Ezra

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Sokka in the background: yeah except for that time in high school when you kicked the shit out of Zuko’s dad

aang: violence is unproductive, and the antithesis of —

sokka, talking over him: because watching Zuko’s dad get his shit rocked by teen Caillou definitely made ME feel good. and if you do something that makes people happy, doesn’t that mean it’s a good thing?

Ozai: *does something characteristically shitty within Aang’s field of vision*

Aang:

the rest of the gaang watching Aang judo flip Ozai over a table:

Aang, sweating: oh wow crazy how that happens isn’t it? Technology is amazing

Gyatso: It was from your school. They were calling to tell me that you’ve been assigned after school detention for the next month because you beat up a grown man on campus today. Would you like to tell me your side of the story?

Aang: it was Zuko’s dad and he deserved it

Gyatso, who had a speech about the perils of succumbing to violence prepared but who also knows all about what a dirtbag Ozai is bc of his weekly brunches w Iroh:

@meraxes-of-new-albion peer reviewing your tags because yeah you get it.

I think part of the problem is also that people hear 'WWII history knowledge' and immediately associate it with the 'worshipping-the-death-machine-advancements' branch of irritating history buffs, but if you write off all WWII history like that, you'll miss things like how Fascism smooths over power hierarchy disagreements by constantly pushing the 'remember, it's us against them' line. You'll miss resistance stories of Dutch schoolgirls luring Nazis into the woods to a waiting anti-fascist with a gun or of Norwegian freedom fighters sabotaging the Nazi nuclear programme or of Allied planes that survived direct hits to the fuel tank because Czech slaves made empty shells with no explosives inside. You'll write off the ghastly things done in concentration camps as horror stories from another time and not recognise them as Real Things done to Real People that were justified on the grounds of pure vitriolic hatred and allowed to continue by others' sheer apathy. And you will not know how to recognise it when it begins building momentum in your own country.

The Fascists want you to be apathetic. They want you to shut off your ears and look the other way. They want you to be so removed from the idea of Fascism beyond a red swastika armband on a 1940s soldier that they can roll out their hateful regime stealthily while you only protest the flashy meant-to-be-offensive parts.

You will find yourselves taking sides in fights between Goebbels and Göring. And then you will remember "oh, right, you might be human, but you're also fucking evil".