#i feel like i need to graph like. how good a piece of media is vs how badly i wanna see fan content of it

[its-no-biggie]

me finishing a good story: wow i need more of this immediately *opens ao3*

me finishing a GREAT story: wow. *doesnt even think about consuming anything else for the next 3 days*

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Same as it ever was 3

Warnings: this fic will include dark content such as neglect, bullying, manipulation, and possible untagged elements. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.

This is a dark!fic and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: Between your home life and work, you just can’t catch a break. Especially after you draw the ire of your boss.

Characters: Lloyd Hansen ft. Pete Brenner

Note: The reblogs and my comments await your wrath.

As per usual, I humbly request your thoughts! Reblogs are always appreciated and welcomed, not only do I see them easier but it lets other people see my work. I will do my best to answer all I can. I’m trying to get better at keeping up so thanks everyone for staying with me.

Your feedback will help in this and future works (and WiPs, I haven’t forgotten those!)

I love you all immensely. Take care. 💖

Your turn to present comes and you stand up at the board, your budget projected as the bulb nearly blinds you. You point to the numbers and the accompanying graphs, going over each as best as you can. Your life might be an utter and complete mess but you know numbers. Your job is simple as simple gets and you can go over this ad nauseam.

Still, your focus is splintered as you find yourself stalling here and there. Each time you meet Mr Hansen's sparkling blue eyes, you nearly swallow your own tongue. You can't help but think of what you did in his office. Of what Pete would say when found out. And he will because you've never been a good liar and this isn't a secret you can keep. You just don't know how to say it.

He won't care that you were in a bind, that you were disgusted by yourself, that you didn't want to do it. You still did it. You betrayed your marriage. Even if it is a bit rocky, you made a vow. Despite the friction, you love Pete. You wouldn't have stuck around this long otherwise. It's just a rocky patch. Or it was, until this.

Your eyes linger on Hansen as he leans back in his chair and lets his gaze drift towards his lap. You gulp and look to the board, pointing out the projection as you finish up. You wallow in a momentary silence before you retreat and reclaim your seat at the conference table. You were absolutely certain to be as far from him as possible, though that was easy as all the executives cluster together.

You keep your attention at the front of the room. These things are always dull. You're not high up enough to care about more than your own piece in the puzzle. You don't make the big decisions, you just show what's there. 

You sip from your cold coffee. You feel your phone vibrating in your back pocket. Not now. You ignore it and tap your fingers on the table.

You glance around and once more find Hansen’s attention on you. He should be more concerned with the marketing presentation going on. You hide any tinge of emotion; irritation, confusion, humiliation, a peer up at the front.

The meeting ends just as you catch yourself nodding off. You shuffle out with the rest of the bodies and find your desk, nearly keeling over as you sit. You got what, an hour's sleep. You don't know if you can make it through.

Your phone goes off again. Great, what is it now? You really can't handle anything else today. Your morning has already drained you of everything you have left.

Shit, it's the school. You get up and answer your phone, marching between desks to find a quiet place. You dip down towards an empty meeting room and shut yourself in. The secretary tells you Malik got sick in gym class. Today? You sigh and promise you'll be there as soon as you can.

You put your hand to your forehead and yawn as you hang up. If you have any more caffeine, you're going to explode. You just need to get through it. You always do. Not for you, for the kids. That's what it's about.

You turn and find the door open, a figure against the frame. You could like and say you're surprised but you know Mr. Hansen isn't the type to let you sink in shame. He wants to rub it in.

"You know, I didn't think witches were real but you got magic hands, toots--"

"Sir," you fight to keep your voice even, "I just got a call from my kids' school--"

"Ew, let's not with the kids," he flicks his fingers dismissively, "I'm talking about us."

"Us?" You frown, "sir, please, I have to--"

"That husband of yours, he's lucky. Is that from practice or are you just that desperate to get your hands on some prime meat?"

You give him a look, the kind you give when you're trying not to yell. As a point, you don't raise your voice. He gives a shiver as if shaking off a chill.

"I'm teasing. I'm just... let's turn this thing around, honey. You got your budget, I got... off. And now we can get along. So, let me be a nice guy and say, go, get your kid, be a good mommy, and be back bright and early tomorrow."

You stutter. You don't quite believe him. It feels like a test. A trap. He smirks and lets his hand wander down his stomach. He grips himself through his pants.

"Unless, you want more--"

"I really have to go," you squeeze your phone, "my son--"

"Alright, alright, ugh, boring," he sneers, "I don't wanna hear about the kids."

"Um, okay," you near him, "thank you, Mr. Hansen."

"Yeah yeah," he backs out of the doorway, "don't stress it." He steps aside as you go into the hallway, "unclench a little."

As you turn, you stumble, a sudden clap against your ass throwing you off balance. You steady yourself but don't look back as he retracts his hand. Your eyes are wide, your steps stiff and stunted as you tell yourself to just keep going.

Shit, this is a problem.

Your job is stressful enough. The last thing you ever wanted was to be Hansen’s next target. It’s not something you ever worried about. You’re too old, too flabby, and too worn out. When he realises that, he’ll be back to the likes of Kendra. You don’t know who you should pity more; yourself or her.

You don't have capacity right now. One thing at a time. Get Malik home, then you can figure out how exactly your life is going to implode.

🗄️

You get Malik on the couch, bundled up watching his favourite cartoons, as you sit and stare at your phone. You know that even if you called, Pete wouldn't pick up. He's too busy for you. Still, your anxiety eats away at you and makes you impatient. You can't even enjoy the time away from the office.

You make some soup once your son's stomach settles but yours is in worse shape. You don't have an appetite, you're restless and exhausted. You're in pieces.

You know you can't go back and change things. Hell, you couldn't have done anything different. You have a mortgage, insurance, and children to look after. You can't throw it all away on one man's ego.

Still, you did something wrong. Something unforgivable. If you think Pete hates you now, he's going to despise you. And you might just lose everything anyway.

You sit and bend over, holding your head. God, you're stupid and weak and awful. You chose this, a family, a man who doesn't care, and a job that gives you nothing but stress. You could've had a better life and never inflicted your mistake on anyone else.

"Mommy," Malik taps your shoulder, startling so you sit up too fast, nearly falling out of the chair, "mommy, the stove."

You look over at the pot boils over, hissing and bubbling. Great, now you've burnt the chicken noodle. You get up and quickly flip off the burner and move the pot to the next one.

"How about some vegetable soup, huh?" You offer, "sorry, Mal."

"Are you okay, mommy?" He pouts as he stands in his dinosaur pajamas.

"Yeah, yeah, mom's just tired," you answer, "go sit down. I'll clean this up. Then it should be time to go pick up Simone."

He mumbles and leaves you. You look at the burnt soup, curdled and filmy and black around the edges. Usually, you just want Pete home but tonight, you don't know what you're going to do when he gets in. You can be sure it'll be a sleepless night.

🗄️

You spend the evening avoiding your phone. It's easy. You sit and help Simone with her homework as Malik colours at the other side of the table. After dinner you get them washed up and in their pajamas in time for bed.

You can’t help but try to suck up every second. You don’t want to lose this. It can be hard, Pete’s long hours, your sore hips, the children’s antics. It can be utterly defeating but you don’t want to lose it all. Maybe you should’ve tried sooner to fix things, maybe if you did, Pete might believe you didn’t want to do what you did.

Once the kids are asleep, you're left to yourself but not really. You clean the kitchen and get lunches packed for the next day. You switch the laundry before you head up to bed but leave the light on as you lay down. 

It’s a mirror of the night before, except you’re not the one with your tail between your legs. Pete gets home as late as ever. You want to be mad that he's only there on weekends to see the kids. Yet, you don't see much of him then either.

He comes upstairs, pushing back his hair as he enters, blanching as he sees you awake. His face falls and he runs his fingers around his stubbly lips. You don't say anything as he loosens his tie and sighs.

"Please, I don't wanna argue tonight," he says as he sheds his blazer, "it's been a long day."

"Alright," you agree, fighting not to squirm as your stomach flips. "But… I wanna talk about something."

"Look, we're almost there. The hard part's almost over," he explains as he unbuttons his shirt, "we're about to hit oil with this thing."

"I know, but… there's something we need to talk about–"

He closes his eyes and hangs his head back as he peels off his shirt. He's in good shape still. You suppose making your own hours gives you a lot of time for the gym.

"Can I take a shower first?" He huffs.

"Sure," you murmur. He's trying to wait you out, hoping you fall asleep before he's done. "Take a shower."

His brows rise and fall and he turns away as he digs in his pocket. He pulls out his phone and plugs it in, leaving it face down on the dresser. He unclasps the gold chain around his wrist and puts it in the jewelry tray with his watch. You watch his hands.

"Where's your ring?" You ask as you focus on his fingers.

"Oh, uh, fuck," he sniffs, "must've left it in my gym bag again."

"Mmm," you him and don't comment further. 

You look down at your own band, twisting it on your finger as your inside rot with guilt. You have to face this. You have to be honest. As much as it hurts you. As much as it'll hurt you.

He moves around the room. He misses the hamper again, this time his underwear fall on the floor. You want to cry as more than just the weight of your confession crushes you. It’s all of it. The years of distance between you, the memory of good days far behind, what you’ll never have again.

The bathroom door shuts and you look up again. You get up, needing to walk off the excess energy. You pace in circles and wring your hands. You want to rehearse what you should say but you got nothing. 

You hear the subtle buzz and pause. You go back to the bed and take your phone off the night table. Nothing. Not even a notification for that dumb matching game you played once while waiting at the doctor's office.

You set it back down and go back to your aimless circling. You hear it again and again. It's annoying. Tweaking your already addled nerves. 

You look around and see Pete's phone, the edges limned in the glow of the overturned screen. You cross the room and flip it over to turn the volume down. You stop as the newest message pops across the top.

'Hey babe, can't wait for Saturday. Bikini or no suit at all?' 

You read it once, twice, several times before your shock fully sets in. What? Your heart drops as you put his phone back as you found it and back away. 

You sit on the bed and stare at the bathroom door. Things can always get worse, that's your bitter mantra. You swallow as your eyes brim with tears and your throat locks up. You listen to the showerhead buzz.

You were prepared to be the bad guy. To lay yourself bare and plead mercy. You psyched yourself up to face the music but you're unprepared for this. 

You get up and turn off the lamp. You get into bed and face away from the bathroom, just like most nights. You pull the blanket to your shoulders and close your eyes. You measure your breaths to keep from crying. Once you start, you won't be able to stop.

When Pete finishes, you're still awake. Sleep? That's a joke. You just lay there and listen to him move around. When he comes to bed, he doesn't try to talk to you or wake you up.

You open your eyes and see the glow of his phone outlining your silhouette against the wall. You gulp, careful not to give yourself away. He groans and he types away on his phone. Right beside you… like you don't exist. You're just an afterthought for him. Just like your vows. Just like the kids.

As low as you thought you were that morning, you’ve sunk even further. Would he even care if he knew? You’re so unlovable, he probably wouldn’t even believe another man would let you touch them.

[isnt-it-pretty]

any advice for someone who never wrote a fanfic before?

Writing is a skill like any other. You wouldn't expect to pick up a flute and know how to play, would you? So no matter what, just keep writing.

Beyond that, here's a few pieces of general writing advice:

- Make sure your dialogue formatting is correct. A new paragraph every time a new person speaks, proper quotation marks, etc.

- Remember your tense. If you're writing in past tense, make sure everything is in past tense. The same applies if you're writing in present tense. It's an easy mistake to make, but people will notice.

- Don't use physical descriptors in place of nouns. Like this:

"Dialogue dialogue," the raven haired man said.

It's one of the quickest ways to turn people off your work. Use pronouns or the character's name unless the reader doesn't know the character's name. Sometimes you can get away with character relationships, ("blah blah," his father said), but use them sparingly.

- In a similar vein, just use 'said.' Words like whispered, shouted, etc., should be used for emphasis, not for regular dialogue.

- Don't learn to write from reading fics. You can tell when somebody does because they use all the tropes common to fanfiction, but honestly, those aren't very good (we've had passionate debates in my discord server about whether "golden orbs" or "the bluette said" is a greater sin. There is still no agreement.)

- Run your work through Grammarly. Copy and paste it into Grammarly's word processor since that works better than their google docs extension. Even the free Grammarly will help you a lot with little grammar things you don't notice. I know it picks up typos and such for me all the time.

- Personally, I suggest checking out some nonfiction writing books too. I'm fond of Stein on Writing by Sol Stein, and The Story Graph by Shawn Coney, but most people never do that, and they write fic just fine.

- Depending on the topic you plan on writing, research. I'm serious; the number of stories I've read that just toss in a deaf character because the author likes the headcanon is insane. If you want to deal with topics like disability or social issues, you need to research.

- If you post on ao3, learn the tagging system and use it properly. For example, "/" is romantic, and "&" is platonic. In general, don't use both for the same two characters.

- This is an excellent master list of writing advice by tumblr user she-who-fights-and-writes. Not all of it will apply to fic writing, but the basics are the same.

None writing but still important things:

- You'll never be happy if you compare your work to others. You can look at your pieces all day and wonder why they don't sound right or feel right or why it isn't like your favourite fic author, and it won't to make a difference.

- Coming off that, jealousy is a natural part of being involved in a skill-based community, but don't let it sour your friendships or make you bitter. I've seen it happen, and it makes everybody involved feel shitty. Meet people with kindness and move on, even if you think they don't deserve their popularity.

- Make friends! Fandom is a community. Authors should make friends with each other and with their readers. They should participate in the community by leaving comments on fics, reblogging art on social media, etc. This is supposed to be fun, so let it be.

- It is illegal to earn money off fan works. Don't mention anything to do with money on ao3. Don't link a kofi, paypal, say a work was a commission, etc. It breaks the terms of service.

- Just be kind and have fun.

[tinyhousepanther]

Todays I-am-very-high-and-have-recently-rejoined-tumblr-because-I’ve-realized-I-need-more-social-interaction-but-tumblr-is-all-I’ve-got-the-energy-for thought is

… drum roll….

the most personal, soul exposing thing I think I could ever do, would be to let some one go through my ao3 bookmarks, even the private ones…. Like the amount of #asexual ♠️ 🐉🌌who kinda likes monsterfucking vibes but is also a depressed millennial who was into Harry Potter and anime and tumblr of yore. Yeesh, how cringe and vulnerable that would be.

Because I like to write when very high and used to write poetry as a moody teen. A good old internet rant into the void. This will get long and old school text formatting like the book House of Leaves is a thing I really love so weird punctuation and spacing ahead.

Also the recursive footnotes in the bartimaeus series

Also, also recently returned to tumblr… lured like a siren into this hell scape of super niche fandoms…. I blame @strange-aeons for making me nostalgic for this place.

On that note. I am actually editing this but mostly because my brain wanted to add things as I read this over for typos because cringe.

Nostalgia leads to reminiscing. I think it was @blackkatmagic who said in a note, that like some niche pairing of fandom like a ship no one asked for but one person dreamed of and a handful of other people liked, is like being in a little boat with them.

(And I had to go find that post so here it is)

And I really like that idea and I like writing stream of consciousness rants when high and also graphs, like data visualization, because I’m an engineer. So a nerd for Venn diagrams that are cool. Like can I make a web diagram bubble graph combo with bubble size for intensity of interest and lines to show how one community spawned an interest in another community? Maybe throw in a color scale for vibes? Like who are the landmarks I use to remember my internet past. Is this what mark zuckerburg is aiming to make for all of us? Can someone build this digital map of my psyche?

Let’s start listing citations to make this glorious journal paper of a post. Giving @strange-aeons or @danielhowell vibes but also @somemorenews and also @scishow and @fishingboatprocceeds energy.

This is like just feeling the need to give a good old trying to describe a very specific mood rant that live journal used to be for.….

Those vibes somehow. Also of course I listen to a lot of podcasts. Like @tanispodcast or @welcometonightvaletranscripts

Who is in this very niche intersection? How narrow of an audience am I?

Or ,

am I yearning for early days Facebook where you just liked a bunch of shitty pages that were just topics. Like quizilla was a window of my internet childhood/preteen (that’s a lie Neopets was first…….)

Which reminds me to also include @dilfosaur and @drawfee. Why do I love the sonic butthole saga so? Is Todd from Mario made manifest into the universe like a tulpa? Am I getting to last podcast on the left now? Do we need to get a net for me??? 🗑️ trap me under a wastebasket like a cat?

God I feel like I’m trying to write a phd thesis on my personality as described via citations of tumblr blogs and other early internet social media. Can I put footnotes in a tumblr post? No. Does my probably autistic ass want them so I can make a hyper detailed thing fully describes a hyper focus moment? Yes. Can I make a whole power point of just internet citations? Yes. Do I have the energy? No.

Should

Be narrating this? I wish, would be interesting if someone I’m citing replies or interacts with this.

Not to brag, but hey I actually did write a phd thesis and some one said it was good enough to give me a fancy piece of paper. I am doctor. Why am I still sad then? Oh, that’s mental illness right. Another citation for a mood elyse meyers

Is this stream of consciousness prose that I am writing while very high and curled in a blanket on my couch while having been overcome by emotion from a fanfic I was reading about a super random cross over of two media from my childhood? Then yes this is me. I am a garbage gremlin of a person who is shockingly successful in life despite my very fun depression and health issues who has way too many parasocial relationships in proportion to real world actual humans I see and interact with on a daily basis.

Is it not the human experience to try and communicate who we are to the world? The innate desire to be seen and known?

Or is that way to high brow for me just wanting to list a bunch of things I like so when I’m having a bad day I can come to this post and just be like…. Oh yeah I did like that one thing.

Like that one video by Drew/Danny/Kurtis that somehow always makes me laugh. Like that friend I had who I could also make laugh by playing the look at this graph vine? 📊. Yes like that. So this my reminder that hey stuff is good and joyful and cringe sometimes, so on the bad days go look at this stuff. I feel @danielhowell has thoughts on this.

That’s it. I should go to sleep. It’s midnight and I have work tomorrow and my cat is glaring at me because we are not snuggling yet.

P.S.

Tumblr really is just MySpace but somehow worse? Yet it’s what we have.

And really the porn had never left. What were they thinking they could do/are doing about it? Like hello tumblrlive makes this app so nsfw to scroll at work when I’ve got time to kill. But also sometimes I want to look at art someone has posted and I’ve got a notification.

[sophiamcdougall]

Look, I understand that "but schools are full of people abusing adderall" probably feels like an uncontentious piece of common knowledge. Everyone simply knows it's true. It probably does not seem like a dangerous thing to believe and repeat.

But people need to be aware that "but obviously it's overdiagnosed" and "people who don't have it are pretending they do" are exactly the sort of ostensibly reasonable concern-trolling that is to used to launder and mainstream moral panic. It is going to get pushed, a lot, as the sensible view. And it is effectively identical to "of course some people are really trans and deserve to have that recognised, but aren't some people jumping on a bandwagon and making irreversible decisions just to follow a trend?? Shouldn't we slow everything down, to make sure we weed those people out?"

It will funnel some people to more extreme positions and persuade "moderates" to resist anything that might result in a larger percentage of the population being diagnosed and treated.

In the moment, however, it can be tempting to accept positions like this as a compromise. Sometimes someone will effectively offer to accept that you, or the ADHD person you love, has a real condition that truly requires meds or accommodations. And all you have to do get that sweet, sweet acceptance is agree that you're not like those fakers, who are surely out there somewhere.

This is a trap. It is designed to corrode solidarity (even if the individual pushing it does not mean it that way) and silence demands, and will never get you anything good.

Are there neurotypical people getting hold of meds illicitly and abusing them for fun? Apparently so, and on an individual level, sure I resent them, although I feel considerably less threatened by them as a group than I do by the media and organisations like the DEA. And yet see how easily such people get equated with people with a clinical diagnosis of ADHD.

ADHD is underdiagnosed, not overdiagnosed. For the vast majority of people, diagnosis is in fact difficult, time-consuming, expensive or simply unavailable. If you want proof of that, just look at prisons. In the UK, around 25% of prisoners likely have ADHD. Most of the ones identified by the study were either undiagnosed or untreated. That statistic alone should be enough to dismiss any concerns that misdiagnosis is a serious social problem, if they are offered in genuine good faith.

