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attackfishI got a comment last night on Quiet Shadowed Places (The one where Zuko is blind):
An interesting idea. It's a little odd, though, because unlike with Toph, this story doesn't really explain how Zuko would compensate for being blind, as I don't see how he could possibly track down the avatar while being blind without some other factor in play. Still, a good little story.
Anybody want to tell me what’s wrong with this comment? (Other than the utter patronization inherent in calling it a “good little story” Because really, wow.)
Don’t get me wrong, I love Toph. I really really really love Toph! And there’s a lot that I found very refreshing in her portrayal as a character with a disability, like her parents’ misguided attempts to protect her from the world because of her blindness, something that real people do to real people with disabilities all the time. Or the way she feels comfortable making jokes about her disability, and the way she gets furious when people forget her limitations, or just plain the way she is an awesome, flawed character with a real personality along with a disability, which as most of you know, is sadly rare in media. But she still has a disability superpower. She is able to use her earthbending in such a way that her disability is functionally negated. It’s a credit to the writers that this ability of hers has limits, and that the writers put her in situations that show these, but for the most part, she is not limited by her blindness in the ways that people who don’t have earthbending are.
This is why when I sat down to write “Quiet Shadowed Places”, I deliberately picked blindness as Zuko’s disability and deliberately didn’t give him any extraordinary ability to compensate. I wanted to show how it was absolutely possible to be disabled and amazing without any special power, with only the solid grit that Zuko shows in canon. Zuko would “make up” for his disability the same way he makes up for his lack of resources, initially poor firebending skills, and other disadvantages, through dogged determination, his own innate cunning, and whether he admits it or not, reliance on his uncle and his crew. None of this requires sight. Zuko doesn’t find Aang time and time again with his sight. He finds Aang the first time with sight, but his crew could have just as easily done it for him. The second time he finds Aang, he finds him by listening to rumors, and having a crew that listens to rumors. He finds Aang by tailing him, by hiring June, by doing all kinds of things that do not require him personally to have sight. Some of the occasions in which Zuko tries to capture Aang would indeed require sight, like his expedition at th North Pole, or being the Blue Spirit. These are done differently in this universe. Given Zuko’s sheer tenacity in the face of extremely long odds, I have full confidence that this wouldn’t be much of a problem for him.
As a disabled writer, I wanted to write a story in which the disabled character doesn’t have an ability that negates his disability. I wanted to reflect the reality of my own experience as a disabled woman in a way that I don’t often get to see in media, because most portrayals of disabled characters are by able-bodied people and seen through their perspective. This is why tropes like the disability superpower, or any of the other noxious tropes I write about exist in the first place. We don’t control the narrative. I’ve written before about how painful it is not to have anyone who looks like you in the media you consume and how affirming it is to have someone who is like you with whom to identify in fiction. This essay isn’t about that, but instead about the way these portrayals of people with disabilities teach people without disabilities to view us.
Whether this reviewer realized it or not, they sent this review to a disabled writer, and in it, they told me that what broke their suspension of disbelief was Zuko being capable without something like Toph’s seismic sense. What this reviewer told me in this review is that not only can they can accept bending, avatars, spirits, and an entire fictional universe, but they can also accept a disabled character inventing radical new, never before contemplated styles of magic to replace their missing abilities, but that they cannot accept a disabled character, who, unable to invent a way to use his magic powers to replace his lost ability, instead functions the way disabled people do in the real world, and is as successful as his able-bodied counterpart. This reviewer is more willing and able to accept the false, unrealistic media portrayals of disability, than they are the reality of a disabled experience. Almost no disabled person has an ability that negates or nearly negates the limitations their disability places on them, or for that matter, the limitations society places upon us because of our disabilities. What people with disabilities do have is an incredible array of creative and innovative solutions to individual problems our disabilities present us with. Many of these things, like wheelchairs, portable oxygen, assistance dogs, and sign language, become the visible signs of our disability to the able-bodied world. I get pitying looks when people see my oxygen, and it makes me want to run up to them and say “look at my oxygen! Look at this awesome thing that helps me live my life!” This is as close as most of us will ever get to a disability superpower.
