Meme

[breakattiffanys]

I have so little to write about these days cause real life has become SUPER busy. But hopefully this meme will give me some inspiration! Give me fandoms and I will tell you:

› Favorite character.
› Least favorite character.
› Prettiest character.
› Character I'd marry.
› Favorite pairing.
› Favorite episode.
› Unpopular opinion.

Fandoms include: mad men |

Comments

[zombie_boogie]

Avatar: The Last Airbender! Now that I'm finished book two and part way into book three :).

[breakattiffanys]

Haha, I just watched the marathon on Nickelodeon this weekend

[zombie_boogie]

Oh my god Jet is the worst. He was slightly more tolerable once they got rid of that stupid thing in his mouth, but still. Worst.

I LOVE ZUKO/MAI. WHY DO PEOPLE HATE THEM I DON'T UNDERSTAND. OK I do, because fandom is stupid, but they are perfect for each other. I love the scene in 3.01 where Zuko goes on this self-important rant and Mai is just like, "LOL I just asked if you were cold." Hipster royalty of fantasy Japan. Love. I love Mai too as an individual. I know she doesn't have a ~sparkling personality, but she's hilarious and I think she makes sense as a character (the explanation in "The Beach" was a bit on the nose, but it was still great).

I also love the fact that the romantic pairings are cute and low maintenance relationships, as opposed to devoting a lot of time to crazy romantic dramaI agree that it was refreshing not to have a lot of relationship drama, but I still would have liked for the canon romantic relationships to be fleshed out a bit more. The platonic relationships on the show (family and friendship) are so

[breakattiffanys]

A big part of this fandom are hardcore Zuko/Katara shippers and that tends to be the source of Mai hate. On top of that, Zuko is really the only male character that fandom can sexualize (Sokka's cute but mostly comedic and Aang is a child) and usually the girl who gets the guy brings in a lot of hate. I mean, from what I've heard, they make the post-HBP Harmony shippers look great in comparison

[zombie_boogie]

Ahh, see I haven't seen that episode! I was just thinking about Katara in "The Painted Lady" and how she had her own capacity for really powerful righteous action in her own right outside of Aang and Sokka. I don't think she would ever reach a permanent state of vengeful rage, nor would she want to. I'm just interested in her capacity for darkness, because I'm always going to be interested in grey areas with characters (just like I'm interested in Aang's struggle to reconcile his uber powerful and violent Avatar state with his more pacifist personality). I like that kind of inner struggle - whether to embrace the darker side and power it provides or to reject it as too dangerous or unpleasant. But, you know, kids' show on Nickolodeon. It's the same reason why they'll never tell me All The Things about the militarization of the Fire Nation.

[breakattiffanys]

See, I love Katara in The Painted Lady because her somewhat crazy actions (well, only that last part was really crazy and Aang kind of helped her there) were driven out of her natural compassion and kindness for suffering people. That's who she is and like she said, she'll never turn her back on people who need help. But what happens later on in The Southern Raiders is straight up personal vengeance, which did not make sense for her at all. I mean, the audience is meant to be shocked and horrified that Aang purposely killed the giant wasp out of rage. And while granted, Katara is not a spiritual pacifist, she has a similar nature that was not really taken into account in that episode when she was just like 'later guys, going to kill some dude'.

[zombie_boogie]

Yeah I think it's a question of motivation. In "The Painted Lady" she was driven by a feeling of righteous compassion. There were darker elements there because she kind of went to extremes, but it was motivated by compassion. I think that if it were given proper time to develop that Katara could have a brief sojourn into vengeance (she certainly has the motivations), but the show decided not to go that route early on when Katara disagreed with Jet's actions. If it were a more adult and longer show it might have been interesting if she had a kind of Arya Stark-like arc, but that obviously wasn't going to happen so it would be odd to kind of shoehorn it into one episode.

[breakattiffanys]

Yeah, and in The Painted Lady, Sokka was more or less disagreeing with her actions because he is looking out of the group (not wanting to get into trouble, waste time, etc). And up until the factory incident, her actions were purely kind-hearted (she heals people, which is not a crime). And then, Aang was totally on board with destroying the factory and they went on their eco-terrorism trip together. lol

[zombie_boogie]

Well, I always thought Hermione was a lot darker than the novels really made explicit, but you are right in that if they were going to go for a darker Katara then they needed to spend time developing it, and there simply wasn't time for it. I would be interested in seeing ALL OF THE THINGS about the Fire Nation ladies. I want to know how bubbly Ty Lee survived growing up in the Fire Nation and why she was so devoted to Azula. I want to know more about Mai and how she built such formidable barriers around herself. I want to know more about how Azula has never really been anything but a psychopath and a child soldier (and I love how in "The Beach" it indicated that maybe she'd like to be something more, but she just doesn't know how). Basically I want some kind of prequel spin-off at the Fire Nation Academy for Girls.

[breakattiffanys]

Yeah, I mean, everyone has different sides and they clearly don't have to time to explore everything. Like, I would never expect the show to do a 'dark' Sokka or Toph episode or anything like that, even though I'm sure it's there and could be explored (just like we saw a different side of Ron in Deathly Hallows). For the goals and purposes of this show, I think they pretty much did all they could given the target audience and the time limitations. And Azula's characterization is overall very satisfying to me, especially in the finale episode. The only thing I wanted was to have Mai and Ty Lee's motivations explained better and I wanted them to show up a little more in the final episodes. Overall though, I think A;TLA is one of the most thematically satisfying shows I've seen.