in the original series, the only Indian-coded guy we meet is a kooky but wise sage who seems to have been a non-bender scholar of air nomad culture or just a really earthly wise traveler. i always figured that some of the islands around air temples might have had some indian-ish cultures that would technically be part of the earth kingdom, or maybe he’s from an island nation somewhere in the big ocean on the other side of the planet.
anyway what im getting at is i actually think it’s a cool idea for an adaptation to try to place that indian-inspired culture somewhere and explore it as a little side worldbuilding thing through a couple of characters, so it’s a shame that such an option was ignored over just casting a bunch of indian people in a decidedly not-very-indian existing culture
in definitely down for more indian elements! that would have been so cool. what really gets me about that choice is that it paired with the whitening of the good characters literally made the movie the good white characters vs the evil brown characters
quite literally
.
me and the other brown kids definitely noticed because there was a little race war about who looked like katara and sokka and this was a win for the white kids.
in the original series, the only Indian-coded guy we meet is a kooky but wise sage who seems to have been a non-bender scholar of air nomad culture or just a really earthly wise traveler. i always figured that some of the islands around air temples might have had some indian-ish cultures that would technically be part of the earth kingdom, or maybe he’s from an island nation somewhere in the big ocean on the other side of the planet.
anyway what im getting at is i actually think it’s a cool idea for an adaptation to try to place that indian-inspired culture somewhere and explore it as a little side worldbuilding thing through a couple of characters, so it’s a shame that such an option was ignored over just casting a bunch of indian people in a decidedly not-very-indian existing culture
in definitely down for more indian elements! that would have been so cool. what really gets me about that choice is that it paired with the whitening of the good characters literally made the movie the good white characters vs the evil brown characters quite literally
.
me and the other brown kids definitely noticed because there was a little race war about who looked like katara and sokka and this was a win for the white kids.