#I just don't... understand... why countries have to be a thing

[sleepyowlet]

Okay, so. I'm German. I may or may not know a little more about German cultural history than you do. Okay? Okay.

You're talking about the stories as if they came about, like, shortly before the Brothers Grimm collected them - they didn't. Some of these stories can be tracked across multiple cultures for literally thousands of years. Yes. Some are that old.

The entire concept of childhood as something fundamentally different from adulthood was literally invented in the late 1700s (Rosseau was one of the first to formulate that thought). There was no such concept before; children were seen and treated as little adults; hell, they could be persecuted and tried for crimes like adults at the age of twelve.

Twelve!

That was the cultural norm in pretty much all of Europe from the beginning of the Middle Ages until about 1800. It varies a bit from country to country. Children also got to watch public torture and executions, they saw the corpses of criminals strung up as a warning.

Nobody thought that was wrong.

So most of the tales the Grimms collected are folk tales, and people told them to everyone. They were evening entertainment. And like evening entertainment on the telly, they varied from lovely and heartwarming to downright grisly. Only, what we now call "children" were not perceived as such! You have a concept of "this is not for children". I do too. The Brothers Grimm also did, because that was a new concept they thought important!

But in the centuries before they lived? None of this mattered. I do understand that this is a difficult concept to grasp for someone whose entire country has only existed for a couple of centuries, and you don't tend to look back into your own history further than that. This is not meant as an insult, btw. I'm guessing it's the same kind of mind-screw that you get when you discover that some people in Europe live in houses that are older than the US.

But nonetheless, it is what it is. This stuff goes back long and deep.

And you also gotta remember that in Germany, there was also a generational trauma at work that resulted from the 30-Year War. The peasant class suffered horrifically; of course, they would also put those horrible things in the tales they told to each other as a means to collectively process that stuff - which may explain why German folk tales across the board (and not just those collected by the brothers) are really dark and bloody.

I enjoy a joke about fucked up German fairy tales as much as the next nerd, but it's genuinely striking how often the source for the really fucked up stuff turns out to be "yeah, this is only in the Brothers Grimm version and doesn't appear in any extant oral tradition, and we're like 80% sure they added it themselves". To a large extent it's not German fairy tales that are fucked up, it's two specific German dudes.

[thatbitchery]

Personal finance is tied mostly to your systems as a person. You could make 6 figures a year and still be broke and in debt or you could make 20k a year and be on your way to financial freedom.I have finally achieved financial freedom, and no I do not make super much, depending on who you compare me to. Mostly it's my financial and personal habits that keep me going.

I do not consider fancy a marker of a good life, as a matter of fact I do not understand it. What do you mean a MEAL costs 1000 its never that serious please. I don't consider Givenchy to be any more elevated than what my tailor can make me for 100$. Fancy is not important to me so when I was building my one year emergency fund I did not consider fancy part of the budget. I do not try to purchase status.

And I can not stress this enough- taking risks with my money. Buying a vending machine is one of the best decisions I made this year. Buying a business, as risky as that was, turned out to be great. I have lost money, too. Like a lot. I bought stocks in a startup that crashed and lost a pretty little buck. I dipped into the VR business not too long ago and that tanked. It is not about making the right decisions- with money that is almost never possible. Its about taking risks.

My end goal is not a career its the money. Meaning? I have worked jobs odd and unclassy and not so fun. I have packaged fish at some point- hated it. I have worked as a cashier once. As the personal assistant to some pig that was always trying to get their hand up my skirt. I have done real estate. Currently doing event (wedding) Planning for my girl. I did forex, once. I have been paid to go as someone's date to some event. I am not picky with my jobs because the job is not the end goal, the money is. The goal is to retire by 30 and I will do whatever it takes to get up there. It's the getting paid part that matters the most to me.

