#blame it on bryke

[the-badger-mole]

I get the frustration around shipping within this fandom. No, really I do. It does take up a lot of the bandwidth in the conversations around the show. I don't blame the fans, though. This is really Bryke's fault. They may not have started the ships wars, but they definitely threw napalm on the bonfire. Add that and the fact that when you really look at it, the friendships- the relationships that were supposed to be the backbone of the series- don't really add up to much. The biggest mistake was trying to make Aang the heart of the group and have so much of the "friendships" hinge on him. The kid has zero empathy and nil desire to actually get to know his friends.

His closest bonds are supposedly Katara and Zuko. I've talked at length about how little focus Katara gets in their relationship, platonic or romantic. His interest in her is very shallow, and mostly focused on the fact that she's pretty and sweet. Any moment of real, in depth friendship between them is Katara supporting him and caring for his feelings, but the moment she needed him to give her the same energy, he compared the death of her mother to his losing Appa for a few days, and compared her desire for targeted justice to Jet trying to do a deep cleanse of an entire community which included children (and possibly other EK citizens). Then the episode ended with his continued misunderstanding of Katara with no attempt at getting to know her better.

His other major bond is supposed to be with Zuko, but I have many of the same criticisms (minus his hyper focus on how pretty Zuko is). Honestly, I don't think Zuko and Aang actually had that strong of a friendship. We know they were "best friends" by the end because the narrative says so, but aside from that moment after Pouhai, and their field trip to see Ran and Shaw, they don't have a ton to do with each other. Even their training together is glossed over. Zuko is more narratively tied to Katara, and he has a stronger "bros" vibe with Sokka, and even Jet, for a quick moment.

If I'm keeping it a whole buck, Aang isn't really a great friend to anyone in the Gaang. The strong friendship beats have more to do with how they are friends to him than the other way around. He doesn't offer much by the way of empathy, or even a desire to know the struggles of his friends. I know that's mostly a failing on the part of the writing, but I do like exploring that as a character trait of Aang. His negative traits are a lot more interesting to explore than his positive ones.

I love the stories that explore the friendships within the Gaang. I love writing stories that do those friendships. In particular, I think the potential Katara, Toph and Suki, and Sokka and Zuko friendships had so much potential. And I'm right. They do. But let's be real here. The major points of interest within the show are the ships. And i think it was partially by design. Who else remembers how hard the show's promo material pushed the Zuko/Katara/Aang triangle?

[avatarfandompolice]

Funny how these edgelords will disown and hate on the original ATLA for being made by white guys ,even though said white guys went through the painstaking effort to make everything as respectful and accurate towards the cultures that they were influenced by as possible.

Meanwhile we have people who let NATLA get away with sexism, miscasting races as other races, using Google translate and literal gibberish for writing, and other things purely because non-white people were making it.

Let’s not forget M. Night is very much NOT a white person too. He managed to be extremely inaccurate and white-washy with his entire movie.

Are we really just to the point where we determine the merit of cultural and racial representation based solely on the figureheads of the property? If Bryan and Mike were doing everything in their power to be respectful, why are we beating them down, especially when none of the criticisms against them have anything to do with the representation in the show itself and solely to do with the race they are? Can we stop excusing disrespect and bad representation purely because the face of it isn’t white? I thought we were past this.

[stardust948]

This was too funny I had to share 🤣

[messymosaic]

Hey, interested in your opinion about this.

Do you think Mako kissing Asami back was in character? When Korra came back from a war, this is what she would walk into. Don't you think it was a degrading thing to do Korra?

The fact that he is friends with a person who would act so desperately selfish says a lot about how he doesn't respect Korra.

I'm not sure how Makorra would work as long as he doesn't realize that. No self respecting woman would put up with that.

(I don't buy the "vulnerable Asami" excuse, nor do I think it justifies what happened)

The way this is a reach 🤌 so if I understand correctly, Asami instigated the kiss with Mako and somehow it’s Mako’s fault? It continually amazes me how Mako gets the brunt of the blame for the love triangle when it’s mostly Korra and Asami playing tug of war with him as the rope.

Vulnerable Asami? Try vulnerable Mako. What the fuck. He’s raw from a break up and Asami lunges for the attack??? That situation is at least 70% her fault.