This reviewer’s inability to accept a disabled character without a disability superpower being capable of chasing the Avatar bleeds into how people like this reviewer treat real disabled people like me. Some people expect us all to have a disability superpower, and resent having to make accommodations in an able-bodied world for us, and say that if we don’t have a disability superpower capable of making our lives look just like theirs and overcome the barriers placed in front of us, we’re just not trying hard enough. Some people heap pity on us instead, in the assumption that without a disability superpower, we’re incapable of doing the kinds of things people with disabilities do all the time, from the normal everyday, to the outrageously impressive. Most of all though, the attitude of this reviewer and people like them, that our lives are somehow unrealistic enough to break a suspension of disbelief that has withstood fantasy and magic means that they don’t listen and believe disabled people when we talk about our experiences. It means that they believe they know my life and my needs better than I do. And that makes my life as a disabled woman infinitely harder.
An interesting idea. It's a little odd, though, because unlike with Toph, this story doesn't really explain how Zuko would compensate for being blind, as I don't see how he could possibly track down the avatar while being blind without some other factor in play. Still, a good little story.
Anybody want to tell me what’s wrong with this comment? (Other than the utter patronization inherent in calling it a “good little story” Because really, wow.)
Don’t get me wrong, I love Toph. I really really really love Toph! And there’s a lot that I found very refreshing in her portrayal as a character with a disability, like her parents’ misguided attempts to protect her from the world because of her blindness, something that real people do to real people with disabilities all the time. Or the way she feels comfortable making jokes about her disability, and the way she gets furious when people forget her limitations, or just plain the way she is an awesome, flawed character with a real personality along with a disability, which as most of you know, is sadly rare in media. But she still has a disability superpower. She is able to use her earthbending in such a way that her disability is functionally negated. It’s a credit to the writers that this ability of hers has limits, and that the writers put her in situations that show these, but for the most part, she is not limited by her blindness in the ways that people who don’t have earthbending are.
This is why when I sat down to write “Quiet Shadowed Places”, I deliberately picked blindness as Zuko’s disability and deliberately didn’t give him any extraordinary ability to compensate. I wanted to show how it was absolutely possible to be disabled and amazing without any special power, with only the solid grit that Zuko shows in canon. Zuko would “make up” for his disability the same way he makes up for his lack of resources, initially poor firebending skills, and other disadvantages, through dogged determination, his own innate cunning, and whether he admits it or not, reliance on his uncle and his crew. None of this requires sight. Zuko doesn’t find Aang time and time again with his sight. He finds Aang the first time with sight, but his crew could have just as easily done it for him. The second time he finds Aang, he finds him by listening to rumors, and having a crew that listens to rumors. He finds Aang by tailing him, by hiring June, by doing all kinds of things that do not require him personally to have sight. Some of the occasions in which Zuko tries to capture Aang would indeed require sight, like his expedition at th North Pole, or being the Blue Spirit. These are done differently in this universe. Given Zuko’s sheer tenacity in the face of extremely long odds, I have full confidence that this wouldn’t be much of a problem for him.
As a disabled writer, I wanted to write a story in which the disabled character doesn’t have an ability that negates his disability. I wanted to reflect the reality of my own experience as a disabled woman in a way that I don’t often get to see in media, because most portrayals of disabled characters are by able-bodied people and seen through their perspective. This is why tropes like the disability superpower, or any of the other noxious tropes I write about exist in the first place. We don’t control the narrative. I’ve written before about how painful it is not to have anyone who looks like you in the media you consume and how affirming it is to have someone who is like you with whom to identify in fiction. This essay isn’t about that, but instead about the way these portrayals of people with disabilities teach people without disabilities to view us.
Whether this reviewer realized it or not, they sent this review to a disabled writer, and in it, they told me that what broke their suspension of disbelief was Zuko being capable without something like Toph’s seismic sense. What this reviewer told me in this review is that not only can they can accept bending, avatars, spirits, and an entire fictional universe, but they can also accept a disabled character inventing radical new, never before contemplated styles of magic to replace their missing abilities, but that they cannot accept a disabled character, who, unable to invent a way to use his magic powers to replace his lost ability, instead functions the way disabled people do in the real world, and is as successful as his able-bodied counterpart. This reviewer is more willing and able to accept the false, unrealistic media portrayals of disability, than they are the reality of a disabled experience. Almost no disabled person has an ability that negates or nearly negates the limitations their disability places on them, or for that matter, the limitations society places upon us because of our disabilities. What people with disabilities do have is an incredible array of creative and innovative solutions to individual problems our disabilities present us with. Many of these things, like wheelchairs, portable oxygen, assistance dogs, and sign language, become the visible signs of our disability to the able-bodied world. I get pitying looks when people see my oxygen, and it makes me want to run up to them and say “look at my oxygen! Look at this awesome thing that helps me live my life!” This is as close as most of us will ever get to a disability superpower.