Learning to leverage my skills and the situation plus to recognize the opportunities when they show up. My girl's last organizer canceled last minute and I offered to take it if she tops the fee up because I love her but not THAT much. In the process I have met so many people in this place and making connections in a new country will never be a bad idea. I have zero to none skills in event planning but all i hear is compliments (Pinterest the things I'd do for you) and I can add event planning to the options my future self has for careers especially given the profile of this one. A lady at church was divorced and man left her with a mortgage and a financial crisis (your daily reminder marrying rich isn't all that) and i drew up a contract to cover her mortgage and kid's education in exchange of a piece of her estate plus slowly easing my way into becoming her financial go to person and asset manager. A bargain, seriously, and I've passed it through enough lawyers to know my fancy little mortgage note will make me very very happy in a few years. Leveraging my mentorship skills to work my way into society because the way to anyone's heart is their children. Its free on paper but is it really? These are the next CEOs and I'm building my space this early. Leveraging my relationships for more relationships. Opportunities are not given they are created. 

THIS. ESPECIALLY THIS - having a value system. Knowing what is important to me and what isn't. Being a part of high society is NOT important to me so why would i buy a gala ticket the same price as my rent? Buying brands to keep up a rich girl aesthetic? Winters in Gstaad although I despise snow? Being part of high society isn't something I value at all so I don't play social games I'll just go home. Yes I'll maintain my relationships but everyone that is everyone knows it is not a race I fancy (Which, weirdly enough, has made it very easy for me to navigate it). Like I said, fancy things are not important to me so apart from an Aston Martin I don't care about the price I care about the quality. I will be at a thrift store I really don't mind. My peace is very important to me so I'll pick the fancy overpriced library fees over other libraries and I will pay a ridiculous amount in rent for an apartment in the peaceful part of town and I will splurge on a fancy cafe because I know the price range itself buys me peace. Ramit Sethi (In his book I Will Teach You To Be Rich) gives this as the core point of getting wealthy, knowing your value system. What is important to you? What isn't? If you're not for something you're for everything. 

Minimizing responsibilities. I don't have kids and I don't intend to. I don't stupidly commit to things without thinking real real hard about them. I didn't buy things that require me to keep up with paperwork, I don't take on things I need to track. My greatest responsibility in life is my three cats. 

[justchillandshipit]

I've Been Trying to Make Sense of Eddie's Story in My Head.

There are several intersecting points that have me thinking. In different seasons, we have heard different stories about Eddie and his feelings for Shannon. We have heard that he met her when he was a kid, and they lost touch and later reconnected. (No problem here.)

Eddie also says his relationship with Shannon was like magic. He says this to Bobby in Season Six when he is trying to get back on the dating scene.

We also hear from him that he married Shannon because she was pregnant, but he didn't regret it. (I believe this was after he said it was like magic. It contradicts the previous comment but also tracks with a gay Eddie storyline. He lived in TX in a very comphet part of the country. FYI. They still, to this day, have conversion camps in Texas. So it is plausible that by marrying her, he was conforming to the expectations of his parents and his immediate social sphere.)

We learned that Eddie had questions for Shannon that he never got to ask. Like why didn't he get a letter when she left? He describes her dying as leaving him broken, and that is just his life now. (This doesn't sound like a person who felt love in the form of friendship. He has described himself as broken a couple of times though and this does remind us of what Athena's ex Michael said about himself as he was coming out. He thought Athena could fix him. So I'm unclear if Shannon made him feel like he was normal, and with her dead, he doesn't feel like he can feel normal again. This would be consistent with gay Eddie too.)

However, when Kim asks him if Shannon was the love of his life, he says he thinks so. We can zero in on the "think" part of that comment but in this show, characters use the word "think" an excessive amount. Most commonly, when someone asks, "Are you alright?" Someone will reply, "I think so. Yeah." (It is not a direct contradiction to his previous comment because he also adds that he didn't realize it at the time, but the whole thing is just confusing, and it ignores the fact that she had asked for a divorce. It ignores the fact that she felt there was something wrong in their marriage, and she didn't necessarily think it was Eddie because she talked about learning how to be a good mother and then figuring out how to be a good wife. I thought that was odd on her part. No one learns how to be a good mother before being a wife. Being a Mom is on-the-job training, and if necessary, there is some therapy to help. It doesn't happen before learning how to be a wife.)

