I feel like I need to watch AtLA again because, like, everyone talks about it as being--I don't need to explain how people talk about AtLA to you, you are, statistically speaking, "everyone" (and that's fine!)
But I didn't really watch it when I was a kid beyond like one or two episodes here and there that happened to be on and when I watched it as an adult it was 2020 and I was SO Depressed and also it was lockdown and I mostly came away going "Yeah, that was good"
And that just feels like an Incorrect Take and I need to go back and see if that's my actual stance or if I was genuinely just unable to engage with it fully because of how my brain was broken
@coriander AtLA and Star Wars are possibly the only two Western works to have an interesting take on spirituality and interestingly they both involve moving around objects with your mind
@coriander but really like. imagine star wars, but instead of the core concept being about a kid with a personality disorder from his abusive childhood getting manipulated into supporting fascism, it is about a kid who grew up in a fascist country going out in the world, experiencing how the rest of the world does things, overcoming his childhood trauma, and developing a conscience. now get rid of the whole “is the jedi temple actually evil and did they deserve to be genocided” discourse and all of the darth vader stans, and that is kinda what AtLA is and why it is popular.
@coriander most of the first season is unserious and jumps around, but that turns out to be an important part of the show’s message. once you hit the second half of season 2 you are stuck in Ba Sing Se, and the third season mostly takes place in the Fire Nation. but the message of the show is that the world is much bigger and more diverse and beautiful than segregated cities and fascist countries would lead you to believe (and also that cities and countries themselves are internally more diverse and beautiful than they appear from the outside). and i think this is a message of hope that resonated strongly with a lot of american children who were looking for a counternarrative to the national discourse of the War on Terror and the universal sameness of Western society and art in the postglobalist era