#first rule of the avatar fandom #ALWAYS REBLOG THAT’S ROUGH BUDDY

qwq

I don’t even watch Avatar and this is awesome!

This panel gives me Emotions™

so we just gonna act like they didn’t just commit a hit and run?

one of the things i really love about The Old Guard and Joe and Nicky’s relationship is how present it is. it’s not necessarily in your face but it is utterly undeniable

a lot of movies (basically anything blockbuster-y) will throw in a moment or a scene to show a queer relationship (if the bother) to get their brownie points and quick press but it’s always something that can either be easily dismissed or cut altogether so the movie can play in different markets or to refrain from offending bigots’ delicate sensibilities

you can’t do that with this movie. Joe and Nicky’s relationship is ingrained in it and in their every interaction. Hell, can you name a single scene of Joe’s that does not in some way mention or include his relationship with Nicky? even his fight at the end where he clears a room on his own has a line about Nicky. it’s there ALL THE TIME

before we even get official confirmation that they’re in a relationship there’s that scene where they all die and then when they wake up we get a very specific shot of Joe and Nicky looking to each other and the relief on their faces when they see the other is okay. they don’t look at anyone else and Andy and Booker don’t check on them or each other. it’s a small moment but it shows that these two care about each other above and beyond how they care for the others even after it’s already been established that these four are a family who all love each other. from then on we get tons of small moments, little touches and looks and winks and the fact that both times we see them sleeping they’re spooning! 

you literally can’t remove their relationship from this movie without removing the characters altogether and THAT is how you do a romance in an action movie

i respect a LOT of things about ‘the old guard’, but the first one i noticed, less than five minutes into the film, was how the cast went to morocco and saudi arabia and there was absolutely no yellow filter, even when they wandered around a desert

I love how the creators of The Old Guard were just like “fuck the ‘kill your gays’ trope I’m giving these kids the ‘unkillable gays’ trope now” and I think that’s very nice of them

The way that French cashier said "Today I help you patch this up, tomorrow you help someone up when they fall. None of us are in this alone" and the entire film's thesis statement that altruism is the defining, essential characteristic of Humanity is dropped in passing by a side character and then comes back in a huge way when Copley shows his research to Andromache and she and the team see how their heroism has resonated throughout the ages.

So we all agree that Joe and Nicky from The Old Guard are the new IT gay couple, right? Because damn. I want what they’re having.

Can I point out a couple of things:

1-It pisses me off that whenever THAT scene is quoted, people only focus on the declaration and skip the GLORIOUS “You are a child. An infant. Your mocking is thus infantile.”

It’s such a good line. It shows that Joe is just tired of centuries of homophobia, while also pointing out that any kind of hateful reaction to diversity is nothing but the byproduct of puerile bigotry, in any situation, in any century.

2-As an Italian gay man, it’s refreshing to see some representation that is so positive and beautiful. It’s not something you’ll commonly find in Italian movies.

3-As an Italian, although being also gay is not essential in this case, let me tell you that Joe’s “Nicolò, destati” is an AMAZING line. Wanna know why? Because nobody in contemporary Italy would use “destati” to say “wake up.” It’s antiquated. Italians would say “svegliati” not “destati.” Of course using “destati” and Nicky’s proper name is like a tiny little slice of what Joe and Nicky’s intimate interactions sound like. They’re from the 12th century when Italian was not even a proper language. They probably learnt Italian together, starting with its first manifestations in the 13th century and evolving with the language. Around the 19th century, they probably got tired of having to learn all the modern variations. So of course they still use old-fashioned words when talking to each other.

4-Can we get a Netflix series chronicling their adventures from their first bloody meet-cute to the present day? Please?

One of the most excellent parts of The Old Guard having a female director is that pharmacy scene. Because I wonder if a male director would have thought to include that scene of a woman working in that environment watching out for other woman walking in looking nervous and bruised, and offering them help. Like a male director might question ‘well why would she do that for her, that doesn’t make sense’, but a female director knows that thats what a woman would do for another woman, that if you work in that environment, you’d be on the lookout for any woman who looks like she’s being abused.

the best side moment in the whole movie. that’s why we need more female directors y’all.

Okay this is a very small detail and I don’t know why it hit me so hard, but when Joe is telling Nicky to wake up, he says “Nicolò, destati! Destati!”

“Destati” is a word no one has used in common speech for centuries (in modern Italian we say “svegliati”). So the fact that he uses such an old-fashioned kind of language makes their relationship feel so ANCIENT, as if they’ve been together forever AND THEY ACTUALLY HAVE

A whole new story;

Hey, I'm Blake. You guys have seen me struggle for months during 2020, unfortunately. I may have some answers as to why, and it also unfortunately begs me to ask for a lot of help, again.

