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army-of-mai-lovers · 4 years

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in which I get progressively angrier at the various tropes of atla fandom misogyny

tbh I think it would serve all of us to have a larger conversation about the specific ways misogyny manifests in this fandom, because I’ve seen a lot of people who characterize themselves as feminists, many of whom are women themselves, discuss the female characters of atla/lok in misogynistic ways, and people don’t talk about it enough.

disclaimer before I start: I’m not a woman, I’m an afab nonbinary person who is semi-closeted and thus often read as a woman. I’m speaking to things that I’ve seen that have made me uncomfy, but if any women (esp women existing along other axes of oppression, e.g. trans women, women of color, disabled women, etc) want to add onto this post, please do!

“This female character is a total badass but I’m not even a little bit interested in exploring her as a human being.”

I’ve seen a lot of people say of various female characters in atla/lok, “I love her! She’s such a badass!” now, this statement on its own isn’t misogynistic, but it represents a pretty pervasive form of misogyny that I’ve seen leveled in large part toward the canon female love interests of one or both of the members of a popular gay ship (*cough* zukka *cough*) I’m going to use Suki as an example of this because I see it with her most often, but it can honestly be applied to nearly every female character in atla/lok. Basically, people will say that they stan Suki, but when it comes time to engage with her as an actual character, they refuse to do it. I’ve seen meta after meta about Zuko’s redemption arc, but I so rarely see people engage with Suki on any level beyond “look at this cool fight scene!” and yeah, I love a cool Suki fight scene as much as anybody else, but I’m also interested in meta and headcanons and fics about who she is as a person, when she isn’t an accessory to Sokka’s development or doing something cool. of course, the material for this kind of engagement with Suki is scant considering she doesn’t have a canon backstory (yet) (don’t let me down Faith Erin Hicks counting on you girl) but with the way I’ve seen people in this fandom expand upon canon to flesh out male characters, I know y’all have it in you to do more with Suki, and with all the female characters, than you currently do. frankly, the most engagement I’ve seen with Suki in mainstream fandom is justifying either zukki (which again, is characterizing her in relation to male characters, one of whom she barely interacts with in canon) or one of the Suki wlw pairings. which brings me to--

“I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!”

now, I will admit, two of my favorite atla ships are yueki and mailee, and so I totally understand being interested in these characters’ dynamics, even if, as is the case with yueki, they’ve never interacted canonically. however, it becomes a problem for me when these ships are always in the background of a zukka fic. at some point, it becomes obvious that you like this ship because it gets either Zuko or Sokka’s female love interests out of the way, not because you actually think the characters would mesh well together. It’s bad form to dislike a female character because she gets in the way of your gay ship, so instead, you find another girl to pair her off with and call it a day. to be clear, I’m not saying that everybody who ships either mailee or yueki (or tysuki or maisuki or yumai or whatever other wlw rarepair involving Zuko or Sokka’s canon love interests) is nefariously trying to sideline a female character while acting publicly as if she’s is one of their faves--far from it--but it is noteworthy to me how difficult it is to find content that centers wlw ships, while it’s incredibly easy to find content that centers zukka in which mailee and/or yueki plays a background role.

also, notice how little traction wlw Katara ships gain in this fandom. when’s the last time you saw yuetara on your dash? there’s no reason for wlw Katara ships to gain traction in a fandom that is so focused on Zuko and Sokka getting together, bc she doesn’t present an immediate obstacle to that goal (at least, not an obstacle that can be overcome by pairing her up with a woman). if you are primarily interested in Zuko and Sokka’s relationship, and your queer readings of other female characters are motivated by a desire to get them out of the way for zukka, then Katara’s canon m/f relationship isn’t a threat to you, and thus, there’s no reason to read her as potentially queer. Or even, really, to think about her at all.

“Katara’s here but she’s not actually going to do anything, because deep down, I’m not interested in her as a person.”

the show has an enormous amount of textual evidence to support the claim that Sokka and Katara are integral parts of each other’s lives. so, she typically makes some kind of appearance in zukka content. sometimes, her presence in the story is as an actual character with layers and nuance, someone whom Sokka cares about and who cares about Sokka in return, but also has her own life and goals outside of her brother (or other male characters, for that matter.) sometimes, however, she’s just there because halfway through writing the author remembered that Sokka actually has a sister who’s a huge part of the show they’re writing fanfiction for, and then they proceed to show her having a meetcute with Aang or helping Sokka through an emotional problem, without expressing wants or desires outside of those characters. I’m honestly really surprised that I haven’t seen more people calling out the fact that so much of Katara’s personality in fanon revolves around her connections to men? she’s Aang’s girlfriend, she’s Sokka’s sister, she’s Zuko’s bestie. never mind that in canon she spends an enormous amount of time fighting against (anachronistic, Westernized) sexism to establish herself as a person in her own right, outside of these connections. and that in canon she has such interesting complex relationships with other female characters (e.g. Toph, Kanna, Hama, Korra if you want to write lok content) or that there are a plethora of characters with whom she could have interesting relationships with in fanon (Mai, Suki, Ty Lee, Yue, Smellerbee, and if you want to write lok content, Kya II, Lin, Asami, Senna, etc). to me, the lack of fandom material exploring Katara’s relationships with other women or with herself speak to a profound indifference to Katara as a character. I’m not saying you have to like Katara or include her in everything you write, but I am asking you to consider why you don’t find her interesting outside of her relationships with men.

“I hate Katara because she talks about her mother dying too often.”

this is something I’ve seen addressed by people far more qualified than I to address it, but I want to mention it here in part because when I asked people which fandom tropes they wanted me to talk about, this came up often, but also because I find it really disgusting that this is a thing that needs to be addressed at all. Y’all see a little girl who watched her mother be killed by the forces of an imperialist nation and say that she talks about it too much??? That is a formational, foundational event in a child’s life. Of course she’s going to talk about it. I’ve seen people say that she doesn’t talk about it that often, or that she only talks about it to connect with other victims of fn imperialism e.g. Jet and Haru, but frankly, she could speak about it every episode for no plot-significant reason whatsoever and I would still be angry to see people say she talks about it too much. And before you even bring up the Sokka comparison, people deal with grief in different ways. Sokka repressed a lot of his grief/channeled it into being the “man” of his village because he knew that they would come for Katara next if he gave them the opportunity. he probably would talk about his mother more if a) he didn’t feel massive guilt at not being able to remember what she looked like, and b) he was allowed to be a child processing the loss of his mother instead of having to become a tiny adult when Hakoda had to leave to help fight the fn. And this gets into an intersection with fandom racism, in that white fans (esp white American fans) are incapable of relating to the structural trauma that both Sokka and Katara experience and thus can’t see the ways in which structural trauma colors every single aspect of both of their characters, leading them to flatten nuance and to have some really bad takes. And you know what, speaking of bad fandom takes--

“Shitting on Mai because she gets in the way of my favorite Zuko ship is actually totally okay because she’s ~abusive~”

y’all WHAT.

ok listen, I get not liking maiko. I didn’t like it when I first got into fandom, and later I realized that while bryke cannot write romance to save their lives, fans who like maiko sure can, so I changed my tune. but if you still don’t like it, that’s fine. no skin off my back.

what IS skin off my back is taking instances in which Mai had justified anger toward Zuko, and turning it into “Mai abused Zuko.” do you not realize how ridiculous you sound? this is another thing where I get so angry about it that I don’t know how useful my analysis is actually going to be, but I’ll do my best. numerous people have noted how analysis of Mai and Zuko’s breakup in “The Beach” or Mai being justifiably angry with him at Boiling Rock or her asking for FUCKING FRUIT in “Nightmares and Daydreams” that says that all of these events were her trying to gain control over him is....ahhh...lacking in reading comprehension, but I’d like to go a step further and talk about why y’all are so intent on taking down a girl who doesn’t show emotion in normative ways. obviously, there’s a “Zuko can do no wrong” aspect to Mai criticism (which is super weird considering how his whole arc is about how he can do lots of wrong and he has to atone for the wrong that he’s done--but that’s a separate post.) But I also see slandering Mai for not expressing her emotions normatively and not putting up with Zuko’s shit and slandering Katara for “talking about her mother too often” as two sides of the same coin. In both cases, a female character expresses emotions that make you, the viewer, uncomfortable, and so instead of attempting to understand where those emotions may have come from and why they might be manifesting the way they are, y’all just throw the whole character away. this is another instance of people in the fandom being fundamentally disinterested in engaging with the female characters of atla in a real way, except instead of shallowly “stanning” Mai, y’all hate her. so we get to this point where female characters are flattened into one of two things: perfect queens who can do no wrong, or bitches. and that’s not who they are. that’s not who anyone is. but while we as a fandom are pretty good at understanding b1 Zuko’s actions as layered and multifaceted even though he’s essentially an asshole then, few are willing to lend the same grace to any female character, least of all Mai.

and what’s funny is sometimes this trope will intersect with “I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!”, so you’ll have someone actively calling Mai toxic/problematic/abusive, and at the same time ship her with Ty Lee? make it make sense! but then again, maybe that’s happening because y’all are fundamentally disinterested in Ty Lee as a character too.

“I love Ty Lee so much that I’m going to treat her like an infantilized hypersexual airhead!”

there are so many things happening in y’alls characterization of Ty Lee that I struggled to synthesize it into one quippy section header. on one hand, you have the hypersexualization, and on the other hand, you have the infantilization, which just makes the hypersexualization that much worse.

(of course, sexualizing or hypersexualizing ANY atla character is really not the move, considering that these are child characters in a children’s show, but then again, that’s a separate post.)

now, I understand how, from a very, very surface reading of the text, you could come to the conclusion that Ty Lee is an uncomplicated bimbo. if you grew up on Western media the way I did, you’ll know that Ty Lee has a lot of the character traits we associate with bimbos: the form-fitting pink crop top, the general conventional attractiveness, the ditzy dialogue. but if you think about it for more than three seconds, you’ll understand that Ty Lee has spent her whole life walking a tightrope, trying to please Azula and the rest of the royal family while also staying true to herself. Ty Lee and Azula’s relationship is a really complex and interesting topic that I don’t really have time to explore at the moment given how long this post is, but I’d argue that Ty Lee’s constant, vocal adulation is at least partially a product of learning to survive at court at an early age. Like Mai, she has been forced to regulate her emotions as a member of fn nobility, but unlike Mai, she also has six sisters who look exactly like her, so she has a motivation to be more peppy and more affectionate to stand out.

fandom does not do the work to understand Ty Lee. as is a theme with this post, fandom is actively disinterested in investigating female characters beyond a very surface level reading of them. Thus, fandom takes Ty Lee’s surface level qualities--her love of the color pink, her revealing standard outfit, and the fact that once she found a boy attractive and also once a lot of boys found her attractive--and they stretch this into “Ty Lee is basically Karen Smith from Mean Girls.” thus, Ty Lee is painted as a bimbo, or more specifically, as not smart, uncritically adoring of Azula (did y’all forget all the non-zukka bits of Boiling Rock?), and attractive to the point of hypersexualization. I saw somebody make a post that was like “I wish mailee was more popular but I’m also glad it isn’t because otherwise people would write it as Mai having to put up with her dumb gf” and honestly I have to agree!! this is one instance in which I’m glad that fandom doesn’t discuss one of my favorite characters that often because I hate the fanon interpretation of Ty Lee, I think it’s rooted in misogyny (particularly misogyny against East Asian women, which often takes the form of fetishizing them and viewing them only through a Western white male gaze)

(side note: here at army-of-mai-lovers, we stan bimbos. bimbos are fucking awesome. I personally don’t read Ty Lee as a bimbo, but if that’s you, that’s fucking awesome. keep doing what you’re doing, queen <3 or king or monarch, it’s 2021, anyone can be a bimbo, bitches <3)

“Toph can and will destroy everyone here with her bare hands because she’s a meathead who likes to murder people and that’s it!”

Toph is, and always has been, one of my favorite ATLA characters. My very first fic in fandom was about her, and she appears prominently in a lot of my other work as well. One thing that I am always struck by with Toph is how big a heart she has. She’s independent, yes, snarky, yes, but she cares about people--even the family that forced her to make herself smaller because they didn’t believe that their blind daughter could be powerful and strong. Her storyline is powerful and emotionally resonant, her bending is cool precisely because it’s based in a “wait and listen” approach instead of just smashing things indiscriminately, she’s great disabled rep, and overall one of the best characters in the show.

And in fandom, she gets flattened into “snarky murder child.”

So where does this come from? Well, as we all know, Toph was originally conceived of as a male character, and retained a lot of androgyny (or as the kids call it, Gender) when she was rewritten as a female character. There are a lot of cultural ideas about androgynous/butch women being violent, and people in fandom seem to connect that larger cultural narrative with some of Toph’s more violent moments in the show to create the meathead murder child trope, erasing her canon emotionality, softness, heart, and femininity in the process.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t write or characterize Toph as being violent or snarky at all ever, because yeah, Toph definitely did do Earth Rumbles a lot before joining the gaang, and yeah, Toph is definitely a sarcastic person who makes fun of her friends a lot. What I am saying is that people take these traits, sans the emotional logic, marry them to their conception of androgynous/butch women as violent/unemotional/uncaring, and thus create a caricature of Toph that is not at all up to snuff. When I see Toph as a side character in a fic (because yeah, Toph never gets to be a main character, because why would a fandom obsessed with one male character in particular ever make Toph a protagonist in her own right?) she’s making fun of people, killing people, pranking people, etc, etc. She’s never talking to people about her emotions, or palling around with her found family, or showing that she cares about her friends. Everything about her relationship with her parents, her disability, her relationship to Gender, and her love of her friends is shoved aside to focus on a version of Toph that is mean and uncaring because people have gotten it into their heads that androgynous/butch women are mean and uncaring.

again, we see a female character who does not emote normatively or in a way that makes you, the viewer, comfortable, and so you warp her character until she’s completely unrecognizable and flat. and for what?

Azula

no, I didn’t come up with a snappy name for this section, mainly because fanon interpretations of Azula and my own feelings toward the character are...complicated. I know there were some people who wanted me to write about Azula and the intersection of misogyny and ableism in fanon interpretations of her character, but I don’t think I can deliver on that because I personally am in a period of transition with how I see Azula. that is to say, while I still like her and believe that she can be redeemed, there is a lot of merit to disliking her. the whole point of this post is that the female characters of ATLA are complex people whom the fandom flattens into stereotypes that don’t hold up to scrutiny, or dislike for reasons that don’t make sense. Azula, however, is a different case. the rise of Azula defenders and Azula stans has led to this sentiment that Azula is a 14 y/o abuse victim who shouldn’t be held accountable for her actions. it seems to me that people are reacting to a long, horrible legacy of male ATLA fans armchair diagnosing Azula with various personality disorders (and suggesting that people with those personality disorders are inherently monstrous and unlovable which ahhhh....yikes) and then saying that those personality disorders make her unlovable, which is quite obviously bad. and hey, I get loving a character that everyone else hates and maybe getting so swept up in that love that you forget that your fave is complicated and has made some unsavory choices. it sucks that fanon takes these well-written, complex villains/antiheroes and turns them into monsters with no critical thought whatsoever. but the attitude among Azula stans that her redemption shouldn’t be hard, that her being a child excuses all of the bad things that she’s done, that she is owed redemption....all of that rubs me the wrong way. I might make another post about this in the future that discusses this in more depth, but as it stands now: while I understand that there is a legacy of misogynistic, ableist, unnuanced takes on Azula, the backlash to that does not take into account the people she hurt or the fact that in ATLA she does not make the choice to pursue redemption. and yes, Zuko had help in making that choice that Azula didn’t, and yes, Azula is a victim of abuse, but in a show about children who have gone through untold horrors and still work to better the lives of the people around them, that is not enough for me to uncritically stan her.

Conclusion

misogyny in this fandom runs rampant. while there are some tropes of fandom misogyny that are well-documented and have been debunked numerous times, there are other, subtler forms of misogyny that as far as I know have gone completely unchecked.

what I find so interesting about misogyny in atla fandom is that it’s clear that it’s perpetrated by people who are aware of fandom misogyny who are actively trying not to be misogynistic. when I first joined atla fandom last summer, memes about how zukka fandom was better than every other fandom because they didn’t hate the female characters who got in the way of their gay ship were extremely prevalent, and there was this sense that *this* fandom was going to model respectful, fun, feminist online fandom. not all of the topes I’ve outlined are exclusive to or even largely utilized in zukka fandom, but a lot of them are. I’ve been in and out of fandom since I was eleven years old, and most of the fandom spaces I’ve been in have been majority-female, and all of them have been incredibly misogynistic. and I always want to know why. why, in these communities created in large part by women, in large part for women, does misogyny run wild? what I realize now is that there’s never going to be a one-size fits all answer to that question. what’s true for 1D fandom on Wattpad in 2012 is absolutely not true for atla fandom on tumblr in 2021. the answers that I’ve cobbled together for previous fandoms don’t work here.

so, why is atla fandom like this? why did the dream of a feminist fandom almost entirely focused on the romantic relationship between two male characters fall apart? honestly, I think the notion that zukka fandom ever was this way was horrifically ignorant to begin with. from my very first moment in the fandom, I was seeing racism, widespread sexualization of minors, and yes, misogyny. these aspects of the fandom weren’t talked about as much as the crocverse or other, much more fun aspects. further, atla (specifically zukka) fandom misogyny often doesn’t look like the fandom misogyny we’ve become familiar with from like, Sherlock fandom or what have you. for the most part, people don’t actively hate Suki, they just “stan” without actually caring about her. they hate Mai because they believe in treating male victims of abuse equally. they’re not characterizing Toph poorly, they’re writing her as a “strong woman.” in short, people are misogynistic, and then invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of feminist theory to shield themselves from accusations of misogyny. it’s not unlike the way some people will invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of critical race theory to shield themselves from accusations of racism, or how they’ll talk about “freedom of speech” and “the suppression of women’s sexuality” to justify sexualizing minors. the performance of feminism and antiracism is what’s important, not the actual practice.

if you’ve made it this far, first off, hi, thanks so much for reading, I know this was a lot. second, I would seriously encourage you to be aware of these fandom tropes and to call them out when you see them. elevate the voices of fans who do the work of bringing the female characters of atla to life. invest in the wlw ships in this fandom. drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic (please, drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic). read some yuetara. let’s all be honest about where we are now, and try to do better in the future. I believe in us.

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rantrambles · 3 years

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Ever get so upset you make a Tumblr account to vent?

I haven’t even listened to The Penumbra Podcast yet but it’s on my list because it’s insanely popular and the cosplays I’ve seen are hot as hell (A+ to all the cosplayers I’ve seen you’ve done great work). Now, with the recent news surrounding the podcast, I’ll wait till it’s done if I ever do get into it. I’m Asian and part of the LGBT community but I’m not nonbinary so I can’t say much about the trans represention in the art but I wanted to add my two cents on the matter as a person of color and someone examining the situation from the outside. Also, before I get deeply into it, I’m not the only person of color with opinions on this matter so if people have their own frustrations and criticism with the racism in The Penumbra Podcast and/or the new artist they hired, definitely listen to them too. These are my own personal opinions, and I’m sure other people will disagree and that’s fine. We’re all going to have different views on this so bear that in mind. Also, feel free to correct me or add anything if I’ve missed some information. Here’s a great breakdown of the whole situation for those that don’t know what happened. Finally, I was very hesitant to post this, but I felt it was important because I make a statement at the end on how race should be presented in a podcast format so if you are interested in making a podcast and want to have a diverse range of characters, please skip to the end to read those thoughts.

