#but my post literally didnt encourage that energy at all and yet i get it. and i expect that only on twt but i didnt want to think it would

[icicleteeth]

Idk man im not being a hater and i genuinely have liked the site a lot and have used it for a while, but im starting to worry (especially with the very recent mass exodus from twitter) that bsky is going to turn into twitter 2 and it might already have… Like i’m lately getting contrarian unpleasant replies from complete strangers on my innocuous ramble posts like maybe it’s just a fluke but im starting to not feel comfy being chatty there tbh!

[fanguuuhhhrl]

Im kinda obsessed with I-Land right now. I love 23 boys and if possible i would like them all to debut but the elimination is in 30 minutes so im going to post my top 12 picks before it airs (kind of in order, kind of not, im biased, this is based on an unsure mixture of skill and personality, could change but most likely not):

1. Sunoo- BITCH!!! WTH!!! I JUST LOOK AT HIM AND MY SEROTONIN LEVELS BURST THROUGH THE ROOF!! He is a puppy!! He is amazing. If you didnt know anyone yet and you put all 23 boys in a line up. He will draw your attention with his sunshine smile :)))) he is so heartwarming. Most people be like "i have no filter" but they just be mean, but this guy is different, he literally has no ability to hide what he thinks but it never comes off as anything negative. He says "Me! I can do it!" but it's just endearing and never comes across as trying to show off. He says "there was a little bit of friction" and when the members look at himshocked, he looks at them shocked too.... theres no dull moment when he's in frame. It's so amazing how pure a person can be. But know that i am not just rooting for personality but for talent. his voice... His Voice!!! Vocally geonu and heeseung really slayed the butterfly performance but if you ask me, "save me" had a more emotional attack. His facial expression is just brimming of feelings. His voice is so raw. Also You know that part in save me where he transitions from head voice into chest voice really smooth??? You'll know what im saying if you see it. thats so fucking satisfying that i had to replay it so much. I definitely replayed the save me performance more times honeslty. And the way he dances!!! It might not be That refined yet but that's the charm... it's so raw and full of emotions... so like him. I can see myself stanning this group long term if he debuts with them.

2. Jungwon- tf i love this boy so much. his visuals already stood out to me when they were entering i-land, then his voice stood out to me in the first challenge... he did that hard ass choreography without any audible changes to his voice that i had to rewind that multiple times (more than the editor already did) then the moment i saw him dance the center in episode 4??? BOY???? BOY!!!! that was my breaking point... i can't believe im saying this about men but i already knew i would die for him... plus he is so sweet :((( his eyes are just so naturally cute but i was so shocked in the last challenge when he was able to pull off that fierce ass look.... i am devastated... im about the same age but my parental instincts are at work here. plus SPOILER ALERT to those who plan to watch he won first place in both the first and last challenge can everybody say jungwon ace

3. Geonu- my feelings for him are much like jungwon :((( except theres more parental instincts... and i say this despite being younger than him but whatever age is just a vibe... HE IS SO LIDDOL :((( i want to be his mom :(( at first, personality wise, it's hard to notice him bc he's a little calm and laidback... but its the little things that draw you to him :((( his glasses and hoodies just seem a little bit big on him and that just makes me smile for some reason... he cries silently when people are sent to the ground and he gets along well with the people... i noticed him first together with jungwon in the first i land challenge because they had the most stable performance. but i've never been more attached to him than when he sang butterfly (favorite bts song anyone??)... i honestly thought they could debut then and there and i wouldnt bat an eye... also it's so funny that the one thing i identified him with during the early episodes was the fact that whenever the camera pans to him, he just has the dead eye stare and parted lips (think: pokerface but confused) especially with the huge ass glasses but in the end the poker face thing that stuck to me became the thing that worked against him i cri

4. Jay- hold on folks this is going to be a long one. Jay has such a powerful personality that at first made me hesitant about liking him... idk he just seemed like the guy i would not vibe with in real life, but the longer time passed, the more he became one of my favorites and i root for him now like crazy. at first it was funny when they kept rejecting him for the vocal parts, but the more it went on, i was so sure that if it was me, i would have cried and dropped then and there, but it was so amazing watching him push through that and he didnt even lie about how he felt. his unique determination is such a breath of fresh air, a little heartwarming and oh so inspiring. i honestly learned a lot from just watching him. the time he went to the ground was so crucial to his development as a person, leader and performer. it was so mindblowing when he became the leader at the ground and even adapted heeseung's teaching methods. you know that meme "improvise, adapt, overcome?" he is the exact personification of that. what i loved about him the most is that even with his steely determination, he didnt enforce or project that on the other grounders, he just shared it with them. he understands when they need rest, encouragement or massages. he was such a caring leader. Skill wise- i can't say anything. He already proved himself so many times. Great dancer and potential vocalist. The mnet specials also show how much sweeter he is than the show shows him to be. He takes care of everyone, and has more of mother duck than street gang vibes (and he knows how to cook!!). And at the end, while he seems to be mostly self- oriented about debuting, he ends up spending most of his time teaching others and helping them improve. I just love him. Debut Jay 2k20!!!

