Me: So you remember in the ALTA finale when Aang gets slammed against a rock in JUST the right spot so his chakra is unblocked and it realigns his whole spirit & body and he is able to reach his full potential as the avatar?
I introduced a friend to ATLA a few nights ago, and they had only
known two things about the entire show: the cabbage meme, and that Aang
apparently wants to ride every large and dangerous animal he can
possibly find. We got through the first five or so episodes, and my
friend noted that Aang is exactly what a 12-year-old would be like if
given godlike powers, and that this is literally just what he
could do with airbending. He can’t even wield any of the other elements,
and he’s one of the most powerful people on the planet, because he’s an
airbender.
And that got me thinking.
This snippet from Bitter Work is one of the few pieces of concrete information we get about the airbenders, at least in ATLA. Iroh is explaining to Zuko how all four of the elements connect to the world and to each other.
Fire is the element of power, of desire and will, of ambition and the ability to see it through. Power is crucial to the world; without it, there’s no drive, no momentum, no push. But fire can easily grow out of control and become dangerous; it can become unpredictable, unless it is nurtured and watched and structured.
Earth is the element of substance, persistence, and enduring. Earth is strong, consistent, and blunt. It can construct things with a sense of permanence; a house, a town, a walled city. But earth is also stubborn; it’s liable to get stuck, dig in, and stay put even when it’s best to move on.
Water is the element of change, of adaptation, of movement. Water is incredibly powerful both as a liquid and a solid; it will flow and redirect. But it also will change, even when you don’t want it to; ice will melt, liquid will evaporate. A life dedicated to change necessarily involves constant movement, never putting down roots, never letting yourself become too comfortable.
We see only a few flashbacks to Aang’s life in the temples, and we get a sense of who he was and what kind of upbringing he had.
This is a preteen with the power to fucking fly. He’s got no fear of falling, and a much reduced fear of death. There’s a reason why the sages avoid telling the new avatar their status until they turn sixteen; could you imagine a firebender, at twelve years old, learning that they were going to be the most powerful person in the whole world? Depending on that child, that could go so badly.
But the thing about Aang, and the thing about the Air Nomads, is that they were part of the world too. They contributed to the balance, and then they were all but wiped out by Sozin. What was lost, there? Was it freedom? Yes, but I think there’s something else too, and it’s just yet another piece of the utter brilliance of the worldbuilding of ATLA.
To recap: we have power to push us forward; we have stability to keep us strong; we have change to keep us moving.
And then we have this guy.
The air nomads brought fun to the world. They brought a very literal sense of lightheartedness.
Sozin saw this as a weakness. I think a lot of the world did, in ATLA. Why do the Air Nomads bother, right? They’re just up there in their temples, playing games, baking pies in order to throw them as a gag. As Iroh said above, they had pretty great senses of humour, and they didn’t take themselves too seriously.
But that’s a huge part of having a world of balance and peace.
It’s not just about power, or might, or the ability to adapt. You can have all of those, but you also need fun. You need the ability to be vulnerable, to have no ambitions beyond just having a good day. You need to be able to embrace silliness, to nurture play, to have that space where a very specific kind of emotional growth can occur. Fun makes a hard life a little easier. Fun makes your own mortality a little less frightening to grasp. Fun is the spaces in between, that can’t be measured by money or military might. Fun is what nurtures imagination, allows you to see a situation in a whole new light, to find new solutions to problems previously considered impossible.
Fun is what makes a stranger into a friend, rather than an enemy.
Hence why Toph Beifong is my favorite badass character ever. Followed by Zuko of course. 😝
I love that Toph believes that she is one of the most badass people ever to exist in the Avatar universe, is not shy about saying so, and is absolutely correct.
Shit, just watch the way she curbstomps Korra without even trying.
The reason Toph Beifong has lived so long is that death is rightly afraid of trying to claim her ❤
Hey remember when Toph was only 12 and stopped a whole fucking building from sinking in the sand, while she was being attacked. so that her friends could escape? Because I sure do.
“airbenders are able to warm themselves with only their breathing”
ok so this explains why katara and sokka were bundled up in parkas galore while aang was just walking around in his little jump suit like it was a perfect summer evening. I’m so glad this was cleared up. I literally thought Aang’s optimistic attitude is what kept him warm, heavens.
So you remember the firebender prison? And how Zuko kept his bending at full strength when he was put in the freezer box, which disabled anybody else put in there? That’s because Iroh taught him that airbender trick, just like later he taught him waterbending moves to deal with lightning. Iroh was secretly master of all four elements and passed it on to Zuko without him noticing.
One of the reasons Avatar is one of the few epic fantasies I’ve actually liked is that nobody is above indignity.
This is a thing a lot of genres do, but epic fantasies seem to be impressively devoid of any sense of humor, and often cave to the temptation to make the villains or heroes so badass that nothing embarrassing or stupid ever happens to them.
In Avatar (the last airbender, anyway, haven’t seen Korra), everyone has stupid shit happen to them. Even Fire Lord Ozai has his moments– “No, Fire Lord Ozai, YOU aren’t wearing pants!” Azula gets covered in mud. Zuko has… well, getting conked in the head by a boomerang is only the beginning of the stupid undignified shit he experiences. (Though he still doesn’t compare to Sokka, the emperor unto perpetuity of Shameland.)
And I love that. Because in life, sometimes you get covered in mud. Sometimes you get conked in the head when you’re trying to be brooding and dramatic. STUPID SHIT HAPPENS TO YOU. And in real life, you still manage to be badass, or terrible, even in your moments of human frailty.
I wish I saw that more often.
Yes! This, so much. That’s definitively something I’ve noticed too, and I love it!
Actually, in a way, I think it’s kind of addressed in the show itself:
Zuko was publicly humiliated, punished and banished for speaking out of turn at a meeting. This was considered a personal offense to the Fire Lord: they were so strict and enamored with their “dignity” that the slightest misstep by a child could turn into some sort of great insult. And if you’re insulted the proper response is to defend your honor in Agni Kai, a duel to the death (with a child if need be).
In contrast, among the Air Nomads, it was okay to throw mud pies at the head monks and laugh your ass off. It was even encouraged: creativity, fun and humility were seen as the most essential qualities. No one was above pranks – neither being pranked nor even doing the pranks. And it didn’t mean they didn’t know respect – we know Aang had enormous respect for his elders and their teachings. It’s actually a much truer form of respect than what you could find in the Fire Nation, where fear kept you silent.
So, I think there is a lesson here, that maybe we should learn not to hold our dignity in such high regard, that it’s good to know how to laugh at yourself? And when ATLA has fun with its serious characters, it’s also a way to illustrate this idea – the show is all the richer by not taking itself too seriously.
when Katara confronts the man that killed her mother and she says that her mom lied about whom the last waterbender in the tribe was and he asks who it was really and she yells “ME.” and stops all of the rain?
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