An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
I have finally posted the bad sex scene I have been promising all over the place. It's Glorfindel/Ecthelion(/Some Horses).
Early reviews from beta readers range from "the sex is not as bad as you claimed it was" to"I was surprised by the presence of feelings".
I'm returning to tumblr just in time to have @a-tehta on my dashboard, with new stories about Glorfindel and Ecthelion, and now I may be stuck on AO3, (re)reading Tehta's tales, and being thrown into a whirl of feels đĽşđ
Am I crying over "The (He)art remembers"? Maybe, a little. Am I smiling like silly over these adorable idiots, and grinning like one myself because I LOVE and have missed how Tehta writes them? You bet!
It's a pleasant surprise to see one of your favourite writers back at work.
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I have been back in the fandom for a few months now. Time to write smut again!
(Note: I am lying. There is no smut in this chapter, just, er, romantic conversation. But Chapter Two is in beta, and coming in a day or two.)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Anyway, the fic describes the reunion of two re-embodied Balrog Slayers, which takes place on a ship heading back to Middle-earth.
A snippet:
âAnother thing I remember,â Glorfindel said casually, âabout being re-embodied, I mean, is that it took some time for my⌠physical needs⌠to return. Even my appetiteâhence all those exotic foods. And, like I mentioned, a month passed before I started feeling restless and in need of exercise, the way I usually do. As for desire, well⌠feeling that again took the best part of a year.â
âInteresting,â said Ecthelion. His lips had tightened again. âThat does not match my experience.â
Glorfindel gave him an encouraging smile. âWell, it has not been a year, yet.â
âNo. But what I meant is that my bodily desires returned just four days after my rebirth, pretty much exactly when this ship departed.â
"This was another talent of Ramyâs: switching subjects so nimbly that Robin found himself struggling to keep up." - Ramy and Robin having a casual evening at the library
ID: Zuko on the left and sokka on the right. From avatar, the last air bender from the waist up and aged up. They have their back turned to the viewer and are facing each other so only their profile is visible. They are looking lovingly into each other's eyes. sokka is resting his left arm on zukos shoulder, holding zukos jaw. His index fingers brushing underneath a cut up hair strand. zuko holds with his right hand on sokkas back. His left hand is placed over sokkas wrist, holding a bracelet made out of zukos cut off hair between his two fingers. End ID
i regrett not making zukos robe seethrough again. but... uhm.... i didn't mean to make this complicated again?
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if you want to deal with all my reblogs
may I direct your attention to my side only my artworks blog?
I wanted to go a bit more in-depth with this piece that I did for zukka week 2023 because i got inspired to do more insane clothing details. ID in ALT.
Ramble about the influences/inspirations below:
Design inspirations for Sokka's clothing are mainly Inuvialuit and Yup'ik, with Nenets, Tlingit, and Chukchi inspiration for the tassels, patterns, belt and beadwork. I mixed these with the ornaments canon shows us used by the Northern Water Tribe, and also in Legend of Korra. I got particularly excited about drawing from Inuvialuit sources since the tassels we see in canon look like they could be inspired by this. Going beyond canon's animation-friendly colour scheme, I drew from Nenets patterns/embroidery/sashes and Yup'ik beadwork for accent colours. I think in the future I'd like to find ways to incorporate more Tlingit-style patterns since I rarely see them in fanart (which is a shame - they're stunning), but since they tend to be very big I ultimately decided to only include them as a nod in order to keep the regalia recognisable as 'Water Tribe'. I wonder if I could start using Polynesian influences as well?
Zuko's headdress and particularly the shoulder garment and beaded embroidery draw heavily from women's clothing styles of LĂŞ Dynasty Vietnam. The other main influence is men's royal clothing in Tang Dynasty China, and patterns worn by Mongolian Khatun. Since we have a bit more to go on in canon as to what fire nation regalia looks like, I blended that in as well. I got particularly excited about the embellishments on LĂŞ Dynasty clothes because I could give a little nod to Zuko's dragon-fire by adding more colours to the embroidery. In the future I think I'd want to make the Mongolian influence a bit more obvious... perhaps even push the envelope by incorporating some Bashkir designs, though I'm not sure how well that will go.
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[ID: A digitally drawn comic of Toph and Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender talking about Zukoâs scar.
