#sokka toph and suki are actually around the same level of enjoyment for me
Note
What are some interesting little individual quirks you headcanon the Gaang to have? And what about stuff that the couples might find endearing about their partner (or even annoying sometimes?)
What are some interesting little individual quirks you headcanon the Gaang to have?
Starting with my most to least favorites:
Katara: She hums to herself when she's working or focusing on something. Usually just softly under her breath. She doesn't do it consciously most of the time, but sometimes she makes up songs about whatever task or problem she's working on. She's actually a pretty good singer, too.
Zuko: He is a leg jiggler. When he is in a heightened emotional state, like if he's anxious or excited or nervous, he jiggles his leg. He learns to keep stoic when something is affecting him, but one thing he can never quite get a handle on is his jiggle leg.
Sokka: He cannot keep his feelings to himself. If he's happy, he's happy dance happy, if he's annoyed, he has a hair pin trigger, if he's mildly inconvenienced, it's the worst thing in the world to ever happen. The only emotion he's not overly loud or expressive of is anger. He can be...scary when he's really angry.
Toph: She likes flowers. It's something she mostly keeps to herself when she's younger because she thinks it's embarrassingly girly, but she likes flowers because it's something that sighted people can enjoy that she can, too. She'll never be able to appreciate the vibrant colors or shapes of the flowers, but she loves the smells they give off. Her favorite flower is the lilac (or whatever the in-universe hybrid would be) because the scent is so strong.
Suki: She has a very dark sense of humor. Not in a mean way, but she jokes about things that most people don't find particularly funny. Death, battle, war, crying babies, etc. It's always obvious that she's joking, though.
Aang: He likes coming up with weird food combinations (along the lines of chocolate on french fries). He doesn't cook, but he's always combining things that don't go together. A lot of the times it's an inedible mess that only he can consume (like the time he put pickle brine on a custard tart), but sometimes he comes up with a truly inspired combination (like chili spiced sesame oil on fruit).
And what about stuff that the couples might find endearing about their partner (or even annoying sometimes?)
I only ship Zutara and Sukka, so here goes
Katara: Loves the way Zuko seeks out physical affection when they're alone. He can get under foot in a way that a lot of other people would find annoying (sniffing her neck when she's sewing, wrapping his arms around her waist when she's cooking), but he backs off with no issue in the rare instances when she wants/needs space.
She finds it a bit less endearing that he likes to play in her hair when he wakes up in the morning. At sunrise. A couple of hours before Katara even wants to think about getting out of bed.
Zuko: He loves when Katara hums when she works. Sometimes, if he knows the song, he'll hum along with her, or he'll make lyric suggestions to her made up songs.
He is not a fan of her habit of saving little odds and ends, like chipped tea cups or empty containers that can be upcycled. She keeps them neat and organized, but they take up unnecessary space, and she almost never actually gets around to finding new purposes for those things.
Suki: She loves how expressive he is when he's happy. She finds his good moods contagious and it's impossible for her to be grumpy when he is in a good mood.
She hates how sloppy he can be. He cleans, but only on his schedule, and in between, he'll leave discarded clothes and plates lying around. He won't leave spills or mud, but Suki has tripped over his shoes one too many times.
Sokka: Loves the way Suki says whatever's on her mind. He thinks they have the same sense of humor (they don't, but they find each other funny).
He hates the way she jumps into drill sergeant mode when she's impatient. When she loses her temper about him leaving something around, she talks to him like one of her soldiers. It is a bigger issue at the start of their relationship, but they learn to do better with each other and it's less of a problem as time goes on.
#atla#character ask#katara#zuko#sokka#toph#suki#aang#zutara#sukka#sokka toph and suki are actually around the same level of enjoyment for me#i like suki a LOT more than i like aang#but someone had to be 5th on the list#katara and zuko are tied for first
109 notes
·
View notes
Text
“Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Promise” Review
Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Promise is a comic that tries to tackle the topic of decolonization. (Tries, being the keyword there.)
In addition to this, there are also the three subplots of Toph and Sokka’s efforts to keep the Beifong Metalbending Academy running, Aang and Katara encountering Avatar Fan Clubs obsessed with Aang and the Air Nomads, and Zuko having a mental breakdown.
