The village had thought that the kyuubi’s container was a monster, but they had not known. They had not known how vivid orange chakra could flare with hate-fire-rage-vengeance. How pupils would slit and tails would form and how orbs of cutting wind could destroy just as easily as kunai in the dark. They did not know that a child of warm spring sunshine could become a summer sun that scorched the earth to a desert beneath his feet. The way winds could howl around his shoulders like shrieking foxes and the stacked-savored never-forgotten whispers. He howls and the wind screams with him. He rages and the world is fire and wind and an ancient hate, and ancient rage, leashed and muzzled but-only-just. Naruto still smiles, bright and orange and yellow and red, and his smiles are nothing but sharp, bloody teeth.
The last Uchiha was supposed to be something of a wunderkind. He had the eyes of all the village on them, the last loyal Uchiha, as though a six year old child could choose loyalty surrounded by the dead. Crowds part before them as they always have, but it is different. He wears hatred and power and anger cut into his bones, crawling across skin like curses. His eyes are red-red-red like demons, like blood, and they spin-spin-spin pinwheels that see everything, that slow the world like molasses and honey, sticky-sweet and poison. Sticky-sweet-slow and they rob everything, mind and body and health. He is dark and pale and shadow, and if you see red-and-glowing it is already too late. He was quiet and aloof and now he is silent-and-alone, hiding in the shadows cast by the too-hot-sun and the strong-tall-rock he stands beside.
She was just a civilian, just a girl. Pink-haired and bright and booksmart but with no legacy, no family, no clan to teach her weapons to wield or bodies to break. That is fine. She doesn’t need it. She is tall and strong and powerful. Her hands can heal but they can break. She shatters mountains the same way she shatters bones. She smiles and tilts her head and she bounces all cute and innocent and bubbly until that smile is a barring of fangs and it’s not her head that tilts it’s the way your body falls, and the bouncing is the beat of your heart and the only thing bubbling is the blood bubbling from the slash across your throat. She stands tall-strong-immoveable. She is two girls in one skin, and one is anger-and-rage-and-hate and the other is calm and implacable and solid-like-rock. Both hide behind bright eyes and a smile of an innocence so long-lost it is all but forgotten.
Oh they are good, they are strong, but they are broken, broken in ways that cannot be fixed. Broken and put back together different—just this-edge-of-functioning but oh so deadly.
Kakashi and his terrifyingly broken team. He loves them the way a broken man loves broken things, not knowing how else to shape them except in his image. They are his, fiercely, to guard and protect and to teach, but Kakashi knows nothing but brokenness, and how to be crushed and be remade. So he pushes them. He pushes them until they break and then pushes them more. He shatters them like rock-bone-body beneath Sakura’s pretty pretty hands. He traps them like Sasuke and his glowing-eyes and sticky-sweet-honeyed-poison. He burns them the way Naruto scorches the earth until it is dry and withered and barren. And then, then, he forms them back up with hands that split lightning and draw walls from the earth to withstand the blasts of friends-turned-enemies. He shapes them with clever-nimble fingers that form-mirror-echo hand-signs back faster and more furious, turning an enemy’s own jutsu back on itself stronger and deeper and more powerful. He shapes them, forms them, careful-sure-shaking, carves strength into them with nails that will never be clean of the viscera wedged beneath them.
He loves them and that love is as twisted as it is poisonous, but that is the only love he knows how to give.
Broken things survive, and Kakashi will not lose another precious person, whatever it takes.
i know its the mets, but this is the coolest shit i’ve ever seen a human being do
Wtf????
Smoove with it too
This is the kind of shit you see in anime that shows that a certain character is stronger than other characters.
