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@birdgod456
Zutara and Aang critical friends, please go ahead and block user “idkabtname” who found a way out of the sewers and is trolling our tags to go on illegible coke rants.
I’m sure they’ll create another dummy blog tomorrow bc they’re jobless and seeking attention, but whatever.
If Sokka found out about the two times that A.ang force-kissed Katara you can't convince me that Sokka wouldn't beat his ass.
When Aang asked Sokka for advice in the Fortuneteller and Sokka told him that the best way to get a girl's attention was to act aloof, I think that conversation would have been very different if Sokka knew the girl was Katara.
Very telling that he assumed Aang was pining after an actual age appropriate love interest!
And telling that overall Aang has no trouble getting attention from and rizzing up girls who are age-appropriate for him even separated from his Avatar celebrity status, he immediately steals the girlfriend of the coolest kid in school after one day and without even trying, just by being cute and charming and fun.
Do yall remember during the episode “Sokka’s Master,” Katara cracks 2 jokes (one about Momo shedding like Appa and another about Toph marrying Sokka), and Aang doesn’t respond positively at all to either of them?? He even says to the first joke that “jokes don’t run in the family.”
This is a smaller transgression in the mess that is Kataang, but it’s so baffling to me. Like, wouldn’t you want to find your (future) significant other funny? And his response is quite rude and unnecessary. I made a comment on a post the other day about how Aang doesn’t seem to like Katara, and this is just one of several examples of him not seeing her as a normal human being, one who makes silly jokes so that her friends don’t miss her brother as much. He doesn’t even bother to pretend to be amused.
There’s been an uptick in discussion regarding Aang seeing nothing wrong with how Katara is portrayed in the Ember Island Players, and it goes to show how Aang just…doesn’t seem to enjoy Katara’s essence and personality. He’s so worked up about being played by a girl that he doesn’t give a damn about Katara being shown as an over emotional woman who lusts over the “enemy.” No matter that Katara’s passion, optimism, and hope is what fuels the plot and enables other characters to overcome their obstacles. In fact, he agrees with this slut shaming portrayal of her, and blows up at her during their conversation on the balcony.
Aang is such a terrible partner to Katara. He doesn’t stand up for her, thinks she’ll jump straight to murder when it comes to Yon Rah, doesn’t find her funny, abandons her when things get tough, and overall rarely provides her with the support that she lends him. Apart from thinking she’s pretty and can be his mommy-wife, he rarely thinks of her highly.
Side note: You know who would find Katara’s corny/silly jokes funny though? Probably the guy who makes jokes about tea and forgets the punch line.
Something about Aang hating being played by a girl in Ember Island Players and seeing nothing wrong with the misogynistic stereotype about Katara because men think that the worst thing you can be is a woman.
Do yall remember during the episode “Sokka’s Master,” Katara cracks 2 jokes (one about Momo shedding like Appa and another about Toph marrying Sokka), and Aang doesn’t respond positively at all to either of them?? He even says to the first joke that “jokes don’t run in the family.”
This is a smaller transgression in the mess that is Kataang, but it’s so baffling to me. Like, wouldn’t you want to find your (future) significant other funny? And his response is quite rude and unnecessary. I made a comment on a post the other day about how Aang doesn’t seem to like Katara, and this is just one of several examples of him not seeing her as a normal human being, one who makes silly jokes so that her friends don’t miss her brother as much. He doesn’t even bother to pretend to be amused.
There’s been an uptick in discussion regarding Aang seeing nothing wrong with how Katara is portrayed in the Ember Island Players, and it goes to show how Aang just…doesn’t seem to enjoy Katara’s essence and personality. He’s so worked up about being played by a girl that he doesn’t give a damn about Katara being shown as an over emotional woman who lusts over the “enemy.” No matter that Katara’s passion, optimism, and hope is what fuels the plot and enables other characters to overcome their obstacles. In fact, he agrees with this slut shaming portrayal of her, and blows up at her during their conversation on the balcony.
Aang is such a terrible partner to Katara. He doesn’t stand up for her, thinks she’ll jump straight to murder when it comes to Yon Rah, doesn’t find her funny, abandons her when things get tough, and overall rarely provides her with the support that she lends him. Apart from thinking she’s pretty and can be his mommy-wife, he rarely thinks of her highly.
