wip 😗

Remaking this post because my old blog got nuked

Hey my old blog @doggirlnarcolepsy got terminated in the recent trans fem tumblr purge, so I'll be posting from this url from now on. Unless tumblr decides to reverse their rash and uncalled for decision, I guess...

Me and my wife have been struggling make ends meet this month and have an unpaid internet and power bill totaling at $225 that urgently need to be paid off or collection agencies will make our life a living hell recouping the charges and fees we will incur. (You can read the original post @queensizeddonger for more detail)

We haven't been able to pick up our hormones or my wife's ozempic yet, as we've been putting aside everything we've received to cover the overdue bills. We've haven't been able to cover groceries either for a while so we've been going days on and off without dinner as our only meal trying to ration what we have left.

Everything has just been so chaotic these last couple of weeks negotiating with utility companies for extensions, barely eating and tumblr nuking my blog out of literally nowhere.. If anyone is able to help out it would be a huge relief for the both of us and we would be incredibly grateful

P*yp*l: QueenSizedDonger

"this female character is underdeveloped" TO YOU. I can read subtext and I know all about her backstory and her rich inner life. also she told me personally

I've seen Otto flirt with every brother but ONE!! I desperately need to see Otto brutally rejected by a happily married Bruce(and possibly salty Brandi??)

Is this in the cards for Otto 🤨

He can dish it out but he certainly can't take it

look at this pic i found on twitter

Prompt 115

“Seriously old man?” the rumbling voice nearly caused Tim to jump, his eyes darting away from where Ras was sitting, the Al Ghul almost seeming to perk. It was kind of hard to miss the man… teen… being? It was kind of hard to miss the owner of the voice what with how their hair looked like it was on fire. 

They motioned around at well, everything, crimson eyes looking exasperated. “Really?” They were definitely motioning towards him, interrupting Ras when he opened his mouth to talk. “No, I don’t want to hear it, I swear- Did he kidnap you?” That was definitely aimed at him. 

“N-no?” Tim was feeling slightly unbalanced and may be on hour sixty without sleep at this point, if the hour long nap was counted. “I need help finding my not-dad who's lost in time.” 

The being let out a strangled noise that Tim could nearly swear was almost another one, but couldn’t vocalize his slurred thoughts as the dude muttered something, motioning around as though he was tempted to strangle something or someone. 

Ras cleared his throat, looking almost awkward which was how Tim knew he had to be dreaming or drugged. Probably drugged. “Jordan, how good to see you, it’s been so long-”

“Can it Pops,” the being-named-Jordan scoffed, finger pointing towards the Demon’s Head. “Moms still pissed and isn’t coming back any time soon with you still pulling this shit.” 

Tim felt his brain stall, process for a moment, then process some more over what he just heard before his mouth ran before it could catch up. “Ras is married???” 

Come, I will tell you the legend of the blacksmith's daughter, and how she stole the heart of a demon.

Book III of The Moth and the Bear, The Summer Road, is coming out this summer!

I love the idea of Kellaborn people painting and sharing stories about Ruyak and Kaelin after meeting them on their journey. I suspect generations later there are many tales and interpretations, possibly even a whole mythos. Everyone who meets them is certainly changed by them.

the good thing about black yarn is that it hides your mistakes. the bad thing about black yarn is that it makes you make mistakes.

Jason Sudeikis as Ted Lasso Seasons 1-3 » T-shirts

I’m doing 3x a week weightlifting classes, and weirdly enough it’s making me look forward to the future

and somewhere else lance is screaming, begging this stubborn, horrible fighter pilot to stay.

This is technically in response/as an addition to a post on the supposed ‘double standard’ in the fandom between Zuko and Jet as Katara’s love interests, but it’s been so long since it was posted and I figured the OP would be entirely uninterested in my word vomit, especially after like one and half years—so, separate post. I added a link for those interested. There's a cut because this got quite long lmao.

In short, the post supposes the argument that though Jet would’ve made Katara kill people (something Zuko very much Did Not Do, no matter what you think about The Southern Raiders), he cleaned up his act after this. Zuko, on the other hand, did lots of Really Bad Things to Katara & Co. with far more frequency than Jet did and got redeemed after a multitude of episodes doing Various Things Moste Evile. To then slap Jet with The Toxic Ex-label and see Zuko as the ‘healthier’ and ‘better’ option creates a Double Standard(™) within the fandom, which is supposedly bad and not an arguably incorrect reading. 