I’ll start off by saying, I’m not even that upset with the new artist that The Penumbra Podcast hired. I know that statement alone is controversial but I don't personally know them, and I’m not going to judge who they are as a person by a few pieces of art they’ve made. They are the least of the problems that I have here. Since the announcement and the backlash, I’ve been scrolling through the artist’s Instagram account and I can tell why people find the designs offensive, but I’m also comparing the designs to the artist’s other work, and I honestly believe that’s just their style. They’ve exaggerated the features of just about every character they’ve made, regardless of race or gender. From what I’ve seen the sharp angles and overly round curves in the anatomy that make some of the character’s features more jarring are how they prefer to draw. I’m sure they’re capable of drawing more realistic proportions but for the most part they’re art aims to call attention, be bold, and create distinguished features. Not inherently a bad thing on its own.

And yeah I’d understand the issue if this were a scenario where the artist heard how these characters acted in the podcast and thought “hey, obviously this character is a black woman because they are super strong and therefore must have big muscles, no other woman could look like that” or “hey, this character has to be Asian because they act super seductive sometimes better draw them as such.” But from my understanding the race was already decided by previous official artists and a general description of the characters were already generated by the audience, similar to how The Magnus Archives leaned towards drawing scrawny Jon with black, greying hair and dark skin. The new artists couldn’t really change those features even if those features aren’t described in canon because a depiction that strayed too far from popular fandom interpretation would make the character’s unrecognizable to the fanbase.

I think the reason this became such a big issue for most people is because the new Penumbra artist used their exaggerated art style when making these characters and people of color and nonbinary folks already see themselves drawn as these exaggerated caricatures all the time (with those images being used to further discriminate against them). I’m sure the artist didn’t mean for their art to be offensive, but that of course doesn’t change how it was received.

According to some, the poses and expressions the artists chose did not fully represent the characters entirely and only served to further perpetuate harmful stereotypes, and I’ll have to take their word for it because I still haven’t listened to the podcast so I have no idea how the characters act. But again much of the criticism is based on the one line-up and doing a deeper dive into the artist’s work I managed to find artwork that was much less offensive. Here some art where Vespa is depicted in a non-violent pose and one where Vespa is in a threatening pose but not an overly violent one. Here is Peter drawn in a non-seductive pose. Hopefully, the artist truly does keep the criticisms in mind as they work on the new official art. I’m just not the type of person that wants to get the pitchforks out and cause this particular person to lose a job they seemed really excited about over their old character line-up, especially when that person is also part of a marginalized group.

Again, that’s just my opinion on that particular artist. Those who are offended by their art are still valid in how they feel, and the artist should absolutely take their criticism to heart to better how they represent the characters.

What I’m more upset about is that I think The Penumbra Podcast should never have released official art for their characters in the first place and that’s their mistake that they refuse to own up about. They have made it clear that the story was never meant to portray characters of colors, a fact emphasized by the fact they hired mostly white actors from the start. They only started releasing art of the characters to get a profit. And the thing is they know what they did was wrong. All I had to do was search Penumbra Podcast racism and there is a note on their website saying that they archived some old official art.

“We have discontinued all Penumbra merchandise that uses the original character designs, and in the meantime, any profits on the sales of that merchandise will go to the For The Gworls project. We also realize that the depiction of these characters as POC, while not appropriate for us to use in our marketing and merchandise, has nonetheless become personally meaningful to many POC listeners. For that reason, and because we do not wish to distance ourselves from our mistake, we are keeping these images on our website for archival purposes. Though we do want to make it clear that many of the main/featured voice actors are white and that we did not write the characters to represent any specific POC experience, you are, as always, free to imagine these characters in any way that you like.”

I went to their shop and they still sell posters and pins with the character’s faces on them, but they are donating it to a good cause so hopefully that stays the same. However, I still find it a little uncomfortable that they are still selling character merch and have plans to continue selling character merch. They have no right to dissuade the fans that already found representation in the characters, but they also have no right to profit off the representation that was built, regardless if they made the story.

Let’s compare this to another piece of popular media. I love Avatar the Last Airbender and, I liked the ATLA voice actors just fine but there should have been more people of color doing voice acting behind the screen too. The voice actors for that show were mainly white too, however, the creators knew that they would be making poc characters. That’s what makes the difference. Did they still choose to go with mostly white voice actors? Yes. Could they have done better and pay more people of color? Also yes. But I’m not as furious at them because they did their research on the cultures they were basing the ATLA world off of and intentionally gave us a show where Asians could see characters that looked like them represented on the screen. The Penumbra Podcast did not do any of that. Again, they openly admitted that it was never their intention to make the character’s people of color when they made the podcast so that goes to show no research was made to properly represent specific cultures. The color of the character’s skin in their official designs therefore became more of aesthetic choice rather than representation, and it wasn’t even their aesthetic choice to begin with!

Race isn’t a color you can just throw onto the character because you feel like it. So I want this to be a lesson to anyone that wants to make a podcast: if you want to include poc characters please do some research into the cultures you plan to represent the way you would with any other form of media. Just because the audience can’t see the characters and just because it’s harder to smoothly introduce the character’s appearance doesn’t mean you’re allowed to be lazy on how you present the characters. Do research before you start writing the first episode and take the time to hire poc actors. Hiring poc actors is actually the least that can be done to show representation. Also, since the audience cannot visually see the race of the characters on a podcast and it can’t typically be described the way you would in a book, you’ll have to be creative. It’s not my job to say how, but my suggestions would be, before the fans come up with their own image of the character, you need to establish race in the first few episodes or release character profiles on a website so that the fans know you canonically intended the characters to be of a certain race even if you aren’t able to mention it in the actual podcast. If you are unwilling to do any of these then the best route is to avoid stating race at all and allow the audience to build their own representation into your form of media. However, once this happens, you are not allowed to profit off popular fan interpretations. You lose all rights to create official art or images of the characters. You cannot use “we have a diverse cast of characters” when you market your story. It doesn’t matter whether you created the content or not, you did not create the representation for those minority groups.

It’s one thing for fans to build their own inclusivity into a form of art like a podcast, but it’s another thing for the creators who never worked to make the representation happen to take advantage of the representation that the listeners built for themselves. Thank you for attending my TedTalk.

#the penumbra podcast #podcast #race #the magnus archives #diversity in podcasts #diversity #tpp #tpp fanart

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thevictorianghost · 3 years

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You said in your finnrey/zutara post that studio meddling was involved for both. I knew that this was the case for finnrey because of racist cowards. But I never knew that was the case for zutara? Tbh I just assumed from the get-go that aang and katara were the main ship and I thought it was cute for them to end up together in the end. Though it is really interesting to learn that zuko and katara could’ve also been a serious thing and I think they could also work together rather nicely. What happened behind the scenes that caused it not to happen? Was aang originally gonna be set up with toph or have no love interest?

Oh hello! Hi! My first anon. Welcome :)

Before we start: I’m going to write Kat/aang, A/ang and Bry/ke like that so it doesn’t appear in the tags and I’ll bold some sections for emphasis.

I don’t think the writers even considered Toph as a love interest for A/ang. It was always about Kat/aang vs Zutara.

It’s no secret at this point that Dante Basco and Mae Whitman, who voiced Zuko and Katara respectively, ship Zutara. Dante Basco is known as the “captain of the Zutara ship”. They’ve written multiple times about Zutara on Twitter and Dante Basco said in an interview that he really thought, at one point, that Zuko and Katara were going to end up together, that he thought it was going that way, and that he loved the idea of fire and water together.

As for the writers, it’s a bit more difficult to find information, since the show ended 15 years ago. But Aaron Ehasz, head writer of ATLA, has come out and said there was supposed to be a fourth season and it was dropped in favor of the movie. He said it on Twitter on April 1rst, 2019 (while also saying sorry for picking that date, it wasn’t an April Fools!). He said that M Night Shyamalan wanted them to focus on Book 4, but Bry/ke (Bryan Konietsko and Mike DiMartino) “wanted to focus on the movie”. You can find those tweets here. Not about Zutara per se, but it does show not everyone was on board with how the show was going to end behind the scenes.

Speaking of the movie, when asked about The Last Airbender, M Night Shyamalan also gave his input on the situation. He talked about how, by the time Book 3 came around, he wasn’t sure if the series was supposed to end there or if there was going to be a Book 4. He said to Bry/ke: ““Dudes, I gotta know this. This is critical! This has to end. This has to end. If it doesn’t end, I’m not on board. But if you don’t want to end it - it’s all good.” They were like “no, we saw it as three seasons for each element that he has to learn.” And I said “great.”” This is where it gets interesting, though: “At that time they hadn’t even decided where things were going to end, even like who Katara was going to end up with. All of that stuff hadn’t been figured out yet.”

It’s interesting to me how he mentions this is who Katara will end up with. Not A/ang, not Zuko. It’s always about Katara.

Someone who interned on ATLA has been quoted as saying that “If you check out the I.P. Bible then you’ll see a Kat/aang endgame was never planned from the start, it was supposed to remain a one-sided crush throughout the whole show.“ and that “The actual decision to make them a couple came about much later at Bry/ke’s request, largely because they were frustrated at the popularity of Zutara.“ Of course, not everyone in the production was full on one side or the other, as the post says some were neutral about it. “Some of the crew liked Kat/aang, I know Joaquim [Dos Santos] was a big Kat/aang supporter but more of them were neutral about it, Ehasz was not fond of Kat/aang but he didn’t mind too much since he’s a mature adult and all that.”

Avatar Extras (special events on Nicktoons where episodes of ATLA were shown with fun facts) were released where it was said that Zuko was supposed to be Katara’s love interest. It was said two times at least. I’ve only ever found screencaps of these, but I found these here on Tumblr.

When asked about these in the Avatar Extras, Bry/ke said that it was just a joke and that Kat/aang was always in the DNA of the show. But if you’re here to tell fun facts to your audience about your show, maybe put a disclaimer that says some things might not be as truthful as they think they will be?

And the intern mentioned earlier also said that “No one was having full-on ship wars in the writer’s room but we did joke about it, and we toyed with the idea of Zuko and Katara falling in love a couple of times.“ So that goes well with the Avatar Extras.

Meanwhile, other writers, like John O’Bryan, have been quoted talking against Zutara in favor of Kat/aang. EDIT: Thank you to @exhaustedhope for giving me a source for this quote! This link also has a few images for the quote, so I’ll add them here.

Thank you again! And also the use of Zutara fanart to badmouth the ship in favor of Kat/aang? Dude.

If this was the way people behind the scenes were thinking of Katara and A/ang’s and Katara and Zuko’s relationships... well that doesn’t really make me think “Kat/aang was in the DNA of the show” either, huh? Zuko was never officially her love interest, Katara never actually “went after that guy”. But the thought that she might made them uneasy.

(Btw, let’s not forget Zuko actually does care about Katara, enough to put his life on the line for her in Book 3, so that mischaracterizes Zuko.)

This comment by John O’Bryan fits with this vision of Zutara Bry/ke has, where Zuko is nothing but a broody, emo “bad boy” who doesn’t care about Katara at all. It’s shown pretty well in their dreadful “joke” made at Comic Con in 2007. You can find the video here. Here, Katara ends up with A/ang and “should have never doubted the will of Mike and Bryan!” (yuck). So Kat/aang was always the “right” way for them to end the show, right?

But then! Even Bry/ke themselves have said that Kat/aang was forced. They said it in 2014 when Korrasami became canon in Legend of Korra. On Korrasami and Kat/aang, they said this: “Originally, [Korrasami] was primarily intended to be a strong friendship. Frankly, we wanted to set most of the romance business aside for the last two seasons. Personally, at that point I didn’t want Korra to have to end up with someone at the end of series. We obviously did it in Avatar, but even that felt a bit forced to me.“

So they admitted that Kat/aang was forced. They even mention the ATLA ship wars in the post. “Either direction we went [about Korrasami or Makorra], there would inevitably be a faction that was elated and another that was devastated. Trust me, I remember Kat/aang vs. Zutara. But one of those directions is going to be the one that feels right to us, and Mike and I have always made both Avatar and Korra for us, first and foremost.”

Okay. So what’s real about the behind the scenes of ATLA and what isn’t? Was Kat/aang in the DNA of the show, or did they go back and forth between Kat/aang and Zutara like they did with Korrasami and Makorra?

There have been conflicting informations scattered across the Internet over the years. Some people say one thing and others react, saying the opposite and that the first thing was false. Some people lied, or joked, to mess with the audience and toy with Zutara - or not, or maybe, or perhaps... What I think, though, is that not everything was set in stone. Some people were for Zutara and some people were for Kat/aang. And even after all of that, the big takeaway for me was: the end result that Bryke wanted so badly was lackluster in and of itself.

#zutara #anti-bryke #anti-kataang #atla salt

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lovebecomeshim · 3 years

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hello! your zutara posting today has finally motivated me to ask this question because I came to atla very late(last year, to be specific) and I Love It Very Much but am 1000% out of the loop as far as why what remains of fandom (at least that I've seen among my friends) is so very strongly zutara. I'm not opposed to it per se I just don't really know what has driven it to apparently be such a popular ship? can you help me understand and maybe convert me a little bit?

Hey!! Your ICON! :D I can try but I’m not sure how coherent I’ll be; however I AM sure someone a lot more competent will be willing to add to this. Either way, I’m glad you asked because my plan was to drag down as many people as possible with me.

*smacks the hood of zutara* this baby can fit so much mutual love and support!

This got so long, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to put it under a cut on mobile and it already got deleted once so I’m scared to mess with it lol. Moving on.

I’m gonna start this with a disclaimer that im on mobile so formatting is tricky and I’m also really new to atla in that I only completed my first watch through in like 2019??? So some of my info is all just based on what I’ve picked up from Discourse 👀 so anyway the sparknotes version: zutara was wildly popular from the beginning. To the point where the atla crew internally disagreed on which ship should be endgame. (Ex. Bryke [showrunners] asked the writers to rewrite The Southern Raiders to make Zuko seem less ideal for Katara than Aang [which failed, depending on who you ask]; the animation team purposefully created a visual parrallel between Oma and Shu in the Cave of Two Lovers and Zuko and Katara in the catacombs under Ba Sing Se in the Crossroads of Destiny; etc.)

The ship was popular enough that Bryke actually chose to display zk fanart at a con for the sole purpose of mocking the fans, but that’s neither here nor there. The entire episode Ember Island Players, while a love letter to/parody of the whole show, was an opportunity to address zutara’s viability as a canon pairing (while, again, mocking zutaras for romanticizing that catacombs scene). Point is! It’s always been popular but with it not being endgame, there’s got to be something that’s given it staying power.

And that’s honestly got to do with three things: their dynamic, thematic cohesion, and potential.

(You know what... you know what, it’s four things. The fourth is they’re so aesthetically pleasing together and individually. Like, they’re just good looking people [specifically when they’re grown but they’re also cute kids] and that absolutely doesn’t hurt) (but it’s not the Point, it’s just nice to point out sometimes)

The dynamic is hard to get into without also looking at the canon pairings, but I think I can do that without unnecessary bashing. It’s just that part of the magic of zutara is really highlighted by what they give to each other that their other relationships don’t.

First off, it’s classic enemies to (would be) lovers. The absolute truest form of it. It’s not too different from how CS started out: a rogue antagonist with a job to do—but no personal vendetta against the future love interest—who is deeply and emotionally invested in his personal storyline (revenge/redemption) with little regard for how it effects other people after his entire life and genuine good nature are marred by suffering, and a fierce warrior girl with a strong moral compass and her own personal investment in stopping him (protect her family and save the world doing it). Obviously frustration and animosity grew between them by the nature of them being on opposing sides, but that just lends itself to the sweetness of their later reconciliation.

The thing is that while they’re wildly different on the surface (he’s a hot-headed prince of a fascist regime who is trying to capture the Avatar to please his father; she’s a nurturing daughter of the chief who is trying to protect and train the Avatar in order to topple his father’s throne) they find out that they have so much more in common both in their experiences and their personalities.

(What follows is an excessive use of the word “both” and I’m sorry about that)(I can edit it. I can do that. That IS an option............)

They both have an innate sense of justice that they are determined to see done (zuko, at the war meeting, sticking up for the Earth Kingdom kid when the guards torment his family, choosing not to steal from the pregnant couple despite his circumstances, abiding by his word to leave the SWT should Aang come willingly, etc.; katara, literally.... at any point). They both have pretty one-track minds at accomplishing certain goals once they’ve put their mind to it, regardless of a lack of support in that endeavor (it goes without saying I guess, but zuko’s entire hunt; katara’s determination to get the earth benders to fight back, her determination to absolutely destroy Pakku until he agrees to teach her, etc.). They both lost their mothers at young ages. Their worlds are war-torn and traumatizing to them both, if in different ways, but that ultimately forces them to grow up too quickly to be wholly independent individuals. They both have issues with their fathers (for WILDLY different reasons, but). They both hold extreme prejudices that they need to learn to overcome (which ties into thematic cohesion)(bit like Lizzie and Darcy in that way but magnified by a million). They’re both extremely emotional and empathetic—which can and often does result in loud outbursts. Katara’s a bit better adjusted and can temper her anger for longer than S1 Zuko can, but they both feel that anger deeply and have no compunctions expressing it (Katara is, usually, more justified, particularly in S1. Again, S1 Zuko is severely maladjusted but at the point when they could’ve feasibly become a couple, he’s so much better off with the way he carries himself). They both struggle with feelings of inferiority in their bending abilities when confronted with prodigal benders like Aang and Azula, but have the work ethic required to double down and become two of the most powerful benders in the three remaining nations. This is a little more minor but it is a parrallel that appeals to some shippers that they both have these alter egos in the Painted Lady (notably fire nation coded) and the Blue Spirit (water tribe coded) that are pretty different from who they are day-to-day and are useful in accomplishing a purpose that they as themselves cannot.

(I’m.... I just realized that this could potentially get very long. Should I have made a slide show with bullet points??????)

Anyway, similar. I know there’s more but there’s literally so much to love about zutara that I’ll drive myself a little crazy trying to compile all the ways they’re similar. (Just gonna say that at this exact moment I went back to add more similarities.... so okay then)

Once they’ve reconciled, we see how all of these things only lend themselves to a deeper intimacy together than they share with literally anyone else. There’s a steady partnership that positions them as the mom/dad of the gaang, while also providing the support necessary to allow the other to not have to carry so much responsibility. A lot of zutaras will point out how zuko is actually depicted doing the more domestic chores that are normally relegated to Katara once he joins the gaang, since the others in the group are two 12-year-olds and sokka. The one that sticks out the most is how he makes tea for the group and then serves them, while Katara is able to just relax with her friends around the fire. Fanon expands upon this a lot to Zuko helping with the laundry or the cooking or whatever else needs doing since he, as a once-refugee, is used to doing his own domestic tasks. Before Zuko joined, Katara was the one mothering everyone, sewing for them, cooking for them, etc. She’s always tending to the needs of the group, and that includes emotionally. She does the emotional labor for the gaang 99% of the time, but when she’s the one falling apart, she’s usually doing it alone and without the comfort that she normally provides for others. Until Zuko. And that’s before they’re even friends.

Which is WHY people romanticize the catacombs of Ba Sing Se so much. Katara is verbally attacking Zuko out of her own righteous anger but also her own prejudice when Zuko, surprisingly, chooses to be vulnerable with her. He’s been on a journey that’s opened his eyes a bit, but he’s never actively chosen to expose the rawest parts of his past to anyone. But for some reason he chooses to do that with Katara of all people. While she’s yelling at him. He sees her humanity, and for once can look past his prejudice and empathize with her. And this time, when she breaks down, she gets to be comforted. Katara normally talks about her mother when she’s trying to explain to someone else that she sees and understands they’re pain, as a form of comfort to them. Here, Zuko uses the exact same tactic. He sees her and he understands. And for zuko? He’s not being shut down. He’s allowed to articulate his pain regarding his mother without being ignored and made to internalize it, and he’s allowed to process how he feels about his scar out loud without being told that he deserved it. And then he lets her touch his scar, something we’ve seen him actively avoid before. He’s completely open to her and she’s completely open to him and all it took was one five minute conversation. She was about to use the little bit of Spirit water that she had, that she was saving for something Important, to heal the scar that still daily causes him pain just because they had, somehow, connected.

