#thank you for asking!!! i'm so glad you like my meta <3

[damianbugs]

Hi!! First I just wanted to say your fics have been an inspo for me to write my own fics and I enjoy them immensely. Second, I’ve been wandering something and I want to ask something about how Jason Todd is portrayed after his death.

I don’t really understand why so many just kind of lie? Or exasperate who Jason Todd is and isn’t. Like the Cass and Bruce scene in front of Jason’s grave, or that scene in Gotham Knights where Alfred tells Bruce “Jason was determined to disobey him.” I know out of universe it just has to do with the mischaracterization of Jason but I’m having a hard time on finding an in universe explanation. Is it out of guilt? Out of misplaced love? It’s confusing me a bit

first of all, thank you!! i'm so glad i could inspire you that is truly the highest complement i could receive <3

secondly, this is a really interesting discussion! you're right about how in a meta way it's the deeply routed classism in jasons writing, as well as many writers (example: grant morrison) just really hating jason for some reason and doing everything they can to make him absolutely insufferable. not even in a cool evil villain way, but in an embarrassment point and laugh kind of way.

for the purpose of this discussion lets (with much difficulty) ignore the writers predispositions and implications and just focus entirely on what this means for the characters. it's good you mention the cass and bruce at jason's grave scene, because i think that example alone is a good way to deconstruct some of character's (for this post: bruce's) perspective of jason's death.

to summarise before dumping a billion paragraphs developing the point; let's not dance around it and accept that much of people's understanding of jason's death falls into the victim blaming variety, but in such way that the characters don't seem to realise that's how they perceive him, which is almost worse than them purposely retelling it in such a way. as well as that, aside from this indenial misunderstanding of jason, i think this shows the sort of flaws the other characters have.

Detective Comics #790

at first glance this seems like a really touching and emotional moment where bruce is sharing his grief with cass (especially when the entirety of #790 is about bruce struggling to do just that), but then you really read it and you're like what the fuck... why are we standing in front of this kids grave slagging him off? not only are we hearing all of bruce's regrets about how he raised jason as opposed to his son's actual death, but we are dragging steph into this too.

to bruce, jason's death is an accumulation of everything he let the boy get away with finally reaching it's tipping point. that jason's ambition to "prove something" lead to his seemingly inevitable demise.

now i do think it's important to note that WE (the readers) know jason died saving sheila. that despite being beaten, betrayed and left for dead, he tried to save someone and paid the price for it. no one else knows that, because the two people that did are dead. as a result, bruce is left with the facts that;

prior to his death, jason was acting uncharacteristically (<- important point) violent and aggressive towards himself, borderline passively suicidal. bruce himself acknowledges this.

that jason ran away from home in search of someone who may or may not be his mother. this is because losing his parents is a hurt jason has still not healed from and a topic bruce has handled badly in the past (example: willis todd). jason does not trust bruce enough to tell him about this.

once they find his mother, jason is instructed to not get involved in the joker related problem. to the extent of bruces knowledge, jason reveals himself as robin, and decides to get involved despite the instruction not to. either because he again, didn't trust bruce to believe he would handle it, or that jason was trying to prove something to bruce, to sheila, or to himself.

sheila dies, jason dies and bruce is the only one alive from the tragedy with only half the story.

All of this can be found in A Death In The Family, but I don't feel comfortable sharing panels of it given where the story takes place right now.

bruce spends the next few years blaming himself at any given point, but the blame is misplaced. bruce feels as though HIS negligence of JASON'S personality and HIS allowance of JASON'S freedom as robin is what allowed JASON to go and die. instead of seeing what he knows to be true about jason (his empathy, his kindness, his grief and loneliness) bruce can now only see how his allowance of all these things played a part in JASON disobeying him (whether maliciously or not) and dying.

in short, bruce is projecting big time onto his dead kid.

bruce is, as per usual, coping with loss by antagonising it. he did the same with babs, with steph and later on with damian. for a character like batman, who upon failing immediately turns these losses into lessons (for himself and all those forced to comply), it's the only way he seems to 'move on'. if he can understand that jason died because of all the things bruce let him do wrong, then he can convince himself that the guilt he feels for it is necessary. that jasons death is on him and that it mattered.

unfortunately, in order to do that, bruce is indenial about what he LITERALLY KNOWS ABOUT JASON! it's not like he was an absent father to jason in the slightest. but hey, if he can vitiate jason's enthusiasm to help people as jason's impulsiveness to fight (two things that can be true but not in accordance to the context he describes them in), then the blame is on jason for being brash, and on bruce for being lenient.

he shoots jason in the foot and himself in the knee to keep them both down. because, well, jason's dead anyway, and bruce unfortunately isn't. this is the closest thing they'll get to sharing the truth bruce knows he's missing and he knows it's his fault for favouring the mission of his son — so at the expense of jason, bruce lets them both be the lesson to learn from.

it is why jason is used as a cautionary tale, and why bruce is so unstable on allowing people (especially children) into his life emotionally. the second robin is a lesson for any young vigilante eager to join the mission, and batman's part in the death is a lesson for bruce wayne to... be even more emotionally untrustworthy? instructions unclear.

the final part of the grave scene is also important, because bruce is admitting that he is not so different to jason. that "for some of us [Bruce and Cass] there is no turning back". he is projecting these flaws about jason not only because that's the only way he can cope with jason's death, but he is projecting these flaws because regardless of what actually happened, he (and cass) are destined to meet the same fate. jason died for a multitude of reason that bruce may or may not have caused knowingly, and these reasons only exist because bruce knows them to be true in himself and anyone else damaged enough to find themselves on his side of the blurry line.

so, now looking a bit less zoomed in, i think it's unfortunate that jason's time as robin is often perversed by the people who should know better (bruce & alfred), and while it is bad writing on jason's character, it is great writing to show the flaws in the characters around him.

especially how it shows that grief is not always something that can become healed. bruce's guilt about his parents death amounts to something hopeful (batman), but his guilt about jason's death makes bruce cruel and childish.

tldr: no one knows the true story, so they compensate from what they do know — but by doing so they project and misinform existing characteristics of jason in order to compartmentalise the gravity of his tragic death. bruce is unable to cope normally and everyone is forced to follow the same fate, because batman's lessons are rarely wrong, even if they cause ten other problems and misunderstandings to understand.

#did this answer anything idk its exam season who even am i #dc meta #bruce wayne #jason todd #character study #saki anons #saki comic talks #put me in a box with bruce wayne and i will eat his brain #sorry idk where that came from erm

[kirain]

Hi! I love your metas and I had a question if you don't mind. I love Barcus but I'm a bit confused by the Ironhand gnomes and why they were so mad at the Gondians? Did I maybe miss something?

Omg, I'm so glad someone asked me this! Thank you, anon. I broached this exact subject with my friend a few days ago, and I'd already considered writing a post about it, so this was the kick I needed! Barcus is hands down my favourite NPC (perhaps of all time) and the gnome plight is easily my favourite side quest in the entire game, so I'm excited to share what I've learned!

