(Sendo is the winner of the pole so here's Sendo Takeshi aka Naniwa Tiger in atla)
• Born in a fire nation colony (around Yu dao's lands which specifically, Naniwa(I made that up)) and Sendo's father was part of the fire nation brigade.
• After his father died due to a fire attack, Sendo learnt that his father's death was on purpose by the Fire Nation as his father protected a young earth kingdom citizen from the flames. But instead of anger, he vowed to protect others.
• Due to that, his family is considered outcast by the fire nation for being 'traitors' but the Naniwa village protects them and loves them still for being so kind.
• Late bloomer, got his bending at 13. Despite that tho, he's proven time and time again to be extremely talented in fighting and turns out to be a talented firebender too.
• Spends most of his time outside the Yu dao academy, mostly in fighting off bullies that try to hurt others.
• Him and his cousin, Ayame(my oc) are pretty much like siblings instead of cousins. She helps him in his early stages of firebending by making makeshift target for him to aim.
• He met Yanaoka and started pro bending to fight the strongest benders. Which he soon came face to face with Avatar Ippo(he didn't know at the time).
• Both of their teams were matched up against eachother for the 'Unified Rookie king of the pro bending match'. And Sendo wanted to face Ippo head on despite the different elements.
• The matchup came to be fter Ippo managed to heal his right hand which was injured during the match with the Toho gym's team (Mashiba's team also known as the 'Reaperbats'). Sendo was proven to be too strong till they realise that Sendo was unconscious as a result of him punching the earth disk in which one of the pieces ricochet onto his temple.
• After that match, Sendo started to feel like something is different with Ippo but didn't thought about it. But he thinks.. was Ippo the Avatar? As what kind of earth pro bender can get through fire without serious burns? (Ippo wasn't unscathed but the damage on his face didn't seem to be burns).
• Sendo continued on with his pro bending career, fighting up in the Fire colony regions and winning. He eventually met Ippo again outside the ring and just as he seems to suspect, Ippo IS the Avatar.
• Which after he found out, he confronted Ippo about who panicked and asked him to not tell ANYONE. Sendo keeps this a secret, in fact, he thinks Ippo's firebending is still weaker than his earthbending so he offered to help.
• That's how Sendo became Ippo's firebending instructor after Aoki. The boy was tough, not cut out much for this but he helps Ippo out in making progress in his firebending offense.
• Now that he's part of Team Avatar, he's sometimes on missions with the Kamogawa boys in fighting bad guys. Meeting other benders along the way like Volg, Miyata and etc.
• Sendo didn't particularly see eye to eye with Volg at first but both were able to respect each others mastery in bending.
• (SPOILERS!!) Right now, he's fighting bad guys after Ippo's hiatus due to breaking his spiritual connection to his bending. He's to fight Ricardo Martinez, a strong bender(the dark Avatar) in the pro bending arena...
One of the things I’ve noticed in fandom complaints about the ATLA comics-- namely, “The Promise”-- and subsequently, LOK’s worldbuilding, is the way the narrative handles colonization.
I see a lot about how what the Earth Kingdom chose to do with the former colonies is “none of Zuko’s (or Aang’s) business.” (I also see people talking about how Katara would never support colonialism, in any shape or form, no matter the circumstances.)
And I just.... don’t vibe with those ideas? At all?
Like, I definitely have problems with the comics-- especially “The Promise,” where all the drama centers around Miscommunications of Epic Proportions and could have been resolved in Part One if all the characters just sat down and listened to each other (not to mention that Aang would never have agreed to make that promise, nor would Zuko have asked it of him (Sokka would be a more obvious choice, but that’s a different discussion))-- but I never had any issues with their worldbuilding.
I love the idea of Yu Dao, and the fact that the narrative acknowledges that a new kind of world has new kinds of problems. It makes sense to me that we can’t always just “give back the land we took.” And I found the idea of the end solution being “give the people who live there their own country” really cool and empowering.
So I want to talk about why I feel this way. About what kind of real-world parallels can be made here. About some little-known bits of world-history that compare.
