i am a yaoyorozu momo lovebot

Vanilla (GACKT) live draw overs cause I’m obsessed with this song

but the racial insensitivity is staggering. and i wanna talk about the amount of exploiting there is of south asian culture specifically. i’m south asian, indian specifically, and i grew up watching this show that was supposed to be “different” and “inspiring” for people of colour.

except there were little to no characters with dark skin who had importance and were explicitly made out to be south asian. that was fine. i was used to not seeing characters on television who looked like i did. except this show used my culture. they used my culture and they couldn’t even bother putting in good characters who looked like they remotely belonged to that culture, even if they were minor and not part of the gaang.

first of all, the show has a lot of influence from Hinduism—the word avatar (avatāra) itself means “descent” in Sanskrit, referring to the incarnation of a deity in human form. where did Hinduism originate?

indus valley, or what we now call pakistan, a south asian country. the entire concept of chi or prana, as it is referred to as in Hinduism, is a reoccurring theme in atla; your vital energy, your spiritual energy. this is another one of the religion’s influences on the show.

atla also talks about the seven chakras. this is another concept from Hinduism, and in the religion, they must always be unblocked for your prana (the term from Hinduism) or chi (the Chinese term which is used the show) to flow smoothly. chi is your life energy.

so. guess who helps aang out with his chakras?

right. this guy. the only blatantly south asian character we’ve gotten so far, and you wanna know why it’s so blatant? because he’s literally an indian stereotype. he’s the only obviously south asian character so far in the show and he’s a racist portrayal of enlightened practitioners of Hinduism. great.

oh, and before i forget—

do their foreheads look familiar? oh yeah, that’s because it’s literally copied off of this:

this is Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction. they used a religious symbol in Hinduism to make a couple characters look cool. well, combustion man and p’li both have these third eyes, so we can assume they are at least south asian coded—but what are their characters like?

villains. unhinged. insane. we don’t even know combustion man’s name—we just know he’s a contract killer who would murder a child for the right price. p’li wants to dismantle all forms of government and let the world reign free in chaos, and finally she is given a horribly grotesque death: she gets her head blown off.

for all of the culture references that are important pieces of this show, you’d think there’d be an area that has south asian people. there isn’t one. i’m not going to speak about the other loads of racism in atla because i don’t belong to those cultures, but here’s my two cents.

*and combustion man is gross, appropriative and racist no matter how you swing it lol. shiva may be the “god of destruction” but he is not meant to be evil/an assassin - he destroys the bad parts of the world. it’s literally bare minimum research. and this is not a forgotten god, he is a religious figure who is actively worshipped. white men do not get to bastardize him for fun. 

look, ATLA is a product of its time. it does many good things. but we can’t just sit here and pretend it’s the “gold standard for representation in cartoons” when it’s just,,,,not.

Shiva also is shown to give boons, or grant the wishes of the asura (the hindu equivalent of demons) if they pray for the same amount of time as any other sage, or even less, if they do it with enough devotion. 

the snake and skulls and animal pelts are to show acceptance. to show that we shouldn’t fear death or run away from it. it doesn’t mean he’s a killer.

Here’s some old artwork that I’ve never bothered posting here hahah