#everything starts drama

[pharawee]

Give us a "Latte the Tiger" review so we know he's not just bragging.

[the-woman-upstairs]

In the universe of the film, there is ABSOLUTELY a contingent of fans that fervently ship Argylle/Wyatt and have the dominant ship on AO3 and trade elaborate fan theories about their hidden relationship and are convinced they’re meant to be endgame but the publishers won’t allow it. Of course, they go totally BALLISTIC when they learn they’re based on the author and her boyfriend.

[aulerean]

Scarlet Pearl is like evil red riding hood. To me.

[wahgifs]

you don't allow me to kiss you, right? — wandee goodday (2024) | episode three / episode four

[rookdaw]

monster X monster hunter

[torantuga]

more on the underestimated alliance rewrite/au!

i changed emma's color scheme a bit cus i wanted to use the one i usually use (cus i like it better)

anyway! 1st scene is when julia gets eliminated in s1, leaving emma confused as to why mk didn't mention her being part of the alliance!!

i love drawing emma sm

[royalarchivist]

I love the QSMP. Not only has it introduced me to many amazing international creators, it's also introduced me to the French and Brazilian community, who are so sweet, funny, and chaotic in their own unique ways. I love seeing fans sharing their culture and learning from one another, and I myself have learned a lot this past year. I think it's incredible how QSMP brings so many different people together – all of us united in our love and passion for this project and its goals.

But passion can often evoke strong emotions, and these strong emotions aren't always positive.

The past few months, I have seen multiple waves of hate, bad-faith generalizations of communities, and racist remarks directed at fellow fans – especially those who are part of the French / Brazilian community. This kind of behavior is inexcusable, and is in direct conflict with the mission of QSMP, which is to break language barriers and unite communities.

We are a global community with a variety of people from different backgrounds. Miscommunications may occasionally occur because of cultural differences and/or language barriers, but we should use these moments as opportunities to learn and engage with other people rather than assuming the worst about them and starting fights.

Although certain issues can be resolved with communication, sometimes it’s better to block and move on. Avoid spreading negativity or hate, and save yourself the headache of interacting with people who are just looking for someone to argue with.

No matter what community we're a part of or what languages we speak, we're all here to have fun. Please remember to be kind to each other. We have more in common than we have in conflict.

[stubz]

"I think Glip and Kal don't like me."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, we just don't talk. Like it's fine when your here or Quip is here but when you guys leave we don't really talk."

"Have you tried? Like making small talk?"

"Yeah but its really awkward and short." Max sighs leaning back in his chair.

"Hmmm...oh my god Piper! Take that off Marl!"

He watches as his friend and co-worker runs off to deal with Piper running off with Marl, treating the youngling as a stuffie to dress. Marl cackled as they were carried off by the human.

"Too bad you don't talk to them like my Mapa, they are a chatter bug."

"Your Mapa is a chatter bug? Really Dali?" he found it hard to believe that Calis would be chatty. The ever so serious and stoic first mate.

"Yeah but only when Pomo gets them talking. Usually about go-sip."

"Gossip huh?"

.

"He sent the email to everyone. Everyone! He sent all the texts and messages between them to everyone to show them what she said about us."

"Oh my god what a power move...this dude is my hero." Quip nods in agreement.

"Want me to read em?"

"Max I would kill you if you didn't."

"Seconded."

..

"-I feel unsafe in this hostile environment. You told me it was fine, that I could go whenever."

"Go whenever? ...she left like a day before the wedding! A day! She had 3 goddamn months!! And hostile??? Says the woman who tried to call the cops on her own roommate for being 'too loud'!!" shouts Quip crushing the drink in his hand.

"It gets better."

"HOW?!" cries Kim

"Hold up! Pause! I need a new drink!"

"Oh get me one too will you?" the humans call out.

...

"-I'll be changing the locks and hereby request to you all who I have sent this email to to not contact her or respond to her. Thanks for reading and Tiffany, I'm willing to talk to when you come back from your trip. Bring your keys."

"Oh shit its done! She's dumped. He's dumping her as soon as she comes home!"

