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Spin this wheel first and then this wheel second to generate the title of a YA fantasy novel!

(If the second wheel lands on an option ending with a plus sign, spin it again)

Share what you got!

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No, app on my phone, I don't want to edit it with AI. I don't want to generate with AI. I don't want to ask the AI. I don't want to make AI wallpapers. I don't want to rewrite with AI. I don't want t-

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If I won the lottery I wouldn't tell anyone, but there would be signs.

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Where are you? Buck cries, loud and demanding attention, begging for love, family, and a home where he belongs.

Right in front of you, Eddie replies, steady and grounding, easily folding Buck into his life until his presence has seeped into the very walls of his home.

Where are you? Eddie sobs, in the darkness, alone, feeling broken and beaten down, like nothing will ever feel normal again.

Right in front of you, Buck answers like a prayer, warm and light, seamlessly supporting Eddie through lowest points in his life.

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After that episode, I'm now imagining Tia Pepa sitting down with Eddie in the Diaz-Buckley kitchen and saying something like "You should have just told me you were in love with our Evan-cito. I wouldn't have pushed you to date if I had known." And Eddie just sitting there like "???? (math lady meme) I'm in love with Buck!?"

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Every time Eddie accuses Buck of being selfish, what’s really going on is that Buck is expressing his feelings—particularly the need for help and attention—and that’s something Eddie was taught not to do. He doesn’t know how to do that, and doesn’t know how to handle it, and that makes him frustrated enough to become irrationally angry at Buck.

Every time Eddie gets mad enough to lash out at Buck, it’s because he found himself needing Buck, his help and his attention, and didn’t know how to ask for it. And he doesn’t know how to articulate that—he might not even realize that’s what’s going on—because he feels like he shouldn’t need Buck, or anyone’s help or attention, really. And because he doesn’t understand what he’s feeling, or why he’s feeling it, and feels like he shouldn’t be feeling it—he gets angry. And lashes out. At Buck.

So every time he says “you’re so selfish” or “you’re making it all about you” he’s really kind of yelling at himself (in addition to intentionally trying to hit Buck where it hurts.) what he really wants to be saying is “you weren’t there” and “why weren’t you there?” and “I needed you,” but he doesn’t feel like he’s allowed to say (or feel) any of that. (Because of his upbringing.) A thing he was allowed to feel/express? Anger. So that’s what he falls back on.

In a lot of ways, it’s a conflict born from toxic masculinity. It’s also conflict born of their different upbringings, and how it shaped them. (It’s both at the same time.) Eddie’s parent were present enough to instill in him these tenants of toxic masculinity. Buck’s parents, on the other hand, emotionally neglected him as much as they could get away with. He learned very early that the only way to get help or attention was to make his need for it very obvious. This was maladaptive and dangerous in many ways, but I think in adulthood he’s learned to take that lesson and put a positive spin on it. He’s not good at hiding his emotions, and he isn’t afraid to ask for help. Even if it means being annoying.

Eddie actually appreciates this, usually, or at least doesn’t mind it. It lets him know when he should reach out and help. The exception being when Eddie happens to be feeling the need for help and attention at the same time.

They need couples counseling for real.

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NOTICE: As more and more fanfic writers are using generative AI for their works (you uncreative dweebs), I hereby swear on everything I hold dear that I have not and will NEVER use generative AI in ANY of my written work. Everything I post will be organically and creatively my own.

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Hey y'all my first book is only 99 cents this week!

You can get it here!

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I think about Azula shooters often and their common refrain of "if Azula hadn't had a mental breakdown, she would've won" and I'm here to tell you that no, she wouldn't have.

There is no universe in which Azula was winning that fight with Zuko (or Katara, for that matter).

Azula spent so much of Book 2 being built up as this deadly terrifying force against whom the heroes are badly outmatched that it can be difficult to catch exactly how quickly Zuko is advancing.

