First 18 in this series are finished and available in my Etsy store. :)
RBG is a Patreon print this month, and will be part of a collage of real-life heroes.
https://www.etsy.com/shop/khallion?ref=seller-platform-mcnav
https://www.patreon.com/KarenHallion
« When I was little, I was afraid of a lot of things. I didn’t have to be, though. They were all in my head. I just didn’t know that yet. But when I was scared, I would imagine myself building a big wall all around me made of the strongest bricks in the whole world. And when I got scared I would imagine myself putting another one on, one after the other until that wall was so thick and so strong I knew I’d be safe in there forever. And that’s what you do too, right? It’s okay. It’s good. ‘Cause kids like us have been through more than other kids. We’re tougher than other kids. »
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.
OP went and ended hard with the last line.
I accidentally found this Umbridge and Miss Trunchbull photo shoot, and it’s terrifying
dark children’s literature, show me the forbidden butch & femme couple
Could you imagine if edward had just been some regular dude like fucking around with bella and she said with the utmost confidence “i know what you are…..you’re a vampire” and he’s just out there alone with her in the middle of the forest like
twilight au where Edward and his family just go along with it for kicks:
Rosalie hates it, Jasper sucks (or can’t keep a straight face) so he takes any excuse to avoid Bella, Carlisle doesn’t like pretending to hurt people so he decides his new persona has miraculous control, Alice and Emmett are LIVING this lie
they have an emergency family meeting to come up with basic ground rules and cover story but then just wing everything else
Edward had to tell Bella that they sparkle in the sun because Alice had dumped an entire bucket of glitter on him that morning when he got out of the shower
how would jacob fit into this tho
he’s a furry
1) We don’t want to talk to you.
2) We don’t want to pause our music to talk to you.
3) We don’t even talk to each other on the phone — why would we want to talk to you?
But the biggest reason is A TRAIL. If I e-mail you back, you can see what was said in the future. You can’t tell me I forgot to tell you something because it’s right there. You can’t tell me I “never reached out” because we can both SEE it. I don’t have to trust your recollection.
And, in a group inbox, you can see who has been responded to. I got forwarded a voicemail from my supervisor (through e-mail! imagine that!) asking me to call some lady back for clarification. So I did, against my will of course…and she said somebody had called her yesterday.
Who? When? What did y’all talk about? Is follow-up necessary?
Phone calls back and forth only work in a workflow where the standard procedure is to *log* phone calls in a shared system with a brief summary of what was discussed. Otherwise, y’all need to let us e-mail. It’s not just about a generation gap. It’s also about efficiency.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Any feedback can be proffered via e-mail.
EDIT
Also: let’s keep it real – we multi-task better than you do. If I’m on the phone with you, I’m FORCED to do that ONE thing and put whatever you want above all the other things I could’ve been doing. If you e-mail me, I can research what you want (while doing other things), find the solution (while doing other things), and offer it to you in a nice concise package (while doing other things) without sitting on the phone with you in awkward silence looking for the answer to whatever you think is urgent. (It’s not urgent. You’re not dying. I know it’s not urgent.)
OP is being kind in saying “i don’t have to trust your recollection.” people straight up lie, especially customers.
GRYFFINDOR: “You know, saving the world would be a whole lot easier if you could just remain innocent. If your conscience was always clear and you never made mistakes. But a moment of forgetting to care isn’t the same as a lifetime of apathy…I might not always like the choices you make or the way things turned out, but I think it would be infinitely more tragic if you let that stop you from trying.” –Jordan Hall (Carmilla Karnstein: Carmilla: The Execution of Carmilla Karnstein)