Plus there’s the whole parallel to the star-crossed lovers forbidden from one another, a war divides their people—

And then zuko messes up, he regresses, he gets what he wants and he HATES it. And the sense of justice he had as a child has been restored to him against his will and he can’t think of anything he wants to do more than the Right Thing, so he joins team avatar. Before he does that though, we get to see his relationship with Mai, which is where comparison really comes in. And what we see is Zuko, fresh off of his encounter with Katara in the catacombs, trying to be emotionally honest with Mai... and getting shut down and dismissed. Which is just how Mai is and it’s fine, but not for Zuko. Still, he keeps trying, and he keeps getting ignored or scoffed at or yelled at. Which is really a larger symbol for how he doesn’t fit in his old life anymore, but again that’s about thematic cohesion. He tries to articulate his anxieties about returning home, he tries to make romantic gestures, he tries to explain how morally conflicted he’s feeling—and Mai diverts to some kind of physical affection to shut him up and a parting comment that is pretty much always, in essence, “I don’t wanna talk about this.” So they don’t. On the other hand, once zuko and Katara are friends, we see him again emotionally distraught and caught up in his anxieties about facing Iroh, and it’s Katara who comes to him and listens to him and comforts and encourages him.

Similarly, we have Aang clamming up and getting uncomfortable whenever Katara shows any negative emotion, usually resulting in him making excuses or running away. Or, in the case of the Southern Raiders, lecturing her on how she needs to just let go of her anger about her mother’s murder. People have talked this episode to death and usually better than I ever could, so imma... keep it brief. There’s a serious disconnect between Aang and Katara in his ability to empathize with Katara and her needs that has her tamping down her vulnerability and amping up her anger. He tells her that he was able to forgive his people’s genocide and appa’s kidnapping (petnapping? Theft??), which is blatantly not true but also not an entirely equal parrallel to Katara’s situation, and continues making these little remarks throughout the episode. But it’s Zuko that Katara opens up to. It’s with him that she’s able to talk about the most traumatic day of her life, and it’s with him that she’s able to get the closure she needs, cementing their bond as friends and partners. This disagreement between Aang and Katara is then... never resolved. They just never bring it up and hear what the other is saying.

There’s a fic called The Portraits of Ember Island that has a line that so completely sums up the heart of the matter for why people love their dynamic. For context, zuko has woken up early to help Katara with the cooking and they spend the whole time just letting one another talk, and zuko stops to ask why she always just lets him talk. And so she stops to ask why he’s always helping, and it goes as follows:

There’s just... so much mutual support! Trust! Intimacy!! And it just continues like that from the Southern Raiders on, listening to each other, advising each other, watching each other’s backs! And then! Literally saving each other’s lives!! I will never be over the last Agni kai. Not ever. Zuko may have been willing to jump in front of lightning for anyone, but he actually did it for Katara. And in a show, that’s the thing that really matters. It’s a fulfilled trope usually exclusively applied to romantic pairings, and it ended up applying to Zuko and Katara. And then she ran out into the middle of a fight with tunnel vision just to get to him.

Also!! Also Zuko pushing Katara out of the way of the falling rocks at the Western Air Temple!! And Katara catching him as he fell from the war balloon that he fought Azula on!! Before they’re even getting along, they’re the ones reaching for each other. They come to this place of equal ground, as partners, who watch each other’s backs, call each other out but still listen attentively and understand, and provide the support that the other has been sorely lacking up until they knew each other (whether that be from lack of effort or lack of understanding from others, or an unwillingness to accept it for themselves).

Then, trailing along under the surface of this, we see the themes of the show totally embodied by Zuko and Katara as individuals and in their relationship to one another. There’s a YouTuber, sneezyreviews, who has a, like, 2-hour explanation on why she not only loves zutara but also believes that their endgame would’ve actually elevated the writing of atla to new levels particularly because of thematic cohesion and resolved character arcs. It’s the zutara dissertation I never knew I needed, and it’s funny and eloquent and effective, so I’m just going to sum up her section on thematic cohesion to the best of my abilities and then link it for whenever you have the time. And I HIGHLY recommend it, especially if you want a full understanding of what makes zutara so great and gives it such longevity.

Guru pathik has a line that goes something like this: separation is an illusion; things that seem different are just two parts of the same whole. Iroh also tells Zuko something similar: balance and strength are achieved when the different nations come together and influence one another and celebrate what makes them each unique. And this lesson is a massive central arc that both Zuko and Katara go through, moving past a black-and-white, good guys-vs-bad guys, us-vs-them mentality and into a greyer, more nuanced view of the world. Zuko sees the fire nation from an entirely new perspective and while he still loves and hopes for his nations future, he surrenders his blind loyalty to them in exchange for an unflinching loyalty to peace and love. Katara too had to come to terms with the fact that cruel people exist in the earth kingdom and water tribes, while some fire nation citizens are just regular, kind people who also need and deserve to have someone speak on their behalf. And this is honed in directly on how they view each other. They grow in their individual journeys to be open to the humanity in the other and then, once they’ve found that, they’re able to grow more in compassion for others in a beautiful feedback loop. And this is all matched in the symbolism repeatedly and intentionally associated with them in canon: sun and moon, fire and water, yin and yang, Oma and Shu who found love despite their warring nations. Their individual arcs are completed in each other and complement the themes of atla beautifully.

The canon pairs... just don’t. Which, again, is fine. But the very things that give atla longevity and popularity are anchored in zutara. Kat@ang doesn’t accomplish this. They’re... nice. Sweet. Especially when you erase a good portion of their interactions in S3. It could’ve been just a sweet love story. (Personally, the dynamic between toph and aang accomplish the same thing that zutara does, with complementary personalities that fulfill the theme of opposites blending in harmony) M@iko, on the other hand, is less sweet but I think wasn’t even supposed to last. Zuko’s relationship with Mai seems to represent his relationship with his old life as a whole. He can’t be emotionally vulnerable, he’s goaded into abusing his privileges, his agency and opinions aren’t respected. They just don’t have common ground with which to discuss anything that matters, so they don’t. As far as themes, the relationship doesn’t fit with atla. It’s zuko returning to and sticking with what is (on the surface) like him, what’s expected. Fire nation with fire nation. Fluid water bender with the flexible air bender. Like with like, separated from what is different and challenging and complementary.

And all of these things combined of course lead to the potential for the ship. I don’t know how familiar you are with the post-atla canon but... well, miss “I will never turn my back on people who need me”, miss “I don’t want to heal! I want to fight!” ends up living quietly in the SWT as a designated healer who turns a blind eye to the water tribe civil war happening right outside her front door. Which can be fine! People change! Some people just wanna stay inside. I just wanna stay inside! But the potential future for zutara is so much more satisfying, with Katara becoming the most unconventional Fire Lady the uppity old cads who are stuck on the old ways have ever seen. Fanon has her serving as a voice for the other nations within a kingdom at the point of its biggest political upheaval, as a confidante to Zuko who can actually help him while he’s trying to figure out how to move forward and make reparations. They have the opportunity, together, to accomplish what they both have set on their hearts to fight for: positive change that lends itself to harmony and balance. And the steambabies! A popular headcanon is that their firstborn daughter, the crown princess, is actually a waterbender, which causes such an uproar among the people who are adamantly clinging to the old ways. It’s just a future full of potential to be forces for good together, full of trust, intimacy, joy. The exact era of peace and love and balance that zuko announces that he intends to ring in with the start of his reign as Fire Lord is, again, magnified by the very personal zutara relationship. And we love to see it.

tl;dr zutara isn’t for everyone. Some people just don’t vibe with it. Some are nostalgic. Some love the canon they grew up with. Some have been disappointed for years. Some just see themselves in other characters and want their happiness instead. Whatever the reason, that’s fine. But for me, I love the way these two, from the moment they give each other a fair chance, are able to lower their walls and prejudices to see the other for the kindred spirits they are. They see each other’s humanity, and their response is to pour out love and support and compassion. I love that they’re a power couple in battle. I love the symbolism and, honestly, soulmatism that colors their every interaction. I love that they embody the whole storyline of atla in their relationship and how it develops, which is notably why their seasonal arcs always culminate in each finale with how they relate to one another. I love that zuko adopting a waterbending move is what actually saves his life and then katara’s. I love the chemistry! And I love the future they could’ve had, instead of the ones they were given.

So, in conclusion: I just think they’re neat and I hope you do too, at least a little bit. Even if it’s just respectfully from a disinterested distance cause you do you. And now here is the video I mentioned. I’m sorry this post got so long and then I gave you an even longer homework assignment, but I can’t recommend it enough. She says it all better than I can.

youtube

#zutara #atla #zutara rant #like really the way the canon relationships were written throughout s3 #it would’ve been more believable for zutara to happen #or at least be hinted at #all of the major issues presented in those relationship were dug up extensively and then... never resolved #and then they just slapped some kisses on a screen and said ‘there all better’#and we just kinda had to say ‘oh ok guess it’s all better then’#this got long I’m sorry #I wrote it all out and then tumblr ate 2/3 of it #which is why it took so long #and what I’ve written now doesn’t even match what I had before #because there’s too much to say about why I love zutara #and the stuff I left out the first time is what came out this time #rip to my original thoughts but this post is different #anyway that’s why this took so long #and I should’ve just made a PowerPoint...#I can do that too if you’d rather not read all of this lol #I won’t be offended #this is incoherent #Alia rambles uselessly #also hoping this doesn’t end up in any wrong tags because I don’t wanna step on toes lol #it’s not anti!! it’s just critical #in a compare/contrast way #I can pinpoint the moment when I started trying to rewrite my points from memory #because everything gets shorter and more succinct #like... I really said all that??? sounds fake and I don’t remember it anyway so here’s the condensed version #with no!! smooth!!! transitions!!!!#also why am I so lazy with proper grammar over text

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ljf613 · 4 years

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Why Azula Doesn’t Need a “Redemption”

I recently read this fabulous meta by @deliciousmeta about some of the issues with saying that Azula needs a “redemption,” and I completely agree and wanted to expound on it.

The term redemption arc is so ubiquitous in fandom, especially when talking about Azula, and I hate it, but I can’t get away from it. If I want people to recognize that what I write is in any way about understanding or humanizing Azula, let alone about working on her healing or actively trying to do better, I have to tag it with “Azula Redemption,” or people won’t know what I’m talking about.

So let’s talk a little more about the concept of “redemption” within the Avatar world.

The show does use the term redemption, particularly with Zuko and the Fire Nation, but it’s not talking about some arbitrary concept of “good person” vs “bad person.” No, words like “redemption” and “restoration” are specifically used regarding one thing: honor.

Before we go any further, let’s define our terms:

[ID: Dictionary definition of the word “Redemption”: Noun 1. the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil. 2. the action of regaining or gaining possession of something in exchange for payment, or clearing a debt. End ID]

Redemption has two separate meanings. The first is about being saved from sin/evil, and @deliciousmeta already went into many of the issues with this, but I’ll add one more point: it’s passive. There’s a person being saved, and another person doing the saving-- and the show itself rejects this. Iroh, no matter how hard he tries, can’t save Zuko. Zuko has to make his own decision to leave on his own terms.

The second definition is the one that’s important right now-- regaining something lost. Zuko (and the Fire Nation) has (or at least, believes he has) lost his honor, and he wants it back.

(Side note: That idea of reclamation/repossession is also something to consider when talking about Aang/the Air Nomads, the Water Tribes, and the Earth Kingdom regaining everything they’ve lost in the war. (I might discuss that in another post.) Redemption isn’t generally the word you hear in regards to victims, but it does apply.)

[ID: Dictionary definition of the word “Honor”: Noun 1. high respect; great esteem. 2. adherence to what is right or to a conventional standard of conduct. Verb 1. regard with great respect. 2. fulfil (an obligation) or keep (an agreement). End ID]

From Zuko’s very introduction, we see that he does honor his word, even when his opponents don’t. He told Aang he would leave the Water Tribe village in peace, and he kept his word, even when Aang did not.

Zuko’s obsession with redeeming his honor (again, that second definiton of redemption) is because he has conflated the two meanings of “honor”; he lost his esteem (read: privilege), and he thinks that somehow means he’s lost his integrity. In his obsession with regaining the first, he loses the second. This culminates in “The Crossroads of Destiny.” When he turns his back on Iroh in Ba Sing Se, he has broken the trust Iroh had in him-- he’s dishonored himself.

(Which, in a sense, is a microcosm for how the Fire Nation lost their honor-- they broke the trust all four of the nations had for each other.)

When he returns to the Fire Nation, he has what he thinks he wanted-- esteem and respect (read: his father’s “love”). But it’s a hollow shell of what it should be. He’s always been a person of integrity-- the person who’s being honored isn’t him. (Or, at least, it isn’t who he wants to be.)

And so this time, he rejects that first definition of honor. In essence, he says that respect is useless if the person’s actions aren’t deserving of respect.

In doing so, he takes back-- he redeems-- his real honor.

That’s what Zuko’s redemption arc is about. It’s not about “becoming a good person” or “being saved from evil,” it’s about taking back what he already had.

So I have no problem with calling Zuko’s story a redemption arc, because that’s what it is: a tale of a boy, and eventually, a nation, taking back what they’ve lost-- their honor-- through his own hands.

Any narrative about Azula, however, can’t be about that.

There are two reasons for this.

First off, Azula herself doesn’t care about honor. Unlike Zuko, her honor has never been something she valued. In “The Chase,” she rejects the very notion of honor when, after claiming that “a princess surrenders with honor,” she breaks her word. For Zuko, his honor is an integral part of his value system and who he is, but Azula has never even entertained the question-- if it doesn’t help her acheive her goals, it’s worthless.

Second, as I’ve mentioned, true redemption is about regaining something that’s been lost. What does Azula have to regain? Azula’s drive has always been about getting things she doesn’t have. (See Mirror & Misdirection - The Distortions of the Mirror Scene from @cobra-diamond for more on Azula’s goals and motivations.)

And the most of the things she’s lost are things she can’t get back:

Her relationships with Mai and Ty Lee were flawed from the beginning. Even if she does build new ones with them, they can’t be the same. Her relationship with Zuko might not have started wrong, but it’s become so warped and deformed, I don’t think either of them could get it back to the way it was-- nor should they. Most people have a different type of relationship with their siblings as adults than they did when they were children, and that’s okay. Her relationship with her mother is fractured and messy-- even if they did want to make up, it would, again, have to be a different kind of relationship. (And if you’ve been following me for any period of time, you also know my feelings on her relationship with Lu Ten, which, obviously, she can’t get back.)

Anything else-- her relationship with Ozai, her title and status, and that expectation of being a perfect princess-- are things she probably shouldn’t get back, because they would do more harm than good.

So no, an Azula story would not-- could not-- be about redemption.

Ideally, a narrative focusing on Azula would focus on two things: healing and atonement.

[ID: Dictionary definition of the word “Healing”: Noun the process of making or becoming sound or healthy again. Adjective tending to heal; therapeutic. End ID]

[ID: Dictionary definition of the word “Atonement”: Noun 1. reparation for a wrong or injury. 2. (in religious contexts) reparation or expiation for sin. End ID]

(Read @deliciousmeta‘s take on the difference between “redemption” and “atonement.” In short, redemption is about “being saved” from “inherent badness,” while atonement is about taking responsibility for your actions and doing the best you can to try and fix the wrongs you’ve done.)

At the end of ATLA, Azula has what, in layman’s terms, is commonly referred to as a mental (or nervous) breakdown. I’ve seen arguments about how that “proves” she’s a “horrible person” (coming back to OP’s argument about our obsession with categorizing people as “good” or “bad”), and I’ve seen competing arguments calling this ableist and furthering the stigmatization of mental illness.

I’ve talked about nervous breakdowns before, but here’s the gist: they are a body’s way of crying out for help. In real life, mental breakdowns are meant to be followed with the sick person (because mental illness is just as much an illness as cancer or sickle-cell anemia) actually getting the help they need.

What Azula needs is help-- preferably from an adult who hasn’t been personally affected by her actions, and who she doesn’t have pre-existing negative feelings about. She needs to be willing to accept that help (because you cannot help someone who refuses to be helped). And she needs to come to the realization that she has made mistakes-- that her actions have hurt people.

Only then will she be able to start making atonement for her actions.

What would that look like? I’m not sure, but I’ve got some ideas......

(No, I’m not going to tell you what they are, I have to leave some surprises for my future fics!)

#avatar the last airbender #meta #azula #zuko #azula's redemption arc #or not #zuko's redemption arc #mental illness #mental breakdown #thoughts #honor #healing #atonement

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remnantoforario · 3 years

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In the grand scheme, I don't really care all that much about Ironwood killing Jacques. He had become a terrible character and lost all the gravitas and menace that was established in V4, but from a pure character and story standpoint, it infuriates me.

Jacques was definitely a POS who likely deserved a fiery death for all the terrible things he did, but the fact that his death and/or him will more than likely never be mentioned again or simply breezed over is really the worst part.

@why-i-hate-rwby-now made a post about how we were essentially robbed from "broke and destitute" Jacques, which is a very good point, but I'm more upset at the fact that this means we will never fully get closure for the Schnee Family as a whole.

We will never be able to see them come together as a family and confront the abuser who screwed up their dynamic in the first place. We'll never truly know WHY Jacques became such a malignant asshole. Was he always like this and Willow ignored it? Did he hide his terrible character well enough to get close to her (like Blake and Yang claimed Adam did)? Did he become this way after taking on the pressure and the power of the company? We'll more than likely never know now, and I get some people don't care about that and that's completely fine, but I'm just a little weird like that. I wanted to see this family explored through the Atlas arc.

We could have seen him trying to worm his way back into his family's good graces, only to fail miserably. We could have seen him react to Weiss' "death". We could have seen Whitley trying to defend him, but Jacques fuck it all up and have his son realize just what kind of monster he truly is (not that he probably didn't know already). Hell, we could have possibly even seen him have a full blown redemption arc and the Schnees come together as a unit. A lot of potential was literally blown away because CRWBY didn't know what else to do with him or just didn't care.

I almost hate to say this...but if you want to see this plotline done BETTER, look no further than Fairy Tail. Specifically Lucy's relationship with her Father, Jude.

Lucy and Weiss are both similar in that they were born into wealthy families and wanted to define themselves OUTSIDE of said families.

Lucy became a wizard and joined the Fairy Tail guild, while Weiss became a Huntress at Beacon instead of her home of Atlas.

Long story short for Lucy, there was a whole arc (Phantom Lord) wherein in the main conflict was her father paying a rival guild to forcibly bring her back home so she could be married off to some rich socialite. The enemy is defeated and Lucy is saved, and in the end she gets this amazing moment where she defiantly tells off her father and reaffirms that she will never be what he wants her to be. She is her own person and she even threatens him to never attack her friends again. It's a really cool scene, IMO.

The story isn't done with Jude though, he comes back later in the Fantasia Arc. This time broke, destitute, and begging for Lucy's help (more specifically her money). When she refuses he starts getting and berating her, prompting her to tell him off leave him behind again. Later she saves him when he's attacked by some bandits, and this is when Jude starts to finally change and realize that his daughter still cares about him despite the crap he's done.

The last time we hear of Jude is after the seven year time skip. Lucy hears about his death, but it doesn't really hit her until she gets back home. Her father sent her birthday presents every year after she disappeared and wrote her letters all the time hoping that they would meet again, but he died from overwork a month before Lucy and the others returned.

That's where the beautiful tragedy of this plot thread comes in. Lucy never got see her father become a better person. She never got to see him become the man that her mother fell in love with. She was robbed of that and was left with nothing but this bittersweet feeling of fatherly love. It's a sad but perfect end to their story.