5. Sunghoon- tf this guy is so cool and laidback that i didnt even pay much attention to him during the early parts but he just keeps crawling into my heart because so many members love him so damn much??? and he just goes along with them?? they want me to do triple axel while average people can't even do a single axel on a trampoline?? ok imma give them a double axel tho. jake is challenging me to arm flexing? yeah why not? k wants me to dance?? yeah lemme just spin 50 times. jay wants to shower together?? weird but im not strongly against the idea. ej wants to scare people? count me in. someone needs a hand to hold?? ok here's my warm hand to the rescue... everyone just wants to be his friend that he birthed my favorite sunoo scene "im cuter than him [jake]" and he was just like "yeah ok i guess so" sksjsk sunoo is that how you ask someone to be your friend jshdk??? and can i just say? as a figure skating fan, he has automatic +52536 points... and when the judges said he's the most natural performer out of them??? i vibed with that hard.. he dances well so naturally and he takes your attention without even seeming like he's trying to. that dance performance with k and jungwon?? i thought at first that his energy wouldnt catch up but damn boy my eyes were just trackingnhim the entire time unintentionallu that i had to rewind and he was just as great as all of them... with the additional benefit of being a stunt boy!! and though it might seem effortless, we saw that he practiced so hard for it. overall a 100/100 boy with a naturally charismatic personality that bleeds into his performance... as a fellow 02 liner i would also like to apply as his bestfriend thank you

6. Heesung- what can i say except he's a perfect boy ok thats it why are you still reading... jk... ok lets talk about him... skill wise?? I cried during the butterfly performance. i marvel at his vocal stability. his voice is so crystal clear. his dancing is so clean. his skills are superb but most of all, theyre already so refined. there's nothing more i could ask for. personaloty wise... i also have a lot to say... despite his celebrity status, it's awesome how he can make the other trainees comfortable with him. he's kind and soft and lovely.

but because i am me, i have to overanalyze people so idk skip this if you dont like that. for someone who's experienced being an academic achiever... i sure do vibe with his personality a lot... you know when there's a group activity and you're so sure you can lead it well but you don't want to? half because you dont want to come off as a show off and half bc you genuinely still have self-doubts, and you're scared of falling short of expectations. Also, you feel that if it all fails, you'll be responsible so you have to feel that everyone approves you before you can take leadership and show your entire thing. And the moment you feel validated and take the reins, you start unconsciously projecting your perfectionist attitude on people??? yeah... i love that despite being an almost perfect person he still has issues most people can find relatable and that, in addition to the talent makes me want to root from him. (im also going to take a stab and guess that his mbti is probs ixxp) i'll be honest tho, because its like 100 percent sure now that he'll debut, im not super attached to him??? i love him tho but he's just not in any danger so i can just let my support for him chill. i think amidst this, bc most of the trainees depend a lot on him, i mostly hope for him to take care of his mental health

7. Daniel- awww danielll... i went into i-land not knowing anyone's ages so i had a brief whiplash feeling when someone said daniel is 15... it's because he's so emotionally mature?? like he's such a supportive and caring person that it barely struck me the that he might be the youngest?? he already caught my attention when they performed "any song" bc they just seemed like they were having fun and doing their best without the pressure of whether they would win ir not, and for me that attitude is something you'd see from more experienced performers. and during the second ep when he just felt the need to comfort everyone bc he's got such a high score?? i loved that an i was so bummed out when they eliminated him. the save me performance was definitely a cherry on top that i just had to love him more than i already do... he may be young but he's as ready to debut as everyone else.

8. Jake- jake is just one of the people who showcased so much growth between ep 1 and ep 2. he already had the right attitude when they performed crown and he just had to improve skills and stage presence, and improved he did. despite being one of the trainees with the shortest training time, he was the one teaching the others by the end it just supports my theory that he might have been an ace as well if he just had the same amount of training as everyone else. im also truly in love with his mischievous antics. he seemed like an introvert to me at first but he came out of his shell and i love that. also i just crave more moments of him and sunghoon's friendship (they both seemed like introverts who found someone they could be extroverts with in each other) i am 👌this close to storming i land and demand that they let me join their merry little band of 2002 children

9. Niki- dance skills= 100 he's just so good it's unreal... it's insane... everytime he's on screen i hear boss musicand i cant even imagine him being younger than anyone, let alone taki. i get why some people dislike him but honestly i think it's just because they don't see him as a child... but he is. i was honestly a bit mad for him when they kept guilt tripping him into leading all of them, and i understood his tjought process when he thought he just kept failing everyone and when he thought things just kept backfiring on him. he is held on such a high pedestal and i dont think he deserves that kind of burden. as for me, it would just be a waste of talent to let him go. his attitude could still improve, as we'd seen when he eventually volunteered to help everyone. i also felt bad when he said that he's scared he might not be voted bc some people dont base on skills and i love him and i just want him to kmow that he's loved

10. Taki- what the hell can i even say?? he's the kindest softest boy ever. he tries to see the good in people and is very hardworking... he listens to people well and actually follow them, so he improves a lot... he knows people think he's cute and he tries and tries and tries to look fierce if the song calls for it... he is amazing

11. K- i really can't say anything, he really stands out during performances. also very pro at dancing. his choreography??? *chef's kiss* and i think the younger trainees depend a lot on him, besides heesung and so he's good at keeping the team together.