To preface, I'd like to mention that most gnomes, according to D&D lore, live in clans and keep to themselves. This is especially true for deep gnomes, as the Underdark is an exceedingly dangerous homeland. Their people are often enslaved by drow or duergar, or eaten by other nefarious creatures that lurk in the shadows. As such, they have become a profoundly somber and cynical race, relying only on each other for survival. They're also extremely wary of strangers, as Barcus perfectly demonstrates when we first meet him.

Now, a history lesson. The Ironhand Gnomes, who at some point left the Underdark, worked in Baldur's Gate for generations, providing the city with the best mechanomagical inventions the populace had ever seen. Though they still kept to themselves and worked in isolation, they were well respected by the citizens, and flourished enough to inspire other gnomes to seek a new life in the city as well. This may not have been their goal, but whether they meant to or not, they brought gnomish innovation to the forefront of one of the most multicultural cities in all of Faerûn.

More importantly, the Ironhand Gnomes worshipped a lesser deity called Gaerdal Ironhand, who Wulbren's ancestor, Wolverforce Bongle, allegedly conversed with. Massive however, in all of my research, I haven't been able to find any evidence that he was truly capable of such a feat, nor is he ever referred to as a "Chosen" by either himself or anyone from his clan. Therefore, it's possible this is nothing more than an unsubstantiated claim made by zealots. A book called Ironhand Gnomes: Our Grievances can be found in the gnome hideout in Act 3, verifying some of this information, but it's glaringly biased against the Gondians, with radically religious and violent undertones.

But where did this hatred come from? Well, according to the book, the Ironhand Gnomes shared some of their expertise with other clans, and some of those clans took what they learned and opened their own workshops. The Gondians, who worship Gond, did particularly well, constructing their own factories and becoming quick competition. They even built a Gondian Church in the city, and attributed their success to Gond; god of craft, smithing, and inventiveness. For whatever reason, the Ironhands didn't appreciate this and accused the Gondians of stealing their methods and designs, as well as pointing out flaws in their "shoddy" craftsmanship.

However, Gondian work was relatively flawless, as well as artifice-based, meaning it relied on science and raw materials. The Ironhands specialised in mechanomagical inventions, meaning they imbued their engines with arcane influence. This put the Gondians and Ironhands at odds with each other, as Gond espoused artifice supremacy, whereas Gaerdal Ironhand, according to Wolverforce, accused Gond of being a thief. So yes, we've reached the crux of the issue—religious turmoil. Both gods, I should mention, are good-aligned and easily misinterpreted, so of course that adds another layer of complications.

In response to the Ironhand's accusations, the Gondians started slandering the Ironhand clan, losing them favour in the city. In other words, the feud quite literally became a he said/she said situation, with both clans acting like petty children. Whether or not the Ironhand Gnomes taught the Gondians a few tricks, they weren't owed credit for their inventions. That would be like my friend showing me how to use Adobe Animate, then demanding credit for all of my artwork thereafter ... and all while criticising it. And the Gondians, though attempting to protect their reputation, had no right to spread lies about the Ironhand clan, not all of whom participated in the drama. They could've let their work speak for itself.

But this war of finger-pointing dragged on, with both sides losing and gaining support from confused Baldurians. Eventually, the Ironhands became desperate to get the upperhand, rousing Wolverforce to experiment with the thought-to-be mythical runepowder. This led to what became known as the "Unfortunate Runepowder Incident", wherein the overweening Wolverforce caused a massive explosion, killing himself and countless others in the blast. Wulbren blames this tragedy on the Gondians alone, and many Ironhands seem to feel it was the root of their exile, but there's more to it.

In reality, the Ironhand Gnomes were banished from Baldur's Gate because they aligned themselves with Sarevok Anchev, the Bhaalspawn who tried to destroy the city in the first game. For some reason, Wulbren completely glosses over this detail, likely because he can't bring himself to admit the Ironhands are responsible for their own downfall. In fact, he brushes it off, as if it's some insignificant happenstance that deserves forgiveness without merit. After all, it happened over a century ago. Then, in Act 3, he says a painfully backwards line about how he thinks the Gondians would've joined Sarevok, if given the chance. But they did have a chance, and they didn't join him. The Ironhands did. As far as I'm concerned, this highlights Wulbren's extensive denial.

Which brings me around to Barcus and why he's such an endearing character. He doesn't care about ancient feuds or gnome supremacy. He made a name for himself, despite his clan's reputation. The Gondians never saw him as an enemy, and he in turn saw the value in their work. He prefers diplomacy and open dialogue, and he abhors violence to the highest degree. With a little hard work, he proved that the Ironhand Gnomes could've redeemed themselves without resorting to such extreme and radical measures; which is why I will always argue for him to take leadership. He's the best. He's everything. He is the shining future of unity and creation.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #barcus wroot #bg3 barcus #barcus my beloved #wulbren bongle #bg3 wulbren #ironhand gnomes #gondians #dnd #d&d #dungeons and dragons #gnome post

[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

[phantasyhalation]

stashed as a useful item and languishing. cleanly bisected. decontextualized into a moeblob. heat emoji. the dichotomy of "true" permadeath versus metaprogression in game design.

i'm glad you were stashed before bisection. i don't want you wasting any more precious inventory space than necessary.

i imagine you asked me this with consideration to our conversations about F&H — i think those games are fascinating, but i'm not here to toot their horn.

it's not necessarily a self-defeating design choice, but the ugly truth is that meta-progression can really undermine a core gameplay loop beyond what it contributes. let's go with the modern classic example: Hades. love Hades. great game... that i lost my passion for the first time i beat Hades. don't get me wrong — i do enjoy much of the story content which comes after! but by that point? gameplay-wise, the game has more or less already played its hand: everything you earn from this point forward is direct vertical progression through countless more upgrades, and the game wants you to keep playing it for dozens more hours. i had other shit to do when it came out, so i pushed through, but by the Real End? hated that game. knew every enemy, hated every enemy. knew every stock line, hated every stock line. knew every weapon, hated every weapon.

this game, quite literally themed around determination and futility, becomes little more than a grind for you to play around in with increasingly arbitrary weapon variety and artificial challenges. the narrative is aware of this, sure: it makes some real fun jokes with it, but mostly runs out by the end of your "initial" follow-up runs. the narrative goes in interesting directions, even! i like the ways through which "beating" the game and beating it some more recontextualises key character dynamics! but it stops surprising you. the game becomes a sandbox action romp with pitiful enemy variety and puddle-deep action. it sucks — and it's still one of my favourite examples!

now, many games handle meta-progression through a less direct power curve — people call this "horizontal" progression as opposed to vertical. some of this can be fun! much of what The Binding of Isaac offers is variety in the ways of 1-3 item unlocks per run. some are very strong, some suck, and they all go into the random pool with everything else. this is cute! it doesn't dictate how you play the game. if you're going for completion in any version, you'll likely prioritise what you want to unlock and when, but these things are still bonuses. a new player never feels lacking for missing Tech.5 in the loot table, or Eden as a playable character. the game only gets more interesting the more stuff you unlock. it plays a perfectly fulfilling hand to start, and drip-feeds you fun little options which may completely transform your experience with the game by the time you're on your final run to complete it.

