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so these sketches of ballet waterbending frickin EXPLODED and a lot of people seemed to want it animated SO. i give you extremely sketchy animations of katara, prima ballerina

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We don’t talk nearly as much as we used to, and I know that’s because we’re both busy. I also know that we will be friends forever, but I don’t think that it will ever be the same. As time goes on, I’m beginning to realize that because people grow and friendships change. And that’s normal and good, but I also wish that I could freeze certain moments in time. But I can’t do that, which is probably a good thing.

Anne Shirley, Green Gables Fables (via thelarkophelia)

This is basically how I feel. I’m about to graduate highschool in June and I just don’t want to have to leave my school, my friends, my grade... 

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Beautiful

For the Memories...

Set in the days following Memories.

He just couldn’t win. Every song, every smell, every sound reminded him of her. It was awful. A year ago, Gilbert thought Anne’s disdain at his apologies and rejection of his offers of friendship were the worst things that could possibly happen.

He was wrong.

Eighteen months ago, he thought Anne was unique, pretty, and fascinating. She wasn’t like any other girl in Avonlea. She was a girl he wanted to get to know.

Now, though. Now he knew her. Now he knew she was completely original, absolutely gorgeous, and wholly captivating. She wasn’t like any other girl in the entire world. She was a girl he loved.

She was the girl he loved.

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Memories are a wasteland

Waiting for the next ep is torture so I had to pen something. You know I’m behind a ship when the urge to fic write takes hold! #Shirbert

What if Anne chased after Gilbert at the end of Memories…?

***

Anne didn’t think, she raced after him. Across the green, he marched towards his dorm. ‘Gilbert, wait! Gilbert stop!’

He stopped and waited. He always waited. But when he turned, she flinched from the pain that lacerated from his eyes. 'What do you want, Anne?

She always knew what to say but now she fumbled, unsure of how to repair the one thing she believed would never change but now lay in pieces at their feet. Perhaps for good. Their friendship mattered. This moment mattered, more than ever. 'Gil, I don’t want to lose you. I care about you so much. We have to talk about this.’

He shrugged, 'There’s nothing to say.’

She threw up her hands. 'There is! Say we’re friends, say you didn’t mean it. It’s just because I���m always around, that’s all -’

He scoffed, folding his arms. 'What is?’

'You just think that you love me. It’s our history, the proximity, if I’d known -’

He snorted. 'Oh, and you’re the expert? Yeah, well, now I wish I didn’t. But I do.’

'A crush then, it’ll pass.’ she said quietly.

Shaking his head, smiling lightly, he took her face in his hands. 'I love you, Anne. I want you. Since the first day we met.’

For a second, his eyes dropped to her lips and the air froze in her lungs. Their eyes met, his hands fell away and he stepped back.

'Gil…I’m sorry, I -’ She wanted so desperately to say the words that would steal the hurt from his eyes but she couldn’t. She didn’t love him, not like that.

‘It’s almost funny of how I’ve struggled to keep all of this from you…I thought you were so smart, the smartest girl I’d ever know. I thought on some level you knew - and you just wanted me to say something first - but no, here we are.’ He stared off into the distance. 'But none that of it matters now, I have to go.’  

Anne grabbed his hand. 'Gil, please, please don’t do this - I didn’t mean to hurt you. It will fade, you’ll find somebody else. I promise I’ll always be your friend.’

His mouth twisted. 'I have enough friends. Goodbye Shirley.’

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It's a bit hypocritical to complain about the creators breaking our hearts and then do it yourself! :P

Happy thoughts I had during the new GGF episode

1) Gilbert thought that the camera was going to capture a special moment.

2) Gilbert’s little smile filled with all the hope and love of a newborn child when Anne told him to wait.

3) The Jonathan Crombie hat was there as a nice reminder of the last time we saw this happen on a screen.

4) Gilbert probably spent hours practicing what he was going to say in the mirror, pacing around the room, messing with his hair etc.

5) He left the room looking like he was probably going to collapse against a wall and cry silently :)))

6) As far as Gilbert knows, Anne’s already been on two dates this year before rejecting him.

7) In fact he probably planned a date of his own.

8) Maybe he made reservations.

9) Which, because he’s Gilbert, he probably called up to cancel whilst locked in his room so as to minimise the inconvenience.

10) Anne yelled at him really aggressively.

11) And she is rooming with someone who will be actively trying to set her up with Roy Goldilocks Gardner.

