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beccatoriaAvatar cartoons. Yup, that's what's been going on lately. I watched them ALL. Like, really quickly cus they were so good. So good. People had been telling me for years, and I didn't listen. I was such a fool.
But now I am enlightened! And, obviously, full of thoughts. Mostly about Korra and expectations and the ways in which it is saddled with an impossible task.
First, though, Avatar: The Last Airbender! Because, wow, that show is a beautiful, beautiful thing. So many narratives that were just...more than I thought they'd be at the start. More subtle, more thoughtful, more touching, more heartbreaking.
Katara being pulled between Aang's insistence that she forgive her mother's murderer and Zuko's insistence that she avenge her, and in the end, she can't do either, and it's not okay. She can't kill him and she can't forgive him and the only emotional resolution is that she didn't betray herself. That she remained Katara, even in the face of crushing anger.
Aang being told by Avatar Yangchen that his spiritual wellbeing will always come second to that of the world. I was so relieved, so grateful, so proud of him for finding a way to defeat Ozai without killing him, but I don't know that this is the only measure by which her words would be true. He never opened that final chakra - whether or not he found another way to master the Avatar state (and I'm not completely sure he did). He will never step off a cliff and fly. He is the last of his culture and he will never achieve mastery of his own religion because he must, fundamentally, be involved in the world. And that is wonderful, and beautiful, and for him, in some ways, sad.
The way Toph's blindness was neither debilitating nor ignored. The way Sokka walked the line, always hilarious, never only a joke. Azula's fury and rage and toxic competence, unravelling because the most frightening thing she can imagine is her mother trying to forgive and love her.
And Zuko. Oh my god, Zuko. When his father tells him that he's learned nothing, and Zuko throws it at him. No. He learned everything. And he had to do it without him. He had to learn it all on his own and it was so much harder, and crueller than it had to be. He made so many mistakes. He was a child. A narrative where an abusive parent gets no presumption of deserving a second chance, because underneath, they must love their child. It must all just be a mistake - something went wrong and they were expressing love in a fucked up way, but the happiest ending would be some sort of cathartic hug where the parent promises to do better and the kid is fixed because finally their parent loves them! For real this time! That's all it took!
We judge women for staying with their abusive partners, but we judge children for cutting ties. For responding to, "He must have loved you, deep down," with, "I do not care, I never want to see him again." For responding to, "You don't really mean that," with, "No, actually, I do."
But Zuko did. And was right to do it. And got that cathartic, parental, loving hug from someone else. From Uncle Iroh, who was such a good father to Zuko, in every way he could be, considering the circumstances, who just loved the absolute shit out of him, no matter what he did. No matter how hard Zuko was struggling, even when he knew he couldn't directly help. He just loved him so fucking much, and so selflessly, it makes me want to cry to see it.
"I was never angry at you. I was sad, because I was afraid you'd lost your way."
"I did lose my way."
"But you found it again. And you did it by yourself. And I am so happy you found your way here."
I just... That writing. What an excellent display of how to love someone.
The world is beautiful and beautifully realised. The characters are fantastic. The narrative is satisfying. It really is just an all-around stellar experience.
So of course, next, I wanted to watch Korra. Because all that but about a girl? Yes. YES PLEASE.
And then, I was warned, it was not so great, and so I went in forearmed, and I think that helped me, because the first season was not so great. And the others have been...well parts have been wonderful and parts have been confusing, and that's what I have gathered you all here today to talk about!
Okay, let's be honest about this - the first book was disappointing.
I could write paragraphs on each of these points, but in an effort to be succinct, and to keep this readable, I'll say, in the broadest possible terms:
I think that it fucked up with the Equalists. I think instead of telling a story about how a social issue gave rise to a terrorist cult, it wanted to tell a story about a terrorist cult, so it tacked on a social issue that it never gave its own due.
I think that it fucked up with the love triangle. You can't do the Girl Cartoon and then make it All About Dreamy Boys unless you do it really fucking carefully, and they did not. I was pleasantly surprised that they didn't throw Asami under a bus, but Mako's personality basically seemed to be ~leather pants~.