but Isaac also has road closures. if i recall, you have to "beat" Rebirth ~21 or more times to unlock enough of both main "routes" to get to their true final bosses. every run you play before then is artificially made incomplete, inferior, unfinished. once you get a grip on The Womb, this becomes utterly miserable, not helped at all by the fact both penultimate bosses are total letdowns and must be clobbered many times each. it also has unlocks for starting equipment, and these i take the most issue with. Isaac himself is probably the best character in the game with his complete kit, thanks to his ability to reroll item pedestals with his starting D6 — you don't get to play with that for hours and hours. even more egregious is Afterbirth's changes to The Lost: typical rules for them are that they cannot have health, and die whenever they take damage. there's a rare item, the holy mantle, which gives you One shield per room — this works on them! in Rebirth, The Lost is a bastard of a challenge character, and one which people often cheesed by rerolling for this and similar items to aid in longevity. come the DLC, though, and if you grind out at minimum 9 runs' worth of money without exploits to the donation machine at the end of the . the problem? no one wants to play The Lost at base anymore! it's an absurd handicap which can be circumvented only through significant grinding. and to make it even more egregious: you can't play as The Lost without holy mantle on that save anymore. that meta-progress is permanent, and it completely transforms the character into something extremely playable, undermining the (questionable) design of the original challenge. you can fuck these things up so badly.

and it goes beyond the rogue-whatever genre pit, too. one of my dear colleagues in pretension has been playing Helldivers 2 lately — he's pissed at it. despite that being a paid game, much of its content is tied to a free battle pass and overarching upgrade systems. the assault rifle you start off with is perfectly competitive, sure, but you're missing some bells and whistles, and more importantly, options, for an inordinately long time. if paced well, like in, say, TBoI, this kind of variety progression can feel satisfying — where it feels like a bonus or commemoration. here? it's a grind. you want some gun variety? well, it's inevitable — it's in here, and you've already paid for it. but you're going to have to play around with what we've given you for a while. and no, you can't nominate when you want to move forward. that's all been decided for you. but remember: it's an inevitability. just keep playing.

anyway, it took me a while but i just shared my hot take. meta-progression in single-player games is the lonely man's battle pass. we're all starved for trinkets we may only earn through menial labour. and nobody even thinks about it. send tweet.

for the coda: i feel your Fear & Hungers and Nethacks work so well at conveying a sense of rewarding progress because they tie your "meta-progression" to understanding game knowledge. this style isn't for everyone, as even in the best examples it is quite often tied to trial-and-error game design, but the joy of a thoughtful Tru Permadeath experience is that all progress you yourself make is something truly and undeniably earned. it is shockingly easy to undermine that.

#asks #long post #shockingly long post.

[noelle-holi-gay]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

heyyyy I was tagged by @snarky-wallflower for this thingy, and I don't typically do stuff like this but what the heck! This one looks fun, and I need a small break from finals.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Sixty-six! Nice round satanic number.

2. What’s your total word count?

Uhhh... 1,164,238. I think I broke a million back with Dream Come True. Wild stuff! Guess that's what happens when you do this nonstop for like four years.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Mostly Deltarune these days, obviously, but I also had a wonderful time in the Splatoon and DuckTales fandoms, as well as Miraculous Ladybug, My Little Pony, and a ton of smaller ones here and there.

4. Top 5 fics by kudos

Dare to Dream (Deltarune): A fun little Susie x Noelle romcom that takes place in a divergent chapter 2 timeline where Susie kisseed Noelle on the Ferris Wheel. Also the first fic in my mega-series Dream Come True, a 300,000 word epic that really kind of went off the rails. But don't worry about that! It's just a funny little romcom! Come closer!

F@#!, Marry, or Kill (Miraculous Ladybug): I am so mad that this is up here. This fic sucks. I wrote it when I was fourteen (hence my reluctance to say "fuck" in the title) and it's just the main characters of the show getting caught up in a game of Fuck-Marry-Kill that involves their own superhero identites, but nobody else knows that. It's a good way to leverage the dramatic irony of Miraculous Ladybug, I guess, but I hate that this was my most-kudoed fic for so long. I wrote it over SEVEN years ago. The only reason it got so popular is because back in 2016, the Miraculous Ladybug fandom was a sea of piranhas starved by the seemingly endless will-they won't-they of the show, ravenous for whatever scraps they could get their grimy little teeth on. Perfect example of why popularity doesn't always equate with quality.

People Write Fanfiction About Me? (Miraculous Ladybug): This one is actually good, even if it's also incredibly old. Basically, Marinette finds online RPF of her and her superhero partner that was obviously written by her superhero partner, and they get into a whole meta fanfiction war, and it gets worse from there. I like this one a lot even if it's in an outdated style: I think it's a good take on the identity reveal genre for the ML fandom.

Stealing Kisses (Deltarune): Not much to say on this one! It's a direct continuation of Dare to Dream, still part of the Dream Come True series, though it functions more as a drama than a straight romcom, which is only one of many tone shifts that this series eventually takes. It also contains Locker Biting Challenge (if you know you know), which I think is, to date, one of the funniest bits of situational comedy I've ever written, so it gets special notes for that.

Crossing the Streams (DuckTales): And this is my most popular DuckTales fic, to round out the set! It's a low-stakes / no-magic AU, where instead of going on daring adventures, the DuckTales kids stream FPS video games online, and are, like, famous streamers. I think its popularity was artificially boosted just a tad due to being in-progress when the series finale dropped, but I think it holds up! I had some good fun playing with identity, fame, and hidden relationships.

5. Do you respond to comments?

I--sometimes! Just not very often... Look, if someone asks me a question, or if I have something to actually say in response, or if the comment is particularly touching, I'll reply, but I'm just really bad at taking compliments! It feels very awkward to me to reply to every comment when I would basically just be going "Thanks so much, I'm glad you liked it!" ten times in a row. That's the only reason (<-Definitely doesn't have anxiety)

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I don't tend to do unhappy endings. Cold Case for sure, if it were finished, lmao. Although--I guess you could argue Stealing Kisses has a very angsty ending, though it isn't actually an ending since it's just a sequel-bait cliffhanger. But yeah, I'm going to cheat a little and say Cold Case. It should be finished soon, anyway! Hopefully!

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

That's hard to say considering the amount of romcoms I've written, but I think I'd actually have to go with the final mainline entry in my Splatoon series, Operation 24, which was The Wedding. It ends on a really sweet and poignant rooftop scene that I think is particularly uplifting, even compared to the endings of my other long-form romance fics.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Very rarely. I've gotten my share of transphobic comments -- welcome to the Internet! -- but thankfully they've been few and far between. I just delete them when they show up.

9. Do you write smut?

Yes, I have; no, you can't see it :p

10. Do you write crossovers?

I have written at least two crossover fics, so yes! I wouldn't exactly call it my genre, though. They're a little too niche and I like attention.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Oh boy. Yes, twice; the first was my Fuck Marry Kill fic for miraculous ladybug, which was ripped off and horribly butchered into a terrible version of the story by someone who IMMEDIATELY abandoned it to Orphan Account. Which is wild to me.

