#hi quill

[szappan]

@armillaryspheres

Saturn Devouring His Son if it were a Draw The Squad meme from 2014

[butterflyscribbles]

Taking shifts❤️💙🧡

[dizzythegreat]

💌 send this to the twelve nicest people you know or who seem to have a good heart and if you get five back you must be pretty awesome. 💌

AWWWWW THANK YOU QUILL ILY

every single mutual please know that if you’re reading this im sending this to you through this post ily all

[marchvijf]

"How would a melody describe itself?"

Micheal doodle that i made SECONDS after hearing his first introduction. TMA is slowly consuming me agagagagagg

[eyes-of-nine]

Gerry art??? In the year of our lord 2024????? HUHHHH???? you can blame it on @mangozic and their amazing tma art

[dailyhogz]

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do riders silver before, so ya wanna give it a try?

175. hes just a guy !

[homosexual-fanfiction]

ily

i love YOU!

[guardian-of-da-gay]

@sonicfashionweek's prompt 'Silly' called for Julia Roberts no. 1 fan!

[sunllghtt]

Saw this on Twitter

[wizardemotions]

pinterest showed me some screenshots of posts that gave me the concept for an au where both harry and ron are sorted slytherin & draco is just slightly less rude in the first book. i could go into why i think this makes a lot of sense for ron but i won't. i've affectionately dubbed them the platinum quartet in my head and they will not leave me the fuck alone

[motziedapul]

@hinaypod has been shadowbanned for unknown reasons - either bad actors, or an auto flag, or because we post links as part of our podcast promotion. Or perhaps the Palestine posts, who knows.

Either way, while we wait for Tumblr to respond to our ticket, it's the perfect time to tell everyone to follow the @ above if you want to follow a Magnus Archives inspired, Rusty Quill Network official podcast about a Filipina immigrant dealing with supernatural threats in Toronto caused by cursed objects and immortal rich occultists from the 1920s who fuel their magic off violent death.

It's about how supernatural horror will never trump the horrors of real life fascism, and about how love, especially queer love, can change the very fabric of reality.

The protagonist is a 5 foot tall cheerful, warm and sunny Filipina woman with magic powers and personal trauma that's ten times worse than your average grumpy podcast man. The main villain is a faceless, nameless, powerful immortal threat in a fine suit, only known as The Benefactor.

It's got that delicious, TMA inspired analog sound (from phone calls and tape recordings) and spooky standalone stories mixed with an overarching plot that a lot of our listeners have made murder boards and spreadsheets for 👀 Theory crafting is popular in this fandom. Some episodes are so scary that people can't listen to them in the dark, but others have described it as their comfort podcast. We have more sound effects and music than base TMA; it adds to the horror, but we also like to include old jazz and classical music depending on the moment and character.

It's female led with a BIPOC majority main cast, and it's so overwhelmingly queer that we have a token cishet couple (an immortal Instagram influencer and her drippy bloody monster husband who crawls on the walls).

The protagonists are queer, the villains are queer, and we've got love stories both wholesome and toxic, happy and tragic. Old men in love, young men in love, young and old men and women in love, women in love in the 1920s, women in love in the 1940s, men who love women then men, women who love women than men, gay betrayals, lesbian tragedies, trans seductions of 150 year old former villains, NB romances in-between taking over the world.... Romantic surgeries and beheadings...

And milk tea 🧋

We're not the kind of podcast that'll ever get as huge as The Magnus Archives, but that's not really what we're aiming for. We're just aiming to reach people who would resonate with our message and love Hi Nay as much as we do!

So give us a follow and a listen! You can find us on Rusty Quill (they approached us, not the other way around 😉✨) and on almost all the major socials, and of course, wherever you listen to podcasts.

[jetboots]

i gave in and made a sth sideblog.... here's the sillies. wish we could've seen sonic falling on his face in sonic prime lmfao

[astrophysician]

i'm normal about him

edit: forgot to add my commission link

[mysticruinedme]

there’s no way to describe the amount of serotonin this specific sonic channel art of knuckles manages to bring me. it’s immeasurable

[beifong-brainrot]

Something I've always loved about atla is how it handled scars, particularly Zuko's facial scar and Aang's lightning scar.

