How Silent Worldbuilding Changes Avatar

so this is my first video of 2022 and after taking a bit of a break in december i thought to start off the year with something a little different instead of the unnecessarily in-depth literary analysis that you have come to expect from this channel i wanted to make this video more of a simple observation and appreciation of avatar the last airbender and its silent world building now worldbuilding is the class a drug that every fantasy or sci-fi writer gets high on there is nothing quite like being the god of your own world crafting a deep reality exactly to the specifications of what you want i should know i've written five full books and to this day there is still nothing like showing off the world you have worked so hard to create but this is the great fantasy trap if you're not careful the world building of your setting can start to get in the way of your narrative plotting and character development there's a very fine line that an author has to walk between indulging themselves in this amazing world that they have crafted while also understanding that world building is a tool for the narrative at the heart of the fiction the struggles of your characters must always be at the center of your story the world and world building of it simply exists to highlight them and create moments of conflict that might not be possible in the real world now we will definitely get to avatar's application of world building in just a moment but i think it's important to address the different methods of world building first the two sides are what i like to call active world building versus silent world building active world building is when the narrative draws explicit attention to an aspect of the world through an explanation to the consumer an example of active world building is when the conflict between aang and the earth general pauses so that roku can explain the avatar state active world building is the most common and direct method of world building but it is also the one that can be most easily misused we've all been subjected to long sections of exposition in fiction and those stand as poor uses of active world building on the other side you have a silent world building this is world building that passively draws attention to an aspect of the world by showing the world in action silent world building can take place over the course of a single scene or be built up across many scenes an example of silent world building is the fire nation's industrial superiority over the other nations though seldom mentioned if ever we consumers can naturally understand that the fire nation is more developed and advanced than others because of their use of ships tanks and various machinery even though we do not see the fire nation until much later in the show we have an understanding of the civilization through simply being shown their technology but just like active world building silent world building can have its drawbacks as i said silent world building is predicated on showing a consumer the world so that they might make their own judgment this runs the risk of a piece of the world building going missed by the consumer and sometimes those pieces are very significant the most famous example of this comes from lord of the rings particularly the movies the eagles came to save the day at the end but that prompted many viewers to ask why the eagles couldn't have transported and destroyed the ring in the first place the silent world building of the films did not explain the complexities behind the eagles involvement nor their relationship with gandalf the world building was there it simply went unexplained and therefore missed by many consumers much of these two sides of world building come down to showing versus telling active world building tells the consumer something or silent world building shows the consumer something each has their strengths and weaknesses but very few shows use silent world building as confidently as avatar there are a massive number of world-building aspects that frankly the show never outright explains the focus of the show and rightfully so is always on the characters and their individual struggles the world building mainly exists to give context to those struggles and enhance those struggles so it does not often need to be explained only seen and another benefit of silent world building is that it makes a consumer feel like they are discovering a consistent world on their own which is always more immersive than being spoon fed a world and paradoxically the smaller the details a consumer is able to piece together on their own the more genuine the world feels take the nomenclature or naming style for the fire nation royal family sozen zuko azula azulon ozai though the show never stops to address it the evidence is clear that the letter z has significance in this culture is this important to the story at all i don't think so but does this tiny silent cultural world building impact our interaction with the fiction of course on one hand it just makes the fire nation feel more real you and i come from cultures with specific naming tendencies and to have that reflected in a fictional culture makes that culture more believable which then in turn allows we viewers to become more immersed in the fiction and immersion breeds investment but on another level silent world building like this allows an author the chance to play with my new details that could have huge impacts going back to the names sozen zuko azula azulon ozai we are still missing one iro and as you can see it's the only one without a z it's the only one that's different and that's kind of really cool because iro is the most different from any of the main royal family members he was the odd man out and whether the authors intended it or not his name being different from his family mirrors that thematic quality