As well you should be.

Here, then, is Nukapedia's entry on Fisto, more formally the Fully Integrated Security Technotronic Officer. The UF version is slightly different, in that he's also still got his security programming and he's quite a competent butler.

>Here it seems that Katara's the one holding more of a grudge. I don't
>know that I agree with that -- Katara's always struck me as the
>forgiving type -- but I can't argue against the presentation. It
>*makes sense*, regardless of what I think of her character.

[snipped and rearranged for context's sake]

>>her spirit battled against each other within her. On the one hand,
>>she was a caring, compassionate woman, a doctor and healer, a person
>>in whom hope for the future had never quite died even in the darkest
>>moments of the war. On the other, she was a warrior of the Southern
>>Water Tribe - tough, tenacious, a survivor; but that same tenacity
>>made her stubborn and slow to forgive.
>>
>
>This actually makes your interpretation of Katara make a helluva lot
>of sense. I can see it. Again, not sure if I agree, but I can see
>it.
>
>The bitch of it is I lack the skill to explain *why* I feel like
>Katara is slightly off somehow. I look at her here and something just
>doesn't seem quite right, but I don't know what it is.
>
>Like I said above though, the UF!Katara makes sense as a character,
>and this part here shows why you went the way you did with her. Which
>makes me happy; I don't have to agree with how you portray a character
>to still enjoy the portrayal of that character, if that makes sense.

Katara - particularly in Book 3 of ATLA - is a lot like the Mark Ruffalo Bruce Banner in my head. Outwardly zen most of the time - indeed, very pleasant, someone you'd like to hang out with - but underneath that, down inside, very angry and, if you are one of the people she's angry WITH, incredibly dangerous. She doesn't show it very often, but when she does she's terrifying, and one of the things that can most reliably bring it out of her is the Fire Nation, because of what they've done to her family. She was the last of Aang's team to accept Zuko's turn, she once basically turned an entire thunderstorm into a gun and pointed it at an old man's head, and the second-to-last time she'd seen Azula before the Ragnarök, she goddamn near killed her to death. I know she's sweet and pretty and motherly and doting and all, but she will fucking cut you if you push her too hard.

She's a lot like Belldandy, too, actually. I expect they get along very well. :)

I acknowledge that this is not necessarily a view of her that everyone will take away from ATLA, but it's the one I emerged with, not a deliberate variation/embellishment on my part (as opposed to, say, the joke about Azula being good at shiatsu massage). :)

>I *really* like how you've broken, then fixed, Azula. I always felt
>like she got the short end of the stick in the original series, and
>seeing her in UF is refreshing.

I had very high hopes for the comics followup to ATLA that promised to explore Azula's fate after the very unsatisfactory nonresolution her arc received on TV, and was very disappointed when it turned out to be a) mostly rubbish* and b) still not resolved. Desolation Angel is basically my reaction to that, distributed unevenly among the gaps in a school year. :)

It's interesting to me, given that I'm not a particular fan of Ernest Hemingway, how often characters' arcs in UF come back to that passage from A Farewell to Arms that has been quoted many times on these boards: "If people bring so much courage to this world that the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places; but those that will not break, it kills." (Paraphrased from memory, but I think it's pretty close; I've quoted it often enough.)

>Of course, I'm not sure how justified one would be in demanding an
>apology from someone who was *clearly* out of their gourd when the did
>the bad things, but that's not exactly the point.

That's true, and has not eluded many of Katara's loved ones over the years, but it's part of the blind spot she has about the wartime Fire Nation in general. She had a hard time accepting Ty Lee and Mai into the club too, and in Mai's case probably still only really puts up with her for Zuko's sake. :)

>>fruit-of-the-poison-tree doctrine
>
>"Hnh," I said, and turned to the dictionary.

(I've gone into this elsewhere in the thread, if there's still some uncertainty.)

>And a damn fine read, sir. Thank you.

You're welcome; glad you enjoyed it.

--G.
* Though, in fairness, it did contain one good line that I was able to steal and turn around in this piece.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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