But the real creme of the crop was some kid on WattPad who copied large portions of my Operation 24 series, and then changed small and seemingly arbitrary details throughout to be more...train-centric? Like, all the characters would have strange and OOC dialog about trains in the middle of the romance. And then after a few chapters of that it did a total left-hand veer into a Thomas the Tank Engine / Harry Potter crossover that was utterly wild to behold. This whole saga is probably one of the weirdest things that has ever happened to me in my life and I'm honestly more bewildered than mad about it.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Wow, wouldn't that be cool! But no, along with getting a podfic this is one of those big fic-writer experiences that has elude me thusfar.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope! I don't really know how to co-write outside of RP, and I haven't ever really done RP. I'm not opposed to the concept of co-writing, but I think it's sort of difficult to make work with my writing style.

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

While I'd love to give the PR-friendly answer of Suselle, I think it's gotta go to Miraculous Ladybug's Love Square. That show has haunted me for seven years and is showing no sign of stopping, and the fuckery it does with its main relationship is some utterly unrivaled Shakespearian nonsense. The way the fandom has built around the relationship is also very interesting, especially the way the fanfic scene has shifted as the show develops and its audience grows up.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?

If I want to finish a WIP, I will finish that WIP. The only ones that don't get finished are the ones I don't want to finish. This is the power of believing in yourself!

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialog for sure--always has been--and also just, like, grammar? I do words good, as they say. I like to think I have a pretty well-rounded writing skillset at this point, though.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Definitely descriptive stuff like setting the scene. I have to really work to make sure my scenes are embodied in physical reality, and sometimes I just forget to describe new locations. It's just a fairly boring part of writing for me, so I don't like doing it.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language?

I took six years of Spanish and have forgotten all of it, so this is unlikely at best. Spanish also uses em dashes instead of quotation marks to denote speaker changes, and while that is very linguistically interesting, it is also very confusing to me, specifically.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Uhhh... the first fandom I published was Miraculous Ladybug, but I think the first fandom I wrote for was My Little Pony. My MLP stuff is on a different site, and also pretty freaking bad, but it was my first large-scale fic and it really helped me develop my skills and voice.

20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

Easy: Dream Come True. That was a monumental journey to go on, and seeing my readerbase follow along as that story morphed and twisted and just kept going and going was such a unique and satisfying experience as a writer. It truly feels unreplicable.

I'm not going to tag anyone because I am a coward, and get horribly anxious at the prospect of @ing people. But if you see this and you wanna do it, use me as an excuse! Say I atted you! Live freely!

Okay good bye. I must return to my endless studies...

#rambles

[georgieluz]

hello! when you get this, list some mutuals you love to see around and then ask someone else! spread the love!!

hello! sorry about the incredibly late reply, work has been hectic, but i can indeed throw some love and affection at my lovely mutuals!

first up: my best friend, favourite person, and overall saint of a human for putting up with all my ramblings, @footprintsinthesxnd! jess, i love you to bits and i'm so lucky to have you in my life! you're a ray of sunshine and a constant safe space in my life. you're so talented, and genuinely kind, and you deserve all the happiness in the world! thank you for being my friend <3 ily a lot!!!!

next we have @ep6bastogne! bel, you make me laugh on the daily.. like literally all the time.. and it's just so easy to talk with you, whether it's about something silly or serious, i just feel like you completely get me. i love our conversations and how similar we are! you and your big brain posts make my dashboard and it genuinely feels a lil bit empty when you're not around. you've got me lowkey crushing on hockey men i don't even know for no good reason but i love it!

@lamialamia bc we always have great conversations and i love how we can discuss everything about hbo war from in-depth meta all the way to the silliest stuff ever. whenever i'm watching something or posting about something it's always so fun to talk about it with you! i hope we have many more interesting conversations!

@theflyingfin you were one of the first people i started talking to when i first came back to tumblr and it really made me feel a lot more comfortable being back here and in the fandom! i love all our chats about andyeddie and f1 stuff and you're just an awesome person who makes my tumblr experience a lot better :)

@merriell-allesandro-shelton for always checking in on me (and everyone else in the fandom). you're such a fun and engaging presence here, and i feel like you bring a lot of people out of their shells, which in turn, makes them feel a lot more comfortable being more interactive in the fandom. you're such a caring friend and i love all the conversations we have and how open and honest we can be with each other! very glad we met and became friends!

@jump-wings and @yeahcurrahhe-e you guys were actually two of my first mutuals on this new account and i love seeing you both on my dash or in my interactions! it's kinda comforting if that makes sense? since you were here when i started this acc

@thewayisset you have such beautiful art!! and it makes me smile every single time i see it on my dashboard!!

some more people i love to see on my dash and whose posts i pretty much adore reading regardless of the topic: @hellofanidea @lewis-winters @jenkil @almost-a-class-act you guys itch a certain spot in my brain with your meta and headcanons that i really dig!

@cody-helix02 @mads-weasley @heystovepipeboys too, i love seeing your posts and i always feel happy seeing you guys pop up in my activity notifications!!

honestly, all of my mutuals are really special to me. if you're a mutual of mine, or even if we just talk on posts outside of following each other, please consider yourself loved and appreciated!

#why do i get scared @ing people with compliments in case they're like “we're not even close go away u weirdo” #anyway my mutuals are amazing i love you all seriously #i would have said more and tagged more people but i'm a shy guy ok i'm like “what if my friends hate me actually” #anyway time to shut up #julian's inbox #mutuals

[jojo-schmo]

Hello! I just discovered your roleswap comic and I'm eating it up, it's so gooooooood. I don't really ship MetaDede personally, but good gods the way you write them bickering and bantering and the near sync when shit gets serious makes me wanna scream in excitement ekdvsiehrhr

AND PRIMAL BANDANA DEE THO

Absolutely my favorite part of the swap. It just makes me crave for an actual Bandana Dee boss fight that actually does him justice. (also the Prince of Dreams/Beasts title itches something in my heart really well)

I'm not sure if it was intentional or if you even know who I'm talking about, but giving Bandana Dee a Scythe at some point (plus some wind abilities) really reminds me of General Gong the Hawkeye from Patapon, what with the whole high-ranking, scythe wielding, wind-adjacent thing. Probably just a coincidence tho, but I personally love it!

Hope to see the next update! :D

(P.S. while I was reading the comic, some of the links are broken or straight up missing. I'm reading from the Tumblr app so it's a bit of a hassle. Just thought I'd let u know :D)

Hello there!! Oh my goodness, what a wonderful ask, thank you so much for telling me all of this! As a person who thrives on Words of Affirmation, these types of comments mean absolutely everything to me. <3

If I may go on a tangent about the shipping thing because I'm glad you brought that up. It's a huge complement to hear you say that because-

The Roleswap comic is not a story about romance. But it is about love.

While I am a personal lover of metadede and it fueled my initial creation of this story, I want to take the Roleswap AU in a different direction from a story that's focuses on a ship where "the main characters act the way they do because they are in love or a couple." A "partnership" like theirs can possibly be interpreted as a build up to a romance. But it doesn't have to be! So there's no blatantly romantic interactions anywhere in this story like what may be found in my non-Roleswap, specifically metadede labeled content (Like kisses, confessions of love, etc.).

Dedede and Meta do love each other, like the other protagonists of Kirby love each other. Kirby, Bandana Dee, all the other Waddle Dees, the Meta-Knights, and the friends they've made over the years. The love between many of them has developed over the entire series! They've all come a long way from fighting each other to trusting one another and even having fun together!