Any time you get tempted to agree with an argument whose logical conclusion and unspoken premise is there are suddenly too many people with ADHD. We need to make it so there are fewer, then go and look at that left-handedness graph again, and consider what squashing that curve actually involves.

I fucking knew it, I SAID it: they're making ADHD people the next culture war targets. They will 'just ask questions' until we lose every scrap of ground we've gained in the last decade and more. We may not quite inspire the same level of hatred as a sexual minority, but we can very easily be made to inspire disdain and that also works.

They will strip us of our accomodations and our medications and try to stifle any sense of shared identity, and if that kills some of us, oh well. So long as it fuels another outrage cycle, fine.

So many of the tropes they've been using on trans people work extremely well on ADHD people too! "There are too many of these people suddenly! It must be a fad! It spreads through friend groups! And online! People are going private for diagnoses and that's bad! They are using pOwERfUl medical interventions and we think it's freaky!"

I saw the first ripples of this in terf circles about two years ago. And of course it's spread.

6% of British ADHD people lost their jobs in the last year thanks to the meds shortage. SIX PER CENT! And that just made these ghouls go "ooh, tasty, what else can we do?"

Recently an 'expert' was on the BBC saying people see ADHD diagnosis as a "golden ticket." Laurence Fox has been ranting that the condition doesn't exist and threatening "'you won't poison my child's body [with ADHD meds] against my consent"

People need to be aware this is going to get worse. Maybe, if we're lucky, it won't get really bad. But it's going to get worse than it is now.

[lgist]

How do I know? Something that has been eating away at me ever since I have started writing is how do I know if what I am writing is actually good? It is like I’m locked in a dark room firing darts at a dart board I cannot see, I hope I am hitting the bullseye every time but in reality I have no idea if what I am saying, thinking, creating, is at all resonating with anyone who reads it. This isn’t about numbers or statistics, I am talking the words and actual sentences that I produce. I’m always in fear that what I am actually writing is not at all what I imagine it to be and instead would fall into this category of “fake deep” writing that is so annoying to come across on any social media timeline. I can only hope and pray and as I keep writing I am sure I will keep getting better but in the back of my mind there is always a voice saying, “was that even any good?”. Of course I love doing it, I love creating something from the blank page of nothingness, but the actual content of what I am creating has me in a bind. This blog is perhaps relatable for other writers and I suppose any creative media, how do we know it’s any good? Especially when we just start out. I love the Dunning-Kruger effect but I find it terrifying, like where am I on the graph? Am I at the peak of ignorance? I feel as if what I write now is good content, yet there is always this voice that doubts me and my capability to write well. Imposter syndrome is a nasty thought process and I feel as if I am cursed. It makes me worried to write my next blog, I feel as if it needs to be a constant one up contest despite the wide variety of topics I might end up doing, that might be completely unrelated. This makes it especially difficult to get my raw ideas on paper, it needs to be dressed properly and have amazing manners before I am confident to present any of them. If I could let go of this bug, this glitch within the mainframe and replace it with code to naturally believe in myself, I would. Alas, the world is not that kind and the human mind will always have some sort of skepticism about everything, including ourselves. It permeates this very paragraph, I feel as if every sentence that gets put down is over dramatic and undersells my entire idea in the first place. I wonder what causes it, I wonder what evolutionary standard necessitated this line of thinking. Perhaps it is the constant need to be perfect, to be flawless. An imaginary concept that is alluring, to be without flaw is to be extraordinary. So once we get that feeling of “that was my best piece yet” it becomes this obstacle to overcome and can really bog down the emotional ecstasy of feeling out our passions. As it becomes a slog to meticulously overanalyze every aspect of every post, the fun and the chaos of engaging with our passions becomes boring and we fall out of love with the action entirely. It makes you forget about the reason you began pursuing passion in the first place, instead of doing what you love, it becomes work and work is the opposite of the natural nature of passion as passion should not feel like work. It should not be exhausting to engage with your passion, sure you can burn out at times but work is just mundane, colourless and detrimental to the passionate psyche. 

Maybe our compulsion to feel perfect is derived from the picturesque personas displayed on social media. People who have the white smile, perfect bodies, PR teams who tell them what to say and when. Young children will grow up with the mentally of striving for this unrealistic prospect of perfection, when in reality these Instagram models and celebrities themselves are human. They exist with fault, fault that is often left out of their perfect image and because of this anytime a fault is discovered it is what is put under incredible scrutiny. We want to avoid scrutiny at any cost, it is difficult to hear what is imperfect about yourself. So we hide our imperfections, photoshop away the humanity and unique attributes we were born with so we can all look like the spitting image of beauty. Standards have only raised in the information age. God forbid you make a mistake, it must be constant wins. When you only win and never lose, wouldn’t the feeling of winning become trivial? Our minds focus on loss much harder than the feeling of winning, I feel as if this is only exaggerated from the perfection we spectate on a daily basis. I mean it is always click worthy to hear your favorite celebrity fucked up. Perhaps if we stopped placing ourselves on pedestals, puppeteering our personal shows that which always have a happy ending and normalize failure, we would be more free to fluidly engage with passion. This would make it never feel like a job but a necessity to the very fiber of our beings. 

However, I do feel an important distinction when it comes to the idea of perfection is the need to be perfect and the striving of perfection itself. You can strive for perfection, perhaps you should, improvement doesn’t come free and you must learn the perfect method that which is personal to improve. Yet the need and compulsion to be perfect is entirely different, this compulsion will not let you improve, you will get stuck on the slightest of problems as you figure hundreds of solutions in your mind, giving yourself the paradox of choice as you choose the safest idea to seem perfect. Passion is not about safety, it is about rigorous experimentation. Experiments that might fall flat on their face or teach you something about yourself you never knew existed. For what is passion besides an avenue into your psyche, a place for you to escape and enter this flow that escapes time, as you can spend hours on a certain piece and it would only feel like 15 minutes have passed. The need to be perfect is an illusion of safety and kills motivation as you can’t breach your own standards. Dismantle your standards, see where it goes and if it fails, try again. I am still battling with the compulsion to be perfect, I want to write pieces that really get you to think. I am always worried I have not accomplished that feat with each and every blog. I worry I repeat myself too much, like a broken record. I worry I will run out of ideas, I worry, I worry, I worry yet I wont let it ruin my flow and I know I will keep improving with each post, neither should you. Experiment and have fun, let go of perfection and instead strive for each creation to be unique in its own right. Perfect your method of learning and improve alongside it, passion should burn and I’ll be damned if I let mine wilt away in a sorry excuse such as “I am not good enough”

_______________________________________

Exploring the very nature of my writing, I must admit I worry this also falls into the category of “fake deep” and you know what, I don’t care anymore. I will write what I feel like writing and if it keeps getting better, that is all I should worry about. We all have a creative mind within us it, is important to acknowledge our capabilities and never short sell ourselves, we all can do it. Much Love - S

[mrwiseandshine]

Roam as an Operating System

Why do people bother with emacs?

It's not like any given feature is better, in any strong sense. And yes, sure, it can do anything, but convincing emacs to do something new is rarely easier than just installing a purpose-built program. Reproducible configurations based on config files are cool, but the emacs design philosophy definitely puts a lot of setup work on the user's back, rather than the creator's.

But fans of emacs, especially heavily-configured emacs, are very clear that doing everything within one program is inherently valuable to them. Why?

Have you noticed we hardly have computers anymore? Computers compute data. We don't have data, these days. We have apps.

/Apps/ have data, internally, and sometimes even provide tools for manipulating it. A good notes program gives you control over the data contained within your notes. This is legitimate and valuable. But it isn't general purpose computation. The web is even worse. Most websites are apps that don't even provide an approximation of general purpose computing. They only contain the content created on them, with barely the most trivial tools for import and export.

Most social media has the same fundamental features. Post text, maybe slightly rich text, with attached images and videos. Yet have you ever seen someone share a screenshot of a post on another social media site? Tumblr and Facebook are effectively identical in the types of media you can post. And yet somehow users find it consistently easier to share from one to the other via taking a screenshot. My theory? Screenshots are a top level function that includes better source and attribution detail than copy/paste, and can function in a single action on both text and images.

Someone who takes a screenshot of a post to share elsewhere is trying to access their data with their computer, instead of with an app. They have to do so via silly convolutions because software actively fights back against that effort. Emacs doesn't fight you for your data. Emacs packages allow you to legitimately manipulate it. To store it, retrieve it, process it, edit it, post it, while operating within a single paradigm and without needing to play dumb games to retrieve it.

This is its true value. With emacs, when you have a piece of text you can trust that you can actually just treat it like a piece of text. You can select it the same way you select any text, your keybindings work the same way as for all your other text. You can perform arbitrary actions on it, like you actually own the text, cause you do. That action can be running a spellcheck, or a search, or posting to your blog, or to twitter, or filing to your notes, or creating a hyperlink, or any other action that you can perform on whatever text you like, once you set emacs up to be able to perform it at all.

And I feel that's what most people really want out of emacs. A lot of them would be fine with using multiple programs, so long as they all actually worked, and weren't siloed apps that prevent general purpose computation. But it's hard to find programs, these days. You just find apps.

Roam has the potential to go either way, at this point. Right now, Roam is an app, even though it has some good integrations. I use org-roam instead, personally. Mostly for privacy reasons, because I like to self-host my notes repository. Roam has enough extra features that I'll probably change over once they add encryption. But it's also significant that I can view my filesystem alongside org-roam, and I can interact with my notes as data, not as app-stuff. I think it's worth paying attention to how to architect these features early, and in particular making the fundamental choice of how and whether to integrate Roam with computation as a whole.

Broadly speaking, there are three choices available. The first is to ignore this whole problem, and leave import and export up to individual integrations. If the community building your integrations is passionate enough, this may even work fine. Second, you could expose full APIs, and hope someone else solves the problem. Someone could build a proper interface for computation, and Roam could be easily set up to take the content and metadata the interface pushes to it, and provide the data the interface wants when asked. Or third, you could do the whole thing yourself, and build Roam-the-OS, with combined filesystem/backup/sync/social/annotation support, where everything you do is already inside Roam and taking notes is a fundamental operation across the whole of your computer.

I'm actually inclined to think the second option is best. Do one thing well, and all that. It's more elegant to have the interface be the fundamental operation and have it merely connect your data to the filesystem/backup/sync/social/annotation plugins. That's fully compatible with everything Roam ought to be able to do, and it keeps Roam itself more pure.

But also, is anyone building that? It's not me, I work in finance and don't actually know much coding. Athens is aiming their sights a bit higher, and integrating social in a way that recognizes its status as an alternative to or overlay upon the whole of the web. But everyone working at building emacs-like interfaces is just working on emacs itself, not reinventing the concept of an operating system. And so Roam has the opportunity to remake the world in its image, by solving the fundamental problem of app-based computing.

We could have a program that treats websites you've read and emails you've sent and margin notes on books in the same way, archiving them and exposing them to search and fitting them into your knowledge graph. Notes should not be a separate data type than social media posts, that instantaneously destroys most of the available value. The tiny scraps left over are enough that people want them dearly, but the fact that you can't annotate your filesystem still represents a deep disconnect from the true promise of the memex. We can do better. We can go further. We can /win/.

[sometimesiwriteangst]

I Don’t Want To Die (It’s Three AM)

Summary: Deceit’s struggling, and even if he wants to be helped, he can’t bring himself to do it.

It’s three am and Deceit is tired. He forgot his medication, and he regrets it. Or, he thinks he should. He should regret not taking it, because it makes the pain worse, makes the memories play on loop, makes him stop sleeping.

He doesn’t want to sleep though. His heart races, flashes of faces leaning over him cross his mind when he closes his eyes. His present is empty but his head won’t let him stop.

He wonders how the others would feel about his medication. The post it notes hiding and correcting the flaws in his art, the out of proportion eyes, the wonky hands, the bad perspective.

He glances at his sketchbook, feeling the urge to draw, to paint, create. He could show the twins, show them that he appreciates their work, show that they inspire him.

He reaches over, opens it slowly, glancing at the vibrant pastels, the dull grey marker, the incomplete works he abandoned last month.

The urge is there, but his hand shakes when he lifts the pen, and he changes his mind, throwing it aside and trying to sleep again.

It’s three am and Deceit is fed up of hearing Virgil next door, music still playing from the other resident insomniac. He can’t bring himself to cry when Virgil is so close by, in case he’s heard, in case his ex-friend comes to ask what’s wrong.

He holds his breath, rolls over and buries his head under a pillow, clenching and unclenching his fists, hissing quietly to himself that he needs to sleep, needs to rest, needs to keep going, for Thomas.

He doesn’t linger on what he means, closing his eyes and picturing smooth pixels on multiply, pastel painted dots below line art.

He falls asleep to the thought of what his art could be, and wakes up with the idea now distant in his head.

It’s three am and Remus is there, talking about things Deceit enjoys, whilst Deceit tries to be patient. Whilst he tries to tell himself that he should enjoy being with his friends, that it’s good to have company when he feels so low.

“Did you take your medication?” Remus asks suddenly, and Deceit shrugs.

“I think so,” he lies, knowing there’s six days of tablets he’s forgotten to take, too busy trying and failing to sleep to remember to take them. Too busy trying to live day to day.

“You should check-”

“I mean, I did,” he lies again, charcoal lines smudging, the black grinding harsh, sticking to his hands and bleeding slow, “don’t worry, I know I need to take them.”

Remus looks unconvinced, but Deceit smiles, shows him a warm colour palette, and Remus drops it, onto the next subject, unaware of how desperately Deceit just wants to be alone.

And it’s five am but he can’t sleep, can’t think, can’t make, can’t lie, but he’s tired and wonders what it’s like to destroy a piece of art in progress.

It’s three am and he doesn’t know why he’s looking at a cheery vision, a patchy impressionist painting reminiscent of Roman’s ideas.

“I’m Dr Emile Picani!” the fuzzy vision says with a grin, “I think Thomas is trying to design my character a bit more for the next Cartoon Therapy.”

Deceit blinks slowly. Right. Dr Picani the therapist. How ironic, coming across him in his current state.

“Can you actually help people?” he asks, unsure of how long the idea will be around for.

“I believe so! What do you need?”

“...I need...I need...”

Over saturated watercolours drip down the page.

“I need you to...to help me...stay alive...”

The idea looks confused, and Deceit continues, the empty vision the only thing he can say the words aloud to.

“Because...I don’t want to die.”

He thought when he said it (a truth, a lie, two inks bleeding together) it’d be loud and angry and distraught, tears and confessions and desperation. Deep slashes through layers of still drying oil.

But instead it’s simple, defeated, tired. Less oil built up on canvas, more scratches of biro on graph paper. Less Renaissance, more tired high school student.

The idea frowns, tilting it’s head and adjusting it’s glasses.

“Why would you die?” it asks, and Deceit doesn’t have a response.

He doesn’t want to die. He wants to die. He can’t die. He can fade. He wants to fade. He doesn’t want to fade. Framed prints behind glass behind velvet curtains.

“You should talk to someone more real than me,” the idea says softly, and Deceit shrugs.

“There’s nothing more real than us right now,” he replies, glancing around the empty room, and when he looks back the idea is gone.

Art is brief and fleeting, and his canvas bleeds, silvery watercolour dripping down unsuitable paper, leaving wrinkles in its wake.

It’s three am and his phone is beeping, one of the others asking him why he’s still online, ignoring the perfect irony. He regrets them knowing his tumblr account, regrets them seeing his trauma, seeing his pain laid out in perfect black and white photographs.

He reaches out, opens up the app, glances at Roman’s messages, sees the days of notifications he’s been ignoring.

U ok? Not seen you recently.

He wants to reach out, call for help, tell him he’s lonely and sad and hurting and god he doesn’t want to die, if only because he’s scared and Thomas needs him still.

I’m not doing so well, Roman. I really want to die.

He deletes the message, deciding not to send it. He doesn’t want to be vulnerable, paint so carefully laid out, still wet, still easy to smudge. He doesn’t want them to worry, he doesn’t want to admit to the pain, he doesn’t want to die but he doesn’t want to live.

Sorry, being antisocial lol. I’m fine. U?

He chucks his phone away and buries himself back under blankets, knowing he’s only postponing his final message.

It’s three am and he knows he’s messing up. He knows he needs to take his medication, needs to eat, needs to talk, tell people he’s struggling.

He forgets to talk Thomas out of thinking of his existential crisis, and Thomas is still awake, living proof that Deceit keeps failing even when all he has to do is his one job. Lie, keep lying, keep Thomas alive, healthy, keep him fighting.

Bristles fall out of brushes when you leave them in water long enough, and it damages the canvas, leaves bits of paintbrush in the art.

He looks to his sketchbook, gathering dust, and wonders what the point would be any more. He can’t complete anything, he has no skill. He’s not designed to create, not designed to be passionate, he’s designed to lie.

He can’t get rid of the faces, and he can’t sketch them out, show them simply to the others, can’t word them, the thoughts, the images, like an old worn out film on repeat.

“Sorry, Thomas,” he mumbles, and rolls over, trying to sleep.

It’s three am but Patton is sat with him, asking him why he won’t sleep, asking him why he looks so ill, asking him questions Deceit can’t answer, doesn’t want to answer.

“We’ll help you if you need anything,” the moral side tells him, and his eyes are so hopeful, dusky watercolours lined with ink, soft but sharp, “you know that, right?”

And oh, Deceit knows. He knows they’d help, wants to ask for the help, but he doesn’t, and he can’t explain why. He nods and lies his way out of the interrogation, getting Patton to leave, and tries to ignore the way his heart stings at his self imposed isolation.

His room is empty and devoid of the passion he thinks he could have. But it feels so full, full to the brink of long gone shadows, the past weighing in like a thick fog, clouding his head until he falls to the floor in silent tears, not daring to be loud, not daring to let Patton know how much it hurts.

He’s struggling, a shaky sketch doomed to be scrapped, and still all he knows is that he doesn’t want to die.

He doesn’t know what time it is, but the other sides have sat him down, firing questions at him. What is he doing, how is he doing, what does he need, why is he ignoring them?

“Don’t you want to get better?” Logan asks, as if it’s ever been that simple.

Deceit reaches for an answer, an explanation, hesitating between stubs of oil pastel and harsh messy chalk on black paper. But whatever he does, the piece is too abstract and surreal for an explanation to take form in his voice.

“Deceit, we don’t get why you’re doing this to yourself,” Virgil says, struggling with the words, as if Deceit knows any more than he does.

“We’re here to help,” Roman adds, “we just need to know how.”

The canvas is tearing at the seams. Deceit hates when his canvas’ tear. He can’t hide it, even with all the collage and mixed media in the world, watching it bend out of shape.

“I want to get better,” he says, a truth, drops of ink in calligraphy pens.

“Then tell us how we can help!” Patton pleads.

And Deceit shakes his head, head blurry and unsure of how to explain. He doesn’t know how, he doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t believe they can help push out the voices of the past.

(The sketch is still there underneath the line art.)

He doesn’t know what time it is, but he’s scared, and he doesn’t want to die.

“I could kill you,” the past taunts him, sly and low and echoing through his ears.

He doesn’t want to die any more than he did back then.

He doesn’t know what time it is, but he’s run out of colour, and you can only paint a canvas black for so long before you scrap it altogether.

[nbbkatherine]

Connecting the Dots

Homeland by Cory Doctorow; Charlie’s Angels, 2019 Elizabeth Banks film; Numb3rs tv show; You Look Like a Thing and I Love You by Janelle Shane; Parasite, 2019 Bong Joon-ho film; the chilliad by Molly Of Geography webserial; Westworld tv show; Future Friends album by Superfruit; Dickinson tv show; after-words bookstore in Chicago, IL; webcomic name by Alex Norris; American Gods by Neil Gaiman; GINGER by BROCKHAMPTON; Russian Doll tv show.

