family !!!

Today’s thoughts are about Rebels and the theme of home, and more specifically about Ezra Bridger.

One thing I love about Rebels is how each of the characters has their own reasons for choosing to fight the Empire—Hera grew up in this fight, Zeb is responding to his past inability to protect his people, Sabine is trying to make amends for her past decisions, and Kanan is just trying to survive after Order 66, figuring out what it means to be a Jedi. They’ve all had to, in some way, leave their people behind to pursue this fight, and that’s where we are when we meet them—when Ezra meets them.

And the thing about Ezra is that he doesn’t want the fight. He doesn’t want to join the rebellion, he wants to fix his home. But, when he gets dragged off anyway, he hears about the wookies being taken from their home, and it resonates with him; and because Ezra is, at his core, a good person, he helps them—and then he can’t stop himself from helping, and with his new family by his side, he doesn’t want to.

During the show, each of those characters faces reckonings with their past, not just once, but repeatedly. Not only does Zeb help the Lasats they meet, he is constantly coming encountering Kallus, who puts a face to the loss of his people. Hera has to work with her father, and then Thrawn steals her Kalikori. Sabine has to fight against her people, and then fights for them. And Kanan trains Ezra, immersing himself back into that life he had to run from, in many ways, with Order 66. In episodes one and two, the troops are shocked to see a Jedi, but he and Ezra slowly become well-known—he stops hiding.

In the midst of all of his family reencountering their homes is Ezra, refusing to leave his behind. Ezra never falters in his commitment to Lothal, and to its people. It’s Ezra who saves the governor, it’s his voice that gives the people hope, it’s him who pushes for the rebellion to act. He never gives up on it, never loses sight of his home, and I think that’s a big part of what draws the others back to their own homes.

By the time you reach the final moments of the battle on Lothal, Ezra has made peace with his decisions. He’s resisted the pull of the dark side, overcome the devastation of losing a master, and even denied Palpatine’s temptation for him to be reunited with his parents. In the rebellion, Ezra has grown into something more than he was before, and this time he chooses to rebel, and to do it in the name of Lothal. And he does it by using the force, not to fight, but to flee—except now, he’s not running from something out of fear, but out of determination. This time, Ezra makes the choice to leave his home behind, so that he can make the galaxy a better place for its people.

And his final message to Sabine was that he was counting on her. He didn’t say what for, but he didn’t have to, because she knew. He was counting on her to bring him back to his home, just like he helped bring the rest of them back to theirs.

Ezra Bridger is the heart of Rebels in so many ways, but this is and will probably always be my favorite.

I cannot articulate enough how badly I NEED Omega and Ezra to meet at SOME POINT

When Philoctetes, son of Poeas and Demonassa, was on the island of Lemnos, a snake struck his foot. Juno had sent it, angry with him because he alone rather than the others had dared to build the funeral pyre of Hercules when his human body was consumed and he was raised to immortality.

Hyginus, Fabulae, 102

the repeating cycles of it all, and also the. the everything about Sophokles' Philoctetes. wounds. abandonment. the fucking isolation and misery of it all.

Introduction to Sophocles' Philoctetes, Diskin Clay, trans. Carl Phillips

and this too, from a conversation between Philoctetes and Neoptolemos

Sophocles' Philoctetes, trans. Carl Phillips

society6 | ko-fi | twitter (pillowfort, cohost) | deviantart

an underrated aspect of eiffel and lovelace's dynamic is that she is the one person who can speak his language, she's just not happy about it. "we're bootlegging the opening band to figure out what kind of anvil the headliner is going to drop on our heads." / "oh! why didn't you just say that?" or saying "there is no try" to him in the live show, or trying to explain her time loop predicament with the one pop culture reference he doesn't actually get, etc.

lovelace is also a pretty quippy and pop culture savvy person, and, unlike hera and minkowski, lovelace has definitely seen star wars. she has referenced star wars. there had to have been a moment where eiffel realized he was finally, after so long, occupying the same space as another person who has seen star wars. this absolutely does not mean eiffel can talk to lovelace about star wars, but you know he tried.

It's so emotionally powerful to me that we don't hear any interactions between Minkowski and Eiffel in the finale between the scene when she tries to send him back on the Sol and the scene where she witnesses him losing his memories. That's more than an hour in the middle of the finale with no direct interaction between these two central characters whose dynamic is a core element of the show. For me, this makes both of those dramatic scenes even more moving, because they feel juxtaposed in a way they might not otherwise be if there was a Minkowski & Eiffel interaction inbetween them.

As the Sol prepares to launch, Minkowski tells Eiffel goodbye and she knows it could be the last time she speaks to him. She thinks she might never see him again, but at least he'll be safe. She thinks he might never forgive her for that choice, but at least he will have made it through this.

But his stubborn desperation to fight alongside the rest of the crew defies all her plans to protect him. And the next time she speaks to him - after she's been shot in the stomach during her attempts to reach him, after she's continued to look for him even as she's bleeding out - he is injured in a way she would never have expected. When she first sees him hooked up to Pryce's machine, maybe she thinks for a moment that he's unharmed, that they might all make it through this the way she hoped. Then she learns that his memories are already slipping away from him.

There's her desperate attempt to protect him at all costs, and then there's a life-altering harm that she couldn't protect him from, which she witnesses. Between these two moments, there aren't any scenes with both characters in together to bridge that gap. There's Eiffel yelling "Goddammit, Renée, DON'T DO THIS!", and then there's him telling her "It was an honor to serve under you, Sir." There's him pleading with her and then there's him forgiving her. There's Minkowski saying "Go home, Eiffel. Hug your daughter.[...] Goodbye, Doug.", and there's the desperate heartbroken way she says Eiffel's name after the memory wipe has gone through. There's two very different kinds of goodbyes.

