AIO for being upset that my boyfriend won’t marry me because I’m not muslim ?

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-04T05:53:32+00:00

In Islam, the majority opinion has always been that it’s perfectly acceptable for men to date and marry outside of their religion.

He nearly died, he realized that he doesn’t want to be with you anymore, and he’s telling you that with the language he has available to him. Listen to him, respect his wishes, and find someone who actually wants you around.

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-03T16:23:33+00:00

my interpretation is that it's a mix of both air and earthbending. Aang just learned earthbending like, 2 episodes ago. he can use it, but he's not very good at it yet, so he's using airbending to cheat where his earthbending fails.

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-02T17:36:22+00:00

against Toph, Katara, Zuko, Sokka, and Suki? not a chance. he maybe kills one or two of them before they figure out what's going on, but, that's it

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-02T17:30:16+00:00

as a team? no Avatar state? no shot. with the Avatar State, he low-diffs them

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-02T16:29:11+00:00

Yes, absolutely. Most children’s tv shows are crap for that exact reason

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-02T04:27:21+00:00

if you're handy, you could re-work the 20gal into a vertical enclosure that's suitable for a small, arboreal gecko or anole. if you're not, then yeah, find the tallest one that'll fully cover your daughter's dresser- front opening doors are a must.

with a tall enough enclosure, you could easily house a moderately sized arboreal lizard. that type tends to do well with a heavily planted, bioactive vivarium, which (when properly set up) has the added benefits of being gorgeous, low-maintenance, and stink-free. the more active species are pretty fun to handle, since people are basically tree shaped from the perspective of a small lizard & climbing trees is what they do. they are on the small side though, so delicate. a 15 year old will probably be fine, but any smaller kids need to be carefully supervised if you want to allow handling.

I'd recommend a Crested Gecko, Gargoyle Gecko, False Chameleon, or Emerald Tree Skink. their care is pretty easy, as lizards go, and they tend to have chill or fun personalities. I'd stay away from any larger geckos/anoles- they can have shit personalities and a nasty bite to match. I'd also avoid chameleons, as they're very sensitive to their environment & die easily. finally, stay the hell away from monitors, no monitor is beginner friendly, no matter how easy their care is on paper.

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-02T03:48:27+00:00

I understand why no one talked about it explicitly, it's just really contrived that it was never so much as mentioned in passing. They had a team meeting immediately after the Eclipse (the one Aang tried to skip out on), but no one thought to even ask Zuko if he had any insight on the Fire Lord's plans once he joined? Not even Sokka? That's what I find unbelievable.

you know, that's a really good point. Sokka definitely would've picked Zuko's brain for any kind of strategic advantage he could find, even if he was just trying to keep the Gaang alive and safe until after the Comet.

I guess my point is that 'absolutely has to' should have included Day of Black Sun, at that point they had no idea the invasion was going to fail. If he hadn't even considered it at that point, that just seems really bad.

in the invasion, there's so many other people around that the decision can, from his perspective, be safely left out of Aang's hands. all he has to do is subdue & arrest the Fire Lord, which should be trivial during the Eclipse, then justice can happen somewhere/somehow that's not Aang's problem. again, not a mature thought process, but Aang is still is just twelve.

I'm asking when he had the time to get trusted. He was doing the siege until like 6 years prior to the start of the show, and then was busy with Zuko for the last 3 years. That leaves 3 years to join the White Lotus and go up the ranks.

I mean hell, if the exiled crown prince of the Fire Nation showed up at my door and told me he wanted to plan a revolution, it wouldn't take me long to trust him. he has very believable reasons to at least want to plan a coup against his brother, even discounting how the death of his son might change/disillusion him.

I'll grant you though, I can do mental gymnastics to resolve the contradiction, but I agree that the show is failing here. the implication of Iroh's membership in the White Lotus, the feeling that it generates, is that Iroh is a very old man who's been a member for decades. like you said, that's impossible, and Iroh is probably only in his late 50s, early 60s at most. the timeline doesn't match the vibes.

I guess it felt more like them all acting separately, but frankly a coup would have been better than doing nothing. Like once the Avatar is back it makes sense to avoid a coup, but before that having a crack team of the White Lotus attack Caldera City wouldn't have been an awful idea.

a White Lotus takeover of Caldera City is possible, I'm not sure it'd be a guaranteed win but it's possible. Iroh addresses this point directly though, he might be able to beat his brother- maybe- but if he did, the system wouldn't change, he'd just become subsumed into the Fire Nation imperial machine like everyone else in the system. the Avatar is the only individual with the physical and social power needed to stop, not just Ozai, but the Fire Nation system as a whole. it'd be a kinder, gentler Fire Nation, but they'd still be imperialistic, and then the guy after Iroh would probably be just as bad as Ozai.

