Avatar: A Study in Worldbuilding — the Fire Nation [ The Last Airbender ]

a while ago i had a wildly successful video on the world building of the earth kingdom so naturally it was probably stolen by sony so let's give it another go with the world building of the fire nation and today's video even has a cool sponsor curiosity stream you can watch thousands of non-fiction and documentary titles from people like david freak in edinburgh at curiositystream.com hello future me but why is it even cooler because of a thing called nebula a streaming service that i am actually a part of as well as other amazing youtubers that i know you watch or you should watch links down below [Music] one this drill is a feat of scientific ingenuity and raw destructive power placing the fire nation in the midst of an industrial revolution was one of the more interesting world-building choices the writers made in creating the last airbnb they've got train networks steam power hot air balloons by the end of the series and they even researched chemistry this is all in marked contrast to the lower tech levels of the water tribes in the earth kingdom who haven't even researched loom it would have been difficult to believe that such a smaller and less populous nation would have been able to go up against the earth kingdom but historically technological imbalance between the islamic empires european empires and those they conquered was an important factor in their success the writers seem to drawn this in giving the fire nation an edge in the hundred year war there is a reason for this geopolitical setup but why the fire nation giving them an industrial revolution wasn't just a really interesting decision but a great example of world building arising from two things geography and the magic system europe's industrial revolution was sparked by a number of technological and economic advancements but two crucial ones that we're going to talk about with the discovery of coal as a long-burning cheap portable high-temperature fuel source in a way that would simply wasn't as well as having access to massive iron deposits and developing methods of working iron for the construction of trains machinery and more durable ships so it happened britain already had both of those and the fire nation already has that first factor a portable fuel source that they can control the temperature and quantity of in fire bending as for the second the fire nation is made of a chain of volcanic islands and one of the raw materials commonly found in volcanic environments is metal ore interestingly we do know that the fire nation's geography was designed to mimic that of iceland another volcanic island and their major export is metal the fire nation is uniquely equipped for an industrial revolution before anyone else because of this intersection of their innate magic system and geographical advantages and the water tribes in the earth kingdom simply lack this ability to generate energy or manipulate metal the way that firebenders can and yes metal bending's a thing but it wasn't at the time okay i'm just gonna preempt the metal bending comments no but a secondary reason that the fire nation might develop industrially before anyone else is economic the other nations have elemental powers that help with the construction of buildings in particular using water and stone at the time of the last airbender there's little economic incentive to develop ways to manipulate metal when alternative materials are so much cheaper and available in contrast the financials economy would naturally have to compensate so there would be an economic incentive to develop ways to work with metal in their buildings and create these machines now we do know that the fire nation uses coal reserves for their steam engines as well but this is only to reduce manpower needed they can and probably did start without it part two the true power the divine right to rule is something you're born with a unified state requires three things a direct flow of information to and from the central authority a way to keep the local politics in line with that central authority and a unified militaristic body to enforce the laws and collect taxes for the central authority and good farm placement you need that the stronger these are the more centralized the authority can be so the fire nation has the most centralized government out of all the four nations with [Music] concentrated in the hands of the fire lord this is control of the military economy and cultural direction of the state there's a national education curriculum and we've seen the blue spirit that ozai even promotes zhao personally a level of involvement seen nowhere else in the world part of this is held together by propaganda at schools and the fire nation's complex administrative institutions they keep detailed records and reading and writing is a lot more common in the fire nation than anywhere else but this centralized power structure wouldn't be possible without the unique geography of the fire nation it's no secret that japan was a strong influence on the aesthetic and design of the fire nation with the food and the clothes and the imperialism but we can see that it follows the historical patterns of japan in other ways as well the japanese capital moved from kyoto to tokyo in the 17th century but the more important context here is that it moved to the kanto plane the population center of the country and the largest and most profitable area of agricultural flat land close control of these two things makes central governance a lot easier though it's difficult to tell by the map the fire nation capital does seem to have been founded where most of the habitable and flat agricultural land is on this main island making it not just a centre for trade but population and thus power and this is something that the dispersed resources and population of the earth kingdom just does not facilitate but an interesting thing is that the nation's smaller landmass and the capital's position make it relatively equidistant to all urban centres of the nation especially with easy access by sea and this makes these two factors in particular a lot stronger we see in the beach that guards on the distant cove island communicate directly with the capital instead of a regional authority per se they send a hawk straight to the fire lord and this direct flow of information to and from the central authority makes direct governance a lot more efficient trained birds can fly up to 500 kilometers per day making communication for administrative purposes throughout the state virtually instantaneous by that day standards and this technological and geographical advantage would mean that they would even directly govern