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#the DISCOURSE
sokkastyles · 2 days
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I have a serious question. Fandom is so exhausting sometimes. I came back to tumblr solely because I was craving some Zutara content. And there is so much wholesome, fantastic content - yet I can't spend 15 minutes on this site without stumbling into some shipwar post. It's exhausting and makes me want to leave again. Meanwhile, you've been here forever and are getting the most brain-dead asks every day and respond to them in length every time. And like: How are you dealing with it without getting the urge to quit this circus?
Well, all these asks do is give me the opportunity to refute a brain dead argument without getting into discourse on someone else's post. So it's actually a win for me. The rest of the time, I just try to block and ignore people who are looking to start an argument because it isn't worth my time.
I'll sometimes voice my opinion on the discourse, but there's actually nothing antis can say to "prove" that I shouldn't ship zutara, so at the end of the day, I'm secure in the knowledge that nothing they say matters. Even if I wanna ship zutara in the most lurid, distasteful possible way, nobody has a right to tell me that I shouldn't, and that's always going to be there. Because shipping isn't morality. I can explain in a lot of ways how zutara is actually a very wholesome ship, but it also doesn't matter, because shipping isn't morality, but how you behave towards real people does.
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cardassiangoodreads · 8 months
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“Oppenheimer should at least represent Japanese voices” actual Japanese filmmakers have made dozens of movies about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including at least two anime films off the top of my head, that you would’ve bothered to watch if you actually cared about this beyond winning discourse points. Not to mention all the Japanese science fiction that is obviously inspired in some way by trauma over the bombing, including the entire genre of kaiju films. Do you really think there's anything those works haven't said that Christopher Nolan would add? Or maybe, in fact, the lack of focus there in Oppenheimer is The Point, since the real-life Manhattan Project (which the film is critical of) certainly wasn't consulting "Japanese voices"? (Like, perhaps that is part of the film's criticism of it???) Anyway, In This Corner of the World is a great film about the life of a young woman from Hiroshima in the waning days of WWII that you can currently rent for $1.99 on Amazon Prime. It's animated by the same studio that did Yuri!!! on Ice and it's based on a 3-volume manga that is also terrific and available both physically and digitally in English. If you actually want fiction that depicts "Japanese voices on the atomic bomb" I would start there. If you actually care about diverse perspectives in media you'd also care about the people making that media and look to what actual Japanese people are saying about this rather than expecting American and British creators to spoon-feed it to you.
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tyetknot · 2 months
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*carefully tosses a golden apple labelled 'TO THE LEAST PROBLEMATIC' into the middle of witchblr discourse*
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frenzyarts · 1 year
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Terf should stand for Trans Exclusionary Radical Failure because I have seen the most misogynistic shit come from them
Feminist card revoked
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reachartwork · 16 days
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I'd love to know how you can advance AI art ethically. I'll be perfectly honest and say I'm of the opinion that there's no way to make AI art ethical but I genuinely would like to hear your thoughts on this since it's something you clearly have put a lot of thought in to. Not trying to hate just curious about your opinion.
i reject the premise that it is inherently unethical to perform any of the operations required to do image synthesis. almost every single assumption required to start from the baseline of "it's unethical" (it's plagiarism, it requires no creativity, it smashes two images together, etc.) are all just straight up incorrect.
unless you can explain to me how to fit two (or more) billion images into 2 gigabytes (i'll let you do the math) in a way that preserves their features for later "stealing" (you can't) then i am rejecting the premise. because even if it were some sort of database that smashed pieces of images together (it's not), if your argument is that it's unethical to do that then you have a whole lot of collage and blackout artists that you need to contend with too. (if you think collage is also unethical then you are internally consistent, good for you, and then we just have a garden variety disagreement). generally speaking there is no argument one can take that can meaningfully separate ai art from other forms of transformative artwork except via special pleading, which doesn't convince me.
so yeah, basically, you (the general case you, not You Specifically, Fish Of The Woods) have to do the work to convince me that it's unethical because i am not starting from the premise of "it's inherently evil, except my one exception", i am starting from "it is neutral and you have to convince me that it's bad". and so far nobody who is anti-ai has managed to do so, primarily because (this is not a dig at you) nobody who is anti-ai actually bothers to understand how it works, and thus all their criticisms don't sync up with actual reality. while i'm sympathetic to labor arguments i.e ai art will put people out of jobs (definitely much more salient than the other ones), that is regular old capitalism abusing automation, and not an inherent flaw in the technology itself that renders it Ontologically Evil From Birth.
i get like five of these asks a day so i politely request you send future inquiries to the AWAY Discord, which is full of people who have significantly more patience than i do.
