#the discourse

[mugasofer]

America is, in fairness, hardly the first country to choose a leader with terrible economic policies that immediately destroyed the economy

I'm not totally sure how historians will explain that America ruined its own economy for no good reason by electing the "let me ruin the economy" man

I hope to live long enough to find out.

[sokkastyles]

The way some antis talk about zutara as if Katara continued to hate Zuko for the rest of her days is like if I argued that Katara could never be with Aang because he's in an iceberg and pretended that nothing ever happened after Aang was frozen in the iceberg. Like wdym they got marrried, he's an iceberg.

[fandomsandfeminism]

I think you can tell a lot about how rigorous and committed someone's belief in a human right is by how quickly they are able to name people who they think could or should have that right taken away.

[self-winding]

Along with the "how do we stop young men turning into angry radical right-wing types" discourse there's been a lot of discourse about the need for cishet male allies of the cause to stand up to their racist, sexist, homophobic etc. male friends and tell them to stop being those things, and other people saying "I've tried that and it doesn't really work, they just call me a fag and then stop hanging out with me."

And yeah, given that the left and right are more divided than ever it is kind of strange to assume that a male feminist is going to be hanging out with a bunch of sexist dudebros who will take it to heart when they make a rape joke and he says, "dudes...that was fucked up." That's not how it works.

(Also, yes, I realize that "the right" and "sexist dudebros" are not really the same thing but there's an area of overlap that is specifically being focused on in a lot of this discourse.)

I've been in sort of the Mirror World version of that scenario: being in heavily left-wing spaces, hearing people say fucked up shit about men and being the one who says, "uh that's kinda fucked up why would you say something like that?" and can confirm, yes, this kind of pushback does not work in that context. They just ridicule you and double down on whatever they were saying. Pushing out dissenting voices is a time-honored bonding ritual for these types of groups.

On the other hand, when I am alone with an actual friend, someone I care about who also cares about me, and they say something fucked up and I respond with shocked silence or a quiet "hey now," they usually backpedal pretty quickly.

So I guess if you're trying to stop someone from going down a rabbit hole my advice is not to confront them in a group setting or online where other people can witness the confrontation, especially if you are in a setting where most onlookers are likely to side with them. Talking to them alone, and in a less confrontational way, is what actually gets results.

[broadwaybalogna]

This is so interesting to me because it’s technically canon that Katara was reduced to being “the avatars wife”. Like, A@ng was always the breadwinner while Katara just watched from the sidelines.

Also, Zutarians will more commonly say that Katara being fire lady gives her the same kind of political power as Zuko, or he would give her such. So it would be a relationship where both are important figures and neither are living in the others shadow.

[forthegothicheroine]

Miss Manners is adding denouncing political correctness to her list of conversational prefaces from which no good ever follows. When people announce that they plan to abandon the rules of civilized discourse, they should be taken seriously. The response should be "Well, if you are in favor of being offensive, I'd rather not hear more."

Judith Martin, Minding Miss Manners In an Era of Fake Etiquette

[stardust948]

*Tired sigh*

[toweringclam]

These takes are so exhausting.

Because nudity = fanservice = hates women.

Nevervmind that Okarun and Jiji are naked just as often and often more naked (girls at least keep their underwear.

Never mind all the awesome female characters, including the fucking Granny Special Forces unit.

Never mind all the flashbacks that highlight gender-based injustice and oppression.

Never mind that the only actual source of real overt fanservice is Granny Seiko.

Nah, none of that matters. The mangaka who said he set out to create a genuine girls' shonen and only added Okarun to appease Shonen Jump editors* must be a virulent misogynist. Because underwear.

[pepperf]

Listen, with all due respect, I don't give a fuck about what Five would or wouldn't do. It takes two to tango, and I don't believe that Lila would change so fundamentally from a chaos gremlin who loved Diego to distraction, into some lobotomised cottagecore manic pixie dream sex toy. This was all set up so that Five could get laid, lbr. They could have given him a mannequin and a Fleshlight for the same effect.

And if, as Steve Blackman claims, she and Five are so right for each other bc they have such similar experiences, blah blah blah, why did he need to shoehorn them into a situation where they're stranded alone for 7 years to even reach the point of having sex? He couldn't even convince himself that it was plausible without cooking up the most extreme nonsense - and even then, like 90% of the fandom has called bullshit.

As if the degree of similarity of experience is such a key factor in a romance, anyhow. All the Umbrellas had a background more similar to Lila's than to Joe or Jane Public, but those are external factors, they all responded differently. Hell, by that argument, why didn't he make Lila and Allison the endgame ship: after all, they were raised by sociopaths who turned them into weapons, they experienced life in the 60s as WOC, they were both parents...

