#the air nation

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[queen-morgana91]

Avatar the Last Airbender beautifully told the story of how imperialists lie and have to be called on it and yet somehow certain people missed that message and turned into fire nation apologists

[demaparbat-hp]

Golden Boy (and Silver Girl) for the Kintsugi AU.

[atlaculture]

how do you think the calendar is organized in the atla universe? they have a twelve-month system like we do but what would those months each be called? do you think they have leap years?

Right off the bat, let me just say that hypothetical calendars and alternative timekeeping is one of my favorite topics to talk about so this reply is going to be lengthy.

First off, everything we know about the calendar system in Avatar comes from the planetary calendar room in Wan Shi Tong's library.

The innermost ring indicates the number of months in a year (12), the second ring indicates the number of days in a month (30), the third ring indicates the different Avatar eras (16 shown), and the outermost ring showcases all of the animals of the zodiac cycle (12). For this reply, we're only going to be focusing on the innermost and second innermost rings.

According to the episode, the ATLAverse appears to have only 12-month years, so no leap year 13th month like the East Asian lunar calendar. There also doesn't appear to be any months with more than 30 days, judging by the number of days shown on the calendar. This means that the maximum number of possible days for an Avatar year is 360. So it's safe to say that there are probably no leap years like ours in the ATLAverse. I guess their Earth's orbit is slightly shorter and more suited for timekeeping than ours.

As for what each month would be called in the ATLAverse, there's a couple of options. One option is to simply call the months by order: First month, second month, third month, etc. This actually ties back to Avatar's Chinese influence, as that's literally how months are named in Mandarin. This is straightforward, practical, and doesn't require any complex etymology or extensive worldbuilding.

However, I also think it would be fun to weave motifs into the calendar. Since there's so much emphasis on balance and cycles, why not divide the twelve months between the four elements? I imagine these months would be referred to as:

The 1st, 2nd, & 3rd Water Month

The 1st, 2nd & 3rd Earth Month

The 1st, 2nd, & 3rd Fire Month

The 1st, 2nd, & 3rd Air Month

For example, a person might say "I was born during the first water month, in the year of the rabbit." Naturally, there would be plenty of superstitions and horoscopes related to the combination of birth month and birth year.

The show also canonically mentions weeks passing by, although they never specify the number of days in their weeks. In a previous post, I mentioned that government officials during the Qin & Han Dynasty were given a day off every five days to bathe themselves. I think this would be a good basis for a week in the ATLAverse, four days of work and one day of rest. Each working day would be named after a cardinal direction (East-day, North-day, West-day, South-day) and the resting day would be called "Center-day", paralleling a compass.

In short, an ATLA month would be comprised of 6 five-day weeks and a year would be made up of 12 thirty-day months; the days would be themed around the cardinal directions and the months would be themed around the four elements. I think this would be a good way of adding texture to the world of Avatar, without weighing the setting down with too much worldbuilding or cultural baggage.

...And that would just be the default "world" calendar that spirit libraries and world travelers and international organizations would use. I think each nation would probably have their own unique calendar tailored to suit their own cultural and seasonal needs.

I might make a few posts on what each nation's calendar system might be, if anyone would like to read that.

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

https://ko-fi.com/atlaculture

[hinamie]

Yuuji: Bye, im going to the fire nation!

Sukuna: Not dressed like you aren't.

Proceeds to give Yuuji a boob window in his clothes

ngl anon i took this bit way too seriously n got carried away thinking abt what yuuji's fire nation alternate fit would look like ,, then after figuring it out I thought well now I /have/ to draw air as well ....

jjk atla!au with @philosophiums

[pukindog-v2]

A-10C Thunderbolt II of 175th Wing, Maryland Air National Guard

[multifandom--mess]

fromage will graham is so babygirl princess i need him so bad

[cephalopodish]

lean down, let me whisper something in your ear

[brighteuphony]

I love Chiyo- and I kind of headcanon her as a Witch of the Woods (Sands???) archetype- a bitter old woman who has sacrificed too much, experienced and committed more atrocities than anyone can imagine, and who knows the truth about what lies in the hearts of men to live among the villages anymore.

