Unhinged Rambling Along

of course grace is delighted! but it'd be very funny if rocky had just. a massively specific regional accent. and now grace has it too. all the eridians from that area are like OMG THE ALIEN IS ONE OF US - we're adopting it. that's an honorary member of the clan. listen to it. it might as well have grown up here.

...actually i'm gonna do it. fuck it. rocky is space scottish. to me. he's mine now, i'm taking him out to look at the kelpies and the falkirk wheel and climb up ben ledi. he can go fishing in a loch. and now grace's eridian accent is their equivalent of scots. he says stuff to adrian's family (posh motherfuckers) and theyre like 'i think it's trying to communicate with us..?' meanwhile adrian, well used to rocky's accent by now, is like 'it's giving you a compliment. be nice to my spouse's alien, please.'

Turns out there's a childhood disease to the tune of measles that erodes the carapace, and the first symptom shows up about a week before any actual damage is caused.

Grace comments to Rocky that one of his students seems to be turning oxidisation-green. About a week later that student has to be hospitalised for this illness.

Eridian scientists realise pretty quick that Grace can detect the illness long before any of their equipment can, and when caught that early it is much, much easier and safer to treat.

Anthropology, specifically Cultural Anthropology, because of her deep appreciation and understanding for other nations' cultures, especially her own.

Sociology because of how well she connects with other people and understands the situations they're in.

Her first advisor, Pakku, STRONGLY advised her against it (specifically he advised her that she could certainly double major in the "soft" sciences but medicine required more dedication than he'd yet seen from --gendered pause as he looks at the cheery HR reminder poster hung just opposite of his desk-- students like her.)

Grace goes swimming! Rocky is not thrilled.

Eridians cant "hold their breath" like humans do, their vents dont close completly so water can still get in, if they fall in water they drown and die. safe to say rocky is not a fan of when grace does it for fun xD

(i got the inspo for this from this fic: Enrichment by alatarmaia4, please check it out it is so funny)

"Iroh lied about killing the last dragon before Zuko was born because he wanted to protect them! They actually deemed him pure of heart and worthy to learn the truest form of firebending🥰" .......... even though he continued to be a violent general in an evil genocidal empire long after that...? I'm questioning the dragons' wisdom now.

Which is all to say I think it would be perfect if we got to the season three end game and realized Iroh was actually still an errand boy initiate in the White Lotus. And Piandao pulls aside the main tent flap to reveal our Supreme Grand Lotus:

Gran-Gran

Canonically traveled the world without Committing A War, thus reasonably having met and networked with most of these other people in a positive way? Check

Saw the Avatar and told her only grandkids to go help that kid ASAP, don't worry Gran-Gran's just going to stay riiiiiight here while you're gone and definitely not relive the excitements of her youth? Check

Would recontextualize Pakku's constant sour grapes face (and his reaction to seeing Katara's necklace) to "my ex left me and now she's my superior, if I don't train her grandkid she will mobilize a global movement to Kick My Ass"? CHECK

Then your kid assaults your new boss.

Or not really your boss, more like your boss’s boss’s boss.

And it turns out everything is really really hard when everyone around you isn’t trying to curry your favor or affirm your ideas. Outside of the fire nation people don’t just nod and go along with you. They ask follow-up questions and instead of adopting your plans and automatically beginning to work on adapting and generating solutions they instead point out flaws that you hadn’t considered. Nobody is troubleshooting for you, nobody stands ready to spin anything that goes wrong in a favorable light. You are repeatedly written off at best and criticized at worst.

Sleeping on the job

Ponytail Zuko, cleaned up for instagram (cabbage_merchant.jpg). Originally from this post by @vallirenwrites about bald zuko without the ponytail to keep his flowing long locks contained. Then my brain went “hold on, what if Zuko just never changes his hair” and now look what happened. 

[ID: 4 monochrome drawings of Zuko, with his book 1 hairstyle. Drawing 1 shows Zuko speaking, while his hair, unbound from the confines of the pony tail, flows majestically behind him. Sparkles adore his hair, to illustrate just how beautiful it is. 

Drawing 2 shows a tired and disgruntled Zuko in uniform, scowling slightly. Heavy bags are under his eyes, and his hair is, once again, out of its pony tail, but now just hangs down onto his shoulder in a tangled mess.

Drawing 3 is a redraw of the scene in the episode “The Beach” where Zuko takes off his shirt dramatically and there are birds flying behind him, except in this version he has his Book 1 hairstyle. Thankfully in a pony tail this time. 

When Zuko gets banished Ozai doesn’t even pretend that he’ll take him back. Zuko is told, in no uncertain terms, that he is no longer crown prince. He is given time enough for his scar to heal enough not to risk infection, but as soon as he can stand long enough without falling over he is deposited at the palace gates with a bag - they didn’t let him bring much, just his swords and a clean pair of trousers.

He wishes uncle were here. Uncle would know what to do. But Iroh is away somewhere, on a spirit journey, so Zuko is alone in the world. And he’s hungry. Luckily there are always merchants in Caldera, and if one of them happens to take on a fumbling part-time worker that looks just a little too scared at the sight of fire, then that surely has to do with that giant scar across his left face, the poor thing, and no one bats an eye. After all, everyone is too busy preparing for the funeral of Crown Prince Zuko to notice little Li.