When I first mentioned my intention to read the A:TLA comics, I received a lot of warnings that they were very bad. But I will say this: I have read a lot worse comics than this one, at least. Here I was expecting some Chuck Austen-level bullshit, but there are parts of this story that I genuinely found interesting and enjoyable. (Including the art; I like how it resembles the animation.) It’s just a real shame that for every one of those positives, there’s also a negative to match. (Sometimes directly contradicting what was first a positive.)
Before getting to the main plot, I’m going to share my thoughts for each of the subplots going on, starting with the one I really enjoyed.
The Beifong Metalbending Academy
I love the idea of Toph starting her own school to teach others how to metalbend. Imagine hearing about the only place in the entire world that teaches such a thing, led by the only person in the entire world who knows how to do such a thing, and you show up and find out that person is a 12 year old.
The Fire Nation owner of the academy before Toph took over returns with his students to reclaim the building. A challenge is issued that whoever’s students beat the other will get to keep the grounds. The problem is, Toph’s students haven’t actually bent any metal yet. And so Sokka tries to come up with various ways of motivating them.
Her three students are very cardboard cutout characters, but I don’t think they’re intended for much more, so I can’t call that a big criticism. The bigger focus anyway is on Toph and Sokka, and there are a lot of great interactions between them. Most funny, but also some genuinely sweet moments, like where Toph talks about how her discover of metalbending came out of pressure and pain from her parents. And I think Toph really needed to see her students display metalbending abilities without that, as proof that pressure and pain doesn’t make or break a person, you know?
In the end, the students overhearing Toph say she had faith and expectations in them is what leads to their success. Toph is just about to give up on the morning of the showdown, when the students kick down the door and whoop ass. It was a touching conclusion about positivity being the best motivator, you know? I liked it a lot.
There’s also this one part where Sokka and Toph discover Fire Nation armour stored under the academy, and they’re distraught over the armour being kid-sized. It made me sad to think that they probably haven’t considered themselves to be kids in a long time, despite Toph being the same age as the “little kids” they’re talking about, and Sokka only a few years older.
Oh, and I also just want to say that Sokka and Suki’s reunion is super cute, and I equally love Toph’s reaction.
The Avatar Fan Clubs
This subplot is pretty much in neck and neck competition for the worst part of The Promise.
The first Avatar fan club they encounter offer to house Aang and Katara for the night. The girls fawn over Aang like a celebrity and he essentially forgets Katara even exists. While Aang has a great time seeing the girls show off butchered attempts at re-creating Air Nomad building style and pass around surviving Air Nomad belongings like memorabilia, Katara sits curled up in a corner, dejected.
I get that Aang might be grasping at straws for any semblance of memory of his people, but I do not think that is an excuse for the way he treats Katara here. (Or for that matter, is it something I would expect from Aang. Season one Aang, sure, but not post-season three Aang.) And just when I thought that maybe that would be addressed, instead when he thanks Katara for staying the night, she looks down and says she doesn’t deserve thanks; presumably because she was so depressed and jealous. Girl, you have ever damn right to be depressed and jealous from that!
I do not at all see Katara sheepishly looking down and apologizing for not liking her boyfriend show off for a bunch of girls coveting him. I was fully expecting Katara to tell Aang that shit was really uncomfortable for her. Since when does Katara shy away from expressing her opinion/feelings?
But oh boy, then the second Avatar fan club comes along... and these people are just downright creepy. They come in saying they’ve studied Air Nomad philosophy, wearing Air Nomad regalia and proudly displaying Air Nomad tattoos. Aang is very rightfully pissed off at this blatant and disturbing appropriation/fetishization of his culture. He tells them they have no right to get those sacred tattoos and wear those clothes like a costume, and that if they really did care about the Air Nomads, they would have known that. This was the first moment in the comic that I was thoroughly impressed with the execution and message, and as an Indigenous person I could relate to Aang’s words and hurt a lot.
But then... oh, but THEN, because the fan club helps stop the conflict in Yu Dao, suddenly everything is okay! Aang is fine with it now! Because they have “the hearts of Air Nomads” and because his culture “can't just belong to history. Air Nomad culture has to belong to the future, too.” And declares them “Air Acolytes.”
What kind... What the fuck... just... WHAT???
Okay. So, if Aang wants to share the Air Nomad belief system for those who want to follow it, I guess that’s his prerogative, given there are no other known Air Nomad survivors to even say anything. But the way in which this was done really, really bothers me. It excuses the creepy appropriation these fans were doing as simply “having the hearts of Air Nomads”, and that actually, it’s Aang’s responsibility to simply “show them the right way” of pretending to be Air Nomads. Why these are people Aang would even want to associate with, I have no sweet idea! If he wanted to share his people’s beliefs, you’d think he would do it to those who don’t fetishize them.
