No title available
Sweet Seals For You, Always
noise dept.
oozey mess
No title available
Three Goblin Art
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
todays bird
Product Placement
⁂
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
JVL
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
@theartofmadeline
Misplaced Lens Cap
JBB: An Artblog!
wallacepolsom
Xuebing Du
One Nice Bug Per Day
tannertan36
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from Denmark
seen from United States
seen from India
seen from Mexico
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Indonesia
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Argentina
seen from India
seen from United States
seen from United States
@lynnieloopie
“zutara would erase katara’s culture!”
well that’s funny because between zutara and kat/aang, only one ship has katara’s partner express distaste for her food, mock her cultural artifacts and impose his own culture’s values onto her, and it sure ain’t zutara lmao
I always hated that scene where that acolyte confused Kya and Bumi for Tenzin's servants not only because of the lack of respect they were shown and that apparently Aang didn't bother telling the acolytes about his other two children but also due to the unfortunate implications because Bumi and Kya have darker than skin than Tenzin so it really didn't paint a good picture there.
The lack of self-awareness in Brkye just gets starker in hindsight
I saw someone mention that TV Tropes has a Fridge Brilliance moment that the reason Katara chose Aang over Zuko was because she realized after seeing Zuko get zapped by lightning that she was much more horrified of losing Aang in that moment than Zuko (or any of her friends) and realized she loved Aang and that was the true point of that entire scene and why Katara came with Zuko and it was meant to show how Kataang was the true ship of Into the Inferno vs CoD. What do you think of that?
So, I saw you’ve asked @catie-does-things the same question, and I think she summed it up rather well. The bottom line is that, like she said, there is no evidence for any of this in the actual episode.
Now, there is one thing I want to say that I think a lot of the criticizers of Zutara miss from time to time. We ship Katara and Zuko because we like their dynamics and the relationship that we see develop in the duration of the show. This relationship can very much be interpreted as romantically-coded, but it is never declared as such in the finished product. And that doesn’t really matter to us, since canon and shipping has nothing to do with each other. The whole point of shipping is the potential of a ship.
I really don’t think Katara chose Aang over Zuko, since, while there was definitely ship baiting with the promotional material during the original airing of the show, Katara didn’t have any romantic relationship with Zuko in the show to pass over for one with Aang. Even if some writers, animators and even voice actors might have been into the idea of the ship, it was never presented on screen. Saying that she chose Aang over Zuko ignores the reality of the show from the get go, and the well-known intentions of Bryke (for better and worse)
It would have actually been interesting to see any sort of thoughts or emotions from Katara about her supposed relationship with Aang at any point in the show, especially the last episodes from the invasion onward, but we didn’t even get that. She was just magically not confused anymore. It’s almost as magical as the Pointy Rock™...
Also, to say that the whole point of the final Agni Kai was to make Katara realise that she wants Aang seriously misses Zuko's entire arc as well as Katara's whole character and is just a very weird thing to say in my honest opinion...
so i saw this kat/aang post on instagram and you know what, they’re right! i do get emotional over this scene.
i get emotional over the fact that a fourteen year old girl was forced to put herself in mortal danger to drag her love interest out of a wildly uncontrollable, incredibly powerful state that literally everyone else ran and hid from. i get emotional over the fact that the only expression on her face is that of complete despair and resignation, because she knows that if she doesn’t do it, no one else will. i get emotional over the fact that she never got back even a fraction of this comfort and support, even when she most needed it. i get emotional over the fact that the same boy she sacrificed her safety for, the same boy she’s taken care of with all the love she can offer since the day she met him, couldn’t give up his unhealthy attachment to her to control the very state that put her in so much danger in the first place, despite knowing that’s what she would want. i get emotional over the fact that this boy would later violate her boundaries, and never apologize for it, and in fact get rewarded with her romantic affections. i get emotional over the fact that this poor girl, who gave so much and got so little in return, would spend the rest of her life doing this exact same thing until she became a shadow of her former self.
and most of all, i get emotional over the fact that this is seen as some kind of beautiful romantic act, when it is, in actuality, an incredibly terrifying and saddening burden that katara should never have had to shoulder.
There’s some really bad takes in the tags I saw others point out too on twitter that Zuko is a woobified asshole and narcissistic guy who doesn’t have any empathy like in the beach and only kinda cares ab things similar to his own pain and he’s selfish and wangle was always way more empathetic and understanding especially of Katara and that he is actually a colonizer full of toxic violence & he isn’t a soft person & thats all “made up fanon Zuko” not real Zuko. What are your thoughts?
I have no idea what is going on in the tags but that's...quite a lot, lol.
Let's take this one by one, though.
First of all, I've posted about my thoughts on "woobified asshole" with regards to Zuko before, but I hate the way "woobie" is thrown around as an insult in fandom in general. A woobie is a character that people sympathize with because they suffer. The original concept of a woobie is a character that you want to see comforted, and the term comes from a word for a security blanket. Usually accusations of woobification get thrown around at popular characters who are usually male and usually attractive, and also usually morally complicated in some way, with the implication that the woobified characters is undeserving of such sympathy or that fans only sympathize with them because they are attractive and girls are stupid. I can't think of any reason why it's a problem that a character is woobified that doesn't boil down to misogyny or virtue signaling, and often a combination of both. Otherwise what exactly is the problem here? That people sympathize with Zuko? That they want to see him comforted? He's an abused sixteen year old. The last time I got into discourse about people "woobifying" Zuko, someone literally tried to claim that he shouldn't be treated like a child. Like, excuse me, but Zuko IS a child. One of the most cathartic moments in the series is when the kid literally breaks down in his uncle's arms and people really want to go around sneering about "woobification"? Shut up.
If it's the morality issue, even if Zuko were the worst person in the world I still wouldn't think it was a problem for people to woobify him, but as it is, he has a whole entire redemption arc where he ends the series dedicating the rest of his life to restoring peace to the world. If there's ever a character who deserves a pat on the back, I'd say Zuko is.
narcissistic guy who doesn’t have any empathy like in the beach and only kinda cares ab things similar to his own pain and he’s selfish
I could list everything that Zuko has ever done to disprove this, but I don't actually need to, and such generalizations don't deserve to be taken that seriously anyway. But I do want to remind people that Zuko's establishing character backstory was that he got banished for trying to defend an entire division of soldiers that he had never met nor would ever meet, because it was the right thing to do, because he did not want to see people killed for no reason, and because, as the crown prince, he felt personally responsible to try and use the power he had to help them, as opposed to the powerful adults around him who wanted to use their power for selfish reasons. Zuko stood up to those adults - one of whom was his own terrifying, abusive father - at great cost to himself and his own power and comfort when he didn't need to at all.
After that, Zuko could have completely shut himself off from the rest of the world and only cared about himself, and indeed, he spends a good three years trying to do just that. He does behave selfishly, he grandstands, he throws tantrums, but he also still has that impulse towards empathy and goodness, which he gradually learns to embrace again. His character arc is a triumph of goodness, and anyone who claims to be a voice for morality who is trying to diminish this fact...really isn't making the moral statement they think they are making. What truly good person would rather have more villains in the world than redeemed ones?
As for "The Beach," it is amazing to me that people try to bring up Zuko having an existential crisis and not being a good boyfriend as something to hold against him since the reason he acts like that is because he DOES have empathy and he just can't take being in this shallow world anymore with these people who understand nothing of what he's come to learn in the past three years.
Like, god, Zuko, why don't you pay more attention to your imperialistic girlfriend and making sure she has snacks at a beach party instead of like, worrying about war and poor people, hm??? Or your uncle in prison, or the next time your father might decide to physically harm you. What an asshole. /s
and wangle was always way more empathetic and understanding especially of Katara
I know you mean Aang, but I'm kinda giggling at "wangle," the unsung hero of the story.
way more empathetic and understanding especially of Katara
Oh, you mean like this?
Zuko: She needs this, Aang. This is about getting closure and justice.
Aang: I don't think so. I think it's about getting revenge.
Katara: [Angrily.] Fine, maybe it is! Maybe that's what I need! Maybe that's what he deserves!
Aang: Katara, you sound like Jet.
Which one had more empathy for Katara's pain here, again? Maybe we should ask Katara.
Katara looking at Aang:
Katara looking at Zuko:
I know I'm nitpicking one scene but like, if you really want to play the comparison game, this is a good place to do it, since this episode contrasts Katara's relationship with the two. Otherwise, Katara and Zuko were enemies for much of the series so like, arguing that Aang "had more empathy for her" is kind of pointless and reeks of Nice Guy-ism. You don't get empathy points just for being her friend longer.
he is actually a colonizer full of toxic violence & he isn’t a soft person & thats all “made up fanon Zuko” not real Zuko
I didn't know that the ATLA fandom was so powerful that they were able to manifest a whole two books of this three book series themselves.
I mean, look how this fanon content of Zuko calling out his father and walking away from colonization and imperialism and toxic violence almost looks like the real thing:
And you're right, Zuko being soft was just totally made up by some very dedicated fan artists and fic writers who somehow got their content to air on nickelodeon when Avatar: the Last Airbender vs His Evil Nemesis Colonizer Zuko Who Is Dastardly Trying to Steal His Forever Girl was supposed to be airing.
It's disgusting, really.
lady healer gave her blessing :)
Whoa… I’m a Zutara shipper but this shows that the creators really planned Kataang all along. Aang FOUND the necklace and gave it to Katara, and she kissed him on the cheek right after. Holy crap this series is so well thought out
@thephattestass 😉
also that necklace represents so much more than a cultural method of proposal; it represented kanna not settling down to a life where her misogynistic husband to be would’ve talked over her at every turn & she would’ve been stuck in a culture that assigned her to a box on her gender. it represented kya’s strength & devotion to her people & her protectiveness over her daughter & the bending legacy of their people.
yet somehow kataang is meant to be when he does near the exact same thing in not caring about her consent, neglecting 2 of their 3 children because they don’t have his bending type + lok has katara on the sidelines as a healer. everything kanna tried + succeeded escaping & against every ounce of love kya had for her daughter.
And the meaning behind the necklace has a significant place in Katara and Zuko’s arc, specifically. Not only is it not just a cultural method of proposal, that is a meaning that the women in Katara’s family rejected. So there’s something ironic in claiming that it doesn’t matter that the conversations Katara had about her mother’s loss and strength are with Zuko, Aang handed her the necklace so he owns her, right? Zuko, meanwhile, tries to give her the necklace and is rejected, because he is using it selfishly without knowing the meaning. It is only when he is forced to see the real meaning that Katara accepts him.
