Today, destiny is our friend. I know it.

ATLA sideblog of @thethiefandtheairbender. Multishipper (Kataang, Zukaang, Maiko, most Toph ships). Aang stan, Avatar cycle + worldbuilding fanatic. No discourse

[aformofenergy]

hello. dragons here

atla sideblog of @thethiefandtheairbender & wordswithdragons on ao3

 ↓ fan since 2009, in the fandom in some way since 2013

 ↓ you might have seen my atla metas floating around from time to time. i'm also the one who started the aanglove tag

 ↓ i like all the canon ships as well as some fanon (zukaang, zukka, tokka). kataang, zukaang, maiko, and yuekka are my favourites as well as zutaraang/kataangko (kataang + zukaang ot3).

 ↓ my favourite dynamic in the whole show is sokka&aang. my favourite season is s3. my fave characters are aang, katara, sokka, iroh, and azula. honourary mentions: mai, jet, hama

↓ aspects of the show i find most interesting: aang's history and trauma, aang&gyatso, the air nomads, post war stuff, the avatar cycle & past lives, katara&hama, katara's view(s) on aang, god-child dichotomy / the thematic sacredness of childhood, whatever the fuck zuko and aang have going on, sokka's arc, pre-reformation iroh, post series and during zuko's exile azula, etc.

↓ sometimes i will also talk about atla and its similarities to stuff from aaron ehasz's other show, the dragon prince. it will be accordingly tagged.

↓ generally tlok critical in a pacing and character writing sense (for the new characters, not the old), but will rarely come up + always be appropriately tagged. strictly speaking, nothing but the OG show is Canon™ to me and i'm willing to take or disregard certain aspects of post-show stuff (comics, novels, tlok, movies, etc) as canon on a case by case basis of Do I Like It or Think It's Interesting.

↓ this is a no discourse blog. do Not ask me about z*tara i Do Not Care about them. i like their platonic canon friendship and seeing anything about behind the scenes conspiracy bullshit is an automatic block/disengage.

↓ that said, i am open and interested in critiques of atla + beyond from a cultural, representation sense and/or from the lens of prison abolition.

[spokelseskladden]

uuh idk man, since it's my au and i do whatever i want they get together in season 3 now. because it's fun

[kataangfanartarchive]

Art credit: royharpersmom on x/twitter

Commissioned by: kataangarchive (Permission received to post on tumblr).

[aisatsaa]

if only Gyatso had run away with Aang

[kendallroynsfw]

30 day female character challenge: {1/~} supports - Toph Beifong

I don’t care what I look like. I’m not looking for anyone’s approval. I know who I am.

(i)

[whimsical--lindsical]

I’m just gonna leave this here…

[jucarl]

The Blue Spirit this time. Gonna ride this out just a little bit longer. I always liked the interplay between this character and aang.  Anyways,  BUY PRINTS HERE

[mrsherlocholmes]

You’re so beautiful when you hate the world

[permanent-detention]

reflections from the marriage of a goth and an emo

[shifuaang]

you mentioned an article of lok being "inescapably white"... but the voice actors in both atla and lok are white people... minus zuko and iroh's first va??

I think it's really important to keep in mind the context surrounding both shows and how they were handled differently based on media at the time. Yes, a diversified voice cast would have been a better choice to embody the Pan-Asian world that ATLA was based on, but it was also made in 2005 when there was less awareness and lobbying surrounding representation. LOK was made in 2012, a full seven years after ATLA - a full seven years in which the show-runners and producers had likely heard feedback and criticisms about including more Asian and indigenous peoples in the cast. And yet the LOK voice actors are comprised mostly of white people, many of whom are more recognizable names and voices that arguably weren't chosen as the best fit for the characters but, rather, for their notoriety (unlike ATLA's cast).

All that being said, the article's focus is less on the 'inescapable whiteness' of the players behind the scenes, and more of the themes and plotlines and settings woven into fabric of LOK. Obviously Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko headed both projects, but ATLA was a heavily researched and meticulously crafted show with far more input from people of color in both collaborative and technical aspects.

I would highly recommend you read the article itself, as it goes into way more detail than I have time to right now. But it basically boils down to LOK being majorly Western centric and Western inspired, unlike its predecessor which took the time to establish a world that honored and respected Pan-Asian cultures, philosophies, and subject matter.

[atlametas]

Anyway, if you want to read an extremely well-written article on how LOK leans into narratives and aesthetics that are directly caused by western imperialism and colonization, click the link above!

[irresistible-revolution]

two things, i guess. 

first, despite popular insistence to the contrary, ATLA is extremely well-researched when it comes to the elements of asian spirituality and cultural aesthetics used to worldbuild the four nations and the concept of the avatar. there are concrete references, themes, symbols and ideas that resonate with folkore and fables from pan-asian history. emphasis on pan-asian. fandom insisting the show is bad actually because it’s helmed by two white men, using absurd comparisons to cultural appropriation to dunk on the worldbuilding, and reducing every single character to a racist caricature, is wildly off-base and self-serving. while these analyses are well-meaning, they’re fundamentally wrong, and lacking information and historical, political context. furthermore, it’s wildly insulting to the asian and other people of color who did work on the show, whose cultures and fables are woven into the fabric of the show, to argue that ATLA is ultimately a story “by and for white people.” please decenter the white gaze and whiteness/ western frames from your outlook. i promise you it’s much freer on the other side.

it’s also self-serving, because if we convince ourselves the show is bad, faulty, incomplete and racist, it lets us off the hook. suddenly we’re no longer required to seriously engage its themes and ideas, or the histories it’s drawing from, because it’s all bad, so let’s just ignore everything about canon and indulge in AUs where the “war never happened” or “the water tribe started the war” or “aang died and my favorite character is the avatar” or “zuko is the real hero” or “sokka is a spiritual leader actually.” it’s fine to indulge in escapist fantasy now and again, but OWN THAT. don’t let your desire for fantasy and escapism warp your judgement of a show that’s actually cogent, well-researched and well-executed, and then insist you’re correct. take ownership for your point of view, your motives and biases, your desires, when engaging this text.

and finally, i know it feels daunting to familiarize yourself with a pan-asian cultural context - a context that, especially in the west (but also increasingly in asia as nationalist movements take hold) is rarely highlighted in popular media. no one is expecting you to learn the entire tao or recite buddhist chants or practice chinese calligraphy. each cultural influence in ATLA, by itself, would take a lifetime of study and discipline to master fully. no one is expecting that from you in fandom. in fact, you can, as many fanfics do, dispense with the cultural influences altogether and simply americanize/westernize the world until you’re comfortable enough to engage. after all that’s what tlok did. there’s no edict or law forcing you to make a bare minimum effort to understand pan-asian cultural influences before writing ATLA fanfic. but it would be nice, it would be ethical, respectful and kind, it would be a gesture of good faith not only to pan-asian diasporic and indigenous people in fandom but towards a larger sense of human compassion and even something like justice, if you at least tried.

[salmakiis]

water and wind

[lujinarchive]

Firelord's family

[homicidal-lagamorph]

This took me ages because bald people are hard to draw

[paulinsversion]

They are very much in love

[wileycap]

I have no idea what to do with this, but wouldn't it be neat if Aang started doing all of his bending using the wrong style of bending? Just because he can?

Airbending? No, actually, it's humid in here. I used the water in the air :) nope, just manipulated the temperature with firebending. Common mistake! They look very similar!

Oh no, that wasn't earthbending. That was airbending. I'm basically just compressing the air! Sokka came up with that!

Avatar Aang comes in to give a bending demonstration, and immediately 60-year-old masters start gnawing the furniture because what do you MEAN that was waterbending!!! You made flames!!!? We've been studying this all our lives why would you come in and do this to us

[ai0lisauce]

Do NOT leave these in tags OP

[thethiefandtheairbender]

+ bonus: