#How this could have worked instead

[thebrisingamen]

I personally disagree; Aang should have killed Ozai because that was the narrative leading of the story. ALTA is a show about war and the consequences of it, so the complete ass pull of 'Energy Bending' flies right in the face of the main philosophies ALTA pulls from.

With ALTA pulling clearly from Taoism, Buddhism and Hindu, all of these beliefs come from societies where the priority is the community/culture over individual feelings. Aang would be considered The Avatar first and foremost, an Air Nomad second and Aang third. His obligation is to be The Avatar, to bridge worlds and people together; that's why he's the master of all four elements and is respected by all four nations. Ultimately, The Avatar is supposed to become the guide and protector the world needs.

When Aang is awakened 100 years later, the Fire Nation has already made major headway in their conquest of the world.

They have, at this point; killed, enslaved, displaced and destroyed thousands of people over the course of this conquest of the world, they have crippled the Water nation and almost wiped out all the Water Benders they knew of. The Earth Kingdom was unable to unite against the Fire Nation as "Kingdom" is a strong term for "A Bunch of City States, the largest of which wages a war of misinformation to the citizenry 'to keep it safe' and solidify a sycophants power."

So, I must ask, why do Aang's feelings matter more than what happened to thousands of people? The world should matter more to him than his feelings, but it doesn't.

When literally all of the philosophy and the understanding of bending and power is based on Community > Self, having your main character choose Self > Community basically is a smack in the face to what you built.

Since all we see is 'Aang refuses to let go of unhealthy feelings and expectations which prevents him from accessing the Avatar State again' he just...gets to unlock it without making any changes at all?

"the point is that if he breaks his vows the air nomads will truly die out with him, forever. the point is that the monks taught him all life is sacred"

Well, that is a truth of Aang's character. However, the Fire Nation will continue to attack and conquer until it has consumed the entire world. Sometimes there are no good choices. Sometimes you have to make a compromise and live with it, especially in a situation as deadly as this.

Aang gets the ending he does because that's what the writing team wanted. 'we'll give super special awesome bending to Aang and ONLY Aang' So every other Avatar that had to compromise their beliefs just had to live with it?

The way it is written, it does not work. It takes Aang back to being selfish, rather than selfless.

"the point is that he takes the man whose ancestors set his on fire and robs him of the ability to hurt anyone ever again"

Bold of you to assume that his inability to bend means he has an inability to hurt others. Rhetoric and hate, as we are seeing in real time are just words but wreak havoc. It is very easy for a man who had power to continue to have influence even in a jail cell. If he's dead his power would been far more broken because HE IS NO LONGER alive to listen to. It would not stop everyone who believed he was right, but it would SURE do a number.

Aang only cares about his own feelings about Ozai and killing him, NOT ABOUT how Ozai and the nation he's led that's been seeking to take over the world and wipe out other forms of bending and did with Aang's people, almost did it with Katara's people and was working on doing it over all over the Earth Kingdom.

TL;DR

Yes he should have killed Ozai because the world should have mattered to him more than his personal beliefs, or if he wasn't going to kill Ozai, we needed more than just 'No, I don't want to' to call forth the power. I can think of several ways this would have worked, but they didn't do any of those options. So it reads as completely and utterly selfish and a slap in the face to all of what was built up before the finale.

Bottom Line?

Don't tell a War Story if you're not going to be able to allow your characters make compromises, otherwise everything earned feels cheapened because of the refusal to have there be any actual consequences or compromises for the characters, especially your titular one.

can't believe there are still people out here in the year 2023 that genuinely think aang should have killed ozai

[gettiregretti]

Slow cooking an idea where Jayce stays to try and help Viktor fight the Hexcore within him. He’s never sure if he’ll have Viktor or the Herald that day. Trying to keep secret plans from your god-like lover who can literally enter your mind is a full time horror show

Viktor and Jayce plotting against the Hexcore without it working out what they are doing. Hidden codes, snatched moments. Viktor manages to create a space just for him and starts to hoard energy against the Hexcore. It can use any face to trick him, and frequently tries to wear Jayce’s. They aren’t more powerful, so they just have to be smarter than their own creation. And together they can solve any equation.

[dizzybizz]

mingling memeing for today 🥰

[floccinaucinihilipilificationa]

Hey hey hey may 31th anon! How's 2024 going? ☆ヾ(*´▽｀)ﾉ This year I have for you a leaked Sherlock season 5 image. Thinking of you!! And everyone!!

