Thread by @XiranJayZhao

this is too cool for people to not know about so THREAD on a hidden worldbuilding detail in ATLA - the Avatar calendar

Because it has a fully fleshed-out one based on ancient East Asian calendars!!

From in to out, the rings go Month > Day > Era Name > Chinese Zodiac Year 1/?

So the precise date of the Day of the Black Sun was the Yangwu Era, Year of the Monkey, 1st day of the 8th month

Era Names are a system that originated in ancient China, used to name and number years. So like Jianyuan Year 1, Jianyuan Year 2, and so on - 2/?

The names are usually just something auspicious or ambitious sounding, like Yongtai 永泰 for “Perpetual Peace” or Daye 大业 for “Great Endeavour.” Every time an emperor declared a new era, the numbering reset - 3/?

Before the Ming dynasty, emperors could declare a new era basically whenever they felt like it, causing some emperors to go WILD (hello Wu Zetian), but starting from Ming, it was more customary for an emperor to stick with a single era name for their entire reign 4/?

(Side note here but the two emperors that went the wildest with the era name changes were Wu Zetian and her second husband Emperor Gaozong of Tang. I highly suspect this was her way of hinting she was the one really in charge during his reign.)

Most countries that used era names have abolished them along with their monarchies, including China itself, but Japan still uses them. You may have heard a while back that they changed their era name from Heisei to Reiwa with their new emperor 5/?

Now, ATLA has its own set of era names, designed by the show’s calligraphy consultant Dr. Siu-Leung Lee. Here are loose translations of the 16 era names from the Avatar wikia, though note that some of these are VERY loose because they use very obscure characters 6/?

The most meticulous part is that the first character in each era name has a radical that’s either Air, Water, Earth, or Fire, and they repeat in that pattern!! 7/?

The show's era is 氜武 (Yangwu), with an air radical, which suggests the era names correspond to Avatars. But it’s unclear if the 16 names rotate in a cycle (which was not how era names worked) or if a new one is made up for each avatar and the wheel gets magically updated 8/?

Regardless, it’s an amazingly detailed system that isn’t even remarked on in show. They did all this work JUST to enrich the world for a few shots in a single episode. That’s dedication, goddamn.

See my video on season 2 for more details like this: