Just Wanted To Share The National Down Syndrome Society’s Message For This Year’s World Down Syndrome

the suffering never ends

so can we start hunting down white liberals now or what

there are a lot of bad takes in the atla fandom (like, atla fandom may as well be a bad take generator) but something that has really been pissing me off lately is the assumption that you can categorize the fire nation royal family into good guys and bad guys. first of all, obviously, they're all bad guys. they are imperialists. but the idea that "sozin ozai azula bad" and "iroh lu ten ursa zuko azulon(?!) good" is actually insane.

lu ten died attempting to conquer the earth kingdom. lu ten was there because his father, iroh, was leading the siege. ursa laughed when iroh joked about burning ba sing se to the ground. zuko laughed too, mirroring his dear mother who taught him about the wonders of imperialism. and the fact that some people think that azulon was a good guy because he favored iroh is crazy. he favored iroh because iroh was the better imperialist, was more charming and tactically savvy as he bent the world to his will. people who think that azulon didn't like ozai because ozai was cruel literally have it backwards. ozai was cruel because azulon didn't like him. sozin shaped azulon, and azulon shaped iroh and ozai. azulon reigned for most of the war, and he was responsible for decimating the southern water tribe and colonizing the earth kingdom.

iroh only realizes the error of his ways well into middle age, after spending a majority of his life colonizing the world. he only stops to reconsider once he experiences the adverse effects of war for himself through the loss of his son. likewise, zuko can only gain empathy for the victims of the war by being one himself, as a refugee in the earth kingdom, and bonding with people who have been hurt by the fire nation. azula doesn't get that chance. ozai doesn't get that chance. azulon, lu ten, and ursa are dead, so they will never get that chance. but it's not like there is some ontological moral divide separating azula from zuko. zuko was a sensitive child whereas azula was better at embodying fire nation values of power and cunning. zuko was punished for his outbursts whereas azula knew how to keep her mouth shut. therefore, zuko experienced circumstances that led him to disavow fire nation imperialism.

but that doesn't mean that azula is ontologically evil. azula was the iroh of her generation to zuko's ozai, and iroh (eventually) disavowed conquest as well. there is no inherent divide between good and bad, monster and human. ursa was a warm and loving mother to zuko, just as iroh was a warm and loving father to lu ten, but they both laughed at others' suffering. their values were shaped by their circumstances and experiences. their ideologies do not make them less human, or less capable of change, just as their interpersonal behaviors do not negate their abhorrent ideologies.

tbh i don’t really get when people say ‘it’s not heroic, it’s the bare minimum’ about things they presumably want to encourage, if you’re really that pragmatic why does the exact motivation matter, downplaying the act you want to happen is not going to make it happen more, is it

being on my period makes me feel like a wounded forest animal trying to find a warm dark small place to die

Thank you to this YouTube comment for this

I needed this drag. Let’s change guys and not look back

I was a teenage girl once.

I am parenting a pre-teen.

Also the daughter of two people who started a relationship when one was married, so cheaters. Cheaters who later married, had kids, and spent 35 years of their lives together parted only by death. Shades of gray; such is life.

Parents fuck up, even good ones. Teenagers can be right assholes, even kind ones.

Helluva Boss is a melodrama that also manages to ground itself in realistic ways people experience conflict and miscommunication. It is a hopeful show about messy people and messy families and messy love, and I fucking love it.

Stolas is right to choose a happier life and was brave to do so, even though some of his actions were hurtful to his daughter.

Octavia is right to be very sad and angry at her father about it.

We should be rooting for their reconciliation and we should be rooting for that dream in Blitz’s head of what their family could become. Because this a hopeful show about building a loving family and community. It is not a show that wants to punish people who are flawed.

Stolas’ biggest error with Octavia is failing to see her as a young woman and not a baby girl. So much of their conflict can and will be resolved by a difficult and honest conversation, when they are ready.

Anyone in this fandom who wants to punish a confused teen and/or a repressed gay dad with depression, fix your hearts.

The Marx Understander: We should be voting blue harder

correct. sitting in your room jerking it to fantasies of a revolution that has no leaders, no organizational infrastructure, and no strategy is not more historically progressive than participating in electoral politics. revolutions don't spontaneously self-organize. the revolutionary left in the United States is fragmentary and riven with internecine feuds, and uses abstentionism as an excuse for its irrelevance. anytime somebody suggests that milieu might not be a tenable vehicle for large-scale political change, somebody leans back in their chair, sneers, and offers some cutting remark with zero substance that functions solely to indicate that cool kids don't vote, cool kids don't team up with liberals, cool kids don't care about large-scale effectiveness, they only care about the incestuous world of far-left politics.

they have no substantive defense of their behavior, of course. if they did, they would be able to offer a defense besides repeating Democratic campaign slogans in increasingly mocking tones to indicate their disapproval. the "far left" in american politics these days really is just an unpleasant, cliquish social club on the internet. and once you notice how their model for politics is Mean Girls, how they have no style of communication that isn't dripping with irony so they don't actually have to make a positive claim that they might have to defend, how they have zero ambitions beyond their extremely insular world, it becomes impossible to ignore.

so embarrassing when i forget im checking someone's blog and i start scrolling through and liking and reblogging shit as if it's just my dash. it feels like wandering into someone else's apartment and not noticing and making myself lunch