The Morning Realms Dispatch No. 7
Avatar: The Last Airbender, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Asianness
This is the free monthly edition of The Morning Realms Dispatch, in which I share with my lovely readers some behind-the-scenes content and teasers for GUARDIANS OF DAWN: ZHARA, the first book in the Guardians of Dawn series, forthcoming AUGUST 29, 2023. If you would like even more secrets, why don’t you consider becoming one of my 절친?
I resisted watching Avatar: The Last Airbender for the longest time.
Mostly because I’m a snob, if I’m completely honest.
The year was 2008, which is a strange time to have been an otaku. Anime was starting to gain a bit more mainstream credibility, but it was still a decade away from true mainstream accessibility. I came of age in the early 2000s (aka, I’m a millennial), when anime and other nerd interests were niche interests in the United States. I wish I could impress upon the Youth™ the effort we had to go through in order to consume the content everyone takes for granted now. No YouTube, no streaming services, no mainstream distribution. If we wanted to watch anime, we had to find the one (1) store at the mall (!) that sold nerd-type stuff — video games, Magic: The Gathering, comics, etc. — and then go to the back behind a beaded curtain to get 3 burned DVDs with fansubs1 of The Vision of Escaflowne that some kind person in Japan managed to get to you.
So when I had friends tell me to watch this “anime” Nickelodeon was producing, I couldn’t help but be skeptical. First of all, "anime" is only produced in Japan.2 Secondly, I was unsure of an work with an Asian-inspired setting written by two white guys and produced by an American studio.
Thankfully I got over myself.3
The marketing materials for Guardians of Dawn compare the series to Sailor Moon and fairy tales, but to be honest, Avatar: The Last Airbender was just as much — if not more — of an influence on the books than Sailor Moon. In fact, when I first pitched this to my agent and editor, I did reference ATLA. Elemental magic and an East Asian-inspired setting? Natch.
Sailor Moon as a comp for the series was really more for the light-hearted, playful, and joyful vibe, as well as a girl-centric cast, but truthfully, Avatar: The Last Airbender is probably the best shorthand to describe Guardians.
And that’s the amazing thing about Avatar: The Last Airbender — it’s become shorthand for high fantasy in an East Asian-inspired setting. But the thing that has always impressed me about the show is how much the setting informs the story — from the magic system to the core philosophies — without defining the story. At its heart, ATLA is a classic story of Good vs. Evil featuring a reluctant Chosen One. Very Joseph Campbell. On one hand, you could plausibly tell the same story in a non-East Asian setting and it would still be the same. On the other hand, the East Asian setting is so entwined with the concept that it would be a fundamentally different story in a different context.
And that’s the sort of fantasy I love best: where the story both transcends and is embodied by its setting.
In other words, the East Asian setting of ATLA is more than mere set dressing; it is lived in.
And I find it masterful just how well done the Asian-inspired elements of Avatar: The Last Airbender are. It is pan-Asian without pandering or being pastiche, drawing on elements of Chinese history and philosophy as well as Korean, Japanese, southeast Asian, and south Asian influences. Moreover, it resists exoticizing its influences, making the characters and the world feel as familiar and as mundane as any western fantasy.
This, more than anything else, is the most revolutionary thing about the show.
Sometimes I find settings in fantasy books hard to swallow. In some western-inspired fantasies, the setting is taken for granted to the point where it feels absolutely no effort was made to give it depth, history, and internal logic. In some non-western-inspired fantasies there is the opposite problem, where every last detail is explained to the point where it feels like you’re reading a tour guide instead of being immersed in the world.
In that way, Avatar: The Last Airbender feels like watching anime. Magic and philosophy in anime is Japanese, but because the intended audience is also Japanese, it doesn’t bother to explain the little details. And perhaps it’s because I grew up in the age of seedy back room anime exchanges, I didn't mind doing the work of trying to contextualize what I didn’t understand. I didn’t have Wikipedia on-hand via my phone then, so I had to draw connections from contextual cues. But that is the way we walk through our mundane, everyday world as well. I remember learning English as a kid — ESL aside — I remember hearing how words were used and drawing connections between the word and a concept through example and repeated use.
This matter-of-factness about the world made me feel more at ease with my own Asianness.
It’s a funny thing to say, especially in an age where Korean culture is...I don’t know...cool? I guess? It still blows my mind that I don’t have to constantly explain Culture 101 stuff to people, and not just Koreaboos! The average person! But it’s hard to overcome the consistent habits of your formative years; I have been explaining myself for far longer than I have not.
When I first entered the publishing sphere, I was incredibly conscious of navigating the white hegemony of publishing, and even more conscious of not wanting to seem too “ethnic.” Not because I was ashamed of my heritage, but because I knew just how quickly the white hegemony pigeonholes BIPOC authors, having worked as an editor and having been a person of color my entire life. To be anything other than the “default” was to be reduced to an identity defined by the white hegemony. Any trait I wanted to claim as mine would always be viewed through the lens of whiteness. Did I like anime? Oh, it was because I was Asian. Did I dye pink streaks into my hair? I did it because I was Asian. Did I love classical music? It was because my Asian parents made me take piano lessons. Was I a good writer and bad at math? I was a defective Asian. I couldn’t ever be normal; I would always be “different.” Other. Special.
The world and the characters of Avatar: The Last Airbender are not viewed through the lens of whiteness. But neither are they stripped of a foundational cultural upbringing that codes them as Asian. And unlike anime, ATLA was produced by a Western studio for a western audience.
Writing a non-western setting while writing in English is always a tricky thing. How much do you explain? How much do you “exoticize” in order to satisfy the white gaze-y need for tourism in its escapism? How closely do you hew to actual history in order satisfy a made-up litmus test for “authenticity” in the world-building? Could a non-western setting ever be “ordinary?”
Avatar: The Last Airbender proved yes.
Part of the pitch I made when I first sold Guardians of Dawn to my publisher was the East Asian-inspired setting — not because I wanted to pay homage to my heritage,4 but because I wanted to set stories in a place that felt ordinary in the way I wished I had been ordinary growing up. Without constant explanation, expectation, or exoticization.
Welcome to the Morning Realms.
That’s all for this month’s issue of The Morning Realms Dispatch! Next month I’ll talk about the Dragon Age video games, himbos, and ensemble casts and the influence they had on Guardians of Dawn: Zhara, so be on the lookout for that. I will also be talking about gatekeeping anime and Hong Kong martial arts movies for my 절친-only in The Guardians Gazette, so if you would like to check out that, why don’t you consider subscribing?
Fan subtitled. Yes, we had fans subtitling shit!
“Anime” within Japan refers to is all animated work, but within the English-speaking context, it refers only to animated work produced by Japanese directors and studios.
Although I would argue my impulse to be skeptical of Asian-inspired work created by two white guys is still correct, even as Bryke are the exceptions that prove the rule.
I had to research as much as any other American; I’ve taken several trips to China, Tibet, Korea, and Japan for research.