I can barely express how much Pakku pisses me off, and I think canon lets him off the hook far too easily. I don't really consider his sexism and misogyny a personal flaw or interpersonal prejudice that needed a little emotional bolt and a little character development because the stakes are literally civilizational and transnational.
It is already absurd that Pakku drops Aang immediately as a student when he tutors Katara. I mean, yes, Aang breaks the rules, and he should treat the traditions he is taught with respect; being the Avatar should not give him a free pass to decide what is right or wrong for cultures where Aang is a guest. Pakku is right to be frustrated, and some kind of reparation is not uncalled for. However, the stakes are pretty serious: Aang can't move on to learning earthbending, let alone firebending, unless he masters water first. They are on a tight schedule because of the approaching comet. The world has already been suffering for a century. The Air Nomads were genocided roughly that long ago. There is barely anyone left globally who has ever met an airbender, and the waterbenders of the South have been raided repeatedly and relentlessly hunted down, too. Imagine being such a misogynist that you would rather allow the fascist and genocidal conquerors to win the century-long war rather than "forgive" Aang sharing knowledge with a friend who happens to be fucking waterbending prodigy. Preserving male authority matters more to him than defeating the Fire Nation.
And I put forgive in quotation marks above because I think Pakku's moral and ethical failure preceded that breach in trust. As mentioned two sentences earlier, the Fire Nation has already virtually exterminated the Southern traditions and population of waterbenders, as far as anyone can tell, at this point. Katara is the last living waterbender from the South Pole. As far as I'm concerned, Pakku is actively participating in the erasure of Southern waterbenders by rejecting her as a student because Pakku is refusing to preserve the nearly exterminated Southern waterbending tradition through its last known individual capable of the practice. Katara is not simply asking for an individual exception to Northern rules. She is asking to continue traditions her people already possessed before Fire Nation raids annihilated the teachers who could have passed it down.
Pakku treats Northern institutions as authoritative over all Water Tribe culture, while showing no reciprocal respect for Southern traditions. Since we meet Hama later in the series, we know that the Southern Water Tribe trained women in combat. Even allowing for the possibility that wartime necessity altered older practices, combat-trained women are part of the South's living historical inheritance. Solidarity would require the North to help Katara recover that inheritance, not demand her submission to Northern gender rules and limit her to healing, while barring her from combat training. Pakku clearly does not consider the South as a distinct culture whose practices deserve preservation. He insists on enforcing his own local standards, fully willing to let Southern traditions perish and the Fire Nation's cultural genocide complete.
Pakku could have regarded Katara as an endangered cultural heir. Instead, he regards her as a badly behaving girl who fails to submit and obey properly.
It gets worse that his change of heart isn't even prompted by her courage, her talent, or her determination when she insists on the duel. He is not considering the immense loss of his already war-crushed sister tribe by denying this gifted girl education, training, and guidance. No. Katara only starts to register as a person when he stumbles across the engagement necklace he crafted for Katara's grandmother, who literally ran away from her home, family, safety, etc., and fled to the other end of the world just to avoid marrying him. What a pathetic man, fr. Like, the writing committed to an incredible level of misogyny in Pakku's characterization (again, he was ready to deny the Avatar learning waterbending, therefore actively sabotage the chances of defeating the Fire Nation, and he was willing, as a Waterbending Master, to let Southern waterbending culture, which includes women in combat, die) and they resolve it by forcing the woman who fled to the other end of the world to marry him, I guess.
