So that one thing
Jul. 23rd, 2008 12:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jlhI know this is, for many, a pointless request to make of an SF-F or action/adventure genre canon, but I'm not a genre fan, so I feel okay pushing for the next level. This isn't a diss on Avatar by any means, just something that felt missing, that occurred to me after a few days of thinking about the finale.
I wish there had been important older women. I wish that all the mother figures hadn't either died/disappeared in sacrifice for their children (which no fathers did, except sort-of Aang's) or were useless in the face of the father's rules, like Toph's mother. I wish that at least one of the White Lotus had been a woman. I wish that at least one of the older mentors we encountered was a woman. I wish there had been a woman to balance out that poor insane water bender who taught Katara to blood bend, just as there were so many young women to balance Azula. I wish it hadn't been Katara who was driven to avenge their mom, but Sokka who was driven to find their dad. We have such a variety of younger women, and a heritage of female avatars. What happened to the older women?
I wish there had been important older women. I wish that all the mother figures hadn't either died/disappeared in sacrifice for their children (which no fathers did, except sort-of Aang's) or were useless in the face of the father's rules, like Toph's mother. I wish that at least one of the White Lotus had been a woman. I wish that at least one of the older mentors we encountered was a woman. I wish there had been a woman to balance out that poor insane water bender who taught Katara to blood bend, just as there were so many young women to balance Azula. I wish it hadn't been Katara who was driven to avenge their mom, but Sokka who was driven to find their dad. We have such a variety of younger women, and a heritage of female avatars. What happened to the older women?
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Date: 2008-07-25 07:10 am (UTC)Did they? Oooh, you wouldn't have a link, would you? I would be REALLY interested to read that. I have to admit to being slightly flummoxed by Ursa as a character, who's the perfect mother to Zuko but also produced a child as damaged as Azula. I wish we had met her and found out.
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Date: 2008-07-25 01:46 pm (UTC)Q: Is Azula really as evil as she seems? Or is there more to her?
M: As with all the Avatar characters, even Azula has a softer side, though it’s buried very deep. As “The Beach” and “Sozin’s Comet” showed, she has a lot of unresolved issues with her mother. She really feels that her mother didn’t love her as much as Zuko, and this drives her crazy, literally.
B: There are obviously some truly evil people in the world, but in the case of Azula, her repressed emotions and jealousies corroded her spirit and made her become that way. It is possible that she could have turned out better in a healthier environment, but growing up in the royal family of a nation seeking world domination proved to exacerbate her problems. But Zuko and Katara spared her life, and who knows, she might have a chance to heal.
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Date: 2008-07-26 07:19 am (UTC)