#anti-lok

[maoam]

What is your opinion of Korrasami? I always feel uncomfortable when I say that their ending is poorly developed because at no point in the seasons did they show romantic interest. I know that this changes in the comics but the truth is that I was never interested in it.

You guys love sending controversial asks to me. It's okay though, if anyone likes the ship a lot then just scroll past this or something.

First of all let it be known KA is nowhere near the worst thing about tlok. I don't want to go on a rant about the show so in case you want to know how I feel about it, this guy explains very well how poor the writing is in the show, how disrespectful it is to Atla and how Korra's character is poor. [link]

But yes, KA was poorly developed. Or more like not developed at all. And not just the romance, but the friendship as well.

I really dislike how Asami's character was handled in the show. During seasons 1&2 she was just an obstacle to makorra. Then when the writers realized many people hated the love triangle, they decided to force some forced friendship down people's throats in season 3, despite the fact it made no sense for Asami to even want to be around Korra. So after treating her as an obstacle in a love triangle for two seasons, do they finally give her development or a storyline? Nah, they make her Korra's personal servant and a bank account. She is there just to follow Korra around, tell her she is the avatar and to agree with whatever she does. And the relationship is very one-sided, with only Asami giving and receiving nothing back from Korra. I laughed when Korra said "I'm glad whatever happened with Mako hasn't come between us" because the reason it didn't was because Asami is a doormat. And come between what? You two had no relationship prior to season 3. You interacted once in season 2. Once. Then in season 4 Asami becomes even more of a cheerleader to Korra, telling Korra she can do no wrong. While Korra shows no enthusiasm towards her. Korra is someone who wears her heart in her sleeve, she can't hide her feelings at all, like we saw with Mako. So yeah her acting so meh about Asami the whole show didn't leave me with an impression she cared about her much or found her interesting as a person. And the one time Asami wasn't passive and told Korra she doesn't get to tell her what she should do about her father, the fandom was mad at her lol. And the one scene in season 4 she tried to console Korra, she couldn't do it, but instead Tenzin came in and did it instead. So yeah, great writing there. Ironically, they give Korra and Mako better scenes in season 4 (don't get me wrong, I'm no MK stan). That's not how you write your endgame couple.

And I disliked how the show pretended Korra wasn't responsible for what happened with Mako at all, that it was all Mako. Which was obnoxious, but considering the show constantly acted like the sun shined from Korra's butt regardless of what she did, it's not surprising. And this is how the shippers act as well, that Mako just used poor Korra and Asami, while Korra did nothing wrong. Lol. She was happily enjoying Mako's attention without caring about how it made Asami feel. And Asami didn't properly call her out either, because she's a doormat and she would prefer to follow Korra around than be alone after her father went to prison I guess (this is me trying to rationalize the shit writing, I know the writers didn't care whether it made sense or not).

Wow that became longer than I intended but yeah, not a fan. I peeked the comics a bit, and still didn't care about their relationship. Lots of explaining how they totally felt like this about each other for quite some time. In the end it's just damage control. If people like it, good for them, but I wasn't impressed.

[nerdemic]

i don’t mind the idea of pro-bending but the way it homogenized three of the four bending styles into one “you just throw punches and make the element do things” style is infuriating

[reasonsforhope]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is, by some measures, the most popular leader in the world. Prior to the 2024 election, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) held an outright majority in the Lok Sabha (India’s Parliament) — one that was widely projected to grow after the vote count. The party regularly boasted that it would win 400 Lok Sabha seats, easily enough to amend India’s constitution along the party's preferred Hindu nationalist lines.

But when the results were announced on Tuesday, the BJP held just 240 seats. They not only underperformed expectations, they actually lost their parliamentary majority. While Modi will remain prime minister, he will do so at the helm of a coalition government — meaning that he will depend on other parties to stay in office, making it harder to continue his ongoing assault on Indian democracy.

So what happened? Why did Indian voters deal a devastating blow to a prime minister who, by all measures, they mostly seem to like?

India is a massive country — the most populous in the world — and one of the most diverse, making its internal politics exceedingly complicated. A definitive assessment of the election would require granular data on voter breakdown across caste, class, linguistic, religious, age, and gender divides. At present, those numbers don’t exist in sufficient detail. 

But after looking at the information that is available and speaking with several leading experts on Indian politics, there are at least three conclusions that I’m comfortable drawing.

First, voters punished Modi for putting his Hindu nationalist agenda ahead of fixing India’s unequal economy. Second, Indian voters had some real concerns about the decline of liberal democracy under BJP rule. Third, the opposition parties waged a smart campaign that took advantage of Modi’s vulnerabilities on the economy and democracy.

Understanding these factors isn’t just important for Indians. The country’s election has some universal lessons for how to beat a would-be authoritarian — ones that Americans especially might want to heed heading into its election in November.

-via Vox, June 7, 2024. Article continues below.

A new (and unequal) economy

Modi’s biggest and most surprising losses came in India’s two most populous states: Uttar Pradesh in the north and Maharashtra in the west. Both states had previously been BJP strongholds — places where the party’s core tactic of pitting the Hindu majority against the Muslim minority had seemingly cemented Hindu support for Modi and his allies.

One prominent Indian analyst, Yogendra Yadav, saw the cracks in advance. Swimming against the tide of Indian media, he correctly predicted that the BJP would fall short of a governing majority.

Traveling through the country, but especially rural Uttar Pradesh, he prophesied “the return of normal politics”: that Indian voters were no longer held spellbound by Modi’s charismatic nationalist appeals and were instead starting to worry about the way politics was affecting their lives.