But the differences in fandom perception between Jet and Zuko as Love Interests for Katara (one of which canonically, and the other potentially and apparently talked about in the writer’s room) are easily explained, as can the Supposed Double Standard—just by thinking about it from Katara’s viewpoint, or even the audience’s. Because, well, the worst things Jet ‘almost’ ended up doing didn’t happen because of outside interference only. 

That’s the important bit here. He 100% would’ve drowned an entire village just to get rid of a handful of Fire Nation soldiers, had Sokka not managed to evacuate everybody. He 100% would’ve grievously injured two people who, as far as Jet and everybody else were aware, were refugees who might not even be firebenders — considering nobody else saw Iroh heat up his tea, he could’ve been wrong — in an attempt to prove his own hunch. Had the guards not been there, had Zuko not been able to fight back with swords, Jet would’ve genuinely attempted to wound them for as much as a puff of smoke. And Jet consistently involves bystanders (innocent or not) in his desperate quest to harm and defeat the Fire Nation: the Gaang (and particularly Katara, through explicitly manipulative means) and the villagers in Jet; Zuko, Iroh, and the people in the teashop in City of Walls and Secrets. Additionally, we don’t see more violence from him because he’s not a main character like Zuko is—though it’s implied that Jet beats up villagers who are supposedly in cahoots with the Fire Nation often, only agreeing to turn over a new leaf when he, Smellerbee, and Longshot decide to move to Ba Sing Se. 

Zuko explicitly and frequently doesn’t harm people: that, or it isn’t important to the plot. He doesn’t burn down the village on Kyoshi, he literally only manages to lightly singe it. He threatens people with violence frequently but never actually goes in for the kill. I’d argue that the most explicitly violent thing he does in Book 1 is breaking Aang out of the Pouhai Stronghold—for his own ends obviously, but if it’s spelled like treason and sounds like treason, it’s probably treason. When he thinks of robbing the pregnant couple while he’s on the run, he stops himself of his own volition; when he considers using Appa to catch Aang (this was a point made against Zuko in the post), he’s unaware of what Appa’s been through prior to that point and sees him as no more than an animal used for travel, much like the ostrich horse he stole earlier in the season. 

Zuko’s schtick throughout Book 1 and 2 is that he doesn’t want to think of the consequences of his actions. His plans are never fully complete. He doesn’t think of how he’s going to get a chained, notoriously slippery little eel of an Avatar to the Fire Nation, and he doesn’t think about what would happen to twelve-year-old Aang after they got there—which is horrible of him, but it also shows an odd, ignorant kind of innocence that you’d associate with a kid who’s got a hard time telling right from wrong. Like, I love Zuko dearly, adore him even, but kiddo doesn’t think ahead until the Book 2 finale and even that’s debatable. He’ll eventually start thinking ahead a little bit but for the most part, he doesn’t. Not saying that takes away responsibility, because it absolutely doesn’t, but it is telling of Zuko’s character: he’s an ‘act first, think later’-kind of guy, all ‘fuck around; find out; maybe success’. His sole goal throughout Book 1 and 2 is going home, without even thinking on how to get there beyond like, Avatar in my custody => back in Fire Nation with Avatar => dad loves me again. And he says that his only intention is to go home too, in Ep 2 of Book 1:

Aang: If I go with you, [He holds his staff in front of him as an offer, making sure Zuko understands that he does not wish to continue fighting.] will you promise to leave everyone alone? [The camera cuts to a side-view of the area, Zuko's men still surrounding him, spears poised. After a brief moment of hesitation, Zuko erects himself and nods in agreement. Aang is apprehended by Zuko's men, who take his staff . . . ] Zuko: [Boarding the ship up the walkway. Determined.] Head a course for the Fire Nation. I'm going home.

(Added emphasis for my point)

Zuko is not the Big Bad. He’s not The Largest Threat. He never is. In Book 1 it’s Zhao, in Book 2 it’s Azula, and in Book 3 it’s Ozai. Zuko is a consistent threat, yes, but not a particularly large one no matter how good of a fighter he is. Because he’s presented to us as a disastrously hurt and traumatised little brat who we, the audience, are supposed to feel sorry for, and slowly grow fond of. Because we learn in The Storm that the notion of “caring for others is weak” has literally been branded into him. Because he keeps getting back up to fight, but consistently holds back. We are shown that he knows, on some level, that what he’s doing is wrong: the text suggests that Zuko is actively suppressing his morals. And by the time Zuko hires an assassin to ensure the Avatar is dead, we know that Zuko is incredibly unhappy with his choice(s) and is desperate to be safe; that he’s uncomfortable but wants to be comfortable; that he’s incorrect about the source of his fear while he’s back in the palace. The audience is shown this explicitly. 

