Avatar: The Last Airbender/Headscratchers/Geography


 * Something I've always wondered is, if the Gaang needed to sneak into the Fire Nation undetected, why didn't they go east from the Earth Kingdom? It's pretty much a fact that the map in the show shows the world in it's entirety- therefore, the Gaang could sail or fly east over the ocean until they reach the Fire Nation. And based on the Fire Nation's tactics, it seems that they sail east toward the Earth Kingdom, but not west, creating a perfect blind spot for the Gaang to slip through. The only reason this wouldn't be viable is if there was an enormous stretch of ocean between the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation that would take too much time and resources to cross, or conversely, there was some sort of landmass just off the edge of the map, blocking direct access.
 * Easy, either:
 * A: the series dropped the ball on the opening titles, maybe the map was a non-effort as well
 * or
 * B: Avatar world is flat
 * The Avatar world is pretty obviously not flat. Horizons and the atmosphere work the same, and when Aang is up in space absorbing Cosmic Energy, the world curves below him.
 * You forgot "C: the world is round, and encompasses more than what we see on the map." It's like looking at a picture of Eurasia and thinking "that's all there is to Earth, so why didn't the Mongols build a boat and conquer England?" You're also assuming that there's not a huge ocean in between the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation. It's why no one wanted to fund Columbus: everyone knew the Earth was round, and they also knew it was really damn huge. Columbus thought he could take a ship and sail across to Asia. Everyone else thought that he and his crew would die long before they hit the Indies- and they were right. It's just that Columbus ran into the Americas, and didn't have to worry about starving to death. With that in mind, would you really want to cross an unknown expanse of ocean with only what you can carry on Appa?
 * The "vast, empty ocean" idea is probably the correct one. After all, the Fire Nation has iron-hulled steamships, meaning that they should be able to do some very effective mapping of the seas west of the Fire Nation archipelago. The fact that the western ocean is never mentioned either as an area of interest or of travel suggests that there's probably nothing there but open ocean with maybe some scattered islands (like much of the Pacific Ocean, for example). Actually sending ships that way would be wasteful and difficult (in real life, coal ships usually required stops for re-fueling, so the Fire Nation would be wasting coal sending the ships the long way).
 * I don't see why the "enormous expanse of water" explanation doesn't work. We're talking about during the Winter Solstice, right? So they had a time limit for sneaking into the Fire Nation. If you were in England, for example, and needed to get to the U.S. in the next two days, given the speed Appa can fly, would you fly your not-really-magic flying bison east, across the entire Eurasian continent AND all of the Pacific, or would you fly straight across the Atlantic? Exactly. They just didn't have the time.
 * I was actually referring to the time period where the episode "The Awakening" takes place. And if you'd actually read my first post in its entirety, you would have seen that I said the only reasons the Gaang couldn't just fly east to the Fire Nation would be because there was an enormous expanse of ocean or there was some sort of landmass blocking the way.
 * The Fire Nation has an Eastern Fleet. Going East from the Earth Kingdoms means they'd still run into a blockade.
 * Ummm, what the Fire Kingdom considers to be East would be West for the Earth nation. Although the fact that they need to specify witch direction the feet is implies there may be a Western Fleet. And over all, as has been said, we don't know what if anything is between the Fire and Earth lands the other way, or if it is just Ocean, just how big it is. It could be a journey that would take months going that way.
 * I thought they did go East in "The Awakening." They would have some time to take this journey while Aang was mostly unconscious and it explains how he was able to fly to the Fire Nation on his own--otherwise it might seem like he flew over half the world in a couple hours. Also, their ship would have to otherwise go South (or North--not sure if there's a waterway up there) to get around the Earth Kingdom because Ba Sing Sei is on the East side of the continent.
 * They almost certainly did go South and then west along the southern coast of the Earth Kingdom continent. The Southern Water Tribe fleet was located near a river mouth on Chameleon Bay, and when they first manage to arrive in the Fire Nation territory in the episode "The Awakening", it's on Crescent Island on the South-East corner of the Fire Nation archipelago.
 * Sokka tells Aang where they travelled why he was out. From Chameleon Bay they sailed west, "inland", and had crossed the Serpents Pass a few days ago. Note that the main part of the Earth Kingdom is not one continuous landmass, but three big islands. The western of the two inland seas divided by the Serpants Pass is connected with the western sea, where you find the Fire Nation (as well as with the northern sea). Map at 7:22 of episode 3.01. The outlet of that challen is pretty close to Crescent Island.
 * Not sure this is the right place, but how did the FN soldiers get to the air temples in the first place? Aang says the only way is with a flying bison, and from how the eastern air temple looks in episode 3, it's probably right (it stands on the peak of a really steep mountain). Adding to that that the war balloons were invented 100 years after, and that even with the comet only a handful of firebenders can actually fly, and it seems there isn't a clear answer to that.
 * I've thought about this too. Maybe they still had dragons at the time, maybe they got their hands on some Flying Bison (Neither seems too improbable). I've also read somewhere (for the life of me, i cannot provide a link or an idea to where i heard it) that some Airbenders betrayed their own people and assisted the Fire Nation, which doesn't seem too far fetched to me. Also, The tanks they use had some kind of cables that can be shot upward and used like a grappling hook, so that would probably work, even if the exact tanks we saw in the series didn't exist at that point, an early version or a simple grappling hook device could've been used. Beyond that, the Fire Nation has been shown, if nothing else, to be extremely capable, clever, and intelligent. It doesn't break my suspension of disbelief to assume they figured something out.