beware this is where i blog

Hello tumblr. I’m reviving my old blog from the dead with some of my PHM fanarts.

This movie/book has gripped my soul a little too hard 😭

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And then you have scenes like, Rocky is telling Grace the Eridian scientists are ready to work on the Hail Mary to take him back to Earth, and you can tell he's nervous to tell him this by the way he shuffles his claws in the sand, almost like he doesn't want tell Grace, because he doesn't want his friend to leave but knows its his choice, so when Grace says he wants to think about it, he perks up and says 'take as long as you need', not just because its a big decision, but he wants his friend to stay even if its a little longer and the fact that he's not choosing to immediately leave makes him happy

I believe (based on clips I've heard) Rocky does express this in the book to Grace, ("Speaking selfishly, I hope you dont go" - something like that) but they didn't need to have him say that in the movie, cause you could tell by his body language

Day 2 - Warmth

Strongly inspired by the zutara au made by this amazing artist (IF ANYONE KNOWS THE ARTISTS @ LMK) and Pursuit of Jade (specifically ep4) 🤭💙❤️

ZK Week 2026: WARMTH (for Burnout)

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Burnout AU:

The Fire Prince is different than she remembers, barely an echo of himself. He moves as though he's treading deep waters. Sometimes, Katara feels like she's watching him through a fog.

After being exiled from the North for bloodbending an abuser—before facing Zhao and being thrown to the seas for Zuko to find—she'd heard the stories. Prince Zuko died as the Long Night began, caught in the explosion of the Yuurei. And yet, here he was, offering Katara passage to Omashu so she can reunite with her friends.

(Breathing in time with the fires of a ghost ship.)

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Reverse AU:

“Years ago, a spirit showed me a reality in which I was meant to be the Avatar,” Zuko's airbending Master said. “Kyoshi died a century earlier and the Tribes didn't join forces to make the world their hunting ground. The Cycle itself was different, too—elemental opposites didn't succeed one another. It was so marvelous, yet so strange. However, this is our reality, and you're the Avatar.”

This was so obvious when I realized it, but I think most people miss it, because we’re so desensitized by D&D-style magic with immediate, visibly, flashy effects, rather than more subtle and invisible forces of magic. When Gollum attacks Frodo on the slopes of Mount Doom, Frodo has the chance to kill him, but he doesn’t. Instead, he says:

Frodo: Go! And if you ever lay hands on me again, you yourself shall be cast into the Fire!

Frodo’s not just talking shit here. He is literally, magically laying a curse. He’s holding the One Ring in his hands as he says it; even Sam, with no magic powers of his own, can sense that some powerful mojo is being laid down. Frodo put a curse on Gollum: if you try to take the Ring again, you’ll be cast into the Fire.

All the other people in the franchise who were offered the Ring declined to take it because they were wise enough to know that if they used its power – and the pressure to do so would be too great – they would be subject to its corruption.

Could he have been drawing on the Ring’s power at this point in the story? At this point in the story we’re relying on Sam’s narration, and Sam doesn’t know what’s going on in Frodo’s head, so it’s hard to say for sure. Having used it once, after spending so long holding out against it, was that the breach in the dam?

Which means that the moment that Frodo succumbs to temptation is not the moment at the volcano – it was already too late by then. The moment he is taken by temptation was when he used the power of the Ring to repel Gollum.

‘I would ask one thing before we go,’ said Frodo, ‘a thing which I often meant to ask Gandalf in Rivendell. I am permitted to wear the One Ring: why cannot I see all the others and know the thoughts of those that wear them?’

‘You have not tried,’ [Galadriel] said. ‘Only thrice have you set the Ring upon your finger since you knew what you possessed. Do not try! It would destroy you. Did not Gandalf tell you that the rings give power according to the measure of each possessor? Before you could use that power you would need to become stronger, and to train your will to the domination of others.’

In other words:

Frodo asks Galadriel, herself carrying a Ring of Power, “Could I, hypothetically, use the power of the One Ring to do something magical aside from turning invisible?” and Galadriel replies, “Yes, hypothetically, you totally could, assuming the magic you want to do involves laying compulsions on others, but I strongly recommend against it, because it would fuck up your brain.”

This was in the first book. At the end of the third book Frodo uses the Ring to fuck Gollum up, forcing him to throw himself into lava if he disobeys Frodo’s commands.

‘Down, down!’ [Frodo] gasped, clutching his hand to his breast, so that beneath the cover of his leather shirt he clasped the Ring. ‘Down, you creeping thing, and out of my path! Your time is at an end. You cannot slay me or betray me now.’