(Please note that for this meta I am only going to be discussing the relationship between Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom. As far as I am aware-- and I could be wrong-- there is no real-world genocide quite comparible to what Sozin did to the Air Nomads, and most of the people alive in ATLA were not actually around for or involved in that. And the relationship the Fire Nation has with the Water Tribes-- and that the North and South have with each other-- is worth a whole separate analysis, and doesn’t deserve to just be shoved into this one.)
(Disclaimer: While this is in response to some of the interpretations I’ve seen on this site, it is not meant to discount or invalidate those fans’ views-- I’m just trying to show my take on it. I am a firm believer in the power of active discourse, and the value of looking at the same scenes through different lenses, rather than just getting one opinion and accepting it as Absolute Truth.)
The main thing I notice in general ATLA discourse-- and not just on this topic, but in any sort of meta about the Fire Nation, colonization, and global impact-- is that the fandom mostly compares the war and its after-affects to real-world Imperialism, the Age of Imperialism, New Imperialism, and Colonization.
And I understand why that is. In the grand scheme of world history, that era is still fairly recent, and we are still dealing with the afteraffects from it. It has shaped the Western World’s worldview on every level. (Not to mention that the Euro-centric way we’re taught history means that this piece of world history is the one we’re most exposed to, and so have the most understanding of and room to analyze/criticize.)
However, there are a few issues with sticking only to this perspective.
First off, the Age of Imperialism was a direct response to the Age of Exploration. This was the period of time when white Europeans sailed around the world acting as though they were discovering new places and pretending that there weren’t already existing civilizations there.
[ID: Two dots meme, edited so that Guy A says “i’ve discovered a NEW WORLD,” Guy B replies “you didn’t discover ****,” and Guy A insists “i’ve discovered it” / End ID.]
Now, I’ve mentioned this in passing, but the world of ATLA doesn’t appear to have had an Age of Exploration. There’s no vast “undiscovered” land masses, the four nations have always known about each other, and they all have a shared language.
The whole foundation for the Age of Imperialism was “oh, look, there are all these ‘unexplored’ lands with resources ripe for the picking (who cares about the indigenous people, they’re just simplistic savages who don’t know what’s best for them), let’s see which European country can grab the most land first.”
This was a race. This was sudden. This was Europeans coming in and taking over while viewing the natives as bothersome pests. This was about multiple major world powers competing over resources.
This was not 100 years of active warfare between a single conquering country and the very people they were trying to conquer.
The parallels don’t hold up.
Secondly, by focussing only on this one kind of historical narrative, we ignore any others.
I will admit that I have used the word “imperialism” in reference to the Fire Nation a time or two. However, upon further reflection, I realize I didn’t really mean imperialism, which is actually a fairly modern concept. What I feel the Fire Nation is really an example of is centralism and expansionism-- two ideaologies that have been a way of life for conquering empires throughout history.
(I am in no way qualified to explain the differences between these concepts-- I recommend doing your own research if you’re curious.)
The Persian Empire. The Greek Empire. The Roman Empire. The Byzantine Empire. The Mongolian Empire. The Russian Empire. The First French Empire.
You could take any of these (or numerous others) and make an interesting analysis between the similarities and differences between their behaviors and that of the Fire Nation. And maybe I’ll do that someday.
However, I started this to talk about Yu Dao and all of the other so-called colonies (I really feel like territories would be a better word, but, again, that’s a whole ’nother discussion), and I’d like to focus on that.
FYI, here’s a basic history refresher: If two countries are at war, and then they decide to end the war, neither country is required to return captured territories. They can make a treaty and agree to do so, but there is no obligation to. The Fire Nation didn’t just march in and say, “this is our land now”-- they fought for it. They captured that land. Just because the war is over doesn’t mean they need to just give it back.
Like it or not, that is the way the world operated for thousands of years, and so that is the interpretation I’m working with here.
In any case, “The Promise” actually presents this as a three-way conversation. There’s Zuko (and, by default, the Fire Nation), Kuei (and, by default, Ba Sing Se and the Earth Kingdom), and the people of Yu Dao themselves.
(My understanding of the Earth Kingdom’s style of government is that it’s made up of a large collection of different ethno-cultural regions who all answer to Ba Sing Se.)
