#( Atlas | musings ) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

movietonight · 3 months

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My friend Alicia made an ATLA meme

#Atla #avatar the last airbender #macks musings #avatar #kyoshi #avatar kyoshi #Game changer #Dropout #make some noise

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survivalove · 2 months

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as i think about aang trauma blocking his death out his memory as he gets older, i also remember that his back scar faded significantly throughout book 3 while his foot scar never did.

and the fact that this is something that aang would never request or even think about.

but katara would. and she’ll never forget no matter how much his scar fades. now i can’t get the image of her healing his back in between episodes out of my head :(

idk if this was artist discretion or intentional. i guess we’ll have to see in the gaang movie

pic source and related hc

#atla #kataang #katara #aang #musings #my headcanons #kataangtag

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ecoamerica · 2 months

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youtube

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the-badger-mole · 6 months

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On the Unredeemed

Unredeemed villains are important in fiction. I feel like that needs to be said. There is a trend in recent years (probably since Wicked became a hit) of people wanting to see monsters redeemed. I'm not against that (per-se... glowers in Maleficent), but also, I feel like we do lose something when we lean into the idea that the monster gets to make good.

Fiction can be really useful for teaching us about life. I remember seeing a quote some time ago on Pinterest or something that said something along the lines of "fairytales are important not because they tell us dragons are real, but because they tell us that dragons can be slayed". That has been on my mind a lot recently when I see discussions about characters like Azula and (more recently) Ozai. They are fictional characters with super magic fire powers, but they represent something real- they represent the cycle of abuse in families, and while I understand the impulse to absolve someone as young as Azula, I think it's also important to tell the story where she isn't redeemed.

One reason that most Azula redemption stories bother me is because of the responsibility they tend to place on Zuko as her older brother, despite the fact that she victimized him probably more than anyone in her life (that we get to see. I don't think her soldiers believed her death threat for no reason). There are plenty of stories about the victims of abuse needing to be the bigger person to keep their families together and being villainized when they don't (I think by now we all understand that Terri was not the villain of Soul Food). We need stories about knowing when it's okay to walk away, and that illustrate the idea that "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb".

In a time when more people are talking openly about going low contact or completely cutting off family members- close family members- I personally think that seeing stories about coming out of the other side of it, of building a new family, healing from the past, and dealing with the residual guilt that comes with "turning your back on family" even when it's the right call, is helpful in the same way that those fairytales about slayable dragons are.

I'm not saying any of this to discourage Azula redemption stories. In fact I would love to see more. Stories that have Azula confronting what she did to the people she should have loved most, and have her considering what to do with the knowledge going forward, instead of just using her past abuse and mental health to gloss over the real harm she did. I want to see her grappling to accept the fact that no one- not her brother, not Iroh, not her friends- owes her forgiveness, and then dealing with all the complex emotions that come with just one of them actually forgiving her. But also, I want to see stories where Zuko gets to let go of his father and sister and go on to be supported in that decision. Because to him, they were dragons, and they were slain.

#the badger mole muses #every villain does not need to be redeemable #zuko #atla #i feel like if i don't tag this #anti azula #someone's going to get mad #it's not #it's just pro having villains be villains #but to be on the safe side #THE YEAR OF CONTENT!!!!

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comradekatara · 7 months

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all im good for is drawing katara in cute outfits

#id in alt text #avatar the last airbender #atla #katara #art #mart #she’s so fun to draw #i think she is my muse #bbygirl #🥰🥰🥰

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theweeklydiscourse · 8 months

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Zuko really is the most complex redemption arc tumblr can handle before they start getting scared.

#the consequences of Zukos redemption arc being seen as the epitome of redemption arcs have been dire #yes this is based on that other post #this is what happens when media made for children is seen as the golden standard of storytelling #people will use Zuko’s arc as a measuring stick to judge how far a character can go before they’re beyond redemption and even then #atla #avatar zuko #zuko #fandom musings #fandom discourse #zutara #redemption arc

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celestial-ringleader · 1 year

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“. . .I still feel like I’ve got a circus tent on my back. . .this is like a ballgown made of kevlar!”

I’ve been thinking way too much about Dick as Batman............ @ronnyraygun

#ive been forced into a role i didnt want bc i dont want to be like my adoptive dad but also #no one else is gonna do it so i guess i gotta #dick grayson #nightwing #richard grayson #dc fanart #listen ive been staring at all those batman variant covers that have religous symbolism #and the muse just possessed me #not rlly eldest daughter syndrome but more like #this was such a good era for him #i blame ron for kicking me in the ass to do it instead of sitting on it forever #dick has such an atlas complex bc of his survivor's guilt and i love him for it <3

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ecoamerica · 1 month

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zyin · 1 month

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You have the opportunity to say that you did something against the Empire. What legacy do you want to leave behind?