Woohoo it’s been two years of Never Be Bored! This blog is all about relating different types of media together, and in the twenty-five posts so far, I’ve written about over one hundred books, movies, tv shows, and more. We could plot out each of these posts on a graph—nodes for individual recommendations and edges connecting recs in the same post. So buckle up folks, today we’re going to connect those dots so that we get one, big, beautiful connected graph.

Already some of the work is done. Too Like the Lightning is featured in Really Big Worms and The R Smith Edition. Worm is featured in The R Smith Edition, All Superheroes Need Therapy, and It’s the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Fine. The first twelve posts all got a bonus recommendation from A Year In Review. Kurt Vonnegut wrote both Slaughterhouse Five from Nonlinearity and Galápagos in And So On. Elsewhere University from Strange and Yet Familiar got a shoutout in A+ in Applied Magics.

Let’s start off easy, making connections with what we’ve already got.

Do you hear that? Arrival, from Nonlinearity, and The Vast of Night, featured in Something in the sky, are two sci-fi movies about listening to aliens. For a modern take, with lots of scenes about trying to figure out xenolinguistics, go for Arrival, but if you’d rather something creepy and retro with dramatic monologues, give The Vast of Night a try.

Takeshi Kovacs is one bad ass mother fucker who is just over this shit, but still somehow gets roped into flashy fight scenes. If you liked that character in Altered Carbon, from To Whom Am I Speaking?, you’ll like the story of Duncan Vizla, aka the Black Kaiser, an almost-retired hitman in Polar, a Year in Review bonus rec to Floor It.

Bright Star (featured in The Northwestern Edition) and Hadestown (featured in It’s an old song) are both blues/jazz/folk musicals about a double love story. Bright Star is loosely based on a Missouri folk tale, Hadetown is inspired by Greek mythology. Both are excellent.

Cosmo Sheldrake (The How How Much Much and I from Strange and Yet Familiar) and Hozier (Hozier and Wasteland, Baby! from Daisies & Death) both create music that makes you imagine old fairy magic in the forest. Cosmo Sheldrake’s “Hocking” is like what I’d envision playing at a fae celebration of summer solstice, while Hozier’s “Wasteland, Baby!” is the sad love song from after the party’s over.

And now, let’s add entirely new nodes to our graph with new recommendations to connect posts.

Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer (Really Big Worms, The R Smith Edition) is a very idea-forward book, and (one of) the catalysts that kicks off the story is a stolen newspaper article draft. Ada Palmer is a professor who researches intellectual history, and it absolutely shows in her writing as her books explore the implications of a society based on certain ideas. Cory Doctorow is another favorite author of mine who also writes idea-forward fiction—if you liked Too Like the Lightning, try his Homeland, in which Marcus Yallow is entrusted with an archive documenting government and corporate crime, and has to figure out how to publish it without getting arrested. I would also highly recommend this book, available to download for free from Doctorow’s website, if you liked The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick (Something in the sky). Although Homeland is fictional, as you read you’ll learn things too—about information security, the darkweb, evading surveillance, and protesting tips.

I want more action movies starring women, because I love a good fight sequence and watching things go boom, but I’m tired of watching men with big guns in movies with, like, one named woman character. Kingsman: The Secret Service (A Year in Review bonus rec to Non je ne regrette rien) just barely passes the Bechdel test, but I will give it a bonus point for having two badass women main characters who aren’t love interests (ugh, the bar is so low). And if you liked the aesthetic of Kingmen’s gentlemen spies, then you might like Elizabeth Bank’s 2019 reboot movie Charlie’s Angels. Naomi Scott, Ella Balinska and Kristen Stweart all kicking ass on screen? Yes, please! Continuing in that vein, see also Ocean’s 8 (Floor It) for an all-women heist crew, set on stealing diamonds from the Met Gala.

My favorite episodes of Hannibal (Daisies & Death) are the one-off monster-of-the-week type episodes, where the FBI is investigating a murder and Will Graham, profiler extraordinaire, is called in for help. If you’re into crime shows like that, try Numb3rs, streaming on Hulu, a tv show about two brothers—one, Alan, an FBI agent and the other, Charlie, a mathematician. Together they solve crimes, using fluid dynamics, disease spread modeling, wavelet analysis, and many more areas of applied math. (I learned a little about sabermetrics, the statistical analysis of baseball, from one episode, so I dropped that term in conversation with a sports-obsessed acquaintance freshman year in college. We became good friends, and I’m pretty sure that conversation was part of why.) For more on applications of mathematics to real world problems, read The Code Book by Simon Singh, featured in On Computability, which details the math theory behind creating and cracking encryption over the centuries.

The Imitation Game, a Year in Review bonus rec to On Computability, is named for an artificial intelligence thought experiment proposed by Alan Turing in 1950, before anything resembling modern computers even existed. In Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson, robots across the globe gain sentience and begin to turn against their human makers—hilariously in retrospect, I recommended this book in It’s the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Fine back in March. Anyway, between those two extremes, where is the field of artificial intelligence today? To learn more, try You Look Like a Thing and I Love You by Janelle Shane, a truly delightful book that will both show you how far research has come and will reassure you that the robot uprising won’t be happening anytime soon.

Bad Times at the El Royale (Just you, and me, and this gun) unsurprisingly takes place at the El Royale hotel. For reasons that would be spoilers to name, the setting is essential to the plot of the film—the story could not have unfolded in the way that it did anywhere else. This is also true of Parasite, 2019 Bong Joon-ho film currently streaming on Hulu, where many scenes take place in a rich family’s house—which was actually designed and built in pieces for the movie. An absolutely incredible dark comedy/thriller, Parasite explores the things a person might just do to get ahead. For another thriller with characters willing to go to extreme lengths for their own personal reasons, try Thoroughbreds, from Non je ne regrette rien.

Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe, featured in It’s an old song, retells the story of Persephone and Hades but in a vaguely modern setting—where the two first meet in a crowded bar. For more modernized Greek myths, check out the chilliad by Molly Of Geography, a wildly funny adaptation of the Illiad. Follow along with Homer Bard, undeclared freshman Alpha Sigma Phi pledge, as he recounts the story of the epic prank war against the Trojan House. If your favorite characters from this ongoing webserial are Achilles “AC” Myrmidon and Pedro Klaus “PK” Liebling but were looking for something a little more traditional, then you might like Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles, a retelling of Illiad from the point of view of Patroclus, recommended in Is it better to speak or die?.

Firefly (The Family We Made Along the Way) is a tv show with an interesting blend of aesthetics—some people wear dusty cowboy hats and some people live in floating mansions and there’s a scene where the crew get a job to transport cattle from between planets. If you’re into that, try the tv show Westworld, streaming on HBO, about a Western-themed amusement park, populated by android hosts—who talk and dress and live as if it’s the 1800s, looking exactly like humans, with no idea that their entire world is a vacation destination for the wealthy. As the series continues and secrets are revealed, plot twists will keep you glued to the screen. See also Sense8 (To Whom Am I Speaking?), which likewise features lots of action and a cast of characters who keep secrets and deals with the question—what makes us different from each other?

In The Northwestern Edition I wrote about the different a cappella groups on campus; if you like that style of music then you might have heard of the group Pentatonix, the first a cappella group to win the Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement. Two members of the group, Mitch Grassi and Scott Hoying, also make up the duo Superfruit, and I adore their (synth-pop, not a cappella) album Future Friends. “Imaginary Parties” (which has an excellent music video) and “Bad 4 Us” are my song recs for Freckle and Caleb respectively, characters from The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo, the five-episode series from Baby if you love me, won’t you please just give me a smile?.

If you’re interested in queer art history, consider following Dan Vo on Instagram, one of the tour guides of the V&A’s LGBTQ tours, recommended in The Eye of the Beholder. You might also like Dickinson, an Apple TV show about Emily Dickinson growing up, writing poetry, getting into trouble with her parents, and falling in love with her friend Susan. Although it’s set in 19th century Massachusetts, the dialogue and music are thoroughly modern, which makes for a fun juxtaposition—in the first episode, Emily imagines going on a carriage ride with Death while “bury a friend” by Billie Eilish plays in the background. For more stories about the life of a queer poet, try Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde, featured in Looking Forward, Looking Back, about her experiences growing up, writing poetry, getting into trouble with her parents, and falling in love with lots of people, in 1940s and 50s New York City. 

Here’s how you spend one perfect day in Chicago: you wake up late one November Saturday. Down in the Loop, you visit the beautiful Chicago Athletic Association, which despite the name is actually a hotel, for Chicago Art Book Fair (A Year in Review bonus rec to The Northwestern Edition). You browse brightly colored lithographs and maybe pick up a zine or two. Then you take a walk north, across the river, to E Illinois and Wabash, to after-words bookstore. Down in the basement, you look through the new and used books in search of something interesting. Take your time in River North, find something good to eat, because you have plenty of time before taking the Red Line up to Argyle, to catch a performance of the The Infinite Wrench by the Neo-Futurists, featured in Next!. 

In My Favorite Shapes (This Might As Well Happen), we get to hear Julio Torres talk about, for example, an oval looking at his reflection in a pond and wishing he were a circle. Some of my favorite shapes are the pink blobs from Alex Norris’s webcomic name, three-panel comics with a repeated punchline—an excellent of example of how sometimes you don’t need a lot of fancy detail to convey emotion. For another webcomic about the absurdities of life, check out Poorly Drawn Lines by Reza Farazmand (And So On).

Forgotten gods and old magic tied to old places. In Digger (webcomic featured in The Family We Made Along the Way), a perfectly respectable wombat finds herself traveling strange lands and meeting a couple of gods (well, sort of). For another story of an ordinary person who gets caught up in the affairs of gods, try American Gods by Neil Gaiman, about an ex-convict who meets Mr. Wednesday, an American incarnation of the Norse deity Odin the All-Father. The things we are allowed to forget shape us—at one time, Odin had power because many people knew that he was real, but in this book, Mr. Wednesday is weakened because so many people have forgotten him. One of my favorite moments—in just about any written work I’ve ever read— is the line of dialogue in The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin (A+ in Applied Magics) that Revealed a Thing Forgotten. You’ll know it when you see it, and any further description would be a major spoiler.

On the scale of how much singing is involved in rap albums, on one side you have something like neo-soul Overgrown (Looking Forward, Looking Back), where Ivy Sole shows off her vocals, and on the other you have R.A.P. Ferreira’s purple moonlight pages (Something in the sky), which has more of a jazz-rap feel. Somewhere in between is GINGER by BROCKHAMPTON, which has both catchy sung hooks and rapid-fire bars; two of my favorite songs off this album are “SUGAR” and “IF YOU PRAY RIGHT.” I’ve seen them in concert twice and I look forward to being able to again, someday.

Lastly, if you liked Palm Springs, from This Might As Well Happen, a rom-com in which Nyles and Sarah fall asleep and wake up on the day of Sarah’s sister’s wedding over and over again, but were looking for something a bit darker, then you might like Russian Doll, a black comedy tv series that begins when two people keep dying and reliving the same night. For another duo of characters with great dialogue bumbling through life and death together, try Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard, featured in It’s an old song. 

Here’s a visualization of this blog, with and without labels:

[renegade-is-in-my-blood]

Being in the blogging business for around 8 years now I came to learn a lot. Let’s hear from the old bitter blogger about the difference between being an ambassador and being a customer. When you’re investing more than you’re gaining from the collaboration it’s not really a collaboration you’re looking for.

There is a new trend going around social media, especially Instagram. I’ve been getting collaboration offers on a daily basis even pre COVID times but now the amount of pseudo collaborations increased.

Hands down it is an incredible business strategy from the business point of view.

Everyone wants to be an ambassador.

Ambassador became an even more prestigious title than an influencer. Influencer posses some sort of responsibility for their actions whilst ambassador is just being paid for simply being.

Who wouldn’t want that?

Many brands use this knowledge to the fullest and offers these pseudo collaborations.

So what is a pseudo collaboration?

Well, it starts off by being contacted by a brand.

You’ll receive a ctrl+c ctrl+v message from a brand-name-scout. The message contains several cute emojis and addresses you as a gorgeous, pretty, cutie, love, honey, sweety, and if they really want to get you, even by your Instagram name.

It’s usually followed by a bunch of compliments about your fashion style, vibe, Instagram, or whatever. Then there is a lie about following or just generally noticing you for a while without ever seeing your insta story, like any of your posts, or even actually following you.

Now it’s time for an offer beneficial for you.

Usually, it’s free products, a way to earn a commission, or just the sheer option to be able to call yourself an ambassador. Every single brand out there offers a “support” like anyone really knows what’s that supposed to mean. I had several ones even offering me a travel trips, but never elaborated on it after my further questioning.

Now comes the hook with a “do you want to learn more?” question.

If you think I’m exaggeration for the story and I can’t be generalizing all of the collaborations offers into a simple standard form I wish you were right. Here are some of the screenshots of my current Instagram DMs:

You might think: “What’s wrong with that? They’re trying so don’t be mean. Just ignore them.” let me remind you how dumb Instagram algorithm is.

If your account is followed by bots, messaged by bots, liked by bots Instagram assumes you’re one of them or you got hacked by them. Sweet of them for trying to protect you thought, but holy hell did that made everything super complicated for me.

I got several messages from the brand scouts messaging me again because their previous account got deleted.

No shit Sherlock, it’s like you can’t keep creating accounts, following and messaging a bunch of people at once and ask for money anymore.

So now every time my account gets suspicious activity such as too many likes/follows/messages Instagram suspects my account got hacked. Each time they require I change my password and let me tell you I ran out of password ideas months ago.

That’s not the worst part though.

After each time I change my password I’m blocked for 7 days from liking, following, or adding tags to my posts and that sucks. Just to get a better picture of this issue I’m blocked approximately once sometimes twice per month.

The block comes hand in hand with a shadowban that lingers for god knows how long, meaning Instagram is not gonna support you in any way. That’s why I have around 40 likes on a posts with 47K followers most of which are bots anyway.

I loath Instagram app yet I spend hours a day on the hellish site and I’m not only one.

We spend so much time on Instagram anyway so when a chance to earn money form it comes along you’re tempted to take it. Brands know that.

Imagine you’re a small-town girl with around 400 followers on Instagram. You already feel pretty popular right?

Now imagine you get the messages I shared above but you get just one. Someone out there thinks you’re so popular they want you on their team, you are just like the big influencers, you get job offers for being an Instagram star. You’re the next Kardashian.

You can have all of the things they said to you BUT you need to do something for them first. You have to pay for it.

And here is the catch with all of the pseudo collaborations.

What they don’t say to you in their first message is what it’s gonna cost you.

Many offers you free stuff but you need to pay for the one-time shipping. Some brands offer you a unique discount of around 40-60% off so you’ll pay just a part of the price and you can call yourself an ambassador.

I don’t know about you, but I thought that was called the customer. You buy a product, you wear it and occasionally you take photo of it on your social media sites. The new term is an ambassador apparently.

I get why so many people agree to this kind of collaboration. It’s new for you. It makes you feel good and successful in your friend’s and families eyes. And there is that hopefully undertone of making money from it.

Aren’t the brands unprofitable when they give away discounts and free stuff?

In a theory, yes, but there is one thing all of the brands that messaged me had in common except for the audacity.

Overpriced products.

I got messaged by jewelry stores, fashion stores and gym equipment stores most of the time. I took the time and did my research on every one of them.

When a store sold jewelry, they had the same products as the rest of the jewelry stores I got contacted by. A small variety of around 8 products most of them sold out anyway. And let’s not forget the ridiculously high prices. You can’t charge a cheap Chinese necklace you can get on amazon or aliexpress for under a 1$ for 40$.

So even if you’re paying just around 30$ for your ambassador order they are still making a profit on your wannabe Instagramer need cuz they purchased said items for far less.

Well, I’m being a little miss know it all right?

How can I talk about pseudo collaboration like this when it’s all based on assumptions. Well you know me, I’m curious as hell and I actually went through 3 pseudo collaborations myself just to prove a point.

I literally spend money so I can tell you about it right now so here is how my 3 pseudo collaborations went like.

All of the ones I choose were jewelry based pseudo collaborations. With the corona times, post offices are overwhelmed with parcels. I ordered big parcels in recent times and they arrived with around a month delay. I figured smaller jewelry in an envelope form would be quicker to arrive and I was right.

Pseudo collaboration number one VONACHI:

A simple yet luxurious-looking website with very few decent pieces of jewelry, offered me 3 free pieces to take a photo in and promote. I would also get a 60% discount code and every time my code would be used I would receive 30% of the money amount. Incredibly overpriced amount in the first place.

Here is the list of all of the benefits they offered.

The scout that approached me was very eager. They kept insisting I place my order right away. No time to waste.

To make it clear I got a simple code to apply in a check out that subtracted the price and I got the pieces for free. All I had to do was pay a 20$ shipping fee what seems like nothing but for 3 small necklaces, it is way too much.

Another thing that was odd was that I was required to take a screenshot of my order and send it back to scout. I guess to prove I was legit.

After bunch of further compliments and claims how excited they are to be working with me we ended our conversation.

If you think I was being reckless to give my credit card and home address to such a questionable site don’t be.

Honestly, I trust zero people, sometimes I don’t even trust myself. I used a card I have no to very little money on and I got it shipped to a work address.

My parcel from china arrived in around a month and a half. I got one black box with one necklace and the other 2 necklaces were in small plastic bags. I received a note about welcoming me to the program and asking me to contact vonachi’s official Instagram account for setting up my discount code and that’s exactly what I did. The official page responded after longer time period with just a “this is your code” message. I took a photo, tagged vonachi as a business partner, and shared my code. I did my part and I was never contacted by them again.

My 60% code is VONAMBNAT and as you might have guessed no one used it so far.

Or at least no one told me it was used. If someone were to use my code I would be contacted by vonachi and here is the problem. I’m supposed to trust them with their credibility cuz there is no other way for me to check it for myself. This is what it’s missing from the old Time collaborations of mine. I would get a tracking code, an account login, graphs, statistics, and one on one communication with a brand in my previous collaborations. But you know Golden times for influencers are long gone.

Now I’m left to just simply trust them.

Why would they ever confess someone used my code? If a customer gets 60% off and I’m getting 30% from already discounted item there is just a very little left for vonachi. They don’t say anything and get to keep my 30% share.

They didn’t put much effort into tracking system cuz they are not expecting their ambassadors/customers to make any sales anyway.

The products were not that bad. They came in a bit rusty and tangled but I was excepting much worse.

Hell, I was not expecting them to legitimately arrive.

Pseudo collaboration number 2: ENGELSINN

I initiated this pseudo collaboration myself. Engelsinn paid a significant amount of money to Instagram promoted post and that’s where I found out they are looking for ambassadors.

I filled out an application form.

This one felt more legit cuz they actually asked for followers count and all of the communication occurred via email. Automated emails but still it reminded me of good old days.

I was given a 40% discount code to use on my first order. The shipping was free but it still cost me another 20$ to get the product. Since placing my first order I got a 20% discount code “nat7x20” for my followers to get 20% off their engelsinn order.

When my code is redeemed 2 times I get one jewelry of my choice for free.

Do I even need to mention that I didn’t get any email since?

Well, that’s not exactly true I got 2 more emails each with another discount code I could use for 24 hours and buy more of their stuff. But none about redeemed code.

Engelsinn is a german based brand and living so close I got my parcel in around a week. I got myself a rose gold knot bracelet and I feel like a hypocrite but I actually really love this one and wear it every day. I know I wouldn’t get it if it wasn’t for the research but I’m glad I did.

Btw the ad about engelsinn looking for ambassador is still up there and it still says they have only a few places left. It’s been 2 months.

Pseudo collaboration number 3: CUZETTE

I got messaged by them on my Instagram and their offer was super confusing. They promised it all. 3 free stuff now, free stuff every month, paid trip to several destinations, and even 50$ voucher. The scout called me sweety exactly 9 times during our conversations. It was super annoying.

So I choose another 3 free items and paid another 20$ for shipping. When I asked about the 50$ voucher I was told I would need to refer 5 friends who would also become cuzette ambassador or delegate as they named it, to get the 50$. No info about the travel trips though.