"I need a copy of this or just you to read it to me again and again for a month."

"Oh with pleasure, I love reading this. It never gets old."

"Thank you for sharing this. This was the best gossip I've had in years. Come on, desert on me!" she shouts grabbing her friends arms leading them back to the cafeteria.

....

"Hey Max!" he looks up from his lunch and sees Quip with Kal and Glip.

"Hey guys."

"I was telling these two about the shipwreck you told me and they won't stop hounding me about asking you for a copy of the email or in depth detail so here." he shoves his two embarrassed partners forwards to the human

"I'd love to hear it again but I gotta return something before the place closes. I'll be back in an hour, have fun!" he calls waving to them

"...so how much do you guys know?"

"...a bit but could you start from the beginning?"

"Like when she said she hurt her back a week after flaking on doing her part of the wedding planning."

"Gotcha. So she says that she hurt her back a week after going to the gym, which makes no sense because back injuries hurt right after or hours after the thing you did!"

"Oh she's lying."

"Did they kick her out of the wedding planning?"

"No, because they don't want to cause drama about this. Like its hard to subtlety make a person prove their back is hurt. Also the job they gave her was the smallest thing so."

"What was her job?"

"Making sure there was enough napkins and balloons."

"Get a hint Tiffany!"

"That's so sad."

.....

"So I heard you're gossip buddies with Kal and Glip?"

"Yep. Spent 3 hours sharing gossip."

"..."

"You wanna hear it?"

"Yes!"

"Thought you would. Wrote down the key notes of each story."

"This is why we're best friends!!"

[belonareyna]

"Riko is dead. Ichiru took care of him" If Aaron could crash Josten's head between his hands right know, he would.

Surprised and horrified faces turned to look at Neil, who was the only one smiling.

It happened so fast it was all a blur. Kevin running to the bathroom, Aaron's racquet slaming into Neil's stomach when he tried to follow, he throwing the racquet to his twin and a single "No" before rushing to the bathroom himself.

He heard Renee behind him, but couldn't care less, he knew she wasn't coming, which meant she was literally acting as a human barrier.

He found Kevin kneeling facing the toilet. And acrid smell filling the room.

Green eyes filled with tears found their way into his gaze "Are you coming to say I shouldn't cry for my abuser death"

Aaron smiled a little "You shouldn't cry for your abuser death" Kevin looked back to the toilet "But I shouldn't had cried for Tilda's death either and here we are..." He snorted "I blocked Neil, I think Renee is containing Andrew, and I know I'm the twin you haven't got a deal with... But I think I can help more than that stone heart bastard"

"Like you were a fucking dream with people"

"When we're talking about crying because our mean mean bullies died, yes, I'm a fucking piece of cake. Or you would rather be with Mr. "Let's hope he doesn't end up like the last woman he loved?""

"You know how to hold a grudge" Noted Kevin

"He's been holding one since i didn't jump into his arms like a damsel to his knight when he ended Tilda." Aaron smiled sarcastically "must be our twin thing. And stop talking about what is wrong with me, and let's focus on you"

Kevin appreciated he didn't say "and let's focus on what's wrong with you"

"I rather not. If Ichiru killed Riko, it must have something to do with how he used the Moriyama's contacts, including Prust. I shouldn't be crying fuck, I shouldn't..."

"You're not grieving Prust. You're not grieven Riko. You're grieven what Riko could have been. You're grieven a brother, a friend, you lost long ago, and now forever. You are grieven your own tragedy. And there is nothing wrong with that. Don't let any dickhead tell you otherwise"

Kevin must have sensed the look of adoration he was giving Aaron, because he tried to change the subject.

"Shit, Jean is alone in the dorm" Kevin tried to stand up, just to be dragged back down by Aaron, who sat by his side "Jean is Renee's problem for now. Let her deal with him, while I deal with you".