and there is tons more silent world building that goes on in the show too flying bison like appa are the original airbenders but this is not revealed until much later when badger moles and dragons are revealed to be the other original benders benders have to move to use their bending but this isn't outright stated until season 2 in boomi's capture much of avatar's world was simply shown to us because the writers knew these little details were cool but not necessarily important enough to pause the flow of the narrative upon their introduction still there are very effective ways to combine silent and active world building one of my favorite examples from the show is the introduction of lightning bending the silent world building is executed when azula generates lightning for the first time on screen there is no explanation there is no long exposition for the audience we are simply shown the ability and that mystery adds to the allure and cool factor of both azula and lightning bending later comes the application of the active world building this is where we get our lengthy explanation of lightning bending and how to use it but there are some very interesting elements in the writing to keep in mind here first of all this explanation comes eight full episodes after lightning bending's introduction more novice rioters might have explained the new style of bending in the very next episode either because they were excited to show off this new part of their world or because they felt the audience needed to know but neither of these reasonings are valid it is absolutely fine to leave an audience in suspense waiting for answers as long as the lack of answers does not impede understanding the crucial elements of the plot do we need to know the inner workings of lightning bending for aang to continue his journey through the earth kingdom no so it can go unexplained and there is actually a benefit in leaving lightning bending as a mystery the longer lightning bending or any persistent element of a story goes unexplained the more a consumer will crave an explanation and when a consumer wants to have things explained when they care about the information being delivered to them exposition transforms from being a lecturer into being the decoder ring to a long struggled with puzzle by leaving lightning bending unexplained for eight episodes we viewers eat it up when iro finally does explain it but there is yet another aspect of the act of world building that ira's explanation accomplished it is timed perfectly robert mckee who quite literally wrote the book on story has said this at some point every vital fictional fact must find its way into the story timed to arrive at the most effective moment loaded to deliver a critical insight these details and the perceptions they inspire must pass into the reader slash audience's awareness without distracting them from the flow of events to simplify this quote world building and therefore any exposition must not break up the flow of the narrative the delivery of the information must be seamless but then how in the world do you have active world building which is predicated on drawing explicit attention to the information while also trying not to disrupt the flow of the narrative well we can turn back to ira's explanation of lightning bending for this answer the best way to organically integrate world building exposition into a narrative is to link that information with character development and the current events of the narrative the exposition around lightning bending feels so smooth because the information is directly tied to zuko as a character through lightning bending we viewers gain a deeper perspective of zuko's inner turmoil and azula's cold and deadly nature we gain a deeper picture of zuko's insecurity of azula being a bending genius and the favored child the exposition exists no longer just for the sake of understanding the setting the information is delivered at a time that works to further the characters and therefore the plot and the narrative this is how you pass information into the reader's awareness without distracting them from the flow of events you silently world build an aspect of your fiction and then actively world build that same aspect once the consumer craves an answer and such information directly interacts with contextualizing the narrative but since we are already talking about lightning bending we are going to use it as an example to discuss a writing subject very closely linked to world building power scaling now i know this is a part of creative writing that does not seem related to world building but once we break down its components things may start to become more clear just like world building i consider there to be two different types of power scaling there is overt power scaling and covert power scaling over power scaling is when objective markers are used to quantify a character's strength against another the most famous example of this would be power levels used in dragon ball z characters are given a numerical quantifiable and inarguable measure of their skill the characters with the highest power level will win covert power scaling however is when a consumer must subjectively compare a character's strength against another an example of this would be dumbledore vs voldemort the fiction has told us many times that these two are incredibly powerful wizards but gives no objective indication of who has more skill we are simply shown their fight and tasked with coming to a conclusion on our own if the difference between covert and over power scaling sounds familiar they both are subsets of showing and telling but how does this relate to world building well world building essentially is simply laying out the rules logic context and expectations for the fictional setting the more world building done in a fiction the more we as consumers can come to