This reviewer’s inability to accept a disabled character without a disability superpower being capable of chasing the Avatar bleeds into how people like this reviewer treat real disabled people like me. Some people expect us all to have a disability superpower, and resent having to make accommodations in an able-bodied world for us, and say that if we don’t have a disability superpower capable of making our lives look just like theirs and overcome the barriers placed in front of us, we’re just not trying hard enough. Some people heap pity on us instead, in the assumption that without a disability superpower, we’re incapable of doing the kinds of things people with disabilities do all the time, from the normal everyday, to the outrageously impressive. Most of all though, the attitude of this reviewer and people like them, that our lives are somehow unrealistic enough to break a suspension of disbelief that has withstood fantasy and magic means that they don’t listen and believe disabled people when we talk about our experiences. It means that they believe they know my life and my needs better than I do. And that makes my life as a disabled woman infinitely harder.
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Date: 2013-11-03 04:35 pm (UTC)Tone is hard on the internet because writing and strangers. But yeah, I see what you mean about ability/disability and a compensating superpower...
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Date: 2013-11-01 11:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-02 12:05 am (UTC)the corrupt asshole of the mayor of Juarez who stole about half the money of the city is being honored with a statue.
That's disgusting.
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Date: 2013-11-02 12:29 am (UTC)Yeah the mayor is a douchbag. He built a stupid, giant X that is pretty much a phallac tribute to his giant dick! The asshole! The city of Juarez is broke and this asshole stole more money and I'm just beyond pissed!
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Date: 2013-11-02 12:44 am (UTC)That is a very good law.
Your mayor really is a total douche.
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Date: 2013-11-02 12:50 am (UTC)The law is okay. The major problem with it is that here, pedestrians have the right of way and any car that runs one over is always at fault. That wouldn't be a problem if the pedestrians didn't act like cattle and crossed wherever they wanted to, including the middle of a main street in heavy traffic. They get hit, they can suck the driver dry.
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Date: 2013-11-02 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-11-02 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-02 01:49 am (UTC)I hope that the rest of your day, at least is better.
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Date: 2013-11-02 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-11-02 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-01 10:34 pm (UTC)"An interesting idea."
It's actually a newish spin on a very old idea that has rarely lived up to its potential, in the hands of nondisabled writers who have no clue what they could actually do with an exploration of how disability would and wouldn't change things.
"It's a little odd, though, because unlike with Toph, this story doesn't really explain how Zuko would compensate for being blind,"
That is technically true; QSP doesn't show how Zuko does things. Other stories in the same AU verse do, and personally, I think you should centralize all of the QSP fics. Maybe adding the drabbles as additional chapters would help.
"as I don't see how he could possibly track down the avatar while being blind without some other factor in play."
But this is an odd thing to disbelieve. Initially disbelieving he could fight in a universe where people primarily use extremely deadly ranged attacks would make sense. This is just an odd thing not to believe. It seems like hunting Aang would be much easier to do blind than most of what Zuko does in canon.
"Still, a good little story."
I sincerely hope that, if this reviewer were to read Ice Flows Through, xe would call it a "good big story" and would call The Road to Yu Dao a "good medium story". I sincerely hope that.
So, moving on to your post:
It hadn't occurred to me that you deliberately chose to give him the same disability as Toph, but it's awesome that you did.
I would love to read QSP versions of The Blue Spirit, The Crossroads of Destiny, and The Siege of the North.
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Date: 2013-11-02 12:48 am (UTC)I've posted all of the QSP fics on AO3, but I never got around to doing it on ff.net, mostly because I really hated their old system. I should probably do something about that.
I doubt very much that the reviewer was talking about the size of the story, but I am going to pretend to believe that, because it makes me want to hit them less.
I have a longstanding promise to write the Crossroads of Destiny in the QSP universe to the next person who asks on an open meme. It's probably about 4000 words long, and it differs significantly from canon, less because Zuko's blind, and more because Jet. I'm way too buried in fic right now to host a meme, but eventually...
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Date: 2013-11-02 12:57 am (UTC)I didn't know you were on AO3!
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Date: 2013-11-02 01:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-02 02:49 am (UTC)Besides which, plot always flows from knowing how things work. If you know how things work, you know how they could be disrupted. Knowing that lets you know how to make interesting things happen.
I'm also not so sure that it's possible to draw a line between descriptions requiring research and plotty events that don't.
I guess this makes me sound as if I have a strong opinion in favor, but I really feel ambivalent, because of how abled-gazey the descriptions can get.
