#and I hate how the fandom acts like that's not the case at all

[dsvoid]

remember when i said i was beginning to relate more and more to michael? well,

i think it’s easy to underestimate his character and not really understand who he is, but once you start acting like him, it gives you a new perspective in the whole of solitaire. michael is a very angry individual, i think we all know that. however, he is not portrayed like how angry characters usually are. his anger stays inside, like a lion waiting to attack. michael lives hiding a part of himself, somewhere so deep in his mind that whenever it is able to come out it becomes his worst nightmare ever. unlike most angry characters, the anger doesn’t affect the rest, it affects him.

i think this is so important to talk about, because yes, solitaire is tori’s book, but michael brings very important details to the story. i know most of the fandom likes to talk about him as a silly little guy, and that’s valid, because he also is that. my mind just won’t be at peace until we all realize a bit more how important he is.

anger will bring him down. that’s not something we can argue about, it’s the truth. and yes, it sounds silly, anger, really? that’s the thing that’s gonna bring him down? well, not exactly. anger is the first symptom of losing yourself. you start keeping all the anger to yourself, not really knowing what to do with it or why it’s becoming bigger and bigger. as this continues, you start hating, loathing every single moment of your life that doesn’t go as planned. before you even know it, you’re isolating yourself, afraid of any chance of the anger getting stronger.

if i were to show this with a scene of the book i would choose the one were michael finally explodes at tori. because at that moment, he has been trying so hard to be her friend, and attempt after attempt, she’s just been making things difficult. i say this from an objective perspective, because we know tori wasn’t in the right headspace, but that doesn’t mean michael’s wasn’t bad mentally as well. it’s what i said before, you start loathing everything that doesn’t go your way. and in this case, his friendship with tori wasn’t going his way. it’s a very hard topic to explain because i have been in both ends, mostly in michael’s, and it is extremely difficult to deal with. we know michael doesn’t have friends and probably didn’t have before either, which means he has been carrying this issue his whole life. it’s obvious he was going to explode. he keeps trying and trying and nothing goes his way. he can’t make friends to save his life, oh and look, he also failed the competition of what he is supposed to be great at, perfect!

i guess i just wanted to talk about this because as i said, feeling like this is not great. it sucks. it’s horrible to experience but so normalized as well. people like tori get talked about behind their backs. everyone has a bit of bitterness in their voice when they talk about them, spitting how being mentally ill doesn’t excuse you for being a bad person. people like michael get pitied. the people who keep a smile and don’t stop trying even when they’re dying inside. everyone feels bad for them, but no one cares enough to make a difference.

[seyaryminamoto]

hello! I really like your meta about Zuko, and I'm so glad that I finally found a person who also thinks that Zuko in book 3 is a much worse person than he was in the book 1. I always thought that something was wrong with me, since literally no one sees this obvious fact for me! But I would like to ask you: What do you think about Katara in book 3? the fact is that she was my favorite character in books 1 and 2, and the way she was written in book 3 upset me a lot. it seems to me that they spoiled her character, but I can't explain why. Please share your thoughts!

Glad you've enjoyed my extensive meta on the fandom's fave, haha. I did write a lot about him, always nice to know my thoughts on the subject are still deemed relevant.

As for Katara... well, I have thoughts on her, too. My experience with her character is quite similar to yours, I'd say, because I too felt a lot better about her character in the first two seasons of the show compared with the third. I don't usually give this a ton of thought, but after your ask, I figured I'd try and figure out what exactly went down with her that made people like us feel so uncomfortable with Katara's portrayal at multiple points of Book 3...

For starters, I'll say I vibed with Katara a lot when I started the show for reasons beyond her being a great character or being written wonderfully: she could very well have been written mediocrely and I would have loved her anyway simply because I ran away from anime to ATLA in an era where anime kept shoehorning incest undertones into every sibling relationship, even in shows that didn't have that as a core subject. It happened at least twice that I can remember, I kept seeing people raving about shows where it WAS the core of it (I still do not understand the Oreimo deal, like, the minute I read that show's title I puked in my mouth and knew I'd never watch it), and I just needed... safety from that concept, I guess?

So when I went into ATLA, and the first sibling relationship you're exposed to is Sokka and Katara, two siblings who very much act like siblings? I was thriving. It was thrilling. I felt so refreshed that I think I didn't care much about the flaws of Book 1, despite my inability to sense direction for most of it, because thank the universe, it was a sibling relationship that made sense to me!

With that as an opening, I'd say that, initially, I thought Katara was fine for most of Book 1. In Book 2? She fell off the radar for me a bit simply because other characters are introduced that just appeal to me so much more than she does. I vibe better with characters like Azula, who tend to be the type of female character I just LOVE, and with characters like Toph, she's a tomboy, I was a tomboy (... was? x'D maybe I shouldn't use past tense...), so I gravitated much more towards those two by no real fault of Katara's core personality traits. Back in Book 1, there aren't as many main characters, so you don't have a lot of variety to choose faves from. It's not that strange, I think, that once the cast broadens, people's interest in certain characters can scatter too.

But then Book 3 happened, and I just couldn't enjoy Katara outside of episodes where she wasn't that important. The Katara-centric episode of Book 3 stand among my least favorite episodes of ATLA altogether, and among the least likely episodes I'd ever want to rewatch. I literally skipped over The Painted Lady in my first rewatches of the show, every bit as much as I skipped The Great Divide or Avatar Day, both of which annoy me a lot in the first two seasons. The Puppetmaster? Not even close to being an episode I could enjoy. Even the Runaway, that's supposed to be Toph-centric, ends up making me count down the minutes for it to end and I'm not even going to get started on The Southern Raiders and the absolute can of worms that episode is...

So, with all this being said, if we peel this particular cabbage open little by little...

After mulling it over, I've grown to suspect that Katara has major inconsistency issues since day one that most people don't particularly like to acknowledge, and that flew over most of our heads from the beginning of the show. She's pretty much portrayed to us as an empath, someone who has so much heart that she can't help but feel everyone's pain and suffer with them all the time. The fandom 100% acts like that's who she is (while also obsessively adultifying her unnecessarily, and forcing her into the mom!friend role, which... we'll talk about that later)

But this is also the same character who, when her brother banished Aang from the Southern Water Tribe as early as in episode 2, protested in a very particular way once Aang was gone. Which one of these statements sound more accurate to Katara's character, and a suitable protest for her to proclaim upon witnessing this injustice against Aang?

"Aang is alone! How could you send him away on his own? He could be in danger, Sokka! He's just a kid!"

"The Air Nomads are gone, Sokka! Where do you think he'll go? He doesn't have a home to go back to and you just sent him away!"

"You happy now? There goes my one chance at becoming a waterbender!"

If you ask the fandom? They'll most likely think that her reaction was either #1 or #2.

Surprise surprise: it was actually #3

I'm not saying she didn't show empathy towards Aang while Sokka was ranting at him, because she did. I'm not saying she wasn't willing to be banished along with Aang until Sokka asks if she'd choose pretty much a total stranger over their family and tribe, because she was. She absolutely did all those things.

... So why would she focus only on how he represented her one chance at becoming a waterbender once Aang is gone?

This feels off to me. I've never particularly liked that line. And you could absolutely say that Katara has every right to be mad at losing her chance to reclaim an aspect of her culture that she cannot connect to, but the way it was framed here? It absolutely makes Katara look more selfish than she actually was. The wording is not good. The show doesn't emphasize, at this point, that bending is such a core and crucial part of their culture and that Katara feels a major responsibility in being the ONLY person in the South Pole that can keep it alive. So it just comes off as a child's tantrum. Sokka's concerns were 100% valid too, even if he went about them while being a jerk (he is, indeed, an older brother...). He wasn't even wrong in the end about how dangerous Aang was to their tribe, since Aang's mishap with Katara on the ship gives away his position to Zuko, and it results in Zuko ramming a huge ship into their home and nearly killing people in the process. But you DON'T see the show fully framing it as though Katara and Aang did something wrong -- it was an honest mistake. We know it was. Sokka is framed as unreasonable for being so paranoid even though later events in the very episode prove he wasn't.

And that's... the crux of the issue with Katara's writing. If you ask me.

There are far too many instances where Katara makes mistakes that she's not held accountable for, that she doesn't apologize for, that run against the core logic and principles of her character and they either get shrugged off or overlooked. There are far too many situations where she acts out, and is a jerk at her jerk of a brother, even unprompted on occasion, and it's supposed to just be funny. One particularly stood out to me when I revisited it a few years ago, I can't really remember what for (maybe when I was writing Jeong Jeong's arc in Gladiator and I had a look at the fishing village...?), but it's the famous flashback episode in Book 1: The Storm.

The scene in question is... humorous. Supposedly. Katara is trying to buy fruit in the market but then realizes they have no money to pay for it. Not only does Katara piss off the vendor, but the vendor actually takes her rage out on Sokka once she realizes these kids won't give her any business: he gets kicked in the rear, as the transcript's description says. No one protests the woman's violent reaction, not even Sokka. Katara most certainly doesn't do it. But that's not all there is to it: Sokka doesn't hold what happened with the fruit vendor against Katara, they have a conversation on how they have no money and no food... and Katara offers him the golden ticket solution to their problems:

"You could get a job, smart guy."

Am I too feminist for thinking it's insane that Katara expects her brother alone to get the job? That she's not saying the THREE of them should get jobs? She and Aang are BENDERS! That's an asset most people aren't likely to find in any would-be employees in the central Earth Kingdom! So... wouldn't it be logical for all of them to do it? But no, instead, Sokka alone has to get the job?

And yes, I know, Sokka is the provider, Sokka is the protector, Sokka would do ANYTHING for his sister and the people he loves: you ask the fandom, though, and that's Katara instead of him. Moments like these simply do not exist in the fandom's eyes and, if they do, they're just excusable because Sokka is boring/weird/annoying/insert-demeaning-nonsense-here and Katara is a queen who can do whatever she wants.

Then, the consequences arrive once Sokka gets a dangerous job on a fishing boat and nearly gets killed in a storm. Aang is the one who shows concern about the potential storm when the fisherman's wife brings it up: from all I can see in the transcript, there's nothing from Katara. Sokka says they told him to get a job, so that's what he's doing, and there's no manifestation of concern from either of them about maybe joining him on this fishing trip to ensure he's safe. Instead, Aang is haunted by his past and Katara goes with him when he leaves, which, yes, is very important for context on the Air Nomads and Aang's life... and yet we don't really NEED for this scene to be Katara and Aang only. It could've included Sokka too. The plot of the second half of the episode would change? Likely. They could've come up with another idea, and not shown us a Katara who doesn't show concern for her brother's safety or any remorse when her unfair demands or expectations from him could result in catastrophic outcomes :') yes, she worries about Sokka's safety once the storm hits, but there's no sign of her feeling responsible for Sokka being out in the storm at all. No apology. Which is ironic, because Zuko apologizes to Iroh in that very same episode, hence, an apology from Katara to her brother could have mirrored that side of the story well, and they REALLY loved doing Zuko-Gaang parallel scenes like that, so it would have fit perfectly! Didn't happen, though.

Point being... Katara's compassion and empathy are not absolute. It's important to keep in mind is that they don't need to be! But precisely because she falters with them in moments where she REALLY shouldn't, with people as important to her as her own brother? It becomes very difficult to believe that she's the empath the fandom is convinced she is, and that the show's narrative tries to push her as.

The real reason why her failure to show compassion to Sokka in "humorous" situations feels so unnerving isn't because she's a typical little sister who takes her brother for granted (which is a perfectly logical/believable behavior!): it's because there are no consequences for it. Maybe at some point or another there were? But I for one can't remember many instances where Katara failed Sokka and it was framed as her fault and her responsibility. Let's look at other Book 1 instances that exemplify what I mean:

She freezes him to the deck of Zuko's ship, which puts Sokka in MAJOR danger, and she just tells him to hurry up as if it weren't her fault that he's frozen in the first place. We don't even see her making efforts to thaw him out of there when she IS the waterbender so it seems logical that she should be able to help with that (and if she's too inexperienced to do it? The least she can do to help her brother out of a dangerous situation is to TRY???). But apparently it's funny that she doesn't help him when it's her fault! So this is fine!

She endangers the entire group over the waterbending scroll, which, of course, the pirates had no right to have anyway and it's reasonable that she'd want it for herself... but she antagonized a group of fully adult, dangerous, potential murderous pirates, against Sokka's constant warnings that they shouldn't pick that particular fight. As far as I can remember? Her apologies on that episode are exclusively about how she hurt Aang's feelings by being jealous over his greater talents as a bender. Basically, nothing for Sokka, no apology for not listening to him about danger, making it worse when the very final moment features Katara proudly telling her brother that she won't steal things... unless it's from pirates. So lesson not learned because it's funny, again, to never acknowledge that Sokka has a point.

She actually cares about Sokka's fate in Jet! But the thing is... the narrative doesn't frame that as Katara's fault. Because it's not. Jet made his choices and he did awful things and he captured Sokka, lied and gaslit everyone, because he had a goal to fulfill and he used Katara to make that happen. As angry and upset as Katara is, it's not exactly shown that Katara is sorry for having trusted Jet when Sokka could have ended up paying a deadly price for it. She's angry at the betrayal, even in Book 2 it's constantly framed as though Katara is upset at him as an ex-girlfriend would be upset at her ex-boyfriend for lying to her rather than, you know, being pissed at him for nearly killing her brother + an entire village. My point is, the narrative framing never holds her responsible for Jet's choices. Which, again, she's not. But she IS responsible for her own choices... and one of those choices was disregarding Sokka's warnings about Jet. THAT was her fault, and her responsibility. She jumped to conclusions and assumed that Sokka was bitter and jealous that Jet was the charming cool leader Sokka could never be. There were no apologies to Sokka over that, either.

