then there are blackbirds

Wow it's been ages since I've read/watched any new content?? Things I plunged into on recent rest/recovery/workfail days:

- Zuko fic, including lots of Sokka/Zuko - I love their canon relationships with Mai and Suki (and to a slightly lesser extent Yue) to bits so this ship hadn't previously registered for me, but I find their combined ridiculousness... astoundingly appealing right now??

- Kimetsu no Yaiba/Demon Slayer - sister watched the anime on Netflix and poked me about it, and then I went and watched it and read the whole manga in approximately 2 days. I didn't expect to love it so much, but TANJIRO! NEZUKO! Cute and heartwrenching and sweet, but tbh my first overall reaction was CLOWN FRIENDS, HOW DO YOU HAVE SO MANY. ♥ ♥ ♥

- Tian Guan Ci Fu/Heaven Official's Blessing - I marathoned this on Netflix after I finished Kimetsu no Yaiba, and then did the same thing with the manhua and novel translations. >.> (Hello again, completionist tendencies?) 800 years of pining, literal/emotional suffering, and EPIC OBLIVIOUSNESS are truly A Combination, wow. The portrayal of the pains of bureaucracy also made me laugh really hard- Ling Wen is a truly underappreciated martyr!

Side notes: I think non-live-action is the only reason I could handle the amount of gore/body horror in these, though the art style in Kimetsu no Yaiba was less of a buffer for me than, say, Mononoke. Really, the art style in TGCF doesn't have Mononoke's extra buffer of surreality either, it's just that Hua Cheng and Xie Lian are distractingly pretty so the eye gets drawn away a lot more. xD

Inspired by a recent exchange with rydra_wong, I thought it would be nice to make a list of life-giving media content that's been helping me get by! I noticed upon my latest rewatch of Nirvana in Fire that the comfort reading/media consumption I do to cope with politics these days is distinctly different from the comfort reading/media consumption I do in response to general life stress. There's a specific flavor of schadenfreude involved in the former which leads me to look for plots involving political takedowns and reforms for great justice, for one thing, though I will also settle for characters resisting and/or getting justice in a less socially comprehensive sense. *g*

My political coping list is much less extensive than my general comfort list, but here are a few things I've been leaning on:
♥ Nirvana in Fire/Lang Ya Bang - I would rewatch this show anytime for any reason because of the amazing characters, but it is especially satisfying as political coping because of Mei Changsu's beautiful takedown schemes (also, there is an explicit hierarchy of court corruptness being dealt with)!
♥ Captive Prince - similarly satisfying, but to a lesser extent. I love Laurent's plotting, but Mei Changsu eclipses him in terms of layers, let's be real.
♥ Black Panther - the most comforting parts of this movie for me are Shuri, Okoye, and Nakia, tbh. I love soft-hearted T'Challa, but those three are what I watch for these days.
♥ A:TLA - this is also a general comfort thing, but for political coping I like turning to the latter half of Zuko's character arc and, uh, pretty much every episode where Katara gets angry, because she's glorious when pissed off and never gets punished for it. I also like all the fights with Azula; they're quite cathartic for me!
♥ Kristin Cashore's Graceling series (er, I forget if that's the actual series name? but all three books!) - I like these because in addition to the various trash fires and takedowns, they don't shy away from the parts where everyone is also coping with the traumas involved during and afterward. There's a raw generosity and kindness in Bitterblue, especially, that I really appreciated post-November 2016.
♥ V for Vendetta - clearly explosions are not a solution to shitty government, but some days there's only so much bullshit I can take before I just want to watch it (fictionally) burn.
♥ The Matrix - same as above? xD
♥ The Handmaid's Tale - I started rereading a couple of weeks post-Kavanaugh, but it was a bit much then (also, I was away that weekend and got distracted by people). I think it would be good to revisit another day, though.
♥ Janelle Monae's entire discography - not only is she an incredible musician, her music videos (Many Moons, Tightrope, and Dirty Computer especially) are such amazing portraits of everyday #resistance.
♥ In the Heights soundtrack - maybe Hamilton would be more satisfying (I still haven't seen it), but literally all of this is immigrants surviving, thriving, and going about their everyday lives, and I desperately need more immigrant stories. (I would cite Allegiance too, if I owned the soundtrack!)
♥ By The Still Waters - I love and have been rereading this fic so much, because it is all about choosing and dealing with the consequences of your choices. Also OMG, what an incredible character piece! (Spoilers for Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition.)
♥ LOTR - for all those comforting Dire Moments with Frodo, Sam, Eowyn, etc., haha.

What are the things you've been turning to? Any recs?

musesfool asked me about Katara! :D

I cannot even with Katara, she is the best. Well, really, I love all the A:TLA characters and think they are the best, but Katara holds a special place in my heart. She spends a lot of time being nurturing and responsible, which is a great and necessary role given who she travels with, she's compassionate, she's genuinely empathetic and kind, she's terrible at humor but a fantastic sib and friend. What makes her truly amazing, though, is the fact that she's so completely unafraid to get angry.

It's interesting to think about the way other characters- particularly other female characters- in A:TLA deal with anger. I don't think we see a lot of anger from Toph, Mai, Ty Lee, Azula, or Suki; the scenes I can recall involve more frustration or crankiness. The show doesn't invest a lot of time in anger that isn't Zuko's, and that comes from a completely different source and is also pretty impotent, Zuko being Zuko.

