the instrument of joy
I'm going to do this in sections, getting the nitpicks and the larger issues out of the way before going for the squeeful stuff, and I'll cut them separately, so if you want to avoid the less happy stuff, you're free to. Also, this is based on one viewing of the series, so I might have missed things or might have a different response on repeat viewings. Spoilers for the whole series, obviously.
Nitpicks
I don't really have a lot of minor things that didn't work for me, and I think most of them are things that are genre-related. Avatar: the Last Airbender is a kids' show, and sometimes that's very obvious. I'll start with Aang's age, which is very young, and his behavior, which is also very young. I think he's a sweet kid, but there are very few times I really felt the heaviness of his burdens weighed on him, and I think that's probably on purpose, and not necessarily a bad choice for the character - especially in a series where you've got Zuko around to do the brooding emo thing - but it makes me less likely to really invest in him for himself (not that I generally go for the brooding emo one, but you know what I mean). Also, while I appreciate the cleverness of removing Ozai’s bending without killing him (I called it long before it happened! Go me!), it’s also super cruel while still allowing Aang to cling to his refusal to kill anyone. On a show more targeted towards older folks, I would expect that tension to be explored more fully, while here it was just played as “Yay! Aang is awesome!”
I like Aang, but it's like the case of Simon Tam - when everybody else around is superawesome, it's hard to compete, and AtLA has a cast of superawesome characters, and while I like him, my response is mostly, aw, Aang is cute. Let's get back to Sokka/Katara/Iroh/Zuko/Toph/Azula now.
This also ties into my feelings about how relatively easy it was for him to open his chakras - I liked that they had a process and they explained it, but that it was such a quick thing was more than a little hard to swallow - much like Sokka's two days of sword training and his day of sword-making, I handwave it as a function of the format and genre. But sometimes that compressed timeline works against the story (esp. in Azula's case; see below).
Also, speaking of the chakras and the guru - where did Guru Pathik come from? We've seen no evidence of his brand of mysticism that I'm aware of, and he's very clearly Indian-inspired, but there's no analogue place for him to come from. It was very jarring. Not to mention it felt way more stereotypical than most other things in the series.
The other thing that bugged me was the lack of resolution for Toph’s storyline re: her parents. We never see them again, and after she and Katara have their heart-to-heart, I don’t think we hear about them again, either. And that’s a loose end I would have liked tied up, even if it was that they couldn’t accept that she’d been an important part of the fight against Ozai and possibly the most powerful earthbender on the planet.
And that leads me into my larger issues with the story.
Larger issues
I feel like we totally missed out on a fantastic opportunity when they dropped Ursa’s story. Zuko knows she’s alive, but instead of going to find her, he goes with Katara on her quest to find her mother’s killer, which felt less important to the overall story. Not that they couldn’t have done both in that episode some how - thematically it could have been tied together - and it was certainly one way for Zuko to gain Katara’s trust, I feel like it didn’t pay off as well as a searching for Ursa storyline would have. (I’m also not sure how I feel about how they underplayed Katara’s bloodbending - I’ll have to rewatch.)
Otoh, I would have loved for Ursa to show up with the Order of the White Lotus. She could have been working with them to undermine the war for years! It would have been perfect. But this is my other main problem with the show - while we have a variety of awesome teen girl characters, the adult women are either dead or absent or, in Hama’s case, evil. (I get that the bloodbending episode was probably a Halloween ep, which is why all the witch imagery, but still, hinky.)
We see a bunch of adult men ranging from awesome (Iroh) and loving (Hakoda) to power-mad (Ozai, Zhao, Long Feng), and there’s a lot of cool stuff about the show’s willingness to make old(er) people awesome, but the only adult women we see are Gran Gran, who is basically running the Southern Water Tribe, but who disappears after the first couple of episodes; Aunt Wu, the psychic; Toph’s mom; Joo Dee (which we learn is more of a role than an actual person); Kiyoshi, who’s dead; Jun, the bounty hunter; and Hama, who’s evil (or at least completely broken). While there are plenty of women in the Fire Nation army, there don’t seem to be any in positions of power; and women in the Northern Water Tribe aren’t even allowed to train to fight. So it would have been nice if one of the cool older women we did see had ended up in the Order of the White Lotus, specifically, Ursa, who we only saw in flashback and who was in a powerful position before she gave it up to save her son’s life.
While dead or absent mothers are a staple in quest narratives and fantasy fiction, it’s somehow sadder to see in a story that in most other ways does so well with female characters.
