#as ever though: who knows!!!!

[knowlesian]

i’ve had a couple interesting talks over messages about this, so i figure what the hell. i could do with some light(er) writing today.

so: my angle at approaching legit predictions for future seasons of any given show is usually more about general story arc than ‘here’s the exact details or situation’. (if only because i think that’s easier to follow/predict when the writing is good.)

with that in mind, i’ve been trying to figure out what i think is next for ed.

given the end of the finale, picturing ed going full fuck it terrifying is easy. and to some degree, i assume that’s what ed tells himself is about to happen/what he’ll try to live out, but i also would argue this next arc will be more about his sadness and lack of desire to keep the mask up anymore than his anger.

and he is angry: reasons and debating their validity aside, the anger exists.

but we don’t end on ed’s anger, or his violence. we end on him crying and staring at the lighthouse. and given that good writers are usually fairly intentional, i think that’s meant to be a guiding light. (bad pun not apologized for and intended, etc.)

i think it’s also worth considering the horrible choices ed makes from a more galaxy brained perspective, just to see what the fuck is going on there in terms of ‘why ed, why? why’d you do it?’.

so, toe first since it’s the easiest; they set that up with ‘cutting off toes for a laugh’ in e9. ed set up a ship culture where you cut off somebody’s toe and force them to eat it not as an act of supreme punishment or anger, but for shits and giggles. (look. when i say stede comes from a culture of violence too, i’m not denying the violence of ed’s world is easier to spot. fuckin... ew???? ew, ew ew ew ew. ew.

...and his feet were probably so DIRTY okay. okay i’m done. ew, though.)

now, my subjective read on that moment has a lot to do with the way the writers set this up; absent that line from ed giving us the context we need about how he and izzy rolled before we met them, the toe moment is like ‘well obviously this is wanton cruelty and not a regular-ish joke we pirates like to play’. because duh, that’s how any normal and even VAGUELY healthy human would take such a moment happening to them. and morally it... remains that, because jesus fuck ed i know izzy was a dick but fun fact, you did not have to respond with metaphor toe sex/communion! weird! bad! again: dirty feet! that one is more aesthetics and less morality but i remain horrified by both!

‘is it better or worse to be forced to eat your own toe if it smells of roses and not stinky feet’ considerations aside, if we factor in what ed tells us about the funhouse mirror logic of a ship where you have to put down your dog and might end up eating a toe and those are things people just... accept, what he’s doing there is showing izzy (with oomph!) that okay fine, message taken. we are back to business as usual.

(i also think he’s pissed off at izzy and almost certainly that’s a factor in there since we humans are complicated and tend to have a million internal reasons all jostling for position when we make choices, but the context is there for a reason.)

why he shoves lucius is like... again a million reasons i won’t even begin to tease out since they’re all connecting dots and not as easy as just referencing the context. same with ‘why frenchie and jim?’ (though for reference my easy answer to both is: Reasons, many of them thematic and in-world emotional.) 

in terms of what that means for his arc, i think the fact that he doesn’t actually kill lucius matters. because ed’s first moment of being the kraken was very, very actively killing his father, like killing him beyond even the eensiest shadow of a doubt dead. lucius just gets a shove overboard and left to die, murder doesn’t count if you can say NOT IT before they die style like ed’s been doing for years.

which isn’t to excuse ed or mitigate the fact that no matter how we try to divine the internal character ratio on how much ed really wanted lucius to die and how much he felt like this was the only call to make (much like e6 when he was trying to tell himself to just do the fuckin’ thing and kill stede, before the crew became the kraken and it drove him into the bathtub and to confess his sins instead) it’s sort of something we can all wrangle over forever. but he could have used that giant rope dangling conspicuously nearby to do to lucius exactly what he did to his father.

a conscious choice was made there. honestly, same goes with the rest of the crew. he could have demanded izzy/ivan/fang kill them, he could have killed them all himself, and instead he leaves them on a tiny ass island with very little hope of escape.

in terms of the only good choices he makes during this part of the finale... ooof, ed. not great. many notes. all the same i think the choices made to go for his old avoiding direct killing and hiding it method with the crew and having the in-world means to recreate the first time he became the kraken with lucius and simply pushing him into the water (...yeeeeah he pushed his father’s body into the water afterwards in an attempt to hide what happened, didn’t he) indicates where ed’s headed, as well as where he’s at when he makes those bad choices.

tldr: i think we are definitely going to get ‘I DO NOT CARE, THIS IS FINE I AM NOT SLOWLY DYING INSIDE, NOW WATCH ME BURN SHIT’ angry mask-on ed, but i also think we are going to see a lot more of sad being honest about how he feels when he’s alone (at the very least) ed than his initial set of horrific choices would lead us to think. 

[sylvies-kablooie]

i do unironically think the best artists of our generation are posting to get 20 notes and 3 reblogs btw. that fanfic with like 45 kudos is some of the best stuff ever written. those OCs you carry around have some of the richest backstories and worldbuilding someone has ever seen. please do not think that reaching only a few people when you post means your art isn't worth celebrating.