Side note: You know who would find Katara’s corny/silly jokes funny though? Probably the guy who makes jokes about tea and forgets the punch line.
Aang’s turmoil at the end of Book 3 about whether to kill Ozai is a nothingburger of a plot for multiple reasons, but something that I realized that hasn’t been discussed as much is how villains are dealt with in Legend of Korra in comparison. Korra, unlike Aang, doesn’t seem to have any qualms with using violence as a means to an end (at least earlier on in her story). She’s not an Air Nomad, and as such doesn’t have the same beliefs of “all life is sacred” and pacifism.
Despite this, however, Korra manages to defeat 3/4 villains without having to kill them. Even with Unalaq/Vaatu, whom she had to effectively obliterate, she shows regret and apologizes to Desna and Eska for having done so. Given that Unalaq physically/spiritually violated her and wiped out her connection to her past lives, I personally wouldn’t blame her if she felt no regret to what she had to do. She also gains insight from each of the villains (see her conversation with Toph), in terms of where they went wrong in terms of their ideologies.
It’s so clear that the writers sprung Aang’s moral conundrum at the last moment in the writing process. Obviously there’s no justifying what Ozai or his forefathers were doing with colonization or genocide. But if Aang is this so-called kind and insightful person, I would expect some sort of reflection on what taking Ozai’s bending means for both Ozai and himself. Did Aang technically spiritually violate Ozai for doing what he did? Would it have been better if he killed Ozai? Aang is the kind of character that consistently shies away from seemingly destructive forms of power (like the Avatar state, firebending), so how is taking someone’s bending away permanently any different?
LOK as a show has it’s own slew of problems, don’t get me wrong, but I appreciate that Korra is forced to confront other peoples’ belief systems and reflect on how those work in tandem with hers. For Aang though, it’s his way or the highway.
Hot take: Aang hate is forced atp
Some of yall talk about a kid like he's the devil or sum
I actually don't see the screenshot saying Aang's the devil.
What I see is:
1) Implying he will go into the Avatar State if a girl doesn't return his affections (already implied by the show)
2) Implying that he values Katara as only a potential girlfriend and not as a friend (already implied by the show)
Recently made a post saying that I don’t think Katara finds anything about Aang appealing or interesting other than him being the Avatar and of course I got slapped with the “he reminded her to be a kid in the first episode and his carefreeness relaxes her YOU DELUSIONAL DUMBASS” 💀.
Kataang shippers will bring up the first scene as a way to prove that Aang “reminds” Katara to be a kid and have fun, but I think it really just serves to show Katara that Aang needs to be protected. He doesn’t understand what she’s been through because he hasn’t experienced anything remotely similar to what she has and so that’s why he’s saying “you’re still a kid!” even when functionally, she’s been taking on the role of an adult for a very long time. Further, as a teenage girl, she doesn’t need to be reminded to act like a child Aang’s age, she acts like a teenage girl all by herself.
The second statement gets me because we literally never see Aang’s carefreeness “relax” Katara at all. If anything, it adds to her stress because she doesn’t want anything bad to happen to him. She’s constantly telling him to be careful and looking out for him while he’s having fun. You could say that she finds it endearing that he is so joyful, but I wouldn’t count that towards romantic attraction.
Katara doesn’t need someone to ‘remind’ her to be a kid, she needs someone to allow her to be a kid, which Aang decidedly doesn’t do. Katara spends a significant portion of 1x01 - 1x03 and even through The Storm protecting Aang’s feelings about the air nomad genocide, getting them to the north pole, keeping them on track, and on and on. Convincing her to take a break from the laundry to have some fun doesn’t help if the laundry (/shopping/etc) still needs to be done by her afterwards.
Allowing her to be a kid/not mom would involve taking on the boring work, just like many husbands fail to do irl. Aang isn’t trying to give Katara the opportunity to see who she is when she doesn’t have to play mom, he’s taking her on ‘dates’, find that cute all you want, but let’s not pretend she’s not back to the mom grind just afterwards.
Tbh, I never even understood the “he reminds her to be a kid” take because… Katara is a kid and she acts one all by herself. She just doesn’t act like a twelve year old boy. She acts like a teenage girl, because that’s what she is. She also simultaneously is put in a maternal role for the rest of the group.
