“Reddit recommended it to me out of the blue,” a Redditor who goes by the handle IamCat16892 tells me. This subreddit has over 76,000 people, but they’re not playing out fantasies of being the greatest waterbender who ever lived - they’re posting about their favourite Earth Kingdom musical and how much they love Mushi’s tea shop, The Jasmine Dragon.
What I didn’t expect to find on LakeLaogai, however, was a fully-realized society where people pretend to be ordinary citizens of Ba Sing Se prior to it being invaded by the Fire Nation in ATLA. Given its global ubiquity on account of that, it’s easy to believe that various role-playing communities have sprouted all over the globe, packed with people who want to explore the world of Avatar in more detail. Avatar: The Last Airbender is universally acclaimed as one of the best television series around town - it’s currently sitting pretty in 11th place on IMDb’s list of the top 250 TV shows of all time.
