A Road Less Travelled

Warning: The following post will mostly be an excursus on where bits of my geek media have crossed. If you, or any of your friends, are among that class of people who consider themselves “normal” then there is a good chance you will be shunned and/or mocked as a geek simply for reading this post. You’ve been warned.

Sometimes, because I’m a thoughtful geek, I like to take different bits of media I enjoy and rub them up against each other just to see what happens. I’ll take this song and that movie or this movie and that book, put them next to each other and ask myself questions like “Why do I like these bits of media?”, “What do they have in common?” or “Why am I rubbing this CD against a book?”. It’s weird what comes out of those conversations with myself. Other times a comparison will pop into my head fully formed. I’ll be talking to someone who’s got a kinda glazed look about a story I’ve been thinking about or a character that I connected with and all of a sudden I’ll think “It’s just like that thing over there!” And it always amuses me to see what gets connected.

So, I recently got hooked on a Nickelodeon show called Avatar: The Last Airbender. It’s supposedly a kid’s show, but I watched a couple of episodes with the kids and found way more depth than I was expecting or they were appreciating. And then I oh so casually went to the library and got out all every DVD in the first season. I’m onto the second season and really mad that our branch didn’t have the fourth disc. They’d better have it next week or I’m gonna have to track down who got it out, go to their house and rip it apart ’til I find it. Not that I’m hooked or anything.

So, in a fantastical world that remains nameless the people are divided up according to the classical elements. You have the Fire Nation, the Earth Kingdom, the Water Tribes and the Air Nomads. Each element has a certain culture associated with it loosely based on various Oriental cultures. In each culture are those called Benders who are able to use and control their people’s element. It’s basically elemental magic, but don’t tell anyone I said that. The bending effects are really cool cause the bending is done like a martial art. So sometimes it’s like a wuxia fight, but with the ground opening up, fireballs, water whips, or miniature tornadoes. I totally geek out on that sort of thing.

Balance between the elements is preserved by the Avatar, a person from one element who is able to master all four elements. He keeps the peace between the peoples and when he dies he is reincarnated into the next element in the cycle. The current Avatar is a twelve-year-old Airbender named Aang.

So the Fire Nation starts getting uppity and everyone looks to the Avatar to keep order, but he’s freaked out about being the Avatar and vanished. One hundred years pass.

Aang is found encased in ice by a brother and sister of the Water Tribe living at the South Pole. The war of Fire Nation aggression has been going strong for the past hundred years and slowly but surely the world is falling to their might. Aang realizes he needs to step up and be the Avatar, but before he can take on the Fire Nation he needs to learn the other three elements. So he, Katara and Sokka set off on Aang’s six-legged, giant, flying bison named Appa (I am not making this up) to travel around and have adventures, I mean, go to the North Pole so he can learn Water bending.

It’s an odyssey story. You have a very unprepared character who’s kinda goofy and delighted with everything he sees preparing to step into his role and save the world. You’ve got Katara of the Water Tribe who’s a Water bender looking for a master and gaining in strength and power as the show goes on. And then there’s Sokka, Katara’s brother, who is very, very normal. Oh, I see, I said to myself, It’s just like Buffy the Vampire Slayer!

See, there’s the main character who’s a mystical creature carrying the strength and power of those who’ve gone before, but who personality-wise remains completely untouched by it. There’s the staunch, down-to-earth friend who starts out useful and only grows in power as the series goes on. Then there’s the final character who’s goofy, ordinary, comic relief and the heart of the group. Plus each season is basically episodic with a running through line that ties things together from episode to episode.

So now that I’ve figured out how this cast of characters is practically one and the same I need to figure out what about this grouping speaks to me so much. What is it about the whimsical and funny reincarnation of a being of great power that holds my attention? Why is the best friend/almost-sidekick so important? And why would the whole group fall apart without the average, ordinary guy? Maybe I’ll go rub the Avatar DVDs against the season of Buffy I own and see what happens.