This Painting Has Been Long In The Making. I Had The Idea Over A Year Ago, But Was Wrapped Up In Another

Avatar the last airbender- Favorite Quotes

(via GIPHY)

artworks by georgia o’keeffe

Evolution Of The King

Why Katara chose Aang over Zuko.

Katara chose Aang because he was her best friend, because she knew him well, trusted him, cared for him more than anyone else. It wasn’t a choice she made lightly; as evidenced first in the episode “The Fortuneteller” and several episodes after that such as The Cave of Two Lovers, City of Walls and Secrets, The Earth King, The Headband, The Invasion, and The Ember Island Players, this was something that Katara thought about for a long time before she decided to start her relationship with Aang at the end of the series.

“But no 14-year old girl would ever want to date a 12-year old, especially when she could have Zuko who is taller and more attractive with a wicked scar!” The problem with that argument is that it is based on the assumption that Katara is a normal teenage girl… and she is not.

First of all, let me point of that by the time Katara was ready to forgive Zuko, she’d already learned the hard way to NOT judge a boy by looks alone through her experience with Jet… her only other canon love interest in the entire series. Moreover, Katara is much more mature than the average teenage girl IRL; with Aang, she is able to look past the surface and see that he is mature and wise beyond his years, and that he has genuine feelings of love and affection for her. Katara says it herself in “The Invasion”:

“We’ve been through a lot together, and I’ve seen you grow up so much. You’re not that goofy kid I found in the iceberg anymore”. In this, we see Katara affirming Aang as her peer; she does not see him as a little brother, she does not consider herself a mother figure to Aang, she sees him as an equal.

Katara also grew up in a radically different environment from our modern world, and also lives in a very different culture. Dating a 12-year old at the age of 14 may seem strange to girls IRL, but to Katara it may not seem so unusual. Look at the Northern Water Tribe; in their culture, a woman can be married at the age of 16, something we would consider unacceptable in the modern world.

As for Zuko… for 55 episodes, Zuko was Katara’s enemy. He kidnapped her, tried to blackmail her, attacked her and her friends on several occasions… but most importantly, the one time Katara chose to give him the benefit of the doubt, he betrayed her in the worst possible way. He nearly got her best friend KILLED. Zutarians fail to recognize how traumatic an experience this was for Katara. It permanently damaged Katara’s relationship with Zuko, and opened her eyes to Zuko’s greatest flaw: As Iroh once said, good and evil are always at war inside him, something that carries forward into the comics even after Zuko helps end the war.

Katara says it herself when she threatens Zuko: “You and I both know you’ve struggled with doing the right thing in the past”. Because of this, Katara never even considers Zuko as a potential partner. In the end, it was not a choice between Aang and Zuko… it was a choice of whether or not she wanted to be with Aang, contemplating her feelings for him, and deciding what Aang meant to her. Zuko was not even a factor.

Kya, canonically a lesbian, tells Korra and Asami about same-sex relationships and coming out in the four nations. We also find out that Kyoshi was bi!

I Will Always Love You

Provided to YouTube by TuneCore I Will Always Love You · Christina Grimmie I Will Always Love You ℗ 2018 Christina Grimmie Released on: 2018-06-07 Auto-gener...

This youtube cover of Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You should be more appreciated, because Christina Grimmie was pure talent. She should be here right now still singing but never got the chance to reach megastardom due to someone taking her life away. Still, she made the song her own, giving it her own combination of strength and sweetness, her own soulful, melodious resonance, her own seemingly effortless modulation between soft and powerful tones, and her command of the whole range of volume, dynamics, and the entire palette of sonic nuance her voice could employ. The voice of Christina Grimmie is unique, inimitable, and -- like Whitney Houston -- worthy of the word "GREAT." RIP Christina Grimmie 1994-2016.

When Daniel Kovarbasich was just 12 years old, a 52 year old man named Duane Hurley approached him outside an elementary school. Hurley was walking his dog, which was used to successfully attract Daniel’s attention. Only a few days later, Hurley returned with the dog and asked Daniel if he would watch it for him while he ran an errand, to which the young boy happily agreed. Following Hurley’s return, he handed Daniel $30 and thanked him for his help, a move which in hindsight has been regarded as the start of a grooming process which lasted years.

Duane and Daniel went on to establish what appeared to be a friendship. Although Daniel’s parents initially expressed concern, they used information from Hurley’s dog’s collar to research their son’s new friend but found nothing incriminating about him. They therefore allowed their communication to continue and even treated Hurley amicably themselves. Daniel’s mother Donna spoke of how their family would sometimes struggle financially but Hurley would be quick to voluntarily purchase whatever they needed, which only strengthened their positive opinion of the older man. However, despite no apparent problems, Daniel’s parents were extremely shocked to discover on 22nd January 2010 that Duane Hurley had been murdered in his own home- by noone other than their own son. It turned out that Daniel had smashed Hurley round the back of the head with a pickle jar before stabbing him a total of 55 times. After Daniel’s arrest, it quickly became apparent that the teenage boy had been sexually abused by Hurley for years preceding the murder. 

Speaking out about the abuse, Daniel told of how it started when Hurley would ask him questions such as “How many different ways can you say the word ‘penis’?” This then progressed to Duane watching Daniel while he urinated, and eventually touching his penis in exchange for money or goods. Daniel recollected that Hurley would simply say “Bigger toys, bigger things” when he asked for something. Ultimately, two weeks before Duane Hurley was murdered, the abuse reached its worst when Daniel was sleeping on Hurley’s couch. While he lay there pretending to sleep, his abuser approached and anally penetrated him. After this point, Daniel began to accept that what was happening was wrong. On the day of the murder, Daniel snapped after Hurley offered to pay him $80 but insinuated he must have sex to receive it. Speaking in court, he acknowledged that he’d lost control and did not realise the extent of the attack until Duane was dead and he had calmed down. 

Daniel was sentenced to 5 years probation and was ordered to remain imprisoned until authorities were able to secure him a place within a treatment facility. If convicted of the original murder charge, Daniel would have been facing at least 15 years in jail.

Jolene

Provided to YouTube by Universal Music GroupJolene · Mindy SmithOne Moment More℗ 2004 Vanguard Records, a Welk Music Group CompanyReleased on: 2004-01-01Comp...

This cover version of Jolene is one of my favorites.