Holding the laptop’s power button down because it’s crashed and there’s no other way to turn it off feels so unsettling. It makes me feel like I’m holding a cushion over its face while the life slowly ebbs out of it.

Have you considered that Zuko is just a bad friend?[This will not be a Zuko friendly post]

While this title is a bit of a joke, the point remains: there is a very strong argument to be made that canon Zuko is just not a very good friend, that he’s someone who doesn’t treat his friends very well. Obviously there are many events in Zuko’s life which negatively affected his interpersonal relationships, so I don’t intend this to be an exercise in blame. I’m merely noting a pattern that I think Zuko will need to work on in the future:

Ty Lee: Zuko is extremely vicious in what he says to Ty Lee in “The Beach,” which stands out because it’s about the only substantive thing he ever says to her, and because Ty Lee is extremely kind to him that episode. He never apologizes for it. He also deliberately tries to provoke a fight between Ty Lee and Mai.

Mai: Let’s us just say that Zuko treats Mai very poorly in “The Beach,” and never really apologizes for it or recognizes what about his behavior was wrong. This includes getting into fits of violent jealousy the moment Mai even lays eyes on another boy.

Now let’s turn to the Gaang. In all cases, Zuko starts off eager to please and gain their approval. However, once he passes this initial hurtle, his behavior doesn’t necessarily measure up.

Toph basically approves of Zuko from the start, and he has to do little to win her friendship. As a result, he largely although not entirely ignores her. He feels comfortable dumping his emotional issues on her, but when she tries to do the same to him, he’s dismissive of it. All things considered, Zuko isn’t a terrible friend to Toph, but I wouldn’t say he’s a great one, either.

Aang rapidly warms up to Zuko, particularly through their field trip in “The Firebending Masters.” However, we see some questionable treatment of Aang later on. Zuko twice mocks the culture of Aang, a genocide survivor whose culture was murdered by Zuko’s ancestors, in “The Southern Raiders.” Worse, Zuko, in the series finale, decided it was a great idea to try to light Aang on fire in order to terrify him into submission, because said best friend didn’t want to train and Zuko didn’t feel like reasoning with him.

Sokka is an interesting case. Zuko tries hard to win his friendship in the “Boiling Rock” episodes. However, once this is accomplished, Zuko starts behaving differently. In “The Southern Raiders,” Zuko uses Sokka to find out about Kya’s death. However, although Zuko emphasizes the importance of revenge, it doesn’t occur to him to offer the opportunity to Sokka. Zuko doesn’t directly tell Sokka what he found, nor does he give Sokka the chance to join on the little “vengeance expedition.” The fact that Sokka already forgave Zuko means that Zuko has no reason to care about giving him an opportunity for closure.  And of course, when Sokka, who also lost Kya, says that he thinks killing Yon Rha is a bad idea, Zuko ignores him.

Zuko’s treatment of Katara is a whole mess of its own, although it’s largely confined to one episode:

1. Zuko feels entitled to Katara’s forgiveness.

2. Zuko ignores Katara’s very clear and reasonable explanation about why she doesn’t like or trust him to instead decide it must be all about her mom.

3. Zuko decides to manipulate Katara into liking him by giving her the opportunity to murder someone she hates. That someone is a bad person who did something truly awful, but whose actions are not necessarily much worse than what Zuko himself did, much less what Zuko’s believed uncle Iroh did. Zuko claims this is all about “justice,” but the fact that he had no interest in giving Sokka an opportunity to come along and participate shows the real character of Zuko’s actions here.

Zuko is mostly nice to Katara after “The Southern Raiders,” but his treatment of her in the episode always feels terrible to me.

Zuko and Suki don’t seem to have any significant friendship, so there’s nothing to say here, one way or the other.

@vector-field-outpost

#honestly when I first watched the show the “I’m teaching you a lesson” scene was so jarringly awful#it felt out-of-character#but it’s in-character for Zuko. it’s out-of-character for the good guy the show tries to frame him as#I remember being so uncomfortable about this scene#I was like ten to twelve the first time we watched the show#and I wanted to buy into the “Zuko is a good guy now” that the show was trying to make me believe (at least that’s how it felt)#i really wanted to#but the “I’m teaching you a lesson” scene seemed so unjustifiably bad. so inexcusable#I think I kinda repressed my memory of it for a while because it was so jarring#anti Zuko Yeah, it’s interesting how that particular scene has a way of slipping from the collective memory. I don’t think I thought anything of it really the first time I watched the show, and it certainly seems to have no presence in the minds of the broader ATLA fandom. Even in the Azula fanbase(which dates all the way back to the show’s airing), I don’t think it was ever referenced until a couple years ago. As far as I’m aware, I was the first person to really notice it and rethink it a couple years ago, when I noticed it had striking similarities with Azula’s treatment of Ty Lee in the circus scene.