I always think of the description I saw years ago: Self-imposed deadlines don't help me, because I know the person who set them, and they're full of shit.
one of my favorite things about my job that i can say to people that sounds utterly ridiculous but is technically 100% true is that one of our sea turtles keeps trying to get me to commit a felony on her behalf and gets SUPER cranky when i won’t do it
this is because she is spoiled rotten and LOVES head and shell scritches. every time i go to the tank she’s in to collect water samples while she happens to be awake and swimming near the surface, she sees my hand enter the water and immediately comes over to try and get my attention, headbutting the dive platform and splashing water at me and generally making a huge fuss.
unfortunately, because she is also a ~100yr old green sea turtle, i legally cannot touch her. she’s a protected species, and a fairly prominent individual at that, and im not one of the aquarists who dives into that tank NOR am i a vet, so i’m not among the handful of people who are ALLOWED to give her scratchies. she knows all of the divers personally, and knows that i am not one of them. she doesn’t care. she wants attention and because she’s the specialest princess in the entire universe she will do anything in her power to get it.
she also throws a big ol tantrum when i end up not petting her. she’ll stick up her head to snort water at me, slap at the platform and ladder with her fins, and then swim under the dive platform and bump her shell against the bottom — she’s a 500lb turtle, which is a lot of weight for her to be throwing around. i usually have to move pretty quick to get off the platform and onto solid ground cuz there have been times where i’ve genuinely felt like i was about to lose my balance and REALLY didn’t want to end up falling into the tank.
^ myrtle, throwing a tantrum because she was unsuccessful at peer pressuring me into violating the endangered species act
the average person with bad taste can be into some extremely banal garbage but when you get close enough to someone with otherwise good taste that they start a recommendation by going off on a preamble about how they don't necessarily recommend it you know you're seconds away from hearing about some real torturously wretched dogshit
friend from work will have you watch a two hour movie where you can feel every second as it passes by, but enemployed movie mutual will put you on the kind of shit that feels like crawling on cobblestone until emaciated
people are reading this as the latter friend recommending dry, pretentious cinema. that's not the case. not that kind of situation. you're getting no enrichment out of this. I need you to understand they're making you watch Gooby because "it's kinda good"
Not to insert myself here but as someone who owns Ghost Rider 1 and 2 on DVD I do actually need everyone to watch it right now because in the second one a kid asks Nick Cage as Ghost Rider how he pees and Nick Cage says “it’s like a flamethrower” and then they hard cut to a CGI skeleton in full black moto leather pissing a jet of fire and then it does a shoulder check at the camera and nods like “hell yeah brother”
Look, rather than being petty and destroying it, why not talk to the girl. Really ask them why they are using the confederate flag. But no, low level terrorism is the answer.
They are called sundown towns and there are a LOT of them in the US.
https://sundown.tougaloo.edu/sundowntowns.php
This website has a clickable map where you can see suspected and confirmed sundown towns by state, as well as information about whether these attitudes are historical or current.
The homepage of Dr. James W. Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, Lies Across America, and Sundown Towns.
My obligatory addition to this every time it crosses my dash, because I know the link is definitely missing ones in my own (northern) state and there are some in this thread not on the above link either - thread by LeVar Burton with a LOT of replies from people naming the sundown towns near them:
As someone that lives in Beaumont right next to Vidor DO NOT STOP HERE EITHER!!! Or literally ANY of the surrounding cities. You have a better chance in New Orleans and Lafayette than here. 
Reblogging to save a life, please try to make people aware of this as this place is actually disgusting and people have gotten hurt here. Please, I’m not looking for interactions for popularity, I’m looking for people to spread this and keep others safe. 🪽
#the shadow acting as bars of a prison cell forcing ilya to hide himself in russia vs the overflowing of light at shane's cottage that allows him a place to be free and completely himself
I'm not done complaining about how dirty ATLA did Hama, btw., and because I'm a sucker for rewriting and worldbuilding, I've actually started tinkering on an alternative arc for the character that has grown entirely out of proportion, so let me yap a little more. Hama is the knot that roped me back into ATLA, apparently.
The episode's setup doesn't make any sense if you think about it for more than two minutes, and I think it's one of the biggest wasted storytelling opportunities of the entire show. See, I don't buy the premise of the Hama episode, so I'm not drawing the ethical, emotional, and even logical conclusions the writing tries to push on me.
