#the great divide
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Ready for a hot NATLA take?
The live-action DID include an adaptation of The Great Divide episode.
Instead of Sokka identifying with the war-like, meat eating, not prim and proper tribe and thinking 'yeah, I identify with them, therefore I'm on their side and will argue they can't be wrong' he identified with Sai, the mechanist where Sokka saw reflected his desire to be more than a 'great warrior' but also to use his mind and ingenuity to help his friends - therefore he didn't want Sai to be wrong.
Instead of Katara identifying with the prim and proper, well prepared, educated and clean tribe and thinking 'yeah, I identify with them, therefore I'm on their side and will argue they can't be wrong', she identified with Jet the freedom fighter where Katara saw reflected her anger, pain and desire to fight back against the fire nation as well as create a community to help people who were harmed be healed - therefore she didn't want Jet to be wrong.
The live-action was able to take the theme and lesson from one of the most maligned episodes of the animated series and reframe it within other plot lines to make it so much more poignant and nuanced, pushing forward a lot more character development than 'Sokka is dirty and lazy, Katara is uptight and prissy'. The live-action took the lesson and actually tied it to Katara and Sokka's core character motivations that will have arcs for them rather than surface-level character traits that never really change.
Anyways, the live action adaptation of Avatar the Last Airbender is really good and y'all should watch it - or rewatch it with an open mind to why they combined/altered the story elements they did. The writers clearly understand this world and the story the OG was trying to tell.
#avatar the last airbender#atla#natla#natla spoilers#netflix avatar#sokka#katara#jet#the mechanist#the great divide#honestly shocked when I made that connection - I'd seen what they were doing on the surface but now that I'm rewatching the animated show#it struck me how that story aspect I liked so much in episode 3/4 was directly from The Great Divide
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The Great Divide may have been a silly little episode but that doesn't make it bad. Plot obsessed folk who want 8 episode seasons wouldn't get it
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Appreciation post for the forgotten butch ATLA character, she doesn’t even have a canon name but honestly what an icon. Look at her. Imagine sharing a joint and a big juicy steak with her
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book one of atla is really just banger after banger after banger [the great divide] uh…….. after banger after banger
#who said that#SO MANT HITS#and then That#AND THEN SO MANY MORE HITS#avatar#avatar the last airbender#gaang#atla#the great divide#atla book 1
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So the LIVE ACTION is like “The Great Divide” so friends, benders and non benders alike, where do you stand?😂
#atla liveblog#atla live action#atla#netflix avatar#avatar the last airbender#avatar aang#atla netflix#netflix live action#princess azula#fire lord zuko#fire lord ozai#prince zuko#katara#sokka#suki#avatar kyoshi#netflix atla#uncle iroh#benders#the great divide
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The Great Divide
Is this episode as bad as people say?
It starts pretty at least.
Would Little Miss Steals From Pirates really be a stickler for camping etiquette? Also, I have to agree with Sokka on this one. If you're lucky enough to live somewhere with such predictable precipitation that you can name your seasons after it, hell yeah don't prepare for off-season weather unnecessarily. Imagine the freedom that comes with not having to carry an umbrella everywhere.
Something that's occured to me is that Katara is always slapping Sokka around (usually for a comedy bit) but Sokka never gets to slap her back. We're like three minutes into this episode and Katara's already thrown sticks at Sokka twice. It's about time Sokka throws some back. There's probably some cartoon violence rule that says violence is only ok when it's gendered the one way, but isn't it about time that got changed?
When Aang namedrops his job a slowed down version of the flute melody from the credits music plays. Neat.
Really liking the banjo type music in this episode.
I have bad luck with spelling phonetically, so the tribes will henceforth be known as Prissy and Dirty.
Gotta say, Prissy seems to always be attacking. Looks like Dirty wouldn't even bother with the feud if Prissy didn't keep bringing it up.
That Canyon guide earthbends a seriously large amount of earth. Like Bumi quantities.
Another responsibility added to the nebulously defined Avatar duties: peacemaking between peoples. I figured he was just for spirit stuff.
Appa's weight limit is apparently at least 11 people plus supplies. Strong boy. Also, this episode he understands enough English to know where to go without a human steering him.
