#not much to work with huh

[acecroft]

EVA GREEN as Milady de Winter in Les Trois Mousquetaires: D'Artagnan (2023)

[ranilla-bean]

✨ The Mercy of Magpies 《喜鵲之恩》 ✨

3...2...1... takeoff! 🚀 @ash-and-starlight & @ranilla-bean here to launch our project for @zukkabigbang2024 🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛

Rating: M Fandom: Avatar the Last Airbender Pairing: Sokka/Zuko Chapters: 1/15 Beta: @faux-fires

Tags: Alternate Universe - Space, Space Opera, Depictions of Violence, Minor Character Death, Dilf Zukka, War, Han solarpunk, loosely inspired by Red Cliff (dir. John Woo), Decolonisation, Ghosts, the narrative is haunted, Getting Together, Slow Burn, eventual sexual content (i prommy), BBL Ozzy, thematically relevant magpies, interplanetary old man yaoi saves the galaxy

Summary:

In the XXXth span of the galactic war against the Phoenix King, the Avatar, Master of the Four Elements, summoned his trusted advisor to his side… Avatar Aang, prosecutor of the long war against the Fire Nation, tasks General Sokka with the recruitment of a secret friend hidden on his old home planet Emptiness II, razed a century ago. There, Sokka finds an impossible community, where peoples from all quadrants of the galaxy have taken root—headed by the Phoenix King’s own son Zuko. As he comes to trust them, Sokka becomes invested in the community. But war is barrelling towards them, and he must harness the spark between himself and Zuko to save Emptiness II… and the rest of the galaxy.

check out the rest of the chapter 1 art here!

[aitadjcrazytimes]

[eldrtchmn]

Doll

[saragrosie]

I have been sketching. So much tma. Here's some expansions on my Jon and Martin designs I've been doing.

Another note I forgor to mention is I love how after hearing Simon go "it's enough to make your hair turn white" about Martin's office in s4 many of us collectively agreed his hair turned white because of his association with the Lonely. The shared consciousness is real and we use it to play hot potato with the communal brain cell dedicated to the sillies.

Closeup of apocalypse boyfriends (also to the person who said they love my s5 Jon's fancy white girl updo: I think about that every day)

[vigilskeep]

i’ve got to be real with cullen that everything he says about samson unfortunately makes himself seem worse and samson seem cooler

[sweetgaleria]

Aaaw, you thought she was being cute <3

[etourvol]

hitting some ocs with the pmd au beam

[saltpepperbeard]

so, hastiness of the sex and the literal and figurative distance that follows aside, something was really bugging me about the morning after. i couldn’t put my finger on it for a while, but now that i’ve sat with things, i think it’s finally clicked in my head:

stede’s reactions to ed’s sweetness. or lack thereof, really.

because goodness, they just slept together. they just bared body and soul to each other. they just survived a dangerous situation and made it to see the sun rise once again. they’ve been through so much, and faced so much adversity.

and despite all they’ve been through, ed is kind. ed is thoughtful, and soft, and sweet. he brings stede breakfast in bed. he tries to make it as pretty as he can. and then weaves beautiful gratitude and admiration in the form of his goldfish tale.

something that should make anyone sigh with fondness, really. something that make eyes flutter with hearts to match.

…and yet.

and yet stede reacts almost…casually to it all. not glittery how he was at the end of episode 5, for example—so warm and so bright and so very clearly in love. it all felt a bit more…stunted? reserved? unnecessarily curt?

and upon sitting with it as i said, i have two lines of thought, two theories.

one, it’s a sort of look into the heightening poison in his system, the good ol’ villain that is toxic masculinity. he feels the need to perform around ed, to be a man worthy of his love. he feels the need to be more than just “adequate,” more than just an “amateur.” and so he feels the need to be more masculine as a result. he’s not quite at his peak of course, not quite in the absolute thick of it—he still has moments closer to himself throughout the day. but the more poisonous seeds have been planted.

and what does that sort of masculinity often lead to? reserved emotions. stunted reactions. you’re not allowed to show vulnerability, or softness, or anything of the sort; you’re expected to be just a wall of strength and flat composure.

which, also, would align with the show: ed actively tries to combat that mentality in the morning. he straight up tells stede that the man who saved him was a fantastic, orange, sparkly mermaid. not some swashbuckling hero. not some colder, mysterious, more reserved man. but a beautiful, soft, dazzling goldfish.

and stede sort of just shrugs it off—turns it into a “well i hope we’ll both get through the violence” as opposed to realizing that ed is complimenting his true character.

but that brings me to my second theory: maybe stede reacts the way he does simply because…he’s never been loved like that before. he doesn’t know what to do with it. he’s never been brought breakfast in bed before, and now there ed goes doing so for him.

he seems to be fine when he's the one in the driver's seat. like, he's very romantic when he's dealing out the romance. but the second it's turned back on him, he can't seem to conceptualize it, even when it's coming from a man he knows he's in love with. like, ed complimenting his shirt led to a more incredulous reaction. ed saying that stede wears fine things well also led to a more incredulous reaction. and like...

"then you shaved your beard off...for me?"

he just can't grasp it. he can't grasp something so new and foreign to him quite yet. and it's of course also wrapped up in a lot of self-worth issues, because how can anyone love him when he really doesn't love himself (which i think is also the same for ed. help them. HELP THEM)

you just...can't catch a fish unless the fish wants to be caught.

[hojichasunrise]

Katara playfully splashes water at Aang, who responded by sulking in a brooding cave and then exploding lava in her face and storming off without any apology. From The Lost Adventures.

