Zuko-Always-Lies @zuko-always-lies - Tumblr Blog

Got Laid Off. Taking Commissions!

Black and white pieces are $60 and Color pieces are $85!

Multiple figures or complex designs or architecture may add more to the cost but can be worked out during the sketching/planning process! Send me an email at [email protected] if you're interested! You can also send me donation if you'd like on paypal using that email as well!

millyblank

Desperately need cash to stay afloat. I have a sudden bunch of bills. Please if you can donate or commission me please do!

zuko-always-lies

Do you think Sokka isn't acknowledged as a survivor of genocide not only by the fandom, but the show itself?

Yeah, I would agree that the show doesn't really acknowledge him as a genocide victim.

0bscvr1ty

What's worse is that his savior complex goes unacknowledged for the most part, treated as irrational or turned into a joke in some scenes.

That's a direct trauma response. I want to make a post about it soon because that's something he has in common with Jet and those two happen to be my favorites.

ao3commentoftheday

AO3 filtering for either of two (or more) tags

You might have noticed that when you include more than one item in your AO3 filters, the number of results drops drastically. When you include more than one item, you're telling the filter to find fics that have tag A as well as tag B, and the more items you include, the more things you're requiring a fic to have in order to show up in your results.

You're telling AO3 that you only want fics that have all of the things. You're not telling AO3 that you want fics that have any of the things.

This is because the filters use something called Boolean operators. The Boolean operators are: AND, OR, and NOT. You need to use caps for these terms in order for them to function as an operator and not just another word in a phrase.

AND (the one used by include filters) means you want both (or all) of the things

OR means you want any of them or any combination of them

NOT (the one used by exclude filters) means that you want none of them, either alone or in combination

So if Include = AND and Exclude = NOT, then how do you use OR? Use the Search Within Results box. It's near the bottom of the filter menu, right above where you can choose which language you want to read and below where you can choose word count range and completion status etc.

In this box, type the name of the first tag you're interested in, then the name of the second tag and put an OR in the middle. Keep adding OR in between them, and you can stack as many tags as you want - until you get to whatever the character limit is (character, in this case, meaning letter, number, or symbol).

If a tag is just one word, then your filter would look like this:

angst OR fluff

If a tag is more than one word, then your filter would look like this:

"no beta we die like men" OR "I wrote this instead of sleeping"

You need the quotation marks around multiple words to let the filter know that those words belong together, in that order

If you want to do an OR search for ships, it gets a bit more complicated because of the symbols used in ship tags. For ships, instead of using the name of the tag, it's better to use the tag ID number.

To find the tag ID, tap/click on the ship tag to go that tag's results page (I'm using Frodo/Sam in this example). On that results page, tap on the button labelled RSS feed. That will either open up a new page full of code or download a text file of code. Near the top of that code, you'll see something that looks like:

The tag ID number is the number that appears after /tags/

In this case, the tag ID number for Frodo/Sam is 13674. When I repeat the same process for Frodo & Sam, I get the tag ID number 716913. Then I just need to set up my OR statement and let it know that the tag number I'm providing is a relationship ID:

relationship_ids: 13674 OR relationship_ids:716913

Put that in the Search Within Results box, and I'll get fics with either one of those ships tagged, and I'll also get results with both ships tagged.

Oh! and if you don't know how to find the filters menu, just tap on any tag and then on the button labelled Filters. You won't see this menu on a search results page. However, you can use these same techniques in the search bar at the top of the page or in the Any Field box at the top of the Advanced search page.

pandorasopenedbox3

Does anyone have any good azula and zuko rekindling fics with background Zukka and tyzula or maizula??? I’m craving my fire siblings with some yaoi and Yuri.

zuko-always-lies

"I really think more [ATLA] fics with polygamy would be interest[ing]."

https://www.tumblr.com/zuko-always-lies/766526980525080576/i-really-think-more-fics-with-polygamy-would-be

What do you think about ships like Mai/Azula/Zuko, Ty Maiko, Ty Lee/Azula/Zuko, Maizulee, and Mai/Azula/Zuko/Ty Lee in the context of Fire Nation Royalty engaging in polyamory?

Also, if you have read fics dealing with each of the previously described ships, what are your thoughts on them? Are they anywhere near historically accurate, or they just smut fics?

Furthermore, how would you write the ships to be historically accurate?

Warning: I will be talking about incest here a bit.

Let's start with Azula/Mai/Ty Lee. There are a good number of good fics for that ship (for instance), but generally the social, cultural, and political implications are not a focus. The best way to make the ship a little more grounded is to present it as something that is going on in addition to fulfilling their cultural responsibilities for their families, not as a replacement for "conventional family life." As long as Azula and Mai (Ty Lee burned her bridges with her family long ago) are marrying the right men (thus making family alliances) and producing heirs, no one cares about them being involved with each other.

