atla jon
(link back to the list)
ethnically southern water tribe and earth kingdom. grandma was from the southern water tribe, and during the southern water tribe raids was all āyeah no this shit aint getting betterā and left with her kids to for a chance at better opportunities. yes this is an allegory to immigrant stories that is pretty much the story i gave jonās grandma in the normal universe what about it
all her kids left to try their chances at better opportunities in the earth kingdom than what was with her. except one of her kids! who turned out to be jonās dad. he met some girl, they had jon, died before jon could remember, and jonās grandma raised him, all that shenanigan
average jon upbringing except with a war raging in the background. crucially, his grandmother wants him to stay out of it. all that nonsense is for the soldiers. she didnāt move to the earth kingdom and uproot her whole life just for her descendants to die in a meaningless war. one that has raged since even she was young and shows no signs of stopping. just keep your head down and do your best to make a living (either way, the war affects them. it affects everyone. there is no escaping the war no matter how much you try. it seeps into every aspect of life. but keeping your head down and making do is better than becoming another number added to the death toll. alive and complacent is better than defiant and dead, or worse)
so jon grows up. he becomes a scholar and leaves for better opportunities, just like his grandma and her children did before him. but. heres the thing. hes not a nonbender
he learned he was a waterbender when he was young. his grandma make sure to stamp out any delusions of grandeur before they could surface with tales of the southern water tribe raids. she never taught him how to use his bending (itās not like she knew how to, she was a nonbender) and only encouraged basic practical stuff (getting a fish like katara did in the first ep, filling up buckets, keeping dry, etc.) so jonās just a scholar who happens to do really basic waterbending
but heres the thing. jonās a dreamer. as much as he tries to deny it and fill his head with cold hard facts and practicality, there is no denying his love for shit like art and and dreaming. hes not pursuing it. but heās definitely thinking about it
so back to the now. jon, a random earth kingdom scholar with no connections to his water tribe heritage aside from his (now deceased) grandma, his physical features, and his bending. everything he has been taught says he should stay back and not stir things up. but he has potential. he has waterbending, which can be dangerous and eyebrow raising, but itās something he can do. something that gives him power to take action if he hones it. so. what does he do?
