Reblog so everyone can hear what they need.

Ha I wonder how many strokes the most complex Chinese character has like maybe eightee-

Reading amazing fanfiction, then forgetting to bookmark it

Yip Yip!! 4 days until my shop reopens and this will be a special motive that will be available as a print and a keychain!!

@staliaqueen

thought you might find this funny, as to why I was intending to make that GIF request on my sideblog.

In response to someone claiming either Zuko or Toph should be the protagonist of the show.

Like yes, those are the best characters outside of Aang but ...

Swift rhetorical kick to the face oughta set them straight. /I’m really a pacifist I swear but dang those are fighting words. I will fight you on this.

My take on the broad-billed parrot! It must have been quite the weird guy when it was around.

Details under cut

Here’s the thing about the air nomads.

I introduced a friend to ATLA a few nights ago, and they had only known two things about the entire show: the cabbage meme, and that Aang apparently wants to ride every large and dangerous animal he can possibly find. We got through the first five or so episodes, and my friend noted that Aang is exactly what a 12-year-old would be like if given godlike powers, and that this is literally just what he could do with airbending. He can’t even wield any of the other elements, and he’s one of the most powerful people on the planet, because he’s an airbender.

And that got me thinking.

This snippet from Bitter Work is one of the few pieces of concrete information we get about the airbenders, at least in ATLA. Iroh is explaining to Zuko how all four of the elements connect to the world and to each other.

Fire is the element of power, of desire and will, of ambition and the ability to see it through. Power is crucial to the world; without it, there’s no drive, no momentum, no push. But fire can easily grow out of control and become dangerous; it can become unpredictable, unless it is nurtured and watched and structured.

Earth is the element of substance, persistence, and enduring. Earth is strong, consistent, and blunt. It can construct things with a sense of permanence; a house, a town, a walled city. But earth is also stubborn; it’s liable to get stuck, dig in, and stay put even when it’s best to move on.

Water is the element of change, of adaptation, of movement. Water is incredibly powerful both as a liquid and a solid; it will flow and redirect. But it also will change, even when you don’t want it to; ice will melt, liquid will evaporate. A life dedicated to change necessarily involves constant movement, never putting down roots, never letting yourself become too comfortable.

We see only a few flashbacks to Aang’s life in the temples, and we get a sense of who he was and what kind of upbringing he had.

This is a preteen with the power to fucking fly. He’s got no fear of falling, and a much reduced fear of death. There’s a reason why the sages avoid telling the new avatar their status until they turn sixteen; could you imagine a firebender, at twelve years old, learning that they were going to be the most powerful person in the whole world? Depending on that child, that could go so badly.

But the thing about Aang, and the thing about the Air Nomads, is that they were part of the world too. They contributed to the balance, and then they were all but wiped out by Sozin. What was lost, there? Was it freedom? Yes, but I think there’s something else too, and it’s just yet another piece of the utter brilliance of the worldbuilding of ATLA.

To recap: we have power to push us forward; we have stability to keep us strong; we have change to keep us moving.

And then we have this guy.

The air nomads brought fun to the world. They brought a very literal sense of lightheartedness.

Sozin saw this as a weakness. I think a lot of the world did, in ATLA. Why do the Air Nomads bother, right? They’re just up there in their temples, playing games, baking pies in order to throw them as a gag. As Iroh said above, they had pretty great senses of humour, and they didn’t take themselves too seriously.

But that’s a huge part of having a world of balance and peace.

It’s not just about power, or might, or the ability to adapt. You can have all of those, but you also need fun. You need the ability to be vulnerable, to have no ambitions beyond just having a good day. You need to be able to embrace silliness, to nurture play, to have that space where a very specific kind of emotional growth can occur. Fun makes a hard life a little easier. Fun makes your own mortality a little less frightening to grasp. Fun is the spaces in between, that can’t be measured by money or military might. Fun is what nurtures imagination, allows you to see a situation in a whole new light, to find new solutions to problems previously considered impossible.

Fun is what makes a stranger into a friend, rather than an enemy.

Fun helps you see past your differences.

Fun is what fuels curiosity and openmindedness.

Fun is the first thing to die in a war.

Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1

The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.

So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.

So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.

Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.

And the probe is working again.

From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.

I call upon the fan fic writing gods to bless you with the perseverance to finish one of your unfinished drafts. 

May your fingers dance along the letters upon your device with ease, may the devil of distraction stay far from you, and may your work not need much editing.

I pass this blessing upon every fan fic writer out there.

oh god you don’t know how much this hit me, friars are such a strong running theme in a story I’m writing and also a song I wrote that I adapted into it later

The sad thing is, it’s HARD nowadays to even FIND beta readers. FFN had a fairly active community section for it in ye olden days, but now it’s dried up.

If anyone knows online locations where this networking might occur now, PLEASE let me know.

I’ve included this plea in my Pinned Post for years now, and it may be because I’m not well-known in the least, but I’ve never heard a peep in response about it.

do you know where "no beta we die like x" comes from and how it is used?

The term "beta" in this context is short for "beta reader" - a person who reads a fic while it's still in the editing stage and helps the writer get it ready to post. Some betas check grammar. Some check canon compliance. Some are sensitivity readers. There are lots of things that betas can do.

So functionally, saying "no beta" means that the writer didn't get this checked by a second person before they posted it. It's a warning that there might be errors or typos etc. It's mostly used when an author has written something quickly and is posting without doing a lot of (or any) edits first.

As for where it comes from? It all started with a bumper sticker.

This image was an internet meme at one point, and it got meme'd on in the form of "no ___ we ___ like men"

Here on tumblr, one of the versions that got really popular was from now-deleted user @grec1a who created this version:

From there, it migrated to AO3 as the "no beta we die like men" tag, and very often the word men is replaced by the name of a character who dies in canon.