as far as pohai's stronghold like we saw in the blue spirit and this geographical layout makes it easier for the capital to exert force on any given region by quickly sending diplomats governors or military forces from the central authority if need be especially when coupled with their steam-powered navy this along with their strong communication makes it really easy for the fire lord to keep local politics in line with his central authority and the industrial revolution itself supports the centralization railways and steam power don't just mean more efficient transport of people and resources but it means that pooling those resources becomes possible there is a reason to have a centralized administration of resources a benefit to it lastly the fact that the population is concentrated on this westernmost island also makes that third factor a unified militaristic body to enforce the laws a lot easier now there are other factors that play like propaganda but the army is mostly drawn from the region under the direct governance of the firelord making a lot easier to ensure their loyalty he provides during famines and they've probably seen him as he travels throughout the country compared to the many states of the earth kingdom where most peasants would only be helped by or only ever see their local lord and this is reflected in how fire nation citizens see one another there's only really a social division between citizens of the colonies and citizens from the mainland consider how the teacher in the headband pointed that they're clearly from the colonies with disdain this population concentration would also explain why despite being an archipelago they're all ruled under the same state island nations tend to be independent because exerting control across an ocean is difficult and expensive and island borders are defensible unless an island with a much larger population dominates the rest this pattern has followed throughout the world and japan the united kingdom new zealand indonesia and others now compare all of this to bar singh say where great geographical barriers and vast distances from the capital make central administration slow expensive and inefficient resulting in a less centralized power structure with all of the 58 states being mostly autonomous even having their own legal systems part three our nation is enjoying an unprecedented time of peace and wealth in the avatar in the fire lord sosan speaks towards people are experiencing an unprecedented time of peace and wealth even before the war and the fire nation throughout the series does seem to be relatively wealthy compared to the rest of the world and there's a good reason why the fire nation has a generally higher standard of living its geography as a chain of volcanic islands with an enclosed stretch of water and access to the mainland is perfectly situated for trade the layout of these islands creates a natural navigable trade network between the cities of the region as well as connecting all towns to the major urban capital and it's this interconnectivity that generates wealth once free of internal strife from around the 4th century bg the fire nation was naturally set up to prosper as a trade empire both internally and externally with the earth kingdom of water tripods in the western sea and though we do see it as a naval power during the last airbender this is actually a natural result of the fire nation being a seafaring civilization due to trade historically merchant fleets have been accompanied by ships capable of defending them from usually pirates occasionally the french and there's evidence to suggest that this may be where the fire nation's naval prowess began in the year 296 bg the earth kingdom actually asked the fire nation to patrol the eastern sea on the opposite side of the continent if they were going to do that then the fire nation must have already been a naval power at the time and in terms of word building it's no surprise that the fire nation turned its focus to naval power it protects its economic predominance in the region and as an island nation the only way that they could be harmed is through a naval attack compare this to the earth kingdom whose larger but infantry based army is designed for land combat and putting down rebellions they just don't have the same incentives but naval control of the region also gives one other major advantage taxes places like the suez canal panama canal and thai canal all play vital roles in connecting distantly separated regions via trade they make traveling from europe to china or europe to india or india to china immensely quicker and because of that they cost a lot for ships to use in the same way it's remarkably quicker to travel through the fire nation straits between the islands than it is to go around when traveling between the northwestern states and the southern states of the earth kingdom let alone between either of the water tribes and the fire nation does seem well aware of how they can exploit this for the homeland's benefit they heavily tax port cities and have long used blockades to exert force in the region and while there are alternate routes to basing say only arriving on the eastern coast makes it easy to transport goods to this major urban centre by using the inlet to the outer wall the result of this and the fire nation being a naval power that protected and controlled this ocean is that they would have taxed the immense trade passing through the region a benefit that no other nation has they're basically just taking wealth from the earth kingdom but this focus on international trade may have been out of necessity we spoke before about how the volcanic geography of the fire nation means that it has access to large metal deposits but they also have coal and valuable stones like gold this is why the fire nation has some of the most skilled blacksmiths in the world but i mean you can't eat coal or iron unless you really want to but this is probably why the fire nation developed an international trade network its land just isn't particularly suited for rice or vegetable production the way that the earth kingdom is rice typically grows in irrigated lowlands which the mountainous land of the fire nation is ill-suited for their farms were just continually exhausted because of this as its population grew it naturally became more dependent on imports thus a strong naval force wasn't just about ensuring prosperity but necessary to sustain the island chain this is actually pretty similar to the economic position of japan whose mountainous landscape makes 70 of it difficult to develop for living and working i talked a bit in my previous video about why the fire nation took the north western earth kingdom