#honestly we need to bring back the culture of personal responsibility that existed in the early 2000s

[transbastard]

@lillcarrionbird this is not at all what the point of the tweet is, and the fact you indignantly dismissed all queer art made in the 19th century as boring and more or less a waste of effort to seek out while categorizing today's cheap fast-food-quality entertainment as being fun and having a huge cultural impact is kind of exactly what they were talking about actually. the whole point is that the mass-market franchise entertainment of today is forever stained by the need for mass-market appeal, for the need to be profitable and safe and relatively easy to digest, for the insistence that spectacle is the measure of entertainment; that you need light and sound but no substance.

the whole point is that any "queer representation" put in the majority of these franchises is sanitized to hell and back so as not to scare the cisgender heterosexual audience members. that queer rep will forever have the curves and rough spots filed down smooth so they can fit neatly into the tiny square holes the producers have created for their token queers, nice and neat and uniform, because even many "tolerant" cishet audiences will just not watch if it gets to be a little *too* queer. that trying to "queer" franchise media like the mcu, or disney, or hp is a lost cause bc real, true, dyed-in-the-wool Queer is too fucking messy for the capitalists running those franchises. queer encompasses too much, and it is messy, and it doesnt have mass market appeal, so they wont do it. you will get A Gay. A Trans. binary, and typically gender-conforming, not to mention white. if you're very lucky (read: if they dont or cant fire the person fighting like hell behind the scenes for it) they'll be one of the protag's best friends. the point is that the people in charge of the franchises you want to "queer" do not want you in them bc your very existence makes other people not want to spend money on the product they're trying to sell, and they care too much about the opinions of bigots to give in even if you pressure them bc most of the ones running the show are bigots.

the whole point is also that there is queer media being made today, and there was queer media being made in the past, because queer media has always existed, but it gets looked over bc it ISN'T sanitized and easily digestible. the whole point is that if you want queer media you don't have to wait to have the tiniest drops of queerness fall from the end of the Mass-Market Content Spoon, you just have to seek it out. the whole point is that there is a lot of very fun queer media both modern and historical that COULD have huge cultural impact if you just sought it out and talked about it and shared it the way people do with mass-market media. the whole point is that we have to make our own if we want truly queer media and we have to support each other instead of sitting on our asses and waiting, waiting, waiting, to be validated by people who want us dead.

its also very important to realize at no point is the tweet ever hostile to people who do want queers in mass market media. it's not mocking the desire, merely speaking honestly and saying "the media you want exists, it has existed for hundreds of years, and you need to seek it out bc the bigots arent going to give you what you want, only cheap and exploitative facsimiles". this is maybe one of the least hostile bits of queer discourse i've seen come out of twitter in a while and i cannot fathom how you interpreted it as a "fuck you" on any level, the closest it comes to insulting anything is the mcu, which you stated that you hate. genuinely may be one of the weirdest responses possible. there are other replies that miss the point as well, bringing up media sponsored by streaming services or tv shows like.. steven universe is not on the level of harry potter. sens8 is not on the level of the mcu. nothing is on the level of the entirety of the disney mega-conglomerate, not drag race and sure as hell not fx's pose. there is queer media that is big but the arent disney-mcu-starwars big. not harry potter big. the whole point is that genuine and real and varied rep from franchises on that level of worldwide acclaim is unlikely to happen because the people in charge arent going to risk tanking their appeal with bigots for us. they value bigots over us, we are a demographic to exploit for a good headline and a few extra bucks so they can toss a lesbian kiss or a gay hand-hold in for about a second or 2, or they can do what disney did with strange world and not fucking market the movie at all so it dies on the vine (did you guys know that strange world came out in November 2022? do you remember seeing literally anything other than the "disney's fifth 'first openly gay character'" eyeroll coverage about it? did you know that it actually is their first where the gay is one of the leading cast who plays a major role and not just a side character with a split-second scene or two? no? thats the point.). the point is that they are not going to actually risk their empires for you. even if there's more money in it. because they dont care. your community cares and they show it in the stories they make, and you should show you care back by supporting them.

[emeaentrepreneur]

Why does the world need more women in leadership roles?

Over the centuries, we have only talked about men’s roles in leadership, but nobody talks about women’s roles in leadership. Women make up half of the world’s population, but they are underrepresented in leadership positions. Women leaders can overcome workplace hurdles and become role models for everyone.  

According to a report, 30% of women are CEOs out of 100%. Companies with a higher representation of women on their boards perform better than other organizations. Female leaders can bring unique perspectives, skills, and experiences that can help drive innovation, creativity, and competitiveness. 

As we look forward to a brighter future, Gender diversity in women’s leadership roles is now more important than ever. That’s why companies are taking responsibility for women and trying to create better policies and opportunities for them. At the same time, they will also need support to proceed and overcome the habit of pulling back. Continue reading this article to learn the reasons why the world needs more women leaders in the workplace.

7  Reasons Why the world Needs more female leaders in the Workplace

Women are exploring space these days, so why can’t they play and dominate any leadership role? So why can’t they play leadership roles? Here are the seven reasons why the world needs more women leaders.

1. For the personal and vocational development of the team

To discover your leadership voice, first understand your strengths and weaknesses as a leader. You can know this by evaluating your interactions with others and estimating your communication skills. However, Female leaders tend to have different skills and qualities. We know that women are more emotionally intelligent, and this quality can help them build strong relationships with their team members and create a positive work environment.

When women are leaders in the workplace, they build good relationships with their team members, encourage them, respect them, and communicate honestly with them. Women leaders give priority to the personal and professional growth of the team. Women also know the importance of investing in their employee’s development and creating opportunities for them to learn and grow.

2. For achieving equity and equality

Over the decades, the lack of representation of women in leadership positions has been an issue in many organisations. As we see advancements in gender equality, women can still face significant barriers to breaking through the glass ceiling and assuming leadership positions. A woman can contribute a different perspective to leadership that understands the needs and expectations of an organisation.

There has been a lot of progress in building equity and equality in the workplace, but the fundamental gap in leadership roles still exists. At the same time, the organisation takes responsibility for improving policies, building the structure, and providing opportunities to women.

3. For Fueling the fire of innovation

Diversity of thought is crucial for generating new and creative ideas, and women leaders can bring a wealth of experience and insight that can result in breakthroughs and progress. Some reports show that teams that don’t have diverse backgrounds and experiences are less innovative and effective than those that do. Women leaders can give an outlook on gender and diversity issues that can help find new opportunities and challenges.

As we know, to boost innovation, diverse perspectives are essential. Women leaders contribute valuable skills, new perspectives, and cultural diversity that facilitate more effective problem-solving. Their high emotional intelligence is crucial to recognizing the pulse of employees in order to get the best results.

4. For challenging traditional leadership styles

The traditional leadership approach involves providing guidance, direction, and motivation to employees so they can do their work. A traditional leader’s main focus is to improve the business position of the company. As we know, women break through the glass ceiling and reach the top positions in their organisations, so they are able to challenge traditional leadership styles. And they can also promote a balanced, inclusive, and honest workplace.

A female leader’s leadership style is based on communication, collaboration, and trust and is less graded than that of traditional leaders. When women are in leadership roles, they have both masculine and feminine energies, and they can play both roles when required.

5. For tackling systemic barriers

It is important to create an environment that encourages and supports women in leadership. It means breaking down the systemic constraints obstructing women’s leader’s growth and providing them with the resources to succeed. Encourage them in their every achievement and try to maintain gender equality.

Women leaders are the best fit for this because of their unique perspectives, life experiences, and ways of thinking that can solve complex problems. Leaders of diverse groups encourage creativity and create an environment where they can make better decisions. We must recognize and accept what they bring to our table.

6. For Achieving a better financial outcome

More creative ideas can be presented in a diverse workplace. This will help fuel the growth and stability of an organisation. Workplace diversity should not just priorities women but be a fluid combination of both genders. Diverse workplaces  can increase productivity, creativity, performance, and staff retention.

According to a workplace study, businesses with gender-diverse workforce experience higher profitability. Some research reports have shown that having more women in higher positions is more profitable for the organisation and provides safer and higher-quality customer experiences.

7. Women in leadership roles can close the gender pay gap

Something we can do is transform the gender pay gap into a gender opportunity gap. When both men and women start from scratch, men are usually offered more opportunities leading to higher-paying jobs. According to a report, women leaders in leadership still don’t earn as much as male leaders, but now a woman can expect a salary of 25% on average.

Therefore, appointing more women in leadership roles can provide benefits and productivity, help them achieve a more comprehensive goal, and close the gender pay gap more effectively.

Closing Thoughts

Women leaders’ challenging journeys to the top allow them to develop themselves remarkably. If we have more women leaders at the top, then it will be easy to fill the gender pay gap, fuel the fire of innovation, tackle problems, achieve better financial growth, achieve equity and equality, and challenge traditional leadership roles.

Finally, women’s leadership is not just about guessing the trends. It’s about wasting untapped potential because we just believed that women could not make good decisions.

Visit More : https://theeuropeentrepreneur.com/leadership/why-does-the-world-need-more-women-in-leadership-roles/

[lassieposting]

People are gonna post about Skulduggery Pleasant related things in the Skulduggery Pleasant tag.

Opinions come with media. Regardless of any personal feelings you may hold, people will post their opinions for general consumption.

You come across as self-righteous and arrogant by demanding that no one posts their opinions about a particular pairing in a general tag. It’s a general tag for a reason.

Nothing against you specifically, and I have no malicious intent at all. Happy holidays.

Tbh anon I don't care how I come across at this point, I am sick and tired of entitled people in this fandom demanding that just because they don't like valdug, everyone else has to stop posting about it. The blacklisting feature exists for a reason, and so does the ability to block. It is your responsibility to curate your own online experience - nobody has to stop shipping things you personally don't like just to accommodate you. Like, I loathe val/itsa, but you don't see me demanding everyone else stop shipping it. I blacklisted the related tags, blocked the people who love the ship or post about it regularly, and boom, I don't see it anymore, so I no longer feel the need to post about how much I hate it.

It's also basic fandom manners that you don't post your hate in the ship's tag, because if you do, you're basically inviting shippers to tell you to shut the fuck up. The valdug discourse is old at this point, and people are still shipping it, so clearly throwing tantrums about how it makes you, personally, uncomfortable do not do any good. Every few months another bratty anti who thinks the fandom has to cater to them jumps in the tag to stomp their foot and screech "But I don't liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike it!" and for what? The shippers don't give a fuck. They're gonna keep shipping and creating content regardless of what the antis think. All you're doing by tagging your hate with the ship tag is trying to drag them into a fight, and honestly? The rest of us are beyond bored of watching that happen, and I personally am sick of watching antis try to shame the valdugs for shipping two grown-ass adults. I'm not even invested in the ship anymore, but this fandom is a toxic shit pit towards people who are, and that shit is not okay. If you don't like a ship, that's fine. If you hate a ship, that's fine too. But use the tools at your disposal (blocking, blacklisting) to wipe your dash clean of that ship without shitting on people for feeling differently to you.

The world is full of things you're gonna find disgusting and offensive. The internet has tools to avoid those things, so use them. But shippers - of any ship in any fandom - are not hurting you, and they're not hurting anyone else either, by just enjoying their ship. So if you're gonna come into the valdug sandbox to scream that you hate valdug and everyone should stop talking about it, then don't complain when other people tell you to shut the fuck up, because you're the one who's out of order in the first place.

Like jesus. The world is shit enough. Go find whatever corner of this hell-pit fandom brings you joy and sit down there surrounded by content you enjoy, and let other people do the same.

[bucketofchum]

Here is my BOILING HOT TAKE on fantasy languages

You know how All Fantasy Movies(TM) need to create their own Fantasy Languages for the Fantasy Worlds......?  why don’t movies just.... use extant languages????

Here’s the deal. We have hella fake languages, like, say Na'vi from Avatar which was inspired a lot by the sounds in Maori.  why don't they just use Maori??  few enough people speak it so it would still sound completely foreign to like... everyone except like 50k individuals in the entire world. And it would help encourage people to learn and otherwise dying language.

Like imagine if they hired some Maori teachers to teach the actors a little-spoken extant language instead of paying some white guy from California to invent a language inspired by real dying languages to make up some words, a grammatical structure, and an alphabet for this fictional universe.

Or what about Game of Thrones, with High Valarian, which was inspired by Estonian and Swahili.

CAN YOU IMAGINE if a wildly popular show like GoT hired Estonian or Swahili linguists and interpreters to teach actors a few phrases? It doesn’t matter if they don’t have perfect pronunciation. That’s fine???? Most people won’t know and tbh even for those who do understand Estonian or Swahili, the increase in interest in people learning their language is??? not a bad thing??? 

AND THEN I REALISED THERE IS AN ACTUAL GOOD EXAMPLE OF WHAT I WAS THINKING OF.

BLACK FUCKING PANTHER, OF COURSE. 

Wakanda uses isiXhosa as their fantasy language. The amount of cultural RICHNESS that comes from using an existing language is honestly unparalleled. And the coolest thing is, there are things in real language that you just can’t make up when a white man engineers a mde up language in his office. The amount of interest in Xhosa SPIKED after Black Panther’s release and SO MANY MORE people became aware of its existence. Do more people speak it? Who knows? Probably not rly? But at least now there is awareness of this language that only has some 8 mil speakers (that’s a little less than the population of NYC). 

And the thing is, even if there are not more speakers of it in the world in response to a movie, at least there is greater awareness of different parts of the world? Imagine using the power of popular media for good like this. People becoming aware of South African tribes, Maori tribes, small Baltic countries, Bantu languages, etc.

Like ??? few enough people are actually aware of the sounds that these languages make that would you actually know if Dothraki was actually a real language spoken by some people in the world??  It would be cool to actually help the cultures that you’re “drawing inspiration” from.

The wild popularity of Tolkien’s Elvish gets me GOING. Every now and then I’ll see that post going around showing how to form words from Elvish letters. You know what written Elvish looks like to me? It looks like Hindi. It looks like the Devanagari script (other people say it also looks like Tibetan, which I cannot attest to, but I can say for sure it DEFINITELY looks like Hindi’s Devanagari script). How consonants and vowels come together is IDENTICAL to the structure in Hindi and there are even a solid number of overlapping characters. Spoken Elvish sounds nothing like Hindi ofc but the written language sure resembles the structure with a fuckton of the same letters. Written Elvish is ostensibly stolen from Indian or Tibetan or other ‘Eastern’ written languages. Imagine if all the people who think Elvish is super sexy and cool and want to learn it actually commited themselves to learning Hindi, a language written and spoken by almost 20% of the world population? How fucking rad would that be?

(look at this elvish Tengwar that is like... literally just Hindi vowels)

I just feel like ???????? movie producers could do a lot of good??? in this very small simple way?? but instead they pay one single person to invent a language and then teach people how to speak their made up language and they have to develop 1000-3000 invented words... when they could just .... use an extant little known language and bring some indigineous languages back from the brink of extinction !!!!!!!

this is my new hill to die on !!!

