I don't hurt people's feelings. I hurt their bodies

[lunabee34]

We finished Avatar!

I think Azula's madness is too abruptly executed although the antecedents of it are certainly there (realizing that she cannot truly trust soldiers who betrayed their commander to follow her, feeling betrayed by her two closet friends, realizing that she really is truly alone especially since her dad's off trying to rule the universe, maybe even feeling some guilt like her vision of her mom implies); in many ways, it reminds me of Dany in GoT. Dany going mad is a perfectly valid choice (as is Azula going mad), but it happens too quickly to make sense.

I did not like the deus ex lion turtle. I like that Aang took Ozai's bending, but the turtle just comes out of nowhere.

I also would have liked to have seen Toph's parents, especially since Hawkie went on a mission to contact them. That feels like a dropped plot point.

Loved Mai and Zuko getting back together!

Overall, thoroughly enjoyed watching this.


So, I went looking for fic, and I have to admit I was surprised by what I found on my first brief foray. I sorted by kudos and looked at the first two pages to find that "Sokka and Katara's dad becomes a dad to Zuko" is apparently a really popular genre of fic. I totally get it. The number 2 fic is in this vein, and there are four of them total on the first page. Pages 1 and 2 have 3 Sokka/Zuko fics each; there are only 3 Katara/Zuko fics on the first two pages (which really surprised me); there's one Zuko/Mai fic on page 2, and the rest are gen. Also surprised that almost all the top kudosed fics are from the last two years.

Fic recs upcoming!

Comments

[the_rck]

Avatar fandom had horrific ship wars back in the day, the type visible from orbit. That might have an effect on kudos levels since most people were good with gen fic that didn't commit.

[lunabee34]

That makes a lot of sense.

And I think a lot of the fics that are gen on those two pages are basically set immediately after canon when they're all still so young anyways.

[sholio]

The last half of season three and especially the finale episodes felt really patchy and rushed to me. I don't know if it was planned that way or if they wanted more episodes and Nickelodeon wouldn't let them have it, but the pacing of that season is so weird. I really loved a lot of the individual scenes (and adored the series overall), but on the whole it did kinda feel like the ending went off the rails a bit. Not in a way that ruined it for me; I liked it but felt like it could have used more fleshing out.

Ficwise, apparently there has been a sudden enormous surge of Sokka/Zuko lately, which was never that big back when I was in the fandom. Zuko/Katara was huge back in the day but has tapered off lately for whatever reason.

It also does seem to be a fandom that has a lot of gen, especially epic-length gen WIPs and canon rewrites/divergent AUs.

[lunabee34]

That makes a lot of sense. I hadn't really thought about over time AO3 stats morphing enough to obscure the original conditions of the fandom, but of course that would be happening.

I am deeply charmed by the Dadkoda trend. And I am super intrigued by the Zuko/Sokka.

I shall report back soon on my findings. LOL

[oracne]

Having never read any Avatar fic, I look forward to your findings.

[lunabee34]

I am having fun so far. I should be able to make my first short rec post soon.

[kitewithfish]

I think this might a generational thing because of how ATLA was first broadcast and when it was available online?

ATLA first aired on Nickelodeon in 2005-2008, which is a year before AO3 existed (2008 was the first beta), so I think a lot of the ATLA fic was on ff.net, and on now-defunct solo sites.

As of right now, AO3 has about 13k fic tagged with ATLA, but FF.net has 43K - and a lot of those are Katarra/Zuko (like, a lot). I played around with the filter settings on ff.net, and it looks like only about 1K of all their fics (with all pairings) are from the past year.

Then, before ATLA was on Netflix, it was only available on Amazon Prime, which way fewer people had, and which is a pain to navigate. I watched ATLA there in 2013, but only because another friend of mine was a big fan after getting into the fandom. And, frankly, Amazon Prime Video has a really stupid interface that is hard to interact with - and it was worse then. I don't think you'd find ATLA without looking for it, unlike the kind of high profile it's been given on Netflix. Still, I found an article from 2016 that said ATLA was the most popular show on Amazon Prime, but it's been off all forms of streaming site since 2017.

Also, I checked in with my friend, who got into the fandom about 5 years after it aired on Nickelodeon - there was massive anti-Zuko shipping sentiment while the show was running, because he was the antagonist for a lot of the early seasons and didn't get redeemed until the end.

In my personal theory, given the time frame, I think there was a thematic overflow of ire about Zuko from people who were in Harry Potter fandom and didn't like Draco Malfoy: the last season of ATLA came out just month after the last Harry Potter book was published, and in terms of marketing, both of these series were aimed at the same age brackets. So I suspect that there were a lot of people who came into ATLA from HP fandom, but the show gave Zuko the space and depth to have a real redemption arc, while Draco just sort of... joins a fascist group and gets away with a vague wizarding amnesty? So the overflow of disappointment about Draco's failure to either be redeemed or punished hit ATLA fandom and Zuko and made some of the shipping complicated.

[lunabee34]

Ooooh. That makes so much sense. Thanks for such a detailed explanation.

I totally see the Zuko/Draco comparison, and I can see how people who were pissed that Draco doesn't get a true redemption arc would be annoyed that Zuko does.

I can't imagine what it would be like going through the ship wars. I have managed to miss that in every fandom I've ever been near, and I'm so glad.