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bpdanakins · 17 hours
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ok but can we talk about this
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Aang is about the strike the final blow and kill Ozai while in the Avatar state, and all the past Avatars of all the Four Nations are speaking through him, but he stops, and the glow fades from his tattoos
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and the fire and the water and the earth drops away, and all he’s left with is Air, his native element, the element of a people that were wiped out, and the air surrounds him with this simple grace and dignity
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and it’s like, even with all the power in the world, Aang remembers who he is, he remembers what he learned from the monks, he remembers his heritage, and he stays true to it. It’s no accident that Air is the element he’s left with when all the others fall away, that it’s Air he’s surrounded by when he comes out of the Avatar state and decides to spare Ozai’s life.
The Air Nomads were wiped out by ambush because they had no military power, Aang was brutalized in his fight with Ozai because of his mercy, and everyone, including his friends and past lives, were urging the necessity of killing OzaI. Ozai himself taunts Aang “your people didn’t deserve to exist in this world, in MY world”. But against all this, Aang refuses to let go of the ideals of compassion and mercy. He refuses to believe that power and violence are the only ways. Aang sparing Ozai was the last, bittersweet stand of the Air Nomads: not vengeance but true justice, an affirmation of the power of their beliefs, an assertion that the ways of peace, freedom and forgiveness are vital for the world.
I mean, how much courage does that take, when your entire culture has been wiped out by a violent world, to still say “No. What my people believed has value, has strength.”
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bpdanakins · 2 days
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Fanart - The Four Elements Specialized
by Ctreuse109 [x] [x] [x] [x]
Interesting how the first three elements exclusively feature specialized benders (you can even see Zuko in the background for the Lightningbending art, since we only ever knew him to redirect lightning not conjure it) while only three of the five in the Airbender set have displayed any enhanced spiritual powers akin to Jinora’s explicit specialization of Airbending, spirit projection. Aang has done something similar many times during his journey, and Tenzin was able to project his inner enlightenment out into the Fog of Lost Souls in order to dissipate it and save his family.
Just posting all of these here with credit because I find them stunning and I haven’t seen this set around yet.
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bpdanakins · 3 days
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The Dancing Dragon (Available as a print)
This was a collab with @silversteampunk!
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bpdanakins · 4 days
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Avatar art by Michael “M.K.” Matsumoto and Courtney Matsumoto.
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bpdanakins · 5 days
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i just can't get over zuko and aang's dynamic. these two tragic foils, these boys who both wear their history on their faces, who both lost their homes to the fire, these born enemies, both bound by big, grand, lonely destinies, the prince and the avatar,,,,,,,, and who, the moment they're able to interact with each other for more than two seconds, both immediately devolve into the pettiest assholes alive
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bpdanakins · 6 days
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i don’t think i’ve rewatched atla since becoming a committed pacifist and i just finished what was probably my tenth rewatch and i have never loved aang more. i've seen it so many times but i still came away with a new appreciation for the way the end of the story was handled. aang is the only survivor of a genocide and he is clinging to the last remnants of his culture and religion, and everyone is telling him the only way to save the world is to kill the dictator whose regime is responsible for the genocide, but to do so would abandon the deeply held beliefs of his people. if aang goes against his beliefs and kills ozai, his people's way of life dies completely and sozin wins.
aang knows it would be wrong but he can't see another way out so he prays for an answer, and the universe hears him and the spirits send out the lion turtle, and the creator answers him. and here's the thing that i never put together before today: aang would not have been able to energybend ozai if he had given in and wanted to kill him. the lion turtle tells aang that only the incorruptible can bend another’s energy, or else they will become corrupted themselves. and i think that aang, because of his love for the fire nation as he had once known it, was never corrupted by personal hatred for the fire lord or the fire nation. he was able to expertly hold two conflicting beliefs in harmony better than any adult could, the belief that ozai is a horrible person and the world would be better off without him and that he's still a human being with a life that is sacred.
and i don't think it's a matter of selfishness like some people make it out to be. aang is not some immature little kid who doesn't want to kill because killing is for bad guys. he's an incredibly wise and spiritual person who was shaped by airbender beliefs and upholds airbender beliefs, and he can see beyond the scope of this war. the balance of the world depends on the existence of the four nations, and aang does not just represent the air nomads, he IS the air nomads. he's all that's left.
despite many people’s interpretation of the four past avatars’ advice, none of the past avatars outright tell him to kill ozai. they tell him to be decisive, to bring justice, to be proactive, to be sacrificial. but none of them tells him definitively to kill him. he doesn't disobey or ignore their advice, he follows their ancient wisdom while still staying true to his beliefs. yangchen actually comes the closest to outright telling him to kill ozai (even more than kiyoshi, surprisingly) but what she fails to account for is that aang is not just the avatar, he is the last airbender, and being the last airbender is far greater a burden than being the avatar. no matter what happens, once he dies, there will always be another avatar. but if he is not careful to preserve the airbender way of life, there will be no more airbenders. yangchen could sacrifice her air nomad way of life for the sake of her duty to the world because there were thousands of other air nomads to continue their traditions. aang has no such privilege.
