So that one thing

[jlh]

I know this is, for many, a pointless request to make of an SF-F or action/adventure genre canon, but I'm not a genre fan, so I feel okay pushing for the next level. This isn't a diss on Avatar by any means, just something that felt missing, that occurred to me after a few days of thinking about the finale.

Comments

[sistermagpie]

I definitely noticed that too. It sneaks up on you, because all the people in that scene had been there throughout, so the obvious response is, "There weren't any because there weren't any older female mentors before...oh, wait. Why weren't there any older female mentors?"

I remember how a lot of the great female characters we see weren't there originally because the guys started out creating guy characters as defaults, and it seems like just nobody thought to challenge the older characters the same way.

I mean, for some of them you can see why it happened that way. There were a lot of boys who wanted male role models. Sokka, for instance, wanted a male master because he had the whole missing father thing. Iroh was Iroh. Pakku was sexist to begin with. But they didn't all have to be men. It was actually *weird* that they were all men given the balance of the rest of the show.

[jlh]

Why is it okay for the boys to get male role models but the girls to not have any female role models, especially since more mothers were actually absent than fathers? After all, Sokka and Katara are the only characters with a good and living dad; he's just not physically present. Why couldn't Katara have had a female master? I know why in the context of the show, but why did they make those decisions? Why didn't we see one aging Kyoshi warrior, especially as they didn't participate in the war until Suki decided they should, so they wouldn't have been decimated by that? I think you're right that nobody thought to change the older characters, but I wish they had. I think seeing older female role models is just as important as seeing younger female warriors, and maybe even more so because it implies that like the men, you can have a life, maybe a family, and not have to give up being badass.

[sistermagpie]

Exactly--It really seems like with the boys they just automatically thought okay, they need male role models. And then for Katara when she wanted a master they went with Katara having to fight for it because it's a guy who doesn't think girls should fight

[sistermagpie]

I know they were asked about her in the interview at the end of the book and that's where I read it...now I'm trying to find the exact quote...

Q: Is Azula really as evil as she seems? Or is there more to her?

M: As with all the Avatar characters, even Azula has a softer side, though it’s buried very deep. As “The Beach” and “Sozin’s Comet” showed, she has a lot of unresolved issues with her mother. She really feels that her mother didn’t love her as much as Zuko, and this drives her crazy, literally.

B: There are obviously some truly evil people in the world, but in the case of Azula, her repressed emotions and jealousies corroded her spirit and made her become that way. It is possible that she could have turned out better in a healthier environment, but growing up in the royal family of a nation seeking world domination proved to exacerbate her problems. But Zuko and Katara spared her life, and who knows, she might have a chance to heal.