#new isolationism

[pettybourgeoiz]

✰Bourgeoiz Music Discovery✰

[randomnameless]

I think the "Billy should ditch the boar" takes comes from AM being the one route that breaks their self-insert fantasy. Flamey and Emile doing their stuff and the Jerry thing etc do not matter bcs its not being directly mean to YOU, the player, in YOUR story. Edel-chan is a very sad and traumatized girl that will ALWAYS love YOU no matter what you do and she will doodle YOU and squeak about rats n stuff, but you don't have to actually deal with any of her supposed trauma in a realistic way (+)

(cont) She will always be fine and ready to gush after you, the trauma is only a plot device to make her wary of other people that aren't you, and be attached to only you. What she does to randoms doesn't matter as long as she's nice to you. But the evil european barbarian boar dares to actually show his trauma and negative emotions around you, and make you uncomfy, and bring any sort of realism to your fantasy! how dare he! Not only that, but he admits he didn't like you at the beginning!!!(+) (cont) you, the player, isn't above other characters when it comes to him being rude because of his trauma and mental illness, and the story dares to show your avatar feeling sad and powerless instead of badass and cool. He won't listen to you until another character opens his eyes first, and even if you marry him he's still hearing voices and struggling with his issues, your love won't cure him!! Not only that, but AM is his story, not yours! (+) (cont) It relegates your self-insert to a supportive deuteragonist instead of the main hero the plot centers around. He will become The King and you will be just a religious leader, following the footsteps of the Evil Lizard Lady!! Obviously you don't want that!! this is your story, where you can dump all your anti-church IRL arguments into, and be a super cool baddass mercenary who never has to deal with negative emotions!! And that's why AM is the only FE16 route where I actually like Billy.

Sorry anon for the tardiness of the reply!

Yep, I feel like for both Dee and the evil lizard lady, at one point, they are unhappy/upset/angry and more or less negative at Billy - who is, in this situation, taken as the player.

I remember during the heights of 2020-2021 discourse people sending asks to other asking how can they like Rhea bcs she was meant to "u" and whatnot, and it's just... Self-insert at its finest?

But Billy - the character we see in Nopes, FEH and FE17, wouldn't feel like the player in those instances (because Billy the character would never pick the "uwu" option in the Holy Tomb, and Billy the character would understand and/or at least get how Dimitri doesn't want to talk right now) - so again, it's the same old question, who is Billy? An empty self insert who feels a lot of sad uwus when Rhea threatens to rip their heart out as they assist and support who swore to kill her because her ears are pointy and cries whenever Dimitri doesn't want to talk to them, or is Billy the character we see in other games, who shows more empathy and tries to understand people, and thus, wouldn't have been able to pick a certain route in FE16?

Lol I just remember now how some people didn't like Cyril or even Seteth because they didn't slobber over Billy - as the self-insert - in their first 5 lines unlike the rest of the cast ^^

Granted, this "YOU must be the most important person EVER" comes back in full force with the S-supports (tfw seteth doesn't mention his family to billy when they hold hands) and it reiterates something I always knew : Avatars were a mistake.

Parasocial maybe saved the franchise from turning into another F-Zero like saga, but damn if it nuked a lot in the process (and by, a lot, i mean coherence and characters networks).

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Part of the crowd, estimated by police at between 10,000 and 15,000, that gathered on West 34th St. outside the Manhattan Center, April 23, 1941. The draw was Charles Lindbergh, who addressed a rally by the America First Committee. This was an isolationist group that lobbied to keep the U.S. out of World War II and believed that a Nazi defeat of Britain posed no danger to America.

