History Headscratchers / AvatarTheLastAirBender

Headscratchers for ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender''. To avoid clutter, kindly ensure that your grievance is placed in the appropriate sub-page. Gripes about the LiveActionAdaptation have been moved [[Headscratchers/TheLastAirbender here]]. Also, please note that this is not a place to bash characters. You can have problems with things that they ''do'', but attacking a character is not allowed, and such entries will be removed.

To avoid clutter, kindly ensure that your grievance is placed in the appropriate sub-page. Gripes about the LiveActionAdaptation have been moved [[Headscratchers/TheLastAirbender here]]. Also, please note that this is not a place to bash characters. You can have problems with things that they ''do'', but attacking a character is not allowed, and such entries will be removed.

* Headscratchers/AvatarTheLastAirbenderFandom

To avoid clutter, kindly ensure that your [[strike:complaint nitpicking]] grievance is placed in the appropriate sub-page. Gripes about the LiveActionAdaptation have been moved [[Headscratchers/TheLastAirbender here]]. Also, please note that this is not a place to bash characters. You can have problems with things that they ''do'', but attacking a character is not allowed, and such entries will be removed.

->I don't know the answer. Sometimes life is like this dark tunnel, you can't always see the light at the end of the tunnel, but if you just keep moving you will come to a better place.

->'''Iroh:''' I don't know the answer. Sometimes life is like this dark tunnel, you can't always see the light at the end of the tunnel, but if you just keep moving you will come to a better place.
-->--'''Book 2 (Earth), Chapter 20: The Crossroads of Destiny'''

To avoid clutter, kindly ensure that your [[strike:complaint]] [[strike:nitpicking]] grievance is placed in the appropriate sub-page. Gripes about the LiveActionAdaptation have been moved [[Headscratchers/TheLastAirbender here]]. Also, please note that this is not a place to bash characters. You can have problems with things that they ''do'', but attacking a character is not allowed, and such entries will be removed.

* Headscratchers/AvatarTheLastAirbenderShipping

* Headscratchers/AvatarTheLastAirbenderShipping

* Headscratchers/AvatarTheLastAirbenderShipping

To avoid clutter, kindly ensure that your [[strike:complaint]] [[strike:nitpicking]] grievance is placed in the appropriate sub-page. Gripes about the LiveActionAdaptation have been moved [[Headscratchers/TheLastAirbender here]].

[[redirect:JustBugsMe/{{Ptitlemxi508a6}}]]

