Banana Lab Notebook @bananalabnotebook - Tumblr Blog

it must be so funny to be any of the jet lag boys because the way they travel is so insane it's like "yeah i've been to italy" and then someone could be like "oh, did you like it? did you visit rome or something?" and they're like no. i went to the padua train station 18 times.

prophecyofgray

pretending that i'm on jet lag the game bc i was forced to adjust my travel plans on the fly

loloftheday

Thoughts?

sluttyfranzkafka

Are we flesh or blood? You buffoon. You clown. You absolute candlestick.

parasite-core

The liquid is the brain, and like a human brain it needs a vessel to function.

kosmonin

littlestarlost

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.

paristexaz

OP went and ended hard with the last line.

#Avatar The Last Airbender #ATLA #Aang #LMAOOO #DAMN #THAT LAST LINE #I MEAN THE WHOLE THING BUT HAHAHA WOW THAT LAST LINE WAS *BRUTAL*#BUT MANNN THIS HONESTLY WAS A MIND BLOWING EPIPHANY FOR ME I NEVER REALIZED THIS AHHH #I ALWAYS WONDERED WHY TF THEY WAITED TILL 16 (THOUGHT IT WAS 'CAUSE THEY WERE HARDASSES)#BUT THIS LOGIC MAKES SO MUCH MORE SENSE LMAO THANK GOD I DIDN'T MAKE THE RULES FOR THE AVATAR I'D BE LIKE 'HEY THEY'RE GONNA HAVE A ROUGH #LIFE LET 'EM HAVE FUN WHILE THEY'RE YOUNG' HAHAHA YEAHHH THAT WOULD HAVE ENDED HORRIBLY #THANK YOU FOR THIS OP DANGGG #FUCKIN' GREAT POST YOU GOT HERE OP #that got me in the feels

modern-politics111

Read and be pissed

bananalabnotebook

I'm the medical field. It checks out

ruinedchildhood

days-of-reading

“Not fabulous.”

Sophocles, Elektra (trans. by Anne Carson)

songs-of-the-dark

This reads like an ancient Greek Austin Powers movie

arepii

Slave- no fear

Orestes- Unless I reconsider

Slave - One fear

fluentisonus

oh to be an ambiguously gendered little personification of winter in a roman mosaic

fluentisonus

ideal self

fuckrealityihaveablog

I want a story about an Italian vampire.

No romance, no action.

Just 200 pages of “What do you mean, I can’t have garlic? Do you know where I’m from?”

absinthenoir-deactivated2019090

TBH I think the main issue would be the mirror thing

have you ever met an Italian man

the amount of time they spend looking in the mirror jfc

wunderlass

#the more you think about it the more all vampire rules are just anti-italian rules#can’t go out in sunlight?? IN ITALY???#Can’t go near crucifixes? IN ITALY???

princezane-deactivated20151205

a bunch of pissed off vampires stuck in Venice because they can’t go over moving water

theresoneofyou

Not to victim blame, but you’d have to be a pretty bad Italian to even get turned into a vampire in the first place.

hey-there-nutlet-deactivated201

the only two places practically immune to vampires are texas and italy

darkestelemental616

Let me tell you of A Thing.

Lithuania has no vampires, I guarantee it.

stephendann

Lithuania has one vampire, and let me tell you, she’s gonna be FURY UNLEASHED once someone gets her out of the centre of that crossterfuck of a burial point.