I also have to say that I would have personally preferred an ending in which Aang decided he wanted to look for any surviving Air Nomads out there. Because really, they can’t be all gone, can they? Surely there have to be people descended from the Air Nomads out there. And hell, if anyone would really value being able to hear Aang’s teachings, I bet they would.
Zuko Needs a Vacation
The very first scene after the timeskip to one year after the end of the show—when this story takes place—is Zuko waking up from a nightmare, convinced someone is there to assassinate him. The guards comment that this has been a nightly occurrence, to which Zuko responds that he’s already dealt with five assassination attempts. And to his credit, there is actually someone there to kill him now, but that’s aside the point that Zuko is clearly very distressed. It’s right on his face, with dark bags under his eyes and sunken in cheeks not present in any flashbacks.
Seriously, somebody get this boy an Ativan.
And this part of this subplot I was really interested in, because I think at makes perfect sense. 16 years old and he’s crowned Fire Lord, inheriting a century-long mess his family has made? Not to mention being on a recovery journey from his own personal trauma? It’s a damn miracle Zuko’s holding anything together.
Zuko is especially bothered by not knowing what to do about the Fire Nation colonies and the Harmony Restoration Movement, after seeing how the city of Yu Dao functions and being accused of betraying his people by ordering them to leave. So he seeks some advice...
...And what doesn’t make sense is of all the people Zuko has to talk to, it’s Ozai he goes to.
Ozai. His father. The father that scarred him in a public punishment and banished him for saying hay maybe treating our troops like cannon fodder isn’t a good idea. The father that would have killed millions of people to conquer over the world if not for Team Avatar. The father that the story opens up with Zuko so terrified he’ll end up like that he asks Aang to kill him if it starts to happen. That father.
Not his girlfriend, Mai—who breaks up with him here actually, and I’ll admit I fucking laughed, I hope she immediately finds Ty Lee and they can live happily ever after—not Suki, who is heading the Kyoshi Warriors on guard duty for him and outright says she worries about him, not Aang or Katara or Sokka or Toph, any of whom I’m sure as hell would not have hesitated to offer help, not his Uncle Iroh, the man who’s whole thing is basically being Avatar Land’s only guidance counsellor... There’s a scene where he does talk to a portrait of Iroh, and for a second I thought this was saying he died. But no, he’s alive, happily running his tea shop. Zuko just didn’t want to bother him.
So he went to his goddamn father.
And what’d’ya know, his father’s advice for Zuko is “you are the Fire Lord, whatever you decide is right because you are the Fire Lord.” He then accuses Zuko of trusting Aang more than himself, to which Zuko doesn’t argue, and so Ozai starts screaming, saying Zuko disgusts him. It’s hard to read, honestly. If you’ve ever had a parent screaming in your face like this, you know exactly how terrifying it is.
The Harmony Restoration Movement
Now, for the main plot.
As mentioned above, The Promise opens with a flashback to pretty much right after the ending of the show, where Zuko, afraid that as Fire Lord he’ll become his father, asks Aang to promise that he will kill him if he ever sees it happening. Why he’d even ask such a thing from Aang, the guy who has made his personal stance against killing extremely clear at this point, I don’t know. Just as I also don’t know how/why Aang agrees to it, but he does.
So now here we are, with things seemingly going well with the Fire Nation pulling back its citizens occupying Earth Kingdom territory. That is, until Zuko is convinced by a Fire-Earth mixed family that the city of Yu Dao should be left as it is if he cares about his people, and he puts a halt to the Harmony Restoration Movement (which I’m gonna abbreviate as the HRM). Everyone immediately looks to Aang like “well I guess you better go kill him now!” But thankfully Aang is one of the only damn people in this comic that isn’t jumping for war. (Yet.)
And here is where everything really falls apart. You see, Zuko goes onto defend the colonization of Yu Dao, and it’s so fucking bad...
Zuko’s big argument is that because of the Fire Nation, Yu Dao has become a rich city, and therefore the Earth people are better off. Despite everywhere in the background and foreground it shows a system of disparity in which Fire rules over Earth. And excuse me, who the fuck is Zuko to say what’s better for the Earth people anyway? Why does he get the final word on this? You’d think Katara at least would say something like “hey, my people have never needed to urbanize our village to be happy and healthy.”
