#and I’m just. I know I’m not articulating this well but like

[threeacttragedy]

Entry 17: The One About All the Hot Air

Oh, hey, hey, hey – what is that over there?

No, not that –

That!

Ah, fuck.

Is that what I think it is?

Yeah, yeah, it looks like some sort of hot air balloon.

Ugh, it’s that fucking wannabe Wizard! Get that manipulative shit-fuck outta here!

Seriously, don’t let it set foot on land. It’s not welcome on this side of Oz.

Someone release the flying monkeys! Like, now. Knock it out of the sky.

Wait, I thought the Wizard liked green. This weirdo has a red balloon.

Bitch, I didn’t say it was the Wizard; I said it was a wannabe Wizard.

Oh, no wonder it’s steering that balloon like a fucking clown.

Hell, I don’t even think we need the monkeys. That idiot is going to crash and burn itself straight into the glass walls of the Emerald Palace.

Well, you know what they say when you start throwing stones in a glass house…

It is slightly amusing (and a tad concerning) to me that children are always led to believe that the villain of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” is that bitch of a Witch of the West when the worst character traits are actually portrayed by the Wizard himself. And, by “worst character traits,” I mean that he was a master manipulator who conned an entire city into believing he held some form of great power.

Did you know that in the original story the Emerald City wasn’t really that green? Sure, it was made from green glass and emeralds, but the Wizard required everyone to wear green-colored glasses so that everything appeared greener than it actually was. Weird, that. And, even more weird, people bought it! “Here, put these glasses on and you’ll see everything exactly the way I want you to see it.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m fully aware “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” is a work of fiction, but the idea that people can be easily manipulated – especially by someone with “power” – is not fiction.

That’s what today’s piece of “hot air” is about – fandom manipulation and the power of suggestion. And who better than to manipulate an entire fandom than the media? It’s unfortunate that I have to give the media power in this story – and even more unfortunate that I have to give it to rag-mags and social media – but the reality is information is power, regardless of whether it’s misinformation. In fact, MIT Sloan did a study in 2018 demonstrating how false information spreads through social media, namely, Twitter, six times faster than true information. Disturbing, right? I don’t even want to know what the going rate for misinformation is in 2025.

And, of course, since I opened today’s story with a visit to the Land of Oz, we may as well take a day trip over to Australia. Remember how I told you Australia deserved an entry of its own? Well, this is it. No, not really. I did say this was a day trip, not a sleep-over, so it’s not going to be chucked full of shiny bracelets or ways to “keep a good girl down.” It’s just our starting point today.

In my first entry, I briefly described what brought me into this fandom. It was something Luke said – and not really what he said, but how he said it – that left me intrigued. He was being interviewed on the Bowral red carpet by “Gretchen from the Philippines.” Yes, that’s literally how she introduced herself! Could I instead refer to the nice lady by her real name (Gretchen Fullido)? Sure, but “Gretchen from the Philippines” is far more fun. Plus, it sounds kind of whimsical. Any ways, Gretchen (from the Philippines) asked Luke if, “in real life,” he’d support friends-to-lovers. Luke’s response was, well, a bit jumbled, which was what sparked my curiosity because his previous answers that day were, for the most part, articulate: “I would – I would support friends – I feel like it’s not something that – that I have in my li – that I resonate with – that I’ve experienced. But, you know, if my – if my friends wanted to explore a relationship with one their friends, go for it. I’ll support it.”

Something in the way Luke answered that question was like suddenly being able to see the forest for the trees. At that moment, I was convinced Luke had always been in love with Nicola, and everything else that went on during that particular red-carpet event (and thereafter) simply christened the USS Lukola. However, that comment by Luke – and a subsequent one he made in New York – would result in the addition of a lot of trees to our enchanted forest.

Now – I apologize – we need to borrow a hot air balloon, preferably one that can travel through time, and jump forward to November 5, London-time. I promise, we will return to Oz momentarily.

Oh, fuck.

What now?

That ridiculous faux Wizard is right behind us. I thought I told you to send in the monkeys!

Dammit, you said we didn’t need them! I left those fuckers back in Oz.

Well, umm, I think we might need them now.

Why??

Uhh, do you see those four-legged beasts on the ground chasing our balloon?

Oh, you mean those coyote-like creatures?

Yeah, but we’re not in the Americas – and those ain’t coyotes…

Ah, here we are: November 5, Claridge’s, London. This was the evening Nicola attended the Harper’s Bazaar Women of the Year awards. We’re only stopping in real quick to steal a piece of the speech Nicola gave that evening. Okay, got it! Let’s get the fuck out of here!

