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bloodbenderz · 1 month

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well said! i should've been clearer but when i was talking about "colonized women" i absolutely was including indigenous/racialized communities within the imperial core. but yes labor is crucial to women's liberation and gendered work is a primary way in which gender is enforced. many people feel that preserving patriarchal traditions is a way of defending their community against white supremacy, which is misguided and very dangerous for women. but it's also true that women of color ARE under particular threat from white supremacy, and part of protecting your community means protecting women. sometimes (not always) it's hard to draw a clean line between these two things

however (and i also should've clarified this) when i say "american style feminism" i don't mean the specific behaviors of middle class white women in the imperial core, i mean the ideology of liberal western feminism which was invented to serve the interests of imperialism. this type of "feminism" is individualistic above all. it doesn't recognize any of the systemic factors which produce patriarchy, racism, poverty, or imperialism. it doesn't humanize oppressed women, it sets a standard of humanity far above them and then demands that those women overcome impossible material obstacles and denounce (the liberation of) their people in order to reach that standard of humanity. women aren't really deserving of liberation until each individual woman proves otherwise. this occurs primarily within the imperial core but imperialism doesn't survive without recruiting agents everywhere

there was a lot of mistakes made in the live action but the worst one without reservation was that the creators did not understand patriarchy and they did not understand women's liberation outside of an american context ( or any context if we're being honest )

it's easy to see on a surface level how that fucked up katara's whole character how she wasn't allowed to have her character defining moments how she wasn't allowed to be angry or even excited or impulsive but i think it doesn't really become clear how deeply wrong the show's conception of gender & patriarchy is (and the implications for the political landscape of the show) until you get into how they destroyed sokka's character too

sokka's whole Complex is born of patriarchy. i'm not trying to do men's rights advocacy here but in my experience when a people is under constant threat, constant assault, constant violence (much of which is gendered) and the traditional "protectors" or "providers" of that people are men, the masculine role becomes protecting women and children. i am not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing but it is true the narrative of violent resistance is overwhelmingly about men. to be a man in a time & place like this means fighting to protect your women, & to die for them is honorable. that is where sokka gets this idea that he has to be a warrior & he has to fight & if necessary die for katara & the rest of the tribe. it's about duty. everyone has a part to play, a role to fill

everyone including women! which is the other half of this. the duty of women is to keep up the home, to maintain a country worth fighting & dying for, to raise children so that the community can have a future. it becomes especially obvious in the context of the show when you see how the nwt lives & in specific how yue lives and dies.

many women participate in patriarchy. many colonized women participate in patriarchy. most of my family comes from or still lives in a country completely devastated by colonialism & its aftereffects & many women in my family believe wholeheartedly in the idea that everyone in the house has a role to play. it's not because these women are stupid or they hate themselves. but when you grow up believing that men & women are fundamentally different, and seeing that women are in specific danger because of their gender, it actually makes a lot of sense to expect the men in your family to protect you, and to raise your sons that way.

in practice that means that men aren't really expected to do anything around the house, especially when there's no actual danger. my aunt literally 2 days ago told me this lol like she doesn't make her sons do anything bc she wants to let their lives be easy before they have to go out into the world & take care of their wives & children.

what does women's liberation look like when an entire community is under threat? colonized women have been dealing with this question as long as colonialism has existed. the writers of this show don't even pretend to understand the question, much less to formulate a thoughtful response to it. they just say oh, well, katara, yue, & suki are all the exact same type of liberated girlboss for whom patriarchy is no significant obstacle.