I was told to contact the official page for more info but it took days for them to finally reply with nothing new just more compliments and excitement about the future. It’s been 2 months and I still haven’t received my order just as I was expecting.

Later on, I endorsed in conversation with several other brands asking for more info, looking for something different than standard copy and paste form. Unsuccessful.

Every time I asked how many ambassadors they have in their program the answer was always “around 3000“. Once again, you have 3000 customers and not 3000 ambassadors. If the only people who buy from you are people you ask to buy from you, you’re doing something wrong.

But your business plan is on point.

When I asked about who and where makes their products I was either met with a silence or a sweet talk about a responsible brand.

These brands are providing people with content. You get to take photos of the items you ordered and you get to be as creative as you want. In these COVID times so many brands had to cancel or postpone their collaborations with bloggers or Instagrammers. I saw huge travel/luxurious instagramers switch form hotel and travel collaborations to promoting kitchen wipes. Times are tough and you got to do what you got to do.

Yet these small businesses with hight prices are thriving?

You know it’s not about the product but about the potential.

Profiting on greediness.

So smart.

To prove my point even further I got to confess one more thing. I mentioned before that I manage Instagram accounts for different brands and among them is one fashion store. I was not only at the ambassadors’ side but on the scouting side as well.

All I had to do was search for people who looked like they would be willing to become an ambassador for our store and had decent amount of followers. I had saved message form and all I did was try to guess peoples names so the message seemed more personal. Once they agreed to a discussion I let my boss take the lead.

So yeah, try to really think about the offers you get.

Look at it from all points of view and ask yourself if it’s profitable for anyone else but the brand.

If you want to have offers pouring your way try adding #ad #spon #collab to your next Instagram posts. That’s how they look for their next ambassador.

Everyone wants to be an ambassador. 

Pseudo Collaborations- Everyone wants to be an Ambassador Being in the blogging business for around 8 years now I came to learn a lot. Let's hear from the old bitter blogger about the difference between being an ambassador and being a customer.

[lwtis]

so i have a problem with fics where i know how it's supposed to start and end, but then when i fill in the middle i get kind of confused on how to set the pieces the way it is (and i would say i'd adlib it and if the ending changes, they that's fine but i'm writing a mystery/whodunnit fic) and then the outline becomes messier timeline wise, where i'd get certain scenes that i can see but i don't know how to pace it well within the middle. do you have any advice for this conundrum? thank you!!

Hey Anon! Thank you so much for the ask!

First of all, congratulations on figuring out the beginning and the end! That shit is hard!! With mystery and plot-heavy stories, my main advice for plotting/outlines would be: Keep It As Simple As Possible. Like, stupidly simple and basic at first. 

I’m a big fan of drawing/writing things out on paper, and then typing it all up - helps me visualise things a bit better. Obviously, it’s different for everyone, but I would recommend trying it!

So get a piece of paper and draw up a timeline - with START and END. Write down every plot point that you already have in your head, as simply as possible. So, maybe something like:

START: 

Event happens that kickstarts the plot

Introduction of Character A, who is assigned to solve the case/who decides to solve the case because of (x) reasons. 

Character A travels to (x) location. On the way, he remembers an event that shaped his personality in a big way. He arrives to location feeling anxious and ready to punch someone.  

Then same with the plot points/story beats you have already decided on - like, when things are going to get revealed, when plot twists happen, when certain character interactions happen, ect. Break down everything in your head to the simplest, most basic statement and note them down until you get to the end. This way, you can see what parts need to be worked on better too. 

It could look something like this, maybe? (With way more detail, obviously)

Post-It notes and different coloured pens are freaking awesome at this stage.

So at the end of it, you should have a detailed ‘skeleton’ of your plot - which will hopefully make it easier to navigate when you’re figuring out the details!

On the matter of pacing, I think an important thing to pay attention to is SET UP and PAY-OFF. 

Mystery stories are fun to read because they’re a big puzzle, right? So for every plot twist or reveal, you should have a hint somewhere earlier in the story for it.

You can work backwards too - for example, if the murderer used his expert skills with poisons, you could mention their very relevant degree earlier in the story. Or if the culprit is a master manipulator, maybe characters could reminisce about how amazing they always were at tabletop games where you had to lie. 

Traditionally speaking, most of the set-ups could be in the first half of the story, and the pay-offs are in the latter half of the story. I would suggest drawing another graph to see where they are, so you can see how it looks.   

Another tip I find helpful is that every scene should serve SOME sort of purpose - to move the story along, for characters to develop, for relationships to change, for the audience to learn something new ect. 

Basically, A THING has to happen.

So if you’re stuck, maybe try examining a chapter that you think worked really well and flowed nicely. 

How many THINGS happened? 

Try and break it down, like - two ‘plot moves forwards’ THINGS, two ‘character’ THINGS, one ‘relationship’ THING, one ‘mood building’ THING, ect. That could serve as a good guide/template for when certain chapters are not flowing well and are giving you trouble.  

Lastly - if things really just refuse to work out, put it down and walk away. Sometimes, all you need is a good night’s sleep or a few days’ break. Or a shower. A lot of good solutions come in the shower. 

Oh, and of course - consume lots of different media! Mystery stories, films and if you’re into that kind of thing, video games! Visual novels have a really interesting and effective way of feeding you information and leading you to the conclusion. The Ace Attorney and Dangan Ronpa series are the first to come to mind, but there are loads more. 

I sincerely hope this was somewhat understandable? I hope I didn’t misunderstand your ask completely - let me know if you want me to clarify anything! Best of luck with your story - I hope you have fun writing it! <3 

[dlamp-dictator]

Allen Rambles About Writing

So as I’m getting back into writing I’m starting to feel the same kind of anxiety that I felt when I started taking my drawing and art a little more serious. Back then I made a Rambling discussing how I felt about the situation, making a message to future Allen to not worry about how your drawings look when you feel down about your progress and starting to compare yourself to others. 

And looking back, I’m surprise how well I know myself since every time I thought up a counter point I was instantly shot down by the bluntness of 2018-Allen’s demands of not taking my hobby as a seriously as an actual job. 

But back on topic, I wanted to do a sort of Rambling like that again, this time focusing on writing. Though honestly, a lot of that stuff I wrote in that original post on drawing can be applied here. However, there are a few points I could add to that, so... here we are. 

But to get right to the point...

Points that Remain the Same

Just a quick rehash of the points I made in the art Rambling that still hold water:

Much like drawing, writing as a hobby, not a profession. You can fail, fumble, and fall all you like and it will not effect my daily life.

If any criticism you recieve feels pretenious and self-gratifying then it probably is. Best to remove them from your mind entirely as their points aren’t for your sake, but their own.

Again, you are not writing for money, so no need to worry about screwing people over finacially. Then only thing their wasting is their time, and their time is theirs to do with as they please.

And with that out of the way, here’s a few new things I want to say.

Your Stuff Probably Isn’t Great

This isn’t to say you should be pessimistic, but you need to understand you’re not making the next bestseller or the deepest of stories exploring the human condition. You’re just writing out what you think might be a cool story. 

For example, right now my stories consist of two fanfics and two original stories. On the fanfic side you have a tsundere aikido girl fighting a bunch of wacky characters that includes a female shounen karate fighter, a taekwondo fighter with an impoverished dojo, and goddamn Rulue from the Puyo Puyo series. The second fanfic includes a tomboy cannibal pretending to be Batman and fighting... basically anyone I think from obscure video games and lesser known/discussed manga. 

In terms of my original stories we have a story about kung fu girls being stuck in the delinquent dorm of their kung fu school forced to fight bullies, gangsters, yakuza hieresses, cultists, and evil priestesses... also yes all these things happen at school. And the second original story is about a forest ninja and her ragtag group of warriors that consist of a Black sukeban, a genderbent Goro Majima, a shy archer girl, and the main character’s sister who is a ballet dancer. 

None of these stories are exactly high art. But that’s okay, not much is. 

And this seems to be a nice segue into talking about...

The Bell Curve

This is the Bell Curve. The Bell Curve is a type of distribution method that shows the likely probability of most variables in a given equation, statistic and general data distribution. This is usually used to determine a fair average among any given amount of data to see what the majority of information lies on any give graph or form of measurement.

Okay, that was a lot of mathematic terms, and unlike my friend Infall I majored in the Humanities, not Mathetics, so I’ll stop there. 

But the point is, this graphic shows where the majority of... things will land. Most... things that make up the average of whatever... thing you’re looking at will be in the center where the curve is. Anything on the ends are the highest and lowest points of data. 

In short, most things in existence are average and will be average, middling, and ordinary. That how averages work. This is what most media and statistics falls into. Very few things created are truly bad, just below average at worse. Most things are, in fact, average. If everything was extraordinary, then there would just be a new scale to maintain some form of equalibrium. 

Hence why the Bell Curve is used in the first place.

I say this not to discourage anyone wanting to write the best story ever, but to just let you know that even if you don’t hit your target goal, if you land within the middle of this curve things show be okay. 

Again, you’re not doing this for payment or as a job, you’re doing this for fun. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t shoot for the moon, but to understand that at worst, you’ll be below average. 

And that’s okay. 

Not everything created can be great, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t good. Not everything needs to strike gold when silver is still valuable. If you get hung up on being the best, you’ll never achieve good. I’ve got a bad habit of trying to make a chapter of a story absolutely perfect before posting, and all that does is make it take a month to post when it could had taken two weeks. Sometimes I honestly need the extra time due to working two jobs, but it’s rarely needed. 

And honestly, for those that say the worse thing something could be is average, I’d like to remind your that 60%-70% if any media is average. To throw out that average and only focusing on the best and worse... I pity you.

But moving on.

General Writing Advice

In all seriousness though, there are a few things to keep in mind when writing. I’m going to be serious for a moment and give a few bits of advice and things I keep in mind when writing:

Worldbuilding is a double-edged sword. It can be cool to explore and explain how certain things in your world work, but it also means you have to adhear to every text dump of exposition you mention. Try to only exposite things that are really important for the audience to know and keeps notes on the side for you to follow as you write it out your story.

Your audience isn’t as plothole-searching as you think, nor are they as thorough when reading something out of enjoyment as you were when you’re tightening up your narrative. Don’t worry too much about detail unless your doing some mystery/intrique plot. Most people just want to read a story that interests them, so just relax and writing something fun and entertaining to you.

On that note, the human imagination is a lot more powerful than you think. You don’t have to go into extreme detail about everything. Your audience can fill in a lot more of the blanks than you think, and what they think up might be more interesting than that 3-paragraph description on your main character’s height, weight, eye-color, and each individual freckle.

Again, relax you’re likely writing as a hobby, not to pay the bills. Just write what feels right and everything else will fall into place.

Oh, and big piece of advice before I close this little motivational writing post.

Shut the Fuck Up

Seriously. If there’s one piece of writing advice you should keep in mind, it’s to not Ramble. Ironic coming from me, but keeping prose and descriptions to a minimum helps a lot more than you think. I’ve said this several times on my RP blogs and I’ll say it here:

More Words =/= Better. More Words = More Words.

 And just prattling on about a character’s backstory or exposition is boring. Be sure to keep that in mind as you write. Try not to go on for too long about a description without very reason.

Anyway, that’ll be it for this Rambling. Sadly, TW3K crashed on me today in the late game, so I guess Total War Tuesday will... be back on Tuesday.

In any case, see you later folks!

[weekinethereum]

January 11, 2018

News and Links

Constantinople is coming. [Also, this is the January 11, 2019 issue but I can't fix the title without breaking links]

Upgrade your clients ASAP! EF FAQ and blog post. From MyCrypto, what users need to know about the Constantinople fork

Layer 1

[eth1] Rinkeby testnet forked successfully. Update your clients ASAP!

[eth2] What’s New in Eth2

[eth2] Latest Eth2 implementer call notes

[eth2] Validator economics of Eth2. Also a thorough Eth staking ROI spreadsheet model

[eth2] Discussion about storage rent “eviction archive” nodes and incentives

web3foundation, Status and Validity Labs update and call for participants on private, decentralized messaging, a la Whisper

Layer 2

Live on Rinkeby testnet: Plasma Ignis - often called “roll up” - 500 transactions per second using SNARKs for compression (not privacy), no delay to exit, less liveness requirements, multi-operator. Check out the live demo.

Georgios Konstantopoulos: A Deep Dive on RSA Accumulators

Canto: proposed new subprotocol to allow sidechain-like subnets

Fae: a subnet by putting Fae’s binary transactions in the data field

A RaidenNetwork deep dive explainer

Can watchtowers and monitoring services scale?

Counterfactual dev update: full end to end implementation of Counterfactual with demos and dev environment will be live on Ropsten in next 2 weeks

Stuff for developers

Embark v4.0.0-beta.0

Ganache v2.0.0-beta.2

ZeppelinOS v2.1

Updated EthereumJS readthedocs

Solidity CTF: mirror madness from authio

Solstice: 15 analyzer Solidity security tool

EVM code fuzzing using input prediction

Compound’s self-liquidation bug

Gas Stations Network, an incentivized meta transaction relay network, live on Ropsten

Understanding Rust lifetimes

How to quickly deploy to Görli cross-client testnet

Maker CDP leverager in one call

Codefund2.0 - sustainability for open source project advertising without 3rd party trackers

RSA accumulator in Vyper

Analyzing 1.2m mainnet contracts in 20 seconds using Eveem and BigQuery

0x Market Maker program. 15k to run a market making bot on a 0x relayer

POANet: Honey Badger BFT and Threshold Cryptography

Ecosystem

Afri’s Eth node configuration modes cheat sheet. A great accompaniment to Afri’s did Ethereum reach 1 tb yet?  The answer is obviously no, state plus chaindata is about 150 GB.

MyEtherWallet v5 is in beta and MEWConnect on Android

Ethereum Foundation major grant to Parity: $5m for ewasm, light wallet, and Eth2

Enterprise

What enterprises need to know about AWS’s Blockchain as a Service

2019 is the year of enterprise tokens?

Governance and Standards

Notes from latest core devs call, includes ProgPoW section. On that topic, IfDefElse put out a ProgPoW FAQ including responses from AMD and Nvidia. Also check understanding ProgPoW from a few months ago

Martin Köppelmann on the governance protocol of DXdao

Pando Network: DAOs and the future of content

EIP1682: storage rent

EIP1681: temporal replay protection

ERC1683: URLs with asset and onboarding functionality

ERC1690: Mortability standard

ERC820 Pseudo-introspection Registry Contract is final

ERC1155 multi-token standard to last call

Application layer

Demo testing on Kovan testnet of the Digix governance platform

Brave at 5.5m MAUs, up 5x in 2018. It also got much more stable over the year, and being able to use a private tab with TOR on desktop makes it a must (mobile has been a must for a long time). Here’s my referral code if you haven’t switched yet.

I saw some warnings about tokenized US equity DX.exchange that was in the last newsletter. I have no idea if they are legit or if the warnings are in bad faith but the reason that Szabo’s “trusted third parties are security holes” gets repeated frequently is because it is true. If you choose any cryptoasset that depends on custody of a third party, caveat emptor.

Origin now has editable listings and multiple item support

Nevada counties are storing birth and marriage certificates on Ethereum

Scout unveils its customizable token/protocol explorers for apps, live on Aragon and Livepeer

Veil prediction markets platform built on 0x and Augur launches Jan 15 on mainnet. Fantastic to see the app layer stack coming together. Not open to the USA because…federal government.

Gnosis on the problem of front running in dexes

Status releases desktop alpha, v0.9

Interviews, Podcasts, Videos, Talks

Joseph Lubin on Epicenter. Some good early Eth history here.

Curation Markets community call

Ryan Sean Adams on the case for Ether as money on POV Crypto

Nice Decrypt Media profile of Lane Rettig

Q&A with Mariano Conti, head of Maker Oracles

Andrew Keys on the American Banker podcast

Austin Griffith 2018 lessons learned talk at Ethereum Boulder

Starkware’s Eli Ben-Sasson and Alessandro Chiesa on Zero Knowledge

Nick Johnson talks ENS and ProgPoW on Into the Ether

Tokens / Business / Regulation

Paul Kohlhaas: bonding curve design parameters

Ryan Zurrer: Network keepers, v2

Zastrin to sell a tradeable NFT as a license to use its blockchain dev courses.

Sharespost says it did its first compliant security token trade of BCAP (Blockchain Capital). Link opens PDF

Actus Financial Protocol announces standard for tokenizing all financial instruments.

Missing DeFi piece: longer-term interest generating assets

Gemini’s rules for the revolution on working with regulators.

Blockchain Association proposes the Hinman Standard for cryptoassets

Blockchains LLC releases its 300 page Blockchain Through a Legal Lens

China released restrictive blockchain rules including censorship and KYC

Why Ether is Valuable

General

ETC got 51% attacked. Coinbase was first to announce it, though it appears the target was the gate.io exchange. Amusingly, the price hardly suffered. The amazing thing is that a widely known and relatively easily exploited attack vector like this didn’t happen during bull market when this attack could have been an order of magnitude more profitable.

Michael del Castillo tracks the supply chain of an entire dinner using blockchain products like Viant

Julien Thevenard argues Ethereum is on par or safer than Bitcoin in terms of proof of work.

Coindesk video interview of the creator of HODL. He isn’t at all convinced by Bitcoin’s new “store of value” meme. Very entertaining use of 8 minutes.

That very odd Bitcoin nonce pattern. Phil Daian says it is caused by AntMiners

Researchers brute force attack private keys of poorly implemented ECDSA nonce generation.

Dates of Note

Upcoming dates of note (new in bold):

Jan 14 - Mobi Grand Challenge hackathon ends

Jan 10-Feb7 - 0x and Coinlist virtual hackathon

Jan ~16 - Constantinople hard fork at block 7080000

Jan 24 - List of things for Aragon vote, including on funding original AragonOne team

Jan 25 - Graph Day (San Francisco)

Jan 29-30 - AraCon (Berlin)

Jan 31 - GörliCon (Berlin)

Feb 7-8 - Melonport’s M1 conf (Zug)

Feb 15-17 - ETHDenver hackathon (ETHGlobal)

Mar 4 - Ethereum Magicians (Paris)

Mar 5-7 - EthCC (Paris)

Mar 8-10 - ETHParis (ETHGlobal)

Mar 27 - Infura end of legacy key support (Jan 23 begins Project ID prioritization)

April 8-14 - Edcon hackathon and conference (Sydney)

Apr 19-21 - ETHCapetown (ETHGlobal)

May 10-11 - Ethereal (NYC)

If you appreciate this newsletter, thank ConsenSys

This newsletter is made possible by ConsenSys.

I own Week In Ethereum. Editorial control has always been 100% me.

If you're unhappy with editorial decisions or anything that I have written in this issue, feel free to tweet at me.

Housekeeping

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[marchersamuelsen50-blog]

Motorsport Supervisor Assessment.