Another realistic way to approach this is to have Mai, Azula, and Ty Lee all be wives/secondary wives/concubines of the same man. I suppose that's where the other part of your ask comes in.

So, I'm actually beta-ing for a Azula/Mai/Ty Lee/Zuko fic right now. However, in general you are correct, most fics of this type are just smut. That's fine, of course, but not what you are looking for.

Let's deal with the incest aspect of this first. As far as I'm aware, this is not something any historical East Asian or Southeast Asian royal dynasty engaged in, but there have been many royal dynasties who have.

Any sort of Azula/Zuko relationship, at least an official one, only makes sense if the Fire Nation royal family has a tradition incest. Otherwise it's not going to be culturally normal enough for a marriage to happen. However, if there is such a tradition, then suddenly the marriage makes a tremendous degree of sense as a way to submerge and eliminate Azula's claim to the throne. As I'll discuss below, there is ultimately only one primary wife on top of the household hierarchy, and if this status is denied to Azula in favor of someone else, it would be as a deliberate slight or humiliation against Azula.

OK, now there are three or four purposes to the artifice of polygamy in East Asia:

As a babymaking machine, to ensure plentiful heirs (and the status of women inside the "harem" tends to be influenced over whether they've given birth to children).

As a status symbol; having many women marks you as wealthy and powerful.

As a source of pleasure and love.

As a way to establish connections and alliances.

The same trends can be seen up and down the social scale, with households of more modest means being smaller, but of course households needed to be of some means to support more than one woman, much less many.

Harems were also structured as a hierarchy, with the primary wife on top (although she would be below her mother-in-law), and then secondary wives/concubines and so below that. Imperial harems in particular had a ton of ranks and titles to them.

By the late Imperial period (Song/Ming/Qing, but not Yuan) the women of elite households were very cloistered and confined (although arguably in the Ming Dynasty that's also true of even the Emperor), but things were less like that in earlier dynasties and other East Asian societies, to a variable degree, and in the Shang Dynasty (which was more or less the dawn of Chinese history) palace women even seem to have regularly led armies in the field. I think that's a bit closer to how the Fire Nation would understand the institution, to say the least.

There are also some other things I should bring up:

For the Emperor, monogamy really wasn't possible, even if he wanted it. There's entire systems pushing him toward polygamy.

There's a huge reputation for vicious infighting between women over status in Chinese harems.

For many women, concubinage was a ticket toward upward social mobility.

Harems can be large, particularly for the emperor. Japan and Korea generally seems to have had smaller households, though.

A common trend (far from universal) is to have children born of concubines adopted by the primary wife.

A lot about this system might sound very depressing (and it was) but I just want to present one counterexample from the famous memoir Six Records of a Floating Life by Shen Fu. Shen Fu was an intellectual of extremely modest (or worst means), and, beyond the struggle to keep going the book is largely about his very happy marriage with his wife Chen Yun and his grief over her untimely death. At a certain point, despite the couple having very little money, Chen Yu gets obsessed with finding a beautiful and charming concubine for her husband, an idea Shen Fu is cautious at best about. She eventually finds a younger girl, Hanyüan, that meets her standards, and basically seems to fall in love with her and become obsessed with her, a feeling that Hanyüan reciprocates (this is a 19th century Chinese text that I'm reading in translation, but what's going on between them seems very homoerotic). Chen Yun tries very hard to add Hanyüan to their household, but eventually Hanyüan was forcibly married to someone else, and Shen Fu blamed the grief over losing Hanyüan for Chen Yun's death.

Anyways, enough prattling. I know what you really want to know is my opinions on Zuko and polygamy. These are the points I think are worth hitting:

For FN society, Zuko's polygamy would primarily be seen as a babymaking machine (and perhaps as a reaction to the disadvantages shown by the monogamy of Ozai and Azulon).

The lack of heirs in the royal family might play into things.

Zuko's consorts would not have the same rank. Only one can be his primary wife.

The high-ranking consorts would have very high social status in the Fire Nation. And in turn (to a much lesser degree) Zuko might gain status by having high-ranking women in his harem.

There would be no reason that people would expect that Zuko would stop at two or three consorts. Especially if Zuko's "harem" was small, people would shopping their eligible daughters to him, and so on.

Attractions between women within the harem would be none of anyone else's business.

I would expect though that Zuko would be reestablishing royal polygamy, if he did it.

dragomer

I think this analysis has a flaw: It has many 'ought' that Zuko could and probably just...not do? Like the lead wife or concubines, he could just go 'No, they are all my wives and they're all equal / have the same status'.