which brings us back to sokka lol. sokka, at the beginning of the show, has completely subscribed to patriarchy, has integrated it into his sense of self. he has a lot of flaws, but he also has a lot of really good traits. his bravery, sense of honor, loyalty, work ethic, selflessness, all of this came from him striving to be a good man. he would die to protect katara, because she's his sister. he also has her wash his socks & mend his clothes, because she's his sister. even after he meets suki, humbles himself, & expands his view of the role a woman can play, he doesn't completely disengage from patriarchy. at the end of the day he believes in his soul that a good man's duty is to fight & if necessary die for his people, & that's exactly his plan. this is a very real psychic burden. pre-aang, it's also largely fictional & completely ridiculous. we're SUPPOSED to think it's ridiculous. he's spending his time training babies & working on his little watchtower. the swt hasn't been attacked since their mother was killed because it has been completely stripped of all value or danger it once held for the fire nation, & everybody knows this. there is very little "men's work" left, aside from hunting & fishing, which is so damaging to sokka's self image he resorts to toddler bootcamp to feel useful. the contradiction here is comical. it's also completely devastating. that's supposed to be the fucking POINTTTT like colonialism & patriarchy convinces this young boy he needs to be a soldier & die for his family. & you know what he does? He acts like a young boy about it. they didn't just leave this unexplored in the remake they completely changed the circumstances to 1. make sokka incompetent for some reason 2. make his "preparations" seem less ridiculous. Which ruins the whole character. Possibly the whole show.

all this makes the writing of katara & the other women infinitely more offensive to me. katara is a good character because she believes in revolution. she wants to liberate her people from imperialism, & she wants to liberate women from colonial gendered violence, traditional patriarchy in her own culture, & the complicated ways those things interact. it is LITERALLY the first thing you're supposed to learn about her. she's the PERFECT vehicle to address the question of women's liberation under colonialism. one of the things i was most looking forward to seeing in this show was how labor is distributed in a place where almost everything that needs to get done is "women's work" & how it affects katara & sokka's day to day relationship when their lives weren't at risk constantly. what actually are her responsibilities every day, & how do they compare to sokka's? how does her grandmother enforce these traditions with katara & sokka, & how is that informed by her own experiences in the nwt? what does patriarchy look like in a tribe made up of mostly women & children? it's so important to who katara is & what she believes! but why bother exploring any of that when u could instead make her a shein model who has nothing in common with the source material except her hairstyle lol.

yue is actually even worse to me bc yue is supposed to be sokka's counterpart. she's supposed to show you how destructive it is for women specifically to internalize this gendered duty so completely. it sucks for sokka, but he is a man & thus his prescribed role gives him some agency. yue's role affords her no agency whatsoever, & this is the POINT. to make her someone who's allowed to break things off with her fiance if she likes, who sneaks off to do what she wants when she's feeling stressed, whose will is respected as a monarch, like what is even the point of yue anymore? in the original the whole reason she was even allowed to spend time with sokka was because her father knew she was with a trustworthy boy. her story completely loses all significance when the dimension of patriarchy is removed from it. the crux of her whole story is that she is not just a princess but the literal & spiritual representation of the motherland. that's what women are supposed to represent during wartime, at the cost of their own sense of self. in order to fulfill her duty to her people she gives her life to them in every single way that matters.

it's just so unbelievably frustrating (and WRONG) that the only types of characters for these writers are "soulless misogynistic fuck" and "liberated american-style feminist." there's no nuance at all! they don't bother exploring how real love manifests in patriarchal communities, & how patriarchy defines the limits of that love. or how for so many of these people their idea of goodness, morality, & honor is gendered. or how imperialism affects not just individuals but entire cultures & their conceptions of gender. but why do any actual work when you could completely change sokka & katara's general demeanors, their entire personalities, & their roles in the tribe so you can dodge any & all nuance

Anyways. in conclusion. it was bad

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bloodbenderz · 1 month

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[Katara drunk as fuck at like, waterbender christmas or something]

“Everybody knows THAT’S *Points at Suyin* Sokka’s baby! Him and Toph went to the fire nation at the SAME TIME and she started talking about being pregnant a month later!!! DO THE MATH!”

#to this day one of my favorite posts ever.