12. EJ- im really hesitant about the last person to be the twelfth i lander because it could almost be anyone and i wouldnt be too bummed out bc theyre almost all equally talented... the thing with ej tho is he already gets along well with the i landers and has harmony with other members. (plus see above: im a sucker for the 2002 line) i think its a tiny bit unfair to base it on this bc the others didnt even get a chance to show what they can bring to the group so im torn.

bonus: i wouldnt feel too bad if it were jaebeom (he has great voice, the producers think he's not too stand out bc he's weak at dance, but the i land is already so full of people whose expertise is dancing, so i think there should be someone who's specialty is singing), kyungmin (i really appreciated how hard he worked during the last test and it actually paid off, i honestly noticed him there even if he was always at the back. i also loved his determination and i was so touched when he and jaebeom were talking and he said "there's really nothing to do but believe in the impossible right?" it's just that the i landers were already ahead of him in terms of skills so he failed the votings) and hanbin (i've watched his cover videos and he's really good at dancing and stage projection. like i was honestly wondering why it wasnt showing in the performances :((( and he hadnt even had too much screentime to actually See what he's capable of.

[shidiand]

How do you imagine Tenco's Story ending in your head?

that is a GREAT but UNEXPECTED QUESTION freshlybaked "spider" bread and i'm really happy to have the opportunity to try and answer this ageless question that has burned within all of us in the tenco's story iv waiting room community since 2013. it is an incredible coincidence (or is it? 👀) that i was just talking to Risa about tenco's this (edit: yesterday) morning so i am extra double super in the mood to talk about Tenco's Story today. so excellent of a coincidence is this that i am tempted to refer you to them in case you wanted to hear their thoughts on the matter that would probably turn out super cool, but that is neither here nor there; let us talk Tenco's Story.

i of course must mention my unadvertised and modestly detailed commentary on tenco's i-iii at https://shidiand.tumblr.com/tencos, presenting slightly interesting facts in an unwieldy and difficult-to-use format, but as it dates back to june 2017, i want to take some time to understand my feelings about the series once more.

tenco's story is a series that has a lot of meaning to me.

i took on my current name of shidiand in november of 2013. i was still in 11th grade at the time, 4th year of high school, and a very socially isolated person. i should say i was introduced to touhou in 7th grade, 2010, so i was still working through a 3 years-strong phase of trying to simultaneously both find an outlet for and bottle up an endless wellspring of awkward weeaboo-gamer nerd energy at the time.

i had my first real foray onto the internet in 2010, tried out twitter, followed some RPers and other people who had Cool Touhou Usernames. didn't really go anywhere. i had maybe 50 followers, i dont really know the count but it was definitely a) double digits and b) pretty low. didn't know what to tweet about. didn't know how to hit it off with others. i think there was basically maybe only 3 other people i ever properly interacted with. oh shit i was playing league of legends at the time. oh my god. i really did play league of .. oh my god. let's move on.

aw shit im super digressing amn't i. well.

this is just how it goes when i write essays on tumblr.com.

i'm afraid you're just along for the ride at this point so please do your best to enjoy it.

i got kind of tired of twitter at the time because i didnt know what to do with it. didnt know how to interact with people and didnt find the people i was following interesting, so i ghosted on out of there by the end of 2012. didnt deactivate it until like 2015 but at that point that was just burning away my dark history. anyways. november 2013.

--im taking a lot of time here trawling through old files on my computer, my tumblr blog, notification emails still lying around in my gmail inbox from twitter, the dropbox i didn't actually use but it had several tenco's story pictures on it but i deleted them so this was useless, ... to trace the timeline of this story and im really seeing a lot of remnants of dark history here you know? did you know i wrote a letter to a girl i had a crush on valentine's day 2014, slipped it into her locker, and anxiously hung around nearby at lunchtime to see how she reacted at lunchtime? i certainly didn't, or at least i made darn ass sure to forget about this incredible virgin incident and not remember it, ever, until i came across the records of it that i thoughtfully preserved for the me of 5 years later today. ok well now i have to read the letter to see if it was as bad as it just sounded there brb

ok so the good news is that it was actually very focused on being positive and full of admiration for the cool things she did instead of being a confession letter so i am very glad i was able to be a respectful chad 5 years ago, but the bad news is that the jokes, the actual sentences i put together. oh my god. but i mean. well. at least i got the spirit. its certainly a step up from this other person in my grade, WEEABOO ANDREW, YOU MAY RECALL THIS STORY AND HIS NAME FROM PREVIOUS STORYTIMES, THE MAN THE MYTH THE LEGEND who came to school on halloween once cosplaying kirito from sword art online and got very possessive about people asking if they could hold his black replica plastic sword, and probably worse, dropped a "will you be my girlfriend" letter into the locker of my homie and fellow trombonist samantha, who was a little bit nerdy, hung out with the anime-likers who were actually sociable and fun to be around so you can imagine why weeaboo andrew was into her, which had i) a direct quotation from SAO chapter 16.5 (origin of the famous "glopping noise" line), and ii) a condom. jesus christ. i dont want to talk about this any more. next topic.

