watching this actually made me cry a little. i’ve long held that i think the support for anti-trans policies is a mile wide and an inch deep, and the majority of people who would oppose our existence in a survey or a ballot box do so out of ignorence in the truest sense of the word. Do so because they have little to no experience of us, do so because they don’t see us in their communities, do so because we are not a part of their daily lives, and that if they were to see us there in front of them day in and day out, they would not so easily cast aside our rights and our humanity in favor of what they hear about us from conservative media outlets. This is exactly what I’m talking about when I say that, and seeing such a perfect example of it, especially in so dark a time, brings me to tears.
Au where Goncharov and Andrey survive everything, grow old together and sit on a street all day somewhere in the south of Europe
This is my favorite Goncharov post so far because:
1. The concept of an ALTERNATE UNIVERSE for a movie that DOESN’T EXIST is sending me into another dimension.
2. Despite appearing nonsensical, we of course are living in a world where the established Canon of Goncharov is that they do not survive everything and grow old together.
3. Of fucking course Tumblr would imagine a movie with two characters with intense homoerotic subtext, kill them violently with their love unfulfilled, and THEN create AU FAN ART WHERE THE LOVE IS FULFILLED.
And all of it fucking slaps I love this so much
Thank you for the great addition! I’m so glad that people get my joke hehe
I love how here on tumblr dot website we regularly cast the greatest curse we can muster on each other by pointing our long creepy fingers and intoning “10,000 notes” in a voice that carries the winds of the mountain with it.
Personally, I don’t really see anything wrong with giving Luke to Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. What else was Obi-Wan gonna do? (He pretty much raised Anakin and look how that turned out, he’s not gonna risk Round 2.) (He could have given both kiddos to Bail and Breha Organa, actually. Luke and Leia Organa is a cool as heck AU.)
I like Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. As much as people like to say Luke really is Padme’s son, he didn’t get those morals from her. (Keeping in mind I have read no comics or novelizations, and not seen the Clone Wars TV show) It’s pretty clear that Luke’s iron spine and goodness and refusal to abandon his friends come from his upbringing. Owen and Beru Lars are kinda the Ma and Pa Kent of the Star Wars universe.
And they are Luke’s family. Owen is Shmi’s stepson. Owen and Beru probably knew Anakin’s mother for years. It’s a neat circle, and in some ways it has the feelings of an apology, for Obi-Wan to bring Luke back to his family on Tatooine in the same way that Qui-Gon took Anakin. Obi-Wan can’t undo what’s been done, and he can’t start over, but he can give Luke what the Jedi denied Anakin: a loving family and normal upbringing.
Tatooine is Darth Vader’s home planet? Yeah, sure, but did Anakin ever go back to Tatooine? (Probably once or twice, I’m guessing, in the comics at least.) Darth Vader hates that place. Bad memories. Damn sand would fuck up his suit. He’d burn it all down and then the Hutts are gonna be pissed. And how many people actually know that Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker? Like, about five? (Bail, Obi-Wan, Yoda, R2-D2, and Ahsoka?) Dude is not exactly getting invites to school reunions and the weddings of childhood friends, is all I’m saying.
Even if Darth Vader ever went back to Tatooine, Tatooine is a big place. The Lars Farm is in the middle of nowhere and Obi-Wan is hanging out left of the funky rock five miles past nowhere. Anakin met his stepbrother once in the entire film trilogy and idk if they even exchanged words, much less space e-mail addresses. I kind of doubt that Uncle Owen and Darth Vader are sending each other Life Day e-cards. (That’s really funny, actually.)
Anyway, the point of this rant is that I want you to imagine new parents Owen and Beru Lars caring for toddler Luke, it’s just after Life Day, and someone rings the doorbell. Owen Lars opens up to Darth Vader holding a fruit basket, because he didn’t know what else to do for Life Day and spontaneously decided to visit distant family rather than mope in his Evil Castle again.
(Everything Obi-Wan hoped would never happen, just… happening.)
Owen, after introductions, panicking, “Uh… the suit is… new.”
He has to invite Vader in, because it’s Life Day and how exactly do you tell Darth Vader to fuck off? Then Owen and Beru have a hushed argument in the kitchen while Darth Vader is sitting awkwardly in their living room with a drink that he can’t actually drink but took to be polite. When they come out, they introduce Luke as Luke Whitesun, Beru’s late brother’s kid, which they guess makes Luke… Darth Vader’s… nephew. (They can’t hide him, Vader’s already seen this 2-3 yr old Luke and the house is COVERED in baby and kid stuff.)
And Darth Vader just… fucking falls for it.
And the Lars family has to spend the holidays with Uncle Darth Vader who is super keen to have a step-nephew-in-law. Beru is showing off her cross-stitching to Darth fucking Vader as Luke plays at their feet. Owen is in the kitchen sending a desperate space text to Obi-Wan, who basically has a heart attack on the spot when Owen sends a shitty stealth-pic of Darth Vader on their couch.
