Five Things You May Not Have Known About Avatar.

January 8, 2013

avataraang:
1. The animators think they are well funny and original.
That’s right people. In perhaps one of the most important and climatic scenes of the show where Aang becomes a fully realized Avatar, some overworked and underpaid person though it would be hilarious for the word ‘GAY’ to appear in the receding water.
2. Toph gets in everyone’s pants, no matter the version of ATLA.
A quite well known piece of Avatar trivia, but important none the less. Toph was originally designed as a dude. Her character in Ember Island Players references both her personality and alludes back to her original character plans.
But what a lot of people don’t know is that Toph was also originally a love interest for Katara. Early production notes state that Toph was supposed to complicate the Aang/Katara romance because Katara develops feelings for Toph and Aang gets a bit jealous. But then Toph was switched to a girl and everything changed.
Totally different.
3. Iroh was freed and had weird sexual chemistry with multiple Grand Slam winner Serena Williams.
Remember that nice prison guard who showed compassion towards Iroh?
Voiced by sporting megastar and all round HBIC, Serena Williams.
4. Nickelodeon will never ever learn from their mistakes.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me thrice, I’m not sure why some of you still have jobs. Fool me four times, no wait guys, seriously who’s running things up there?
People think Nickelodeon have messed up a few times concerning Korra, what with episodes being uploaded online before they were aired and general sloppiness in terms of spreading information. This is nothing, NOTHING, compared to what happened during Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Episodes were frequently uploaded online before they aired, different countries got episodes ahead of America leading to a massive spoiler fest, DVD’s were released with episodes that hadn’t aired yet and of course perhaps the weirdest fuck up, the release of a graphic novel that gave away the entire finale.
That’s right. This short illustrated book was released WEEKS before the finale (Avatar Aang) was aired on television and gave away everything. At least we got to the Korra finale not knowing Amon was Noatak. This book gave away everything, energybending and final pairings galore. I suppose you can’t really blame Nickelodeon for this, (or can you?) but it does just show the general point of how weird and chaotic it is being an Avatar fan.
(Sidenote: One of my favourite moments as an Avatar fan came when about 1000 posts were made about how this book was a massive fake and that it was just a conspiracy against Zutara fans. To be fair, Katara is dressed wrong and it does seem as if Aang has had a lobotomy.)
5. Iroh’s a really great and inspirational character. Wrong. He’s a massive asshole. Or at least he could have been.
Another gem out of the production notes was the idea that Iroh would be a bit of a dickhead. Instead of joining Zuko on his exile voyage out of the good of his heart and a wish to steer his nephew towards a path of good, Iroh was planning to ruin the fuckers life.
Iroh was originally going to teach Zuko a faulty form of Firebending that would totally ruin any chances of him capturing the Avatar. The idea of Iroh teaching Zuko Firebending made it into the final cut of the show, but of course without the general evillness and family backstabbing.
What a shame, I think if anything, Zuko was really missing a source of angst and despair in his life.