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Hi ! prompt idea : What if Zuko was armed during the first episode and was stranded with the water tribe while the avatar left with Katara and Sokka, Iroh on his trail for white lotus reasons.
Oh we are going to have us some FUN with "stranded with the water tribe", say no more.
---
Zuko was dripping, and steaming, and staring down two dozen women and their gaggle of small children, plus that old not-the-Avatar crone from earlier. They were all cowering away from him. Which was--
Good. It was good. If they were cowering, then they hadn’t noticed how steam was not flames. He wasn’t sure he could make flames, not after the arctic water he’d landed in, with that last sight of the Avatar glowing; not after surfacing under the ice pack, after swimming, after kicking slamming breaking through and his ship was gone and there was only ocean all around and
and he’d made it back to this pathetic little camp of the Southern Water Tribe, because that was the only place he knew for sure would have shelter, and he wasn’t going to die just because they were all staring at him, even if felt like he would.
Even if the old not-the-Avatar woman could probably take him, right now. But she didn’t know that.
Zuko pulled himself up, taller than her by at least a few inches, and blew steam from his nose.
“I am commandeering one of your huts,” he said. And added, because Uncle said even a prince should be gracious: “You may choose which one.”
---
She choose her own.
...The only one without children that flames might scar, or younger women to catch a soldier’s interests.
Zuko sat by her fire and determinedly started struggling out of his wet clothes and she was still in here with him--
Zuko pulled one of her animal pelts over himself, and finished fighting off his clothes. When he stuck his head back out, cheeks still reddened from what was obviously the cold, she dropped a parka on his head.
“Dry clothes, Your Highness,” she said.
The parka was much bigger than he was. He fell asleep hoping that the camp’s men were on a long, long hunting trip.
---
He woke up again. Kanna tucked her favorite ulu knife away, newly sharpened, and stopped contemplating the alternative.
---
“I am commandeering a ship,” he said.
The crone led him across the village, all twenty paces of it, to a row of canoes.
“Take whichever one you want,” she said. “Will you need help getting it to the water?”
Zuko looked at the canoes. Looked at the ocean. Watched a leopard seal, easily the size of the largest canoe, dozing just past the ice his own ship had broken through the day before. It was frozen again, a great icy arrow pointing from the waves to the village, snow already starting to cover it over.
Beyond was blue sky and gray ocean and white ice, floating in blocks like stepping stones, like boulders, like cliffsides.
There wasn’t even a hint of gray steel, or smoke. Or any land, besides what they were standing on.
He looked down at the canoes again. Somehow, they seemed even smaller.
“I, uh,” Zuko cleared his throat. “I’ll require supplies. Before I go.”
---
They... did not have supplies. Not extra ones. This didn’t stop them from trying to give him supplies, food and blankets and anything else he could think to ask for. But each blanket was a pelt hunted by someone’s grandfather, had been inked with images and stories by someone’s mother, was the favorite of someone’s husband or brother or uncle or cousin--
They couldn’t go to the nearest market to replace things, here.
And when they talked about food, about what they could spare, they kept sneaking glances to their children, who were sneaking glances at Zuko from the huts, sticking their heads just over the snowy ledges like their fur-trimmed hoods would hide them. Their mothers and aunts shooed them away, and they crept back, like barnacle-crabs. Zuko glared, and they disappeared.
“When are your men coming back?” he asked. “They’re hunting, aren’t they?”
Oh. So that was what they looked like, when they weren’t trying to hide their hate.
---
Zuko wrapped himself up in the same blanket that night. It was printed inside with fine lines and images, telling a story he didn’t know. He wondered whose favorite it was.
---
Kanna wondered how quickly he’d wake—if he’d wake—if she built the fire up with wet driftwood and tundra grass, if she had one of the younger girls boost up a child to plug the air hole, if she let the smoke draw its own blanket down over this fire child.
---
It was hard to know when to wake up, because the sun never set. So everyone was up before him, and they all had spears and clubs and—and nets, and trap lines, and snow googles with their single slat to protect the eyes from snow blindness. Zuko had seen those once, at the Ember Island Museum of Ethnography, where they’d gone when it was too rainy for anything more exciting.
