#strawberry-111

[fuckishimoto]

Why a lot of people don't really care if someone insult them but get crazily triggered when the hate is directed toward their fave characters/ships o_O??

Because people project their most insecure parts onto the characters to seek validation. When you hate their self insert or ships, you’re invalidating the parts for which they seek validation most desperately, you’re invalidating their romantic fantasy, you’re saying to them their romantic fantasy won’t happen, so they got triggered as fucks. To them, having their desires and fantasy invalidated is worse than being insulted. Also, when you got insulted on the internet, it’s just from people who don’t really know you in real life, it’s not hard to feel apathetic and detached about these insults. If you insult someone’s self insert, that’s different. To these people, these characters are closer to their heart than their online persona (which is often just another bitchy internet troll), the characters represent the persona they want other people to like and appreciate. 

That’s why relatable characters suck, the discourse is really just people saying “it’s about ME ME ME！！！using a character in disguise”.

[loopy777]

Okey, how do you think ATLA "high school" AU would be like? How each character would look like as a student or teacher?

Well, I couldn’t describe how they’d look. Even when I was in high school, I was Socially Stupid and had no idea how fashion really worked. (Thankfully, the style at the time for Boys Who Didn’t Want To Get Beat Up was just t-shirts and jeans, so I could manage.) And I’ve always stumbled over how artificial it feels to try to translate the AtLA characters’ lives into a modern setting. We don’t really do child soldiers anymore in Middle Class America, so to translate it properly we have to bring gang warfare into things, and when Aang is angsting about how the Fire Mafia or the local American Triads or the FireLULz Gang killed his grandpa, it just feels weird.

However, one time I tried to lean into that artificiality and write a parody of High School AU stories. It’s about halfway done, and someday I hope to finish it.

So, here’s some quick character summaries from that story. Keep in mind that the whole thing is a parody:

“ATLA High School AU”

(or “How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Homecoming”)

Katara Watertribe: The most popular girl in the school, thanks to being an elemental distillation of The Girl Next Door. She’s in love with the local bad boy, Jet. Her mother was murdered by the local Yakuza Crime Family, the Agnikaijuko clan.

Sokka Watertribe: The school mascot, running around the games in a Soaring Sky Bison costume. He’s not good enough to make any of the athletic teams, but he has hopes of asking out the the head cheerleader anyway. Lives in a basement apartment with his sister and Gran-Gran.

Aang: A bright boy who skipped a few grades. He’s madly in love with Katara but can’t spit it out. He writes Star Wars fanfiction and makes Toph read it, but how he types and posts it while living in a cardboard box beneath the bridge is unknown.

Toph Bei Fong: A blind classmate of Aang’s, and his only friend; her screenreading software trips over the weird prose in his fanfic. She is strangely wise and right about everything, despite her irreverent humor.

Suki Wazuki: Captain of the field hockey team. She is madly in love with Sokka, but can’t get him to realize it, as she seems to have been born in the Friend Zone.

Azula Agnikaijuko: A classmate of Katara’s, and the most accomplished student in the history of the entire school. She was born into the local Yakuza crime family, and has an unfortunate history of arson when the strain of being The Greatest starts to get to her; thankfully, her family is good at blackmailing the authorities. She will never be asked to a Homecoming Dance.

Ty Lee: Azula’s best friend, who frequently reminds her that she doesn’t like herself when she’s setting fire to things. Ty Lee also is the only student noticing that one of the teachers is a giant chicken.

Mai: Bony goth girl. When asked about her date to the Homecoming Dance, she says, “I figured I'd just go, find Zuko there, and then shove him out on the dance floor and start grinding against him until he realizes what's going on. Seems like the easiest way of doing things.”

Yue: Head cheerleader, crushed by her obligations to the social order of the school.

Zuko Agnikaijuko: Disowned first born of the Agnikaijukofamily. He likes Archie comic books and bony goth girls.

Jet: Local bad boy who uses his serial womanizing to cover his crush on Zuko.

Hahn: Star quarterback, despite surely deserving to be on academic probation. He was held back for two years in a row, and he hasn’t turned in an assignment yet this year with his name spelled correctly.

Mr Piandao: Sokka’s homeroom teacher.

Mr Long Feng: Creepy biology teacher who makes the kids dissect lemurs.

Coach Pakku: Grumpy football coach.

