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wileycap · 2 months

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The Stupidest Things In Netflix's Avatar The Last Airbender: A List

a.k.a.

a whiny rant from someone who has dedicated far too many of their already limited number of braincells to atla i know it's just a tv show but come on this is what tumblr is for let me whine

For your consideration, with many spoilers:

5. Katara Being Smug After Kicking Jet's Ass

In the original, Katara is betrayed by Jet. You can feel the raw emotion in the words "I trusted you! You're sick, and I trusted you!" immediately followed by her concern for the innocent people Jet has seemingly murdered. It's not a triumph, it's a wound, and the next time she sees Jet, her first reaction is "kill on sight".

This is great. It's heartwrenching, it's humanizing, and Katara using violence against Jet isn't a victory for her. It's just pain.

In the live action, Katara very mildly chastises Jet for trying to kill innocent people, which is... an interesting characterization for her, to say the least. Jet then tries to grab her, immediately followed by Katara throwing him and freezing him. She then just tells him goodbye. Her tone is placid, almost unaffected.

And then Jet says "Look at the power you have. That's because of me!"

Katara: "That wasn't you. That was me."

And then she strides off with a small smile, and that's the end of that. Sokka and Aang are not present. It's an incredibly hokey moment that's meant to emulate the style of feminine empowerment, but it has none of the substance. It glosses over any human feelings of hurt and betrayal. All that the it ends up doing is removing a story beat for Katara.

4. The Badgermoles

"They're blind! They sense feelings and react to them! Anger, fear... but mostly love."

Katara and Sokka hold hands in a cave and it makes the badgermole stop attacking them.

The blind badgermoles. Navigate by... love.

Yeah.

Do I need to say anything? Can we all see (pun intended) how stupid that is?

3. Bumi Makes Aang Choose Between Killing Him Or Letting Himself Die To Make The Dumbest Point Imaginable

Remember Bumi? Aang's old friend, a fun, kooky king? Well, here he's an actual fucking psychopath.

He collapses part of the roof onto Aang, and Aang holds it up with airbending. Another part of the roof collapses on Bumi, and Bumi just... shrugs his shoulders, fully intending to die. Aang holds that one up as well, and Bumi, instead of helping, makes the dumbest fucking point I've ever heard about "making tough choices", and urges Aang to let the boulder crush him.

Again. Bumi, the fun, wise king, wants Aang to kill him.

The situation is defused by Katara freezing a little strip on the floor so that Sokka can very slowly slide on it and tackle Bumi to safety. I can not emphasize how slow his slide is. Running would have been faster. Bumi has time to look at him and say "Huh?" as Sokka slowly slides across the floor. Oh, yeah, they were led onto the scene by the love-sensing badgermoles.

Then it's Aang's turn to be dumb. He says "you CAN rely on your friends" and hands Bumi a friendship rock. Bumi is pacified for now, but there is no telling when his next Saw trap will activate.

This made me actually feel bad. I just. I kept expecting for it to turn into a secret lesson, like Bumi in the original show, but it never did. Bumi's just a spiteful psychopath who is easily swayed by the gifting of rocks.

2. Koh The Face-Stealer Has A Backstory Now

Why? Mother of Faces? What? No.

No.

Iroh Is Intimidated By Zhao, And Then He Kills Zhao

Ah, Live Action Iroh. The most ineffectual man on the planet.

So, Zhao has the Moon Koi in a bag, and is ready to stab it with his special stabbing implement. Iroh is standing right behind him. RIGHT BEHIND HIM. Iroh has been there the whole time. Iroh does not want Zhao to kill the fish.

Iroh says: "Whatever you do to that spirit, I'll unleash on you tenfold!"

Remember how in the original, where that was like a big, shocking moment that he got angry? And how Zhao immediately let go of the fish, only to then have his anger get the best of him? How Zhao attacked the spirit by surprise?

Well, here it's a little different. For one, like I already said, Iroh doesn't come in suddenly, he sort of gets bullied into looking for the spirit by Zhao. Then he looks for the spirit, and after Zhao finds it, then he decides that he really has a problem with killing the spirit. He did protest before, but then he kind of just caved and helped anyways.

He threatens Zhao, and Zhao just... brushes him off. "Spare me your empty threats." Then the firebenders next to Iroh sort of... glower at him menacingly, and Iroh looks worried.

Zhao offers Iroh a place at his side once he becomes Fire Lord, which, uh? Okay. Fine. I actually don't have a problem with Zhao wanting to be Fire Lord, that seems to be entirely on brand for him, but everything he does to get to that goal is just stupid.

Aang arrives, they talk, Aang says "I don't matter", and then Iroh, who has sidled past the Glowering Firebenders Who Do Nothing Else, shoots the fish out of Zhao's hands. And then, as Zhao is on the ground, reaching for the fish with his special stabbing implement, Iroh forgets that he can shoot fire out of his hands, and lets Zhao stab the fish.

AND THEN Iroh, who literally stood by two different times and let Zhao kill the fish, decides to kick everyone's ass. And the Glowering Firebenders do nothing. One of them just stands in the background. Iroh doesn't even attack that guy.

In the original, Iroh immediately leaps into action after Zhao kills the spirit by means of surprise attack, takes out Zhao's guards in about a second, and Zhao escapes.

Here, he doesn't do anything at first except help Zhao find the spirit he doesn't want to see killed, then back down, then do something, then back down again, then do something again, then forget that he can do anything, and then he does something again.

It's just... so dumb. (So dumb it's brilliant!) No! It's just dumb!

And then, fifteen minutes later, after Zuko has dueled Zhao, Iroh kills him. Iroh just barbecues him by striking him from behind. Gee, Iroh, if you were willing to do that, why not just do it when Zhao was holding the fish?

Dishonorable mentions:

The fact that all of the actors fit their characters so well and have some great moments, but the show just doesn't support their performances at all. I feel so bad for all of them, being robbed of a chance to shine by some truly awful writing, editing and direction

The Ocean Spirit making Godzilla noises

June flirting with Iroh (didn't they say that they wanted to remove iffy stuff from the original? Well, that whole thing was iffy in the original. Why didn't you cut it entirely?)

Zuko doing the jazz hands to charge an attack

All the clunky and unnecessary exposition (for example: after Aang turns into the Ocean Spirit, Yue immediately turns to Sokka and narrates that Aang has turned into the Ocean Spirit, for almost 30 seconds)

The fact that Aang can only communicate with each Avatar at their shrines

The Ice Moon

The Cabbage Man literally turning to shout his line to the heavens while fire rages around him

The Secret Tunnel song being shoehorned in for no reason

Iroh's entire backstory being shoehorned in for no reason

Ozai being a caring dad actually

Zuko being shocked that Ozai prefers Azula

Gran Gran's speech

The fact that they showed Gyatso being killed by Sozin (literally nobody needed a big action scene, because that's what it was, predicated entirely on the genocide of the Air Nomads)

And finally, the fact that Sokka and Yue's reason for going to the Spirit Oasis is that Momo was fatally injured.

#avatar the last airbender #atla netflix #netflix atla #netflix avatar #aang #zuko #iroh #katara #jet #sokka #atla spoilers #atla zhao #fire lord ozai

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literally-noone83 · 2 months

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Silver Tongue

18+

A/n: Idk what this is. This thing has been sitting in my drafts for so long, and I haven't posted in forever... so. I finally finished it. Here we go, enjoy.

He could listen to you for hours...

The God of Mischeif, the silvertongue of Gods, he's the God who loved to hear himself speak. Words dripped from his lips like honey, or boomed from his depths in power. He enjoyed talking, it was his tool beside his dagger he welded equally graceful and skillfully.

He'd use it to spark the fear in cowering swine, use it to make snide and conniving comments to wound up midgard's heroes, or to caress your ears just to see you go flush red. His words were his way to get what he wanted but... he found your words all the more captivating.