Oh. They were going hunting.
“Give me that,” Zuko said, and took a spear.
The women looked at him. One of them adjusted her googles.
“I can hunt,” he scowled.
He did not, in fact, know how to hunt.
---
“Give me that,” the Fire Prince said, and Kanna almost, almost gave him her ulu. Humans, like most animals, had an artery in their legs that would bleed them quick enough.
She kept skinning the rabbit-mink one of the women had snared.
“I can help,” he said, with less grace than most of their toddlers. Likely with the skinning skills of a toddler, too. She wasn’t going to let their unwanted visitor ruin a perfectly good pelt.
“Chop the meat,” she said, and gave him a different knife. “It’s dinner.”
“...This is really sharp,” he said a moment later, looking at the knife with some surprise.
“Is it,” said Kanna.
---
Things the Fire Prince was convinced he could do: hunt (until he realized he couldn’t tell the tracks of a rabbit-mink from a leopard-rabbit apart); spear fish (at least he could dry himself); pack snow for an igloo (frustrated princes ran hot); ice fish (the prince was a problem that kept coming close to solving itself).
Things the Fire Prince could actually do: mince meat, increasingly finely; gather berries and herbs, once he stopped trying to crush them; dig roots, under toddler supervision; mend nets, after the intermediary step of learning to braid hair loopies.
“Can’t I take him ice fishing again?” asked one of the women, as she watched Prince Zuko put as much apparent concentration into braiding her daughter’s hair as his people had into exterminating hers.
“Wait,” said another woman, sitting up straight. “Wait wait wait. I just had an idea.”
---
Three words: Infinite. Hot. Water.
---
Summer was coming to an end. The sun actually set, now, and the night was getting longer, and colder. The salmon-otter nets were mended and ready. The smoking racks were still full of cod-lemmings. The children were all a little older, the women all a little more used to doing both halves of their tribes’ chores; a little more used to not watching the horizon, waiting for help to come.
The Fire Prince was staring at the canoes again.
“Are you actually going to try leaving in one of those?” Kanna asked.
“...No.”
“Come on, then; someone needs to watch the kids while the women are hunting.”
She didn’t leave him alone with them, of course. But she could have.
---
Elsewhere, the war continued.
The moon turned red, for a moment none could sleep through; they did not learn why.
The comet came and went, leaving their castaway prince laying on the beach, his breath fogging up into the night sky above him, as the energy crashed from his system as quickly as it had come. Above, lights began to dance in the sky; Zuko pulled his hood up, so none of those spirits—children, dead too soon—got any ideas about kicking his head off to be their ball.
The war had ended. The world didn’t feel any different; no one in the south would know until spring came again.
---
Suffice it to say, Sokka and Katara were not prepared for this particular homecoming.
#Sokka: please stop calling my Gran-Gran by her first name. please.#Kanna: you’re right Sokka he can call me Gran-Gran#Sokka: THAT IS WORSE THAT IS SO MUCH WORSE#Meanwhile Hakoda: you adopted WHO#Kanna didn’t ADOPT anyone thank-you-much she was very practically holding that boy for the fleet to use for ransom#why Hakoda#what would you have done if you had a Fire Prince#avatar the last airbender#atla#Zuko#Kanna#ficlet#(infinite hot water lady is ABSOLUTELY Toklo’s aunt)#(he looks to the prince looks to her and spontaneously invents the High Five)
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also I don’t say it enough but I love sera she is not grating she is not obnoxious… she is wrong sometimes but she actually always makes sense, is extremely insightful and her points are perfectly understandable if you just pay attention and don’t get caught up in the -way- she’s delivering
#like she makes SENSE.#and yeah she’s not exactly intersectional but like as far as DA characters go she practically invented class consciousness LMAO#sera#dragon age
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Love that Star Trek accurately portrays humans in the future as being DTF practically anything. Works wonders for diplomacy.
"Sure I don't find you attractive, but give me ten minutes, your Excellency, and I'll find someone on this ship who's into tentacles and slime."
We may not be super intelligent or super strong, but give humans a chance. We're annoyingly likeable, tenacious, stubborn, and attracted to the weirdest things.