I've probably spoken before about how, as a burn victim with a ton of skin grafts on my legs, torso and hand, Zuko really was the first character "like me" that I saw on TV. It was, as you can guess, quite a momentous moment for kid me. Which is probably why I'm so disheartened on the live action show shrinking and toning down Zuko's scar significantly.

Too often scars, especially burn scars are seen as gore or body horror and too graphic to be seen on TV that isn't horror or related genres. And often scars, especially facial scars are reserved purely for villains and are used as a signifier for 'evil'. A trope that you'll find is still alive and kicking even today even in big franchises.

And while Zuko does reinforce this trope to some extent, I think it was subverted enough for it to have irs own merit. Atla also steers away from the scars=evil narrative, by having a lot of "good" characters have scars too like Bato and Song. This helps destigmatise scars as a whole, making Zuko's 'scarred villany' seem like a more individual case.

In Atla, scars are more the trademark of victims rather than villains and this rings true for Zuko too.

Zuko is a victim of the Fire Nation in the sense that the Fire Nation's values of war, strength and honour facilitated Ozai's abuse of him, particularly the scarring.

Zuko's scarring does follow a very established trope of a son being scarred by a father, which is surprisingly prevalent, especially with burn victims. Seriously I collect these men like pokemon. This tropiness isn't a bad thing, since I think it leads to us very quickly sympathising with him. I certainly did, since his experience mirrors my own.

The scene of Zuko's scarring is also particularly special, due to it being rather unique, because it isn't quick or an action scene, nor is it shown as an overly gory horror scene, despite it being, well, horrific.

It's... tasteful. Or at least, as tasteful as the scene of a child getting scarred by their father can be, I suppose. It doesn't linger on the violence, but also doesn't sugarcoat it. The scene of Zuko's scarring, and the events leading up to it also give us a good exposition to his better qualities, like his compassion, and a good explanation for why these qualities stay buried.

I can understand why some people in the fandom believe that Zuko's scar symbolises his 'worse side', but I actually believe its the opposite. Very often, when a character has a 'split down the middle' type of scar, their scarred side represents their worse half, like with Two Face from DC.

Because Zuko's scar doesn't symbolise his allegiance to the Fire Nation, it symbolises the fact that he failed to live up to the Fire Nation's standards. It's a physical reminder of the time Zuko actively defied the Fire Nation's standards and mindset.

We get a lot of nods to Zuko's scar aymbolising disgrace and failure to uphold ehat the Fire Nation expected of him. It's literally a physical blemish upon his 'honour'.

This is especially noticeable when Zuko's appearance is contrasted with Ozai, who exists as sort of the human stand in for the Fire Nation's imperialism. For most of the show, we are not shown any of Ozai's features, his face being obscured by shadow or out of frame.

We finally see Ozai's face, it's when Zuko is seeing hik for the first time in years. And Ozai looks so similar to Zuko. An unblemished, perfect, complete Zuko, so to speak. In Zuko's fever dream, where we see an unscarred Fire Lord version of Zuko, he looks exactly how I imagine a younger Ozai would look. I also love that Zuko's adult design seems to lean into this similarity.

Furthermore, Zuko's scar is used time and time again as a way he connects with victims of the Fire Nation. People who don't know him, like Song and Jet, assume him to be another victim of the Fire Nation, citing his scar as the reason why. Which is half true, Zuko is a victim of the Fire Nation, just not in the way they think.

Jet: I think Lee would make a good Freedom Fighter. He's just trying to find his way in the world, like us. Smellerbee: You don't know anything about him, Jet. Jet: I know he didn't get that scar from a waterbender.

One person who doesn't connect to Zuko over his burn scar is Katara. I love the scene of Katara and Zuko in the crystal catacombs. It's a profound scene and one that always makes me a bit emotional, especially in the wider context of atla, a subject I've touched on in this post.

