#mara reblog

[carol-cigarettes-furcoats]

[cloudwhich]

in honor of 100 followers of my blog here is my cat’s namesake, Mara Jade :D !!!

Thank u all for supporting my art and niche asf fixation <3

Mara says thank you too :>

[fujobritta]

El Grillo (The Cricket) — Josquin Des Prez

(notes under cut)

[bluesey-182]

"give", "gods", and "sugar" all playing back to back in Sundowning is hilariously entertaining to me bc it's like "here's a heartaching, beautiful ballad. here's an underground-punk-scene-esque banger. here's haunted clown music". and i eat that shit up each time

[arytha]

joelle and francis's icons got turned into the anonymous/deactivated icon because my phone cache is probably buggy but man did it concern me for a second ghfjdk

[thefirstknife]

Mara is being a classic manipulative abuser trying to sway everyone to pity her and putting the spotlight on her own grief rather than the immeasurable suffering she has caused others, and the fandom is falling for it hard. As someone who will spend likely the rest of my lifetime healing from the hurt caused by someone like her and hangs out with many fandom friends with the same experiences... it's just really anxiety inducing and hurtful to see how large chunks of the fandom are so quick to praise and adore her for her "character growth". She is upset to be facing consequences for her actions and is trying to get pity. She is a horrible person and a fantastic character and she should be allowed to be the asshole that she is. She doesn't have to be good to be enjoyable. I am terrified the narrative will go the way of having Crow forgive her because that's the "good" and "kind" thing to do, thus essentially saying abuse victims need to be the "bigger person" and forgive their abusers. Not even gonna get into how she used the Awoken people from the first moment. There's nothing wrong with loving Mara but I think all of you need to take a step back and listen to people who have met real life Maras and understand just how messed up your support of her is when you're touting her as this traumatised person just trying to do what she believes is right (true) which makes her good and worthy and simply misunderstood (false, her trauma doesn't absolve her of being a cunt). She isn't growing, she's just further manipulating people and making things about herself. There is no moral failing in enjoying characters who are horrible people. She's no different from Clovis with her god complex and having slightly more noble intentions doesn't excuse her whatsoever. Her remorse might be genuine but at the moment she isn't seeking to provide any reparations to her victims, she just want people to feel bad for her being sad.

I was abused by my older brother, emotionally and physically, who manipulated (and still does) people around him.

I shouldn't have to say this, but I'm getting really tired of people assuming that everyone who sees some value in Mara's character growth has never been abused. That assumption is disrespectful and forces the person you're telling this to out themselves about their own abuse. Because if I don't, then people will just continue saying that I can't possibly understand what it's like. I understand. Unfortunately, personally. I would advise not to approach random people telling them that they can't understand what it's like because they happen to like Mara as a character.

Another thing that I want to mention at the start is that I have never in my life claimed that Mara did nothing wrong or that she isn't a bad person. She is. It's a part of the reason why she's a fascinating character. She's an uncompromising leader who worked under the idea that the end justifies the means and that she is the only one that can see us through to that end. It's a cruel life for everyone around her.

Her trauma doesn't absolve her of being a cunt, but it does explain why she is one. I think this is not only valuable, but crucial to understand because that explains that her cruelty wasn't out of sick malice and enjoyment of hurting others.

If we want to care about abuse, we have to understand that parental neglect is also abuse. Mara is also an abuse victim. This also doesn't absolve her of her actions, but it does explain them. Mara's recent new line in which she tells Elsie about Osana Sov, her mother, is a classic abuse victim story about parental abuse. It's one that rarely gets acknowledged because that type of abuse is structured specifically in a way to go unnoticed. But it's abuse nonetheless. And I'm sorry but if we care about abuse victims, we also have to care about abuse victims who become cunts. That's the only way to really fix the situation.