i also put this drawing of iku nagae and her skarmory (actually an albinoss from 18 DRAGONS) on the other side of the letter because it was the coolest thing i could think of drawing at the time. and i completely agree with 2014 me because it IS super fucking cool. hell fuckin yeah

https://shidiand.tumblr.com/post/76301993387/iku-nagae-ft-that-thing-that-supposedly-is-a

alright that was a fun little trip down memory lane but lets get back on track. november 2013. i started anew as shidiand. still awkward, still learning how to express myself and looking for my place among others. i followed some touhou bloggers, hung around r/touhou a lot as well. in december i got my first tablet for christmas, a wacom bamboo splash. i still use this thing! the usb cable disconnects if you bump it so i have to find just the perfect position to sit in whenever i want to draw, but its served me well. anyways. i was just starting to play around with digital art but i remember, probably just before new years, for some reason i wanted to find out more about tenshi hinanawi (i don't remember why. tenshi wasn't even one of my favourite characters at the time) so i went googling and right there on zerochan i found this:

https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=23525572

this was during my dark souls phase so i just went BANANAS at the sight of this. this was literally the coolest image i had ever seen in my internet life. That image alone made me want to draw in hopes that I could make something as cool as that someday.

it wasn't immediately after but i soon discovered tenco's story, and it was love. kannnu was my very first artistic inspiration, and for a long time, my only one. i absolutely idolized them at the time. since then, ive found other artists to look up to, in a more healthy manner, but to this day i still look up to kannnu, still admire their work a lot.

i played around with drawing, followed the lives of people on tumblr, started reading touhou fanfiction, made a new twitter. i met a lot of new people along the way. some people i havent stuck with, some i cut ties with, and some people i still keep in contact with today. over those long 5 years of being shidiand, i found a name (i used to use shidian and then shid, but someone called me shidi once and i realized that was a lot better), how to reach out to others, how to express myself, places that i could feel included in. this is why i owe a blood debt to evelyn, who permitted me to kneel at her throne and was like "yea ok you can join my discord server u seem cool". evelyn, if you were confused by me ominously mentioning this blood debt/blood oath in a tumblr reply 1-2 years ago, this is the context. those 5 years were like a coming of age of sorts, that i never had when i was in high school.

and my love for tenco's story, that inspired me to draw that day, has been with me since almost the very beginning of my time as shidiand. from the beginning, i have always encouraged people to READ TENCO'S STORY, like the kin of those who cry PLAY MELTY or WATCH SYMPHOGEAR. i think my very first sidebar description was something akin to a prayer, written in very choral language, hoping for the day tenco's story iv was completed, ..., "meanwhile, furious shitposting". kannnu's work, finding delight in whatever they chose to draw, has been at my side, all along. my true mentor, my guiding moonlight...

so that's why i still to this day love tenco's story so much.

let's talk about tenco's story.

tenco's story is a story told through single pictures. the plot is vague, and details are sparse. dialogue is rare. we only know what has happened; we seldom know why. furthermore, there are many gaps between scenes that the reader is left to fill in for themselves; we see only snapshots that form an hazy outline of the events that occurred, and must imagine the rest. motivations and explanations fail me. but even with a barebones plot, tenco's story has themes, and if nothing else, those have to be carried through.

the main theme, of course, is journey and travel, but there are also other ideas, too. i actually think they start to change as the series goes on:

book i, where tenshi runs away from home, is about striking out on your own. it's a very fun and unpredictable journey, together with a friend.

book ii, where tenshi and iku are separated, forces tenshi to find and rely on companions of her own even more. but they do so, and they are able overcome hardships, and there is food and festival.

book iii marks a climax, reasserting tenshi's goal of finding the sword of hisou. i feel like the journey shifts from a travel (visiting) to a path forwards (making your way through). perhaps this is just something i get from knowing the locations from dark souls (Anor Londo, New Londo Ruins, the Great Hollow), but the locations start to give more of a sense of verticality, like they're emphasizing tenshi's climb to the summit. the hardships and enemies are the greatest they've been yet, and right when they near the top, tenshi and iku start to bleed. the book ends on an uncertain note.

if i had to describe the type of journey and travel that tenshi and iku undertake, there's this sense of wonder at discovering new places, wandering from vista to vista in delight, but also a sense of conquering, making it through a difficult patch. the sequence from pages 2-44 to 2-51, taken together, convey this sense of overcoming the best. it's one of my favourite parts. again, although the tone definitely starts to lean towards struggle in book iii, i think tenco's sense of wonder really is the heart of the series. there's no map of the world, no predicting where tenshi and iku will end up next. and through their travels, though they come across many enemies, they also find friends -- places of refuge, places full of life, people who will look after them for a few days, companions who will stay with them for the rest of the journey. at the end of book iii, we see a long haired tenshi with purple hair being impaled by the sword of hisou (3-33, see also this extra illustration that risa pointed out to me http://sinnnkai.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-195.html), and regular short haired tenshi continuing on her journey (3-42). if we ignore the out-of-story images where tenshi has the sword of hisou, tenshi has actually only ever used her sunlight blade (2-24, 3-26, etc), so i think that the long haired tenshi on 3-33 is a different person altogether. (if i had to guess, she might be the purple haired woman in the top left of https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=35443328 as we have never seen that woman appear anywhere.) she probably has something to do with the flashbacks at the end of book ii and she might somehow be short-haired tenshi at the same time, but this is just speculation.

