#so don't think I'm having a breakdown or anything.

[comradekatara]

Can you go a bit more in depth about your post about Sokka in the Burning Rock episode? You said that it was basically his suicide mission, which I agree with. I'd really like to hear more of your thoughts on it.

okay yeah i mean i'm sure i've covered all these points before extensively because i love weaving a tapestry of sokka's fucked up psychological landscape more than anything in the world, but every so often someone will comment on one of my posts and be like "i think you're reaching i think sokka is the paragon of mental health actually" and i'm just like um. did we not all watch the boiling rock. did we just ignore the apotheosis of sokka's entire character arc. like katara's apotheosis in "the southern raiders" is both very overt and impactful and also, arguably, subtler than sokka's, because they don't explicitly spell out the themes every five seconds, but like. if you didn't watch the boiling rock then you cannot understand sokka. and weirdly enough i also believe that zuka shippers are the biggest culprit of this despite this episode being thee zucchini episode because they somehow still have the audacity to characterize sokka as "goofy sunshine who exists to comfort zuko" when like. the entire point is that sokka is legitimately suicidal here and zuko is doing everything in his power to support him thru what is quite literally a mental breakdown. like their relationship is legitimately interesting i don't understand how people have taken that and made it deeply boring.....but i digress.

the boiling rock is quite obviously sokka at his lowest. the worst thing that could ever happen to him – fumbling a mission that was squarely his responsibility, from its conception to its execution, due to not being able to sufficiently compartmentalize his emotions, leading to the mass imprisonment of most of his comrades, including the men of his tribe whom he idolized his entire life and felt immense pressure to live up to, including his father who he is deathly afraid of disappointing (for reasons that have nothing to hakoda being malicious or neglectful in any way, fwiw), and thus being directly implicated in the failure and the harm caused by said failure – happened. sokka is someone who is especially bad at dealing with failure, because a) he is exceptionally talented, and thus has less experience dealing with failure in both minor and major ways, and thus lacks the emotional resilience developed through the process of struggle and growth that normal people (such as, incidentally, zuko) go through and b) to sokka, whose primary desire at all times is to protect and provide for others in any way he possibly can, for someone else to sacrifice themselves for him constitutes a fundamental disruption to the order. there is a perverse wrongness to kya or yue or hakoda or suki making sacrifices on their own volition, because it means that sokka has existentially failed to protect them by martyring himself. like, he somehow feels so guilty about suki being imprisoned that when azula reveals this piece of information to him, it literally distracts him from his own mission. and mind you, there's absolutely no way sokka could have known or been responsible for suki's imprisonment. but he still feels guilty nonetheless. and azula knows that, knows exactly how to twist the knife to make him break, because, well, it's honestly pretty obvious.

sokka obviously cannot retroactively save his mother or his first girlfriend, but he can save his father and his current girlfriend. in "the awakening" aang says he has to restore his honor after the guilt and shame of his failure in ba sing se (aang is also an incurable gifted kid perfectionist, btw, as is azula. posts for another time...) and sokka repeats zuko's line again in this episode, after experiencing the guilt and shame of his failure during the eclipse. the driving motivation of zuko's entire character, feeling like he has failed in some ontological way and must therefore redeem himself or die trying, is reinforced through aang and sokka's respective experiences mirroring that drive. aang goes out in a storm and nearly drowns to redeem himself in some vague, nebulous way, because he isn't thinking rationally. and likewise sokka, who usually always has a plan and always thinks things through, feels that caution and foresight is pointless, because he came up with a genuinely brilliant invasion plan and it didn't work, so clearly there's something wrong with him (just as he always suspected) and no amount of planning even matters, because he's a capital F Failure and always will be. and so he vows to save his father, as he promised him he would when they parted on the day of black sun, or die trying, because if he can't even do that then what is he good for; at least he'll die a martyr, which to him, is basically his ideal situation. because to sokka, dying as a martyr is basically the highest form of fulfilling his purpose (being needed, protecting people) and so if he dies a martyr, then maybe his catastrophic failure (that is entirely his fault and rests squarely on his shoulders btw) can be forgiven. so his plan is basically just to sacrifice himself for his father so that he can die "redeemed." very normal, rational, healthy behavior, i would say.

