Like Calls To Like

[starrfettii]

Please please please, put Sauron and Galadriel together on my screen come November. I’m begging. I don’t care what they’re doing, they could be trying to kill each other (actually, preferable scenario), I just want to see them together again :( let her stab him back, or whatever.

[deceitfulapple-eatingscoundrel]

ARTIST: kalisamiii

Chaos and LaLa are just 🔥

[starrfettii]

They look so good

[starrfettii]

Jack really ruined Apollo’s life. Apollo was doing perfectly fine on his own before Jacks showed up and started messing with him for his own selfish gain.

[kigozula]

I felt sad for Apollo here. The guy did nothing wrong, yet Jacks, his supposedly friend stabbed him in the back several times. No matter what, Apollo is 100% justified in his hate towards him and the fact he has wanted posters.

In my teenage years, I would have supported Jacks, but today, even if I really ship Evajacks, I don’t truly think Jacks deserve this happy ending. He never apologized or felt bad for his actions. He never felt sorry for Apollo, his friend.

And please let’s all not forget that he did NOTHING for Evangeline’s happiness. He was literally going to use the stones, erasing her memories as well, knowing fully that she would go through all these miseries again, only without him. He was alright using and pressuring Evangeline all this time, just to have his „own happiness“ and her going through all this misery on her own and who knows maybe even worse.

In ACFTL, Jacks again wanted to rip his heart out and again leave Evangeline in misery. He triggered her remembering him, only so that he could leave her again.

I still can’t help but feel like, that Apollo might have been the original happy ending of Evangeline but the course of the story changed? And I really like the third book because it has this slightly gentlemanly romantic touch, the relationship between Eva and Apollo has some very nice moments where I thought, they actually could have been happy if they talked things out and Apollo confessed everything. I had enjoyed the first book where he is cursed (sadly) a lot too. They fit together well actually. I just think in order to make Evajacks happen, Apollo who showed regret for his actions, suddenly was turned into someone who he was not. And that’s tragic.

[starrfettii]

Just saw Ben Barnes fancast as Apollo. Y’all fucking would🤣

[markerofthemidnight]

you 🫵. make a self-indulgent au now

[chainofclovers]

Put in the tags the completely finished (whether cancelled or wrapped up on its own terms) TV series that has YOUR perfect ending, however you define that

Please don’t include huge spoilers for the specifics of the endings, and it would also make me happy if people don’t use this to talk about the shows whose endings they hated

[starrfettii]

I am unreasonably irritated today.

[starrfettii]

Comments like this irritate me. I read the books, I know Fivan isn’t canon in them, leave me alone. Let me live.

[starrfettii]

You’re telling me nobody else sees the potential of Eva/chaos!?

Don’t get me wrong, I love evajacks and am happy they ended up together, but there are so many different potential stories for Eva and literally every love interest she had. Evangeline and Luc? Potential. Evangeline and Chaos? I mean…just think about that scene. Evangeline and Apollo? Potential there, too. I’m bored by the fandom’s determination to stick to canon, and canon only.

[starrfettii]

I forgot how fun multi-shipping is. But this fandom isn’t big on it, and I’m bored.

[starrfettii]

[wrathful-lambb]

The way he's trembling, trying to bury his face in Hannibal's neck when he pulls him away.

[cloakedlizard]

Aang didn't give Katara her childhood back, he helped steal it from her

I've seen a lot of takes about this recently going over how Katara is super serious and Aang being silly and goofy allows her to relax and be a kid again, when it's quite literally the exact opposite. She is forced into a more serious, maternal role prematurely because she feels she has no choice but to take care of Aang because he is irresponsible in a situation where him being irresponsible has disastrous and fatal consequences attached.

(I also have a problem with a lot of takes I've seen blaming both Katara and the audience for parentifying her: nope, that's intentionally included in the text. It was woven into the very foundation of the Kataang relationship. See beneath the cut.)

Katara stepped up in the absence of her mother and took on all sorts of adult roles for the other children both in the Southern Water Tribe and in the group. And people blame her for this, as if it's her fault for taking on these responsibilities, saying she could stop at any time and that no one is asking her to do these things. But if she stops, it doesn't get done and the stakes for things not getting done include the world ending and more people dying.

They will go without clothes, without food, without shelter, without emotional support (which for Aang means remaining in the Avatar state and actively endangering people!). She keeps the group moving forward, keeps them on track. Literally if she stops, the world ends because she's the one primarily concerned with Aang's training while he wants to play. It was a constant struggle for her to get him to do even the bare minimum of his responsibilities; he remains resisting training even until the very end of the show. Who knows how quickly he would have stopped if she wasn't there the entire time pushing him along?