The other female role that’s a staple is the woman who goes mad from power, and while I don’t think that’s what they were intending with Azula, I think it looks that way, mostly because of the compressed timeframe. Yeah, there’s something always a little off about Azula, budding sociopath that she is, but I wish they’d given more time to her deterioration, which was brought about by abandonment, rather than being named Fire Lord. I mean, I can see in some ways that it might be meant to mirror Zuko’s arc - Zuko gets everything he believes he wanted and he’s still angry and still unhappy and he has to realize that what he thought he wanted and what he actually has are not (with the exception of Mai) actually the same thing. Azula gets what she always wanted - she’s named the Fire Lord, finally - but it doesn’t mean anything because Ozai elevates himself in such a way that the position is meaningless (even if it does show a remarkable amount of trust in her abilities, it’s more like he doesn’t even care anymore than an actual reward) and then leaves her behind, the way everyone else has. Girl’s got abandonment issues for sure. Add in the "Mom always loved Zuko best" insecurities and the "people don’t love me they only fear me" stuff (brought home by Mai and Ty Lee’s defection) and yes, the cracks are definitely there in her façade.
The deterioration itself I’m less torn on - I didn’t want her dead (and certainly not at Zuko’s hand), so having her break down is a way to make her less of a threat but still keep her alive and in play for future mischief - but I can see why it would leave a bad taste in people’s mouths, because even if it’s new to a lot of the kids who watched the show, it’s something adults have seen all too often in our media and literature. (I did like the use of the hair-cutting to signify it, though. Again, a weighted symbol from all the past stories, but also significant given Azula’s introduction as being someone who wouldn’t even tolerate one hair out of place.)
I don’t know why, but squee is always harder to write coherently for me - when I really like something, I have a harder time speaking cogently about it, rather than just flailing incoherently with glee. But I’ma try.
Squeeful things
squeeful things include:
Sokka! *draws a million sparkly hearts around him* And how he’s a very teenaged boy, and he’s definitely the Xander or the Ron - the true heart of the group - he has no superpowers but he’s going to fight because it’s the right thing to do (and someone’s got to look out for his sister and Aang). I like that he’s allowed to be right as often as he’s allowed to be fallible and that he is often in on the jokes at his own expense. (His passion for meat! His buyer’s remorse! His bad puns! His BOOMERANG! ♥) He's also shown to be smart and resourceful and competent and a good fighter, and his responsibilities do weigh on him in ways that seem consistent with both the responsibilities and his character. And of course, that he gets his ass kicked for thinking boys are better than girls, and comes around to a more equal way of thinking over the course of the show. Plus, he loves his sister a lot and always has her back, and he’s very sweet and hilarious with Toph and Suki and Yue.
I love how grounded and solid Katara is. She does fly off the handle in rage sometimes, and she has doubts and fears and nags and worries, and can be silly, but she’s also strong and hopeful and smart, and she has a strong grip on the difference between right and wrong, and is learning about the shades of gray between them. I think it would be easy to dismiss her as nagging and humorless and overly interfering or managing, and I’m sure some people saw her as a Mary Sue, but I think she’s fantastic - she’s the Scott Summers, the Clark Kent of the Avatar-verse: she has the thankless role of being the boy girl scout, the one with a true moral compass (mostly), and without her, they would have perished in the desert after Appa was bison-napped (if not before).
And then we have Toph, who is MORE AWESOME THAN YOU by a long shot. I admit, her brattishness at first irritated me, but SHE INVENTED METALBENDING AND RESCUED HERSELF. SHE HOLDS BUILDINGS UP FROM COLLAPSING WITH HER TINY FISTS! Toph has scams to run and firebenders to vanquish and an avatar to school. SHE DOES NOT HAVE TIME FOR YOUR EMO BULLSHIT. I like that she’s a girl but she still has a sense of humor and is in on the pranks and likes a good coating of dirt on her skin, but she still understood that girly bonding time with Katara could be fun. She is the equivalent of [fill in your favorite pro wrestler here] (I still can’t believe they went with the Rock homage. I don’t even know.). I was especially pleased that they didn’t foist some weird romance on her, because she’s TWELVE! She might be having some of those feelings, but aside from Aang, who’s in her age group, all of the boys she meets are of an age where they wouldn’t give a 12yo the time of day in that way. She has time to top all of them (and the girls, too) once she’s actually hit her teen years.