[originalartblog]

Apparently much-needed reminder that reposting artists' art (by saving the images or screenshotting them and reuploading them yourself) on other platforms without the artists' expressed permission and without credit is theft and an insult to their passion and craft. You are profiting (in views, in attention, in feedback) from someone else's work and ideas, who do not get that feedback for sharing their creation.

If you are an art reposter, you are a thief and I have no respect for you.

[united-under-skyfall]

leverage is so fucking funny. man manages to find the most mentally ill and neurodivergent group of thieves on the market + an even more mentally ill guy whose literal job description was trying to chase all of them, and forces them into a found family speed-run by trying to blow them all up. they lowkey stage a full fucking country wide coup and are like eh 🤷 just another wednesday. this might be a fun place to vacation tho i guess. sophie shows up to her own funeral twice. they're so good at convincing people of their shit that they make a guy's body start reacting to an illness he doesn't have because it isn't real. go completely out on a limb and basically hand this one guy a new password for his computer so they can get into it and he goes with it. parker and hardison have straight up just "fake it 'till you make it"d into the fbi without even attempting to cover their tracks beyond just These Two Guys. half their clients never asked to be their clients and don't know they're their clients, and the other half are random people who find them who fuckin knows how, meanwhile no government agency can track them down without selling their soul to sterling. they make a point to have a dramatic scene w a Big Bad Shadowy Government Guy who doesn't actually get caught or brought to justice or anything telling them he's going to hunt them all down, and in any other show this would probably earn at least a minor arc later on but he literally never shows up again. an entire season finale hinged on a cake and a bunch of clams. they accidentally made eliot a celebrity not once, not twice, but three times. parker blew up her foster parents' house when she was like. nine. and it's hardly a footnote. hardison is just casually an artistic prodigy but it's only ever brought up for the most background of background gags. eliot's biggest beef with parker and hardison for like two and a half seasons is that they won't stop making weird food with lasers and refuse to realize they can't make a decent beer to save their lives. sophie's immediate response to being shot is to call her shooter a wanker. there's a character who has literally killed a man with a mop and they had the audacity to only put her in one episode.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Bonus 8: How met your mother (CSSR design by @qourmet!)

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[jomeimei421]

Felt a bit nostalgic watching RT shut down…Here are the og faves again for old times sake 💙

[egophiliac]

I love how you draw Grim the size of a small cat. It genuinely blows my mind that according to the game he's actually approximately 70 cm tall... Like, Ortho is 148 cm. That's only two Grims! If Grim stands on Ortho's head, they'd be just a bit taller than Malleus (who is 202 cm and I'm not sure that's counting the horns)! The proportions are just so wild to try to imagine realistically... (and I do like the small cat Grim take more, it's very endearing)

every time I remember Grim is actually supposed to be the size of, like, a medium-to-largeish dog, and then I just...draw him cat-sized anyway. I also think it's cuter that way! 🤷 (let's just say he's not allowed to ride the servant unless he takes the shrinking potion first.)

ultimately I figure we all get a little artistic license in our fanart, and mine are:

cat-sized Grim

Lilia with hair spikes up to the heavens

w i d e Silver

[black-and-yellow]

[ruporas]

all I wanted was to save them... (ID in alt)

[radiance1]

Danny and (a recently revived) Jason move into an apartment together, they live right next to each other too.

The thing with this, however, is that the both of them?

They goddamn hate each other.

If murder was not illegal, they would genuinely kill each other. But since it is, they settle for the next best thing, just beating each other up on sight.

At least, until the landlord told them to not fight on their property and if they were to do it out of sight, so they don't scare away any more potential clients.

They've already scared away more than 10.

[muffinlance]

Wait, what’s going on with Embers???? That fic has been on my read later list since 2021, what’s happened with it???

Brief overview, then I'm likely never touching this topic again, because this is not a Drama Blog:

Context: Embers is a super old AtLA fic that was written during the early fandom days, read widely at the time, and was the origin of the widely-used fanon name of "Wani" for Zuko's ship (kind of by default that it was one of the first popular fics to give his ship a name, I think?), even though most fic writers don't seem to realize it's from there anymore.

"What's Going On": I used to include a link in all my stories to it, because I believe in crediting other writers for borrowed elements, and I was using "Wani" in all my fics. But BOY did I not want to be sending readers that way anymore, so I've adopted a new name for Zuko's ship, and removed all Embers links.

None of the criticisms about Embers itself are new; I'm assuming they date back to when the fic was being written, because this isn't an "it aged badly" thing, this is an "actually yeah this gets worse the longer you think about it and I shouldn't have ignored my bad feelings just because some of the worldbuilding was interesting" thing.