The part of the speech I wanted to share was this: “I did a six-month press tour for Bridgerton, the show which I love, and I’m so proud of. The amount of inappropriate questions I got asked about my appearance, about my relationship…”

Hold up. Relationship? What relationship?

Did she say “relationship” or “relationships?”

Does it fucking matter?

Well, I guess not. But what does it mean?

I could tell you what I think it means… Wait a hot-air-balloon-minute – where the fuck have you taken us? I told you we needed to go back to April 21, Aussie-time. This looks like Soho in January.

Shit, sorry. Let me fix that. Here we go…

>>> 

Umm, hey, where’s that weird little red Wizard? I swear it was just behind us…

Eh, probably got stuck in Soho, hahaha. Guess it missed its exit.

Do you think that’s a good idea?

Yeah, sure. It’ll be fine…

We’ve returned to April 21, Bowral, Australia. Now, at this point in the timeline, World Tour interviews were already well underway. In fact, the first two parts of EmEdits on YouTube are entirely pre-Australia interviews, making up roughly 6 ½ hours of screen time. I’m not the least bit surprised that “Gretchen from the Philippines” asked Luke what his thoughts were on “real life” friends-to-lovers. The chemistry between Luke and Nicola was hard to ignore.

The Australian red carpet also introduced the hand holding, which – if we took another magical mystery tour over to May 9, Italy – Nicola and Luke agreed was a sign of “love.” I suppose I could buy the excuse that one or both had so much anxiety they needed the other’s hand to remain calm on the red carpet. But, nah, I wouldn’t buy that at all – for one very specific reason. When Luke and Nicola were seen leaving (I believe) the Milton Park Country House on April 23, Luke instinctively reached for Nicola’s hand as they were descending the steps. Why? This reflex by Cool Hand Luke was as natural as a pregnant woman touching her stomach. I ask again – why?

There’s only one answer.

It’s the answer that fits with the Claddagh ring. It’s the answer that fits with the side jaunt to Galway. It’s the answer that fits with their natural chemistry, the hand holding, the canned “shared experience” and “unique relationship” responses, the playful sexual innuendos. It’s the answer that fits with Luke’s “the best foundation for love is friendship” bracelet. It’s the answer that fits with Nicola’s remark about “[t]he amount of inappropriate questions I got asked…about my relationship…” It’s the only fucking answer that makes sense.

But, the real kicker is, why don’t people believe that is the answer?

Why is it so hard to believe that Luke and Nicola could be in a real-life relationship?

That’s easy – because the Man Behind the Curtain told us so.

Who is the Man Behind the Curtain? Well, that’s also easy. It’s collectively the rag-mags and the social media creators on the prowl for a following. It’s the spread of misinformation at its worst and it’s so incredibly easy to do with, say, a pair of green-colored glasses.

Like I said, “…put these glasses on and you’ll see everything exactly the way I want you to see it.”

There was one major plot twist that came out of the World Tour, and you already know what that is. The seed was planted with a New Year’s Eve kiss, fertilized with blurry pictures, a compulsory hallway hug, and copycat photos, and encouraged to grow with a bit of junk news and a lot of social media innuendo. Now, I’m not saying the video and photographic evidence that was presented was fabricated; I’m simply suggesting the narrative that came out that evidence was skewed. The media, namely, social media creators, pushed us to plant Lutonia trees while Luke’s actions (i.e., not acknowledging the existence of Lutonia) told us to “pay no attention to the Man Behind the Curtain.”

Uh, so, what you’re saying is we shouldn’t have left that wannabe Wizard in Soho?

Ah, shit! I forgot about that fucker!

The unfortunate thing about the Lutonia narrative was that it was bolstered by insinuation that Luke would never be interested in Nicola. Now, whether these remarks were deliberately planted, or they were simply seedpods carried away by a storm, they were not overlooked by Lukolas – or Nicola. In fact, Nicola herself brushed upon it in her Harper’s Bazaar speech: “The amount of inappropriate questions I got asked about my appearance…” Yes, I’m referring to the suggestion that Luke preferred “brunettes” over “blondes.” Somehow this narrative was conveniently supported by the existence of – lo and behold! – the brunette “friend of a friend” Antonia, who happened to be slender. Again, whether it was intentional or not, the push by, initially, social media creators (and later gossip rags) to link Luke to Antonia inadvertently called the blonde in our story – Nicola – fat. I refuse to dance around that word because it is exactly what this disgusting narrative implied when it chose to compare Antonia to Nicola. Regardless of whether these gossipmongers “corrected” themselves by replacing “thin” with “brunette” and “fat” with “blonde,” the implication was that Luke would never be interested in Nicola because she had thick blonde hair. This was incredibly upsetting and confusing to many Lukolas because it was contrary to Luke’s behavior towards Nicola throughout the World Tour (and in Bridgerton behind-the-scenes clips).