If you look at it that way, Aang giving Katara the necklace and Katara giving him a kiss (while joking about wanting to kiss Zuko) parallels Pakku giving Kanna the necklace and Kanna deciding that she’d rather follow her heart than be some misogynist’s possession.
Seriously, it’s just baffling and a little funny that anyone would look at this and be like “wow, proof that kataang was planned all along, no zutara here!” when if anything it’s obvious set-up for a love triangle. Otherwise why all the jokes about Katara and Zuko being a couple? Why use parallel framing with Zuko and Aang giving Katara the necklace? The show absolutely did not need to include Zuko here, but they chose to on purpose.
And then if you go deeper, you get the deeper meaning of the necklace and how it means much more than just a man giving it to a woman as a claim on her, a meaning the narrative actually pushes back against. And it’s Katara’s relationship with Zuko that gets those deeper associations.
It’s just all very HMM for a show that supposedly never had any intentions towards Zutara.
it’s interesting that of all the places they could have chosen, the writers had zuko and katara’s reconciliation take place on ember island, the very same place we were told earlier in the season “has a special way of smoothing even the most jagged edges and revealing one’s true self”.
That dock must have been near Zuko’s family’s beach house, which means it wasn’t that far from the beach where Zuko said he was angry at himself.
ppl love to forget that katara: 1. has her own taste, 2. developed around aang, he needed her for his development and vice versa, 3. ZUTARA IS SHIP BETWEEN AN OPPRESOR X OPPRESSED!!! Ignoring all of the development they had with their respective partners and the trauma Zuko caused Katara!!
In the infamous words of one Luke Skywalker: amazing. every word of what you just said was wrong.
It’s actually kind of ironic that you bring up Katara’s taste, since, throughout the show, we have examples of the guys she likes, to greater or lesser extents in canon--Jet (explicit romantic feelings on her part, word of god that jet was her first kiss--a kiss that would have been consensual, incidentally, something you should keep in mind for later) and Haru (she denies the crush, but that could just as easily have been because of the abomination he’d been growing on his lip rather than denying those feelings ever existed), both of whom have much more in common (in terms of both emotional and physical maturity, and physical appearance) with Zuko than either of them has with Aang.
Zuko’s book 3 hairstyle is almost exactly reminiscent of Jet’s, even, if not quite as floofy.
(This is probably in part because of Jet’s function as a foil of Zuko within the narrative, particularly given their book 2 encounters, which I think just further solidifies my point that, were it not for extenuating circumstances [like the fact that Zuko was introduced as an enemy and they had significant obstacles to hurdle before they could be friends], Zuko would have been exactly Katara’s type. Had they met under different circumstances, she could have been the girl he went on a date with in Ba Sing Se. Just something to think about.)
So, yes, we’ve established that Katara has her own taste. Her tastes seem to be boys with great hair who are taller than her, the same age or older, and of a similar maturity level.
Aang falls short (heh, short) on all counts. So it isn’t Katara’s taste in boys that led her to be interested in him. Hm!
Next, you claim that Katara ‘developed around Aang’--that she was necessary for his development, and that he was necessary for hers.
Let’s take a moment to examine that, shall we?
I will absolutely grant you that Katara was necessary for Aang’s development--only to a point, of course, but we’ll get to that later--but was he really necessary for Katara‘s growth? I suppose I could grant you this on a generous technicality--he did, after all, provide her with the means to finally leave the South Pole and find a waterbending master to teach her (although she wound up largely self-taught anyway). But that had nothing to do with his relationship to Katara and everything to do with the structure of the plot--Katara and Sokka find Aang (and he never would have gotten out of that iceberg without Katara’s own righteous anger, so even that leads back to her own power), and then they go on a quest to find teachers for the Chosen One and save the world.
The story could not have begun without first finding Aang and then providing means for the other main characters to travel with him (or, in Zuko’s case, chase him), but this has nothing at all to do with Aang’s relationship to Katara. Aang was not a mover in Katara’s developmental arc--if anything, he acted as an obstacle more often than not, his actions ranging from innocent but obnoxious (playing and flirting with girls rather than helping with chores like picking up vital supplies, leaving Katara to do all of the quite literal heavy lifting and keeping her stuck in the role of caretaker that she’d been thrust into following the death of her mother), to deliberate and harmful (hiding the map to Katara and Sokka’s father, a truly selfish action, regardless of his lack of malicious intent, and one for which he never actually apologized), to somewhere in between (”she didn’t really mean that” he says to the man refusing to train Katara because she’s a girl, when yes, she very much did mean that, and Aang was no help in finally getting the old codger to eat his words--Katara had to shove them down his throat her own damn self).