I really wanted to slap Zuko when he said this to Aang. Like dude, you do realize that the dead nation that you are making fun of is dead thanks to your family, right? The very same family who has profited from the deaths of the air nomads and countless others for a 100 years since the war started? Kindly shut the fuck up. He's lucky Aang didn't get pissed with him and decide to kick him out of the group. He would have been completely justified.

i’m surprised that katara didn’t go off on zuko for that because she’s always been shown to respect the air nomads and their culture. poor girl was going through it this episode so i don’t exactly fault her or the writers for it either. katara deserved better than to have her trauma be used as a tool to forgive zuko.

Yes!!!

It’s like you guys didn’t even watch the Southern Raiders, because nowhere does Zuko helping Katara deal with her trauma is a means to end solely for forgiveness.

Zuko recognized that Katara was projecting her frustration towards the Fire Nation onto him. This is a dynamic that defines their relationship since Crossroads of Destiny where Katara literally says that she views Zuko’s face as the face of “the enemy.” He’s a representation of the forces that tore her family apart, which happens again earlier in the same episode when she and Sokka have to separate from their father when Azula attacks the air temple. This repeating pattern makes Katara upset, so she redirects it unto Zuko, a more tangible target whom she still justifiably angry at.

As someone who had also lost their mother at a young age with zero closure, Zuko understands that Katara needs that closure when she yells at him to bring her mother back. Katara, who has likely always wondered about her mother’s killer, doesn’t hesitate to accept Zuko’s offer, indicating that she wanted to go after him all along but had no real avenue to do so. This shared connection is clearly significant if it results in Katara opening up to Zuko abut the darkest day of her life. It’s reflective of their interactions in CoD, but instead of Katara trying to “heal” Zuko, it’s Zuko “healing” Katara. In both episodes, the two lower their guards and find middle ground. Ultimately, the show’s lesson is that though not everyone can be reconciled with (aka Yon Rha), reconciliation is still possible for those who put in the effort.

How this is reduced to “the writers had zuko exploit katara’s trauma so she could just forgive him” is beyond me.

"How is this reduced to 'the writers had Zuko exploit Katara's trauma so she could just forgive him' is beyond me."

Ummmm, because that's literally what they did?

Book 3 was rushed to hell and back, especially once he joins the group. That much is obvious. At this point, Katara hasn't forgiven Zuko (and rightfully so) for his role in what happened in Ba Sing Se. There wasn't that much time until the finale. So the writers needed something to make Katara forgive him. Easiest way to do that? Hmmm, what was the one thing that they "bonded" over for all of 5 seconds in the book 2 finale?

Seriously, Zuko himself pretty much makes it clear why he's doing this when he goes to Sokka's tent to ask him about Kya's death. It was less about helping Katara with her trauma and more about having her forgive him by taking out her anger at him onto someone else who he thought actually deserved it. Which, Yon Rha did. But so did Zuko.

And I will always hate the fact that it's framed as Zuko being entitled to Katara's forgiveness. And you know what, you're right. The episodes message WAS that not everyone can and should be forgiven. Yet somehow, this completely goes over Zuko's head. At no point in time do we ever see him come to the realization that Katara may in fact never forgive him. And that it's OK. That he shouldn't try and force her to forgive him. Who knows, she may have forgiven him eventually when enough time passed. Maybe she wouldn't. But the bottom line is, that choice was entirely up to her.

Where are those Air Temple preschoolers, Zuko? Where are they? What happened to them? Don't worry; I'll wait.

The problem of romanticizing "Zutara" scenes

How about we try to see Zutara "scenes" prior the Western Air Temple through Katara eyes and not Zuko's? Because I have seen like a couple of people romantize things like stealing her necklace as something deeply important to him.

Let's say that Zuko did have feelings for Katara since the beginning.

Let's try to ignore that he has a girlfriend already since Zuko does that, if Jin is anything to go by, Zuko may try to have a date if he thinks he's not seeing Mai ever again, wich is a bit understandable I guess.

If Zuko, at any point of the series, got any romantic feelings for Katara, they're really toxic ones, overrided by his desire for honor.

For the sake of not making this super long, let's just go up until Zuko joins the Gaang in the Southern Air Temple.

First, the "I'll save you from the pirates line"

Is just… SO MANY people use this as saying it was started the ship for them, to those Zutara shippers who don't romantize this scene, you have my respect because…

Just… fucking TRY to put yourself into Katara shoes.

