Katara was always kind of a preachy brown bitch crying about "muh sexism," but the writers were at least self-aware enough to balance that with more endearing traits to make her tolerable. Netflix is advertising the fact they're gutting the smart character writing that made the show work to begin with. Characters being human and relatable is now implicitly right-wing, because real human emotions as opposed to artificial tropes designed to break stereotypes are too close to badthink.
that era is just gone, full stop. It was really at the very tale end of it too because even korra, which feels like a lifetime ago at this point, had already moved on from ATLA’s feminism of “look, the girls are just as tough and strong as the boys!” To “actually girls are tougher and stronger and better in every way” and liberals have gotten DRAMATICALLY more bitter and vindictive in the decade since korra. It’s a lot like Star Trek, the lighthearted fun days are never coming back, it’s all resentment from here on.
@jimmybuffettfanaccount @ArdainianRight it's not just the left without any tact either, it's also the right. When was the last time you enjoyed something that was touted as "right wing?" It's all cringe. The left can't have anything in their media they don't want to promote unless it is a villain, and what they choose to promote can be psychologically damaging. The right has zero subtlety and always just comes out swinging with anti-SJW shit from 6 years ago and from people that typically don't have as much actual talent.
ATLA made sure all of its characters had rough edges and flaws and made them very rounded out. I can see Katara as being a character who is a feminist, but really only like very soft first wave feminism and her main issue is fitting into her role as the "mother" of the group.
It also does a great job of humanizing most of the fire nation characters, other than Sozin because he is supposed to be the comically evil character, the BBEG. Even Azula, for how psycho she is, had a horrible upbringing and has let all of her problems fester, which is something Iroh sees and doesn't want for Zuko. Iroh himself struggles a little bit, though in solitude, due to his past. A lot of media that has a nation that's evil (Nazi Germany facsimiles or whatever) just sticks with everyone being evil and not people in their own right.
The show is damn good and there will likely never be anything like it again because, yeah, everything is just a cringe caricature these days. Zero care for the craft, just people copying what was good before and shoving their own ideals into it without realizing what made the show able to portray those issues well in the first place.
DeSantis is ignoring the big issues right now to focus on "culture war" issues more popular when the economy was better. He's way behind the actual issues now, he's more focused on fucking over Disney.