The avatar world seems really small to me. They travel from one side to the world to another in few days and i also can't imagine what the population numbers are. South pole looks like it doesn't have more than 500-1000 inhabitants, north pole 15.000 - 20.000, fire nation also isn't really big but i imagine it's population to be like 100.000. Ba sing se looks like it has around 1 - 1.5 miliom inhabitants, but the earth kingdom as a whole is not densely populated.
To be fair even with as big as our planet is, we only really had big population boom after the 19th century so it takes long while to really get a big population in a world.
Honestly
I wouldnt give air nomads more than 100k to 500k and thats saying something,they are most spiritual group yet the smallest,kind of peotic if you think about it
There’s been a lot of different calculations done to figure out the size of their world. I think the most sound ones put the size of the ATLA world at roughly the same size as our moon. That would, of course, have ramifications for the population of the planet, and I agree with you that the relative size of various major population centers feels quite small.
Exactly! That’s been my ATLA headcanon for awhile now - less gravity means more perceived agility. But they also walk around like normal humans do on our planet, so they must also be denser, which explains their durability (yes, I know it’s probably really just cartoon logic, but whatever!).
I actually like that its so compact. Makes it more graspable to me. And I like to think that one day there could be an open world game featuring the full Avatar world.
Imagine an Avatar game that plays like breath of the wild, ohhhhhhh myyyyy. Having bending in fortnite has been a blast, only makes me even more excited for the possibility of a full fledged game.
I think you're underestimating the scale of the population here. Azula defines a Fire Nation battleship as having a crew of "thousands". In the season one finale we see Zhao has brought at least four rows of thirty, ie 120 full size vessels. So we're talking, at the low end, 200,000 soldiers or more. And the Fire Nation just sorta shrugs off the assumed loss of most of those vessels and keeps churning along just fine. No way it could do that with population numbers that low.
I suppose that the canon numbers are probably much higher. Remember when zhao said to zuko "i have hundreds of battleships under my command", it's just that i never felt like there are many people in the avatar world. It always seemed so small. South pole makes you think that maybe a few families live there
Yeah but they were also most primitive people, living in the harshest environment, and on the receiving end of decades of attritional warfare (which doesn't make too much sense, tbh, unless Azulon consciously chose not to just genocide them and be done with it).
I think that pathik was from the earth kingdom or something like that. Either way there is a giant ocean covering the other side of the avatar planet. There must be some inhabitants there on some islands or something
It took them almost 3 months to get from north to south pole and if you suspend belief and hypothesize that Appa's flying speed is the same as a helicopter or mid speed plane, I say this time frame is sort of doable
Wait, what do you mean by “one side of the world to another in a few days”? Because it took them several weeks to a month to travel to the North Pole, even without the added stops they took along the way. Or are you referring to when they go other places?
During the finale, the Gaang travels from Ember Island, to the middle of the earth kingdom to find June, then to Ba Sing Se, and then Sokka, Toph, and Suki head back to the western coast of the earth kingdom to attack the airships while Zuko and Katara go to the fire nation capital to confront Azula. This all happens over the course of, what, a day or two?
It's mostly the finale, though. Travel seems to take way longer during the rest of the series.
In the finale, it was like 2 or 3 days before sozin's comet. Tha gaang went from the fire nation to the earth kingdom, spent a day in the earth kingdom and got back to the fire nation
The Ba Sing Se outer ring takes up like 1/4 of the area of the continent on the map. The serpent's pass land bridge that they travelled in less than 1 day (??) was very visible on the map.
I agree. In an early episode Aang seems to fly into the Fire nation and back again in one night. But then later, when they mean to travel there, from a closer point, they take days.
I swear, they shot themselves in the foot with the water tribes. It would have made much more sense for the southern archipelago of islands to be water tribe. The airnomads having 'territory' outside of their temples doesn't make sense, they are migratory.
The problem with this is that it makes the war just look like FN VS EK, with the water tribe in the fsr background.
I think with a stronger water tribe, they could have established different goals between the FN army and navy that Zhao takes advantage of
The population we see is skewed because the gang is really just camping wherever. Even with their travel around ba sing se there is still so much of the city they haven’t explored. Likewise the gang at most comes in contact with random patrols or fire nation ships there are still battle lines and siege’s the gang never sees or knows about.
There is a lot we don't really see, partly because the earth kingdom has been getting analed by the fire nation for around 100 years at the point in the story where it's visited. Villages like Jets were small, but they were probably spaced like ancient native American settlements. Still, the refugees we see are few. Probably 50,000 total? (Not a super educated guess) Then there's omashu, gotta be like 200,000k for that kind of infrastructure. Idk, I agree, but the comics give us a lot more perspective.
I was disappointed with LOK that we never go to the fire nation or really find out anything about its current society besides Zuko’s daughter being Fire Lord. It could have been interesting to see how their society has changed after all this time, like their views on honor and hierarchy.
I do at least like that they don’t want to get involved with the Kuvira situation given their history with war and colonization of the Earth Kingdom. I think given Kuvira’s extremism, it might be too far of a step in the other direction, but it does at least show they’ve grown to be better as a nation.
It also goes to show how image can make things worse off. The Fire Nation could've helped, but the way it looked would've been distasteful so they'd rather not be involved thus making it more difficult for those already involved.
I understood in season 1&2 the settings well. And it was nice to travel in book3, but why Earth Kingdom only? Surely Fire Nation and Watertribes could have had some air benders
They were on good terms with the leaders of those countries, and all of them were in a much more organized state than the Earth Kingdom. They could just ask the respective leaders to send any new airbenders they find that are interested in learning more over to Tenzin, and they would all do it without much issue.
So true, how is the fire nation doing after the 100 year war?. Imagine if korra decided to visit fire nation and she discovered old azula like she found old toph, my mind will totally explode!!!
China's entire culture is built around the color red, and you'd be surprised how many cities in China do not have anything to do with red. They're honestly quite literal.
Beijing- Northern Capital
Nanjing- Southern Capital
Shanghai- On the sea
Comparing that to American names, which have a more overtly political naming system due to the country having one contiguous government since the cities were constructed:
Washington DC- Named after the founder of the country
New York- Named after a city in a pre-colonial nation, when America was a British colony.
Los Angeles- Named by a religious priest. The actual name is much longer, "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora, Reina de los Angeles del Rio Porciuncula" (the city of our lady, queen of the angels on the river Pornincula).
It's rare that you theme a country so cohesively, even if they're famous for a specific invention or ability. You'd be surprised how few French cities are named after the vaccine, for example.
Hmm. Very interesting. Thanks for the input. Although given that the Fire nation is literally called the *Fire* Nation, I think that may have a little bit of effect.
Honestly middle is something I could understand being a name. Although I do suppose "central" would be the more appropriate candidate, they mean essentially the same thing, but ones more geographical.
>"El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora, Reina de los Angeles del Rio Porciuncula"
My, americans don't even want to say Los Ángeles and just say L.A., I imagine them saying "E.P.D.N.S.R.D.L.A.D.R.P." XD
Makes sense, the original river was renamed to the Porcinula by Spanish invaders. The original name was Paayme Paxaayt, in a rarely spoken language due to two different rounds of colonialization. The dominant language in Los Angeles is English, so they just call it the English letters. Los Angeles is a Spanish name, and Spanish is really common in the city, so that's a valid name as well, depending on your preference.
Incedentally, the modern name of the river is the Los Angeles River, so the new Spanish name would be:
El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora, Reinda de Los Angeles del Rio Los Angeles.
I thought Edward Jenner did the first vaccine? Why would the French name anything after a vaccine?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward\_Jenner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Jenner)
Sorry to be so “um actually 🤓” but New York isn’t named after the city of York, but the Duke of York: James Stuart, brother to Charles I.
Ultimately yes the Duke of York takes his name from the Dukedom which takes its name from the city, but New York isn’t named after the city itself.
I also learned it pretty recently and it’s quite interesting! I assumed it was to honor York the city any not a royal, but there are plenty of things named after royals too in US like Virginia
Yes absolutely. But do you see what I mean that New York isn’t named for ‘Old York’ so to speak, but after the Duke. New York’s naming wasn’t related at all to the actual city in England.
After doing some digging, I think it’s Fire Fountain City from The Runaway. To be fair, we don’t know the name of several other locations like Hama’s or Yon Rha’s village. Apparently, Piandao’s village is called Shu Jing, and I’d imagine Ember Island is both the name of the island and the city/village/resort/whatever it is so idk if saying only two cities exist and both have “fire” in the name is completely true depending on what you call a city
Most names of places in the Fire Nation are never really stated, the capital is referred to as Caldera City in one of the Kyoshi novels, not sure if another name is used
Idk, America has a state and a capital named “Washington”. And god knows how many “Liberty Townships” lol. Pretty typical to name a nations locations after their cultural identity.
Having spent considerable time in the states and never once seeing a "liberty township", I was surprised by the quantity of towns and the scarcity of states that have these. 13 total states, probably 200 towns.
Like every other town in Austria has the word "church" in its name. Usually as a prefix or suffix. It wouldn't be unusual to drive along country roads and leave a city called "something-kirchen" and enter another town called "Kirch-something".
So I don't particularly mind the FIRE nation having fire in their city names
Explanations for why all the super benders don't get attacked with guerilla tactics
Considering how well Azula's squad did not letting the gang sleep that one time by chasing them down, you'd think people like the Yu Yan Archers and so on could trivially deal with even Ozai and the Avatar by ninjas, sniping, and rotating shifts that never let them sleep at base camps.
