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Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ

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Kiana Khansmith
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@wizardwithacoin
Reblog if despite being silent for a while, you're still here
I think about Azula shooters often and their common refrain of "if Azula hadn't had a mental breakdown, she would've won" and I'm here to tell you that no, she wouldn't have.
There is no universe in which Azula was winning that fight with Zuko (or Katara, for that matter).
Azula spent so much of Book 2 being built up as this deadly terrifying force against whom the heroes are badly outmatched that it can be difficult to catch exactly how quickly Zuko is advancing.
Back up a bit to Book One. For the fearsome exiled crown prince of the Fire Nation, Zuko's not that impressive a firebender. He's not bad by any stretch, and he's able to lay the untrained Sokka and Katara flat pretty easily. Then he gets in the ring with Aang, who is an airbending master, and the difference between a regular bender and a master becomes apparent when Aang literally puts his ass to bed:
People have attributed this to the fact that no one's fought an airbender in 100 years, but I think it's also worth noting that Aang (a 12 year old from a pacifist nation) has probably never fought anyone before. Like, ever. And yet the second Aang thinks "okay, I'll attack back", the fight's over.
Zuko's got the same genetic predisposition for firebending talent that Azula does, yet it never seems to manifest because of his mental blocks. At the beginning of the series, he's already so beat down that all he really has is conviction, pride, and anger, so even with training from Iroh (the firebending master, thank you very much), he struggles. Yet throughout Book 2, when he has no time to train because he's on the run, he actually seems to advance faster. The fact that his bending is literally tied to his character arc (as his morals become tangled and he has to fight off aforementioned mental blocks) is pretty brilliant. Like, by the time of the Crossroads of Destiny, Zuko getting his ass handed to him by Aang is a pretty consistent feature of the show--he just can't match wits with him.
Hell, at the beginning of the series, he and Iroh (again: the actual firebending master) launch a combined power surface-to-air attack...which Aang casually swats away into a nearby ice wall. Come the Crossroads of Destiny, however, and Zuko by himself launches this bigass fireball that blows through Aang's defenses.
Zuko advances so quickly that it's scary. That prodigious talent is in him even if it doesn't come through as cleanly as with Azula. Who, by the way, was busy about to get flattened by Katara some few dozen feet away, until Zuko took over and then effectively stalemated her himself.
All of this in retrospect makes it abundantly clear why Zuko's firebending seemed to skyrocket so much when he learned true firebending from the Sun Warriors: it was really the only thing left. He's hard a hard road learning how to fight waterbenders, earthbenders, and airbenders, and even if unconsciously, he's applying the philosophy Iroh taught him about augmenting his bending style with aspects of other styles (see also, the waterbending-like fire whips he uses in the above gif). Once he actually understands fire and how it works, he's got it mastered. Hence why any gap between him and Azula effectively disappears as soon as their next fight--before her friends have betrayed her and her stability goes out the window. There's no real sense of urgency to their fight at the Boiling Rock prison. True, Sokka's presence with the sword helps, but Zuko doesn't look remotely worried and he counters Azula's every attack perfectly.
All her life, Azula only ever learned fire. She was taught by the best people the fire nation can employ, so she knows all the cool tricks, but she's still poisoned by the corrupted firebending practiced in the modern ATLA timeline. Unlike Zuko, who managed to get the basics if nothing else from Iroh (fire comes from the breath, and can be used to survive as much as to kill), Azula has always used fire as a weapon and a means to hurt others. She has no true knowledge of the craft, meaning she's got the same weaknesses as Zhao, she's just better disciplined to the point she can make up for it.
Zuko's victory was a given considering Azula's complete loss of control by the time of Sozin's comet, but even had she been in a perfect mental state, she'd have lost, because in many ways Zuko is simply the better firebender.
And that's the truth of it.
@coolman229 @just-absolutely-super @frankthecherokee
A bender achieves mastery truly when they figure out MMA. Case in point, Bumi using air bender style despite being an earth bender.
It is worth noting that firebending and Tophs earthbending were based on sister martial arts. I forget the name of it, but they are the northern and southern variants.
