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

[breakattiffanys]

Haha, I just watched the marathon on Nickelodeon this weekend!

› Favorite character: I pretty much love everyone but if I had to pick a few favorites, probably Azula, Sokka, Aang, Irroh and Mai.
› Least favorite character: Jet.
› Prettiest character: Azula and Ty Lee.
› Character I'd marry: Sokka probably cause he's funny and the most normal of the guys. Zuko's emo-ness can only be handled by Mai and Aang is a kid (although he's a cutie pie, that's still pretty wrong).
› Favorite pairing: Honestly, I'm pretty much down with the show's canon pairings. Zuko/Mai are my favorites. Sokka/Suki are cute and I can get behind Aang/Katara when he's a little older (maybe when he's 14 and she's 16).
› Favorite episode: I'm gonna be super obvious and say the Sozin's Comet finale. But I also love the other two season finales a lot.
› Unpopular opinion: LOL, this might take a while. This fandom is batshit crazy. I'm pretty sure that's not even an unpopular opinion these days but oh well, I have A LOT of opinions that differ from fandom's. For one, I love Mai. I think she's awesome but she gets a lot of hate because she's not a conventional heroine personality (a la Katara) and is not drawn to Western standards of beauty. And I think Zuko/Mai are super cute together. 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 drama (there are more important things on the show). On a similar note, I don't like Zuko/Katara. I loved the development of their friendship but romantically, no and I don't think he brought out a good side of her in 'The Southern Raiders'. Like I said before, it's basically Draco/Hermione, a ship that's popular but belongs in the realm of fanon and that would've required A LOT of extra screentime to develop to a point of being believable and the show clearly wasn't interested in that. With regards to Aang/Katara, I think it's kind of wrong to say that her feelings weren't considered. I don't have super shippy feelings about them, just cause I don't think a 12 year-old can fully understand romantic love but the show does make the pairing's development clear enough.

Finally, this is a spoiler alert! cause it refers to the finale episode - I think people who wanted Aang to kill the firelord are seriously messed up. The kid is 12 years-old and wanting him to deliberately kill someone is really really wrong.

[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 drama

I 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 stunningly constructed, but a lot of the romances feel perfunctory. Ultimately it's fine, since this is a kids' show, but part of me would like the romantic relationships to give me as many feelings as, say, Zuko and Iroh. More time with Zuko/Mai, more time with Sokka/Suki, not being so conclusive about Katara/Aang since I don't think there was enough development, etc. A lot of the romantic stuff, especially in the case of Zuko/Mai, is predicated upon pre-series or off-screen stuff, which I understand for time purposes but it makes me long for more.

I think I could have found Zuko/Katara interesting, but the show hasn't gone anywhere with it so I don't have any strong feelings about them as a pairing (as individuals: yes). I fine with Katara/Aang being end game, and I'm glad at least that they started to show that the feelings might be mutual between them. It's cute and mostly inoffensive. I don't think it's taking away Katara's choice or not taking her feelings into consideration, but I do kind of think that Katara/Aang sort of sidelines the most interesting aspects of her character (for me at least). There is a darkness and intensity in Katara that I would have loved to see explored. I also kind of think that as the, you know, messiah Aang's narrative subsumes Katara's if she's his love interest (I feel the same way about Harry Potter - I think it would have been better if they had not given him a love interest because any girl he was with was going to have her narrative subsumed by his).

[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.

Re: the romances, I don't expect to see a lot of romantic development when the characters are that young. Perfunctory romances are kind of what's expected at that age. Romance is just a bit of a side show for kids. But on the other hand, kids do have strong relationships with family and are perfectly capable of forming really deep friendships at that age. Like, I really don't think Aang, at age 12, could possibly understand fully the implications of romantic love, but he could perfectly understand familial love. So I think the show had the right priorities there. I just think that no matter how much time they spend on romance, it's never really going to make super young love stories THAT serious and engaging because they're so young. And it's not like Harry Potter or whatever, where you don't get 7 years of slow romantic development and wait until the characters are 17 (and even then, it still wasn't THAT well developed).

See, I'm totally the opposite on Katara. I don't think she was at all in character in 'The Southern Raiders' (Zuko was even less in character, especially when he makes fun of Aang's cultural beliefs. It's like FYI YOUR FAMILY KILLED THEM ALL THANKS FOR BEING A DICK). For the majority of the show, Katara is a strong, compassionate girl who acts out of kindness for others and would never do anything to hurt people unless it was to protect her friends. I mean, she was truly HORRIFIED about her ability to blood bend. Her sudden desire for revenge in that episode just seemed really off to me (as well as too little/too late on that front, maybe if it was earlier in the show) and I don't like that Zuko encouraged it just to gain her acceptance. I think one of the writers said Zuko was kind of like "the devil" in that episode, influencing Katara in a really negative way. IMO, that episode brought out bad characteristics in both of them. What I love about Zuko/Mai is that they're healthy and happy together. About the only times Zuko ever smiles is when he's with Mai.

I tend to agree that "chosen ones" shouldn't have love interests (esp. in Harry's case), but in this case, the show kind of has to point Aang in that direction cause if he doesn't have kids, there are no more Airbenders left and the Avatar cycle is totally fucked and the world gets plunged back into chaos or something. I mean, I would've preferred they just do subtle hints while he's a kid and left the actual romantic stuff for when he's older.

ETA - Also, with regards to the Katara being dark and angsty idea, I just don't think it would work in the long run because of her strong relationships to Sokka and Aang. Sokka is in the same position as her, having lost their mom, and they're very close so I don't think she would really go down that road with him being so against it. And it also felt really out of character that she totally brushed off Aang when she saw exactly what he went through when he found out the airbenders were totally wiped out and when she has always been there to pull him out of his dark moments (like when Appa was stolen). Even without any romantic component, they clearly have an incredibly strong bond with each other and he is probably the most important thing to her. I don't think she would ever do anything to hurt him like that, especially since she is so protective of his feelings.

[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.

I think there's always potential for 'exploring a dark side' of any character because everyone has that side. But at the same time, for certain characters, it's not something that needs to be a huge part of their arc unless they are REALLY going to spend a lot of time on it. I guess I just see Katara as like Hermione - she has self-righteous moments (i.e. SPEW) and she can go to extremes, but I don't think she needed any dark vs. light conflict to be interesting. I actually would've been more interested to see some of this conflict with Mai because she's also of the fire nation and starts out being firmly on Azula's side, but her motivations and change were not as clearly spelled out as Zuko's. With Katara though, everything we saw of her in Seasons 1 and 2 suggests that she is just not the kind of person to go for vengeance. The bloodbending episode especially highlights that she finds those methods to be really wrong and awful.

[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.