#which is a lot more than we can say for LOK

[burst-of-iridescent]

“the live action watered down katara’s character!” yeah and so did the comics and the legend of korra but i don’t remember seeing yall complain about that. or is it only bad when bryke aren’t the ones doing it?

[ecoterrorist-katara]

“Katara deserves a quiet life after the war, so becoming a healer (who made no contributions to the field) is actually a good arc!”

It is already bizarre to me that in ATLA, Katara is this confident & combative & ambitious girl who LOVED to fight and wanted nothing more than to help as many people as possible…then comics!Katara and TLOK!Katara showed neither her previous personality traits nor a career commensurate with those traits…

but it’s even more bizarre to me that ATLA fans would defend her trajectory as if it were some kind of progressive story of recovering from war trauma.

I’ve seen multiple takes like this. “Katara is not a YA heroine, she’s not a bloodthirsty girlboss who loves fighting so it’s actually a good thing that she doesn’t have to fight anymore” “after everything she’s been through she deserves a quiet life and a loving family”

For Katara, fighting in the war was actually empowering. It didn’t burn her out. It didn’t disillusion her. It didn’t take more out of her than she can give. Katara is not Katniss Everdeen, who needed to step back and discover her own agency and a sense of peace after fighting in a war she never chose to start. Katara’s war trauma largely happened before she took an active part in it. After she chose to be a part of the war, she became a waterbending master, made close friends, found her father again, got closure for her mother’s murder, defeated the Fire Lord, and met the love of her life. If Katara were a real person, maybe she’d be traumatized, but nowhere in the text of ATLA does she exhibit the sign that she’s tired of fighting on behalf of the world. If anything, she just got started.

If you take her post-ATLA arc at face value (vs as bad writing), it’s a tragedy of a woman who has learned to minimize her own relevance and her own power. In The Promise, she begins deferring serious decisions to Aang. She doesn’t even express a strong opinion about the fate of the entire colony of Yu Dao, or the fate of her friend Zuko. In North and South, she accepts Northern encroachment of the South in the name of progress. In TLOK we see her not as a politician or a chief, but rather as “the best healer” — albeit one who apparently never established a hospital, or trained acolytes of her own, or done anything to help people at scale, which she has always wanted to do. It’s even more egregious when you remember that in Jang Hui, she was not satisfied to simply heal the sick as the Painted Lady. She wanted to solve the root of the problem, so she cleaned the river and committed full-on ecoterrorism. Just because the war is over doesn’t mean she wants to stop helping people. In fact, the problem she addressed in Jang Hui is exactly the type of problem that would become more prevalent after the war ends, judging by the rapid industrialization between ATLA and LOK.

In the original ATLA, I think Katara is about as close to a power fantasy as you can get for a teenage girl, because she gets to be messy and goofy and powerful, even though she also had to perform a whole lot of emotional and domestic labour. But post-ATLA, she doesn’t get power and she doesn’t get to make a change. She gets love and a family. That’s it. And her grandkids don’t even remember her. Her friends and peers, on the other hand, were shown doing all sorts of super cool things like, you know, running the world they saved.

It’s not feminist to say that a female character deserves “rest” when she’s shown zero inclination that she wants a quiet life. Women who want a quiet life deserve to get it — I think Katniss’ arc is perfect — but women who want power deserve to get it too, especially when they’re motivated by compassion and a keen sense of justice. There’s nothing feminist about defending the early 2010s writing decisions of two men. Like just admit that they fucked up! It’s fine! Maybe they’ll do better in the future!

[wilcze-kudly]

The Gaang being 'bad parents' didn't ruin their characters.

I've seen this argument tossed around a couple times and it's honestly one of my least favourite criticisms of lok.

Katara (and Sokka but we have no confirmed kids for him, which seems unrealistic with how much game he had) lost their mother as children and their father was forced to abandon them when they were barely starting their teens. They were raised by their grandmother with little to no peers of their own age.

Aang did not know his parents and a huge chunk of his childhood was him being groomed into taking up the mantle of the avatar and mastering airbending. He also was isolated from other kids his age. His closest parental figure was Gyatso who was more of a teacher than a father. Also the Air Nomads were literally wiped out so that adds to the trauma pile.

I really don't think i have to talk about Zuko's family life here, but at least he had relatively positive parental figures in the form of Ursa (though i do have a burning personal dislike of ursa) and Iroh. Despite this his struggle around the subject of his family and his trauma relating to his upbringing was a focal point of his character arc.

Toph was raised in isolation by her asshole abelist parents who did not listen to her, sent people to capture and bring her back and then disowned her. (If my cursory understanding of 'the rift' is correct, I need to actually read it because i am unreasonably obsessed with the Beifong family.)

Where, pray tell, were they supposed to learn proper parenting skills? On their brief stint as child soldiers? While fighting a war as literal children?

There is the argument that they must've matured later in their lives, of course. But you can only recover so much from copious amounts of childhood trauma.

Being a bad parent doesn't necessarily make you a bad person. Sure it makes you a failure in an incredibly delicate and important aspect of human life but it doesn't make you a bad person. And saying that it does takes a lot of nuance out of the conversation.

Like, do you know how easy it is to fuck up a child?

Especially that the ways the members of the Gaang 'fucked up' as parents feel mostly in character.

Bumi was going to face some struggles with self worth due to being the firstborn child of the Avatar and arguably one of the most powerful waterbenders in history, while being a nonbender himself. That much was unavoidable, no matter how his parents approached the issue.

And Aang was obviously going to be over the moon when Tenzin was born. Think about it. He's literally the last of his people. He has no one else 'like him'. No one else to pass down the traditions, the teachings that Gyatso and everyone else he cared about and who were horrifically murdered to. Aang is getting older and he feels like his culture and history and his entire life before he got trapped in that damned iceberg will die along with him. And then Tenzin is born and Tenzin can take up the mantle that had been thrust upon Aang.

I'm going to withhold my judgement on Izumi and Zuko, since we barely know anything about them. She seems well adjusted but that's all i can say right now. But Zuko has also been shown to be extremely, painfully aware of how fucked up his family is and has clearly been putting in a lot of work to unscrew what his ancestors have screwed up.

Toph situation feels very tragic to me,because it's obvious that she thought she thought she was doing better than her parents. She gave her daughters the freedom to do what they want, to not feel opressed and trapped like she had. How was she supposed to know that she was making her girls feel like she didn't love them? (Here's another post of mine about the Beifong family and how they just feel like they're cursed or something at this point.)

TLDR; I get annoyed by people saying that the Gaang being 'bad parents' ruined their characters, because to me it felt like it actually enhanced them.

Neither Aang nor Toph acted out of malice or a lack of love. On the contrary, Toph was trying not to repeat her parents mistakes, accidentally committing a bunch of her own. While Aang probably didn't even realise that he was neglecting Kya and Bumi.

But just loving your children doesn't always make you a good parent.

I think these flaws only add to them as characters. It makes them feel more real.

It's unrealistic and, frankly, just plain boring to go 'oh the Gaang were all good people so they would be good parents too.'

The Gaang were a gaggle of traumatised children forced into saving the world, because the adults around them failed them, that then grew into traumatised adults who have no idea how to be good parents.

[eponastory]

I know you most likely already realized this, but I was just thinking about Aang as a father in LOK, and realized something. If Katara ended up with Zuko and eventually had children together, Zuko would likely end up being a better father than Aang. Aang never even met his parents, and only had instructors as parental figures. They're like parents but mostly just in the way that a school teacher would be. But Zuko understands what good parents and what bad parents look like because he knows what his own parents are like. His memories of Ursa and Iroh would be his guide to what you SHOULD do for a child, and Ozai is an example of what you should NOT do. Zuko doesn't have the pressure of repopulating firebenders because firebenders aren't virtually extinct, so there wouldn't be as much (if any) pressure to pay unfairly extra attention to one child over the other. Zuko knows what it's like to be neglected by a parent that's supposed to love because of something you can't control. Aang clearly doesn't, hence why he neglected Bumi and Kya II in the first place. Zuko also has experience with Azula, and would know to recognize any bad signs of sibling jealousy and/or hatred, and put an end to it because he knows what bad sibling dynamics look like.

I feel like he would also be a better husband to Katara. He's not as naive as Aang when it comes to marriage; Zuko has the experience of growing up with two married parents, and would know what not to do. Katara would relax better because the distribution over who watches the kids would be more fair, as Zuko would give them ALL attention. While Aang made Katara jealous from always being around the Air Acolytes (in the comics), I feel like Zuko would not give polite attention to women who are rude to Katara/flirting with him because in the show, Zuko knows exactly how hurtful it feels for a romantic partner to flirt with/give polite attention to people who are obviously pursuers. Imagine being in an alternate dimension where Zutara was the main endgame couple, and we get to see their parental dynamics in LoK. There would probably be a flashback of Katara getting worked up about one of their children, and Zuko would ease her into calming down because he sees a solution that she didn't.

Aang's issues are more than he doesn't know. He is selfish by nature. Selfish parents aren't good parents. I know this for a fact. It's an endless cycle of 'It's your fault' or 'what about how I feel' every time you try to say something. It's not fun, and it's damaging. I can totally see Aang using this behavior as a way to get what he wants. As far as him being naive... yes. He is very naive and doesn't take anything seriously.

Like the war, for instance. He was only there for the last year of it. He wasn't born into the war like Zuko, Katara, Sokka, Toph, and Suki. They aren't naive. They know what war is like. Toph is the same age as Aang, and she is much more mature than he is. He's got this idea that killing anyone is bad, but he is responsible for a lot of deaths. Honestly, he has a kill count from the Fire Nation attack on the NWT, and a lot of people overlook that for some reason. Actually, the show overlooks it because Aang is the Hero, and it's okay if he killed people. So, when all is said and done, all of the things that he does afterward is overlooked too. It's a huge writing flaw with the show. So how does this translate to him as a parent?

It makes him a hypocrite.

Plain and simple.