Happy Valentine’s Day from me and @gogodoczilla, who is seriously the best boyfriend ever and he is here aaaa I still can’t believe itttt ♥
[[So any of you guys remember @echomancerforhire? And how he and I would write a lot of stuff together and it turned into a lot of shippy stuff and then we started dating for real? Look. We’re canon.
Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody. Hope it’s great… and I hope to be back around here a little more often soon, too.]]
[[Also reblogging here because I’m a terrible showoff. #sorrynotsorry ♥]]
((And, nine years later, an update on how the RP-partners-to-dating-IRL pipeline worked out: pretty damn well, I’d say! 💍))
Congratulations and best of wishes to you both.
Is he by any chance a 6'6" grumpy wizard chicagoan
So for years we've had a Halloween decoration of a realistic plastic skull we call Bob, and with kids, to make skulls and skellies seem less scary, we just call all skulls Bob. So skulls are pretty chill in our household, amounting to effectively just a different kind of toy. That leads to today on our park outing, my daughter decides she wants to bring Bob this time to play with. So if you can imagine this 2 year old little girl with her flowery shirt, overall shorts and heart buttons running around with a realistic skull, cheerfully greeting the neighbours with said skull in hand, running down the road like they're best friends and throwing him down the slide with utter glee as if Bob himself is having the time of his life. Anyways, I wonder how many people did a double take today lol
I had nothing to do with this, you can not prove otherwise.
Oh fuck off
Anyway the best opening line to a book is still from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe:
“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
Another favorite is the opener from CS Lewis's Voyage of the Dawn Treader:
"There was a boy named Eustice Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
May I present a strong contender as well:
JESUS CHRIST. Killer opening.
You know a branch of physics is hardcore when the textbook needs a trigger warning.
I mean, I think that what this really means is that there are a lot of people who really haven't read many books other than the Harry Potter series.
It's also hard to top "The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault. "
Bad + Blood: End of Day
Mina having a smoke after a long day. With and without blood.
[Made a new brush explicitly for Mina’s hair.]
One Twitter too! I’d appreciate any engagement on this one, I worked hard on it!
I can feel the raw hide tenacity and exhaustion. Well done.
That awkward moment when you realize you haven't been on here since Battleground came out.
Do I owe anyone a post who still even remembers that we were writing together?
Probably not, but it's good to see you.
Sorry If you've answered something like this before but the werewolf question made me curious. Are faeries still weak to iron in BtP? If so, what properties do iron and silver (or other metals) have that makes them weak to metals?
They are weak to iron. Specifically unrefined iron, not cast iron, not steel. Cold, untempered iron. The more you process or alloy the metal, the more potency it loses. Fairies can handle steel and suffer no ill effects except the occasional rash.
The reason for it is because of alchemy. All things have a magical property and nature. In alchemy, the goal is to combine certain materials with one another to create a matrix. This matrix, when charged with mana, transmutates based on what is in it.
It just so happens that the magical property of iron runs counter to faerie's nature. They react negatively when put together, like putting magnesium and water together. So it burns them, puts them in deep physical and psychological pain, and disrupts their magic.
Silver works on vampires and werwolves because silver is a purifier, magically speaking. It frequently used to remove curses. That's great (if painful) for someone afflicted with a minor curse. But lycanthropy and vampirism are ingrained in every inch of a person's body, which means that you're no longer just purging the curse, you're purging the flesh, blood and bone too.
In that case, would iron ore have the most potent form of this reaction, or would that be too impure?
Theoretically, would it be possible to deliberately mix impurities into iron to make it more effective, or does it have to be naturally impure iron?
Between (least iron content to most) iron slag, iron ore, bloomery iron, and pig/bog iron, which would be the most effective?
Or is all of that unknown?
If you have a chunk of iron ore, the iron itself (not the impurities) would be very potent. Imagine a chunk of fluorine mixed with impurities. If you grab that chunk of fluorine, you’re still going to get a ‘chemical burn’ regardless, because the impurities don’t stop the fluorine you’re in contact with from applying to your skin.
Fire (and heat in general) changes the alchemic structure of things. Fire is change and destruction. This is why heating iron will cause it to degrade in its magical properties.