I could go on, and on, and on. The truth is, I bring all this up to show with solid evidence that Katara's writing was always a little... unstable. Weird. Disconnected from logic in many regards, I'd say. It's not logical/compatible to tell us that this character has the BIGGEST heart of the entire cast when she fails to show that heart to none other than her own brother, who is inarguably the person who she knows best and with whom she should share the closest relationship, even as her friendship with Aang grows and thrives. That makes no sense, thematically speaking.

Is it meant to be comedic? Yes, every bit as much as Iroh sexually harassing June was done for comedy's sake. That's not an excuse for characters behaving in ways that are thematically contrary to what they're supposed to be portraying... and along with that? No excuse for them facing zero consequences for that behavior. Which is, in fact, my main issue with these flaws from Katara: I have no issue with the writing choices in the scenes I listed just now! I take issue, however, with the lack of follow-up and consequences that you can BET, 100%, would have befallen Sokka if it had been him instead of Katara acting that way. He faced consequences even for things he didn't do, for comedy's sake: he wouldn't have gotten away with disregarding Katara's safety as often as Katara did with him, no chance at all.

Ultimately, these scenes in Book 1 are kind of ignorable in the larger scheme of things (or at least, that's how the fandom has always acted). Not a lot of people take any of this as major proof of characterization for Katara. You won't see a lot of fic writers showing her acting like this. Canon, though, often would go down this route for funsies, and the comics certainly did it plenty too, that I can remember. Part of the issue here is that, as funny as it is, it also makes Katara feel stale as a character, as does the Sokka-Katara dynamic, at large, because there's no progression for it. That's probably my greatest gripe with the Great Divide, believe it or not: it fakes being an episode where Sokka and Katara are going to be confronted over their conflictive tendencies, and the ONLY potential development in that basically-filler episode SHOULD HAVE BEEN Sokka and Katara learning to be a bit more harmonious and respectful of each other? ... And that's just not what happened at all. The status quo remains exactly the same after that episode, and it continues to be like that until the end of the show.

The real reason why Sokka and Katara are deemed the healthy siblings is because, of course, compared with the other main set of siblings in the show, these two appear to get along wonderfully. But the truth is, their relationship is not as dynamic as it deserved to be. And that's part of why Book 3 ends up failing in ways Book 1 might not have, while having similar flaws: Book 1 is when you're still getting to know these kids, and that's why I find its flaws far more forgivable than anything that comes later. When there's basically no development for that connection at all, Book 3 winds up falling flat with characters like Sokka and Katara and the bond between them.

All this being said... I'm not saying that Katara is terrible in Book 1. I still stand by the fact that I really enjoyed her character in many instances of this season, there absolutely are situations where she sasses Sokka that still make me crack a smile, and genuinely humorous situations that don't paint her in a questionable light over her lack of concern for her brother's safety. Her fight to earn the right to be trained as a waterbender is deeeeeply flawed but it's not her fault, it's more the misogyny of the writers/creators that decided that a betrothal necklace from his past would make Pakku unlearn all his sexism and get over his bullshit right after beating up a girl who was fighting tooth and nail to make him acknowledge her. That he only acknowledges her because he wanted to marry her grandmother is... uh... fuckboi behavior even when he's well over 70 years of age? XD

So, yeah, Book 1 still has my favorite Katara of the entire show even though I REALLY wish she wouldn't get away with things that other characters wouldn't get a pass for (... well... other than Zuko...). I can't enjoy her as much as I enjoy other characters because I really don't like it when characters aren't held accountable for serious mistakes they made.

Moving on to Book 2, though, and leaving behind my greatest gripe with Katara's Book 1 writing (lack of direct consequences/self-reflection on her part), Book 2's biggest sin when it comes to Katara is the beginning of the "mothering" trope. I honestly did not feel motherly vibes from Katara towards anyone in Book 1. Sokka is very often the one playing the responsible role, while Aang and Katara are seeing the world, practicing their bending, doing reckless and fun things. The entire thing about Katara being the mom friend started in Book 2 when she suddenly becomes the epitome of responsibility (well... kinda) when Toph joins the group. She still does sketchy stuff with zero consequences (I'll forever complain about how ice is not cold in this show, the kids she froze to the wall may have been dicks, but freezing someone alive that way should have resulted in serious health repercussions, just as ANY case of freezing someone alive should have, ffs, be it Zuko in Book 1's finale or Azula + Katara in Book 3's...), but once Toph is part of the group, she becomes the cool girl who's "one of the boys", and now Katara is "the mom". This dynamic gets forced into the story pretty much right after Toph joins the group. And after that? It doesn't really change for the better often. There are only a handful of instances where Katara wasn't acting wholesome and comforting and kind and compassionate in Book 2 (... particularly with Sokka, ofc), but the point where her dynamics, even with Aang, start to feel motherly is definitely Book 2.

And this adds to the issue, in the end: Katara's appeal as the main girl in the show is suddenly gone because Toph is here, and she's a way more unique character that the writers definitely were having fun working with, probably more fun than they had with Katara. So they had to find a new niche for her, I'd dare guess. Thus, instead of actually building up an awesome and solid friendship between Katara and Toph, they mostly just clash and collide. Toph is basically the ONLY character who gives Katara grief and isn't framed as in the wrong for it, which is its own set of issues (namely, Toph not being challenged enough by the narrative, which stunts her character growth), but among many things, we suddenly get shown that Katara is a girly girl who likes makeup and she ropes Toph into this when nothing we've seen so far suggests that Toph would be comfortable with that. Katara pushes her into doing things because they're the "girls of the group"... and it doesn't often look like Toph's feelings on anything are important when Katara is pushing her around for whatever purpose. I'm not saying Toph hated the spa day, she certainly had fun eventually, but even when the comics made a "Katara and Toph's day out" story, where Toph got to choose what to do for once, the story devolved into Katara's show anyway, and things concluded with Toph deciding they're better off doing girly things together when they want to hang out because Katara is just too intense for the things Toph would like to do.

This isn't even in the show, but it's basically a response to Tales of Ba Sing Se to try and even out Katara and Toph's one-sided dynamic, where Katara calls the shots of their entertainment... and even then, Toph doesn't really get what she's looking for. But Katara does get that out of Toph because all she wants is a girl to do girly things with and Toph provides that in the end, no matter how much of a tomboy she may be. Toph might just want a friend who loves the things she loves, and who knows, Katara could be that person! But the story never leads her in that direction so we never see that happen. And that's why that particular friendship never really... clicked for me. Their dynamics don't really feel enjoyable to me as they were written in the show, even though they very much could have been.

That's one thing I'll always give ATLA: the character potential and synergy they captured with that cast could be absolutely incredible. Team Avatar is so iconic because they really could work well off each other. A lot of teams in other media just aren't this good (... one of my main reasons to not enjoy Voltron and drop it in season 1 was my absolute failure to find any synergy between those characters, it felt like they all hated each other and I honestly did not enjoy their dynamics in the least), but Aang, Katara and Sokka have great synergy due to their different personalities in Book 1. Same when Toph joins them in Book 2. Zuko ABSOLUTELY could have been better in the group than he was if Book 3 hadn't devolved into the Zuko Woobifying Show by the second half, where the only writing priority was making him friends with everyone, and making them all feel sorry for him and have compassion towards him. But, broken down to his core traits, Zuko's personality would have resulted in solid chemistry with everyone else's if they'd gotten off that agenda anyway! So ultimately, ATLA has a big win in this respect that a lot of TV shows would LOVE to recreate but they simply haven't struck the right kind of balance in character traits.

Hence why the way they wrote Toph and Katara's dynamics kind of feels like a betrayal to me. Those two could have been a lot of fun, they have EVERYTHING it takes to be entertaining characters with not a ton of things in common and yet building a solid friendship that hinges on their differences. I've seen a fair few examples of that kind of dynamic in other media, and it absolutely would be possible with Toph and Katara. It's really unfair that they couldn't capture their dynamics in such a way that both characters would SHINE, rather than constantly resorting to conflicts between them that never seemed to truly be resolved.

So: Toph should not be a problem for Katara. She should enhance her character and doesn't because of writing failures. One of the core failures is "mom friend Katara", of course: there's nothing inherently wrong with Katara stepping up and taking care of people she loves, but there's something very wrong with it when she's suddenly portrayed as this motherly figure when she's doing things that Sokka had been doing just fine in Book 1. Main reason why this is the case? Sokka got dumbed down to full-time class clown for whatever reason in Book 2. While he has good moments, a lot of times they went WAY overboard with making him a source of comedy this season and that, too, contributes to mom friend Katara. Since Sokka is being so meh? We even feel relieved that Katara is there to keep things together because nobody can expect the other three to do it, right? But... Sokka was doing it in Book 1. And there's no real development to explain him NOT doing it anymore once Toph joins in besides "Katara is now the mom friend and Sokka is just here to be funny". It's not organic development: it's forcing tropes that just don't fit. And while Katara's mothering doesn't feel as unpleasant as it could here, it ultimately forces a new interpretation and portrayal of her character that honestly isn't all that interesting, most of all when the other characters are constantly portrayed as "more fun" while she's just here to keep them in line.

It just isn't the same Katara we met in Book 1, and it shows in spades. Book 1 Katara would have been hyped to join Aang and Toph in chaos while Sokka screams at them to behave themselves. Book 2 Katara is the one trying to keep the other three in line, and there's genuinely zero development that led things to that stage. It's not organic storytelling. There's no growth that leads to that, and so, it feels off.

But the core problem of all these flaws in Book 1 and Book 2 is that they roll together and snowball into something far greater that then proceeds to just... disrupt everything we thought we knew or understood about Katara. We've been told she's a kind person above all else, someone who cares about people close to her, someone who embodies hope and strength and love...!

... And then Book 3 starts, and we're actually facing a Katara who shifts into a wholly different person with the speed of a whiplash that we're left not knowing who tf this is anymore.

"Mom friend Katara" absolutely comes back in Book 3, why lie? She takes care of people, she tries to provide, she tries to be nice and sweet and then also enforces discipline on Toph (particularly) when she's being irresponsible!

But the reason why The Runaway is such an unpleasant episode is because Katara's behavior is dialed up to a thousand, and the conflict between her and Toph feels WAY too similar to what it was when they were barely getting to know each other in The Chase. Why are they STILL clashing over such things? There are occasional glimpses of friendliness there in The Runaway, sure! But they're not so strong that you actually feel like that friendship supersedes their conflicts and their propensity to bicker and argue and hurt each other. Toph blatantly calls her out on her mothering and fully canonically confirms that Katara is The Mom Friend™. Where Toph is annoyed but eventually complies with doing what Katara wants to do in Tales of Ba Sing Se, this time Katara makes a huuuuuge fuss over Toph's misbehavior and her scamming Fire Nation people. And you could argue that Toph has every right to do it, or that Katara is right to be worried, just like Sokka used to worry about such things in Book 1...

But what we get is a stale dynamic that repeats the same problems we saw in Book 2, as well as Katara coming off as rather hypocritical because she, too, did dangerous shit and picked dangerous fights where she shouldn't have, and ignored everyone who told her not to do it: she gave Toph that kind of grief over things Katara was willing to do back when Toph wasn't in the group (see the pirates thing), and she will try to stop Toph from having fun on her own terms when nobody has ever tried to stop Katara from doing that in hers. Of course, any Katara advocate would read this and go "you're missing the point: Katara was sad and upset that she was being LEFT OUT! That's why she was so mad about this!" Then the irony of the matter is that this argument STILL reflects poorly on Katara. She gave her friend a tough time, called her a wild child and a crazy person, went through her personal belongings because "she could tell Toph was hiding something from her", so she fully disregarded Toph's privacy... all because she couldn't say "Wait, you guys went scamming Fire Nation people? Damn, why didn't you wait for me! I would've gone too!", and there you go, problem solved! Katara's not left out anymore!

Yes, of course, that's not how it WORKS, people can struggle to identify what they feel...!

... And now it's my turn to say that that's not the point.

The point is that Katara said and did hurtful things to her friend. Things she eventually regrets, yes, but that she didn't have to do at all. This is the same person who fed Appa a bunch of food that made it look like he was sick, all be it to keep the group from leaving the Jang Hui river village so she could go out of her way to heal the injured and sick without telling anyone what she was doing. That, too, was a choice she made with no concern regarding how the rest of her team might feel about it: was she doing something nice? Sure! But it's not fundamentally different from Toph doing whatever she wants with zero regard as to Katara's feelings on the matter. Katara KNEW she was stalling their journey and that Sokka wanted them to move on: she didn't care about his feelings or priorities, and the story eventually frames Katara as being in the right for feeling that way. Here, she's in the inverse scenario, only it's with Toph rather than Sokka, and instead of realizing that she, too, has made choices that were irresponsible/dangerous/risky and STILL went all out with them, down to fighting whoever opposed her choices? Katara just doubles down until she, again, breaches boundaries and overhears Toph and Sokka's conversation, WHICH IS ANOTHER CAN OF WORMS DUE TO THE SOUTHERN RAIDERS FOLLOW-UP...