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bloodbenderz · 1 month

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never read the comics & never plan to but i would actually love to see a well written story about zuko & the establishment of republic city. one that makes it CRUCIAL to the story that republic city is a colonial settler state & creating it doesn't just inflict unspeakable harm on its indigenous population but also destroys for good the possibility of zuko's political, moral, & spiritual redemption. i think it makes perfect sense that it happens in fact i think it's accidentally a good way of pointing out that changing out a monarch doesn't change the intrinsic goals of a monarchy. the setting of lok was never the problem with lok!!! the colonial period of atla was relatively short but six people can't complete decolonization by themselves and it would have been monumentally stupid to pretend otherwise. it's easy to disavow the open invasion of another country it's harder to admit that colonialism has consequences longer than its own lifespan and the machinery of exploitation will not stop sucking wealth from other countries until it is destroyed entirely. but even though it's the most thematically and politically correct ending nobody wants to see zuko turn back into an imperialist shell of a human being with no friends except me i suppose.

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bloodbenderz · 1 month

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only good modern au for katara & sokka is trickster 2020. and yes before u ask i am watching trickster 2020 specifically & exclusively bc the guy who played hahn in the live action is a beautiful beautiful man & he's only ever gotten one other role in his life (trickster 2020) rightfully because he's honestly a dogshit actor. but he IS gorgeous. anyways katara & sokka grew up in rural canada

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bloodbenderz · 1 month

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Your atla analysis is the best so I wanted to ask your opinion on something I've found the fandom fairly divided on - what did you think of Azula's ending within the show proper? Unnecessarily cruel or a necessary tragedy? Would you say that her mental breakdown was too conveniently brought about in order to 'nerf' her for the final agni kai? Also, do you think it was 'right' for Zuko to have fought with his sister at all or would it have been better for him to seek a more humane way to end the cycle of violence?

okay so im saying this as someone who loves azula to death like she has always been one of my absolute favorite characters ever since i was a kid and i’ve always vastly preferred her to zuko and found her to be extremely compelling and eminently sympathetic. i am saying this now before the azula stans come for me. i believe in their beliefs. but i also think her downfall is perfectly executed, and putting aside all the bullshit with the comics and whatever else, it’s a really powerful conclusion to her arc. obviously that isn’t to say that she wouldn’t continue to grow and develop in a postcanon scenario (i have a whole recovery arc for her mapped out in my head, like i do believe in her Healing Journey) but from a narrative perspective, her telos is in fact very thematically satisfying.

no, she wasn’t nerfed so that they could beat her in a fight. the fact that she falls apart is what makes them feel that they can confidently take her on (although i do think in a fair fight katara could win anyway), but the whole point is that it’s not about winning or losing in combat. the whole point is that zuko and azula being pitted against each other in this gratuitous ritual of violence as the culmination of their arcs is fundamentally tragic. yes it’s a bad decision to fight her, and zuko should have chosen another path, but the whole point is that he’s flawed and can only subscribe to the logic he has spent his whole life internalizing through violence and abuse.

that’s why aang’s fight against ozai, while tragic in its own way, is also a triumph for the way in which his ideals prevail in the face of genocide, while zuko and azula’s fight is very patently tragic. there is no moment of victory or triumph. even as zuko sacrifices himself in a beautiful mirroring of “the crossroads of destiny” and as katara uses the element of her people combined with techniques across other cultures to use azula’s hubris and ideology of domination against her, it’s presented as moments of personal growth occurring within a very tragic yet inevitable situation. it was inevitable because azula had always been positioned as an extension of her father, and thus to disempower ozai also means disempowering azula, his favorite site of projection, his favorite weapon.

yeah, it does rub me the wrong way when zuko asks katara whether she’d like to help him “put azula in her place.” it’s not a kind way to talk about your abused younger sister. but it’s also important to understand that zuko doesn’t really recognize his sister’s pain, despite the fact that they obviously share a father, because he’s always assumed that she was untouchable as their perfect golden child and thus never a victim. and he’s wrong. zuko and katara expect a battle of triumph and glory, noble heroes fighting valiantly so that good may prevail over evil. but as they discover here, even more so than their previous discovery two episodes prior, a battle is not a legendary event filled with bombast and beauty until after it has been historicized. often a war is simply fought between pathetic, desperate people who see no other option but to fight.

