Leo / Aug 6 / Fem / Bi / Emmy-Emmer-Em/ My Ao3 is Emers_Writes / Voltron / Klance / Star vs The Forces of Evil / Sonic / #sth / #svtfoe / Legend of Zelda / #botw / Miraculous Ladybug / #mlb / and just... a lot more / requests are open for art / To see my art, tag is #mine or #my art
Hey, I launched a profile on Patreon and uploaded a quick breakdown of this animation :D Please consider becoming a patron! I’ll be putting exclusive art and documentations of my process, if that interests you :)
What people think I mean: I get off on violence. I think hate sex is the best, don't think healthy and stable relationships are 'interesting' enough, and I purposefully sabotage all my relationships. I frequently ship characters with their abusers and consider dragging someone along and domestic violence 'grey areas' because if you look at context it really just means they love each other.
What I actually mean: I love it when two people who hate each other, whether it be seemingly clashing personalities, or actual literal enemies (always enemies who balance each other out. Not 'anti-hero/villain guy constantly harasses heroine girl', but two people who are evenly matched and can hold their own against each other and even in hatred have somewhat respect for the other) who are fighting on opposite sides of a struggle, come together on equal ground and realize that they have more in common than they previously thought. When the two finally join the same side, whether it's due to the redemption of one character or what have you, they may not get along at first, but with time and effort the two eventually find themselves friends with the other. Only *after* they have an established trust and friendship do they then start to have romantic feelings for the other. The 'enemies to lovers' trope does not work if you cannot put 'friend' between the two.
Hi! I was wondering if you could do a post about the parallels between the fire nation royal family and the SWT chief's family. Obviously I have some thoughts but I couldn't really formulate them well. I think it would be interesting to consider the similarities between the two families but also the contrasts
I understand
completely why it’s difficult to articulate, because while all four family
members have counterparts in the opposite nation, there are as many contrasts as there are comparisons, and subversions of what we might think is a parallel, but isn’t.
Ozai and Hakoda. Ozai
rules over his family with an iron fist. He demands respect and longs for total
control over everything and everyone in sight. His lust for power consumes him
and leaves his family twisted and shattered.
Hakoda is the diametric opposite. Although Water Tribe culture could have led Hakoda to assert
authority over his family as the head of his house, he didn’t; instead, he listens to and is proud of Sokka’s ideas, and lets
Katara yell at him (quite disrespectfully, I might add) in order to release her
pent-up emotions. While Ozai rules through fear, Hakoda commands his warriors
through respect. Where Ozai is manipulative, Hakoda is cunning with inventions.
And while his family quite easily could have
been shattered by Kya’s death, Hakoda’s love for his children and their love
for each other kept them united.
Ursa and Kya. These
two are the most similar, and occupy virtually the same place in the story and
their respective families. They are strong and determined mothers who sacrifice
themselves to save their children from harm. After they’re gone, the children
who look up to them the most have a difficult time dealing with their loss, and
their families suffer greatly. It is important to note that this applies to the
A:TLA TV show only, and not the
comics. You can’t make the claim that Ursa “sacrificed” for Zuko if she spent
all the intervening years in deliberate obliviousness to the suffering around
her, living the life she’s always wanted to with the man of her dreams!
Pardon me while I take
a moment to let off some steam.
Anyway.
Azula and Sokka.
“But wait a minute,
Araeph! Zuko is the older brother, so shouldn’t Zuko and Sokka be paralleled?”
Zuko and Sokka do have
similar experiences throughout the show; however, they are not true parallels. Azula
is the coldly logical (and yet creatively crafty) one of her family. Sokka is the strategist
of the GAang, and the one who can see clearly past Azula’s strategic manipulation (if not her emotional one). Sokka and Azula are also the ones with the
most responsibility thrust on their shoulders, as Sokka feels pressure to be
the “man of the house”, especially with his father away at war. Meanwhile,
Azula faces so much stress for being the only child Ozai considers competent and the heir apparent to the Fire Nation
that she develops an insidious strain of perfectionism that eventually tilts
her world upside down. However, while Azula’s response to her father’s abuse is
to regiment her firebending so that not even a hair gets out of place, Sokka
absorbs his father’s ideas and praise like a sponge and gets the chance to
stretch his creativity on pursuits other than warfare. As the privileged
firstborn son, Sokka could have
refused to listen to Katara and Suki or used his position in the tribe to try
to gain more power, but he didn’t. He made a conscious choice to become a
better person throughout the series, while Azula, despite her exceptional skills, never grew in such a way.
Zuko and Katara.
Katara is the person who wields her emotions like a weapon, determined not to
let anything stand in her way. Zuko is the same: he goes where his emotions
tell him to, regardless of whether it’s the wisest course or whether it affects
his personal safety. Both of them are very practical when the need arises but
can be blown off course by an event that evokes their childhood trauma or their
current state of cultural oppression (Katara) or abuse (Zuko). They are capable
of enormous acts of kindness, but they also take their anger out on safe
targets—not people with less power, but people who will see them at their worst
and accept it (Sokka, Hakoda, Iroh, each other). Katara is the mighty bender of
the SWT family, but her fighting style mirrors Zuko’s much more than it does
Azula’s. Zuko’s bending is characterized by drive and determination, and one
look at Katara trying to freeze the firebenders in Episode 2 alongside Zuko’s
duel with Zhao in Episode 3 shows just how similar these two are. But since
both of them began their journeys on opposite sides of the war, their challenges are
different: Katara has to fight for the rights that she deserves, while Zuko
needs to learn that he doesn’t have
the right to be spoiled and have everyone bow to him just because of his
lineage. Still, they’re alike in one more important way: they successfully
learn to see the “enemy” as an ally, even a friend, and despite their childhood
experiences or conditioning, they are both willing to embrace an element of
change.