She's tied to a tree, surrounded by grown men (pirates no less) and Zuko is helding her most precious possesion while trying to convince her to sell out Aang so he may capture him and snuff out any hope the world has of being free of the war with the fire nation, he literally talks to her ear about betraying the whole fucking world just so she can have the only thing she has left of her mom or she is going to be attacked by the pirates.

The only way I can see this being even more r*pey would be the pirates showing any sign of being agressive towards her. The last time a Firebender was that close to her mother necklace she was a little kid and her mother was killed.

The "You rise with the moon, I rise with the sun" line? Zuko was calling Katara "A little peasant" a couple of hours prior that, he attacks her, she gets fucking knocked out. Aang is taken away, all with a fucking raid against the Northern Tribe is happening.

I have seen fanfics with Zuko criticize Aang for killing the fire nation soldiers that were attacking the Northern Tribe.

Just…. Just what the fuck with that by the way?

Because of Zuko, there was no one to protect Tui and La, he directly and indirectly, is the reason Yue needed to sacrifice her life or the planet is permanently screwed.

For the fandom that came out with the eeeexcelent idea of Katara with remaining scars because of that time Aang accidently burned her, try to go in reverse.

Imagine every single time that the Gaang could have scars if any blow of Zuko actually landed.

Try to imagine Toph not being able to see anymore because her feets are permanently scarred this time.

Try to imagine Aang, Katara and Sokka looking at Zuko in the eyes and trust him with teaching Aang firebending while having permanent reminders of what fire near him feels like in their skin.

Katara tried to heal Iroh in The Chase even if she din't knew what was happening, she saw the one guy that was their enemy from quite some time and she decided to help him.

Zuko answered that by trying to burn them.

And it Crossroads of Destiny, they bond over their dead moms, except Zuko mom isn't actually dead but just missing.

Imagine if Katara and zuko knew the full story beyond the fact that both their mothers are gone, she would'nt feel as understanding of similar since her mother being killed isn't the same as Zuko mom leaving them because she needed to save Zuko from Ozai.

You want to know what's even more funny? Try to imagine their moms reacting to what happened to the other.

Kya was a woman willingly to give her life for her daughter, for her people to not be raided and hunted anymore, she would see a thirteen year old kid being burned by his own father and being horrified by what the Fire Nation does to itself.

Ursa?

Ursa, Kid Azula and Kid Zuko were laughing at Iroh’s suggestion of burning Ba Sing Se to the ground. To them Iroh’s comment was some hilarious joke, even though he was serious about erasing the Earth Kingdom most populous and biggest city from existence for no good reason whatsoever other than Fire Nation supremacy.

At best she would be "Poor uncivilized water tribe girl, but we have a good cause for what we do, yes even your mothers death"

And that's what we have at Crossroads of Destiny.

Katara says "The Fire Nation took my mother from me" ignoring the fact that the very first thing she said was about how Zuko was the one that hunted them for so long, she HATED him to the point she explicitly says she thinks of him as the face of the enemy.

Katara has feel nothing but hatred towards Zuko, she literally would have let him to die frozen to death if Aang din't took him with them.

How and why does Mai get hate for saying it playful and throwing a piece of paper but Katara being very honest about wanting to kill him and being WILLING to let it happen is overlooked.

She APOLOGIZES to Zuko for screaming at him, she says she could heal Zuko scar with the Spirit water and she was about heal him.

Let's just…

Let's think for a moment that she din't used that on fucking Jet who she knew for a fact was trying to change for the better, but was willingly to use it on someone who has done so much harm to her after Zuko talks about himself, because that's what their talk in Crossroads of Destiny was, Zuko just talks about himself, at no point does Katara shares more about how she feels about the whole thing beyond that comment about her mother.

Katara at this point is just limited to feel sorry for Zuko because his mother is gone like hers, not because of all the pain he specifically has done to her.

He USED the knowledge he got from Katara healing water to send an assassin for the possibility Aang may be alive, that she may have saved them.

Think about something.

Imagine the spirit water wasn't enough.

Imagine Katara crying over her first and best friend being gone, forever.

Imagine the world having no hope anymore.

Imagine a fourteen year old little girl holding the corpse of a twelve year old little boy.

Imagine that and the next thing Katara sees, is a combustion bender hunting her and her remaining friends, likely killing her without Aang being both a sensor and the only one that could directly counter Combustion Man attacks without loosing a limb in the process.

There are people angry at Katara for threatening Zuko.

Katara has been so directly hurt and being threatened by Zuko actions than hating him more would be understandable, if Zuko felt even a single shred of affection or attraction to her, he maybe have felt a single doubt, or shame or repent after what he has done, but is not until Katara directly points it to him that he says he regrets it.

