Just so we’re clear, if I point out that you did something racist, that’s not the same as me thinking you’re irremediably terrible. You did a racist thing.
You think you don’t do racist things, homophobic things, etc? You do. I caught myself in fat phobic and homophobic lines of thinking/speech just this morning. I’m fucking gay married. Nothing disqualifies you from acting in a way that reflects the society you exist in. We are obliged to fight it. Why not fight it in honesty and with camaraderie?
Please vote for your favourite prompts for this year's Zukka Week!
If you notice that a prompt you submitted is not on the list, please do
Prompt voting for Zukka Week 2026 is open until Sunday August 16!
We had a ton of interesting submissions this year, and now it's time to decide on the final prompts. There are quite a lot of prompts to pick from, so choose wisely and make that vote count!
If you find you're bored of the folk punk you always listen to, try out a rap album. If you only ever watch classic cinema or more grounded art films, check out a fast and furious movie or something. Or try reading a book if you only ever consume film or tv. Or comics. Or go to an art museum. You may not like whatever it is you try out, and I promise you don't have to like it, but I can guarantee that you can't subsist on a monoculture. Be open to experiencing new art. Even if it's bad. Especially if it's bad, actually.
just watched jurassic park and from a meta perspective im thinking sadly about how the behavior the carnivores display is way more indicative (at least to me) of wanting to play and lacking stimulation in their lives than actually wanting to eat the human characters. and they got so so demonized for it
JP dinosaur behavior analysis with a healthy dose of headcanon included from someone who doesnt know much about behavioral science. for funsies
ok so first of all lets start with the t rex. her very first moment is the goat leg ending up on the car, but we can see in the next shot that she is very capable of swallowing the goat whole. so how did that leg get there? given evidence that t. rexes were likely social creatures, i like to imagine that the leg on the car was more “here you go have part of my meal because you’re small” for the humans
next is her communication. i want to look at one specific thing, which was actually the thing that prompted the post
to me, that certainly looks like eye pinning. eye pinning is a behavior in birds that signals high stimulation. here’s what it looks like in a bird
it can be positive or negative, but in this case it’s probably not negative, because there’s nothing forcing the rex to stay there. if she wanted to leave the situation she could hit the bricks
the continual roaring also sort of suggests play behavior to me. there’s not really any sense in making a shitload of noise at your prey (unless you’re trying to scare them out of cover, but we know she doesn’t need to do that because we see she’s strong enough to just break into the car) so, especially because they keep screaming, that reads way more like “im making noises and they’re making noises back ^w^” then it does as trying to intimidate prey for some reason
play behavior also makes sense because we know, canonically, she’s crazy understimulated. alan grant says as much when he mentions that they aren’t feeding her in a way that promotes hunting behavior. the way she noses at the jeep and spins it really just looks more like curious interaction than anything, as well as all the chasing people she does
next, the raptors. their really famous scene is the kitchen, but first let’s establish some facts about them. we know from muldoon and what we’re shown that:
- they’re smart enough to use one of their own as a distraction for flanking maneuvers
- they’re good at problem solving enough to wait until the electric fences are turned off to systematically test them for vulnerabilities
- they’re absurdly fast. “60 mph on open ground” fast
- they are absolutely not in a big enough enclosure
- they’re not fed in a way that promotes hunting behavior either
so when you put all this information together and then look at the kitchen scene, i don’t believe for even one second that the “hide behind the counter” routine is fooling those two raptors for any time at all. that entire sequence of loudly scrambling around the kitchen while something that can keep pace with a cheetah pretends it can’t catch you? yeah that makes WAY more sense as play behavior than it does hunting, especially since we see numerous times that there are many things on the island easier to catch and eat than a bunch of skinny humans (this goes for the rex, too!)
the bit with the noises is also true here. more true, if anything. muldoon tells us the raptors are ambush predators, so why on earth would they get into a hunting ground and then risk scaring their prey off with the loud barking calls? “hi we’re here come out and play” is a much more sensible use of a call loud enough to hurt a human’s ears from across a room in that situation
in conclusion: damnit john your girls are bored as fuck. give them a horse ball or a frozen pumpkin stuffed with meat or something
My woke take, as someone who has worked in both a public library and a school library, is that we desperately need both more books that are at a higher reading level but a less mature subject matter, and more books that are at a lower reading level but a more mature subject matter, because 8 year olds who are advanced readers are still 8 year olds and don't want to read about graphic violence and torture, and teens and adults who have learning difficulties or who are just later readers for whatever reason are still teens and adults and don't want to read about Billy the Bunny going to school or whatever the hell.