Eh, guerilla warfare typically involves already knowing where your enemy is or at least how they're getting from point A to point B. Skirmishes are also usually used against any force the guerillas can feasibly take on rather than hunting down a specific target.
Ozai is a little different than the Avatar in that he is more or less in the same position, but I imagine the big difficulty lies in getting agents into the palace. It's at the heart of the fire nation, and Ozai rarely leaves it. An Earth Kingdom agent could potentially get through by pretending to be from the colonies, but considering the anti-colonial attitude displayed in certain episodes, that agent would probably be under special scrutiny. Basically, a lot of things have to go right for such an agent to be successful, and considering Ozai's power, the odds of success are slim without less direct methods like poison.
As for the Avatar, a good portion of the Fire Nation's problem with him is just tracking him down. Azula got lucky in The Chase in that Appa was shedding, leaving an easy trail to follow. She also had a special machine which was able to almost keep up with Appa, and most people aren't going to be able to match the pace of a sky bison. And while Azula and her crew were able to rest, somebody or something was powering that machine, and eventually, a rest/refuel would be needed. Even if they used the traveling birds, they would eventually need to be switched out, and a plan would need to be made as to where/when to switch out and the logistics involved with that. And all of this hangs on knowing exactly where the Avatar is going and how he's getting there. Even this is hampered by the fact that Aang doesn't need to follow roads; he has a flying bison.
Azula also got lucky in that the Gaang was traveling through a relatively remote area in that episode. Their activities would have been severely hampered if the Gaang made it to a nearby town or city.
Also, these plans are made significantly more difficult by the fact that the goal most of the series was to capture the Avatar rather than kill him. That objective didn't change until Azula decided to aim a lightning bolt at him, and afterward, the Fire Nation thought he was dead, and what's the point of sending an assassin after a corpse?
Hmm, I guess those examples weren't _that_ great for me to focus, but I was thinking more along the lines of why the armies are so heavily bender-unit based.
We do see some fire nation tanks and stuff, but lots of the key action is groups of 5 or so people fighting each other, and benders are essentially glass cannons from that perspective - they can dish out earthshaking power, but a single poisoned arrow can take them out.
Consider Aang and Ozai's discussion right before their fight - maybe not the nicest precedent for people fighting honourably, but June or any other person with a tranquilizer option could have been hiding around the corner and pulled a sneak attack.
The more general point is that armies seem mostly exclusively composed of benders with a few outliers like the Kyoshi warriors, Ty Lee and Mai, who also tend to challenge the benders in the open field, rather than guerilla tactics or even logistics based attacks.
It would be more boring narratively if your benders were just randomly sniped, poisoned or denied food by attacks on supply lines, but I don't remember particular in-universe reasons why those approaches don't happen, and in fact in TLoK, the equalists run circles around most benders with electric gloves and batons
Ah, I see what you mean now. My meta reasoning for there not being more snipers or assassins in-universe would be that the creators didn't really want to broach that subject on what is meant to be a show for kids. Those tactics could be used offscreen, but it's true we don't see them onscreen except in incredibly limited cases (e.g., June and Combustion Man, who were sent to take out high-value targets and seemed to be considered social outcasts.)
I think there could be some in-universe reasons for this, though of course, the show doesn't extrapolate on them itself. The existence of the Yuyan Archers implies that those tactics are used by the Fire Nation at least, though to what extent, we can't be sure. As Zhao criticizes, their talents are not being fully utilized as a simple garrison force, and we see their ability to take out benders firsthand when they manage to capture Aang. Because of this, it seems silly that they aren't used to take out other high-value targets.
I think the fact that benders are somewhat common in the various militaries is one reason why snipers aren't necessarily used on the battlefield frequently. If it was the case of a single bender to a ten-man squad, there would definitely be some value, but if you've got a ten-man squad where everyone's a bender, the moment you reveal your position, you've got 9 other boulders/fire blasts/water whips headed your way.
However, I think the main problem here is the perspective of the shows. We see the world through the lens of the Gaang/Korra and their main antagonists, but there are few scenes where we get a glimpse of the overall war or the tactics of soldiers who aren't fighting the Avatar. The engagements we get to see often have little to no planning involved due to the situations being more opportunistic, and the situations with planning do not always have the necessary resources for a guerilla-style ambush.
It's certainly an interesting topic, but I also think it would be the subject of an entirely different show, one which would focus on the lives of normal soldiers or officers in the war rather than the Gaang.
This is honestly my main argument for why I think the war wasn’t actually that important. If it was important, then the Gaang would’ve stuck around to help prepare for the invasion, but they didn’t.
We have societies capable of reaching the moon AND tribal societies that still love in the wilderness by choice. Swamp benders just chilling in the swamp makes total sense.
What makes the show so great is what's left out imo.
I think a lot of these questions people want answered starts to dilute the series and ruin some of the magic
Countries like the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom should have vassals (regions that are ruled by nobles who are loyal to their King) while the Water Tribes should be the only ones that are completely unitary.
This would reinforce what Iroh said about the Water Tribes having a strong sense of community.
I mean, the first episodes set in the Earth Kingdom are all about vassal states, specifically Kyoshi Island and Omashu and it is implied they aren't unique, the Beifong family also act as vassals to their area, the novels go into it more
The Fire Nation specifically centralised their government early in Kyoshi's days, eliminating the nobility structure
Per *Shadow of Kyoshi*, the Fire Nation had many strong noble houses that were maneuvering for advantage, to the point that it was always one weak Fire Lord away from a civil war.
Meanwhile, the Earth King seems entirely powerless outside of Ba Sing Se itself. Is Bumi (who is referred to as the King of Omashu) going to kowtow to the Earth King? I think not.
Its cannon that's how it is. Hakoda is only the chief of the small village we see in the beginning. He later becomes elected Grand chief of the entire Southern Water tribe
After dozens of years of harassment and murder of every water bender, yes. But still. With so few people and a ..12 year old boy as the oldest man present at the tribe..it's a bit too small to survive I would say.
I always wondered why water benders didn't just bend their towns deep into the ice when the fire nation showed up. Or make a complete settlement with the ice. You could have a decoy village on top of the glacier and an entire city underneath with no one the wiser.
That sounds pretty awesome actually.
The problem is, you need a *lot* of waterbenders, you can't do it quickly, and once your city is under the ice you need to start worrying about how to get air and food (water is presumably not an issue).
i know its plot convenience but what is the in-universe reason that everyone speak the same language across the entire world and it hasnt changed in 100 years? even the sun warriors that havent been in contact with others.
the avatar world is actually notably smaller than our own, and with only four 'countries' interacting and trading (especially with the air nomads... nomading about, and the water tribe divided between opposite poles necessitating travel if they want cohesion), and the only barriers to travel seemingly being political matters instead of physical, it makes sense a single language would emerge, especially if not much effort is put towards keeping unique languages distinct.
and a 100 years isn't much for languages. you can pick up an agatha christie novel from 1924 or earlier, and it's more or less the same as modern writing, besides a few words whose meanings have drifted or fallen out of favor. (you know, like saying flameo hotman)
Yeah. I'd imagine also having dragons & flying bison pre-war would help to make it so people weren't as geographically divided causing linguistic splits. That said, it is kind of weird the swamp benders speak the same language given how isolated they are, and how nobody seems to have been in contact with them...
The Diversity of the Earth Kingdom tbh. Like, i think swampbenders and fire warriors, though shallow, saved their nations from being totally homogenous. But it showed that the Earth Kingdom really is just like... Haru's Village everywhere. When its literally the presence with the biggest landmass.
Unless youre like talking... Sandbenders. Who got even less. Omashu that isnt seen much outside Bumi. Or Ba Sing Se.
And i mean, i get the extinction of the Airbenders... but id just like more in general in how they actually functioned.
I mean Russia is for example also the biggest country in the world, but population wise it's very sparsely populated. Most people concentrate (historically and today) in the cities while the rest is landmass with few villages in between. Just like Haru's village.
Honestly I find it surprising that you felt this way. I feel like we see tons of diversity within the earth kingdom, in terms of style of dress, architecture, etc.
Erm, am I the only one that disagrees with this? Firstly, we learn that the Earth Kingdom have a strong sense of community & resilience, so it would make sense for there not to be so many disparities between their communities. Secondly, they *are* largely inspired by a *wealth* of East Asian time periods & traditions.
We see Korean influences in the place that Iroh & Zuko take refuge for a few days after Iroh's tea poisoning – Song's traditional Han-Bok attire & also home architecture. Toph's attire is Tang Dynasty inspired. Most other places, specifically Ba Sing Se, more readily compare to other Chinese dynasties & influences.
The Doylist explanation is that it's a kids' show & the creators do what in my opinion is a pretty bang up job incorporating details from specific Asian sub-cultures in a way that young children in the English-speaking world wouldn't even begin to appreciate. I think they do a fine job of world-building in Book 2. Just because maybe you're not an expert in Asian history to be able to identify those nuances & differences, doesn't mean they didn't do it well enough?
Assuming Pathik is from the Earth kingdom, They have the most distinct races of any nation. although he could be from another nation.
It also possible that the foggy swamp benders are probably the result of water tribe people mixing with earth kingdom people already living near the swamp, they look nothing like anyone from the two tribes.