however, in 3-43, tenshi's hair is rather blue, so i don't know if this is the purple haired woman or not. if it is, tenshi is probably still fine and closing in on the summit, but if it isn't, then it's very worrying to see a picture of tenshi without any of her companions. it's very ominous.

meanwhile, iku, while climbing the red carpeted corridor, is stabbed, and disappears for a few pages. there's a black page, a shot of a shrine that strongly resembles the hakurei shrine, and a picture of iku standing behind someone in a tux, with the line "In the past, I was saved by the lady I was serving, you see?". and then iku wakes up in a field of flowers.

i think what this scene makes clear is a theme that has continued to appear and reappear throughout every book of "being saved, being aided by someone's kindness".

i think another theme that is implied and has to be addressed by this story of running away from home is "return". something im imagining is that the reason tenshi makes finding the sword of hisou her goal is because she wants to have something to prove herself with, to vindicate her when she comes home. but i don't think she needs to prove anything, and i ultimately think that she would be happier spending the rest of her life exploring.

so i think this should be what happens in the ending.

open on iku's journey, and give her a long sequence of travel without seeing tenshi. underline her newfound resolve. she climbs to the summit with albinoss, and finds the rest of tenshi's companions fallen. and in the last room is sword of hisou tenshi, who has lost herself, and it comes down to iku to bring her back. after a difficult battle, when both of them are on their last legs, iku is unable to stand any longer. but at this moment tenshi sees her companions struggling to get back up and reach her, and that's what brings her to her senses. and iku gets to see how many friends tenshi's been able to make on her own, and they finally and properly reunite. together, tenshi and iku carry each other out of the last room.

i don't think it's necessary to return to heaven. as a conclusion, dedicate some time to tenshi and iku travelling together. they're on their way back, revisiting old friends who helped them along the way, enjoying the journey. their last stop is the house of the elderly nawis (1-42). tenshi shows off the sword of hisou; she decided to keep it not as a trophy to show her family but as proof of the bonds of her companions. surrounded by friends, tenshi and iku decide to part ways with each other, knowing that the other will be alright. iku drifts among the clouds once more, and tenshi sets off for the horizon.

that's the plot that i'd write/just wrote. i don't really expect tenco's story iv to ever come out, though. i mentioned my first sidebar description earlier in this essay, but of course, you can see that it's been changed. 2 years ago, i read my hopeful prayer once more and was struck with a terrible melancholy, so now it reads this: "having come to terms with the fact that tenco's story iv will never be released, i can still live, knowing that the spirit of the journey will live on through kannnu's original works [...] meanwhile, furious shitposting".

on one level, tenco's story is a story, but in the process of following it, i came to think of the work itself as a journey too. you can constantly see kannnu's improvement between and even within each book. they have always drawn whatever they liked; what plot matters in the face of "I wanted to draw a beautiful sky." "I wanted to draw a fantastic battle." "I wanted to draw Dark Souls and Monster Hunter and Pokemon and Brave Fencer Musashi and Bokura no Taiyou and Touhou."

its not really kannnu's style to go back and tie up old ends. they just draw whatever makes them happy. so as i watch them continue to draw beautiful places and fantastic creatures, new characters heading out on journeys of their own or just enjoying their everyday lives, it's as if tenco's story never ended. the limits and consistency of that world ignored, and a new one springs up; in a way, the world of tenco's, which had such thin boundaries, just gets bigger.

but even so, having said all that, i still see them draw that short-haired tenshi from time to time. it makes me happy to see them remember tenco's story with such fondness. often crossing over with orion or roar or elweiss, you can see tenshi on another journey.

[meggannn]

(based on your previous ask) do you mind if I ask how you feel about lok? is there a general consensus if it's good or bad? youre really insightful and just wanted to know if there were any major issues you had with it

yeah sure, i’ll do my best. if you want a quick answer to your question, here is a link to some of my other korra posts where i say pretty much the same thing as i do here, just in fewer words. cause this post will be mostly an unhappy summary of my experience watching the show. this post will contain spoilers, and disclaimer, i am a really biased, disappointed asshole, so i’ll just admit that now. 

short answer: i liked the concept of lok more than the product we got. a lot of that is because you had a physically buff brown wlw protagonist written mostly by cishet white men and, as you can imagine, it wasn’t handled great. when i think of lok now i tend to fluctuate between bittersweet nostalgia and quiet, simmering rage.

if you don’t care about the show summary, skip at the middle paragraph break down to my tldr.

