My freak corner

Here’s the thing about the air nomads.

I introduced a friend to ATLA a few nights ago, and they had only known two things about the entire show: the cabbage meme, and that Aang apparently wants to ride every large and dangerous animal he can possibly find. We got through the first five or so episodes, and my friend noted that Aang is exactly what a 12-year-old would be like if given godlike powers, and that this is literally just what he could do with airbending. He can’t even wield any of the other elements, and he’s one of the most powerful people on the planet, because he’s an airbender.

And that got me thinking.

This snippet from Bitter Work is one of the few pieces of concrete information we get about the airbenders, at least in ATLA. Iroh is explaining to Zuko how all four of the elements connect to the world and to each other.

Fire is the element of power, of desire and will, of ambition and the ability to see it through. Power is crucial to the world; without it, there’s no drive, no momentum, no push. But fire can easily grow out of control and become dangerous; it can become unpredictable, unless it is nurtured and watched and structured.

Earth is the element of substance, persistence, and enduring. Earth is strong, consistent, and blunt. It can construct things with a sense of permanence; a house, a town, a walled city. But earth is also stubborn; it’s liable to get stuck, dig in, and stay put even when it’s best to move on.

Water is the element of change, of adaptation, of movement. Water is incredibly powerful both as a liquid and a solid; it will flow and redirect. But it also will change, even when you don’t want it to; ice will melt, liquid will evaporate. A life dedicated to change necessarily involves constant movement, never putting down roots, never letting yourself become too comfortable.

We see only a few flashbacks to Aang’s life in the temples, and we get a sense of who he was and what kind of upbringing he had.

This is a preteen with the power to fucking fly. He’s got no fear of falling, and a much reduced fear of death. There’s a reason why the sages avoid telling the new avatar their status until they turn sixteen; could you imagine a firebender, at twelve years old, learning that they were going to be the most powerful person in the whole world? Depending on that child, that could go so badly.

But the thing about Aang, and the thing about the Air Nomads, is that they were part of the world too. They contributed to the balance, and then they were all but wiped out by Sozin. What was lost, there? Was it freedom? Yes, but I think there’s something else too, and it’s just yet another piece of the utter brilliance of the worldbuilding of ATLA.

To recap: we have power to push us forward; we have stability to keep us strong; we have change to keep us moving.

And then we have this guy.

The air nomads brought fun to the world. They brought a very literal sense of lightheartedness.

Sozin saw this as a weakness. I think a lot of the world did, in ATLA. Why do the Air Nomads bother, right? They’re just up there in their temples, playing games, baking pies in order to throw them as a gag. As Iroh said above, they had pretty great senses of humour, and they didn’t take themselves too seriously.

But that’s a huge part of having a world of balance and peace.

It’s not just about power, or might, or the ability to adapt. You can have all of those, but you also need fun. You need the ability to be vulnerable, to have no ambitions beyond just having a good day. You need to be able to embrace silliness, to nurture play, to have that space where a very specific kind of emotional growth can occur. Fun makes a hard life a little easier. Fun makes your own mortality a little less frightening to grasp. Fun is the spaces in between, that can’t be measured by money or military might. Fun is what nurtures imagination, allows you to see a situation in a whole new light, to find new solutions to problems previously considered impossible.

Fun is what makes a stranger into a friend, rather than an enemy.

Fun helps you see past your differences.

Fun is what fuels curiosity and openmindedness.

And… Tomorrow too. Tve’s set has photos of the candidates that make me think of The Brady bunch, I don’t know why.

The Amazons’ New Clothes

Zack Snyder caused an Amazonian uproar on social media when he started sharing pictures of Amazons from Justice League in leather bikinis.

This abrupt change of direction is a shock and these outfits look like generic barbarian women from a game of Dungeons and Dragons. They completely lack the unique flavor of the Greco-Roman-inspired armor ensembles that Lindy Hemming put so much thought and historical research into creating for Wonder Woman. The Wonder Woman designs received acclaim from fans and costume fanatics alike. They were clearly inspired by the Amazon’s origins in the Mediterranean and were feminine but very functional. Why mess with perfection?

Oh, right. The all-male team of directors and executive directors wanted women to fight in bikinis.

Wonder Woman began filming in 2015, the year before Justice League started filming in 2016. The Amazons’  design was finalized and most of the costumes completed while Justice League was still in pre-production. That means that there were discussions about what the Amazons should wear into battle in Justice League and the epic designs from Wonder Woman were rejected in favor of leather bikinis. Let that sink in. They rejected already finished costumes to redesign and remake the armor so that more skin would be showing.

this same species is also trained to identify tuberculosis in samples by smell, meaning they can test for TB at a rapid rate with a high accuracy :)

Olly Moss’s Harry Potter.

Olly Moss surprised everyone and is currently doing a timed release of these new, official, Harry Potter illustrations.  They’re only available until October 25th, 2016.  Check them out!

“Chancellor Merkel met with internationally acclaimed human rights  advocate Amal Clooney today to talk about the refugee crisis. Clooney was accompanied by her husband, an actor.”