The thing is, Katara as a mom friend is not even a good thing. It's not conducive to fun or interesting storytelling, not in Book 2, not now. It doesn't make Katara a more interesting and dynamic character. The way she's portrayed isn't so she looks tragic for taking this role, it's all about forcing these kids into tropes that don't necessarily add up to who they have been so far. Katara's mom friend status is NOT treated with any compassion. It's not handled as a sore, difficult subject outside of the ONE conversation Sokka has with Toph that Katara overhears. And it's not centered on Katara's tragedy, on how she overcompensates for her mother's absence, it's centered on Sokka accepting her as a motherly person and encouraging Toph to do the same thing. The people who saw further depth in it probably haven't looked at the script itself in a long time: you CAN see more to it, but that's not the point of the scene. That's not where it's going. And the fact that such a tragic situation is what conduces Katara to take up the mom friend role actively makes it look like... she shouldn't have it. Why would she be the mom friend if she's just overcompensating for Kya's death? If she's taking up responsibility by thinking that no one else will (a blatant lie because, again, in Book 1 there's NO SIGN of this behavior and it's Sokka who's in a role of responsibility compared to her), it suggests that EVERYONE ELSE ought to step up and stop "relying" (and Sokka very much uses that word) on Katara being the mom friend. It's not a healthy thing. It's a coping mechanism that seems to be actively damaging Katara: and the story doesn't acknowledge it that way.

So... "mom friend Katara", dialed up to a thousand in Book 3, absolutely has a connection with why her character loses its sheen by this point in the story. There's no attempt to deconstruct this coping mechanism by Katara. No indication from the rest of the team that maybe Katara should get to be a kid just like them and stop being so uptight (even though VERY often she's not that uptight but the show very much tries to pretend she is). It's Katara's initiative to do a scam, it's not Toph or Sokka or Aang who think she needs to join in on the fun, she basically inserts herself in it. So basically, those three take the route of saying "that's what she's like, we just gotta bear with it", instead of actually helping her. If we'd seen that? Mom friend Katara would actually be a fun element to witness deconstructed by the story. And I'm not blaming either Katara or the other three for this:

This is EMINENTLY a writing problem.

Mom friend Katara is not a good trope. It could be if the point was to help her break free from it. It's not. It's simply weak writing that can't handle two girls with proactive, aggressive personalities and a ton of agency, a lack of creativity in realizing how much potential there could be in making Toph and Katara the absolute best of friends. It's seriously a disservice to the two of them that this trope literally blooms over Toph joining the show and then NEVER gets resolved or chased away. And when you have characters like Sokka or Aang kind of joining the bandwagon of "yeah, Katara's a mom!" when the two of them traveled with her in Book 1 and she WASN'T that at all? It makes matters infinitely worse.

So, if you ask me? This is the first thing that makes Katara feel more unpleasant than ever before in Book 3.

The second thing is even worse.

We return to accountability, as well as to illogical flow of thought when it comes to the writing of Katara: in Book 1, we see a hopeful girl who never speaks ill of her father or betrays any manner of displeasure or distrust towards him. No sign of her being conflicted by what Hakoda is doing: the focus is entirely on Sokka's feelings on the matter once it finally comes up in Bato of the Water Tribe, and Katara is a secondary matter, if even that.

This would be fine if Hakoda hadn't come up at all as a subject throughout Books 1 and 2. If Katara had never had the potential opportunity to see her father in any of these instances and had backed out from them for bigger reasons than... plot reasons.

For reference: she's excited, just as Sokka is, when Bato says he can bring the kids to meet their dad again. They're HYPED. We see no sign of Katara being upset at Hakoda for leaving at this point. The only portrayed reason why she and Sokka decide not to go see Hakoda is because they think Aang needs them more and they decide to forgive him for hiding the map. Katara, from the get-go, is not as angry at Aang for hiding the map as Sokka is. Clearly, Sokka wants to see Hakoda far more intensely than Katara does: even so, there's no sign anywhere here that implies that Katara harbors resentment or dissatisfaction towards Hakoda.

Book 2 gives us a similar situation: Katara declines going to see Hakoda and offers to be the one who stays in Ba Sing Se so Sokka can go see Hakoda himself. Sokka is soooo thrilled and thanks her and calls her the best sister ever and Katara very much says she is, indeed, the best. Which she's allowed to, worth noting, I'm not saying her reaction to Sokka's praises was bad, it's actually funny: but what I AM saying is that she knows how much this matters to Sokka and that's why she makes the offer she does. It's also VERY convenient! Because logic dictates that, if Sokka stays behind, he realizes the Kyoshi Warriors aren't themselves far faster than Katara does (even though, to be fair, Katara didn't really have much time to realize it at all), and we wouldn't have Aang suffering over Katara's imprisonment because the one in chains would be Sokka and then Aang might just go "oh okay it's just Sokka, I can go cosmic if it's not Katara"

... yeah I'm being sarcastic I actually don't think Aang wouldn't have saved Sokka, but they very clearly had Katara stay behind first and foremost for this specific purpose...

But Katara's acknowledgement that this is a good thing for her brother makes you REALLY wonder how much of a secret grudge she was supposed to feel towards her father at this stage of the story. The truth, in my opinion? She wasn't actually supposed to resent Hakoda as she did, let alone quite so harshly.

My sister personally told me that she thought Katara's anger at Hakoda was a fine storytelling choice when I told her I didn't like it. She told me Katara herself most likely didn't realize how hurt she had been by her father's leaving, that it wasn't until she was around Hakoda again that she understood she resented him at all, and that she had a lot more pent-up rage and frustrations than she had EVER acknowledged, and they burst out frequently in Book 3. Which, you know, is one possible explanation that tries to make this whole thing more palatable. From a human standpoint? This is valid.

... From a writing point? Not so much.

A Katara who struggles to understand her heart (which... is odd, tbh. As far as they portray her, Katara tends to know exactly what she's feeling, why she's feeling it, and she acts on her emotions rather than brains more often than not) would be portrayed as confused over her own rage at Hakoda. She would not have been written as a snappy teenager who hates her dad. She would have snapped at him and then apologized by reflex, unsure of what's come over her. We would see Sokka trying to mediate between them too, probably asking Katara what's her deal, and she would have no idea how to explain it. Katara would be avoiding Hakoda, knowing she loves him, not knowing why she seems to hate him now, afraid of saying things she shouldn't. Every time she snaps at him, she should worry about what she did, she should fear for Hakoda's feelings, she should reflect on what's going on inside her heart...!

... But that doesn't happen. And that knocks SO HARD on the concept of empath/compassionate Katara that it basically turns her into a whole different person.

As I've said countless times so far: it's not about Katara being perfect. I don't WANT her to be perfect. But I DO want the show to acknowledge that she's not. I want the flaws to REALLY read as flaws. I want other characters to react to those mishaps on Katara's part, and I want HER to reflect on what she's doing and realize she's messing up, just as she does when she hurts Aang's feelings in the Waterbending Scroll, which is most likely the best situation where Katara actually owns up to the exact mistake she made and feels genuine, palpable, obvious remorse for it. But when you feature Katara lashing out at Hakoda, and everyone just staying quiet because "uuuuh, awkwaaaard...", it feels off. Aang asks Katara, outright, what's her problem with her dad! And Katara goes "What? What problem?" She's acting like she's not even aware of the fact that her behavior is out of place, basically gaslighting Aang into pretending that she didn't do anything rude or mean to Hakoda. Aang literally saw it with his own eyes and is the ONLY person to bring it up.

To make matters worse? Katara has been with Hakoda for WEEKS. It's not like they just crossed paths two seconds before Aang opened his eyes. The implication is that she's been behaving like this, or her behavior has been deteriorating towards Hakoda with no one worrying about it or trying to make her reason with it. for that long. Sokka didn't do anything. Hakoda just took the teenage rants and left her alone because that's what she wants. And when the one person brings up that she's not acting like herself? Katara pretends nothing's wrong and acts like everything's fine and she's not acting any differently from herself. Whether she actually is just lying to Aang or ALSO lying to herself is a matter of debate... but what it suggests is she's unwilling to confront the gravity of her choices and how she can be hurting her father with them.

This is NOT to say that Katara has no right to be angry about Hakoda abandoning her in the Tribe. She has every right to be upset and feel forsaken. Their mother died, and Hakoda left with all the men of the tribe, and Sokka was left behind, tasked to protect everyone, and Katara apparently felt responsible for the whole village too: as valid as Hakoda's quest to fight in the war might be, it's not out of this world for Katara to harbor frustrations and resentment over what happened.

What IS out of this world, and particularly, not appropriate to her character, is that her way to convey those feelings was something she gave herself to, completely, only to reason with it once Aang was missing so that the episode would conflagrate her problems with Aang and Hakoda into the same thing.

This is basically a dark expansion of what we've seen in Katara's treatment of Sokka since Book 1: where it was typically "humorous" when she was a jerk to him and paid no price for it, this time it's not humorous. This time, you're supposed to see her being a jerk and then go "aaaaw, poor dear," even if you're not supposed to get mad at Hakoda because he is very much a decent dad. The show was trying to have its cake and eat it too with this situation, because Katara DOESN'T apologize to Hakoda for being unfair to him: HAKODA APOLOGIZES TO HER. Hakoda acknowledges the pain he caused Katara and the damage his leaving has wrought upon his children by apologizing and explaining how much he missed them... but Katara does not acknowledge the pain she inflicted on her father by acting out when he wasn't doing anything wrong. Is this teenager behavior? You could chalk it down to that, but that's precisely why teenagers can be a pain in the ass! And that's very much how Katara is being portrayed if she's unwilling to acknowledge she acted out and hurt someone she loves!

Her problems and resentment towards Hakoda magically go away after that single conversation. After this? She loves him. No hard feelings left. If her problems with Hakoda were this deep and difficult to navigate and work through, either she bottled them up in the rest of the show and stopped them from affecting her father... or she just got over it that quickly. Which would be very unrealistic because Hakoda apologizing for leaving doesn't change the damage Katara suffered through because he was gone. A single apology doesn't fix everything that people read into Katara's deep anguish in this scene and episode. And yet that's very much how the show portrays it: Katara is 100% fine in every single other interaction with Hakoda she gets past the first episode of Book 3. Does that make sense? Is that good writing? No, actually: it's literally digging up a problem, making it up last minute with zero lead-up to it, where the ONLY way to read "lead-up" is to pretend that Katara always had ulterior motives to avoid going to see Hakoda, even though we NEVER were shown that she was hiding anything, something that could be VERY easily shown in the story if they'd always had this in mind. The truth is that they didn't. They made it up for this episode, forced it in there, didn't even write it right because nobody reacts to Katara's behavior reasonably except Aang, and she gets away with it without even having to apologize. That's... not good form for any character, let alone Miss Responsibility and Empathy, is it?

This is why it's such a problem that Katara acted as she did towards her father. It's not because this is an unthinkable flaw: it's because there's very much no lead-up to it, kind of like there's none with Korrasami's big reveal in LOK's finale. It's because there's no follow-up to it either. It's because we don't see Katara living up to her supposed core character traits, where she should have a realization that her choices and actions and behavior have hurt someone else, someone she cares about. None of that happens.

And I will say: it's different when it comes to her clashes with Zuko and her reactions to him in the second half of Book 3. This is basically the MAIN thing the fandom gives her grief for and I hate them for it: she has every right and reason and justification to show no empathy or compassion towards a person who, as far as she could tell, took advantage of her compassion in Ba Sing Se, of Aang's compassion frequently across Book 1, and paid them back for all of it by joining forces with Azula and showing no concern to help Aang when Azula almost killed him. I am no fan of Iroh's... but Iroh jumped in to help Katara and Aang escape, at risk of being captured. Zuko stood beside Azula and did NOTHING to help those two leave. He showed zero concern for Aang's survival. He saw his sister potentially murder someone and had ZERO REACTION. So, no offense but full offense: Katara's unwillingness to trust Zuko is JUSTIFIED. Not only is it justified? It's CORRECT. It's the only writing choice that makes sense. Sokka getting over it relatively quickly feels off to me, no matter if the Boiling Rock adventure isn't as bad as others might be. Aang not holding a grudge for too long kind of fits because it is Aang... but Katara being that mad at Zuko? That's 100% fine. It fits. It works. And anyone pretending that what I said about Hakoda applies to how she treated Zuko is just completely biased in Zuko's favor.

Katara and Zuko do not have a secret magical powerful soulmates bond in canon. Their one instance of bonding comes after multiple instances of the exact opposite thing. Katara and Sokka were 100% down for leaving Zuko to freeze to death in the North Pole, and the ONLY reason why Zuko survives is because Aang can't let that happen to him. It's AANG'S compassion that saved Zuko. Katara felt none, AND SHE DIDN'T HAVE TO FEEL ANY. Let's not forget that!

Moving on to Book 2, Katara actually makes her first offer of kindness to Zuko and Iroh in the Chase when she offers to heal Iroh after Azula's attack. Zuko's reaction is to lash out violently and yell at her to leave: who, exactly, would feel inclined to think this poor beautiful sad boy just needs love when you OFFER HIM kindness and his reaction is, in a manner of speaking "go fuck yourself I'll handle this on my own"? And it's worth bringing it up because it feels like the fandom is hilariously misled into thinking the Gaang magically knows what Zuko is up to and how he's growing and evolving, as if they were part of the audience: they're not. The last time Katara saw Zuko before Ba Sing Se is literally when Zuko refuses her help. We're also talking about Fire Nation people: Katara has every right and every reason to believe that Zuko is refusing her help, not out of personal, internal strife he's dealing with and has no idea how to handle... she very much can read this as "inferior Water Tribe peasant, you will not heal my uncle with your wretched waterbending!" Because... let's be real, that's what Zuko looked like to Katara across Book 1. She has no real reason to think he's any better or different from that until their catacombs scene...

... And he stabs her in the back and joins Azula there. Right after "bonding" with her.