I’d post what I have of this story, but I really do want to finish it someday.

[loopy777]

Is the comic real or a joke? Anything can come from Gene.

I’d actually be interested in seeing Gene unleash his full sense of humor and do a full AtLA comedy. Not something aimed for the Dark Horse kiddie crowd, but just going crazy and drawing his own idea of what’s funny and weird. Or pair him with an artist who can unleash chaos, like Skottie Young.

[loopy777]

I feel Yang doen't think twice before he decides a plot or action/drama scene. He doesn't make the scenes follow naturally but they feel forced and artificial. As an important note Gene admitted he never wrote trilogies before, and he's under the pressure to finish the story as quickly as possible. Maybe this -along side the poor planing and his clear biases- is one of the reasons most his plots feel forced or artificial and few characters went OOC.

It’s the only conclusion that makes sense, given how his Original Graphic Novels are so good (IMO). What’s weird is that American Born Chinese wound up being about the same number of pages of each AtLA trilogy, so he can clearly tell a satisfying story in the same space, and the breakup into marketable trilogies likely does a lot of damage to his work process. I don’t know what kind of publishing pressures he may have for a OGN, but I assume that since it doesn’t need to go through licensing approvals and he’s working in a more collaborative way with his artist (or doing his own art), there’s less deadline pressure.

Smoke & Shadows Part 3 held back showing Azula’s face under the spirit mask for that first fight, despite the characters being sure it was her, and I can’t help but notice that all the previews were of that scene. So the only conclusion I can make is that the creative team wanted readers still wondering about her involvement, and so her involvement was left unconfirmed until after the number of pages earmarked for the preview. That didn’t serve the story in the slightest, because the characters all took Azula’s involvement as a certainty, and it really was her, so the meta-mystery had to just be for marketing purposes.

If anyone reading this ever goes to see Gene Yang in person, please ask about that. It wouldn’t be a criticism (”Did you not show Azula’s face under the mask so that she would be confirmed in the preview pages that were released? And was that something you wanted to do or did that come from an editor?”), and I’d be very interested in knowing if he really was constrained in how he told his story by marketing.

Maybe it makes me a coward, but junk like that is part of why I don’t have much desire to go pro with my writing. I’d have to deal with a publisher telling me that 300 pages is too little for a premiere novel, but ideal once I have an established readership, so for now shoot for 400 pages but don’t go over because then there will be less profits, and also the first chapter is going to be released to the blogs and websites as a preview so make sure it’s extra punchy with just a hint of sex and ends on a cliffhanger.

[firelxrdazula]

As far the worst ATLA characters. It's hard to assume one because people have Different views and opinions. Most annoying: Katara, one of the most extreme behavior: Azula, most hypocritical: Iroh, most evil: Ozai, most whiny: Zuko... est. It depends.

Same, but for me the worst character is Admiral Zhao.

Literally nothing good comes from him. XD

[loopy777]

I took some time to re-read The Promise (I wanted to check some penals), and now, I think I know the reason why Aang got violent. Aang, canonically, would go from pacific to violent under only "one condition": if someone hurt Katara.. Zuko somehow threatened/hurt Katara by grasping her by the elbows, and Aang couldn't take it.

I found that whole scene painfully artificial. I can’t wrap my head around Zuko setting up soldiers inside the city with orders to attack Aang & Co. As I recall, nothing in that scene indicates that the soldiers jump the gun and attack Aang without orders, or that Zuko made a dum-dum and said something like “Attack everyone!” when he really meant “Attack everyone except the people I like.” And then he has the nerve to be upset about Aang and Katara fighting to defend themselves against lethal force.

I also have trouble figuring out what train of thought would have led Zuko to expect Aang to attack him, when the more logical conclusion should be, “In case Aang shows up, I’ll have my soldiers tell him where to find me so that I can explain that we made a huge mistake in hastily deciding to ship everyone in the colonies to the Fire Nation.”

But then, Aang was already considering assassinating Zuko before he even arrived at Yu Dao, so maybe Zuko was right to warn his soldiers to shoot to kill if they saw a bald head with an arrow on it. Maybe we can get a prequel to The Promise one day that sets up a proper foundation for the events, like Aang getting possessed by Roku and murdering someone for changing his mind in front of Zuko.