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starlightomatic · 3 days
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Am I imagining things or does everyone who tries to talk about 'white' Israelis immediately go for Poland ? There are lots of (conditionally) white Jews they could name but they ALL go for Poland and that really disturbs me. How are you gonna say "I'm against genocide, which is why I believe Polish Jews should've stayed in Poland in the 1930s"
yep!! it's low hanging fruit i guess. they also know very little about jews so they don't even know what other countries to talk about
also, i didn't mention this in that post, but the borders changed so often that using country names isn't even helpful. my great-grandfather's village is now in "poland" but it wasn't when he lived there. it was austria
someone should edit that meme so instead of "you're from fucking poland" it says "you're from the fucking austro-hungarian empire"
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therobotmonster · 8 months
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You can complain about the crassness of 80s advert-toons, but what came before wasn't good just because it didn't have a toy company paying the bills.
In fact, that was part of the problem.
(splitting this into its own post)
Pre-80s, your biggest player in TV animation was Hanna Barbera. Post-Cartoon Network kids won't remember, but before they had a network to fill, HB made low-cost dreck exclusively. Race-to-the-bottom, cheap-as-possible, formula driven dreck.
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Some of it was dreck with potential and staying power, because you had guys like Alex Toth trying their best to make good stuff despite being given the budget of a Viewmaster disk.
Kidvid in the 80s was the first time, en-masse, someone cared about the quality of kids' entertainment on TV. Not kids' edutainment, PBS existed for awhile, but actual get down and have fun kidvid. Prior to that you had the distressing puppet shows from Sid and Marty Kroft and everything else was 'what will the kids care?' low-end channel filler.
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(Channel filler that was, by the way, still selling toys and candy. Just not themed after what the kids were watching)
Then in the 80s, suddenly a lot of people care about the quality of the show. They care because the show is a very expensive ad campaign, but suddenly the avenue to maximized profits drove through a show that was actually engaging and entertaining to kids.
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At the same time, your animation industry was flush with new money and a desire to not see that snatched away by another 1960s parent panic that killed the Sugar Bear cartoon. So the studios did everything they could to not make the shows the advertisements they were assumed to be. The goal of elevating the project to avoid feeling like an ad-writer also slipped in. You get stuff like Real Ghostbusters, Spiral Zone, Bravestarr, some very impressively animated and written shows...
And before that, remember, was Jabberjaw, Huckleberry Hound, and fucking Clutch Cargo.
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Yes, that is a pair of human lips projected onto a blank face because they couldn't afford animation.
And everything that wasn't a toy-toon had to have a bigger budget to compete. You don't get Thundarr the Barbarian until HB has He-Man breathing down its neck. There is no Le Mondes Engloitis if they don't have the merch wave washing over France. The Disney Afternoon was only what it was because it was trying to contrast itself from the figure aisle.
There is no BTAS or Gargoyles without the action figures.
New Google makes searching for the quote basically impossible, but one of the leads on G.I.Joe has a quote along the lines of: the fantasy of G.I.Joe was not a war fantasy. The fantasy of G.I.Joe was the idea that when you get in trouble, you have a large group of friends who will be there to help you through it.
And one last dirty little secret. Before they could make cartoons based on toys the toy market was still driven by licensed stuff, it was just stuff based on live action properties:
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The 80s are seen as this time in which kids were deeply exploited, and all the money made in the kidvid and toy industries is seen as the evidence of that. The idea that the boom happened, even in part, because kids were actually getting media and toys they wanted never occurs to them.
And what did youtube make into the face of kid's entertainment?
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If the YT kidverse had to deal with the regulations and rules of 1980s advertising cartoons none of that would have happened.
No one wants what these guys are selling.
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mikkeneko · 1 year
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It came towards the end of a very long acrimonious thread about conflicts between TERF and non-TERF feminism, which I don’t especially want to reblog, but I’m still stuck on the observation from that thread that “TERFs see trans issues like gender affirming surgery as being a distraction or taking resources away from issues like abortion or FGM, but it’s not. It’s all the same fight.”
There’s no contradiction between opposing FGM and supporting gender affirming surgery. There’s no contradiction between supporting the right of women to get abortions or hysterectomies, and protecting women (and men!) from being sterilized against their will by eugenics policy. There’s no contradiction between supporting the right of women in France to wear a hijab, and the right of women in Iraq not to. There’s no hypocrisy. There’s no gotcha. These are all the same right. The right to control one’s own body, life, and lifestyle.
It’s not about loving or hating a headscarf, or prizing a dick over a lack of a dick. These are details. The fundamental principle is always about autonomy. It’s all the same fight.