[quackle]

they're so perfectly in sync with their facial expressions like i genuinely believe they practiced to be like this

[moeblob]

OC again gomen ... (her name is Yuma)

[valakiir]

Rough sketch on my phone of long haired essek

[oneatlatime]

Want to get your thoughts on something you've touched on in a couple places. A pretty popular idea in the fandom is that one of the (in-universe) reasons airbenders have gone so hard into the peace-and-love monk thing is a self-awareness that, if they didn't, there's not a whole lot anybody could realistically do about it.

Like, Southern Air Temple pretty strongly implies that Gyatso solo'd a room full of comet-roided firebenders. It killed him but he did it, and while he is a master Airbender, we're not given any real indication that he is uniquely so, right?

I have many thoughts on this! Sorry in advance for the long post! And sorry if this goes a bit off topic!

Short answer: I don't agree.

Long answer:

We've seen that nations' cultures tend to reflect their native bending styles. Or vice versa. It's probably a chicken and egg scenario. The Fire Nation chose to spread (like wildfire) and is full of hot headed, impetuous roid-rage sufferers who can't see or plan for the long term. Fire itself easily becomes ungovernable and is at best muzzled/leashed, always waiting for the next chance to bubble over in unplanned / unpredictable / generally unhelpful directions (Hi Zhao!). So an element shapes a culture shapes and element until you've got a positive feedback loop (or in the case of the Northern Water Tribe, a negative feedback ourobouros due to outside pressure). Importantly, neither culture nor element develops in isolation; I think they develop simultaneously.

The Earth Kingdom is probably the most rigid and unchanging, even when it would benefit them to change/innovate. We see rigidity and humourlessness in response to change or the unexpected (see Toph's parents) and we see an inability to let go of a bad idea, or mitigate the consequences / think on the go when things that were clearly bad ideas go bad in ways anyone with a non-earthbender brain can see coming a mile off (think The Avatar State episode). Earth digs in when it should retreat, stands solid when it should duck and weave. It is grounded to the point of stupidity (unless you're Toph or Bumi, although even Toph seems to be unbending so far). It's linear to the point of being unable to deviate from that line.

This is me guessing, but I figure since fire and water are opposites, air must be the opposite of earth, right? So while we'll never see airbending culture in a non-shrunk-down-to-one-person form, we can look at earthbending culture for its dark reflection. Well, probably not dark, but you get what I'm saying. They'll be opposites in world view. We can extrapolate.

So if earth is grounded, humourless, aggressively traditional, linear, then air must be constantly fluctuating, unchained, lighthearted, bonkers-all-over-the-place. The heaviness of earth would dictate that problems should be faced by digging in and facing them head on until the problem blinks first. The lightness of air would dictate that problems should be faced the opposite way: blinking first i.e. removing yourself from the problem entirely. The linearity of earth dictates that fights are solved by fighting - you punch me, I punch you. The non-linearity of air would seek to recontextualise a problem until it's no longer a problem because we all forgot what we were fighting about in the first place, i.e. throwing pies at it or busting out the marble trick. The heaviness of earth would cause excessive earthly attachment; the lightness of air would cause excessive detachment from worldly concerns.

To start violence is to make a statement that you wish to be involved. It's rooting yourself to a particular dispute, choosing a hill to die on. It stems from attachment. This is earthbendery behaviour (and Zuko-y, but let's not go there). To never start violence is to never invest, never dig in your feet and make a stand. To be detached. (I'm oversimplifying here.) It's clear from in-show examples that Aang's pacifism is of the "ladies don't start fights but they can finish them" variety; he's got no problem with self-defence (caveat: we have no idea how typical an air nomad Aang was). But he never attacks first that I can think of.

Violence is a very direct tool. If someone starts a fight with you, and you decide to continue it, you're choosing the most obvious action. Since when is airbending direct or obvious?

All this to say, I think that pacifism, peace and love, monkiness, etc., was more likely a natural and inevitable outgrowth of air nomad culture, caused by constant culture / element interaction, rather than a conscious choice.

So I think airbenders "have gone so hard into the peace-and-love monk thing" because the nature of their element creates a culture that discourages the traits required for effective offensive violence, and the inherent detachment and ever-changing nature of air naturally encouraged spiritual (i.e. monkly) pursuits rather than earthly ones, like whatever the conflict of the week is. I don't think self-awareness of the dangers of their element factors into it. Not to take away from Gyatso's accomplishment, but I think air is nowhere near the most dangerous element. From what I've seen so far that would be Fire or Earth, though I'd give the edge to Fire because they self-generate, and also because they've spent a largely successful century dominating the other elements. Waterbenders and earthbenders can be neutralised by taking away their element; airbenders - due to the very nature of their element - probably can't get past that initial avoid and evade instinct to become legitimate offensive threats.

As for Gyatso, I think he's an outlier. We know little about him so far, but we do know that: a) Aang says he's the best airbender (in I think the Southern Air Temple?); b) he's good enough that he was granted a statue while he was still living, learning, improving; and c) he's good enough that the monkly council (of which he is part) granted him the honour/responsibility of being the quasi-dad of the Avatar. These things tell me that Gyatso was the Spiders Georg of the Airbenders. I suspect Bumi is the same for the Earthbenders, and at least as far as the philosophy of bending is concerned, Iroh may be so for Firebenders. Even the example of Gyatso nuking the comet-enhanced firebenders is a case of defensive action in ultra extraordinary circumstances: he was staring into the teeth of a genocide while mourning the disappearance of his quasi-son and the likely loss of the world's only hope / chance at stopping the war. That's how far you have to push an airbender before they'll take a life. Unless the Avatar world pre-war is a lot more godawful than Aang has implied, airbenders probably wouldn't have been taking lives frequently enough for them to get to the point where they would have to start questioning whether they should consider pacifism.

I think what this fandom idea ultimately is, is a desire for the hidden badass trope. Everyone loves it when the most peaceful character in the story is revealed to secretly be a Rambo-level fighting badass, right? Who didn't love it when kindly grandpa Roku manifested in his temple and unleashed a volcano? But I think this trope fundamentally takes something away from the appreciation of Airbending, Air Nomad culture, and the concept of Pacifism as a whole. This is just my interpretation, but applying the "secretly the deadliest all along!" trope to airbenders undermines their commitment to pacifism and makes it performative rather than earnest. It's a cop out; an acknowledgement that violence actually is the answer, and even those head-in-the-clouds monks know to use it when the chips are down. This show goes out of its way to show that non-combatants have value and a place in this world that's worth fighting for, that fighting goes way too far pretty frequently, that non-violent solutions are valid, even preferable. It would kind of undermine that message if all of the elements were easily weaponisable.

Something I've loved so far about Avatar is the show's earnestness. There have been no Marvel-style fakeout bathos plots. I feel making airbending secretly the deadliest element or similar would be exactly that sort of thing. Can't my pacifists be peaceful not because they're secretly untouchable badasses who carry the biggest stick, whom the rest of the world leaves alone out of fear, who are not a threat only because they have chosen not to be, but because that's just who they are?

On the other hand: Aang's been a one-man-army plenty of times. We've seen that; that's undeniable. So air is stupidly powerful as an element. No denying that. Gyatso did murder a bunch of people trying to kill him, so air can be deadly. But I don't think your typical airbender could be deadly. If you gave a can of airbending to a firebender, an earthbender, or even a particularly provoked waterbender, I don't doubt that they could kill people with it. But the culture that the element generated - rather than a conscious choice by that culture's participants - prevents them from taking the direct, violent, solution. And I think that culture developed in tandem with airbending, so there could not have been a time when airbenders were deadly as a rule. Air shaped airbenders as much as airbenders shaped air, and it shaped them into non-violent people.

There's a lot of power in the idea of consciously choosing, and sticking to, something that is perhaps not in line with your natural abilities. Styling airbenders as deadly-but-choosing-peace is a great way to explore themes of agency, identity, strength of character, morals, maturity, etc. But, to me, there's also a lot of power in the idea that some people just can't - not won't, but CAN'T - fight their way out of things, and this doesn't make it any less wrong to genocide the crap out of them.