I see the love between the Kirby protagonists as one where they care about and want the best for each other. They may not always understand the other's thoughts and motivations. But they respect them and learn to complement each other's differences. They protect each other in battle. They grow together and learn to bring out the best in each other.

So how could two very different and powerful authority figures like Dedede and Meta come together to save their friends and family, and navigate a huge world and an unknown conflict together? That's the main question I want to present in this story.

Whatever the interpretation of the King and Knight's relationship a reader may have, I'm most happy about the fact that this comic has readers!!!

Anyway!! Back to your ask! :D

Primal Bandana Dee means a lot to me too! The only reason this comic exists is because I also wanted a cool boss fight for him, and I had just finished playing Forgotten Land for the first time. It all just branched out from there. I wish I could just spill everything I have planned for him, but alas! I have a story with a set order to tell! I will say that if anyone is worried about not seeing him until the Winter Horns area, that he will make appearances before that. Just stay tuned!

And hey. This is an AU of an existing story. We know how the canon ending went already. To keep things interesting I have to include some surprises in my version down the line somewhere, right? ;)

I also haven't heard of Patapon so the resemblance between General Gong and Bandee is a coincidence! I did look it up and General Gong looks cool!! I respect scythe wielders, haha. Thanks for telling me! If this is a game I have the ability to play it could be fun to check it out!

New Roleswap update is coming soon! I feel bad that it's been about a month and I left it on a bit of a cliffhanger. But my personal and work life is slowing down enough for me to make more progress on the next pages! Our heroes will get out of the underground tunnel soon! :O

Maybe I can offer this behind-the-scenes peek of Dedede's internal monologue in the dark tunnel as a thank you for the patience?

Finally, big thanks for letting me know about the broken links! I'll sit down on my computer soon and clean up all the links. I sometimes post on mobile and sometimes on web so maybe that messed some things up.

But if anyone needs a non-tumblr reading experience, I've also hosted the story on Comic Fury for a simpler navigation! Link is in the pinned masterpost on this blog, but also here: https://forgottenlandroleswap.the-comic.org/

Thanks for reading this director's commentary! Toodle-oo!

#roleswap ask #forgotten land roleswap #king dedede #meta knight #metadede related content #kirby and the forgotten land

[jademickian]

oh man, haven't done tag games in a while, sorry friends 🥹 i've been passive the last few weeks because uni is really taking most of my time and energy, but i appreciate the tags and i love love reading your answers<3

ok enough blabbering, thank u @callivich, @lingy910y, and @mickeysgaymom for the totally optional, fun gallavich questions tag!

What’s a fic you’ve read more than once?

Stuck at Three for Days - delicious banter, laughed my ass off

another kiss is all it takes - so fuckin sweet, dude

Like Real People Do - just finished my reread last month:)) i needed the comfort

Cooperative Gameplay - currently rereading! i miss the feels

Sometimes I reread bits and pieces from ORFNSP and since we're alone because they changed my brain chemistry. I will eventually get around to actually rereading them.

2. What’s a gifset you always have to reblog?

You know the one... this legendary world heritage gifset

3. What’s a headcanon you can’t stop thinking about?

not sure if this is counted but i always like to think that once, ian got struck with grief about monica's death on her death anniversary. mickey asks him what's wrong and he opens up about it. ian will say it's stupid but mickey will truly handle it with grace and say nah man it's not. because yahknow, he gets it. and ian melts at it, because no one has acknowledged his grief like this before. mickey teases him about it a bit, sure, but deep down he held ian's mourning warmly, like petals on his palm. and they went together to the cemetery that day, simply sat in front of her grave and talked. the good things, the bad. and that despite it all "hey, tleast she popped out an alien lookin mfer i ended up marryin." they get pizza after.

4. What’s a fanart you love looking at?

Van kiss by @lingy910y

Prince Mononoke by @darthvaders-wife

Prison Boyfriends by @gallavichonly

Part of Our World by @steorie

It's Okay by WhatsaMattavich

This Kiss by @deathclassic

SO MANY others actually if i could fit them all here

5. What’s an idea you’d love to create if you had the time/inspiration?

i actually have a LIST lmao. one of those has something to do with art because i cannot take my mind away from human mickey and manananggal ian (manananggal is a Philippine myth creature with wings and can separate the upper half of its body from its lower half).

6. What’s something you’ve discovered since entering this fandom? A new trope you love? A different analysis of the show? Something else?

oh man. believe it or not, i was never into fics. i was in fandoms before, but i just couldn't get into fics within those fandoms (i tried). this is the only time i truly liked and LOVED reading fics. it really speaks volumes about the talent and dedication, and i'm glad i got to experience it.

it's also fun reading metas on the show and getting different perspectives, especially on characters. one of my favorites (just because i was so distressed about it the first time i watched it) are analyses on the city hall scene and ian's hesitation on marriage. after reading up others' thoughts on it explaining the why's, i totally felt some relief and was able to get some sleep. lol

7. What’s an underrated trope or concept you’d like to see more of?

apocalypse aus 👍

8. What’s your favourite season? And has this changed after multiple rewatches of the show?

The first five seasons are gems to me. but i truly love season 2 because it's so chill (at least compared to some of the heavier seasons after) and the gallaghers move as a unit. special mention for season 4 because it holds Emily and Lazarus.

9. What’s a plot hole you wish had been answered or resolved?

same qualms with @mickeysgaymom about mickey's mom. brain rotting over it.

10. What scene or moment do you feel isn’t discussed enough?

not gallavich related, and i'm sure people have already mentioned it, but sometimes it hits me how smart debbie is. like, i know she's smart, but people easily forget from all the chaos. at the heart of it, she's a fast learner and also would and have excelled academically.

11. What line/dialogue/description from something else (a poem, a book, a tv show, a movie, or something else) do you feel describes Ian and Mickey’s relationship?

aaaa @lingy910y beat me to it! it's totally "I'll take care of you. / It's rotten work. / Not to me. Not if it's you." but if i could pick another, maybe "I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world."

12. What do you think is next for Ian and Mickey post-finale?

they'll grow old together and be just as in love, no matter what happens in between.

tagging @mybrainismelted, @scurvgirl, and @lupeloto if u wanna join!! raahh

#now back to my lab sheets #jade jabbers #tag games

[distant-screaming]

Thank you for the tag @waitmyturtles beloved <33 glad to be considered part of the ephemerality squad despite being inactive recently :')

Current time: 10:14am

Current activity: having lunch with friends!

Currently thinking about: morning rehearsal... I need to work on the new piece we got today!

Current favourite song: asking my favourite anything is so cruel </3 anyway either CHANGGWI by Ahn Ye Eun, Psycho by Mia Rodriguez or ICHIDAIJI by POLKADOT STINGRAY!

Currently reading: oooh, last night I finished Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke and I LOVED it, so fun! I adore reading atypical formats and the book itself was so good. I'm going to start The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu later tonight - it looks good!

Currently watching: Home School (ended on ep 14 yesterday and I am only strengthening my poly agenda), Hidden Agenda (Louis and AJ have my whole heart <3) and Racket Boys with my mom (it's such a heartwarming show I love it so much!).