Live footage of Aang simultaneously letting out ALL, every last ounce, of his frustration at how the world has gone topsy turvy in the past 100 years and also dodging Azula like a BEAST

me except it’s for writing

I made something

If these people caught someone masked on camera stealing their one year old female dog with clear intent to spirit them away to some shady, filthy, miserable puppy mill place, would they keep THEIR cool? I think not.

All Aang had to go on was an apparently reputable and trustworthy adult- a guy whose established quest was knowledge- earlier in the episode EMPHATICALLY drive off sandbenders when they so much as LOOKED at Appa.

Danger.

great danger

from someone who clearly knew what he was on about

(Same guy who affectionately and respectfully said, ‘are you the last of your kind?’ to Appa)

Aang had no idea what these people intended. Appa would make countless good coats to sell to a different climate market OR a good source of food.

He’s one step away from a cow, after all. (cow-hog, for this universe)

Nobody knows what a flying bison even IS anymore.

Remember when he commented on ‘dead animals’ adorning the walls in Bato’s tent in the first season? Yeah.

Aang is genre savvy. He knows what world he inhabits.

If these Aang haters were in a country where it’s normal to eat dogs, and their dog went suddenly missing? Well your companion isn’t NECESSARILY dead! Maybe just lost! Let’s see how well THEY handle having their pet in potential mortal danger.

Never mind the background of having your entire rest of a human family butchered.

What about the Aang antis who say his trauma is not important because he lost the air nomads a 100 years ago or when they lost Appa?

I swear to God, this fandom is so fucking stupid when it comes to understanding how trauma works, that if Zuko didn't literally have a physical reminder of it on his damn face, fans would claim Ozai did not abuse him (they already to it to Azula after all).

IMAGINE thinking that "You lost everyone you ever knew and loved at once" is something that stops hurting EVER. And while yeah, they died 100 years ago, Aang was frozen during all that time, and only found out about what happened when Katara and Sokka accidentally freed him. He did NOT have 100 years to process what happened, he literally had this massive trauma to deal with while having the new burden of "If you don't master all the elements, something that took every other Avatar years to accomplish, in just a few months, everyone is gonna fucking die."

Seriously, people are constantly giving Aang shit for being immature or acting too much like a kid (spoilers: HE IS ONE, YOU DIPSHITS!), but considering the trauma of, again, LOSING LITERALLY EVERYONE HE KNEW AND LOVED IN A BLINK OF AN EYE, that kid is super well-adjusted. I would have spent a whole week crying, then walk into the ocean because what's the point of anything anymore?

As for the Appa thing, I've said it all once, and I'll say it again.

1 - Appa is literally meant to have a spiritual bond with Aang that cannot be broken even in death (see Roku and his dragon, who not only chose to die with him but also is still helping him out in the spirit world).

2 - Appa is one of the few things Aang did NOT lose. Literally the only other living reminder of his "old life" is Bumi - who was being held prisoner by the Fire Nation at the time.

3 - Appa is one of the few surviving things from the air-nomads. Losing him is a tragedy not just to Aang, but to the whole world.

4 - APPA WAS LITERALLY CAPTURED! Who the hell would be okay with hearing "By the way, someone you love was kidnapped and you might never see them again. In fact, they could be dead right now"

Trying to act like Aang was overreacting when he lost Appa or when he found out about the genocide of his people is pure bad-faith reading. It's like being mad at Zuko for falling for Ozai's trap on the day of the eclipse, like he would not be extremelly vulnerable in such a position - Ozai has been his abuser for years AND Zuko, naturally, was desperate to find out what the hell to his mother.

It's assuming that the characters daring to show EMOTION is a bad thing because "it affects the plot", as if "trauma informs a character's decisions" is not the point in the first place. Nope, the story would totally be much better if Avatar was pure exposition all the time instead of having anyone CARE about anything ever, and we especially can't have the protagonist be emotionally attached to anything and thus be sympathetic to us - just look at how well that worked in the Shyamalam movie!

Gonna make a masterpost for Pastel Punk Aang takes here real soon.

I'm tired of people defining Aang as this boring little vanilla guy. Aang helped Katara destroy a factory. He participated in Toph's scams. He shrugged off Katara's theft of the waterbending scroll and heartily laughed at her jokes about it. He was delighted by the Painted Lady ruse. He mastered airbending at twelve and the avatar state at thirteen. He snooped around the old ship after Katara said it was booby trapped and dared her to follow and stepped up to take the blame when it went badly and then surrendered himself to protect the village because he knew he could hand everyone on that ship their asses and escape. He outright lied to two communities that had been bickering for a century to get them to stop. He egged on Katara when she decided to throw hands with Pakku. He wants to ride every big animal in the world ("they don't like being ridden but that's what makes it fun" -unhinged take). He has sick burns for everyone which are doubly funny because they're almost always unintended as such. He threw a clandestine dance party in the nation that banned dancing and thought he was dead and wanted him dead. Before that he corrected and argued with teachers, beat a bully without lifting a finger and then brought his teenage friends to pose as his parents. The whole Bonzu Pippipadaleopsicopolis the Third thing. The being idiots with Sokka in Ba Sing Se thing with the bowing and the busboys disguises. He rightfully asked "what's cosmic power compared to a girl". Let's add all the badass stuff he does as a bender and as the Avatar up to and including energybending and the conversation with Koh the Face Stealer. That time in The Chase when he finished the fur trail and then decided to just sit down, sleep deprived, to wait and face whoever it was chasing them. Aang is one of the funniest and coolest characters I've ever seen and he deserves more respect. Absolutely unhinged kid with immense powers and the world is lucky he's goofy and has a good heart.

Aang outcunted everyone in this intro