#concluded in: I hate it

[stefisdoingthings]

ark aftermath

[betweenlands]

sbk members species + respawn hcs

Viking -- "human." he's unsure how he respawns, and unknowingly this is because it's tied to something/someone that would really prefer to avoid detection.

Fix -- lumian. they just have innate respawn in some universes, wild right? it's fine, don't worry about it.

Fool -- was human at some point, probably, but is a little bit too god-touched to classify as that now. his god is actively trying to keep him alive.

Milkman -- nobody knows, but he's immortal by default of getting himself kicked out of every single afterlife in existence.

Kittrix -- sculky and might be an insect of some type (credit goes to @mallowbees for the latter). whenever she dies, a new Kittrix crawls out of the ground at her spawnpoint like a warden with her memory fully intact.

Trog -- don't ask. as for respawn, though, even if they hadn't done dark magic about that ages ago to make sure they'd never die, they effectively made the Skyblock world.

Ruby -- "human" as well. The Bearer Of The Curse. it's unclear as to if this curse is just immortality or if it's something else as well. some people who've stood near the point where zhe respawns have heard ticking clock noises...

Vintage -- human-adjacent, but a shapeshifter sometimes randomly have pointy ears or a unicorn horn or mantis mandibles or what have you. someone in her recent family history was probably fair folk. whatever afterlife she keeps getting sent to, they're suckers and are easily sweet-talked into letting her come back to life for free.

Leon -- just sort of a general anthro penguin situation (with maybe a little bit of endermite in there too). has too much chorus fruit in his system still and taking damage -- especially void damage -- will cause him to teleport, often several times at once. he usually drops all his stuff when this happens before ending up teleporting back home.

Josh -- a really fun guy. regrows. like a fungits. he's a mushroom.

Avid -- human, then ex-human (and largely made up of corpseplants), then a monkey. his boss won't let him die. whether this is a work benefit or a horrible drawback is entirely unclear.

Doovid -- was legitimately human prior to turning into a monkey. whenever he dies, time freezes, he sees an Instability detected. Player restored and game paused popup message out of the corner of his eyes, and then he resets back to where he woke up that morning with no stuff.

Kale -- pigy (potentially an alien, credit to @moxijunk for that one). has normal respawn, but goes full Gmod ragdoll when he dies before eventually fading and respawning. can't actually take Void deaths as he will loop back to the top of the skybox until he hits something solid, at which point he and his items vaporize on impact.

M1g -- lumian-enderdragon hybrid (credit to @autisticlalna for the former and @moxijunk for the latter). lumians do in fact have respawn in some universes; M1g specifically is here on assignment so he's been given respawn in order to blend in and maintain cover.

Marmalade -- human, still, something she's a little bit grumpy about because she thinks becoming a nonhuman would be pretty cool. whenever she dies the Void picks her up and oh so gently sets her back down at her spawnpoint with a pat on the head.

Teaish -- dryad, or at the very least a plant person. her fortune specifically said she was going to have a nice day and permadying would really ruin that :(

Anathra -- questionably human (he can see through the fourth wall, but also, he seems totally human otherwise). lags out heavily until he eventually restabilizes, erratically teleporting around and resetting his position several times in sort of a combination of Leon and Doovid's respawn styles. drops all his stuff during this process. (credit to @rubycowashere for this one)

Acorn -- tanuki (this seems to be a general consensus, idk who to credit) and also maybe fae (credit to @mallowbees). transforms into a leaf, and then a leaf on top of the Spruce island transforms into her. can't carry her inventory with her when doing this, though. (credit to @rubycowashere for this one as well)

Elffe -- some sort of Netherborn, although his exact species is unknown. regrows when he dies (it's very fleshy and a little bit gross).

Artemis -- human, but slightly to the left. weird portal-based respawn that will often evaporate her items while she's traveling. (credit to @fallow-foot for these)

[saffron0v0]

"I can fix her"

No. You can't.

I didn't know it was her birthday 5 days ago, and I'm so angry at myself. I wasn't free on Atsushi's birthday either, so I'm double pissed.