One of justice or cowardice?

#important #reminder #sudan #congo #Palestine #gaza #save sudan #free gaza #free palestine #atla #one piece #muse #muslim #islam #jesus #christianity #Jerusalem #bethlehem

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prodogg · 2 months

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in the Atla world, there is a period where any nation can do what they want without the avatar intervening, between Avatar Kyoshi and Avatar Roku was a period of like 27 years (with 16 years the avatar gets told they are the avatar and then 11 years of learning all the elements although it can be argued it was just Roku traveling around and he took maybe 5 years to learn all. So in the time between an Avatar's death and a new fully realized one is no one to keep the world in check.

#avatar the last airbender #atla #musings #pd talks #fire nation #earth kingdom #air nomads #water tribes

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savrenim · 3 months

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watched the first 30 minutes of the new live action ATLA bc I was Curious and they have already committed three different mortal sins that I can't Not Rant about, spoilers for the first 30 minutes below the cut

1. They rearranged the order of storytelling to open with the Fire Nation attacking the Air Nomads.

And I'm not.... totally sure why? Like, my guess is either "we need to make an immediate dramatic hook for the people who have never seen ATLA before!" or "we need to explain the background for the people who have never seen ATLA before!" But the truth is, people never saw ATLA before it came out, and they were perfectly fine catching on to learning about what happened to the Air Nomads and the geopolitical state of the world in media res!! That is not an excuse!

By opening with The Attack On The Air Nomads, not only do they rob the audience of getting to do my favorite thing throughout, which is the ability to piece together backstory via being told details as the story goes on, but it also..... vastly undermines the impact that That Attack Happening is going to have later in the story. Instead of piecing together tragedy from 100-year-old ruins and getting the moment of "oh god" and imagining it, we're shown it directly upfront onscreen, which not only to me comes across as unnecessary and gratuitous violence, but it means that every time in the story that The Air Nomads Are All Dead is going to come up, instead of it being this weighty thing that we can only imagine that each small detail adds even more to that weight, the payoff was all upfront. We've seen it, there's nothing to imagine, any detail they give us is not adding to our understanding of the tragedy and increasing the tragedy to us at all, it's just a reference to the opening scene.

2. STATUS!!!!!

So 'Status' is a concept that I rant about a lot and am highly sensitive to in writing, probably bc in the gay theater camp day camps the first thing you need to teach your 8-year-olds in improv workshop is How To Respect Status if you want to have at all a reasonable adventure game; otherwise you have kids interrupting the king's big dramatic speech and hence Undermining The King's Authority and the adventure game falls apart but also so you don't get trapped in scenes where you've got two characters yelling back and forth "well I'm [this thing] so you should respect me!!" and the complete lack of respect between them totally undermines what both of them are saying and the fiction falls apart. I kind of joke but not really that I stopped watching Supernatural in like. season 8?? 9?? because there was some episode with Greek Gods and you got to the finale of the episode and Zeus was going "dO YOU KNOW WHO I AM??? I'M ZEUS. I'M A GOD. PUNY MORTAL" and Sam and Dean went "dO YOU KNOW WHO WE ARE??? WE'RE THE WINCHESTERS. WE TOOK DOWN SATAN AND ALSO SATAN'S MORE EVIL OLDER COUSIN. PUNY MONSTER OF THE WEEK" and I went "by day three of camp my nightmare 8-year-olds can do Status better than this. Why am I even watching this?"

In the first scene, the live-action ATLA severely undermines the status of the Fire Nation and Fire Lord and then continuous to do so throughout the entire opening.

The initial scene is some random Earth Kingdom spy running away with Fire Nation plans to attack the Earth Kingdom and getting captured and dragged before Fire Lord Sozin (to be?? monologued at by Fire Lord Sozin of 'HAH you fell into my TRAP, those plans were FAKE, we're attacking the AIR NOMADS' which is just. dumb. kill the spy, don't monologue at him and kill him, but also why the fuck are you letting an Earthbender spy into your presence in the first place???????) which besides the aforementioned letting?? an earthbender spy??? into his presence in the first place????? He:

is not wearing particularly fancier clothes than the other people around him; like, they're okay, but the 'total desaturation of all colors including/especially in the clothing' aesthetic that Netflix has going makes it not look very royal. that shit should have been BRIGHT red or 10x fancier to make up for the fact that it wasn't Bright Red

they are STANDING IN THE THRONE ROOM and INSTEAD OF BEING BEHIND THE CURTAIN OF FLAMES he's just STANDING DOWN THERE on the SAME LEVEL AS EVERYONE ELSE????? WHY ARE YOU EVEN IN THE THRONE ROOM IF THE FIRE LORD IS???? NOT ON THE THRONE?????? JUST STANDING AROUND???? THE FIRE LORD DOES NOT JUST STAND AROUND WHERE IS THE POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE OF THE OFFICE????????????