#star trek#humans are weird#would tag humans are space orcs#but we're not#humans are space whores#Its a course in Starfleet Academy#every ship must come with an officer who's frisky and feeling risky#Jim Kirk for the Enterprise#William Riker for the Enterprise D#Julian Bashir for DS9#Tom Paris and Harry Kim for Voyager#And also Vorik?#Oh and can't forget Trip Tucker#Or Jonathan Archer#They practically invented the position after Shran and the whole pregnancy thing#Being DTF comes with risks#Like telepathic pregnancy or battles to the death
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Want to get some last minute holiday shopping done, but don't want to wait for shipping?
Well come on down to the Community Bazaar held by Ignition and Fire Camp on December 5th, and stay cozy by fire light as you explore a selection of vendors and watch the talented crew perform.
https://facebook.com/events/s/december-open-practice-communi/3876670872595961/
This will be my last in-person booth of the faire and festival season, so come on over if you're able and say hi.
Custom orders will also be available onsite and will come with free shipping for those looking to upgrade their adventure gear for the new year.
I'll also be bringing my fire sword and shield. 😉 🔥
I hope you all have a warm and wonderful week. 💛🧡❤️
Photo Credit to IRDEEP Photography,
EspressoBuzz Photography & Vitz Photography
#community#bazaar#ignition#firetroupe#fire camp#holiday#shopping#experience#open practice#bothel#rental hall#local vendors#much merrry fun to be had#archer inventive
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#I am literally going insane!#gif three is giving. practicing a presentation or pitch. or statement. specter ross era. they're a team!!!!#and mike's like. analysing but also. the touch so familiar gentle 🥹🥺#and GIF FOUR. I HAVE STARED AT THIS FOR HOURS NOW?#happiest they've ever been because they're! in! a relationship! now! open close comfy loose happy happy happy themmmmm them them#they're just??? they're literally each others. couldn't be more compatible. more simpatico. with any other.#they invented being in love. no one will ever be it like they are#anyway thank you t-mobile for my monthly put-them-in-situations + remove-the-context + brainstorm-it-from-there -athon 🙏#suits#suits tv#suits usa#marvey#harvey specter#mike ross#gabriel macht#patrick j adams#harvey x mike#mike x harvey#tmobile#t mobile#t-mobile#late to the party on this one lol but I am turning up the music! marvey party never stops
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Late night sketch🔫
#tw guns i guess??#i had my airsoft cz lying around so the sketch was bound to happen#it was invented in 75 so it even fits into canon (somehow)#i refuse to believe gru didn't have any airsoft guns come on he gotta practice with something#my art#artists on tumblr#digital art#Despicable me#despicable me fanart#felonious gru
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Practicing piano remembering why I never actually got good at piano bc I hate practicinggggg AUGH
#i dont mind and even enjoy practicing on every other instrument but my brain hates piano so badddd#alas i must nail down this bach invention bc I dont want to have to waste my time in a beginners piano course next sem#i talk
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Intellectually I understand where people are coming from, but personally I do THE biggest double take every time someone boils down conservative Christian ideology (and/or secularized cultural reflections thereof) to a kind of dour puritanism that proclaims happiness is sin/suffering is a moral good/everyone should be miserable all the time. Like I get it! I do. But also, institutionally, I have never met a group of more passionate worshippers and vicious defenders of their own comfort than evangelical Christians. There is a reason the common thread between my various weird triggers more or less boils down to "toxic positivity." There is a REASON my exvangelical tag is #walking away from omelas.
#one of my biggest problems with half-cooked critiques of christianity tbqh#and fundamentally it's just the flip side of the same coin#to liberal christians going 'well republicans aren't REAL christians bc they flout the teachings of their own holy text'#religions are socially as well as ideologically constructed! 'real' christianity is christianity as it is really practiced!#valid critique WITHIN the faith perhaps but not that meaningful (and in fact kind of willfully dense imo) take on christianity as a whole.#likewise trying to pin the evils of institutional christianity on some fatal underlying theological flaw is getting the issue backwards#in much the same way that treating race as a biological reality as opposed to a social construct is getting things backwards#empires do not rob and murder and enslave because they are racist.#they do those things out of naked self interest and invent racism to justify themselves and prop up their power.#walking away from omelas#my posts
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seriously what is it with tennis players and dishwashers?!