It wasn't like you were doing this on purpose. On the contrary, you found yourself trying not to spiel thoughtless things to the closest person. For the longest time, Loki saw you for your reverence, your shyness as you worked away in the Avengers Tower. He did know your voice tk be tender and sweet in the caveats of days that passed with your kind greetings, small talk with colleagues and phone messages at your desk, but the moment you got latched on to a topic... Loki found himself listening a little bit more closely.

He watched as your eye lit up, your soft lips breaking out into a grin, one that twitched hesitantly as ti contain the visible excitement he saw bubble up inside you. He'd interrupt anyone in the room that may have been talking over you just to inquire on this small matter with you — a book, a movie, a part of history, a niche topic, a notion — and naturally a blush threatened your cheeks. His eyes softened, nodding to letting you know he was listening and the ends of his lips lift to see that was all you needed -- a greenlight that someone cared. Your hesitant words grew to rants, knowledge flowing from you. Your articulation, the fine words you kept in your hidden reputiore, alongside these thoughts. Soon there were days it was just you and him, sitting somewhere hed catch up, comfortably laxed as he hummed at your shared conversations that transformed into your personal monologues hed sit audience to. All of which hed constantly instigate...

"The- then I read an article about ahh- uhm, L-loki?" You breath hitched and he smirked.

"Yes, darling?"

"You- uh, you sure you want me to..." You breath hitch at the way his breath fans your sensitive neck, "Oh yes, dear." His slender hands trail over you hips and god-perfect thighs under that hideous coat.

"Keep talking to me, you know how much I love your voice." His voice hums lowly, kissing that spot under your ear making your shudder slightly. "So sensitive..." He comments smugly.

He had you situated on your desk. Useless things in his eyes pushed to the side to make room for you. How you got into this situation, who knows. And most importantly, who cares? He stood between your legs, up and close tasting your skin and finally feeling how fucking maluable you are in the palm of his hands. Atlas, hearing you shudder and stutter in his ear, under his touch, it was like he was in Valhalla.

"mm darling~" He purrs. "I don't hear you talking..."

You face flushes. You couldn't think straight. "R-right."

"What this article about, hm? I'm listening..." His words end with another wet kiss to your collar bone. A badge of his sincerity.

"it... it was about mythological.... p-paintings." He hums against your skin, kisses trailing your delicate skin.

"Is that right?" He murmurs, before sucking experimentally on a spot only to smirk at the gasp and sigh he elicits from you almost instantly.

"A-about gods and hah..." Loki rubs circles over your hips. "About their heavenly battles," his hands run over your underside of your thighs, smoothing over the plushness before gripping it needily, "them as legends... their- their beauty." He pulls you close to the edge, and your eyes widen at the feeling of his bulge against your inner thigh.

"No need to read about gods when you already have one in the palm of your hands, darling." His snake-like gaze meets yours, his nose brushing yours. His emerald eyes glimmer at your flushed complexion. His fingers graze the band of your leggings. "May I?" He asks softly.

You nod your head.

In a rough yet swift motion, he easily pulls down your pants past your ass and down to your thighs. You watch as his gaze darkens at the sight and you blush, embarrassed. The way his eyes are glued to the wet patch over your clothed pussy makes you squirm. "Lokii..." You whine softly at his long silence. He ignores you. His slender fingers suddenly brush your damp panties, marvelling at the way your cunt involuntarily quivers. He could feel his cock twitch at the view.

His hand comes up hard against the underside of your thigh. The harsh slap echoes in the empty office space. He towers over you and your knees held together by the band of your leggings, hugging your thighs deliciously. One of his large hands pinning you in this position from the back of your knee while the other rubs the pink mark of your skin in forgiveness.

"You stopped speaking, my pretty dove~" He says. His palm travels to your drooling pussy, and he glances at it. The smug grin on his lips widens ever so slightly, satisfied by the growing dark spot on the thin fabric. He audibly groans at the feeling; the wetness pressed against his skin, the heat that radiates from you. All for him, he thinks.

"I want to hear it. Your melodic voice, darling." He continues. Your breath hitches as he drag his middle and forefinger down your slit so easily. "You may think no one's listening... the way you murmur and talk so sweetly, to even the most unworthy of such a sound..." His flattery words drip from his silvery tongue akin to honey and poison. "You have no idea the state you reduce me to when you whisper instructions in my ear when I'm on those god-awful missions... it's the only reason I keep attending." He preens, and he sinks a thumb in your clothed fold, a devilish smirk gracing his lips at your shocked and broken moan.

His eyes glimmered at the way you struggle to walk the line of thought and the abyss of pleasure. He leans down, his lips just tickling the shell of your ear. He breathes steadily compared to your laboured breaths, pausing for a moment to resist the urge to bite you before speaking, "So I want you to speak, my love. I want to hear you babble every frivolous thought as I ravish you. Fucking you to the sound of you trying to retain a single coherent notion. Choking on your words as I listen intently... giving you the attention you deserve, darling."

He pulls back slowly, his nose lightly caressing your cheek as he meets your cloudy eyes. Through hooded lids, his intense gaze flickers over your flushed expression. Your desperate eyes and parted lips, swollen from how much you bit them just to controll yourself — only makes him want to try harder to push you over the edge. You feel his thumb press up against the hood of your clit, and the way you whimper and pull at his clothes, tells him he's the first to ever touch you like this.

"Mm, would you like that?" He whispers. "Finally give you the attention you always deserved?"

He presses on your clit, "m- y-yes! Yes Loki, please." You blurt, you felt like you were going to cry.

"Oh darling..." He removes his hands off you to cup your face. A wanton whine bubbles up into your throat until the feeling of his lips against your forehead, dissolving your pent-up frustration for just a moment. "Patience." He says softly. "I'll give you want you so clearly desire..." His forehead touches yours. Burning hot skin against his contrastingly cool complexion.

However, looking up into his eyes, they were burning with want.

"Let's start with the article's first paragraph, shall we?"

He was going to eat you alive.

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verboselocket38 · 8 months

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I need to make something clear or else the fans might attack me and send me threats, I like this show and was kinda scared to post this but I gotta say it........

.......Anyways, Im just rant about some excuses for Helluva Boss that are just not good excuses when fans defend the wrighting.

1. "If you dont like it dont watch it 🙄"

So this excuse I hear a lot when fans are backed into a corner and cant protect the critisisms from the show (Sorry I am tired, so my spelling might not be that good) And even if people deny it they use this excuse anyways without giving a good argument to why whatever critism the show gets is wrong.

Also I told this to someone before, but by the logic of this excuse, that means anyone who watches and said they openly hate a show like Velma or High Gaurdian Spice secretly likes it.

(I am gonna bring these shows up a lot to use them as examples. Should probably mention now that I dont like either Velma or HGS, but Helluva Boss has SOME THINGS in common, not ALL THINGS, but SOME)

2. "The Series isnt finished, you should wait for it to be done"

Now to an extent this one is ok. Like for example: If Aang from ATLA were going on a journey to learn how to Waterbend, Earthbend, and Firebend to defeat the Firelord, then obviously its gonna take awhile and shouldnt be like "wHy DoEsNt He BeAt HiM NOW!!!". BUT that does not mean you cant critisize the episodes where Aang might get out of character, Katara does something that will leave a bad taste in your mouth, or anything that might not be good writing.

Yes Helluva Boss isnt finished, but thats still a bad excuse for defending the writing. You should still put effort into the writing. Like the fight between Blitzø and Stolas was resolved in A TEXT MESSAGE AND PEOPLE SAY ITS GOOD WRITING. IT ISNT!!! Like if your most emotion point in your show is going to be resolved in something we dont see happen, then there is no growth to the characters. (Saying this is an easter egg is just another excuse for bad writing.) People say that later on it might get resolved and that we should be patient I call bull crap. In S2E2 Stolas and Blitzø are not even akward around eachother, so I highly doubt future episodes will talk about this.

