ATLA Escapism

💧 🪨 🔥 💨 #ZUTARA

[okikaguloveforever]

"Braiding hair~

I chose Gloriosa lilies and Chionodoxa, whose flower meanings are honor and hope respectively.

[ijustneedsomefunformyday]

☝️🤓

[soopersara]

A Tale of Ice and Smoke

Chapter 69: Uneasy Accords

With the lessons and the battles of the North Pole behind them, Katara and Zuko set off on separate journeys across the Earth Kingdom. While Katara pursues her next element, Zuko flees the nation and family that tried to destroy him. Though their paths promise new friendships and new challenges for them both, destiny seems determined to bring them back together someday.

This time:

As Katara's group plans and prepares for Ba Sing Se, alliances elsewhere are forged and tested.

Read it on AO3

[emletish-fish]

Aang and attachment and Buddhism

Ah Aang.

He was done so dirty by Bryke and the narrative.

In my fic - the worst prisoner I am working on a section where Aang comes to terms with his Air Nomad philosophies. Since Aang and the Air Nomads were based on Buddhist monks, I looked to Buddhism.

Disclaimer. I'm not an expert, I'm just a newbie, but even as a newbie I have come across some absolute gems of wisdom.

In Buddhist philosophy attachment =/= love.

One guru described it this way:

Love = I care about YOU and I want YOU to be happy.

Attachment = I care about ME and I want you to make ME happy.

Learning to let go of Attachment is all about learning to let go of our egocentric world view, and to see that some things are bigger than us and our immediate wants and whims. Once we let go, we can see the world more completely and with more compassion, but without putting our own agendas on it ---

Ah, do you see the vision. Someone on the writing team knew this and they built Aang up for 2 whole ass seasons to be the sort of person who needed to learn this. They made letting go of attachment the crux of his character arc. This is a key Buddhist teaching, so it would have been an important Air Nomad idea.... and Aang just never learns it?

He thinks attachment is about his crush? (It's not even about what is good for Katara. Katara makes Aang happy, and he wants her to keep making him happy. At it's core, it is about him)

He never learns to let go of his attachment, and so he never learns to put others first. He never gets to let go of his egocentric world view and instead he puts his own agenda into everything.

Aang never gets to fully understand Air Nomad philosophy?

Aang never gets to grow.

Why build up the attachment lesson for two seasons if you weren't going to do anything with it bryke?! It's just such an odd writing choice because the entire set-up, themes, inner conflict and personality were already written and perfect for this kind of narrative arc.

Ah, the narrative arc Aang could have had is so beautiful. it's such a lovely philosophy and the potential is all there. I'm a big believer in growth for Aang.

But yeah, this is another thing I'll be salty at Bryke about. It just feels ... kinda disrespectful to Buddhism. Instead of beautiful teachings about selflessness, we get their hamfisted interpretation of attachment and petty immaturity shoved into the narrative instead.

But it could have been a beautiful journey of enlightenment.

[thevictorianghost]

I know the Painted Lady's appearance in NATLA S2 was controversial for the mainstream fandom, and I've seen two arguments against it. 1) it removes Katara's link to the Fire Nation and--especially--to Jang Hui, and 2) the Painted Lady was such an "unimportant" part of Katara's character arc, such a one-off plotline, that it didn't deserve to be an important part of S2.

I'm not going to adress the second point, as it's an argument made in bad faith. It's funny how people were clamoring they wanted NATLA to give Katara more to do/her passion back (which she never lost, but that's another matter entirely) yet when she does have a storyline in S2, it's not the "right" one they should have given her. I wonder why?

Anyway, I want to adress the matter of the Painted Lady's link to the FN, and specifically to Jang Hui. The Painted Lady already protects Fire Nation people in S2, so that's one part of the puzzle right there, but I also don't think that just bc Katara picked up the mantle of the Painted Lady in Ba Sing Se, that she's never going to put on the veiled hat ever again.

Instead, I think S2 has perfectly set up Jang Hui for S3. It's all foreshadowing. Just like how Wan Shi Tong's cameo in S1 was foreshadowing for S2, NATLA sets up Jang Hui in S2 for S3. And it does so with the Painted Lady and also with Toph.

Hear me out. I'm 99.99% sure NATLA is going to include Jang Hui by combining The Painted Lady and The Runaway.

Think about it, it fits perfectly! NATLA has been merging storylines since the beginning, and if the writers wanted to go out of their way to include the small fishing village of Jang Hui in the grand scheme of things, what better way to do that than by combining two Katara episodes, one of which she already shares with Toph in the animated series?

And narratively speaking, Katara in The Painted Lady and Toph in The Runaway both do shady stuff right under the FN's nose, so it makes even more sense to combine those episodes. This narrative change also gives both girls something to do and a more heroic reason to team up, by working together to destroy the factory rather than by scamming random people.

But more importantly, I think this change has already been set up in S2 when we learn that Toph's parents are secretly working with the FN. After all, the man who blackmails Toph says that the Beifongs have sold machinery parts specifically to build a factory in Jang Hui.