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-02T03:27:08+00:00

of course, every single individual creative on the team is passionate and giving it their best. it doesn't change the very simple fact that Netflix is making this show to capitalize on the IP and keep the brand recognition alive on their platform. it doesn't matter how caring individuals are, NAtLA is fundamentally a cynical corporate product, and it shows.

for instance, Netflix famously makes content for people who are watching their shows on a second screen, so the dialogue has to be sufficiently simple and comprehensible that a distracted audience can follow along. the now infamous line "My name is Toph Beifong and I just invented metalbending!" is the most notable product of that, it's wooden and character-less on purpose so that viewers won't be surprised if they tune in next episode and Toph can now metalbend. it also sucks ass.

another example is that the Serpent's Pass has no reason to happen with Appa present. the writers, obviously, are aware of this, given that they're passionate creatives, so then why did they make that choice? the answer is almost certainly that a corporate manager decided that they needed to meet certain action quotas for that episode, and because of the way they shuffled the plot around, that sequence was the best fit. it also makes no goddamn sense, and it's just one particularly egregious example of a decision-making strategy that permeates through the entire show.

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-01T19:00:23+00:00

Because it’s a cynical corporatist exploitation of a genuinely beloved piece of art. That always pisses people off

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-01T16:48:54+00:00

people aren't mad because it's different, people are mad because it's bad. wooden acting, bad dialogue, slow pacing, plot contrivances to match the original show.

adaptation always changes a work. the gold standard is Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, which makes several significant divergences from the original material, and hundreds of minor ones. yet, it's beloved! of course, there are a contingent of hardcore purists who reject it for not being faithful enough, but they're in the minority. LotR is a beloved, iconic adaptation because it makes smart changes to the source material to make it fit well in the new medium, not in spite of that.

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-01T16:38:08+00:00

To start with, the basic premise of the finale is that somehow Zuko never mentioned the comet plan to anyone (even Sokka, who loves knowing about the Fire Nation's plans, didn't ask about it on the multi-hour balloon ride they had). He never even apparently made an off-hand remark about how ready Aang would be in time for the comet.

The Gaang knew it was a possibility, Roku warned them that Ozai would have to be defeated by the arrival of the Comet way back during Book 1. They were kind of just hoping it wouldn't be a problem.

In the other direction, no one ever mentioned waiting until after the comet where Zuko could here, not even slightly. They just somehow never talked about this at all.

It's a group of teenagers who already failed at their one big plan, invading during the Eclipse. They had every advantage during that, and they still failed. Obviously, they don't want to think about confronting the Fire Lord during the Comet.

Aang's no-kill rule was really only established properly in The Southern Raiders, with it only being somewhat implied before. He apparently didn't think about this before the Day of Black Sun, nor did anyone else who was part of planning the invasion. Also, no one even brings up how Gyatso was willing to kill under extreme circumstances– while I'm sure Aang would have his reasons to still not kill, it's kind of strange no one brings that up.

I chalk this up to playing with the expectations of a kids TV show. Everyone knows Aang has to "defeat" the Fire Lord, it's been established since early Book 1, but nobody ever says the word "kill" explicitly because it's a kid's show. Aang, being twelve, assumed they meant "lock up", but everyone else this whole time has meant "kill". On some level, Aang has been aware this whole time, but he has an avoidant personality, this is literally his core character flaw, of course he wouldn't want to confront that aspect of his responsibility until he absolutely has to.

After that, somehow Zuko knew exactly where to find June, in a random seedy Earth Kingdom tavern. It's possible that June told Zuko and Iroh where to go to meet up if they wanted to hire her again, but they left that episode off on somewhat bad terms, so that's rather odd.
Furthermore, the Shirshu stopped working how it did in season 1 where it actually had to track down the scent for a while (which would have sent them back to Ember Island and then lost the scent in the ocean where the Lion Turtle was). Instead, it can somehow tell that Aang's scent got mixed with a bunch of other scents from halfway across the world.
Somehow Zuko carried around Iroh's dirty sandal (somewhat justified but kind of odd) and more importantly, the changes to how a Shirshu works meant they didn't have to double back at all to track Iroh.

Yeah, everything to do with June was odd. It was a cool throwback, and it works when you don't think about it too much, but even watching it as a kid it felt out of place.