Also, I just thought, shouldnt shows like Velma also go for its excuse? Like its getting a Season 2, so we shouldnt judge the show until its finished right? I dont wanna hear "Its because Velma ruined Scooby Doo!" Or "Velma is an acception since it can make my eyes role" Nope!!! We gotta wait till Velma is over to fully critisize it.

2.5 "You shouldnt be comparing VELMA to HELLUVA BOSS!!!"

Gonna bring this up since SOMEONE WILL. But I do NOT like Velma, I think its crap. I like Helluva Boss, not a fan of the stans and a lot of things Viv says and does. They can not take Critisism. She says she can but accually doesnt. And I kinda realize that there are some things Velma does that people role their eyes at, but when Helluva Boss does it, they get praised for it. Again, I 👏DO 👏NOT 👏LIKE 👏 VELMA. Im treating it equal to other shows, when Velma does something everyone hates it. When Helluva Boss does it everyone likes it. For example, the Swearing and Sex jokes. When Velma does it, people say that they swear and do sex jokes for no reason and it ruins the mood. But when Helluva Boss does it (Which keep in mind, 90% of the dialoug is sex and swearing.) It gets praised. Just wanted to point it out.

3. "Its Hell, what do you expect? 🤡"

I saved the best for last. Yall probably heard this one before lol. So, Im just gonna say that yes the characters do live in hell and that can lead to their bad behavior and cruel humor. The issue that I have is that will be used to defend bad writing. Yes they live in hell, but that doesnt mean 90% of the dialoug should be sex, swearing, and angst. Yknow the end of Unhappy Campers where Moxxie and Millie dressed as siblings and had sex on stage infront of minors? "But its hell!" Yes, BUT its out of character for Moxxie and Millie. MOXXIE ESPECIALLY!!!! ITS ALSO GROSS LIKE HOW IS THIS FUNNY?????

There are also double standards. For example when Stella turns out to be a abusive bish, we are made to suppose to hate her. But when Loona was abusive to her adoptive father who took her in and gave her love, we are suppose to laugh??? Also, dont say "But he threatened to replace her!" No, Loona brought it up AFTER she was attacking Blitzø and he roled along with it.

"But its Hell!!!" my butt. If Stella is abusive to make Stolas look like a justified character and her unlikeable, then why should I like Loona? And no, trauma is not an excuse. She is 22 and she has control of her own self.

And like??? If I were to write a story of some unlikeable guy in New York City who killed people for no reason, should my excuse be "Its society, what do you expect? This is life, get over it."

Conclusion

In conclusion, if you accually want to defend the writing of your horny demon show, then find accual critisms. Again, I👏 Like👏This👏Show. But when Fans and Viv shield any critisms and just see it as blind hate, it makes me upset. Most people who critisize this show like it. The thing is, if we praise or ignore something that needs to be critiqued, then the writing wont get any better. If we critisize it, then there is a chance that Viv will realize she needs to put effort into her wrighting.

I like this show, it inspired me, but Season 2 is such a downgrade from the previous season.

#helluva boss #its hell #helluva critical #helluva critique #helluva criticism #hazbin hotel #hazbin critical #vivziepop #vivziepop criticism #vivziepop critical #vivziepop critique #hazbin critique

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dreamchasernina · 25 days

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What was the moment u started liking kataang and why

Thank you for the question!

I’ve shipped them ever since I can remember honestly, ever since I was 16 and decided to watch the show from beginning to end. There was a phase when I was like 12 that I kinda shipped Zutara but that was before the show even ended and I think it was mostly based on the first season. You could say I started shipping Kataang when I saw their last kiss at the end of the series, I found it so sweet and such an amazing closure to the show. The show starts with Katara and Aang and it ends with Katara and Aang, I always found it beautiful and that moment always brings tears to my eyes. So that was when I was 16.

So fast forward to me 28, I went through a really hard time in my life and I did what I always do to make myself feel better, I watched ATLA again. So when I finished it I was thinking - hey let’s see some cute Kataang fan art on tumblr. So I went into the Kataang tag and I was surprised to see so much hate for 2 of my favorite characters of the show. Rants after rants about how Kataang is toxic and forced and I was shocked…did we watch the same show?

Well you know what I did after that? I decided to rewatch the show yet again and this time to really focus on Kataang to see maybe it wasn’t as natural as thought it was. And you know what I found? That I shipped them even harder than I ever did before!

This time I kinda noticed the little things I didn’t before. Like the way Katara talked to Aang in the avatar state episode, how she practically told him she loved him. And then how she calmed him down in the desert episode (I’m also a sucker for the trope “the man loses his shit and she’s the only one who can calm him down”).

Then I guess on this rewatch what solidified it for me was her reaction to Aang getting shot. I watched that show so many times I lost count, but somehow this time watching it as 28 year old I felt Katara’s heartbreak so deeply, like the expression on her face said it all, how deeply she feels for Aang. And then in the Awekening, like my second favorite Kataang episode of all times, is when I was all like….that girl is so obviously in love with that boy, what is everyone else on? I guess they see what they want to see?

Like, it’s so obvious they’re each other’s person! They’re the ultimate friends to lovers and they just warm my heart so much. And so I finished the show and found myself starved for more Kataang content so I read the comics again, and I was being FED!

So that’s how I went from loving them as a couple to completely obsessed and I will defend them until the day I die!!

Mother/son relationship my ass, watch the damn show again and with your eyes open this time please! And Katara wouldn’t appreciate you adultifying her, she’s fucking 14! Sorry I just saw another anti kataang post and I’m fuming.

#avatar: the last airbender #atla #avatar the last airbender #kataang #aang #avatar #Katara #avatar aang #pro Kataang

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luvendiary · 1 year

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Hi! Could you do fem!reader has a nightmare and Leo valdez helps us

night terrors / leo valdez

leo valdez x reader

a/n: this is my first time writing for leo. sorry, I suck at writing endings. let me know what you thinks. requests are always open!

As much as Leo was glad that the war was over, he often found himself wishing to be back on the Argo II. If just for the light tinkering that kept him entertained at night. The sound of the cogs, springs, and gears often lulled him onto a sense of comfort until he would be able to fall asleep. Now, back in the city, the noise of cars and drunken teenagers late at night wasn’t exactly the definition of soothing.

That’s how he found himself up in the early hours of the morning tinkering away in the repair shop. You had insisted on having your living space separate from the workshop, but you knew it was inevitable for him to completely set his mind off work. If there’s a will, there’s a way.

He was currently working on a special project, that would let you use cellphones to communicate with each other without catching the attention of any monsters. It was partly because of the commodity of communication, and partly because he couldn’t stop thinking about the look on your face when you had come home ranting about how you wished you could have an easy way to take pictures of your life together. Upon further reflection, he realized that he quite liked the sound of that. Looking back on a lifetime of memories in the form of photographs was something that excited him too.

The tinkering of the work shop and his own thoughts had kept him distracted for too long, and it wasn’t until the sound of clattering coming from your bedroom brought him back to reality, that he realized something might be wrong. He dropped his cogs and gears and rushed upstairs.

As he got closer to your bedroom, he could hear the sound of whimpers and muffled cries. His mind immediately jumped to the worst case scenario and reached out for a spare wrench he had lying around. He did realize that if it was a monster, the metal wouldn’t do anything to harm it, however, as log as its attention was no longer on you, he had a chance to get you out of there safely.

Had his experimenting with cellphones attracted it? If it did, he would never forgive himself for putting you in danger. He should’ve listened to you when you insisted that he shouldn’t overwork himself.

