My neurotypical friend just looked at my calendar and went ‘Book, you don’t need to specify what time you have breakfast, and have a shower - just set your wake up time and what time you need to leave the house’

And I’m just sat there going ‘ohoho, it is soooo obvious you have never experienced executive dysfunction’

i feel like the reason aang isn’t as adored and beloved as he should be is because he’s the protagonist but he’s also not an archetypal western classical hero. i don’t agree with the entirety of that “avatar aang: feminist icon” essay because i think the role of patriarchy and gender in atla is more complex than what that essay posits, but he definitely complicates the masculine ideal of heroism and generally does not conform to patriarchal notions of masculinity. which is very deliberate, especially as contrasted with sokka and zuko’s explicit struggles with the imperialist/colonial standards of an aggressive, militaristic, and chauvinistic masculinity. aang is subversive because he represents an absence of war in a world ravaged by it. through his link to a (somewhat more) peaceful and harmonious past, he represents a better possible future. as katara would say, he brings people hope.

but people don’t like that he’s not visibly edgy or tormented like zuko is (even though he’s a far more tragic character than zuko is, just fyi), that he isn’t “cool” (even though he’s literally the coolest kid ever, just fyi), that he “gets the girl” (even though if anything, she gets him) despite being twelve and bald and nice (the horror!). katara is the more classical hero of the narrative, as its narrator and its catalyst, the adventurous revolutionary who gradually learns to control and use her powers and eventually becoming a force to be reckoned with. zuko is the classical anti-hero of the narrative, his “redemption arc” constantly hailed as one of the greatest character arcs in television. so people expect katara and zuko, as very obvious narrative foils who parallel each other every step of the way, to be the obvious couple, because based on every romance narrative we’ve been inundated with throughout our lives, within our patriarchal society, they “just make sense together.”

but as much as katara is a protagonist in her own right, aang is the show. the title quite literally represents the central thematic tension of the entire narrative, the colon illustrating the implicit divide between his duties to this brave new world in desperate need of justice and balance, or his duties to his extirpated culture as the last true voice among them. aang is the central figure because this tension represents the crucial ideological battle happening across the entire show. aang is the avatar because he is the only person in the entire world whose values have not been shaped by war.

people constantly laud zuko, in particular, for being the most interesting, complex character in avatar. but i personally don’t even think that’s true. which isn’t to say that zuko isn’t fascinating in his own right, of course, but rather that he’s certainly not the only complex character this show has to offer. he just happens to monologue about his anguish constantly. but aang wasn’t raised as an imperial prince, and so he approaches the world, and his own pain, in a very different manner. the reason he immediately goes to ride giant koi on kyoshi island, mailchutes in omashu, and otherwise goofs around after learning of the shocking ramifications of his people’s genocide is because that’s how he copes with his pain. unlike zuko, who never stops talking about his aches and yearnings, aang represses his trauma and hides his tears behind a mask of upbeat cheerful goofy twelve year old antics.

until he can’t anymore. until he snaps. both katara and zuko wear their hearts on their sleeves, and that includes their rage. but aang’s rage is dangerous specifically because it represents that he has been pushed past his limits, that the conditions of this world in which he is a perpetual stranger, temporally displaced and dispossessed, are intolerable. that peaceful reconciliation is impossible. and the fact that he persists beyond that breaking point, over and over again, to firmly and resoundingly establish his ideals even as they conflict with everything he has learned about this world, a world that is not his own even as he can never return to the world he once knew, is what makes him so unique, so powerful, so beautiful.

i know that aang isn’t the typical hero, neither narratively nor aesthetically, but really, that’s the entire point. the world, our world, needs something other than what we have now. we need someone who will not succumb to the ideals of domination and victory through violence to assert themselves. we need someone who stands firm in refusing to kill the firelord, even as everyone he knows tells him otherwise. we need someone who knows that darkness cannot be vanquished through more darkness, but can only truly yield to purifying light.

and sure, aang is a child, and often acts childishly. sure, he’s not conventionally handsome and alluring. but one thing i will never understand is how that somehow negates his appeal to the masses. because even if you don’t appreciate how crucial he is to the themes of this narrative you all seem to love so much, how can you not love his adorable little face? his precious little laugh, his zest for life, the infinite well of love and kindness he holds in his heart? people who hate aang are crazy to me. because you are, quite literally, hating the world’s most precious baby boy.

actually. Louie poisoning himself compilation. there isn't as much as i thought there was but it's fun to read regardless

+ bonus olimar cringe bc he's not immune to eating the planet either:

