#teaching freedom

[sokkagatekeeper]

i think gyatso is so incredibly important to aang not as much as a father figure but as a support system. aang is so obviously an airbending master by the time he gets cracked out of the iceberg. he is so obviously and tragically a master by the time he’s first told he’s the avatar. throughout the show he displays an impressive comittment to the preservation of his culture and his beliefs solely through him, and the weight of this responsibility is only shown as such when he has to actively choose it over something else; aang is practically the most mature person in team avatar. so infantilizing aang is obviously wrong. however, the show makes a point to show that despite his impressive emotional maturity, his bending prodigy tendencies, say, a hundred and twelve years, aang is still biologically just a twelve-year-old child. and it’s very interesting to me the way this idea is introduced properly for the first time by gyatso, of all people.

upon finding out he’s the avatar, we see aang being expected to learn, train, perfect his airbending techniques, and pressured to do this by the other monks. the news of his avatarship, to give it a name, result in him being isolated from his peers, having only these people who are constantly chasing after him for him to become a child soldier as soon as possible, with the best intentions in mind, but still pressuring. so it comes to a point where aang can only turn to gyatso to be a child again. he cannot play with his peers anymore; he’s expected, as a master and the avatar, to behave more like an adult every day. but with gyatso, aang can play boardgames, he can make pies, he can vent, he can find a shelter and a safe space to act his age and trust an adult to do the same. gyatso values aang’s status as a child as much as, maybe even more than, aang’s status as an airbending master and the avatar. and unknowingly, he passes on those values and beliefs to aang.

so aang runs away, gets caught in a storm, wakes up completely alone except for two kids more or less of his age who act so much like how adults are expected to act, and he’s just like, this is wrong. so he takes katara penguin sledding, so katara can play with aang, she can have fun with aang, she can have a safe space to act her age around aang. and he continues to crack sokka out of his chell and encourage him to have fun, and he continues to wonder if zuko can have friends, can be better, if zuko even has a safe space to be child. so while yes, katara had sokka to shelter some of her hope and somewhat childhood innocence, sokka’s idea of masculinity and adulthood is deeply flawed thanks to isolation and a lack of perspective, and zuko may have the support of iroh to be able to act his age around him, but it’s not a space he understands. so katara still has the weight of a culture on her back, sokka has katara and his entire tribe, zuko is literally a trained soldier since he was thirteen. aang, for a change, gives all of them the same space gyatso gave him to act their age and be the children the war and the adults around them didn’t allow them to be in the first place. aang reassures katara of what she already knew: her childhood was stolen from her and she deserves and wants to be a kid; aang gives sokka a new perspective on maturity and responsibility and introduces him to the idea of actual fun; aang inspires zuko enough to chase him all over the world which brings him to realize he is just a kid, and that he didn’t deserve all that cruelty and isolation. because aang wants to be a kid, and aang wants to take responsibility, and aang didn’t deserve all that isolation, and aang had gyatso. aang knows, these kids have no one but him.

the way aang is able to preserve his own childhood while giving others their own, i believe, is in part shaped by the way gyatso took care of him and gave him so much room for his childhood on the first place.

[sokkagatekeeper]

another thing i’ve been thinking about is how different the approaches katara and zuko respectively take on aang are and how aang reacts to them while still being relatively normal about it. while katara is the most welcoming, zuko is the most aggressive. aang acts accordingly to both of these approaches; he defends himself and the village people from zuko and is upfront about wanting to be katara’s friend, but ultimately, his brain is fresh from any sort of pre-established judgements that aren’t immediate to what he’s experiencing in the moment, unlike katara or sokka. he initally just treats both katara and zuko as his equals, as children, merely managing the situation and the people he meets as they present themselves to him — one friendly and one not quite, and that’s about it, at least at this point. against katara’s narration and wonder, sokka’s default paranoia, and zuko’s full-on-commander mode, aang is a refreshing contrast from and to the rest of the characters, and so this information can stick with the viewer from the get-go which is useful to understand the characters, the context they are currently in and how it affected or didn’t affect each of them, and therefore first hint to why (meta)textually, aang is the perfectly fitting protagonist for the story he’s in