“Pathetic. You can’t even hold the bat you dare step to the plate? Have you no respect for the sport?”
reminds me of this gif
Baseball players are to be feared
Reblogging for the last one
^Same for me
They just kept getting progressively more “woah”
much woah
Oh my god this is a lucky universe
adhd mode 1: I want to do this thing!!!! I’m going to do the thing!!! *5 mins later* this is so exhausting lets not do the thing, I’m done
adhd mode 2: *hyperfocus on the most irrelevant, completely unwarranted task in the world* “where did the sun go?”
adhd mode 3: *cue panic-induced motivation, typically offset by: an exam in 1 hr, a 10 pg paper due at 8AM, and other anxiety-stricken deadlines*
adhd mode 4: I want to do something but I don’t know WHAT I want to do, I want to do a million things *spend an entire day restlessly moving from task to task*
adhd mode 5: I’m READY to be PRODUCTIVE! But first, I need to get a cup of water. But wait, there’s no ice in the freezer let me make ice. Hold on, all the cups are dirty, time do the dishes lol. Hm… there’s dishes in my room let me go get them. Oh, there’s my computer let me go check Tumblr. *5 hrs later* What was I just gonna do
me at 14: wow, protagonists in media my age! how relateable!
me at 28: WHY ARE THERE SO MANY CHILD SOLDIERS? WHERE ARE ALL THE ADULTS? WHO LET THIS HAPPEN AND WHY ARE THEY NOT BEING PROSECUTED BY LAW WITHIN THESE FICTIONAL UNIVERSES
In the same vein:
Me at 14: oh protagonists that are 17-20-ish, they’re basically adults, right?
Me at 28: Oh my Gods you’re babies who left you in charge?!
Your periodic reminder that in people who have been subject to threats and punishment for having emotional responses or ‘inappropriate’ facial expressions, panic attacks look different.
They may look like the person has become calmer and less involved, dismissive, even. Some people become intensely subservient and silent. Some become catatonic.
Panic doesn’t always involve screaming, crying, and obvious signs of distress. It involves an extreme form of the person’s fear response – which can be altered by circumstance, ability, and what they’ve learnt to fear.
Which is to say, it’s not your place to decide someone isn’t having a panic attack, when they’ve told you that’s what’s happening.
oh, it’s a tragedy, of course it’s a tragedy, how can it be
anything else?
but i think the tragedy is not in his actions, not in the
father he killed nor the mother he wed nor the children he sired. no, it’s not
in what he did, it’s in who he was, the tragedy here is that oedipus was a good man and a good king and unlike so many mythical figures, he did not reap what
he sowed
the tragedy here is not that he was human and erred and suffered
due to his errors.
it’s that he did not err, and suffered, it’s that the sins
of our fathers are our sins too and we cannot escape them
the oracle of delphi gave a prophecy that foretold that any son
of king laius would kill his father and marry his mother. so when his wife and
queen jocasta bore him a son, he had the baby’s ankles nailed together and
ordered him to be left to die.
laius erred. laius planned to kill his son of blood, who had committed no crime, who was in perfect health, who had done nothing but be born. it is laius
who committed the sin of infanticide, and through this sin all other such
events transpired
a shepherd spirits the infant away instead of leaving him to
die, and he is eventually brought to the house of king polybus and queen merope, where
he is adopted. laius and jocasta have no more children, even though this leaves
laius heirless. since we know jocasta will later bear four more children, we
know it is not her whom is the issue here. after laius commits this grievous
crime, he is left sterile, and this, here, is where i believe the curse truly
begins.
the curse over thebes does not begin with oedipus’s rule,
with his supposed transgressions. it begins with his father’s sin.
oedipus grows up a devoted and loving son. he eventually hears
rumors about his strange birth and consults the same oracle his birth father
had, and is told the same prophecy. not knowing he’s adopted, he think the
prophecy refers to polybus and merope, and he flees his home, horrified at the
thought that he could ever harm his beloved parents in such a way.
he’s traveling, and upon a crossroads he meets his birth
father, laius. they do not know or recognize eachother. they quarrel about who may precede
first. it’s important to note that laius is the one who attacks first, who’s so
offended that this unknown man will not move for a king that he tries to kill
him, unknowingly attempting to murder his son a second time.
oedipus kills laius, not knowing he’s a king or his father, rather
than let himself be killed, and fulfills the first part of the prophecy. once
again, it is laius’s actions that are the incendiary actions here. if he had not
attempted to kill oedipus, perhaps he wouldn’t have died. if he hadn’t thrown
his son away, oedipus never would have killed him, since he was so aghast at
the possibility of harming his adopted parents that he ran from his home and
his life rather than risk it.
