katherine-lupin-enver

[katherine-lupin-enver]

Zutara 😍

i love zuko x katara

[katherine-lupin-enver]

Zutara Week 2024- Day 3 Echoes

Keep reappearing year after year in different forms...

but they are still together always..

Is this just 'echoes' from the past..?

An eternal love born from the power of 'almost'?

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Although the original stories already ended since forever ago...(Yeah there's some comic, but I mean the original 3 books series), we are still doing this Zutara Week..every years? Haha isn't it awesome? 🥹✨✨✨

They're my muses. Although I have many fandoms now, but I'll keep come back to draw something for them.

Even tho here, and in many other social media is not as lively as back then, but I still appreciate that you're liking my arts, (even my old zutara arts too..hehe)

Lol why it's kinda somber now...🥹🥹

@zutaraweek

ps. Book 4 Air will forever be my Roman Empire...okay

🚫do not use, edit, reupload my arts! Thx!!

[katherine-lupin-enver]

Cultural Practices: Medicine in ATLA

I thought I’d do a quick overview of the medicines and treatments that we see employed in ATLA. This post will be a little different from the usual, as it’ll include a few personal anecdotes from yours truly and a content warning since some medical practices can be a bit gruesome to describe.

Chi Pathways

Also known as the meridian system or jīngluò (經絡), these are the metaphysical “veins” through which chi flows. Although modern science rejects the existence of the meridian system, belief in chi pathways forms the basis for many treatments within Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

Cinobufagin

Also known as Huachansu (华蟾素) or “Chinese Toad Essence”, it refers to the practice of using secretions from the skin of Asiatic toads for medicinal purposes. The chemical, cinobufagin, found in these secretions has been known to have many beneficial effects in humans:

Pain Relief

Strengthens Immunity

Cancer Cell Suppression & Reduction

In TCM, cinobufagin is extracted by drying toad skin and steeping it in hot water, essentially using it to brew a medicinal ”tea”. However, thanks to modern science, cinobufagin can now also be taken via pill or injection.

For obvious reasons, Aang couldn’t exactly be shown drying and skinning pond critters to make hot froggy juice. Can’t say how effective sucking on frozen frogs is for curing the cold, but I’m sure someone out there has tried it. I will say, I never related harder to Aang than when the herbalist tells him to go gather frogs for medicine and he just looks bewildered. My grandparents were strong believers in the health benefits of toad skin and used to have me hunt for them during fishing trips.

Fire Cupping

When Zuko takes Iroh to a local Earth Kingdom clinic to cure his uncle’s poisoning, fire cupping or báguàn (拔罐) is briefly shown as another treatment available there. Here is a quick description of the process from the Wikipedia page:

Fire cupping involves soaking a cotton ball in almost pure alcohol. The cotton is clamped by a pair of forceps and lit via match or lighter, and, in one motion, placed into the cup and quickly removed, while the cup is placed on the skin. The fire uses up all the oxygen in the cup which creates a negative pressure inside the cup. The cup is then quickly placed onto the body and the negative pressure “sucks” the skin up.

According to TCM, the purpose of cupping is to dislodge stagnant blood and encourage circulation, thereby improving chi flow to cure common ailments. My headcanon is that this treatment is a specialty of the Fire Nation cause, you know, fire cupping. It also ties into the importance of body heat in firebending and would be a pretty decent treatment for a chi-blocked body; I also headcanon chi-blocking as having roots in firebending.

I have second hand experience with fire cupping. My mother once tried fire cupping on my dad but I think she might have overheated the cups because he ended up getting pretty big blisters on his back. You can imagine what happened when he accidentally rolled over on to his back while sleeping…

Moral of the Story: Please leave all medical treatments, both traditional and modern, to trained professionals.

Acupuncture

Acupuncture is probably the most well-known form of TCM in the English-speaking world. It is the practice of inserting very thin metal needles into the skin along the meridian system to improve chi flow. As far as I know, porcupine needles have never been used. ;-) Acupuncture is typically used to treat various types of body pain and stiffness. 

Surprisingly, I actually don’t have any real life experience with acupuncture. As far as headcanon goes, I imagine this might be a specialty of the Earth Kingdom once metalbending becomes more commonplace.

In the near future, I’ll probably make a post detailing other traditional Asian and Indigenous medicines that would work well in the Avatar world.

Like what I’m doing? Tips always appreciated, never expected. ^_^

https://ko-fi.com/atlaculture

[katherine-lupin-enver]

— Sarah Williams

[katherine-lupin-enver]

Inside many zutara antis calling the ship "colonizer/colonized" is an Azula stan who hates Zuko for ending colonization.