[potatopassenger]

Crocodile is low-key obsessed with manners like he tells Vivi he didn't expect a princess to be so foulmouthed (he's caused a civil war) and he gets mad at Sanji for being rude over the phone (while he's threatening him) All his employees' codenames start with Mr. or Miss. He's even trained his deadly attack crocodiles to queue nicely for their food!

[worldwright]

Malevolent Yellow thoughts have been fermenting for months now. It's the nature versus nurture of it all. Is a good person born or made? How much can they choose it in the face of a world that won't let them?

When John first woke up with Arthur, he was terrified. He had no idea who he was, where he was, he had no control over his form or direction, he had no purpose. He defaulted to the survival tactic most familiar to him: manipulation. He wanted to control Arthur -- and thus, his own situation -- without leaving himself vulnerable. It worked, for a time. But his own memory loss made him slip up, and it turned out Arthur was more canny than he anticipated. And yet, when gaps opened in his defenses, Arthur responded with kindness. Understanding, sympathy. He didn't take advantage of that vulnerability. Honestly, even without his month with Lily, I believe John would have opened up to Arthur.

But John's relationship with Arthur had begun on even footing. Neither of them had any memory. Both were lost and confused and desperate for answers. Both were wary of each other, but forced by circumstance to work together. Another place where they could sympathize. They both made compromises along the road as they settled in with each other.

But Yellow?

Yellow is the exact same as John was. Terrified, alone, with no control and no memory. But he was greeted with someone who KNEW him. Someone who his manipulation didn't work on. Someone with all the power over him while he was left with no leverage and no escape. And this person told him who he was supposed to be. Said, I know you. No you don't! The person who you love was grown, not born!

Of course, Arthur realized this eventually. But the damage was already done. Instead of learning to fit together organically, it was stilted and forced, tainted with the expectation that Yellow would eventually be someone he knew nothing about -- someone who both he and John himself would have recoiled from upon first waking!

John and Yellow have a fascinating dialogue about strength and weakness. Yellow claims to know the meaning of strength. Maybe he does. It's all he's ever known. John claims to have earned the power of weakness. Vulnerability. Trust. Yellow never got a chance to find that. It took John time and love and reciprocated weakness to find that meaning for himself, and to embrace it. Yellow was under threat from the first moment he existed. And when -- suddenly, without warning or countermeasure -- he was trapped with Larson instead, he had no choice but to continue using the tactics that kept him safest.

Yellow is a prisoner, first and foremost. He never had autonomy, not even to decide what he wanted. Arthur told him that he wanted to become someone weak. Larson told him that he wanted to be an all-powerful god. One of those tends to have more control over their circumstances, and Yellow chose accordingly.

[teacupsandcyanide]

Something I miss from earlier eras of the creative side of the internet was things just being unabashedly low-budget. Just all unashamedly amateur, unprofessional, ‘I don’t own a good camera but I have a story to tell you’, ‘I can’t afford a good mic but I have a song to sing for you,’ ‘I don’t have any kind of background in editing or lighting and I only just picked up this guitar last Tuesday but here’s an entire musical me and my friends wrote about our favourite book, we filmed it on a potato and put it up on YouTube in ten minute segments because we thought it was pretty funny.’

[imclou]

can't believe fnaf brought me out of art hibernation man what a turn of events

[dykedvonte]

You ever just see a Mouthwashing take that makes you want to bang your head into a wall? I literally just saw someone claim Curly couldn't have been emotionally abused by Jimmy before the crash because he was in a higher position of power than Jimmy.

-Shrimp Anon

The mouthwashing fandom has shown me that people genuinely do believe that certain types of abuse are not as detrimental as other types especially when they deem those immune/resistant, ergo, believing one is objectively worse no matter how it affects the person nor the intersections of power, history and dynamics at play.

Get ready cause this is a yap session:

Cause like it's heavily implied that Curly and Jimmy's friendship was toxic and abusive, pointedly in the direction of how Jimmy uses Curly's belief/comfort in him. Curly wasn't forced to enable Jimmy but he was emotional and mentally on edge around him in almost every scene in some way. Mental and emotional abuse are not contingent on what positions you have at work. Yeah, he's Jimmy's boss but he was Jimmy's friend first and it's like getting into Psych discussion to talk about how social power tends to overshadow any perceived organizational power in the human mind. People are concerned about their jobs ofc but they tend to hang onto and put more value/investment into their personal relationships, hence why there tends to be laws and restrictions around mixing the two.

