Permanently Deleted
Isn’t the story beat “kid fucks around until visiting the old air temple and seeing his dead mentor causes him to freak the fuck out and realize the implications of the war”?
Why do a coming of age story without character development? Why doesn’t Korra start out as a child yelling, “I’m the Avatar! I’m gonna do my best and respect other points of view along the way!”
Isn’t the story beat “kid fucks around until visiting the old air temple and seeing his dead mentor causes him to freak the fuck out and realize the implications of the war”?
Well no actually, “let’s go fuck around with the elephant koi” is actually the episode directly after he finds his home destroyed and his guardian (and everyone else he ever knew) dead.
I think it’s important to the vibes of the show in general. The point of Aang’s journey isn’t “grr the fire nation killed my family now I need revenge.” The catalyst for his fight against the fire nation is Roku telling him that Sozin’s Comet is coming soon and that Ozai is going to lead another major invasion with it. Until that point Aang mostly just wants to help Katara learn to waterbend.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen this show, but the vibe I get is that Aang’s grasp on his power is still very rudimentary, so there’s not much he can do about it in the moment, and so he just wants to take the edge off and have some fun to keep his mind off the fact his people were all murdered after he abandoned the air temple and deprived the world of the avatar for a century.
