#this isn't the end of the arc AT ALL

[seyaryminamoto]

I try not to get too rambly lately because I am indeed busy (trying to finish a Patreon piece rn!), but... I'd say this moment warrants it.

I have spent over a decade building up to this chapter and its developments. It's very much the climax of the entire story. The journey we've been on was always meant to lead us to this, for all emotions to come to a head, for all threads to converge right where they shall.

To make it clear just how long ago I intended for this particular plot point, I hereby present all evidence needed:

This is a scanned old artwork from a long time ago. I've kept it quiet for ages, showing it only to a few people, because I didn't want to give away too much pertaining how Gladiator would unfold.

This piece was scanned on November 11th, 2014, according to the properties of the file. While of course I was nowhere near the level of quality I am at now, this piece, at the time, was one of my unquestionable best. In fact, I remember @jordanalane straight up asking me if I had asked someone else to draw this, because it seemed sooooooooo beyond my style back in those days... I was pretty flattered by that, even if maybe I should have been proud and said OF COURSE it was me! 🤣But the point still stands, it was a rarity for me to do something of this quality 10 years ago, even if I absolutely could remake it and outdo it now.

What I'm saying is simply that I've spent a long, long time working towards this endgame. Once I realized where we were headed, the direction of Gladiator became kind of immutable in my head. It was the ending that made sense. The development that would bring everything together properly:

Our story started with these two clashing, as enemies, and altering their lives forever by what appeared to be a mere coincidence.

In that instance, Sokka was completely overwhelmed. He wasn't strong enough to fight one-on-one against Azula. She had the upper hand at every point in time. That was the starting point of Sokka's gradual power climb: he faced an unbeatable foe who then became his greatest ally, helping him become so much stronger than he ever knew he could be...

... Leading up to this: once again, they face each other as enemies, after what feels like a lifetime of bonding and sharing incredible adventures, growing together and becoming better people by each other's side. Both grew stronger across time... but Sokka, undoubtedly, had the steeper power climb. Thus, the outcome this time is nowhere near as straight-forward as it was back when the story began.

Sokka's growth was meant to bring him here, to face his worst possible enemy, and this time, actually have a chance to prevail. What most people surely didn't expect all along was for this worst-enemy to be Azula, of all people, after everything they've been through. But what exactly will he choose when he finally has a chance at victory against her? Can he stay true to who he is... or will the pressures destroy him?

Near the start of the story, Piandao warned Azula to be careful, for if she broke Sokka to the point where he no longer knew who he was, Sokka would lose his greatest strength. He warned her not to turn him into someone he was not. It's a thread that has been dangling all throughout the story, sometimes easily forgotten, but ever-present nonetheless: in pushing matters to the extent Azula has, is Sokka's true self lost now? Or will he cling to it still, even in the face of likely death, all be it to make an unthinkable choice that might just change the fate of the world...?

:')

Guess you'll find out on Friday! :'D

Preview: Gladiator Chapter 374

As memories of better times rush through their minds and hearts, Sokka and Azula collide on a battlefield, as enemies, for the first time since their fateful encounter in the South Pole. The armies around them remain at a standstill, waiting for the outcome of the duel between Princess and Gladiator.

One will hesitate. The other will demand for no mercy. As steel and flames clash furiously, the fate of the world shall hinge on the choice the victor shall make, upon facing a defeated foe: will the blade strike down...?

Or will they surrender?

Read Gladiator HERE or HERE

For a snippet of the new chapter, support me on Patreon!

[late-draft]

I'd contribute a tiny bit to the pro-Zutara side when it comes to the idea of Katara in the role of a co-ruler of the Fire Nation.

I understand where the negative arguments are coming from, how it's especially "shocking" if she enters the royal family (one which led the oppressive regime which waged war for 100 years and caused so much devastation);

however, firstly it is really no longer that family. Zuko committed high treason, almost died TRICE for that and still kept steady on that course, rejected his family, the family's terrible ideas about the world and both Ozai and Azula were imprisoned. Nobody supporting the old ways is still there. I don't understand negative arguments which treat Zuko's early background, lineage, political role (which may be incredibly undefined as the entire nation is being restructured, it's fantasy) as a more important factor than him as a person. He treats others with respect after undergoing redemption, he's demonstrably empathetic, he's working on undoing as much damage the Fire Nation has caused as possible, he was ready to die for these things. Secondly, why should a job or a title in a fantasy setting be a more relevant argument than love? If love was real and strong: if there's mutual respect between two people, understanding, cooperation, splitting of tasks, mutual care, communication on how to tackle problems, this is much more important and holds more weight than whether or not a role granting political power is from this or that side.

