#atla spirits

[asiriyep]

Zukki week 2025.

Day 3: Stargazing.

This is an idea read in a fanfic.

@zukki-week

[mango-213]

the ocean and moon spirits :)

[randomhuman45]

ATLA Headcanon:

Iroh is known for being so funny and kind.

We know he respects all 4 nations' cultures and values. He lied about killing the last dragon to keep the origin of fire bending and the original purpose and values of fire bending alive. He respects the spirits of the water tribe even when fighting for the fire nation and even fights his own side of the war (at the time) to preserve the spirits who are much more water tribe value than fire nation. We see him understand the values and mindset of the earth nation, even when he is fighting them as a general for the fire nation.

In his talk with Zuko he mentions how the Air Nomads were apparently known for their senses of humor. I headcanon that while being silly and goofy is a part of Iroh as a person, he makes a very explicit point to joke, laugh, and try to share a strong sense of humor everywhere he goes in an attempt to keep a part of the air nations' culture and values alive even after his people killed them all off. He couldn't save them from extinction like he could with the dragons, but he believes that maybe he can just try and incorporate and keep some party of them alive, no matter how small it may be. He shows not only his humor throughout the series, but respect for the spirits (also a big part of air nation culture and I'm trying to more refer to his ability to see spirits and "live" in the spirit realm in Korra), great hospitality for literally EVERYONE he comes across (important as explained in Korra), offers wisdom and guidance to everyone (very similar to how Aang kinda ends up towards the end of the series), very little attachment to material items and riches (shown when Iroh and Zuko first decide to go off on their own and hide from the fire nation), and I'm sure more I'm not thinking of.

I just like to believe that Iroh through spending the time to learn about the other nations decided to include learning as much as possible about the air nation and nomads and in some retrospect made the choice to try and implement some of the customs and culture of the people who were, at the time, extinct in his own life and try and share, even just a little of their values, with the rest of the world to try and keep some part of them alive in the world that already killed off every other bit of them.

[dandelion-blues]

Just started this drawing of Yue. Wanted to post the draft. I might finish in about... a time 😅

[paragonrobits]

Sokka: Scientifically speaking, there's no way to be sure reincarnation exists or that the spirits are actually real Aang: Okay, I've been meaning for a while to talk to you about this but... they are ABSOLUTELY real. You have empirical evidence that the spirits exist. Aang: One of them kidnapped you out of retribution. Katara: You made Wan Shi Tong so angry he took his library out of the physical world. Which, now I think about it, probably could have been a source of missing information on our culture that was lost with most of our oral traditions. Zuko: Your first girlfriend had to take the place of the Moon Spirit. Or so I hear. Toph: You told ME you were in the Northern Water Tribe city when all that happened! How do you not know?? Zuko: I'm not good at paying attention when its not about me. Aang: Anyway the point is, after your lack of veneration probably put some kind of karmic curse on the Black Sun invasion plan to begin with, and that a lot of the knowledge I provide is either FROM the spirits or what my past reincarnations tell me, how on the world can you say that spirits don't exist with a straight face. Sokka: Okay guys, I'm going to level with you, this is all a big bit I'm doing because the fact that the spirits exist and you can't fight them or really understand them because of how alien they are SCARES ME A WHOLE LOT. Sokka: Please just let me cope as sarcastically as possible. Katara: Given that letting you cope is actively enraging the beings that form the balance of the world and therefore returning harmony to the world means we have to make peace with them... no. Letting you cope like that is a REALLY bad idea. Katara: Also I have no idea where you picked any of this up. About the only culture in the world I can think of that actively disdains the idea of spirits is the Fire Nation. Why are you imitating them? Sokka: I have no idea. Honestly I think it might be a really extreme fear response. Koh the Face Stealer, apparently taking to following Sokka around out of boredom: That sounds incredibly counter productive.

[on-my-zuko-shit-again]

I have had this drawing in the wings for a while now alsklslsls kind of a half rough draft of Tui and La

And in my typical fashion, I forgot who was who again

Do not repost! Reblogs appreciated! :D

[capt-snoozles]

this isn't as good as i wanted it to be but in my defence it is 5:30am

[balsa-margarita]

My thoughts on Raava and Vaatu (probably a hot take, idk)

I had a conversation with @deriroga recently about the spirits of Order and Chaos that were introduced in LoK, and it basically came around to the idea that they were misrepresented. I’ve seen this in other places too, and since it’s relevant to my slowly-assembling spirit lore I’m going to explain it here, or at least list what I’ve figured out.

First of all, the way the show represented Raava as the “good guy” and Vaatu as the “big bad” really rubbed me the wrong way, because in reality both spirits in their pure forms are not good at all. If pure order actually existed then the world would be warped into something completely unrecognizable and that result would be just as bad as whatever pure chaos would accomplish. So for humans the ideal outcome would either be to have Raava and Vaatu slugging it out and ignoring everything else (as they had been for time immemorial before one man got involved), or for them both to be sequestered somewhere they couldn’t do any harm.

Well, when Wan became the first Avatar they got the second option - except not really, because now the most powerful entity in the world was being directly influenced by Raava. In practice, this worked out not nearly as badly as one would expect, because humans are naturally pretty well balanced between order and chaos, so the Avatar was mostly normal and reasonable with only the slightest bent towards being more orderly. (Which kind of shakes out to explaining the lack of technological progress and national upheaval throughout most of ATLA’s history - we saw it with Roku believing in separation of the four nations which sounds like a whole lot more isolationism than is a good thing for humanity.) And of course, order and chaos in human society persisted anyway, because that’s how humans work, and also because you can’t contain the literal embodiments of Order and Chaos in a tree or an ape with anxiety. They’re concepts-made-into-eldritch-entities that are far too large for that, and they leak out and spread and do other messy things.

Also - and this is even more weird, but I think it makes sense - Raava and Vaatu aren’t the most powerful spirits out there, not by quite a bit. These two seem to represent order and chaos as they apply to sentient things (humans and spirits) not entropy and whatever the opposite of entropy might be in physics. So they’re big, but not that big. The actual spirit of entropy would be... something entirely different.

So, that’s my rant for the day (maybe, I might have more to say). Hopefully this wall of text didn’t interrupt your scrolling too much.