#atla background character

[bemnie]

ATLA Tumblr i desperately need ur help! for some reason i decided itd be fun to look at all the characters shown in the southern water tribe in episode 1 and 2 of atla and attempt to draw them, give them names, personalities, and roles in the village ! (as well as attempt to match them up with the comic characters from wolf cove aurghh)

so , so far I have done Woman 1 , shown below !

Because she is 1 of the younger adult women and she surprisingly has a pattern detail on her sash(?) I have decided to headcanon her as 1 of the stronger women. I think she may lead most of the hunting and fishing trips while the men are off fighting the war. I think boy 2 or boy 3 may be 1 or both of her sons, not sure yet. I think I want to draw everyone first before I start assigning family units. BUT! what i would like help with if anyone is so inclined is naming. Naming characters has always been a bit of a struggle for me and it does not help that Water Tribe names are derived from a culture i do not know much about! When I look at Woman 1 the words Crane and Seal come into my brain for some reason, but I'm not sure how to translate thoses into a native language or condense the words into an Avatar friendly name ! If anyone has any ideas or suggestions that would be insanely appreciated! (even not name related, just anything regarding this project :3)

[livingmeatloaf]

There is only one way to make a truly wonderful Avatar adaptation, not matter how bad it turns out to be:

A professionally shot, full length stage production of the Ember Island Players' Fire Nation propaganda version of the events

[demaparbat-hp]

“Zuko?” Ming searched for the Prince in his silence. He was staring intently out of the window, mouth blown wide open, eyes distant and awed and sincere. Oh. His whisper was a fragile, breathless thing.

“We're here.”

Ming’s doubts and concerns are hers alone, but that doesn't mean the rest of the Crew doesn't share them. This sudden mission, Zuko's change in attitude, his obsession with the Water Tribes...

Ming tries to discover the root of it all in For the Spirits Chapter VIII: Make You Stay, but will Zuko let her in?

[p2ii]

control

[allgremlinart]

LOVE korra fandom actually. it's considerably smaller and therefore considerably less annoying . falalalalaaaa we dont even have twink wars here .. you WISH...

[3cosmicfrogs]

im gonna be real with you chief, i may not like the natla, but i enjoy natla zhao even more than OG zhao. og zhao was a sleazebag but natla zhao is like your bitter workplace enemy Michael who works in middle management. entirely and utterly pathetic, serving officecore loser. giving a bit of a gay-but-votes-conservative vibe. which to me is very enjoyable, i liked having him on my screen.

[cepheusgalaxy]

Missed opportunity in Wish tbh

[Image description: The blonde triplets from Beauty and the Beast, color coded in red, yellow and green. /end ID.]

[Image description: Picture of a paper sheet, with a sketch of three guys in similar, medieval clothes, each with a different color (red, yellow and green). An arrow points to them and says "all blond" and a note above them all reads: "based on the triplets from Beauty and the Beast". /end ID.]

Yknow. With all the references

[wojakgallery]

Title/Name: Big Brain Atlas in Space Known As: In Greek mythology, Atlas is a Titan who for his part in the Titans’ revolt against the gods is forced by Zeus to support the heavens or sky on his shoulders for eternity after the Titanomachy. Wojak Series:  Brainiak (Variant), Stronkjak (Variant). Image by: Unknown Main Tag: Atlas Wojak

[autistic-katara]

oh my god can ppl find a reason to ship/not ship something that’s in the middle of a ship war w/o trying to make out the other character to be the worst person in existence? honest to god it’s not that hard to say “this ship doesn’t work for me bcz of xyz” u rlly do not need to go “uhhh actually no it’s not character a that’s a horribly racist asshole who thinks SA is cool (that’s so stupid wtf, they barely did anything), its character b. did u not see how they [smallest thing possible]??? can’t believe the hypocrisy u have going on here…” like seriously PLEASE u do not have to justify urself to this level it just makes everything 10x more annoying

[orbitfalls]

been having young druella thoughts lately….

