#water tribe culture

[the99thfanboy]

Hakoda teaching Sokka how to put on his face paint and a little Katara coming in all shy and asking if she can learn too.

Sokka opens his mouth and says something like “girls can’t wear war paint!”

Hakoda puts a hand on his son’s shoulder and gives him that fatherly look and a gentle lecture about girls being able to do what they like that makes Sokka cross his arms and pout.

Katara sticks her tongue out at her brother before she tries to follow Hakoda’s instructions and draw the right squiggles.

Sokka huffs and mutters “you’re doing it wrong” before he snatches the paint and does it himself.

Hakoda just smiles, watching his kids do each other’s paint. He chimes in to show them different symbols and colors with their respective meanings, but mostly the kids are just having fun.

Later, Bato has to help Hakoda wash all the paint off of the kids because it got everywhere and Gran-Gran will lecture the two men if she sees that mess.

#avatar the last airbender #atla #atla hakoda #atla sokka #atla bato #atla katara #sokka #hakoda #katara #southern water tribe #water tribe culture

[prodogg]

A friend of mine had a thought:

Y‘all know how in the episode The Puppetmaster, Katara tells the story of little Nini and how she disappears and is a ghost trying to get warm. She also says that sometimes you can see the smoke coming from her house. Katara also swears that it was a real story which happened to her mom. Anyways looking at it from a perspective of mythology, couldn’t those sorts of ghost stories be the explanation that Kanna‘s generation told Kya and Hakoda‘s, to explain why so many of their people went missing during the raids, going down to the detail of fearing smoke. Furthermore right after the story, Hama appears, Hama is one of the „missing ghosts“ who is now making others disappear.

#All credits to Pandora for that one #atla theory #atla mythology #ghost stories #Hama #atla Hama #katara #atla katara #katara atla #water tribe culture #water tribe mythology #SWT #southern water tribe #atla #avatar the last airbender #avatar #pd talks #sokka #hakoda #atla kya #kya #atla kanna #kanna

[caripr94]

This may be an unpopular opinion, but…

I used to not think a lot about the Water Tribe ice dodging rite of passage in A:TLA, but now that I've been thinking more about it, especially in the context of the sinking of the Titanic… I really hope that those dads had good safety measures, like lifeboats or whatever, in case of emergencies when they took their 14-year-old sons out on ships into iceberg fields 'cause otherwise, that seems like child endangerment. As the poor victims (and survivors) of the Titanic can testify, floating around in freezing cold water after having an iceberg sink your ship is no joke. Most of them didn't survive more than half an hour after getting dipped.

#atla #water tribe #ice dodging #titanic #hypothermia #science #rms titanic #water tribe culture #southern water tribe #northern water tribe #child endangerment #please reblog #sokka #katara #bato #hakoda #chief hakoda

[sabreurs]

sokka trying to get katara to give up on her waterbending bc it could get her killed. and katara refuses to give up and continues to practice anyway. bc sokka and katara represent the survival of both the people and the culture. sokka had the safety of their people thrust upon him by his dad, while katara is the only one in their tribe that can carry the weight of their culture. both are heavy burdens, and they're struggling with their roles bc they're just two kids trying to rebuild in the wake of genocide. but they refuse to give up, bc that's what the story is about.

holding onto hope, regardless of what you face.

#so glad they focused on this aspect of katara and sokka's story instead of making them fight abt sexism #highlighting the unique ways in which they struggle to preserve the water tribe hits so much harder #ALSO it's a little unclear but if katara is the one who helped free aang from the iceberg #then katara's insistence on embracing her culture is what breaks the iceberg and frees aang (aka hope) #natla spoilers #avatar the last airbender #netflix atla #live action atla #katara #sokka #atla #natla #🪸

[atlaculture]

Cultural Practices: Pai Sho - The Game

I'm honestly a little embarrassed it took me this long to get to this topic! As always, credit goes to @atla-lore-archive for saving all the neat ATLA tidbits and concept art from the old Nick website.

