#avatar commentary

[n3arby-s0up]

Just saying, I honestly just don't agree with the whole—"Na'vi don't have body hair." thing, I know it's cannon and all, But like... They live out in the forest? Outside? Are they just butt ass naked down there? No protection? Nah man, I'm giving all these bitches a happy trail, full bush.

You get bush 👉 you get bush☝️ you get bush!! 🫵

[betwixtyiff]

My friend @andalwaysdance​ and I were talking about it the other night and I want to yell about it here because I don’t think I ever have aside from tags on posts depicting it, but I want to talk about one of my all time favorite moments in Avatar the Last Airbender

In the finale of Book 2, “The Crossroads of Destiny”, there’s the moment where Zuko and Iroh are cornered in the Earth King’s Palace by Azula and the Dai Li, and almost immediately after Azula chimes in about how lovely she finds the deadliness of the Dai Li, we get Iroh saying this:

To which Azula replies: 

But General “Oh I Know You’re Not Because You Never Were, Princess” Iroh comes back with this:

And then the camera cuts to Zuko who we see giving just a little smirk like ‘oh yeah, I’ve been waiting to see this one’

And its just. Such a small but subtle bit of brilliant characterization that says so much about these three and their relationships in less than 30 seconds. Azula’s eager willingness to shrug off her Uncle’s long and storied experience as a general. Then there’s Iroh’s full knowledge of that fact and pushes forward with a smile on his face, knowing the Dai Li and even Azula are about to come face to face with nothing they ever had before.

Then there’s my honest to God personal favorite here; Zuko. Prince Zuko; who we as the audience know had a close relationship with his Uncle ever since he was a small boy, who listened to his Uncle’s stories of travels and war, even when Azula shrugged him off and went to bed, Zuko was always up for one more, which is how he KNEW Iroh’s fire breathing feat was coming enough to put a big fat smirk on his face and duck behind his Uncle’s back, while Iroh let lose an inferno after a slow, slow, sip of jasmine tea.

Again its just. Such a small, but such a rich moment that gives you so much of these character’s history together in such a natural way that so many other shows fail to do

TLDR; Avatar is my favorite TV show of all time and I read too much into it well over a decade on

[shifting-lark]

Watching the Avatar finale with my friend M:

(Spoilers duh......)

Loves that Mai saved Zuko from Azula and wants Mai to join the avatar squad

He was laughing SO hard at Ember Island Players episode (especially buff Toph)

(Aang and Katara have their convo and Katara says she’s “confused” and doesn’t know if she loves him) Every episode after that, M just goes: “shut up Katara you’re confused.” He’s SO bitter heisvauahzv

(My last girlfriend turned into the moon, that’s rough buddy) he LOVED that 🤣🤣

Mark Hamill is the voice of the Firelord so anytime he sees him M just goes “okay Mark Hamill”

(When Aang vanishes) “maybe if Katara wasn’t confused then he wouldn’t have run away.” 🤣

At one point Aang says “I had a crazy dream” and M goes “OMG KATARA DIDNT SAY SHE WAS CONFUSED AND SHE LOVES YOU FUCK!!!”

We SOBBED when Zuko was apologizing to Iroh and Iroh hugged him 😭😭😭😭

(Zuko asks Katara to help him fight Azula) “FUCK OFF!!!! I HATE ZUTARA WHYYYY”

(Lion-turtle appears in front of Aang) “Hey lion-turtle why is Katara confused and why is she with Zuko?” [if you CANT tell he’s bitter as fuck and just wants Kataang to happen 🤣]

(Sokka and Suki kiss) “WOW must be nice to have a girlfriend that’s not confused”

(Katara and Aang kiss at the end) “F I N A. LL Y”

Overall he LOVED it and had an amazing time watching it!! I will forever love Avatar holds such a special place in my heart 🥺💕

[laerugo]

mmmmmmmmmmmmy other hot avatar take that i wont put behind a cut is that lok didn’t shit on aang’s characterization by making him a bad father, i seriously believe the kataang kids’ argument over aang treating tenzin specially said way more about kya and bumi than it ever did about aang

i straight-up don’t think aang was a bad father for taking his only airbending son on cultural trips that only tenzin would need to pass down. these weren’t like fun one-on-one vacations with dad, they were school for tenzin, they were both academic and personal, they were “you will have to know all of this as well as i do one day and kya and bumi won’t, and you will be different from everyone else you know, and one day i will not be here anymore and it will be up to you to pass these down too” lessons, and that is a very serious set of conversations to have, continually, every time. i can understand why aang wouldn’t want to have the responsibility of two more kids during a cultural lesson with this enormous weight overshadowing their private time.