12) And probably vlogging it and putting it online. Where Gilbert can see it all.

13) And we probably won’t see Gilbert again until he’s literally dying.

14) We might even get transmedia silence from him, or he might unfollow her on Twitter.

15) He won’t wish her “Merry Christmas Shirley.”

16) Neither Anne nor Gil has any Avonlea friends at Uni now.

17) Because, you know, their friendship is dead.

18) Everything dies.

19) Matthew and Ruby included.

20) I paid money for this. Thanks, Kickstarter.

21) @officialggf is run by cruel sadists who feed on our suffering.

22) :)))))))

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Katara: It’s not magic. It’s waterbending, and it’s- Sokka: Yeah, yeah, an ancient art unique to our culture, blah blah blah. Look, I’m just saying that if I had weird powers, I’d keep my weirdness to myself. 

So I wanted to talk a little about Katara, because I think we often focus on her grief for her mother, and forget her relationship to her culture, and her experience of the Southern Water Tribe genocide (unlike the Air Nomads genocide, which was for the greater part over after four big terrifyingly effective simultaneous strikes, this one took place over a long length of time - more than 40 years? 50? - and it wasn’t total, but it definitely was one. genocide = the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group, fwiw)

(Kanna’s village - before and after)

All of the Southern water benders were exterminated or taken away to rot in prison (where they all died eventually except for Hama). Katara was born the only bender left in the whole South Pole. Then when she was eight years old, she survived a raid that was meant to kill her, but took her mother instead (she probably was too young to realize that, to her it must have been a question mark up until she met Yon Rha - gratuitous cruelty? Why her mother in particular? They took nothing else!).

So Katara from a young age had a double burden to bear: that of her mother, and the legacy of her bending (and she was shown as painfully aware of her situation and what it meant on both front). But here’s the thing: Katara could be a mother, she was naturally good at it, and her grandmother could teach her what she didn’t already knew. Her family and tribe demanded that of her, they needed her to be that for them (especially after her father and the rest of the men basically abandoned them). However, there was no one left to teach her how to waterbend - she had almost no hope of ever becoming a master without formal training, her brother thought it was silly and weird and let her know, her grandmother thought it was a waste of time. But she kept practicing, because she knew how important it was, to her and to her tribe, that she kept trying (as the only one left who could).

(…an ancient art unique to our culture, blah blah blah…)

(Of course she would obsess over that waterbending scroll)

When she gets to the North Pole, she meets Pakku, and with him the opportunity of finally becoming a true master. But because she is a girl, he judges her unworthy. He judges her, the only remaining southern waterbender, unworthy of carrying on their culture. The Fire Nation didn’t care about the gender of their prisoners, men and women - they all fought side by side for their freedom in the South, and they were all taken away to the last one, and killed to the last one. In the South, the women had the choice to learn how to fight, or be defenseless. And privileged master Pakku couldn’t possible realize the extend of what he was denying her in that moment.

Katara had to prove herself, she had to earn her right to these teachings. And if she had been less good or less stubborn or not Kanna’s granddaughter - well the North would have refused their sister-tribe the power to use their common cultural heritage to fight back against the nation that destroyed them.

(It’s sexist and terrible.)

Meh, thankfully, she was that good, stubborn, and Kanna’s granddaughter, and she did get to become a master.

Good.

But, of course, her story doesn’t end here, and wrt her culture, the next chapter is a much more traumatizing experience. In the Fire Nation, she meets another master. This time it’s an old woman from the South like her (“You’re a waterbender! I’ve never met another waterbender from our tribe!”), and she is, ah, more than willing to help her.

Look how happy Katara looks at the idea to learn from her in particular:

Katara: I can’t tell you what it means to meet you. It’s an honor! You’re a hero. Hama: I never thought I’d meet another southern waterbender. I‘d like to teach you what I know so that you can carry on the southern tradition when I’m gone. Katara: Yes! Yes, of course! To learn about my heritage… it would mean everything to me.

But when Hama starts her lesson, the techniques she teaches have been obviously developed with one goal in mind: survival in enemy territory. They can’t possibly have been invented in the South Pole, where water is abundant everywhere. They are deadly and cruel, and the damage they do to the environment leaves Katara sad and uncomfortable, but Hama waves that off as unimportant. It doesn’t matter, she doesn’t have the time to worry about flowers or beauty or nature. To her that peace and beauty is probably just an illusion anyway, a lie: years after her escape she is still living the war, and war is ugly and rotten and messy (her world is ugly and rotten and messy - this is her comfort zone).

