crazy how quickly dust accumulates. i should be allowed to put my trinkets on a shelf and not touch them and they remain in perfect condition forever. dont even get me STARTED on the inside of a computer. why do i have to brush your teeth. youre technology.
As writers, we like the most interesting scenes: the ones with all the action, the murders, the plot twists, and the tragedies. However, there are other types of scenes that we don't give enough credit to: filler scenes. It might be the most annoying part of writing because they might not be important to the plot or interesting to write, but trust me, they are important in their own way. And if you give filler scenes a chance, they might surprise you.
If, like me, you are having trouble writing them, there are 7 ways I use to make writing filler scenes bearable.
”with shapes.inc you can talk to your ocs!!” Dumbass. I’m already talking to them. In my head. “B-bbut what about your favourite charac-“ skill issue. In my head as well. get fucked.
Back on schedule. I’m writing more backstory for her. She is my Sarentu but I have two AU for her. One for the game and one outside the game to interact with other peoples oc.
Anyway, as someone that tries to stay away from human weaponry and gear in AFOP, I do respect those that have a preference for it. “I only use Na’vi weapons against the RDA to show that our customs and tools can match theirs. Our ways of life are not inferior” vs “I use human weaponry against the RDA to mock their ways of life. The cruel irony of being eliminated by your own arrogance” are sibling concepts in my opinion, not necessarily at odds. Different tactics but all from the same side.
So like, I don’t have an issue with Na’vi that use metal weapons vs Na’vi that only use their own. I acknowledge that canon Tamtey does use both. I didn’t think Neytiri and the Metkayina’s aversion to RDA gear in F&A was bad, nor do I think Nor’s repulsion of metal in its entirety is either. These are all valid trauma responses that simply is not an issue.
The only issue, in my opinion, is when Nor bleeds his internalized disgust onto others. This has always been one of his flaws. He upchucks his self loathing onto everyone else. Unintentionally instilling doubt into Tamtey during their iknimaya as just one example. But now he’s significantly more forceful with it. No longer slips of the tongue, but intentional weaponization. Yelling at Rasi for being open minded. Scolding Ri’nela for how he thinks she should behave as tsahìk. Going from idolizing So’lek to, apparently, seeing him as a cautionary tale.
As sad as it makes me, I can understand how Nor, completely on his own, has spiraled in this way. He needs to bleed. He has so much hatred for himself that he simply can’t hold all of it. And the toxicity is that he can only release it onto others. It needs to come out, but Nor has only ever allowed himself to remember pain and know pain, and so his only coping mechanisms are letting his insecurities leak out or forming them into weapons himself. I hope I’m making sense.
Nor’s aversion to metal is not the issue. It is, and has always been, the ways he (unintentionally or intentionally) hurts others when trying to cope with his trauma. And his self imposed isolation after stabbing Alma’s avatar has clearly heightened these unhealthy habits to dangerous levels.
And I do think some part of Nor, maybe subconsciously, is aware he’s spiraling out of control. He returns to save the Sarentu, but he refuses to fully join them. Watching them all embrace So’lek after the Wukula fight, watching from a distance everyone bond with the tarsyu. We are Sarentu while Nor chooses to stand on a cliff by himself. The Sarentu are his family, he says this and he does recognize Ri’nela as his tsahìk, and yet he still cannot really go to them.
I think Nor is aware he’s losing it. That he’s becoming a little monstrous to his own family. I think it does scare him otherwise he wouldn’t punish himself with continued distance. But he also cannot stop. A wound that needs to bleed.
YOU. WILL. WRITE. oh you want to write so bad. all the motivation is here. the plot is so good. words come to you so naturally. YOU ARE GOING TO WRITE. RIGHT NOW.
what ao3 would look like with ads. no, you do not want this. support ao3 because it’s one of the last few places on the internet that is not tainted by capitalism bullshit. support ao3 because it’s one of the last few places on the internet that is genuinely about the connection between audiences, artists, their works and the love/passion artists have for what they do
killing all of those ai chat ads that are sporing themselves across tumblr with a maelstrom or rocks. Fuck you and fuck your product. I do not want to replace my mutual with ai chat. I do not want to simulate my cats inner monologue with ai chat. I do not want to talk to my blorbos with ai chat. Fuck your and fuck your product.
This will be long and you don't have to play in this space with me, but I've been thinking pretty hard about the mission in AFOP where Tamtey and Ri'nela experience Alma's last connection to Eywa in The Hollows'. More specifically: when her Avatar succumbs to her injuries Nor inflicted, and the two Sarentu take a happy little stroll through her memories of the fateful night at the Sarentu Moot.
First of all, what the fuck.
Secondly, I noticed (and I'm sure everyone else noticed) that many of the models for the Sarentu we see in Alma's memories are rarely different from one another. There are a few notable exceptions, but most have the same hairstyle, same clothes, same face, and so on. And that's well and good; we could go with the obvious explanation for all this, which would be that Ubisoft is lazy and reused models for a very important cutscene like it was nothing, but I present an alternative:
Because we're viewing this through Alma's memories and Tamtey has very little memories of it themself, the two experiences are mixing together. I doubt Alma got to talk to the Sarentu for very long before Mercer ordered for them to be killed, so it's probably equally true that she didn't hold defining features of them at all. Maybe just snippets, which is why we get minor differences between the models.
With Tamtey, they have nothing. Almost nothing. Just before this, they remember their mother's face and scent through discovering the Sarentu Moot site. It's all they really get to have as they walk through Alma's cloudy memories of the massacre and very brief celebration.
So, is it impossible to say that these two separate memories and experiences are coming together to create something more tangible and solid? Even the soldiers we encounter in the shadows are just that—blurry and dark, like Alma can't stand to remember them.
Alma remembers the horrible trauma she inflicted on Aha'ri, and Tamtey only has Aha'ri's face: Every child looks like Aha'ri.
Alma might not remember exact details of the Sarentu's styles/clothing, and Tamtey has their imagination to build off of after exploring the Frontier: clothes that would be accessible in-game, like the ones we can make after finding the totems. Some of them wear Zeswa garb, some have locs in Kame'tire style, some wear bright colors of the Aranahe.
This could simply be because they're Sarentu; they learn and spread the ways of other clans, so of course they'd have styles to remember them by, but maybe it's both. I like to believe it's both.
Either way, it's sad as fuck, and my hate for Alma as a person and love for the fact that she's a complicated character grows every day.
meanwhile AO3: so everything is free in our house. read whatever you want offline. also no ads. no capitalism. no censorship. be as wild as you want with your fics. also we have tagging systems so you can search or avoid any specific tags, pairings, relationships or characters. whatever you want.
I’m sorry but if you’re still complaining, you don’t realize how good you have it with AO3, one of the last platforms on the internet that is free of capitalism and censorship. just artists and writers creating and sharing their works with the community for free and for fun. just authentic love between artists, their works, characters, stories and audiences.
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