[seesgood]

can we very gently talk about call out posts / culture really quick?  not in a judgmental way, but in like a: i just want to pose a thought and explain why i��m never going to buy into it and why i wish it would become less of a trend instead of more of one? and i’ll add the  disclaimer  here: i totally get not wanting certain people around you for various reasons, that is all your prerogative. that’s your comfort level. but in emphasizing “your blog should be a safe space” we’re kind’ve losing sight of the fact that the rpc should also be a safe space, and as much as your comfort and safety matter, so do other people’s. and not just the person who hurt you, but the third parties and other mutuals and 99.9% of people who are not at all involved in any way in whatever happened. so, anyway here goes, read it or don’t, we all have different opinions or reasons, i just want to be heard:

people are allowed to change.  think back to who you were last year. two years ago. think about the stuff you said when you were seventeen, or twenty-one, or hell whatever age you were. current-you would probably cringe at the kind of stuff past-you had to say. because you grew. you learned. you had life experiences. in hindsight you have the freedom to be like “oof yeah that was not the best version of myself right there damn i don’t want to be like that again.” the growing trend of ‘here’s a 10+ page google doc complete with out of context screenshots that sometimes date back to like 2017 or earlier’ makes this kind of change impossible. because right there, you’ve just frozen a person in time, probably not at their best, removed any and all amounts of context, and put it on the internet and let other people judge it for themselves. 

so that leads into another point that i want to just kinda present to the community at large: the act of documenting behaviors and storing them for months / years at a time, in itself creates a super unsafe environment, not just for you, your friends, the people who have hurt you --- but also for anyone else that isn’t at all involved in whatever happened. like, for example, i like to think that i’m a pretty nice person. i actively try to be a nice person. am i sometimes not having the best day? have people definitely caught me in bad moments? oh hell yeah. but am i, as someone who tries really hard to be nice and welcoming, constantly thinking through every message i send to someone knowing that a) i could have a reputation that makes them read into context that isn’t there and that could contribute to them misinterpreting words i meant in a different way, b) very aware that every post i make, ask i send, message i send can at any moment be screenshotted and posted and taken out of context and either serve as someone’s only opinion of me or pile on to someone’s existing opinion of me? yeah. so in my experience, and based on people i’ve talked to, we now have this thing where you can be surface-friends wtih a lot of people, but if you want to survive in the tumblr rpc you should really only have 2-3 people that you really trust that you can actually talk about shit with. 

and lately i’ve been seeing a resurgence of posts on my dash about like “bring back xyz in the rpc” or “the reason the rpc is like this is because of xyz” and i both agree and disagree with a lot of this, but primarily i think the reason the rpc is Off lately is because everyone and their cousin has a DNI, which is --- again --- your decision and i understand and respect that, but while you know the context of every name on that DNI, other people don’t. and to be honest: other people don’t really care and honestly maybe they shouldn’t care. --- and don’t get me wrong, your friends should care if someone has hurt you. that’s important. but joe billy bob who just wants to write their character with yours is going to read through your rules, they’re going to see “do not interact with me if you follow with or interact with these people you’ve never heard of and if you want me to tell you why just message me” (which no one is ever going to do, i’m sorry to say). and say, joe billy bob also followed that other person because they were like ‘omg this blog looks cool’ --- now joe billy bob, who just wants to write cool plots, is suddenly the middle-man in some type of drama that they do not understand, and maybe they’re able to remove themselves from the situation, but even then it’s still in the back of your mind. 

this is getting long. it’ll be longer, but let’s take a brief break for me to remind you that in some cases, it’s definitely good to give your mutuals and friends a heads up when someone has done something really, really bad. like, remember x amount of years ago when some dude was like ‘i’m gonna make up a new person and say they died by suicide as a social experiment’ or ‘hey this person actively tries to force very triggering plots about abuse / rape / incest onto people and has been doing so for years and does not seem to change their ways no matter how many people try to educate them’ that’s shit people should probably know about. and it’s also okay ( in my opinion ) for your friends to be able to message you like ‘hey i saw you’re writing with x and i just wanted to let you know i had this experience with them’ if that’s something they feel comfortable doing. and if they are comfortable with you still having the autonomy to make your own decision regarding the person. 

i’ll be honest, for a second: i’ve been part of friendships and groups that have turned really toxic for one reason or another. a handful of times. there are probably people out there that are like “yeah this chick is really fake and manipulative and etc, i was friends with her back in 2019″ which, okay. yeah. i’ve definitely done shit and said shit that was not the most representative of who i want to be and who i want to become, and you probably have to. because we are human beings and we are a product of our social groups and the community around us. and you shouldn’t be chained to a version of you that isn’t you anymore. people change. they grow. you don’t have to like them, but you should respect that sometimes people don’t mesh, and that doesn’t mean any of them are bad people, it just means the experience was bad. 

a few additional notes i would like to make but i’ve already gone on way too long:

90% of the callout posts that i’ve seen and the DNI’s that i’ve seen can, in my opinion, be classified as a friend group thing. you were friends with x, x did something, now y and z aren’t friends with x anymore. pain is a very, very real thing and people hurting you should never be minimized, but at some point i just want you to remember that not every friendship is going to end happily, but both you and the other party should be allowed to move on and grow better, healthier friendships after. rehashing Friend Group Gone Wrong instances removes that ability for not only person x, but also person y and z.

you putting out a callout says just as much ( maybe more ) about you than it does about the other person. which sucks. because i’d like to think we all have great intentions, and i’m not saying that you should swallow your pain, but it might not be the kind of thing that impacts the community at large, and maybe you should try to find a better way of working through it with a trusted friend(s)

i’m going to be very real and very blunt on this one: literally no one cares. i say that with love. i’m good friends with people who have each other on their DNI’s. establish a baseline of respect and ‘i’m not going to say anything to them about you and vice versa because there’s no need for me to do so’ and move on. but seriously. no one cares. most outside people read callout posts because they like being in the know about the drama, not because they actually care. 

person a and person b who are mentioned in the DNI / callout aren’t the only ones who are going to be affected. your friends, your mutuals, your writing partners are now all put in a weird spot where you have to pick sides on an issue you know nothing about and shouldn’t have to know anything about. you’re asking people to choose sides on an issue they cannot fully understand, and that’s not fair to them or to you. and it drives great people away. and then we all lose out on having more awesome people in the rpc.

you’re entitled to your safe space, but this is a public platform and you are also responsible for maintaining your safe space. you shouldn’t put it entirely on other people to do that for you. you can block, blacklist, make up funny names for, or spitefully erase from your many anything and anyone that you wish. but you shouldn’t make your friends do it for you.

there’s always an inherent power imbalance when any kind of drama occurs between those who have more followers / friends / connections and those who do not. and the smaller blog is always going to suffer a little bit more because they don’t have people blindly coming to their defense. 

bad moments, bad experiences, bad decisions DO NOT equal bad people. 

allow people to make up their own mind about something or someone

anywho, if you read through this whole thing i think i owe you financial compensation. but also thank you for reading / listening / considering. even if you rolled your eyes through the whole thing like “stfu lia” that’s fine. i’m just presenting an alternative thought. i’d like to once again state: i’m not judging you if you’ve made a callout/DNI or if you’re on a callout/DNI. like i literally don’t care. and frankly, in my opinion, i shouldn’t have to. because i, and you, and your friends, and your mutuals, and your non-mutuals should be allowed the space to make up their own opinion and mind on something or someone without being told that there will be consequences if they don’t agree with you. set boundaries. communicate in healthy ways. you don’t have to forgive the people who have hurt or wronged you, but you also don’t get to decide that their actions make up 100% of who they are as a person, or decide that that is the only side of that person people should get to see. 

[atopfourthwall]

Ive only recently gotten into classic Star Trek so I don't think I can properly answer but what is it specifically about Discovery and recent Star Trek that classic Trek fans hate?

Putting this behind a cut because... it's a lot.

Well, first of all a big rejection of it is just on an aesthetic level. Up until the 2009 movie (which was considered a reboot, even with time travel elements), Star Trek tried to treat the original series and how it was portrayed as pretty sacrosanct. Sure, they might occasionally make jokes about goofier aspects of it and discard some of the stupider stuff (like how in the final episode, penned by Gene Roddenberry himself, that women weren't allowed to Captain starships), but how TOS looked? That's how the 23rd century looked. Buttons and multi-colored outfits and boxy computers and smooth, undetailed ships WAS what was appropriate for the time. When Scotty came back in TNG, they had him on the holodeck and it was the TOS bridge. When DS9 traveled back in time to that era for an episode? They went onto the Enterprise and visited it. When in an Enterprise 2-parter we had a TOS-era ship? It looked like a TOS ship. They even did a 2-parter on Enterprise to explain why Klingons had smooth foreheads when later (and earlier) they didn't. Star Trek up until then cared about maintaining that continuity of appearance. But Discovery is set in the TOS era... but nothing looks like TOS. Even when we got the Enterprise and those uniforms and we saw inside the ship, it was an upgraded form. The only logic I've seen people try to argue about WHY it doesn't look like it actually did was "Well, audiences won't accept something as cheap as TOS being futuristic." Well, then you've got a few responses there: -Don't set in TOS era, then. -That's horseshit, because audiences from the 90s through the 2000s accepted it just fine. Even a piece of dialogue from DS9 explained it perfectly: "I LOVE 23rd century design." It LOOKS cheap, but it was just the aesthetics of the period. And the Enterprise 2-parter it still looked good in HD. Hell, arguably it looked BETTER in HD because they knew how to light it and create mood and its own unique flavor. -It's even more horseshit because people are STILL going back and watching it even today, as indicated by you saying you've started watching it, so clearly it's not that much of a barrier. But what's even more egregious is the TECHNOLOGY. You might be able to accept updated aesthetics if at least matches what was present during the period... and it doesn't. Holographic displays and communication (holodeck technology AT ALL, frankly - it's possible it was there, but TNG seemed pretty adamant that the holodecks were fairly new, very impressive technology), weapons not looking or acting like they traditionally did, Enterprise and Discovery having R2D2-style repair droids that certainly did not exist in TOS, the wrong sound effects being frequently employed, replicator technology for good-looking food instead of food dispensers that gave out marshmallows and cubes, and honestly the tech level shown in Discovery looks just as advanced - if not MORE advanced than seen on TNG 100 years later. And this is a minor thing, but despite the attempt to make the future LOOK futuristic, from a cultural perspective, the future looks... way too damn similar to now. The excessive swearing (it was said in particular in Star Trek 4 that while they certainly did cuss, it was less common and they sure as hell weren't dropping F-bombs), a party on Discovery that looked like a rave (when previously it seemed like the most popular music and culture of the 23rd/24th century was considered fairly high-brow entertainment [classical music, Shakespeare, great works of literature and plays, etc.] - and while you could certainly argue that that snootiness and love of that stuff is a problem with Star Trek and a sign of how sterile and homogenized it is, THAT is the future they presented and a character in Voyager loving some of the goofier parts of 20th century culture like jukeboxes and old sci-fi serials was considered unusual), and just the general way people talk betrays the idea that the writers aren't thinking about how society changes in the future. It's just the modern day, but with cooler technology. But hey, let's set aside the general aesthetics - some people aren't going to mind that and find

ways to handwave away a lot of stuff (even Discovery season 2 TRIED to handwave away stuff like the holographic communications, but did a piss-poor job of it). This brings us to the problem of the WRITING. And the problem with the writing is a big Michael Burnham-shaped indentation. To be clear, I don't mind Michael as a character or her actress - there are interesting aspects to her, centering a Star Trek show around the science officer is a neat idea (though that means you should probably NAME IT AFTER HER and not around the ship, because it suggests this is a standard ensemble group and not JUST her)... but the actual execution is that it feels like the entire universe bends over backwards for HER. She has a unique relationship with a beloved longtime character that is retconned in. She has unique relationships with several important characters to the point where the fate of billions of people hinges on her and the decisions she makes. She is presented as almost always correct about everything, and those that oppose her are often wrong, naïve, or active enemies. Now, this is less of an issue in the third season - but that has its own unique problems - but in the first season, the resolution of two major storylines (mirror universe and the Klingon war) revolves around her and her relationship to the Terran Emperor and Lorca. In season 2, her mother trying to help or save her is the basis of the ENTIRE friggin' plot with time travel and the like, with special knowledge and history having to do with her and everyone ready to abandon their lives for her so she won't be alone when she has to go to the future when arguably they barely know her (the timeline of the show is debatable). Season 3 has a few different problems with her - the first is that she keeps being involved in things that don't concern her (why is she going down to Trill?) and she keeps violating orders. Now, her violating orders is a problem throughout the entirety of Discovery - in fact, it's kind of the instigating factor OF the series. And arguably, other Star Trek characters are guilty of that and they face no consequences, just as she faces none... and yet it's the brazenness with which it happens, and in those other series it's arguable because the series tries to avoid excessive continuity changes for its episodic nature, so the status quo MUST return to normal... but Discovery is pivoted as one of MAJOR continuity, so her lack of consequences (and indeed eventual PROMOTION) is baffling to the point of frustration. Now again, let me be clear here - she is not a bad character in and of herself. Honestly what it shows is that being the science officer on a starship is not where her talents lie. She should be in a position where she has a lot more freedom to act and not in a major command structure... but being in that command structure, what we see in season 3 is that she lacks the discipline, emotional maturity, responsibility, leadership qualities, and general other traits necessary to be a Captain. Only once during season 3 did she display such a quality - putting the safety of the Federation above a friend and colleague... but other times she will happily disobey orders and put herself and others in harm's way, creating potential new problems. Now, again, Star Trek is rife with characters doing that... but usually not the Captains. And, in fact, when this happened once on DS9 with one officer disobeying orders and putting their own personal feelings above the greater responsibility, it was made VERY clear that the incident would mean that they would never be able to command a starship because of the unofficial reprimand. What's even more frustrating about her is that the character is ALWAYS shoved to the forefront so much to the point where we just get sick of her. SHE is the one giving log entries (usually pretty piss-poor ones, at that - very flowery and nonsensical and kind of dumb) and not the Captain. SHE is the one given so much focus and how the plot of the episode affects her. Barely anyone else gets any focus episodes - I STILL can't

remember the names of some of the secondary characters because they're so rarely said, and a PTSD-related plotline in season 3 for one of the secondary characters basically gets resolved OFF-SCREEN. Michael would be fine if we actually had a chance to miss her... but we never do. Arguably one of the best episodes of the show is in season 2, when it focuses on Saru and his people because Michael DOES take a back seat. It's his story and his development and problems relating to him and his people. And even if, again, we forgave the idea of so much focus on her even in plots that aren't about her... she never seems to really change that much. She'll TALK about how she's changed, but I see no real difference in the way she acts (MAYBE season 1 to 2, where in season 1 she was stiffer and more Vulcan-like, but that's it). But hey, let's assume that's not a problem for you - you really, REALLY like Michael and are fine with so much focus on her. Simply put, the writing of the rest of the show... is just kind of dumb. The ship is powered by magic mushrooms that let it teleport everywhere because the universe has super fungus capillaries throughout it that nobody can see and also it's magic and can resurrect the dead. The time travel plot of season 2 doesn't make any sense when you sit down and diagram it. Well-established Trek lore is just kind of sprinkled in, but now in ways that doesn't match what it was before or at least in ways that completely recolor how it's supposed to work, because it needs to serve THIS plot. Everyone remembering a murdererous monster fondly after she leaves because "Hey, she was coooool." The explanation for the big mystery in season 3 is just fricking stupid and one of the two big reasons why I've finally given up on Discovery, because it's just so absurd, doesn't match how anything works, and just feels like the writers giving the middle finger to the audience because they care more about "YOU MUST FEEEEEEL THINGS!" instead of it making sense. And indeed, there is certainly a balance to be made of plot vs. emotion-driven storytelling - some stories are dumb, but are forgivable because the character writing and emotion are so strong that they override how goofy the plot is... but sometimes a plot is just so dumb it overrides anything I'm SUPPOSED to feel. And it would help if I already liked the show, already gave it some benefit of the doubt... but I don't and it hasn't done enough to impress me. A little thing that's a problem with ALL of current modern Trek shows is that whole sprinkling lore thing - I don't think a single episode goes by in ANY current modern Trek series that doesn't have a random reference to classic Trek lore. A name, a line of dialogue, etc. It comes across like the creators don't trust you to enjoy it on its own merits, but want you to like it because "Hey, remember thing? We know about thing! Like us because we mentioned thing!" But hey, I recognize that these are things that other people may not have any problem with or just disagree in general. But for me and my family, these are the big ones that keep us from enjoying it. Hell, my brother and dad still watch it for hatewatching purposes, but I was done after season 3. I gave it plenty of chances to impress me, and while each season MARGINALLY got better as it went along, I'm tired of waiting to actually like it and to stop feeling like it thinks I'm a fucking idiot. If other people still like it, great - it clearly appeals to them in a way that it doesn't appeal to me and they are free to enjoy it. Other people probably have their own issues, but this long, rambly bit is the major stuff for me.