aang’s ultimate refusal to fight despite having all the power in the world is what makes him so important as the protagonist. but katara and zuko both share a more simplistic view of morality and what it means to be good. and zuko assumes that by fighting azula, he can only be punching up, because she has always been positioned as his superior, and she (in her own words!) is a “monster.” and then azula loses, and his entire worldview shatters. joking about putting her in her place makes way for the realization that behind all her posturing and lying (to herself more than anyone) and performance and cognitive dissonance, azula has always been broken, perhaps even more than he is.

azula says “im sorry it has to end this way, brother,” to which zuko replies “no you’re not.” but i think azula is truly sorry, because in her ideal world, she wouldn’t be fighting zuko. she doesn’t actually want to kill him, as much as she claims to. she’s already reached the conclusion that zuko will only truly reach once their fight is over. she lacks a support system, and she needs one, desperately. if she could somehow get her family back, do everything differently, less afraid of the consequences, she would. she’s smirking, she sounds almost facetious, but really, she is sorry. as of this moment, she really doesn’t want it to end this way. but zuko cannot accept that, because in his mind, azula is evil. azula has no soul nor feeling. azula always lies.

her breakdown doesn’t come out of nowhere, either. it’s precipitated by everyone she has ever cared about betraying her. first zuko betrays her, then mai, then ty lee, and then ozai — the person she has staked her entire identity to and to whom she has pledged her undying loyalty and obedience, become nothing more than a vessel for his whims — discards her because she had the audacity to care about someone other than him. what i don’t think zuko realizes, and perhaps will never realize, is that azula betrayed ozai by bringing zuko back home. he was not supposed to be brought back with honor and with glory. azula specifically orchestrated the fight in the catacombs to motivate him to join her, and it’s not because she’s some cruel sadistic monster who wanted to separate a poor innocent soft uwu bean from his loving uncle, it’s because she genuinely believes that she’s doing what’s best for him. she believes that their uncle is a traitor and a bad influence, and she believes that bringing zuko home with his honor “restored” is an act of love. to her it is.

yes, she claims that she was actually just manipulating him so that she wouldn’t have to take the fall if the avatar was actually alive, but also, she’s clearly just covering her own ass. she didn’t know about the spirit water, and only started improvising when zuko started showing hesitation. but even if she was only using zuko, then that was an insane risk to take, because either way she was lying directly to ozai’s face. and zuko admits it to ozai while simultaneously committing treason, so of course ozai would blame azula, his perfect golden child who tried to violate his decree by bringing zuko back home a prisoner at best and dead at worst, and instead found a way to restore his princehood with glory.

we only see ozai dismissing and discarding azula in the finale, but it’s clearly a tension that’s been bubbling since the day of black sun. and we know this because we do see azula falling apart before the finale. in “the boiling rock” she is betrayed by her only friends. in “the southern raiders” we see that this has taken a toll on her, that she is already somewhat unhinged. she and zuko tie in a one on one fight for the first time. and she takes down her hair as she uses her hairpin to secure herself against the edge of a cliff. unlike zuko, who is helped by his friends and allies, who has a support system. it’s a very precarious position; she’s literally on a cliff’s edge, alone, her hair down signifying her unraveling mental state. azula having her hair down signals to us an audience that she is in a position of vulnerability. she is able to mask this terrifying moment wherein she nearly plummets to her death with a triumphant smirk, but it should be evident to us all that her security is fragile here.

and the thing is, even though she’s always masked it with a smirk and perfect poise, her security has always been fragile. azula has never been safe. azula’s breakdown is simply the culmination of her realization that no matter how hard she tries, she will never be ozai’s perfect weapon, because she is a human being. she is a child, no less. and there is no one in her entire life who loves her for nothing. zuko has iroh, who affirms to him that he could never be angry with zuko, that all he wants is simply what is best for zuko. but azula doesn’t have unconditional support in her life. she doesn’t even have support.