So let's be VERY clear on that respect: Katara has no real reason to forgive Zuko. She has no real reason to feel empathy outside of the show constantly trying to push that she's kind and compassionate with no boundaries, even if she forsakes that kindness and compassion at random whenever the plot requires it. But her death threats to Zuko? They're completely fine by me. I'd be pissed if she had acted any differently, and if anything I hate how easy Zuko had it to befriend everyone but Katara.

... Not to say I'm happy with how he befriended Katara either, but anyway...

As this isn't Zuko meta, we're not going to get into the true core glaring issues in The Southern Raiders, because ultimately, that episode paints Zuko in a disgusting light that his fans are constantly gaslighting themselves about. He was not beinga heroic good dude helping someone he connected profoundly with. His behavior leaves so much to be desired and proves he hasn't unlearned a lot of toxic things he had internalized. He didn't unlearn them in this episode, either. But the GREATEST sin Zuko commits in this episode, without a doubt, is bringing Katara on a journey that ultimately did NOTHING for her. The only person benefitting from it was Zuko himself. I've seen people pretend that Katara finally found closure: she did not do such thing. She learned what kind of scum killed her mother, but she did not forgive him nor did she kill him. Closure would mean peace. Katara did not find peace with the situation. She's shown troubled, sitting at that pier, miserable, when Aang talks with her, she's STILL angry. That's not closure. It never was.

What it was, however, was the journey where Katara thanked Zuko and forgave him because..! Uh... because...

... Why, exactly, did Katara forgive Zuko here?

He brought her to her mother's killer: she found no closure from it. In fact, she learned the VERY disturbing truth that she hadn't realized so far: HER MOTHER DIED SPECIFICALLY TO SAVE HER. Her mother sacrificed herself for Katara's sake. She CANNOT find peace with this reality in a single afternoon because holy shit, who would? Katara KNEW her mother had died. It's not until Yon Rha tells her what happened that she understands what happened in the igloo. Katara herself, her waterbending skills, and the target she painted on her own back because of something 100% out of her control, something that is NOT evil and that the Fire Nation was hellbent on destroying, are the reasons why Kya was murdered. This is DISTURBING SHIT to deal with. And the show completely sidelines this revelation and the dark impact it could have on Katara, which, seriously, is HUGE, way worse than what happened with Hakoda, because it very much could have triggered a profound self-hatred by Katara towards her own skills because how tf could her bending cause her mother's death?! Not to mention the obvious: who was that source? Who told the Southern Raiders that there was a waterbender? Who the hell is responsible, beyond the Fire Nation, for her mother's death?

There's A LOT to unpack here.

And none of it matters because Katara is just supposed to forgive Zuko for exacerbating and worsening her trauma regarding her mother's death :') funny how that works.

This IS the point where Katara should make a display of darker sides of herself that she didn't know or understand. THIS is where Katara turning dark like Aang did after Appa vanished would make PERFECT sense. With this revelation about Kya that's beyond disturbing: not with Hakoda... and certainly not with Sokka.

The cusp of Katara's worst is, by far, her behavior with her brother in the Southern Raiders. I know a million excuses have been made for this moment: my problem is NOT the fact that she lashed out at him as she did and said something DEEPLY hurtful. It's the fact that KNOWING, SEEING HE'S IN PAIN...

... does not matter to her one bit.

Instead of a trite scene with Zuko spouting shit he does NOT mean (aka "violence wasn't the answer... but lol go kill my father okay??"), we deserved a scene with Katara and Sokka talking this out. People pretend it's fine as it is: it's not. Katara has spent the ENTIRE show disregarding her brother's feelings in a myriad of ways: this time, it was way more painful and way more hurtful and SHE KNOWS IT. It's not funny. She's not amused. She's not being a shithead little sister. She's ANGRY. She's UPSET. She has every right to be! What she DOESN'T have a right to do is hurt her brother DELIBERATELY and then escape every consequence from doing that.

There's very much no way to spin that moment into making Katara a decent sister. There's no way she remains true to her core values of being empathetic, kind and wholesome when she will insidiously, vindictively hurt her brother this way. And what I said earlier about her overhearing Toph and Sokka in the Runaway? It actually gets a follow-up in this scene: Katara telling Sokka that he didn't love Kya as she did is basically her WEAPONIZING the information that was NOT meant for her as her alleged evidence that Sokka didn't care about Kya as much as she did. As if his inability to retrieve Kya's memory was NOT a manifestation of trauma, as if it were something he's FINE with! He's not! How guilty must he feel for that? Does that matter to Katara at all? Why... nope. Because all that matters at that point is her own rage, her own feelings, her own fury. Which is, then, entirely against the character we've been told she is.

The lack of apology or follow-up to this horrible moment will never stop being one of the absolute biggest misfires in one of the WORST written episodes of this show. Yes, I said it. The more I ponder The Southern Raiders, the more I realize it's an immensely flawed speedrun to establish a friendship that simply doesn't add up. Katara and Zuko becoming friends after this journey requires some wild, absurd leaps of imagination that, boiled down to basics, don't make any sense. There's no reason for Katara to decide she'll forgive Zuko after she regains enough clarity. Why does she forgive him? Because he proved he'd rather make her happy than defend his nation anymore? Ironically, at no point does Katara show any appreciation of the fact that Zuko is setting aside his firebending supremacist attitude completely for her sake. So maybe that's not it.

Ah... is it because of how he, and he alone, was ready to help her go on this journey of revenge...?! Why, ironically, the only reason why ONLY Zuko goes on this journey is incredibly artificial and fake: this IS intended as Katara's "field trip" with Zuko. None of the field trips make sense, from a logical standpoint, as duo journeys. I've mentioned it to a few people: Sokka and Zuko could have brought Toph with them to the Boiling Rock, a metal location where her abilities would be VERY useful, used her as a false prisoner and turned her in as a captured ally of the Avatar's, who 100% will bait him into coming here to rescue her so that the Fire Nation can get him next! A cover as strong as that one might actually get them further along on that rescue attempt than what they did in canon. But this CANNOT BE... because it was Sokka's field trip with Zuko so nobody else is invited, even if they're very much not doing anything else (as is the case with Toph). Aang? Why didn't everyone join the firebending discovery with Zuko and Aang? They weren't doing ANYTHING in the Western Air Temple at the time. They very much could have gone with them too. But they don't. And that's exactly why Katara's trip works exactly as it does: it's the solo journey with Katara and Zuko, and the ONLY way to make it work is to show Sokka and Aang completely opposed to the concept of finding Yon Rha. I'm not saying I think Sokka and Aang would have been on board if they're allowed to remain IC... but they could have wanted to go on this trip with Katara regardless of not agreeing with what she wanted to do. Hell, as is OBVIOUS: Kya is Sokka's mom too. His opinions, his feelings on this subject, should matter just as much as Katara's do, and fuck anyone who pretends otherwise. These two are NOT supposed to be the well-known unhealthy siblings Zuko and Azula, who each got one parent in their corner and therefore the other parent treated them like they were worthless or a monster. Hakoda and Kya were parents to BOTH their children, and any narrative or interpretation that attempts to say that ONLY Katara's opinion on Kya matters is immediately ruled out, for me, as absolute bullshit spouted by someone not worth listening to. Point blank.

Also, the fact that Zuko USES Sokka to gain this information about the southern raiders, and then doesn't even extend the chance to Sokka to join them? When Sokka is basically his new best buddy? That... does not make sense. It basically portrays Zuko as a disloyal asshole who takes advantage of his friends for his purposes and tosses them aside, disregarding their feelings whenever it suits him.

So Sokka's treatment at the hands of this episode is just deplorable. Both Zuko and Katara are HORRIBLE to him... but Katara is our focus here, she's actively hurts Sokka and then proceeds to not care. Because that's how she has operated so far, and that's how she always will.

Hence: we have a long, long tradition of Katara not treating Sokka fairly all across the show. The reasons why it's not a fair or balanced relationship at all is because Sokka typically pays the price for being a dick to Katara: either she inflicts the punishment herself, such as when he's disrespectful in the Drill and she smacks him with the slurry, or the narrative inflicts some magical punishment instead that CONSTANTLY proves that Sokka is not allowed to be a dick without facing consequences for it. Does he ALWAYS learn the lesson? Sure he doesn't! But the consequences for it NEVER stop. He doesn't get away with being a jerk to his sister. That's forbidden. But Katara? She's allowed to get away with it every single time! And the reason why it gets worse and worse is because we went from relatively silly/comedic things, in which Katara did not apologize because "it's funny that she didn't apologize", to NOT funny things at all, such as this scene in Southern Raiders. Even just a troubled glance at Sokka, or a slight hesitation after seeing how hurt he is, would be enough for me: there's NOTHING. She doubles down and keeps charging ahead. Zero thoughts or concerns given to her brother.

If this isn't why you have issues with Katara, well, I don't know why it might be the case in your case x'D But I absolutely attest that the combination of "mom friend", "selective compassion particularly when it comes to her brother" and "absolute imperviousness to consequences for her mistakes" are the things that fully caused my initial appreciation of her character to shift into ambivalence and then into full blown dislike once I reached Book 3.

Worth noting: THIS IS A COMPLAINT ABOUT THE SHOW'S WRITING. Boiled down to basics, written by any more competent hands, I don't think Katara would have acted the way she did often, ESPECIALLY in episodes like The Awakening or The Southern Raiders. I categorically refuse to write Katara in my stories as someone who gets free passes for EVERYTHING she does. I also refuse to portray her as the mom friend, particularly in Gladiator. There's a lot of depth you can give this character! So much you can do, so much worth exploring... and canon just settled for stunting her and then only bringing her out to play in ways that make her unpleasant, not particularly bright and extremely resistant to character development even after allegedly learning lessons (see how her initial behavior around Hama, who shows red flags often, isn't all that different from how it was with Jet? There's only a handful of moments where it looks like Katara MIGHT be wary, and yet they're quickly overcome by her excitement, which Hama manipulates in her favor until she does the bloodbending reveal). So I'm NOT saying Katara had no potential... but I am saying the show itself failed her, big time, because of how she was written. A quick glance through the transcript of the Puppetmaster to confirm my memories that Katara shows no sign of concern over Hama when Sokka finds her suspicious reveals that, after Hama shows them her comb and that she's from the Southern Water Tribe, Sokka, and Sokka alone, apologizes for suspecting her of being sketchy. Nothing from Aang, even though he was part of it too. Nothing from Toph, either. And certainly nothing from Katara. Only Sokka apologizes. As usual.

So... what does this tell you? What does this tell any of us? That Katara's development is... erratic, at best. That it's not linear isn't a bad thing, but that it contradicts itself non-stop, that her core traits come and go willy-nilly as the plot demands it, that her motivations to do things (like forgiving Zuko) don't add up to her experiences or to any lead-up we've witnessed, is most certainly not good.

If I were to rewrite ATLA, the main characters I'd want to rewrite into making a lot more sense than they do, and making their arcs actually logical, are Zuko and Katara. I'd definitely add a few rewrites for Iroh, particularly to make him WAY more accountable for shit than he ever was, and to show he's not universally loved and shouldn't be, since people would have very reasonable grievances with him. I'd also rewrite a handful of things with Aang, too. Toph, full-stop, deserves a growth arc of her own beyond getting stronger and getting used to having friends. Girl has the range. They just never let her explore it. And of course, I'd change a fair few elements of Azula's writing as well. But I feel like no characters would warrant a deeper intervention than Zuko and Katara, precisely because they constantly fail to live up to all the stuff people keep pretending they're flawless exhibits of.

And this is one more issue we've got going on with Katara:

The fandom ABSOLUTELY has been unfair to Katara. A lot of people hate her for no reason. A lot of people who potentially have unexamined racism making their hearts' choices for them and they despise her just because she dared not have fully-white skin. A lot of people pick completely ridiculous things to get angry at her, such as people who HATE HER because she's "rude to Zuko". Just, fuck off. That's about the stupidest reason to hate this character and stupid reasons for that have been heard plenty.

But Katara's fans have become... reactionary. They appear think that any criticism to her character NEEDS to be fought off with "she was right tho" or "she has every reason to act this way" or "she's HUMAN she's allowed to make mistakes you heathen!! That's what a flawed character is like!"

Here's the kicker, though: if you have justifications and excuses for every little unpleasant thing Katara EVER does? You're basically taking a dump on her character yourself and saying she IS flawless.

Flaws in characters are bad things that cannot be justified. They can be funny! They can be annoying. They can be infuriating. But they're things that inconvenience other characters, that hurt them, that show they're not above or beyond doing harmful things! All of what I listed in this crazy long post are Katara's flaws. The reason why I don't like the way these flaws were handled are all the things I already have talked about: no accountability for flaws is basically saying that these flaws don't matter. No follow-up, no lead-up, means Katara is allowed to be as much of an ass as she wants to be and nobody cares: THIS IS NOT FAIR. This is not how ANY character should be written. This is the core reason why I've spent years feuding with Zuko and Iroh: they get away with shit they should NOT get away with, EVER. They're not held accountable for so much they should be. This happens to Katara too. particularly in her dynamcis with her brother. And when people see those flaws and just start listing reasons why it's actually okay? All you're doing is dehumanizing these characters to pretend everything they EVER do is fine.

Also worth noting... character flaws are the way characters grow. If a character is DEEPLY flawed, you know what kind of work you have cut out for you as a writer. If you're writing a story heavily steeped on character development? Then those flaws are VITAL to the work you have to do in order to develop these characters!