so for those who don’t know, LOK was really my first “big” fandom on tumblr. when it was announced, a bunch of ATLA purists were already hating on it because 1) brown woman, 2) it was unrealistic to go from ATLA’s technology to streampunk in 70 years, and 3) it wasn’t ATLA, basically. it was my first big interest that i got to participate in as it was airing, and i was really excited about it. i defended it, i wrote meta, i liveblogged, i wrote tons of fic and spammed theories/wants before the damn show even had a release date. all that is to say, i was Invested, and i believed in it before i even saw it. people called me a bnf, i’m not sure if that’s true, but i did gain a lot my followers in my first few years on tumblr by posting korra stuff. a lot of them – hello – i think are still around today (i’m not certain how all the video games hasn’t scared them off yet)

i should say at this point that my opinion of LOK the show has been really wrapped up in the ugly stain left by the fanbase. korra the character has been the subject of tons of racist, misogynistic criticism since the moment we saw her back; when she showed up on screen as a proud young woman who fought with authority and stood up for herself, that was the nail in the coffin for her reputation. i agreed that she had a bit of growing up to do, because ATLA/LOK have always been stories about coming of age and maturing, but i disagreed strongly with this notion that she deserved to be “humbled,” which is what a lot of fans were looking for.

the overall consensus on if it’s “good” depends on who you ask. most people agree that ATLA is better overall: it was better plotted because it benefited from more writers in the room and more episodes to flesh out the world. opinions on LOK specifically range based a lot on their opinions of the K/orra/sami pairing, if they were involved in or what side they were on in any of the fandom wank, and also just complete random chance.

i’ll go more in depth into my ‘history’ with the show below, but i just wanted to mention that all the while the show was airing, korra was being hit with waves of criticism by so-called fans for basically being a confident brown woman who were calling for her to learn her place, respect her elders, etc. another common theme was fandom’s brilliant fucking idea that asami, a light-skinned feminine non-bending woman who was more polite and reserved than korra, would’ve made a better avatar. because you know why. (korra was often described as brutal, rough, unsophisticated, next to pretty, perfect asami. and asami is a fine character, to be clear, but that’s what she was – fine. nothing really stands out about her, which is a fault of the writing, because she had a lot of potential too.) so anyway all of this did sour my mood toward engaging with other fans outside my friend circle.

–

it was around maybe the middle of book 1 that i realized the writing for the show was simpler than what i was expecting – not that it was childish, which it was (because it was written for children, i understood that), but i felt like the plot meandered and the twists came out of nowhere. it felt like they were making it up as they were going, and it opened threads it didn’t answer. one of the biggest threads was the equalist revolution, which was a very sensitive topic that got jettisoned when the leader was revealed to be a fraud, and that devalued the entire movement in an instant. really disappointing, because i was looking forward to seeing that addressed. for a lot of people, this was a dealbreaker, and they started walking. i stuck with it, but loosely.

book 2 aired, focusing on the spiritual world and some really cool history. it still suffered a lot from awkward b-plots and loose threads it didn’t know how to tackle. korra lost her memory and then regained it 2 episodes later with no consequences, mako flip-flopped between korra and asami because bryke don’t know how to write teenage romances without making it a love triangle, and at some point bolin kissed a girl against her will and they didnt acknowledge that at all? i honestly don’t remember. anyway at the end of book 2, even though korra saves the day and prevents the world from descending into darkness for ten thousand years, due to events beyond her control, korra loses the spiritual connection that ties her to all of the previous avatars – aang, roku, kyoshi, wan, everyone. and people hit the fucking ceiling. “korra’s not a real avatar if she lost her connection to the old ones! that’s the entire point of the cycle! this show is bullshit, it’s not canon anymore!” (the entire point that finale demonstrated that korra’s power alone was enough to save the world and she didn’t need anyone else. but people found that ~unrealistic~ i guess). as you can imagine, being a fan of LOK is starting to get a little tiring by now.

books 3-4 is where the korra haters got to love the show again, because they were both straight-up torture porn. after everything she did saving the world, this is the arc where korra got beat down, tortured, dragged into the dirt, swallowed and spat back out. book 3 is a lot of people’s favorites because it was the first book that felt fully plotted out before it was put on air, which is why i enjoyed it too. but for me it was difficult to see a girl, whose identity revolved around being the avatar after being raised and sheltered to think it was all she was good for, effectively abandon her life and even her name by the beginning of book 4 because the events of book 3 were that traumatizing for her. somehow this was character development. we were encouraged to stick with it because we hoped korra would find herself again. and she did, sorta.