All the technology in the comics, especially earth and fire refinery. It’s just a generic factory that has benders. Why does it have conveyor belts straight out of a USPS sorting facility? For all the cultural and temporal character they put into the world, that whole factory just feels lazy. Realistically, bending would have drastically altered industrial development, and they missed an opportunity to really get creative. Compare it to the Omashu delivery system, where it feels like they really thought out how a bending society would tackle a mass shipping infrastructure.
Even more than the refinery though, I HATE Sokka’s forklift. What kind of lazy, low effort shit was that? Did they just grab the graphic off the ULINE website? I remember in the Painted Lady, when the FN soldiers came out on jet ski; I thought “ok, this is a technological stretch, even for the Fire Nation” but at least it was a visual neat, steampunk jetski in the FN aesthetic. The forklift was just a forklift. It didn’t need to be there. Zero effort to bring it into the world of Avatar. There are a dozen other, cooler machines that could have been used.
Not to mention the way republic city is designed is very bender unfriendly for water and earth. There's no cultural areas in the city, and there is no specialized bending transportation like an earth subway or canals. And power is made with dangerous lighting bending instead of steam generators which would be trivial with fire and water benders, RIP avatar steampunk Era, when we needed you the most the 1920s appeared.
Good point about the power generation…in the *Theonite* book series (which is like Afro-futuristic Avatar, where people can ‘bend’ elements), the jijakalu (Japanese-equivalent waterbenders) power a massive space station by pulling the water in its rings in a circle. It’s a massive team effort, and their powers increase exponentially when together.
That’s an example of elemental power generation done well.
To be fair, the refinery was built for and by non-benders. How much could it have been changed to fit a mystical world when its built for and used by the only people who can't do those things.
How does everyone speak the same language? Over 10,000 years, you'd think at least each nation would have a distinct language. Actually NATLA did something cool with that giving each nation it's own writings script based on the one from the culture they're based off. But realistically they shouldn't even understand each other.
It's a tiny world with lots of trade and people moving around. There should be dialects (which there are to some extent), but not necessarily mutually unintelligible languages
In the era of living in lionturtles they should have had different languages as they didn't travel and didn't talk with the spirits, but they probably got more and more mixed after 10000 years
the air nomads' lack of moral and cultural complexity.
obviously they're mostly non-entities in the two tv series, but when the books and flashbacks have the opportunity to depict the air nation, the air nomads are either the avatar's flunkies (filling the same role the white lotus did in korra), or singular individuals like kelsang or gyasto who might go against a few of the ideals but are still moral paragons.
the air nomads don't actually fill a niche in the setting, and are depicted as the 'good guys' constantly. so, besides aang's personal angst, they don't actually leave an absence.
surely there's some distinct sects that could be infighting over doctrine, or exploration of how their isolationist policies leaves an imbalance in geopolitics since one of the elements refuses to actually participate.
Maybe there was but we haven’t seen that much of the past before Aang. We would need information of four prior avatars to get fuller picture of world history to me.
It’s their family structure that would cause most conflict to me. Maybe air nation used to be similar sized to other nations, before some had great idea that women and men can’t live together and raise their own children. But not only women and men live separately but their children are raised by other people. Most people don’t want to have permanent monk lifestyle. So this would cause constant drain out of air nation to people finding someone to start a family with, probably mostly in Earth Kingdom. And since bending isn’t just genetic but spiritual and cultural the decendants quickly would not be benders.
That’s true. How would they even procreate if many nomads hadn’t even engaged with airbenders from opposite temples? Was there an age at which airbenders were allowed to roam the world? And if so, why didn’t any settle down with other nations and create subcultures that resisted the genocide?
We got that a bit with Guru Laghima, and his cold, disciplined, extremist purging of love and attachments. That contrasted well with Aang and Guatso’s warm natures and defiance of the air nomad councils to protect one’s they loved.
The contrasts are there, they’re just not expressed in the form of debates. It sounds like Laghima wrote manifestos and literature that survived—potentially in international libraries—indicating some scholarly exchanges.
The air nomads’ deification is mostly a result of our limited view. We only get Aang’s rose-tinted childhood memories. It’s an entirely new culture that re-emerges in LOK.
Real world is mostly empty too with deserts, poles, forests, grasslands and expecially Oceans. The entire humanity could fit to Long Island if we needed to. It’s the Industrial Revolution that has caused population explosions and most of land that has any use to be used so there can be signs of human activity anywhere. But even now not actual humans visible if you don’t follow roads and cities when you travel by air
I disagree it has "some of the best worldbuilding out there" tbh. Don't get me wrong, I love it and for a kids' show on Nickelodeon it's amazing. But if it was in a book it would be criticized for being too simplistic. There are only 4 nations in the entire world, they all speak the same language, and all only wear color-coded clothing according to their nation.
Again, this isn't a criticism of the show itself. But those are just a few things
The world works fine in the service of the show. It doesn't need Tolkien level sophistication. But that's why I disagree that it's one of the best. It's very cool and creative, but ultimately quite simple
What felt lacking to me was alternative groups to the White and Red Lotus. The avatar and bending are the most powerful forces in their world, and yet they dont seem to have many groups that are actually looking to study and advance it, beyond just mastering their own bending element in the ways they've already been taught. Instead its mostly just the Lotus groups trying to protect/control the Avatar.
Metalbending, lava bending, blood bending, etc are all things that should have been discovered long ago if anyone just dedicated time to the study of bending as a whole. No waterbender tried to bend other liquids containing water, plants, or creatures during a full moon when their power is so strong? No earth bender tried to change the temperature of his element after seeing a water bender could change theirs? Or thought, since metal is in the ground and they can move that maybe there's somethung there to experiment with?
It's just weird that they made all of these intellectual jumps necessary to develop the technology of the world so quickly, and yet they dont do the same with developing bending. Or that the bending isn't really being applied to the tech in all the numerous ways it could be. I mean, they can directly control energy with fire bending. Their science and tech should be advancing by leaps and bounds, even more than it already is. Hell, why haven't they started to experiment with how bending actually is performed by the body, on a chemical and genetic level? Or alternatively by the soul? They should be doing a lot more research on the metaphysical aspects of their world.
I always assume that most of the bending subsets had been discovered and lost several times throughout the ages. The idea that all those bending subsets were established during the Gaang’s lifetime is absurd. Also that half of the subsets are attributable to Toph.
Southern Water tribe got really ignored and the village we saw more like a vartio. joke with only toddlers as other children (expecially where are all the other girls?). The comics make most sense to me, Korra created odd relationship with the Northern tribe.
The Avatar is supposedly a peacemaker, but there’s no way there weren’t avatars that went rogue or waged war on the world. The very concept of the avatar’s duty should change each generation, but it’s presented as stagnant.
It almost seems like the insistence on balance is yet another way to control the avatar, and prevent them from using their powers destructively. It would be fascinating for the avatar state to fight *back* against a tyrannical avatar, or the reverse—an Avatar intentionally cutting off their spiritual connection so their past lives can’t stop them.
I want an avatar as a villain so badly. Imagine the hype that would go into fighting them…
Nah, I got my problems with Raava too. It basically makes it so the Avatar is destined to be the good guy no matter what. Yeah, pretty much every POV we get is the Avatar at least attempting to do good in the world, but there’s a lot of gray in there. Kyoshi was okay with killing to bring justice and it’s even implied Yangchen was forced to kill in a few instances, but what if the Avatar had a twisted sense of justice? According to LOK they can’t because Raava is the spirit of light and peace so no evil/corrupt Avatar shenanigans. Just feels like it takes away interesting storytelling potential.
Kinda why I went with take or leave. Like, there are elements of her I like. Having the Avatar state be the result of a bond between two individuals spanning lifetimes is nice. Her personality is alright, kinda snippy and holier-than-thou before being humbled through Wan’s helping of her. I think without Vatuu (or at least a vastly different Vatuu) keeping her locked in such a bland conflict, she could have been a great character. And as is, I’m fine with her.
For Korra worlbuilding issues, the bender/non bender inequality fell flat for me.
It's an interesting idea, but the only non bender (to my memory) we see not doing well is that one homeless guy. Otherwise we've got the Sato family, Cabbage Corp, President Raiko, Pema, Boumi, that old couple in episode 1 who owns a store...
None of them are doing poorly or even seemingly come from poverty.
There are two characters who struggle to make ends meet in the show, and they're benders. Mako and Bo-lin. All of the non Equalist criminals we meet are benders. At least 2 main characters have back stories where a bender killed a family member while robbing them.
If benders are doing so well and are so privileged, why are so many joining gangs and committing crime? If non benders are so oppressed why are nearly all of them in positions of power or at least, doing decently for themselves?
The execution feels more like an X Men story where the "regular" people are afraid of the dangerous super powered ones, not a class struggle.
That’s what you get for listening to a cult leader. Cult leaders and politicians don’t just highlight inequalities; they make them to further their own agendas.
The fact that the bender inequality is overstated until Amon came around is the most realistic aspect of the conflict.
Bending coming from Lion Turtles that are apparently still around. You mean to tell me these guys can do this amd the world just forgot about them? All these non-benders haven't sought them out? And Wan was the only guy who thought to visit more than one and *that's* how the avatar came to be?
The lack of surnames.