He's so focused on reviving the Air Nomads that he has little knowledge on what they actually believed. What we are given is a few Taoist, Hindu, and Buddhist proverbs to go off of. Then, it's completely disregarded (disrespected as well) for 'Love'. This 'Love' is actually deep infatuation fueled by jealousy and possessive behavior. Which is actually frowned upon by the three religions mentioned above. It is a 'poison' to the spirit. And disconnects you from being enlightened (I think that is what the proverbs/scriptures are eluding too, if I'm wrong, please do not hesitate to explain, I'm super interested in cultures and eastern religions) or granted a place in Heaven (or their version of it). Letting go of all earthly possessions is common place in most religions. Aang does not do this. But I digress.

So, while there is the Nature vs Nurture aspect of parenting... where Katara does most of the Nurturing because that is how her character is written post-war and LoK. Notice how is said Written. Written by two misogynistic men who stripped her of a lot of her characteristics from the original run of the show. This is the problem. And it's the same with Aang. I can't take him seriously because he doesn't take any of it seriously. Especially with his children. He's not a serious character. He acts like he's serious, but he never really left the 12 year old boy behind to mature. Probably because in his fictional relationship with Katara, she enables him to keep doing what he always does. Which is to not grow. Relationships grow sour when the two people in them do not grow. It's not really about who grew up with parents at that point because it's the current parents that are the ones that should be to blame.

Now on to Headcanon space...

Zutara is a Headcanon ship. Did it almost happen? Oh yes I believe it did because the writing supports it heavily and Bryke's actions post show also scream 'lairs'. Sorry, but I have a pretty good Bullshit metor and Bryke set it off big time by their immature behavior.

But I digress.

Zuko grew up with a Narcissistic Sociopath as a Father and a Mother who was caught in the middle of a choice she was essentially forced to make. Ursa was also forced to forget her own parents never existed after she married Ozai. This is all canon, by the way. Her life before her marriage was great, but then it was taken away so she had nothing left but her morals and beliefs. However, while she loved both of her children, her influence on Zuko is essentially what made him who he is. Ursa didn't get to influence Azula like she did Zuko. Why? Because of Ozai.

Ozai pit his children against each other. This was apparently a Fire Nation Royal Family tradition because it sounds like Azulon did this with Iroh and Ozai as well. This kind of parenting style is abusive to its core. What Ozai did to Zuko isn't neglect... it's straightforward abuse and control. How do you make a child do what you want? You hurt them, or you take something away from them. Ozai both hurt Zuko and took away his home by banishing him. If Zuko wants to go back home, he has to find and capture the Avatar. It's that simple, but at the same time, it's also near impossible.

Flash forward to Canon Zuko and we see he has one child and he is a very loving father. Actually, he's the best father in the show. His experiences with growing up as the not so favorite child has made his choice to have one child easy. Probably because he and his spouse had a less than perfect relationship. This also may have influenced him to be protective of Izumi (as we can see he's still protective over her even at 90 years old) because of the loveless relationship his parents had. It was enough to damage him deeply when it came to relationships. This is likely also why he had trouble with Mai as well.

Headcanon space now...

Zuko loving Katara is what makes the difference here. Love is giving your partner the freedom to make their own choices and support them. As long as there is good communication, trust, and honesty. Something Maiko does not have, by the way. So it stands to reason that even with Nature Vs Nurture in the way of parenting, both win here. I'll tell you why Zuko's relationship with his parents here have no effect on why he would choose to have more children with Katara.

Because if written well, it's a very good relationship between them. We already know they work well as a team. The show gives us this. We know that Zuko absolutely cares about Katara. The show also gives us that. We also know they become lifelong friends. So why do they make great parents?

Because they rely on each other.

It has nothing to do with how they were raised individually, but everything to do with how they support each other narritively. They trust each other to make good decisions together. They rely on being honest with each other. They also communicate with each other. This by itself is the building blocks for a healthy and stable relationship. With that in mind, parenting is easier. There is no need to be afraid of becoming a bad parent because they hold each other accountable. It's a deep relationship. Having multiple children is easier because it is a loving relationship. There's no conflict besides the silly little arguments over simple things that happen all the time. It's just an overall healthy dynamic.

And that is what appeals to Zutarians.

While it was almost canon, I'm glad it isn't because Bryke would definitely not get it right. They tried to make Korra and Mako happen out of spite because they believe Zutara is toxic. It's not. Their children would turn out absolutely fine because Zuko would not change a thing about Katara. It's in the show. He doesn't try to change her because that's not his job. His job in TSR is to let her find closure. He offers it to her because he cares about her. Bottom line.

Anyway, I probably forgot what you said at this point because I just tend to go on and on, but I tried my best to stay on topic... ADHD is both a blessing and a curse.

[seyaryminamoto]

Any thought on Toph's writing and "arc" in ATLA? I personally think Toph was the most stunted and underdeveloped character. She never really develops at all and is mostly just a walking joke. It's clear that the writers loved her but also clear that they never did anything with her.

If you mean stunted and underdeveloped character in the main cast, definitely yes. A lot of minor characters were done a disservice by the show, given next to no complexity, so I wouldn't rank her as #1 altogether, but among the main cast, absolutely.

Now, I wouldn't say she had zero growth, it's just... not an arc. I also don't think she was only a joke, though they used her for comedy a lot. It's part of why it weirds me out when the fandom acts like Sokka, and only Sokka, was comic relief in ATLA. Toph, Aang, Iroh, even Zuko whenever the narrative wanted to poke fun at him, provided comic relief often, so it's kind of stupid to pretend it was only ever Sokka.

... But that ridiculous perception, then, caused the not-so-funny LOK phenomenon of "Bolin is the funny one", where basically all comedy was meant to be about/around this one character, which didn't work nearly as well as they expected it to, and did nothing for the team's synergy and bonding, but I digress...

What do I think about Toph's story and journey in ATLA?

Toph starts out as a girl who wants nothing more than to be independent and for people to stop underestimating her. When we consider that, in her final action scene in the show, she's clinging by her fingertips to someone else, and that her survival and life depend expressly on HIM, it suggests that she's learned that she doesn't have to go at everything alone, and also that she doesn't have all the answers to all situations. The first time we met her, it doesn't really feel like she wants to work alongside other people, as shown in her conflict with Katara in The Chase, where Toph felt absolutely no need to chip in and help out with anything but her personal needs.

I will say, in Toph's defense about that last thing, it's perfectly common for a child who has spent most her life being cared for, not having anyone expect a single thing out of her, to not understand why she needs to contribute ANYTHING to the team. It doesn't hurt that she's new, which implies that the others have been setting up camp, finding food, traveling across the world, without needing an earthbender's contributions. So it's fairly easy to see her side in this: why does she need to help at all? Why can't they handle things on their own when they always did?

But in her chance encounter with Iroh, Toph is given a chance to think on things and ponder that there's nothing wrong with relying on others. It's so effective that this scene concludes with Toph telling Iroh that maybe he should tell Zuko that he needs him too. This might even be one of Toph's strongest moments in the entire show, honestly. She has no idea who she's talking about, has never met Zuko or Iroh before, but what she tells Iroh doesn't sound like it comes only from having determined that IROH needs Zuko: it sounds like self-reflection, based on Toph realizing that maybe she can open up to needing her friends, too, and working alongside them isn't such a bad thing.

I think this is decent writing. Really!

The issue is... this is about as good as it gets with Toph.

I really like her character, she has a lot of good jokes, some interesting moments of vulnerability here and there, but this scene with Iroh is the only instance of the show I can think back on that actually features Toph questioning her strict ideas and reasoning with them, choosing a different path and abandoning something else she wasn't ready to forsake (complete and utter independence). What's more, this isn't even the kind of growth where Toph has COMPLETELY abandoned her individualistic mentality: she's adjusted it. She allows herself to consider she could be part of a team, to have friends, to work with others, but that doesn't mean she's tied down to them. It never stops feeling like Toph is more than ready to do things on her terms, in her own ways. No matter how much she bonds with the others, she will rely on them exclusively when she needs them (see how she clings to others when she has little to no visibility), or when they need her in combat and such, but outside of such spaces? It's unlikely that Toph will be the type of person who feels the need to be accompanied all the time, who feels better if someone is constantly watching over her. Her friends allow her to find some kind of balance between her need for independence and the comfort of having allies and friends to connect to... but that doesn't mean that she'll never break off on her own when the urge hits her, when the big battles are settled, when problems are resolved.

And I'm the last person to think Yang, of ALL PEOPLE, has any solid understanding of these characters, but whether it was his idea or Bryke's to feature Toph as a teacher, and to have the Gaang drop by to pick her up during The Promise? Ultimately, this just proves she doesn't feel the need to be with Aang, Sokka and Katara non-stop. If even someone like Yang thought she'd go do her own thing (... the quality of what he wrote is, of course, forever in question), down to even leaving her out of The Search entirely? It's clear that they're not trying to promote the idea that Toph is forever clinging to her friends now. She's still independent.

But like I said earlier... this balance Toph finds between her friends and her freedom isn't the product of multiple episodes and lots of hard work and bumping into obstacles to achieve. This... is literally just Toph's second episode. That's the last time the show actually challenged Toph on a PERSONAL level that doesn't involve "becoming a more powerful bender".

Take her relationship with her parents, for instance: the fandom is convinced they were abusive as fuck and that Toph would hate them forever. Ironically, the show DOESN'T promote this notion at all (which makes The Rift kind of insane when compared to the show's treatment of Toph's parents), for it features her parents as two idiots who underestimate Toph immensely and who simply want her to come home and stay out of danger. This could be deemed as abusive in some people's minds, as usual the word needs to be taken more seriously nowadays... they're not good parents, there's no denying that. They don't understand their daughter, outright. They allow their preconceptions of her disability to determine who they think their daughter is. There's nothing in the show that suggests otherwise.

So why, exactly, is it that every instance where Toph considers communicating with her parents or meeting them, she seems to be perfectly content with doing it?