should aang have invited katara and the other kids anyway, maybe to ease the burden on tenzin and make it more of a shared experience? i could see that happening once or twice, but every single trip? i won’t judge aang for deciding differently. bringing tenzin alone allows him to mourn his people and pass culture on in a more intimate, private setting. i will never judge him for choosing to have those moments with his only airbending child, for prioritizing tenzin’s nomad education and experience over, like, making the temples a family vacation that would inevitably turn louder and more hectic with more people around. it was a group trip for tenzin’s larger airbending family in lok book 2, but it makes total sense why aang would want to go with tenzin alone. this boy literally had to remake his entire culture from scratch as he grew up. as a growing adult and now a father he now has to explain the architecture, make his own robes and pendants, reverse engineer every recipe he ever ate, correct incorrect historical assumptions, rebuild the air temples, rebuild airbending training exercises, remember and write down anything he could ever remember written on a scroll, at the temples, things his teachers said, things his friends did, how they spoke, how they laughed, what they fed the bisons, how often they played, how often they meditated, how he was raised, and try to recreate his lessons with gyatso and more in a way that resonates with tenzin, all of it taught well enough for tenzin to feel confident passing it on when aang is gone. aang only had sixty years to pass down thousands of years of history; it’s an impossible task. i think he deserved to be a little selfish and treat one son specially. it never meant he loved kya and bumi less.

so, all that said: kya and bumi’s focus on aang not taking them on vacations felt straight-up childish. you guys are sixty years old, you had parents that loved you, you were well fed and cared for, your younger brother was special and given an enormous burden, and you have known that from childhood. can you not be mature and understand that? too much of their bickering reminded me of my old chinese relatives holding grudges between each other over the PETTIEST shit for literal decades. i think beloved fictional characters that become parents are absolutely capable of making mistakes and it doesn’t mean their characters are ruined or suddenly awful people (there is no such thing as a perfect parent anyway). but mostly i think everyone involved in this situation is just human and clearly none of them handle familial conflict well, but it is most understandable the man who was born into a nomadic society and was raised by monks, not a mother and father, would have some difficulty drawing the line between teacher and father in the first place.....

[i-still-quote-twain]

I’ve got such a cheeky boyfriend, oh my.

[betwixtyiff]

The live action Avatar for Netflix adaption changing Sokka and Katara’s ages is...less than good actually.

Like part of what made Sokka and Katara being the ages they were in the original was Katara having to grow up so fast and become one of the ‘mothers’ of her village at around the age of 10 after the death of her own mother. It makes the “I haven’t done this since I was a kid” line she has while penguin sledding with Aang in the first episode hit all the harder.

Not to mention Sokka growing up the older brother and ‘chief protector’ of their village in the Southern Water Tribe was what contributed to the sexist attitude he held and then shed over the course of Book One. And like was the case with Katara, it makes the line in ‘The Runaway’ about “sometimes I can’t even remember what my mother looked like, and when I think of her I just picture Katara’s face” again hit all the harder.

Then there’s the issue of Sokka and Katara being the ages they are being parallels of Zuko and Azula respectively. The scene in episode one of Sokka and Zuko both suiting up for battle juxtaposed up against each other is evident of this and the more subtle character details regarding Azula and Katara (they’re both 14, took on further roles within their families after the loss of their mothers) but each down a widely different path.

They could of course remedy this by making Azula the older sibling as well, but I think that would completely muck up Zuko’s character arc of him being an older sibling with his right to the throne taken from him. Thus subtracting from his connection to Iroh a bit.

So yeah I’m not a fan

Thanks again to @andalwaysdance for being my soundboard on this

[laerugo]

thank god im not the only other asian girl who came to realize how weirdly orientalist atla/lok is.

i hope you don’t mind me using this ask as a springboard to get some of my thoughts down (i edited this once and that fucked up the read more, so i tried several times to put this behind a cut again but tumblr hates me so i guess now everyone has to read my beef ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

my friend said last night that ATLA is like the new harry potter with the way people talk about it and..... yknow she’s not entirely wrong.....

like, not to keep pulling this card, but ~as a half-asian~, i have been struggling with this show a lot over the past few months; before even the show came to netflix, i was seeing a resurgence of ATLA stan culture. the hype of the live-action series and the release of the kyoshi novels have also amplified this. i reblog posts because i do still enjoy it, but i have been abstaining from reblogging commentary that so obviously glorifies it.

part of this burst-bubble effect is my problem, because i strongly dislike how people talk about certain characters and ships (and i admit that frustration is seeping through what ATLA did right) and observing fandom favorites makes me think that a lot of points were missed: people love toph, but hate korra (even people who think they love korra only because she’s one half of korrasami, actually do hate korra lmfao); people love zuko but completely ignore aang; don’t get me started on the fandom’s embracing of korrasami/subsequent forgiving of the patronizing, disrespectful, borderline racist way bryke did it. that is fan behavior, and it all bothers me and is no doubt coloring my judgment of the actual show, but beyond that, i also do want people to realize and accept “wait a minute, plenty of the things we criticize other media for also exist in ATLA, and it shouldn’t be different just because this show is full of asians.”

