Avatar: TLA - Book 2 (and more winter crap)
Made some progress today thanks to being snowed/iced in. :) As expected, the sun going down led to the refreezing of the roads, making them far nastier than they were earlier. Good thing I didn't head out; wherever I was, I'd be stuck. And it looks like I'm stuck tomorrow, too - little sister doesn't get off work until late afternoon, right
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Well, I like to PLAY IT SAFE. Mostly because CONFESSION: THE FIREKIDS AKA DANGEROUS LADIES PLUS ZUKO. THEY ARE MY FAVORITES. And their arcs are all just <3333 and I just don't trust myself to bring any of them up more than in passing without like gushing everywhere.
But when I talk about the dynamics of, say, Z/K or A/K, I'm not even talking about the relationships in a specifically romantic sense.
Oh yes. I know! Which I appreciate! I didn't think for a second that you were. What I was trying to say was that the fandom specifically and almost exclusively did this: just [relied] on symbolic representation to show two characters are going to hook up or who likes each other, even though the show itself doesn't really do that at all, and ignored this: the genuine relationships/feelings between the characters if it contradicted what they had decided was the SYMBOLIC IMPORTANCE OMG of whatever thing. It got to the point where people genuinely just wouldn't consider a pairing if they couldn't force it into some kind of twisted ~*~symbolic elemental~*~ logic. And you can, as you said, read elemental connotations into whatever you want...but I guess what I'm saying is that the fandom's problem was that it decided that elemental connotations were the sole determining factor from which every relationship and plot development was destined to spring. As opposed to, you know, a reading that might provide more thematic depth to some things.
Another thing I will say is that Book Three...it delves into its namesake nation/culture in a way that the previous two books didn't. You know, Book One wasn't about Water Tribe culture and, in fact, took place mostly in the Earth Kingdom. Book Two def took a little tour through the Earth Kingdom, but the Earth Kingdom is so disparate and diverse that it can't really be said to be significantly about answering any sort of overall questions about the Earth culture. In contrast, Book Three is legit about the people of Fire. It's about who they are and why they are that way. It's about what their culture was and what it became and how that affects them day-to-day and the influence that it's had on all of their lives. Like if I had to describe the season I would say it's one almost solely about internal struggle for a lot of the time and because of that a lot of the really heavy four elements symbology of the previous two seasons recedes as it becomes about all of these characters trying to balance themselves wrt their very personal and individual shortcomings and foibles and issues.
Obviously it doesn't go away or anything! Just, you know, it's not really rolling out things as blatantly appealing to that as The Chase and Bitter Work, Crossroads of Destiny and Siege of the North, etc.
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