Xin Fu's trap for Toph was completely cemented on the notion that Poppy Beifong had come to visit Ba Sing Se and that she finally accepted her daughter for who she was. Toph's reaction isn't some kind of jaded dismissal because there's noooo way her mom would ever accept her... she outright goes to see her. Which allows Xin Fu to trap her. Which then results in Toph discovering she can metalbend. But the thread that started this whole plotline? It... goes nowhere. Of course, Toph's parents AREN'T there, there's no real reason to assume they've changed, and this was just a trap... but we get no reaction from Toph when it comes to this. We see no conflict. She simply embraces her new abilities and runs back to Ba Sing Se. A quick glance through the transcript shows zero focus or interest in what she went through. Hell, there's not even any acknowledgement that she learned to metalbend. It's all about Aang's struggles with the Avatar State and Katara being in danger.

Next time? The Runaway. A very frustrating and annoying episode. What happens here? Katara decides to dig into Toph's old wounds regarding her parents, tries to psychoanalyze her and decides that all of Toph's rebelliousness against authority boil down to having a bad relationship with her parents. Which... maybe it's true? Doesn't really justify Katara trying to act like her mother anyway? And then the episode ends with Toph asking Katara to help her send a letter to her parents, which sounds like Toph has made her peace with them and like she's ready to accept that she would like them in her life too, and that she wants them to accept who she is. Yay.

... The issue here is there's no follow-up. This doesn't feel like development because nothing comes from it. Nothing really changed. It doesn't come from organic writing either: it comes from Katara's forced "mother friend" role that she didn't use to hold at all (as I said in the ask about why I think Katara loses her appeal as a character the deeper we go into ATLA), and it never actually confronts Toph with her parents again. It doesn't feature a deeper reflection from Toph regarding why she feels the way she does about her parents, nor does it feature Katara realizing that Toph's parents actually did fuck up a LOT with her and that she has every right to push back against them. It merely makes Katara calm down because she realizes the others care about her (while eavesdropping, ofc) and are ready to accept her for who she is... even though she, too, merits a LOT of reflection regarding this mom friend role and nobody else should be comfortable with that, let alone her :'D

Point being, the show really just holds this as the only thing about Toph that wasn't actually resolved, but it acts like it's fine because Toph sent a letter. What growth did we see in Toph that actually means this letter makes all the difference, though? We have no idea how it affected her parents -- as much as Yang acts like it didn't affect them at all, it could have made them rethink some things, or it could have made them mount an even more desperate search for their child, who knows? And it's a pretty solid thread to pull at, to tug loose, to TRULY challenge Toph's character... aaaaaaand they just don't do it at all.

The way I see it, that's really what it boils down to. The show doesn't challenge Toph in any significant way after her... second episode. This isn't the case for most main characters, and I'm not even asking for Toph's story to feature an intense, horrible, super harrowing and difficult plot...! Just, make some things complicated for her. Show her frustrations, show her difficulty to grasp things she hasn't experienced before. Confront her with realities that she, a sheltered girl from a pretty well-off city, has never really needed to face before. Her attitude towards Ba Sing Se is never questioned or challenged narratively: she's constantly proven right about the city being fucked up, and about her reads on all high society people. While all this makes Toph feel smart to a viewer, the issue really comes where this character basically only has her admittedly sizable charisma to win us over. She succeeds! But what does this show give her to work with besides a very quick "I don't wanna work in a team-I learned to work in a team" conflict that is resolved even faster than Sokka's sexism, which pretty much died out within 4 episodes?

There's definitely a component here were Toph is successful not only because of her personality, her abilities, her strength... but also because of the message she conveys regarding disabilities. A LOT of disabled people have clung to Toph as an example and inspiration to not allow whatever ails them to define them or hold them back. Whether the comparison between a blind girl with magical powers and a disabled person of our world without them is valid or not? The effect Toph has had on a lot of viewers who related to her struggles is undeniable. In a sense, it almost feels like the fandom's worship of Toph suggests that in not giving her further challenges on a personal level, they actually hit some kind of jackpot as far as social messages are concerned... but once you actually scope in and pay proper attention to her character, you might find she's got so much more potential that went ignored by this story in favor of presenting her as this unquestionably strong girl who relies on others when she really needs to but otherwise is independent and free from all of society's restraints on her.

Personally, I know this to be the case because of the pushback and reactions my version of Toph in Gladiator initially resulted in. She had no reason to think anything of Sokka and damn near killed him when they first clashed in the Gladiator League... and this horrified a LOT of people! They couldn't BELIEVE Toph could be like this! An older Toph, 7 years older to be precise, who broke free from her parents' hold, struck a bargain with her would-be-captor to get him MORE money than he'd find if he turned her in, and who wanted nothing but to measure her strength against other powerful fighters. If she doesn't have Aang's group's influence on her as early on as when she's 12-years-old, is it REALLY that crazy for Toph's problems with her parents and authority to fester, for her craving for independence to reach new heights, for her readiness to prove herself stronger than anyone to actually be a hazard for other people who stand in her way?

Thus... a lot of the work I've done with this character has been deconstructing these flaws, building her into someone who understands herself better. It's in learning from the examples Sokka and Azula set for her that she starts to realize what kind of person, what kind of LEADER she wants to be. One of my favorite scenes to write about Toph is when she's setting her city free from Fire Nation control, extending her earthbending reach all across Gaoling, putting a stop to the FN army while focusing on creation rather than destruction. On building up her people, on leading her forces with the power of her seismic sense, on capturing the enemy leader, all of it without razing her home city to the ground. Early Gladiator Toph? She wouldn't have cared one bit to join the war to begin with, and if someone had told her that her city, the place she associated with rules, limitations and restraints would be razed to the ground? She might have even encouraged it. Yes, a part of her would have felt guilt over her parents... but she would have been so emotionally stunted that she would have forced herself to ignore any part of her that still cared about them.

And worth noting? One of the biggest personal issues Toph faced was actually nearly killing Azula and Sokka because of her absolute determination to win against them during an event. They were already friends, but they were also each other's biggest rivals in the League... neither side holds back when it comes to this particular competition, and Azula and Sokka had actually beaten Toph and Iroh on their previous encounter! Which meant Toph's desperation for victory was driving her a bit crazy. But once Toph takes it too far at one point, she freaks out. It triggers guilt that actually jumpstarts a much deeper and more complicated arc than anything she'd been through before. Her determination to win at all costs, her pride over her lifelong winning streak within the League... she's suddenly facing the possibility that all this shit she used to cling to, so damn hard, means NOTHING when she could lose two of the people she cares most about if she continues to privilege all that stuff over their wellbeing and safety.

And this doesn't mean that she didn't like fighting as a Gladiator anymore... it means she really came to terms with the fact that other things mattered more. Later on? She realized there are BIGGER fights out there, too, than what's going on in the League: she was the last line of defense against a brutal attack by a rogue waterbender who killed a lot of people and could have killed many more... and after the fact, she spends quite some time worrying about what could have happened if she had failed to protect everyone, if her strength had faltered when she needed it most.

Yes, touting my own horn a lot... but everything I've typed about my own story is exactly why it can even piss me off, at times, to see Toph's potential as a character squandered to the extent it is in canon. I've done so much more with her than they ever did, and granted it's a huge story, but Toph ISN'T the main focus on it and I still managed to give her more to work with than canon ever did. It makes no sense, does it?

I don't think she was given the respect she deserved, and partly, I feel this happened with a lot of female characters who straight-up don't have arcs at all. There's this latent fear that in questioning a character, showing they're flawed, they could become unlikeable... ironic how this is seldom a concern over male characters, but it is with female ones. And mind you: it DOES happen to male characters, because Aang himself is the most egregious example of a male character showcasing flaws and people spiraling over them, turning them into something they never were, all be it to pretend SOMEONE ELSE (*cough* Zuko *cough*) is that much better than him. But they WEREN'T scared of writing Aang into complicated situations that showcased his flaws and resulted in his growth, though. They are with Katara, Toph, Suki, Mai, Ty Lee... :') wonder why, huh?

Ultimately, Toph is a much better character, boiled down to basics, than many characters I tend to talk about and criticize openly. The issue with Toph, for me, isn't really that she fails as a character, or conveys wrong messages, or that the narrative is biased in her favor (though sometimes it is...).

The problem with Toph is she has no chances to truly grow into her own. That her biggest growth comes from a singular conversation with Iroh in episode 2x08 is incredibly unfair to a character who can provide SO MUCH if you simply give her a chance and let her be... human. Flawed. Complex. There's so much more that can be done with her, and if given a chance? She really could have been the best character of the entire show. Too bad they didn't have the guts to let that happen.

[matt0044]

Why does Indie Animation lend itself to such intense discourse?

If I had to speculate from my own observations (feel free to call me out on an overgeneralizations), it would be that the harsh turn against any given indie project would be akin to a mother scolding a child with, "I expected this from your sibling but you?!"

See also the "We were rooting for you" gif often tossed around.

Indie Animation be it from a small studio or crowdfunded is seen as bypassing the hoops and hurdles of getting your foot in the door of the highly corporatized entertainment industry. With the likes of Disney or Nick or any given streaming service, creator driven projects are subject to the whims of the company who holds the IP.

And those whims are often to said IP's detriment. It'll more often than not be willfully neglected at best or treated as just something to fill a time slot or shove onto a streaming platform as "content." Enough may be allowed to flourish but their either uncerimoniously cut short at best or being dragged out as a franchise at worst.

To keep from going on about the whole Legend of Korra vs. Spongebob thing (I was there people, there was an LoK fandom believe it or not), indie animation has often been seen as small scale but also within the creator's general control since they control how long it goes or how it's written.

Many cartoons like Gravity Falls, Owl House and Amphibia have talked about trying to get their vision across while contending with a lot of Standards and Practices. Their story which had a "kids and adults alike" target audience would have the top brass insist on something more just for the former category.

While they find work arounds, often to stick their tongue out at the FCC, this can be a hard reminder of who has the final say despite it being what you want. Indie animation is seen as an answer to "What if Alex Hirsch didn't have to comprimise elements of Gravity Falls for the FCC?" or "What if Dana Terrence could just blaze her own trail with The Owl House with little to no notes?"