and it's not that he doesn't want to kill, it's that he actually doesn't think he can do it -- both that he won't be able to emotionally bring himself to kili someone, and, prodigy that he is, he doesn't have the raw bending skill to overcome a comet-powered master firebender. and then it turns from 'i don't think i can do it' into ‘i can’t do it.’ and when the avatar state gives him enough power to actually do it, he changes the answer to ‘i won’t do it.’ he overcomes all the combined power of his past lives to say no, i have found another answer and i will remain incorruptible. to kill is to maintain the power struggle of the fire nation and to reject air nomad wisdom and without airbenders the world CANNOT be brought into balance.
the only thing ozai cares about is power, and that's what the entire fight with ozai is about, physically and ideologically, because ozai only sees power in terms of force, fear, threats, and violence. to ozai, aang (and his entire people) are weak and undeserving of life because they are largely pacifists, but he fails to see the magnificent power that the airbenders do hold, spiritual wisdom and mastery of the self and contentment and joy and harmony and a deep understanding of the world that a man like ozai could never obtain. to kill ozai would ratify ozai’s worldview that power as he defines it is the most important pursuit in the world and the only way to assert one's right to be in the world is to be cruel and violent like him. i think to ozai, becoming powerless might be worse than being dead. he wants power, or he wants death, and aang gives him neither. it upends everything he believed in. aang, the avatar, but more importantly, the last airbender, armed by his past lives' power and his people's love and the spirit world's blessing and the lion turtle's omniscience (and toph's mastery of true sight through neutral jing), ends the war 100 years to the day after the air nomad genocide, in the way that his people taught him, with power that goes beyond force and violence, with spiritual wisdom, with an incorruptible soul, with mercy -- mercy that is not weakness, mercy that brings justice.
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bpdanakins · 7 days
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I'm tired of people defining Aang as this boring little vanilla guy. Aang helped Katara destroy a factory. He participated in Toph's scams. He shrugged off Katara's theft of the waterbending scroll and heartily laughed at her jokes about it. He was delighted by the Painted Lady ruse. He mastered airbending at twelve and the avatar state at thirteen. He snooped around the old ship after Katara said it was booby trapped and dared her to follow and stepped up to take the blame when it went badly and then surrendered himself to protect the village because he knew he could hand everyone on that ship their asses and escape. He outright lied to two communities that had been bickering for a century to get them to stop. He egged on Katara when she decided to throw hands with Pakku. He wants to ride every big animal in the world ("they don't like being ridden but that's what makes it fun" -unhinged take). He has sick burns for everyone which are doubly funny because they're almost always unintended as such. He threw a clandestine dance party in the nation that banned dancing and thought he was dead and wanted him dead. Before that he corrected and argued with teachers, beat a bully without lifting a finger and then brought his teenage friends to pose as his parents. The whole Bonzu Pippipadaleopsicopolis the Third thing. The being idiots with Sokka in Ba Sing Se thing with the bowing and the busboys disguises. He rightfully asked "what's cosmic power compared to a girl". Let's add all the badass stuff he does as a bender and as the Avatar up to and including energybending and the conversation with Koh the Face Stealer. That time in The Chase when he finished the fur trail and then decided to just sit down, sleep deprived, to wait and face whoever it was chasing them. Aang is one of the funniest and coolest characters I've ever seen and he deserves more respect. Absolutely unhinged kid with immense powers and the world is lucky he's goofy and has a good heart.
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bpdanakins · 8 days
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My take on the moment when Aang & Appa reunite after the lost days
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bpdanakins · 9 days
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A forgotten memory of home
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bpdanakins · 10 days
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bpdanakins · 11 days
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🦀 Kudos Crab 🦀
If you are scrolling and see Kudos Crab, your fics will be blessed!
You will get good comments and kudos!
You will beat your writers block!
GO AND WRITE!
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bpdanakins · 11 days
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Here's the full artwork I did for the upcoming Avatar concert! Thank you for having me🎶
Tour dates and info: https://avatarinconcert.com
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bpdanakins · 12 days
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it's always so fascinating and heartbreaking when a character in a story is simultaneously idolized and abused. a chosen prophet destined for martyrdom. a child prodigy forced to grow up too fast. a powerful warrior raised as nothing but a weapon. there's just something so uniquely messed up about singing someone's praises whilst destroying them.
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bpdanakins · 13 days
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am i the only one who sees all the pro-ship/anti-ship discourse stuff as unbearably annoying and stupid, or?
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bpdanakins · 13 days
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I don't want to write fic that's "good", I want to write a fic that hits someone's id so hard it changes their brain chemistry.
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bpdanakins · 14 days
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"This bond we share…I believe it is alurlssrin. If that is so, it will last as long as we do."
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bpdanakins · 15 days
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generally i make fun of the orlesian version of an organisation more than any other but i’ve got to admit there’s no bitch as useless as a kinloch hold templar
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