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Another thing about ATLA that never ceases to work me up is how dirty the show did Hama. She appears in a single episode and confronts us with one of the most politically and humanly devastating histories in the series. She gives the only (!!!) testimony of the Fire Nation's state campaign to eliminate Southern waterbending and emerges as one of the richest arcs in the series, at least in potential, but it remains unrealized: cultural annihilation, abduction, torture and incarceration, ingenuity under absolute deprivation, escape, and survivorship in enemy territory as a diaspora of one. However, at the end of the day, she is a crackling victim who passes on bloodbending like a curse. The episode concludes with Fire Nation citizens dragging her away in chains, emphasizing that they'll lock her away indefinitely, basically never seeing day or moonlight again, reproducing the very trauma that forced the conditions on her under which Hama developed bloodbending.
The episode doesn't really ask us to understand bloodbending as an invention born from torture and genocidal violence, but primarily as a horror "Come to the Dark Side, Katara"-test because the reveal is directly linked to the abducted Fire Nation villagers. We don't even bother about Hama's motivation beyond "They deserve the same" (as if what Hama did was in any way symmetrical or proportionate. As if they want me to believe this old woman who can only bloodbend during the full moon could reproduce the carceral torture environment specifically designed to exterminate her bending lineage. This is not a reasonable "both sides are bad" situation.)
The Fire Nation removes water, community, bodily autonomy, hope, and any ordinary means of escape. Hama still feels the charge of the full moon every month, studies and experiments for years to find power in the one remaining source available to her: the water inside living bodies. She invents a technique in a place optimized against waterbenders and perfects it to the point where she can control the fine motor skills in another one's hand to open the cage that holds her. As far as we know, she doesn't even kill the guards when she walks out. Bloodbending is horrifying, but it is also an astonishing act of ingenuity. The Fire Nation reduces her to helpless flesh, and she weaponizes flesh itself against her torturers and murderers of her people.
We don't spend any time on what bloodbending meant for Hama because the succession of events structures the reveal entirely through the judgment of the Fire Nation citizens and Katara's guilt. I think Hama deserved more ambiguity (compare it with how much grace and depth the story gives Iroh, who cracked jokes about burning Ba Sing Se to the ground, laid seige on the capital for almost two years straight, which certainly starved the poorest people of the population first, and is still allowed to return as liberator, leading the charge and is the one burning the Fire Nation banner) and Katara deserved to feel more conflicted about bloodbending: both disturbed and mesmerized. Bloodbending is born from the Fire Nation's machinery of extermination, which makes it unquestionably a technology of resistance, power, and dignity.
The narrative never asks what the Fire Nation made, what justice could look like for someone like Hama, or what Katara owes to a survivor from her destroyed tradition. It asks whether Katara can defeat the scary old woman and agonize over learning that skill. When it comes to metalbending or lightningbending, it mostly gets framed as extraordinary achievement. Bloodbending is terrifying and intrusive, yes, but so was what its creator had to endure. The technique is inseparable from the brutality of the Fire Nation's annihilation of the Southern waterbenders. The show should've sat with the immense political and ethical weight it created itself, instead of making it evil and resolving the episode with the abhorrent picture of the elderly prisoner of war being dragged away by the people who destroyed her culture with false moral high ground and pseudo-vindication.
Edit: Here's a follow-up if you liked this post so far.
something else underrated about good omens I think is that it’s never been about how immortality drains the joy out of everything . it’s been 6000 years and these fools are still drinking and dining and seeing the world and listening to the nightingales and learning to dance and there’s always newness and challenge and joy and idk maybe it’s the mental illness or the crushing weight of the world talking but that’s just really precious to me
Okay but THIS. This is absolutely on point and I think why I so viscerally reject the theorized “human ending” of GO3. These two have evolved with humanity and will continue to evolve with humanity. They deserve the chance to do so while also living freely and openly together, truly liberated from the grasp of Heaven and Hell. Give them a happy ending that lasts an eternity longer, and they will find newness and challenge and joy and so much more in that eternity together.
And not a little bit of that shared joy was in the finale. An open smile, a shared laugh, or a long and rambling drunk discussion about mammals and fishes. We needed them to enjoy their company. Forever
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I’m sorry but the third place match on Saturday is going to funny as ffuuuuccckkkkk simply France vs England fighting to see which is less of a disappointment
I feel like TSR would have had the exact same result without Aang's intervention. I don't think Aang's "advice" for Katara had any influence at all on her decision to not kill Yon Rha.
It just showed us that Zuko understood Katara's needs better than Aang and that Aang didn't trust her to make the right choice.
armand, his eyes enormous: you MOCK armand? you make fun of his traumas on the stage? oh! oh! suicide for the band! suicide for the band for One Thousand Years!!!!
Yeah, sorry, but I'll never believe in this. Sergeant Bucky Barnes, ser. no. 32557038, was drafted into the army and the propaganda presents it as enlistment because it looks better. You don't change my mind.
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The lack of video content is what kept us here... I thought we all agree that the best feature of this hellhole was and always will be anonymity.
Tumblr's not asking for my phone number. It's not going through my contacts to try and connect me with my fucking colleagues. I can come here and talk about whatever I want without anyone ever seeing my face or hearing my voice. I don't have to censor myself and hide my interests or enthusiasm out of fear of consequences it might have in my real life.
you solve the mystery of what to have for dinner one night and you think "hell yeah case closed forever" WRONG there is a dinner mystery the next night too
you have permission to pick that 2 year old "abandoned" project back up. it's not mad at you for setting it aside. and maybe time and distance have helped ease or erase the things that made you put it down in the first place.
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it's so insane to me that buffy just kind of casually mentions to riley in a random episode in season 4 that slayers don't make it past 25. there's a part of her that's just accepted it. i don't think she's actively suicidal yet, but she's no longer that 16 year old girl desperately insisting she doesn't want to die. as sad as that moment in prophecy girl is, it's also kind of hopeful, because it's still an instance of buffy valuing her life and autonomy and defying her horribly unfair destiny. there's something so much sadder to me about her having accepted the inevitably of her untimely death to the point that she casually brings it up in conversation.
watching this show is absolutely hysterical because ava literally has 0 game and says shit like "like toy story?" when a hot woman tells her to her face she wants to fuck her and she gets it ANYWAY. truly a masterpiece. ava gives hope to all losers out there.
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