know the limitations and nuances of said setting most people might think of world building as creating histories in cultures in biomes but world building is also comprised of creating unique abilities and powers for the setting water earth air and fire bending are all world building how the characters effectively use each of those powers based upon their explained limitations is power scaling and because avatar does not use objective markers to categorize character strengths we of the audience have to compare the skills of the vendors ourselves sometimes this is easy as it's evident that some vendors are clearly stronger than others and sometimes this means power scaling must be done by assessing the most my new details of character abilities when things are not so clear i want you to watch the difference between these three clips here is the first here is the second [Music] now here is the third you probably noticed something right across these three clips of lightning bending there is a noticeable difference in the speed in which ozai generates his lightning versus azula and iro the latter two while still quick take time to get into stance channel the lightning and then strike ozai on the other hand is near instantaneous even in other instances of lightning bending when the user is more urgent they are still nowhere near as fast as ozai through the world building of lightning bending the show was able to covertly power scale many of the characters zhao is lower than azula because azula has lightning bending but azula is lower than ozai because ozai is more skilled in lightning bending now it happens so quickly and with so little attention that you might not have even really appreciated but that's always the risk that you run with showing as opposed to telling but just stop to consider the covert power scaling that ozai's clip shows us in comparison to every other instance of lightning bending not only did he generate lightning faster than any other person we have seen the man was hundreds of feet underground during an eclipse and was able to intuitively sense a sliver of the sun being uncovered with barely any connection to his bending source ozai managed to flawlessly and near instantly perform the most difficult fire bending move in existence oh and he was able to do all this with two hands something that no one else has been seen doing and this happens in like five seconds and is never talked about again but it becomes clear upon scrutiny that this action effectively power scales ozai against every other firebender on the planet and power scaling like this works well because it's so visual that it keeps us in the moment with the characters rather than paying attention to numbers and leveling and lectures and it's not just this one scene the show loves these covert power scaling moments when aang is training in fire bending zuko tells him to roar like a tiger dillo now let me hear you roar like a tiger dillo [Music] from what we see we can assume this is just a fire bending stance meant to show power and ferocity but as you probably have guessed by now this seemingly simple little moment is used for power scaling ozai also does a tiger derlo stance but it absolutely dwarfs the one aimed in training this is visual power scaling between aang and the fire lord but then when aang fully awakens his avatar state he does a tiger dillo stance and completely outclasses ozai nothing is said about this no dialogue is pointed towards this occurrence it is simply done for we of the audience to appreciate on our own and in our own time and examples like this are how to covertly power scale your characters as well showing how one ability or move can be used more effectively by one character versus another gives an audience a chance to make good comparisons and in that vein power scaling can not only affect our understanding of characters drinks but our perceptions of characters overall let's talk about toff and aang for a little bit both in the show and in the fanbase toff is hailed as a genius level transcendent earthbending prodigy which she is she was a world-class master earthbender at 12 years old before she was a teenager she invented an entirely new bending art in metal bending in terms of raw talent and power many viewers might see toff as the most gifted bender in the avatar gang however and this might sound weird aang is probably right there with her as far as being a prodigy in fact i'm confident in saying that aang is just flat out a better bender than toff period one of the things that i think we fans of the show take for granted a lot is that aang at the beginning of the series was a 12 year old boy and he was already an airbending master aang wasn't just like good at airbending he was a master at 12. keep in mind for air nomads becoming a master also meant gaining the highest level of attunement to your spirituality it was directly tied to their culture hence the tattoos so just to repeat aang was a seasoned monk and a world-class martial artist at 12. and the funny thing is that it didn't even have anything to do with him being the avatar he was just that good at airbending toth might have had invented metal bending at 12 but aang invented the air scooter at 12 which is an air bending technique that seemingly breaks the laws of physics now why do i bring up this difference in audience perception between toff and aang well it's to show the importance of power scaling and the comparisons we viewers are allowed to make toff appears extraordinarily powerful because she can be power scaled against other earth vendors for an entire season and a half we are shown average to decently strong earthbenders and what they can do the most powerful vendor we see is boomi and he is very clearly leaps and bounds better than any earthbender out there after having our baseline of power set with characters like herou