#atlas bar

[wgm-beautiful-world]

Atlas Bar, Parkview Square, SINGAPORE

[itsanidiom]

So if anyone is wondering this is where I spent my book launch day 🥂 seemed apt 😁👌

[elderwisp]

black madonna, my black flower

[kibutsulove]

Y’all….

Y’ALL…

[wilcze-kudly]

You know I think one of the most infuriating parts of being in a fandom is liking when 'good' characters have flaws.

I love Aang's bouts of childishness, I love Sokka's occasional misogyny, I love the ease with which Suyin is swept up by her emotions.

But a lot of fans are so quick to judge these characters only by the merit of their flaws. And then people come away with: oh this character is a piece of shit because they did this one thing while under extreme duress, even if they're a really good person in day to day life.

And I feel inclined to argue because, no, this character literally has done things that prove the contrary. And I end up dreading seeing a character mess up becaus I know some jackass with a vendetta is gonna spin a whole narrative around a character acting realistically.

Like, look at the insanity of people who hate Aang. Mans messes up and people are comparing him to fucking Ozai.

Flaws in characters are a wonderfully tool for storytelling and also to help the audience truly connect with the characters but fandom turns them into ammo in some sort of fucking war of virtues.

[thethiefandtheairbender]

it's like. aang didn't even run away. he breaks himself free of the avatar state in episode one, y'know, the thing that originally took two seasons for him to master? zuko fights back during the agni kai with his father, undermining everything about both of them as characters. katara is just compassionate with zero rage or caretaking instincts bc the latter got given to her brother. who even Are these people

[hyperfocusthusly]

Today really did a number on me, so I wrote some self indulgent angst to avoid my problems

https://archiveofourown.org/works/55974070/chapters/142150129

[drowthelynes]

@writebecauseyoucannotbreathe's magnificently hilarious post inspired this comic :3

toph learns a valuable lesson about grifting, only one (1) soap was harmed

[blood-choke]

hiiii… i wanted to ask more about this particular val scene where mc and her talk about that portrait and mc is a bit stuck on the word husband and wants val to know theyre not a man. can i ask what inspired that type of convo? i wanted to know if it’s something you’ll touch up on again? is this underlying feelings mc had before their entombment… worried that val sees them as a man just because mc is masc? cause i know that’s kind of broader discussion in the lesbian community iirc….. was that why you wanted to incorporate it? this ask has so many questions LOL but basically i wanted to say i was intrigued and it did made me think more on those type of dynamics (thinking back to those resources you rb’d a while ago that go more into depth about diff things in the lesbian community)

oh boy get ready for another long-winded answer from me!

a lot of the feelings mc has about their gender are inspired by Leslie Feinberg's work (mainly Stone Butch Blues)

Feinberg was someone who lived & passed as a man for years of hir life, and wrote a lot about the complexities of hir gender and what it was like being a "gender outlaw."

there was actually a scene in particular from sbb that kinda put the kernel of an idea in my mind that led to this narrative of the mc feeling overshadowed by Standard and anxious about being perceived as a man. it's towards the end of the book when Jess (sbb's protagonist) meets Ruth (a trans woman that Jess falls in love with)

Jess offers to help Ruth carry groceries up to her apartment, and Ruth takes this the wrong way & is offended, partly because she thinks Jess is a man.

One Saturday afternoon I found her clutching two huge bags of groceries and fumbling with the downstairs front-door lock. I pulled out my key.

“Here, let me.” She didn’t say thank you. She hurried ahead of me on the stairs.

“Can I help you carry those?” I offered.

“Do I look weak to you?” she asked.

I stopped on the stairs. “No. Where I come from it’s just a sign of respect, that’s all.”

She continued up the stairs. “Well, where I come from,” she called out, “men don’t reward women for pretending to be helpless.” Once I heard her apartment door close I kicked the stair in anger and frustration.

later, after they get to know each other better, they have this interaction:

I laughed and picked at my salad. “Do you know if I’m a man or a woman?”

“No,” Ruth said. “That’s why I know so much about you.”

I sighed. “Did you think I was a man when you first met me?" She nodded. "Yes. At first I thought you were a straight man. Then I thought you were gay. It’s been a shock for me to realize that even I make assumptions about sex and gender that aren’t true. I thought I was liberated from all of that.”