It begins with Toph approaching Zuko, who is sitting near a campfire. âYou have a scar?â she asks. Zuko replies,  "Oh! Uh, yeah⌠You didnâtâŚ?â Toph cuts him off and says, "Came up in passing with the other guys.â Toph casually makes herself a seat out of rock and sits down next to him. âMust be pretty badass if everyone assumes I know itâs there, too,â she continues. Zuko looks aside awkwardly and says, â⌠Itâs on my face.â âAh.â Toph replies.
Zuko says, âMaybe you could⌠feel it?â âHuh?â says Toph. âI guess, if I concentrate hard enough.â Zuko reaches for Tophâs hand. âUhm, just with your hand, if you want,â he says. âI donât think I can describe it.â â⌠Gotcha. Guide my hand then, boss,â Toph says. Zuko does so, and thereâs a pause as Toph touches his scar. The fire reflects in her eyes.
As Toph pulls her hand away, Zuko says, ââŚ. You know, my left eye is almost blind, too.â âSeriously?!â Toph exclaims. âWhy arenât we a tag team yet?! The blind bandit and the half-blind dweeb!â âCome onâŚ!â Zuko moans. End ID]
id by @strawberrygiorno , thank you!
iâve had this comic sketched out for months but only decided to finish it now, itâs based on something i drew a couple years back of toph and zukoâŚ.donât think too hard on when or how this takes place because i donât really know either! itâs just a concept iâve always wanted to draw
Hi! I really want to hear your opinion about Agni Kai in Atla LA and why it's bad thematically. Thank you!
Hi! I've never been asked anything before!
Alright, so - spoilers. Also, sorry that this is so long.
In the original, Zuko does not fight back, and that's so important. It's clear that the Fire Nation has great respect for hierarchy, whether it be elders, leaders or superior officers. Ozai is the ultimate hierarchical superior to Zuko: his father, his superior as a royal, and - of course - the leader of the entire nation.
In the Agni Kai, Ozai repeatedly orders Zuko to fight for his honor, and Zuko refuses. He remains prostrate, and reaffirms his respect for his father. In the context of this hierarchical culture, he is doing everything right in the face of an order that, to him, is the ultimate paradox. And that's what earns him his scar. A disfiguring, dishonoring brand.
He gets burned because he wants so badly to do everything right. He gets burned because he wants to show respect. He gets burned because, in a cultural context, he is behaving as he should. Because his father is cruel.
But it's not just that: it also serves as a shorthand to the audience that the Fire Nation under Ozai and his forefathers is wrong, to the point that Zuko, the dutiful son, literally cannot do right under that system. And you don't need to do a deep dive into what the culture is presented as to get that - it immediately strikes the audience with a profound sense of unfairness. It efficiently communicates that the Fire Nation is rotten, that the system itself has become corrupted and distorted.
And this sets up Zuko's entire arc. He did right, and he got punished. At the end of S2, he does wrong, and he gets rewarded, but the reward isn't fulfilling to him, because everything he could ever earn under that system is tainted and his experiences outside the system have shown him that, even if he can't accept it at first. And it's so narratively satisfying to watch him then defy his father, who tries to punish him again with lightning, only for him to now be able to literally turn it back (with Iroh's technique, Iroh being one of the few sources of unconditional love in his life!). He then redefines his relationship with Firebending itself, going back to the original source of it. He literally rids himself of the corruption of his nation.
It forms such a tight narrative arc, and it sets up so much about the Fire Nation with no need for explanation. Even his interactions with Iroh also tske on a new light: he's intentionally disrespecting his uncle - another elder and superior, as well as a father figure - and Iroh never punishes him for it. Ultimately, that unconditional love and support leads him to reform his nation.
In the Live Action, Ozai orders him to fight back, and he does. He even has a chance to strike Ozai, but doesn't, prompting Ozai to remark that "compassion is a weakness" before he burns Zuko. Which was never the point of Zuko's arc. It waters down his entire primary character conflict, because if his takeaway is that he lost a fight because he was too kind, then the only thing that needs to happen is for him to get some kind of narrative payoff by being kind. Wow, arc over. It becomes this surface level morality tale about how compassion isn't weakness.
In the LA, he also gets multiple chances to speak out at the war meeting. He questions the plan, the general and Ozai lay out actual, sensible reasons for why the plan has to proceed as it is, and then Zuko says that it's a terrible plan anyways. In the original, he speaks out once, and his words even make it clear that he's speaking out because the soldiers "love and defend our nation." His objection is the mildest possible form of objection: he isn't questioning the system, in fact, he's reinforcing it by appealing to the virtue of these soldiers. And he still gets punished.