Yadav’s conclusions derived in no small part from hearing voters’ concerns about the economy. The issue wasn’t GDP growth — India’s is the fastest-growing economy in the world — but rather the distribution of growth’s fruits. While some of Modi’s top allies struck it rich, many ordinary Indians suffered. Nearly half of all Indians between 20 and 24 are unemployed; Indian farmers have repeatedly protested Modi policies that they felt hurt their livelihoods.

“Everyone was talking about price rise, unemployment, the state of public services, the plight of farmers, [and] the struggles of labor,” Yadav wrote...

“We know for sure that Modi’s strongman image and brassy self-confidence were not as popular with voters as the BJP assumed,” says Sadanand Dhume, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies India. 

The lesson here isn’t that the pocketbook concerns trump identity-based appeals everywhere; recent evidence in wealthier democracies suggests the opposite is true. Rather, it’s that even entrenched reputations of populist leaders are not unshakeable. When they make errors, even some time ago, it’s possible to get voters to remember these mistakes and prioritize them over whatever culture war the populist is peddling at the moment.

Liberalism strikes back

The Indian constitution is a liberal document: It guarantees equality of all citizens and enshrines measures designed to enshrine said equality into law. The signature goal of Modi’s time in power has been to rip this liberal edifice down and replace it with a Hindu nationalist model that pushes non-Hindus to the social margins. In pursuit of this agenda, the BJP has concentrated power in Modi’s hands and undermined key pillars of Indian democracy (like a free press and independent judiciary).

Prior to the election, there was a sense that Indian voters either didn’t much care about the assault on liberal democracy or mostly agreed with it. But the BJP’s surprising underperformance suggests otherwise.

The Hindu, a leading Indian newspaper, published an essential post-election data analysis breaking down what we know about the results. One of the more striking findings is that the opposition parties surged in parliamentary seats reserved for members of “scheduled castes” — the legal term for Dalits, the lowest caste grouping in the Hindu hierarchy.

Caste has long been an essential cleavage in Indian politics, with Dalits typically favoring the left-wing Congress party over the BJP (long seen as an upper-caste party). Under Modi, the BJP had seemingly tamped down on the salience of class by elevating all Hindus — including Dalits — over Muslims. Yet now it’s looking like Dalits were flocking back to Congress and its allies. Why?

According to experts, Dalit voters feared the consequences of a BJP landslide. If Modi’s party achieved its 400-seat target, they’d have more than enough votes to amend India’s constitution. Since the constitution contains several protections designed to promote Dalit equality — including a first-in-the-world affirmative action system — that seemed like a serious threat to the community. It seems, at least based on preliminary data, that they voted accordingly.

The Dalit vote is but one example of the ways in which Modi’s brazen willingness to assail Indian institutions likely alienated voters.

Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s largest and most electorally important state, was the site of a major BJP anti-Muslim campaign. It unofficially kicked off its campaign in the UP city of Ayodhya earlier this year, during a ceremony celebrating one of Modi’s crowning achievements: the construction of a Hindu temple on the site of a former mosque that had been torn down by Hindu nationalists in 1992. 

Yet not only did the BJP lose UP, it specifically lost the constituency — the city of Faizabad — in which the Ayodhya temple is located. It’s as direct an electoral rebuke to BJP ideology as one can imagine.

In Maharashtra, the second largest state, the BJP made a tactical alliance with a local politician, Ajit Pawar, facing serious corruption charges. Voters seemingly punished Modi’s party for turning a blind eye to Pawar’s offenses against the public trust. Across the country, Muslim voters turned out for the opposition to defend their rights against Modi’s attacks.

The global lesson here is clear: Even popular authoritarians can overreach.

By turning “400 seats” into a campaign slogan, an all-but-open signal that he intended to remake the Indian state in his illiberal image, Modi practically rang an alarm bell for constituencies worried about the consequences. So they turned out to stop him en masse.

The BJP’s electoral underperformance is, in no small part, the direct result of their leader’s zealotry going too far.

Return of the Gandhis? 

Of course, Modi’s mistakes might not have mattered had his rivals failed to capitalize. The Indian opposition, however, was far more effective than most observers anticipated.

Perhaps most importantly, the many opposition parties coordinated with each other. Forming a united bloc called INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance), they worked to make sure they weren’t stealing votes from each other in critical constituencies, positioning INDIA coalition candidates to win straight fights against BJP rivals.

The leading party in the opposition bloc — Congress — was also more put together than people thought. Its most prominent leader, Rahul Gandhi, was widely dismissed as a dilettante nepo baby: a pale imitation of his father Rajiv and grandmother Indira, both former Congress prime ministers. Now his critics are rethinking things.

“I owe Rahul Gandhi an apology because I seriously underestimated him,” says Manjari Miller, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Miller singled out Gandhi’s yatras (marches) across India as a particularly canny tactic. These physically grueling voyages across the length and breadth of India showed that he wasn’t just a privileged son of Indian political royalty, but a politician willing to take risks and meet ordinary Indians where they were. During the yatras, he would meet directly with voters from marginalized groups and rail against Modi’s politics of hate.

“The persona he’s developed — as somebody kind, caring, inclusive, [and] resolute in the face of bullying — has really worked and captured the imagination of younger India,” says Suryanarayan. “If you’ve spent any time on Instagram Reels, [you’ll see] an entire generation now waking up to Rahul Gandhi’s very appealing videos.”

This, too, has a lesson for the rest of the world: Tactical innovation from the opposition matters even in an unfair electoral context.

There is no doubt that, in the past 10 years, the BJP stacked the political deck against its opponents. They consolidated control over large chunks of the national media, changed campaign finance law to favor themselves, suborned the famously independent Indian Electoral Commission, and even intimidated the Supreme Court into letting them get away with it. 

The opposition, though, managed to find ways to compete even under unfair circumstances. Strategic coordination between them helped consolidate resources and ameliorate the BJP cash advantage. Direct voter outreach like the yatra helped circumvent BJP dominance in the national media.