During all of this money troubles, trying to get my job back, and just trying to live, I've been going to the doctors insuranceless. I've been told I "very likely" have something called Ménière’s disease, which is not only a rare disease to have but a degenerative one. I am losing my hearing completely, and it has been accompanied by immense dizzy spells and the inability to eat. I've lost OVER 40 pounds since November because I haven't been able to eat well because of my dizzy spells, and now I see it's possibly been because of a potential disease I never knew I had. 2020 has been a hell of a year, huh.

If I may ask, I'd like to try to get 134 for my storage bill, and 600 for my meds and future copays for my ENT and Ophthalmologist appointments, which are soon. I know it's a lot to ask, but I want to get a grip on this before it can get worse. Anything helps, and everything will help me now. I never ask for help for myself, and now I know I need it most. If anyone, ANYONE can spare even a penny, I'd be beyond words.

I didn't want to come forward and mention this. It doesn't sound like much of a disease in retrospect, but it has plagued me for 8 years. I never had solid answers, and now that I do, it's possibly too late. All I can do is go see doctors, get tests, take medication to help the spinning and constant nausea so I can make it through the day. And the potential of surgery is high on their list, which makes me really scared. But I have a chance at a better life, and I just need some help to get there until I can get health insurance through Ohio approved, which I am waiting on currently.

I want to make myself better, and I truly need your help more than ever. Thank you all to bits, I love you all to death for what you've done for me, for us. Now it is my turn to try to make myself right. Please.

If anyone would like any extra info, has any questions, anything at all, please feel free to ask. I'm still gathering up info and proof and whatnot myself; this is app a very new diagnosis and it's humbling. Sobering, even. I've pushed this too long and now it's irreversible. But at least I have a chance to try.

Edit: I'm dumb and forgot to put this - paypal.me/zwhack, @neonstahli on venmo and $neonstahli on cashapp

July 7th Update - Urgent. Yay.

Heeey. So of course things were going well for a bit and are now bad again! The car payment thing, we need by Wednesday, which would have been lovely to know sooner. If we don't pay it we don't have a vehicle until we dooooo, and that's incredibly bad right now. So, if anyone can help with 300, I can pay you back, or whatever you want me to do. In a way I'm pretty desperate, I want to make sure I can keep working and have reliable transportation just in case, and we need the car for a lot of other things including a personal reason for one of us here that I will not discuss on here (but it involves a family member in a delicate, critical situation right now). So I want to make sure we have a car, even this one that barely runs anyway. Please if anyone can help, I got you back if you need. I'll pay it forward if you want me to. I'll do whatever you feel is right, I just want to make sure this is okay. I'm sorry to ask for so much.

July 9th Update

So, I'd hate to post and ask for things again but, at the moment we could really use about 200 for storage. I forgot about it! I don't get paid for 2 weeks from now and we dont have much time left to pay it before it can possibly be sold, and my entire life is in there so I'd love to get it paid and hopefully they'll let us get our stuff out of there soon. Quarantine lmao. But seriously, if anyone, anyone can help with this too, I'll pay you back, I know this sucks yet again but it's actually the last major stressful issue I can think of right now.

Thank you guys for any help, I'm really sorry to ask and bother.

Need the 200 ASAP if anyone can help :/

I need 150 by TOMORROW. Please

The Dance of a Thousand Hands.

This is so surreal for something that includes zero special effects of any kind

HOLY SHIT

If this is the group I think it is (you can find them by searching Dance of a Thousand Hands on YouTube. The dancers are all hearing impared and the orchestra is visually impared. The dancers can feel the music through vibrations in their feet and hearing and feeling each other’s breathing. They are the China Disabled Peoples Performing Arts Troupe and have traveled to 100 countries and counting. They aim to prove that anyone can dance, and anyone can play.