Especially when it comes to animation with queer characters. Animation made to be "fit for kids" have it tough enough even today but adult animation has to "play it for laughs" since comedies have been the defacto standard for that type of cartoon.

However... a show being creator driven or creative team driven comes as a double edged sword for the fandoms they form. Not all stories that play out across multiple episodes of varying lengths are going in the direction YOU might want to.

Creators might tire of a certain direction or formula and mix things up with things that come to mind almost on the spot. Even with a solid plan, the status quo will get a shake up that can and will alienate those who fell in love from episode one.

Indie Pilots spark the imagination something fierce. There's theories as to what any little detail could mean going forward and speculation on what a character's arc could be. These go wild because Fandom is all about the hypothetical, the unknown, the what could've/should've/would've been. Whole phenomenon would be dead in the water otherwise.

Thing is that not all theories will be proven right if any at all. The creators aren't mind readers and even if it isn't a legality like in corporate, they don't read fanfics if only because they don't want their vision to be totally compromised. Any good creator knows not to just give fans what they want. However... trampling over all these fanfics and theories makes it feel like any given fan had their "child" dragged into the streets to be shot.

A harsh phrasing but that's how a lot of fans act when continuing episode bump up against initial impression of this character or that storyline. It was their creation but new lore, new backstory or what have you is liable to override them. It's been an occupational hazard of being a member of fandom for ages yet it's become the center of a lot of discourse now more than ever. Say thank you to social media for creating such a combative environment everybody.

It's this... feeling of ownership that has existed in fandoms of other shows owned by corporations but amplied by the smaller scale of it, how creators seem more... approachable. And THIS is how the YouTube "critic" scene comes in to capitalize.

So... yeah.

[feathered-serpents]

Okay so the new adult Gaang movie is coming out next year. I’ve talked on TikTok (and might make a video on this too) about how from the LoK photo it looks like Bumi might be significantly older than their other two kids

He looks ten here, at least, and if we can calculate how old Aang and Katara were when Tenzin was born (Tenzin is 51 in LoK, LoK is 70 years after Avatar, 70-51 is 19, Tenzin was born 19 years after the events of Avatar. Aang and Katara were 31 and 33 when Tenzin was born, if Bumi is ten years older, they were 21 and 23) we can guess they were in their early 20s when Bumi was born. We know they’re supposed to be in their early 20s in the movie

By this timeline, some people were concerned Katara might be pregnant during the movie. But by some rumors I saw, Aang and Katara are meant to be around 24 and 26, so Bumi would have already been born and maybe be feature in the movie as a toddler. Based on Kya and Tenzin’s ages in this photo, it looks like they wouldn’t be born for a few more years, and unless there was a time skip Katara wouldn’t be pregnant in the movie.

But… then I found the leaked concept images

I keep staring at Katara

And I can’t decide. If she looks pregnant here. Her stomach looks slightly rounder, but it’s hard to say if it’s not a trick of the eye from her clothes and shading. I can see it and not see it depending on how I look at the picture.

For the record, I really really don’t want Katara to be pregnant in the movie. I do not want her to be treated as “fragile” or have her entire arc centered around her pregnancy. If she is pregnant, then either the movie age rumors are wrong, they’re retconning the timeline, or that’s not Bumi, but Kya, which is not as direct of a retcon.

I’m hoping to god I’m just seeing this because it’s been commented on my videos a LOT and it’s on my mind. I wouldn’t mind a time skip or a flashback, but please, not the whole movie

[late-draft]

Thoughts on Toph, Jet and Suki? For these last two the question is more about potential or what you'd like from them, more than about canon.

I'm curious about how you feel about some of my favourites. Don't feel pressured to reply and have a nice day. Love your art!

Hello! Thank you!! I'm gonna try to formulate my thoughts here, but I'll definitely have to expand on these in the future.

I think all of these three are strong, quality characters. Toph has most characterization and she and Katara share an aggressive temper, something I always thunderously cheer for; yet, they're vastly different despite that. The way I see it, Toph's situation is probably happier because the type of pain she carries is a feeling of betrayal and loneliness as she was restrained and oppressed by her parents and had no friends up until recently. She broke free. The writers said they wished there was more time to conclude Toph's struggle with her parents because it's an obvious pain point for her, for which she expressed several times a desire to fix. Fortunately for her, and unlike Katara whose pain comes additionally from traumatic loss which cannot be reversed, Toph's problems mostly can be solved relatively quickly by getting in her life what she was missing. She really is one of the best benders in the world and I was saying "Holy sh*t!" every time she fought because of the stuff she was able to pull off. She has a great dynamic with all characters from the gaang. Her animations of movement and bending are incredible - her character design, clothes and outer shape contribute to this (as shape and movement of clothes affect how animation feels a lot!)

(There's more movement in the lower part that emphasises groundedness?)

I think her discovery of metalbending has been undercut because she probably wasn't in actual danger, she was being brought to her parents who as it turns out, wanted her unharmed. If I had been writing, I would have had her be in a more dire situation which would have then made her discovery and subsequent victory all the more amazing.

She's a character who I think couldn't be stopped by any obstacle. That's literally how she's constructed as an archetype, compared to Katara who might face much more moral/emotional dilemmas or unsolvable situations rather than just challenging obstacles. But I should never say never; Toph did show a vulnerability in the form of (unfounded) guilt when Appa was taken. The narrative correctly found one of her character vulnerabilities because she's someone who theoretically "can't lose" so what happens when she lets her (only) friends down by failing? She didn't solve this guilt last time. It would most likely show up again later if similar situations happen. She's a very compassionate person who cares very deeply about people important to her. (I vaguely hearing about her dealing with guilt about her daughters in LoK, but I've only briefly watched LoK, I have no idea how that could have happened and I'm no longer sure how "canon" that show is considered to be, due to vastly different characterizations of many old characters…) Also her disability is never erased, neither does it make her helpless and her parents wrongfully use it as an excuse to restrain her. It's a part of her that isn't just a cosmetic character trait. She's perfectly capable on her own (if we ignore specific circumstances like being in the air), and I like how the show, instead of having her learn this, skips that part and advances onto Iroh helping her through anxiety and assuring her that it's also okay to accept help from friends in general, unrelated to her disability. Because she expanded this stress due to her parents' treatment onto thinking she should refuse all help in order to stay strong.

________

Suki is also one of my favourites. It's unfortunately clear that she doesn't have much characterization besides being a badass (which is spectacular, it's so cool that she's such a skilled fighter as a non-bender!) and a kind, no-bullshit person. These traits she has are very strongly repeated. Suki to me feels like someone who wouldn't suffer from social anxiety in the slightest. She could be the boldest in social situations alongside Aang, a confident extrovert. However, she feels like too stable of a character with no visible obstacles for her to overcome. I was disappointed by the Boiling Rock episode - yeah, a lot of things happened but it felt like nothing there affected the characters. Like in Toph's situation, what if it was tougher on them? The narrative did say Suki was Azula's favourite prisoner?! As much as I dislike torture, and this was a children's cartoon, imagine how strong Suki could have been to not break under worse conditions? But more importantly, I feel like she might have been really shaken from losing to Azula. How much would this harm her confidence in her skills, and how would she recover from this? Another one is how she might feel about Sokka's brief relationship with Yue, considering Suki had met him first. It would hurt her, and perhaps some feeling of guilt would arise because, how could she feel bad when Yue was no longer in the mortal realm? How would she deal with this? And maybe she could have an inverse parallel in Mai - if both of them had beef with benders, they might have different ways of overcoming this (Suki's being a healthy one). This thread would clearly be connected to the defeat to Azula, the prodigy bender. Because inversely, the narrative currently has Suki not feel anything from losing to Azula, not feel any envy towards benders in the series - that's kind of healthy for her, but boring to the audience. Plus, envy is one strong motivator to improve oneself. If not envy, then anxiety. Her and Kyoshi warriors' fight animations are also spectacular, I love the movement in the specific clothing they wear because you can't really see their legs. It's different from other characters and I heard their fighting style is inspired by aikido? The variety in combat styles is amazing! I think Suki could be additionally developed as one of the characters who puts the most focus on raw, physical prowess. So not just agility like Ty Lee, but strength and stamina too. Maybe Aang and Zuko don't have to be the only characters to push through sustaining scars from difficult wounds (if the show really doesn't want Katara to keep scars on her hands). Boiling Rock anyone? She and Sokka could match in this in the end when he hurts his leg in the final confrontation.

______

Jet is also a very strong character as he has a clearly defined role. He fulfils his purpose well. I really do have a feeling that he is sort of an inverse-Zuko: this doesn't mean I think he couldn't exist as a character on his own if Zuko didn't. But considering who ends up as part of the hero group, Jet additionally fills the role of showing something inverse of Zuko through the form he takes because he's a side-character (two birds with one stone). An Earth Kingdom character (Ally). Nonbender (masculine even without bending). No mercy for enemies. Successful and respected leader (of kids, but still) unlike Zuko who strained to get adults on the ship to respect him (loser). Jet's character design even has the more extreme version of Zuko's type of eyebrows!

This next part touches on shipping which can be skipped: ~ Most likely it's one of the integral parts he was created with. I'm not sure if I read this correctly, but I guess it's possible that Jet's character, which was made to fulfil the narrative purpose of showing a possible bad side to Allies who take things too far and kill innocents, in the visual and behavioural FORM he takes, was subsequently designed to also be someone Katara could project her forbidden interest in Zuko onto, but this time in a "justified" and "good" way, since Jet appears as a good guy freedom fighter. Then reality turns upside down at the end of the episode. (Narrative was planning to redeem Zuko since the beginning, so this was taken into consideration even while making S1. Katara gets a random FN crown in S1E13.) There is no hard evidence in the TEXT of the show for this, but to me it feels like this is what the narrative was doing. Thus there would be a high chance the narrative could force the two to clash in the future; and they do - I guess this is part of the reason why Jet physically fights Zuko. That fight grabs a bunch of threads: Zuko and Iroh are not safe/hidden even in Ba Sing Se, Jet was unable to overcome his visceral hatred for firebenders, Jet needed to be put in the brainwashing machine for some crime, the narrative needs a way to show that Zuko ISN'T integrating in the society outside of FN so it does it by having him refuse to join the freedom fighters gang, AND the two boys inevitably have to clash. I guess this might prove my suspicion, since the two had no interaction in S1 at all.