Weiss never really gets any of that. She says back in V2 that her goal is to redeem the Schnee name after what her father has done to it, but she never really does that. Sure we the audience get to see her do all this heroic stuff, but the wider world doesn't see it or care. To them she's still a spoiled heiress. She's really done nothing to work towards her ultimate goal.

The one time she tells off her father she gets slapped and locked in her room. She later escapes but she never gets back at him until she gets her father arrested in V7 (and even then her mother did all the work for her).

I'm not saying she needed to be as involved as Lucy was, but it certainly wouldn't have hurt. Unlike Lucy, Weiss still has her entire family with her. So there are different ways for her to see Jacques and learn how to properly deal with him. Obviously the women in the family see him as a controlling tyrant (because he is), but Whitley might be completely different in his interpretation of his father.

We saw how distraught he was when Jacques was arrested. Whitely more than likely knew that Jacques was a horrible parent, but at the same time (for better or worse) Jacques was the only parent who gave him any attention. Willow was content with drinking her life away and both of his sisters (who could have helped shelter him from the abuse) up and left. Jacques was likely the only one who cared for him (at least enough to try and mold him into his own image). Willow was to drunk to care, Weiss completely gave up without even trying, and Winter had long since written off everyone in her family who wasn't Weiss. Whitley adds a whole new avenue to this story, but again we'll never see it explored.

TLDR; Jacques death might have been cathartic for some, but in the grand scheme it's just another case of RWBY missing out on potential stories to flesh out it's characters.

#RWBY #RWDE #Jacques Schnee #Schnee Family #Winter Schnee #Willow Schnee #Whitely Schnee #Fairy Tail #Lucy Heartfilia #Jude Heartfilia

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kitkatopinions · 3 years

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I'm not a Fairgame fan but I genuinely don't understand Snowbird shippers thinking their ship was more valid. They're just a man and a woman who hate each other and never implied to at least care about each other. Nothing about Qrow Winter would be interested in(alcoholic older man that disrespects the Atlas military and Ironwood, sounds familiar).

You know, conversations about what ship is and isn’t ‘valid’ are always very strange to me, because... Most ships are valid? If people are talking about what ships are most likely or most deserving in canon, than that’s another conversation, but just insisting that Fair Game or Snowbird isn’t valid at all or that one is inherently better to ship than the other is weird as heck to me. It’s not hard to just, let people enjoy the ship they ship.

The thing is, I do think there’s some truth and validity to people complaining that a new character was introduced, given a rushed connection to Qrow, and then killed the same season he was introduced while the audience was suddenly expected to believe that he really meant a lot to Qrow and that his death was devastating. It’s a valid complaint to say that Qrow had at least some level of dynamic with Winter and Ironwood, and that maybe they should’ve been explored rather than contributing to the character bloat only to kill the man, in an attempt to get an emotional reaction without being gutsy enough to kill off a character that had already mattered to the audience.

It’s also a valid complaint to say that with the direction the show did take, Winter doesn’t seem to matter to Qrow at all and vice versa, leaving their fighting interaction in volume three looking like less of an anime-ish fun but tension filled rivals relationship and more like one of only dislike and contempt with nothing more to it. But neither of these things means either ship is inherently better than the other, just that they’re both flawed.

Here’s the thing; people didn’t ship Winter and Qrow for nothing. For one thing, some people (like me) just like tension and rivalry based ships, and that’s fine. For another thing, Snowbird did get a wink, and smiles and what seemed like the occasional flirty moment during the fight. I don’t ship it myself, but I did read attraction into their season three interactions, because like it or not, ‘I hate you, but that’s also fun’ is often portrayed as romantic or leading to romance in media, it’s a commonly used trope. People raised on Han Solo and Princess Leia and tons of other romances growing up often read ‘they’re very insistent that they hate each other’ as an indication that the opposite is true.

But that doesn’t mean that Snowbird is therefore better than Fair Game, because sped through it might’ve been, but obviously people were going to ship it when Clover was made with Qrow in mind and there’s winks and soft tones and lingering looks, and they enjoyed spending time with each other, and did care about each other in canon. There’s a reason it got super popular very quickly. People who like more clear cut and less tension driven relationships likely enjoyed this one a lot more, and might dislike more tension filled, love-hate relationships.

They’re just very different ships.

If you’re having a conversation about what is or isn’t more canon confirmed or more likely in canon, than yeah, mid season seven, you could say Clover and Qrow had more indication in canon. And comparing ships is fine (I’ve compared BB to BS, FB, and LB.) But like... Block the Snowbird tag if you don’t want to see praise towards it, is what I’d suggest, and vice versa for fans who just don’t like Fair Game. Personally, I’ll stay here with my “Winter and Qrow were both attracted to each other, but had no romantic feelings for each other,” and my “Clover had unrequited feelings for Qrow from the get go,” to add onto my own personal favorite “Qrow and Ironwood have been in love with each other for years without fully realizing their own feelings until they saw each other again in season seven,” headcanons that of course ignore everything post the Ironwood vs Watts fight.

#rwde #canoncrit fair game #canoncrit snowbird #I don't feel like this is really anti but I WILL tag them just in case #anti fairgame #anti fair game #anti qrow x clover #anti snowbird #anti qrow x winter

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itsclydebitches · 4 years

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RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Strings”

Happy Saturday, RWBY friends! I am, quite obviously, going to dive into the recap in just a moment, but first I wanted to take a short detour to discuss the elephant in the tumblr room. Namely, Supernatural.

For those of you out of the loop, the tl;dr is that a fifteen year, beloved show ended with a truly horrendous finale. Specifically, the finale rejected everything that the show had been building towards: the logical conclusion to character arcs, the theme that “family don’t end in blood,” the potential for a queer romantic relationship… I could go on. The point I want to make is that the fandom had every reason to believe we’d be getting these things. This isn’t a case of fans upset that the finale didn’t go the way they wanted as an individual viewer, but rather that the finale didn’t go the way the show clearly and explicitly said it would. It’s not an exaggeration to say that in many respects, viewers were straight up lied to.

(I recommend reading the reviews.)

What does this all have to do with RWBY? Well, I can’t help but think that history is repeating itself. Certainly there are some notable similarities between the two series. Both have long, meandering plotlines with no clear end in sight (though I hope RWBY doesn’t reach the 15 Volume mark…). Both began with a small, core cast, but quickly expanded—generating the expectation that these now equally important characters will be given their due. Both have moved from the small conflict of fighting everyday monsters to a god-based mythology. Both have a popular queer relationship dangled in front of the viewers, featuring scenes where they’re “obviously” in love… but will it ever be confirmed? Both have a fanbase that says loudly and confidently that the writers know what they’re doing. Just wait! It’s all been planned! We’ll be rewarded for our patience and soon all the naysayers will be proven wrong.

Thing is, the Supernatural fandom wasn’t rewarded. Right up until a week ago those fans—myself included—had faith that the writers knew what they were doing because they can’t really be that out of touch with their own story...right? It’s not possible. Yet they were, it was, and now that I’ve gotten solid proof of precisely how far a show can go to reject its own logic, themes, and premise, that just makes me more wary of RWBY’s mistakes. Before I had a solid faith that things couldn’t possibly get that bad, that no matter how much RWBY might be messing up in the short term, it will undoubtedly pull it together overall, because what show wouldn’t? Especially a show with such promise and, at times, wonderful storytelling. Well, Supernatural didn’t manage it and frankly I’m not sure what to do with that information.

Seriously. I don’t have any grand conclusion here. It’s not my intention to suggest that anyone should stop watching RWBY, or to claim that it will absolutely fail because Supernatural did. Obviously, we don’t know what will happen until we get to see it in the show. I only want to acknowledge these parallels and the similar journey I see both fanbases on. I can’t help but wonder if, a couple years from now, RWBY fans will be making incredibly optimistic posts about how it’s all coming together, just have some faith, everyone who says that the group won’t get a satisfying ending, or Blake and Yang won’t be confirmed are just mean trolls… only to wake up that Saturday morning and get another metaphorical slap in the face.

It’s something to think about.

But here I’ve spent a page talking about the wrong show. Let’s get into the episode!

We open on a black screen with lots of ambiguous noises. At first I thought this was Oscar struggling in the Hound’s grip or something, but then I remembered that RWBY likes to insert an episode between cliffhangers. I watched Ironwood (presumably) shoot a guy and he only came back this week (though that question still isn’t answered. At this point I kind of wonder if it will be). Oscar was kidnapped last week, which means we won’t get to see him until next week. Or… two weeks from now? RT skips the week of Thanksgiving, don’t they? Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Something horrible happens to Oscar and we need to wait two weeks to find out how it’s resolved.

Watch him escape the Hound off screen and return to the group with a new outfit 😂

So it’s not Oscar we hear, but Ruby, the last one coming out of the tube. Weiss is in the process of pulling Nora’s ear for that stunt… with a frankly strange looking hand. What’s up with RWBY animating weird hands lately? I’m pretty sure that’s not how anatomy works.

Anyway, Nora counters that this was a “Once in a lifetime experience,” but they were all going to go through the tubes regardless. Weiss isn’t pissed that you sent her through, she’s pissed that you did it unexpectedly when she was alone, heading into enemy territory. But of course, there’s no one in the room to hinder them, so the mistake is meaningless.

We’re setting the tone again though. For the first half of this episode everything is sunshine and giddy adventure, which doesn’t fit the situation at all. It also creates emotional whiplash when I’m suddenly supposed to be super worried about things later on. This sort of about-face works once in a blue moon, as an emotional punch, like we see in Mulan:

But RWBY does it every other episode, which makes the overall tone of the series confusing instead. Half the time RWBY feels like two different stories—the cartoony tale of girls going on fun adventures, and the traumatic tale of a fantasy war—that have been badly spliced together.

“Alight, Robo-Girl, which way?” May asks and Penny demonstrates why she’s the best for sneaking into a facility. She’s able to map out the whole place, including seeing where everyone is so they can avoid detection. Kudos to RT for going this route. I was worried that they would have Ruby and the others straight up attacking Atlas grunts, knocking them out/potentially even killing them because who cares, right? They’re the bad guys! So I’m glad they’re working to get in and out undetected. Granted, we see in some places that they’re clearly willing to fight the soldiers if it comes to that—they’re reaching for their weapons when Penny opens the final door, expecting the room to be full of people. They were going to attack—but at least they’re trying to lessen that conflict as much as possible. That’s the sort of choice I expect to see from heroes and I’m glad we got it here.

After scouting the area Penny corrects May: “And my name is Penny,” to which Ruby gives a satisfied “Heh.” I’ve got no problem with Penny rejecting nicknames, even potentially well-meaning ones, because she’s always struggled with her status as a real girl and her name is her own. She gets to decide what others call her. I do, however, have a problem with making the presumed trans character the one who is corrected. Granted yes, we haven’t gotten confirmation in the show that May is trans, but RT doesn’t get to cash in on that rep without likewise suffering the consequences for how the character is treated. You’re telling me that a trans woman is going to roll her eyes when someone asks her to use a specific name? Please give May flaws, yes, she’s a person, but out of all the millions of flaws across the human spectrum, this is the one we’re shown?

Not to mention Ruby’s continued attitude. It’s like, ‘Yeah, May. Stop being a horrible person who draws attention to the fact that Penny is a robot. I never did that.’ Except when Ruby first met her she didn’t know Penny was a robot. Just like she didn’t know Blake was a faunus—something we’re reminded of this episode. We might assume Ruby wouldn’t have ever made any missteps at the beginning of these relationships, but the fact remains that she got to know both girls before their minority status was ever revealed. Ruby loved them before she ever had to grapple with their differences.

Put in her place, May then demonstrates that she can make lots of people invisible, not just herself. That’s handy. She creates an invisibility bubble that reminds me of Harry’s invisibility cloak. In the sense that others might not be able to see you, but they can still hear and touch you, which makes sneaking around still pretty challenging.

No sooner have I thought that then two guards get into the elevator with them. The group keeps quiet as the duo discusses how no one can get close to Salem’s storm without “getting shocked right out of the air.” Interesting. And frankly one hell of a roadblock if the Hound escapes into the clouds. Oscar may be gone for a while if he doesn’t escape on his own... The woman also comments about how creepy it is that all the grimm are just hanging out, waiting. It’s “worse than if they’d attacked.”

No it’s not! RT, stop trying to implement the idea that Salem withholding her forces is some epically cool choice. She should have decimated everyone by now and the fact that she hasn’t just shows how transparent the problem is: you’ve created a villain that’s too powerful and now you don’t know what to do with her.

As the group sneaks out of the elevator Nora grins and presses all the buttons, which is, as expected, a dumb move. They’re supposed to be sneaking into this base. If they’re caught they’re going to be thrown in jail at best, killed at worst, but Nora wants to risk that for a practical joke? Again and again we see this insistence on incorporating comedy where it’s not only unnecessary, but actively interferes with other aspects of the scene.

Reaching a terminal, Penny inserts her finger and gains access via Pietro’s credentials. She’s really demonstrating this episode why she’s… pretty terrifying? I mean, Penny is an incredibly powerful fighter with a computer’s view of the world, access to everything in the most powerful Kingdom alongside its information, and she now has Maiden powers to boot. Which, I should add, it took her one fight to master (because remember, the heroes are now always as strong as they need to be to win…). Now that Watts is planning to hack her, I expect her to be an incredibly formidable enemy, just given the amount she could potentially do. I think Penny herself is too kind to exploit all that potential and as we’ll see via Pietro briefly taking control, she doesn’t always have the knowledge to use the tools at her disposal. But in the hands of someone like Watts? He’ll turn Penny into the ultimate weapon.

Access granted, they learn that they have to go “Right through central command!” Of course, Penny makes it sound like a fun game and the spy-movie music/cartoon lecture doesn’t help. Again, tone. It’s adorable! It just doesn’t fit sneaking into a military base with your lives on the line while Salem waits outside. That was a RWBY Chibi moment.

Penny explains—twice—that Ruby can use her semblance to fly them all through central command and it’s treated like a revelation. At first, I was pretty confused because Ruby has been dong this for ages? She carried Weiss in “Argus Limited” and Nora during the Geist fight. But upon close inspection, what Penny seems to have “figured out” is that Ruby can carry multiple people at once because the “mass doesn’t matter.” Okay. Not a contradiction then, though I think RT could have made it a little more clear that Ruby was shocked at the idea of carrying multiple people, not carrying someone at all.

What I do take issue with though is Ruby mastering this skill instantaneously. I mean, why is Ruby being forced to try this on the fly (pun not intended)—Penny has known the layout of the building since they made this plan. She knew they had to get past central control and that it would be packed with people. She’s obviously thought about Ruby’s semblance a great deal—and why is she succeeding? Give me a Volume 7 where Ruby actually trains in this technique, set up via Harriet’s comment early on about her semblance, and then she’s victorious here when it finally matters. Or give me Ruby assuming she can pull off this incredibly difficult skill only to fall out of her semblance halfway through, a roomful of Atlas personnel staring at them. Then what?

Not this.

This is a character who does everything perfectly on the first try without ever having to fail. Ruby is boring like this.

Crisis averted, we transfer to Ironwood who is… working with Watts.

What else is there to say? I’ve already laid out all the reasons why this is stupid and makes no sense. Others keep coming onto my posts to explain to me how Ironwood’s awful deeds up until now fully show his decent into villainy, conveniently ignoring the numerous limitations he was under and his choice to do what he thought was best for the world using inaccurate information. Ironwood was always a divisive character and many are happy to ignore the years’ worth of deconstruction done—a man who looks like the Evil Military General but actually isn’t—because they never liked him to begin with. Not liking him is fine, no one has to like any character, but I’m honestly shocked by the number of viewers who refuse to acknowledge how bad the writing is, even if it means defending a character they hate a teensy tiny bit (#SupernaturalVibes). As a friend put it, Ironwood now feels like a caricature of his former self, a Pure Evil Ironwood who appeared out of nowhere and is now here to stay. He shoots kids. He shoots unarmed civilians. He teams up with Salem’s men and tries to hack Penny. These are undeniably horrible acts, they’ve just been given to a character who never would have done them until RT randomly flipped the Evil switch.

The “RWBY” tag, alongside all the fluff moments of this episode, is now filled with posts encouraging Marrow to turn, yelling at the Ace Ops for being “bootlickers,” and capslock screaming at anyone who dared to speak up for Ironwood. It still sucks to have bad writing twisted into an attack on the fans and it’s going to continue to suck until at least the rest of Volume 8. I’d like to again remind everyone that Qrow teamed up with Tyrian a few episodes, yet because he’s again in Ruby’s graces, that was twisted into a ‘not that bad’ situation. The issue isn’t really that Ironwood is teaming up with one of Salem’s subordinates, but that he’s doing it to go against RWBYJNOR… the second a character teams up with Salem to get what Ruby wants (to not have her team in jail) then that’s totally fine… but that’s a wrinkle a lot of people are happy to ignore.

So yeah, Ironwood is an idiot now too. Like Qrow also was last Volume. He really thinks Watts isn’t going to betray him somehow? Although, I do wonder if the chance to ruin Pietro’s creation outweighs his loyalty to Salem, but the point is that Ironwood can’t be sure of that either. At least he’s smart enough to keep Watts under continuous guard. He puts his hand on Watts’ shoulders and goes, “I’d hate for us to have to try motivating you. Again.”

So he tortures people too now? Like I said, caricature. This was Ironwood and we were given no clear idea of where he disappeared to.

RIP a great character.

Watts notices though that Pietro has apparently accessed a secure area and alerts Ironwood to it. I laugh that the information is just ¡EMERGENCY! In large, red letters. Ironwood immediately makes an announcement for everyone to be on guard. It’s a level 3 lockdown — that won’t impede the group leaving via airship! — and they’re to use “lethal force” if necessary. Weiss is disgusted.

As much as I disagree with making Ironwood into a shoot first, ask questions later kind of guy — he’s definitely wrong to be doing this — I also find myself rolling my eyes at reactions like that. Yes, Weiss. You attacked four operatives until they were knocked unconscious. Prevented an entire city from escaping Salem’s wrath, endangering them all. Now you’re breaking into the most classified room in the Kingdom to steal an equally qualified project and use it for your own means. There’s no reason why Ironwood would level his might against you. Is death still an extreme response? Yes. Should Weiss be acting like Ironwood is crazy for responding to them in an extreme manner? No. Her remark makes it sound like Ironwood is attacking her poor, innocent, defenseless team… not the team that’s been lying to him, betraying him, attacking him, and stealing from him. Not the team carrying deadly weapons into a facility to take what they want at any cost.

With their presence known, May wants to go grab an airship. That’s the series now.

Meanwhile, Penny insists that they can still complete their mission and we see Nora come up with some sort of plan.

Except, what plan was this?? What did she say to the group? ‘Hey, let’s wait around until some guy conveniently walks by with a full cup of coffee. Then we can trip him and the mug will fly alllll the way across this gap to land on a terminal, startling at least two workers. Except this guy will be hated by the whole room because he’s always messing things up—his coffee mug has been changed from #1 Dad to #1 Dud—so that this little mishap will create a ruckus that gets everyone involved, giving us the opportunity to slip by them all.’

Seriously, what? This kind of “plan” only works with someone like Clover, where we know he has a good luck semblance and thus all these unlikely pieces fall into place. I could absolutely buy Clover smiling smugly, working under the knowledge that he just has to wait around a few minutes and something will come along that works entirely in his favor. But Nora? How did she know any of this would happen? Obviously she couldn’t have, so what exactly was their intention if this coffee carrying, hated guy didn’t show up? RWBY, your contrived plots are showing.

I do, however, love the grimm Jaws poster. Jaws is an absolute favorite of mine, so seeing a reference to it in RWBY? A funny one at that? It almost makes up for how bad this episode is lol.

Because frankly I’m bored. The group sneaks around, criticizes May and Ironwood, briefly confuses me about Ruby’s semblance knowledge, and gets through tons of Atlas personnel in the stupidest way possible. I have to watch this guy running out of the room with coffee on his pants screaming, “WHHHYYY???” and he doesn’t notice the five girls standing right next to him. It’s silly. It’s boring. Luckily for RWBY, things are about to pick up in the second half.

