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Ah Aang.

He was done so dirty by Bryke and the narrative.

In my fic - the worst prisoner I am working on a section where Aang comes to terms with his Air Nomad philosophies. Since Aang and the Air Nomads were based on Buddhist monks, I looked to Buddhism.

Disclaimer. I'm not an expert, I'm just a newbie, but even as a newbie I have come across some absolute gems of wisdom.

In Buddhist philosophy attachment =/= love.

One guru described it this way:

Love = I care about YOU and I want YOU to be happy.

Attachment = I care about ME and I want you to make ME happy.

Learning to let go of Attachment is all about learning to let go of our egocentric world view, and to see that some things are bigger than us and our immediate wants and whims. Once we let go, we can see the world more completely and with more compassion, but without putting our own agendas on it ---

Ah, do you see the vision. Someone on the writing team knew this and they built Aang up for 2 whole ass seasons to be the sort of person who needed to learn this. They made letting go of attachment the crux of his character arc. This is a key Buddhist teaching, so it would have been an important Air Nomad idea.... and Aang just never learns it?

He thinks attachment is about his crush? (It's not even about what is good for Katara. Katara makes Aang happy, and he wants her to keep making him happy. At it's core, it is about him)

He never learns to let go of his attachment, and so he never learns to put others first. He never gets to let go of his egocentric world view and instead he puts his own agenda into everything.

Aang never gets to fully understand Air Nomad philosophy?

Aang never gets to grow.

Why build up the attachment lesson for two seasons if you weren't going to do anything with it bryke?! It's just such an odd writing choice because the entire set-up, themes, inner conflict and personality were already written and perfect for this kind of narrative arc.

Ah, the narrative arc Aang could have had is so beautiful. it's such a lovely philosophy and the potential is all there. I'm a big believer in growth for Aang.

But yeah, this is another thing I'll be salty at Bryke about. It just feels ... kinda disrespectful to Buddhism. Instead of beautiful teachings about selflessness, we get their hamfisted interpretation of attachment and petty immaturity shoved into the narrative instead.

Aang is such a warm and peaceful soul who is in a crushing situation. I have nothing against him.

The AtLA world is entirely fictional and so are the dilemmas within it. The characters are used to tell a story.

I agree the repopulation issue would have been a big one for Aang. But it is also a Writing Choice. That would have been a cruel weight for Aang but it was one that was placed there by the writers.

Since bending isn't completely genetic and pops up in characters without bending parents, Bryke had so many other narrative options for repopulation but settled on Aang wanting an American style nuclear family. (Which in itself isn't a very Buddhist desire and they insist he's buddhist-like).

I'm not criticising Aang - he is a fictional character and he's a kid. It would be unreasonable to expect a twelve year old to be across the nuances of his culture.

My criticism is directed at the choice by the Bryke/writers to:

1 set all Aangs character arc in motion and link his crucial lesson to an explicit teaching in a real world religion(Bryke frequently cite Buddhism as an inspiration for the Air Nomads)

2 make avoidance and a self-centred outlook the fatal flaw of the hero, explicitly state the lesson that the hero needs to learn over the course of his narrative arc, and this spiritual lesson is all about letting go of selfishness. (All heroes have flaws and learning to work through these is the stuff of great character arcs. Also Aang is twelve and the last of his kind, so being self-focussed is a fitting flaw for him).

3 then just decide, nah. Selfishness, smelfishness. That Buddhist teaching which we explicitly referenced as the answer is just dumb and unnecessary. A rock will do the same thing as achieving enlightenment. (Dismissing a key Buddhist teaching).

4 have Aang decide he wants an American style nuclear family and continue basing all his choices on how they affect him rather than considering the needs and wants of others.

I'm willing to cut 12 year old Aang from season 1 and 2 all the slack in the world. He's a kid. He's a genocide survivor. He's trying his best.

But the writing gets real wonky in season 3.

And now we know Bryke are the sort of people who will invent their own language with chatgpt so they don't have to use Chinese calligraphy and ask AI how to draw different ethnicities... So it's part of a pattern for them wanting the aesthetic of a culture but not wanting to engage with it or respect it.

