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Realistic Injuries 1 2 ⚜ Rejection ⚜ Structural Issues ⚜ Villains

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Terms of Endearment ⚜ Ways of Saying "No" ⚜ Yoga

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Here’s the thing about the air nomads.

I introduced a friend to ATLA a few nights ago, and they had only known two things about the entire show: the cabbage meme, and that Aang apparently wants to ride every large and dangerous animal he can possibly find. We got through the first five or so episodes, and my friend noted that Aang is exactly what a 12-year-old would be like if given godlike powers, and that this is literally just what he could do with airbending. He can’t even wield any of the other elements, and he’s one of the most powerful people on the planet, because he’s an airbender.

And that got me thinking.

This snippet from Bitter Work is one of the few pieces of concrete information we get about the airbenders, at least in ATLA. Iroh is explaining to Zuko how all four of the elements connect to the world and to each other.

Fire is the element of power, of desire and will, of ambition and the ability to see it through. Power is crucial to the world; without it, there’s no drive, no momentum, no push. But fire can easily grow out of control and become dangerous; it can become unpredictable, unless it is nurtured and watched and structured.

Earth is the element of substance, persistence, and enduring. Earth is strong, consistent, and blunt. It can construct things with a sense of permanence; a house, a town, a walled city. But earth is also stubborn; it’s liable to get stuck, dig in, and stay put even when it’s best to move on.

Water is the element of change, of adaptation, of movement. Water is incredibly powerful both as a liquid and a solid; it will flow and redirect. But it also will change, even when you don’t want it to; ice will melt, liquid will evaporate. A life dedicated to change necessarily involves constant movement, never putting down roots, never letting yourself become too comfortable.

We see only a few flashbacks to Aang’s life in the temples, and we get a sense of who he was and what kind of upbringing he had.

This is a preteen with the power to fucking fly. He’s got no fear of falling, and a much reduced fear of death. There’s a reason why the sages avoid telling the new avatar their status until they turn sixteen; could you imagine a firebender, at twelve years old, learning that they were going to be the most powerful person in the whole world? Depending on that child, that could go so badly.

But the thing about Aang, and the thing about the Air Nomads, is that they were part of the world too. They contributed to the balance, and then they were all but wiped out by Sozin. What was lost, there? Was it freedom? Yes, but I think there’s something else too, and it’s just yet another piece of the utter brilliance of the worldbuilding of ATLA.

To recap: we have power to push us forward; we have stability to keep us strong; we have change to keep us moving.

And then we have this guy.

The air nomads brought fun to the world. They brought a very literal sense of lightheartedness.

Sozin saw this as a weakness. I think a lot of the world did, in ATLA. Why do the Air Nomads bother, right? They’re just up there in their temples, playing games, baking pies in order to throw them as a gag. As Iroh said above, they had pretty great senses of humour, and they didn’t take themselves too seriously.

But that’s a huge part of having a world of balance and peace.

It’s not just about power, or might, or the ability to adapt. You can have all of those, but you also need fun. You need the ability to be vulnerable, to have no ambitions beyond just having a good day. You need to be able to embrace silliness, to nurture play, to have that space where a very specific kind of emotional growth can occur. Fun makes a hard life a little easier. Fun makes your own mortality a little less frightening to grasp. Fun is the spaces in between, that can’t be measured by money or military might. Fun is what nurtures imagination, allows you to see a situation in a whole new light, to find new solutions to problems previously considered impossible.

Fun is what makes a stranger into a friend, rather than an enemy.

Fun helps you see past your differences.

Fun is what fuels curiosity and openmindedness.

Fun is the first thing to die in a war.

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Hello! Do you have a post explaining your ocs and the universe they are in? I just saw the designs and I love them! Your art style is so beautiful!

Hello! I don't have one full post but I do have some links to some asks I have gotten explaining stuff! (Hopefully I linked them right!) but for a general thing for my basic story idea for the comic I'd like to do: Basically Belle (my human Oc) unknowingly performs a wish making ritual that summons Starberry and since Starberry has never been summoned before and Belle doesn't remember what he wished for-Starberry is stuck on Earth! They need to figure out what the wish is or Starberry's star will die and he will fade away! Starnana (Starberry's ex), and Choccostar (Starberry's current rival in stardom) both visit Starberry and try to help and Milkstar (the forgotten star who crashed into Earth and is fading away) also tries to help! Whenever Belle makes the wish Starberry will be able to go back to space, his wish will be granted, but he will forget the stars! So it's basically a bunch of shenanigans and whatnot as Belle is grumpy and aliens are annoying! I'm glad you like my style and art though thank you!! >0<

Yknow what. I’m just gonna say it.

It’s about time we have a fictional princess who actually enjoys being a princess.

She enjoys the politics. She enjoys the diplomacy. And she enjoys the balls and banquets and attention and pretty dresses and that doesn’t make her a dumb shallow bimbo or some regressive anti feminist handmaid or whatever the kids say these days about women who don’t fall in line with their Strong Female Character power fantasies.

All the princesses urging for ‘something more’ that’s all fine and good but I’m ready to see a princess who appreciates that being a princess is already a lot!

I think everyone who writes a futuristic world where everything is very tech sentric should take into account that everyone in that society will have horrible handwriting. When you just type all the time and never write, your handwriting quality usually starts declining.

Or even funnier, one nation is more tech focused then another, they're viewed as all powerful and cool and stuff. The head of the tech nation comes to a world meeting, the tech nation and the less tech focused nation have to sign important documents and it's just this-

Vampires wearing black makes no sense. Black absorbs heat, which would make any accidental contact with sunlight even worse. Consider: vampires wearing white, maybe even reflective, clothing, carrying umbrellas meant to block sunlight, big sunhats (that have little flowers or something on them because pretty much all sunhats have little flowers on them). Ideally, they wouldn’t be out at all when the sun comes up. But the extra reflectivity could mean the difference between life and death for a vampire caught out at dawn.

here it is the rainwing god of harvest maybe if I had more character design skill and more time I could have done better but whatever. Tell me what you think! @dragonstylemeringue