Then suddenly, Sam saw these two rivals with other vision. A crouching shape, scarcely more than the shadow of a living thing, a creature now wholly ruined and defeated, yet filled with a hideous lust and rage; and before it stood stern, untouchable now by pity, a figure robed in white, but at its breast it held a wheel of fire. Out of the fire there spoke a commanding voice.

‘Begone, and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom.’

Then the vision passed and Sam saw Frodo standing, hand on breast, his breath coming in great gasps, and Gollum at his feet, resting on his knees with his wide-splayed hands upon the ground.

…

Frodo is sparing Gollum’s life here, and shaping that into his curse. He is only cursing Gollum—can only curse Gollum—as an effect of this mercy; if Gollum were dead, he could not be cursed by Frodo or the Ring; his survival makes the curse possible and serves as payment for the curse: they are in effect making a bargain here, wherein Golllum’s life and his sentence of dying in the Fires of Doom should he take the Ring again are as one, a package deal, which Gollum “accepts” by retreating with his life.

Then, once Frodo comes to Mount Doom, he cannot cast the ring into the fires; the Ring has him in thrall, since he has used it. Now into the picture again comes Gollum, whose greed for the Ring has surpassed his love of his own life—even having been cursed with death should he touch it again, he craves it and demands it for himself, taking it from Frodo by force.

Thus we see the Ring’s power divided against itself—it has defeated both Frodo and Gollum, and its defeat of Gollum inspires Gollum to fight Frodo for it, invoking the curse. And thus Sauron, who has it, now, by virtue of both its erstwhile Bearers falling under its (and therefore its Lord’s) sway, is cheated out of it by the effects of Frodo’s act of mercy.

Frodo spared Gollum, and used the Ring’s power to set a curse, and when Frodo faltered, it was Gollum whom he spared who took the Ring from him and invoked that curse, falling into the Fires of Doom and, due to the same greed that defeated Frodo, taking the Ring with him.

If there had been no sparing Gollum, there would have been no curse, and Frodo would have had the task Isildur failed at—destroying the (beautiful, useful, lovely ring)—set before him alone, and he may have succeeded, or he may have failed, or he may have tarried too long in the struggle for Sauron’s destruction to come in a timely fashion, or the resolution and the Ring’s destruction may have hurt him far beyond the loss of a finger.

Instead, there was Gollum, in thrall to Sauron yet doomed by Frodo, to take from Frodo both the Ring and the burden of destroying it. Frodo, in his mercy-tinged use of the Ring, effectively shifted the impetus behind the Ring’s destruction from himself to the doom laid on Gollum—and Sauron’s hold over Gollum made it a near certainty that the doom would come to pass: Gollum would die, and not surrender the Ring, and thus the Ring would fall with him into the fires of Mount Doom.

The warrior-poet-king Cú Chulainn was, eventually, brought down because he was bound by a geas. His geas was to never eat the flesh of a dog (I believe by Culann, but I’m not sure on that). Well, he got served some dog stew. He couldn’t eat it, because it was dog. But he couldn’t not eat it, because that would be extremely rude, according to cultural custom at the time - a custom so strong, it might as well have been a geas on its own. Either way, he was breaking a geas’ rules, and this magically weakens him before an upcoming battle. He - and his charioteer and horse - are slain

Odysseus: Regret it why?

Cassandra: You won’t believe me if I tell you. If I prophecy, nobody believes me. That is my curse.

Odysseus: … I’m Nobody. Fill me in. 

*A couple of months later* 

Odysseus: HELLO PENELOPE, I AM HERE PRECISELY ON TIME AND NOT YEARS LATE incidentally I rescued and adopted a Trojan seer while I was away, she’s great, got me home really fast, Cassandra this is your new mother who’s not going to treat you like shit. 

Penelope: … I’m going to need more details, but okay, sure. 

The Avatar's Smile 🍀

Because the way I was taught it, the Trolley Problem isn't a one-and-done thing in isolation - its classic form is there to set up the variations and test where your values change.

The classic form is: a runaway trolley is careening down the tracks. The brakes are broken, it can't be stopped. In its path, five people are tied to the tracks, and if it's left to its own devices, the trolley will run over them and kill them. BUT you have the option to pull a lever and send the trolley down a different track. On that track, one person is tied to the tracks. As it stands Right Now, if you do nothing, the five people will die, and the one person will live. But you can pull the lever and switch the trolley's track so that the one person will die, and the five will live. The trolley is approaching and you don't have time to untie anyone from the tracks. Would you pull the lever?

In its base form, the question is fairly simple, and it's about if the capacity to intervene makes you morally obligated to intervene, and if doing nothing and letting more people die is better or worse than personally intervening to make it so that fewer people die, but one person will die who without your intervention would otherwise have lived.