and then beyond the absolute idiocy and letting a nobody no-name spy into his presence like that and dramatically revealing battle plans fucking idiot deserves to be assassinated for letting a spy earthbender get within three feet of him that's just extremely bad royal security, Sozin personally Murders this Random Spy. with his own firebending hands.

One of the whole things that makes ~the Fire Lord~ so terrifying is the sheer amount of weight around The Institution Of The Fire Lord, the courts and the backstabbing nobles of the fire nation, both the extreme imperial politics and complications there but also the almost deification of the office itself. The Fire Lord is untouchable, I forget if it's fanon or canon that they've got a 'descended directly from Agni / divine right' thing going but if it's fanon at least canon has those vibes, and one of the biggest aspects of the finale of the whole show is the combination of Azula's meltdown making it so that even though she was 'Fire Lady' she.... wasn't particularly scarier because in panicking and banishing everyone she'd totally undermined her own power structure, but also realizing that Ozai was Actually Just Some Dude Who Sure Was Pretty Good At Firebending And A Really Shit Person And Terrifying For What He'd Done With His Power but he wasn't a god, he wasn't impossible to defeat, when push came to shove he was just a firebender and as such his power could be stripped.

Fire Lord Sozin standing on the same level as his advisors and a random earthbender spy, and then doing things with his own hands, instead of, you know, sitting on that throne behind that wall of fire while this scene was happening if this scene really needed to happen in the first place, totally undermines that sort of deification level of status that the Fire Lord is supposed to have. Sozin becomes an Evil Scary Murderer Villain, sure, but what proceeds to be established about his character is. Nothing to set him apart from "a particularly skilled Firebender." Hell not even that, as nothing ever demonstrates that he's substantially more skilled than the firebending soldiers around him!!!!!!!

And it undermines the severity of the threat of the whole Fire Nation to undermine the status of the Fire Lord and hence the Thing That Makes The Next Fire Lord So Scary. hnnnnnnnnnng.

3. Every single character keeps giving extremely stilted monologues about how they're feeling?

It just feels like Bad Writing. And it also kind of feels like incorrect characterizatons? Big "he would NOT say that" mood but also just, like. Aang giving a three minute monologue purely to Appa about how he never asked for the responsibility of being the Avatar, he just wants to be like other kids, that just feels. So Cookie Cutter. So "gotta check off our refusing the call so our protagonist is Relatable!" and also just he would not say that.

This doesn't quite bother me as much as the other ones because it doesn't feel like a fundamental undermining of the narrative and/or the setting but it is Highly Annoying.

anyways defs not worth the watch. 30 minutes of my life Wasted. some of the costumes are kind of nice tho so might go back for the costume refs.

#live action atla #netflix avatar #just some random musings but it's been a While since I've dropped any sort of writing analysis #and I kind of miss doing it #do truly love how like. the Vast majority of my media criticisms #or at least the ones that I get Annoyed enough to Go On Rants about #are the ones that break the rules of Status #bUT HNNNNG STATUS IS SO IMPORTANT!!!!!! YOU LITERALLY CANNOT TAKE ANY CHARACTER SERIOUSLY UNLESS THE CHARACTERS #OR IN THIS THE FRAMING OF THE SCENES THEMSELVES #RESPECT THAT STATUS #HNNNNNNNNNNG

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movietonight · 3 months

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Adaptations neither can nor should be 1:1. They should, however, expand on something, explore a different perspective, play with the material in a meaningful way.

The tragedy about NATLA, in my opinion, is that it's simply not doing that, or at least not in a way that is actually good. It just put ATLA in a big pot, stirred it and called it a day. The tragedy is that a live action remake is simply not the best format of adaptation.

I believe that there are still things that can be expanded or explored and the world-building is rich enough to offer a lot more stories. I think they should have opted more for something like another spinoff. For easy money you could give us, either animated or live action, the story of another avatar. I'd personally love a more in depth on screen exploration of Kyoshi and the history of the Kyoshi warriors. Hell, if you want to be really creative you could use the universe and just tell a story in an entirely different genre. I'd totally watch an avatar themed spy drama or romcom or detective story. You could probably make a cabbage merchant biopic and people would love it.