I think that it fucked up Korra's hero arc. At the end, she fixed herself because it was the end of the last episode, not because it was part of a satisfying narrative arc.
I wasn't actually as disappointed in it immediately after finishing watching it as I was after the second Book, I think because I was in some amount of denial. I was focusing on what I liked and trying to convince myself it wasn't that bad because I didn't want to be heartbroken.
But then Book Two came along and was so much better that it...well it simultaneously made me appreciate Book Two more than I think I would have otherwise, while making me more retroactively disappointed in Book One.
I mean, yeah, there are things about Book Two that aren't perfect. I feel sometimes the first half is overzealous in its attempts to characterise Korra as impatient and stubborn - both traits I like that they gave her - I like that she is different to Aang. But it's a tightrope I don't think they always walked well. I adored the way it reclaimed its comedy and had genuinely funny and versatile characters like Varrick, and started using Meelo in much better ways, but I did think it was sad that Bolin turned into the type of guy who didn't realise a chick didn't dig him, after he basically dealt with that from Korra sort of gracefully in the first season. I wish it had done more with Asami and that Lin hadn't trusted those idiotic detectives so much. And I dread to think what my reaction to the flashback episodes would have been if I'd had to watch them in real time. If I'd gone, "Wow! Korra finally gets a spiritual quest episode!" just to find out it was an extended story about some other dude, followed by an amnesiac jumpstart to the interminable love triangle.
But I didn't watch it week-by-week so I kept going. And I saw Korra get her spiritual journey and the love triangle really fail to have any sort of impact going forward or even any significant scenes, and instead suddenly it was all epic hero shit and spiritual awakenings and giant glowing battles and a 10 year old little sister figure kindling the embers of Raava's goodness - the goodness Korra knew would be there from her own experience of her memories - so that she could bodily haul it the hell out of her enemy's chest.
And. Just. Gah.
It was like a personal apology, just to me. And that makes it feel amazing, but also sad, because it means the apology was necessary.
So then we get to the third book, which it seems has been universally hailed as the best yet?
I totally get why - it's been much better on an episode-by-episode basis. I love that the romance is finally gone, I like the way they're developing the characters.
I can't bring myself to love it as much as the second book, though, even if it was objectively more uneven, just because of how it ends.
I understand why it tells that story. It's heroic sacrifice. And it's damn heroic. And Korra will recover and still be the hero next season, I get that. I understand it. I just...feel like I'm pissing in everyone's cornflakes but I feel I won't be able to relax and enjoy the arc until I've seen it complete. Until I have the whole story. Because it fucked up once before and what if it fucks up again? This time, it's the last season.
Which, I guess, brings us to the salient point:
It's all about hurting Korra, and taking things away from her.
Aang was a reluctant Avatar - uneasy with that role and identity. I understand and agree with the logic of making Korra different. She wants to be the Avatar. She likes that part of her identity. So then, sure, it makes sense that that's the source of conflict - not growing into her role but having to fight for it.
On a logical level it makes perfect sense. And when it works, as I feel it did in the second season, I think it works beautifully. She fights for her right to exist, to be the hero, after being severed from her position as Avatar, she doesn't say, "Hey, I lost, I guess I wasn't good enough, maybe I should fuse Raava to someone else who won't screw up," she says, "I'm good enough. I'm taking back what was taken from me."
But even when it works, it doesn't get rid of the underlining threat, or...question.
Aang's question was whether he'd be a good Avatar or whether he'd fail to use his power in responsible ways.
Korra's question is whether she gets to have power.
Amon takes her Bending. Unalaq takes her past lives and tries to steal her position as Avatar. Zaheer challenges the idea that the world needs an Avatar at all, and from her reaction at the end of the season, I'm thinking Tenzin's good intentions with his new Air Nation Avatar-Backup-Squad will just compound that poisonous fear in her mind.
I can see how this works logically - narratively. How you would come up with these ideas without relating it back to gender. But the fact that the boy's story is about how he will use his power, and the girl's is about whether she can keep it, is so deeply gendered, on such a deep level, it's painful and inescapable.
It would also be fair to say that putting a girl in the main, heroic protagonist role is always going to be inescapably gender-related. Like the act of doing that is a political statement. The act of doing it means you can't not deal with this stuff - and some of it will seem like you're playing into problem areas no matter which way you go, because you are, because double standards, because the world sucks.