Zuko is already a reformer upending 100+ years of fire nation culture and the Fire Lord is already an Absolute Monarch on a level that's a mix of Louis the 14th and a Mandala God-King from the South East Asian islands. Just changing how his own wives are handled is a side quest in comparison.

And it's not like Zuko just grew up sheltered, never knowing anything outside the palace that would make him not even think about changing stuff like any IRL Emperor who didn't particularly like how their harems worked. His dad and grandad even practiced monogamy so Zuko going for a harem would come with no pre-conceived notion of what a harem even is (and even if Ozai had an offscreen harem, Zuko hate him and would very much change how the women in it were treated by the time he came to power.). He, just like Azula, Mai and Ty Lee are very knowledgeable and well traveled people who have the knowledge and agency to do things their own way if they want given Zuko's authority as Fire Lord.

Also attraction between the girls would very much get people talking if they notice Zuko isn't active / centered enough to it all, it could easily be taken as an insult against him just like you said Azula not being the lead wife could be taken as an insult against her (which isn't the case by default, as I said, there can be no lead wife or the lead wife can just be an administrative position with no further prestige or it can be Azula being spared the pressure of an official post).

But like seriously, nobody is even gonna try to tell the Fire Lord 'no' if he decide to change the rules of his harem and even if they did, do you really think someone as bullheaded as Zuko is even gonna hesitate if someone try to tell him how to take care of his women and the mothers of his children? Especially with how much of a Momma's Boy he is?

Also Manadala God Kings and Kaisars very much took part in polygamy and so did the Mongols.

zuko-always-lies

I think this analysis has a flaw: It has many 'ought' that Zuko could and probably just...not do? Like the lead wife or concubines, he could just go 'No, they are all my wives and they're all equal / have the same status'.

Zuko is already a reformer upending 100+ years of fire nation culture and the Fire Lord is already an Absolute Monarch on a level that's a mix of Louis the 14th and a Mandala God-King from the South East Asian islands. Just changing how his own wives are handled is a side quest in comparison.

I do not have any particularly strong knowledge of the Mandela system but what I do know suggests it is not a good fit for the modern Fire Nation at all. And the authority of Chinese Emperors was theoretically absolute as well, but not so in practice.

And it's not like Zuko just grew up sheltered, never knowing anything outside the palace that would make him not even think about changing stuff like any IRL Emperor who didn't particularly like how their harems worked. His dad and grandad even practiced monogamy so Zuko going for a harem would come with no pre-conceived notion of what a harem even is (and even if Ozai had an offscreen harem, Zuko hate him and would very much change how the women in it were treated by the time he came to power.). He, just like Azula, Mai and Ty Lee are very knowledgeable and well traveled people who have the knowledge and agency to do things their own way if they want given Zuko's authority as Fire Lord.

You are assuming that historical emperors were entirely OK with the existing practices. Some of them weren't, but were unable to impose their will. "Absolute" rulers were always far more socially and culturally constrained than people understand. And those rejected that did not tend to survive long.

I think this analysis has a flaw: It has many 'ought' that Zuko could and probably just...not do? Like the lead wife or concubines, he could just go 'No, they are all my wives and they're all equal / have the same status'. Zuko is already a reformer upending 100+ years of fire nation culture and the Fire Lord is already an Absolute Monarch on a level that's a mix of Louis the 14th and a Mandala God-King from the South East Asian islands. Just changing how his own wives are handled is a side quest in comparison. Also attraction between the girls would very much get people talking if they notice Zuko isn't active / centered enough to it all, it could easily be taken as an insult against him just like you said Azula not being the lead wife could be taken as an insult against her (which isn't the case by default, as I said, there can be no lead wife or the lead wife can just be an administrative position with no further prestige or it can be Azula being spared the pressure of an official post).

Ah, yes, Zuko, the guy who is always considerate about the feelings and needs of others and who always thinks things through.

Also attraction between the girls would very much get people talking if they notice Zuko isn't active / centered enough to it all, it could easily be taken as an insult against him just like you said Azula not being the lead wife could be taken as an insult against her (which isn't the case by default, as I said, there can be no lead wife or the lead wife can just be an administrative position with no further prestige or it can be Azula being spared the pressure of an official post).

In Imperial Chinese civilization, there was very little ever written about romance and sex between women, not because it didn't exist but because it was regarded as a rather unimportant topic. People just didn't care at all about it.

Also Manadala God Kings and Kaisars very much took part in polygamy and so did the Mongols.