Now, for the episode to happen at all, the writers shove three conditions into the setup that work against each other. First, the episode needs Hama socially embedded enough that the children can meet her casually and have a reason to hang out with her at all; thus, she's the owner of an inn and offers boarding to the Gaang. Second, the episode needs her to appear suspicious and unworthy of trust enough that Sokka can justify investigating her; thus, the kids can find the chest where she keeps the comb as a relic from home, revealing to them that she's from the Southern Water Tribe (don't bother thinking about the implications of non-violent resistance this comb carries, btw, since she managed to keep it through years in a prison during which the guards tied her up by hands and feet before they feed her water and through the escape, or what it means that she has to keep that last remenant of home hidden in a locked chest; would it expose her if she kept it in the bathroom? Does she fear it could? Episode says, who cares? It's just a plot device to reveal her origin. Obey the episode and don't ask questions) Third, the episode needs her crimes to be recent enough that the local community has not already exposed her, but frequent enough that the kids have reason to investigate at all. Thus, how convenient that Hama messed up the schedule during the last full moon and failed to capture her latest victim before sunrise, so the Gaang has someone to tell them an invisible force pulled him toward the mountain. Now, they know where to look for the missing people. (btw, that the man lived to tell the tale makes me additionally question how evil and dangerous Hama truly is because that is a senior, too; as if she couldn't have assassinated him in the month since to make sure he doesn't talk. As if that weren't the most logical decision if she were as ruthless as the episode needs her to be to justify the cruelty it unleashes on her)
As you see, to meet the plot requirements, the script simply stacks coincidences until the villain twist can unfold, but the character and the storytelling just become aggressively incoherent.
One of the many questions I keep asking myself is, why now? Why does Hama start now to abduct civilians? If I remember, it's quite directly stated that the disappearances started recently, a few months ago. However, even if it wasn't stated, anything else creates considerable timeline issues. If Hama had been doing this for years, there should be many more victims, bodies, searches, rumors, patrols, or investigations. Keep in mind: Sokka suspects and investigates her immediately. I know he's a smart young man, but I don't see why no one else in the area would've come up with a similar idea.
For an antagonist, if you insist on making Hama one to impress and register as evil and dangerous, they have to work for their crimes. If she has been doing this for years without any friction because people are that easy to fool, I am not buying the threat. Since all context clues imply that she has been committing these abductions for a few months, the episode owes us an inciting event. What changed? What is the causal bridge between survivor and refugee Hama and kidnapper and predator Hama? The episode doesn't bother to answer this question beyond "They deserve the same." Again, I said it before; it's funny that the story actually thinks that what Hama went through as a prisoner of war and a genocide survivor is symmetrical to the kidnappings she does.
But why did Hama go through all the trouble to build a life at all? Do you, writers, know how much labor hospitality is? Do you, writers, care at all how much work it is to take care of such a big house with multiple guest rooms, apparently, alone? Have you, writers, considered for a moment how Hama managed to OWN PROPERTY and START A BUSINESS?! The paper trail? Hello? Did you not show me repeatedly how bureaucratic the Fire Nation is? What about a title deed? You need documentation for that. And, well, money. Taxes? Inspectations? Travelers? Suppliers (since Hama is stocked well enough to feed four children for several days)? An inn is pretty much the least anonymous business imaginable, and Hama has every fucking reason to stay as anonymous as possible.
Let me remind you of the fucking background story the writers conjured for her with meticulous detail: A high-profile waterbender escapes a purpose-built detention facility by controlling guards from inside their bodies. As far as we know, Hama is the only waterbender who ever escaped, and HOW she did it should make her THE most explosive and terrifying fugitive the Fire Nation has ever seen. You cannot tell me that this happened and the Fire Nation just shrugged and called it a day. No way, people. I don't buy it. You cannot come up with this escape story and expect me to think that this is the end of it.
There is no plausible version of that event in which the Fire Nation doesn't set hell in motion to hunt Hama down. Just imagine the witness reports of the guards on this waterbender with a bending ability that bypasses walls, weapons, and will. The officials paniced, I would bet. Hama is a security nightmare and folklore material, haunting the Fire Nation. She should be, at least.