Or, to pull another quote that has stuck with me, “If you don’t own your own body absolutely, then you don’t own anything at all.”
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prokopetz · 1 year
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It’s actually very simple: it’s always immoral to spend money on frivolities while suffering exists in the world, unless it’s something that I personally enjoy, in which case it’s exempt for Reasons.
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marzipanandminutiae · 1 month
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still not over the absolutely braindead take that "if you say brutalism looks dystopian, you care more about your aesthetic than people having homes!!!!"
like
can't criticize Shein or you must want their workers to be unemployed
oh you don't like that restaurant? guess you want the people eating there to STARVE
fuck both roses AND bread; nutrient-dense gray EnergyCubes would keep you alive so wishing for a better sensory experience is basically capitalist bootlicking
(I agree that considering Soviet-era brutalist apartment buildings in the context of "shit we need housing; put something up quick" is important for those specific structures- though I think that can coexist with "wow that's ugly" -but. this person did not stop there)
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sokkastyles · 6 hours
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I have a question, I know we know that shipping does not equal morality. And I get that, and I really like that. However, on my other blog, that should have been my main blog (yes I am that dumb). I have talked about Aang's non-consensual and criticized how Kataang is written, however, if you ship Kataang I won't come for your throat because that's not my style. I know the few misogynists/antis on here and on Twitter, and I don't want to let a few bad apples be my impression of a fandom, that's not fair, So now I'm side-eyeing myself over my past remarks. Likewise, I know shipping is not equal to morality, but I also want to criticize Kataang because of how flawed it is and how wrong that kiss was (and other things). I have no idea what I'm saying because at this point I'm rambling. What do you think?
Well, there is a difference between criticizing a ship and criticizing canon. I don't honestly care what people ship. I use the antikataang tag because I don't want to argue with people who do ship it, but that doesn't mean I won't be critical of what is in the show. I think expecting people not to engage critically with media is absolute nonsense. But there is a difference between engaging critically with the actual media and criticizing people's fanon or headcanons, which is where you get away from critically engaging with canon and move into the area of criticizing other people's opinions, which is how arguments start.
Like, there isn't really any actual concrete argument you can make to criticize zutara, because zutara does not exist in canon. It's all fanon and headcanons and speculation. And criticizing other people's opinions just makes you look like a dick.
You also have to take into account the intention behind something. The thing about the way Katara's relationship with Aang is presented is that we're supposed to root for Aang to get Katara, and every obstacle towards that end is just there to create dramatic tension for the male point of audience identification. That's the real problem with the noncon kiss, and people who are critical of it are right to point it out.
In contrast, when I say shipping isn't morality, I'm talking about people who write, let's say, dubcon zutara fics. Fanfiction as a genre is largely female-centered fantasy. Yes, even those lurid fics you're thinking of. People write and read these fics for completely different reasons and have completely different expectations than when watching a series like ATLA. Trying to say that someone can't criticize the way the show presents Aang kissing Katara after she said she was confused as a mistake to be glossed over (that is forgotten as soon as it happens) because they also happen to like reading darkfic is nonsense. There's also a long history of women's interests being policed that informs my views here, vs the fact that consent has only fairly recently become a conversation in mainstream media. You have only to look at the way the show itself portrays Katara having interests (especially in boys) outside of Aang as dark and dangerous to see this happening in ATLA itself. Or the way the creators got away with saying that zutara shippers are doomed to end up in abusive relationships while painting Aang as a typical Nice Guy stereotype who expects Katara to magically become his girlfriend (and gets angry when she doesn't) and seeing nothing wrong with it.
The thing is that zutara, if we look at the way it's written in canon as a metaphor for a romantic relationship, follows the same tradition of how fanfiction has historically existed as an exploration of romantic and sexual dynamics. Those conversations about consent are actually happening and being explored in fanfiction, even the dark stuff, whereas relationships that are presented as "wholesome" often push us to NOT have those conversations. So when I say shipping isn't morality, what I actually mean is that noncanon shipping and darkfic actually has more of a moral leg to stand on than uncritically engaging with relationships on the grounds that Aang is the hero so his goodness and worthiness to get the girl should just be assumed. Zuko has to work for his right to be in a relationship with Katara because he didn't start out from a place of goodness, and that, on its own, is very female centered because instead of starting out from the perspective of the male hero deserving a relationship by virtue of being the hero, we see the idea that a man has to work to gain a woman's respect and affection.