everyone she ever thought she could trust has betrayed her, and so she yells that trust is for fools. because she feels like a fool. of course fear is the only way; it’s what kept her in line all these years. azula is someone who is ruled by fear, and who is broken by the recognition that fear isn’t enough. her downfall is necessarily tragic because her worldview is wrong. the imperialist logic of terror as a tool for domination is her own undoing, just as ozai’s undoing is losing the weapon he has staked his national identity to. it’s a battle of ideals. aang v ozai: pacifism v imperialism. katara and zuko v azula: love and support v fear and isolation.

zuko is unfair to azula, it’s true. he tries to fight her even as he can clearly recognize that “she’s slipping.” instead of trying to help his little sister, he uses that weakness to his advantage, tries to exploit her pain so that he can finally, for the first time ever, beat her in a fight. it’s cruel, but it’s also how siblings act. especially considering the conditions under which they were raised, and how zuko has always viewed her. and in zuko’s defense, she has tried to kill him multiple times lately, both in “the boiling rock” and in “the southern raiders.” zuko is someone who gets fixated on a goal and blocks out everything else, including recognition of his surroundings or empathy for others. so of course when he’s promised to put azula in her place he’s going to exploit her weaknesses to do so. after all, isn’t exploiting his weaknesses exactly what azula does best? so he allows himself to stoop to her level, and in fact only redeems himself through his sacrifice for katara. but it is when azula is chained to the grate and zuko and katara, leaning on each other, look down and observe the sheer extent on her pain, that zuko realizes that “putting azula in her place” isn’t actually a victory. it feels really, really bad, actually.

they’re in a similar position as they were when they faced yon rha. and now it is zuko’s turn to understand that he is not a storybook hero triumphing over evil, but rather a human being, facing another human being, in a conflict that is larger than themselves. to “put someone in their place” is to imply a logic of domination, of inherent superiority, that someone has stepped out of line and must be reordered neatly into the hierarchy. but aang disputes the notion, ozai’s notion, that humanity can be classified along these lines, that there exists an ontological superiority among some and not others. so operation: putting azula in her place was always going to be flawed, even if she was performing competency the way she always does, because they’re nonetheless subscribing to her logic.

of course they should be helping azula, of course they should be reaching out to abuse victims through support instead of more violence. but first they must recognize her victimhood. first they must come to understand that they didn’t get lucky, and they didn’t dominate her because they are more “powerful,” that they weren’t “putting her in her place.” they must understand that they are not heroes fighting villains in a glorious trial by combat. that the logic of the agni kai is flawed. that they are all victims. that they are all just scared, hurt children who are still grieving their mothers.

#i love you forever azula.

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bloodbenderz · 1 month

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We'll need you in 2025

why what for....

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bloodbenderz · 1 month

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You’re back! Yay!!

no im not

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bloodbenderz · 1 month

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Anyways. in conclusion. it was bad

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bloodbenderz · 2 months

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it was bad

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bloodbenderz · 1 year

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Your an amazing person and I am sorry for anon trolling you a while ago. That was immature and I hurted and upseted you and I am sorry.

who are you

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bloodbenderz · 2 years

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an essay about hama and what it means to "pass"

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bloodbenderz · 2 years

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Did The Fire Nation Actually Lose The War?

Well one would assume yes.

At the end of the show Team Avatar defeats the Fire Nation by defeating Fire Lord Ozai and crowning Zuko as the new Fire Lord. Any further details of the Fire Nation defeat are explored through the various comics, with the main topic being the decolonisation of the Fire Nation colonies of the Earth Kingdom.

But if you take a look at how the comics ultimately resolve this issue, it becomes clear that actually the Fire Nation kind of won the 100 Year War.

But didn't the Fire Nation had to decolonise after the war?

Kind of. In the comic "The Promise" it is revealed that the oldest Fire Nation colonies actually become independent and later form the United Republic of Nations. This is because Zuko and Aang decide, that the Fire Nation people and Earth Kingdom people had become too intertwined to belong to either the Earth Kingdom or the Fire Nation.