But when Zuko is unnecessarily violent and you're told "it's because his culture and family are!", you rightfully assume that as he drifts away from Fire Nation ideology, Zuko WILL grow less violent. Then, you watch how he picks an unnecessary fight with Aang in the finale because everyone's being lazy, an EXTREMELY violent fight at that, and you contrast his earlier behavior with it and... where's the difference, exactly? How did he grow or learn better if violence is STILL his immediate reaction to anything he doesn't like?

Thus, when Katara's flaws get overlooked, ignored, disregarded? What kind of development does Katara get, if none of her flaws are addressed in a way that makes it look like she's genuinely learned any lessons? At least, none of the worst, biggest, glaring flaws were addressed. None of the things that she SHOULD be troubled by and that she shouldn't be happy with herself over, especially after seeing how she hurts people with her actions. This isn't cool. This isn't a fun way to write a character. And it's so glaringly unpleasant when you can so very easily contrast this with the well-known terrible flaw Sokka displays early on: sexism! And then he gets his ass kicked by Suki and he learns to respect the Kyoshi Warriors... and we never see him displaying that particular flaw again. THAT is what growth looks like! What can we point to with Katara that remotely compares to this? That she accepted Zuko? Yeah, no, that sincerely could not count any less. Her personal arc CANNOT be about Zuko. That she got over her mom's death? She didn't. So that's not it either. That she helped Aang save the world? So her personal arc was about Aang and not herself? Was her whole role in the story to play Aang's cheerleader, then? Because if that's it... she was doing that just fine at it since day one. She's the only person who faithfully believed the Avatar would return well before Aang turned up in her life, if the first episode's introduction is to be believed.

So... what, exactly, was Katara's arc? If it's just her waterbending skills, then she's as stunted as Toph, unexplored and underdeveloped and left to just strengthen her fighting skills while Aang and Zuko and Sokka are getting full character arcs, even if very lowkey but very much effective in Sokka's case, where they develop and grow (or they should) into the men they're supposed to be to end the war! Why don't Katara and Toph get similar arcs? Why aren't they challenged on a level that actually provides them with lasting, solid, provable growth, where you can look at them where they started out and see how they ended up and conclude their journey was beautiful?

I insist... writing. Weak writing. Failures to understand/develop characters properly. And of course, lack of accountability in storytelling. I wrote that one focusing mostly on Zuko... but it's very much applicable to every character who fails to own up to the things they should and deserve to face consequences for.

Anyway... this is what I'd say about Katara atm. I'm not 100% sure this is everything because I might have overlooked some stuff that also made Katara's character kind of backfire (while I'm no Kataang hater, I 100% agree that the ship should have been written better too, and after writing them whenever I have, it's honestly kind of ridiculous how such an easy ship could get fucked over so badly by weird writing choices...). Whether you agree with these assessments or not, ultimately, there are valid reasons to feel offput by Katara and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Most of all when you DID appreciate and cherish the character once before, but her fans just jump to the conclusion that you must be a mindless hater to think she's anything but flawless (this, while claiming they love that she's flawed, then they proceed to reveal they have no idea what a flaw is...).

(final note: SORRY IT TOOK ME FOREVER TO ANSWER! Super lengthy answer to make up for it, I hope :((( sorry)

[musical-chick-13]

...People DO realize they can ship two male characters WITHOUT diminishing the importance of the women in the story to both the overall narrative and the male characters themselves, right. RIGHT.

[silkythewriter]

Vox and alastor with an undeserving to be in hell reader!

Warnings!:non!

Fandom!: Hazbin hotel!

Author note!;I THINK TUMBLER ACTUALLY HATES ME (ﾒ﹏ﾒ)(｡•́︿•̀｡)it keeps not letting me edit my drafts, it’s happened like 3 times already this week alone!,…BUT ANYWAY I LOVE THIS IDEA I REALLY HOPE YOY ENJOY!!!!♡´･ᴗ･`♡

Summary!: alastor and Vox x reader WHOs I. Hell for a minor sin/crime

❤️Written by silkythewriter do not steal or repost any other platform please! <3❤️

ఌ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ఌ

“Each time I find myself

Flat on my face

I pick myself up and get back in the race!”

ఌ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ఌ

!📺✨Vox✨📺!

When you first admitted what you did that counted as a “sin” he was flabbergasted! He thought they must’ve made a mistake. All be it one that was in favor since he got to be damned with you. But still!

Out of every monster known to man kind one who’ve committed acts that are despicable. You, one who can barely hurt a damn fly get sent with them?

At first he thought you were genuinely just joking. And he actually laughed! Like audible chuckled before waiting for the actual reason, which never came, and he soon realized you were being serious!

He always questioned why you use to refuse to kill, or at least scare people into respect. But then you explained how you refused to be like the rest of the sinners.

He utterly dumb founded you made it this far without spilling a bit of blood, at least for survival!

He becomes more overprotective as if he wasn’t before, good luck with that!

Cause now he knows your rules, he knows you won’t budge. Nothing would get you to change your mind. So he made sure to keep eyes on you 24/7, you may be nice, but the other sinners in this damned place definitely aren’t. And he knows that from experience

Would neither confirm or deny he put a small tracker in an item you carry every where.

This man has enemy’s as you’ve seen, demons, overlords, rival company’s, it’s a headache an a half for him. Not that he hates protecting you and your values! No never!, but the nerve of the people who think they even have a chance to lay a hand on you.

Gives you the lastest phone from his series, and yes he will text you and blow up ur phone up if he can see you through cameras around the city.

Even if you put it on silent he wouldn’t put behind himself to over load it and just show up on your phone screen.

Sometimes he’s just so confused how you can be so nice, or at worst passive to those who are poking at you. He thinks your a saint, even if you aren’t, an maybe you have a short temper still the way you hold yourself form blowing up is astonishing!

Sometimes he jokes about how if you were to go to Charlie you would be redeemed in a day. And at night sometimes he thinks about it and it scares him to know there’s a possibility for you to go where he will probably never be able to follow you too

He loves you to the depths and the crooks of hell, and he’ll be damned again if he lets anyone hurt you. He sees you as a small soft light in the red cover world, and he will do anything before anyone can put out that light.

He makes sure to keep a good distance between you and Val, a BIG distance.

He’s always on the edge about people around you, how can’t he? He can’t trust all these “disgusting and repulsive” sinners in hell around you. The thought alone cringes him out and stresses him.

He knows to some degree he isn’t exactly better then them sin wise, but he makes sure to do his best for you while infornt of you, he cares about his image, and wouldn’t be afraid to scare someone into discipline. BUT he will tone it down, just for you ♥(⸝⸝´꒳`⸝⸝)♥

He has you under wraps, from the public eye in this case. As much as he’s one to show off his earnings, he loves you a little to much and knows well people will use you as a advantage. He loves to show off but you something just for him behind close doors for now before he can work something out

NOW if the public were to already know, he show off by showing how untouchable you were, demons knew better to approach you seeing as how fast he is to get rid of those stupid enough to try something.

Overall he respects your morals of not wanting to stoop as low as other sinners. But it dose make him more protective of you, your like a rare gem. There’s only a handful of people like you, and even then the numbers decrees daily, so he dose his most to make sure you safe and happy <3

ఌ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ఌ

!🎙️✨Alastor✨🎙️!

Like Vix he humors it at first! Playing around with it before Laughing with his usual staticky voice as he stared at you with his unnerving smile. You guys quite literally stared at each other for a hot minute waiting for the other to say something.

It took you clearing your throat for him to realize you weren’t just trying to get a chuckle outta him.

And for the first time since you met him you caught a hint of confusion, making you explain that it was genuinely what you did.

He quite literally burst out laughing, you, someone who probably did something everyone did once is in this horrid place stuck with the horrid monsters ever! Just for that single act alone.

He will admit he found it a bit amusing how you refused to kill or lay a hand on anyone. Refusing to stoop to other people’s levels. Now that for him is pure gold of entreatment! He’s seen people like you, say the same exact thing then crumble when backed I to a Corner.

But for the first time, for all the decades he’s been damned here, he’s seen you stick to what you’ve stated. You were very much quite a spectacle!

Now finding new amusement, he decided to protect you, cause someone like you were sure to be a one time experience. Aside from loving you of course

Now with your name being accosted with him alone is a shield in if its self. Barely any one approached you, aside from those playing with their afterlives of course.

If you ever feel a looming shadow or presence it’s most likely one of his shadows. Like Vox he is gonna have his eyes on you almost always

Although he loves you he will play around to get a reaction out of you. All for the fun of it!, he knows you cringe when he talks about his cannibalism tendencies he just loves seeing your cute little face scrunch up!

Even though with all of that he is a gentleman and will make sure no one is to bother you.

He’s quite impressed you made it this far without getting killed, I mean of course you have him but if you arrived to hell and didn’t met him immediately he’d be quite impressed and surprised one you both do meet

He indulges himself in the horrible aspects of hell, with no remorse or shame what so ever either. So although he dose respect your wishes he won’t stop or calm down his tendencies.. （；へ：）but on the bright side he’ll make sure your far away or he goes off to other part of the city and do whatever he wishes. But your likely to see on the news either way… (￣▽￣💧

He dose enjoy the more civil and nice talks he has with you though! He finds it nice to take a break from all the crude talk on the street from other sinners and have a nice conversation!

Great listener let me tell you, he’ll happily sit there as you explain your day away! He honestly enjoys hearing you genuinely happy!, although his a chatter box himself but he enjoys listening to you more then anyone or anything else!

Watches you be nice to the most repulsive, and rude demon like it’s nothing. Even when disrespected you find a way to calm down the situation and nicely at that. Of course the demon doesn’t live long once their out of your sight, but still! He’s pleasantly surprised.

He finds it rather weird that your nice just for the sake of being nice but still it’s definitely a nice refresher from all the horrible people down in hell!

You catch his eye rather quickly with how you stick out from others (in a good way! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ) and his eyes end up on you, you mainly have all his attention almost always if he isn’t off doing something!, your his light just live Vox he’ll make sure you’ll shine bright as ever and won’t go out.

Not everyone can catch it but in some rare moments he’ll be seen just staring at you as you happily talk away to Charlie. And for the smallest second you can see his unnerving smile turn into a soft smirk, eyes only on you and his mind filled with only you. This happens on the regular, it’s just he’s quick to cover up so no one sees!

Overall he loves you, even with some differences between your views he’ll still do his best to make you comfortable. Aside from teasing you here and there! But other then that he’ll protect you, your one of kind. And he loves having things no one else can.

ఌ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ఌ

AHHHH HELLOOOOO OH GORSH I MADE IT JUST IN TIME THIS TOOK SO LOBG TO DO CAUSE I KEPT HAVING TO DELETE AND REWRITE ON A NEW DRAFT AUGHHH I HOPE TUMBLR FIXES THIS BUG, BUT ANYWAY TYSM FOR REQUESTING PLEASE COME AGAIN!!!\(^ヮ^)/’

[sleepys-circus]

I keep seeing critics talking about the fnaf movie being poor but it literally isn't for them. I saw someone else saying the movie's a love letter to the fandom and i WHOLEHARTEDLY agree.

This is how i took it: We, the fans, are Anton Ego, the critic from Ratatouille; the ratatouille was special to us because it was our childhood. I hate ratatouille (the food), but to Anton Ego it was everything. Critics don't like the fnaf movie because they only have the movie as context, but to fans, the fnaf movie is everything and we love it even though it's a little cringey. In fact we love it BECAUSE it's cringey in some cases.

Like no new viewers would get the chica's magic rainbow part, or the MatPat reference, or the whole ongoing bit about Dream Theory sucking, or understand how hype the whole ending part was.

I was lucky to be in a cinema full of fnaf fans, and we were cheering and laughing, and screaming at the references. People got up when the movie ended and SAT BACK DOWN when the living tombstone came on. We shouted the letters of the code, and screamed when Matpat said his line. People clapped and cheered at the end, and people were crying at the parts where they were treating the animatronics with love and affection.

No critics would understand how much fans want to interact with the animatronics in a positive way, or understand how much importance the five seconds of its me on the mirror means in implications of the lore. They wouldn't understand because they haven't been waiting a good part of a decade to see this movie. They came, they saw, and that's it, it was a second of their life, but to us it was everything. This is our ratatouille, made to impress us, not the other people in the restaurant. This was our movie, a love letter to the fandom, not the critics.

I like the changes to the story, because it puts us back at square one. We're fumbling to rearrange lore and timelines. We have to rearrange names, and start with a blank slate, and it feels like a homecoming where to critics, it might feel a little messy.

We've been given a chance to start the journey all over again and i fucking love it so much. Because i'm an adult, and all of a sudden, i'm twelve years old again and we're trying to figure out if phone guy is chica, and struggling our way through whatever the fuck was happening in fnaf 3 to get the good ending. The critics don't get this.

They don't understand how hype the midnight motorists reference is, nor did they care about the references on the chalkboard. Or the code at the end, or the song choices, or the lore implications. They don't understand the sudden lore drop of william afton, or the way he's acting, but we do. They don't understand the vengeful spirit, but we do. Nothing is explained to the audience, because we don't need it to be explained.

This is our ratatouille, and we love the rats in the kitchen.

[wlwmedarda]

I'm honestly just looking to rant and this might be long depending on how fast I get irritated the more I type so if this isn't coherent or well written I apologize in advance. Since it looks like Ambessa will take on a more antagonistic role in arcane season two, I would like to unpack the fandom's antiblackness that you guys are either blind to or aware and too pussy to call it out as my gut is telling me it's gonna increase and if no one is gonna start the difficult conversation then I sure as hell will.