and general fong we are introduced to toff by comparison she accomplishes near deific feats like lifting an entire library or defeating an entire arena of master earthbenders in her pjs we have plenty of instances to compare her to others and gain a perspective of how she stacks against them we do not have that same luxury with a there are no other airbenders in the show for ink to be compared against which means his mastery of the bending art goes largely unappreciated sure we can contrast him against vendors of other disciplines but it's not the same as comparing him to someone using the same ability as we get to do with taw aang's main power scaling is covert and often comes by other characters commenting on his skill that title will not help you against the avatar do not try to fight him you are no match i think i can handle a child i have never seen such raw power but again this is just consideration of aang as an airbender world building empower scaling allow us to get a picture of just how insanely talented he was as an avatar believe me this is where things get truly wacky the show's entire premise is that aang must master the elements and then defeat the fire lord however the final episodes reveal that aang has not mastered either fire bending or earth bending i'm not ready i need more time to master fire bending and frankly your earth bending could still use some work too in the moment this almost comes off as ang being kind of weak or behind schedule but through considerations of the established world building we can see it's the exact opposite eng had just about a year to master three elements he fully mastered water bending became really good at earth bending and became decent at fire bending what starts to make this crazy is when you scale this against the world building of previous avatars granted we can really only use roku because he's the only avatar we have deep knowledge of but he is a good baseline anyway roku was a fire bending master at 16 at which point he started training in the other elements as the avatar leading him to become a fully realized avatar at the age of 27. so it took roku 11 years to master the other three elements but we will say 10 just to make this a nice round number now it stated that water bending was about twice as hard for roku to master as earth and air because of it being the natural opposite of fire so let's just say for that 10 years of training water took two times as long as the others to master that would mean roku mastered air bending in two and a half years mastered water bending in five years then mastered earth bending in two and a half years we can understand this as the world building baseline for the typical amount of time for an avatar to train so once we have this down pad moving back to aang becomes a little bit more impressive where it took roku two and a half years to master air bending it took aang months to master water bending the boy was so talented that it literally made katara jealous she had been practicing this martial art for more than a decade and aang picked it up in weeks again it's not talked about much but aang was on pace to be the most prodigious waterbender in the whole world if he focused exclusively on that style there is no doubt in my mind he would have been the greatest waterbender on the planet to put this in perspective aang mastered waterbending faster than he mastered his own native air bending aim was so good with water bending that he did not even need to practice lightning redirection a technique based in water bending flow and movement he just intuitively knew how to smoothly move the highly volatile energy through his body next we can move on to earth bending for aang it took roku an estimated five years to master his elemental opposite now eng never mastered earth bending but he became very competent with it in a matter of months this was supposed to be his most difficult element yet we see him performing feats only rivaled by the likes of toff and boomi to put this in perspective where it might have taken roku 60 months to master water bending it took aing six months to become the third best earthbender on the planet and of course aang never mastered firebending but he became competent with it in a short time with zuko but now i hope this puts into perspective just how incredibly talented aang was while the silent world building and covert power scaling never brought attention to it there is large evidence to support that he might be the most prolific bender of all time he was leaps and bounds better than roku and if that's our benchmark he was leaps and bounds better than most avatars some of us in the fanbase like to diminish aang for getting his butt beat by ozai before the avatar state kicked in but let's really think about what was happening there a 12 year old boy who was constantly on the run for the last year was facing off against a grown man who had spent decades mastering his martial art to the point where he was considered the greatest practitioner on the planet oh and that guy had a steroid that made him a hundred times stronger this situation would be synonymous to if a middle schooler had to 1v5 an entire team of lebron james and only lost by single digits aang was literally 12 maybe 13 the fact that he could even occupy the same space as ozai for more than a minute is honestly incredible and a testament to his skill and just to cap off this video that is quickly descending into a rant the last thing that i want to talk about is a twist on what we have previously discussed up until now we have gone over how world building influences our perception of power scaling however power scaling can also influence world building let's take a closing look at avatar kiyoshi because who we good lord what were the writers thinking when they made this character like seriously buckle up kiyoshi was the avatar