I’ll let Sokka explain it:
[ID: Comic panel from Part Three of “The Promise.” Sokka and Katara are talking, both in obvious states of agitation, while Suki and Toph are looking at something in the background. Sokka is saying, “Let me see if I got this. The protestors and the Earth Kingdom Army want the colonials to go, the Fire Nation Army wants the colonials to stay, and the Yu Dao Resistance just want their city to be left alone?” Katara responds, “Yes!” / End ID.]
The people of Yu Dao don’t care about the war. They don’t even really care who’s in charge. They just want to be left alone.
This speaks to me on a very personal level, so I’m going to make another real-world comparison here:
My ancestors first came to America to escape from the poverty and opression they were experiencing in a place known as “White Russia”-- that is, Belarus. To be clear, I am not talking about the country “Belarus,” but the region, which includes the modern-day countries of Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia and Moldova, as well as parts of Poland and Russia.
I looked up White Russia, trying to find out how much information someone who didn’t grow up hearing stories about what it was like (that is, most of the people reading this,) might have. I didn’t find much. Most of what I found talked about political ideologies and such-- things that your average poor peasant, struggling just eke out a living, didn’t have much energy to care about. So let me paint a(n oversimplified) picture for you.
Imagine you’re a poor shoemaker in a small town on the Russian border. You spend your days hard at work, trying to earn a living to support your wife and nine children. You’ve never left the town you were born in. One day you get the news: Russia and Poland are fighting again. Your two oldest sons (ages 15 and 17) are forcibly drafted off to fight in the Russian army; you never see them again and have no way of knowing if they’re dead or alive (they’re probably dead). Poland wins-- this time. Congratulations, your town is now part of Poland.
Does suddenly being Polish make a difference to your life? Not in the slightest. Two or three years down the line, you’ll go back to being part of Russia again. This is the third or fourth time you’ve seen your town switch hands, and you can’t say you prefer one government over the other. It doesn’t really matter who’s in charge-- you’re still faced with crippling taxes, forced drafts, and various other forms of oppression. (It doesn’t help that you happen to be part of a persecuted minority.)
(This is why I have many ancestors who may never have left the town they were born in, and yet records show that they were born in one country, got married in another, and died in a third.)
This is the kind of worldview through which I am looking at Yu Dao. (Obviously, it’s not an exact parallel, but neither is the standard “colonizers vs oppressed natives” lens.)
My ancestors eventually got fed up with the treatment they were receiving from their respective governments, and left to build a new life, in a new place. But the citizens of Yu Dao don’t have anywhere to go. The only two real world powers in this story are the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom, neither of which has ever before expressed any true interest or concern in the actual people of Yu Dao.
The Earth Kingdom didn’t really care about the city before the war-- they were just another poor, struggling town, whose citizens were barely able to make ends meet. And while the Fire Nation may have helped the place grow into a bustling town, they also established a hierarchy that did not serve in the citizens’ best interests.
And so, in “The Promise,” these citizens’ frustrations come to a head. “Enough,” they say, “we don’t want to be used as a pawn in your games anymore.”
And Zuko and Kuei (and Aang) actually listen. They say “we need to start thinking about these people as people, not as symbols of one side or the other. It’s time to give them a say in their future.”
And a new country-- a new way of life-- is born.
(Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But it is constantly evolving and changing, trying to do better, be better. And that’s more than you can say about most of the other countries in this world.)
Okay, I'll be honest. I've seen some things that say Kori in the comics got off too easy or that she was too harsh with her actions in the comics but honestly? I can understand why she's so intense about all this.
Remember, Zuko and the others were planning to forcibly deport all of the fire nation citizens back to the Fire Nation including her and her father. Which meant that not only would she be forced to leave her home and go live somewhere she'd most likely never even been to before but that she would also most likely be separated from friends, people she was close with, and even her own mother. Plus she would've been an earthbender in a country of fire nation folk. What they were planning to do might have completely uprooted her life and broken her family.
