#also they're not totems they're more just animal teachers

[oneatlatime]

The Waterbending Master

Finally! Only took the whole season to find one.

This one apparently also has commentary. I'll leave it off for now.

After countless episodes without, we finally have another hybrid animal. Behold:

A koala Sea-otter? That makes noises like a Raven. Alright.

Sokka saying "I'm not one to complain" is a) pretty damning evidence of his amount of self-awareness b) self-deprecating sarcasm c) a funny line that I'm reading too deeply into

Why is Appa flying so low anyway?

Subtle signs that these guys are way too used to relying on bending: -no railings -no alternate propulsion source (seriously, not even an oar?) -no emergency supplies in case a trip runs long (I don't even see an emergency sandwich, and come on guys, it's not like waterbending controls the weather)

Random pinball bumper style ice stabbies does seem like a good defense though.

Not so subtle exposition dump from Zhao the asshole. Avatar writers are usually better at integrating catch-up dialogue. Looks like Aang will be arriving just in time to defend the Water tribe from the invasion that, ironically, he summoned. Talk about self-inflicted problems. Do you think if Aang had found a waterbending teacher somewhere else, the Fire Nation would have left the water tribe alone for another hundred years? Aang's been learning on the run; they could have picked up a single waterbender and hightailed it back to some cave in the earth kingdom to learn there. Or the water tribe could have sent a waterbender out to find the gaang as soon as rumours of the avatar reached them. See? This was avoidable.

Always love me some sea-bison.

They have bending doors like Omashu. Actually is this a door or a lock? I think the water level is changing.

Is this a hybrid animal? The yak thing, not the two legger.

Last time you got a hero's welcome, Suki's village burnt down. Foreshadowing?

How often does this lady see sea-bisons? She just passed by one and didn't even bat an eye. Is there a secret sea-bison colony that's spent the last 100 years hiding from the fire nation in the north pole?

Music Night! Need a better lyricist.

What's going on here? Did they roast a giant turtle thing and now they're cooling it to serve by dunking it in water? Did they feel the need for a steam effect for the guy's speech so they heated up a giant thingy and dunked it in water? Is it a weird boat thing? It looks like it has a face. I bet it's a ritual object.

Are these pot stacks the water tribe version of Totem Poles?

Oh nuh uh. Nope. 16 is way too young to marry.

This girl is so into him I can feel it through the screen, the dvd player, and the 15+ years since this aired.

Even the head guy's like "yeah, he's an asshole, What can you do?" Let's put this asshole and Zhao the asshole in a room together. They can out-asshole each other. Should be fun.

Remember back in episode three when I said that Zuko needed to learn how to lie? This is why.

Nevermind, we don't need to put Zhao and Paku in a room together to out-asshole each other. Paku wins. As far as I've seen, bending is not gender specific, either in who gets it or how it's taught/used. What kind of idiot would tell someone born with the ability to wield an incredible weapon that, actually, they aren't allowed to? How did this attitude get instilled in the first place? Why didn't the first guy who ever said this get slashed to death by ice stabbies thrown by the ten nearest female benders? Are these northern water tribe people so unbothered by the war that they can afford to sideline 50% of their forces? More than sideline, render incapable of defending themselves or others? Obviously this tribe is far too privileged if they can afford this attitude. And also far too bored. I guess hiding behind that giant ice wall for 100 years left them so understimulated that they turned on themselves.

Bad attitude? Fucking bad attitude!?! There's only one guy in this episode with a bad attitude and it isn't Katara. Zhao looks downright pleasant compared to this Paku guy.

Question for Paku: why would the Northern Water Tribe's rules apply to a Southern Water Tribe member?

My god these two are so cute. Sokka could propose they disembowel whale carcasses for their activity and the princess would say yes.

So the parrot lizard did survive the fall over the waterfall.

They're little tiny children. Katara, who has spent her whole life wanting to learn to bend to fight, has literally been shoved back into the igloo with a bunch of babies to learn lady-bending (no offence to the babies). How how HOW is she so calm right now? If I were in her situation, I think I'd be so angry I'd be ugly crying. And also plotting how to murder that Paku guy.

WHAT.

Paku the asshole is apparently a proponent of the tell don't show philosophy of teaching. The Tell-while-doing-unspeakable-things-to-my-lunch don't show philosophy.

Unexpected backstory. This lady must have been pretty close to Gran Gran if she recognises a carving she presumably wore for maybe a few months about 50 years ago or more. Also this lady is shockingly dumb if she can't see why Gran Gran left this misogynistic hellhole, but I guess it can be hard to see it while you're in it.

Nitpick time: How does the teacher recognise this? Isn't this just the water tribe symbol? Probably the most common symbol in the whole north pole?

Nosferatu Zuko. Nosferzuko. Zukoratu? Iroh's pause here was so long that I checked in case I had muted by accident. And how does your crew being taken by Zhao the asshole make your crew traitors Zuko? Orders are orders.

So we're adding asassinating royals to our list of reasons Zhao is an asshole. I think he's won the title back from Paku.

Fuck this port I guess.

Zuko's dead. Huh. Bye then. Gotta say I don't get why he's so big in the fandom.

This princess sure does send some mixed messages. At least she didn't ghost him.

"Master Poophead." My God. It's perfect. Why didn't I think of that?

Aang passing on what he learns to Katara. Why didn't I think of that either? My plan was to get Katara to launch unprovoked attacks on Paku's students and study how they defend themselves until she can copy / surpass them. Mostly so I could watch Katara beat the crap out of sexists.

Die mad about it you troglodyte. Disrespect? How nice it must be to have enough of your culture left that it can be disrespected. And you're going to deny the avatar training, thus dooming the whole world to death via fire nation, because you're butthurt? Freakin manbaby.

YES! YES! BEAT HIS ASS! PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE!!!!!!

"I know. I don't care." + "I'm not doing it for you." = I'm officially in love with Katara. I took a while to warm up to her, I admit the first few episodes were a little rough, but this seals the deal.

This screenshot sparks joy. Last episode Aang bitchslapped a fire nation guy with air. This episode it's Katara's turn with water. The Firelord Uber-Bitchslapped Zuko with fire a few years ago. All I need is an earth bitchslap and my collection will be complete. Avatar: master of all four bitchslaps. Also this wouldn't have worked to goad Paku into fighting if he was half as mature as he thinks he is. Although he gets points for being harder to goad than Zhao in the Deserter.

In an episode where the A plot is Katara, the B plot is Aang, the C plot is Zuko, and the D plot is Sokka's love life, the writers still manage to fulfill the Beat up Sokka quota. Good job guys.

If only she'd aimed a couple of inches to the left. This show already includes a kid getting his face burned off. Surely a Poophead being separated from his nose is ok?

That's twice now she's lost her necklace. If the carving has lasted 50+ years, surely it's earned a metal chain rather than a hair ribbon?

Gran Gran! Bullet dodged! Excellent call!

That's a lot less beat up than I was expecting. And Iroh has never once given the impression that he isn't quietly ride or die for Zuko, so why would Zuko not expect Iroh to help him? Because Zuko isn't terribly perceptive? Because the writers needed a way to deliver yet more exposition?

I did notice that the healing lady specified that Gran gran was in an arranged marriage but Poophead was talking about love. Again, why was Gran Gran leaving a mystery?

Underrated moment of wisdom from Aang here. He gets why the princess is upset and he's twelve! But I'd bet good money that the idiot on the right has no clue what's going on.

Princess ran so far away that it's night time now. This episode is not subtle anywhere, so I figured that the princess being engaged was the cause of this whole blowing hot and cold thing. Despite being 16 and fictional, Sokka handles mixed signals and rejection with 10000% more maturity and kindness than many unfortunately non-fictional grown men I've met. Kudos to Sokka for being honest and respectful.

Even redeemed, Poophead is still an asshole.

Well that's a problem.

Fire Nation ships would be a lot more intimidating if they didn't look like shoes.

