Loony fangirl ravings
Mar. 27th, 2007 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soc_puppetFeeling much better after I had a chance to rant about things here. With a little self-hypnosis, I'll probably even get through it pretty okay, but yeah, the rantage helped. Not that I'll stop you if you still want to pet me, of course.
Anyway, indulged in some fangirlish stuff today. The first of which is Avatar-related, because... well, because of various reasons, not the least of which being the show's creators saying she seems to be a character that the fandom is very divided on. So, uh, yeah, I'mma talk a little bit about Yue - mostly what I think her motivations might be, especially in regards to the first episode she appears in, as that's what I watched twice today ^^a I'll also be talking a little bit about Kanna (AKA, Gran Gran) and her timeline, because I'm still mildly obsessed with my very cracked-out theory. ...Yeah. Moving right along!
What I'm going to talk about first, I think, is that Yue is/was a non-combatant. This, I feel, was an integral part of her character. A good portion of this is probably due to the fact that she's part of the Northern Water Tribe, which is a lot more chauvinistic than is the Southern Water Tribe. As explained by Mike and Brian (I think on the audio commentary? Correct me if I'm wrong), the NWT's culture survived the war with Fire Nation better than SWT, and that was probably a fairly central part of their culture. *will have to double-check in the books - has been too embarrassed to really read into them as yet ^^a*
Another reason behind this is probably her status. Being 'princess', it's a lot less likely that her parents will be willing to put her through any sort of training, especially considering that they almost lost her as a child. If anything, that's bound to make them even more protective of her. Back to her being a princess; this makes her a huge political figurehead.
Yes, just a figurehead. She's very loyal to her tribe, and wants the best for them, and she's pretty sure at the moment that what's the best for them is in everything she's grown up learning, and what her father thinks is best for them, and all that sort of thing. She doesn't seem to have the desire to overthrow the anti-feminist sort of society that the NWT is. Even if she did, she doesn't seem to have the strength of character or conviction to do so. She is far more comfortable going along with what she's told/what's expected of her than she would be in rocking the boat. And that right there probably is one of the bigger reasons people don't seem to like her: because she has all this political power at the tips of her fingers, and yet does nothing with it. You can say it's because that's what she was taught, you can say that even with Katara providing a better example for her she hadn't had enough time to even process the idea of rebellion, but in the end, she still doesn't do anything with it. However, she does still have that power, and does still want the best for her people, and that is how her power is used in the end: in maintaining the status quo. With any luck, Katara's brief influence will have had some effect on the NWT, and they'll start loosening up a bit more, but it'll be slow going at best. At worst, they'll just write her off as a 'special exception', because she was the companion of the Avatar.
...That got a bit long-winded, didn't it. Anyway, to summarize Yue: non-combatant political figurehead and only child. (Face it, only children get a lot less slack from their parents than children with siblings.)
Moving on, the second reason people don't seem to like her: her relationship with Sokka.
Yue's little not-fling with Sokka firmly set the groundwork for Sokka's reputation as a lady's man in the series. Let's face it, the girls like him. He's charming, funny, and on an incredibly dangerous and likely suicidal (read: romantic) mission to save the world, not to mention easy on the eyes. It's not surprising that girls would be swooning left and right! However, Yue was only really the second really established character who expressed interest in him in the show, Suki being the first. Thus, Yue could quite easily be seen as competition for Suki, and disliked for that reason. (See also: just about every female potential love interest in any series with a prominant yaoi fandom - Kairi in Kingdom Hearts, Sakura in Naruto, etc. Suki, Yue and Toph end up on something of a lesser end of that, in that they're all competing in a het fandom, but you get the idea.)
Also of interest, and brought up by the lovely![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
msbbt in my recent weekend of awesomeosity, from most perspectives, Yue could be seen to be stringing Sokka along/toying with his feelings. It was primarily with this in mind that I sat down and re-watched episode 1x18 today - once all the way through, and once fast-forwarding through the Fire Nation bits ^^a Anyway, I came up with an approximate timeline for that episode:
Meeting A: Aang and co. enter the city; Sokka sees Yue for the first time.
Meeting B: Picnic/feast thing; Sokka and Yue flirt. Also Yue's birthday, where it is announced that she is of marrying age.
Meeting C: Day after Yue's birthday, probably around mid-morning? Yue and Sokka meet on the street/canal and arrange to meet later that night.
Meeting D: Yue-and-Sokka's Big Date-Like Thing (AKA, an Activity, at a Place, for some Time). Yue apologizes to Sokka, claiming she made a mistake, and basically dumps him.