[pencilofawesomeness]

Recently caught up with Code Adam and this goober has been living in my brain. Imagine getting shot, faking your death because you're sick of being feared as the military's living weapon, only knowing violence, and then when you learn friendship you're so emotionally tied up you can't even use violence to save them.

Gold medal to Iantis / Otto for being the narrative's punching bag, so much so that the narrative couldn't even bring it up until later because being forgotten is part of the punch.

I'm so normal about him. So normal.

Original panel I redrew this from under the cut:

[morallygay]

Apparently there’s a poll trend of putting 10 of your fav female characters and ppl vote for their fav.

I’m kinda reluctant to the idea bc ppl will just vote for those they know and I’ll be sad to see beloved characters of mine have no/few votes just bc they’re less known. BUT! The main point is just to share some female characters you like bc #feminism so. I would gladly. And I tried putting relatively well-known media and characters.

[discordiansamba]

it's him

the last airbender

[demaparbat-hp]

For the Spirits— Chapter V: There Was Sun

I wish I could dream like I used to dream

I wish I could be all the things that I used to be

When there was sun

—There Was Sun by Nothing But Thieves

.

Zuko was a child when he first met Agni. He couldn’t remember the dream, not really. He woke up with ragged breaths and eyes older than his years on earth. Whenever he tried to drag the memories to the surface all that could be found was a blank space where the night’s visions should be. Zuko knew he had met Agni in the dream because that’s when the whispers started. The next day, a six-year-old Fire Prince burned for the first time.

[erisenyo]

Hey there, can I ask how you come up with your OC names?

Anon I am THRILLED you asked because I am about to dump so much in-my-head-only worldbuilding on you, so much more than you probably needed or wanted lol.

As always this is not short, and forgive in advance the butchery I’m about to do of like, all of phonetics and linguistics.

OKAY so generally speaking, when it comes to names I have a set of foundational building blocks/general guidelines for the various countries and I work from there. These are based on phonetic characteristics of the canon names we see, and then from there I'd start layering in additional fun along groupings I've noticed around gender or class or family lines or whatever if I want to take the worldbuilding that deep.

So for example, with the Water Tribes…

We have Sokka, Katara, Hakoda, Bato, Kya all from the South, so I pick out...

Hard K or T sounds being quite common

Primarily A and O as vowels

Vowels being between consonants (ie, being single vowels)

Names being 2-3 syllables

In the North, we see Yue, Hahn, Agna Qel’a, Arnook, Kanna, Pakku...

Some similarities with the Ks and hard Qs

Now we see some softer ‘gn’ and ‘hn’ and L sounds, and the addition of P (which makes Bato’s “B” and Sokka’s “S” stand out)

Some ‘oo’ instead of ‘o’ vowels (so double vowels)

Hahn and Yue with no hard consonant sound at all (and both upper class!)

So that gives us some basic starting blocks to start building up names that sound like they fit within the Water Tribe culture in terms of sounds, as well as some potential regional and class differences to start working with! (Maybe Q sounds are only in the North, and upper-class people have soft consonant names, for example.)

Similarly in the Fire Nation…

The royal family is Zuko, Azula, Ozai, Azulon, Sozin, Iroh, Lu Ten, so...

A lot of Z and K sounds

(Male) names that end in N

A lot of two-syllable names (with the emphasis on the first syllable)

A lot of riffs on each other (Sozin and Ozai, Azulon and Azula, Azulon and Zuko)

Iroh and Lu Ten stand out as having fairly distinct names comparatively, with the “oh” ending and the softer "Ir" and "Lu" starts

Chan, Zhao, and Ruon-Jian are the other upper-class guys we see, which gives us...

short syllables again

N endings (for men) agai

The ‘two word’ name again (so Lu Ten's name naming structure is used elsewhere)

The introduction of “Ch” and “J” and “R” and double-vowel sounds (ao, uo, ia)

We also see Roku and Kuzon...

So very similar names to our royal bunch with those Ks and Zs and oku/uko and uzon/ulon sounds

Also older names from 100+ years ago, and commoner names

Mai, Ursa, Ty Lee as our upper-class ladies gives us...

short syllables again

‘two word’ names again

M sounds!

