Sometimes I think about the fact that there is exactly one time that we hear someone express surprise at the fact that Aang–the Avatar– and his companions are children. And it’s in the second episode, from Zuko:
From an out-of-universe perspective, this makes sense. And it wasn’t something that surprised me when I was a ten-year-old in 2005 when A:tLA first aired. One of the tenants, I think, of adventure children’s television is that there is a degree of wish fulfillment. Children want to be taken seriously as agents, and so it makes sense from that vantage point, that everyone takes the Gaang seriously as agents except the person portrayed as an antagonist.
But, I think this also makes sense, heart-breakingly and unlike other children’s adventure television, from an in-universe perspective. This is a world ravaged by bloody, bloody war for a hundred years. A world in which child soldiers are commonplace. We see countless examples of this throughout the series:
When we meet Sokka–fifteen-years-old and in-charge of security for his village–he is training small children to be soldiers. This is played off as something of a laugh, but if Aang hadn’t returned in the second episode, I think we’re supposed to think that Sokka very much would have tried to lead these little boys into battle.
Jet and the Freedom Fighters, who practice guerrilla warfare (fairly successfully) and regularly raid Fire Nation outposts, are children. Jet, who I think we are supposed to assume is one of the eldest of the group, is sixteen when he dies (according to the Avatar wiki).
The Kyoshi Warriors are one of the elite-most fighting force in Avatar World, eventually taken seriously by the Earth Kingdom military and given military jobs. And the general of the Kyoshi Warriors, Suki, and the eldest member of the group (again according to the Avatar wiki) is fifteen. She can’t have always been the eldest member. I’m willing to bet the older women are sent off to war, and Suki becomes the eldest member and the leader by default. (Much like Sokka–probably why they connect so well).
In Zuko, Alone, the soldiers in the village threaten to send Lee off to join the army at the front, and based on the mother’s reaction, and what we see of him when he’s tied up, this doesn’t seem like an empty threat, and it’s probably not the first time this has happened to children in the Earth Kingdom in villages like these.
I could go on.
So of course, after living in a world of child soldiers like these, no one is going to bat an eyelash to learn that the Avatar–perhaps the ultimate non-Fire Nation soldier–is twelve-years old, and his companions aren’t much older. When Aang starts to bring this up himself to Yue, for instance, Yue doesn’t seem to understand. He’s the Avatar, he has to save them, she insists. Who cares if he’s a child?
But the Fire Nation Army isn’t filled with child soldiers. It doesn’t need them. Fire Nation children are in school. It is adults that make up the Fire Nation Army.
And, (with the exception of Azula and her gang), when we do see a Fire Nation child attempting to take on the role of an adult member of the military, he isn’t taken seriously. (E.g. Zuko, and the way Zhao brushes him off.)
So of course it is only Zuko, who grew up in the absolute center of the Fire Nation, and, though he is banished, hasn’t really seen much of the reality of the war until he meets Aang, that looks at the Avatar and remarks in surprise that he is a child.
(If anyone is interested, I wrote a fic that deals with a lot of these themes. It can be found here.)
1. Iroh hasn’t seen his nephew since he left to lead the siege of Ba Sing Se more than eight years ago, more than half of Zuko’s life. Zuko disappeared from court to train as a combustion bender before Iroh returned. He has no idea what the boy even looks like anymore. But still when Pakku sends word to him asking if he knows who the young man captured by the Northern Water Tribe who tried to defend the moon could be, Iroh knows it has to be Zuko and he sneaks away from court to go find his nephew and rescue him.
2. Zuko is well treated in the North, kept in a pleasant room with good food and a comfortable bed, much more comfortable than his own quarters back in the Fire Temple, or on Zhao’s ship. He stood against his own people to defend the moon, and if he had succeeded, the Northern Princess would have lived. If he were to ask for asylum, he would have it without question. But he doesn’t speak. He has a vow of silence, but he knows that’s only an excuse. He can’t even begin the process of finding the words to say, or any words at all.
3. He is visited often by the Avatar and his companions. At first Arnook hopes that children his own age will draw the strange young man out of his shell and get him talking, but to no avail. He remains stubbornly silent.
4.Yet Aang continues to come. With his shaved head and third eye tattoo, he reminds the young Avatar of his own people, and even though he knows this resemblance is illusory, that the firebender is no more an Air Nomad than Katara or Sokka, or any of the other fragments of family he will gather to himself, he can’t help it. He still goes to see him every day, to talk to him, and try to make him laugh. Last week he made him smile. That’s something. A small victory. but a victory none the less.
