#like how aang and katara are represented by tui and la from atla

[braincellwhatsthat]

ok. instead of the setting sun and moon, what if kyokao was like the sea and the moon. yknow how the tides are affected by the moon and all that

[aangarchy]

Netflix atla live action review ep 4-6

So, they completely ruined Bumi. Spoiler warning.

The more episodes pass by the more confused i get with the choices that were made. I wrote down commentary for the episodes and the thing that i wrote down the most was "why does this happen?". The writing is incredibly confusing and messy, feels too rushed in some spaces and too slow in others. There's just... so much going on and so little at the same time. They brought in elements that in the OG don't get introduced until later in s1, s2, the comics, or even the legend of Korra. The reason these things get introduced so early here is not clear at all, because they don't serve any purpose other than to be an obstacle to Aang, Sokka and Katara on their way to the North.

Mai and Ty Lee are.. there. They get introduced earlier but they don't serve any purpose at the moment other than stand around, watch Azula train, ask questions so that Azula can give us the answers the viewer needs. My guess is they only got introduced for the audience who watched the OG to go "oh we know them!". We get the secret tunnel story earlier too, but it has absolutely nothing to do with love. Somehow "love is brightest in the dark" now correlates to the badgermoles being able to sense a human's emotion. It's a waste of a storyline, doesn't teach us anything about love, gives us Omashu lore which is useless bc neither Sokka nor Katara actually use love to escape the tunnels. Also Oma and Shu are lesbians now, but you only know that bc they changed Shu's pronouns. Wow, so progressive! We have lesbians in the story now! Boy do i feel represented as a sapphic!

We get Koh early on as well, but his entire gig got changed. Now suddenly he doesn't steal faces but he "feeds", and hunts using the fog of lost souls (which is tlok lore mind you) as a tool to trap humans. We introduce the mother of faces (comic book lore!), or rather pendant of her that Koh owns. There's no reason for her to exist in this story though other than to be an easter egg to everyone who read the search (Not even the majority of the fandom!) and to offer a solution to this problem we've created, which is Koh capturing our friends in order to eat them and us not being able to convince him into letting them go. There's no feeling of dread in the Koh scenes at all because the whole problem of not showing emotion is just not a thing now. No suspense, no fear, just a weird cgi clown face worm. The worm doesn't even menacingly circle around Aang to invoke a feeling of being surrounded, it just sits there. I also just don't understand why Koh is here already bc now who is going to give us information about Tui and La?

This decision also creates a problem that Hei Bai's story just isn't about Hei Bai anymore. We get fed a few lines from a talking fox about how the forest spirit got hurt, but there's really no solution? Aang buries a pinecone in front of the statue and tells him not to give up hope but he didn't even really need to do that, because Hei Bai wasn't the one kidnapping villagers! It was Koh. Why did we appease Hei Bai if Koh was the real villain? Hei Bai/Koh's story leads us to Roku, but Roku is completely useless. All he does is undermine Kyoshi's advice to Aang, tell Aang about the mother of faces pendant so he can appease Koh, and then we leave. I knew in advance Roku wasn't going to warn Aang about the comet here bc Albert Kim already told us working with a deadline like that with child actors is just impossible. But with Roku suddenly not being Aang's main Avatar guide he just gets nothing to do. There's no suspense in this part of the story either, bc the time limit of the winter solstice isn't a thing here at all. Aang also ends up flying over Fire Nation borders without issue, and gets led right into the sanctuary without the puzzle of figuring out how to open the door, and without the problem of Zhao's soldiers waiting for him when he comes out. It creates this issue of there not being any excitement, at least for me. I genuinely am getting a bit bored with the show, which was never an issue with the OG for me. There's a reason all of this extra material didn't get introduced until later on. There's too many characters and they all get too little time to really do anything useful, they're not fleshed out, the stories aren't thought through and it ends up getting very confusing and boring. I'm genuinely curious for the perspective of people who have never watched the OG cartoon, bc i wonder if they're even able to follow along without prior knowledge of this universe.

Bumi is just... not Bumi. They completely changed his character to be this bitter old senile man that resents Aang for abandoning the world. This doesn't make any sense because in this version of the story Bumi shouldn't know that Aang is the Avatar at all, because Aang was told right before he disappeared! So why does Bumi immediately know that Aang is the Avatar, and why does Aang immediately recognize him? Also the original point of Bumi's tests is to get Aang to approach fights and puzzles from a different angle, so he can learn versatility as the Avatar. But here the tests are just happening because Bumi is mad at Aang for leaving and wants to get back at him for being gone so long. He says some lines about Aang having to learn to make hard choices and you can't rely on your friends, but Aang ends up proving him wrong in the end! What is even the point of Bumi's part in the story now, except for him just being another obstacle on the way to the North Pole?

There's a lot of instances where I feel like the bond between characters gets completely lost. We barely spend any time with the side characters like the mechanist, Teo, Jet and the freedom fighters, and the people in the spirit village. It makes some scenes feel very out of place. These storylines all happen at once, and they don't get their individual moments to shine. We have no room to feel betrayed by Jet or Sai, because we barely got to know them to begin with. Jet and Sai only spend time with One member of the gaang each, but when their betrayals come to light the rest of the group acts devastated, as if it was their dear friend. Sokka also gets really mad about the Jet thing, but he only met Jet once when he smuggled them into Omashu, and Jet didn't even tell Sokka his name. He said it afterwards when Katara met him again. It makes absolutely no sense why Sokka is yelling at Katara for trusting Jet only bc she finds him attractive, when Sokka wasn't even there during all of that!

The sense of family between the gaang that we get from the original also just doesn't happen here. Especially because these characters so far have spent more time apart than together. Aang constantly gets separated from Sokka and Katara, leaving no room for them to bond. We get Katara and Sokka bonding, but they shouldn't need those types of scenes because they're already siblings (which isn't very clear in the show either btw!). I ended up forgetting that Sokka and Katara were trapped by Koh, bc we spend so much time away from them (a whole episode, which is now an hour!).

I have little to no criticism for the Blue Spirit story. Want to guess why that is? Bc they left it pretty much untouched. We even get a little bit of an extra scene, with Zuko and Aang talking while Zuko recovers after getting hurt during the escape. I liked this choice, especially bc it highlights how conflicted Zuko is.

This is where we get Zuko's backstory. I have one question here: why did they make Ozai more sensible and less ruthless? Was that a Daniel Dae Kim decision? Bc it feels like a Daniel Dae Kim thing to do. They're very on the nose with the way Ozai is abusing Zuko and Azula, but then they turn around and make this man visit Zuko after he burned him and praise Zuko about finding the Avatar. I understand that they did this to show how Ozai uses Zuko's accomplishments in order to push Azula, but even if it were to do that: the original Ozai would NEVER. The problem here as well is that they don't let the viewers draw any conclusions themselves anymore. They're holding the viewer's hand through the whole thing, leaving no room for nuance or doubt.

I just finished episode 7 and 8 and I have Things To Say. None of which are good. Writing it down is challenging so it might take a day or two.

[burst-of-iridescent]

on Tui and La and Zutara

so I was scrolling through the Zutara tag today (as one does) when I came across a Kat/aanger talking about how they don’t like Zutara - which, sure, your prerogative - and I was casually skimming through and laughing when I had to read, with my own eyes, the words “Tui and La are better representations of Kat/aang than Zutara because it is talking about the moon (thus the sky), and ocean spirits and so it’s talking about airbending and waterbending”. 

What. 

“And push/pull is talking about Kat/aang because *insert scene where Katara and Aang are waterbending to and from each other*”

I- WHAT. 

First of all, Tui and La - the spirits themselves - are both about WATERBENDING. Yue literally says that they were the first WATERBENDERS and watching them push and pull the tides is how the waterbenders learned to control the water. The spirits have nothing to do with airbending or firebending or literally any-fucking-thing else because they are both symbols of WATERBENDING. And if your link to airbending with Tui is that “the moon is in the sky” well I got news for you buddy! Guess what else is in the sky? Gee...not a symbol prominently linked to firebending? 

And if we’re going to do literal spirit symbolism, you know who should really be linked together? Yue and Katara. Like, the actual representations of the moon and the ocean? (Honestly I’m down for some Yuetara). 

But the symbolism of Tui and La has never been about the spirits themselves, but rather the form in which the show represents them. Tui and La are clearly based on the imagery of Yin and Yang, white and black, dark and light. Now in Taoism, where the idea of Yin and Yang is drawn from, Yin (the black side) is associated with water, the moon, femininity, and night time while Yang (the white side) represents fire, the sun, masculinity and daytime. 

Wow, I wonder if we could possibly think of two opposing forces, one male and one female, one linked to the sun and one linked to the moon, one who wields water and one who wields fire? 

Now the same person went on to say that the sun and the moon don’t inherently lend itself to partnership - in Greek mythology, after all, Artemis and Apollo are gods of the sun and the moon, and they’re twins. Sure. That’s all fine - except that ATLA is not a show based on Greek mythology. ATLA is entirely based on Asian ideas and philosophies and symbolism, and in Taoist beliefs Yin and Yang is inherently linked to the idea of seemingly complementary forces finding unity with each other. This idea is never associated with Artemis and Apollo, and in fact the two concepts cannot be linked because they are carved from different cultures and mean entirely different things. 

The show could have represented Tui and La in a number of ways but it chose to draw upon Yin and Yang, a symbol they were well aware was based upon the concept of opposite but complementary sides who keep each other in balance and find harmony together. That is not an accident.

Now I can’t believe I even have to justify this but the idea that Kat/aang represents the idea of “push/pull” because of a singular scene in which they push and pull water to one another - first of all, please refer to “The Siege of the North, Part 1″ re: Zuko and Katara’s fight. There’s some push/pull for you. 

Second: you do realize when they say “push/pull” they don’t actually mean literally? Because a revolving door in a hotel lobby could pretty much satisfy the same requirement? 

The idea of push and pull is meant metaphorically, meant to represent two people who find themselves caught on opposing sides and seem, at first glance, to be utterly incompatible forces, only to find that they are not. This literally does not represent Kat/aang. 

The show never presents Kat/aang as opposing forces, or complementary elements - in fact, waterbending is the first type of bending Aang learns, and the first element that he is able to control besides air. He does not fear it the way he does fire, or struggle with it the way he does earth. Water is the element, besides air, that comes most naturally to Aang, and that’s not a coincidence. 

Katara and Aang are never situated in ways that place them opposite to one another - but Katara and Zuko are, from the show’s very first episode. Two opposing forces who should be incompatible - but find, the more they learn about each other, that they are more similar than initially thought, and end up in perfect harmony together. They literally form the full circle of the Yin and Yang symbol - Zuko goes from fighting Katara in the S1 finale to fighting FOR Katara in the S3 finale, willing to lay down his life to save hers. 

The idea of Tui and La is linked only to waterbending, but the show chooses to present them with the concept of Yin and Yang, and all the symbolism that brings with it, and what that lends itself to is a perfect representation of Zutara. 

You can make of that information what you will :)