[prozd]

Bones of the Forgotten

For those unaware, when I was 12 years old, I used to write very gritty Mario fanfiction.  The only reason this exists is because we hit a charity milestone for Extra Life (which by the way you can still donate to here: https://www.extra-life.org/participant/450294)

I decided to write the sort of fanfiction that 12 year old me would've enjoyed writing, so here is my love letter to my youth.

A question block can come in handy in a variety of ways.  You just gotta know how to scrap it down.  Easily done enough with a precision focus Fire Flower blowtorch.  The first thing you gotta do is realize there's nothing bringing that sonuvabitch down; those fuckers float in the air forever no matter how much you push or pull 'em.  Instead, you gotta carve off pieces from it as it's floating up there. Awkward at first, but by the fiftieth time, it's fucking clockwork.

Melt down the pieces and you've got the golden goo perfect for crafting all sorts of nasty tools.  A bat made from question block has just enough lightness for a easy swing, but just enough density to still effectively break a kneecap.  A blade still won't pierce, say, a Chain Chomp, but it can at least pierce most Koopa shells.  Plus, some people just like the gold color; they think it looks sick.

I personally think the best use of question block goo is making bullets out of it.  They're denser than most others and they maintain their speed for longer. The only downside is they stand out if you leave them in a body at a crime scene, but that's irrelevant as long as you're cleaning up your messes properly.  If anyone had the time and resources to search the bottom of the sea near Rogueport Docks, I imagine you'd find a glittering trove of golden bullets scattered among the bones of the forgotten.

One of those bullets dances idly through my fingers as I listen to one of my subordinates, a Craw with the quite frankly unfortunate name of Garf, lament about his recent mistreatment by the Syndicate.

"Ishnail, they just stomped the shit out of us!  Gus and I, we weren't doin' NOTHIN' and those leafy fucks attacked us.  Everyone knows the Plaza's neutral territory, we gotta DO somethin' about this."

Craws get a bad rap, in my opinion.  They get labeled as savage, but I've always found them to be much more thoughtful than people would assume.  Even in this moment, as my eyes gaze upon Garf's tattered, bloodied vest and bandana, and his curved beak squawks in rage, I notice the slightest trace of tears at the very edges of his eyes.  Aw.

"Let me ask you one question, Garf."  Out of respect, Garf immediately goes silent. Again, thoughtful.  "Were you and Gus carrying your spears?"

"I......I mean.....we have to, it's part of Craw culture...."

"I'm well aware, but Garf, I'm sure YOU'RE well aware that no weapons are allowed in the Plaza.  I mean, at the very least, keep a goddamn gun hidden in your pocket, don't wave a fucking SPEAR around.  You're just asking for the Piantas to give you a beating."

I get up from the dingy sofa I've been lounging on and dust myself off.  "But I can't have Don Pianta thinking it's okay to fuck up my guys.  I'll have to have a word with the ol' mustachioed fuck."  I pat Garf on the cheek and wipe a tear away with my thumb.  He nods in appreciation.

I motion to two of my subordinates, a scrappy looking Goomba named Goomfrey and a laidback Hammer Brother named Hamma.  We step outside HQ and into the bustling, grimy streets of Rogueport's east side.  

As long as I've lived in Rogueport, it's always carried the smell of the sea in the air.  It's a welcome scent to me, having grown up in the Seaside Kingdom.  My mom was a Bubblainian; she raised me when my deadbeat Koopa dad left us, and what she gave me was the snail shell on my back and a love for the water.  Merchants shouting and the occasional "STOP, THIEF!" ring out as my muscle and I make our way through the Plaza.  We pass the gallows where the Shadow Queen's corpse was supposedly hung from one thousand years ago.  Fittingly gruesome lore for a city filled with murderous rat-bastards.

A sickly sweet scent starts to mingle with the smell of the sea and garbage I'm used to. It's an indication that we're entering the west side of Rogueport. Sure, it's a much tidier area than where the Robbos and I live; there may be fancy-ass things like "flowers" and "benches," how hoity-toity.  You can put lipstick on a Li'l Oink, but it still smells like shit.

We walk into Westside Goods.  There's no need for the customary password; Peeka, the Boo shopkeeper, knows why I'm here.  She opens up the back door, and we walk up the stairs in the back alley to Don Pianta's office.

"Ishnail, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

Don Pianta stands behind his desk; as much as I hate to admit it, his presence is overwhelming.  "And you brought friends, too?" he notes as he sees Goomfrey and Hamma.

If you want to live long in Rogueport, every time you enter a room, you have to mentally gauge 1. the quickest way to escape, 2. who you may need to disable and/or kill to escape, and 3. how easy that's all going to be.  Two giant yellow Pianta in suits stand guard at both sides of the Don's desk. A blue Pianta in a white suit, the Don's underboss Frankie, closes the door behind us.  

Piantas are not easy to injure, let alone kill; I know this from years of tangling with the Don's gang.  The little palm trees and skirts would make you think otherwise, but Piantas are naturally built like fucking dump trucks and hit just as hard.  Hamma's a Glitz Pit fighter, and I've seen what he can do with that hammer.  Goomfrey gets underestimated for his species, but his reputation precedes him; he has bitten off more fingers than your average Rogueportian.  Still, a fight against four Piantas, even with my question block bullets, would be brutal.  It's telling that you never see a Pianta with a weapon because nothing will kill you faster than simply their own fists.

"Your men attacked mine, Don.  And for what, carrying spears?  You and I both know that's bullshit."

"My men....have been on edge.  Your little Bandit friends have been scuttling around, picking too many pockets they shouldn't be.  Keep that shit on the East Side where it belongs, and we'll be fine."

As Don Pianta talks, he habitually cracks his knuckles.  Out of all the Piantas in the syndicate, Don Pianta is truly a mammoth; his muscles are barely contained by the suit he's wearing.  Honestly, if he wasn't my ultimate arch-nemesis in this town, shit, I'd fuck him.  I like my men beefy.

"Alright, Don.  I'll tell my boys to keep their weapons out of the plaza.  You and I both know no one benefits if we fight in the streets.  Bad business for both your establishments and mine.  Let's keep things quiet."

"Agreed," The Don extends a giant hand.  I shake it firmly.

I turn to leave with my muscle in tow.  As I open the door to leave, I hear a whisper.

"Get your slimy shell outta here, you fuck."

I pause.  I give Goomfrey the look, and he smirks.  Goomfrey's eyes quickly dart and I know he's already memorizing every little detail about the yellow Pianta who whispered the insult.  Without another word, I close the door behind me.

---

There's one more use for question block goo I forgot to mention.  It's perfect for weighing things down.  

I breathe in the salty seaport air; it's particularly sweet tonight.  The golden bullet dances between my fingers; I know it's a bad habit, but it's fun to fidget with.  It'll go to good use though.  I load it into my Fire Flower pistol with a few others and carefully attach the silencer.

"Now, listen, uh...what was his name again?"

"Paulie," says Goomfrey, standing to my side with a grin.

"That's right, Paulie.  I'm a pretty patient person, I think most people including your boss would agree, but I've got a real sore spot about the shell, ya know?  It's just, it reminds me of my dear old ma, and I love her to bits.  You understand, right?"

There is no response from Paulie due to his crushed windpipe courtesy of Hamma's hammer.  Quite frankly, I'm impressed he's still conscious from the pain.  He looks up at me from his crouching position eyes filled with hate, his hands and feet encased in reforged golden question blocks.  Piantas are heavy, so four blocks worth is safest.

"I did promise the dear Don that I'd keep things quiet, so let's cut to the chase." I point the gun at his forehead and before he can react, I fire three shots.  There's no need to prolong this shit; I'm not a sadist. Hamma and Goomfrey pick up the body and toss it off the port into the sea.

"For what it's worth, boss," says Hamma in a low, pleasant baritone.  "I like your shell.  Looks good on ya."

"Aww, thanks."

[interact-if]

I’m sending this in because it seems like I could get good opinions from not only you but also the people who follow you. I have an idea for an IF, and I’m very excited for the story. My question is, would people be offended if I made the playable MC physically female that identifies as female and all the ROs physically male that identify as male? I have seen some out there that are strictly M/M or F/F, and I’m so happy they exist because I feel that population is underserved. I just feel, not having the experience, I could bring justice to writing LGBTQ+ (and I don’t want to offend anyone in that community by writing something incorrect), mostly when it comes to sex (which I plan on including in my game). I support games that have those relationships in them and admire them, even play those games, and I don’t care who plays my game. The more the merrier! I still want the characters to be diverse. One of them will be of a descent that is based on Japanese culture and many others, based on Persian culture. I also want the playable MC to have any skin tone/features the player wants. I just want to know if this…will have people coming after me? I want to tell my story, but I don’t want to be attacked for it, if that makes sense?

I really don’t mean to offend anyone. I just don’t want to cause trouble, and I just want to respectfully ask for people’s opinions on this.

Hello! So, before diving into our response, we’d like to emphasize that we are but five individuals running a blog devoted to interactive fiction. We are neither the end-all-be-all voice on this matter nor necessarily a representative mouthpiece for the community.

First off, you can write whatever you would like to write; as the author, you have absolute control over what you produce, so nobody is going to stop you from writing what you want to write. It’s also important to write what you enjoy.

That said, the community is, in our experience, very inclusive, and largely devoted to providing a space for the queer community. We can understand the desire to have an appropriately inclusive and diverse game, and why you particularly want to turn to characters of color to bridge the gap; however, substituting characters of color for queer characters to claim diversity in a project is possibly something that will receive the wrong kind of attention. Furthermore, assuming that writing characters of color well is any less complex than writing queer characters potentially suggests that said characters could end up underdeveloped or tokenized. (See Nines' and Roast’s response below for more context)

All of that doesn’t mean you can’t make a game that’s genderlocked and restricted to M/F romance, and I don’t think anyone will be offended by such a game, but it might limit your audience. At the same time, there are (many) other visual novels that have this format, so it’s not something unheard of. As far as CoGs and text-based games go, as far as we’ve seen, they are rarely genderlocked unless for plot reasons, etc.

There is also a chance that you may receive feedback requesting that the MC be un-gender locked, or for additional ROs to be added of different gender, or for the ROs to be made gender selectable. These requests may be gentle, insistent, kind, or aggressive, and they may only occur at the beginning of your work, or may occur throughout your game development. Maybe they’ll never happen at all. It’s impossible to predict the future, but in our experience, we have often seen this occur to games in the past with RO gender imbalances, locks, etc.

As for searching for feedback, if you’re looking for feedback but you’re not pursuing the CoG format, may we suggest the Reddit subforum? It’s a little difficult for you to get the feedback/dialogue going here that you’d likely like to get, so Reddit’s format may be more conducive to your needs.

In the meanwhile, those who would like to provide their thoughts are encouraged to respond in the comments of this post. Please remember to be polite with your discussion!

— — —

The above is our general mod response; a few of us wanted to offer some individual thoughts as well, and those can be found below. These are personal opinions and reflect each individual mod’s thoughts, rather than a collective response.

While it can be a little daunting to write about something you’re not familiar with, writing often broaches topics with which we don’t personally have first-hand experience. Additionally, queer relationships are ultimately still relationships between people—they’re not all that different from heterosexual relationships. If you’re worried about the way you’re portraying your content, that’s something well-curated beta readers/testers (from the population you’re trying to represent) can help test for, and give feedback on. And on top of all of the above, that’s not to mention the potential issues associated with substituting in POC to replace queer people, which is perhaps not what your intention is, but is what it feels like your intention is (see Roast and Nines for all the ins and outs on why this is an issue). Ultimately, I stand by the opinion that on the most basic level, most will not be offended by a game that’s about a straight, cisgender female MC—yet some, or even many, may be off-put by such a game. I know I, personally, am. (P. S. Also consider that the MC has to interact with the other ROs that she isn’t romancing, as friends, enemies, acquaintances, what have you—having selectable ROs, for example, also allows the player to “diversify” their acquaintance group, if they so wish.) — Dani

I understand that this ask is coming from well-meaning intent but I would just like to state that writing characters of color is not easier than writing queer characters. One of them isn't a substitute for the other. Writing characters of color and writing queer characters are separate matters entirely, and both come with its own difficulties. Wanting your characters to be diverse, while admittedly lacking the perspective to back such identities, is still a murky water to navigate.

Personally speaking, and I really do have to be transparent about this, the way certain sentences were phrased in this ask rubbed me the wrong way. Still, I understand that this isn't malicious, just someone who is asking for guidance, which is something I can't fault. We all have to start somewhere, you know? That being said, if you really want to write diverse characters, my general advice is to do research. Lots and lots and lots of research. No author is exempt from that, honestly.

Find helpful articles, journals, studies, video essays, etc. to aid you in writing your characters. If you still feel like that's lacking in some way, which is a valid concern, being open to feedback from the appropriate people is also a good way to improve. The integrity of a project is important, but so is reasonable criticism against, for, or about it. Keep an open mind, educate yourself, and don't be afraid to ask for help or clarification should it be needed. — Nines

Nines says it well that queer people and poc are not interchangeable nor any 'easier' than the other. The fact that you're willing to do research and include characters of color yet not include queer characters tells me that you're afraid yet misconstruing how much effort actually gets put into cultural research.