To be clear, the opposition still did not win a majority. Modi will have a third term in office, likely thanks in large part to the ways he rigged the system in his favor.

Yet there is no doubt that the opposition deserves to celebrate. Modi’s power has been constrained and the myth of his invincibility wounded, perhaps mortally. Indian voters, like those in Brazil and Poland before them, have dealt a major blow to their homegrown authoritarian faction.

And that is something worth celebrating.

-via Vox, June 7, 2024.

[burst-of-iridescent]

katara becoming “the greatest healer in the world” will never be a satisfactory ending for her character. not only because we never actually saw her heal, not only because of the gendered implications of healing, not only because she said herself that she wanted to be a fighter, but because katara’s arc in atla is about earning her own empowerment.

she fought tooth and nail to develop her waterbending skills even when she had no one to teach her, even when it put her in danger, even when she was straight up forbidden to learn. of course she had raw talent, but that would have gotten her nowhere without her own resourcefulness, creativity and willingness to learn and work hard. that’s what differentiates her from azula, her foil, and leads to her triumph over azula in the end. nothing was ever just given to her… nothing, that is, except her healing.

the moment katara discovers her healing abilities is in the aftermath of her own victimization, when her narrative is subjugated to serve her male love interest’s. her healing, like her accident at aang’s hands, is something that happens to her rather than something she actively does — and this narrative will continue to repeat itself throughout the story. katara never has to work at, develop, or fight for her healing abilities, a jarring contradiction in a show that always stresses the importance of discipline and effort to becoming a master.

nothing worth having ever comes easy, as it goes… and yet healing comes nothing but easy to katara. what, then, is the audience meant to infer about the value of healing as a skill within the narrative?

katara’s empowerment arc in atla is one catalyzed by her own agency, driven from beginning to end by her actions and choices. she fights for every bit of power she has, fails, learns, fails again, picks herself back up, and repeats the cycle over and over. the struggle is what makes her growth meaningful, just as the fight is what makes her victory worthwhile. that is what makes katara a hero, and makes her so inspiring to the many girls who saw themselves in her.

for all that resilience and hardship and strength and growth to be stripped away in the legend of korra in favour of defining katara by some underdeveloped, unexplained ability she just intrinsically has not only devalues her as a character, but also undercuts the significance and impact of her character arc in atla. and that will never, ever sit right with me.

[the-badger-mole]

Clouds, Fog and Mists

The scholars and archeologists that Aang had been working with had come out of their museum basements and dimly lit studies with a wealth of Air Nomad histories and artifacts that had been lost during the war. Aang now had access to recipes he hadn't tasted in years, scrolls that gave historical context to the things he had just begun learning at age 12, and objects he had never seen, but was excited to learn the use of. At 22, he was just now learning that the Air Nomads had a variety of subcultures and customs he'd never encountered, even though he had visited every Air Temple that existed back then.

"Did you know..." became as common to his vocabulary as "hello" and "custard tart". Every day, he approached his wife with some new bit of lore he'd learned.

"Did you know that the Southern Air Nomads had a Festival of Remembrance?" he'd excitedly asked as Katara was hanging the laundry out to try. She was only half listening while she tried to keep Bumi, their nearly three year old son out of the basket of wet sheets, but she gave a polite hum of encouragement.

"For a whole week," Aang continued needing no further prompting, "no one was allowed to play music or speak. They even wore velvet over their feet so their footsteps wouldn't be too loud. Then, at the end of it, there was a huge party! Loud as anything with music and plays and games. I think I remember going one of those ending parties, but I didn't know about the vow of silence before it."

"That's fascinating, sweetie," Katara said, rubbing her heavy belly with a look of discomfort. She was seven months along with their second child, and this one was very active. "Bumi, last warning. Do not touch the clean clothes!"

"Okay, Mommy!" Bumi said before swatting at one of the sheets Katara had hung on the line. She sighed and turned to her husband.

"Can you take him?" she asked. "I'm tired, and I'd like to take a nap after I finish this."

"Oh," Aang said reluctantly. "I was going to have an afternoon session with the Acolytes. I'm dying to tell them what I've been learning."

"Aang, please?" Katara sagged tiredly, taking Bumi's hand and pulling him away from all her hard work.

"Alright," Aang sighed. "I'll watch him for a bit. Come on, Bumi! Let's go practice some air katas! I want you to be ready when your airbending kicks in!"

-:-:-:-:-:-

All Air Nomads were airbenders. That's what Aang had always been taught. He had to account for late bloomers, of course, but at age four, going on five, if Bumi was going to be an airbender, there would've been signs by now. Kya was a lost cause. She had started waterbending just before her second birthday, and despite the fact that her father was the Avatar, there was no chance that she would inherit the ability to control more than one element.

"Well, maybe it's not true that all Air Nomads were benders," Katara said with a shrug. "After all, not every Water Tribesman is a waterbender, and not everyone in the Earth Kingdom is an earthbender."

"It's different," Aang insisted. "The monks told me that all Air Nomads were benders because we have a unique connection with our spirituality." Katara didn't quite manage to hide her annoyance from him.

"Then explain our kids," she said. "Unless you're the first Air Nomad in history to have children with a non-Air Nomad, someone somewhere got something wrong." Aang went quiet after that. He had no response.

"Just because the Air Nomads may have had children with people from other nations doesn't mean that their children were Air Nomads," an acolyte named Qiao said. She was one of the most apt and studious of Aang's Air Acolytes, and they had spent many hours together pouring over the newly discovered texts. Sometimes, Aang thought that she had a better grasp of Air Nomad culture than even he did.

"I suppose....I suppose that's true," Aang said thoughtfully, taking a sip of his tea.

