"I hate you," and you're the object of all my desire and the bane of my existence
Girlpool—Before the World Was Big // memorial bench quoting Toni Morrison's Sula // @inanotherunivrse // Iain S. Thomas, I Wrote This For You // Zadie Smith, Swing Time // Fall Out Boy—The Kids Aren't Alright // Audrey Emmett // Mikko Harvey, "For M" // Mahmoud Darwish, Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982 (tr. Ibrahim Muhawi) // Langston Hughes, "Poem"
the reason "robot racism" is often a really stupid metaphor is the same reason that like. discrimination against demons or vampires or whatever doesn't work, is because there's often a pretty justified reasons humans are scared of vampires or robots or whatever, in a way that doesn't apply to real life minorities, like a fantasy author will be like "the reason vampires are discriminated against is because most of them and kill and eat people for fun and pleasure, and so humans respond by trying to kill them, isn't that so sad" and like no that's a perfectly fine reason to not trust vampires i think.
I've said this before and I'll say it again: it's more important to know and understand fully why something is harmful than it is to drop everything deemed problematic. It's performative and does nothing. People wonder why nobody has critical thinking skills and this is part of it because no one knows how to simousltansly critique and consume media. You need to use discernment.
the year is 2025
scientists are still scrambling to figure out what “zigazig ahh” is so that they can give the spice girls what they really really want
the spice girls are getting impatient
war is upon us
I have to be honest: if Katara had gotten the same treatment Toph did in ATLA, people would like her much more.
What do I mean about “getting the same treatment”? In many moments of the show, I realized that Katara was written differently than Toph (in the sense of how female characters are written). Toph is given much more substance and power showing scenes than Katara. She’s a genuine person that it’s not being written for a particular cause and has her story ending already written; she gets to do more and be more. While, for me, Katara has moments where she gets to be the amazing, waterbending master, that’s fair and loving (that to me are the scenes that show the true Katara), and then there are others where it seems she’s not allowed to be anything more than a plot device.
The episode that got me into that conclusion was “The Day of the Black Sun”. Katara does nothing in that invasion. Absolutely nothing. There’s a small scene of her attacking people, then her father gets hurt and she’s immediately removed from the story. While, Aang, Sokka and Toph go kick people’s butts and do something, Katara is (off-screen) healing her father. I wouldn’t have a problem with the trio fighting together, if it was shown Katara doing something important as well. While, Toph gets to be a person and get in fights, showing her skills and “hanging out with the boys”, Katara is only there to fulfill a purpose of that episode’s plot: which is getting kissed by Aang. After that, she’s removed from the narrative.
That’s something you never see happening with Toph. She fights creatively, grows on her power, gets to show her skills and is known to be a badass through the whole fandom, she doesn’t have scenes where she’s downplayed or underused and then just disappears. The reason for that is that she was written as a person with nothing binding her , with no sort of romantic connection to another character; therefore she gets to be a person. Now, this isn’t a post shitting on ‘kataang’ (this is not a post about ships), but Katara was written in many moments as just the romantic interest of Aang, having scenes where her entire actions are revolved around him, like in “The Day of the Black Sun”. Her purpose was to be kissed and now that’s she fulfilled it, she can be removed from the story.
Which makes me come back to my original point: if Katara was given the same treatment as Toph, people would adore her, ‘cause we know what she’s like when written normally: a fair, talented, fighter who guides the group through moments of helplessness and wants to save the world.
sorry to ppl who are normal about their ships but if I'm not tearing my skin off, literally about to bounce off my walls, eating something inedible and getting close to having an aneurysm cause of them i do not care that much. i need dialogue that sends me into oblivion just seeing it typed out lmao. i need to be insane about them sorry
𝟚𝟙 | ⟟ A city where it always rains | Personal blog ig | ⚠︎ Not nsfw-free
144 posts