There is a 'purity culture' that goes around tumblr that claims that diverse characters have to be perfect, have to have no flaws, cannot die, cannot have trauma, cannot face adversity, they must be perfect and good and happy.

I think this is bullshit.

I also think the backlash from this 'purity culture' community is what is creating so much fear in authors (including queer authors!!) in making characters with different backgrounds and identities than their own. In making queer characters with flaws and tragedy and negative characteristics.

If we only ever wrote what we knew, what we've personally experienced, fiction would be a very boring world.

Being afraid of representing a community wrong is a valid fear, but it shouldn't stop you from trying. You can write what you want to write, but it shouldn't be limited by fear.

Do your research. Get sensitivity readers. Be open to feedback. Be willing to be afraid, but do it anyway.

If, in the end, you decide to gender lock, make it an informed decision at the very least, and if you are including characters of color, know that that is a heavy amount of research too, and should be handled with the same care as what we've said on queer characters.

And like we've said before, we are not the voice of the community, we cannot give you permission or our blessing or flawless feedback, we are just five people running a blog. — Roast

Alright this was already mentioned a bit before but I wish to add my two cents: M/F relationships are the norm anywhere else in real life, and if you feel like there's no space for you and your relationships in a mostly-queer community then you might want to recheck if this is the community you wish to have as your target audience.

No one's going to be offended if your story is cishet, as we said, but you are extremely reducing your audience by doing such. The appeal of interactive fiction is that a good bunch of us have played female-mc-straight-love-interest visual novels in the past, having to endure being misgendered or romancing people we might not be attracted to.

The current interactive fiction community we're trying to promote has opened a million doors for everyone to explore themselves, so don't be surprised if your story, no matter how good, is ignored due to this aspect. Most of us have no interest in being forced to play as something we're not.

Again, we cannot tell you what you can or cannot do. We don't speak for the community, we speak for ourselves and for this blog. Maybe every comment we've made was incorrect and your game turns out to be successful, really, but it's what we believe you should keep in mind. — Cruz

Honestly, I don’t have much to add since everyone here mentioned and discussed important facets of this ask! At the end of the day, we are not a group who can or will ever dictate what you can or cannot write. That is not the purpose of the blog or the reason why we’re working as hard as we are. 

There have always been games with this specific set of characteristics: gender locked MCs and/or ROs. Some people may enjoy it, others may not, for whatever reason. 

Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee anything in terms of how people will respond to a game, because people will react to content differently. All we can do is offer our perspective and the potential things that may happen in the future based on the experience the lovely devs above have had. (fellow interact-if mods, my beloved ❤️)

It’s always admirable for people to reach out when they’re unsure, and I’m sure there are infinitely more opinions that vary or are similar to the ones in this response. But there you have it, some of our thoughts! 

Goodluck with your project! — Mars

[zutarawasrobbed]

So Zutara happens. Then what? War over, everyone else returns to their homes and loved ones while Aang wanders the world alone burying what's left of his culture before dying of depression next to Monk Gyatso's skeleton? Kataang's narrative purpose is to show that Aang can have belonging, bring back his people, have a life beyond being the Avatar. Without it, there's no happy ending. This could be avoided if they set up another romance for Aang after letting Katara go but they didnt.

Okay, so there is a lot to address here, and honestly, I had a hard time knowing where to begin because wow...

First of all, all I see here is how Aang feels. Why is it that whenever anyone discusses Kataang, it's all about Aang and his feelings? Even in the show, it's only ever really shown from his side and what he wants, not Katara. Does Katara have a say? Is Katara’s only purpose in life to be an airbending baby maker? Does Katara's very existence hinge on her being Aang's girlfriend? What about how she feels? What about what she wants? What about her happiness? Or is Aang's happiness all that matters, and Katara should just deal with it?

Now for the culture argument. I want to point out that no genocide is ever really successful in wiping out an entire group of people. Air nomads are literally nomads meaning they move around a lot. It's in the name. This means that there are most definitely other airbenders out there hiding too afraid to come out until after the war is over. But, let's say we go with all the airbenders are dead narrative, then it makes even less sense for Kataang to happen because that means the entirety of the future of one nation depends on how many airbending babies Katara pops out. So this plan is stupid. But Aang is 12, so this plan might make sense in his brain. However, as he grows up, he would come to the obvious realization that if he wants to bring back the airbenders he needs to make a lot of babies with a lot of different women, so monogamy makes no sense and Katara would likely not be down for her boyfriend/husband "planting his seed" in every willing woman given that she's from the water tribes where family units are central to her culture.

Another thing Aang is 12, he'll survive not getting his first crush to date him. We all have at some point or another experienced heartbreak over someone who didn't like us back. We get sad for a bit and then move on. That's life. I also speak from experience as someone who was in a relatioship at 12 that no one should date at that age, and it is extremely unlikely you will end up together in the end. My relationship lasted a grand total of three months, and it is by far the dumbest decision I ever made. I was an idiot, he was an idiot, we were both idiots not ready for a relationship like all 12-year-olds are. So the idea that Aang and Katara would even last beyond a few months is ridiculous and unrealistic. In fact, the idea of me still being with that same person makes me visibly cringe because it was very unhealthy for a multitude of reasons I am still recovering from emotionally. If I was still with him, I would not be in the amazing relationship I am in now. Every relationship contains lessons that help us grow, and we keep with us when entering another relatioship. Sometimes we grow in relationships, and we realize we aren't right for each other, and that's okay. That's life. It goes on. That said, I know some people do get together at that young age and end up happily married. I know two people from my high school personally who got together at 14, got married a year after high school, and just had their first baby. But, the likelihood of that happening is extremely slim. On that note, relationships are hard work and require a certain amount of maturity. The maturity gap between Katara and Aang is vast, with Katara having the mental age of at least 25 and Aang still having the mental age of 12. It's unbalanced. 

Furthermore, the idea that Aang's happiness depends on Katara being with him means that his other relationships pale in comparison to his crush. It also makes him kind of pathetic if he's gonna end up "dying of depression next to Monk Gyatso's skeleton" as you so eloquently put it if he doesn't get with Katara. Also, it makes the connections he has with the others in the gaang worthless, especially his friendship with Katara. Because that means Aang doesn't really care about being in Katara's life if it isn't in the way, he wants it. It makes their friendship conditional, with no value because there was always an ulterior motive, and in his mind, it was always just a means to an end. That just makes him a selfish dick.

The argument that Aang is alone without Katara is dumb. He has Toph, Sokka, Suki, Katara, and Zuko. Plus, I don't know if you know this, but you can make more friends than the ones you made in your teens. You don't just stop making friends after a certain age. You continue to meet people and form connections. And given how charismatic Aang is, he's gonna make a ton of more friends and have the opportunity to form new bonds, including romantic ones as well. Furthermore, as a 12-year-old, Aang should be allowed to expand his circle around the world because he is the Avatar, and he is going to need to make new friends because his main ones aren't always gonna be available. Moreover, the idea of Aang being alone without Katara implies that Aang will only ever have katara at his side and cut ties with everyone else and expect her to do the same.

The idea that to have a happy ending Aang must get into a romantic relationship makes no sense. What about Toph? She didn't have a romantic relationship in the end, and she was perfectly happy. Because she's 12 and knows life doesn't depend on being in a romantic relationship all of the time. Furthermore, on the topic of Toph, I would like to bring up another argument you made about Aang not developing other potential love interests because he does. Toph is one of them. In season 2, we are introduced to Toph by way of a vision that is pretty romantic and used as a common trope in both modern and ancient literature. We also see their compatibility in the way they are naturally with each other. Aang wants to be a kid and have fun. With Toph, he can do that. But, he also has someone who won't let him shirk his responsibilities when they matter most. They match and balance each other in their personalities, and we see some possible romantic development in both seasons 2 and 3. Another potential love interest we are introduced to is On Ji in season 3, episode 2, "The Headband," where we see her have an obvious crush on "Kuzon" (Aang.) But what's appealing about this pairing is that she doesn't know he's the Avatar, meaning she genuinely likes him for who he is without the glitz and glamour. Which I personally find adorable. Side note, I am aware that "the headband" is supposed to be a hallmark "kataang" episode. However, I would be remiss if I did not point out that this episode actually proves the "Katara doesn't treat/see Aang as a son" argument wrong. Because in that same episode, before the dance scene, Katara literally pretends to be Aang's pregnant mother.

Moreover, Aang is not without purpose outside of being the Avatar. The very notion is ridiculous. Yes, he has to rebuild his nation, he's a symbol of peace, but he is also a person who wants friends and a family, which he has found in the gaang. He also has the purpose of being a kid, which now he can be contingent on him meeting his obligations as the Avatar.

Lastly, I would like to reiterate that not only is Aang 12 and a child, the rest of the gaang are too. Granted, Aang is by far the least mature as he grew up in a time without war and has not had to a childhood with the effects of war the other members of the gaang have throughout their lives. But, in regards to Zutara, I personally do not see them getting together immediately after the war, they both have responsibilities to their respective nations. Katara, in rebuilding her tribe and Zuko in redefining the Fire Nation. Therefore, it would take years just to find some stability. But that doesn't mean they don't keep in touch. We know out of everyone in the gang, Zuko and Katara are closest to each other. They both share a bond with each other no one can match. You might be tempted to argue that Aang is closest to Katara and her best friend, but that is pretty debatable because both Aang and Katara have more positive interactions with other gaang members than they do with each other. For instance, if I had to choose out of everyone in the Gaang who Katara's best friend was, aside from Zuko, I would be tied between Toph and Suki. But, given Suki is not part of the gaang long enough to really expand on her relationships with the others beside Sokka, Toph would be my answer. That said, after the war, everyone would keep in touch with each other. They are all friends for life regardless of romantic relationships. Therefore, the gaang would most definitely be keeping in touch with each other, not just Zuko and Katara. But over the years as they grow, I can see Zuko and Katara growing closer and building on that strong foundation to form a strong and healthy romantic relationship.

[themollyjay]

On the Necessity of Making Our Own Myths

So, I’m writing this on what is technically the day after I finished Transistor.  That is, it’s after midnight, even if I haven’t gone to bed yet. The reason I mention that is because it won’t get posted for a couple of weeks since it’s going in the queue for the Monday blog posts, but the timing in relevant.  You see, the same day I finished Transistor, I saw a Tumblr post talking about Harry Potter and JK Rowling and in one of the responses to the original post, a trans person talked about how Rowling betrayed a whole swath of her fan base.

The comment stuck with me for a number of reasons.  First, because it really does feel that way.  My childhood wasn’t great.  In fact, it kind of fucking sucked in a lot of ways, and I missed out on a lot of the experiences other kids got to have.  When I discovered Harry Potter, I latched onto in a big way, because it filled a huge void I hadn’t even realized existed.  I loved those books so much, I can’t even put it into words.  When Order of the Phoenix came out, my girlfriend at the time and I ended up with four copies, because Amazon didn’t deliver the two copies we had on preorder on release day, so we went down to borders and bought two copies.  We went to the midnight release for Half-Blood Prince.  Harry Potter was a huge part of my life for years, and now I flinch every time someone makes a Harry Potter reference, or Rowling’s name comes up because it’s an instant reminder that someone who created something I loved deeply doesn’t believe I have the right to exist.

But I think the second reason it stuck with me is a lot more important.  It stuck with me because it made me realize that far to often, as queer people, and especially as trans people, we look to people outside our community to create our myths for us.  It’s not something that’s really our fault, because for a long time, we didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter.  For a long time, queer people, and especially trans people, were silenced by systematic censorship and oppression.  Queer narratives just weren’t allowed, or if they were allowed, they had to end in pain, misery and tragedy.  Those were the rules imposed by the gatekeepers.

Those rules have slowly but surely faded away.  First through queer people bypassing the system by setting up our own publishing houses, and making our own movies, but then, when the mainstream media realizes that queer people had money, they rushed in, trying to get those queer dollars. First my queerbaiting, then by safely neutered queers who never dated or had relationships, then with the gay secondary characters, and only very recently, with the very occasional, heavily sanitized queer lead.

But the problem is, we as a queer community, and more specifically, we trans people, are looking outside of our selves for the mythology we need to nourish our souls.  That’s not healthy for us for any number of reasons. First, because if we rely on straight people to create our myths, or to approve our myths, we never really get to see ourselves.  Not really. We get to see what cishet people consider acceptable queers.

This leaves us with myths that are cut off from our culture.  When was the last time Alex Danvers made a horrible gay joke about herself?  When was the last time Batwoman attended Pride? When was the last time you saw a group of queer characters sitting around bitching about straight bullshit? When we let outsides create or approve our myths, we only ever see versions or ourselves that are acceptable to those outsiders.

Which brings me back around to Transistor.  Transistor is the fourth novel I’ve finished this year, and I don’t want to give the impression that I’m not incredibly proud of the other three, because I am.  It’s just that Transistor holds a special place in my heart, because of what it is.  The first piece I’ve ever written with a Transgender protagonist.  It’s a myth intended to speak to people like me, to people who have had the same sort of experiences as me.  It speaks to the shame and insecurities trans women feel about our own bodies.  It speaks to the imposter syndrome that’s an inevitable result of transphobia and TERF rhetoric.  It’s speaks to the religious alienation we feel because of the way the church rejects and demonizes queer people, to the way our families reject us or ignore us when we need their help.  It speaks to our often traumatizing relationship with our own bodies.  It speaks to the way law enforcement neglects, abandons and abuses us.  It speaks to found family, and the lengths we’ll go to in order to protect the people we love.

Transistor is, on the surface, a story about a woman who accidently gets Superpowers, and ends up having to fight an angel to protect her girlfriend, but scratch the surface, and you’ll find a diary of my experiences as a trans woman.

I think the queer community, and especially the trans community needs more of that.  We need more storytelling, more mythology, that comes from within.  We need to raise our own voices and tell our own stories, because at the end of the day, no one else can tell those stories the way we can. No one else can tell our stories honestly and authentically.  And as long as we rely on people outside of our community for the stories and myths that inspire us and give us hope, we will always be waiting for the next betrayal, the next person to come along and give us something we love, only to snatch it away and tell us how vile and disgusting we are.

I wish I had something cleaver to say, or some words of wisdom to wrap this up, but honestly, after what I wrote today, I’m spent.  All I can really say is that a culture without its own mythology is not a culture which lasts.  We need to give voice to our stories, to give birth to our own mythology so that it’s there for those who come after us to find and absorb so that they don’t just know what came before, but they can feel it and understand it.  Otherwise, who and what we are will be lost.

[newamsterdame]

a deadly education is tone-deaf at best and racist at worse; not the cure to jkr anyone was hoping for

Harry Potter’s massive cultural impact means that we haven’t seen the last of magic schools set in Britain, and we probably won’t for a long while. In some ways, the fantasy genre’s response to Rowling’s work is tiresome. In others, it’s exciting—because a generation of readers and writers have grown up to bring their own perspective to the limits of Rowling’s work and push it beyond the limits of its author. However, if you’re looking for a transgressive magic academy book that interrogates the limited morality, inclusivity, and perspective of Harry Potter, you should put Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education back on the shelf and keep looking.