So it's not so much that I hate KA, but I hate the idea that we should engage in it uncritically. And that would be true even if it really was the most wholesome relationship in the world. The same thing cannot be true of zutara because even the darkest of darkfic are about women centering themselves in the narrative and engaging with power dynamics in ways that are subverting patriarchal norms about relationships by definition.
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cardassiangoodreads · 7 months
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Some people get mad when you point out that Kira Nerys canonically was a terrorist and killed a lot of people which is so funny because like that’s not an impediment to liking the character at all! The fact that she’s a thorny, morally-complicated character who has to grapple with that across the course of the show as she rubs up against conflicting ideologies, who forces us to grapple with all that too, is why she’s such a good character! She’d be less good if all that was sanded off and she was just a generic “badass woman” like we’ve seen in so much other media. She shows how people like her who’ve had the “upbringing” she has actually tend to be IRL.
But this is also yet another reminder that if you don’t like a character’s “faults” you do not actually like the character. If you have to sand her (or any other DS9 character) off to fit some generic mold because it’s more “inspiring” or “empowering” or “nice” to you then you’re no longer engaging with the character as written. You may as well be honest and admit you’re writing about an OC at that point.
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chainmail-butch · 1 year
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Okay, this is my last post about the Present Discourse but defining Lesbianism in relation to men really seems to run entirely against the grain of being a lesbian. If someone is a bisexual lesbian then that means they're a bisexual lesbian. And, not to put words in other peoples mouths, they're not concerned with men.
They're Lesbians. That's why they're using the word lesbian, why is that a problem.
Two dykes can fuck each other and simultaneously admire a man's ass.
If your beef is 'we need our own special word' then grow the fuck up. Your special word is lesbian. Its right there. No one is adulterating it. It means women that fuck women. There are Dykes, there are Bulldaggers, there are Butches, there are Studs, there are Femmes, there are He/Him Lesbians. Not all lesbians have vaginas. Not all lesbians are women. And in that same vein not all gay men have cocks and not all gay men are men. We (Dykes) aren't special and we aren't excluded from fluidity.
And also sexuality and queerness don't need to be firmly defined. I was ace for a while, now I might not be ace. Shit changes. Hell, I was a guy for 23 years. Shit can and does change over the course of someone's life.
If you're main beef with bisexual lesbianism is the fact that these women have the capacity to be attracted to men then maybe chill. They're lesbians. That's why they're using the word lesbian. If you're worried that Bisexual Lesbians will somehow compromise "The Sexuality" in the face of the straights then I don't know what to tell you.
Respectability politics never win. Exclusion is never the right choice. There are Bisexual Lesbians in this world, no amount of whining is going to change this fact.
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fandomsandfeminism · 4 months
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Paxton’s office petitioned the high court just before midnight Thursday, after a Travis County district judge granted a temporary restraining order allowing Kate Cox, 31, to terminate her nonviable pregnancy. Paxton also sent a letter to three hospitals, threatening legal action if they allowed the abortion to be performed at their facility.
Ken Paxton is a fucking ghoul.
This has 0 to do with "saving a life"- the pregnancy is unviable. It's all about ensuring that pregnancy is a weapon, a threat, a way to keep anyone who can become pregnant at a permanent disadvantage socially and financially.
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juana-the-iguana · 7 months
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Sometimes I just think of fan interpretations of the cut-away between Zuko telling Katara that he knows where the man who killed her mother is and her packing things and getting ready to leave, and Aang and Katara having their last in-person interactions on screen (when they are lone together in EIP and when they are in a group in the finale) be fights to them kissing at the end.
People who support Kat-aang and do not like Zutara (and specifically comment in the Zutara tag about this) often say that Zuko had to convince Katara to go after her mother's killer. A lot of those people also assume that Aang must have apologized to Katara off-screen for the EIP kiss.
I have had a lot of people who share these interpretations accuse me and other people of not having "media literacy" because we can't clearly understand he must have apologized off screen. The irony is that is the exact opposite of the truth.
The cut away between Zuko telling Katara he knew how to find her mother's killer and her getting ready to leave signifies swiftness. Her response to this knowledge is so clear that showing her reaction would actually take away from conveying it. Things are moving fast, her mind was made up right away and she kept moving so the scene did too. And because she is moving so quickly, the audience can fill in the fact that any conversation she may have had with Zuko about this (How do you know this? When did you find out? etc.) did not play a role in her decision to find her mother's killer.
