Bi-babe-y

sorry but in WHAT world would a hall full of british teenagers think their new headteacher was cool because she danced across the stage like theresa may? everyone would eat her alive

I haven’t seen anyone talk about this, but why is no one talking about the casual racism from Hope when she assumed Adam was Jackson?

is there a genre of TV called good people trying their best? coz i think thats my fav genre atm

#LateStageCapitalism

I’ve decided to make a second post about Aang’s parental neglect because the first one was hijacked by people accusing me of being delusional.

The more I think about Aang’s attitude, the less I understand it. In my post, I said that it would be understandable (but still questionable) for Aang to leave Bumi and Kya behind if he’s going to places made for airbenders- I take it back. Not only because it’s parenting 101 that even if you believe that your child won’t enjoy a vacation, you still take them, but because I’ve come to realize that there is no such thing as airbender-only places. They don’t exist.

Think about it, what is airbender culture? Is it being vegetarian? Kya and Bumi could do that. Is it believing in absolute pacifism? Kya and Bumi could do that. Is it meditating and being spiritual? Kya and Bumi could do that. Is it being bonded with an air bison? Kya and Bumi could do that.

The only thing that is exclusive to Aang and Tenzin is bending air and even that isn’t unreachable for Kya and Bumi. Remember in ATLA when we learned that you can learn techniques from one form of bending and use them for another form of bending? Iroh famously learned a waterbending technique and used it to create lightning redirection and we saw Zuko using techniques from all 4 forms of bending in his agni kai- So why couldn’t Aang teach Kya airbending techniques and have her use them for waterbending? It would’ve been perfectly possible. Even Bumi could’ve used the same technology that Teo and Katara used to fly- Aang acknowledges that Teo is essentially an airbender, so why couldn’t Bumi do the same?

What TLOK is presenting is an immense regression for the character of Aang. Are we supposed to believe that the same Aang who saw Teo flying and exclaimed “Even though Teo is not an airbender, he really does have the spirit of one!” would look at his own children and say “Nope, you’re not an airbender and could never be one”?

If I didn’t know anything about Bryke, I would assume that they hate Aang and that this writing choice is their personal vendetta against the character- But I do know about them and I know that they love Aang more than anything, so what the fuck is this? Is it a power fantasy about being so famous and powerful that you can get away with neglecting your children?

I can’t believe that Aang stans flooded my mentions. If I were a devoted Aang stan, I would track down the showrunners and key their cars.

Zutara, romance novels, and the female gaze

Okay so I’ve been thinking about the female gaze a LOT so I checked out a subreddit about romance novels, despite never having read one. I came across this meme (which was initially a Tumblr post and then got posted to Instagram and then to Reddit and I’m now bringing back to Tumblr — Internet telephone, pls never change):

And…what is The Southern Raiders, if not a platonic grovel? Katara’s pain is central to the episode. It’s central to Zuko. Zuko asks Katara what he can do to make up for his betrayal; she demands the impossible. He reads between the lines, cockblocks her brother to get the necessary information, and then waits outside her door overnight (which he also did for Iroh, the one person we know for sure he loves). He basically makes himself a receptacle for her rage, and he holds space for her by coming with her on her revenge quest and carrying their bags and not saying a damn thing about what she should and should not do beyond like…asking her to rest. And obviously the grovel works! She forgives him and then they’re thick as thieves, bantering and fighting and saving each other’s lives, etc.

On a different note, I’ve been told that enemies to lovers is one of the biggest tropes in romance novels, similar to YA lit and fanfic. Here’s something else I found in the romance novel discourse:

And…yeah. In TSR, Katara really does show Zuko her worst self, because she doesn’t feel the need to perform for him. She doesn’t feel the need to perform moral perfection OR cold blooded vengeance. She bloodbends in front of him and he just goes with it. She doesn’t kill Yon Rha and he just goes with it. He doesn’t treat her any differently afterwards. Maybe they talk about it off screen, but I kind of like the idea that they don’t, because Katara doesn’t need to explain anything. And it’s so interesting, because some people in the ATLA fandom have a totally different read on TSR. They think Zuko was encouraging Katara to get revenge (by what, keeping his mouth shut?), and that Aang is the one who acts as her moral compass. I believe that either Bryan or Mike said in the DVD commentary that Aang is the angel on her shoulder the entire time. And this interpretation does make sense if you see it from the male gaze, where Katara as an object of affection is acting in an angry, irrational, threatening way. But if you see it from the female gaze, you recognize that actually it’s probably the most emotionally taxing experience Katara has to go through, and she doesn’t owe it to be nice or perfect to anybody. Katara’s formative trauma literally comes to a head, and she has to make a decision — no, a discovery — about who she is in relation to the tragedy that defines her life and even her identity (as a waterbender, as a parentified child who becomes the mom friend, as a genocide victim), and she’s accompanied by someone who trusts her judgement and validates her feelings.

I’m not saying TSR is explicitly romantically coded, but when it conforms so well to romance novel tropes…is it any wonder that so many people thought “yes this is her man?” And then he takes lightning in the heart for her and reaches for her when he’s literally dying, I will never be normal about that either

We’ve all been there.

Make it this and I’m in.

"Pen ruined Eloises reputation" no the fuck she didnt. Eloise faced no consequences for going to see a man of lowerclass unchaperoned (Pen wrote she was seeing political radicals), got a new friend, and was still able to hang out with the debutantes and have her reputation in tact meanwhile Eloise blabbing about polins lessons caused Pen to be shamed and have to write about herself cause everyone was making fun of her

People say “I don’t ship Zutara because if Zuko and Katara got married, Katara would end up like this” and then they describe exactly how Katara ended up after she married Aang