As for efficiency, that depends on what you’re looking for. It isn’t just the iron content, it also has to do with how often that iron is heated. I’ll address each:
Iron ore and raw bog iron are going to be the most potent because they haven’t been smelted, yet it’s difficult to form anything of use out of a chunk of raw iron. Raw iron deals the most damage, leaving wounds that never properly heal.
Pig/bloomery iron would be the next potent, being fired only once. This iron would leave burns similar to chemical burns on any faerie, causing intense pain that eventually fades and heals over a long period. However, these irons are hard to work into something useable without another heating.
Wrought/cast iron is next, having been fired at least twice. It can be cast/wrought into functional shapes for defense and offense. These irons still cause pain to faeries but nowhere near as much as previous kinds, dealing the kind of damage you’d experience if you were touching scalding hot water.
The problem with purchased wrought/cast iron is it can be made out of recycled iron, meaning it gets fired again, reducing its potency to zero. Best practices is to make the wrought iron yourself or by someone you know uses fresh iron.
Steel is next, being basically worthless, having been exposed to heat several times. It doesn’t matter the iron content, simply because it’s been smelted/heated so many times at this point. Faeries who touch steel might get a rash but nothing severe.
Stainless steel doesn’t even register to faeries. It has the impotency of steel while also being alloyed with non-iron elements.
So for people looking to face down faeries, cast/wrought iron is best. But it’s going to be a big shock if you find out your wrought iron is made from scrap and the faerie in question is barely impacted by it.
Where would meteor iron fall in it's potency?
*blows dust off this blog*
Oh hi everyone. Anyone still around? I see a couple new faces in the dfrp tags……
Still alive, just busy.
Who's been following me for marketing?
If the wizard you’re fighting is using two-to-three syllable pseudo-Latin magic words, that is a wizard you can absolutely punch in the face.
If the wizard you’re fighting starts reciting a rhyming couplet, you need to get out of there yesterday. You need to change your identity and hide your soul in a pin in a rabbit in a chest on an island that only appears once every three months and even then only to a third son, because any spell that rhymes will curse you, your dog, your descendants, and will somehow work its way backwards through time to curse your ancestors.
Patreon Wizard Reward: May
Thank you to Dash4rd, who submitted the winning idea for May!
Kitsune are fox werebeasts who can easily blend into human society, yet their curious and mischievous nature often gets the better of them. Much like other werebeasts, kitsune struggle with their urges and instincts to contain the animal spirit within them. If they can’t, they may lose control and become a terrible, mindless monster.
Once again, thank you for all your support! It’s been one month since the first goal has been hit and I hope to continue putting out content for all of you! Hitting the next milestone will allow me to put out more!
Artwork by @tomis-safezone Support Beyond the Pale on Patreon!
Patreon Wizard Reward: March/April
Thank you to Dash4rd, who submitted the winning idea for the second half of the double reward!
A kumiho is a Dreamtime spirit that takes the form of a multitailed fox. As the kumiho grows older and more powerful it gains more tails up to a total of nine.
Kumiho live off of strife and discontent so they will often interfere with the lives of humans; breaking up families, destroying property, murdering the young and old alike and disturbing graves. To better achieve these goals the kumiho can take human form to blend in and get closer to their targets.
Thank you all for your help so far. More artwork is on the way!
Artwork by @tomis-safezone Support Beyond the Pale on Patreon!
Patreon Wizard Reward: March/April
Thank you to Dash4rd, who submitted the winning idea for one half of the double reward! Here we have a lucky clover sprig finding a lucky penny! Wonder where he found it.
Sprigs are naturally curious but shy. They’ve been known to collect small objects when they think nobody is around. Maybe this little guy stumbled upon a change jar or got under a desk!
Artwork by @tomis-safezone Support Beyond the Pale on Patreon!
I’m reading the first chapter of my Ichthyology book for homework and so far my favorite quote is:
“Humans are not the pinnacle of evolutionary progress but only an aberrant side branch of fish evolution.”
women want me, but fish? fish pity me
This is true for all mammals taxinomically.