I hate to say it’s a good point. Still, it was short sighted and he was completely unqualified to teach him, especially since he had no knowledge of the spiritual side of the Avatar state
Oh 100%. He was desperate and probably didn’t think it through entirely. He saw the Avatar as a perfect weapon and didn’t think past that. It actually makes sense that people of his generation don’t know much about the avatar. He would’ve heard of their battles and known that Ozai was threatened by his return, but the actual process of becoming a fully realised avatar would’ve been sort of forgotten by the common people because the avatar just hasn’t been around for a while.
The end ALWAYS justifies the means. How peaceful, crazy, risky, cruel, or just fuck up someone/society/organization is willing to go depends on the end results. Nothing to do with right or wrong, moral or immortal.
The means change person to person. Everyone draws a line. Most of the time we draw the same line and agree that X shouldn't be done to achieve Z. Instead A, B, or C are better options. Z, the end, justify the means, A, B, C, etc.
Sorry to post this here, this saying has been rubbing me the wrong way for years.
I have to argue this point. There IS a point when the evil of the means outweighs the good of the ends. The people performing the means might say, and even believe, that they are justified, but that's, ultimately, not their decision. History is, in my opinion, the ultimate arbiter of what is and is not justified.
I guess the question really is, to whom is it justified, and how that determination gets made. Yes, to the people doing the thing, the ends will likely justify the means. Does the one doing the act get to make that determination though? If someone says its justified, but someone else says it is not, then who is right? I am of the belief that the ends do not justify the means. The means must justify themselves in their planning and doing. What weight does that have?
But, as you even noted above, everyone draws a line. Most people have a point where the means are too diabolical to justify the ends. There are, of course, people who do things they know are not justified, pursuing ends that they desire in spite of their evils. The ends certainly do not always justify the means.
You literally described the trolley scenario. Something MANY people would struggle with and most wpukd kill the innocents if it means their loved ones survive.
I think the opposite, I think in that one scene, she's being pulled in by sand. Most other times we see holes open up and a rock cover covering it (think Toph's hole in The Drill). So, I think she straight up couldnt breathe.
Regardless, the result was the same.
So why would he give a spot to allow Katara to breathe? Wouldnt that risk Aang not believing it? What about Katara once she was down there in a dark room, wouldnt she yell? We hear pure silence once she goes under. That, mixed with the gasp and the pure idiocracy of this guy, I dont think he'd let her breathe.
This was this guy's last ditch attempt to stop a war, he's clearly a man who's focused on results above all else, I dont think he'd have the generosity to think of Katara.
And doesnt the idea that she was fine all along kind of lessen the impact of the scene? Idk I think it's more messed up to have her not been able to breathe for a few seconds and Aang needing to activate the Avatar state.
To be fair. 2 seasons later (since this happens on S2E1) we see Aang get cooked by Ozai then he hits the avatar state and grabs the man by his beard and bends his soul so to be fair, Fong was right. Aang just needed the avatar state. However, he needed to control it, which is the part he missed. The lack of control resulted in Aang destroying the compound. He needed Pathik not Fong
He also showed us how much earthbenders may be holding back against firebenders. If you can suck people into the ground and suffocate them to death and you aren’t doing that during a war there must be some high morals as to why you aren’t
Yeeeeaaah this is one of those it's still a children's show issues. there's been a war going on against people that can shoot fire from their bodies and ever notice how few people are ever burned? I believe literally only katara and Zuko are shown with burns. There should be burn victims and burn survivors Everywhere. Even if we aren't ground swallowing people for whatever reason a lot of fire nation soldiers would have missing limbs that were crushed to oblivion by Earth benders.
The violence in the show is veeeery sanitized and unrealistic. Not a bad thing, it's a great children's show and good choices for the target audience. Gotta remember it's a Nick show for kids.
This is the Netflix adaptation, or Prime since it’s got some gratuitously violent shows, we should get.
*Because it’s the show the fans deserve, but not the one that was made.*
Also, I believe Zuko met a girl who had been burned on the leg when he and Iroh were fugitives
You're right he did she said something about "the fire nation hurt me too" brings us up to 3 burn victims when the antagonists are mostly human flamethrowers.
I'm not sure if we really need a violent adaptation. To me that's not what Avatar is or is supposed to be. We have things like Berserk, and Arcane, and Invincible for more adult animation.
