#avatar the las airbender

[magickibum]

zuko bebe

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[yell0wsalt]

Nomad and Childhood Trauma

Day 15 of whumptloktober

“Tenzin, you have to get away. Go hide. Now!”

Aang’s voice was strung tight as a chord. A firm commanding deepness Tenzin hadn’t ever had the displeasure of witnessing before. Even when leaning into the harsher side of parenting with his siblings or playing the authoritarian Avatar card fighting other political leaders, those scenarios all now paled in comparison to the directive Tenzin faced.

He puffed up his chest as his features turned to a frown. “No, Dad! I’m not going to leave you! I can fight! We can do this together.”

The shrills and screeches the spirit let out resonated in Aang’s and Tenzin’s ears.

Tenzin fought the violent urge to wince. 

Several of the structures about the Southern Air Temple had begun to shake. The spirit grew increasingly angry, transforming to be darker in color and bigger in size. Its tentacle-like arms flailed in reckless patterns, destroying all within its vicinity.

“Tenzin!” Aang boomed. “This is not a game. You need to hide. Get somewhere safe!”

“Dad!”

Aang pressed his lips thin, a sharp glare towards his son for a second.

It was clear he was fighting certain reprimands. Until they dissolved in the wind.

Aang’s arms silently fell to his sides. He decidely closed his eyes, searching for something within.

Tenzin watched his father breathe in and out slowly. The silence between them deafening, washing away the dragon-bird-like screeches the spirit had evolved to make.

Eventually, Aang opened his eyes. A resolute stony yet solem gray. 

Kneeling down to a rushing hug, Aang took in his young son. His small yet sturdy presence, his fresh Air Nomad robes, his freshly shaven head free of tattoos. 

“I love you, Tenzin,” Aang said as a gentle whisper in the minute space between them. “Tell your mother, brother, and sister I love them as well.”

Blown in a panic, Tenzin’s eyes darted back and forth. 

“Dad– wait. No. What are you sayin–”

“Goodbye.”

With a subtle turn of his palm down to the ground, the earth beneath Tenzin opened up to a void. 

His screams tapered off, unable to escape being swallowed by the hole, too.

Finally landing at the bottom of the pit, Tenzin furiously clawed and banged against the gritty earthen wall, screaming for his father past the point of straining in pain.

He’s never encountered evil spirits before… has he?

[aangtheairbender]

Not to be that person, but i think wokeness will kill the live actions atla films and even lok films in the future.

[naonap]

atla doodles... i wish i could watch it for the first time again

[die-auster]

The moment I saw that wooden fish on @chiptrillino's moon-Yue redesigns (she is soooooo talented!!!!!!) I wanted to draw this comic strip.

Id in ALT

[mryddinwyllt]

[bluespirlt]

omashu?.. you mean..

the city founded in honor of star crossed lovers, whose villages were enemies?..

who wore red and blue clothing?..

...

the bait is baiting but i am no better than a fish

[adajel]

[sabellart]

i would’ve sobbed uncontrollably if moon spirit sokka existed, but i had to fulfill my vision

[firenaition]

cutting down sokka's misogyny and calling the live action a serialized drama. we're so cooked

[wilcze-kudly]

So um. I genuinely don't have many thoughts on the live action atla. It looks fine.. i guess

Except. Zuko's scar.

It's so... underwhelming. Like yeah it's there. It's red and it has a little bit of texture. But I guess i was hoping the live action would make it a little more prominent.

Like I'm a burn victim myself, who very much went through a similar struggle Zuko did. Where i felt like my scars define me. This. This feels not like what i hoped for. They even let him keep his eyebrow 😤

And I'm hoping that it's just because it wasn't practical to go all out with it. Like it was too expensive to put full prosthetics and special effects on such a young actor for every shoot.

But i have this sinking feeling in my gut that its because he's 'meant to be attractive'. Or even more heartbreakingly, that making it bigger would be considered too 'gory' or 'body horror'.

And im just tired of seeing scars and other 'deformities' as being seen as something to only be shown in full capacity in horror movies. That it would be too visceral or too 'gross' to fully show. It reinforces the idea that people like Zuko, people like me have something inherently disgusting and ugly about us. That our features have to be toned down in order to be palatable to a wider audience.

I remember seeing Zuko for the first time as a kid and seeing a part of myself that was rarely represented. I was bullied for my skin grafts as a child. Of course i was, kids are cruel. But seeing Zuko go through the struggles i went through and to have him find people who didn't treat him differently was so important to me. Like to me, that part of his story was arguably more important than his redemption arc.

And seeing Zuko seen as attractive by people in the fandom was also a profound experience. Because it felt like i could too exist in my full burnt chicken nugget glory and still be treated as a full person. Not looked at with pity or disgust.

So that's why live action Zuko's scar is such a disappointment to me.

I have other thoughts on the atla remake but really, they don't matter that much, since i don't think ill be watching it

[magickibum]

zuko bebe

[yell0wsalt]

Air and Nowhere Else to Go

Day 17 of whumptloktober

“I’m so sorry, sweetie. You’re not an air bender.”

