araeph

[araeph]

So you were like the first person I saw call Aang out for being a bad father, and I'm watching through LoK for the first time now and there's this scene where (this is after Bumi gets airbending) Bumi says "even though I'm Aang's son, I never really felt like part of the Air Nation" and then Tenzin is like "You are now." NOW???? GIRL WHAT???? Literally HOW does anyone defend Aang's parenting when one of his sons is like "you're right, you never were part of this half of your heritage, but now you are, because you've earned it"

Listen...when I tell you my anger in that moment was transcendent! Had I had just one more cup of espresso, I'd have shifted dimensions into the ATLA universe and slapped the taste out of Tenzin. I'd have hit him hard enough that Bryke would've felt it, because WHO looks at that moment and think it speaks to a healthy family dynamic???? And even then, at least Bumi got some sort of resolution to his issue with Aang. Kya? Crickets...

I can never be harsh enough on Aang because in canon, he's an absolute creep of a character. His nascent physical abuse of Katara is canon, but because he's small, bald and has a Pollyanna smile, we're not allowed to hate him. Luckily, I've always been a bit of a rebel.

#anti aang #anti kataang #anti tenzin

[araeph]

Good Omens art prompt

Crowley stops by, gives Aziraphale some flowers, and saunters away.

Aziraphale is admiring them when he sees that the wrapping paper says: SPECIAL DEVILRY.

#crowley #aziraphale #ineffable husbands #good omens #art prompt

[araeph]

Why does Aziraphale collect books but guard his collection so jealously?

Why does Crowley like cultivating plants?

Yes, it fits their characters, but why these hobbies specifically?

Perhaps Aziraphale has amassed a good deal of knowledge ... knowledge of good and evil ... made of trees ... and is guarding it.

Perhaps Crowley is making a garden of his own.

Perhaps they are recreating their own paradise on Earth when, in different ways, Heaven denied it to them.

And perhaps this time, it is the angel, not the demon, who succumbed to temptation, and is driven from paradise, which is in danger of being lost forever.

#good omens #aziraphale #crowley #ineffable husbands

[araeph]

When Ozai finally kicks the bucket.

Zuko to the GAang: Ugh, even though he was a terrible dad, I don’t know how to feel right now. There are so many things I’m still processing and what kind of funeral do I even hold for--

Toph: Don’t worry, Zuko. We’ll take care of everything.

Sokka: Yeah, we got your back.

[Ten minutes later ... ]

#toph #sokka #zuko #ozai #gaang

[araeph]

John Howe’s cover for The Hobbit

#john howe #the hobbit #look it's my banner

[araeph]

You’re right that we shouldn’t just believe Ehasz at face value. At the time I wrote this, there were no widely known allegations of his being a sexist and gaslighting boss (that would come seven months later), and for those who want to know more, I reblogged the accusations here. 

I also agree that Bryke likely never considered doing a lot of these ideas, but this does not contradict Ehasz’s assertion that it was the studio who asked him to give thought to a fourth season, he discussed it with Bryke, and then the movie came along and they decided against it, having themselves always wanted three seasons.

However, with respect to whether Bryke wanted to focus on the Shyamalan movie, the ones caught making stuff up have not been Ehasz, but Bryke. Before the negative audience reception which caused them to lambaste it, Bryke admitted in interviews to working closely with Shyamalan and that he was respectful of them and the project.

Bryke before the movie’s release: 

TZN: You said you have two weeks to finish off season 3. Do you know what's next for you guys?

Bryan: The one thing we weren't joking about is that we really are helping on the movie quite a bit. Night has been very collaborative from the get-go, from the first time we ever met him. Very respectful of the project and of us. So we're helping out a lot on that. Also, we're just trying ... we do have a new idea, and we're just seeing if it's going to happen or not.

Bryke after the movie’s release: 

We had nothing to do with the movie. 

We were dragged thr ... it’s a long, horrible story.

Ehasz has no skin in the game here because he was not involved in the movie. However, Bryke have a motive to protect their reputations by distancing themselves from a project that it seems they did originally invest in and support. Grains of salt all around!

A:TLA Book 4 rumor timeline.

1/3/16, colonel-mustang:  [[Head Writer Aaron Ehasz confirmed that there was originally a fourth season planned and that Zuko/Katara was never explored because it “would have made the six year olds cry”. Also because the development time was cut short. The relationship dynamics would have gotten more time, had season 4 existed. But when Shyamalan bought the rights, it was for a trilogy and season 4 was cancelled - so they said it was always planned to be three seasons. One of my friends/rp partners took an A:TLA & Philosophy class at her school, and he gave a talk and addressed this.]]

