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Kataang Week 2025 — Day 3: Bridgerton AU @kataang-week

Art by Child_ofOlive on x/twitter

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Day1——Aang has a little surprise for date night🌌

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Jattaw continues to stay a mood™️

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#proudest boyfriend moment

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He is such an unabashedly wife guy that it's giving me Gu Tingye vibes - a man who is so supremely competent and comfortable in that competence, he dngaf about what anyone else thinks about his doting.

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I drew this such awhile ago for that Twitter awareness post of draw your fav character with a watermelon—just to not do that 🥲

I think based on Aang’s experience alone he’d stand with Palestine. 🇵🇸

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drawing every day until I stop day 5 (no spoilers in tags pls I'm not done yet!!)

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A thing I find really important about the way Kevin Can Fuck Himself goes about its job: Allison is kind of a mess. She’s self-centered, she doesn’t put other people’s needs first, she makes reckless choices that endanger herself and others. And the show says: yes. Right. She’s flawed as fuck. And she still does not deserve any of what’s happening to her. It could be argued that she is, in fact, this flawed as a direct product of her trauma. Her self-absorption, unlike Kevin’s, is actually self-preservation. It puts Patty in danger. It tunes out Diane’s pain. It capitalizes on Sam’s relationship problems. And still, the show says: yes. Right. She’s going about this in fumbling, worrying ways. And she still does not deserve any of what’s happening to her.

Know how we know this? How we really know this, outside of our own objectivity, our own awareness of the abuse she’s enduring even to the soundtrack of laughter?

Because Tammy is the one to find her. Because Tammy is the one holding the cards at the end of the game. Tammy, who does not like Allison. Who sees so clearly the complicated, messy, dangerous person Allison can be. The mistakes she is prone to making in the name of desperation. How imperfect she is at every level. And Tammy, who is the character most explicitly set to call Allison on all of her shit, to drag her before a court of law, to lean on that hot-button of whether or not she’s a “good person” until it breaks—lets her go. Folds the cards up, puts them in her pocket, and leaves.

Because Tammy, like the show, like the thesis statement of abuse is never earned, never deserved, never warranted, understands. This is a world that so often sanitizes women after it’s too late to save them. A world that insists she should have done more to get out. A world that insists you should be kind and moral and perfect, or maybe you got what was coming to you. This is a world that sees fighting back as an equally heinous crime. As punishable, if not more so, than the actions of the instigator.

But this show doesn’t want to play that game. This show doesn’t want to fuck with it at all. Allison doesn’t have to be perfect and moral and above reproach. Allison has blood on her hands, and a DUI neatly ignored, and knowingly has an affair with her married boss. Allison hurts her friends sometimes, and she makes awful decisions out of desperation, and she doesn’t always pay attention to other people’s plotlines. And the show says: yes. Right. She’s making choices you probably should not agree with.

And she still does not deserve any of what is happening to her.

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Free Educational Resources for Teachers and Students

With Trump's talk of eliminating the US Department of Education, I want to compile a list of free and accessible materials for students, educators, and continuous learners.

Project Gutenburg has a library of over 70,000 free eBooks and audiobooks, with particular emphasis on those in the Public Domain.

The California Department of Education has compiled a list of Free Educational Resources that were originally meant for distance learning during Covid. I think these are primarily for grades K-12.

Library Finder is a free website that can point you in the direction of your closest local library. Libraries are an amazing resource for literacy programs, community outreach, computer access, and much more.

The University of San Diego has compiled a list of Top 24 Educational Resources for Teachers. Most of these are free, free with ads, or free with an account.

National Geographic has a list of Education Resources on their website. I highly encourage everyone to explore the website on their own time.

PBS has a bunch of different educational resources on their website that you can browse easily by subject and grade level.

Please add more resources if you come across them. This is by no means a comprehensive list.

Education is a right, not a privilege.

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I'm just a kataang girlie

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“Heal my demons/make it dirty on principle/kill my prison, tip my demons/‘cause I know they’re unquenchable” from One in A Million by Dance Gavin Dance (writer’s choice for ship)

Lines, faded so pale pink that only someone looking very close would see them, twine around her wrists. Remnants of the chains in Naraku’s castle. Their presence is as heavy as the real thing.

Layers of clothing hide a collection of poorly-healed battle wounds that neither time nor demonic blood could erase. They burn with the reminder of her original purpose: Soldier. Shield. Slave. 

Worst of all is the spider that still mars the whole of her back. Rough, ugly, and wind-worn. Though she can't see it herself, knowing it's there (like a stamp, a brand) makes her want to claw her body to ribbons. 

Kagura’s scars feel like a curse.

-

The wind god finally allows her to resurrect, and it is a disappointment that her body remains unhealed.

Jaken complains about the time she spends melting away in hot springs, unaware how many minutes are dedicated to scrubbing her skin raw. Her displeasure is not out of a sense of vanity; rather the constant reminder the marks make, of the being that put them there. 

I will be free, Kagura spits at her tormentor's back for the hundredth time. Echos of a thousand demonic cries shudder through the castle walls. 

Naraku doesn't even spare a look back towards her as he retorts, You don't even have a reason to exist without me.