If you're a normal GTA Online player you'll wish to obtain directly in to those 30-player deathmatches as well as nationalities, thus right here is actually a step by step guide to transferring your character off one console to yet another. And just when on-line social pc gaming goes to its height by means of the desktop computer as well as laptop computer monitors around the world, our experts are launched to the iPad. Most likely to iTunes and conserve a data backup from your phone's information to your pc by choosing Back Up Now. Social media is actually the media (web content) that you post - whether that is actually a blogging site, online video, slide show, podcast, e-newsletter or an e-book. Because this is actually the final ranking in the social web link, you could technically choose any dialogue alternatives you would certainly such as, but there are actually still some which provide points, as signified below. Yet due to the fact that nearly every Site now shows advertisements and given that some add networks are actually so prevalent, they can track and videotape a significant piece from your Net utilization. Adam Ostrow, managing editor and also elderly vice president of web content, Mashable speaks to Vadim Lavrusik, reporter system manager from Facebook, concerning exactly how the social media network's new attributes may assist journalists. Due to the fact that Reddish Crucible Firestorm is actually a big video game (Charts, Video Quality, and Attributes) Internet Web browsers like Web Explorer and Firefox can certainly not handle loading and managing the activity adequately. Among the inquiries is, Is there a way to distinguish merely performing challenging estimation coming from being actually absolutely smart?" That is actually kind of the outdated stating, The climate possesses a mind of its very own." That's sort of an inquiry from, Is actually that merely pure, earliest animism, or even exists, in reality, at some level some science to that?" Considering that the computations that are going on in the fluid dynamics of the weather condition are actually actually certainly not that various from the sort of calculations that are taking place in minds. A riches from alternative control choices likewise take a simpler user interface so the thrills of genuine video games are accessible to mobile players unaccustomed to face-buttons as well as d-pads. There are 3 means in order to get activities right into the emulator - whatever you select, perform remember that installing ROMs is illegal and Wallet Gamer carries out certainly not pardon pirating. Social media plays an extremely notable part in helping folks size up the incentives as well as company slant that companies deliver to a brand-new solution when you think concerning this. The recently repositioned provider is actually targeting its own products specifically toward Chinese-speaking households in the U.S.-- accurately the people which could profit from the Netflix of China" information service that's been creating for a long time. Due to the fact that creators, the really good headlines is that who utilize social networking and various other APIs to act on account from consumers are called for to enroll a distinct application identity with each company, abuse is simply squashed by the service operator. Remote cleaning is a crucial protection device that enables you to erase the information on a dropped ipad tablet if and when it connects to the Internet.

Internet infrastructure has actually boosted while server-side lag-reduction strategies are a quantum leap beyond just what OnLive was actually doing back in the day. OpenDNS, the initial company to specialize in delivering just DNS; easyDNS's, DNS company off a pro domain-hosting service; and Google.com's current entry, Google Community DNS OpenDNS is one of the most widely made use of; easyDNS is actually very. regarded; and also Google.com is actually, well, Google.com. There's truly only one potential drawback, and also's the price: $FIFTY, which guards a single computer for one year.

Coming from a handful from nerds and also academics at colleges that began sending emails and generating the very first sites to your pet's traveling blogging site: there was actually never ever a solitary main authority that coordinated the Net. The USA results in this discussion through trumpeting Web independence as well as the perks of a much more decentralized approach to Net governance. Violet amount floor tiles may additionally be come back to the correct square as well as held till required. WhiteHat Pilot shuts out openings whereby very most destructive internet sites contaminate your personal computer. I'm finally benefiting myself, doing work in factors that I experience proud of. I've being dissatisfied many of my lifestyle, throughout my twenties (I have 34 currently) I had plenty of amount of money and also I just squandered that in bad habits because I experienced vacant daily. When I would, this was more compared to a years back partake the institution pc lab, building roads, taking care of areas and acquiring taxes. There are actually two points all professionals seem to share in these times: smart devices as well as LinkedIn profiles. If fitnesswelt-de.com is low good enough and you stay in a getting involved condition, there are also an amount of plans that offer affordable high-speed Internet solutions. I needed to reactivate my computer after pairing with the phone to ensure the LockItNow plan can see those COM port the phone was actually utilizing. This piece from advice is actually actually essential so feel free to heed. Social network is NOT a program resource. Social updates is actually a warm place and also it has actually been for pretty some time, with well-known startups consisting of Flipboard, Rhythm and a wide variety of others vying for that sought after location on your iPhone or apple ipad house screen. You would certainly anticipate to see a lot from sequels in the graphes to create on previous excellence if the free2play activities are actually thus much exciting to participate in.

[consmcchill]

Avatar the Last Airbender movie FIXED

I did it. TLDR: I fixed the movie The Last Airbender. Feel free to skip this rambling intro and scroll down to the good stuff.

For the rest of you, my name is Conor McCahill, I’m an actor and wannabee screenwriter living in Chicago.

I wanted to post this on the internet for three reasons:

One: Avatar the Last Airbender means a lot to me. My high school friends would meet every week at my house to watch each premier live. Those memories are among my happiest. I was beyond excited for the movie, but, everything I found out about it pushed me further from it and when it finally came out I resolved never to see it. And I didn’t, until I was in a show with Francis Guinan, who played Master Pakku, and when he told me he was in it, I thought, “Hey, why not?” Watching this movie was one of the most disappointing experiences of my life. Fast forward to now and I’m reading Save The Cat, which is a book about screenwriting and one of the homework pieces is to fix a bad movie and make it a good movie. Obviously, the worst movie I can think of is The Last Airbender, so I chose it to fix it.

Two: Fans scare me. True deeply loving fans are like tiger mothers. You have high standards, and good for you! I can’t think of anyone who would enjoy this project more than a diehard fan and my goal is to impress you.

Three: Though I started this before the Netflix announcement of the Avatar the Last Airbender live action series, I’d still like to think that this could help get the movie remade. However, even if it doesn’t, maybe this can help you find closure that in some universe, a better movie exists.

I wrote this as if it was a wikipedia article describing the movie. I tried to avoid dialogue as much as possible, but sometimes, it’s just clearer. I used screenshots from the show to aid the reader though sometimes the pictures aren’t perfect, and other times I used real pictures or art. I linked to the websites where I did that.

The process:

I watched all of season one again, with an eye for character and story development. It was a real treat and I graphed each character’s development over the season, who was the main character of each episode, and how they grew in each episode. I painted a picture of tracking information about the characters, which characters know it, and when it is revealed to a character or the audience. I also tracked tokens, my word for props of importance like Aang’s staff and the water scroll. Adapting this cartoon to a movie was a huge challenge that I was not fully prepared for. The biggest challenge faced is reduction of the source material into roughly an hour and a half to two hours. Season one is very filler heavy, we get to meet our characters and watch them interact, and the first season takes its time and lets the characters be kids in a really nice way. Each episode is roughly twenty-two minutes long, making the season about seven and a half hours long which means inevitably something is going to be lost in translation because we’re losing six hours of content. Episodically is a great way to tell a story with lots of characters with multiple plot lines and over longer periods of time. Movies are better equipped to tell stories as an immediate chronological sequence of events with few characters. This just comes down to time and how much we have to tell the story and how the audience processes a story in “real time.” If you want the movie to be exactly the same story, well, that’s impossible and you should just watch the cartoon. It’s gonna change, there’s no way around it. After finishing the cartoon, I decided it would be a good idea to at least watch the movie again.

Overall and if you squint, Shyamalan got the story of the first season in the movie pretty accurately. His movie goes, southern water tribe, southern air temple, earth kingdom, northern air temple, and northern water tribe. The problem is that we don’t really get to enjoy any one thing for too long because we’re being whisked off to the next one. I didn’t want to make the same mistake, so I chose to limit my main settings to the number of my acts, for simplicity. I picked the southern water tribe, the southern air temple, and the northern water tribe capital.

Shyamalan decided to write each movie one at a time and I really think that doomed the project. I think he decided to do it that way, Nickelodeon went along with it, and by the time he realized his mistake, production has already started, and he couldn’t hold it up because it’s millions of dollars and our young actors are rapidly aging. Any kind of delay will hurt a project starring kids more than other movies. If you want to do it right, you need to be ready to pump out each movie so the kids can age naturally and not suddenly be adults, (see: Harry Potter.) Keeping his decision in mind, I decided to approach this project as if it were a trilogy. That helped me eliminate characters and plotlines for movie one, because they can appear later. I whittled my main characters down to seven, which is more than plenty; Aang, Katara, Sokka, Zhao, Zuko, Iroh, and Yue.

Let’s talk about Yue. Her sacrifice is the emotional apex of the first season of ATLA and is therefore the most important part of the movie. We need to care about Yue because the more we care, the more effective her sacrifice is and the more satisfying the emotional catharsis. In visual media, the way we make you care is we give you screen time. In the show, she gets three full episodes, but the development of her relationship with Sokka feels rushed. It still feels better than the Shyamalan movie, where she comes in at the last thirty minutes, and by all accounts gets half as much time as the cartoon. Considering her sacrifice, Yue needs to come into the movie early. Save the Cat talks about act two as the love act. Often in movies, it is when our protagonists meet a new character(s) who will nurture them through the end. It does not have to be true love or romantic love, it is often friend love. That seems like a perfect place for Yue.

I didn’t want to change the canon, but I had to get Yue into contact with Katara, Sokka, and Aang. I decided that the most important thing, at least in adapting, is not necessarily what happens to our characters, but that they grow in the same way. That freed me up to consider other, more exciting possibilities. Like, what if we bring Yue to the south, on a quest? Aside from Yue, the most necessary element of the north is the spirit oasis, so Zhao can kill the moon. So, I thought to place the spirit oasis in the ruins of the southern tribe capital, so we’re not suddenly robbed of a whole world crossing adventure where lots of stuff must happen. We can grow with our characters (Aang, Katara, and Sokka) in the illusion of real time, and not cut to weeks later at the northern tribe. That evolved into a portal to the northern water tribe, something heavily plot relevant, canon from The Legend of Korra, and it gives something new to longtime fans.

The Yue I came up with differs from the show Yue in very exciting ways. I develop her relationships with Aang and Katara and give Sokka a stronger interest, a love that could actually be returned and is hopeful. The best part is, I make her more active instead of passive. Since this will be her only movie, she should be there more, not to mention there are five main males and only one main female without her. All my own changes made me sympathetic to the way Shyamalan had to alter the plot and characters and it was the choice to boost Yue’s role that really lead to this entire piece.

Thanks to Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino for their work that continues to inspire me to this day. Thank you to all the long-time fans who run the Avatar the Last Airbender wiki. Your work was essential. I lifted some passages directly from the episode descriptions that match what I see as the movie, but where I did, I tried to mark with a *. Also, I used some art and photos and I provided a link to those artists. And, I dunno, thanks to Jim Henson who thought it was important and healthy for children to feel fear.

How I would open the movie:

Open on the fire nation palace: an imposing tower of red crowned with gold spires slices a sunny blue sky in two and looms over a vast courtyard. The front doors are open and we zoom into the darkness. Inside the palace, the air is thick and stuffy and ornate tapestries line every wall lit by braziers that fume and pop and crackle.

In a gallery filled with portraits of proud and angry men and women cloaked in red and holding fire in their bare hands, a teenage boy sits at a table, playing a tile game with an older man.

The boy squirms, agonizing over his next move. The older man is toying with him, but plants seeds of wisdom on how defeat a superior opponent. The boy tentatively places a tile, lingering his finger on the it before whipping it away. The old man examines the board.

With one decisive move, he places a lotus tile in the center of the field, winning the game leaving the young man in disbelief. The older man laughs as the younger man passionately demands a rematch, but they are interrupted by the sound of footsteps and they stiffen. A messenger comes. He bows low, and begs forgiveness from Prince Zuko for interrupting him, but he has come to escort General Iroh to a war meeting. The older man smirks and asks the younger man if he forgives the messenger. Zuko rolls his eyes and says he does but asks his uncle if he can join him in the war meeting. His uncle denies him, but the young prince pleads. He wants to be a good king someday, why not learn as soon as possible? Iroh relents and warns Zuko not to speak out of turn.

Iroh leads Zuko into the hall before the throne room. As the firebending generals go in, each makes a flame in their hand and adds it to a fiery bowl on a pedestal in the center of the hall. Iroh explains to Zuko, as he follows suit, that the ritual serves to show that no firebender will use fire bending in the throne room or face extreme consequences. Even the fire lord is honor bound to uphold his promise, he just never has to symbolically prove himself. Iroh puts his fire in the bowl. Zuko steps up after him and does the same, his face lit up by the flames.

The inside of the throne room is darker than the rest of the palace. Zuko is both frightened and exhilarated. As a particularly old and decrepit general drones on, Zuko admires the long war table, painted to display the entire world and littered with pieces that make war seem like a big game. This will all be his someday. His eyes draw him down past the far end of the table, to the wall of fire beyond which a dark figure, the fire lord, sits on an ornate throne obscured by the dancing smoke.

Zuko stares at the man beyond the flames and their crackle fills his ears. He feels the eyes of his father staring back. Zuko snaps to attention, just as the old infirm general outlines a plan to send fresh recruits into combat against a heavily garrisoned earth kingdom fort. The prince asks the general how he expects the recruits to survive, his interruption sending a wave of murmurs down the table. The general clarifies, he doesn’t. Their sacrifice will be enough to weaken the earth kingdom army, so they can be wiped out by a second wave of more seasoned elite fire nation soldiers. The mutters of agreement wash over the room. The prince is horrified. He cannot believe what he is hearing and stands and speaks, in defense of the new recruits and their lives. To send loyal soldiers to their doom is nothing short of treasonous. The color drains from Iroh’s face as the wall of flames flares up. He clutches Zuko’s robes and advises Zuko to apologize or be honor bound to settle the matter in an Agni Kai.

Zuko sizes up the old general. What could this old man, so near to death, possibly do to him? His uncle hisses at him to be quick, but Zuko is not afraid and accepts the fire duel. The wall of fire burns high beyond him.

High above the Agni Kai arena, the crowd that lines the stands chant ceremoniously. Zuko kneels, his back to his opponent and the chanting ends. He breathes deep, spins and rises, and throws off his cloak to face… his father, the fire lord.

Zuko doesn’t understand, the general he spoke against is in the audience, smirking, next to a teenage girl and his uncle.

The Firelord fumes at him, it was his plan Zuko spoke against and it was he, the fire lord, Zuko disrespected. His booming voice echoes in the vast chamber. Zuko falls to his knees, he won’t fight his father. The fire lord demands that he stand and fight, but Zuko refuses. The fire lord will give him one more chance but Zuko bows further, touching his forehead to the hard stone floor. The Firelord calls upon the crowd to witness his son’s cowardly refusal to fight. Only a permanent lesson is appropriate for such shameful weakness, he growls as he approaches his grovelling son.

Slowly, Zuko lifts his head and begs his father for mercy, but there is none.

In the reflection of his left eye, a fireball heads towards Zuko’s tear-stricken face. A girl’s voiceover begins. “Long ago the four nations lived together in harmony, then, everything changed when the fire nation attacked.” The fireball grows larger and larger in his eye until the whole frame is filled with fire.

https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-illustration-yurt-vector-drawing-portable-round-tent-covered-skins-felt-isolated-white-backdrop-freehand-outline-black-ink-hand-image80545151

The fire in Zuko’s eyes becomes a campfire in a yurt. “Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished.”

Reveal, a pretty and bright water tribe girl, Katara, telling the story of the Avatar to the young children she babysits.

The kids beg Katara to waterbend for them. She’s not supposed to, and they moan and whine. To appease them, she waterbends the soup in the pot in a swirl. They beg for more and, though it is difficult for her, she manages to suspend an undulating ball of steaming water in the air. It is a magical moment, even for Katara, and they all watch in awe until she lowers it back down. The kids go nuts and all take turns trying to waterbend the soup, but it soon becomes clear that she’s the only one who can. As she watches them all around her, there is a sense of how lonely and isolated she really is. 

The flaps fly open and a teenage boy on the brink of manhood barges in and asks what the ruckus is about. Katara blurts out Sokka’s name in surprise and passes the commotion off as just childish playing. She turns the conversation to his hunt. He pretends to be downcast, then reveals three small fish triumphantly. Katara squeals with joy and embraces him.

https://itadakimasuanime.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/seafood-shellfish-hitsugi-no-chaika-avenging-battle-06.png

Later, as the sun sets, the fish roast over the fire. Katara, Sokka, and an older woman, their grandmother, eat with appreciation as if a feast as meager as this is rare. Sokka finishes first and as he gets up, he rips his pants, again. He criticizes Katara, her stitching is still terrible, and since Grangran can’t do it anymore, it’s up to her. He reaches for his other pair of pants but stops when Katara admits that she hasn’t mended them yet. Sokka gets cross with her for not finishing her chores. Katara retorts that if he wasn’t so clumsy, he wouldn’t tear his pants. Sokka scolds Katara for just playing around and waterbending. Their grandmother drops her bowl. Quickly, Katara denies waterbending, but Sokka saw her. Grangran comes down on Katara: It is forbidden, but Katara can’t forbid who she is! Grangran snaps that waterbending will get them all killed. There is silence. Sokka brings the pants over to Katara. He puts food on the table, the least she could do is contribute. Defeated, Katara fetches her needle and thread but hesitates before she begins to work. She’s about to speak when Sokka pushes that his pants aren’t going to mend themselves.

Katara pops off that he can repair his own stupid pants and throws them in Sokka’s face and storms out into the night. Sokka sticks his head out and calls after her but Katara breaks into a sprint. She runs past her neighbors, out of the village and runs and runs and runs until she can run no more, collapsing at the top of a snow-white cliff, overlooking a frozen bay.

The cold light of the nearly full moon beams down upon her. She looks up, with tears in her eyes and screams out her frustration. She pounds her fists to the ground. The ice cracks inches from her fists and shatter the side of the icy cliff down down down into the middle of the bay. The ground shakes and Katara is avalanched over with the side of the cliff and is buried in the ice and snow.

She pushes a mound of snow off her with her waterbending. As she cleans herself off, she notices a soft glow emanating from the fissure in the ice. As she investigates, the light intensifies, rising, until the source, a glowing ice sphere, bursts through the floe before her.

Cracks splinter throughout the sphere causing the light inside to escape. The light is too much and Katara shields her eyes. The sphere goes dark for a second then a pillar of light erupts out the top.

Back in the village, Sokka mutters to himself as he struggles with a needle and thread. The light rips through the night sky and through the flap of the tent. His eyes widen. He whispers Katara’s name and grabs his spear.

A dazzling aurora fills the sky. The broken bay has frozen again by some mysterious power, leaving the landscape jagged and strange. A cloud of snow and swirling mists ebb and flow about the remains of the sphere. Katara approaches and sees in the remains a boy tattooed with arrows and a white six-legged bison, both fast asleep. She kneels beside the tattooed boy and touches his face. He dreamily opens his eyes and then closes them again as he mutters about how beautiful she is.

Katara is amused. The boy snaps awake, he’s not dreaming. He jumps out of Katara’s arms and admires his surroundings. With his hands on his hips, he announces that he has made it to the south pole as planned and immediately requests a snowball fight and before Katara can protest she’s pelted as he laughs. She pulls the snow off as the boy exclaims that she’s a waterbender, and that it is officially on! Katara puts on her game face and snowballs begin to fly back and forth. Katara hides behind a snowbank. She peeks out and sees the boy scooping snow into a ball, she turns back and uses her bending to mold her own. She peeks out again, but he has disappeared. Out of nowhere he lands behind her and unleashes an impossible number of snowballs. Katara screams as she’s hit. Sokka hears her scream and breaks into a sprint. He yells her name and runs towards the boy with his spear who dodges the thrust and the following swing. Katara, covered in snow, tries in vain to stop Sokka. Sokka thrusts again. The boy lands on the spearhead, faceplanting Sokka into the snow and bringing him to his knees. Katara, wipes the snow from her eyes and gets a full view of Sokka’s undercarriage. She shrieks, “Where are your pants!?” The boy helps him up. Sokka didn’t have time to put on pants, he thought she was in trouble. Katara is touched.

https://www.deviantart.com/akreon/art/Appa-132703919

A low grumble escapes the large, furry, six-legged creature lying motionless nearby. The boy climbs onto it and enthusiastically rouses it. Sokka asks, unsure, what the thing is, and the boy replies that it is Appa, his flying bison. Sokka expresses disbelief over the purported ability of the large bison to fly. The boy, looking around at his surroundings, asks if they live nearby, which triggers Sokka to tell Katara not to answer, as he is convinced that the mystery boy is a Fire Nation spy, a notion that Katara rejects sarcastically. The boy introduces himself as Aang, an airbender. Sokka tells him no one has seen an airbender in a hundred years. Aang laughs, they are very good at hiding. *

Aang offers to fly them back to their village if he can get shelter for the night. Katara happily agrees and climbs on with Aang, while Sokka refuses, convinced that Aang and Katara are crazy. Aang says, "Yip-yip!", and Appa leaps into the air, though immediately comes crashing down, while Sokka crows sarcastically about Appa's inability to fly, Aang decides Appa is still too tired to fly just yet. He looks over his shoulder and leans out to stare at Katara with a huge smile on his face, causing her, after a few long, awkward seconds, to ask, "Why are you smiling at me like that?" He replies, "Oh, I was smiling?" Sokka lifts his head back, groaning, while Katara, at first smiling at Aang's response, frowns back at Sokka. *

In the moonlight, they walk back to the village. A curious Katara asks Aang if he knows the fate of the Avatar; being an airbender, she knows that the Avatar was supposed to be an Air Nomad. Aang awkwardly states that he knew people that knew the Avatar but did not know the actual Avatar himself. A disappointed Katara drops the subject, leaving Aang looking guilty. *

Underneath the setting sun, a scout blows a horn atop a fire nation fort located at the foot of the southern air temple mount. The commander of the base, a fierce looking full-grown man, greets Iroh and Zuko in the courtyard, he makes sure to highlight Zuko’s scar to confirm that it’s him. Iroh shows his respect to Admiral Zhao, who asks what brings the exiled prince and his uncle before him.