Why is Mako friends with Asami? You mean why is Korra friends with Asami? The two of them giggling like besties in Book 3 like they didn’t thoroughly fuck with Mako’s head and actively disrespect each other’s relationships.

Why does the blame fall squarely on Mako here, when really it’s male writers blatantly not understanding female dynamics. Feminism? Maturity?? If I catch a bitch kissing my boyfriend that bitch better get out of my house. Best believe she will never be trusted again.

The writers wanted a Beautiful Liar moment so bad where two girls bond over being victimized by the same man. EXCEPT in both cases the girls instigated the betrayal (Korra kissed Mako while he’s dating Asami, Asami kissed Mako when the break up is so raw it’s not even pasteurized)

Pictured: NOT Korra and Asami

If there is any justice in the world (and Bryke knew how to write romance) Asami and Korra would’ve fought each other like the catty bitches they truly are.

I don’t even care about defending Mako or Makorra I just want to highlight that the Korra-Asami friendship makes ZERO SENSE. They’re so fucking toxic omg. And now they’re dating??? Based on their track record with respecting boundaries: good fucking luck with that.

Then you get Mako sacrificing himself in book 4 and people going “he should’ve died”, why??? Because two girls tossed him around like a frisbee?? Because you’ve got showrunners who can’t write romance???

Korra would be lucky to deserve Mako after all that. That is my core Makorra belief. It’s a fucked up girlfriend/pathetically in love boyfriend who’s too good for her dynamic!

This reply went off the rails but in my defense, that love triangle is a scourge on humanity. I’m not mad at anon I’m mad at the abysmal romantic development that mks have been trying to rectify with fics for years.

[princessizumi]

god i wish that bryke would just confirm who izumi's mom is so i don't have to keep seeing the same three arguments everytime i search for her name on every single platform

[ecoterrorist-katara]

The West has been notorious in viewing and treating indigenous and Asian cultures as a monolith. Due to that, the idea of handpicking various aspects from those particular cultures seems to come from the result of a Western ethnocentric worldview. And due to how it does not acknowledge the differences in these various Asian and indigenous cultures….it’s hard to argue that it’s not orientalist. Especially since they combine these different aspects of those cultures in a simplistic manner to a western audience.

Whether the work encourages you to identify with the characters or not doesn’t matter in regards to if it is orientalist or not.

And I would suggest you research this show and Tibetan monks. If you don’t agree with their being orientalist aspects of the show, then fine, but that one aspect, in how they handled it, is orientalist.

Why specifically only Asian and indigenous cultures? what could two American Caucasian men find in those cultures that they think they can pick and choose certain things from them, and it end up being cohesive?

Whether a show encourages you to identify with its characters matters a whole lot in whether the show is Orientalist, because the whole point of Orientalism is making the Oriental Other look bad! If a work encourages you to identify with these “Others,” it’s actually breaking down the Orient-Occident binary.

To be clear, ATLA not being Orientalist doesn’t preclude it from being culturally appropriative. The important things to me are whether ATLA is harmful to 1) the cultures that inspired it or 2) the people from those cultures, and the answer to both questions is no. ATLA is not claiming to represent anything, and therefore it’s not spreading misinformation or stereotypes — with the exception of, again, Guru Pathik which I think was in poor taste.

I do take issue with how easy it is for fans to take the Air Nomads as representation of Tibetan Buddhist monks. I think Bryke should have gone further to incorporate more influences to get away from the impression that Air Nomads are Tibetan Buddhist monks (or Buddhists in general), because people now moralize about the Air Nomads using the plight of Tibetans, and the oppression of Tibetans — like the oppression of all real-life people — should not be shoehorned into a cartoon. Still, a child fan of ATLA wouldn’t think the Air Nomads are Tibetan Buddhist monks unless someone in their life tells them so, because the inspiration is not explicit in the text. It’s fans who draw asinine conclusions like Fire Nation = Japan / Air Nomads = Tibetans or Buddhist monks / Earth Kingdom = China / SWT = Inuit, and then interpret ATLA according to corresponding real-life dynamics, who inadvertently spread misinformation. I have never seen such ridiculous takes on Buddhism as I have in the ATLA fandom. Nobody with an iota of knowledge of South Asian or Southeast Asian politics would claim that Buddhists are always non-violent. Nobody who knows about monks would think monks can get married. But I can’t even fault the text; I fault people who take their information about Buddhism from a cartoon that never even mentioned the word Buddhism.