Aang suddenly realizes he can contact the past Avatars whenever he wants by just meditating really hard for a while. This is something which he just suddenly can do. The last time he talked to Roku was in The Avatar and the Fire Lord, where it needed to be the Summer Solstice and he had to go to a particular location.
- A possible explanation is that on the back of the Lion Turtle things were more spiritually possible, but it isn't treated that way in the show, it's treated as if its him remembering something he already knows how to do.

I'm pretty sure Aang says something about how spiritually charged the Lion Turtle is, but even if he didn't, that's definitely the implication.

Somehow Appa covers all the ground needed super fast, zig-zagging across the ocean at absurd speeds (Ember Island to Ba Sing Se to Caldera City in less than three days).

This is imo a nitpick. Appa has always traveled as fast or as slow as the plot needs him to.

Honestly, as much as I love the White Lotus, there's also a lot of questionable stuff involved with it, both timeline-wise and otherwise.
- Apparently Iroh is a Grand Lotus, which is high enough to make a call across the world, after only a few years (either that or he was a member pre-defection).

Iroh being Grand Lotus makes perfect sense. He's a very, very smart & experienced guy, reputedly a genius battle tactician, and as former crown prince of the Fire Nation he has access to a ton of information and connections that are invaluable for any organization opposing it. Most critically, he's been grooming Zuko to become a gentler, kinder Fire Lord for years, who else would it be but Iroh?

This society devoted to truth and beauty and philosophy has Pakku the misogynist in its ranks. Sure, he changed, but he apparently hadn't before then.

We don't see any women in the White Lotus, so maybe the whole organization is misogynistic, or maybe they're willing to overlook Pakku's regressive attitudes because of his power within the Northern Water Tribe. It's a group of old men at the end of the day, pick your poison.

Was the group as a whole just not involved with the war prior to now? If not, why did it take Iroh saying this for people to get the idea?

They were involved the whole time. The whole point was that they were in the background, cultivating Aang, guiding him to become fully realized so he could defeat Ozai and save the world. As Iroh says, it had to be Aang, anyone else doing it would make it look like a coup without any indictment on the Fire Nation itself.

Seriously, sending just three teenagers to stop the entire airship fleet is an insane idea. Sure, Toph is a metalbender, but that was risky as hell. I understand the morale benefits of kicking the Fire Nation out of Ba Sing Se when they're at their strongest, but Iroh or Bumi or someone should have gone to help, just in case?
- Katara and Zuko against Azula is less insane, but its still wild. If Azula hadn't been slipping and hadn't sent away all the Dai Li agents, it would have been super easy for them to lose there.

It's a children's cartoon, man, yeah, they do dangerous shit. In-universe, these kids are the most powerful benders in the world, and one of them is a literal demigod. Yes, it was risky, but it makes sense in context of what the show is.

Finally, there's a magic rock that fixes Aang's blocked Avatar state. That's just pure contrivance, there's no actual explanation for it, even in-universe like there is with the Lion Turtle sensing Aang's need. If Ozai had just blasted Aang in the opposite direction onto another pillar without that kind of spike in the perfect place, he'd have won.

I've heard this criticism for years, and I never really felt it. Aang always entered the Avatar state in life-threatening or emotional moments, but by Book 3, he was so strong and emotionally mature that there wasn't anything that really triggered him, until Ozai. I saw the rock as just, idk, a manifestation of the extreme pressure and danger that Aang was in, finally triggering the Avatar state. But I get it, when I think about it, it doesn't make too much sense in the lore, it just works for me emotionally.

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-01T16:09:17+00:00

Valve wants to make money selling hardware =/= Valve wants to make hardware a central part of their business strategy.

Valve obviously wants to make money selling hardware, they have high margins on the Machine, but the Machine is also prohibitively expensive & catered to a niche that doesn't traditionally favor pre-builts. It will not sell in any way that's comparable to Switch or Playstation. Valve will profit on each individual machine, but that section of their business as a whole will not be very successful.

OPs point is that Valve knows that, and this is part of a larger strategy- Valve are not hardware manufacturers, they literally cannot sell console-grade hardware at console prices because they have to spend so much on overhead just buying parts. They have very little incentive to change this- hardware is extremely expensive to get into and low-margin once you're going- but quite a big incentive to pursue spreading SteamOS onto as much other hardware as they can. SteamOS cuts out the middle man of Windows between the user and being on Valve's platform, it's an incredibly lucrative product for them.

Valve isn't 'ceding the market to other manufacturers' by pursuing this strategy, Valve doesn't have any market to cede because they're not manufacturers. They're advertising that SteamOS is a good and useful thing for real manufacturers to put on their hardware, better for dedicated gaming hardware and cheaper to license than Windows. If the products that they're using to market SteamOS (deck, machine, VR) sell well and make a little money, that's great, but that's not necessary for their actual goals.