Zuko demands access south, to the Antarctic seas, Zhao’s domain. This amuses Zhao and arouses his interest. Even if he had seen or heard any sign of the Avatar, he wouldn’t tell Zuko. Iroh reasons with him, then, that there would be no harm in letting them search. Zhao deflects and muses if Zuko’s quest to restore his honor will ever truly end. He continues that when he marries Zuko’s sister, Princess Azula, they will let him come live in the palace dungeon. Zuko retorts that Zhao is a fool if he thinks he can ask the fire lord for Azula’s hand in marriage. Zhao is confident, that when his mission is complete, the fire lord will offer his daughter’s hand. He denies Zuko’s request, his mission is too important, and sends Zuko back to his ship.

Later that night, Iroh finds Zuko glowering over the vast southern sea. He presses the prince to sleep, telling him that if he doesn't rest, he will, like his ancestors, fail to capture the Avatar even if they do find him. The prince refuses to his uncle’s wisdom, he will succeed because he seeks to regain his honor through the endeavor, a trait none of his ancestors shared with him. Iroh casts doubt on Zuko’s assumption that the avatar is in the southern water tribe. Zuko reveals his logic, that the old airbender has likely died, and a young waterbender would be next in line to be the avatar. If it was a northern child, the proud northerners would have announced it, like they did their runaway princess. Iroh still doubts, Zuko snaps at him if he has a better idea. The night sky lights up, the same pillar of light from when Aang was released, and the aurora casts a green glow all on the southern hemisphere. *

Zuko observes it through the end of his telescope, his eyes narrow.

From high above the fire nation fort, on a cliff side, a mysterious figure in leather armor watches Zuko’s ship leave and turn south in the dead of night. The figure stands, a beautiful young woman who’s white hair shimmers in the moonlight.

Back in the village, Katara leads Aang into a stable. They don’t have much room, so he’ll have to sleep in here with Appa. She gets him a blanket. As she hands it to him, there is a moment where they share eye contact. Katara breaks it off and leaves, but not before stealing one last glance at Aang.

That night, Aang has a dream that he and Appa fly through a terrible storm. They are buffeted by the full fury of the gale, struggle in vain to escape and eventually are forced under the waves. *

In his dream, Aang’s eyes and tattoos began to glow and he creates a giant bubble around himself and Appa. The bubble freezes over, encasing their figures in light which grows brighter and brighter.

In his sleep, Aang stirs and his tattoos dance luminously. The lights wax and wane in the slit of the stable door casting a strange light on the sleeping village.

The sun rises over an icy expanse the next morning. Aang throws open the flap to the yurt, but it is empty. Sokka and Katara and Grangran are already doing their duties. As he explores, the elderly villagers look upon him with suspicion. Aang bows to the villagers respectfully, eliciting a response of fear from them, and they hurriedly take a few steps away from the airbender. *

He hears Katara calling his name. Eager to impress her, he jumps high in the air and lands in front of her and her wards. The kids go nuts. They goad him into showing off, which he obliges.

Aang attracts quite a crowd, almost the entire village. He finishes his trick. Everyone is stunned. One villager erupts in applause, the others glare her into silence. The kids tackle Aang and climb all over him. His airbending is even cooler than Katara’s waterbending.

A stir in the crowd. Katara is a waterbender? Katara feels the eyes of the villagers on her. Grangran assures the other villagers that Katara is not a waterbender, as the crowd whisper amongst themselves and go about their business. She gives the younger children the evil eye and they scamper off screaming and grabs Katara and Aang to throw them both into the tent. She looks Aang square in the face and tells him that it would be uncustomary to kick him out without breakfast but that the airbender is no longer welcome here. She goes to find Sokka. There is quiet. Aang timidly asks Katara why she refuses to waterbend. She tells him it is forbidden. Aang doesn’t understand why. The waterbenders get taken away, by firebenders. There’s a war. Aang didn’t know of any war.

Just then, Grangran and Sokka return. Sokka has checked the morning traps and has brought oysters. He passes them out, they each pry them open and slurp theirs down, except Aang, who holds it awkwardly. Sokka apologizes and opens it for him. Aang makes a face, “Do you have anything vegetarian?” he asks. Sokka aghast, scoots away from him. Aang realizes he’s made a faux pas. He corrects himself. “Can I please have something vegetarian?” Grangran and Katara share a glance. Sokka doesn’t have any vegetarian options except for sea prunes for Grangran and they are nasty.

Grangran throws a shell at Sokka and thrusts a bowl of sea prunes into Aang’s hands. His stomach growls, and he eats one. He likes them!

Sokka does not get Aang. He and Katara share a look of disgust as Aang gorges himself. Katara leans over to Sokka and whispers in his ear that Aang doesn’t know about the war. Sokka asks how that is possible: the war has been going on for a hundred years.

Meanwhile, Zuko spies the village through a telescope. Everything is going according to plan. Just then, from around an iceberg, an armada of three of Zhao’s fastest destroyers cut Zuko’s Battleship off and he is forced to change course to avoid them.

Zhao boards Zuko’s ship. Zuko greets him, amazed he found the time to chase him and hopes his all-important mission wasn't jeopardized by this detour. Zhao admits it was easy to catch up with them, the battleship was built like a tank to hold a fully realized Avatar, which makes it slow, but necessary for his capture, which is why Zhao is commandeering Zuko’s ship. Zuko protests, the Avatar is his. Zhao reminds Zuko that he ignored a direct order and is trespassing in his domain. Zuko spits out that he doesn't take orders from anyone, especially a low born upstart rat like Zhao. Zhao's smile fades as he orders his men to take the prince into custody. Two guards grab Zuko arms, but he throws them off easily. He points at Zhao and challenges him to an Agni Kai, winner gets the ship. Zhao laughs, and asks how Zuko plans to survive stranded on an iceberg without a ship, doesn't he remember the last time he did an Agni Kai? Zuko will never forget.  

Outside their village, Grangran leads Appa with a rope as Aang, Katara, and Sokka head out with her. Aang tells them that it was very nice to meet them, and he’ll come visit the South Pole again soon. Sokka explains to Aang they aren’t actually in the south pole, they are much further north, less than a day to the southern air temple. Katara extrapolates: There’s nothing left at the south pole.

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https://www.masterfile.com/image/en/679-07608205/moon-rising-over-trees-and-buildings-at-night

The tribes used to be connected by the moon gate.

Under the light of the full moon, the portal would open and northerners and southerners could walk between the poles via the spirit world to mingle and trade and visit family and make the pilgrimage to the spirit oasis. The moon gate connected the north and south cultures. Until the fire nation destroyed everything in south and the portal was destroyed.

Flashback: Fiery projectiles rain down on the southern capital and reduce it to rubble.

Everybody who was trapped in the south had no choice but to move away from the ruins because there was no food. The north pole is floating ice, and the waterbenders can fish beneath the ice year-round, but south pole is above frozen ground and there you can’t grow food in frozen ground. Grangran interrupts and tells the airbender that it’s time for him to go. As he turns to leave, Aang asks if they are sure the south pole is really destroyed. Sokka assures him sarcastically, that yeah, they're sure, and glares at Aang. Aang posits that the monks at the southern air temple would have told him, they tell him a lot of things, after all, they told him that he was the- he doesn’t finish his sentence. He climbs on Appa and they trot off. Katara calls for him to wait. As she approaches, she tells him the only thing they have at the southern air temple anymore is a fire nation fort. Aang looks at her with a twinkle in his eye and assures her, there are air nomad monks.

He extends his hand to her. Grangran yells that she’s taking too long and though Katara takes a breath, she doesn’t look back as she takes Aang’s hand and climbs aboard. Grangran pushes Sokka to stop her. Katara wraps her arms around Aang as he tells her to hang on. “Appa, Yip yip!” Appa grumbles and begins to move just as Sokka reaches them. He grabs Appa’s fur and tries to pull them back but ends up getting pulled himself and has to run to keep up. Aang leads them straight towards the edge of the cliff and Sokka screams that they are all going to die! He shuts his eyes and holds tight as Appa leaps and they disappear over the edge. Grangran cries out for them and falls to her knees. Appa and the gang reappear, flying. Sokka freaks as he clutches Appa's fur. Aang tells Sokka that when he says let go, to let go. Sokka protests but Aang leads Appa into a barrel roll and yells at Sokka to let go which he does out of instinct. The momentum flips Sokka up and over and plomp, directly seated behind Katara on Appa’s back. The daring move has made Katara cling to Aang close and she blushes.

Aang cheers and Grangran watches as they fly towards the sun.

The sun is directly overhead as the Agni Kai begins.

Admiral Zhao and Prince Zuko crouch, back to back on the deck of the battleship. Shedding their capes, they turn to face each other. Iroh counsels Zuko to remember his basics, as they are his greatest assets, but Zuko seems not to heed his uncle's wisdom, instead stating, simply and forcefully, that he will not allow himself to lose. As he assumes his stance, Zhao, doing the same, taunts Zuko, saying: "This will be over quickly." *

The two opponents stare fiercely into each other's unblinking eyes for a brief moment, waiting for the other to strike; it is Zuko who begins the duel with a series of fire blasts from his hands and feet. *

Zhao seems more than a match for Zuko, effortlessly avoiding and nullifying all of his fire blasts. As the prince catches his breath, Iroh continues to advise Zuko to remember his basics. Zhao throws his own volley of fire blasts; Zuko is able to block each attack, but he is slowly forced back with every parry he makes. For the final blast, Zhao, using both fists, sends a ball of fire that connects solidly with Zuko, knocking him to the ground. Pressing his advantage, Zhao leaps into the air, covers the distance separating him and Zuko, and prepares a finishing blast aimed directly for the prince's exposed face. An instant before contact, Zuko rolls out of the way, rises with a kicking flourish, and knocks Zhao out of his stance. *

With new-found vigor, Zuko releases a series of low attacks that cause Zhao to retreat, finishing him with a jet of fire from a full body kick. Prone, Zhao tells Zuko to do it, to give him a scar like his own, but Zuko aims beside his face instead. As the victorious prince walks away, a beaten and furious Zhao sends a jet of fire at Zuko's back. Iroh intervenes, however, stopping the attack with his bare hand and throwing the admiral to the ground. As Iroh stands over Zhao, Zuko tries to attack Zhao once more, but his uncle tells him not to taint his victory by retaliating. Iroh lectures Zhao about the dishonor he has brought upon himself through his actions and states that his nephew, even in exile, has proven himself to be more honorable.  *

From the crow's nest, a scout shouts. They all crane their necks to see a flying bison with a water tribe girl and boy and air nomad fly far above them.

Up on Appa, Sokka refuses to open his eyes as he clutches Katara's garments. Katara lets him know that he's missing the sights. Aang spies the fire navy ships below. The fear deep inside him grows. He’s never seen fire navy ships this far south.

Both Zhao and Zuko blink in their telescopes. Iroh suggests they try working together as the bison disappears into the clouds.

Aang and Sokka and Katara fly through clouds and above mists and fog. Sokka asks if they are they yet. Aang spots the temple at the top of a mountain and they fly closer. Katara remarks on how beautiful it is.

From a window, the white-haired girl watches them all land in a sky bison pen and jump off. She disappears into the shadows. Appa grazes happily.

Sokka wishes he could eat, that ride took longer than he thought. Katara shushes him. Aang calls out to his people, but nobody answers. The temple appears to be abandoned. They walk up the temple steps. Sokka asks Aang if the airbenders have any food and is berated by Katara for being one of the first outsiders to see an airbender temple and he can only think with his stomach. She apologizes for Sokka. Aang insists the airbenders are simply hiding. There are lots of hiding places. They walk through a large archway into a great hall beyond. In the rafters above, the white-haired girl shifts into position. As Aang, Katara, and Sokka pass beneath her, she drops a net down upon them. The girl lands and knocks them off their feet and they fall to the ground in a pile.

She brandishes a staff at the subdued trio. “Are you firebenders?” She barks. They tell her they are not.  “That’s just what a firebender would say!” They assure her they are not firebenders. They are water tribe, and Aang is an airbender. She releases them and introduces herself as Princess Yue of the northern water tribe. Sokka is impressed and bows, “your majesty,” Katara does a stiff movement she would call a curtsey. Aang recognizes the staff and grabs it but Yue holds fast. It’s a sacred air nomad staff, it’s not to be touched by outsiders. Yue is nonplussed. Sokka tells Aang that he can’t speak to a princess like that. Aang takes a deep breath and bellows, “LET IT GO!” His voice echoes in the halls. Yue lets go of the staff.  Aang apologizes for yelling and inspects the staff. Yue never got the names of the other two, Sokka and Katara. Yue is incredulous, “You are Sokka and Katara!? Your father saved my life! Hakoda’s ship arrived at our capital a year ago and he was granted audience before me and my father. My father refused to help, and, I had to make a choice. I ran away and boarded your father’s ship in secret with the moon scroll.”

“We’re going to reopen the moon portal!”

But where is their father now? “He was taken prisoner by the fire nation. The last thing he said was he’d be a boomerang, but, I never got to ask him what that means.” “Means he’ll be back,” Sokka explains. He shows her the boomerang his father gave him when he left. Aang asks her how she got here. Yue continues, “I was found by a fisherman and made my way south. I got marooned here about a month ago after my ship sank. Been looking for a way off ever since, but there’s so many fire nation... We could fly to the south pole on a sky bison, though.” Someone’s stomach growls. Katara admonishes Sokka. It wasn’t him, it was Aang! Yue calculates that there is enough time to eat.

https://www.mostphotos.com/fi-fi/2720912/plum-orchard

The air temple orchard is overgrown, though a thousand years of tending have given a sense of order to the older trees. Aang hopes they like mountain peaches as he hops high in the air and grabs one. He lands and hands a peach to Katara and jumps back into the air. Sokka, asks her for it, salivating, and Katara licks it all over, much to Sokka’s chagrin. Aang lands with an armful of peaches and one in his mouth. He hands them out. They sit and enjoy a moment of peace.

Yue asks how the boomerang works. Sokka hands it to her and instructs her how to throw it. She does her best, but it is a terrible throw. She puts her hands up to her mouth and yells “Come back!” Sokka offers to go get it, but she should, she threw it, and they both end up going together. When they find it, Sokka throws it to demonstrate. Yue commends him on the throw. Sokka smiles goofily and gets lost in her eyes. They smile at each other and the boomerang runs smack into the side of Sokka’s head and he yelps in pain. Aang and Katara come running. Though he’s bleeding and wincing, Yue laughs and says it’s nothing a waterbender couldn’t heal. Katara isn’t sure what she means. Yue furthers, waterbenders can heal, she thought everybody knew that, especially waterbenders.

Yue pours some water into Katara’s hands. Katara is unsure what to do so she waterbends the water onto Sokka’s cut. Nothing happens. She closes her eyes and concentrates. The water releases a soft glow. Katara gasps and her eyes pop open. The wound has closed and there is no scar. Yue tells Katara that she just did some high-level bending. Aang lights up, he knows where the airbenders are.

Aang leads them to an intricately carved door. If the airbenders are hiding, it will be here. They have storerooms and water reserves deep in the temple. It’s his last hope. Only high level airbending can open this door, he reveals, and he bends two focused currents of air into the large doors' ornate locking mechanism, and a strange hauntingly beautiful tone resonates. The locks disengage, and the doors open slowly. Aang walks into the darkened room as Katara, Sokka, and Yue follow him.

Aang calls out to the airbenders. The room is pitch black and his footsteps echo. Katap. Katap. Katap. Skrit. He steps on something. It is a wooden medallion. He picks it up and flashes back to a happy looking older airbender monk: Gyatso, wearing medallion on a necklace.

Monk Gyatso is Aang’s sensei. Aang in the flashback has no tattoos yet and runs up to him calling his name and they embrace. Gyatso leads Aang out of the wind lock doors and onto the terrace before it.

Flying bison of all sizes fill the sky above. Gyatso tells Aang to call to him. “Appa!” Aang yells. Appa roars and dives down to Aang leaving his siblings and his much larger mother behind. Appa nuzzles and licks Aang as he laughs and laughs and laughs.

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The memory fades as Aang’s eyes adjust to the shadows. He sees a sky bison skull among bones and piles of soot and ashes, all over the room. Firebenders were here. Katara gasps. “Oh no.”

Aang falls to his knees. He is not alright. His eyes and tattoos light up. Wind begins to circle around him. Sokka freaks, “Is he glowing? How is he glowing?!” Katara calls for Aang. The winds get faster and faster, lifting Aang into the air. Yue makes them take cover. The soot and bones in the room get caught up in the whirlwind, disintegrating into brown and black dust and debris. Aang’s eyes, emanating white light, widen. The swirling blackness closes in on him. He shuts his eyes and pushes the darkness away, forcing all the ashes out the temple. Aang stops glowing and he drifts to the ground.

Outside, the ash cloud drifts away.

Yue, Katara, and Sokka cough around the corner. Katara runs to Aang and takes him into her lap. He stirs. It really has been one hundred years. She cradles his head and opens up to him that she and Sokka lost their mother to the fire nation. Even though his people are gone, he has found a new family: herself and Sokka. He looks Katara in the eyes and tells her with conviction that he will never firebend. Never ever. He sits up and hugs Katara as she mulls his statement.

From their ships, the firebenders notice the ash cloud drifting down from the temple as they pull into the harbor of the fort. Something must be going on. They form a squad of male and female fire nation soldiers fresh from the base. Zhao tells Iroh that he is too old and slow for this mission and Zuko is free to stay behind as well, if he doesn’t think he can make the climb. Zuko is ready. Iroh warns Zuko that Zhao is not to be trusted. Zuko assures his uncle, he can handle Zhao. From the battlements, Iroh watches the troops begin the hike. He puts on a cloak and sneaks out after them.

Later, the sun sets over the mountain peaks. Aang and the others bring flowers to a stone alter. The medallion sits in the middle of it. They pile the flowers around it. Aang sets a peach down with the flowers and steps back. Peaches were Gyatso’s favorite, he tells them. He closes his eyes. They all do. Aang gives the airbender prayer of mourning. The sound of wings. They open their eyes and a winged lemur eats the peach on the altar.

Aang laughs, a long clear laugh as he takes the lemur, lazily eating the peach, into his hands and names him Momo. The wind blows through the flowers.

Night falls. In a clearing in the orchard, Aang strokes the sleeping lemur as Sokka builds a fire and Yue puts peaches on the ends of sticks. She pokes fun at his fire building technique. Sokka has been building fires his whole life. Yue retorts that she’s only been doing it for the last year and she’s already better then him. They race to light the fire and Yue wins, but just barely. “Best two out of three?” Yue asks Sokka with a cheeky smile.  Katara returns with a bucket filled with well water.

The peaches roast on the sticks as the fire casts an amber yellow on the kids’ faces. “So, are we going to talk about what happened?” Sokka asks. Yue and Katara avoid his line of questioning. Sokka extrapolates, “Aang was glowing. I haven’t heard of a glowing person before.” Aang is silent. Yue speaks up, “I have.”