We know from both her past actions (being haunted by her mother's death, her righteous fury) and her future ones (trying to take Appa without talking to Aang or anyone else, telling Sokka that he didn't love their mother like she did, bloodbending) there is nothing Zuko could have said in a period of time that would have been a few hours, tops, that could have made her that angry or driven if those emotions were not already there. Zuko telling Katara he knows where her mother is isn't actually the completion of that narrative moment: her affirming that she needs to confront said killer when her actions are questions is. (I should note that part of the cut away could have been to leave room for a commercial break - I can't remember if that was the case when this aired on television - which would break up the viewing, but does not take away from the fact that Katara's shown response to this knowledge is to leave as quickly as possible).
Now compare that with the EIP kiss. We see the full moment play out, from Aang meeting Katara on the balcony to pressuring her to commit to him to kissing her when her eyes are close to her getting upset to her running away to him reflecting on what happened... Set up, action, response, reflection. This is an emotional scene, Katara is clearly distressed and this is one of the few times we actually see her mad at Aang. Their kiss at the end is another emotional moment, as it marks the culmination of Aang's journey as an Avatar. There needs to be a bridge between these intense scenes for them to make sense. Kat-aangers will argue that the EIP kiss is A and the ending kiss is C, so B must be the implied apology. But if A and C both matter a lot, and there needs to be a connection between the two things, then B should matter a lot too. C is the last scene in the show! This bridge should be shown, or at the very least referenced!
Unlike the TSR scenes, there is so much time between EIP and the finale that there is no clear flow between these moments. To the contrary, there are moments that break up this romantic sub-subplot, from them playing at the beach together again to them fighting again over how to deal with the Fire Lord and Aang running away (something worth noting is that Katara is the last person who is talking when he runs away - he literally left her - and she lets him go after a light touch on the shoulder from Zuko). Fight, friends, fight, love.
Since that B scene, the thing that bridges together Katara and Aang's relationship, is not there, then it either isn't important or did not happen.
Now let's get into media literacy. Media literacy isn't filling in gaps to make things make sense. Media literacy is understanding the messages that a piece of media is sending, intentionally or unintentionally. Even, in theory, if Zuko did have some conversation with Katara convincing her to seek out Yon Ra, it isn't shown and it isn't alluded to, so it doesn't matter. What we are supposed to take away from that episode is that Katara was ready to hunt down Yon Ra, she needed closure and got it, and that Zuko helped her. The same can be said for an apology after EIP. It doesn't matter if one happened off-screen, if it wasn't shown or referenced to, so it isn't important to the narrative. And if Aang making amends for hurting Katara isn't important to the narrative, but her kissing him after he fulfills his duty as the Avatar is, that is a huge statement about their relationship. Katara only rejected Aang because he wasn't an Avatar yet, so the only thing that matters in their relationship is him being the Avatar.
But the thing about media literacy is it isn't just about what is shown on the screen itself. It is about the bigger picture, what this is trying to convey as a message to the viewers.
So what does the gap in time in TSR tell us? Katara is this caring, nurturing friend who, in her brother's words, doesn't hate anyone except the people who took her mother. If she doesn't hate anyone except for the people who took her mother away from her, and she was immediately able to act on that hate when she got the chance to seek closure, then that hurt must have been closer to the surface than anyone thought. She acted fine, but her trauma was still there.
So what does this mean? She was able to address the anger conveyed in the scene in the episode and by the end of it, even though she was still conflicted about Yon Ra, she made peace with Zuko. Zuko whose mere presence caused her distress for weeks, not only because of his betrayal, but because he reminded her of her mother's death. Zuko who became her good friend and saved her life later on. Confronting her demons not only brought her peace, it improved her life tremendously.
So what is the "media literate" message from the lack of apology? The absence conveys is that the most important thing needed for Katara to like Aang was for him to fulfill his role as the Avatar, because that is the only thing that changed in between those two scenes. He didn't treat her any differently, he didn't apologize for hurting her, in fact its vague that he even acknowledged that what he did was wrong because it hurt her (the "I'm so stupid!" could easily mean he blew his chance, not that he cared). And Katara never went through the process of forgiving him or making peace with him wronging her. She never even acknowledged that he underwent a significant change as a person in the last episode either (Aang, who ran away from his duties at the start of the series, faces them head on in the last episode. YMMV on how good that was developed) - if it's not shown, it doesn't matter.
So what does this mean? It doesn't matter when Katara is hurt, conflict resolution doesn't matter, and apparently Aang's personality doesn't matter either. Their interpersonal relationship and emotional connection mean very little. Men do great things and women love them for it, how they act or are treated does not matter.
And before anyone comments "they're kids, it's not a big deal," this is a direct response to accusations about media literacy which, by definition, is a big deal - it's about the messages being made to viewers and its commentary on how society works and how things should be.
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sarasa-cat · 10 months
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