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@ok-boomerang
learning to make fire: fic complete! 🎉🎉
read on ao3🔥🌊
chapters: 15/15
rating: T
Brief Fic Summary: Katara broke up with Aang, but he won’t let her go. Mai dumped Zuko, and he’d do anything to get her back. Surely fake dating will solve their problems.
To put it very bluntly.
You will always make a better impact helping people who need it than trying to hurt people you think deserve it.
Zuko is canonically a sappy hopeless romantic who enjoys romance stories like Love Amongst The Dragons, we know this because his problem wasn't that his mom would take them to see a gushy romance play but that they did it badly. You don't care about something getting butchered unless you like that thing.
He has trouble expressing himself but tries to make thoughtful gestures and give little gifts to people he cares about to show affection.
Early on when Iroh and he are living in a cave and he's going through one of his Robbing People With Swords phases he steals a fancy tea set for Iroh in a misguided attempt at showing affection.
In another misguided attempt at affection he gives the Earth Kingdom boy his knife.
After struggling the entire night to bond with Jin because he's socially inept he does his cute little gesture of lighting the lanterns and risking outing himself as a firebender because he wants to make her happy. And then gives her a coupon for a free cup of tea when she clearly wants to kiss him, because he's clueless.
We see this style of showing affection come out with Mai as well except she sneers at it and shuts him down and hurts his feelings about it. He is the kind of sappy bastard whose first instinct on seeing something pretty is "I'm going to give this to my girlfriend :)" but it seems like this is supposed to be showing us that he and Mai aren't a good fit. He tries being sweet and vulnerable and makes little gestures, like seeing a beautiful perfectly intact conch shell and trying to give it to her, and she verbally rolls her eyes at him and hurts his feelings about it.
Later on when he's with the gaang and starting to feel safe being his true self, he's showing them affection in his typical way by making and serving everyone tea (and on a more subtextual level I think this is a way to demonstrate humility to them, since he comes from royalty he's trying to show that he sees them as equals).
He does other kind gestures to show his new affection for them in the forms of leading a prison break with Sokka and taking Katara on a trauma closure (but murder not NOT on the table if she wants) mission and waiting outside her tent all night like a wet dog on her doorstep.
Dude is a piner and a yearner. And you know what, you know who would LOVE IT if Zuko found that seashell and gave it to her and wouldn't turn up her nose at it? A certain waterbender who he acts more in love with than his canon gf.
Good point about serving tea to the gaang. It also shows what kind of political leader he wants to be and how he's going to approach diplomacy with the rest of the world. Which doesn't mean he's going to be a doormat, but serving tea in Asian cultures represents hospitality, harmony, and respect.
To me, that's one of the saddest parts of Zuko's character. He WANTS to connect with people and show affection. The problem is that Zuko was stuck being surrounded by people like Ozai, Azula and Zhao who would destroy Zuko at the slightest show of vulnerability.
I'm so happy for him when he actually gets to make tea for the gang and they happily accept his token of friendship instead of throwing it back in his face
Like Mai always did
Which is why on this blog we remember that fictional stories like ATLA are contemporary myths and the nature of myths and legends and storytelling all throughout human history has been that they get reinterpreted and changed countless times and with every classic myth there are numerous versions of it that exist.
In some later versions of the story of Heracles, storytellers added in their own little side fic to it, where Heracles is getting force-fem'd and has to live as the maidservant of this wealthy dominatrix lady and this addition to the story got so popular in retellings that it's considered its own equally valid version of the myth. Literally someone's Heracles femdom fanfic that got so popular it was accepted as a "canon" part of the story by the people of the time, most of whom probably didn't know that it wasn't in the older versions of the myth because it was the only version they'd ever heard. So now someone's dominatrix OC they created to ship with Heracles is an official part of Heracles lore and listed as one of his wives on Wikipedia (with the caveat that she's not in every version). This part of the story arose at a time when ideas about gender and sexuality were shifting somewhat, so I think we can see why people in a time period like that found this addition to the story to be intriguing and wanted to explore them through a popular myth.
"Canon" is a modern concept born from a religious concept that was designed as a tool of social and mental control. Canon should be considered like draft 1 of the contemporary myth and all fanfic and retellings are just alternative versions of the same story just like how classical mythology has multiple versions depending on who's telling it and when.