But that's even one iteration of the problem, because most people say yes - saving five people and sacrificing one is, overall, better than saving one person and sacrificing five.

And the real value of the Trolley Problem comes after you've said, yes, I'd pull the lever.

You've established that you believe intervening to save five people even if that means sacrificing one person is the more morally correct option. Then the question-asker hits you with,

... what if the five people were strangers, and the one person was your mom/your spouse/your sister/your best friend? Would you pull the lever then?

... what if the five people were adults, and the one was a child? Would you pull the lever then?

... what if the five people were convicted felons, and the one was not? Would you pull the lever then?

... what if the five people were disabled, and the one person was an Olympic athlete? Would you pull the lever then?

... what if instead of one person, it was four people? Would you pull the lever then?

... what if instead of five people, it was a critically endangered bird, whose death might doom its species to extinction? Would you pull the lever then?

The one that sticks in my head is, let's go back to the baseline version - a trolley is careening out of control towards five people, and you can intervene to shift it to the track where it will kill one person. Did you say yes to that?

Now imagine there are five terminally ill people who need a heart transplant, a liver transplant, a lung transplant, and two kidney transplants, or they'll die. Meanwhile, there is a perfectly healthy adult in front of you with fully functional organs that are a perfect match for these five people. Would you kill that healthy adult and distribute their organs to the five sick people, saving their lives?

If you said no to that, but yes to pulling the trolley lever... why? The logic is the same: kill one person who would otherwise have lived, in order to save five people who would otherwise have died. But it feels different, doesn't it? Why?

That's what the Trolley Problem is for. It's a deliberately contrived ethical thought experiment to draw out our values, our feelings, and how we apply our values about people's lives when we make decisions - and maybe make us face the realization that we have some gut feelings about the value of some lives over others, and make us ask ourselves why we feel that way.

It's applied to hospital triage situations about who to treat first, and to decisions when programming self-driving cars in a crash scenario of whether to prioritize the safety of a pedestrian or the driver.

And it exists so that once you realize the way you're thinking about this, you then have to turn the question to the trade-offs we actually make in society.

... what if instead of five people, it was seven million people, and on the other track, instead of one person, it was The Economy?

... what if instead of five people, it was 7,500 people, and on the other track, instead of one person, it's letting car companies do what they want forever?

... what if instead of five people, it was 1,000 people, and on the other track, instead of one person, it was police budgets and police immunity?

... what if instead of five people, it was a ground invasion of Japan, and on the other track, instead of one person, it was 140,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

... what if instead of five people, it was 251 hostages, and on the other track, instead of one person, it was the entire population of Gaza?

Archaeology has traditionally had a fundamental bias against fabric. Fabrics are after all highly perishable, withering away within months or years, and only rarely leaving traces behind for those coming millennia later to find. Archaeologists—predominantly male—gave ancient ages names like “Iron” and “Bronze,” rather than “Pottery” or “Flax.” This implies that metal objects were the principal features of these times, when they are simply often the most visible and long-lasting remnants. Technologies using perishable materials, such as wood and textiles, may well have been more pivotal in the daily lives of the people who lived through them, but evidence of their existence has, for the most part, been absorbed back into the earth.

A civilization that built structures out of stone is assumed greater than a civilization that built structures out of wood or some biodegradable material

This makes me think of Rivercane (Arundinaria spp. our native bamboo which was almost wiped out in colonization similar to what happened to the Bison) and how it was used universally by the peoples of the Southeastern USA for every tool, structure, furniture etc imaginable: bedframes, waterproof mats for roofs, backpacks, sieves, shields, torches, sharp splits for quick-and-dirty butchering knives…

when the spanish first came here randomly roaming and murdering people all over the place they reported that the country was so populated that you could be in one town and see the smoke of the campfires of other towns on the horizons.

now bamboo by weight is stronger than steel, and Rivercane is one of the stronger species of bamboo. Bamboo-working in southeastern USA pre-colonization was crazy advanced. And you could use a split of Rivercane as a butchering knife in a pinch, and you could also use sharpened pieces as arrows without a stone projectile point at all. So there were all these useful objects and tools and constructions that were able to simply biodegrade away.

So people nowadays often assume there was hardly anybody here before white people showed up just because they don’t see all the constructions and temples and stuff.

What’s even crazier is you DO see the constructions all around you, literally the town I live in was built on top of an Indigenous town and many roads around it and leading to it were Indigenous roads.