oedipus acts in self defense. even if he hadn’t, laius had
already tried to kill him once, although neither of them had been aware of it.
a trial by combat would be the least of what oedipus would be owed. he breaks
no laws, does not act in hate or malice or fear. oedipus kills laius, kills his
father, but no great sin is committed. patricide is a sin, but defending
yourself is not, refusing to die is not a sin.
so he travels, and lands upon thebes, where a sphinx has
taken residence, eating anyone who attempts to enter the city and cannot answer
it’s riddle, effectively cutting off all trade to thebes and trapping all its
residents inside, lest they leave and never be able to return. was the sphinx
here when laius left? we do not know. it doesn’t say.
but if it was – did laius leave his city to die? was this
sphinx just another piece of the curse laius had brought down upon thebes by
attempting kill his freshly born son?
oedipus, a cleverer man than any who have yet tried to enter
thebes, answers the sphinx’s riddle, and the creature leaves, having been
defeated by this man’s intellect.
oedipus is a man who has shown himself to be strong enough
to kill a king, and clever enough to defeat a sphinx. he has not harmed any who
did not first try to harm him, was so against committing harm against those he
cared about that he simply left them behind. oedipus so far has shown no fatal
flaw, no poor judgement, nothing damning or ruinous.
jocasta’s brother, creon, had said any man who could rid
thebes of the sphinx would be named king, and given his sister’s hand in marriage.
oedipus had not known about this before arriving. he had not come to thebes
with the intention of becoming king.
but king he becomes.
he is given jocasta’s hand in marriage, and the final
portion of the prophecy is complete. he weds and bed and fathers children with
his birth mother.
notice, however, that this only happens in the first place
because of how honorable and kind oedipus is to begin with.
jocasta is in her forties, at least. she may be a beautiful
woman, but she’s not a young woman. yet there are no accounts of oedipus being
unfaithful, or cruel. jocasta bears him four children, two sons and two
daughters, when during those long years after oedipus she had not had another
child with laius. if oedipus had rejected this widowed queen, said her age made
her unsuitable, had taken mistresses, had kept her as a wife in name only –
then perhaps so much pain could have been spared.
but he didn’t do that. oedipus took a wife twice his age, at
best, took a woman who was not a virgin, who had been the wife of this land’s
former king, and he dedicates himself to her. he is faithful and attentive, and
she must be fond of him, because she later tries to shield him from the truth
when she uncovers it.
which part of his actions can we take account with? yes,
jocasta was his mother, and it is incest – but he didn’t know that. he didn’t
want that. to do otherwise than what he did, to cast aside his gifted bride,
could only be considered cruelty. and oedipus was not cruel.
many years after this marriage, a plague strikes thebes. why
is not clear, because if it were truly due to oedipus’s actions, to the gods
taking offense at this incestuous union between mother and father-killer,
surely it would not have taken years to come to fruition?
but a plague comes, and the oracle says that the only way to
lift it is to see that laius’s killer is brought to justice.
(is it laius, yet again, bringing sorrow upon his city? is
it his restless spirit which curses all of thebes? it is a strange coincidence
that the infertility which he was cursed with after trying to kill his infant
son is the same plight that now faces all of thebes.)
and of course, of
course, honorable and kind oedipus vows to bring the killer to justice,
says that this killer will be exiled for his crime of murdering the king.
exiled, not killed, what a peculiar punishment, what a merciful punishment for a king killer,
what a merciful judgement from a merciful man.
but things unravel, as they do. he tells creon to bring him
the blind prophet tiresias, who tells oedipus that he must stop digging into
this matter. but the good of his city is at stake, so he can’t, of course he can’t,
and tiresias calls him false for not knowing his true parentage. he and creon
quarrel, and slowly, oh so slowly, the truth comes out.
