#This saga is the death of me

[alpenglow-moons]

The Ithaca Saga!!!

Folks it's out!! Sadly that means Epic has finished. But we got it!! It started with My brothers and ended with I love you. We also finally got a motif and reference back to Warrior of the Mind!! I felt sick during Hold Them Down. Best villain song I've ever heard. It was musically fantastic. Even better when you hate it with your full being. Odysseus becomes the final boss! With his name being the title like Polyphemus, Scylla, and Charybdis! Finally Ody and Telemachus meet. Odypen reunite. The tears were in my eyes. I was a latecomer to the process but it has been amazing my friends. The way Ody said No reminded me of Poseidon in Get in the Water. Might just be me. I love the Challenge so much. Penelope is the best. Odypen take love to the next level. They are the ultimate soulmates. Fucking fight me. Try to change my mind. I. Dare. You. Athena and Odysseus meet once again. I love them so much. Y'all. I'm telling you.

[nyssasatelier]

When the captain doesn't accept the blame for your death you know you died dumbly 💀

Inspired by a text post from @caleohateclub

[egophiliac]

don't think I'm not still deep in the episode 7 brainrot. because OH BOY AM I

(also one more extremely, obnoxiously self-referential thing, I'm -- I'm so sorry)

[flwrkid14]

The Reincarnation of Romance

Tim doesn’t believe in fate. He believes in statistics, in probabilities, in cold, hard logic. He believes in data points and patterns and cause and effect.

Danny doesn’t believe in fate either. He believes in choices, in carving your own path, in standing at the precipice of the unknown and stepping forward anyway.

And yet—

There is something undeniably fated about them.

Something in the way Tim’s fingers trail along Danny’s wrist like he’s tracing the life thread of his own existence. Something in the way Danny says Tim’s name like a whispered prayer, like the world could crumble around them and it wouldn’t matter as long as they were together.

Something ancient, something timeless.

Tim doesn’t believe in past lives. And yet, when he looks at Danny, there is a familiarity that stretches beyond reason, beyond explanation. It’s in the way Danny leans into his touch like he’s done it a thousand times before. It’s in the way Tim worships him so openly, so effortlessly, without hesitation.

Like instinct. Like inevitability.

The family doesn’t know what to do with them.

Tim, whose love is all-consuming, who would burn the world to the ground if it ever so much as thought of harming Danny. Danny, who welcomes Tim’s obsession with the amused indulgence of a man who was clearly adored in another lifetime and carries the memory of it in his bones.

Danny sweeps Tim into his arms at a moment’s notice, presses kisses against his wrist with breathless adoration, waxes poetic about Tim’s brilliance, his beauty, his mind.

Tim, for his part, is indulgent. Amused. He watches Danny with dark, knowing eyes, lips quirked in a smile that betrays nothing but quiet satisfaction. He tilts his chin up just slightly when Danny kisses his hand, his wrist, the inside of his palm. A queen granting favor.

They move through the world as though they exist on some other plane, where every touch is sacred and every look is a vow.

They are impossible to be around.

“Mon amour,” Danny gasps the moment Tim steps into the room, eyes alight with an adoration that borders on worship. He strides forward, hands already reaching for Tim’s waist, his arms, anything he can hold.

Tim hums, tilting his head as Danny presses a kiss to the back of his hand. “Darling,” he murmurs, amusement dancing at the edges of his voice.

Jason groans. Steph makes a gagging noise.

“You were apart for five minutes,” Duke says flatly.

“Five minutes too long,” Danny insists, pressing his forehead dramatically against Tim’s shoulder. “The sun is cold without you, my love.”

Tim lifts a delicate brow, but his fingers still come up to tangle in Danny’s hair, slow and methodical. A caress disguised as nothing at all. “You are insufferable.”

“And yet, you adore me.”

A smile, small and sharp, curls at the edges of Tim’s lips. “A tragic truth.”

Cass watches them with knowing and amused eyes. Duke mutters something about how it’s “so much worse in person.” Damian looks between them with deep suspicion but diligently sketches the scene anyway.

And Bruce? Bruce has seen a lot of things in his life. He’s fought gods, stood against the impossible, watched the world bend and break and come back together again.

