#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.

[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

[fancylala4]

Oh my god, the defenses that korra stans are using are so stupid.

“Well, it turns out that the next avatar doesn’t need the past lives for advice because they all lived in different time periods! How could the past avatars help when they never had a radio?”

Do they even hear themselves? This makes no sense at all. It doesn’t matter if they all lived different experiences in different time periods, past avatars only exist to give the current avatar advice and how they dealt with troubling experiences. The past avatars could also help the current avatar out. Heck, Aang literally helped korra got her bending back yet these stupid stans are claiming that past lives are useless because the past avatars never had a iPhone or radio.

[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.

[lazyspeedy]

who is the bigger ass kisser?

bryke loyalists? or the new post-rep era swifties on twt?

[myinterestsvary-writes]

“I can’t wait until we have lots and lots of babies which may and may not include airbenders, I’m a little fuzzy on how all that works but I want you to teach me!…”

“I’m breaking up with you.” Over the most understandable but shallow of reasons because it just shows she never even really liked him and truly had the hots for Zuko who she went to immediately after lmaooooo and I understand it even more how Zutaran/AntiKataangers are offended because this is how so many seriously view them still

An oldie, but goodie… We made this silly little video for the Avatar panel at the 2008 San Diego Comic Con. It occurred to me that the only versions out there on YouTube were videotaped from the crowd, so I thought I’d post a clean version here (if one can refer to this as “clean”).

Now, I don’t want to cast aspersions or hurt any feelings, but for some of you I feel the need to explain that this is all a joke.

joke |jōk| noun

a thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter, esp. a story with a funny punchline: she was in a mood to tell jokes. • a trick played on someone for fun.

Who’s going to San Diego Comic Con this year? It is coming up fast. We’re cooking up a really cool panel that, while not a unique format, is different from anything we’ve offered in the past. Looking forward to seeing you there!

[atlafan]

okay but don’t make me mad by basically blaming the downfall of the avatar on Korra because that girl wasn’t given a fighting chance! They kept her secluded for SIXTEEN YEARS, then expected her to just exist in a regular society!! The world became what it wasn’t supposed to be. The four nations DO live in harmony, but when you squish them altogether, you’re going to have problems! You can’t mess with that balance. But that wasn’t Korra’s fault! The adult gaang tried to police every little thing when they should have been paying attention to far more important things. I’ll still never forgive Bryke for what they did to my babies, and thus what they did to my poor grand babies. Korra tried doing what no other avatar even attempted: bridging the spirit world with the physical world

so who fucked up with the spirit world? I bet all those rich idiots tried making it into some vacation destination or something. I think avatar Wan was right for closing the portals. The spirit world and the physical world were never supposed to mix. We better get some fucking backstory. How long did Korra live for? If people hate the avatar and no longer see them as a savior, does that mean they murdered her????

and since this new avatar has a twin, does that mean there’s going to be TWO avatars??? Did Rava get split in two?

And are there seven nations now? Not just four? WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!

I NEED ANSWERS AND I NEED THEM NOW! BUT I SWEAR TO GOD IF THEY PUT MORE BULLSHIT ON KORRA IM GOING TO BURN VIACOM TO THE GROUND

[seasideoranges]

I think the biggest thing regarding the concern of the new avatar show potentially bringing in more Korra hate is that - the people who hate her character already hate her and will continue doing so. This show could paint Korra as one of the best Avatars ever seen who passed without leaving any problems behind and people would *still* hate her.

Another important note is that this is just following the pattern and theme we’ve seen with past Avatars. Every Avatar has to clean up the mess of the previous Avatar, and every Avatar leaves the world with some unresolved conflict. We see this with Yang, Kuruk, Kyoshi - hell, Roku’s inaction led to genocide, colonization, and a 100 year war. The same thing happened with Aang leaving behind unresolved conflicts, and now the same will happen with Korra. Korra isn’t the only Avatar who will leave problems behind, and she won’t be the last. This is a pretty important lesson Korra herself learns during LoK, the Avatar can’t fix everything, and at the end of the day they’re still human.

Again, I do understand the frustrations of Korra facing hatred and misogyny, but I am not a fan of this attitude that any future Avatar projects should only show Korra in a positive light with no flaws, and if she faces any more hate from misogynists, it’s the writers fault, this way of thinking is so restrictive and isn’t fair to both Korra as a character, and the writers who enjoy writing complex female characters. We shouldn’t sanitize Korra just to try and please asshole misogynists, and I think it’s unfair to blame writers for fandom discourse and incels.

Anyways! As always I will reserve judgement until more information comes out and the actual show releases, but Bryke and the writers love Korra, and while I understand the anxiety, I am honestly not too worried. This could easily go in a direction where Korra wasn’t 100% responsible for this cataclysm, but something happened that makes the people blame her (just like how there were characters in The Last Airbender who blamed Aang for being gone and for not stopping the 100 year war). We will see! Happy Friday everybody, and happy birthday ATLA!! ❤️❤️

[poison4rrowfr0g]

We have to talk about how Bryke have been consistently writing shitty continuations for both ATLA and TLOK and how they should probably retire and just let new writers do their job, because what the actual fuck is this new Avatar series they're planning.