I always see the sentiments that "Curly is a grown ass man", "Curly is bigger than Jimmy", "Curly is Jimmy's boss", "He just needed a backbone" as criticisms of Curly and while I do agree that on the surface level all of these to be true and viable ways Curly could've taken more control of the situation, I often look at the parallels of Anya and Curly as victims of Jimmy pre/post crash.

The way Jimmy talks to Anya post crash is how he talked to Curly in the pre-crash segments. It's hard to pin-point mainly because we know he hates and wants nothing to do with Anya compared to his contrary but similarly handled obsessions with Curly. It's a weird sort of "honey-moon" effect of abuse Jimmy does in terms of emotional and mental victimization. He is always horrid to Anya, always talking down or questioning her abilities and thoughts in a situation, this of course includes the harassment and assault. However, he has a moment of attempted gentleness/conditioning when he question her about the mouthwash when she's contemplating drinking it at the table. The key difference is he has no personal investment in Jimmy outside wanting nothing to do with him, meaning there is no sort of romanticized version of him that he can condition her off of. He knows this, hence, why he always reverts to trying to make her to scared to oppose him.

This sort of give and take of "kindness" doesn't work on her because she knows he is just doing it to take more from her than whatever he could possibly give but it reflects even the "softer" scenes between him and Curly where he always rewords or rephrases Curly's sentiments and concerns to sound more shallow. He is feigning a deeper understanding by reworking Curly's emotions into something bad and needing to be hidden. Everything is laced with envy and resentment, an outburst just around the corner, I mean he even slams the table in the birthday party scene, a tactic in emotional manipulation to set the victim on edge and cloud their ability to respond. Even if Curly knows Jimmy won't get physical in that moment, the physical actions is intended to make him back down in the confrontation in case it does. This is something that is just not person specific. It ingrains itself into how you interact with the world and life and it shows in major and minor ways with Curly.

Post-crash, the abusive nature is more in tandem to the physical victimization Anya went through and the stripping of voice and autonomy we see take place. Like the parasite in HFIM, Jimmy speaks for Curly most of the time and puts words in his mouth, similarly to how he takes Anya's plans as his own. He very commonly, with the both of them mind you, supplements the worst aspects of himself into them; pettiness, selfishness, lack of understanding... And tries to cover himself with their best qualities; kindness, planning, initiative, etc...

These parallel are just to say that positional power has little to do with if a person can be abused and how it can even be flipped to further the abuse. There is no doubt that Curly could've picked up on Jimmy's envy of his position hence another reason he never confronted him as a Captain but as a friend as doing so would immediately put Jimmy in a space to be confrontational/combative.

I think the disdain some people have when they talk about the heavily implied if not implicitly stated emotional/mental abuse Curly experienced being Jimmy's friend is when treating it as an excuse to why he didn't do more. I can understand that completely because it is not an excuse to why he didn't do more but is a very real reason people in his position in these scenarios can experience whether in the context of a work or social environment. However, I also think the way people talk about it really does demonstrate a bigger problem when talking about abuse when somehow who is/was abused is either part of the issue or enabled it.

Harkening back to the sentiments about Curly's inaction regarding Jimmy, I think the exact phrases I used/have seen show how there is an inherent belief that it is easier to overpower the effects of emotional/mental abuse that go in tandem with the perception of Curly as someone who should be able to. There is not an age you suddenly stop being susceptible to abuse nor a set point or low where you realize how it has affected you. You don't suddenly know to stand up or put a face on to face your abuser nor admit that you inadvertently enabled them to subjugate someone else to the same treatment. Maybe it's my psych brain but their is this growing belief that direct action is somehow easy or always the best method with the game shows you instances where it is not always the case. In real life that rings true too. He should have done more, but it's not impossible to see why he struggled to find a way or didn't even if it makes us mad.

It's not easy to suddenly gain a "back-bone". You don't immediately want to resort to aggression, especially if it mirrors the type you were a victim to. You don't want to believe you allowed yourself to be treated this bad, let it get that bad or allowed something bad to happen to someone else. It is easy to be in denial, to retreat to your thoughts or make excuses to avoid the painful truth. It's frustrating but in a way we know is relatable. It why we both hate and love Curly for it. We know we'd be better, we think we'd be better, we like to think we wouldn't falter in the same ways but it's always easier to say that from the outside looking in. It's easy to see what he was doing wrong because we are seeing it, not him, but the game really does make you picture what you would do if this was your raw reality and it's why this debate about Curly seems so never ending/contradictory. We can all say what we'd do but bottom line is that's much different when you're in the moment with all the emotions and human feelings attached.