And I do genuinely believe in fixing the situation. I know that a lot of people don't want their abusers to get better or to change and I also know that a lot of people don't believe that their abusers CAN get better and change, but they can. Not all of them of course, but some can. Insisting that Mara is not actually changing and is just pretending and being manipulative again is your trauma talking. The text is incredibly clear in this scenario and it's not just coming from Mara herself; it's coming from people around her. So unless we believe that literally every character (including incredibly perceptive ones like Elsie or Ikora) would fall for Mara's every word even when they never did so previously, Mara is genuinely changing and she isn't manipulating anyone or pretending to be trying to get better for good girl points. That's incredibly uncharitable interpretation where you have to go out of your way to insist that she's just pure evil. It's equally incorrect as saying that Mara is pure good.

Again, I know that not everyone is capable of dealing with that in the same way or same time as someone else. There was a time in my life when I genuinely wanted my brother to just die and be gone from the world and that he is not deserving of any introspection or the ability to change. And I know there are horrific people who have done truly unforgivable things and that it's hard to think about them as people deserving of effort and change. But if those people put in the effort and want to change, we have to give them that second chance.

Of course, their victim is not obliged to help them or be in their presence ever again. This is a right that Crow is currently exercising, with no end in sight. But if he eventually chooses to give it a go? His story will not be worth any less to an abuse victim. It won't align with everyone's story, but it will align with some of them and again, if we care about abuse and abuse victims, then we also have to care about those that aren't identical to us. It's not about being the "bigger person." I don't want to be prove being a bigger person to my brother, I just genuinely think that it would be better for everyone involved if he changed and worked through all of our issues and we were a normal family.

The text is also more than clear about Clovis who has never in his life believed that he is wrong or that anything that he did was wrong, including all suffering he caused to all of his family and humanity. Like, this cannot get any clearer. And the game directly made that comparison to debunk it in a very on-the-nose way: in a full dialogue in-game. Clovis doesn't think anything he did was wrong; Mara does (and Rasputin admits to the same).

I would also like to point out that the game is filled with abusers who never get a fraction of the same flack. Calus is a massive abuser who neglected and emotionally manipulated and punished Caiatl her whole life, as well as treated his people as accessories to his own goals and tossed them into suffering and death for his own amusement. Not even for anything dire like saving all life in the solar system; for pure amusement. Reading about Gahlran is a special type of horrific depiction of Calus' disregard for people's autonomy and safety.

People also for some reason don't see it, despite it being incredibly clear in the lore book, but the Witness abused Rhulk into obedience through isolation and manipulation. It picked Rhulk because he was already on the edge and then it used isolation and manipulation abuser tactics to sway him away from his people and turn him into the genocidal unquestioning obedient follower that he became.

Savathun was also a fairly abusive person as well and probably the best comparison with Mara. She was knowingly manipulating her siblings, and her nephews, and also her children, for whom she had very little love and care. She also completely ignored them and left them pretty much for dead when she decided to become a Lightbearer. And you know what? Savathun is also an abuse victim herself as well. She is a traumatised person that has been on the receiving end of manipulation and we all feel very bad for her circumstances. And Savathun also wanted a second chance; and she got it!

Clovis was a massive abuser whose wife had to run away from him and hide, who did not see his child and his grandchildren as real individual people. He manipulated every single one of them, most of all Elsie, to whom he most likely lied about her disease to make her accept the Exo body and to whom he directly said that he is in control of all information about her own body. He also did not view any people as real people and instead, they were all experiments. Reading his logbook and his extra experiments (warning for medical trauma and body horror) is, to borrow words from an in-game character, "a gratuitous exercise in horror." He has never, not once, said or did anything that shows he regrets it or thinks anything he did was wrong.

You might say "but nobody is making excuses for Calus or Savathun or the Witness or Clovis!" And like, yes they are. They're never addressed as abusers and they have plenty of fans who treat them just like their cool blorbos. A really interesting example is the Witness who, by god, has a really cool design, but whom people are consistently treating only like a sexy otherworldly alien who is just sooo shippable with its abuse victim.

