#I refuse to

[grumpyghostdoodles]

So. About to go into surgery, that directly affects my mobility, so no physical way for me to draw. Legit no idea when Ill be back to drawing, could be two weeks, could be a month and a half, it all depends on the outcome and rehabilitation. DO NOT WORRY, I will be fine, this is a long time coming surgery, and it all will turn out fine.

Ill still be around in tumblr, checking my notifications and such, just not able to draw (which is gong to drive me insane, I just know it lmao).

Anyways, Ill be back soon-ish. Cheers! <3<3<3<3

[storybookhawke]

writing a modern au be like: glosses over anders not having a last name

[starsechoes]

gotta be honest i've been really...not ok the last few days. i'm not "getting political" and i get this is a safe space for a lot of people but i'm genuinely disgusted with the country i live in, and what the next couple years might look like. i get a lot of people don't want to engage with it, but remember most of us here in the rp space are either lgbtqia+, poc, or marginalized in some way. try to have patience with us moving forward, and understand a lot of us are grieving.

and, just a blanket statement i guess - if you support and/or voted for t.rump, i want nothing to do with you. exit stage left, and close the door behind you.

i took the day off of work today and i'm just focusing on self care, and rest. i'll be on discord here and there, maybe game a bit, but i'm taking time for myself i appreciate your patience.

[balloonspace]

Hehe sleepy cultists (I haven't sleep at all) also ignore the ibispaint watermark I'm broke

[obliviouskara]

i just saw sabrina carpenter’s new mv for please please please and boy do i have THOUGHTS namely Barry Keoghan makes me think of Kara Danvers with all the muscles. and how about Lena Luthor the rich "spoiled" newly appointed CEO with a scandalous rebellious past who got handed by daddy a multi billion dollar company gets arrested for not being able to handle her liquor and gets to spend the night in jail bc lillian wanted to teach her a lesson meets Kara Danvers and just imagining Kara Danvers be little cute and little psycho and they both spend the night in jail talking (flirting and a little goodbye kiss) and lena luthor cant for the life of her stop thinking about that blonde cutie who likes to smirk a lot and make inappropriate jokes that shouldn’t work but is working for her that makes her legs go weak but is also smart and funny and did she mention how muscular she was. so she visits her. kara spends more days in jail but they never discuss about why Kara in jail. they dont discuss anything personal or lena tries to pry but kara just distracts her by telling her how hot she would look like underneath her but they like to talk to each other constantly. a lot of flirting, a lot of tension and unnecessary eye contact until one day kara danvers gets released earlier than she should have and she's confused bc she knows she doesn't have any lawyers good enough to get her off the hook and she knows there's no way they would release her after all the evidence piled up against her but she is and when she steps out she sees a pink cadillac park & lo behold lena luthor perched on top of the hood like the pocket princess that she is with her pink feather jacket waiting for her handsome beefcake to drive her around town and wreak havoc its like bonnie & clyde but supercorp. yes? yes

[redflagracing]

We’re so back.

New chapter of The Doctor’s Rules ready for you!

[feitan-cl]

Trying to draw fanart of a ship being domestic but now i have to think of what color would their walls be :/

[beeccoe]

Me, Catholic who hates Catholicism: If I don't put fifty references to the bible and religion while they're fucking I will shrivel up on the spot.

[damagecompilation-a]

who do you guys think i'll like in penacony im taking bets

[seyaryminamoto]

Zuko has showed quite the character development over the course of the story. However, I can’t help but wonder if he will fall back into his old ways ? Will he fight Azula over the throne now that things are in a chaotic state?

Hmmm... well, as usual, under the cut because this sounds like very distant and dangerous territory, haha.

You know, I might try to be mysterious all I want but the truth might be a little obvious if you think about the story's direction so far, haha.

