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this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2025
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Chapotraphouse
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there are no neural networks in ba sing se
while this is a funny comment, my cat died and so i've been rewatching avatar and my god the earth kingdom stuff is straight up sinophobia, jesus christ, cant westerners ever be normal?
I mean the entire thing is just based on western stereotypes about asian cultures... and inuits? For some reason? Sorry to hear about your cat btw, that sounds like it's tough.
it's making me rewatch avatar for the third time, which probably shows the seriousness of the matter. but it's ok, she lived 14.5 years and enjoyed nearly all of that time.
i broke this morning, and i'm probably getting another cat by sunday....
almost 15 years is long by cat standards, sounds like she had a long and full life. That's as close to making it as you get in cat terms.
yeah, and it was her time, but it's still incredibly fucked up how i get to decide when the vet kills my cat for me.... i dont think there's a better way (short of not having pets at all), but it's still super fucked up
like, my cat was super tired at the end and had aggressive cancer (1 month from normal to ... dying). still.
sorry i'm dumping this here, i guess it had to come out sometime....
It's fine, you had a companion for almost 15 years and no longer do, that is an enormous emotional toll. Especially given that you had to make the very hard choice to end their life. I do not blame you for being affected, and wanting to share is only natural.
I think it doesn't really go any further than "we want people to live at the poles, who lives closest to our poles?" There are plenty of coastal and tropical and desert and plains and mountain dwelling Asian cultures, but not much in the way of polar ones lol
There's a bunch of Siberian people who are pretty polar. But yeah, most people probably associate the term "Polar" more with Inuits and Aleuts than they do the various people of Siberia.
Can't be stereotyped for a cartoon's worldbuilding if Yankees haven't even heard of you [taps temple]
Chukchis, Sireniks, Yuits, Kereks, Yukaghirs, Evenks, Evens, Nenets, Enets, Nganasans, Yakuts, and Dolgans:
Depends what you mean by "Asian" I guess, most people don't really think of Russia as being part of Asia
Tungusic people (Some of the people mentioned here being a subgroup of that) would include manchus.
if you think of asians as people with the funny eyes, it totally works. air nomads are tibet, earth kingdom is china, fire nation is japan, water tribe (tribe!) is i guess various polar people.
notice how air nomads have no economic base, it makes no sense. it's the western idea of tibet, with no serfs, no slaves, just the monks.
I guess I just always assumed their economic base was related to the sky bison. They're pastoral nomads
Every single air guy we see is a monk, we never see a pastoral nomad air guy.
Sure, but they're also all dead as shit, which is kind of the whole conciet of the show.
Plus, anything we really know about them, comes from the flashbacks of a 10 year old boy.
Idk, I think I can forgive the children's cartoon for not trying to be the Silmarillion
they're vegetarians. what are they eating up those mountain monasteries? butter and lichen?
Well since they're vegetarian (And not vegan) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter_tea
Idk, probably some seasonally based agriculture/forraging thing, and they just move around as needed. It's been awhile, but I feel like I recall the show making some mention of those monasteries not being occupied year-round.
They probably weave bison hair into fibers to make clothes, and engage in trade of some kind.
I don't think it's that hard to infer from the text, what their lifeways were like.
But it's also a children's cartoon so I'm not all that scuffed up about it ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I think it's less "trade" and more like, the way some monasteries in the real world are supported by their local populace, so too were the Air Temples. They no doubt farm what they can up there, but the bulk of their food is probably donations from the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation villages nearest each temple. And in return, the Air Nomads would give spiritual guidance and assistance. None of this is ever explicitly addressed but I feel like it is implied especially in FC Yee's novels. Keep in mind you can get pretty much anywhere in the world from any air temple in a matter of days by sky bison so collecting donations would be pretty easy.
They are occupied year-round but not by all the same people necessarily. Children are born in the East and West Temples (the ones where nuns take priority) and the boys once they get old enough ~~(probably once weaned)~~ (edit: I just remembered this is wrong, the cutoff point is once they bond with a sky bison. The sky bison are also raised at the East and West temples so boys can leave once they've befriended "their" sky bison which seems to happen around age 3 or 4) are taken to the North and South temples (where monks take priority) and they seem to stay largely at one temple which they then consider their "home" temple. Then once they're old enough not to need a direct guardian looking after them, they're free to wander the world and stop by any of the four temples as they please. But they're still considered residents of one temple and visitors to any of the other temples.
Yknow what? Good post!
Yeah, I read Theory
I was in the target demographic when it came out, and while it has quite a lot of lib bullshit in it, I do think there's some sincerely good art in there
Also Yee's novels are straight up just good stories, if you like fantasy slop and have any interest in the setting or its aesthetics I highly recommend them
The ancestors of the Inuit came from Asia. Following the law of "my ancestors came from there, which means I'm from there, too", which is sacrosanct in the Anglo-Seppolandic culture that the text of Avatar: The Last Airbender was composed in, this means that the Inuit are seen as Asians for the purposes of the story. (jocular intent)