I tried to animated with watercolors.

x

Holy fuck

Zohra Sehgal, a South Asian actress par excellence, actually spoke multiple languages including Urdu, Hindi, English and German. She is one of the earliest international actresses who came from an aristocratic Muslim family in India. When her father insisted that she get married, she outright said, ‘I don’t want to get married,’  and announced that she might become a pilot. In 1917 she went to a boarding school in Lahore, after which, in 1930, she donned a burqa and set off for Europe by road — crossing Iran, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. She trained as a ballet dancer in Germany. Zohra was quite blunt when it came to expressing her opinions. She was an agnostic and defied all the stereotypes about a “Muslim girl from a traditional family”. She was unbelievably bold and confident and was known for her mischievous humor. She earned immense respect in British TV at a time when people were not accepting of ‘diversity’ and even the Asian roles were played by white people. When she had first arrived in Britain, “it was such that if we were sitting in the bus, the British did not sit next to us. Unconsciously in the minds of white people, there was a hesitation”. She defied cultural norms once more when she married her Hindu student eight years younger than her. She never felt welcomed in Lahore, so she left half her family in Pakistan after 1947 Partition and settled in Delhi where she taught a theater group. She raised her children on her own when her husband committed suicide at a young age. She was literally unstoppable and appeared consistently in British TV series like The Jewel in Crown, Mind Your Language and Doctor Who. She has acted in myriad Bollywood films and performed across Japan, Egypt, Europe and the US. She was a classical dancer, choreographer, cinema, theater and television actress whose career spanned over 8 decades. She was awarded Padma Shri and Padma Vibhushan, some of the highest civilian honors in India. She was a fighter all her life, she even defeated cancer. On her 100th birthday she said, “I want an electric cremation. I don’t want any poems and fuss after that. And for heaven’s sake don’t bring back the ashes. Flush them down the toilet if the crematorium refuses to keep them. If they tell you that I am dead, I want you to give a big laugh". Zohra aapa lived the life of a grand diva and passed away in 2014 at the age of 102.

“Oh, my burqa was of lovely silk and I was so glad I made petticoats out of it!”

Zohra with her husband Kameshwar Sehgal in 1945.

“What actually makes brings out your beauty is the radiance of being content and you can only be content when you are employed in something you love.”

“You see me now when I am old and ugly, in fact you should have seen me earlier — when I was young and ugly!”

Zohra at her 100th birthday was quietly humming “Abhi To Main Jawan Hoon” (I am still young) by poet Hafeez Jullundhri, as she attacked the huge cake.

“Life’s been tough but I’ve been tougher. I beat life at its own game”

What an amazing face! And an even more amazing woman!

What a life, what a woman!

I am so pleased that there are people who make these types of posts.

Thank you.

This woman confronts racism in the funniest way possible.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Okay, I’ve been sitting on (no pun intended) this theory for awhile now because it’s not even really a theory, so much as it is speculation. (”Uncle, that’s what all theories are!”) Anyway, hear me out:

tl;dr: Iroh was depressed, and thus in a passive state, up until the end of Book One, whereupon Zhao’s act of violence snapped him out of it.

We know that Lu Ten died during the original Siege on Ba Sing Se and it’s heavily implied that losing Lu Ten caused Iroh to “fall apart” and ultimately end the Siege itself:

(Image Descriptions: First two images are of Iroh chained, saying, “I acknowledge my defeat at Ba Sing Se. My men was tired and I was tired.” The third image is of Iroh at Lu Ten’s grave. The fourth and fifth images are of Young Azula talking to Young Zuko: “He found out his son died and he just fell apart. A real general would stay and burn Ba Sing Se to the ground.”)

He didn’t have the mental strength to fight at Ba Sing Se, but that’s not the only time that he refused to fight.

He never tried to take the throne from Ozai. He never once tried to find out what happened to Ursa. And I hate to do this, but he didn’t even put up that much of a fight when a thirteen-year-old asked to attend a war meeting. And when they were in that war meeting, who was the one to speak out against the immorality of war? Zuko. Not Iroh, even though he was sitting right next to him.

(Image description: Zuko standing up at the war meeting. We can see that Iroh is sitting next to him.)

When Zuko was in the Agni Kai Chamber, on his hands and knees, crying, begging for mercy…Iroh just…looks away…

(Image description: Iroh looking away.)

And I’m not going to lie, this theory was originally just going to be a post talking about how guilty Iroh must have felt, but I think it goes a lot deeper than that. I could make a post arguing that Iroh’s misjudgement and lack of action were what led to Zuko being scarred, but to do so would be to blame Iroh, and I don’t want to blame Iroh. Because it’s not his fault. I think that, in this moment, he’s still in a depressive, passive, state from what happened to Lu Ten. Iroh essentially has PTSD. He saw what war can do, so he freezes and backs down at any sign of a fight.

And we see, all throughout Book One, how many times Iroh tries to actively stop Zuko from fighting:

(Image descriptions: Two nearly-identical shots of Iroh breaking up a fight between Zuko and another character, the Pirate Captain and Lieutenant Jee, respectively.)

