Laoding. "The Cave of Two Lovers, Wan Shi Tong's Library and Energybending: A Critical Analysis of the Available Evidence." Avataric Review Letters. Vol. 56, No. 9.
In this article, Laoding seeks to catalogue and analyze the evidence relating to three controversial claims about Avatar Aang: that he had been in the Cave of Two Lovers, that he had been in the mythical library of Wan Shi Tong, and that he had used Energybending to remove the ability to Firebend from Firelord Ozai. These claims originated with the earliest biographies of Avatar Aang, including Riko and Dima's Avatar: The Last Airbender and Chief Sokka's Life of Avatar Aang. While widely believed in the years after Avatar Aang's death, they have recently fallen into dispute.
The Cave of Two Lovers, which has been recently found, was thought to be a myth related to the legend of the origins of Earthbending and the city of Omashu. The dispute about Avatar Aang having entered the cave stems from the fact that many scholars of the time thought the cave to be lost. Laoding concludes that the evidence is ambivalent; the detailed descriptions of the cave found in early accounts of Avatar Aang's life could have been fabricated, but there would be no reason to do so. This is the only claim whose veracity is no longer in doubt; the discovery of the actual Cave of Two Lovers and its agreement with the description furnished in Avatar Aang's Places to Go show that he most likely had been in the cave.
Wan Shi Tong's library is widely held to be either completely mythical or partly so; it has been theorized that the legend of the library is based on a historical library, but has been embellished over time. Laoding considers it implausible that Avatar Aang or his friends entered the library. It has been held that their accurate prediction of the solar eclipse of 1/8 Riwu-Monkey is evidence of their having entered the library, but their arrival in Ba Sing Se around that point in their journey suggests otherwise. They would likely have been able to access detailed astronomical predictions there, and various tables of the time predict a solar eclipse for 1/8 Riwu-Monkey. In addition, the fact that Wan Shi Tong's library was considered lost even at that time casts further doubt on the affair.
Evidence considering Energybending is scarce, and Laoding freely acknowledges it. Almost nothing is known of Firelord Ozai after his defeat; the official biography released by the Royal Fire Nation Historians' Academy has only one line of text concerning Ozai after the Hundred Years' War: "Former Firelord Ozai died in the third month of the year Yuanzheng-Serpent, and was barred from the traditional funeral rites." It is impossible, therefore, to assess whether he could still Firebend after the war. There is, however, the testimony of Chief Sokka and Toph Beifong concerning the immediate aftermath of his defeat, but Laoding dismisses these because of the obvious bias involved. Based on the fact that no instance of Energybending had been known to occur since the Tenth Avatar, Laoding decides that the story of Avatar Aang taking away Firelord Ozai's bending is "probably an embellishment of the true facts".
Laoding's work is rather more like a summary than a full analysis of the evidence; it is useful as such, though it is now outdated and somewhat controversial. Despite its perceived shortcomings, the article remains the only academic paper to compile and analyze the data surrounding these claims.