A Deadly Education tells the story of Galadriel “El” Higgins, a half-British half-Indian sorcerer attending a magic school where the consequences of any mistake might mean sudden death. El is a loner by nature and circumstance, but walking alone in the halls of Scholomance might mean being attacked and devoured by one of the school’s monsters. This puts El on a crash course with Orion Lake, the shining hero of her year who takes it upon himself to save the lives of his fellow students, including a less-than-grateful El.

The set up honestly sounds pretty good—a prickly protagonist, a heroic rival-slash-love interest, a deadly setting, and the potential for deep lore in magic and world-building. Unfortunately, not only does Novik fail to deliver on any of the premises’ strengths, she also chooses to weigh her narrative down with reductive, tone-deaf, and downright racist details.

El’s particular class of magic relies on language. El speaks English and Marathi, and picks up Sanskrit, Hindi, Latin and Old English in her study of language-based spells. It’s a little uncomfortable that Novik lumps dead and defunct languages like Latin and Old English together with actively spoken ones like Mandarin, Hindi, and Spanish, but that isn’t where Novik’s faux paus end. El approaches languages like computer programs to be downloaded onto her hard drive. Despite languages being the basis of her magic, she has no personal connections to the ones she’s speaking. She views other students and their languages the same way, identifying groups of students as “the Mandarin speakers”, “the Arabic speakers,” etc. Novik seems clueless about the relationships between the languages she’s building her world’s magic around, putting Sanskrit tombs in Baghdad and declaring that the Scholomance has a library aisle containing all of India’s languages. (About 800 individual languages are spoken in India, fyi.)

This clinical approach to diversity extends from language into character. El doesn’t try to make many friends, and honestly it’s not hard to see her classmates don’t try to befriend her, either. She doesn’t describe her classmates as people—she describes them as assets. And while that could be explained away by the premise that half her classmates won’t make it out of school alive, and El needs allies more than friends to survive, it doesn’t make it any better when El refers to others exclusively by the language knowledge they offer her. A character named Ibrahim has no personality or backstory, but he conveniently pops up when El needs someone who knows Arabic. A character named Kaito is thoughtlessly grouped in with the Mandarin speakers. An Argentine character exclaims in Spanish when she’s excited or relieved. There’s an uncomfortable distinction between the languages that get written out in the text—Spanish, French—and the ones that get narrated away—a character exclaims in Mandarin.

Novik goes out of her way to let us know that the population of Scholomance is diverse. There’s a group of South and West African students (only one of whom is named, and none of whom are important). There’s a “civilized” enclave of magicians in Toronto who value family and human life more than other groups. One character might graduate and go to Bangkok, but he’s looking to secure himself a place in Shanghai instead. Naomi Novik really knows the names of cities on at least four continents, and she’s not about to let you forget it!

But aside from names, languages, and cities, Novik has given no thought to what diversity means, or who these characters are if they come from diverse backgrounds. El calls on “Mandarin-speaker,” Yi Liu, exclusively by the name Liu. Is Liu meant to be this character’s first name? Or her surname? El doesn’t call anyone else by surname, but Liu is a Chinese surname, one of the most common in the world. El’s father is a Marathi-speaker from Mumbai, but El has no personal connection to Indian culture. Her father’s family prophesied that El would be a destroyer, and other than that rejection El has nothing to say about India or half of her culture. She refers to her Indian relatives in clinical English descriptors (my father’s mother, my great-grandmother, my uncles), even though she is purportedly fluent in Marathi and should know words like Panaji, Aaji and Kaka. El says that her Indian family is from an old Hindu enclave, and yet they have djinn as servants. (Djinn aren’t a typical part of Hindu cosmology, though they are a significant part of Islamic texts.)

Making El biracial seems like an afterthought, not something that affects her character in any way. It just creates some truly unfortunate optics, like when El goes on a three-paragraph description of how unnecessary she finds showers and how dirty she is at any given time. El’s father died making sure her pregnant mother (and therefore, El herself) would live, and yet El barely thinks about him. His name is mentioned once in the entire book. El complains that (presumably white) British people “assume she speaks Hindi” or call her the color of weak tea. But her Indian heritage is a veneer placed on top of a character who is otherwise just a default white protagonist.

All this adds up to a character (and a world), that reads as nothing so much as colonial. El feasts on the languages of others for her own edification, power, and survival, but she doesn’t see her classmates as people, and she doesn’t see language as a living thing related to real cultures. And I’m given to believe that Naomi Novik holds the same views, what with how she throws around the word “mana” as part of her world-building without considering its roots and real-life meaning to Polynesian and Melanesian peoples.

However, nothing makes the cultural tone-deafness of this book more evident than this passage:

Dreadlocks are unfortunately not a great idea thanks to lockleeches, which you can probably imagine, but in case you need help, the adult spindly thing comes quietly down at night and pokes an ovipositor into any big clumps of hair, lays an egg inside, and creeps away. A little while later the leech hatches inside its comfy nest, attaches itself to your scalp almost unnoticeably, and starts very gently sucking up your blood and mana while infiltrating further. If you don’t get it out within a week or two, it usually manages to work its way inside the skull, and you’ve got a window of a few days after that before you stop being able to move. On the bright side, something else usually finishes you off quickly at that point.

El’s pithy commentary about imminent death aside, I have a hard time reading anything but casual and thoughtless racism from this passage. The nefarious and deliberate myth of dreadlocks being unhygienic (and by extension, Black people being endemically dirty) is pervasive to this day. And Naomi Novik decides to include this passage in a book that has no major Black characters, in which dreadlocks never even come up in any meaningful way, just to remind us that in this magic world of hers, dreadlocks are dirty! Monster insects nest in them! The consequences are death! There was no good reason to include this passage, and all it does is draw on inaccurate and racist myths and perpetuate them into a world where anti-Black racism is never contended with. Although, I suppose, why would it? El never has need of any languages from the West or South Africans.

A Deadly Education bills itself as a subversive, even feminist, response to Harry Potter. But just like J. K. Rowling, Naomi Novik is a white author who uses other cultures thoughtlessly to build her own magic world. Other cultures and peoples exist, but only to serve the aims and needs of white (or mostly white-coded) characters. Novik has no empathy, no care and apparently no ability to Google anything about the cultures she wants to draw on. And the result isn’t just insulting—it’s boring. The world-building in this book is as dry and dusty as any history written by 19th century British colonizers.

Using some foreign names and making your protagonist biracial does not shield your work from racism. It does open you up to more pitfalls in depicting other peoples and cultures, if you don’t care to look out for them.

It would be nice to close by saying that despite its flaws, A Deadly Education is an enjoyable book. But it isn’t. It’s just a badly-researched, emotionless story told by rote.

[cavehags]

i realize this will probably bring up old drama so you might not want to answer it. but do you ever regret, however on purpose or on accident, bringing all that unnecesary hate towards Katara? i'm really sad and dissapointed tbh. i'm a woman of color and katara was so important to me growing up. my favorite animated woman ever. and then this resurgence comes and theres so, so much unnecesary hatred for her and everyone ignoring everything that makes her a good character.

(2/3) 2- and you know, i expected this from the male side of the fandom. they were misogynistic to her and the others even back then so i would expect it to be even worse with how internet culture is more mysogistic now that ever. and i wasnt wrong. male atla fans had some truly horrible takes and views that just came across as racism and misogyny. but, i expected these circles to be better. to be a safe space for us woc who love this character. but i found the same weird hatred for her.

(3/3) 3-i just, i cant believe i feel less welcome now that i did even back then. and back then i didnt even paricipate really. but at least i could enjoy fandom content without stumbling into misogyny and racism every other post. also sorry for sending this to your personal blog b i just wanted to let you know you controbuted to that too even if it wasnt your intention. at least you realized that and arent contributing to it anymore right? cause honestly the hate has only gotten worse not less.

hey anon. thanks for asking this question, because i hadn’t addressed this topic previously and this gave me an opportunity to do so. 

no, i don’t regret publicly interpreting a character whom i love through a nuanced and human lens. and i don’t regret combating the one-dimensional interpretation of this character, which posits that she’s merely an vaguely defined object of attraction for some boy or another, and a singularly gentle, mature, maternal figure whose sole purpose in life is to nurture others. those interpretations suck. they rob her of the humanity and complexity that make her character unique and they stem from misogynistic tropes that reduce women to the services they can provide to men. the thing in the world that matters most to me is fighting misogyny, and this trend to diminish a proud and powerful and angry teenage girl by exaggerating only her most socially acceptable traits is misogyny. 

unlike you, i did not grow up watching avatar: the last airbender. the shows i watched growing up did not have a lot of girls who felt real to me. the girls i saw on tv growing up were simple. they were the main characters’ crushes. they were simple, desirable, usually sweet and loving, and not much else. if they had a flaw, it was that they were, at best, “awkward.” whatever that means. or if they were the protagonists, which was rare, they were nice enough and tried to do the right thing, but they never had strong feelings like resentment and anger. they weren’t allowed to be unfeminine which meant they weren’t allowed to be bitter, angry or in any way flawed. they didn’t look like the version of girlhood i knew to be true for me personally, which included a lot of anger and frustration and powerlessness. 

that crappy representation left me with internalized misogyny that chased me for longer than i’d like to admit. i did not learn to think of girls as humans who could be as interesting and flawed and messy as the boys were. i did not value myself as a girl, and later a woman, because i thought the best thing a girl could be was... bland. boring. pretty, but empty. passionless.

it would have meant the world to me to see a character like katara. 

because katara is angry. she has every right to be: she’s had so much stolen from her, including her mother, her people, and her childhood. katara has a short fuse. she yells. she snaps. she fucks up. sometimes she makes mean jokes! i never saw a single one of those dreamily perfect cartoon love interests make mean jokes when i was a kid. she is extremely idealistic--it’s her defining character trait--but we see the bad side of that as well as the good. we see that her need to help others  leads her to act rashly, to get herself into danger, to put others in danger too. 

and she has her very own arc. it’s not about her love for another person, either (what a snooze of a storyline); it’s about growing up and learning to break down some of that stubborn black-and-white thinking that we all indulge in as children. it’s a true coming-of-age arc and it belongs to a fourteen-year-old girl. 

when i, to use a phrase i find crass, “entered the fandom,” i quickly realized that other fans’ perceptions of katara did not line up with the things i valued most about her. other fans seemed to valorize her most socially acceptable feminine qualities: her generosity, her kindness, her dedication to helping others. and of course i love those parts of her--i love everything about her--but what is really remarkable about avatar: the last airbender is that katara’s many important virtues are also counterbalanced by equally significant flaws. a good character has flaws. katara is a good character, and a deviation from the characters who made up my formative media landscape, because she has flaws. her temper, her idealism, her stubbornness--these are flaws. flaws make her seem real and human and challenge the mainstream sentiment that girls are not real or human.

it simply did not occur to me that celebrating these aspects of katara that make her a realistic and well-written teenage girl would spark ire from other adult fans. it absolutely did not occur to me that i would then be blamed for somehow causing misogynistic interpretations of this character, particularly given that misogynistic interpretations of this character are the very thing i sought to correct when i began to blog about this television show.

i’m told there are “fans” on instagram and tiktok who think katara is whiny, annoying, and overly preoccupied with her trauma. i do not use instagram or tiktok, so i wouldn’t know, but i’ll take your word for it. respectfully, however, they didn’t get that from me. misogynistic takes on katara have existed since before i came along. i have never, ever called katara whiny. and seeing as i have been treating my own PTSD in therapy for nine years, you can safely conclude that i don’t think anyone, katara included, is overly preoccupied with their trauma. that’s not a thing. do i think she’s annoying? of course not! as a character, she’s a delight. does she sometimes find real joy in aggravating her brother and her friends? yes, because she’s 14. i, an adult, am not annoyed by her. sokka and toph often are, because that is katara’s goal and katara always succeeds in her goals. she’s not “annoying.” 

if there are “fans” who are indeed following lesbians4sokka and somehow misreading every single post and interpreting them to mean that we hate katara and they should too, i don’t really know what you want me to do about that. l4s has over ten thousand followers and we have already posted so many essays disavowing katara hate. our feminist and antiracist objectives in running the blog are literally pinned with the headline “please read.”

furthermore, you cannot reasonably expect my co-blogger and me to control the way our words will be received. we should not have to, and are not going to, add a disclaimer to every post saying that when we critique or make jokes about a teenage girl we are doing so through a feminist lens. our url is lesbians4sokka, and we are clearly women. if that alone doesn’t make it obvious, then refer back to that pinned post. 

it is indescribably frustrating, and really goddamn depressing as well, that people are so comfortable with the misogynistic binary of Perfect Good Women and Flawed Wicked Bitches that they perceive any discussion of a woman’s flaws to be necessarily relegating her to the latter camp. if that is how you (a generic you) perceive women, then i’m sorry, but you’ve internalized sexism that i cannot cure you of. and it’s unjust to expect my friend and me to write for the lowest common denominator of readers who have not yet had their own feminist awakenings. we do not write picture books for babies. we write for ourselves, and with the expectation that our readers can think critically. reading media through a feminist lens is my primary interest; i have no intention of excising that angle from my writing.

as i go through my life, i am going to embrace the flaws of girls and women because not enough people do. as long as the dominant narratives surrounding women are “good and perfect” and “unlovable wh*re,” you’ll find me highlighting flawed, realistic, righteously angry women in the margins. and for what it’s worth, it’s not just katara. i champion depictions of angry girls in all sorts of media. that’s sort of my whole thing. my favorite movies are part of the angry girl cinematic universe: thoroughbreds, jennifer’s body, hard candy, jojo rabbit, et cetera. on tv, in addition to katara, you’ll find me celebrating tuca and bertie, poppy from mythic quest, tulip and lake from infinity train, korra, and more. i adore all these women and see myself in them. i hope you find this suitably persuasive to establish that i have sufficient Feminist Cred, according to your standards, to observe and write about these very flawed and human fictional women. 

what i’m saying is this: i decline to take responsibility for the misogynistic discourse orbiting a children’s cartoon. as someone who writes about that series from a perspective that seeks to add humanity and nuance to the reductive, one-dimensional, overwhelmingly sexist writing that already exists, i am pretty taken aback that i am the one being blamed for the very problem i sought to address. except not that taken aback because i am a woman online, haha! and this is always how it goes for us. 

finally, i think it sucks that you’ve chosen to blame me for a problem that begins and ends with the patriarchy. i can’t control the way this response will be perceived, just like how i can’t control the way anything will be perceived because i am just one human woman, but i do hope you choose to be reflective, and consider why you’ve chosen this avenue to assign blame. 

[vennilavee]

to build a home - ch 1

beyond the drapes

attack on titan masterlist

ch 2 - a girl in a bar

Pairing: levi x reader (attack on titan)

Summary: a modern au where you and levi both work for the Survey Corps, a non-profit organization with a mission to help the youth of the Underground District.

