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Post by mrspettyfer on Nov 13, 2012 3:13:28 GMT -6
Did anyone else get really annoyed by this? I know it was supposed to be romantic, but I thought it was the dumbest move in the world. Aang, as the Avatar, NEEDS the Avatar State more than Katara at the end of the day. Katara isn't going to save the world, but the AS could--and does, actually.
I had huge problems with the fact that Aang always seemed to put Katara first. As the Avatar, I think it's important to put the world first, and I was never convinced he'd do that. He didn't seem as balanced within himself when he's with her. Like the weight would always shift more to her. [That's one thing I like about Korra, how she's willing to put her duties first over personal relationships, like she did in EP7.]
Agree. Even Dante Basco has said time and time again that he thought Zuko and Katara were going to end up together. I don't think it was intentional either, but there was something there. Whether it be their chemistry, parallels, shared experiences, past, or what. It's something and that's why there are so many people who support the ship.
I just can't for the life of me like Kataang. Not even a little. I wasn't convinced with the writing of it--Katara basically had no say and no opinion. Her feelings were never fully addressed. I didn't like the way they both enabled less appealing traits in one another. I also had a very, very hard time seeing them as romantic couple. I mean Katara compares him to Momo for crying out loud. Calls him a "sweet little guy like Momo." lmao Not exactly romantic vibes.
Now a Kataanger might argue she made that comment in season one, which is true, but I didn't feel like she treated him any different in season three. :/ Even after he kisses her before the eclipse she still treats him like a younger brother.
I think, at least for me, it's easier to transition from enemies to lovers versus siblings to lovers. Aang and Katara, from the start, gave me family vibes. I just struggle seeing the transition from that. Same reason I could never get into Harry/Hermione. I'm probably not making sense but oh well, lol.
I wanted to root for Kataang. It was forced down our throats enough. But Katara and Zuko just had so much chemistry and potential..
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Post by dynamojacks on Nov 13, 2012 6:05:46 GMT -6
Even after he kisses her before the eclipse she still treats him like a younger brother. Now this. I'd like to make a point of this. Folk usually draw attention to the 'You're not the goofy little kid in the iceberg' (argh paraphrase) remark as evidence 'that he'd grown enough' in Katara's eyes to be a romantic partner rather than 'sweet little guy like Momo'... ... but the bit -I- heard, is the bit where she says 'I guess you could say I'm proud of you' straight afterwards. What does that say to you? It's like the way my MOTHER talks to me. At moments of 'truth' as it were, she likes to let her kids know she's proud of them. So it was just like that for me. The kiss really surprised me when it happened, just.. okay? Again, I barely thought of it as romance as much as 'this is Aang's crush showing all over the place'. Okay I get it. If they were communicating that Katara was unsure because she was worried for his safety (or something), you know.. they weren't very clear on that. At all. Instead they wait until EIP to even go INTO this, but by the time they have, they're already trolling the audience with something else- Zutara in the EIP play, oh and the fact that Katara didn't openly deny what the play was saying. She just said 'I didn't say that, an actor did'. Dodging the issue much, Katara? The more I think about it, the more the 'Bryke trolling' theory makes sense. I think there were some serious misdirection tactics at work here.. There are so many conflicting elements throughout the whole series that it.. just seems to make sense. I think they even said Kataang/Zutara was fifty-fifty at one point, but I can't get a source for that. They DID say something interesting on the DVD commentary though, right around the moment Aang kissed her at the invasion. Something to the effect of 'we don't know', while referencing both K/Z. That DOES seem to back that one up. (It's almost like they were erasing Mai from the picture altogether.. just how I felt from here and the BR onwards! Completely forgot about her!) Now THAT DANTE BASCO THING. From what I know about voice acting, sometimes you're not given the context of the whole thing (i.e the whole script) when you're doing your character. You're focused entirely on delivering your character and giving it life. Yet from his interactions with Katara and Mai's characters respectively.. he thought that, from his character's standpoint, he was going to end up with Katara's. Innnteresting. (cookie if that made sense, I gotta go now)
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Post by pugletto on Nov 13, 2012 11:51:21 GMT -6
What gets me, in particular, is how incredibly overpowered the Kataang storyline was in Book Three - not by Zutara, but just..by Zuko.
I mean when you consider how often they kept their main romances in the background, you would assume some resolution would've come of the third season in-between the main plots. Some people would argue that it did, in EIP and TSR, but I just really can not accept that for the fact that we'd gotten so much of Zuko in the end, the whole Kataang bit was really just grating on my nerves at that point.