The timeframe is so weirdly inflated, too; Zuko says that the Fire Nation began moving in only just over a hundred years ago, and yet the argument presented is that Fire families have lived here for so long, that’s just how it is now. The mayor makes the claim that his family built the city with their “blood and sweat,” by which I can only assume he means his parents ordered around the same Earth servants that now carry him around, to build the fancy palaces he and his people now live in.
A hundred years is not even that long. There would be people yet alive who remember the days before the Fire Nation’s occupation.
And the fact is this: It doesn’t matter a single goddamn bit that the Fire Nation first colonized Yu Dao over a hundred years ago, when the Fire people are still benefiting from it and the Earth people are still suffering from it. This happens to be one of the most frustrating arguments I’ve heard from ignorant colonizers in North America on repeat, and here it is being presented like an actual fucking point.
Zuko says “It'd be disrespectful to take from [the Fire people] a life they spent generations building,” completely ignoring how disrespectful it is to the Earth people to keep the system as is.
Anyway, Aang convinces Zuko to at least talk to King Kuei about it all, and he agrees. Aang and Katara fly to try and arrange this talk with Kuei, who understandably doesn’t take too kindly to hearing that Fire Lord Zuko is backing out of the HRM. What isn’t understandable however, is instead of agreeing to the talks Aang is trying to arrange, his reaction... is to launch a full scale attack on the city.
No one in this comic has any problems with conflict escalation, it seems. But they have plenty of problems with critical thinking skills.
Ozai told Zuko that this is what Kuei would likely do, leading to Zuko muttering the words that he was right. (Ugh. Really?) So Zuko gathers his own army to meet them.
So now we have a conflict set outside the walls of the city between the Earth Kingdom army, the Fire Nation army, civilians fighting for the the Fire people to leave Yu Dao, and civilians fighting for the Fire people to remain in Yu Dao.
In the middle of the fight, Katara and Aang break away to give time for Katara to explain why she’s now on the side of Yu Dao staying as it is: Because the Mayor’s mixed family made her think of her future with Aang, and their potential children. And it’s treated like some grand revelation for some reason. Are we honestly supposed to believe there’s never been such a thing as mixed families before the Fire Nation started colonizing places? Are we honestly supposed to believe that Yu Dao is special in this regard? We’ve seen plenty of evidence that people travel around here there and everywhere!
The worst part of all this is, there’s a very plain solution: Allow the Fire people of Yu Dao to stay, but address the colonial systemic inequality and return power to the Earth people!
Alas, because no one in this comic has a goddamn brain, that isn’t even so much as considered an option by anyone. As the fight goes on, Aang goes into a meditative state in which he consults Roku. Roku tells Aang that he’s Zuko’s great-grandfather, but nonetheless, Aang needs to kill Zuko. (Where have I heard all this before?) Aang says fuck that and goes into the Avatar State to instead create a crater between the troops and all around Yu Dao. Zuko takes a nose dive into the crater but Aang catches him, and he promptly feints. Katara leads Kuei to see the city he’s attacking, and this convinces Kuei to stop. I guess the dormant light-bulb in his head finally switched on.
Four days later, Aang and Zuko are chilling at Iroh’s place, with Zuko having just woken up.
Aang tells Zuko that Kuei has agreed to talk about the future of Yu Dao. Zuko apologizes to Aang for asking him to promise to kill him. Aang reveals that he knows Zuko is Roku’s great-grandson, and that makes him Aang’s family.
In the end, Zuko returns to the Fire Nation, where he visits Azula in a psychiatric hospital and asks for her help in finding his mother.
Just some miscellaneous bullshit and weirdness
Not once, but twice is Sokka called a s*vage. At one point with the accompaniment of a rock thrown at his head. Since when is this a thing in Avatar? We’ve seen three different Indigenous-coded groups in A:TLA, with the South and North Water Tribes being the most prominent one. It fully reads like shoehorned in anti-Native racism.
Zuko’s hair is consistently coloured brown, not black. Toph’s hair is still black, so it’s not just the colourist’s aversion to it. He just for some reason decided to bleach his hair I guess.
The mayor of Yu Dao legit basically says “your father may have been a genocidal warlord, but at least he wasn’t a coward like you” as an arguing point with Zuko.