In my opinion, other than both original series, the best "extended universe" content for the Avatar Universe has been created by other writers, such as:

- F. C. Yee and Randy Ribay and their works for the Chronicles of the Avatar books

- Faith Erin Hicks and her work with Imbalance and the standalone comics

- Kiku Hughes and the Mako centered comics (not released yet, but looks very promising)

(Just to name a few, there are other works by other artists, that I didn't have time to catch up.)

Now, we've got the works Bryke created or "supervised" the creation, such as the early ATLA comics + TLOK comics, that included problematic points, just to name a few:

- Azula going insane and kidnapping children (?)

- Roku asking Aang to kill Zuko (??)

- poorly written Kuvira redemption arc

And other aspects of ooc behavior.

About this official synopsis of the new franchise, they truly decided to give all the Korra haters (who mostly blame her for shit she didn't do) the best reason to hate her so far.

And honestly, I think part of the Korra hate comes from how Bryke wrote the show, in the first place (but we can't forget to blame Nickelodeon as well)

For me, at this point, anything "bryke included" is doomed to fail. They have been missing the point for a long time now and I don't think they will get any better.

Yes, thanks for creating this amazing franchise, but I think it's time to move on and let competent people take care of it before it's too late.

[sunmoonmonsoon]

Gene Luen Yang, aka, writer of the bad ATLA comids admitted on the podcast that he's a Zutara fan and??? Yeah that makes so much sense as to why the comics struggled so badly with Kataang now??? It's because even the fucking writer wasn't into it but he was basically forced to include them because of Bryke's stupidity!! Oh man legit this makes a lot of stuff make so much more sense about the comics....

[the-badger-mole]

you know bryke wasn't the only person writing atla right? every time on this blog you have something bad about avatar to say you just add in "blame bryke" what has he actually done wrong? where has he been sexist?

HE??? I'm DYING!!!!! 😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣💀💀💀💀

[sokkastyles]

If Bryke were not cowards, and if the ATLA writers had been allowed to do this (and also if they had the inclination to do this, I’m not gonna entirely blame Bryce for this one), I’m pretty sure that we would gotten flashback scenes during all of Zuko’s dates with Mai where he cannot help but remember Jin. We also would have gotten more scenes where Zuko was alone and he found himself thinking of Katara. Unfortunately Bryke are cowards so we don’t get to have nice things.

No one can tell me that Zuko didn't once think about what would have happened if Katara had healed his scar, if she hadn't left that cave, if he hadn't sided with Azula. Even just platonically, the show already creates a context where Zuko has an intimate moment with Katara that makes Azula correctly guess that he's keeping secrets that compromise what side he's on. It wouldn't be that much of a stretch to add romance to the mid.

As for Jin, imagine if she had acted as vindictive as Mai because Zuko ran away from her. She knows he's a firebender, she could put his life in danger if she wants to, decide he deserves it for spurning her. Or she could have decided she didn't want to deal with Zuko's obvious baggage, because, you know, it's just soooo much trouble to bother to pretend to like the person you're dating and only a paid therapist would love Zuko, which is what a lot of maiko/Mai stans seem to think.

Like damn, do you think Zuko ever thought about what would have happened if he had stayed in that tea shop, if he hadn't run away from Jin, if he had let himself be loved simply and honestly? Because I do. I don't think he would have wanted to continue to lie to Jin but to trade that for the lie that he's living in early book three, is that any better?

[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.

[ecoterrorist-katara]

I just saw a very long post talking about your friends to lovers Kat//ang post.

https://www.tumblr.com/mal3vol3nt/754643736340856832/hey-first-of-all-i-love-your-blog-in-a-world

You don’t need to read it all but I didn’t see many instances where they bring up the idea that Aang always viewed Katara as a romantic interest while Katara may have viewed him as just a friend.

They do however, bring up a few points about the EIP that I’d like to hear your opinions on. I don’t think much of it was in a lot of retaliation to your post but I’d like to overall hear your opinion on “Aang was dealing with a bunch of emotions regarding the play and not only how he felt regarding his relationship with Katara but also about his overall portrayal.”

Anyways, I thought you might be interested in seeing this since the overall point about the post was to rebut your argument

hey anon!

So — this user said a lot of things to defend Aang, but my focus was not on blaming Aang the character: I’m accusing Bryan and Mike of executing friends-to-lovers poorly.

So yes, I can understand Aang’s reactions to the EIP play, because obviously that play was racist and misogynistic and jingoistic etc etc. But all Bryke had to do was add a scene after EIP where Aang apologizes. “Hey Katara, I’m really sorry about how I acted at the play. I was mad about xyz but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.” And then Katara can say, I understand, I don’t blame you, that play fucking sucked, let’s talk after the war. Turn that into 12yo-speak and voila, conflict resolved. And while I still wouldn’t love the ship, I wouldn’t be so indignant about it.

re: this user’s take on EIP and how Aang’s portrayal in the play is racist & colonialist propaganda, and therefore justifies his outburst, I’m putting it under a cut because it’s long and it’s a much more specific discussion of colonial dynamics than what most people are here for.

