Avatar: The Last Airbender

It seems very odd and reductive to call Republic City a mistake or a mess of Aang's.

Edited by lycropath on May 22nd 2023 at 8:09:49 AM

Wonder what the mess Korra will create for her successor will be...

Calling Republic City Aang's mess doesn't seem right. Plus, all of Team Avatar seems to have had a hand in making the city to some extent.

Some of Aang's unfinished business is quite attenuated. He couldn't have known Yakone would've had two prodigy kids, or that Queen Hou-Ting wouldn't get any of her dad's world experience and openness, or how the Red Lotus would spread through White Lotus.

It is a mess when Korra first shows up. It's not a total shithole, but there's still a lot of issues with it such as the power imbalance between benders and non-benders. This was even a problem Aang himself realized was a problem in the comics, but he couldn't come up with a decent solution within his lifetime.

The original governing body of the city being composed entirely of Benders for example? Not the best idea.

Probably the complications from keeping the connection with the Spirit World open.

Edited by M84 on May 22nd 2023 at 11:31:17 PM

The original governing body is entirely benders by Korra's time, in Aang's time two of the five councilors are explicitly non-benders since Sokka served as did an Air Acolyte.

The point stands that Republic City had a lot of growing pains that Aang couldn't fully solve within his lifetime. It's also his mess because he was one of its founders. That it was the best solution he could come up with at the time doesn't make it not his mess.

It's not as bad as the mess Roku left behind for Aang, but it was still a problem Korra was stuck trying to handle.

It's a running theme for Avatars. The solutions they come up with to solve the problems of their time end up having complications that cause new problems for their successors. See also: Yangchen and Kuruk and Kyoshi.

Edited by M84 on May 22nd 2023 at 11:41:15 PM

Dealing with the problems the previous generations didn't solve is inevitable for everyone given the impossibility of an eternal utopia.

Though it's worse for the Avatar since they're stuck reincarnating to keep dealing with said messes. Everyone else just dies and leaves the mess for future generations.

The Avatar's kind of like a bodhisattva. They're someone who by all accounts is qualified for enlightenment, but they will never achieve it because they want to keep helping people.

Edited by M84 on May 23rd 2023 at 12:29:17 AM

Other people presumably also reincarnate but do not have that direct access like the Avatar does.

It's not clear what happens to everyone who isn't the Avatar when they die. We know that Iroh at least ended up in the Spirit World after leaving his body behind. But that might not have been true death.

Raava bonded herself to all of Wan's future lives, but she did not give him the power of reincarnation which does suppose that the natural cycle is to be reborn.

It is not confirmed either way.

We do know it is possible for mortals to become spirits, like Iroh did. Other examples include the Painted Lady, Yue, and the Kemurikage. It is also possible for the reverse to happen, spirits becoming mortals. Examples include Lady Tienhai, Tui, and La.

Then there is the dangerous middle ground where a spirit simply devours a mortal or vice versa. Father Glowworm tried to eat Yun only to be eaten by Yun instead.

Yeah, the language Raava uses is extremely ambiguous. When she says she'll be with Wan through all of his lifetimes, it's unclear if this is because everybody reincarnates or if it's because, through her power, Wan will reincarnate. The only thing that's really 100% set-in-stone is that Raava knows the Avatar will reincarnate. Which they do.

The big point of weirdness in all of this is the destruction of the Avatar. It's widely known that if you kill the Avatar in the Avatar State, the reincarnation cycle will break. The Avatar will never again be born into a new body. Presumably, this is because killing the Avatar in the Avatar Cycle would destroy Raava, the source of the Avatar being able to bend multiple elements.

So under the "Everybody Reincarnates" idea, it's possible that destroying Raava would cause the Avatar to continue to reincarnate but, without Raava's power, they'd be just like everyone else. No past life mentorships. No multiple Elements. No connection to the spirit world.

But what really gets me is. Like. How do people know this?

Why does everyone know how to break the Avatar Cycle? Why is this treated like an ironclad fact that's been tested and proven? It's kind of weird that we can speak with certainty about how you can destroy the Avatar utterly when there's only ever been one Avatar and they've never been destroyed utterly.