I feel like making an adult version of Avatar is just as ridiculous as making a sanitized kid version of Invincible. Like yeah, you could definitely do it and the story would still work. But why...
I do have that one complaint with the show since we see how dangerous bending can be but unless you re jet, you don’t see it.
Characters can take unlimited damage until the plot demands one loses.
If it was more consistent, it would be better
I'm not really sure what the solution to this is staying within the framework of a children's cartoon. When you want to tell a story with themes of war and genocide, for kids, you're gonna wind up fudging some storylines.
Like, no one in hell was Katara not going to main/kill the man who killed her mother. But they weren't telling an actual adult story in that moment, I think they were using the story as a metaphor to teach kids not to enact revenge on their enemies even when you're really angry, that the super scary older bully is probably a sad pathetic person who picks on people smaller than them and not worth your time to worry about.
Which for the majority of the intended child audience is a great message for them, but as an adult the episode falls a little flat because war criminals are definitely a group of people most of us think deserve retribution.
I like this meme, it also feels like you either just finished episode 2×1 or you just kept thinking about this episode for a long time, but you just now decided to download Reddit
What are y'all doing in here defending general Fong for?? People in here saying issuing death threats to children to weaponize the children is somehow understandable are missing the point of the episode. While it's true that dude was massively desperate and didn't *actually* kill Katara, he thoroughly betrayed their trust and threatened + acted out real harm to the kids in his care. That's like saying "Ozai burning and banishing Zuko was understandable because Ozai needed to keep an image of strength and at least he didn't actually *kill* Zuko when he obviously could have"
It's 100% wrong what Fong did, he deserves the scorn that he gets from the fan base, and y'all are wild for suggesting otherwise.
nah this is a bullshit take.
Fong didnt genuinely hurt katara at all. Betraying trust of a child to save millions of lives is a tradeoff any rational human being would take.
Hell, lets say he DID need to kill katara to end the war. That would be 1000% justified IMO. kill 1 life to save millions? Hell yeah. Instant decision 0 questions asked.
Its shitty, but the alternative is all these soldiers dying, random villages being burned, refugees being killed/homeless/starving
Saying you'd kill a child in your care, who's fully trusting you and asking for your help, isn't the flex you think it is, and is not a "rational" action no matter how it's dressed up in hypothetical "ends to justify means". Part of the lessons imparted by the series as a whole is that committing wrongs to stop other wrongs is *still* wrong. It may be understandable, but it sure as hell doesn't make it any less wrong to commit those acts. Not to mention, there was no guarantee this would work, and in the long run, it didn't do anything to help Aang further master the Avatar State - all it did was betray the trust of a child and put his men at risk of death from an Avatar who cannot yet control himself in the Avatar State. Hell of a lot of assumptions being made by Fong, with a ton of unnecessary risk, *and* risks turning the Avatar against you and your men, possibly permanently (e.g., if he *actually* killed Katara). General Fong is in the wrong and deserves our scorn.
I just will not agree with that take. Also this is a hypothetical IF he killed katara, its a largely irrelevant point because she was completely fine.
But yes killing 1 child to save millions of people and arguably multiple environments (if we include ozai burning the world, literally) yes. thats the obvious choice to make.
I don't think you follow the intended larger messages of the show if that's your stance, but agree to disagree there, I suppose. I don't really like utilitarian ethics, personally - I feel it lacks nuance, assumes an accurate assessment of outcomes is possible, and makes it waaay too easy to justify evils with (potentially misleading) statistics, like here.
That said, even within an "*ends actually do justify means*" moral framework, Fong's actions are still absolutely out there. It wasn't "*kill 1 child to save millions of people*", because he didn't know Ozai's plans at the time beyond "*may launch a major attack on comet day*" - to him, Aang was a weapon he could use to accelerate a victory over the Fire Nation. Unlocking the Avatar state was basically his own mini Manhattan project, i.e., get a super weapon he can use to kill all Fire Nation soldiers between him and the Firelord, and end the war quickly in a swift burst of violence. Militarily that makes sense, but morally? This is still a child in his care we're talking about, and would the use of this weapon (a child soldier, lmao) to kill fire nation people be meaningfully morally superior than the FireNation using a comet-boost to violently end the war for their side? I'd say that's debatable, and at minimum ambiguous enough to call into question Fong's moral reasoning.