It's not necessarily the wrong choice to tell the story of how a girl fights for power. Of how she stands up and says, yes, this is a thing I deserve and am worthy of and I will actively pursue and defend it. I reject your judgements and I claim my mantle. We need those stories too, and we can't get them if the story doesn't raise the question about losing your power in the first place.
And let's be honest, the cartoon's not going to end with her quitting or losing.
But as the first book shows - what if there's no more to it than that. What if it's not a story about how a girl has a right to claim her place? What if it's just a story about how a girl has to fight four times as hard to prove she's as spiritually and morally worthy as her male predecessor?
One thing I liked about the second book's finale is that she essentially saved the day on her own. It love the teamwork in Avatar, but in that instance, she went where her companions could not follow. As with Aang when he fought Ozai.
We haven't reached Korra's final battle yet, and I worry, having done the lone epic duel for the fate of the world with Vaatu, they won't redo it and will go with a different type of enemy for the final book. I want Korra to win on her own terms, though. I feel like that will be a big component of whether I end up feeling like it was a story about her owning her power and actively fighting for it, or being "allowed" to keep it.
I did listen to an interesting podcast where the two guys who created the shows were talking about how, while Avatar was airing, it really wasn't this untouchable, perfect show, and how that's something that developed after it finished airing. About how the real measure of Korra will be how people remember it in the years to come.
I agree with that.
I need Book 4 like yesterday.
But now I am enlightened! And, obviously, full of thoughts. Mostly about Korra and expectations and the ways in which it is saddled with an impossible task.
First, though, Avatar: The Last Airbender! Because, wow, that show is a beautiful, beautiful thing. So many narratives that were just...more than I thought they'd be at the start. More subtle, more thoughtful, more touching, more heartbreaking.
Katara being pulled between Aang's insistence that she forgive her mother's murderer and Zuko's insistence that she avenge her, and in the end, she can't do either, and it's not okay. She can't kill him and she can't forgive him and the only emotional resolution is that she didn't betray herself. That she remained Katara, even in the face of crushing anger.
Aang being told by Avatar Yangchen that his spiritual wellbeing will always come second to that of the world. I was so relieved, so grateful, so proud of him for finding a way to defeat Ozai without killing him, but I don't know that this is the only measure by which her words would be true. He never opened that final chakra - whether or not he found another way to master the Avatar state (and I'm not completely sure he did). He will never step off a cliff and fly. He is the last of his culture and he will never achieve mastery of his own religion because he must, fundamentally, be involved in the world. And that is wonderful, and beautiful, and for him, in some ways, sad.
The way Toph's blindness was neither debilitating nor ignored. The way Sokka walked the line, always hilarious, never only a joke. Azula's fury and rage and toxic competence, unravelling because the most frightening thing she can imagine is her mother trying to forgive and love her.
And Zuko. Oh my god, Zuko. When his father tells him that he's learned nothing, and Zuko throws it at him. No. He learned everything. And he had to do it without him. He had to learn it all on his own and it was so much harder, and crueller than it had to be. He made so many mistakes. He was a child. A narrative where an abusive parent gets no presumption of deserving a second chance, because underneath, they must love their child. It must all just be a mistake - something went wrong and they were expressing love in a fucked up way, but the happiest ending would be some sort of cathartic hug where the parent promises to do better and the kid is fixed because finally their parent loves them! For real this time! That's all it took!
We judge women for staying with their abusive partners, but we judge children for cutting ties. For responding to, "He must have loved you, deep down," with, "I do not care, I never want to see him again." For responding to, "You don't really mean that," with, "No, actually, I do."
But Zuko did. And was right to do it. And got that cathartic, parental, loving hug from someone else. From Uncle Iroh, who was such a good father to Zuko, in every way he could be, considering the circumstances, who just loved the absolute shit out of him, no matter what he did. No matter how hard Zuko was struggling, even when he knew he couldn't directly help. He just loved him so fucking much, and so selflessly, it makes me want to cry to see it.
"I was never angry at you. I was sad, because I was afraid you'd lost your way."