TL;DR: I’m tired of people claiming that colonialism = emasculating its subjects. That’s extremely historically incorrect, and also incorrect in ATLA’s own universe. Stop giving Bryke credit they don’t deserve!

I often see the argument from Aang defenders that he’s so angry about his portrayal by the Ember Island Players because there’s a history of feminizing colonial subjects. The fact that he was played by a woman is meant to be derogatory, and it’s not toxic masculinity for him to feel upset about it, and it’s reasonable for him to feel upset about Katara’s depiction.

First of all, he’s 12 and I don’t care if he shows toxic masculinity either way. Second of all, yes, Katara’s portrayal in the play is absolutely misogynistic and offensive, though it’s important to note that hypersexual Pocahontas is only one of many damaging stereotypes.

More importantly, it is very very wrong to say that colonialism requires the emasculation of its subjects. If you’ve seen colonial propaganda, whether it’s about Palestine or Algeria or Tibet or what is now Canada, you’ll know that colonialism usually does the opposite. Colonialism frequently posits a hyper-masculine, hyper-violent, hyper-savage version of its subjects, specifically men. In our world, colonialism is usually justified through the language of “bringing civilization,” and I’d use the term “white man’s burden” except Japan and China and Morocco can colonize just like the rest of them. Do you think the CCP talks about Tibetan monks as feminine, ditzy flower-crown wearers? No, they absolutely do not. CCP propaganda depicts Tibetan monks as violent sadists, and Tibetan Buddhism as a violent religion, and Tibetan people as needing Han Chinese roads and trains and schools so that they can learn to be civilized. (And incidentally, if you know anything about Southeast Asia you would not say Buddhism is an inherently peaceful religion, but that’s another conversation). Similar POVs can be found littered throughout history, and that’s because colonial propaganda fundamentally must justify violence and control, and it’s much easier to justify violence against people whom you’ve identified as inherently threatening.

More relevant to ATLA, we know that “the Avatar is super violent” is actually the flavour of Fire Nation propaganda, because Aang learns in the show and in the comics (Katara and the Pirate’s Silver) that the average Fire Nation citizen sees him this way! And the discrepancy between sweet, cheerful, vegetarian Aang and this bloodthirsty Avatar figure of FN propaganda is one of the greatest ironies of the show!

In addition, unlike real-life fascist states which are misogynistic by definition, the Fire Nation is not indicated to be misogynistic, canonically speaking. Women can fight, we don’t see them doing housework, Mai is the only one told to be ladylike and meek, etc. There are subtle, likely unintentional signs of power differences (we don’t see women in positions of political power in any nation til Korra), but it’s pretty obvious that the FN is supposed to be the less sexist one (and btw, it was A Choice to make the Inuit-inspired culture the misogynistic one, but that’s out of the scope of this post). EIP’s play actually waxes poetics about how fucking amazing and prodigious and powerful Azula is. So it doesn’t even make sense for EIP to denigrate Aang via his masculinity when they’re trying to prop up Azula in the same breath.

I’m tired of people stuffing surface-level anti-colonialist analyses into ATLA & giving credit to Bryke, of all fucking people, for writing an incisive portrayal of how colonizers & imperialists see their victims. I don’t believe the source text can make any points other than by sheer accident. The politics of ATLAverse are milquetoast at best and reactionary at worst (see: Jet, Hama, comics, LOK). I don’t think Bryke and the creators have read any anti-colonial literature or history, whether it’s about Haiti or the Congo; I don’t believe Bryke sat down and watched The Battle of Algiers and took notes on how to portray colonial resistance; I don’t believe Bryke read Burmese Days or The Colonizer and the Colonized in order to get into the psychology of the Fire Nation; I just don’t believe they or their writing team intended to take on the burdens of real-world tragedies with this show. A while back I think @sokkastyles found a post where someone was wondering if ATLA is a good representation of child soldiers, which is such a baffling failure of media literacy & empathy in general that I’m still disturbed by it. It’s a TV show for kids. It’s a great TV show for all ages, but there are some things that it will never be, one of which is “anything more than a rough parable about imperialism, colonialism, and genocide.”

And you know what? I don’t believe the average ATLA stan leveraging colonialism for a ship war has done a whole lot more thinking than Bryke. I recognize that I was very lucky to have taken multiple courses on anticolonialism and decolonization at institutions that genuinely value faculty who think about these topics, but that’s also the precise reason why I’m so against leveraging colonialism in most ATLA discourse unless I’m trying to set the record straight on something. I’m not an authority on anticolonialism or postcolonialism, but I sure as fuck can recognize when other people aren’t either.