Bonus points if the Lars’ don’t even move after this, because Vader left without issue and Uncle Owen afterwards was like, “It turned out fine. I don’t want to move, that’s too much hassle.” So, every major holiday, Luke gets a visit from his Uncle Darth Vader, which works out fine so long as they instigate a “Don’t Talk About Politics” rule when Luke starts getting excited about Rebellions and starts bad-mouthing the Empire (Vader making small talk at a Star Destroyer water cooler to his terrified staff: “Ugh, I’m going to have to debate my liberal 13-yr-old nephew at the dinner table again.”), and Vader even helps with the dishes and stuff, and every time Obi-Wan ages an extra year from stress.
Guys, please, the way this continues is that the general events of the Star Wars universe continue as normal (Leia, having literally just left a space battle: “Darth Vader, the AUDACITY of attacking an innocent diplomatic vessel!”) UNTIL the stormtroopers show up at the Lars Farm. (Luke is desperately chasing down the droids he lost and properly meeting Obi-Wan Kenobi.)
At first, it’s business as usual, y’know? Stormtroopers break down the door and interrogate the occupants and start prepping to burn the place down, and the leader is in the middle of shouting, “TELL US WHERE THE DROIDS A-” when he pauses and just… stares… at the mantlepiece.
Because on the Lars family mantlepiece and walls are, like, a hundred family photos and roughly half of them have Darth Vader in them. There’s Darth Vader wearing a Life Day party hat at a dinner table. There’s Darth Vader holding a toddler and playing with model ships. There’s Darth Vader and a pimply thirteen year old in the stands at the Boonta Eve Classic. There is a cross-stitched pillow on the couch that says OUR FAMILY on it, consisting of a man, a woman, a boy, and Darth fucking Vader.
Stormtrooper Grunt #1: “What… what… what the fuck.”
Aunt Beru, who has HAD it with these guys wrecking her house, already angrily jabbing at their space phone: “I am calling Mr. Vader RIGHT NOW about this.”
Darth Vader, excusing himself from the bridge of his Star Destroyer to take a call from his stepsister-in-law: “Beru. This isn’t a good time-”
Beru: “Well, MAKE TIME, because your stormtroopers broke down our door and tracked SAND all over my nice clean floors and they won’t stop yelling about the droids we just bought! You better have a good explanation for this!”
Darth Vader does not, actually, have a good explanation for this. The stormtroopers can feel his wrath from across the galaxy. It’s a work thing and he’s very sorry and he’ll make the stormtroopers fix their door, but he does really need those droids and could they hand them over, please? He’ll have the Empire compensate them. Yes, he’ll pay them back and send new droids. Yes, kicking doors down is very rude, Beru, you’re absolutely right.
So Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru promise to pick up Luke and the droids, and hop in the spare Landspeeder to go looking for them. Owen is Not Happy to find that Obi-Wan’s given Luke a lightsaber, and Aunt Beru is Not Happy to find out that the Empire’s made some superweapon. Of course they have to get these plans to the Rebellion! Yes, she promised Vader, but he should have told her it was for such a terrible thing! Yes, Owen, they’re all going to Alderaan.
So the Lars family runs away to Mos Eisley and get on the Millennium Falcon to Alderaan, while the stormtroopers are standing around like, “Are they… coming… back???” And Han Solo does not know what the hell is going on or what to do about the Weird Old Wizard talking about “universe-penetrating magic”, or the Grumpy Farmer who keeps trying to fix his “piece of junk” ship that excuse you does not need fixing, or the Sunny Farm Boy waving a light sword around, or the kindly old woman who is currently cross-stitching in his back seat and gossiping with Chewie like he’s not even there.
Later, after the Death Star’s been destroyed, Owen and Beru Lars are now a part of the Rebellion with Luke. Beru sends Darth Vader a piece of fabric in the Space Mail, and it’s the little cross-stitched Vader from her OUR FAMILY pillow who’s been cut out because she’s mad at him. (Except her note says DISAPPOINTED and that’s worse.) Darth Vader is more upset about this than the Emperor being mad at him for the destruction of the Death Star.
Scrolled past this agakn and just can’t get over how much I love it. We need to make things beautiful again and this is such a wonderful example. The beadwork on the wires of a utitarian object, contrasted with the grey concrete.
The most horrifying implication of Awakening to me is that despite the way nearly every character describes them and thinks of them, the darkspawn were always sentient. The Architect’s experiment with the modified Joining simply freed them from the compulsion of the Old God’s call. The blood of Grey Wardens could confer resistance to the taint but it couldn’t grant them a personhood, a soul they never had.
If they had possessed no intelligence, no personhood at all behind the Blight that animated them, that should have left them an insensate husk. But it doesn’t. Now they make choices that were once denied them, some rallying behind their liberator, others rising against him for taking away what gave meaning to their existence.
The horror of Awakening is not that darkspawn could become intelligent but that they always were.
THANK YOU it has been a fucking disservice to Dragon Age as a whole that it was never explored again.
There could have been an entire franchise based off that alone. An Awakened Darkspawn as a protagonist, trying to find a way to exist in a world that demands they’re nothing but a monster, sympathizing with Mages who feel the same way and having Templars be forced to unpack that even the monsters who are worse than mages have Personhood!?