Bringing us to this season, Eddie is saying things like he doesn't deserve to be forgiven. (For what exactly? For dating Kim? For hurting Chris? He didn't sleep with Kim. There was an alternate scene where they kissed, but that never aired, so the only thing Chris and Marisole walked in on was them hugging. Eddie broke things off with Kim. She came to the house and pushed the situation. Even so, Chris is understandably hurt and Eddie does feel guilty. I can understand that guilt, but not to the degree that he doesn't deserve to be forgiven for it or experience joy. Not when he had broken it off.) Eddie says he doesn't deserve joy. (Again, this seems overkill for what happened with Kim when all things are considered. Guilt is understandable, but not to this degree. He grew the mustache as a mask. He was afraid of seeing a failure in the mirror. (A failure at what exactly? Being a father? Being a husband?) There is a lot of meta on this being code for gay Eddie. The problem here is that at some point if Eddie is coming out, people who can understand subtext and gay coding should not be the only people aware of this possibility. The general audience doesn't know crap about gay coding, and that is one of the reasons I don't like the way the storytelling is going at the moment. If they intend to bring Eddie out in a way that is understandable to everyone something more than coding is needed. There needs to be something solid and not subtextual, so everyone can follow along with the journey he is on. The audience needs to see or know what he is thinking even if Eddie isn't out of the closet to the people in his life. The audience should know the struggle. As it stands, the only people paying attention are us Buddie shippers. (For the general audience, his struggles appear to truly be about Shannon. If Eddie comes out, they are going to think it's out of nowhere. ) I think clarification of these contradictions would help.

[scltbvrns]

homogenising something that has always been inherently diverse will kill us all one day.

[sicheslavchyk]

Btw, I really don't understand where western communists got the idea of equal rights for women and LGBTQ+ folks in soviet union... Like damn, post-soviet countries have a great misogyny, homophobia and transphobia problem, AND THIS IS COMING FROM AN AFAB QUEER FROM A POST-SOVIET COUNTRY

I'm sorry, I'm tired of hearing "oh, your country is so bad, you haven't legalized gay marriage, you are so homophobic and misogynistic, why should we help you protect yourself!!1!1!", and then those same people praising soviet union as a paradise. Where tf do you think all of those problems, that are, mind you, especially common in post-soviet/socialist countries, came from? Don't you see a pattern here? Why the western, so-bad-capitalist part of Europe legalized gay marriage, has low levels of misogyny and has laws that protect minorities, and post-soviet countries are struggling with that? Maybe because homophobic laws of soviet union that literally jailed or put openly non-cishet people in mental institutions? Maybe because of misogynistic mindset that was extremely common in soviet union? No, women were not treated as equal, they were treated as cheap workers who you can pay less and not give a good education because they will become mothers and wives nonetheless :) No, queer folks were not treated as equal, they were treated as mentally ill sub-humans.

Bonus point: people from soviet countries struggled just to preserve their national identity. There can't be any mass riots for gay rights, if you are jailed and/or killed for creating art in your native language, researching the history of your land, that soviets tried to hide, and speaking about their crimes. And I'm not talking about only about 20s or 30s here. This thing was relevant in the 60s, 70s, 80s and all the way till the collapse of soviet union. Post-soviet countries are independent for a bit more that 30 years, and we are fucking trying, okay? I will be speaking about Ukraine right now, but the situation with misogyny and homophobia here is already better than it was in 2014, for example. There are new laws that defend women (Istanbul Convention), and activists are currently trying to push government to accept civil partnerships, so gay couples could have at least part of the rights that married hetero couples have (we can't legalize gay marriage right now because for that you need to change the constitution, and it is prohibited during the war).