Iroh was right on top of my favorites list after the first episode. His love of tea and music night and Pai Sho! His gentle guidance and fierce love for Zuko. His quiet mourning for his son and how it reshaped his worldview (though possibly even before that he was different? I’m still not sure.) HIS CLAP PUSHUPS AND SARAH CONNOR PULL UPS IN JAIL! Iroh could have easily been a stereotype, but I think he transcended that early and often and oh, man, I love that his happiness comes in the form of a teashop in the country he once tried and failed to conquer, and the eventual knowledge that his guidance did lead Zuko to eventually make the right choice, based on his own judgment, and not just because Iroh was telling him what to do.
Which leads to Zuko. Who is basically what Draco Malfoy should have been, had he been well-written, or Logan Echolls, had the narrative not started to distort around him. He’s so hilariously emo and broody and yet he turns out to have been hiding a soft marshmallow center after all. I especially like how much he has to work at things to please people. Nothing comes easy to him but he never gives up. I knew he was the darling of fandom (fandom loves its damaged broody princes), so I was prepared to dislike him on principle, but man, he totally won me over, mostly by being totally hilarious while he was being earnest, and by being self-aware enough, in the end, to realize why he was unhappy, and how to fix it. Plus, he really does get some of the best lines ever. "Are you happy?" "I’m NEVER happy." "Some kids have to worry about bad skin, but not me. My dad taught me a lesson ON MY FACE!" "When I try to make lightning, it blows up in my face. JUST LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE!" Oh, Zuzu, you are an adorable failboat and I love that you get to dance with dragons and bond with Sokka and teach Aang and finally face your father.
And we can’t talk about Zuko without talking about Azula. Man, she is one BADASS villain. I was surprised they let her be as brilliant and competent and AWESOME as she was before the wheels came off the wagon. And while the beach episode might be heavy-handed, it really DOES work to show that even she has vulnerabilities. Also those conversations on the beach sounded EXACTLY like those 3 am conversations you had as a teenager. Don’t even front. Plus, she pwned Long Feng like a master, and she played Zuko like a harp and even though I never wanted her to win, my heart broke for her when she fell apart, because she only ever wanted her dad to love her and to do that, she had to be the perfect, ruthless weapon, because just being herself clearly wasn’t enough (and had scared her mother away, or so she believed). So yeah, Azula, man. One of the best villains I’ve seen in a long time.
I also really love Suki, Mai and Ty Lee for being awesome in their own ways, and I love Appa and Momo for being AWESOME (their duel when Aang is hallucinating is HILARIOUS), and I love the world-building and the hybrid animals and the sense of humor and the feeling that this world was one that was lived in and felt and true.
Wow, that was a lot of words. I could go on, but I have actual work to do today. Sigh.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/203262.html.
people have commented there.
Nitpicks
I don't really have a lot of minor things that didn't work for me, and I think most of them are things that are genre-related. Avatar: the Last Airbender is a kids' show, and sometimes that's very obvious. I'll start with Aang's age, which is very young, and his behavior, which is also very young. I think he's a sweet kid, but there are very few times I really felt the heaviness of his burdens weighed on him, and I think that's probably on purpose, and not necessarily a bad choice for the character - especially in a series where you've got Zuko around to do the brooding emo thing - but it makes me less likely to really invest in him for himself (not that I generally go for the brooding emo one, but you know what I mean). Also, while I appreciate the cleverness of removing Ozai’s bending without killing him (I called it long before it happened! Go me!), it’s also super cruel while still allowing Aang to cling to his refusal to kill anyone. On a show more targeted towards older folks, I would expect that tension to be explored more fully, while here it was just played as “Yay! Aang is awesome!”
I like Aang, but it's like the case of Simon Tam - when everybody else around is superawesome, it's hard to compete, and AtLA has a cast of superawesome characters, and while I like him, my response is mostly, aw, Aang is cute. Let's get back to Sokka/Katara/Iroh/Zuko/Toph/Azula now.
This also ties into my feelings about how relatively easy it was for him to open his chakras - I liked that they had a process and they explained it, but that it was such a quick thing was more than a little hard to swallow - much like Sokka's two days of sword training and his day of sword-making, I handwave it as a function of the format and genre. But sometimes that compressed timeline works against the story (esp. in Azula's case; see below).
Also, speaking of the chakras and the guru - where did Guru Pathik come from? We've seen no evidence of his brand of mysticism that I'm aware of, and he's very clearly Indian-inspired, but there's no analogue place for him to come from. It was very jarring. Not to mention it felt way more stereotypical than most other things in the series.
The other thing that bugged me was the lack of resolution for Toph’s storyline re: her parents. We never see them again, and after she and Katara have their heart-to-heart, I don’t think we hear about them again, either. And that’s a loose end I would have liked tied up, even if it was that they couldn’t accept that she’d been an important part of the fight against Ozai and possibly the most powerful earthbender on the planet.