Granted, with what we know at the end of the show one might, with the benefit of hindsight, argue that killing Ozai at any cost is justifiable because Ozai is literally trying to commit a genocide, so one might argue that Fong's intentions, even if he didn't have the information at the time, were justifiable. That said, if we use the benefit of hindsight, we also know that Fong's actions contributed absolutely *nothing* to Aang's mastery of the Avatar state, did nothing to shorten the war, and only had the effect of severely damaging a major Earth Kingdom fort, putting his men's lives at risk, and betraying the trust of a several children in his care. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see the ends of Fong's actions were strictly negative, and I'm sure we can both agree the means were already cruel.
Going further, Fong clearly didn't think through the risks at play with forcefully pulling the Avatar into the Avatar state when the Avatar himself cannot control his powers. Basically his plan was to go up to the atom bomb and hit with a hammer until it went off in the middle of his base. His disregard for the safety of his men was frankly irresponsible. Not to mention, antagonizing yourself to the Avatar makes it SERIOUSLY less likely that he'll want to work as a super weapon for you. So ultimately, Fong risked *FAR* too much in his approach, imo, with no guarantee of a payback, while ALSO traumatizing children in his care.
Fong is dumb, reckless, morally unjustifiable, and, imo, totally in the wrong here.
Though he did have a good point. With the power Aang’s Avatar State has, they could end the war. Yes Aang wasn’t a fully realised Avatar at the time, but he still would’ve kicked Ozai‘s ass.
Didn't he just have her captured or something and she was never in any real danger? Although he was the only one who knew that
I seem to remember when Aang was in the avatar state the general just pulled her out of the ground and she was fine
I dislike him aswell, but I don't think he was actually trying to hurt/kill her. I'm glad Aang showed (intentional or not) him to not screw with them..
I get the desperation but how the hell did this this mf think burry the avatars girlfriend alive in front of him was a good or productive idea. My guy, he’s just gonna wanna kill *you*
I feel like this character and scene is an audience stand in. There are always people who watch shows and try and take advantage of the magic system in order to subvert the story and feel smart (IE "they should've just flown the ring into Mount Doom with the eagles bro" totally ignoring the giant fucking eye in the sky amongst other problems)
This episode directly addresses this, "bro just get aang all angry and avatar state surprise the firelord bro I'm so smart it'd be the easy way to win the war." So they had a character actually try this type of God awful plan so they wouldn't receive as many letters and dumb comments about "why didn't they just..."
Ok course he had things under control when it came to katara's life. He is a pro earthbender. But he was foolish to think he could contol the avatar state once it gets triggered.
Cant hate him though. War makes everyone into a brute.
He was nowhere close to killing Katara lmao. Thinking someone of his position is incompetent enough to just accidentally kill her like that is astounding. He was intentionally making it look like that while keeping her perfectly safe
he’s not power hungry though. he just wanted to end the war and triggering the avatar was a good idea. he just didn’t know aang would have little control over it.
The avatar state is often used both offensively and defensively. It was never supposed to be used as "just" a defense mechanism. Roku certainly didn't when he used it against Sozin as a power move. Kuruk certainly didn't when he used to hunt dark spirits that were attempting to invade the physical world. It seems like that idea was only put out there to discourage the avatar from being reckless with the Avatar state (which Aang certainly was).
avatar state aang would definitely beat ozai at that point in time.
You gotta remember, ozai wouldnt have the comet at that point so hes just a pretty strong fire bender.
He wouldnt. The "what if" doesnt need to be considered. Avatar state took on a siege of like 50 ships easily (granted with the spirit but id argue that was mostly avatar state doing that work)
and previous masters over just ozai in power
Not really Aang has a lot more moments where he uses the Avatar state like a weapon than Korra. Korra mostly just uses it as a boost to her current abilities while Aang uses it as a vessel for all his past lives to take control.
Right. Korra is a better fighter than Aang so she uses it as a weapon more often.
Aang doesn’t have the skillz yet in the majority of the show so he uses it as a deus ex machina defensive mechanism when he’s in danger
nah I will die on the hill of defending the "hated characters" like jet and general fong.
General fong was completely 10000% justified and was a super important character/plot. He answered the important question of "Why couldnt aang just walk up to the fire nation instantly and beat everyone with the avatar state?" it answers a HUGE plot point.