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Date: 2013-11-02 03:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-02 05:16 am (UTC)But if you're writing an AU-- specifically, an AU where there's one event that happened differently and everything thereafter is affected-- then whatever is different is what you focus on, right? I don't know, maybe this isn't clear. Hypothetically, if I were to write... hmmm... deaf!Aang, I'd probably write about him figuring out how to talk to Sokka and Katara after getting unfrozen, and... *quickly plots out AU* how that might or might not affect his relationship with Toph, and how they would talk to each other, what with Toph not having learned to read. Because if I wrote about, say, the Siege of the North, it would just be Aang sinking ships and then going o the spirit world, just like canon.
Actually, that plotbunny is almost interesting enough to write.
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Date: 2013-11-02 03:30 pm (UTC)Write that AU!!!!!!!!!!!! I want to read it.
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Date: 2013-11-02 10:28 pm (UTC)(I really, really want to read QSP!Siege of the North.)
But, I mean, of course you don't describe Zuko playing the tsungi horn in a fic about the plot. But you do describe the plot, and how characters are doing things is sometimes part of that.
The following is a work of fiction, and I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Earthbending
"We're going to start by moving a rock!" Toph shouted at Aang.
"Something about rocks? What are we gonna do with them? Are we gonna turn them into..." Aang didn't stop talking, but Toph stopped understanding. She sighed. Aang kept going, very excitedly.
"Hey, Katara, get over here," said Toph. "Tell Aang we're gonna start by moving a rock."
Katara's movements flowed like she was waterbending. Aang stopped talking.
"What are you doing?" asked Toph.
"Waterbending characters in the air," said Katara.
Toph tried to guess at whether that last movement meant she was done. It would be easier to learn what Katara's waterbending moves did if she could see what happened every time.
"Okay, moving rocks, that sounds fun," said Aang, but he sounded a lot less excited than before. Toph gestured for him to follow her to a suitable spot to start practicing. Katara followed them like a lost puppy.
She adjusted a couple of boulders a little bit, so they stood right next to each other.
She held out an arm to stop Aang, then positioned herself in front of him. She pointed to him, then to her eye, and then to the rocks.
"You want me to watch?" he asked. Toph nodded. Then she went to one of the rocks, took her stance, and punched it so hard it went flying across the valley.
She turned back and pointed to Aang again, and then to the next boulder. Then she had to correct his stance a bit before she let him try.
"See, Katara?" she said, glancing over so Katara would see her face. "I can talk to Aang just fine."
Aang hit the boulder. It wasn't the boulder that went flying.
Talking to him wasn't going to be the hardest part, was it?
***
The Fire Nation
"I'm sorry, what?" said Aang. Someone was tugging on his collar. He dug in his heels. Had he been found out?
He heard shouting-- something about a lion? Something about stupid?
"I can't hear you," said Aang. "I can't hear!"
The shouting stopped and Aang was whirled around.
"Can you read lips?"
Aang shrugged. "A little." He could read that question pretty well, from long practice.
"You ... I ate ... fool!"
Other sentences, sometimes not so much.
"Sorry?" said Aang.
--
"Why, hello there," the woman signed to him in Fire Nation Sign. She said something out loud and Aang was left alone in the classroom with her and her class. "I can't recall seeing you before," she signed to Aang. "Are you new here?"
"Yes, ma'am," Aang signed back, hoping he didn't have too much of an accent. Her signing seemed different from the kind Kuzon had used. Maybe it was just newer. "I'm from the colonies."
"Oh, that would explain it," she said disdainfully. "Well, this is the world's most progressive civilization. We treat deaf people right here. Have a seat, you're already late for class."
***
no subject
Date: 2013-11-02 10:29 pm (UTC)Could happen anywhere
"Perfect!"
Toph grinned and bent a sentence into the earth that would have been pronounced just like "of course it's perfect, the Blind Bandit did it".
"Um, Toph? Not everything that sounds the same is written the same," said Aang.
She was still learning to write faster than Aang was learning earthbending.
***
Western Air Temple
"Really, I'll go with you," said Katara. "You know, so I can tell Aang what you're saying."
Zuko started to say something. Then he stopped himself, because it would be rude to talk about the Avatar in front of him without letting him listen in. Zuko traced lines of fire in the air, writing out "I can handle it" in flaming letters.
"I'm sure it'll be fine, Katara," Aang said.
She looked equal parts disapproving and worried when she left them alone.
"So," Zuko asked, in fairly rusty Fire Sign, "can you sign?"