Meeting E: Aftermath of Katara's showdown against Pakku. (Definitely a time/scene change; if you look at the audience, the people are distinctly different from the ones who just watched the fight.) Pakku talks about how he loved Kanna, and Katara comments that she didn't love him, which (I think) fits together with previously witnessed mention of Kanna running off.
Meeting F: Sokka catches up to Yue; Yue reveals that she is engaged to be married.
I would not be at all surprised if it turned out that Yue was reminded of her station/responsibility sometime between Meeting C and Meeting D. This could have been done for at least two reasons, if not more: she could have been engaged to what's-his-face for a long time before her sixteenth birthday, and her father, after seeing how she was acting around Sokka, saw it fit to remind her that she had a husband waiting (Alternately, but on the same vein, she could have seen/run into her fiancé after making plans with Sokka and been reminded that way); or, she could have had her engagement announced to her by her father between those two meeting times, at which point she would be reminded of her status and end up going into an emo spiral of how she never should have fallen for Sokka in the first place since it was obvious that her parents were going to arrange something for her.
These seem to be the most likely reasons for her running off on Sokka in Meeting D. The events that transpire in Meeting E likely gave her another reminder not only that she was engaged to someone else, someone she didn't love, but that she didn't have the strength of will to run away from it - so she ran away from the meeting instead, and I really don't think I have it in me to blame her for that.
So to summarize this bit: Yue meets Sokka, is charmed, is reminded that she's not supposed to fall in love, and tries to fix it in all the wrong ways.
Aaaand that completes my Yue speal for today. I'll probably get back to her again later for one reason or another, though. Next up, the Kanna stuff:
This is mostly more timelining/fact laying out for me, again because I'm just that obsessed with my little crack theory (scroll down to where I start talking about Iroh, yo ♥) (while I'm at it, check out what the lovelyphantom_kaito wrote for me based on said theory ♥♥♥ *is a crack merchant, apparently*).
*The Nick website lists Gran Gran's age as eighty.
*In episode 1x18, Pakku claims to have carved Katara's heirloom necklace "sixty years ago".
*In the same episode, Yugoda (teacher at the healer's hut) tells Katara that she knew Kanna when they were about Katara's age.
*Kanna ran off from the Northern Water Tribe to escape a marraige she didn't want.
*Marrying age in the NWT is sixteen years old.
Now, if we take all of these facts at face value, there's some nice little mathematical inconsistancies there - mostly being the fact that 74 =/= 80. So I'm going to go out on a limb and assume there was some rounding done by some of these characters. I'm going to assume that Yugoda did rounding when she told Katara about when she knew Kanna before I assume about Master Pakku. Given that fourteen isn't even a quarter of eighty, and that it's talking about ages, I can easily see that Yugoda could/would have meant "when we were in our teens" instead of "when we were both fourteen, give or take two years". Also, she did specifically say "about".
Pakku's quote was also specifically "sixty years ago", without an 'about' - or an 'over' or 'almost' - anywhere in sight. Given that he's talking about a broken heart here, and that it's clearly made a strong impression on him, I definitely wouldn't be surprised if it was three score that very year. However, I can also imagine that he might have exaggerated a touch, either under or over, because 'sixty' rolls off the tongue much better than, say, 'fifty-eight' or 'sixty-four' (the latter being the correct number should Kanna have run off when she was sixteen).
All this considered, I would not be at all surprised if Kanna was turning down suiters left and right for at the very least two years after reaching marrying age, if not a whole four years. This would have given her a certain danger of being an 'old maid' in the city, which was almost certainly frowned upon, but which is also something I doubt she would have cared about, either because she just didn't want to marry anyone she'd met yet, or because she'd met someone she wanted to marry, but was unable to at the time. Or possibly she just didn't want to get married, and her priorities changed after she left. Who knows. Gran Gran's a cool character like that :3
...Also, if she were twenty, it would be a lot easier for me to get away with making Iroh, say, seventy-two in the current year, and then feel unsquicked by him being twelve when she ran off. But that might just be because I just read Dear Mine last night - which is absolutely hilarious and adorable, by the way - and my perception is somewhat skewed. That happens sometimes when I read too much shoujo.
((More Avatar timelining by yours truly, if you are at all interested, can be found here.))
And that concludes that part of the fangirling. ...Dang, this post is getting long. And I seem to have been working on it for a while. Adding the obligatory hour to LJ's as-yet-un-DST'd starting time, it's been almost two hours. So, uh, I think I may brevify my remaining fangirling.