From what I've seen, the dominant headcanon for Zutara is that it wouldn't be oppressive to her but instead allow her to affect the world. It makes sense, most people want their favourite characters to be happy - AND there's no canonical evidence to suggest that being a co-ruler of the new Fire Nation would be a terrible, oppressive, restrictive position. Sure, there can also be headcanons where duty to other parts of the world might be too heavy and they split Zuko and Katara up, but this is a Tragedy trope and it only exists when there's incredibly strong love between them underneath this. So even this argument ends up supporting zutara.

I think that any arguments that use outside reasons why their relationship would be terrible are in the end much weaker in philosophy, compared to arguments about whether or not there are strong feelings between them. This is fantasy, love is an incredibly powerful force. And audience wants to believe in the power of love.

Now, if you ask me, I'd say I believe two characters absolutely do not need to have an on-screen kiss or anything completely explicit in order to convey that yes, they have deep feelings for each other. Shipping comes down to preferences, many people certainly simply Do Not Vibe with Zuko as a personality or whatever. However, this is a separate thing from what the characters are written as doing, how they are behaving in each other's company and how they treat each other.

So I'd say, if Katara loves Zuko (and vice-versa), then that's fullstop. Anything else is just an obstacle in their way which they'd tackle together.

[blackhholes]

teen wolf meme: [3/5] motifs -> resurrection

It's different now. I think dying did something to him. It did something to me, too. But none of it was good.

[kindaorangey]

recently i've been thinking about rowan omondi in terms of the "supportive black best friend" trope. i've had this idea for a while that it would be interesting to see a story that deals specifically with the psychological effects of being the designated "support friend", especially in cases where that character addressing/expressing their own emotions and advocating for themself would be stigmatised because of their race... and obviously, rowan fits into this neatly, actively repressing and refusing to talk about his feelings because he isn't usually given this sort of support by his friends, it's usually him who's supporting them. and i guess on a metatextual level, once he begins to address his own emotional repression and step down from that support role, you could view it as him becoming cognisant of his own role as the "supportive black best friend".

[bonefall]

...Something's kinda hitting me, guys. I think something just clicked.

So we all know that BB!DOTC is the arc I'm not staying faithful to, right? A lot of characters are getting total overhauls? I'd actually been dancing pretty heavily around the pro-colonialism themes in the original text, simply because I don't really feel comfortable handling them (same with certain sexual themes, it's not great for my mental health to force myself to engage with certain elements that are triggering)

So I'd made it so there was Park Cats (Wind Coalition and River Kingdom) who arrived relatively recently, and Tribe Cats (Sky's Clan, Shadow's Clan) who nestle into an unclaimed spot in the forest. All groups roughly equal in power until Thunder's Clan which was existing in defiance.

But Clanmew isn't JUST comprised of Parkmew and Tribemew-- there's a third contributor. Old Townmew, which mixes with Parkmew and forms Middle Townmew, mixing again with Clanmew to create Modern Townmew.

Since I'm now really thinking about the colonialism themes, especially in my re-read where it starts reaching its narrative conclusion in Books 5 and 6... I think I need to add that 3rd cultural group. I need to make them a player. I think I'm doing a serious disservice by only having the Park Cats, Tribe Cats, and then saying all others mostly lived in the town.

I'm gonna do a BB!Brokenstar with Slash. Previously I'd just cut him completely-- but I think I should, instead, walk him back from being "Pure Evil" like he is in-canon and make him into a real character.

One Eye's a god drawn to the festering stink and rot of the First Battle; Slash is a mortal, leading a group like any other in the Forest Territories.

I think I'm also going to significantly bump up the time the Park Cats have been in this territory. Slash and his cats have been fighting them for years, and until the Mountain Cat influx, were basically spread through most of the Forest.

[meimi-haneoka]

Happy birthday Sakura & congratulations for the conclusion of Clear Card Arc!! ✨✨✨✨

[the-way-astray]

alright everybody can we please stop tagging me/talking about me in the notes of pro keefe/sokeefe posts. i know strieefe has made it so that it's really funny to talk about how much i love him and how much i'm in denial when i say negative things about him under those posts (and that's all in good fun and not the problem), but we have to think about the fact that the ops are just trying to make a positive post and probably don't want a keefe hater in their notes /srs

[redrobin-detective]

Skull and Co

Ok so the writing hasn't been going so great (upset stomach + laptop acting on the fritz) but it gave me time to bat around with a new l&co au where Skull and Lockwood's situations are reversed.

Lucy runs away to London and joins an eccentric agency run by a teenage boy who only goes by Skull. He was a talented orphan boy apprenticed by a well known if eccentric spirit researcher and agency leader, Edmund Bickerstaff, who died suddenly a few months ago. Skull chose to continue the agency on his own, hiring George and later Lucy. Lucy and Skull have a caustic but playful banter between them. She is intrigued by this mysterious boy who owns this whole agency not mention the master he still looks up to even in death.