Warnings: cursing, suggestive themes

Word Count: 3787

A/N: im so excited to explore levi’s character in this setting!! this story will be a series of moments in no sequential order. in this modern au, the walls still exist, as does the underground district. the only thing modern about it is the technology and culture lolol ENJOY

*** This day is bound to be a long one- it’s only 10 AM and you’ve already been in back to back meetings with several of donors for the foundation. You’ve been in meetings for the last three and a half hours, your toasted bagel now cold and your second cup of coffee now empty. You sigh and roll your shoulders back, pinching the bridge of your nose in annoyance.

These rich types would be the death of you. But Erwin had specifically asked you to handle the rich donors. As if Hange or Levi would be able to sit through even one of these ass-kissing phone calls. You can hear sugary sweetness dripping off of your tongue with practiced patience and you hardly recognize it. It’s an out of body experience. As words are rolling off your tongue, you wonder how Levi would fare with this responsibility.

He’d complain the whole time and then tell the person on the other end of the video call to fuck off and get their heads out of their asses. The thought makes you scoff and you clear your throat to cover the sound.

Erwin knew your strengths and weaknesses as individuals and a team, and you were grateful for such an insightful boss and friend.

Once you seal the third donation of the morning, you take your headset off and rub your temples. You’re glad you’re free until noon, giving you some time to catch up on emails and catch up with your colleagues and friends. The drapes in your office were drawn back, illuminating your office in a faint sunny glow. Today, the sun was hiding behind the clouds so it wasn’t terribly bright.

And yes, you had drapes in your office. They were a midnight blue with threads of gold embroidered throughout. Everyone else had normal blinds, but you had seen these drapes while window shopping years ago for this new office and you knew it belonged. Something about the blue and gold made you feel royal and regal. As if this was yours and yours only.

That didn’t mean that Levi didn’t tell you how stupid your drapes were and how stupid you were at least once daily- “You think this is a stupid castle or something? You hear yourself?”

To which you would prompt reply, “if this was a castle, you’d be the damn gargoyle in front. The one that scares everyone away.”

And then he’d just ‘tch’ at you and roll his eyes.

What an ass.

You’re growing restless, so you lock your computer and get up to stretch your muscles for a few minutes. Sitting for hours at a time does a number on you in ways that you’d never expect- your shoulders sometimes hurt, your lower back, even your ass.

Maybe you need a better seat and desk setup, you muse. Walking down the hallway with your cold bagel in your left hand, you rotate your right shoulder and wince. You pass several of the new hires, Eren and Jean who seem to be bickering amongst themselves but straighten up and say ‘good morning’ to you as you pass them. You give them a smile and a wave, continuing on your way.

You stop by Hange’s office, where her door is wide open and papers are strewn all over the place. She’s viciously typing on her computer as she pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose in between each word. Her hair is in disarray and you sigh when you knock on her door.

“Hange,” You call, “Did you stay up all night again?”

“Huh? No way,” Hange gasps, looking at the time, “I just got caught up with things! You know- I’m this close to finishing this grant proposal! Look how much money we’re gonna get outta them! They won’t know what hit ‘em-”

“Hange,” You say firmly, “I’m calling you a cab to go home. Go to sleep. I don’t trust you to drive home, considering you’ve been up all night.”

“What?! I can drive-”

“Hange!” You interrupt her, “I’m serious! Come back tomorrow. Take it easy.”

She slumps in her chair in defeat and removes her glasses, rubbing her eyes in fatigue. “Oh alright. I guess I’m a little tired.”

“See you tomorrow, Hange,” You salute and point to your phone, “Cab’s on it’s way.”

With that, you make your way further down the hallway and come to a stop in front of Levi’s office. You knock and immediately open the door without allowing a moment of rest in between.

“What’s the point of knocking if you’re just going to barge in?” Levi asks, eyes still on his computer screen.

“It’s much more dramatic, and we both know you would’ve left me waiting. Because you’re an ass,” You reply good-naturedly, sliding into the seat in front of his desk and propping your legs up on his desk. Your shoes are in his face and he pinches the bridge of his nose in annoyance.

“To what do I owe this most shitty pleasure?” Levi says, eyes narrowed at your bagel, “You here to ruin my office? Last time you were here I had to spend an hour cleaning it-”

You bite your tongue at the response you want to provide to that.

“No reason. Just have been on calls all morning. Was bored,” You shrug and wince at the slight shoulder movement.

Levi quirks an eyebrow at you but says nothing. He continues typing away, seemingly ignoring you as you munch on your half of the bagel. Once you’re finished with it, he throws a banana at you wordlessly. You fail to hide your smile.

“You’ll get hungry in about an hour with that shitty bagel. And then I’ll have to hear about it,” Levi says tonelessly, eyes trained on you. You roll your eyes at him and peel your banana.

“So you gave me this banana to shut me up?”

“Yes, it’s in my own best interest.”

A comfortable silence falls between the both of you. You eye the snow globe that you had gotten him for Christmas and his birthday on his shelf. It looks as if you had purchased it for him yesterday, when in reality it was over five years old. His office is as clean as ever, just like him.

“That’s a nice shirt,” You murmur, eyes raking over him shamelessly,  “Who’s the lucky person who bought it for you?”

And honestly, he wants to do something about the smug smirk on your face. But instead he just stares at you, face as impassive as ever. His hair falls into his eyes with a practiced poise. You see the corners of his lips turn up, nearly daring to give you something resembling a smile.

“What makes you think I didn’t buy it myself?”

“Come on, Levi. You and I both know your sense of style is… questionable most times.”

“My sense of style? You really want to talk about your shitty drapes?” Levi asks, but you sense no malice in his voice.

“My drapes? Wouldn’t you like to know if the curtains match the drapes-”

“I can’t think of anything worse to know.”

You gasp in indignation, hand to your heart. “Don’t be such an ass!”

“Then don’t be such a brat!”

“Ugh,” You groan, standing up from your seat and making sure there are no crumbs falling off of you, “I have actual work to do, Ackerman. Quit wasting my time.”

“Door’s right there, sweetheart,” Levi says nonchalantly, looking back down at his planner and not sparing you a second glance.

“See you soon, handsome,” You call, turning back to wave at him and he gifts you with an upturn of his lips.

***

The Survey Corps was a nonprofit organization run by Erwin Smith and the mission of the organization was to find and provide educational resources and mentoring to the youths in the city. Specifically, the mission was to show kids who grew up in the shadows that they could have a life outside of the shadows and in the light with the help of the Survey Corps.

That’s not to say that the Survey Corps had all of the answers and all of the funds to fix the poverty in the walls. But your team tried their hardest to help the kids. Because the kids were the future.

As an organization, you had done some pretty amazing things and had some pretty amazing connections. The Survey Corps had been successful in launching many partnerships and setting up afterschool programs for the kids to find their interests. It was the kind of work that made you feel fulfilled and driven.

Not to mention, that you worked with some of the best people. Despite everyone’s differences, everyone had a clear shared passion for helping the kids of the city.

You truly loved your job, and everyone around you did as well. Ever since Erwin had promoted you to Director of Impact all those years ago and had seen your capabilities, you had really been able to thrive.

Bringing those new kids on board was your idea for the most part- Levi had complained the whole time, asking why they needed a separate youth outreach group when Erwin’s original team wasn’t even that old.

You had kindly told him that you weren’t teenagers anymore and hadn’t been in two decades. He had glared at you but nodded in agreement.

The rest of your afternoon was relatively free, you were just finishing up a few project ideas for outreach and catching up with some of the new kids.

You should probably stop calling them kids, you think dryly. They’re all in their early twenties, fresh faced and eager. Besides Mikasa- she’s almost as neutral as Levi is, with similar eyes, and you can’t help but wonder if they’re distantly related.

You rotate your shoulder again and massage it lightly with a wince. Damn, your right shoulder has been aching over the last week. Maybe you needed a real massage. Or a new chair.

You send all of your emails out quickly with your shoulder beginning to throb in pain as minutes go by.

Death by the office.

You tell Jean and Connie to meet you in the break-out room for your quick catch-up, unable to take sitting at your desk for much longer. You bring a notebook and a pen with you to the break-out room and wait for them to arrive.

They sit across from you with their stainless steel water bottles in front of them. They’re chatting animatedly, telling you about their ideas and their plans of all the good they can bring to the kids within the walls. Their shared enthusiasm makes you smile.

You start taking notes on their ideas, already thinking of ways to bring them to life. You groan softly as your hand cramps up from the pain in your right shoulder and neck shooting down your arm.

Jean calls your name and you look up.

“Are you okay?” He asks, “You look like you’re in pain.”

“Obviously she’s in pain!” Connie exclaims indignantly, “Sorry about him. He likes to state the obvious.”

“I’ll be alright. My shoulder is just- acting up today…” You trail off and rotate it, “Anyway, I like your ideas. Keep it up, I love the enthusiasm. And don’t try to out maneuver each other either.”

You look pointedly at Jean who gives you a look of innocence.

“We’re a team,” You murmur.

“Captain still calls us interns,” Connie blurts out and you can’t help but let out a laugh. That they still call Levi their Captain, because he’s so rigid with them and that he still calls them interns.

“I’ll talk to Captain grump,” You reassure them, “He calls you interns out of affection.”

“Affection? From Captain Levi? Pff,” Jean scoffs, crossing his arms.

“You’d be surprised, Jean.”

***

Levi catches your soft whistle of pain as you slide the straps of your backpack over your shoulders. He wordlessly stands behind you and pushes the straps of your arm and carries your backpack for you instead. He gives you his phone and keys to hold on to and you give him a smile in return.

He walks you to the car in silence, opening the door for you and waiting for you to get in. Levi catches your grimace and soft exhale once more as you shift in the seat.

“You told Hange to go home?” Levi asks, breaking the silence.

“Yeah,” You nod, “She was here all night again. I don’t know how it gets past Erwin, but I told her to come back after she’s rested.”

Levi nods, eyes trained on the road in front of him. One hand on the steering wheel and one on his thigh. After a moment of staring off into the setting sun, you feel Levi’s hand slide into yours and his thumb rub against yours. His gaze hasn’t shifted, but you can see the light in the corner of his eyes.

He has let his hair and his scruff grow out a little longer than he usually likes- is he distracted? You can’t recall the last time his hair has been this long, but you like it. You make a mental note to ask him about it once you get home.

But as always, Levi can feel your eyes on him.

“Why are you staring?” He asks bluntly.

“Just lookin’ at your ugly mug,” You say nonchalantly, not missing the way his lips quirk up.

“You’ve been with this ugly mug for the last six years,” Levi says dryly, “And what does that say about you?”

“That I have good taste,” You beam at him and he rolls his eyes fondly.

“You’re a brat.”

“You’re an ass.”

You squeeze his hand and watch the planes of his face imperceptibly relax. He wonders how long your shoulder has been bothering you like this. You had mentioned a few times over the last week that it was an odd sort of ache, but today, it seemed like you were in a lot of pain. He’ll ask you about it when you get home.

Home. The space he’s shared with you for the last three and a half years. Levi thinks about that often. He thinks about being a rough, underground kid with nothing but dirt and danger to his name. He wonders if that kid would’ve ever dreamed of living a life like this. He often thinks about Erwin finding him so young and pledging to help him and help kids like him.

Levi often thinks about you. You, who had offered him nothing but laughs and coffee when he had nothing to give. You, who offered your shoulder when he didn’t have the strength to ask. You, who found a crack in his armor of steel and buried yourself next to him despite his roughness.

You.

Even now, he still wonders from time to time if you are aware of the extent of his adoration for you. But when you look at him in that soft way of yours, in that way that’s only reserved for him, he thinks you do.

***

Levi hears your pained gasp from the kitchen and then a call of his name. He sees you standing in your underwear, clutching your right shoulder with creased eyebrows.

“Levi,” You murmur, “Will you help me out of this shirt?”

Levi hums and brushes his knuckles over your neck gently.

“Lift your arms up for a second. This would be easier if this shirt was a button up rather than this shitty material,” He mutters, “This might hurt for a sec.”

He hears your sharp inhale and exhale as he pulls your top off. Levi pulls out one of his own shirts that has now become your sleep shirt and a pair of his shorts for you. He’s quick and precise in his movements, unclasping your bra easily and tugging his shirt over your head. He even helps you into his shorts and you press a kiss to his cheek in gratitude.

Levi rubs your shoulder gingerly, eyes cast over you in concern.

“Go sit on the couch,” Levi murmurs, “I think we still have some of that medicinal paste my mom gave us. The one that’s supposed to help with pains like this. Your shoulder is tight.”

“That’s not the only thing that’s tight,” You wink at him and he shakes his head, patting your hair.

You’re tempted to follow Levi to the kitchen but refrain when he shoots you a look. Instead, you settle on the couch, stretching your legs out.

“Took you long enough,” You grumble, scooting up on the couch for him to lay behind you.

“It took me two minutes. Did you lose your sense of time as well?” Levi murmurs, pulling you into his chest.

You hum, already feeling yourself relax and take his hand in yours. Levi pulls the right side of your shirt down a little to examine your shoulder. He presses a finger to your upper neck and you hiss once his fingers press a little lower. He continues his examination, trying to figure out exactly where you’re in pain.

“Gonna give you a massage,” Levi says, “Might hurt at first. It’ll feel nice after. You can hold my hand if it does.”

“Thanks for your permission, honey,” You roll your eyes but clasp his free hand in yours once more.

His fingers are steady, gentle but firm against your skin. Levi whispers words to you, words of his day, words of what he thinks of the new interns. You correct him for the millionth time, reminding him that they’re not interns anymore. They’re employees now, part of the team. He scoffs but it pulls a laugh from you.

And then you gasp sharply when Levi’s hand prods at a knot. You squeeze his hand reflexively but after a few soothing touches, the pain washes away and the knot dissolves. Levi continues to rub your muscles and you lean further into his chest, your eyes closed in bliss.

He maneuvers you so as to not disturb you too much and spreads the topical analgesic on your shoulder, leaving your skin exposed. So that the medicine doesn’t spread on your shirt.

“Good?” Levi asks, rubbing your other shoulder. You nod, peering up at him and pecking his lips in gratitude. You try to deepen the kiss, try to rake your fingers through his hair the way he likes, but he turns his cheek.

“You’re gonna waste the medicine. It’ll stick to your shirt rather than your shoulder.”

“Seriously?” You groan.

“Blame your shitty shoulder,” Levi says and you glare at him.

“Take my shirt off then.”

“It’ll stick to your shirt when I take it off. Don’t be stupid.”

“Wow, you really thought this through,” You grumble, settling back into his chest and hoping the medicine absorbs quickly. He gives you a rare smile and kisses your forehead, his hand snaking under your shirt to rub your belly, his fingertips at your ribcage. The way he knows you like.

It had taken a long time for Levi to touch you like this. But you didn’t mind though. You were patient, and he was worth it. He was an immensely private person and while he was never ashamed of you- the thought had never even struck his mind- he preferred to keep his business within the walls of your home. Even at work, Erwin often teased both of you that he could hardly tell that you were in a long term relationship with the way you two bickered with each other and the general lack of PDA. But Hange, bless her, would scold Erwin for being so dense-

How can you not tell? They argue like a married couple!

