Avatar: The Last Airbender

I think I remember hearing that they were planning or at least considering on making Momo actually be the reincarnation of Avatar Roku.

Uh... But isn't the Avatar already the reincarnation of the previous Avatar?

-shrugs- I don't understand it any more than you do.

Every time I hear Roku's name I'm just reminded of the TV service now. I don't even use it, but It's stuck in my mind, and I can't escape it.

I'm so sorry.

I just collected North and South AKA the fifth comic book trilogy. IS there going to be a sixth? Or is this the last one?

It's the last one announced so far. It might be the last since they're doing Korra comics now.

Are any of these comics worth getting?

The Secret is, from everything I've heard, a massive letdown, and that's the one that handles Zuko's mother.

That's only a letdown depending on what preconceptions your going into it with about his mother.

The ones the main series led you to have?

The main series barely revealed anything about her. It revealed almost nothing of the circumstances surrounding her relationship with Ozai, how she found out about the plan, or her actions afterward.

That people took it as an actual insult that she made actual human mistakes, that were acknowledged as mistakes in the comics, and which she and her family could move forward on, says to me people were looking more for a saintly figure than an actual character.

I imagine that was what a lot of people got of her from the show... but probably just because that was Zuko's perspective of her.

I'm just saying, when all we get from her character in the show is "good mom" and then the comics come and give us "actually shitty mom", it's kiiiinda jarring.

Bryke liked doing that with everyone in Avatar.

"Everyone you liked was an asshole except Sokka. Doesn't Korra's cast look better?"

"No, I still hate them."

Are you talking about the comic or the show, because I don't remember how Katara or Zuko were assholes.

And the same season the Gaang was proven to be flawed is also the one that focuses most intensely on Team Avatar's flaws. Gee maybe it was a theme of the season or something.

And that's exactly the point I was illustrating. Zuko and Katara, and Aang weren't assholes. Neither was Ursa. They were just good people who all made some bad, but very human mistakes.

But apparently acknowledging that good characters can sometimes screw up is too complicated for some people to like.

Look, the issue isn't that characters aren't black and white, it's that in this specific case they took a background character and flipped their main trait. Yeah, Ursa was probably not gonna be as perfect as Zuko remembered her, considering how this franchise likes its Parents as People, but the way they did it was unsavory. What we knew about her was that she withstood marriage to a total asshole, let herself be exiled, and killed her father-in-law to help said asshole, all to protect her children. And then it turns out she hightailed it and chose to forget all about them, just like that. When Zuko was being disfigured by his father and exiled in disgrace for the crime of having a conscience, Ursa was far away with her new family, having chosen to get her memories of them removed. Is it understandable? Yeah. But it's also pretty jarring for a character who revolved entirely around the concept of "good mom" to then go "eh, can't get back to my kids and can't help them, so I'll just get some magic to make me forget they ever existed".

It wasn't "just like that". And it wasn't supposed to be right. The entire thing was a tragedy, but ends with hope.

Maybe that isn't your cup of tea, but a lot of people just seem to miss the entire point of it, and really did seem to expect her to be this perfect mother figure and nothing else, and that's not a character, or at least, it's not an interesting character.

Edit: Unless your interest in her stems solely from making Zuko happy, which is fair, but he's happier by the end of it anyway, with not only his mother back, but a new sister and step-father, and hope that he can actually get through to the sister he grew up with one day.

edited 15th May '17 10:25:33 PM by LSBK

Suki has no flaws.

I really don't get the Ursa hate. Her choice amounted to "live with the threat that my crazy husband will murder anyone who gets close to me like he has already confessed to having done in the past" or "give up my memories to the spirit woman I have been waiting months for to prove my sincerity." Why people treat it as an unforgivable sin and act like she should have just accepted being a lonely hermit living in perpetual fear that Ozai would murder anyone up to and including his own children out of spite.

Because Ozai would murder anyone up to and including his own children out of spite. Like, this is always the problem when characters try to employ amnesia as a solution. The very real danger doesn't stop being a thing just because you quit knowing about it. You just lose the ability to do anything about it.

The show implied that Ursa was MIA because Ozai did something. That she just fled and left Zuko to the mercy of his father feels like a huge departure for her character. Especially when we're talking about a woman who committed regicide just before doing so, so it's not like she's supposed to be callow.

edited 27th May '17 7:34:46 AM by TobiasDrake

People forget that after she helped killed her father in law that Ozai banished her. So, yeah after what happened she was forced to be out of her children's lives.

Ozai who only had the power to do so because she assassinated his predecessor.

What this amounts to is that she had a Crowning Moment Of Awesome that demonstrated her incredible cleverness and resolve to protect her children, then promptly gave up on her life, threw Zuko to the wolves, and then erased the Character Derailment from her mind so she wouldn't have to risk ever figuring out where she left her spine.

But at least she got to live happily ever after with that random O.C. the comic made up while her son was emotionally abused, physically mutilated, and then banished to die on the other side of the world chasing snipes.

edited 27th May '17 8:10:30 AM by TobiasDrake