While Katara’s overall arc wasn’t exactly big and dynamic (like Zuko’s redemption arc), or in-your-face (like Sokka getting force-fed Respect Women Juice and his eventual growth into a tactician and leader), it was very much present and woven into her character--and Aang had almost no part in it. He provided her with the means to get to the North Pole, but left Katara alone to fight the patriarchy herself. He messed around while Katara took it on herself to do the chores and keep the Gaang alive, but he did almost nothing to decrease that burden so she could grow out of the caretaker role. (Contrary to popular shipper claims, Aang didn’t actually teach Katara to have fun. She already knew how to have fun. But she couldn’t indulge, because she had a responsibility to her family and her tribe, and later to her brother and Aang and Toph, and Aang goofing off and trying to get her to do the same only added to her burdens rather than subtracting from them.) He provided Katara with the necessary motive to learn to heal herself, but he certainly didn’t seem to learn from the experience of accidentally burning her, preferring instead to claim he was never going to firebend again, despite already knowing, at that point, that he was going to need to master fire along with the other elements to become a fully realized Avatar and defeat the Firelord.
He didn’t help Katara keep them alive during The Desert. (In fact, he ran off, leaving her to desperately try to keep Sokka and Toph from succumbing to the heat while worrying for his safety.) In The Painted Lady, Katara makes the decision to stall the Gaang and do what she can to help the Fire Nation villagers on her own--Aang agrees to help her when he finds out, but he wasn’t actually instrumental in her making that choice. The Puppetmaster was, again, Katara finding a master of her own, and having to deal with the fallout from that. And in The Southern Raiders, Aang was--perhaps unknowingly, if I’m being generous, because he is a child and could not reasonably be expected to fully understand the implications of what he was asking her to do or why it was impossible--actively impeding Katara’s development! She desperately needed closure, something he could not understand and actively belittled and dismissed. The only reason he relented in the end (but not without a condescending ‘I forgive you! Does that give you any ideas???’ parting shot lmao) was because Katara was planning to take Appa anyway, and letting her go (and hoping she’d just magically wind up doing things his way) was easier than trying to fight her on it.
While Aang’s existence was necessary for Katara to start down her own path, she needed neither his guidance nor his approval to follow it--and absolutely nothing would change about Katara’s arc if you removed their romantic relationship entirely.
Possibly because the only changes needed to do so would be to remove the two times Aang kissed Katara without her consent (which, hopefully, no one would actually miss), and the epilogue kiss (which was awkward and unnecessary to begin with, since ending the entire show on a romantic kiss as the final shot kind of missed the point of the story to begin with, but that’s another discussion). None of these kisses (which are the only moments in which Katara’s feelings for Aang are so much as addressed; do note that addressing them, or hinting that they needed to be, is not the same as saying she exhibited any sign of reciprocating them) altered anything about Katara’s behavior, her personal arc, or (and perhaps most critically) her relationship with Aang.
It’s that last point that is really damning, as far as ‘Katara obviously had feelings for Aang, she kissed him in the finale!’ goes. Because she didn’t ‘obviously’ have feelings for him. And the fact that he kissed her before the invasion and then she forgot about it (she literally had no idea what he was talking about during the play’s intermission until he reminded her that he’d kissed her) is pretty clear evidence that she didn’t actually have feelings for him. Not the kind he had for her.
I’ve been a teenage girl. I know what it’s like to be surprise!kissed by your crush. And I absolutely for a full fact know that I had not completely forgotten about that kiss three months later and had, in fact, spent most of my waking hours thinking about it and remembering it and trying to talk to him about it. Now, granted, I was not in the middle of a war, but even if I had been, I doubt I would have needed reminding about the fact that the boy I’ve supposedly been developing feelings for had kissed me and showed clearly that he had those feelings for me too.
At the very least, if Katara was harboring feelings that she was worried about approaching until after the war, her relationship dynamic with Aang should have shifted. But it didn’t. She acted the exact same way with him after the Day of Black Sun as she did before it--that is, as a mother figure and a caretaker, responsible for his wellbeing. (And it’s clear she never took him down off the pedestal she needed him to occupy, either--let it not be said that the unhealthy aspects of their relationship only went one way.)
And book 3 is, incidentally, where Katara went from being vital to Aang’s development to being detrimental to it--or, rather, Aang’s refusal to let go of his attachment to her (despite ostensibly having done as much at the end of book 2) was. Because despite having been told by, perhaps, the greatest authority left in the world on Air Nomad culture (even more than Aang, who had left his temple with a child’s understanding of his culture that was never able to mature because he got stuck in the ice berg while his people were wiped out) that he had to let go of his possessive attachment to this girl who never even expressed the possibility that she might harbor romantic feelings for him to begin with, after Azula killed him and Katara brought him back, he went right back into the mindset of Katara is mine, it’s just a matter of time.
And the narrative validated him for it.
Notice how, during Ember Island Players, Aang says the following (emphasis mine):
“We kissed at the invasion, and I thought we were gonna be together. But we’re not.”
First of all, if you go back and watch the scene, it’s clear it wasn’t a mutual kiss. Aang sprang a surprise kiss on Katara, which left her shocked and unhappy after he flew off. (The decision to have her looking away and frowning was a deliberate one on the part of Bryke, who wanted Katara’s feelings kept ambiguous. Heaven forbid you allow the animators to make it clear that this fourteen-year-old girl who was just kissed without her consent by someone she’d never once demonstrated romantic feelings toward might actually have some. Heaven forbid she have a little agency in her own romantic narrative. But whatever.)
Second, he says he thought they were gonna be together.
He thought.
He never once even asked Katara what she thought--or even how she felt. He just assumes. He assumes that if he kisses her, she’ll kiss him back and they’ll get together. He assumes that she must have feelings for him, even though her body language is closed off and she told him with her words that she did not want to talk or think about this right now, and kisses her regardless of those signals, upsetting her and leading her to storm off.