When he peeked inside the room, however, there was no monster in sight. He risked a second glance, and confirmed what he had seen -or rather, not seen- before. It was only you, lying in your bed. Your hair was sprawled messily across the pillows, and your shoulder peeked through the shirt you were wearing -Leo’s- which was a size too big on you. To him, you looked angelic, however the soft cries did not stop. You were tossing and turning while alarmingly mumbling something in your sleep.

Another nightmare. Leo sighed, and carefully sat down by the edge of the bed. His calloused hands rubbed your back tenderly as he whispered reassuring words to you. Eventually, your eyes opened, not without a few stray tears escaping first.

“Leo-” you whimpered as you looked up at him and sat up on your elbows. “I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”

“No, I was up…” he whispered softly, running his hand along your back.

You hastily whipped your tears off your cheeks and forced a smile up at him.

“The same nightmare again?” he asked, reciprocating the sad attempt of a smile you offered him.

“Yeah, I’m sorry…” you whispered in reply.

“It’s not your fault Y/N/N”.

Then why did you feel as if it was? The past few months have been plagued nonstop with nightmares about death. And not just death in the broad sense, as if your old buddy Thanatos was paying you a visit, but rather your best-fried’s death. Jason was more than just a best friend though, he was your brother, and his absence crushed you like the sky crushed Atlas. It was hard coping with his death, and it was hard having to do it without your sister, Thalia. It’s not as if she had just left you alone, but rather, you had insisted on her leaving with the hunters. You thought it would help her heal.

Piper was a mess, she felt guilty to no end. She hadn’t dare visit you in weeks, and you couldn’t help but be bitter about it. She used to be your friend, now it’s as if she’s just a stranger.

Leo noted your silence and climbed up into your bed completely, “You know he wouldn’t want you to feel like this. There was nothing you could do about it.”

You nuzzled your head into the crook of his neck and took in his scent, “I just… I miss him so much”, you whispered, your voice breaking half through.

“I know, I do too”.

You stayed like that for a while, allowing you to be comforted by each other’s warmth. You traced shapes on Leo’s abdomen until you eventually hit a ticklish spot, making him squirm a little. You chuckled, and looked up at him with a watery smile. “What were you working on?”

He sighed and offered you a mischievous smile, he knew you didn’t like him working up late. You’d much rather prefer that he spent the late nights with you, curled up in bed. “It was supposed to be a surprise, but we could do with some cheering up”.

He leaned up on his elbows and looked down at you with the same mischievous smile you had fallen in love with. His accent started showing a little, that’s how you knew it was exciting for him. You also knew that with him by your side you’d be fine. So as he ranted about the new invention he was working on, you listened carefully, eyes glimmering with a mixture of sadness and joy.

#leo valdez #percy jackson #pjo #leo valdez x reader #piper mclean #piper mcqueen #heroes of olympus #percy jackson x reader #percy jackson and the olympians #leo valdez fanfic #leo valdez fic #percy jackson fic

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survivalove · 7 months

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hii what type of tropes do u think katara fits ?? and what type of tropes do u think her character subverts ??

Hi anon! I’m not gonna lie this is a heavy topic which has been weighing on my mind ever since my Katara rant a few days ago. Tbh, I wasn’t going to make a post about this, just cuz I feel like maybe I talk too much 😂 but you just gave me the perfect excuse so here we go:

1. Girls are Healers, not Fighters

I want to start this off with the issue of misogyny in the Northern Water Tribe and how the fandom discusses Katara’s portrayal in LoK. First of all, the NWT not allowing girls to fight is misogyny and Pakku telling Katara to “go in the healing hut with the other women” very much sounds like “go in the kitchen where you belong”. This is something everyone understands.

However, I think we start losing the plot when people only focus on this aspect and ironically parrot the same misogyny when they talk about female healers in the franchise and in media. Let’s look at Yagoda. Yagoda is a recognized master. She doesn’t teach in her house, her kitchen or her bedroom. She teaches in a school alongside other master healers and students. When the Yue was stillborn, who did her family turn to at first? Pakku? No, the healers. During the civil war, did Katara just sit at home twiddling her fingers like so many in the fandom would have you believe? No, she was single-handedly healing dozens of rebels in her White Lotus outpost. The importance of female healers in the franchise and media in general should not be diminished when speaking out against this misogynistic trope. I just had to get that out of the way.

So, how does ATLA subvert this trope with Katara? They show her developing her healing abilities alongside her fighting skills. One does not hinder the other. When Katara discovers her healing ability, she gains respect for possessing a talent so rare and revered, by a man originally from the nation that wiped out the male and female waterbenders of her tribe. When Katara saves Aang’s life, the most important moment in the entire show IMO, in the same episode, she is also shown facing off a major enemy in battle and winning. These two sides of her are constantly shown in balance to the fullest extent of her power, without one skill being diminished to highlight the other.

2. The Hero’s Girl

I think this is another trope that’s prevalent in media, particularly shonen animes which ATLA gets compared to so often. A lot of times these female love interests are never in the main story without the main male character. They seemingly have a one-sided crush, fall apart at his feet, interacts with him only when he needs her (and only him), and can sometimes be a pick-me when it comes to any competing female characters. I think a lot of people see Katara this way solely because she gets with Aang in the end, when this does not even come close to how she is portrayed.

Katara is an extremely developed character. Her arc is largely independent of Aang even though there are so many parallels between the two. Katara initially sees Aang as just a friend and even when she starts seeing him as a potential love interest, she’s not begging him to notice her or accept her affections. She gets jealous but isn’t competing with anyone for his attention for long and she has relationships with other characters that further the story whether Aang is there or not. She doesn’t exist solely to be with him, in fact she even teaches him. Katara and Aang being endgame is not integral to either one of their stories. They don’t agree with each other all the time and when he pushes their romance too far, she isn’t framed in a negative light for rebuffing his affections. No one in the narrative forces her to be with Aang because he’s the Avatar for status, or anything else. Love is not her biggest priority and she chooses to put off her romantic feelings until the war ends.

Now does she get jealous of other girls who seem to like Aang as well? Yes. Does she cry and get emotional when something happens to him? Yes. Does she spend an episode pestering the fortuneteller about her future husband and get excited at the idea of falling in love? Lol yeah. Does she blush and hug and kiss Aang often? Literally every other episode. But that’s not all there is to her or their dynamic. I think some people often overemphasize the fact that Aang and Katara do get together in the end and act like it automatically voids the rest of her development in canon when it really doesn’t. Like I said in another post, I know a lot of Katara stans that don’t ship her with anyone or can discuss her character at great length without mentioning romance. People who choose to focus on her ending up with the hero to ‘defend’ her are more doing her a disservice if you ask me.

3. One-Dimensional Female Characters

This sort of ties into everything I just said and is also something the franchise achieves with all the female characters, but even more-so with Katara. Katara has several behaviors that directly contradict her general personality traits:

In the Chase, Katara lectures Toph about the importance of doing chores and being a team player and in the same episode, insults her, picks fights with her to the point she leaves the group entirely.

Katara loves her brother and always cheers him up when he’s feeling him down, but she still will tease and pick on him, and on a darker note, lashes out at him in the Southern Raiders when he doesn’t tell her what she wants to hear.

Katara turns up her nose at the wrestling tournament they find Toph in and winces as she attacks The Earth King’s soldiers, but still partakes in fighting the war because it’s for the greater good.

Katara from a young age had to take up the societal expectations that her mother would have had in her family and in her tribe, but is still a child and often takes delight in activities children enjoy, as she should.

The point is, Katara isn’t one-dimensional. There are a lot of contradictions within her that are usually juxtaposed one after the other. Yet, most viewers can only focus on one side at a time, usually choosing to focus on the negative aspects of her character. They will complain about her being motherly as if she never has fun. They will focus on the one time she was out of line with Sokka just to attack her character. They will cry she was too hard on Zuko, after 2.5 seasons of him chasing them down.

