SW Meta Phora

Searching for joy in a galaxy far far away

[evipineschi]

Days 8+9

[scurviesdisneyblog]

Art tutorials by Disney artists Griz and Norm Lemay

[teachmoments]

[butchtj-deactivated20190316]

Do any other american high schoolers have intense survivor’s guilt and trauma with school shootings even though they weren’t at your school?

[butchtj-deactivated20190316]

Like. A laser tag place opened geared towards teenagers and it got no business, we tried to enjoy it but when someone pointed a laser machine gun at me and I instinctively dropped behind the nearest wall and reached to turn off my phone I cried, I wasn’t the only one. The announcements system turns on at an unexpected time and everyone holds their breath until they say something besides “locks, lights, out of sight,” nobody even jokingly pops chip bags anymore, a door slammed really loud during a class change and everyone dropped and ran. Everyone cries during drills, even the toughest ranch kids. Every drill comes with a full day of teachers crying and telling us that they love us all so much and will die for us, and every kid in every class looking around wondering who would I die for? Who would die for me? You walk to the bathroom and wonder every second if it happens right now, where will I go? You test supply closet doors to see which ones are unlocked, you memorize which furniture in the teachers’ lounge your English teacher says is light enough to barricade a door with. The fire alarm goes off and nobody moves, instead you wait for gunshots—it a trap? You stand with a group of freshmen and realize that you’re the oldest, you know you’ll have to die for them. You forget your ID tag and worry that now the police won’t be able to tell your parents if you’re safe, or not safe. Your stats teacher has a baseball bat by the door, your math teacher keeps a stapler under each desk to throw, your drama teacher asks who will be willing to stand by the non-locking door with the Shakespearean swords. Your yearbook teacher tells you don’t worry about breaking a camera because you heard about the kids who died holding them. You don’t use the bathroom during classes because you don’t want to be the only target to shoot at. You keep your phone on silent 24/7 because you worry the one time you forget will be when you get your whole US History class killed. You have a snap saved with your class schedule and school and full name to send in an instant to your internet friends so they know if you were on that wing, you have a note saved with the things you want your mom to know and the things you’re sorry for. At the age of 12 I was told I needed to know who I would die for and that it was okay if it was nobody, that was my decision to make. School shootings control us more than adults and non-Americans could possibly imagine and nobody moves to change anything unless we’re actively screaming for it. Have you considered we’re too scared?

[tehdoctah]

The absolute fuck. The fuck did I just read. This sounds like dystopian fiction. The fucking fuck.

[allthingshyper]

It isn’t. This is 100% the reality of all American children - not the ones that live in bad neighborhoods, not the ones that make bad choices, ALL OF THEM.

Welcome to America.

[kentuckyfriedbooks]

This reminds me of a discussion we had in one of my classes the other day-

My professor was describing how everyone from her generation had the same nightmare of a nuke going off. In they dream they all saw the same mushroom cloud and everything. She said that she didn’t think my generation had a dream like that; one that everyone shared and had

For a while none of us could disagree with her. Until this popped up. I raised my hand and mentioned that everyone I knew had an active shooter dream at one point or another. And Every. Single. Person. Nodded. All of us had that dream. All of us.

Pretty telling, huh?

[aristocrowcy]

The mere notion that highschool children might have survivor’s guilt is sickening

[the-reylo-void]

I rankle a bit at the unspoken implication that the primary motive behind wanting Kylo Ren to receive a redemption arc is wanting a) a way to ship him with Rey as a “good” character or b) a way to compartmentalize and excuse his actions (“yes but it was KYLO who killed all those people, not Ben!”).

I am about as pro redemption arc as it is humanly possible to be. I will lay down in the road in protest if it doesn’t happen by the end of IX and Kylo dies unredeemed.

And it has nothing to do with Rey. Do I like seeing it in fanfiction? Sure. But that’s fantasy. That’s things you love to see explored and examined even if you’d never want to see them in canon. It’s creativity playtime, basically.

I’m pro redemption arc because of a bone-deep need for hope.

Star Wars is so deeply-coded with themes of light and dark, good and evil, but it’s also near-codified the Hope Spot, the idea that hope is never gone, there is still light, a chance for goodness to prevail. Take the final shot of ESB: even with the narrative heaviness, the Rebellion crippled, Han encased in carbonite, we get Luke and Leia dressed in pure white, gazing out the viewport at the stars, towards tomorrow, towards another chance to win the fight. They’ve lost the battle, not the war.

Kylo Ren dying unredeemed doesn’t just defeat that spark of hope – it decimates it. If he does not redeem himself (note the word choice: redemption is not a passive act. No character can “redeem” Kylo. He MUST do it himself), he will die. No question. He will be slotted even more firmly into the role of end-villain who must be destroyed, an obstacle for the light-born heroes to overcome, and he will be killed.

Why does this take that idea of hope and destroy it, then? Because Kylo Ren is not a random villain. He’s Han and Leia’s only child. At this current moment in canon (again, AT THIS MOMENT), he is the only heir to the Skywalker line, the fallen son. Even if we learn that Rey is a Skywalker, that doesn’t negate his lineage. That doesn’t change the fact that Han and Leia, the original OTP if ever there was one, had one child, just one, who fell to darkness, stayed there, and died there.

