The truth about you is beautiful.

The Midwest Immigration Bond Fund, which pays immigrant bond fees to get people out of ICE Custody, has run so low on funds they've had to put a hold on their work. They have a donor matching funds through $50,000 or until August 21st, so please consider throwing a few bucks their way and telling your networks.

DONATION LINK

average Daine problem: the forest 😐

average Kel problem: They Are Killing The Children

I'd like to thank @atlaculture for some of these pictures (and info). The rest come from good ol' Google, historical fashion articles, and overall open domain goodness. The jaw-dropping artworks are by Chakrabhand Posayakrit, a wonderful Thai artist.

Getting inspiration from chut thai and broad SEA cultures for Fire Nation clothing—especially Ember Island—is surprisingly fun and highly recommended! I hope these refs help inspire you guys <3

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Katara's outfit—batik patterns, sabai top, (extremely simplified) jewelry, and sinh skirt.

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Zuko's outfit (what little we can see of it)—suea phraratchathan (with rolled-up sleeves because #please), and chong kraben bottom.

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Yup'ik jewelry—main references are earrings, but it was interesting to study them and figure out how a bracelet/anklet could look like.

after i dropped out of high school i found a torrent of like 5GB of OCRd romance novels and i read like 3 romance novels a day for a while

read enough romance novels and you will realize that they live or die entirely on technical skill. if you are new to romance novels then even bad ones can dazzle you with novelty but by the time you are on your 30th historical fake engagement between a bluestocking and a rakish duke you can grade them and you know when they've failed. when two books have what should be the same main characters hitting the same plot beats, but one of those books is delightful and the other fucking sucks, you learn some things. some books are bad and still delightful. other books are good but they just don't hit. you start to see the seams in the bad ones. 'oh, this is a weird out of character moment because she wanted to have the kabedon moment and didn't know how to get there'. 'she didn't want the ust to end but couldn't think of a better reason than this deus ex cockblock.' that kind of thing.

you could probably do this with other genres but i like romance because the plot is two people fall in love. that's it. everything else is set dressing. if you can figure out how to make that work you can carry it over into whatever other genre you feel like. mysteries would give you a different skillset around plotting that i don't have.

and the other thing is that you can't really sub in fanfic for this. plenty of fanfic takes characters from other genres and plops them into romance, but it's not the same. a good romance novel says, "here are two characters. you may know their archetypes, but you don't know them. you are going to get to know them, and you are going to love them, and you are going to want them to love each other, and when they love each other you are going to be happy for them". i love a rakish duke. when a man who's never had to do his own laundry is slutty as fuck that's my shit. but you still have to make me like him. you can take that archetype and make a guy who fucking sucks. most fanfic will not impart to you any knowledge about how to make a reader like a guy from scratch. you already know that guy. that's the whole point. fanfic with as much character building as an original work is the exception, not the rule.

the whole reason i get catty about fics that just make a different guy is that... you've made a different guy. i don't know who this guy is and i don't like him, and you haven't bothered trying to make me like him, because you slapped another guy's nametag on him like a cheat code. it's cool if you did make me like this new guy, but why is he wearing that other guy's nametag if no other aspect of him is present?

ZUTARA WEEK - DAY THREE: Aurora

"i feel you / like a breath on the air, / and in the light / like a memory. or a dream. / or a sign of something, / in a hope for somewhere / with a hold on anything / i feel you everywhere, i look for you in everything" —Butterflies Rising, Wild Spirit, Soft Heart

Honestly, I went back and forth between this prompt. At first, I wanted to parallel Disney's Sleeping Beauty with Zuko and Katara, but that plan failed (😭). It was pretty difficult with all the overlays I was trying to experiment with, so I went with my second plan: the Aurora Borealis. I didn't have a strict, thought out draft for what I was doing, but I quickly got it done with the idea in mind that I wanted to make it seem like a watercolor painting. I wanted something more delicate that represents the spiritual aura of an Aurora Borealis, while keeping in mind Zuko and Katara's intricate relationship.

Avatar: Aang, the Last Airbender