The strenght she has for not looking at him like she wants to pierce his skull with ice 24/7 is not because of romantic feelings, but because Katara is willing to be pragmatic about what needs to be done but she also has the right to be angry at him after so much.

You may call Katara carring about Aang being angered/in pain and helping him to calm down emotional labor, but you know what?

Forgiving and trying to let go on in all the pain Zuko has directly and indirectly caused to her, is a bigger labor than everything Aang has ever done to her

asjjsjsjks okay i love zuko but he’s such a dick in the southern raiders omfg (i rewatched the ep last night). the writers really just made sure all of his flaws shone through in the span of 20 minutes. case in point:

“This isn’t fair! Everyone else seems to trust me now! What is it with you?” wtf?? zuko,, honey,, that’s so goddamn arrogant of you lmao. “gee, katara, why haven’t you forgiven me yet?! it’s not fair!! everyone else has!! you’re just being mean >:((” like okay buddy katara doesn’t owe you forgiveness. or have you forgotten what you’ve put her through lmao

“Your sister. She hates me! And I don’t know why.” you dumbass she just told you why!! my god!! were you just not listening?? in that case, you’re an asshole, not a dumbass, because that means she told you and you ignored it

“I know this may seem out of nowhere, but I want you to tell me what happened to your mother.” this is more something i think i specifically have a problem with but damn the bitch really went behind katara’s back to find out what happened rather than actually trying to talk to her (but considering he conveniently “didn’t hear” her explaining why she hated him maybe this isn’t unexpected lmfao)

“this isn’t air temple preschool” WHAT THE FUCK WHATTHEFUCK HOW INSENSITIVE CAN YOU BE??? ZUKO NO PLS your ancestors wiped out aang’s entire people and here you go treating their beliefs like they’re somehow lesser to your own. huh. almost reminds us of sozin and ozai, doesn’t it? in other words zuko the colonizer is jumping out of you. put it back

“we’ll be sure to do that, guru goody-goody” zuko it’s time to stop. for fuck’s sake you keep putting your foot in your mouth. if aang wasn’t a pacifist he’d have punched you because you’re being a major asshole rn

on the bright side, zuko does have one shining moment this ep:

“You were right about what Katara needed. Violence wasn’t the answer.” this is why we listen to aang instead of acting like his people’s beliefs are somehow inferior to yours, especially considering your ancestors are the reason the beliefs of the air nomads have been transformed into legend and aang is the only person able to keep them alive and present in modern times. im glad you came to your senses zuzu

in conclusion zuko deserved to get punched in the southern raiders and it’s a miracle he didn’t. thanks for coming to my tedtalk

Zuko’s Feels >>> The World

Hi, how’s it going? Pardon me if this gets tedious, I was in the mood to use repetition as a tool.

——————————————————————————

So, do you remember that time the cruel, heartless, born-evil, doesn’t give a damn about anything and anyone Fire Lord Ozai, of all people (while he implicitly planned the worst war strategy in human history), sent his two brats on vacation? 

Remember when he sent them away with friends on vacation to Ember Island? That place he and his family used to visit all the time for bonding?

Remember when he sent them to a barn-sized hut, instead of their mansion-sized beach house that he and the kids-he-currently-likes would clearly be more accustomed to and look more like royalty inside?

Remember how his doing so basically implied, at the least, that said beach house held some sentimental value to him? That it was a sacred part of their past that he didn’t want anyone to unearth and sully by walking inside and bringing the past to the present?

Remember when Zuko went on to do exactly what Ozai probably didn’t want anyone, including his children, to do and walked inside their old beach house anyway? And touched their (the whole family’s) past?

Remember when during yet another one of his angst and mope fests, he decided to grab one of the last remnants of their shared past—a painting, probably one of the few the family has where they’re together—and proceeded to burn it? Right in front of Azula’s, his younger sibling’s, eyes? Without any concern over how that would appear to her and others, or how those with a connection to the image besides him, would feel about that?

Remember when Ty Lee rightfully pointed out that that rare piece of history from their past quite obviously meant a lot to him, and him pulling his overdramatic stunt did the opposite of prove he didn’t care?

Remember when he then verbally degraded her for stating what’s obvious to everyone who has a 5 minute conversation with him?

Remember when no one acknowledged that Azula was in the painting/picture too? Or that she has a right to feel something about Zuko’s actions too? Remember when none of them even asked her how she felt about that? 

Remember when he did all that, in the episode that Azula was at one of her most civil toward him and others, and was being very protective and supportive of him?

