#i have a bunch of post battles but not That One Scene™

[chenziee]

I need to write more fics about how lovestruck Law was on the Onigashima Skull Dome rooftop when Luffy told them to get down

I've never been the same after that

[im-a-hoping-beetch]

Many people seem to get genuinely confused, whenever we, zutara shippers, mention how underdeveloped kataang really is. Usually, they’ll brush it off as us being delusional, bitter and you know the drill. Their main response to that, usually is: “How, could they possibly be underdeveloped, they had 3 seasons!?!”

The thing is they forget that the amount of time isn’t as important as what you do do with it. Cuz, yeah, Aang and Katara did have 3 seasons, but their relationship still managed to feel rushed as hell. Heck, even Bryke, out of all people, admitted to it. Which mostly as to do with a bunch of things that I’ll get into right now.

Let’s start with the fact that, Katara never actually shows any interest in Aang.

Now, many of y’all will probably come for me by citing how the cave of the two lovers or even the Headband have moments of her showing interest in him, but all of them end up falling flat at some point.

The cave of the two lovers:

The argument here, usually is“if she didn’t have any interest in him, why would she kiss him?” or “why would she blush at the idea of kissing him?”. The former seems to forget this is a life or death situation and that we don’t really know for sure that if there were another way to get out if this, she wouldn’t take it. For the latter, I’d like to say that blushing can have many significations such as, embarrassment. Which, here makes sense when considering what she says and overall demeanour, after suggesting to kiss.

Like yeah, a fourteen year old girl blushing bcz she’s embarrassed at the idea of having to kiss, her friend, out of all things, cuz you know… awkward. Can you imagine that (pun fully intended)???

The headband:

This one is going to be a ride, but stick with me. The arguments can range from “What about her jealousy while Aang is dancing with other girls.” to “What about the way she looks at him during the dance.”

Here, is said jealousy being shown:

And said look being done:

Now, yeah, I can absolutely see why these two exemples would be used as a way to prove her interest, but let me remind you that this is the same episode where we have this happen.

Yeah, the same episode where Katara is acting all jealous and giving flirty looks to Aang is also the same one where she pretends to be is… mother. While, I could go on about how it wasn’t the best idea on the directors or whoever was in charge of the episode part if it was their way of giving a glimpse of Katara being into Aang. The issue is, them doing so wasn’t completely farfetched either, because up until now it’s been established that Katara can be very motherly and she acts that way with almost everyone in the gaang. More specifically, the one with who she does so the most is, Aang.

I mean, even the show makes a point of poking fun at their mother-son dynamic on several occasions all throughout the show (ie. the don’t-rub-your-eyes-when-you’re-speaking scene in “The runaway” episode). So realistically, the two exemples shown way above could somewhat work, but only if you decide to completely ignore what episode they take place in, one that hasn’t really helped at stopping the mother-son dynamic allegations kataang has been getting, for years, now.

So, back to the development aspect, I think it has always been stunted from the beginning, because, fundamentally, the ship as always been designed to be Aang-centric. If you’d like more insight on that I’d recommend checking @starlight-bread-blog’s amazing post on the issue. But also, that their lackluster resolution is way much more obvious, cuz both are leads in the show. Katara's existence in the show, isn't solely there to serve as some love inerest for Aang. Shocker, but she's actually a MAIN CHARACTER in the show, meaning that we spend three seasons where we get to learn about her battles, fears and aspirations, none of which seems to involve a relationship with Aang.

Like yeah, the reason why The Ending Kiss™ feels so unsatisfactory is, simply, because, Katara doesn't like Aang (at least not like that). Katara, likes Aang, because the show said so. Now, stick with me, cuz I can already feel some of y'all ready to jump at the screen. Within the show, name a single moment where she ever comes to thinking of Aang in a romantic way. One that doesn't involve any external sources, such as someone suggesting about it or because of the given circumstances she has to. The answer is none. The only time we ever get to see her voice her ACTUAL opinion about it, this is what she says:

That's not even counting how her overall demeanor, from the body language to her choice of words seems to suggest that she's actually trying to let him down gently. Also, may I remind you that at that point THERE'S ONLY 3 FREAKING EPISODES LEFT BEFORE THE BIG KISS™ and this is where there at in their relationship. Plus, within the 3 episodes that are left WE NEVER GET TO SEE THEM TALK ABOUT IT, EVER!!!

This obviously was part of Bryke’s horrible attempt at the will-they-won’t-they trope. Which ended up playing right in their face, cuz like I mentioned they themselves had to come to glaring realization that kataang was rushed. Now, it could’ve been it, the creators realizing their obvious mistake and if they could, trying to fix it by giving us what seemed like the natural progression of their relationship, which was for it to end.

