Sudden pre-sleep Avatar finale thought

[snarp]

Originally published at I Am Completely Serious. You can comment here or there.

Hey, wait a second. Vague spoilers:

Do Aang and Katara have, like, a single one-on-one conversation in the finale? They spend the whole thing on like opposite sides of the planet! I don’t think Katara talked to Aang outside of the group-scolding sessions!

Yeah, I don’t think the Zuko/Katara shippers have too much to complain about here.

Comments

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

I think if I felt at all convinced by or invested in Aang and Katara as a romantic pairing, I would feel gypped by that, on-screen mutual smooching or no.

Come to think of it, it's a shame none of their actual conversation time was spent on the non-romantic bits of their relationship--the faith, the support, the teaching, the inspiration. I suppose this does not bother me much because a lot of that forms the undercurrent of the crush, and therefore is covered indirectly, and friendships and mentorships don't necessarily need a dramatic finale when you have every reason to believe the participants are going to remain major parts of each other's lives in the future. Zuko and Iroh really needed that onscreen conversation (and that Zuko-Toph conversation back in Ember Island Players) to be satisfying, specially as Iroh's just now patting Zuko on the shoulder and saying, "Go on, now, I'm done teaching you." But the teaching thing and the friendship thing with Aang and Katara has already received its due, so the lack of addressing it here--in favor of making their screentime all about romance--doesn't feel like a gaping absence to me even as a viewer who doesn't care much about the romance.

[snarp]

Yeah, I actually don't feel it was emotionally necessary that that relationship get a lot of screen-time - Aang and Katara are pretty clearly joined at the hip, whether their relationship's romantic or not. (And I still don't buy that. Aang's too twelve-years-old.) It doesn't really need the extra emphasis. Presumably that's why it took 24 hours for this to occur to me - it doesn't stick out as something wrong, the way the Ursa Gap does.

It just struck me as an odd decision, I guess.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

Hee, yeah. Aang's grown up a bit over the series, and improved a lot on the stepping-up-to-responsibility front, but he's still a young kid. A really young kid. And Katara, despite her flaws, comes across as much older than him, to the point where romance between them at this point simply does not fly for me, independent of other romantic possibilities.

Joined at the hip, yeah. There's a bond between them that is deep and enduring and so much in the forefront of the show that it doesn't demand extra attention for dramatic catharsis. It would if they'd been neglecting it--that's a common complaint in other shows, neglecting core emotional relationships as the writers lose focus--but they've always given it its due. It's one of the things I think I've really enjoyed about Avatar, how they've always remembered to pay attention to the deep emotional structures, both the reciprocal relationships and the unbalanced ones. (ex. Reciprocal: Zuko and Iroh. Unbalanced: Zuko and Ozai. I don't know where Zuko and Aang are on that scale--sliding along, perhaps?--but that's another really important one that went back to as many times as was needed to complete the arc.) And now I'm just babbling.