“When I was born I was very sick and very weak. Most babies cry when they're born, but I was born as if I was asleep, my eyes closed. They told my mother and father I was going to die. That night, beneath the full moon, he brought me to the spirit oasis and placed me in the pond and pleaded with the spirits to save me. I began to glow and my hair turned white. I opened my eyes and began to cry, and they knew I would live. That's why my mother named me Yue. For the moon.”

Yue explains that Aang must be filled with immense spiritual power. Aang is silent. Sokka pipes up that it was the same light from when Aang came out of the iceberg. Still Aang is silent. Katara scoots closer to him and prods him why he told her he would never firebend. She asks him if he is the avatar. Aang stands, surprising the lemur and it scurries away. He never wanted to be the Avatar. He only ever wanted to be normal and play airball with the other kids. He didn't ask to be the avatar! They were going to send him away, to the eastern temple where he would be safer. Which means he was in danger.  Avatars aren't supposed to know they are the avatar until they are 16 because: what if they told you, you were supposed to save the world at twelve years old? That’s why he ran away. He was going to come back but ran into a storm and somehow he lost 100 years.

Sokka is confused, if he's the avatar, how come he can’t bend the other elements? Aang doesn't know how yet.

Yue smiles. Out of her pack she produces the moon scroll.

In it is more than just how to open the moon gate, but also advanced waterbender techniques as well. She gives it to Aang and suggests Katara give him his first lesson. Sheepishly, Katara unravels the scroll. There’s writing, but she doesn't know how to read. Aang and Yue are taken aback by this, but Sokka doesn’t know how to read either. They have chores all day, there wouldn't be any time for reading, even if they had books. Yue sadly remarks that everyone in the Northern tribe knows how to read and apologizes that life in the south has gotten so hard. Aang comes closer and reads the scroll to Katara. Water is the element of versatility. It is a liquid, a solid, a gas. Gifted waterbenders can even be healers. He smiles and Katara blushes and Sokka touches his head where the wound would have been. Water is Tui and La, Push and Pull, and the earliest waterbenders learned how to push and pull the ocean like the moon with its tides. The moon is the source of power for all waterbenders and they are strongest when the moon is full.

They look up at the moon above. Aang remarks that they will be really strong tonight. Yue informs Aang, it's almost full. It's waxing, it will be full tomorrow. Katara admits that from studying the drawings, she doesn't know any of these moves. Aang asks her what she does know. She smiles. She takes him by the hand down to the well. Katara thrusts her hand out over the edge of the well and instructs Aang to do the same. She moves her hand up and down. Aang isn't sure but she tells him to feel the water, even though it’s not attached to his body. Splashes echo out of the deep. Katara says “Ok, I'll pull it and you push it.” Splash. “Ok, now you pull it and I push it.” Splishy splash. He feels it!  Katara asks Aang to pull the water up with her. Aang is surprised on how it's almost like air, but heavy.

Together, they lift a large ball of water high into the air. Aang chuckles and starts pushing it over Katara's head, he lets go. Katara closes her eyes and shrieks but opens them when she realizes she's holding up the water by herself.

She celebrates and loses her concentration and drops the water and gets soaked. Aang laughs and she douses him with the puddle around her. Aang laughs again and dries himself off with a whirlwind. Katara, drenched, asks if he could dry her off too. He tries. Her hair is swept back and poofs out. They both laugh. They gaze into each other’s eyes. Between their faces, the light of the campfire sparkles in the distance.

The campfire suddenly flares up a pillar of fire 10 feet high. Sokka yelps. Aang and Katara turn to face the flames. A rustle behind them. Fire nation soldiers! They throw their spears. Aang whisks Katara down behind the well with him. Katara begins to panic. Aang tells her to use the water.

They lift a spout out of the well and repel the foot soldiers. They run towards the campsite. Yue and Sokka are held captive by elite firebenders while Zhao taunts her. He’s been looking for the princess’s hiding place. Zuko concludes she’s the reason he’s locked down the southern sea. Zhao nods.

Katara and Aang come running to a stop. Zhao is immediately taken by the air nomad boy. Where did he come from? Where are the other air nomads? Zuko wastes no time in taking Katara prisoner. He advises her not to struggle. Zhao stares at Aang while confirming with Zuko that the girl is indeed the Avatar. She's the one from the village, the one waterbender in all the south, therefore, she must be the avatar. Aang shouts that she's not the avatar. Zuko sizes up the air nomad boy. Then who is? Katara tries to stop him but Aang tells them that he is. Zuko retorts that he couldn't possibly be the avatar, he’s just a child! Zhao isn't so sure. The avatar would be over a hundred years old, Zuko reminds Zhao, they have the princess, they have the avatar, but if he wants to waste his time with an air nomad liar, he is welcome to. Zhao willing to be convinced, leaves Aang.

Soldiers take Katara, Yue and Sokka and form ranks.  

Aang drops out of the sky in front of the squadron. He declares himself the avatar and points his staff at the firebenders. They laugh at him. He calls for Appa. From above, Appa roars, then dives and the solders duck and cower. Aang makes an air scooter and zips through all the solders like a pinball. Appa lands where Aang was standing and charges the soldiers with his horns, they scramble to their feet to fend off Appa. Some run. The distraction gives Yue the chance to escape. She knocks her captor in the gut and off of her and throws him into Sokka's guard. Aang takes out the bender holding Katara, and they struggle to get the chains off.

Zhao calls for the men to form rank. Someone yells, “the prisoners are escaping!” Zuko and Zhao leap into the chaos. They arrive to hear Aang give up on getting the chains off of Katara and that they need get to Appa to escape. Zhao is a clever man, he turns and runs to Appa, manifesting a fiery whip in each hand. Zuko fire charges into the group and separates Katara from the rest. Aang spins in and spins Katara out into Yue and Sokka’s arms. Aang and Zuko duel. Katara won’t leave Aang so Sokka picks her up and puts her over his shoulder. Katara begs Sokka to stop, but then changes her mind and tells Sokka to take her to the well. Yue tells them she will get the key to the shackles and joins Aang against Zuko. Appa runs about the courtyard chasing a hapless soldier in circles until Zhao faces off against the beast.

Aang dodges Zuko’s fireball as Appa wails in fear from afar. In his distracted moment Zuko gets past Aang but runs right into Yue. Aang is torn, does he run to help Appa or Yue? Yue tells him that she’s got this, and he goes to rescue Appa from Zhao’s torment. Yue gets in close, Zuko is on the defensive. He dodges past her, and she doesn’t follow. She has pickpocketed the key.

Sokka and Katara are at the well and Katara is bringing up all the water she can with her hands behind her back. Zuko comes racing towards them. Sokka screams and Katara throws the water at Zuko, and completely misses him. Katara asks if she got him. Zuko didn’t even get wet. Sokka throws the boomerang and Zuko has to duck. Zuko rises to his feet and the boomerang comes back knocking Zuko’s helmet. The water pools by Zuko’s feet as he fixes his helmet and with menacing rage makes fire daggers in his hands. Katara closes her eyes. She spreads her fingers then clenches her fists with a quick breath out and the water freezes and Zuko feet are frozen to the ground. Yue slides by Zuko on the ice twirling the key on her finger.

Yue unlocks Katara’s shackles as, in the distance, a blast of fire. Appa roars and flees into the air. Aang screams his name as he runs after him, but Appa won’t come back.

Zhao turns to Aang with a sadistic look in his eyes and a fiery whip in each hand. Katara, Sokka, and Yue come running. They try to convince Aang he has no other choice, he has to run. If he’s captured, who will save them? Fire nation soldiers begin to compose themselves surrounding the group. Zuko, fuming melts his feet. Aang pops the wings out of the staff. It’s also is a glider. He runs and takes flight on the orchard path. Zhao barks a command and all the firebending infantry call out and punch the sky sending fireballs into the air above and beyond and all around Aang. The fireballs arc in the sky and land all over the temple. The peach trees left and right burn and Aang lands among them. The sight of temple burning sends him into a rage. Aang glows. The wind picks up and blows all the fires out. Zhao and Zuko see. He is the avatar. With the fires out, the avatar spirit leaves Aang and the light of his tattoos fade and he lands. Zhao and Zuko race towards him; the chase is on.

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Aang runs through a large archway and into a great stone rotunda with a corkscrew staircase in the center. He runs at the speed of wind up the staircase to the top. Zuko and Zhao are hot on his heels. At the top of the stairs there’s a hallway and at the end of the hallway Aang finds the door to the jump room locked. Zhao leisurely jogs, beast like, up the stairs. Zuko fire leaps up the sides to just beneath the top.  Zuko grabs the edge of the top with the tips of his fingers. He pulls himself up. Desperate, Aang hits the lock with the staff and it breaks open. The door swings off the hinges to a launch pad at the top of the mountain just above the tree line. With freedom before him, he turns around and faces Zuko as the prince rises to his feet.

Zuko promises Aang that if he comes with Zuko now, he and his friends will be unharmed. Aang asks how he can trust Zuko. The fire nation invaded and killed his people. Zuko retorts it was the airbenders’ aggression and illegal settlements on Fire nation land that brought this upon them. Aang claims the airbenders are pacifist. Zuko clarifies then, that Aang won’t just windblast him off and takes a step forward. Aang also takes a step forward. The people who lived here were mostly children. He accuses the fire nation of genocide. Zuko doesn’t want to believe it, but Aang’s conviction has awoken what he knows to be true, and he falters. Aang is still very vulnerable and emotional. His tattoos light up, his eyes glow, the wind rustles around his clothing: the avatar state emerges.

Zhao comes around the corner, not even out of breath. He sees Aang’s glow and smiles his crazy smile and charges Aang. Under the state of the Avatar, Aang is stiffer, more confident. He sends a blast of air with his staff down the hallway at Zhao, knocking him off the stairs. Zuko jumps after him and catches Zhao’s hand and saves him from falling. Zhao glares menacingly at Zuko as he pulls him up. The Avatar spirit fades as Aang realizes he just attempted murder. His actions horrify and confuse him. Tears stream down his face.

Zhao kneels, winded from the air blast. Aang turns to flee. Zuko takes off after him. Aang activates his glider and throws it out the window and leaps out after it, catching it and the wind. For a second, it seems like he’ll get away but then Zuko jumps after him at full speed and grabs hold of his legs, causing them to spiral and crash in the clearing below. Zhao approaches the edge and looks down. He jumps off. Aang and Zuko lie in a crumple before him. Aang tries to get up, but he can’t. Zuko is also injured. Zhao gags Aang and shackles his hands and feet. He goes to Zuko and helps him up. Zhao compliments him on his willingness to sacrifice everything, maybe they aren’t so different. Zhao throws Zuko towards the edge of the cliff and fireballs him off. 

Aang watches, in a daze, as Zuko disappears into the forest below. From afar, Iroh is lit up by the light of the fireball. Zhao lumbers back from the edge and picks Aang up and over his shoulder as Aang passes out. Darkness.

A knock on a heavy iron battleship door. Iroh opens it and stands in the doorway. A messenger tells Iroh to hurry, there’s been an accident with the Prince. Iroh pushes through the crowd to the deck of the boat where Zhao meets him. Zhao proclaims to Iroh that the avatar threw the prince off a cliff. A search party is to be sent immediately to find his body for proper burial. Iroh spits and claims he never liked the sullen prince who had no respect for his elders and they can leave the body on the mountain for all he cares. He asks if the Avatar is in custody. Aang, gagged and bound, is carried by two large soldiers. Iroh leads them into the bowels of the ship. The battleship is a marvel of engineering and the prison for the avatar is state of the art. Even so, Zhao expected more. Iroh states that it’s mobile, self-sufficient, heavily guarded, and the safest place for the avatar to be.  

In the avatar’s cell, Zhao has Aang’s arms chained up and his legs chained down. Iroh gets into Aang’s face, “So this is the great Avatar. Master of all the elements. I don't know how you've managed to elude the Fire Nation for a hundred years, but your little game of hide and seek is over.”

Zhao ungags Aang and asks him how it feels to be the only airbender left. “Do you miss your people? Don't worry, you won't be killed like they were.” Zhao turns to leave. Aang takes a deep inhale and breath blasts Zhao, knocking him to the floor. Zhao is triggered, and fiery. Iroh helps bring him under control. Zhao tells Aang, “Blow all the wind you want, but your situation is futile. See, if you die you will just be reborn and the Fire Nation would have to start searching all over again. So, I'll keep you alive, but just barely.” Zhao leaves in a huff. Uncle Iroh glares at the remaining guards and asks for a minute alone with the thing that killed his nephew. They oblige.

Iroh approaches Aang. Aang shies away, but Iroh lays a gentle hand on his shoulder and assures him he is not like the others. He reveals that he knows Aang didn't kill Zuko but that it doesn't matter because no one will believe Aang anyway. Aang asks what's going to happen to him. Iroh assures Aang that when the time comes, he will help Aang escape, but first, he needs Aang's help. He needs to know about the waterbending girl.

In the prison hold, Katara sits comforting Grangran. Grangran is babbling on about how the fire nation came not long after they left and rounded up the villagers onto their ships but Katara's eyes fix on Sokka. He’s worried about Yue. Katara thinks they should be worried about all of them. A guard rattles the door and tells them to shut up. Iroh enters, carrying a bucket of water. The guard tries to stop him from entering the cell but Iroh tells him the orders are from Zhao. The prisoners haven’t been watered all day. Besides, Iroh asks the guard if he thinks the dragon of the west can’t handle one young waterbending girl. The guard apologizes and opens the door. Iroh enters the cell, kneels, and takes out a ladle and invites the villagers to drink. They do not move. He drinks some water himself. Sokka takes the bucket and gently helps Katara quench their grandmother’s thirst. The bucket is passed around and Katara brings the empty bucket and the ladle to Iroh. He tells her, “Katara, I have spoken with Aang.  He needs you to come with me.”

Iroh takes Katara into his cabin. On the bed, Zuko lies suffering, his stomach wrapped in bandages from Zhao’s fireball. Iroh asks Katara to heal him. Katara doesn’t want to, Zuko put shackles on her and he is after Aang. Iroh understands why she wouldn’t want to. Zuko attacked her, he’s an angry young man, he’s fire nation, but he’s the only good thing in Iroh’s life. Maybe she can see past the anger and the pain and see that he has suffered at the hands of the fire nation, too. Katara eyes the scar on Zuko’s face.

Reluctantly, Katara dips her hand in a bucket by the bedside. Water clings to her hands and she brings them to Zuko’s bandages. The water glows for a few moments and Zuko is soothed. Katara asks to be taken back to the cell. Iroh sneaks Katara through the ship. He takes her back into the prison hold and in with the rest of the villagers. As he locks them in, Sokka asks him about Yue. Iroh tells him, she is with Zhao.

In Zuko’s former quarters, Zhao sits beneath a rack of twin swords, eating a feast alone. Yue is escorted in. She has been bathed and dressed in her gown from the night she left the north. She is seated in front of Zhao. He invites her to eat. He tells her about the captain who found the dress of the northern water tribe princess on a water tribe boat headed for the south pole. Yue asks what Zhao wants. Zhao wants peace, a permanent peace with the water nation. The southerners have wasted their land, like the earthbending savages and the airbenders before them. The north will be safe, it’s water, the fire nation doesn’t want water. The southerners can move to the north. Yue doesn’t understand. Zhao tells her, he’s going to help her open the moon gate. Isn’t that what she wants? Yue asks about the avatar. Zhao tells her she can either leave here and return home with her people or join him in prison. Yue wants to know where her people are. Zhao will take her there.

The prison hold door is flung open. Zhao leads Yue to the southern people. She sees them locked in a crowded cell. She announces that they will all be taken to the North Pole as her new subjects. Zhao will allow them to open the moon gate to let the water tribe members through to their sister tribe. However, the southerners will never return to the south. This news is upsetting, the south is their home. Yue assures them, this is their only option. Zhao tells the Princess its time for her to return, Yue asks to stay. Zhao locks her up in with the rest of the tribe. A soldier enters the hold and tells Zhao they have the beast.

On the deck of the ship, fire nation soldiers struggle to restrain Appa with ropes. Zhao appears. Appa wails and struggles harder. Zhao delights in his fear and what a fine present Appa will be for his bride to be. They take Appa below deck and set sail. Momo watches from the walls of the fort. He glides down and reaches the battleship and crawls through a vent in the side of the ship. He hears familiar voices, Sokka and Yue huddled close. Sokka asks her what the north is like. Yue tells him that it’s different. She has responsibilities, she’s betrothed. Sokka doesn’t understand she’s to be married.

Yue asks if she can do something she’s wanted to do since she first saw Sokka. He nods and she kisses him. She curls into his little spoon as he holds her. Momo gags and continues through the vents.

Momo passes by Iroh and Zuko in his cabin. Zuko is feeling much better after being healed. Iroh tells Zuko that Zhao captured the bison and maybe they can use him to gain the Avatar’s trust. Zuko bets that if the Avatar escapes under Zhao’s command, it will be a huge blow to his plans. There is a knock at the door. Zuko hides in the closet. Iroh answers, it is Zhao. Zhao wants Iroh to know that he grieves for the prince and they will want to get word to the fire lord, but first, Iroh is invited to the north pole, as Zhao’s advisor. Iroh asks if Zhao meant the south pole and Zhao smiles and leaves. Zuko peeks out of the closet as Iroh shuts the door.

Momo continues on through the vents. Finally, he finds Aang’s cell. Aang is delighted to see Momo. Momo gnaws at the shackles at Aang’s feet, to no avail. He curls up around Aang’s neck, giving him comfort deep in the bowels of the battleship.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/outdoors/a19228/ice-breakers-coast-guard-great-lakes/

Late day, over the icy seas, icebreaker ships take the battleship as far south as they can. The firebenders load sleds and snowmobiles with their prisoners for the south pole. Katara is lead out, the only prisoner in full shackles and even a muzzle. Iroh walks down the gangplank after the last of the prisoners. He passes a soldier, there is a familiar scar beneath the helm. The two nod to each other and Iroh joins Zhao on his sled. The fire nation troops take off, roaring into the distance.

On the ship, a soldier stands guard outside of Zuko’s former room. There is a clanging at the end of the hallway. The soldier investigates and is incapacitated by a masked man. The man enters Zuko’s old quarters and stares at the twin swords on the mantle. The door is left ajar and the swords above the mantle are gone.

Down in the prison hold, four guards play a game in front of Appa’s cell. One of them asks why they need so many men to guard this beast. Another guard tells him, that he’s a gift for Princess Azula from Zhao just as Aang will be a gift to the fire lord. There is a bang down the hall. The guards all jump at the noise.

The helmet of a Fire Nation soldier rolls down the hallway toward them. When one guard investigates alone, the other three suddenly see a flame erupt from the hallway and hear the muffled sounds of combat and of chains being strung up. When two more guards follow after him, they find their companion strung up with his hands to the ceiling. The masked man, clinging to the ceiling, wraps a chain around a hand of each guard and drops down, simultaneously pulling the guards up. The last guard standing in front of Appa’s cell, having heard the scuffle, takes his horn to sound the alarm, though before he could blow the instrument, it is knocked out of his hands by a well-aimed knife. Noticing a figure running toward him, he firebends, though the masked man extinguishes the fire by throwing water and proceeds to sweep the legs from underneath the guard with the bucket. *

Appa groans in interest as the masked man offers him some hay.

Inside his cell, Aang hears a commotion and eyes the door with apprehension. Momo hisses at the door as the lock is being turned. Aang gasps as a masked figure enters with dual broadswords. Momo attacks the figure and is easily subdued when the figure reveals Appa in the hallway. The man unlocks Aang’s chains and retreats to Appa without saying a word. Aang asks him who he is, what is going on, and wonders if the man is there to rescue him. The figure does not respond, and they are interrupted by the sound of the alarm. He signals for the Avatar to follow him. *

Aang, Momo, and the masked figure ride Appa through the halls of the ship. They burst through the door to the deck and are surrounded by soldiers. The masked man draws his swords but Aang yells, “yip-yip,” and they take to the sky. Firebenders all around them shoot projectiles the sky bison dodges or are deflected by the swords. The soldiers’ last hope is artillery that they point at the escapees. FIRE! A rocket heads directly towards the bison. The masked figure taps Aang on the shoulder, but Aang is concentrating. The figure shakes him. Aang sees the rocket but doesn’t know what it is. The figure unsheathes his swords and throws them at the rocket causing it to explode and sending the riders tumbling through the sky in the resulting shockwave. The firebenders below argue about who’s idea it was to shoot the rocket. Gaining his senses after the blast, Aang whirlwinds himself onto Appa’s back. They dive and catch the masked man in Aang’s arms. Momo lands on Aang’s shoulders as the mask falls off the man, revealing him to be an unconscious prince Zuko.

