The anti-Zutara crowd likes to act like Zuko's character is defined by all the worst things he ever did and the worst behaviors he ever showed and not by Endgame Zuko who was patient and kind and humble. They characterize him as being angry and belligerent and aggressive, hell I've even seen people call him a misogynist, and say that this is why he would be bad for Katara when all he is is patient and apologetic with her once they're on the same side. As though he's not the only person we ever see her feel comfortable enough to open up to and share her most traumatic memory with, as though he doesn't give her space and let her make her own choice about how she gets closure for her grief without pushing his ideals on her, as though he's not the *only member* of the group who she doesn't have to play mommy to because he is more mature than anyone else in the group, with Katara coming in close second. Post-Southern Raiders they're basically co-parenting together, they're glued at the hip. He gives her a reprieve from being the glue that holds everyone together because not once after they become friends does she have to mother him, he has leadership skills and immediately takes on an older brother role once they all trust him.
Meanwhile Aang is pushy, he's entitled, and he does not handle rejection well. He doesn't take no for an answer. It doesn't matter that he's goofy and fun and acts '"nice" if he also doesn't actually care how Katara feels or consider whether *she* wants to be with *him* and then disregards her feelings once she rejects him. He kisses her without permission twice, once when she is clearly trying to let him down gently and she rightly gets mad at him for it and then they never talk about it and he never has to apologize to her for it. This is their last one-on-one interaction before the finale.
So many girls and people raised girls have experience with a boy like Aang. He's the kid who has an unrequited crush on you who takes rejection as an invitation to feel sorry for themselves and demand to know why you don't like them back because they think they're owed something by being nice to you.
Yes, Aang is not real, and neither are any of the others, they are paper puppets controlled by the creators and writers of the show. But how he behaves and how the show handles his actions narratively reflects how they feel about girls and women in real life. His character flaws are not treated as flaws and he never has to apologize or atone for them. Narratively, he's rewarded for acting pushy and entitled. He never has to tell Katara that it was wrong of him to kiss her without permission, he never comes to the conclusion that if he truly loves her he'll respect whatever her decision is.
That's why most female fans like Zutara and reject Kataang, while most of the male fans accept Kataang and don't see any issues with it. Because nearly every woman and girl or those raised as such has known a kid like Aang. They have been in the exact situation that Katara was both throughout the entire series and then specifically in the Ember Island Players balcony scene, and they know just how uncomfortable it is. They see themselves in Katara and have been in her shoes and know damn well it's unrealistic that she'd choose Aang after the way he acts and the clear discomfort she shows when he interrogates her about when she's going to finally accept his advances and be with him without ever once considering how she feels.
I have *personally been through* Katara's situation with an Aang IRL when I was around the same age as Katara was in the show. I'm not a girl anymore but once upon a time I was an adolescent girl who let down a boy in the kindest possible way and spent the rest of the school year being treated like a mean heartless cunt and getting sexually harassed by his friends.
This is why Kataang is bad, lazy writing. It's clearly nothing more than a male wish fulfillment fantasy where the babysitter or nice older girl they had a crush on eventually "came around" and realized what a big cool strong boy they were. It's like wet unseasoned tofu, they have no chemistry and there is no reciprocation of the care and emotional support Katara offers him.
Imagine if Dipper and Wendy had started dating in Gravity Falls, how weird and forced and unrealistic it would be compared to what actually happens, which is Wendy letting him down easy and Dipper accepting it even though he's sad, not with him demanding to know when Wendy will like him back because he just assumes she eventually will. It gave little boys a blueprint for how to handle rejection properly.
Zuko, in opposition to Aang, by the end of the story takes rejection very well and has an excellent handle on regulating his darker emotions. Katara rejects Zuko, not romantically but platonically, first by making mean-spirited jabs at him, and he doesn't push back at all for presumably weeks, he just takes it because he understands that forgiveness and learning to trust him will take time. When it reaches a boiling point where she clearly still vehemently hates him even after he's proven himself to everyone else, literally earlier that same day throwing his entire body at a threat so that the rest of them could escape and almost dying multiple times in the process, he confronts her and asks why she still hates him and she tells him exactly why, because she trusted him once before and he betrayed it. She was the first to show him compassion and he spit it back in her face. They connected with each other in a way neither of them anticipated in the crystal caves, they connected emotionally more than any other two characters in the entire show's runtime. He feels so safe being vulnerable with her that she is the first person he lets touch his scar, and then he fumbled it by betraying her. Instead of trying to deny or justify it he asks how he can make it up to her and she gives him two impossible ultimatums, which is basically like saying that there is no chance of her ever forgiving him. But he still tries anyway because he cares how she feels. He waited for her all night because of how hard it was eating at him.
He doesn't stomp his feet like a child and demand to know WHEN she will forgive him like Aang does when she tries letting him down easy, he doesn't force the issue and just start acting as though they're friends and everything is fine regardless, he asks her how he can prove himself to her.
Aang never questions how Katara feels about him, he seems to just expect her to accept his advances and love him because he loves her. Zuko works to earn her respect, to show her just how serious he is about atoning for his past and earning her respect. Afterwards, he doesn't demand to know if she forgives him yet, he gives her space and lets her come to him to tell him if she forgives him or not.
Aang is the one who is the more belligerent and aggressive of the two by the end of the story, not Zuko. But because he's treated by the narrative as ontologically good, for some reason his character gets a pass on his angry outbursts and he gets to keep his status of just being a silly little guy without ever apologizing to anyone or changing. Aang is a Nice Guyā¢ļø.
Katara's character is put in the position of constantly having to be the one who calms Aang down from his belligerent angry outbursts, especially in the comics. He is so entitled and possessive of Katara that he openly says that he's angry enough to enter the avatar state (if he could) just because actors on a stage pretending to be Zuko and Katara were acting lovey-dovey, of fucking course she's standoffish and avoidant about rejecting him, he's the world's only hope and he's also an emotionally unstable 12 year old who can't handle rejection. And later in the comics she repeatedly is put in the position of being the only one who can calm him down from violently raging out in the avatar state.
Sit with that dynamic for a second; imagine if one of your friends had a boyfriend who regularly got worked up into a violent angry rage and could only calm down if your friend fawned and doted on and cuddled him. You'd tell her to get the fuck out of there and leave him because it's not her responsibility to gentle parent him out of his violent angry moods.
This is the problem with Aang as a character, he is treated like he is always right and can do no wrong, and therefore he never has to change or develop, it's why he doesn't have a true emotional arc.
This is also how they unintentionally made Zuko the real protagonist of the show, because his arc is what carries it, he changes more than any other character, for the better, and we see it every step of the way. We see how he learns and improves and then we're frustrated and heartbroken when relapses into his old ways, we feel just as betrayed as Katara does, and then how he chooses to leave everything behind after finally getting everything he ever wanted in life because he knows it's the right thing to do. He had everything to lose and nothing to gain, he volunteers to go back to being homeless and living in poverty. He does the most terrifying thing someone in his position can do by facing down his abuser and telling him to his face that he's a horrible father and that what he did to Zuko was wrong.
By not letting Aang's flaws be flaws, by not ever making him learn from them or develop as a character, they made Zuko the honorary main character whether they meant to or not.
And they wrote Zutara into the narrative too, whether they intended to or not. It is the most obvious endgame on the planet and the only reason they didn't follow through is cause Bryke has a babysitter kink. This is why I do not acknowledge the ending of ATLA. It's bad, lazy, cowardly writing that doesn't deserve to be respected or accepted.
I can't get rid of that gif, Tumblr won't let me delete it. Pretend that's not there.
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