cartoonsareawesme

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fiance betrayal

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I love that opera sits in this limbo where it's extremely well-known but not really beyond a surface level recognition, so you get commercials for makeup or whatever to the tune of the I Hate Women So Much It's Unreal aria

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Attempting to get my students to fucking come to class

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Sometimes I think about how ironic Hamilton was in that he was really poor but managed himself an education and became a General and worked in government, but came to dislike the poor because they were uneducated. Like, damn. That went the other way.

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“no one’s ever mad at me unless they tell me so” is the best assumption i’ve ever made

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cleared so hard

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There was a young man from Peru

Whose limericks stopped at line two

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Reblog if you also think Toph shouldn’t have been a cop.

I want to see how “unpopular” this opinion really is outside cop-worshipping Reddit.

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The spirits don't tell them zip.

One of their kids just starts sprouting stuff about spirits and murder and they collectively go 'Oh, it's that one'.

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there’s a reason why the entire story of avatar the last airbender begins and ends with katara. there’s a reason why we are introduced to katara first before we are introduced to any other character. there’s a reason why katara is the narrator. there’s a reason why the creators have emphasized over and over again that katara is just as titular to the story as aang - she’s the other main character.

when you water down katara - remove her compassion, her ability to connect with others, her nurturing role, her ANGER and RAGE and DRIVE - you water down the very fundamentals of the story. you drastically and severely alter the core dynamics of the gaang, because katara was so important to the development of every single one of them. she was the rock and glue that held team avatar together.

katara was unlike any other character to ever appear on television; she was a young brown girl who took no shit from anyone, yet at the same time remained kind and compassionate and nurturing. katara was a force of nature; proud of her heritage and culture, burdened by the responsibility of being the last southern water bender of the water tribe, angered over the death of her mother and everything that the fire nation took from her, determined to help every single person in need, determined to change the world, angry and resentful because old men and rules and laws kept telling her what she could or could not do, thus, she was determined to restructure thousands of years of patriarchy that stood against her from accomplishing her goals and dreams.

watering down katara into at most 2-3 tangible characteristics, stripping her away of all her motivation and agency and nuance, telling the audience that she wants to help and change the world only to have her stand in the background with an air of grief, demonstrates that the writers of the live action fundamentally misunderstand the spirit of avatar. and that’s something so unforgivable. no matter how many changes they decide to make, or how much they decide to stay true to the original story in other areas, no matter how many flashy VFX fight scenes we get - if you fail to properly understand katara, you fail to understand the heart and soul of avatar the last airbender, everything that makes avatar such a timeless classic.

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Sometimes I think about how and why some people had such a *bad* reaction to the end of Steven Universe, specifically in regards to the Diamonds living.

Even though they no longer are causing harm to others and are able to actually undo some of their previous harm by living, some folks reacted as though this ending was somehow morally suspect. Morally bankrupt, even.

And I think it might be because so many of us were raised on a very specific kind of kids media trope:

They all fall to their deaths.

Disney loves chucking their bad guys off cliffs. And it makes sense- in a moral framework where villains *must* be punished (regardless of whether their death will actually prevent further harm or not), but killing of any kind is morally bad for the hero, the narrative must find a way to kill the villain without the protagonists doing a murder.

It's a moral assumption that a person can *deserve* to die, that it is cosmically just for them to die, that them dying is evidence that the story itself is morally good and correct. Scar *deserves* to die, but it would be bad for Simba to kill him. So....cliff. (edit: yes, cliff then hyenas. But cliff first. Lol.)

Steven Universe, whatever else it's faults, took a step back and said "but if killing people is bad, then people dying is bad", and instead of dropping White Diamond off a cliff, asked "what would actual *restorative*, not punitive, justice look like? What would actual reparations mean here? If the goal is to heal, not just to punish, how do we handle those who have done harm?" And then did that.

Which I think is interesting, and that there was pushback against it is interesting.