Was Iphegenia sacrificed by her father or did the goddess Artemis step in at the last moment to spare her? Both, because both versions exist and are equally valid and real because both are fictional. The one where she IS sacrificed came first (I believe) but was changed in later tellings, probably because human sacrifice was a huge no-no in Ancient Greek religion and practitioners were probably not buying the idea that a god would demand a human sacrifice when such things were strictly prohibited, and they decided that they were ignoring and rewriting that part of the "canon" because they couldn't make sense of it in the context of how they understood their religion. Kind of like how I cannot make sense of a highschool aged girl wanting to make out with a 6th grader based on my understanding of teenage girls as someone who used to be one. It was one of the first ever instances of "she would not fucking say that," so the folk fixed the error they saw in the story, and we do the same thing today with fanon and fanfiction.
They weren't buying that Artemis would ask for a human sacrifice, they decided she was acting OOC and to fix it, just like how I do not buy that Katara wanted to kiss that little boy or that Zuko would be happy with Mai, and as a result I am changing the story in the way I retell it.
So if I decide that Zuko ended up happily married to Katara and they had beautiful steambabies, then fuck it, that's what happened. Because I said so. Because that is how telling stories has worked since the dawn of humankind.
The version of ATLA where Zuko and Katara end up together is just another version of the contemporary myth. It might not be canon, but it is just as valid and just as real, because neither are real, both are imaginary, and arguing that people aren't "allowed" to disregard canon and decide for themselves what happened is basically like arguing that your imaginary friend is more real than someone else's imaginary friend. Both are imaginary. Neither are real. These are not historical events they are fictional stories and no one can stop you from deciding that something else happened because thought crime is not real and you have free will.
Deciding to disregard canon and make up your own version of fictional events is using free will to its fullest extent tbh. More people should do it when a story they like ends in an unsatisfying way. It's very fun.
Ending this rant on some Henry Jenkins wisdom.
And this one:
"'Fandom' is a vehicle of marginalized subcultural groups (women, the young, gays, etc.) to pry open space for their cultural concerns within dominant representations; it is a way of appropriating media texts and rereading them in a way that serves different interests, a way of transforming mass culture into a popular culture."
Jenkins, Henry. “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5, no. 2 (1988): 85–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295038809366691.
Thank you for listening. Zutara forever.
“fanfiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of by the folk” is an incredible quotation, thank you henry jenkins
let us not forget the rumor that ATLA went with KA in the end bc nickelodeon stepped in, afraid that a Zutara ending would “make 6-year-olds cry”
Y'all if you gotta make the characters literally make out with each other to convey that they are in love, then you failed at writing a romantic plotline.
If you cut out the scene where Katara and A.ang kiss and the scene where Zuko and Mai reunite, the narrative would remain intact and the only logical assumption would be something brewing between Zuko and Katara.
We wouldn't need to see them kiss to understand that something was going on between them, because there was plenty enough material that is easily interpreted as romantic coding. That's the real reason they had to insert the Kata.ang kiss and the Mai.ko reunion scene, they needed to be extremely obvious and in-your-face with it or else there'd be no reason to think either of these pairings were endgame.
It's the definition of telling not showing. They did such a shitty job of setting up these romantic subplots and such a GOOD job of setting up a romantic subplot that they weren't intending to canonize that they had to ham-fistedly insert two scenes that serve no narrative purpose so that no one would get confused about who is in love with who.
It speaks to how unconfident the creators are in their own choices.
I think one of the reasons anti-zutara arguments bother me so much is that zutara isn't real. everyone in their head has a different understanding of what zutara would look like in practice based on their impressions of these characters. like if you're making a post critiquing kata//ang then everyone has a concrete understanding of what we're actually discussing.
so when someone makes an anti-zutara take, it usually looks like either 1) bashing the fans for being annoying (when no fandom is uniquely awful) or 2) fighting an invisible ghost lmao. "zutara is wrong because it romanticises toxic masculinity and katara would never be fire lady". katara and zuko are feeding turtle ducks and he's helping her rebuild the southern water tribe in my imagination so I have no clue what you're talking about, I'm sorry.
I think one of the reasons anti-zutara arguments bother me so much is that zutara isn't real. everyone in their head has a different understanding of what zutara would look like in practice based on their impressions of these characters. like if you're making a post critiquing kata//ang then everyone has a concrete understanding of what we're actually discussing.
so when someone makes an anti-zutara take, it usually looks like either 1) bashing the fans for being annoying (when no fandom is uniquely awful) or 2) fighting an invisible ghost lmao. "zutara is wrong because it romanticises toxic masculinity and katara would never be fire lady". katara and zuko are feeding turtle ducks and he's helping her rebuild the southern water tribe in my imagination so I have no clue what you're talking about, I'm sorry.
