Strider

karkat my beloved

struggling fr

greta gerwig is so fucking amazing. barbie is about BEING HUMAN. it’s about growing up, its about being a woman and about being a man, it’s about what it feels like to be a little girl and see your male friends lose their innocence and start “turning into men”, it’s about being a mother but also a daughter, it’s about not letting the patriarchy take half your humanity away and about how it hurts all genders. it’s about not feeling good enough because as a woman you feel like you have to be exceptional or else you’re useless. it’s about accepting that we can be mediocre sometimes and it’s fine. it’s about acceptance of yourself and others, it’s about acknowledging your privilege and doing the right thing, it’s about empathy and love but also about resentment. it’s about coming to terms with the fact that even though being a human hurts so bad we still want to live and create experiences and FEEL.

haha sloppy style

i think dave strider smokes. not because he likes it, persay, but because he thinks thats just what people do.

i imagine he smoked his first cigarette on the roof with bro after one of their fights. probably when he was way to young, maybe 10?

bro just sat on the edge of the building and started smoking, wordlessly offered one to the kid he just beat the shit out of.

dave, wanting to be like him and not wanting to be seen as weak, took it and did his best to copy him. he nearly coughed a lung up the very first time.

after that, after every fight, bro would leave him on the roof bleeding. but there would always be a lone cigarette and a lighter waiting for him near the ledge.

he never told anyone, but rose walked in on him painstakingly trying to alchemize a pack when they were on the meteor once. she never mentioned it, thats just what people do.

once, karkat found him on the roof smoking, sunglasses pushed up as his eyes traced the endless starry sky above them. wordlessly, he offered the troll one.

they smoke on the roof together sometimes. its just what people do. what they do. even if they were upset with each other. they never talked about it though.

dirk found him once, smoking and silently crying. they shared a cigarette, quietly, wordlessly. they found comfort in each other.

halfway brothers, leaning against each other as the puffs of smoke sank into their clothes. neither said anything, they both had a feeling that thats just what people do.

the smell of smoke still brings about feelings of comfort to him. he never explained that to anyone, though, mostly because no one asked.

its just one of those things. its just what people do.

glad to be here with you

The Velveteen Rabbit, or, How Toys Become Real

a memory

theres a distinct difference between Katniss’s and Haymitch’s narration style that i think a lot of other people are noticing and it is that haymitch seems to know a lot more about District 12 and Panem than Katniss seemed to. and SotR might seem like lore dropping or name dropping but like. i think it says a lot about them as people.

I think the lack of context we get from Katniss isnt just due to propaganda, but largely due to the fact that she’s so deeply rooted in poverty and survival mode that she simply doesn’t have the mental capacity for anything else. When traumatized, our brains automatically retain less information than they ordinarily would and we see that with Katniss. Not for friends, or school, nor propagandized television lore. Notice how we get descriptions of most tributes before she remembers their names, if she ever does, while Haymitch actually remembers a lot of their names right off the bat. When you’re fighting for your life every day, it really doesn’t leave much energy for anything else. She’s used to saving all of her energy for providing for her family.

But Haymitch isn’t providing for his family. He has several friends, a healthy romantic relationship, and retains information about society because hes not neglected.

It’s just so interesting that Katniss is the luckier of the pair because in their childhood parallels, she drew the short stick compared to him. She’s only luckier cuz she had him.