Sauntering Vaguely Downwards

it's hilarious how if you do any amount of research into life or death melee combat the prevailing themes that emerge are that

Other favorites from history:

I don’t know if you could call Hama a resistance fighter. The episode made it clear that she only targeted random civilians as a way to take revenge.

Actually making her a resistance fighter would have been more interesting and nuanced though. Have it explore the issues about how the means do not justify the end. It would also show how far Katara is willing to go in revenge if the show established that bloodbending was wrong no matter who it was used against.

There are good stories that could be told about a Hama redemption. She is after all a very unique character.

I would’ve thought that resistance includes her time pre-capture fighting against the Southern Raiders. (Maybe not, thats not my field of expertise.)

Regardless, coming up with something more nuanced rather than “see, look she’s just as bad as the Fire Nation now” would’ve absolutely been better. (That’s not even getting into the whole “treating her like a horror monster” aspect.) You vilify a woman - an indigenous woman - and make her come off as “creepy?” In the same narrative that softens the image of generals and at least one admiral who fought for the empire that’s doing all the colonizing and genocides?

That’s how you get takes that equate Hama to those who ordered and executed the decimation of her people, or even claim she’s worse.

To my understanding resistance-fighter typically refers to people fighting against an occupation force in secrecy as part of an irregular force. Hama’s time in the SWT does not quite meet that definition. As she never taught secretly and was not part of an irregular force. But her time fighting in the SWT should not be discounted. It was impressive and vital in protecting her people.

I get what the episode was going for. They wanted to illustrate that the gaang would even protect the Fire Nation citizens and that not all people who aren’t Fire Nation are good while having a horror aspect. It just that they have done that better in the Avatar State with general Fong. And they could have made Hama’s actions more reasonable while maintaining a horror element.

I’m looking at incorporating Hama into a chapter of my ongoing fic and in light of this thread, I’d like to maintain the horror element but do so in a more respectful way. Can you elaborate on what could have been done to make her actions more reasonable? I’d imagine narrowing her target field (I.e soldiers on leave/retired soldiers as opposed to Everyone) but is there anything else that you can think of?

Have her mostly target people involved in the war effort. This isn’t just soldiers but also factory workers and the like who keep the Fire Nation economy going and produce the raw materials(and in some cases the weapons) used in the Fire Nation war effort. She’s trying to bring home the logic of total warfare to the Fire Nation. Beyond that, she can mostly target government officials and nobles, both because she blames them for the war but also because she’s trying to disrupt the government of the Fire Nation.

The other thing you could do is bring in settler colonialism(and make Hama live and operate outside the Fire islands). Hama targets the Fire Nation families and settlers who are settling/trying to settle on land stolen from the SWT, Air Nomads, and Earth Kingdom. She targets civilians and families(just like the Fire Nation targets civilians and families in its raids) because settlement of the “empty” land is a critical element of genocide and settler-colonialism.

@dawnsiren Also don’t make the focus of her appearance about how she’s wants to “corrupt” Katara, that’s needless demonization.

I’ve been stuck on how to give her proper respect. Because her whole setting is just…

Look, it’s not impossible for her to have done this, but it’s in really bad taste with the history of how Native people have been targeted and demonized and the lies government spread against them in order to justify taking their land and home. Here you have so few representation and somehow you think it’s okay to write a story like this?

How ignorant do you need to be to not recognize that your oh so wise message of ‘not only the Fire Nation is evil’ is absolutely out of place and inappropriate and definitely not your story to tell when you’re using Native coded people as the scape goat?

Bryke traveled out of country to get inspiration for the show and they couldn’t travel a state over to get some Native people on the show?

It’s like… I don’t want to erase Hama’s actions because I can totally see how she got to that mindset and it would sort of be like I am agreeing with Bryke and the fandom that she’s a monster, but writing it out feels so disrespectful. Yes, there are monsters from every type of land and people, but it’s definitely not our story to tell, especially if you’re white American with the history of what they have done and are still doing to indigenous people.

I do like the idea that she only targets people in the Fire Nation that are actively supporting the war. I’ll never fully be okay with her story, but I’ll also take any improvements.