I decided months ago that Luke was incredibly transparent. And, by that, I mean he’s terrible at keeping secrets. Luke himself admitted his “tell” to this was pulling at his ear – now go watch the World Tour with that information in mind. It’ll give you something to do, at the very least. Luke’s sincerity is also why the blonde versus brunette nonsense just doesn’t take flight for me. Any ways, as I hinted at earlier, Luke’s comments on the Bowral red carpet and his later comments in New York City about friends-to-lovers would – again, unfortunately – give the Man Behind the Curtain ammunition to debunk any real-life relationship between Luke and Nicola. Luke was quickly labeled as being “…dismissive of something ever happening between him and Nicola…” Those are literally the words The Tab used in an article dated May 22 to explain Luke and Nicola’s differing commentary about real-life friends-to-lovers. In fact, the article is titled, “Luke Newton has revealed the reason he’d never date Bridgerton co-star Nicola Coughlan.” Oddly – but not really given the source – Luke never actually said he would never date Nicola. But that fact didn’t stop it from becoming a theme of the World Tour – Luke didn’t believe in friends-to-lovers therefore he would never date Nicola – even though, by the end of the tour, Luke’s stance on this had seemingly changed. That’s not to say the rag-mags misquoted Luke – they didn’t – but the narrative they coiled around his words attempted to shut down the idea that Luke and Nicola would ever date in real life because Luke wasn’t interested. But what Luke was saying was that he believed in love-at-first sight. “I actually don’t think friends-to-lovers is something that happens in my life. If I meet someone, I know immediately.” Now, take that statement with the fact that Luke has repeatedly stated he remembers everything about the moment he met Nicola.

The above examples of gossip and innuendo are simply par for the course. The media manipulates facts all the time – whether it be through social media chatter or rag-mags putting their own spin on ordinary commentary – but this type of manipulation is not what puts the fandom in danger of itself. In fact, most of the gossip and innuendo that took root during the World Tour would have dissipated almost immediately after it ended – if it hadn’t been for Papsmear.

Yeah. That was disastrous.

Come to think of it, it was awfully convenient, too, don’t you think?

Absolutely. And you know what else was convenient? That little wannabe Wizard was –

Oh, yeah, I heard that, too! That clown has been trying to hand out green-colored glasses ever since!

Yep. Tried to give me a pair and I told it to go fuck itself and its little glass cat, too. I mean, they weren’t even name brand glasses. Fake ass, bitch.

All jesting aside, if you haven’t noticed already, I do, on occasion, use my writing to call out the fandom, usually as a whole. I mean, we are in this together, right? Actually, no; we ceased being Collectively Delulu after a few unsavory characters were bitten by the Hunter’s Moon and followed Nicola through the streets of New York and London. There was a major – and rather unexpected – shift in the fandom when the rabid Jakolas appeared from the dark corners of our enchanted forest. And I’m sure you’ve realized at this point in my story that I have one particular – oh, shit, I just realized I don’t even know to which fandom our wannabe Wizard belongs. Ruh-roh. Regardless, that motherfucker is in my peep sight because it is a perfect example of how fandom manipulation has reached a new level of toxicity.

Typically, I don’t care what part of the fandom you’re on. My general attitude is, to each their own. If you’re a Jakola and you find yourself spending an average of 15 minutes each week reading my Lukola blog, I applaud you for peeking outside of the den hole. Best not let Alpha find out, though. It’s all in good fun, right? I often find myself getting a good laugh from Jakola stories, especially when they theorize on the Woman Behind the Curtain. Question, though – did you find her? In all seriousness, if I didn’t consider Jakola and Lutonia perspectives, I would be borderline Conscientiously Stupid, now, wouldn’t I? After all, the desire for knowledge is what ultimately gave our Scarecrow his brain.

