The Sailor, Picard

I have begun my little project of taking stuff I find at the Thrift and turning them into Oz characters. The very first subject: Lion! This one took all day and was very annoying, but worth it in the end. I tried to hit the way he looks on the first edition cover, which is why he’s wearing green glasses. I also put a little ribbon on his tail, cause idk how to mold up with clay yet to get his little hair ribbon.

My next goal is to repaint a chicken figurine I got yesterday, and then I will have Billina.

Like I understand from a critical level that Reese Witherspoon didn’t care about the show or the world at first and Toby Maguire did, so naturally that means they develop into each others roles as they learn what it means to be confident, independent individuals.

It’s that scene where Haymitch is sitting on the train ride back home, all of his dead friends are sitting in caskets behind him, he’s actively being pumped with a cocktail of morphling and other opioids, and he’s wracked with the overwhelming pressure of his guilt for not only surviving, but failing to make any meaningful difference in the process. And as a result of all these factors, he begins having these violent, vindictive hallucinations that solely exist to remind him of his weakness. Of his failures to help anybody, to save anyone at all.

They mock him, and they guilt him, and they wound him in ways that only literal manifestations of guilt can. Until suddenly—he’s faced with Louella and Lou Lou, and Haymitch is forced to recognize that he can’t comprehend what either of them were anymore. They force him to understand that he will never recognize himself ever again.

When they ask him, “Which one of us is which?” and he admits that he cannot tell them apart anymore; he’s not only directly saying that the Capitol has won over him and broken his will, but also realizing that he will never know innocence again. That his identity now is that of the man who can longer tell which child he killed, because no matter what he has killed both of them.

That’s who the Capitol has created out of Haymitch, who Katniss and Peeta meet and must place their lives toward. The Capitol literally did the equivalent of editing the WORST POSSIBLE PARTS of Haymitch’s games, and broadcasting it live to millions. Snow hated Haymitch unconditionally so much that he ensured no cut of his games came out making him look like the decent kid he was.

He would be a ruthless child murder, who killed his own district partner with his bare hands, or he’d be the type of person who abandoned his teammates the moment he had the chance (quite loterlaly the second he could move), or he’d be the tribute who cut his partner off and sent her to her inevitable demise, or he’d cheat the system entirely to get the final kill, and survive by physically holding onto his entrails as they squeeze out his gut.

And in that single moment, as the figures of both Louella and Lou Lou ask Haymitch just who they are—it all becomes exposed. To us and him. Haymitch’s innocence and his youth didn’t die in that arena, it only received the fatal blow. It died on that train, and proceeded to rot all the way back home to the very border of Panem.

So like, yeah—this is my petition to mark that as an INTEGRAL part of the story, like how they make places Historically Significant so they can’t be torn down by cities and stuff.

Like, yes they solve issues and are an active part against the wickedness of the Alliance and the verse as a whole—but at the same time they’re only passing through. They’re only passively active, not for when it benefits them but instead for when they happen to be on the wrong side of a moving boulder.

Even when they do attempt to make some form of a difference, it only loops around and comes back to bite them anyhow.

Mal and Zoe realize they’ve stolen medicine thy was meant for a struggling, dying town, so they return it and give back the money they were paid to steal it in the first place. All that accomplished was allowing Mal to die in a later episode, Wash to get himself tortured, River to traumatize Katie, and the medicine just went right back to where it was already heading in the first place. Nothing truly changed, and all that did was really just the wellbeing of the Serenity and her Crew.

No one is better or worse off for the crew coming in, if anything they’re actively at detriment for trying.

Even in episodes where they do attempt to do the right thing, without it at first being for self-serving or other more ulterior motives, you have to wonder if they really should have tried at all. Of course, I’m not saying that the crew shouldn’t have stuck their necks in for the brothel in Hearts of Gold, but the effects of it are felt well past the end of the episode. Inara’s departure is fueled by her heartbreak during the preparation, and Zoe and Wash were given a promise of their future that would never get to truly happen.

In the end they managed to free the brothel, but they also destabilized an entire moon’s economy and killed several key figures of the planet’s civilization. All while planting the seeds that would inevitably lead to their own destruction during Objects in Space and Serenity. It was like a double time in the crew’s uniting ability to be corrosively destructive towards themselves and each other.

If you told me that they were fated to end up the way they are by the end of Serenity, I’d call your bluff but I also wouldn’t really doubt you.

They’re space cowboys. In every sense of the word.

It’s easy come, but it’ll never be easy go.

If the series had continued, or even been allowed to finish one whole season, I wouldn’t be shocked if Mal was intended to have eventually been killed. Whether that be in a moment of heroics, or as a consequence of all his past and the love he had grown for his very present.

You can run from it, you can grow a family in spite of it, and you can learn to love yourself and all those who cherish you. But death rides a fast horse, and his mercy doesn’t come quick.

I wouldn’t be shocked

Like throughout Buffy, it’s strongly eluded to that the Slayer and the Watcher Council are only parts of this all encompassing war between Light and Dark. The Slayer itself being this almost, like, higher force bestowed to humanity by higher powers in this endless conflict. However they never really go into that past the S4 and S5 finales, and even then only through the lens of The First Slayer.

And now, here I am, only 8 episodes into the first season of the detective agency, buddy cop spin off—and they reveal that not only is there a true higher force influencing this timeless war, but this war is infinitely stretching???