Photo: Associated Press via Posterazzi

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"America First tapped into the widespread isolationism that was among the nation’s most powerful impulses in the thirties. In rejecting the League of Nations, imposing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff and redefining the war as a scam, America had returned to its long tradition of non-entanglement and unilateralism. FDR’s hands-off “Good Neighbor” policy toward Latin America, welcomed south of the border, was much in the same vein. The Senate was dominated by isolationists, including Republicans whose populism meant that FDR could count on them to support his New Deal as long as he steered clear of intervention. Polls showed that Americans overwhelmingly opposed getting involved, and by 1940 the ranks of isolationists were swelled by defections from the pacifism that was once widespread but no longer seemed credible. Right-wingers were especially eager to keep out of war, but so were left-wingers. Nobody was more isolationist than the communists; taking their cue from Moscow, which had made its peace with Hitler, they loudly advocated keeping America out of war. This made for some strange bedfellows, even if the romance was short-lived.

Antiwar music lovers on the right and the left, for example, both applauded Songs for John Doe, a scathing album issued in March of 1941 by a pioneering folk group called the Almanac Singers. The Almanacs included Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, and Millard Lampell; later Woody Guthrie would join. Reflecting a change in communist orthodoxy (Seeger was a party member), the previous anti-fascism of the Left was abandoned after the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement in favor of keeping America out of the European conflict. Thus, the album earned praise from the Daily Worker newspaper for attacking the prospect of American involvement in the war.

One song implied that the urge to war was yet another New Deal effort to eliminate surpluses, except instead of burying agricultural excess the plan was to “Plow under, plow under, / Plow under every fourth American boy.” The Almanacs leveled equally savage musical denunciations at Roosevelt in “The Ballad of October 16th,” whose lyrics bitterly commemorated registration day for the new peacetime draft:

Oh Franklin Roosevelt told the people how he felt. We damned near believed what he said; He said, “I hate war—and so does Eleanor, But we won’t be safe till everybody’s dead.”

Eric Bernay, in his midtown Manhattan record store, The Music Room, supposedly had so many requests for the record from America Firsters that he kept it hidden in the bathroom. That may be, but the album probably got more attention on the left. “After one performance before the League of American Writers,” Richard and JoAnne Reuss report in their history of leftist folk music, “Theodore Dreiser jumped up, planted a kiss on the cheek of a startled Lee Hays, and declared, ‘If we had six more teams like these boys, we could save America!’ ” A few months later, after Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, the album was withdrawn and the Almanacs started singing a very different tune. The title song of their next, and last, album, “Dear Mr. President,” insisted that “Mr. President, we haven’t always agreed in the past, I know,” but the important thing now was “we got to lick Mr. Hitler.”

- Daniel Akst, War By Other Means: How the Pacifists of World War 2 Changed American for Good. New York: Melville House, 2022. p. 53-55.

[asepticvoid]

I just finished track number 10

I'm starting the next one.

[thinkwellassumenothing]

Life against Death: A Tale of Origins & Ends

[bodhi-ryuchai]

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[mesetacadre]

this might be a silly question, but. ive recently learned more about the devastating effects of sanctions on countries like cuba, dprk, or venezuela, and how much unnecessary suffering they cause among the population, especially when it comes to food or medicine shortages. but then bds also calls for sanctions against israel, and im wondering, is there any meaningful difference between that and the sanctions already imposed by the US on other countries? i feel a bit hypocritical when i argue against sanctions while at the same time supporting bds, i feel like they are very different situations with different outcomes but i lack the understanding to really grasp how they are different, if that makes any sense

Sanctions are the systematic blockade of all or certain sectors of trade under military or economic threat by the sanctioner (mostly just the USA in recent history) to any potential agents who might try to ignore the sanction. These sanctions typically include things like medical supplies, food if the country is dependent on imports (like most countries who get sanctioned), electricity, fuel, both light and heavy industry, agricultural products and machines, the global financial system, and other such key sectors. These sanctions, overwhelmingly, only serve to impoverish the country, create undue suffering and political strife. This political strife/instability is usually the main goal of sanctions, to destabilize the target government. However, this political instability more often than not does not result in a magical restoration of "democracy" or "human rights", it usually leads the country down a path of further isolationism and political violence that only worsens its general situation. It also makes it much easier for factions like ISIS to gain popularity and support, since people are desperate. Sanctions are inhumane measures which only makes a country suffer for no good reason. The sanctioners know this, they don't care, and I'd wager that suffering is often the actual point of these sanctions. What has the 60 year old blockade achieved in Cuba? It has only caused pointless poverty, and the stated goal of the sanctions, which is to ultimately remove the communist government, has failed, is failing, and Cuba is managing to make due with what they have.