(And that's not even getting into the fact that this was all a writing choice, as others have said. It wasn't inevitable, it didn't have to happen, it added nothing to the plot and contradicted past characterisations. It's just masturbatory.)

[sokkastyles]

Lol this is a nice essay but totally ignores that Zuko renounced belief in colonization and imperialism and became Katara's ally and friend, and that she did forgive him. That's what my original post is about, the fact that the show had Zuko go to great lengths to atone onscreen and had Katara forgive him onscreen. We actually see Zuko learn to respect Katara. We do NOT see Aang learn to respect Katara. You say the kiss was "a bit much" while downplaying Zuko's redemption, and then say that Aang "needed to grow," except that he did not grow. The kiss happened in late season three and is never brought up in the show outside of the episode in which it happens.

I'm sorry, but I wholly reject the idea that Zuko is not a romantic option if he can be Katara's friend, and he canonically is. Also, you missed the point of my post, which is that Zuko grew to respect Katara and Aang did not. If my choices are between a man who had to learn to respect me and my boundaries and was forced to grovel before me in order to earn my trust (a literal romance trope) and an immature child who disrespected my boundaries and sexually assaulted me but he'll never be held accountable and is extremely likely to do it again, I'm picking the first guy every time.

It's also giving the writers too much credit to say that they got the affects of adultification right. Katara experiencing trauma over being parentified is somewhat addressed, but she's still expected to take care of the group's needs and ultimately the show concludes that this is a good thing at the same time that the show uses those traits in Katara as sources of comedy. Also all the kids are more "adult" than real kids because they are cartoon characters in an adventure story. ATLA is not a realistic story about child psychology, nor can it be.

It's also clear that the romance didn't happen because "Viacom needed a romance plot," Bryke have spoken often about their intentions for the romance plot and how it was meant to portray Aang growing into earning Katara's affections and proving he's grown up enough for her. Thus the problems with the kataang romance stem from the inherent fact that it was always driven by being a male fantasy, and the problems that exist aren't accidental, they were done intentionally because the writers don't actually care about how Katara feels. Disregarding what Katara wants and having Aang win her anyway despite being immature and never having to respect her is an essential part of that fantasy. Aang kissed Katara without her consent because the writers want us to identify with his frustration that she hasn't become his girlfriend yet. Aang never apologized for it because the writers don't care about that, people like you downplay the fact that he kissed her without consent because the romance was written from the perspective that Katara's feelings need to change to accommodate what Aang wants. The misogyny is an intentional feature, not a bug. Even if Zuko wasn't the better option (and he is) I think Katara should pick him because fuck that entire narrative.

Edit: I also want to address your tags because you use the word intersectionality but don't seem to understand what it means. It does not mean you "pick the lesser of two evils" (and I am EXTREMELY judging you for insisting that sexual assault is a lesser evil, wtf), it does not mean we should constantly judge people by identity alone. It means that arcs like Zuko and Katara's are actually necessary and should happen more often in shows, where they both have to learn to respect each other, because it's also intersectionality that Katara had to learn how to treat Zuko as someone with a facial disfigurement. Katara learning how Zuko has been victimized by his own family and how that parallels the loss of her mother is also a facet of intersectionality. Being like "oh these two characters can never have a relationship because of identity politics" is NOT intersectionality.

Just saw a post where someone took someone else's post and said that they were "projecting" onto Katara because the OP said that if they were in Katara's position when they were kissed by Aang in EIP after making it clear that she didn't want to be kissed, they wouldn't forgive Aang.

And the thing is, that first of all, projecting isn't a dirty word, it's a normal way to relate to fictional narratives. Second, we actually don't see Katara forgive Aang or even address the kiss in any way other than after she looks upset and angry and then runs out of the room. Audiences can ONLY project onto Katara because we don't actually get to see the resolution to that event from Katara's perspective. We assume she forgave him because she gets together with him in the end, but we aren't actually shown it and we know that they would be endgame whether or not the kiss had happened. Katara's forgiveness of Aang doesn't feel organic because she doesn't actually get the chance to forgive him, so of course audiences are going to question it.

Third, it's actually quite common now for writers and producers to consult audience members, especially those who fit the demographic of a character, on whether that character's actions seem plausible. This is especially true if the writers themselves aren't representatives of that demographic. Katara's actions were written by male writers, so it's not up to them to give the final word on what a teenage girl would do upon being kissed without consent, it is up to female fans to decide whether that rings true. The fact that the writers didn't even bother to show us Katara's perspective further highlights the lack of a female perspective being considered here.