So I guess I just talked myself into believing that Katara’s pain wasn’t even really necessary. Aang walked in already considering the possibility of beating Zuko to death, and then was attacked by soldiers who seemed to be trying to light his skin on fire. With a setup like that, of course he attacked Zuko upon seeing him.

At least Katara was included?

[madara-fate]

What's your favorite siblings relationships? ATLA, Dragon Ball Z, Naruto...

I didn’t really focus on the sibling relationships in those shows, but to answer your question:

ATLA - Katara and Sokka (though I preferred Mako and Bolin’s relationship)

DBZ - Gohan and Goten

Naruto - Sasuke and Itachi

[loopy777]

Hey Loopy! sorry if I seem to ask so much. There's few people in this fandom make sense. You said Maiko has bad pacing and stumbling development (which I observed too, and I agree). But what do you think of Kataang? I don't like how Katara only being attached to Aang’s hip, and how he completely forget about her in the Rift. Do you think the they got weaker and shallower? (regarding writing of course not the nature of the ship)

No problem, I like getting Asks. Although, if I’m one of only a handful of fans making sense, it’s probably worth asking if we’re all going crazy. As a wise Jedi once said, “If one guy calls you a Hutt, ignore him. If a second guy calls you a Hutt, begin to wonder. If a third guy calls you a Hutt, buy a drool bucket and start stockpiling spice.”

As for Kataang, I don’t think of it much. It was fairly straightforward in the cartoon, although I think it really suffered for the storytellers’ desire to try to throw a little doubt into the outcome for the latter half of Book Fire. Katara’s confusion was never really explained, and the resolution consisted only of seeing Aang as a fully realized Avatar on a stage. So the implication was that he needed to metaphorically Come Of Age in order to catch her eye, but wasn’t that resolved back in The Fortuneteller when she realized he was a possible romantic partner who matched Aunt Wu’s prophecy?

Really, it would have just been better to cut the ambiguously-received kiss from The Day of Black Sun, and cut the faux-conflict from The Ember Island Players. Leave Kataang as that simmering crush that they spontaneously decided to act on in the final scene. Bam, heartwarming accomplished. Cue applause. I would have been perfectly satisfied with that.

As for Kataang’s depiction in the comics, I wouldn’t say it’s any weaker or shallower than anything else. (Faint praise!) The Promise at least gave it focus, as well as a conflict that was no more arbitrary than Roku’s sudden racism. Katara was characterized well through most of that subplot (except for where she apologized for feeling bad but not making a fuss after the Culture-Appropriating Aang-Fangirls outright told her that they were going to try to seduce her boyfriend away from her), pointing out to Aang that racially dividing the whole world was going to put a crimp on their relationship unless he wanted to be a hypocrite. Considering that Aang was a murder-happy fantasy racist, Zuko was a colonization apologist who would reluctantly and sadly kill everyone who didn’t agree with him (so he’d feel right at home on Tumblr), and Toph was her exaggerated fanfiction-self, Katara was probably the most in-character and level-headed person in the entire story.

But I may be forgetting some horrible moments for her. I’ve avoided rereading The Promise for obvious reasons.

The rest of Kataang’s page-presence is, as I recall, just “oogie” moments and the most ill-timed use of terms of endearment in the history of fiction. (”Someone is throwing an axe at my head, sweetie!” Ugh.) Anyone not the focus of the current storyline rarely gets anything to do, but Katara is rightly considered a major character for the franchise, so she just winds up tagging along and acting as muscle. That’s unfortunate, and it makes Kataang look weak as a result, but it’s a problem that could easily be resolved by just coming up with a way for Aang’s extended cast to actually matter to the stories, instead of just filling in fight scenes and exposition conversations.

But hey, the comics haven’t provided any new fuel for Zutara/Taang/Jetara/AangLee speculation, Katara hasn’t tried to murder any of her friends for dumb reasons, and Kataang is shown to be a happy and affectionate relationship. That puts Katara and Kataang as one of the elements best served by the comics. Certainly, it’s doing better than Maiko and Sukka, while Katara has more to do than Suki and appears much more often than Mai.

But then, the Mike and the Bryan have admitted (or was it Gene who admitted it?) that they vetoed Gene’s attempts to add more conflict to Kataang. Let the narrowly averted possibilities of THAT swirl around in your head, the next time you want some Kataang nightmares! XD