#the risk I took was calculated

[thechekhov]

no productivity, just comic about the worst thing that happened to me today

I had to march out to my car and get in, right in front of every single parent that was waiting out there aaaaAAAAAAA

[autumnmobile12]

I love this scene because, for at least one moment during this encounter, all three of them are some level of scared.

That one bead of sweat by Trevor’s eye?  He’s nervous.  At this point, he thinks they accidentally woke Dracula.

“I might die down here, but there’s a vampire in front of me, so I’m going to do what I do.”  And the added bonus of,  “He might kill the woman standing next to me and I am not explaining that to her grandfather.”

Then there’s Sypha’s reaction after Alucard shows them his fangs.  Slightly taken back but all the same,

“Oh, shit, he has fangs.  That is a vampire.  The savior is a vampire, the rude drunk was right about it, and it was originally my idea to come down here.  What have we done?”

And then there’s this shot of Alucard after Trevor first attacks him.  The way he’s hunched over like that and the look in his eyes makes him look vulnerable and a little afraid.  Not afraid that he’s going to die, but rather the passing thought of,

“I have been sleeping off a near-fatal wound down here for a year, I’m not sure if I’m at full strength yet…and I may have pissed off the wrong guy.”

[oneatlatime]

The Chase part 2

Apologies for the technical problems. Battery power must be conserved for necessities, which unfortunately does not include Avatar. But the power's back on now, so!

Picking up from Toph treating a senior citizen like a snooker ball...

I do like how Mai's not shy about participating in Ty Lee's nonsense.

The way Zuko Jr. says "I'll follow this trail" is very menacing.

We're continuing last week's cowboy theme.

This village has the same menacing single windchime as the village in the Spirit World Part One did.

This was may more satisfying than I was expecting! It was completely unfair how easily the Fire Nation ladies defeated Sokka & Katara so getting Appa'd was a nice payoff.

No disability unmocked this episode. Also nice stance from the lizard.

This whole scene with Toph and Iroh has the most beautiful backgrounds. I sense phone wallpapers in my future.

Forget about the visuals, every line of this exchange was golden. Two towering pillars of wisdom and emotional maturity meet for tea and not a soul goes untouched. Also a nice moment of calm in an otherwise frantic episode.

Can this PLEASE be the rock bottom for Zuko. I can only take so much more second hand embarrassment.

Fully-provisioned princess of the fire nation v. sleep-deprived half trained avatar v. starving outlaw who seems to have forgotten to bring his swords, the only weapon he's good at. Place your bets, folks!

Zuko in a nutshell.

Ok so we're getting the whole gang back together.

The whole whole gang.

The whole whole whole gang.

How the hell did they mess up six on one?!?!

A princess can't surrender with honour when she doesn't have any!

That was kind of Katara to offer to help. I didn't expect that.

Final Thoughts

This episode doesn't let up once. Even the break with Toph and Iroh having tea doesn't do much to dispell the rising tension from the chase. The musical stinger that plays over the title card was a surprise bit of foreshadowing in that way.

That tank thing was neat. Shame about what it contained, but that's a really cool design.

Poor Appa was once again the MVP this episode. It was uncomfortable watching him get so exhausted.

It seems like the thin veneer of level-headedness cultivated by Katara over the last season or so is indeed quite thin. It was interesting to see how the different characters reacted to being tired. Sokka was alternatively amped up and completely chilled out, Aang got quiet (until he felt Appa was being insulted), Katara reverted to her early season one characterisation. It's hard to say with Toph, because we've only known her one episode (it feels like more) but I think she just got more Toph-like.

Please let this be the end in Zuko's experiment with independence. He's not good at it. He needs uncle. Points for trying, but he failed, so please bring uncle back.

Sokka low key wins this episode. He's the one with sense, the only one who stays clear-headed when it counts, and it turns out that clear head of his can defeat the pokey thing Ty Lee does.

I don't know how much time is supposed to have passed between picking up Toph and the start of this episode, but I can't help but feel that Toph really got the short end of the stick here. She did give up everything, even if much of what she gave up was not that great for her personally. And in return she got to travel in a way that completely blinds her and get yelled at. Meeting Iroh was a nice consolation prize.

Now I kind of want a story where Toph doesn't come back to the Gaang and instead goes around unleashing bending hell on the earth kingdom.

Was there no b plot or c plot this episode? Everything kind of collided in the final couple of scenes, which I did not see coming.

Frantic is the word I keep coming back to for this episode. Everything fit together nicely. I'll definitely rewatch it when I have the chance to do so in one sitting, without unforseen technical problems.

[xerith-42]

Writing Advice of the day: Let your characters be cringe! Sometimes they have a genius idea, an actually coherent thought, but they completely botch the execution due to an oversight. Maybe the idea was dumb in the first place, and they thought it was the newest innovation of mankind. Sometimes they're trying to sound cool and don't realize they don't or get interrupted and lose their patience. Let them be confidently wrong! Someone asks them for a piece of information, and they say something that is factually incorrect, but they believe it and you must have a foolproof argument with supporting evidence to convince them otherwise. This isn't about characters being flawed, that's an entirely different thing, but that even in the most serious and dramatic and dark story TM, there needs to be moments where characters are just human and kind of bad at it because every human is kind of bad at being human.

[tarnussy]

excellent teamwork

[handageddon]

Is that one book Guide to Troublef Birds still in print

[starlikesilences]

Just got my bivalent and flu vax today, bc I thought it would be good to get them over with together!! so I wouldn’t put one off!! aaaaaand now I have no side to sleep on.

Brilliant.

[risingphoenix761]

Downed my coffee in one go and threw on my mosh pit playlist in preparation for work and currently hoping it's not dead today.

[sanctus-ingenium]

gatecrasher

[sourw0lfs]

Sometimes I think about how I made my mother watch Stranger Things under the guise that she could have some 80s nostalgia when, in fact, I knew that she would immediately see herself in and cling to Eddie Munson, and I wouldn’t have to deal with this alone anymore. 

[mando-abs]

I am almost 6 pages in a 14 page paper about the Mandalorian and despite the fun topic, I want to crawl into a whole and die.

[tampire]

Boy Math? Girl Math? I'm NonBinary and out of the equation.

[nightmareonpeachstreet]

I didn’t even chug my drink I just took several big drinks in a row and my tummy still hurts. I just didn’t want to spend the next 20 minutes drinking it I wanted to go to sleep but alas....

[dogtoling]

Tentacles of joy.... Squidmas

[wistrearchived]

semi hiatus from september 25 - october 14 because it’s midterm hell week and i’ve got quizzes, assignments, and exams galore! i won’t be around much, writing will be queue based and i’m scarcely on discord. sorry for anyone waiting on replies! please wish me luck to survive these trials :’)

[midydoof]

I have severely underestimated how long it takes to pack down anything that's not a dorm room.