Instead, we got comics!Katara and oooh boy…

Basically, they decided that they would throw away Katara’s meticulously built characterization in order to make her existence revolve around, Aang. I kid you not, when I say that she isn’t allowed scenes, lines and actions that do not revolve around her “sweetie”.

Remember how I said that, Katara likes Aang because the show runners said so. This is an example of this cranked up to a hundred.

Essentially, when you start thinking about where these two are in terms of growth, kataang is the antithesis to development itself. On one hand it validates the regression of one (ie. the dropped chakra plot line), while simultaneously, having to strip any previously built characterization of the other (ie. comics!katara).

On that note, I’d like to remind people, how important Katara is to the story. Without her, the entirety of the gaang would be dead. Without her, there would be no story. Without her, there would be no Aang.

She deserved to have a voice within her own relationship and not for it to be stolen by two grown men who were still stuck in their childhood fantasy.

She deserved better.

[bronx-bomber87]

Hi Caitlin, how are you ? If you have time, I need your help with something. I seem to remember, right before season 6 started, we got a bunch of promo pics and one of them was of Lucy looking down on Tim laying down on a firefighter stretcher....Did I imagine that picture ? I tried a bunch of hashtags and keywords and cannot find this picture. Did I dream it ? Was it from season five or from an episode we already got ? It's just, I remember them sharing "The Look™" Thanks :)

Hi, I’m doing well thank you for asking 😊 I hope you’re doing good too ❤️ Well I don’t remember anything of the sort for S6. Now it would make sense to link it to the premiere. They had just survived that epic battle. They were beat to hell. There was fire and ambulances on the scene. But I don’t recall any pics like that. But I wasn’t hunting for spoilers either. So if anyone else saw this please chime in ha I would’ve loved this but as we all know the premiere was very go go go from the jump. I was hoping for a moment like this post battle but we did not get anything of the sort sadly. But made sense with how the premiere started off.

Otherwise only other time he would be been on a stretcher would’ve been in the 1x01 when he was shot. Or 1x20/2x01 when he had the adverse reaction to the vaccine. Lucy was in the ambulance right next to him in 2x01. So maybe you saw a promo shot from that? She’s definitely looking down at him on a stretcher in that scene. If you thought you saw S6 might’ve been a dream? I personally never saw anything of the sort sorry. Idk this was helpful at all LOL But thanks for asking happy to answer :)

[ageless-aislynn]

WIP ask game for the following: the blue lady ships it, au the war crime part out, and …or possibly like this on the condition 'heat' is something like Pon Farr and not omegaverse

boops gently

*rubs hands together gleefully* Thank you so much!

1. The blue lady ships it (Halo) aka "Untitled Cortana (and the marines) totally ship John/Kai" 😁 Sadly, this one ended up having large parts of itself "donated" to other fics and so would have to be redone if I ever decide to finish it but here's the original opening, for your reading pleasure, lol!

Cortana made sure to manifest her holographic self down at the bottom of the hill, well away from where John and Kai had just finished mopping up the last of the Covenant infantry. She'd learned the hard way that, if they felt like she was watching them, then they'd scurry away from each other.

And yet they're standing on a hill with a bunch of marines looking up at them and somehow that's not "being watched?" Maybe it's simply the distance, the false sense of privacy?

Or maybe it was because once, just once she’d appeared right next to them, practically with digital popcorn in hand, wanting a front row seat for The Big Moment?

Come on, Chief, take your helmet off. Show her those adoring eyes… she thought but was careful not to project herself into his auditory cortex. He hadn't responded well to that, either.

Kai took off her helmet.

Also acceptable. He can't resist when she's all battle-flushed. He removed his helmet as well, both of them going off comms. Not that it mattered because being literally housed in his head meant he couldn't actually shut her out; she had to choose to give him privacy. Which she was doing, thank you very much.

Watching from a distance didn't count. Ask anybody. Ask the group of marines next to her, none-too-covertly studying the Spartans and taking bets on who'd make the first move.

False sense of privacy was her favorite new thing.

2. I wasn't sure if I should make a funny scene out of a war crime 👀 Guess I'll have to AU the war crime part out, yep *nodnod* (Halo series)

Aka the completely awkward John/Makee sexytiems scene we all REALLY deserved. 😇😂 I totally, completely AU'd the war crime out of it, though, so now we can chuckle at all of the awkward, 10,000% guilt free! *nodnods* 😁👍 Still in progress, may even be completed and posted one day, who knows? Would also be my first posted John/Makee fic. 😁

3. Yeah so if Spartans went into heat, I’d probably write it like this... (Halo gameverse)...or like this (Halo gameverse, different game)...or possibly like this (Halo series) 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Technically, they're all variations on the same idea, which is why I probably won't ever write them. But they each have at least one distinct scene that lives rent free in my head, what can I say? Okay, so, with a wave of my hand, I've just given the gameverse Spartans the hormone pellets of the TV series Spartans. And with another wave of my hand and a little flourish of my fingers, I've added a condition to the pellets where, at certain times, to keep the pellets and the Spartans operating at peak efficiency, they have to go off of them.

