Comments | moonspinner: In which I declare myself a fandom heretic

moonspinner

In which I declare myself a fandom heretic

Dec 06, 2010 15:44

After the euphoria of Atla's Book 3 (Fire) wore off, I realized that I had some issues with it. And some is an understatement. It took me a while (another understatement) to put them together with any degree of coherency. I don't think I succeeded. But here they are, at last, to all intents and cathartic purposes.

( Cut for spoilers and heresies )

meta, avatar the last airbender

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inuyatta December 7 2010, 06:17:09 UTC

Despite the minor wank that seems to have cropped up either here or elsewhere, I agree with this post fully. And no, I have not ever shipped Zutara either ( ... )

moonspinner December 7 2010, 07:56:21 UTC

Where do I begin about the seething pool of conflicted emotions that I have with the Southern Raiders? LOL. More uncensored ranting in a moment.

moonspinner December 7 2010, 12:38:08 UTC

Despite the minor wank that seems to have cropped up either here or
elsewhere, I agree with this post fully. And no, I have not ever
shipped Zutara either. ;)

I think it is perfectly possible to have problems with the shipping of
a story and have valid criticism for other aspects of the story. All
the same, I am pleased as punch that other non-Zutara shippers see
problems wtih the finale. Avatar is a brilliant story. Perhaps if it
was less brilliant, the gaping holes of consistent inconsistency and
sub-standard story-telling in Season 3 won’t be so... gaping. Because
there is a lot of Season 3 that is fantastic - Zuko calling the old
man out; the Boiling Rock for all being written on top of a foundation
of shaky characterization is still an excellent episode - but because
so much of what was fantastic was built on or hedged between OOC/WTF
episodes, it just makes it worse.
LOL @ the minor wank. I almost wish there was wank. I feel like
if I’m letting some commenters down.

some of the writing team left before the series was done. ( ... )

inuyatta December 7 2010, 17:26:38 UTC

I think it is perfectly possible to have problems with the shipping of
a story and have valid criticism for other aspects of the story. All
the same, I am pleased as punch that other non-Zutara shippers see
problems wtih the finale. Avatar is a brilliant story. Perhaps if it
was less brilliant, the gaping holes of consistent inconsistency and
sub-standard story-telling in Season 3 won’t be so... gaping. Because
there is a lot of Season 3 that is fantastic - Zuko calling the old
man out; the Boiling Rock for all being written on top of a foundation
of shaky characterization is still an excellent episode - but because
so much of what was fantastic was built on or hedged between OOC/WTF
episodes, it just makes it worse.
LOL @ the minor wank. I almost wish there was wank. I feel like
if I’m letting some commenters down.YESSSSS to ALL of this! I wanted to do a post like this back when the finale first came out, but there were so many cries of 'quit harshing my squee!' and 'lol, if you didn't love it, you must be a butthurt zootard' that ( ... )

inuyatta December 7 2010, 17:26:59 UTC

As much as I like Zuko, he was a shitty boyfriend ( ... )

zamkenobi December 7 2010, 23:07:07 UTC

I agree with all of your post, but this in particular:

I also hated how overpowered and sue-like Katara had become in s3. It seemed she could do no wrong and had no real conflict until bloodbending came into play--and then she's using it on random soldiers that she thinks may have killed her mom.

What the heck was this? I got excited when bloodbending got introduced because I just knew that it meant conflict later. Yet the way it turned out, it might as well not come into play at all. I fully expected her to bloodbend those soldiers, but I also fully expected her to feel very guilty and then wonder what this revenge was doing to her. Even if she went on with her plan, she (or Zuko!) should have stopped and thought about what her hate was turning her into ( ... )

amiraelizabeth December 7 2010, 23:16:07 UTC

I didn't hate Season 3 either. I still enjoyed it. I enjoyed the finale. There were many squee-worthy moments. But there were story points that I felt had been sacrificed for other things.

moonspinner December 8 2010, 13:08:29 UTC

But they acted like it never happened. The only person who as appalled was the viewer.

I don’t think the creators thought beyond, “let’s give Katara this angsty, dark new power and see her go all angsty and dark with it. It’s gonna be hot.”

I didn’t hate S3 either. I was genuinely happy with it when it first aired even though my happiness always needed a pinch of ‘don’t think too hard’ salt to go with it. Heck, I’d even be happy about the stories that they didn’t follow through (Iroh’s Spirit World connection, Ursa’s whereabouts) if it had really appeared that there was too much story to fit in. As it was, with the number of filler episodes in the season, there’s no reason why they couldn’t have finished off the plotlines coherently.

moonspinner December 8 2010, 13:05:12 UTC

YESSSSS to ALL of this! I wanted to do a post like this back when the finale first came out, but there were so many cries of 'quit harshing my squee!' and 'lol, if you didn't love it, you must be a butthurt zootard' that I just shook my head and moved on.
*shakes head sadly* So much for fandom uniting the nerds against the world, right? Sometimes it seems like if we’ve just moved from one kind of schoolyard bullying to another.