I don’t really understand this bit completely... so, Sneers (formerly part of Jet’s gang) is in a relationship with Kori, the mayor’s daughter. And characters keep making a shocking big deal out of it. There’s a repeated gag of halting things up for someone to say “You’re dating her? Really? You? And her? Oh wow that’s great!” (No exaggerating.) At first I thought Sneers was a girl, and this was trying to draw attention to the protagonists saying gay rights. But then Sneers is called a man much to my astonishment, in which case, why the big deal about his relationship with Kori? After thinking about it, the only conclusion I can come up with is that it’s supposed to be shocking that Kori and Sneers are dating, because Sneers is fat. And who would want to date someone if they’re fat, right? //Sarcasm
In Conclusion
As said above, I think the fact that I was expecting so much worse is a contributing factor to me not having as much hate for The Promise as it’s really deserving of. It’s not good. But it is just interesting enough that I am actually curious to see where The Search goes next.
...Is it too much to hope that maybe Azula will get some cool moments, at least?
66 notes
·
View notes
Text
atla rewatch thoughts
because i’d regret it if i didn’t write it down, here’s my thoughts upon rewatch off the top of my head!
always interesting to see what new things come to the fore when revisiting something as an adult, especially when Something is excellent
this is my #1 fav show c:
this show is so good!
it’s not just character-oriented, which is the single most important factor in me giving a shit, but it has 2 things i think i value the most in a plot, overarching cohesion/consistency, and breathing room
book 2 was always my fave, but i have a newer appreciation for book 3 and i’d put them equal now (as i think most people do?)
AANG! i love him. he is so special. he is an absolute joy to watch, a character that just glimmers with understated complexity, humour, heart, cleverness, strength, tragedy, integrity. an icoooon. and just unique from a meta perspective- had a great discussion about how there are truly no protagonists in popular western media like him - there’s things about his characterisation, his arc that i’ve always appreciated deeply that i didn’t rly have the tools to articulate until this time around
by the same token, i can better pinpoint my issues with a lot of fandom reception of him (in particular, though this applies to all the characters) (touched on one aspect here)
i love the entire gaang but my unpopular onion is that ehhh... suki isn’t really part of the gaang? i mean she literally has her own gang give them some credit (real talk this is because she’s a static character compared to them whose inner life we aren’t privy to, though there’s nothing wrong with that)
atla gives effortless dimension to its secondary characters, and this applies to azula but not i think to the degree it should given her narrative agency, role as zuko’s foil, and the complexity of her whole... complex. she’s the one character that is slightly close to being a caricature imo, and we don’t see Into her early as we should because it’s cooler when she’s #slick. i’d love to have had a bit more of her.
if i could change anything else about the ending, i’d give zuko prince wu’s abdication ending from lok
aside from that, the show has such a deft, sustained, multidimensional treatment of imperialism and colonialism that truly sets it apart within the genre and beyond
also the first thing that ever caught my attention about atla is how asian the aesthetics are and i will always love that! i don’t know how americans ever executed this galaxy brained concept but i’m so glad a massively popular anglophone cultural product that speaks directly to us, can belong to us, before white people exists (#representationmatters and all that, but it’s altogether more liberating if your entire fantasy world is noneuro and no one even has to exist in relation to hegemonic whiteness. utopic!)
i happily drink that delicious pan-asian soup, but if you asked, i’d say i wish we saw more explicitly south asian characters given how much the show borrows from indosphere culture/religion (including but not limited to the titular concept)
could take it or leave it when i first watched it, but as an adult who knows they can just not like stuff, and whose tolerance for perfunctory het is at an all time low: i don’t like maiko. like all atla ships, there’s potential, but my instinctual read as i watch is that as they are, they’re bringing out the worse aspects of each other (in zuko’s case, the malaise that characterises his whole personal/moral quandary after returning home is usually on display in scenes with mai, whether that just makes maiko a victim or circumstance or not)
the show is def a product of its time wrt heteronormativity, regardless of how queerable it is to those interested. this is something i’m interested to see change in the live action, because i think it will have to change!
