totallynotthedarkreunion
jupiter
they/she INTP 5w6
follow if you want my random irrelevant and convoluted thoughts
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Zukka comic for a friend
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so on a scale of aang (killing is always wrong) to katara (killing is a statement) to sokka (killing is a tool), where would the rest of the gaang + ozais angels go?
toph is hard to pin down because she’s the only character who ever actually kills people outside of the context of war. and i don’t know if she even realizes what she did, because she’s 12 and the adrenaline rush of discovering that you can actually metalbend probably supersedes any logical reasoning in that moment, but like, she did just leave two guys to die a gruesome death in a metal box. so i do think it’s more nuanced that simply saying, “to toph, killing is fun and flirty,” but like, there is a not insignificant part of her that will gladly kill as a means of asserting her power over others and individual autonomy, and has no compunctions about killing those who threaten her autonomy specifically, as it is such an acute point of trauma for her. but also, she’s twelve so like, she’ll probably develop a more nuanced approach to that quandary as she ages.
zuko’s stance on killing is mostly that he’s happy to outsource that violence and then take credit for it as long as he personally doesn’t have to get his hands dirty. like he’ll hire an assassin but won’t bring himself to admit that “end them” means “kill them,” or he’ll threaten to kill zhao and then try to save his life at the last minute. he wants aang to kill his dad but would never actually kill ozai himself, just as he wants katara to kill yon rha, but would never actually kill ozai himself. and i’m sure zuko thinks this is all because he’s a coward who simply lacks the capacity to be ruthless and effective (like sokka), but actually it’s symptomatic of zuko’s greatest quality, which is his inherent sensitivity, his queasy stomach for violence, his predisposition for gentleness, the fact that he actually struggles to deny his own inclinations and simply submit himself to a logic of brutal death and destruction. he thinks it makes him weak, but the fact that he actually has a desire to do the right thing and be a good person despite it all is truly his greatest strength.
azula is always operating from a place of survival because it was impressed to her from a very young age that she exists in a world that is unforgivingly cruel, and it is kill or be killed. she does not want to die (which is quite possibly one of her greatest points of deviation from sokka, but i digress) so she wholeheartedly submits herself to this logic, and unlike zuko, who struggles to erode his own humanity even under the threat of violence, azula is very good at becoming something “monstrous” (her words) out of fear, can contort herself into any shape necessary as long as the threat is tangible enough. so obviously azula approaches killing in the same way sokka does, no surprise there. murder is a tool to achieve her ends, to ensure her own safety and survival. it is simply a mechanism of war. but unlike sokka’s view of it, she also believes that the strong kill the weak because the weak deserve to die, and that logic she inherited from ozai.
we never see suki actively kill anyone, but she does threaten to feed sokka to the unagi, so like, even if she is (probably) joking, i don’t think suki is flat out against killing. i think she’ll kill if she absolutely has to, but would also prefer not to because she clearly values and holds a deep appreciation for life. but also, whenever there is a gap in our textual understanding of suki, i usually just fill it in by being like wwkd (what would kyoshi do), so maybe that’s why i just said. who knows
mai always makes an effort to never actually stab people with her blades, but rather pin them in place. that said, whether this is because a Y-7 cartoon simply isn’t allowed to depict blood or if it’s because mai is genuinely that attuned to not seriously hurting the people she throws knives at, i’m not entirely sure. i like to think that mai doesn’t actually want to hurt people, because like zuko, she is naturally inclined towards sensitivity and gentleness, but i think there’s also a part of her that would lock people in a metal box if she could. i think the best way to summarize mai is thus, excitement is valuable (including the heat of battle), but killing is unpleasant.
ty lee has actively refined a technique that makes her extremely dangerous without ever actually having to cause long-lasting damage to someone physically (psychologically is another story). yet another W for ty lee air nomad heritage theory, but i digress. ty lee is smart enough that she never actually has to be personally responsible and culpable for killing anyone ever, but she is also submitting to and enabling the violence of an empire for the sake of her own survival, so it’s not like she’s not complicit either. so to ty lee, killing is also a tool, but one she personally doesn’t need to employ, which is a comfort to her.