Golly gee why don't I want to ship such a wholesome wonderful healthy ship like this? Gee whiz, it's great Katara didn't end with Zuko, otherwise she might get lava thrown at her in an argument from an immature, emotionally unavailable, abusive jerk! /s Oh, right, Aang is the one who did that.

Aang has always been the one to hurt Katara. Funny Zuko hasn't. Remind me again who scarred Katara's hands, who blew up into the avatar state leaving Katara to pull him out lest he destroy her, her brother, and everything around him? Who stormed off right before the finale without communication leaving his friends to die in the invasion? Was it Zuko who did those things? Was it?

Such a wholesome ship!

[neflil]

If I beg you - Time Buddies animatic

"Why didn't you ever come find me..?" Said both at the same time. //Major Outer Wilds spoilers

Heeeyyyyy sooooo... New song by Flower Face came out today and the moment I heard it I- well saw visions and had to satisfy them lmfao. The moment I came back from school I just sat down and made this ::D I absolutely love her songs so I'm glad I managed to make something silly using a banger.

[pmpwbrrs]

TBOI but Isaac is a rain world fan

You know, I never think about SRS. But now? After I drew them as a pathetic fucking wet soggy mew mew? And their slug as a stupid worm maggot? I get it now

that's NOT all . wait for more :)

[milksnake-tea]

apparently sagau has infected hsr and while i have my own opinions on it i propose this

sahsrau but the reader isn't a god. nonono we don't do that we let the aeons deal with responsibility. no.

sahsrau except the reader is this eldritch apparition ghost looking thing with a gambling addiction who floats around the trailblazer and whose job is to feed into said trailblazer's intrusive thoughts and be horny. and ig occasionally turn people into indestructible weapons of mass destruction but yk that's kinda a side gig we're mainly here for the hot people

this is the only form of sahsrau i will accept i refuse to be omniscient in an absolute clown game like star rail no if we play with clowns we gotta join the circus

[luck-of-the-drawings]

"And soda; runs off into the street..." "...and soda... is totally okay!"

[sioneve]

Happy Birthday, No. 1 Idol in the Universe Yazawa Nico!

this gay card gave me inspiration and extended my life span

[inkskinned]

hey it's nanowrimo. i have tips bc i've done it about 34 times.

Don't edit. Ever. Stop it. If you just decide to start a new project half thru this one with all new characters, no problem. pick up and keep writing as if you'd already written the first half of that.

"but i spelled it wrong" whatever. "but the grammar" whatever. make it exist first. no time for sense. think like you're working on a typewriter. no backspace. only forward go.

Don't re-read further than a paragraph or two backwards. "did i mention the gun before?" listen - it doesn't matter. if you need there to be a gun there, the gun is there. put it back in once you finish the book.

"i forgot the specifics of X thing i already wrote" whatever. change it, make a note/comment to figure it out later, and just write what makes sense for the moment. "no raquel it's legit the characters name and origin" idc that character is now reborn as Claudius from Elsewhere. it's fine.

only you see your mistakes. nobody else knows. one of the ways writing and dance overlap - only you know the choreography. nobody else will know if you miss a step, so just keep dancing and pretend you meant to do it like that.

it's an illusion that you need to write linearly - from point A to point B to point C. Nah; that's just timeline propaganda. I've written a LOT of books out of order and just reordered them once i've finished. if you have a scene you'd LOVE to write but can't get there yet because of plot, just fuckin write the scene. I've always found its easier to establish "point F" "point J" and "Point A" and then wiggle my way between those scenes.

write what you WANT to write. 230 pages of smut? of well-researched discussion on bread? whatever. the point is to strengthen muscles however you can.

if you miss a day, a week, whatever. not the end of the world. we all have dry days. also time is a myth so u can do this challenge whenever u want.

as soon as you try to write for a specific audience, you kill your voice. you are writing for yourself. stop thinking about how people will take ur book. it don't matter. what matter is u, enjoying writing. i luv u.

play to your strengths. i have characters talk so much because i don't know how to write a plot if it kills me but i'm really good at dialogue so.

i love a flight of fancy. write a poem in there. shift tactics and write in code. keep it fun for yourself.

see what happens if you shift something major about ur main characters - gender, wealth, superpowers. or if you change point-of-view. or if you kill everyone in a big explosion. do NOT edit anything before this or after it. often these little weird one-off exercises teach me what interests me about what i'm working on. it is never what i thought. plus it is a fun way to add like 1k words.

stretch.

it's for fun and for practice. stop doing that project if it's giving you anxiety. once my nano was literally 50k words of half-started stories. just things i tried and tried and tried and wasn't able to flesh out. oops. but i am now 50k words of a better writer.

add dragons?

read books/listen to books on tape/etc. people often make the mistake of "buckling down" to just write. you need inspiration. you need to like. fill up on words. you need to remember how it feels to lose yourself in a story.

i don't have the time or space to really talk about this in this post but a lot of creative people turn to drugs/alcohol because it can help you be more creative. this is harmful, and walking a blade that only cuts deep. if you notice you and your loved ones are turning more to substances, please know i love you and i hope you are able to get help soon. i feel like this almost never gets mentioned because it's kind of a hazy underbelly to art. you are always more important than the work.

on that note. drink your fukin. water.

don't talk about a story until you've finished it. once you tell the story, it exists already, and isn't about discovery. i usually have a very canned "haha we'll see" response.

grapes :) tasty snack.

i love you be free.