Current favourite character: AAAA making me pick favorites again! They're all my beloveds, hmm.... okay, Palm for sure, he's one of my all time blorbos! Also currently spinning White from Home School in my brain at exponential speeds, I love her :)

Current WIP: okay, so:

Metas - I have a nlmg meta cooking in my drafts that I will eventually post but I need time to finish writing, and an old soundwin one

Fics - currently? absolutely nothing, your girl is Tired after writing 62 fics (count em!) for October so I'm taking a short break ((but I doubt I'll be able to stay away for long sjfkdk))

Art - working on crocheting a pillow for my sister! I'm using one of her doodles (she draws) to tapestry crochet, so the front of the pillow will look like this:

but lilac purple!

And, finally, tags - @jojotichakorn @akawrites000 @cornflowershade @soundwin @vegasandhishedgehog @mutlishipperfangirl @ieatwoodchips @welcome-to-the-shit-library and anyone else who sees this! <3

#I'm very busy but things are finally slowing down a Bit so!! very happy #waitmyturtles beloved #tag game #distant screaming screams into the void

[merakiui]

For the ask game :3

1. My favorite fic of yours

Must be clingy codependent Azul! I've read so many yandere fics but this one really made my skin crawl as Azul slowly descends into madness :0 (I do enjoy emotionally invoking stories very much :>)

10. A character/ship I didn't enjoy/think about as much before you wrote about them

Octatrio (mostly Azul, but all three of them). I simply never think much of them (if I see them irl I'd run for my life lol) but you are so creative with your ideas that you offer new perspectives for me ❤️

11. Something I wish/hope you write

Any characters that are not as regularly featured (because I love your writing and I just want to hear more thoughts on them from you, even as chitchats) but mostly Vil and Lilia my beloved 🫶

As for concepts, may I raise back otome game au 🥺 (I love to hear more of your rambles on the endless possibilities of this au)

(ask game)

:D I'm so glad you like clingy, codependent bf Azul!!!! He's so terrifying. I'm relieved those unsettling feelings could be felt because I felt so when typing it. I had actually just finished watching a true crime series when I was writing it. It frightened me to such a degree that I had to put that anxiety into writing and thus clingy, codependent bf Azul was born. <3

Thank you so much for enjoying the trio in my writings!!! I never gave them much thought in the very beginning. They've grown on me. Like pesky barnacles on a whale's back, they are forever stuck. I wouldn't have it any other way hehe.

I will definitely write more for other characters! Actually, when twst got its English release I made a tier list to show my friend how I felt about the characters. Since then, my opinions and tastes have changed. There was a category called "we can get dinner, but that's it" and I put Trey there. It's an inaccurate portrayal now because he has moved up into my favorites, as have many of the others on the list. I want to write more for Vil (starting with the omegaverse fic hehe) and I definitely want to write for Lilia more often!!!! He has a lot of potential... >:)

Aaaaa otome au my beloved!!! I would love to ramble more and brain rot on it! There are so many routes it could go. >w< I hope to make it my next big project after DRU is complete. I just love the idea of a reader who is trying to survive romance rather than fall into it. Reader tries so hard to avoid every situation that may lead to blossoming feelings, hoping to be unlikable and boring enough to avoid raising the affection meters of the main cast. But seeing as Reader is the main character, that's just impossible. orz if Reader encounters more than three romantic events in a single day, they're shuddering and thinking it's an omen for something much worse (the inevitable confession or those horribly cliché moments where they're destined to accidentally kabedon a character or fall into his chest or (worst of all) have a heartfelt, touching moment that establishes a deeper connection).

I have so many ideas for comedic interactions and jokes. I want to make a meta joke at some point in my outline, in which Idia and Reader are talking about video games and reality and Idia says, "Wouldn't it be easier if everyone had likability meters? Then you could just avoid getting caught up in useless quick-time events if you know the people around you hate you." And Reader, without missing a beat, very bluntly says, "Trust me on this. You don't want that. It sucks." On paper, the idea sounds great. In execution... ;;;;; not so much.

#sweet messages

[iridescentscarecrow]

Hi. Just wanna let you know that I enjoy your aki analysis thread a lot. (Saw it first on twitter and have been anticipating it ever since you first mentioned working on it.) Especially the connection of Aki's character being so tied to the state and in that respect, Makima by extension, and how that feeds into his revenge goal + the symbolism of Ghost and Himeno in how she, through the notion of Ghost cements herself in his tragedy. An interesting side note, the Easy Revenge cigarette in the original Japanese version of the manga is further explained as 気楽に復習を which translates to "Hang loose with your revenge." (Saying "hang loose" probably sounds silly here but it's the best I can think of for this phrasing using 気楽 which means "easy-going/carefree" a literal translation would be something more like "Take your revenge in an easy-going way.")

Back on topic, the framing and dynamics addressed in your thread is also something that has been on my mind for quite some time that I haven't seen discussed as much (at least as far as I'm aware) so it's nice to know that I'm not alone in having these thoughts. I just find Aki's arcs and narrative themes very intriguing to think about (to the point where he can almost be his own de-facto main character even though his existence is meant to supplement and build Denji. It's just something in the way he views the world of CSM and how the audience views the world of CSM through HIS lens while it's evident that he's just strung along for the ride under the belief that his story is driven and motivated by his own agency unaware of how both his choices and his story are shaped by influences and machinations outside of his chosen perception. Aki's faux main character syndrome if you will. Sorry I'm rambling.) And ultimately what all those aspects reflect back on the world of CSM. There's more I'd love to talk about but this ask is already so long. Anyways, I'm usually more of a casual lurker in this fandom but I appreciate and enjoy tuning in to your analysis.

first of all, a huge apology for taking so long to respond to this. i'm so glad you liked my aki meta!! i love how fjmt intertwines the more Symbolic aspects of his world (the devils) with his narrative & i think himeno's character is an excellent version of that.

i wasn't aware of the original version of the phrase -- that's definitely interesting / will be thinking about that. some thoughts in my head already but they're very muddled i'm afraid.

and yes!! you've put it perfectly here re: the framing. aki's character (the "manga protagonist") is the pov that denji borrows from to string us along into the very shounen tropes that fjmt subverts. and aki's narrative occuring alongside denji is so tasty in this regard. "under the belief that his story is driven and motivated by his own agency unaware of how both his choices and his story are shaped by influences and machinations outside of his chosen perception" !! absolutely. i love thinking about how denji's initial borrowing from aki (also enforced by mkm's asking him about the gun devil / aki's reaction to this outside the hotel) is presented as this Cheap version of aki's own motivations. it's so good. it's what leads us in the end to denji staring at aki's gun fiend corpse in the streets (and i do enjoy considering Fiendhood as sort of. a giving of a Body to an Idea. what aki effectively did with the gun devil -- and then the irony of his revenge climax isnt that ironical at all, isnt it?)

thank you for sending this in, and i'm pleased you enjoy reading my analysis. i'd def be interested in hearing more of your thoughts about csm if you wanted to share them :3

#crow.asks #chainsaw man #csm #aki hayakawa #crow.txt #csm meta

[altraviolet]

TEG -> MTMTE anon here. I thought that since you seemed to appreciate my first ask, I'd share more of my impressions.