* When Aang goes to visit Koh the face stealer, why doesn't he, y'know, ''cover his face''? Wear a mask, or just find some large leaves. Heck, tear off a bit of the orange piece of his costume. He can't see any expressions if he can't see your face at all.
** First, where would he get a mask of any kind in the Spirit World? And if it showed even the slightest emotion, Koh would just take it, anyway. As for a leaf or chunk of his clothing, my best guess would be so that we the viewer are on the edge of our seat. Or maybe Koh would've just not agknowledged him without a visible face; when you're known as the Face-Stealer, you want to be able to back it up.
** If protecting your face from the Face Stealer was really as easy as "cover your face with something," he would have hardly any faces in his collection. Obviously, it doesn't work that way; you show emotion, he steals it, and a mask wouldn't protect it like armor protects you from a sword.
* I assume when two earthbenders have a kid, they make another earthbender. But what would happen if, say, an earthebender and a waterbender fell in love and had a kid?
** Probably either one or neither. Look at a Punnet Square. Red flower+White Flower= 1 Pure red flower, 2 Red flowers with white genes, or 1 White flower. Just depends on which one is dominant. Also I know that it is a fukton more complicated and probably dead wrong with human genetics but its a cartoon. This should suffice.
*** Bending is spiritual, not genetic. It would depend on the child's upbringing, personality and things like cultural indoctrination. You could have an orphaned Earth Kingdom baby raised in the Fire Nation and that child could be a Firebender. Come to think, that'd be a good fanfic premise: if that child were to find out their true parentage.
*** If it's spiritual, what's to stop somebody who's not an avatar from learning the other elements?
**** The spiritual leaning appears to be mutually exclusive if you aren't the Avatar.
**** I think that it's partly nature and partly nurture. Someone who has two Earthbending parents is more likely to be an Earthbender, first because personality types (Which helps to determine bending, note that Toph is very strong-willed and stubborn, Aang is very light-hearted and playful) are partly genetic, and second because your environment and the people around you also greatly influence your personality. So, someone who would have had the potential to become a fiery, passionate Firebender who was raised in a very peaceful pacifistic home, more likely than not would have been a nonbender.
**** As Pathik, Iroh and Hue said, the differences between the elements don't exist. Anybody could theoretically learn any element, but the mental blocks are so ingrained that most people don't think that.
*** Note on the Punnett square: some genes can be co-dominant. See: blood types (A and B are dominant to O, but when both A & B type genes are present, we recieve AB). Genes can interact in various ways. In some situations, both sets of genes will express themselves, or will actually appear to 'combine' traits because they connect so thoroughly. So no, even if it is genetics, it doesn't have to be one or the other.
** [[WordOfGod Word of Bryke]] states that if Aang and Katara were to reproduce, each of their children would be either an Airbender, Waterbender, or non-bender.
* How did the old man in ''The Chase'' know about Zuko? I would have thought something like that would have been kept pretty tightly locked up.
** I hope you mean one episode before, ''Zuko Alone'', because the only old man in ''The Chase'' was Iroh. As for how the old man knew, I guess it's like how everyone else knows if something happens to the Prince of England or something like that; news travels.
*** Yeah, I did mean ''Zuko Alone''. My bad, I'd just watched ''The Chase'' and it was still in my mind.
*** It's been a while since I watched the episode, but I seem to remember there being a huge crowd at the Agni Kai where Zuko's face was burned. It didn't seem to be a secret at all.
*** But in ''The Storm'', Iroh sits down with the ship's crew and has to tell them the story of Zuko's Agni Kai. They were under the impression that his face got burned during a training exercise.
*** Perhaps the "training excercise accident" was the official press release? And why would they question that? The crowd that was there during the Agni Kai was probably mostly upper class nobles and military higher ups. The Royal Family might've ordered those who were there to keep the truth to themselves and it's unlikely that they'd be interacting much with the lower class, anyway, let alone say that the Fire Lord's a liar.
* Why does Katara always feel the need to run out into the middle of a fight for no apparent reason? She does it twice - once during their trip to the Earth kingdom where they're tormented by the crazy king (who almost ''suffocates her underground'') and then in the 2nd Season Finale, making herself Azula's new target. Wtf?
** Bleh. She epically PWNs Azula soon after they start fighting. It's only through timely intervention from Zuko that Katara didn't get to finish the job.
* During the whole series finale (Sozin's Comet) Aang has second thougts about killing Firelord Ozai. Yet he does not hesitate to hurt, maim or possibly kill the crew of Ozai's air ship when he causes it to crash into a rock formation. (Not to mention that he most likely drowns any survivors when he extinguishes the fire with a cosmic amount of waterbending)
