Avatar: The Last Airbender/WMG/The Four Nations: Difference between revisions
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== The reason why there aren't any Air Nomad Nonbenders is because they would have made the ''first'' attempt to [[Take Over the
Since the logical [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture]] for Air Nomad nonbenders are Flying Mongols (Tibetian Buddhism spread like wildfire through the Mongolians after they were driven out of China by the [[Useful Notes On China|Ming Dynasty]]) or mounted archers of some sort, it must follow that they must have tried for world domination at least once. Knowing the Mongol's historical attempt at it, they would have been ''very'' successful, considering their obvious advantages (Ba Sing Se? No match for those Sky-Bison mounted raiders with composite bows and gliders). However, it would have been reasonably more interesting to have the Fire Nation, with it's Industrial-level technology; be the first of the four peoples to try to take over the world. There is also the elemental symbolism: Air has traditionally been seen as one of the "good" elements, while Fire is usually the opposite (and no, I do not mean any malice in that statement). In short, the Fire Nation was the much better choice for "attempted world dominator", and This Troper has made his peace with that.
* It's possible that this happened at some point in the past. For a world that's been at peace up until the Fire Nation invaded, they seemed to be pretty well set up to, you know, fight eachother.
** True. Also, it's well known that the steppe nomads were great archers in their day. Could this be replicated in the Avatar World too? Maybe the Yu Yuan Archers were remnants of the Nonbender takeover attempt who managed to settle in the Fire Nation and keep their archery skills, making them useful when the Fire Nation decided to have imperialist ambitions. Just a thought...
** Well, we know for a fact that in Avatar Kyoshi's lifetime, there was a conquering tyrant who may have had designs on world domination who originated in the Earth Kingdom. Considering how long the Avatar has been around (Roku implies that there have been at least a thousand Avatars, which would suggest a period of ''tens'' of thousands of years), it is likely that the history of the world means that the four nations have not always been in the state that they were when the war started by Sozin began. Indeed, the [[Word of God]] has said that the spirituality of the Fire Nation by the end of the war was low enough that the ratio of Benders to Non-Benders was lower than any other nation (in contrast to the 100% Airbender Air Nomads), so it has probably waxed and waned for the other nations. Also, "The Avatar and the Fire Lord" implies that the prosperity and unity of the Fire Nation in Sozin's time was a fairly recent development. We can probably assume that there has been war between (or within; nation is not necessarily the same thing as state) the different nations throughout the Avatar's history.
** A water-empire also seems likely not too far back in the world's history, judging by the distinct populations of physically and mystically similar people at opposite ends of the world. With their more fortified and sophisticated architecture, the Northern Water Tribe probably represents the core of the former empire; the Southern Tribe and the Swamp Tribe are remnant of colonies.
* Maybe the Air Nomads are like the Levites of Ancient Israel. The ancestor of that particular tribe (Levi) went on a killing spree. Therefore, while all the other Israelites received a tract of land, the Levites were scattered all over the nation. However, they were given the task of being a priestly class. Though they could never really have land as a tribe, they were the most spiritual people of the land. So the Air Nomads tried to take over but failed. They were forced to be scattered among the nations, doomed to forever wander the earth (Frankenstein or Prometheus -like). But to ensure no one looked down upon them, they became the spiritual leaders of the whole world.
* It should be noted that there are airbending weapons. Not just tools like Aang's staff, which can be re appropriated as weapons, but there is at least one airbending weapon mentioned. It's in the episode ''Sokka's Master'', Aang mentions that there is a kind of weapon that's usually just a hilt until you bend air through it and make a blade. Seems like an odd thing for a nation of pacifist monks to have. So it's not unreasonable to assume that sometime in the past there was some form of airbending civilization or sect that was willing to use deadly weapons.
** Also, the nations have proven to change over time. The Sun Warriors apparently preceded the Fire Nation as... well, the nation of Fire. And there are a ''lot'' of ruins in the Earth Kingdom.