9/13/17, devongiehl:  Aaron (head writer of Avatar: the Last Airbender) droppin’ some knowledge on a reddit thread right now, neat stuff (link: https://www.reddit.com/user/ehasz/) reddit.com/user/ehasz/

The reddit AMA: 

I was head writer of ATLA. Azula and Zuko’s relationship was not always well understood, even by the team internally. Azula loved Zuko, more than anyone save her father. She also felt competitive with him for their parents’ attention of course, but since she had alienated herself from her mother, she focused her energy on pleasing dad… which of course meant acting in more and more intense and possibly evil ways. By the end of the series, of course, her loss of her friends shatters the part of her identity that she could somehow control affection and love through intimidation. As a result she spirals… I did however intend to leave a kernel of humanity, and had we made a season 4 Azula would have completely bottomed and we would have explored the possibility of a path to redemption. True story! -Aaron

½/17, kataraandzuko:  It’s pretty obvious what couple he is talking about with this line. Ehasz always wanted to make Zuko/Katara canon or at least develop it much more than what was shown in the actual series, but Bryke would fight with him about it. This was why the chance of Katara ending up with either Zuko or Aang was 50-50 even mid-way through the third season. Yes, this means the “Zuko was originally going to be the love interest for Katara” and “The writers and creators toyed with the idea of Zuko and Katara falling in love” Avatar Extras are completely true. The cancellation of the fourth season and Shyamalan’s complaints about how indecisive Bryke were about who Katara was going to end up with led the Nick execs to step in and push for Katara/Aang because that was what they concluded as being most suitable for young children. The resulting draft for the finale ended up with Katara/Aang and lot of people in the writing room were surprised since they believed Zuko/Katara was the better choice. Bryke wanted Katara and Aang to passionately kiss to symbolize a marriage and make them look “definite”. This is in contrast with Ehasz who just wanted a sweet scene near the end where Zuko and Katara talked about how much the world had changed to foreshadow a future between them. …  Heck, Ehasz has told numerous people the same thing and even hosted a lecture at UCB about the Avatar stuff he didn’t get a chance to write about.

1/17/18, Dragon Prince AMA with Aaron Ehasz: Regarding ATLA and season 4 speculation, I would first caution anyone that unfortunately there are some “fake interviews” with me out there that spread some false info – so it’s hard to say if those specific topics are true or not.The truth is that the creators’ (Mike and Bryan) original plan was always to do only three seasons. While we were writing the show, Nickelodeon did ask me to give thought to what a fourth season would be, and it was also something I discussed briefly with Mike. However in the end Mike and Bryan decided to end the story where we ended it, and based on the love people have for the series I would be hard-pressed to say it was a mistake!

4/1/19, Aaron Ehasz’s twitter:  

 I always intended for #Azula to have a redemption arc in the story of #AvatartheLastAirbender. 

 Yes I always believed there would be a 4th season.

Truthfully, there was a moment in time when we all thought we would do a 4th season of #AvatartheLastAirbender. Then along came M. Night…

Though to be clear, M Night wanted us to do a 4th season, but Mike and Bryan wanted to focus on the movie.

And there you have it. 

#anti-bryke #anti aaron ehasz #atla book four

[araeph]

I won’t chastise people for their taste in phones regardless, but something you might not know is that Apple products are generally more accessible than their counterparts, and have been known to be so for years.

the real problem is people still use apple products

#accessibility

[araeph]

Exactly.

Embossed braille should be standard on computer keyboards. 

It would raise braille literacy more than anything else I could imagine - among both the blind and the sighted. Currently braille is actually vanishing due to an increasing reliance on audiobooks and screen readers. 

I think that braille has a lot of potential use among non-blind groups. As an alternative to traditional writing for dyslexics. As a way to help photosensitive people type with their eyes closed. Or simply as a means to help sighted people find things without needing the lights on all the time!

#braille #accessibility

[araeph]

It gets worse. 

Not enough blogs are talking about this and seeing how clear you arguments are and how wide spread your audience is I thought I'd express something that's really been rubbing me wrong with the comics that people are glossing over. Obviously with Brian and Mike there are issues with racism in their writing, especially since they don't have other writers to clean it up, and the issue of colonialism is painted as a good thing with Bryke, with people like the Earth Kingdom who have suffered for so

long under Fire Nation rule and want them out being portrayed as bad and irrational. It makes me so angry. Im someone who has had a history of oppression in my nation’s history, and Bryke choosing to paint occupation (which I’m assuming is based off of Japanese occupation of Asia, some of the most brutal in history) as a good thing and anyone again it needs to get over it or they’re against progress, it makes me so angry, especially since this happens in real life. Bryke failed me here.

