Wild Wild Eyes

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Jinora getting her tattoos | Requested by @dealcour

This scene legit made me cry because as soon as her hood came off I thought she looked so much like Aang. And then I thought of Aang’s reaction watching his people and culture rise again from the spirit world.

Abled gays celebrating marriage equality: well we sure do have nowhere to go from here when it comes to marriage rights. Gay rights!

Me, a disabled lesbian trying to get on ssi thinking about how I will not be able to marry my girlfriend if I do because I can't have more than $2000 to my name at a time and they count a spouse's income towards that: wow .. gay rights ...

Just wanna say if you fought for and support marriage equality for gay people its your responsibility to do the same for disabled people. Abled people can and should rb this

so i was talking to my grandmother about old-school video games and she was all “y'know there was one game i used to play, and it had like a maze, and it was underground, and there was a guy in first person and he had a weapon” so knowing her penchant for puzzle games, i started guessing like myst, or legend of grimrock so we start hunting through these 90’s-era games featuring dungeon crawls. turns out. it was not a puzzle game. it was nothing close to a puzzle game. apparently, in the mid-90s, my grandmother would sit down and play fucking Wolfenstein 3D and listen to AC/DC for like hours on end.

Au contraire, the puzzle was “how to kill Nazis” and the answer was “use gun”

hmmm

Guys? GUYS!!! I THINK THE SPELL WENT WRONG!

no it went RIGHT

Fun fact! Purple fire usually comes from things with lots of potassium, so something weird is going on here

The spell went

Bananas

This is still too funny to me

for you and your squad

"Hey so it turns out that the people of earth accidentally did a global experiment to see if every individual could course correct climate change through mass personal change of habits, and it turns out, no! We can't! It was massive corporate activity all along!"

Good Omens’ own author getting the publication date wrong and getting a small crew of people along with two in-demand celebrities to make a video celebrating it during a global crisis ten days early is the most Good Omens way to celebrate its anniversary I can possible think of 

When Zuko apologized to uncle Iroh in the tent cause he was so ashamed of his actions and what he’d done to the only person who unconditionally believed in his ability to do good >>>>>

So okay, I’ve given this rant before but this is another good time for it.

Structurally speaking, ATLA did something important with Zuko that, in a purely mechanistic sense of narrative development, I think a lot of people don’t notice immediately, and that even fewer people who want to emulate what was done with him get.

Which is Zuko is made a protagonist VERY early, and the show goes out of its way to continually place Zuko into situations where the audience empathizes and roots for him.

This happens in literally the second episode of the series, if we count the two-part premiere as a single episode, which I think we should. The A-plot of that episode, “The Southern Air Temple,” is Aang reckoning with the genocide of his people… but the B-plot?

The B-plot is the introduction of Zhao, and more specifically, his introduction in a way that is calculate to shift the audience, whose introduction to Zuko did NOT engender a ton of sympathy to him, directly and forcefully onto his side. They want Zuko to kick Zhao’s ass.

This continues all through book one and book two. Remember, Zuko is never, ever the main villain of this series. That’s initially Zhao, followed by Azula and Ozai. (Plus various temporary players like Long Feng.) Whenever Zuko isn’t placed into direct conflict with the other protagonists, he’s always written and presented in a way that is careful, VERY VERY careful, not to make him too monstrous, and to make us root for him. He’s placed right next to Iroh, who is designed for people to like, and that reflects back onto Zuko; we want Zuko to be better than he is because we want Iroh to have good things.

Put aside for the moment whether any specific character, including Zuko, deserves their redemption. If you’ve decided you’re going to do that, you have to erect the proper narrative scaffolding around them, and it extends to far more things than “did this person not do things that were too horrible” and “is this person genuinely sorry and is working really hard to atone.” There’s a difference between protagonist and white hat, but if you want someone to eventually wear that white hat, you REALLY need to establish them as a plausible protagonist early on.

Yeah, it was made obvious from the get go that Zuko is definitely nowhere near Zhao’s level of nasty, which in turn means he’s nowhere near Azula’s and nowhere in the scope of Ozai’s.

1.) 

He made a deal with Aang to leave the Southern Water Tribe alone if Aang went with him. When Aang escaped with help from two of those tribe members, Zuko didn’t demand they go back and destroy what was left of the tribe as revenge. He didn’t even think of it as an option. There was no split second where he went, should I/shouldn’t I?

2.) 

This is repeated. He corners the Avatar somewhere, causes some damage to the area in the ensuing fight, but does not stick around to raze the village/monastery to the ground and kill the people when he doesn’t get what he wants. Doesn’t consider this a necessary action even once.

3.) 

The Iroh&Zuko relationship is juxtaposed with the Zhao&Zuko relationship. Both older men have more power over him. Iroh is a retired War General and Prince who is not banished. Zhao is a Commander in favor of the Firelord, who is also not banished. We could tell early on that Iroh is wise and despite being on the bad side, seems to be pretty chill. We took a liking to him immediately. Zhao is the opposite. He is very much like early!Zuko. Impulsive, rude, loud, cocky, etc… But why is he more annoying? Why do we root for Zuko as opposed to him? 

