Day 3 of @atlagenweek2021 was Unexpected Ally and/or Found Family. In my fic, WMTE, Ty Lee eagerly joins the Gaang as an ally for reasons mentioned above, but season 2 Zuko needs some more convincing.
Outfits are drawn to emphasize the visual similarities between the designs of these two. ^_^
If you need preliminary evidence that my fic is the ultimate Found Family, look no further than the tags:
The tags for my fanfiction.
You can read it at ao3 OR ffn, but ffn has a ton more chapters posted.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/26361
The Gaang is very much found family for Ty, but Aang struggles, at least with Iroh.
[IMG ID: Ty Lee says to Aang, “All your auras are so bright and pretty!!” He says, “Aw shucks.” Iroh, drawn in the style of the School Time Shipping animated short, comments, “Good is easier to see for some ... and SOME must be conked over the head with it.” He swings a club to literally hit Zuko over the head. Zuko goes, “OWWW, UNCLE!” To the right, the words “Incorrect Quotes from What Meets the Eye” appear, along with my M.S. signature, which looks like Sigma Infinity.]
So, there’s a TV Trope that at first I thought might fit with ATLA. ‘Conservation of Ninjitsu.’ It is where, no matter how many guys a person is fighting, they always come out on top. In any world, realistic or fantasy, with no superpowers, this is obviously unrealistic. Samurai and martial artists of the past could excel, sure, but if they were going up against another army, they had to have the numbers. This trope is called ‘Old as Dirt’ because even in Roman mythology it’s mentioned that one warrior ceasing to fight within a battle turned the whole tide. In media this narrative device tends to play out as the ‘hero’ or hero’s team being able to keep up with multiple nameless mooks, no matter how well trained in martial arts they are.
Think, Ninja Turtles versus hordes of Foot Clan.
ATLA is an interesting twist to this, because you’d expect benders to at the very least knock out lots of nonbenders. Those with powers should overwhelm those without, right? And yet, we see the second highest ranking person in the Fire Nation choose nonbenders as her primary fellow combatants! I’ve given a plausible explanation for this with Ty Lee.
In my fic, she has unique senses that allow her to excel past even most benders in hand-to-hand combat. She can track the movement of their gathering chi, and therefore predict what their resultant move will be. And she can also sense chi pathways, so she strikes with a sure hand. For Mai, I haven’t come up with anything specific. But, I encourage you to note, against benders, the necessity of taking up a ranged weapon like throwing stars and knives, as opposed to a close to the body sword or anything like that. Whether Suki was unusually skilled, or over-confident, or thought she had the numbers, or merely desperate in challenging Azula with a katana, that is up to the viewer’s opinion.
In my fic, I also explain how a nonbender might fight or defeat or disable (or kill) a bender, and extrapolate on how firebenders in particular MUST use non-bender techniques if they are to be truly effective in combat.
Did Suki ally herself with benders in other situations? Was Kyoshi wiped of benders like the South Pole? But their leader said that they stayed out of the war. Surely the original KW were benders? Why are there no adult Kyoshi Warriors?
Anyway, I’ve always liked ATLA because the ‘superpowers’ were subtle, and not truly ‘superhuman.’ It not only made the characters somehow more relatable, it blended with the world better and the stakes felt higher when they couldn’t just keep taking hit after hit like your typical superhero. Katara got knocked out in the North Pole, for instance.
So, this all still begs the question, given the scene where Zuko rescued Iroh from earthbenders, are there vast power differences between benders? Are the ‘heroes’ merely good at fighting because of that narrative device I mentioned earlier, or is their ability to fight off many foes at once canonically based? We have some clues to this, as Aang got his master tattoos earlier than any other airbender. It’s even explained by the fact that he’s the Avatar. So it’s not just typical Mary Sue OP, it at the very least has an in-world basis.
Azula and Zuko are powerful because Ozai deliberately sought out the Avatar’s bloodline, according to the comics. Which makes total sense for him to do. I don’t give a lot of credence to the comics because of the way it clashes with what the creators originally planned for the Ursa-Ozai relationship, but the reversal of royalty looking to “marry into” a family because of bloodline is interesting and really points up the sheer importance and power of this world’s Avatar.
Toph is OP because she is blind, and that has given her a unique connection to the earth. Katara is the only one without an explanation or justification.
If you don’t count Iroh, which I don’t. He is just OP. No explanation needed. Ok, so, I could spin a yarn about how the current dynasty of the Fire Nation retained their rulership because they are the strongest firebenders in existence. But that would only have tenuous basis in canon.
Just remember that the dude, practically in the nude, put a beat down on earthbenders that had shields for firebending (a very inventive use for those hard coolie-style hats). And that was when he wasn’t in shape like in the finale, or in this fic.
He also, in canon, as has been covered with Sokka in my fic, bested Azula’s hand picked team of men early in Season 2.
(These chapters I discuss here have not been posted to my fic yet, but they have been written. It's just getting the in-between scenes written that still needs doing.)
The idea with powerful benders accruing wealth or power might partially explain Toph. We don’t know if her parents are benders or not- maybe in current cultural mores they genuinely think bending and fighting are low class. But the idea that’s where her strength comes from back in family history would not be as fun as canonical blindness powering her up.
So, just how powerful is Toph?
She resisted Wan Shi Tong’s entire fricking several story stone library sinking.
When being pursued in The Chase, she made a wall that appeared to extend possibly a hundred feet in each direction. So thick, Azula had to resort to lightning just to break through it. I’m pretty surprised that, with only two nonbenders at her side, Azula even decided to keep pursuing THE AVATAR in that tank, going up against him AND power like that.
Speaking of Azula’s motivations. I’m going to freely admit here that this is an interpretation that is probably far away from what the writers were going for in canon, for Azula’s actions. But, I am attempting to look at it in a realistic lens, which is what I’ve aimed to do for everything possible in that fic.
For example, Azula’s refusing the hostage trade between Mai’s kid brother Tom Tom and King Bumi, I’m sure, was SUPPOSED to come off as conniving, cruel, and heartless, by the writers.
The implication was probably supposed to be here, that she would ‘rescue’ her friend’s ‘baby brother’ IF she were a ‘good person.’
However.
Bumi is an incredibly skilled martial artist who has most likely violently defended Omashu from the Fire Nation for an entire one hundred years. He therefore by default, by view of any even casual outside observer, is either powerful, or smart, or both. Azula would know this in detail, studying the war growing up.
He would be one of these OP benders. Like, REALLY OP.
The idea that a leader of her country should free such a dangerous enemy man posing a threat to her people in exchange for a toddler, is utterly ludicrous.
Now, maybe the writers intended the viewer to logic that out. But I doubt it.
Therefore, drawing kidnappers out of hiding to have a shot at rescuing him would be using her smarts in service to Mai and her family.