At the age of six, Bumi didn’t necessarily understand the weight of the hug with which his mother braced him. Blue-grey eyes peered over his mother’s shoulder to stare off to an indeterminate point. The tone in her voice he didn’t understand how to define until years later as pity caught in his ears. Resonating.

Several years later, their family expanded to welcome his younger sister Kya. Two years later, they celebrated when a tantrum Kya had resulted in the disruption of several cups of tea served at the table.

While everyone was acting weird, Bumi thought it was a cute trick. He was intimately familiar with his mother as a water bending master, so it wasn’t anything grandiose per se. 

Just a baby.

Another two years later, the family grew once more. 

Tenzin.

He was so… squishy.

It was so tempting to just… 

Poke.

Tenzin’s cheek caved in like soft dough. Just as squishy as he thought.

Another time, Tenzin’s face wrinkled and he sneezed.

In that moment the juxtaposition of how everything got incredibly larger and smaller at the same time was palpable.

Katara when she wasn’t doing her work building up the Southern Water Tribe and making healing more accessible to benders in the Northern Water Tribe, she’d train Kya, building up her skills. There were instances when Katara was able to do this bringing Kya and Bumi to the Northern Water Tribes. 

Bumi was excited. It was fascinating to him to discover the world and see all it had to offer.

How quickly did the light in his eyes dim when he’d look to his left and right and find neither his mother nor sister there.

Looking back at home, his father was busy, to put it mildly. 

It was a fact of life Bumi had become acclimated to over the years. Being the Avatar was a lot of work. The world needed him. He was the last air bender. While that title no longer applied with Tenzin in the picture, it managed to get infinitely worse. 

Sometimes Bumi joined the two on their Air Nomad bending trips, but those soon fell in line to how the trips with his mom and Kya would go.

Eventually… he gave up. 

For increasingly longer stretches of time, he’d spend time with his Uncle Sokka and Aunt Suki. They got him. They understood. They made him feel at home with their own kids. 

Uncle Sokka and Aunt Suki weren’t his mom and dad, though. They had their own kids to wrangle as well. It helped curb what he needed, but only so far.

In a moment of solitude, Bumi sat at one of the hilltops overlooking Yue Bay. The wind he couldn’t control rushed past him. He buried his head in his knees pulled up to his chest to protect him from the cool blast of air, but it was too loud.

A crashing wave to the hillside gratefully cut through the noise, coaxing Bumi to peer up through tear-stained eyes. 

Maybe the bay could be his salvation.

[k8lynjoy]

I'm so tired of people telling those of us who are upset about the LA atla remake that we are "being too dramatic" or are just "finding things to be upset about". We are allowed to be upset that something that we love so dearly has been butchered, AGAIN. If you liked it, then that's your personal opinion, but don't sit here and tell those of us who didn't that we're the problem.

I personally think the CGI, costumes, and sets all look terrible. None of it is immersive. Sure, it LOOKS like atla, but it doesn't FEEL like atla. The heart of the og is gone, and people are allowed to be upset about this. They've altered characters to the point that they aren't the character anymore (looking at you Aang and Katara), which is a huge upset for me personally because Katara is one of my favorite characters ever. So watching her be turned into someone meek and docile is more than a slap to the face. Not to mention them removing her as the narrator as if Bryke themselves didn't state that Katara is the person the story is being told through. And before you start telling me that Aang is the same. No, he isn't. Major parts of his development through season 1 (him coming to terms with the fact that he's the avatar and embracing that role, and him also accepting the fact that he RAN AWAY and how he is never going to do that again, which is also pivotal to his character later on) are completely removed. And don't even get me started on what they did to Kataang. Regardless of whether you ship them or not, those 2 are deeply connected to one another from the start, and their relationship is a big part of the show, so to see that butchered is heartbreaking for me.

This isn't just about them "making some changes" or it not being a 1:1 adaptation. I'm fine with adaptations that aren't 1:1. What I'm upset about is that the changes they are making are VITAL changes to characters and dynamics between characters. They're rushing through the plot and condensing the story (and I will scream if I hear one more person say that it's because they couldn't fit it all in with their runtime. The runtime is an HOUR LONGER than the og, so yes, they did have the time). The changes they are making make it evident that they do not understand the og show, and if you don't feel like that, fine, once again, that's YOUR opinion, just as this is MY opinion. So stop telling us we have no right to be upset and that we just want to hate everything. That's not true. What is true is that we are expressing valid complaints about another bad adaptation of something dear to us.

Edit: If you also come at people who are upset bc they were expecting a faithful adaptation and didn't get it bc "its not supposed to be the cartoon," you're missing the whole point. An adaptation is ADAPTING SOMETHING from one medium to the other, not rewriting it. "Yall expected it to be just like the cartoon." No, I expected a FAITHFUL ADAPTATION and was met with poorly written fanfiction.

[thatoneshippermina]

Okay so I’m done and.. (spoilers ahead)

The scarf thing (I might have screamed)

Oma and Shu are still red and blue 👀

Kataang didn’t have a moment in the Cave of two lovers

[die-auster]

Inspired by one incorrect quote I can't find :(

It went on kind of like this: Hama said that the moon gives her power, and Katara replied that the moon gives her more power since Katara's brother dated her. If you know this post please please please tell me so I could credit the author of the original idea.

Id in ALT