I, a hearing person who likes subtitles just as a preference, shouldn't have to read a subtitle that's obvious nonsense, go back a couple seconds, and listen again in order to figure out what's going on. An accessibility feature should not be the most half-assed part of a professionally made production. Scripted media has absolutely no excuse for not having subtitles or having subtitles that aren't perfectly verbatim. Professional captioning services should be ashamed of the shoddy work that they put out. Captions should be treated as a part of the production, just like filming, editing, audio balancing, etc - and anything that releases with missing or bad captions should be seen as unfinished
When you try to talk about enshittification, it sounds like conspiracy theories. (I'm not crazy)
Amazon made their service worse, to force people to pay for Prime.
Nowadays, if you order from Amazon, there is a week long delay before your package is shipped. (on purpose)
I remember when orders would ship out the same day. (I remember - it was real)
YouTube didn't used to have ads. Now, ads play in the middle of videos. (it's worse than TV ever was)
The best can opener I have owned is over 40 years old. Modern ones just don't hold up as well. (The ones I bought new broke ages ago)
The bread machine my mom got for her wedding lasted 30 years. It's been replaced twice in the last 5 years. (How can you fuck this up?)
The cardboard tubes in the middle of toilet paper rolls have gotten larger. (This too?) Companies increasing the price of the product while selling you less. (REALLY?)
It sounds crazy. (it's the truth) When you talk about it, YOU sound crazy. (it's true)
Even when people believe you (do they really), all they can say is "it sucks". (it's too big) Because the problem is so big, so pervasive, what can we even DO about it???
To get the necessary laws written and passed, we need politicians, to get the politicians elected we need information campaigns, to fund campaigns we need money, and all the money is being hoarded by the people profiting from enshittification. (it sounds so fake)
So I talk about enshittification (it sounds crazy), so people don't forget that things have been made worse on purpose (it's true), even though I sound crazy. (maybe I am)
publisher: I've been looking into tumblr, have you thought of using Blaze to promote your book?
me: NO
publisher: But it seems like an efficient way to get this in front of more eyes-
me: people on tumblr hate Blaze.
publisher: There is no algorithm and you can't pay to promote a post? I don't understand how anyone advertises anything on tumblr.
me: That's the best part. They don't. They can't.
(trying to make him understand that we do not control the attention. We just have to show something shiny and gay enough and if people are interested, they'll reblog.)
(Mrs. Victoria buys a brothel, a deconstruction of the colonialist cowboy mythos dressed up as a sapphic romance.)
Just learned about the guy from Shark Tank who called his own dad “my wife’s father in law” and now I HAVE to call my brother “my sister in law’s husband” as soon as they get married in a few months. Thank god I learned about this in time!
I love getting comments on really old fics. It's like a little tap on the shoulder that says, "hey the art you create is going to last forever even if you don't think it matters anymore"
I'm not done complaining about how dirty ATLA did Hama, btw., and because I'm a sucker for rewriting and worldbuilding, I've actually started tinkering on an alternative arc for the character that has grown entirely out of proportion, so let me yap a little more. Hama is the knot that roped me back into ATLA, apparently.
The episode's setup doesn't make any sense if you think about it for more than two minutes, and I think it's one of the biggest wasted storytelling opportunities of the entire show. See, I don't buy the premise of the Hama episode, so I'm not drawing the ethical, emotional, and even logical conclusions the writing tries to push on me.
Now, for the episode to happen at all, the writers shove three conditions into the setup that work against each other. First, the episode needs Hama socially embedded enough that the children can meet her casually and have a reason to hang out with her at all; thus, she's the owner of an inn and offers boarding to the Gaang. Second, the episode needs her to appear suspicious and unworthy of trust enough that Sokka can justify investigating her; thus, the kids can find the chest where she keeps the comb as a relic from home, revealing to them that she's from the Southern Water Tribe (don't bother thinking about the implications of non-violent resistance this comb carries, btw, since she managed to keep it through years in a prison during which the guards tied her up by hands and feet before they feed her water and through the escape, or what it means that she has to keep that last remenant of home hidden in a locked chest; would it expose her if she kept it in the bathroom? Does she fear it could? Episode says, who cares? It's just a plot device to reveal her origin. Obey the episode and don't ask questions) Third, the episode needs her crimes to be recent enough that the local community has not already exposed her, but frequent enough that the kids have reason to investigate at all. Thus, how convenient that Hama messed up the schedule during the last full moon and failed to capture her latest victim before sunrise, so the Gaang has someone to tell them an invisible force pulled him toward the mountain. Now, they know where to look for the missing people. (btw, that the man lived to tell the tale makes me additionally question how evil and dangerous Hama truly is because that is a senior, too; as if she couldn't have assassinated him in the month since to make sure he doesn't talk. As if that weren't the most logical decision if she were as ruthless as the episode needs her to be to justify the cruelty it unleashes on her)
As you see, to meet the plot requirements, the script simply stacks coincidences until the villain twist can unfold, but the character and the storytelling just become aggressively incoherent.