So to make this more interesting, let's stroll through the history of Gladiator's development: initially, I had no idea where this story was going past the Combustion Man confrontation. Now that we all saw it happen, I can safely say that my first real goal in the story was always that seemingly world-ending battle between Sokka and Combustion Man, the battle that seals the fate of the Gladiator League and changes the story's rhythm irremediably, for it was always going to happen as a consequence of Sokka and Azula's relationship being discovered. I did hope Sokka might rise enough in the ranking to rival him? But as the story progressed, I realized that was going to be very difficult, no matter how many events and points boots I gave him, haha.

Anyway, I digress: at that stage of building up the story, Zuko became a wild card I had no idea what to do with. For a long time, I wanted him in the South Pole. I thought it could be interesting if he found Aang indeed, but didn't just drag him back to the Fire Nation right away. How to make that happen, how to realistically develop Zuko to not be that impulsive? I didn't know right away (fortunately, my Zuki shipping buddy helped me see the light with that particular problem before long!). I actually pondered making Zuko a gladiator, fighting as the Blue Spirit (a relatively popular concept back when the story was still starting out, people REALLY loved this idea... and the minute I started writing Zuko directly, I realized it was never going to work, haha). I remember that, back when I had no idea what I'd do for the future of the story (aka, Part 3 wasn't even a blip in the radar because I was just LOST in my ultimate narrative direction back in year 1, haha), I even considered Zuko and Aang being the ones fighting Ozai, and Sokka and Azula were basically just together and reuniting? But the thing is that their reunion was going to be different back then, because... shit, this all sounds so ridiculous right now XD but at a point in time, I had in mind that Ozai would basically steal Sokka from Azula and make him his own gladiator (again, something that just made zero sense with Ozai's character). Azula would've been left bereft of what to do, and I even pondered her teaming up with Katara to save Sokka from Ozai while Zuko and Aang basically started a coup... all of which made so very little sense! I had no idea how Azula and Katara would join forces, no idea how Aang and Zuko would get that far, no clue how Sokka and Azula would be "reuniting", considering that Sokka was going to be right in the same Palace as Azula all along?? ... So, uh, yeah. That kind of weird shit went through my head.

Let that be a lesson on NOT sticking with your gut instincts in storytelling every time: marinate your ideas! Test other possibilities! Sometimes you'll strike gold right away... but if you don't, be open to other ideas. If I hadn't been? I would've fucked up this story BIG TIME x'D

So, in all of that, one of the prominent problems was obviously Zuko: wtf was I going to do with this guy if not THAT? I was rewriting his character from scratch and I knew where I'd take him by the end of Part 1, but I wasn't 100% sure of where he would go from there. After my Zuki shipping associate helped me see the light, his story became much stronger once I brought him and Suki together, and the South Pole story also became that much better because them being there would make things much more dynamic for Katara and Aang (and then also for Kino).

But the ultimate direction for Zuko isn't really something my friend could help me with, because even though she sparked the idea of Whaletail Island, I took that to a whole other level once I backtracked on the "and then they sailed away and Katara and Sokka didn't reunite" concept (which, yes, was the original way that arc was going to wrap up X'D again, as a storyteller, it's good to go against your initial impulses at times, it can be soooo much better when you do that...). We always did want Azula and Zuko's relationship to improve... but my friend certainly believed that Zuko would be fighting for the Fire Lord hairpiece and throne quite hard, and I was a little unsure of what to make of that.

Thus, for a long time, after I finally started figuring out Part 3 and how things would turn out by then, I thought I might have to write Zuko and Azula having a huge, long, tedious discussion over which of them would be better suited for the role of Fire Lord, and the decision would have been basically left to other people once they put all they could offer on the table. Back then, the idea that Zuko would have become embittered and frustrated if he lost the throne certainly was prevalent...

