loopy777:

lj-writes:

loopy777:

(2/2) Aang still held onto his love for Katara and they ended up
together. I’ve seen some people say that unlocking your seventh chakra
doesn’t actually mean letting go of your loved ones and stuff, that in
Aang’s case it’d mean not to prioritize his attachments over the world,
but if that’s true then a) you may call it a sacrifice, but considering
it didn’t affect Aang’s relationship with Katara at all, it certainly
doesn’t feel like one b) why did Pathik word things so poorly?

(3/3) He pretty much said “Forget about the person you love”. The more
analyses I read about that last scene in The Guru, the more contrived it
feels to me. What are your thoughts? P.S.: Just to clarify (‘cause I
was called an “Aang hater” when discussing this very same topic a few
weeks ago): I love Aang, as in, he might very well be my favourite
fictional character ever. I just want to get a better understanding of
what the writers were going for in the Book 2 finale. 

Well, even though I had a reputation (and still might, for all I know) of holding the original AtLA cartoon up on a pedestal as perfect, I think the writing around this little subplot was actually pretty bad. There’s a lot going on in the finale to Book Earth, so it’s easy to miss the nuances of Aang’s “detachment” subplot. I was always under the impression that this specific subplot is resolved at the end of Book Earth, and wouldn’t continue into Book Fire (as it turned out no to), but I’ll admit that the path to that conclusion is very shaky.

And, on top of that, of the three characters who weigh in on the subject (the Guru, Aang, and Iroh) at least one of them is completely mistaken about the subject, and the cartoon doesn’t give us any clues as to who!

But let’s see if I can offer enough of an explanation to back up my reblog.

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I think you’ve got it right, attachment =/= love. There’s also Aang’s personal history to consider: He was a young Airbender who was not deeply into his studies before his education was curtailed, and even beforehand the spiritual side of his training may have suffered from receiving Avatar training so intensively at a young age, which could have been another reason for his mentor’s unhappiness at Aang’s regimen. The guru may have assumed a higher level of knowledge than Aang actually had, thinking Aang was using the terms correctly, resulting in a misunderstanding.

I agree the whole arc was not a model of clarity, especially since Aang’s misunderstanding was a common one for the audience and should have been cleared up. This confusion may have contributed to some fans’ dissatisfaction with/misunderstanding of Aang’s arc and his romance with Katara.

Also are you finally admitting Yoda was full of crud

Yup, the Guru is shown as disappointed to find out that Aang doesn’t even know what a chakra is, and since Pathik is familiar with the Air Nomads, he clearly expected it to be part of Aang’s education.

I just wish the reply to Aang’s, “How could it be a bad thing that I feel an attachment to her?“ was at least some acknowledgement that love isn’t always an attachment. The basics of the conflict could have been preserved if the Guru simply didn’t think Aang was capable of loving without attachment, at his maturity level.

I could write a whole essay questioning when Yoda was wrong, the degrees of his various states of wrongness, and whether the storytellers believed him to be wrong at the time of production. It would be no more coherent than The Great Kataang Detachment.

No wonder Gyatso was so opposed to the way Aang was being trained, in their rush to make him battle-ready the monks weren’t even giving him the fundamentals he needed as the Avatar. There’s a slight callback here to Iroh emphasizing the basics to Zuko early in Book 1, and a clearer parallel with Katara warning Aang in Book 2 against taking shortcuts to get to the Avatar State.

I was surprised to find Attack of the Clones actually made the distinction between attachment and love through Anakin himself, of all people (audio clip):

“Attachment is forbidden.
Possession is forbidden.
Compassion, which I would define
as unconditional love…
is central
to a Jedi’s life.
So you might say that
we are encouraged to love.” 

Much like ATLA, the PT was pretty terrible about making this distinction clear and I agree we’ll never see the end of it if we start talking about Yoda being right/wrong. Still, Anakin’s line arguably foreshadows the real reason he fell–not because of love, but because he failed to love Padmé unconditionally. Because he was willing to mistreat her unless she complied with him to soothe his fears, and unless she overlooked the terrible things he had done. His desire to control and possess overwhelmed his love, and that was why he fell. This was arguably also the foundation for his choosing to follow Luke back, when he realized he was wrong and saved Luke despite his defiance of his wishes.