In my AU she's got a pretty dark backstory. Back in time when Villages were just getting established, women weren't allowed to be shinobi in the same capacity as men. There was too much warring and death among the clans to risk women, so they were only ever allowed to serve as spies or medics. (Chiyo started off as a medic).

And like any military/fascist dictatorship, serving the state was more important than anything else- so women who were kunoichi were given missions to steal and return with powerful bloodlines. Even before villages, this was a common fear among clans (which is why so many of them have protective measures and inbreed/arrange matches very carefully).

Chiyo was one such woman, who took a X-rated mission in her youth because she was told it would 'serve her nation'. There was a powerful bloodline whose Kekkei Genkai could harden sand to something akin to Steel- something Suna very desperately wanted.

Chiyo succeeded in her mission, but despite the veneer of 'serving your nation', when she returned, she was considered, in her words, "Just another whore."

Then when her son didn't manifest the bloodline- it was worse, but Chiyo was happy because that meant her son was HERS. (This is when she met Enji, and he saved her son's life at great cost- so Chiyo owes him a blood/life debt.)

Then the war came, and they needed women to fight so now serving the nation meant something different, and Chiyo became a full fledged 'shinobi' and turned her healing towards poison and death- especially when she had to fight the Salamander.

Then she sealed Gaara and that was the atrocity straw that broke the camel's back and she dipped out Suna and retired to an oasis. She's still a healer, but adamantly refuses to serve shinobi.

Once again, thank you so much for these asks and all the support for this AU?

@youngpeacearbiter

[nocternalrandomness]

Mudhen out of PDX

[akiizayoi4869]

The discourse around the Roku Novel has been so amusing to me for the past few days that I just had to make my own post about this lmao. Ok so for all of the morons in this fandumb who are hating on Gyatso for what he said to Roku (despite the fact that he was entirely within his rights to do so. There is nothing better than to have someone being blunt with you about something when you absolutely need that reality check) and saying "why are they trying to make the Fire Nation look worse?! This is terrible writing" I just have one thing to say: THAT'S THE ENTIRE DAMN POINT🤣. Of course we're going to be shown the Fire Nation being shitty and whatnot, this is before the freaking 100 year war started! You really think that the Fire Nation was all sun shine and rainbows before Sozin's reign? Looks like Roku wasn't the only one who needed that reality check from Gyatso. If the Fire Nation was this place where nothing fucked up was happening and everything was perfect, it would have never given rise to a man like Sozin, and he never would have done what he did. The novel is pretty much giving us a glimpse of what the Fire Nation was like during Roku's time, and how it ultimately resulted in the war. I don't know how or why that's so hard for some people to understand.

Also, the Fire Nation committed a genocide. Pretty sure you can't get any worse than that lol.

[queen-morgana91]

i find something so fascinating about a character remaining so gentle, empathetic and true to himself after going through so much.

Not because he's a monk, but because he knows and understands how destructive pain, vengeance, pure anger and hatred could be

Aang is one of the strongest characters in the series. I would say the strongest actually

[lululeighsworld]

it was literally their moment and they just let us watch

(if you need me i'll be marinating in this for the foreseeable future)

[sillybillylulu]

Part 2 of all my atla screenshot redraws

Part 1 here

[atlaculture]

What's in a Name: Fake Name Edition

I thought it'd be be fun to cover the silly pseudonyms that the characters have used in the show.

Bonzu Pippinpaddleopsicopolis - Buddhist Monk (房主) in Medieval Japanese... Pippinpaddleopsicopolis. Very subtle, Aang. ;)

Hua Mei - Beautiful flower (花美) in Mandarin Chinese. The name becomes hilarious when you consider that Katara chose the word Dung for Toph's pseudonym right afterwards.

Wang Fire - Literally the most common surname in China (王)... Fire.

Lee - Literally the second most common surname in China (李).

Mushi - Bug in Japanese (虫). Poor Iroh.

All in all, Katara and Zuko are both terrible at naming people on the spot.

[goldthorn-archive]

Demons by The National / gif 1 by @appletvdaily / gifs 2-4 by @basilone