So I saw this post about Aang rejecting all the avatars’ advise because they didn’t give him a vegan option, which is frankly hilarious, but I have so much to say and I don’t want to start shit over on someone else’s post.
Look, I fucking love avatar Kyoshi with every inch of my soul and I’m absolutely sure she would have had exactly zero qualms about just squishing Ozai under her big sexy boot, but I think y’all keep missing a very important fact about her conversation with Aang - Kyoshi never told Aang to kill Ozai. In fact, not a single one of the previous Avatars told Aang to do that.
In shameless self-promotion I would highly encourage you, if you want, to read the full blown over-3300-wrods-essay I wrote about this entire issue and Aang’s arc. I’ll just reiterate the point about Aang’s conversation with the avatars here:
What exactly did the old avatars say? Roku lamented that he didn’t act sooner on Sozin’s actions and told Aang “you must be decisive”. Kyoshi said that even though she didn’t technically kill Chin the Conqueror, she would have done whatever it took to stop him and told Aang “only justice will bring peace”. Kuruk told the story of losing the woman he loved to Koh, blaming himself that had he been more attentive and active he could have saved her and said “you must actively shape your own destiny and the destiny of the world”. And lastly, Yangchen said that while Aang’s values and education are important, it isn’t about him since his duty as Avatar is for the world and not himself and said “selfless duty calls you to sacrifice your own spiritual needs, and do whatever it takes to protect the world”.
Technically speaking, not a single one of the old Avatars actually told Aang to kill Ozai. Is Aang talking about the question of killing Ozai? Yes. Is any of them telling him directly that he should kill? Absolutely not. They are talking exactly about Aang’s unresolved character arc - about facing your problems, about not running away, about making an active choice, shaping your own destiny and not letting destiny control you and making sacrifices for the world.
But, of course, in the end he didn’t do any of this and just let deus ex machina after deus ex machina solve his problems for him with zero character growth and no effort or price to pay whatsoever (a hell of a lot more about this in my original post).
Anyway, jokes like the one in the beginning are great and all, but sometimes we seem to remember our impressions of the source material more than the source material itself and what was actually said in it, and we really should learn to differentiate the two.