Remember how he seemingly never returned the favor or even apologized for his obnoxious behavior? 

Remember how he probably never stopped to think about how poorly he treated all three girls that night?

Remember that? 🙂

I remember. 🙂

I wonder what Ozai would have thought, had he known what Zuko did to that image of their loved ones. Do you think that deep down he’d be pleased, apathetic or pissed?

How do you think Azula felt as that irreplaceable painting of her near her mother, as well as the males in her family during that relatively happy period in their lives, was thrown into a self-made, bended fire by her own brother right in front of her—to be turned into ash? It was a pretty hurtful thing to do, wasn’t it?

God, this post is brilliant.

man the site that used to be full of people horny for the onceler now getting really hyped about tree law is some serious poetic irony

I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees!

And for some fucking reason, they speak legalese!!!

#fuck yeah treegalese

(via @tanoraqui)

When was Azula a jerk for the sake of being a jerk(i.e. “malicious”)?

Here, I want to catalogue the moments I remember where Azula did something merely to be a jerk. I’m not counting moments where she was kind of a dick about something she would have done anyways. For instance, trying to defeat Aang wouldn’t count, even if Azula enjoyed doing it and taunted him while she fought him. Where does that leave us?

1. Making fun of Zuko, many times. Note that younger siblings making fun of older siblings is utterly normal.

2. The exact manner with which Azula recruited Ty Lee. Azula could have figured out something “nicer.”

3. Kicking over a kid’s sandcastle on Ember Island.

4. Insulting Ty Lee and calling her “a tease” at the party(Azula immediately apologized for this one).

5. Burning down Chan’s house(Mai, Zuko, Ty Lee were also 100% on board with this).

6. Being kind of smug, arrogant, and bossy to a servant in the series finale.

Overall, it’s not a great list, but it’s mostly that of a teenage delinquent, not a supervillain. 

not that we didn't already Know belos was full of shit, but it's even funnier knowing the titan was still alive the whole time and probably judging him

hot take but none of you are allowed to use deer/antler imagery when working with cannibalistic themes anymore. you need to be honest with yallselves on WHY you're associating deer/antler imagery with cannibalism. just because you aren't naming the name doesn't mean that the original anti-indigenous racism isn't still inherent to what you're doing.

For those who need more explanation, a well known (but often misunderstood) figure in Algonquin and Aanishinabe culture is the wend*go.

No, I'm not fully typing out the name cause we don't say that name and don't want to attract its attention. Yes, all of this is taken very seriously by us Natives.

The problem is that this very serious figure isn't taken seriously at all by non-Natives and, instead of respecting our culture and the fact we don't even say its name, its perceived as this cool monster to add to movies, video games and cool edgy OCs.

And, as with all thing Native being used and abused, misunderstood, and transformed by non-Natives, we are tired of that. It's not okay, it's not respectful.

You want a people eating monster in a story? Use anything else.

As someone who's absolutely guilty of this shite on this account...yeah you have the right to spitroast me for that. Fair is fair.

I do hope we can use creepy deer aesthetics on and about other mythological/fiction monster villains tho. As someone who had a deer almost kill their dog, I just find deer creepy and unsettling regardless.

first off: You are the single person who has responded to this post admitting some variant of having done this that actually listened to what was being said, acknowledged that you did such things while you didn't know any better, expressed an intent to never do it again, and asked for clarification on whether or not "creepy deer aesthetic" is completely off-limits with that in mind. So with that said, I want you to know that you're one of the very few folks in this post I respect sincerely.

To that end: While obviously I can't speak for Native America as a monolith, it would be my opinion that no, creepy deer aesthetics as a concept are fine. Deer can be fucked up and weird. There is a fundamental lure to the idea of a large prey animal behaving as a predator or in ways anathema to our understanding of prey. That juxtaposition and irony has a lot of narrative potential and for good reason--it fucks severely! I don't want to see it go away! It fucks hard, for Christ's sake!

But it is my opinion that the use of deer aesthetics within the specific context of cannibal themes isn't able to be used anymore. The well has been poisoned too deeply. I never said once the specific being I was referring to in nearly any of my responses, but everyone knew exactly what I meant. Even trying to purposefully distance the racism from the imagery would be useless, since the racism is baked in to the assumptions by now. Reclamation may be able to happen in the future, but first we need to accept that setting it down completely is the right play for a while. You can distance racism from creepy deer stuff by purposefully and actively distancing it from Native America and cannibalism--if it becomes a recurring imagery on its own throughout multiple types of horror, rather than being innately tied by implication to the winter hunger, that's when we could maybe begin talking about whether or not to start re-examining our relationship with it.