i still think it would be equally poignant and tighter without most of the overt romance, and i continue to not be hot on the ending scene
kataang shines bright regardless. no amount of clumsiness on that front can elide how pivotal, touching, and enjoyable their actual dynamic is. they’re the emotional bedrock of the whole show
zutara tasty, but i’m always like (to quote zuko) ‘where’s the rest of it?’ when i jump into the show after the fandom
zukaang manifesto time! this is undeniably the non-canon ship with the most TEXTUAL juice. their mirrored journey is my favourite throughline of the show and it’s arguably the throughline with zuko as the deuteragonist and their convergence/shared destiny being the key to the war’s end. that’s not coming from a shipping lens (it was true before i ever really shipped them), but this particular flavour of narrative basis adds real magic to shipping. when there’s no difference between what you appreciate intellectually and indulgently in a narrative and they just compound each other endlessly..... eliteeee
related, can’t stop thinking abt how roku’s homosexuality started the war
i preferred when toph/sokka/suki instead of sokka/suki/zuko was the go-to gaang ot3 but what i really want to see is zutaraang supremacy
aang, zuko and katara are the show’s tentpoles, especially emotionally. they each foil the other two so well - in their personalities, and esp for zutara/zukaang, on a wider thematic level. and they’re such well articulated characters that it’s easy to extrapolate that to the three-way dynamic. it’s probably most (in)famously on display in 3.16 but there’s a deeelicious little moment in 3.18 when aang leaves distraught and zuko is the one to stop katara from immediately going after him. the #dynamics that were simmering, whew.
i think mai/ty lee is getting the generic uwu soft girls treatment that is the bane of all popular femslash ships (same way zukka’s getting the generic dudeslash treatment) because azula makes tyzula a little too spicy. however i would like to see more tyzula, especially of the spicy variety
i wish there was someone in this show i could thirst over. hakoda is sort of a dilf?
22 notes
·
View notes
Text
Thursday Thoughts: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Coming-of-Age Stories, and Where The Heck Are The Adults In This World
Recently, I finally watched all sixty-one episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender (ATLA) - a show that literally every friend I’ve ever had has been surprised to learn I never watched as a kid.
(Returning readers will already know that I never watched most TV shows as a kid. I’m making up for lost time now.)
Overall, I enjoyed ATLA. It’s an emotional adventure with complex morals and strong positive themes like the power of friendship and family. I had a lot of fun finally discovering the contexts for all the memes I’ve become familiar with because of Tumblr (like “Sparky Sparky Boom Man” and “That’s rough, buddy”).
But I also felt uncomfortable while watching, for one specific reason: how young everyone is.
Aang is twelve years old. So is Toph. The other protagonists, and several major antagonists, aren’t much older. It hit me in the middle of the second episode that I was watching kids play at war – a thought that I know wouldn’t have occurred to me if I had been watching as a twelve-year-old myself, but one that stuck with me for the rest of my watch-through. ATLA is a story about kids in a world of absent or incompetent adults, with the fate of the world in their hands. And that kind of weight just plain doesn’t belong on the shoulders of twelve-year-olds.
The show makes some ventures towards confronting the topic of the kids’ age, and how circumstances have forced them into adult roles far too soon.
Aang was taken away from childhood play because of his destiny as the Avatar and the monks’ fear of the impending war.
Sokka and Katara’s mother died when they were little, leaving Katara as the only “mother” Sokka can remember. Their father left to fight the war after that, leaving Sokka as the only “man” of their village.
Zuko’s father treated him not as a preteen son, but as an adult inferior, and physically tortured him in public over a perceived slight.
The show points at these situations as unfortunate, and in Zuko’s case outright states that it was wrong. But then it keeps going, as all stories about child heroes do, and shows that it’s necessary for the kids to save the world. It’s unfortunate that Aang and Zuko and the others were taken out of childhood so soon, but even when they do go to adults for help, they are turned away and told that only they can solve the problems. It is their plot-driven destiny to be adults before their time.
ATLA also gives us a supporting cast of children whose too-adult qualities are portrayed in a completely uncomplicated, even praiseworthy way.
Suki and the Kyoshi Warriors, Princess Yue, and Jett and his Freedom Fighters all are treated by the narrative as though in being responsible “adult” figures they are as they should be, even though none of them could possibly be older than fifteen.
Toph’s entire character arc revolves around her hatred at being treated like a child by her overbearing parents, and the narrative unquestioningly supports her – the only moment in which it seems her parents might actually support her (the letter from her mother) turns out to be a lie, and leads to Toph achieving her destiny as the world’s first metal-bender. There is no middle ground, and we never actually see or hear from her parents again.
And the villainous Azula, though she displayed a frightening level of competence in every other episode of the show, is finally defeated when she starts behaving in an age-appropriate childlike way. I might be reading too much into this (I am an English major, after all), but the four-episode finale arc left me with the impression that the show was condemning childhood. When push comes to shove, no matter how old you are, you better grow up, or else.