And the narrative rewards him, because despite the fact that they don’t have a single significant scene together after that second disastrous kiss, Katara just decides off-screen that she Does Love Him Really and walks onto the balcony to make out with him.
The upshot of all this being that, while Katara was indeed instrumental to a lot of Aang’s early growth and development, Aang was not necessary for her own arc, and their romantic relationship (such as it was) actively hampered Aang’s development in book 3, while removing it would change absolutely nothing for Katara (except saving her from some painfully embarrassing memories).
As far as your third point, I’m simply not going to get baited into explaining how reducing Zutara to an ‘oppressor/oppressed’ relationship is not only insulting to interracial couples irl (not to mention any other couple with a potentially unbalanced dynamic of societal power, since there are many more axis of oppression than just racial), but demeaning to Zuko and Katara, their personal arcs as well as their relationship development together.
However, I will point out that Zuko was not responsible for any of Katara’s trauma. She did not find violence and fighting in bending battles to be traumatic--in fact, she reveled in it. She enjoyed fighting against Zuko at multiple points (especially noticeable in their battle at the end of book 1), because she wanted to fight--she always had--and once she had the ability, she was ready to throw down with anyone who gave her the slightest reason. (Including, by the way, her own potential waterbending master.) Aang’s death at the end of book 2 was Azula’s doing, and while I think that contributed to Katara’s extreme reaction to Zuko joining the gaang, it was not something for which she actively blamed him, and it wasn’t something she believed would be repeated--she let him go off alone on a journey to find the original firebending masters with Aang well before she chose to forgive him. So she already trusted Zuko’s intentions and that Aang would be safe with him.
Finally, because this has gotten long enough already, I hope you now understand that Zuko and Katara getting together would not require ignoring any of their development with their canonical romantic partners. We’ve already established that Katara’s arc wouldn’t change in the slightest if all of Aang’s romantic advances were removed, and I haven’t even gotten into how Mai meant nothing in the grand scheme of Zuko’s development because I’m pretty sure that’s just self-evident. I mean, the video compilation put together by Nick showcasing Zuko’s journey throughout the series doesn’t include a single scene with Mai, though it does include several with Katara, and even Jin makes an appearance--because Katara, and even Jin, played key roles in Zuko’s personal journey, while his relationship with Mai happened entirely off-screen and her only real function was to showcase just how unhealthy trying to force himself back into the role of the Crown Prince was for him.
What development, exactly, is there between them to even ignore?
At any rate, I’ve gone on long enough--I hope you enjoy the fact that you activated my wordvomit trap card right when i was about to go to bed, anon, because I just spent two hours writing this instead. In case you’re interested in the TL;DR: at the end of the day, there was no meaningful, mutual development in Kataang’s romantic relationship, and those romantic feelings that did exist were largely one-sided and ultimately detrimental to Aang’s development in the final third of his overall arc. Meanwhile, Mai meant nothing to Zuko’s journey--rather like Aang’s romantic overtures, she could be removed from the show completely and nothing about his story would change--while Zuko and Katara were both vital to each other’s overall storylines, arcs and development. This, coupled with the fact that Zuko never actually traumatized Katara and, in fact, helped her achieve closure from the biggest source of her own trauma, means that Zuko and Katara have better and more believable build up that could potentially lead to a romantic relationship than either of them have with their canon romantic partners.
So no, anon, I didn’t forget anything--I think you may have, though. Perhaps a rewatch is in order? Make sure not to close your eyes for the back half of book 3 this time.
One of the dumbest anti-Zutara/Kataang takes is that Aang (who automatically the most popular guy wherever he goes and has fan girls following around) is the under appreciated nerd while Zuko (the awkward angsty turtle duck who only got a date because his uncle set it up for him and only got a girlfriend because his sister manipulated one of her friends into dating him) is the douchey popular guy
Is it just me or when Katara says “Aang, don’t walk away from this!” does it sound like a parent scolding their child?
It isn't just you, and the fact that this is their last scene together before their kiss in the finale is infuriating to me. After we've seen how much pain it causes Kataea to see Aang walk away, and after the show repeatedly made jokes about Katara being like Aang's mom at her expense.
The reality with Katara being coded as motherly towards Aang is that it isn't all that unusual in the way heterosexual romances are written by male writers. Women are typically expected to mother their male partners and simultaneously derided for it as if it were a natural state. That's why so many people accept it and don't see it as all that unusual.
But what really gets me is how the show deliberately chose this framing after not letting KA make up after their serious fights in the previous two episodes. They chose to frame Aang as a child rebelling against motherly, long-suffering Katara
And then chose to frame Zuko as the father figure stepping in to tell mom to let their son sort it out for themselves.
I mean, look at Katara's face when Aang is pointing his finger at her and look at her face when Zuko acts supportive.
She is totally shocked that someone is actually taking this burden off her. Not only is this one of the quintessential momtara scenes, it's also a dadko scene. And Aang is their unruly child.
I'm being slightly facetious but what really bothers me about this scene is how ugly Aang is towards Katara and how hypocritical. I mean, look at the dialogue.
Aang: None of you understand the position I'm in.
Katara: Aang, we do understand. It's just ...
Aang: Just what, Katara? What?