Sure, this could be a nice Easter egg, but why namedrop this one specific place during the same season the Painted Lady is introduced and Toph learns metalbending if you're not going to do something about it? Especially since we now know that the factory is hurting the people from the village where the Painted Lady comes from and it was built by the Beifongs' shady business?

Personally, I love this idea. It fits thematically so well for Katara and Toph to give back to the community where the Painted Lady comes from (for Katara) and repair what her family broke (for Toph). And just imagine what Toph could do to all that metal while Katara floods the factory!

Sounds awesome to me :)

[ilyzsue]

Zutara | First responders AU

[feeplings]

adult zutara escaping the bustle of republic city 🏔️

↬ support a kicked out artist yay! shares and asks are appreciated :)

commission me 💌 | buy me a ko-fi ☕️

[astrocitosart-deactivated202304]

a very messy zutara sketch

[peacefulsoaring]

NATLA Cast in various interviews (Sources: Collider, A*Pop): -> Elizabeth Yu, Kiawentiio, Gordon Cormier (aka Baldy #1), and Dallas Liu (aka Baldy #2). note: made this for fun and the sillies, so don't take it too seriously :)

[keikomivra]

AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER (2024- ) 2.05: Ten Thousand Things

I had him. But I couldn't do it.

[solidsmax]

AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER 2.18 | The Earth King

[desertbcrnnobody]

Headcanon about Katara I want to share.

In spring in the Fire Nation gardens, wisteria grows beautifully everywhere and Katara was absolutely enchanted by the sight.

Once she finds out that the plant and the flowers have duality as well as looking attractive, they become her favorite flower.

Zuko is thrilled that a Fire Nation flower becomes her favorite and makes sure there are some located outside her office window.

[rifari2037]

A random headcanon that suddenly popped into my head:

After Zuko and Katara married, they became even busier as Fire Lord and Water Tribe Ambassador to unite their people, they didn't realise they were about to have a baby.

And Toph was the first to know that the Fire Lord would soon have an heir because she felt two heartbeats when she was near Katara.

[moonwatermind]

My headcanon is that when Zuko & Katara kissed for the first time, there wasn’t one who kissed the other first. Instead, they reach for each other at the exact same time.

[gemgirl28]

Please enjoy a Zutara + Steambabies headcanon that is once again inspired by irl shenanigans:

So Katara has helped birth babies before, right? So she probably knows lots of Water Tribe lullabies. But I headcanon that it's several years between the end of the war and her having kids, and in that time she was doing political stuff/helping maintain peace, so when she actually has her own kids she's a little fuzzy on the words. Sokka gives her a hard time for this, but Hakoda just quietly sings the lullabies whenever he visits.

Katara also has a habit of just making up songs, about the baby or whatever she's doing or both, and it's not until she's been singing them for a week that someone will point out they are to the tune of some common songs like Happy Birthday.

Meanwhile Zuko is super self conscious about his singing voice but the babies love falling asleep on his chest, so he just narrates his day, literally what he's ate, what meetings he has, what policies he's working on. It's why no one is surprised when all the steambabies are saying words like "taxation" and "diplomatic relations" before they turn two.

[skiyron]

I like the idea of Katara being the more forward party in the ZK relationship. Her love language is physical gestures; out of nowhere she’ll hug and/or kiss Zuko just because she feels like it, and Zuko’s brain just shuts down because he’s not used to such positive intimate interactions. But Zuko’s better with words, he drops “I love you”s like it’s nothing and will say the most cheesiest lines you can imagine…and Katara secretly eats them up

[janadoesstuffwrong]

Thinking abt that scene at the beginning of LOK and headcanoning that Katara actually has the closest, most wonderful relationship with all the steambabies and their kids.

For instance, everytime Izumi takes a leave of absence from Firelord duties to come visit her retired parents in the SWT, she's met with the customary grilling '(I can tell u aren't getting enough sleep. Have you been eating enough? Has that one minister started bothering u again? im going to send a letter to his mother-')

Izumi's husband gets the full briefing as well ('next time you see her putting treaties on her bedside table, u need to bodily pick her up and drop her in a pond because I've tOLD HER SO MANY TIMES-')

Meanwhile the children are always so excited to go see Gran Gran and "Grumps". They get to spend the whole day exploring, fishing, sledding and getting in trouble around the village, overseen grouchily by a giant red dragon who is definitely NOT HAPPY at being turned into a glorified babysitter. When they get back, Katara tells the creepiest stories around the fire- old myths and legends, she'll save the war stories for another time- while they drink hot tea (made by a much more skilled Zuko). Sometimes they'll get to see them spar (still got it), and be in awe at first only to become disgusted when it inevitably becomes poorly disguised flirting.

When their cousins are there they get a tent all to themselves and stay up the whole night. Katara and Zuko told them to go to sleep, and they can hear them trying and failing to keep their voices down, but they don't mind really.

It's the family that Katara had taken from her and that Zuko never would have dreamed of having.