I smiled. “I didn’t want you to think I was a man. I wanted you to see how much more complicated I am. I wanted you to like what you saw.”

i think the inspiration here is quite obvious, hahaha. i figure anyone that's read sbb can sense the similar through-line here in my work. though the conversation between mc and Valentina has a much different tone.

there's another scene later as well after something happens to Jess and she has to have her jaw wired shut. she's working at a new job and is unable to speak, and she's also passing as a man at this job. she overhears some of her female coworkers talking about her and they refer to her as a "creep" and speculate that she's always watching one of them. Jess overhears all of this and then walks out of the job, goes home and pulls the wires out of her mouth herself:

After I was sure I’d gotten the last piece of wire out of my gums, I rinsed my mouth with whiskey and then drank the rest of it so I could sleep without remembering how Marija’s words had stripped me of my humanity.

butches & gnc women still face this kind of dehumanization; compared or likened to men in a derogatory way, accused of being "heteropatriarchal," the predatory stereotype of the fat ugly lesbian, and on the other side they're also hypersexualized, especially online and in queer spaces. butchphobia is a specific kind of misogyny that hits from all sides, even from the people that are supposed to be a part of your community. and this attitude especially effects trans women and women of color, who are already experiencing all of these things due to transmisogyny and racism.

i also really wanted to use this to touch on the kind of gender essentialism that we see in a lot of these cis feminist discussions - to these women at this job, Jess had committed no real crime other than being quiet and being the “wrong” kind of man. something about this scene has always stuck with me and really bothered me, but it's hard to put into words; on one hand i can admit i have probably been one of those women who made some kind of similar remark about a man i barely knew, but i've also been someone on the receiving end, too, because of the way i look. the mc in blood choke is put into this box, but they can't fit in, as someone who has been on both sides and doesn't really understand where they belong because of it; how can she stand beside Valentina or Hana or Clear when they might see her as a perpetrator, someone who can't be trusted? how does this mindset harm both the women and the men of the council and everyone in between? how can we break this cycle?

one of the films i mentioned recently when talking about the character designs was The Same Difference, which is specifically about the Black lesbian community and the discrimination within that community based upon gender roles (though this is not something limited to just the Black lesbian community)

a lot of the women in that doc talk about the boxes they're put in as AG or stud lesbians - they can't have their hair long, they can't wear makeup, they can't do this or that, they have to be aggressive and hard or else they're not real studs. they discuss stud on stud (or butch4butch) and how other lesbians look down on those types of lesbians, as well as the disdain for bisexual women for "betraying" the community. it explores the way misogyny and the patriarchy still oppress these women and forces them into this restrictive gender role despite their refusal to adhere to the other role originally assigned to them, and the way racism specifically intersects and exacerbates it for Black lesbians. there's a stud that's an exotic dancer and wears a weave, and a lot of other studs have a problem with this because a weave is "a female thing." another section follows a pregnant stud, and how the community shuns her for that, because she "dresses like a man and acts like a man" so why is she getting pregnant when she should be "the man"?

mc doesn't remember how they felt before entombment, but waking up they feel this need to prove themselves - both in that they are hard and aggressive like a butch should be, but also in that they want to be this person for Valentina or Clear or Hana (or all of them) that is safe and comforting. but they aren't sure how to do that when the world perceives them as this one specific thing - as a husband, as Standard, as a man, specifically this man who hurt Valentina.

of course we've already seen this to not be true of the companions with the last chapter as the mc learns more and spends more time with everyone. but this is kind of the foundation of where this whole idea came from. it started with my novel & i chose vampires for that story & this one because there is a long history of lesbian vampirism (and also because it's sexy) but there's this "curse" that both Hana & Valerie talk about in their respective stories, the first one being the racism she's had to face, the transphobia, along with this alienation and perception of lesbians as predatory and conniving and aggressive, as vampires, which i just think really lends itself to expanding upon these issues lesbians & trans women face both in general and within the community.

anyways if you want to read more i suggest Stone Butch Blues, which you can get for free on Leslie Feinberg's website, as well as S/he, by Minnie Bruce Pratt, available on the internet archive, Gender Failure by Ivan E. Coyote & Rae Spoon also on the internet archive, and you can rent The Same Difference for $10 on vimeo.

[infinityinakiss]

look, the atla live action has one job, and that is not to be better than the og because that's impossible. it is to be better than the movie.

[joseopher]

THE ONLY NORMAL ONE IN THIS BOOK

[freakurodani]

something that frustrated me and lok is that kya and bumi, when talking with tenzin made it seem like aang didnt want to share his culture with either of them

like, i can believe the favoritism, unfortunately i know first hand that parents can be super obvious about it, but i just don't believe that aang wouldn't want to share his NEARLY EXTINCT culture with ALL his kids! like yeah they couldn't do ALL of it bc they werent airbenders, but they had air nomad blood and i think that would MEAN something to aang

like idk, i think the favoritism resentment could have been written better, i believe in it, but it felt less believable than it could have been idk

[dont-leafmealone]

So! Finished Legacy Of Yangchen yesterday, and hoo boy. Here are my thoughts (spoiler warning):

amazing. awesome. 10/10

really though I think this is the best of any of the novels so far. Like I really liked the others but this one was really good

love that there was no forced romance or pointless will-they-won't they, Kavik and Yangchen *aren't at that point* (and you know might never be, we don't know) so while there's potential and a lot of chemistry (and a fake-dating plot), they don't have a big kiss moment or anything resembling a love confession - their closing interaction is a pledge of companionship. Frankly I think aang/katara should've been handled this way. But alas...

absolutely loved all the parts where it would show the present happening, get to a really tense moment, then cut away to show the build-up to that event - helped keep the suspense up while also giving the necessary set-up. Very cool.

Love Chaisee. She's horrible and I love her bc she's also really smart? And there's moments where you almost feel like she genuinely wants to help even though she's doing all this terrible stuff behind the scenes. But it never feels like inconsistent writing

That said. The fact that she supposedly invented Lake-Laogai-esque brainwashing felt a little forced yk. Like cool reference, why'd it have to be here? Now you've created questions like, how does this technique get all the way to Ba Sing Se 800 (give-or-take) years from now?

That's basically my only complaint though, and other people have covered that issue better than I could

I liked getting some more info on how combustion-bending happens, we already knew it was a rigorous training but yikesss

kalyaan also is such a cool villain. like, Avatar has done 'villain is the hero's relative' before but it's always been 'well, they're an abusive monster who'd let their family die as easily as anyone'. The scene where they got Kalyaan to confess by 'torturing' Kavik? Wouldn't have worked with Ozai or any of Korra's or Kyoshi's villains; iirc even the lady from Imbalance wasn't terribly concerned about her kids. Same goes for Chaisee and her genuine concern for her family; I liked the departure from the typical villain formula.

Absolutely cruel to kill off Nujian?? That was uncalled for. I'll be suing for emotional damages. Rude.

Jujinta my little guy <3 (i have a lot of thoughts on Jujinta but mostly I just think he's pretty cool. Would still love to know how the whole Yuyan thing works, since the Legends RPG says they were established in Roku's era a whopping six centuries or so in the future? Was archery just like a family trade until that point when they formed an Organization of it or is it just inconsistent lore?)

didn't expect Akuudan and Tayagum coming back for this book, but I'm glad they were included. Love 'em

That's about all the thoughts I have right now lol

[elderwisp]

OC QUESTIONNAIRE

Thank you for the tag @pralinesims ˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

NAME: atlas dubois

NICKNAME: ... cassanova (*me wheezing in the background*)

GENDER: he's just a boy

STAR SIGN: pisces ♓︎

HEIGHT: 5'11 (180 CM)

ORIENTATION: pan 🩷💛💙

NATIONALITY/ETHNICITY: french

FAVORITE FRUIT: strawberries

FAVORITE SEASON: summer

FAVORITE FLOWER: poppies, roses and lily of the valley

FAVORITE SCENT: the smell of the sea, taryn's perfume

COFFEE, TEA, or HOT CHOCOLATE: hot chocolate! he’s not a fan of coffee

AVERAGE HOURS OF SLEEP: if he's lucky, 6 hours

DOGS or CATS: he honestly used to not like having pets but after leo, he absolutely adores cats and wouldn't go back

DREAM TRIP: he'd love to spend a summer in portofino, italy on a boat

NUMBER OF BLANKETS: he likes sleeping with nothing or like those sheet covers O_O can't be me

RANDOM FACT: he used to work as a bartender and used his charisma to make hella money before becoming a fulltime freelance artist. he honestly whips up a good drink every now and again

I tag: @lynzishell @goldenwaves @roos-bowl-o-soup @kazuaru @acidheaddd @vicciouxs @moonfromearth if you'd like :)

[kibutsulove]

I ju I just i egh AGH. I. WHAG AT

[shitpostingkats]

Jack: Hey, any chance the shaky, scared, afraid-to-make-a-sound-or-be-noticed-in-any-way child that's constantly trailing after you is actually traumatized?

Declan: