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You say that. And perhaps. but I highly doubt I would enjoy a series like that. I dont like invincible heroes. I don't care how cool they are.
But then, not every story has to cater to me, I suppose.
Though I'm not talking about the Avatar being an underdog. I mean writing a compelling conflict for them at all. Even in shows where a character isn't the underdog, they usually fight something that can give them a challenge at some point.
An adult Avatar can be tricked and cheap shotted. You can't really have a climactic fight with them though.
Edited by GNinja on Dec 26th 2022 at 3:48:50 PM
Kaze ni Nare!It could be written, it would just have to be written carefully. Like, nobody is going to pretend Ozai hadn't lost the second Aang entered the avatar state against him, but it was still a cool set piece to watch, and it gave catharsis to the fans to see Ozai get his shit kicked in by a literal god.
And even before then, Aang rarely lost fights, and he also wasn't in mortal peril terribly often; throughout the entirety of season 1, neither main antagonist actually wanted him dead, after all. It's an inevitable side-effect of the genre itself; we know the main character isn't in actual danger, because this isn't a special episode, it's fighting the villain of the week and they're not going to kill the main character in a random filler episode.
Sometimes, but not always. One-Punch Man has been going for years without its title character ever breaking a sweat. A character whose superpower is literally being infinity strong and being able to obliterate any foe in a single hit has managed to cultivate and maintain a fan-following.
They even managed to give him longer fights without breaking his rule, by pitting him against things like a regenerator that can pull himself back together after every obliterating hit or a copycat fighter literally channeling Saitama's own limitless power. While still making clear that even those fights are effortless stomps that never truly challenge Saitama. And still being extremely entertaining to watch.
So. No. I don't think "A fully-realized Avatar would instantly erase anyone who tried to fight them, and that would make for a boring series," is something to be too worried about. If Saitama can be interesting, then a fully-realized Avatar shouldn't have a problem.
Especially since it's always seemed pretty evident that experienced masters of the individual bending arts are more than capable of fighting on the Avatar's level anyway.
The real bugbear is the Avatar State, which is typically treated as an automatic "I Win" button for Avatars of any age. Firelord Ozai pushed a young Aang so hard that he was only able to win by entering the Avatar State, and the bloodbender Yakon would later do the same to an older Aang. If you want an OP tension-nuke, it's that.
And yet, we've managed to go two whole series without it nuking the tension.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 26th 2022 at 7:56:36 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.And tobias mentioned Toph. The parts that I remember most about Toph are her moments of vulnerability. I always remember her being unable to stop Appa from being captured because of the fact that she was standing on sand, and so couldn't use her powers as effectively.
I dunno, I just think characters need contrast. Toph wouldn't be as lovable to me if all she ever did was effortlessly beat people.
As I said, I'll just need to resign myself to the fact that if Avatar ever did do a One Punch Man, then there'd be nothing for me personally to enjoy. Because I can't stand One Punch Man.
Although I would point out that the primary conflict of One Punch isn't really the fights, right? Which was my original point. If you had an unstoppable Avatar, you'd have to give them conflicts that they can't win just by punching.
Edited by GNinja on Dec 26th 2022 at 4:08:13 PM
Kaze ni Nare!They could use possession like that. Spirits merging with humans is a Dangerous Forbidden Technique outside of Harmonic Convergence; even Raava couldn't do it for long. So a villain could go "I know this is going to kill me, but it will make me strong enough to kill you too" and merge with a spirit for the final battle.
Or just emphasize politics, as was said earlier. The Kyoshi duology is largely about how she's terrible at politics and can't solve these problems by punching them. Of course, the second book ends with Kyoshi deciding to go full-in on the Judge, Jury, and Executioner Terror Hero thing rather than stumbling around in politics and just screwing everything up worse.
What I'm wondering is what the next Avatar's animal companion is going to be (and we do know for a fact that every Avatar has one). I felt like they tried a bit too hard with Naga and Pabu to recapture the dynamic of Appa and Momo, and they should do something different with the next one.
Before I heard the announcement about the new show, I was playing around with the idea of writing my own fanfic about the Avatar after Korra, and his companion was going to be a bobcat-rattlesnake hybrid.
i like the idea of an avatar that was just completely missed or overlooked
like a street rat kid that grew up in the underbelly of the city, completely forsaken by society for happening to be born extremely poor
so they never came into their own or had strong moral guidance in growing up before discovering their avatar powers
"There's not a girl alive who wouldn't be happy being called cute." ~Tamamo-no-MaeNon-bending Big Bad is definitely possible. They claimed they were doing that with Amon but, well, we saw how that worked out. They might be willing to do a real try now.
Non-bending Avatar is literally impossible. Non-bending protagonist, maybe. Make a series about the Sokka of the new generation.
Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.![]()
A non-bending Avatar would be the equivalent of a non-super powered Superman. Yes, it would be interesting to see Superman operate without his powers, but it defeats the whole purpose of Superman if he wasn't born with said powers to understand what it's like to have no powers. There can be no non-bending Avatar, but there can be an episode where an Avatar temporarily loses their four bending powers.
x5 I agree on both counts. Maybe even do both at once, have them be a Sandbender who grew up in a big city.
Other personal desires for the cast:
- While I don’t want to imply that Aang’s bloodline is super special or whatever, I would still like to see one of his great-great-great grandchildren be a part of the main cast. Tenzin’s kids can still be around as important elders in the Air Nation, it’d be fun to see Ikki as a kooky old lady.
- Some sort of talking animal spirit as one of the traveling companions, perhaps able to give insight on the spirit world in a way we have not before. After several decades of the Spirit portal being open, I think it would make sense if they were more…knowable, if you get what I mean.
- Such a character should ideally be voiced by Danny De Vito.
Also, what exactly was the latest status of the remnants of the Earth Kingdom? Because I kind of like the sound of “Earth Federation”.
As for a non-bender Avatar, conventional wisdom would indeed deem that impossible…but what about an Avatar that couldn’t bend at all outside of the Avatar state? You’d need to justify it somehow, but that alone could be very interesting.
Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Dec 26th 2022 at 1:36:46 PM
Oh God! Natural light!I'm interested to see how they'll handle a new Avatar that now has only one precursor they can seek wisdom from. A part of me wouldn't necessarily be opposed to a plotline about finding out a way to bring back the others (since it's kinda implied that Wan through Aang didn't actually disappear per se but were more just locked out of contact) but I feel like having both Korra and the newbie figuring things out together as they go is the better story option.
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I’d also like to point out that it’s not like we haven’t seen an adult Avatar get beaten or killed before.
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