Long story shorttoo late!, while reading a certain shoujo manga last night (yes, the one mentioned at the end of the Kanna stuff), I found out that the meaning of (that particular spelling of?) Kurogane is iron. Which, uh, even if it's just phonetically, and T:RC's Kurogane has different kanji and stuff, is still kinda crack-addled, especially with DelRay translation speculation on Fai's name being derived from the Fair Folk (Faeries, fairys, etc (and that's another whole joke in itself, man =_=)). 'Cuz yeah, there was little as deadly or as poisonous to the fae folk as iron; it's why horse shoes are a good luck charm - they helped keep the little tricksy things outta house and home and thus from doing too much damage. And yeah. My mind? Gone. (Also, consider certain events, and start me wondering on the iron percentage in hemoglobin, and now I'm worried about whether this thing'll end up doing permanant damage o_O)
...And then all the CLAMP thinking made me remember that hey, Watanuki's (and Sakura's, and Sakura-hime's, and Fujitaka-no-Syaoran's) birthday is coming up! Which ended with me deciding to draw something for it, so. Uh. Expect Holic art on the first, I guess, maybe?
Edit: ...What I kinda meant by that "iron = poyzen, omg DD:" bit up there is that it cancels out their magic (too?). Yeah. Bad shit for fae-types.
Anyway, indulged in some fangirlish stuff today. The first of which is Avatar-related, because... well, because of various reasons, not the least of which being the show's creators saying she seems to be a character that the fandom is very divided on. So, uh, yeah, I'mma talk a little bit about Yue - mostly what I think her motivations might be, especially in regards to the first episode she appears in, as that's what I watched twice today ^^a I'll also be talking a little bit about Kanna (AKA, Gran Gran) and her timeline, because I'm still mildly obsessed with my very cracked-out theory. ...Yeah. Moving right along!
What I'm going to talk about first, I think, is that Yue is/was a non-combatant. This, I feel, was an integral part of her character. A good portion of this is probably due to the fact that she's part of the Northern Water Tribe, which is a lot more chauvinistic than is the Southern Water Tribe. As explained by Mike and Brian (I think on the audio commentary? Correct me if I'm wrong), the NWT's culture survived the war with Fire Nation better than SWT, and that was probably a fairly central part of their culture. *will have to double-check in the books - has been too embarrassed to really read into them as yet ^^a*
Another reason behind this is probably her status. Being 'princess', it's a lot less likely that her parents will be willing to put her through any sort of training, especially considering that they almost lost her as a child. If anything, that's bound to make them even more protective of her. Back to her being a princess; this makes her a huge political figurehead.
Yes, just a figurehead. She's very loyal to her tribe, and wants the best for them, and she's pretty sure at the moment that what's the best for them is in everything she's grown up learning, and what her father thinks is best for them, and all that sort of thing. She doesn't seem to have the desire to overthrow the anti-feminist sort of society that the NWT is. Even if she did, she doesn't seem to have the strength of character or conviction to do so. She is far more comfortable going along with what she's told/what's expected of her than she would be in rocking the boat. And that right there probably is one of the bigger reasons people don't seem to like her: because she has all this political power at the tips of her fingers, and yet does nothing with it. You can say it's because that's what she was taught, you can say that even with Katara providing a better example for her she hadn't had enough time to even process the idea of rebellion, but in the end, she still doesn't do anything with it. However, she does still have that power, and does still want the best for her people, and that is how her power is used in the end: in maintaining the status quo. With any luck, Katara's brief influence will have had some effect on the NWT, and they'll start loosening up a bit more, but it'll be slow going at best. At worst, they'll just write her off as a 'special exception', because she was the companion of the Avatar.
...That got a bit long-winded, didn't it. Anyway, to summarize Yue: non-combatant political figurehead and only child. (Face it, only children get a lot less slack from their parents than children with siblings.)
Moving on, the second reason people don't seem to like her: her relationship with Sokka.
Yue's little not-fling with Sokka firmly set the groundwork for Sokka's reputation as a lady's man in the series. Let's face it, the girls like him. He's charming, funny, and on an incredibly dangerous and likely suicidal (read: romantic) mission to save the world, not to mention easy on the eyes. It's not surprising that girls would be swooning left and right! However, Yue was only really the second really established character who expressed interest in him in the show, Suki being the first. Thus, Yue could quite easily be seen as competition for Suki, and disliked for that reason. (See also: just about every female potential love interest in any series with a prominant yaoi fandom - Kairi in Kingdom Hearts, Sakura in Naruto, etc. Suki, Yue and Toph end up on something of a lesser end of that, in that they're all competing in a het fandom, but you get the idea.)
