#avatar cycle

What I mean by that is that as a result, the Avatar is never under pressure to have children due to that status. They can be gay, ace, or just otherwise not have biological children, and it wouldn’t matter because the Avatar Cycle will continue anyways. And their children don’t inherit any of their Avatar-ness either, they’re just normal Benders. So the Avatar is free to love whoever they want and have children entirely by choice

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.

kyoshi pops up for suki’s birthday. and spars with her and toph. probably ends up adopting toph (she’s wanted to do that since the blind bandit episode)

szeto and sokka harmonise the fire lord anthem.

iroh v kuruk pai sho. the game lasts three days and no, they haven’t slept at all.

roku wanders around the palace gardens sighing. he feeds the turtle ducks with zuko and azula.

Some throwback digital art from my archive. It was a lot of fun to paint Korra with Raava some years ago.

I have been a big fan of Avatar since its first broadcast and love the connection between Raava and Korra and the story behind it.

Like Aang, an airbender. Airbenders are the ones most focused on spirit realms, however Aang's biggest achievements are building the Republic city and ending the war, both kinda materialistic goals (like one would expect from Earth bender, since Earthbenders are more about materialistic things, rocks and so on, and so on.)

That goes along with what (I think, I, sadly haven't read the books yet) avatar Yangchen also did. She focused on humans (and sided with them most of the time, leaving spirits angry) and ending wars as well as mentioning peace. Could be seen as materialistic.

And now with the new movie: as I see it, avatar Sonam's most prominent tasks were to establish peace. And how did she do that? By making a staff and creating new air benders. And when that heavily backfired, she sent the airbenders to the mountains. So she left her handprints on the relocation (building a new space for air nomads - materialistic) and creating

So I'm saying: materialistic legacy (even if it's kinda funny, that air NOMADS are the one in this category. But that just proves that avatars are not there as a representative of just one nation but of all the people. Or something).

As far as I know, both avatars from the Fire nation mostly focused (or what we know about their time) about inner politics. Szeto is said to be the first one to lava bend and to focus on internal stability and politics. Avatar Roku is mostly known (even if he did a lot of things!) in the Fire nation court as well (and shown as he is trying to stop his friend from the war), which could also be said to be inner politics and ensuring stability.

It could be: political engagement legacy. Or something.

And what about avatar Kyoshi? Well, she did a lot of things but what lasted from her time are Kyoshi warriors and Dai Li. Both are human groups that were established by her and survived centuries doing the same (or almost the same) thing as in the beginning.

So: human group legacy.

(I also want to note, that she had a problem with who the true avatar is. And something (not really but) a little similar is happening in the new avatar: seven heavens... Just a note.)

Then there is Korra, a waterbender first and foremost. And what does she focus on? The spirit world (bcs she kinda has to, but still). That should be the airbenders expertise, right?

And avatar Gun (if I remember correctly) lost his friend in a tsunami and vanished for some time. When he reappeared, he was cynical and deemed the humanity undeserving of the constant saving. So he sided with the spirits, one could say... But we don't really know that much.

And that's the same with Avatar Kuruk with his heavy focus on the spirit world.

Therefore: spirit world legacy.

Let me put it in less words:

Air - material legacy

Fire - inner politics focus

Earth - organisations legacy (because there's really no one else to compare Kyoshi to :C)

Water - spirit world focus.

And now, let me link it to the elements. Air is all about freedom, movement and the spiritual world in my opinion (I kinda need to rewatch AATLA...). But they leave behind buildings, structures and so on to PRESERVE the culture or create a new one. A little bit of paradox there.

On the other hand, water is about healing (as I see it, again...) and the known avatars focus on healing the spiritual world (or so is my interpretation).

And that leaves me with this idea:

Water is the opposite of air.

Sure, it could be mainly because water focuses on the issues air causes right before but shhhh. Let me continue.

Air, in its core, is all about redirecting energy, about taking a stone and with a wind making its path different. It's fluid and all about flow.

And so is water, flow and fluidness. But the philosophical core is about containing the blow of water, embracing it and then changing the ENTIRE flow. Not redirecting it, but standing strong and changing it as it goes.

So air avatars instead of completely changing the present instead try to build something, preserve it. Just redirect it a little bit. But water avatars try to change the world by changing the spiritual energy. You can change humans, but they will forget the lessons in a few generations. But changing the spiritual world? Spirits will remember it forever. They absorb the blow that the spiritual world is in disorder, and completely shift the flow of how it goes.

But what about fire and earth?

Let's start with earth, because it goes right after water. It's very similar to water with the philosophy of enduring the blow. But instead of redirecting it, earth creates another one to destroy the previous one. No redirections, just creation.

It makes sense, for Kyoshi to create a new group to deal with the issues in the human world. She created a permanent human organisation, that will withstand blows and endure for centuries. And she had to do it, because the world needed human connections after so much spirit work.

And now, fire. Fire is similar to air and earth as well. Fire doesn't absorb blows, no. On this front, it's similar to air. It uses speed. And then they strike. That's the similarity with earth, they want to overwhelm the enemy with the attack. The strike.

So they impose new rules, choose how the kingdoms are going to be ruled and burn the corrupt structures off (that's where Avatar Roku failed sadly). After the cycle of earth avatars trying to do things outside of the inner politics of kingdoms and such, the fire avatars need to focus on the inner structures and change it from within, not from the outside. They can't absorb the blow, they can just dodge (like air) and then attack directly.

And that leads us back to air, air that needs to focus on preserving the culture from being wiped out, so it can outlast political chaos. Culture and traditions are neglected by the fire avatars mostly. There is almost always some war for the air avatar to clean up (due to inner politics not being stable as fire is not stable also? Maybe.) and restore the peace.

OFC, there are a lot of other styles and so on, but every element can have styles inspired by others and so on. There is no element that can't benefit from learning about others. There's a lot to talk about each and every element and to compare them and so on and on... But I would like to stop for now.

Alas, I believe the new avatar: seven heavens will be about creating long lasting human organisation and structures. But who knows, maybe not (kinda hard thing for two kids to do).