The post in question also said that what Aang did didn't actually hurt Katara, and that she was just "annoyed and angry," but not hurt. And I feel like people who argue this in favor of Katara and Aang's relationship are actually downplaying the relationship quite a bit. Because if Katara loves Aang, she'd feel a whole lot more than annoyed upon being kissed by him after expressing that she was confused and felt that it wasn't the right time. She'd feel incredibly betrayed, she'd feel like he didn't listen to her. She might even question her relationship with him further and start to back away from the feelings of love that she was already hesitant to express, because what Aang is showing her is that he doesn't actually care about how she feels and isn't going to be careful with her feelings if she were to truly give her heart to him. The EIP kiss actually does A LOT of damage to Katara and Aang's relationship, and the fact that it's never actually addressed does even more damage.

I mean, if Katara didn't really care about Aang kissing her without her consent, I'm not sure why I should care about their relationship at all.

The post also brought up that Zuko has done worse to Katara but she forgave him. The thing is that we actually SAW Zuko earn Katara's forgiveness. This is a relationship I can get behind because the show cares about it. The show cares that Zuko hurt Katara and cares about whether or not he gets her forgiveness. Zuko and Katara would not have had a relationship at all without that conflict and its resolution. The show tells me that these two characters care about each other, and it does it without any sort of romantic drama AND without having the guy sexually assault her.

[maikingsenseofit]

I think almost all of the anti Mai discourse from namely Zutara shippers boils down to this.

You can try and deliberately misconstrue the writing to say Zuko forgot Mai, was never happy around her, never loved her, etc etc

But not once can you say Zuko ever looked at Katara, Jin, or any other female character you ship him with the same way he looks at Mai in these four panels.

What I love about the art of animation is it conveys so much when words can’t.

The eyes, Chico. They never lie.

This single scene conveys so much love, adoration, and the happiness of finally reuniting with your soulmate. And no amount of dissertations on how a fanon ship would’ve made a children’s tv show more enjoyable to you will never change that.

The curse of canon weighs on Maiko and Kataang shippers, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.

[reachartwork]

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.

[wufflesvetinari]

controversial, but as someone who's spent the last year tearing her hair out adjudicating student conduct cases involving AI misuse: i'm never going to be impressed by an anti-AI post that sounds like an abstinence-only educator wrote it

it goes without saying that AI as implemented has many problems.* it fills me with a low-level sense of dread! but some of you seem to think that if we teach the children to Just Say No, it will go away. which...maybe this is because i work with engineering students but that sounds about as likely as email going away (and that message is just about as likely to resonate with kids as The Internet Is Evil So Stay Off).

students are graduating into a workforce that requires them to use AI. it is, in certain contexts, an appropriate tool. so between an engineer who's never touched AI in their life and one who's had a thorough education in it--who knows what it can and can't do; what it can and can't be trusted with--i'd pick the latter every time.

like, they're going to build the airplanes for christ's sake. they're going to be handed AI, usually of higher quality than public-facing chatgpt but still. i don't want them graduating with the sense that AI is a Forbidden All-Knowing Cheating Machine instead of something they've spent time understanding the limitations of. i want them to understand which programs work for which tasks, and which don't work at all. and that requires active education on the tool, the same way you'd teach about internet safety or how to detect fake news

(this goes, imo, for people trying to make AI safer and more ethical as well. if you consider it unethical by definition to work on AI, the only people working on it will be the ones who don't care about ethics.)

-

*i will say it. misinformation, algorithmic bias, disruptions for the labor force, shoving it into tasks it's not good at LET ME SCHEDULE MY OWN DAMN VET APPOINTMENT, unethical sourcing for datasets, environmental impact (the data center planner in my life is VERY skeptical of DeepSeek being more efficient but one hopes)

[tyetknot]

*carefully tosses a golden apple labelled 'TO THE LEAST PROBLEMATIC' into the middle of witchblr discourse*

[imperiuswrecked]

I simply do not care what Marvel says is official about the Magnet Family that removes any aspect of them being Romani/Jewish, so why would I care if anyone goes "Billy and Tommy are white because blah blah soul magic whatever but they have white/non Roma parents" lol, like sorry not sorry but if you are gonna claim them as the Minimoffs, and as Wanda Maximoff's children then they are Romani, full stop. You do not get to have the aesthetic/connection without the background, fuck that.

And it's just so fucking tiring to have to see these old and new shitty takes that keep trying to divorce the Maximoffs or Minimoffs from their Romani background.

Why are you, a fan of the Maximoff or Minimoffs, doing Marvel's whitewashing for them??? Why are you deep throating Marvel's boots??? Grow a spine and a brain and stop trying to "but the comics-" you mean the comics that were literally rewritten on a whim because some corporate cry babies were mad that XMCU decided to use Quicksilver (who was whitewashed!!! or the MCU also whitewashed!!!), and I'm supposed to accept their word on it over 40+ years of collective canon stating that the Maximoffs are Romani and Jewish? lmao.