Sevika:

Mel:

Starting off strong with the definition of "you guys want complex female characters but can't even handle her". Mel Medarda is in quite the predicament seeing how she's morally grey, a black woman, AND "gets in the way" of a mlm ship so she was kinda screwed from the start. A cunning politician disowned for her pacifism who acts as a sort of bridge to Noxus' slow introduction, and is THE ONLY CHARACTER IN THE SEASON 1 MAIN CAST SPECIFICALLY CREATED FOR THE SHOW. She's treated like satan incarnate or a Jezebel (highly suggest looking into that if you don't know what that is), GOOD character analysis is rare, and when she is talked about positively, it's so often chalked up to appearances that I'd rather yall not talk about her at all. Oh you love Mel? Then can we talk about her relationship with her mother? Unpack her dynamic with Jayce? Maybe more fanworks centered around her? I've seen yall's fake asses dropping the shittiest fucking takes about her only to turn around and gush over how pretty she is, and yall think you're slick about it and you're not. I would say I prefer the ones who are loud and proud about their hatred but that'd be a lie, they're two cheeks on the same ass; annoying and couldn't give a decent break down of her character if a gun was pointed at they head even she's perfect to dissect. I could talk about her more but we'd be here all day and so many black women even from outside the fanbase have already talked about yall so there's no need for me to add on 🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️.

Quick question, have you guys ever tried to talk about her in a non sexual way? Yes, Sevika is undeniably sexy and you could argue that true stans of hers talk about her outside of horny time, but a good half of the fandom is a different story. In a similar case to Mel's, deep dives into her character are rare to find which is crazy when she acts as Zaun's own "kingmaker". She's loyal to her city and the cause, never to a specific person and will not hesitate to betray you. She could be your right hand man one day, and the next she might find a better kingpin to follow and stab you in the back like it all meant nothing. "Were you tempted?" "Not for a worm like him". Simple and subtle and probably my favorite Sevika scene; she comes to realize Silco is no longer the best leader for Zaun, but he's as good as it gets for now and so she sticks by him. I remember a YouTube comment breaking down how she's essentially the quintessential Zaun: a brute warrior molded by her environment, who defied Vander's peaceful ways and embraced Silco's cruelty. Her mindset and goal is interesting and you'd think it'd result in some fascinating meta or exploration of her upbringing when we got a hint that she potentially has some daddy issues right? Obviously, but what do we get instead? White sapphics treating her like nothing more than a sexual object. How delightful!

Ekko:

This might partially be Riot's fault because — and I hate to sound like a league lore nerd — Ekko is quite underdeveloped compared to the richer origins of his former pre arcane self, but I'm gonna hold off on that till the season finale to see how they handle him. Anyways, at this point the fandom clearly sees him as Jinx's trophy husband. When you talk about him, she is brought into the convo 90% of the time. That's exactly why I prefer black timebomb shippers over the nonblack ones because I trust they actually love Ekko as a character on his own. Even though I have my complaints regarding how's been written so far, I still know he's too good to be reduced to Jinx's loverboy. He fights and cares for his city, the only character that you can confidently say is pure of heart, and is the revolutionary leader Zaun really needs. He's just as smart as Jinx too, he is literally going to create TIME TRAVEL. Why does no one wanna talk about that? Can we be excited for his character development and arc not just for the timebomb scenes you'll get out of it?

Ambessa:

Can't even deny this woman is awful but her presence on screen enthralled me after a couple of rewatches and I also love bad mothers in media so I've settled on a love/hate relationship. Yes, she's definitely gonna have some influence on Caitlyn, which makes sense since she has now lost her mother; she's vulnerable and as we have seen, naive. She's practically free real estate for Ambessa. My recent worry though has been how the fandom seems to be willing to put all of Caitlyn's actions on her as if Cait isn't a grown ass woman who can make her own decisions. Of course being grown doesn't mean you're immune to manipulation, but I've seen some Silco and Jinx comparisons and it is NOT the same. Mind you we haven't even seen the first three episodes; we don't know how far Ambessa's manipulation is going to go and we can't really tell what the dynamic is gonna be like based off of clips and trailers that are likely shown out of context on purpose to throw people off. I'll never defend her actions, hell I'll join in on the lashings, but my black ass is also not gonna sit here and let yall talk about her weirdly or pin all of this on her.

Some might say I'm overthinking this, but I've been here since November 2021 and have sat back and observed for 2 years. You don't have to write deep, philosophical conversations 24/7, I'm sure it's not all in bad faith and I won't act like I don't thirst over Sevika or marvel at Mel's beauty. I'm not saying you have to like these characters and that you're racist if you don't. My frustration comes from the lack of nuanced conversations and hypocritical opinions surrounding black characters in this show. When you try to say something about this, you're hit with excuses; it reminds me of how man obsessed fujoshis act when they're questioned for not giving two fucks about female characters. They're either reduced to one character trait, only admired for their looks, or only discussed when it's about the white character they're connected to. Do NOT under ANY circumstance be black and morally ambiguous, you WILL be held to higher moral standards than everyone's wittle blorbos who can do wrong and are defended from all sides when you dare to take the rose colored stan glasses off and criticize them. What's really ridiculous is you hear the "complex characters" bullshit every two to three business days and some of you have the nerve to boast about this series being diverse while simultaneously ignoring the complexities in the characters of color. This is the main reason I took a step back and with season two around the corner I thought "Hey, maybe it'll be better this time!" and it was a mistake. Good to know yall still have an underlying racism problem you don't wanna address but with some extra classism thrown in. "What will we do once Arcane ends?" hopefully get a job, touch some grass, and reflect. Lord knows yall need it. The faster yall sizzle out the better. I'm done that's all I have to say lol goodnight 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽.

[stealingyourbones]

I don't really get the people who think reading the comics is such a radical idea. Don't they want to learn more about them? aren't they curious what makes them tick? what insane adventures they went on? what fears they have? what makes them laugh and smile? I'm from europe so I haven't seen any of the DC shows I see mentioned every once in a while (which means I really don't get the whole Clark hates clones thing... but that's a different thing) and it's only been this year that I have enough disposable income to splurge on comics, aka I haven't read that many just yet.

But I do think the ones I have read enhance the stories I'm trying to tell, which to me is a good reason to read them ;p but besides that, they are fun! they are just really fun to read

I’m glad you’re having fun reading comics man! It’s a shame that folks don’t read them as much but you know, I can understand it. I both asked some folks in the Haunting Heroes discord server and have some of my own points to make about this.

First of all I do still believe that you should consume some form of DC media if you’re in the fandom. It’s fun and there are comics, books, movies, tv shows, and every other form of medium known to man that you can take a peek at! Idk I’m just a bit DC enjoyer and think that looking at canon media to expand on your knowledge and help create ideas you wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t looked at said piece of media.

Now onto why reading comic books is hard:

Some folks simply prefer the fandom and not the official DC content. Whether they prefer fanon, find fics more accessible, or like the people in the fandom, they’d rather just stick to the fandom.

They simply don’t know where to start. Getting into comics can be INCREDIBLY overwhelming ( DC has done their best to fix this and has messed up more than once. My go to is to reccomend folks just start reading New 52 comic runs as it’s really good for new readers to jump into the comics with any hero that might intrigue them). Big comic events span multiple comic story runs and not a cohesive line of comics, some omnibuses for stories are out of print, the 80+ years of comics are daunting as hell, and everyone has their own opinion on the best versions of a character/where to start/what to read.

Money. Comics are an expensive hobby to have. They may cost $1-$5 each on average but that price adds up over time. I have a comic collection of roughly 1,300 comics. I’d estimate its value very roughly around the $7,800 range. It’s probably far more than that though and I know damn well reselling it I won’t get half of that value back. I’m very fortunate to be a college student with disposable income and for this hobby to be the only thing I ever really spend money on besides rent and food. Some people either can’t afford them or don’t want to buy a comic they don’t know if it’s good or not.

Varying quality. Comics are a very mixed bag thing where they can be incredibly written or some of the worst pieces of media you’ve ever read. With this being the case, it can be really hard to find a comic character or writer you like if that’s your first experience. It takes a while to learn about different writers and find out who your favorite writers are. What’s harder is some writers can make absolute masterpieces with one character and the next comic run they cover it can be absolute garbage. Not only that, everyone has opinions on what is a good comic run or not. It’s impossible to find a repeatedly stated and easily accessible list on the good comics to read.

Pretentious “Canon is God” fans. Experiencing “um actually this isn’t good because this isn’t how the canon character would act” responses from people can really fucking suck and diminish their want to experience anything that’s official DC writing. I’ve seen more than one person go into this primarily fanon focused space and insult people saying their writing isn’t canonical and therefore it isn’t valid. It’s Uber Pretentious, demeaning, and actively harms peoples interests in checking out canon content.

Timelines. I already kind of said it but DC’s timelines are a mess. hell, even New 52 has some fucked up timelines making all of Batman’s previous timelines canon but happen only within a seven year period. That’s WAY too short for how much history is packed in there. The amount of crisises that happen and fully change the lore and timelines of characters is bonkers, the comic runs that bounce between different comic runs are really confusing, and the fact that there isn’t a True Starting Point for reading makes it so hard to grasp anything that’s happening. It’s one of comics biggest issues and no matter what DC has done they have yet to find a convenient solution.

Sensitive Content. Comics from DC are littered with either intentional, badly aged, or ignorantly written plot points and writing choices that will turn away readers. DC has its fair share of sexism, misogyny, abelism, racism, abuse, sexual harassment, sexual assaults, or topics casually addressed that can be very triggering for some people. Especially since a large amount of that sort of content is handled incredibly poorly. One particular writer, Alan Moore, writes sexual assault scenes with absolutely zero tact or the delicateness that a topic such as that should be held in. It’s almost solely used as a “let’s make the bad guy do the most fucked up thing they could do” throwaway plot point. Comics of the sort dissuade a lot of readers because of both the heavy content within comics and how that content can be incredibly poorly handled. This is partially why some folks would prefer to read fics. Comics are a unknown mixed grab bag when it comes to content like this and things exactly like this is known to make PTSD symptoms worse while fics have tags and can warn you before you consume the content within.

Time. A lot of folks have busy lives and just don’t have the time to read them.

The ways they intake media. Some folks might have a better time watching a long commentary video that explains a comic or their brain can’t process the comic medium very well. I can read and retain comic knowledge but even I am unique in this aspect, my memory is frightening levels of bad and is proven by science to be absolute shit. I have to reread comics at least once a month to retain the basic bare bones plot. Just because one person can easily digest what’s going on in a comic doesn’t mean everyone can.

Comics are such a big part of my life. I love them so much and they’ve gotten me through so many things. My own experience with comics isn’t the same for others and my thoughts on reading comics differs with other people. A lot of people have equally as many reasons for why they don’t read comics as you and I have for reading them.

[makiquas]

Its Butchtober. Bear with me for a second as I rant about children's cartoon ships, butchphobia, the conditional acceptance of butches in sapphic spaces on the basis of desirability, and feeling erased as a butch kid.

It's so funny that I realised early on as a 2000-2010s teen/kid how a lot of so called "sapphics" of social media are really, really anti butch4butch, only by interacting with certain subsets of Catradora and Appledash haters. It may be flippant to connect butchphobia with children's cartoons, but you cannot deny it is there. We finally had two canon butch4butch and masc4masc lesbian animated ships. And the fandoms decided that the best possible reaction to this is to violently hate on the ships for bullshit reasons and write up masterdocs about how the butch character actually looks better with a femme character instead (in both cases–Rarity and Glimmer, who is arguably feminine but not femme, but that's a conversation for another day, how the SPOP fandom waters down gender identities for aesthetics).

This is not just about two cartoon ships; this mindset of seeing two masc lesbians and immediately going "actually they act like bros; but this BUTCHFEMME couple has real chemistry" comes off sounding really, really bad in 2024 when you have no idea how butch identity operates, outside of depicting us as pants-wearing sexually aggressive muscular women. Butches ARE bros, even the ones who kiss each other. Camaraderie and tomboyish swagger *is* a part of their life. It's not our fault you are too fanfic trope-pilled to read these interactions are sexless friendship bantering.

It's also quite concerning, given how there are only a handful of butch4butch books in the market, and almost all of them talk about the stigmatizing of relationships between two butches/studs/masc lesbians. There are many butch lesbians who themselves face internalized butchphobia because of societal standards and expectations of being turned into the "gallant" provider of femmes. Butch and femme are not always inherently complementary, butches can be attracted to other butches, there is no "natural order" model of lesbian/sapphic attraction and your thinly veiled butchphobia is really off-putting, given you guys don't seem to extend that same rhetoric to mascfemme ships like Korrasami or Caitvi, or femme-femme ships like Harlivy.

Here, I must mention relationships like Rei and Kaoru from Oniisama E, or Jess and Lupe from A League of Their Own, who have bucket loads of chemistry but still have some vehement antis only because both the lesbians are masculine. (What's funny is the new wave of lesbian Oniisama E fans are almost all Rei/Kaoru shippers despite the show putting them into two butchfemme pairings.) Something something to be butch4butch is to be failing the tests of palatability and desirability according to conventional models of societal norms. Forever.

Again, one may have valid reasons for disliking these fictional ships (what, I genuinely don't know). But it *is* weird that you guys can watch fifty white fem4fem sapphic shows in a year and read 100+ GL with the same feminine girlish blonde and brunette/pink haired archetype and not bat an eyelid, but conjure a world of made-up "platonic" dynamics just because you read every butch4butch interaction as fundamentally platonic.