While digging through the basement - looking for supplies bc Skull and George together are a messy, disaster duo - Lucy finds a Source jar in the basement containing a chatty, affable Skull who calls himself Lockwood. He's a boy from the Victorian era who could see spirits clearly back in the day. His parents, also researchers, dedicated time to understanding their child's abilities. They died a few years before Lockwood himself did under mysterious circumstances. Lockwood has intermittent memories of his life and none of his death. Skull is annoyed Lucy dug that old thing up, stupid skull was always making pleading faces at him but Skull can't Listen worth a damn.

The series would follow the agency as they grow as people. Lucy learns more about the wickedness that happened under Dr. Bickerstaff and how Skull had often been forced to particpate. Skull will be coming to terms with his mentor's abusive behavior and realize that he genuinely does want to be a better person. They're also trying to solve the mystery of Lockwood's death which ends up spiraling into the mystery of the problem itself.

[ineffectualbookseller]

Have we talked about the priest? The way his body marks Wee Morag's death as a heavenly judgment.

Morag is terrified when she sees the priest. She's said she's afraid of how graverobbing will stain her soul (she holds the common belief of the time that desecrating a body will stop that person from entering heaven - Aziraphale's correction that that's not how it actually works is brushed off) but she agrees to help Elpeth get a single body to help them survive. But now that they've done it she's met with the face of holy judgment and Morag is so badly scared that she falls into the gun's trip-wire and ends up dead.

(Something about being met with a dead priest and not a live one - a priest who can no longer offer forgiveness or absolution)

We know this grave robbery is happening with the approval of an angel, but Morag's death feels like a sign that heaven disagrees.

There's something bigger here about the hard-learned morality that Aziraphale is gaining on earth, his growth to understanding the greyness of human morality, and how he keeps reverting back to attributing his view of goodness to Heavenly Goodness. But it's not, it's human goodness. And despite the clear signs that they are different things and heaven isn't interested in his (near-)human perspective, he still can't make that disconnect.

[moretheta]

im so tireddddd of the "halkenburg is just as bad as benjamin now" hot take. listen a halkenburg villain arc does sound fascinating i won't lie but we are so very far from that point. yes, halkenburg has abandoned pacifism. but also have you ever considered that pacifism could have... flaws.... when you are an (unwilling) part of a fatally unequal system that children are steadily losing their lives to.

sorry you can't handle a radical but i'm still with halkenburg on this. you'll never get me to side with mr. military industrial complex

[two-braincells-in-total]

SPOILERS FOR THE GRANDEST GAME!!!!

This is a Brady hate post, because what I said in my review of the book is not enough to express my feelings about him

Looking back, he was acting much older than he was and treated Gigi like a child, despite being only 3 years older than her, which makes the "relationship" weird. And he touched her stomach like that? Even when I liked him, I still found it weird. Knox's reaction was amazing though "She's 18 and I'm 25, I can't see anything"

He kinda took advantage of her skills, she solved most of the puzzle but he still had no hesitation to accept the second chance, even when he barely did anything the entire game. I want to point out how Odette, who we know notices everything, probably saw that Gigi deserved the chance the most and offered it to her first. And even though I think she should've accepted, because she deserves it, I still love how she knew that she didn't earn it like the other teams and denied. That's fair play over here, which is something Brady didn't do, because he actually wasn't even good enough to deserve to stay in the game, he wouldn't have made it without relying on Gigi, therefore kind of cheated his way back in.

He shamelessly lied to Knox and Gigi about his mom being sick to manipulate them in a way, especially Gigi, who took it upon herself to carry them through the game because of this and OFFERED HELP EVEN IF SHE DIDN'T WIN! That's a good person over here!

He also told Knox about their mentor and father figure's death out of the blue? Imagine the shock in Knox, like wtf was that announcement?

PLAYING WITH GIGI'S FEELINGS!!! He got her into him, told her all the things she wanted to hear, just to drop the bomb that it was all a lie? And that he's still in love with Calla? That was such an asshole move of him and I know for a fact that it worsened Gigi's insecurities about not being enough, not having anyone to love her and being too much even more! He was too good to be true and I hate how I fell for his lies along with her

Some of this might be over exaggerated and maybe I'm too blinded by the betrayal but I don't care! I hope he doesn't have a redemption arc and that she doesn't actually end up with him, because he sucks so much that I somehow ended up rooting for the kidnapper. If you know one thing about me, I DESPISE the kidnapper x kidnapped trope and any dark romance trope in general, which shows how low I'm getting for the sake of my girl's happiness and how low Brady set my standards.

[greensaplinggrace]

Alina didn’t choose to have her powers taken from her and she didn’t intend for them to be lost. You can’t say Alina chose her ending when the ending was deliberately forced on her without her consent, and she is actively upset by this.