"I did lose my way."
"But you found it again. And you did it by yourself. And I am so happy you found your way here."
I just... That writing. What an excellent display of how to love someone.
The world is beautiful and beautifully realised. The characters are fantastic. The narrative is satisfying. It really is just an all-around stellar experience.
So of course, next, I wanted to watch Korra. Because all that but about a girl? Yes. YES PLEASE.
And then, I was warned, it was not so great, and so I went in forearmed, and I think that helped me, because the first season was not so great. And the others have been...well parts have been wonderful and parts have been confusing, and that's what I have gathered you all here today to talk about!
Okay, let's be honest about this - the first book was disappointing.
I could write paragraphs on each of these points, but in an effort to be succinct, and to keep this readable, I'll say, in the broadest possible terms:
I think that it fucked up with the Equalists. I think instead of telling a story about how a social issue gave rise to a terrorist cult, it wanted to tell a story about a terrorist cult, so it tacked on a social issue that it never gave its own due.
I think that it fucked up with the love triangle. You can't do the Girl Cartoon and then make it All About Dreamy Boys unless you do it really fucking carefully, and they did not. I was pleasantly surprised that they didn't throw Asami under a bus, but Mako's personality basically seemed to be ~leather pants~.
I think that it fucked up Korra's hero arc. At the end, she fixed herself because it was the end of the last episode, not because it was part of a satisfying narrative arc.
I wasn't actually as disappointed in it immediately after finishing watching it as I was after the second Book, I think because I was in some amount of denial. I was focusing on what I liked and trying to convince myself it wasn't that bad because I didn't want to be heartbroken.
But then Book Two came along and was so much better that it...well it simultaneously made me appreciate Book Two more than I think I would have otherwise, while making me more retroactively disappointed in Book One.
I mean, yeah, there are things about Book Two that aren't perfect. I feel sometimes the first half is overzealous in its attempts to characterise Korra as impatient and stubborn - both traits I like that they gave her - I like that she is different to Aang. But it's a tightrope I don't think they always walked well. I adored the way it reclaimed its comedy and had genuinely funny and versatile characters like Varrick, and started using Meelo in much better ways, but I did think it was sad that Bolin turned into the type of guy who didn't realise a chick didn't dig him, after he basically dealt with that from Korra sort of gracefully in the first season. I wish it had done more with Asami and that Lin hadn't trusted those idiotic detectives so much. And I dread to think what my reaction to the flashback episodes would have been if I'd had to watch them in real time. If I'd gone, "Wow! Korra finally gets a spiritual quest episode!" just to find out it was an extended story about some other dude, followed by an amnesiac jumpstart to the interminable love triangle.
But I didn't watch it week-by-week so I kept going. And I saw Korra get her spiritual journey and the love triangle really fail to have any sort of impact going forward or even any significant scenes, and instead suddenly it was all epic hero shit and spiritual awakenings and giant glowing battles and a 10 year old little sister figure kindling the embers of Raava's goodness - the goodness Korra knew would be there from her own experience of her memories - so that she could bodily haul it the hell out of her enemy's chest.
And. Just. Gah.
It was like a personal apology, just to me. And that makes it feel amazing, but also sad, because it means the apology was necessary.
So then we get to the third book, which it seems has been universally hailed as the best yet?
I totally get why - it's been much better on an episode-by-episode basis. I love that the romance is finally gone, I like the way they're developing the characters.
I can't bring myself to love it as much as the second book, though, even if it was objectively more uneven, just because of how it ends.
I understand why it tells that story. It's heroic sacrifice. And it's damn heroic. And Korra will recover and still be the hero next season, I get that. I understand it. I just...feel like I'm pissing in everyone's cornflakes but I feel I won't be able to relax and enjoy the arc until I've seen it complete. Until I have the whole story. Because it fucked up once before and what if it fucks up again? This time, it's the last season.
Which, I guess, brings us to the salient point:
It's all about hurting Korra, and taking things away from her.
Aang was a reluctant Avatar - uneasy with that role and identity. I understand and agree with the logic of making Korra different. She wants to be the Avatar. She likes that part of her identity. So then, sure, it makes sense that that's the source of conflict - not growing into her role but having to fight for it.
