SIGH like at the end of the day, there is nothing a live action ATLA show could bring that we didn't get in the animation. Other than appealing to the most annoying parts of fandom who want to deprioritize Aang.

if i lived in the avatar universe and was from the water tribe and couldn’t waterbend but my younger sibling could and i just had to sit there and watch how powerful they got moving water with their mind and being able to heal and the sheer power and versatility of the form but no matter how hard i tried the water would not budge for me no matter what. well i would simply kill myself. sokka is so strong

I say this as someone with mental disabilities, sometimes you just gotta take the L and do it. Maybe it'll cost you and send you into negative spoons but sometimes you gotta. We have a human debt we owe to one another and we have to fight for each other.

Disabilities make things hard to do safely, without pain, etc. Where you can, seek accomodations, ask for help, live your life, and do good in the world in the ways you can.

What we can't do with our disabilities? We can't sit here and wallow and use them as a shield.

see sometimes I try and think about it all more logically. what if it was all happening to a friend. my friend!! you completely forgot to feed your kitten his wet food for five days? you haven't drunk water for a couple of days? you didn't shower or change your clothes for four days? you've only eaten two actual meals in the last two days? your average sleep in the last week is around five hours? my friend, you need help.

since it's me, I don't need help.

setting up my old phone for my mother rn. she is driving me insane. how can one person contain this much negativity and bitterness? wow.

hmmm

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a stitch in time is great i am not sustaining any psychological damage at all <- words of a man who is lying

how do people, like, not think about a single bad interaction that lasted like five seconds for 3 years straight anytime they let their mind wander/become less than vigilant and also not long for very real death every single time it crosses their minds

Let the deceased rest : a rambling discussion of the impermanence of death in fiction, and why we should maybe let our characters go

So listen I didn't roll up onto this app to start writing rambling paragraphs on why I don't know if the constant revival of dead characters in fiction is a good move on our part, but here you are and here I am and I’m about to go off I guess.  To focus in a lens a little bit before we get started, I want to be very clear.  I am using mainly Western media for this examination, that and my own personal experience.  I mean if I really sit here and write as much as I think I might then maybe we’ll get some anime references in here too, but a lot of this is just being looked at through a world coloured by my own individual life and observations. 

But basically it boils down to this.  When I was a little kid and I used to play imagination games with my friends, I always, ALWAYS, wanted my character to die.  Now - to clarify, I did not want my character to die fully.  I was always revived in some mystical way, maybe I was never really dead in the first place.  But I always wanted it to happen.  I would build my story around it, would present it to our little ragtag group of kids running around a field and making up whole worlds to just pass the time, and my childhood friends would roll their eyes and sigh and put up with me.  Which was truly lovely of them because looking back on it now it must have been really fucking annoying.  My brother still makes jokes about it to this day.  

I want to be very clear here.  I wanted my characters to die every single time for one specific reason.  And that was for the revival.  Even as a kid I craved that angst, the emotional response of others looking on, of having to bare the weight of this insurmountable grief, of this terribly sad thing.  But I didn't want it to stick.  I wanted all the emotion without the permanence. The pain and the suffering and the sadness but without the end result of the end being, you know, the end.  

And that has followed me like a shadow into my own writing.  I kill off characters for the pain it inflicts onto others, for the growth that it will cause, and then I bring them back for that additional emotional release - the completion of the circle.  You take the pain and you hold it without breaking and eventually the reward of the resolution will come.  The suffering is worth it because the joy at the end is all the sweeter for it.  

And I am not an outlier in this mindset.  Everywhere you look in film, in television, in books, we think very similarly.  The death itself is painful, but Death has no weight in an unreal world.  Look here they are again, the person you missed - and yeah maybe they’re a little different, a little worse for wear but you have them back again.  Their people have them back again.  And we can all move on in healing together, instead of trying to piece ourselves back together with an absence so gaping you can't even see the other end of who you are.  

One of my closest friends has gotten back into Star Trek recently, which means that I have been listening to facts about the show, about the books, about the films, almost nonstop.  We watched the films together recently (the new ones not the old ones don’t come for me) and Kirk dies.  In the original it’s Spock, but the results are for the most part the same.  They die, some stuff happens, they come back.  And that was really when I started thinking about this as something so pervasive in our culture, in the way we view the world.  People come back more often than now.  Stranger Things - a hugely popular show known for it’s violence, it's willingness to throw it’s characters into brutal situations and to make sure that some don't walk out - is another with that kind of motif.  SPOILERS in case you haven't seen the fourth season, but basically a well liked and popular member of the main group of characters - Hopper - ‘dies’ at the end of the third season.  He leaves behind a touching note for his adoptive daughter and the scene is so raw and heartbreaking because you know he’s gone.  That that letter is what she has left of him, and those words are what she is going to have to hold onto.  It doesn't feel like enough.  It isn’t enough.  And that’s what makes it real.  It’s what causes an emotional response in people, the truth that we are witnessing.  However, in the very next season, we see that there was no need for such a devastated response, because here he is, back again and maybe a little worse for wear, but alive.  We get to see him reunite with his daughter, get to vicariously live that relief with her, get to feel the joy in the reunion.  

