>(Since the Forum appears to be getting a little tetchy about long
>threads and I noticed I hadn't addressed this, here is another thread
>to be going on with.)

Well, since it's my comment you're responding to... XD

>
>>>Philosophically (as opposed to practically/mechanically) speaking,
>>>she's not a very good airbender, and she is acutely aware of that,
>>>which makes it worse.
>>
>>If Lhakpa's the first of the new descendants of Aang who is a skilled
>>airbender but is crap at/hates/is indifferent to the airbender
>>philosophy and lifestyle, that almost makes her a -pioneer-.
>
>Oh, I doubt she's the first, though she may be the first of her
>generation. Ironically enough - and this will not have eluded Lhakpa
>- Aang was a terrible Air Nomad, but he got away with it
>because he was a) the last one and b) the Avatar. The elders of his
>boyhood would probably shake their heads in dismay at the version of
>airbender culture that has developed in his wake, and doubly so at
>someone like Lhakpa, who can't even stick at the preposterously
>liberalized new model. :)

You have to wonder, when looking at the ancient air nomads, just how much of this reasoning the original ATLA writers didn't bother to do before writing the show. This is far enough removed from the action that it's easy to overlook, but when you break it down, it becomes difficult to explain without adding in a 'they kept their kids unworldly so they wouldn't want to leave' clause like they were Amish. Certainly ancient air nomad culture can't be explained solely through human nature.

>
>That said, Lhakpa and Nyima are members of the first post-Aang
>generation to really have the luxury of having people in it who
>are Not On Board. In Jinora and her siblings' day, they were
>it. If any of them had walked away (and I suspect Ikki, for
>one, rather wanted to at times), the survival of the airbender nation
>itself would have been in some measure of doubt. Lhakpa thinks
>she's experiencing societal pressures?

Hmm. I think I'd lost track of the number of generations, or just didn't do the math. But...yeah. I think I heard '100-some airbenders' and thought more than 4 generations were around. But I may not have factored in the longer lifespans. But, thinking about it...we have Aang and Katara, then Jinora's generation, then Tenzin's, then Nyima and Lhakpa's....I think. I could be wrong.

In any case, that '1 in 100 is a bender' thing is looking less and less likely all the time. I wonder if the rate is accelerating? Maybe at the same rate that psions in the Big Universe is accelerating? Hmmmmm~

Isn't that an interesting line of thought?

>
>>Jinora will certainly not like it,
>
>I'm actually not so sure about that. It's easy to forget, as both
>Lhakpa and Nyima often do, that Jinora was young once, and though she
>never seems to have doubted her path herself, she certainly will have
>known people who did.

Well, she may convince herself intellectually that it's all right, but I have a feeling at first, emotionally, she'll be unhappy about it.

>
>There is a peculiar and awkward disconnect between the traditional,
>rigorous lifestyle of an Air Nomad and the free-and-adaptive nature of
>airbending itself, and though it never seems to have occurred to
>Tenzin (who was, after all, a bit thick), Jinora's too clever not to
>have noticed it. Her contemplation of that dichotomy as grandmaster,
>and her closeness to her grandfather's spirit, are probably
>responsible for much of the relative liberalization of Air Nomadry we
>see by the third century - and, as such, one doubts she has it in her
>to be too severe with a descendant who finds what regimentation
>remains unsatisfying.

I mentioned the my OOC thoughts on this above. ICly, however, I suspect you're 100% right...and I also suspect there will come a time a couple more generations from now where the airbender nation will want to settle and be separate from the air nomads. That dichotomy is too distinct and too much a part of everyday life to not be thrown in the face, eventually, of every family descended from Aang. That will put Republic City in an interesting spot.

--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu