semi-organized chaos

And look, okay, listen. I have a film degree. Im not in any an expert on cinema nor am I a film scholar but I do have some higher formal education on the topic, and I am a trans person who has, unfortunately, been 21. Here's my 2 cents:

Firstly, trans-coded villains in horror movies (namely the "man in a dress" archetype) is pretty cinema 101. It IS so extensively talked about that you were probably drawing an eye in the back of the lecture hall if you dont remember anything being said about it. If you ever take a horror movie class specifically then you are absolutely guaranteed to have this conversation and have the plethora of scholarship about it thrown at you for required reading.

Secondly, I do not like this idea that simply being a bit rude or short with someone of a particular demographic is always and exclusively rooted in a prejudice towards the identity group(s) they are a part of. There is a VERY big difference between active transphobia and just being a bit of a dick, and conflating the two is going to make things very messy and potentially dangerous. For starters, you are going to create an extremely paranoid and jumpy bunch of young trans people who are absolutely convinced that the entire world is out to kill them when they inevitably encounter some random asshole in the real world. And you are going to give a whole bunch of conservatives a whole bunch of ammunition to say that we think every minor inconvenience or moment of discomfort is a targeted attack against us, frankly because you are acting like it is.

Additionally, every 21 year old has a very weird superiority complex. I did, you did/do/will. It just comes with the territory. Youre having your first taste of true independence and are probably in undergrad, which is an environment that drip-feeds you a lot of rewards for doing essentially what you just did in high school again but at a slightly higher difficulty with less social ostracism. If you live on your own or in the dorms with other 21 year olds, you will all just feed into each other's superiority complexes. You end up convinced that you and your friends are the smartest people alive and the first ones to ever come up with certain ideas, that I promise have been thought of by millions of 21 year olds before you. This includes "has anyone else noticed that trans-coded villains are common in horror movies?" And I think its justified to have a bit of a reality check in someone saying "yes, everyone has, this has been discussed extensively for generations, youre just 21."

Finally, I do not appreciate in the slightest the response to this tweet being "silence of the lambs has no artistic merit and should be scrubbed from the media landscape entirely because of Buffalo Bill." If you personally are not comfortable with/do not have the ability to look past the trans-coded villain archetype you dont have to watch it, but to act like the presence of a poorly-aged trope completely negates all the very real positive impact a foundational film did for modern horror is infuriatingly anti-intellectual and betrays your one-dimensional morality around media, as well as your complete inability to look at something objectively.

some landlords own a dozen homes and outsource 99% of their job -- that's a capitalist. some own a couple homes and do most of the maintenance and work themselves -- that's a wealthy worker. some don't own any properties and are the hirelings of the building owners -- that's a worker and potential comrade.

some CEOs have dictatorial power over thousands of workers, a golden parachute, and no legitimate merit or skills -- that's a capitalist. some were hired for their skills and have to put in their hours for their salary if they want to keep the job -- that's a wealthy worker. some built the company from scratch or from a small size, are putting in 80 hour weeks, have a handful of employees, and may have taken a loan just to get started -- that's a worker and potential comrade.

This is what's called a poetic epithet, and it happens all the time in writing. Consider, for example, Homer and his wine-dark sea, or Shakespeare and his death-mark'd love.

If you were then to start using them instead of the word they're describing, you'd be making a kenning. For example, if instead of describing the sun as honey-bright, you said "the honey-drop in the sky". Kennings are best known from Norse writings, like "the path of serpents" for gold, or "Grímnir's lip-streams" for poetry itself.

◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – The sun / was ho/ney-bright / that af/ternoon

an illustration that language and its associated rules exist to lift up human expression and not to hinder it (and are both constantly changing and maintaining helpful usage to suit the needs of the moment),

as well as a devastating reminder that whenever you think you’re doing something new and oh-so-scandalously inventive, it was probably actually the well-trodden pasttime of a glorified theater kid several thousand years ago.

Sure, the Northern Tribe might have benders, but they have such a different culture/identity around bending compared to the South. We see in Hama's flashbacks that the Southern Tribe had male and female benders at the helm, fighting equally, learning the same things, sharing the same tactics. They weren't left behind as strictly healers or defenseless women given a man's gift, they were strong.

And the thing that separates Katara and Aang's stories being the last benders of their nations is that Aang remembers what it means to be an Air Nomad. There are obviously blind spots because of how young he was, but Aang knows the customs and the culture and spiritual practices. He was able to pass those down to Tenzin and his grandchildren, he was able to start the process of rebuilding what was lost.

But Katara? She was even younger than Aang was when the Southern waterbenders were eradicated. There are Southern practices that are most definetly just... a fractured part of history because she never got to experience them. There are ways of hunting, of building, of navigating the waters, ways of healing, probably even spiritbending, that are simply lost to time.

And maybe her grandmother can clue her into it, memories from a nonbender living aside benders, but it's not the same. She didn't get to hear it from the waterbenders, she didn't get to learn from a Southern waterbender, she doesn't even know what to rebuild because it was never something she was versed in.

That's why The Puppet Master is such a heartbreaking episode. Because Hama could have been the Southern teacher Katara clearly wanted, she could have shown her more, but ended up passing on her legacy of Bloodbending. And on the inverse, I can't even fully call Hama a villain for wanting Katara to know how to bloodbend, because the ache of thinking you were the only one left for so long, the rage against a Nation known for destroying nations, would've driven anyone insane.