Katara: We're trying to help!
Aang: Then, when you figure out a way for me to beat the Fire Lord without taking his life, I'd love to hear it!
Remember when Katara told Aang that he didn't understand the position she was in wrt getting justice against her mom's murderer and the fandom constantly skewers her for it?
Remember when Aang said he did understand and then proceeded to tell her what she was feeling and what he thought she should do about it, and how Katara thanked Aang for understanding even though he clearly did not and continued not to understand up until he wrongly assumed she had done what he thought she should do? Contrast that with Aang immediately interrupting Katara when she tries to tell him she understands and screaming at her.
The icing on the cake here is that Katara had just made her own decision to spare the life of someone who didn't deserve it. If anyone is in a position to understand even a little bit Aang's position, it is her. But Aang completely dismissed her in that episode and was wrong about what she would choose to do about Yon Rha.
This scene just emphasizes how little Katara and Aang understand each other, while showing Katara and Zuko getting closer.
What really, really irks me about this scene is that they didn’t even try to add romantic coding because they knew the characters’ relationship, at this point, was not even close to being romantic. A scene like this could be romantic in the right setting. Two characters with feelings for each other, fighting because one of them is running away. That’s some prime angst right there.
But the thing is, Ember Island Players left the Kataang relationship in a very bad place and that hasn’t been fixed at all yet and then they try to shoehorn an emotion packed scene in their next interaction. Like, what? As an audience member, I’m confused. Where was the resolution for their LAST fight? They’re fighting again, already?? And look, this would make sense if the writers wanted to show that Katara and Aang wouldn’t work together in a romantic context because of these issues. OR if the writers had began showcasing these issues a little earlier in the season so they’d have time to work through them and build a healthier relationship so that by the time the big kiss happened, we’d all be satisfied with the way their relationship progressed. But … no. They just packed their relationship with so many issues right before the finale and then expected us to applaud when they kissed at the end because … the hero always gets the girl I guess.
Can you imagine if, instead of an out of character comic about Zuko’s mother erasing her memory and changing her face to shack up with an ex and pop out replacement babies, we instead got a fully developed Book 4 of ATLA in which we learn that Ursa has been a major informant for the White Lotus for years and played an active role in destroying Ozai’s regime?
Like, the show explicitly states that Ursa is the kind of mother who bites back if you threaten her kids. Can you imagine the hell she’d raise after learning that, despite everything, Ozai burned and banished her baby boy? Can you imagine if the reason why Team Avatar made such crazy progress in only ONE YEAR was because Ursa was spearheading the White Lotus’s resistance efforts all over the world? Do you really think that Ursa, the woman who murdered her warmongering father-in-law to protect her precious son, would quietly disappear into a new life trusting that Ozai wouldn’t go back on his word?
Come at me, Bryke, Ursa deserved SO much better 😒😒😒
Katara is the most mistreated person both in the show and fandom and it breaks my heart.
Antis saying that Zuko is abusive... just because Katara has more softer tone, that doesn't mean she doesn't have sharp edges. She actually never held back from Zuko. And she actually had her own ways winning him during matches. How do you think Katara would be helpless against Zuko? Just because she's a girl?
I honestly don't think either of them would try to be abusive towards each other. They're each other's rocks.
But if you think that way, Zuko was kinda abused by Katara too. Why is it always that Katara is painted as the helpless girl of color, while Zuko is painted as the abusive colonist who forced his way into marriage with Katara when you describe their romantic relationship???
This might be a bit of an unpopular take but it’s okay to be in love with someone who doesn’t like you back.
I don’t mean being in a relationship with someone who’s stringing you along or never getting over someone hoping they’ll eventually like you back, obviously, but like... the idea that if someone doesn’t return feelings for you then they were never worth your attention in the first place or that they should “look at what’s right beside them” or whatever is so bad but I also see it everywhere. Sometimes someone can be worthy of your love and also not like you back that way.
On top of that is the expectations of perfect love or that being in unrequited love is pathetic or sad, or that you can only be happy if someone you like a certain way likes you back the same way, and I fully blame societal amatonormativity for this. In movies and books unrequited love is always framed as either “they were never good enough for you (and usually there’s an undercurrent of about implication they were ‘using’ you)” or “by the end they realized what they were looking for was right beside them the entire time, they fall in love the end” and like
Yeah, it sucks when someone doesn’t like you back, but I’ve been in unrequited love a few times now and my general experience is that I don’t love them less because they love me differently. All my loves were close friends first, and they all remain close friends to this day, aware of my current or former feelings, and it’s... okay.
It’s okay to not be in storybook love. It’s okay to love someone differently than they love you. It’s okay to love someone who’s aroace or gay or straight and can’t be into you that way. It’s okay to be in love with someone and not want to start a relationship with them because you’re not ready or you’re happy single or you’re relationship types aren’t compatible, and it’s okay to fall in love with someone who loves someone else who isn’t the bad guy either.
Love is supposed to feel good. Loving being in love without it being requited is okay. Nobody has to be the villain or the bad guy or the one that’s missing out—sometimes, they just don’t fall in love with you, and that’s okay! If you fell in love with them for the right reasons, you should still love having them in your life, and love having them in your life while your feelings settle and you can both move forward.