The simple way I do it is that the "innocent" village? Yeah, that's where all the workers at the death camp of a prison she was kept in lived.

It also very neatly also explains why the hell she didn't do something like "escape to anywhere out of the Fire Nation" (even if she didn't think she could go back to the SWT without endangering her people). If the village is still profiting over the bones of her people, if she's the only one who remembers the names of the people in the mass graves, then how can she leave?

If anything, yes, I will play up the fact that she's a genocide survivor, a concentration camp survivor, and she's got all the right in the world to deeply resent what was done to her and her people. And to bluntly state just how disgusting I find it that Bryke decided to not only side with the oppressor, but to have Katara be okay with handing Hama over to the exact same people who fucking tortured her for years, the same people who were ultimately behind the death of Katara's mother.

Like what in the actual fuck.

Jack Black did more of Hit Me Baby One More Time, and I am living for this.

BABYYYYYY I DIDNT KNOW I WAS SUPPOSED TO FALL IN LOVE TODAY

RPG’s be like

I’m offended

I CANT EAT BECAUSE IM LAUGHING TOO HARD

@mastersamson88

Is this the same show with the guy who licks his own poisoned blade & just immediately dies?

Yeah. It’s called Yūsha Yoshihiko, or The Hero Yoshihiko.

Marvel Syndrome

Josh Whedon disease

so uh. Ursula Vernon is an acclaimed and accomplished writer (also known as T Kingfisher) of multiple genres, including fantasy and horror - lots of horror. she also wrote and illustrated the award-winning webcomic Digger. I knew this screenshot couldn’t be showing us her whole opinion, so I pulled up the actual tweet, and I was right! she goes on to explain that many in her crowd loved it, including her husband, but that it wasn’t for her. even more relevant than her original thread, though, is this response she had to someone who was asking in (apparently) good faith why she found the lack of humour frustrating:

like. yeah. not every movie requires a comedy element. of course not! but I think this post is ripping unfairly on entirely the wrong person. Vernon was clear in her original thread that being humourless did not make it a Bad Movie, and has been exceptionally straightforward about why that lack of humour felt detrimental to the film in her experience.

For those that are going to miss the eclipse on Monday, I have created a simulation of what the eclipse will look like along the path of totality

No context no nuance. Pick

Apotheosis: To become a god

Deicide: To kill a god

vote for deicide because i voted for apotheosis and then realised deicide is cooler

the crucial fact of zuko and azula's relationship that makes it so insanely compelling is not the tried and true facets of siblings on opposite sides of a war, sibling rivalry turned murderous, or siblings who are divided by their parents' favoritism; it's the fact that despite being the older sibling, zuko is the one who doesn't care about azula while azula cares about him even when it goes against her best interest to do so. i think this makes a lot of people who want to see zuko through the fanon lens of this awkward turtle duck who's just doing his best and isn't super angry and volatile deeply uncomfortable because it so directly contradicts that reading of him unless they completely strip azula of her sympathetic and human traits. but that reading is not only unsupported by canon, it's boring.

the truth is that azula cares about zuko (in a very distorted way given how her upbringing and trauma restrict her ability to express it in a way anywhere in the area code of healthy) to the extent that because she chooses him over herself in bringing him home (because it is an insane retcon that implies she is near omnipotent to say she knew for certain the avatar was not really dead and was just going to scapegoat zuko, not to mention it makes very little sense and is, again, boring), she loses everything. and zuko cares so little for azula that he only feels anything remotely close to grief about it all when he sees just how badly she's hurting.

as much as i think his redemption arc leaves to be desired in terms of the political implications of it, zuko does have a good heart. he does want to do the right thing. it's just that azula has always been his blind spot, and that makes their relationship so much more interesting.

As someone who loves both Zuko and Azula, this thesis is completely valid. And it’s also valid for Azula to behave this way as much as it is for Zuko.

Azula loves Zuko, she cares about him, like OP said. The thing is, she grew up in a toxic, unhealthy environment all her life, and contrary to Zuko, who had first his mother and then Iroh, she has no support aside for the man who praises her every move, her father. And so her rude, cruel, “evil” and malicious ways to play with her brother don’t look like that in her eyes. They seem simple playing with Zuko. Even taunting him for what Azulon said, she did it to kind of warn him, I guess? Because I don’t think she thought it could actually happen, and yet it was true.

