S6 E8 Title Puzzle: Wilting Flower Meta Post

This wilting flower + the ring around the rosy song is puzzle we got for the 6.08 title. Now, it's late, so this might not be very coherent.

TDP Official once used a wilting flower in a tweet

This was in response to when we received the assassins' names.

We see wilting flowers in the recent poster

Supposedly, this is happening at the Moon Nexus, and supposedly Aaravos is there. We also see spirits in the background.

I'm curious if the worlds between life and death are colliding? And the Moon Nexus is probably being destroyed ("ashes, ashes, we all fall down"). So perhaps the lotus flowers are wilting... because the barrier between life and death is gone, they are now one and the same, therefore the flowers wilting is basically an "Error! Cannot compute!" message.

So perhaps that's how Aaravos is broken free? If there are no barriers between the different dimensions, then he is free.

....... Callum, Claudia, what have you done?

This got me thinking, what if Ethari goes to the Moon Nexus during season 6 to try and talk to Runaan and he's there at the Moon Nexus when things start happening.

And what if he also knows how to reach out to spirits and he's doing something to reach out to his husband.

Or what if he ends up unexpectedly reuniting with Rayla and Callum there if they're still trying to free Runaan, Lain and Tiadrin. And he helps with harnessing the Moon magic to bring them back somehow.

My S6 Predictions Based Off the Poster

I haven't read any meta posts yet, so here are some of my thoughts. (I am also nauseous, jet-lagged, stressed, and have a small head ache, so sorry if it's incoherent.)

Lotus Flowers

We see several lotus flowers in the background, but there are three that catch our attention in the foreground:

Runaan's, Lain's, and Tiadrin's.

This, of course, assumes that Lain and Tiadrin were given lotus flowers after leaving for the Storm Spire. The green/turquoise one is Runaan's, as we see him in 3.03 with his lotus being green/turquoise. The other two must be Lain's and Tiadrin's, then. Which is which, I'm not sure.

As for the falling petals... what if they're not falling, but rising to the flower? Because Aaravos is doing a spell to bring the elves back, you see. The reason for this? Perhaps because Callum makes a deal with him: free the coins, and he'll free Aaravos.

Archangel Lunaris/Moon Primal Stone

Archangel Lunaris are used to track sources of moon energy. Interestingly enough, it seems the book Aaravos is holding may have an Archangel Lunaris on it, and possibly a moon primal stone.

The symbolism here is delightful. I'm curious if it's the same primal stone from the moon staff.

Shadowhawk/Lighthawk

Both these faces coming from the bottom of Aaravos's robes kinda look like they are connected to Aaravos via blood ribbon/assassin binding what with the way the cloth goes from purple to red or purple to white.

Not only this, the faces appear misty, kinda like the shadowhawks and lighthawks.

The faces look like they could belong to these two:

If the lighthawk carries messages of life and shadowhawks carry messages of death, and if The Merciful One represents the lighthawk and Akiyu represents the shadowhawk... this is actually really interesting. Akiyu imprisoned Aaravos... and while we don't know much about The Merciful One, I think we can guess things about them based off their name. The Merciful One must have been... well, merciful to Aaravos, most likely after his fall.

The Moon Nexus

I'm running low on mental energy, so I'll keep this brief. The blue structure behind Aaravos looks like the Moon Nexus, indicating that perhaps everyone will be freed from the coins there on the next full moon, and perhaps even Aaravos.

The Plane Between Life and Death

At the top of the poster, we see of bunch of spirits. It's quite possible that while the spell is being cast, the lines between the different realities get a little blurry. Whether this is the afterlife or the dimension between life and death, I'm not sure, but I'm wondering... am I going crazy, or does this look kinda like Sarai with her hair down?

Anyways. These are just the thoughts running through my head. :) Let me know if you have anything else to add!

So we all know that Tumblr is US-centric. But to what degree? (and can we skew the results of this poll by posting it at a time where they should be asleep?)

Reblog to increase sample size!

since hes dead now i wanna know what yall think

reblog for a larger sample size

I cannot fucking believe that I learned OJ is dead from a fucking tumblr poll

not even the destiel meme! a poll!! what is the world coming to

If any of y’all didn’t know, there’s a free online library, aka

https://openlibrary.org/

and I found like, twelve ebooks I’ve been wanting to read on there, and blasted through like three of them during the course of a boring-ass shift.

