Me @ the majority of atla fan content featuring the Gaang
tbh, i never thought lars and sadie were going to end up together.
like. the writing was always on the wall that they don’t work, even if they care about each other / want the other to be happy. they’re better as friends. sadie was never what it took (nor should be made responsible) to push lars in a better direction. even when they were together, lars didn’t become the emotionally open person sadie needed. and i never got the sense that you should just mash them together once lars had grown a bit. that’s not who they are now.
there was never a strong throughline of sadie obsessing over lars in space, because it wasn’t about her or their relationship - it was about his growth. sadie needed to try to move on and live her own damn life (even if that made lars initially upset). her growing separately, into someone who is primarily concerned with what she wants & needs, always felt like the right move. and from there… they’re friends, yeah, but they don’t have the basis for a real relationship. sadie should never be lars’ prize for his growth.
there may have been a time she was happy to put herself in that position - always waiting for him, passively hoping for him to get better… but going off on a tour of self-discovery, with new interests and a new partner? that seems to be a much better message - she deserves a life not dependent on his growth. agency in her own story. all without making lars a shallow ex-boyfriend stereotype, who can’t accept change. once? yes. but not now. he’s got his own life. of course he’s going back to space, that’s where he found himself. he’s got every incentive to go - and sadie has every incentive to stay on earth.
so having her always be looking up, waiting for him to return, maybe even growing old like that… felt wrong. acknowledging that “growing apart” can sometimes be a good thing for both parties seems, to me, like a much more mature conclusion. it respects the characters they’ve become. they aren’t right for each other, without that being either’s loss.
and of course, steven feels like that’s another instance of him failing to fix something… but this was never his to fix. it’s about them, not him. it’s private.
Listen, I didn’t want to have to do this, but you leave me no choice. Here comes the smolder.
I commissioned @all-things-geekie to combine my two favorite fictional characters of all time into one and I will never stop screaming over how beautiful the result is
Bryan Konietzko's full statement about the ATLA live action situation
Looks like you made a new friend, Sokka.
“If you’re gonna cuss with somebody, you’re not gonna cuss with me, you little cuss!”
thinking deeply about the sokka/suki of it all in “the serpent’s pass,” how sokka spends the whole episode terrified of something happening to suki and turning away when she tries to kiss him, only it’s when he finds out that SHE came along to protect HIM that he can finally take that step and be with her. sokka is good at protecting people but he’s finally in a relationship where he doesn’t have to be in that role all the time. he can let himself be protected and taken care of. anyway hashtag sokka is the little spoon