Azula is a child whose father’s enablement made her blind to the pain she caused, to the point where she couldn’t even see that her way of playing with her brother and friends was wrong, or cruel. And when her mother did not enable her behavior, or justify her way of playing, she considered her the enemy, someone who preferred Zuko over her. Which pushed her towards Ozai even further.

Meanwhile, Zuko is older, he knows his mother and uncle’s compassion. He knows that the way Azula plays with people and with him is wrong. He doesn’t like it. And in his child mind, the basic sibling rivalry is much more than that. He has to prove himself to best his sister and win his father’s love for once. But he fails, Azula taunts him in her way to be a sister, and he grows to hate her. So of course, Zuko grows up resenting his sister, without seeing the good in her. Just what Ozai wants. Not what Ozai made her.

And by Zuko’s pov, Azula is simply the prodigy who follows him and taunts him and takes things away from him, and when she does do things for him, he’s too paranoid to see the good and automatically thinks she is out to get him. He doesn’t realize that the betrayal on the day of the black sun deeply scarred her. He doesn’t realize his leaving once again is just another step towards insanity. And when she fully goes mad, he doesn’t see a sister. Just an enemy. Because at that point he made peace with the fact that she doesn’t care for him and never did, which is a lie.

I think this view and point of view of Zuko was also shared by Iroh, because he too isn’t capable to see the good in her, as he usually does. And given that he wasn’t always present during Zuko and Azula’s childhood, he only sees the grown up version of Azula in which the enablement has cemented.

So in the end, it is all about the character’s perspective. Azula cared for her brother but never showed it in a traditional way, as Zuko wanted, because of Ozai’s influence in her life. And Zuko cares for his sister, loves her even, but has lost all faith in her because he doesn’t align with her way of playing/joking/reacting, and thinks of it as hatred and hostility towards him. As a result he doesn’t see her as someone he loves anymore, but as an enemy.

Their relationship is very complicated, which makes it a good piece of media. I think it can be salvaged, especially after Azula’s comic set in the spirit temple where she made piece with her desire for love and, at little steps, for the realization that her father was not the man she thought he was. But to be done well, Zuko needs to move from his “she is evil” one dimentional stance and see Azula in a deeper way (in the search there were some instances where this already happened, I think), and Azula needs to fully acknowledge that her behavior influenced by Ozai was bad for both of them. They both need to detoxify from all those years of abuse and unhealthy environment, and then try to have a relationship with each other.

genuine question. what does zuko ever do or say at literally any point in canon to indicate he loves or even cares for azula?

like as boring as i find this devotion to proving he somehow does love her (while trying to agree with my post despite directly contradicting my point), what does he ever do to indicate that? i don’t mean displays of any compassion or care for others that could hypothetically be extended to azula. what does zuko ever actually do to show he cares about azula at all?

his dislike of her when they’re children is not hard to understand or explain as children being children who don’t get along, except that he never actually does or says anything at all to indicate his dislike of her was anything short of sincere and full-hearted then or now.

from the time zuko first mentions azula to aang in book 1, he speaks of and views her as nothing but a source of his resentment. he doesn’t compare aang to her in a remotely positive way. he does so to express his frustration at how undeserving he views azula and aang of their successes. he does so to express that azula, like aang, is an obstacle he wishes to overcome. there is no thought whatsoever given to her humanity or any care for her between siblings.

zuko consistently (as far as i remember, SOLELY but i’ll be loose about this since i haven’t watched in a while) interacts with azula in a way guided by suspicion, mistrust, envy, and dislike. sometimes this is warranted (i.e. when she deceives him to capture him); often it’s not (i.e. pretty much every interaction they have when he’s back in the fire nation in hook 3). there are many times where azula is unkind to him too which he happily reciprocates, but unlike azula, zuko’s return of this energy is not underlined by a strong (if misguided) sense of love and care. azula’s intentions are not clear to zuko, yes, but her love for zuko does not waver in the face of his resentment, mistrust, and dislike of her while his so-called love for her is never shown to start with.

