#Atlas Repopulation

[votsalot]

very strange thing to bring up in a review of a children's tv show: that the inital deficit of women and girl characters is a "positive" because it circumvents any "awkward conversations about restoring populations" like this isn't a Y7 show for kids in middle school. kind puts a spotlight about the implicit presumed role of women in a narrative.

[the-badger-mole]

I am kind of obsessed with Aang's possible villain arc now. I am writing a multicapter fanfic right now, and ever since I saw your asks my hands are ITCHING to give him some sort of a dark!Aang persona. You are right, it is just way more interesting that way. My initial idea was so display him as a broken and struggling individual who is hiding his issues from the rest of the world. To outsiders, he'd be pretty much the way we got to know him in the show. But people close to him would know that he is having frequent emotional breakdowns with heavy surges of grief, anger, self-loathing and helplessness. His happy-go-lucky attitude of the show is, in my mind, just not sustainable in the long-run. He lost EVERYONE he had ever known and loved by age 12, and much as I am sure that he felt kinship with Katara and Sokka, that's just not enough to replace everything. He had not dealt with his loss nearly as much as one would expect from someone in a similar situation (bar just a few scenes) and weirdly enough he seems kind of?.. fine?? with how the world is by the time of ATLA. So in my interpretation the boy is just in denial (and I don't blame him), but it inevitably comes crashing down on him by the time his is 20 at the latest - maybe especially when he succeeds in repopulating the temples to some extend but then notices that it is still not. the. same. And that nothing will fill that hole in his heart, much as he might try. I just also think that he won't be very good at handling his grief in a healthy way, and would be prone to suppress his feelings for large swathes of time, and then dump them all on his close ones - Katara especially, who'd have to carry the burden of his grief and his outbursts. Well, such was my thinking, but then you mentioned dark!Aang, and now I am thinking that these two interpretations are not mutually exclusive - and I am honestly just a bit afraid to commit to that idea, mostly in fear of angering the readers ^^" Though I would be more interested in giving him an almost-villain-arc - meaning, that he would get a sort of a redemption by the end.

What I am trying to say is: thank you for the inspiration!

This sounds like a really interesting story. You should go for it! Don't let some hypothetical haters stop you. There's always going to be someone who doesn't like your work. That's got nothing to do with you.

[princess-of-the-corner]

Lila: I am also a surviving Airbender!

Chloé *loud, frustrated groan*

Okay so /technically/

I don't think I ever decided on that AU if like. It takes place post-atla/lok or if it happens in its own separate continuity? It's funky because the way I envision it has the tech and such be a mix of the original series, but there's reference to more Canon lore bits.

But either

1.) It /does/ take place in the world, but it's post LoK so Airbenders are properly repopulated

or

2.) It takes place in a 'within the worldbuilding of atla/lok but those plots aren't heavily referenced', in which case the Air Nomad Genocide is just kinda nonexistent to them.

[levitatingbiscuits]

I love some of ur atla metas revolving katara sm! People are really hard on her, when in reality she suffered the most in the show. I think people try to use her to prop up sokkas barely existing issues so he's more relevant, and as a way to excuse aangs flaws, but you don't do that.

Thank you! I am, first and foremost, a Katara stan. I'm like Aang straight out the iceberg. 10 year old me saw her and was like OH YES SHE'S THE LOVE OF MY LIFE and that hasn't changed in 13 years.

People tend to play suffering Olympics for this show specifically to shit on katara, even though it's primarily her trauma that the narrative focuses on as a lens through which to explore the war. Tellingly, most of her suffering she goes through alone, without the support she offers to everyone else.

People try to play whataboutism with Aang and Sokka's trauma, even though the show straight up tells us that she is their living emotional crutch and the reason they were able to move on. Katara can't move on. No one helps her move on. When she tries to take matters into her own hands, to heal herself the way she heals others, she's condemned by the fandom (and Aang and Sokka that one time), called selfish and cruel and a million other things.

I especially hate when people bring up the Air Nomad genocide as a gotcha, when Katara is also the sole survivor of a genocide, a genocide she personally witnessed and was in danger of dying in. People forget that bloodbending is very obviously a metaphor for the generational trauma she inherits ON TOP of the traumatic murder of her mother, who died in her place. Katara knew very well that Yon Rha was there to kill her for her bending. Her survivor's guilt is actually worse than Aang's, even though it's less focused on, because she never truly gets over it. She spends the rest of her childhood trying to fill the empty space her mother left. And she SUCCEEDED. For her father, her brother, for everyone else she supported and mothered. For the child she named after her mom, a child that carries on the almost extinct legacy of Southern bending the way Tenzin does for Airbending, even though her importance is just as downplayed as EVERY OTHER ASPECT OF KATARA'S LEGACY INDEPENDENT OF AANG'S. Katara fills that empty maternal, caring role for EVERYONE in the gaang but zuko and herself, then she plays the same role for Korra because she's Aang's successor.