Aang tries to get her to do stuff that he finds fun, but when we actually look at the things Katara finds enjoyment in and seeks to do herself, it’s not really in line with penguin sledding and elephant koi riding. She likes going shopping and dressing up and having a spa day and asking a fortune teller about her love life and flirting with boys she has a crush on. She just doesn’t get a lot of opportunity to do those things because of the nature of their traveling and also because she gets more and more responsibilities piled on as the seasons progress. If she had help with those responsibilities, she’d probably have a lot more free time (and we see that when Zuko joins the gaang and takes on the emotional burden and part of the domestic work too, she does relax a lot more).
Can we not portray Zuko helping Katara gain closure over her mother's murder as BAD THING or as him stumbling in his redemption arc?? Because it absolutely is not. It is INSANELY misogynistic to make the claim that Zuko facing his abuser is justified and good while claiming Katara's need to face the man who murdered her mother is bad and misguided. I am so sick of this. I am so sick of the way Katara and Zuko get treated by the fandom when it comes to their characterizations in The Southern Raiders. He is giving her autonomy!! The power to choose for herself how to gain her closure the same way he did for himself.
What people seem to miss with the "bad influence" and "he should've stopped her cause a real friend wouldn't let her do something she regretted" other than the inherent misogyny of the boy "knowing what's best for her" and putting the responsibility on him to make her decisions for her like she cant be trusted with that agency, it would be an ACTUAL regression in his character arc if Zuko tried to tell Katara to have mercy and spare the guy (forget forgiveness cause that's a completely different thing and way less acceptable to suggest than advising her against killing) like A.ang did.
It was his country, the military that he was heir to, that murdered her mother for genocidal purposes. Taking her to confront Yon Rha was his way of showing through his actions and not just his words that he hates what his country has done just as much as the rest of them, that he sees their crimes for what they are and gives them the weight that they deserve. It's not his place to tell her what Yon Rha deserves or what she needs to do to heal. His actions tell her "I understand the irreparable trauma and injustice my country has caused you, I understand that I carry that legacy, and to show you how seriously I take the crimes committed by my country, and that I am not aligned with them ideologically, I will give you the power to exact justice however you deem fit, even if it means implicating myself in the murder of one of my countrymen."
Getting all "but he's still a human being 👉🏻👈🏻" on Katara would have been an actual regression, a show of tribalistic attachment just because he's from the same country as the guy, it would tell Katara that he still feels a sense of loyalty and duty to his country's war criminals and doesn't take the Fire Nation's crimes with the seriousness they deserve.
And later on when she helps him defeat Azula, how would she be satisfied putting him on the throne when he drags his feet and whines that his country's genocidal war criminals deserve to be forgiven? I imagine that seeing how far he was willing to go for her instilled her with immense confidence that he'd set his country on the right path as Fire Lord.
This is literally exactly what people are missing. He is giving her all of the power to do anything she needs to heal and understands that the victims should choose their form of justice. On top of that, he literally does know that Katara herself is committed to justice in every facet of her life and can separate her emotions from the necessity of violence if need be because she did it with him. She was incredibly angry with him, but she still saved his life, so Zuko knows that if Katara is pursuing violence, she believes this is the way to enact justice and he completely respects her autonomy to do just that.
It’s twofold. He recognizes her as a victim of a horrible crime that deserves to have justice in whatever way she sees fit, and he understands her as someone who has observed her behavior and her morals and just trusts her to know what she needs to do.
Why do antis act like people are crazy for saying Aang could be called abusive or that Kataang would be toxic?
What tf do you call forcefully kissing someone who just said no to you?? What do you call telling someone you'd go into an out-of-control murderous time bomb state over the idea that they might not like you back?? Would you feel safe telling someone who literally holds the fate of the world in their hands no right after they told you that??
If you feel obligated to protect someone's feelings and don't feel comfortable directly saying no to them because they threaten or assault you, or idk, might run away and cause the end of the world, that's a form of coercion.
And if you don't care about all that for some reason, neglect is also a form of abuse, so it's not like adult Aang is looking too much better either lol.
I mean, the answer to the question why is misogyny. Defenses of the EIP kiss in particular sound a lot like the defenses that real-world rapists use. Why are you making such a big deal about this? They kissed before! She obviously wanted it! It's her fault for not responding to his advances! She's sending mixed messages!
Let's really, really not.
