Movies, and TV Shows, and Books! Oh my!

Unlike the rest of the Gaang, Sokka’s Fire Nation outfit is almost entirely Chinese-inspired. The capelet he’s wearing is inspired by “cloud collars” or Yunjian (云肩).

Fun fact, Sokka’s cloud collar is traditionally considered to be women’s fashion. Considering that Sokka would obviously be clueless about civilian clothing in the Fire Nation, the “inaccuracy” of the design choice can simply be written off as Sokka’s ignorance. That said, it is pretty funny that this is the second time Sokka has visited a new nation and ended up in traditionally female clothing.

Aang

Aang’s outfit is canonically a school uniform and inspired by Thai male formalwear. He’s basically wearing a posh boarding school uniform.

Katara

Katara’s design is inspired by the female folk-dance costumes of the Dai people, so I’m assuming her outfit would be something like a street performer’s outfit in the modern day.

Sokka

As I implied earlier, the cloud collar was historically a popular accessory with Chinese noblewomen. Meanwhile, sleeveless tangzhuang tend to be associated with martial arts; I’ve seen quite a few listings online refer to them as “Kung Fu Vests”. So quite a contrast in clothing choices. The modern-day equivalent would be walking around in a tank while wearing a pearl necklace… Which is apparently a thing.

Toph

Toph’s shawl-cape thing is inspired by the sabai (สไบ) worn by female performers in Thai ballet renditions of the Ramayana. Basically, a very fancy piece of clothing. The hairband she’s wearing also resembles costume jewelry. In contrast, her pants are Thai fishermen pants, which are about as practical and unfancy as you can get. In short, she’s basically wearing the modern equivalent to sweatpants with a tutu and a tiara. I imagine Fire Nation locals assume she’s just a very whimsical 12-year-old.

but rocky and grace put the whole diplomacy thing in jeopardy by being too best buddy with it. like they're both really low level members of the mission. some engineer necessary for ship maintenance, and an obligatory molecular biologist they brought along in case they found more alien cells out in space. and these two guys like, somehow keep ending up hanging out essentially "at the back of the classroom." consistently left out of the actually important negotiations, and well, they're bored!

grace steals some laptops and starts jury-rigging his own personal translator for rocky, despite the fact that the official translation software is way quicker to learn and much more nuanced. rocky starts learning english, simplifies his eridian, and immediately starts mocking grace for needing the software. they start blabbing to each other about all the weird quirks of their respective cultures and advanced science their planets can do. the whole time they are ribbing each other about culture stuff. grace eats in front of rocky. rocky forces grace to sleep in a corridor somewhere so he can keep watch.

then stratt and the eridian leader find out and it's like

stratt: you. you've been meeting in private with a member of the eridian deligation?

grace: ... yyyes.

stratt: and you shared with them classified scientific documents?

grace: i... maybe gave him. a laptop. he's so smart! what was i supposed to do?

stratt: HIM? you've assigned male pronouns to a genderless species?

grace: he said he likes to match!

stratt: do you even know the name of this eridian?!

grace: i call him rocky :)

stratt: 😰

then on rocky's side of things it's like

eridian leader: sorry did you say you called the human after one of its digestive noises?

rocky: yeah :)

eridian leader: and. you've been telling it about how to make xenonite. one of our most vital trading resources.

rocky: yes yes, grace is very ignorant about basic chemistry 🙄

eridian leader: right. and you watch it sleep. despite the fact that all the human beings we have spoken to have described this as a cultural violation?

rocky: well he didn't like it at first but he came around!!

anyway both sides of the delegation are sweating profusely (metaphorically speaking) until they see rocky and grace in action and are like ohh! they're both freaks. we are not to blame for this. these two are just really bad at navigating cultural norms.

so three things happen the summer after ozai is defeated and appa starts shedding in earnest again

aang starts spinning and selling yarn because that’s What You Do and he’s clinging REAL HARD to every possible air nomad tradition because, well, who else will remember these things?