Back up a bit to Book One. For the fearsome exiled crown prince of the Fire Nation, Zuko's not that impressive a firebender. He's not bad by any stretch, and he's able to lay the untrained Sokka and Katara flat pretty easily. Then he gets in the ring with Aang, who is an airbending master, and the difference between a regular bender and a master becomes apparent when Aang literally puts his ass to bed:

People have attributed this to the fact that no one's fought an airbender in 100 years, but I think it's also worth noting that Aang (a 12 year old from a pacifist nation) has probably never fought anyone before. Like, ever. And yet the second Aang thinks "okay, I'll attack back", the fight's over.

Zuko's got the same genetic predisposition for firebending talent that Azula does, yet it never seems to manifest because of his mental blocks. At the beginning of the series, he's already so beat down that all he really has is conviction, pride, and anger, so even with training from Iroh (the firebending master, thank you very much), he struggles. Yet throughout Book 2, when he has no time to train because he's on the run, he actually seems to advance faster. The fact that his bending is literally tied to his character arc (as his morals become tangled and he has to fight off aforementioned mental blocks) is pretty brilliant. Like, by the time of the Crossroads of Destiny, Zuko getting his ass handed to him by Aang is a pretty consistent feature of the show--he just can't match wits with him.

Hell, at the beginning of the series, he and Iroh (again: the actual firebending master) launch a combined power surface-to-air attack...which Aang casually swats away into a nearby ice wall. Come the Crossroads of Destiny, however, and Zuko by himself launches this bigass fireball that blows through Aang's defenses.

Zuko advances so quickly that it's scary. That prodigious talent is in him even if it doesn't come through as cleanly as with Azula. Who, by the way, was busy about to get flattened by Katara some few dozen feet away, until Zuko took over and then effectively stalemated her himself.

All of this in retrospect makes it abundantly clear why Zuko's firebending seemed to skyrocket so much when he learned true firebending from the Sun Warriors: it was really the only thing left. He's hard a hard road learning how to fight waterbenders, earthbenders, and airbenders, and even if unconsciously, he's applying the philosophy Iroh taught him about augmenting his bending style with aspects of other styles (see also, the waterbending-like fire whips he uses in the above gif). Once he actually understands fire and how it works, he's got it mastered. Hence why any gap between him and Azula effectively disappears as soon as their next fight--before her friends have betrayed her and her stability goes out the window. There's no real sense of urgency to their fight at the Boiling Rock prison. True, Sokka's presence with the sword helps, but Zuko doesn't look remotely worried and he counters Azula's every attack perfectly.

All her life, Azula only ever learned fire. She was taught by the best people the fire nation can employ, so she knows all the cool tricks, but she's still poisoned by the corrupted firebending practiced in the modern ATLA timeline. Unlike Zuko, who managed to get the basics if nothing else from Iroh (fire comes from the breath, and can be used to survive as much as to kill), Azula has always used fire as a weapon and a means to hurt others. She has no true knowledge of the craft, meaning she's got the same weaknesses as Zhao, she's just better disciplined to the point she can make up for it.

Zuko's victory was a given considering Azula's complete loss of control by the time of Sozin's comet, but even had she been in a perfect mental state, she'd have lost, because in many ways Zuko is simply the better firebender.

And that's the truth of it.

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Norway!

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i’m going to hold your hands when i say this and i am only going to be kind about it once: ai does not belong in fandom spaces, ever. not in writing, not in art, not in video, not at all. it does not matter how bad you want to see your favourite characters kiss, or how much you need a bit of help finishing a chapter, or whatever.

make friends with artists. commission somebody. learn to draw yourself. ask for a beta read. try a writing partnership. fandom spaces are communities, so engage with them! it is about the journey and the fact that we all love something enough to create and build together about that thing.

spending 30 seconds to kill a tree and get an AI to push out some soulless empty piece of “content” is antithetical to the entire point of being engaged with fandom, and if you’ve taken to doing this you should really reconsider if you belong in these spaces with the rest of us.

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so uh- buddie wedding season 10?💍🤍

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Write it shitty, write it scared, write it without a clue but don't you be so spineless and have an AI write fanfic for you.

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