#Atla #avatar the last airbender #natla #macks musings

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raytm · 2 months

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shipping call ??

#if you have a muse specify and ill sneak into ur dms #this is opening up to plotting or chatting or just anything really !!!#it doesn't have to be inherently romantic but its also ok if it is and we #pre-establish it or build up to it.#i've also updated my muse list ( again ) so check it out #every day i get closer to removing all my atlas six muses bc that book HAUNTS me.

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comradekatara · 2 years

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a "quick doodle" of katara i got way too invested in once i started painting it (lmao whoops)

#id in alt text #avatar the last airbender #atla #katara #art #mart #dont u know she is my muse #whenever i try to draw her in a casual capacity i always end up getting way too invested #this took me hours to paint #it was supposed to just be a sketch!#anyway. it was good practice for painting skin i guess #im proud of this one cuz she looks cute #cuteness is key when drawing katara #if u dont wanna be her bestfriend when u see my drawings of her then i have failed as an artist

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myherobirdbros · 7 months

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Straying from my usual posts to say man the narrative fucked Azula over. When I was a kid I really liked her. Like I distinctly remember whenever we had flashback scene and saw her and Zuko with their chubby cheeks and baby selves I was sure it was a way to foreshadow some kind of redemption for both of them. Where Iroh saves Zuko and then Zuko saves Azula. It felt like (at least to me) that's where the story was heading. But then around season 3, I think I started to realize that wasn't going to happen. Because no matter how compelling that story could be and how young Azula was, the narrative really really wanted me to believe she was some kind of irredeemable moster. Which made no sense because we had the beach episode and those little flashbacks of her and Zuko running around the fields, laughing together and Zuko saying his family used to be happy once. Like, did the show writers want to take the easy way out? Did they want Zuko to also defeat a biiiig bad (Azula in this case) so they refused to give her a lifeline? Because I felt blindsided. Apparently Iron the colonizer and Zuko deserve redemption but not Azula. She was just crazy. Like I watched the first airing of avatar as a kid and looking back it's frustrating knowing how little the writers cared about Azula's humanity when it was so easy as a kid to see how sad and angry and scared she was.

#atla azula #atla #azula #birdbros musing

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candyredmusings · 2 years

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I need to feel needed .... and I need it more than I let on

#musings #the broken bird #the atlas #the facade #the down and out #the desolate #source: high definition - waterparks

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chaoticmiserablelover · 10 hours

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My taste in books: sad queers being unhinged.

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lagt-duck · 1 year

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To me it's so interesting how Avatar (tla) manages his villains

Zuko by all accounts looks at first like a classic kid show villain

Always shouting, not extremely threatening and with scars to make him look more evil

And then the show does a 180 and is like "yeah but getting that scar wouldn't have been painful viewer?" And the viewer who has no real reason to hate Zuko beside him being a normal villain is like "oh shit"

Iroh is that classic side kick of the villain, to make him look funnier to the kids

But then the show kinda hits you with a bat when you realize that this guy loves the other like a son and like aaaahhh despite all the shit he did in life (let's not forget he was complacent in the war) he is such a good force that a lot of people FORGET THAT

Azula.... Azula is fucking terryfing and that's perfect! She in more ways then one follows Zuko steps of the evil guy, just a little less cartoony but still pretty basic, like she is ruthless and doesn't stop

Then the show is like "i mean yeah but she is also a very fragile teenager with the worst father in the world as only parent" and that is so so fucking painful? Like the final Agni Kai to me NEVER really felt like a triumphant Victory but more like... A sad relief? Like it's finally over and they can all heal now

Ozai... Ozai fucking sucks and that's amazing

Because.

A story needs a villain that the viewer needs to root against

Ozai is pretty one dimensional, but he thrives as a villain because EVERYONE ELSE in his (current alive) family is so well written!

It doesn't matter why Ozai is such a megalomaniac abusive piece of shit

Because the only thing we need to hate him it's provided and justified since episode 1

But. I think as a kid it really surprised me how... "Refined" he looked.

He isn't burly or his face is in a permanent scowl

He is by all standards a pretty boy. (Which is funny to think about)

But then he smiles and you realize that oh. This bitch is the creepiest bastard we have seen so far

(i personally think Zhao was a prototype, they share *a lot* of characteristics)

Anyway i just though it was neat.

#lagt yells #atla #random musings #also fuck Ursa.#woman is a terrible person and i would have preferred if she was actually dead in post canon #azula #zuko #iroh #ozai

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