#a high five

[cha1cedony]

Okay fine I’ll do one of these (because I like to talk about myself hehehe). Thanks @roboobin for tagging me B)

A very long ‘get to know me’ post below…

Last song: Apparently it was ‘Two Time’ - Jack Stauber, according to Spotify? I’ve also been relistening to a few tracks from Falsettos all day, for some reason. ‘I’m Breaking Down’ got stuck in my head somehow. I’m not super big on musical theater, but I LOOOOVE Falsettos and especially Trina :) You can probably tell I have a certain type of favorite characters/media lol.

Favorite color: Light greyish blue (or white, grey, silver, orrrr light greyish green?)

Last movie: I actually have no idea. Maybe Nimona with my IRLs a few months ago? I almost NEVER watch movies in full because I get bored of them easily. Sorry I know that’s so lame lololol

Currently watching: A commentary YouTube video to use as background noise while I do my writing assignments lol. Like I said, I don’t really watch a lot of movies or TV :/

Currently reading: Nothing, unfortunately! I haven’t read any books/stories in an embarrassingly long time :( I am so ridiculously busy and haven’t had the time/motivation to read and get invested in new characters. I have a bunch of series I want to reread for nostalgia purposes, though. I’m also strangely tempted to read the Animorphs series? LOL. I looked it up on AO3 for the first time a few months ago while in the kids’ section of the library with my IRLS and we were assessing the popularity of kids’ books based on the amount of AO3/Wattpad fics (btw, there are a shockingly low amount of Geronimo Stilton fics in the world). I wasn’t expecting there to be an Animorphs fandom, but there IS? And the fics are really GOOD even though I don’t know the source material? Anyway. Tempted to read it because I like putting teens in situations /lh. Also I want to read more short stories! Send me recommendations, if you have any.

Last thing I googled: This is so embarrassing. ‘Bathroom cruising’ LMAOOOO. I was just writing a funny bit, but I wanted to make sure it was accurate, okay? T_T Other recent searches include my voice lesson Lieder, various areas I’ve felt pain recently (because I’m a hypochondriac /lh), and a vlog I had to watch for my job… I was writing an article about it.

Sweet/spicy/savory: Savory. Every time. I love savory foods, and they’re basically the only types of food I ever crave. Then I would go with spicy, but only if it’s spicy in a flavorful way (and not just a painful way). I don’t like sweet foods except for chocolate—and, even then, I am infamous among my friends and acquaintances for only liking SUPER dark chocolate… like 70% cocoa or more. I would say my favorite flavor profile is bitter! :)

Current obsession: I think y’all already know :^) I am incapable of having more than one strong interest at once, soooo DnDads has quite literally been occupying my brain since liiiike October 2022… almost a year ago now! o_o Holy shit. I’ve been really busy with work and school in the past month or so, so I haven’t done basically anything else in my free time. I’d like to start cross stitching again because I have some projects to finish, and I got some of my late grandmother’s jewelry-making supplies recently, so I’ll toy around with that, too.

Currently working on: Like, right this second? Discussion post replies for my Writing in Digital Environments course :p In general? As far as hobbies go, the beginnings of my next longfic chapter! As far as work goes, I’m working on article about a mural. I have to drive like 30 mins to get a features image for it tomorrow ugh. At least I get to kill time on the clock :’)

I don’t want to tag anyone in particular, but, obviously, if you want to do this, you can just say I tagged you. Shhh I won’t tell ;) hehehe

[ghastlyvampire]

Mutuals I hope you know I'm walking around the office (following feed) and giving everyone a pack of fresh warm blood (because I know you're all vampires too) and a silly little doodle to go with it. Am also accidentally infodumping about fictional gay people as I do it, sorry!!

[puppyeared]

filipina miku!! my mom helped me with her outfit ^_^

[porcelain-rob0t]

the psychological damage that comes from fumbling a trans girl

[saixria]

Lil comic of Athena ody reunion :3

In light of recent updates, I am EVEN MORE HYPED for their Ithaca saga reunion

[chonkadonk]

fnaf fans is it over for us all

[muffinlance]

Hi ! prompt idea : What if Zuko was armed during the first episode and was stranded with the water tribe while the avatar left with Katara and Sokka, Iroh on his trail for white lotus reasons.

Oh we are going to have us some FUN with "stranded with the water tribe", say no more.