iroh (technically you didn’t ask about him but he’s fascinating so i can’t just leave him out) used to view killing as a tool, and now views it as an inviolable taboo because it took him like over 50 years to recognize the inherent value of human life and the grief of losing a loved one. so it’s not that he grew up in a “kill or be killed world” that fostered his need to kill to ensure his survival, but simply that he grew up in paradigm that dictated that “killing is the path to attaining glory” and he was good at killing, and thus glorious. but then he experienced the consequences of that worldview firsthand, and had to completely recalibrate his own logic of conquest and domination. and so now he’s still capable of violence in equal measure, but is less willing to exercise it for purely shallow, destructive reasons. yay..??
jet actually does think that killing is fun and flirty. anyone who disagrees with him deserves to die because he is simply right about everything. sokka? closet fire nation sympathizer, obviously. guy he met on a boat who said “hey im not really interested in joining your child militia”? well he’s probably the prince of the fucking fire nation (okay he was right about that one but he had no way of knowing it so). he watched the rough rhinos burn down his house and murder his family with a smile on their faces, and a part of him that day calcified and decided that the only way to truly reclaim his power was to beat them at his own game. so he does everything in his power to control the people he can, to control his narrative, to refine his logic in a way that makes him the uncontested hero no matter what. but in truth, it’s quite simple: he wants power because he has none.
haru exists somewhere between “killing is a statement” and “killing is a tool.” killing is a tool because it functions as a statement. killing is a statement because it functions as a tool. violent resistance is necessary by any means necessary, but you know, in a nice way. he’s basically just the model of the “good” colonized subject who fights for collective liberation instead of personal empowerment, so it makes sense that he’s introduced before jet as like the emblem of what katara should do (how she should fight, what she would fight for) versus what she shouldn’t. which is like, perhaps a simplistic reduction of “good” vs “bad” methods of resistance into “our noble collective action” vs “their senseless terrorism,” but like. lol. what can you do
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Ong some of you have actually terrible takes. Please learn to accept that characters have flaws (which is GOOD, if a character has no flaws it's probably a shitty character) and it doesn't make them a terrible person
Fandom shippers try to ship your ship without putting down/trying to disprove other people's ships and demonizing other characters that "get in the way of your ship" challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)
Ready go
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Fandom shippers try to ship your ship without putting down/trying to disprove other people's ships and demonizing other characters that "get in the way of your ship" challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)
Ready go
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Toph helped a little I guess
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there’s a little detail that i didn’t notice about “the blue spirit” when i first watched it. when zuko returns to his ship after his misadventures at ponhuai, avatar-less and honorless and still puzzling over aang’s speech and having made an enemy of zhao and probably severely concussed, iroh is there on deck.
music night happened the previous night. and yet it’s morning when zuko returns, and iroh is still playing the tsungi horn on deck.
iroh waited up all night for zuko to come back.
it’s such a small detail, but speaks volumes about their relationship. iroh not only allows zuko to sneak out in order to free the avatar in order to preserve his chance at regaining his honor, iroh actually subtly encorages zuko to free aang from ponhuai, even though he clearly knows that there’s every possibilty that zuko will be caught by zhao and iroh will not be able to save him.
as the guardian of a teenager, iroh’s influence over zuko is limited. iroh must allow zuko the freedom to chase after the destiny he thinks he wants, iroh cannot always protect zuko or keep him out of danger, iroh cannot even demonstrate affection to zuko in the way he would clearly like to because zuko is too hurt and guarded to be able to accept it from him -
- but iroh can wait up for him.
iroh can sit up all night, just to make sure that zuko gets home safely.
and it is such a striking element of their relationship, because I waited up all night for you becomes the unspoken love language by which they communicate caring and affection for each other.
iroh waits all night for zuko to return safely from ponhuai stronghold. iroh stays up while zuko sleeps on the ferry and waits up for zuko to return home from his date with jin. iroh sits up all night watching over zuko when he is sick and feverish.
and it’s not one-sided, because zuko waits up for iroh.
zuko waits up all night watching over an injured iroh after azula blasts him with blue fire. zuko sits up all night waiting for iroh to wake up when they reunite at the white lotus camp.
