And Sarek freaking out (in a logical way) because he doesn’t know what is happening and Amanda like “Adun, no, you don’t have to call a healer, Spock is ok. No, he’s not in danger. Yes, that’s completely normal. Sarek… please, sit down and listen to me… that tooth cannot be reimplanted. Yes, he will lose all his teeth and I don’t want to have this conversation every time, ok?”
Whenever I look back on the early episodes of Avatar: the Last Airbender, I realize that Iroh was probably acting a little ridiculous on purpose. He knows that Zuko still has fresh emotional wounds from his cruel, uncompromising father and sadistic sister, and the one source of softness and warmth in his life, his mother, is long gone. Iroh always tried to be a friend to Zuko, but now that his nephew has been scarred and banished, he tries to be goofy and funny and carefree so desperately hard because all he wants is for Zuko to smile and relax again. If making a fool out of himself is what he has to do, he’d do it a hundred times over.
how dare you give me iroh feels all these years later
that, and it gives him cover to slow things down.
he doesn’t want to capture the Avatar, but he can’t tell Zuko that; he needs time to help his nephew get out of the mindset Ozai’s abuse taught him.
nobody’s going to listen to him if he just tells them to stop - it’s too blatant a betrayal of the Fire Lord’s wishes - but he can play the buffoon; when they get too close, he can lose a piece of his pai sho set and delay the entire operation to replace it.
because he’s a loving uncle, and this is what Zuko needs on that level; but he’s also a genius strategist and an experienced conspirator, and this serves his purposes on a few levels
there’s even a pretty damn direct implication that he’s doing this deliberately. it’s easy to miss at the time, because you don’t have the context, but that first time we see Iroh delay Zuko and the soldiers chasing Aang? it is, as I mentioned, when he loses a piece of his pai sho set, only to realise he’d been carrying it all along
specifically, it’s the White Lotus tile - the one that gave its name to the order of benevolent meddlers he’s secretly been a member of this whole time. there’s no way that’s a coincidence.
Pretty sure I’ve said this before, but Uncle Iroh is possibly the most brilliantly sophomoric character ever written.
I don’t wanna like Kill The Joke but this brings up a really cool fact about swords in ~14th-16th century Germany! The only people who were allowed to own Real Swords were the royalty and nobility BUT! Everyone else was allowed to own knives. The definition of a knife, however, was based on not length but handle construction, and to some extent how it was sharpened. The handle had to be constructed Like So with 2 pieces of wood sandwiching the metal tang.
Only one edge was allowed to be sharpened, but oftentimes a small part (a couple inches) of the short edge (e.g. the edge that wasn’t sharp) would be sharpened, and weapon design often allowed for this
In this way, something that looked like This, a messer of just over a meter in length…
…would be legally considered a knife, and therefore allowable for non-nobility to possess. (you can also see the bit on the back of the tip that would be sharpened)
So @swordmutual, there’s a not definitive but certainly interesting historical perspective on your question
Just for once I’d like to tell the gate agents and flight attendants that my folding wheelchair is going into the onboard closet and not have them tell me there’s “no room”. Bitch that’s a wheelchair closet, not a “your bags” closet. Move your damn bags where they belong.
Ok, so according to my friendly aviation expert, this is a Big Fucking Deal. In fact, if an airline argues with you about putting your wheelchair in the wheelchair closet or even suggests there may not be room, unless there is already anotherpassenger’swheelchair in that closet, they have violatedfederallaw.
CFR Title 14, Chapter II, Subchapter D, Part 382, Subpart E, Section 382.67, Subsection (e)
“As a carrier, you must never request or suggest that a passenger not stow his or her wheelchair in the cabin to accommodate other passengers (e.g., informing a passenger that stowing his or her wheelchair in the cabin will require other passengers to be removed from the flight), or for any other non-safety related reason (e.g., that it is easier for the carrier if the wheelchair is stowed in the cargo compartment).”
This is hugely important because it means that if this happens to you, you should report their asses to the DOT. Why? Because these statistics are published every year for every airline, and the airline gets a huge ass fine for every violation. If we want to see change, we need to make airlines literally pay every time they treat us this way.