Mai and Ursa both don't have a hard consonant stop

Some phonetic/vibey similarity with “Mai” and “Ty”

And adding in Chit Sang (another commoner!) (presumably!)...

Another two-word name

Introduces the ‘ng’ ending

Leverages a lot of the consonant sounds we already saw

Uses an “it” usage of the "I" vowel (vs Iroh’s I)

So pulling it all together, in addition to those foundational consonant and vowel sounds, we also see that the royal family has a distinct naming convention that may be rooted in archaic naming styles.

And we can start to build out some ideas around gendered naming, family/honorific naming, and some potential class/pre-unification culture differences, as well as some space to speculate about why Iroh and Lu Ten’s names are so different from the rest of the royal family, too (as well as the ammunition to suggest that Zhao comes from a family of suck-ups lol)

Moving onto the Earth Kingdom (where I truly went wild)…

We start off with Toph, Haru, Long Feng, Kuei, Jet, Bumi, Poppy, Lao, and there's a lot of varability here!

Generally, the names are one or two syllables and start with a consonant

We see more double-vowel pairs (uei, ao), perhaps in the upper class but just as many single vowels

Consonants are hard or soft, and don't seem to group like the Water Tribe or FN royals did around particular sounds

Names end in vowels or hard sounds or softer 'ph' and 'ng'

Those guardrails are fairly wide and broad for feeling out distinct-sounding names, but it makes sense given how huge the Earth Kingdom is and its history of war, displacement, movement, etc.

So for a fic like That Love You've Been Looking For which was super EK-centric and focused on worldbuilding, I ended up breaking it down into broad regions and leaning into place names as well to help articular some basic rules:

In the southwest (Gaoling, Toph, Lao, Poppy), I decided that there’d be a mix of single and two-word names, and that the ‘ph’ ending would be used by women and the ‘ng’ ending for men

On the western coast (Haru, Omashu, Bumi), I went with primarily two-syllable names that follow a ONE-two pattern (PA-lo, BU-mi, CHE-lu, HA-ru) and went with mostly softer consonants

In the north (Ba Sing Se, Si Wong Desert, Long Feng), I went with short multi-word names where each part would be a single syllable

And in the center I was kind of pulling it together from what was left, but I went with names that end with an ‘an’ or ‘in’ sound and echoed some of the place names I was using

So we have some building blocks for the various regions, this time that we can use to indicate where someone’s family could be from and to give each region a more specific feel.

For Kyoshi...

I generally lift the Earth Kingdom rules, but view it as more of a trade-center and melting pot (Suki could fit in WT or FN rules), so it's deliberately a lot looser and with more variation.

And everywhere has a Lee/Li, so none of these rules are hard and fast, and I imagine too that there’s a ton of cultural mixing and fads and trends and whatnot in naming across various regions.

A quick note from a process standpoint--

This approach is very much not trying to find names within various existing real-world cultures. If I'm writing ATLA canon-world, I tend to stick to the idea of leveraging real-world contexts as a base rather than a strict guide. Something I wanted to flag, as there are other ways to go about OC naming that lean much more heavily into researching the naming conventions of various cultures throughout history, thinking about translation and name meaning, etc.

And also, if I need a lot of names, I'll often use the Fantasy Name Generator and look for names that either fit or that I can tweak into the above 'rules.' (Otherwise I accidentally start giving people ship names lol, RIP to Mailee, Maizula, and Yutara, you lived on under new personas)

I also don't always dig as deeply into the way names can signify class or status or whatnot, either. It can be very fun, but sometimes you just need a one-off name so your POV character looks like they actually interact with the people they nominally see every day haha

Editing 10/24 to add - this is representative of my prior approach, going forward I have shifted to leveraging real names as much as possible and building headcanons around, for example, different real-world inspired cultural influences within the nations

[imjustavenuxwithaboomerang]

made the gaang with this picrew cause i have too much time on my hands, enjoy