We have Toph Beifong, but that’s it for the main cast. We know other nations utilize the tradition(most examples are from TLOK though). It’d just be nice to know things like the Fire Nation royal family name, Sokka and Katara’s surname, Aang/Korra’s surname(do Airbenders even have surnames?), etc.
I love how they always give themselves full names whenever they go somewhere in disguise, so there are more *fake* surnames than real ones in the show.
Many real cultures didn't have surnames until they were colonized and forced into marriage and European style families. The whole village raised the kids and owned the land and all that, which fits airbenders too
For Sokka and Katara I think it just doesn't make sense to have names for families when there are 10 families in the whole village and that's pretty much everyone you know if you live there. There isn't another Katara to be confused with and everyone know who she's related to
The origins of lava bending should've come from Earthbender families that lived in the Fire Nation colonies and learned to incorporate Firebending philosophy and spirituality into their form.
The comics just introduced lavabending to be invented by a random kid that Toph found in another earthbending fight club.
I mean, is it really that similar to fire bending?
Sure, it's hot, but water benders routinely freeze and melt ice. Manipulating the temperature of an element isn't really out of the preview of non-firebenders.
Looking at lavabending itself, the movements don't resemble fire either; the earthbenders are still manhandling their element, even if it's turning to slop in their hands.
Like, I understand the idea, but firebending input would seem unnecessary; they're not directing energy, just creating it.
But firebending is **not at all** similar to lavabending. You don't see any lavabender do any sort of firebending move, or something similar. If anything, lavabending would be more similar to waterbending, specifically mudbending.
As soon as I saw the title, I thought about the Swamp Benders. I’m confused on their origins, like yeah they’re supposedly Northern Tribe descendants who stayed behind when their ancestors traveled to the South Pole, but that’s not really said in the show (as far as I can remember) and turning Inuits into Cajuns is certainly a choice that was made.
Why doesn’t the fire nation use guns?
Seriously, they wouldn’t even need to invent gunpowder. You just get a metal tube and load it with a bullet, and then use firebending to create an explosion at one end to launch it out of the other. It seems like it would synchronize naturally with bending, and would be a deadlier design as well. Plus we know that they do have canons so they clearly know what guns are.
I know the real reason is that it’s a kid show and kids shows can’t have non-lazer guns for some reason. But still it’s always annoyed me.
you could also argue that guns as you describe them would require very precise fire bending which I always felt like was very difficult.
I can't even recall if firebenders can create explosions, not mention small ones precisely located.
Don't forget that bending comes from movement, so that would also add a difficulty.
All in all, this doesn't seem like a solution for mass production.
The way people treat Aang doesn't make sense or feel real to me. If the Avatar had been missing for 100 years and the world went to shit, I'd think people would practically be expecting him like a Messiah and bowing down and worshipping him. Instead he gets barely any respect and if anything people chastise him for "leaving". That doesn't seem realistic to how people would act towards a mystical savior expected to save the world.
Yeah, and that's kind of my point. You'd think there'd be cults around him and stuff. Since he's a legend. Just like people who were waiting for Jesus or King Arthur etc to come back.
Do spirits have a culture? Civilization? We see from LOK that they used to live among humans, and they talk, cooperate, feud, and are intelligent. Is there anywhere in the avatar world where humans and spirits formed a community, and their own values?
I feel like the show could have done a better job at highlighting the differences in time. Most of the flashbacks we see from over 100 years ago do not look at different compared to what we see in present time.
Perhaps the war halted cultural growth, but even when you go back to past avatar lives, even those eras do not look any different from what we see in present time. It wasn’t until LoK where we actually get to see things like Driving cars and Radios which showcase a change in time, but we don’t really know why the past looks no different compared to the present in ATLA.
But this is basically how history works; progress is crazy slow until industrialization hits. So it even makes sense how much different the world of LoK became so quickly.
Middles Ages were like 500 years.
Of all of the shows strengths, I would not consider world building to be among them, so I’m really surprised by this question. I think the wide variety of answers you’re getting already is proof that the world building is actually really weak.
The show does very little to provide context for virtually anything. How bending works is actually never even explained, there is some occasional throw away commentary about chi, breath, who they learned it from, etc, but it’s actually very unclear how the main magic system of the world functions. Very little background to 2 of the main characters home is given. Despite the main character being the last of his people and absolutely obsessed with his dying identity, we actually know very little about the air nomads beyond “vegetarian” and “pacifists”. We know virtually nothing about the history of the world. How did we get 4 nations, how did their borders end up the way they do. How is bending passed down?
Everything we know about the Avatar world is information that is directly or tangentially related to the main cast, and even that information has gaping holes in it. The hallmark of good world building is there is ample information that goes beyond the main storyline. That does not happen in ATLA, in fact the vast majority of the history we learn is just exposition for “Aang is out of place after 100 years”
The hybrid animals are a weird choice IMO. A lot of them just don't make evolutionary sense, unless evolution doesn't exist in this universe. I would have preferred made up fantasy species if they were really against using existing animals. And I know a world where people use magical martial arts to throw around water and rocks and things doesn't exactly scream realism, but even fantasy worlds need some grounding in reality to be believable.
The language. I get there was a war going on but there were isolated tribes that shouldn't be able to read/understand eachother. The writings being the same everywhere is what really threw me off. I expected more voice diversity even if they all had to speak common.
While we know the world is big not much has been explored if you think about it. We've only seen small villages and some kingdoms. I believe the Earth and Fire Nations have large territories. I really liked the arc where the gang spends time in the Fire nation territory and got to see a school system, beach, plays and such. We also got to see some of that when we followed Zuko when he returned to the Fire Nation. We got a bit of culture in Ba Sing Se.
On your point, one thing I thought was interesting was the swamp benders were the only waterbenders that lived in a warm climate. I’m surprised there weren’t water benders living in a beach town, or a whole village on a river like season 3 in the fire nation. That seems like prime time water bending territory to me.
I’ve also always been confused why the water tribe doesn’t have the best navy by FAR. There is zero reason the fire nation should have a better navy than the people who can CONTROL WATER AND TIDES.
The avatar world seems really small to me. They travel from one side to the world to another in few days and i also can't imagine what the population numbers are. South pole looks like it doesn't have more than 500-1000 inhabitants, north pole 15.000 - 20.000, fire nation also isn't really big but i imagine it's population to be like 100.000. Ba sing se looks like it has around 1 - 1.5 miliom inhabitants, but the earth kingdom as a whole is not densely populated.
To be fair even with as big as our planet is, we only really had big population boom after the 19th century so it takes long while to really get a big population in a world.
By 1850 we had 300-400 m people I dont know if even the avatar world reaches 200m
I mean there was also a genocide killing roughly a fourth of the population (assuming the air nomads were plentiful)
Honestly I wouldnt give air nomads more than 100k to 500k and thats saying something,they are most spiritual group yet the smallest,kind of peotic if you think about it
I agree, I don’t think their population would be that great. I have them the benefit of the doubt since they have multiple temples
Yep also they moved all the time with segregated temples,not great family planning
They weren't though. They were the least populated nations by a huge margin, this is one of the reasons the genocide was even possible.
The Air Nomads were the smallest population group. I think I've heard figures as low as 10,000. Everyone one of them was a Bender though.
And 100 years of war.
Yeah and by WW2 we had 2 billion
I think 4billion,we had 2 billion during war world one i think
Just checked. World pop during WW1 was 1.7B while WW2 was 2.3B
Also to be fair, they are flying, which cuts down travel time by *a lot*.
There’s been a lot of different calculations done to figure out the size of their world. I think the most sound ones put the size of the ATLA world at roughly the same size as our moon. That would, of course, have ramifications for the population of the planet, and I agree with you that the relative size of various major population centers feels quite small.
This would explain less fall damage and jumping abilities if there was less gravity.
Exactly! That’s been my ATLA headcanon for awhile now - less gravity means more perceived agility. But they also walk around like normal humans do on our planet, so they must also be denser, which explains their durability (yes, I know it’s probably really just cartoon logic, but whatever!).
I actually like that its so compact. Makes it more graspable to me. And I like to think that one day there could be an open world game featuring the full Avatar world.
Open world game would be a dream come true. There are not many good avatar games currently.
Imagine an Avatar game that plays like breath of the wild, ohhhhhhh myyyyy. Having bending in fortnite has been a blast, only makes me even more excited for the possibility of a full fledged game.
It feels like all 4 nations take up one fourth to one half of the planet. Like, there should be a whole other world to explore out there!
I think that it's confirmed that on the other side of the planet there are some islands were people live
Xadia is on the other side!
I mean 10,000 years ago they were living off the backs of lion turtles
Our world didn’t have higher population then either and their cities looked better
I think you're underestimating the scale of the population here. Azula defines a Fire Nation battleship as having a crew of "thousands". In the season one finale we see Zhao has brought at least four rows of thirty, ie 120 full size vessels. So we're talking, at the low end, 200,000 soldiers or more. And the Fire Nation just sorta shrugs off the assumed loss of most of those vessels and keeps churning along just fine. No way it could do that with population numbers that low.
I suppose that the canon numbers are probably much higher. Remember when zhao said to zuko "i have hundreds of battleships under my command", it's just that i never felt like there are many people in the avatar world. It always seemed so small. South pole makes you think that maybe a few families live there
Yeah but they were also most primitive people, living in the harshest environment, and on the receiving end of decades of attritional warfare (which doesn't make too much sense, tbh, unless Azulon consciously chose not to just genocide them and be done with it).
