Not Quite Normal

In The Storm, we cut from a flashback about Aang’s life with the Air Nomads to Zuko’s life in the Fire Nation. We get an entire episode just about him in Zuko Alone. We watch him steal food for refugees with Jet in The Serpent’s Pass while the Gaang escort more refugees through the titular pass. He learns how to redirect lightning while Toph teaches Aang earthbending in Bitter Work. He and Aang learn about their predecessors’ shared past together in the perfectly named episode The Avatar and The Fire Lord. During The Day of Black Sun, we jump between Aang reach the beginning of the end of his journey and Zuko beginning on his newly chosen path as the Avatar’s ally.

Every step of Zuko’s journey is in tandem with Aang’s, right from the first episode. He’s learning and growing right there alongside the Gaang, even when they’re miles apart. Him and Aang doing the Dancing Dragon in The Firebending Masters is the culmination of three seasons worth of buildup. Two young men who were once enemies become allies, as Zuko restores firebending’s true spirit and Aang overcomes the last thing holding him back from his full potential.

It was the failings of the Avatar and the Fire Lord that started the war, and it’s the successes of the new Avatar and the new Fire Lord that ends it.

And my manager was like no!!!! If that happened, I would drive to find you guys in my truck and we could eat stuff from my wife's garden and I would make sure everyone I know survived!! I would carry you all on my shoulders away from the zombies!!

The idea that societal collapse exposes mankind’s true nature ignores one thing: society IS mankind. We make it, just by being around each other. Social mores and customs aren’t arbitrary rules inflicted on us by some unseen force, they’re our own behaviors and views. We say please and thank you because we want to be kind. We establish charities because we want to help others. We set up garbage cans because we want to be clean. We’re the ones setting the standards and frowning at the people who don’t rise to meet them. We’re the ones who are appalled by the cruelties in our history.

In a film market so thoroughly oversaturated with Oscar bait and lowest-common-denominator nothing burgers, criticizing the movies people actually enjoy screams of the kind of pedantic snobbery that birthed current Hollywood’s postmodernist cynicism.

I did not check myself before posting, but it's from the Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 1, pages 683–685 (International Publishers, 1975), and accessible online at the Marxist Internet Archive here:

he doesn’t start hugging her back till the end of book 1 and even in book 2 he’s still thrown off by her cheek kisses. every time she initiates a new type of physical interaction, he has a confused or surprised reaction. the one time he initiates a hug is in the serpent’s pass after he initially rejected katara’s hug from earlier. in book 3, he initiates more physical interactions but it still doesn’t add up to the amount of times katara has in total. outside of katara, the only other time i can think of him reaching out to to touch someone is toph when he held her hand because she was feeling vulnerable.

even when i think of the flashbacks, i don’t really recall him getting a hug from gyatso or anyone. obviously the circumstances in the flashbacks are a bit tense but in general, the air nomads don’t seem to be that big on physical affection among friends or even pupils and teachers. gyatso gives him a pat on the head and that seems to be pretty much it when it comes to physical contact. the only being he hugs freely and consistently is appa 😭

anyway it’s just interesting to me to think of aang coming from a community of free-spirited monks and nuns who were not keen on too much touching and affection, being with katara, who comes from a culture or at least a family that hug and embrace each other whenever they feel like it. katara gets a hug from gran-gran, she hugs sokka’s annoying ass sometimes and he gives her a kiss on the cheek when he’s feeling particularly affectionate even if she gets the ick. plus, the water tribe is the only culture where the official greeting between people meeting for the first time includes physical contact.

individually, katara initiates platonic physical interactions with several characters to suggest that this is also just a part of her personality even if aang is definitely the one she likes to be affectionate with the most, let’s be clear!

When we see them in flashbacks, the monks do seem to be rather hands off. They bow, they beckon, they wave, and they even play tricks with airbending (or at least Aang and Gyatso do), but we don’t really see much physical interaction.

The Southern Water Tribe, meanwhile, seems to be much more free with physical affection. The greet each other by grasping forearms, hugs and nudges are pretty common, and one warrior even greets Sokka at Chameleon Bay by giving him a noogie.