The merchants aren’t very nice though, in Li’s opinion (they treat him like he’s stupid, but he’s not, the tutors at the palace just never covered things like haggling in their lessons), so he collects his pay for the last time and hitches a ride on a cart down to the harbour. He could go to the Earth Kingdom, maybe; the scar distracts from his golden eyes well enough, and he’s lost his fire, so it’s not like being a firebender would be a problem.

(Not until Father conquers the rest of the Earth Kingdom, at least. He doesn’t know where he will go when that happens.)

But Li is 13, and small for his age, so no one wants a half-blind toddler on their ship, no matter how much he insists that he can earn his keep. The logical idea is, then, to sneak onto a ship in secret, because he really can’t stay here, not another second, so he picks the ship with the most green-eyed people and hides in between crates of spices and fine Calderan silks and hopes for the best, but the best doesn’t come (of course it doesn’t, Agni hates him) and Li is discovered three days into the voyage.

He pleads and he begs, he really does, for the second time in his life, but the old sailors are as deaf to him as his father was, and they bundle him up and toss him overboard (”waste of good rope,” one of them says) and somehow he gets his arms free but the sea is so cold and dark and not at all like the warm waves of Ember Island and Li - no, Zuko, he’s not going to die under a false name - Zuko can’t breathe-

Zuko wakes up with sand in his mouth and sun in his patchy hair. He’s parched, and hungry, but he’s alive, so maybe the spirits have been merciful with him this time. There’s really no use lingering around on the beach, where no one will come for him anyway, and he needs to find water or something to eat, so he sets off into the thick jungle.

There’s nothing to eat here either, but Zuko does find what looks an awful lot like old stone buildings, and well. He’s always loved exploring. 

The Sun Warriors are strange, Zuko thinks. For a lost civilisation, they seem very much alive. And they don’t bend like anyone he’s ever seen before… they dance, they talk to their fire, breathe with it instead of forcing it to follow their breathing, and for the first time since the Agni Kai, Zuko wants to learn.

[ID: 4 digital drawings in monochrome of Zuko from the sun warriors adopt zuko au above. Image 1: Zuko, aged 15, from the shoulders up. His head is lowered slightly and his eyes are closed. His head is shaved in the style of the Sun Warriors, which almost looks like his book 1 ponytail but longer in the front. Ritual markings decorate his cheeks, shoulders, and head.

Image 2: Younger Zuko, aged maybe 14, practicing with his fire bending teacher (original character named Atzin). They’re both wearing the trousers and leg coverings of the Sun warriors, while Atzin is also wearing arm bands and ritual markings on his cheeks, as well as the sun warrior’s tail hairstyle (three-pronged), while Zuko’s hair is long and un-styled to signify his young adult status. Both are in a crouched stance, with their right feet in front of them and their right hands parallel to the ground. Atzin is smiling down at Zuko, saying “Almost… check your right foot.”

Image 3: Young Zuko, aged 13 and fresh into banishment, playing with another Sun warrior kid of the same age. Both have shoulder-length unstyled hair and are wearing trousers and leg wrappings like the other sun warriors. The kid has a big grin, and Zuko is sporting a small smile. His friend is running. The two are playing with a ball, probably some version of football. The ball is on fire.

Do you or somebody you know have PCOS? You are banned from international womens athletics because you are supposedly in posession of an unreasonable advantage in sports.

Folks disqualified for hyper-androgenism in womens athletics.

Francine Niyonsaba

Caster Semenya

Dutee Chand

Margaret Wambui

And more

-

Why are those disqualified overwhelmingly black and brown? Because testing is case by case when an athletes performance “raises suspicions”. They overwhelmingly test athletes of colour, for being too fast and not meeting white expectations of femininity.

It’s pretty likely that it’s a four digit number, and as there are four digits chosen there, that means that there cannot be any repetition. This mean that there are:

No, no, no. Don’t base your deductions of psychology. Let’s talk chemistry. When you first press a button, there’s more of the natural oils on your skin, and therefore it wears down the numbers on the keys faster. Obviously 0 is the first one, then. Try 0791 first.

The light is green.

And they both coexist with the statement that “posts that guilt-trip fans into interacting with fandom works make many people who want to interact less likely to do it out of fear the creator will think their interaction is not good enough”.

And another truth that also coexists with these, but that I don’t see talked about enough, is that this:

(no need to actually read the whole text in the image!)

…is a wall of love.

But these:

…are also walls of love!

(image descriptions available in alt text)

And both of these make many creators so, SO happy!

So, for all of us who do want to show creators more love and improve their and our own fandom experience, here’s what I propose:

Whenever you consume fandom content, if you have the energy and feel like it, leave a one-line comment. A few emojis. A smile. A keyboard smash. If you have a bit more time and energy than that and you feel like it, quote back your favourite line or point out what your favourite detail about a fanart is. And on the moments where you don’t have the energy for any of this, trust that others will do it for you, the same way you do it when you have the energy and others don’t.