On a logical level it makes perfect sense. And when it works, as I feel it did in the second season, I think it works beautifully. She fights for her right to exist, to be the hero, after being severed from her position as Avatar, she doesn't say, "Hey, I lost, I guess I wasn't good enough, maybe I should fuse Raava to someone else who won't screw up," she says, "I'm good enough. I'm taking back what was taken from me."
But even when it works, it doesn't get rid of the underlining threat, or...question.
Aang's question was whether he'd be a good Avatar or whether he'd fail to use his power in responsible ways.
Korra's question is whether she gets to have power.
Amon takes her Bending. Unalaq takes her past lives and tries to steal her position as Avatar. Zaheer challenges the idea that the world needs an Avatar at all, and from her reaction at the end of the season, I'm thinking Tenzin's good intentions with his new Air Nation Avatar-Backup-Squad will just compound that poisonous fear in her mind.
I can see how this works logically - narratively. How you would come up with these ideas without relating it back to gender. But the fact that the boy's story is about how he will use his power, and the girl's is about whether she can keep it, is so deeply gendered, on such a deep level, it's painful and inescapable.
It would also be fair to say that putting a girl in the main, heroic protagonist role is always going to be inescapably gender-related. Like the act of doing that is a political statement. The act of doing it means you can't not deal with this stuff - and some of it will seem like you're playing into problem areas no matter which way you go, because you are, because double standards, because the world sucks.
It's not necessarily the wrong choice to tell the story of how a girl fights for power. Of how she stands up and says, yes, this is a thing I deserve and am worthy of and I will actively pursue and defend it. I reject your judgements and I claim my mantle. We need those stories too, and we can't get them if the story doesn't raise the question about losing your power in the first place.
And let's be honest, the cartoon's not going to end with her quitting or losing.
But as the first book shows - what if there's no more to it than that. What if it's not a story about how a girl has a right to claim her place? What if it's just a story about how a girl has to fight four times as hard to prove she's as spiritually and morally worthy as her male predecessor?
One thing I liked about the second book's finale is that she essentially saved the day on her own. It love the teamwork in Avatar, but in that instance, she went where her companions could not follow. As with Aang when he fought Ozai.
We haven't reached Korra's final battle yet, and I worry, having done the lone epic duel for the fate of the world with Vaatu, they won't redo it and will go with a different type of enemy for the final book. I want Korra to win on her own terms, though. I feel like that will be a big component of whether I end up feeling like it was a story about her owning her power and actively fighting for it, or being "allowed" to keep it.
I did listen to an interesting podcast where the two guys who created the shows were talking about how, while Avatar was airing, it really wasn't this untouchable, perfect show, and how that's something that developed after it finished airing. About how the real measure of Korra will be how people remember it in the years to come.
I agree with that.
I need Book 4 like yesterday.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-29 03:33 am (UTC)I can see how this works logically - narratively. How you would come up with these ideas without relating it back to gender. But the fact that the boy's story is about how he will use his power, and the girl's is about whether she can keep it, is so deeply gendered, on such a deep level, it's painful and inescapable.
It would also be fair to say that putting a girl in the main, heroic protagonist role is always going to be inescapably gender-related. Like the act of doing that is a political statement. The act of doing it means you can't not deal with this stuff - and some of it will seem like you're playing into problem areas no matter which way you go, because you are, because double standards, because the world sucks.
I do think you hit it on the head with this. Because for me, I absolutely see how and why they came to the stories they did with regard to Korra's heroism and heroic arcs, given her character and her differences to Aang, and the fact that she's living in a different world with different circumstances. And I'm totally sure they did it unconsciously, without purposefully dealing with this stuff, or thinking they were saying anything about female heroes. But it inescapably, for me, fits into this larger pattern of SO MANY THINGS that have women in power ultimately being about whether they should have it, whether they are capable of having it, whether they should keep it, whether they are suited to having it, whether they ought not to be doing something else instead. So even though Korra isn't dealing with any of that on an explicitly gendered level, and isn't textually really asking whether a *girl* should have this immense power, in practical effect it felt like part of this constant pattern. And like a gut punch in my girl hero story, yet another story that's perpetually about whether a woman with power should get to keep it at all.