The last technique she teaches Katara is bloodbending. She forces Katara to learn something she finds disgusting, repulsive (just like Hama was forced to learn?) by torturing her (Hama was tortured), by overpowering her, invading her, making her lose control over her own body, bending her blood (Hama herself is clinging to the last remain of control she managed to get back after rotting in prison for years), and finally by threatening to have the two people she cares most about in the world kill each other right under her eyes (Hama lost everyone too, she had to say goodbye).

(Katara: But, to reach inside someone and control them? I don’t know if I want that kind of power. Hama: The choice is not yours. The power exists…and it’s your duty to use the gifts you’ve been given to win this war. Katara, they tried to wipe us out, our entire culture… your mother! Katara: I know. Hama: Then you should understand what I’m talking about. We’re the last Waterbenders of the Southern Tribe. We have to fight these people whenever we can. Wherever they are, with any means necessary! Katara: It’s you. You’re the one who’s making people disappear during the full moons. Hama: They threw me in prison to rot, along with my brothers and sisters. They deserve the same. You must carry on my work.)

And this, this, is the only truly southern waterbending Katara is ever going to learn. This is her tribe’s bending heritage, what’s left of it: blood, grief, suffering, hatred, loss of control over both your body and mind (because it’s terrible, but I think that’s what’s implied by the show: bloodbending makes you lose your mind. Hama’s only mean of regaining physical freedom ended up trapping her in another nightmare). Hama gifts her with a power she despises (but will use anyway in her darkest hour when she loses control) and a philosophy of violence and revenge.

Katara chose peace and forgiveness. As an adult, she will have bloodbending outlawed, she will become the greatest healer in the world, and she’ll teach her daughter, the next avatar, probably many others. These choices matter, and we should talk about them with that background in mind. Katara redefined her heritage - or rather she created a new one for herself: she refused the condition that was forced upon her (bloodbender) and ensured nobody could legally do to someone else what Hama did to her (and it’s implied this law is valid anywhere in the world). She transmitted Pakku’s warrior teachings, the ones she fought for, to the next generations (and did a great job of it!), but she also taught them how to heal, refusing to separate the arts as in Northern Water Tribe tradition - and healing was something she discovered by herself, that she felt was always a part of her. At that, she became the universally acknowledged best. Her legacy, despite everything that happened to her, will never be one of violence.

tl;dr: Katara is one of the strongest fictional characters ever created bye

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Wait, is Fred Jewish??

throwback to December 2014 when Marie and I first started planning GGF season 2 and we discovered what is possibly the best app on Google Hangouts

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Hagrid is already pretty old. He’s supposed to be 63 in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (it’s 50 years after he was expelled in his 3rd year), so by the epilogue he is in his late 80s. What I mean is, one way or another he has a long life.

My two cents on “Albus Severus Potter”:

This isn’t just about showing the complexities of the world, good and bad (though I definitely think there’s a message about forgiveness and empathy in it, and I may talk about that some other time). This is also about memory and commemoration.

Harry witnesses the deaths of both Dumbledore and Snape. More than that, he is witness to their innermost turmoils and memories surrounding these deaths - exposed to Dumbledore’s fears and childhood mistakes in the cave and Snape’s postmortem secrets. Both men die long isolated from anyone who may have loved them, both wrapped too deeply in their secrets, selfishness and morally grey behavior. Both men die very, very alone.

And both men die without anyone else to carry their memories, for good and bad. Except for Harry.

People ask why Harry didn’t name his child after Remus, or Sirius, or Fred, or a dozen other heroes. I understand that argument, I do, but… every one of those names is someone who is remembered. Many have their own descendants or relatives to carry the names. (Recall that Harry named his first son after his father and his godfather - James Sirius - so that name is already recognized.) 

We can talk separately about when and why Harry concludes Albus and Severus to be the bravest men he knew. I have lots of thoughts about that as well. But as for why Harry and Ginny (and Ginny!) chose to name their second son after those two complex men? I think they wanted to keep their memories alive somehow. They wanted someone to remember Dumbledore and Snape as fully formed humans, and not simply as “hero” or “villain”, pedestal or gutter titles that forget the person behind them. And the only person left to truly remember them was Harry.

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AAAWWW! YOU GUYS!