by the way please share this post because i’d really like some people to reconsider using communist symbols and labels, especially the hammer and sickle / soviet flag, because i have seen lots of things like this:

and there’s several posts here about not using imperial japan flag or nazi imagery because of the mass crimes these symbols are associated with, but none about the flag under which my country and my family, and many others, have suffered.

i know tumblr is very american-centered, and not many people here care about the history of countries that are not the united states or white western europe, but seeing the above imagery can really hurt some people.

if you are a young person who just decided that communism was synonymous with “perfect justice utopia”, please reconsider because it wasn’t exactly like that for people whose lives were actually directly/undirectly altered for the worse because of your “harmless intellectual ideology”. please ask yourself why you use symbols and flags under which literal ethnic cleansings and discriminatory crimes were commited, under which disabled people (or “invalids”, how we were called in my country) have suffered. the working class was outwardly praised but secretly starved to death. women were used behind false statements of equality.

you’re a little bitch if you think pretending to be one of the people that fucked up my country and family is “badass” or “edgy”, and if you hope “communism will win”.

[rabbithaver]

every so often i will see a post from a leftist on this website that is so egregiously ableist that i remember that like. oh yeah the userbase of leftists on this website is violently anti-disabled people and will jump at any chance to demonize any of us for any reason. i just forget that fact because i'm extremely dedicated to curating my space

i'm paraphrasing here but i saw a post that said, "every time i see an American [disabled person] mention being scared about the election because they're afraid of losing their benefits i have to laugh. anybody who wants blood-soaked money from the US government deserves to starve" which. like. goodness that's a lot to unpack. i think we should burn the whole suitcase instead !

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

ah yes, she's concerned about the aggressor and attacker who was invading them six months ago. something is wrong with the empire right now, poor edelgard; whatever could've happened to her? :(

like... what. why do you care about what's going on with her specifically when she's the person who made the decision to invade leicester? does the whole war just mean nothing to marianne? it's just totally fine that all those people died in a war edelgard started? poor edelgard, something happened to her after she started her attack? you're concerned about the leader who gave the order to attack your home?

hopes has stupid lines but this one is top tier of the top tier and just an excuse for more edelgardjerking from the writers.

[fromchaostocosmos]

Hey OP everything I'm about to say I'm saying out both kindness and frustration.

I'm guessing that you are not Jewish because what you wrote really does not reflect the reality of life for Jews in the USA at that time.

Jews would not be socialites or rubbing elbows with wealthy and elite. And no matter how much any Jews would have stripped away any their Jewish identity they still would have been viewed as classless and lesser by the upper echelon.

Jews were immigrants who primarily did not speak English and mostly were on the east coast.

Fun fact about Jews during this time: Jews who kept Shabbat would have to look for a new job ever week because they would be fired for refusing to work on Shabbat.

As for San Fransisco Jews only came there due the California Gold Rush which happened the mid point of the 1800's.

Jews were heavily involved in Unions and were a major backbone of the Labor movement.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 is something that is major keystone is labor rights and movement history. You can not learn about unions and labor laws or anything to do with that without hearing about this. But you know what always gets glossed over, ignored, and often outright erased? The fact that the majority of the workers were Jewish girls and women.

In fact if you look at pictures of many labor marches you will notice that the signs are in Yiddish.

The Jewish identity of the Jewish contributors the unions, labors laws, child labor laws, and labor rights get erased and they become immigrants of X country when their Jewishness played a important role in why they fought for what they did, but also why they faced the discrimination and unfair labor practices they faced.

Also Oscar Wilde would not have had anything to do with anything related to Jews because he was a massive antisemite.

There is this thing that people often do, such as what you have, where they write Jews as having wealth, privilege, and access thinking that they are being inclusive when really what is happening is the furthering of antisemitic tropes and stereotypes as well as a revision of history when this happens in historical settings.

You want to make the Jewish character the prince of the story no problem. Have them be an organizer for a Union and the ball can some kind event or even march or something related to unions.

