#i like atla but it is largely fantasy that with a dodgy ending

[gch1995]

If you know about ATLA the airbending monks were everything people pretend the Jedi were and when the masters heard about the impending war, which would turn out to be the genocide of the airbenders, some of them wanted to send 12 year old Aang the chosen one away to another temple train for the war, going against their air-bending principles, but the point was that it was framed as completely wrong AND Aang's teacher, the monk who raised him, protected him from that fate. I'd love to tell more.

I’ve seen ATLA. I loved watching that show! My favorites were Katara, Sokka, and Zuko! The writers treatment of Azula could have been better. Yes, she was a bitch, and when I was a kid, I hated her, too. However, much like Zuko, she was a victim of her father, and a broken and dictatorial Fire nation’s brainwashing. Unlike Zuko, she never had her mother’s love, or if she did, she was clearly the “unfavorite” of Ursa. In spite of his father’s abuse and brainwashing, Zuko had Iroh and Ursa who were both decent influences on him, which was why he was able to redeem himself in the end. Azula only had her father, who was a downright awful person with no redeeming qualities.

Nonetheless, now that I look back on ATLA, it also very much was an idyllic westernized East Asian fantasy. None of the young characters really behaved much like believable children, except for Aang, Toph, and Sokka. It was easy to forget that these kids were 12-16 and being allowed into war zones. Yes, Katara and Sokka weren’t exactly groomed for warfare, and, thankfully, Giazo stopped Aang’s grooming for warfare. However, they’re still allowed to go off into warzones alone, and even the characters who are supposed to be good parents, such as Iroh and Hakoda, are actually okay with it. Aang’s a different story because he literally has no parents left. No adult is putting a stop to this, even at the end.

In my opinion, a realistic narrative would consistently point out that it is wrong to conscript anyone for warfare under the age of 18. As much as I love ATLA, it doesn’t consistently do that, except for with the kids in the Fire Nation, and even with them, it’s dodgy, because Zuko becomes the Fire Lord at 16, and he is completely okay with that responsibility. For someone who was shown to be an arrogant and emotionally unstable teenager less than a year ago, in spite of having a good, kind, and well-meaning heart underneath it all all along, I don’t totally buy that he suddenly would be able to handle all that responsibility and be okay. Why were Katara and Aang ever a couple? Why were the issues with Toph’s parents never addressed?

For all of Star Wars flaws since Filoni, Hidalgo, and Disney took over and ruined everything, though, I do actually think the OT and PT movies and novelizations do a good job of writing believable and relatable character reacting realistically in traumatic war zones, relationships with abusive, manipulative, and oppressive authority figures, and situations that they weren’t ready for from childhood having lifelong negative emotional/psychological effects on Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader because there were very limited to nonexistent options for healthy support, therapy, and escape from such toxic environments his whole life. While Anakin/Vader does hold a level of responsibility for his crimes as an adult that is on him, and no one deserved to be murdered, I think the writers did make it consistently clear that, while well-meaning, the Jedi Council and Republic were also very broken and dysfunctional. They never should have been taking in children to train for warfare.

Then, in the OT, we have Luke breaking the cycle of abuse, crime, and oppression that his predecessors contributed to, perpetuated, and suffered under as an outsider from that systematic corruption with enough clarity of mind, realism, stability, normalcy, and compassion to do so. While there’s no excuse for perpetuating abuse, child conscription, murder, oppression, and war crimes, it’s a very hard cycle to break and see through as wrong when it’s almost all you’ve known your whole life, there’s limited to nonexistent options for viable safe escape from it, and/or healthy and non-biased support within it.

The problem is that the majority of the OG Star Wars fandom kept bitching about how they didn’t like the dystopian tragedy take that George Lucas went with in the PT, even though it showed signs of having been a problem in the OT too since Obi Wan and Yoda knew Darth Vader before when he was Anakin, claimed to have failed him as his teachers, and did nothing to stop him themselves within those 19 years before Luke came of age. Sure, it is completely reasonable to believe that Vader would be better off dead in self-defense and/or for execution of his crimes, but the fact that Obi Wan and Yoda are both Jedi who knew about him for all this time before Luke showed up, and did nothing about it in those 19 years he was terrorizing the galaxy as Sidious’s attack dog, only so they could attempt to recruit his son to finish off the monster of a man they both contributed to luring his father to become as his guardians who failed him? Fucked up and cowardly as hell.

But again, the majority of the SW fandom didn’t like George Lucas’s take that the Jedi weren’t “completely blameless” and Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader wasn’t “pure evil.” It was a systematic issue of abuse, crime, and corruption that they all contributed too and were too afraid to stick up against.

Thus, we got Dave Filoni, Pablo Hidalgo, and Disney canon Star Wars who keep muddling, retconning, and undermining George Lucas’s original story about good and evil not being this black-and-white issue to cater to the, surprisingly many fans who never liked the fact that Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader wasn’t the badass and cold-blooded cartoon villain murder machine man they thought they were going to get in “New Hope.”