In case anyone was curious on how well non-indigenous people are handling being given the very simple task of "please acknowledge this extremely specific thing is racist"

Ruby Bridges is 68. This is not ancient history. Not even close.

I know Ruby. She's a really nice person. The idea that they would try and write what she did as a girl out of history is shocking to me on so many levels, the simplest of which is just, but don't they know how lovely she is?

No I will not apologize for the continued Nimona spamming. No I will never stop making Owl House memes.

uses my insane musscle memory to open 4 wrong apps in a row

Basically a guy took the idea of destiny and ran it to its logical conclusion where Azula was always destined to be evil and thus she should have never been born and should not be allowed to live or be redeemed

Ok, this honestly made me laugh 😂. That sounds so stupid, holy shit.

The nature of the internet is such that so often someone reinvents Calvinist predestination.

...this is just gonna make me write that It's A Wonderful Life fic, isn't it?

When a character is written with so much malice and hate it only makes you stan them more

On why Azula needs to be humbled before being redeemed

So I read about a fan complaining that it’s bullshit for Azula to hit rock bottom first before being redeemed.

I believe people who think like this are often fresh out of college or probably still in higher education who dont have the life experience to spout such nonsense. No offense to the smart yuppies out there, I’m sure this isn’t you.

Like bish what do you expect? For her ‘friends’ to remain friends with her after EVERYTHING she’s done to them? For people she wronged to just understand that shes that way because she was abused and for her to not be treated any differently like it never happened? For her family to wait for her to want to change?

Have you not read of stories about Nebuchadnezzar? Of haikus and scriptures of ‘Pride’ goes before a fall? Of the phrase ‘to be humbled?’ In atla, Zuko learned humility the same way, why can’t Azula be any different? Because she is younger? Because she is a girl? Because *gasp she’s been abused (too)?

Hurt people hurt people, that much we know, but bad behavior should never be rewarded and the moral of the story is that there are consequences for your actions. And this can be learned or taught at a young age. At times until a person (fiction or otherwise) learns the error of their ways, understanding and compassion can be given by forgiving someone from a distance. Even we teach ourselves to separate from the abuser. And Azula has become that, an abuser, no different than a bully in a school or a playground. Until they lose certain ‘privileges’, they dont know or feel that what they’re doing is wrong, and sometimes that even isn’t enough for some.

So for Azula stans fans, let’s try you make a head canon of how Azula can be redeemed AFTER ALMOST KILLING HER BROTHER’S FRIEND (or girl whichever way you ship) devoid of the ‘humility’ of losing freedom, or losing friends, or even the confinement in a mental health facility. Lets see how silly that goes. ‘Oh hey friends I’m sorry I really realized I’m wrong can we be friends? Let me help you in your quest’ (canon comics) Do you know how that would play out?

Trust issues.

And can you blame the gaang?

If you do, then there’s no hope for you

And THAT’s WHY the canon comics doesn’t sell very much. Because that plot is unrealistic and stupid.

This is a weird post, so much that it’s hard for me to entirely make sense of it.

For one, your interpretation of Zuko’s arc seems to be dubious. Zuko was “humbled” at various points in it, but him being humbled had little directly to do with his redemption. He was burned and banished from the Fire Nation and spent years searching for the Avatar, but this didn’t lead to him becoming a good person. In Book 1, he was repeatedly defeated, in humiliating fashion, by Team Avatar, but this led to no change in perspective. 

In Book 2, Zuko is humbled even more. He loses the last vestiges of his status as Fire Nation prince and is hunted as a fugitive across the Earth Kingdom. Although eventually he largely accepts his new lot in life once he realizes that he has no hope of regaining his status in the Fire Nation, he is not “redeemed” at this point in time. In fact, the instant he finds that his dream of “regaining his honor” is still possible, he joins forces with Azula and helps her conquer Ba Sing Se and defeat Aang.  All the forced humility he experienced did not redeem him.

In the first half of Book 3, Zuko is in the “least humble” situation he has ever experienced. He has his father’s approval and his sister’s support. He has a supportive girlfriend. He’s a proper prince again and a war hero; he’s even heir to the throne once more. He lives in luxury, surrounded by servants. He has everything he ever wanted, other than his uncle’s approval. He’s the least “humbled” he’s ever been. Yet this is when Zuko turns toward redemption and decides to help the Gaang. Even then, the decisive moment comes when he aggressively and firmly confronts his father, absolute tyrant of much of the world. This is not a show of humility but of strength and stubbornness.

Zuko’s story is not one of forced humility leading to redemption. It’s one of being allowed to make his own mistakes ultimately leading there.