That's why it's so galling that she never got to resolve the bloodbending story herself. Sokka and Aang do it for her while she's busy trying to repopulate the Air Nomads, because God forbid she be allowed to do anything separate from her husband. Legend of Korra shits on Katara almost as much as the goddamn fandom. "She doesn't get a statue because she didn't do anything after the war but mother Aang's kids" is the actual justification bryke gave for no one honoring or idolizing her the way they do for the rest of the gaang in LOK. And God forbid she get a fight scene or even attend her own granddaughter's mastery ceremony. After all, that's Aang's legacy, not hers. She was treated like a convenient broodmare still pining for him 2 decades after his death and training and healing his successor and being neglected and isolated by her kids, because of course she's not allowed to move on and be content without him. Katara is never allowed to heal from her losses. She's always, always left to suffer in silence and deal with her pain alone.

No wonder this fandom props up Aang and Sokka by undermining Katara. The creators did it first :/

People didn't used to be such weirdos about Sokka. This is 100% a result of the ex-klance people latching on to zukka due to the superficial aesthetic similarities. Remember all those Lance stans who would insist that he's the one who suffered the most and would shit on every other character to make him look better? And transplant the character traits of other characters on to him, ESPECIALLY the girl of color popularly shipped with his supposed love interest? (Waterbender/moon spirit sokka is just altean Lance with a fresh coat of atla paint.) That's literally what they did to sokka in the "Renaissance." Before that it was primarily the hard-core kataang/aang stans insisting that Katara's narrative mattered less than the male characters'. I still remember the rape and death threats I got back in like 2018 for arguing that she deserved better than to end up a permanently benched housewife healer propping up Aang's legacy rather than securing her own in LOK. Then the zukkas came along and insisted their misogyny was woke because it was in service of fetishizing a gay ship with barely any basis in canon. (Cmon guys, jetko is RIGHT THERE and their interactions are not exclusively about one guy's various girlfriends. Just saying. Hell, Zukaang has the most basis of any atla slash ship, but people aren't attracted to Aang so they don't bother. Mark my words, the upcoming atla movie is gonna cause a zukaang Renaissance.)

That got long lol. This is probably gonna be controversial but I don't care, I'm right. Appreciate you nonnie!

[5-7-9]

Never heard any nonbender complain about wanting bending in the series, it was always about being defenseless from attackers like the fire nation or terrible people. I just assumed it was a spiritual thingy, only the people that care about bending want to have bending.

At least, not until the comics and LOK? It’s getting confused with stuff like Aang wanting to repopulate the airbender genes, and the Equalists wanting… something??? (Criminals attacking them??? Idk). Which, stopped shifting the attention to actual political issues, and started to be about bending?

Which was weird imo, the ATLA show seemed to make a point by never making that point because it wasn’t an issue! Which i appreciated!!! I was very tired of hearing about power jealousy in all these stories with powers. Sokka doesn’t count, he adds to the team 😤

Bending as a genetic thingy suddenly being looked down upon is just, so now we’re rushing to geneticism huh??!! You know wanting more power is how Fire Lord Ozai became a villain you know!!!!!!!!!! Anyway, I just preferred it if nonbenders weren’t unhappy with themselves for not having bending, i find it very sad :( since you can’t just become a bender for some reason

This is why i wanna think people’s disinterest with bending explains why they aren’t bending :/

[rwbysworld]

The Last Knight Alive

(A closed rp blog with @lewdest-mansion)

Vale

Mistral

Vacuo

And Atlas

All the males in all of Remnant have died out.

All except for one and his name is Jaune Arc. the Remnant Council, now made up of all females, had declared a new law that Jaune must travel all across Remnant and impregnate every single woman to repopulate the world while also making all the women free use for him.

And right now? He had entered his room only to see Nora on his bed with a condom in her mouth.

[myatlaramblings]

I feel that aside from the obvious reason (If you know, you know.), it's most likely because he's the last airbender, a lot of people argue that because Aang is invested in keeping his culture alive, he should feel obligated to quote unquote "repopulate" the air nation/Air nomads by having multiple airbender children (Basically similar to why Katara gets called a babymaker because the youngest Tenzin was the only airbender when he was born.). Which is a gross misinterpretation of his character. Especially when you remember that-

1. ATLA is a kid show (And a mid-late 2000s one at that.). Not a harem anime!

2. Being a genocide survivor doesn't mean you can't have a romantic relationship.

3. Reproduction is not the only way to keep a culture alive! (The Air Acolytes are right there people!)

4. Having children for ulterior motives and not because you want them never ends well!

"why didn’t Aang just have multiple babies with multiple women? :("

can someone for the love of god explain what this fandoms obsession with Aang cheating/slash having multiple wives is?

Because, and hear me out, he LOVED Katara and didn’t want to have children with anyone else? Crazy, i know

[maylonghorn]

2020 New Year and More Content

Hello everyone sorry that I have been quite this winter. I will respond to all ot the new years requests this week, but I do have some new ideas.

Adding in more details for Atlas.

Whitney (Whitley) will get a short story to start how atlas will work for requests.

I hope you all enjoy wants coming soon.