Hell, I shipped Kataang up UNTIL s3. All they had to do was not mess up and actually show Katara making that conscious decision to view Aang as something other than a student/friend, and instead we got this ridiculous back and forth ambiguous behavior until the finale happens, and then boom--canon. Just because.
Wow, it’s as if you have a scanner that is looking through my skull and typing out my thoughts. So much word to this.

Sokka/Suki, and Suki herself actually, felt more like a tacked on afterthought. Sokka KNEW she had been captured before 'The Boiling Rock' happened. He SHOULD have figured it out ( ... )

inuyatta December 9 2010, 03:05:26 UTC

Kataang had excellent foundation and a beautiful friendship; their romance had tons of hints...but in the final season, it should have been less ambiguous at that point. I have always felt that the most satisfying part of watching a relationship is when the other shoe drops and the one sitting on the fence about the whole affair has the epiphany and realizes 'omg I AM in love!' and then has to work their way through awkward aftermath of said epiphany until they can bring themselves to a confession ( ... )

moonspinner December 9 2010, 08:09:57 UTC

Kataang had excellent foundation and a beautiful friendship; their romance had tons of hints...but in the final season, it should have been less ambiguous at that point.

I've always thought so, too. I thought the Headband was a nice start to their coming-together moment... then Bryke kept on bringing in these religious obstacles. Why is Katara confused again? Because I honestly don't know if the narrative ever addresses it. If she's wary because Aang died on her once and she's scared he will die again, it's never shown. In fact she shows very little apprehension at the thought of Aang going into battle again which you would think, girlfriend or no girlfriend, after seeing Aang die, she might be a bit worried. :facepalm And Aang doesn't even work through the whole 'leave Katara or lose your powers' angst that was introduced in the S2-ending. It was just dropped on the way side...

Hey, at least, I know that I'm fanwanking the Kyoshi thing. :P

In regards to Maiko--yeah, the foundation for a relationship shouldn't be left out of a ( ... )

inuyatta December 10 2010, 04:42:59 UTC

I'm with you on Kataang--what they had up until 'The Headband' was wonderful...and then it just abruptly went to the wayside where we didn't get a follow-through on Katara's conflicted feelings and coming to terms with them ( ... )

moonspinner December 10 2010, 08:02:05 UTC

As for Aang's leave Katara or lose the powers thing--I think that's actually a common Western misconception of the lesson. The thing taught in Buddhism is that love is good--but possessive, all-consuming love is dangerous. Aang hadn't quite realized that his position as the Avatar means that restoring balance to the world comes before everything, including Katara. Instead, Aang placed Katara above it all and nearly lost everything. My problem with it is that it’s set up and not followed through. Nobody even talks about it in Season 3. There’s an ass-pull pseudo-explanation for why Aang can’t achieve the Avatar State just before Invasion (or Sozin’s Comet? I don’t remember but I know it was before one of the two battles). But it’s not brought up before then and we never see Aang even trying to practice the Chakra lessons. He never works through the whole ‘Choose between Katara or the World’ dilemma again and that always felt like a cheat to me because if anyone should have been having misgivings about a relationship, it should have ( ... )

inuyatta December 10 2010, 09:31:14 UTC

You are definitely right that they should have followed through with that so that it would have least made sense to the viewers ( ... )

moonspinner December 12 2010, 15:42:53 UTC

Sorry it's taken ages for me to reply! I've been immersed in composing NIKITA meta. Do you watch the show? You really should.

I love the idea of Song as a medic and using her non-Bending skillz to help the war effort. And you’re absolutely right that the Song episode ended in such a way that it foreshadowed her returning into the story.

I like your theory on Aang's trip to rediscover the Avatar spirit, but as cool as it sounds, it probably would have taken quite a bit more than 20 episodes to pack everything in there while making use of most of the cast.I think if they deleted a lot of extraneous episodes (Runaway, Painted Lady, Sokka’s Master, etc) there might have been quite some room to explore Aang’s adventures in the Spirit World. Remember his other adventures in the Spirit World never took more than 2 episodes in a row (the Winter Solstice, the Siege of the North, the CoD, etc ( ... )

inuyatta December 13 2010, 07:13:06 UTC

Unfortunately, I rarely get home early enough these days, so I haven't been watching much TV--but no worries about the length of time between replies ( ... )

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