BDS call for sanctions mostly in regards to military equipment and related products/services, for NATO to stop aiding the genocide, or the banning of Israel from international events such as the olympics. No Israeli will ever go hungry because they no longer get European-made ordinance or because they don't get to participate in Eurovision. This is what BDS says in their Sanctions and governments campaign (which is behind two menus, this is also not the main focus of BDS, by far):

The BDS movement calls for sanctions against Israel, similar to the sanctions that were imposed against apartheid South Africa. These sanctions could include a military embargo, an end to economic links and the cutting of diplomatic ties. In the meantime, the BDS movement is calling for states to take steps to meet their legal obligations not to be complicit in the commission of particular Israeli crimes and not to provide recognition, aid or assistance that help Israel maintain its regime of settler colonialism, apartheid.. This includes, for example, the obligation for states to immediately end to all trade that sustains illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the suspension of free trade agreements and other bilateral agreements with Israel.

Notice the greater emphasis on military and diplomatic ties, and how economic/trade sanctions are only called for when it «sustains illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory». Sure, this will (if it is ever adopted by Israel's significant trade partners) cause some suffering for the poor illegal settlers who had just moved into their shiny new apartment blocks built atop acres of land that sustained the surrounding Palestinian villages. The mere existence of these settlements cause more suffering than any sanction could ever cause.

Calling for these sanctions against Israel, which again, don't even come from comparable agents, are both less harmful towards the total population of Israel, and occur in a completely different context. I'm not going to pretend I care about the wellbeing of settlers whose houses didn't even exist 10 years ago. If these sanctions ever do occur in a significant enough scale (dubious), and those settlers don't want to find themselves in a food desert because Carrefour closed all their stores in the west bank, they shouldn't have moved into land stolen from a people facing genocide in the first place. We're also wagering hypothetical and non-global suffering against the now more than 100,000 dead Palestinians in Gaza in the past year, not even counting those who died ever since the first Nakba.

Like BDS points out, these types of grassroots and targeted boycotts/sanctions worked in South Africa, and the white South Africans didn't even suffer that much. Wager these short-lived and targeted sanctions against these other half-century long sanctions sustained by the US' strongarm policy that have prevented basically anything from getting into Cuba or the DPRK.

While those two things are both called sanctions, they have radically different objectives, methods, range, timescale, and character. I can't reiterate this enough, the North Korean collective farmer and the Israeli settler in the west bank have nothing in common when it comes to their position. Only one of them is complicit in genocide through their own actions, only one of them has any degree of blame, and only one of their governments is actually doing anything that warrants any kind of international action. And again, the BDS strategy focuses much more on military sanctions. Let's also be practical for a second, and acknowledge that the US is never going to withdraw their support for Israel, and especially will never sanction Israel. Israel is simply never going to face the same kind of sanctions that Venezuela or Cuba are facing, nor with the same severity, nor with the same restrictions on products essential for life.

