Seeing Zuko FINALLY getting his head straightened out makes all the angst of the last two seasons worth it, eh?
Yes, Sokka's picking up swordplay so quickly was a bit much, although that seemed to take place over more than a single day, but I can sort of handwave it away as he's already had a lot of training in different weapons so it's not like he's coming from a completely cold start. And once again, more teasing hints about the White Lotus Society, whee!
I did have mixed feelings about "The Beach" -- I liked seeing hints of a more human side to Azula, and seeing that there is at least ONE area of her life where she isn't scarily precocious and beyond competent (and per the AU talk my fanon has been that she's a little backwards emotionally, so that really works); and so much love for seeing that Ty Lee does have a brain beyond that ditzy-cheerleader act, and a chance to see Azula and the Dangerous Ladies interacting a bit more as friends and less as mistress-and-servants. (Not that any of them ever forget just who has the highest status here...but there is still something of a more intimate bond there, they can get away with more familiarity than anyone else.) That last big emo-confessional scene around the fire was a bit overdone, but all in all I still liked that episode a lot.
I don't mind the Zuko/Mai thing the way you do, but in my mind the way it's shown here is like Kataang less inspiring to my imagination for just the same reasons; they're too much alike, it's a little too easy. (Now, back when he was a fugitive and her primary loyalty seemed to be to his sister, that was another story; that was pushing all my "we shouldn't trust each other, we shouldn't be doing this" enemy-ship buttons. Now? Too fluffy. Although if he's going to be siding with the Gaang now and Mai still remains Azula's loyal sidekick, this could change.
Also, the hair thing? If you look back over the previous seasons they've actually wobbled back and forth between black and black/brown quite a lot, it's not just a contrast-with-Mai's-shiny-hair thing. It's been consistently inconsistent enough, heh, that I tend to view it as his hair is genuinely black-brown, the sort of shade my mother or a lot of folks I knew growing up in Hawai'i had, where it *looks* black in a lot of lighting conditions but at other times the light will be just right to reveal that it's actually a very dark brown.
I wanted to point out how much I loved two strong, independent women having difficulties with each other that are completely unrelated to a man. It was just their personalities and issues bouncing off each other
YES YES YES YES YES! I *loved* that, have loved that occasional clashing with Toph from the beginning. I've seen a lot of other folks like oyceter who were bothered that the two primary girl characters were fighting, but personally I *liked* that they did not go for the easy route of "now we have two girls so let's make them bestest friends". Because that just wouldn't be true to the characters: Katara can be a controlling, mother-hen bossy sort, and Toph can be very abrasive and rebellious, and you'd EXPECT those personalities to not always mesh smoothly, and just "we're both girls" is not enough in common to smooth that over. And having their conflicts, as you put it, grow naturally out of their personalities instead of the usual depressing fighting-over-boys was very, very refreshing. (The Dangerous Ladies work in a slightly similar way for me -- they bicker a little bit, but they're still obviously friends, and the bickering is again over basic personality differences, not boys. SO COOL. They all have lives and identities other than being defined in terms of their romantic interests!)
And the bloodbending is something people were speculating about in meta long before the creators started dropping hints about it, so it was particularly cool to see it finally shown, and so very creepily!
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Seeing Zuko FINALLY getting his head straightened out makes all the angst of the last two seasons worth it, eh?
Yes, Sokka's picking up swordplay so quickly was a bit much, although that seemed to take place over more than a single day, but I can sort of handwave it away as he's already had a lot of training in different weapons so it's not like he's coming from a completely cold start. And once again, more teasing hints about the White Lotus Society, whee!
I did have mixed feelings about "The Beach" -- I liked seeing hints of a more human side to Azula, and seeing that there is at least ONE area of her life where she isn't scarily precocious and beyond competent (and per the AU talk my fanon has been that she's a little backwards emotionally, so that really works); and so much love for seeing that Ty Lee does have a brain beyond that ditzy-cheerleader act, and a chance to see Azula and the Dangerous Ladies interacting a bit more as friends and less as mistress-and-servants. (Not that any of them ever forget just who has the highest status here...but there is still something of a more intimate bond there, they can get away with more familiarity than anyone else.) That last big emo-confessional scene around the fire was a bit overdone, but all in all I still liked that episode a lot.
I don't mind the Zuko/Mai thing the way you do, but in my mind the way it's shown here is like Kataang less inspiring to my imagination for just the same reasons; they're too much alike, it's a little too easy. (Now, back when he was a fugitive and her primary loyalty seemed to be to his sister, that was another story; that was pushing all my "we shouldn't trust each other, we shouldn't be doing this" enemy-ship buttons. Now? Too fluffy. Although if he's going to be siding with the Gaang now and Mai still remains Azula's loyal sidekick, this could change.
Also, the hair thing? If you look back over the previous seasons they've actually wobbled back and forth between black and black/brown quite a lot, it's not just a contrast-with-Mai's-shiny-hair thing. It's been consistently inconsistent enough, heh, that I tend to view it as his hair is genuinely black-brown, the sort of shade my mother or a lot of folks I knew growing up in Hawai'i had, where it *looks* black in a lot of lighting conditions but at other times the light will be just right to reveal that it's actually a very dark brown.
I wanted to point out how much I loved two strong, independent women having difficulties with each other that are completely unrelated to a man. It was just their personalities and issues bouncing off each other
YES YES YES YES YES! I *loved* that, have loved that occasional clashing with Toph from the beginning. I've seen a lot of other folks like
And the bloodbending is something people were speculating about in meta long before the creators started dropping hints about it, so it was particularly cool to see it finally shown, and so very creepily!
(As for Suki aliases, sure, help yourself!)