Children/teens aren’t allowed to be sad or in a bad mood because they can get yelled at for it and ridiculed and told to ‘change your attitude or I will for you’, while adults who are sad or in a bad mood, are allowed to yell at and take their frustration out on the kids. Adult privilege huh?
And when the adult is in a bad mood, it’s the kids job to step on eggshells in order to keep them from not exploding, and when they do, it’s on them.
And when the child is in the bad mood, it’s their job to try to hide it, and when they break apart trying to, it’s on them.
What extra sucks about this is that adults literally have more experience, context, perspective, and brain development to help them manage emotions. Adults who do this are shit. We are the adults, we should not be expecting kids who are still developing and learning about the world and trying to figure out their place in it to be the ones who are emotionally mature.
People who treat adulthood like a power trip are honestly shit and should not have authority over kids.
We’re getting pretty close to having adults who weren’t alive during 9/11, and we really need to admit at this point that the overemphasis on 9/11 in the US is just a propaganda machine to indoctrinate the younger generations into nationalism and to justify all the horrible war crimes the US committed in the Middle East, and the continued mistreatment and distrust towards refugees.
DUDE my teacher canceled class the other day and so the next day we were all like oh no is everything ok?? and shes like “oh yeah its fine its just my wife wasn’t feeling good so i took her home, made her some soup, yknow fun stuff” and i swear everyone in class froze for a sec cuz we never knew she was a lesbian but then we spent a good 30 min of class time discussing whether her wife actually ate the soup cuz we all know she sucks at cooking
this is beautiful
I had a professor who would talk in class about her wife and their four daughters and it always made me go !!! inside. like, wooooow, family goals.
In my undergrad, I took a module that had two lecturers teaching it. The first was very butch and would occasionally talk about how brilliant her wife was in the field and would talk about her kids and general family life. Then the other lecturer took over classes, and she would talk about her wife too, and how brilliant her wife was academically. Then they taught a class together and the penny dropped. They were talking about each other and both thought the other was the literal shit in their area of media.
It’s been delightful for me to watch my friends finally able to get legally married. Every time @crofethr says “my wife” it’s like a chorus of bluejays dance around behind her.
I was at work at a deli a few weeks ago and this group of three women came in pretty late at night. One was the mother of one of them, and the other two were just being really cute and holding hands and cuddling and whatnot. One was leaning on the other and she seemed really tired, so her wife ordered for her and the mom was like, “Married for seven years, they know each others’ orders by heart” and I honestly felt like I’d been blessed
one time a lecturer was discussing all the stupid reasons she’s been called up in front of the board (which include an actual formal accusation of witchcraft) and once a student accused her of homophobia and homophobic statements and she walked into the formal board hearing with her only prepared defense being “remember how I’m married to another woman ok thanks let’s go get lunch”
omg when ladies talk about their wives and just say “my wife” I just get so excited and happy because it is all possible and real. it’s so amazing and beautiful
I’m an optician and one day I had 2 women, one blonde and one brunette, come in to pick up glasses. I had the blonde try on hers while the brunette was talking to one of my coworkers. When she put them on I said, “Oh looks like they’re not sitting straight.” Without missing a beat she said “Oh honey, nothing about me is straight,” and proceeded to pat her wife on the butt and say “Honey, did you hear what I said? It was really funny. Honey? Honey, I said nothing about me is straight.”
this post cleared my skin watered my crops
In undergrad I had a professor tell us she was going to be out for a conference but she’d get us another professor who was gonna guest lecture and to be on our best behavior, etc. So the other professor is a delightful butch woman, and she’s as great as we all expected. Cut to three months later after the semester is over, and I see them walking up the stairs to the faculty offices holding hands and chatting about which one is picking up their son from school and which one is going home for the dog’s midday walk. Meanwhile I just stood there grinning like an idiot until my professor noticed me and gave me this knowing smile and wink, and all was right in the world.
this is literally the most beautiful thread ever, my gay heart
We had to write a Mini Comic for my Illustration Class so I did mine based on The Frog and The Scorpion. Hopefully you all know the story!