#this is weird guys#where does this strange reluctance to use one of the most practical household inventions come from?#i'd really like to know#and of course with novak it has to be an example of mindfulness and meditation#nole please#jannik sinner#novak djokovic#dishwashing#(i can't believe i just tagged that)#tennis
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I haven't seen anyone else talk about this so I will
THIS MOMENT RIGHT HERE I LOOK AT IT AND GO ABABABA
Icarus knows what's going on here I mean they've said several time that they know they're being manipulated but it's one thing saying you know something is happening and another to watch it happen in real time right after your brother made connections to how you used to treat someone else
Fable looks around at the changes prompting an apology from Icarus leading to Fable quickly and loudly blaming Quixis for changing thing bit in the kinda way you would blame someone for ruining your life and then the other shoe drops Fable knows damn well what day it is so he pretends to apologize for not being able to remove Quixis but then is quick to blame Centross for his failure to do so
you can see a sliver of the want to protest that Centross was protecting them that he saved their life that their best friend died valiantly protecting his family but they just don't have that kinda fight left it's not worth it and admitting that they were ever in need of saving implys a danger to be saved from and it doesn't take a genius to know how that would go over
Icarus is so tired they're fucking exhausted and sometimes when you're that tired the good fight can wait sometimes it's quicker safer and easier to just nod along and wait for them to finish whatever rant they deem it necessary for you to hear let whatever point they needed to make drive home and then go to bed because after everything even doing nothing but listen to them can be absolutely draining
#thank you for coming to my ted talk#i just think they're neat#i go abababababa#the psychology of icarus morningstar consumes my brain#they know what manipulation looks like#they practically invented that kind of manipulation#they know damn well whats going on#but they aren't going to fight it#and i go abababababa#and this above most other things shows the stark contrast between Rae and Icarus#AND I GO ABABABABABABABA#fablesmp
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how does it feel to blow up in this way ?! I've been reading your fic since you posted chapter 3.... its so cool seeing you get the recognition you deserve!
surreal like so surreal.
obviously i have an overwhelming amount of gratitude that clouds all else. the amount of kindness has been insane, and the incredible art that I've gotten has moved me to tears like multiple times haha.
i really have no words! it's also nice, (I said this in one of my notes) because I write professionally but haven't been able to put any of my writing out there so immediately, it's really nice to see that my work can get this kind of response, especially since this was something I was writing without taking it too seriously ?? I've learned so much!
it's hard to speak to the occasional overwhelm - because I'm so humbled by all of this the last thing i'd ever want to do is come off cocky/like I'm complaining - but sometimes it's really hard for me to wrap my head around WHY DLFKSJDh.
I wrote Viktor the way i did for a reason LMAO. It's very hard for me to take compliments and its even harder for me to believe them and internalize them. That's definitely been a big hurdle for me.
i also just don't know how to talk about it and respond to things sometimes. i also feel a bit less like I can just actively participate in fandom space - especially on twitter right now. im very afraid of coming off like I think I'm hot shit for writing a fanfiction based off of a show based off league of fucking legends DKJFSHDFlk.
the good news is is i've been met with such an overwhelming amount of kindness that its really helped me regain some faith in people. i rarely get weirdos
so yeah. i'm so happy and grateful :) even though its sometimes overwhelming for someone like me - who struggles with attention and praise haah.
#i had one guy who was absolutely deranged right as coming home was starting to get attention and right before I posted chapter 12 -#it was so unhinged that i almost feel desensitized to everything else#i might talk about it one day because in retrospect its incredibly funny#ask bee#like he was verrrry mad i didnt care to do research on american business practices#im like king this is set in a fictional city and we have a character inventing little butterfly drones that can melt guns#he also called viktor a filthy capitlist for wanting the job because of the lab space and salary#but like trust me there was so much more to it. like when i say unhinged i mean UNHINGED
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What is it that the Rat Grinders actually want exactly? Or at least, what does Kipperlilly want since she's the one we know the most about.