I don't tend to apply strict colonial theory towards a:tla, because the second you try to, the whole thing crumbles apart. I tried to make a list of questionable stuff this show does in its canon and in its orientalism and the list just keeps going. the show's perspective is that war and genocide is bad and hurts everybody. the deeper you interrogate the political stance of a children's cartoon from 2005, the less it holds up. this is ultimately a fantasy epic story for children, written by two white men who really loved anime and the aesthetics of east and south east asian culture. (the sun warriors are based on mesoamerican and indonesian indigenous groups too). and they just smushed all of that together.
katara helps zuko earn back his throne. she canonically believes he's earned it.
basically, if you think zutara fundamentally romanticises coloniser x colonised, then I don't think I can change your mind but then there are about a billion other things that actually happen in the show that ought to render the whole thing unforgivable to you (and those that do apply these critiques to the show as a whole still have no issue calling themselves a:tla fans and actively making fanworks all these years later right?)
so I find it hard to engage with this critique when it's only ever applied to the Concept of Zutara (something which is fanon, fluid and non-canon i.e. not real) and never the actual show redeeming him anyway. aang is the sole survivor of the air nomad genocide, and he stands up on the steps of the fire nation palace as the unified nations celebrate zuko's coronation.
100% — the suggestion that zutara is some colonizer x colonized fantasy does not fit with the whole reason zuko is so popular — he redeemed himself! the character as written had the bad moral luck to be born in the royal family of a colonizing state but ultimately rejected it, and to still label post-redemption zuko as an active colonizer seems to suggest that humans are not mutable and will always be defined by their pasts. which is…pretty sad and cynical to me. not to mention the fact that critiquing a romance with him but not a friendship is necessarily ranking romantic relationships above platonic ones…which is also a bummer!
I think one of the reasons anti-zutara arguments bother me so much is that zutara isn't real. everyone in their head has a different understanding of what zutara would look like in practice based on their impressions of these characters. like if you're making a post critiquing kata//ang then everyone has a concrete understanding of what we're actually discussing.
so when someone makes an anti-zutara take, it usually looks like either 1) bashing the fans for being annoying (when no fandom is uniquely awful) or 2) fighting an invisible ghost lmao. "zutara is wrong because it romanticises toxic masculinity and katara would never be fire lady". katara and zuko are feeding turtle ducks and he's helping her rebuild the southern water tribe in my imagination so I have no clue what you're talking about, I'm sorry.
I don't tend to apply strict colonial theory towards a:tla, because the second you try to, the whole thing crumbles apart. I tried to make a list of questionable stuff this show does in its canon and in its orientalism and the list just keeps going. the show's perspective is that war and genocide is bad and hurts everybody. the deeper you interrogate the political stance of a children's cartoon from 2005, the less it holds up. this is ultimately a fantasy epic story for children, written by two white men who really loved anime and the aesthetics of east and south east asian culture. (the sun warriors are based on mesoamerican and indonesian indigenous groups too). and they just smushed all of that together.
katara helps zuko earn back his throne. she canonically believes he's earned it.
basically, if you think zutara fundamentally romanticises coloniser x colonised, then I don't think I can change your mind but then there are about a billion other things that actually happen in the show that ought to render the whole thing unforgivable to you (and those that do apply these critiques to the show as a whole still have no issue calling themselves a:tla fans and actively making fanworks all these years later right?)
so I find it hard to engage with this critique when it's only ever applied to the Concept of Zutara (something which is fanon, fluid and non-canon i.e. not real) and never the actual show redeeming him anyway. aang is the sole survivor of the air nomad genocide, and he stands up on the steps of the fire nation palace as the unified nations celebrate zuko's coronation.
ATLA faaaannssss 🗣🗣 Is anyone alive in this fandom??🗣🗣 Please accept me!!!🗣🗣
did you seriously just let it linger
The answer is always yes
Zuko really said "I support women's rights, but more importantly I support women's wrongs."
Is it me or I think zutara is better than kataang…like everything about them is so beautiful
Agree, I think the reason why zutara works for me personally is
from the very beginning aang did not want to be friends with katara he wanted to be in a romantic relationship with her first, so people need to stop calling their dynamic friends to lovers, the creators made it pretty clear that the dynamic was always younger child having a crush on older girl, she loves him like a babysitter like a little brother, that's the love katara had for him not the romantic kind.