[ellakomskaikru]

as a fan of katara im not big on both kataang and zutara. theyd both require sacrifices on kataras part than neither zuko nor aang would be able to reciprocate. katara is a southern woman at heart and if she didnt become a chief (which i personally think she would excel at) at least shed take an active role in the rebuilding of her tribe - and frankly i dont see her leaving the south pole after the war, except for diplomatic/personal trips. aang is the avatar and if he did ever decide to settle down (as far as im concerned tlok was a bad dream and the republic city doesnt exist) lets be honest, it woudnt be in the southern water tribe of all places. most likely itd be an air temple because he has responsibility towards his dying culture. zuko would be semi-permanently chained to the fire palace or the fire nation at the very least i mean... he is a monarch, not much left to say. again except for trips, but thats not permanent residence. why does katara have to end up where either zuko or aang reside? and another thing - heirs. aang needs future airbenders. zuko needs a fire prince/princess. why does katara need to be held responsible for repopulating air nomads? why do kataras children have to be the royal family of a foreign country? (and she would have to have children in both those relationships) that would inevitably come at an expense of her own heritage, because again zuko, aang, their potential children would have great responsibilities. this concerns all of zukos or aangs potential partners but kataras culture and home are especially important to her. in my dreams katara permanently resides in the swt, as a chief, with a water tribe hunk who loves her a lot or at the very least someone willing - and capable - to move for her from another country. i like both zuko and aang, a lot actually but unfortunately they cant just do whatever they want for love

i know youre not a kataanger, but how do you reconcile all that with zutara? how would they overcome those obstacles? because for me theres just no solution that would satisfy me as a fan of katara that isnt unrealistic. again thats just my personal opinion and im curious about yours :)) all good vibes

Hello anon!

I completely understand where you are coming from! I really love Katara as well, she’s my favorite character in the entire atla series. I agree that Katara’s culture is very important to her and that she’d absolutely want to rebuild her tribe. But I don’t think that being with Zuko will prevent her from doing that. Multicultural families exist, and I speak with personal experience in that regard, as I come from a multicultural family. The Fire Nation after the war would be entering a new era of peace and they’d be trying to get rid of their fire superiority beliefs. So with that in mind, I think that Zuko and Katara could have a multicultural family. Their children would be both Fire Nation and Water Tribe.

As Fire Lady Katara would have the power to help her tribe rebuild even more, and she’d also bring her culture with her, and visit the Southern Water Tribe a lot. I don’t agree with the idea that she has to stay in the South Pole forever to truly be able to participate in her own culture, people in the real world leave their own home countries all the time and settle somewhere else, that doesn’t mean that they’ve abandoned their culture or stopped being their nationality of birth. And I think it’d be much easier to Zuko and Katara to have a multicultural family, because their cultures share more similarities than the Water Tribe does with the Air Nomads.

Both the FN and SWT cultures have an omnivorous diet, both have family units, and both have more similar philosophies on life, like they are both not pacifists. Also, the SWT is very family oriented and the community is very close with one another, which is the complete opposite of the Air Nomads, who aren’t raised by their parents because they want to free themselves from earthly attachments in hopes of achieving spiritual enlightenment. So I don’t think that would resonate well with Katara, who has abandonment issues. The Fire Nation society definitely isn’t that close to one another, as it is very classist, but they still value their family members very much like the SWT does.

And with Zuko, Katara doesn’t have the pressure to adhere to his culture because his people are still very much existing and plentiful, unlike with Aang, where she’d probably feel the pressure to adhere to his culture because his people where entirely wiped out, and she’d probably feel bad asking him to convert to Southern Water Tribe customs or to even just participate a little when he’s trying to preserve the cultural legacy of his people.

I also believe that Zuko and Katara’s children can be part of both cultures perfectly fine. Zuko would not be xenophobic like his predecessors, and his children with Katara would help the Fire Nation stop being xenophobic because they’d see the beauty of other cultures, and it would put the rest of the world more at ease, especially the Southern Water Tribe, to know that there are heirs of their blood on the Fire Nation throne, which greatly lessens the chance of another war breaking out. So anon, you’re opinion is completely valid and totally get where you’re coming from, but overall, I just don’t agree with the idea that Katara has to stay in the Southern Water Tribe forever and marry someone of her own tribe in order to preserve her culture. I think she can still preserve her culture while living elsewhere.

Thanks for the ask!

[night-heron-writes]

Parallels between Kataang and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

An extended take by NightHeron

First off, I’ll start with the societal parallels. In the Handmaid’s Tale, before the rise of the country called the Republic of Gilead, America falls into a second civil war, with underlying causes of limited natural resources and ideological extremities. The ATLA-verse has their Hundred Year War, also mostly because of natural resources and extreme ideologies. Both worlds place a heavy emphasis on duty. Gilead emphasizes the duty of the few fertile women to bear children—whether or not they want to is considered quite irrelevant—, while the entire plotline of ATLA revolves around duty in some form or other. Aang’s duty to the world and previous failure to follow through is quite literally the premise of the show. However, this emphasis on duty can become quite twisted, and both pieces of media showcase this in eerily similar ways.

Katara in particular becomes a victim of duty. This stunningly powerful force of nature steps aside and lets herself fade into the shadows in the name of keeping Aang happy. She consigns herself to being his housewife/mother and hoping he’ll pay attention to her. Aang, for his part, frequently forgets she is there for hours on end when he’s with his fan club/acolytes and makes her feel guilty for wanting more. The narrator of the Handmaid’s Tale, a woman called Offred, is forced into a role no woman would envy in the name of patriotic duty—the duty to give birth to children she doesn’t want or get to raise.  (Not to mention that she didn’t consent to any of this, but more on that later on.)

Speaking of children and childbearing, Katara was expected to singlehandedly repopulate the airbenders because of her role as Aang’s wife, irrespective of whether or not that was what she wanted. She was expected to raise her kids alone while Aang was off on “Avatar business” and the vacations he only took one of his kids on. All of her formidable achievements during the war were forgotten, leaving her only known as “The Avatar’s wife.”  The narrator of the Handmaid’s Tale is stripped of her name, simply called “Of” + the name of the man who thinks he’s entitled to the use of her uterus.

Consent is an issue in both works, but where the Handmaid’s Tale intends to address the topic and does it well, ATLA’s brush with consent issues is both unintentional and poorly executed. The Handmaid’s Tale is about reproductive slavery and the horrors that come from it, and makes it quite clear that the non-con/dub-con stuff is not okay. The narrator is quite literally kidnapped and forced to bear children for men she doesn’t know, much less like. ATLA’s dealings with non-con elements do not come off so well. Aang forces several kisses on Katara, even when she explicitly tells him she’s confused about her feelings and clearly does not appreciate his advances. Not only is this never addressed in-show, but the narrative rewards Aang for his actions. He “gets the girl” at the end of the show, never mind the fact that the last canon interaction of the “happy couple” is Katara yelling at him for kissing her without even asking. He NEVER ONCE asked her about her feelings in a way that wasn’t phrased as “why aren’t you my girlfriend already?”

The viewing of women as objects by men is present in both works, though admittedly present in almost everything because of our current society—but that’s a rant for another time. Not a single man in Handmaid’s Tale ever expresses that he thinks the reproductive enslavement of women is wrong, even the ones who oppose Gilead. There’s a not-so-subtle theme of men feeling entitled to a woman’s reproductive labor throughout the book, despite them not being the ones to actually have to bear the children! Similarly, Aang feels entitled to Katara as a prize for having ended the war—a war it was his literal job to end, by the way. He expresses this at the Ember Island Players episode, when he brings up the first non-con kiss and asks her why they aren’t dating already. He also feels entitled to her reproductive labor later on, expecting her to bear him airbenders to “carry on his legacy.”

Religion/cultural values being used to control people is also a big theme of both works, again intentional on the part of the Handmaid’s Tale and unintentional on ATLA’s. Gilead uses a twisted version of Christianity to control its population, including using carefully cropped passages from the Bible to justify institutionalized rape and forbidding women to read and write. Aang’s twisting of air nomad values is less overtly malicious but still harmful. He took the “separate but equal nations” philosophy to an extreme, even going so far as to attempt to ban intercultural relationships—which he had himself! His relationship with Katara is multi-cultural, although he didn’t see it that way. That he would have to give her up if he went through with the policy never seemed to occur to him, adding fuel to the theory that he saw Katara as more air nomad than water tribes. He also was perfectly happy to do away with the fact that air nomads didn’t do marriage simply because he wanted Katara for himself. He also refuses to teach his two non-airbender children about the air nomads, despite the fact that not all air nomads could have been benders. A 100% bender rate is highly suspicious and reeks of eugenics, and an air nomad society that disposes of its non-benders, whether by abandonment or just plain killing them, does not match up well with the picture Aang paints of a society beyond reproach.

[konggodzuko]

Rare non-ZK ATLA post from me, but imagine if ATLA was more realistic and had Air nomad survivors in Aang’s time. Like, is the extremely rare and situational genocide that gets 100% of a people, and those are usually due to disease doing most of the heavy lifting, and even then there’s almost always still a surviving element (the Taíno people are gone but us Caribbean Latines still carry on their genes and some cultural stuff).

So, the idea that ATLA and LOK puts forward that the Air Nomads, who were NOMADS and very much a part of the wider world, were *entirely eliminated* is ludicrous. It also torpedoed some *very* interesting story ideas for Aang.

What if Aang & co. find Air Nomads and they’re violent and angry… except if anyone has the right to be angry beyond what is usually considered reasonable it’s them. They’ve lost basically everything. So how does Aang square his beliefs about how Air Nomads *should* act with how these survivors are acting? I feel like it could pull some *very* interesting stuff out of Aang, and have a very interesting conversation about revenge (that Hama’s episode almost does but also sabotages by having her go after civilians instead of military or government workers).

Also, narrative plenty aside, it would give the poor kid a break and the ability to be the motherfucking Avatar. A 12 year old wouldn’t be solely in charge of a people’s legacy and that people’s repopulation. He also would be able to be an Avatar of all 4 nations, no longer needing to be so concerned with making sure he’s also an Air Nomad since he’s the only one left.