After Ruby gets them upstairs and the final room is also conveniently devoid of people, Pietro takes control of Penny—including yellow possession eyes like Oscar has with Ozpin—and he...gets Amity started. That’s it. After a whole volume of ‘It’s not finished yet’ and ‘We barely have the resources’ and ‘Robyn stole what we were using to do idek what with’ he presses buttons for a while and they’re in. How good for them!

I do love that Penny calls Pietro “Dad” though. I’m here for the android-father relationship.

While Pietro works we turn to Blake, Weiss, and Nora. Blake tries to convince the audience that Ruby and Yang had an actual fight with, “I’ve never seen Yang and Ruby fight like this.” Yeah, because no one in this group has ever said the sliiiiightest thing against Ruby, so you all read the tinniest disagreement as a “fight” to be worried about. I mean, doesn’t RT have friends to draw inspiration from? They’ve never disagreed about Huge and Complex Questions before? Never gotten pissed and then shrugged it off the next time you want to text? RWBY’s idea of a diverse friend group feels like many other writers’ idea of a sibling relationship: anyone with an actual sibling goes, “What is this?” Speaking of, Weiss explains that sisters often have “very different ideas about what’s right” as if, again, people don’t have different ideas? Just in general? Why is this suddenly a sister thing? She’s clearly thinking about Winter, but doesn’t actually bring it up, so all we’re left with is the same situation we had last Volume. Weiss thinks she’s right, Winter is wrong, and they’re just going down their separate roads because there’s definitely no reason to re-examine any choices here. It’s all static.

Until Winter betrays Ironwood, of course.

Nora tries to reassure Blake that the group will be fine (ha) even though they’ve split, the irony being that we, the audience, know they just got wrecked by the Hound. Jaune is a great leader though, Oscar has grown so much, Yang could defend them all in a fight, and Ren… well, she can’t think of anything to say about Ren. I hate the Nora is acting like Ren has drawn away from her for no reason, after she chose to kiss him—without consent—rather than listening to what was bothering him, then proceeded to pretend that this mystery problem never existed. What does she expect? I do, however, like the general acknowledgement that she doesn’t know who she is without Ren. Who is Nora? Someone who is “strong and hit[s] stuff?”

See, this feels like RT writing self-consciously because Nora doesn’t have much of a personality. Oh, on a surface level she’s bursting with it, but past the bubbly exterior? That single layer? We can add maybe one thing to this “Likes Ren, is strong, hits stuff” list: she’s funny. That’s it. Anything else we might add like “she’s loyal” or “she’s kind” is just a generic characteristic of this entire team. They’re all meant to be crazy talented good guys and even the “is strong” aspect is suspect when others frequently pull off attacks as showy as Nora’s hammer hits. So who is she? What are Nora’s dreams? What are her hobbies? Her fears? Her history? We’ve seen a single flashback of her on the streets and one scene back at Beacon where she listens to music and reads a magazine. Seven years worth of material and that’s it. There’s a reason why the go-to, non-combat action for Nora in fics is “makes pancakes.” We know so little about her still.

So I was excited for a brief, shining moment. Yes! Explore who Nora is outside of being strong and hitting stuff! … and then her big action this episode is, as she says, being strong and hitting something. Don’t get me wrong, outside of that setup it’s pretty epic. I like Nora going to those lengths to save Penny and I absolutely love the repercussions of the choice: a broken aura, passing out, and badass lightning scars all over her arms and neck (especially when women often aren’t allowed to accumulate scars in visual media). That’s pretty damn awesome. It’s just that it comes on the heels of the story insisting that Nora is more than this, that we’ll learn something new about her… and we haven’t. This is indeed cool, but we already knew that Nora was willing to crazy lengths by hitting things really hard. That’s already her established norm.

At least this moment has some really nice characterization alongside the stupidity. The conversation between Ruby and Penny is just plain stupid. Penny wants to stay to help with the evacuations, but Pietro says she should come with him in Amity. Why? As Ruby says, because then she’ll be up in the sky and Salem won’t be able to access the relic.

That’s what Ironwood wanted to do! We could have had this conflict episodes ago with you all working with him! I really can’t with this cast. Also, the rest of this is still confusing. I thought pretty much everyone was in the slums by now, so what evacuation are they talking about? Do they plan to evacuate everyone in Mantle out of the kingdom somehow… like Ironwood wanted to do with Atlas? And why are they acting like Amity is evacuating some people too? I thought they were just using it as a communication device? To add insult to injury, Ruby then contradicts herself a minute later when she tells Harriet that Ironwood can’t have the relic because “Salem will find her way to the relic no matter where you go.” Ruby, if Salem can access the relic high in the sky she can also access Penny in the sky. If you believe that literally nowhere is safe then why are you sending Penny away under the claim that she—and via her the Relic—will be safer? If you want Penny in Amity to lessen the chance of Salem getting the Relic, why can’t Penny be in Atlas while simultaneously (hopefully) getting a whole slew of people to safety?

I’m continually confused by this “plan” of theirs. Their claims just flip-flop according to what (supposedly) contrasts them with Ironwood. Even though that’s not actually the case.

Penny is me, sad while watching this train wreck of a scene.

So yeah, the Ace Ops are here. I’ve wondered since the trailer why Weiss looked smug while everyone else was startled. Turns out it’s because of her line, “So, your first time losing to us wasn’t enough?” I can’t express how much I dislike all the girls’ personalities now. I want to shake some compassion and humility into them. Plus, they never should have won that fight in the first place. Marrow yells, “We were holding back!” but coming from the team’s weakest member it reads as defensive. Like we’re supposed to go, ‘Lol yeah right, Marrow. Just admit you got your ass kicked,’ even tough the Ace Ops should have wiped the floor with them, holding back or not. That’s my biggest takeaway from this fight: it’s the reverse of what we should have gotten. The Ace Ops should have beaten Team RWBY with ease and struggled greatly against an android Maiden, not falling before a bunch of teens and succeeding against Penny if not for Nora’s timely breakthrough. Your half-trained cast of growing heroes should not come across as more powerful than an intelligently designed weapon now wielding magic.

Before the fight starts we get a whole lot of lines that are, frankly, frustrating. Vine tells Penny, “I thought you were supposed to protect the people, not hurt them” which is true enough. Penny is taking action that is putting a lot of people in danger, regardless of the fact that Ruby is at the helm. Problem is, the Ace Ops then blame her for Winter’s injuries and “stealing” the power? That’s not the issue here. The issue is Penny’s blind loyalty to Ruby, but by having the Ace Ops back a stance that is clearly inaccurate—Penny didn’t cause Winter’s injuries, Cinder did; Penny didn’t steal the powers, she was encouraged to take them—it makes them come across as Very Evil people who will twist things to make poor Penny look like the villain. Even if this is a case of Ace Ops having bad intel (which seems unlikely. Wouldn’t Winter have told them what happened?) RT has avoided letting the Ace Ops take a justified stance here because that would make them look too sympathetic… even though they do have multiple justified stances to take. Like, ‘Hey, stop keeping half a kingdom here where Salem can easily kill them all’ or, ‘Hey, why did you spend months betraying Ironwood and then turn on us instead of trying to find a compromise?’ Even, ‘Why did your uncle help kill our leader?’ There’s plenty that the Ace Ops should be rightfully pissed about, so choosing Penny and Winter out of everything feels like RT is firmly backing them into Ironwood’s corner: you’re just bad now and bad people blame innocent girls, rather than acknowledging the actual wrongs done against them.

So we have Ruby contradicting herself and the Ace Ops backing warped ideas that make them look worse than they actually are. Adding to the stupidity is the fact that Elm mentions that Winter is in “critical condition” and Weiss… doesn’t care. Harriet then tells Ruby that she’s “throwing [her] in jail right next to your uncle, runt” and... Ruby doesn’t care. Qrow is missing and Ruby just found out he’s been captured by Ironwood, yet there’s no reaction whatsoever. This show continues to go hard on the ‘screw adults’ mentality, huh? Ozpin needs to keep quiet and is horrible for coming back. Ironwood is now a cartoon villain. Winter made the wrong choice so no one cares about her anymore, not even her sister. The Ace Ops remain enemies despite trying to talk things out. Qrow? Barely know him. Who’s he? This is a Ruby loves Penny episode. There isn’t enough emotional nuance for her to care about him too.

The sad thing is I adore Nuts&Dolts. In a different context these moments would be a goldmine for me.

If anything, this episode feels worse than the majority of last week’s because there are good things here that have been thrown into a bad setup. I can’t get excited for the group’s battles when I see who they’re attacking. It’s hard to squee over Ruby hugging Penny when she doesn’t react to Qrow. Watching Nora go all Thor feels like it only has half its potential when it’s coming out of a very messing, ‘I’m more than just being strong and hitting things… which is why I’ll continue being strong and hitting things.’ RWBY has excellent moments set into a terrible story.

The fight, at least, is exciting. The Ace Ops goad Penny into stepping away so they can trap the rest of Ruby’s team—smart—and she’s forced to hold her own while Weiss tries to break through with her knight, then Nora overloads the system. To be frank, I’m not great at analyzing combat. Not unless I’m looking for something specific like whether a win is justified. I’ve already mentioned above the broad issue of the Ace Ops very nearly beating the most powerful fighter next to Salem herself, yet failing so spectacularly against Team RWBY. Outside of that context though? I really enjoyed this. Lots of tight action, creative attacks, teamwork, some emotional pauses throughout… it feels like a pretty solid battle. Put it on Youtube as a clip, outside of the rest of the story’s messiness, and you’ve got yourself a fantastic watch.

We can’t stay in the combat forever though. During all this Weiss calls the Ace Ops “cowards” for making it four vs. one. You know, RWBY should really just do away with dialogue and make the show purely action because the cast frequently sounds so stupid when they speak. Like her comment about Ironwood’s lockdown… really Weiss? ‘Yes, we might be wanted criminals who betrayed this group in the worst possible way, but how dare they not do the honorable thing and have three of their teammates sit out while trying to capture us? Even though the girl they’re trying to capture has magic. I mean, the nerve of them!’

Weiss, at this point I’m not sure how to explain to you that the people you’ve made into your enemies do not owe you a fair fight.

Another detail: we get to see Ruby fall off the edge of the walkway and this time she remembers she can fly! A definite improvement from Volume 6.

Finally: by the time Penny’s eyes go full Maiden in Elm’s grip, I think we’ve seen everything from our trailer. Episode 4 will truly be a mystery.

Ironwood has, of course, been watching the fight this whole time. When it looks like the Ace Ops will lose against the team he means to send in reinforcements, but Watts says he has “a message for your operatives.” Instead of capturing Penny they steal one of her swords instead, ending with a shot on Marrow looking conflicted.

Because remember, there’s no actual moral grayness in this story. The protagonists are right and everyone else is wrong. It’s (supposedly) black and white. Which means that if the Ace Ops have any hope of surviving this Volume and being seen as anything other than evil bootlickers, they have to join with Ruby. Marrow seems primed to do that.

Am I surprised? No. Disappointed? Always lol.

May has the airship ready to go and they fly off… despite the shields. And the lockdown. Consistency? Who’s she? Nora is said to be “in bad shape” and after another hug Penny leaves to hide in Amity, even though Ruby thinks that hiding is a useless, cowardly choice. Just not when she and her allies choose to do it.

We end the episode with Watts receiving Penny’s sword and making the statement, “If you can’t beat them… then make them join you.” I have to say, his cheesy villainy is something I continue to enjoy, even if it’s heavy handed at times. Watts is just fun. I do have to say though: if Penny is hacked, what does that say about her agency? We double-downed on the ‘real girl’ narrative by giving her the Maiden powers, but she’s simultaneously synthetic enough that a single piece of her can remove all autonomy? It once again feels like RT isn’t sure what point they’re trying to make, they’re just chucking a lot of themes at the wall and seeing what sticks. Still, we’ll have to let it all play out before making any judgements.

And that’s it for this week. It seems like this is a slightly shorter recap than normal, though that may be because I struggle with discussing pure action sequences, which made up a decent chunk of this episode. I’ll no doubt return to the Ace Ops vs. Penny fight when I’m not on a self-imposed, one day deadline for posting. The only thing left is to update the Bingo Card, but I don’t think we made any headway this week. So... good job, RWBY?

I’m still going to hold off on the civilian’s square until Salem’s army actually attacks, as well as the two day timeline square.

No Winter this episode

Watts is teaming up with Ironwood which is… so much worse than him teaming up with Jacques again. Does a square get an X if the canon is even worse than what you assumed it would be??

Maria was mentioned this episode. Jury’s out on whether she’ll actually do anything.

Atlas is still standing, we knew Penny was heading towards a hack so it’s not much of a cliffhanger, no Qrow, no Ozpin, no Neo or Cinder.

It certainly looks like we can check off “The team gets Amity up and running,” but let’s just see if there are any problems next episode. If the problem is only ‘We would have launched it if not for Salem’s attack’ or something, I’m checking it off. The point is it would have worked.

I’m also leaning towards “More obvious Blake/Yang implications without confirming a relationship” given Blake’s heart-to-heart with Nora… but let’s see if the Volume does anything more egregious.

All in all (and perhaps despite what I’ve written above), I don’t think it’s fair to totally drag this episode. As said, this feels like a strong episode in a bad story, something that I would have LOVED if a) Salem weren’t here and b) the ‘ethical dilemma’ wasn’t boiled down to a ‘Team Ruby is good’ and ‘Ironwood and everyone associated with him is evil’ situation. It’s an episode whose tone and character action belong in a different version of RWBY. If you gave us this fun episode in an earlier Volume against a Pure Evil antagonist? It would have been great.

Ah well. It is what it is. Expect more emotional whiplash when we come back and everyone learns that Oscar has been kidnapped by Salem’s talking pooch 🙃

See you then! 💜

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #rwby strings #mymetas #rwby recaps #apologies if this Recap is messier than normal #I have a zoom meeting in five minutes lol #gotta go fast!

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stitch1830 · 3 years

Text

ATLA Q&A

So I got tagged by @mycomfortblanket and @dannyurl but it wouldn’t let me reblog on the thread so I made a new one lol. Never really thought about these questions til now, so good exercise!

1. What is your favorite character?

Toph Beifong. Need I say more?

2. What is your comfort character?

Hmmm, does Appa count? If yes, then Appa. He’s a good, chill pal. I’d snuggle with him.

3. Which element would you bend if you could?

Probably earthbending. I like the fighting style of firebenders a bit more, but I think that the element of earth has more opportunities and possibilities to adapt the martial art and then also bending the different compositions of earth lol. Plus metalbending is a dope technique and I would love to be able to do that as well.

4. What’s your favorite nation?

Probably Earth Kingdom. Idk, maybe because it’s the biggest nation, so there are lots of different cities to travel to. I can’t really explain why it’s my favorite lol.

5. What makes you love ATLA the most?

Probably just the established world. If I ever try to make up my own stories, creating the setting and space the story takes place in is always the hardest for me. So the fact that there are multiple nations, maps, cities, and cultures associated with the story, and those background details are fleshed out is pretty impressive. And even as a kid I noticed that.

COULD GET YOU ATTACKED QUESTIONS

1. Who is your least favorite character in the gaang?

I think as a kid, I didn’t care for Sokka or Aang. Sokka seemed useless to the team to me as a kid and then all of a sudden he was an expert strategist in my head. And Aang bothered me because he was a bald kid with tattoos lol. Weird for my 10-year-old brain to wrap around at the time. I love both of them now, obviously, and see my flawed thought process as a kid lol. Otherwise, I never cared for Mai or Ty Lee.

2. What character do you think is severely underrated?

Mmmm, idk. No one from the Gaang seems underrated, nor do the main villains. I’ll find realms of the fandom that tend to overrate characters, so I feel like a lot of them get the love and appreciation they need. Even Cabbage Man has support. Like, okay.

Maybe Freedom Fighters? Like, all of the minor ones. They kind of come and go as they please, and they probably need more backstory than they actually get.

3. What’s your least favorite nation?

Again, as a kid I never liked that all the Air nation people were bald and had tattoos. Not the smartest logic on my end lol. But idk, I still prefer the other nations now.

4. What is your controversial ATLA opinion?

I actually struggle to watch the show now as an adult and after reading some fantastic posts on Tumblr about the show’s flaws. Obviously I shouldn’t judge the show based on bad writing near the end or series finale relationships, but I can barely watch it now without seeing the hints of romantic relationships and cringe or just... knowing that the outcome of the show isn’t what I particularly want to see. It’s easier for me to just stay in fanfiction and read about fan theories and then come up with my own outcomes.

The show used to satisfy me, but now? Not so much. I like, only watch season 2 now if I want to watch it at all, mainly for Toph and because there aren’t as many obviously displays of Aang crushing on Katara.

SHIPPING QUESTIONS

1. What’s your favorite ship and why?

Canon ships only.

JK. Taang. Taang for days. As a couple, I see them having a lighthearted relationship where they know how to balance each other. They are powerful and strong and independent on their own and certainly don’t need to be in a relationship, but they would choose to be together because they add value to their lives and want to be together. They’ve got that classic ‘opposites attract’ dynamic that isn’t like “I can’t live without you�� feeling, but more like “You help me be better” feel.

Before finding Taang, I never really shipped Toph with anyone, and didn’t even know she had canon kids until like... the pandemic started lol. I just thought she’d be a badass and wreak havoc on the world and be responsible for only herself. And if I did ship her with a character, it was usually Sokka bc of the angst and canon compliance it provided. But after reading a few Taang fics, there was actually potential for her to be in a longstanding and committed relationship with someone that made sense to me. It was cool to find a ship that opened my eyes to that, because otherwise, I would’ve never assumed or thought she’d ever marry or have kids or anything.

Tokka is a close second because it got me into reading fanfiction, but idk Taang is just feels so right to me lol.

2. What’s your least favorite ship?

After reading lots of metas, I don’t like Mai/Zuko and Aang/Katara. They just rub me the wrong way now.

3. Do you sometimes self-insert?

As far as inserting myself into a romantic relationship with ATLA characters... No. Not my cup of tea.

I do sometimes create OCs that are just like... best friends with the Gaang and went through their own shit during the war. But they don’t resemble me at all. If anything, they mirror the personality of the character they’re close with, simply because I think friendships where characters have very similar personalities would be interesting. We see a lot of opposite duos, romantic and platonic, and I certainly do the same thing in my life (I have lots of friends where I am not like them at all, but we’re really close). But to see relationships where they act very similar... Interesting dynamic. They probably butt heads a lot and fight a lot, but also really understand what the other needs for help, and... yeah. Those friendships seem unappreciated to me. So I like to make those up lol.

4. What ship would you make canon if you were the creator?

I wouldn’t make ATLA about romantic relationships. If anything, I would emphasize the family aspect of the team, then let fans and audiences decide who works best with who ~after~ the show ends lol. I tend to like endings with open interpretation, and also, just based on my personal life/preference, I think it’s sometimes weird when really really close friends get together in relationships afterwards. Like, I’ll think of those friends as my family, and dating ‘practically family’ is sometimes weird imo lol. Of course, I know why those relationships tend to happen, mostly because those characters are the only ones that can relate to the war trauma they all went through, so I get that and love that aspect of it.

I would certainly lean in the direction of the Big Three: Zutara, Sukka, and Taang, just by pointing out their dynamic, having them confide in one another, or something of the sort. But no one would like, get together at the end.