It also reminds me of the folks who get very weird about Aang not killing Ozai at the end of Avatar. And like, Ozai still gets chucked in prison, so it doesn't even push back on our cultural ideas of punitive justice *that much.* and still, I've seen people get real mad that the child monk who is the last survivor of a genocide that wiped out his entire pacifist culture didn't do a murder.

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I think the most hilarious place to put Post-Canon Sokka would have been the university at Ba Sing Se. I think he would have made a great unhinged professor. Also, in true Sokka fashion, he should have completely dodged fame. Momo is more famous than he is.

He wants to demonstrate to the class how this thing called electricity works, so he's going to be bringing in a Firebender, so everybody be cool, we're all friends here... and in walks Princess Azula of the Fire Nation. One-time conqueror of the city. One of the students is currently writing an essay on how her brief rule of the city affected fruit trade. She says she considers the class to still be her subjects as she doesn't acknowledge any pretenders to any of her thrones, but for now you're exempted from bowing and "Your Highness" will do. It's a really interesting lecture.

"Okay, guys - hey, listen up, everyone - I won't be here next week, me and Aang are going to-" yeah right, sure, Professor Sokka knows the Avatar. Except, of course, the Avatar walks in sheepishly and says that Appa might have gotten into Sokka's hybrid crops, and then you all have to sit there and watch your professor chase the Avatar around with a sword.

One postgrad student is specializing in Water Tribe Cultures. She's currently studying the massive cultural shift that happened in the Northern Water Tribe at the end of the war - oh, and Professor, I absolutely know that you're from the Southern Water Tribe, but it's just that the shift started with Master Katara, and of course I don't think that every person from the South knows one another haha it's just that I need to ask her some questions and I thought maybe you could help me write a letter or write a letter of introduction or...

Sokka looks at her blankly and goes "yeah, she's my sister. KATARA!" which is followed by a faint answering "fuck you!" from Somewhere and to the horror/elation of our postgrad, Master Katara bursts in and is promptly beaned in the head with a rock by Professor Sokka. Her brother. her hero and her professor are siblings and currently brawling on the floor.

Sokka does not teach or study history, but he does sometimes sit in on lectures about recent history. Whenever he does, several doctoral students flock in to sit near him (even if it's an intro course) so that they can eavesdrop on his grumbling. (No matter how they try, an "overheard utterance" is not a valid source according to their professors. No, we have no sources on the Avatar's bison taking part in combat - sky bison are not war animals and...)

He gets regular deliveries with the Beifong family crest on them, and he goes "sweet, Toph must have found some new minerals" and at this point nobody needs to ask which Toph. He seems to have friends everywhere, literally everywhere. Wang was headed out to this massive swamp to study if it's one big organism, and Sokka told him to find some guy named Hue and "don't mind the loincloth." One time the university gets shut down because the Earth King wants to visit. Oh, visit the University? What an honor- Of fucking course not, he wants to visit Professor Sokka, who yells at him and his royal guards for interrupting his day. The Earth King and his many, many royal guards then sheepishly say sorry and file out.

The last straw is when - not a week after he yelled at the Earth King - the assistant head of the Political Science dept walks in to the faculty lounge to find Sokka having tea with a nice normal man dressed in Earth greens for once, and can't resist a little joke. "Let me guess, you're having tea with the Fire Lord." And then she can instantly tell that she fucked up, because both of them go stock still.

So when the two men awkwardly stand up and proceed to introduce the Fire Lord whose portrait she has in her office because she is the assistant head of Political Science as Li, a server at the Jasmine Dragon, she just says "hello Li" and leaves to find a bottle of something strong.

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I need to admit something to the US Tumblrinas. Philadelphia isn't a place to me. It's a cream cheese. You say "philadelphia" or "philly" and I immediately, and exclusively, think of the cream cheese. "Twelve people die in Philadelphia disaster" wow that must've been a Molasses Flood style event

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Do you want to be politically pure in theory or help your neighbor. Is it fruitless to help your neighbor because there's no Perfect Pure way to do it ?

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this is, as the kids say, frying me (a glasses wearer)

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