Final Thoughts

This episode was a lot of exposition, a lot of set up, and even some catch up. And it was not done as gracefully as this show usually does it. More than once the dialogue between characters felt like two actors lecturing the audience rather than the characters we know.

This episode also had twice the concentration of assholes. A Zhao episode I can deal with. An episode with a one shot asshole where Zhao doesn't appear? I could also deal with. But TWO grade A assholes in ONE episode? No. Too much.

My whole-hearted congratulations to Gran Gran for seeing Poophead for what he was, and refusing to put up with it. Leaving his ass didn't make him get the message. 50+ years alone didn't make him get the message. The granddaughter that ought to have been his being so disgusted by his conduct that she attempts to cut his face off didn't make him get the message. There was no way that this idiot was going to change. So congrats to Gran Gran for making an excellent call, leaving his ass to freeze, and getting two most excellent grandchildren instead.

I also have to applaud Sokka and Katara for not being bitter about the Northern Water Tribe. I can't help but notice the spectacular architecture, complete with embellishments and unnecessary non-structural doodads. Let's do a quick comparison (ignore the ship):

Left has one waterbender. Right has all the waterbenders. We know that Northerners can travel south thanks to Gran Gran. The North couldn't have sent one sneaky waterbender to at least make the south a ship-proof wall? That chief guy has some audacity calling Katara and Sokka their brother and sister or whatever when they've evidently left the south to rot for a century. And I know the Fire Nation, the War, bla bla, but you guys are so bored behind your walls that you're cannibalising your own capabilities based on gender just for fun.

RANT INCOMING

Since I'm on the topic, can we talk about how STOOOPID it is to separate your combatants from your medics? Here's a secret about combat medics: they're both. They learn the basics of combat, and they learn the basics of emergency medicine (And a LOT of other stuff besides). Basic training includes basic first aid for EVERYONE.

Because here's the thing. People who get hurt beating the shit out of other people are usually hurt in an environment where beating the shit out of people occurs. If they are injured enough that they can't get themselves out of the 'beating the shit out of other people' zone, then unless they can treat themselves on the spot or their fellow soldiers can administer first aid or get them out, they die.

Alternatively, if they can't get themselves out of the 'beating the shit out of other people' zone, then medics have to be sent in. A medic who doesn't know how to fight who gets sent into the zone will - guess what? - get the shit beaten out of them. Now you're two men down at present, and who knows how many more you're going to lose over the next few days because you're down a medic. So unless every single waterbending fighter in the Northern water tribe is going to go into combat with a waterbending healer literally attached to them, there will be mountains of unnecessary losses and avoidable injuries.

Now let's look at this from the other angle. What happens if the enemy breaches your defences (because all your defenders are merrily bleeding out from wounds their bending could heal if only they'd learned how) and then makes their way to your combat hospitals? Which are full of soldiers who are too injured to fight and healers who don't know how to defend themselves? Apart from the whole living surrounded by their element thing, waterbenders' greatest advantage in a fight appears (to me) be to be their miraculous healing powers. Katara completely healed her burnt hands to the point where there wasn't even scar tissue and she had no training at all. A skill that can erase burns (the thing firebenders give you) negates the fire nation's greatest weapon - their fire. Any fire nation general who's not an idiot would therefore target waterbending healers, maybe even over waterbending fighters. So any fire nation commander would absolutely put 'capture field hospitals' as one of their top priorities. This is a kids' cartoon, so let's ignore historical precedent as to what happens to nurses caught in field hospitals behind enemy lines and say that the fire nation would defeat the waterbending healers.

Let's paint a quick picture here: in the background, a field full of waterbending fighters sidelined by treatable injury. In the middle ground, an inexorably advancing wall of firebenders. In the foreground, a field hospital full of defenseless waterbending healers. Just peachy isn't it?