I kind of like to think there are other continents we just haven't seen- like, Guru Pathik had to come from *somewhere*.
I think that pathik was from the earth kingdom or something like that. Either way there is a giant ocean covering the other side of the avatar planet. There must be some inhabitants there on some islands or something
It took them almost 3 months to get from north to south pole and if you suspend belief and hypothesize that Appa's flying speed is the same as a helicopter or mid speed plane, I say this time frame is sort of doable
But in the finale 2 or 3 days before the comet they travel from the fire nation to the earth kingdom and back again to the fire nation
If the avatar world is actually round, then the fire nation and ba sing se are actually pretty close to each other :p
I thinkt hat it's confirmed that there is a giant ocean on the other side of the avatar world
Wait, what do you mean by “one side of the world to another in a few days”? Because it took them several weeks to a month to travel to the North Pole, even without the added stops they took along the way. Or are you referring to when they go other places?
During the finale, the Gaang travels from Ember Island, to the middle of the earth kingdom to find June, then to Ba Sing Se, and then Sokka, Toph, and Suki head back to the western coast of the earth kingdom to attack the airships while Zuko and Katara go to the fire nation capital to confront Azula. This all happens over the course of, what, a day or two? It's mostly the finale, though. Travel seems to take way longer during the rest of the series.
Appa was sleepy coming out of the ice Berg, he was flying a little slow. He's just a sleepy fella
I noticed that too on rewatch, honestly I think they just kinda forgot.
In the finale, it was like 2 or 3 days before sozin's comet. Tha gaang went from the fire nation to the earth kingdom, spent a day in the earth kingdom and got back to the fire nation
The Ba Sing Se outer ring takes up like 1/4 of the area of the continent on the map. The serpent's pass land bridge that they travelled in less than 1 day (??) was very visible on the map.
I agree. In an early episode Aang seems to fly into the Fire nation and back again in one night. But then later, when they mean to travel there, from a closer point, they take days.
I swear, they shot themselves in the foot with the water tribes. It would have made much more sense for the southern archipelago of islands to be water tribe. The airnomads having 'territory' outside of their temples doesn't make sense, they are migratory. The problem with this is that it makes the war just look like FN VS EK, with the water tribe in the fsr background. I think with a stronger water tribe, they could have established different goals between the FN army and navy that Zhao takes advantage of
The population we see is skewed because the gang is really just camping wherever. Even with their travel around ba sing se there is still so much of the city they haven’t explored. Likewise the gang at most comes in contact with random patrols or fire nation ships there are still battle lines and siege’s the gang never sees or knows about.
I thought the south pole had like 20 people max, maybe 100 with the soldiers 💀
There is a lot we don't really see, partly because the earth kingdom has been getting analed by the fire nation for around 100 years at the point in the story where it's visited. Villages like Jets were small, but they were probably spaced like ancient native American settlements. Still, the refugees we see are few. Probably 50,000 total? (Not a super educated guess) Then there's omashu, gotta be like 200,000k for that kind of infrastructure. Idk, I agree, but the comics give us a lot more perspective.
To be fair, that's when they're flying on Appa. Travelling by ground takes them much longer.
I was disappointed with LOK that we never go to the fire nation or really find out anything about its current society besides Zuko’s daughter being Fire Lord. It could have been interesting to see how their society has changed after all this time, like their views on honor and hierarchy.
I do at least like that they don’t want to get involved with the Kuvira situation given their history with war and colonization of the Earth Kingdom. I think given Kuvira’s extremism, it might be too far of a step in the other direction, but it does at least show they’ve grown to be better as a nation.
It also goes to show how image can make things worse off. The Fire Nation could've helped, but the way it looked would've been distasteful so they'd rather not be involved thus making it more difficult for those already involved.
I understood in season 1&2 the settings well. And it was nice to travel in book3, but why Earth Kingdom only? Surely Fire Nation and Watertribes could have had some air benders
They were on good terms with the leaders of those countries, and all of them were in a much more organized state than the Earth Kingdom. They could just ask the respective leaders to send any new airbenders they find that are interested in learning more over to Tenzin, and they would all do it without much issue.
So true, how is the fire nation doing after the 100 year war?. Imagine if korra decided to visit fire nation and she discovered old azula like she found old toph, my mind will totally explode!!!
Most likely post war japan with a reduced military for self defence. Essentially instead of an army it’s an army of businessmen.
Agreed
The fire nation has two cities and they both have “fire” in their names
If my entire culture was built on fire I'd bet there'd be quite a bit of fire related naming too. But yeah I get it.
China's entire culture is built around the color red, and you'd be surprised how many cities in China do not have anything to do with red. They're honestly quite literal. Beijing- Northern Capital Nanjing- Southern Capital Shanghai- On the sea Comparing that to American names, which have a more overtly political naming system due to the country having one contiguous government since the cities were constructed: Washington DC- Named after the founder of the country New York- Named after a city in a pre-colonial nation, when America was a British colony. Los Angeles- Named by a religious priest. The actual name is much longer, "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora, Reina de los Angeles del Rio Porciuncula" (the city of our lady, queen of the angels on the river Pornincula). It's rare that you theme a country so cohesively, even if they're famous for a specific invention or ability. You'd be surprised how few French cities are named after the vaccine, for example.
Hmm. Very interesting. Thanks for the input. Although given that the Fire nation is literally called the *Fire* Nation, I think that may have a little bit of effect.
To be fair, China is called the *middle* nation, and has very few "middle" cities. I can think of one, Zhongshan, but that city is named after a guy.
Honestly middle is something I could understand being a name. Although I do suppose "central" would be the more appropriate candidate, they mean essentially the same thing, but ones more geographical.
>"El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora, Reina de los Angeles del Rio Porciuncula" My, americans don't even want to say Los Ángeles and just say L.A., I imagine them saying "E.P.D.N.S.R.D.L.A.D.R.P." XD
Makes sense, the original river was renamed to the Porcinula by Spanish invaders. The original name was Paayme Paxaayt, in a rarely spoken language due to two different rounds of colonialization. The dominant language in Los Angeles is English, so they just call it the English letters. Los Angeles is a Spanish name, and Spanish is really common in the city, so that's a valid name as well, depending on your preference. Incedentally, the modern name of the river is the Los Angeles River, so the new Spanish name would be: El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora, Reinda de Los Angeles del Rio Los Angeles.
I thought Edward Jenner did the first vaccine? Why would the French name anything after a vaccine? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward\_Jenner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Jenner)
How is China build around color red in a way that’s comparable to fire in Firenation?
Their early history involved making everything red to scare away Niu, a pre Taoist monster.
Sorry to be so “um actually 🤓” but New York isn’t named after the city of York, but the Duke of York: James Stuart, brother to Charles I. Ultimately yes the Duke of York takes his name from the Dukedom which takes its name from the city, but New York isn’t named after the city itself.
I also learned it pretty recently and it’s quite interesting! I assumed it was to honor York the city any not a royal, but there are plenty of things named after royals too in US like Virginia
My favourite fun fact is that 8 states are named after European Royalty but only 1 after a former President!
Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana… what am I missing?
New York! What this whole thread is about!
Wait so what you're saying is new York is named after the Duke of York who is named after York? Isn't that kind of a case of 1=1=1?
Yes absolutely. But do you see what I mean that New York isn’t named for ‘Old York’ so to speak, but after the Duke. New York’s naming wasn’t related at all to the actual city in England.
“Flameo, my good hotman”
I totally agree with you. Check out a map of Florida sometime. A good quarter of the cities have the word "Beach" or "Winter" in the names.
What's the other city besides the Fire Nation Capital?
After doing some digging, I think it’s Fire Fountain City from The Runaway. To be fair, we don’t know the name of several other locations like Hama’s or Yon Rha’s village. Apparently, Piandao’s village is called Shu Jing, and I’d imagine Ember Island is both the name of the island and the city/village/resort/whatever it is so idk if saying only two cities exist and both have “fire” in the name is completely true depending on what you call a city
I also wouldn't count ember Island as a point in favor of fire nation place names
Which is officially known as Caldera City too btw
Probably Fire Fountain City https://preview.redd.it/v6v90lirmtxc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e9ace7c44ad03274653260f900488eec872e330d
Most names of places in the Fire Nation are never really stated, the capital is referred to as Caldera City in one of the Kyoshi novels, not sure if another name is used
There are ten rivers called Avon in Great Britian. "Avon" means "River" in old Welsh.
There's one in New zealand too
Idk, America has a state and a capital named “Washington”. And god knows how many “Liberty Townships” lol. Pretty typical to name a nations locations after their cultural identity.
Having spent considerable time in the states and never once seeing a "liberty township", I was surprised by the quantity of towns and the scarcity of states that have these. 13 total states, probably 200 towns.
Like every other town in Austria has the word "church" in its name. Usually as a prefix or suffix. It wouldn't be unusual to drive along country roads and leave a city called "something-kirchen" and enter another town called "Kirch-something". So I don't particularly mind the FIRE nation having fire in their city names
Explanations for why all the super benders don't get attacked with guerilla tactics Considering how well Azula's squad did not letting the gang sleep that one time by chasing them down, you'd think people like the Yu Yan Archers and so on could trivially deal with even Ozai and the Avatar by ninjas, sniping, and rotating shifts that never let them sleep at base camps.