"The Air Nomads were mostly not monogamous," Qiao pointed out. "I'm sure there were a lot of Nomads who had understandings with their lovers from other nations. Especially among the Air Acolytes of the day."

Aang pondered that for the rest of the day. Then the next. Then the rest of the week before he finally approached Katara. He found her by the fountain with Kya and Bumi. Kya was busy making imperfect little shapes with the water while Katara was teaching Bumi how to put his hair into a warrior's wolf tail.

"You look just like your uncle Sokka," she laughed, pressing a kiss on her son's cheek. "I bet you'll be a great warrior just like him, too." That twisted Aang's gut uncomfortably. He cleared his throat to get Katara's attention.

"Hey, sweetie," he said.

"Hey," Katara smiled at him. "We're just about to have story time. Do you want to stick around for How Umiak Rowed Her Boat to the Stars?"

"Oh, um..."Aang shifted uncomfortably on his feet. "Sure. I was just...thinking of something."

"Yeah?" Katara raised her brow at him. "What?"

"I was just thinking of how all the Air Nomads were benders." Katara didn't bother trying to hide her disgusted snort or the rolling of her eyes.

"Okay, and?" she huffed. "Did you draw any new conclusions?"

"I can't have been the only Air Nomad to have children with someone from a different culture," he said. Katara stared at him blankly for a long moment.

"I told you that," she responded finally. "It's just now sinking in?'

"No, I understood you," Aang told her. He kicked at the ground. There was a loose pebble under his toe and he focused on rolling it back and forth. "It's just...well, the Air Nomads, they weren't strictly monogamous."

"Monogamous," Katara scoffed. "That's a big word for you." Aang bristled a bit at that, but he took a breath and let it go.

"I was just reading," Aang said with a shrug. "It occurred to me that maybe because the Air Nomads weren't monogamous, they just didn't bring their non-bending kids into the Air Nomad society." Katara looked up at Aang with her eyes wide.

"That's awful!" she said. "So because their kids didn't bend the right elements, they had to be cut off from one of their parents?"

"No, I'm sure it wasn't as bad as all that-" Aang started to protest.

"What exactly are you saying, Aang?" There was a dangerous edge to Katara's voice. A warning.

"Nothing, nothing!" he scrambled back, tripping over his tongue, trying to call back his words, and cursing himself for trying to bring up the subject without a plan. Katara eyed him coldly. She was angry and trying not to show it.

"It's time for lunch," she told her children. "Let's go inside and fix something to eat."

"But Mommy," Bumi protested. "I want to hear about Umiak!" Katara turned to him with a tight smile.

"That's okay, sweetie," she said. "I'll tell you while you help me fix lunch." With one last scowl at Aang, she took Bumi's hand and swung Kya up onto her hip and went inside.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Aang felt vindicated when it was discovered that he and Qiao were right. The Air Nomads would often leave non-airbending children with their non-Nomad parents. Sometimes the Air Nomad parent would stay with their non-Nomad partners and build a life with them and their children (something he made a note to tell Katara about). Then it was discovered that they were only partially right.

Some of the Air Nomads stayed and raised mixed heritage families. Some left their non-airbending children behind with their non-Nomad partners. That was expected. Reasonable, even. What Aang was not expecting, however, were the accounts of non-airbending children being given away. Some were adopted, and those adoptions were traceable through documents and letters. Others were sold. Those transactions were traceable, too. By most accounts, those children went into indentured servitude and many of them learned trades and were able to start businesses once their indenture was up. Aang tried to focus on the positives. Katara, however, was horrified.

"What right did they have to sell those children into...into slavery?" she demanded hotly while they were getting ready for bed.

"I'm sure it wasn't that bad," Aang insisted. "After all, the Air Nomads wouldn't have put children into situations where they could've been hurt."

"Yes," Katara sneered. "I'm sure their new owners were very gentle with their exploitation."

"That isn't fair!" Aang protested. "Do you know how difficult it would've been for those kids to live among the Nomads?"

"Probably about as easy as it's been for our kids." Katara glared at Aang meaningly. He felt his cheeks heat as he looked away, pretending not to understand.

Bumi was going on eight now, and Kya was five. They were both old enough to ask questions about why it was so difficult for them to move around their own home. Katara and the Acolytes had an easier time being adults and able to maneuver obstacles that short legs and small hands couldn't without help, but it was still a regular challenge to get around the Air Temple for them. Aang was in the process of building a complex near Republic City where non-airbending Acolytes could live and learn with more ease, but it wouldn't be ready for anyone to move into for another year or so. It would be safer for children with no airbending ability, too. Aang glanced over at Katara from the corner of his eye, at the soft swell of her stomach, already showing signs of pregnancy at her second month.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Tenzin was the last of Aang's children with Katara, and the only airbender. When he was almost one, he airbent for the first time, and Aang couldn't stop celebrating for an entire week. When Tenzin was two, the first of the burial mounds were discovered.

Archaeologists working at the mostly restored Northern Air Temple found it at the base of the mountain. There were several layers to the grave, suggesting generations' worth of use. Most of the bones were small. Infant and toddler sized. The largest bones were about the size of an average eight year old. The bones were all jumbled together, as if they had been tossed in a heap. Some of them wore the clothes they were buried in, but most of the bones were too broken to hang on to any frabric. There were also no signs of any shrouds or anything indicating that they had been given any of the customary funeral rites of the Air Nomads. The fact that they were found at the base of the mountain in itself was unusual. All the different groups of Air Nomads had their own unique funeral customs, but one thing that remained the same was that they were laid to rest as close to the sky as possible.

When the first reports of how the children came to be at the base of the mountain came out, Aang was certain it was the rankest propaganda. None of the Air Nomads, no matter how stringent they were about non-airbenders living among them, would ever harm a child. For a while, he seemed to be right, as all the proof was from secondary and tertiary sources.

