The Earth Queen's allergies

[attackfish]

What follows is almost completely spoiler free.

In all the awesome that is the new season of The Legend of Korra (and after all the problems with Books One and Two, it’s good to have that awesomeness back) I feel kind of like an ungrateful jerk for complaining about anything, but I do have a minor quibble: the Earth Queen’s allergies.  I’m getting a little sick (no pun intended) of seeing my disability played for laughs, and used to make the suffer look like a buffoon.  There’s a part of me that’s just glad that there isn’t any suggestion that the Earth Queen is faking her allergies, and in fact we get to see her allergies know Pabu’s around, even when he is hidden away.  But I don’t like the way my disability only ever seems to show up as the butt of a joke.  Also, lot’s of nice people who love animals are very allergic to them and have to avoid them because of it, like me with my birds, which I had to give up because allergies to them almost killed me and my mother.

tl:dr The Avatar franchise is usually so good with disability, why aren’t they good with mine?

Comments

[lizbee]

Yeah, that and the way the Earth Queen was portrayed as a dragon lady stereotype, while being modelled on Empress Cixi, are the only complaints I have about the season so far.

[attackfish]

Yeah, I was trying to figure out how much of her was Dragon Lady, and how mch was just "unpleasent woman with lots of power and wealth, who happens to be in a show where all the characters are Asian" but she's heavily modeled on Cixi, which... Well.

[lizbee]

Yeah. It's mitigated by the fact that the show is suddenly full of older women who DON'T fit that stereotype, even the really cranky one who hates people. But the Queen is the only one in traditional Chinese clothing without even a dash of modernisation. The subtext is probably unintentional, but unfortunate to say the least.

[attackfish]

Makes me really want to see Zuko's daughter show up all royal and traditional and cranky, and wonderful and awesome to make up for it.

[lizbee]

YES. I hope she's as awkward as Zuko and as deadpan as Mai, leaving chaos and confusion in her wake.

[attackfish]

Yesyes! She should be a cranky dweeb, whose manners are far too good for her to roll her eyes like she wants to.

[lizbee]

For some reason, I've always had this headcanon that she and Lin can't stand each other, in that "Our parents are friends and expect us to be friends and actually we have nothing in common" way. Only that dynamic has shifted now that Lin has a little sister.

On the other hand, on the basis of nothing whatsoever, I've decided that Zuko is Lin's father. "The secret kid Dad had that time he and Mom separated for a while" is nice grounds for tension.

[attackfish]

I keep trying to keep that from being my headcanon, because I love Maiko, but there's a lot about Lin that reminds me of Zuko, so I hover between her being the product of that one wild night when Toph somehow talked him and Mai into a threesome, and oh spirits, how are we every going to explain this, or her glomming onto Zuko as a kid as her surrogate father. One or the other.

Canon says that neither Bei Fong woman knew their dads, so if Zuko was her dad, she doesn't know.

[lizbee]

...that one wild night when Toph somehow talked him and Mai into a threesome...

SOLD.

Lin doesn't know and Zuko doesn't like to ask, but Katara has very strong suspicions she keeps to herself.

[attackfish]

Zuko is so glad Katara doesn't ask, because that conversation would be so awkward, and Mai is secretly terrified at the thought of explaining it so anyone, and Toph is only pretending to be oblivious to the chaos in her wake, but really kind of enjoys it.

[lizbee]

It would have been awkward if Lin turned out to be a firebender, but like that was going to happen. And if she turns out to be a megalomaniac with plans for world domination, well, who's to say she didn't get that from her mother?

I have no opinions yet on Suyin's father. I know Sokka is the popular choice, but her hairstyle makes me think she shares a common relative with Tahno.

[attackfish]

AU Lin's megalomania makes some minor lordling say something about her really taking after her mother, and Toph's like "no, I think she gets it from her father's side of the family." And Zuko just shrivels up and dies.

Asami's mom also had a similar hair style. My headcanon is that they all share a stylist, who was very popular in Republic city for a while, and after the Equalist revolution, Suyin convinced them to move in with the metal clan. The secret politics of hair stylist clientele is my strange Korra crack weakness.

The Tokka shippers never give up, never surrender. I don't see it either. I mean, if anyone's got secret Sokka genes, it's Kai. Just look at him.

[lizbee]

AU Lin's megalomania makes some minor lordling say something about her really taking after her mother, and Toph's like "no, I think she gets it from her father's side of the family." And Zuko just shrivels up and dies.

Oh dear. You've just gone and reawoken the terrible Mirror Universe AU of my heart, where Tenzin is training the Avatar to follow in his father's totalitarian footsteps, and he and Lin run Republic City as a police state.

My headcanon is that they all share a stylist, who was very popular in Republic city for a while, and after the Equalist revolution, Suyin convinced them to move in with the metal clan. The secret politics of hair stylist clientele is my strange Korra crack weakness.

HEADCANON ACCEPTED.

[attackfish]

Oh man, you're reminding me of my Eldritch Abomination Avatar mirror AU. Actually, Zaheer reminds me a whole lot of that universe's Iroh.