But nothing—nothing—could have prepared him for the reincarnation of Odysseus and Penelope manifesting in his own home.

Tim and Danny don’t care.

Tim is obsessed. Tim is devoted. Tim is utterly, ridiculously in love, and he makes sure Danny knows it every waking moment of his existence.

Danny basks in it.

They have done this before, in another life, in another time, and they will do it again in the next.

Because, for Tim and Danny, love is eternal.

[echo-coyote]

A conversation that neither are really paying attention to

[cheriecelestial]

Jacob Black’s Self Saving System and His Shenanigans™️

[spineless-lobster]

So obviously listening to luck runs out after listening to mutiny has the same effect as seeing a picture of new york that has the twin towers in it, but like the line where odysseus says

“I need you to always be devout and comply with this, or we'll all die in this”

and eurylochus was like “okay”

But eurylochus CONSISTENTLY does not do that 😭 he disobeys odysseus and opens the bag, then after blowing them off course you’d assume he’d learned his lesson but NO he’s also gotta kill the sun cows

Like eurylochus I love you and they could never make me hate you but come on man you kinda brought all of this upon yourself man

[dark-elf-writes]

WAIT

Odysseus breaking from the monster mindset to plead with Eurylochus over the cows because he knows how this ends. They’ve already played this out. They already know the cost. After everything Odysseus being the one to see the parallels that lost him one friend and being helpless to stop the other from doing the same damn thing.

Polites was the lamb for slaughter, a death of all of their innocence and a realization that their journey was far more fraught than the war they all had just lived through, but Eurylochus could have been different. Could have, but he was stubborn, set in his ways, a cow set to pasture day after day and reliving the patterns he had learned.

[likopinina]

MORTIFLIERS in FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA (2024)

[shorlinesorrows]

I was relistening to Mutiny today, and the more I go back to it, the more I get stuck on the line near the beginning where Eurylochus is asking Odysseus to explain/deny what just happened

Every time I listen, it sounds less like a dare or a jab, and more and more like he is begging his friend to convince him that Scylla didn't just happen. He is *begging*. He's not angry right there, he's desperately reaching for the security of a captain and friend who can talk his way out of any problem, and he is begging Odysseus to make it better

But Odysseus can't. And he won't deny what he's done. Because even if it was to get him and the majority of the remaining men home, there's nothing he can say to justify not warning them ahead of time. So there's a mutiny. And then it's history.

[fellthemarvelous]

How can you be on the council and not be a master?

I need to stop looking at Star Wars TikTok posts because I guess the concept of personal accountability is lost on so many people.

I love Anakin Skywalker. I do. I think he is one of the best fictional characters ever created because he is so fucking complex. I love him for all the good he did and in spite of all the bad things he did as Darth Vader. In the end, he sacrificed his own life to save his son.

That's the thing that's killing me right now.

People want to blame everyone else except for Anakin for the choices he made. They want to blame the Jedi because the Jedi don't strictly adhere to their vision of love and are therefore responsible for why Anakin fell to the dark side.

I saw a few comments where someone blamed the Jedi (specifically Obi-Wan), blamed the council, blamed Ahsoka because she left him, blamed Padme (because if we can't blame female characters for something then what are we even doing, right?), blamed the Jedi for not trusting him (and therefore somehow preventing him from believing in himself), and then at the end was like...oh and I guess Palpatine too since he groomed him for 13 years.

First of all, why is it a chore to blame Palpatine for Anakin's problems but so easy to blame the Jedi?

Imagine the heartbreak Anakin felt when he learned that the man who spent 13 years mentoring him turned out to be the Sith lord the Jedi had been searching for. That's reason enough to be angry at Palpatine because it was Palpatine who broke Anakin's spirit.

Secondly, not one of these people is responsible for Anakin's actions. Not one of them. Not even Palpatine. That's why it had to be Anakin's choice. Palpatine could not force him to fall, so he had to resort to manipulation and gaslighting to fuck with Anakin's head. He spent 13 years planting seeds of self-doubt and mistrust in the Jedi in Anakin's head. Because what happened when Palpatine assigned Anakin to the Jedi council despite having zero authority to do so??

"How can you be on the council and not be a master?"

The Jedi Council would like to ask Anakin the same question.

You have to be a Jedi master before you can be on the council.

Anakin became upset because he was denied the rank of master. It didn't occur to him at all that Palpatine intentionally placed him in that situation for that exact reason. Palpatine knew the Jedi well, and he knew how they would react. He knew it would lead the Jedi to asking Anakin to spy on him. He played the long game and it paid off.

The Jedi taught Anakin what they could, but they have no control over whether or not Anakin put the Jedi code into practice. The Jedi trusted Anakin. We saw them trust Anakin with their lives many many times during the Clone Wars.

They gave him a padawan for crying out loud. They looked at this 19-year-old, freshly knighted Jedi General and trusted him to mentor Ahsoka, a 14-year-old girl who was more advanced than everyone else her age. He's a vergence in the Force and they gave him a padawan who was already incredibly powerful. It's rare for Jedi to get their own padawans at such a young age, but Anakin was a Force prodigy and Ahsoka could have become a knight herself at 16 if she had not left the Order.

The Jedi trusted him. Until they didn't.

Anakin is the one who slaughtered an entire clan of Tusken Raiders in anger after the death of his mother. Even the women and the children. He killed all of them because he hated all of them and he was angry because he wasn't able to prevent his mother from dying in his arms. The only people who knew about that were Padme and Palpatine.

Anakin is the one who spent three years lying to the Jedi because he kept his relationship with Padme a secret from everyone (except Rex). He believed he could have it all if he tried hard enough, and trying to have it all is what lead to him losing everything when he chose to fall to the dark side, when he chose to sacrifice the galaxy for one person, only to lose her and his unborn child for good.

During the war, Ahsoka told Barriss that Anakin will always do what needs to be done, leaving out the part that includes the use of terror and torture. Barriss got to witness Anakin's rage personally when he figured out that she was the one who framed Ahsoka for treason.

We all saw how Luminara reacted to Ahsoka violently threatening Nute Gunray to get him to talk. She was horrified and immediately reprimanded Ahsoka because it is not the Jedi way to resort to terror. The Jedi were supposed to negotiate, not terrorize. And Anakin taught Ahsoka his version of aggressive negotiations. (And she hinted at the fact that she used aggressive negotiations against Morgan Elsbeth when Huyang questioned her about how she obtained the information to locate the map to Peridea and she told him that she did not follow Jedi protocol.)

When Anakin interrogated Poggle the Lesser during Brain Invaders, he physically hit Poggle before force choking him. He used brutality to get the answers he needed. Obi-Wan, Luminara and Ki-Adi all expressed concern over how he got Poggle to talk, and he wouldn't tell them what he did. What he did went against the Jedi code. He made that choice. No one else made it for him. He knows it was wrong. It's why he didn't answer their questions.

Yes, he was doing it because Ahsoka was in imminent danger and he needed to save her (and Barriss and the infected clones) and there wasn't enough time to negotiate with Poggle. Anakin did what an older brother would have done for his little sister, but she was also his padawan and he was her master. And it was very clear that Ahsoka was a lot like him.

It's not Anakin's fault that Ahsoka left the Jedi Order, but it is not Ahsoka's fault that Anakin fell. He was incapable of letting go of his padawan (he literally resurrected her from the dead on Mortis), which was an important part of the reason he was given a padawan in the first place. He had formed a strong attachment to her just as he had Padme and Obi-Wan and Rex and C-3PO and R2-D2.

His unwillingness to let go of his attachments is what caused him to fall. He was a Jedi, and Jedi are not supposed to form attachments. So when he betrayed the Jedi Order to save Padme's life, his fall to the dark side was a result of him giving into his hatred and his anger. He took his rage out on an entire galaxy for 25 years because he was unable to let go.

Attachment does not equal love.

Maul was attached to Obi-Wan and there was nothing loving about it. It was violent and many people died because of Maul's inability to let go of his anger and hatred for Obi-Wan.

