#because you're basically just spitting upwards at that point

[seyaryminamoto]

hello! I really like your meta about Zuko, and I'm so glad that I finally found a person who also thinks that Zuko in book 3 is a much worse person than he was in the book 1. I always thought that something was wrong with me, since literally no one sees this obvious fact for me! But I would like to ask you: What do you think about Katara in book 3? the fact is that she was my favorite character in books 1 and 2, and the way she was written in book 3 upset me a lot. it seems to me that they spoiled her character, but I can't explain why. Please share your thoughts!

Glad you've enjoyed my extensive meta on the fandom's fave, haha. I did write a lot about him, always nice to know my thoughts on the subject are still deemed relevant.

As for Katara... well, I have thoughts on her, too. My experience with her character is quite similar to yours, I'd say, because I too felt a lot better about her character in the first two seasons of the show compared with the third. I don't usually give this a ton of thought, but after your ask, I figured I'd try and figure out what exactly went down with her that made people like us feel so uncomfortable with Katara's portrayal at multiple points of Book 3...

For starters, I'll say I vibed with Katara a lot when I started the show for reasons beyond her being a great character or being written wonderfully: she could very well have been written mediocrely and I would have loved her anyway simply because I ran away from anime to ATLA in an era where anime kept shoehorning incest undertones into every sibling relationship, even in shows that didn't have that as a core subject. It happened at least twice that I can remember, I kept seeing people raving about shows where it WAS the core of it (I still do not understand the Oreimo deal, like, the minute I read that show's title I puked in my mouth and knew I'd never watch it), and I just needed... safety from that concept, I guess?

So when I went into ATLA, and the first sibling relationship you're exposed to is Sokka and Katara, two siblings who very much act like siblings? I was thriving. It was thrilling. I felt so refreshed that I think I didn't care much about the flaws of Book 1, despite my inability to sense direction for most of it, because thank the universe, it was a sibling relationship that made sense to me!

With that as an opening, I'd say that, initially, I thought Katara was fine for most of Book 1. In Book 2? She fell off the radar for me a bit simply because other characters are introduced that just appeal to me so much more than she does. I vibe better with characters like Azula, who tend to be the type of female character I just LOVE, and with characters like Toph, she's a tomboy, I was a tomboy (... was? x'D maybe I shouldn't use past tense...), so I gravitated much more towards those two by no real fault of Katara's core personality traits. Back in Book 1, there aren't as many main characters, so you don't have a lot of variety to choose faves from. It's not that strange, I think, that once the cast broadens, people's interest in certain characters can scatter too.

But then Book 3 happened, and I just couldn't enjoy Katara outside of episodes where she wasn't that important. The Katara-centric episode of Book 3 stand among my least favorite episodes of ATLA altogether, and among the least likely episodes I'd ever want to rewatch. I literally skipped over The Painted Lady in my first rewatches of the show, every bit as much as I skipped The Great Divide or Avatar Day, both of which annoy me a lot in the first two seasons. The Puppetmaster? Not even close to being an episode I could enjoy. Even the Runaway, that's supposed to be Toph-centric, ends up making me count down the minutes for it to end and I'm not even going to get started on The Southern Raiders and the absolute can of worms that episode is...

So, with all this being said, if we peel this particular cabbage open little by little...

After mulling it over, I've grown to suspect that Katara has major inconsistency issues since day one that most people don't particularly like to acknowledge, and that flew over most of our heads from the beginning of the show. She's pretty much portrayed to us as an empath, someone who has so much heart that she can't help but feel everyone's pain and suffer with them all the time. The fandom 100% acts like that's who she is (while also obsessively adultifying her unnecessarily, and forcing her into the mom!friend role, which... we'll talk about that later)

But this is also the same character who, when her brother banished Aang from the Southern Water Tribe as early as in episode 2, protested in a very particular way once Aang was gone. Which one of these statements sound more accurate to Katara's character, and a suitable protest for her to proclaim upon witnessing this injustice against Aang?

"Aang is alone! How could you send him away on his own? He could be in danger, Sokka! He's just a kid!"

"The Air Nomads are gone, Sokka! Where do you think he'll go? He doesn't have a home to go back to and you just sent him away!"

"You happy now? There goes my one chance at becoming a waterbender!"

If you ask the fandom? They'll most likely think that her reaction was either #1 or #2.

Surprise surprise: it was actually #3

I'm not saying she didn't show empathy towards Aang while Sokka was ranting at him, because she did. I'm not saying she wasn't willing to be banished along with Aang until Sokka asks if she'd choose pretty much a total stranger over their family and tribe, because she was. She absolutely did all those things.

... So why would she focus only on how he represented her one chance at becoming a waterbender once Aang is gone?

This feels off to me. I've never particularly liked that line. And you could absolutely say that Katara has every right to be mad at losing her chance to reclaim an aspect of her culture that she cannot connect to, but the way it was framed here? It absolutely makes Katara look more selfish than she actually was. The wording is not good. The show doesn't emphasize, at this point, that bending is such a core and crucial part of their culture and that Katara feels a major responsibility in being the ONLY person in the South Pole that can keep it alive. So it just comes off as a child's tantrum. Sokka's concerns were 100% valid too, even if he went about them while being a jerk (he is, indeed, an older brother...). He wasn't even wrong in the end about how dangerous Aang was to their tribe, since Aang's mishap with Katara on the ship gives away his position to Zuko, and it results in Zuko ramming a huge ship into their home and nearly killing people in the process. But you DON'T see the show fully framing it as though Katara and Aang did something wrong -- it was an honest mistake. We know it was. Sokka is framed as unreasonable for being so paranoid even though later events in the very episode prove he wasn't.

And that's... the crux of the issue with Katara's writing. If you ask me.

There are far too many instances where Katara makes mistakes that she's not held accountable for, that she doesn't apologize for, that run against the core logic and principles of her character and they either get shrugged off or overlooked. There are far too many situations where she acts out, and is a jerk at her jerk of a brother, even unprompted on occasion, and it's supposed to just be funny. One particularly stood out to me when I revisited it a few years ago, I can't really remember what for (maybe when I was writing Jeong Jeong's arc in Gladiator and I had a look at the fishing village...?), but it's the famous flashback episode in Book 1: The Storm.

The scene in question is... humorous. Supposedly. Katara is trying to buy fruit in the market but then realizes they have no money to pay for it. Not only does Katara piss off the vendor, but the vendor actually takes her rage out on Sokka once she realizes these kids won't give her any business: he gets kicked in the rear, as the transcript's description says. No one protests the woman's violent reaction, not even Sokka. Katara most certainly doesn't do it. But that's not all there is to it: Sokka doesn't hold what happened with the fruit vendor against Katara, they have a conversation on how they have no money and no food... and Katara offers him the golden ticket solution to their problems:

"You could get a job, smart guy."

Am I too feminist for thinking it's insane that Katara expects her brother alone to get the job? That she's not saying the THREE of them should get jobs? She and Aang are BENDERS! That's an asset most people aren't likely to find in any would-be employees in the central Earth Kingdom! So... wouldn't it be logical for all of them to do it? But no, instead, Sokka alone has to get the job?

And yes, I know, Sokka is the provider, Sokka is the protector, Sokka would do ANYTHING for his sister and the people he loves: you ask the fandom, though, and that's Katara instead of him. Moments like these simply do not exist in the fandom's eyes and, if they do, they're just excusable because Sokka is boring/weird/annoying/insert-demeaning-nonsense-here and Katara is a queen who can do whatever she wants.

Then, the consequences arrive once Sokka gets a dangerous job on a fishing boat and nearly gets killed in a storm. Aang is the one who shows concern about the potential storm when the fisherman's wife brings it up: from all I can see in the transcript, there's nothing from Katara. Sokka says they told him to get a job, so that's what he's doing, and there's no manifestation of concern from either of them about maybe joining him on this fishing trip to ensure he's safe. Instead, Aang is haunted by his past and Katara goes with him when he leaves, which, yes, is very important for context on the Air Nomads and Aang's life... and yet we don't really NEED for this scene to be Katara and Aang only. It could've included Sokka too. The plot of the second half of the episode would change? Likely. They could've come up with another idea, and not shown us a Katara who doesn't show concern for her brother's safety or any remorse when her unfair demands or expectations from him could result in catastrophic outcomes :') yes, she worries about Sokka's safety once the storm hits, but there's no sign of her feeling responsible for Sokka being out in the storm at all. No apology. Which is ironic, because Zuko apologizes to Iroh in that very same episode, hence, an apology from Katara to her brother could have mirrored that side of the story well, and they REALLY loved doing Zuko-Gaang parallel scenes like that, so it would have fit perfectly! Didn't happen, though.

Point being... Katara's compassion and empathy are not absolute. It's important to keep in mind is that they don't need to be! But precisely because she falters with them in moments where she REALLY shouldn't, with people as important to her as her own brother? It becomes very difficult to believe that she's the empath the fandom is convinced she is, and that the show's narrative tries to push her as.

The real reason why her failure to show compassion to Sokka in "humorous" situations feels so unnerving isn't because she's a typical little sister who takes her brother for granted (which is a perfectly logical/believable behavior!): it's because there are no consequences for it. Maybe at some point or another there were? But I for one can't remember many instances where Katara failed Sokka and it was framed as her fault and her responsibility. Let's look at other Book 1 instances that exemplify what I mean:

She freezes him to the deck of Zuko's ship, which puts Sokka in MAJOR danger, and she just tells him to hurry up as if it weren't her fault that he's frozen in the first place. We don't even see her making efforts to thaw him out of there when she IS the waterbender so it seems logical that she should be able to help with that (and if she's too inexperienced to do it? The least she can do to help her brother out of a dangerous situation is to TRY???). But apparently it's funny that she doesn't help him when it's her fault! So this is fine!

She endangers the entire group over the waterbending scroll, which, of course, the pirates had no right to have anyway and it's reasonable that she'd want it for herself... but she antagonized a group of fully adult, dangerous, potential murderous pirates, against Sokka's constant warnings that they shouldn't pick that particular fight. As far as I can remember? Her apologies on that episode are exclusively about how she hurt Aang's feelings by being jealous over his greater talents as a bender. Basically, nothing for Sokka, no apology for not listening to him about danger, making it worse when the very final moment features Katara proudly telling her brother that she won't steal things... unless it's from pirates. So lesson not learned because it's funny, again, to never acknowledge that Sokka has a point.

She actually cares about Sokka's fate in Jet! But the thing is... the narrative doesn't frame that as Katara's fault. Because it's not. Jet made his choices and he did awful things and he captured Sokka, lied and gaslit everyone, because he had a goal to fulfill and he used Katara to make that happen. As angry and upset as Katara is, it's not exactly shown that Katara is sorry for having trusted Jet when Sokka could have ended up paying a deadly price for it. She's angry at the betrayal, even in Book 2 it's constantly framed as though Katara is upset at him as an ex-girlfriend would be upset at her ex-boyfriend for lying to her rather than, you know, being pissed at him for nearly killing her brother + an entire village. My point is, the narrative framing never holds her responsible for Jet's choices. Which, again, she's not. But she IS responsible for her own choices... and one of those choices was disregarding Sokka's warnings about Jet. THAT was her fault, and her responsibility. She jumped to conclusions and assumed that Sokka was bitter and jealous that Jet was the charming cool leader Sokka could never be. There were no apologies to Sokka over that, either.

I could go on, and on, and on. The truth is, I bring all this up to show with solid evidence that Katara's writing was always a little... unstable. Weird. Disconnected from logic in many regards, I'd say. It's not logical/compatible to tell us that this character has the BIGGEST heart of the entire cast when she fails to show that heart to none other than her own brother, who is inarguably the person who she knows best and with whom she should share the closest relationship, even as her friendship with Aang grows and thrives. That makes no sense, thematically speaking.

Is it meant to be comedic? Yes, every bit as much as Iroh sexually harassing June was done for comedy's sake. That's not an excuse for characters behaving in ways that are thematically contrary to what they're supposed to be portraying... and along with that? No excuse for them facing zero consequences for that behavior. Which is, in fact, my main issue with these flaws from Katara: I have no issue with the writing choices in the scenes I listed just now! I take issue, however, with the lack of follow-up and consequences that you can BET, 100%, would have befallen Sokka if it had been him instead of Katara acting that way. He faced consequences even for things he didn't do, for comedy's sake: he wouldn't have gotten away with disregarding Katara's safety as often as Katara did with him, no chance at all.

Ultimately, these scenes in Book 1 are kind of ignorable in the larger scheme of things (or at least, that's how the fandom has always acted). Not a lot of people take any of this as major proof of characterization for Katara. You won't see a lot of fic writers showing her acting like this. Canon, though, often would go down this route for funsies, and the comics certainly did it plenty too, that I can remember. Part of the issue here is that, as funny as it is, it also makes Katara feel stale as a character, as does the Sokka-Katara dynamic, at large, because there's no progression for it. That's probably my greatest gripe with the Great Divide, believe it or not: it fakes being an episode where Sokka and Katara are going to be confronted over their conflictive tendencies, and the ONLY potential development in that basically-filler episode SHOULD HAVE BEEN Sokka and Katara learning to be a bit more harmonious and respectful of each other? ... And that's just not what happened at all. The status quo remains exactly the same after that episode, and it continues to be like that until the end of the show.

The real reason why Sokka and Katara are deemed the healthy siblings is because, of course, compared with the other main set of siblings in the show, these two appear to get along wonderfully. But the truth is, their relationship is not as dynamic as it deserved to be. And that's part of why Book 3 ends up failing in ways Book 1 might not have, while having similar flaws: Book 1 is when you're still getting to know these kids, and that's why I find its flaws far more forgivable than anything that comes later. When there's basically no development for that connection at all, Book 3 winds up falling flat with characters like Sokka and Katara and the bond between them.

