L.J. Writes

Title: The Need to Be Seen
Author: ljwrites
Rating: K
Words: 474
Genre: Gen, Drama
Characters: Tenzin, OC
Summary: Will Air Acolytes be content to remain so forever?
Notes: This arose out of amyraine's speculation about the place of non-benders in the preservation of Air Nomad culture. Edited and slightly expanded from a shorter version originally posted to avatar_contest Prompt #67: Hunger.

( The repairs are well underway... )

Part I: A Genocide in Four Easy Steps and As Many or More Decades

So I've been blowing my top over fun things like fictional genocide, and the Air Nomads were on my mind a lot. Together with arguments that Sozin might not necessarily have hated the Air Nomads, plus the evidence from the show, I've started speculating that the destruction of the Air Nomads wasn't industrial-strength massacres like the German Third Reich perpetuated. Maybe the process was more akin to the reduction of the American native peoples, a combination of very real atrocity and oppression with population issues, social and economic change, and loss of culture. It even culminated with little Airbenders growing up in Air Nomad Reservation Air Temple Island.

( Why are your words so big, Grandma? The better to crush you with, dear. )

Culture in Avatar: The Last Airbender Series:
1. What It Is to Be Free: Aang and the Spirituality of the Air Nomads
2. We Can Do This, Together: Community and Change in the Water Tribes
3. Stand Strong, Stand Proud: Earth Kingdom Resilience and Identity

( In this essay I'll examine the idea of freedom. And Star Wars comes into it somehow. )