Like apparently there’s assassins who kill “champions of humanity”, and Angel and Buffy are both one of these Champions, and these “powers that be” quite frankly operate very similarly to Wolfram and Hart.

To be honest—I always knew that the cycle was expansive, however I didn’t expect it to really be that deep. Like all of Season 5 of BtVS is about Buffy wanting to know more about what being a Slayer means, and they treat it like a clueless mystery on a sinking ship that just keeps getting itself fixed just enough not to sink, and it’s like—

Angel has MET the dudes who work for the people responsible for your existence! THEY LIVE UNDERNEATH THE L.A POST OFFICE!!! We can go VISIT THEM AND THEY OFFER A VAGUELY STRAIGHT ANSWER!!!!

Ultimately, I am very intrigued to see how this develops. Because it almost reframes everything, including all that occurred in Buffy, as this sort of—game of chess between these higher powers.

Even if it is a lot to get adjusted to in one sitting, I think it adds a lot.

Almost. Time will tell.

I don’t need to wonder, because all my days are spent on that moment. In the seconds of emptiness, as I just mess the fireworks off the side of the empty parking lot.

I blew nothing.

It is amazing what a sense of humor can do for a man. If he asked, I’d gladly hit. Now that his sadness is less all encompassing and more Bedroom Sadness.

That someone else also loved a book enough that they took the prettiest flower, and they left it between the pages as a reminder that they read it. That a grandmama and a granddeadie thought of their granddaughter so much, that they not only bought her a used copy of Anne of Green Gables, but left her a note on the cover page; to let her know how much they love her, and how much they hope they love this book. That at some point, a teenager your age or younger was also reading New Moon, and they were as astounded by the plot as you felt while you read.

I can’t quite find it anymore, but my copy of The Hunger Games was filled with old annotations from an elementary schooler around the time of its release. It even came with custom money, Panem dollars that the kid (who I suppose is now a grown adult) made and shoved into the middle pages of the book. Where it sat for years; until the moment that I ordered it online, and it came to my house, and it was read once again.

Even after years of unuse, in which its pages aged and its binding went away—it still felt it proper to carry a piece of who had once read and cherished it. A feeling I can only understand from the perspective of a book, but from which perspective I am humbled into realization.

What I think fills me with that sense of melancholy, is the feeling that some experiences are always present. Even if these words hadn’t been written down, or those objects had not been placed, the feelings would always be there. They’d be invisible to those who did not experience the moment of their existence, but they wouldn’t not be at all.

Whether we admit it or not, all human beings want to be known and recognized. We want to be remembered, to no longer want at all for our connection.

That invisibility, the moment no one else will know, just can’t work. So we must do the visible, because that is all that will ever be known.

In the shape of letters and messages to those we love, or our written thoughts as we engage with media for the first time, or in the words we leave under photographs that remind us of their context, or the smiley face a child asks to be left on the receipt as their parents checkout; all because one stranger did it for them once when they were a teensy bit younger, or even in the act of writing all one’s bleeding thoughts to a blog that no person will likely ever read or write to.

To desire any legacy isn’t a horrible thing. Yet the kind you gain once you’ve left? I suppose that’s what matters most. Regardless of what you did, or how you were. Words. That’s the sort which comes up, which marks you.

Have the legacy of a caring person, of a “I love and miss you too”, or an “O… M… G…” which shows your passion and your love.

Or, instead, simply be the flowers in an old book. The flowers picked by a person who once took an old book from their school library, and brought it to the meadow… and then never opened it again. To let those flowers sit, to let their heart age and grow in turn. Until the day that old book wound up in a newer bookstore, and was bought and opened… and the flowers picked by an older lover fell out once again.

If you are looking to be anything—be what is captured in goodness. That is what will be seen, and what will be known.

Be the flower which ages.

Morning’s dew came for us then

in places that we didn’t see.

It wasn’t looking for us, but

we weren’t looking for it.

Maybe that’s why it passed

on through.

Maybe that’s why we are

not cold in the dark places.

Why we are not damp like all

the other pale creatures.

It left the city.

It left and did not take us as

passengers within it.

I carry you, little one, I give you away.

In this flat city, nothing real can stay.

You are the only true thing here,

the best of me is all of you.

Which is why you cannot stay

here with us.

Here in this flat city, nothing real can stay.

So I wrap you in song, cover your head

with notes and string. I have no food

for you, little one. All there is, is love.

Love for the music, love for the life

we could have shared. Cause you

are real, and I am not.

I am the rubble, but they are not. Kindness

is all they bring, and the safety which I

cannot. There’s an island for you to be,

an island for you to live. There the

sun will never fade, and the morning dew

will never stick. There you will

know no rubble, there you will

never know the starving pain.

I’ll trade you one flat city for

another, and send you on

your way. A flat city for a flat

island, one which ends up all the

same. But for now, and for then you’ll

be safe.

And as this dew takes me home,

I’ll trust that you will know.

I feel in my heart the greatest love

there ever was, little one.

I feel in my soul the greatest ache

that’s ever been felt, little one.

Yet I know that you will

make that place home.

You are my Music Baby, you are

our world’s soul. I believe in all

of you, and I trust that you will one

day take your place.

In all flat cites… nothing real can stay.