A:TLA au inspired by @radicalskit 's post <3! Go check >> it << out!

Avatar!Rumi everyonee!!!! I haven't fleshed much out for this au, just that I enjoyed drawing and designing her outfit and I wanna do more-

In this I kinda theorized that Rumi grew up in the earth kingdom, probably in the countryside as Celine wouldn't want her in big cities, where she practices sword fighting with her mothers blades (Dao blades). I sat on the thinking for a bit of if she only had ONE Dao blade, instead of the intended two to show her internal war with herself. I then completely forgot abt it and drew her with the intended two (the 2nd is on her hip) whoops...

stranger things has always had gorgeous visuals, i don’t think i’ve ever watched a scene (even the ones i didn’t like) before S5Vol.2 and thought that it wasn’t pretty. and in my latest rewatches i’ve started to pay a lil bit of attention to the transitions between scenes and they always amaze me (am i a simple person? you can be sure of it. but still—btw how are the transitions in S5E8? because if they’re all bad or just basic then i’ll take also that as proof).

so if i can have something similar to a proof, something that can convince me that extra content must exist, is the fact that S5E8—especially—looks expensively ugly. they invested actual money on it, on the effects, on the lights, on the handmade(?) set, on all the people involved in the setting and the filming and the writing and the costuming and every other department. there was a huge, expensive job behind that episode and it still looked shit, from the visuals to the lighting to some of the acting to the writing.

the biggest inconsistency is that it was a really bad episode compared to all the other 40. and i don’t think anything could ever make me believe that it wasn’t on purpose. as many others have already pointed out, quoting the line from spiderman: into the spider-verse, you can’t fumble literally everything so badly without intention, at least not suddenly—if the whole show had sucked since the beginning, then that would have been different.

cause i can’t wrap my head around the fact that if they wanted to do a proper series finale, EVEN IF the script were still the same—either you think the villain won or that the heroes did—, they could have done a much better job instead of what we’ve got—just like they have done in the past. istg every time i think about the final battle in season 4 i want to scream because it was such a captivating and impactful scene. i don’t even know if it was in any way flawed plot wise and honestly i don’t care because it was so good to watch and to experience that i’d never give it up for a different one. and YET they gave us that joke of a battle as the series finale???? when i say i felt embarrassed watching that episode from start to end ,,,,,

and honestly, we can think that the duffers are awful writers as much as we want, but i’m pretty sure that they’re at least quite good directors and yet they suddenly fumbled that too? as all the other professionals did right at the last episode of one of netflix biggest show? right.

That’s what Xena asked Gabrielle in one of the moments that was meant to be among their last together. If only little old me had known! (I’m not weeping, no). Looking back on it now, that line feels incredibly vulnerable. It reveals a side of Xena we rarely got to see, not the stoic warrior, not the hero, but a woman who is tired to constantly looking for trouble. I think, by that point, Xena had begun to realize that wandering forever in search of the next fight wasn’t doable…not when the person she loved most in the world was risking her life beside her every single day. There’s something deeply moving about that realization. About the face she makes and that hope in the eyes. Hope of someone that maybe can truly leave everything behind and be normal. (It took her long enough, I know!). For perhaps the first time, Xena was thinking about a future. And it sucks we didn’t get to see that. That’s why I love to interpret that question as her own quiet version of, “Settle down with me.” Something bolder would have been “Marry me”, but you know…

Maybe they get a little high, and Ryan watches as Naim scrapes it all off his fingers, picking off the flakes and letting them fall to the floor of their shitty little apartment. “Should do mine,” Ryan says between a puff of the joint they were sharing.

When Ryan was a little kid, he used to scribble on his nails with felt markers. Thought it was fun. Didn’t understand why his mum would take him to the bathroom and wash it off, a warm rag over his hands as she gently told him, “Boys don’t really do that.” It never felt malicious, only a fact he was being told. A part of life to accept as he was.

Far away from Bandee, where preconceived ideas of how to be eventually start to melt away, when they start to build a community around them, he can’t imagine why it was worth caring about.