"Would you rather be hungry, or dead?" Love how that line is delivered. Also I get the feeling this poor guy's been working a customer-facing role for too long.
Tiny Momo.
More evidence that this guy is a Bumi level earthbender. Diverting a landslide in mid-air? Diverting a whole landslide's worth of momentum-heavy rocks without any contact with them? This is nuts. Throw this guy at the Fire Nation and the war would be over in ten minutes.
"Now we gotta help me!" Unexpectedly funny line.
You know, now would be a good time for the Avatar to know earthbending. Actually how does that work? Aang can bend all four elements, but I guess he hasn't unlocked earth yet? What unlocks it? Apparently not peril.
Told you that earthbending guide had worked too long in customer service.
I get it. This whole tribal conflict is a mirror of Sokka and Katara's fight at the beginning. I completely agree that Sokka would have the grounded practicality of the Dirty tribe, but I've never read Katara as a "you can never be too careful" type of person. If anything, she's the much bigger risk-taker, especially compared to Sokka. In the very first episode, it was Katara who (with Aang's encouragement) went on the Fire Nation shipwreck. In the second episode, it was Sokka who was carefully assembling the supplies required to rescue Aang. Frankly Katara and Sokka as written in any other episode would fit into the opposite tribes, although Katara wouldn't fit the aesthetic of the Dirty tribe. Maybe that's the point? That they're not so different after all?
"Well, I guess it's ok if everyone's doing it." I am abruptly reminded of the fact that I am an adult, not a member of the target audience of this show. That line awakened my disapproving mom voice with such force that I had to restrain myself from yelling "if all your friends were jumping off a cliff, would you jump too?" at the screen. Honestly, I thought that the fact that I am not the target audience would cause problems like finding the humour too juvenile or the plots too basic or preachy. Turns out the humour is not juvenile at all, and the plots are complex and sincere in a way that makes any message being delivered seem a natural consequence of the plot and the opposite of preachy. No, where my age gets in the way is when Katara acts her age in small ways that make me want to throw half a dozen parental figures at her, with great force.
Wanna bet that Gin-wei and Wei-gin were the same person, if they existed at all?
Add gullible to Katara's list of things she needs to work on.
The justifications for bringing in food are hitting 5D chess levels.
This is gorgeous. I'll side with the Dirty tribe just because their myth is prettier. Yes, I'm that shallow, but this episode is too.
Sokka maintaining the appropriate amount of distance from the conflict and not getting sucked in like his sister by focusing on food is a lovely touch. Both true to Sokka's less trusting tendencies and true to the fact that he is a teenage boy.
Don't worry Aang, you're not missing much.
This canyon guide's got wisdom. Impartiality is lonely, and getting out will be a team effort. Definitely not his first rodeo.
Every argument between these two tribes is started by the Prissy one. Would they just put a sock in it?
Don't let the praise go to your head honey. I don't think they took it like you meant it.
One-man-army Aang strikes again.
"You're all AWFUL!" Yep. I think that's the crux of this episode. The problems are tiny and stupid, but seem huge when you're in the middle of them. Another of the side-effects of being impartial is that sometimes the pettiness and irrelevance in the grand scheme of things of very heated debates is infuriating.
"I only took their side because they fed me." Sokka shines this episode.
How did Aang make the canyon crawler pile? First time I haven't been able to follow fight choreography.
Combination muzzle and reins? I wouldn't have thought of that in a million years. And are people who aren't airbenders/acrobats going to be able to pull that muzzling move off?
Apparently yes. Gotta love cartoon physics.
Congratulations to both tribes for having superhuman grip strength. Clinging to a moving giant bug thing at 90 degrees while ascending a several hundred metre tall canyon seems neither fun nor possible.
I love the fake-out resolution. No way would 100 years of oral history be forgotten because of one bout of co-operation.
I love the noise these two make. They sound like ducks.
The panda referee going completely without explanation is fitting, given that Aang is completely done with these people, and is putting in as little effort as possible to get them out of the way as quickly as he can.
Can you really forget 100 years of prejudice so quickly? I predict there will be some hiccups along the journey.
Someone get that poor canyon guide a cushy retirement.