~

However, when the show implied that Jet had died, I was literally shocked. Mostly because it was Zuko who kept giving off the vibes of "dies in the end" type of character, so I was stunned to see this transferred onto Jet. (My bro was convinced Zuko was gonna die right up until the end when Katara healed him. Then we were both staring at the screen and I said "I thought you said he was gonna die?" anyway) I feel like Jet did manage to speedrun a sort of redemption arc though. The narrative COULD have pushed him more into "refuses to redeem himself" path if he had ended his run still fully obsessed with killing any firebender he comes across. That was one option. But the story decided to pivot into him managing to overcome brainwashing in order to save the heroes, this is what his arc ends on. I feel like both situations of him dying or surviving were fitting and satisfying. If Jet had survived, maybe I'd push him into an even more morally ambiguous spot, something pretty tangled in which he'd be an ally to the gaang but still antagonistic to Zuko in some way. Or some sort of indescribable negative tension existing there, with no easy or clear explanation Zuko could point to when confronted by someone from the gaang defending Jet. Then what if there was a plot by Ozai's supporters to secretly get the Earth Kingdom to attack the Fire Nation, which would then have Jet be tempted in aiding this. Secretly? Openly? Or not at all.

How cool his animations with hook swords are? They're that good that it feels like his weapons are extensions of his arms. It looks very believable and makes it seem like he's on an equal power level with benders. References used in animation definitely paid off. I'm sad his fight against Zuko didn't last longer or gotten a rematch! But I'm a simple person, I love watching energetic fights.

______

Now in terms of animation of ATLA in general, I was surprised to see that it's actually spectacular in many parts, even if it's not constantly as high as the one in LOK (whose S1 I watched first.) Before watching ATLA, I had the wrong impression that the story was childish, with continuous annoying tea jokes and the like, and thought "well the animation is worse than LOK, so why should I even bother." Then many times during my watch I had to gasp how skilled the animations were! Also, references for fights - amazing, I'll always support this. The fact that I'm now attempting to match ATLA's animation should be telling!

I'm not sure if I replied along the vectors of your interests, feel free to ask additional questions if you'd like.

[thecaroliner]

NATLA: An Extremely Mediocre Mess

I spent the entire day watching Netflix's ATLA adaptation and oh boy was it...something.

I struggle sometimes with putting my full thoughts into words but here goes. No idea how long this will be.

Spoilers ahead, obviously.

I want to start out by getting a few things I thought were good or at least fine out of the way.

First off I wanna mention the acting (aside from Gran Gran) was fine. I think Gordon Cormier has a lot of potential and it really felt like sometimes he was being held back by the script and direction. Really hope this role opens up new doors for him in his acting career!

Not that I think ATLA needed more violence or anything, and initially I was against them adding more violence just to make it more "realistic", but I actually didn't mind it. It was way more gruesome than I thought it would be, both Sozin and Ozai literally set people on fire and burn them to a crisp. Kind of does help set in the actual horror of what they're doing. We even saw the same happen to Kya in a flashback. Again, this wasn't needed, but I didn't mind it.

The bending effects DID look a little better than in the trailers I thought. Firebending in particular I thought was decent, all the other elements were just okay, with waterbending I feel suffering the most from it. The rest of the CGI kind of sucked though which I'll get into later.

Having Gyatso be more of a presence I thought was nice, as I always felt like he could've been a little more to the front of Aang's mind in the original series than what he was. I honestly LOVE the idea of him hanging around in the Spirit World for Aang, as in the past I've thought of that idea and wished it had happened. Except....they just kind of throw this plotline away later for no reason. So that's great.

Lastly, it was neat to see Indian culture being represented in Omashu.

Now that that's out of the way....time to really dig in.

The series starts with the Air Nomad genocide, pretty brutal stuff but I don't have much to say about this aside from the moments with Gyatso being nice.

Aang can apparently just fly now, but he only really does it to show off in this first episode. Apparently it's because he's an Airbending prodigy, despite the fact that the ability to fly was established in LOK as being a very rare occurance that only comes after letting go of every earthly attachment. But sure, let's just have Aang fly now. Why even have his glider in the first place?

He gets frozen in pretty much the exact same way, which now leads us to the Southern Water Tribe, where Katara is practicing waterbending in secret in the abandoned Fire Nation ship. It's mentioned later that Sokka and Gran Gran forbid her from practicing bending in case the Fire Nation comes back and tries to kill her, which...sure, I guess.

They find Aang's iceberg, but since Sokka isn't sexist anymore, her anger at him isn't what opens the ice, it's her attempting to pull their canoe back to them and she accidentally splits the iceberg open.

Speaking of Sokka's sexism, remember when people were trying to say "Oh the show isn't getting rid of that arc, it's just updating it because a lot of moments in the original show were iffy!" Yeah, no, they got rid of that arc entirely. Which, honestly if they had just done that without making a big deal out of it in interviews wouldn't have been an issue. The issue is them trying to act as though the narrative of the show itself was sexist and not actively showing us that Sokka is in the wrong.

Anyways, Aang literally just falls out of the iceberg and it's lowkey funny cause he just slides out like he's going down a water slide.

They take him back to the village unconscious and once he wakes up, Gran Gran (who's acting was awful by the way. Not sure if it was the actress' fault or the direction, it really felt like the direction to me). She immediately recognizes Aang's tattoos and just tells him flatly that the Air Nomads are all dead. No compassion or anything. Oh, and she out of the blue begins narrating the original series' intro verbatim which was so out of place and funny. HEY REMEMBER THE OPENING FOR THE CARTOON?? THAT'S IN HERE TOO!!!!!

Weirdly enough....it almost felt like Sokka and Aang had more of a bond than Katara and Aang. Sokka was initially skeptical of Aang but then instantly wants to go save him and I swear they had more interactions than Aang did with Katara. The two of them don't even really feel like friends until the last two episodes or so.

Also, they go to the Southern Air Temple in the first episode where Katara doesn't calm Aang down from the Avatar State but rather a memory of Gyatso did. Okay....

Oh, this also had one more thing I liked, and it was Aang giving Gyatso a proper burial. I always assumed that happened at some point, whether during the series or sometime afterwards. Nice to see it here.

Okay, so my thoughts after this are just gonna skip around a bit because I was writing them down as I went. The first half the series really didn't have much egregiously wrong with it, it was mostly just mid.

It's mentioned briefly that...Aang's airbending went out of control sometimes? Like the reason he had to train with the monks was so that he would stop accidentally hurting his friends with airbending. Because why have the storyline of him accidentally hurt Katara with firebending when you could have this instead?

The like...purple and motion blur effects they used for the Spirit World scenes was such an eyestrain....

In the Spirit World, Kyoshi gives Aang a vision of the attack on the Northern Water Tribe. Before, Aang had no reason to even bother going here, because Katara is teaching herself waterbending (turns out Gran Gran had the waterbending scroll the whole time! But hid it from Katara til now). Aang also doesn't even attempt waterbending at all this season btw

The Gaang gets to Omashu, where they decide to combine The King of Omashu, Jet, The Northern Air Temple...and The Cave of Two Lovers. Despite this sounding clunky and weird, I think these storylines together actually did mesh well (except for the COTL, which OH BOY I WILL GET TO)

The idea here is that the Mechanist, whose name is now Sai (don't know if this was ever mentioned in any supplemental material or if it was just made up for this show) and Teo live here. Jet and the Freedom Fighters also live nearby, where they are trying to plant bombs around Omashu and make the Gaang think it's the Fire Nation.

One scene I wanna mention, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I SWEAR Sai said he needed to control the "attitude" of the hot air balloon...not "altitude."

Aang ends up getting captured by Bumi's generals, and he almost immediately figures out who Bumi is. Which...I cannot believe Aang named his son after THIS Bumi. He's kind of a huge asshole and is mad at Aang for abandoning them for the past century. Like you really had to make the character angry at him Bumi???

So, um. Let's talk about the COTL plot now.

Katara and Sokka go to try and find Aang and find out that there's a series of elaborate tunnels underneath Omashu, where they run into the singing nomads. This was literally only a plotline so that they had an excuse to sing Secret Tunnel this season. They explain to the siblings the story of Oma and Shu (which is just verbatim from the original series), ending with "Love is brightest in the dark."

Remember that. They preface the storyline of the tunnels by explicitly telling Katara and Sokka about the two lovers. Very romantic.

Katara and Sokka quickly realize that the cave crystals glow in the dark and begin to follow the path. Love is brightest in the dark, right? Along they way they begin bickering because Katara feels like Sokka still sees and treats her like a child.

Eventually they get pursued by a badger mole who begins to chase them. They apologize to one another and hold hands as they think they're about to be killed but...the badger mole stops attacking.

Why does it stop attacking, you ask?

Because now apparently badger moles can feel human emotions. They don't like feeling people fight and want to feel the love between them instead.

I was LOSING IT at this part. "Love is brightest in the dark" was apparently metaphorical.

And don't get me wrong, I love seeing platonic and familial love portrayed in media...but like, to do this storyline...don't preface it with a romantic tale of two lovers????? It gives off a very unintentionally creepy vibe for the siblings. And I'm sure I don't have to explain why badger moles being able to sense love is just dumb as shit.

Moving on....Bumi is nice again. Yay.

They go to the town where Hei Bai is attacking and Aang somehow accidentally pulls Katara and Sokka into the spirit world with him because the writers also wanted to have The Swamp here. Oh, and the Koh storyline. He doesn't steal faces for showing emotion anymore either, he just captures people and eats them later and steals their faces then. Cool.

Oh, and Wan Shi Tong is there and he looks emaciated.