And I do admit that by the time we got to season 2, my visceral reaction was just an exhausted. . . stop taking shit away from her, she lost her bending, she lost her freaking memory, she's asleep and virtually absent for two key episodes. And everyone is always trying to freaking kidnap her, to bind her and carry her off. (Which, like, I guess Zuko was constantly trying to capture Aang, idk, I'm probably just overly sensitive). Like the episodic plots for Korra are often her fighting implicitly for her autonomy--without the episodes even seeming to realize that they were often jeopardizing Korra's autonomy?--whereas it felt like Aang got more stories about how to affect the world without losing himself. Which is a very different thing? And while all the losses of autonomy for Korra were temporary and the larger arcs were generally about something else, it did just really make me tired to watch her constantly having to fight the same battles to keep things integral to herself, physically and mentally, rather than an emotional or spiritual journey. But then, she WINS, so. It's complicated. And again, I do think a lot of this stems from Korra being post-Aang, living in the world that Aang built, which then developed into something more politically complex, with more shades of gray. Which should be fascinating. But it's hard. :/
Though I do think SOME of this was purposeful, because come on, they would never have given Aang amnesia to make him forget his girlfriend broke up with him, regardless of whether that became a big plot point or not. And it IS gendered that the story with the female hero is the one that gave huge time to a love triangle, even if that's not the ONLY reason they did it (Korra is always aimed for an older audience, all the kids are older, etc.).
Aw, at some point I got rid of my Korra icons and that makes me unspeakably sad. :(((
no subject
Date: 2014-08-30 01:04 pm (UTC)I think part of why it feels so exhausting is because of that sense it's not purposeful (well, mostly - because ugh, yes, love triangle fuck you). Because it's that sense of inescapability. That sense that either these issues are so ingrained they're inescapable and unseeable or that they exist in so many directions they're always part of some pattern of bullshit. Because social structures have ways of discrediting women no matter what they do because they have to, in order to maintain the status quo. And then these stories can't "just be" because there aren't enough of them. Korra's not one of a million female messiahs out there. It's like...the issue with Wonder Woman needing space.
What I'm mostly struggling with at the moment is the general reaction to the finale. So many of them include the second season - which as I said, I thought ended well - in their "so much better than!" salivations. And I get it - ending something on an unresolved note is fairly daring for children's animated television, and quite possibly also a note they needed to hit for the overall story they're telling. But...part of it also just feels like, yet again, the accepted, laudible dramatic choice for female heroes is personal suffering and a challenge to the necessity of their existence.
Korra renegotiating the fundamental way in which an Avatar needs to exist in an industrialised world where there's no gap between the mortal and spiritual planes has the potential to be epic. And also the potential to be awful if she like, reinvents that role in a way that involves stepping back and abdicating some of her previous unilateral power on the grounds of democracy and self-determination.
Which I don't really think is what will happen. But there's just...something about fan reaction that makes me scared that people aren't even considering that, or worse, might buy into it as daring and politically liberal if it happened. I can't explain it properly (which makes me think at least some of it is my own fears colouring my perception), but there's something uncomfortable to me that this is the ending that got people finally heaping artistic praise on it.
Which is complicated by the fact I also really think this season WAS better in many ways, but yeah...
And I feel daft, but... I guess I feel threatened by all the excitement and speculation over Korra's s3 finale situation WHEN THE PROPER RESPONSE SHOULD BE FEAR. DID YOU PEOPLE NOT HAVE TO WATCH FRINGE? DID YOU NOT SEE SEASON 4 LAURA ROSLIN IN BSG? DO YOU NOT KNOW OUR HISTORY? FEAR. FEAR IS THE RESPONSE YOU SHOULD BE HAVING.
Ahem.
Yeah. I'm overreacting. I just...need to stop reading websites where paid reviewers talk about how, if Book 3 had been the last book, there would have been something moving about watching Korra resist the Red Lotus poison just long enough to refuse to die in the Avatar state in order to continue the reincarnation cycle. AHAHAHAHA fuck you. Ahem.