Also of interest, and brought up by the lovely
msbbt in my recent weekend of awesomeosity, from most perspectives, Yue could be seen to be stringing Sokka along/toying with his feelings. It was primarily with this in mind that I sat down and re-watched episode 1x18 today - once all the way through, and once fast-forwarding through the Fire Nation bits ^^a Anyway, I came up with an approximate timeline for that episode:Meeting A: Aang and co. enter the city; Sokka sees Yue for the first time.
Meeting B: Picnic/feast thing; Sokka and Yue flirt. Also Yue's birthday, where it is announced that she is of marrying age.
Meeting C: Day after Yue's birthday, probably around mid-morning? Yue and Sokka meet on the street/canal and arrange to meet later that night.
Meeting D: Yue-and-Sokka's Big Date-Like Thing (AKA, an Activity, at a Place, for some Time). Yue apologizes to Sokka, claiming she made a mistake, and basically dumps him.
Meeting E: Aftermath of Katara's showdown against Pakku. (Definitely a time/scene change; if you look at the audience, the people are distinctly different from the ones who just watched the fight.) Pakku talks about how he loved Kanna, and Katara comments that she didn't love him, which (I think) fits together with previously witnessed mention of Kanna running off.
Meeting F: Sokka catches up to Yue; Yue reveals that she is engaged to be married.
I would not be at all surprised if it turned out that Yue was reminded of her station/responsibility sometime between Meeting C and Meeting D. This could have been done for at least two reasons, if not more: she could have been engaged to what's-his-face for a long time before her sixteenth birthday, and her father, after seeing how she was acting around Sokka, saw it fit to remind her that she had a husband waiting (Alternately, but on the same vein, she could have seen/run into her fiancé after making plans with Sokka and been reminded that way); or, she could have had her engagement announced to her by her father between those two meeting times, at which point she would be reminded of her status and end up going into an emo spiral of how she never should have fallen for Sokka in the first place since it was obvious that her parents were going to arrange something for her.
These seem to be the most likely reasons for her running off on Sokka in Meeting D. The events that transpire in Meeting E likely gave her another reminder not only that she was engaged to someone else, someone she didn't love, but that she didn't have the strength of will to run away from it - so she ran away from the meeting instead, and I really don't think I have it in me to blame her for that.
So to summarize this bit: Yue meets Sokka, is charmed, is reminded that she's not supposed to fall in love, and tries to fix it in all the wrong ways.
Aaaand that completes my Yue speal for today. I'll probably get back to her again later for one reason or another, though. Next up, the Kanna stuff:
This is mostly more timelining/fact laying out for me, again because I'm just that obsessed with my little crack theory (scroll down to where I start talking about Iroh, yo ♥) (while I'm at it, check out what the lovely
phantom_kaito wrote for me based on said theory ♥♥♥ *is a crack merchant, apparently*).*The Nick website lists Gran Gran's age as eighty.
*In episode 1x18, Pakku claims to have carved Katara's heirloom necklace "sixty years ago".
*In the same episode, Yugoda (teacher at the healer's hut) tells Katara that she knew Kanna when they were about Katara's age.
*Kanna ran off from the Northern Water Tribe to escape a marraige she didn't want.
*Marrying age in the NWT is sixteen years old.
Now, if we take all of these facts at face value, there's some nice little mathematical inconsistancies there - mostly being the fact that 74 =/= 80. So I'm going to go out on a limb and assume there was some rounding done by some of these characters. I'm going to assume that Yugoda did rounding when she told Katara about when she knew Kanna before I assume about Master Pakku. Given that fourteen isn't even a quarter of eighty, and that it's talking about ages, I can easily see that Yugoda could/would have meant "when we were in our teens" instead of "when we were both fourteen, give or take two years". Also, she did specifically say "about".
Pakku's quote was also specifically "sixty years ago", without an 'about' - or an 'over' or 'almost' - anywhere in sight. Given that he's talking about a broken heart here, and that it's clearly made a strong impression on him, I definitely wouldn't be surprised if it was three score that very year. However, I can also imagine that he might have exaggerated a touch, either under or over, because 'sixty' rolls off the tongue much better than, say, 'fifty-eight' or 'sixty-four' (the latter being the correct number should Kanna have run off when she was sixteen).