---

Zuko was dripping, and steaming, and staring down two dozen women and their gaggle of small children, plus that old not-the-Avatar crone from earlier. They were all cowering away from him. Which was--

Good. It was good. If they were cowering, then they hadn’t noticed how steam was not flames. He wasn’t sure he could make flames, not after the arctic water he’d landed in, with that last sight of the Avatar glowing; not after surfacing under the ice pack, after swimming, after kicking slamming breaking through and his ship was gone and there was only ocean all around and

and he’d made it back to this pathetic little camp of the Southern Water Tribe, because that was the only place he knew for sure would have shelter, and he wasn’t going to die just because they were all staring at him, even if felt like he would.

Even if the old not-the-Avatar woman could probably take him, right now. But she didn’t know that.

Zuko pulled himself up, taller than her by at least a few inches, and blew steam from his nose.

“I am commandeering one of your huts,” he said. And added, because Uncle said even a prince should be gracious: “You may choose which one.”

---

She choose her own.

...The only one without children that flames might scar, or younger women to catch a soldier’s interests.

Zuko sat by her fire and determinedly started struggling out of his wet clothes and she was still in here with him--

Zuko pulled one of her animal pelts over himself, and finished fighting off his clothes. When he stuck his head back out, cheeks still reddened from what was obviously the cold, she dropped a parka on his head.

“Dry clothes, Your Highness,” she said.

The parka was much bigger than he was. He fell asleep hoping that the camp’s men were on a long, long hunting trip.

---

He woke up again. Kanna tucked her favorite ulu knife away, newly sharpened, and stopped contemplating the alternative.

---

“I am commandeering a ship,” he said.

The crone led him across the village, all twenty paces of it, to a row of canoes.

“Take whichever one you want,” she said. “Will you need help getting it to the water?”

Zuko looked at the canoes. Looked at the ocean. Watched a leopard seal, easily the size of the largest canoe, dozing just past the ice his own ship had broken through the day before. It was frozen again, a great icy arrow pointing from the waves to the village, snow already starting to cover it over.

Beyond was blue sky and gray ocean and white ice, floating in blocks like stepping stones, like boulders, like cliffsides.

There wasn’t even a hint of gray steel, or smoke. Or any land, besides what they were standing on.

He looked down at the canoes again. Somehow, they seemed even smaller.

“I, uh,” Zuko cleared his throat. “I’ll require supplies. Before I go.”

---

They... did not have supplies. Not extra ones. This didn’t stop them from trying to give him supplies, food and blankets and anything else he could think to ask for. But each blanket was a pelt hunted by someone’s grandfather, had been inked with images and stories by someone’s mother, was the favorite of someone’s husband or brother or uncle or cousin--

They couldn’t go to the nearest market to replace things, here.

And when they talked about food, about what they could spare, they kept sneaking glances to their children, who were sneaking glances at Zuko from the huts, sticking their heads just over the snowy ledges like their fur-trimmed hoods would hide them. Their mothers and aunts shooed them away, and they crept back, like barnacle-crabs. Zuko glared, and they disappeared.

“When are your men coming back?” he asked. “They’re hunting, aren’t they?”

Oh. So that was what they looked like, when they weren’t trying to hide their hate.

---

Zuko wrapped himself up in the same blanket that night. It was printed inside with fine lines and images, telling a story he didn’t know. He wondered whose favorite it was.

---

Kanna wondered how quickly he’d wake—if he’d wake—if she built the fire up with wet driftwood and tundra grass, if she had one of the younger girls boost up a child to plug the air hole, if she let the smoke draw its own blanket down over this fire child.

---

It was hard to know when to wake up, because the sun never set. So everyone was up before him, and they all had spears and clubs and—and nets, and trap lines, and snow googles with their single slat to protect the eyes from snow blindness. Zuko had seen those once, at the Ember Island Museum of Ethnography, where they’d gone when it was too rainy for anything more exciting.

Oh. They were going hunting.

“Give me that,” Zuko said, and took a spear.

The women looked at him. One of them adjusted her googles.

“I can hunt,” he scowled.

He did not, in fact, know how to hunt.

---

“Give me that,” the Fire Prince said, and Kanna almost, almost gave him her ulu. Humans, like most animals, had an artery in their legs that would bleed them quick enough.

She kept skinning the rabbit-mink one of the women had snared.

“I can help,” he said, with less grace than most of their toddlers. Likely with the skinning skills of a toddler, too. She wasn’t going to let their unwanted visitor ruin a perfectly good pelt.