"Lies the Fire Nation used to justify genocide," Aang said confidently.

"But how did the children get there?" Katara asked. Aang had no answer for her. Yet. There must have been a good one, though. Maybe a plague had run through the Air Temple, forcing them to bury the bodies at the bottom of the mountain to prevent contamination, or something equally tragic. Aang began talking to the archaeologists about giving the bones a proper burial as soon as they could be sorted. The count at that time was 700 bodies in the pile and there were still so many more to go.

A few months after that, the oldest of the Air Nomad accounts were uncovered. It went back a good 300 years, and it spoke about a surplus of infants born without the gift of airbending. There were too many to be disposed of the normal ways, and many of the non-bending parents were unwilling or unable to raise the children themselves. The anonymous monk wrote of a meeting to discuss the crisis. They wouldn't be able to care for so many that couldn't get around the temple, or travel with the Nomads. There was a food shortage. A water shortage. An everything shortage. So the head monk suggested giving the children to the air. That had been the first time the practice had been recorded, near as anyone could tell. But some of the bones were older than that.

That's what they called it. It sounded lovely. Poetic even. In practice, though, the babies were carried to the edge of the temple grounds and held in the air. A short prayer was said for the souls of the children, and then they just...let go. They were so high up, they probably couldn't hear the children hit the ground.

The public began to call them the Fog Children. They were babies born to Air Nomad parents, but without airbending abilities themselves. People clung to the term and it soon spread all over the world in hushed whispers. Aang hated it. Katara hated it. It was the only thing they could agree on by that time.

"It isn't fair!" Aang bemoaned. "It's like people are using it to justify the Fire Nation killing all the Air Nomads."

"If it bothers you so much," Katara said after she'd put the kids to bed, "then speak up! Condemn what they did."

"I do!" Aang insisted. He had protested, loudly that all of the Air Nomads shouldn't be judged by what one fringe sect did.

"Not just them," Katara said. "All of it. It's just like with the Fire Nation. Remember what Zuko said? You can't expect to move forward without acknowledging the past. All of it was wrong. The Air Nomads treated their non-bending children as if they had no value. Condemn the adoptions and abandonings and the selling of the children!"

"How is it my responsibility to make up for all of that?" Aang demanded.

"You're the only one left," Katara reminded him, trying to be gentle. "I'm not saying you have to call the Air Nomads monsters. They did something wrong. They were human. You can acknowledge that and commit to being better than that."

"How?"

"Start with your children."

It had been a frequent argument between Katara and Aang how Aang treated their children. Bumi was 13 now, well on his way to becoming a man. Kya was 11 and Tenzin was five. Often, Katara would quiz Aang on his children- what Kya's favorite color was, or the name of Bumi's best friend. Aang could admit that he was correct about Tenzin more often than the others, but it was only because Aang had so much he had to teach his youngest. Katara should've understood that. After all, there were things she did with Kya that she couldn't do with Bumi or Tenzin.

"It's not the same," Katara told him. Aang could never remember why, though.

For the next year or so, Aang spent much of his time doing damage control. He did his best to separate the practices at the Northern Air Temple and the particular sect of Air Nomad culture that grew around it from the rest of the Air Nomads. Every criticism of the culture was met sharply by Aang's rebuttals and justifications. Penning article after article espousing the virtues of the Air Nomads at large became his full time job, and obsession. It took him two weeks to notice that Katara had left with all three of his children, and another month for him to find the letter Katara had left in his bedside table telling him she was seeking a divorce.

He got Tenzin three months of the year. It was all he could manage, being completely unused to parenting alone. Aang taught his son what he could of airbending and the Nomad philosophy he could in that time, and did his best to ignore the people whispering fog children in the same breath as his oldest children.

[emletish-fish]

Damn, I love this show.

Even years later, I get to see a brand new take.

Aang's feelings of cultural superiority are a valid part of his identity and so so understandable. He's the last one! He's the only air-nomad left! Of course he's going to cling to his culture and defend it against everyone - even his friends.

Of course he's going to look at the broken violent war-torn world he woke up in and think 'damn, this place was much better with air-nomads.' The airnomad solution was the right answer to every problem. It was his way of honouring his people.

And

And

And

He's so damn young when the genocide happens that he never reached that teenage rebellious questioning phase where he might have started examining his culture in a safe environment.

So he only has this childhood simplified non violence as the guiding principle.

And pacifism is a beautiful principle.

But peace takes work!

Peace needs patience and listening to other views and tolerance and kindness and compromise.

Pacifism does not mean running away to avoid the problem. It does not mean forcing everyone to agree.

And Aang was too young to fully absorb that.

So of course, of course of course, forcing his 'peaceful' world view on the world is the solution he reaches.

And now I'm getting 'treaty of Versailles' vibes from the whole comics world, and the inherent tragedy that all of Aang's struggles for peace just created more violence. How he propped up oppressive systems because they were familiar. How he ended up erecting vainglorious statues of himself towering over a city. How his wisdom could never be questioned even when it was obviously wrong...

Oh Aang.

To Be Fair -

I don't think bryke really 'got' Aang, or Buddhism or pacifism. They saw him as a reflection of themselves - a Midwest American nice guy- (jeez they even animate adult Aang to look exactly like one of them). Its their ideas for Aang that we see on screen in the back half of season3 and comics and Korra.

They give Aang a Midwestern Nice Guy happy ending without ever considering whether this would have made Aang happy.

(spoilers - it didn't. LOK shows us the entire air family were miserable in their own unique way.)

The Ehasz were really wanting to explore Aang's identity through his attachment struggles. So I genuinely think this was a storyline/plot point that was set up to be dealt with. We have a great two and a half season set up for it.