My thoughts on ATLA, and I’m going to tag anyone that wants to do this! I’m looking at you. ;)

#atla #atla q&a #asking the hard hitting questions #I barely knew the answers lol #tag game

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dualdaospirits · 4 years

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Do you think if they ever reboot ATLA they would make Zutara canon? Reboots have changed quite a few things(the new She-Ra is vastly different from the original) especially with all the support Zutara got post-series

Hmmm, an interesting question. It depends on many things I think, not the least of which being who the showrunners are and the tone they want to set. We may get to see our reboot soon, actually, since there’s a live action Netflix series in the works (they haven’t started production yet though, so don’t get too excited). As far as I know, Bryke is at the forefront, and while that’s great news since it means another abomination hopefully won't happen, it does mean that a Zutara relationship probably isn’t likely since they’re big fans of the Katara/Aang relationship.

That being said, I think it would be a missed opportunity if they didn’t, and I’ll explain why. (Disclaimer for any non-Zutara fans reading this, being a Zutara shipper is not my main motivation for thinking or wanting it to be canon). First things first, the audience. I don’t know if post-series Zutara support would have much of an effect on Bryke, but it’s possible that the producers or Netflix would notice and try to factor it in. However, I don’t think pandering should be the reason they include Zutara--far from it. The original audience that watched Avatar has grown up at this point. Many of us are in our twenties, give or take. We’ve matured, and it would be foolish of the showrunners for ignoring this fact. If there’s a reboot of Avatar, live action or animation, the majority of the audience will be those that grew up with the show, not kids the same age as the audience of the animation. I think that’s evident enough with the release of Avatar on Netflix (notice how many people are rewatching and falling back into their love for the show?) and the comics. Ah, the comics. Some things they did well, others...not. What they did do well is writing the storytelling more maturely than the show. I don’t mean to bash the original show as it obviously had no problems including the dark effects of a war story in bite size, easy-to-swallow chunks for kids (a good thing). However, they treat the audience more seriously, knowing that not everything needs to be spelled out. You see the same in Korra. And to me, that’s part of what makes the Zutara relationship so captivating and intriguing--it’s mature. It’s not easy, and it has faults. It’s not “hero gets the girl after saving the world”. It’s complex.

I’ll say this now: there’s a difference between a relationship being canon and being endgame, and it’s an important difference. I definitely think Zutara should be canon, if not endgame, in any reboot they do.

Personally, I’m excited for a live action version if they ever get around to it. It brings many new factors to the table, and the majority of them have to do with adaptation. (I’ll mainly be talking about a live action version for a little bit, excuse the art student that shows). Adaptation, especially between mediums, is tricky to execute. You see many book-movie adaptations that succeed, and some that miserably fail, and others in between. This goes for other forms as well, ex: book to comic, book to animation, animation to film, etc. With any medium adaptation, the story will inherently change. You can't hear a character's inner dialogue or prose written in a book in a film, so changes have to be made or the filmmaker must write or use film language to substitute for it. With adaptation, changes must happen, that's a fact. To me, more often than not those adaptations succeed when the creator embraces that fact and uses the medium to their advantage. Sometimes this changes the story, and sometimes that change enhances it for the better. Take Game of Thrones or Harry Potter. The former deals with many characters and worldbuilding that is extremely complex, and they did an excellent job in getting you attached to those characters. However, they did have to change some things from the books, and while some weren’t as successful, others did remarkably. (Before anyone starts raging, I’m specifically talking about the seasons where they still had books to go off of). For Harry Potter, we have eight movies to analyze, which I will not be doing, but I will say that the weakest films storywise were the fifth and seventh, simply because they tried to do both too much and too little, if that makes sense.

How would this apply to a live action ATLA? Well, it wouldn’t be like the animation, most likely. It’s a medium adaptation, meaning that the approach they had in the animation won’t work the same in live action. Think about it--you don’t watch animation, especially 2d, the same way you watch live action, psychologically and subconsciously. There’s a separation there between their world and ours. It lessens with 3d animation, but it’s much much smaller when it’s live action since it looks like our world, more or less. Would GOT beheading and other violence (you know what I mean) have had the same effect if it were 2d animation? No, probably not. Yes, I know that anime has its fair share of gore that can be extremely realistic and gross, but it still doesn’t have the same impact it would if it appeared on your screen with quality vfx. Now, these are extreme examples. I really doubt that they’ll make the violence that intense or realistic in the show, as they’ll more than likely want to keep it family friendly (there’s still kids that watch the original). Another disclaimer (ik there’s a lot of them, but people can misunderstand this kind of critique as bashing, which it’s not): I am not saying that the original animation of ATLA is not impactful, absolutely not. I have no trouble getting attached to animated characters, laughing or crying with them, etc, especially if the writing is good. However, it was a kids show, and it was written with that in mind. This is apparent to me as I’m rewatching the show now. There’s some dark stuff that happens, as is the nature of a war story, and the animation handles it excellently. But think of how different it will be seeing the ruins of the Southern Air Temple, practically a garden of bones, Gyatso’s included, in live action. Show us all the nitty-gritty of the lower rings of Ba Sing Se, and the corruption up top. Let this affect the characters. Bring this moral ambiguity into light, as it was done in the show. I think that if they’re going to tackle a show in this way, not a movie or series of movies, it would be smart of them to lean into these darker themes, not shy away from them. Like I said earlier, the audience has matured, and there’s so much more to explore with these stories and themes. I’ll say with confidence that they’ll definitely do this, and possibly add a story or two. Otherwise, it will just be a rehashing of the original, word for word dialogue. Not that the original is bad (obv not), but I don’t think we should want that. There’s a lot of potential in a live action series, and I think they’ve learned lessons from the abomination that already tripped over itself. It was an example of adaptation done badly. However, you can change a story without destroying it, but it’s a delicate operation. That’s why having the original showrunners on gives me a bit more confidence. To be clear, I don’t think they’ll go full PG-13 or higher. It’s still possible to have family/kid friendly media without shying away from the darker parts. ATLA is a great example of that. If you want a live action example of a show that balances humor, heartache, and violence beautifully, look at Merlin (bbc).

I think you bring up an interesting point with She-Ra and it’s divergence from the original. I haven’t seen the original animation, but I can say that the new one was successful in telling a new and fresh story in the same universe. The act almost as parallel stories in that universe. How To Train Your Dragon is the same way--the book and movie have very very little in common story wise, but it’s a beautiful trilogy nonetheless. Would this work with ATLA? Possibly, though I doubt they’d want to stray away from the original’s core themes. Though, you can fight me on this, Zutara does align with those themes, but that’s another post (this one is long enough). However, it’s such a complicated question because it inherently considers countless possibilities, so there’s no definite answer. It’s a beloved show that’s already been butchered once, so how much would they be willing to change?

Now, how does Zutara factor in? (getting to the point now). For many of the reasons above, I think it should be canon. Their dynamic, their rocky relationship, the journey of trust and acceptance, the connection they have, all of it is ripe for exploration, especially in a revamped, inherently more mature story. Instead of a predictable relationship where there was never any real conflict (Katara was always loyal to Aang, and their fights were never truly consequential), you have a relationship coming from a difficult, seemingly impossible place, one that requires time to establish. Like I said, it’s not an easy relationship. Part of it is strengthened by Zuko’s wonderful redemption arc. He needs to build a foundation of trust before almost any of the Gaang trust him (Aang, the angel, is willing to give him a chance almost immediately in Book 1, and though she didn’t care one way or the other at first, he did accidentally burn Toph’s feet). What would a Book 4 have brought us? Despite what Bryke say about it being a false rumor, Ehasz, a co-producer, said that it was at least discussed, plus Book 3 definitely had more to give, so I take it with several grains of salt. Anyways, even wondering about it hypothetically produces interesting theories. We see at the end of Book 2 in the cave that Katara, once she overcomes her immediate, and warrented, repulsion of Zuko, she’s able to connect and see a bit of his heart underneath the layers and layers of angst and anguish obscuring it. This scene is popular in the Zutara fandom for a reason. However, I think that making changes to characters, especially in Zuko’s case should be done extremely selectively and purposefully. His arc is one of the most fantastic accomplishments of the show, and I think very little should be changed. For example, he should still make that doomed, yet inevitable choice in that cave to join Azula, but perhaps they’ll include his mother as a more forefront character, especially when he goes back to the Fire Nation. By all means, give Ty Lee and Mai more than just a conversation to supply their backstory. Thoroughly explore the swampbenders and the Freedom Fighters. Show more of the original airbenders in Aang’s memories! There’s room for exploration without dismantling the world or characters like the M. Night film did. For Zutara, I think that expanding Book 3 and giving the characters more time with each other would be invaluable. Think of how quickly Katara and Zuko grew close, from Katara threatening to off him first time he even hinted at being a threat, to becoming one of the most instinctual and formidable teams in the Gaang, to saving each other’s lives in the final battle. That’s not even mentioning the Southern Raiders. The conflict over the entire show as the backdrop for a relationship like that, romantic or platonic, is incredibly suitable for a reboot. If it was explored, the outcome would be so powerful.

I said before that there’s a difference between canon and endgame relationships. This just means that a relationship can be confirmed and explored without being the outcome. If Bryke include Zutara at all, that’s most likely how they’ll do it: adding a love triangle that ends up with Katara and Aang getting together. Honestly, it would be a method of making K/A a more interesting relationship and a way to have the characters grow a bit. However, this has the awful potential of just shitting on Zutara and turning it into a toxic relationship, which I’d rather not see.

But if it wasn’t Bryke running it? Absolutely, I think Zutara would, and should, be canon. Adaptation should take risks and be willing to explore, and I think Zutara is the type of dynamic we should see.

#zutara #atla #atla live action #avatar the last airbender #zuko #katara #sorry this got really long i have a lot of feelings

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killiansprincss · 4 years

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Chapters: 6/? Fandom: Once Upon a Time (TV) Rating: Mature Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan Characters: Emma Swan, Captain Hook | Killian Jones, Neal Nolan, Henry Mills (Once Upon a Time), Snow White | Mary Margaret Blanchard, Prince Charming | David Nolan, Alexandra (Once Upon a Time), Phillip II (Once Upon a Time), Original Female Character(s), Robin | Margot Additional Tags: Neverland (Once Upon a Time), Curses, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Emma Grows Up Happy, Evil Queen curses Emma, season 6 AU, Angst, Magic, Hurt, Canon Divergence Chapters 1|2|3|4|5| okay here is chapter 6 of my Neverland fanfic! I hope you enjoy please leave me a comment on A03 I’d really appreciate it!

I also have a collage for my story below, ignore the badly photoshopped Alex Pettyfer as Neal Nolan!

Emma woke up on the morning of her 28th birthday and she felt like she had a hangover even though she hadn't been drinking. In fact, it was worse than a hangover because she had woken up with 2 lives inside of her head.

But it wasn’t like in New York, because that life was based on a lie and false memories, she actually had lived 2 lives. One as a daughter, a sister, a friend, and another as. Well, as an orphan.

Henry, and Killian. The two missing mystery men. No wonder she was dreaming of those two the most, as she had no clue where they were. The two most important men in her life and she was clueless as to where to begin looking for them. Hopefully, her parents would have the answers.

Her house. With the white picket fence, with a view of the water.

The two people missing from it were the ones who chose it.

How could this have happened? Things were going so well, the three of them were finally starting to be a family when the Queen ripped that away from them. She searches in her jewellery box that she’s looked through every day, hoping the one thing she wants is in there. Necklaces and bracelets and rings she’s received from her parents and friends over the years. It’s not there she thinks to herself.

But then, at the bottom of the pile, it's there. Liam’s ring, the one Killian gave her back in Camelot all those years ago. She takes the silver ring on the chain and feels a sense of relief as she puts it over her head. She was going to find them, and bring them home.

The drive to her parents’ house, despite it only being less than a 5-minute drive, felt like a lifetime. She kept going over in her head(s) what was happening right now, she was meant to be celebrating her birthday with her parents and younger brother, the way they do every year, but now she was finding it strange that she had a family to do this. She was an orphan who found her family at 28, but she wasn’t really an orphan now. Or was she?

She knocks on the door to her parents house, expecting a huge Happy Birthday banner and for them to sing, but instead her father has the sorrowful look in his eyes when he opens the door. There’s no ‘Happy Birthday’ because he obviously knew what was coming.

“I remember,” is all she says as she just starts to cry.

The old Emma, the orphan would never cry, especially in front of her parents, but the girl who grew up with a family cried over the stupidest things

“Come in, we'll talk all about it.” David says putting his arm around her leading her inside.

Wiping her tears away she asks, “what happened?”

David and Snow look at one another trying to figure out the best way to explain the situation. “The Evil Queen, she said turning you into a toddler was the best way to get to each of us.” They begin to explain, going through all the details of how they eventually captured the Queen using squid Ink and how Regina has sacrificed herself to save everyone.

“Wh-what about Henry and Killian?” Emma asks when they’ve finished.

Snow takes a deep breath before saying, “we don’t know. When it happened they ran off to another realm we think, we haven’t heard from them since it happened.”

Emma looks like she could be sick, or faint, or both.

Seeing her face David quickly adds, “they’re safe though don’t worry. We believe Gold had a hand in wherever they escaped to, we can go ask him.”

“No-“ she cuts them off, “I’ll go. Just me. Henry’s my son and I have no idea where he is, I haven’t been his mother for 25 years.”

“Emma, you didn’t have a choice. He forgives you for putting him up for adoption, of course he’ll forgive you for not being there when you were under a curse.” Snow tells her, caught off guard by her sudden attitude-the Emma she raised would never do something this important alone. She was going to have to get used to the fact that the Emma she didn’t raise was seeping back in, the one who liked to work alone. The Orphan.

“Before you go beat up Gold to find out where Henry is,” David says, giving her a large rectangular box, “I thought you might want this.”

Emma takes the box, and slowly opens it to reveal her red leather jacket. Her armour. She hasn’t needed her armour growing up with a family, but now…

She took off her armour when she realised she wanted a future with Killian. But now, she didn’t know if there was a future with him.

_______

She decides to walk to Golds shop. Feeling slightly betrayed by everyone she needs the fresh air. That is until she bumps into her best friend Alex.

“Happy Birthday Emma!” She screams and hugs as she sees her. “I know it’s only a Tuesday but I was thinking tonight we can go drinking at the Rabbit Hole, like I’m working there until 8 and then I have tomorrow off,” she starts babbling, Emma feels so mean but all she can think about is Henry and getting him back.

“I can’t, I need to find my son. I need to find him I don’t know.” She starts to ramble, she knows Alex won’t understand, but she can’t think straight.

Alex looks perplexed, “I’m confused, you don’t have a son? Emma are you feeling okay?”

“No!” She cries, “nothing in my life is real, none of this. It’s all lies I don’t.”

Alex takes Emma’s hand, “Em. It’s okay. I’m your best friend, I’ve known you for your whole life, whatever you’re going though I’m here.”

“No that’s the problem, you don’t know me. At all. My life, growing up with you, it’s all based on a lie.” As soon as Emma said it, she knew it came out wrong.

Letting go of her hand Alex replies, “okay well if that’s how you feel then forget it. I was only trying to help. So much for being best friends.” And storms away, hurt by what Emma said.

She tried to call after her, but it was no use. And plus even if she tried to explain what was going on she wouldn’t believe it.

___

Standing outside of the Pawn Shop is strange. She had been inside many times before in her past life, but not once in the past 25 years. She stands outside for a moment debating what to say, but in the end she just storms inside. She sees the dark one inside in all his horrific glory, despite not having aged much he still looks awful.

“Where the hell is my son Gold?” She demands.

“Why Miss Nolan, I didn’t realise you had a son?” Emma rolls her eyes, the typical Dark One avoiding the question at hand.

“Don’t play dumb okay. Henry. Your grandson. Where. Is. He?” She demands again.

He finally looks up from his books. “Ah, has it been 25 years already? Well I believe birthday wishes are in order!”

Emma sighs, this isn’t going to be easy. “Look. My parents told me Henry and Killian made some kind of deal with you after what happened to me. They’re in some other realm or something, I want to know where, and how you can get them back.”

“Well I told them where they could go. Doesn’t mean they’re still there. As for getting them back, I’m afraid you’ll have to do that yourself.” He explains.

“Okay then do something to find them.” She practically yells at him.

“Blood magic can be used to find your son, for your one handed pirate lover I'm afraid there’s no way of finding him.” Emma’s heart sinks, but she knows Henry is the most important person to find right now.

He reaches under the counter to grab something, part of Emma wishes she had her gun but at the same time she knew that wouldn’t work on him, and her parents probably got rid of that a long time ago. It’s the same white atlas-like ball he used to locate Henry when he was kidnapped by Pans' minions.

“Before you do anything, if that’s a locator spell we are using my blood. Forgive me if I don’t trust you, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you do anything.” She tells him.

He nods in understanding. Emma gives her hand over and he and he pricks it on the top of the globe, slowly releasing her finger onto the white globe and the blood rushes around forming different shapes until they finally form one shape and glow.

“What does that mean?” She asks.

He smirks, “why it’s Neverland dearie.”

The pit of Emma’s stomach gurgled, and it wasn’t because she hasn’t eaten anything today.

Neverland.

Where Henry was taken the first time. Also the place where she finally admitted to herself that she felt something for Killian, and where he told her after kissing her he saw himself loving someone again.

It was where she accepted the fact she was an orphan, a lost girl.

“So do you have a magic bean or something?” She asks, ignoring her overwhelming thoughts inside her head.

The Dark one just laughs, “you think if I had an endless supply to magic beans I would still live here?”

Emma just glares at him, “so how do I get there? What happened to the wand you had? It created portals before?”

“That wand was lost a long time ago. As for portals, you and your brother are born of the truest love, your powers are of the strongest light magic. You created a portal once when you went back in time, I’m sure after years of training and love you’ll be able to do it again.” He explains. “Meet me back here later with your family and I’ll show you.”

______

Neal Nolan was working as an English Teacher in Storybrooke High. He had grown up with his older sister Emma, who was a year older than him. Or so he thought. Neal had no idea of the news he was about to be hit with about his sister.

Neal knocks on the door to his parents’ house with his gift for his sister. He got her a Granny's gift card and a new brown sheriffs jacket (which his girlfriend Thalia helped him pick out) and expects to see Emma in the goofy birthday hat they have both worn on their birthdays since they were 5, but instead, his dad opens the door and he walks in to find Emma looking through the Storybook almost crying.

“Everything okay?” He asks.

Emma looks at him, almost horrified. “We gotta talk.”

He debates whether to say Happy Birthday or not. He decides against it.

“I have no idea how you’re going to take this news,” Emma begins, “One thing is that you are an uncle.”

Nels eyes widen “You’re pregnant?”

“NO!” Emma shouts “Not, no, definitely not.”

Neal is even more confused.

“You are an uncle, but I’m not pregnant. I was, but I'm not now, or well I was a long time ago” Emma starts rambling and making no sense, Neal is even more confused now-When did Emma have a kid?

“Maybe we should back up a little.” Snow says, seeing her son's confused face.

And so the three of them explain how Emma was put through the magic wardrobe to eventually save everyone. How Emma met Neals namesake and thus Henry was born but given up for adoption. Then all about her journey in Storybrooke and breaking the curse, and all the other journeys and curses up until the one where she was turned into a toddler. And how said son and Emma’s boyfriend ran away to Neverland, a place where nobody grows old.

Looking at the photos of Emma holding her baby brother was slightly concerning considering Emma in the photos looked exactly as she did now, yet Neal was a baby. If he hadn’t just been told Emma’s previous life story, he would’ve sworn they were photoshopped.

“Okay, so what happens now?” Neal asks, worried about the answer.

“You and I have to create a portal to Neverland to save my son and True Love,” Emma tells him as though it’s obvious.

“Wait a second, you and I create a portal, like combine our powers?” Neal asks slightly worried about this, they had never combined their powers before and now they were meant to create a portal, everything that could possibly go wrong was likely to happen.

“I realise it’s crazy, but we have no choice. You just gotta trust me.” Emma knows Neal can never say no when she says this, as his older sister Emma always got him to do what she wanted by saying “trust me”. Despite getting into trouble most of the time when they were younger with the whole trusting Emma, even now as a 26 year old man, he couldn't say no to his sister.