Fundamentally I think this conversation is about whether it’s okay for white Americans to take aesthetic inspiration from non-white cultures to create their fantasy worlds, and to what extent they’re responsible for the ways in which their fans interpret the sources of their inspiration. I’m fine with people taking aesthetic inspiration from my culture (beyond sacred and religious cultural practices, which I generally don’t think should be aestheticized by people who don’t understand them). I don’t know why Bryke chose to take inspo from Asian and northern Indigenous cultures; people can certainly say it’s culturally appropriative and decide not to watch it.

[thatoneguy56fanfic]

Since I’m rewatching B3, I thought I’d share some of my thoughts about it.

I both love and hate how Bryke treated Queen Hou-Ting. I love it, because as a huge animal lover her whole “I hate animals” thing was just annoying. But also because she was absolutely terrible to her servants. Yet I also hate it, too. Mainly because Bryke has no subtly whatsoever. In fact I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t know what subtly was if it smacked them in the face. They went completely out of their way to make Queen Hou-Ting to be a completely unremarkable and downright unlikable character. All so they could conveniently kill her off a few episodes later.

Personally, I hated that scene. Because it simply didn’t feel as impactful as it could have. Let’s go on a little thought experiment for a moment: Imagine for a moment that Queen Hou-Ting wasn’t the horrible person that they made her in the show. Imagine that instead of taxing her people into extreme poverty, she instead was trying to help modernize her nation. Instead of screaming at her servants and making them live in fear, she instead was kind to them. Imagine that she was truly loved by her whole nation. Imagine instead that she helped Team Avatar convince the new airbenders to the fledgling Air Nation.

Now imagine that Zaheer and friends come in. They order Queen Hou-Ting to help them capture the Avatar, but she refuses. So Zaheer kills her. Watching a ruler who was actually loved instead of hated be killed off would’ve felt far more impactful than what we were given. But Bryke chose the lazy way and just made her into another completely forgettable character.

Not to mention that the whole idea of an evil ruler isn’t even an original idea for Bryke either. Did they suddenly forget about Ozai and Azula? Who were villains, but still managed to be actually interesting characters. Hell even Unalaq got better treatment than Queen Hou-Ting did. And I get it, she was never meant to be the “big bad” of the season. But it just irritates me to see so much potential wasted like this.

And don’t even get me started on the Beifongs. They deserve a separate post of their own.

[kataraslove]

as someone who has recently read the reckoning of roku, it’s really not the anti fire nation propaganda that a certain subsection of fandom is making it out to be. yes, gyatso says those words to roku, but he’s angry - at both the world and at himself for the death of his sister. he later apologizes to roku. the book does not paint gyatso out to be in the right, and neither does it paint all fire nation citizens to be in the wrong. the narrative even makes a distinction between the good fire nation citizens (ta min and roku) and prejudicial fire nation citizens (sozin, primarily), and some morally ambiguous ones like dalisay, but they’re more or less abolished from any accountability for partnering with sozin.

avatar the last airbender does not do a good job at displaying much of the context associated with the crimes of the fire nation, aka the climate and perspectives that justified sozin eradicating the air nomads and many of the benders in the southern water tribe. we know from avatar that sozin wanted to conquer the rest of the world for fire nation domination and expansion, but we’re not given much insight into the causal factors that allowed him to conduct genocide and colonialism, beyond “he was able to do it all in one day with the power of the comet,” and “he was a very bad man.”

the reckoning of roku provides the context for all of that, the factors that contributed to sozin’s blood-thirst. which means seeing sentiment from sozin that view the air nomads - and their pacifist ways of life - as inferior and below human. the novel doesn’t particularly attempt to humanize sozin, not in the way that other medias do when exploring the backstory of their villain. at the end, the takeaway from the novel is that sozin is on the road to becoming the ultimate fascist we all know him for, but this time we’re provided more context into how he became that fascist, and why roku hesitated to kill him.

is it more critical of the fire nation than most of the franchise? yes, i would say so, and having a filipino author be the one to offer that commentary is an excellent decision by avatar studios. but the extent of the critique is still more or less along the lines of “this one guy was truly the operations behind it,” which is still consistent with what we’ve seen in atla. there’s nothing too radical introduced in terms of colonial theory, unlike what parts of the fandom are saying.

