Week 6 Story: Storybook Research

In my first storybook research post I dove into the origins of the east Asian mythology that inspired several of the spirits in Avatar: The Last Airbender.  However, this time I wanted to do more research on the origins of the spirit characters as told in the Avatar universe by their writers.  I found that there was tons of official information that wasn't officially in the series that I didn't even know existed.  The writers have written books and backstories about future and previous avatars aside from our current protagonist Aang.  Several of these avatars had recurring encounters with various spirits who they fought or made peace with in their lifetimes.  For example, one of the characters I was going to write about was the lion turtle.  These are supposed to parallel the great "world turtles" in Chinese and Hindu mythology.  In the Avatar universe, these turtles not only held civilizations on their backs, but also granted humans with the powers of an elements when they left their homes for hunting or other ventures into the wild. Before the elements were able to be passed down through genetics, it first avatar had to personally obtain all the different elements from their respective "world turtles."  

Centuries later, the current avatar struggles to go against his nomadic beliefs to kill a merciless dictator in order to end an 100 year war.  At the climax of the plot, the last remaining lion turtle, now deserted of human life, grants him the ability to remove the power of the elements from an individual.  This allows Aang to end the war while preserving his culture and integrity (I always thought this was an oversimplified solution, but for the sake of a kid's show I think they portrayed genocide and different system of government like theocracy and absolute and confederate monarchy really well).  It also turns out that the last lion turtle was also the lion turtle that granted the very first avatar his first element!  The origin stories of the avatar are actually much more detailed, and a lot more happened with the lion turtle and ending the war, but that was just a simplified version of what happened!  

I actually got this backstory from the sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender, called the Legend of Korra, which follows the story of the next avatar after Aang dies.  

Avatar: The Last Airbender - Book 3, Episode 19 - Where Aang meets the Lion Turtle

Avatar: Legend of Korra - Book 2, Episode 7 & 8 -  Origin stories of lion turtles and the first Avatar

The Forbidden City in Beijing (2012), architectural inspiration for the City of Ba Sing Se, Source