However, what I don’t find “in good fun” is when social media creators prey on more than one side of the fandom under phony pretense, namely, that they “just want Nicola to be happy.” Oh, these Cowardly Lions may argue that they’re simply being “neutral” – and, yes, I’m sure some instances of this do exist – however, neutrality does not embrace openly ridiculing one fandom over another, especially on a platform that is touted by its owners as being a “safe space” for everyone. The problem with these so-called “neutral creators” is that they’re only here for social media engagement – the clicks and the giggles – and they defect to the other side when the going gets tough. If you, too, take issue with this kind of creator, be soothed in knowing that when you play two sides, you find yourself with two-times the number of enemies.

What makes these so-called “neutral creators” – actually, let’s just call them the “Defectors” – so poisonous to the fandom is that they are made from the grease drippings found at the bottom of the barrel of the Conscientiously Stupid. The Conscientiously Stupid are one thing – they are the ones using their platforms to spread misinformation because they choose to ignore exculpatory evidence (i.e., they’re headstrong in their beliefs) – but the Defectors are typically the ones creating the misinformation and feeding it to the Conscientiously Stupid and then hanging them out to dry when the information proves to be false. The Conscientiously Stupid who refuse to “lose the battle” then resort to bullying (more so than usual) the Sincerely Ignorant of an opposing fandom. And in defense of their Sincerely Ignorant comrades (or simply because they’re sick and tired of the Conscientiously Stupid preventing anyone from having nice things), the Fact Finders – unceremoniously, I might add – have taken their own place on the battlefield (oh, yes, they are absolutely your tactical commanders). Now, the entire fandom is at war with each other – all because some wannabe Wizard – a Defector – convinced people to look through a pair of shiny, green-colored glasses. More than once.

Is it appropriate – or perhaps a bit catty – to put “ceasefire” here?

Ah, yes, well, uh, we have found ourselves a bit far from Oz at this point, haven’t we?

I suppose – but we are trying to help Dorothy find her way back home, and at least we now have an idea as to how she got lost.

Maybe one day we will get her back to Kansas.

Yeah, maybe.

Oh, silly me! I forgot to sneak in a sly reference to Dorothy’s third companion – the Tin Man! He’s perfect for the end of our story. You know, in the book, the Wizard was just an ordinary man who stumbled into his Ozian existence on a magnificent hot air balloon and took advantage of the power that Emerald citizens bestowed upon him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Wizard preyed on the naïve using deception and the power of suggestion and invoked fear in anyone who dared to question his authority –

Uh, where are you going with this?

Give me a minute!

Like I said – shit, where was I? – Oh, yes, the Wizard was just an ordinary man, and ordinary people are flawed. We all make mistakes. This is where our Tin Man comes in as he represents love and empathy. Yes, empathy; the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, to understand and forgive, to take into consideration someone’s redeeming qualities –

You know that Wizard defected in his hot air balloon before taking Dorothy home, right?

Wait, what?

Okay, okay. It was Toto’s fault but the Wizard sure as shit didn’t come back for her!

Hmm, you’d almost think Toto knew the Wizard’s true colors all along…

“Au revoir, Wiz.”

[ogniemimieczem]

Thanks! That looks promising.

Though don’t worry, I have read Taras Bulba, so I know what it’s about. But I can see how my topic pivot from narrow (Khmelnytsky Rebellion) to general (Zaporozhians) was confusing.

This is an ancient and long-abandoned project, but the goal had been to see how different groups who experienced the Rebellion imagined their own fictional versions of the Zaporozhian Cossacks generally, ideally in works that have some cultural prominence and also articulate some communal sense of continuity with the historical events depicted. I’d aimed for sources as old as possible. (Also excluding outright forgeries like “The Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks.”)

I’d been thinking about Kiddush Ha-Shem recently, by way of thinking about how the trauma of the Khmelnytsky Rebellion produced both the Baal Shem Tov and Sabbatai Sevi, so I picked it up to re-read again after all these years. (Specifically, because of Khmelnytsky, I got told by a transphobic Slovenian hippie on a boat in Greece that Jews controlled the Turkish government because the motherfucker was doing conspiracy theories about Dönme.)

Sholem Ash’s book is quite recent (1926) but he was Polish-Jewish (born in Kutno in 1880) and so the book represents a continuity of memory as well as resonance with the ongoing pogroms in his lifetime (the resistance to the 1906 Białystok Pogrom seemed particularly relevant). As a source, the novel uses the Yeven Mezulah (1653), whose author was from Iziaslav/Zasław. That chronicle is probably familiar to a lot of you, but Yeven Mezulah gives a first-hand account of the chronicler’s own experience and then—as I remember it—several second-hand accounts. Ash’s novel specifically focuses on the siege of Nemyriv, the anniversary of the fall of which is a Jewish fast day mourning the Khmelnytsky Massacres as a whole. So that’s a very strong cultural memory + fictional imaginary combination.