azula only stops showing her care for zuko after he betrays both her and their country and rats out her lie to their father despite knowing that ozai is a dangerous abuser, at which point zuko has not only hurt her deeply with his rejection of what she considered a great act of love but his disregard for her well-being. this brings them back to being enemies at war and also kickstarts azula’s psychotic break.

cut to boiling rock when azula and zuko almost fall to their deaths. zuko is saved by the gaang and says, with no love or care in his voice whatsoever, that his sister is really going to die this time. he makes no effort to even ask the gaang to try to save her. i don’t think they were in a very good spot to do so if they wanted to, but it’s worth noting that this is the most extreme display of zuko’s apathy at best toward azula because when zhao, who he hated, was in imminent danger that zuko could realistically do very little to save him from, zuko still tried to save his life. furthermore, when azula saves herself, zuko acts annoyed that she did that. he’s not that surprised, sure, but seconds earlier he declared that he sincerely believed azula was going to die, and now he’s annoyed that she saved herself.

is that something that implies zuko loves or even cares about azula to you?

what about how he goads her into lightningbending so he can humiliate her by redirecting it during the last agni kai while she’s having the world’s most blatant psychotic break? he was already on the track to winning that fight. she was so psychologically fractured that all he had to do was keep up what he was doing, and he would have won without katara’s intervention. she was making no move to lightningbend. he knew that. but he wanted to show her that he was better than her now by redirecting her lightingbending even while she was having a mental breakdown which he at least vaguely recognized.

does that seem loving to you? even if you want to argue that zuko has at this point stopped loving azula, can you honestly show me a moment where he seemed to love her at all? a moment where he wasn’t constantly suspicious of her, even when they were children?

i’m not saying azula is a good sibling either. she’s extremely fucked up too, but she cares about zuko, and he couldn’t care less about her.

again, the idea of zuko caring about azula is made up from nothing because zuko stans are uncomfortable with the fact that he’s a flawed character, as if that’s not what’s so interesting about him to start with.

Oh boy, evidence that maybe Zuko cared a little bit about Azula is extremely thin and you have to have a very low bar, so I'm by no means necessarily disagreeing with you and I think he would generally show her a lot more empathy and compassion if he wasn't related to her and barely knew her. However, I thought it was worth at least listing off the "best evidence," such as it is.

Zuko Alone:

While Ursa is just chastising Azula, Zuko seems to make an effort to teach her empathy. That's just about the nicest thing we ever see him do for her.

Then there's this scene:

But that's kind of weak. The entire scene is basically Zuko expecting that a respected authority figure would tell him to try to get along with his sister because a respected authority figure in the past (i.e. Ursa) has done so, and trying to pre-emptively deflect that. It's not about Zuko's love for her.

The final thing(aside from the scene at the Western Air Temple you already mentioned) is that Zuko does help Azula at one moment during their fight against Katara and Aang under Ba Sing Se. It's possible to interpret this as an act of love or care, and indeed I think Azula interpreted it like that, but it makes equal or more sense as a pragmatic act to make sure an ally isn't disabled during a difficult fight.

And yeah, that's basically it. There's about nothing else you could interpret in canon as Zuko demonstrating he loves Azula.

It is very, very telling that Azula was never taught a language in which she could express her love and care in a healthy way, but she tries to anyway with an imperfect tongue.

Zuko was taught how to express care and affection in multiple ways, in word and deed, by Ursa and Iroh at the very least, and he uses none of these to extend any to his younger sister.

Azula is a child who only has a hammer and is trying to use it to build everything because it is the only thing she has. Zuko has the entire toolbox but refuses to pick a single tool up to do the work.

This article is actually about a very serious problem. If you overgenerate electricity it increases the phase frequency of the power grid, and if that goes out of sync with your generators (including solar panels) it can destroy them. In the kind of way where your power grid is fucked for months. It is very very very very bad.

California started a program to make solar panels more affordable by offering very low interest rates for solar panels, to allow people to benefit from their lifetime $/energy cost that's below fossil fuels, without having to worry about the high frontloaded cost. However they did not do this for batteries. And power grid quality batteries with massive energy storage and serious charge-discharge lifetimes, are expensive.