You want me to believe that Hama performs one of the most terrifying forms of bending in the franchise and the Fire Nation just forgets it? Put some respect on this woman's name when you insist on writing her that formisable! No, no, no. There was a bounty on Hama's head; in fact, there still is, I decided, but there is no data to update the picture for decades and age has changed her so much that people don't recognize her anymore.
Multiple versions of her tale are circulating through the Fire Nation because the story travels far, growing a life of its own. How would you coordinate the search if you don't pass on what happened and who's on the run? The authorities have to pass on minimal information, at least, but the event is so horrifying and incredible that details leak anyway. Therefore, the propaganda specialists spin Hama's tale as a ghost story. I headcanon that Zuko and Azula grew up with it because some servant kid told it to Lu Ten when he and his parents spent the summer in some holiday palace of the royal family.
I mean, that is the magnitude her escape story deserves. How did she not become one of the most wanted fugitives across every territory controlled by the Fire Nation? That is one of the basic mechanisms of storytelling: if you make Hama's escape and the skill she developed to achieve it that extraordinary, the consequences of her action have to match the scale and intensity.
Now, as I said, running an inn is one of the least anonymous occupations, and it doesn't really match what Hama can plausibly afford. I mentioned the paper trail that would lead every scout and bounty hunter to her sooner or later. However, the writing insists she achieved it. Granted. That makes her even more formidable.
Decades of successful concealment suggest someone capable of regulating impulses, making long-term calculations, and tolerating intimate proximity to the society that destroyed her people as Hama RUNS AN INN!!! Her field of trade is, therefore, hospitality! Are you, writers, not paying ANY attention whatsoever to the story you are writing? Do you not keep track of the creative decisions you made? She was a prisoner of war, spent years under the worst "living" conditions and then decides to to HOST guests of the Fire Nation (not exclusively, sure, Earth Kingdom travelers may pass through, but see what I mean)? What was the motivation for that? Revenge? Lure guests in and murder them? Why go through the trouble and RISK of buying (or even renting, which is even riskier if you have a landlord or landlady to answer to) and maintaining an inn? She could just move into a little appartment in a big city somewhere, scout the sewer system, bloodbend victims underground, and let them rot there. Or kill them and dispose of them in the sewer water. Get away with it for decades. Much more anonymous. That's not a story I would suggest, but if the writers wanted to make her a scary villain, that's what it would take to convince me. And, again, as elaborated in detail, we have to assume she only recently started abducting people. We know she didn't silence the one man who escaped her. So, what is her masterplan supposed to be? It doesn't compute. The setup makes Hama exceptionally bad at terrorism, actually.
Now, IF the writers insist on making her run an inn..... Here is a sneak preview of my rewrite/AU take on Hama: The White Lotus. She is a member of the White Lotus. Yes, you don't get the villain one-shot (as we established, none of the elements required to achieve the plot, arc, and conclusion of the episode make sense; neither alone nor in isolation), but Hama's story never had to go there to begin with and this decision would resolve multiple issues of Hama's post-escape story (not that the writing consideres these decades part of her character, please keep your attention on the crimes, but don't bother about the timing or an indicing event because the writers didn't either). The White Lotus would have every reason to recruit her after performing the feat of escaping the prison designed specifically to render waterbenders utterly helpless. It would explain how she evaded the Fire Nation for years: the White Lotus can hide her, shelter her, help her recover, and give her a mission and a purpose. Running an inn would still mean she's super exposed, but if the operation runs through the White Lotus, the administration issues are resolved plausibly enough. It would give Hama a meaningful way to resist because, of course, this inn would be an ideal remote operation base. Genuine travelers passing through provide an organic flow of information. Agents can blend in, leave messages, recover from injuries (it's reasonable to assume Hama is a healer), hold meetings, coordinate operations, or store and move resources.