A lot of people also defend the first kiss also as one of those old movie tropes: "Sure, he kissed her without her consent, but it's fiiiine because they ended up together." Usually these violations include a "yeah, but" excuse, wherein they have the female character like or be okay with what happened to them.
But 1) They didn't even have the decency to include her liking it as a "yeah, but" and instead had her be visibly upset after- making the wrongness of it blatantly obvious and uncomfortable (but then doing nothing with that and retroactively acting like that was a symptom of her being "confused about her feelings" blech), and 2) Just because the writers force a character to be okay with something that happened to them, does not make what happened to them okay.
It's also just completely unromantic. Because the way it's set up isn't some grand buildup of feelings between them culminating in a gesture. It's Aang imposing his crush onto her without any conversation or warning or consideration of her feelings. It gets even worse when he uses his forced kiss as essentially his claim on her, his reason he's mad that she isn't just with him now in EIP when she never got a choice in the matter.
And when she says she's confused he tries to force it again when her guard is down and she's obviously unable to react. Which is a symptom of the idea that women just play games and secretly want it and to keep pressuring them, which is made worse by the fact that they reward this belief by having her end up with him anyway and never show his entitlement to her as wrong. It literally backs up the idea that all her negative reactions to his advances, her general disinterest, and her avoidant body language don't need to be considered because she, again, just secretly wanted him all along or wasn't important because she'd learn to love him.
And the idea that Aang is too good to be abusive to the point that the idea is preposterous mirrors so well the whole "I know my boy, he wouldn't do that" denial/excuse used to shut down women talking about abuse. You don't have to be evil to be abusive in a relationship. No one is mad because they think he's evil; he just should have had to learn from his poor behavior. Every abusive person I know means well and is thought of by everyone who knows them as a good person. The 'nicest' person I know around others, considered to be the perfect prince any girl would be grateful to be with, was an actual villain in his last relationship. Not out of ill intent, but just by not considering the shitty positions he was putting his gf in and only worrying about what he wanted (sound familiar?).
"But he's only 12! He's not allowed to make mistakes?" -> Then he's not ready for a relationship and shouldn't be in one. This is not a punishment because no one is owed a relationship with another person. -> Then he's definitely old enough to know better than to put hands on people, and definitely old enough to learn his lesson about respecting others' boundaries- unless you think it's harsher for boys to hear stern words than girls to be violated. -> It's not a 'mistake' if it is never acknowledged as one and continues to persist. It's just a character flaw. One people are allowed to criticize when it goes unresolved. -> We have no reason to believe he'd grow out of this behavior because it was never addressed and was in fact rewarded, and Katara has no obligation to put up with this behavior before it is fixed, or even after it has been fixed. She should not be expected to be with someone on the basis that in the future they might rise to the bare minimum standard of respect for his significant other.
"You're acting like he's worse than Zuko (when he was her enemy)" -> This is an incel talking point. 'He's not as bad as xyz so he deserves to get the girl/be in a relationship.' So, because he hasn't literally attacked her (the Avatar state putting her life in way more danger than Zuko incapacitating her in a duel notwithstanding), he's automatically a good partner? His violations are above criticism because he could be worse? -> Zuko was on the opposite side of the war, it's expected he'd fight her and since he owes her no loyalty, it isn't a betrayal (until the Catacombs, which has a whole arc to mend that personal betrayal). He also is shown by the show to be wrong, is punished, and makes up for everything he did. Aang is her friend and actively owes her respect for all she's done for him and he still violates and does not respect her or her feelings and never is shown to be wrong for it. He never has to overcome it. He is instead rewarded for being a bad actor (treats Katara horribly: gets rewarded with Katara as a love interest; abandons his friends and runs away at the end of the world: gets rewarded with a magical fix to his dilemma). So those negative behaviors still exist within his character to be criticized. Zuko's aren't there anymore so there's no point. -> Yes, her friend should be expected to treat her better than someone pitted against her in a war. And he still treats her like his prize he's entitled to and tired of waiting for.
complaining about thinkpieces while also writing out a thinkpiece. mmhm okay.
Who's gonna tell them that Avatar: The Last Airbender is a fictional show and not a timeline of historical events?
There is no "well what would you have wanted him to do?" argument because the events that happen and Aang's response to them are all crafted as part of a narrative.