But if you don’t know the story… In the original the scorpion stings the frog in the middle of the river. When the frog asks “why” the scorpion says “it’s in my nature” and they both die. I like my ending more.
Done with watercolor and pen and ink nib.
I always thought this story was fucked up, even when I heard it as a very young child. I even got put in the naughty corner, and a star next to my name crossed off for questioning it.
This story is so much better, and I like it’s message much more.
I introduced a friend to ATLA a few nights ago, and they had only
known two things about the entire show: the cabbage meme, and that Aang
apparently wants to ride every large and dangerous animal he can
possibly find. We got through the first five or so episodes, and my
friend noted that Aang is exactly what a 12-year-old would be like if
given godlike powers, and that this is literally just what he
could do with airbending. He can’t even wield any of the other elements,
and he’s one of the most powerful people on the planet, because he’s an
airbender.
And that got me thinking.
This snippet from Bitter Work is one of the few pieces of concrete information we get about the airbenders, at least in ATLA. Iroh is explaining to Zuko how all four of the elements connect to the world and to each other.
Fire is the element of power, of desire and will, of ambition and the ability to see it through. Power is crucial to the world; without it, there’s no drive, no momentum, no push. But fire can easily grow out of control and become dangerous; it can become unpredictable, unless it is nurtured and watched and structured.
Earth is the element of substance, persistence, and enduring. Earth is strong, consistent, and blunt. It can construct things with a sense of permanence; a house, a town, a walled city. But earth is also stubborn; it’s liable to get stuck, dig in, and stay put even when it’s best to move on.
Water is the element of change, of adaptation, of movement. Water is incredibly powerful both as a liquid and a solid; it will flow and redirect. But it also will change, even when you don’t want it to; ice will melt, liquid will evaporate. A life dedicated to change necessarily involves constant movement, never putting down roots, never letting yourself become too comfortable.
We see only a few flashbacks to Aang’s life in the temples, and we get a sense of who he was and what kind of upbringing he had.
This is a preteen with the power to fucking fly. He’s got no fear of falling, and a much reduced fear of death. There’s a reason why the sages avoid telling the new avatar their status until they turn sixteen; could you imagine a firebender, at twelve years old, learning that they were going to be the most powerful person in the whole world? Depending on that child, that could go so badly.
But the thing about Aang, and the thing about the Air Nomads, is that they were part of the world too. They contributed to the balance, and then they were all but wiped out by Sozin. What was lost, there? Was it freedom? Yes, but I think there’s something else too, and it’s just yet another piece of the utter brilliance of the worldbuilding of ATLA.
To recap: we have power to push us forward; we have stability to keep us strong; we have change to keep us moving.
And then we have this guy.
The air nomads brought fun to the world. They brought a very literal sense of lightheartedness.
Sozin saw this as a weakness. I think a lot of the world did, in ATLA. Why do the Air Nomads bother, right? They’re just up there in their temples, playing games, baking pies in order to throw them as a gag. As Iroh said above, they had pretty great senses of humour, and they didn’t take themselves too seriously.
But that’s a huge part of having a world of balance and peace.
It’s not just about power, or might, or the ability to adapt. You can have all of those, but you also need fun. You need the ability to be vulnerable, to have no ambitions beyond just having a good day. You need to be able to embrace silliness, to nurture play, to have that space where a very specific kind of emotional growth can occur. Fun makes a hard life a little easier. Fun makes your own mortality a little less frightening to grasp. Fun is the spaces in between, that can’t be measured by money or military might. Fun is what nurtures imagination, allows you to see a situation in a whole new light, to find new solutions to problems previously considered impossible.
Fun is what makes a stranger into a friend, rather than an enemy.
The internet went from showing food recipe videos to alchemy in less than a decade. There’s going to be a quick video on how to make the philosopher’s stone from tomato sauce next week.
That’s why Dr. Marcoh kept all his research hidden in a cook book
Welcome to Chaos 