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.
Man found the stoplight cameras were activated during yellow lights and decided to cut the wires of it.
Florida Man: Chaotic evil. New York Man: Chaotic good.
Holy shit. Nah dude look up the entire story, it’s INSANE.
The dude got arrested once before this for using a painter’s extension rod to point the stoplight cameras into the sky instead of cutting the wires. He didn’t cut the wires until AFTER he got out after being arrested the first time–which he did after posting facebook videos that prove that the stoplights are intentionally rigged to trick drivers into citations–the yellow lights at intersections with cameras only last THREE SECONDS, as opposed to the five seconds they last at other stoplights without cameras in the same county.
When he cut the camera cords, he reported his deeds to the news -himself,- and then politicians pressured the local police force into arresting him. The local police and sheriff deputies actually SUPPORT him for his actions because the lights have been killing innocent people! During his most recent arrest, one of the Sheriff’s Deputies actually -offered to bail him out-.
When he got home again after these incidents, there was a surveillance camera planted at his house BY THE GOVERNMENT to watch him! His reaction to being surveilled? He painted over the camera in America’s flat out fucking ballsiest “fuck you” to the gubmint I’ve ever heard of.
And it gets EVEN CRAZIER. After painting over the camera, suddenly this guy–his name is Stephen Ruth by the way–started GETTING ATTEMPTS ON HIS LIFE. He reports that a car intentionally tried to hit him in a head-on collision, and after talking about the car to his neighbors, they confirmed that the car in question (Or at least, one that was visibly identical, its occupants included) had been staking out his house! Somebody was legitimately trying to MURDER HIM over his discovery and his actions!
As a final insult to injury, Ruth pointed out that the VAST majority of the cameras were found SPECIFICALLY in lower-to-middle-class neighborhoods. As well, the victims of these rigged stoplights tried to go to the local news station to talk about the deaths of their family members that occurred from the rigging. Aaaand… The local station, “News12″, never aired their interviews.
Remember how I said that, after cutting the cables and calling the local news station, Ruth was arrested because of pressure from politicians? Get this: News12 is actually owned by CableVision, who PROVIDES INTERNET SERVICE TO THE CAMERAS.
Whereas mister Ruth was only trying to help people and save lives, he’s been caught up in a full-blown fucking government conspiracy that’s out for his blood. This guy isn’t Robin Hood, he makes Robin Hood look like a -CHUMP-.
1. How are rigged stoplight cameras killing people
2. Who in their right fucking mind would murder someone over something that is already in the public domain
Like come on.
The cameras aren’t doing any damage. However, they only make money for the corrupt politicians behind them if people run red lights, so they rigged those traffic signals to only have a 3 second yellow light instead of the legally mandated 5 seconds. This means more people run the red lights, which makes more money from tickets but also has the trivial little side effect of causing a lot more car crashes, with all the injuries that accompany those. To generate a little bit more money, these fuckers decided to subvert vital safety equipment in low income areas.
And if a person is a persistent nuisance, many corrupt politicians would gladly have them killed to prevent them from continuing to be a nuisance in the future, if they thought they could do so without any evidence linking back to themselves (like if he died in an ordinary car accident). Especially if they’ve already demonstrated their willingness to cause innocent people to die for money.
For example, back in 2016 another whistleblower for another ticketing scam for money, John Lang, posted online that he thought the police were going to kill him. Then his house burned down, and the firefighters found him unresponsive… with several stab wounds in his back. The police ruled it a suicide.
i’ll never understand why we don’t call countries the names they actually call themselves
like, i know this is a weeaboo-sounding example, but let’s start with Japan. They call themselves Nippon or Nihon depending on… i guess, the speaker’s accent??? or their level of formality while speaking??? I dunno. But we still called them Zipangu for like a few hundred years. And now we call them Japan.