[comfreyhollywings]

im feeling in a weird mood recently. mind’s just facilitating between needing approval and not needing validation from anyone because that would feed into the wound i have around my self-worth/self-esteem. if i do happen to feed into this self-worth with endless compliments and attention; it’s like scratching a bug bite. it gets worse and worse. because i know that i need it for myself. but then some sort of bullshit loophole tells me:

 “that’s part of self-worth though. you can’t just live by your word and your word alone. people naturally get feedback all the time.” 

which is true in terms of socialization and finding your crowd. but how much could be classified as isolation and how much could be classified as needing approval? is this whole post just a cry for approval?? 

hell if i know. like i know it contributes to an extent. but. i think the overall intent of this post is to find an outlet to vent this out. because. i don’t know. feelings are weird and despite me letting people talk about them, i hate talking about it myself. because that leaves room with me being vulnerable. and i’m fighting the struggle against the terror between being seen, and the overall isolation that i’ve found comfort with but ultimately destroyed my sense of self-perception.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Robert Reich:

Friends, Some say if he loses, that’s the end of Trump. Wrong. We’ve been through this before. When Trump lost in 2020, most Republican insiders thought he’d be toast after January 6.

[...]

The Republican Party is more MAGA now than it was in 2020. More congressional Republicans are election deniers than they were in 2020.

If Trump loses by a small margin, he’ll almost certainly contest the outcome once again. At least this time Trump is not the incumbent president. He won’t be sitting in the Oval Office receiving recommendations from his staff to send in the military to seize voting machines and “rerun” the election, as happened in December 2020. He won’t have power to pardon anyone and won’t be able to claim presidential immunity. And instead of Trump’s vice president presiding over the counting of Electoral College votes on January 6, 2025, this time it will be Vice President Kamala Harris. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump and his lapdogs created post-election chaos at the precinct, county, and state levels, where votes are counted and the results certified. Trump loyalists in key districts will almost certainly try to manipulate the process and withhold certification.

I expect the federal courts will become involved. Some of this litigation may make its way to the Supreme Court. Raise your hand if you trust the current Supreme Court to rule impartially. Even if Trump loses these battles, there’s nothing to keep him from meddling in 2026, or even running again in 2028, when he’d be 82. I’ve heard from a few Never-Trump Republicans that they hope he wins in November so he can serve his final term now, and then disappear for good. But he won’t disappear. Trumpism will live on, regardless. But if he loses in November, he’s very likely to do some time in prison — in a special wing of a prison in New York state or a federal prison secured by the Secret Service. This will slow him down but also make him a martyr in the eyes of his loyalists.

If Trump loses in 2024 and is unable to run again due to physical or psychological decline — or a prison sentence — JD Vance will be his heir apparent for 2028. In the short time Vance has been a vice presidential candidate, he’s shown himself just as bigoted and unconstrained by facts as Trump. Trump sons Donald Jr. and Eric will also continue to fire up the Trump base. Fox News, Newsmax, and other right-wing outlets will continue to distort the truth. Trump’s billionaire backers such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk will continue to finance Trumpism’s shambolic politics.

I doubt a majority of Americans will support Trumpism after Trump, but Trump’s base will continue to be a significant force in America. They have remained remarkably loyal and resilient for eight years — consistently 42 to 44 percent of American voters. If Trump loses, some proportion of them may turn to violence. Even a relatively small portion could threaten social stability. Apart from the immediate aftereffects of a Trump loss, many of his followers will remain wedded to the isolationism, xenophobia, racism, and misogyny he has stirred up.

Robert Reich gives valuable insights on the future of Donald Trump and Trumpism should he lose the election to Kamala Harris. Trumpism will be here to stay even after he leaves the scene.

[mariacallous]

BERLIN — For the first time since the Nazi era, a far-right party in Germany has won the largest piece of the electoral pie in a state election.

Mainstream politicians and Jewish leaders are expressing alarm following Sunday’s elections, in which the anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic and pro-Russia Alternative for Germany party came out on top in the state of Thuringia, with 32.8% of the vote.

The 11-year-old party also earned second place to the traditional conservative Christian Democratic Union party in the neighboring state of Saxony. Both states are in the former East Germany.

“No one can brush this off as a ‘protest’ vote anymore,” Charlotte Knobloch, head of the Jewish community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, said in a statement late Sunday.

“Exactly 85 years after the start of World War II, Germany is in danger of becoming a different country again: more unstable, colder and poorer, less secure, less worth living in,” said Knobloch, a former head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany who herself survived the Holocaust in hiding.