After all, in the finale, three (!!!) of the five revealed members of the White Lotus are from the Fire Nation; I will have you remembered. Two of them were directly responsible for major military campaigns (and I think Iroh's inclusion specifically leaves us with major timeline issues: his siege on Ba Sing Se for almost two years wasn't that long ago; Zuko appears to have been around 12 or 13. If he was already a member, the White Lotus is another Imperial organ because Iroh was also crown prince and Azulon's intended successor. That looks more like infiltration, if you ask me, and maybe you could make an argument that the White Lotus recruited him specifically to get a member on the throne who can stop the war, but then it makes Iroh look like a saboteur if he left the crown to his little brother. Also, I think I remember a line where Iroh even points out that he once came as a conqueror and returns now as a liberator, which implies he took the siege campaign seriously. If Iroh became a member after losing his son and the campaign and the throne, I can see how the White Lotus would recruit an experienced soldier with close proximity to the throne for tactical reasons. Still, Iroh pretty much acts like he is the leader of the campaign to free Ba Sing Se, when Bumi is fucking there, and I don't see how that would be justified given the atrocities he committed). If you can have three (!!!) Fire Nation representatives and all the members are men, exclusively, I don't see why the sole survivor of the Southern Water Tribe benders, who liberated herself from the cruelest conditions, wouldn't be approached and recruited. As I said, it is virtually impossible that Hama's escape didn't break containment. She would've been an ideal candidate, and I think, given the background story and the fact that she is THE ONLY waterbender of the South from before the Fire Nation annihilation IN THE FRANCHISE (more sneak preview: in my rewrite, she isn't) that would've been an appropriate arc. But, no, literally crackling villain it is. Katara was actually manipulated by a predator who stains her with a forbidden technique, not reconnecting with her culture after the Fire Nation annihilated it.
In my head Shane is 14 when one of his coaches finds him on the ice doing extra drills after practice and he makes some Crack like, "Guess you're not a once in a generation talent after all." And Shane is surprised and doesn't know what he means, and thinks maybe he did something wrong? A stupid newspaper called him a generational talent a couple months ago and the kids on his team - well it's fine. They're still winning. "More like twice huh?" The coach finishes. He holds up a DVD in an unlabled jewel case (because it's 2005) "Got something you're going to want to see."
The coach takes him to the video room and puts the DVD in, "There's a kid in Russia, same age as you. They're saying he's the next Gordie Howe."
He presses play and they watch a shaky video of two Russian teams. Shane's heart starts racing as he watches. He can immediately tell who coach is talking about. One of them is clearly faster and smarter than the rest, moving through the defense with a slick confidence that Shane immediately finds fascinating.
"His name is uh," coach digs though a pile of paper, "Romanof or something." He finds what he's looking for, "Ilya Rozanov. He'll be draft eligible the same year you will."
Shane feels that same sense of determination, terror, and joy he always feels when one of his coaches talks about him getting drafted like it's a forgone conclusion. He keeps watching the kid on the ice, the same age as him, and very good, and also already set for the draft.
His play style is fascinating, and when his shift is over Shane grabs the remote to fast forward to the next time he gets on the ice, wanting to see more.
His coach laughs and claps him on the shoulder, "Don't worry about him too much. You won't be playing him for a couple of years."
Shane watches this boy skate around his teammates like it's easy, like he's bored, maybe as bored as Shane sometimes is with his own team. He can't wait.
shane goes to the grocery shop early in the morning to buy some ingredients for ilya because now they live together, from time to time when they have time, ilya likes to cook dinner for them. the grocery is oddly busy, so shane goes to the line to pay and there’s an old lady in front of him with a cart that’s completely full while his basket barely has anything, so he asks the lady if he can go first like “my husband is gonna wake up any minute now and he’ll notice i’m not home and he’s really clingy and will be very upset” and the lady goes “oh—“ but she gets cut off by shane’s phone ringing and he pulls it out from his pocket and sees the caller and is ilya and he sighs loudly, presses accept and the second he brings the phone to his ear he hears a loud whine and ilya goes “SWEETHEART WHERE ARE YOUUUUUUU? YOU LEFT ME” followed by exaggerated crying noises and shane just looks at the lady and she looks back at him with a very understandable expression and wordlessly moves a little to the side to let him pass in front of her
"The last time any human touched Ryland Grace was an act of horrific violence"
Well... Yes and no.