[bestworstcase]

I'm sorry, "he manipulated her into serving her abusers"? No. Just. No. Salem didn't tell him about how she led an army against the Gods that ended the world (The Gods' fault for being so fucking petty, but also Salem's fault for also being so fucking petty and self-righteous that she thought she could hurt Gods. Not to mention how she was so willing to throw away as many lives as possible just to get payback at the Gods) because she was worried he would hate her for it. Oz didn't tell Salem about the Gods' mission because he was unsure of the truth. The God of Light tipped him off that something had changed about Salem, that she wasn't the same person, and then when he got back, she looked that THAT. I wouldn't have kept the truth, too. It's exactly the same as what RWBY did with Ironwood. They saw the state that Mantle was in, and decided to keep the truth from him until they deemed that he could trust him. It was Salem who decided to try and unite humanity, not Oz. He didn't manipulate her into doing that. He also didn't manipulate her into choosing to become the new Gods. He went along with it, but he didn't manipulate her. He finally decided to spill the truth for the same reason RWBY did for Ironwood: things had gotten out of control. She was massacring people and she was enjoying it. And sure, she was calm as he told him, but then she suggested they commit mass genocide because she saw these people as lesser, and replace them with their own race. That's a sign that she was too far gone. She was not the woman he once knew, he was scared of her, you could see it in his face. Especially when she caught him with the children. She was suggesting that they use their own children to repopulate the world.

And, does it matter whether Oz decided to seal the Relics away first or not? If he did, it was because he knew how dangerous they were. He recognized that Salem or others might attempt to take them and use them. If that is what caused Salem to strike, that's entirely on her. In the end, yes, the Gods are to blame. But you seem to be intent, from my understanding, to shift a lot more blame onto Oz than Salem. Was he paranoid? Yes. But he had a damn good reason to be. Though the fairy tales from the book should all be taken with a grain of salt, it is evident that there are seeds of truth amongst them.

Both Salem and Oz are victims. Was he the "chosen one"? Yes. And you know what that got him? Continually punished over and over again. Oz is being punished just as much as Salem is. Unlike Salem, who shows she cares little for others and sees herself as higher than them, Oz has been humbled. He sees them as people he must protect, and he watches them die over and over.

Oz is not innocent. He's made mistakes, mistakes that have led to the death of people under his wing and people he cared for. He lied out of fear and when confronted with the truth he ran. When Salem's lies were put into the open, she attacked. I see far too many people hope that Oz and Salem reconcile and try to defeat the Gods together and that's just disgusting. Salem has hurt him, hurt people he cared about. She kidnapped, tortured, dehumanized, experimented on, and turned people - living people - into her pets. She tortured a 15-year-old boy. Whatever Oz may or may not have done, nothing is comparable to the horrors and atrocities she has committed in the name of her own selfishness and pettiness. Maybe if she had tried to come to Oz of her own free will, without suggesting mass genocide, they could have talked about a way to be free of their curses. But she didn't. She murdered and mutilated and took great glee in it. Because in her twisted sense of justice, she deserves this pleasure after the Gods took everything else away from her.

*clears throat* all the devastation salem caused in atlas is ruby’s fault because ruby is so petty and self-righteous that she thinks she can stop an immortal sorceress orders of magnitude more powerful than anyone else on the planet. she threw away the lives of all those people just to get payback for the fall of beacon. so selfish of her, fighting back against a terrible evil more powerful than she could fully comprehend until now.

🙄

the gods responded with horrific, over-the-top cruelty when a grieving young woman had the audacity to take no for an answer from one of them and then ask the other for the same thing, then lash out after they revived and immediately killed her dead lover twice, a completely understandable and human reaction for which they decided she needed to suffer for eternity or until they decided she was sufficiently contrite.

then—after apparently several decades spent trying to kill herself, given that a whole new kingdom forms in the interim—salem fomented a rebellion against them and they slaughtered every. single. person. on. the. planet. to punish her for it.

the gods were not just “petty.” the gods are evil tyrants who feel entitled to do whatever they please with their creations and became incensed when humans defied them. the god of light explicitly views modern humans as inferior imitations of their ancient predecessors because they lack the blessings of the gods—i.e. magic—and he fully intends to kill them all again should they fail to sufficiently redeem themselves for what salem did, something they had nothing to do with on account of not having even existed at the time.

according to the gods, humanity as it is now deserves to die. if the relics were brought together and judgment day happened now, everyone on the planet would be killed. is that fair? is that just? is that right?

ozma decided that it was, when he chose to commit himself to the task of redeeming humanity. he is the chosen one of an evil god and it’s brought him nothing but suffering and a slow, painful corruption of his own ideals. because he serves a tyrant who holds that humanity deserves to die.

salem told him the salient information—that the gods slaughtered everyone—and may or may not have told him about her rebellion. (jinn says “salem, fearing ozma would reject her, blamed the end of the world on the gods.” that is not a statement that precludes salem sharing the events leading up to the massacre; she put the blame where it belongs, and the amount of detail she went into is ambiguous.) he told her nothing. they were happy for a time, and then ozma started to fret about humanity “seem[ing] more divided than ever.”

he’s the one who brings it up as a problem. salem suggests a possible solution and offers wholehearted support for something she believes is ozma’s personal ambition. she hears him worrying about the chaotic, troubled state of the world and enthusiastically goes well then, let’s use our power to help, let’s fix it!—at which point ozma visibly realizes that there’s a critical disconnect, because he wants to unite humanity to appease the gods and salem went right to making the world better than it was under the gods. he listens to her whole spiel with zero concern about the points she’s making until she says they could “create the paradise the old gods could not,” whereupon he goes D: and glances away as he realizes this. the time to tell her the whole truth was then, and he knew that, and he chose not to.