sidenote, i also see people claim that "the boiling rock" makes sokka look stupid because why wouldn't he take any of the insanely talented benders to a prison in a giant volcano surrounded by a boiling lake, and it's like. sokka literally admits that he's not being rational, that he doesn't think he's going to survive this, that this is not a good idea. it would go against sokka's entire modus operandi if he brought the children who he feels a deep, presiding responsibility to protect on a suicide mission that he's lowkey hoping will fail (because he not so secretly loves courting death. it's like she's the moon or something). he only lets zuko come with him because he doesn't actually care whether zuko lives or dies at this point. sokka has absolutely no faith in zuko whatsoever (and frankly, why would he, zuko has yet to actually prove himself to him. he didn't even kill combustion man; sokka did) so he has no idea that zuko is actually going to be helpful and supportive in a meaningful way. and frankly, if he had known that at the beginning, or even remotely liked zuko as a person, he probably wouldn't have caved so easily when zuko invited himself to join. if he didn't think that zuko was objectively worse than him and basically worthless as a human being, i doubt he would have let himself be so vulnerable with zuko in the first place. meanwhile zuko is eating it up bc he's like "omg he's confiding in me he's letting me help him we're basically besties" because he doesn't actually know sokka well enough to realize that sokka doesn't actually do that shit with people he remotely respects. shit like "my first girlfriend turned into the moon" and "i had a feeling this was going to be a one way trip" are simply not things that sokka would say out loud 98% of the time. the fact that he is admitting something real is not a testament to the trust he places in zuko, but rather the opposite. sokka spilling his guts (you know, for him) to his resident collateral damage, sokka bringing his lovingly crafted space sword on this mission, sokka not even confirming whether or not his father is actually there beforehand – he's simply stopped giving a fuck, he doesn't care whether or not he lives to see another day, because to him, he has nothing left to lose.

but of course, that also isn't true at all. i mean, for one thing, zuko still needs to teach aang firebending, so he does serve a pretty important function to the group, and zuko simply telling him to do hot squats in his absence does not qualify as significant tutelage. but also, even more importantly, sokka is integral to the fabric of the group. when he's gone for a day in "sokka's master" they literally all just shut down and start complaining about how much they miss him (we don't actually see any b-roll of the gaang hanging around the western air temple because the episode is simply too busy for that, so who can say whether the same thing occurs twice). sokka cannot afford to simply die just because his first plan failed, he still has a major responsibility to his friends. fucking idiot. i've said before that sokka has the emotional resilience of like. a pathetic wet newborn kitten caught in the rain. but like, come on man. i mean, as someone who has also suffered from debilitating perfectionist issues and never had to be responsible for a failed military invasion that cost my people their freedom, i do get it, but still. not his best moment. although there is something genuinely admirable about the fact that after he finds suki, he decides that saving suki is enough, and genuinely does want to succeed in his mission going forward. like his love for suki is one of the only things that consistently makes him happy and makes him forget that his greatest dream in life is to be murdered, and that's so beautiful to me.

the entire point of this episode, by the way, is that sokka is wrong. if that isn't obvious. sokka's entire worldview, that he only has value insofar as he exists to provide for others, and if he fails to protect people in any capacity, he has fundamentally failed to uphold the one reason he even exists on this earth, and thus he does not deserve to exist unless he is bearing the weight of everyone's suffering or otherwise proving his worth through sacrificing himself for others, is um. fucking stupid???? and incorrect. and stupid. the thing is, unlike zuko, sokka can't really point to any one person who taught him to see himself this way. he can't just face his father and tell him that his abuse was cruel and wrong, because hakoda is a good father who has never not supported and believed in and encouraged him, done everything in his power to protect him, loved him unconditionally. hakoda has inadvertently damaged sokka's psyche in various ways, of course, but never with any intention to hurt him. like, ozai tried to kill zuko, on multiple occasions. it's a pretty obvious indicator of the primary source of harm in his life. but sokka is equally if not more Unwell, and there's no one single figure he can blame, because his complex lies within a tangled web of what my best friend fanon calls the "massive psychoexistential complex" of the colonized subject. he is being dehumanized not through interpersonal abuse, but through the violent logic of imperialism. sokka's formative traumas inform his psychology as he understands that he only has value insofar as he is protecting the people he loves (namely his sister) from being murdered by imperialists, much like his mother did. and that logic is continually reified through the violence he is being subjected to, until he truly absorbs the belief that his life has no value on its own, that he is genuinely Less than [human] in some fundamental way. which is obviously deeply tragic, but also lowkey kind of comical because he also happens to be the specialest boy in the world, who literally did come up with multiple working escape plans at the world's most secure supermax on the fly, mind you! but whenever anyone tries to point that out, including piandao literally saying "you're the most exceptional and worthy person i've ever met in my life" sokka is just like "um. that is incorrect actually." like NO ONE should depersonalize themselves and feel that their only value lies in their ability to serve and sacrifice themselves for others, but it's especially ironic that sokka literally does not think he has any value as a human being, and yet he is also objectively exceptional. like, do you understand why i adore this character so much. do you.

