i know that a lot of people take issue with the fact that pakku only agrees to teach katara because he realizes that she’s the granddaughter of the woman he tried to get with a bajillion years ago, but i actually see that moment of him realizing that kanna left to escape their marriage as a moment of self-reflection from him. like, imagine having to contend with the fact that your rancid vibes drove the love of your life away after having just publicly humiliated her fourteen year old granddaughter who was begat on the literal other side of the earth because how that’s far she went to escape him. sokka gets the moment of realizing “oh, men and woman are ontologically equal in their capacities, and divisions between genders are socially assigned and arbitrary,” but that isn’t really pakku’s deal at all. pakku’s deal is more like, “oh, my unyielding insistence on adhering to and imposing unjust patriarchal traditions actually makes me deeply unpleasant to be around and drives my loved ones away. maybe I should take a fucking chill pill perhaps.”
like, the fact that katara ultimately loses the fight and nothing she actually says or does persuades him is interesting, because it means that his reflection is internal, his moment of revelation not brought about by didactic moralizing, but through taking a long, hard look in the mirror, and realizing that being kind is more important than being right. and that’s why he seems to make an effort to be friendlier and more helpful, more so than making any effort to become a male feminist and fight for women’s rights. sokka, for example, initially has a narrow view of gender because his worldview is limited and then it expands, but pakku, by contrast, is literally a member of the white lotus; he is old and worldly, so he clearly already understands that their tribe’s traditions are not ontologically necessitated, but he nonetheless supports them because they benefit him. it is only when he learns that the love of his love literally escaped their tribe and left behind everything she ever knew just to avoid him that he decides to reevaluate his staunch insistence on clinging to his patriarchal values. and who wouldn’t. i mean, that’s gotta fucking hurt!
i know that katara’s fight against him does feel like a grand feminist moment as she fights for her ideals and her rights as a girl, and to her (and to us as the audience) it certainly does feel that way, but to pakku, his change of heart is one of realizing that he should probably stop being an asshole to every woman he’s ever met while he still has a few good years left. a core motif of katara’s arc is that she cannot actually preach her ideals and simply enlighten every asshole she meets, as much as she’d certainly like to; enlightenment comes from within. and so it is pakku’s regrets that motivate him to be kinder, because it’s never too late to change for the better. and that’s kind of beautiful actually.
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okay but imagine. Thalia Grace, after Jason's death, in a fit of desperation, comes racing to Nico di Angelo, wanting him to summon his ghost, because she just wants to talk to her brother one last time. Before it's too late. Before he reaches Elysium, since the closest she could get to talking to her brother after he goes to the hero's paradise is through dreams, and that wasn't enough for her. Seeing his fragmented soul through dreams is not nearly good enough. She wants the message to reach him. The real him. Not a loomy remnant. She wants to apologise, as she feels her soul being hollowed out with guilt.
She should've looked for Jason, even after their mother told her that he's dead.
She shouldn't have been so busy with the hunters that she would have to cut their brother-sister conversation short.
She should've realised how much her brother craved her attention.
She should've come to the chb meeting that she'd promised jason she'd come to, she shouldn't have made her brother wait like a lost puppy.
The look in jason's eyes when she told him she'd have to leave was etched on to her face. Permanently scarring her soul.
She should've been a better sister. She failed him. She failed to make him feel wanted. She hoped Jason didn't face his death thinking that she didn't need him. Because Gods of Olympus, that would break her.
And she poured all of these gut wrenching thoughts to Nico, who suprisingly listened. Yes. Nico did resent Thalia for being in the hunters of Artemis, the same group that got his sister killed. But listening to Thalia pour her heart out to him, really hit a little too close to home. The daughter of Zeus seemed to echo a young nico, trying aimlessly to summon his sister's ghost to talk to her. They both had the same hollow red eyes, burning with hot tears streaming down, the same crease in the eyebrows, the same flicker of rage over their siblings's murder. At that moment, Thalia Grace looked as unthreatening as the king of all god's daughter could possibly look like.
But Nico was glad, that Thalia, atleast cared about her little brother to this extent. Up until this point, Nico had these lingering doubts if Bianca had really cared about him like this, she had dropped everything to join the hunters after all. Hearing Thalia talk about jason had healed his inner child. Maybe big sisters do think about their younger brothers, no matter how busy they appear to be... So he complied to her wishes. She deserved closure from her brother's death. It would do Jason some good too.
He poured all of his concentration into summoning the son of Jupiter, as Thalia anxiously chewed on her nails, pacing around the murky woods in anticipation. Until a wispy figure with rimmed glasses and neatly cropped hair, appeared in front of them.
"Hello, sis."
Nico di Angelo and Thalia Grace were more or less the same, when it came to wanting to make amends with their deceased sibling.
Except Thalia was the older sister who wanted her younger brother back, And Nico was the younger brother who wanted his older sister back.
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ill be honest as much as i love to criticise the use of fatphobia for comedy ill never be able to hold the fatphobic jokes in kung fu panda against it
like yea those movies are guilty of dipping into The Usual Tropes for a cheap laugh but not only is the character writing for the fat characters the strongest and most sympathetic ive Ever seen literally just the character designs of the pandas in the 3rd movie get me choked up sometimes. theyre all so appealing and clearly treated with the same care and attention as everyone else without copping out and making them Barely Fat. po is already a size that doesnt exist in film protags and hes still the thinnest person in that whole village and that meant a lot to me
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funniest language thing in modern greek is that the word for baby/infant is “moro” which literally means “idiot.” like someone looked at a baby 1000 years ago and was like “this guy doesnt know shit.”
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