that’s where the manipulation lies. salem said something that firmly, unambiguously confirmed she would never get on board with the divine mandate—inherent to the idea of creating a paradise without the gods is the idea that humans not only don’t need the gods but might even be better off without them, and that worldview is simply incompatible with the view that humanity needs redemption in order to be worthy of existence—and ozma recognized that but still didn’t tell her the truth. he accepted her support for YEARS without ever telling her that his “ambition” was actually a mandate coming from the gods she despised and fundamentally opposed.

and then, once he started to get cold feet about the crusading tyranny thing, he dropped the mandate in her lap instead of engaging with the moral question of whether being crusading tyrants was the right call. “this isn’t what he asked of me” is a very different objection from “going to war to force our way of life on everyone else is wrong,” and we have no way of knowing how salem might have responded to the latter because at no point did ozma try to make an argument besides “the gods told me to do this.”

ironwood makes a good point of comparison here: imagine if, instead of the kids consistently challenging ironwood on his escalating authoritarian tendencies and urging him to choose another path, they had instead gamely gone along with everything he said and allowed him to think they agreed with him completely, only for oscar to confront at the very end not with an argument that abandoning millions to save a couple thousand is wrong but by going “ozpin told me he disapproves, so you should stop this.”

( kshfbsk also like. you realize that salem is effectively a grimm faunus, right. she’s a person with the physical traits of a grimm but a human soul. salem inexplicably looking like a grimm but still acting like a person in a world where other people equally inexplicably had animal traits is, um, not equivalent to mantle being crawling with drone soldiers and propaganda feeds and special forces who arrest people for defending themselves against the grimm. “ozma didn’t tell salem the truth because she looked scary and lived in the wilderness far away from all the people who told him scary stories about her and also kept their faunus slaves in literal cages” is… not the defense of him that you think it is )

and look: even if you buy that salem’s reasoning was “one of our four daughters has magic, therefore nothing the gods said matters and we can murder everyone to breed new magical humans somehow”—which, for the record, i don’t—the right thing would have been to challenge her on that thinking, the way oscar did with ironwood at the end of v7. ozma… didn’t do that. he was shocked and then he wavered for a moment before walking out, even though—as her partner, and someone she cared about enough to implicitly and immediately forgive him for lying to her for so long about something so important—if anyone could have gotten through to her, it would’ve been him. (see also: there’s a very quick beat right after she catches him leaving where salem relaxes her hands and begins to glance away while ozma visibly braces himself—it’s like half a second but very obvious once you notice it—followed by a very close shot on salem’s face as she catches that movement, startles, and angrily retaliates. like. ozma tensed up because he wasn’t sure how she would react, but salem started to back down until she perceived that motion as aggression. ozma had just revealed to her mere hours ago that he serves and intends to keep serving an evil god who threatened to kill everyone: she’s no less shocked, horrified, and blindsided by ozma’s moral position here than he is by hers. given that she was also fully dressed and headed for their daughters’ room in the dead of night there’s every possibility she was going to do the exact same thing, i.e. take the kids and run because her partner just sprinted past the point of no return. but because of that moment of hesitation and reaction, i think she would have been receptive to discussion had ozma actually tried to reason with her—just as ozma would have been receptive to discussion if salem had actually followed through on backing down.)

( and if she meant literally anything else, like for example “the gods left and won’t come back unless we summon them, so none of their threats matter and we can carry on replacing them as the new gods instead of ‘redeeming’ these humans,” then even just a single question about what she was thinking could have resolved the whole thing peacefully. their daughter having magic wasn’t relevant to the discussion and while jinn constructs the narrative to imply otherwise, and ozma was definitely unsettled by the development and had it in mind when he told salem the truth, there’s no indication that salem connected those dots. if salem were otherwise obsessed with magical power, sure, it’d be open and shut, but salem has literally never once spoken of magical power in a positive light. it’s always qualified with “it brings with it a crippling weakness” or “remember that it comes with a cost” and half her interactions with cinder involve salem trying more or less delicately to get cinder to STOP fixating on it and her methods are oriented around exploiting weakness and turning her opponents’ strengths against them, an approach that can and does succeed without requiring the use of magic at all. she’s… not exactly hung up on magic. )

anyway.

fundamental to my reading of salem is that i don’t think ozpin is correct about what she wants: that this isn’t suicide-by-eschaton, it’s salem going for the relics now because she has what she believes is a workable a plan to take down the gods. (that was her ultimate ambition for millions of years before ozma reincarnated. i don’t believe she’s abandoned it just because ozma committed to serving them.) also, the gods 1. hate her and have gone to extreme lengths to torment her, and 2. already ensured she would live and suffer through one extinction and apocalypse. salem has EVERY reason to expect that if the gods return and rule against humanity, they’ll obliterate the world and leave her stranded in the rubble again or worse.

she also knows exactly how cruel, exacting, and unfair the gods are. she knows that what the god of light meant by “demand our blessings” was “ask for things i don’t think you deserve,” because he perceived her genuinely humble first plea as a demand. she knows that this is an impossible ultimatum because as long as she is alive and defiant the gods will never, ever be satisfied, and they WILL condemn the rest of humanity for her defiance because they’ve done it before. and she knows that ozma is fully committed to carrying out their will, which means that if he ever feels like humanity is “united” enough, he’ll bring the relics together himself on faith that the gods will rule in humanity’s favor, and he’ll be wrong, and everyone except her will be killed. again.