"Oh, yeah," Aang signed back, almost too fast for Zuko to understand. "I know Fire Nation Sign and Southern Earth Kingdom Sign and about five words of Northern Earth Kingdom Sign, plus I learned some Kyoshi hand-signals when I was there. I had no idea you could sign, though! Where'd you learn? Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
"I didn't tell you sooner because I was busy chasing you, remember?" Zuko answered slowly, haltingly, trying to remember lessons that had ended years ago. "So, show me what you can do. Any fire at all."
***
Ember Island
Aang split his attention between the play and the tiny flames in Zuko's hands that formed discreet subtitles.
"Honor!" Zuko wrote. Aang glanced up to see the actor disappear in flames. The real Zuko's jaw was set angrily.
"It's just a stupid play," Aang whispered.
"I have no idea what you just said," Zuko wrote, "but if you think that's a whisper, it isn't."
Aang smiled sheepishly.
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Date: 2013-11-03 05:45 pm (UTC)This is awesome! I was always a little thrown by how in canon there is one world language, and the idea that they might have one world spoken and written language, but multiple sign languages is cool.
I always get a kick out of the imperialist, racist, Fire Nation and their progressiveness on other issues, like womens' rights, compared to other nations. I've always written them as especially ableist because of their militarism and hints of strong capitalism, and certain attitudes about strength espoused, but I can totally get on board with the opposite.
Toph trying to write by sound in Chinese characters is a beautiful thing.
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Date: 2013-11-03 09:43 pm (UTC)I'm glad you like it! :D I'm open to prompts, though who knows if I'd actually write them.
Not everything about any of the ATLA cultures is all good or all bad. Take the NWT, for instance: they really do take community seriously. It would be the easiest thing in the world for them to offer up Aang to get the Fire Nation to go away-- it's not like that hasn't been tried before-- but not only don't they do it, they don't even consider it.
So the fanon I was working with for the Fire Nation (that I came up with for this piece) is that they want everyone to be as useful as possible, and being dead, or being hidden away in the attic, is not useful. So with disabilities that leave a lot of abilities intact, for which it's relatively straightforward to compensate, they have excellent diagnosis, treatment and accommodation. Somewhere in the gray area of marginally work-capable depending on support and what work is available (e.g., too inconsistent to hold down a regular job, or having mainly obsolete skills), they're willing to start throwing people under the bus, depending on factors like their other skills and whether their families will pick up the slack. It's not exactly a progressive utopia for people who would be disabled elsewhere but get perfectly accommodated by the benevolent Fire Nation (that would be their propaganda, though, with added "so you owe us your life" guilt tripping), but it's better than at least one family in the Earth Kingdom.
Absolutely. I like working with multiple languages. I decided this version of the ATLAverse had sign languages developed by Deaf communities in the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom, and that there were fewer EK Deaf cultures than EK Hearing cultures because there were fewer deaf people and they would have clustered to be able to sign with each other. I figure FN Sign, SEK Sign and NEK Sign all developed from schools for the deaf, but that NEK Sign was largely secret because of local oralist movements gaining traction (besides which, Aang might have spent much more time in the southern hemisphere, limiting his ability to learn NEK Sign), while SEK Sign was more accepted on the grounds that "who cares if those people ever talk anyway?" and Aang probably learned it from Bumi. Meanwhile SWT Sign would have died out because the population wasn't big enough to support a Deaf community, or even to consistently have at least one deaf person alive at a time, and the NWT wouldn't have a sign language because of oralism and aggressive mainstreaming. Kyoshi Island would use military hand signals, which aren't the same thing at all. The Fire Nation probably started using FN Sign for silent or distance communication, and the EK joint armies might be using EK Sign to hide information from the Fire Nation. That probably makes Aang very sad, because to him, these are ways to make information more available, and they're being used to hide things. (Meanwhile, who can guess what if any languages might be hidden away on the island of the Sun Warriors, or in the Northern Air Temple, or be used by the Dai Li?)
I mean, Aang would be multilingual if he couldn't use one language to communicate with everyone. He's traveled enough and knows enough about various cultures that it seems very reasonable.
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Date: 2013-11-04 03:19 am (UTC)I usually like to make the Fire Nation really ableist, because it gives Azula a reason to Do Something Stupid with regards to underestimating/insulting her brother in fics where he's disabled. Actually, the guilting of disabled people by the Fire Nation is fun for me to play with.
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Date: 2013-11-04 03:48 am (UTC)"We're doing you such a favor by not infringing on your rights. You should be grateful that we're treating you with the bare minimum of decency." Amirite?