That can be a connection point between the two of them. The prince title can be a nickname or another connection point where her name, either first or last, is mispronounced by non-Yiddish speakers.

You could even have it be that she is going out and doing out reach to different jobs to get them to unionize/help unionize.

as for views towards their child being gay honestly it would vary with how religious the family was, but also the fact that she was a girl and not a boy it would not as much as a deal due to religious understandings.

While a lot of parts of Yiddish culture has been lost due to the loss of many Yiddish speakers their has existed within this culture a whole queer culture/world though they had their own words to describe it.

This idea has merit and could work it just need to fix the historical inaccuracies and cultural insensitivities in regards to the Jewish parts.

I'm not Chinese so I can't speak to those parts and I don't OP if you are Chinese so again I don't feel it is my place to speak on any of those parts.

Because I do not want Sephardim to left out or forgotten I want to point out that Ashkenazi Jews are not and have not been the only Jews in the USA.

1934 saw San Francisco's first Sephardi Synagogue.

So while yes there was in the 1800's a large influx of Jewish immigration of Ashkenazi Jews to the USA that doesn't mean that there were no Sephardim in the USA already or Sephardim who at the time who were moving around the USA or immigrating to the USA.

I don't want Sephardi history to be ignored or erased.

There is nothing wrong with having the Jewish character be Ashkenazi, I just want to make sure that if I'm accounting for proper historical record in regards to Jews then I'm doing that and leaving out Sephardim.

cinderella remake set in 1880s san francisco where cinderella is a chinese immigrant with bound feet and also she’s a butch lesbian and the prince is a butch lesbian too but she’s a paris-educated german-american socialite and a darling of the transatlantic arts and literary world so the connotations of her gender nonconformity are completely different. oscar wilde is there

[specialshinytrinkets]

The weirdest gripe I have with Mr Small enjoyers part of the fanbase is as to why he was unanimously agreed to be Canadian

Like

Is it some sort of American thing I don't understand or?????????

[textless & "template"] under cut

[the-busy-ghost]

Alright uninformed rant time. It kind of bugs me that, when studying the Middle Ages, specifically in western Europe, it doesn’t seem to be a pre-requisite that you have to take some kind of “Basics of Mediaeval Catholic Doctrine in Everyday Practise” class. 

Obviously you can’t cover everything- we don’t necessarily need to understand the ins and outs of obscure theological arguments (just as your average mediaeval churchgoer probably didn’t need to), or the inner workings of the Great Schism(s), nor how apparently simple theological disputes could be influenced by political and social factors, and of course the Official Line From The Vatican has changed over the centuries (which is why I’ve seen even modern Catholics getting mixed up about something that happened eight centuries ago). And naturally there are going to be misconceptions no matter how much you try to clarify things for people, and regional/class/temporal variations on how people’s actual everyday beliefs were influenced by the church’s rules. 

But it would help if historians studying the Middle Ages, especially western Christendom, were all given a broadly similar training in a) what the official doctrine was at various points on certain important issues and b) how this might translate to what the average layman believed. Because it feels like you’re supposed to pick that up as you go along and even where there are books on the subject they’re not always entirely reliable either (for example, people citing books about how things worked specifically in England to apply to the whole of Europe) and you can’t ask a book a question if you’re confused about any particular point. 

I mean I don’t expect to be spoonfed but somehow I don’t think that I’m supposed to accumulate a half-assed religious education from, say, a 15th century nobleman who was probably more interested in translating chivalric romances and rebelling against the Crown than religion; an angry 16th century Protestant; a 12th century nun from some forgotten valley in the Alps; some footnotes spread out over half a dozen modern political histories of Scotland; and an episode of ‘In Our Time’ from 2009. 

But equally if you’re not a specialist in church history or theology, I’m not sure that it’s necessary to probe the murky depths of every minor theological point ever, and once you’ve started where does it end? 