All this being said... I'm not saying that Katara is terrible in Book 1. I still stand by the fact that I really enjoyed her character in many instances of this season, there absolutely are situations where she sasses Sokka that still make me crack a smile, and genuinely humorous situations that don't paint her in a questionable light over her lack of concern for her brother's safety. Her fight to earn the right to be trained as a waterbender is deeeeeply flawed but it's not her fault, it's more the misogyny of the writers/creators that decided that a betrothal necklace from his past would make Pakku unlearn all his sexism and get over his bullshit right after beating up a girl who was fighting tooth and nail to make him acknowledge her. That he only acknowledges her because he wanted to marry her grandmother is... uh... fuckboi behavior even when he's well over 70 years of age? XD

So, yeah, Book 1 still has my favorite Katara of the entire show even though I REALLY wish she wouldn't get away with things that other characters wouldn't get a pass for (... well... other than Zuko...). I can't enjoy her as much as I enjoy other characters because I really don't like it when characters aren't held accountable for serious mistakes they made.

Moving on to Book 2, though, and leaving behind my greatest gripe with Katara's Book 1 writing (lack of direct consequences/self-reflection on her part), Book 2's biggest sin when it comes to Katara is the beginning of the "mothering" trope. I honestly did not feel motherly vibes from Katara towards anyone in Book 1. Sokka is very often the one playing the responsible role, while Aang and Katara are seeing the world, practicing their bending, doing reckless and fun things. The entire thing about Katara being the mom friend started in Book 2 when she suddenly becomes the epitome of responsibility (well... kinda) when Toph joins the group. She still does sketchy stuff with zero consequences (I'll forever complain about how ice is not cold in this show, the kids she froze to the wall may have been dicks, but freezing someone alive that way should have resulted in serious health repercussions, just as ANY case of freezing someone alive should have, ffs, be it Zuko in Book 1's finale or Azula + Katara in Book 3's...), but once Toph is part of the group, she becomes the cool girl who's "one of the boys", and now Katara is "the mom". This dynamic gets forced into the story pretty much right after Toph joins the group. And after that? It doesn't really change for the better often. There are only a handful of instances where Katara wasn't acting wholesome and comforting and kind and compassionate in Book 2 (... particularly with Sokka, ofc), but the point where her dynamics, even with Aang, start to feel motherly is definitely Book 2.

And this adds to the issue, in the end: Katara's appeal as the main girl in the show is suddenly gone because Toph is here, and she's a way more unique character that the writers definitely were having fun working with, probably more fun than they had with Katara. So they had to find a new niche for her, I'd dare guess. Thus, instead of actually building up an awesome and solid friendship between Katara and Toph, they mostly just clash and collide. Toph is basically the ONLY character who gives Katara grief and isn't framed as in the wrong for it, which is its own set of issues (namely, Toph not being challenged enough by the narrative, which stunts her character growth), but among many things, we suddenly get shown that Katara is a girly girl who likes makeup and she ropes Toph into this when nothing we've seen so far suggests that Toph would be comfortable with that. Katara pushes her into doing things because they're the "girls of the group"... and it doesn't often look like Toph's feelings on anything are important when Katara is pushing her around for whatever purpose. I'm not saying Toph hated the spa day, she certainly had fun eventually, but even when the comics made a "Katara and Toph's day out" story, where Toph got to choose what to do for once, the story devolved into Katara's show anyway, and things concluded with Toph deciding they're better off doing girly things together when they want to hang out because Katara is just too intense for the things Toph would like to do.

This isn't even in the show, but it's basically a response to Tales of Ba Sing Se to try and even out Katara and Toph's one-sided dynamic, where Katara calls the shots of their entertainment... and even then, Toph doesn't really get what she's looking for. But Katara does get that out of Toph because all she wants is a girl to do girly things with and Toph provides that in the end, no matter how much of a tomboy she may be. Toph might just want a friend who loves the things she loves, and who knows, Katara could be that person! But the story never leads her in that direction so we never see that happen. And that's why that particular friendship never really... clicked for me. Their dynamics don't really feel enjoyable to me as they were written in the show, even though they very much could have been.

That's one thing I'll always give ATLA: the character potential and synergy they captured with that cast could be absolutely incredible. Team Avatar is so iconic because they really could work well off each other. A lot of teams in other media just aren't this good (... one of my main reasons to not enjoy Voltron and drop it in season 1 was my absolute failure to find any synergy between those characters, it felt like they all hated each other and I honestly did not enjoy their dynamics in the least), but Aang, Katara and Sokka have great synergy due to their different personalities in Book 1. Same when Toph joins them in Book 2. Zuko ABSOLUTELY could have been better in the group than he was if Book 3 hadn't devolved into the Zuko Woobifying Show by the second half, where the only writing priority was making him friends with everyone, and making them all feel sorry for him and have compassion towards him. But, broken down to his core traits, Zuko's personality would have resulted in solid chemistry with everyone else's if they'd gotten off that agenda anyway! So ultimately, ATLA has a big win in this respect that a lot of TV shows would LOVE to recreate but they simply haven't struck the right kind of balance in character traits.

Hence why the way they wrote Toph and Katara's dynamics kind of feels like a betrayal to me. Those two could have been a lot of fun, they have EVERYTHING it takes to be entertaining characters with not a ton of things in common and yet building a solid friendship that hinges on their differences. I've seen a fair few examples of that kind of dynamic in other media, and it absolutely would be possible with Toph and Katara. It's really unfair that they couldn't capture their dynamics in such a way that both characters would SHINE, rather than constantly resorting to conflicts between them that never seemed to truly be resolved.

So: Toph should not be a problem for Katara. She should enhance her character and doesn't because of writing failures. One of the core failures is "mom friend Katara", of course: there's nothing inherently wrong with Katara stepping up and taking care of people she loves, but there's something very wrong with it when she's suddenly portrayed as this motherly figure when she's doing things that Sokka had been doing just fine in Book 1. Main reason why this is the case? Sokka got dumbed down to full-time class clown for whatever reason in Book 2. While he has good moments, a lot of times they went WAY overboard with making him a source of comedy this season and that, too, contributes to mom friend Katara. Since Sokka is being so meh? We even feel relieved that Katara is there to keep things together because nobody can expect the other three to do it, right? But... Sokka was doing it in Book 1. And there's no real development to explain him NOT doing it anymore once Toph joins in besides "Katara is now the mom friend and Sokka is just here to be funny". It's not organic development: it's forcing tropes that just don't fit. And while Katara's mothering doesn't feel as unpleasant as it could here, it ultimately forces a new interpretation and portrayal of her character that honestly isn't all that interesting, most of all when the other characters are constantly portrayed as "more fun" while she's just here to keep them in line.

It just isn't the same Katara we met in Book 1, and it shows in spades. Book 1 Katara would have been hyped to join Aang and Toph in chaos while Sokka screams at them to behave themselves. Book 2 Katara is the one trying to keep the other three in line, and there's genuinely zero development that led things to that stage. It's not organic storytelling. There's no growth that leads to that, and so, it feels off.

But the core problem of all these flaws in Book 1 and Book 2 is that they roll together and snowball into something far greater that then proceeds to just... disrupt everything we thought we knew or understood about Katara. We've been told she's a kind person above all else, someone who cares about people close to her, someone who embodies hope and strength and love...!

... And then Book 3 starts, and we're actually facing a Katara who shifts into a wholly different person with the speed of a whiplash that we're left not knowing who tf this is anymore.

"Mom friend Katara" absolutely comes back in Book 3, why lie? She takes care of people, she tries to provide, she tries to be nice and sweet and then also enforces discipline on Toph (particularly) when she's being irresponsible!

But the reason why The Runaway is such an unpleasant episode is because Katara's behavior is dialed up to a thousand, and the conflict between her and Toph feels WAY too similar to what it was when they were barely getting to know each other in The Chase. Why are they STILL clashing over such things? There are occasional glimpses of friendliness there in The Runaway, sure! But they're not so strong that you actually feel like that friendship supersedes their conflicts and their propensity to bicker and argue and hurt each other. Toph blatantly calls her out on her mothering and fully canonically confirms that Katara is The Mom Friend™. Where Toph is annoyed but eventually complies with doing what Katara wants to do in Tales of Ba Sing Se, this time Katara makes a huuuuuge fuss over Toph's misbehavior and her scamming Fire Nation people. And you could argue that Toph has every right to do it, or that Katara is right to be worried, just like Sokka used to worry about such things in Book 1...

But what we get is a stale dynamic that repeats the same problems we saw in Book 2, as well as Katara coming off as rather hypocritical because she, too, did dangerous shit and picked dangerous fights where she shouldn't have, and ignored everyone who told her not to do it: she gave Toph that kind of grief over things Katara was willing to do back when Toph wasn't in the group (see the pirates thing), and she will try to stop Toph from having fun on her own terms when nobody has ever tried to stop Katara from doing that in hers. Of course, any Katara advocate would read this and go "you're missing the point: Katara was sad and upset that she was being LEFT OUT! That's why she was so mad about this!" Then the irony of the matter is that this argument STILL reflects poorly on Katara. She gave her friend a tough time, called her a wild child and a crazy person, went through her personal belongings because "she could tell Toph was hiding something from her", so she fully disregarded Toph's privacy... all because she couldn't say "Wait, you guys went scamming Fire Nation people? Damn, why didn't you wait for me! I would've gone too!", and there you go, problem solved! Katara's not left out anymore!

Yes, of course, that's not how it WORKS, people can struggle to identify what they feel...!

... And now it's my turn to say that that's not the point.

The point is that Katara said and did hurtful things to her friend. Things she eventually regrets, yes, but that she didn't have to do at all. This is the same person who fed Appa a bunch of food that made it look like he was sick, all be it to keep the group from leaving the Jang Hui river village so she could go out of her way to heal the injured and sick without telling anyone what she was doing. That, too, was a choice she made with no concern regarding how the rest of her team might feel about it: was she doing something nice? Sure! But it's not fundamentally different from Toph doing whatever she wants with zero regard as to Katara's feelings on the matter. Katara KNEW she was stalling their journey and that Sokka wanted them to move on: she didn't care about his feelings or priorities, and the story eventually frames Katara as being in the right for feeling that way. Here, she's in the inverse scenario, only it's with Toph rather than Sokka, and instead of realizing that she, too, has made choices that were irresponsible/dangerous/risky and STILL went all out with them, down to fighting whoever opposed her choices? Katara just doubles down until she, again, breaches boundaries and overhears Toph and Sokka's conversation, WHICH IS ANOTHER CAN OF WORMS DUE TO THE SOUTHERN RAIDERS FOLLOW-UP...

The thing is, Katara as a mom friend is not even a good thing. It's not conducive to fun or interesting storytelling, not in Book 2, not now. It doesn't make Katara a more interesting and dynamic character. The way she's portrayed isn't so she looks tragic for taking this role, it's all about forcing these kids into tropes that don't necessarily add up to who they have been so far. Katara's mom friend status is NOT treated with any compassion. It's not handled as a sore, difficult subject outside of the ONE conversation Sokka has with Toph that Katara overhears. And it's not centered on Katara's tragedy, on how she overcompensates for her mother's absence, it's centered on Sokka accepting her as a motherly person and encouraging Toph to do the same thing. The people who saw further depth in it probably haven't looked at the script itself in a long time: you CAN see more to it, but that's not the point of the scene. That's not where it's going. And the fact that such a tragic situation is what conduces Katara to take up the mom friend role actively makes it look like... she shouldn't have it. Why would she be the mom friend if she's just overcompensating for Kya's death? If she's taking up responsibility by thinking that no one else will (a blatant lie because, again, in Book 1 there's NO SIGN of this behavior and it's Sokka who's in a role of responsibility compared to her), it suggests that EVERYONE ELSE ought to step up and stop "relying" (and Sokka very much uses that word) on Katara being the mom friend. It's not a healthy thing. It's a coping mechanism that seems to be actively damaging Katara: and the story doesn't acknowledge it that way.

So... "mom friend Katara", dialed up to a thousand in Book 3, absolutely has a connection with why her character loses its sheen by this point in the story. There's no attempt to deconstruct this coping mechanism by Katara. No indication from the rest of the team that maybe Katara should get to be a kid just like them and stop being so uptight (even though VERY often she's not that uptight but the show very much tries to pretend she is). It's Katara's initiative to do a scam, it's not Toph or Sokka or Aang who think she needs to join in on the fun, she basically inserts herself in it. So basically, those three take the route of saying "that's what she's like, we just gotta bear with it", instead of actually helping her. If we'd seen that? Mom friend Katara would actually be a fun element to witness deconstructed by the story. And I'm not blaming either Katara or the other three for this:

This is EMINENTLY a writing problem.

Mom friend Katara is not a good trope. It could be if the point was to help her break free from it. It's not. It's simply weak writing that can't handle two girls with proactive, aggressive personalities and a ton of agency, a lack of creativity in realizing how much potential there could be in making Toph and Katara the absolute best of friends. It's seriously a disservice to the two of them that this trope literally blooms over Toph joining the show and then NEVER gets resolved or chased away. And when you have characters like Sokka or Aang kind of joining the bandwagon of "yeah, Katara's a mom!" when the two of them traveled with her in Book 1 and she WASN'T that at all? It makes matters infinitely worse.

So, if you ask me? This is the first thing that makes Katara feel more unpleasant than ever before in Book 3.