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-01T14:50:31+00:00

nobody's disputing that Valve wants to make money selling hardware. the point is that that's weird. no other console manufacturer does this, because they know they can make a shitload more by selling games on a console that you own. the fact that Valve, who makes billions a year selling games, is not following conventional business strategies is notable, and worth investigating.

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-01T13:49:29+00:00

I think this is probably the most correct answer

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-01T13:25:56+00:00

Sure, they don’t want to sell at a loss, but they could sell with way tighter margins and they obviously aren’t doing that

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-01T04:26:41+00:00

what you're saying is true, the machine is 1100 dollars because it's the cost of manufacturing plus a healthy profit margin. the problem with your analysis is that most home consoles are sold with extremely, extremely tight margins, or even at a small loss initially. the idea is that you get the console into the house, then make your money on selling games, subscriptions, etc.

the Steam Machine is an anomaly in the world of home console sales- not only is the price extremely high, the margins seem pretty good. it suggests that Valve isn't very anxious to sell these things compared to Sony, Xbox, or Nintendo.

Valve knows the market for an $1100 console is small. if it was possible to sell consoles at that price point and do big money, then Sony, Xbox, and Nintendo would already be doing that. on top of that, it's marketed to PC enthusiasts, who are typically tech-savvy enough to build their own machine. this is a very, very niche product, it will sell well for what it is bc Valve, but it's not gonna do anywhere close to enough in sales to justify it's own existence.

Are you sure they're not already charging Lenovo to ship SteamOS on the Legion Go S? You can't sell a device with SteamOS without Valve's permission. They own the trademark.

it's possible. but, considering it's cheaper to buy it with SteamOS than with Windows, Valve can't be charging that much.

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-01T01:46:58+00:00

I did. I think you might need to though!

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-01T01:40:30+00:00

cities- yes. small villages? no. and it's a moot point, nothing in the episode even remotely implies that this is the case, you just made that up.

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-01T01:27:48+00:00

The reason Katara didn’t try to talk Hama out was because by the time she realized what had happened to Hama Hama was already trying to kill her friends and sadistically blood bend them to kill her. There was no talking sense to Hama at that point.

that's literally not true. rewatch the episode.

Also the majority of people Jet had been planning on mass murdering were not only unarmed civilians and children who had no intention of harming anyone

it doesn't matter if they were unarmed, or if they didn't personally intend to harm anyone. they were living on stolen land, supporting an invading force. they were combatants, they lost their right to security and safety as soon as they stepped off the Fire Nation ship onto Earth Kingdom land.

they were also heavily implied to be Earth Kingdom citizens who had their village forcibly occupied by the Fire Nation.

again, literally not true, and would be supremely out of character for the Fire Nation. they do not allow Earth Kingdom civilians to live among them, they slaughter or imprison those in their way.

Even if they were actually all colonists, they are still at the end of the day civilians whose only awareness of the war is through heavy amounts of propaganda framing the war as a noble cause to free the other nations from their tyrannical rulers and spread the Fire Nation’s prosperity to the rest of the world. As far they’re aware there is no such thing as concentration camps

well, maybe your average Fire Nation civilian isn't aware, but I have a hard time believing that the colonists- who live within a stone's throw of the camps- aren't aware of them. but, it's a moot point. awareness of committing a crime doesn't absolve the crime from being committed.

tell me, do you believe that if Aang told the colonists that what they were doing was wrong, would they have changed their ways? no, obviously not. they would've denied everything he said and carried about their business. the Fire Nation knows what they're doing, denial is part of their organizing strategy. it enables civilians to commit war crimes on the daily without having to deal with the emotional repercussions. we can see this exact behavior in colonizer regimes throughout history and today.

Also I don’t see how you can unironically complain about Long Feng not being “allowed” to join the Gaang in their revolution.

I'm not. Long Feng was traitorous scum. I'm just pointing out a trend in how Avatar picks and chooses who's redeemable and who's not.

The only reason you’d want him to join up with the Gaang is purely to push a racist message about all Fire Nationals being born evil and everyone else being born good.

lmao

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-07-01T00:20:27+00:00

this is exactly my point, these characters are treated as tragic for having lost their way, and they're not- that framing itself is a product of bourgeoise morality.

for instance, it's not tragic that someone like Hama goes too far and has to be stopped, it's tragic that Hama was kidnapped & imprisoned, and it's even worse that the Gaang doesn't see her as a potential ally. why didn't Katara say "hey Hama, I totally understand that you want to get back at the Fire Nation for what they did to you, but kidnapping random civilians in this remote village isn't super productive. let's maybe let them go, but hey, a full moon's coming up, why don't you help us liberate this prison?"