Pai Sho (牌數), meaning "several game pieces" in Chinese, takes inspiration from a few different table games:

Its most obvious influence is the German game Sternhalma, known in the English-speaking world as Chinese Checkers. Like Chinese Checkers, the game is played on a circular board.

The lines on the board and the circular tiles are reminiscent of Xiàng​qí (象棋), known in the English-speaking world as Chinese Chess. The pieces often being positioned on the intersection of lines is also very similar to Chinese Chess.

The game's four player limit and visually creative tiles are reminiscent of Mahjong (麻将), China's most famous tile game. In particular, the iconic white lotus tile appears to draw heavily from the classic Mahjong one-dot tile.

Finally, the name Pai Sho was likely inspired by Pai Gow (牌九), meaning "nine game pieces" in Cantonese--- which is both a domino game and a style of poker.

Just like ATLA's animals, it seems that Pai Sho is a fusion of different real life sources. In the next posts, I'll be covering the symbolism and cultural significance behind each Pai Sho tile shown in ATLA.

Like what I’m doing? Tips always appreciated, never expected. ^_^

https://ko-fi.com/atlaculture

#atla #avatar #avatar the last airbender #cultural practices #water tribe #earth kingdom #fire nation #air nomads

[muffinlance]

Wait, what’s going on with Embers???? That fic has been on my read later list since 2021, what’s happened with it???

Brief overview, then I'm likely never touching this topic again, because this is not a Drama Blog:

Context: Embers is a super old AtLA fic that was written during the early fandom days, read widely at the time, and was the origin of the widely-used fanon name of "Wani" for Zuko's ship (kind of by default that it was one of the first popular fics to give his ship a name, I think?), even though most fic writers don't seem to realize it's from there anymore.

"What's Going On": I used to include a link in all my stories to it, because I believe in crediting other writers for borrowed elements, and I was using "Wani" in all my fics. But BOY did I not want to be sending readers that way anymore, so I've adopted a new name for Zuko's ship, and removed all Embers links.

None of the criticisms about Embers itself are new; I'm assuming they date back to when the fic was being written, because this isn't an "it aged badly" thing, this is an "actually yeah this gets worse the longer you think about it and I shouldn't have ignored my bad feelings just because some of the worldbuilding was interesting" thing.

An Incomplete List of Why I Made the Change:

I don't actually like the story that much anymore, and don't want to rec it

I tried to re-read it recently to see if some things were as bad as I remembered and it turns out they were So Much Worse Oh Yikes. More specifically, the treatment of Katara and Aang and their respective cultures has... rather a lot going on. One example: The Fire Nation and Air Nomads are both given multiple backstory elements in an attempt to make the average Fire Nation soldier's participation in the genocide/war in large part the fault of the Avatar and the Air Nomads themselves, and also fully justified from the Fire Nation perspective. And I do mean fully. One of its core tenants is "People from the Fire Nation (and only people from the Fire Nation) who don't follow orders Literally Die, therefore murdering pacifists and babies and continuing the war (and their regularly scheduled war crimes) is the only thing it is physically possible for them to do". I cannot emphasize enough how literal that is.

Also the name "Wani" means "Alligator" and is... objectively a pretty lame name for Zuko's ship? Where's the personality, where's the deeper meaning, where's the resonance with Zuko's themes? @tuktukpodfics initially thought I was calling the ship "Wanyi", and that's what I've switched to, because it is Objectively So Much Better. In their words: “Wànyī (萬一): Literally ‘one in ten thousand,’ ‘perchance.’ Used grammatically in Chinese to mean ‘what if’ or ‘just in case.’ I think a ship called ‘The Perchance’ is perfect for a boy clinging to false hope.”

TL:DR; I don't rec Embers anymore, because I don't actually like the story anymore, and there are things about it that get worse the more I think on them. I've removed links to it and renamed Zuko's ship to "Wanyi" ("The Perchance") because our boy deserves a ship name that reflects his character arc.