But that isn’t how it works, is it?  And this, I think, is the very crux of what I have been spending so many words trying to get to.  Because even now, there are days where I think about what life is going to be like when my dad comes back. Where I imagine the moment in my head, shape it from all sides and hold it there, a perfect image of a moment that will never happen.  Because my dad is dead.  He has been dead for nearly five years now and Death is unshakable in its endlessness.  No matter how may shows I watch or books I read or stories I write where the characters come back, where it's all ok, where the pain is fucking worth it, that won’t happen for me.  Because he is gone and that is that.  

I sometimes regret how much I read as a kid.  The worlds I was a part of, the stories that I absorbed became facets of who I am now, and I was reading where at the time it was hugely popular to revive a character.  Maybe they were a fan favourite.  Maybe they were part of a twist.  Maybe they were never really dead at all.  But any which way, there is a part of that mindset that has rooted itself in my psychology, and it is something so hard to fucking shake.  Because why would I want to?  There's relief in knowing that maybe I’ll get to see someone I love again, even if all they are is words on a page, a creation of someone else's mind.  And I think if done well, done rarely, this revival is something that can be beautiful.  That can have all the impacts intended and leave everyone, the creators, the observers, the characters themselves, contented with how it ends.  But again I think that the quantity with which these revivals occur? The commonplace nature of them?  I think that’s what fucks me up so bad, what makes it difficult for kids like me to separate what is fiction from what is reality.

Or maybe it’s just me.  Maybe it’s just been me all along.  But either way, I really try to take a step back as I write from now on, try to take a deep breath and think to myself before I bring someone back.  Is this what is right for you?  Or is this because I myself am afraid of losing you?  

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headcanons for frederick... it’s time. this time we talk about Mental Illness. tw for psychosis, ocd, depression, suicidal ideation and ableism below the cut.

he suffers from several mental illness including ocd & another atm unspecified disorder causing some level of psychosis, both of which he’s indicated or implied to have canonically - as well as depression (which is just headcanon on my part!) unfortunately, coming from a time when mental illnesses weren’t really well understood or treated with much sympathy, he knows that he has to hide his symptoms or he’d be thought of as “mad,” and he does think of himself pretty negatively/holds a lot of internalized ableist attitudes towards himself too.

he can get away with more than some people can due to his high standing in society, passing a lot of his ocd symptoms in particular as “eccentricities,” but he takes great effort to hide how badly everything affects him from other people. music is one of the only things that helps him deal with the voices and auditory hallucinations he hears, but they’re still just as present as they were in his childhood - he’s just gotten better at hiding that fact from others. often, he believes people are reading his thoughts or worries that he’s being controlled by others, though how strongly he believes this fluctuates over time.

his ocd symptoms are relatively mild all things considered, and i’m still working on developing exactly how his ocd affects him/what kind of compulsions he engages in, but he’s luckily still functional enough to hide it for the most part. that doesn’t stop the anxiety and distress it brings him, though, nor does it stop it from often interfering with his life. recently, the obsessions and compulsions have slowly started getting worse, and he sometimes fears that things are on the edge of spiraling out of control.

his depression is mostly a result of how the above illnesses affect him as well as his lack of musical talent, causing him to be disowned by his family and causing him a great deal of distress personally too. even after moving to france, he still tries to compose songs in private, often becoming frustrated as he can’t reach the quality he wants, and this more than anything else causes him to have periods of depression. he’s very good at hiding this from others and often comes across as almost fully functional to an outsider, but internally, he struggles to motivate himself to do anything that isn’t related to music, and generally tries to cope by either trying to distract himself by performing or isolating entirely. sometimes he does struggle with suicidal thoughts and feelings, but spite is one hell of a motivator, and his determination to one day compose songs like he used to keeps him going.

a few unrelated headcanons - he’s in general a rather intense person, which can make people uncomfortable. he enjoys indulging in luxury when he can, and is rather self-centered in that he’s usually thinking about himself and doesn’t spend much time on other people or their problems. part of that is just because he’s got so much on his plate, and he does care deeply about the few people who he’s actually close to, but those are few and far between. mary kreiburg, who i imagine also struggled with mental illness and depression especially, is one of the few people he really felt could understand him, so he was devastated by her death.

You know your country's turning into a dictatorship when you want to write about the recent shit your prime ministers been up to but you're scared you'll disappear yhe way so many journalists have done in the past 5 years he's been in power

Well hopefully once I'm fully back on my meds I'll feel better bc oof

Infinite list of favourite lyrics: 221/?

Half Man Half Biscuit - Stuck up a Hornbeam (2014)

"I'm so desolate, I'm so all alone.

I feel arthritic in every single bone.

I've got a mynah bird -

It does nothing but moan.

For you, I'd lose

My self-esteem;

For you, I'd lose

My self-esteem;

For Crewe, I'd use

Junction 16."