And as for her talk with Sneers, again yes she is really intense with her reaction but think about this way: imagine if you were a mixed race person who was proud of both of your heritages and people kept telling you that not only was one of the of the race you were bad or evil but also that you couldn't be of both heritages and you had to pick one or the other. Not to mention the real threat of either your government or a foreign government coming and forcibly deporting you, some of your friends and your family. It might justifiably piss you off a bit to. Was killing Zuko the right way to go about it? No. But I can absolutely understand her anger over the point.
Yu Dao being a multicultural city where the EK and Firebenders got along decently is stupid and obviously never existed or would’ve been a concept in the 2000s show and was created solely to give an origin story for Fake New York Chinatown.
Avatar Aang is summoned before King Bumi, where he learns that Yu Dao was once a part of Omashu but is still under Fire Nation colonial rule. King Bumi stresses the importance that the Four Nations remain separated and makes Aang promise him that he will remove the FN from the region.
Conflicted over the situation with Yu Dao, it causes great division amongst Zuko and Aang. The Gaang soon finds themselves picking sides and battling it out for the fate of Yu Dao.
~~~~
Aang: Sorry, Zuko. You know that I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't have a choice but he's my friend.
I think i have a working theory on why the take on the Fire Nation colonialism is so bad in "The Promise":
Bryke aren't talking about colonialism in The Promise, they are talking about immigration.
If we look at Yu Dao as a colony, it just doesn't work. And I mean that in the literal sense. Yu Dao, as it is described in The Promise can not exist in any world that could be considered logical or realistic.
Yu Dao apparently became one of the wealthiest cities of the world under colonial rule. And that is just not how colonialism works. Colonialism is the colonial empire extracting resources from their colonies. A colony becoming one of the wealthiest cities in the world under colonial rule is absolutely laughable. How can you become rich, if everything that is in anyway valuable gets stolen from you?
And a developing kinship between the nationalities is also just not in any way realistic. The Earth Kingdom people are oppressed by the Fire Nation. And the Eatth Kingdom is defending itself against the war the Fire Nation wages against them.
And that is without speaking about the rampant racism of the Fire Nation. How can a kinship develop between the nationalities if the Fire Nation doesn't view Earth Kingdom people as fully human. Any idea of kinship between the two nationalitiesis laughable.
But if you just remove the context of colonialism and the war, and just view at as normal immigration, the story actually makes sense. The comic turns into a very standard story about immigratiom. "Two different nationalities working together create something better and in the end they prosper due to their cooperation" is the standard premise of a lot of stories about immigration.
Just take a look at how Yu Dao is described on the wiki, a description that is accurate to the portrayal in the comics. It sounds like how someone would talk about the benefits of immigration and definitely not like someone would describe colonialism (unless the person in question thinks colonialism is good.)
And the central conflict makes a lot more sense if we talk about immigration. The main argument for decolonization in the comic is not, like one would expect the horrors and exploitation inherent in colonialism, but that the four nations should be seperated. And this does actually makes sense if the main conflict is Immigration vs. Segregation.
Just a small problem: The comics deal with colonialism, even if you want to pretend very hard that it is about immigration.
TL;DR: In the Promise Bryke seem to equate Fire Nation Colonialism with immigration.
Can anyone who has read The Promise Avatar comic answer if the book is as pro-colonialism as the plot synopsis implies? Like if this excerpt from the avatar wiki is an accurate portrayal of how the issue of decolonization is handled in the comics, i am going to cry.
"Together with the Earth Kingdom civilians already living in the area, the Fire Nation settlers created a thriving metalworking industry which evolved into one of the best in the world. The tiny village grew into a thriving, cosmopolitan city. Through the unique blending of Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation culture, Yu Dao became one of the wealthiest cities in the world. According to Fire Lord Zuko, the colony of Yu Dao made the finest metal of any nation.
In 100 AG at the end of the Hundred Year War, Earth King Kuei and Fire Lord Zuko agreed to start the Harmony Restoration Movement, aimed at the removal of all Fire Nation colonies from Earth Kingdom territory. However, Yu Dao posed a particular problem due to its age, as many families had lived in the city for over one hundred years and had put down deep roots in the area. Marriage between Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation citizens was common, causing Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation citizens to feel a kinship toward one another beyond their nationality. This led to conflict among Avatar Aang , Fire Lord Zuko, and Earth King Kuei."