And they did this because while solar panels are cheaper than fossil fuels per kilowatt hour of electricity over their lifetime, solar panels plus batteries are not. And California wanted a supplemented free market solution and didn't really want to think about the part that direct government intervention in the form of taxation and paying for this change would be necessary.

So everyone in California just kept adding solar panels to the grid with no disconnect mechanisms, until eventually it hit a point where at noon, solar panels generated more power than the entire grid needed. With no batteries to store the excess. This is a motherfucking power grid killer. It is a scenario where people get left in the fucking dark for months because of how badly it destroys the powergrid.

So the power grid authorities did the only thing they could do. They called up every industrial plant with heavy duty equipment and ovens they could and paid them to turn it on full blast (because using that equipment costs money in wear and tear even without the electricity cost). And in doing so, avoided disaster.

That's what this article is talking about. They are solar panel researchers criticizing a capitalist adoption strategy and promoting direct government intervention to create renewable energy. However as with most newspapers they don't get to choose the title, the editor picks the most provocative title that will get clicks.

Okay here's another case where I originally reblogged the first part without thinking, and now we have the proper context. Damn

They say you die three times, first when the body dies, second, when your body enters the grave, and third, when your name is spoken for the last time. You were a normal person in life, but hundreds of years later, you still haven’t had your “third” death. You decide to find out why.

You sold some shitty copper, man, I don’t know what to tell you

:)

for me it's "the search"

How could you make choose?

Challenge Level: IMPOSSIBLE

In mine and many other east Asian cultures, the dragon traditionally symbolises things like power, wealth and strength (imperial symbol and all)

I think we often forget that in the story of the Great Race, the dragon came in fifth because it'd stopped to give people rain. Then it'd stopped again to push a rabbit adrift on a log across the wide river so it reached the shore safely (that's why the Rabbit year comes before the Dragon).

Dragons aren't meant to just be powerful - they are meant to do good with such power, and to help those in need.

So in this lunar new year, I hope you gain more power, so that you might be able to help others. I pray you have abundant resources so you may give to yourself and those around you. I wish you courage, endurance, kindness and generosity, for yourself and your people.

I hope you, and I, will be rain givers, life preservers, joy bringers.

I hope we will be dragons.

There is some pretty shocking footage out there of the Baltimore bridge collapse early this morning. I've already seen some incredibly wrong, incredibly insensitive Hot Takes about how shitty the bridge was to have fallen after being bonked by a boat, etc

Please don't be that person.

The facts will come out. Speculation is silly. In addition to loss of life, the Francis Scott Key bridge was a major arterial in that region's highway system. Its loss will be felt for years, and not just to daily commuters.

Baltimore harbor is closed. No shipping at all. This will impact supply chains in ways we cannot even assess yet.

It's pretty fucked up.

Hey y'all, Baltimorian here.

correction from the notes: 95 THOUSAND tons

I was about to say, "only 95 tons? that's fucking tiny. the Edmund Fitzgerald had a cargo load of 26 thousand tons on its last voyage in 1975, and iron ore is one of the denser cargoes but after fifty years of ever-bigger shipbuilding, fucking 95, really?"

This makes much more sense.

Yeah, those cargo ships aren't light, and since this one was OUTBOUND was probably close to fully loaded. Since it lost power so close to the bridge there was almost NO way to have stopped the collision.

The only way it could have been prevented, really, would have been to have a mandate in place that any ships traveling near the bridge (or really ANY bridge in a shipping lane) be escorted by a couple tugboats, similar to what is supposed to happen in the Suez Canal. Before the invention of the bow-steering systems most of those ships have now, this was the NORM - tugboats used to be MUCH more prevalent in and around harbors like this, I remember reading SEVERAL books as a child talking about tugboats, one might even have been called 'the brave little tugboat'? Been a couple decades.

Anyway, the point is, we can be in love with all the new tech we have available to us as a species, but if we want to protect our infrastructure, there is no replacement for more hands and working together.