“Chop the meat,” she said, and gave him a different knife. “It’s dinner.”

“...This is really sharp,” he said a moment later, looking at the knife with some surprise.

“Is it,” said Kanna.

---

Things the Fire Prince was convinced he could do: hunt (until he realized he couldn’t tell the tracks of a rabbit-mink from a leopard-rabbit apart); spear fish (at least he could dry himself); pack snow for an igloo (frustrated princes ran hot); ice fish (the prince was a problem that kept coming close to solving itself).

Things the Fire Prince could actually do: mince meat, increasingly finely; gather berries and herbs, once he stopped trying to crush them; dig roots, under toddler supervision; mend nets, after the intermediary step of learning to braid hair loopies.

“Can’t I take him ice fishing again?” asked one of the women, as she watched Prince Zuko put as much apparent concentration into braiding her daughter’s hair as his people had into exterminating hers.

“Wait,” said another woman, sitting up straight. “Wait wait wait. I just had an idea.”

---

Three words: Infinite. Hot. Water.

---

Summer was coming to an end. The sun actually set, now, and the night was getting longer, and colder. The salmon-otter nets were mended and ready. The smoking racks were still full of cod-lemmings. The children were all a little older, the women all a little more used to doing both halves of their tribes’ chores; a little more used to not watching the horizon, waiting for help to come.

The Fire Prince was staring at the canoes again.

“Are you actually going to try leaving in one of those?” Kanna asked.

“...No.”

“Come on, then; someone needs to watch the kids while the women are hunting.”

She didn’t leave him alone with them, of course. But she could have.

---

Elsewhere, the war continued.

The moon turned red, for a moment none could sleep through; they did not learn why.

The comet came and went, leaving their castaway prince laying on the beach, his breath fogging up into the night sky above him, as the energy crashed from his system as quickly as it had come. Above, lights began to dance in the sky; Zuko pulled his hood up, so none of those spirits—children, dead too soon—got any ideas about kicking his head off to be their ball.

The war had ended. The world didn’t feel any different; no one in the south would know until spring came again.

---

Suffice it to say, Sokka and Katara were not prepared for this particular homecoming.

[frogloinz]

FNAF fanart in 2023? more likely than you think. 13 year old me would be very pleased with this development.

(I need him)

[chloesimaginationthings]

Michael Afton rating his FNAF animatronics,,

[vitreouspositive]

THE FISTBUMP STILL LIVES!!! but through... exchanging blows...

[burgersdayoff]

we did it guys we solved fandom racism

[ciralincixx]

i am right

[abysshare]

This is your sign to make an OC by the way.

"Its a mary sue" i Don't Care, Make it.

"I Feel cringy" cringe can be cool too btw. Reclaim cringe. Have fun with it.

"I don't know the lore at all / very well" thats okay !!!!

"It doesn't fit the lore" so? Maybe that can be a new story/plotline

"My OC is my Self insert" HELL YEAH!!!

"My OC is not a Self Insert" HELL YEAH !!!

"I don't know where to start" Picrews, dress up games, etc help me as a base. Its okay to take your time and change the design one to multiple times

"I don't know how to draw/write" its fun, you don't have to know everything i promise. Draw a stick figure. Write a few sentences or a quote.

"I'm afraid of people making fun of me" that is very fair and very valid but please do not let other people control you. Life is short, make something out of it.

"My OC is LGBTQIA+/MOGAI/POC/Disabled/Neurodivergent/Fat/etc" FUCK YEAH??? I LOVE YOU /friendly

"My OC is a Kinsona/Furrysona/TherianSona/Systemsona/Charactersona" THOSE ARE SO COOL AND I WISH TO SEE MORE!!!

"I built an entire AU / original universe with my OCs" you're gonna go places i promise /pos

[aro-aceattorney]

i have not stopped thinking about this moment for a week

[withwordsasweapons]

how it feels to be in your 20s with the same interests you had when you were 10

[captainjonnitkessler]

I truly, TRULY do not know how to say this, because the fact that I have to say it makes me feel like I am losing my grip on reality. But no, in the post-capitalistic anarchist utopia, I will not be relying on “autistic minecraft girlies” to be building inspectors because - and this may shock you - one of those occupations takes years of education in how to read and interpret hundreds of thousands of lines of regulations based on complicated math and physics that were the result of decades of tragedy and death, and the other one involves playing a children’s video game.