That's one of the many reasons why zutara is better in my opinion.
We all know she only got with aang not just because he was the main hero but because the creators wanted to live out their boy fantasy ,even by the shows own writing we know her type, values and standards around relationships.
The fortune teller is a good indication on their dynamic, it is only by an outside force that she even considers him, if this didn't happen she wouldn't have given him the time of day. And this really pisses me off, because your telling me that aang can define his own fate but not katara? so only aang can forge his own destiny but katara is expected to marry a powerful bender because xyz said so, really?????. It is always an outside force that tries to push them together it is never katara seeking aang out of her own free will, but it is always aang trying to seek her out, this is summed up to every romantic interaction the creators try to force on them and us.
The reason I like the southern raiders ep is because zuko is trying to fix what he broke, he's being a good friend first and even some antics that bring this ep up can see and not deny as a gotcha on why he was doing this for katara, because he's a good friend(which is def not the only reason he did this), also why he took a lightning bolt for her as well(the only time they refute any romantic tension which was clearly present and being teased between them, they refer back to him being a good friend), but see that's the thing, zuko and katara trusting one another, having each others back and being each others ride or die is why its soo compelling, because they have a natural build up of becoming more than just friends, the potential was there, you don't see this progression in kataangs dynamic.
And a lot of people say it was obvious, yes, it was def obvious with the creators forcing it down our gobs all the time with every cringe moment they had aang trying to impress katara then having the very next ep back to like nothing happens with their apparently progressive romantic development.
The ones that really sabotaged kataang was bryke.
They were so clouded by what young girls and teenagers thought and liked about zutara that they butchered their own couple and made a poor attempt at putting them together at the very end without resolving their prior conflicts, so antics really have no right to say anything about people thinking it was forced.
You also don't see kataras pov on her feelings towards aang cause the creators were going to put them together no matter how much it didn't make sense for her to like a pre-adolescence boy. I really wanna know what qualities katara likes in aang other than he's the avatar and saved the world which is expected of being the avatar?
In canon we see him disrespecting her culture in the bato ep, running away from his responsibilities, which katara urged and encouraged him to take seriously and complete his training, she wanted the war to end and you can see how aang never understood this, you'd think when we find out the real reason why aang wanted to win the war in nightmares and daydreams ep was because he's doing this all for her, he would have actually mastered the avatar state and defeated the fire lord a lot sooner.
He also puts her in a position that burdens herself to care and control his emotional outbursts like a mother/sister would do, you don't see aang stepping up to lift this burden off katara so he wont put her or anyone else in danger(this dynamic was still written between them when they began a relationship in the comics by the way, just disgusting).
This was the character arc the competent writers were going to give aang in trying to control the avatar state. He doesn't want to take responsibility in being the avatar and that is understandable, he just wanted to be a normal kid, but this was supposed to be his character growth. letting go of his attachments, embracing his avatar duties, his immaturity to realize that what guru pathik was talking about wasn't that he couldn't love or stop loving but that he had unhealthy expectations placed on katara, those attachments needed to be let go for aang to realize that even if katara did not reciprocate he would still love her regardless, that is what unselfish/unconditional love is, putting the needs of someone before your own.
He also dismisses Katara's emotions when she even slightly shows another emotion that is not angel like.
Also the non-con kisses, this is why aangs puppy love is childish, he has no right to be in a relationship if he doesn't understand how to respect boundaries.
And people need to not act like he was mature around things, that's what his monk philosophy was not his own thinking.
Sorry, went on a whole rant, but yeah, that's what makes zutaras dynamic so real and authentic, a relationship should be based on, trust, respect, understanding and communication.
you ever reread your own WIPs and think "damn, I wanna keep reading, wish that person would update" ??
This is me. Kinda jealous of all the writers who can write quickly because I can't.