5. A small steamboat slips past the Northern Water Tribe defenses and docks in a hidden harbor outside the fortress. The old man who enters the fortress under the cover of darkness goes straight for the home of Master Pakku, who wakes with an old friend’s hand on his shoulder, and a finger to his lips.
Ooooh, I already have one of these AUs! I wrote a drabble about Blue Spirit Aang rescuing Avatar Zuko from the Pohuai stronghold: [link]. Yes I do have three Avatar Zuko AUs.
1. Fire Prince Aang is a lot like a young general Iroh. This is one of the reasons his father hates him so much. He projects his hated older brother who he was terribly jealous of onto Aang. Anyway, this means that he’s fairly receptive to his uncle’s less treasonous wisdom, though he’s still convinced he can win Ozai’s love if he brings him the Avatar.
2. Twelve year old Zuko is one surly little airbender. He felt all angry, lost, and alone upon finding out that he’s the Avatar, and waking up in the future with his people dead did not help at all. Sokka and Katara feel bad for him, but he can be a little trying.
3. The first time Aang captured him, Zuko very solemnly agreed to go with him and when Sokka and Katara rescued him, he agonized about breaking his word.
4. When Pakku says he won’t teach Katara, Zuko yells at him and is ready to fight until Katara’s like, “No, I got this.”
5. Aang and Zhao have a special relationship that involves cutting insults from Aang with a grin on his face.
1. Ozai scorns both his children for being weak and pathetic. Much as he does in canon, he projects much of what he hates about himself onto Zuko. He also sees his hated older brother in Sozin’s attempts at cheerfulness and his flirtatiousness. While he does make some cursory attempts to set them against each other, to compete for his affection, these attempts are half-hearted at best, as he considers both his sons to be worthless.
2. Ozai instead focuses his attentions on remarrying and trying to produce an heir that way. The results are less than impressive, leading to a string of miscarriages, murders, and divorces. Yes, he is the Henry VIII of the Avatar world.
3. Meeting Jet is dicey. See Katara might be much more wary of Jet because he and Akanna’s styles of manipulation are fairly similar, or Akanna may have weakened her resistance to such manipulation. Akanna doesn’t trust him, but she also doesn’t care enough about her sister to try to protect her like Sokka does. My guess though is that Jet puts Katara’s guard up and it takes a lot more to persuade her to help. Akanna by the way doesn’t trust Jet, but she likes him, and wonders if she can use him.
4. After the fiasco at the North Pole, and with Ozai making noises about marrying again, Zuko and Sozin slip away to try their hand at capturing the Avatar themselves. They meet up with friends and make it all the way to Ba Sing Se. The four of them disguise themselves as Earth Kingdom country nobility, and run into a refugee street kid named Jet, who tries to pick their pockets. They catch him and have him arrested.
5. Look, all I’m saying is, Sozin and Zuko have a really good time conquering Ba Sing Se together with Mai and Ty Lee. It’s a bonding experience.
I’m letting Sokka and Katara keep their same names because it appears in the Southern Water Tribe at least, a endings are gender neutral.
1. Sokka is the eldest daughter of a village chief, but she is nothing special. She is one of five other teenage girls, but after her brother, the next oldest boy in the village is six. So she always has it in her mind that someday she will leave the village to find a man. It’s just the way it is. So there’s always that part of her that knows the village won’t be her home forever, but she always thought the South Pole would be. Village life is incredibly stifling for Sokka. After her mother’s death and her father’s going off to war, she has had to shoulder the moose-lion’s share of chores, and while her brother was too young to do it, the hunting as well. It’s exhausting, and neverending, and all anybody tells her is how lucky she is her brother wasn’t old enough to leave yet.
2. Katara meanwhile is the chief’s only son, and the only waterbender in the entire South Pole. He’s a catch. He also witnessed his mother’s murder, all to protect him, and responded to this and the sudden absence of his father by trying to parent his older sister. Sokka jokes that her little brother will make a good wife someday.
3. This is the world into which Aang drops. And it’s into this world that Sokka has to sneak away, because Katara is a boy, and fourteen is old enough really to leave in the eyes of the village, but why is Sokka going with him? But Katara’s glad to have him around.
4. The Kyoshi warriors are a revelation for Sokka. She has always felt miserable that she couldn’t help defend her home, that she couldn’t protect her vulnerable little brother, and here are these nonbending women warriors, who can teach her to fight, and who keep their own homes safe with or without the men. They fascinate her and thrill her, especially their leader, and if she didn’t need to keep her brother safe on the way to the North Pole, she would never leave.
5. In the North, Katara is readily trained by Pakku. It’s Sokka who is forced to come to a reckoning. It’s much easier to recognize what she had felt for Suki now that she’s feeling it for Yue too.
Cheloneuniverse 