What should have happened was that the show should not have presented "saving Katara" and "letting go of an unhealthy attachment to Katara" as a dichotomy in the first place to validate that unhealthy attachment.
I am continually amazed at antis’ inability to look at a narrative from a Doylist perspective. We have no need to harp on about Watsonian possibilities when Bryke chose to establish the detachment -> Avatar State conflict in The Guru, but then proceeded to feign amnesia (despite being the ones who wrote it) and not follow through by executing on those narrative stakes since they had written themselves into a corner. A corner that did not bode well for their self-insert endgame.
Here are three fantastic metas that dive further into this writing pitfall:
The Chakra Plot Hole
Aang Never Let Go of His Attachment by @soareleandluna
Aang Choosing Katara Over the Avatar State is Not Love by @burst-of-iridescent
@thegreatestdollarbean's Four Part series on Aang's Abandoned Character Arc is a fantastic read, in addition to their thoughts on how Iroh's advice to Aang about the Avatar State muddies the fandom's view of the detachment conflict since Iroh doesn't have all the context around what Aang is asking him about. We should also discuss how Guru Pathik must feel having his wisdom so casually discarded by Aang and Bryke. It's a bit like being replaced by AI at work. Or more aptly, replaced by the Deus Ex Rockina to end them all...
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Zuko paid more attention to Katara as a genocide survivor than Aang ever did.
This is just facts.
100% agree with this OP. The biggest impact that Katara’s genocide survivor status had on her life was her mother’s murder as her mother wouldn’t have been murdered if Katara was not the last Southern waterbender and Zuko knows this but A.ang doesn’t, which is just hilarious to me 😂.
A.ang knows that the Fire Nation killed Katara’s mother but he has no idea it was specifically because she was the last southern waterbender, one because he never bothered to ask about the tragedy and two because Katara just never felt compelled or encouraged to tell him. Zuko on the other hand knows all the details about the situation from Sokka, from Katara herself and then from Yon Rha.
Then for some reason Zuko, not A.ang (you know, the guy who’s married to a Southern waterbender), was specially mentioned to have given special attention to rebuilding Katara’s nation and countinues to take special interest in the Southern Watertribe over all the other nations.
They always say “they’re both genocide victims so they understand each other better”
And that would be cute if not for the fact that that little similarity between them completely went over Mike and Bryan’s heads even in this new movie (A.ang telling Katara she doesn’t understand what it’s like to be a genocide survivor). You’d think they’d say her husband was the one who took special interest in her tribe’s welfare since you know, it was affected by genocide and A.ang is supposed to be able to relate to that? But nope, apparently it’s Zuko, you know the guy who supposedly doesn’t care about Katara.
I’m honestly convinced that Bryke might just be dense because about 95% of A.ang’s interactions with Katara’s culture are negative. Him not liking their animal skins and food and being disrespectful about it by telling Toph not to eat it, or him allowing Katara’s culture to become completely sidelined in their family with the only person taking after Katara’s culture being Kya.
The one similarity that could actually make Ka/taang somewhat engaging has Zuko being more positively involved in it than A.ang.
Just ridiculous
It drives me nuts whenever I hear 99% of these types of arguments to back up Kataang. None of this is substantiated by the text of the show. None of this is literally present in the show. It's all extrapolation from their own biased memory of what the relationship was when last they watched- which is divorced from what really happened because it's framed from Aang's perspective and Aang is an unreliable narrator. If you pay attention to what actually happens instead of seeing it through his relationship fantasy goggles, none of it holds up.
Of course they see her supporting Aang and think, well Aang is supported, look what a supportive relationship this is- Aren't we forgetting someone?
They had many, many, many chances to show the two of them relating over their shared trauma. Each and every time it's brought up (the show AND the movie now), he doesn't acknowledge it or throws it back in her face or is pitted against her (which the fans then also engage in) over who has the bigger trauma. And only his is treated as important. Hers is brought up as an afterthought to support a dynamic that never existed between them. Because no one spares a thought for Katara. If they did, they'd notice how the support never comes back around in her direction from Aang. They are trained to see her as Aang's reward at the end and so when she's just entirely his cheerleader with no consideration in return, they don't see anything wrong with that.
