Avatar: The Last Airbender

The closest to an air nomad would still be among the peoples of the remaining three nations. It'd be effectively the exact same scenario.

As for the balance angle, I'd argue that a successful complete genocide would have already shattered the balance irrevocably.

Edited by M84 on Apr 18th 2024 at 8:14:30 PM

It wouldn't though if they started out with airbending as their base element/philosophy.

eta: Yes, I agree that without the airbenders/air nomads the world and balance would have been shattered. At least going by the ATLA concept of the balance between nations, while TLOK leant into the balance between material realm/spirit realm being most important.

Edited by dcutter2 on Apr 18th 2024 at 1:16:16 PM

But the example you brought up before as a reference were the people who gained airbending from Harmonic Convergence. Most of them were completely unfamiliar with airbending culture or philosophy. Zaheer was one of the only exceptions.

Edit:

ATLA covered that too with the Moon Spirit being slain and waterbending being lost as a result. If that had been permanent, the spiritual balance of the world would have been screwed.

Edited by M84 on Apr 18th 2024 at 8:17:41 PM

I was speculating that it'd end up in someone who's natural personality was closest to the mindset of an Airbender.

I don't think any of them were particularly close to the airbenders personality wise either. Zaheer definitely wasn't, though he knew a lot of their lore.

That's one of the reasons Tenzin struggled to recruit them. That and he spectacularly failed to make the Air Nomad way of life sound appealing.

Edited by M84 on Apr 18th 2024 at 8:22:54 PM

I was speculating about reincarnation there. Not harmonic convergence granted powers.

That doesn't make much sense either. Newborns don't have much of a personality.

I don't know how I've got sucked into this argument because as I've said before I figure rotates through the three remaining nations is a perfectly viable option, it's just not the only possible one.

I'm going to bow out again here because it's going around in circles as far as I can tell.

edit: Removed my actual argument because it's not fair to bow out while trying to get the last word.

Edited by dcutter2 on Apr 18th 2024 at 1:30:05 PM

It does beg the question what happens to the Cycle as the Nations and their cultures become increasingly less separate along with increased interracial relationships.

What would the first Republic City Avatar be like?

Edited by M84 on Apr 18th 2024 at 8:33:56 PM

I always assume the cycle wasn't about nations, which can change and evolve and fracture and merge over time, but about the elements. It doesn't matter how prominent Republic City becomes or how much the nations blur because there are still four elements and the Avatar cycle will keep going through them.

The movie was been pushed back to January 20th, 2026.

I actually am kinda curious why the cycle exists. Theoretically the Avatar could be born to anyone. Like it's a good narrative point and it works excellently in the series.

Yeah, I don't think the elements are as strictly tied to nations as people assume.

Especially with the air nation, I got the impression that it was less a nation as such, and more like a religious order, with some suggestions that members could come from any nation, and were traditionally adopted into the air nation from a very early age, rather like the Jedi order.

Which is incidentally exactly what ends up happening in Korra's time.

Edited by Redmess on Apr 18th 2024 at 6:57:31 PM

It's interesting to come back and see this conversation happening. One point about the established lore, though (and I realize this was a while back, but it stuck with me).

A lionturtle can grant and remove an element. Raava could "hold" the other elements for Wan, because normal humans can only use one at a time, and she wasn't even sure it would work.

She has the power to transfer elements, not grant them.

Edited by Dracoblade on Apr 18th 2024 at 10:54:07 AM

There is when, in the series as presented, the Avatar is born to each nation in turn and raised as a bender of that nation before being revealed. Every shown Avatar, by manner and dress, presents as a member of their birth nation, even when they're bending every element under the sun.

The question is what happens after that Avatar. Suppose this Avatar were born in the Earth Kingdom, by law of averages (it's the most populous nation). They're trained as an earthbender first before discovering the other elements. Is the next Avatar still born in the Water Tribes? If so, did that first Avatar count for "air" in the cycle, even if they never identified as an Air Nomad?

Suppose instead that the Avatar that would have been Air was born in the Water Tribes and raised as a waterbender. Would the Avatar after them also be born to Water, or to Earth? That's what we're wondering here. In a world without an existing Air nation, does the Avatar still cycle through four, or three?

Maybe, but it is interesting to think about how that Avatar would be identified. The traditional methods would be less useful when you can't rely on geography as a starting point. (Finding the Earth Avatar on the giant continent was always the most difficult.) If an Avatar was born to a blended family like Mako and Bolin's, they might not be where the authorities would expect to find them, and showing an affinity for one element or another might not twig those in the know to look. ("Sure, he's a firebender in the Earth Kingdom; his uncle is one, too.")

They didn't tend to have a set territory, other than the Air Temples, and lived among the other nations. That'd be kind of a funny Doing In the Wizard explanation for why they're all benders. If you're an airbender, you get handed off to the Air Nomads. If you're a nonbender born to the Nomads, you're ... what, traded off to some other family?

Edited by HeraldAlberich on Apr 18th 2024 at 3:12:17 PM

Non airbending Air Nomads get handed climbing gear.

Yeah, the Avatars very much take on the nationality of where they are born, and are always shown to be strongest in the element of the nation they were born in.

Yeah, that's a question I don't think the series ever answered: what happens to non-bender air nomads? Or, for that matter, who Aang's parents are.

Edited by Redmess on Apr 18th 2024 at 10:21:18 AM

Honestly I'm not too sure how accurate that is? You could argue Korra is a bit of an odd one out but she did seem to favour another element over her base one.

Did she? Which one?

Fire IRRC

Interesting. Aang's was definitely air though, and Roku's was fire. I suspect Korra is the first Avatar to be shown to not favour the element tied to her cultural background.

x4 The implication of the show is that all air nomads are benders.

Right, that's a frequently cited All There in the Manual—there are no nonbender Air Nomads, because of their higher spirituality compared to the other nations. 100% airbenders.

Korra I would say was equally proficient in water and fire at the start of the series, but definitely favored fire for a few reasons—it's easy to use anywhere, it's good for attacking, she didn't have real-world experience in mixing up her attacks to fit the situation, and she'd just completed firebender training, so it was fresh in her mind.

On the issue of Aang's parents, they're never really alluded to in the show. I think that the Air Nomads don't form family units and raised all children collectively and therefor no onw really knows their parents. This also lines up with the fact that the Southern Air Temple seemed to have only male children, as girls are presumably raised in the Western and Eastern temples. I don't know if this was ever stated in anything, thought

I think the strict gender separation, even as children, in Air Nomad society is underexplored. Did they practice marriage? How did heterosexual couples meet to have children? What ideas about gender made them set up their society this way?

Edited by TheMountainKing on Apr 18th 2024 at 6:20:32 AM

Korra is also supposed to be the opposite of Aang. Aang's biggest regret was running away from his duties at the start of the Hundred Year War, even when he's told it's not his fault. Thus it makes sense for the next reincarnation to start running towards duty head first to remedy that problem.

And naturally, it would be a Waterbender that acts more like an Earthbender and Firebender.

Edited by Shadao on Apr 18th 2024 at 3:11:08 AM