EDIT: Also, why doesn't Raava know? The whole mercury poisoning gambit in Legend of Korra was predicated on tricking Raava into exposing herself and getting killed, because she doesn't understand the consequences of dying with Korra. The one person you'd think would be aware of all the metaphysics involved and could make more careful choices is Raava.

...what if that's backwards. What if "Killing the Avatar in the Avatar State will destroy the Avatar utterly" is just some shit people made up, and Raava's the only one who knows that.

Edited by TobiasDrake on May 23rd 2023 at 8:41:00 AM

Well I wouldn’t want that. There needs to be a risk in using the Avatar State so that a fully realized Avatar can’t just steamroll everything any time.

You'd think autopilot Avatars would start out by sinking into the ground for full diamond or stone armour in order to avoid accidents like that, but the Avatar State's kinda cocky.

I don’t think Raava can control when the AS activates in cases like the mercury poisoning incident. I’m pretty sure that’s purely instinctual.

One could argue that being killed in the Avatar would also destroy the Avatar’s soul in its entirety, though if that was the case, you might expect that Aang would have been a soulless husk if Azula really did kill him, Spirit Water or no.

Perhaps it’d like what happened with Korra, and all access to past lives would be permanently cut off, in addition to there being no more Avatar.

In any case, all this talk about past mistakes makes me wonder what issues could emerge as a result of Korra’s actions that the next Avatar would have to deal with. Going purely by what we see in Lo K, I’d guess either something particularly nasty coming through the spirit portals, or further instability in the former Earth Kingdom.

Alternatively, the increased prominence of corporations like Future Industries gives rise to a Cyperpunk setting, but I’d personally prefer to save something like that for when we reach the Fire portion of the cycle, not Earth. Corporate corruption becoming a major issue could still be good, though.

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on May 23rd 2023 at 5:38:53 AM

I mentioned this before a while back, but I've always thought it'd be neat if the next Avatar series had a 1950s inspired setting with all the nations locked in a Spirit Cold War as they build various Spirit-powered superweapons (inspired by Kuvira's Spirit cannon) and the Avatar has to find a way to deescalate the situation.

Edited by Trooper924 on May 23rd 2023 at 4:02:49 AM

Yeah, wasn't Kuvira's cannon powered by spirit wood which is, like, everywhere now?

But yeah, I'd say Korra's successor will have to deal with the continuing consequences of a melded human and spirtt world. 'Cause those are gonna be some big consequences.

Edited by Robbery on May 23rd 2023 at 5:28:44 AM

Not to mention Korra being the only past Avatar the new one will be able to spiritually communicate with.

Korra is still young when her series ends, and Avatars Live Longer. For the problems at the end of LOK to be on the next Avatar’s plate, they’d have to kill Korra off right quick, which is just depressing. Otherwise, she could still be Avatar right through to her world’s 21st-century equivalent, and maybe beyond.

Unless culture and technology take a bit longer to develop than it did in the real world. It's something they could probably handwave away somehow.

Do Avatars live longer? Aang died before most of his friends.

There actually is an established and known downside to using the Avatar State all the time that people in-universe know by Korra's time.

Using the Avatar State burns up the Avatar's life. It's okay using it short bursts, but using it for, say, 100 years while stuck in an iceberg, dooms you to an early grave. And yes, this is known in-universe — Korra's the one who explains it.

The Avatar State is evidently a taste of Raava's true power. And remember that her counterpart Vaatu at full power is able to pull off shit like Wave-Motion Gun death beams. The squishy human body just isn't able to handle that kind of mojo for long.

It's established that the time he spent in the iceberg in the Avatar State drained a lot of his life.

That said, it should be noted that the only confirmed Long-Lived Avatar was Kyoshi. And her novels hinted that the true reason she lived for so long wasn't because she was the Avatar. Instead, she had learned a means of "freezing" her biological and mental state via becoming a Master of Your Domain.

Edited by M84 on May 23rd 2023 at 10:30:39 PM

^^Well, Aang also spent 100 years in an iceberg in avatar state so I think that's also a factor.