Look at these faces. I have nothing to say about them, they're just worth looking at.
The purple sky in the last scene is a delicious colour. Also harmonises really well with water tribe attire.
Casually overwriting a century of oral history (otherwise known as culture) in order to get the stupid problem to go away is funny as hell, and putting two warring tribes on the path to peace is an objectively good thing to do. That being said, any anthropologist in the audience is cringing, and I would think at least Katara, who seems to be very aware of the cultural importance of her waterbending, would not be ok with Aang casually rewriting someone's history like that. And maybe an Avatar that lies that easily is not the ideal. It's certainly realistic - sometimes bullshit problems require bullshit solutions. And lying equally to everyone is technically impartial, right?
Final Thoughts
This episode is not bad. That is my ATLA hot take and I will stand by it. Do you know what this episode is? It's an episode where Aang and friends get to see what their more ludicrous adventures look like from the perspective of an uninformed outsider. I guarantee you that Aang & company's attitude by the end of the episode is an exact mirror to how the guards in Omashu felt after hosting them for a couple of days. 'Good riddance to that nuisance, may it never darken our door again. What a headache that was.'
We always see Aang's adventures from within, with the context to understand what is going on. Riding a mail cart down a mail chute makes sense to Aang and the viewer, but the guards see it as a disruptive nuisance that needs to be stopped. Hating a member of the opposing tribe for a past betrayal makes sense to one of the tribe members, but Aang and the viewer can see that it's a disruptive nuisance that needs to be stopped if they want to get out of the canyon alive. I liked that the episode did let us inside both tribes' perspectives, so that they aren't entirely unsympathetic. But even with an understanding of the dispute, what essentially amounts to a century-long blood feud is objectively a bad idea, especially with the fire nation after both tribes. It's not like the fire nation will go after one but not the other; both tribes will just be earth kingdom citizens to them, as they are to Aang, the impartial observer.
This episode was sort of Aang & friends getting a taste of their own medicine. It also maintained a consistent attitude of not taking seriously the problems that people who are too involved are taking too seriously. I think that the overarching theme of the episode is basically 'it's not that deep.' Sometimes the Avatar's duties will include solving petty, stupid problems. Good to see that Aang has at least one workable, if ethically dubious, strategy for handling said problems.
I do feel that Katara's sudden goody-two-shoes characterisation in the tent fight in the beginning of the episode was incorrect, unless I'm missing or forgetting some time she's clung to the rules before. It was obviously to set up the episode's larger conflict on a micro scale between her and Sokka, but as I said in my post on the Warriors of Kyoshi episode, if you have to Flanderise your character in order to make them eligible for learning the lesson of the episode, maybe they weren't the right character to use to drive home the lesson.
Aang is so zen most of the time that I enjoyed seeing him lose his temper on people who absolutely deserved it. Sokka had lots of great lines this episode, and Katara was a beast with that water whip of hers. Looks like, much as I don't want to admit it, stealing the water bending scroll paid off.
It does bother me how every argument between the two tribes seems to be started by the Prissy one. I would have preferred if the two tribes were equally antagonistic, I guess that would just be fairer?
If this episode was aiming for Southern Air Temple or Jet levels of depth and emotion, then this episode would be bad. But this episode, to me at least, is clearly a goofy side trip style episode, like the King of Omashu. Makes sense to have some utterly irrelevant side adventure after and episode as dark as Jet.
As an unexpected bonus, Zuko's characterisation was wonderfully consistent this episode!
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every show has that one episode that fans refuse to acknowledge.
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So I've noticed that the Bat fandom is split between those who ship the Batboys with each other, and those who very adamantly don't. Like, to an aggressive degree. It's honestly pretty hilarious.
I, myself, am a connoisseur of both. I can appreciate quality content of the Batboys being either brotp or otp, sometimes even both at the same time, it honestly doesn't matter. But some of you guys have obviously never had an adopted sibling/relative and it shows. Like, it really fucking shows, oh my god.