which leads me to my final point: if this is how badly a subsection of fandom (aka fire nation worshippers and zutara shippers [not mutually exclusive]) are reacting to the simple notion exploring how sozin committed genocide, then they’ve hit further rock bottom than i can imagine. not only that, but this type of reactionary behaviour risks alienating other parts of the fandom; for instance, fans of the avatar novels who otherwise would have given the ship and the shippers grace.

in other words, many of these hardcore shippers “criticizing” the roku novel have no one to blame but themselves if their behaviour leads to the alienation of regular fans. this loud subsection of fandom is so caught up in their one-sided, imaginary fantasy where everything in the franchise somehow revolves around aang/kataang vs zuko/zutara, that the Evil Bryke are always targeting them, to the point that they’ll fail to realize that the fire nation and fire nation characters are often absolved from accountability across the IP, and the fire nation is explored much more than the other nations are.

[longing-for-rain]

so I dunno if you've seen my "I just watched ATLA again" post (probably not) but something happened with it that is kind of bothering me and I was wondering if you'd be willing to take a look and tell me what you think of this.

my post was basically about how Katara was treated in LOK and how it's disturbing to me that she is completely absent from the narrative after ATLA in a way that she would literally never be if Bryke hadn't decided to assassinate her as a character. and someone responded to that with this:

is this even accurate? am I deluding myself or is this person just being a hater?? like it genuinely feels insane and scary to me that Katara was so easily sidelined now that she's married with kids, and this person says she actually wasn't that absent and that none of my concerns matter. and even though I never brought up Zutara in my post they decided the post was entirely about that and not my genuine horror at how Katara was treated after ATLA.

sorry if this isn't something you usually do. you were just the blog I thought of when this reply came because I know you're out here fighting these kinds of people and I needed another fan's advice.

No I think you’re 100% right. In fact, I think whoever wrote that post basically admitted as much without realizing it.

What these people fail to realize is, fictional characters aren’t real people. They don’t exist as autonomous beings. Everything they are is what is shown on screen. So if little to nothing of significance is shown about a character? That indicates the writers didn’t value that character and their story as much as the others. They didn’t consider it worth giving the same attention.

Admittedly she was unfortunately sidelined in the comics in LOK and didn’t have much involvement with the story or other characters…

Yes, exactly. Even the people who try and defend Katara’s treatment post-canon can’t avoid this fact. Her story was not valued by the writers. It was not included to the same extent. After becoming “the Avatar’s girl,” Katara’s role in the story was diminished. She ceased to be her own character with her own personality and arc.

…but she still accomplished a lot.

Ok, where? Did you forget that “show, don’t tell” is part of creative writing 101? I don’t care what they said Katara did or was in some supplementary material that came out over a decade later. They failed to show it in the actual story, which tells us everything we need to know about how Katara’s character was viewed.

You aren’t overreacting; you’re dead right. Sounds like this person ragging on you is having trouble separating fiction from reality and has a tendency to blame all media criticism on ship wars instead of actually thinking about it. Because I don’t know about you, but a large part of the appeal of Zutara to me is the fact that many fan-made narratives associated with it were created by women in direct response to the sidelining of Katara’s character. The continuing popularity of Zutara is in large part due to the fact it addresses many misogynistic and upsetting aspects of Katara’s fate, not the other way around.

[burst-of-iridescent]

I’ve been reading a series where a guy is in a near identical situation to Katara was in The Southern Raiders. But what I find interesting is that no one really tries to stop him and the fandom considers it completely justified. I can’t help but think despite it being two different series and fandoms that Katara’s gender has at least something to do with this. When a male character wants to seek revenge and kill the murderer to do it, the narrative and fans justify it but when it’s a female character she’s vilified, seen as out of control and letting her emotions get the better of her. I hate when people say Aang was right to say what he did and try to stop Katara from making her own choice. It doesn’t help that we know Bryke is misogynistic based on well everything to do with their female characters post series after they didn’t have the talented writers who actually understood the characters helping them. And sure I know Bryke themselves didn’t write The Southern Raiders but we know from script leaks that there were more shippy Zutara moments that were cut and I think we know who’s to blame for that. So I wouldn’t be surprised if they still influenced the more problematic parts of that episode. Such as Aang and Katara never talking about or resolving their conflict, Sokka calling Aang wise beyond his years and never talking about or resolving his side if things with Katara, and even Zuko weirdly agreeing with Aang at the end that “you were right about what Katara needed.” Even though she literally just told Aang a second ago that he was wrong and she would never forgive him and doesn’t know why she couldn’t kill him. If you couldn’t tell I have rather mixed feelings about TSR episode.

