

[crystallizedtwilight]

Have LSB ever gone into Canada during Halloween before? I ask bc parts of Canada usually get snow during Halloween so a lot of kids either have to wear a snowsuit over their costumes or sometimes costumes go over their snowsuits lol. What were their reactions?

I feel like the trio would like to visit all countries that trick-or-treat on Halloween at least once!

The trio, emerging from the Canadian tomb:

[matchstique]

I always wanted to be buttercup ❤️💚💙

[froqpi-art]

power rangers jungle fury anyone? anyone???

[wormspoodle]

[in a brooklyn accent] it's genda' toime

[kidcore-nostalgia]

Littlest Pet Shop Twinkling Sledding Party (1995)

[honourablejester]

It’s weird how mundanely different everyone’s experience of ‘the sea’ is.

I remember as a young kid reading one of the Famous Five books and the characters talk about ‘swimming out past the waves’ for a more leisurely swim. And I was in absolute awe of this, because the beach I swam at as a kid is basically an inlet between two headlands, it has an incredibly long gradual incline up towards the beach, and the tide drives water directly in. The difference between high and low tides is like quarter of a mile, and it’s waves all the way up. So you could swim past the waves when the tide is all the way out, sure, maybe, but if the tide is in? That’s like quarter to half a mile of a hard swim just to get to your ‘swim’. So I was looking at these kids in this book thinking ‘wow, you guys are hardcore’.

And then we started swimming at a different beach much later on, and it basically has no waves. It’s fully sheltered in the lee of a headland from the main currents/weather for the area, and it’s flat as a pond. Going out past the waves involves wading out five feet. So, ah. Depending on the geography of the beach the Famous Five were on? They might well have been hardcore. Or they might have had 15ft to go to get past the breakers.

I’m thinking about this because I’ve been watching clips of Bondi Rescue on youtube, and Bondi appears to be a surfer beach with big surf and several permanent to semi-permanent rip currents. And there are people going out in it who can’t swim, and they’re paddling around in rip currents in those inflatable pool rings, you know the pool flamingo things? And it baffles me. But then I remember that … well, everyone’s experience of ‘the sea’ is different. Maybe their home beach was flat as a pond because it was sheltered by a headland, and those pool things are perfectly feasible there.

I still would never in a million years go anywhere near the sea in them myself. You can’t swim in those. They pin your arms up. Yeah, you float, but you also get picked up by any motion in the water whatsoever and put wherever it wants you and you have no say in the matter. I’ve been in a rip once, with a boogie board, and you can feel them pulling you. It’s terrifying. I could feel it pulling the board out along its line away from me. Thankfully I could just swim sideways out of it, but for a while there before I knew how wide it was I thought I’d have to let the board go just so it wouldn’t pull me with it. So yeah, I get the desire for a floatation device, but I’d prefer one that a) lets me swim, and b) that I can get out of/let go of if it’s pulling me places.

I’ve been in a lot of seas. I’ve been in rocky inlets with big swells from the water just sloshing around between the rocks. I’ve been picked up and fully thrown up onto a cliff by a wave in one of those. I’ve been in nearly motionless water when you can basically lie on your back and let yourself drift because the water’s not going to carry you far. I’ve been swimming in a storm surge on that childhood beach with 12ft waves charging up quarter of a mile of beach and it was amazing, and relatively safe because you were going to get thrown in, not out. I’ve been caught in a rip in the most mild looking sea you can imagine and been absolutely terrified. I’ve been on a beach with a big long parallel sandbar submerged offshore, where you’re basically swimming in something that very much wants to be a shallow lagoon one day, but if you take one step off the far side of the sandbar you plunge into 30ft deep water.

‘The sea’ is not a thing, really. Every sea is a different sea. Every beach is a different beach. They all have their own rules and habits and peccadillos. Never assume it’ll be the same.

Just. As a general rule, though? I still wouldn’t use a pool ring in moving water.