It’s veryimportant to distinguish the difference between how the Fire Nation occupationwas handled in the show as opposed to the comics. In the show, the occupationwas shown to be terrible for both the world AND the Fire Nation, and that theadvancements of the Fire Nation civilization, while admirable, also halted thetechnological development of countries like the Southern Water Tribe (just lookat the SWT city in “The Puppetmaster” that Hama remembered from 60 years ago). Zukoand Iroh rightly view Fire Nation colonization as a deep stain on the honor ofthe Fire Nation from which it must redeem itself. They acknowledge that theworld has a reason to hate them for what they’ve done, and they will do their bestto rectify the mistakes of the past. All of this is accomplished without makingthe Fire Nation citizens any less human than those of, say, the Earth Kingdom(which has its own issues with oppression, albeit internalized).

Then weget to the horrific writing of “The Promise” and the colony of Yu Dao.

It’samazing that Bryke saw no contrast between this:

Zuko: No, I’velearnt everything! And I had to learn it on my own. Growing up, we were taughtthat the Fire Nation was the greatest civilization in history and somehow, thewar was our way of sharing our greatness with the rest of the world. What anamazing lie that was. The people of the world are terrified by the Fire Nation!They don’t see our greatness, they hate us! And we deserve it. We’ve created anera of fear in the world. And if we don’t want the world to destroy itself, weneed to replace it with an era of peace and kindness.

And this:

Andbetween this:

Zuko: Today, thiswar is finally over. I promised my Uncle that I would restore the honor of theFire Nation, and I will. The road ahead of us is challenging. A hundred yearsof fighting has left the world scarred and divided. But with the Avatar’s help,we can get it back on the right path, and begin a new era of love and peace.

And this:

Zuko’scharacterization takes a huge nosedive, dragging with it the entire point ofredeeming the Fire Nation. It is shown that the Fire Nation coloniesdiscriminate against Earth Kingdom citizens, but Zuko sweeps that under the rugas a problem to be fixed later.

King Kueihas every right to be angry about Zuko withdrawing support from the colonyafter he agreed to it in the negotiations. You don’t just go back on your wordas a country when you just stoppedinvading the world. And if by some chance you lose your mind and do it, you don’t leave everyone, especially the Avatar, in the dark about it!

Iactually think founding Republic City from the old Fire Nation colonies was agood idea, but a) there should have been an agreement from the start withoutZuko unilaterally withdrawing his support, b) the Earth Kingdom should havebeen properly compensated for the land, and c) it should have immediately beenput under a different interim government. Not one who had as its spokeswoman agirl who tried to assassinate the Firelord!

Oh, those wacky comics. Never a dull moment, I suppose.

#anti atla comics

[araeph]

This ship is not, and never was, a good idea. Maybe more people will finally understand why now that they see a similar age gap in live action, and Bryke can’t magically de-age Katara. And by the way, this has nothing to do with any other ships being canon or not canon. Just ... just please, no romance scenes. 

#anti-kataang #bleaugh #big nope

[araeph]

today’s the day!

#lotr

[araeph]

Why Zutara serves the themes, plot, characters, and overall storytelling of ATLA better.

#zutara #anti-kataang

[araeph]

“Zuko fans think Zuko is perfect” is such a common mischaracterization of Zuko fans that I have an entire wall of shame post dedicated to it. Time to add a new entry!

I would actually like to invite anyone who thinks Zuko fans unfairly glorify Zuko to find me an example of this behavior. Surely, if this is such a frequent occurrence, it should be easy. 

(No one who brought up this point has ever, once, cited a specific instance of it.)

there’s this trend in the atla fandom of ppl complaining about how the fandom mischaracterizes zuko and then…….mischaracterizing zuko…..in the same breath…….and i JUST

-insert that one gif of hades here-

look. i’m sorry. i know you love your weird headcanon that zuko is just an absolute dick, an asshole for no reason and that this should somehow remain a cornerstone of his personality no matter where in his life he’s being depicted, but that’s????? not remotely accurate to his character in the show lmao

he’s not ‘a dick’, he’s a traumatized teenage boy with emotional regulation issues and unhealthy coping mechanisms. these are not cornerstones of his foundation as a person, they are the result of–you guessed it!–the trauma he suffered as a thirteen-year-old boy. and while i’m not gonna pretend that he will ever be 100% perfectly well-adjusted (he’s probably always gonna have issues with his temper, ingrained trauma responses that will become far less commonplace but still crop up, particularly if anything happens to trigger a regression), but to pretend that people who focus more on ‘awkward turtleduck Zuko’ post canon are treating him like some ‘uwu soft boi who never did anything wrong’ is weirdly reductive.

