AtLA: The Promise - part 3
Sep. 28th, 2012 07:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizbeeIs not yet released in Australia (which is weird, since the first two came out bang on time), but there are scans here. And I'm in the minority, though with rather good company, since I agree with Racebending that that was pretty great. In fact, their review is pretty much my thoughts all over, especially their framing of the Gaang as former child soldiers. It covers pretty heavy ground for a comic aimed at children and skewed slightly younger than the series itself, and does it quite well. Naturally, therefore, fandom hates it and is calling for Gene Luen Yang to be fired/assaulted/etc.
(Tumblr, man.)
At some stage I'm probably going to snap and write meta explaining why Mai/Zuko shippers should stop being so fucking entitled and consider Mai's relevance to either the plot or this phase of Zuko's character arc, which is: NOT MUCH. Adolescents who are dealing with a legacy of child abuse don't make good love interests because they're still trying to make sense of the dysfunction in their earliest significant relationships, which is with their parents. Zuko's relationship to Mai is secondary to that, and should stay that way until he's healthier. TL;DR she's right to leave, right to stay away (for her own sake), and is pretty much irrelevant to the plot after that.
(If it was a story about Zuko alone, without the overall political stuff, I'd expect more Mai. But calling for her to be in it and get back together with Zuko right at the end of the comic strikes me as misunderstanding the nature of Zuko's issues and also what healthy relationships look like. No, getting back together with Mai won't help Zuko get better, and it's unreasonable to put that burden on her.)
Anyway, I'm either going to write that, OR I'm going to stop reading shipper tags on Tumblr.
Have reservations re Azula, though;terajk more or less sums up my feelings in general about disability in AtLA and Azula in particular.
(Tumblr, man.)
At some stage I'm probably going to snap and write meta explaining why Mai/Zuko shippers should stop being so fucking entitled and consider Mai's relevance to either the plot or this phase of Zuko's character arc, which is: NOT MUCH. Adolescents who are dealing with a legacy of child abuse don't make good love interests because they're still trying to make sense of the dysfunction in their earliest significant relationships, which is with their parents. Zuko's relationship to Mai is secondary to that, and should stay that way until he's healthier. TL;DR she's right to leave, right to stay away (for her own sake), and is pretty much irrelevant to the plot after that.
(If it was a story about Zuko alone, without the overall political stuff, I'd expect more Mai. But calling for her to be in it and get back together with Zuko right at the end of the comic strikes me as misunderstanding the nature of Zuko's issues and also what healthy relationships look like. No, getting back together with Mai won't help Zuko get better, and it's unreasonable to put that burden on her.)
Anyway, I'm either going to write that, OR I'm going to stop reading shipper tags on Tumblr.
Have reservations re Azula, though;
terajk more or less sums up my feelings in general about disability in AtLA and Azula in particular.
