The Way Hyacinth Is One Of The Youngest Of The Bunch Yet The Most Observant One

once i catch u fujimoto

Anne Sexton, from a letter featured in Anne Sexton; A Self-Portrait In Letters

“Eventually soulmates meet, for they have the same hiding place.”

— Unknown

the funeral (a grotesque display of two queens’ grief, forced on them against their will) being interjected by images of aegon beating blood into a bloody ruin says something about how women’s grief is exploited and paraded around as a virtue while male grief is only allowed to exist in conjunction with violence.

female sorrow is expected to be public, dignified, and even noble, it serves as a symbol of quiet strength and resilience. otto uses it as a tool to gain sympathy for their cause. notice how he forced alicent and helaena into it, while he allowed aegon not to participate. wouldn‘t the king being at the funeral send a powerful message? yes, it would. but otto looks at aegon with contempt, the other councilmen and alicent do not know what to do with his tears. the realm cannot be allowed to see the king grieve. not like this.

male grief is denied its own space and validity unless it manifests in aggressive or destructive acts. aegon realizes this to some degree too— he lashes out publicly by killing the rat catchers. he shows his grief by being violent, by spilling blood.

the toxicity of it all is very effectively shown at the end when aegon is crying by himself. did he retreat there to be alone and finally let it all out? his mother is either letting him have that moment alone or she’s deeply uncomfortable with it and chooses to leave. no matter what motivated alicent in acting the way she did— the moment still reveals how male vulnerability is something people fear. it shows that even the most human expressions of pain are not acceptable for some.

oooohhhh ok. the more you deny yourself the more you lose yourself

Every time people use ATLA as an example of progressive children's cartoons that was "unusally politically sound" I remember how there were two whole villain characters (including an orphan kid and an elderly Indigenous lady) who were victims of genocide and settler colonialism but chose to fight back and were thus rebranded in canon as terrorists for harming "innocents", as in, harming the very colonialists who have settled on their land and leeched off their resources and are definitely not in favour of the Fire Nation imperialist propaganda because they are cute little civilian folk ofc, and dont you get, the Fire Nation has good humans too 🥺🥺🥺.

And I'm not usually someone who makes those Hunger Games, AOT style comparisons to real life events etc but I am a literature student and I genuinely think it's not unsurprising the number of people who fall for American liberal "pacifist" propaganda in media, that paints revolutionaries and armed resistance as inherently evil, that has the central character call his indigenous love interest as bad as aforementioned canon "terrorists" because she wanted to kill the colonial officer who murdered her mother during a genocide, and she has to defend herself saying "no that was different Jet was killing civilians (aka settler colonialists are not = military and therefore are totally absolved of their crimes) I am killing a dangerous man (aka safe to blame imperial military)"

And like. Do you not see it. Do you just. Not. See it.

I have to be honest: if Katara had gotten the same treatment Toph did in ATLA, people would like her much more.

What do I mean about “getting the same treatment”? In many moments of the show, I realized that Katara was written differently than Toph (in the sense of how female characters are written). Toph is given much more substance and power showing scenes than Katara. She’s a genuine person that it’s not being written for a particular cause and has her story ending already written; she gets to do more and be more. While, for me, Katara has moments where she gets to be the amazing, waterbending master, that’s fair and loving (that to me are the scenes that show the true Katara), and then there are others where it seems she’s not allowed to be anything more than a plot device.

The episode that got me into that conclusion was “The Day of the Black Sun”. Katara does nothing in that invasion. Absolutely nothing. There’s a small scene of her attacking people, then her father gets hurt and she’s immediately removed from the story. While, Aang, Sokka and Toph go kick people’s butts and do something, Katara is (off-screen) healing her father. I wouldn’t have a problem with the trio fighting together, if it was shown Katara doing something important as well. While, Toph gets to be a person and get in fights, showing her skills and “hanging out with the boys”, Katara is only there to fulfill a purpose of that episode’s plot: which is getting kissed by Aang. After that, she’s removed from the narrative.

That’s something you never see happening with Toph. She fights creatively, grows on her power, gets to show her skills and is known to be a badass through the whole fandom, she doesn’t have scenes where she’s downplayed or underused and then just disappears. The reason for that is that she was written as a person with nothing binding her , with no sort of romantic connection to another character; therefore she gets to be a person. Now, this isn’t a post shitting on ‘kataang’ (this is not a post about ships), but Katara was written in many moments as just the romantic interest of Aang, having scenes where her entire actions are revolved around him, like in “The Day of the Black Sun”. Her purpose was to be kissed and now that’s she fulfilled it, she can be removed from the story.

Which makes me come back to my original point: if Katara was given the same treatment as Toph, people would adore her, ‘cause we know what she’s like when written normally: a fair, talented, fighter who guides the group through moments of helplessness and wants to save the world.

Rococo Doll by Amaa Fairy

I edited the photo so it looks digital