legendofkatara:

sokkaspetboomerang:

Honestly what freaked me out the most in this scene wasn’t monk gyatso’s skeleton – we pretty much expected that. What freaked me out was all the firebender skeletons. 

 Monk gyatso was always portrayed as a light-hearted, peaceful man, both from roku and aang’s perspective (the most aggressive thing we see him do is drop pie on the other elders). Aang’s teachings of “respecting all life” almost undoubtedly came from gyatso, which is why it’s so hard to picture him killing all these people, even during a crisis. 

 The other thing that I wonder about is why were the only bodies found around him? Sokka found a helmet, but that’s not the same as a skeleton – it could have easily been lost in the confusion of the attack. So it begs the question: was gyatso the only airbender to fight back? Was he the only one who broke the airbender code of non violence? Did he die thinking he’d rather go down fighting then be executed like the others? I need to know what happened during the genocide

See now for me, this always made perfect sense. That temple was full of children, and I have no doubt that nearly every able adult in that temple would do absolutely anything to protect those children. 

In the comics, we see Aang kill General Old Iron to protect Toph, so it’s obvious that airbenders will and can kill if pushed to it to defend others that they care about. So I think that it makes sense that the Monks and Nuns at the temples would have broken from their own beliefs in defense of the children they undoubtedly loved. 

As Avatar Yangchen said: “Selfless duty calls you to sacrifice your own spiritual needs and do whatever it takes to protect the world.“ And I think that philosophy would be stretched to protecting children.

What surprises me most in this scene is the sheer number of bodies around him. It really illustrates how powerful airbending masters can be. All of those soldiers were (presumably) firebenders with their powers all hopped up on Sozin’s Comet, and an elderly, pacifistic monk managed to kill them all.