== Aang is not the last Airbender... ==
...or at least won't be if he ever starts having children.
* ''Ty Lee is a descendant of the Air Nomads.'' Ty Lee's extremely acrobatic [[She Fu]] sometimes seems to be more than just cartoon and/or action physics can explain. She must be (unconsciously) airbending to assist her acrobatics.
** It's worth noting that she has brown hair and grey eyes (like most Air Nomads), rather than the Fire Nation's usual black-and-gold. Also, Ty Lee is the only person seen in the Fire Nation with round-faced features almost exactly like Aang's.
*** A fanfiction of this theory can be found [https://web.archive.org/web/20120409074814/http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4354055/1/Twenty_Truths_About_Ty_Lee here]
*** Rewatch the episode The Headband. There are lots of Fire Nation children with rounder facial features similar to Aang and Ty Lee.
**** Most of those children are Aang's age or younger, and so can be expected to still have child-like features. Fire Nation teenagers and young adults tend to have much sharper features.
**** Alternately, the island in The Headband is the one that Ty Lee's from, and they're all secret airbenders.
* ''Aang will not be the last Airbender because Karma itself will fix the reincarnation cycle.'' People who currently seem to possess no Bending abilities, but share a strong affinity with air (like acrobat Ty Lee, knife-thrower Mai and the colonists of the Northern Air Temple) will spontaneously manifest airbending, and feel strangely drawn to the old Air Temples, setting up societies there, and learning airbending techniques from the only living master on Earth--Aang himself.
** It's heavily implied by the Finale. If he can take off bending abilities, why not ''give''?
** I like this idea, it gives a nice beginning to a new air nation. I'd like to add the kyoshi warriors to the list though (they don't seem to have any earth-benders and fight with fans)
* ''Reports of the Air Nomad genocide have been greatly exaggerated.'' As noted on the [[Just Bugs Me/Avatar The Last Airbender|It Just Bugs Me]] page, the temples house kids and elders, while the rest of the nomads travel between them. Some of them must have survived, banded together, and had children. These descendants were dedicated to finding the Avatar and supporting his cause, and made like-minded allies in the three other nations. This society would have to remain secret, of course, so it would come to be known by the name of it's symbol... "The White Lotus."
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** Jossed by the new series where Aang's son is teaching the new Avatar airbending.
* My theory is, that most or all of Aang's children will be airbenders, and most/all of their children, and most/all of ''their'' children, until they reach the point when they're all so distantly related they can make babies with each-other without worrying about genetic diseases, and then the Air Nomad culture will be born again.
** Jossed by the new series. Aang had three children, only one of whom (Tenzin) is an Airbender. However all of his children (so far) are Airbenders.
* People "learned" how to bend from various sources. My theory is that anyone with bending potential can learn to bend any element -- but only one element; once you've learned one, you're locked. And growing up around benders, seeing their techniques, being immersed in that element, tends to predispose one. But Aang can find untrained benders and teach them airbending.
** By this logic, Appa could also teach airbending, seeing as he's a Sky Bison.
*** Unfortunately though, being the last Sky Bison, once he dies there will be no natural source of airbending for humans to potentially learn from, which makes it even more important for Aang to have descendants and get some people from the other nations to integrate into air nomad culture (and even if only a blood descendant can learn airbending, his children will need people to live and have children with) and try to learn airbending themselves. Of course, this will cause a caste system to develop among the new air nomads, between blood descendants of Aang and everyone else.
*** Jossed. Word of God confirmed Aang found a whole herd of wild sky bison and they're repopulating.
*** Also, Avatars live for 1-2 centuries typically. Hence, assuming they don't die early deaths, It will be something on the order of 4-8 centuries before the next Airbender Avatar is needed anyways
*** Every Avatar is an airbender.
*** The show occasionally notes that Airbending, Firebending, Earthbending, and Waterbending originated from ancient peoples studying elements of nature, such as skybisons, dragons, badgersmoles, and even the moon, respectively. They watched how each animal / the moon manipulated an element, and developed methods to replicate it. Following that trail of thought, all four bending styles could be said to have been manufactured by humans watching nature. So a skybison like Appa teaching a human to Airbend isn't too unbelievable, seeing as it's been done before.
