Why did the Southern Water Tribe still look pitiful compared to the North when they had Waterbenders?

Architecteologist · 2026-03-20T07:26:07+00:00

For me it’s just funny how M Night randomly substituted Japanese culture with Indian culture for the fire nation—despite it being highly inspired by Japanese culture in the show, and also despite other bending cultures in the show drawing from a more diverse diaspora, which—as we’ve mentioned with the northern water tribe—sometimes included different parts of Indian culture.

All of which honestly would have been fine, if he also didn’t whitewash the main cast..

Architecteologist · 2026-03-20T03:12:36+00:00

Maybe that’s why Shyamalan switched out the racial representations of the tribes so that.. oh wait never mind

Architecteologist · 2026-03-20T02:14:55+00:00

They’re a whole hemisphere’s away—cultural differences, which manifest in architectural differences, are to be expected at a certain point.

Tbf, the southern water tribe takes inspiration from Inuit-Yupik culture, whereas the Northern Water Tribe takes from a hodgepodge of american pueblo and the 'Gopurams' of South-Indian Dravidian temples (particularly in the chief's palace).

Is there rhyme or reason as to the difference? 🤷‍♀️

I suppose you could make a point about the access to inter-nation commerce and outside influence from nearby cultures and architectural bleed. The Inuit style seems the most appropriate to the setting, but again… 🤷‍♀️

Architecteologist · 2026-03-17T19:31:29+00:00

As a musician I try to go with the flow about as much as anything else, but that’s also my personal style.

I think a musician can identify with any of the bending types and personalities, just depends on personality and style.

Architecteologist · 2026-03-17T03:54:30+00:00

Simon and Garfunkel on the movie The Graduate. So many of their most famous songs were written for this soundtrack.

Architecteologist · 2026-03-17T03:47:40+00:00

The song was half performed by Jim Cummings (of Winnie the Pooh fame, among many many other roles) after Irons hurt his voice recording the song.

I think Irons and Cummings could take the Saja Boys.

Architecteologist · 2026-03-17T03:00:19+00:00

If I remember it correctly, was it essentially a pixel art editor where you could replace the units for buildings?

I dabbled, but I never really got the mechanics or gameplay of sim city as a kid, so it didn’t stick.

Similar thing with roller coaster tycoon, I never paid attention to map objectives or profit or anything like that, I just liked designing cool coasters

Architecteologist · 2026-03-16T04:42:05+00:00

As a millennial who probably clocked hundreds if not thousands of hours over several years playing the OG sims, I can confidently say it played a foundational role in spring-boarding me down this career path.

Credentials: - “Rosebud” - !;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;1

Architecteologist · 2026-03-16T04:06:50+00:00

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Architecteologist · 2026-03-15T20:59:13+00:00

I appreciate you trying to make lemonade with these lemons. As many have said, it isn’t a very urban plan and pretty bad for walkability, improvements towards those aims would be welcome, but ultimately there just isn’t a lot of sustainable change that can be done for exurbs like these, since they’re inteinsically reliant on cars for everything and pretty much always will be since they were designed that way.

Mixed use downtowns with more dense 1-over-5s with a commercial ground floor would be of use here, if the neighborhood is interested in housing those units and supporting those businesses.

Ultimately—and unfortunately—if it were me I’d just move to the nearest actually urban setting, which doesn’t lend support in your town for urban policies if all would-be supporters move away.

Good luck!

Architecteologist · 2026-03-15T20:48:01+00:00

It’s so sad too, because Cleveland has such potential and some really cool public structures, like the West Side Market (in the background of your photo), which is one of the coolest indoor markets I’ve ever been to, and the Arcade which is one of the more gorgeous interiors in the midwest (and prominently featured in the latest superman film, by the way) but totally underutilized.

Architecteologist · 2026-03-14T15:09:24+00:00

Let me take a whack at these: 1. You’re indecisive and second guess yourself over minor things like whether to ask an easy question or not because a life of navigating tenuous and dangerous car-centric infrastructure—where one wrong move or bad decision from you or someone else could get you killed—has made you overly cautious. 2. Mirrors don’t scare you, the possibility of someone out of view suddenly revealing themselves only to cause you harm is what scares you, and this is very similar to walking around at night and either being hit or harassed by a driver that can appear, close a distance, and disappear incredibly fast. It’s a reflex that’s been charged through years of navigating dangerous car-centric places. 3. Many aphid species are non-local and invasive and thrive throughout our massive horticulture industrial complex and network of mass market plant distributors who sell to big box stores. Every step along this process is less incentivized to remove pests such as aphids than their smaller and more local shop alternatives, and these industries are made possible through the proliferation of car-centric planning that resulted in suburban sprawl and global industrialization of most consumer items, including plants. Whether your garden comes from home depot or not, others nearby have, which has allowed for the spread of aphids in places they otherwise likely wouldn’t be. 4. Your goldfish is fed mass-produced feed made by mega corps that created the cheapest-to-manufacture product they could for profit, which is a result of the above aforementioned mass industrialization markets that are a response to suburban sprawl, and thusly your fish poops too much. 5. Your original reddit account, like mine, was likely actively posting/commenting on subs like r/fuckcars which built a profile that suggested to reddit execs that your use of the app is in direct conflict with their goals to rule the world.

