marbleglove (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
marbleglove) wrote2010-07-13 11:19 am
marbleglove) wrote2010-07-13 11:19 am
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philosophical plot-bunny: The Last Airbender
Despite the epic casting fail that was The Last Airbender, I went to see the movie. And, wow, the casting bit was not the only failure involved. Nonetheless, I actually enjoyed the experience once I realized that it's not a movie in the traditional sense. It's sort of like a retelling of the actual movie (which would be about twelve hours long, have actors that can act, and plot development that actually works.) The plot of that movie is sort of summarized by the movie that I went to see with a combination of voice-over narration and random monologues in which characters describe their entire backstories. And the movie I saw really made me want to watch the movie that it should have been.
In the quest for the movie that should have been, I decided that I should probably actually watch some of the original animated series. I watched several episodes and confirmed that while, yes, it is a very good cartoon, I am, alas, not part of their target audience anymore. My days of being fully satisfied by cartoons aimed at the six to twelve-year-old audience.
Thus, moving on to fanfiction, I was fairly disappointed by the selection. There simply aren't that many good fanfic writers for a series with a target audience that young. Sigh. However, I did find Embers by Vathara. She's an excellent writer and I recommend pretty much all and any of her writing. Go and see what coolness she hath wrought. However, this particular story of hers goes oddly extreme in it's apologist writing for the fire nation in its later chapters. That made me think:
Let us consider The Avatar (the main character of Avatar: The Last Airbender.) The current avatar is 12-years-old but he is the reincarnation of the whole line of avatars going way back. The avatar has control of all four elements (air, water, earth, and fire) unlike the other benders in this universe who can only control one each. The avatar brings balance to the world and is insanely powerful. The implication is that The Avatar is inherently good.
What if The Avatar wasn't?
Consider:
The Avatar is insanely powerful with control of all four elements. Which ever side of a war he is on, is the one that's going to win. (This is true of The Avatar, not just Aang, our current incarnation.) So, his history is always, always, always told by the victors who he helped. He's not good because he's good; he's good because the people who survive are the ones who like him and the ones who don't like him don't survive.
None of the monks who raised Aang (current Avatar) thought this through, though, and just told Aang that he was inherently good. Aang ran way before claiming his role as The Avatar because he was beginning to realize that he doesn't automatically know what's right. He's going through his teenage years trying to figure out a proper moral code to live by (and to make others live by) when all of his allies seem to think he doesn't need one. They tell him that anything he randomly decides on the spur of the moment must be right. However, he's The Avatar and has plenty of experience to say that, no, really, it's not that easy and he's perfectly capable of messing up with some fairly severe consequences to everyone else.
Consider what happens when an essentially nice sweet kid discovers that he's powerful enough to essentially lack external boundaries, either physically or socially. No one and nothing can stop him except himself. I'd like a story that develops Aang's struggle against his allies' opinions even more than against his enemies' attacks.
In the quest for the movie that should have been, I decided that I should probably actually watch some of the original animated series. I watched several episodes and confirmed that while, yes, it is a very good cartoon, I am, alas, not part of their target audience anymore. My days of being fully satisfied by cartoons aimed at the six to twelve-year-old audience.
Thus, moving on to fanfiction, I was fairly disappointed by the selection. There simply aren't that many good fanfic writers for a series with a target audience that young. Sigh. However, I did find Embers by Vathara. She's an excellent writer and I recommend pretty much all and any of her writing. Go and see what coolness she hath wrought. However, this particular story of hers goes oddly extreme in it's apologist writing for the fire nation in its later chapters. That made me think:
Let us consider The Avatar (the main character of Avatar: The Last Airbender.) The current avatar is 12-years-old but he is the reincarnation of the whole line of avatars going way back. The avatar has control of all four elements (air, water, earth, and fire) unlike the other benders in this universe who can only control one each. The avatar brings balance to the world and is insanely powerful. The implication is that The Avatar is inherently good.
What if The Avatar wasn't?
Consider:
The Avatar is insanely powerful with control of all four elements. Which ever side of a war he is on, is the one that's going to win. (This is true of The Avatar, not just Aang, our current incarnation.) So, his history is always, always, always told by the victors who he helped. He's not good because he's good; he's good because the people who survive are the ones who like him and the ones who don't like him don't survive.
None of the monks who raised Aang (current Avatar) thought this through, though, and just told Aang that he was inherently good. Aang ran way before claiming his role as The Avatar because he was beginning to realize that he doesn't automatically know what's right. He's going through his teenage years trying to figure out a proper moral code to live by (and to make others live by) when all of his allies seem to think he doesn't need one. They tell him that anything he randomly decides on the spur of the moment must be right. However, he's The Avatar and has plenty of experience to say that, no, really, it's not that easy and he's perfectly capable of messing up with some fairly severe consequences to everyone else.
Consider what happens when an essentially nice sweet kid discovers that he's powerful enough to essentially lack external boundaries, either physically or socially. No one and nothing can stop him except himself. I'd like a story that develops Aang's struggle against his allies' opinions even more than against his enemies' attacks.