[knockknockitsnickels]

Thinking about how the Tower & the Adversary routes are connected through the Fury, and how you kind of get there by turning one into the other, and how horrified they are by what they become. Tower is about subjugation - she outright says she does not believe the two of you are on equal footing. You get the Fury from her when you assert your independence and fight back, forcing her to take you seriously as a threat and defend herself. Adversary is all about an equal fight - she prides herself on her strength, but also admires yours. You access the Fury through her by refusing to fight, watching her beat you to a pulp and become disgusted by what she does to you. IDK it is interesting how the Tower & Adversary parallel one another, and how you end up with the Fury in each route by doing what their sister route would have wanted you to do.

[oneatlatime]

The Awakening

Season 3 let's goooooooooo

These Fire Nation cells are absurdly spacious.

I do love that Momo's first reaction is kisses.

Not a cell. Oops.

Well that was confusing. I was arguing so vociferously that the SWT weren't pirates and then they go and gank a ship.

Mai girl get it! Questionable taste in men, but I love to see a lady getting exactly what she wants.

Mai: "how are you?" Zuko: *existential dread* Mai: "babe. Shut up."

Aang says he's the only one who's completely out of it, but Appa's behind him in full faceplant mode.

Actually, by the hair growth standard established by Zuko, Aang's been out 5 days at most.

Season 1 bitchy Katara is back again. I hate season 1 bitchy Katara.

I'm impressed by how much of these characters' identities is tied to their colour palettes. I see all these water tribe guys walking around in reds and blacks and I have no idea who I'm looking at.

Aang's eyes are back to brown this episode.

I love that Katara has no idea how she healed Aang. Superpowered does not mean superlearned. So much more believable than supergenius tweens.

It's the old ladies! They're wearing croissants on their heads. Why not.

This is a cool way to do exposition. A royal proclamation narrating a flashback.

These Dai Li don't know shit about loyalty huh.

SONG! HI SONG! I MISS YOU!

CORNY BABY & FAMILY! HI CORNY BABY & FAMILY! I DON'T MISS YOU! My guy why haven't you unpacked yet.

Given the welcome Zuko gets from the Fire Nation crowds, I'm thinking the exact cause/terms of his banishment were never made public? They're hyping him up like a wrestling entrance. That doesn't track with someone known to be honourless.

I want whatever's in Bato's bowl. Those noodles have him mesmerised. He's staring at them like they're telling him the secrets of the universe.

Are you telling me that Appa successfully landed on the deck of one of these ships without sinking it?

I love how Gaang's reaction to everything going wrong is to go find their dad.

STOP GOING ON ABOUT THE INVASION PLAN. IT WON'T WORK. STOP.

"Yep! The whole world thinks you're dead. Isn't that great!" Sokka. TACT.

Sometimes Sokka's brain gets too far ahead of itself.

Poor Aang. Not many people whose deaths are wrongly cause for celebration live long enough to see those celebrations.

How do the topknots fit inside the helmets?

This is silly beyond words. It's a two second throwaway gag but they're so into it.

Aang saying "I hate not being able to do anything" to the girl whose whole existence was not doing anything until recently is certainly a choice. And honestly, wasn't Season 1 Aang's whole point not wanting to be the Avatar? Actual responsible adults are handling the problems for once. He should be ecstatic.

I just realised this Fire Nation disguise ship plan means there are people in the Southern Water Tribe who know how to run coal powered ships. Neat.

One of the things I really love about Avatar is how much love they put into the side characters. This guy on the left is a nameless mook, but in the three to four lines of dialogue he gets, we see a world of political and bureaucratic headaches and a bunch of normal, humanising emotions (who hasn't been angry at that one coworker who can never be bothered to email?). The writers didn't have to give him that much personality, but they did!

Also, how often do Fire Nation ships get captured, if two pieces of bureaucracy not lining up causes this guy to jump to that conclusion, rather than think the bureaucracy messed up?

Someone in the Fire Nation has invented extra buoyant metal.

Turtleducks are scared of Azula. Turtleducks are good judges of character.

An awful lot of this episode is flashback footage.

Toph is a missile launcher. This is all I wanted out of life.

For the first time ever, Aang gets to play the role that Sokka plays in every bending heavy battle.

Since when can Katara do bending moves this big?

Sokka once again harnessing his ability to speak the opposite of what he wants into existence.

They said they passed through the serpent's pass a few days ago. Clever foreshadowing I completely missed.

Don't you love it when all your problems cancel each other out?

Aang. This is not the hill to die on. Also please don't throw tapestries around in a room with unguarded candles until you can firebend.

Wow Aang is just taking all the wrong lessons from this. And he's stealing Zuko's lines.

