Hey everyone, I don't like saying my real name online so you can just call me Ace. I have so many fandoms, I can never remember all of them but some of my favorites are Gravity Falls, Star Wars (especially Rebels), The Lunar Chronicles, Ranger's Apprentice, MLP:FiM, Adventures in Odyssey, Disney, HTTYD, White Collar, Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, Parks and Rec, Avatar:TLA and LoK. I also enjoy webcomics, especially The Silver Eye and Space Boy. Basically I'm just a God-loving, formerly homeschooled fangirl who likes to write and draw and be creative in general.
Reviews:"Excellent taste in fandoms. All of them" -captaingondor
So excited to announce the cover and the release date for my debut novel!!
Jade Torch: The Killing Thought will be available to purchase on June 30th, 2023 on Amazon!
There will be over 45 illustrations in it by me, and the layout graphic design was done by the splendid Amber Andersson!! Amber also did the layout for the cover 💕
If you combined Ghibli’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Eragon, and the Gregor the Overlander series, you would get a book that has the vibes of Jade Torch: The Killing Thought. If you love dragon riders, warrior princesses, and dysfunctional royal families, this might be the perfect book for you!
Seeing, “Zuko is canonically bad at firebending,” takes on my dash, so…
Zuko is canonically not bad at firebending. He may not be the natural prodigy that Azula or Iroh are, but skills don’t work on a basis of either “extreme prodigy” or “not good at all.”
Zuko works hard throughout the series to grow and improve in his firebending, and he does.
He defeats Zhao, an adult firebending master, in an Agni Kai when he’s 16 and ostensibly still stuck on the basics, because mastering the fundamentals is a huge part of getting “good” at any skill.
He learns lightning redirection in about a day and later successfully uses it against Ozai, who is meant to be an extremely powerful firebender.
He learns to understand and appreciate his fire on a fundamental level from the dragons, who were the original firebenders, and in so doing he becomes a firebending master just as much as Katara (who had a few days/weeks at most of formal training) or Toph (who declared herself an earthbending master after learning from badgermoles) are masters of their elements.
And then he took everything he had learned about fire and put it together to help Aang master firebending over the course of a few weeks.
None of that says, “canonically bad firebender.” It says that Zuko didn’t start out as a major natural prodigy like his sister, but he worked hard, never stopped learning and growing, and developed into a very strong and capable firebending master in his own right by the end of the show.
Zuko takes prudence over flash and style.
He focuses on the basics because:
He has to.
Iroh wants him to.
He doesn’t have a natural affinity for it, but because he focuses on learning it, he’s able to do things that few other fire benders can actually do.
And this is an absolutely fantastic life lesson for people watching the show, both young and old.
Just because you don’t naturally excel at everything you touch doesn’t mean you can’t learn to master things that matter to you. Not everyone is a prodigy, but that hardly matters in the end. An amateur who breaks their back learning and pushing themselves will exceed a natural prodigy in time. That’s why Zuko is able to beat firebenders who are far more talented than he is… because he isn’t talented, he’s skilled.
His whole speech to Aang about how his sister is born lucky and he doesn’t need luck because he worked for what he had and it made him strong is a perfect encapsulation of his character
“Several women have written to me to complain about A Swiftly Tilting Planet. They feel that I should not have allowed Meg Murry to give up a career by marrying Calvin, having children, and quietly helping her husband with his work behind the scenes. But if women are to be free to choose to pursue a career as well as marriage, they must also be free to choose the making of a home and the nurture of a family as their vocation; that was Meg‘s choice, and a free one, and it was as creative a choice as if she had gone out to get a PhD. in quantum mechanics.”
Thinking about ways to create memorable characters that don’t just blend into the story.
A few possible techniques:
Intensity: Give the character one or two broad traits and then crank it up to eleven. Subtlety is overrated. You will remember these characters because their over-the-top traits jump off the page.
Layers: Give them a personality trait that’s immediately obvious, and then give them other traits that clash with that. The arrogant jerk who’s secretly a sensitive soul. The shy introvert who’s a karaoke queen. That kind of thing.
Contrast: Make a character with intense personality traits, then give other characters the exact opposite traits. Even a fairly tame character can become more vivid when contrasted with a bunch of weirdos surrounding them.
I can’t think of a great artistic term for the next one–the closest thing I’m coming up with is blending. It’s the counterpart to contrast, in that it’s about how the differences between characters create a memorable dynamic when you put the two of them together. About how they clash and connect. A good dynamic between two characters can be more vivid than the characters themselves.
one time i went through the taco bell drive thru and when i tried to order a baja blast i said “mountain boo bah” and then i just left. couldn’t recover
a friend of mine once went to order a beefy bean and cheese burrito but ordered a “beedo beedo” instead and i think of it every time i go to taco bell