and it’s so strange to me, because we see who zuko is before the trauma that quite literally changed the entire direction of his life. he was a kind, compassionate boy, who felt badly when he realized he’d hurt that baby turtleduck and that was why the mama had attacked him, and who stood up and spoke out in a war meeting because the general was planning to just throw away the lives of an entire squad and he couldn’t understand why anyone would treat their own people that way!

he wasn’t an asshole or a dick, and his rude and abrasive responses to stimuli came as a direct result of his trauma and the following three years of desperately searching for something he, on some level, had to eventually recognize he would never be able to find.

(iroh knew from the start that ozai had sent zuko on a meaningless mission that he would never actually be able to complete. i don’t think zuko ever fully realized this, but i do think he was beginning to subconsciously, and it’s why he was getting increasingly agitated and frustrated prior to discovering that the avatar was still alive. then, everything kicked into overdrive and he was desperate to actually capture the avatar and prove himself, so he never had to fully grapple with the realization that his father wanted him to fail.)

zuko with the gaang in the back half of book 3 is already much better at managing his emotions than at any point in the series prior (except possibly that one shining moment in ba sing se, moments before Disaster), and with his friends and uncle around him as a support network after the war, he would only continue to grow and become healthier and happier. (this is part of why i reject the comics out of hand, incidentally. bc i don’t for a moment believe that everyone would literally abandon him to the point where he had no one to turn to for help but his abuser.)

allowing zuko to be happy and healthy isn’t ignoring who he is at his core, it’s giving him the time he needed to heal and expanding on that. zuko was never just ‘a dick’, he was a traumatized teenage boy who needed to learn healthy coping mechanisms and emotional responses to things, but that was never a permanent state of being for him. zuko, pre-banishment, is a much more likely template for how a happy and healthy zuko would act, imo, and i don’t understand why so many ppl insist otherwise.

#zuko

[araeph]

[araeph]

For tomorrow. 

For today.

#hope #iroh #zuko #avatar:the last airbender #november 9 2016 #january 20 2021

[araeph]

In the Northern Air Temple, there’s a scene where Katara is flying and Aang is helping her. She says “All I had to do was trust [the air], let it carry me.” many Kataangers use this line as foreshadowing to Kataang getting together. However, the episode was written by Elizabeth Welch, who is known for writing foreshadowing for Zutara... what do you think this line meant to Kataang? Why do you think she put it in there? Obv she may have not written that exact line, but what do you think of it?

I think both shippers and anti-shippers should not read this dialogue from a shipping perspective. First, while Elizabeth Welch wrote some of Zuko and Katara’s most interesting dynamics, there’s no hard evidence that she promoted them as a couple. However, this is the Aang and Katara dialogue from “The Northern Air Temple,” and it really doesn’t have anything to do with Kataang either:

Katara: Teo was right about the air! All I had to do was trust it. Let it carry me. Aang: Even though Teo's not an airbender, he really does have the spirit of one.

Katara’s words are meant as a positive reflection on Teo’s understanding of air as an element. It ties in with the message of the episode: just because Teo does not have the same ability Aang does, doesn’t mean he can’t have just as meaningful of an experience in the air. (A metaphor for Teo himself, who lost the use of his legs at a young age.) Furthermore, in order to say that this metaphor applies to shipping, we would have to say that Katara should let Aang metaphorically carry her. But ... that isn’t what happens with them in the series, literally or figuratively, so it doesn’t really fit with their relationship dynamic.

[araeph]

What are your thoughts on the rise of Zukka as a ship? Did Zuko and Sokka have romantic tension in the show? Were they queerbaited and will they likely be canon in an S4/Live Action?

I admit that I’m puzzled by the sudden popularity of Zukka, not because there’s anything wrong or unhealthy about the ship, but because I’m not sure why it was singled out among the possible pairings for the GAang to be so popular. Nor could they have been queerbaited in the show when half their scenes together as friends are them trying to save a female romantic partner, talking about a female romantic partner, or trying to sleep with a female romantic partner. (That last one is, I believe, their final scene alone together in the show.) But most tellingly, although Zuko and Sokka had adventures as friends, it was not part of a larger narrative about the pair of them specifically. That is, if you took Zuko and Sokka scenes (especially in Book 3) and stitched them all together, there would be no narrative arc to them. Their relationship progresses, but not in a definable shape or thread the way, say, Zuko and Aang’s relationship does.