#life in the air age

[brusiocostante]

BE BOP DELUXE - LIFE IN THE AIR AGE

[hanadoesstuffwrong]

Thinking abt the air nomads:

What if, after the war, once the dust has settled a little, Aang goes back to travelling, hoping that maybe he can find at least some trace of surviving airbenders. As an added bonus, he gets to do more of the exploring and wandering that he had to put on hold.

Toph goes with him ofc. She only just got a taste of real freedom and it was overshadowed by ever-present impending doom. While she's on speaking terms with her parents, she isnt quite ready to be back under their roof on a permanent basis. The rest of the gaang have their individual homes and responsibilities that they get back to, though they join for the odd field trip or adventure when they can.

So anyway, they're touring all over the world and over the years they notice just how displaced so many people have become. EK citizens who barely escaped the blaze but lost everything; FN military now decommissioned with no idea how to carry on; people looking for a new start in the hard-won peace. Maybe it starts with Toph heading back to Earth Rumble, where a group of young runaways scrounge for cheap fights to make a little money.

At each turn they find more and more people with no homes to return to and no family to protect them; runaways escaping the roles the war forced them into. Gradually, Aang and Toph start to see that they aren't so different from themselves. They just want a new start.

So they decide to give them one. They clean up the temples and set up villages in the surrounding areas (helps to be master earthbenders), where people can arrive and stay as long as they need. Travellers and refugees pass through in droves, sometimes choosing to stay and rebuild their lives there, sometimes continuing in their wandering with a guarantee that they'll always have a place to return to should they have the need.

Over time, the lemurs grow in number and even some flying bison calfs (hybrids with a relative species maybe?), can be seen in the skies. Whenever the founders visit, it isn't the same but Aang feels a little more at home.

The first time someone asks Aang to teach him his philosophies, and expresses his desire to become a monk, how can he refuse? Maybe it's a former soldier, somebody who's done terrible things, looking for a path to redemption. So Aang teaches him, and then he teaches others. And though they may not be airbenders, they are as earnest and faithful as any nun or monk Aang knew before. The temples become filled with new faces: Firebenders, Earthbenders, Waterbenders and non-benders all wearing Air nomad orange and yellow.

Aang always feared that it would be his responsibility to have airbender children, and the idea of forcing that on someone he loved terrified him. Maybe that's why he waited so long before acting on his feelings for his best friend, his travelling companion, his fellow-village builder and temple-restorer. How could they have a truly happy relationship with this pressure hanging over them? He wishes he could be content with the new way of things that he and his friends have created. But he knows that he can't be the last airbender forever...

Nobody knows why some children can bend the elements and others can't. Is it blood? Is it blessing? Is it the land in which you're born? Or is it the simple allocation of fates decided by the values and norms you're raised believing in? Is it enough to be surrounded by the culture and beliefs of the Air Nomads? Nobody knows...

All they know is that nobody sees it coming when the six-year-old daughter of two non-bender villagers from the Earth Kingdom and Northern Water Tribe sends herself flying twelve feet into the air with a sneeze.

[fromtheseventhhell]

Zutaras are really the original self-insert, "we understand the story soooooo much better than everybody else" girlies and they just never moved on

[cringefail-clown]

ive classpected my old edgy ocs for funsies because i wanted to see what their sburb session would be like and ive got this:

rouge of time

thief of space

prince of breath

bard of blood

knight of void

seer of life

i think theyd krill each other five hours into the session

[dullahandyke]

didnt even touch on the sandra lynn stuff int he tags of the last post bcos if i talk about her im liable to explode. get behind me, middle-aged divorced woman proficient in archery

[timmurleyart]

Sailboat in the sea. ⛵️💦⚓️

[loiteredvalentines]

i wish i spent my childhood in the 70s, lived through my teens in the 80s, became a young adult in the 90s, got my shit together at 00s (surviving the great recession because i am, fundamentally, that bitch), and became a hip middle aged woman reading books and spending time with my spouse in the 2010s-20s.

[arctic-hands]

The subject came up today and I can't decide so I'm throwing it out there because I don't give a fuck and also having survived all of this kinda makes me sound like a badass

[hyunpic]

[wizardnuke]

yall have got to watch pacific rim im telling you. incredibly sincere movie about humans who pilot big fuckoff robots to fight aliens that come out of a rift in the ocean. mad scientists that have something gay going on. cartoonish mob boss. all of humanity working together to survive. every other character has ptsd and its treated incredibly well. big explosions. scientifically proven soulmates. idris elba is there and he kicks ass

[shirehobbit]

CAN U BELIEVE!? turns out the secret to reading more is setting yourself actually obtainable goals for you and being kind to yourself 💛 😊 💛

[tattoorue]

[literaturebf]

lip put so much work and effort into staying at school and he kept trying and coming back even when he was pissed off or didn't want to or didn't have enough money. and then he ends up getting kicked out and it's very realistic but it doesn't make it any less sad

[bittersweetresilience]

marchil is cute... but chilaios is full of freaks and i'm into that...

[heniareth]

It's interesting to note how the Tabris Origin, which involves a wedding, kidnapping and attempted sexual harassment, and fighting your way through an estate full of guards, is the Origin where gender plays a huge role in what story you experience. M!Tabris will always storm the castle coming to the rescue of his cousin and his betrothed, while F!Tabris will always have to fight her way out because the men in her life can't fully protect her (Nelaros dies, Soris literally hands her the sword, Cyrion is powerless to stop the abduction. Okay, this may be a little unfair to Soris who does fight side by side with Tabris and counsels caution the same way regardless of Tabris's gender). I'd go so far as to say that Tabris is the only Origin where the gender of your PC has a definite impact on the story.

TLDR to the rant in the tags: Tabris is constrained on all sides by being an elf, by their gender, in part by their family, and by society at large (both the Alienage and the wider city).

[ecto-stone]

Hey... Jude.