To be fair, this is a coming-of-age story. Naturally it’s pro-adulting. Also, twelve-or-so is the normal sort of age for these stories. That’s when Gregor enters the Underland in Suzanne Collins’s Gregor the Overlander, and when Lyra and Will’s daemons settle in Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass
For a twelve-or-so-year-old reader, as I once was for both these books, it feels perfectly natural. As Neil Gaiman said about his book Coraline:
Reading audience number one is adults. Adults completely love it and they tell me it gave them nightmares. They found it really scary and disturbing, and they're not sure it's a good book for kids, but they loved it. Reading audience number two are kids who read it as an adventure and they love it. They don't get nightmares, and they don't find it scary. I think part of that is that kids don't realize how much trouble Coraline is in -- she is in big trouble -- and adults read it and think, “I know how much trouble you're in.”
A kid reading these coming-of-age stories sees “someone like me saving the world” and goes along with it, not having the external perspective necessary to stress about whether or not the child hero will be able to save the world.
But me? I’m twenty-three. I’m too old to see Aang and company as “someone like me.” I don’t connect with Katara or Toph nearly as much as connect to Uncle Iroh, the closest thing this story has to a constant responsible adult figure. I look at the child heroes and I think, “Where the heck are the adults in this world?”
The adults are gone, as is necessary for the plot. In order for a “kids save the world” story to take place, the adults must be absent or otherwise incompetent, as nearly all the adults in ATLA are. They’re dead, or they’re off fighting another part of the war in a distant land, or they don’t understand their children, or they’re just plain stupid. It puts me in mind of the make-believe games the next-door-neighbor children I babysat in high school would create: in those stories, their parents were always dead.
In her book Good Girls and Wicked Witches: Changing Representations of Women in Disney's Feature Animation, 1937-2001, Amy Davis examines the tendency of parents in Disney films and other fairy-tale kinds of stories to be either absent or otherwise unable to protect their children. This lack of adult guidance is what creates the circumstances for those children to go on an adventure. Grown-ups can’t solve the world’s problems, so kids must step up and solve it.
Or rather, the kids must step up and be grown-ups, and solve it.
But take it from a twenty-three-year-old: a twelve-ish-year-old is not a grown-up, no matter what they’ve been through.
When I was sixteen, it suddenly hit me that it’s ridiculous that Lyra and Will’s daemons settle at age thirteen. Settling indicates that their personality is done changing, that they are who they are and they’ve finished growing up. But at sixteen, I could tell that I wasn't the same person that I had been at thirteen. At twenty, I wasn’t the same person that I had been at sixteen. I’m different again now, though less dramatically. I’m still figuring things out, and there are still adulting steps that I haven’t yet taken, but I’m much more a grown-up than I’d ever have called myself at thirteen.
I can see the value in “kids act like grown-ups and save the world” stories. They’re not written for me, who’s beginning to find them troubling. They’re written for kids, who don’t find them troubled, because they don’t see the dangers that the child-heroes face. They see that the child-heroes succeed.
My mother doesn’t like The Lion King because it’s about a child being told his father’s death is all his fault. She told me so when I was little, and my response was that it’s okay, because we know Scar is lying and that Simba will defeat him in the end. I’m closer now to my mother’s perspective than to my younger self’s response in regards to how I watch ATLA.
We do need to tell kids that they can and will grow up to do great things, and the best way to do that is to show them people their age that they can relate to doing great things – even if it makes adults feel uncomfortable. While the adult behavior of the children might be unrealistic, the ideal that it encourages in them, to become people who save the world, is absolutely realistic.
ATLA is not a story intended for me, though it might have been if I’d watched it then. I’m content to recommend it to children Aang’s age, and to derive an entirely different kind of enjoyment from it by over-analyzing, critiquing, and otherwise completely picking it apart. As I said, I am an English major, after all.
By the way, I highly recommend Amy Davis’s book. It was an instrumental piece of my thesis research and a super interesting read.
Come back every week for a new Thursday Thoughts!
Got a suggestion for a topic? Send it my way!
Like what you read? Consider tipping the writer!
2 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
wnewsguru
News Guru
enjoybeingnaked
Nudist Living
little-tiffany
Little Tiffany
venacoeurva
haha heart pun in a heart term
singunery
𝚂𝚒𝚗