People are also so scared of acknowledging the flaws and sexism in the show's writing it makes it impossible to take any Kataang defense seriously. You're allowed to headcanon a more wholesome dynamic that retcons the weird incel behavior Aang was on in S3. You're allowed to headcanon in new scenes where they support each other equally. Defending the terrible treatment of Katara just to avoid the discomfort of feeling "wrong" or accepting the writing of your ship has flaws and that people are gonna talk about them feels so dishonest and like... regressive.
You don't need to hold so fast to the canon version of the ship, you can see the potential in it and ship that without it being less legitimate because that dynamic isn't 100% accurate to the canon portrayal. (This is where being so obsessive about canon adherence backfires, you feel you need to defend the writing problems like if you admit they're real, you'd be ceding ground and tarnishing the purity of your ship.) But these headcanons being treated as if they absolutely happened to shut down fair criticisms of how Katara was treated... We're talking about apples and you replaced the apple with an unrelated orange and are now saying calling it an apple isn't accurate. We're still talking about the apple whether or not you pretend it was never there. We're criticizing the way it was depicted!!!!! Not your own view of the ship in your head!!! We all deserved better than that mess.
Maybe if people weren't so ready to call others morally bankrupt for liking a ship with any degree of conflict AT ALL, people wouldn't be so scared to acknowledge the flaws of their own ship because you'd know it obviously doesn't reflect on your moral character irl. But people won't give up bullying people for their ship preferences, so they're always gonna be super careful to remain denying the problems in their ship so they don't in turn get bullied.
Some people in this fandom remind me of this character 😂😂. These people are basically clowns who think they are super villains ....
I always thought it was weird that ATLA set up this philosophy of “all the elements are equal and amoral and benders will use their craft for good or evil” but then chucked it straight out the window when it came to the topic of bloodbending.
A power that creates fear and pain and only seems to be used for destruction? I can’t think of anyone who would know what that feels like.
Katara should have used bloodbending to strengthen her skills as a healer. That seems like the most obvious solution and fits with her character. This is a skill she learned from a SWT bender and although that bender used it for evil, she will use it for good.
The healing aspect is cool, but Katara should feel as comfortable using her bloodbending for combat as any other bender. Notice that no other form of bending is outlawed, even though they would kill an opponent just as dead. In fact, of all the extra power up forms of bending, bloodbending would be the best for non lethally subduing someone.
Also, any other form of bending could reach inside the human body like that. We see it in LoK when Zaheer kills the earth queen by sucking all the air out of her, literally collapsing both lungs, but I’d argue you could do stuff that’s just as invasive with firebending and earthbending. We know because of Zuko’s fire breath and other firebending moves that a firebender can increase the temperature of something, not just produce a flame, so they could just reach in and boil your insides if they wanted to. Also, every bit of your body that isn’t water is primarily carbon or a carbon compound, so I’d argue that an earthbender could just like disintegrate you if they could figure out how to do it.
Zutarians will point out the toxic behavior of A/a/ng in Ember Island Players and correctly point out that he's being pushy and possessive and entitled, and the Ka/taan/gians will counter by bringing up the Beach episode and how Zuko acts in it as a way to say "See! He's way more possessive and jealous with his girlfriend!!"
But they seem to miss the crucial detail that the Beach episode is meant to be Zuko at his worst, the peak of his identity and morality crisis that has him acting like a jerk. And he IS acting like a jerk in that episode, but we're clearly meant to understand that he's being a jerk and the narrative punishes him for it. Mai breaks up with him after calling him out on his anger issues, and good because someone needed to put their foot down (my fellow Zutarians give too much flack to Mai in this episode often, like she might've been being not the best girlfriend earlier that day, that's debatable, but she was valid for calling him out on acting like an angry lunatic) and give him consequences for his actions.
It's a good thing that Mai was willing to stand up to him and call him out when she knows she's being treated unfairly, and for knowing her worth enough to not take him insulting her. Then they get back together only after he actually opens up about why he's angry and admits that it's himself he's truly angry with.
But again we're meant to see Zuko's behavior as bad in this episode, the whole point is that he's lashing out at everyone around him and is angrier than he's ever been because the guilt of what he did is eating him alive and instead of dealing with it in a healthy way he's taking it out on others.
And even more importantly, Zuko stopped being angry and belligerent and violent, this was the sort of behavior he left behind when he decided to do the right thing and work on himself.