And as much as that makes me super uncomfortable, same as Calus bros who to this day swear that he's actually someone worthy of following or that Clovis is just a poor little meow meow that everyone is being too mean to, I am not here to tell people that they aren't allowed to do those things. And I am not going to send them guilt-tripping asks telling them that I am an abuse victim and that they cannot possibly have similar experiences because they post positively about these characters. And I certainly can't claim that none of them understand abuse.

I don't know why Mara is the only one that gets this sort of response. Mara is both an abuser and an abuse victim, she was a miserable person as a human to the point where she straight up decided to commit suicide. She was a cruel leader who believed that only she alone can save the world and that everybody else is at her disposal to be used as she wants. And she has since learned how awful she was and regrets it. She wants to change and be better. No matter the timeline, she remains our steadfast ally until the end. It's really not that difficult. There's no double or triple deceptions and manipulations involved.

Me and many others have actually literally been talking about how Destiny writing is currently focused so much on every character sounding like they've been going to therapy and how everyone is super introspective about their problems and wrongdoings. I assume this is because we're slowly wrapping things up and we can't have characters being too ambiguous in the face of our endgame enemies, but no matter what's the reason for it is, the conflicts and characters have been getting increasingly more straightforward. Mara is not going to flip the switch on us.

If you for any reason can't stand to see a storyline in which someone like Mara gets a second chance, that's something that you will have to deal with in your own time. Disengaging from the story is okay. Disengaging from the fandom is okay. Sometimes media will tell a story about your experience that doesn't align with yours perfectly, but it does align with other people who have been through similar issues.

And in case of Destiny, this is a story whose main theme is "second chances." Mara wants one so she deserves one. Savathun wanted one and she deserved one. Even Calus or Clovis or even the Witness; if they want one, they deserve one. It's okay to not want to forgive any of them personally and even to struggle with the fact that the story is trying to pass that as the right thing to do, but again, that's something for everyone to deal with in their time. And please don't make assumptions about other people and their relationship with abuse.

[sleepergeek42]

thanks doctor who: the gloaming for having a line so brain rotting that i needed to make art about it (or rather a mock-up of what the art would be) because i'm so normal about devotion and godhood and praise and consumption -

(thanks big finish and more specifically lauren mooney & stewart pringle for using the mara to its unhinged potential)

[mayxthexforce]

"You know [Roganda Ismaren] was the Emperor's Hand. His other Hand," he added, as Leia looked quickly up, a protest on her lips. "And Mara's fried as a fish about it."

— Han Solo to Leia Organa in 'Children of the Jedi' by Barbara Hambly.

[invinciblerodent]

tagged by @starfightrpilot in a kissy-picrew, couple song game using this creator! (A lot of the designs aren't super well-reflected in it because, well, the medium itself is a little limited like that, but I still had so much fun playing dressup with it again! ❤️)

@antiqua-lugar, if you're in the mood to play dolls, I'd love to see you do it too next! ❤️

(I went on a bit longer than i thought, so, under the cut it all goes!)

This is the best I can do for the moment of Iona and Astarion- their song for me is "Masquerade" by YENDRY (ft. Lous and the Yakuza)

I really like how the basis of their whole story is, at its core, a willful miscommunication based on the complete misunderstanding of the other's motives, and how the two singers have their back and forth in different languages.

I really like how over and over again, the song responds to "Antes de hablarme quítate la máscara" ("before you'd speak to me, take off your mask") with "Arrêtez un peu avec toute cette mascarade" ("stop with all this charade/masquerade"), I think that works so nicely for these two's whole Deal with each other- kind of both daring each other to drop the pretense first without fully understanding what the other is saying.

They didn't have a goatee that would have fit Arvid, so this is kind of the closest I could get to him and Gale! Their song for me is "I Know That He Loves Me" by Autoheart.