I personally think Mouthwashing tackles the themes of rape culture, enabling, toxic masculinity, types of abuse and patriarchy in ways that are meant to deconstruct the typical straightforward views we mostly have of these concepts and how little subtilities of them are just as, if not more, detrimental than the overt/obvious parts. The game deals with the idea of little details and bigger picture in a way to show that sometimes the bigger picture is not the issue but the little details that make it up. It's why I have a personal dislike of depictions of Jimmy as the typical horrible person who would of course do something like this because the game is about noticing the little warning signs, the foreshadowing and foresight.

It's why I dislike the typical discussion of "bro code" and "boys will be boys" for the game because the game makes a point to avoid the standard depictions of such. It is about the type of men who still enable despite not condoning, agreeing or even perpetuating harmful beliefs because they can't see the little details or the ways it seeps into their everyday. The severity is not obvious to them as it was not obvious to Curly, Swansea or even Daisuke the way it was to a woman like Anya. There are little details about Jimmy that should ring alarms but if you are too naive like Daisuke, too distant like Swansea or too conditioned like Curly, they are just off markers.

There is 100% more constructive/concise ways to say "Curly was a victim of Jimmy's abuse on an emotional and mental aspect that clouded his judgements and perceptions in the scenario" while also critiquing on the side of "Curly still had a responsibility to protect Anya as a crew mate and Captain that he failed to do due to biases and stigma's he failed to surpass" without the weird condemnation people give him about should've knowing better than to let himself be manipulated by a person he considered a close, if not family/best-friend and had his own reasons to trust initially. Also stop being weird about victims of abuse in general with this fandom, like sorry not everyone has a like social epiphany the moment someone's nasty to them. People are treating it like you immediately know when you are in a toxic relationship immediately or comprehend when a person is actively dangerous and either it's your fault for not knowing how to leave/cut them off or you deserve it. Like the hypocrisy of people believing how certain fans treat the story reflect their irl views but not their own is crazy.

End statement is: I honestly don't even know man, I've been writing this too long and just like no man on that ship was perfect or really helped Anya when it mattered and I feel like pitting them against each other in discussion on who did the least or most or how it was justified sucks cause in the end Anya always did the most and best thing for herself.

[deoidesign]

Return date for my webcomic, Time and Time Again!

It's been set for a while but sometimes they change the date without warning, so I'll keep you updated if anything changes!

I'm extremely proud of the work I've been doing on it, I can't wait to share everything!

See you then!

[somewhatsentientspellbook]

Look. Look look look.

I was saddened by Percy's death, obviously, but it didn't hit me overly hard because I was expecting it the entire time I was watching E7. Damn episode is literally called Cloak and Dagger and had all the telltale signs of an impending character death (looking at you, score-less scenes and death-flag dialogue)

But KASHAW? Fucking KASH? They killed HIM off? That was the scene that brought me to tears. What the FUCK do you MEAN the loveable asshole is DEAD? That he got SQUASHED like a BUG by Thordak and joined the Matron's side?

He and Zahra were supposed to have a lovely cameo each season where we got to see their relationship progressing alongside the others! They were meant to end the show happy and healthy, joking with Vex and Vax about how twins run in Zahra's family!

I kinda desperately want Kash to be given a resurrection. Let Vox Machina repay him for his help in bringing Vex back last season! Let Zahra and him build their family together! Let me know some peace!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

A gift horse for @piosplayhouse

[the-force-awakens]

Still not used to this life or death situation stuff. That's good, 'cause I'm not either. You never get used to it.

[tea-cat-arts]

I simply think this fandom doesn't give Wei Wuxian enough credit for the various ways in which he saved Lan Wangji

[asavt]

[ Reflection ] About yourself.

Was listening to Shunkan Sentimental by SCANDAL at like 10 p.m. and stayed up until 4 a.m. to work on this. I didn't finish it right away tho, I still had to sleep.

Two extras below read more!

[blackthornish]

martin short is a legend!!! his performance in episode 2 of s4 is an emmy tape!!!!! he was brilliant!!and the script for this season is amazing!!! they separated the suspects into two episodes, which I found very interesting!! cuz they didn't interact at all and we can't exclude anyone who has appeared so far…. (SPOILERS IN THE TAGS)