Hello! I Hope You're Doing Well. I'm Planning To Start A Community Here On Tumblr That Bridges The Gap

*Said with a heavy French accent

Ex raven Neil would be a menace for the jerejean relationship. Jeremy thinks he's scary now? Give Neil years of attachment to Jean as his one and only lifeline and you'll learn what terror really means. He doesn't even like Jean like that (definitely obsessed with that one foxes goalkeeper) but he WILL threaten anyone who even tries. He thinks it's funny. Jean is so used to it he just sighs and moves on. Jeremy ends up playing matchmaker to andreil JUST to get Neil out of his life because God is it scary to wake up and see blue eyes just staring at you. Mind you Neil is already on the foxes lineup. How in god's green earth he has enough time to show for dinner once a week Jeremy will never understand. He locks eyes with Andrew and they're both overcome by a neuro telepathical bond of suffering for whatever the hell that is. Last year it was as bad (for Andrew, at least) because Jean was still in the nest and Neil couldn't just come and go there, but now he can and does.

Jeremy is brave and all but having the known son of a Mafia boss in his face telling him very clearly that jean is first and foremost his best friend? Yeah no I would run for the hills Jeremy you stubborn fool that's a RED flag.

Bonus points if both Jean and Neil think this is Neil behaving. Jean is actually pleasantly surprised by how calm Neil is being.

poor riko. growing up totally isolated from ichirou meant he never learned that the correct response to your brother saying “come here” is “no you’re gonna hit me”. and that’s how he got shot

Jean is the proof that strong doesnt equal hard. He has a deeply kind heart, and it is exactly the fact his heart didnt get hard like stone with all the horrors he was put through that makes him so strong. He didnt just endure, his heart came out it all still soft and beating. I feel like this is also one of the reasons Riko was always specially cruel to Jean. He looked at him and saw all he could never be, all that his money, power and talent would never get him: a kind heart, and he wanted desperately to break this in him, to make Jean bitter and cruel, and it didnt matter how many parts of Jean he would break(physically, emotionally and mentally) he still couldnt break his softness and kindness. Not only that, but he was reminded of this at every turn: when Jean would still take care of Kevin, when he taught Kevin french, when he wasnt able to handle seeing Neil get waterboarded (even though he was tortured like that many times, he couldnt stand there and bare the suffering of another person). Riko hated and despised Jean bc no matter how many times he made Jean see and live through the worst of humanity, Jean still insisted of being a reminder of the best that human beings can be. He reminded Riko that he wasnt bad bc the world was bad, he was bad simply bc he was trash.

That's why I absolutely love Jean Moreau

I swear, this boy desearves the world, he desearves to heal. He desearves to be in a place like the Trojans, full of good ppl, who will show him that he desearves love

jean moreau who learns how to cook and falls in love with it because it distracts him from everything inside his head. jean moreau who learns how to ride a motorcycle and falls in love with the open road now that he can go wherever he wants whenever he wants to. jean moreau who likes peaches and cradles them in his hands like something precious. jean moreau who is sentimental with the gifts he receives from his friends. jean moreau who helped rhemann to pull up the vegetables in his garden and realised he would like to grow something of his own one day. jean moreau who'd plait his sister's hair for her, and sew up the rips in her dress. jean moreau who watches how people show affection to him and to each other and then emulates it back to them when they need it for comfort. jean moreau who was so disturbed by the image of his friend being hurt he searched her for imaginary bumps and bruises he knew weren't there. jean moreau who has been abandoned or betrayed time and again yet still looks out for his friends bc he is loyal by nature. jean moreau who still yearns so deeply for love even though he has convinced himself he cannot have it. jean moreau whose favourite colour is associated with all the things that bring him peace - the soil in rhemann's garden, the sand after the tide washed ashore, the dirt roads he'd been down with cat, jeremy's eyes. jean moreau, a soft boy forced into a hard life.

“I don’t want you to be like Zane…I don’t want Coach to be like the master. I don’t want to teach Tanner contrition when he continuously fails my drills or to break my racquet over Cat’s back if I think she should have performed better. I don’t ever want to go back to how things were. Maybe you are fools, and I am the biggest fool for indulging you, but better to be reckless fools than Ravens.”

DID RICK JUST CALL JASON THE SON OF JUNO?!?!

Oh my poor heart-

They way this ties perfectly with the fact that it was Hera/Juno who mourned him and not his own father….

He really was her boy🥹

Okay, I might be pulling this out of my ass but since that finals match was in Evermore that means the foxes should have been wearing their white away jerseys. Which means: the final match was a game of chess.

Not only are they wearing white, but they have first serve (Dan won the coin toss), and near the end the Foxes' king (Neil, because this is a battle between Riko and Neil) changes positions with the tower (Matt, a defenseman that towers over most people) creating the illusion of a castling.

And right there at the end, Riko attempts to kill Neil because they're in front of each other, but that's not how kings work. In the time it takes him to take that step, Andrew closes the gap and strikes. Check mate.

Explained aftg to my best friend. Was hit with “who’s the love interest” halfway through…girl we got 2 more books, and 20 more tiggers warnings before we even ATTEMPT to touch that.