That isn't him letting her have fun and act like a kid, that is him burdening her with more responsibilities because HE wants to act like a kid in a situation where they don't have the space to. Katara doesn't need to shirk responsibility and mess around, she needs HELP. She needs someone to take some of these necessary chores off her back. She needs freedom from being the one who is just assumed to take all these things on.

Yes, she is a kid. She shouldn't have to deal with this. But because she's responsible and moral, she won't just stop and let everyone suffer because of it. Every time she blows off chores to "be a kid" having fun with Aang, she has more work to do afterwards because no one else will have done the work in her absence. That isn't freeing, it's stressful.

It's also why him putting her on a pedestal and doing meaningless displays for her affections are not signs of real love. Real love is not distracting someone from work you put on their back in a way that makes their life harder, it's finding out what actually would make their life easier and doing that. Which for Katara would be helping her with work that was his to begin with: doing it without being asked, without expecting praise, without needing her to hold his hand through it. Doing it because it is his responsibility to begin with.

People often bring up that he was willing to give up the Avatar state for her. But I submit to you: that wasn't for her, it was for him. He doesn't want responsibility, he wants Katara. And he's willing to subject her to living in a world he no longer can save (a world where her loved ones will suffer and die) to hold onto his one-sided infatuation/attachment to her. Again, this wasn't a gesture of love, it was selfish. He didn't consider how it would affect or negatively impact Katara or if it's even something she'd want (it's not!), just how it would affect him. Just like he doesn't consider how she feels about him back and only worries about how he will feel if she doesn't like him back as if it's the only important factor in their relationship.

Aang doesn't give her back her childhood. He takes it away. She has to be the adult so that he doesn't have to. He gets to be a kid because she's taking care of everything else for him like a mother. Katara was forced to marry a guy she'd always have to be carrying in terms of both domestic labor and emotional labor because that's the dynamic they intentionally wrote. Carrying the weight of a whole other person in a relationship and having to fix all their problems like that is not sustainable and is an abusive dynamic. Love is selfless; it isn't benefitting from the toil of your partner nor doing whatever you want to their detriment.

That's why Zuko joining the group having learned the value behind this kind of labor is so important. He is the only other character shown to take up some of these responsibilities consistently: without being told, without expecting praise, without having his hand held. He packs, serves food, is strict and disciplined about enforcing training onto Aang. He is also the only one who allows Katara to process her negative emotions, another burden that she lifts from others but only Zuko helps her heal from. Katara acts way more like a teenager in front of him than she ever did around the others, teasing him and coming across way lighter. Because with him picking up the slack, she actually has the room and freedom to relax because she has less to worry about.

(How the relationship was characterized and the problems with it under the cut:)

And yes, this dynamic was intentional. Doing everything for him and taking care of him like a mother: intentional. Her feeling obligated to keep performing all this extra labor for him because he's the Avatar and she literally needs him because the world will end if he's not on track: intentional. Him distracting her instead of helping her with burdens placed on her by taking care of him: intentional. Him never actually becoming responsible and helping her pick up the slack: intentional.

This dynamic is intentionally written for Katara to be his supportive mother-girlfriend who does everything for him while he's just goofing around. Because it's a male fantasy. It doesn't matter how draining and frustrating it is for Katara, it just matters that she's eternally devoted to Aang and takes care of all his needs.

Also, it's super creepy that they even knowingly draw attention to the huge power imbalance between them forcing her into an oppressive role like this in that she thinks she has to do this for him because he's the Avatar. That should be considered a huge foundational problem in this dynamic, and it's instead glossed over as if it's a character flaw on Katara's part for Aang to feel insecure about... When Aang actively enables her to believe this all the times he shirks responsibility or puts them in danger when he's in the Avatar state and needs her to prod him back on track. Every time he runs away and leaves them in mortal danger. These all reinforce the power imbalance in their dynamic. Without Katara being forced into this role, again, the world could easily end: the Avatar would not train, or would go into an uncontrolled murderous Avatar state frenzy, etc.

Does she really have a choice here? If the alternative is putting the world at risk?

[starrfettii]

Look at them!!!

[starrfettii]

Does that link to every single Buffy episode still exist on this website? I’ve searched for so long :(

[starrfettii]

Apollo turning into a tree because he’s who he loves the most…

Should’ve see that coming. With all those fucking portraits.