Stealth Buffalo

an encounter

one thing i think is so Neat about atla is how all the main bender characters have an arc that corresponds to their "opposite" element. zuko's arc is about the capacity to change yourself and your worldview, and the culmination of his arc is learning a move inspired by waterbending. katara is all about passion and drive, wanting to become a great waterbender and fight for what she believes in, and over the course of the show she comes into her power. toph's arc involves getting free of her restrictive family and connecting with a community, and aang's arc is about learning to stand fast in his beliefs and confront difficult issues head-on. it's a beautiful bit of symmetry that reinforces the show's point about the illusion of separation

i think this might be why i've never thought aang's decision in the finale was "selfish". aang was someone who ran from responsibility bc it (understandably) scared him, and often when he did try to "be responsible" it was out of guilt rather than a genuine commitment to his role as the avatar (agreeing to fong's plan in "the avatar state", striking out on his own in "the awakening"). he either avoided the issue or did what he thought others wanted him to do to "atone". but in the finale when he approaches the issue of killing ozai, he is not running from responsibility. he knows he must take down ozai and is prepared to do so. and his final course of action is not based on guilt or what he thinks others want from him, but on how he approaches the task of being the avatar, from his perspective as the last airbender. he takes ownership of his responsibility as the avatar and does his duty in his own way

Jonathan is NOT trapped in a time loop Jonathan is trapped with a toddler who keeps asking him to tell about the time mama and dada killed a vampire with his uncles (and aunt).

There’s that post that’s like ‘everyone should get into a tiny niche fandom at least once’ fully agree, that was really fun -- but I would like to add that everyone should get into a fandom where their opinions run counter to major fanon because it really teaches you about sticking to your guns and trusting your interpretation of the text without having to rely on peer validation

because WHAT are people talking about sometimes

If your plot feels flat, STUDY it! Your story might be lacking...

Stakes - What would happen if the protagonist failed? Would it really be such a bad thing if it happened?

Thematic relevance - Do the events of the story speak to a greater emotional or moral message? Is the conflict resolved in a way that befits the theme?

Urgency - How much time does the protagonist have to complete their goal? Are there multiple factors complicating the situation?

Drive - What motivates the protagonist? Are they an active player in the story, or are they repeatedly getting pushed around by external forces? Could you swap them out for a different character with no impact on the plot? On the flip side, do the other characters have sensible motivations of their own?

Yield - Is there foreshadowing? Do the protagonist's choices have unforeseen consequences down the road? Do they use knowledge or clues from the beginning, to help them in the end? Do they learn things about the other characters that weren't immediately obvious?

Thank you so much for this!

all water tastes different for some reason and I'm not open to debate

i'm so sick of being the only person who can make simple connections of how doing a thing to the ecosystem has effects. so so so so sick NO ONE knows the ways of the plants

sorry just venting over how i am so so so small and the task is so so so big

This year, I had a balcony garden.

I wanted to last year but I 'never got round to it'. I kill a lot of plants (not on purpose. ADHD and constant watering is hard, and sometimes it's just me confused as fuck about why I suddenly have x thing happening to my leaves) and kind of felt it was hopeless anyway.

Then I was reading your posts, and how you were seeing biodiversity in even small little hopeful changes. And I was like. Hey. Even if I do kill the plants. They will feed insects for a little, while they survive, and after, I can put them in my compost pile and they will feed more insects, and the flowers (if I get any) will feed bees (which are my special children) and so, even if it doesn't give me food, and even if they die, it might be worth it to try.

I never ate the cilantro. Turns out my flatmate has the soap gene. But it flowered like CRAZY and there were SO many happy pollinators.

I ate so many green onion shoots. The bulbs I still haven't pulled because they just keep giving me shoots to eat.

The mint is going HAM and also the insects loved the flowers.

The cucumber plants went absolutely APESHIT and produced flowers ALL SUMMER, and they were BEAUTIFUL, and I couldn't walk outside without a bee or, occasionally, a butterfly dropping by. It's STILL FLOWERING in NOVEMBER in PHILLY and now I have ladybugs and fireflies. FIREFLIES! I didn't see a single one last year and now they love my balcony and I love them so much. I only got two cucumbers but I don't even care.

I had a bunch of nonedibles in a little greenhouse thing, and they flowered too, and I'd find random bugs (a grasshopper. Huge. Massive) in there hanging out. They died when the greenhouse got blown over but they lasted longer than I ever expected to keep a plant alive.

The birds came by my balcony despite the cat avidly watching them by the window. More types of birds, too. And my little compost box is constantly happy with fruit flies and regular flies and things I don't recognize. I never did get around to buying worms, but I haven't had to because the insects are having a blast in there and every time I think "oh, it'll be full" it is, once again, not full because it has been broken down further.

There is a tiny ecosystem on my 6th floor apartment balcony because you get excited about plants, and it was inspiring enough to get me off my ass. Because even if I didn't eat my plants, you reminded me SOMETHING ELSE WOULD.

The task is so so big. But if my fruit flies can eat an entire watermelon (yes. There was an entire watermelon in my compost bin at one point), I think you and I can tackle this watermelon together.

...Oh...Sheds a single tear that contains so much happiness

everyone saying "art doesn't need to be perfect" hasn't taken into account the art monster, the monster that comes and kills you if art doesn't look exactly like it did in your head

Wings anyone?

Hey btw, if you're doing worldbuilding on something, and you're scared of writing ~unrealistic~ things into it out of fear that it'll sound lazy and ripped-out-of-your-ass, but you also don't want to do all the back-breaking research on coming up with depressingly boring, but practical and ~realistic~ solutions, have a rule:

Just give the thing two layers of explanation. One to explain the specific problem, and another one explaining the explanation. Have an example:

Well, that's a very quick and simple explanation, which sure opens up additional questions.

It takes exactly two layers to create an illusion that every question has an answer - that it's just turtles all the way down. And if you're lucky, you might even find that the second question's answer loops right back into the first one, filling up the plot hole entirely:

When you're just making things up, you don't need to have an answer for everything - just two layers is enough to create the illusion of infinite depth. Answer the question that looms behind the answer of the first question, and a normal reader won't bother to dig around for a 3rd question.

This is good advice on worldbuilding.

And also. 

I would really like to play a vampire-hunting sewer-nun and her pet alligator in a ttrpg.

Woops uh oh oops woops.

horsey aiba (design by @glittergoats)

bonus Aiba name trivia by Uchikoshi under cut

wishing my good friend Jonathan Harker the best of luck on his journey 🙏

Dracula Daily Year 1: Aww, our good friend Jonathan is poor little meow meow.

Dracula Daily Year 2: Our good friend Jonathan is in a legit horror story, and I have literary analysis to share.

Dracula Daily Year 3: We have created a metanarrative wherein not only is our good friend Jonathan in a legit horror story, but he is also cursed to live in a horrifying time loop until we stop doing this.