and this gesture becomes so important to zuko that it even becomes the way he demonstrates caring and concern for the members of the gaang. zuko waits up all night in appa’s saddle, knowing that sokka is planning a rescue mission. zuko waits up all night for katara to wake, knowing she needs to confront her own deeply-felt anger before she can understand and let go of it.
and this even is the gesture by which aang first demonstrates friendship to zuko. after zuko is knocked out by an arrow to his blue spirit mask, aang sits up with zuko for the rest of the night until zuko wakes up, just to make sure zuko is all right.
and the concept of sitting up all night for you is such a poignant contrast to zuko’s memory of his mother, who vanished out his life in the middle of the night, waking him up for a last goodbye.
it’s pretty clear that iroh sitting up all night with a sick child was far from an unusual occasion. i think it was probably really important for zuko to be shown, again and again and again, that he has someone who will be there when morning comes.
one parent left zuko in the night - but one parent will always wait up for him to come home.
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“May I please draw your OC?”
Reblog this message if you encourage anyone that wants to draw your OC to do so. No need to ask for permission in advance.
Go for it. Draw my OC. If you want, I’ll even give you reference posts. Go to town on it.
You are welcome to draw my OC and surprise me with the result. Seriously. In fact, I encourage it. I will proudly display whatever it is you submit to me regarding my OC. There is a chance that I will squeal about it for several days.
Even if you feel you aren’t good at whatever artistic adventure it is you do, please feel free to submit it to me. I want to see what you have done.
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GUYS GUYS I need to show off the rosary I got today!!
The wooden beads smell like old man and catholicism because apparently it's from the vatican. Straight from the source, yo 🤙
Gonna use this as an opportunity for some Mello's rosary headcanons! 8D
Maybe Mello smelled like an old lady when he first started wearing his. I headcanon he got it from his mum and maybe it's even a family heirloom and who knows which ancestor was wearing it before him? But now it smells like a very slavic cologne with a little too heavy undertone of iron.
[2.1] During the mafia wedding, Mello's rosary caught the attention of the pastor and he comes up to him like "Ah my son, you found the way to faith" and Mello has to hold back a chuckle, kisses the crucifix of his rosary super reverently with a "Padre..." while Matt's standing beside him holding back a "He found his way into my pants but not to faith, dude" with all his might.
[2.1] If Mello leaves the rosary on during sex, it's often dangling in front Matt's nose like a symbol of guilt and shame and even if they're both not religious, Matt sometimes can't take it
"... can you put that thing away for now, it's like it's watching me"
"What, don't you think blasphemy is a little hot?"
"... hehehe oh, forgive me father daddy for I have sinned."
"Allllright, away with the rosary then."
He lost the rosary he was wearing since Wammy's during the explosion, or better said during the process of Matt dragging his ass out from under a piece of ceiling.
During his recovery, Mello got his hands on the crime scene photos and the police found the broken rosary in a pile of rubble.
Matt takes it upon himself to craft him a new one that looks vaguely like his old one (turns out, it's not that difficult to make a rosary from scratch!).
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I had a tattoo client ask if I ever used AI to design tattoos for me. Man I spent the better part of a decade doing shitty bit work as a graphic designer and now that I have the space to do whatever I want, I'm gonna let the computer generate random garbage for me? What next should I have a computer that eats my dinner and fucks my wife?
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thank you for the support on my last post-- here's more from my AU which doesn't have a name, feel free to suggest a name, lol I'm bad with that.
zuko and aang after a fight with the Yuyan Archers, Zuko barely misses an arrow to the head, instead clipping the ribbon that hides his identity.
aang suspects Blue is the banished prince with a high bounty, whom he saw in a cell inside Admiral Zhao's ship at the Southern Water Tribes. Despite being fire nation, and quite unkind, Aang releases him from his shackles only for him to vanish when soldiers showed to recapture them both.
Katara, Sokka, Aang & Blue travel together to the Earth Kingdom. Unfortunately, Sokka is stupid.
in case u didnt see the last post, TLDR of what it is: Aang was told he was the avatar at 16, after the war has already begun, gets frozen in ice, Ozai ascends to Phoenix King, succeeds in his plan to take over the world, the Blue Spirit joins Aang first (identity still 'concealed', although Aang is 89% sure he knows who he is after a while), and now Aang must save what's left of the world.