Feelings are valid. Jealousy and pain and yearning are par for the course, but what you do with those feelings matters more than whether or not your feelings were returned. It’s okay to be in love with someone and happy to be their friend, because friendship isn’t a backburner to romantic or queerplatonic feelings or anything else. They can love you as a friend.
Stories can end without romantic or qp or other requited resolution—in my experience, sometimes it makes your relationship stronger, to be able to talk about those feelings and move forward without having them be requited. You can move forward, or move on, or stay in love or fall in love with someone else, and it’s okay. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t and maybe we want different things from the people we love, but it’s not a waste of time or a waste of feeling or a waste of a friendship for something to not work out how you’d hoped.
I just don’t think enough people celebrate loving someone without it ending in wedding bells. Maybe it’s the aroace in me too—but the people I’ve loved in my life have taught me a lot, and I think that’s pretty good, too. I like loving, and I really think more people should.
For some people, life doesn’t truly begin until they’re 26-30. The way we romanticize and obsess over youth is super harmful. Your life is not over at 21, I promise you. It’s just beginning
Do you think most fans project into Katara when shipping her with Zuko or with Aang? I kinda feel guilty about this because a part of me ships her with Zuko because I myself would want a more mature partner, rather than someone I would need to take care and baby. I might be in the minority though because I know Zutara works and makes waaaaay more sense beyond just my personal preference in a man.
I don't think that "most" fans do much of anything. To be honest, unless someone is somehow able to survey every single fan of the show and the ship to find out their opinions and reasoning, I don't think that it makes sense to generalize about either ship's fandom.
Anecdotally, I can say that most Zutara fans I have met have been women or AFAB nonbinary people. And since I really only interact with the Zutara side of the ATLA fandom, I can also say that basically everyone I've met in the fandom agrees that Zuko would be a better partner for Katara, and most seem to agree that the relatively equal maturity levels between Zuko and Katara are a huge factor in their compatibility. But when it comes to projecting onto Katara... it's really hard to say whether anyone projects onto a character, even anecdotally. Yes, I have met a few people who relate heavily with Katara and would totally date Zuko if he was real. But then I've also met (probably even more) fans who ship Zutara, but would prefer other characters (like Hakoda) for their own partner, who are solely attracted to women and therefore would NEVER consider Zuko for their own partner (some of them would like to date Katara if she was real), or who don't experience attraction at all personally and don't want a partner for themself. Obviously, my experience isn't necessarily representative of all the people who ship Zutara, but in my experience, it seems like relatively few project onto Katara, or use their projection onto her as a reason for their shipping preferences.
But even if I'm wrong, and it turns out ALL the people I don't know, ALL the people I've never spoken to ship Zutara because they project onto Katara and would prefer a partner like Zuko over a partner like Aang, where is the problem with that?
No, seriously. Where is the problem? If someone sees Katara's canon relationship with Aang as a reflection of a relationship they've experienced in their own life where they had to act as a caretaker for their partner at the expense of their own needs and wellbeing, are they wrong for wanting a partner who operates on equal footing with them? Is it wrong for women (or anyone else who relates to Katara as a character) to want more from their partners? Should they feel ashamed because they enjoy seeing their ideal relationships portrayed in fiction? And if so, then why is it okay for the men who created this show, one of whom was quite literally filmed stating, "Who hasn’t felt like Aang at some point? When you’re pursuing a girl and she’s just gonna go after that guy who really doesn’t care about her?” (John O'Bryan, one of the show's writers), to clearly project onto Aang's romantic relationship with Katara (despite the fact that his own statement implies that the girl being pursued has no interest in her pursuer)? Why do we, as fans of the show, have to feel ashamed for preferring a more balanced relationship dynamic when the creators and writers explicitly projected their own desires onto the (extremely unbalanced) canon romance?
You're fine, anon. You're allowed to have preferences, you're allowed to have reasons for those preferences, and you don't have to feel guilty about any of that. Even if you are projecting onto Katara (which I'm not completely sure that you are), it sounds to me like your core reason for preferring Zutara over Kataang is that you prefer more balanced relationships between equal partners. And frankly, equality in relationships seems like an admirable ideal both in real life and in fiction.
One of the reasons why people ship Zutara is because it follows a tried and true romance arc exemplified by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
We have a spirited and outspoken heroine who chafes against the expectations and restrictions imposed upon her by the society she lives in.
Elizabeth Bennet and his sisters have to marry well in order to keep their social standing because their family home will go to a distant male relative after their father dies. Mr. Bennet was financially irresponsible and has little interest in making social connections which puts his daughters at a disadvantage on the marriage market. But Elizabeth, like her father, enjoys spotting and pointing out human folly, which often causes her to step on toes in snooty high society. She refuses advantageous marriage proposals from men she cannot like or respect.
Katara lost her mother at young age and had to step into her mother’s place and she’s had to grow up fast and pretty much parent herself and Sokka because their father has been fighting in a war. She’s expected to be the “team mom” of the Gaang. Katara dreams of becoming a master water bender but the only water bending masters are at the other end of world in the Norther Water Tribe, who only teach female benders how to heal. She defies Master Pakku by insisting on also learning how to do combat bending.
Next, we have a love interest who seems like a brooding a**hole but is actually a huge dork with poor social skills due to a mixture of class snobbery and their own awkwardness.