This is the death of hope. This is the idea that some people are just too far gone, are too deeply broken and damaged to change, to be saved. This is a direct undermining of the ultimate character arc we saw with Vader: that he thought, down to his bones, that it was too late for him, that he could never be turned, only to be proven wrong in the eleventh hour. The power, the impact of that moment as it stands in the Star Wars mythos dies with the franchise narrative then turning to Kylo Ren and saying, “But no, with this one, he’s REALLY too far gone. He will die facing hell and be unmourned.”

My love of what Star Wars accomplishes in its themes of hope, redemption, and the search for the balance between light and dark cannot handle that level of cynicism, of hopelessness. It’s not about ships. On a personal level, it’s actually a bit insulting for that to be the primary assumption. It’s about hope, and the belief that no one is ever beyond it if they seek it.

[shymagnolia]

so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god

[shymagnolia]

okay so i just got my dream job??? a week after applying to it?? and now i’m thinking….maybe this is the good luck post

[flagellant]

…..not even six hours later i got an offer of a well paying full time long-term job with free room and board in queens in nyc, allowing me independence and a way to escape an abusive situation and an unhealthy environment

likes charge reblogs cast, folks, this is the good luck post

[swmetaphora]

Fuck this. I need luck

[bauliya]

so women are supposed to grin and bear the books, the comics, the movies, the plays, the tv shows, the stories, the sci-fi, the translated ancient poems, the fucking millennia of men writing about their self inserts torturing women and it being declared as High Art by other men, we’re supposed to read it in our free time, study it in classrooms, include their styles in our own writing, accept their cultural influence as natural, watch it in the cinema, write about it, talk about it, accept it, aspire it, but men can’t tolerate three seconds of female wish fulfilment of a woman snapping the wrist of a creep without feeling personally kicked in the balls.

[darkshrimpemotions]

This reminds me of something I observed in college while I was doing my honors thesis on women in modern horror films. I watched a LOT of horror during that time as part of my research, and sometimes that was done with my family around.

And my dad and brothers? Were deeply disturbed by the movie Jennifer’s Body. I was flabbergasted. It’s not scary! It’s not even that gory. But they were horrified by it. These men who grew up on 70s slashers were legitimately shook by 90 minutes of Megan Fox eating a few teenage boys, mostly off-screen.

Similarly, my all-male reading panel for my thesis? Were so disturbed by my synopsis of the film Teeth that they couldn’t even talk about it. One of them said he couldn’t look at his wife for a week after reading it.

Again, grown-ass men who study and teach media for a living. Who definitely watch and enjoy horror movies. One of whom was a huge Tarantino buff. We watched and read worse in his intro to mass media class! But one movie about a girl whose vag could bite was enough to haunt him.

Then of course you have things like the Gone Girl backlash–men yelling that Amy Dunne is evil and women clamoring to assure everyone that they know she is not someone to emulate–the backlash against Carol Danvers, and, more recently, the griping from MRAs against the upcoming film Hustlers, which is about strippers scamming their Wall Street clients.

My conclusion? Most men–at least most straight, cisgender men, who are both my sample population and most of the ones whining that Carol is a “villain”–are perfectly fine with, and desensitized to, media where men do violence to women (horror movies), or men do violence to men (horror and action movies). They’re even sort of fine when women do violence to women (“ooooo cat fight!”).

But they get intensely uncomfortable when women are depicted doing any kind of violence to men, especially in films that tilt the balance of power to the other side of the m/f gender binary beyond a single moment or scene.

So woman as flesh-eating monster with men as her preferred cuisine? Woman who responds to unwanted sexual contact by biting it off? Woman who frames her cheating husband for murder? Woman whose response to harassment–behavior that many of the loudest whiners know is both creepy and reflective of their own thoughts/actions–is to break something?

Too scary. Unacceptable. Disturbing. These men hate being presented with the idea, even in fiction, that their position of power is socially constructed, that it could easily be flipped the other way. It terrifies them.

In feeling that terror, they experience a tiny modicum of what living, existing, moving, being perceived as a woman in the world is like.

And they flinch every time.

[swmetaphora]

Look who liked this pic.

It's all just been P&P in space all along.

[swmetaphora]

Look who liked this pic.

It's all just been P&P in space all along.

[thededfa]

"There would be no motivation to do anything if you didn't get paid!"

Bitch, if money wasn't a worry you know what I'd be doing? Raising chickens and giving the eggs and extra meat away because I like chickens.

Growing gardens and orchards and giving the food away because I just like plants.

Building cabinets, beds, bookshelves, furniture, etc because I like woodworking!

My dad would fix/build cars, pumps, appliances, anything with a motor! He loves machines!

My mom would sew and educate kids! She loves teaching!

My little sister would make custom clothes! She loves sewing!

My older sister would be a nurse! She loves helping people!

Why? Because we like it! And if money wasn't an object, we wouldn't stress about doing what we love

[tuesdaymonster]

The big misunderstanding between reylos and antis:

The antis see what’s on screen: An abduction. An interrogation scene. A murder. A fight between the hero and the villain.