Reading TEG, I thought Brainstorm's teleportation gun saving the day immediately after being invented was a bit of a stretch in terms of plot convenience. Then I read the MTMTE annual in which Brainstorm uses an experimental gun to turn everyone tiny so they can cure Ultra Magnus' bug infestation in the most direct way possible: by simply shooting the things from inside Magnus. After this I have learned that anything is possible so long as Brainstorm is involved. Do I even mention the meta-bomb (made me laugh audibly).

I thought Whirl attacking people randomly was rather unwise of him. From Issue 1 I have learned that he is also simply Like This. I take it all back. Whirl's Punching Things Club is a great idea and all *Soundwave voice* Autobot Hypocrisy is forgiven. I generally quite disliked Whirl in TEG, but a deeper understanding of him through MTMTE skyrocketed him into being one of my favorite characters in the series.

As I started getting more familiar with the characters, I had to appreciate the brilliance of the rare-pair-loving author deciding to pair up Drift, the earnest spiritualist, with Ratchet, the obnoxious atheist. Then I decided to go to the tfwiki for something and learned they actually eventually become Conjunx Endurae in canon. How could I have underestimated the genius of the source writing.

welcome back, anon!

woo, that's certainly an eye-opening look into how the characters are perceived by folks who aren't familiar with them!

1 - Brainstorm is indeed Brainstorm. it'd be easy to use his inventions as a convenient/sudden plot point with no foreshadowing at all, but I promise I didn't do that (see below)

2 - I'm glad you came to love Whirl through reading MTMTE: he's a fav for sure!

3 - this made me laugh because Drift/Ratchet is THE BIGGEST PAIRING in IDW1 xDDD while the comic was still ongoing, there was A Lot of Grr Feelings in the fandom about whether Drift/Rodimus was canon or Drift/Ratchet was canon. dratchet is as far from a rarepair as you can possibly get, but I appreciate the thought ;D

Looping back to 1, re: the teleportation gun, it wasn't a gun that Brainstorm had just invented. he'd invented it a while ago and Perceptor took it and turned it in to Rodimus.

Perceptor's point of view, Ch 26:

Brilliant though he was, Brainstorm had no built-in limits. Intercepting dangerous ideas early was the key to defusing them. Perceptor considered himself the first line of defense for the Lost Light.

Brainstorm, Ch 28:

“I need to find my experimental teleportation gun. Have a feeling Perceptor's hid that one on me, too…”

Rodimus gives the gun to Aquafend in Ch 30.

It's revealed as the missing teleportation gun in Ch 33.

>How could I have underestimated the genius of the source writing.

xD yessssss JRO's work is very, very inspiring!

I hope you enjoy the rest of the MTMTE read. Thanks so much for sharing more of your thoughts! 💎❣️

#ask #anonymous #TEG -> MTMTE anon

[meidui]

So I'm actually very glad you came back, among many others I'm sure :D Esepecially because I recently saw a post by Sineala stating the difference between 616 vs MCU Steve and Tony, and she said people should ask someone else if they wanted to know about the MCU. So, I really wanted to ask you from your perspective what you think the difference is, because you seem to like MCU the most! This is the post.

sineala(.)tumblr(.)com/post/172540509139/whats-the-difference-between-tony-and-steve-from

Thank you and welcome back :DDD

oohh i know that post and i love that post 🤗 i learn so much about 616 from sineala, her fic and meta are more sacred to me than comic canon i'm so serious about that

i feel like i read the comics very chaotically and so most of my limited firsthand knowledge is very.. incidental. but if you're looking for someone who has spent too much of her time obsessing about every stevetony related detail in the mcu i am your girl <3

mcu steve makes me go *heart eyes* because even though he's very fighty and very stubborn (the core steve rogers traits across the multiverse), i think as a generalisation mcu steve is sadder and 616 steve tends to be angrier?? in my opinion he's gentler, quieter, more reserved and measured and forgiving than his 616 counterpart and that's one of the reasons he's so attractive to me because i think he's actually so soft!!

also- mcu steve did the best with the hand he was dealt but he did not at all have the support system that 616 steve when he came out of the ice :'( in the comics the avengers are the ones who find steve, but in the movies it's a group of shield agents who get a call from an oil team. the first thing that happens to mcu steve when he wakes up is that he gets lied to (shield puts him in that fake hospital room and tries to convince him it's still the 1940s to ""ease him in""), and then between waking up in 2011 and meeting the avengers in 2012, he's completely alone. there's an amazing deleted scene from a1 that shows steve wandering around new york by himself and his loneliness is palpable

i think this also relates to their ideas of home in the 21st century. 616 steve seems very sure about the fact that tony gave him a home, his home is with tony and the avengers, but mcu steve spends a long time searching for a place to call home. even in catws, when he's been in the 21st century for 3 years, he still has books stacked on the floor of his apartment and paintings he hasn't hung up yet. a year later in aou, sam asks if he's found a place in brooklyn yet, and steve says he doesn't think he could afford a place in brooklyn, and sam says "home is home" and steve sort of just stops smiling and goes quiet and looks away. the only place he calls home in the movies is avengers compound, once in aou when tony asks if he's alright and steve says "i'm home" and once in infinity war when sam asks where they're going and steve says "home" (referring again to the compound). and when the compound gets blown to bits in endgame, even that's gone

on the other hand mcu tony seems more well adjusted than 616 tony and that felt like a deliberate choice based on the scenes that didn't make it into the movie. for example ,there's a deleted scene from im1 where pepper finds tony on the floor the morning after a party, drinking in his iron man suit and he's bleeding and there's a wisp of smoke coming from his armour and he is clearly not doing well, and an alternative opening scene for im2 that they didn't use where tony is vomiting and altogether freaking out a little bit before the stark expo

tony's alcoholism and sobriety is an important part of his 616 character, and there's the birthday party scene in im2 where tony gets drunk to cope with the fact that he's dying, but other than that and mysterio casually calling tony a "boozy man-child" in spiderman ffh, it's not really part of his mcu character

there's also the childhood trauma he has from howard, 616 howard was horribly abusive!!!!! a lot of people dislike mcu howard for not showing tony affection growing up etc, but the mcu portrays that father-son relationship in a more complicated light so you do see people split over tony forgiving him in the end. for example tony invents the new element in im2 with the help of howard's old tapes and notes and goes "dead for almost 20 years and still taking me to school," tony tells steve "my father made that shield" "he made it for you," and there's the full on reconciliation scene tony has with howard in endgame (also we get to see young howard stark in catfa and agent carter and he is honestly so likeable there, which still confuses me to this day but anyway)

and in the comics tony sees himself as more separate from iron man, hence the secret identity, and it feels like he sees iron man as his repentance and as having only his good qualities, someone he wishes he could be? but they tossed that right out at the end of im1 when tony literally says "i am iron man," which was a very clear rejection of the identity-crisis component of his 616 character, and they drive it home again when it's his last line in endgame. i think mcu tony sees iron man as an almost inextricable part of himself which i really love about him, and it makes sense because 616 tony hates himself so much more than mcu tony does ;_;

in terms of steve and tony's relationship, they have such a long history of friendship in the comics which makes the civil war arc hurt more but i feel like they always have that friendship as a bedrock to keep building and rebuilding their relationship on, whereas in the mcu they get off on the wrong foot and tiptoe around a very fragile relationship/disproportionately deep feelings for a few years but don't trust each other enough for a long time and that's the reason their civil war happens, and it's only at the end of their canon that they resolve it and really come together

there's also the romantic relationships- they both have several significant love interests in the comics but just one true love in the movies, it's always been peggy for steve and pepper for tony, but i think that's more due to the nature of the mcu being one movie canon and 616 spanning so many more years and going through so many more writers

now i'm just rambling but they shifted a lot of the characters around in steve's life as well, like the role sharon plays in the comics is diluted in the movies and peggy and natasha are the two most important women in his life instead because they're the ones who give him that support and guidance. also mcu stevebucky doesn't really exist in the same way in the comics because they didn't grow up childhood friends with bucky being protective over steve, they met in the military and bucky is a few years younger than steve in the comics, so steve was a mentor to him