Turns out the Firelord is just some guy with an unfortunate goat beard.

Katara finally gets a chance to be her age, complete with nonsensical emotions and misdirected anger. I hate bitchy Katara but I love seeing her expressing the root of that bitchiness. And I love how illogical it all is, and that she acknowledges that! Emotions ARE illogical and messy!

Contrasting Hakoda winning Dad of the Year with Ozai setting off every alarm bell known to man is a choice. A really good choice. But wow. Not subtle.

I knew Azula always lied, but to her own dad/Firelord too? That's a dangerous move.

Aang. What are you doing. Stop.

Leave the door open. Peak sibling move.

In a turn of events that should surprise absolutely no one, Zuko's been played like a fiddle by his sister and is now as trapped as ever. The surprising part is that Azula thinks she can get away with lying to the Firelord too. Don't know how that's going to go for her long term.

So much for me saying the Avatar universe doesn't do ghosts. This season opener is surprisingly backwards-looking.

No offense to ghost Yue, but I think the saving the world she's referring to is the time she and a massive fishman saved the world, not strictly Aang.

How did they get past the blockade and find the right island?

I cringed at Katara's knee slide.

How are they standing on that island or breathing the air if it's hot enough to do that?

Final Thoughts

...what was that?

Seriously. This episode was a disorganised and aimless mess with the occasional gold mine of characterisation bobbing around. Did the writers not have a plan for what would happen after season 2 ended? This episode feels like the writers had as much plan as the characters did. If I was feeling charitable, I would say that this episode was a hot mess as a metanarrative commentary on Aang and the world's state, but I'm not feeling charitable. I think this episode was just a hot mess.

First, the good bits.

I liked that Sokka was very in character. We've seen before how he can run away with an idea to the point that he forgets to mind the human element. This episode's Sokka felt very much like Sokka. I liked that the beat up Sokka quota was replaced with 'Sokka dares the universe to play chicken and actually wins for once.' His optimistic characterisation this episode didn't grate like his inexplicable optimism did in Ba Sing Se, because here he has a reason to be happy. He's got his dad and a plan. Being around his dad and their people has done him good.

I like Toph the Ballista.

I like the noodle hypnosis.

I loved Katara's emotional blow up. It doesn't matter how noble or important the cause, leaving your kids for a cause is still leaving. I love that she points out how illogical her emotions are being. And I love that Hakoda creates a no-judgement-all-comfort-safe-to-rant zone for her. She's been waiting to do that for a while, and some of it came out at Zuko last episode, so it's been established that she's at boiling point. Fun fact: Katara has now had emotionally fraught venting sessions at Hakoda, Zuko, and Jet if you squint. I don't know what to make of the fact that the show has grouped these men into the same category of 'safe for Katara to vent to.'

I liked a couple of the throwaway gags, and the throwaway characters.

I liked the framing of Zuko's reintroduction to his father. Great use of angles and shadows. We've had two seasons of build up to this guy as the Biggest Bad, and the scene of Zuko kneeling in the throne room while Ozai paces around and delivers the world's most menacing praise felt big enough to be the crowning glory of that payoff. Especially contrasted to the loving father daughter reunion of equals it was interspersed with. But...

The bad bits.

Why did they immediately undermine two seasons of hype and all of the episode's menace by showing the Firelord as a gullible idiot who can't spot a bold-faced lie coming from a tween? I am legitimately pissed off that they defanged him as a threat so soon after introducing him. And I don't think showing that Azula can successfully lie to the Firelord builds up Azula as a threat - I think it also undermines her, because it's a stupid move. This episode could have introduced the biggest bad and reinforced the threat posed by last season's antagonist. Instead, it completely neutered the biggest bad and made Azula look like an idiot. I am actually mad about this.

Other stuff I didn't like: Aang's whole deal. Of course he was going to lose his mind and not be ok about what went down in Ba Sing Se. But he's never this dismissive of his friends, and a huge part of his early character is the fact that he would absolutely love it if some qualified adults stepped in and did the job he was unwillingly born into. Aang this episode felt self-centred and out of character.

Zuko's usually not this dim. I had figured out the angle Azula was going for by the end of the turtle duck pond conversation. Why can't he figure out for himself why Azula has redirected the potential blame if Aang is found to have survived?