at the opening of the 100 year war fundamentally it's because it's the region most rich in resources what we can tell here is that taking this wasn't just a wise long-term strategy but necessary if they were going to survive without international trade and ireland colonialist powers like the uk have historically had resource-based strategies for extraction when it comes to where they choose to colonize and the writers seem to go out of their way to show the fire nation doing exactly this there are good economic and geographical world building reasons that they started the war here but consider the concept of availability the gold resources on these islands may give a different reason for why gold is a colour of the fire nation it may not simply be because it's the color of the light and the sun or it's the team color but because gold was a readily available resource taking up a role in their culture the way that it did in mesoamerican civilizations which interestingly we know that the sun warriors a precursor fire nation civilization were based on you can see it in their aesthetic they took up the color of gold because why not likewise the fact that fish is a readily available cheap food source accessible to most population centres in the fire nation made it a major part of its cuisine and export economy unlike the inland earth kingdom which has conventional livestock as part of its cultural food instead it's about availability of resources part four she's a true prodigy [Music] so one really curious element of the fire nation's world building is gender equality yeah not even kidding women are given the same education they can enroll in the military and they can take up political positions there were probably some women during the air nomad genocide hashtag women can be fascist murderers too now this doesn't mean that there aren't gender roles but they seem to be a lot weaker than they are in other nations and i think that this arises from how fire bending influences two world-building elements social stratification and distribution of power i hate to be a hobbesian when it comes to state formation but when early fire nation society began a natural upper class formed from firebenders and strong fire-bending families groups that could monopolize defend and control resources far more easily than non-benders could and it wouldn't really matter if you were male or female because fire mending isn't heavily determined by the usual attributes of strength and stamina like a sword fight often is meaning that men don't have a natural advantage in fire-bending duels against women the result of this is an upper-class wielding power that doesn't necessarily lend itself to gender inequality this is even institutionalized by the agony kai a fire-bending duel with a measure of legal power to determine disputes of property and otherwise men and women can participate in these this is also why and i find this so damn cool the fire nation royal family aren't just powerful firebenders but they choose to only reproduce with other strong fire bending families not only a way of ensuring political ties with rivals but literally keeping fire bending power within the family it's no wonder that only nobles are able to lightning bend during the last airbender but perhaps a more important factor in the fire nation's gender equality is specialization every society grows as people specialize individuals getting better at a specific role in society makes the whole society generally better off and this folds down to gender roles like we see in the northern water tribe women are homemakers and men are warriors but these world-building differences arise from the different roles that water and fire play in society waterbending has broadly two branches martial and healing so gender roles were easily divided along those lines as men and women specialized into essentially two different professions that reinforce gender roles but fire bending on the other hand has no such division whether male or female they both specialize in the same way in this sense fire bending is an equalizer gender doesn't matter to real or legal power distribution and social norms can't easily divide it into social roles now you might be wondering why this isn't the case with the earth kingdom and i think it comes down to the fact that uh earthbenders comprise a much lower percentage of the total population so social norms will develop more independently of vendors than it does in the fire nation part five i couldn't find a cool quote to fit this part interestingly the island chain naturally fits in with the main continent its arc of islands follow the arc of ua bay telling us that these lands are likely broke off from the mainland prior additionally these sunken gaps between the islands and the narrow strait between the mainland earth kingdom and the fire islands suggest that there was once a land bridge i really appreciate this because it's a detail of the world building that is never really talked about but it's definitely there they paid attention to how now island civilizations like the uk and japan came to be continental drift and land bridges formed so that the initial group of people could cross to them it really builds into the subtlety of the last airbender the fire nation is a really interesting study and how island civilizations operate different to continental states and if you want to learn more about world building island cultures like the fire nation then consider watching samurai castle on curiosity stream it's a really cool documentary discussing how castle architecture evolved to accommodate geographical problems in japan an interesting thought experiment in world building really and what's even cooler is that you can get this and thousands of other titles for free for 31 days if you go to curiositystream.com shallow future me and use hello future me as your code at sign up just checking out the site below really does help and it's only 2.99 per month after that which is like nothing for those of you with no shame in your nerd game like me and it comes with nebula which is even cooler because i'm a part of it alongside dozens of other youtubers that are really really cool like just right lindsey ellis and tons more links are all below let me know how it goes stay nerdy and i'll see you in the future [Music] you

Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 1,327,905

Keywords: explained, theory, lore, analysis, how to, fire nation, worldbuilding, writing, explored, zuko, katara, avatar, the last airbender, korra, atla, firebending, firebend, earthbending, earth kingdom, aan

Id: Pa2BD13VzxY

Length: 19min 50sec (1190 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 26 2019