At the top of the season it seemed like she wanted to Be The Best at school and Be Recognized in a very Tracy Flick/Sara Berry kind of way and was just going to crazy lengths to get there because this is a world where you help a dragon kidnap girls so you can be Prom Queen and life goes on. But now we know that the Rat Grinders are a part of Porter's larger plan and one of the major steps of that plan is completely abolishing Aguefort as an institution.
It's clear what Porter gets out of this. He gets to be a god and he gets to continue his imperialistic family legacy. And I would maybe get what Kipperlilly would get out of this is she were the Cleric/Paladin of the plan. She'd get to be the new god's champion, like she was gushing to Lucy. That's maybe worth something to an achievement hunting, Type A individual.
But she's not gonna get to be the best student at Aguefort if Aguefort doesn't exist anymore. Hell, Elmville won't really exist anymore. Is Porter planning on opening a new Adventuring School in Rage Elmville and she gets to be the god Principal's pet? Does she think he's gonna make things "fair" for her somehow? How? Retroactively killing her parents? Does she want to use the powers she cheesed from the easy XP he drip fed her to be a renown adventurer? Kinda hard to pull that off when everyone knows you were part of the plan that doomed the town. Maybe she thought they were going to get away with it without being implicated? Does she literally not want anything other than a chance to kill the Bad Kids? Or even pettier, to just to be stronger than Riz? Is that worth it to her? To damn the whole town just so she can say that she beat Riz once? Did she want something concrete at one point but at this point she's just lost in the sauce and doing whatever the next task is without knowing what she'd even do with a victory if she got it? Did she already get what she wanted in the free XP and now she's just paying her end of the bargain?
I'm just very unsure about what her version of a happy ending is here.
#dimension 20#d20#fantasy high#kipperlilly copperkettle#i was gonna save this for a recap but I may do the last 2 recaps put together bc they're battle eps#so we'll see#if porter was literally just like do you want a chance to kill her rivals and they were like boy do I! that'd be nuts#I have to assume there was more to it than that but idk man#even if the RG's have rage stars I think that means they're influenced not mind controlled puppets#I assume she has goals and desires#I just have no idea what they could be at this point in the story#and if it's just to be stronger then woof#crazy reason to damn your town to being rage city#in her mind what is her place in the endgame?#and what would be 'fair' to her?#even before she ended up in this plot what did she want that she wasn't getting?#like in her world what should they do to compensate for her not having a dead dad?#curve her grade?#kill her dad?#like practically what did she want?#i think it would have made sense if kipperlilly was doing a kind of syndrome thing#making up threats to defeat#inventing her own plot hooks#but this plan doesn't seem very mastermind rogue of her#I guess blind rage isn't great for evil plans#also for that matter what's up with jace
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as i often do, i am once again thinkin about clothes and my thought process that goes into picking specific outfits or pieces for any particular art. specifically, drawing Wolf with their plastic coat -- which has been part of their character basically since the beginning and in an odd way has even informed their character's evolution.
i like to use it when its evocative of them wearing their heart on their sleeve, baring it all, asking for you to look at them whole and accept them (whether they might be half dead and crying or covered in blood and flirting). they look like a walking condom for a reason.
but - it is still an extra layer, an illusion of full transparency, they are ultimately in control how much they show and to who. their preference is for clothes that cut a sharp silhoutte, often shiny, light catching materials. somethign that people notice before they even look at their face.
then there's Bastien, ive talked about him developing his own style over the years at length before but i also like cherry picking what he wears to suit the art. extra layers when he's guarded and not (yet) comfortable around someone, and his loose sleeveless tees when,lets say, they don't mind when someone ogles his arms and body a bit. when he feels most comfortable in his skin, which is rare. he doesn't like being nude or putting himself on display any more than that, normally.
Bastien likes simple cuts, neutral colors and no patterns because he thinks of himself in those simple, straight cut, plain ways. despite that he has a bit of "flair" a chain here, a leather band, an earring, a simple choker. something small that's allowed to break out of his self imposed cage.
and imo the star of my last painting, his lil frayed sweater - again only the illusion of him being more covered up, more guarded but those walls are falling apart, the edges of his attempts at distancing himself from their feelings frayed and torn.