Katara relives the night her mom dies, while Sokka sees a mysterious looking fox in the forest. Initially I assumed this was one of Wan Shi Tong's knowledge seekers but oh no. Oh no, it is much, MUCH worse. We'll come back to it.

Aang manages to find Gyatso in the Spirit World, which again is an idea that I LOVE. Gyatso explains that after he died, he never moved on to the next cycle of enlightenment, instead choosing to stay in case Aang needed him. They have a really touching moment, and Aang promises to come find him again after he finds Katara and Sokka.........which we'll come back to.

The events of The Blue Spirit happen, not much to talk about here. Aang connects with Roku (apparently he can only connect with past Avatars at their respective shrines, btw) and finds out Roku stole a totem of The Mother of Faces from Koh and that's why Koh hates the Avatar. Why steal that totem?? Hell if I know. Roku's also a funny man now I guess.

Aang saves Katara and Sokka from being Koh food and all is well. Yay.

They finally get to the North and this is where the show really went from being mid to pure cringe for me.

The "women only learn healing" plot is still here. Katara is rightfully angry about it, but Aang's like "oh well maybe you should listen to them". Yes, really.

Here Aang is so worried about losing anyone else, which, obviously understandable. But he doesn't want Katara and Sokka, especially Katara, to fight AT ALL. Which I mean. OG Aang never once tried discouraging her from learning to fight. Obviously he loves her and does have concern for her safety a number of times throughout the show and comics, but he also knows she can kick ass and stand her ground on her own and never tries to stop her.

Katara fights Pakku, and despite literally the day before saying she still has a lot to learn and a long way to go, she's just instantly declared a master waterbender now!

And oh boy my friends, buckle in because now we're gonna talk about Yue.

First off...her wig looks BAD. Like I'm pretty certain I saw her real hair sticking through a few times. Why not just dye the actress' hair....even Shyamalan's Yue hairstyle looked better than this, and we all know what that looked like.

So right off the bat Sokka asks Katara if Yue is at all familiar. Katara says no but Sokka keeps pressing and eventually follows Yue, where we learn she's a waterbender? Okay, not like her being a waterbender or not has any affect whatsoever on the story, but sure. We also learn that she had previously been engaged to Hahn but broke it off because he "wasn't the boy of her dreams". Not sure why they bothered to write him in the first place.

So...Yue and Sokka begin talking, and Sokka finally realizes why she's familiar to him.

I genuinely had to pause the episode to laugh when this reveal happened.

YUE WAS THE FOX SPIRIT SOKKA SAW IN THE SPIRIT WORLD.

Yes, I'm being 100% serious. When Yue was healed by the moon spirit, she turned into Danny Phantom and can now just hop in and out of the Spirit World. As a fox for God knows what reason.

BTW, this has jack shit to do with anything overall. It adds nothing. It serves NO PURPOSE. Genuinely do not know what the hell they were trying to do with that.

Um, so yeah. Moving on.

Apparently in this version, Tui and La only become mortal fish once a year or something? On the night of the "ice moon". Your guess as to what on earth an ice moon is is as good as mine.

Zhao begins to lead an invasion on the north and Momo is killed in the crossfire.

Well, almost.

Again I just busted out laughing because Momo has served NO PURPOSE until now, he's just been there because he was in the og series. I'm sorry Momo, as much as I love you....why were you here.

To save a kid from being crushed by falling debris. He just pushes them out of the way and is crushed. The reason is just so that Yue can take him to the Oasis and use healing on him with the Spirit Water.

Katara and Zuko have their classic fight and Zuko says "Oh you've found a master haven't you?" To which Katara replies, "Yeah, me" because she's a master now after 2 days remember?

Koizilla happens...the tribe is saved...Yue makes her sacrifice. So now she can go be the moon instead of a fox I guess.

Also, I think Iroh killed Zhao, despite earlier in the series refusing to kill the Earth Kingdom soldier who captured him because "we've all seen enough death."

And then...Aang goes back to the Spirit World, to find that the little "house" Gyatso was in is empty now. Gyatso is just gone now, with no explanation, although he seemed to know when he met with Aang beforehand that he would be gone from the Spirit World next time Aang tried to find him. Great job, taking the only interesting storyline made up for this series and just throwing it out the window for no rhyme or reason!

Now lemme talk about Azula....

She's not even Azula anymore. She's really insecure and worried about pleasing her father. Because whenever I thought of Azula, I always thought "insecure!" Like I get what they were going for, Zhao says this honestly kinda raw line about Zuko merely being the fire to sharpen the iron that was Azula, but like....why did she have to be this insecure person now? Also why is she even an archer now? It again has nothing to do with anything

Mai and Ty Lee are there for also no reason at all other than to be like "HEY REMEMBER THESE TWO CHARACTERS FROM THE ORIGINAL SHOW?!" They just stand there and watch Azula train sometimes.

The show ends with a Fire Sage showing Ozai through their planetarium (which they have now I guess) that Sozin's Comet is returning "soon." Who knows when! Just soon!

Also, Kataang shippers do not get your hopes up. Not that I expected much Kataang here at all, but I swear they barely even feel like friends until the end. It almost seems like Katara is more interested in him than he is in her.

My expectations of this series were low from the beginning. When it was first announced this project was in development, I said it was unnecessary and couldn't improve upon the OG in any way...and I was right. Even as its own thing entirely divorced from the cartoon, it's just kind of bland and downright confusing at times.

Anyways, my fingers hurt now so I'm going to wrap this up. Apparently I've been typing for like 1.5 hr now lol

Watch the original series instead :)

[the-badger-mole]

There's A Difference

I think I've said this before- in fact, I'm almost certain I've said this within the last few months- but the reason I can't let Aang's actions be dismissed by his age is because his worst traits are never addressed in canon. The reason why I personally find him very incel-ish is because the grown men who created him and project onto him strike me as incel-ish (and yes, I'm aware that at least one of them is/has been married. Incel is more of a frame of mind than an actual state of being). Aang could have had a growth arc, but instead Bryke chose to either ignore his flaws or make them out to be virtues. I'm judging Aang as a character, not a child. Because Aang is not an actual child. An actual child might have been confronted on the things Aang did. Aang is a character whose creators want fans to think is perfect, even when they themselves introduce the idea he might not be (Aang's being a terrible father is not that surprising to me, but even then Bryke had to scramble to tell us he wasn't actually that bad 🙄)

I am a lot less harsh with Zuko because he actually faced the consequences of his poor decisions. He worked to make amends not only for himself, but for his family. I empathize with his losses and his personal tragedies because the narrative actually cared about how those things affected him in just about every episode, unlike Aang, whose devastating losses are only touched on when they're convenient to that episode's plot. Otherwise, he is the picture of unbothered to the point that I question if he even knew most of the time that he was in a war (the answer, it would turn out in the penultimate episode, was no, apparently not). There's not much I can criticize Zuko on that wasn't already touched on within the show. Why would I judge Book 3 Zuko based on Book 1 Zuko (who btw, I still think was a much better rounded character than Aang in any of the series)?

When it comes to Katara and the misogyny inherent in how she was treated in her canon ship? Well, I can only point to canon and aks to be proven wrong. Katara had very little to do with the development of Kataang during the series, and that little was usually prompted by someone or something outside of her own thoughts and feelings bringing the idea up. Meanwhile, we know from the beginning that Aang likes Katara (well, he likes how she looks anyway). His feelings matter to the narrative: Katara's not so much. Then the disastrous comics where Katara's character from the show is completely stripped from her and she ends up being the cheerleader girlfriend of the Avatar. I know some of that is walked back in the more recent comics, but we already know how it ends for Katara and her kids. Also, the post LoK scramble to give Katara more agency honestly just makes me think that my original assessment of her relationship with Aang was spot on.

Zutara, in my opinion, would have been a great relationship for them both. They would've been just about perfect together, because as hot tempered as they can both be, they also both get really good at communicating with each other, which is something that Katara never really has with Aang. That's why it doesn't surprise me to find out how dysfunctional their family is. Katara and Zuko know how to work together as a team. In a relatively short time, they got comfortable opening up to each other. They are both passionate to the point that they can be really hot-headed, but they are both also extremely empathetic and compassionate. They are a couple that would've helped each other grow, and would have been so much more interesting than anything that happened with their actual canon relationships.

I get that there are people who would rather believe that Aang could outgrow his selfishness. That's totally valid, and has made for some great stories. However, I don't think saying the way he was written in canon has shades of incel is wrong. Especially by Book 3. I could see that guy growing up to be a viciously obnoxious narcissist. I bet those of us who know an "Aang" IRL can picture that, too.

[umalvie]

out of curiosity, what would it mean to you for fiction to replicate the maizula dynamic? like what features are most salient?

the heart of their relationship i think is replicable to an extent in that it's this sort of rotted love where you have known each other so long and so well that you couldn't not love each other but you have known each other so long and so well that you couldn't not hate each other as well. so that integral piece is absolutely something we can find in other relationship dynamics. like the rich girl/weird friend dynamic absolutely exists.

the sibling love triangle aspect with maiko's existence is also a hugely important and compelling aspect of maizula! this is techniaclly replicable in theory in terms of you can absolutely do love triangles where two members are related, but also it's so hard to duplicate the maizula-maiko triangle because mai is supposed to love zuko, and you can interpret her as actually loving him, and he feels like he's supposed to love her too, but they don't work fundamentally because he doesn't want to understand the worst parts of her, doesn't even want to admit that they exist, and she is so horribly caught up in azula who makes her feel so alive by acknowledging and knowing and seeing all these parts of her and bringing them out even more that she could say she chooses zuko because it's the right thing to do in terms of both heteronormativity and what choosing zuko represents, but i don't think realistically mai can actually turn away from azula and everything she's ever known and hated and loved and wanted to leave her alone and not known how to live without. not without regrets.