Anyway this entirely uninformed rant brought to you by my encounter with a sixteenth century bishop who was supposedly writing a completely orthodox book to re-evangelise his flock and tempt them away from Protestantism, but who described the baptismal rite in a way that sounds decidedly sketchy, if not heretical. And rather than being able to engage with the text properly and get what I needed from it, I was instead left sitting there like:

And frankly I didn’t have the time to go down the rabbit hole that would inevitably open up if I tried to find out

[bnnuy-wabbit]

this entire Music Taste debate thing re:rap is getting annoying really fast. Im not USian enough for this.

[askshivanulegacy]

Yeah, seriously.

The thing that I've never understood is how no one on either side who talks about America seems capable of understanding what America IS.

The people who glorify it don't understand it. The people who whine and cry and hate on it don't understand it.

America is an idea. It's the idea of a place where you can live without persecution. It's the idea of America that we should be working toward. That's literally why we exist.

And like every other country ever on the planet, it has a bloody and violent past. And the past has great and inspiring stories on every side. And every figure on every side was a real human being with flaws and contradictions. They were good and they were bad, and they had complex reasons for doing things. History is all of it. History is fascinating. It's great stories! It's Remember the Alamo and all the great things the founding fathers did. And it's also that they fought for the wrong thing, and they owned slaves and never freed them.

You all love flawed characters and tragic stories and watching trainwrecks happen in your media. We all just watched terrible person, murderer, and war criminal Jinx in Arcane and people cheered for her. It was a great story! And also she was a selfish little bastard who murdered people for no reason and other characters rightfully wanted her dead. Well, that's what history is.

We all have the capacity to enjoy stories - and history as stories - and also to analyze the flaws and context and situations behind them. You can find the Alamo an inspiring moment in time because any life and death struggle can be. And you can also criticize it. Both can be true because people are capable of holding opposing concepts in their minds at the same time.

History isn't either/or, it's all of the above is true. And it's water under the bridge.

I think if more people understood that, they'd be able to celebrate historic moments without taking things personally when people decide they don't want to repeat that moment. And they'd also be able to recognize that you can't condemn for history either - it's over and now you take what you have and move it forward.

What I struggle with, as a public historian and a US American leftist, is how right wing US Americans can say they love history and call themselves “history buffs,” but get so righteously indignant when it is suggested that we can learn from history, and that it is normal and healthy to discuss the flaws and dark sides of various historical figures.

It’s like a wall which I, speaking as a public historian, wish I knew how to dismantle. Like when someone’s all REMEMBER THE ALAMO, I think the natural response is something along the lines of “certainly, but it’s important remember that one of the things the revolutionaries were fighting for was the freedom to continue their enslavement of other human beings.”

For me, that’s not a political statement. It’s a commitment to view historical events and figures for what they were in all their good and their bad and their complexity. But you say that to someone with right wing US American politics, and it’s like you spat on their mother and pooped on the flag.

I do make political posts here as an angry, frustrated progressive citizen of the USA who is also a historian. But right now, I’m posting as a historian, who happens to be a left wing US American. I don’t want to talk shit, I want to figure out how to fix it.

But then, knowing what I do of MAGA Americans, I don’t think there is a fixing it? Unambiguously valorizing the American past in order to maintain the illusion that this country was at some point Great is kind of their whole Thing.

Idk. Just some stray thoughts.

[lord-squiggletits]

Between TF and my other fandoms like BG3 and TES, I keep finding myself making OCs that have some element of "battle hardened hero who is actually good and righteous, but so traumatized by the toll of war that even after the war ends they feel empty/wrecked and can't enjoy the fruits of victory" and I'm not sure if it's bc I gravitate to a certain type of media where such OCs fit in best, or bc I have a specific character archetype I like and gravitate towards media that contains those things.

[fanglesshound666]

sorry if this is terribly offensive but I dont get why the "men are bad" jokes (as long as they ARE jokes) are inherently bad

[megane-sama]

Kazuki ranting about having to go to the government office while Rei is just sitting there like :| is so funny to me.