With all that and Iroh explicitly calling out Ozai multiple times in the LA, we don't get the sense that the Fire Nation culture itself has been warped by imperialism. We just get the sense that the leader is a bad dude. And that's a far less powerful setup, and it will lead to a far less satisfying resolution.
It's an incredibly watered down version of the original, and lacks so much thematic weight.
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"Hey so it turns out that the people of earth accidentally did a global experiment to see if every individual could course correct climate change through mass personal change of habits, and it turns out, no! We can't! It was massive corporate activity all along!"
the thing that people are missing about TLTâwhat makes it so good and so extremely affirmingly gayâis that it is layered through and through with queer desire of all kinds: Sick desire, wrong desire, desire that will never be voiced let alone fulfilled, desire that CANNOT be spoken of, desires that shouldnât be fulfilled or run counter to social mores of the setting in ways that are alien to the readerâs own. It is So. Horny. People are horny for corpses. Theyâre fucking using other peoplesâ bodies (without consent). Theyâre subtextually fucking their siblings. The core homoerotic relationship is a necro/cav relationship, which in the bookâs setting, romantic or sexual necro/cav relationships are considered repulsive.
And it will never be fulfilled or consummated in the sense that most people imagine them. Nobody is getting what they want. Girls are kissing girls who are in love with someone elseâs corpse. Girls are lobotomizing themselves to save other girlsâ souls. Girls are spearing their hearts on iron fences and offering their souls to other girls to eat. They are both profoundly Not Getting Laid and also having intimacies and consumptions that make sucking and fucking seem about as profound as a puddle. The penetration metaphor of Naberiusâ death and the bottoming metaphor of Gideonâs cannot be overstated.
And somehow, even though it portrays repression in some cases, it is not Repressed(TM). The girls are Jesus; the girls are reading porn rags; the girls are dying as virgins. Someone tries to fuck a hallucination that is also the ghost of the Devil and also of the Earth. The ghost of the Earth and the Devil says âHuh. One moment, I have to cross time, space, and the River beyond deathâ and roughly⌠a day later, fully possesses their body.
Sex doesnât begin to describe it. It is sublime; it is spiritual; it is as crass and visceral and compulsive as whatever sick pornographies anybody gets off to; it is as grimy and solipsistic and subterranean as any human unconscious.
You simply could not get that in a light and happy âfound family! â¨â rainbow sci-fi
i haven't talked about this on here, and idk if tamsyn necessarily intended it to come off that way but harrow being a demisexual lesbian is one headcanon you can pry from my cold dead hands lol
something about how's particular brand of demi lesbianism and the fact that her LI is hot butch really helped me figure out that im in fact a lesbian and not bi as i thought.] but like listen:
The only people Harrow has canonically loved:
- the Body (basically the image of woman who can never love her back and on whom Harrow can project whatever she wants)
- Gideon (aka someone she has known since literal childhood, "her only friend")
- (she does admit ianthe is beautiful but i don't personally consider that sexual attraction for several reasons, but that's for a different post possibly after i reread HtN)
I mean yeah she's religiously repressed obviously, but it's not just that. She literally spends the entirety of HtN being like "ew sex, marriage, kissing, the idea of marrying your cavalier" (even when it doesn't involve her) UNTIL the moment she remembers Gideon
That's like... the BEST representation of demisexuality I have seen, bar none idc if it's meant to be canon
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Imagine an alien sharing a cool human fact they just learned like âhey guys did you know that the silvery markings on humans actually arenât true stripes? Theyâre called stretch marks, they happen when the human is growing fast enough to actually outgrow their skin, which is apparently something that just fucking happens to almost all of them at some point of their life.â
and another one is like âwait so youâre saying humans donât have stripes.â
âactually they do, but the stripes are invisible. Thereâs genetic code thatâd give them stripes but theyâre just the same colour as the rest of the skin. So the visible stripes are not real stripes and the real stripes are invisible.â
âI swear if you tell me one more weird human thing today Iâm beating your ass.â
I remember reading somehwre the human eye can see more shades of green than any other colour. I just googled it and the human eye can see 10 Million different shades of green.
So human could see stripes and patterns on, say, a reptillian race who maybe canât see as many colours as we do, and think theyâre just one boring shade of green.
Human: We have stripes?! I wish I could see them. I hope they look like yours.