before roku and honestly not much is said about her in the show what the active world building of the show has told us is that she had no qualms about killing people even royalty for the betterment of the world you didn't really kill technically he felt to his own doom because he was too stubborn to get out of the way personally i don't really see the difference but i assure you i would have done whatever it took to stop chin and what the silent world building shows us is that she was an extremely powerful bender but a world building fact about kyoshi that many fans do not know is that kyoshi lived to be over 230 years old this one detail greatly affects the power scaling of kiyoshi which in turn greatly affects the details of history aka world building that we do not know of yet now i know i just kind of glossed over the fact that kiyoshi is centuries old but the current most popular belief is that she learned the secret to infinite vitality from her spiritual teacher laughy so from there since the avatar can only be reincarnated once the current avatar dies this means that there was only one avatar kiyoshi for 230 years i want you to think about what that means for our interpretation of the historical world building first of all this isn't a decrepit 230 year old granny this is a seven foot woman who was in her physical prime for literally centuries and what that means is that kyoshi had 230 years to practice bending now being able to practice any martial art for 200 years would make you the best fighter of that discipline in the world and maybe ever but kyoshi as the avatar could practice all four of the elements it's very likely that simply due to the amount of time that she had to perfect her techniques kiyoshi can be power scaled as the strongest bender of all time in every single element another thing to think about is how her personality interacts with her power scaling and how that can affect our understanding of the world building kiyoshi killed chin the conqueror a man who had basically taken over the entire earth kingdom chin would have been one of the most important and powerful people on the planet and kyoshi killed him with no hesitation or remorse because of his unstoppable lust for power now let's put that into context for the rest of the world at the time as the avatar it was kyoshi's duty to keep balance and order in the world and we know in her eyes she would murder those who threatened that balance in order so just think for 230 years there existed in the world an immortal nigh all-powerful spiritually ordained arbiter of justice that would kill with extreme prejudice imagine yourself as a royal family member at this time let's say the son of the fire lord there would most certainly be a conversation at some point where your father sat you down and told you that when you inherit the throne you must be on your best behavior you must not wage wars or threaten the sanctity of the spirits because there is an unkillable all-powerful god woman who polices the planet murdering the unjust and when you did become the fire lord you would have that same conversation with your child because that same god woman would still be around she was around for your father your grandfather and his father and as far as you know she will be around for your grandchildren and great-grandchildren it is extraordinarily likely that most people would have thought kyoshi to be the last avatar because she would never die she walked around the world for generations meeting people as they were born and burying them as they died of old age people probably assumed that she would just go on to be eternal a literal walking deity surveying the planet for injustice kyoshi's long lifespan also gives some world-building context as to why sozen and the fire nation became so militaristic after discovering that roku was the avatar the fire nation was next in line for the avatar cycle but they did not receive their own avatar for centuries they had to watch as kyoshi born into the earth kingdom became the most unstoppable force in the history of the world so when kiyoshi finally did die it was probably seen by the fire nation as their golden opportunity for them to expand in the legacy of the fire nation book ira says that sozen was jealous of the avatar's power and control and of course the avatar sozen would have most heard about growing up would have been kiyoshi sozin and the rest of the fire nation upper command surely thought and expected for the new avatar to be their version of kyoshi sozen invited roku into its plan of conquest because the fire nation had waited centuries for an avatar and wanted to use the one that they now had to the fullest extent the only problem was that roku might have ended up being more like yoshi than they expected i'm letting you go in the name of our past friendship but i warn you even a single step out of line will result in your permanent end but it's little details like this that are so cool to think about because they change our understanding of the story and the world within it and all of this is based in world building and power scaling hopefully now any of you writers out there have a deeper knowledge of these subjects and how to execute them in your own work anyway thank you for watching all the way until the end of this very long video if you like what you heard like comment and subscribe if you want to be a real homie support on patreon or check out some of my books on my website links will be in the description below as always it was a pleasure and i will talk to you all again soon

Channel: Savage Books

Views: 354,848

Keywords: avatar the last airbender, world building, legend of korra, ba sing se, writing tips, avatar kyoshi, savage books, dialogue dive, zuko, video essay

Id: PgnoEFpe-EM

Length: 31min 27sec (1887 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 15 2022