Now we turn to Azula. For some reason you seem to suggest she was never “humbled” in canon. In fact, she ended up losing everything she cared about in short order: her brother, her friends, her father’s approval, her mind,  “her” cause, and her freedom. She ends the series weeping incoherently and chained to a grate. This is as humbling as anything Zuko ever experienced, and honestly I would expect Azula to be suicidal in it’s aftermath. Her nation lost the war due to her own failure, after all.

In any case, Azula having a redemption arc is by no means necessarily dependent on Zuko, her friends, her family, the Gaang, etc. forgiving her or wanting a relationship with her. In particular, there’s no reason for her to have any relationship with the Gaang given her only connection to them is that they fought on opposite sides in a war. Also,I personally would advise her to get as far away from her extremely screwed up family as possible and find a new life, but that’s a me thing.

I’m confused by your reference to the comics since you don’t seem to understand what happened in them. Azula has nothing resembling a redemption arc in them. Azula does briefly travel with Gaang, but this is forced upon both parties, and they dislike and distrust her and she dislikes and distrusts them.

What i've been learning thru my research is that Lawn Culture and laws against "weeds" in America are deeply connected to anxieties about "undesirable" people.

I read this essay called "Controlling the Weed Nuisance in Turn-of-the-century American Cities" by Zachary J. S. Falck and it discusses how the late 1800's and early 1900's created ideal habitats for weeds with urban expansion, railroads, the colonization of more territory, and the like.

Around this time, laws requiring the destruction of "weeds" were passed in many American cities. These weedy plants were viewed as "filth" and literally disease-causing—in the 1880's in St. Louis, a newspaper reported that weeds infected school children with typhoid, diphtheria, and scarlet fever.

Weeds were also seen as "conducive to immorality" by promoting the presence of "tramps and idlers." People thought wild growing plants would "shelter" threatening criminals. Weeds were heavily associated with poverty and immortality. Panic about them spiked strongly after malaria and typhoid outbreaks.

To make things even wilder, one of the main weeds the legal turmoil and public anxiety centered upon was actually the sunflower. Milkweed was also a major "undesirable" weed and a major target of laws mandating the destruction of weeds.

The major explosion in weed-control law being put forth and enforced happened around 1905-1910. And I formed a hypothesis—I had this abrupt remembrance of something I studied in a history class in college. I thought to myself, I bet this coincides with a major wave of immigration to the USA.

Bingo. 1907 was the peak of European immigration. We must keep in mind that these people were not "white" in the exact way that is recognized today. From what I remember from my history classes, Eastern European people were very much feared as criminals and potential communists. Wikipedia elaborates that the Immigration Act of 1924 was meant to restrict Jewish, Slavic, and Italian people from entering the country, and that the major wave of immigration among them began in the 1890s. Almost perfectly coinciding with the "weed nuisance" panic. (The Immigration Act of 1917 also banned intellectually disabled people, gay people, anarchists, and people from Asia apart from the Chinese...which were already banned since 1880.)

From this evidence, I would guess that our aesthetics and views about "weeds" emerged from the convergence of two things:

First, we were obliterating native ecosystems by colonizing them and violently displacing their caretakers, then running roughshod over them with poorly informed agricultural and horticultural techniques, as well as constructing lots of cities and railroads, creating the ideal circumstances for weeds.

Second, lots of immigrants were entering the country, and xenophobia and racism lent itself to fears of "criminals" "tramps" and other "undesirable" people, leading to a desire to forcefully impose order and push out the "Other." I am not inventing a connection—undesirable people and undesirable weeds were frequently compared in these times.

And this was at the very beginnings of the eugenics movement, wherein supposedly "inferior" and poor or racialized people were described in a manner much the same as "weeds," particularly supposedly "breeding" much faster than other people.

There is another connection that the essay doesn't bring up, but that is very clear to me. Weeds are in fact plants of the poor and of immigrants, because they are often medicinal and food plants for people on the margins, hanging out around human habitation like semi-domesticated cats around granaries in the ancient Near East.

My Appalachian ancestors ate pokeweed, Phytolacca americana. The plant is toxic, but poor people in the South would gather the plant's young leaves and boil them three times to get the poison out, then eat them as "poke salad." Pokeweed is a weed that grows readily on roadsides and in vacant lots.

In some parts of the world, it is grown as an ornamental plant for its huge, tropical-looking leaves and magenta stems. But my mom hates the stuff. "Cut that down," she says, "it makes us look like rednecks."

Invasion ecologists are taking seriously how many of our commonly-used terms reinforce xenophobia.