By contrast, we’re shown that Jet is fully aware that those villagers will die. He’s fully aware that, if he manages to prove the two refugees are firebenders, they’ll be arrested and probably mutilated (if the hand-crushing is any indication). I love Jet and his character, but he’s supposed to be the example of poisoning yourself with your hatred, anger, and hurt. He’s revenge that goes too far, because he doesn’t allow himself closure. He knows the consequences and isn’t shown to care for them, as long as his goal is furthered.

And there is the small, but significant, difference between the two characters: Zuko initially just wants to capture the Avatar, is purposefully remaining unaware of what will happen when he does so, and is clearly shown to change, while Jet just wants to punish firebenders and is very aware of what will be necessary for him to do so, with a handful of lines of how he ‘stopped being like that’. And honestly, Jet is far more mature than Zuko is for quite some time, regarding the violence of war—basically as mature as Zuko eventually becomes at the tail-end of his redemption arc. But Zuko’s maturity is at that point healthier, because he doesn’t want to genuinely do harm. 

In regards to their separate relationships with Katara, there’s these fantastic points that @sokkastyles made in reply to the post:

The fact that Zuko actually did change and Katara actually forgave him makes ALL the difference. [ . . . ] The thing about Jet is how manipulative he was with Katara. He not only almost made her kill innocents, but he lied to her about the man he attacked having a knife when he was called out, so that Katara would see her as righteous. Someone who is willing to lie in order to make themselves seem good and someone who says they are going to change but then does the same things doesn’t have a good track record, and that’s a more troubling relationship dynamic than someone who acts as an upfront enemy but then sincerely changes.

And: 

I do think it makes sense to focus on manipulation being worse than being a cartoon villain when we're talking about personal relationships. I think many people can relate to having someone like Jet in their lives who seems nice but who lies and manipulates to justify their own bad behavior despite repeatedly claiming that they will change. Not that many people will experience being tied to a tree by someone who wants you to tell them where the Avatar is, and it is completely reasonable for people to be more forgivable of things Zuko did as a villain than things Jet did to Katara when he claimed to be a friend.

I actually don’t have anything to add to this, lol. It’s succinct and well-worded.

Lastly, in addition the relatability and the relationships being different (the manipulative, emotionally hurt, and self-proclaimed anti-hero versus the initially childish, explicitly confused and desperate cartoon villain, plus the girl they hurt horribly), there’s also the problem of Jet not being a main character. Jet is a relatively well-written side character, whilst Zuko is very quickly established as a main-ish character with his own POV (as the writers decided during the conceptualisation that he’d be joining Team Avatar eventually). Zuko’s troubling, self-destructive nature that has been forced upon him and his Tragic Childhood is shown in high definition. The audience is supposed to eventually be okay with Zuko and hopefully like him, slowly adding puzzle pieces to complete the picture of a horrific earlier youth and treatment by nearly everybody he knows except Iroh. Something like this isn’t necessary with Jet, not just because he was already incredibly likeable and understandable from his introduction and onwards, but also because he’s neither a villain nor a main character. 

There’s multiple reasons as to why Zuko is often seen as the ‘better’ option, just like there are multiple reasons why Jet and Zuko are compared so frequently—they’re both traumatised teenage boys who ‘rebel’ to get some semblance of control back, but we see Zuko change into a kid anyone would be a little bit proud and fond of and that doesn’t happen with Jet. Double standard or not, Zuko and Jet are different characters who the writers also treated very differently, on purpose. It makes sense to me that the audience would think Zutara is the ‘less bad’ or far better option. We know far more about Zuko than we know about Jet; and Jet’s redemption arc, if we can even call it that, halts permanently when Zuko’s is reaching the height it for him to go into a freefall, ultimately culminating in a genuine redemption. We, the audience, know this. So does Katara.

i don't wanna have any adventures unless they're with you. / i am, and have been for some time, just totally, ridiculously, desperately in love with you.

“queer spaces should be inclusive of people who don’t enjoy sex and who have “strange”, negative or repulsed relationships with sex” and “sex is an important aspect of lgbt community, history, and activism and queer people should be allowed and able to talk freely about sex without stigma or shame” are ideas that can and should coexist.

back off our boy!