Most annoying of all, they will compare her to other female characters who are less hypocritical in nature and, in my opinion, simply not as complex as Katara. Don’t even get me started on how community is such an integral part of Katara, Sokka and Aang’s characters and how their character development often get overlooked in favor of characters with more individualistic and straightforward narratives. But this is about Katara.

Katara is an unapologetically feminine character that is sweet and kind without serving some villainous agenda that gives her a reason to be on par with the male characters when it comes to fighting skill. Her strength gets questioned in ways that Azula, Toph, Mai and Ty Lee’s do not. She subverts a lot of misogynistic tropes that a lot of 2000s female love interests in media suffered from and still do. She’s a very difficult character for most people to wrap their heads around, simply because she doesn’t stick to the script that most fmcs who look and act like her, do.

If we pretend she’s not fictional for two seconds, Katara is a hypocrite and hello? Who isn’t. It’s human nature for people to change their minds or do things that don’t really match up with that they’re say about. People who get mad at Katara for this, are essentially saying they’re mad because she’s not a flat character and they don’t even realize it. Her contradictions aren’t just one-off moments and her grief over her mother’s death isn’t something she only brings up once or twice. These occur over and over again because she is the other main character and with that comes a lot more screentime for her to be hypocritical, grow and show development to a level that the other female characters can’t.

#atla #katara #my asks #atla critical #katara defense squad #pro katara #wow #why are my katara rants always so long #i’m so sorry #those fans reblogging me again #so i’m putting the tags #antizutara #anti zutara #anti zuko #kataang

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starmans-spacelibrary · 22 days

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An ATLA book 3: Fire, episode one scene analysis !!

I cant lie the scene where Ozai welcomes Zuko home makes me sob just a teeny tiny bit because you can literally see in his face that returning doesn’t feel like it should, and as someone with a complicated relationship with their parents i feel that

(Zuko matters so much to me like i cant put it into words he is one of the most special characters in existence)

Also something i noticed straight away during my rewatch is that Ozai can never mention any kind of accomplishment of Zuko’s without bringing Azula into it,, like even when Zuko is home for the first time in three years he cannot say he is proud of him without adding “because you and your sister conquered ba sing se” and he also bases all of his praise of zuko around harming others and not a single bit of it commends his personal growth or literally anything observant at all because if he actually looked at Zuko for five seconds he would see something so far from what he preaches and i genuinely think Ozai does not possess the emotional maturity to see what is right in front of him.

Additionally, the symbolism in these scenes actually astounds me like in this short sequence theres so much to pick up on!?!?

Something small but very important is the symbolism behind this scene of Zuko kneeling before his father while Ozai officially welcomes him home.

Its such a simple scene but we can link it to so much, but mainly the scene of him kneeling before his father during the agni kai.

This also links to the fact that he still defers to his father despite everything and through that we can see that while he is so emotionally mature he isnt ready yet to fully sever ties with his father, and by extension his guilt and feelings of inadequacy because for as long as he can remember that was his whole identity and when he was faced with the big choice by Iroh i think he most definitely knew what was right, however the permanence and finality of it scared him into following Azula and his father because thats what hes always known, its FAMILIAR.

Another piece of symbolism i adored in this episode was the framing of this shot where the fire nation banner looms over Zuko, and how it represents his father and the expectations placed on him, and how he feels they are too big and overbearing.

I also noticed that when he steps forward the banner/ entrance to his fathers throne room casts a shadow on his face, which i think could be interpreted as representing how Ozai and Azula cloud his morals because he is so desperate for their approval and love.

This whole shadow archetype is also seen in how Ozai is always shown as being obscured by shadows right up until this episode and i think that was so incredibly well done.

ANYWAYS!!! If you made it this far you’re an absolute trooper and i adore you <3 thanks 4 listening to my daily rant (i know i have like 10 followers MAX but idc i love pretending i have loyal readers)

#atla #atla zuko #avatar the last airbender #analysis #i ate that shit up #i love media #what the fuck #in tears #i love zuko

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causenessus · 25 days

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binary stars

part 0.05. intros. OIKAWA'S EMOTIONAL SUPPORT GROUP

NOW FEATURING...

THE STAR AND HIS PLANETS ‧₊˚✩彡

oikawa tooru .°˖✧

seijoh’s volleyball captain and distant uncle of the team (most certainly not a co-parent). did not realize that what he felt for y/n was romantic until their first year in secondary school when she tried to distance herself and now he feels stupid. whenever he needs to be put in his place (e.g. after leading on another girl too much) he can always count on iwa to talk him down and remind him about how badly he’s messed up </3 currently pining after y/n without making it obvious because he’s scared of ruining what they have in case y/n doesn’t like him the same way back - follows y/n's private on his main and private in case she ever decides to give him a second chance </3 - known for unfollowing people when he wants to say something without someone in specific knowing (e.g. ranting about the one sided mental war he's fighting with kenma inside his head without kuroo knowing). once he feels that his point has been made, he'll delete the post and follow the person again so that they can see his private (y/n uses this and the picture he leaked as reason for why she's never letting him back onto her private when in reality they're just excuses to be able to indirectly post about him without him ever knowing)

FEATURING...

iwaizumi hajime & bokuto koutaro .°˖✧

iwa-chan

co-parenting seijoh with y/n. also their ace and vice captain. will have an aneurysm if neither tooru nor y/n make a move on each other. he loves y/n but he will only be able to handle oikawa for so much longer. maybe he’d be able to last if he got to go to y/n’s girls nights more but that’s kuroo’s role while he has to attend tooru’s boys nights as his best man. he’s feeling a little bit like atlas rn but he knows it’ll be worth it in the end (if they ever get to the end).

bokuto

FUKURODANI’S ACE !!! found his way into the solar system after a practice match between fukoridani and seijoh. he could tell immediately that something was up between their manager and captain. he had fun getting to know oikawa and felt like he had seen their manager before. bo talked it over with akaashi, asking him if he felt like there was something going on between seijoh’s manager and captain. akaashi nodded and then was shocked when he fully processed how socially aware bo was being. he then answered bo that yes, he had seen their manager before because she was good friends with kuroo. after that, he knew who to talk to in order to get the details ❤️ his entrance into the gc went as follows: oikawa: why was bokuto just added to the gc kuroo: he would like to speak for himself your honor bokuto: I KNOW YOUR SECRET

FEATURING...

matsukawa issei & hanamaki takahiro .°˖✧

mattsun

seijoh’s middle blocker and one of five third years. him and makki are just there for a good time, and watching essentially four people and a few more distant people try and manage the mutual pining of two idiots who might as well be blind qualifies as entertaining. he’s taken it upon himself to maintain the mental stability of the team whenever oikawa’s messes up and sends y/n through the five stages of grief--starting with setting up the net for the team

makki

seijoh’s outside hitter and one of five third years. is thinking that perhaps him and mattsun should get onto the trend of co-parenting and adopting someone. they’ve assumed the role of the grandparents that seijoh’s team has to put up with whenever y/n or iwa are out of commission LMAO both him and mattsun usually get oikawa’s side of the story but sometimes they work together to try and fit the vague, out-of-context tweets on y/n’s private into the puzzle of oikawa’s stories

not featured:

kuroo tetsuro </3

currently undercover for y/n but he can’t complain. is still good friends with oikawa and as a result hears about a lot of his feelings in their groupchat but when it comes down to it he’s on y/n’s side. neither oikawa nor y/n realize how much information both iwa and kuroo have because they’re good at what they do. kuroo’s trying his best to alleviate iwa’s stress as he continues to watch the disaster of miscommunication occur between his two childhood friends that's been happening since they were kids

full picture of what oikawa posted to his private bc unfortunately it's not an upside down dick </3

prev. | m.list | next

#oikawa tooru #tooru oikawa #oikawa tooru x reader #tooru oikawa x reader #oikawa x reader #oikawa smau #haikyuu smau #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu #hq #hq x reader

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eiochevart · 8 months

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Mural and Atlas⚔️

So I thought I’d do a little backstory/background info for this one!