toph hears about this and scruffs him before he can sell too much because she’s a merchants daughter and holy shit aang do you understand what you’re selling?? yarn from the last known sky bison! the avatar’s own spirit guide!! spun by the avatars own hand!!!! what are you doing aang!!!!!! she has to drag katara in at this point because aang is real unhappy with the idea that his normal flying bison yarn of, uh, questionable quality is being sold to exclusive high class weavers so they can make shawls for filthy rich nobles for baaaaaank just on the basis of his name. this isn’t how the monks did it :/ and he doesn’t WANT a lot of money anyway! he’s a monk!! he only asks for what he needs to survive!! anyway katara manages to talk toph around to donating most of the money to reconstruction efforts, charities, and orphanages and convinces aang that having an emergency fund is a good thing and he should keep something. aang accidentally ends up with a reasonably full bank account and is really confused about how that happened, why it’s there, and what he’s supposed to do with it

there is a real weird period of time where it’s In Fashion for high noble ladies to have shawls and scarves dyed the same color as aangs clothes (because that’s how you know it’s made with special avatar yarn!) or have images of appa woven into them (can you imagine a shawl that’s just a full length body shot of appa?? amazing) and all the earth kingdom nobility are just rocking green and orange like nbd. weaving decorative shawls with slubby yarn becomes really in fashion, too, because aang is not great at spinning. he’s 13 and it’s boring, ok?

BONUS sokka is just. so mad. you could have been making bank with appa the whole time we were scrambling around the planet aang? do you realize how much more food we could have had? how many more hot baths?? how could you betray me like this

i bet sky bison yarn is really strong but probably not super soft - we see in the show that the fibers are really long, which lends itself well to strong yarns that can stand up to a lot of wear and tear (silk yarn is INCREDIBLE when it comes to being hard-wearing, and that’s mostly because silk is basically an INFINITELY LONG FIBER). But because it’s so long and comes from such a large animal, it’s probably really coarse and thick.

I’m imagining most of those high-class ladies would be wearing at least one layer underneath their shawls, because bison yarn is probably pretty itchy if you’re used to high quality wool, silk, or fine linen. Especially bison yarn spun by a 13yo who doesn’t really like spinning.

unless of course the air nomads bred their bison specifically for soft fur, but generally when you’re breeding for stuff like that, you need different breeds for different purposes. appa’s pretty clearly a long-distance riding bison, which would probably have been a different breed than whichever ones would have been bred for soft fur. most species of domesticated animal that are dual+ purpose (i.e. meat/milk/wool/transportation) have breeds that can only do one or two of those well, and the others not as great.

the air nomads obviously would not have been breeding for meat, because vegetarians. For long distance travel and a nomadic lifestyle I bet they would have wanted a travel/milk dual purpose breed, but because they can regulate their body temperature with airbending, soft warm yarn might not have been a high priority for that breed.

I *do* spin on a drop spindle, tho, and the biggest problem with stopping and starting often is keeping the single the same width, but you have the same problem stopping and starting ANY kind of spinning project. In some ways, a drop spindle makes it easier to control that than a regular spinning wheel - you have a lot more control over the fiber and the yarn you’re spinning, so you can be more precise. My drop spindle yarns tend to be very regular and compact, while my spinning wheel yarns are more varied and lofty.

And wouldn’t the process from start to finish be a good lesson in great fullness? Like how long it takes from baby bison to clothes

Also, to the person who said Sky Bisons would only shed about seven pounds a year, I would like to counter that idea with the fact that Appa is GARGANTUAN. He has enough room on his saddle to carry literally six or seven children and their equipment on his back without much complaint, of which these children are not too much smaller than adults. An ox or an Alpaca or a normal Bison are tiny compared to Appa.

I was actually trying to say that if muskox shed seven pounds we could use that to extrapolate how much appa shed if he shed proportionate to his size, not that appa would only shed seven pounds

ok, adhd rabbit hole time because I just looked up the average size of muskoxen and the approximate size of appa and, uh. apparently muskoxen are 900lbs full grown and appa is ten tons. over TWENTY TIMES THE SIZE OF A MUSKOX. obvs that’s doesn’t actually tell us anything about appas actual height and length but that’s the only solid number the show gives us and thirty pounds of underfur is starting to seem pretty conservative. it might be closer to 120lbs???

An Overview of Tibetan Weaving

Tibetan Rugs - Wikipedia

According to the first article, there are five types of traditional Tibetan wool-based fabrics that vary in coarseness. Tibetan rugs are special in that they are created using knotting techniques unique to the Tibetan culture, distinct from the surrounding Indian and Chinese rug-making traditions.

now you only really see the moment of and don't realize it was an hours long protracted event with plenty of dead time to fill. At one point they just start listing off famous ships to waste time when nothing was happening

The video...

...and the uncut coverage

Dad (who was a NASA engineer) bought a 25" color TV in summer 1969 just to watch the moon landing in style. Largest TV available at the time. Stupidly expensive.