Just about every joke in Avatar: The Last Airbender is peak comedy but conceptually my favorite moment is that scene in The Waterbending Scroll where Zuko’s crew was fighting some pirates and Aang was lost in the middle of a smoke cloud.
Now, Aang being an Airbender, the logical thing to do would be to blow the smoke away, which he does.
This would be funny enough in and of itself, but what really gets me is that Aang just nopes his way out of the situation by… Calling the smoke back?
Like on top of this being the literal only instance of an aerokinetic character blowing smoke away in reverse (not the same thing as kicking up a cloud of dust) just… everyone who was fighting just goes back to fighting each other like that didn’t just happen? Like they didn’t just see the Avatar- who they’re fighting over- is no longer tied up?
This five seconds of animation is just the most beautifully hilarious mess.
my mom is 61 and her bf is a huge nerd and he’s teaching her to play magic the gathering and he had her watch avatar the last airbender with him and his ringtone is terra’s theme from final fantasy 6 and he paints pictures of sephiroth. my mom’s bf is nerdier than i’ll ever be.
and she does all these pinterest crafts and now she makes little bejeweled vials of healing potions for him and his buddies. my little geek heart can’t handle all this.
edit: just picture a 60-something woman with a VERY thick minnesotan accent saying “mike is having me watch the naruto”
Whenever I look back on the early episodes of Avatar: the Last Airbender, I realize that Iroh was probably acting a little ridiculous on purpose. He knows that Zuko still has fresh emotional wounds from his cruel, uncompromising father and sadistic sister, and the one source of softness and warmth in his life, his mother, is long gone. Iroh always tried to be a friend to Zuko, but now that his nephew has been scarred and banished, he tries to be goofy and funny and carefree so desperately hard because all he wants is for Zuko to smile and relax again. If making a fool out of himself is what he has to do, he’d do it a hundred times over.
Actually, there’s a reason for this. The human brain interprets round shapes as friendly, and the color yellow is associated with happiness and energy. So this design basically reads, “I’m a happy friend!” Its basically the most non threatening design you can have, which makes sense, even for Krillin and Saitama.
I officially have a head-cannon that Sokka was meant to the next Avatar. Why? Because I really the like the idea!!!
You don’t have to like it but i think its cool
A bit more explanation…
We all know that after Air, Water comes next. Hence Korra.
But we also know Aang disappeared for a 100 years. So technically if he had lived his natural lifespan, never went into the ice, and lived anywhere to be like 80 something years old. A good long lifetime, (Avatar Roku lived to be 70 but Kyoshi lived to be 230 years old. In the show Aang lived close to age 70 but a different life means a different ending)
There’s a good chance someone else would’ve been the next Avatar, not Korra.
But because Aang didn’t die when he should’ve the person that was REALLY meant to be the next Avatar didn’t get to fulfill their destiny.
What if this person was Sokka.
Why not Sokka?
Sokka who is still the same Sokka. Except for this one, he always thought he was normal. Until… he didn’t. And argument with Katara causes both of their powers to unleash a giant explosion.
Not long after Sokka is told he’s the next Avatar
This image is pretty much Sokka all through Headcannon Book 1.
Everyone keeps their storylines.
Katara is super powerful Waterbender sister. They would’ve learned together.
Zuko would’ve still hunted him down
He still would’ve met Toph.
Aang, before he died, would’ve put as many Airbenders underground as possible where the Fire Nation couldn’t find them. Maybe had kids of his own. Grandchildren. One of which would’ve help Sokka learn his abilities.
Zuko would’ve had the same story arc/
So again, why not Sokka.
Sokka who had the ability to master all four non-bending fighting styles from each nation. Sokka who had the ability to adapt no matter where he was and learn from everyone around him and grow.
Sokka who can honestly say he once dated the MOON!
Sokka was legitimately was of the most badass character of the show.
Even Azula instinctively knew Sokka was a threat.
Honestly, I understand that Sokka went through a shit ton of character development and became great over time. But…
For my headcannon, I think that Sokka always had this power inside of him waiting to be tapped into and unleashed… His Avatar state
But because Aang never kicked the bucket, Sokka could never reach it so instead it manifested in other ways.
Been experiencing two polar thoughts about this scene…
1. There is no way Sokka is expecting to win this battle. He is the one and only warrior left in the village, about to face down a Fire Nation ship all by himself. Sokka has been the epitome of bravery since the very beginning.
2. Sokka can’t draw worth shit, and yet he sure can perfectly apply war paint on himself without even so much as a mirror aksdflj
Like I feel like the show is more blatant in the “Katara had to grow up too young after the murder of her mother” but…Sokka’s loss of innocence is also present in the show in shit like this, and his discussions with Piandao where we see this contradiction between the kid and the warrior and that need to protect his family and his diminished self-worth
Like how many times do you think he mimicked dad’s warpaint, knowing one day it would be him donning that?
How many nights has he spent going over the worst possible scenarios and planning for how he’d keep the people he loved safe?
Like. He’s able to apply warpaint but not draw because he too lost his chance at living a normal childhood and just. dude all the kids in this show have so much trauma it’s unreal
And as we see in the flashback to when his father left…
It’s unlikely that his father helped him apply that. Sokka’s been perfecting his warpaint since he was thirteen (at most).
And he’s been doing it on his own. One of the most poignant things about the scene above in which he’s preparing for battle is how alone he is. (This is reinforced by the scene’s juxtaposition with Zuko not having to lift a finger while his men deck him out in armor–highlighting the differences in these boys’ backgrounds and resources.) Sokka has no mentor or support system as he takes on this role that someone his age should never have to shoulder, and he’s having to figure it out all by himself. As (understandably) awkward as his early attempts to be a warrior are, it never occurs to him to do any less than take this responsibility seriously. His father and the other men aren’t there, so he basically has to stand in for all of them. Alone. At age thirteen.
Like all of it, and yes, this makes it clear sokka has practiced his warpaint before, since before even his father left.
That’s the part that makes me a little sad about how much fans make fun of Sokka’s drawing abilities.
In his village, I find it very unlikely Sokka would have regular access to paper or anything to draw on for fun, I suspect after he leaves the south pole that the drawings we see are him drawing seriously for the first time at 15.
Like we know both Katara and Sokka read and write so they had practice with writing but I doubt there were as many chances to draw, and it also isn’t something Sokka would have considered worth his time, because he was concerned with doing everything he could to protect his village as the only warrior left. He didn’t care about fun activities growing up, obviously he’s still a kid but we can see with how seriously he takes himself when he’s in the south pole that’s not something he would have valued enough to spend his time on even if he had the chance, and I doubt he did.
I think Sokka is actually an incredible artist, in exactly the same way he’s an incredible swordsman, not that he’s instantly good at it. But that he has the creativity and the passion and the dedication that makes him amazing.
Sokka puts so much of himself into his art, sometimes very literally, with stamping his own face on the page. But he puts his heart into it, he adds rainbows where they weren’t before and lets Suki firebend and he doesn’t give up just because people, or even himself, will think he’s no good at it.
I think as Sokka gets more and more chances to practice his art through his life he’ll certainly refine his technical skill, as everyone does. But Sokka’s true artistic merit is in the way he sees the world and makes it his own.
Cat in the summer meadow, 1920 - Bruno Liljefors (Swedish, 1860-1939)