**** Tantalizingly, this would imply that any human with bending potential could, with enough discipline and an observable subject, learn to bend ''anything.''
***** Do they even need an observable subject? Toph invented Metalbending simply by realizing that metal, as Iroh said, "is simply earth and rock refined into a stronger form."
** The Guru mentioned that the differences between the elements are illusionary, and that they're actually not inherently separated (in that scene where Toph learned to metalbend). Maybe benders aren't even "locked" when they learn one discipline, but Aang is the only person who knows he can learn them all and who has enough talent to learn each of them in less than a life time.
** I heard that it's [[Word of God]] that bending is determined by personality, upbringing, and spirituality rather than genetics, so it's not impossible for a person not related to Aang to pick up airbending.
*** Which would be exactly why Ty Lee and Mai cannot Firebend. Mai is too "cold," and doesn't express emotions much, which is central to firebending. Conversely, Ty Lee is too "warm," as the Firebending technique used at the time foucused on anger rather than positive emotions.
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* Bending one element or another isn't genetic. All Aang has to do is find lots of war orphans and teach the most promising ones Airbending. Aside from an inborn talent of bending strength, the only thing necessary to learn bending is a teacher and starting early enough to make the bending philosophy a part of your life.
** Well if that's the case, why can't all benders bend all elements?
*** Bending disciplines aren't just skills, they're ways of thinking. The reason one type is associated with each nation is that over time the dominant element among each group has influenced their culture, giving rise to societies that promote the personalities and worldviews associated with it.
== Aang ''is'' the Last Airbender, and his ultimate destiny is to usher in the end of the Four Nations and their individual bending styles. ==
Aang and his multicultural group of friends are a sign of the world's future. The national boundaries between nations will break down, spurred both by affects of the war and by industrialization, creating a greater intermingling of peoples. Look at Team Avatar's romantic relationships, where Aang (Air Nomad) and Katara (Water Tribe) are mixing just as Sokka (Water Tribe) and Suki (Earth Kingdom) are. The boundaries between the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation have been blurred by the war and colonization efforts. With technology like airships, international travel and trade will be made easier, resulting in greater intermarriage. Since [[Word of God]] has it that Aang is the last airbender, the one thing he can pass on to future generations is the knowledge of a bending style you don't need to be born with -- Energybending. Just as the world was once unified as one people who used energybending, so it will be again. The divisions between the nations and the four bending arts are said to be artificial by the like of Huu and Guru Pathik. Aang, and the final three Avatars after him, will use the knowledge of energybending to reform a newly globalized world into a single nation and people.
== The separation between the four nations is actually a socio-religious one, rather than genetic. ==
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* They're '''nomads'''. Nomads do not sit in one spot, it's kinda the [[wikipedia:Nomad|definition of the word]]. The four great temples represent permanence amongst the Air Nomad people, but as Aang notes, they don't have a military, which means, presuming the term 'nomad' wasn't just used because it sounds cool, they were decentralised and spread out, making the population of the monasteries a minority. When news of the destruction of the temples spreads, any sensible nomadic people are going to swap their robes for local gear and spend the next However Long they can integrating into the society in which they find themselves, or at least not clearly identifying themselves as 'air nomads'. This theory means Air Nomad peoples could be spread out across any of the other communities. If one presumes all Air Nomads were Air Benders, and we accept the narrative that Aang is the '''last''' air bender, then yes, he must be the last of the Air Nomads as well. But if they all lived in one of four spots and didn't move around, they're pretty sucky at being Nomads. Presuming that the monasteries represented the Bending population of the Air Nomads, though, the two story elements dovetail decently and allow for oddities like yes, Tai Lee, with her Air-Nomad-ish features.