The second thing is even worse.

We return to accountability, as well as to illogical flow of thought when it comes to the writing of Katara: in Book 1, we see a hopeful girl who never speaks ill of her father or betrays any manner of displeasure or distrust towards him. No sign of her being conflicted by what Hakoda is doing: the focus is entirely on Sokka's feelings on the matter once it finally comes up in Bato of the Water Tribe, and Katara is a secondary matter, if even that.

This would be fine if Hakoda hadn't come up at all as a subject throughout Books 1 and 2. If Katara had never had the potential opportunity to see her father in any of these instances and had backed out from them for bigger reasons than... plot reasons.

For reference: she's excited, just as Sokka is, when Bato says he can bring the kids to meet their dad again. They're HYPED. We see no sign of Katara being upset at Hakoda for leaving at this point. The only portrayed reason why she and Sokka decide not to go see Hakoda is because they think Aang needs them more and they decide to forgive him for hiding the map. Katara, from the get-go, is not as angry at Aang for hiding the map as Sokka is. Clearly, Sokka wants to see Hakoda far more intensely than Katara does: even so, there's no sign anywhere here that implies that Katara harbors resentment or dissatisfaction towards Hakoda.

Book 2 gives us a similar situation: Katara declines going to see Hakoda and offers to be the one who stays in Ba Sing Se so Sokka can go see Hakoda himself. Sokka is soooo thrilled and thanks her and calls her the best sister ever and Katara very much says she is, indeed, the best. Which she's allowed to, worth noting, I'm not saying her reaction to Sokka's praises was bad, it's actually funny: but what I AM saying is that she knows how much this matters to Sokka and that's why she makes the offer she does. It's also VERY convenient! Because logic dictates that, if Sokka stays behind, he realizes the Kyoshi Warriors aren't themselves far faster than Katara does (even though, to be fair, Katara didn't really have much time to realize it at all), and we wouldn't have Aang suffering over Katara's imprisonment because the one in chains would be Sokka and then Aang might just go "oh okay it's just Sokka, I can go cosmic if it's not Katara"

... yeah I'm being sarcastic I actually don't think Aang wouldn't have saved Sokka, but they very clearly had Katara stay behind first and foremost for this specific purpose...

But Katara's acknowledgement that this is a good thing for her brother makes you REALLY wonder how much of a secret grudge she was supposed to feel towards her father at this stage of the story. The truth, in my opinion? She wasn't actually supposed to resent Hakoda as she did, let alone quite so harshly.

My sister personally told me that she thought Katara's anger at Hakoda was a fine storytelling choice when I told her I didn't like it. She told me Katara herself most likely didn't realize how hurt she had been by her father's leaving, that it wasn't until she was around Hakoda again that she understood she resented him at all, and that she had a lot more pent-up rage and frustrations than she had EVER acknowledged, and they burst out frequently in Book 3. Which, you know, is one possible explanation that tries to make this whole thing more palatable. From a human standpoint? This is valid.

... From a writing point? Not so much.

A Katara who struggles to understand her heart (which... is odd, tbh. As far as they portray her, Katara tends to know exactly what she's feeling, why she's feeling it, and she acts on her emotions rather than brains more often than not) would be portrayed as confused over her own rage at Hakoda. She would not have been written as a snappy teenager who hates her dad. She would have snapped at him and then apologized by reflex, unsure of what's come over her. We would see Sokka trying to mediate between them too, probably asking Katara what's her deal, and she would have no idea how to explain it. Katara would be avoiding Hakoda, knowing she loves him, not knowing why she seems to hate him now, afraid of saying things she shouldn't. Every time she snaps at him, she should worry about what she did, she should fear for Hakoda's feelings, she should reflect on what's going on inside her heart...!

... But that doesn't happen. And that knocks SO HARD on the concept of empath/compassionate Katara that it basically turns her into a whole different person.

As I've said countless times so far: it's not about Katara being perfect. I don't WANT her to be perfect. But I DO want the show to acknowledge that she's not. I want the flaws to REALLY read as flaws. I want other characters to react to those mishaps on Katara's part, and I want HER to reflect on what she's doing and realize she's messing up, just as she does when she hurts Aang's feelings in the Waterbending Scroll, which is most likely the best situation where Katara actually owns up to the exact mistake she made and feels genuine, palpable, obvious remorse for it. But when you feature Katara lashing out at Hakoda, and everyone just staying quiet because "uuuuh, awkwaaaard...", it feels off. Aang asks Katara, outright, what's her problem with her dad! And Katara goes "What? What problem?" She's acting like she's not even aware of the fact that her behavior is out of place, basically gaslighting Aang into pretending that she didn't do anything rude or mean to Hakoda. Aang literally saw it with his own eyes and is the ONLY person to bring it up.

To make matters worse? Katara has been with Hakoda for WEEKS. It's not like they just crossed paths two seconds before Aang opened his eyes. The implication is that she's been behaving like this, or her behavior has been deteriorating towards Hakoda with no one worrying about it or trying to make her reason with it. for that long. Sokka didn't do anything. Hakoda just took the teenage rants and left her alone because that's what she wants. And when the one person brings up that she's not acting like herself? Katara pretends nothing's wrong and acts like everything's fine and she's not acting any differently from herself. Whether she actually is just lying to Aang or ALSO lying to herself is a matter of debate... but what it suggests is she's unwilling to confront the gravity of her choices and how she can be hurting her father with them.

This is NOT to say that Katara has no right to be angry about Hakoda abandoning her in the Tribe. She has every right to be upset and feel forsaken. Their mother died, and Hakoda left with all the men of the tribe, and Sokka was left behind, tasked to protect everyone, and Katara apparently felt responsible for the whole village too: as valid as Hakoda's quest to fight in the war might be, it's not out of this world for Katara to harbor frustrations and resentment over what happened.

What IS out of this world, and particularly, not appropriate to her character, is that her way to convey those feelings was something she gave herself to, completely, only to reason with it once Aang was missing so that the episode would conflagrate her problems with Aang and Hakoda into the same thing.

This is basically a dark expansion of what we've seen in Katara's treatment of Sokka since Book 1: where it was typically "humorous" when she was a jerk to him and paid no price for it, this time it's not humorous. This time, you're supposed to see her being a jerk and then go "aaaaw, poor dear," even if you're not supposed to get mad at Hakoda because he is very much a decent dad. The show was trying to have its cake and eat it too with this situation, because Katara DOESN'T apologize to Hakoda for being unfair to him: HAKODA APOLOGIZES TO HER. Hakoda acknowledges the pain he caused Katara and the damage his leaving has wrought upon his children by apologizing and explaining how much he missed them... but Katara does not acknowledge the pain she inflicted on her father by acting out when he wasn't doing anything wrong. Is this teenager behavior? You could chalk it down to that, but that's precisely why teenagers can be a pain in the ass! And that's very much how Katara is being portrayed if she's unwilling to acknowledge she acted out and hurt someone she loves!

Her problems and resentment towards Hakoda magically go away after that single conversation. After this? She loves him. No hard feelings left. If her problems with Hakoda were this deep and difficult to navigate and work through, either she bottled them up in the rest of the show and stopped them from affecting her father... or she just got over it that quickly. Which would be very unrealistic because Hakoda apologizing for leaving doesn't change the damage Katara suffered through because he was gone. A single apology doesn't fix everything that people read into Katara's deep anguish in this scene and episode. And yet that's very much how the show portrays it: Katara is 100% fine in every single other interaction with Hakoda she gets past the first episode of Book 3. Does that make sense? Is that good writing? No, actually: it's literally digging up a problem, making it up last minute with zero lead-up to it, where the ONLY way to read "lead-up" is to pretend that Katara always had ulterior motives to avoid going to see Hakoda, even though we NEVER were shown that she was hiding anything, something that could be VERY easily shown in the story if they'd always had this in mind. The truth is that they didn't. They made it up for this episode, forced it in there, didn't even write it right because nobody reacts to Katara's behavior reasonably except Aang, and she gets away with it without even having to apologize. That's... not good form for any character, let alone Miss Responsibility and Empathy, is it?

This is why it's such a problem that Katara acted as she did towards her father. It's not because this is an unthinkable flaw: it's because there's very much no lead-up to it, kind of like there's none with Korrasami's big reveal in LOK's finale. It's because there's no follow-up to it either. It's because we don't see Katara living up to her supposed core character traits, where she should have a realization that her choices and actions and behavior have hurt someone else, someone she cares about. None of that happens.

And I will say: it's different when it comes to her clashes with Zuko and her reactions to him in the second half of Book 3. This is basically the MAIN thing the fandom gives her grief for and I hate them for it: she has every right and reason and justification to show no empathy or compassion towards a person who, as far as she could tell, took advantage of her compassion in Ba Sing Se, of Aang's compassion frequently across Book 1, and paid them back for all of it by joining forces with Azula and showing no concern to help Aang when Azula almost killed him. I am no fan of Iroh's... but Iroh jumped in to help Katara and Aang escape, at risk of being captured. Zuko stood beside Azula and did NOTHING to help those two leave. He showed zero concern for Aang's survival. He saw his sister potentially murder someone and had ZERO REACTION. So, no offense but full offense: Katara's unwillingness to trust Zuko is JUSTIFIED. Not only is it justified? It's CORRECT. It's the only writing choice that makes sense. Sokka getting over it relatively quickly feels off to me, no matter if the Boiling Rock adventure isn't as bad as others might be. Aang not holding a grudge for too long kind of fits because it is Aang... but Katara being that mad at Zuko? That's 100% fine. It fits. It works. And anyone pretending that what I said about Hakoda applies to how she treated Zuko is just completely biased in Zuko's favor.

Katara and Zuko do not have a secret magical powerful soulmates bond in canon. Their one instance of bonding comes after multiple instances of the exact opposite thing. Katara and Sokka were 100% down for leaving Zuko to freeze to death in the North Pole, and the ONLY reason why Zuko survives is because Aang can't let that happen to him. It's AANG'S compassion that saved Zuko. Katara felt none, AND SHE DIDN'T HAVE TO FEEL ANY. Let's not forget that!

Moving on to Book 2, Katara actually makes her first offer of kindness to Zuko and Iroh in the Chase when she offers to heal Iroh after Azula's attack. Zuko's reaction is to lash out violently and yell at her to leave: who, exactly, would feel inclined to think this poor beautiful sad boy just needs love when you OFFER HIM kindness and his reaction is, in a manner of speaking "go fuck yourself I'll handle this on my own"? And it's worth bringing it up because it feels like the fandom is hilariously misled into thinking the Gaang magically knows what Zuko is up to and how he's growing and evolving, as if they were part of the audience: they're not. The last time Katara saw Zuko before Ba Sing Se is literally when Zuko refuses her help. We're also talking about Fire Nation people: Katara has every right and every reason to believe that Zuko is refusing her help, not out of personal, internal strife he's dealing with and has no idea how to handle... she very much can read this as "inferior Water Tribe peasant, you will not heal my uncle with your wretched waterbending!" Because... let's be real, that's what Zuko looked like to Katara across Book 1. She has no real reason to think he's any better or different from that until their catacombs scene...

... And he stabs her in the back and joins Azula there. Right after "bonding" with her.

So let's be VERY clear on that respect: Katara has no real reason to forgive Zuko. She has no real reason to feel empathy outside of the show constantly trying to push that she's kind and compassionate with no boundaries, even if she forsakes that kindness and compassion at random whenever the plot requires it. But her death threats to Zuko? They're completely fine by me. I'd be pissed if she had acted any differently, and if anything I hate how easy Zuko had it to befriend everyone but Katara.

... Not to say I'm happy with how he befriended Katara either, but anyway...

As this isn't Zuko meta, we're not going to get into the true core glaring issues in The Southern Raiders, because ultimately, that episode paints Zuko in a disgusting light that his fans are constantly gaslighting themselves about. He was not beinga heroic good dude helping someone he connected profoundly with. His behavior leaves so much to be desired and proves he hasn't unlearned a lot of toxic things he had internalized. He didn't unlearn them in this episode, either. But the GREATEST sin Zuko commits in this episode, without a doubt, is bringing Katara on a journey that ultimately did NOTHING for her. The only person benefitting from it was Zuko himself. I've seen people pretend that Katara finally found closure: she did not do such thing. She learned what kind of scum killed her mother, but she did not forgive him nor did she kill him. Closure would mean peace. Katara did not find peace with the situation. She's shown troubled, sitting at that pier, miserable, when Aang talks with her, she's STILL angry. That's not closure. It never was.

What it was, however, was the journey where Katara thanked Zuko and forgave him because..! Uh... because...

... Why, exactly, did Katara forgive Zuko here?

He brought her to her mother's killer: she found no closure from it. In fact, she learned the VERY disturbing truth that she hadn't realized so far: HER MOTHER DIED SPECIFICALLY TO SAVE HER. Her mother sacrificed herself for Katara's sake. She CANNOT find peace with this reality in a single afternoon because holy shit, who would? Katara KNEW her mother had died. It's not until Yon Rha tells her what happened that she understands what happened in the igloo. Katara herself, her waterbending skills, and the target she painted on her own back because of something 100% out of her control, something that is NOT evil and that the Fire Nation was hellbent on destroying, are the reasons why Kya was murdered. This is DISTURBING SHIT to deal with. And the show completely sidelines this revelation and the dark impact it could have on Katara, which, seriously, is HUGE, way worse than what happened with Hakoda, because it very much could have triggered a profound self-hatred by Katara towards her own skills because how tf could her bending cause her mother's death?! Not to mention the obvious: who was that source? Who told the Southern Raiders that there was a waterbender? Who the hell is responsible, beyond the Fire Nation, for her mother's death?

