My favourite thing about Zuko joining the Gaang is how seamlessly he assumes the position of:
sleep-deprived
over-aggravated
strict
parent, forced to play bad cop, to keep the children on task.
And my absolute favourite (without missing a beat):
Which is a pretty accurate approximation of daily conversations with a toddler.
THAT’S JUST IT ABOUT ZUKO. He became the missing piece the gaang sorely needed because he IS the central father figure taking care of the toddlers.
This is a character who’s been prepped for leadership for years. He knows he could potentially rule the firenation one day. His uncle has been secretly grooming him while aboard the battleship WHICH Zuko runs. He’s the leader of a small batallion of fire nation soldiers. He’s a prince. He understands what it means to be a leader. He understands sacrifice. Can you imagine from his perspective exactly what it was like to join the Gaang? The people who’ve thwarted him all this time, really ARE just children.
He finds out Aang really IS a literal child. Sokka is mostly self taught as all paternal figures he could have had teach him left for war at a young age. So he’s very much Junior as to what it means to be a leader. Toph led a very sheltered life of female nobility, learning to be seen not heard. And she lashes out in full blown preteen angst. Katara has the mom of the group part down because by god SOMEONE had to step up and be an authoritative figure to the babies!
So here comes Zuko thinking the Gaang might just be as war worn as he is. They’ve got all their shit together and must be, like him, mature for their ages. DING DONG HE WAS WRONG. He’s a practical adult with a lot of life experience trying to wrangle children in to saving the freakin world. No wonder he’s sleep deprived, aggrivated, and strict. He thought he was dealing with professionals. Like what he’s used to. Instead he just adopted 3 kids and is sharing custody with Katara.
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.
jinlinli 