The pacing felt off. The A plot flipped between action set pieces and emotional stuff. The B plot was purely talking. But the action set pieces felt out of place in an otherwise quiet episode. I get that you need something to interest the 8 year olds hyped up on sugar who only want explosions, but I think this episode would have been a lot better without the 'Aang almost drowns but gets a pep talk from a couple of ghosts who say exactly what everyone else has already said to him for two seasons but for some reason Aang listens this time and it works.' Why couldn't we have had a quiet episode?

Speaking of, why are Roku and Yue randomly popping up? Last time Aang talked to Roku, it took a trip into the Avatar state and the destruction of a very stupid general's whole army base. The ONLY person who's talked to Yue since she died is Sokka, and that took a magic swamp. I just don't get it. I don't get why they were there, why they said what they did, why those particular words in that particular order worked on Aang when no one else's words were getting through. I don't get why hiding out in the Fire Nation is the plan of choice over chilling with the Southern Water Tribe (other than because the plot says no responsible adults allowed).

The action piece with the Snekky Boy was fun. Even if what set it off was contrived (which it was), I think it was a fun watch and the only action the episode needed.

This episode was also so dark that I spent more time contemplating how much I really need to clean my screen than watching stuff happen.

I got so pissed off at this episode that I totally forgot about Mai. Go Mai! I am WEAK for romance arcs that boil down to 'Girl sees boy. Girl wants boy. Girl gets boy." Go Girl! Like I said above, questionable taste, but if it's what she wants, then congrats on getting it. I love Azula noticed and is like 'my resident goth appears to be broken.'

I have decided that Toph carved an underground harbour like the refugee station on Full Moon Bay and stashed all the water tribe ships in there, because those ships are too pretty to scuttle.

If I could surgically remove that scene between Katara and Hakoda and insert it into some other episode, I'd never watch this one again.

[f0linasahl0]

never getting over dean winchester's shitty ending

never getting over sam winchester's almost broken ending

never getting over how castiel left

never getting over how bad the supernatural finale was. it hurt a little with how it ended and i just..i don't know i never liked it. coming out now with this because i didn't have an active tumblr in what...2019?

idk i just didn't like it. didn't feel like a good ending for any of them. it was more angsty and heartbreaking than they deserved.

i'm sorry i just hated it :|

[dukeofthomas]

''jason thought he was replaced'' bestie he WAS. dick was replaced with jason, jason was replaced with tim, tim was replaced with damian. the way the robin mantle was passed down everytime is literally the definition of 'replace' there is no 'thought' about it!!!

[ducktracy]

reminder that if you're not watching Crayon Shin-chan then you are living a hollow and empty life. this is not edited. this ripped straight from the movie (Movie 8: Jungle That Invites the Storm, highly recommend for fellow Masaaki Yuasa lovers)

if you need further convincing: these monkeys run an animation sweatshop

[sassygaykuja]

>opens ihnmaims analysis video

>"am is incapable of human emotion"

>closes ihnmaims analysis video

[bloomburnburial]

i have admitted a want and/or need. this is tantamount to admitting weakness. now i must go and fold my arms behind my back and contemplate the wall for the next six months

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

...Do you ever think about how Sonic truly is the only person who cares about Nine now?

[valinoar]

the way people behave towards criston and fabien needs to be studied

[fredtheengels]

i’m not here to do discourse but king wilhelm truthers are the funniest people how do you misread a show that badly

[quatregats]

🌹!

From a fic in which I throw Hornblower, who has learned to play piano by rote, in with one of Stephen and Jack's music sessions, and everything goes swimmingly, as you can tell by this very congenial start:

Hornblower, who had already decided that he disliked Aubrey immensely, baulked at the invitation, but he could not find it in himself to refuse it, an action which he felt would be very much like surrender.

Thank you very much! <33

[threepoint14art]

weird cat

absolutely weird cat

[communistkenobi]

“We need to expand our idea of data capture beyond the extraction of personal data through digital platforms, which is frequently at the center of the debate [about the colonial implications of data collection]. We must consider other types of valuable data including biodata and data from objects, nature, and geophysical exploration.” perhaps this is a mind blowing fact in media studies but the fact that states and corporations collect geographic and biological data from populations is such a pedestrian fact that you don’t even need to assert that this is true in geographic disciplines. this is like if somebody from the humanities published a paper about biology and was like did you guys know about this natural selection business? pretty crazy right?