Everyone talks about how Roy killed Lust as a symbolic proof that he is devoted to actual love but no one talks about how Envy was outed by Riza almost immediately as a symbol of her always accepting what she has and even being content with it. Maybe love IS a narrative force and theme to be reckoned with (and rightly so!), but content when you have so many reasons not to be and when others sometimes have what you don't? That's super cool, too

been learning to play ironsworn (gritty fantasy ttrpg which you can play with a gm but is mostly suited for solo or small group co-op gmless play) after having the rulebook pdf for several years (stars finally aligned to remove invisible thing blocking me from reading it idk) because i'm on another solo ttrpg kick & i don't know what took me so long to get around to this game because it genuinely is exactly what i was looking for. years ago when i was playing through solo 5e modules i should have just been playing ironsworn (believe it or not, 5e isn't very suited to solo play and is extremely clunky when you try lol).

also though i have dabbled in some other solo ttrpgs, a considerable amount of them are journaling games which is fun but imo considerably more work (usually by the time i'm a quarter of the way through the journal entry, i know how to entire scene played out and i want to move on to the next gameplay thing, so i get frustrated and bored quickly. it feels like when you solve a level in a video game but don't have the coordination to pull off the necessary move so you have to spend 20 extra minutes doing something you already figured out), so i really appreciate like not needing to write something for the game to progress (ive been taking notes for my own record since im playing solo and thus am not really out loud roleplaying the way you do in a group, but i definitely could do that instead and not take notes and the game would still function perfectly)

& ive been playing by myself but also in the past ive played a lot of ttrpgs in very small groups which has been other games but is mostly dnd and like. we also should have been playing ironsworn so that having a gm was not necessary. have definitely played games where we had to adapt the rules soooo much to do something that is just base game included in ironsworn. plus it's rules-light enough to do pretty complex moves that pose difficulties in bulkier games (ever introduced someone to dnd and they tell you they want to do a sick backflip and catch something and then attack and you have to tell them that will require several different consecutive rolls and some creative liberties with how the rules are 'supposed' to let you move? you can just Do That in ironsworn. use the strike move and describe it. done!)

the one thing is that although it's rules-light enough to theoretically play any setting or genre (some with more difficulty than others), ive found so far that like... the grittiness and sense of threat is very built into the mechanics so that would be sort of difficult to work around or change (but i think it's great from a game design perspective). what i mean is like, okay: you start with 5 max hp. there isn't really a way to raise this max hp, you just slowly gain abilities (assets) that make you less likely to have to lose the hp in the first place, or that make it easier to recover. when you encounter foes, you rank them on a scale of 1 -5, and enemies on the lowest side of this scale do one harm to you, while enemies on the highest side do five harm to you. so even though encountering an epic enemy won't always be deadly due to the assets you have, they are ALWAYS capable of taking you down to 0 hp with one good hit. so the feeling of threat is much more present compared to games where your character starts to be able to just tank and push through a failure or huge threat.

admittedly also i'm playing solo, im still learning how to balance combat, and also i built a character who has NO combat talents and iron (the close quarters fighting stat) is one of my lowest stats so i personally am under much more threat than if you built a character who knew how to fight or who could do deadly harm. but also the other thing about combat is it's extremely difficult to maintain control of the fight; you have to score a strong hit to do it on basically all moves, and there's a really limited pool of moves available when you don't have the initiative, and obviously none of them really favour you. i don't know that this makes combat genuinely more difficult, but it does make you feel like the fight is always about to spiral out of your control. every second you let it drag without decisive action feels like it brings you closer to dying. like i said, this is a feature of the game design and not a problem in any way. just thinking about it because when i was initially learning i was going to try to supplant it into a homebrew fantasy world of my own but the tone just wouldn't be right. and that it is somewhat difficult to replicate the kind of worlds that i typically play or run for dnd, which tend to lean somewhat sillier and definitely much higher fantasy

but i like to try new things and tbh especially in dnd i find that i very rarely feel that sense of threat and when i do feel it, it has nothing at all to do with the actual mechanics and reality of the combat and everything to do with how well the dm sells it to me and makes it sound and feel scary and dangerous. which is a testament to what a good gm can do for you but i do appreciate the threat feeling more built-in and also being actually real.

testing out youtube's copyright system by superimposing a transparent image of sketchpad tnm over copyrighted material and seeing when the copyright claim is triggered. currently at 17% opacity being fine while 10% DOES get copyright striked. is everybody excited for the random transparent sketchpad tnm jumpscares in an hour long youtube video to avoid copyright

pokeani moments that exist purely to make Me miserable:

the line where they call ash's oshawott a throwaway pokemon in the unova league so they're just flat out saying they think it's a worthless pokemon

to thine own pokemon be true (extra angst points for me bc ambipom was my second favorite on the team at the time)

the granddaughter of the guy who trains gliscor calling gliscor pathetic and weak to her face despite gliscor being an extremely sensitive pokemon

pretty much everything about that gible

blue episode (favorite color but they made it a fetish somehow and also dewott and brionne and meowstic are all there and its so bad)

boxing heracross immediately. also that battle frontier episode where it's literally the only returning ash mon (barring torkoal i think but i dont count it bc its native to AG) to get humiliated onscreen

pidgeot returning but gliscor didn't even show up in the miniseries despite being an Actual Character

so if Tanaka has a pair of sunglasses that help his ghost-caused blindness, is there technology that could restore Asako’s hearing? Like this must be a thing that happens enough for them to have developed technology to assist it specifically. I also highly doubt Tanaka was the only guy in the world to be physically impaired by ghosts before this.

so: theories on who gave John that letter and key and then "vanished?"

could be a lot of folks...

someone who knew Henry (like that one remaining living MoL in 2013)

Henry himself, having set it up before the initiation ceremony gone wrong as an insurance policy, like... ensuring his son would not lose his legacy (thought you'd think John would recognize his own father... unless he was wearing groucho glasses or something...)

or... could it... have been Dean... putting it in his hands from the future? to give him the key to stop the Akrida before it could devour our universe? and then trying piece the history together after the fact?

or even Cas, flapping in from the future on an errand Dean asked him to perform :'D

suppose it could be Chuck, because he's always trying to meddle :'D

but I think once we know that-- who that mystery vanishing person was-- it'll unlock a lot more (literally! he gave john a key!)

and I know they keep saying everything they're doing won't change original canon, but damn, i sure hope that in rewriting the beginning, they're also able to rewrite the end. Because otherwise what is the point?

I’m just annoyed by AFO, one of the worst characters and he’s the Big Bad. His main body should’ve died against Endeavor so we wouldn’t have to waste so much time with him.

I agree that Hori really didn't need to drag out OG AfO's death. I think he wanted to give All Might and Bakugou a Heroic Moment/Win but it came at the coast of pacing and AfO feeling really redundant. I mean I love All Might and I do think he needed a little bit of a moment before the end of the story but depending on how the story ends it could have possibly been left to his vestige+emotionally helping Izuku.

As for Bakugou getting his moment, again depending on how things go, could have been left for after Shigaraki gets fully possessed, with him teaming up with Izuku.

Because we're still not done with the story I can't say for sure, but I'm a little annoyed that OG AfO wasn't killed by Enji+Dabi. At the moment it seems like if/when Hori redemes the core LoV it will be last minute in a friendship is magic/breaking Shigaraki out of AfO's mind control thing. I'm not a huge fan of that and do wish that Dabi would have helped bring down AfO with Enji and Shoto. He still could have been cheering Shigaraki on from the sidelines to help bring him back, but it would have been the first step in showing he was starting to choose something for the greater good over killing his family for revenge.

It also would have given Enji, Shoto, Hawks and the other UA students that fought him more of a win, while also fitting in with the todofam subplot.

Ghiaccio's White Album is probably a really convenient Stand to have around with Grateful Dead. I imagine he could keep the rest of the group from aging so it can specifically kill the target while keeping the members of La Squadra safe from harm's way. (I kinda wonder what the Grateful Dead fight would've looked like with Ghiaccio there or what missions would look like with him and Prosciutto paired up instead. There would be no need for the freakout over losing ice cubes and Bruno's group would probably try to use the freezing ability as refuge only for Ghiaccio to go "Ha! No, sucker!" and reverse the effect or just start freezing them to death or something)

Swear to god I don't know why I ever try to bring anything up with that woman it's never a good idea but every time I'm like "what if this time I'm not immediately told I'm wrong". Call me either an optimist or a fool

Can you imagine what would happen if patb fandom actually posted noncon for reals?

Seeing a job listing that would be AWESOME if I didn't intend to go live alone and/or if I was maintaining a side income. Sighs

that reminds me, have you ever seen how weird they got about stimboards on tiktok? fucking wild

Honestly getting a little fed up with people universally panning every single pregnancy plotline as "pro-life propaganda"

Fandom start being normal about people wanting to be pregnant sometimes challenge.