I'm not sure if the Aang and Ozai parallels are deliberate. Most of the concrete parallels come from LOK, which didn't have the full writing team (and it shows). Damn, they even had Aang show overt favouritism and rejecting his non airbending kids....

They did Aang so dirty!

I'm so mad whenever I think about it.

Look what they did to my boy!

And if they were trying to make an absolute power corrupts absolutely plot point then great...

But they WEREN'T!

Anyway...

Back to the whole attachment arc and how it is about learning to let go, and putting others needs first.

We know there were huge squabbles in the writing room in season 3 (and boy it shows in how disjointed that season is tonally to the other two). We have so many tantalising rumors about what might have been if the ehasz storylines had been followed.

And I can watch the dragon prince to see the ehasz writing team flesh out their ideas on attachment. What is happening in Claudia's storyline especially with regards to how her attachment to her father is leading her to make some awful decisions and how her father has come to a place were he wants to let go. Viren wants to feel the sun on his face but Claudia wants to drag him back to the darkness because at least they are together there ... and she's physically dragging him across xadia during this process and Viren is horrified at her path. He made all his choices based on love, so how did it come to this....

(oh my Gosh. This show. The Dragon Prince! it is amazing and I love it).

Anyway I can think to myself that in a different world, with different writers, Aang's identity would have been fully explored and handled with care. He would have learned to make peace, with himself, with his past, with his duty, with the world.

And I guess this is why this show still has an active fandom and is generating new fanfic.

Because if we can't have it in canon, then I want to write it.

No but I do find it extremely performative when certain parts of the fandom are like "this part of atla and this nonwhite culture is symbolic for the bad parts of white American imperialism but this other nonwhite culture represents the good parts."

I'm talking about the people who say with their whole chest that Aang should use his power as Avatar to abolish the fire nation monarchy or destroy them as a political entity and culture, without recognizing that Aang is as much a creation of white American authors as Zuko is. And what's more, Aang is the hero. His power and authority is never questioned the way Zuko is forced to question his.

Even if we use the fire nation as a 1:1 representation of Japan - which doesn't work in any case because it's a fantasy show that pulls from so many different cultural influences - even if we did pretend the fire nation was Japan, though, like I guess we all forgot the atrocities America committed in Japan in the name of world peace.

"Aang should use his Avatar powers to destroy the Fire Nation" sounds a lot like "let's nuke them" at a certain point.

"Aang should abolish the Fire Nation monarchy and establish a democracy" sounds a lot like what America did in the Middle East.

The thing about imperialism is that it never comes in announcing itself as the bad guy, it always presents itself in terms of the greater good. This is something that atla itself actually addresses but the fandom apparently forgot.

[sapphic-agent]

"Katara was an old lady! You can't expect her to fight!!"

😐

Do people not understand what Katara being completely non-combative in LOK says about her? Zuko became active again to protect his daughter from the Red Lotus. Toph became active again to save her daughter, son-in-law, and grandsons from Kuvira.

How many times were Katara's children and grandchildren in danger? And she was nowhere to be found, not once. Genuinely, how the fuck do you think that makes her look compared to Zuko and Toph (one of which is older than she is)? Are you going to look me in the eye and tell me there's nothing wrong with that? Are you going to try and tell me that this is Master Katara of the Southern Water Tribe?

Nope. Not buying it. That is not the Katara I grew up with. That is not the Katara I looked up to my whole life.

Stop defending her treatment in LOK. There's no excuse for what Bryke did to her. They completely assassinated everything that made Katara who she was. If you think differently, you never understood her character

[rightwheretheyleftme]

Kya’s life is nightmare fuel for young women

I just watched the last episode that Kya appears in (Korra Alone) and I’ve been thinking about how so much of her story are just women and girls’ worst fears:

- Being openly neglected by your father

- Being belittled by your brothers, even in adulthood

- Not getting recognition for your sacrifices

- Finding out that your father never even mentioned your existence to his inner circle

- Having to take care of your elderly mom with no help from anyone else in your family

- Never getting to be included in half of your heritage (unlike your brother who got his trauma fixed via magic)

- Ending your story stuck at your hometown even though you clearly like to travel and prefer a nomadic lifestyle

Everyone talks about how shitty Lin’s life was but it’s Kya’s story that really breaks my heart. She didn’t even get a proper ending, they just tossed her in the South Pole and forgot about her, the same fate as her mother.

[darklinaforever]

Me, when someone dares to tell me that Korrasami is better than Caitvi :

Or even at the same level, while this ship of tlok is (sorry to the fans) super poorly written :

Seriously, this ship is one of the worst queer relationships I've seen in fiction with Chaggie from Hazbin Hotel ! And I'm not difficult though.

Korrasami is a bad ship, and I don't understand its popularity. Already it's a bad ship which is part of a bad show...

I guess it's because it was still pretty rare for real representation in a children's show at the time, but still. Objectivity as you grow up please ?

[jumumo]

There's something so sinister about the fact that Katara is shunted away from the story when she should be way more involved in Korra's arc. Korra's seemingly main conflict is her sheltered life with her fiery passion for enacting justice and learning to temper it with diplomacy. Who's an old person in the series that has dealt with injustice, who always took direct action to correct them in any way she can and had moved to a more diplomatic role once there wasn't an active war?

Katara fits so well in Korra's story it's not even funny. Imagine Korra having a mentor from the devastated but resilient Southern Water Tribes that was the THE last water bender at a point and can absolutely do girl talk with? Imagine Korra having a tangible connection to the history of her Tribe. Imagine writing Korra to have connections to the place that was the next most affected by the war. Imagine writing a Korra where that mattered to her character.

The way she was canonically written, she don't really give a damn. And that's heartbreaking. And most likely a blind spot with the writers. Especially when passing down cultural traditions and respecting elders is one the most important things to happen to communities where there were attempts to erase them.