[sokkastyles]

Actually, yeah, there is such thing as trespassing, and you sure do seem to complain a lot about me "misconstruing" your arguments when you came here to argue with me and then claimed about four times in this reblog that I said Mai was an abuser when I said nothing of the sort. I thought you wanted to agree to disagree. I think "nasty" is a word that fits you better, since that's how you started acting because I didn't agree with your opinions on a fictional character.

"Aside from her just existing as a fire nation character on the wrong side of the border"

Lol, THIS is the kind of stuff Azula stans say, actually. Mai helped Azula capture Zuko and infiltrate Ba Sing Se, and fought the gaang numerous times. The first time we meet her, she shows disdain for the city her father helped colonize. We are told that Mai and Azula bond over their "dark sense of humor," which is also what we see a lot of from Mai. She makes a joke about the Dai Li "peeing their pants." She makes a joke about ordering around servants. She's a villain. She's not the worst villain, but she is a villain. We are supposed to think she's a villain. It's not speculative. Otherwise, why did she need to learn to be better in the first place? I know the show is making an attempt at showing her growth, I just don't think they do a very good job of it, and I find your arguments of "but actually she did nothing wrong" alternating with "but actually she got better" to be inherently contradictory and not helping you here. The difference between the Azula stan arguments you are citing is that while we are supposed to feel sorry for Azula to a degree, we are also still supposed to recognize she is a villain. I think you know this, but you're using a strawman argument. Just like I think you know that we're supposed to not think Mai is not being particularly kind when she dismisses Zuko's worries about going home. Something she does in part because of her own trauma, but also because she helped put him there and that is not something she is willing to admit. Saying that she "doesn't have to be his therapist" is not only callous, but an inherently bad reading of the show. And no, the scene is not portrayed as it being "just a joke." Zuko looks upset when she says that. He accepts being kissed, but the tone of the scene is still meant to make us understand that Zuko is right and Mai is wrong.

I don't have time to go through every scene with you and explain where you're being willfully obtuse about this because you don't like that I don't think these two characters would be besties. But I do think it's interesting that you jumped real quick to the "but Zuko." I think you also know that the difference with Zuko is that he was actually shown unlearning most of the things that Mai kinda sorta unlearns on a personal level, actually understood why his country was wrong and worked to correct those wrongs. Mai ends the show with "actually, I kind of like you" but also feels entitled enough to tell the person she's with to never break up with her. That's not good enough for me. I get what the show was trying to do here, but I don't have to like it, sorry. That's not the same as me saying Mai is an abuser. Get out of here with that nonsense, or stop acting like you're better than Azula stans who blatantly make shit up.

I know what Zuko says about protecting Mai. That doesn't erase the context of him not trusting her. Why would he? Their relationship is not built on trust. That's not entirely Mai's fault, but there is a fault when we try to ignore the context which does include Mai being an agent of fascism, does include him being in a context where he is not safe on a personal level and is being abused. Ignoring that context is not great. And if you have to ignore it to make maiko work, well, then, that's why it doesn't.

Anyway, I don't actually think Katara should punch Mai (mostly), but like. Come on. The comics are bad but they didn't pull Mai supporting imperialism out of thin air, and "he wasn't a real threat" is a ridiculous thing to say in her defense. Zuko's characterization in the comics feels regressive because we actually do see him working to end the war. We don't see Mai care about anything except Zuko. And that's me being generous about it. It's not unreasonable to critique her character based on that alone.

You're also still making a false equivalence based on Sokka and Suki's relationship. What would be a real comparison is if Sokka and Suki broke up because Suki tried to kill him and then when they met again Sokka wasn't sure whether she was still his enemy. The difference is that Suki is never written as a villain and Mai is. Like, it's okay to admit this. And again, if you can't, then that's why her character arc and her relationship with Zuko don't work.

"I think Katara would get along with Azula/Mai because female solidarity!"

Cool. I think Katara would punch fascists in the throat.