#avatar cycle

Michael Dante DiMartino:

"In answer to your first question, our version of reincarnation is probably most similar to the Buddhist view. Wikipedia’s explanation is more eloquent than I can muster up at the moment: “At the death of one personality, a new one comes into being, much as the flame of a dying candle can serve to light the flame of another. The consciousness in the new person is neither identical to nor entirely different from that in the deceased but the two form a causal continuum or stream.” This is how I view the different Avatar’s personalities. They are definitely linked, but each has his or her own personality. The constant is Raava’s spirit which moves from lifetime to lifetime with each incarnation."

[source]

In other words, a different body powered by the same soul, does that make the reincarnated Avatar into the Ship of Theseus kind of paradox?

Air, they are practically revered as the best; generally, we only hear praise about Yangchen, and Aang ended a hundred-year war.

Water, they are the worst. For quite some time, Kuruk was presented to us as lazy and careless. Korra faced countless problems and is blamed by others for destroying the world, as far as we know.

Earth, Kyoshi appears to be loved except by that small pro-dictator town. We don't know much about Pavi yet, but her design looks sweet, and we could assume she'll be focused on uniting the people of a shattered world or something similar, something she could be loved for, or at least restoring people's belief in the Avatar.

Fire, We only have Roku and Szeto, and their lives seemed to be largely defined by their nation. Szeto focused on his people's politics, while Roku couldn't prevent them from starting a war.

Until we have more examples, the last two are mostly speculation, but we could say that this pattern arises from a cycle.

Air has to deal with problems that lead them to be revered once they are resolved, and their mistakes are not held against them much. Water is seen as deficient compared to its predecessor and is mostly recognized for its mistakes. Earth provides a visible solution to its predecessor's problems, which grants it enough love from the people for Fire to focus on problems with its own nation, but these lead to the problems that Air will have to face, and so the cycle begins again.

so the avatar cycle goes “water, earth, fire, air”, right?

like each full cycle starts with water, ends with air

but does avatar wan count as a fire avatar since he learned fire first?

if that were the case, since he’s the first avatar, the cycle would actually begin with fire and end with earth, right?

WHICH IS IT?!!!?!!?!

How the FUCK does the avatar not pass on to the next person despite them saying the next avatar is born the second the last one dies

https://youtu.be/cs95gaAK7io?feature=shared

So I pulled out an old FanFic I wrote four years ago and decided to continue it. (The POWER of people commenting on older fics at work!) Link to story on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25475605?view_full_work=true

It's my take on the Avatar!Zuko troupe. My muse was wondering how many Avatars I could cram between Aang and Zuko. And when I got back to working on it I wanted a visual of the line of Avatar's behind Zuko... So.. I made this.