Some of y'all are not even subtle about it.

[katherine-lupin-enver]

“zuko didn’t actually care about katara he just wanted her to forgive him!” do you guys hear yourselves when you talk. do you care about earning forgiveness from bitches you hate? no? so then you do understand that genuinely seeking restitution is intrinsically an act of caring because it matters to you that you hurt this person. it matters so much, in fact, that you’re unwilling to let it stand; that you’ll do the work to fix what you broke, because the idea of it letting it remain broken is unthinkable.

this is why the southern raiders is intentionally positioned as the finale to the field trip arc, why the climactic confrontation between zuko and katara that’s been building since ba sing se happens after the rest of the gaang has already befriended zuko. by tsr, zuko has achieved almost all of his goals. he is aang’s firebending teacher. he’s doing his part to stop the war. he’s part of the gaang. he’s even earned their trust and respect!

katara’s feelings towards him do not pose an obstacle to zuko in any way — it doesn’t hinder him from training aang or influence the rest of the group into shunning or ostracizing him. the point of the scene where everyone except katara hails him as a hero is meant to highlight this very dissonance, because not only does katara’s hostility not matter to her friends, it’s even treated as somewhat irrational and confusing [see sokka’s “what’s with her?” when katara lashes out at zuko].

and all of this is laid out because it’s important that the viewer is assured of the irrelevance of katara’s feelings to the larger narrative before the tsr field trip occurs, so that it’s crystal clear that zuko making amends has nothing to do with any external plot requirement and everything to do with his relationship with katara.

storytelling is meticulously intentional and animation even more so; the sequence of these episodes and individual scenes matters because it shows the audience that zuko has nothing more to gain by earning katara’s trust and affection back — nothing, that is, except katara herself.

and frankly, you really can’t blame anyone for reading romantically into that.

[katherine-lupin-enver]

This, so this

my biggest issue with the httyd live action-and just about any live action reboot is that it seems that the live action adaptations are being made to make the original “better”? like, so many people talk about a live action spiderverse, a live action hercules, a live action PRINCE OF EGYPT (dont piss me OFF.)-like animation is a beautiful work of art, and for some reason putting real people and cgi in it is supposed to be an “upgrade”? im probably being that friend that’s too woke, but i just think it’s so disrespectful to act like something that takes so much time and effort and energy is immediately considered as lower because it is animated. animation is beautiful, and it is one of the most heartfelt art forms there are, and erasing that for the sake of a cash grab is downright degrading to animation as a medium.

[katherine-lupin-enver]

Please like, reblog & credit if you use!

[katherine-lupin-enver]

Keep your priorities straight: post fic.

[katherine-lupin-enver]

They probably have a cute conversation since here I'm Belle and there I'm Ariel hahah

your discord pfp and your tumblr pfp are locked in a room together. what happens?

[katherine-lupin-enver]

[katherine-lupin-enver]

[katherine-lupin-enver]

going through a mental breakdown? have you tried writing fanfiction?

[katherine-lupin-enver]

There's a ton of emotional neglect from mothers in A:TLA. A TON! And I'm here for speaking about all of it. The intentional ones, the accidental ones, the I tried to do my best ones, the I don't care ones. Because mommy issues is me and I'm mommy issues and you don't know how that fucks you up for life. Even if they loved you so much but were unable to really be there for you how it counted.

In general this fandom is unwilling to analyze emotional neglect from moms. No one talks about Mai's mom except to use it as an excuse for Mai not giving a shit. The weird amount of fanart that exists of Toph being treated like a pretty doll by her mom. The only time the fandom wants to discuss this type of abuse is when they're blaming Ursa for literally all of Azula's crimes.

[katherine-lupin-enver]

[katherine-lupin-enver]

i dislike the argument that mai would be a better pick for fire lady compared to katara mainly because while i don't disagree marrying a fire nation citizen would be less controversial in the fn it wouldn't for the rest of the world especially the earth kingdom when mai's family helped colonize ek territories and mai herself is ambivalent towards the 100 years war (she even helped her dad stage a coup against zuko, that alone would cause a huge political scandal if he married her). i don't deny that if zuko married katara, they would face a lot of opposition from fn citizens, but i don't believe that it's better for zuko to marry a girl that is apathetic to the genocides and colonization that her country perpetrated when the fn is trying to make up for their past wrongdoings. at the end of the day, fire lady katara is a headcanon created by fans and i don't think interpretations should be restricted by if it's "politically sound" because zutara isn't canon and people should be allowed to be as creative as they want with how they write fanon ships.

[katherine-lupin-enver]