At the south pole, the ruins of the former southern capital are jagged and jut harshly from the surrounding icy waste. Zhao investigates the moon scroll as firebenders race to cut blocks of ice. They stack ice block onto ice block to rebuild the portal according to the scroll. When it is finished, it looks like a tunnel that leads into the side of a wall.

Aang lands Appa on the icy terrain. The tracks of snowmobiles run deep and are easy to follow, but that’s not his issue. Zuko lies motionless on the ground. Aang’s gaze follows the tracks into the distance, then returns to the unconscious Zuko. He can’t just leave him here.

At the south pole, Zhao watches the sun set. He orders Princess Yue to open the moon gate. She can’t. Only a waterbender can. All eyes turn towards Katara. They unshackle and unmuzzle her.

Katara approaches the rebuilt portal. It looks rough and raw in the twilight. She waves her hands over the ice. No change. She does again, but nothing happens. Zhao’s face darkens. He barks an order. The water tribe villagers are pushed to their knees as firebender soldiers brandish flames at them. She tries again and again to use her powers on the portal, but still, it does not respond.

Katara cowers. Zhao approaches her, his fury palpable. He suggests she try again. She doesn’t know if she can open the portal. He sneers that he hopes, for her family’s sake, that she is wrong. He snaps his fingers twice and Grangran is dragged forward. Zhao commands her to open the gate, and though Katara tries, she still can’t do it. Zhao scowls. He looks over at the villagers and spies Sokka. He orders Grangran returned to the others and Sokka to be dragged forward next. Katara begs Zhao. He orders her to open the gate. Sokka tells her that it’s okay, and that he loves her. Grangran yells that she believes in Katara. Yue joins them. The whole village shouts encouragements. The sun disappears over the horizon. The light of the moon is the only light in the sky. Katara closes her eyes and waves her hands once again. Nothing happens. Zhao makes a fireball in his fist and approaches Sokka.

A villager shouts and Zhao turns. A soft light creeps over each ice block until the entire arch is shining. The shining abruptly stops and the blocks have fused together. Zhao investigates.

In the darkness of the tunnel, one can see the moon, hanging in blackness, illuminating a path to a distant archway. Zhao laughs, an evil laugh. Yue stands and bids the southerners to follow her to the north, but Zhao stops them. Elite firebenders take hold of Yue, while others put Katara back into shackles and muzzle and lump her in with the villagers. Yue spits at Zhao for turning against his word. Zhao takes her personally into custody and leaves the rest of the water tribe with the elite guard as he and a small team, including Iroh, lead Yue through the portal.

As they walk the moon’s path, Admiral Zhao sinisterly tells General Iroh that they are in the process of writing history, as they will be destroying the last of the Water Tribe civilization. Yue is aghast at Zhao’s machinations, and Zhao has her gagged. Iroh warns Zhao that history is not always kind to its subjects, Zhao condescendingly assures him that this will not be like Iroh's legendary failure at Ba Sing Se; Iroh ominously tells Zhao he hopes not, for Zhao's sake. The firebenders and Yue reach the end of the path and find themselves in the throne room of the northern water tribe. *

Iroh confirms their location and inquires if it is wise to attack during the full moon, as waterbenders draw strength from the moon. Zhao states that he is aware of the problem, and that he is working on a solution. As he reveals a secret door behind the throne, Zhao explains that years earlier, while serving as a young officer in the Earth Kingdom, he stumbled on the secret of the Moon and Ocean Spirit's mortal forms in an underground library. When he declares it is his destiny to kill the moon spirit, Iroh angrily informs him that the spirits are not to be trifled with. Condescendingly, Zhao tells Iroh he has heard tales of his journey into the Spirit World and assures him that the Moon and Ocean Spirits, having made the decision to give up their immortality to be part of the human world, will face the consequences of that decision. *

They descend down the passageway behind the throne to the spirit oasis: a small bamboo forested pool in a glacial atrium. A low voice is heard up ahead. Zhao puts his fingers to his lips and the firebenders sneak in the shadows. Chief Arnook, Yue’s father, prays to the moon for his daughter and his people. The light of the full moon shines brightly above. When he finishes, he asks an older man, Master Pakku, to escort him back. Zhao reveals himself and his prisoner, Princess Yue. Pakku squares up but Arnook orders him to stand down.

Zhao commends the chief for his wisdom and releases Yue to him. Arnook ungags her and Yue tells him that Zhao means to destroy the water tribe by killing the moon spirit. Arnook and Pakku share a look.

Arnook is incredulous that Zhao could kill the moon, whose bed is the sky and the horizon, but Zhao assures him confidently, that the spirits are close, closer than he thinks. He gestures to the pool, two koi fish swim around each other. Yue is in disbelief that Zhao thinks the fish are the spirits, but Arnook and Pakku are silent with secret knowledge.

Meanwhile, at the south pole, Katara breaths through her muzzle, now hoary with frost. A firebender yelps and points at the sky, it’s Aang riding Appa. The firebenders form a defensive perimeter. Katara takes her chance, she ices the locks to the point that they break and she frees herself from her bonds. She begins taking out firebenders as Aang does the same. The firebenders run to their snowmobiles and sleds and retreat. Katara throws off the muzzle and hugs Aang as Sokka inspects the gate. He runs through it, after Yue. The rest of the southerners follow with trepidation. In the palace, Sokka begins to call out. He sees the door ajar behind the throne. Sokka finds it out of place and passes through it. Katara and Aang ensure all the remaining southerners go through the portal. Aang shows her Zuko on Appa and they decide to leave him in the south.

Suddenly, as if he had been conscious for a while, Zuko makes his move and attacks. Katara trounces him. She freezes him in a block of ice and she and Aang and Momo try to pull Appa through the moon portal. Appa resists; after being cooped up in the ship, he is not interested in going through a small door again.

Sokka sneaks down the path to the spirit oasis. Zhao arrogantly applauds his own efforts to fulfill his "destiny", speculating as to which names by which future generations will call him. From the shadows, Sokka makes eye contact with Yue. He retreats to get help.

A water tribe scout on an ice tower watches the fire navy ship’s blockade. It’s nothing unusual.

Katara and Aang desperately pull Appa with a rope onto the moon path. Zuko the ice block begins to steam.

Zhao takes a burlap sack and charges into the water. After a moment, he rises with the fish in the bag. As he hoists it over his head in triumph, the full moon above transforms, turning from white to blood-red. *

The scout sees the red moon. His waterbender comrade in arms reacts: he can no longer waterbend.

On the moon path, the moon and path are red in the blackness. Katara feels weak. She collapses. Aang releases Appa’s rope and helps her up. Appa pulls back into the open air on the south side. Aang hobbles Katara over to the north side and lays her down in the throne room. He tells Momo to watch over her, he has to go back for Appa. The path beneath him cracks and Katara tells him to hurry. Aang runs through the gate to the other side. Before he can make it to the south, a shadow appears in the doorway and fireblasts him back. Prince Zuko who corners Aang in the disintegrating moon path.

Yue begs Zhao to release the moon spirit. The chief holds her and comforts her. Iroh pleads with Zhao to consider his actions: they will bring harm to all, not just those in the Water Tribe. Reinforcing the point, Iroh promises Zhao, "Whatever you do to that spirit, I'll unleash on you ten-fold." Zhao confirms what he knew all along, that Iroh is a traitor. To save the moon spirit, Arnook offers Zhao the unconditional surrender of the northern water tribe.

Water tribe warriors swarm into the throne room and surround the villagers coming through the portal. Sokka appears in the door behind the throne and bids them to follow him. The arch of the moon gate begins to crack and Katara yells for Aang. Zuko’s firebending keeps Aang on the pathway guarding the south door as it splinters here and there.

Zhao confirms with Arnook, that he has his unconditional surrender and releases the fish back into the water. The moon turns white. Everyone, the water tribe scouts, fire navy sailors, Sokka, Katara, Aang, Iroh, and even Zuko is relieved. The floor beneath Aang and Zuko solidifies again and Zuko takes a defensive stance.

Zhao watches the fish swim. Something dark and unsatisfied crosses his mind. Without a hesitation, he fire blasts the white fish.

Iroh watches the fire bolt hit the moon spirit in horror.

On the moon path, the full moon above Aang goes out like a light. The path beneath Aang and Zuko disappears and Aang falls into darkness. Zuko jumps to the southern portal and pulls himself through as the pathway vanishes behind him leaving an empty black tunnel.

Katara yells for Aang, and approaches the portal, but the portal in the north now ends in an icy wall.  Momo scratches desperately at the wall.

The scout blinks in the darkness. He is at a loss. One by one, on the horizon, the fire navy blockade lights their trebuchets. They fling fiery projectiles in waves. The scout blows his horn.

Appa huffs at the gate. Zuko tries again and again to jump through the threshold, but without the moon, the gate is shut. Zuko lights the sky up with his fire blasts.

Iroh bellows and lunges on Zhao. The elite squad do their best to protect Zhao but are subdued by Iroh’s fury. Zhao realizes he might be in trouble and flees up the ice wall, his fingers sinking like molten rods into the ice to climb his way out through the opening above. Iroh falls to his knees and mourns the spirit with the chief and Pakku and Yue. Sokka returns with warriors and villagers. The first round of trebuchet projectiles hit the palace and bits of icy debris fall from the ceiling. Grangran pulls Katara wailing for Aang to the safety of the path to the spirit oasis and down to join the others. The northern water tribe capital is in chaos. The dead white fish is prodded by the living black fish.

Aang floats in darkness thick as water. A giant black koi fish finds him and swallows him.

Katara clutches Momo as a ripple in the water breaks the stillness of the spirit oasis. Aang rises out of the water in the avatar state.

Katara is filled with joy, but Aang does not respond. He rises into the sky. Ice and snow from the land and sky begin to swirl around him and envelope him the form of a giant snow-white koi fish. The fish swims through the air out over the bay and dives into the water between fire navy ships. They are hit with a minor wave, but the sailors braced themselves. The snow fish becomes slush and the fish shape decompresses, filling the seas. Then the shape recollects and rises pulling all the water with it. The ships try to flee but are caught up in the gargantuan shape. The rocky bay beneath is revealed as some ships are beached on the seafloor. The water pillar takes a vaguely humanoid fish shape.

It collapses, and the navy ships are tsunamied away.

Back at the spirit oasis, Iroh notices, with astonishment, that Yue has been touched by the Moon Spirit, and that as a result, some of its life force is within her; Yue affirms the conjecture, then decides that she should try to restore the spirit to life by giving hers to it. Her father, upset by this idea, protests, but she is unmoved by him. Sokka takes her hands into his own and assures her there has to be another way. She calmly replies, "I have to try," and places her hands on the dead fish. *

The fish glows as Yue’s spirit leaves her body, she closes her eyes, exhales one last time, and collapses into Sokka's arms, dead. *

Moments later, Yue's body evaporates, and the fish, suddenly filled with life, swims into the oasis, looking for its partner. Floating, Yue appears above the water as a spirit, clothed in a flowing white dress. She tells Sokka that she will always be with him, kissing him one last time before disappearing; as she vanishes, the moon reappears in the sky, restoring the waterbenders' abilities. *

On the walls of the palace, Zhao sees the moon’s return and screams his frustration.

Aang fused with the Ocean spirit, in the meantime, has laid waste to the Fire Nation's navy but ceases as the moon reappears. The Ocean Spirit acknowledges the moon's restoration and, ending its violent vendetta, places Aang atop the outer wall of the city as it melts into the ocean water. *

Zhao finds a hole in the ceiling of the palace as jumps down. He has no choice but to escape through the moon portal. Except a figure blocks his way, Prince Zuko. They begin to fight. Iroh returns to the throne room and catches their duel. As Zhao and Zuko weave in and out of moonbeams let in by breaks in the ceiling. The beams seem to bend and sway as if attracted to Zhao. They wrap around him like a web of fine hair and he is stuck. Tentacles of light pull him into the air. Zuko, forgetting the duel, tries to help Zhao, reaching out a hand to him, but Zhao stubbornly refuses to take it, and he is pulled through the hole in the roof, where he vanishes in the light of the moon. Iroh puts his arm around Zuko and leads the teen back through the moon portal to the south.

Zuko is already planning, they will camp in the south and wait for the Avatar to return for his bison. Iroh looks at him sadly as Zuko begins to make camp with Appa tied up nearby. With a decisive move, Iroh unleashes a fireball that destroys the moon portal in the south. Zuko is speechless as Iroh retrieves Appa and mounts him and pulls Zuko aboard. Zuko says “uh… yip-yip” and the three lift off.

Back in the north, a drained Aang makes his way to the throne room as the rest return as well. Aang looks distraught at the closed portal’s dead end and whispers Appa’s name. The water tribe surrounds and embraces him as a group, with Katara, Sokka, Grangran, Arnook and Pakku in the center. The fire navy ships retreat out of the north and the moon glows high in the sky.

Post credit scene

In the Fire Nation, Fire Lord Ozai imparts the knowledge of Iroh's treasonous behavior and Zuko's failure to his daughter, Azula, and entrusts her with a special task as she looks up at him, a smile on her face. *

[foxpeople477]

Building A Web Scraper

Create A Web Scraper

Web Scraper Google Chrome

Web Scraper Lite

Web Scraper allows you to build Site Maps from different types of selectors. This system makes it possible to tailor data extraction to different site structures. Export data in CSV, XLSX and JSON formats. Build scrapers, scrape sites and export data in CSV format directly from your browser. Use Web Scraper Cloud to export data in CSV, XLSX. It also has a number of built-in extensions for tasks like cookie handling, user-agent spoofing, restricting crawl depth, and others, as well as an API for easily building your own additions. For an introduction to Scrapy, check out the online documentation or one of their many community resources, including an IRC channel, Subreddit, and a. This question is related to link building method i am doing seo for web development company and website has more than 2lac backlinks, majority of backlinks come from social bookmarking, article and press release submission. In this recent penguin 2.0 update, i lost my ranking on majority of keywords. Advanced tactics 1. Customizing web query. Once you create a Web Query, you can customize it to suit your needs. To access Web query properties, right-click on a cell in the query results and choose Edit Query.; When the Web page you’re querying appears, click on the Options button in the upper-right corner of the window to open the dialog box shown in screenshot given below.

What Are Web Scrapers And Benefits Of Using Them?

A Web Scraper is a data scraping tool that quite literally scrapes or collects data off from websites. Microsoft office for mac catalina. It is the process of extracting information and data from a website, transforming the information on a web-page into a structured format for further analysis. Web Scraper is a term for various methods used to extract and collect information from thousands of websites across the Internet. Generally, you can get rid of copy-pasting work by using the data scrapers. Those who use web scraping tools may be looking to collect certain data to sell to other users or to use for promotional purposes on a website. Web Data Scrapers also called Web data extractors, screen scrapers, or Web harvesters. one of the great things about the online web data scrapers is that they give us the ability to not only identify useful and relevant information but allow us to store that information for later use.

Create A Web Scraper

How To Build Your Own Custom Scraper Without Any Skill And Programming Knowledge?

Modern post boxes uk. Sep 02, 2016 This question is related to link building method i am doing seo for web development company and website has more than 2lac backlinks, majority of backlinks come from social bookmarking, article and press release submission. In this recent penguin 2.0 update, i lost my ranking on majority of keywords.

Web Scraper Google Chrome

If you want to build your own scraper for any website and want to do this without coding then you are lucky you found this article. Making your own web scraper or web crawler is surprisingly easy with the help of this data miner. It can also be surprisingly useful. Now, it is possible to make multiple websites scrapers with a single click of a button with Any Site Scraper and you don’t need any programming for this. Any Site Scraper is the best scraper available on the internet to scrape any website or to build a scraper for multiple websites. Now you don’t need to buy multiple web data extractors to collect data from different websites. If you want to build Yellow Pages Data Extractor, Yelp Data Scraper, Facebook data scraper, Ali Baba web scraper, Olx Scraper, and many web scrapers like these websites then it is all possible with AnySite Scraper. Over, If you want to build your own database from a variety of websites or you want to build your own custom scraper then Online Web Scraper is the best option for you.

Build a Large Database Easily With Any site Scraper

In this modern age of technology, All businesses' success depends on big data and the Businesses that don’t rely on data have a meager chance of success in a data-driven world. One of the best sources of data is the data available publicly online on social media sites and business directories websites and to get this data you have to employ the technique called Web Data Scraping or Data Scraping. Building and maintaining a large number of web scrapers is a very a complex project that like any major project requires planning, personnel, tools, budget, and skills.

Web scraping with django python. Web Scraping using Django and Selenium # django # selenium # webscraping. Muhd Rahiman Feb 25 ・13 min read. This is a mini side project to tinker around with Django and Selenium by web scraping FSKTM course timetable from MAYA UM as part of my self-learning prior to FYP. Automated web scraping with Python and Celery is available here. Making a web scraping application with Python, Celery, and Django here. Django web-scraping. Improve this question. Follow asked Apr 7 '19 at 6:14. User9615577 user9615577. Add a comment 2 Answers Active Oldest Votes. An XHR GET request is sent to the url via requests library. The response object html is. If your using django, set up a form with a text input field for the url on your html page. On submission this url will appear in the POST variables if you've set it up correctly.

Jul 10, 2019 The Switch itself (just the handheld screen) includes a slot for a microSD Card and a USB Type-C Connector. The Nintendo Switch Dock includes two USB 2.0 Ports and a TV Output LED in the front. The 'Switch tax' also applies to many games that had been previously released on other platforms ported later to the Switch, where the Switch game price reflects the original price of the game when it was first released rather than its current price. It is estimated that the cost of Switch games is an average of 10% over other formats. Get the detailed specs for the Nintendo Switch console, the Joy-Con controllers, and more. Switch specs. The S5200-ON is a complete family of switches:12-port, 24-port, and 48-port 25GbE/100GbE ToR switches, 96-port 25GbE/100GbE Middle of Row (MoR)/End of Row (EoR) switch, and a 32-port 100GbE Multi-Rate Spine/Leaf switch. From the compact half-rack width S5212F-ON providing an ideal form factor. Switch resistance is referred to the resistance introduced by the switch into the circuit irrespective of its contact state. The resistance will be extremely high (ideally infinite) when the switch is open and a finite very low value (ideally zero) when the switch is closed. 2: Graph Showing Typical Switch Resistance Pattern.

Web Scraper Lite

You will most likely be hiring a few developers who know-how to build scale-able scrapers and setting up some servers and related infrastructure to run these scrapers without interruption and integrating the data you extract into your business process. You can use full-service professionals such as Anysite Scraper to do all this for you or if you feel brave enough, you can tackle this yourself.

Apr 15, 2021 Currently, you cannot stream Disney Plus on Switch, however, there is a piece of good news for Nintendo Switch users. It seems that Disney lately announced that Disney Plus streaming service will be accessible on Nintendo’s handheld console. The news originates from a presentation slide revealing the new streaming service available on consoles. Disney plus on switch. Mar 15, 2021 Though mentioned earlier, Disney Plus is available on few gaming consoles. Unfortunately, it is not available on Nintendo Switch as of now. Chances are there to bring it in on the future updates as Nintendo Switch is getting popular day by day. Despite the own store by Nintendo switch, it has only a few apps present. No, there is no Disney Plus app on the Nintendo Switch. If you want to stream movies or shows on your Switch, you can instead download the Hulu or YouTube apps. Visit Business Insider's homepage. Nov 30, 2020 Disney Plus is not available on the handheld console. The Switch only offers YouTube and Hulu as of now, not even Netflix. This tells us that the Nintendo Switch is indeed capable of hosting a.