There's A LOT to unpack here.

And none of it matters because Katara is just supposed to forgive Zuko for exacerbating and worsening her trauma regarding her mother's death :') funny how that works.

This IS the point where Katara should make a display of darker sides of herself that she didn't know or understand. THIS is where Katara turning dark like Aang did after Appa vanished would make PERFECT sense. With this revelation about Kya that's beyond disturbing: not with Hakoda... and certainly not with Sokka.

The cusp of Katara's worst is, by far, her behavior with her brother in the Southern Raiders. I know a million excuses have been made for this moment: my problem is NOT the fact that she lashed out at him as she did and said something DEEPLY hurtful. It's the fact that KNOWING, SEEING HE'S IN PAIN...

... does not matter to her one bit.

Instead of a trite scene with Zuko spouting shit he does NOT mean (aka "violence wasn't the answer... but lol go kill my father okay??"), we deserved a scene with Katara and Sokka talking this out. People pretend it's fine as it is: it's not. Katara has spent the ENTIRE show disregarding her brother's feelings in a myriad of ways: this time, it was way more painful and way more hurtful and SHE KNOWS IT. It's not funny. She's not amused. She's not being a shithead little sister. She's ANGRY. She's UPSET. She has every right to be! What she DOESN'T have a right to do is hurt her brother DELIBERATELY and then escape every consequence from doing that.

There's very much no way to spin that moment into making Katara a decent sister. There's no way she remains true to her core values of being empathetic, kind and wholesome when she will insidiously, vindictively hurt her brother this way. And what I said earlier about her overhearing Toph and Sokka in the Runaway? It actually gets a follow-up in this scene: Katara telling Sokka that he didn't love Kya as she did is basically her WEAPONIZING the information that was NOT meant for her as her alleged evidence that Sokka didn't care about Kya as much as she did. As if his inability to retrieve Kya's memory was NOT a manifestation of trauma, as if it were something he's FINE with! He's not! How guilty must he feel for that? Does that matter to Katara at all? Why... nope. Because all that matters at that point is her own rage, her own feelings, her own fury. Which is, then, entirely against the character we've been told she is.

The lack of apology or follow-up to this horrible moment will never stop being one of the absolute biggest misfires in one of the WORST written episodes of this show. Yes, I said it. The more I ponder The Southern Raiders, the more I realize it's an immensely flawed speedrun to establish a friendship that simply doesn't add up. Katara and Zuko becoming friends after this journey requires some wild, absurd leaps of imagination that, boiled down to basics, don't make any sense. There's no reason for Katara to decide she'll forgive Zuko after she regains enough clarity. Why does she forgive him? Because he proved he'd rather make her happy than defend his nation anymore? Ironically, at no point does Katara show any appreciation of the fact that Zuko is setting aside his firebending supremacist attitude completely for her sake. So maybe that's not it.

Ah... is it because of how he, and he alone, was ready to help her go on this journey of revenge...?! Why, ironically, the only reason why ONLY Zuko goes on this journey is incredibly artificial and fake: this IS intended as Katara's "field trip" with Zuko. None of the field trips make sense, from a logical standpoint, as duo journeys. I've mentioned it to a few people: Sokka and Zuko could have brought Toph with them to the Boiling Rock, a metal location where her abilities would be VERY useful, used her as a false prisoner and turned her in as a captured ally of the Avatar's, who 100% will bait him into coming here to rescue her so that the Fire Nation can get him next! A cover as strong as that one might actually get them further along on that rescue attempt than what they did in canon. But this CANNOT BE... because it was Sokka's field trip with Zuko so nobody else is invited, even if they're very much not doing anything else (as is the case with Toph). Aang? Why didn't everyone join the firebending discovery with Zuko and Aang? They weren't doing ANYTHING in the Western Air Temple at the time. They very much could have gone with them too. But they don't. And that's exactly why Katara's trip works exactly as it does: it's the solo journey with Katara and Zuko, and the ONLY way to make it work is to show Sokka and Aang completely opposed to the concept of finding Yon Rha. I'm not saying I think Sokka and Aang would have been on board if they're allowed to remain IC... but they could have wanted to go on this trip with Katara regardless of not agreeing with what she wanted to do. Hell, as is OBVIOUS: Kya is Sokka's mom too. His opinions, his feelings on this subject, should matter just as much as Katara's do, and fuck anyone who pretends otherwise. These two are NOT supposed to be the well-known unhealthy siblings Zuko and Azula, who each got one parent in their corner and therefore the other parent treated them like they were worthless or a monster. Hakoda and Kya were parents to BOTH their children, and any narrative or interpretation that attempts to say that ONLY Katara's opinion on Kya matters is immediately ruled out, for me, as absolute bullshit spouted by someone not worth listening to. Point blank.

Also, the fact that Zuko USES Sokka to gain this information about the southern raiders, and then doesn't even extend the chance to Sokka to join them? When Sokka is basically his new best buddy? That... does not make sense. It basically portrays Zuko as a disloyal asshole who takes advantage of his friends for his purposes and tosses them aside, disregarding their feelings whenever it suits him.

So Sokka's treatment at the hands of this episode is just deplorable. Both Zuko and Katara are HORRIBLE to him... but Katara is our focus here, she's actively hurts Sokka and then proceeds to not care. Because that's how she has operated so far, and that's how she always will.

Hence: we have a long, long tradition of Katara not treating Sokka fairly all across the show. The reasons why it's not a fair or balanced relationship at all is because Sokka typically pays the price for being a dick to Katara: either she inflicts the punishment herself, such as when he's disrespectful in the Drill and she smacks him with the slurry, or the narrative inflicts some magical punishment instead that CONSTANTLY proves that Sokka is not allowed to be a dick without facing consequences for it. Does he ALWAYS learn the lesson? Sure he doesn't! But the consequences for it NEVER stop. He doesn't get away with being a jerk to his sister. That's forbidden. But Katara? She's allowed to get away with it every single time! And the reason why it gets worse and worse is because we went from relatively silly/comedic things, in which Katara did not apologize because "it's funny that she didn't apologize", to NOT funny things at all, such as this scene in Southern Raiders. Even just a troubled glance at Sokka, or a slight hesitation after seeing how hurt he is, would be enough for me: there's NOTHING. She doubles down and keeps charging ahead. Zero thoughts or concerns given to her brother.

If this isn't why you have issues with Katara, well, I don't know why it might be the case in your case x'D But I absolutely attest that the combination of "mom friend", "selective compassion particularly when it comes to her brother" and "absolute imperviousness to consequences for her mistakes" are the things that fully caused my initial appreciation of her character to shift into ambivalence and then into full blown dislike once I reached Book 3.

Worth noting: THIS IS A COMPLAINT ABOUT THE SHOW'S WRITING. Boiled down to basics, written by any more competent hands, I don't think Katara would have acted the way she did often, ESPECIALLY in episodes like The Awakening or The Southern Raiders. I categorically refuse to write Katara in my stories as someone who gets free passes for EVERYTHING she does. I also refuse to portray her as the mom friend, particularly in Gladiator. There's a lot of depth you can give this character! So much you can do, so much worth exploring... and canon just settled for stunting her and then only bringing her out to play in ways that make her unpleasant, not particularly bright and extremely resistant to character development even after allegedly learning lessons (see how her initial behavior around Hama, who shows red flags often, isn't all that different from how it was with Jet? There's only a handful of moments where it looks like Katara MIGHT be wary, and yet they're quickly overcome by her excitement, which Hama manipulates in her favor until she does the bloodbending reveal). So I'm NOT saying Katara had no potential... but I am saying the show itself failed her, big time, because of how she was written. A quick glance through the transcript of the Puppetmaster to confirm my memories that Katara shows no sign of concern over Hama when Sokka finds her suspicious reveals that, after Hama shows them her comb and that she's from the Southern Water Tribe, Sokka, and Sokka alone, apologizes for suspecting her of being sketchy. Nothing from Aang, even though he was part of it too. Nothing from Toph, either. And certainly nothing from Katara. Only Sokka apologizes. As usual.

So... what does this tell you? What does this tell any of us? That Katara's development is... erratic, at best. That it's not linear isn't a bad thing, but that it contradicts itself non-stop, that her core traits come and go willy-nilly as the plot demands it, that her motivations to do things (like forgiving Zuko) don't add up to her experiences or to any lead-up we've witnessed, is most certainly not good.

If I were to rewrite ATLA, the main characters I'd want to rewrite into making a lot more sense than they do, and making their arcs actually logical, are Zuko and Katara. I'd definitely add a few rewrites for Iroh, particularly to make him WAY more accountable for shit than he ever was, and to show he's not universally loved and shouldn't be, since people would have very reasonable grievances with him. I'd also rewrite a handful of things with Aang, too. Toph, full-stop, deserves a growth arc of her own beyond getting stronger and getting used to having friends. Girl has the range. They just never let her explore it. And of course, I'd change a fair few elements of Azula's writing as well. But I feel like no characters would warrant a deeper intervention than Zuko and Katara, precisely because they constantly fail to live up to all the stuff people keep pretending they're flawless exhibits of.

And this is one more issue we've got going on with Katara:

The fandom ABSOLUTELY has been unfair to Katara. A lot of people hate her for no reason. A lot of people who potentially have unexamined racism making their hearts' choices for them and they despise her just because she dared not have fully-white skin. A lot of people pick completely ridiculous things to get angry at her, such as people who HATE HER because she's "rude to Zuko". Just, fuck off. That's about the stupidest reason to hate this character and stupid reasons for that have been heard plenty.

But Katara's fans have become... reactionary. They appear think that any criticism to her character NEEDS to be fought off with "she was right tho" or "she has every reason to act this way" or "she's HUMAN she's allowed to make mistakes you heathen!! That's what a flawed character is like!"

Here's the kicker, though: if you have justifications and excuses for every little unpleasant thing Katara EVER does? You're basically taking a dump on her character yourself and saying she IS flawless.

Flaws in characters are bad things that cannot be justified. They can be funny! They can be annoying. They can be infuriating. But they're things that inconvenience other characters, that hurt them, that show they're not above or beyond doing harmful things! All of what I listed in this crazy long post are Katara's flaws. The reason why I don't like the way these flaws were handled are all the things I already have talked about: no accountability for flaws is basically saying that these flaws don't matter. No follow-up, no lead-up, means Katara is allowed to be as much of an ass as she wants to be and nobody cares: THIS IS NOT FAIR. This is not how ANY character should be written. This is the core reason why I've spent years feuding with Zuko and Iroh: they get away with shit they should NOT get away with, EVER. They're not held accountable for so much they should be. This happens to Katara too. particularly in her dynamcis with her brother. And when people see those flaws and just start listing reasons why it's actually okay? All you're doing is dehumanizing these characters to pretend everything they EVER do is fine.

Also worth noting... character flaws are the way characters grow. If a character is DEEPLY flawed, you know what kind of work you have cut out for you as a writer. If you're writing a story heavily steeped on character development? Then those flaws are VITAL to the work you have to do in order to develop these characters!

But when Zuko is unnecessarily violent and you're told "it's because his culture and family are!", you rightfully assume that as he drifts away from Fire Nation ideology, Zuko WILL grow less violent. Then, you watch how he picks an unnecessary fight with Aang in the finale because everyone's being lazy, an EXTREMELY violent fight at that, and you contrast his earlier behavior with it and... where's the difference, exactly? How did he grow or learn better if violence is STILL his immediate reaction to anything he doesn't like?

Thus, when Katara's flaws get overlooked, ignored, disregarded? What kind of development does Katara get, if none of her flaws are addressed in a way that makes it look like she's genuinely learned any lessons? At least, none of the worst, biggest, glaring flaws were addressed. None of the things that she SHOULD be troubled by and that she shouldn't be happy with herself over, especially after seeing how she hurts people with her actions. This isn't cool. This isn't a fun way to write a character. And it's so glaringly unpleasant when you can so very easily contrast this with the well-known terrible flaw Sokka displays early on: sexism! And then he gets his ass kicked by Suki and he learns to respect the Kyoshi Warriors... and we never see him displaying that particular flaw again. THAT is what growth looks like! What can we point to with Katara that remotely compares to this? That she accepted Zuko? Yeah, no, that sincerely could not count any less. Her personal arc CANNOT be about Zuko. That she got over her mom's death? She didn't. So that's not it either. That she helped Aang save the world? So her personal arc was about Aang and not herself? Was her whole role in the story to play Aang's cheerleader, then? Because if that's it... she was doing that just fine at it since day one. She's the only person who faithfully believed the Avatar would return well before Aang turned up in her life, if the first episode's introduction is to be believed.

So... what, exactly, was Katara's arc? If it's just her waterbending skills, then she's as stunted as Toph, unexplored and underdeveloped and left to just strengthen her fighting skills while Aang and Zuko and Sokka are getting full character arcs, even if very lowkey but very much effective in Sokka's case, where they develop and grow (or they should) into the men they're supposed to be to end the war! Why don't Katara and Toph get similar arcs? Why aren't they challenged on a level that actually provides them with lasting, solid, provable growth, where you can look at them where they started out and see how they ended up and conclude their journey was beautiful?

I insist... writing. Weak writing. Failures to understand/develop characters properly. And of course, lack of accountability in storytelling. I wrote that one focusing mostly on Zuko... but it's very much applicable to every character who fails to own up to the things they should and deserve to face consequences for.