The last time Ryland Grace was CONSCIOUS of any human touch was when he was knocked out. Absolutely true.
But the last human contact he would have had was Yao and Ilyukhina. Who were told that he was scared about panicking during launch and asked to be sedated. Who did all the pre flight checks before the Hail Mary launched. Who would have carefully, gently carried Grace to his bed in the dormitory, made sure he was secure, and initiated his coma procedure.
There would have been love there. Remember Ilyukhina throwing her hands high and saying "welcome to crew!" Remember Yao saying how he hoped Grace would say yes. Remember how much the crew trusted Grace, Stratt's First Officer, the guy who helped them so much, and was so kind to them, and was the one who they entrusted their preferred methods of suicide to. Who thought they were wonderful and brave.
They would have tucked him in. Maybe brushed his hair out of his face. Maybe said something kind to him before initiating their own coma procedures.
Ryland Grace doesn't remember, of course he wouldn't. But the last human touch he ever had was full of love.
Danny: Excuse me, have you seen this boy? He's been missing for two weeks
Random guy: No, sorry.
Danny: That's alright. Would you mind taking a flyer?
Random guy: Of course.
Danny moving to the next table over: Excuse me, have any of you seen this boy?
Barbara: Hmmm. Yes.
Danny: What?
Dick angrily: I've seen him too
Danny: When!? Where?! He's been missing for two weeks!
Barbara cautiously: How do you know this boy?
Danny glancing between them: I know I look suspicious. He's not my kid or anything. Jason is just my best customer. I don't know what the deal is at his house- nothing good, I suspect- but in Crime Alley, CPS is a death sentence, so I never called them to check. I know he's been having it rough since his mom passed. He used to come every day for a chili dog at my cart. Two weeks ago he suddenly stop coming around. He's missing.
Dick: Maybe he didn't want anymore chili dogs
Danny, shaking his head: That's what the police said, too, when I tried to file a missing person report, but I know the streets. Kids like Jason vanish all the time because no one is looking out for them. No one notices when they stop showing up. Jason came by every day, even when he didn't order anything, because he felt like I would notice if he vanished. And I did. He's gone.
Barbara: Hmmm. I saw the kid at the beginning of the month. I haven't seen him since.
Dick: Me too. It was at the public library. He was reading some books to younger kids dressed as a wizard.
Danny, disappointed: I see. That was the last time I saw him too. He got a dog after he finished Todler Tales on his way home. Will you take these flyers and call me if you remember anything else?
Barbara: Sure. I hope he's found soon.
Danny: Thank you. Me too. *Moves to next table* Excuse me, have you seen this boy?
Barbara watching him: Should we tell B?
Dick: That the kid he replaced me with has a worried dad? Nah, let them figure it out. He can be charged with kidnapping for all I care.
Barbara: Stop being so immature. The man is obviously worried out of his mind about Jay.
Dick: .....fine, but only because the man is searching this hard and not because I forgive either of them. I'll phone the cave tonight.
Ilya would get Shane those stim toys that kinda hurt you when you use them and Shane, not used to having actual accomodations for his autism, thinks they're kinda stupid. Like, why would I WANT to hurt myself? That makes no sense. And I'm a grown adult I don't need a toy. But because he loves him husband he agrees to try it and he absolutely loooves it. He still doesn't really understand why he likes it so much he just knows he does. And one day he asks Ilya why he thought he would like them and Ilya's like "well you always get so happy and relaxed when I spank you or slap you or choke you or go really really hard or-" and Shane's like "okay enough"
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