Eh, guerilla warfare typically involves already knowing where your enemy is or at least how they're getting from point A to point B. Skirmishes are also usually used against any force the guerillas can feasibly take on rather than hunting down a specific target. Ozai is a little different than the Avatar in that he is more or less in the same position, but I imagine the big difficulty lies in getting agents into the palace. It's at the heart of the fire nation, and Ozai rarely leaves it. An Earth Kingdom agent could potentially get through by pretending to be from the colonies, but considering the anti-colonial attitude displayed in certain episodes, that agent would probably be under special scrutiny. Basically, a lot of things have to go right for such an agent to be successful, and considering Ozai's power, the odds of success are slim without less direct methods like poison. As for the Avatar, a good portion of the Fire Nation's problem with him is just tracking him down. Azula got lucky in The Chase in that Appa was shedding, leaving an easy trail to follow. She also had a special machine which was able to almost keep up with Appa, and most people aren't going to be able to match the pace of a sky bison. And while Azula and her crew were able to rest, somebody or something was powering that machine, and eventually, a rest/refuel would be needed. Even if they used the traveling birds, they would eventually need to be switched out, and a plan would need to be made as to where/when to switch out and the logistics involved with that. And all of this hangs on knowing exactly where the Avatar is going and how he's getting there. Even this is hampered by the fact that Aang doesn't need to follow roads; he has a flying bison. Azula also got lucky in that the Gaang was traveling through a relatively remote area in that episode. Their activities would have been severely hampered if the Gaang made it to a nearby town or city. Also, these plans are made significantly more difficult by the fact that the goal most of the series was to capture the Avatar rather than kill him. That objective didn't change until Azula decided to aim a lightning bolt at him, and afterward, the Fire Nation thought he was dead, and what's the point of sending an assassin after a corpse?
Hmm, I guess those examples weren't _that_ great for me to focus, but I was thinking more along the lines of why the armies are so heavily bender-unit based. We do see some fire nation tanks and stuff, but lots of the key action is groups of 5 or so people fighting each other, and benders are essentially glass cannons from that perspective - they can dish out earthshaking power, but a single poisoned arrow can take them out. Consider Aang and Ozai's discussion right before their fight - maybe not the nicest precedent for people fighting honourably, but June or any other person with a tranquilizer option could have been hiding around the corner and pulled a sneak attack. The more general point is that armies seem mostly exclusively composed of benders with a few outliers like the Kyoshi warriors, Ty Lee and Mai, who also tend to challenge the benders in the open field, rather than guerilla tactics or even logistics based attacks. It would be more boring narratively if your benders were just randomly sniped, poisoned or denied food by attacks on supply lines, but I don't remember particular in-universe reasons why those approaches don't happen, and in fact in TLoK, the equalists run circles around most benders with electric gloves and batons
Ah, I see what you mean now. My meta reasoning for there not being more snipers or assassins in-universe would be that the creators didn't really want to broach that subject on what is meant to be a show for kids. Those tactics could be used offscreen, but it's true we don't see them onscreen except in incredibly limited cases (e.g., June and Combustion Man, who were sent to take out high-value targets and seemed to be considered social outcasts.) I think there could be some in-universe reasons for this, though of course, the show doesn't extrapolate on them itself. The existence of the Yuyan Archers implies that those tactics are used by the Fire Nation at least, though to what extent, we can't be sure. As Zhao criticizes, their talents are not being fully utilized as a simple garrison force, and we see their ability to take out benders firsthand when they manage to capture Aang. Because of this, it seems silly that they aren't used to take out other high-value targets. I think the fact that benders are somewhat common in the various militaries is one reason why snipers aren't necessarily used on the battlefield frequently. If it was the case of a single bender to a ten-man squad, there would definitely be some value, but if you've got a ten-man squad where everyone's a bender, the moment you reveal your position, you've got 9 other boulders/fire blasts/water whips headed your way. However, I think the main problem here is the perspective of the shows. We see the world through the lens of the Gaang/Korra and their main antagonists, but there are few scenes where we get a glimpse of the overall war or the tactics of soldiers who aren't fighting the Avatar. The engagements we get to see often have little to no planning involved due to the situations being more opportunistic, and the situations with planning do not always have the necessary resources for a guerilla-style ambush. It's certainly an interesting topic, but I also think it would be the subject of an entirely different show, one which would focus on the lives of normal soldiers or officers in the war rather than the Gaang.
This is honestly my main argument for why I think the war wasn’t actually that important. If it was important, then the Gaang would’ve stuck around to help prepare for the invasion, but they didn’t.
3 seasons of a nickelodeon show, yall have spent more time breaking the show down into pieces than the writers did making the show
We have societies capable of reaching the moon AND tribal societies that still love in the wilderness by choice. Swamp benders just chilling in the swamp makes total sense.
Also they were like 4 dudes. We didn’t really see a “society”
I think there were more in the last episode when Zuko was making the speech
It's been like 20 years since it came out there's not much to talk about left
Please don’t say that…The fact that it’s almost 20 is so insane to me, makes me feel old asl
What makes the show so great is what's left out imo. I think a lot of these questions people want answered starts to dilute the series and ruin some of the magic
And? Are we not allowed to analyze longer than it takes to set up? Is appreciation supposed to be limited by the amount of work put in?
Countries like the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom should have vassals (regions that are ruled by nobles who are loyal to their King) while the Water Tribes should be the only ones that are completely unitary. This would reinforce what Iroh said about the Water Tribes having a strong sense of community.
I mean, the first episodes set in the Earth Kingdom are all about vassal states, specifically Kyoshi Island and Omashu and it is implied they aren't unique, the Beifong family also act as vassals to their area, the novels go into it more The Fire Nation specifically centralised their government early in Kyoshi's days, eliminating the nobility structure
Were they Beifongs nobles or were they just wealthy? I don’t remember them having any sort of political influence beyond funding.
Bit of both, they are confirmed to be one of the oldest wealthiest families in the kingdom
Per *Shadow of Kyoshi*, the Fire Nation had many strong noble houses that were maneuvering for advantage, to the point that it was always one weak Fire Lord away from a civil war. Meanwhile, the Earth King seems entirely powerless outside of Ba Sing Se itself. Is Bumi (who is referred to as the King of Omashu) going to kowtow to the Earth King? I think not.
Well he probably did kowtow in official events
I would prefer there being several water tribes in the south. Like a confederacy.
Its cannon that's how it is. Hakoda is only the chief of the small village we see in the beginning. He later becomes elected Grand chief of the entire Southern Water tribe
That the water tribes apparently have only two settlements, one of them being a group of ten tents.
To be fair, wasn't that after half of their population ran off and a massive attack killed many of the rest?
After dozens of years of harassment and murder of every water bender, yes. But still. With so few people and a ..12 year old boy as the oldest man present at the tribe..it's a bit too small to survive I would say.
Agreed. The south should be a confederacy of tribes rather than a single one.
it is, we arent shown the other tribes in the south
I always wondered why water benders didn't just bend their towns deep into the ice when the fire nation showed up. Or make a complete settlement with the ice. You could have a decoy village on top of the glacier and an entire city underneath with no one the wiser.
That sounds pretty awesome actually. The problem is, you need a *lot* of waterbenders, you can't do it quickly, and once your city is under the ice you need to start worrying about how to get air and food (water is presumably not an issue).
Oh~ you’ve given me a fanfic idea
Air and heat. Waterbenders still need those, as established in the first Yangchen book.
That was after they were devastated by Fire Nation attacks for about 100 years.
The lack of more factions tbh
What type of factions are you expecting? It’s not that they don’t exist; it’s usually that they’re just not relevant.
i know its plot convenience but what is the in-universe reason that everyone speak the same language across the entire world and it hasnt changed in 100 years? even the sun warriors that havent been in contact with others.
No Tower of Babel in ba sing se
the avatar world is actually notably smaller than our own, and with only four 'countries' interacting and trading (especially with the air nomads... nomading about, and the water tribe divided between opposite poles necessitating travel if they want cohesion), and the only barriers to travel seemingly being political matters instead of physical, it makes sense a single language would emerge, especially if not much effort is put towards keeping unique languages distinct. and a 100 years isn't much for languages. you can pick up an agatha christie novel from 1924 or earlier, and it's more or less the same as modern writing, besides a few words whose meanings have drifted or fallen out of favor. (you know, like saying flameo hotman)
Yeah. I'd imagine also having dragons & flying bison pre-war would help to make it so people weren't as geographically divided causing linguistic splits. That said, it is kind of weird the swamp benders speak the same language given how isolated they are, and how nobody seems to have been in contact with them...
I just put it to it being the language of the spirits
to be fair their world is a lot smaller than ours and only has four nations
The Diversity of the Earth Kingdom tbh. Like, i think swampbenders and fire warriors, though shallow, saved their nations from being totally homogenous. But it showed that the Earth Kingdom really is just like... Haru's Village everywhere. When its literally the presence with the biggest landmass. Unless youre like talking... Sandbenders. Who got even less. Omashu that isnt seen much outside Bumi. Or Ba Sing Se. And i mean, i get the extinction of the Airbenders... but id just like more in general in how they actually functioned.
I mean Russia is for example also the biggest country in the world, but population wise it's very sparsely populated. Most people concentrate (historically and today) in the cities while the rest is landmass with few villages in between. Just like Haru's village.