i think it's also so hard to replicate the way that their individual characters are and come together in the ship as a whole. like azula being a prodigious princess with such an insane relationship with gender and having such a tragic domestic origin and mai being a noblegirl who is so sullen and depressed and dead inside and has such an awful domestic life as well and who has to obey azula's orders but also absolutely doesn't do that because the power dynamic of their relationship is so complex by complete accident that while azula is higher ranking than mai socially and financially and in the military sense, mai absolutely has more power on an interpersonal level. that's something that you see a lot in lesser degrees in media with toxic female friendships sure, but never to the extent that one of the parties can literally have the other executed if she wants to, but she chooses not to do so even when she imprisons her former friend.

i wrote a mini essay on this here, but the way in which they play with the rich girl/weird friend dynamic is also INSANE on a level i have yet to see anyone else touch really except maybe rhaenicent.

speaking of other posts i've made abt their dynamic being so fascinating, this one about the "i love zuko more than i fear you" line vs what atla's show canon actually demonstrates is something i think is vital to understanding what makes them so insane. and i do think it's unique, if only because of what the narrative wants to tell you vs what it actually shows you.

also, one of the most important things which i touched a little on earlier is just... the politics of atla as a setting for their relationship. that makes it 10x more compelling that azula is this tragic figure who is on the completely wrong side of history, a child soldier who fights for imperialism and racism and xenophobia because she has been indoctrinated and abused and made into a weapon, and mai is someone who fought alongside with her until it inconvenienced her to do so, then switched sides in the name of love without ever actually analyzing or critiquing her own beliefs about what her country was doing. mai chooses the good and moral side by choosing zuko (who also doesn't actually reflect internally and... gets to kind of just keep doing a friendlier imperialism when we look at the comics and lok, but that's another topic), but does she actually want that? does she actually believe in that? has she actually let azula go? the comics can try to whitewash her morality more by pretending she cares abt tom-tom and she's totally reformed, but the show doesn't actually support that, and with no material in-between to show us mai's redemption beyond her betraying azula, not because she cares abt what's good and right but because she cares abt zuko, we as an audience have no real reason to believe that.

so yeah, maizula is endlessly fascinating to me, and i wish a ship would be more interesting than them

[blissfulip]

Not to give yall a thinkpiece with no warning but I'm on the Gale hate train as much as the next person but mostly because of his atitude towards Katniss romantically and not for the more widely agreed on "he has no morals" thing. (Also he has a generally very punchable face look at him)

However, the way Suzanne wrote him kind of reminds me of Zaheer from LOK which to me is a great representation of what a true revolutionary is. Anarchists have something that people have difficulty reconciling with, which is their willingness to bend their morals for their cause.

Everyone says they would never do the things he did but these are the few radicals that spearhead movements and make tangible changes when being faced with oppression. They will bomb parliaments and shoot politicians and bend the air out of the lungs of an authoritarian leader and close off a railway with people still inside. And of course you wouldn't do any of those things and neither would I, but someone has to. Dystopian fiction has really managed to romanticise and warp the idea of what a revolution actually looks like, it has taken all the radical things people are forced to do in the face of oppression and made all of it seem like "if we all work together and look to the side with a cool pose long enough we can beat this regime!".

Im sure anyone with half a braincell more would be able to articulate this better than me but i digreess,

TLDR; a lot of people are repulsed by Gale's actions on paper but would probably wear his face on a t-shirt in the real world.🤷‍♀️ Che Guevara I'm looking at you

[djemsostylist]

Toph and Zuko, Headcanon

Generally, I don't ship noncanon ships, but in this case, I'd say this is less of a case of noncanon and more a case of after canon. After all, ignoring LOK (which I'm rather more than happy to do tbh) the last we see of these two they are still children--we don't know what their future holds.

But I want to work within the bounds of canon as much as possible--leaving ATLA as is, and working off character established in canon but working forward.

I talked in another post about the idea that Zuko and Toph would work well together as a adults for a few reasons. Firstly, personally I like the idea of the core six (that is, Aang, Katara, Sokka, Suki, Toph and Zuko) being paired off. I think they went through an experience together that is so singularly unique, it would be hard to ever find another person who could understand it quite the same way. I also think that given a lot of their issues, trust would be hard to achieve.

(More under the cut bc I'm just rambling now lol)

Now, I know in canon Zuko has Mei, but he's 16 and she's familiar. I got the feeling that Mei and Zuko were more of a "it's what you do" couple than one with any sort of lasting power. I'm not saying they didn't love each other--I think they certainly did, but I also think they were very young and they were both going through sort of a big life change. When Zuko gets together with Mei, he's teetering on the edge of trying to find out who he is and what he wants for his life. Mei is very much a person that old Zuko would have been with--she makes sense for him in that life. And I think there is genuine affection between them--but I also think a lot of it is tied up with other feelings. Her best friend's older brother she maybe always had a little crush on, the rebel son, etc. That she does eventually support his choices to change is a good thing, but I don't know that I see their relationship lasting into the future. Zuko still has a long way to go and a lot to handle when he becomes Fire Lord at 16--I think he probably isn't exactly going to be focused on a relationship all that much in the beginning, and frankly, I think Mei needs to to figure out who she is without the context of Zuko and his sister, since her entire life seems to revolve around their family. I could see their relationship sort of slowly backing off until they eventually end things mutually, no hard feelings, just a natural sort of ending to a childhood romance.

For Zuko, I imagine he would then spend most of the rest of his time not in a relationship. He's dealing with a lot with his country and his family and dealing with forgiving and understanding himself--again, I doubt a relationship is the priority. He probably maintains close contact with most of the Gaang--Aang in particular probably makes it a point to come see him, and I can see him and Sokka still having pretty close contact, especially with Sokka stepping up as the future leader of the Southern Water tribe and etc.

Toph, I think, would be dealing with a lot of similar issues to Zuko. Both of them are trying to define what home means--Zuko in the place he grew up that he both recognizes and doesn't, and Toph unable to go back because she isn't sure what she'll find. I imagine Toph spends some time with Aang, Katara, and Sokka, but it's not like she would particularly be comfortable at the poles in ice and snow, and I also think she'd want the chance to explore, to see the world, to find out who she is and what she wants from life. So around a yearish after the end of the world she sort of goes out on her own into the world and starts a sort of long, wandering slow journey. She stops along the way to do various things: sometimes she works, sometimes she helps others, sometimes she just sight sees, sort of goes where whim takes her. She sees most of the Gaang often enough, with how much the others travel, but I'd imagine she hardly ever sees Zuko (as he is busy running a kingdom).

Now we get into deep headcanon territory. I had seen it posited that Sokka invents a version of braille (in a fanfiction I believe, though I'm not sure if the idea started somewhere else, and I honestly can't recall the fanfic), and I like this idea, both because it makes sense for Sokka to do something like this, and also because it gives Toph a way to continue a bit of a relationship with Zuko whilst traveling. So basically for about the next 6 years or so, Toph and Zuko exchange letters while she travels around. They have a lot they can relate on, and talk about family and belonging and guilt and love and etc, as best they can. But they don't see each other much--maybe once or thrice throughout the intervening years, as they both grow up.

Then, when Toph is about 18/19 (making Zuko 22/23) he gets word from Toph that she's in jail and needs a bail out. At this point, he's tired, a little overwhelmed, and he's been a little lonely lately (Aang and Katara are married and still sort of in the honeymoon phase, Sokka is super busy with building a city in the south and all his various projects, Suki is the leader of his secret police so he sees her often but she's also often abroad) and so he basically decides to go get Toph himself. He hasn't seen her in a while, he misses his friend, and he's also more than a little curious as to why she's in jail in the middle of a nowhere town at the ass-end of the Fire Nation.

Toph, for her part, had written both because she hadn't wanted to bug the others and also because Zuko still owes her a Life Changing Field Trip and she's ready to collect. And also because she misses him maybe a little and also she knows he could maybe use a break.

So Zuko shows up and Toph is A Woman now and his poor little brain is like, trying desperately to square this information in his mind because of course he knew she wasn't 12 any more but also he wasn't expecting her to look Like That and also Toph can sense you know, everything, and she's trying to be chill also because it's just Zuko only Zuko spent the past 6 years stress working out and also somewhere along the way became A Man but this is fine and everything is fine and they are still friends right?

So Toph convinces him to play hooky for a while and come with her to track down some asshole (working on those details--some person scamming refugees maybe or something with disappearing kids? and she's trying to get to the boss) and Zuko is tired and overwhelmed and also maybe a little bit smitten and he agrees and then they go on the Life Changing Field Trip only this one is the one where they fall in love.

And it's the easiest thing they've ever done and the hardest thing all at once. Because they understand each other and they are determined to be more than their parents and together they heal.

I have so many little headcanons and one shots and larger story arcs bouncing around in my head with all this, and bless @bonesingerofyme-loc for thinking them all through with me.

I have actually written some ficlets, but they are currently pretty rough and disjointed (it's been a while since I've written) and I'm not entirely sure if I want to save them to write into a cohesive story, or tell their story in parts as I am inspired. I sort of have some scene ideas and others being build off prompt lists. I might share disjointed here and then wait to publish on AO3 until I decide what I what to do, but I'm not sure.

I will, however, share the very silly headcanons that Leo and I came up with. My Toko/Zutoph tag will be otp: it's me if you want more of my dumbass thoughts on these two lol. (Like what Toph did to end up in jail and how Sokka got Zuko's wedding invite and wasn't sure who the bride could possibly be and how Aang knew from the beginning but never said bc it wasn't polite or how Toph refuses to let Zuko ask for her parent's permission and he's like, dying slowly over the propriety of it all or how he courts her Properly™ once they are back in the capital and Toph is secretly thrilled or or or. Also Leo may have maybe made some AI adult Toko pics I can share that killed us both lol. )

[atla-suki]

sokka’s treatment in lok was astonishing tbh but i’m actually glad he was dead by the time the series started bc toph being a cop??? aang being an awful dad???? they would’ve ruined him and suki’s characters lbr.

as far as any possible kids go idk we didn’t meet suyin till book 4 we barely saw izumi i think they just didn’t want to make the new series be a atla reunion plus lok was only meant to be one season so they were making that shit up as they went along lmao. and back in 2012-14?? they didn’t know themselves what happened to sukka lmao.

sokka and suki are definitely the type to break up bc of long distance but then find their way back to each other a few years later especially as they settle into their roles in life.

while bryke definitely neglect suki and sokka to some capacity also they do have a soft spot for suki after bringing her back. many don’t consider her to be team avatar but they’ve stated they do so idk ! she shows up a lot in the comics which have obv been created post-lok and it’s been said that they’ll utilise it’s plots and characters in shall see in future projects (crane fish town becoming republic city maybe??? where suki currently is working?? and sokka later lives!!)

i’m p sure suki will be in it at some capacity anyway and that there’ll stick with jennie as she’s one of the few asian og va’s. she’s doing a lot of work atm for avatar studios.

also random but i literally found out today that it’s not bryke-confirmed that mai and zuko end up together. it was a comment on a panel by the old comic writer. it’s not technically canon. izumi is the spit of mai anyway but hmm! interesting!!

btw btw suyin’s father was def a sandbending outlaw who toph had a secret relationship with that couldn’t be public bc of her role as police chief x

oo big ask ok let me break this up into different paragraphs …

fist point - one thing i will admit about lok is that it fell short in incorporating the original characters into the new series in an interesting way with enough verisimilitude (realistic-ness) that it didn’t feel like they were just throwing a popular character into an episode for the sake of it. such as the whole ‘aang is a bad dad’ thing because they under-utilised him as a mentor figure to korra and instead focused on his supposed favourite son (i have thoughts on this re. aang NOT being a ‘Bad’ dad but i will make another post on it if u are interested (or have i alr made one? i’ll make another one.))

i have to agree that they would’ve probably done something shitty to sokka or suki if they were included. especially with the entire first season of lok being about bender/non-bender equality… i can just imagine they’d make sokka say something dumb about the equalist movement being 100% Bad instead of him actually supporting some of their completely valid arguments. idk. i’m sad there’s no sukka but at the same time…. quit while ur ahead yk.

second point - sukka long distance relationship is so real ESPECIALLY during their first few years together. i can see them just kinda calling it off because of commitment issues due to their work, etc. but not ever really losing feelings. they’d be endgame tho🥰

i can absolutely see suki being in upcoming projects! especially since she and the other kyoshi warriors expanded their reach across the nations - it would be hard to ignore them completely if we’re assuming they’re including comic canon into the universe. i hope jenny returns!!

third point - yeah! how crazy that maiko as izumi’s parents isn’t canon confirmed… though she’s so clearly mai’s daughter. i wonder if mai’s role will be expanded in upcoming projects / if she’ll be featured more. hmmm.

fourth - would honestly prefer this to the theory sokka is her father lol. it kinda baffles me that TOPH became a cop.. not bc she opposes authority - there’s something different about enforcing it than there is having to follow it. i can see toph in authoritative positions, and she fits them well. but i think it baffles me moreso because why would toph even work as a COP? isn’t that boring as hell for her?? go do something awesome like probending or professional underground fighting (adult blind bandit anyone?? this would make a good fic) or literally just construction idk i feel like toph isn’t a Hard Worker type that would want to be stuck in such a rigid career.

[eastgaysian]

Hello there 樂眀 (I think that's your name)! I have three (I think) things to say to you!

#1: Your pronouns are very cool

#2: Would you mind explaining some of your recent post (tumblr.com/eastgaysian/728507273015672832)? I'm not entirely sure what entrenched fantasy tropes you are talking about. the only one I can think of at the moment is the sort of evil race thing. it probably has a name but where one race are the bad guys or minions of the bad guys (usually orcs) but it sounds like theres a lot more. no pressure to answer though :)

#3: may I please see your little korean white dog??????

#4

look how big the #4 is! That's so cool! I never knew that could happen! Wow!

ok have a great day bye!

oh wow i think this is the first time someone's written my name in chinese online instead of just lok ming. and thank you it/its pronouns are very cool i think more people should use them.

yeah, what i'm referring to in that post is primarily the expectation in a fantasy world that Race Is Real, which is to say that race science/race essentialism is treated as a provably true fact of the universe and of biology, rather than a social construct. i'm not sure if there's a term specifically to discuss this in the context of fantasy, but to be clear, what it is is race science. if you are writing a world where sapient beings are divided into biologically distinct race categories, you have created a world where race science is real. if you are writing a world where certain biologically distinct races are inherently evil and their deaths are always morally justified, all the while being acknowledged as sapient beings of comparable awareness/intelligence to everyone else, your world has a racial hierarchy embedded into it as a law of the universe.

this is bad! even before we get into the fact that these inherently evil races are 9 times out of 10 coded as/composed of caricatures and stereotypes based on real life people of color. 'what if biological essentialism was real' is a hallmark of fantasy (and sci fi). it's not really a fun whimsical what-if, though, it's an extremely harmful ideology that causes direct harm to people in real life, and cloaking it in people being purple or having horns or pointy ears doesn't erase the troubling implications. and when creators literally just base their goblins on Jewish stereotypes or their trolls on Indigenous peoples or their fucking feral animal people on African cultures... somehow you've squared racism. there's other stuff i could talk about but they mostly build off of a fundamental basis of Fantasy Race Science Is Real anyway

[on this topic, i've heard that charles w. mills' the wretched of middle-earth picks apart the construction of fantasy race in tolkien in an insightful way (and tolkien obviously has far-reaching influence on high fantasy as a genre), but i haven't read it myself. i could probably look harder for a pdf, it's just not at the top of my list of priorities.]

anyway. my dogy ⬇️

[phoebehalliwell]

can I send you another silly ask lol I'm curious about how your characterisation of each character came about. across all of your next gen aus and canon lol. I've got my own next gen ocs for another fandom and some of them were a full character immediately while others I still have no idea. I have to assume making like aesthetic edits and stuff helps you with that but what else? did you have to think about it much or did some appear in your mind with a full personality and vibe already?

so a lot of it depends i would definitely say some appeared in my mind more fulfledged than others (charactrers like henry jr, parker, sheridan, & pj i had a pretty solid handle on from the start whereas like melinda, tamora, dj & mikey morris, and patricia halliwell-trudeau were definitely slower processes and a lot of coming up with something then scratching it lol). but, in general, for next gen specifically, i would say my greatest influence is both parents + birth order, just because i think those are the thing that will make a next gen character feel the most like a next gen character to the audience. it is a personal pet peeve of mine where next gen media kind of goes yeah they were kind of shitty parents like. those are the people i grew up with!! you shut your whore mouth!!! (no i am still not over the characterization of aang in lok.) but yeah, so like, a large part of what their character is like will come from what i perceive their childhood to be like. so for example: pj, phoebe and coop's eldest, is def going to be a romantic and totally going to meddle in everyone's business, and then, being the eldest, is also going to have that protective/overprotective streak we see so often modeled by the eldest sibling in charmed, as well as her own mother (think back to when paige was with richard). so next gen does offer a kind of cheat sheet like that.

there is, of course, a little more difficulty when, like, you just straight up don't really know which route to go/where to start. for melinda, i had trouble because she's already coming in on two really strong personalities: wyatt & chris, who also already have an established dynamic without her. for this, i really just kind of worked backwards to establish what i didn't want. for melinda (and this is personal preference) i really didn't want the stereotypical ya 2014 badass heroine who wears eyeliner and black leather jackets. for starters, i feel like those tropes have gotten really overdone, especially in the urban fantasy medium, and then secondly i just didn't want everyone in this family to be the same kick ass leather boots type (which, given that i already had visions for parker, henry jr, kat, chris, pj, etc who all kind of fit comfortably into those ya tropes, i really wanted someone on the softer side). i also think that like, for her, piper and leo are you know they have this tenderness this sweetness and i wanted to embody that. so i didn't want black leather melinda, but narrowing it down further i also really didn't want doormat melinda either. again, we're looking at her parents. they're stubborn, they're fighters, they don't take shit. so i wanted to work to combine a softness and like a take no shit vibe. from there it was just kind of holding up puzzle pieces in my mind until i found ones that fit (e.g. i think she swears at her brothers and calls them out on shit but i think outside of the home she's a lot more passive not everything needs to be a fight because quite frankly she's got plenty of tension in her life already no need to be adding more, she's shy when it comes to love interests, she's a perfectionist, she's a mom friend/mama bear, all just little character quirks that exist in my little character brain bank that i decided i liked how they worked for her)

there is the separate category of the true oc, one who has not previously engaged with canon at all, and those are usually shaped through motivation, and their motivation is usually shaped by what i need to happen in the plot. so, for viola, for example, her main motivation is a wish to be left in peace. why? well, because i wanted kat to try to find the twice blessed and that kind of meant the twice blessed had to be hiding. so for that main motivation, a couple potential pathways arose: she could straight up not give a fuck and be apathetic towards the whole thing. she could be scared of her destiny and not want any part of it out of fear of herself/her own power. she could not want to complete her destiny because doing so would involve making a choice she feels like she can't make. i ended up going for the last one bc to me it definitely seemed the most fun. based off canon, i decided that the twice blessed destiny, while never explicitly stated in canon, was to wipe out all evil. of course, this meant there was the flipside there was the potential to wipe out all good. now i feel like to the average person this has a fairly easy answer like if you could wipe out all mosquitos. like, yes, you know there are prob going to be some like ramifications from removing a species from existence, but, like, fuck those guys. also, hello, malaria? i feel like you'd be saving a lot of people. so like i felt like i needed to give her some tie to evil, some bond, something that would motivate her not to want to destroy evil because if she did she'd be destroying her loved ones. next question is why/how does she love something evil. so i built her a backstory of being raised in a defect clan (witches who have turned into warlocks, something we established could happen in the show), giving her a different perspective of being people raised in say the manor might have. from her backstory more parts of her personality started to bloom, she doesn't let herself be tread on and hates feeling like a pawn in someone else's game, she's very protective over the ones she loves and is willing to remove herself from their lives to save them, she likes helping people, she likes making people smile, her sense of humor can be a little bit twisted and she thinks selfish people should be cut down before they hurt others.

i hope this helped answer you question if you have any more qs just let me know and i will do my best to answer