It was poorly timed and poorly executed and if they would've given me more to hang on to at the end, I probably would've been okay with the last five minutes of the series. People putting on their rose-colored shipping goggles seemed to think it was absolutely perfect, and it wasn't.
On that note, I really don't think Zutara would've worked at all in canon for the same reasons Kataang did not work in canon with me. The idea of this ~blossoming romance~ in a time of war is such a silly notion to consider if it brings no real value to the storyline. Kataang did its part in CoD. That was an arc of development that ended and was not addressed until eons later - at which point, I was already exhausted by it. If Zutara was a point of interest for anyone working on the series, it would've had to have been addressed between the time it took to get Zuko completely accepted within the group, and we all know how rushed that was to begin with.
I've got a lot of storytelling rage when it come to the pacing of book three, in general... But augh, man. It's not that I don't like Kataang, it's that they didn't work hard enough to convince me it was worth all the fanfare at the end.
(But then nobody sees it that way. "You ship Zutara. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.")
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Post by pugletto on Nov 13, 2012 13:59:16 GMT -6
No, instead the only time we saw Katara showing some actual 'romantic' feelings was when we saw her with Haru, Jet and even Zuko. With Aang, they were trying too hard to show his character development, so poor Katara just ends up looking like his mother.I'm going to disagree with this, in particular. I mean I want to know in what dimension Katara had ever shown romantic feelings toward Zuko? This is something we need to just... not even gloss over. Because it wasn't there, and you know why? Because Bryke spent 1/3 of this show (Book Three) telling us that Katara didn't like Zuko.Bryke wasted their energy trying to convince us that Zutara was never going to happen.[/b] They made this incredibly asinine decision that instead of developing Kataang more in the end, they were going to disprove the other end of the spectrum with commentary, subtleties (EIP, anyone? No? How about Sozin's Comet Pt 2, with Jun?) and overall poor-pacing. Bryke made sure they had no ~romantic~ interaction. Believe me. It shows. I honestly wished they would've wasted less time trying to convince me to let go of Zutara and more time convincing me, again, that Kataang was worth all the fanfare. dfgsdlkgnrilgndfsksdkgnfd
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Post by mrspettyfer on Nov 13, 2012 14:21:28 GMT -6
Exactly! I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought the same thing. That line really did make it sound like a mother talking to her son. The kiss took me completely by surprise as well, especially considering the last interaction was with Katara not only being confused, but also not denying anything the actress said. If I was Aang, that would concern me.
Yeah, I mean he could have been like us and seen the direction of the story and thought Katara and Zuko would end up together. I did, at least. After the season two finale I was almost sure Zuko would join the group in S3 and he and Katara would fall for eachother. Jokes on me, I guess lol.
I think it could have happened if Zuko had joined the group earlier. Either when Katara offers Zuko help after Iroh takes Azula's lightning, or if Zuko had joined in the S2 finale. But by the time he joins in S3, it was definitely too late.
Very much agree. And you know, I don't think Aang should have had a love interest at all. For me he was just too young to take seriously--and they treated Kataang serioiusly. That was one of the biggest problems for me. You have Aang who is borderline obsessed with Katara, so convinced she's his forever girl. That was so unappealing to me. Had they made it a small crush, like Toph with Sokka, I think it would have been better. I wanted Aang to be more focused on saving the world and learning the elements rather than getting Katara to notice him.
I think it could have been done more smoothly. In fact, it should have been easy as cake. Creating a romance with two characters who are constantly together? How can you mess that up? lol The problem was that there was just no interest on Katara's part. So by the end it just comes across as unconvincing and forced.
I personally think the only boy Katara really showed romantic interest in was Jet. There was chemistry between her and Zuko, but I don't think she showed romantic interest.
Lmao we need a new topic for that cup of bad tea.
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Post by pugletto on Nov 13, 2012 14:31:44 GMT -6
The only time Katara ever blushes is when Jun teases them in Sozin's Comet Pt 2, and no, that wasn't a romantic implication.
There's like, zero things left up to interpretation because they legit made it that way. The characters had chemistry, but it wasn't romantic chemistry. At all. Ever.