Guy there are books on magic on there.

There’s books on EVERYTHING there!

Wouldn’t this be bad for authors though? or is this like a normal library where they get /some/ money?

It’s like a normal library. Libraries can upload ebooks there and let people check them out through openlibrary if you have an openlibrary account, or it can point you to nearby libraries that have physical copies of the book for you to go and check out. If you check out books via openlibrary it counts towards the count of books checked out from the library that uploaded the ebook, and they can use it in their reporting and funding and stuff.

There’s like 150 libraries partnered with openlibrary so far.

They also have copies that you can check out if you are print-disabled.

You can also ‘sponsor a book’, which means you pay the cost of the ebook you want openlibrary to acquire, and then they can add it to their collection and let people check it out.

https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL26576A/Tamora_Pierce

I sure did!

And click on a title even if it says ‘no ebook available’ and scroll down, ‘cause sometimes that just means “all of the copies of ebooks are checked out right now but you can get on the waitlist when it’s back in”

This is part of the Internet Archive! I’ve posted about this before. Please go, it’s amazing. 

signal boosting because BOOKS

Oh!

ROUND 4: POLL #5

PROPAGANDA BELOW

Netflix, I don’t know how to tell you this but a woman doesn’t have to be self taught to be a strong female character. It’s ok to let her know her limitation and ask for help. It’s ok to let her get angry, it’s ok to let her be jealous, it’s ok to let your female character have flaws and WORK on them. Your female character doesn’t have to become a master on her own to be memorable, it just makes her accomplishment feel unearned.

my hot take is that i would've been fine if natla had changed virtually everything... character names, aesthetics, plot beats, character choices, etc. IF it had been more culturally accurate and respectful.

instead natla changes virtually nothing except the removal of sokka's sexism while increasing pakku's and the general north's, while also not being willing to commit to it (see: yue breaking off her engagement pre-show with zero consequences, which also undersells their new angle of her resenting/disliking the expectations her community has for her). we get one scene of katara doing braiding/weaving with her gran gran and mother. no other elements of water tribe culture are present that weren't there in the show, and others are removed. the water tribes don't even get to explain their own culture and relationship to the spirits, the fire nation does it. iroh being called out for ba sing se by an angrily grieving earth kingdom soldier is undercut by iroh coming off looking better when he spares the man and the man still strikes him afterwards from behind. because, y'know, the show that literally has fire nation characters critique an earth kingdom soldier for being corrupted by war, calls jet an outright terrorist and remove all of his nuance, and have katara say jet is just like the fire nation to his face isn't both sides'ing an imperialist genocidal conflict at all, obviously /s.

like, what the fuck are we doing here?

if natla wanted to radically change character arcs, struggles, backstories, and plot beats (avatars having glimpses of the future and that's why we head to the north, etc) they should've just wholly committed. the httyd movies are nothing like the books, but they change enough to be their own story in their own right (literally, they only keep a father-son relationship and the setting and half the character names; everything else is different). and they told a different, but really fucking good story.

for example: why not have there be zero sexism, and katara fights pakku for the right to learn any waterbending (healing or fighting) because they see her as an outsider who can't understand their culture, the same way there are stories about indigenous people working hard to reconnect to their culture after being separated from it due to colonization? why are we doing the same things, but worse, every time?

i'm not mad at natla for not being a 1:1 adaptation. i'm mad because every single unnecessary change it makes to the characters' core backstories and personalities are less effective than the OG, are not adequately addressed in story at any point, or has things ham-fisted in for no reason (yue being able to go into the spirit world has no bearing on the actual plot, for example; it's just There, because...?).

it's not more culturally sensitive than the og; instead, in many ways, it's less, and i think that's the biggest waste of it all.

Also if I can also add to this: Katara's big "Girl Power" moment being her recruiting the all female waterbenders to fight in the battle despite none of them having any combat training and there then being seemingly no healers waiting in the wings to heal people. It was an incredibly dumb decision from the writers and did not come across as empowering whatsoever.

bonus: if you explain why (in the tags) <3

Option 4:

She’s adorable, and she will stab you in your sleep