One of the many questions I keep asking myself is, why now? Why does Hama start now to abduct civilians? If I remember, it's quite directly stated that the disappearances started recently, a few months ago. However, even if it wasn't stated, anything else creates considerable timeline issues. If Hama had been doing this for years, there should be many more victims, bodies, searches, rumors, patrols, or investigations. Keep in mind: Sokka suspects and investigates her immediately. I know he's a smart young man, but I don't see why no one else in the area would've come up with a similar idea.
For an antagonist, if you insist on making Hama one to impress and register as evil and dangerous, they have to work for their crimes. If she has been doing this for years without any friction because people are that easy to fool, I am not buying the threat. Since all context clues imply that she has been committing these abductions for a few months, the episode owes us an inciting event. What changed? What is the causal bridge between survivor and refugee Hama and kidnapper and predator Hama? The episode doesn't bother to answer this question beyond "They deserve the same." Again, I said it before; it's funny that the story actually thinks that what Hama went through as a prisoner of war and a genocide survivor is symmetrical to the kidnappings she does.
But why did Hama go through all the trouble to build a life at all? Do you, writers, know how much labor hospitality is? Do you, writers, care at all how much work it is to take care of such a big house with multiple guest rooms, apparently, alone? Have you, writers, considered for a moment how Hama managed to OWN PROPERTY and START A BUSINESS?! The paper trail? Hello? Did you not show me repeatedly how bureaucratic the Fire Nation is? What about a title deed? You need documentation for that. And, well, money. Taxes? Inspectations? Travelers? Suppliers (since Hama is stocked well enough to feed four children for several days)? An inn is pretty much the least anonymous business imaginable, and Hama has every fucking reason to stay as anonymous as possible.
Let me remind you of the fucking background story the writers conjured for her with meticulous detail: A high-profile waterbender escapes a purpose-built detention facility by controlling guards from inside their bodies. As far as we know, Hama is the only waterbender who ever escaped, and HOW she did it should make her THE most explosive and terrifying fugitive the Fire Nation has ever seen. You cannot tell me that this happened and the Fire Nation just shrugged and called it a day. No way, people. I don't buy it. You cannot come up with this escape story and expect me to think that this is the end of it.
There is no plausible version of that event in which the Fire Nation doesn't set hell in motion to hunt Hama down. Just imagine the witness reports of the guards on this waterbender with a bending ability that bypasses walls, weapons, and will. The officials paniced, I would bet. Hama is a security nightmare and folklore material, haunting the Fire Nation. She should be, at least.
You want me to believe that Hama performs one of the most terrifying forms of bending in the franchise and the Fire Nation just forgets it? Put some respect on this woman's name when you insist on writing her that formisable! No, no, no. There was a bounty on Hama's head; in fact, there still is, I decided, but there is no data to update the picture for decades and age has changed her so much that people don't recognize her anymore.
Multiple versions of her tale are circulating through the Fire Nation because the story travels far, growing a life of its own. How would you coordinate the search if you don't pass on what happened and who's on the run? The authorities have to pass on minimal information, at least, but the event is so horrifying and incredible that details leak anyway. Therefore, the propaganda specialists spin Hama's tale as a ghost story. I headcanon that Zuko and Azula grew up with it because some servant kid told it to Lu Ten when he and his parents spent the summer in some holiday palace of the royal family.
I mean, that is the magnitude her escape story deserves. How did she not become one of the most wanted fugitives across every territory controlled by the Fire Nation? That is one of the basic mechanisms of storytelling: if you make Hama's escape and the skill she developed to achieve it that extraordinary, the consequences of her action have to match the scale and intensity.
Now, as I said, running an inn is one of the least anonymous occupations, and it doesn't really match what Hama can plausibly afford. I mentioned the paper trail that would lead every scout and bounty hunter to her sooner or later. However, the writing insists she achieved it. Granted. That makes her even more formidable.
