Not Quite Normal

And my manager was like no!!!! If that happened, I would drive to find you guys in my truck and we could eat stuff from my wife's garden and I would make sure everyone I know survived!! I would carry you all on my shoulders away from the zombies!!

The idea that societal collapse exposes mankind’s true nature ignores one thing: society IS mankind. We make it, just by being around each other. Social mores and customs aren’t arbitrary rules inflicted on us by some unseen force, they’re our own behaviors and views. We say please and thank you because we want to be kind. We establish charities because we want to help others. We set up garbage cans because we want to be clean. We’re the ones setting the standards and frowning at the people who don’t rise to meet them. We’re the ones who are appalled by the cruelties in our history.

In a film market so thoroughly oversaturated with Oscar bait and lowest-common-denominator nothing burgers, criticizing the movies people actually enjoy screams of the kind of pedantic snobbery that birthed current Hollywood’s postmodernist cynicism.

I did not check myself before posting, but it's from the Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 1, pages 683–685 (International Publishers, 1975), and accessible online at the Marxist Internet Archive here:

he doesn’t start hugging her back till the end of book 1 and even in book 2 he’s still thrown off by her cheek kisses. every time she initiates a new type of physical interaction, he has a confused or surprised reaction. the one time he initiates a hug is in the serpent’s pass after he initially rejected katara’s hug from earlier. in book 3, he initiates more physical interactions but it still doesn’t add up to the amount of times katara has in total. outside of katara, the only other time i can think of him reaching out to to touch someone is toph when he held her hand because she was feeling vulnerable.

even when i think of the flashbacks, i don’t really recall him getting a hug from gyatso or anyone. obviously the circumstances in the flashbacks are a bit tense but in general, the air nomads don’t seem to be that big on physical affection among friends or even pupils and teachers. gyatso gives him a pat on the head and that seems to be pretty much it when it comes to physical contact. the only being he hugs freely and consistently is appa 😭

anyway it’s just interesting to me to think of aang coming from a community of free-spirited monks and nuns who were not keen on too much touching and affection, being with katara, who comes from a culture or at least a family that hug and embrace each other whenever they feel like it. katara gets a hug from gran-gran, she hugs sokka’s annoying ass sometimes and he gives her a kiss on the cheek when he’s feeling particularly affectionate even if she gets the ick. plus, the water tribe is the only culture where the official greeting between people meeting for the first time includes physical contact.

individually, katara initiates platonic physical interactions with several characters to suggest that this is also just a part of her personality even if aang is definitely the one she likes to be affectionate with the most, let’s be clear!

When we see them in flashbacks, the monks do seem to be rather hands off. They bow, they beckon, they wave, and they even play tricks with airbending (or at least Aang and Gyatso do), but we don’t really see much physical interaction.

The Southern Water Tribe, meanwhile, seems to be much more free with physical affection. The greet each other by grasping forearms, hugs and nudges are pretty common, and one warrior even greets Sokka at Chameleon Bay by giving him a noogie.

On the one hand the lost lore archive seemingly confirms that cow-pigs produce “delicious” milk, but how canon can we really consider that? On the other hand, if you didn’t already know, most humans are lactose intolerant. The gene for lactase persistence (the ability to digest milk past babyhood) originated in the Middle East or Europe and spread from there. Even today East Asia has some of the highest rates of lactose intolerance in the world, and lactase tolerance was virtually nonexistent in North America pre-colonisation. Not drinking cow’s milk is the norm for humanity, not the exception, so I just think it would be cool to have at least one fantasy world where the main characters are lactose intolerant and soy milk is the norm.

Granted, given that cheese can be made to be palatable to lactose intolerant people and that there does seem to have been some lactase persistence traditionally in northern Indian and Himalayan regions (at least at a cursory research glance), you would probably expect it to vary by region and culture. Maybe cow-pig milk is consumed in only certain regions and otherwise usually made into cheese. I personally headcanon that air nomads eat sky bison cheese, which might taste similar to chhurpi.