In my AU, “present time” is considered to be somewhere along the lines of ALBW (Downfall timeline), Twilight Princess (Child timeline) and Wind Waker (Adult timeline). I know they may not canonically align completely, but… meh. Anyways, these are the three “current” heroes! They all have a sort of spiritual connection with the previous iterations of the Hero, though their connection isn’t necessarily strong and can be unreliable… regardless, they each have an “extra strong” connection with their most immediate predecessor in particular, namely the hero before them:

Mural has Atlas (ALBW is the spiritual successor to ALTTP, and they share several similarities, visual and story wise. Atlas generally isn’t too happy when he first meets Mural, perhaps because the young boy reminds him a bit too much of himself, and he’s not too keen on seeing another go down the same path as him? Presenting, Cranky Uncle/Older Brother-Figure Atlas.)

Rancher has Prophecy (Twilight Princess Link has the Hero’s Shade… yadayada. Besides, they’re related by blood. He has always been aware of Prophecy’s company, ever since he was a child he could sense a sort of fatherly presence. As he embarks on his quest, the Rancher develops a somewhat serious but close bond with his ancestor.)

Okay, I lied - Sailor is the exception to this rule. You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again: Wind Waker Link does not possess the Hero’s spirit, at least not inherently. His predecessor vanished from his timeline shortly after defeating Ganon, and would proceed to exist in the Child timeline. It’s safe to assume that he gained some sort of connection to the Hero’s spirit after completing his quest, but he doesn’t have a designated guardian/mentor. Perhaps he may… adopt one, eventually?

Sorry for the massive rant lmao. Feel free to ask questions if there’s anything!<3

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aquaquadrant · 8 months

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do you have any idea how excited i am for the next chapter. Bursting right now. Every time I see you or lunarcrown post I am here in an instant. I am so in love with the htp au I am going insane. Literally biting and throwing it around like a feral dog rn. I also just hope that Bravo doesn't bully Timmy too much, he deserves some love.. He needs something good in his life. Honestly I think that Tango would appreciate him more, and not just because he's a version of Jimmy, but because he is beautiful and his special little rabbit <3 he's also my special little rabbit. I love Timmy a lot btw. He's so dear to me. My pathetic little paper bag rat of a man, I will hold him up to a heating lamp and comb through his tiny little hairs. He's baby. To me specifically. I hope he gets to have a nice meal one day, and a place to call home. And that he never has to worry about starving again. I also hope that Atlas gets punched in the face again because he deserves it. No, he needs it. He needs to be punched repeatedly until he is a little brown stain. On the floor. And then I will burn that floor.

Anyway keep up the good work yaaaaa sorry for ranting haha I just ramble a bit. I love htp it's my favorite hehe

I LOVE ALL THE TIMMY LOVE. it’s so great especially considering the super limited role he’s had in the actual text. like “yes king give us nothing!!”

fr tho thanks so much for sending this in, i never mind ranting or rambling. it’s actually really helpful and motivating for me cuz seeing u guys get excited makes me even more excited. i added probably another 2k words to chapter nine after u sent this in.

#hels to pay au #HTP ask

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leafykat · 2 months

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ATLA LIVE ACTION RANT/MANIFESTO

After watching it I started typing and couldn't stop. Sorry it's really really long and probably not very coherent.

(Since I wrote this, Big Joel put up a vid on his side channel talking about his thoughts on the first episode and he had a lot of points I agree with so watch that too if you’re interested) <- eta: ok jk sorry it already got taken off youtube it's only on his patreon now

I really dislike starting the story with the beginning of the war. It's like they don’t trust the audience enough to care about the protagonists without laying out all the Big Important World Context out right at the start, or they don’t trust us enough to understand non-linear storytelling. I’m trying really hard not to just hate on changes simply for being different than the show I grew up with, because god knows I have my own issues with it. There are scenes that are nearly shot-for-shot, line-for-line remakes of the original, which makes the parts they change really jarring and frustrating. I don't mind the way they combined some episodes or storylines or changed some details, like, June being the one who hits on Iroh instead of the other way around, but other changes just feel like they either miss something fundamental (to me) about the characters or the story or are just… arbitrary, which is almost worse.

One thing that REALLY frustrated me right from the start was that Aang wasn’t actually trying to run away. He goes flying to “clear his head” and gets caught in a storm coincidentally right as he says “ok Appa let’s head home”. Why? Everyone treats him like a coward anyway. Everyone is way meaner to him than in the cartoon about something that, in this version of the story, objectively was not his fault. Why? In the cartoon, he feels intense shame that he wasn’t there for everyone, even though he was twelve and about to be taken from the only person that wanted him to have a childhood, and he got so overwhelmed and scared by what the world expected from him that he tried to run away from it. In the live action, he gets to reunite with the spirit of Gyatso, who says, “you couldn’t have done anything if you had stayed. You just would have died,” (paraphrasing bc I can’t be bothered to give it more views just to get exact quotes) which is fine, I don’t think he needed a spirit world reunion with Gyatso but I can accept it. But if that’s what that gives Aang closure, what is the point of changing him to be less responsible for disappearing? In the cartoon Katara is the one who reassures Aang and helps him process his guilt, representing the people of the present who he can still help. The live action has the voice of the past, the people that he’s ‘failed’, reaching forward in time to absolve him of any sins. And remember that in this version he literally was trying to go home. It just feels like they’re trying to remove moral complexity from his character.

Less importantly (except to me maybe) I think that showing us the Air Temple pre-genocide removes impact of seeing it for the first time in the cartoon. I loved Aang hyping it up to Katara and Sokka, unwilling to believe that it could have fallen. It almost makes the viewer think maybe some of them could have survived in secret. Then, the contrast between his idyllic memories and reality start to sink in. It was an incredibly hard-hitting moment, dulled in live action by the audience having seen exactly what happened to the temple already (including an incredibly hamfisted “you can’t beat us while we have the power of the comet!” line from who I think was Sozin.) I think Momo is pretty cute though.

Another thing that pissed me off was the way they handled the Agni Kai: They combine Zuko's duels with Zhao and Ozai into one, where Zuko not only fights back against his father but gets an opportunity to deliver (presumably) a winning blow and hesitates. This choice weakens important aspects of his backstory and, to me, flattens his relationship with Ozai: 1) That he was never a prodigy firebender like Azula, feeding the inferiority complex that Ozai fostered 2) The Agni Kai was meant to be public humiliation, meant to teach Zuko ‘respect’. It was in front of hundreds of people, and it was a thirteen-year-old child against a full grown firebending master. Zuko prostrates himself and begs his father for mercy. His refusal to even fight embarrasses Ozai by exemplifying the 'weakness' Zuko's mother 'instilled' in him. In his duel with Zhao, Zuko makes a conscious choice to be merciful despite Zhao telling him to “do it” and kill him. Despite knowing how the fire nation views it as weakness, as cowardice, especially in this specific setting. It foreshadows his later choices, and shows his innate kindness. Combining the two duels doesn't allow us to see that parallel nor that growth. Reducing his act of mercy to a mere hesitation in the moment of victory, furthermore, reduces his agency.

