Thinking About Atla Thematics As Usual And Fascinated By How Many Fans Insist They Wanted Aang To “grow

cruelty is so easy. youre not special for choosing it

I didn’t watch last nights episode but from what I gathered the cast bullied Lucien for three straight hours and I’m here for it.

So this is entirely @tygermama's fault

HOKAY, SO. This the earth … I mean, no.

Let’s talk about Éowyn Éomundsdaughter for a bit, shall we?

Keep reading

I reblogged this literally only to answer your question. Reyes. Reyes is the sinammon roll.

Mass Effect Andromeda + Cinnamon Roll meme 

Things I don’t really see people talking about from Solo:

-They had Lando pronounce Han “Hān”

-and made it REALLY SUPER clear that parsecs were a unit of distance (but made doing the Kessel run in 12 parsecs still really impressive)

-just to cover some relatively minor plot holes from the original trilogy

-and I absolutely loved it.

Anonymous said: Who are your favorite three companions to take along with you from each DA game?

My squad(s).

I apologize for my brief recommendation of the further novels, as it was without context and born out of my excitement for the books. Frankly, I wrote it with the assumption that whatever my feelings upon the matter you already had your own, and would do whatever you wished no matter what I said. Having said that, I will now write the reason I so quickly recommended the books without giving you context.

Reading Bujold, for me, is a baseline to expand one’s empathy for others. All books do this, to an extent, but Bujold does it with particular finesse, and with, I admit, a dry irony I very much enjoy. She writes humans who push the boundaries of how we define humanity and asks us to expand our definition of humanity to include them.

Within her books she discusses a wide variety of topics, frequently pertaining to ethics. She is at her best while writing ethical intellectuals. A shortlist of the topics Bujold breaches are, family, identity and self-discovery, redemption, ableism, patriarchy, the mechanics of privilege (from different points of view), tradition and innovation and how they relate, medical ethics, bioengineering, and more (not to mention a generous portion of science fiction ethical dilemmas). Within the world of her books she focuses more upon characters than she does upon science, giving a plausible future scenario in which she can discuss more topics more freely than she might be able to within the modern era.

Shards of Honor was Bujold’s first published novel, and therefore lacks some of the polish and skill of the later novels. She is an author whose writing gets better, not worse, as she progresses. This is even more impressive when you realize that Shards of Honor is no where near a ballpark that could be considered bad.

I do not have a reference for how much you know about the series, so I will now expound a little upon its format.

The protagonist of Shards of Honor, Cordelia, appears as the main third-person narrow point of view for one more book before a time jump and a change in perspective to her son, Miles. Miles is his own protagonist for the majority of the series, though in later books the cast expands. Miles is a complex character that I do not wish to spoil should you decide to keep reading, but he very atypical for a protagonist of his sort, and it leads to a lot of interesting things about the series at large.

In addition, it is important to note that not all of Bujold’s novels are romances. Barrayar, the next book, can be semi-classified as a romance given as Aral and Cordelia are both still present, but I find it more justly fit into a political thriller. All the novels in the series can be called space operas. Furthermore, depending on the book, she writes within the genres of horror, speculative fiction, comedy, mystery, and drama. While this has a potential to be jarring with a less skilled writer, with Bujold, the result is instead a cohesive, interesting universe with realistic societies.

The books do include trigger warnings on rape and torture, though the worst instances are in the scene you mentioned in Shards of Honor, and instances in Mirror Dance much further in the series. The most common just complaint I have heard of her books is a lack of understanding of gender and sexual orientation early within the novels. She does not handle the subject horrendously, as you have likely gathered from the nature of Beta colony, but there are some instances that reveal a lack of understanding into bisexuality and what in means to be transgender. However, this lack of understanding, too, improves as she continues to write.

The series itself is extremely important to me, which doesn’t necessarily mean it will be an extremely important to everyone. However, I would highly recommend you continuing to give it a chance. I did not receive the impression you particularly disliked it, but rather you enjoyed it well enough, but not enough to derail your reading for the next month as you finished the series. I strongly urge that you do. Personally, I find it some of the most poignant books ever written on human nature and on human hope, and have long felt the relatively insular community that knows of its existence should expand. It is a series I honestly believe would improve the world if everyone read and understood its messages. It is a story of finding joy in the darkest times, of changing the world, and of the power of human inspiration.

Read further. Just do it.

@unexpected-firestorms replied to your text post

Read further. Just do it

I’m not absolutely opposed to the idea, but I’m gonna need way more of a convincing pitch than that.

So Gaider tweeted these today and here they are voiced (aside from Morrigan unfortunately)!

the fact that even all these years later, people are still arguing over Aang’s choice to not kill Ozai suggests that A. ATLA is the goddamn best and you just can’t recapture the lightning in a bottle that it was and, B. it’s really kind of disturbing how many people are obsessed with the idea that Aang should have committed murder.

You see a lot of this in the fandom. Constant debates about how Katara and Zuko’s quest for revenge was correct in the Southern Raiders (despite the narrative painting Katara’s choice at the end as a correct one), advocating for greater violence on Aang’s part, and so on. But a biggest, disturbing trend is for people to claim that Aang’s decision to not violate the most sacred principle of his people as being immature.

There’s a tendency nowadays to see violence as not just a solution, but the only solution. That the only way to resolve a problem is to end life; to hurt people. It’s called a cop out when Aang chooses to put his own existence on the line.

The implication, therefore, is that the people advocating this sincerely believe that the mature thing to do is to kill.

Similar in nature to posts talking about how superheroes not killing is weak.

And the idea here, of the willingness to kill as a sign of strength, and as the only real solution to anything, is a deeply disturbing and unsettling one.

If Aang had killed Ozai, it truly would have been the end of the Air Nomads, their most sacred spiritual law broken by their only surviving member. Because Aang would have sunk to the level of the man who had ordered his people killed in the first place, and that of the nation which carried it out.

But when he Energybent, he knew that if he failed, he would have died in the process, and Ozai with him. Not only was Aang willing to put his life on the line for his beliefs, he was genuinely willing to die rather than sacrifice who he was, and the last lingering remnant of the Air Nomads.

I just need to save this...

BILL BILL BILL BILL BILL BILL!

Awesome followup comic from brainbubblegum, who always deserves to be pelted with cash monies.