#suddenly ive realized i wanted to yap more abt random OC stuff on this blog and i absolutely HAVENT in like six months. maybe more#some of it is due life events and some of it is i get too embarrassed. but i need to get into the practice of just talking about random oc#stuff. so anyway this was on my mind and here it is on the page now too#wolfgang#bastien#i should invent a tag thats for rambling but not like lore rambling uhhh hm
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How likely is it do you think that there are/have been Grimm-based cults? I can't imagine there's Never been Grimm cults, and I'm particularly interested in the idea of there being Grimm cults or even just organizations who Actually Understand the Grimm and safely live alongside them. I think it's such a fascinating idea, I'm very tempted to come up with a mysterious faction that respects/admires the Grimm (like how people did/do respect forces of nature in religion) and (mostly) safely lives alongside them. Any thoughts?
two obvious paths. whether the second is viable depends on how well you trust my basic reading of the grimm as sapient beings who reflect back what they’re given—dark mirrors—but the first is textually sound without any extrapolation required.
#1: the grimm as gods of war
these are the salient facts:
the grimm follow groups of bandits around to scavenge in the wake of their raids
criminals in mistral sometimes use captive grimm to execute members of rival gangs
grimm are more strongly drawn by violent anger and hatred than by sadness, fear, or other negative emotions.
it’s possible (per ‘before the dawn’) for one side of a conflict to "ally" with the grimm in battle if the other side is, er, tastier
ok. imagine you have a region where most of the people live in small nomadic groups—perhaps a steppe or a desert, their subsistence base is herding—with smatterings of fortified towns and villages around the edges of the region where there’s arable land enough to support a larger sedentary population. the nomadic groups can’t produce their own weapons/armor (mines, smelters, and forges aren’t portable), so they’ll need to either raid or trade with the towns for that. and conflicts between these nomadic groups over territory and other resources are inevitable.
how do the grimm figure in this region?
well a) the grimm are going to be following the nomadic groups around, with more warlike groups attracting more grimm, and b) grimm will fight alongside people against a common enemy if their "allies" are calmer or otherwise less appealing.
this is like… a perfect storm for the nomadic groups to start venerating "their" grimm as war-gods, in tandem with fostering warrior-cultures that prize tranquility or joy and mercy in battle; there is no honor in hatred or rage or taking pleasure in killing (our grimm turn against those warriors who lose themselves to bloodlust), so a good warrior must be calm, decisive, and swift, and never prolong a fight unnecessarily. but it’s also beneficial to make one’s enemies fearful and angry, or provoke them into hatred.
all it takes is one or two warriors who kept a cool head in battle noticing that the grimm ignored them to go after another warrior who went berserk and then interpreting this as a moral judgment. historically, we know grimm were thought to be the vengeful or corrupted spirits of animals, or animals possessed by demons; both are understandings that encourage this sort of thinking. these are animal spirits that cannot rest because someone killed them without giving due respect, and now they seek to punish those who commit such wrongs… so we’d better take care to treat our adversaries in battle and the animals we hunt with honor and mercy.
and oh, we should pay our respects to the grimm, too. perhaps make some offerings. they eat the corpses of the slain after a battle, so… a) we mustn’t be wasteful when we hunt, it isn’t respectful, and b) we should consider the grimm in our funeral customs.
this is a very basic. BASIC human impulse. humans will try to propitiate the fucking sky because we’re so good at pattern recognition and also anthropomorphizing things that we’ll find patterns and read meaning into the most random coincidences. take that and add it to the fact that it legitimately is possible to form alliances with grimm… fgrhjsv
under these conditions grimm-worship probably tends to look something like:
warrior cultures that prize moderation, calmness, efficiency, and clever mockery or intimidation of the enemy in battle,
funeral customs that ritualize feeding the dead to grimm, and/or ritual sacrifice of captured enemies,
grimm viewed as battlefield psychopomps and/or patron spirits of warriors, whether as a class or as individuals or both, and
incorporation of grimm-like designs or motifs into armor and clothing of warriors, to intimidate enemies.
with wide variation in the details and elaborations. the reason for this common set of foundational practices is that religion is practical. it’s not arbitrary. it isn’t pretend. prayer and ritual are things people do because it works, or it’s believed to work, and the right methods are figured out through trial and error long before they coagulate into tradition. so with something like grimm, whose behavior really can be meaningfully influenced, similar patterns will emerge across different cultures because whether a given practice does or doesn’t work is a) more than random chance or coincidence, and b) extremely easy to identify because if it doesn’t work the grimm will attack you.