#for the record if you ever find something kind of rancid in my fics #do please let me know #EX: I've rewritten scenes to be better Actual Blind Rep for Toph based on blind reader feedback #and I'm debating how hard it would be to ignore/re-write the canon issues of Water Tribe sexism (for the Southern Tribe at the least) #because that is a common complaint I see from the people who's RL cultures the Water Tribes was based on #probably I can do more interesting things with that going forward #in other words justice for Hama and Hahn #at least the show itself made Hama excellently complex #anyways back to doing actual writing #please no follow up questions #though I will say anyone who wants to update their own fics to use Wanyi (or any other name): go for it! #all you need to do is plop your chapters in a word editor and find/replace the ship name! it took about 40 minutes to do literally #all of my fics and I had some other editing to do besides! it'll be even quicker for you! #let's sink the Wani #avatar the last airbender #atla #Zuko

[elitesheepi]

Betrothal necklaces are a Northern Water Tribe custom, I know, but I'm fond of the idea of Zuko making a necklace for Katara--except he makes the band way looser and longer. Her mothers necklace is too important to her, so he makes his necklace's band longer so she can wear both at the same time. A good old choker+medallion necklace pairing.

#Zutara #wish we got more southern water tribe customs and cultures but alas #sure we can take real world inspo but idk it's fun to see world building

[cimmeria-writes]

for @kataang-week -- day 4: cultural exchange

(ID: a digital drawing of katara and aang from atla. they're wearing clothing from each other's cultures. katara is wearing a yellow chuba with red trim, an orange shirt, a chumpi belt, and boots. she has one necklace with small turquoise beads and one with large yellow beads. aang is wearing a parka with a thick fur hood and black-and-white geometric patterns, and dark blue pants. he also has mittens and large boots on. they're smiling at each other, with pink hearts floating between them.

#kataang week #kataang #kataang fanart #artists on tumblr #atla #avatar: the last airbender #cimmeriadraws #the chumpi belt is a traditional andean garment #i assume part of the reason tibet serves as inspo for the air nomads is the high altitude of where they live #and quechua people also live in high altitudes so i think they'd be interesting to pull inspiration from for air nomad clothing #plus atla has already taken inspo from south american cultures with the sun warriors so it works :) #but anyway all i have in this drawing is the chumpi belt so i'd like to incorporate more andean culture into air nomad designs in the futur #i also want to dive some more into siberian and alaskan indigenous clothing for the southern water tribe fashion #and explore ideas for differences between nwt and swt clothing

[a-todd-illustration]

Working on backgrounds. Did I do good?

#myart #fanart #avatar the last airbender #atla #avatar #zuko #avatar au #zue #zue kids #zukos kids #northern water tribe #water tribe #culture #background

[zuko-always-lies]

Historically Accurate Polyamory and ATLA?

One thing that's inexplicably on my mind right now is that East Asian royal families were generally historically polygamous, so if you wanted to have Azula or Zuko or King Kuei or some other Fire Nation or Earth Kingdom royal or noble take multiple partners, that would actually be reasonably historically accurate. It seems like the Fire Nation royalty has avoided polygamy in recent decades (or you would expect the royal family to be much, much bigger), but isn't the point at the end of the series that they are supposed to return to old ways?

Interestingly, some of this applies to the Water Tribes as well. Although I don't know nearly as much about this subject as I know about East Asian royalty and I don't want to say anything too confidentially, I know some Inuit groups sometimes practiced polygamy. I also know that some groups sometimes practiced "spouse exchanges" where two couples would temporarily exchange spouses in order to create fictive kinship between them. Although the SWT is not identical to historical Inuit groups and the NWT in particular seems very, very different with it's city and state, I think you could definitely justify polyamory being in the tradition of both Water Tribes.