#anon #asked #stevetony #stony #st♡ny

[runawaydr3amerao3]

hi! how are you?? i hope you are having a good day! (im sorry if this message sounds a lot like a corporate email hahaha im at work watching tumblr xDDD)

i just wanted to ask you if you have a podcast??, i think i read that somewhere (or maybe i imagined that (i mean... it's totally possible 'cause im delulu)) if the podcast exists, can you send me the link? Thank you in advance!! p.d. i apologize if i made any mistakes! english is not my native language :) p.d.2 i love your tumblr!! p.d.3 im sorry for using so many exclamation points, im a millenial xD

First of all, never apologise for your English! As someone who only speaks English, you will never understand how impressive most of us find you and your fellow bi- or multi-linguals, let alone those of you who are bi- or multi-literate as well! 💐🥹

Secondly, don't apologise for your enthusiasm either! I'm a chronic exclamation-mark overuser. Also a Millennial. Is that a thing, the correlation? I'm an emoji tragic, too. I just accept these things about myself now. 🙃

Thirdly, you're so sweet! Thank you for liking my Tumblr! It's really just me gleefully hoarding and sharing all the cool things other people share, but if you're enjoying my curation, I'm super glad. 🥰

Lastly, you were close! I don't have a podcast myself, but my wonderful friends @talltalesandbedtimestories and @sam-is-my-safe-word do! It's the Idling In the Impala podcast (@idlingintheimpalapodcast), and it's all about SPN, the fandom, and the fanfiction. They had me on for an interview recently, which is what you might be thinking of. 🥲 There'll be a part two out in a few weeks, I think, where I sound much more chill and together (as much as I ever do. 🤭) after Sandra and Kasey helped me overcome some of my nerves about the whole thing. 💖

The entire podcast is wonderful, so I recommend it to everyone! I AM A SHILL FOR MY FRIENDS AND I REGRET NOTHING. Wait, we call it 'hyping' now, I think. Anyway. There are fanwork author/artist interviews, fic recs and dissections, podfics by Sandra, convention run-downs, fandom discourse, show meta, trope discussions, lubrication lessons from the Agent of Chaos and Kink, and so much more. 🥰 Check it out!

Thank you again for your lovely message. You made my day.

#ask and ye shall receive #more than ye asked for probably #supernatural podcast #spn podcast #idlingintheimpala #the podcast by and for lovers of supernatural and the fanfiction it inspires #idling in the impala #supernatural #spn

[piracytheorist]

I've recently migrated to Tumblr from the blue bird hellsite and I'm really enjoying it, a big part of it is due to all the extra fandom content and that includes your blog, so thank you!

You've probably answered this somewhere (apologies if so) but how come you don't read the manga? I really enjoy the anime and the second season and movie can't come quick enough!

Hi and welcome, hope you have fun in this silly little hellsite XD I'm glad I'm one of the people that make your stay enjoyable <3

I did mention in a post some time ago about why I don't read the sxf manga but I think you're the first one to ask me about it so don't worry ;) my quick answer is that reading manga from the small screen of my laptop ruins my immersion (especially in comparison to reading in printed form), and that in general I don't like spoilers and I prefer experiencing a story without knowing anything about it.

While watching the anime I feel fully immersed and I can properly enjoy it because anime is meant to be watched from a screen. I love the story, but as I said I prefer going in on a story almost completely blind, I like not knowing what's going to happen, and I have actually tried reading a few manga chapters before they were animated, and while it was a fun experience, it ended up lessening my enjoyment of the episodes slightly. I was comparing stuff a lot. It's like reading a book and then watching a film that was based on it, you usually spot what is missing and make way too many comparisons. On the other hand, I did not make such comparisons when I read the manga after watching the anime, I could instead enjoy it just as much. That was like reading the book after watching the film, in which case, for me, the film isn't ruined and the book provides cool little details that the film omitted.

So, after I compared my experiences and saw what was more enjoyable to me, I decided to not read further into the manga and only read the chapters after I watch their respective anime episodes. I have full respect for Endo's work and the effort and dedication he's put into it, I've been slowly buying the manga volumes and will continue to do so unless a scandal arises or the story goes full downhill both of which I hope never happen and I neither suggest everyone should do it my way nor do I take pride in it. It makes being in the fandom very hard (since I cannot engage in pretty much any discussion nor interact with most other fans) but I really really really love this story and its characters, and I want to give myself the chance to enjoy it in the way I know will be most enjoyable to me.

I am so jealous of people who like or don't mind spoilers, or who can get fully immersed by the manga alone. I know there's so much of the story and development I'm missing and since my main reason for being on tumblr is a) meta analysis and b) talking about it with other fans, being anime-only is almost contradictory to that. But it's a story promising enough to make me believe the wait will be worth it :)

I've already put a countdown widget on my phone for the movie, and I can't wait for the season 2 premiere date to be officially announced so I can add a countdown for that too! I'm so excited to get more of the story, as well as new stuff with the film! From some spoilers I've gotten for the following chapters, it seems to be an arc with great story and development so I can't wait to experience it for myself :D

#resonancebeach #nette speaks #sxf #ask and ye shall receive

[absolutebl]

Hii

Thank you so much for your lists, meta, spreadsheets and so on. I found BL relatively recently but as a queer person who used to watch any queer movie I could get my hands on, it has been amazing. And your blog has helped me to understand BL, tropes, filming techniques/styles, media analysis, recommendations and so forth. Thank you so much for your hard work.

I wanted to ask, I have a friend a recently met that is queer and thought he (is from the US) might like BL. I was thinking in recommending him The new employee or Bad buddy, but wanted to ask you what would you recommend a queer person to first start in BL.

Also, I love Moon Ji Yong and Khaotung's in-love eyes. They're superb. I was wondering if you have a top of your fav in-love eyes of BL.

Again, thank you so much, sending good vibes ✨

Thank you for the compliments! So glad to be helpful!

My favorite love eyes?

Currently? Gongchan - Unintentional Love Story:

what would you recommend a queer person to first start in BL?

I thought I had a post about this but now I can't find it so I'm going to cobble one together for you.

I did do come intro level BL question here, but none of them speak specifically to a queer viewer.

#asked and answered #currently my favorite boy #Gongchan #korena bl #korean bl #thai bl