(And there were quite a few stone constructions, but colonizers have been running wild all over the place so long that they’ve been knocked down and you literally couldn’t identify the ruins unless you thought “hey wait these stones don’t belong here, they had to be quarried and brought here” And in a lot of cases the locations of such ruins are not popularly discussed because looting and desecration of Indigenous sites is such a huge problem if anybody knows.)

what do they even think a fortification is for???

what do you think a shield is for. what do you think ranged weapons are for????

if your tactics are dumb and reckless but you usually win and it's just you punching people that's one thing. or even if it's you and five guys who've decided they like how you roll!

but if you are put in charge of soldiers. and you throw their lives away because you don't know what you're doing. that's not okay.

it's not always avoidable! one of the basic problems with armies! but when it happens in fiction it needs to be on purpose, to make sure the military elements of the narrative remain thematically congruent.

when you have a bit where Main Character is in command and then makes avoidable bad decisions and people die who didn't have to. either the protagonist has been put in a horrific position by whatever authority figure thrust them into a role they didn't want and weren't competent to handle, without support.

or the protagonist, voluntarily assuming a management job they suck at, has committed a grievous harm against others by not recognizing their own limitations.

even if they win! i don't want to be watching a movie where the main character squanders every tactical advantage and loses 40% of their forces totally unnecessarily for Narrative Tension, but the enemy retreats or gets eaten by a dragon or loses the MacGuffin or whatever, and then there's triumphant music and a party because They Won!!!

For example, in the American Civil War, the tactics used of soldiers, marching into open fueled, and exchanging musket fire was not all that different than the tactics of the American revolution a little under 100 years prior. However, the rifles that infantry men were armed with were significantly more accurate. As a result, casualties, both in terms of lives lost, and soldiers, injured were horrific.

The concept of trench warfare in World War I was not all that different from wars, fought all over the continent in the century prior, and were designed to try and curb advantages of cavalry. But again, of mortars, more accurate, rifles, and chemical warfare meant that charging trenches resulted in truly grotesque numbers of casualties.

There is certainly evidence that World War I era generals were fairly callous when it came to casualty figures. They were more interested in territory gained. And it mattered very little how many lives that cost since soldiers were replaceable.

I agree that there should be some narrative coherence when protagonist squander advantages due to bad tactics, but when you look at actual history, it’s very clear that even if there are “good guys“ and “bad guys“ in war, there’s also just a lot of waste. That doesn’t make for a very sexy narrative, but it’s the nature of the beast. Militaries in particular are conservative institutions slow to change. you do things a certain way because that is the way they are done. That will always get people killed. But that’s also excepted as the way things are done.

At the end of the day, I’m just not sure there is a good way to organize two groups of people trying to kill each other.

thereby creating major ruptures in the narrative logic and characterization for anyone who knows (for example) what the point of a wall is.

this is a writing complaint, about failure to adequately situate motive within character and maintain internal consistency.

i'm not going to ask every piece of fiction that wants to have swords in it to engage in a meditation on the nature of conflict. that sounds boring, and also like it's asking too much of people. i'm aiming way lower here.

In real life, countries around the world are in frequent states of war. Not everyone has access to easy air travel. There are places in the world ruled by war lords and terrorists. There are countries which do not allow foreigners to move freely.

There are still refugees who have to make long travels across dangerous parts of their country just to get to a border stop where they might be granted asylum.

Child soldiers are still recruited by terrorist groups, and it would actually have been pretty cool to have explored modern child soldiers in the Avatar universe, juxtaposed with the Gaang everyone cheered for in the original.

I highly doubt when OP made this post the takeaway was supposed to be "Curse every white person with blond hair and blue eyes" or anything of the sort.

If you read this and get offended or you feel called out or something akin to that I need you to remember that this isn't about us. This isn't about you. This isn't saying that there's an unfair expectation on white people with blond hair and blue eyes to be good. This isn't saying that white people inherently are evil or even that they're sort of objectifying these traits and imposing them on you and your fair complexion. None of this is about you.

This is about media always portraying a lack of melanin as pure and good. This is about villainizing and demonizing black and brown people. This extends to even light-skinned black people being viewed as more palatable and good because they aren't as dark as some of their fellow people of color which is also just something that has historically affected black demographics.

It can be hard sometimes to put others perspectives before your own. It can be hard sometimes to remember that people exist outside of you and that you can't be involved in everything. It does not make you bad to feel this way but it doesn't make you bad if you can't curb your own selfishness and look at what is actually important. I shouldn't have to hold anyone's hand through that so they can have any sense of sonder.

I apologize to any people of color, especially black folks, if any of this felt like I was talking over you or if I missed the point of this post. White people often need to be smacked upside the head with our privilege so we can sit down and shut up and listen.