It had taken a long time for Levi to touch you like this. He can remember when the mere act of looking at you had proven to be too much sometimes. And somehow, you always knew when he needed space. When it got to be too much. It had even taken you a long time to touch him like this. He was unlike anyone you had ever met in every way. You’re certain from the way you fit within the spaces of his arms that this is where you were meant to be.

Something gentle settles in your cheeks, in the way you blink at him, in the way you’re stroking his undercut. He very nearly purrs at the touch but still-

“What are you thinking about?”

“You,” You reply, not missing his ‘tch’ in response, “Your hair’s getting long…”

You run your fingers through his dark, silky strands and leave a trail of burning embers in your wake. You cup his cheek and he leans into your touch, head tilting into your hand slightly. His grown out stubble prickles your hand and you push yourself closer to him.

“Something on your mind?” You murmur, “You never go this long without a haircut. Or a shave.”

“Testing something out,” Levi says vaguely and you hum.

“Whatever you say, honey,” You reply, pressing a kiss to his neck.

“Don’t worry about it. You’ll hurt yourself if you think too much.”

“Noted. Thanks for looking out for me, Levi,” You say dryly, poking his chest.

“Someone has to,” Levi mutters, “Think you need a new chair at work. You’ve always had a shitty chair. Or maybe you need a standing desk. I’ll build you one.”

You’re barely listening, eyes beginning to flutter closed and you hum in agreement. Levi is just so warm, it’s no surprise that you’re asleep in just a few minutes. Your breaths are steady against his arm as you shift a little to turn on your side. You must be tired. Levi grabs the book he’s currently reading from the coffee table, drapes a blanket over you and rubs your back as you fall into a deeper sleep.

As he reads, he can’t really focus on the words on the page. He’s busy thinking about you, and how easily you grew to trust him and to love him. Despite how long it took for him to even realize that what he felt towards you was trust and love. Levi thinks back to the kid from the Underground. That kid is still him, and he remembers the faint desire to have a semblance of this life. To feel the sun against his face, the wind in his hair. To be unabashedly himself.

And somehow, not even the freeing feeling of the sun on his face and the wind in his hair can compare to your velvet touch on his skin.

[halfpint55]

A Defence of Kataang with regards to how they are portrayed in TLoK (it’s long but there’s headcanons at the end)

Note: This is not about shipping wars. This is a safe zone. This is not about Zutara vs Kataang. This is me defending Kataang and the characters themselves...from the writers. 

I initially wrote this as a response to a post that got me heated. My reblog just made it too long so here it is as its own post. 

Now this post ripped apart Kataang as a couple but more than that said some stuff about Aang himself that hurt my heart. I didn’t really want to pick on this post but its condemning of Kataang was based almost entirely in what we know of them as parents in TLoK and honestly it’s that lil nugget of canon that I take issue with. It has bothered me from the get go because it doesn’t make sense from a writing and story perspective, and it’s been pissing me off since I watched it.

TL;DR nice and early bc this post is gonna be a long one:

This particular condemnation of Kataang rests almost entirely on the SHITTY way they were portrayed as parents by the writers of LoK, and in all honesty, on this particular topic, canon should be ignored.

Overall Kataang parenting is of my biggest gripes with LoK because in terms of writing it’s totally incongruous - it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t align, and it makes zero sense for what we know of those characters, and I don’t know if I can ever forgive the showrunners for allowing it to be written it into canon.

I will also preface this by saying I like LoK - love it. I had a scroll through the comments and reblogs on this post, and a lot of the hate towards this portrayal of Kataang ended up being blamed on the “terrible writing of LoK” which is not where I stand at all. That being said I am so angry at the writers for this one.

The other portion of the concurring comments that were very hateful towards Kataang came from Zutara shippers and honestly for me, although I do ship Kataang, this not a just a Kataang issue. I’m of the belief that Zutara would’ve just as easily been written to have similar issues due to very similar dynamics - Zutara also would have been two powerful benders from very different cultures, and with Zuko/Aang (whoever you ship w her) having a massively important global leadership role that is embedded in who they are, and therefore impossible to ignore as a factor in their relationship.

Now let me be clear, my desire to reject canon on this front is by no means me wanting to believe the best of my faves, and not wanting to hear a word against Aang. It’s not even necessarily a defence of Kataang bc I ship it that hard (I mean I do but I can set that aside for the sake of argument if that’s what you need from me here). 

The first, and main issue people have with Aang/Kataang in Korra, is the first point of the original post:

So why in hell would [Katara] be okay with Aang ignoring TWO of their children’s complete existence once he found out they had an airbending son?

And I agree with the post on this front; Katara would not have allowed her children to each be treated differently by their father. I had the same initial thought when watching LoK, and it’s the reason I hate and want to ignore the canon of LoK so badly. 

As much as it hurts to think of, we have to accept that Aang wouldn’t have been able to stop his preferential treatment for Tenzin from bleeding through into his parenting just out of a desperate desire to save his culture (which is absolutely understandable - doesn’t make it okay, but it’s understandable; Aang suffered an incredible loss, a massive cultural trauma which he alone carries the burden of). So of course he wasn’t able to hide how excited he was, and forgot to be mindful of his attitude and behaviour towards Kya and Bumi. So this aspect of canon Kataang? Yeah, I’m with it. So far so good. EXCEPT the most unrealistic element of canon is now that Katara would let him. I simply do not believe for a second that Katara would’ve allowed Aang to be the kind of parent LoK painted him to be.

However, I do not think it would’ve been a point of contention between the two of them! Katara would pull him aside, Katara would gently (but firmly) point out what Aang mightn’t be able to see for himself - he’s focusing too hard on Tenzin.

And Aang would listen.

All throughout A;tLA the two of them often help the other sort through their stuff. Aang has a great track record of being receptive to Katara’s advice and help (calming him down when discovering Monk Gyatso’s body, The Desert when he Appa is stolen, Serpent’s Pass when he’s bottling his feelings about Appa being missing). He’s also just so receptive to others’ ideas - he just goes with it and trusts in his friends (think of his trust in Katara’s plan to rescue Haru, his trust in staying behind with Sokka in the library to get the eclipse info). Aang’s humility is one of the most incredible things about him and it’s at the core of who he is. He would absolutely be able to hear Katara telling him he’s focusing too hard on one child - he would be open, and he’d listen.

So to me now canon just does not make sense at all. it does not align with their established character traits. And yes, people change as they get older and grow into adulthood but honestly, the elements of their respective personalities that we’re talking about here are pretty core elements of who these two people are.

Katara has always been fiercely protective of those she loves, strongwilled, stubborn, and ready to (vocally or physically) fight for what she believes is right and that wouldn’t disappear as she gets older. She wouldn’t let Aang’s preferrential treatment slide.

Aang has always been, and chose to be despite his loss, an optimistic, kind, believe in the best of humanity kind of person. He’s open to all points of view, he’s a good listener, he always tries his absolute best to find solutions that are good for everyone. And again his humility, his willingness to love, is who he is.  He believes all humans (including fkn OZAI) and all life are sacred, he believes in the absolute right to life. The kid is a vegetarian for crying out loud.

Now the parts of the take in the post that hurt my heart to read about what OP thinks of Aang:

“Aang never made an attempt to establish anything resembling a real familial unit with Katara, basically just stayed around until she popped out an Airbender [...] she was treated like some trophy wife to give birth to airbenders and that’s it!”

I wasn’t going to address this in this post until I read the comments in the notes, because people seem to agree. They share the sentiment that Katara was reduced to “just a love interest” by the two ending up together.

However I do very much take issue w the notion that Aang “basically just stayed around until she popped out an Airbender” (and honestly that entire paragraph - we don’t actually know that Aang didn’t make an effort to establish a family unit). As much as the LoK writers fucked up in their portrayal of Kataang as parents, this is a much harsher judgement of Aang’s character as a husband and father than anything implied by Aang and Katara’s children. I just don’t buy that Aang would view Katara (or anyone he married, even if you don’t ship Kataang) as a trophy wife, whose only role is to have airbender children. He never has viewed her that way - he has always looked at her like she’s the sun, and the most important person to him after she pulled him out of the iceburg. He loves her the most of anyone on the planet. It does not align with his character, his values or beliefs that he’d think of her (or any partner) that way. He is so besotted with Katara for who she is it HURT me to read that part of your take. Aang simply would never. Look at how he looks at her! 

What’s more is the unwavering respect and deference he shows Katara as his waterbending master - he recognises and loves her as the whole, complete, three dimensional, TALENTED POWERFUL INCREDIBLE WOMAN that she is. She is NEVER “just” a love interest for Aang. (But ALSO, do we respect Suki any less for being Sokka’s obvious love interest??? No. suki is written to be so badass that Sokka is HER love interest and I think Katara has equally badass energy but I digress).

Moving on!

OP made an excellent point that there would’ve been culturally different values between the two but I don’t think it would’ve been family that was the clashing point. Yes the airbenders value spirituality and enlightenment. But they lived together in massive communities! They supported and raised one another. Their community and culture was strong, and they were bonded in their spirituality! They value love, as well as enlightenment, peace, and the lives of all.

Now, again the points they made about the cultural divides within the Kataang family unit are valid, but also again I dislike how they chose to portray this in LoK. It would definitely be a struggle they faced as a couple. However I think they really missed an opportunity here with where they took it. Because they do at one point in the comics have Katara bring up the fact that their family will be a blend of two cultures, and she brings it up because Aang is trying so hard to bring balance back to the world by means of seperation.

They’ve known from the get go of being a couple that they’re going to have to navigate being a culturally blended family unit.

So I find it so shitty that they wrote it so that Kya got to learn the waterbending culture, Tenzin got Air and bumi got…nothing? It’s dangerously close to the way Disney does the “the girls are carbon copies of mum, and the boys are carbon copies of dad” thing (think Lady and the Tramp). It’s lazy. Especially when we had that “separation is an illusion” episode, AND things like Zuko learning different nation’s styles and applying them to his firebending, and Sokka learning an element of strategy or fighting from every nation. 

So give us Kya using Airbending moves with her waterbending (maybe she invents the water scooter)! Give us Tenzin doing more grounded moves that Aunty Toph (or Lin, while they were together) taught him from earthbending.

There are much more creative ways to illustrate the bumps and troubles Kataang might have run into in trying to navigate incorporating equal parts of their cultures in their children and family unit. Even just smaller scale issues like food and meals - how do they figure out how to do mealstimes with Aang’s vegetarianism with Katara’s culturally significant Water Tribe meat dishes? And then even taking into account how picky little kids can be!

Give me a scene where they literally just ate moon pies for a week because toddler Kya would scream if you put anything else down in front of her.

Maybe Bumi demanded sea prunes over and over but Katara and Bumi are the only ones who like them, and Bumi bonds with his mother this way - they go on little one-on-one outings to water tribe restaurants in Republic City, searching for the most authentic sea prunes!

Kya maybe likes the water tribe fashions the most because it helps her connect with her namesake BUT Kya also has a playful sense of humour - not unlike Monk Gyatso - Aang sees how much she loved moon pies and teaches her to throw them with waterbending.

We know Tenzin was a calm, quiet, and possibly shy child. Maybe he loved to hole himself away learning crafts. Give me Tenzin learning to tattoo, Tenzin learning to carve (and carving his first glider - it crashes of course), but also Tenzin learning to carve water tribe adornments and necklaces. Katara tries at first but when she gets busy Sokka comes in and teaches Tenzin to break all the carving rules Katara has laid down (”it doesn’t need to be perfect my little pupil - let the creativity flow!”)

Tenzin may not be able to waterbend but that doesn’t mean he can’t learn other means of healing. As the littlest he spent a lot of time watching Katara work - she teaches him to tie splints, dress wounds, and yes deliver babies.

If you made it here I love you so much for reading. I love sharing my thoughts so HIGH FIVE YOU MADE IT, ur now my friend - the friendship is non-refundable sorry 😌😌

[rip-a-dip-dip-you-potato-chip]

what have I created?

idk if yall like this, but they just exist not i guess :/

ok the the first one is Royalty AU

first things first, when I say Royalty AU, I don't mean the classic shit we've all become accustomed to. Im talking about the good old Chinese royalty! And I want to emphasize that these guys will/should be dressed in century appropriate attire. As someone thats read a handful of 'marinette, princess of china' fics from the ML Fandom, I've noticed a common trend. Marinette wouldn't be in the culturally appropriate clothes, always ballgowns. Not that there's something wrong with it, its just most of if not all these fic are set in China, so I'd expect Chinese royalty to dress as THERE dress code calls for. And since this AU takes place far in the past like, it won't make sense for any of the characters to be in royal clothing that wasn't from there region. I'm not trying to white knight/gatekeeping. Im Guyanese not Chinese. But since JTTW and Monkie Kid take place in China, it's only right. In my opinion that it. You don't have to outright agree with me.

With out of the way, it's time for that good old AU crack

- Wukong is the king of the Flower Fruit kingdom(or a different one if you'd like, again I'm only familiar with what western culture has taught me, but I'll try my hardest) 

- he’s single but rumor has it he used to/still is dating the Vigilante/thief The Six Eared Macaque

- *chants ShadowPeach violently* 

- no one know whether it true or not

- On of his wanders around the kingdom he finds an abandoned baby in a basket. 

- and no shit sherlock it's fucking baby Xiaotian 

- I think we all know where this is going because i'm a simp for Monkey Dad & Monkie Son shenanigans

- Xiaotian becomes prince

Shit, ill be referring to Xiaotian as Mk from now on, I mentioned this before in a fic I wrote for lmk that Mk's a nickname for Xiaotian for some reason- wait i don't have to explain my self to you people!

- Sun loves his son

- MK is treated differently by staff and others because he's not blood related to the king

- no one mistreats MK per say, because there King loved his adopted son, but words are said behind his back

- Sometimes MK hears what’s said, and he feels as if he won't live up to his dad’s legacy.

- He meets Mei during a festival

- Mei is from a noble family, that wouldn't mind if they got a connection into the royal family.

- but it becomes hella clear to Mei’s family very fast that the two are just friends, and will always will be. but hey there daughter is bffs with the prince so that's a plus.       

_

- the Demon Bull Family is rules a kingdom as well, I dont/am not creative enough to think of a name I leave that to you.

- It's a common misconception that DBK is a tyrant, when he’s not. 

- most of the time...

- they have been at war with the Monkey King for some time now and settled for a peace agreement.

- that agreement being there sons to marry

- oooo original i know

- MK and Red Son are roughly the same age, Mk being 20 and RS 22

- RS is revolted/disgusted at the idea of being wed to the Monkey Kings child, even more so when he realizes MK is adopted,

- but, that all changes the second he meets MK while he meets him by accident when he gets kinda lost in the palace when he and his parents go to discuss the arrangements.

- the second he looks at MK, he's instantly in love. MK less so, he's nervous and honestly kinda bummed he's not marrying someone he loves but it's for the good of his ppl, and he'll do anything for them.

- RS isn't even aware that MK is Suns adopted son until MK walks him back to the meeting room.

"Oh There you are MK! I was about to have a servant go fetch you!" Sun Wukong says, gesturing for his boy to come sit with him.