While the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation, and the Water Tribes might have traditions of polygyny (where one man marries multiple women), the Air Nomads might have a very different traditions. They are inspired at least in part by Tibetan Buddhism, and Tibet has it's own traditions of plural marriage. Historically, the most common type was fraternal polyandry, in which two or more brothers would take the same wife. However, apparently polygyny, conjoint marriages, and of course monogamous marriages were also historically acceptable in Tibetan society. Of course, there were specific economic reasons why fraternal polyandry made sense in Tibet, which might not apply to the Air Nomads and we really don't get a sense of how their marriages and family life might look like, but it's another reminder not to force their culture into "Western marriage norms, circa 2007."

With all the various forms of plural marriage that would theoretically be culturally appropriate, I think you can culturally justify just about any form of polyamory you are interested in writing.

#ATLA #avatar the last airbender #polyamory #ATLA meta #Fire Nation #Earth Kingdom #Air Nomads #Southern Water Tribe #Northern Water Tribe #chinese culture #polygamy #polygyny #polyandry #Zuko #Azula #Mai #Ty Lee #Katara #Sokka #Hakoda #Kya #Bato #Yue #Princess Yue #King Kuei #Toph #maybe? #Aang #air nomad

[autistic-katara]

oh my god can ppl find a reason to ship/not ship something that’s in the middle of a ship war w/o trying to make out the other character to be the worst person in existence? honest to god it’s not that hard to say “this ship doesn’t work for me bcz of xyz” u rlly do not need to go “uhhh actually no it’s not character a that’s a horribly racist asshole who thinks SA is cool (that’s so stupid wtf, they barely did anything), its character b. did u not see how they [smallest thing possible]??? can’t believe the hypocrisy u have going on here…” like seriously PLEASE u do not have to justify urself to this level it just makes everything 10x more annoying

#kataang/z*tara ship war posting in the year 2023? more likely than u think. #also abt the whole jancy/st*ncy thing but this was spurred by me seeing a kataang v zk argument where both ppl just sounded so insufferable #literally “aang is so racist for not liking this one water tribe dish” “actually zuko dismissing aang’s anti-revenge philosophy is the same #as the great grandkid of an ss officer making fun of jewish culture” #(not even exaggerating they both said that basically verbatim) #like babes please it’s really not that serious- #i hate how this happens every time there’s a ship war that’s boy x girl v same girl x different boy #it’s always “erm actually it’s implied in one frame in s1 that boy 1 hates black ppl bcz of the red x over the black background” #“oh yeah? well boy 2 was an asshole pre-character development so he’s definitely homophobic as hell” #with minimal mention of the girl u guys r shipping them with #like look i love kataang nd while jancy might not be my fav of all time i still ship them #but holy shit u guys can be as annoying as the zk/st*ncy shippers u claim to hate #idk this is just a problem i have with fandoms a lot nd i needed to yell abt it #rant #ship wars #fandom bs #atla #kataang #pro aang #pro zuko #ryan shut the fuck up

[comradekatara]

when people say “katara could never be chief of the southern water tribe because she loves exploring the world and meeting new people” like wow..... ur right....... being a political leader means never traveling or engaging with members of other cultures. if she is to be chief she must be at home at all times managing crisis after crisis because it’s clear that her tribe is not a self-sustaining community that values mutual aid over singular leadership anyway. she would never receive help from her family and friends and people, she would be doing everything on her own all by herself, because she really values individualism and never asking for help from anyone ever. the minute she is declared chief, as a mandatory job that she is expected to perform singlehandedly at all times, mind you, and certainly not a title largely dedicated to honoring her integral role in galvanizing, inspiring, and healing her community, she must say to aang, “best friend, light of my life, as much as i’ve enjoyed traveling the world with you since we were kids, i have suddenly been crowned Commander in Agoraphobia and now our field trips must cease forever.” i can’t believe i was so stupid as to not even consider all that. thank you so much for enlightening me <3

#katara #chief of #the famously isolationist southern water tribe that never takes boats across the entire world to reach across cultures #and who never relies on her brother or friends or community for help ever #and would totally believe in leading a system wherein she is the sole decision maker and the whole thing falls apart if she goes off on appa #for even a week #yes that’s exactly what we mean when we say this #good job guys 👍🏼

[swan2swan]

Annual reminder that Aang wasn't a terrible dad, that one episode was badly written and had poor perspective. Aang was a busy, working dad who had a lot of stuff to do, and then suddenly his third kid was a full-on Airbender and he was literally the only one qualified to teach this baby, so then he finally had an excuse to put his family before his duties ("My family IS my duty now, suckers!!!"), and so Kya and Bumi were all "What the heck, Dad???" because they were now teens (iirc) and they missed out on all that stuff.