However, the handling of Zuko's scar in this scene is especially dear to my heart. I strongly remember that, when Katara offered to heal Zuko's scar, I actually got scared and upset. I was terrified of Zuko's scar being erased, of the connection I felt to him snuffed out and one of the best parts of his characterisation being erased.

But that's not what happened, and the scene is amazing on that front and all others.

We learn that Katara asscociates Zuko's face with the Fire Nation, which makes sense, since he's been kinda clingy for the entire 1st season. Katara denies it having to do with anything with Zuko's scar.

Katara: It's just that for so long now, whenever I would imagine the face of the enemy, it was your face. Zuko: My face? I see. [He touches his scar.] Katara: No, no, that's-that's not what I mean.

The Katara lover in me believes her. As a a member of the Sothern Water Tribe, she probably has seen many burn victims. And her pursuing healing would also probably lead her down the route of normalising and understanding burn scars.

However, I would not be surprised or disconcerted if the scar did have something with Katara perceiving him as a villain. After all, to a lot of people, scars and "ugliness" denote moral ugliness. The very obvious fire asscociation probably doesn't help someone traumatised by the Fire Nation too. It is a sad fact of life that even those who know better subconsciously react to people with scars and other "deformities" with disgust and distrust.

We also see Zuko explicitly give us the rundown of his previously unspoken struggle with feeling like his scar is defining him as a person.

Zuko: It's okay. I used to think this scar marked me. The mark of the banished prince, cursed to chase the Avatar forever. But lately, I've realized I'm free to determine my own destiny, even if I'll never be free of my mark.

This is something I can relate to as someone with prominent scarring and I'm sure we all sometimes feel defined by things outside of our control. Sometimes It's hard to seperate your identity from your appearance. And it's even harder to seperate yourself from events that influenced you so harshly.

As I previously highlighted, Zuko's scar relates strongly to his failure to adhere to the Fire Nation's ideals and conventions, his failure to be the perfect prince of the nation. And while to us, that is a good thing, to Zuko, at least at first, that is a very, very bad thing.

To Zuko, the scar is a symbol of his flaws, and a just, if not harsh punishment for his percieved transgression. He sees it as a brand, denoting his mistake and shame. He sees it as the physical manifestation of what his banishment and scorn from Ozai means.

It's only when he begins growing as a person away from the Fire Nation's influnece, that he starts to realise that the scar is just a scar. It holds no power over him. And while he relapses for a moment, "demystifying" his scar allows him to do the same to the event of his scarring. It allows him to look back at that moment and not see righteous discipline, but rather see it for what it was and go "hey wait a minute that was actually fucked up.". Which allows him to look at The Fire Nation's conquest of the world and go "hey this is also fucked up.", when the lessons he's learnt in the Earth kingdom finally click.

I believe this is why we see Zuko almost purely from the side of his scar in the scene where he confronts Ozai, especially when it's contrasted with Ozai's unscarred eyes.

Zuko's scar, like many scars in fiction, symbolises imperfection. But rather than an "objective" imperfection, as most fictional scars do, Zuko's scar symbolises his imperfection through the skewed and biased eyes of the Fire Nation. It's a nice subversion of the trope that usually encourages us to equate beauty with goodness and ugliness with evil.

Side note, I know I've been using the terms "ugly" and "ugliness" to talk about scars. I just wanted to note that I don't think scars automatically mean someone isn't attractive/scarred people are ugly. But in a lot of media, scars are seen as gross and ugly, which is why I've been using these terms.

I like that Zuko defies this trope by being drawn as very attractive with his scar, and even being seen as desireable in canon.

Even though it does loop back to the 'attractive=good' symbolism, I don't think it totally invalidates the story Zuko's scar is telling. Plus it WAS an ego boost to child year old me who thought no one whould ever love me bcs I looked like a burnt chicken nugget. So I'll let it slide.

I love Zuko's scar, and I love how it seamlessly fit into the story, while also subverting tropes and invalidating stigmas towards scarred people. It's probably one of my favourite, if not very personal aspects of the character.

I do however, also want to analyse and go over Aang's scar from Azula's lightning and I plan to go over it at a later date, since this post is getting a bit long and overwhelming.

Toodles!

[siggiedraws]

rat baby