I like to kind of think of it as "He" in a way going back and forth between referring to Arvid's god Tempus ("At the edge of imploding/He surrounds me with light") and referring to Gale ("And He acts like a sedative/All through the night"), kind of as a.... religious crisis/romantic panic type of deal? Either way, it's a nice fit.

For Petyr and Shadowheart (shipname: Phart), most of my songs are instrumentals, but the one that I associate with them is "Love Song of The Beta Male" by Stornoway.

"beta male" in this context is referring to the concept as it exists in birds basically, but it's just a very sweet kind of, "I'm not an idiot, I know I'm not, like, a perfect, charming prince who'll sweep you off your feet, but hey, I can love you still the best I can" sentiment that I feel fits their silly and.... in a way, almost kind of juvenile romance.

(I unfortunately don't yet have one for Petyr and Halsin -ship name Hatyr-, but that's probably for the best, since I can't make them look not related in the bloody picrew, lol.)

And closing it out with Ray and Wyll, with "Yellow Bird" by Ben Stevenson.

This whole.... hero in/before his prime and hero past his own angle, this... one of them embodying the present and the future and the other the melancholy past, they're very much two sides of the same coin, and "Nobody knows all that we've got, you couldn't tell a single thing new/Nobody knows me like you" just... fits so well.

To know sacrifice because they've both had to make it, to know one another because they see versions of themselves in each other, I really like that. Nobody knows me like you, because I am you, and you are me, and that depth of understanding without need for words just tickles me so perfectly.

Thank you for tagging me love on u ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[carol-cigarettes-furcoats]

Carol [seductively] saying Therese’s name 

[wolfblood-of-anubis]

please reblog so that more people can see and vote, thanks!

[aromanticmara]

did you guys know we need more mara art in this world. did you know that

[swimming-karyss]

more OCs!

since I neither can nor should draw now, I thought I could share some old art and a bit or two about my imaginary children!

Meet Mara and Yole Balemila! They are travel companions, your honor. And one day I will definitely write a comic about them, one day.... Mara is an ex-monster-hunter, and she seems so out of touch with the modern world, I wonder why is that :) And Yole is a self-proclaimed witch who can't cast a single spell. Actually the 'witch' title is usually given to threats to society, but Yole isn't bothered by this, because witches are cool! Her mum is one! :D

unlike Avelyn they do live in an interesting world with some mysterious history! I've even drawn some maps! But all of them are outdated and do not fit my vision. I've got really interested in worldbuilding and had a lot of fun thinking about ocean currents, climates and such!

aw look, it's their first art together! they've grown up so much!

(an unfinished art of one of the previous designs) Yole is really keen on hanging out in open elevated spaces. She enjoys the wind :) and I enjoy mysterious ruins

Actually Yole has quite an interesting family tree when it comes to inspirations behind her. She is an alternate version of an alternate version of an old beloved oc. Maybe I'll talk about it someday....

Mara is just Mara. She is like a Ken....

this was meant to be a light study from a frame from a film, but I got disappointed with something and abandoned it, I think? I don't really remember. but they are rather cute here

this picture had a caption: "sometimes I forget that Mara is a protagonist too", which is, lol, true. Compared to Yole her design didn't change with time at all! it probably means I don't think about her all that much.........

an untranslatable meme about eating a beetle. I'll actually try to translate it. everyone likes the jokes being explained, right??

Mara: how much will you eat a bug for?(money)/how much it'll take you to eat a bug?(time)

Yole: hmmm, Less than a minute

Mara: I was talking about money!

Yole: I will be paid?! :D

[ufonaut]

Anne Mason slept, and a coldness like the coldness of death touched her.

The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love (1971) #3

(Jack Oleck, Don Heck)

[arytha]

i do think one of my biggest issues in art is colors. i dont get them. i dont understand. maybe this is why i'll never be a digital painter but like, i dont know how to use colors and would love someone to just hand colors to me for me you know

[carol-cigarettes-furcoats]