A lot of you love to throw around Stone Butch Blues as a catchphrase to educate strangers on the internet about 1950s-70s blue-collar bar culture and USA butch femme history, but how many of you actually know that within the book itself, the lead character acts prejudiced and hates on another butch for being butch4butch? How many of you know that she apologizes to her friend at the end for her hateful remarks? Fun fact: when you ostracize a butch for not fitting into your butch-femme subculture aesthetic, you're no better than lesbiphobic bigots actually.

Anyway, here are some butch4butch resources if you are a baby butch4butch and feel alienated by these kinds of weird rhetoric in online and fandom queer spaces too:

Butch4Butch romance books

My Butch4Butch books masterdoc (**being updated regularly**)

Leo Wilder's Butch4Butch writing (18+)

Butch4Butch photography archive (insta)

Boyish² Butch4Butch yuri anthology (insta)

@milsae Butch4Butch artist (tumblr/insta)

This post is made by a trans masc butch of color. Terfs, racists, biphobes and radfems kindly do not derail or interact.

[jaidenk-nox]

Elizabeth midford

Shitty 2AM rant on the Misogyny that Lizzy has faced since the very start but it's the perspective of someone who has witnessed the horrors of Misogyny in Spanish speaking fandom

I should mention that English is not my first language and I'm not very good with it either, so most of this was done with Google Translate and I tried to correct what I could, I hope it's at least readable

I've never seen enough people point out the fact that Elizabeth midford character also defies the "Girlboss" archetype, she is definitely physically strong and can protect herself, but she is A 15 YEAR OLD GIRL, who manages her emotions like someone her age would and also exhibits many neurodivergent traits. I have always been bothered by the way physical strength is misunderstood as a "girlboss" trait, the simplest example I can think of is Ran Mao, she possesses brutal and superhuman strength. but it doesn't make her a girlboss, in case anyone forgets Ran is a girl who barely reaches 18 years old and is exploited by an opium trader who also seems to be involved in human trafficking (implied in the manga). Is she really a girlboss? girlboss when her physical strength is more of a requirement to SURVIVE while working as an assassin and sometimes seductress (which u can tell she doesn't enjoy much)? Obviously Ranmao's social reality is very different as she is a woman of color from the underworld, unlike Elizabeth, who is a white woman from the nobility. However, her physical strength has always been a double-edged sword for herself. Lizzy longs to get married, like any other girl her age, she longs to be protected but says goodbye to it the moment Ociel returns.

I may seem a bit exaggerated, but the way your sociocultural background affects the way you perceive and treat a character has me slightly traumatized, I wish I could give proof of the horrible and degrading treatment that Lizzy has received from the Spanish-speaking fandom.

I am a trans boy of color who grew up watching my female relatives being encouraged to rip their hearts out of their chest from the moment they turned 8yo for the simple goal of caring for and protecting my cis male relatives. household chores, cooking for them, washing their clothes, taking accountability for their actions. Their freedom and childhood as little girls were taken away from them. but none of that was ever valued, I never saw anyone recognize it as sacrifice.

Elizabeth is not a woman of color, nor does she have those demands as a woman of nobility, but she SACRIFICED stuff to try to protect Ciel on her own way, I have seen many people underestimate her backstory in book of Atlantic because "High heeled shoes aren't reason to cry." Everything Lizzy has done for Ciel is devalued, all her suffering has been minimized. losing so many family members in such a short time, losing the boy you were raised to marry your entire life. People truly forget that lizzy is still just a child, that she has the right to mourn everything she lost that day. She had to mourn publicly as a noble girl,she probably heard that she would never be able to get married or would never achieve happiness, I've never seen any adult to stop and think about how heartbreaking and soul shattering that must have been as a 11yo

I have seen how EVERY thing Lizzy does is judged. how her behavior, personality and temperament are criticized. but other characters like Soma just get a pass while doing the same stuff, but this does not just stop at gender, but also at age. people HATE girls and afabs who act like children when they are literally CHILDREN.

How is it possible that Lizzy has faced such harsh judgment from the fandom when there are other characters like Maam red, Lau, Grell, Undertaker who are universally ADORED or atleast respected in the fandom.

I love u Elizabeth midford but ur character makes me violently ill omfg

[once-upon-the-earth]

Look I think I said it before somewhere but I need to talk about it again.

Aziraphale (in the show - his characterization differs in the book and I’m talking about show Aziraphale here) is a soft character. He started out as a soldier and he made the conscious decision to give the sword away to someone who would use it for protection, instead of keeping it to fight (leaving out the whole thing about War owning it later on cause that’s a different topic and definitely wasn’t what Aziraphale had in mind when giving away the sword). He also makes a conscious decision to look and act as non-threatening as possible, instead deciding to look soft and huggable and gay as hell a tree full of monkeys on nitrogen oxide. We don’t see him fighting anybody even when he gets the sword back - he just holds it and swings it around a little, he doesn’t even lift it when they face Satan (I think. I’d have to go back and watch again but I’m fairly sure he just stands in the background behind Adam with the tip of the sword facing the ground).

We know, or at least suspect from the scene where he fixes the hole in the wall that he’s physically strong and we know he’s still technically a soldier in Heavens eyes (Gabriel going „you’re a lean mean fighting machine“ and him having and possibly leading a platoon in Heaven) but he fully rejects that position in episode five to go back to Earth. He doesn’t want to be a soldier at all. He’s still a protector, we see this in season two with Jimbriel (he literally says „I said I would protect you and I will), but even THEN he doesn’t physically fight the demons entering the bookshop (he lights the circle but it’s Maggie and Nina throwing fire extinguishers and encyclopedias).

I know we as the fandom love badass Aziraphale. I love badass Aziraphale as well. I take a little bit of an issue with how him actually being badass is portrayed in fanfic sometimes because a lot of trying to make him physically fight demons comes across as trying to make him more masculine, more fit, less the campy, soft, kind character that he is and it annoys me. (A part of that is also how people try to make him more like Crowley, which I don’t like the undertones of either but that’s a whole different topic.) Both because I don’t like the implication that to make him badass you have to change that part of his character and because we’ve seen him being badass in the show already and it was either a) trying to protect humans/Crowley/Jimbriel, which involved a lot more threatening that him actually throwing hands or on one occasion b) him being bitchy (Furfur pronouncing his name wrong). It was him being kind and caring about people and their lives! And possibly their reading skills.

And I know there’s a lot of hope for more badass Aziraphale in season three, because hell yeah, Heaven getting obliterated from the inside? Absolutely. But when we get to see BAMF Aziraphale in season three (because I don’t doubt we will, in some form or other) I’d much rather see him be badass by outsmarting Heaven (magic tricks anybody?) and getting away with it or threatening the Metatron or whatever than by punching somebody in the face. And IF he does have to use physical violence, then I want there to be a reason for it and I want it to be portrayed as a bad thing. Like I want I to be the absolutely lowest point of the character because we know how much he detests doing it and he hates having to do it anyways.

In that case also want it to end with the Metatron dead in a ditch.

[14dayswithyou]

Meowdy Saint! ^^ lolol hello hello o/ hope you are doing good!!

So this masterpiece of a game has been invading my mind with ZERO chill lately which directly translated to me coming up with a TON of questions orz I really didn't realize how many I ended up compiling lol

If you don't feel like answering this many please feel absolutely free to ignore this ask or only answer the ones you like the most, the last thing I want is for you to feel overwhelmed! ^^

ALRIGHT LET'S-A GO

-do Rendacted's memories remain intact when he resets the day or do his wipe too with everyone else's? Also is there an in-universe answer for why he has these glitchy powers or is he just Built Different™?

-if angel made it VERY clear that they would be mad asf and prolly even start hating and leave Ren/[REDACTED] if he were to hurt their friends(or killing people bc this man needs to chill fr), would he listen to them? Bc I know that if he touches Violet, Elanor, Kiara or god forbid Moth I'm personally deleting his kneecaps 🥰

-since it seems to me that Ren/[REDACTED] is only kinda meh at cooking I was wondering if he actually made the not burnt pancakes in day 3 or if he had some store bought ones that he passed off as his own lol

-does he know how to give massages? :00

-during day 1, how did Ren come up with a book on the local flora?? It seems like such a random topic to pick when put on the spot without already having a genuine interest in it lmao

-if I understood correctly Maple should be Jae's dog right?? Did you have a specific breed or age in mind when creating her? I got curious because in my head she automatically popped up as a young australian shepherd to match with Jae's hyperactive dumbass energy lol❀⸜(˶´ ˘ `˶)⸝❀

-staying on the dog topic lol, in day 1 when angel gets up from the couch to get Ren the inflatable mattress(iirc) and he follows right behind them i immediately thought he acted like a puppy lmao. So would he mind being called 'puppy' as a pet name?

(I am not sure if this⬇️ questions falls under character deaths, if it does I really apologize and absolutely feel free to ignore it ^^)

-from an ask from last year it seems [REDACTED] would ultimately kill angel if there was ultimately not way to enter in their life?? Gotta say I was very taken aback by this, would this still be the case after a year of building more to his character? (Ok I went back to check the ask again but I can't for the life of me find it anymore maybe I dreamt it up idk😭😭 im really sorry if that is the case jdkslajdl)

-uuhh I know there is already a lot in this ask(im seriously sorry orz), but I was wondering if we will eventually get an SFW alphabet for Ren/[REDACTED] for the folks who don't care about the nasty 👉👈

-THIS IS THE LAST THING I PROMISE 👹 will there be a guide to get all the endings? I'm not sure if there is one already and in that case I missed it 100%

Also I find it ironic how the fandom is trying to find out every single aspect of Ren/[REDACTED]'s character the same way he must do with angel lmao

ALRIGHT THATS ALL IM SO SORRY FOR ASKING SO MUCH THE REN BRAINROT HOURS ARE SO REAL IM LOSING BRAINCELLS orz Remember to take care of yourself drink water and take breaks!! ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧

(Also sorry if some phrases don't make sense, english isn't my first language as I am 🤌 lolol)

✦゜ANSWERED: Under da cut because this got long >:3

-do Rendacted's memories remain intact when he resets the day or do his wipe too with everyone else's? Also is there an in-universe answer for why he has these glitchy powers or is he just Built Different™? Ren's memories remain intact!! I mean... He remembers each time you get a bad end and sometimes says something different... >:3 There is also an in-universe reason as to why he has his abilities — I won't spoil anything, but his real name (along with River's and one other character) have a reeeeally big tell. But what this tell is is for me to know and you to find out >:3

-if angel made it VERY clear that they would be mad asf and prolly even start hating and leave Ren/[REDACTED] if he were to hurt their friends(or killing people bc this man needs to chill fr), would he listen to them? Bc I know that if he touches Violet, Elanor, Kiara or god forbid Moth I'm personally deleting his kneecaps 🥰 Ren (and by extension [REDACTED]) knows not to harm anyone if he knows you won't like it — and even then — he won't actively show that murderous side of him in the first place. To Angel, Ren is just a timid, normal guy.

-since it seems to me that Ren/[REDACTED] is only kinda meh at cooking I was wondering if he actually made the not burnt pancakes in day 3 or if he had some store bought ones that he passed off as his own lol Ren is actually good at cooking, he's just a bit out of touch since he doesn't normally cook for himself! It's normally microwave meals or takeout for him... ^^; And yes, Ren did burn and burn the pancakes in Day 3 — he was distracted by something on his phone :3

Bonus cut Day 3 content: I took out the scene where Ren started to profusely apologise for burning the pancake because he often had to cook when he was younger. Given the dynamic of his family and the environment he grew up in, Ren didn't have much room to make mistakes ;n; I cut this scene out because I felt bad ksgskd So y'all get to have flustered, happy Ren instead!!

-does he know how to give massages? :00 If that was one of Angel's interests or desires, then sure!! ^^

-during day 1, how did Ren come up with a book on the local flora?? It seems like such a random topic to pick when put on the spot without already having a genuine interest in it lmao Someone else likes flora too, and it sure would be funny if Ren (eventually) starts to mimic certain traits and interests of the person you have the highest affinity/relationship points with in order to make himself look more appealing… >:3c

-if I understood correctly Maple should be Jae's dog right?? Did you have a specific breed or age in mind when creating her? I got curious because in my head she automatically popped up as a young australian shepherd to match with Jae's hyperactive dumbass energy lol❀⸜(˶´ ˘ `˶)⸝❀ It was mentioned in Jae's lore post (I'll link it here once I find it), but Maple is a Labrador! (Leon would be Jae's Australian Shepherd hehe) In my mind, Maple is only 2 or 3 years old, but that wouldn't really fit the official timeframe... ^^; Jae adopted Maple during high school so he wouldn't feel lonely at home, and it's been over 6+ years since then.... hgdshjg

-staying on the dog topic lol, in day 1 when angel gets up from the couch to get Ren the inflatable mattress(iirc) and he follows right behind them i immediately thought he acted like a puppy lmao. So would he mind being called 'puppy' as a pet name? Angel affectionately calls Ren a puppy during the scene in Day 1 where they meet up after work, so that nickname definitely could work!

-from an ask from last year it seems [REDACTED] would ultimately kill angel if there was ultimately not way to enter in their life?? Gotta say I was very taken aback by this, would this still be the case after a year of building more to his character? (Ok I went back to check the ask again but I can't for the life of me find it anymore maybe I dreamt it up idk😭😭 im really sorry if that is the case jdkslajdl) aaa I think you might be mistaking that ask for something else? ;v; [REDACTED] would NEVER harm Angel in any capacity, and they're a very patient person. Even if it took decades for Angel to fall in love with him, they'll wait.

