I've seen a couple of comparisons of Obsession to A.ang's attitude towards Katara, but there's an older, more interesting comparison I keep thinking of in relation to kata.ang: 500 Days of Summer. The story itself (as interpreted by much of the audience, at least, but we'll get there) is, much like Obsession, about how unfair and unromantic the whole "guy meets girl, decides she's his Forever Girl in spite of knowing almost nothing about her, decides he's entitled to a relationship" trope actually is for the woman. It may be the most thorough deconstruction I've ever seen of the romance storyline of the Nice Guy with the soft romantic heart who deserves his dream girl, even though she plays hard to get, and so he's eventually rewarded for his relentless pursuit.
The more I think about it, the more I think that Tom and A.ang do have essentially the same dating strategy (I think more than A.ang and Bear, who really only acts on his crush with the assistance of a magic wish). Compare how Tom uses a combination of pity, erosion, lashing out, and outright cornering her to convince Summer to date him, with A.ang's pursuit of Katara in season 3. Compare Summer talking about how she can't give Tom the love and commitment that he's demanding to Katara telling A.ang that she's confused and now isn't the right time. Compare Tom and A.ang ignoring what Summer and Katara tell them because it's not what they want to hear. Compare Tom's rose-colored idealization of Summer, and the way he lashes out at her when she doesn't live up to that idealization, to A.ang's daydreams about Katara and the way a switch flips in his treatment of her when she says or does something that his Forever Girl wouldn't say or do.
Compare the scene where Summer is talking about herself while Tom zones out and starts daydreaming about how how he's totally gonna be the guy to win her love instead of actually getting to know her, with the fact that we see three solid seasons of A.ang pining after Katara but, in however many one-on-one scenes of them having meaningful private conversations (always about A.ang), not once does he actually ask her about her hopes or dreams or fears, or anything about herself, really. I still don't know what precisely A.ang liked about Katara other than...she's there.
Now, in the end, ATLA plays out like wish fulfillment: the girl finally stops playing hard to get, settles for the writer's self-insert Nice Guy hero, and they supposedly live happily ever after.
The really interesting difference that makes 500 Days of Summer a more intriguing comparison than Obsession (in my mind) is that it's semi-autobiographical, so Summer's response to Tom isn't dictated purely by the writer's wish fulfillment fantasies. In the real world, the guy got the girl, and then...the girl finally had enough of dating a guy that centered their relationship around his entitlement to his dream girl and fulfilling his fantasies of True Love with zero input from her. So she dumps his ass.
And then within a year, Summer is married to a guy who walked up to her and asked her about the book she was reading. Hmm. I wonder if there was anyone in ATLA who took time out of his schedule to seek out and learn about who Katara is and what's important to her?
Here's the best video breakdown I could find, both of the movie itself, and even more interestingly, the evidence that Tom is a blatant self-insert for the screenwriter. It takes you through the mechanics of the story, and then shows how the screenwriter of 500 Days of Summer wrote a semi-autobiographical screenplay based his own experience of his dream girl breaking his heart. He was then shocked that the director, actors, and audience interpreted it very differently than he intended.
I found the clip from the commentary where the director and actor are discussing Tom's selfish and possessive ideas of love, and the screenwriter pushes back and tries to position Tom as some noble romantic hero for trying to "win" the girl, to be particularly brutal.
It's truly a fascinating case study in how a writer can come up with a very compelling and meaningful story, filled with interesting and fleshed-out characters, and still fundamentally misunderstand what he's created. It's a case study in how the audience can see things in a story that the writer can't, that the writer didn't ever intend, that the writer rejects, and how the audience is right to see those things (especially if the writer is not being honest with himself about what he's writing and why).
Of course, it sounds like the writer of 500 Days of Summer eventually saw the light and stopped defending his self-insert as a Nice Guy who deserves his Forever Girl. If only Bryke could do the same :/
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