Take notes

twitter is dying fr

lol

[ID: A tweet from Elon Musk's official Twitter account that says, "To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we've applied the following temporary limits: - Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day - Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day - New unverified accounts to 300/day". End ID.]

Already made a post about this but there’s a good chance Elon’s lying and the servers are just completely unstable because he refused to pay a contract with Google

i finished!!! FINALLY I CAN EAT (prints later)

"Credit to the original artist" is not credit to the original artist

"Payment to the cashier", I say, as I haul a TV out the door of the Walmart

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!

honestly just want a spider-verse spinoff where spiderpunk and spider noir team up and beat the shit out of fascists for 2hrs

Tumblr Migration 2: Reddit Boogaloo

We all know about the Twitter immigrants, but there seems to be radio silence on what's happening now with Reddit users from certain subreddits doing a similar thing.

What's happening?

Reddit is restricting their API later this month and killing off third-party apps. An AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the CEO Steve Hoffman was held and it was clear that he would continue with the changes.

In protest, thousands of subreddits across the site are planning to go dark for 48 hours on June 12th. Some are planning to continue indefinitely until the changes are reversed.

Okay, so how does this affect Tumblr?

Some subreddits (mainly queer and left-leaning meme ones, don't worry too much about Reddit Atheists™ overrunning us) are encouraging their users to jump ship to our beloved - and beloathed - hellsite. There will be another influx of new users and many will be unfamiliar with how the site works.

What do us Tumblr users do?

Show them how to use the site; introduce them to the site's culture, tell them to reblog shit and curate their dashboard. Sorta like how we welcomed Twitter users back when they flocked here. Kungpowpenising optional.

I'm new from Reddit, what do I do here?

CHANGE YOUR PROFILE PICTURE AND BANNER TO SOMETHING OTHER THAN DEFAULT BECAUSE THIS SITE IS FILLED WITH BOTS AND YOU MIGHT BE MISTAKEN FOR ONE. This is the FIRST thing you should do after getting a blog.

Other folks can help you with stuff like curating your dashboard or creating sideblogs (or you can look shit up) but please, PLEASE just give yourself an icon and reblog some stuff so people don't mistake you for a bot

Nothing funnier than Link getting the Tony Hawk treatment

[Please do not dub this comic! I’ll be releasing it for the VO community in a few weeks! <3]

The thing about the D&D movie which is absolutely genius is that the game mechanics basically insulate them against any of the most frustratingly fun sucking movie criticisms. “But why were the guards looking the wrong way?” Failed their perception check. “Why did the spell stop RIGHT before they would have died” Dropped concentration. It gets to be dumb and fun anyone that TRIES to be the plot hole police gets ever increasingly obscure D&D rulebooks thrown down in front of them and called a fake nerd. There's NOTHING those type of guys hate more than being a fake nerd. This movie is untouchable.

Even as someone who doesn’t play D&D I was completely fine with everything that would be stupid in any other movie. Every time something unrealistically lucky happened I went “ha, natural 20” and every time something pathetically unlucky happened I went “ha, natural 1”. It felt like they weren’t just nicking the forgotten realms setting, they genuinely wanted it to feel like a game.

In the games, Maya would sometimes say, “We’re lawyers” and I always would go “no one in this game should be able to call themself a lawyer, especially you Maya.” Anyone who sees these videos probably thinks I don’t like Nick because I only exist to bully him. I love Nick. He’s great. He’s just so easy to bully. 

Thank you to @themornal and @8edhead for doing the voice work again! 

Ay!!!!! New Paula Animation!!!! Always so exciting!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUVbwm3RrXs

And here’s the YouTube mirror :P

Hospital.

This scene took like a month to do, and I almost gave up on it twice. But it’s done.

Thank you to @themornal for doing all the voice work.

Here’s another animation by Paula!!! The quality is insane every time

Below is the YouTube mirror:

i rly wanna know like americans and non-americans- were u immunised against chicken pox or did ur parents rather u just get infected as a child??

I was born just a few years before the vaccine was even available, and I contracted chickenpox before the vaccine was part of routine vaccination (and mandatory in schools).

Which doesn’t sound so bad on its own, but at sixteen my immune system collapsed, and the previous mild case of chickenpox I had at nine suddenly gave me a violent and atypical case of shingles. My whole damn body was covered in pustules, even down my throat. Wherever there was skin, it was covered in pox. I nearly died. The doctors told my mother if she had waited just two more hours to get me to the hospital in Indy (my hometown hospital refused to even give me an E.R. bed ‘because it’s just chickenpox’, despite our pleas that I was immunocompromised), I would have died.

I was out of school for three months with a PICC line going straight to my heart pumping acyclovir into me even after I was discharged from the PICU. I never recovered academically and I ended up forced out of school the next year because they hated that I was wrecking attendance records with my frequent illnesses.

It’s only in the last five years that most of the pox scars have faded. I was sixteen then. I’m thirty now.

People/parents love to think that chickenpox is a normal and harmless part of childhood, almost a right of passage. Oh it’s just a week or so if mild itching, life will go on. No need to get my child vaccinated. Hell, let’s intentionally infect our young child by hosting chickenpox party! Better to have it at a young age, they say! But I wasn’t immunocompromised yet when I got chickenpox at 9. And at sixteen that same “harmless” virus latent within me nearly killed me. And even with the basic chickenpox, things can and have gone catastrophically wrong. Your perfectly healthy kid might come into contact with another kid on chemo. Suddenly that kid can die just like I almost did. Even your perfectly healthy kid can have a freak reaction and be killed by chickenpox.

The chickenpox vaccine has been around and available for over two decades now. Chickenpox and further complications like shingles are completely avoidable. Get your kid vaccinated

A vaccine wasn’t available when I was a kid so I picked it up at the age of four. My brother’s best friend came to visit and sat with me awhile to cheer me up- only to catch them himself at 15. He took them home to his dad- never had them. Half his family ended up in the hospital and his dad nearly died. Get your vaccines, folks.

thesecretlifeofchloe on tiktok

this beast is seething with rage

Happy Pride!

Every pride, you must reblog this. No exceptions

I love that four different people on my feed scheduled this joyous person to reblog by 8am on June 1. I look forward to seeing this a dozen more times today.