He only fights when he has to, such as when the Earth Kingdom soldiers capture him in Winter Solstice. Even then, he uses his chains to disarm two of them and knock them unconscious (a waterbender technique btw) while Zuko takes out the third. By all accounts, Iroh is a pacifist during Book One. He’s certainly passive. I really think it’s because Lu Ten’s death (which, remember, only took place a few years prior) is still bothering him. Hence my original claim that Iroh’s essentially in a depressive state during Book One.

So, what happens?

Zhao happens.

This image has haunted me for a decade and a half:

(Image description: Iroh looking absolutely devastated.)

This is right after Zhao kills the Moon Spirit koi fish. Something about this has always gotten to me. It’s just so intense. It’s like you see this other side of Iroh that you had never seen before. (Remember, at this point, any viewers wouldn’t know about Lu Ten.) And what happens right after?

(Image descriptions: #1: Iroh attacking multiple soldiers. #2: General Zhao looking horrified. #3: A shot of Iroh standing over multiple bodies on the ground.)

Iroh starts actively attacking them all, to the point where Zhao backs away, horrified, because he’s never seen this side of Iroh. Neither has the audience. For the first time, Iroh is actively attacking someone, triggered by Zhao’s violence. I don’t know if it was just the cosmic stakes of the spirit being killed that triggered his anger, if it was the straw on the ostrich-horse’s back, if the way that the koi fish was killed was somehow reminiscent of Lu Ten’s death, or if it was a combination of reasons. Either way, Zhao snaps Iroh out of whatever passive funk he was in.

From that moment on, Iroh acts like a man who was a general for years. In the very first episode of Book Two (the next canonical episode), we see that Iroh doesn’t trust Azula and is on guard, even jaded:

(Image descriptions: Two shots of Iroh looking around suspiciously.)

Then, when it’s revealed that Azula had tricked them, Iroh wastes no time in attacking multiple guards:

(Image descriptions. #1: Iroh kicking a guard off the ship entrance. #2: Iroh firebending at three separate guards surrounding him.)

In a later episode, when Zuko thinks that Iroh’s going to say that he should be nice to Azula because she’s family, what does Iroh say, instead?

No. She’s crazy and she needs to go down.

This Iroh is a completely different person than the Iroh that we saw in Book One, because this Iroh has been snapped out of his depressed, passive, funk by the senseless act of violence that he witnessed. This Iroh is willing to fight and be an active participant in creating change. This Iroh is a General. This Iroh is the Dragon of the West. Incidentally, we see Iroh call himself that when he actively attacks a full room of Dai Li soldiers:

(Image description: Iroh breathing fire onto a room filled with soldiers.)

And we all know how fitting it is that Iroh is the one to liberate Ba Sing Se, but just think about the difference. The original Siege on Ba Sing Se took him 600 days, nearly two years, and he still wasn’t able to break through. In the final battle (albeit with a little help from the comet), Iroh was able to effectively create a fireball and blast through the wall in a single moment:

And that is my speculation…analysis…theory…thing of how Iroh went from being a fighter to being a depressed pacifist to being a better fighter, all in the background of a series that focuses on a dozen other well-rounded characters. It really is the show that keeps on giving…

since my writing post was received pretty well, i though i’d make other, to give some insight on the racism in the film industry and why it’s still a big problem now as it was in the past. 

Oh my god. I just realized…that isn’t her mother’s necklace. I’ve watched the finale a million times, and this was the first I noticed that. xD

…so that must be the necklace Aang gave her. :D

I’m thinking that either

oh my god it’s all scribbly and ;____;

OH MY GACHQIOFHE CHONGS RIGHT, LOOK AT IT. ITS ALL SCRIBBLY AND GROSS AND AWFUL LOOKING BUT THAT MAKES IT ALL THE MORE AMAZING AND FEELY BECAUSE JUST IMAGINE A TWENTY THREE YEAR OLD AANG CARVING IT AT 3 IN THE MORNING WHILE KATARA WAS SLEEPING WITH HIS TOUNG STICKING OUT OF THE SIDE OF HIS MOUTH IN CONCENTRATION AND HIM GETTING ALL FRUSTRATED BECAUSE IT WASN;T COMING OUT RIGHT, BUT IN THE END IT SHE LOVED IT ALL THE SAME BECAUSE IT WAS FROM HIM.

OMFG, PLEASE. SOMEONE.

FIC NOW

NOOOOOOW 

OH MY GOD IT IS ALL SCRIBBLY. THAT’S ADORABLE

MY FEELS