[starlight-bread-blog]

Some people suggest that Katara became a trophy wife to Aang in TLoK. In my opinion the writing of the Gaang in TLok isn't very good, (and I'll discuss this later), but this critisism is not it. In her introduction, Katara is refered to as "Master Katara", she's a high ranking member of the White Lotus - and her most highlighted relationship is with Korra. She is the one who helps her recover from Zaheer, and she is the one who advises that she should meet Tenzin. Her relationship with Aang is very rarely the focus. Katara is not a trophy wife, nor is she reduced to Aang's partner.

This isn't to say that the writing in TLoK is perfect, I can name 5 issues from the top of my head.

She doesn't have a statue as she deserves.

She wasn't present during the bloodbending trial.

Katara is the only living Gaang member without a fight scene.

She wasn't present during her own grandaughter airbending ceremony.

When her children discussed their flawed childhood, we never heard of Katara's parenting and perspective.

But as you can see, none of these issues can be fixed by Katara not ending up with Aang or ending up with a different character. None of this issues suggest that Katara is living in specifically Aang's shadow.

Heck, even if Katara was a trophy wife (which she isn't), that wouldn't be a problem with Kataang, it would be a problem with TLoK. Compare this (hypothetical) situation to the very not hypothetical situation of the comics. Many if not all of the characters act incredibly out of character (if I remember correctly, but for argument's sake let's say that they are). Aang promises to kill Zuko if he ever becomes like his father. That is out of character. He couldn't kill a genocidal dictator because of his cultural values. It was very powerful in the original. So what, does that mean that Aang has given up on preserving his nearly dead culture, and that we should hold him accountable for it? Of course not. He's being out of character. His promise is a comics problem, not an Aang problem.

This is the same with Kataang in TLoK. It wouldn't be a Kataang problem, it'd be a TLoK problem. Because in A:TLA, Katara is anything but a trophy wife. She is the narrator, the central character of many episodes, a master waterbender, a teacher, a healer - she is the hero alongside Aang. If you cannot link Katara being a trophy wife to A:TLA, you should take no issue with A:TLA. Katara hypothetically being a trophy wife has nothing to do with the original cartoon. Again, it wouldn't be a Kataang problem, it'd be a TLoK problem.

But then again, Katara isn't a trophy wife to begin with.

[l00se-can0n]

where do people get this idea that when someone says that katara was reduced to aang's wife and the mother of his kids in lok, that means that katara had zero achievements? ofc katara had achievements in lok, the problem is that she was rarely involved in politics like the rest of the gaang when she's shown to be very passionate about changing the world in atla and she doesn't get much characterization outside of her relationship to korra, her children, and aang (ffs aang and sokka are dead and they still get more characterization than her in lok). she never gets to be her own person and that's what fans have a problem with.

[coconutsaiyan]

I don’t care if this offends someone but if you think Aang was as bad as Ozai when it comes to parenting then you’re a fucking idiot.

Like the mental gymnastics you have to make to come to a conclusion proves you don’t have a lot of brain cells

Tenzin said they were a happy family at the end and Bumi and Kya obviously agreed.

[reasonsforhope]

"It was widely described as the week that India’s beleaguered democracy was pulled back from the brink. As the election results rolled in on Tuesday [June 4, 2024], all predictions and polls were defied as Narendra Modi lost his outright majority for the first time in a decade while the opposition re-emerged as a legitimate political force. On Sunday evening, Modi will be sworn in as prime minister yet many believe his power and mandate stands diminished.

For one opposition politician in particular, the humbling of the strongman prime minister was a moment to savour. Late last year, Mahua Moitra, one of the most outspoken critics of Modi and his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), found herself unceremoniously expelled from parliament and kicked out of her bungalow, after what she described as a “political witch-hunt” for daring to stand up to Modi.

The murky and allegedly undemocratic circumstances of Moitra’s expulsion from parliament was seen by many to symbolise Modi’s approach to dissenting voices and the steady erosion of India’s democracy. She was among several vocal opposition politicians who were subjected to investigations by government crime agencies.

But having won a landslide re-election in her home state of West Bengal, Moitra will return once again to parliament, part of the newly empowered opposition coalition. “I can’t wait,” said Moitra. “They went to egregious lengths to discredit and destroy me and abused every process to do it. If I had gone down, it would have meant that brute force had triumphed over democracy.”

While he may be returning for a historic third term, many have portrayed the results as something of a defeat for Modi, who has had to rely on coalition partners to form a government. The BJP’s campaign had been solely centred around him – even the manifesto was titled “Modi’s guarantee” – and in many constituencies, local BJP candidates often played second fiddle to the prime minister, who loomed large over almost every seat. He told one interviewer he believed his mandate to rule was given directly by God.

“Modi’s aura was invincibility, that the BJP could not win elections without him,” said Moitra. “But the people of India didn’t give him a simple majority. They were voting against authoritarianism and they were voting against fascism. This was an overwhelming, resounding anti-Modi vote.”

During his past decade in power, Modi and the BJP enjoyed a powerful outright majority and oversaw an unprecedented concentration of power under the prime minister’s office, where key decisions were widely known to be made by a select few.

The Modi government was accused of imposing various authoritarian measures, including the harassment and arrest of critics under terrorism laws, while the country tumbled in global democracy and press freedom rankings. Modi never faced a press conference or any committee of accountability for the often divisive actions of his government. Politicians regularly complained that parliament was simply reduced to a rubber-stamping role for the BJP’s Hindu-first agenda.