Unlike Zuko, Katara doesn't let anger get the best of her; she uses it to get results. We see this again and again throughout the series- with Sokka in the very first episode, with Master Pakku, with the Southern Raiders. Sometimes the results she gets are unintentional, like the iceberg, and sometimes they're unsuccessful, as with Master Pakku, but learning to use her anger productively is a key part of Katara's character development. I'd guess that Toph and Azula deal with anger in a similar fashion, but unlike Katara, we don't really see them actually or consciously acknowledging being angry. Katara, on the other hand, is always aware of her anger, the reasons for her anger, and the consequences of the actions she takes while she's angry, so much that we get entire episodes devoted to this process (Puppetmaster! Southern Raiders!). Unlike most of our protags, Katara understands feelings and copes well with them! This makes her, in a sense, both Aang's match and the ultimate anti-Zuko, and it's also what makes her so incredibly powerful. Azula is a frightening antagonist because she has pretty much no use for empathy. If Katara were the antagonist? That would be a whole different level of frightening.

Obviously there are many, many reasons to love Katara, but to me, this is possibly the biggest.

eruthros asked: What if the characters from ATLA were animals? What kind of animals would they be?

For the sake of my brain I am using real-world animals, not A:TLA animals! Also, I'm leaving out Korra, since I'm less invested in it. Feel free to fill in or disagree in comments! If you decide you want to include Korra characters, though, please note that I have not yet watched S2. :D

- Katara: wolf
* Sokka: dog (if at first you don't succeed...)
- Aang: monkey (though not quite Monkey)
- Toph: star-nosed mole
- Suki: fox
* Zuko: (awkward) penguin
- Uncle Iroh: bear
- Mai: cat
- Azula: cobra
- Ty Lee: magpie

* I kept flip-flopping on these two, lol, but in the end I think this is more fitting? :P

I am in a writing kind of mood today, but am sadly lacking in inspiration! There's the obvious Touch Pass assignment, but that requires more consideration and I still need to get my hand in in terms of writing fic again. SO! Toss me prompts please? Any fandom [incomplete list] will do, not just Kuroko. As usual I can't promise I'll fill everything, but I'll try to finish as many as I can.

eta;
+ balance [OT4, gen, "Red Cliff characters as benders from ATLA verse"]
+ weekend routines [Makoto & Haruka, gen, Free!]
+ what bros are for [Nippori & Ryosuke, gen, Tumbling]

*title from Li-Young Lee's "Immigrant Blues"

+ Currently debating the white_lotus exchange- I really want to play (and am overdue for a rewatch!), but given all the things I have to accomplish over winter break, I don't know if I'll be able to manage even a treat. :< Also, there's that A:TLA thing I still haven't finished (er, ~2 years later) that I should really get done first!

+ Finally finished watching Natsume S4 yesterday! ALL THE FEELS (and ALL THE CRIES), omg. ♥ Natsume is actually atypical for me in terms of anime- I don't usually go for slice-of-life in things I watch, though I like to read them- but I do so love its themes around chosen family and kindness.

+ Re: other things I've been watching- SAO just got more exciting again?? Or has it just been a while since the ~cliffhanger~ has been sufficiently hang-y?

+ A partial list of my Kuroko ships of glee, for no reason at all: Aomine/Kuroko/Kagami (all permutations), Kiyoshi/Hyuuga/Riko (all permutations), Kise/Kasamatsu, Midorima/Takao, Aomine/Kise, Kise/Kuroko (... maybe more one-sided than not, I really love the canon dynamics xD), Momoi/Riko (RUNNING THE WORLD), everyone/everyone (especially Seirin and Miragen ♥)

+ Ask me anything! No, really. (Well, except maybe things involving finals.)

I had a moment of... something and did a huge 339-icon batch of the S3 finale yesterday, and I currently don't have the energy to upload & code all of them! However, I wanted to put up a few so y'all can hold me to the rest of them eventually: ( 16 icons- SPOILERS, obvs! )

+ Favorite age-up of Aang thus far omg ♥ ♥ ♥

+ I already have 123098723095872309487 Korra icon themes plotted in my head! April: SO CLOSE, YET SO FAR A:SDLKJA:LSKFJA.

... I had other things to say and also I think some links and maybe someday they will return to me, but KORRA. Brain is waving goodbye for the foreseeable future!

» I am SPOILED by DW A:TLA fandom, you guys. Someone made me an APPA HAT! State Dinner is the OTGaang ficlet of my heart!

Other reasons to love white_lotus's Lunar New Year Exchange:
+ a deep delight of the blood- wow, I find bloodbending practice an extremely believable basis for Katara/Zuko now.
+ Ephemera from the Avatar Collection at Republic City University with notes and commentary by the archivists!
+ Primary Sources, aka Sokka and Suki vs. Wan Shi Tong, THE FACEOFF! xD
+ Spa Day is awesome lovely Katara/Toph (with OTGaang in the background ♥)!

» Love meme at dingsi's! Thanks for my thread. ♥

» Check out terajk's Heroes Arrive Last fest!

» The Boy Who Only Lived Twice- I haven't read HP fic in a really long time & I've never read much Harry/Draco, but OMG SERIOUSLY, the way this story plays with all the levels of fucked-up those two are is fantastic.

+ Workin' It Out- dudes, I am not the biggest fan of Adam Lambert, but Adam Lambert + Tumbling earnestfaces = yes please, apparently! Also KIYAMA/MIZUSAWA, BRB STILL FLAILING EVERYWHERE. (Spoilers, obvs.)

Happy Lunar New Year to everyone celebrating! ♥ I am in between classes right now & cannot brain properly, so consider this an open party thread. Dragonspam welcome! ;)

Also, via angryasianman, this is probably relevant to your interests: enter gene luen yang's avatar: the last airbender - the promise part 1 twitter contest!