[sokkagatekeeper]

could you talk a bit about some of the mindsets and values that you see aang bringing from his memories of the air nomads to the gaang and modern world and their impact? if that makes sense

values, teachings, wisdoms, and fresh perspectives aang offers to the modern world in war that he wakes up to, keeping the legacy of the air nomads alive and therefore becoming a savior of said world in every sense of the word, inciting justice and revolution with his mere existence:

fun. a fundamental thing that was lost after the genocide of the air nomads is fun, the ability to let go of earthly attachments and enjoy life as it presents itself. the world of atla that we see is drowning in misery, poverty, death, unnecessary hatred and pointless conflicts. ever since the war’s begining was marked down by the genocide of the air nomads the world lost its spirit, its right and ability to enjoy life. the very first thing aang does when cracked out of the iceberg is invite katara to do a fun activity with him. as katara herself says, she hasn’t had fun since she “was a kid” ignoring the blatant fact to aang that katara is still a kid, she’s fourteen, she grew up way too fast, and even though she knows it and she knows she deserves the childhood that was taken from her, it is not until aang makes the offer to her that she jumps through the window of opportunity of actually doing what she wants to do, rather than what it’s expected to her as a child of the war. the way aang affects sokka is a much longer process, but it’s plainly visible when comparing their dynamic, and sokka’s own personality and humor from book one to book three. in the first book, sokka is always alert, in soldier-mode, essentially a miserable grump who at the age of fifteen believes having fun is for children and an utter waste of time when there’s an entire war going on. in book three, although he is still responsible and reasonable most of the time, he is a lot less uptight and allows himself to have fun alongside aang and toph. aang is not able to teach sokka that having fun is a right of his as a child, but he is able to teach sokka that having fun is okay. aang quite literally teaches sokka how to have fun in the first place. during “the headband” aang actively works against fire nation propaganda by throwing a party, showing the fire nation children how to have fun as well, and most importantly he teaches the importance of having fun as a form of self-expression. aang teaches freedom, essentially, through the inherent individualism of childhood and not waiting for fun to knock your door but actively search for it, look for reasons to enjoy and love life despite everything else.

one of my favorite motifs of aang is the justice theme. defining the meaning of justice becomes crucial in the finale of the show, but it can also be seen throughout the entirety of book three with hama’s episode or the southern raiders episode. when aang looks for advice from kyoshi, her response lies plainly in achieving justice and therefore peace. by choosing to spare ozai’s life, despite the fact that the entire world is pressuring him to kill him and end it once and for all, aang is preserving the values of the air nomads through this choice. the values of his people, who were massacred by the fire nation (figuratively ozai) and the entire reason why aang is so important as the last surviving air nomad left in the world, his role in the world and the wisdoms he can offer to it, which would be, in a certain way, lost, if aang decided to give up on his beliefs and kill ozai. as the last air nomad left, he would be giving up this crucial part of his identity to the same people that murdered the air nomads and destroyed so much of the culture aang struggles so much to preserve. aang understands the importance in loving oneself before hating your oppressor, even if those two things are somewhat intertwined, love must always be greater than hatred. which brings me to:

aang’s grief for the air nomads and his culture is essentially translated through his love for the rest of the world. aang could’ve easily given up on the world and the teachings he has from the air nomads, but because of how much he loves his culture, how much he loved his people, his grief is tremendously big and heavy, and it resolves, in the end, in his love for the world he must save as it’s his duty as the avatar. he loves the world enough to give it the philosophies, beliefs, values, wisdoms of his people back, trusting it to be more careful with them this time around. aang teaches forgiveness the same way he teaches freedom, because his rage is destructive and alive, but his love and his rage come from the same place which is his grief. he chooses love over hatred every single day, and inspires other people (katara, zuko, toph) to do the same.