It was basically Aang going from "my family has 20% of my time" to "my family has 40% of my time". Still not enough, probably, but Aang could finally go and explore his own culture without feeling guilty about leaving the rest of the world to fend for itself.

#poor dude probably had all kinds of mental issues #also literally everything else about his dadhood has been outstanding #his son gets a high rank in the navy #his lesbian daughter gets to go do her thing #tenzin had it hardest of all the kids #we can also get into the whole part where Aang's whole culture separated parents from their kids #so he wasn't exactly raised with a child-to-biological-parent bond himself #the perils of culture clash...especially with a devoted water tribe mother #you've got a culture that says ''Family is EVERYTHING parents will teach their children for LIFE'' #meeting a culture that says ''Everyone in the world is your family so you have to treat them equally'' #.....gosh that story really needs to be explored more #and they could NOT have delivered it more clumsily #or wrapped it up more frustratingly #''here we are lamenting all our insecurities and inner doubts but LOOK THIS FAMILY PHOTO SHOWS US HAPPY WE MUST HAVE BEEN HAPPY'' #I mean...they were #but it was also poorly executed #legend of korra #tlok #atla #how to tell the casuals from those who take this seriously #''aang was a bad dad'' do you even READ SUBTEXT

[un-pearable]

the kyoshi flashback in Avatar Day and the sheer scale of ba sing se in comparison to…. literally everywhere else in the world really has me thinking about the politics that lead to such distinct “nations”. it makes way more sense for a land as vast as the earth kingdom to have once been earth kingdoms with local land disputes between feudal lords - as we see with the conflict kyoshi ended - only for a world-spanning war to have driven first the lords to unite under ba sing se’s banner for protection, and then as the war continued, increasing waves and waves of refugees and oma shu standing as the only remaining hold out due to their unique position (top of a mountain - most other earth kingdom towns we see are in valleys) such would explain how many ruins and ghost towns we see throughout s2 but also the improbability of a land that big to be unified under a single leader for that long

#text✨ #just pondering i don’t want to do research about if they’ve actually spoken about this #hm. i think it’d be very interesting if the beifongs are descended from a former lordship. would explain even folks in ba sing se recognizin #the name and crest….. #anyway i think smthn similar happened to the water tribes . i like the idea that the village we see in the south is only one of many but i #really like the idea that the north only has such a big city bc their miscellaneous tribes banded together #and i’m very interested in the political strife that would result in #different clans with different practices all piled on top of each other… the myth of homogeneity is BORING give me cultural diversity bryke #also…. another layer of tragedy in the loss of regional cultures in both the earth kingdom and northern water tribes as their populations #were condensed into urban environments

[asocial-skye]

this is a really odd thing to consider with atla, but for a show that loves taking liberal scoops of hinduism, buddhism and south and east asian cultures for its worldbuilding, atla is really weird about letting its characters practice religion.

everything in atla is people taking about spirituality, defining themselves with spirituality, yet nobody engages it in the context of belief. we are given the concept of worshipped beings in the atla universe; tui and la and agni for example. but none of these gods are ever seen as gods that the characters hold belief in. we barely get a framework of belief with the earth kingdom (the earth kingdom is examined politically and never religiously in the series) which would actually be interesting because so many cultures did have a god or goddess of the earth. the water tribe goes into cultural rituals, but only for an episode. we know nothing about air nation religious practices beyond nonviolence bad and vegetarianism. even the fire nation is practically a blank slate.

it's almost like the creators were nervous at the idea of letting the characters practice a religion, even a created religion that's foreign to the majority of their (most likely christian) audience. the weddings are very christian-coded (you're telling me that the FIRE nation wouldn't have a hindu-style marriage which literally involves FIRE), and the characters are never seen worshipping or participating in cultural festivals beyond the usual 'oohh fireworks and food' type thing. normally i wouldn't care, speaking as a former kid who did spend religious festivals like that, but if you're going to put characters forward that practice eastern religions and then have them interact in the most surface level way possible, what's even the point?