The whole reason that Anakin gave into the dark side completely was because he fell for the trap. He believed he could use the dark side without letting it consume him, but the dark side is all about controlling others. He couldn't control Padme and he ended up force choking her. He couldn't control Ahsoka and she left. He couldn't control Obi-Wan and chose to fight against him instead of listening to Obi-Wan's pleas.

No one could save Anakin Skywalker from himself. He had to save himself from his own darkness.

Which he did, in the end, because he saw his son being tortured by Palpatine, and he realized what it meant to let go. He finally understood what he needed to do and accepted that he would have to give up his own life to do so.

It took him a long time to understand what it means to let go, because letting go isn't giving up. Letting go is about accepting that there are some things beyond his control.

The conversation he had with his mother on Mortis was key to helping him accept who he was in the end. "Your guilt does not define you. You define your guilt."

He knew he was going to die, but he died saving someone he loved, doing the right thing and ultimately returning balance to the Force. He accepted his destiny. He accepted responsibility for who he was as Anakin Skywalker and that Anakin Skywalker was also responsible for the actions of Darth Vader because they were one in the same.

It's the problem we see Ahsoka struggling with when she's with him in the World Between Worlds. She struggled with the knowledge that her master became a monster and worried about what that meant for her. She struggled to figure out who she would have become if she had not left the Order. She had to wrestle with her own darkness, and Anakin's final lesson to her also took a weight off her shoulders. It's why she's suddenly that same girl we saw at the beginning of the war. The one who always smiled and was always so sure of herself. She chose the light and it was reflected in the way she suddenly began wearing white, a contrast to what she'd been wearing decades.

It's understanding that she has control of her own destiny, whatever that might be, and that she gets to choose who she decides to be. Anakin chose to be a Jedi in the end, and he was able to pass a hard-learned lesson onto a padawan he loved like his own sister. He was still able to watch out for her in the end while teaching her one more time.

It's never too late to do the right thing, but it's Anakin who has to take responsibility for his actions instead of blaming everyone else for all of his problems.

Apparently that's a lesson a lot of fans need to learn too.

A question Star Wars has always asked us is "how far are you willing to go to save what you love?"

[waffle-time-god]

“I guess I always dreamed of being as strong as my dad.”

Future Gohan you deserved so much better.

Full image under the cut

This was supposed to be a quick sketch that turned into several days of casually adding to it until we got this. My first attempt ever at a comic lol.

[hiccupshypotheticalleftsock]

Im gonna say it because its been bugging me but Lujanne should have died.

The show seems to have shied away from real stakes this season for no apparent reason whatsoever, killing off every vaguely known side character they could think of to avoid real harm to any of the protagonists.

[somepsychopomp]

Meanwhile, in the underworld, Tiresias is giving a live play-by-play like a sports announcer & Ody’s 600 men are screaming and cheering at the poor prophet as if he's their TV screen

[sassypantsjaxon]

My fault

[morganbritton132]

Eddie posting a Tiktok that’s just him jabbing his finger into Robin’s arm until she wakes up. When she cracks open one eye to glare at him, he’s like, “Stop sleeping with my husband.”

Robin, pulling Steve closer: It’s my god given right as a lesbian to have a platonic bisexual himbo. Are you trying to take that away from me? That’s so homophobic.

Eddie: How can I be homophobic, I’m-

“Himbo?” Steve says, rolling onto his back. He blinks up at Eddie and smiles at him before holding out his hand to be held. Eddie obviously holds his hand. Steve adds, “I’m not a himbo.”

Robin: Steve, you think you have a picture with Paul Walker

Steve: Because I do!

Robin: It was taken two weeks ago

Steve: So?

Eddie: So, Paul Walker passed away like ten years ago. It was on the news. You were really sad about it, remember?

Steve: So, the news said that you were a murderer and that was wrong. Also, Hopper died and came back. You died, came back. Will, Max, El - died and came back. And that’s just people I know. It happens.

Robin: Not to Paul Walker!

Eddie: That’s actually a really good point

Robin: Eddie, that’s not a good point!

Eddie: Well-

Nancy, who Eddie didn’t even know was here and who is standing in the doorway losing brain cells every second this conversation continues: I don’t think any of the people you mentioned from Hawkins actually died