i wonder why ozpin suddenly locking the relics away in magical vaults after engineering an unprecedented global peace by doing exactly what she once told him was necessary to unite the world, which is crushing everyone who stood against his ideology in battle and forcing them to submit to his vision of the world, might have FREAKED HER OUT A BIT. it’s a mystery.

ozma isn’t responsible for her choices, for the terrible things she’s done and is doing, but he is responsible for his own: for choosing to bow to a god who told him flat out that his entire species deserves to die. salem’s hatred of him, and her determination to prevent him from succeeding in his divine task, cannot be separated from her resistance to the god he serves.

[breached-containment-script]

I remember this from LoK pretty clearly because it sounded iffy to me already, even though at that time I hadn't watched ATLA yet and only knew the general arcs and premise.

Pema was overwhelmed by all the constant airbending and how "deeply"(?) everything in their life was immersed in the Air Nomad heritage, and the fact that she was carrying what, a fourth child felt like these people were making their own lives worse or strained, for the sake of "repopulating" airbenders. What didn't help was the heavy implication that both Lin and Tenzin still had feelings for each other, but split up as Lin didn't want children. Due to the setup, it is unclear how much of Tenzin's desire to have children was his own, and how much of it was from that being drilled into his head by his dad. Leading me to question how much Tenzin likes Pema versus how much she ticked the boxes of being a nonbending Air Acolyte who would bear many children.

And ultimately, at that time I thought it was uncomfortable but interesting because I perceived these characters as those who were supposed to be deeply flawed. Then later I'm learning that despite how clearly Aang's treatment of his children was Not Good, the audience is supposed to still view it as Good, just a bit "melancholic" because it "didn't all work out in his favour" (two children not being airbenders)? Writers should own up to narratives that portray characters as negative, even if those characters are supposed to be protagonists or "good guys". Especially when they canonically write Bumi II and Kya II as verbally confirming they suffered, and Bumi displaying very negative self-perception just for not being an airbender.

It's a bit confusing how many people in the fandom buy into the flawed idea that it's any character's responsibility to sacrifice their life in order to repopulate the world with airbenders, especially after LoK did that Harmonic Convergence event. Yes, what had happened to the Air Nomads was atrocious; but this responsibility idea centers Aang again and again due to his titular status as the Last airbender, which fails to recognize his other partner (whoever that might be) as also an equal human who deserves equal respect for themselves and their culture. It's a myopic view of the main character who was written as having moral high ground due to starting game code, basically.

Pema slides almost in an invisible way, because her starting characteristics are "already being in Air Acolyte culture", "willing to carry many children" and "having all children airbenders" (which doesn't actually escape the problem, it only masks it.) With Katara's case, the problem becomes glaringly obvious.

Some of my suggestions would be for the narrative to relax and embrace portraying Aang as deeply flawed; or that it had written him as learning and improving, he could have had children with multiple women after a divorce or two if they intended to keep the nuclear family aspect despite that clashing with the... ambiguous way of life of Air Nomads. But the way LoK canonized Aang and everything resulting from his behaviour and attitudes, does not paint him as a good person.

The many times I have seen someone be critical of the way Aang treats Katara and/or their kids and someone in the comments tries to use the Air Nomad genocide as an excuse is waaay too many.

Things along the lines of:

Aang has to marry Katara so they can repopulate the Air Nomads!

Aang has to take Tenzin on trips to train him in his culture (while entirely neglecting his other children and the other side of his family's cultural heritage) because otherwise it completes the Air Nomad genocide!

And um, no. Katara is not a baby-making machine and the responsibility for the Air Nomad genocide does not and should not rest on her and her children.

I even had someone tell me yesterday that if Katara were to say no to Aang taking Tenzin, that it would be "forced assimilation," and no. Tenzin is just as much Katara's child as he is Aang's, and she has a right to not want her child treated that way and she has a right to a voice in how he is raised culturally. Especially since what we know did happen in canon is that Aang completely cut Tenzin off from his Water Tribe heritage and his children didn't even know their grandmother. Defending that in the name of "preserving Air Nomad culture" is actually just misogyny.

Genocide and forced assimilation are, by definition, things that happen on an institutional scale and are done deliberately to destroy a culture. Katara making her own decisions about who she has children with and how those children are raised is not and should not be compared to those things. But it's actually not a new idea for men to use culture as a tool to control women. It's just regular old, run-of-the-mill misogyny tied up in progressive-sounding language.

[yiangchen]

Imagine calling Firelady Katara the “worst ATLA fanfic trope” when “Katara willingly gets pregnant as a teenager to start repopulating the Air Nomads” and “Toph gets ‘cured’ of her blindness” exist.