Yet on Tuesday [June 40, it became clear that the more than 25 opposition parties, united as a coalition under the acronym INDIA, had inflicted substantial losses on the BJP to take away its simple majority. Analysts said the opposition’s performance was all the more remarkable given that the BJP stands accused of subverting and manipulating the election commission, as well as putting key opposition leaders behind bars and far outspending all other parties on its campaign. The BJP has denied any attempts to skew the election in its favour.

“This election proved that the voter is still the ultimate king,” said Moitra. “Modi was so shameless, yet despite them using every tool they had to engineer this election to their advantage, our democracy fought back.”

Moitra said she was confident it was “the end of Mr Modi’s autocratic way of ruling”. Several of the parties in the BJP’s alliance who he is relying on for a parliamentary majority and who will sit in Modi’s cabinet do not share his Hindu nationalist ideology...

Moitra was not alone in describing this week’s election as a reprieve for the troubling trajectory of India’s democracy. Columns heralding that the “mirror has cracked” and the “idea of India is reborn” were plastered across the country’s biggest newspapers, and editorials spoke of the end of “supremo syndrome”. “The bulldozer now has brakes,” wrote the Deccan Chronicle newspaper. “And once a bulldozer has brakes, it becomes just a lawnmower.” ...

“This was not a normal election, it was clearly an unfair and unlevel playing field,” said Yadav. “But still, there is now a hope and a possibility that the authoritarian element could be reversed.”

Harsh Mander, one of India’s most prominent human rights and peace activists who is facing numerous criminal investigations for his work, called the election the “most important in India’s post independence history”, adding: “The resilience of Indian democracy has proved to be spectacular.”

He said it was encouraging that an “intoxication of majoritarian hate politics” had not ultimately shaped the outcome, referring to Modi’s apparent attempts to stir up religious animosity on the campaign trail as he referred to Muslims as “infiltrators” and “those who have more children”.

“The past decade has seen the freedom of religion and the freedom of conscience and dissent taken away,” said Mander. “If this election had gone fully the BJP way, then India would not remain a constitutional secular democracy.”"

-via The Guardian, June 9, 2024

[burst-of-iridescent]

Personally Kat.aang looks bad to me because Aang gave his most lightest skinned child special treatment 💀 there were air acolytes who weren’t air benders themselves but were still dedicated to keeping the culture alive so leaving Kya and Bumi out on account of them not being air benders is absolute bullsh*t. You don’t see Zutara shippers calling Kat.aang shippers racist because of it 🤔

yeah see this is one of those things that again ties back to bry.ke being totally oblivious about the implications of what they were writing because the optics of the kat.aang family are… troubling, to put it nicely.

the darker-skinned woman is a waterbender. the lighter-skinned man is an airbender. the nonbender is conveniently in-between. their clothing all correspond strictly to their individual elements (except bumi who gets chucked to red for the audacity of not being born an airbender — at least till he conveniently turns into one). if you knew nothing of these characters you’d never know they were biracial at all.

which is just… so disappointing. part of the reason i love zutara is how the fandom handles the incorporation of both cultures, and yet bry.ke couldn’t even be bothered to do the bare fucking minimum of at least having the kat.aang kids in blue and yellow clothes. if you’re going to claim that a significant aspect of this new, postwar world is the increased cultural exchange across nations then the kat.aang family of all people should be emblematic of that change! but no, instead of taking the opportunity to actually delve into and depict the intricacies of a blended household, we might as well just stick to the same shit we’ve been doing since atla because why think of something new, right?

it’s even more troubling that within the strange cultural division of the ka kids, it’s katara’s culture that gets the shaft. tenzin’s entire family might as well be air nomads through and through, and while bumi and kya seem to have been intentionally excluded from air nomad culture through no fault of their own, they don’t seem to know (or care) any more about their swt heritage either. the natural conclusion to draw from that is evidently that katara’s culture just doesn’t matter as much as aang’s in their family, and that paints a very disturbing picture of how aang views his wife’s heritage (especially with the worldbuilding of atla portraying the air nomads as ‘spiritually pure’ in comparison to everyone else).

i have no patience for the common ka defense that aang is a survivor of genocide so his culture should take more priority because a) katara is also a genocide survivor, as ka stans are so fond of pointing out until it doesn’t work in their favour and b) why are we acting like cultural integration is some sort of zero sum game? tenzin, kya and bumi aren’t going to run out of space for their air nomad traditions and practices just because they know more about their swt background as well. there’s no arbitrary limit on how much you can learn of your heritage.

yes, i know bry.ke didn’t intend for the ka family to come across this way. but whether the implications were purposeful or not, they still exist, and it’s fucking galling that the fandom will call zutara and zutara shippers racist all while defending the shitty writing choices of two american white men — and then pat themselves on the back for being progressive, as if genuine activism means harassing real poc in the name of fictional ones.

[the-badger-mole]

So you were like the first person I saw call Aang out for being a bad father, and I'm watching through LoK for the first time now and there's this scene where (this is after Bumi gets airbending) Bumi says "even though I'm Aang's son, I never really felt like part of the Air Nation" and then Tenzin is like "You are now." NOW???? GIRL WHAT???? Literally HOW does anyone defend Aang's parenting when one of his sons is like "you're right, you never were part of this half of your heritage, but now you are, because you've earned it"

Listen...when I tell you my anger in that moment was transcendent! Had I had just one more cup of espresso, I'd have shifted dimensions into the ATLA universe and slapped the taste out of Tenzin. I'd have hit him hard enough that Bryke would've felt it, because WHO looks at that moment and think it speaks to a healthy family dynamic???? And even then, at least Bumi got some sort of resolution to his issue with Aang. Kya? Crickets...

I can never be harsh enough on Aang because in canon, he's an absolute creep of a character. His nascent physical abuse of Katara is canon, but because he's small, bald and has a Pollyanna smile, we're not allowed to hate him. Luckily, I've always been a bit of a rebel.