- Time to retire “alien” from the invasion ecology lexicon

- The Language of Invasion Ecology

- Aliens & Invaders & Exotics, Oh My: The Language of Invasive Biology

I had a discussion with someone I work with about the term "pioneer species" and the rather inaccurate and questionable colonialism-tied implications.

I prefer "disaster species," but "pioneer species" is still the typically used term.

Okay wait. Wasn’t there that post about the word “pokemon” being used in the early 20th century or something? About how it meant someone who was really slow or something?

Either I’m misremembering it, or there may be a connection here...

Pokeweed comes from an Algonquin word translating to "dye plant" so it's probably not related.

Wait wait wait is that why USAmericans would rather do all the nonsense involved in importing fucking quinoa rather than like... this is why amaranth is classified as a noxious weed in so many places, isn't it? Because a hardy pseudocereal that just grows wherever would like, help poor people not fucking starve? And while there are native amaranths in a lot of the US, it's pretty damn cosmopolitan, so many immigrants would know what to do with it, because there was also amaranth where they lived before?

A lot of the way we live is focused around avoiding the aesthetic appearance of poverty, yeah.

So, it seems what you're saying is more or less: If people could even partially live off the food growing in their neighborhood, they wouldn't be as exploitable. If they worked together to build a community farm that built solidarity and diversified nutrition, they would be even less exploitable. So the exploiters use laws and propaganda to avoid such things as much as possible.

So maybe we should be doing more sustainable farming, community gardens, homegrown fibres, and generally more pleasing and diverse environments in our "lawns" (while doing due diligence to ensure that we aren't causing inadvertant ecological problems)?

That is punk as hell. I am getting many ideas and many questions. Maybe I'll do research and post something when the Texas heat dies down enough that I can think.

Absolutely.

I haven't been able to read about it in much depth yet but there's this concept called food sovereignty which is basically people especially marginalized people having agency over their food systems instead of relying on Corporation which controls their resources

I think gardening and knowing plants and growing food and useful plants as part of a COMMUNITY is very powerful because it creates a kind of safety net that you can partly rely on for your basic needs instead of depending on the whims of Corporation

Kaitlin Smith of Outdoor Afro & Storied Grounds in Boston has a whole historical tour about this, but a lot of anti-foraging laws and policies came into effect in the US following the abolition of slavery, when migrating, poor Black families would have to rely on wild plants to survive.

(Kaitlin also has a talk about how Black enslaved people in the US grew their own abortifacient plants for... the exact horrifying reason you might think. If you are in the Boston area and a Black person or close loved one to one, her tours are for you! Go check them out.)

Also if you're in the Midwest, Alexis Nikole Nelson AKA @blackforager does really videos about plants, foraging, and the history of racism against black and indigenous people in the US

This ties deeply into indigenous oppression as well. One of the first peoples targeted by for foraging/trespassing law and eliminating "weeds" was indigenous peoples.

It's well documented that there was no trespassing or law against foraging in early US history. It's even documented that the founding fathers thought foraging, and the land's bounty, was a god given right as it kept many alive in the early colonial days.

Once the US government was well established, 100 years later, and expanding west rapidly, trespassing and foraging became outlawed for two reasons.

One was so that towns near indian settlements could have a reason to shoot and harass them. Townships claimed a large excess of food growing forest around them, forest that natives had cultivated for generations as a primary food source, and then forced them natives as they were "trespassing." Not even getting into that native NA agriculture is food forests....

Second, was after the civil war, plantation owners still needed workers. One of the surefire ways to get them was to criminalize any way to live off the land, and make the only available work for black folks, plantation work.

From what I've seen, the criminalization of foraging is far more extreme in the south, lesser in the west, and least in the north east.

But it all ties into classism, racism, and forcing the poor people of the country to benefit the wealthly. Here's a pretty decent article to kickoff all these ideas.

Replacing physical buttons and controls with touchscreens also means removing accessibility features. Physical buttons can be textured or have Braille and can be located by touch and don't need to be pressed with a bare finger. Touchscreens usually require precise taps and hand-eye coordination for the same task.

Many point-of-sale machines now are essentially just a smartphone with a card reader attached and the interface. The control layout can change at a moment's notice and there are no physical boundaries between buttons. With a keypad-style machine, the buttons are always in the same place and can be located by touch, especially since the middle button has a raised ridge on it.

Buttons can also be located by touch without activating them, which enables a "locate then press" style of interaction which is not possible on touchscreens, where even light touches will register as presses and the buttons must be located visually rather than by touch.

When elevator or door controls are replaced by touch screens, will existing accessibility features be preserved, or will some people no longer be able to use those controls?

Who is allowed to control the physical world, and who is making that decision?