And y'all know what I think would go on at that time. *coughcoughs in "Side Effect" NSFW* But imagine it as being more controlled than that, something scheduled, maybe a nice, out of the way place for Spartans on similar cycles to go and ahem, take care of each other, just an accepted part of being a Spartan and all that.

Annnnnnd in each of those 3 ideas, we get a pellet malfunction where game!Chief, Noble Team and TV!Chief ends up Trapped Alone With The Reader™. Not at the same time, not at the same place and not with the same Reader, I should mention. I mean, that would be one very tired Reader and quite a swingin’ Spartan party, woah, lol! 😳😂

I have a surprisingly well-defined, really more of an OC character for game!Chief, with a whole developed backstory and everything. And it's not ALL of Noble Team, just 2 of 'em. (That one actually came from a dream where the Reader was giving a report to Carter who is getting more and more flummoxed at how calm she is considering what all she's telling him. "And you're saying that you... handled them both. One at a time, right?" "Well, there might've been a one at a time in there but, honestly, it was just more expedient to double up." 😂) Then TV!Chief has a Reader no one has met before, someone who gives off this shy, reserved demeanor but who is an absolute wildcat underneath, who can give a malfunctioning-hormone-pellet Spartan a run for his money. I don’t know why but I want to see a scene where the rest of Silver Team finds them and they’re kinda running in like, “Okay, we’ve got to see if the non-enhanced human is all right. She might need medical aid!” and she’s all composed and walking out of the room like, yeah, he’s in there. And there’s John just totally worn out, asleep and snoring, lol! 😂 However, since John and Kai went through "Side Effect" together, I doubt this one would ever be written just because it's a rather close idea. I dunno. We’ll see! 😉

And *drum roll* there we have it! Thanks so much for asking! 😎👍

WIP folder ask game

[nattikay]

Thank you for the detailed response!! I like to chat about that too, clearly hrh :)

I hope you're right about the tsalnu being cut (yeah that Neteyam birth scene in the script was.....graphic o_o;), but I suppose only time will tell. There are some things I'm fine with handwaving as sci-fi...for example, another one we'd probably disagree on is you said you're into speculative evolution yes? I know there's a lot of people who don't like that the Na'vi are so human-like because they don't think it makes sense evolutionarily, and argue that instead they should have six limbs, four eyes, two kuru, etc. like the majority of Pandoran wildlife. Personally I do not give two craps whether or not the Na'vi map accurately to any sort of evolutionary tree lol; that's just not really a particular interest of mine, so it doesn't bother me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ buuuuut embryology and fetal development is something I'm rather nerdy about, so I suppose the questionable biology that comes with the tsalnu etc. bothers and distracts me more a lot more than the average person. Really feels like trying to fix something that ain't broke and making it a big weird complicated mess in the process 😅

Yes on the afterlife stuff ;_; I've heard some theorize that Jake and/or Neytiri will die in A5, and personally I really really really don't want any more of the Sully family to die BUT I will be ok with Jake and Neytiri dying in the last movie IF AND ONLY IF: it is at the very end of the movie of old age after a time skip that shows that they didn't have any more RDA troubles after whatever the final battle is and Neteyam is there to welcome them into Eywa's arms k thx bye ;_; Oh my goodness yes, of all the young characters Neteyam by far gets the brunt of the smut -_- it drives me crazy because I of course adore Neteyam as a character but not like that holy flip. As a 27yo woman I very much view Neteyam as A Child™ in this regard so seeing posts like "uwu daddy pookie Teyam so sexy what if he was my boyfriend here's a bunch of fantasies about what we could do" is just like

I get that having a little crush on a fictional character isn't that big a deal, probably even pretty normal for teens in the same vein as celebrity crushes for instance, but holy flip people do y'all really have to be so publicly explicit all the time for pete's sake—like, it's one thing to be like "hey I think this character's kinda attractive 👀"—heck, go ahead and make a self-insert OC to ship with him if that's your thing, idc go nuts—but it's quite another to be posting heaps and heaps of explicit smut about them on main, y'know? 😬 or at absolute minimum at least make sure such posts are properly tagged, c'mon folks

as for the history about the fandom's perception of Spider: you don't need to tell me, I was there lol! In fact, some of my earliest fanart did depict Spider as officially adopted, because like you said, at the time we thought he was. I remember being surprised when the first volume of The High Ground was released and we learned that the Sullies did not raise Spider and that he instead had a human foster family, the McCoskers. And yeah, I was there for Spider's initial mixed reception in the fandom too, in fact in the early days I considered myself a mild Spider defender because I thoroughly disagreed with the people saying crap like "he's a traitor, he's evil, it's his fault Neteyam died, he's gonna be a villain," etc. etc. It's only as general fandom opinion (on tumblr at least) began swinging further and further in the other direction to the point of calling the Sullies evil/abusive/neglectful/etc for not adopting him that my hackles started going up.