Sorry for the ramble. How do you think their conversations (Katara, Aang, and Sokka) would go if they were to talk about it all after the episode?

oh misogyny definitely plays a part - just compare the way people react to inigo montoya from the princess bride vs katara in tsr - but i think the bigger issue is the overt narrative framing of the episode.

on a first watch, tsr appears to push a very simplistic idea of "violence = bad" and strongly favours aang's perspective, which encourages the viewer to see him as being in the right while katara and zuko appear to be in the wrong. the fact that aang never changes his perspective and both zuko and sokka are (forcibly and very uncharacteristically) made to take his side by the end naturally inclines the audience to do so as well.

it's only with a closer reading that you see a more nuanced take which highlights the flaws in aang's thinking and treatment of katara. katara herself makes it clear that what aang wanted her to do would not have helped her find closure, and she began her healing process without ever forgiving yon rha - which is exactly why i hate people attributing her decision not to kill yon rha to aang when she explicitly stated she did not and would not ever do what he wanted her to!

these are the same people who will also blame zuko for being a "bad influence" on katara, as if the only reason she hunted down her own mother's killer is because zuko convinced her to do it. katara isn't some weeping willow to be bent to the will of zuko and aang; her decisions are her own, not based on the whims of the boys in her life. can we please stop stripping katara of all her agency in the one episode that actually focuses on her trauma and healing?

rant aside, i do wish that katara had talked to sokka after this episode and i imagine there would be some apologising on both sides. sokka - a realistic sokka, because my god was he wildly out of character - would probably check in on her and admit that he was afraid for her safety and well-being. katara would likely apologise for the "you didn't love her the way i did!" remark and i think it would've been nice for them to finally talk about kya and for katara to bring up the conversation she overheard from the runaway about how sokka confessed to seeing her as a surrogate mother.

(imo the impact hearing that would've had on katara was largely downplayed in the show, and is likely part of the reason she reacted to sokka the way she did in the southern raiders, but that's a post for another time.)

the katara-aang conversation would probably have gone the same way that it did in canon, because the issues with their dynamic in tsr are part of the underlying problems with the kat.aang relationship in general. i would've liked to see aang have a little more of a reaction to katara saying she never forgave yon rha (he doesn't seem affected at all in the show), and for that to maybe prompt him to really reflect on what he said.

but ultimately what really has to be tackled here is aang's idealization of katara and his focus on clinging to air nomad values at the expense of those from the other nations - and those problems run too deep to be fixed in a single episode or conversation. the southern raiders would have been a good starting point, but unfortunately the finale never engages with these issues, and so what could've been a great arc ends up going nowhere at all.

[rifari2037]

Do , you , Have any Avatar the last Airbender ships that , you like or Dislike.,

Yes, of course I have any ATLA ships that I like and dislike. I've actually written my thoughts about the ships in ATLA that I like and why. Here's the link!

Meanwhile, these are my least favourite ships in ATLA and the reasons why.

Maiko

In general, I dislike Maiko because Zuko is complex character, meanwhile Mai is so flat. We don't know conflicts inside her beside she's bored of being a royal family. And then, we have to believe that she would be happy to be a Fire Lord's wife?

Yes, I believe that Mai loves Zuko, since she was a child she had crush on him, but I doubt Zuko loves Mai that deep. I have reason to say that, actually this thing has been in my head for long time. Maybe later I will write about it.

I don't hate Maiko that much, but I blame the writers for writing this couple poorly and forcefully.

Kataang

I have a lot of reason to dislike Kataang, but the main reason is they have no any chemistry. Aang has crush on Katara since season 1, but looks like puppy love and not that deep. Meanwhile Katara always act motherly toward him, that's makes this couple looks weird.

Even Bryke (the writers who Pro-Kataang number 1) confirming that Katara loves Aang like a "babysitter" or a "younger brother". That's prove any Zutarans points.

Again, this couple written very poorly and forcefully. I never see any chemistry between Aang and Katara, but at least they are written well in season 1. They have conflict and resolved it. But in season 3, their conflict has no solution, and then I forced to see them kiss.