... But I'd dare say I'm very pleased to have discarded that concept entirely :'D

Back then, I didn't have the Southern Air Temple arc in mind. That I didn't plot that one from the get-go sure didn't help, either xD so, putting that together with the extended Azula-Zuko bonding in Whaletail Island, adding as well how much more thorough Zuko's growth wound up being all across the story... and we get a Zuko who doesn't believe his entire existence is justified by sitting on that throne.

Gladiator's Zuko has stopped basing his identity on succeeding his father as Fire Lord and proving himself better than the failure Ozai thinks he is. He already proved it plenty as it is: he has a family that loves him, he's part of a community that he earned his place in, friends who cherish him and that he bonded with on his own, even a crazy brother-like bond with a dork like Kino, for whom he's basically a hero (even if Kino doesn't go all the way to hero-worship other than for comedic purposes, the guy can defy Zuko and disagree with him when he wants to...). So, does he need Ozai's approval at this point? Does his identity hinge on it that much? Or on someone else's approval?

Thanks to Guru Pathik's lessons, it really doesn't. After all the self-reflection Zuko did in that arc, this guy has reached the strongest state of balance I have EVER written him in, in ANY storyline. Even my most optimistic Zuko characterizations in canon settings, or even my non-ATLA AUs, are nowhere near as fulfilling, balanced and mature as the current Zuko in Gladiator. This is a guy who finds his mother, she tells him a LOT of wild and disturbing things, and he still manages to keep his center, even as he processes the reality of what had been going on in his life when he was a child and he was too young to pick up on any of it. It's a guy who can love his uncle without forgetting that he has done TERRIBLE THINGS. A guy who, regardless of their many differences, has grown to cherish his sister and truly wants to save her.

So... for him? The throne is not this big prize that justifies his very existence anymore. He knows he's much more than a prospect Fire Lord -- and he knows his sister is much more than that, too. Neither one is going to approach the burden and responsibility of becoming Fire Lord with the same childish attitude as in canon. They've both come way too far to treat it as some competition where they have to constantly measure against each other to prove which sibling is "better". Both have solid things to bring to the table as Fire Lords, and both will have to think about, above all else, if they want to become Fire Lord at all!

So, to answer your question more specifically...

There MAY be a fight. That fight wouldn't be like what we saw in canon. It wouldn't be chaotic, it wouldn't be overly violent, it wouldn't be the ugliest sides of these two characters colliding in a battle of mutual hubris... no, it would be a battle to conform to traditions to determine the fate of the Fire Nation. It would be a battle that truly would show how far they have come, how much they have grown, and how much respect and genuine appreciation they have for each other. Neither one would step into the dueling area under the belief that they must crush/kill/destroy the other.

And that they can do comes as the result of a ton of character growth and development for these two, in which, unbeknownst to them, they have broken the cycle of abuse in their generation, putting an end to the absolutely catastrophic mess the Fire Nation's Royal Family has constantly been engulfed by. That toxicity, as seen frequently in Ozai's flashbacks, finally comes to an end when both Zuko and Azula learn to break free from that ideology, from the terrible weights of expectations of their family, and learn to see the world through much clearer eyes than any of their relatives ever did.

... I hope that's a satisfactory answer :'D

[agayworthfightingfor]

i will not hide anymore

[half-milk-equation]

How did Fall Out Boy write the line "You were the sunshine of my lifetime" and just expected me to be okay with it

[carbkaiju]

Absolutely desperate to look up fanart for this manga Im reading, but knowing I will be bombarded by spoilers if I even sneak a peek.

[hyperfixation-tangentopia]

OKAY NO MORE YT LMK FOR ME NOBODY SPOILER WARNS THERE

I GOT EXACTLY 1 SECOND OF A SCENE BUT I'M NOW OVERTHINKING IT AND AAAA *SCREAMS*

Elaboration in tags so don't read those if you don't want to

[vampiricfoolart]

the army is growing thanks to @eviltendo and thanks again for your gift (*´▽`*)

[orangesunsets12]

You know you have long hair when a little kid tells you that you need a haircut 😭😂.