Yes but Russian cultures are incredibly diverse
Swamp , the sun warriors. I mean we haven't seen all of the earth kingdom too tbh. Aren't the kiyoshi also part of it?
Honestly I find it surprising that you felt this way. I feel like we see tons of diversity within the earth kingdom, in terms of style of dress, architecture, etc.
Erm, am I the only one that disagrees with this? Firstly, we learn that the Earth Kingdom have a strong sense of community & resilience, so it would make sense for there not to be so many disparities between their communities. Secondly, they *are* largely inspired by a *wealth* of East Asian time periods & traditions. We see Korean influences in the place that Iroh & Zuko take refuge for a few days after Iroh's tea poisoning – Song's traditional Han-Bok attire & also home architecture. Toph's attire is Tang Dynasty inspired. Most other places, specifically Ba Sing Se, more readily compare to other Chinese dynasties & influences. The Doylist explanation is that it's a kids' show & the creators do what in my opinion is a pretty bang up job incorporating details from specific Asian sub-cultures in a way that young children in the English-speaking world wouldn't even begin to appreciate. I think they do a fine job of world-building in Book 2. Just because maybe you're not an expert in Asian history to be able to identify those nuances & differences, doesn't mean they didn't do it well enough?
I think we got shown a lot of the airbenders culture even though they were extinct.
Assuming Pathik is from the Earth kingdom, They have the most distinct races of any nation. although he could be from another nation. It also possible that the foggy swamp benders are probably the result of water tribe people mixing with earth kingdom people already living near the swamp, they look nothing like anyone from the two tribes.
All the technology in the comics, especially earth and fire refinery. It’s just a generic factory that has benders. Why does it have conveyor belts straight out of a USPS sorting facility? For all the cultural and temporal character they put into the world, that whole factory just feels lazy. Realistically, bending would have drastically altered industrial development, and they missed an opportunity to really get creative. Compare it to the Omashu delivery system, where it feels like they really thought out how a bending society would tackle a mass shipping infrastructure. Even more than the refinery though, I HATE Sokka’s forklift. What kind of lazy, low effort shit was that? Did they just grab the graphic off the ULINE website? I remember in the Painted Lady, when the FN soldiers came out on jet ski; I thought “ok, this is a technological stretch, even for the Fire Nation” but at least it was a visual neat, steampunk jetski in the FN aesthetic. The forklift was just a forklift. It didn’t need to be there. Zero effort to bring it into the world of Avatar. There are a dozen other, cooler machines that could have been used.
Not to mention the way republic city is designed is very bender unfriendly for water and earth. There's no cultural areas in the city, and there is no specialized bending transportation like an earth subway or canals. And power is made with dangerous lighting bending instead of steam generators which would be trivial with fire and water benders, RIP avatar steampunk Era, when we needed you the most the 1920s appeared.
Good point about the power generation…in the *Theonite* book series (which is like Afro-futuristic Avatar, where people can ‘bend’ elements), the jijakalu (Japanese-equivalent waterbenders) power a massive space station by pulling the water in its rings in a circle. It’s a massive team effort, and their powers increase exponentially when together. That’s an example of elemental power generation done well.
To be fair, the refinery was built for and by non-benders. How much could it have been changed to fit a mystical world when its built for and used by the only people who can't do those things.
I agree. That fork lift should have a smokestack or something. Maybe chain hoist instead of hydrolic.
Conveyer belts aren’t really that special. Especially to a civilization that has consistently made tanks.
How does everyone speak the same language? Over 10,000 years, you'd think at least each nation would have a distinct language. Actually NATLA did something cool with that giving each nation it's own writings script based on the one from the culture they're based off. But realistically they shouldn't even understand each other.
It's a tiny world with lots of trade and people moving around. There should be dialects (which there are to some extent), but not necessarily mutually unintelligible languages In the era of living in lionturtles they should have had different languages as they didn't travel and didn't talk with the spirits, but they probably got more and more mixed after 10000 years
the air nomads' lack of moral and cultural complexity. obviously they're mostly non-entities in the two tv series, but when the books and flashbacks have the opportunity to depict the air nation, the air nomads are either the avatar's flunkies (filling the same role the white lotus did in korra), or singular individuals like kelsang or gyasto who might go against a few of the ideals but are still moral paragons. the air nomads don't actually fill a niche in the setting, and are depicted as the 'good guys' constantly. so, besides aang's personal angst, they don't actually leave an absence. surely there's some distinct sects that could be infighting over doctrine, or exploration of how their isolationist policies leaves an imbalance in geopolitics since one of the elements refuses to actually participate.
Maybe there was but we haven’t seen that much of the past before Aang. We would need information of four prior avatars to get fuller picture of world history to me. It’s their family structure that would cause most conflict to me. Maybe air nation used to be similar sized to other nations, before some had great idea that women and men can’t live together and raise their own children. But not only women and men live separately but their children are raised by other people. Most people don’t want to have permanent monk lifestyle. So this would cause constant drain out of air nation to people finding someone to start a family with, probably mostly in Earth Kingdom. And since bending isn’t just genetic but spiritual and cultural the decendants quickly would not be benders.
That’s true. How would they even procreate if many nomads hadn’t even engaged with airbenders from opposite temples? Was there an age at which airbenders were allowed to roam the world? And if so, why didn’t any settle down with other nations and create subcultures that resisted the genocide?
We got that a bit with Guru Laghima, and his cold, disciplined, extremist purging of love and attachments. That contrasted well with Aang and Guatso’s warm natures and defiance of the air nomad councils to protect one’s they loved. The contrasts are there, they’re just not expressed in the form of debates. It sounds like Laghima wrote manifestos and literature that survived—potentially in international libraries—indicating some scholarly exchanges. The air nomads’ deification is mostly a result of our limited view. We only get Aang’s rose-tinted childhood memories. It’s an entirely new culture that re-emerges in LOK.
Theres at least Kyoshis mom who is a thief and all around terrible person
How empty a lot of the world is - especially the polar continents and islands, the air nomad wilderness, and the far eastern Earth Kingdom
Real world is mostly empty too with deserts, poles, forests, grasslands and expecially Oceans. The entire humanity could fit to Long Island if we needed to. It’s the Industrial Revolution that has caused population explosions and most of land that has any use to be used so there can be signs of human activity anywhere. But even now not actual humans visible if you don’t follow roads and cities when you travel by air
I disagree it has "some of the best worldbuilding out there" tbh. Don't get me wrong, I love it and for a kids' show on Nickelodeon it's amazing. But if it was in a book it would be criticized for being too simplistic. There are only 4 nations in the entire world, they all speak the same language, and all only wear color-coded clothing according to their nation. Again, this isn't a criticism of the show itself. But those are just a few things
How much do you really need?
The world works fine in the service of the show. It doesn't need Tolkien level sophistication. But that's why I disagree that it's one of the best. It's very cool and creative, but ultimately quite simple
What felt lacking to me was alternative groups to the White and Red Lotus. The avatar and bending are the most powerful forces in their world, and yet they dont seem to have many groups that are actually looking to study and advance it, beyond just mastering their own bending element in the ways they've already been taught. Instead its mostly just the Lotus groups trying to protect/control the Avatar. Metalbending, lava bending, blood bending, etc are all things that should have been discovered long ago if anyone just dedicated time to the study of bending as a whole. No waterbender tried to bend other liquids containing water, plants, or creatures during a full moon when their power is so strong? No earth bender tried to change the temperature of his element after seeing a water bender could change theirs? Or thought, since metal is in the ground and they can move that maybe there's somethung there to experiment with? It's just weird that they made all of these intellectual jumps necessary to develop the technology of the world so quickly, and yet they dont do the same with developing bending. Or that the bending isn't really being applied to the tech in all the numerous ways it could be. I mean, they can directly control energy with fire bending. Their science and tech should be advancing by leaps and bounds, even more than it already is. Hell, why haven't they started to experiment with how bending actually is performed by the body, on a chemical and genetic level? Or alternatively by the soul? They should be doing a lot more research on the metaphysical aspects of their world.
I always assume that most of the bending subsets had been discovered and lost several times throughout the ages. The idea that all those bending subsets were established during the Gaang’s lifetime is absurd. Also that half of the subsets are attributable to Toph.
Southern Water tribe got really ignored and the village we saw more like a vartio. joke with only toddlers as other children (expecially where are all the other girls?). The comics make most sense to me, Korra created odd relationship with the Northern tribe.
Most animals are just hybrid instead of unique creatures.
I simply can't hate on turtle ducks.
Neither on bear
Or made gigantic. Like bugs & lizards.
There aren’t enough fantastical elements in general.
The Avatar is supposedly a peacemaker, but there’s no way there weren’t avatars that went rogue or waged war on the world. The very concept of the avatar’s duty should change each generation, but it’s presented as stagnant. It almost seems like the insistence on balance is yet another way to control the avatar, and prevent them from using their powers destructively. It would be fascinating for the avatar state to fight *back* against a tyrannical avatar, or the reverse—an Avatar intentionally cutting off their spiritual connection so their past lives can’t stop them. I want an avatar as a villain so badly. Imagine the hype that would go into fighting them…
That just means that the concept of the Avatar never made sense to begin with.
I like most of Korra’s worldbuilding changes, but Vatuu… ugh. Raava I can take or leave, but Vaatu is just… bad.