Neal just sighs, “Okay. Let's do this.”

Neal had never stepped inside Mr. Gold's Pawn shop. When he was younger he heard stories of kids sneaking in and touching different items therefore getting cursed with the insane amounts of dark magic in his shop. Now he was older, he knew this was just a story, but it didn’t make him any less nervous to enter his shop, there was an insane amount of light and dark magic inside that freaked him out.

There was something different about Emma, the way she walked and held herself. She was less confident, very aware of her surroundings, normally she was more confident and whilst she was aware people knew her (both as Snow White oldest child, and the current sheriff), she never let this bother her, whereas now, supposedly everyone their parents age would have known her before her curse, people were looking at her wondering if she had broken her curse yet. Even as they enter Mr Gold's shop, which wasn’t actually as scary inside as he pictured, she walked in very determined,

“Okay were here. How do we do this?”

“Patience Miss Nolan.” He tells her.

“Ah and the youngest of the Charming broods I see.” Mr Gold says looking at Neal, who suddenly felt a little uncomfortable. He knew of the things he had done to people, innocent people, in the Enchanted Forest and that made his stomach churn. But his parents (and Emma apparently now too) have trusted him in the past, and Neal guessed so should he.

“Before we make this portal, you don’t do things out of the goodness of whatever heart you have left. What did you ask for in return?” Emma really was not the older sister he grew up with, she was this independent, confident and slightly argumentative woman that looked like his sister, but had a different aura about her.

“For my grandson I was willing to let the poor lad have this without a deal. As for the pirate.” He sneers, Neal was told The Dark One had a colourful history with Hook, and he was seeing this already. “I simply reminded him of the 300 years he spent in Neverland and what, desires, may still lurk.”

Neal had no idea what this meant, and neither did Emma by the looks of it.

“Now, you two are born of the purest true love therefore your powers combined can create some pretty serious magic.” Gold explains, “Now I need the two of you to hold your hands together and believe you are strong enough. You need to think of the portal in your minds, you will feel it when it is ready.”

And so the siblings to just that. They take each other's hands, standing opposite one another and close their eyes. They then take a deep breath and think of a portal in their minds, letting their magic grow and rise above them.

Emma thinks of Henry, and of Killian. She thinks of Neverland in her mind, and when Henry was kidnapped, she thinks of how badly she wanted to get him back and the things she had learnt about herself, about how much she loved Henry. And about how she was feeling something for Hook.

Both siblings can feel the magic, it’s a part of them and it's rushing around their insides like their blood. Gold said they would feel it when the portal was ready, and he was not wrong. It almost splits the two siblings apart, but they hold on to one another until they just know it’s ready.

The two siblings open their eyes and see a door, a green door with black etchings and designs. It's the portal to Neverland.

They're going to save Henry. Again.

_______

The four charming family members step through the beautifully crafted door, the portal to Neverland. They had packed a few bags and Emma was going to see her son (and hopefully true love) for the first time in 25 years. She could be sick.

The greenery of Neverland greets them as they walk through the door, the humidity and vast amount of jungle and sea that they had seen once upon a time. They arrive near the coast, and Emma can’t see the Jolly Roger in the water, but she had to think positively. If Killian was here she would find him. But only after they found Henry.

She looks over at her parents, and they have the same look on their faces. Fear, determination and awoken memories they had shoved into the back of their minds. After all, Emma wasn’t the only person to go through hell in Neverland, her father was poisoned with dreamshade and had planned to spend the rest of eternity here after drinking the rejuvenating waters.

And poor Neal who only found out a few hours ago that she was actually a lot older than him and was cursed, and now he was in Neverland searching for two people he had only met as a baby.

“Let’s head into the jungle then.” Emma says to her family. And so they head off, into the green jungle filled with who knows what. Now Pan was dead, who knows who now ruled Neverland.

It looks the same as it did 30 years ago, but it feels different. The Magic on the Island feels different, she knows this now, by studying magic for years taught her to sense different types of magic and this was some kind of mix of light dark magic. Not as powerful as Dark One Magic, but not the light magic she feels inside herself. Whatever was keeping this Island alive was clearly a type of magic not found in Storybrooke.

They’re walking for probably an hour when Neals plucks up there courage and asks, “Do you recognise anything here?”

Emma wants to ignore him and shut him out, the way she would’ve done before, but he was her brother, “Honestly, no. I thought I would but it all looks the same.”

“I think we should keep walking, I think we’re on a ridge right now and I assume there’s flatland where we can set up camp a little further up.” Their mother cuts in. Snow was a bandit and a runaway for years when her father was killed, so she knows how to scope out new lands and find a place to set up camp, so they don’t question it and sure enough another little while and they find flat land that seems like a good enough place to set up camp.

“Let’s not use magic to set it up though,” Emma tells her brother, “we don’t know what sort of magic is used here, or who now rules this Island and if they can detect magic. It’s just safer to do it the normal way.”

Everyone nods as they begin to set up. Emma is terrified, she has been since she woke up and realised her life was a lie. She had grown up the way she always wished to, with a family, but now she had broken her curse, it didn’t feel right. She abandoned two people she loved, one being her son. The first family she had in 28 years.

They had run away. So heartbroken that they ran from their home. That didn’t make her feel good about herself. Henry has forgiven her for giving him up as a baby, but will he forgive her for this?

“Emma! Emma!”

She’s snapped out of her thoughts by her brother's voice.

“Sorry, I was zoned out.” She tells him.

“Hey it’s okay don’t worry.” He can clearly sense what’s happening in her brain, though he has no idea of the extent. “I know you said no magic, but don’t you think it’s a good idea to put up a protection spell around our camp? To keep out whoever or whatever might attack us.”

Her little brother was brilliant. Though his magical abilities were not as good, lucky for him was not the saviour so his magic wasn't as strong, but what he did know was his magical history and the theory behind magic, much more than Emma did.

“That's actually a really good idea! You can cast it if you want, I’m a little weak after the portal.” She lies, she’s not weak, she's just scared of using her magic. In her real-or before her cursed life, she didn’t use magic unless it was serious, when she was the Dark One she used it for everything just like in her cursed life.

He believes her lie, why wouldn’t he, she never normally lies to him. He casts the protection spell eagerly, not normally given the chance to do magic.

“We should rest. It’s dark, and we’re not gonna be able to find Henry now. Let’s sleep, and we can figure out our plan in the morning. We also don’t know who or what is in charge of this Island, don’t want to run into them in the middle of the night.” David says to his family, to which they all agree. Emma is exhausted and her dad is right, there’s no point starting now all she knows is he is on the Island somewhere, maybe he’s imprisoned, or worse, enjoying his time on the island where you don’t grow up.

Sharing a tent with Neal when they were kids was a fun adventure, but as two adults, one who was snoring very loudly, it was a very different story. As tired and exhausted as Emma was, or thought she was, she could not sleep. Killian once told her he was never able to sleep in Neverland, as you can hear the cries of the other lost boys and girls.

But you can only hear their cries if you are also a lost one.

Sure Emma had a family, and she grew up surrounded by people who loved her, she had 2 best friends and a little brother. She was the furthest thing from a lost girl. But she was an orphan. For 28 years, she was an orphan who was never wanted, and gave up her child at 17. That part of Emma will never go away.

Giving up on trying to sleep, she gets out of the tent and sits on the log to try and clear her head. If it’s even possible to do that with the cries of lost ones.

She thought about the two men she was here to save. The last time she had seen Henry, it was saying goodbye to him on the school bus, it was a Friday so they planned to have a Star Wars marathon that weekend. Emma had stocked the freezer with Ice Cream especially. Finally Killian would learn and understand their references to Star Wars. She hoped Henry would still be the same smart little kid who questioned everything.

And Killian. God she missed him. He would bring her coffee in the mornings when she had an early start, and when she was on a night shift at the station he would be at home cooking her breakfast. If she hadn’t been cursed, they would’ve been married and had a kid or two by now. They were finally happy, finally without walls, and she had a feeling Killian was going to propose. But of course he never got the chance.

She loses her train of thought when she hears a twig being stepped on. Her impulses kick in and she hides behind the large tree to her left. She hears someone whistling, as if signalling to somebody. She sees him in the distance. A lost boy, around 15, dark hair, like…

“Henry!” She jumps from behind the tree and in front of her son.

He looks startled, obviously because she scared him and also he hasn’t seen her for 25 years. “Mom?”

Emma is smiling so hard right now, “Henry!”

Henry can’t seem to get words out, “m-mom? Is? It’s-you-you’re here?”

She goes to embrace her son with tears streaming down her face. “I’m here. It’s broken. The curse.”

She pulls back and wipes away her tears.

“Is it really you?” He asks.

Emma looks different to how he remembers her. Her blonde hair is in a french braid, something she only learned to do in this life. Her clothes are nicer, but still donning the red jacket. Henry knows it’s her, but could it really be her?

“It’s me. Henry. It’s really me. I know you love cinnamon on your hot cocoa, and Operation Cobra brought me to Storybrooke and you made me believe in magic in everything.” Emma’s practically sobbing, she didn’t expect to see him so soon.

Henry looks nervous constantly checking his surroundings, “I can’t stay. If you’re truly my mom, then meet me here tomorrow morning when the sun rises over the place they took my heart.” With one last look he runs away into the darkness of Neverland.

Emma is stunned for a second, confused as to what just happened. Was there someone following him, or did he need to be somewhere?

The place where they took my heart

Dark Hollow . She tried to look around but it was dark, hopefully in the morning she would be able to see the sun rising over it.

Just as she’s pondering over the last minute with Henry, she’s startled by another voice.

“Swan.”

She hasn’t heard that name in 25 years. And there’s only one person who calls her that.

“Killian.”

#Captain swan #Cs Ff #emma swan #Killian jones #emma x killian #emma x hook #fanfic #captain swan fanfic #ouat

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pinkyshy101 · 4 years

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So I got bored and decided to type out a list of the cartoons/tv shows I’ve watched, cause why not! I think this is all I’ve watched, or at least recent enough (I’m thinking like…. 2014/15 onward, when I actively started to watch more cartoons)

It’s kinda long, and I’m kinda rambley, so I’ll put it under a keep reading thing (if I can) so you don’t have to scroll through that if you don’t want to. Idk who will actually read this, but hey maybe it’s an idea of what kind of things I might reblog on here! I’m always taking any suggestions for shows to watch, I love learning about and watching more and more cartoons! So if there’s something I didn’t list as something I watched and you think of be interested, feel free to please recommend it! I may update this with a reblog or an edit or something at some point in the future, idk though. For now, its September 19, 2020, and here’s what I got for ya

This ended up way more rambley than I meant for it to be but I started writing it at maybe 12:30ish am and now its almost 2am when I’m getting ready to post it so oops 👀 I’m not really expecting anyone to read this but hey, it’s something! Read if you wanna know what shows and other stuff I watched lol idc

Cartoons I’ve watched in their entirety (or what’s all aired as of today 9/19/20):

(updated 12/2/20 as starting with ATLA)

Gravity Falls - watched since late 2014

Steven Universe (including the movie and Future) - watched since mid June 2015, right before the second stevenbomb/sworn to the sword (early season 2)

Over The Garden Wall - watched back around when it first came out, can’t remember exactly when but sometime in 2015

Star vs The Forces of Evil - watched the first 2 seasons as they aired, then stopped watching for a while and rewatched the whole show in June 2019

Hilda - watched for the first time in I think October 2018, rewatched in May quarantine

She-ra and the Princesses of Power - watched all 5 seasons about/not even a week after season 5 came out, idk why I waited so long to watch it

The Owl House - started watching it after the grom episode aired, idk why I waited so long to watch it but molly and noelle and everyone was screaming about grom on twitter, so of course I had to watch it then

Kipo and The Age of Wonderbeasts - watched it all in early August, right before I watched The Owl House

Infinity Train - watched the pilot back in 2016, then the first season when it came out, but then I started college and didn’t get the chance to watch the 2nd/3rd season until I decided to watch the whole series (s1 again, 2/3 for the first time) this past week

Ouran High School Host Club - ok I know it’s anime not a cartoon and I can’t see myself reblogging anything from it but it’s literally the only anime I’ve watched more than like 1 or 2 episodes of/the only one I’ve seen in its entirety so I figured eh I’ll mention it

Camp Camp - I almost forgot to mention this one! I started watching it when there was I think only 3 episodes of season 1, so back in 2016, and I’ve loved it since then! I guess this summer’s season couldn’t happen cause of covid.... But I’m still excited for when/if it does eventually come out!

Avatar the Last Airbender

Shows that I’ve partially watched but not completely:

We Bare Bears - I’ve seen the first 2 seasons, maybe some of the third I can’t remember, I watched it when it first came out but I haven’t watched it in a while, so I would probably need to rewatch a bunch of it (I did rewatch I think the first season sometime this year? But it was while working on school projects so I wasn’t giving it my full attention), apparently there’s also a movie now???

My Little Pony Friendship is Magic - I was huge into the brony fandom from roughly 2013ish-2017ish, I’ve seen up to season 8 and a few episodes of season 9, and the 4 equestria girls movies, and the mlp movie; I probably know seasons 1 - 4 the most, maybe a little of 5, 6 and 7 are kinda fuzzy but I’ve seen them, 8 I watched over quarantine (since it’d been a few years since I had watched any of it, I also rewatched bits of 5-7) as well as I think the first episode or so of season 9, but I don’t remember them too well. I watched the movie (the pony one, not eqg) when it came out in theaters, and not too long after that I drifted away from the mlp fandom (tbh I was drifting a little bit before it came out, but I knew I had to stick in there at least until it came out since I had been waiting for so long for it). The equestria girls movies, I saw them all when they first came out (I even saw rainbow rocks in the theater). I think there’s like, half hour shorts or episodes or something?? That’s in the eqg universe?? But I don’t think I’ve seen any of them, and if I have it was probably a really early one a long time ago because I haven’t really kept up with anything after Legend of Everfree came out

Animaniacs reboot - I’ve seen the first 5 episodes and it’s nice!

Shows that I’ve only seen an episode or few of that I (probably) intend on continuing to watch:

Glitch Techs - I saw the first episode! Definitely want to continue it

Rick and Morty - I watched a few episodes of the first season in like March/April quarantine, but I was still dealing with online school at home finishing out last semester then. I think I want to watch this eventually, but I have other shows that I want to catch up on/watch before I’d get to this one

Tangled the Series - idk if that’s the name I’ve seen multiple names but I hope you know what I’m talking about, I saw a handful of episodes from the first season I think sometime around fall 2019, but I’d probably have to rewatch the whole thing

Adventure Time - I’ve never had cable/cartoon network so I didn’t watch this growing up, but I’ve heard really good things about it and seen a bunch of stuff from it (I’d have to be living under a rock to have not seen anything lol) but it’s so long and I just haven’t gotten around to it yet! Well I’ve seen maybe a dozen or so episodes of the first season but it was a while ago so I’d have/want to start over probably

Shows I haven’t started

Amphibia - I’ve heard it’s good! I just haven’t gotten around to it yet

Avatar the Last Airbender - probably next on my list to watch, I’ve been meaning to watch it for years but I haven’t yet, its on Netflix now so that should make it easier to watch and a friend from school made me promise that this would be the next one I’d watch so that’s what I’m doing (I did watch the last 2 seasons of infinity train that night though, since I was really wanting to finish it first… But atla is next) watched it! (updated 12/2/20)

The Legend of Korra - obviously I’m waiting to watch it until after alta, and I’m probably going to watch it right after I finish atla

The Dragon Prince - idk really anything about it other than I think it’s on netflix? and apparently it’s good and maybe gay idk but I’ve heard it’s good thus why it’s on here lol

Black Horseman - idk too too much about this other than apparently it’s good but also kinda depressing. Similarly to rick and morty I want to watch it eventually but its not insanely high on my list

OK KO - don’t know a ton about it other than it’s decent, a step up from r+m/bojack on where I want to watch it but not urgently

Ducktales Reboot - similarly to OK KO, don’t know much about it other than it’s decent, same level of want to watch

Milo Murphy’s Law - saw a couple episodes when it came out, haven’t watched it in forever so if I ever do want to rewatch it I’d have to restart it, not super high on my priority list though

Bee and Puppycat - another one I almost forgot! I don’t know a ton about this but I’ve heard its nice! Plus from what I’ve seen I like the artstyle so 👀 maybe someday

Animaniacs (original) - I started to watch the reboot and I think I want to watch the original eventually! Just haven’t gotten around to it yet

Clone High - listen it’s not that I desperately WANT to watch this, I just have friends who are like, hey, watch this lol it’s apparently not super long so why not

Other non cartoon shows I’ve watched:

Brooklyn 99 - idk when I started watching it, maybe around season 4/5ish? I think sometime in 2018 so idk the season, idk, most of the episodes I’ve only seen once so I couldn’t tell you exactly what happens in every episode but I still like it

Rise - ugh I miss this show, I started watching it after/around when the 3rd episode came out (end of March 2018?), and I don’t think I’ve watched any of it since it ended (mid may 2018) cause its not on any streaming services anymore :/ at least not that I know of but I loved it and would love to rewatch it

Andi Mack - I’d heard it was good but hadn’t watched it after it ended (early august 2019 I think I watched it), haven’t rewatched it since then but it was decent, I mainly watched it cause I had seen clips of gay but yknow it was alright

Sex Education - watched 1st season sometime in 2019, when rewatched it/watched season 2 when it came out January 2020, this is like WAY more mature than like anything on this list but like it has an interesting story

Love Victor - watched first/currently only season when it came out mid june 2017 (how was June so long ago what)

Queer Eye - I’ve seen a couple seasons of it idk I figured why not add it lol

Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist - I think I watched this around when there were maybe a few episodes of season 1 left (well there’s only one season now but still), idk I liked it cause like musicals and stuff idk

Idk what else to add to this section but if I think of anything (to any category on this list) I’ll probably update it later maybe idk (again I’m not necessarily going to be reblogging stuff from all/any of these but like, I figured I’d mention it cause idk)

Musicals:

Another thing I love is musicals, like I’m a design/tech major in college rn so yeah I like theatre lol so I’m going to list some I’ve seen (mostly watched bootlegs of, but I’ll list some professional/tour ones I’ve seen in person)(but if it doesn’t say anything special I probably just watched a bootleg, 2017 was a big year for me and my google drive being filled with bootlegs…) This might not be all of them and I won’t go into as much detail (I hope, I haven’t typed it yet) but we’ll see:

Broadway tours I’ve seen: (I swear this isn’t bragging they were cheap seats way up high lol)

Dear Evan Hansen (May 2019)

Wicked (first professional show I saw, October 2017, haven’t watched a bootleg or anything of it since then and I went in completely blind)

Mean Girls (November 2019, last professional show I saw before quarantine)

Come From Away (September 2019)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (November 2018)

The Book of Mormon (August 2018, was hoping to again this August but quarantine :( )

Non professional/high school/college/other shows I’ve seen in person/been on crew for (not all of them, but some) (assume I’ve also seen bootlegs/proshots if there are any)

Newsies

Spring Awakening (spot op)

Shrek (props)

Legally Blonde

I’ve seen done way more but I don’t feel like listing them or that they’re anything I’d want go reblog/actively look at fandom content for (that’s not saying it reblog stuff from shrek the musical but still lol)

Other shows I’ve seen only in proshot/bootleg form:

Basically every Starkid show

Spies are Forever

The Solve it Squad

Hamilton

Heathers

Be More Chill (yes I was in that big amalgamation of musical fandom stuff with these and deh in 2017 aaaa)

Falsettos

Beetlejuice

Spongebob

21 Chump Street

Les Mis

Phantom

(Again maybe not necessarily all but some there’s a slight chance I might reblog things about)

Musicals I still need/want to watch/listen to:

The Prom

Six

The Great Comet (not typing it all out)

Hadestown

Waitress

Bonnie and Clyde

Something Rotten

Tuck Everlasting

Again there’s more I want to see I’m sure but I haven’t really watched bootlegs in a while…. Idk feel free to suggest shows tho

Movies I’ve seen/like: obviously I’m not gonna just every single movie I’ve seen but heres a few I like:

The Sound of Music

The Wizard of Oz - these 2 have actually always been my favorite movies since I was little, I can’t dee myself reblogging much of anything about them but figured I’d mention them cause why not

Love Simon

Some but not all Disney movies (I grew up with no cable/mostly just pbs)

Most pixar movies?