There is no reason to think that post-redemption arc Zuko would act like this again with a girl, because the only reason he was acting like that in the first place was the inner turmoil he had yet to work through, caused by his betrayal of his uncle and what he knows in his heart to be right.
He actively worked to improve himself and be a better person, and to be less impulsive so that he wouldn't hurt the people he cares about.
Everyone always agrees Zuko's redemption arc is one of the best things about the show and loves how far he's come, until it's about Zutara and then he's actually stuck as the worst version of himself forever.
The difference between how Zuko is in the Beach episode and how A/an/g is in Ember Island Players is that Zuko is punished by the narrative and we're meant to see his behavior in a negative light, he is forced to atone and change. A/a/ng is not forced to atone or change for his bad behavior and it's unclear if we're supposed to condemn him for it or if we're just supposed to feel bad for him for feeling bad.
Comparing pre-redemption Zuko to A/ang at any point is not a fair comparison, if we really want to compare their behavior to assess the kind of person each of them are, we need to look at redeemed Zuko if we're going to compare him to A@ng.
It's just funny how trying to make Zuko look like a bad person or like he'd be a terrible partner only works if you pretend the redemption arc never happened.
I'm less generous to Mai, and to me, there are some other key differences between these two scenes.
One is that Mai is complicit in Zuko's inner turmoil. She's part of the genocidal regime and aided in bringing him back into it and back under his father's abuse. He isn't right to assume she's flirting with another dude, but he is right to call her out on not feeling anything because she is a person defined by her apathy towards the suffering that Zuko can no longer be a part of. The episode doesn't highlight this but it's a huge part of WHY Zuko is so angry and why I actually think he should have directed more anger at Mai specifically. Of course, none of it is her idea, but it had to have crossed Zuko's mind that if he didn't agree to come back with Azula, he would be a prisoner instead of kissing Mai, and Mai helped put him in that position.
I also think this informs Zuko's jealousy. How can Zuko be sure, given that context, that Mai actually cares about him? Would she have cared if he were imprisoned or killed? Would she care if Ozai hurt him again?
Then she spends the whole episode sneering at him, she belittles his attempts to communicate with her ESPECIALLY about what's wrong. I do think that his violent jealousy and him saying she doesn't care about anything is him saying he feels like she doesn't care about him, and he needs someone to because he's trapped with a man who burned his face and the one person who he knows actually loves him is imprisoned. His behavior reads like a cry for help, to me.
Which doesn't excuse it, but does give context. People do not act in ways they normally would when they're living under abusive conditions, and abusers will use the victims' seemingly irrational behavior to characterize them as the actual aggressors. A dog that bites in self defense when it's been cornered and provoked is not rabid.
The other thing that differentiates Zuko's behavior from Aang's is that Mai is actually Zuko's girlfriend and Katara is not Aang's girlfriend. Not that the EIP kiss would be okay even if they were dating, but Aang specifically gets mad at Katara for not being his girlfriend, whereas Zuko wants more attention from Mai because she is supposed to be his girlfriend, and at least acting like she cares kinda comes with that territory. I actually think both Mai and Aang are similar in that both of them seem to expect relationships without actually doing anything to maintain them.
I think that instead of getting violently jealous, Zuko should have dumped her.
I feel like saying Mai was right to break up with Zuko over his jealousy is kinda missing the forest for the trees. He crossed a line and was in the wrong in that specific scenario, but there are bigger issues in the relationship, and most of them lead back to Mai.
And seeing as she gets back together with him pretty quickly, despite nothing having really changed, it seems more like she was just annoyed at his outburst rather than considering it a red flag of any kind.
And seeing as she gets back together with him pretty quickly, despite nothing having really changed, it seems more like she was just annoyed at his outburst rather than considering it a red flag of any kind.
Exactly. That, to me, is a red flag, but not against Zuko. To use the cornered dog metaphor again, a good rule of thumb is to consider who has the power in that scenario. Mai is the one who breaks up with Zuko, and the one who gets back together with him. Zuko lashes out but nothing actually changes.
And despite what I said, Zuko won't dump her, because he has nowhere to go, and no one else on his side. Literally, no one.
That is, until he realizes that he does have somewhere he can go and that he can do better. And that infuriates Mai.
This can be serious... what the hell...