#avatar the last airbender #atla #atla meta #cultural appropriation #religion in art #bryke #i guess this would be anti bryke? #religion #fire nation #earth kingdom #water tribe #air nation #worldbuilding

[atlaculture]

Cultural Architecture: NWT Totem Poles - The Specifics Pt. 2

Among most of the totem poles we see throughout the Northern Water Tribe (NWT), four representations appear consistently throughout. For this post, I will be covering the final two.

Koi Fish

The third totem is clearly a koi fish with long whiskers and a marking on its forehead. In other words, it's clearly a reference to the physical forms of the moon and ocean spirit. I can't help but wonder if Aang's realization of Tui and La's true forms was unconsciously informed by the all the koi head totems omnipresent throughout the NWT.

Culturally, koi fish are yet another example of the Chinese influence in the NWT. In Chinese culture, koi represent fame, family harmony and wealth. There's also a famous Chinese folktale about koi fish and other carp:

Along the Yellow River, there is a legendary waterfall that cascades from a magical mountain top known as Longmen (登龍門), meaning the Dragon's Gate. If a carp can swim upstream against the currents and hop over the waterfall into Longmen, the fish will transform into a dragon.

Thus, koi fish can also represent determination, courage, and perseverance. The connection between koi and dragons also strengthens the fan theory that the dragons, Ran and Shaw, might be the Fire Nation's equivalent to Tui and La. Perhaps the dragons are the spirit of Sun and Fire respectively?

Wolf

The totem beneath the koi depicts a wolf. The wolf head totem also bares a striking resemblance to the headdress that Sokka wears in "Day of the Black Sun" (Season 3, Episode 11). Wolves are prominent figures in the mythologies of many Indigenous American cultures, particularly those whose societies were oriented around hunting.

Within different Inuit groups, wolves are called amarok (multiple groups), amagok (Inuvialuit), and amaguk (Inupiat). These names refer both to normal wolves and to the gigantic, magical wolf of Inuit religion. There are two Amarok-focused tales that I'd like to detail in this post:

A persecuted and physically stunted boy seeks to increase his strength. When he calls out to the lord of strength, Amarok appears and wrestles him to the ground with its tail. This causes a number of small bones to fall from the boy's body. The Amarok tells the boy that the bones had prevented his growth; he instructs the boy to return daily in order to develop his strength. After several days of wrestling with the Amarok, the boy is strong enough to overcome three large bears, thus gaining him the esteem of his village.

The land was once full of caribou; the people lived well and were happy. But the hunters only killed those caribou that were big and strong. Soon all that was left were the weak and the sick. The people began to starve. And so they called upon Amorak, the spirit of the wolf, to winnow out the weak and the sick, so that the herd would once again be strong. The people realized that the caribou and the wolf were one, for although the caribou feeds the wolf, it is the wolf that keeps the caribou strong.

From these two stories, we get quite a nuanced conception of what the wolf represents in Inuit culture. While wolves represent strength in many cultures, these tales really emphasize the wolf as a creature that strengthens those around it. Through this worldview, we understand strength not as an innate or individualistic quality, but one that's nurtured through mentorship and interdependence.

This makes Sokka's adoption of wolf imagery during "Day of Black Sun" all the more appropriate. Sokka is certainly not the most powerful character in the show, but his role as the leader strengthens the group as a whole.

#avatar #atla #avatar the last airbender #water tribe #cultural architecture