In fact, the adaptation softens a lot of Zuko's role as an antagonist, giving most of his actually villainous actions from the cartoon to other characters. They keep him capturing Aang in the South Pole, but Zhao leads the attack on Kyoshi village, they remove the episode with the pirates (s1e9), combine aspects of episode s1e15 ‘Bato of the Water Tribe’ with ‘the Blue Spirit’ (s1e13) and ‘the winter solstice’ (s1e7/8) removing three instances of Zuko capturing or attacking Aang in favor of one with Zhao capturing and Zuko rescuing him. But I guess they add a fight in Omashu. Look, this is inevitable as a result of combining 20 episodes into 8. I don’t really mind streamlining a lot of these episodes, nor removing others (having episodes like ‘the great divide’ and ‘the fortuneteller’ only referenced as rumors Zuko hears in a bar is cute, to be honest), though the change to the Bato episode where Sokka merely has a flashback of his father implying he thinks Sokka is an incompetent warrior is a really unnecessary and bad change, to me. But they took out almost every instance of Zuko posing an actual threat to Aang and replaced it with one fight scene in Omashu. To me, what it feels like is the show runners know Zuko is going to become a Good Guy and thus they don’t want to make him act too Bad.

On the topic of Kyoshi island: giving Aang a reason to go there aside from wanting to ride the giant Koi, whatever. Removing Sokka’s chauvinism, okay, I guess. But it ends up replaced with extremely awkward flirting between him and Suki that feels motivated by nothing beyond each being the first non-relative young adult of their preferred gender either one has ever met. Whether or not you want to have Sokka start off sexist, and that could be a whole conversation on its own, him humbling himself enough to ask Suki for instruction was an important moment of growth for him that he doesn’t really have in this version. And they don’t even put Sokka in the dress and makeup!!! BOO! Also minor moment but I think it’s also sus for the show to have Suki remove her makeup as soon as it’s time for her to be a love interest and then just not wear it again. BOO!! She looked really cool though. It’s not like I think her first appearance in the cartoon is full of depth or whatever, and I think the cartoon turned her into a cardboard cutout as soon as she became a love interest, but it’s like the live action clipped through a wall straight to my least favorite parts of s3 Suki. It’s just disappointing. I also don’t like Aang being able to just talk to Kyoshi and his other past lives so easily but that might just be my cartoon-purist talking.

I didn’t mind putting Jet and Teo into Omashu, even though I think Danny Pudi’s ‘I had no choice’ justification for working for the Fire Nation holds up less well when he’s in a position of privilege in an Earth Kingdom stronghold as opposed to protecting a community of refugees in an isolated air temple. I don’t think they needed to add the Cave of Lovers plot from season 2 into the mix though. Not only that, but to rework that plotline so that 1) Aang isn’t even there, 2) it’s Sokka’s idea to put out their lights and follow the crystals, 3) that’s not actually The Solution 4) badgermoles can sense…. Emotions???????? Sorry that’s so fucking stupid it makes me angry. They include the legend where Oma and Shu learned earthbending from the badgermoles, so why would these giant creatures have learned to sense human emotion instead of the pre-existing explanation from the cartoon: sensing the world through the earth. You know, the thing that connects them to Toph’s earthbending. I guess setting up stuff as far away as… next season… isn’t important. They used the stuff from the season 2 episode “the swamp” for aspects of the winter solstice plot anyway, which is where Aang originally had a vision of Toph and thus was able to identify her as an earthbender in spite of her appearance. I guess they can come up with something else, but it’s just a decision that feels arbitrary. Sokka could have had his flashback without the spirit vision, but since this is before he meets and loses Yue they needed something, I guess. At this point I’m describing these changes not necessarily because I think they’re inherently bad but because I want to describe how fragile this jenga tower is getting, and how unnecessary they feel.

Ultimately it’s like… the things they’re the most faithful to are all the most surface-level easter egg references, while missing or changing the actual soul of the source material. Gran Gran gives the opening monologue word-for-word because Fans Will Get It. They include Bumi’s rock candy trick and lettuce leaf joke but make him resentful and angry at Aang for no reason I can understand. Sokka isn’t sexist anymore, he just has issues where his dad apparently thinks he ‘shouldn’t have lives in his hands’. Ozai is… wait- is he tearing up while he scars Zuko’s face?

I know we all love Daniel Dae Kim but we did not need Ozai so much this season, let alone Azula, let alone Mai and Ty Lee. We especially didn’t need a scene where Ozai praises Zuko to Azula while belittling her. For the record, because people defending this scene seem to think the issue is that the rest of us fail to understand that Ozai is playing his children against each other: That is not the issue. It’s that he did not play his children against each other in this specific way. He uses Azula to show Zuko how much he fails to measure up and threaten his position as heir, and he uses the example of Zuko’s failure to keep Azula in line. If she’s good enough and Zuko is bad enough maybe she’ll become heir. After all, that’s what happened to Ozai and Iroh. They are allowed to change this dynamic in adaptation but personally I think it’s a change for the worse, and the shot of tears in his eyes as he abuses his son lends credibility to an interpretation that maybe he does want Zuko to succeed. Lol. The cartoon focuses on Iroh’s reaction, his inability to watch, instead of Ozai’s… emotional conflict? Or whatever.

Katara and Sokka getting stuck in the spirit world as a replacement for their fever in The Blue Spirit is fine, I think condensing that plot and the winter solstice works decently. It’s fine that they changed Aang’s motivation for finding Roku to be getting info on how to save his friends instead of getting crucial info about Sozin’s Comet. After all, they clumsily introduced that in episode 1. It’s honestly fine (Read with as much cope in my voice as you want.) Combining that with Zuko’s half of The Storm is also…. Okay, even if I’ve already described why I don’t like how they adapted Zuko’s backstory. What frustrates me is that The Storm parallels Aang and Zuko’s backstories in a way that works really well with the events in The Blue Spirit. In fact, they’re back-to-back episodes. But the live action has moved Aang’s backstory to the beginning of the first episode. So instead of getting to see how they’re both constrained by the roles and times they were born into, and how heavily others’ expectations weigh on both of them, we have to have Aang explicitly spell it out for us. Rewatching these two episodes of the cartoon I was just really struck by how efficient the storytelling is. All Aang has to say after he’s saved Zuko is that he misses his friend from the Fire Nation, and that he wonders if he and Zuko could have been friends if they’d been born into a different time. All Zuko has to do is attack him in response. Because we’ve just seen why they can’t be friends in this time, in this world. The live action has to create some plot point about Aang having stolen Zuko’s diary, and Zuko having researched Airbender culture or something. They bond a little bit over brushes before Aang goes like ‘why don’t you turn against your family?’ The conversation (before that part) is cute, just like, not a good replacement for trusting the audience.

I guess once we’ve gotten this far it doesn’t matter much that Katara and Sokka have been captured by Koh, because of course they were. Yeah, they changed how it works, yeah, now he steals your face once you’ve succumbed to despair or something. Whatever. At this point it feels like nitpicking to point out that what made Koh so scary was that he would steal your face if you showed him any emotion at all. Who cares anymore.

^ok I wrote most of that before having seen the last two episodes, which cover the last three episodes of the first season of the cartoon. Dude it got even worse somehow. It’s been a couple days and my friends and I rewatched all of s1 of the original show in the meantime.

First of all, the changes to the dynamic between Hahn, Sokka, and Yue were completely inexplicable to me. Yue gets nominally ‘empowered’ in the sense that she’s no longer trapped in an arranged marriage to a total shithead, but at the same time they made Hahn seem like a… genuinely good guy? He’s humble, asks Sokka for his expertise, and nobly accepts that Yue broke up with him. When asked about it, Yue says ‘he’s great, he’s just not the guy of my dreams’, before kissing Sokka. (They also reveal that she was the sexy fox spirit that flirted with Sokka in the spirit world —I didn’t mention it before because I didn’t think it mattered at the time— so I guess we are meant to believe that Sokka is the boy of her dreams. Which we know from these two and a half conversations that manage to be way less cute than the awkward/shy flirting from the original show.) Even if they wanted to completely change Hahn’s character, Yue’s conflict in the original show was between her heart and what she saw as her responsibility to her people. They could just as easily have kept that element: that she isn’t in love with Hahn, but that for Political Reasons can’t just break things off. That’s way more interesting! But I do love a forbidden romance, so maybe that’s just me. The adaptation does say that they were at one point betrothed, which raises more questions than it answers. If both of their parents were anticipating this marriage so much that they set it up years in advance, why were they okay with her just breaking things off because she didn’t like him like that? Are arranged marriages in the Northern Water Tribe (I’m so sorry I forgot the name they gave it in this adaptation) purely meant to be love matches? There’s no financial or political element at all? Even for a princess? Whatever. Hahn still dies, this time it’s just offscreen. This time I’m actually a little sad for him, if just for his wasted potential.