Yeah, I really don't get it, especially since every Fire Lady Katara fic I've ever read has been Katara-centered and explores the meshing of their two cultures. I'm not that familiar with KA fic, so I can't speak on that much, but in Zutara fic, Katara isn't forced to give up her culture at all and her life doesn't revolve around Zuko and giving him an heir, whereas in canon, Aang prioritizes the air acolytes and Tenzin over Katara and his non airbending children. Essentially, ZK is portrayed both in canon and fanon as being about both Zuko and Katara and their respective cultures, while KA is about Aang and his culture alone. Katara's not even allowed to fight and instead becomes a healer and has kids and is only responsible for the passing of one (1) law and isn't even present for Yakone's trial, whereas in Zutara fic, she's recognized for her fighting abilities and has a political career and wants a family. She's allowed to have it all.

[stitch1830]

Hi Stitch! Sending you another Taang ask, because we need more Taang on our lives 💚🧡

Now, my ask is more Taangst than Joy's, and I don't know if anyone sent something similar before, but what would be the reason for their first fight as a couple?

If you have already answered before, feel free to ignore it 😊

Hi Rise! Thanks for the ask! Happy to chat about Taang, because you're right, we do deserve more Taang in our lives!

That's a really good question, and I feel like it could be a number of things, depending on how they get together and what they've already talked about throughout their relationship.

For a first fight, I can see them arguing about Aang's duty as the Avatar. That seems like an issue that probably stays with Aang for most of his life is just him trying to balance his life as the Avatar, his role as the last airbender, and his own desires for his personal life. It's a delicate balance, and I can see Toph pushing him to lean toward one role over the other, trying to help him prioritize his responsibilities, and he just gets mad about it.

It's a lot of pressure, and his instinct tells him to run when he's under pressure, so Toph getting on his case about his life probably pushes him toward bursting a few times. He'd yell at her that she doesn't understand, perhaps complains that he can't handle it, stuff like that. Toph is just trying to help him, but she's so straightforward and direct with Aang that sometimes it rubs him the wrong way. And when he fights back, she digs her heels in and doubles down on her arguments. I think her instinct would be to stand her ground, to counter all of Aang's arguments until he caves, because she doesn't lose to Twinkletoes, even if she loves him. Her competitiveness gets the best of her during the fight, and she forgets the reason she's arguing with him in the first place.

Honestly though, I feel like this type of argument is one that is short lived. They both get furious quickly, but after a beat, they learn to think about the other's perspective and can get past their troubles.

Another argument could be one that is left to simmer for years but then there comes a time and things just boil over. I feel like while Aang never explicitly states that he needs to have children to repopulate the Air Nation, I think it's this cloud that hangs over them, whether they want it to or not.

Aang just wants kids because he loves kids, but of course, if Toph says that they're not having kids, he wouldn't push her. He'd be sad, but it wouldn't sway his decision to stay with Toph. Toph probably gets it in her head that Aang says he doesn't want/need kids, but that he's lying (she knows he's not, but a part of her always thinks this). She shuts him out whenever the conversation comes up, because while she's never told him that they're never having kids and that she doesn't want kids, she doesn't necessarily think that she'd be a great mother.

It's a lot of internal conflict on Toph's end that has her pushing him away and maybe even trying to break off their relationship, but Aang learned from the best about how to be stubborn like the earth. All he does during this time is try to convince her that he doesn't need kids to be happy, just her.

Eventually, they do talk about it and start to have a conversation around kids, but it just takes them a while, and the argument is prolonged simply because Toph shuts the conversation down whenever Aang brings it up for the first few years.

Okay! I think that answers the question, if not, feel free to ask more questions, Rise! Always enjoy chatting about Toph and Aang and Taang and ATLA haha ;)

Thanks again for the ask, and I hope you have a great day!

......

Send me asks about ATLA, or anything, really! :D

[kyoshi-lesbians]

Then, might you be willing to share any general Air Nomad headcanond you might have? Or any headcanons about the other four nations you've got.

ahhh ty for asking! i go on about the air nomads so often lol so for the other nations

before the war there was a tradition of fire nation women visiting Kyoshi Island to learn self defense techniques. not women of the army, just women who wanted to protect themselves and their family

the town that the herbalist lives in is the remnants of a prestigious medical university. for centuries healers from all four nations gathered to learn from each other’s techniques and discuss theory 

you know how schools have snow days? at the southern air temple, every once in a while the monks would take the kids to visit the SWT just for funsies. like a snow day. this is how Aang loves penguin sledding 

i wasnt the one to think this up hdc and i can’t find the post where it was started, but the Library was like the House of Wisdom to the sandbenders. It was their institution as much as, if not more so than Wong Shi Tong’s. until the war broke out it was the greatest intellectual hub in the atla world, and it becomes so again after the war  

there are a lot of villages in the earth kingdom that the central government doesn't even know about lol theres more towns up in the mountains like the town within the secluded mountain range mentioned in the RoK (which i think that was repopulated at some point)

there are whole islands in the fire nation filled w/ natural hot springs and bath houses that before the war were famous resort / tourist towns  

white jade white jade white jade! (aka international society of women who actually get shit done lmao). the white jade and white lotus used to be one orginazation, but there was a schism a few thousand years back when certain members became more concerned with power than international cooperation and learning. kanna, yugoda, aunt wu, the herbalist, hama, and lo and li are members. a bit later on katara, chief of the SWT, becomes the youngest member to ever join