Now she has a life of her own. But with how the vessel containing her spirit looks, who would know?  If she could live with a hollowed out place in my chest, then a few layers of skin off the back won’t matter…

The sky grows dark, indicating she's taken far too long. So Kagura grits her teeth and ties her kimonos loosely around sore, stinging shoulder-blades. The spider mark burns; perhaps Naraku is using it to send her a message from Hell. 

That night, curled up together in a cave somewhere, Sesshomaru watches the ginger way she moves about. Predictably, he doesn't actually say anything. But Kagura picks a fight anyway, just to distract herself from what he could be thinking. 

Pity would be bad enough, and isn't something she wants anyway. Confusion is more likely; Sesshomaru often finds her feelings and behaviors a mystery. 

As for compassion - Jaken claims the daiyokai has developed some, in the time between Kagura's death and rebirth. But as the source is less than reputable, she won't hold her breath for that. 

-

Over the years, her body gains other scars. But it's different this time.  

It's not hard for someone with Kagura's taste for fun to meet with trouble - how fascinating, that violence seems to be a constant partner of good entertainment! So she collects a few more battle wounds. It takes days for her demonic energy to fade them into a white or pink interruption of skin. But in this life, Kagura is not shut up in a corner of the castle to wonder at the consequences of resting for too long. Instead, Sesshomaru sits by her side with little comment, other than a dry reprimand for her lack of sense. And nothing happens to her heart.

Well, nothing bad, anyway. 

A year after her resurrection, they kiss for the first time, and his fangs catch her lip. It's sharp enough to leave a divot that she runs her tongue over at night. Not with fear, but excitement. And the next time their lips meet, she tries her best to give him a matching one.  

Her body stretches as she eats and drinks and laughs more often; in the hot spring, she counts blue stripes along her hips and thighs and delights in how they look like sunlight rippling across wind-touched water. It leaves much less time to try to wash away a dreadful past. 

Jaken mentions it off-handedly one night - a demon who makes art out of people's bodies with ink. Kagura interrupts to ask about something she will never remember later, and as with most of their conversations, it quickly devolves into a screaming match. She ends up so focused on chasing the kappa around the room with blades of wind, that Sesshomaru's thoughtful expression completely passes her notice. 

A few days later, he takes her to a grimy seaside village. They stop at a dark stall covered with line-work designs, where he stuffs a genuinely worrying amount of money into her hand. "This should cover anything that you feel is necessary."

To cover her rapidly increasing heartbeat, Kagura punches his arm with a shout - don't treat me like a greedy little mistress you're abandoning in a merchant's square! But even if he didn't have excellent hearing, the warm wind that twines around his shoulders would still make her delight clear. 

The self-proclaimed artist, Yatora, deems the scars on her wrists "not a problem". He is clearly taken aback when she states that is not her concern; when she pulls away the final kimono to display the spider scar that still stains her back, the response is a frustrated sigh.

"Well...I hope you can handle pain." 

Memories rush in, but she is past feeling like she'll drown in them. "Won't be a problem."

-

In the growing darkness, Kagura flexes her shoulder-blades carefully to test the stretch of the raw, needled skin. She left the mirror somewhere, or else she'd go to look at the finished design again. Even swollen and healing, it makes the air around her sing with pride, to have the spider finally covered. 

Sesshomaru watches her move, eyes half-lidded. After some time, he murmurs, "What was it that convinced Fujin to resurrect you?" 

Kagura twists her head towards the futon; he has never asked her this before. Perhaps because it didn't matter to either of them, so long as she was alive at all. As she considers how to answer, her tongue worries the divot in her bottom lip. 

"I dunno. It was something like - my smile had 'too much beauty in it to be left to a hopeless fate'."  

Sesshomaru frowns. 

"Okay, fine, I made that up. He never said why; don't reckon I'll ever know." 

He shifts closer; the tips of his claws run down the collection of blue lines striping her left hip, and she shivers. 

Clearing her throat, she says, “Whatever it is, I suppose you’re asking because you’re grateful for it?”

Sesshomaru’s eyes gleam in the barest hint of lantern-light that remains. It makes Kagura want to mark him, too. 

So she does. Long lines scratched down his back and the imprint of her mouth against his throat, to start. But unlike the scars crossing her own body, anything that mars Sesshomaru’s skin will fade before the morning sun can arise.

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I love it when shows don't take themselves seriously and break the fourth wall...

Because what do you mean "This is not a real certificate and was created for illustrative purposes only"?

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people literally getting mad at fletcher for dating/kissing a man like...have you tried not taking a queer woman's dating choices personally?

saying this is 'feels like a breakup' or is 'disappointing bc representation'?? Like, genuinely why do you have expectations of a complete stranger to act in ways you personally deem to be 'queer enough'?

Why are you personally affected by someone else finding and expressing desire in ways you personally wouldn't? --> the fact this statement is directed at [mainly] queer women instead of conservatives is embarrassing.

And on the basis of representation: to be frank, there are literally so many wlw, especially white, skinny, cisgender femmes like Fletcher, in the music scene. Acting like you get to police someone's dating choices because she's the only one you personally listen to ain't it. If it really, really bothers you that much, go find another person to listen to, but posting comments on Youtube/Instagram about how painful her journey of sexual expression is for YOU is tacky, to say the least.

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Adrienette boat date

What you mean the reflection doesn’t match???? Must be an illusion or something

Choose whimsical fun and joy instead of grinding hard detail