So you’ve got this typical story about an average kid right? Only, surprise surprise, he actually turns out to be more than average. See, one day, when he was just minding his own business, he’s suddenly told that he is this super-being who has to save the world from evil. Again, it’s your basic tropes all lined up and ready to go.
And this isn’t just a “Oh, I need some time to think but I’ll come around in a day or two and fulfill my destiny.”
No this kid is gone. For the first time in his life, this kind and generous kid makes a selfish decision. He knows what the consequences are. He knows what’s at stake. He knows that lives are going to be in danger. And he still chooses to run away.
Things take an abrupt turn when he gets into an accident and he ends up in a coma. He wakes up years later and guess what? Him running away from his duties that day? Yeah it kind of caused the entire world to be plunged into chaos. This kid, this kid, is now responsible for thousands upon thousands of deaths.
At the age of twelve, this kind pacifist single-handedly becomes a mass-murderer by association. All because he ran away.
A few older teenagers find him and immediately help him. They don’t think much of it. They’re used to helping out anyone they can. After all, the war has killed people they love, family, friends. So they help this kid before they even realize that he’s destined. And this kid, this kid isn’t even fully aware of just how many people he inadvertently killed.
Until they go to the ‘city’ where he was from. He doesn’t understand why they’re so worried but when he gets there…he gets it. There is no ‘city’. Not anymore. It’s abandoned ruins lined with skeletons—his friends, his family. He finds his father’s corpse. He finds signs of a struggle. Everyone he knew is dead. And there are so many more. Hundreds. Thousands. All dead. All because of him.
He’s a good kid, a great kid. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.
And he led to thousands of deaths.
And this entire story is just the first three episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender. (Four if you count borrowing some information from The Storm.)
Avatar showed all of this in just three episodes. Actually it showed this and more. Because this is just one character’s story and they introduced us to half a dozen major characters, each with stories just as, if not even more, tragic than this one.
Long story short, we always talk about how amazing Avatar is for the representation and art and animation and music and morals but we rarely ever talk about how amazing the story is. The horrible irony that Aang, a pacifistic monk who was kind and generous to everyone he met, inadvertently led to thousands of people dying in a century-long war—it’s one of the greatest stories that I’ve ever heard of. This doesn’t even include all of the other consequences we see throughout the series—villages being destroyed, families living in fear, people being dragged off to concentration camps in the middle of the night, kids turning into terrorists, refugees being forced to walk thousands of miles to get to a safe haven, the injuries, the fear, the trauma. (And this is all just in Book One. Don’t even get me started on the other two.) It’s hard to say that it’s all Aang’s fault but his disappearance certainly had a huge impact on the horrible things that occurred.
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