Anyway... this is what I'd say about Katara atm. I'm not 100% sure this is everything because I might have overlooked some stuff that also made Katara's character kind of backfire (while I'm no Kataang hater, I 100% agree that the ship should have been written better too, and after writing them whenever I have, it's honestly kind of ridiculous how such an easy ship could get fucked over so badly by weird writing choices...). Whether you agree with these assessments or not, ultimately, there are valid reasons to feel offput by Katara and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Most of all when you DID appreciate and cherish the character once before, but her fans just jump to the conclusion that you must be a mindless hater to think she's anything but flawless (this, while claiming they love that she's flawed, then they proceed to reveal they have no idea what a flaw is...).

(final note: SORRY IT TOOK ME FOREVER TO ANSWER! Super lengthy answer to make up for it, I hope :((( sorry)

#anon #I am not tagging the character directly but I bet this is gonna show up in her tag anyway because Tumblr gonna Tumbl #look #if you're the kind of katara fan who cannot stand a single word against her #just don't read this for your sanity of mind #... but if you go ahead and do it anyway? #don't come back at me with a million arguments to prove your fave is indeed flawless #because you're basically just spitting upwards at that point #and further proving that you do not understand character growth or development in the least #she's not a goddamn religious figure she's a fictional character #every fictional character that's worth something is flawed #and flaws are not always going to be cutesy pretty things #such is the case with Katara #the writing of this show is a mess in many regards #but they fucked up in particular with some characters the fandom adores #and I hate how the fandom acts like that's not the case at all #just to take trips into delululand and absolve them of every single thing they did wrong #and all the very deserved consequences for their worst actions #because the show itself dropped the ball hard enough in that respect for the fandom to do the same #you do you #but no argument will change my mind #and if none will change yours? #... skip past this post :') #it's a free world

[masiola]

Obey me brothers giving and receiving NSFW HCs

MDNI!!

x GN! reader

Lucifer

(receiving)

Depending on his mood and the place, sometimes he'll let out only quiet breathy moans or groans (any place other than his bedroom), and other times he'll moan loudly, eyes rolling into the back of his head.

praises praises praises

"You're doing so good dear."

"Such a good human for me."

"You look so beautiful sucking on my cock."

Can be degrading if he's had a bad day or if you've been misbehaving. He'll be rougher with you, guiding your head up and down his length, until he paints your throat white.

"You love my cock in your mouth don't you, my little slut."

"You like being used like this? Hmm?"

Plenty of praise after and forehead kisses of course.

He looks at you the whole time. He loves to see your fucked out face at the end; lips red and plump; a mix of spit and cum dripping down your chin; tear stained cheeks. You look so perfect to him.

(giving)

Painfully slow at first, he wants you to beg and tell him exactly what you want

If you try thrusting your hips upwards, he'll warn you and pin them down to the bed.

Overstimulation until you're crying. He kisses your tears away after and offers plenty of hugs. He cleans you up and changes the sheets if they get dirty.

Mammon

(receiving)

Tries not to moan loud because he gets a little embarrassed, but always gives up at the end. Throwing his head back and crying out loud enough for the whole HoL to hear.

"T-that's good baby!"

"Yer mouth feels s' good darlin'."

Make eye contact with him during and he'll start rambling on about how you're the most beautiful and handsome being to ever exist. When he's close he'll guide your head and start panting, followed by a string of 'I love you's. He likes to cum on your face. He wipes it off with a warm towel and kisses it after.

(giving)

He takes his time because he wants to explore all of you with his hands and tongue.

He mutters possessive things from in between your legs. Maybe growls a little?

"You're my human, all mine."

"MY human...so pretty."

Leaves marks on your thighs.

He loves giving you head sm, he could get off on it alone. Moans the entire time.

Leviathan

(receiving)

Generally subby, especially when it comes to oral. He's a little scared to take control so you get to set the pace, position etc. Tell him to use his words and he'll whine and whimper for you to go faster.

Stuttering and blabbering mess. His face is bright red the entire time and he'll try to hide with his hands or pillow.

"It's t-too much."

"I-if you keep doing that your gonna make me cum!" (like duh that's the point).

He's thrusting his hips upwards constantly without really meaning to, but damn does it feel good to fill you up completely.

Two dicks? No problem we have two hands for a reason ;)

double the cum double the fun

He'll get a little annoyed if you suck him off in the middle of a game. His headset and controller are thrown somehwere on the desk and his back is arching from his seat. Once you're done his attention returns to the game over screen and he frowns. He puts his headset back on just for you to wrap your hands around his cocks and start pumping again.

"W-wait! It's ahhh~"

(giving)

His long, forked snake tongue can basically do anything, flick, suck, fuck your hole, ask and it will be done. He loves it when you cum on his face.

"C-canyousitonmyfaceplease."

Breathing is overrated anyways.

#obey me #obey me smut #lucifer #mammon #leviathan #lucifer smut #mammon smut #leviathan smut #obey me headcanons

[decaffedthoughts]

Kinktober Fic 2

Kinks: make up sex and dry humping

Other content: gender neutral reader (no body parts referred to. lemme know if i accidentally coded it some way though), jeongin's really cute and a little whiny

925 words

The argument was so unimportant and laughable that you and Jeongin had forgotten what it was about after 5 minutes. You had both walked away before it got too heated and had come back together about a minute and a half later to apologize.

Now, you sat together on the couch, trying to melt into each other. Which was what led you to discover Jeongin's little problem. It took him a minute of poking to make him notice you noticed.

"Hey! You're hot and basically laying on me, it was bound to happen." He pouts and protests.

You giggle and start moving, causing Jeongin to tighten his arms around you to try and keep you down. However, you free yourself quickly since he's too tired to really try too hard in the face of you wanting something.

"I'm not upset about it, big boy. No, no. I think we could... blow off some steam after that dumb argument. What do you think?"

Jeongin's eyes widen, and he sits up, staring at you.

"Really? Like right now?"

You just have to laugh. He's too good. "Yes, baby boy. Right now. Let me sit."

You gesture at his lap as your space to sit, and he does, and you plop right down on him. With one hand on his neck, you pull him into a deep, messy kiss and grind your hips down on him. Jeongin makes the sweetest little noise of surprise into your mouth and tries rolling his hips upward for more. It's not the most coordinated little thing ever, but it works, it works so well. Not well enough for you, though.

You break from him, panting and stand up abruptly. Jeongin protests ardently but cuts off when he sees you going for your pants. He understands immediately and takes off his own, pulling you back into his lap when both pieces of clothing have disappeared. It was worth it. Two fewer layers are so much better.

When you pull Jeongin into another kiss, you're both panting and moaning more frantically. If you two were trying to melt together while cuddling, now you have become one. Every piece of your body touches his, and the only way to get closer is inside, but you don't have the patience. All you have the patience for is circling your hips on his, trying to find the best angle. When you have to pull away from the kiss to breathe for a moment, you can already see the slightest bit of spit at the corner of his mouth, and you swipe at it with your thumb. Jeongin flushes, flustered at having been discovered to be so needy already.

"Needy boy. Already drooling for me."

No answer, he just nods. All the while, he's still trying to rut his hips up into yours, only proving your point even more. You follow his lead, feeling the heat in your belly flicker ever so slightly. This time, you watch Jeongin and how he squeezes his eyes shut or tries to force them open to look at you. Or the way his mouth falls open, his brain catches up, and he forces it back closed.

"You're so pretty, Innie. My pretty boyfriend, gonna cum in his pants for me." You tease, pushing yourself down a little harder and moving in slow, fluid circles.

"Ah, no. Please, harder." Jeongin pants.

You can't deny him when he's so adorable. You just can't find it in your heart. It has the benefit of wringing the prettiest noises out from him that you love. It's fun being on top because it gives you the power, even if that's different from what you're strictly going for right now.

The next time Jeongin throws his neck back, your eyes zero in on the clear skin, and you go in for the bite. He jolts but relaxes into you quickly. You let him take over the lower part and move however he likes while you occupy yourself with marking up his neck.

He makes the best noises while you do, and you can feel his pulse jumping like a hyperactive grasshopper under your lips. Jeongin's so cute, and he's never gotten less cute somehow. It's what makes you want him a lot of the time.

"Ah, fuck." A particularly good movement makes you swear reflexively, half of it caught on your lips still attached to his skin.

It keeps going, and you know it's just you getting close now. Jeongin must be the same because he's getting much sloppier. You decide to help him out since there's no point in making either of you wait longer than you have to. It's frantic and needy, and both of you are getting progressively louder, moulding your bodies together.

"Innie, baby! So good, so close. Cum with me." You plead, panting and pulling back to stare at him.

Jeongin says nothing in response, just nodding and biting his lip. You both fully let yourselves go then, feeding off each other's movements and sounds, disturbing not only your neighbours but the whole street, or so it seems. Maybe you're just too close right now. Jeongin cums just seconds before you do, and his face of pleasure is what finally sets yours off. It's messy, both of you grinding together hard and trying to ride it out. Jeongin starts to whine and push you away, the sensitive boy he is. Mercifully, you stop and just let yourself fall on his shoulder.

"Best way to resolve a fight."

"Baby, we're so messy now."

"And?"

#kinktober #kinktober 2023 #cal's kinktober #my writing #jeongin smut #yang jeongin smut #skz smut #stray kids smut

[meowmeowmage]

Let's write an mHanders fic! Part 6 (poll under readmore)

Masterpost featuring links to all parts: HERE

"And then I said I wasn't like- like the other nobles!" Hawke exclaimed, letting his forehead hit the sticky table at the Hanged Man, while Isabela shrieked with laughter.

He hadn't meant to retell his embarrassment to anyone, but after several drink that were meant to make him forget about it, he was instead rambling about it, much to Isabela's entertainment (and a bit of pity).

"Oh, sweet thing, I know I basically told you to think less, but I didn't mean quite that little," she said and then laughed again, slamming her palm against the table.

Hawke lifted his head just enough to take another big gulp of the nasty but effective Hanged Man alcohol.

"So what happened next?" Isabela prompted, once her laughter subsided a bit.

Hawke told her the whole thing. Or as much as his drunkenness allowed him. But it wasn't hard to get the point of his embarrassment and cringe behaviour across.

"Let me recap," Isabela said, "You interrupted a private conversation, made an ass out fo yourself, then lied multiple times in order to make yourself look better, but were so bad at it that you got caught."

Hawke didn't follow all that very well but it sounded accurate enough so he nodded.

"I'll be honest with you, Hawke," she said seriously and barely kept her facade for the next part, "you're so cringefail you're giving me secondhand embarrassment," she then started laughing yet again, eyes almost watering from it.

"Aren't you supposed to make me feel better?" Hawke asked irritated.

"That's the alcohol's job, sweet thing. Mine is to laugh at you. But look on the bright side - despite having your foot in your mouth you still somehow managed to patch things up, so just don't think about it anymore and try not to be quite so terrible next time."

It was a good advice. One Hawke might be able to follow. At least as long as Bayron was not around. Fucking Bayron...

"What does Anders even see in him?!" he blurted out, completely ignoring how Isabela wasn't up to date with what was happening inside his head.

"In Bayron?" She asked, a bit confused.

"Yes, that fucking prick!"

Isabela snorted and then a wide grin spread on her face. One that Hawke didn't like one bit.

"Well, he is quite a looker. I'd firmly put his ass on my Top 5 Best Asses In Kirkwall list. So there's at least one reason."

Hawke got up so fast that the world spun and his thighs hit the table hard. He swayed but caught himself with both hands on the table.

"My ass is better!"

"You're certainly being a bigger ass, that's for sure," she noted with amusement, "Hawke, if you get any more jealous you'll start spewing poison while you talk."

Hawke imagine if that was possible. To spit poison in Bayron's face. That would be quite something. But Anders would be very pissed off. Just his disappointed face was enough to cool Hawke a bit, and he sat back down like a scolded brat.

"I've been helping Anders as well," Hawke mumbled dejectedly, looking as miserable as some of the other drunken patrons, "but it looks like I haven't, and now I can't tell him because I'd look like I'm only doing it to get brownie points with him."

Isabela looked at him with sympathy in her eyes. She got up and combed the hair out of Hawke's drunk red face with her fingers, and then tugged him upwards to stand up.

"Let's get you home, loverboy. Some sleep will do you good. It's not amusing to poke fun at you when you're being such a miserable mess."

° ° °

[cult-of-artemis-and-athena]

What the fuck is "femininity", anyway? Pt. 2

I was watching a video a few months ago about Evangelical Christians complaining about what they perceived as androgyny - women wearing pants and not having long hair, men not going fishing or wearing beards - and then said something to the effect of "These people are straying from God's design!"

I suppose the Bible does have some parts that can be construed as saying that women should have long hair, men should have short hair, and they should both look different and do different things. However, wearing certain clothes or hairstyles, or doing the majority of tasks don't have a biological component. If men were naturally, biologically, by-God supposed to have short hair, it should grow to be an inch long and stop, right? I've seen some Christians rebut the "only men can wear pants" argument on the basis that the stereotypical Christian man wouldn't like, nor properly fit into a pair of women's pants. I would take that a step further, because I think it's hilarious, and say that if women wearing pants were a 100%, by-God biological impossibility, they would have one leg, or be like nagas or mermaids and it would be physically impossible to make pants for them.

Another example: musical instruments are assigned gender stereotypes for some fucking reason. A friend from middle school said she wanted to play the trumpet, but was given a clarinet because it was a "feminine" instrument. Conversely, I've seen boys who started school band on a flute or clarinet either switch instruments, or quit band altogether. Perhaps small hands make it easier to play the piccolo, and it's less annoying for a strong person to carry around a tuba, upright bass, or bari sax, but there's no reason for the player's genitals to enter the equation. During the 18th century, the acceptability of an instrument for women was based on whether the player had to spread their legs to play it. Pianos, violins/violas, and flutes were allowed, but a cello was indecent. I'm not sure, then, how harps became stereotyped as "feminine instruments" when they're both gigantic and require the player to straddle them...but here I am trying to make sense of nonsense again...

Finally - and this is the big one - there is the downright schizophrenic relationship some male communities have with female attractiveness and things women do, or have done to them, to change how they look in pictures and videos.

I feel I must preface the rest of this point with something: "men" and "women" are not hive minds, and it's important to not strawman half the population based on a conglomeration of the worst representatives you have experienced. If you go outside, in real life, and think about the couples you see, it becomes very obvious that the majority of men you will see are attracted to women who aren't skinny blondes with big boobs/asses and the majority of women you see are attracted to men who aren't 6-/7-figure earners. People who seem to express that they are totally alone and perpetually shit-on by a world of "Chads" and "Staceys" feels like the same type of mindset school kids have, where they obsess over not being included by the popular kids while they're befriended and included just fine by kids they actually have more in common with. It's not a healthy mindset to have, but excusable in school kids because kids are immature by nature and they mostly grow out of it; however, to be an adult and still think like this is a good sign to get help.

I'm talking primarily about the incel community and perhaps some of the groups that this mentality spills into.

A post was going around several years ago and I think the photos were taken from a clickbait which was taken from a makeup artist's portfolio. The MUA might actually have been Goar Avetisyan (https://www.goaronline.com/courses) but the before and after pictures resembled the ones on the link above -- one with absolutely no makeup or hair styling, and then the other with full glam, special occasion makeup and styled hair, a wig, extensions, etc. The way it was presented was "LOOK! HERE'S PROOF W*MEN AREN'T ACTUALLY HOT! WAKE UP SHEEPLE! THEY'RE LYING TO YOU! ILLUMINATI EXPOSED!!!!"

I can see why they're mad, because the dishonesty surrounding makeup, but especially photoshop, plastic surgery, posing, and airbrushing can get toxic. I'm old enough to remember the old-fashioned mindset where women were supposed to hide their "beauty secrets". Don't apply makeup in public, keep your roots touched up so nobody knows they're dyed, and if you have any treatments or surgery always deny having them. Wear your makeup to bed, then wake up early and fix it before your guy sees you.

I couldn't imagine how awful I would feel if I had Instagram or TikTok when I was growing up. I had enough moments of feeling frustrated because I didn't naturally look how other people looked, and I didn't realize that people in TV and movies were wearing makeup, that magazine ads were photoshopped, etc. Just being an extremely average-looking human being with no concept of basic grooming, comparing myself to other kids at school was hard enough without the rapist-run media adding another layer of bullshit.

When I realized the layers of lies, it was like...how long have I been wasting my time and money on this totally made-up problem? How much did I actually improve my life and happiness chasing it? Or, did it actually make me more miserable? How much could I have accomplished if I put the same amount of angst into a different pursuit -- instead of fixing my face, I could have been fixing my art...When it comes to pursuing an unattainable ideal, there is no end to the horror.

So, I suppose, when a group of men (...boys, whatever) realize that "hot women" are a spook, and the the ethereal creature they've been told by society to put on a pedestal is actually not far removed from them, and it shits and farts, it seems very reasonable to feel angry and like you've been taken for a ride by "the system". It can be easy to blame women for this, and hate them. And it's probably easy to get stuck here.

Instead of being perpetually angry, they have to mourn the death of this ethereal spook-woman, and move on with an acceptance of reality as it is. Women, too, have to kill and mourn the spook-woman as part of self-acceptance.

One positive evolution of the makeup fandom is that while the makeup has gotten more intense and elaborate, makeup tutorials have demystified makeup. When tutorials started to become popular, there was a lot of "Excuse my eye-circles, excuse my pimple, excuse my skin, excuse my hair, excuse my lighting, excuse my room, excuse my, excuse my, excuse, excuse, excexcexcexCEXEXEXEXEXEX- *boom*" and thankfully someone eventually came along ($10 says it was a drag queen) and said, "SHUT THE FUCK UP, NOBODY CARES," and eventually the makeup fandom became okay with letting a bare face be a bare face. You wear the makeup, you don't wear the makeup. It doesn't matter. It's just a hobby.

To refer back to my original point, the confusion of makeup (something culturally feminine) with biological femininity has really fucked up both men and women. Everyone is better off extracting the two from one another, and it seems like many people are in the process of doing that. It helps women hate themselves less, and it helps men humanize women and have better relationships.

However, the image of the spook-woman, "10/10 model" is so ingrained in some parts of the culture, as the apex of the vertex of femininity, that despite complaints about how makeup is a lie, discarding that in favor of just a healthy, bare-faced woman feels like embracing post-modernity and a slippery slope to embracing ugliness as beauty. I think the lack of exaggerated femininity that spook-woman makeup provides feels threatening because the woman's face looks more masculine in a purely relative sense. The exaggerated femininity of the spook-woman, as it is for the Evangelical Christians who follow strict gender roles, provides additional separation between the sexes which serves to reassure men who are A) preoccupied with their level of masculinity and B) hyper-aware of their standing toward the bottom of this hierarchy of masculinity. I think the entire hierarchy benefits from them being placated by more separation from women, because if the bottom whatever percent of men are too dissatisfied with their standing, they may start punching upwards or wanting to attack the hierarchy itself. The men at the top don't want that because of the benefits they receive for being at the top.

MGTOW and the incel movement really kicked off after Gamergate, and intensified with subsequent "waves" of feminism. The discontent men direct their frustration at women, but they also direct their frustration at the men not troubled by what women do. There's suddenly a lot of interest in whether you're an alpha, a beta, a gamma, omega, a sigma, a ligma male, etc. and which one is the better type of male to be. There's a lot of hatred for "Chads" and I see a lot of jealousy directed toward men who are married and have families, usually in the form of "She's just gonna divorce you, take half your shit, and then manipulate your kids to hate you. You'll see...you'll realize you should have spent your whole life banging whores."

This all seems like the result of the ol' spending money we don't have to buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like. This is undoubtedly the idealist in me, men and women would be better off to cut each other some slack. We could see one another as fellow tragic, flawed individuals instead of fleshlights and ATMs, escape the Matrix and spit in the faces of our rapist, media elite overlords.

#femininity #performative femininity #mgtow #mass media #makeup #spooks #traditional gender roles #women don't exist #gender roles are a spook #hollywood rapists #jordan peterson #stop putting women on pedestals

[notagamersdey]

The Dream

Painting by: Henri Rousseau

Photo (2021) and Story By Tyler D. Ortiz

Rating: T

Word Count: 2k~

Warnings: bad language, panic attacks

A/N: So this story is inspired by the Pedro Pascal episode of the podcast Talk Art (31:14-34:15). Go check that out if you want to hear some fun stories by the hosts and pp.

Summary: Matias, after losing his chance to act in a popular TV show, is taken to the Museum of Modern Art by his sister where he realizes he has nothing to lose.

~~~

Today, I’m supposed to meet my sister Lyanna here at East Village Pizza. She said it was a special treat for getting my first “big” role on Law & Order. When I told her the news, she had jumped up for joy, squealing my ear off. It wasn’t a big deal, just another job for the bills, but she was adamant that this job was a life changer. She’s says that about every job.

I came to the pizza parlor early, grabbing my favorite seat in front of the window. We normally sat here when we came because it gave us the perfect view of cold, angry New Yorkers. I had ordered our pizza, waiting for her to arrive when my phone starts to buzz.

I open it up and put it against my ear, holding it with my shoulder, “This is Matias.”

“Matias, I'm sorry to tell you…” Fuck, “…but we’ve decided to go in a different direction...” It’s the fucking casting director, droning on, saying those same fucking words, “You have wonderful talent.,” “You didn’t fit the director's vision.,” etcetera. Etcetera. ETCETERA. It's all movie-talk for “You weren't good enough.”

Grabbing the scruff behind my neck, I slammed my phone shut and stuffing it into my jacket pocket. What the hell was I going to do now? Three hundred bucks – gone in an instant.

“Here’s your order, Sir,” A waiter places the small pizza in front of me, and you know, today was one of the rare days I was able to scrounge enough money to afford the luxury of a decent slice of pizza, and now I can’t even enjoy it.

“God dammit,” It’s moments like these when memories of my father came hit me like a freight train. He used to berate me about goals and aspirations, telling me, “It’s never going to happen, Matias,” and “It’s not a job. You won’t get anywhere with that.” In high school, I used to constantly fight with him, telling him my dreams were achievable. That I would succeed as an actor. He would laugh in my face; tell me they were unobtainable. I mean... Maybe he was right.

Now, I’m living in one of the most expensive cities with over 300,000 dollars in debt, 40 bucks to my name, and a dead-beat waiter job at Planet Hollywood that barely pays for food let alone the bills. I have no back-up plan, no emergency fund. I just had my bachelor's degree in acting, which won't pay for shit.

I shake my head. My neck and back start to ache, an oncoming migraine sitting on my temples.

Matias, the fuck do you want to do that for?

Matias, you’re not good enough.

Matias, you will always be alone.

I stand to leave, throwing the untouched pizza in the trash on my way out the door. The cold winter air bites at my nose when I step outside. I pull my scarf up closer to my neck and make my way down East 9th Street.

Leaving the restaurant doesn’t help. Hopelessness rushes over me like a tsunami. The texture of the wool sweater underneath my jacket scratched annoyingly at the exposed skin on my wrists. It’s a cold wintery day but I feel incredibly hot underneath the layers. A nervous sweat builds underneath my beanie. Everyone’s staring, I know it. They know I've failed yet again. They know I’m just a naïve child.

His voice repeats in my head like a tornado siren, yelling, screaming at me, “You will not survive.”

You will not make an income.

You will not have healthcare.

You are setting yourself up for failure.

…You will die- My phone starts to buzz again. I really want to fucking ignore it but if it’s Lyanna, she’d have every cop in the city on my ass within the hour.

“Hey.” I cough, trying to clear my throat. Act normal.

“Mat! I’m sorry I’m late, I’m-” She sounds like she’s running.

“Actually, Sis, I left…” I stop in the middle of the pavement, getting shoved and cursed at by the impetuous crowd around me.

“What? Why?” Her concerned voice seeps through the phone. Suddenly, heat shoots up my back. She’s going to be upset.

I move off to the side, leaning up against a wall of graffiti, “I didn’t get the job after all.”

I hear her let out a breath, “Different direction?” She asks, knowingly.

I nod, “Yea... said I could act the part, but I didn’t fit the type of Latino they were going for... whatever the hell that means.” I spit out, bitterly.

“Means they’re bigoted.” I can hear the annoyed twinge in her voice.

“Yea... probably...” Lyanna stays quiet. “Hey... So, I’m not really up for doing anything... Can we just go home?”

“Umm...” She hums, clicking her tongue, “No.”

“Lyanna...” Please.

“No, no, I’m serious, I know you. Once you get home you're going to sulk in your room for days. Let's bypass the self-pity and go have fun. Take your mind off it.”

I’m silent for a moment, feeling my anxiety subside as I focus on her words, “What do I get if your wrong?”

“A fresh slice of cheese pizza to replace the one you probably threw away...” She laughs, “Now, how ‘bout MoMA?”

“Sure… MoMA sounds good.”

I’ve always found it difficult to find the Museum of Modern Art. The only way anyone would be able to tell where this museum was is with the three bright red banners hanging off the side of the building holding their acronym in an even darker shade of red. This was basically every building in New York so, of course, I pass right by it. Lyanna managed to catch me before I got too far. She runs up to me and immediately linked her arm into mine.

“Hey stranger, took you long enough.” She greats, warmly.

“You know how it is.”

“Oh common, where’s that smile? We are celebrating!” She starts to pull me into the museum, warm air painting my face when she opens one of the doors.

“Celebrating a failure.”

“Celebrating life.”

We walk in and are bombarded with hordes of people packed in front of every corner of the room. It's as if every single person visiting New York had decided that they would all collectively visit the museum on this specific day. Maybe they were having an event. People of all shapes and sizes were packed in front of each art piece, creating a thick barrier preventing outsiders from looking in on their beauty. In the corner of the room is a balloon man handing out replicas of Jeff Koon’s Balloon Dog to children. I clench my teeth at the disgusting sound of rubber and latex rubbing together. I feel a hot prickling in my neck at the sight of a child squeezing the neck of their bright metallic green Balloon Dog, another child on the edge of crying as she violently hit her blue Balloon Dog onto her stroller seat.

Someone bumps into me. I feel myself tense up. Don’t touch me. I take my arms away from Lyanna, hiding them in my pockets. Lyanna looks up at me, “Hey, are you okay?”

Fuck no,“Yes.”

“You sure? You seem tense,” she raises her eyebrow.

“No. No... I'm good... There’s just.” Act normal, “A lot of people.”

“Well, if you’re sure...” Everyone is breathing my air - of course I’m not sure. “You wanna start off this way then make our way around?” she asks pointing to her left. I nod.

She guides me to the fifth floor, to our first painting. Shes pushing through the crowds so we could get a closer look. It’s a dark painting with a black, shadowy silhouette of an elephant trudging on an upwards incline. The air around him grey, as if he was pushing through a sandstorm. He is struggling to get to wherever he was headed. I’m suddenly pushed closer to the struggling elephant. Lyanna snaps at someone behind me. A balloon pop’s. A child's scream echo around the room. The dark clouds surrounding the elephant fill my edge of my vision as my eyes zoom into the lonely elephant. My throat begins to close. My heart hurts. A voice in my head whispers “You’re dying. You’re dying.” in a joyous chant. I try to breathe but nothing can get through. My hands prickle. My chest stutters. The elephant fades. Only the shadowing and silhouettes of people fill my vision. I still feel the pain in my throat, as I try to breath in air.

Lyanna speaks but her voice is muffled. The darkness that had overtaken my vision slowly fades away. I sit up straight, feeling the soft leather beneath me, becoming aware of my surroundings. We are in different exhibit. It's completely empty. I shift, feeling the leather bench beneath my finger tips. The silence is soothing.

“You feeling better?” Lyanna sits next to me with a cup of water in her hands, causing the leather beneath creaked.

I close my eyes. God. She grabs at my hand but I pull away. Please go away. I can feel her eyes burning into my soul. It’s unbearable. I turn away from her. Please go away. She grips at the cup tightly. The crunch of the cup is excruciating.

“Matias.” She attempts to grab my hand again. I see it coming from a mile away. Like in slow motion. The closer she got, the more I dreaded the contact.

“Fuck! Stop! Can you please just give me a God damn minute?” I stand up trying to get away.

“What is happening?” She’s mad. You’ve ruined everything.

“I don’t want to be fucking touched, Lyanna. Just stop. Stop everything. Leave me alone.” I’m staring at the floor. If I look at her, I’m going to lose it. Shameful. Embarrassing.

“I’m only trying to help.” You’re an embarrassment.

“You’re not!” She’s going to never going to forgive you.

“Okay…” She stands slowly, “Let’s relax for a moment… I’ll be back in a few minutes… Just text me if you need anything.” I don’t say anything while she walks away, the sound of her shoes fading. I sit back down onto the chair, head in my hands.

I take a few deep breaths, focusing on the ground beneath me. The floor is smooth, my hair is soft and messy, the pressure of my elbows on my knees grow. My eyes leave the floor only to be met with a flood of green. A naked woman waking up on a large red couch in the middle of a jungle. Light green paints the leaves towards the bottom of the canvas and becomes darker going up towards the sky. The bright flowers burst up in different directions as the moon peaks through the canopy. The woman is surrounded by hidden animals. I spot a few hidden tigers, a white bird on the top left, a person hidden in the shadows playing an instrument, a few monkeys in the trees and an elephant beyond the trees staring back at me. It was a paradise. So sure of herself, she sits there facing away from me as if she has nothing to lose. She sits unafraid of the world around her.

I can’t relate. I’ll never get my chance. I’ll never not be afraid. I continue to stare at her, trying to understand what she may have done differently. Maybe she kept going. Maybe she stopped caring. Or maybe someone gave her a chance. Whatever she did must’ve worked because she continues to sit as if she has nothing left to lose –

“Henri Rousseau’s The Dream,” I jump. Lyanna stands on my right, staring at the painting with a hand on her hip, “Most people hate this painting.”

“I don’t see why…”

“Eh… Everybody has their own opinions…” She approaches cautiously, “Do you feel any better?”

I nod. “S-sorry,” I look back to the painting, “I just needed a moment to myself.”

“Don’t apologize… I should’ve… I don’t know, been more mindful, I guess.” She sits down next to me. I can see her hesitate before she puts a hand on my shoulder, “Are you going to be okay?”

I don’t answer at first. I look back at the painting. The Dream she called it. Maybe, this was the woman’s dream. Maybe she is like me. Our chances will arise. She strives towards her peace with nature around her as I strive for success in the asphalt jungle. Just as she has nothing left to lose, I, too, have nothing to lose. We are the same.

“Yea… I think I will be.”

~~~

Thank you so much for reading! Let me know what you think! Let me know if I missed a tag or a warning.

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Till Next Time!

-Dey

#my writing #short story #short fiction #inspiration #talk art #henri rousseau #The Dream #Pedro Pascal #tw panic attack #Museum of Modern Art #I could taste the pizza #new york #original writing #original story #original fiction

[coveredinsweetpea]

when you're ready || sweet pea

Anon request: oH my god imagine sweet peas reaction when his long time girl (space) friend (who he’s had a crush on his whole life) sings a song she wrote called “when your ready” ab him like oh my god i’m emo if you can, pls write it??? much love hun            

A/n: I really, really hope this is decent. Thank you for reading, feedback is more than appreciated, hope you like it, love ya, enjoy!

-

"Don't know why I tried/

'Cause ain't nobody like you/

Familiar disappointment every single time I do/

Every single night my arms are not around you/

My mind's still wrapped around you"

You are laying on the floor on your back, with your legs comfortably sprawled in Sweet Pea's lap. His back is prompted against the side of the couch in the middle of his trailer, as his fingers rest on your knees, a concentrated stare visible in his eyes as he listens to you sing.

You watch him for a second, but feelings overwhelm you at the sight, so you settle to look upwards, into the ceiling. Maybe it's dumb and a cliche, but you'd never have the guts so say it to his face. So you put it in a song. It's not the first time you made him listen to something you wrote, so you hide behind this shield. Maybe see how he reacts and go from there.

You've had a boyfriend before, he's had more than a few girlfriends in the past, but to you, they're all just pathetic excuses. You looked for him in every boy that has ever been close to you, but nothing compared to his soft smile that contrasts so perfectly with his tough exterior. No one ever protected you like he did, no one made you laugh like he could, and no one made your heart flutter with every unusual compliment like him. Fuck, you can only hope he feels the same when it comes to you and the girls he's been with.

"Even ten years from now/

If you haven't found somebody/

I promise, I'll be around/

Tell me when you're ready/

I'm waitin'"

You want to make sure the reason you're not together is because he doesn't feel the same about you, and not because he's not ready for a relationship. You'd wait for him until your last breath, all you need is just a word to slip from between his lips and you're dropping everything.

You finish the song with a last powerful strum of the guitar, and don't advert your gaze from the ceiling as you wait for him to speak.

"What was that?" he eventually asks, and you feel his fingers stiffen against your thighs. His skin is now clammy and his voice is shaking. God, let it be nervousness and not anger.

"A song" you mumble, trying to save yourself a few more seconds. Your heart rate picks up in anticipation, and no matter how hard you try, it seems impossible to make yourself calm down.

"Huh, Sherlock, is that what it is? A song?" he chuckles, turning his head to look at you, "Don't sass me, princess"

You put your guitar aside and stand up. You tuck your legs underneath yourself as you hopelessly try to come up with a decent response, "It's a song I wrote"

His right hand flies up and his pointer finger connects to your jaw as he turns your head towards his', "Who is it about?" he asks barely above a whisper. When you fail to answer and small tears start to mock your tired eyes, he continues, "Who are you waiting for? Whose heart do you know like the back of your hand?"

His voice grows colder and his expression darkness under your insecure gaze. You hesitate again. For the simple fact that a small part of you thinks this sudden change in mood is the physical manifestation of the jealously you're so used to, out of anger, you want to rush out the door and pretend none of this ever happened. How could he possibly think you'd play him a song about another guy when you specifically mentioned you wrote it for him? Frustration starts to get the best of you, thinking he might actually be this stupid.

"It's just a song, Pea" you sigh, moving to sit on the couch.

He stands up and moves aimlessly around the room, until he settles against the wall, his eyes trained to the floor, "God damn it, (Y/n)" he eventually huffs annoyed, "Tell me who it's about!"

To be fair, you never planned to tell him. You hoped he'd figure it out himself, or that if he didn't, that he'd believe you when you told him it was a basic song idea. Now that you think about it, naive doesn't even begin to describe your previous way of thinking.

"Why?" you ask defeated.

"I wanna hear you say it" he argues, leaning forward. His back is hunched and eyebrows furrowed; his presence is nothing less than intimidating. Your eyes bore into his, hoping he'd get your point, without you actually having to say it, "So I know who I have to-" he begins to speak but he trails off. Seeing you pull your lips between your front teeth, his voice breaks until it dies down completely, "-kill" he finishes as a bitter smile tilts the corners of your mouth.

As hard as you may try, your mind is lost, running laps back and forth between the same old insecurities that you've been harboring, and as no words leave your throat, Sweet Pea speaks up again.

"Why- um, why do you feel like you need to wait for me?"

This technique of beating around the bush is something you've both mastered, so when you're sat face to face, it makes it nearly impossible to get to the point before one of you loses their patience.

"I meant it as in I'll always be there for you" you mumble.

His head falls to the side. Nose all scrunched up, he bits into his lower lip as he approaches the couch you're still sitting on. You stand up, in hopes of meeting him halfway and having a decent conversation, but he's not having it. Sweet Pea waves his hands as a sign for you to walk back, and when you stumble confused, he grabs your elbows and guides you to stand on the couch. With this height boost, you're a few inches taller than him, and the sight awakens thousands of butterflies in your stomach.

"Why didn't you tell me, doll? You had to serenade me?" he chuckles, his boyish charm amplified by his dark curls and proud grin.

"I didn't-" you protest, cringing at the thought, "If you put it like this, it sounds stupid, Pea"

"Still" he whispers as the smile he held until now dissipates, "Why didn't you tell me? For how long has this been a thing?"

"I may or not have written this song last year" you giggle, pulling away and jumping off the couch. Things seemed to be heading in the right direction, but your heart still craved a lighter tone for this conversation. "May or may not!" you repeat yourself, as you see his jaw drop.

"What the fuck have you been doing this past-" he starts to yell. His words could come off as somewhat aggressive, but his tone is slightly playful, he's dancing on the edge, almost laughing at himself.

"You were with other people!" you counter, trying to move past him. You hear a loud chuckle, before you feel him grab your elbow and pull you back against his chest.

"That's because you always said you don't want a relationship" he defends himself, dipping his head forward and breathing softly against your skin as he looks you in the eye.

"That's because the only person I wanted a relationship with was being a man whore" you playfully spit back, turning to look at him.

A hungry smirk spreads across his features before he digs his teeth into his bottom lip, "We're dumb, that's settled" he laughs, fully wrapping his arms around you.

"Not to push your buttons or anything" you giggle, knowing that's exactly what you're doing, "But you never actually said you feel the same"

With a signature roll of his eyes, Sweet Pea turns you around in his hold, immediately welcoming you back against his chest, "I fucking love you, (Y/n)" he says, his smirk growing wider as prepares to give you a taste of your own medicine, "May or may not have loved you for way longer than a year"

"Interesting" you laugh, gripping the collar of his flannel to bring him closer. His hands lay flush against your hips, pulling your body fully against his'.

"This doesn't suit you" he says.

"What doesn't?"

"This attitude. Go back to being sweet, that's who you are"

With your heart mostly warm with love but also with a bit of embarrassment, you raise yourself on your tip toes, and plant your lips against his'. You feel his whole frame shake with a heavy exhale, as if yelling 'finally'. His hold tightens and the kiss deepens as pure bliss propagates in waves along your whole body under his touch.

When you pull away, you bring your lips between your teeth, as a way of proving to yourself that all of this is real, "Is it weird? That i always thought I was to girly for you?"

He watches you amused for a second, before cupping the back of your head, and bringing you closer in order to place a long peck to your forehead, "Yeah" he laughs, "It is weird. You're mine now, and you're perfect, (Y/n)"

You go back in to kiss him, whispering an "I love you, too" before your lips connect.

#sweet pea fanfiction #sweet pea #sweet pea imagine #sweet pea fanfic #riverdale fanfiction #riverdale imagine #riverdale imagines #riverdale fic #sweet pea fluff

[canaliculi]

I guess you got what you're after (if you're after a life on your knees)

Gravity Falls

Bill/Ford

M: begging

Either of them apologizes to the other, very very humbly.

“I’ve been thinking,” Bill said. Ford didn’t move, but he felt his pulse quicken, just an extra beat or two each minute. “It’s getting kinda boring around here, isn’t it?”

Ford clenched his fists. It hadn’t been until he’d gotten evicted out of his home dimension that he’d realized he could be just as much the fighting type as Stanley. Part of him wished he couldn’t be goaded so easily, but the majority of him wanted to punch Bill squarely in his stupid, smug eye. The fake muse seemed oblivious to Ford’s bubbling ire, slitted pupil revolving in shallow circular motions as he watched himself swirl some glowing pink liquid about a martini glass. Seemed being a key word in this situation, because even if Bill no longer had an open invitation to squat in his mind, the demon was almost preternaturally tuned to his emotions. And never failed to use said attunement for any purpose outside of prodding him violently.

Bill titled his glass, appearing to empty his drink onto the floor, but a mouth sprouted from the blackened grout between the tiles of the fearamid and swallowed the no doubt alcoholic ichor. Ford shifted on his knees, eying the glossy bricks he’d been forced to kneel upon, suddenly uncomfortable. Well, more uncomfortable. Bill turned to look at him, glaring, and let his glass fall to shatter on the tiles, eliciting a yelp from the apparently sentient flooring.

“Well? Aren’t you gonna ask why?” Bill continued to scowl at him, and then began laughing. “Oh yeah, I forgot!” He snapped his fingers, and the bridle-like gag that he’d personally shoved into Ford’s mouth days ago dissolved into a thick, sour slime that Ford had to spit out onto the floor, hunching over and gagging. The scientist turned dimensional hobo could feel it dripping in viscous lines down the sides of his face, gooey in his hair, coating his tongue like maple syrup. “Hey, don’t puncture a lung down there – I’m pretty sure they turn horses into glue for that offense, too!”