*** The airship that very slowly crashes into the rock formation and shows no deformation at all from the impact? And the cosmic amount of water that rose for a grand total of a few seconds? There's no reason to assume those hurt or killed anyone.
** Also, when he was taken over by the Ocean Spirit. While the spirit seems to have been in charge, all of that power was moving through Aaang. He allowed himself to be used as the instrument of death for the entire Fire Nation fleet. No tears appear to have been shed.
*** No one was shown being killed; the most the Ocean spirit does is slice apart the superstructure of one of the battleships and shove another out to sea really hard; its entirely possible the crews could have survived that.
*** While it's a good point, Aang doesn't really have control over himself when he's in the avatar state, hence the whole episode where he goes off with Pathik trying to learn how to control it. It's only because he forces himself out of the avatar state in the finale that he doesn't kill Ozai, otherwise he totally would have.
** The archaeologist/scholar he and the Gaang abandoned in the sinking library of the Knowledge Spirit.
*** Do recall that the Gaang asked the professor to come with them, but he outright refused to leave. It's no surprise that the Gaang abandoned him in favor of escaping with their own lives instead of futilely convincing him otherwise and losing precious time.
* A whole bunch of issues are brought up in the fanfic "Embers" by Vathara, including discussions about the different cultural attitudes towards personal versus communal responsibility, the various psycological issues among the Fire nation nobility, and the fact that the way that Aang and the Avatars of the past are shown to have used their powers would have had major reprecussions. I.e. senseless deaths all over the place.
** That fanfic is nothing but pretentious snobbishness and turning Zuko into a Mary Sue surrounded by idiots.
* Aang's inability to take responsibility for his actions. And his attitude about his mission. Yes, he is twelve. But perhaps someone needed to explain to him that stopping at a festival IN THE FIRE NATION is a bad idea.
** They tried. A little.
* It seriously bothers me that Zuko's entire ability to fight Azula at all without getting pwned isn't because of any improvement on his part, not because he's found the emotional center and calm he never had before, not that he's broken free of the "Azula is better than me" mindset that's been his own personal hobgoblin, not because he's met the last two dragons in the world and has a greater insight into the true nature of Firebending than any other citizen of the Fire Nation except his uncle, but simply because Azula's having a VillainousBreakdown. That's the reason he gives. He hasn't improved, she's just gotten worse.
** It struck me as self-evident that Zuko ''had'' improved and learned the truth of firebending. The main fact is that even with all of that were Azula at the top of her game she would be more than a match for him... and he knew it.
*** In other words, Pakku's words at the beginning of season 2 (that hard work and dedication prevail over talent) are completely accurate--as long as talent is undergoing a severe emotional breakdown leaving them judgmentally impaired and unstable. Otherwise hard work just won't cut it.
**** Pretty much, yeah. You can work hard and improve significantly, and yet there's still going to be someone who's just better than you.
**** Let's not forget, some of the first we see of Azula is her training obsessively, and she's described as already being a prodigy, even when she's demonstrating for Azulon.
* At the very start of the series, Zuko is shown learning the basic sets of Firebending. Was he never taught properly before, or was Iroh just starting again from the ground up, trying to teach him The Right Way?
** I think so. In the flashbacks, he's shown to be still very much a basic firebender. Later, Zuko had to be reminded in the Agni Kai with Zhao to stay grounded and use his feet... very ''Earthy'' advice, wouldn't you say? Couple that with the waterbending inspired lightning redirection technique and It entirely possible Iroh was working to make him a "balanced" Firebender and hoping it would spill over into his daily life.
* During the flashback scene in "The Puppetmaster", was Hama's friend Gran Gran? Katara said that "this ship has haunted Gran Gran ever since she was a little girl", but during the flashback, when the ship was frozen, she was more of a young woman.
** Katara didn't even know about Hama's existence, so it's likely that Kanna's stories were either remembered incorrectly or embellished by Gran-Gran to add warning for a young Sokka and Katara. Or it's possible that it wasn't Gran-Gran who told Katara at all, but her mother or father, furthering the chance that it was remembered wrong. Plus, little girl getting tortured by Fire Nation? ''Probably'' not okay with Nick execs.
*** On a similar note, keep in mind that Kanna didn't head south until after Pakku propsed to her, when she was 16. And that she never told at least Katara that she's from the North.
* Am I the only one who thinks the actor Ozai from the Ember Island Players looked far more badass than the real Ozai?
** Yes.
* Why is Momo called a lemur? All the other MixAndMatchCritters get called by both animals names (like the turtleducks and the Sabre Toothed Moose Lion). Why not call him a bat lemur or something?
** Story goes that at first, there weren't supposed to be that many mix-and-match critters, lemurs just had wings in this universe, for whatever reason. The animation department just went on a random creativity buzz and started drawing all these MixAndMatchCritters, so Bryke went "SureWhyNot, ThrowItIn."
* Where do baby air nomads come from? You have the temples separated by gender, and if these are like temples in most traditions, the nuns and monks are celibate. Do they go around abducting children? Occasionally meet for wild sex parties? What?! Where do the baby Air Nomads come from?! -sob-
** I saw mentioned on another page that only young and elder air nomads stay at the temples and the rest travel between them. It's quite possible that air nomad romances happened on these travels.
* Assuming the monks/nuns aren't celibate, wouldn't gender separated air temples encourage homosexuality?
** WordOfGod is that Air Monks/Nuns don't [need to] take celibacy vows. Beyond that, in the Western Air Temple flashbacks, there's only a few guys that are Young adults or Middle-aged. Everyone else is either early childhood to Adolescent, or Old/Ancient. They wouldn't be so concerned about romance. Also, Aang was at the Eastern Air Temple when he met Appa. The monks/nuns visit each other from time to time, and may or may not have been having a wild sex party while the kids were off frolicking with their new bison.
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