Meme! via sholio

[terajk]

Pick a character I've written and I will give and explain the top five ideas/concepts/etc I keep in mind while writing that character that I believe are essential to accurately depicting them.

This one sounds like a TON of fun. XD

Comments

[chordatesrock]

Aang.

[terajk]

Aang is so hard! I really need to write him more. (I think I've written him as a major character twice?)

1. He won't be 12 years old forever. In the series he's the kid most consistently written like a kid, and I have trouble aging him up in my head.

2. As glass_icarus once said, he's more than just a goofy kid. Which leads to:

3. Despite his playfulness/Airbender lightness/the trouble he had learning earthbending, he isn't afraid to stick to his principles. I actually liked that he found a way to defeat Ozai without killing him--not because I think Ozai has any redemptive qualities at all (or because I have anything against graphic violence, which....ahahahahaha), but because Aang didn't believe in killing him.

4. Aang actually is playful, especially with his element(s). (He invented the Air Scooter, after all.) He's a prodigy, but an altogether different kind of prodigy than Azula is: airbending is natural and fun. (Local Aang once told me that air is like a living thing-slash-friend. He doesn't control it, but they listen and talk to each other and have fun together.) Maybe some of the problem when Toph was teaching him earthbending is that, while Toph certainly thinks fighting is fun, she turned into a drill sergeant and made it SRS BZNS.

5. He's lost not only his family, but his people. (Perhaps airbending takes on a new meaning then, as a connection to his culture.)

[chordatesrock]

Me too. I wonder-- since I haven't seen Korra-- what fully grown up Aang will be like. Will be continue to get sidetracked by silly things? Will he at least manage to remember what his priorities are and maybe spend money more wisely in the future?

Yes, definitely. And it's even harder to see that in light of what those principles are. For Aang, conflict avoidance and serene acceptance of things are what he works for because they're right, not things he does to avoid facing problems.

What, or who, is Local Aang?

Unrelatedly, I just realized that the figure on the left side of your icon is Iroh facing away from the camera, not a humanoid rhinoceros facing toward it. I still see it as a rhino.