…sorry about who i am as a person 💕
want to talk about the new fic i’m writing (i’m actually writing! pls clap) but 🤐 until it’s finished
“zuko didn’t actually care about katara he just wanted her to forgive him!” do you guys hear yourselves when you talk. do you care about earning forgiveness from bitches you hate? no? so then you do understand that genuinely seeking restitution is intrinsically an act of caring because it matters to you that you hurt this person. it matters so much, in fact, that you’re unwilling to let it stand; that you’ll do the work to fix what you broke, because the idea of it letting it remain broken is unthinkable.
this is why the southern raiders is intentionally positioned as the finale to the field trip arc, why the climactic confrontation between zuko and katara that’s been building since ba sing se happens after the rest of the gaang has already befriended zuko. by tsr, zuko has achieved almost all of his goals. he is aang’s firebending teacher. he’s doing his part to stop the war. he’s part of the gaang. he’s even earned their trust and respect!
katara’s feelings towards him do not pose an obstacle to zuko in any way — it doesn’t hinder him from training aang or influence the rest of the group into shunning or ostracizing him. the point of the scene where everyone except katara hails him as a hero is meant to highlight this very dissonance, because not only does katara’s hostility not matter to her friends, it’s even treated as somewhat irrational and confusing [see sokka’s “what’s with her?” when katara lashes out at zuko].
and all of this is laid out because it’s important that the viewer is assured of the irrelevance of katara’s feelings to the larger narrative before the tsr field trip occurs, so that it’s crystal clear that zuko making amends has nothing to do with any external plot requirement and everything to do with his relationship with katara.
storytelling is meticulously intentional and animation even more so; the sequence of these episodes and individual scenes matters because it shows the audience that zuko has nothing more to gain by earning katara’s trust and affection back — nothing, that is, except katara herself.
and frankly, you really can’t blame anyone for reading romantically into that.
yall need to stop this “but katara choose aang!” nonsense because a) idk how she personally told you that when she doesn’t exist and b) even if katara were a real woman, this is some choice feminism bs that willfully ignores a lot of the social pressures and dynamics within heterosexual relationships that kat.aang as a relationship taps into both within the world of atla & as a narrative.
the creators themselves have alluded to the fact that katara & aang’s relationship draws from the trope of a younger boy pining after an older, more mature woman who doesn’t give him the time of day at first but is eventually brought around with his persistence and determination to win her heart.
and this dynamic bleeds through into the show itself, especially when aang is talking to people about katara. he is told multiple times that she’ll come around because he’s the avatar and that all he needs to do is not give up. the social dynamics of the kat.aang relationship even within atla reflects the prevalent narrative around straight relationships in our world: if you keep trying, the girl you like will obviously give you a chance eventually, because how could she not?
that’s troubling enough but then comes the second half of book 3, and now this narrative isn’t reflected just in those around aang, but in aang himself. what began as a sweet, harmless adolescent crush warps into something more dangerous, more familiar: entitlement. the aang of ember island players is one who demands katara’s love, not one who wishes for it. just look at the language used here:
i thought we were going to be together, but we’re not.
why don’t you know?
when is the right time?
the line delivery here is frustrated, almost accusing — this is not the way you talk to a girl you claim to love. this is the irritation of a long-promised reward that continues to be denied, something you wanted but cannot yet possess. this is eerily, intensely reminiscent of real-world gender dynamics, and it continues to be reinforced when katara responds according to the same gendered script:
aang, i don’t know.
we’re in the middle of a war. this isn’t the right time.
i’m sorry but right now, i’m just a little confused.
katara gives neither a yes nor a no but a neutral, noncommittal in-between. her tone and body language are apologetic yet clearly tense, uncomfortable — dancing that fine line most women are familiar with, of having to let down a man yet protect his feelings at the same time.
it’s one thing for the narrative of kat.aang to be misogynistic from a doylist perspective, but when the same applies within a watsonian analysis as well, that’s a far bigger problem. when you set up this dynamic for kat.aang in the show and double down on it as their last romantic interaction, you cannot then remove the implications that follow when katara inexplicably, wordlessly, obediently kisses aang in the finale:
that she loved him because she felt she had to.
because that is the underlying societal expectation of this particular dynamic, the same expectation the show itself has set up within the advice aang receives: that a woman’s affections are owed to the man who fights for them, and if he fulfils his obligations in pursuing her, she will fulfill hers in turn by dutifully rewarding him.
as with women in the real world, no choice katara makes in her world is free of the delicate, insidious entanglement of social pressures and gendered expectations that underlie and drive those choices, even subconsciously.
so yes — katara chose aang. but as the show ends with no insight on her part as to the nature of this choice, the question still remains: did she choose him freely, joyfully, unfettered and unburdened by the weight of expectation? or did she choose him as the girl who always did what had to be done, who took on duties that she was too young to shoulder for the sake of the people she loved, who could never let down the child she fiercely, lovingly protected from the moment she met him?