anyway. the point of this episode isn't that sokka has worth because he's exceptional, either. that's lowkey the point of "sokka's master," but also a) sokka doesn't really internalize it and b) the more important part of the episode lies in how much the gaang just misses his company because they miss their neurotic control freak big brother who makes bad jokes. but even if he couldn't come up with multiple working escape plans on the fly, suki and zuko still stay by his side anyway because they care about him. they are demonstrating that they would risk their safety and possibly even their lives, in the exact way that sokka is always trying to for everyone else, for him. that sokka doesn't need to be the one who always protects everyone else, and that he isn't a failure for letting people who care about him help him and protect him. and sokka has to accept their help, because suki and zuko are simply too stubborn not to force him into letting them support him. they are standing in a literal maximum security prison in the middle of a volcano and they are still choosing to prioritize sokka's mental health and wellbeing, which is honestly crazy, but also exactly what he needs in this moment. suki has known sokka for what, 3 days maximum? yes they're soulmates but like, girl get up. and in zuko's case, "girl get up" is magnified tenfold, because he literally risked his life to go with him to the boiling rock (also largely motivated by the guilt of not being able to stage his own prison break with iroh, but still!) and let himself get imprisoned despite being the fire nation's most wanted criminal, stayed by sokka's side no matter what including getting thrown into a literal torture chamber for him, jumped across a gaping boiling chasm with no guarantee that he'd survive except for the implicit expectation that sokka would catch him on the other side. like zuko is so fucking pussywhipped and sokka didn't even value him as a human being until like halfway through their entire mission. insane.

in conclusion: "the boiling rock" is a beautiful story of the most mentally ill boy on the planet (he took first place ever since jet died rip jet forever in our hearts), and his two ride or die bitches who he met like yesterday, and also his dad, and a casual homophobe named chit sang, all working together to demonstrate to him why killing yourself is a bad idea in most cases, probably. it's also the story of the most insane dyke drama of all time, but that's for another post (of which i have of course made multiple, most recently, here). i said it's the apotheosis of sokka's arc, and by that i mean it's the most overt acknowledgement of what his fundamental issue is, and the first steps one must take in actually resolving it (namely, accepting help and support from your peers and loved ones). do i think that sokka is magically cured after returning from the boiling rock? no, probably not (in fact, because i'm somewhat sick & twisted myself, i like to imagine that once the war ends, he actually gets worse). but he does seem genuinely happier after they return. and maybe that's just bc kyoshi warrior pussy hits different, but like. he was able to rely on others for help (including mai my best friend mai) who supported him unconditionally and prevented him from simply giving up, and that's so incredibly important. that kind of support is always important, to everyone, of course, but as we've established, it's especially important to sokka specifically, at his lowest (quite possibly ever), in this situation. no one has an obligation to risk their life for someone else, but sokka is something who thinks that his purpose is to risk his life for other people (namely katara), and so for people who really have nothing to gain and everything to lose in standing by and promising not to leave without him, to actually show that they support him unconditionally is huge. if sokka has no fans then i am dead and so is suki zuko hakoda toph aang piandao iroh the mechanist etc etc etc. perfect episode <3

[scintillyyy]

actually though since we're chatting about what if x character died and came to life: tim. hm. like put tim in a position where he died, but not only that he failed to save his dad.

i think tim would be marked by the fact that after he woke up and realized he failed to save his dad and his dad was dead...he would just. go back to bruce et al. in like a "hey! i'm alive! don't blame yourselves for my death, hey it's fine, since i'm alive now me dying doesn't count anymore right??? don't worry about it!!" (tim "hey the joker was barely dead so it doesn't count as killing him, dick shouldn't blame himself for anything ever" drake).

however under this he is slowly breaking down inside over why. why was he brought back and not his dad. why in a world that he was brought back, his loved ones have to stay dead. there's hidden research, late nights awake ruminating on this very question. if he could just figure out how he came back, maybe-

and in pure breakdown tim fashion, it's not until all these feelings reach a head that tim chooses to leave and distances himself, in search of a lazarus pit in search of something-

but this time, at the edge of a lazarus pit, does he go through it? does he make the decision to try and bring the people he loves back? after all, he came back fine, didn't he?