I keep seeing this really upsetting thing where people keep justifying their ship by literally saying that it's cool and totally not weird because the boys "aren't really related" and that they "aren't real brothers"?? Like, what the actual fuck guys?? Do you honestly not understand how absolutely disgusting and horrible that is to say?? You're literally saying that being legally adopted doesn't make you family. That shit is so not it. Ship who you want to ship, it's honestly nobody's business, but don't invalidate their relationship like that. Don't invalidate adopted sibling relationships in general like that. Adopted siblings are real siblings.
#batman#fandom#bat family#batboys#fanfics#the great divide#to ship or not to ship#that is the question#dick grayson#jason todd#tim drake#damian wayne#brotp#otp#adopted siblings#found family#adopted siblings are real siblings#jaydick#jaytim#jaydicktim#occasionally#jaydami#are you seeing a trend here?#lmao#i ship jason todd with almost everyone#he's my baby#and he deserves all the love
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I was trying something new with my art style and I can't tell if I hate it or not
#the characters are from a comic i like#the great divide#fan art#do not steal#please someone read it its pretty good so far#rael#davkas#characters are not mine#and webcomic is on tapas and webtoons
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The Great Divide Re-Watch
The best thing I can say about this episode is that we get to see Aang at his best & we get to see how lonely his duty to be impartial can be. The unfortunate aspect of this episode is that while it's clearly "the point" that both the Gan Jin & Zhang tribes are annoying - they're still annoying to watch. I've commented so far along this re-watch that I forgot how funny Sokka & Katara's banter & sibling bickering can be - but this episode makes me wanna qualify that it's fun to a point. The issue with showing bickering on a TV show is that it should remain funny & entertaining for an audience & I'll be honest, in this episode, Sokka & Katara both just annoyed me. Especially when they each just took the side of the tribe they were supposed to be gathering intel on. Well, at least it made me laugh that Sokka just said "I only took their side 'cause they fed me" in the end, that part was funny.
The good part of this episode is that I do think we get to see Aang at his best. Yeah, he technically lies to the tribes to get them to get along, but I don't think whether it's a lie or not is really the point. This is where we get to see Aang doing that outside-the-box thinking Bumi was talking about - both with his plan to escape the Canyon Crawlers & with his method of finally getting the tribes to make peace.
Something that I think is interesting - the "game" Aang tells the Zhang & Gan Gins that these brothers were playing is called "redemption." In the episode following this, we'll get to see how Aang & Zuko share a lot of parallels & by the end, they're on the same side just like the Zhang & Gan Jin tribes & Zuko gets a redemption arc. I could be wrong, but I feel like maybe the writers were trying to sneak some subtle foreshadowing in there.
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I see this episode isn't well-liked by the general public :|
I don't mind it, charactarisation wasn't fantastic & some of the plot is nonsense (Appa can fly 11 people maximum, he could do it across a day if it isn't too much for him)
But I don't absolutely hate it
#legend of aang#lb#ATLA rewatch#book 1: water#the great divide#i actually find the ember players one WORSE#the only fun thing was toph's reaction to her actor#since chronologically it's the last one before sozin's comet
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Bridgetown, Barbados. Did you know this about your police and justices? There will forever be the haves and the haves nots in Barbados.
https://youtu.be/KsInB7TdHm8
No wonder people are walking off their jobs and demanding better pay! The divide is vast and shouldn’t be in a homogenous society like Barbados. Have your say. Naked!!
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The thing about The Great Divide is that not only is it a useless episode plot wise but it’s also like. They have Appa. Aang just bought a bison whistle. Appa can literally take everyone out of the canyon so there’s no need for this whole journey
#i’m just saying#not that every episode needs to be useful to the plot but u know what I’m saying#we love a filler episode when it’s GOOD#gaang#avatar#avatar the last airbender#atla#the great divide
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My Thoughts ... Not What I Expected
Around 5:30 last night came the news we had all been waiting for with bated breath … Special Counsel Jack Smith announced the indictment of Donald Trump on four charges connected with Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, to silence our voices, possibly forever. Given my thoughts on the matter and given that I’ve had my fingers crossed for this day so long that I may need to have them…
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#Department of Justice#Donald Trump indictments#January 6th attempted coup#Special Counsel Jack Smith#The Great Divide
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I was thinking: Avatar Day has the same lesson as The Great Divide: sometimes being the person destined to save the world means you have to save idiots, often from themselves.
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