Animated

[viridian5]

Talking with lady_ganesh, I've realized that the new TV I've enjoyed the most in the past six months has all been animated: The Venture Bros., Naruto Shippuden, and Avatar: The Last Airbender. I'd love to have someone to talk Avatar with aside from aside from occasionally syvia because I really enjoyed it--though I still haven't seen the start and middle of Water

Comments

[lady_ganesh]

I love Avatar so much, and you haven't even gotten to my favorite character yet. Sokka's like the anti-Xander.

[viridian5]

I was talking about Sokka in the buttmonkey bit. Xander and Harper might have the writers making them a pathetic source of "humor," constantly kicked, but Sokka gets his props as the "idea man." He's a strategist and an inventor, planning invasions, imagining submarines, taking apart zeppelin fleets, rescuing political prisoners, and showing people the power of Boomerang.

[lady_ganesh]

Oh, wait, I see re-reading you've finished the series, and yes, exactly. Back when I was watching Buffy I talked a lot about balance on teams and how the Buffy team seemed constantly out of whack-- Xander vacillating from perspective guy to humor guy to 'wait, why is he here' guy and Willow's arc from useful to painfully overpowered to almost useless and then useful again-- and the core group of Avatar seems almost perfectly balanced.

[viridian5]

I really liked Xander, which made what the show kept doing to him really hurt.

Zuko joining the gang also gives them full representation of the four elements and nations.

[lady_ganesh]

Yes-- and it was so nice to have them still consider Sokka important, even with Zuko in the picture.

[greenygal]

He's a strategist and an inventor, planning invasions, imagining submarines, taking apart zeppelin fleets, rescuing political prisoners, and showing people the power of Boomerang.

When he got all depressed right before the invasion of the Black Sun, I was going "Are you kidding? This invasion is only happening because you, personally, were so brave and smart and stubborn, and you're worrying because you aren't a good public speaker? It was nice of the writers to let him have his more action-oriented Moment of Win too, if only because he wanted it so much, but it was gravy; he could have just waved the army on its way and sat down for a nap, and he would have still been one of the primary contributors to...er, okay, a devastating defeat, but still! (And it wasn't anything that went wrong in the planning or execution stage, still; they just kind of failed at security.)

[viridian5]

When his dad took that really bad hit Sokka even took his place on the battlefield. But I can see how he really wanted to impress people before starting the invasion and how embarrassing it is that his nervousness turned him into a klutzy motormouth, which happens to a lot of people.

[greenygal]

When his dad took that really bad hit Sokka even took his place on the battlefield.

Yeah, that's what I meant about the Moment of Win. Getting that traditionally heroic moment was great, but for me he'd proved himself well before that, even if he didn't think so.

But I can see how he really wanted to impress people before starting the invasion and how embarrassing it is that his nervousness turned him into a klutzy motormouth, which happens to a lot of people.

Oh, I totally sympathized, and it was very in character, both the motormouth and the feeling like it meant he was a screwup.