[paradoxgavel]

vent post bc. i don't know what else to do but vent right now

i think today is a record for how quickly my whole entire life can go up in flames. so, my mom has really intense depression and anxiety. and about eight years ago, she had a breakdown - i think it was a conversion disorder episode, or something psychosomatic like it - where her motor skills got disrupted. she's recovered a lot since then, but... when her anxiety gets bad nowadays, her motor skills go bad again. she starts physical therapy next week, and hopefully that should help, but. in the meantime.

usually my dad is there to help her, but... this week, he's away on a mandatory trip for work. and that made my mom really anxious. so, around 4 pm today, she started yelling for me because she couldn't stand up off the toilet. i'm not strong enough to lift her up, and she couldn't get her legs to cooperate. her legs are weak but functional, but the psychosomatic effects of her anxiety just. make her legs go dead. i wound up having to call the fire department so they could come and help her up after about an hour of me trying.

a few hours later, it happened again. i called my dad that time, and... he was so angry with her. he told me to call an ambulance, tell them to take her to the hospital, and that he wants to put her in a nursing home. he can't come home until the end of the week at risk of losing his job. i called 911 and the EMT basically told me that because it's a psychosomatic issue, the hospital wouldn't be able to help her. and our town is small and doesn't have a psychiatric hospital or anything, so... all they could really do was help her up and then leave.

i wound up setting up a makeshift setup so she doesn't have to go to the bathroom to use the toilet, but. my dad can't come home from his trip at risk of losing his job, and there's no one else who can help us, so. this is just our life for the next four days.

i'm so scared. and upset. and i don't know what to do. i feel like i'm losing my mind here. i'm just. i love my mom so much and i can't help her and i don't know what to do and my dad is going to send her away and i'm going to miss living with her so so much if that happens even if it's for the best.

my dad's tired and upset and scared, my mom's tired and upset and scared, and i'm tired and upset and scared. and i just.

fuck. y'know?

[imminent-danger-came]

WHAT WAS HE GOING TO SAY. WHAT WAS HE GOING TO SAY! WHAT WAS HE-

Sun Wukong: "Kid—new armor isn't going to cut it! We have to hit Azure with everything we've got! You can't just, ignore this whole part of your power because it scares you!"

MK: "I-"

-

LITERALLY WHAT. WHAT WAS IT. MK HONEY SWEETIE DARLING WHAT WERE YOU GOING TO TELL WUKONG HERE

[babykittenteach]

2023 in review! I made an effort to try more things and it worked mostly (at least for TV and movies). New things, new-to-me things, and new installments of old things all had characters to love even if I didn't necessarily feel fannish about them, and I'm hoping 2024 does, too.

[wild-at-mind]

Had a really stupid conversation via minor emotional breakdown with a queer friend about what makes an LGBTQ person 'assimilist'. From what she said I'm kind of forced to draw the conclusion 'if you say you're not assimilist, then you're not'.

[amzarashi]

there's this thing where you can't say certain words or phrases or breathe a certain way or touch something for too long or nudge the book that's been collecting dust on your bedside for two years because anything and everything could turn the world against you

i can't sleep at night because my breathing doesn’t feel right and the prayer i said five times in row doesn’t feel right so i have to get up open the door turn the lights on retrace my steps until my feet start aching from how bad i need it all to make sense to fall into place to not hurt the people i care about because guilt makes your heart sink like stone and i still haven't learned how to swim

fox reads me poetry until fox is all i think about until the world isn't so scary and the static in my brain is quiet i tell fox good night i say i love you but it's rarely there so i say it again over and over because repetition speaks things into existence until it piles up on top of each other until i can gather it all in my hand and squish it together like putty and use it to close up everywhere the hurt is leaking through

exposure therapy sucks. it's not that i can't touch door knobs or cross the threshold or have to wash my hands so many times or that i have to click the lock and turn the bathroom lights on and the bedroom lights off and the doorway lights on and the people around me have to say good night with an inflection that tells me i won't die tomorrow because i don't know what my brain wants more often than not

words have so much weight and i haven't told anyone i love them and meant it because i’m scared if i do i will doom them to my fate of picking at nails and skin so i use loopholes like my life depends on them. i say it with breaks in between. the pauses are periods so it's a string of words not a curse set into motion it'd be nice to breathe without having to think about what i can or cannot say

instead i send poetry, i say read the orange by wendy cope listen to 400 lux by lorde it's not a love language because language was made to share love babel was a death sentence there are many words i want to say but can't say but roland barthes says, i've got nothing to say to you but it's to you i want to say this nothing

[allisonreader]

My heart hurts. Not physically, but emotionally. I don't like the news, I tend to avoid actively searching it out, for that exact reason. I ache because as people we just can't seem to get along. Learn to compromise and fully try to understand the other side. It's exhausting to understand why people are against certain things, even when it's the opposite of what I personally believe in.

