What I Learned About Writing Diversity From the Avatar Universe

No, not this one, of which I wasn’t too fond. This one.

One of the awesomest parts of being a writer is that watching and reading fantastic stories is a legitimate way of learning to be better at what I do (some would say the best way). I get the dual pleasure of exploring wonderful worlds of fiction and then deconstructing them to figure out how their creators made them that way.

Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel series, The Legend of Korra, are two examples of those wonderful worlds. Both series take place in the same fictional universe: some people in this pre-industrial world can “bend” elements (Water, Earth, Fire, and Air) in a form of magical martial art, but only the Avatar, reincarnated through the ages, can bend all four. In the same way that many popular English fantasy epics (e.g. The Lord of the Rings) take place in worlds based on elements of Western European cultures, Avatar’s fantasy world is based on elements from Pacific Rim cultures.

For this reason, Avatar is one of the relatively rare popular Western stories that features a cast of characters who are not white. Its team of protagonists includes characters who are differently abled, and the show’s many female characters are as well rounded and compelling as their male counterparts. The show can be pretty heteronormative, though it did make an effort to include a homosexual relationship among one set (no spoilers) of important characters.

As a writer, I can take away a few lessons on writing diversity from the way Avatar and The Legend of Korra function.

First, the thing I admire most about the two series is how their diversity feels natural and organic. These characters — and this world — are living, breathing entities. The setting is rich in details, and every detail feels well considered. So often, in mainstream Western media, diversity feels like an afterthought, either through tokenism or by effectively making diversity a “guest star” in the story that is otherwise white, Anglo-Saxon, and male. By contrast, the Avatar universe isn’t a story to which diversity has been added — it’s a universe where the story and the diversity are the same thing.

I also like that Avatar trusts its audiences to love characters who may be different from them. We don’t need to see this place through the eyes of a white guy to understand it. A lot of the time, any diversity I see in movies, TV, and books places a white character at the centre of a group of diverse characters. Not only am I tired of seeing only one type of protagonist, but I’m insulted that the creators think I need someone who has the same racial experience as me in order to identify with the story. Avatar offers me characters who might differ from me in lots of physical and cultural ways with the full confidence that I can sympathize with them regardless. And I do.

On the other hand, Avatar does show that diversity of characters doesn’t necessarily entail the diversity of the creative team. For example, many of the voice cast are white performers (or at least, performers who can pass as white and therefore likely benefit from some forms of white privilege — I have no idea how they would self-identify). They’re talented, and that’s great, but if even a show like Avatar with so many different characters doesn’t reflect that difference in what kind of artists get work, when do we get a diversity of backgrounds in the creation process as well as in what’s created? This is a double-edged sword: on the positive side, Avatar does show that just because I’m white doesn’t mean I can’t or shouldn’t want to create fantastic stories that star all sorts of characters. But the real-life inequity of the creative industries is a broader problem that also needs work.

This larger issue makes me wonder, cynically, if the Avatar world’s diversity is possible only because it’s animated. Infamously, in the live-action movie adaptation, all the leads were played by actors who, as described above, probably experience forms of white privilege in real life (though, again, some may identify differently). The chief actor of colour played the villain/antihero, and he was of a different cultural and racial group than the ones upon which his character’s people was based. Is diversity only acceptable until the point where audiences would get to see real bodies of people of colour on their screens?

Likewise, presenting orientations that are not heterosexual in non-sexual ways is still important. What do I mean? Well, part of the reason Avatar and The Legend of Korra don’t weave diversity of sexual orientation in their stories as well as they present racialized cultures and strong female characters is because the stories are aimed at children and young adults: they don’t deal with physical sexuality on a level above kiss on the lips. (The other, perhaps more important part, is network guidelines restricting the content that can be included.) But characters’ sexuality are displayed in more ways than just showing sexual acts. In Avatar, we see plenty of adult characters in heterosexual marriages or relationships; we see characters have crushes on characters of the opposite sex; and, perhaps most importantly, we see characters assume that all the other characters are heterosexual. My language-learning app, Duolingo, manages to be inclusive simply by sometimes giving me sentences to translate like “Her wife likes oranges.” Stories, no matter what age they’re aimed at, can do the same.

There are, of course, many kinds of diversity other than race and culture, and the Avatar world is rich in part because its creators pay attention to intersectionality rather than focussing on one way to explore difference. Portraying the differences among members of a single culture or group is as important as including the differences between multiple groups. For example, within the Earth Nation, we meet cowards, useless aristocracy, cheeky thieves, corrupt officials, hardworking police, and funny comedy relief. We see that sometimes different people within the same nation might look different and have different values. And we see that race and culture are only a few of the varying statuses that might shape someone’s experience. For example, Toph Beifong, the main Earth character in Avatar: The Last Airbender, is not only female but also differently abled (she was born blind) and struggles with the expectations placed on both identities even as she demonstrates her talent as the greatest Earthbender of her time.

But perhaps what means the most to me, personally, is how the Avatar universe demonstrates that diversity and great speculative fiction go hand-in-hand. Fantasy and science fiction are my favourite genres, but because the world in which they’re set is often built from the ground up, there are so many opportunities to accidentally (or purposely) marginalize people and cultures who are not the writer’s “default.” Many creators seem to work under the assumption that diversity adds another layer to making this new world with new rules.

It’s true that expanding one’s mind to learn about and embrace identities beyond the “default” can be hard work, especially for writers like me who belong to one or more of the “default” groups. But we all have a responsibility to do so precisely so that our stories can reflect the wide range of human experience no matter what genre they belong to. Just like Avatar and The Legend of Korra, speculative fiction for all ages can reflect the wonderful diversity of humanity in an entertaining, exciting way.