Zukka

I don't mind people ship Zukka just for fun, I have no right to forbid anyone to ship any characters. I just hard disagree when the shipper say that Zukka is solution of Kataang and Zutara ship war. Because no, it's not!

I against Kataang and prefer Zutara because of the storyline and relationship development, so brought me Zukka doesn't mean anything to me. Zukka is just crack-ship, they don't have any chance to be canon.

Some shippers realised that Zukka will never be canon, they ship it for fun without make any meta or analysis Zukka would be canon. Then, they're compare themself with Zutaran.

But, c'mon! Even some ATLA writers fought for Zutara end-game and they expect us to not make any meta and analysis? We have materials from the show, meanwhile they don't. What do they expect?

I dislike Zukka not only because they don't have any chance to be canon in the show, but also some of the shippers behaviour.

[the-badger-mole]

Aang really was the worst...

I think it's worth pointing out that according to TPTB canonically, this moment...

Came before this one....

And it's very reasonable- even likely- that Katara was thinking about that first moment when she was telling Aang she was confused.

Look, even if you like Aang...even if you ship him with Katara, you have to admit that the way the canon did things is insanely messed up. Maybe Aang wasn't the biggest monster in the show, but he certainly was the biggest one in the Gaang.

[eponastory]

I wonder how Byke are gonna present Aang and Katara's family life in this adult gaang animation I keep hearing about. Since Bryke insist that Aang and Katara were not at all imperfect parents and were happy all around, I wouldn't be surprised that they would try to put the blame for any family squabbles all on Bumi and Kya and they were written to look like a couple of whiny brats. Or, they try to make it seem like Zuko was somehow responsible and that he was just a bad influence on Aang or the kids.

I don't know, to be honest. I find myself thinking that Bryke is just going to retcon everything to make themselves look better, and at this point, I can't even bring myself to care.

I'm actually hoping this movie fails.

Like bombs.

And then they just give it a rest.

[sokkastyles]

Hi,

Hope you are doing well. Thank you for the response on TSR.

I was reading some of your older metas on "The Ember Island Players" episodes, and a few things got me thinking.

I know out of universe, the writers were parodying Zutara, but the way the play wrote Zuko and Katara, it makes me wonder, were there people shipping the two in-universe? There has to be some reason, other than just inaccurate storytelling of the Gaang's adventures.

Second, when Aang and Katara talk, this one is also partly influenced by @araeph's metas, the fact that Katara has probable romantic thoughts on her relationship with Aang was introduced way too late, I feel. This should have been discussed way earlier, I think.

I would like your thoughts on this.

What I think is funny about the way zutara is portrayed in "Ember Island Players" is that by parodying fan interpretations of zutara in-universe, they end up having the characters acknowledge that there's some truth to it. The plot of that episode centering around Aang's insecurity that Katara may not like him back, which is very much being fueled by zutara, makes this even funnier. If Bryke wanted to convince us there was nothing to zutara, this is like, the opposite of how to do that.

And yeah, many people have spoken about how the show should have told us more about how Katara feels about Aang, and the reason they don't is because the romance is written to keep up the suspense, so that the audience identifies with Aang and worries whether Katara will reciprocate his feelings. The zutara moments in EIP are also used in service of this conflict. Can anyone really blame the audience for thinking that Katara might actually prefer Zuko instead?

[redwiccanrobin]

I keep seeing people say the live action show is going to be bad only because Bryke is no longer involved. Now, I’m not particularly interested in the show because live action remakes just don’t do anything for me, personally. But I think y’all are giving Bryke way more credit than they deserve. Let’s discuss.

First, I think we should acknowledge the more problematic aspect of them creating the show in the first place. While I love Avatar, Bryke are two white men who took the aesthetics of many different Asian cultures to create their world. And most of the voice cast were also white. If there were Asian voice actors, they were either a background character or a villain (besides Iroh and Zuko, of course). Now, I know that some of you may have read that and thought about how the actor playing Sokka is not only white but lied about his ethnicity. Don’t worry, I’m mad at that as well and I’m beyond frustrated that Sokka has been whitewashed not once, but twice in the name of a live action interpretation.