Azula in the Spirit Temple proves Azula is ready for a "redemption arc"

Was just rereading Azula in the Spirit Temple again last night, you know, as one does, and I was struck by the function Mai and Ty Lee serve throughout the narrative. Over and over, they serve to remind her that what she's seeing isn't real, even if what she's seeing is really nice and enjoyable. (There's definitely at least a hint at both Ty Zula and Maizula but I think at this point Repressed Lesbian Azula isn't so much subtext or text as a giant neon sign across everything Azula has ever done.)

However, as the comic progresses, both Ty Lee and Mai get harsher and harsher about delivering their reality check-ins. Azula of course is someone who at this point in time is going to be a seasoned pro at not taking reality at face value, anyway, though the spirit says something to the effect of, "Why not get lost in a dream if it's pleasant?" multiple times to her (a pretty good indicator early on to the reader that this is not a spirit to be trusted, particularly around Azula, and whatever reason it got called to her, it was not ultimately to offer redemption). Anyway, the turning point for when Mai and Ty Lee's check-ins go from mean to downright hostile occurs in the following two panels.

This is after Azula and Ty Lee are talking about "the old days" which, according to the Ty Lee Subconscious mouthpiece were stressful and anxiety inducing (like, literally S2 of the show) to which Azula verbally counters that they all "loved it" although she does note that then Mai had to go and "ruin it" for a "stupid boy" (emphasis hers, she doubles down on this and says, "stupid Zuzu" as well). How super duper straight of you to say, Azula. We're all buying it. Then Subconscious Mouthpiece Ty Lee says, "Maybe you should get help?" and that specifically is what sets Azula to attacking her.

So of course it's not the phrasing here that's harsh or over the top but the suggestion itself. It's notable that Azula's mind puts it in Ty Lee's mouth and not Mai’s (we'll get to that in a bit). But Azula has at this point been running from help and instead fomenting domestic terrorism for years for her own twisted and convoluted reasons and not because most of the comics are shit. And she's a noted liar. Of course, she's not the liar the show builds her up to be, or the liar she herself brags about being. We don't actually see Azula lie all that often in the show and when we do, there's usually a pretty decent explanation (like she's overthrowing an enemy city).

It's important to note that Zuko is being ridiculous in his flashback in Zuko Alone - that's my favorite episode but eight years olds developmentally cannot control when they lie or often even distinguish that they've done so (ten year olds can usually distinguish when they're lying better, but not by much). Zuko at ten and 16 gets a pass because he knows nothing about child development and I'm sure his little mantra didn't spontaneously generate; I suspect Iroh or Ursa handed it to him at some point. But we as viewers know better and cannot take, "Azula always lies," as any kind of proof of anything beyond the abusive nature of both of their childhoods. And given that the nature of these "lies" at the time probably mostly consisted of either ways to avoid punishment, or things she legitimately didn't even do but nobody believed, I think eight year old Azula gets a pass at the time. I had a childhood that was in many ways similar to Azula's. It creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the people around you decide you're lying all the time, you're like, "OK, bet."

But that really gets to why Ty Lee's words are so harsh in these panels. Because when you grow up like that, as Azula has, the person you end up lying to the most is yourself. And she's still not ready to face that even by the end of the comic. She's aware she needs help, but it's too scary to reach out for it when in reality nobody is there for her and she's all alone, by her own doing (another thing the comic drives home).

In fact, Azula's subconscious chooses to drive that fact home through Mai. And Subconscious Mai is a lot less nice in her phrasing than Subconscious Ty Lee. I don't think that's an accident. Irl, Azula probably looked to Mai as a gauge for when she was going too far. "Oh, Mai wouldn't go in the slurry... well, okay, fair. I can see by looking at Ty Lee that that was pretty disgusting... And she got stuck in it by that Water peasant anyway, so it was pointless too." "I hated that stupid bear too." Etc etc. Essentially, she could trust Mai to call her on her bs. Which is what Mai did at the Boiling Rock, and Azula's subconscious knows it (but who's our princess best at lying to? Say it with me! Herself!).

And there's nobody she hates more than herself, either. (Actually, given Mai and Ty Lee's roles in this comic I think it's pretty clear that at least on a subconscious level, Azula really wants to make amends with them, which hurts, because... they don't.) The whole thing made me really just want to give her a hug. She needs one. I've been there.

I'm curious to see if she'll make an appearance in Ashes of the Academy. I actually think, given what was presented in Azula in the Spirit Temple, that she wants to change and grow into a better, more healthy person. Obviously that's going to look very different from Zuko's arc. Villain to antihero is not the same arc as antihero to hero. I think she's ready now to start walking that path, though, if she is approached by the right person. (Ty Lee or Mai.) Mai seems to be the more likely of the two to be willing just in terms of how their relationship has always been, how she currently feels about Azula, and given that she's prominent in the upcoming comic. Fingers crossed for some good material!

Heard someone telling their kid that boys shouldnt cry and I was like "wtf??? Is this ths Middle Ages???"

Then I remembered there are a lot of mtf who still think like that

the thing about being nonbinary is that you really do start to forget that other people have such strict walls around what is and isn’t allowed for genders. i thought we all agreed that we made that up. could you climb out of the cave real quick and feel the sunshine for a minute.