The election came just over a week since a Syrian refugee was arrested after a deadly stabbing spree at a festival in the city of Solingen, and only days after Germany resumed its program of deporting refugees convicted of crimes. The knife attack, in which three people were killed, reignited popular anxiety about social unrest connected with the more than 1 million refugees admitted to Germany since 2015.

AfD stresses isolationism, takes an anti-EU and pro-Russian stance, and is accused of fomenting anti-Muslim sentiment. Some of its most extreme representatives have also belittled the Holocaust, saying that Germany has paid enough penance for the sins of an older generation.

Mass protests against the party took place earlier this year following revelations that the party had held a secret meeting at a lakeside villa to discuss plans to deport foreigners, including those who had become German citizens. Prominent neo-Nazis attended the meeting, according to the news organization that broke the story, inducing painful echoes of the gathering of Nazi leaders at nearby Wannsee in 1942 to devise a plan to deport and then murder Jews.

But while support for the AfD dipped in polls at the time, it soon rebounded and then accelerated. Now, it has achieved breakthrough results in state elections and raised concerns for next year’s national elections.

The party — whose Thuringen leader, Bjoern Hoecke, has been convicted twice of using a Nazi slogan to boost his party — is unlikely to form a ruling coalition in either state, since it is shunned by other parties. Still, it will have additional seats in the state legislatures and will have the numbers, particularly in Thuringia, to interfere with some governing decisions.

A far-left party, Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance or BSW, also produced notable results, coming in third in Thuringia with 15.8% of the vote. Last month, the current head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, warned that the party, which has accused Israel of genocide in its war in Gaza, was “fueling hatred of Israel in Germany.”

The new election results bode ill for Germany’s future, Schuster said on Sunday.

“Can we recover from this hit?” Schuster wrote in a column in the Bild newspaper. “Our free society must not fall, especially in the face of Islamist terror. Unvarnished truths — honesty and sincerity — are needed, not populist pseudo-answers from radical parties.”

In Thuringia, the mainstream Social Democratic Party barely squeaked in, with 6.1%. Several parties, including the Greens and Free Democratic Party, received so few votes that they will not have any seats at all.

BSW also came in third in Saxony, with 11.8% of the vote, following the AfD with 30.6% and the CDU with a narrow win at 31.9%.

Younger voters overwhelmingly favored the AfD in this week’s elections, according to an NTV-Infratest exit poll.

“The survivors are asking themselves: ‘Didn’t we do enough to teach, to tell, to show?” Christoph Heubner of the International Auschwitz Committee, told the Guardian.

Some Jewish leaders say German politicians would do well to address the concerns apparently expressed by voters this weekend.

“The election results in the German federal states of Thuringia and Saxony are a clear wake-up call to the centrist parties in Germany to listen to the real concerns and fears of the people,” Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, said in a statement. “When half the population votes for parties on the extreme fringes, their problems must be addressed openly and honestly.”

Sunday was an “insanely sad” election day, German Jewish journalist Samira Lazarovic wrote on Facebook. She said her 96-year-old father compared the outcome to the opening salvo of World War II, exactly 85 years ago.

Lazarovic said it was is urgent to reach out to younger voters. “It’s not that we know better than they; but we should shape the future together.”

Obviously, it wasn’t enough to take to the streets and protest against the far right, she added: “Populists all over the world have one thing in common. They mean exactly what they say and do everything they can to turn their words to deeds.”

[gaypuppiboi2]

In the year 2102, a dramatic transformation took place in the United States of America. This was not a sudden change, but the culmination of decades of cultural shifts, political realignments, and economic partnerships that gradually turned America into an Arab state.

It all began in the late 21st century, when the global balance of power started to shift. The Arab world, particularly the Gulf states, had long been wealthy from oil, but they had diversified their economies, becoming leaders in technology, renewable energy, and finance. Meanwhile, the United States was grappling with internal divisions, economic challenges, and the decline of its global influence. The rise of populism and isolationism in America had weakened its traditional alliances, making it more susceptible to foreign influence.