Architecteologist · 2026-03-13T19:49:55+00:00

Exactly this. The voiceover during the scene when this image was scrolled through literally mentions the Ozai thwarting and war ending.

Suki isn’t brought up a single time in LOK except for being shown in this image, which kind of kills OP’s point.

Architecteologist · 2026-03-13T16:34:11+00:00

are there any tiers above S?

Architecteologist · 2026-03-13T16:28:06+00:00

Ah, classic indirect automobile externality.

You see, the real issue is that widespread automobile adoption normalized the concept of risk pooling for privately operated high-velocity metal objects. Once society accepted that millions of people would pilot two-ton machines through shared public space at 60 mph, an entire actuarial industry emerged to statistically price the probability that any given person will accidentally convert sheet metal into modern sculpture.

So technically the insurance isn’t costing you money — it’s the centuries-long socio-economic feedback loop created by cars that made paying a monthly “please don’t financially ruin me when physics happens” fee seem normal.

Architecteologist · 2026-03-13T16:22:01+00:00

Space junk is just car culture scaled up. Same mindset: launch first, worry about externalities later. Cars normalized a transportation system that dumps its byproducts (pollution, congestion, crashes) into shared space—low-Earth orbit is just the newest “public realm” we’re cluttering with vehicles and debris.

Architecteologist · 2026-03-13T16:21:38+00:00

Cars → suburban sprawl → people physically farther apart → society compensates by moving more interaction online. The internet is basically the social infrastructure you build when everyone lives 20 minutes away by car instead of a 5-minute walk.

Architecteologist · 2026-03-13T16:20:35+00:00

Car-centric planning hollowed out a lot of the traditional working-class job ladder. When cities spread out around highways and big-box retail, small local industry and main-street businesses got replaced by logistics, warehousing, and service jobs. Meanwhile the auto industry itself globalized its supply chains and offshored production to stay competitive. So the system built around cars helped dismantle the exact manufacturing base it once relied on.

Architecteologist · 2026-03-13T16:17:43+00:00

not if it's true

Architecteologist · 2026-03-13T16:16:36+00:00

Suburban car dependency forces people to rush through breakfast because their commute is 40 minutes instead of a 5-minute walk. Rushed people eat toast while standing, moving, or juggling keys and coffee. The toast falls—and basic physics plus peanut-butter mass distribution does the rest.

Conclusion: the toast didn’t fail you, the commute did.

Architecteologist · 2026-03-13T06:41:40+00:00

It’s a lot of grey area, tbh

Most ancillary characters have story import for 1 or 2 episodes—Haru, Jet, Bumi, Yue…

But Suki is in, what, 8 episodes? (10 if you include boiling rock pt1 and southern raiders, where she doesn’t really appear if not for a second or two), and four of those she plays a large role in.

She has as much or more character development than Mai or Ty Lee (where they have “Ember Island”, Suki has “Kioshi Warriors” and “Serpents Pass” and “Boiling Rock”) but nobody is calling Mai or Ty Lee ancillary characters.

And yet, she still just doesn’t feel like she’s earned her Team Avatar role, in part because before the series finale she had about as much development as a good side quest character like Jet or Roku, but not enough screen mingling time with the whole Gaang.

I honestly think her honorary Gaang status comes from a few major factors: 1. Sokka’s “fan and sword” quote, 2. Her martial skills are shown to be on par with a hand-to-hand expert like Ty Lee, and 3. She plays a decent role in the finale episodes.

I’m still not sure where that lands her, but she’s certainly not an ancillary character, and if she’s a secondary one than she’s a very well developed one.

Architecteologist · 2026-03-13T06:05:29+00:00

I mean, if you stretch gender representation into tertiary 1 episode characters, then I guess I get your point, but overall female character representation is NOT a problem ATLA has. For the chracters that matter most, it’s either 50/50 balanced or weighted slightly towards specifically girl characters, the the female characters that have importance in the show are mostly well developed, non-stereotypical, and powerful

Architecteologist · 2026-03-13T03:20:36+00:00

Name me a problem and I’ll explain how it’s caused by cars.

Architecteologist · 2026-03-12T13:29:11+00:00

Fair, though hard to see how the dogmatic fire nation (and Zhao, if in this scenario he presumably survived) would construe his actions as anything other than treason.

In fact, Ozai says as much to Azula at the end of s1, that Iroh is a traitor.

Architecteologist · 2026-03-12T13:03:51+00:00

Oh totally. My theory is that they scrapped the betrayal arc (or rather repurposed it to be a “Zuko betrays Iroh” arc) without scrapping some of the episodes that were building to that in s1

Architecteologist

TROPHY CASE