Paired with TB and OiM, that’s been my rough “Zaporozhians perceived through cultural perspective” trilogy. It’d be great to find more than one Jewish source. The Slave (1962) by Isaac Bashevis Singer (born in 1903 in Leoncin) is beautiful but, while it’s set in the immediate aftermath of the Khmelnytsky Rebellion, there’s no perspective on Cossacks.

And I couldn’t find any Tatar sources at all which isn’t wholly surprising but it’d sure be nice to get all perspectives.

For the Tatar perspective, these were all my dead ends:

There is apparently a poem from the 17th century by a Tatar poet named Dzhan-Muhammad/Djan-Nuhamed called Tuğay Bey but I couldn’t find it anywhere.

If I were just looking for a primary source, there’s Mehmed Senai’s chronicle about Khan İslâm III Giray. But chronicles attempt a different project than fiction or poetry.

I’d hoped that the Tatar epic, Çora Batır, might kinda be a source the way Taras Bulba is, since it describes life in the Crimean and Kazan Khanates before the Russians showed up. But while it slaps, even in the summary I found, it doesn’t touch on Cossacks.

I do suspect there’s Tatar-authored Pan-Turkist literature that’s hiding what I’m looking for. Most of that writing (as I’ve found it described) is focused on the Soviets, as you’d expect. Longing for a pre-Soviet past might reasonably have produced a literary work that fits my criteria, though. But even if I could get my paws on the revenant antique literary journals from 1930s, it’d all be in Turkish. And while it sure would’ve been convenient if my family had kept up speaking Turkish… we didn’t :')

And so ended my quest.

If actually I got into this again I’d widen my parameters and include Turks overall, possibly with an eye to the Cossack raids by ship. I’ve read recent pushback against the established historical narrative that the Ottomans were uniquely inept as a naval power, so maybe the churn of that discourse will turn something up. Who knows.

There’s really something about the Steppe (and landscape in general) as described by novels about the Khmelnytsky Rebellion that hits different

Q: For novels about Zaporozhian Cossacks, we obviously have Ogniem i mieczem (Polish), Kiddush Ha-Shem (Jewish), and Taras Bulba (complicated, but Gogol’s Ukrainian). But is there an ethnic Tatar perspective in a novel somewhere?

(Specifying novels, rather than books, since I’m specifically looking for ideological biases in fictional portrayals, as reflected in all three above.)

[spacemancharisma]

not to be aggressively southern on main but ppl who think that singing with a twang and saying yeehaw to whatever beat they threw together automatically makes it a country song or even a country fusion………… this is simply not the case

[yea-baiyi]

ok but like imagine being hua cheng. and when you were a teenager you were trapped in a cave with your god when he got hit with sex pollen and you already felt ugly and unlovable but he stabbed himself through the gut rather than touch you and you saw him shirtless and horrifyingly that’s how you found out you were gay

and then you meet him again centuries later when you’ve grown up and become comfortable in your own skin, and you think you might be in love with him except a part of you still feels terrified that he’ll look at you and find you hideous again. but you want to trust him so you show him your real face. and. turns out he finds your adult self so hot that you make him horny for the first time in his life and he keeps doing and saying absolutely deranged things because he does not know how to cope. he panics and tries to give you, a ghost, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and while you’re lying there trying not to freak out he is beside you acting out his one man humiliation-style comedy show because he has never wanted to kiss someone before let alone fuck. he agrees to get locked in a coffin together because he never even considered the possibility that he might pop a boner except he does pop a boner and now you are stuck under him while he squirms and you are trying very hard not to think about your own boner

i don’t know how to end this post i just think that’s so funny. and they live happily ever after and have lots of gay sex. hua cheng keeps winning. slay king

[angelmush]

the other day i walked around the golden lake w my love and the sun was setting hot and orange and we watched a brown duck preening through the weeds, ducking her head under the dark water. the cool lake swallowed up my tired feet to the ankles and we counted the dog walkers with their curly panting doodles and their handsome german shepherds and their whip smart little terriers and we admired the careful construction of a sand castle whose moat held determinedly against the lapping of the waves. we could feel in our chests the persistent thunderous thumping of celebratory music at the finish line of the lakeside 5k, welcoming each gasping runner across its bounds. and i felt like crying. i felt like curling into myself and crying. we walked through the swamp of the bird sanctuary afterwards and listened to the woods sing and croak and groan and then we went and got ube and yuzu gelato and devoured it suntired and sweating on the couch in our living room. and i was so overcome w a deep and true unshakeable happiness and a sort of confused grief that i wanted to sob and sob and sob.