[cheekblush]

me today 💤

[house-in-the-backyard-trees]

i see Boy on Thursday? i hope? i kiss his face again? i hope?

[myersesque]

damn . internalised ableism got hands

[yuriyuruandyuraart]

woah woah woah yuri you're still alive????

haha what happened you may ask??? well, life just gave me hell and decided that today. TODAY, was gonna top it off with the biggest disaster so far!!!!!

i literally just wanted to have ONE day off after my bday, but the next morning my computer wouldn't work! which was fantastic because literally every single one of my wips/ finished not posted works/ digital art was on there so i stressed. the FUCK. out

it's fixed now ofc and THANKFULLY nothing was lost except the artworks that weren't autosaved that day! (which- yknow, sucks, but there was worse at stake before :'D) after me bEGGING my dad to help me with the problem

except it's NOT OVER yet!!!!

sai's settings and brushes reseted for some reason and my absolute fav custom brushes were gone! so with me trying to recreate them then loosing them all over because they just wouldn't be SAVED OMG and me going for a trip to my uncle's small town and watching the leftover day offs i had dwindle so goshdarn fast i was feeling so sO drained-

and wanna know the funniest thing??? when i come back home ready to post art and FINALLY rant about this what happens?? no wifi :DDDD

prioritizing the water and electricity bills first, i got to work and drew everyday to make it up for you guys and look at that! i have good and horrible news!

so SURPRISE! since you guys have been SO patient with me (thank you all :'D), i will say that i have a LOT of finished works to post! all ranging from 1 animated gif, 9 artworks, 1 illustration that's part of a little prompt idea i came up with (1 done and 4 left)

technically, i have 2 pieces finished and 3 wips for the remaining days of fnk week and 2 new ocs!!!! (and redraws of 4 older ocs, 2 of which are ready to post)

as for the worse news... man. i'm barely hanging here but woo i broke my tablet's pen and it's charging wire!! (i literally don't know how but it got separated from it's body while it was in it and i can't i can't even)

i am so so broken right now- i was so happy to update yesterday and reblog stuff since i finally got wifi again and- man it feels like i'm making this shit up but oh my god i wanna cry

i guess i could post everything i had the chance to draw before but gosh i'm so sorry but i can't promise more art after i announce which one was the last in stock- (at least until i get enough money to buy a replacement for them both)

i know i suck at communicating if i'm alive and just having a hard time but i swear this year was really rough on me and my health in general so i hope you guys can understand :'(

[running-in-the-dark]

if there's one thing I hate it's nurses who treat you like a child or an inconvenience when you're in pain despite them insisting you shouldn't be.

no, I can't sit on the side of the bed to eat my soup, sitting up hurts like hell and I don't care that you don't think it does. it does. I know it does because it's my body and I feel the pain, so what the fuck is that about?! I had surgery this morning, there's a wound in my belly button, so it's going to hurt for a bit, I'm not being dramatic or anything!

the weirdest part is that I didn't complain or say anything, I just started sitting up very slowly to eat, and she felt the need to treat me like I'm an idiot for being in pain 🤷

she also rolled her eyes and made an annoyed noise when I showed that I was in pain during and after she gave me the injection to prevent blood clots. lady, I don't know what your problem is but that shit hurts like hell for me, every single time I've gotten it, and it keeps hurting for over an hour. so I'm going to fucking wince a little and you're just gonna have to learn to deal with that without being an asshole.

it's like there's two categories of nurses - the ones that are incredibly sweet and kind and caring, who apologise if something they do hurts and are calm and understanding when you show that you're in pain. and the ones that are completely dismissive and treat you like you're a fucking idiot for every single question, statement or reaction.

[lostlovepunk]

.

[outlawwolfe]

Really really struggling with college lately and having the good ol, maybe this isn't for me, thoughts again.

[lonesomedotmp3]

guy who didn't take their stop getting panicked and freaking out at everything and having unbearable heart palpitations and being unable to sleep pill voice guess who's feeling panicked and won't stop freaking out at everything and is having unbearable heart palpitations and can't sleep!! el oh el!