it's you i welcome death with

Humanity's Imprint; The Quest To Be Remembered Credit to: @mag200 (x), @janemorris (x), @zegalba (x)

i love you whiny singers

i love you shouty singers

i love you raspy singers

i love you drawly singers

i love you scratchy singers

So I really wanted to do the thing where you sing in an echo-y building, which i did, but now the leaves being blown around on the floor play backup vocals and they are Loud (also the song is by Dirt Poor Robins)

I strongly headcanon that Silco didn't know Singed was keeping Vander's body in his lab and turning it into a monster. Because there's no way Silco would have been normal about it. Singed doesn't outright lie often, if at all - he's all for hard truths. But he probably knows his patron is very weird about Vander (Silco thinks himself very cold and restrained, but anyone who spends time with him hears about how He's Totally Over It and Is Stronger Now. See, Deckard). Singed doesn't want someone in his lab monologuing and drinking at random hours of the day and night when he's trying to torture the subject conduct experiments. If Silco asked "what's behind that door?" Singed would have to say "reanimation is a topic of significant personal and professional interest to me, and I pursue it in my spare time using part of the facility not otherwise occupied. So far the results have regrettably borne little resemblance to the original subject, but negative study results are of value to science too." And Silco must know Singed had Vander's body. Immediately after the cannery incident Singed was badly injured, and the only people (that we know of) who could have dragged off Vander's body for Singed were Silco's remaining crew. I suppose you can hypothesise the body ended up on the black market and Singed bought it later, or something. ...anyway, it's Silco who should be asking "what's that you have there?" and Singed saying "a smoothie?" I still think there's a 10% chance that Warwick has some of Silco in him and that's what makes Singed eventually able to create a thinking monster from a corpse. I rambled about this theory here and in this fic.

🎶 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘨𝘢𝘨𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘴𝘪𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘰𝘯𝘴 🎶

Sketches of some metalheads from Cave Island.

I LOVE CAVE ISLAAAANDDDDD🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

lark that sings at dawn

Fuck it, Zhou Shen acappella video.

if i knew how to make podcast edits i'd edit season 4 martin to this bit of phoebe bridgers' version of the gold..

'that gold mine changed you' works so well with jon's growing alignment to the eye? 'you don't have to hold me anymore' works so well with lonely!martin and jon?? THE OLD MAN LYRICS WITH PETER LUKAS???? you've become my ceiling????????? aAghhhhh

Art Style and Emotions Evoked

One of the choices made for ATLA that I really admire is that they sometimes used intentional shifts in art style (such as lines and colors) to change the atmosphere in a scene (or part of a scene, such as an ink painting) and give off a certain feeling, often dream-like and with the occasional benefit of reminding us of real life art history. 

Some examples of this can be seen in the episodes The Storm, The Cave of Two Lovers, Zuko Alone, Tales of Ba Sing Se and The Beach. Basically, it tends to happen during Zuko’s trips down memory lane or when focus is put on other members of the Fire Family (but not always).

(Above Images from The Storm)

You can see the differences of course, but also the strong yet subtle similarities between the first three images above—and especially the third one where a younger Zuko can be seen standing next to his father—and the fourth one after, where Zuko is standing on his ship. The third and fourth images practically mirror each other; one younger with a more innocent vibe, the other older and hardened from the past.

Also, the first three, to me, have softer edges and warmer tones. And (when animated) appear more blurry. It reminds me of a sepia-hued, smudge-style canvas painting or even an edited photograph. It’s truly like a memory, which is exactly what that scene depicts.

***

(Above Image from Zuko Alone)

The above is yet another example of a memory being shown within scene, although it somehow seems more “real” than the previous images, imo.

I think it’s because of the way it’s made to look closer to the regular art style. A part of me wonders if this maybe was the “original” art style that they were going to go for, before they switched to a more commonly used one.

***

(Above Image from The Beach)

Now I'd say the above is akin to that of a caricature, which I absolutely love. The Fire Gang all look like themselves, yet not, due to the exaggeration that also helps to showcase their differing personalities. The beach was actually a goldmine for stuff like this: Exaggerated illustration of personality.

A few more beautiful examples:

All in all, the changes in art style were a very good, dynamic choice for a high quality, quickly-advancing show. I can look on the images used in this post alone for ages, just studying and enjoying them.

Remember when I complained abt my art tablet beig broken and my art lookig gross on my phone WRONG . MY ART LOOKS THE SAME HELP

Anyways Blarret and mimic my loves

Thoughts on Purgatory Day 4:

God what a fun day, and yet funnily enough a much more relaxed one.

It's gonna be interesting to see what the ramifications of blue's logout strat are gonna be because it's definitely going to be banned, but, from my understanding, blue used this strat to prove a point: that red's strategy was unfair.

Which is true, or at least I think it was true.

Personally, I feel like it was mostly unfair due to how difficult it used to be to get to global, but I feel like the admins have pretty fairly counteracted that and balanced things with today's introduction of the spawn portals.

Because with red's strat players HAD to physically travel to global and turn in the contracts within at least the last 30 minutes of gameplay. The portals now easily allow other teams to show up and at least put up a good fight, and we actually got to see how effective they are today with cellbit and charlie's assist they pulled for roier. If they had been just slightly quicker, green might've been able to steal back the win.

Which I think brings me to the other potentially unfair part of red's strat that I've seen be brought up which is that it isn't fair for streamers in European timezones/streamers who play earlier. Which is a fair criticism, but honestly I haven't personally been able to think of a way for the admins to balance the contracts around that without either: A) completely changing how contracts work, or B) unfairly punishing later streamers.

I think it's complicated, and I feel like the main thing that's gonna result from today isn't going to be them banning turning in tasks late but instead banning logging out right in front of the global NPCs. Knowing the admins, they'll probably figure out something I hadn't thought of and make the whole thing more fair for everyone.

Competition and lore wise, tomorrow is gonna be really interesting as well. A small alliance might be blooming between red and green and that might have massive ramifications going forward. That and I think (???????) that players might be getting their eggs tomorrow (?????). I know they described a period in which they had to keep them alive and the actual event ends on the 10th so I'm guessing they're arriving tomorrow. If they are, that shit is going to be crazy.

(Side note: It was also a delight to see teams casually hanging out more together today. As much as I enjoy the competition, I missed them all just chilling)

Overall, congrats blue on the win! Cheesy as fuck and they knew it but it was absolutely deserved! They worked their asses off! And green put up a hell of a fight! I hope they get their chance to win as well tomorrow!