a messenger comes, saying that his adopted father has died,
and oedipus is relieved. not for any malicious reasons, but because it means he
won’t fulfill his prophecy of murdering him. he refuses to go home because
merope is still there, refuses to take up the title of king that is surely his
by right, because he fears harming his mother. when the messenger says that
oedipus is adopted, and there’s no reasons for him not to go home, jocasta finally
realizes that oedipus is her son. she begs him to stop his search for laius’s killer, desperate to
keep the truth from him.
jocasta knows, and tries to protect oedipus. she must
believe he’s worthy of being on the throne, he must have showed her kindness and
affection if she’s so desperate to protect him from the truth, even at the
expense of the well being of thebes.
but oedipus does not listen. he leaves, and finds the shepherd
who gave him to his adopted parents so long ago, and discovers the truth.
he is the son of lauis and jocasta. lauis is the man he
killed at the crossroads. he has killed his fathe and married his mother, all
them each unaware of each other.
after this, there are differing accounts of what happened
next.
sophocles’s account is most popular. he returns to find his
wife and mother jocasta has killed herself, and he takes the pins from her
broach and blinds himself, unable to stand the sight of her. he is then exiled,
as he said laius’s killer would be, and his daughter antigone guides him until
he dies soon after.
in euripides’s version, jocasta does not kill herself.
oedipus is blinded by a servant of laius, and so justice is still served to laius’s
killer, and he continues to rule thebes. i like to think jocasta rules with
him, alive and well, because she no more deserved death than oedipus deserved
blindness.
the tragedy here is not in oedipus. it is in lauis, the
clear villain of this story, the one who damned and hurt and cursed all around
him. he who caused so much strife, and then left it all for his son to fix, for
his son to struggle with.
but he did fix it.
oedipus was a fair and just ruler of thebes, a kind husband
to jocasta, a good father to his children, from all accounts, since antigone was
so devoted to him, and he was disappointed in his sons for their selfishness because that’s not how he raised them.
perhaps oedipus is a story of how our fathers, our
predecessors, those who come before us will curse us and damn us and leave us
more problems than solutions can be found
perhaps oedipus is a cautionary tale, and our tragic figure
is not oedipuis, but laius, who made his own ruin, who’s spiteful hands left
scars on all they touched.
oedipus is a tragedy, but only because it reminds us that
our own undoing, our own unhappy endings, aren’t necessarily within our
control. our own tragedies may not be our fault, may not be due to our
mistakes, maybe we didn’t earn our unhappiness.
it’s not fair.
it’s not fair, and that’s the true tragedy of oedipus. that
good, kind, clever, merciful people can do their absolute best, can show
kindness and sacrifice and love, and in the end it won’t be able to save them
from the mistakes other people have made.
oedipus was a good man, and a good king, and it may not have
saved him – but it saved all those in thebes.
yes, oedipus was blinded. yes, jocasta died.
but the spinx was gone, their line continued, and thebes
thrived.
the tragedy of oedipus is the idea that we’re not in control
of our own destiny.
the triumph of oedipus is the idea that we need not control
it in order to have a destiny worth remembering.
It is Asian and Pacific Islander heritage month so please take a minute to read this. Samuel Kaleioka Kaeo, a Hawaiian professor has a warrant out for his arrest just for speaking Hawaiian in court. He is facing charges for protesting against the construction of a telescope on a sacred mountain in Haleakalā. Words cannot convey how disgusted I am with this trash country.
“Punishing Native Hawaiians for speaking our native language invokes a disturbing era in Hawaii’s history when olelo Hawaii was prohibited in schools, a form of cultural suppression that substantially contributed to the near extinction of the Hawaiian language,” Crabbe said.
“It is disappointing that the state government continues to place barriers on olelo Hawaii, 40 years after Hawaii’s constitution was amended to recognize the Hawaiian language as an official language of the state. We demand that the state Judiciary find an immediate solution to this issue.”
Hawai’i is more than a picture perfect sunset. It’s more than a vacation spot away from work. Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) are still facing blatant racism and suppression in 2018. This is oppressive action against the protesters. This is bullshit white supremacy in action.
I don’t know how to directly help, so I’m spreading the word. We must all practice Malama ‘Aina. http://m.hawaiinewsnow.com/hawaiinewsnow/db/330510/content/YTPnUXB5
backup blogging platform 