The reylos see the setup: An abduction – wait, why is he carrying her this way? That’s reserved for romance. Strange. An interrogaton scene – errr, why do they make him look like a love interest with all that fluffy hair and that camera angle? A murder – okay, so no evil laughter after killing your *SPOILER*, but sad, sad puppy eyes. We get it. There will be a redemption ark. A fight scene – well, he doesn’t even care for the map anymore, he wants her to be his acolyte. 

Conclusions after TFA:

Antis: Kylo Ren is evil!

Reylos: I’ll eat my hat if that wasn’t the first part of the beauty and the beast trope!

[cartoonjessie]

Brilliantly put!

[dearmisskitty]

(forwards to her anti brother) >}

[gwendy85]

BOOM

[catchymemes]

Basic sketching tips

IG: @mitchleeuwe

[enjoyallneednothing-blog]

Art friends @obsessivepropulsive @assortedfruitsnacks212 these are so cool

[aspergersissues]

[ectoimp]

Thats social anxiety my dude.

[fromtheboundlesssea]

Me

[hi-def-doritos-deactivated20181]

A while back I heard my friend (male) insult another dude by saying, “You look like the kind of guy who wouldn’t go to Wal-Mart to buy his girlfriend a box of tampons” and I still think about that crowning insult sometimes

[manasaysay]

My dad once called another guy “someone who thinks loading the dishwasher once in a while makes him less of a man”

[hi-def-doritos-deactivated20181]

I like your dad already

[charming-tothelast]

one time my dad’s boss was giving him shit for always leaving work early so he could get home and help my mom with me when i was a newborn and his boss said “i’ve never changed a diaper in my life” really proudly and my dad responded “i’d be ashamed to ever admit i was that worthless of a husband”

[hi-def-doritos-deactivated20181]

oh WOW

[hi-def-doritos-deactivated20181]

This is by far my most popular post.

[fromtheboundlesssea]

My dad (a pastor) once chastised his entire congregation by saying: “when you see me out with my children, I’m not babysitting, I’m being a father” and “you don’t ask where I am when my wife is with our children, stop asking where she is when I’m with them as though that makes her less of a mom.”

My dad also made it so daycare was available for the all guy meetings and that our church had changing stations in the men’s bathroom.

[reyloeyesofmist]

The future that awaits Rey and Ren

When Rey is in Jakku, cleaning the objects she has obtained scavenging, she looks up and sees a very old lady, alone, doing the same as her and Rey looks at her for a long time. In my view, the old lady doesn’t remind her of a grandmother she probably can’t remember, I think she is looking at what will become of her if nothing happens in her life to change it. She is looking at her future, what she doesn’t know is that her life is about to change.

When we meet Kylo also in Jakku, in the village the STs attack, he sees San Tekka, looks at him from head to toe and says, ‘Look how old you’ve become’. Well, the irony is that San Tekka is also a monkish man without a family who has dedicated his life to a cause.

Both Rey and Ren are looking at their future, looking at what they will become if they don’t meet. But this future is about to change when they meet. This is because he is the belonging she seeks and she is the Light he has been trying to keep away since he fell trapped by Darkness. Yes, they are both virgins because their bond (fate, the Force, whatever we want to call it) will have it no other way, they belong to each other so that they can stop being lonely, scared and so afraid to leave. 

I think this symbolic comparison with the old man and old woman was done on purpose, but if it wasn’t, it works so beautifully as foreshadowing,as a symbol of the potential future that is about to change, that it should have been done by design.

Read more

[clairen45]

It is a sweet great little piece! Short and to the point. I had never thought of this parallel but it is valid.

[prokopetz]

Some day I want to see a Hamlet adaptation that plays the title character off as a Deadpool-esque fourth-wall-breaking snarker, and frames all of his weird decision as him recognising and subverting various theatrical tropes – but even though he’s medium aware, he’s seriously mistaken about what genre of play he’s in, and that’s why everything ends so badly for him.

[rainbowloliofjustice]

I will never understand people that are like “You’re almost 30 get off of tumblr.”

Like ??? Do you not realize ???? You too will be almost 30 ???

“when I’m 30 I’m not going to be spending time on tumblr/insert other popular social media site because I’ll be married and have kids which is what they should be doing ;)”

Okay ???? Good for you???? But not everyone tryna be about the life of being married and having kids by 30 ???? Like ??? there are plenty of other things to still be doing in life????

Like are you no longer allowed to just enjoy shit after being 26???

[octopuscato]

To be honest, all I hear is: “Why are you, a woman of a certain age, not in your place, which is under a man and taking care of children? If you are married and have kids, you’re obviously neglecting them by having a personal life, and if you’re not married/having kids, then you’re a sad ridiculous spinster with sad ridiculous interests.” This has been the attitude that women who didn’t fancy the idea of no control over their own lives have had to face for millennia. And these kids fancy themselves somehow ‘progressive’? LOL.

[obsessivewriter]

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[buffshipper8490]

I’m 29 with 2 kids and this is my emotional support hellsite thank you very much

[clairen45]

42, married, 2 kids, over my dead body just try!