And that leads me into my larger issues with the story.
Larger issues
I feel like we totally missed out on a fantastic opportunity when they dropped Ursa’s story. Zuko knows she’s alive, but instead of going to find her, he goes with Katara on her quest to find her mother’s killer, which felt less important to the overall story. Not that they couldn’t have done both in that episode some how - thematically it could have been tied together - and it was certainly one way for Zuko to gain Katara’s trust, I feel like it didn’t pay off as well as a searching for Ursa storyline would have. (I’m also not sure how I feel about how they underplayed Katara’s bloodbending - I’ll have to rewatch.)
Otoh, I would have loved for Ursa to show up with the Order of the White Lotus. She could have been working with them to undermine the war for years! It would have been perfect. But this is my other main problem with the show - while we have a variety of awesome teen girl characters, the adult women are either dead or absent or, in Hama’s case, evil. (I get that the bloodbending episode was probably a Halloween ep, which is why all the witch imagery, but still, hinky.)
We see a bunch of adult men ranging from awesome (Iroh) and loving (Hakoda) to power-mad (Ozai, Zhao, Long Feng), and there’s a lot of cool stuff about the show’s willingness to make old(er) people awesome, but the only adult women we see are Gran Gran, who is basically running the Southern Water Tribe, but who disappears after the first couple of episodes; Aunt Wu, the psychic; Toph’s mom; Joo Dee (which we learn is more of a role than an actual person); Kiyoshi, who’s dead; Jun, the bounty hunter; and Hama, who’s evil (or at least completely broken). While there are plenty of women in the Fire Nation army, there don’t seem to be any in positions of power; and women in the Northern Water Tribe aren’t even allowed to train to fight. So it would have been nice if one of the cool older women we did see had ended up in the Order of the White Lotus, specifically, Ursa, who we only saw in flashback and who was in a powerful position before she gave it up to save her son’s life.
While dead or absent mothers are a staple in quest narratives and fantasy fiction, it’s somehow sadder to see in a story that in most other ways does so well with female characters.
The other female role that’s a staple is the woman who goes mad from power, and while I don’t think that’s what they were intending with Azula, I think it looks that way, mostly because of the compressed timeframe. Yeah, there’s something always a little off about Azula, budding sociopath that she is, but I wish they’d given more time to her deterioration, which was brought about by abandonment, rather than being named Fire Lord. I mean, I can see in some ways that it might be meant to mirror Zuko’s arc - Zuko gets everything he believes he wanted and he’s still angry and still unhappy and he has to realize that what he thought he wanted and what he actually has are not (with the exception of Mai) actually the same thing. Azula gets what she always wanted - she’s named the Fire Lord, finally - but it doesn’t mean anything because Ozai elevates himself in such a way that the position is meaningless (even if it does show a remarkable amount of trust in her abilities, it’s more like he doesn’t even care anymore than an actual reward) and then leaves her behind, the way everyone else has. Girl’s got abandonment issues for sure. Add in the "Mom always loved Zuko best" insecurities and the "people don’t love me they only fear me" stuff (brought home by Mai and Ty Lee’s defection) and yes, the cracks are definitely there in her façade.
The deterioration itself I’m less torn on - I didn’t want her dead (and certainly not at Zuko’s hand), so having her break down is a way to make her less of a threat but still keep her alive and in play for future mischief - but I can see why it would leave a bad taste in people’s mouths, because even if it’s new to a lot of the kids who watched the show, it’s something adults have seen all too often in our media and literature. (I did like the use of the hair-cutting to signify it, though. Again, a weighted symbol from all the past stories, but also significant given Azula’s introduction as being someone who wouldn’t even tolerate one hair out of place.)
I don’t know why, but squee is always harder to write coherently for me - when I really like something, I have a harder time speaking cogently about it, rather than just flailing incoherently with glee. But I’ma try.
Squeeful things
squeeful things include:
Sokka! *draws a million sparkly hearts around him* And how he’s a very teenaged boy, and he’s definitely the Xander or the Ron - the true heart of the group - he has no superpowers but he’s going to fight because it’s the right thing to do (and someone’s got to look out for his sister and Aang). I like that he’s allowed to be right as often as he’s allowed to be fallible and that he is often in on the jokes at his own expense. (His passion for meat! His buyer’s remorse! His bad puns! His BOOMERANG! ♥) He's also shown to be smart and resourceful and competent and a good fighter, and his responsibilities do weigh on him in ways that seem consistent with both the responsibilities and his character. And of course, that he gets his ass kicked for thinking boys are better than girls, and comes around to a more equal way of thinking over the course of the show. Plus, he loves his sister a lot and always has her back, and he’s very sweet and hilarious with Toph and Suki and Yue.