If the fandom wants to headcanon airbenders as secret badasses who consciously choose nonviolence, I say a) go ahead! there's more than enough evidence to support that conclusion; b) I respectfully disagree; and c) is Iroh not enough?

tl;dr in my opinion, air's pacifism was a natural outgrowth of, and restriction imposed by, the element rather than a conscious choice; airbending can be deadly but airbenders aren't; Gyatso is not representative; 'speak softly and carry a big stick' is all well and good as a philosophy, but those who speak softly and don't have a stick are of value too.

[total-drama-brainrot]

february has blessed me with The Sickness (i'm down with it) so apologies for not posting much these past couple days

anyway i'm still waiting for someone to write that alenoaheather fake dating au where both heather and alejandro pretend to date noah- the least intolerable person on the plane besides each other- to make the other jealous and noah Lets It Happen because it's funny and he has nothing better to do (he's read all of his books and now he's bored)

[akkivee]

OTOMES SOLO IS CALLED MIC REWRITES THE ENDING

ICHIJIKUS SOLO IS CALLED GET FREEDOM

NEMUS SOLO IS CALLED DO THE RIGHT THING

AND THE DRAMA TRACK IS CALLED STAY GOLD

[greenerteacups]

Hi GT, I hope you are doing well! who is your favorite Weasley?

Thank you! Absolute treat of a question. Oh, man. It's Ron, right? It was always going to be Ron.

So here's the thing: the Weasleys are a really well-characterized family in that you can kind of see a lot of character emerge through limited sketches and contextual information. Bill is Number One Boy, the best at everything, oldest child who was always confident and at peace with his indisputable place in the family; so he's a chill, cool, incredibly competent guy who naturally takes-charge. Charlie is a patented never-grew-out-of-your-middle-school-dragons-phase Weird Kid, but like, mindfully and enthusiastically so, because his parents probably still had plenty of time to support and nurture his interests; plus he's also different to Bill and excels in different ways, so they aren't too competitive (as we see). Percy is the first one to suffer from the pressure of mounting expectations, and he's very quickly followed by the twins, who do the classic "if I can't be the best I'll be the worst" late-sibling trick of acting up for attention, so he gets lost in the shuffle. (The fight between Ron and Percy in Chapter 58 is, hence, in substantially about the relationship between the two most-ignored members of the Weasley family, and that's why Ron is so much angrier at him than the rest of them. Like I've said before, Ron always thinks he's got it the worst, but he takes pride in being able to kinda "tough it out," and nothing pisses him off like other people's self-pity.) Ginny is obviously the baby of the family, a girl with everyone wrapped around her finger, and I love her, but I feel like we didn't get enough grit in her portrait— she's just really successful in everything she does, in a way that can read as flat to some people, and certainly read as flat to me my first time through the books. In fact, Ginny reminds me a lot of Bill: first daughter/first son, described often as "cool" and clever and good at basically everything, charming and generally liked by all. Which is lovely. A delight to read, just like the twins are. But my taste in characters ranges way more fucked-up and mean.

Ron is the last boy, "sixth son of a woman who wanted a daughter" (fascinating line that complicates everything we know about Molly's relationship with her kids — and BTW, how the hell does Ron know that, and how old was he when he learned it? And this also comes into play with Molly's cry of "not my daughter" to Bellatrix which like, as a moment obviously fucking rules, but also — there's a reason she says daughter, not "child," right? Do you see what I'm digging at? Anyway). Ron meets Harry and recognizes himself in how Harry defaults to thinking people don't care about him, or won't help him if he asks, because — although they come from very different circumstances, Ron's home was completely loving, just not as nurturing as he always needed it to be — Ron usually goes in assuming people don't care about him, too. So his first instinct is to go: "Alright. Well, I'll care about you, then, weird stranger. Do you want to share my horrible sandwich, and also my life, perhaps?" Goddamn! Sixth of seven in a house with never enough to go around, and he's immediately like: "fuck it, room for one more." Because he could have been Percy — and you can see it in the way that Ron is mean, sometimes, he's not careful with his words and he struggles with empathy and he's got a vengeful streak that comes out when he's pissed — but he isn't selfish enough, he loves too much and too easily, and it takes shockingly little to earn his loyalty. You just have to pay a little attention to him.