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Hello lovely, wonderful fandles!

It seems fitting that today, one year on from Hero’s 16th birthday, we hit 10,000 subscribers on the NMTD channel. That’s incredible.

It’s been amazing seeing the different ways the show, the fans, and ourselves have grown. This time last year we were in the midst of The Week of Silence and the number of viewers jumped considerably. Now we’re in the beginning of the second arc of Lovely Little Losers; a series that was made with the help and support of you guys. Basically, long story short, wow. Thank you. We hope you have a great day, and if it’s your birthday- Happy Birthday! Thank you, thank you, Claris, Elsie, Minnie, and Sally

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Since Phil and Blake (Jonas) are both women we can assume they’re also lesbain/bi. Maybe Phil is going to come out as bi, which would sorrespond to the unexpectedness of her love to Jonas in the book.

Hello! I'm very excited for season 2. Just wondering, will there be any LGBT characaters? Or is that a secret?

Yes! We don’t want to spoil anything but there will be LGBT characters in Season 2. 

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Maybe some time you could talk about Susan and what it would be like if she didn't desert Narnia

How about we talk about what might have happened if Narnia hadn’t deserted Susan?

What if, instead of sending a stag to lead them astray, the Pevensies had been given time to end their first rule– to have finished their reports, their negotiations and treaties, that letter in the bureau Lucy was half-done penning to Mrs. Beaver to thank her for the fruitcake and to ask about her grandchildren. 

They had lived there more than a decade then, grown from children to kings and queens, to brave young adults with responsibility heavy on their shoulders. They had lived through storms and wars, peace and joy, lost friends to battle and old age and distance. They had made a home. What if they had been given time to say good-bye? 

What if we didn’t tell Susan she had to go grow up in her own world and then shame and punish her for doing just that? She was told to walk away and she went. She did not try to stay a child all her life, wishing for something she had been told she couldn’t have again. 

There is nothing wrong with Lucy loving Narnia all her life, refusing an adulthood she didn’t want for a braver, brighter one she built herself. But there is also nothing wrong with Susan trying to find something new to fall in love with, something that might love her back. 

You can build things in lipsticks and nylons, if you don’t mind getting a few runs in them. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be pretty, especially when pretty is the only power left to you. 

Let’s talk about being the last one left. No, really, think about it. You get a call in the middle of the night, in the little flat you can just barely afford, and you are told there has been an accident. 

Think about it, that moment– you scramble over everyone you know, everyone you love, and try to figure out where they all are that night. There are things rushing in your gut, your fingertips, your lungs, your ears– there are words in your ears as the tinny, sympathetic voice starts to tell you: it is everyone. 

They were on a train. Something went wrong. They probably died instantly. A rushing sound. A bright light. (You try to imagine it, for years. You try not to think about it. You imagine it, for years–a rushing sound, a bright light.)

Your little sister, who you always felt the most responsible for, who you never understood, really– Your big brother, who disapproved of your choices but loved you with a steadiness you could never regret leaning into– Your little brother, a smug and arrogant ass except for the days when he drowned in self doubt– Ed was going to go far and you knew it, were waiting for it, were shoring up your defenses and your eye rolls for the days when he’d think he ruled the world–

Your mother is gone. Your father, with his stuffy cigar smell and big hands and the way he got distracted telling stories– he is gone. Your cousin Eustace, who suddenly lost that stick in his ass one summer. That friend of his, Jill, who you’d never actually quite met. Gone. A rushing sound. A bright light. 

Go on. Walk through this with me. You can’t sleep all night long, because you still can’t understand it, still can’t quite breathe in a world where you are the last Pevensie. You finally fade sometime between midnight and dawn and when you wake up you don’t remember for half a second. You think ugh and you think sunshine why and then you remember that you are an orphan, an only child. You remember there probably isn’t anyone else to handle the funeral arrangements. 

Get up. Make tea. Forget to eat breakfast and feel nauseous and empty all day. Call the people who need to be called. Your work, to ask for the time off. The mortuary, to ask about closed caskets. Distant relations. Friends. Edmund’s girlfriend and Peter’s boss. You listen to Lucy’s friends weep hysterics into the phone while you stare out the kitchen window and drink your fourth cup of tea. You call Professor Diggory, out at the old house with the wardrobe that started it all, and it rings and rings. You don’t find out for three days that he died in the train crash too. When you do, you stare at the newspaper article. You think of course. 