All because Marco Polo asked someone in China about that island over there and they said “oh that’s Cipangu” and Marco Polo was like “Oh, Zipangu, cool.” And then he went back to Italy and said “Y’ALL THERE’S THIS DOPE-ASS ISLAND CALLED ZIPANGU” and people back in Italy were like “An island called Giappone? Dope.”
And this pattern of people mishearing people kept repeating until we got to “Japan.”
And we still call them Japan even though we know better. Because fuck you, Marco Polo asked the wrong person 500 years ago and misheard them and we’re sticking to that, I guess.
that was literally just the world’s worst game of telephone
Here’s a thing I’ve had around in my head for a while!
Okay, so I’m pretty sure that by now everyone at least is aware of Steampunk, with it’s completely awesome Victorian sci-fi aesthetic. But what I want to see is Solarpunk – a plausible near-future sci-fi genre, which I like to imagine as based on updated Art Nouveau, Victorian, and Edwardian aesthetics, combined with a green and renewable energy movement to create a world in which children grow up being taught about building electronic tech as well as food gardening and other skills, and people have come back around to appreciating artisans and craftspeople, from stonemasons and smithies, to dress makers and jewelers, and everyone in between. A balance of sustainable energy-powered tech, environmental cities, and wicked cool aesthetics.
A lot of people seem to share a vision of futuristic tech and architecture that looks a lot like an ipod – smooth and geometrical and white. Which imo is a little boring and sterile, which is why I picked out an Art Nouveau aesthetic for this.
With energy costs at a low, I like to imagine people being more inclined to focus their expendable income on the arts!
Aesthetically my vision of solarpunk is very similar to steampunk, but with electronic technology, and an Art Nouveau veneer.
So here are some buzz words~
Natural colors! Art Nouveau! Handcrafted wares! Tailors and dressmakers! Streetcars! Airships! Stained glass window solar panels!!! Education in tech and food growing! Less corporate capitalism, and more small businesses! Solar rooftops and roadways! Communal greenhouses on top of apartments! Electric cars with old-fashioned looks! No-cars-allowed walkways lined with independent shops! Renewable energy-powered Art Nouveau-styled tech life!
Can you imagine how pretty it would be to have stained glass windows everywhere that are actually solar panels? The tech is already headed in that direction! Or how about wide-brim hats, or parasols that are topped with discreet solar panel tech incorporated into the design, with ports you can stick your phone charger in to?
(((Character art by me; click the cityscape pieces to see artist names)))
I wish more people got this because some ‘low-empathy’ people are the most compassionate and sympathetic in the universe, and I hate it when that’s taken to mean ‘unfeeling and probably hostile’ when nothing could be further from the truth
Or, as my dad put it,
Sympathy: I know how you feel Empathy: I feel how you feel Compassion: is there anything I can do to help?
Sympathy: that sucks bro empathy: I feel that compassion: want me to send you some puppy and kitten pictures to make you feel better?
Ok so imagine your fantasy setting with your typical giant spiders.
Ok, now imagine that these spiders have largely been domesticated for their incredibly valuable silk. They help make clothes, rope, textiles, even ARMOR. They’re almost treated like carnivorous cows in the regions that can support them. They might even name these girls the classic names like “Bessie”. They’re great mothers and produce many young; useful for trade and… even food if you like The Crunch.
People in this world are hardly afraid of big spiders the same as we’re hardly afraid of big dogs. Wary of wild ones, but not scream and cry terrified. Smaller spiders…it depends. Would you be scared if you suddenly saw a tiny cow crawling on your wall? The only type of spider people collectively fear are the hunting types: the ones that don’t spin webs, and instead attack their prey with brute force and a much stronger venom.
These large domestic spiders are incredibly lazy. They’ll sit in their webs and wait for their handlers to put their food on the web. Unless you get tangled, they don’t see you as food. This makes them great guards as well. They build traps for you. The venom isn’t deadly to humans…but can still be used as a weapon or in medicine. They’re just so damn useful that millennia ago, people put aside their instinctual fear just to get those sweet benefits.
Backup for Tumblr 