They actually take out the engagement necklace stuff altogether, including the history between Pakku and Katara’s grandma, and the story of how and why she fled. I don’t really know why but maybe they thought “you lost the so-called love of your life to backward practices” was a weak reason to change his mind. So instead they have it that he doesn’t change his mind but it turns out Katara doesn’t need a master anyway because she’s already good enough to be a master! Despite not having been able to waterbend ‘more than a thimbleful’ before meeting Aang, and us not really getting to see her train at all. Gran Gran gave her the waterbending scroll she stole from the pirates in the cartoon, so I guess we can assume that contained everything you’d ever need to know. She loses the fight but wins the hearts and minds of the people. The women of the tribe support her when she goes against Pakku and go “we want to fight too!” Oh, did I mention this is all after they realize the Fire Navy is at their doorstep, so it’s less a fight about the right to learn waterbending than about the right to fight in war. And then again the issue of Katara needing to learn from Pakku is sidestepped by her magically being good enough now on her own. I don’t actually mind the change to include other women from the North standing up against sexism but to be honest I don’t understand taking out the betrothal stuff. It was a deliberate parallel in the cartoon- women trapped in loveless arranged marriages and also forbidden from learning any waterbending aside from healing. But whatever, it’s a choice. I can live with it.

What I don’t like is the way they’ve undermined Katara’s journey in season 1. Aang teaches Katara how to waterbend at first, and she also doesn’t learn to heal on her own before an elder shows her how to do it. In the cartoon, she’s been trying and figuring things out on her own all her life. Her hunger to find someone to teach her is a major motivator for why she wants to go to the North Pole. We see her struggle, get intensely frustrated and jealous that Aang picks up waterbending more naturally than she does, and work really hard at it. Her dedication and hard work are what Pakku eventually praises about her when he teaches her. He compares her to Aang, who is naturally talented but distracted. This is after an indeterminate amount of time, but whatever, condensed timeline, 8 episodes, whatever. We don’t even see Aang waterbend at all this season, which is kind of wild to me. I guess if you take out the Summer Solstice Comet deadline to master all four elements (which they did) Aang doesn’t really need to rush. Instead they kind of just have Aang have a thing of like “I have my friends to help me” which is….. ok….. Oh wait, is this why they don’t care that much about foreshadowing Toph? Are they just not gonna bother having Aang learn the elements and just have her show up and join them for whatever reason? Is that why they just totally removed ‘The Deserter’? Wait sorry, I’m assuming they’re planning that far in advance at all, my bad.

Okay also like I have to talk about this because it bothers me so much. Zhao was handled so badly. Whatever, have a Fire sage just give him the moon/ocean spirit exposition in a flashback instead of the way it unfolded in the cartoon (I guess we’re already not bothering to set up the great library since the gaang already met wan shi tong, I guess that’s… fine… Appa can get captured a different way, if they’re even going to bother with that plotline in season 2. If they’re even going to do a season 2.) Sure, the moon and ocean spirits are only in the physical realm and vulnerable for ‘only one night’ now as opposed to permanently. Zhao knows this but not that they’re fish. Okay. Whatever. Blah blah blah. Those are personal nitpicks. But what really gets me is that in the end, Iroh and Zuko kill Zhao. Or rather, Zuko doesn’t finish him off, Zhao tries to attack when his back is turned, and Iroh finishes him off (similar to the way their Agni Kai in the cartoon plays out.) In the cartoon, Zhao and Zuko are fighting, Aang-as-Ocean-Spirit grabs Zhao, and Zuko reaches out to try and help Zhao, which Zhao refuses. He chooses to meet his fate at the hands of the spirits he provoked rather than swallow his pride. This is such a good conclusion to Zhao’s character! The live action also fails to set Zhao up as a formidable firebender, which is also not strictly necessary but I think complements other elements of his character well. His first episode in the cartoon includes the Agni Kai between him and Zuko, establishing Zhao both as a firebending master and as someone who values his ambition and pride above all else. In s1e16, ‘the deserter’ we see him as the embodiment of fire’s destructive hunger: he is baited into destroying his own ships in his desire to “win” his fight with Aang. He gloats of how his siege of the North Pole will earn him a place in the history books, and to win he is willing to kill the moon, against Iroh’s exhortations. In the live action, we get a weird revelation that he was working with Azula, and she was the mastermind behind a lot of his plans? Huh? He also “reveals” that Ozai was only ever using Zuko to “motivate his sister”, which is both incredibly heavy-handed and completely redundant. I guess I should mention that the finale has a couple scenes thrown in where Azula is doing firebending training to pass some kind of arbitrary Test Ozai has set for her, while Mai and Ty Lee watch and tell her that her dad is like, being way too hard on her and she knows he’s manipulating her right? Thanks girls!

Anyway, I guess since the live-action completely removed the golden child/failure dynamic between Azula and Zuko we needed something to replace it. The “my father always said Azula was born lucky. He said I was lucky to be born” line summed up that relationship dynamic nicely. Oh well, who needs it. Instead Zuko is good enough to have beaten Ozai in a duel at 13, but Ozai decided he was weak for hesitating. Meanwhile Azula is struggling to meet his expectations. He banished his heir on a mission that, for the last hundred years, was considered a complete dead-end, so that he could, uhhhhh, Motivate her when he miraculously started succeeding. Masterful gambit, sir. Okay sorry to harp on that again. Back to Zhao. Actually, what else is there to say. He has a couple funny lines but he’s just not the same guy at all on either a superficial or deeper level. It’s so disappointing. It’s also just a really weak choice to make Iroh and Zuko responsible for his death. Maybe they couldn’t figure out how to make the special effects look good when the ocean spirit picked him up. It just misses the point of Zhao’s ultimate tragedy, to me. The man so lacking in self-control, so ambitious, so assured in his own superiority, that he saw the spirits themselves as his prey. To be destroyed by the forces he tried to destroy is so poetic! Instead let’s water down Zuko’s mercy and Iroh’s pacifism.

This is all I can remember at this point aside from nitpicks. Do I think the Koh vs Kuruk backstory needed to be spelled out like that? No. Did we need to almost have Momo DIE to get Sokka and Yue to the oasis? Not really. I don’t think the way Zhao “assassinated” Zuko in the live action made as much sense, but we took out the pirates so oh well.

When you get to a certain point I guess the question becomes ‘how much can you change in an adaptation and still call it an adaptation’. What do adaptations owe to their source material? Where does the spirit of a story reside? If the same plot beats happen, does it matter if characters are different? If the characters are faithful, does it matter if events are moved around? If the destination is the same, how much does it matter how you get there? What do I personally want to see in a ‘live-action’ adaptation of Avatar, this show that I loved so much growing up? Well, assuming that “don’t make one” isn’t a possibility, I would have preferred they follow more in One Piece’s footsteps. That adaptation wasn’t perfect either, and it condensed around 100 chapters of manga into 8 hours, but it really felt like it got the characters right. Avatar had a tough job too, but it condensed 7 hours 40 minutes of cartoon into 8 hours of- wait. No. Well at least we got the cabbage merchant.

#u guys dont even know how much the original shaped my adolescence....#for that reason i was probably the most annoying person possible to watch the remake with #thank u to my friends

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