You are twenty one years old. You have ruled a kingdom, fought and won and prevented wars, survived exile and school and your first day as a working woman. Nothing has ever felt worse than this. You have a necklace in your dresser you meant to give your mother, because she loves rubies and this glass is painted a nice ruby red and it is all you can afford on your tiny wages. 

Excuse me, a correction: she loved rubies. She is dead. You never wear the necklace. You cry yourself to sleep for weeks. The first night you don’t cry, the first morning you wake up rested, you feel guilty. You wonder if that will live in the pit of your stomach all your life and you don’t know. The years reach out in front of you, miles and eons of loss. You are on the very shore of this grief and you do not know how you will survive feeling like this for the rest of your life. But you will survive it. 

Get up. Make tea. Make yourself eat breakfast. Make plans with a school friend to do lunch. Go to work and try to bury yourself in the busyness of it. Remember that you’d promised to lend Peter a hand with some task or other, but you don’t even remember what it was– Collapse. Hide in the bathroom until you’re breathing again. Redo your makeup and leave work the moment your shift is over. Drop your nylons and your sweater and your heels in the apartment hallway. Fall into bed and pull the covers over your head. 

Get up. Make tea. Eat. Don’t think about them for weeks. Don’t feel guilty when you remember. Feel proud. Spend an indulgent weekend in your pajamas, reading Lucy’s favorite novel and making Ed’s favorite cookies and remembering the way your mother smelled and how it always made you feel safe. Love them and miss them and mourn them. Keep breathing. Cry, but wash your face after in cool water. Wake in the morning to birdsong and spend three hours making breakfast just the way you like it. 

Imagine the next birthday, the next Christmas, the next time you hit one of those days that herald the passage of time, that tell you how much you’ve grown and how much they haven’t. 

Lucy, Peter, and Edmund will be at the same height for the rest of your life. Lucy will always be seventeen for the second time. You see, you think you know, when you lose them, what the dagger in you feels like. But it grows with you, that ache. You grow with it, too, learn how to live with that at your side but it grows, that ache, finds new ways to twist– 

At the first friend’s wedding you go to, you cry because it’s lovely, those two smiling and promising and holding hands– but you also cry because you wonder what Lucy would have looked like in white, joyous and smiling and promising the rest of her life to a boy who deserved her. 

Go on. You tell me if Susan deserted a world or if a whole life deserted her. You tell me who was left behind. 

So yes, let’s talk about it– what if Narnia hadn’t deserted Susan? What if lipstick and nylons were things worn and not markers of worth? 

What if we had a story that told little girls they could grow up to be anything they wanted– all of Lucy’s glory and light, Susan’s pretty face and parties, the way Jill could move so quiet and quick through the trees? 

Because you know, some of those little girls? They were the little mothers, too old for their age, who worried and wondered, who couldn’t believe like Lucy or charge like Jill. Susan was reasonable, was hesitant and beautiful and gentle, was pretty and silly and growing up, and for it she was lost. She was left. And when Susan was left, so were they. 

The little girls who worried louder than they loved, who were nervous about climbing trees and who would never run after the mirage of a lion, who looked at the pretty women in the grocery store and wondered if they would grow up pretty too– some of them looked at their little clever doubting hands, after they read Peter and Eustace and Jill scoffing at Susan’s vanities, and they wondered what they were worth. 

Imagine a Narnia that believed in all of them. Imagine a Narnia that believed in adult women, lipsticked or not. Imagine Susan teaching Jill how to string a bow, arms straining. Imagine her brushing blush on Lucy’s cheeks, the first time Lu went out walking with a boy she was considering falling in love with. Imagine that when the last door to Narnia was shut, there was not a sister left behind. 

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I agree. Especially since it’s the beginning of the season and we’re all so anxious to know what is going on.  

Here’s the thing. I hate it when episodes don’t drive the plot. If this comes back as important information later I will be super happy but until then I am upset about the fact that this episode gave us almost no new information.

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Literary Webseries Fan Aesthetic

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Some consolation?

But consider this When asked to sum up 2014 the first thing Ben thinks of is ‘hi I’m Beatrice’

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misselthwaite archives: mistakes

I think the worst part about “Mistakes” is that Mary is left feeling like all the mistakes have been made by her. And they haven’t been. Not at all.

On the contrary, this situation is a group effort.

Keep reading

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show the world your pretty face