TrueMetis

While the violence is escalating in Gaza, so too is it escalating in the West Bank

(Content warning about some of the videos in there)

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/as-gaza-violence-grows-a-different-kind-of-conflict-is-emerging-on-the-west-bank/ar-AA1iBVsX

Between concerns that settlers will use the attack as an excuse to steal more land, the Israeli foreign minister stating that Gaza will be smaller after they're done, and the stories about Israel having been warned about the attack beforehand it leads to some questions about how happy some in the Israeli government might be to have an excuse to continue their colonial project.

3 minutes ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

I was being glib. 

So was I.

Just now, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

I believe that he answered that before: they should all be rising up against Hamas. Just like the people of Afghanistan should all be rising up against the Taliban. Or the people of any totalitarian or terrorist state should be rising up against them. Easy. 

If the Cherokee nation decides to blow up the Oklahoma State Capital building I expect to hear no complaints from any of y'all.

5 hours ago, Zorral said:

They Say we are in a 'soft civil war' and these mass shootings are a big part of it.

Seems to be given the massive disparity in who's perpetrating said shootings.

Honestly tells you a lot about the difference in mindset between the left and right that the people committing these shootings, police that coddle them, and perhaps most importantly politicians who sit there and continue to enable both of the former aren't turning up dead.

Like would any of use be surprised if one of the Uvalde victims parents killed Ted Cruz? You think these idiots ever realize how lucky they are?

No training in the world will help with the type of people who want to become cops.

A lot of black people (and other people in general) do avoid calling the police. It's not out of any sort of protest, it's because it's not fucking safe. And the idea that LE aren't expected to help marginalized communities (or again communities in general) is already formalized in the US, by the fucking supreme court no less.

33 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

No it really isn’t.

The core message is the same: we don’t want you here.

The fact the organizers can’t literally do a background check for everyone who attends the match or planning to doesn’t alter that message.

And I don’t think it’s a message that will help anyone in any meaningful extent.

It is, because the only people getting the "we don't want you here" message are as I said the weird fucks who take on cop as part of their identity, and to them that's absolutely the message as it should be. This is no different when someone makes some comment about "men who do x thing" and a bunch of men whine and #notallmen about it. If the action or comment bother's you, you are part of the problem group and should fuck off.

Quite frankly, no cops at pride is an excellent filter.

1 hour ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

I find this to have no worthwhile distinction.

I can easily go “I’m not banning gay customers. Just people who happen to be gay in my store.” 
It's telling these men if they want to be apart of their community that they have to be ashamed and hide what they are when they're participating in such events.
 

It's absolutely a worthwhile distinction, cop is not an identity, it's a job. And if you treat cop as anything like an identity you are the absolute last person that should be a cop. Seriously if cop is "what they are" that's a massive red flag.

11 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/nyc-pride-parade-bans-police-gay-officers-disheartened-n1267565

“NYC Pride parade bans police; Gay officers 'disheartened'”

I find this something that could only likely satisfy those who are the most anti-cop whilst doing more damage than good. 
Having members of law-enforcement solidarity with a typically maligned group is a good thing.

Showing gay men could be in what are looked at as masculine professions is a good and needed thing.

I think you'll find that a significant number of LGBT+ people are in the anti-cop group, with good reason.

Also note that this doesn't ban gay people who happen to be cops, there'd really be no way to tell, but cops in uniform.

10 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

Where do you get the hilarious notion that darkness as evil and lights as good is an exclusively Christian concept? 

Not sure what you mean by the last part, either. Raava and Vaatu have a very classical light/dark duality, including Raava being reborn from Vaatu's heart, and despite Vaatu being dispersed by Korra, evil and darkness remain in the world, indicating he's in her. There's no eliminating either of them, and the world is a constant struggle between the two. That fits Zoroashtrianism better than Christianity.

I don't have that notion, but this was a western show, created by westerners, for westerners. Everyone and their grandmother looked at what was happening there and went "that's God fighting Satan." People who like LoK thought that, people who don't like LoK thought that, non-western fans thought that. I've got a pretty wide group of fans I interact with and you're literally the first I've seen dispute the obvious Christian parallels. If the creators meant to invoke something else, they failed, badly.

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Yeah because Shiva is the only deity with a third eye...

With that specific design and as a force of destruction? Yeah pretty much. Like the above, if they meant to invoke anything else but Shiva they failed.

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Why is it dumb?

I thought I had covered that, but in more detail Energybending exists only so Aang doesn't have to properly tackle the challenge put before him, not just in the value of human life, but in his people's philosophy. This might be excusable if it turns out to not just be for that but to also help in restoring the balance that they were always banging on about. They even set up a group of non-bender earth kingdom refugees in the NAT that Aang thinks have the Airbender spirit and never made that connection. That's bad writing.

But no, Energybending only exists so Aang doesn't have to kill (well kill directly, he's certainly indirectly killed a bunch of people, but the show never really explores that either) a benefit I will note they don't give to Toph, Sokka, and Suki who kill the fuck out of a whole bunch of people during the fight on the airships. So it's not even like the show has decided at the end to put in a "killing is bad" message, no this is all about not challenging Aangs simplistic (and selective) understanding of air nomad philosophy. Well just ignore that Gyatso killed the fuck out of a whole bunch of firebenders so there's clearly more to it than that. Instead Aang gets to cling to his childish view of the Air Nomads.