[angelnumber27]

violently forcing myself to have better days

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

There has been so much excellent discussion on my dash this morning, especially musing on the privacy vs secret thing, and once again thinking about how strange it must be to go from thinking “I must shrink myself and avoid public sightings for the sake of my sanity and personhood” to realizing that perhaps you are shrinking yourself in public specifically because the person you’re with doesn’t (or people you’re with don’t) want your personhood to infringe on their peace of mind 😵‍💫

[wander-wren]

sighs. thinking about bare again…..

[tariah23]

Man….. :(

[citizen-zero]

it drives me nuts how it feels like you can’t talk about certain feminist issues anymore without inevitably getting called a TERF even if you’re not one. like I hate TERFs and I think the pushback against them is fully justified but sometimes it feels as if, in our efforts to make bigots unwelcome, we’ve unintentionally ceded ground to them and made it so people think of TERFs when they think of feminists. which is the opposite of what we want.

your feminism has to be intersectional but like, that means acknowledging that not all women are going to have the same kinds of problems. gay women and straight women have lots of issues that will never overlap. same with women of color and white women. I don’t think it should be controversial to recognize that the same is true for trans women + AFAB people and cis women. I think it’s okay for some conversations to only focus on one or the other.

idk this is mostly a problem I see in left leaning spaces bc the conversation in broader society already mainly focuses on feminism in white cishet terms but the answer isn’t to do a whole 180 and shut down conversations about issues that primarily impact cis women and AFAB people and make people nervous about talking about those issues, the answer is to continually affirm that trans women are women regardless of AGAB.

[viktoriakomova]

Not to get Sad but like. I miss not knowing what’s going on with gymnastics in a way lmao? Like I peer pressured (complimentary, pat-on-back celebration worthy 😎) some of my normie friends into getting bama szn tix and I brought them to a meet last year and they were so so jazzed about like. ALL of it.

In a way I do understand bc it’s all just so impressive to Normies who mostly can’t even touch their toes let alone do a passable cartwheel etc so like EVERYTHING is awesome by default. And that’s not true of basketball football etc like most able bodied people can do the basics of those sports even if their performance is terrible. Most people can throw a ball or dribble it even if they suck, or carry it and run at some speed. But yeah ykwim

Like one of my friends, his favorite skill is a double pike on floor. He just thinks it’s the most impressive thing and he loves watching it every single time, he doesn’t know shit about difficulty ratings he’s just watching what’s in front of him and in a way I’m extremely jealous of him 😭😭😭😭

[bikananjarrus]

also sabine calling ahsoka “master” in the trailer mmmmmmm don’t know how i feel about that. don’t think i like it. it’s a trailer so things are obvs spliced together in a certain way, but implying that they’re trying to make sabine as a jedi??

now i love that at the end of rebels, ezra left his lightsaber with sabine and she still uses it. but introducing formal training for her?? idk it feels like they’re sidelining her mandalorian heritage, and if they make her force sensitive istg. like if they wanted to have ahsoka walk away from someone again, jacen or ezra was right there (ezra more in the sense of abandoning him in wild space, which still happened :/ ). idk trying to give ahsoka an apprentice and it being sabine is just meh. like reducing sabine to the role of an apprentice also just makes me feel like dave didn’t trust her to be interesting enough otherwise for more casual viewers, which is so disrespectful of the rebels source material

[the-golden-dragoness]

Not crying and being guilt ridden again :))))))

[south-sea]

shadow having days where he’s more kid than adult, and more adult than kid

but also days where he’s more maria than shadow

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

I find it really interesting that in the “anger” playlist intro she says that the common thing about all the songs was that she wrote them while she was feeling anger. This particularly intrigues me about the folklore and evermore songs, because they’re the more clearly fictionally-cloaked songs (other than maybe mad woman). Because it makes me wonder what, ahem, personal situations from her past she was drawing from to write those that made her feel that anger (again other than mad woman, which is pretty obvious). Like, yes they are characters and inspired by other stories but they’re clearly… infused.