By the 2080s, a series of unprecedented economic crises hit the United States. A global recession, combined with environmental disasters and the depletion of natural resources, left the country in a vulnerable position. Seeking a way out, American leaders turned to the Arab world for help. A coalition of Gulf states, led by a visionary and charismatic leader, Emir Khalid bin Faisal, offered a lifeline: massive investments in infrastructure, technology, and renewable energy, in exchange for political and cultural influence.

At first, the partnership seemed like a win-win. Arab investment revitalized American cities, brought new jobs, and led to the creation of a high-speed rail network that connected the entire continent. The Arab states also introduced new educational programs, focusing on science, technology, and engineering, which quickly became the gold standard in American schools. Arabic became a mandatory subject in schools, alongside English and Spanish, reflecting the deepening ties between the two regions.

As the years passed, the influence of the Arab world on American culture became more apparent. Mosques began to appear alongside churches and synagogues in cities and towns across the country. American architecture started to reflect Arab styles, with domes, arches, and intricate mosaics becoming common in public buildings. Traditional Arab clothing, like the thawb and abaya, became popular, especially in the hot and arid regions of the American Southwest.

Politically, the transformation was even more profound. The United States adopted a federal system similar to that of the Gulf states, with greater autonomy for individual regions. The new constitution, drafted with the assistance of Arab legal scholars, blended elements of Sharia law with the existing American legal framework. While the country remained officially secular, the influence of Islamic principles was evident in the legal system and public policies.

The American political landscape also changed. The two-party system was replaced by a multi-party system, with parties representing various ethnic and religious groups. The most powerful of these was the New Dawn Party, which advocated for closer ties with the Arab world and the adoption of Islamic values in public life. By the turn of the century, the New Dawn Party had become the dominant force in American politics, with Emir Khalid bin Faisal's descendants playing a significant role in its leadership.

Socially, the transformation was met with both resistance and acceptance. Some Americans embraced the new culture, seeing it as a way to rejuvenate a country that had been in decline. Others resisted, clinging to the old ways and traditions. There were protests and even violent clashes, but over time, the new order became the norm.

By 2102, the United States was, in many ways, unrecognizable from what it had been a century earlier. The American flag still flew over the White House, but the stars and stripes were now accompanied by a crescent moon, symbolizing the country's new identity. Washington, D.C., had been renamed Al-Washington, and the city was home to the Grand Mosque of America, one of the largest in the world.

The transformation of America into an Arab state was not just a change in political and cultural identity; it was a reflection of the changing world order. The Arab world, once seen as a region in need of Western aid and intervention, had become the new center of global power, with the United States as its most important ally and partner.

In this new world, America was no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. It was the land of unity, where East met West, and where the crescent moon shone alongside the stars, lighting the way for a new era in human history.

[stirringwinds]

imo, one thing that is quite interesting but often overlooked by anglophone commentary about meiji japan, is the history between mexico and japan. such as mexico's role in the repudiation of japan's unequal treaties that granted western powers privileges including extraterritoriality. because mexico was the very first country that agreed to sign an equal treaty with japan (and this came to fruition in 1888), when japan was seeking to test the diplomatic waters of revising all the unequal treaties.

on a more human level, i think maría (my personal headcanon name for mexico) understands certain aspects of the conundrum kiku was in quite well: having your hand forced, and your politics upended by alfred. after all, that's one person she knows very well for good and ill. and then there's the 1600s hasekura mission before that, where the japanese emissaries visited what was then new spain before isolationism. she and kiku might have some very interesting conversations, imo 🤔.