Fingers ran through his hair then, though they jerked back the moment they touched the trail of mystery liquid that had drenched him. An arm emerged from the floor, soft fingers wiping off his mouth that Ford immediately tried to pull away from. The various other restraints littered across his body, having not transitioned from a solid state to a liquid, held tight – he could turn his head, but it wasn’t nearly enough to escape the sardonically gentle touch.

“Aww, what’s wrong? You used to like it when I pet you! Remember?” Bill’s eye went fuzzy like an old TV set, and then light poured out of it like a projector. Instead of displaying anywhere in front of the demon, the ground beneath Ford’s hands – that was liberally splattered with the disgusting ooze he’d heaved out – lit up. Ford was still long enough to watch a grainy image of himself appear. An image of himself that was obviously moaning, writhing in a tangle of pitch black limbs. Heat rose to his face, in much the same way bile rose in the back of his throat, and he shut his eyes.

“And do you know what else I remember?” Ford felt a small weight settle on his head. “Come on, this one should be a fond memory for you!” Fingers alighted on his face, bracketing his eyes, and they peeled his eyelids apart, so he was forced to watch as the floor lit itself up again with a new image. Bill was on his head, diminutive in a way he hadn’t bothered to be in so long, fluffing up his hair as though they were back in the mindscape.

On the ground, like an old home video, Ford watched himself burst into the nightmare dimension, guns blazing. The camera panned to linger on the smoldering remains of one of the nameless monsters Ford had slain on his final visit to that shifting, in between world, and a sad cascade of violins began playing. He rolled his eyes.

“Hey, hey, what’s with the attitude! Trevor – wait, or was it Travis? Maybe Terrorizer? Anyway, he was an integral part of both my plans and my crew! This is a stirring memorial to his lifetime of achievements! I’d pour some out, but getting the monolithic nightmare castle you’re currently residing in drunk is against most interdimensional construction laws!” Ford didn’t even need to see Bill to know that the sudden silence was Bill realizing A) something was illegal and, therefore, B) that he should do it. The hands that had been holding him captive let go, sinking back into the floor.

“Bill,” Ford said, mostly because he didn’t want to see what a drunk fearamid was like. His voice was scratchy and rough, either from the recent disuse or the not-so-recent constant, agonized screaming. He’d actually had to make multiple attempts before any sound would come out at all. “What’s your point?” The movie playing below had finally focused back on him, diving heroically into the Quadrangle of Qonfusion, but at his words the image of Ford on the screen stopped dead in his tracks, instead turning to the camera to look outraged.

“Fordsy! Why, I’m shocked! I’m stunned! Absolutely flabbergasted!” Bill hopped off his head to float in front of him instead. Ford craned his neck up to watch him, irritated because he knew, just knew, that was what Bill wanted to him to do. “I’ve never seen you be so cold – well, except to your brother, your family, and basically anyone that has ever mistakenly put their trust in you! But to me? It hurts, IQ!”

Being reminded of his family just reminded him that they were here, somewhere, just as caught as he was, though hopefully without the personal attentions of a megalomania-riddled demon. Ford swallowed around a stone in his throat, in his chest, and focused instead on the annoyance Bill provided, a constant burr jammed into the soft flesh of his side. Bill drew closer to him, and laid a small hand on either side of his face. A light pressure in his fingertips that encouraged Ford to lean forward, to come nearer. It felt surprisingly insidious for such an innocuous gesture, and left heat curling through his body that was entirely unwelcome.

“Why are you bored, Bill?” Best to just get this out of the way. Bill no doubt wanted to play some infuriating and humiliating game, and was trying to let out enough lead for Ford to get himself tangled up in. Swallow the bait whole, and it at least took some of the sport out of it.

“I’m touched you asked, Sixer! And here I was, thinking you didn’t care about me anymore!” Ford almost leapt out of his skin when another hand emerged from the ground and ran up the midline of his chest, trailed a finger across his heavy collar before fading away again. “Silly me! I mean, you’ve managed to alienate or disappoint everyone else in your life, who else do you have but me?”

Ford’s gaze dropped to the floor that, thankfully, was no longer acting as a video screen. He wasn’t sure if he could bear to look at himself just this moment. Bill’s hands dropped away from him. An opportunity would come, he knew. An opportunity to put an end to all of this, once and for all. He just had to be patient. He had to endure. For Stanley. For the kids. For the entirety of Gravity Falls. The edge of Bill’s cane tapped against the crown of his head and he grit his teeth. Endure.

“Anyway, back to the topic at hand!” Ford got to watch a hand sprout out from dark cracks in the bricks this time, disgusted at the way it blossomed and unfurled. It took his chin between its fingers and redirected his gaze upwards again. “Me! You! Now I’m not one to ruin a good thing, and let me tell you, the martyred victim, bravely suffering Stanford Pines: Special Edition is a real treat!” Bill ruffled his hair while Ford clenched his jaw so hard a weird buzzing filled his ears. “But I have to be honest, things were more a lot fun when there was a real challenge to the whole forceful dimensional takeover spiel!”

It was like a bolt of lightning had struck him. This was it! Could it really be? It had to be! Bill was letting his arrogance, his utter assurance he’d won blind him, and Ford was going to leap at this chance, whatever it may be. Ford tried to clamp down on his excitement, but Bill’s eye was curving like he was in on a private joke.

“You’re interested, right? Don’t try to pretend you’re not, I know that look, Fordsy!” A sudden weight was lifted off him, and Ford thought it was metaphorical for a moment until he realized that literal weights had dropped off him. He swallowed and the collar was still in place, evidenced by the way his Adam’s apple bobbed roughly against the tight metal, but the others – manacles around his wrists, his ankles, strange chains that wrapped around his thighs to force him into a bent position, crisscrossing restraints that constricted his lungs and connected to the floor at his sternum by a short shackle, kept him pulled down like a groveling, subservient beast – all gone. There was a moment where he remained frozen, inches off the ground, a deer trapped in one-eyed headlights, and then apparently Ford remembered how to move himself. He cleared his throat as he straightened.

“I have to admit, Bill,” he began, somehow managing to drift into his lecturer voice. He even adjusted his eyeglasses. “I am intrigued. What did you have in mind?” It was simple, somehow, to ignore all the context surrounding this conversation.

“Well, as far as this dimension goes, you Pines have been the only real challenge I’ve faced! Not that that has amounted to much, but you take what you can get, am I right?” Bill drifted to his side and propped an elbow up on Ford’s shoulder, gesturing in circles with his free hand. “Now of all the Pines, you’ve been the most, uh, formidable! But I can’t just let you go, after all the trouble I’ve gone through to get you back here again!”

Ford took a deep breath. He didn’t want to spoil whatever mood Bill had gotten into, but this conversation wasn’t going quite the way he had hoped it would. Bill floated off his shoulder, blinking out of sight from his periphery and into his direct line of vision.

“So here’s my offer! I willing to let ONE of the Mystery Twins 2.0 go free!” Ford couldn’t even try to hold in his excitement. Dipper or Mabel – he would be able to get one of them out of this hellhole! And certainly, they weren’t comparable to himself in terms of capability, and it was wholly cruel and unfair to heap such a responsibility on them, but they had a better chance than anyone else to figure out a way to free Ford. Allow him the time to fix all this. “Yeah yeah, but you have to do something for me, first!”

“What do you want me to do?” Even to his own ears, he sounded eager and it made him cringe inside. But what wouldn’t he do for those kids?

“Oh, it’s easy enough! I just want one little thing from you,” Bill said, sounding uncharacteristically charming. “An apology!”

Now, for whatever reason, Ford felt the beginning of apprehension drawing in. Like he could see the sharp angled jaws of a trap cinching closed around him. It galled him to no end. He could pull his head back, and get nothing – back in chains, the status quo maintained. Safe and sound and mired in the same swamp he’d been in before. Or he could bare his neck to poisoned fangs and hope that, somehow, he survived the impact. Bill had the upper hand, as he always managed to have, and the demon was currently examining his nails, like he had all the time in multiverse. Which Ford supposed he had, considering time was dead. For the time being.

There was nothing more to be done, really.

“I’m sorry,” Ford said. It sounded like his mother had a hold of his ear, pinching it brutally while Stan huffed and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Good start, but that wasn’t super believable, was it?” Bill had dropped his hand down, and was smirking at him. Ford cleared his throat again.

“I mean it. I’m sorry, Bill.”

“Oh, I don’t know Fordsy, do you really mean it?”

Ford clenched his jaw tight. “I don’t know how else to put it, Bill. If you don’t believe me, what’s the point in this exercise?”

“There are ways you could convince me!” That was exactly what he’d feared. Ford let out a long suffering sigh.

“And what could I do to convince you that I’m sincere?” A brief silence stretched between them, fragile and vulnerable. Ford broke it first. “I am sorry, Bill.”

“Hmmm,” Bill said, looking upwards. He tapped a finger against his surface, pretending to give hard thought to Ford’s words. “Nah, I’m not buying it - you’re the genius here, you should be able to figure something out!”

With that, Bill snapped his fingers and a fresh drink appeared in his outstretched hand. The demon settled upon a throne that seemed to have appeared in the brief span of a blink. His eye warped into a mouth, which opened showing off white and curving fangs, and a bruise mottled tongue dripped out, its tip running along the edge of his glass. And then Bill tossed the drink back, ending with a broad grin.

Ford remained where he stood, his spine feeling like steel rebar. His fists were clenched so tightly that he could feel the bite of his fingernails digging into the soft flesh of his palms. He walked a few steps closer to the throne, looking down on Bill from his slightly elevated position. Bill blinked, his eye coming back out, almost a challenge. Waiting for Ford to choose. He sucked in another deep breath, and his eyes dropped to the base of the throne. And then Ford dropped down to one knee, crouched for a moment in the mocking mimicry of a proposal, and then he fell further to his other knee, and bowed his head. It burned all along his core, to be back on his knees without chains dragging him down.

“I’m sorry, Bill – truly,” he managed to murmur, around the disgust for himself that threatened to tie his tongue. The demon said nothing, and Ford kept his eyes glued to the almost ground. He watched in a distant manner the way Bill’s sticklike legs kicked in thought. The muscles between his shoulderblades quivered and ached, as he tried to keep his posture firm, and the silence stretched on. Ford finally risked a glance upwards.

“I dunno Fordsy,” Bill said, inspiring a heavy, sinking feeling in his gut. “It’s just not coming out sincere!”

There were at least a hundred things Ford had the urge to call Bill, but he bit his tongue quite literally, and focused on the firm feeling of the ground under his knees. He looked back down, staring at his six fingered hands resting on his thighs, and shuddered. And then lowered himself even further, placing his hands palm down and flat against the smooth tile, bending over until his head was hovering over the scant space stretching between his fingers.

“Bill,” Ford began, and swallowed, and forced himself to continue, “my muse.” It felt like the world around them jolted to a halt, a deadly and thrumming potential energy filling up the air. Ford thought of staring down a snake about to lunge, but it didn’t clear the distaste from his mouth as he went on. “I am not worthy of your leniency.”

“No, you really aren’t, are you?” Bill sounded different, but Ford was hard pressed to say what quality, precisely, had slipped into his tormentor’s affect. He could only hope that the change, whatever it signaled, meant he was doing something right.

“I’m not.” He wanted to vomit. “You gave me- so much, and I-” Ford swallowed again, his mouth feeling dry “-I spurned all your gifts.” His fingers had curled, to dig and scratch at the ground. He tried to focus on the pain in their tips. It didn’t help for long, as soon he felt just the slightest weight on the back of his head, and it only took him a moment to piece two and two together and realize that Bill had kicked his feet up on him, was using him like a foot stool while Ford shamed himself for his amusement. Heat burned in his face, down his neck, across the top of his chest. And disgustingly, pooled somewhere lower, in the pit of his stomach, and was only stoked as Bill applied pressure and forced him down even further, closer to the ground.

“You’re getting closer – I almost believed that one! But there’s just some level of contriteness I’m not getting here, a certain I don’t know what!” Anger threatened to overwhelm him at Bill’s blatant stubbornness, and like a mantra, he had to remind himself again and again that he was doing this for Dipper. Or Mabel. Bill’s feet were still on his head, and one of them had transitioned to tapping lightly against his skull. Swallow the bait, Ford thought, and sunk down even lower, until his forehead came in contact with the cool tiles of the fearamid. It felt like he was prostrating himself, exposing himself, baring himself to the world, which he supposed was the point of the whole exercise, but he arched his back as he did so, and he felt a minute tremble shaking down his spine.

“I beg you, Bill,” Ford said, aware of how close his lips were to brushing the ground. “Forgive me.” It sounded contrite. It sounded like – did he mean it? Silence spread thick between them again.

“Wow.” Hope squirmed inside his chest like a thick and wriggling worm. “That sounded really heartfelt, Fordsy. I dunno, though – what do you guys think?”

The muscles along his stomach clenched violently, and Ford felt very cold. All around him, very abruptly, he could hear loud voices laughing, jeering, every high school bully, every scholar that had turned their nose up at him combined into one. And the worst part was, Ford was still in control of himself. When his body twitched and jerked, it was of his own volition and will. Nothing was holding him down, nothing was forcing him to remain where he was, groveling at the feet of the monster who continued to find new things to strip away from him. His breathing was coming quick and shallow, and he couldn’t even understand the individual words of the monsters around him. He concentrated on Bill, his demeaning touch a lifeline in the maelstrom.

“I’m sorry, Bill,” Ford said, his voice quivering. The backs of his eyes were stinging.

“Oh, I know you are, Fordsy,” Bill replied. “I know you are.”

#status!tag: complete #f!tag: GF