That's why I try to make it clear when I make posts on the subject that I don't hate Spider as a character at all, and I totally 100% understand and empathize with wanting him to have a proper home. Like you said, no matter how you slice it his situation just straight-up sucks and I absolutely completely get wanting to fix that to the extent that one can!! His circumstances are not his fault and yeah it's entirely reasonable to sympathize with him and want him to get his happy ending, for sure!

I just got really really tired of some fans acting like Jake and Neytiri had some unique and specific obligation to be the ones to provide that for him, and therefore by not doing so they are actively committing some sort of heinous moral wrong against him. Like the people who (understandably) became extra defensive of Spider because of his haters, I've become extra defensive of the Sullies because of theirs :P

On "son for son", fwiw I do think it's very possible that Jake taking Spider more under his wing post-A2 is to some degree a way of coping with his grief. I do think Jake generally likes/sympathizes with Spider, even if he doesn't consider him his son. But adopting him is not his decision alone to make, and Neytiri...yeah she is nowhere close to being remotely ready to even consider such a thing. There's still a loooooooot of unresolved dynamics there that need to play out, and while I do suspect that Neytiri and Spider will resolve their issues eventually, something tells me their relationship is going to have to get worse before it gets better. But we shall see...

ah, to clarify about the post-A2 art/fics, I meant specifically stuff that depicts Spider as a member of the Sully family, thereby making him look like Neteyam's replacement—not just stuff that happens to have Spider in it in general haha, which of course makes sense per canon ^^;

Kelutral is one of the bigger Avatar-centric Discord servers (they have branches on other social media as well but Discord is really the community hub), and for the record I of course don't think there's anything wrong with people theorizing about A3 lol—it just became a little exhausting for me and I needed a break ^^; I still check the server daily, I definitely have several people I consider friends there, I've just indefinitely muted a bunch of channels for now. Would still highly recommend it for anyone interested in learning Na'vi though, the language side of the community is great! :)

man just really not vibing with the fandom at large recently

[incomprehensiblelentils]

nobody asked me but since this is my worst special interest and I’ve been reading the damn things since 2005, I can weigh in specifically from the POV of a person who is still reading them and finds some merit in them as an adult

There are literally hundreds of characters. If you don’t like one, wait it out, sooner or later there’ll be one you DO like, and they’ll probably get a novella or graphic novel or something. At the very least there’s a defense squad in the fandom for them.

The books have gone through like four generations at this point so if you are the kind of person who likes reading about the children of characters you like, congratulations, this is the ur-example of that.

There are (as of posting in June 2020) 39 main books, 12 “special edition” books, 7 guidebooks (contains lore explanations and also a bunch of short stories), 14 graphic novels/”mangas,” 18 novellas, and other random bits of canon floating around on the internet. I would venture a guess that these things have the most Canon™ of any children’s lit, and probably more than most adult lit.

That being said, there are enough weird mistakes or things left out or unexplained that you can make up explanations to fill them in yourself, or get in fights with other people about them! And that’s fun.

They are HIGHLY dramatic in a way that appeals to 10-14yos and anybody who can still access that part of themselves. Like, there is an iconic scene in book 5 of series 3 where the three series POV characters are trapped due to a fire, and while their mother is trying to rescue them another cat (Ashfur) blocks her way. Ashfur proceeds to deliver a villain monologue about how their mother rejecting him ruined his entire life and how he wants to watch her suffer as her children die because “[t]his is the only way to make you feel the same pain you caused me.” AND THEN the mother says, "Kill them, then. You won't hurt me that way. If you really want to hurt me, you'll have to find a better way than that. They are not my kits." IT IS ABSOLUTELY BANANAS and things like this happen all the time. The fourth series is about demon cats training living cats to kill their opponents without mercy while said demon cats attempt to cross over into the real world, and it ends with a giant battle between the demon cats, the living cats, and their spirit ancestors. The fourth series sucks but I’d sell my firstborn for an animated version of this battle.

Cats are easier to draw and animate than humans.

It is extremely fun to explain the horrifying or bananas plot points of this series to your unsuspecting friends.

ETA: also there are multiple authors and as far as I know they haven’t said any dodgy shit, but you can also totally ignore them and just read the books without running into a JKR “what the hell did she say now” situation.

What is it with warrior cats?

I have always been wondering why it is so famous and praised. Can someone explain to me and enlighten me on the subject please?