It has been said before and I will say it again:

Alina explicitly wants her power in the books. She has conflicting feelings on it, which is normal, but does on multiple occasions admit to herself as well as others that she likes the power, that she wants it, and that she does not wish to lose it.

This is not due to a lack of conceptualizing Alina liking her powers and Alina’s greed for power as separate things. This has nothing to do with Alina’s greed. Outside of Alina’s greed for power, she comes to love this part of herself she neglected all her life because she was raised by people who could not understand her and who taught her to be wary of her own people and culture, so much so that she subconsciously avoided dealing with who she actually was.

Equating Alina’s power with her greed is exactly what those oppressing grisha do in justification for their hate crimes. You are using the same logic as a cast of people set on genocide and oppression. Not to mention the direct connection between grisha being based on jewish persecution and how the thing that defines grisha is equated with greed, which is a highly common antisemitic depiction of jewish people.

Alina is the ethnic jew raised by goyim. She is the repressed queer child of homophobic parents. She is everybody who only got to realize and express themselves after finding and connecting with their community late in life.

A story about a persecuted minority hunted because of what makes them different ending with your main character, who is a part of that minority, losing that piece of themselves and being forced to assimilate, is incredibly problematic. And anybody who makes this criticism about “Alina choosing” forgets that Alina is a character who’s only choices are those made for her by the person who wrote her.

Another thing that people constantly misrepresent is that Alina is not happy to be stripped of her powers at the end, and explicitly expresses sadness, grief, rage, and anger about the loss of her powers. This is separate from her finding happiness despite her grief, but the grief never goes away. Which means that anybody saying she was happy to lose her powers or chose to do so is factually incorrect. Her agency is stripped from her in the end.

She doesn’t get to choose the peaceful life because the peaceful life is chosen for her. This is not a natural ending to a meaningful character arc of self realization. This is the regressive and brutal shafting of a character who’s arc was abused at every turn, and who’s actual development was walked backwards. Not because of her powers but because she is prevented from ever finding peace with her powers by the narrative.

She doesn’t have to fight a war ‘because of her powers’. She has to fight a war because her people are fucking oppressed. Laying the blame on what makes her different instead of the people who have singled her out because she is different indicates a severe lack of understanding in regards to racism, persecution, and oppression.

Her powers didn’t become so corrupt that they failed her in the end. She didn’t see the consequences and choose peace to avoid them because she wasn’t allowed to see anything at all. Her path was decided for her before she could even look down the other.

People focus on Alina and her powers because that is the story. It is a story about realizing something crucial about yourself that has been kept from you and repressed your whole life. It is an incredibly important story to tell. It is a coming of age story about self realization and self actualization and finding agency after a life where you realize you had none.

Blaming Alina being grisha for why she is stripped of her grishaness is fundamentally flawed argument. If the greed for power was what was supposed to be punished, then she would only have lost that which she sought in her greed. And if a balance needed to be reached, then there would be just as many sun summoners as shadow summoners in the world. Because she lost more than that and because of the discordance in thematic symbolism, the message becomes a punishment not for “greed” (which shouldn’t have even been the message in the first place for a plot and setting like this), but for something else. It becomes a punishment for her being grisha and coming to love and accept herself for it. It becomes a punishment of reveling in one’s difference. It becomes a statement about living outside of the boxes society tries to place people in. It becomes a message about oppression and assimilation on the side of oppression and assimilation.

The most important criticism about the ending will always be about the framing of Alina losing her powers. Alina choosing peace and love over power as a message would only have been able to work if Alina had been able to choose it. And to do so she would have had to choose it when she still had her powers. That is the only progression her developmental arc of “choosing peace and love” could have taken if it didn’t want to become regressive and strip her completely of her agency.

[dazais-guardian-angel]

kinda wild to me that one of the most compelling aspects of both Chuuya and Kunikida's characters to me, that I never really see talked about, is how they're heavily set on a doomed crash course towards complete and utter destruction, and how I am so, so worried for them both.....

[shannonsketches]

something something foils moving in opposite directions Goku's always happy to seek and fight stronger opponents because he spent most of his life being the strongest guy in the room and Vegeta wants to be the strongest/is always exhausted to find stronger opponents because he spent most of his life having to navigate his survival around the whims of the strongest guy in the universe room and so Goku has a foundation of safety and stability and so spends his time craving challenge and adventure and Vegeta has a foundation of challenge and adventure and spends his time craving safety and stability and the overlaid section of their venn diagram is that the only way they know how acquire and maintain those things is through battle

[setacourse4home]

Look, I think it's gonna be okay but I just want this on the record:

I am still highly salty over Captain Shaw dying in Picard S3. So if Rayner doesn't make it through Discovery S5? I am gonna be annoyed.

[everymadara]

Chapter 661