== The peaceful, happy final scene in the series is only a brief respite. Things in the Avatar world are still very unstable and decidedly not peaceful. ==
The Earth Kingdom seemed to be a loose federation of smaller kingdoms and city-states, not really a true empire. After Zuko has the Fire Nation pull out its troops, many of the larger city-states under Fire Nation rule for so long find themselves with a power vacuum. Not to mention that the nominal head of the whole shebang, the Earth King, seems to be uninterested in returning to his throne. All of that is ripe fodder for power struggles and widespread civil conflicts. Then there's the whole matter of the Fire Nation itself. Ozai wasn't the only power hungry, sociopathic bastard in the Fire Nation (as seen with the many smirking generals when Ozai gave Zuko his scar) and I doubt many of them would recognize a ruler who has a history of being exiled and betraying his father (essentially, a subject who probably would have been executed had he been a peasant or a lesser noble and not related to the Firelord). They may use the post-war confusion as an excuse to either carve out their own little fiefdoms in the Earth Kingdom or maybe even start a coup. In short, our heroes are still gonna be very busy for some time to come.
* This is a traditional ending for fantasy epics: even after the great evil overlord is defeated, the heroes still have years of mop-up left ahead of them. Its what they do in between the happy ending and dying of old age, rather than being bored for decades. As an example, from the appendix of ''Return of the King'':
{{quote|
* However, things aren't necessarily as bad as all that. While the Earth Kingdom is politically disorganized, that will only act to ''prevent'' major wars for the foreseeable future. Wars of revenge vs. the Fire Nation have to deal with the limitation that you need a navy to reach them, and the Water Tribes aren't interested in revenge. (Or, rather, while individual Water tribesmen might still be PO'ed, the Northern Water Tribe has no naval expeditionary force and the Southern Water Tribe's chief and heir are both firmly behind the Avatar's peace plan.) Ambitious bastards in the Fire Nation have to deal with the fact that the Fire Lord has overwhelming support from the commons, who are from all appearances simply ecstatic that the war is over and Ozai's iron boot is off their neck. And looming over everything is the fact that the Avatar and the Order of the White Lotus have both spectacularly and publicly proven themselves capable of wrecking armies all on their ownsome. So, while there's definitely going to be some mop-up left to do, there's really nobody left who can significantly challenge the Avatar/Firelord/White Lotus/Water Tribe alliance of peace.
** Good points, but it need not necessarily be wars of revenge against the fire nation that would cause unrest. And while the politically disorganized state of the Earth Kingdom might prevent major wars against foreign powers from breaking out, history (hell, even current events) shows that political disorganization is a breeding ground for internal power struggles and civil unrest. The Earth Kingdom being as large as it is, it is perfectly feasible that some ambitious bastards in the under newly-freed city-states would try to take power, legitimately or otherwise. Then there's the Dai Li, who were "banished" by Azula. Which means they might still be a viable power, and might try to install another puppet Earth King. Given that they publicly supported Azula, such attempts would not go over well with the population. As for the Fire Nation, even with Zuko having popular support, even just a small number of ambitious Fire Nation commanders with their own private forces (the Fire Nation military organization always struck me as similar to the Romans just before the rise of Augustus, with armies loyal to the generals and not the nation. Zhao and his troops come to mind) can still make a great nuisance of themselves. Especially if the rougue commanders are smart enough to use asymmetrical warfare than direct confrontation. All that combined is gonna be a huge headache, and as powerful as the Avatar is he can't be everywhere at once.
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== The Airbenders that survived escaped to the mesosphere. ==
Seriously. The mesosphere is really windy and has nothing in it (except a couple ducks). That leaves loads of room for the airbenders to live and practice airbending.
* Food? Water?