Mr. Darcy is the grandson of an earl and the son of a wealthy landowner. His standoffishness is due to the fact that he feels awkward around people he doesn’t know well, especially if he perceives them as his social inferiors. He is presented as a fundamentally good person who was misguided by the snobbish and class-conscious society he lives in. Elizabeth dismissed him as a snob but he’s hinted not to be as snobbish he seems. Mr. Darcy’s best friend is Mr. Bingley, whose family made their money in trade and he’s gracious and friendly towards Mr. and Mrs. Gardner, Elizabeth’s aunt and uncle, who also made their money in trade.
Zuko is the son the Fire Lord, the ruler of the most powerful nation in the world. He’s been raised to believe in Fire Nation superiority and in his own superiority as a prince. Like Mr. Darcy, he is fundamentally good person who’s had positive influences in his life (like Iroh and Ursa) but is misguided (because of his desire to please Ozai). To quote Mr. Darcy: “I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit.” He is awkward in social interactions with people his age, ex. His date with Jin and the Ember Island party. He is also willing to help out and stick up for Lee’s family and doesn’t feel he’s above working a minimum wage customer service job.
Zutara actually lines up almost perfectly with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy’s arc and I’d love to explore it in further posts if you all are interested.
I completely agree with all of this!! You make some great points about the roles that Elizabeth/Katara vs. Darcy/Zuko serve in their respective stories, and I want to elaborate a bit on the similarities in their character arcs too!
One of the reasons why people ship Zutara is because it follows a tried and true romance arc exemplified by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Many of the most well-known love stories (and I mean from all genres, not just romance shows/movies) often focus on tension between characters - which is not always explicitly romantic tension, just emotional tension - that causes them to challenge each other, force each other to grow, and progresses both their individual development and the plot’s development. The idea that two characters can be so perfectly and equally matched and encourage each other’s growth without even needing to have romantic feelings for each other just makes it all the more beautiful and meaningful if/when their relationship is expanded upon into a romance.
In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet’s character arc involved learning to overcome her overconfidence in her judgements about people. Darcy’s character arc involved realizing that his social class shouldn’t impact the way he treats people. It is through Elizabeth and Darcy’s interactions with each other that allows them to overcome their pride and prejudice and become better people (falling in love along the way). Elizabeth learns to becomes more understanding instead of relying on emotional snap judgements, Darcy learns to be more accepting of those that are of a different social class than him. It’s the emotional tension between the two characters that pushes them together and progresses their development, even when their first impressions of each other are hate.
Similarly, Katara’s character arc is entwined with the Fire Nation itself as she grapples with the guilt she feels from her mother's death protecting her from the Fire Nation, and takes on the responsibility of helping Aang so that he can save the world by ending the war. And her relationship with Zuko is incredibly impactful to her emotional arc - coming to see Zuko as an individual separate from the entity of the "Fire Nation" helps her recognize the complexity of the war, shows that the reality of the situation isn't as "black and white" as it first appears, and allows her to empathize with someone she originally thought could have nothing in common with her. Thus, her journey in coping with the loss of her mother and the feelings she has towards the Fire Nation are intrinsically tied together with her changing relationship with Zuko. This emotional tension between the two is made pretty explicitly clear in the show too - she is repeatedly pit against, then put beside Zuko. It's Katara that is with Zuko during the emotional climax of the show (the final Agni Kai) and at the conclusion of his character arc.
(Katara simply doesn't have this personal, emotional tension with Aang - the "tension" they share is mostly due to their similarities in being kids that are forced to grow up too soon and take on a great deal of responsibility, learning to master their elements and become strong fighters, and their shared goal of wanting to end the war and bring an era of peace and harmony to the world. But these aren't just shared between Katara and Aang - they're shared with Toph, Sokka, and Zuko (and kinda Suki) too. Don't get me wrong - the scenes that explore these themes are very impactful and meaningful! They just aren't unique to Katara's specific character arc, unlike her moments with Zuko.
Katara and Aang have a strong bond and are important to each other, but we don't really see their dynamic changing much, nor is their individual development tied to each other in any way. This isn't necessarily bad, but it did lead to the romantic subplot being poorly integrated into the main plotline - every romantic scene between the two was separate and out of place from everything going on around them, especially with how much Katara and Aang changed individually but their romantic relationship's tension was based on "will they or won't they" for three whole seasons. And this is not me trying to say that k/ataang is any less valid than Zutara, merely that it explains why many people - including myself - are more drawn to the non-canon ship.)
Taking all of this into account, it’s no wonder that so many are drawn to ships like Zutara and see the appeal in perceiving them romantically, considering the prevalence of these tropes in many romance stories, like Pride and Prejudice, as you pointed out.
OP made some more really great points. These things just basically set the foundation for their arguments and underline why their perspective of the writing is so spot on.
@rachelsophielesch :
In a well-done version of “enemies to lovers,” both parties are at fault for why they don’t get along. No one is 100% wrong or 100%. It allows the heroine to be flawed and relatable and the couple to be on equal footing. Also, these types of stories hold men accountable for their mistakes.
One of this first things you’re told when you study writing is the concept of want vs. need.
Want = the character’s goal and motivation.
Need = the emotional at the character goes on.
The weakness of A:TLA’s canon ships (Sokka/Suki excluded) is that they’re based on the characters’ wants rather than their needs.