And the ATLA Fire Nation is not really based on either of those cultures. There's a reason why I focused on China, Japan, Vietnam, and Korea when I was writing my post and didn't bring up, for instance, Islamic cultures that practiced polygamy.

Anyways, I was asked what would be a more historically accurate take on polygamy, and I gave my answer. The fact that it doesn't fit with your desires is not my problem. You are free to believe what you wish, but household hierarchy was extremely important to the historical cultures that inspired the Fire Nation.

haaroart

ANGSTY MAIZULAAAA LOVE THEM SM

Mai was always there when Ozai happened

herbluefire

zuko is actually delusional when u think about it

zuko-always-lies

People really don't talk about this, but Aang actually marrying Katara is a real big deal for him and a cultural concession even since the Air Nomad culture he's so desperate to somehow preserve doesn't seem to include marriages at all. The same is true for raising his biological kids. In the culture Aang is from, biological parents just don't do that. You raise children, but not your own.

In terms of what their family looks like, it seems to be much closer to Water Tribe traditions than Air Nomad traditions.

vector-field-outpost

(tags by op)

yeah... and the tragedy of it is, that's the only practical way! his culture is very collectivist. you can't set up a collectivist culture without a collective of participants, and Aang is the last one. he has to teach others to do it. if he wants his children to know the air nomad culture he has to be the one to teach them, which in practice means he'll have to participate in raising them, because there's no one else to do that.

not to mention that Katara is also from an almost-wiped-out culture. she's not the only one left, but it would be unfair to her as well if she had to drop the swt traditions in her family life.

God the Ancient Egyptians were really hardcore about incest.

#of course I've known this for years #and this is something that likely changed over time #but yeah we have a lot of evidence #and they were really into it #sibling/sibling is really common in particular #but father/daughter marriages definitely existed too #there's also a lot of people very focused on denying all available evidence as much as possible

lenaikart

Imagine Maizula with Jetko's dynamic 👀

Or do you prefer Azutara?

Not sure about jetko dynamic but anyway. Maizula🎉

camiiro

@zuko-always-lies

kropotkindersurprise

2015 - Here are some gifs of Donald Trump being attacked by a bald eagle named Uncle Sam, literally the least patriotic thing that can happen to an American. [video]

kedreeva

I’m reblogging this again because I finally realized why this is so funny to me, as a bird person.

In the first gif, what you’re seeing is a man who has zero idea how to handle a bird. That’s a heavy bird, and he’s got his arm stretched out as far as it will go in an attempt to keep the bird away from his face. What that does is create unstable footing for Uncle Sam. The handler is there trying to hold up Trump’s arm, but the bird has already realized it needs to leave or it will fall. In the first gif the bird is not attacking Trump- it is trying to get away from him so it doesn’t get hurt.

In the second gif, what we see is a bird that remembers what just happened and is blaming Trump for it. Uncle Sam sees Trump reach for its tether, and makes a lunge at Trump’s hand to keep him away. The bird /does not/ want to hang out with Trump because it has learned that Trump has no idea what he is doing.

Uncle Sam is rejecting Trump based on Trump’s proven inability to properly handle Uncle Sam. And that is both hilarious and beautiful.

Good bird.

rainnecassidy

Always reblog Uncle Sam telling Trump to fuck off

why-animals-do-the-thing

This is a better explanation of these gifs than I could have given!

allaboardtheloonyexpress

I had to reblog this, for obvious reasons.

lost-carcosa

Iconic.

dingdongyouarewrong

i'm getting the sense some of you are not actually forklift certified.

averagejoey2000

dingdongyouarewrong

well damn . egg on my face

dingdongyouarewrong

THE PLOT THICKENS @averagejoey2000 explain yourself

averagejoey2000

I can't believe this is how I'm finding out that I got a scam forklift cert.

I took the cargo ops class at school but my teacher explained that it doesn't give a certification and I'd only be okay for ship's crane and the school forklifts. she said I could take an online exam and get my cert. I paid 60 bucks.

I'm googling and I'm seeing a lot of resources saying that the online programs cover the classroom part of the exam but not the in person practical aspect.

29 CFR 1910.178 (l)(2)(ii)

but I did the in person practical shit at school.

averagejoey2000

the back of the card even had fancy numbers on it. I couldn't have known that this isn't the one. this website sounded more official than certifyme.net, and there wasn't one with a .gov address.

averagejoey2000

so, I emailed OSHA, and they said that so long as I live and work in California, there's no such thing as forklift certification. I have to be told how to do it every time I get the job.

averagejoey2000

Update: I took a certification class in shipboard Material Handling Equipment at my federal job. *now* I'm forklift certified, but only on ships and piers and only for this company, but also rated to forklift explosives and hazardous materials. Also I'm a woman now.