"S-sorry for keeping you waiting I got caught up in my lessons with Mr. Tang" MK responds, sitting next to his father. Red Son looked gobsmacked. The beautiful young man he had bumped into, was the prince of this land? Damn, life truly blessed him. Or cursed him depending on how you looked at it.

- the two are left alone in a separate room for a while.

- And MK straight up tells RS why he's agreeing to this union.

"Look Red Son. I've dreamed about meeting my one true love for a while. And I would give almost anything for that dram to be real. But I wouldn't ever dare give up my people, for as there price they mean more to me. I'm doing this for them, no other reason" MK says, his back straight and hands folded neatly in his lap. The look in his eyes was a mix of sadness, but that was drowned out by loyalty and determination. It just made Red Son fall for him even harder. Clearing his throat Red spoke.

"I understand, for im doing this for the betterment of my people to. But I propose a wager"

"A wager?"

"Yes, if i can make you fall in love with me by years end, before our marriage, we can live together like in the fairy tales from far away. But if I fail, in a years time afterwards you will be permitted to find your own path in life" Red Son stated. MK took a moment to process what was happening.

"So, if you succeed in making me fall in love with you, before our marriage we can live happily ever after?" Red Son nodded in response, letting the younger continue.

"And if I shouldn't fall for you, in a years time after our union, im free to leave?" Red Son nodded once more.

"So, what do you say?"

...

"Deal"

In the end, your free to choose their fate, should Red Son win the hart of Mk? Will he fail? Or will he let him go, and let him travel the country, after all Mk's a free spirit and keeping him trapped in a big house is like keeping a cannery trapped in a cage only for its song, only for it to dul. Or will the unthinkable happen and will both boys find their freedom? together or appart? I don't know, because that's all up to you 😉

personally, I’m partial to where MK and Red Son both find freedom together. Like they straight up run away together to somewhere far away and just live out there lives together. 

this could also be genderbent thing as well. MK or Red as their respective counterparts. Again it doesn't have to be, but it’s whatever bro. im just spitting out the idea. 

Also, there is a main side plot that they fight the WBS throughout the year as well, along with other shenanigans you wanna throw in.

____

The second is a My Hero Academia/BNH/MHA AU

truth be told i'm not a big fan of MHA i think it to over hyped(this is also coming from the same person that’s a Fairy Tail fan lol), and the fandom i don't even know how to describe that mess, but I will admit not the whole of its toxic since every fandom has some toxic members, some even more so. 

I just sometimes find myself enjoying MHA AUs like the Fullmetal Alchemist, Danny Phantom, Evil!Deuk AU and several others. 

to make it clear I don't see this AU taking place the same time as the main plot of the actual Anime/Manga. This could be either like 6-10 years before or after the plot idk bro. But i’ll do this after the main story plot of MHA, so keep that in mind ya? another thing, the gang is still in China, the top hero school in the world just so happens to be in Japan, and it’s only ever mentioned by Sun wukong and other pro heros. So MK never attended AU. in short it’s only ever mention/ reference.  

_

- Mk was considered Quirkless as a kid. 

- he was just a late blumer, i swear  

- Mai’s Quirk is called Dragon. 

- it pretty much works the same way as it does in the show(duh)

- Tang’s got a knowledge Quirk, 

- my man can retain information and he’s basically an archive of information drawback being his personality lol 

- Piggsy is a Animal that gained a Quirk

- in cannon to my current knowledge, there are two other characters that can confirm animals can become sentient. the characters being Fumikage Tokoyami, & Nezu the principal at the school UA.  

- Sandy is just Conner Kent, aka he like superman but can't fly, or shoot lasers from his eyes. And blue.  

I have two scenarios for Macaque and Wukong  

*- The first one is that, Sun Wukong & Macaque are brothers. twins to be exact. 

- they where legit people, but have mutation quirks that made them too like monkeys. 

- the added powers were just a boues. 

- Sun and Mac are close growing up, like there brothers but also best friends.

- the draw back to there quirks could honestly be whatever you want bro idk, same with the others tbh. Personally I like to think Sun just has lack of motivation, and Macaque needs to draw on other people's energy.

- Sun is a hero, Monkey KIng and Mac is a villain Six Eared.

- Sun was always treated has the golden child in the family, Mac always resented that, but there shitty up bring didn’t stop the two from being good brothers to one another.

- soon tho the resentment became hatred when Sun was able to attend UA in Japan, while Mac didn't.

- Mac be angy 

- so he became a villain, and joined the Chinese branch of the LOV(league of villains)

- Sun doesn't know this till he finds out during the all out war during the main story. and by that time he’s a full on hero with is own agency(The Flower Fruit agency)    

- when the hero's ultimately win and Mac is arrested 

- This ultimately hurts Sun a lot, his brother was in jail now, arrested for his involvement and wrong doings, he knew nothing about this! this brother, his blood. A bad guy? why? he hadn't seen his brother since he left for UA, he hadn’t seen him when he came home, and started his agency. 

- this just puts Sun into a funk so he’s not as active as he used to be, and he starts thinking he might need a successor 

*- The second one is that they were two separate people that had similar quirks and both attended UA but Sun ended up in the hero corse. so 1A.

- Both Macaque and Sun have similar quirks, Sun’s is obviously more light based while Macaque’s is more shadow based(this applies to the first one as well)    

- Macaque was placed in class 1B, U.A.’s High's Heroics Department, I believe, you can correct me. 

- In cannon Class 1A and 1B both went to the training camp. I can see the teachers pinning Sun and Macaque against each other to hone their skills. 

- And because of that they become great friends    

- In fact when they graduate they both co-found there hero agency together in China and are a duo.

- But due to Monkey King’s popularity and Six Eared's association with shadows(people sometimes saying he has more of a villains quirk than a heros) the public see’s Macaque as Sun’s sidekick when thats far from the truth. 

- now it’s up to you whether you think that Wukong and Macaque would be in a relationship together, but knowing how cooked we all are, ShadowPeach is a thing here more than likely. 

- If you do or don’t support/ like the ShadowPeach aspect, the two would be living together regardless since its more cost efficient. 

- They my be heroes but living costs are expensive!   

- I would imagine there would have been a huge fight/argument between the two in privet of course, at there home.(or in there shared office if you want the extra angst of the other people they work with hearing them fight)   

- If the two are dating, then this would either lead to an out right breakup, or Macaque just up and leaving with Wukong thinking he’ll come back once he’s cooled off. But after a week, with no sign of his partner, or him answering texts or calls, not even coming into work. Wukong gets worried that something might have happened to him. so there wouldn't be a confirmation if they were still a thing or not. 

- But Wukong remains hopeful, despite the nagging at the back of his head, and gut telling him to go find Macaque, or atleast make a public statement, or even just tell another pro hero about it.   

- on the not so shippy side, Macaque and Wukong still have there argument, and much like the ShadowPeach esc side, Macaque up and leaves, and isn't seen for weeks. the only difference here is that when Wukong comes home one night to there flat, most if not all of Macaques stuff is gone. 

- where as if this was the ShadowPeach side, Macaque leaves all of his possession in the flat he and wukong share. for the simple reason being, he still loves him and wants to go back, but Macaque being Macaque can’t bring himself to do it, especially after seeing just how hurt Wukong looked when he yelled at him just before he left.  

- in other words, ANGST DIALED UP TO A 10 BABY  

- in either case, its a news report that confirms Wukong's suspicions that he desperately didn’t want to believe, and that is Macaque turning into a villain.

- much like if the two were brothers, Wukong just can’t take it and is no longer as active as he once was, and is thinking about, either A) Retirement  B) Saying, “Fuck Society, Be Gay Do Crime” and join Macaque as a villain himself, or C) find a successor, and a way to bring Macaque back to there side, but most importantly, back to him.    

- also extra points if you're after people's hearts and want to make them suffer;  - If there dating, Wukong curle’s up in the bed he and Macaque shared, holding/wearing something of great value to Macaque and just crying himself to sleep, where as Macaque is getting wasted on alcohol, as he stumbles out of the bar he’s in, he either see’s something that reminds him of Wukong or while he’s trying to put his wallet back into his pocket, a photo of them on their first date fall’s out. and Macaque just cries in a nearby alley way. And it’s there where he gets indoctrinated into the League.

       - If there just friends, macaque heads to the nearest forest and just levels it, where as Wukong just gets engrossed into his work, trying not to think about it. you could add you own spin on this, again i'm just spitballing.             

- NOW BACK TO MK! :D     

- Obviously MK is a huge Monkey King fan     

- at Twenty MK has come to terms he's quirkless (HE’S NOT)

-for ANGST reasons MKs fokes kicked him out at this realization at 13.

- he works at Piggsy's Noodle shop, and has been since he was 14.

- don't need a quirk to drive or cook!

- the boy lives a content life with his new family, till DBK happens :D

- DBK runs a Mafia(in conjunction with TLOV) and has been in jail for like 5 years thanks to Monkey King, PIF and RS brake him out one night when MK's out making a late night delivery since Piggsy had the bright idea to go 24/7 service!

- one thing leads to another and Mk somehow manifest what looks like the Monkey King's staff, but its not, it’s MKs powers, it just so happens to be the same power the Monkey King has. And it practically goes down the same way in the pilot. 

- but unlike the pilot Mk and Mei go straight to the FF Agency, after making a panicked call to Pigsy and Tang.

- one way or another Mk are lead into Wukongs office. Mei being forced to stay in the lobby.

- they have there convo, butterfly monkey squishing included.

- "And so, I want you do be my success-" BOOM 💥

- from there they rush downstairs and see that the lobby has been infiltrated by the DB fam, and you know fight.

- once the DB family seems like there down, PIF wisks them away. Much to Monkey King’s displeasure.

From there stuff kind plays out like cannon, the calabash ep is just a conjoint quirk the Demon bros have. As for EP9, ill have to script that one out myself lol. I'll get onto it as soon as my will to commit stabs me in the face. Till then have a dancing Kermit the frog.

Now if you'll excuse me, am about to Kermit a felony :D

(For legal reasons thats a joke)

Psst @writingamongther0ses its done

[akkalafuru]

Let’s talk about today.

Today I was involved in drama. Yes. I know. Surprisingly, that’s not a common thing in my life (at least not that I’m aware of—unless I’m the subject matter of a conversation that I never heard of or participated in. Does that count?) All this situation made me reflect a little bit on how I've been approached in today's discussion and I think it deserves to be addressed.

I honestly don't even know where to start... Anyway. 

Yes. I agree that harassments, bullying, threats to an author are absolutely inexcusable and unjustifiable. It many countries they're considered a crime and the offender must deal with legal consequences. So Yes! It’s wrong and not supported by me. PERIOD.

It is also true the fact that authors should get criticisms/audience feedback in order to sense where their next steps should be, especially in a serialized franchise (which yeah, it can be a curse but also an opportunity). Even if your favorite author may not change their story main plot, it's quite naive to believe they wouldn't consider the audience response at all; like never ever.

With that out of the way, the story is that someone wanted to call me out because I replied to Suetsugu's post telling I was upset because of her tweet. Other fans weren't happy either, but I was the only one who mentioned "taichihaya", so I guess i became an easy target. (Also, it's worth comment that the fan-police scrutiny is much harsher and aggressive when it comes to Taichi fans and taichihaya shippers. That’s a fact.) 

My post was not positive, but it can't be considered offensive either. And of course, the same way I was able to express my opinion, others have the same right to do so. I don't think, though, that singling me out, comparing me to actual harassers and bullies, and insulting me, are smart ways to address my or any other situation. The level of response I got was disproportional and extremely rude.

I was also accused of being a repeating offender and infamous for doing that, which puzzled me. I'm curious to know the sources and past proofs because those are very serious accusations. I honestly haven't been aware of this kind of behavior of mine, but if they're true, I need to understand what's going on so I can work on that on myself. As an advice, though, making plain false or baseless accusations only weakens one’s argument, so when accusing someone, they better be true.

And with this out of the way, I want to address some other points that I cannot let go of. 

I understand that we're all behind screens. All we see are profile pictures, nicknames and a bunch of text. But behind each account ( I’m not counting bots and fakes here) there's a person with actual feelings and their own circumstances. Unfortunately, the internet allows for the dehumanization of the "others", resulting in situations where the lack of respect is too evident. 

Going back to the drama part, as soon as I started the conversation, I was said "if you can't see your mistake, I won't waste my time with you" and then I was blocked after a couple of exchanges. What's the reason of calling someone out if they want to immediately cut off the communication? If this person was face to face to me, would they talk to me like that? If I am that waste of a time, why summon me to this situation to begin with? 

The words used were very rude and if I was in a vulnerable mental state, I would definitely take them more than personally and start questioning my self-worth. That’s a personal attack and a very destructive one. If anyone receives a response like that, please (PLEASE!) understand that it’s not about you! That’s a defense mechanism people use to mask their own weak arguments! Not only that, it also sounds entitled af.

I also understand that many people want to take action and show service for their causes and beliefs, and I'm very admired by that pro-activeness. There's definitely value when it comes to bringing change in the world to move our society to a better path. However, the ability to discern the actual threat/harm and make a proper judgement are as important as acting on it. That’s why actions should be taken with purpose and reason after proper evaluation and reflection about a situation.

In theory, it’s easy to tell the difference between what’s right or wrong as we get a lot of black-and-white examples; in reality, there are a lot more grays than one expects. This person was absolutely convinced they were right, and that’s fine. Again... it’s their right to believe so. It’s a shame they weren’t open for dialogue and basically treated me as the unredeemable, unforgivable perpetrator for something I didn’t do (?), throwing unfounded accusations after accusations at me; in addition to pointing fingers exclusively at me because I mentioned my preference, which seems to offend them.

At the end of the day, I believe that I at least have the right to express my take on this mess and my view on this person. I thought their judgement was poor and their action was extremely offensive. They lacked maturity, reason and critical sense. This situation was embarrassing, humiliating and completely unnecessary. Calling someone out just for the sake of calling them out without expecting or foreseeing a counter-argument is naive, plain stupid and immature. Giving a “last” word before blocking someone doesn’t automatically grant any victories to any arguments. So... I’m sorry if your attempt to “own” me failed.

I don’t care if people are frustrated or has a lot of time in their hands, but if it’s the latter, at least go find something useful to do instead of wasting everyone’s time by trying to give hot takes online in exchange of likes. All these attempts to make justice with your own hands—by exposing others and bringing them involuntarily to your mess—feels like you’re massaging your own ego, especially if you’re not open to communicate, nor educate, nor talk about this in a non-confrontational and rational manner. I was gonna mention cancel culture and online lynching (maybe online inquisition! that sounds pretty fitting!), but let’s not go there. 

I know that I should’ve let that go and not incite drama. However, I had to stop someone from trying to look good in front of their friends (tell more me about virtue-signaling. Ok let’s not go there.) at my expense by exploiting a situation that barely applies to their argument. The more they get away with it, the more they believe it’s right to repeat the same action. The more we become silent, the more they step on us.

Lastly, I don’t want to accuse this person for targeting specifically me for petty reasons. I want to quote this, though:  “tell me who your friends are and I will tell who you are.”

There’s a reason why this saying exists. Let’s leave at that.

Cheers!