& #2, the grimm as nature gods
these are my presuppositions, based on extrapolation from the text:
the grimm have a physiological need for aura, which they can get by siphoning; they eat their prey in order to extract aura from the remains.
grimm attraction to emotions is akin to our attraction to the aroma and taste of food; strong emotions herald deep auras or excite aura so it’s more "nutritious" for the grimm, so they hunt by following emotion.
because aura/soul separates from the body at death, siphoning aura from a living person is much more efficient than killing and eating; grimm will prefer to be fed aura by someone alive over hunting if possible.
because aura can be channeled outward through tools, clothing, etc, it can also be channeled into a repository and stored for a while; this seems to be how the grimm lures in arrowfell work.
grimm are intelligent, emotional, social creatures who can learn to recognize certain groups of people as 'safe' or as friends/allies, without salem.
grimm reflect back the emotional energy they’re given; they’re not "attracted" to anger or pain per se, they just mirror it. bristle and draw your weapon at a grimm, and the grimm will charge at you. remain calm and retreat slowly, and the grimm will keep its distance too.
if all of these presuppositions are true, you can propitiate grimm by saturating an object with aura and leaving that out for the grimm on the regular. i imagine that organic/living things that naturally have aura would work best for this purpose; sacrificing an animal or a portion of your harvest is intuitive, and if fervent religious belief alone isn’t enough to infuse something with aura, then priests or religious officials whose auras have been unlocked and trained will do the trick.
if aura-saturated offerings aren’t possible, then you’d need someone with aura training to channel aura to the grimm through, like, a stick, or bare-handed if they were brave enough or confident enough. this is a more uncomfortable option (like physically) but we have a canonical example of a character doing it: she found it disconcerting, but not painful, and it’s implied that the grimm didn’t attack her at any point during. so a) it probably doesn’t do any more harm than having one’s defensive aura break, and b) stopping the flow of aura to the grimm by moving away won’t provoke the grimm to attack.
as unpleasant the prospect might seem, if it clearly worked to reduce or eliminate grimm attacks on the community, people would do this. people would absolutely do this. the big hurdle lies in discovering that this is possible—like you’d need someone to willingly approach a grimm, lay a hand on it, and channel aura into it without knowing what will happen, and the kind of person who would even think to TRY that is very rare—but once it was known? religious belief motivates people do all sorts of unpleasant, uncomfortable, or even outright painful and harmful things to themselves. fasting. self-flagellation. hermitage.
like… waves hands. if it’s a known thing in a community that grimm won’t attack anyone if a few people go into the wilderness every morning to stand there and pour aura into grimm who pass by until they’re tapped out for the day, lots of people will be fully willing and able to do that. far more than are willing and able to become huntsmen: it’s not dangerous or difficult, it’s just going to tire you out on your assigned days. and if you have say, a village of a hundred people of whom ten are able to do it, you can rotate so no individual has to do it more often than thrice a month. NBD.
and if nothing else except the emotional mirroring thing is true, then you can… more or less propitiate grimm by doing whatever, because in this case what makes propitiation effective is community belief that it works: if you and everyone else around you believes that wearing pendants carved in the likeness of grimm and pouring a libation of wine outside the village gates to entreat the grimm for safe passage through the wilds is effective in making the grimm leave you alone, then no one’s going to panic or raise the alarm upon seeing a grimm wandering around in the barley field, and the grimm won’t freak out either.
if you believe that a grimm is a being that can be appeased and you cross paths with one in the woods, you’re going to do what you believe will keep you safe; for a huntsman, that’s "draw a weapon and attack," but for you that might be "hold up your grimm pendant and recite a prayer to politely wish it well and ask for its blessing in return," which—if the grimm just reflect your emotional energy back at you—will probably make the grimm pause and look at you for a moment before continuing on, which confirms and reinforces your belief that this is the correct way to deal with grimm. This Is How Religion Works.