part of me wants to — and does — celebrate that a pan-asian show, in which NO white characters and NO trace of western culture exists, was a critical and commercial success in 2005! and had full network support and resonated with kids of different backgrounds. i can appreciate and be happy of that. but “no western culture” doesn’t mean “no western influence”: it’s an asian fantasy world created by non-asians, so the staff still ultimately wrote a pretty western story. the treatment of the fire lord imperialist dynasty is the big one (iroh was a war criminal who only left the warfront because his actions affected him/his family but now he’s a old friendly Good Guy and never acknowledges the lives he’s ruined! everything is ok now that zuko is fire lord! not like his new friends will have any direct trauma or conflicting feelings with how he is now heading a nation that burned two out of three of their homelands to the ground and tried to burn the third too! now here are all our headcanons about katara/sokka being fire lord/lady, toph being a fire lord advisor, and aang being an air nation rep to the fire nation! perfect ending!!), but also the themes of a pretty straightforward good kids v evil conqueror story, watered-down concepts of buddhism/taoism/others for child consumption — some of these are not strictly bad things, but they don’t make it the best story in the world. they are not worth saying “stop watching x problematic cartoon, watch ATLA, the BEST cartoon with the BEST diversity!!!!”

side note, my friend looked it up last night and there was a total of one asian writer on the staff, May Chan, who according to wiki, just wrote the Boiling Rock episodes. (at this juncture i want to keep in mind that someone in the writer’s or developer’s room might be in my situation, possibly mixed race but white-passing in both face and name... it’d be hypocritical of me to not consider that possibility, but as far as i know that’s not the case, and in any respect i think it’s important to have visible diversity, not because i think mixed people don’t have anything to say or shouldn’t be counted, but in the sense that poc who don’t get the luxury of being white-passing should be allowed control of depicting people who look like them. but that’s another discussion.)

honestly, i can look over some aspects of this show because i still do enjoy it. i like the use of martial arts as a fantastical magic device because it was used consistently and clearly they did their research, even if it does kind represent this idea of Asia, the Land of Magic Powers; i don’t mind because not everyone has the magic powers, the magic powers are deconstructed, people without the magic powers are still treated respectfully, the magic powers are diverse, and they are treated both practically and spiritually (so not everyone, like sokka, has the same awe-inspiring respect of them, which is realistic characterization to this world, and though he’s sometimes portrayed as incorrect in his disbelief of the spiritual, he’s never portrayed as wrong for being practical and realistic). honestly, i don’t mind the oohs and aahs of these magic powers because i still think the magic powers are pretty fuckin cool; it’s likely we’ve all pretended to be a bender at some point lol. and as a kid, i didn’t mind that ATLA nations blended cultures; i thought it was fun to look up later and see which sorts of things were made up and which were influenced by real things (i liked that not a lot if it was made up). i don’t mind that Lake Laogai was named after a real, horrifying place, though i understand and completely respect that plenty of others find the name disturbing and tasteless.

that said, as an adult coming to ATLA for the first time, I would probably not go this hard for a show that blends a bunch of real ethnicities together in a hodgepodge of culture clashes, at least not one spearheaded by a white developer team. i would be less willing to ignore the northern air temple episode, where aang, victim of a genocide, forgives a bunch of strangers who disrespected and destroyed his home (including the guy who was NOW INVENTING WAR WEAPONS FOR THE VERY NATION THAT DESTROYED HIS PEOPLE). i can mostly look over these things because of nostalgia. but the way people outright stan the whole avatar series (including LOK but i won’t get into that right now) without acknowledging ATLA is, ultimately, still a story with a pretty western handling of its themes just with asian faces, is..... frustrating.

a new coworker of mine, also an asian woman who was too old to watch ATLA at the time it was airing, has said that the more she learns about ATLA as an adult the weirder she feels about it and less inclined she is to watch it, which makes me think that maybe i’m not crazy.

[laerugo]

agree with what you said about korra! personally, i'm not sure if this is just nostalgia but if you asked me about individual episodes in each tlok season i have.. no idea. like i know the general plot of each season but individually i cannot remember a single episode? whereas with tloa each individual episode feels like such a well contained story that contributes to the overall arc. idk if thats just me though?

no i understand what you mean! i think in the entirety of lok only a few episodes really stand out, and those are the ones like the finales and “beginnings p1/2,” and “and the winner is” and also that episode when they break the bei fongs out of kuvira’s prison, because they’re mid-series episode plot twists that actually mattered lol (they were also really well done imo).