An Incomplete List of Why I Made the Change:

I don't actually like the story that much anymore, and don't want to rec it

I tried to re-read it recently to see if some things were as bad as I remembered and it turns out they were So Much Worse Oh Yikes. More specifically, the treatment of Katara and Aang and their respective cultures has... rather a lot going on. One example: The Fire Nation and Air Nomads are both given multiple backstory elements in an attempt to make the average Fire Nation soldier's participation in the genocide/war in large part the fault of the Avatar and the Air Nomads themselves, and also fully justified from the Fire Nation perspective. And I do mean fully. One of its core tenants is "People from the Fire Nation (and only people from the Fire Nation) who don't follow orders Literally Die, therefore murdering pacifists and babies and continuing the war (and their regularly scheduled war crimes) is the only thing it is physically possible for them to do". I cannot emphasize enough how literal that is.

Also the name "Wani" means "Alligator" and is... objectively a pretty lame name for Zuko's ship? Where's the personality, where's the deeper meaning, where's the resonance with Zuko's themes? @tuktukpodfics initially thought I was calling the ship "Wanyi", and that's what I've switched to, because it is Objectively So Much Better. In their words: “Wànyī (萬一): Literally ‘one in ten thousand,’ ‘perchance.’ Used grammatically in Chinese to mean ‘what if’ or ‘just in case.’ I think a ship called ‘The Perchance’ is perfect for a boy clinging to false hope.”

TL:DR; I don't rec Embers anymore, because I don't actually like the story anymore, and there are things about it that get worse the more I think on them. I've removed links to it and renamed Zuko's ship to "Wanyi" ("The Perchance") because our boy deserves a ship name that reflects his character arc.

[ducktracy]

a short placing heavy emphasis on Hungarian Rhapsody No. II is a rite of passage for golden age cartoons. Bugs Bunny did it! Tom and Jerry did it! Daffy and Donald! but one thing Woody Woodpecker has above the competition is that he is held hostage by a group of gangsters and is forced to entertain, lest he get executed. amazing

[tesco-finest-aromantics]

i feel like the queer community lost when we started policing labels and making sure everyone used the Correct™ labels instead of letting a person decide what feels right for them

[thatorangedrank]

Little is Alyx 👎🏻

Little is Penny 👎🏻

Little is a reflection of Ruby in Vol.1 and is a physical representation of “healing your inner child” 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

[garaksapprentice]

The internet: You must never machine wash your knits. Never. Ever. They will be destroyed the moment they are touched by the caress of a machine's heated water supply. Hand wash only, or You Shall Be Sorry.

Me:

That photo contains ~13 pairs of 70/30 wool/nylon socks, a 100% wool shawl, an acrylic shawl, an acrylic kid's jumper, an acrylic beanie, a vest knit of "handwash only" wool, and a few other things I've forgotten.

This is one of the reasons to swatch, people. Knit a swatch. A big one. Even better, knit a hat out of the thing you want to use. Chuck it in the wash. See how it comes out. Make decisions from there.

I've knitted somewhere above 50 non-sock things in the decade or so since my first kid came along. I have machine washed them all. Only two - TWO - things have gotten eaten by the wash in that time. (a purple toddler dress and half a sock). And both of those were accidentally put through with the regular clothes wash.

Obligatory caveats: Probably don't do this if your machine doesn't have a gentle/delicate setting. I made sure mine came with a wool cycle when I had to buy a new one. It takes 38 minutes, spins at 800 RPM, and refuses to go hotter than 30ºC.

Also if you tend to use loosely spun yarns or very large gauges (both seem to be popular nowadays), or like to knit Extremely Delicate Lace, use caution. (My knitting preferences are basically the opposite of those things - I like things that last.)

[bucephaly]

It's kinda shocking to me how few people seem to know how prevalent the 'my great grandmother was cherokee' myth is and how it's almost never actually true, especially when it comes with things like 'never signed up' or 'fell off the trail' or 'courthouse burned down destorying the documentation' etc etc.

People just don't even seem to know the history like.. when the Trail happened. My great great great grandfather was 2 years old during Removal in 1838, so peoples 'my great grandmother hid in the mountains!' is so clearly wrong. And we have rolls. From before and after removal, rolls done by cherokee nation and others by the government, rolls that were not stored in one random flammable courthouse. It's not difficult to find the actual evidence of ancestry.

And just.. there are lots of ways those family stories get started. It was a practice during the confederacy to claim cherokee ancestry to show one's family had 'deep roots in the south' that they were there before the cherokee were removed. Many people pretended to be cherokee and applied for the Guion-Miller payout just to try to steal money meant for cherokees - 2/3rds of the applicants were denied for having 0 proof of actual cherokee ancestry. [We even see lawyers advertising signing up for the Miller roll just to try to get free money.] And the myth even started in some families in the cherokee land lotteries, where the land stolen from us was raffled off, including the house and everything that was left behind when the cherokees were removed. We have seen people whose families just take these things stolen from the cherokee family and adopt them into their own family story, saying that they were cherokee themselves.

If you had some family story about being cherokee and you wanna have proof one way or the other, check out this Facebook group run by expert cherokee genealogists that do research for free. Just please read the rules fully and respect the researchers. They run thousands of people's ancestries a year and their average is only around 0.7% of lines they run actually end up having true cherokee ancestry.