** Aforementioned ducks and clouds!
*** ''They'' sent the sky-bison water cloud to the Gaang in the desert, providing much-needed spiritual and hyrological nutrition.
* [[Adventure Time
== By the end of the series, most of the Fire Nation has lost it's Firebending prowess. ==
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== The Order of the White Lotus was not founded by humans and is responsible for the creation of the Avatar cycle. ==
Let's step back to the infancy of human society, perhaps at the time when humanity has begun to take their first steps away from a unified spirit-bending society into the four nations and the four elements. The forces of the world allowed this, and even helped guide it (this is how people learned bending from certain animals; Dragons encouraged the creation of firebending, and so on) but divisions in the world meant there had to be a balancing force. The oldest and wisest Lion Turtle decided to create this force, calling the greatest Dragon, Flying Bison, Badger Mole, and the moon spirits to watch over the developing nations and keep them in balance to make sure these changes did not cause a disaster.
However, the Order's guidance was unable to prevent a war from breaking out as humanity drifted further and further apart, and while the Order quickly put a stop to it the first time, they realized the human race needed someone to carry on after they were gone, human forces to work against chaos and war. While the other members of the Order began to select human pupils from the four societies to make a new Order of humans, the oldest Lion Turtle took an alternative route, discovering an orphan child of indeterminate origins in his wanderings and taking it under his wing, raising the child independently of other humans. As the Lion-Turtle suspected, doing this allowed the child to have limitless bending potential, reviving the art of spirit-bending among humans. Taking his student to the other members of the Order, the Lion Turtle asked that each of them pass on their knowledge to the child. Thus, the first Avatar learned all five forms of bending from the oldest and wisest beings in the world, and became such a potent spirit-bender that s/he became capable of reincarnating in a cycle and channeling the spirit world's power to enter the Avatar State.
Content with the existance of a spiritual balancing force in the Avatar and a human Order of the White Lotus to act as a political balancing force, the original Order withdrew from human affairs and slowly died off and were forgotten...
Until the Lion Turtle encountered the most recent incarnation of his first and last pupil.
== There was a second group of Air people ==
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* Seconded because this sounds pretty fricken reasonable. XD
== The Yu Yan Archers are really Airbenders. ==
The Yu Yan Archers split off from the Air Nomads because they (the Archers) wanted to fight and/or hunt. Notice how they didn't have any trouble keeping up with Aang while chasing him (they could "run like the wind"), and Airbending could account for their accuracy. There are examples of other bending subsets (Fire->Lightning, Water->Swamp/Blood, Earth->Sand/Metal), so it's not a stretch.
== Agni Kais aren't done shirtless for freedom of movement or because fabric is more flammable than human skin. ==
The custom was initially promoted by the Fire Nation government as a way to encourage firebenders to work out more. It's not enough to be a better firebender than your opponent - you also need nice abs.
* Nice Theory, but if this is so, why didn't Azula go topless for her Agni Kai against Zuko? It seemed rather important enough an event to follow all the rules and customs.
** PS While the WMG is interesting, lets just be thankful that Lo and Li are NOT firebenders when ordered to Agni Kai or it was mercifully left unshown if they were.
== Air Nomad children who couldn't bend were adopted into the other nations. ==
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== Aang is not the last airbender during the time that A:TLA takes place. ==
This tropers original guess was that people of differing nationalities in the Avatar world couldn't have children, because their genes were incompatible, which is why we see no hybrids (half one nation, half another), but this is [[Jossed]] by ''[[[[
Instead, there are hybrid children all over the place, but any of them that are born benders can only master one element: the element of their father, or the element of their mother. Airbenders mingled with the other societies, so there are children of airbenders in all of the nations. The descendants of these children will not necessarily know of their Air Nomad blood, but they all have the potential to airbend, even if some of them haven't realised. Some of them have however, and hide this ability because they fear that what the Fire Nation inflicted upon the Air Nomads will happen to them if they are caught.
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