@sokkastyles
@burst-of-iridescent
if bry.ke cared about katara being a genocide survivor, they wouldn’t have had her canonical love interest try to stop her from finding justice for her mother who died as a result of said genocide. or not given the two of them even a single moment of connection over it in the show. or completely erased katara’s culture from her familial legacy. or erased katara as a character in general.
kat.aang’s relationship has nothing to do with the solidarity or kinship found between two people who’ve survived the same unthinkable atrocity, and everything to do with bry.ke wanting aang to be special and katara to be his free therapist. but it doesn’t surprise me that the people who don’t seem to comprehend the concept of a visual metaphor are the same people who choose to spew this sort of senseless vitriol on twitter defending an interpretation of kat.aang that simply wasn’t intended or established in the show instead of just, i don’t know, blocking the op and artist and minding their own damn business.
I finally understood why I hate Kataang so much. It feels like Katara's death. You just watch it and can't do anything about it (in a canon sense). This is the fear of most women in toxic traditional societies, who are afraid of being married to a man they don't love. Here it is, the demise of a woman. Yay, the 12-year-old nice guy who kissed teenage Katara (rep for FEMALE viewers) without her permission several times is happy! And then she suddenly falls in love with him in the next move. And they get married. It sounds heartbreaking and terrible. But of course, no one notices because Aang is the main character and he's the favorite, and no one questions how this reflects on the fanbase of girls and Katara. Suki and Sokka had a good relationship, but it's not shown. Why? This show has terrible writing and a terrible message for the audience. People absorb the media they interact with. And one of the main problems girls in such situations face from poor traditional societies is portrayed not in a negative, but in a positive light. And Katara stayed with him for decades, rather than divorcing him in the canon. This is truly the worst thing.
This is why I feel so passionately about this ship in particular. People may say “it’s just a kids show” but the fact that it’s a kids show is the point. I don’t care what kind of unequal relationships people want to enjoy in adult media, or in fan media. They’re adults. They can make their own choices.
But ATLA isn’t for just for adults. it’s a really, really good kids show. A good enough show that it’s still finding new audiences decades later. And a popular kids show is how kids learn about how to manage their romantic relationships.
Kat@ang teaches boys to:
- Not be discouraged by her apparent disinterest. She’ll come around.
- Be possessive of your female friend/crush and get angry when they show an interest in someone else (EIP)
- Kiss them without their consent, even when they’ve just told you they’re not interested in a romantic relationship right now.
None of these behaviours from Aang are discouraged by the show (aside from the Guru’s attempt which is promptly forgotten for the rest of the show) and are in fact rewarded when Katara changes her mind without any positive interactions between the non-consensual kiss and the big ending kiss.
It reminds me of a lot of the boys I was friends with growing up. The ones who questioned me when I got a boyfriend. Who broke off our friendships when it became apparent I was never going to date them.
To be clear, I don’t blame Aang for this. He’s overall not a bad person. He’s 12. He’s allowed to make mistakes in how he approaches his love life. Especially under such pressure.
I blame the writers who decided that the narrative would not treat these actions as mistakes to be learned from, but would simply reward Aang with his forever girl as soon as he had finished the main quest.
Katara deserved better. And so does every young girl who grows up loving this show, past and future. They deserve male friends who view them as friends before they are romantic prospects. When they grow up they deserve partners who respect their boundaries and act as equals in a relationship.
Something that annoys me about Feyre from ACOMAF and beyond is how boring and metaphorically shapeless she is. It feels like she isn’t there to shape and move the plot forward, she’s simply a conduit to narrate the story and describe the other characters and their lives. And more than that, Feyre’s not really…spectacular at anything. She has these so-called special powers from the High Lords, but we don’t actually her using them in the war. What was the point in her training and getting all worked up at Tamlin for not “allowing” her to master magic?? I’m pretty sure the last time she used these powers was when she and Lucien were running from Eris in ACOWAR.
Her other personality traits don’t stand out either. She’s not particularly compassionate (though her stans try to argue otherwise), funny, intelligent, fierce, etc. No matter how you feel about the other ACOTAR female characters, you can at least admit that they have some stand-out characteristics. Her wit and strength as a human were more interesting to read about than anything she’s done being Fae. I don’t like using the word Mary Sue bc of its misogynistic implications, but if I had to use that word to describe any character, it would be Feyre.