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Post by dynamojacks on Nov 13, 2012 14:36:42 GMT -6
Hope I got this right lol. What I meant to say was that Dante was probably blind to Bryke's story tactics/intentions and thus, only focused on the character. All things considered, the context of the scenes he had to deliver (the uh, romance between him and Mai and the bonding between him and Katara), he felt that his character was geared towards pursueing Katara. And considering how INTO his character he was, dayum- I'd say he knows Zuko best. Bryke's got loads of characters to deal with, whereas Dante was very much invested in one and one alone. So I'd say he knew him inside and out. Yes we need a thread for that other thing *hint hint* pugletto, I think we know that D8 Keywords here: what you see is not the same as two people who have absolutely no romantic feelings for each other at all.
what you see Whether or not Bryke INTENDED it that way isn't the issue here. The fact is it could well have looked that way, and it can be interpreted if you forget everything you know about the commentaries etc. because that's hindsight bias. Think as though you're watching it for the first time and were really convinced that it's gonna happen. I mean, that sheer embarrassment reaction was a LITTLE much considering they never reacted in such a way before.
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Post by pugletto on Nov 13, 2012 15:06:12 GMT -6
pugletto, I think we know that D8 Keywords here: what you see is not the same as two people who have absolutely no romantic feelings for each other at all.
what you see Whether or not Bryke INTENDED it that way isn't the issue here. The fact is it could well have looked that way, and it can be interpreted if you forget everything you know about the commentaries etc. because that's hindsight bias. Think as though you're watching it for the first time and were really convinced that it's gonna happen. pugletto, you say there are zero things left up to interpretation, but that doesn't explain why so many people were intrigued by Zuko/Katara and really thought it was going to happen. I don't generally go out of my way to like couples that aren't canon. I definitely saw something between them, and I knew while watching the show that Aang/Katara and Zuko/Mai was endgame. How can you explain that if there was literally nothing up for interpretation? As I have already said in this thread, I don't really care what writers or anyone else says. I'm intelligent enough to come to my own conclusions about things, and they did a poor job of convincing me that Zutara couldn't happen or that Kataang and Maiko were the only couples that could work in the show. There isn't anything to interpret in the context of the show. Interpretation implies you're using an analytical lens to give insight into something that is open to any other possibility there may be. It's just the fact of the matter is that there was nothing open to interpret. What we saw is what we got. Not believing what is right in front of you is like... you're ignoring something in favor of your own shipping bias. There's nothing subtle about the relationship because we know what subtlety is in this show. It's Katara blushing, it's Aang blushing - it's little quips and quirks that children are going to be able to identify because this show was made for a target audience of boys, ages what... twelve to fourteen? There was nothing in canon that has ever been consistent with Katara showing romantic interest in Zuko.There is chemistry between the characters. It's not romantic. You can make whatever deductions you want, but the potential for something and there actually being something are two different concepts. Given how late Zuko was thrown into the game and how many characters we needed to endear him to in the process, there was absolutely no way, no how, Zutara would have ever happened in the timeline. I honestly believe that is true - without the commentary and the shipping goggles. The potential has always been there, though. Their character arcs were very carefully constructed to not only reflect one another, but to compliment Aang's development as a character, as well. I think that if they chose to go that route - to make Zutara a thing within a reasonable timeline - then yes. It would have worked. It would worked far better. I never got my hopes up, though. That would have been a very surprising move on their part. As it stands. No. I can ship post-canon Zutara, but I can not see it presented in canon. Not just because of the commentary, but because I can't make the same deductions without feeling like I'm doing everything the wrong way.
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Post by pugletto on Nov 13, 2012 15:24:47 GMT -6
I guess I'm not as hardcore as I thought I was, then. I mean damn.
I'm out.
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chromeknickers
Bender
I'm somewhere where I don't know where I am!
Posts: 216
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Post by chromeknickers on Nov 13, 2012 15:36:55 GMT -6
I think everyone needs to listen to Korra: Yes, there was no romantic chemistry between Zuko and Katara, but there was chemistry. No one is disputing this. The hackles are being raised on the points of interpretation and intention. The intention of the show was Kataang. The interpretation is meant to be Kataang. But let's not forget opinion. Everyone has their own. My opinion, for example, is that Zuko and Katara's chemistry built up through the three seasons, and the friendship they form, has the potential for a romantic relationship. That is my interpretation of their perceived chemistry. It's my opinion. While some may support post-canon romantic potential between Zuko and Katara, others support canon romance simply because they see the perceived potential. From there, they manipulate that potential and create a story (non-canon, obviously). In the end we're all just expressing our opinions; the key is to respect each other's. P.S. No offence meant to anyone here by the use of the Korra icon. I just find it hilarious.
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