From what I've read, dairy cows aren't native to East Asia, hence the lack of cow milk in most of the traditional cuisine of that region. I would say that cow-pig milk in Avatar might just be a local delicacy unique to the EK town from "Zuko Alone".

However, a predisposition towards lactose intolerance is not necessarily a permanent roadblock to enjoying milk products. Speaking from personal experience, I can generally build up my tolerance for dairy if I make a point of drinking milk every day. However, if I take a break of more than a week, then I have to start the whole process over again.

As for the consumption of other animal milks...

Based off cultural inspiration, the Air Nomads likely had close to 100% lactase persistence. Dairy is a huge part of Tibetan and other Himalayan cuisine. Plus, if Appa is any indication, sky bisons were roughly the size of sperm whales. Assuming there was a sky bison for every nomad, there was probably enough extra milk produced for it to become a staple of the Air Nomad diet.

The Northern Water Tribe probably has some lactase persistence, since they have Mongolian and Sakha cultural influence in addition to Inuit. Both Mongolian and Sakha culture are known for their consumption of mare's milk, both as a drink and as an ingredient in dishes. Plus, the NWT canonically has Buffalo-Yaks, which is a combination of two animals whose milk is commonly consumed in parts of Asia. Lactase persistence might not be as strong in the Southern Water Tribe, who don't seem to have domesticated any milk-producing animals.

The Earth Kingdom probably only has lactase persistence in certain regions, such as the village in "Zuko Alone". This aligns with its primary cultural inspiration, China. While most of China does not have a cheese-making tradition, there are pockets of regional cheeses: cow and goat acid cheeses in Yunnan, fermented cow milk cheeses in Xinjiang, and yak cheeses in the Tibetan and Mongolian autonomous regions. However, on the whole, I think most EK citizens stick to non-dairy milks made from soy, seeds, or nuts.

What are your favorite sci-fi/fantasy/dystopian/post-apocalyptic shows with good world building?

If world building is your main criteria, I'd tentatively suggest one of the Game of Thrones series. GoT has an almost universally hated ending, and House of the Dragon seems to be falling apart faster that GoT did, but A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is excellent. It actually has protagonists and it's more optimistic and heroic than the more cynical and bleak GoT and HotD.

Jericho is a really good post-apocalyptic show from the early 2000s. It follows a small Kansas town after a nuclear bomb goes off in a nearby city. They don't know why it happened or how far the attack, if it was an attack, might have gone. The show is mostly about the town, specifically the Greene family, dealing with the fallout (literal and figurative) while holding onto their small town American values. It has one full season and a second, sort of epilogue season that ties up most of the loose ends before the show was canceled, but it's still really good. I rewatch it every few years.

The early 2000s Battlestar Galactica reboot show is also really good. So is Falling Skies, which is another post-apocalyptic show that follows a family as they try to fight back against the aliens that conquered Earth. It has a lot of good people trying to do the right thing and a kind of patriotic through line you don't see anymore. The main character, who's played by Noah Wyle, is a former history teacher who tries to keep the spirit of America alive as much as he can while fighting the aliens. But the world building is very much in the background compared to the fight against the aliens and the personal dramas between the characters.

Avatar the Last Airbender has been praised for its worldbuilding for years now, and I definitely agree that it’s worth watching. It is a kids show, and Season 1 especially feels like a Saturday morning cartoon, but its story and characters live up to all the hype. The show tackles plenty of heavy subject matter, but does so in ways that a lot of kids will be familiar with from their own lives. The world feels vast and real in a way many of its imitators have failed to live up to, and it’s full of characters who are just as complex and well developed.

Delicious In Dungeon (or Dungeon Meshi if you prefer) only has one season so far, but a second has been announced. Even if you’re not all that into anime or Dungeons and Dragons, this show’s approach to creature design is very inventive in ways that really add to the fantasy genre, as well as offering both exciting fights and hilarious comedy. It’s especially enjoyable to watch the main party’s wildly different personalities clash as they progress through the titular dungeon, and it only gets more entertaining when they bump into other people while on their quest.