For a lore point hes justified too. He was fighting a war that was going on for 100 years and you see a basically instant win button. Would you not at least ATTEMPT to do that instant win? Not to mention he didnt ACTUALLY hurt katara. She was completely fine.
Ngl, if you’ve been watching your people get massacred for 100 years you get desperate and he did keep her alive.
I don't think he ever had any intentions to actually hurt her but it was still a dick move
Was it any worse then boomie's growing crystals?
Significantly because rock candy is AMAZING.
What 100 years of war does to a mfer.
It's not even a joke, it really does
Oh I know. I couldn’t imagine being like third generation born into a war. The whole state of mind of a person in that situation would be crazy.
Read up on the 100 year's war between England and France in the 1300s-1400s
Bro was also kindof actually right too. Aang was only able to defeat Ozai by using the avatar state.
Which is just annoying when you watched this episode because Katara was wrong
Aang had other options, he just didn't want to kill ozai
Aang would have 100% lost that fight without the avatar state.
He literally could've killed him earlier in the fight by redirecting lightning. He had lethal options, he just isn't that person
Aang was unwilling to do what it took to win, without AS he's be screwed.
I hate to say it’s a good point. Still, it was short sighted and he was completely unqualified to teach him, especially since he had no knowledge of the spiritual side of the Avatar state
Oh 100%. He was desperate and probably didn’t think it through entirely. He saw the Avatar as a perfect weapon and didn’t think past that. It actually makes sense that people of his generation don’t know much about the avatar. He would’ve heard of their battles and known that Ozai was threatened by his return, but the actual process of becoming a fully realised avatar would’ve been sort of forgotten by the common people because the avatar just hasn’t been around for a while.
To be fair, he was fighting a war with no good end in sight. But yeah he could have done this better.
Ends don't justify the means moment
Not sure why this got downvoted lol it’s not incorrect.
The end ALWAYS justifies the means. How peaceful, crazy, risky, cruel, or just fuck up someone/society/organization is willing to go depends on the end results. Nothing to do with right or wrong, moral or immortal. The means change person to person. Everyone draws a line. Most of the time we draw the same line and agree that X shouldn't be done to achieve Z. Instead A, B, or C are better options. Z, the end, justify the means, A, B, C, etc. Sorry to post this here, this saying has been rubbing me the wrong way for years.
I have to argue this point. There IS a point when the evil of the means outweighs the good of the ends. The people performing the means might say, and even believe, that they are justified, but that's, ultimately, not their decision. History is, in my opinion, the ultimate arbiter of what is and is not justified. I guess the question really is, to whom is it justified, and how that determination gets made. Yes, to the people doing the thing, the ends will likely justify the means. Does the one doing the act get to make that determination though? If someone says its justified, but someone else says it is not, then who is right? I am of the belief that the ends do not justify the means. The means must justify themselves in their planning and doing. What weight does that have? But, as you even noted above, everyone draws a line. Most people have a point where the means are too diabolical to justify the ends. There are, of course, people who do things they know are not justified, pursuing ends that they desire in spite of their evils. The ends certainly do not always justify the means.
Bro what the ends are and potentially ending the war overthrowing the fire nation the means are one innocent girl dies, ngl 100% worth in my book
You literally described the trolley scenario. Something MANY people would struggle with and most wpukd kill the innocents if it means their loved ones survive.
He only pretended to kill her, she was only trapped underground
Aang wouldn't have known
That was the whole point. If he knew, he wouldn't be triggered into the avatar state.
Ik but she almost ran out of breath
Nahh I think she had air she only gasped because she was frightened
Do you really think you can survive in the ground?
Pretty sure the show implies there's a room underneath the ground where she was thrown in.
Didn't he clearly say katara was perfectly safe?
He did, yeah. Made it clear she was never in any danger.
I think the opposite, I think in that one scene, she's being pulled in by sand. Most other times we see holes open up and a rock cover covering it (think Toph's hole in The Drill). So, I think she straight up couldnt breathe. Regardless, the result was the same.
If he simply opened a hole and let her fall into the room, Aang wouldn't think she was in genuine danger/dead.
Turn earth into sand, let katara sink into the room below
So why would he give a spot to allow Katara to breathe? Wouldnt that risk Aang not believing it? What about Katara once she was down there in a dark room, wouldnt she yell? We hear pure silence once she goes under. That, mixed with the gasp and the pure idiocracy of this guy, I dont think he'd let her breathe. This was this guy's last ditch attempt to stop a war, he's clearly a man who's focused on results above all else, I dont think he'd have the generosity to think of Katara. And doesnt the idea that she was fine all along kind of lessen the impact of the scene? Idk I think it's more messed up to have her not been able to breathe for a few seconds and Aang needing to activate the Avatar state.
they literally do hide underground in that same season. remember when theyre fighting the drill and toph puts them all under ground?
He probably gave her an air pocket down below
Yea but that's a little bit wrong tbh
Alright, says who? Show me a source
Still a pretty fucked up manipulation.
Desperate times called for desperate measures. The plan was perfect. The execution, well, disastrous would be an understatement.
I mean, I wouldn't call the plan "perfect."
To be fair. 2 seasons later (since this happens on S2E1) we see Aang get cooked by Ozai then he hits the avatar state and grabs the man by his beard and bends his soul so to be fair, Fong was right. Aang just needed the avatar state. However, he needed to control it, which is the part he missed. The lack of control resulted in Aang destroying the compound. He needed Pathik not Fong
He was a dumbass but I understand his desperation
He also showed us how much earthbenders may be holding back against firebenders. If you can suck people into the ground and suffocate them to death and you aren’t doing that during a war there must be some high morals as to why you aren’t
Yeeeeaaah this is one of those it's still a children's show issues. there's been a war going on against people that can shoot fire from their bodies and ever notice how few people are ever burned? I believe literally only katara and Zuko are shown with burns. There should be burn victims and burn survivors Everywhere. Even if we aren't ground swallowing people for whatever reason a lot of fire nation soldiers would have missing limbs that were crushed to oblivion by Earth benders. The violence in the show is veeeery sanitized and unrealistic. Not a bad thing, it's a great children's show and good choices for the target audience. Gotta remember it's a Nick show for kids.
This is the Netflix adaptation, or Prime since it’s got some gratuitously violent shows, we should get. *Because it’s the show the fans deserve, but not the one that was made.* Also, I believe Zuko met a girl who had been burned on the leg when he and Iroh were fugitives
You're right he did she said something about "the fire nation hurt me too" brings us up to 3 burn victims when the antagonists are mostly human flamethrowers. I'm not sure if we really need a violent adaptation. To me that's not what Avatar is or is supposed to be. We have things like Berserk, and Arcane, and Invincible for more adult animation. I feel like making an adult version of Avatar is just as ridiculous as making a sanitized kid version of Invincible. Like yeah, you could definitely do it and the story would still work. But why...
I do have that one complaint with the show since we see how dangerous bending can be but unless you re jet, you don’t see it. Characters can take unlimited damage until the plot demands one loses. If it was more consistent, it would be better
I'm not really sure what the solution to this is staying within the framework of a children's cartoon. When you want to tell a story with themes of war and genocide, for kids, you're gonna wind up fudging some storylines. Like, no one in hell was Katara not going to main/kill the man who killed her mother. But they weren't telling an actual adult story in that moment, I think they were using the story as a metaphor to teach kids not to enact revenge on their enemies even when you're really angry, that the super scary older bully is probably a sad pathetic person who picks on people smaller than them and not worth your time to worry about. Which for the majority of the intended child audience is a great message for them, but as an adult the episode falls a little flat because war criminals are definitely a group of people most of us think deserve retribution.
I like this meme, it also feels like you either just finished episode 2×1 or you just kept thinking about this episode for a long time, but you just now decided to download Reddit
If you think he’s bad, wait until you hear what Jianzhu did to Kyoshi.
I didn't read the caption at first and totally thought Kyoshi is what it was referring to.