Source

back the fuck up

There’s another story that I like about a Chinese general who had to defend a city with only a handful of soldiers from a huge enemy horde that was in all likelihood going to steamroll the place flat within hours of showing up.

So when said horde did arrive, they saw the general sitting outside the city’s open gates, drinking tea. The horde sent a couple of emissaries over to see what was what, and the general greeted them cheerfully and invited them all to come and take tea with him.

The horde decided that this was a scenario that had “MASSIVE FUCKING TRAP” written all over it in beautiful calligraphy and promptly fucked off.

Whoever that general was, he was clearly the Ancient Chinese equivalent of Sam Vimes.

did he just invite us over for tea nah man i’m out

This just keeps getting better

I fucking love history.

ok but tbh that story misses a lot of the subtlety of the situation like ok

so this story is the Romance of Three Kingdoms, and essentially takes place between Zhuge Liang, resident tactician extraordinaire, and Sima Yi… OTHER resident tactician extraordinaire.

The two were both regarded as tactical geniuses and recognized the other as their rival. Zhuge Liang had a reputation for ambushing the SHIT out of his opponents and using the environment to his advantage, thus destroying large armies with a small number of men. Sima Yi (who kind of entered the picture later) was a cautious person whose speciality was unravelling his opponent’s plans before they began. So it was natural that the two would butt heads; however, since Sima Yi tended to have more men and resources, he started winning battles against the former. Which, y’know, kinda sucked.

On to the actual story: Zhuge Liang is all like “shit i gotta defend this city with like 10 men.” Literally if he fights ANY kind of battle here, he WILL lose; his only option for survival is not to fight. And that’s looking more and more impossible until he hears that his rival is leading the opposing army. And then he gets this brilliant idea. He basically opens all the gates, sends his men out in civilian clothes to sweep the streets, and sits on top of the gate drinking tea and chilling out and basically makes the whole thing out to be a trap

When Sima Yi comes he’s all like “yo come on in bro”

and Sima Yi is like “yeah he’s never been that obvious about his traps before. this is definitely a bluff” and he’s about to head in when he realizes

wait. he knows that i think he’s bluffing.

and so he gets it in his head that maybe, just MAYBE, Zhuge Liang has this cunning plan that will wipe out his army - recall that he has a pretty good handle on what his rival is capable of. And after a long period of deliberation (which is just like “he know that I know that he knows that etc.”), being the cautious man he is, SIma Yi eventually decides to turn his entire army around and leave.

Zhuge Liang later points out that the plan was based specifically on the fact that he was facing his rival; if it had been anyone else, there’s no way it would have worked. A dumber or less cautious person would have simply charged in and won without breaking a sweat. 

and that’s the real genius here: it was a plan formed entirely just to deceive one man, and it worked.

Zhuge Liang is the most brilliant, sneaky-ass bastard in history. One time his side’s army was out of arrows, which pretty much meant they were screwed. So Zhuge Liang goes and does the logical thing, which is build a fuck ton of scarecrows and put them all on boats. Then he makes the men hide in the boats and sail them out on the river.

Well, that day was super foggy (which Zhuge Liang had predicted. Did I mention he was also a freakishly accurate meteorologist?). So the enemy across the river sees a fleet of boats armed to the teeth with what appears to be half an army of men. They panic! and start firing arrows like crazy. 

Zhuge Liang lets this play out for a while, then he’s like, ”Ok guys that’s enough.” They calmly turn the boats around and go back to base, where they dismantle the scarecrows and pull out all the enemy’s arrows.

Zhuge Liang is legend.

I love this post. It just keeps getting better. Like seriously, I would have adored learning about this in World History.

If you want to see this in cinematic glory, watch Red Cliff.

Especially since it makes Zhuge Liang look like this:

Red Cliff is 50% bloody battles and 50% eye candy and about half of that eye-candy is due to Zhuge Liang

@admiraloblivious we’re finding this movie and watching it asap

Ffffff-

I KNEW ITWAS HIM! WATCH RED CLIFF. WATCH ITTTTTTTT

How dare you post this picture of me.

(laughter) Argh.

Not so much in a first draft. But oy, in any given WIP…