Sym-Bionic Titan, much like Firefly, was tragically cancelled before it could really get into more than episodic adventures, but what we actually got is still incredible. Due to only having twenty episodes, we’re left with a lot more questions than answers, both about what the villains actually want and how the protagonists would defeat them, but the interactions among the main cast are still excellent. It’s a teen drama and a giant mech vs giant monster fight at the same time, and it’s a lot of fun to watch.

And it seems like it’s actually making some people here wake up and go “hey, maybe our country is pretty cool after all.”

I actually think that Mr. Bennet was probably the most similar to Lydia for all that as his favourite daughter Lizzy shared his penchant for books and witticisms about other people.

The thing about Mr. Bennet is he's chiefly concerned with his own amusement, his own interests, while Mrs. Bennet panics over the entailment and what they'll do when he's dead he brushes it off and takes no action, if pushed on it he gets passive-aggressive. He's not interested in thinking about a world where he's dead or preparing for it, and while that's obviously irresponsible it's also not like that mindset's uncommon even today. Mr. Bennet doesn't save money, Mr. Bennet reads and jokes around, taking nothing seriously. Mr. Bennet is prepared to make fun of his young daughters "They are all silly and ignorant like other girls but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters" and tease his wife "You mistake me dear I have a high respect for your nerves, they are my old friends." and everyone else that he comes into contact with "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?" "Mr. Bennet’s expectations were fully answered. His cousin was as absurd as he had hoped; and he listened to him with the keenest enjoyment, . . . and, except in an occasional glance at Elizabeth, requiring no partner in his pleasure." He amuses himself with their antics without stepping in to teach the daughters he's responsible for better 'more respectable' ways to behave especially in regards to the scenes they make in public. That's far less entertaining after all. And would require him to actually put work in rather than look down on them as an observer.

Lizzy mirrors his behaviour a lot at the start of the book in regards to making character judgements about the people around her, but her care in trying to make sure her younger sister doesn't drink too much at the ball for example is something he never would've bothered with and she learns over the course of the book to be less prideful about her 'discernment' and less liable to allow herself to be prejudiced against the people she meets based on hearsay or first impressions.

Lydia meanwhile is similarly entertaining as a member of the family early in the book and later on is revealed to be similarly selfish in what her indifference to the consequences of her choices will mean for the rest of the family, in the note explaining that she has run off with Wickham, Lydia writes “What a good joke it will be!”

While her sense of humour is less cynical and sarcastic than her father's the fact she places priority on what's fun rather than the right thing to do makes her a very interesting parallel. Of course this is also an indicator of her immaturity and her parents' failures to educate her properly but Lydia ends up being a foil for both her parents', the result of their enabling and neglectful parenting styles and a merging of their worst qualities/personality traits. In fact her marriage echoes their own "My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life." in how she marries thoughtlessly, for attraction rather than love. As ridiculous and inconsiderate as her mother; as passive, selfish and careless in regards to 'duty to the family' as her father and as conceited as both of them.

He had a list of things a woman would have to be before he’d even consider dating them, and he fully admits he made it because he was convinced no woman could match it. She had to be active in the church, divorced, have not been the reason for her divorce, and she had to be the sort of person who was always fifteen minutes early, to name just a few. He finally decided to pay for the subscription just to find people to talk to. He was convinced his list was foolproof.

And then he met my mom.

To hear my dad tell it, he met my mom for the first time and said to himself “Crap. Now I need to get married.” They dated for about four months before he proposed, and this fall they’ll have been together thirteen years. He went from having three children to having eleven, and he’s loved all us kids the same; but the person he loves best is Mom.

He’d been the backup before; the breadwinner, the stabilizing force. What he hadn’t been, to his ex, was the partner. The true love. The best friend.

And then he met my mom.

My mom had been through her own heartbreaks, her own disappointments, and through a lifetime of struggle, what she’d never had was an equal. A security blanket. A partner.

And then she met my dad.