How fucking UNSTOPPABLE would a bender able to shrug off a fireball to the face then turn around and take out a firebending platoon be? Get one hundred - no fifty - benders who can both heal and fight, have them advance in two rows: Front row fights, switches with back row when they're injured, gets healed up, rotates back up to front row as a replacement. Functionally unstoppable barring the need to eat and sleep (so long as they bring their own water). The Northern Water Tribe had decades to develop that. Unlike the south, they had the time, the resources, and apparently so little going on that they took up sexism to pass the time. The wasted opportunity here burns. See kids? Sexism hurts the sexists too.

This northern attitude is just dumb. It's illogical. It's stupid. I'd call it a ham-fisted unsubtle after school special of a plotline if it weren't a fictionalised version of something that's literally baked into to many cultures worldwide, past and present.

RANT CONCLUDED

What else can I say about this episode? Aang and Sokka had like three lines each, but they were very in character. Sokka and the princess are cute together. Zuko and Iroh had a good dynamic when they weren't acting in service to exposition. This whole episode really feels like part one of a two parter.

I think something might have been off with the narrative weighting of this episode. There was an honest to god assassination attempt and I forgot.

While the shot of Paku looking put out that the ice disk landed so close to his face was funny, I would have preferred it if Katara had gotten in one hit beyond her bitchslap. Just one. His ego needed the beating which it got via the necklace thing, but I would have liked to see actual beating too.

If I had seen this episode as a child I absolutely would have lost my mind over Katara getting to beat up a sexist. I'd bet good money that this episode did lots of good for the self-esteem of little girls who saw it.

Katara's plot line is like the plot of the Waterbending Scroll episode, but in a positive light. In that episode her selfishness regarding bending got them in trouble; in this one it helped. Seen in that light, the fact that it's the necklace rather than Katara's skill that gets through to Paku is a bit undermining, but if "magical girl has such impressive skills that the sexist dinosaur throws away decades of sexism for the chance to be her teacher" had been the plot instead, I'd probably be complaining about cliches instead.

All in all, a bit clunky, a lot of set up, and too many assholes and frustrating idiocy for it to go on my rewatch list. Feminist beat downs are good for the soul, but I'm not sure they outweigh Poopheads.

[pretty-prince-lulu]

SIDE CHARACTERS/COLONISTS TIME

have a readmore. I want to write words and I just took my ADHD meds so I'm having thoughts that come in sequence instead of pinging off each other like marbles falling down stairs

lyfield there has a social skill of zero and is abrasive, and yet is more popular than his highmate wife. for reasons I can understand.

mel and misambil there, a drakonori and a frost giant respectively (also a couple) are his absolute rock-solid BEST friends. they have maxed 100/100 best-friendship links. they come and train together all the time. they have also banded together to try and befriend caelum, a shy little animusen who spent his childhood as a selective mute and is incapable of the social worktype.

they also share tips and mutual lessons with each other in magic. Misamibil is a shadow (I guess you'd want some stealth counterbalance to the fact that you're 5 times everyone else's height), Mel is an apothecary and shares his potions with his BFF while they train and Lyfield is a shaman who can throw up healing totems and invoke Enrage on his friends when actual battle strikes, which causes them to do a fuckton of damage until it wears off.

Lyfield is also huge and apparently clumsy as fuck. He goes ass-first through at least one chair a day. He's a night owl and gets real shitty if he has to work during the day, but he mostly uses his night shifts to train, which means everyone in the colony is constantly hearing his fucking rifle. ALL night. every night. He's good at making weapons and clothing but 99% of the time he just wants to do combat training. he refuses any and all cleaning and he won't carry jack of shit.

Mel is a masochist who LOVES the cold, explaining his choice of spouse. (his real name is Tak. We're not sure why he calls himself Mel. I guess it does sound classier?). He mostly trains our animals. he LOVES cats (he will bond with them very fast), is 'angelically beautiful' and can grab people with his tail and just grip them until they're finished being fuckoffs. That royal coat is of apparently awful quality but I CANNOT get him to take it off and not put it back on immediately.

