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

[ali_wildgoose]

A lot of genres certainly have room for more strong older women.

Here here!

[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

[calloocallay]

I guess. It didn't really surprise me, though. It had been hundreds of yoeuars since a female avatar, it seemed like the soldier groups in all the kingdoms were male, and there were a lot of "dealing with sexism" parts, like with Katara insisting on learning waterbending up north and Toph's dad's overprotective dad bit. Assuming that Kyoshi warriors don't usually live to be old, I assumed the lack of badass old ladies and the presence of badass young ladies was part of the world-building. I believe pretty firmly that Katara and Toph and Mai and Tai-Ly and Suki will all grow old in a bad-ass manner, and as I commented on Friday, it wouldn't surprise me if Toph was inducted into the White Lotus Tea Club.

[jlh]

This is why I said: I know this is, for many, a pointless request to make of an SF-F or action/adventure genre canon and This isn't a diss on Avatar by any means and framed my musings as "I wish." I'm not sure why the male warriors lived to be old and no female warriors did, but again, I know that I'm not as knowledgeable about or as comfortable with SF-F genre conventions, which is why I don't generally critique anything within SF-F. I didn't mean it as a criticism, but just as something that I thought of at the end that I would have liked to see as part of the universe, though I understand that it is an unreasonable request.

[ascetic_hedony]

Here via dotfic and sistermagpie.
I've been inspired to re-watch, and I'm wondering if the leader of the Jiang (one of the two tribes from episode 1x11 - The Great Divide) would count.
She's not elderly, though certainly a mature woman. She carries weapons and leads a tribe of women and men.

[jlh]

She counts, but she's like, one woman in one episode, who doesn't return, doesn't factor in the finale. I mean, that's great, and there were some other women in the series to be sure! But one woman in one episode can't make up for the general absence of women.