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passed two guys on campus who were having an enthusiastic discussion about the final agni kai and i had to stop myself from forcibly entering their conversation like
#PREV TAGS#CAUSE LIKE IVE NEVER HAD AN OBSESSION LIKE THIS THAY OTHER PEOPLE ACTUALLY KNOW ABOUTT#its amazing actually
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Love being a Death Note fan in 2024. We're trapped here. We can't leave. I cosplay Matt a few times per year, during convention season. Someone at Anime Boston thought I was Hawks from MHA. I told her I was Matt from Death Note. I don't think she recognized the name or the character. There still isn't an official US production of Death Note: The Musical. People are still making "Imagay" jokes and acting like it's peak original humor. We're trapped here. We're banging on the walls of our cage, demanding enrichment in our enclosure.
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“They finally made this theme more blatant-" Why does it need to be blatant. What's wrong with subtlety? Concepts can be underused but subtlety is not neglect.
Blaring all your concepts and themes is not good writing. It's so disruptive to a story's flow when the characters look off the screen to be like "See? This is the concept. The idea. The theme."
If you can feel the hand of the author becoming too heavy that's bad.
For example: I see people saying Azula's abuse in ATLA is more blatant in the live action and it's good because "it's being discussed more". It already was discussed at length. The show made it clear she was a victim at every turn, every behavior, every reaction, it came from a place of trauma. It was made clear that she was scared of ending up like Zuko because Zuko was an example of what would happen to her if she failed. When she says she's better than Zuko it wasn't just because she was raised to think hersef superior to him but because Zuko failed and failures get mutilated and exiled, failures are abandoned. In that final Agni Kai the music is morose and somber because this isnt some epic battle its a fucking tragedy, the burning out of "Ozai's brightest light" and Azula finally succumbing to her terror and trauma she was repressing now that her worst fears are realized. How can you see a fourteen year old girl chained to a sewer grate wailing and writhing and breathing fire desperately as unsympathetic? Even Katara and Zuko are horrified as to what has become of her.
The writers weren't looking us in the eye and saying "See? She's a victim too" when they wrote this, they weaved it in. They weaved it into her obsesison with symmetry, her extreme perfectionism, the way she talks about Ozai, the ways she calls herself a monster, her isolation from those with healthy home lives, all the ways she held herself together and ultimately all the cracks and seams that she shattered down when she fell apart. It did not need to be blatant to be clear.
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Sorry, but having Zuko actually fight back against Ozai during their Agni Kai is just wrong. He was a child, only 13 at the time, afraid to fight his own father and was mutilated as punishment, because Ozai saw Zuko's begging and unwillingness to fight as unforgiveable weakness.
The Angi Kai isn't meant to be a showcase of Zuko's fighting potential (that's what the Zhao fight is for), but to show the utter cruelty of Ozai.
#THAYS WHAT I SIAD#I WAS SCREAMING DURING THAT SCENE#I WAS LIKE#THAYS NOT HOW IT WENT#ZULO WOULD NOT FIGHT BACK#IDIOTS#AGRHRHRGGR#*cue the vine*#ARRGHH IDIOTS.#WHEN WILL YOU LEARN#THAT YOUR ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES#FUCK
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Does anybody else just get sparkley-eyed amazed by their instruments. Like all the time I see my guitar or my clarinets or the piano just sitting their minding their business and then I pick it up and I'm like wow. I can put my hands on it and make pretty sounds
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the evolution of zuko
in every series i have ever watched or read, zuko hands down has the best redemption and character development of every character and i will stand by that statement to the grave.
sketches version under the cut
really I have art block and honestly couldn't think of anything better to draw, but now, seeing his growth checkpoints side by side really heightens my love for this character. ATLA honestly never flops when it comes to good characters that feel human and grow in realistic ways
#avatar the last airbender#atla#atla fanart#prince zuko#fire lord zuko#zuko atla#zuko#fanart#zuko fanart#atla zuko#just realized I didn't color in season 3 Zuko's shirt all the way. FUC#oh well
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