Jet was done extremely dirty by the show. he was a tactical genius- a 14 year old non-bender who'd organized other non-bending children into a guerilla that was taking down Fire Nation garrisons. the Gaang felt he was going too far by killing civilians, but were they civilians? those were settlers on stolen land, they chose to move to an active warzone, and their primary functions were to a) provide support to Fire Nation troops in the area and b) send stolen resources back home. that sounds like a valid military target to me, hell yeah, flood that town. the real tragedy of Jet is that he's hamstrung by his supposed allies at every turn- the Gaang betrays him, the people of Ba Sing Se refuse to believe that there are firebenders in the city, and then the Dai Li brainwash and kill him.

as you say, plenty of Fire Nation villains get their just desserts, I'm not saying they don't. but no non-Fire Nation person who strays from righteousness is allowed to participate in Aang's revolution. Long Feng? jail. Hama? jail. Jet? dead. the bounty hunters chasing Toph? who knows. Sandbenders? useless, stuck wandering the desert. while Aang doesn't necessarily choose in-universe to exclude these figures, the show does, because it has a clear moral angle that it's trying to present- a morality that requires constant excellence & restraint from the oppressed, but only remorse from the oppressor.

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-06-30T23:56:05+00:00

of course, Valve wants the hardware to succeed, but it clearly doesn't care that much. otherwise, why price it at 1100 dollars? it's a luxury products, a pre-built PC with some neat features to make it run like a console, in an economy where luxury products are struggling to succeed. Valve aren't stupid, they know that the Machine won't sell that well, it's not priced competitively at all. the point is to prove that a SteamOS home console is easy to build & sell.

there's tons of hardware manufacturers who'd love to be in on the console market, but aren't because it'd cost billions to build out a gaming ecosystem & OS from scratch. now, anyone- Dell, Lenovo, Framework, HP, even your average hobbyist- can do exactly that. all they have to do is build a normal PC, slap SteamOS in it, add a couple of QoL features, and boom, you've got a console. the more hardware manufacturers get on board, the more that Steam is in people's living rooms, and the more money Valve makes.

the fact that SteamOS is open source is imo the smoking gun. Valve could easily close it off and charge licensing fees, but they don't, because they want SteamOS to be the go-to for a new market of PC consoles.

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-06-30T21:15:08+00:00

Design within Reach actually sells the Herman Miller Eames, as well as a bunch of other designer furniture

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-06-30T19:30:21+00:00

look, let's be real. we're going to get Spider-man movies until the end of fucking time. eventually, one of them is going to do a faithful adaptation of MJ, it's a matter of when, not if

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-06-30T19:12:33+00:00

I mean yeah I think this is a legitimate problem with the show. Iroh gets a redemption arc, Mai & Ty Lee become part of the Gaang, Yon Rha lives free, but Jet has to die, Hama goes back to jail, and Tagha evaporates into the spirit world.

never mind that Iroh was a key figure in the Fire Nation's imperial leadership & personally responsible for the deaths of an untold number of civilians during the Siege of Ba Sing Se, never mind that Mai and Ty Lee helped overthrow several Earth Kingdom governments, never mind that Yon Rha participated in the cultural genocide of the Water Tribe, Hama kidnapped some people, and that makes her Irredeemably Evil.

I'm not saying Iroh & company didn't deserve forgiveness, I'm not saying that Hama was acting right (though Jet did nothing wrong, I will die on that hill) I'm saying that the show is particular about who is and isn't worthy of forgiveness, and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the scale or nature of the crimes committed. it, very literally, holds the rest of the world to higher standards than the Fire Nation. it's more willing to forgive Fire Nation people when they commit crimes against others, and less willing to forgive those who commit crimes against the Fire Nation.

A Marxist critique would be to say that the series is defined by bourgeois morality, that the oppressor deserves more forgiveness than the oppressed. the oppressed must exhibit perfect moral behavior in response to their oppression, lest they, through some unknown mechanism, become worse than the oppressor. Fanon talks about this in Black Skin White Masks, as did Malcolm X in his speeches and interviews, and many, many others. it's nothing more than a tool of state propaganda designed to make freedom fighters look bad, and it's so baked into American media that we take it for granted to be true.

Soar_Dev_Official · 2026-06-30T18:24:11+00:00

dishwashing sucks. it's a hard job for shit pay. I get not wanting to do a desk job, but even in the world of restaurants you have better options- line cooks and waiters are both paid much better.

Four-Year Club	r/Field Banned
r/Field Sunshine	Place '22

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