but it makes me furious that people who had quit in books 1-2 came back during 3 because they heard these books were better – aka book 3, the book that featured korra the least, and books 3-4 in which korra got her ass handed to her in some of the hardest fights vs some of the cruelest villains of the series. (nevermind that the book 3 villains suffer from the anime villain curse: they quickly went from “cool character design” to “wait, how does this rando group of villains show up with powers literally no one in the universe has ever heard before?” – questions no one ever answers)

anyway book 4 is a mish-mash of… i’m not sure. i’ve rewatched all the books but i don’t know if i’ll ever touch this one again. the culturally appropriating airbender wannabe, zaheer (a complete rando who somehow masters airbending enough to fly, which was a huge middle finger to airbending masters aang and tenzin for no reason) a guy who literally tortured korra one season before and put her in a wheelchair, is the one who the writers send korra to for her spiritual awakening that lets her save the day. not tenzin or jinora, her spiritual teachers with whom she has positive, healthy relationships – they send her back to her abuser who terrifies and degrades her a bit more before deciding to help. this was a pattern: the writers made both korra and asami face their abusers (in asami’s case, her father) for catharsis instead of gaining peace over their trauma another, healthier way because…. i’m not sure why. there is no reason why. and then there’s the guilt tripping nonsense of asami feeling as if she had to forgive her father, who tried to kill her, because he said he was sorry and sacrificed himself for her in the finale. it’s angst galore, if you like that kind of thing, which i normally do, except this is less angst and more just the writers trying to hammer in torture porn, grimdark, and poor attempts at morally gray nonsense into their finale season.

anyway at the end of her journey, korra, our buff brown woc, learns that she had to suffer to learn how to be compassionate and relate to her enemy. i’m not exaggerating, she literally says that. which is lovely.

–

tldr: i wasted a lot of emotional time and energy into this show and was extremely disappointed when some of the ending’s notes were “you had to suffer to become a better person” and “forgive your abusers/villains because aren’t we all the same in the end?”

but also on a strictly narrative level, LOK also bit off way more than it could chew both emotionally and thematically. it had an amazing premise, but it was not committed to

utilizing the steampunk genre to its best potential in the bending world (after the creativity in the rest of the worldbuilding, the LOK series finale was literally fighting a giant robot – seriously?)

giving its hero the respect and character arc she deserved. and i don’t say that because i think korra had no growing up to do in b1, she did, but she didn’t deserve for it to happen like that.

so basically i realized that a lot of the writers that made ATLA great weren’t brought back for LOK, and it showed. i realized that the LOK writers, when they listened to fans, were listening to the fans that whined the loudest, or (more likely, since they plan seasons years before we see them) they thought from the beginning that it was a good idea for korra to go through years’ worth of pain just to be spat out a humbler, “better” person

the reason i told you all that about me defending LOK in the beginning is because i need you to understand that i believed in LOK longer than i probably should’ve. i wanted it to be everything i was expecting in a diverse children’s show with an unorthodox female protaganist. but just because they had a brown wlw heroine doesn’t mean that they deserved to be praised for it when they treated her like garbage.

and korra and asami walk into a beam of light together in the last second of the show and i’m supposed to applaud the writers for their bravery or something

[topsolarpanels]

Nevada’s solar workers and customers reel as new rules ‘shut down’ industry

Companies struggle after state imposes highest charges yet on customers, driving firms out of the state and workers out of jobs

The conversation at SolarCitys hollowed-out warehouse in Las Vegas felt like it came after a funeral, and in a sense it did, with workers cycling between sadness, disbelief and anger at the untimely death of the rooftop solar industry.

fixed rate states solar power

The cause, as seen by workers drifting in to clean out their belongings, was state-assisted suicide, after the Nevada regulator imposed costly newrules for residential solar customers.

The decision to replace economic incentives with new higher fees pulled the carpet out from under an industry that provided 8,700 jobs in the state last year, according to the Solar Foundation, and stranded some 17,000 homeowners who have already gone solar with a financial liability on their rooftops.

Three companies, including SolarCity, announced they were quitting the state, laying off about 1,000 workers.

Everyone in this warehouse was let go, 550 people across the valley, said Chandler Gray, who lost his job as an installations inspector for SolarCity.

The havoc turned solar panels into a hot topic for Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton ahead of the Nevada caucuses on 20 February.

Call it the solar wars. From Arizona to California to Florida and now Nevada, states are struggling to reconcile residential solar with its promise to give homeowners greater independence while fighting climate change with highly centralised business models of the electricity industry.

California and a number of other states eventually defeated efforts by energy companies and corporate lobby groups to claw back incentives for solar customers.

Three companies, including SolarCity, announced they would leave the state following the new rules. Photograph: Jacob Kepler for the Guardian

Now Nevada has raised the stakes, levying the highest charges to date and breaking with convention to impose those charges on existing customers as well as new ones.

The solar showdown pits Elon Musk, the electric car billionaire and cofounder of SolarCity, against Warren Buffett, owner of the states monopoly electricity provider NV Energy.

The new rules, confirmed on 12 February, raised the monthly fees to solar customers from $12.75 to $38.51 over 12 years while dramatically cutting back the rates that customers were paid earlierfor feeding surplus power back into the grid from about 11 cents a kilowatt hour to about two cents.

Homeowners who are suing NV Energy in a class action estimate the new rates add 40% to their monthly bills, while reducing the amount they get paid for the solar energy their panels produce by 18%.

SolarCitys warehouse was still plastered with posters advertising the infinite power of the sun but the companys power to change the residential roofline of Nevada cities was, for the moment, gone.

opposition solar power nevada

Orders stopped the moment the new rules came out, Gray said.

