#ITS GR8 FOR YOUR MENTAL WELLBEING

[vvardenfellcat]

Periwinkle - Would you consider yourself to be a good parent? what do you think a good parent should be?

The side of the Khajiit’s mouth stretched into a half-frown.

“I’ve never had a kid, and Hist forbid if I ever tried to be a parent to one. Afflictions aside, I live a very risky lifestyle, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon, unless the Thalmor decide to leave me alone. Which is unlikely.” He rubbed his face, pressing his fingertips into his closed eyes until he saw stars.

“A good parent protects their kids without smothering them, and prepares them for the world they’re going to face. A good parent also shows them love and care because gods know there isn’t a lot of that out there.” He peeked between his fingers with a slight scowl.

“Does that answer your question?”

[groundramon]

F, K, M, and V? (shoot i just realized the first three letters)

F - What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom?

Oof, I guess that depends on your definition of a “fandom”?  The OG spyro games were some of if not my very first proper video games that I ever played, but I dont know if I can call myself part of the spyro “fandom”.  Same goes for stuff like Looney Toons, SpongeBob, Tom and Jerry - all cartoons that (at least old episodes, in SpongeBob’s case) I still think are pretty damn good cartoons.  But I feel like Spyro might’ve been before SpongeBob and Tom and Jerry….not sure though (Looney Toons was later) it was a long time ago lol.  But as far as an actual fandom goes, I’d say Pokemon would be my oldest one.

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

OOH this is a good question.  I can think of a couple of my characters that’ve had the most fun development arcs (or…will have) but for fandom characters, hmm…  God I really cant decide, probably someone in ATLA though (although my mind keeps jumping to Digimon Adventure/02 haha) but I’ll go with Aang’s because while his development arc probably isnt my favorite, it’s absolutely one of my favorite to analyze.  We all know how much Zuko’s arc is praised, and rightfully so, but while Zuko’s has a happy ending, Aang’s development is much more tragic and also much more realistic in my opinion.  You kind of have to look into the subtext to see what’s happened to Aang over the course of the series, but once you do it kind of makes the series bittersweet.

Over the course of ATLA, Aang slowly looses his innocence and naivety until he can become the “hero” that the world needs.  His playful nature, his trusting nature - its all slowly whittled down.  Perhaps the saddest thing and most realistic thing about it, though, is that he didn’t immediately loose his playful nature when he lost everything he’s ever known - all air nomads, gone.  No, he was still his usual self after that instance.  But time after time he had to make hard decisions, found out people he trusted stabbed him in the back, had things he loved and cared for ripped away from him.  It all slowly, ever so slowly caught up to him.  I’ve been through a similar thing - one traumatic thing happens, you slowly get worse and worse after that, other bad albeit less bad things happen, and you’re just never the same afterwards.

And some people might call Aang’s character growth “maturing” but…he was 12.  He was literally not even a teenager yet.  Also the way society views “maturing” is synonymous with “shoving your mental wellbeing in a bottle and floating it out at sea because people aren’t capable of being good people” and I hate it.

You know, it’s never surprised me that Aang had problems being a father.  Sure he never had a true “father” in his life because of how the air nomads were raised, but he had way too many other factors working against him.  I really feel like Aang was an extremely emotionally compromised character, even at the end of the series.  Sure he still expressed his feelings at times like when he confessed to Katara, but that’s like saying I’m not a depressed and anxious mess because I vent every other text post I post lol.  (Also, you can say what you want about Katara not letting him do that, but I just feel like it was realistic for AANG to do that, not Katara.  I also don’t think Aang’s favoritism was intentional nor did do any good for Tenzin.  Babying your child and/or expecting perfectionism can go hand in hand with favoritism and I feel like Tenzin was subject to at least one of those if not both.  But like I said, Katara is a completely other story.)

M - Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.

tERRA or Kirishima or Tsuyu. I love them all. we’d all be gr8 friends

V - Which character do you relate to most?

Terra again lol.  I’ve said before that Zuko’s character arc was better than Terra’s despite being fairly similar, but in some ways this actually almost works to Terra’s advantage.  Because her arc is so brief, she holds a lot more moral grayness than Zuko does.  By the end of the show, you know Zuko is a good guy, 100% guaranteed.  But Terra’s is a bit more vague, since it’s abruptly cut short.  Is she sacrificing herself to protect her friends?  To protect the city?  To protect solely beast boy?  Or could it even be…well, something else, I guess you could say?  Is it a spur-of-the-moment decision that, if she had survived somehow, she would’ve gone back on at some point and flipflopped to the bad side again?  There’s a fairly strong indication that she was on the side of good for sure after that, but…you know that stuff doesn’t explain why she’s on the side of good.  She could just have wanted to do it to make it up to her friends and protect said friends, without any concern for “the right thing to do”.  Who knows.  And that’s why I dont like calling myself a terra stan - because saying she never did anything wrong takes away half of why I like her so much.  Having said that, I’ll still shoot Slade with a bazooka for corrupting my child.  *cocks gun*

That doesnt explain why i relate to her tho.  Uh…we’re both insecure bastards.  That’s it.  Also I love her, she’s trying her best