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By screwed you mean not having them be perfect adults and parents? I'd rather have the more realistic take, thanks. 

It's not a matter of perfect, they were very much not perfect in the show, and that was great. They were screwed because they become completely different people and not in a "characters change as they grow older way"

Can't say much about Suki, cause she doesn't get to show up.

Sokka, a nonbender, was instrumental in setting up Republic City a city that would latter have an anti-bender rebellion. Sokka's been the non-bender surrounded by benders, he'd know whats up. And he's smart enough to set things up better than that. And smart enough to not let it happen in his own family.

Aang has apparently taken a page out of the Ozai guide to parenting, blatantly favouring one child over the others. He does this so much and so badly that the air acolytes do not know that Aang had more than one kid, so much that his kids are in the forties and are still pissed at each other over this, and so badly Bumi goes to a statue of Aang and says he hopes Aang is proud of him despite not being an airbedner because he'd come to the conclusion that the only thing Aang cares about is the ability to Airbend.

Katara at some point lost her spine, allowing Aang to do all of the above and sitting out of the actual civil war going on in her home. Apparently having gone from "I don't want to heal, I want to fight." to "I'll just go to the the healing huts with the other women." Like even if she's decided she's to old fight (which has never been a thing in the series before) she should have still been an active participant.

Toph become a cop. Do I really need to say anything else?

Zuko comes out probably the best, Was a good parent, still actively participating in things, but like Katara and Sokka, saw Aang being a shit parent and did nothing about it.

20 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

There's nothing Christian about it. Gods reincarnating on Earth to kill demons is as Hindu as it gets, which is where the concept of Avatars come from anyway.

But Raava's not a god, and Vaatu's not a demon. They're spirits, the spirit of peace and light and chaos and darkness respectively. It's eminently clear that they were attempting a duality thing like with Tui and La and failing spectacularly. Instead of an actual duality, dark is bad and evil, light is good. Very Christian.

But hey, if you watched that and thought that the creators understand Hinduism enough to make that sort of connection then I admire your optimism. They gave Shiva's third eye to two assassins, So I'm not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on that one.

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It seems pretty clear Avatars, and strong Bloodnenders, can take people's bending away, and reverse that procedure, but don't quite have the ability to outright grant it to people.

And that's dumb. Either have there be air nomad survivors (we see a lot of grey eyed people running around) or have the 11th hour superpower Aang got have more of an impact than just letting Aang pretend his hands are clean.

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I wouldn't have minded having that, but not at the cost of losing Korra. It's atrocious and stupid to want to erase the show. 

Erasing the comics really, Korra could only be improved by not relying on a back story that screwed over most of the Gaang.

2 hours ago, AverageGuy said:

 

I think Beginnings was incredible on its own. Loved the animation, story was interesting. However, I do feel it was inconsistent in the greater context of the show. TLA shows the spirits interacting with the mortal world and being part of it, more akin to what you'd see in Native American animism or Japanese Shinto. Wan Shi Tong (the librarian owl in the desert), Hei Bei (forest/panda spirit in Winter Solstice), the legends of the Painted Lady, Tui and La/Princess Yue... none of them were locked away in the spirit realm. In Korra spirits feel more like strange beasts, which doesn't make them that unique in the Avatar world (what makes an Air Bison or a Badgermole different from a spirit? They have the strange shapes and magic abilities). There was also a hint that there was more to energy bending when the Lion Turtle talked to Aang, but we only see it as their granting people bending-- and with their involvement less of a direct role in teaching from dragons/bison/badgermoles. YMMV, but to me it felt like bad lore.

I felt like that about a lot of Korra, though. So many things that were amazing on their own and then failed to come together. Granted there are rumors Nickelodeon was heavily interfering.

Going from semi-primodrial beings to cute and cuddly in Korra was weird, like wasn't Korra supposed to be more mature? Kind of feels like it was the opposite in a lot of ways. And that's without going into the addition of the evil Satan avatar to Christianize the whole thing for no reason.

Also Energybending was a bad enough addition to TLA, then Korra made it explicit that energybending could be used to grant people bending, so why was Tenzin the only airbender?

Man I wish we had gotten Ehasz's book four instead.

Eh, it's not like Bryke aren't responsible for a lot of crap ideas, after all they were all for the movie version until it bombed and suddenly they hated it all along. And Netflix currently has Aaron and Elizabeth Ehasz on their payroll and they were responsible for a lot of the good in the show. (Remember Toph? Yeah that's them, Bryke wanted Toph to be a guy and in a love triangle with Aang and Katara, just see the crap relationships in Korra to see how that would have worked out)

I mean the show's probably still gonna be garbage, but it's was going to be garbage with or without Bryke's involvement.

Also don't trust to much on the reasons why they're gone, there's apparently been a lot of deliberate misinformation being spread around.

Canada, BC

Not a terribly big deal, but the "mark forum as read" functionality doesn't work.