Misamibil is a quick sleeper, quite obviously absolutely massive, shares Roly's fondness for cannibalism (she still hates him but will apparently warm substantially if he learns some magic; we have... been unsuccessful teaching him so far), abrasive (hey, maybe that's why she clicks with Lyfield so well) and apparently sickly but I seldom see her catch very much. Maybe it's a relative term for frost jotuns. due to being the size of a Jeep she is a very good miner, but mostly (when she isn't training) she's one of our field medics. She has a good relationship with most people she's spent time with but she stays pissed off at the occasional apostates we get for a long while. I guess disavowing the faith that she has annoys her.

not forgetting, lyfield's wife, Varklir:

is one of our teachers for the colony's children. She has a perfect link with lyfield but that's mostly because she's a highmate; they have little in common and don't see each other while working much because the rifle range and the school are on opposite sides of the colony (which felt like a good idea to me).

she's a good teacher but to be honest she's kind of a bitch. she is aware that her coworker Crane is beautiful but is the only colony member that I've noticed that does not a bonus to their relationship with him for it. She does NOT care- in fact, she snubs him a bit because he also hasn't bothered trying to learn any magic. I'd contend he has a pretty good excuse for being the main schoolteacher and a key researcher on the side despite being a vampire subtype that still has to sleep, but she disagrees with my assessment. She's also kind of annoyed by her new student, Irocarve (half genie half highmate hence his baldness), as he has come to his first day of school without putting on pants first, and that gets a relationship penalty here. He also doesn't know magic, but he's listening to his lesson, which earns him a few singular points of opinion back. Jesus Christ, Varklir, he JUST turned three today.

She is a summoner, which I feel like is increasing her disdain of the colonists without magic as her summons are doing a significant portion of the work around the compound on their behalf. She was apparently a jeweler as a youth. Nimble, small and enlightened (meaning she's very resistant to being worn down by the constant magic tax caused by her summons). She is also apparently a martial artist, despite being incapable of violence, which means if she ever IS in a fight she can yoink the opponent's weapon and throw it to the ground. She's vengeful, but that trait has been suppressed by her Highmate blood. I would argue that the suppression is, uh, incomplete. She has negative relationship points with every single non-magician member of Chaos Gene.

I cannot decide if I like her or if she kind of annoys me...

[not-poignant]

There's an essay on lithub by an author who had an octopus talking to her in her head as she wrote a novel about him, and I thought you might enjoy it. Shades of stupidhead. It's called lessons learned from a year listening to the fictional octopus in my head

Hi anon!

I've been sent the link to this a few times already (a lot of people know I love cephalopods, and that I do work with spiritual and non spiritual animal teachers - I literally run and write this website about animal meanings and animal teachers)!

I found it interesting, though I didn't really connect specifically with the article (I had more of a detached 'oh neat this is something I've seen a lot of people do before' reaction).

I think it's really cool that the writer was able to have these processes and this experience, and was able to talk to an aspect of themselves - it's a thing a lot of people (especially people who work with animals on a spiritual level) have experienced and do, whether it's an inner wolf, or snail, or spider etc. It's pretty cool, 100% not a unique phenomenon, but it's just awesome that we got a cool article that markets a book about it. :D

It reminds me a lot of Internal Family Systems parts work, where you can - among other things - sometimes let a part take on a voice, or it does it anyway, and then you have literal conversations with aspects of yourself. Those sorts of internal dialogue systems are awesome, and it's a great phenomenon for self-communication, and doing it through the symbolism of an animal avatar can be really powerful, because you can ascribe characteristics of that animal to your inner voice (or it can self-ascribe), and sometimes make the voice more appealing or at least understandable because of it.

I have an inner wolverine that's been leaving commentary around the place in my life for easily over 15 years. In that sense, it can even be used as a deliberate technique for self-communication, esp if you have a fragmented sense of self. It's why some people are super drawn to spiritual animal work, they just have always connected to animals better than people, and then realised they could communicate to themselves through animals, even in their own heads.

Anyway, tl;dr, very cool article, I'm happy for the author and her self-acceptance as a writer, and that she can share that (and her book/s) with others too. :D