[narrativelysignificantturtleduck]

okay things i liked about the live action:

the southern water tribe being bigger. it's still small but less unrealistically so

gyatso saying he's aang's friend

suki chafing against kyoshi island's isolationism. mostly bc it reminded me of "suki alone". you should read that instead probably

all the avatars serving as spirit guides instead of just showing up at the end. relatedly, incorporating kyoshi novel lore with kyoshi & kuruk

zuko throwing a fit bc aang stole his diary Manly Avatar Journal

zhao being a lower-status guy who just benefitted from right place right time

sebastian amaroso jet. he is so beautiful and perfect and that he was a mama's boy like katara's a mama's girl really worked

smellerbee and longshot existing. like they were obviously gonna be there but i got a little excited when they came on screen

moving the mechanist storyline to omashu. i thought his mad scientist energy fit well with eccentric omashu and it fixed the problems i had with his episode in atla. also he has a name now!

the idea that bumi, after living so many years as a leader during a war and losing his friend, may be bitter and upset with aang. his tests seem to have real meaning now instead of just being pranks and i like that eventually he softens when aang reminds him of friendship. like really gets at that theme of aang bringing hope back into the world

bumi's new design & omashu's general south asian feel

the one woman who started beating zuko's ass in the middle of the fight in omashu

OMA AND SHU LESBIANS!!!!

cameo by secret tunnel hippies

cameo by cabbage man

the guys in the bar referencing "the great divide" and "the waterbending scroll"

the way the spirit world works, responding to your emotions and shaping the environment around you. i know that idea's not exclusive to this show (it was in lok) but it's a concept i enjoy nonetheless

aang hugging gyatso and katara hugging kya in the spirit world got me a little teary

yagoda kind of a milf

yue making an actual cultural dish (it's called akutaq and often referred to as "alaskan ice cream")

katara responding to zuko saying "you found a master" by saying that she's the master

sokka's little plan to take down the fire nation ship where he went in and bashed in all their machinery. that was very in-character

sokka/hahn

unfortunately so much of what happened around those things was clumsily written but there WERE some decent ideas and good moments. idk i just wanted to be a little less negative

[unnamedmedicalprofessional]

I feel like in the past several years it's been trendy to claim that marvel movies are, and always have been, the absolute height of complete and utter soullessness, and I don't think that's really fair.

I'm not saying they're high art. They aren't. I will also admit their aesthetic blandness is a huge and immensely frustrating flaw. Their impact on the film industry as a whole is largely negative and the average quality of the movies themselves have been declining for a while. But there are some decent character, emotional and thematic beats in them.

Like for example, Iron Man 1 is a story about an arms dealer realizing he's wrong and trying to change. Iron Man 3 is character wise a metaphor for building emotional "armour" around yourself as an unhealthy coping mechanism for trauma, and thematically about propaganda and a metaphor for how the military industrial complexes bad decision "create terrorists" and they are financially incentivized to do this. Captain America The Winter Soldier is about a patriot losing faith in America and how the surveillance state is a gateway to fascism. Spider-man Homecoming is about a teenager overestimating his own maturity and taking on more responsibility than he's ready for, and him realizing there needs to be someone looking out for the little guy. Black Panther is about T'Challa realizing isolationism is wrong. Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 is probably the most emotional and character driven action movie I've ever seen (and the other two guardians movies have great character and emotional beats as well).

I also think the whole "military propaganda" thing is exaggerated although not entirely false. Iron Man, Iron Man 3, Captain America Winter Soldier, Black Panther Wakanda Forever, and Ms.Marvel all critique the military industrial complex to some extent. I should however note that there is always a clear sense of holding back, especially in Iron Man 1. It is true that the military funds action movies including marvel movies as propaganda and I think that's evil. I read a good analysis that pointed out that in Marvel movies, good things about the military are literal and bad things are metaphorical or externalized to a fictional villain. The MCU's politics, in all things not just the military, are markedly liberal rather than leftist, but I've heard people try to paint them as fascist and I don't think that's fair. However, I also think there's a very high chance that Captain America:Brave New World specifically could turn out to be actually ideologically evil with the whole Israel thing.