The outcome is only uncertain for those who disbelieve.

THE GAANG + SECRET IDENTITIES

shoutout to the avatar renaissance for being the only thing keeping me together during quarantine ✌🏼

[ID: A blue-toned, digital painting of Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Aang is at the center of the painting. He is drawn in the distance, sitting cross-legged on the edge of a forested meadow, with his tattoos glowing. Encircling the meadow are tall trees, and surrounding the wooded area on either side are rocky cliffs. In the background, hills roll in the distance and stars glimmer behind billowy clouds in the night sky. End ID.]

one line that aang says in the southern raiders that has always stood out to me, with a little confusion, is “it’s easy to do nothing, but it’s hard to forgive.” aang is one of the most forgiving characters on the show, giving zuko numerous chances, and not having real personal bad blood with anyone - not even the fire nation for what they did to his people. that doesn’t mean he never gets angry, obviously, or that forgiveness is easy (“how could [the monks] do that to me? they wanted to take away everything i knew and everyone i loved!”) but i also don’t think aang would be saying that line as a self-congratulatory one, ie. “forgiveness is hard but i’ve done it” etc.

but then i realized that forgiveness is really hard for aang, in particular. because he struggles to forgive himself. 

Please join me in appreciating my favorite part of the Avatar pilot.

That’s it that’s Aang. Character establishment complete in 0.5 seconds, zero lines, and one (1) *ding*.

I’m loving Dante Basco’s prototype Zuko voice

Video transcription:

Guard: We caught her trying to climb over the wall

Zuko: Is the Avatar with her?

Guard: No sign of him, sir

Zuko: Search the island. He’s probably hiding under a rock.

(Aang flies by. He dings.)

Zuko: *startled gay scream*

BONUS: almost a year later-

aang: youre in his dms, im the reincarnated embodiment of an ancient spiritual force he and his sister broke out of an iceburg. we are not the same

Keep reading

Team Avatar~

Finally drew the Gaang, I’ve been wanting to for so long!! <3

baby gaang!!

I wanted to post this with just the symbolic meaning of the items on the shrine by themselves, but I also want to put this in context for any of you who might be interested: this is from S3E18 (Sozin’s Comet, Part 1: The Phoenix King).  It is from the scene immediately following this one:

Sozin’s Comet is full of subtle demonstrations like this.  It isn’t outwardly obvious, but the shrine is a reflection of Aang’s tremendous effort to find a way to defeat the Fire Lord that doesn’t require him to sacrifice the ethics of his people. He knows he needs patience and compassion to do it.  I’ve discussed this before here. It seems like every time I watch the finale I find more of this sort of stuff and I think it is so beautiful and inspiring.

I reblogged this so I could find it later because I was interested in the mudra Aang is using here, which isn’t the one he typically uses when he meditates.  In fact, from what I can see, none of the mudras he uses in S2E19 (The Guru) are his standard one.  Since Guru Pathik is leading the exercises, I think it is pretty safe to assume he is giving instructions as far as the mudras are concerned, as well.   

This is from the scene when Guru Pathik is instructing Aang in unlocking the Vishuddha chakra, which is associated with higher discrimination, creativity and self-expression.  He’s being encouraged to accept his true nature as the Avatar here, and the mudra he’s being instructed to use is the Dhyana mudra.  It carries a lot of symbolism (most mudras do) but of particular interest is the fact that it indicates balance, and is supposed to be helpful in gaining the wisdom of discernment.  There is a lot to say about discernment in the context of Buddhism but most relevantly here, it has a lot to do with skillful actions and intentions, as well as the consequences based on those actions and intentions.  We see Aang use this mudra later:

This is S3E19 (The Old Masters), when Aang is consulting his past lives for advice on how to stop Ozai.  I think it’s so beautiful that his desire to find a peaceful resolution is so strong that it’s reflected even in his posture.  That is so powerful to me.  If you want a single image that reflects Aang’s gentle, loving nature, for me this is it.  It demonstrates the intense effort he is making to protect the sanctity of Ozai’s life.  

he’s a little confused but he’s got the spirit

angsty bonus:

after a long and heartfelt hug he and Iroh had The Talk™ gay edition

let aang grieve 2020

Here’s the thing about the air nomads.

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.

Fun helps you see past your differences.

Fun is what fuels curiosity and openmindedness.

Fun is the first thing to die in a war.

OP went and ended hard with the last line.

Anyone notice how Aang greets humans and spirits based on their nation/culture?

Yes! Noticed this in the series and loved it! A solid nod to the Avatar’s role as a whole – keeping balance, which is not just ending disputes in physical combat, but also includes one’s conduct. Acknowledging and respecting each culture and adapting accordingly.

If someone wants a really good example of the importance of justice in fiction, then Avatar: The Last Airbender did it really well. 

See, audiences are obsessed with justice and fairness in stories. They want the characters they like (the protagonists, usually) to win and for the villain to get their comeuppance. Stories get more complicated and really interesting when they question what justice actually is and what it means for characters to get what they deserve. Should the characters get what they want? Or what they need? If the characters haven’t “earned” it, should they get anything at all? If, at the end of a story, a character has gotten neither what they wanted or what they needed, why not? 

A:TLA covers justice a lot, in many different ways. There’s Hei Bai’s forest, Jet and the Freedom Fighters, Monk Gyatso’s skeleton, Avatar Kyoshi and Conqueror Chin, the Ocean Spirit’s revenge on Zhao, what happened to Katara and Sokka’s mother, Hama of the Southern Water Tribe, Iroh’s past as the Dragon of the West, Zuko’s suffering versus his sins, Iroh and Zuko’s rejection of the Fire Nation’s war and their efforts towards peace, and so on. 

A:TLA’s finale is especially well done because traditional story justice expects Aang to kill Ozai for everything the Fire Nation has done. The characters in the story expect Aang to kill Ozai. It would be long-awaited justice for the world. Ozai is responsible for the deaths and suffering of thousands of people in his time as Fire Lord; it can’t be argued that he doesn’t have a lot coming for him. 

But Aang doesn’t kill Ozai. 

And it still works, because at that point in the story, it’s not about what Ozai deserves, it’s about what Aang deserves. Aang is a 12-year-old boy who has the fate of the world on his shoulders, the last member of a pacifist culture that’s been essentially wiped from the face of the planet, and he doesn’t want to kill anyone. It’s justice for Aang, the last airbender, not to have to kill Ozai.  

Whether or not the audience believes Ozai deserves to die, whether or not the audience believes Ozai’s death was the “right” course of action, they can still at least be somewhat satisfied that Aang is satisfied with this end.