zutaras-where-its-at:

bulletproofteacup:

legendofkatara:

I always thought this scene was so many kinds of messed up. They are making fun of a twelve year old monk for not wanting to kill someone. 

A+ to Katara for being the only one who cares enough about Aang’s feelings to be clearly upset by it. 

Honestly,  I love this scene.  It illustrates the gaping chasm that exists between Aang and his friends. We always write Aang off as simply a lighthearted character,  but often forget the privilege of his upbringing.

I say upbringing in the sense that Aang grew up in a peaceful time.

His friends did not.

Ozai represents the fear and pain and suffering that robbed them of their youth. Avatar is very lighthearted, but the suffering can hardly be ignored. Sokka and katara lost a mother and grew up in a rickety village on it’s last legs. Suki was imprisoned. .realistically this would not have been pretty for a girl. At best, she lived in fear of her life, her comrades, and the safety of her people. Toph perhaps had the most sheltered upbringing,  but I’m sure she saw thing and suffered the knowledge that her people were slowly being subdued.  Zuko grew up in fear of his own father–he was shitty enough if his own kid wanted him dead.

So this scene is screwed up ,but it also demonstrates how different Aang is. How naive and innocent.  He’s seen enough suffering since he emerged from the iceberg, but not enough to lose all his beliefs. 

I personally think Ozai needed to die, but this scene perfectly illustrates where everybody stands and why.

It also shows how easily black and white become grey. It’s irrefutable that Ozai is evil and that the Gaang is good; nobody would oppose that statement. However, you see the clash of good and evil here.

Aang represents the total righteous side of a hero, the side that stands for every life as a life, and for the extinguishing of a life as purely bad.

The others represent how murder and death are not subject to just the evil side. The others represent how the killing of one can save the lives of many. In their goodness, sometimes they must do an evil act to achieve justice.

This is where the ingenuity of the writers comes through. In a very subtle way, they show the ideals of a cartoon show to the truth of a very harsh reality we all live in. We all root for Aang, and we all recognize that he is being noble and honorable, but we are also uncomfortable because we are forced to question the deeper moral dilemma of a situation. We are forced to pick a side between two groups of “good” people, and wonder whether one side is more right than the other.

War is never black and white, and I think ATLA does a fantastic job of showing that.