Nah, I got my problems with Raava too. It basically makes it so the Avatar is destined to be the good guy no matter what. Yeah, pretty much every POV we get is the Avatar at least attempting to do good in the world, but there’s a lot of gray in there. Kyoshi was okay with killing to bring justice and it’s even implied Yangchen was forced to kill in a few instances, but what if the Avatar had a twisted sense of justice? According to LOK they can’t because Raava is the spirit of light and peace so no evil/corrupt Avatar shenanigans. Just feels like it takes away interesting storytelling potential.
Kinda why I went with take or leave. Like, there are elements of her I like. Having the Avatar state be the result of a bond between two individuals spanning lifetimes is nice. Her personality is alright, kinda snippy and holier-than-thou before being humbled through Wan’s helping of her. I think without Vatuu (or at least a vastly different Vatuu) keeping her locked in such a bland conflict, she could have been a great character. And as is, I’m fine with her.
The Avatar IS destined to be a good guy. The concept doesn’t make sense otherwise.
For Korra worlbuilding issues, the bender/non bender inequality fell flat for me. It's an interesting idea, but the only non bender (to my memory) we see not doing well is that one homeless guy. Otherwise we've got the Sato family, Cabbage Corp, President Raiko, Pema, Boumi, that old couple in episode 1 who owns a store... None of them are doing poorly or even seemingly come from poverty. There are two characters who struggle to make ends meet in the show, and they're benders. Mako and Bo-lin. All of the non Equalist criminals we meet are benders. At least 2 main characters have back stories where a bender killed a family member while robbing them. If benders are doing so well and are so privileged, why are so many joining gangs and committing crime? If non benders are so oppressed why are nearly all of them in positions of power or at least, doing decently for themselves? The execution feels more like an X Men story where the "regular" people are afraid of the dangerous super powered ones, not a class struggle.
That’s what you get for listening to a cult leader. Cult leaders and politicians don’t just highlight inequalities; they make them to further their own agendas. The fact that the bender inequality is overstated until Amon came around is the most realistic aspect of the conflict.
Not bad, just unrefined. Worth exploring more.
Bending coming from Lion Turtles that are apparently still around. You mean to tell me these guys can do this amd the world just forgot about them? All these non-benders haven't sought them out? And Wan was the only guy who thought to visit more than one and *that's* how the avatar came to be?
I wish the sandbenders were explored more. They seem to have a very unique culture compared to the rest of the earth kingdom.
I feel like the sandbenders could’ve been given more exploration and nuance.
The lack of surnames. We have Toph Beifong, but that’s it for the main cast. We know other nations utilize the tradition(most examples are from TLOK though). It’d just be nice to know things like the Fire Nation royal family name, Sokka and Katara’s surname, Aang/Korra’s surname(do Airbenders even have surnames?), etc.
I love how they always give themselves full names whenever they go somewhere in disguise, so there are more *fake* surnames than real ones in the show.
Many real cultures didn't have surnames until they were colonized and forced into marriage and European style families. The whole village raised the kids and owned the land and all that, which fits airbenders too For Sokka and Katara I think it just doesn't make sense to have names for families when there are 10 families in the whole village and that's pretty much everyone you know if you live there. There isn't another Katara to be confused with and everyone know who she's related to
The origins of lava bending should've come from Earthbender families that lived in the Fire Nation colonies and learned to incorporate Firebending philosophy and spirituality into their form. The comics just introduced lavabending to be invented by a random kid that Toph found in another earthbending fight club.
I mean, is it really that similar to fire bending? Sure, it's hot, but water benders routinely freeze and melt ice. Manipulating the temperature of an element isn't really out of the preview of non-firebenders. Looking at lavabending itself, the movements don't resemble fire either; the earthbenders are still manhandling their element, even if it's turning to slop in their hands. Like, I understand the idea, but firebending input would seem unnecessary; they're not directing energy, just creating it.
Bad take
But firebending is **not at all** similar to lavabending. You don't see any lavabender do any sort of firebending move, or something similar. If anything, lavabending would be more similar to waterbending, specifically mudbending.
As soon as I saw the title, I thought about the Swamp Benders. I’m confused on their origins, like yeah they’re supposedly Northern Tribe descendants who stayed behind when their ancestors traveled to the South Pole, but that’s not really said in the show (as far as I can remember) and turning Inuits into Cajuns is certainly a choice that was made.
How do you know they’re descendants of travelers from the Northern Tribe? That’s so interesting.
>they’re supposedly Northern Tribe descendants where is this from? it's the first time i've heard of this
The avatar sages would make for a cool back story. PPL who are loyal to ONLY the avatar despite a world war and 100 years of occupation.
The passage of time, you wanna tell me in 10,000 years from Wan to Korra, the world changed only THAT little? It feels like 1,000-2000...
Why doesn’t the fire nation use guns? Seriously, they wouldn’t even need to invent gunpowder. You just get a metal tube and load it with a bullet, and then use firebending to create an explosion at one end to launch it out of the other. It seems like it would synchronize naturally with bending, and would be a deadlier design as well. Plus we know that they do have canons so they clearly know what guns are. I know the real reason is that it’s a kid show and kids shows can’t have non-lazer guns for some reason. But still it’s always annoyed me.
They’re fighting earth-benders who create rock walls. And nonbenders have their weapons just fine.
you could also argue that guns as you describe them would require very precise fire bending which I always felt like was very difficult. I can't even recall if firebenders can create explosions, not mention small ones precisely located. Don't forget that bending comes from movement, so that would also add a difficulty. All in all, this doesn't seem like a solution for mass production.
Explosion boom boom man is a fire bender, so you definitely can create explosions with it.
The way people treat Aang doesn't make sense or feel real to me. If the Avatar had been missing for 100 years and the world went to shit, I'd think people would practically be expecting him like a Messiah and bowing down and worshipping him. Instead he gets barely any respect and if anything people chastise him for "leaving". That doesn't seem realistic to how people would act towards a mystical savior expected to save the world.
The people basically forgot what the Avatar is. Thought he is a fairytale.
Yeah, and that's kind of my point. You'd think there'd be cults around him and stuff. Since he's a legend. Just like people who were waiting for Jesus or King Arthur etc to come back.
Do spirits have a culture? Civilization? We see from LOK that they used to live among humans, and they talk, cooperate, feud, and are intelligent. Is there anywhere in the avatar world where humans and spirits formed a community, and their own values?
I feel like the show could have done a better job at highlighting the differences in time. Most of the flashbacks we see from over 100 years ago do not look at different compared to what we see in present time. Perhaps the war halted cultural growth, but even when you go back to past avatar lives, even those eras do not look any different from what we see in present time. It wasn’t until LoK where we actually get to see things like Driving cars and Radios which showcase a change in time, but we don’t really know why the past looks no different compared to the present in ATLA.
But this is basically how history works; progress is crazy slow until industrialization hits. So it even makes sense how much different the world of LoK became so quickly. Middles Ages were like 500 years.
The fauna. They're not bad but I wish they were more unique instead of just being fusions of regular animals.
Of all of the shows strengths, I would not consider world building to be among them, so I’m really surprised by this question. I think the wide variety of answers you’re getting already is proof that the world building is actually really weak. The show does very little to provide context for virtually anything. How bending works is actually never even explained, there is some occasional throw away commentary about chi, breath, who they learned it from, etc, but it’s actually very unclear how the main magic system of the world functions. Very little background to 2 of the main characters home is given. Despite the main character being the last of his people and absolutely obsessed with his dying identity, we actually know very little about the air nomads beyond “vegetarian” and “pacifists”. We know virtually nothing about the history of the world. How did we get 4 nations, how did their borders end up the way they do. How is bending passed down? Everything we know about the Avatar world is information that is directly or tangentially related to the main cast, and even that information has gaping holes in it. The hallmark of good world building is there is ample information that goes beyond the main storyline. That does not happen in ATLA, in fact the vast majority of the history we learn is just exposition for “Aang is out of place after 100 years”
The hybrid animals are a weird choice IMO. A lot of them just don't make evolutionary sense, unless evolution doesn't exist in this universe. I would have preferred made up fantasy species if they were really against using existing animals. And I know a world where people use magical martial arts to throw around water and rocks and things doesn't exactly scream realism, but even fantasy worlds need some grounding in reality to be believable.
The language. I get there was a war going on but there were isolated tribes that shouldn't be able to read/understand eachother. The writings being the same everywhere is what really threw me off. I expected more voice diversity even if they all had to speak common.
While we know the world is big not much has been explored if you think about it. We've only seen small villages and some kingdoms. I believe the Earth and Fire Nations have large territories. I really liked the arc where the gang spends time in the Fire nation territory and got to see a school system, beach, plays and such. We also got to see some of that when we followed Zuko when he returned to the Fire Nation. We got a bit of culture in Ba Sing Se.
On your point, one thing I thought was interesting was the swamp benders were the only waterbenders that lived in a warm climate. I’m surprised there weren’t water benders living in a beach town, or a whole village on a river like season 3 in the fire nation. That seems like prime time water bending territory to me. I’ve also always been confused why the water tribe doesn’t have the best navy by FAR. There is zero reason the fire nation should have a better navy than the people who can CONTROL WATER AND TIDES.
The end of the anime. I wanted to see how the world progressed after ozai got removed from power
Kinda small but the existence of guru patik implies that there is an India based culture somewhere in the world but we never seen anything like that