And then, afterwards, there's two very different kinds of introductions.

dont ask me why i made this, its all my hand felt like producing

It'd kind of weird how..Persephone has a closer relationship to Hera than her own mother like 🤨

Demeter literally gave you everything you could ever want, she just didn't want your dumbass running around with the Olympians FOR GOOD REASON?? (And low and behold as soon as she left the Mortal Realm everything went shitty and bad things immediately happened to her 😶)

Like..you wanted MALE god friends so bad?? Cuz ig Hermes wasn't enough?? All the nymphs, Athena, Hestia and Artemis weren't enough?? Fucking weird.

Like I'd get it if it was about hee wanting to go to school but she only did that for like one WEEK or less, before she pussied out and got distracted by Hades and all his riches.

Demeter should be disappointed that she put so much effort into Persephone only for her to become this ungrateful, spoiled, tantrum throwing, sugar baby. Like holy shit--

She was raised around nymphs but she takes every chance to terrorize them, but let a God actually insult her and she just grumbles and pouts and let's Hades deal with it. (Unless it's Zeus for some reason?? She has no issue getting bold with the literal king.)

Like her act of Wrath was because of her two nymph friends dying and yet..she clearly doesn't care about nymphs. Or anyone in the Mortal Realm for that matter.

(Also.. she doesn't seem to like Hermes or Artemis for that matter either, easily replacing them with Eros and Hades, despite Hermes being her first male friend and Artemis LETTING HER STAY IN HER HOUSE. Also..Eros got to ealk her down the isle.and not of her nymph friends were there except for Daphne?? What the hell.

Me after seeing the Ashoka teaser:

On Zeus and Hera: divine conflict

When one consults the lore about Zeus and Hera, they may notice a pretty consistent pattern in their relationship: that is, the terrifying and constructive nature of their conflicts and disputes with each other, where a frustrated Zeus matches his brains with an equally frustrated Hera. This may lead some people to think that they don’t love each other, while this is simply not the case, which is why I’m writing this rant about the nature of the two head gods of the Olympian pantheon’s conflict with each other, and the ways in which it is significant in maintaining the balance of the universe.

First of all, Zeus and Hera are siblings. Siblings bicker and fight all the time, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love each other. In fact, the love of Zeus and Hera is recounted in multiple bits of poetry, and their wedding famously lasted 300 years. The myth of the founding of the Daidala festival reinforces this notion of deep love and respect that the two gods have for each other, especially the one that Zeus has for Hera, his wedded wife and definitive partner.

Next up, the conflict between the two of them is a reminder of the equal nature of their marriage, as Zeus never argues with any other deity than Hera, nor does she argue with anyone other than her husband, with both allowing their points and desires to be heard and understood by the other. In the Iliad for example, Hera is the only goddess with whom Zeus shares his plans for the fate of Troy, to which she responds with her own plans to bring glory to the Acheans before all of it comes to pass, making the divine couple agree on the following course of events that will lead to the fall of Troy. This shows that this divine conflict, so often misinterpreted as divisive, serves as a means of determining the way in which the fate of the universe will be carried out.

Like Eve in the bible who was cursed with a mind contrary to her husband, Hera has a will opposed to that of Zeus, which serves as a challenge to him and a reinforcement of his diplomatic power, a good quality for a king to have, which ultimately leads to the solidification of his reign as supreme, since he is able to not only marry his way back into Olympus through Hera (she is a symbol of legitimacy after all), but also reconcile his will with that of a contrary goddess such as Hera, thereby making him seem wiser and peaceful in the eyes of the gods, to whom he is a father and a sibling.

Moreover, Zeus even appreciates, or at least accepts the fact that Hera is constantly bickering with him, as seen in the Iliad, when he sends Iris to scold Athena for being against his will while letting Hera walk away without consequence, even specifying that her character opposes his. Another example is in one version of the story of Tiresias, where the divine couple argued about who gets the most pleasure during sex and call Tiresias to give his opinion on the matter, having been man and woman at multiple points of his life.

Hera and Zeus argue all the time, but the Eris (discord/strife) omnipresent in their relationship is not the destructive, war-creating Eris that we all know and love (Hesiod identified two Erises), but the one that makes rivals compete, the one that makes opponents fight, and the one that makes siblings quarrel. As such, it is no coincidence that she is sometimes the daughter of the divine couple, and that her presence leads to constructive forms of conflict that facilitate the reconciliation of two opposing sides, making her a force of peace instead of lasting hatred that one thinks of when they hear the word “discord”.

Au where after the war with Kronos Nico just goes to moral school and leaves Camp half-blood behind him. He lives with his father but isn’t involved at all with any quests or prophecies.

I just KNOW they going to make Sabine and Ezra romantic and I don’t want it. I don’t want it at all. That is a LESBIAN, sir, and her emotional support heterosexual, thank you very much

why do none of the rebels characters or ahsoka have actual personalities anymore,,,,,

I was a fan of Star Wars Rebels YEARS before I watched any other star wars content

Do you think that affected my obsession with star wars found families?

In retrospect, I've been a Hera girl since the very beginning. The only thing I can clearly recall from the time when I was in second or third grade and we were forced to read a book of Greek myths is that I really wished that Zeus would stop cheating on her lol. My favourite myth was the one in which she left him and he pretended to marry a wooden statue in order to get her back.

having a moment again about the way the wolf 359 live show is staged: hera stands apart from the others, and only eiffel ever crosses over to her. eiffel regularly looks over at her while he’s speaking to her, something the rest of the crew doesn’t do, and something i’m considering as close to canon confirmation as possible for the idea that eiffel makes eye contact with hera’s cameras (while everyone else just sort of talks upwards.)