She was amazed to discover that when he was saying, 'As you wish,' what he meant was, 'I love you.' And… she truly loved him back.

No subscription. Just program.

On your computer. You got to use it forever and ever and never had to worry about it going away.

Because it was physically on your computer. As a program. That you actually owned. Not because you got it separately, but because it was a standard inclusion with your computer.

I'm sorry but I'll just never get over it. I remember when companies cared about their products being usable out of the box. I remember when our things belonged to us.

TV Appreciation Week 2024  : Day 7 : Free choice → Favourite show nobody watched (Galavant)

Jewish baby named Edgardo Mortara is seemingly about to die in Bologna, 1851

Catholic nanny secretly baptises him to save his soul, which she’s not exactly the kind of authority who can do that, but w/e, it’s interpreted by the church as valid later

Kid survives

1857 her secret gets out, a baptising makes a kid a Catholic according to the Church and a Catholic can’t be raised in a non-Catholic household in the Papal States, so the church authorises the police to kidnap Edgardo from his family

Raised personally by Pope Pius IX, Jewish family not allowed to take him back due to Church doctrine, this action destroys the family with grief and despair

This case gets international infamy with the Pope not understanding why everyone’s shiting on him for doing this, including allies

Emperor Napoleon III shifts from opposing Italian unification to supporting it as a direct consequence

Bologna falls the next year, 1859

Kingdom of Italy forms 1861

By 1870 Rome is lost to the Italians and the Papal States are no more

(Edgardo Mortara goes on to become Father Mortara)

The most infamous of these cases was the Finaly affair. Two Jewish children in France, Robert and Gerald Finaly, were placed in a Catholic nursery in 1944 in anticipation of their parents being deported to Auschwitz, where they were both murdered. Their aunt, Marguerite Fischel, survived the war and went to find the boys so she could take them to live with her. However, the nun who had custody of the boys, Antoinette Brun, adamantly refused to give them up, reportedly saying that “The Jews are not grateful”

What followed was a years long custody battle where despite being repeatedly ordered by courts all over Europe to return the boys, Brun took them to many different countries and hid them, with the support and help of other nuns and priests. It was suspected at the time, and later confirmed by documents released in 2020, that Pope Pius XII had supported the effort to keep the boys away from their surviving family and have them be raised Catholic.

Thankfully, after negotiations between a sympathetic cardinal in France and the chief Rabbi of Paris, the boys were finally recovered and reunited with their aunt.

I wish I could say that the phenomenon of the Catholic Church kidnapping children and keeping them away from their families for the purposes of forcefully raising them Catholic is unique to Jews, but it’s not. From the mid nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century, the Church ran hundreds of residential schools in the US and Canada where indigenous children were kidnapped from their homes and forced into these cruel and inhumane “schools”. The children were forbidden from speaking their own languages or practicing their own cultures and religions, their hair was cut, and they were subject to emotional, verbal, spiritual, physical, and sexual abuse. Many of the children died due to malnutrition or medical neglect, their bodies buried like dogs beside the schools. The Catholic Church was not the only Church to participate in this, but they’ve been the most reluctant to fully acknowledge and apologize for it. It was only in 2022 that Pope Francis apologized on behalf of the Catholic Church for their part, but some people found the apology inadequate.

Word prompts to use for doodling or writing

sunglasses

underwater

backpack

shade

pavilion

sentimental

tent

garden party

swimming pool

coconut

popsicle

island

spicy food

airplane

bubbles

watermelon

palm tree

seashells

ocean

parasol

snorkel

Wanderlust

vintage

bugs

string lights

homemade lemonade

surfboard

polaroid photos

childhood friends

summer reading

The second search result had included the slur "ob*se" in the title of the article.

There are seriously people who tell me fat people aren't oppressed. Meanwhile, trying to find information about how to keep a fat person from drying in a car crash is met with links to products that make dirty money off of how society views my body.

Pelvic bones are strong and sturdy, and you're going to be MUCH less likely to injure internal organs and such when you suddenly slam into a nylon belt"

Text and photos by @thejacespace