I love how grounded and solid Katara is. She does fly off the handle in rage sometimes, and she has doubts and fears and nags and worries, and can be silly, but she’s also strong and hopeful and smart, and she has a strong grip on the difference between right and wrong, and is learning about the shades of gray between them. I think it would be easy to dismiss her as nagging and humorless and overly interfering or managing, and I’m sure some people saw her as a Mary Sue, but I think she’s fantastic - she’s the Scott Summers, the Clark Kent of the Avatar-verse: she has the thankless role of being the boy girl scout, the one with a true moral compass (mostly), and without her, they would have perished in the desert after Appa was bison-napped (if not before).
And then we have Toph, who is MORE AWESOME THAN YOU by a long shot. I admit, her brattishness at first irritated me, but SHE INVENTED METALBENDING AND RESCUED HERSELF. SHE HOLDS BUILDINGS UP FROM COLLAPSING WITH HER TINY FISTS! Toph has scams to run and firebenders to vanquish and an avatar to school. SHE DOES NOT HAVE TIME FOR YOUR EMO BULLSHIT. I like that she’s a girl but she still has a sense of humor and is in on the pranks and likes a good coating of dirt on her skin, but she still understood that girly bonding time with Katara could be fun. She is the equivalent of [fill in your favorite pro wrestler here] (I still can’t believe they went with the Rock homage. I don’t even know.). I was especially pleased that they didn’t foist some weird romance on her, because she’s TWELVE! She might be having some of those feelings, but aside from Aang, who’s in her age group, all of the boys she meets are of an age where they wouldn’t give a 12yo the time of day in that way. She has time to top all of them (and the girls, too) once she’s actually hit her teen years.
Iroh was right on top of my favorites list after the first episode. His love of tea and music night and Pai Sho! His gentle guidance and fierce love for Zuko. His quiet mourning for his son and how it reshaped his worldview (though possibly even before that he was different? I’m still not sure.) HIS CLAP PUSHUPS AND SARAH CONNOR PULL UPS IN JAIL! Iroh could have easily been a stereotype, but I think he transcended that early and often and oh, man, I love that his happiness comes in the form of a teashop in the country he once tried and failed to conquer, and the eventual knowledge that his guidance did lead Zuko to eventually make the right choice, based on his own judgment, and not just because Iroh was telling him what to do.
Which leads to Zuko. Who is basically what Draco Malfoy should have been, had he been well-written, or Logan Echolls, had the narrative not started to distort around him. He’s so hilariously emo and broody and yet he turns out to have been hiding a soft marshmallow center after all. I especially like how much he has to work at things to please people. Nothing comes easy to him but he never gives up. I knew he was the darling of fandom (fandom loves its damaged broody princes), so I was prepared to dislike him on principle, but man, he totally won me over, mostly by being totally hilarious while he was being earnest, and by being self-aware enough, in the end, to realize why he was unhappy, and how to fix it. Plus, he really does get some of the best lines ever. "Are you happy?" "I’m NEVER happy." "Some kids have to worry about bad skin, but not me. My dad taught me a lesson ON MY FACE!" "When I try to make lightning, it blows up in my face. JUST LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE!" Oh, Zuzu, you are an adorable failboat and I love that you get to dance with dragons and bond with Sokka and teach Aang and finally face your father.
And we can’t talk about Zuko without talking about Azula. Man, she is one BADASS villain. I was surprised they let her be as brilliant and competent and AWESOME as she was before the wheels came off the wagon. And while the beach episode might be heavy-handed, it really DOES work to show that even she has vulnerabilities. Also those conversations on the beach sounded EXACTLY like those 3 am conversations you had as a teenager. Don’t even front. Plus, she pwned Long Feng like a master, and she played Zuko like a harp and even though I never wanted her to win, my heart broke for her when she fell apart, because she only ever wanted her dad to love her and to do that, she had to be the perfect, ruthless weapon, because just being herself clearly wasn’t enough (and had scared her mother away, or so she believed). So yeah, Azula, man. One of the best villains I’ve seen in a long time.
I also really love Suki, Mai and Ty Lee for being awesome in their own ways, and I love Appa and Momo for being AWESOME (their duel when Aang is hallucinating is HILARIOUS), and I love the world-building and the hybrid animals and the sense of humor and the feeling that this world was one that was lived in and felt and true.
Wow, that was a lot of words. I could go on, but I have actual work to do today. Sigh.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/203262.html.
people have commented there.