Fighting the Chantry’s story because “We’ve always been people, and I’m sorry that we were compelled to do all that, but we can’t stop it as long as the old gods exist” would have been a HELL of an angle for DA2 and Inquisition.
And the Magisters who also have been dealing with the Blight and how THEY dealt with their visit to the Black City…THERE WAS SO MUCH POTENTIAL WE WERE ROBBED
The alt-right’s foothold into Gen-Z is frustrating and I can see from over here how they’re doing it.
You’ve got a generation of young-adults who are learning to be adults for the first time and for so many of them it sucks. It sucks to be in your first shitty apartment where things break, and to have your first shitty car that needs maintenance, and to be working a low-paying service or retail job where you get berated all day and barely scrape by. And you go home and you have taxes to figure out and electric bills to figure out and a screen on your phone to rot into to destress.
And this is men and women, equally, in this spot. But the alt-right messaging gets to tailor their approach to gender.
And hey women, yes you working a shitty job for shitty pay, overwhelmed by financial responsibilities and car repairs, what if you actually didn’t need to do ANY of that? You don’t need to. And you don’t need to feel guilty about it. (You’re not quitting, you’re not being lazy), you actually are just embracing the chance to be exactly who an ideal woman should be. You should actually be beautiful, and demure, and barefoot in a sunny kitchen, glowing, pregnant, hearing the joyful sounds of your children while you bake a roast for your wonderful husband (strong, protective, loves you, handles the finances, handles the jobs, handles all the things you hate). OUR ancestors (don’t mind the dogwhistle) did this for GENERATIONS, and modern society has failed you instead!
It’s offering to break women out of all the parts of their real life that suck, and do it in a way that promises they’re actually being better, being more admirable, more moral, more respectable, more correct, can feel good about, can feel proud about, as a Woman as Feminine as Mother as Goddess.
And the thing being promised does not need to actually reflect reality. It’s a fantasy. It is not real. For every “beautiful demure barefoot” day, you’d be having another one covered in shit changing diapers of screaming infants with screaming children while your husband ignores you because it’s Women’s Work (take pride!) But that doesn’t matter. It just needs to sound better than the reality they’re living.
Then the men are targeted too. And it’s the same in that it’s getting to them by appealing to pride in their gender, but the messaging is different. It’s “those finances are hard but ACTUALLY you’re leveling up, you’re grinding, you’re finance maxing.” It’s hard but it’s the kind of hard that is a challenge you can WIN at, boast about, post about, prove your manliness. Knowing cars, knowing home repairs, knowing taxes, that’s your MAN pride, and you are so elite, you are so sigma, you are the envy of everyone, you are a masculine man. Women love you. Women will defer to you. Strong, respected, moral, loyal, unshakeable. Unlike those pansy men (mind the homophobic dogwhistling) who will whimper and cry like girls. You are better.
The shitty retail job is actually humble beginnings because you’re minmaxing your way to financial success (bitcoin, crypto, investments). You can sleep with any woman you want as long as you’re confident, and then you’ll find one who understands how smart and confident and strong and protective you are and she will defer to you as her man. She will birth your children and teach them good morals and you will make it. Our ancestors lived this way for generations (dogwhistle) and modern society took it from you.
And with that messaging it makes it clear who the enemy in all this is - modern society that has convinced women to torture themselves with high education and terrible jobs, turned them Ugly with Ugly opinions and bad hair and nasty attitudes, yelping about “rights” and “equality” (pitting them against men! TAKING things from men!) All the while, society has been trying to emasculate men–replace them with women, make them soft and emotional, make them gay, make them WEAK. We’ve been made WEAK.
The naive women hearing this go “I’m not ugly! I don’t hate men! I DO hate my job and my finances. I’ve been tricked. I’m actually rebelling by declaring my goal is to get a Perfect (White) (Christian) moral husband who will make all our decisions and protect me and our children.” (And when she’s financially trapped in an abusive marriage…? When she’s suicidal with PPD but her husband won’t touch that because it’s Woman Hysteria…? And when her husband leaves her for someone who was as hot as she was 20 years ago and now she’s figuring out finances, health care, taxes, bank accounts for the first time in her life…?)
And the men go “They’ve been TAKING things from us for too long! It’s time to be men again! It’s time to take pride! I am strong and confident. I am in charge! I never show weakness!” (And when he’s got a gun to his head due to the depression he’s never been allowed to talk about as Women Feelings…? And when he’s financially ruined from a crypto scheme that stroked his ego and robbed him blind…? And when he’s dead from alcohol poisoning and none of his adult children notice because no one’s spoken to ‘Dad’ in 15 years…?)
And it’s so hard to fight because you’re arguing against a fantasy. How do you disprove their fantasy? It’s so hard to explain to them, hey you’re working a shitty job where you have no future because the rich bastards took it all from you. And now you’re doing their work for them. You hate society because of what they’ve done to it and now you’re doing their work. Now you’re targeting groups who’ve never done anything to harm you and the guys responsible are laughing to the bank. How do you explain? How do you disprove fantasy?
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