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Date: 2013-11-04 04:16 am (UTC)The Earth Kingdom is incredibly diverse, and I think that the Earth Kingdom is a misnomer. It's more like the Earth federation, a loose collection of people that all identify as earth, and when they do have benders, they bend earth. i got the feeling that Ba Sing Se was very sexist indeed (and I would like to write the story of the one lady earthbender in the army that we see) but on the other side, we have the Zhangs, and the Kyoshi Warriors.
Yes, exactly right, and so true to life too.
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Date: 2013-11-04 04:42 am (UTC)I agree with all your assessments, except Ba Sing Se. It seemed like it might be sexist (because we see female Joo Dee and male Dai Li, and an all-male group of generals), but it can't be that sexist ("that" sexist here meaning either "caricature-level sexism where women can't do anything at all" or "NWT-level sexism"), given that:
There's at least one openly female soldier
Jin can take initiative in her romantic life
Many of the people in Ba Sing Se come from elsewhere in the Earth Kingdom
No one expressed disbelief about Azula's team or the Kyoshi Warriors
I would like to read the story of the one lone female soldier in Ba Sing Se.
Maybe when Chin the Conqueror conquered everyone, he called his domain the Earth Kingdom, rather than Chin's Empire, and now that Ba Sing Se is nominally in charge, it's a sort of polite fiction that no one actually believes or listens to, and no one seeks official independence because a situation where you can proclaim yourself king of your own city-state can't be that stifling. (Here used in a far different sense from "can't be that sexist.") Actually, it's not necessarily fair to call them the Earth Federation, either. The only thing politically uniting them is that they're all at war with the Fire Nation.
I initially found it difficult to follow the plot because so many things were misnamed, actually. "Oh, okay, it's the Earth Kingdom, and this guy in Omashu is calling himself the king. Must be king of the whole Earth Kingdom. Wait, why are these peasants under Fire Nation control? Why is it inconsistent whether the Fire Nation has conquered the Earth Kingdom or not? ...OIC, the creators don't know what a kingdom is." (Similar problem: why do the Air Nomads live in four fixed locations that have obviously been built into permanent living spaces? Aang, do you know what that word means?)
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Date: 2013-11-05 06:20 pm (UTC)I didn't say that Ba Sing Se had a "no women in positions of power/military ever. I think it has a milder more insidious sexism. Actually, the fact that there are types and degrees of sexism/racism/prejudice and privilege more generally isn't discussed enough in fiction. Also, in the real world, sexism, and rules of behavior between the sexes change as class changes. Maybe Jin could take romantic initiative, but a girl from the upper ring couldn't. Or maybe Jin is an immigrant (fic idea!) And I assume there are trouble-making men who are brainwashed. Since they don't become Joo Dees, what happens to them? What does the prevailing Ba Sing Se view of gender have to do with that? I would like to know.
The more I think about, I wish they had called it the Fire Kingdom and the Earth Nation (or Earth Nations, to be more accurate), because a non-politically united, culturally and ethnically related people that feels a sense of kinship and unity together is a fair definition of a nation that isn't a nation state.
I tend to answer the Air Nomad issue in fics with the Air Nomads being formerly nomadic, and the name being a remnant of that. Or they are semi nomadic with permanent bases.
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Date: 2013-11-05 07:17 pm (UTC)I always imagined the Air Nomads as having the temples with some elderly people and little kids living in them and then the rest of them travel between the temples and generally all over following the sky bison herds or something.
And then there's the Water Tribe which is really more of the Water Tribes as evidenced by the Civil War, just with a lot of immigration and inter-marriage but distinct cultures and political structures.
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Date: 2013-11-06 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-06 07:24 am (UTC)Yes! Yes! Degrees of prejudice! Different kinds of prejudice! :D
That would have been a good idea. Unfortunately, anyone who uses it in fic will probably be assumed to be using a spoonerism.
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Date: 2013-11-06 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-06 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-06 07:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-06 10:27 pm (UTC)And I like playing with Fire Nation militarism too. In my head, boys and girls are equally expected to be 'good little soldiers' for their families, and this includes both being willing to do things like marry as commanded, and be able to physically defend one's life, honor and the honor of one's family, or to make arrangements to do so like bodyguards.
And also that I love being able to read your writing and use it as impetus to reexamine my own assumptions.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-06 10:52 pm (UTC)boys and girls are equally expected to be 'good little soldiers' for their families
This is my headcanon too.