And speaking of live action interpretations, let us not forget Bryke’s role in the 2010 movie. They announced their decision to leave this new show due to it not matching their vision. But they had no problem with the film that casted almost exclusively white actors to play characters of color. Again, if there were POC in the movie they were either background actors or villains (again, besides Iroh and Zuko). When people bring up the movie, they blame Shamalan for every aspect of it. Yes, he did not direct a good movie. But, at the end of the day, Bryke wanted this movie to happen. Everyone else, including Shamalan, wanted a season four but they were dead set on the live action movie that whitewashed most of the characters. And they were fine with that. That didn’t clash with their vision despite relying very heavily on non-white cultures to make their show.

Outside of the whitewashed movie, their creative choices are… interesting, to say the least. And we didn’t get to see those because the writers pulled their weight and tweaked the original concepts. Toph? Bryke wanted her to be a boy and be in a love triangle with Aang and Katara. It was the writers who made her a girl. Azula? Again, Bryke wanted her to be a boy and, again, the writers made her a girl. Katara fighting sexism in the Northern Water Tribe? They wanted her to be fighting for Aang, not herself. It was the writers decision to add in Katara fighting against a patriarchal system. Many of the episodes that people point to as their favorites (Zuko Alone, The Puppetmaster, The Southern Raiders) were not written by them. Yet, they get the pats on the backs from casual viewers and even some dedicated fans.

Do you know what happens when they do have creative control? At best, it’s mediocre, at worst, it’s bad. Let’s first take a look at their continuation of this universe by looking at Legend of Korra. The writers that made those iconic and beautiful episodes in ATLA? For the most part, they’re no where to be found. And it shows. LoK was a mess from the very beginning and never quite got its footing. Yes, I will acknowledge that Nickelodeon fucked them over. Yes, I do have respect for them for sticking to their guns and making Korrasami an item and giving us not one but two bisexual women of color. But besides that? It’s just a very mediocre show with mediocre writing.

But we see how truly bad things can get with the ATLA comics. Now, I do need to acknowledge that they didn’t work on that comic alone. So, like the movie, there are others to blame for the mess. But Bryke signed off on everything and wrote some of it themselves. And, boy, are they bad. A large number of the ATLA fandom do not like these comics and there’s definitely a reason why. Including out of character moments, prominent sexism with how the women are written, and just downright bizarre discussions, it’s not that much of a surprise that we don’t like to acknowledge it. In my opinion, no one got screwed over more in those comics than Katara. They make her a trophy girlfriend. A shadow to Aang rather than being her own character. That girl we watched in the show, the one who was vibrant, layered, complex, was gone. In her place, a hollow shell. And they would continue to show disrespect for their own character in LoK where she has been upgraded from trophy girlfriend to trophy wife. They didn’t even care enough about her, besides her being the wife of Aang and the mother of his children, to give her a statue! All the feminism we see in the original show? It definitely wasn’t Bryke.

I don’t know how this new live action show is going to pan out. It could be great, it could be bad. It could just be meh. But none of those outcomes have anything to do with whether or not Bryke was involved. Because they may have created ATLA, but they weren’t the ones who truly breathed life into it.

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

do you agree Bryke had way too much fun overexaggerating Azula's mad state in the finale?

Okay, let's make three distinct things clear:

1 - Azula's madness in the finale was not exaggerated, it was the brutal, tragic pay off to many things that had been set up about her character very early on.

2 - Azula's "madness" in the comics, written by Yang and approved by Bryke, was some of the most offensive, ableist, lazy bullshit I have ever seen, and all three of them are to blame for how that entire narrative quickly turned into "abuse is fine if the victim is mentally ill" - because don't forget, Yang himself said the asylum would do nothing but worsen Azula's mental condition because it is right out of literally any horrible "madhouse" story ever, only we're supposed to forget the heroes are the ones keeping her there and sometimes helping the staff abuse her. Not really the kind of message that is pleasant to find in kids' media, especially when the original show had Zuko, an abuse survivor, and Toph, a disabled person who was literally hidden away from the rest of the world like a shameful secret, call out their parents false narrative of "This is for your own good."

3 - While there's nothing wrong with enjoying writting something as dark as a very young character going through a mental breakdwon (after all, it's a character, not a person) the way Bryke (and Yang) talk about Azula, her fans is often filled with ableist language and stereotypes that were used, both historically and currently, to justify all kinds of violence towards the mentally ill - and, more importantly, they are yet to acknowledge that they fucked up. Not thinking about the implications of what you're writting/approving of is one thing. Covering your ears when people point it out is another.