I’m glad we’re enjoying Avatar and Zucchini but can we talk about this https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😨" title="Fearful face" aria-label="Emoji: Fearful face">

I have mixed feelings about Avatar. While I enjoy its characters (Katara), themes and world-building (Water Tribe OUT), I do struggle with how it represents Japanese imperialism and how it often conflates East Asian cultures for aesthetic purposes.

This is a minor example from the comics. But it bothers me to see Ursa, who is from the Fire Nation and coded Japanese, in a kind-of hanbok and with a hairstyle intended for Korean royalty.

Why is that a problem? To start, the Empire of Japan wiped out the entire Korean royal family and brutally colonized the peninsula. I don’t want to see Japanese and Korean aesthetics being presented as parts of the same country when we’re still fighting for justice.

I’ve noticed this kind of generalization a lot in publishing, where a story is pitched as “Asian-inspired”. This is erasure. I don’t think that it’s empowering or that it inspires solidarity between Asian and Asian diasporic communities.

Don’t generalize, don’t conflate. These differences MATTER. We’re taking about REAL people and their different countries and cultures, not “hey do you think lava bending is technically earth or fire bending” https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🤷🏻‍♀️" title="Woman shrugging (light skin tone)" aria-label="Emoji: Woman shrugging (light skin tone)"> I don’t know, fellas. Maybe we should just let Bolin have this.