I don’t think John Mulaney shows count as movies but eh whatever I’ve seen them on netflix

Idk what else lol I know I’ve seen more movies than this but eh

If anyone actually read all of this... Wow I’m surprised honestly lol have a free cookie or something for your struggles or smth, idk, thanks for reading this though lol I appreciate you (but also slightly worry, this was a lot of words and a lot of rambling)

#long post #me #personal #really long post

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thecloserkin · 4 years

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book review: C.J. Hauser, Family of Origin (2019)

Genre: the most literary of fiction

Is it the main pairing: yes

Is it canon: yes

Is it explicit: kinda

Is it endgame: no

Is it shippable: if you’re into unhealthy ships

Bottom line: i hate literary fiction. ok i don’t hate fiction obviously i just hate when it tries to be too literary?? u feel me fam

Two estranged half-siblings spend a week tying up loose ends on the remote island where their father died (it is unclear if he committed suicide). The “loose ends” are that they had sex once, as teenagers, and now it’s weird. The island is populated by cultists and nut jobs who are convinced it’s the end of days and evolution is going in reverse. I have… many equivocal feelings about this book. On the one hand there are so many lines that just peel me like an orange, lines like “There was nothing more humiliating to Elsa than her own desires” or “Elsa was never surprised when someone killed himself. She was only surprised by her own animal perseverance day after day.” Plus I think this book really gets the dynamic where they’re constantly needling each other and every interaction is doused in fifteen gallons of repressed attraction. I think this is a novel that accomplished everything it set out to do with assurance and aplomb; I’m just fundamentally uninterested in what it’s trying to do. It’s about damaged people who learn to heal but the problem is the healing is much less engaging than the hurting.

Here’s the difference between speculative fiction and literary fiction: SF/F presumes zombies are literal zombies. Instead of assuming the zombies metaphorically represent something abstract, you just take them at face value ok? You spot a time machine or a vampire, you take it at face value and you add additional layers of meaning later. Which puts me in a pickle because Family of Origin is decidedly not a genre book, so what am I supposed to think about Famous Bigshot Biologist Ian, Elsa and Nolan’s dad, and his reasons for relocating to this island? There’s no cell phone service; it is quite literally removed from civilization. When I said nut jobs I mean it’s populated by secessionists, survivalists, doomsday preppers, anti-establishment types of all stripes. And they have some kooky theories about ducks. Which Ian apparently subscribed to. If this was SF/F I would just go along with it because maybe Elsa and Nolan, having arrived on the island, will finish Ian’s life’s work and find this elusive duck and prove Charles Darwin wrong haha??? But it’s fucking literary fiction which means I have to look for SYMBOLISM gahhh kill me now.

C.J. Hauser knows what she’s doing. Her bio says she’s a creative writing instructor and you can see why. It sucks that “what she’s doing” only glancingly aligns with “what I want her to do,” but c’est la vie. I was immediately taken with her choice of island setting (remote islands breed intimacy!) and the familiar configuration of type-A older sister paired with a younger brother who begs for a scrap of notice or attention. From the get-go Elsa’s priority is control. Nolan’s is acceptance. This quote sums it up pretty handily:

The problem was that Nolan wanted answers, and Elsa wasn’t sure what she would do with answers if she found them.

Like, I personally identify more with Nolan than with Elsa, because there’s this sense of learned futility that I find kind of charming in him but everyone finds annoying af in me:

Nolan wished he could return to a time before anyone had any expectations for him.

Elsa, otoh. Here is Elsa thinking about her ex, a relationship she clung to well past the expiration date merely because he loved her more than she loved him back, and she wasn’t willing to give up that bargaining position:

As long as his side of their love had more ballast to it, she felt in control and like he would not leave. Everyone left Elsa, so she had to be sure.

Nolan and Elsa are certified disasters. They’re both so burnt-out, and twisted up inside with shame and guilt and impossible desires, and the island is the ideal backdrop for them to resolve their issues:

There was so much that was not allowed that the island seemed willing to permit. Things underwater. Things offshore.

That night, they made no pretenses about the sleeping bag and slept cupped like shells in their father’s bed.

Jesus Joseph and Mary this woman can write. I’ve even seen lines from this novel quoted in those tumblr compilation poetry posts.

Anyway Elsa and Nolan’s dynamic is they do not get along and they’ve never gotten along. It starts with Elsa’s resentment at being displaced by a new sibling, which was compounded by Elsa’s mom being divorced and replaced by Nolan’s mom. These kids have spent all their lives probing at each other’s weaknesses and I am reminded of a very apt line from a book that has absolutely jack shit to do with incest: “When siblings spar, the true cause is proximity.” This seems to apply to Elsa and Nolan’s situation more potently than most.

Will you just LOOK at this god-tier sparring though:

Nolan touched a drop of rain that hung by her ear, letting it spill onto his fingers. Elsa smacked his hand.

Don’t— Elsa began, but Nolan, dirty water dripping from his fingers, grabbed Elsa around the ankles and shook her, groaning, Graaghh! like some B-movie Swamp Thing from the deep, ready to pull Elsa into the pool. Elsa considered Nolan’s hands around her ankles.

It’s one part goofing off, one part competitive banter, and one part violent sexual tension . Elsa takes meticulous mental inventory of every instance of skin-to-skin contact and I’m like—girl you know it only means something if you let it? Who the hell pays that much attention every time their brother accidentally brushes shoulders with them?!

There was a knot between Elsa’s shoulders that twisted taut when she saw him.

Nolan is shiftless and aimless, doesn’t even have the balls to break up with his girlfriend, his internal monologue is a constant refrain of “Nolan wished there was some more-adult adult whose job this could be.” Child you are TWENTY-EIGHT years old and need to start owning your choices. I think this hypothesis that’s sorta floated in an early Elsa POV is pretty conclusively disproved in the course of the novel:

But people didn’t change. They just ran away from everyone who knew them too well so they could start over and do a better job of obscuring the worst parts of themselves.

Because they do change, both of them change and mend their ways and they become a family again and ok here’s where I have a problem with C.J. Hauser: Her idea is that you have to choose—Nolan is either Elsa’s brother or her lover:

And he understood then that he could have kept Elsa as a sister or slept with her. It was a choice, and what he’d just done was to have given her up.

It seems her whole motivation for seducing him was as a big fuck-you to their father. I’m not saying she was not attracted to him I’m saying her field of vision is dominated by Ian:

Everyone here is insane, Elsa said.

They have their reasons, said Nolan.

They have stories, not reasons.

What if you’re my story? What if the story of why I’m on this island is you?

What’s my story?

Your story is Dad.

Go to sleep.

Tell me a story.

Which is really sweet and I am a fiend for these callbacks that deliberately echo the older sibling interacting with the younger one as a baby, but Ian’s stature is such that he takes over everything?? We find out that he wasn’t that great of a scientist. That he wasn’t a great dad was clear from the start.

So the really interesting thing from a craft perspective is the climax of this book occurs in the middle of it instead of at the end. The only other novel I can think of that does this is Cloud Atlas but that has a very unique structure. The film The Talented Mr. Ripley also kind of does this?

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

It’s revealed that Elsa isn’t Ian’s biological child. Her mom had an affair and when Ian found out he divorced her and married Nolan’s mom. When Elsa learnt the truth, she took the radical step of sleeping with Nolan to prove a point, I guess? To wit: If she wasn’t Ian’s daughter then it wasn’t actually incest. If Ian was troubled then it must be because she was his daughter:

But you are this kid, her mother said. You’re so totally his kid that you think biology is the only way you can be his kid.

I’ll admit that the “they’re not related” reveal does in this instance actually serve a purpose, unlike in some other books (yup this is a Wasteland callout post). And it ties into the theme of biology, and the stupid elusive ducks that supposedly inhabit this godforsaken island:

”We’re no longer good at adapting to things in the natural world because it’s too hard to tell which parts are real anymore so we don’t know what to adapt to.”

So there you have it. Family of Origin is not a book that spoke to my soul but it is a devastatingly exquisite book, and it has a number of really shippable scenes even if the relationship taken as a whole is not one I was rooting for. Here’s Nolan trying to get laid at college:

He didn’t know what to do because there had only ever been Elsa that one time before and Elsa had known what to do.

And then he has a breakdown so bad that he calls Elsa??? For emotional support??? Even though she’s at least 50% of the reason he’s so broken. When Elsa shows up she says ”I drove over two goddamn hours so you could yell at me in person” lolololol every single line of dialogue is so on-point. Oh oh and Elsa biting his ribs and his neck while they’re lying half-naked in bed is another pearl of a scene.

I saved so many quotes from this book and half of them have nothing to do with incest but they’re SENSATIONAL so I’m going to end this review with an assortment of quotes:

that she was afraid to ask for small things like this because the need in them did not seem big enough to draw attention. That she was afraid her small needs would go unnoticed, and so she made plays at bigger ones instead.

Whatever inner thing guided normal people in their choices … Elsa’s was broken. Nolan had been her first wrong choice, years ago, and as much as she’d have liked to pretend she was different now, that it had been a stupid teenage mistake, there was too much other wrongness that came after. Dozens of dubious choices that all seemed to bloom outward from that first moment.

But no, there was a difference between realizing how wrongly he’d been made and the moment the wrongness actually happened.

Because it wasn’t perfect. Because she couldn’t tell the difference between unconditional and infallible.

Maybe the sooner Elsa stopped trying to hunt down some class of people who had all the answers—adults, scientists, Mars missions, Ian—the sooner she could stop the cycle of trying to win. Could look around and decide what kind of game might actually be worth playing.

#cj hauser #family of origin #book review

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tonotbelionized · 5 years

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Different Partners in Team RWBY

So I was actually writing another discussion post before my sister asked me a thought provoking question.

What would be different if Team RWBY had different partners to canon?

I’m going to honest, I thought that not much would given that they’re all good friends in canon, and surely having different partners wouldn’t change that. But after some thought and talking it through, I’ve come to realise that, yeah, there’d be some difference to their dynamics if their partners were different, especially at the beginning of their journey.

The main reason is that some members of Team RWBY barely interact with each other. The most egregious example is Ruby and Blake, who’s one-on-one interactions I can count on one hand. Given that six volumes have passed, this isn’t a good thing. But that’s not the point of the post, so let’s see how things would change in my opinion if RWBY had different partners.

Partners #1: Yang & Ruby

The best thing about this pairing is that it’s already been talked about in the canon material. Ruby wanted to partner up with Yang because Yang’s the only person she knows positively in her short time at Beacon, and as she’s socially awkward Ruby likely finds the prospect of pairing up with someone else daunting, something that she doesn’t want to entertain.

But Yang already points out the disadvantage of Ruby pairing up with her. If she continued to latch onto her sister,Ruby wouldn’t have been pushed into the situation where she had to interact with other people. Replace Weiss with Yang and the whole arguments that happened between Weiss and Ruby would never happen, including the scene where they start to move past it because of Weiss saving her partner from the Deathstalker.

That’s not to say Weiss still wouldn’t save Ruby from the Deathstalker. Just because Yang is Ruby’s partner doesn’t change the fact that she is unable to reach her sister in time, but there’s no conflict between them beforehand due to Weiss and Ruby not spending that time together. This would be the first time they see each other since their arguments in Beacon, and having to save Ruby after she rushed into battle likely wouldn’t make Weiss’ view of her any better.

That being said, with Ruby still being made leader and following behaviour deemed unworthy to Weiss, they would still have that moment where Weiss tells Ruby that Ozpin made a mistake and that she did nothing to earn the title of leader. Both Ruby’s talk with Ozpin and Weiss’ talk with Port would happen, and the two would grow closer even if they weren’t partners, due to being on the same team.

It’s pretty similar to Weiss’ and Blake’s relationship in canon. despite not being partners, Weiss works hard to let Blake know that she can rely on her and the team due to all of them making up Team RWBY. Yang’s partnership with Ruby wouldn’t change that, and after the difference in the beginning, it’s likely that Ruby’s friendships with Blake and Weiss wouldn’t change much from canon.

Partners #2: Blake & Weiss

To be honest, I think Blake and Weiss being partners would change quite a lot with their dynamic in the beginning of RWBY. Given their little interaction before the Emerald Forest plot line, Blake obviously has no love for Weiss or what she represents to her; the SDC, and isn’t afraid to call Weiss out for any small contrivances.

Now, I’m not saying Ruby was a pushover, especially given that she was shown to stand up to Weiss as well, but Blake’s little love for the Schnee name and Weiss’ poor attitude would certainly hinder any progress that they make in the forest more than Weiss and Ruby. It’s likely Blake would’ve gotten in more sly jabs at the SDC and Atlas as a whole, and wouldn’t have opened up like she was beginning to do so with Yang.

After the forest and integration into Team RWBY, the whole revelation of Blake’s Faunus heritage and her previous affiliation to the White Fang, I’d think that Weiss would take it even more poorly. In canon they were on the same team and were expected to work together with Ruby and Yang, but they weren’t partners, and didn’t have any time previously (on-screen) where it was more one-on-one teamwork. As Ozpin said, their partner is someone they would be working with for their four years in Beacon, and Blake was hiding a pretty big secret that had impacted Weiss personally before.

That’s also to add that Weiss had a very poor attitude about the Faunus and the White Fang as well. In this partnership, Blake could be even more angered given that Weiss is the one she’s meant to work together with, and yet she has this bigoted attitude about her own people. The whole scene at the end of Volume 1 would’ve been the culmination of these flaws and hold more weight. It definitely did in canon, showing that outside of their respective partners, the girls did obviously care about each other, but in this instance it would end the story with two girls from very different and conflicting backstories overcoming these problems and growing closer as friends and partners.

That being said, after Volume 1, there really wouldn’t be that much difference in their dynamic. Blake would still run away and Weiss had grown into a more understanding and empathetic because of her time with Team RWBY, so their reunion wouldn’t change much from canon. Chances are her talk with Yang would differ slightly to accommodate this change in relationship between her and Blake as compared to their canonical relationship.

Partners #3: Ruby & Blake

Given just how little one-on-one screen time these two get, a partnership between Ruby and Blake would add more dynamic overall to their friendship with the additional screen time.

Given how aloof and somewhat standoffish Blake was around other people in the beginning, it’s almost certain this behaviour would carry on throughout their first mission together in the Emerald Forest, especially since it was Yang’s sunny and warm demeanor that got anything out of Blake with their canon interactions in the forest. Going off Ruby’s social awkwardness, it’s likely their interactions would be more stiff and, well, awkward.

However, there would be moments of breaking down Blake’s walls there. The main turning point of Blake opening up at all was Ruby’s connection with her over something that they mutually enjoyed; books. This was before Yang and Blake’s interactions with just each other, and it’s pretty telling that Yang was unable to get anything out of Blake the night at Beacon, even going as far as deeming Blake a lost cause and willing to go back to bed before Ruby asked about her book.

Going off that introduction to their characters and how they work together, it seemed that Blake was pretty willing to entertain Ruby’s optimism and goal of becoming a Huntress so that she can protect people, like the heroes in her stories, and even called them “pretty ambitious for a child” before explaining her own viewpoint on the matter. It shows that Blake doesn’t look down on Ruby like Weiss did, and she doesn’t have that sibling relationship like Yang does. It’d be pretty conceivable that this level of maturity would carry on all the way to them forming Team RWBY, and their surprisingly in-depth conversations would continue with the time they spend together.

Given that Blake is certainly more level-headed at this point than Weiss, including in the heat of battle, I’d think that Blake wouldn’t underestimate Ruby’s capabilities, and so wouldn’t install this need in Ruby to prove that she’s deserving of her place in Beacon. Any tendency to rush into battle on Ruby’s part wouldn’t be met with biting rebuttal or arguing like with Weiss, and I think at this point Blake would’ve been a good partner to mature and push Ruby to reevaluate her own flaws given that Blake doesn’t hesitate to call people out when they deserve it.

Outside of that, partnering Blake and Ruby up might even bring their relationship closer. In canon Ruby obviously cares deeply about Blake; she was upset to hear that she left at the end of Volume 3, she welcomed Blake back without hesitation in Volume 5, and Blake being in danger in Volume 6 caused Ruby to activate her silver eyes. If they were pushed together instead of Yang and Blake, it could’ve given Ruby more of a chance to develop and talk about herself.

One scene in mind is when Blake refuses to go to the dance in Volume 2 because she’s too busy worrying about the White Fang. The scene could go either way honestly:

A: Yang still takes it upon herself to help Blake break through this obsession, opening up about her mother leaving her.

B. As her partner and leader, Ruby would feel more confident in talking to Blake herself and go seek her teammate out. This could give us some forbidden Summer lore as well as looking into Ruby’s feelings over her mother’s death, something that even nearly seven volumes in, we know nothing about save for one song Red like Rose part 2.

Either way, the main positive of this pairing is just the extra time these two desperately need to talk to just each other, not when they with the others in their team.

Partners #4: Yang & Weiss

(Note: I picked this picture just because it was really funny and I had to lmao)

Similar to Ruby and Yang, this pairing would only really affect Yang and Weiss at the beginning, and they have the advantage over Ruby and Blake with having more screen time and plot important moments together in canon.

Playing off Yang’s character before her dismemberment by Adam, the main source of conflict between these two would be just how differently Weiss and Yang treat fighting. Yang is the happy go lucky boxer who treated her fight with the Ursa in the Emerald Forest as some sort of game that she didn’t have to take seriously, whereas Weiss is practical and goes over the steps to her fighting style down to the letter.

This attitude of play vs work would make Weiss butt heads with Yang, though given her pretty playful nature and teasing attitude, I wouldn’t suspect Yang would hold it against Weiss unless some buttons were pushed, such as when we saw Yang start to lose her temper with Weiss while she and Ruby were arguing the night before the exam. This conflict wouldn’t be resolved until after Weiss’ talk with Port, pushing her to learn to move on from her entitled attitude and build up her teamwork skills.

Nothing would change much after that, until the end of Volume 3 where Weiss is taken away by her father. Going off their partnership and Yang likely growing closer to Weiss like she did with Blake in canon, this loss would hurt Yang deeply and would be something they talked about when they reunited in Volume 5. However, unlike Yang’s clear anger towards Blake for running away, I doubt she’d be very angry with Weiss leaving due to the fact that it wasn’t Weiss’ choice to leave.

Yang’s abandonment issues seem to not take in whether someone leaving her was willingly or not, given her attitude that Summer left her even though she died and Yang appearing to lump unwilling abandonment (Summer) with willing abandonment (Raven and Blake). The talk with her and Weiss could include this difference, and the whole scene would definitely read differently with this pairing compared to Blake and Yang’s canonical partnership.

That’s all there is to the subject honestly. While there would definitely be change in the beginning and in some of the scenes later in the volumes, there wouldn’t be any giant difference to the girls’ relationships with each other or how they grew as characters themselves. Afterall, all of Team RWBY clearly love each other and cherish their friendships, and getting different partners would not diminish that love between them.

Either way, thanks for reading and leave what you think would change, or if you believe that I’ve missed something out as well!

#rwby #ruby rose #weiss schnee #blake belladonna #yang xiao long #crtq #post: mine #out of these four different pairings I did enjoy looking into Blake and Ruby's the most honestly #Blake and Weiss was a close second #also this is not attacking the canon paairings or thinking that they aren't as good #they have set up development for the girls just as well as these ones would've

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