Until the axe fell, SolarCity was shipping up to 1,600 solar systems a week from this and one other warehouse in southern Nevada. It used to be like Raiders of the Lost Ark when you went into this warehouse, he said

It was massive, Gray went on. Then they dropped the bomb.

Gray, who saw SolarCity as an escape from dead-end retail jobs, was let go. So was his partner, who also worked for SolarCity. Our household income was zero for a couple of weeks there, Gray said.

His partner was rehired and Gray hopes he will get taken on too. But for the moment he is looking after their six-year-old son, and campaigning for a ballot initiative to overturn the rules. We are going to fight to bring solar back, and once we do, we will get our jobs back too, he said.

SolarCity is keeping its Las Vegas headquarters in an upscale shopping mall where the glass conference rooms are decorated with the names of island vacation destinations like Aruba and Maui.

But the office will operate mainly as a sales center. Roz Holdens last day arrives on 21 February, after which the top saleswoman plans to put her four-bedroom house on the market and move into a rental just to keep costs down and start hunting for work.

The company offered Holden a job in its call centre or to move her to another state, but neither was a good option for a single mother supporting two daughters who are firmly settled in Las Vegas.

nevada solar power holdout states

Even now, Holden still cant fully believe the good times for solar are over in Nevada. Its unfathomable, she said. We expected some changes this year, but we didnt expect they would shut us down completely. It was quite shocking.

SolarCity arrived in Nevada in 2014, shaking up the market for rooftop solar with a leasing plan that allowed homeowners with good credit ratings to put solar panels on their rooftops with no money down.

The company could barely keep up with demand until 22 December, when the new rules were announced. We literally stopped business within that hour, pulled installs off the roof, finished up the jobs we had within that hour and we were done, Holden said. It pretty much shut down the industry.

Some of their customers were caught in limbo, like Kelly and Charisma Schwarze, whose installation was completed but whose panels have still not been switched on by the electricity company.

The couple had been excited to go solar, once the leasing option put it in their budget. Now I feel like we are being punished for trying to do the right thing, Kelly Schwarze, an independent film-maker, said.

For Mike Stitely, the new rules destroyed the tiny thrill he got each day when he checked the iPad to see how much electricity was being produced from the 16 panels on his roof.

Stitleys wife is still working, at Walmart, but he is retired. He is very worried about higher bills, and selling the house when the stairs become too much. People are going to be scared off, he said.

nevada solar power fightback states

It blows my mind and really upsets me, Stitley said. Its pretty high anxiety. At this time of your life you like to know what is going on.

The public utilities commission (PUC) claims solar customers were not paying their fair share for maintaining the grid. When solar rooftop ratepayers reduce energy consumption with solar generation, they lower their bills at the full retail energy rate, which includes charges not only for fuel costs but also for fixed and demand costs; these fixed and demand costs do not go down simply because the rooftop solar ratepayers consume less energy, Peter Kostes, a spokesman, wrote in an email. Solar rooftop ratepayers are under-paying.

Patricia Farley, a Republican state senator who drafted a bill last year to revise the states solar policies, claimed solar was only for rich people, and that the new rules were fairer for all Nevadans.

We dont see people with lower income putting solar on their homes, Farley said. I think if you looked at who bought solar, you dont really see diversity. You have got people who can afford it, and some of the experts told me the people who cant afford it are paying the difference.

But the new rules struck clean energy advocates and campaign groups as retrograde. Instead of limiting rooftop solar, Nevada should be promoting residential arrays as a means of fighting climate change and diversifying the electricity grid, in case of natural disaster or attack, they argued.

Clinton issued a statement saying it was punitive to change the rules on existing homeowners. Bernie Sanders, who met with solar installers in Reno, said it was just wrong.

Rooftop solar is also likely to figure in next Novembers elections.

The SolarCity offices in Las Vegas. Photograph: Jacob Kepler for the Guardian

This is an existential battle for the future of solar being waged right now in front of regulatory bodies, said Adam Browning, director of the Vote Solar campaign group. It is really about who gets to decide how much solar is installed and who owns it.

Others see the solar wars as an uncomfortable blip on an inevitable energy transition.

encouraging solar power nevada

Solar was barely on the radar when Louise Helton went into the solar business in 2007, inspired by hearing Bill Clinton describe his vision of Nevada as a Saudi Arabia for solar energy.

She went on to found 1 Sun Solar, offering residential solar installations out of the same shopfront where she runs her electrical contracting and stone tile business.

After the recession hit, landing harder on Las Vegas than other towns, it took until 2011, when the prices of solar panels began coming down, for Helton to get her business up and running.

By Heltons own estimates, she stands to lose about $500,000 a year because of the PUC decision. But she is relatively philosophical about the eventual outcome of the solar wars.

Its sort of the same problem we had to go through when you first had cellphones. Ma Bell wasnt happy, Helton said. It was a disruptive technology that changed industry, that took it from being top-down and inverted that pyramid completely.

It was clear which side was going to win the end, Helton said. And then she picked up her cellphone and smiled.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

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