Decades of successful concealment suggest someone capable of regulating impulses, making long-term calculations, and tolerating intimate proximity to the society that destroyed her people as Hama RUNS AN INN!!! Her field of trade is, therefore, hospitality! Are you, writers, not paying ANY attention whatsoever to the story you are writing? Do you not keep track of the creative decisions you made? She was a prisoner of war, spent years under the worst "living" conditions and then decides to to HOST guests of the Fire Nation (not exclusively, sure, Earth Kingdom travelers may pass through, but see what I mean)? What was the motivation for that? Revenge? Lure guests in and murder them? Why go through the trouble and RISK of buying (or even renting, which is even riskier if you have a landlord or landlady to answer to) and maintaining an inn? She could just move into a little appartment in a big city somewhere, scout the sewer system, bloodbend victims underground, and let them rot there. Or kill them and dispose of them in the sewer water. Get away with it for decades. Much more anonymous. That's not a story I would suggest, but if the writers wanted to make her a scary villain, that's what it would take to convince me. And, again, as elaborated in detail, we have to assume she only recently started abducting people. We know she didn't silence the one man who escaped her. So, what is her masterplan supposed to be? It doesn't compute. The setup makes Hama exceptionally bad at terrorism, actually.
Now, IF the writers insist on making her run an inn..... Here is a sneak preview of my rewrite/AU take on Hama: The White Lotus. She is a member of the White Lotus. Yes, you don't get the villain one-shot (as we established, none of the elements required to achieve the plot, arc, and conclusion of the episode make sense; neither alone nor in isolation), but Hama's story never had to go there to begin with and this decision would resolve multiple issues of Hama's post-escape story (not that the writing consideres these decades part of her character, please keep your attention on the crimes, but don't bother about the timing or an indicing event because the writers didn't either). The White Lotus would have every reason to recruit her after performing the feat of escaping the prison designed specifically to render waterbenders utterly helpless. It would explain how she evaded the Fire Nation for years: the White Lotus can hide her, shelter her, help her recover, and give her a mission and a purpose. Running an inn would still mean she's super exposed, but if the operation runs through the White Lotus, the administration issues are resolved plausibly enough. It would give Hama a meaningful way to resist because, of course, this inn would be an ideal remote operation base. Genuine travelers passing through provide an organic flow of information. Agents can blend in, leave messages, recover from injuries (it's reasonable to assume Hama is a healer), hold meetings, coordinate operations, or store and move resources.
After all, in the finale, three (!!!) of the five revealed members of the White Lotus are from the Fire Nation; I will have you remembered. Two of them were directly responsible for major military campaigns (and I think Iroh's inclusion specifically leaves us with major timeline issues: his siege on Ba Sing Se for almost two years wasn't that long ago; Zuko appears to have been around 12 or 13. If he was already a member, the White Lotus is another Imperial organ because Iroh was also crown prince and Azulon's intended successor. That looks more like infiltration, if you ask me, and maybe you could make an argument that the White Lotus recruited him specifically to get a member on the throne who can stop the war, but then it makes Iroh look like a saboteur if he left the crown to his little brother. Also, I think I remember a line where Iroh even points out that he once came as a conqueror and returns now as a liberator, which implies he took the siege campaign seriously. If Iroh became a member after losing his son and the campaign and the throne, I can see how the White Lotus would recruit an experienced soldier with close proximity to the throne for tactical reasons. Still, Iroh pretty much acts like he is the leader of the campaign to free Ba Sing Se, when Bumi is fucking there, and I don't see how that would be justified given the atrocities he committed). If you can have three (!!!) Fire Nation representatives and all the members are men, exclusively, I don't see why the sole survivor of the Southern Water Tribe benders, who liberated herself from the cruelest conditions, wouldn't be approached and recruited. As I said, it is virtually impossible that Hama's escape didn't break containment. She would've been an ideal candidate, and I think, given the background story and the fact that she is THE ONLY waterbender of the South from before the Fire Nation annihilation IN THE FRANCHISE (more sneak preview: in my rewrite, she isn't) that would've been an appropriate arc. But, no, literally crackling villain it is. Katara was actually manipulated by a predator who stains her with a forbidden technique, not reconnecting with her culture after the Fire Nation annihilated it.
Edit: A little more teasing of the WhiteLotus!Hama AU....
Getting Older, not wiser. @dizzie-lizzie-me - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