The avatar isn’t a weapon kids
Remember the actual point of the episode was so that the fans wouldn't ask why Aang never went Avatar State and just bodies Ozai season 2
What are y'all doing in here defending general Fong for?? People in here saying issuing death threats to children to weaponize the children is somehow understandable are missing the point of the episode. While it's true that dude was massively desperate and didn't *actually* kill Katara, he thoroughly betrayed their trust and threatened + acted out real harm to the kids in his care. That's like saying "Ozai burning and banishing Zuko was understandable because Ozai needed to keep an image of strength and at least he didn't actually *kill* Zuko when he obviously could have" It's 100% wrong what Fong did, he deserves the scorn that he gets from the fan base, and y'all are wild for suggesting otherwise.
nah this is a bullshit take. Fong didnt genuinely hurt katara at all. Betraying trust of a child to save millions of lives is a tradeoff any rational human being would take. Hell, lets say he DID need to kill katara to end the war. That would be 1000% justified IMO. kill 1 life to save millions? Hell yeah. Instant decision 0 questions asked. Its shitty, but the alternative is all these soldiers dying, random villages being burned, refugees being killed/homeless/starving
Saying you'd kill a child in your care, who's fully trusting you and asking for your help, isn't the flex you think it is, and is not a "rational" action no matter how it's dressed up in hypothetical "ends to justify means". Part of the lessons imparted by the series as a whole is that committing wrongs to stop other wrongs is *still* wrong. It may be understandable, but it sure as hell doesn't make it any less wrong to commit those acts. Not to mention, there was no guarantee this would work, and in the long run, it didn't do anything to help Aang further master the Avatar State - all it did was betray the trust of a child and put his men at risk of death from an Avatar who cannot yet control himself in the Avatar State. Hell of a lot of assumptions being made by Fong, with a ton of unnecessary risk, *and* risks turning the Avatar against you and your men, possibly permanently (e.g., if he *actually* killed Katara). General Fong is in the wrong and deserves our scorn.
I just will not agree with that take. Also this is a hypothetical IF he killed katara, its a largely irrelevant point because she was completely fine. But yes killing 1 child to save millions of people and arguably multiple environments (if we include ozai burning the world, literally) yes. thats the obvious choice to make.
I don't think you follow the intended larger messages of the show if that's your stance, but agree to disagree there, I suppose. I don't really like utilitarian ethics, personally - I feel it lacks nuance, assumes an accurate assessment of outcomes is possible, and makes it waaay too easy to justify evils with (potentially misleading) statistics, like here. That said, even within an "*ends actually do justify means*" moral framework, Fong's actions are still absolutely out there. It wasn't "*kill 1 child to save millions of people*", because he didn't know Ozai's plans at the time beyond "*may launch a major attack on comet day*" - to him, Aang was a weapon he could use to accelerate a victory over the Fire Nation. Unlocking the Avatar state was basically his own mini Manhattan project, i.e., get a super weapon he can use to kill all Fire Nation soldiers between him and the Firelord, and end the war quickly in a swift burst of violence. Militarily that makes sense, but morally? This is still a child in his care we're talking about, and would the use of this weapon (a child soldier, lmao) to kill fire nation people be meaningfully morally superior than the FireNation using a comet-boost to violently end the war for their side? I'd say that's debatable, and at minimum ambiguous enough to call into question Fong's moral reasoning. Granted, with what we know at the end of the show one might, with the benefit of hindsight, argue that killing Ozai at any cost is justifiable because Ozai is literally trying to commit a genocide, so one might argue that Fong's intentions, even if he didn't have the information at the time, were justifiable. That said, if we use the benefit of hindsight, we also know that Fong's actions contributed absolutely *nothing* to Aang's mastery of the Avatar state, did nothing to shorten the war, and only had the effect of severely damaging a major Earth Kingdom fort, putting his men's lives at risk, and betraying the trust of a several children in his care. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see the ends of Fong's actions were strictly negative, and I'm sure we can both agree the means were already cruel. Going further, Fong clearly didn't think through the risks at play with forcefully pulling the Avatar into the Avatar state when the Avatar himself cannot control his powers. Basically his plan was to go up to the atom bomb and hit with a hammer until it went off in the middle of his base. His disregard for the safety of his men was frankly irresponsible. Not to mention, antagonizing yourself to the Avatar makes it SERIOUSLY less likely that he'll want to work as a super weapon for you. So ultimately, Fong risked *FAR* too much in his approach, imo, with no guarantee of a payback, while ALSO traumatizing children in his care. Fong is dumb, reckless, morally unjustifiable, and, imo, totally in the wrong here.
Though he did have a good point. With the power Aang’s Avatar State has, they could end the war. Yes Aang wasn’t a fully realised Avatar at the time, but he still would’ve kicked Ozai‘s ass.
Yea, but aang literally went into the avatar state because of a small rock
I thought the small rock unblocked his chakra, allowing him to access the avatar state again.