Because we see what Zuko is like with his Uncle Iroh. Iroh does not rub in the fact that he’s banished. He doesn’t use that when reprimanding him for his attitude or his failings. That is a hot iron and he knows it. It’s to the point where Iroh can bend fire in Zuko’s face and Zuko is perfectly relaxed over it and doesn’t once believe his uncle will hurt him. There is a lot of faith in Iroh, from this angsty teenager, and it’s very obvious with their interactions.

Zhao is not trustworthy from the start. We’re shown this by how both Zuko and Iroh are hesitant to interact with him and don’t want to linger in areas he has control over, for too long. They even lie to him despite him obviously having more favor in the Firelord’s eyes than either of them do. Zhao’s personality opposes both Zuko and Iroh. And as we like Iroh, we want him to win and have nice things, as stated above. But Zuko&Iroh is a package deal. And as Zhao reveals himself more and more to be nasty even if it’s subtle, we want Zuko to win even harder.

And even when Zuko wins and he’s in the prime position to do to Zhao what Ozai did to Zuko for also ‘speaking out of turn’… he doesn’t do it. He walks away. He is the bigger man in that scenario. And Iroh further puts shame onto Zhao when he goes against the sacred rules of the Agni Kai because he can’t handle a loss to a banished teen. We are shown that Zuko follows rules and has honor, which is reinforced by Iroh’s, ‘even in exile, my nephew is more honorable than you’. Iroh’s Word is basically Law at this point. Sf he says it is so, then he must be right and the audience accepts that. He knows Zuko better than us and hopefully we’ll get to understand more as the story progresses.

Already by the 3rd episode, we’re shown that Zuko is in no way the worst person from the Fire Nation. In fact, we’re given a sort of scale now from the four major Fire Nation people we know of. Iroh–Zuko——-Zhao–Firelord.

We’re also hoping that Iroh rubs off on Zuko enough for him to also become wise and learn to chill out.

4.) 

When “The Storm” finally rolls around, we’re pretty invested by then in the Iroh&Zuko relationship and that episode gives us so much more info into Zuko’s character and we are shown that Iroh is right. He has honor and he cares for others. And yet it’s obvious the Firelord doesn’t because we see Zuko do the right thing(protesting the plan to treat new recruits as cannon fodder) in the wrong place, and then his face gets burned off by his father because of it. And further, he’s banished for refusing to fight his own father. What sane parent wants to do battle with their own child? What sane parent banishes their child for speaking out of turn at the defense of their own peoples’ lives? What the fuck is wrong with the Firelord?

Zuko was punished severely for showing compassion and having a kind heart. And Iroh(and the ship crew even) is properly mortified by the punishments his nephew received for it, which in turn affects the audience’s perception of this situation. Iroh doesn’t like it, it’s especially bad then.

Now we start wondering why does Zuko wants to go back to the guy who burned his face off?! Iroh, talk some sense into him! PLEASE!

Halfway through S1, they got us to the point of wanting Zuko to have a redemption arc. 

Making the audience want a character to be redeemed is also very important in this. We were shown he has redeemable qualities. We want that pay off! Do it justice!

Merlin: I’ve only had Arthur for a day and a half but if anything happened to him I would kill everyone in this room and then myself

In my freshman year of high school, we had a new history teacher. His name was Mr. Taylor, and he was ridiculously hot. He was just out of college–this was his first teaching job–and he was one of those people that you look at and think “shouldn’t you be modelling somewhere?” On top of being gorgeous, he  was also kind, funny, a great teacher, and a huge Lord of the Rings nerd, and the student body worshiped him. 

This was a small, private school, and there were only two sections of freshman World History, and he taught both of them. He constantly complained that one section was ahead of the other. As the year progressed, the gap between the two sections widened–as midterms approached, one section was in the medieval period and the other was still lagging at the end of the Roman empire.

Both sections were meant to sit the same exam, so he couldn’t just move up the midterm and have one class sit it first. He needed to get both classes into the same time period. 

So for the week before midterms, he hurried the slower class into the middle ages, and went in to depth with the other. He discussed battles in detail, drew regional maps on the white board, and even diagrammed the lineage of the king of Noldor. The class, of course, took diligent notes and asked questions. Everyone wanted to impress him and did their best to learn the material.

During the last class before the midterm, he reviewed the material he’d taught for most of the term, but didn’t touch on any of the things he’d been teaching for the last week. 

Finally, one student asked if any of the stuff he’d been teaching for the last week was going to be on the exam. 

“No,” he said, “The contents of the Silmarillion will not be on the exam.”

There was a moment of silence while everyone sat there, confused. Someone eventually went “…what??”

Mr. Taylor grinned. “Yeah, I needed to keep you guys busy while the other class caught up, so for the last week I’ve just been teaching Lord of the Rings history. I can’t believe none of you noticed. You need to pay more attention to geography.”

The class was, unsurprisingly, outraged. Mr. Taylor just laughed.

stupid leftists and their belief in *checks notes* the intrinsic value of human life

Elsa

The Mermaid of Lily Lake by Andy Ivanov

this is beautiful

Gorgeous!!!