so all that to say, as long as i’m correct about at least one of these presuppositions—the one with the strongest textual evidence, no less—then propitiating the grimm will reduce their aggression dramatically if not stop it altogether. and if that’s the case then i’d imagine grimm-worship is quite common and also varied in more remote regions where human-grimm encounters are frequent.
the shape of that worship will evolve out of how people in a given community figured out that you can do this with grimm. if one person tries a certain thing and it works, and then more people try the same thing and it works for them to, then that is going to become known as the Thing That Works and it will be gradually refined and elaborated on from generation to generation. and on the other side of the mountains they might be doing the same process but with a completely different thing that also worked the first time.
so you might have a village making huge ritual productions of preparing a feast for the grimm with a portion of the harvest, orchestrated by a coterie of priests who fill the offerings with aura… and in the hinterlands a few hundred miles away you might have a group of nomadic herders who leave the bones of every sheep they eat for the grimm and also have elaborate coming-of-age rituals where you go into the wilderness to prove yourself to the grimm by baring your soul… and up north on the coast you might have a whaling town where sailors pray to something like the leviathan or the feilong as a sea-god because their ancestors happened to stumble into a symbiotic relationship with a giant grimm that preys on whales and realized these little guys in boats make better hunting partners than they do snacks. etc.
basically if you accept a presupposition that the grimm aren’t "soulless evil monsters whose sole purpose is to kill humans" and consider them as beings that have some rhyme or reason as to when they’re aggressive and when they’re not, and the rhyme or reason is something humans/faunus could plausibly figure out how to accommodate and/or influence, there are a lot of ways to build a grimm cult. ’cause religion is at its core humans trying to understand the world so we can keep ourselves safe, healthy, and comfortable; worshipping grimm is just a cultural framework for a threat management program.
think about it in those terms, and take however you think grimm work and ask "what could people Do to lower the risk of grimm attacking them?" and "what might people Do that doesn’t really have an effect but seems like it maybe does?" and then start to elaborate from there with "okay, what stories do people tell to explain why they do these things and how they learned to do these things? how do they conceive of the grimm and their relationship to grimm? how does this shape the social and moral values of this religion?" etc.
praxis comes first, belief second. and the praxis develops through trial and error with the basic goal of "how can we make the grimm leave us alone?" so things that clearly don’t work will be discarded. (with ‘clearly don’t work’ meaning "we did this and grimm immediately attacked us"; people will tend to take "we did this and grimm didn’t attack us for two months" to mean "it worked! we should do it every other month!")
#and that’s how you build a religion :)#worship is practical! it’s meant to be effective! humans are really bad at distinguishing correlation from causation so we#develop irrational belief systems based on coincidence and our bonkers pattern recognition#which is why all religions ever are So Weird. WE’RE weird.#but it’s practical nevertheless. people do it because it works or it seems to work and the belief systems are just us#telling stories about ourselves#to explain why we do stuff because ''it works'' isn’t satisfying. we ALL have the toddler urge to go BUT WHY??#and then we come up with a better story. scientists do this also they just invented a process that#puts up guardrails against the universal human reflex to go ''well i put a bucket outside hoping it would rain and it did rain. therefore#putting buckets outside makes it rain.'' lmfao
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Hc that both Sokka and Mai would be BEASTS at pool. Like those two??? With their aim??? Absolutely destroying the competition and subtly showing out with tricks while they’re at it
The Gaang has a rule stating that Sokka and Mai are no longer allowed to play pool on a team together because it’s mean and unfair. Sokka just calls them sore losers and Mai gives a cold cold glare
#sokka + mai friendship supremacy#mai avatar#atla mai#mai atla#sokka#atla#avatar#avatar the last airbender#avatar headcanons#atla headcanons#modern au#maybe??#honestly this could be both#WAIT SEPARATE HC#If pool isn’t already a game played in the atla universe#then Sokka invents it as a fun way to practice his aim and learn cool tricks#then he starts playing it with the Gaang and it catches on#Mai demands a face off between the two of them#some say that to this day they still haven’t declared a winner#(maybe they don’t want to bc they enjoy having competition)
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