All this considered, I would not be at all surprised if Kanna was turning down suiters left and right for at the very least two years after reaching marrying age, if not a whole four years. This would have given her a certain danger of being an 'old maid' in the city, which was almost certainly frowned upon, but which is also something I doubt she would have cared about, either because she just didn't want to marry anyone she'd met yet, or because she'd met someone she wanted to marry, but was unable to at the time. Or possibly she just didn't want to get married, and her priorities changed after she left. Who knows. Gran Gran's a cool character like that :3
...Also, if she were twenty, it would be a lot easier for me to get away with making Iroh, say, seventy-two in the current year, and then feel unsquicked by him being twelve when she ran off. But that might just be because I just read Dear Mine last night - which is absolutely hilarious and adorable, by the way - and my perception is somewhat skewed. That happens sometimes when I read too much shoujo.
((More Avatar timelining by yours truly, if you are at all interested, can be found here.))
And that concludes that part of the fangirling. ...Dang, this post is getting long. And I seem to have been working on it for a while. Adding the obligatory hour to LJ's as-yet-un-DST'd starting time, it's been almost two hours. So, uh, I think I may brevify my remaining fangirling.
Long story short
...And then all the CLAMP thinking made me remember that hey, Watanuki's (and Sakura's, and Sakura-hime's, and Fujitaka-no-Syaoran's) birthday is coming up! Which ended with me deciding to draw something for it, so. Uh. Expect Holic art on the first, I guess, maybe?
Edit: ...What I kinda meant by that "iron = poyzen, omg DD:" bit up there is that it cancels out their magic (too?). Yeah. Bad shit for fae-types.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 02:50 am (UTC)If you're interested, there's an Avatar fic on fanfiction.net called "The Engagement Necklace" which is about Kanna and how she ran away from the NWT. She does meet up with Iroh in that fic, and though it doesn't actually 'ship them, it's implied that something might happen. It's pretty good.
As for the Yue debate, it's very possible that even if her marriage was arranged a long time ago, her parents may have not told her about it until her birthday, deeming that the proper time to let her know. I'm on the fence about her character. At first she seemed too emo, but then she redeemed herself (IMHO) when she made the decision in the end to save the moon spirit and her people.
Okay, I'm done now. :D
no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 02:57 am (UTC)Oooo, sounds shiny :3 I'll have to look into it. ...Er, when I have more than eight minutes of time on the internet, that is.
Very true, that. I'm pretty sure I like Yue, but I don't know that I neccessarily love her; I just have this thing about people disliking characters, I guess. Call it insecurities left over from early fandom days ^^a
no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 03:00 am (UTC):DDD
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Date: 2007-03-28 05:07 am (UTC)Where to start though?
no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 06:25 pm (UTC)If you mean "where do I find it", all the episodes for the first season are out, and it goes pretty reasonably; individual DVDs are about $12 or $13 USD, and the box set (five 'episode' DVDs (I think? Twenty episodes, at any rate) and one DVD for extras) is about $50 most places. The second season DVDs, of which only one is out at the moment, went up in price a little where I am to $15 USD, but they also had five episodes instead of four, so I could live with it. If you're short on cash, there's also this place. Er.
If you mean "at which episode," it starts to really pick up around episode thirteen, but it's good to watch at least a few before that to get the hang of characters and so forth.
Anyway, go forth and aquaint yourself!
no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 06:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 11:27 pm (UTC)But thank you, and I shall!
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Date: 2007-03-29 12:46 am (UTC)Hope you enjoy :Db
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Date: 2007-03-29 10:58 pm (UTC)As for the CLAMP stuff, that's really interesting. I never thought about that. (Of course, I also didn't know that stuff about fairies and iron.) I wonder if that was on purpose, or just some freaky coincidence. o_o
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Date: 2007-03-30 06:44 pm (UTC)The fairies and iron thing is so true, and it would not surprise me in the least if CLAMP had found that out and planted it. Because CLAMP is freaky like that.
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Date: 2007-03-31 01:02 am (UTC)Yeah, CLAMP does like to throw in all sorts of crazy little things, and now that I think on it more, there's almost no way it's just a coincidence.
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Date: 2007-03-31 06:14 pm (UTC)CLAMP is batshit awesome like that.
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Date: 2007-04-01 09:18 pm (UTC)o CLAMP. XD
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Date: 2007-04-01 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 09:56 pm (UTC)