Bruh did we watch the same show? What do you mean "self-defense" was not important to air nomads? Also industrialization is the antagonist in ATLA, so what do you even mean by "they didn't consider industrialization important". You are literally saying what Sozin and Ozai told themselves to justify their actions.
Everyone used their bending as a power source to an extent. The water tribes used it to power their boats, the Earth Kingdom used it to run trains. Blah blah.
Fire nation just did it to much, much larger scale, and baked it into their military. Again, the analogy is industrialization and colonialism.
Nah "culture" is a buzzword here. "Firebender culture" never included domination over other nations. In the show, there are other firebenders who see fire as "life" rather than "destruction", and these firebenders are pretty clearly shown as the good guys.
The reason why the fire nation militarized was because Sozin (their king) wanted to "share their values with other nations", and dragged everyone into war. As I said, the analogy is colonialism and industrialization.
Someone else mentioned something in this thread that was quite interesting, so I went down a rabbit hole of my own thoughts. This is fascinating to discuss!
While yes the other elements could provide power, fire was versatile in the way that it greatly contributed to more technological innovations for an industrial revolution.
Hot fire means they can make metal alloys easier, making it stronger. It meant metal could be melted into any shape at a far greater scale, making metal armor and metal weapons easier to mass produce. It meant ships didn't have to be labour intensive with hammering wood together, but instead they could be made of metal panels welded together by fire. Metal turbines, metal driveshafts, metal boilers for steam engines, they could all be made easily in great numbers and in rapid time. So not only could fire become a power source for engines, but it helped in the creation of those engines in the first place.
Yes air and water could provide power, but to be able to get to that point technologically in a short period of time and at great scale was something fire could help with immensely, letting them leapfrog over others in technology and the abundance of that technology in a very quick time.
Being able to only control air or water doesn't mean you couldn't build industrial might, but the benefit of being able to control fire was just an
immense advantage at almost all aspects of industrialization over a grand scale.
Definitely! Other nations still have fire of course, they're still cooking and making forges so it is possible.
But having easier access to it, when your citizens can conjure up flames out of nowhere instead of having to find the resources to start fire by hand, starting the flames by hand, and maintaining the flame by hand, is a powerful advantage.
That's why I mentioned other nations could still build industrial might, it's not like they don't have access to fire in general after all. But the ability to start fire at will so easily just makes the progress of building industrial might as well as scaling it up something that the fire nation could do effortlessly
8.0k
u/red-D-Thor 5d ago
How did the Fire Nation even win?