-uuhh I know there is already a lot in this ask(im seriously sorry orz), but I was wondering if we will eventually get an SFW alphabet for Ren/[REDACTED] for the folks who don't care about the nasty 👉👈 You're fine!! And I'm open to doing that! I'll add it to my list hehe

-THIS IS THE LAST THING I PROMISE 👹 will there be a guide to get all the endings? I'm not sure if there is one already and in that case I missed it 100% I've shared a spreadsheet that lists all the available choices, the points you earn from each of them, and the endings you can get — however it's only available on Discord and I don't really want to share it outside of the server and potentially put it in the hands of minors. Sorry!!

Also I find it ironic how the fandom is trying to find out every single aspect of Ren/[REDACTED]'s character the same way he must do with angel lmao Hehe >:3 There's a loooot of lore that won't ever be mentioned in the game (since it doesn't seem fitting/I don't see a reason to), so I'm happy to provide it here!

[wings-of-fire-confessions]

This fandom is actually so horrible when it comes to the multiple abuse victims in the series, because most of them are viscerally hated by the fandom for really stupid shit.

Winter is constantly labeled as a toxic abuser and like. I can understand not liking how he treated Moon, or any of the jade winglet in early arc 2 for that matter. What I do not understand is people ignoring that he is actively bettering himself just so they can keep hating him, or even just ignoring why he's like that to begin with. He's not mean because he likes being a jackass, he's mean because he's been taught that showing any care for other dragons, ESPECIALLY dragons of other tribes, is considered weak. It's something he has been trying to fix, but people would rather just keep calling him an abuser than acknowledge he is changing

Peril gets called an insane psychopath who doesn't deserve love which, first of all that's GOTTA be some form of ableism. Second of all, no fucking shit she is the way she is, the dragon who raised her manipulated her to believe she's a monster who will never be loved by other dragons. No fucking shit she got attached to the one dragon her age that showed her kindness, she thought that wasn't possible!! Also another case of the fandom chooses to ignore her healing just so they have a reason to keep hating her. "She's toxic and obsessed with Clay!!" It literally says in the god damn book she's so used to having a dragon to control her, and she is actively trying to stamp that habit out, why do we keep ignoring this

Boa is by far the worst victim of this because the fandom treats like scum of the earth not because of who she is, but because of one fucking decision she made. A decision she made in a state of panic. A decision she made because fuck, why SHOULD dragons have such power that can be used for evil so easily? Boa's entire EXISTENCE is an example of a dragon misusing their magic, why are we surprised she thinks the world is better off without it? She's not a bitch who thinks she knows better than everyone else, she's a terrified abuse victim who genuinely believed animus magic would bring the destruction of dragonkind. And look. I get the decision to remove animus magic was a stupid one. But can we please just acknowledge Tui was the one who made that stupid decision instead of pretending Boa is this awful person and the worst character in the series. Because she isn't. She's not an asshole. She's not a bitch. She made one bad decision and the fandom acts like she's satan incarnate

Im sure there may be more examples, these are just the biggest that come to mind

.

[princesstarfire1234]

TLDR: I fucking despise ship art and fanfics that infantilize Orion Pax / Optimus Prime

Okay so I just wanna put my thoughts out here right now because I've not seen many people talk about it and it honestly bothers me a lot...

So, it's no secret that I ship MegOp and stuff right? I like and have reblogged a bunch of art of them before and I will keep doing so, but something about how this place (or more certain parts of the fandom) portray the ship gives me major icks and I fucking hate it so much

Detailed thoughts under cut ⬇️⬇️⬇️

Case in point, a massive part of the TFP fanbase likes to ship Orion and Megatronus and I get that, I get why people like shipping those two but it's the WAY they do it. A lot, not all, but most of the fanart surrounding Orion Pax and Megatronus is him being like the smaller and more submissive one of the relationship which fine, whatever, but most people just end up drawing him REALLY small like ik he's shorter than Megs who was a gladiator and all that and he was an archivist but jesus christ... Aside the size which is weird and all but it's really all about the rampant infantilization of the guy. When they remove all agency from the character and act like Orion is gonna fucking combust the moment someone confronts him or tries to fight him like no... I've not read Exodus but I don't think Orion being a nerdy book guy is gonna make him THAT soft, this is still the same mech who became PRIME like cmon

I don't know the exact words for it other than "infantilization" but like y'know what I mean right?? I'm not gonna name blogs but there's this one AU on here where Orion is blind and it has this cutesy artstyle which is fine but I vividly remember reading a comic on that AU where some thugs confront Orion and he's all like sobbing and shit and has to be saved by someone and it's... so you made him disabled and also a crybaby and absolutely incapable of anything??? Does that NOT give you an ick of sorts or seem weird??? God I don't even know anymore because I've seen many people seem to like that so I'm just scared I'm the weird one and wrong for this lmfao... Maybe there's smthn im not getting, you tell me

Anyways this post is getting real long, but this kind of "infantilization" also applies to certain fanarts of TFA MegOp, I always thought the ship was bordering on kind of strange (since TFA Optimus is like the equivalent of some 20-something college dropout and Megatron is implied to have been doing the war stuff way way way back like Ratchet's time) but I won't get into that, I just don't ship that certain brand of the characters myself, but it's fine, do what you want with it. Just know that I have seen art of those two where they treat TFA Optimus as this sort of incapable cutesy uwu boy (aaaghh)

So yeah.... hahahaha stop infantilizing characters and taking a ship where they're both grown ass big men and like straight up turning the other one into some weird ass incapable version of the character that lacks any and all agency and honestly bordering on being really icky as fuck, thank you, idc if you make Optimus the bottom or whatever, that's not what I mean, cya ✌️

[explodingchantry]

Anders isn't my problematic fave because he isn't problematic. I think the wider concept of anders being 'wrong' the fandom has is a clear example of how biased the writing has been in the games. It's the same reason why people hate Jowan, or why they think the kinloch hold mages were stupid. There's a clear bias in the writing and framing of it all that guides the player towards feeling negatively.

The majority of answers you can give Jowan in Dao are negative, mocking, or downright insulting. The ones who aren't are just... Neutral. You can be a bit sympathetic to him in the circle origin but by the time you meed him in redcliff most of your dialogue choices are so fucking mean. In my replay I was trying desperately to be nice and sympathetic to him but the best you can do is be neutral and let him go but for every rude dialogue option there is no "you've been through something horrible, I'm sorry" or "you were manipulated, loghain took advantage of your vulnerability, I'm sorry" it's soooooo.

Likewise, I always make sure to speak to every single npc in the mage origins and the One mention of uldred before the broken circle quest is from the one mage who tells you about the different political faction enchanters are in, and it's with absolute disdain. That mage thinks uldred is annoying and it's implied that the other enchanters think so, too. Uldred who was an activist for mage liberation is treated as annoying for being an activist.

Then he turns out to be a blood mage and to have killed the majority of the circle, turning them into abominations. The message is clear: those who seek liberation are wicked. In the first game of the series, thus in the game which introduced the concept of circles at all, their existence is justified by the text. It overtly says: look at all those foolish mages, how dangerous they can be when One of them is wicked. Can you imagine if they were free? Can you imagine those abominations' destruction if they were out in the open?

Something similar happens in the mage origin, with Jowan. Through the whole origin, whilst Jowan is painted as annoying, he's definitely seen as a victim. Up until he uses blood magic, that is. Suddenly, the player is likely supposed to think "oh, so they were right to want to make him tranquil after all". Instead of being a way to show that the circle will often turn innocent mages tranquil, it shows you that greagoir was right to distrust Jowan, because he was indeed a blood mage. Instead of showing you how paranoid those in power are about mages, the writing justifies their fear and hatred.

Bear in mind this is the first game and likely the very first thing that happens to a lot of new players. The game does not expect you to know the intricacies of its lore yet, doesn't expect you to understand that blood magic is actually fucking neutral unless you sacrifice people for it. You might be tempted to argue that it's setting up for that realisation later and for you to feel bad about Jowan later, realizing he was led to blood magic because it was his only solution, because he and all other mages are caged like dogs (except this is ferelden, so the dogs are better treated than them). But then you've got the redcliff fiasco where it's obvious the writers expect you to fucking hate his guts

And while dragon age 2 is more overt in its depiction of mage suffering, it also tries to pass on the idea that kirkwall is a special case, that it's only the gallows that are this bad. That it's just Meredith whose craaazeyyy 🤪 and not just Meredith being a product of a corrupt system. The writers expect you to think of Anders as an unstable extremist, or as his writer puts it, a "bipolar terrorist" (note that ofc there's nothing fucking wrong with being bipolar, but I don't think his writer cares!)

With different writers and the exact same set of events, Anders blowing up the chantry would be easily recognized as a positive, as an act of justice, of rightful rebellion. Instead it's seen as a tragedy, a mistake. Instead Anders is categorized as a villain, morally grey even though Hawke themselves has a higher death toll than he ever will.

It's a lesson, I think. In narrative bias.

[garr9988]

I say this as a big SU fan: If I had to give Steven Universe one glaring L above all else, while fully recognizing that it may be at least in part due to the final season & Future being so rushed:

It’s having Rose and her death be so heavily suicidal-coded (the art books went in on how much she loathed herself and thought she was incapable of changing, so) and yet ending the series with Steven being so irreconcilably angry with her and the impact of her death that he locks a reminder/representation of her away in a place he doesn’t visit so that he doesn’t even have to acknowledge her existence.

Granted, the finale ended with Steven getting therapy and clearly improving his relationships with the Gems, Greg, and Connie that were similarly causing him grief, but Rose in particular is a very specific case in that we don’t see whether he improves his feelings on her, and because she’s dead she isn’t an active presence in his life that he’s compelled to reconcile with. Greg is his dad and Connie is his girlfriend, he has to like them to keep them around, but there’s no incentive with Rose.

There’s also Greg, Pearl, and Volleyball still loving Rose even with the full picture, but to me that feels barely there anyway, a half-hearted tack-on.

I still have a big gripe with the movie for tacking on Rose’s treatment of Spinel and making Rose seem even worse than before, purely because neither the movie nor Future remind the audience of the ways she eventually improved. It felt like the writers went too far when they had already given us Rose’s story in reverse and already had the characters react negatively to the news she was Pink Diamond in the original show.

There’s obviously room for audiences having to remember these things themselves and that a narrative doesn’t have to point these out all the time. But a narrative bears responsibility for the way it frames things and the way it wants or expects an audience to view something.

Rose’s redemption arc being shown in reverse IS cool, in concept! But when the audience insert protagonist and a lot of other characters get this reverse arc and act like the terrible things are the conclusion of her self, that these secrets aren’t her past that she left behind but the mask being ripped off and the true evil monster being revealed for who she is… it doesn’t leave a good taste in my mouth.

That’s certainly part of why a good chunk of the fandom hates Rose the way they do, bc to a non-negligible extent the show is fostering their view, playing it out on screen without actually correcting it.

It’s obviously realistic and possible and downright good & compelling for someone to have a very negative response to another character’s death (suicide) and the fallout they’re left with. But a character who dies in such a way, especially Rose. deserves to be given sympathy and respect within the narrative.

[if-you-heart]

Analysing Soul’s character with animal behaviour

Something I’ve noticed about how Soul is treated by a portion of the fandom is that, to be honest, their character is extremely misunderstood by a lot of people. And that’s pretty sad! Because I think Soul is a very interesting and complex character. The main thing I’ve noticed is how Soul is often portrayed as the “big bad villain” because of a handful of lyrics throughout the cccc album. I’m not really going to go into the lyrics right now, but I feel like a lot of people are misunderstanding who Soul really is, and are more so looking for a character to pin all of the blame on for everything that goes down in the album.

Thinking about this made me realise that Soul reminds me of a wolf. Specifically, how a lot of people are quick to perceive a wolf’s social behaviour as “aggression” and them simply just being violent towards a “weaker” wolf.

The behaviour wolves display towards other pack mates (growling, nipping, etc) is almost always framed as them harming the other wolf. It may LOOK threatening, and the wolf’s teeth may seem intimidating, but in reality the wolf is being very gentle with its pack mate. It’s more so a corrective behaviour, or a way of showing social status, in most cases. I think Soul suffers from this misinterpretation when they’re lashing out within the lyrics of some of the songs. I believe the main reason it’s misconstrued is because of a general lack of understanding behaviours the viewer hasn’t personally experienced. Ofc this is a literal animal I’m comparing this to, but there’s still something to be said here regardless.

I’ve seen many people so far perceive Soul’s attitude towards Heart and Mind as pure evil and malicious, and barely cutting them any slack whatsoever. Soul isn’t a villain. They’re just exhausted. They’ve been stretched thin over the stress of feeling like a puppet to the other two. They’re what’s left when emotion and logic separates; a husk that’s struggling to survive. When you villainise them solely for how they act in the music, you’re also disregarding that both Heart and Mind are… just as bad. I mean Heart literally tried to kill Mind. None of these guys are evil, but they’re not good people either. The only way they’ll become whole is if they learn to get along, that’s what the album is about. Not one being more right than the other, but about them finally opening up to each other’s viewpoints and accepting one another, albeit hesitantly.

And yes, Soul’s behaviour in the album is ABSOLUTELY pretty toxic. But that’s what stress and depression does to a person!!! They’re very clearly tired of Heart and Mind fighting all the time. They don’t hate Heart OR Mind, but their patience with these two and their nonstop bickering is growing very thin. And that’s completely understandable. Every single one of these freaks start off with an unhealthy dynamic and difficult mindset. But they learn over time to get along until they’re eventually Whole again. There’s no “villain”, and none of them are completely innocent either. It’s just three really depressed guys who desperately want to see the light.

Anyways,