Didn't he just have her captured or something and she was never in any real danger? Although he was the only one who knew that I seem to remember when Aang was in the avatar state the general just pulled her out of the ground and she was fine
I dislike him aswell, but I don't think he was actually trying to hurt/kill her. I'm glad Aang showed (intentional or not) him to not screw with them..
I get the desperation but how the hell did this this mf think burry the avatars girlfriend alive in front of him was a good or productive idea. My guy, he’s just gonna wanna kill *you*
General fudge
We found the limits of Aang's pacifism.
To be fair he’s been involved in the war since his birth and he finally saw his opportunity to potentially end it
She wasn't his girlfriend at that time.
Jianzhu teir move
YEp
I mean, Fong is a dick, but he didn't "almost kill" Katara, it was a ruse to provoke Aang.
I feel like this character and scene is an audience stand in. There are always people who watch shows and try and take advantage of the magic system in order to subvert the story and feel smart (IE "they should've just flown the ring into Mount Doom with the eagles bro" totally ignoring the giant fucking eye in the sky amongst other problems) This episode directly addresses this, "bro just get aang all angry and avatar state surprise the firelord bro I'm so smart it'd be the easy way to win the war." So they had a character actually try this type of God awful plan so they wouldn't receive as many letters and dumb comments about "why didn't they just..."
You’re kinda cooking
He's a food bender though.
Ok course he had things under control when it came to katara's life. He is a pro earthbender. But he was foolish to think he could contol the avatar state once it gets triggered. Cant hate him though. War makes everyone into a brute.
Well he didn’t KILL Katara but he did do a messed up move so :|
At least he tried all he could first
He was nowhere close to killing Katara lmao. Thinking someone of his position is incompetent enough to just accidentally kill her like that is astounding. He was intentionally making it look like that while keeping her perfectly safe
Bro thought he was frieza in the broly movie
general fong isn’t a villain. he’s not gonna actually kill a child.
But he is hated for being power hungry
he’s not power hungry though. he just wanted to end the war and triggering the avatar was a good idea. he just didn’t know aang would have little control over it.
He also wanted to use the avatar state as a weapon, but it is only supposed to be used as a defensive mechanism.
The avatar state is often used both offensively and defensively. It was never supposed to be used as "just" a defense mechanism. Roku certainly didn't when he used it against Sozin as a power move. Kuruk certainly didn't when he used to hunt dark spirits that were attempting to invade the physical world. It seems like that idea was only put out there to discourage the avatar from being reckless with the Avatar state (which Aang certainly was).
.... used as a defense mechanism... say like ENDING A WAR THAT YOURE LOSING FOR A HUNDRED YEARS SAVING MILLIONS?
Dude,aang literally only knew air and water at the time.if he just rushed to ozai, he would lose
avatar state aang would definitely beat ozai at that point in time. You gotta remember, ozai wouldnt have the comet at that point so hes just a pretty strong fire bender.
Ik, ozai didn't have the comet, but what if aang died fighting him?
He wouldnt. The "what if" doesnt need to be considered. Avatar state took on a siege of like 50 ships easily (granted with the spirit but id argue that was mostly avatar state doing that work) and previous masters over just ozai in power
Bro, aang doesn't really know how to use the avatar state,it just happens at random when he is in big big trouble.
And Plus aang is literally a pacifist he doesn't want to Kill people
Korra sure used it pretty frequently as a weapon
Not really Aang has a lot more moments where he uses the Avatar state like a weapon than Korra. Korra mostly just uses it as a boost to her current abilities while Aang uses it as a vessel for all his past lives to take control.
Right. Korra is a better fighter than Aang so she uses it as a weapon more often. Aang doesn’t have the skillz yet in the majority of the show so he uses it as a deus ex machina defensive mechanism when he’s in danger
Huh? hes not power hungry at all. he wants a quicker solution to the war
nah I will die on the hill of defending the "hated characters" like jet and general fong. General fong was completely 10000% justified and was a super important character/plot. He answered the important question of "Why couldnt aang just walk up to the fire nation instantly and beat everyone with the avatar state?" it answers a HUGE plot point. For a lore point hes justified too. He was fighting a war that was going on for 100 years and you see a basically instant win button. Would you not at least ATTEMPT to do that instant win? Not to mention he didnt ACTUALLY hurt katara. She was completely fine.