Now one has to keep in mind, that these colonies belonged to the Earth Kingdom originally before the war. So this decision actually means the Earth Kingdom lost a not insignificant chunk of their country, especially because the colonies are portrayed as quite industrious and wealthy in the comics.

Meanwhile the Fire Nation gained a new allied nation. A lot of the Fire Nation colonists are aligned with the Fire Nation, and this sentiment would therefore also be found in the United Republic of Nations, especially because Fire Nation colonists made up the higher strata of their society.

What about reparations?

Well, the comics don't actually mention reparations. But what we get in the comic "North and South" is the Southern Water Tribe asking the Fire Nation for funds for expanding their economy. Which to me heavily implies that in canon the Fire Nation never actually had to pay reparations, because otherwise the Souther Water Tribe had probably demanded reparations, instead of asking for funds.

This is especially interesting, because investments in poorer, less industrialised nations (like the Southern Water Tribe) can be utilized by richer and more industrialised nations (like the Fire Nation) as another form of imperialism. Either by tying specific requirements, e.g. favourable trade agreements or specific economic policies, to the funds or by using these investments to acquire a lot of economic influence in the nation.

This also means that the Fire Nation economy isn't burdened by paying reparations

Didn't the Fire Nation also suffer under the war?

In comparison to the other nations not really. The Air Nomads got wiped out, the Southern Water Tribe suffered from a cultural genocide, the Northern Water Tribe suffered under the Siege of the North and large swath of the Earth Kingdom were destroyed and its people displaced.

In contrast to that, the Fire Nation didn't even really suffer any civilian casualties or damage to their industrial base. The only attack on the Fire Nation mainland was the Day of the Black Sun, which failed and because the Fire Nation was forewarned didn't result in any civilian casualties. The Fire Nation only really lost soldiers to the war.

But Zuko is Fire Lord now!

Zuko would have become the Fire Lord even if Ozai wouldn't have been defeated, he was the next in line anyway.

And it is nice that he reforms the Fire Nation, but that is not really relevant if we discuss who won the war.

He may have reduced the size of the navy and the army, but it was out of his own volition, not because of some stipulations of a peace treaty. And why wouldn't he? The war is over. The Fire Nation is on good terms with the Southern Water Tribe, the Kyoshi Warriors, who work for Zuko on multiple occasions, and on neutral terms with the Earth Kingdom under King Kuei.

So what is the Score?

The Fire Nation ultimately came out of the war and the peace process with:

A new allied nation in the United Republic of Nations.

Economic influence in the Southern Water Tribe.

Good Relationships with the Southern Water Tribe and the Kyoshi Warriors.

an undamaged industrial base and an economy unburdened by reparations.

losses were mostly limited to military members, with almost no civilian casualties.

Weakened rival nations due to the heavy losses they suffered, which also include a lot of civilian losses.

Wars have been fought for less and have been considered won by achieving less. So in conclusion, if you consider the comics as canon, the Fire Nation came out of the 100 year war as a clear winner. Especially if one considers how much the other nations suffered in the war.

Did the other nations gain anything from the peace process at all?

Yes. They got to live and now have the security that the Fire Nation won't burn them all to the ground. Or at least some of the nations got this security.

#yummy post very delicious thank you..#honestly my problem isnt even that the aftermath of the war was set up like this #bc i think it makes perfect sense and it reflects real life and its not like a group of 5-6 people could actually end imperialism #but that all of this is presented basically uncritically #and that the effects of the war which are RIPE for a sequel are ignored in favor of a completely made up NEW conflict which has no historic #historical basis #MAYBEE if they had MARXISTS writing korra #also prev i wouldve read a whole book about how the different spheres of fn society reacted to the end of the war #would be soo interested if theres any ideological break in the upper classes #like ideologues stuck in the past and insistent on an oldfashioned style of imperialism #and forward thinking capitalists ready to profit off of the new political landscape bc it still favors the fn

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