A Sudden, Terrifying Thought

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ours is the holiest love.

so um. about that promise jonathan made??

The other factor is that of course the SNP has managed to take Labour and LibDem seats in Scotland. If the exit poll is correct. This is going to absolutely suck

if the SNP is on 55 how the fuck are the Tories on 368

It’s 20fucking20 and here we are, still writing Barriss meta, apparently.

Tonight it’s lightsaber symbolism, because Anakin is very much fighting Barriss using her own lightsaber, and there’s a lot to unpack there.

On the one hand? This is…perverse. It’s viscerally wrong. It’s made very clear in TCW that lightsabers are powerfully magical weapons–soulbonded, in a sense. Your lightsaber is an extension of your being. “This lightsaber is your life.” The most powerful moments are the ones in which lightsabers willingly change hands. 

Cody handing Obi-Wan his saber is literally him handing him his life back. Barriss and Ahsoka, trapped in a tank under a mountain of rubble. Ahsoka casually hands her lightsaber to Barriss to hold while she works to save them; when Barriss gives up and accepts that no one is coming for them (and this is a running theme–Barriss gives up and accepts her fate, while Ahsoka will never stop fighting for a chance at hope) she lets her own lightsaber fade. But Ahsoka’s she keeps lit, a thin blade of light against the darkness, as she takes her friend’s hand in the one that had previously been keeping her own flame lit so that neither of them will be alone when the end comes.

So let’s…talk about that.

Because there was no saber exchange this time. The first sign to Barriss that something is very wrong is that Anakin walks into her room and casually uses the Force to pick up her lightsaber where it rested on a small altar. He used the Force and immediately took control of her life with that casual movement. Picked it up against her will, to stop her from being able to take it, specifically to limit her options. And then he used it as a weapon against her–

Barriss is furious during that fight, and it’s not just because she’s finally expressing her pent-up rage. Anakin swung a live saber straight at her head at combat speed, in order to test her. If he had been wrong, he could very easily have killed her. With her own lightsaber.

Of course, there’s the flip side of that equation. Yes, Anakin fighting her with her own saber is…obscene. But he was also, this time, completely justified in taking it in the first place. Barriss is the one who set her Jedi lightsaber aside in the first place. Barriss is the one who chose instead to take up Sith blades, stolen by force. When Anakin attacked her, she didn’t use the Force to hold him off, or dodge, or try to take her lightsaber back. No. She reached for the Sith lightsabers she’d taken in order to pull off an elaborate deception to cover her own tracks.

(And spare Ahsoka. The only reason to try to frame Ventress in the first place is to spare Ahsoka, which is why it’s very clear Barriss didn’t intend to frame Ahsoka when she first bombed the Temple. She lost control of the situation, and framing Ventress would solve the clusterfuck she created by trying to solve the wild spiral.)

(But you’ll notice she doesn’t confess or try to come clean. If all that mattered was sparing Ahsoka from the mess Barriss accidentally created for her, if this was about righting a wrong–you’ll notice Barriss does not turn herself in.)

The reason Barriss doesn’t have her own lightsabers is because, well. She decided the Sith blades suited her.

Which is how we got to this scene:

Anakin wielding as a weapon against her the reflection of her own untainted soul.

Unabashed Book Snobbery: GoT's 10 Worst Adaptational Decisions

Spoilers only through GoT S4.

Anonymous said: I recently discover your blog and I’m in love with it, I’m in full reading of all your posts! But at the risk of repeating something that someone you have already ask for you… I cannot resist the curiosity! Especially after your magnificent poll, cause I like how critical you are with Game of Thrones so… What would you say are the 10 worst decisions committed so far? Scenes, plots or characters. (btw, sorry, my english sucks)

Well, anon, at first when I saw this I smiled, jotted down a knee-jerk bulleted list, and sent it over to a friend of mine who also happens to be critical of the show. Then she and I began talking about it further, and suddenly it became a Google Doc with mini essays. The following is a collaboration between myself and the wonderfully talented Dornish enthusiast theculturalvacuum​.

To quickly preface, we are not the types of people who will criticize every minor change when a book is being adapted to the visual medium. Even with GoT, there are times we even kind of like changes. But the fact is, with this series, we have very good reasons for our book snobbery. Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss (D&D) have, over time, demonstrated to us that they have a very limited understanding of the characterizations and themes at play in a series that is about so much more than twists and gasps. In the case of LOTR, it was clear that Peter Jackson, despite his changes, understood Tolkien’s vision. From our perspective, while D&D may know plot-wise where ASOIAF will end up, what they are giving us is a story that relies on overused tropes and trite interpretations, which ultimately misses “the point.”

So without further ado, the 10 worst adaptational changes, from least awful to most:

10. Masturbatory original dialogues:

Back when Season 1 was in production, D&D found themselves short in terms of run-time. It was a low-budget operation back then, so they added a lot of scenes of just two or three characters talking in one room as a way to pad their show. Originally, these scenes were thought of as the shining stars of the series (Varys vs. Littlefinger being almost like a spy vs. spy). Then they turned into…

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Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

Trump is going to get re-elected.

Get comfortable saying it. Get comfortable hearing it and thinking it. Because if we don’t collectively get our fucking shit together, it’s gonna happen.

It’s gonna happen because his supporters still love him. It’s gonna happen because even people who don’t love him are thinking to themselves, “well this hasn’t been so bad, the economy is good, we didn’t actually go to war, that’s way better than taking a chance on some newfangled progressive.”

Nevermind the fact that the stock market takes a plunge almost every time Trump does something crazy and the economy is doing well due to Obama-era policies.

It’s gonna happen because I’m already seeing “I wanna take my toys and go home” rhetoric among Democrats who don’t want to vote for anyone who isn’t their fave.

I’m exasperated and tired and stressed and I should not have read the comments on a WaPo article, I know, I get it, but people — kids at the border. The Supreme Court. The stacking of the lower courts. The complete inaction on climate change. The uninformed “stick first, think later” approach to foreign policy. Even if you’re privileged or ignorant enough to sit there and think that none of this has touched your life, that doesn’t mean it won’t. Reading some of the things people are saying about the state of politics in the US has me feeling like I’ve taken crazy pills over here.

Do I have a favorite in the primary? Sure. Does it matter if she doesn’t win the nomination? No. I’ll go to the fucking bat for Joe Biden if I have to because people’s lives are more important than my ego or my principles. I don’t know how else to put that.

Other people’s lives are more important than your ego or your principles. That’s it. That’s the whole fucking thing and I don’t understand how no one has learned their goddamn lesson about this.

This is the Baby Money Yoda, reblog in the next 60 seconds of seeing this to receive a blessing from our green bean prince.

Hey do y'all fucks remember two years ago when just before the election all these “don’t vote both parties are bad” or “vote independent!” Posts were going around and then Trump won and now two weeks before midterms there’s all these “don’t bother voting, revolution is the only way!” And “your vote isn’t gonna matter and is an ineffective way to protest” posts are going around? Yeah knock that shit right the fuck off, don’t fall for it and get your ass to the polls, we are not doing this again.