(That is sad about your icons, but you have Katara, so I think the cartoon gods forgive you.)
ETA: Speaking of icons, wtf, I can't change mine from my default. Ugh. Weirdness...
no subject
Date: 2014-08-29 11:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-30 01:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-30 05:36 pm (UTC)Finding it intriguing that you say maybe Aang never mastered the Avatar State. I don't know if I even thought about that when I watched originally, and I've only seen S3 once (shhhh!) but I'm in the middle of an extended rewatch at the moment (i.e. when I remember I have it to watch) so I will try to remember that to see what I think.
Iroh is 100% the best parent to anyone, ever. I love him. But also YES that a cathartic hug doesn't fix what's wrong between Ozai and Zuko. That's not how real life works, most of the time (speaking as someone who had issues with their dad). That's TV/film sticking a plaster on things and making out it's OK.
I can't comment on Korra because I haven't watched it yet (no desire yet + negative fandom comments. Although it took me a bazillion years to watch AtLA in the first place, sooooo...)
Anyway, welcome, convertee! If you ever want to chat about it, I am totally up for that! (I need more fannish interactions with people).
no subject
Date: 2014-08-31 07:42 pm (UTC)So - the Avatar state! It wasn't something that immediately occurred to me, either? And I don't think the chakra path the guru advocated was the only way to master it, necessarily, just the way he knew of and could teach? I suspect it's got more to do with being personally calm and at peace however you manage that. I mean, it goes back to what Avatar Yangchen said: the Avatar can never truly cut ties with the real world because the Avatar must be concerned with the real world so much. Aang expresses that to himself through personal attachments, in this case symbolised by Katara (and the rest of his friends too, really).
In many ways I think, therefore, that the guru's teachings weren't right for Aang. They were right for someone trying to attain spiritual enlightenment, but the Avatar is the bridge between the spiritual and mortal planes and can't cut ties with either.
So anyway, you end up with this situation where, because he closed the chakra violently or what have you, he can't access the Avatar state at all for most of the back half of Book 3. Until that wound to the scar Azula gave him jolts him into it.
He's obviously more himself and in control here than he has been in previous Avatar state episodes, but I think that increased understanding and increased control isn't necessarily indicative of having completely mastered it. I don't know that he can call it on command. I don't know quite how rational he was and quite how much was instinct?
I think it's quite possible that throughout his life he did master it, or at least continue to learn. But I think we at least have to entertain the possibility that he didn't. I may be reading too much into something that was supposed to symbolise knowledge and control "clicking" into place, but I kind of like that this wasn't neatly resolved.
Aang's keen experience of and ties to the world through personal attachment are honestly at odds with the notion of being a distant and equitable caregiver and with the Air Nomad spiritual ideals of detachment. That's a complex, moving quandry that has no clear answer. And Aang's decision to embrace his love of the world in this lifetime should have ramifications on the type of Avatar he is and how he wields his power and performs his role.
AND STUFF. *waves hands with excitement*
If you haven't read the comics that continue the series, they are also totally worth a read. More good stuff about Aang's spiritual conflicts, the way the peace process isn't easy, Zuko's mom and now they're in the middle of a story about Toph's parents. It really feels Avatar-like.
As you can see I have mixed feelings on Korra, but if you ever do get around to watching it, let me know!
(Also re: your comment in your journal, yeah. I am never watching Appa's Lost Days again. NEVER. Too upsetting. So desperately upsetting.)
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Date: 2014-09-03 09:26 pm (UTC)(Ugh, I'm so sorry I can't comment more on this, but I am really tired and in pain so my brain is just going "can you not?" at me. But you have said some really interesting things and YES).
I'm a bit iffy about the comics (also no money sooooo...Have they been published as collected editions, any of them, do you know? Because then I might be able to convince the library to buy them for stock *strokes beard*) But only because I like that the story in the show is over and done, and I don't feel like I need to know anything about anything else.
I might watch Korra over the winter while I'm working (one of the perks of being my own boss is nobody can tell me off for watching stuff :D ). No promises, though.
OH JESUS THAT EPISODE IS THE WORST. I feel awful for Appa just thinking about it (also I don't know why I ever subjected myself to it a second time because who does that???)