[bumbleboa]

recently I got back into atla

[mhyinart]

Kataang has big Tom and Zendaya energy

[tyzulapropagandist]

still my favorite atla take ive seen

[eulaties]

thats cinema baby

[candeartv]

Kataang x The Prince of Egypt

Finished this wip finally

Original screenshots for comparison.

[frogpropaganda]

I love how by the first episode that Zuko is a full member of the gaang (The Firebending Masters) even though he's pretty clearly uncomfortable and unsure how to fit in with them partly cause he knows he hasn't yet done enough to be redeemed to them, the other characters, like Sokka namely, are already fully comfortable pissing him off on purpose and find his angry reactions funny instead of intimidating. Like they figured out immediately that he's all bark no bite with people he actually likes or wants the approval of, that you can (literally) poke the bear all you want and all he'll do is growl at you. He knows it's part of his atonement to put up with them annoying the crap out of him, and they all know that Zuko's anger is actually safe. He's a safe person to be angry with and he's a safe person to make angry.

[k-0re]

theyre grown up now

[scarlett-fire-cat]

Character Deficit: Stop Stripping Complex Characters Of Their Trauma Just Because You Think They’re Hot

Welcome back to my blog, where today I am waking up and choosing absolute violence against fandom culture. We need to talk about the severe lack of media literacy on the dash, specifically how people completely objectify brilliant fictional characters—either by hyper-sexualizing their designs or reducing their entire existence to a shipping prop. Put down the fanfic for five minutes and let’s talk about the top 10 characters you are actively robbing of their agency.

Let's start with a basic reality check: writing a character with emotional depth, intense trauma, and real flaws takes absolute mastery. But the second a character hits a fandom space? If they are remotely attractive, all of that writing gets tossed out the window.

Fandoms love to objectify characters, flattening them into two categories: "aesthetic sex symbols" or "the prize in a ship war." I am entirely finished pretending this isn't incredibly lazy. Here are the top 10 characters getting absolutely cheated by their own fanbases:

1. Raven (Teen Titans 2003)

Raven is a teenager holding back a literal apocalyptic demon god with nothing but her own mental fortitude. She is a masterclass in psychological survival and boundaries. But the internet completely objectifies her as the ultimate "goth girlfriend." They hyper-sexualize her design and treat her emotional walls as a game for self-insert romance, completely ignoring the sheer weight of her isolation.

2. Zuko (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

Zuko has arguably the greatest, most hard-fought redemption arc in television history. He is a victim of severe child abuse, systemic indoctrination, and facial mutilation. Yet, a massive portion of the fandom completely flattens him into a "misunderstood bad boy." They objectify his aesthetics and his anger, treating his deep-seated psychological trauma as nothing more than a cute, moody trait to be "fixed" by a ship.

3. April O'Neil (TMNT)

Across almost every single iteration, April is a brilliant scientist, a fearless investigative journalist, and a literal tactical asset to a group of ninja turtles. But historically, fandom spaces reduce her entirely to the token "hot human girl." She gets stripped of her intellectual agency and turned into a damsel or a visual trophy to give the male-dominated audience something pretty to look at.

4. Katara (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

Katara is a revolutionary leader, a master waterbender, a survivor of maternal genocide, and the literal emotional backbone of the Gaang. But if you look at the ship wars, you’d think her only purpose in life was deciding between two boys. She gets aggressively objectified in the Zutara vs. Kataang trenches, where people strip her of her independent moral agency just to turn her into a trophy for their favorite male character.

5. Arcee (Transformers Prime)

Arcee is a battle-hardened veteran soldier dealing with massive, textbook PTSD after watching one of her partners get brutally murdered in front of her. She is fierce, closed-off, and survival-driven. But because her CGI model is a sleek, purple motorcycle with feminine lines, parts of the internet hyper-sexualize her to a repulsive degree. It is peak objectification to look at a giant alien robot dealing with war trauma and reduce her to a sexualized aesthetic.

6. Korra (The Legend of Korra)

The objectification Korra faces is a deeply toxic mix of misogynoir and body-shaming. Korra is a muscular, physically powerful, queer woman of color who literally undergoes paralysis and severe psychological depression. Instead of respecting her unprecedented physical and emotional resilience, a massive chunk of the internet objectifies her muscles or her relationships, minimizing her incredible journey down to pure physical optics.

7. Catra (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power)

Catra is a masterclass in generational abuse, defense mechanisms, and complex villainy. Her entire arc is a messy, painful deconstruction of what abandonment does to a person. Yet, parts of the fandom completely flatten her into a quirky "sassy cat-girl." They objectify her aesthetic and completely sanitize her dark, raw choices just to make her a perfectly neat, non-threatening partner for shipping reasons.

8. Emily Prentiss (Criminal Minds)

Prentiss is a high-level federal agent, a brilliant international profiler, and a woman who literally faked her own death to protect her found family from an international terrorist. She is a powerhouse. But the fandom frequently objectifies her by completely ignoring her professional genius and trauma, reducing her instead to a static aesthetic icon or an empty pawn to be used in workplace shipping dynamics.

9. Jessica Knight (NCIS)

Agent Knight is a powerhouse REACT agent who runs toward explosions, specializes in high-risk hostage negotiations, and possesses intense tactical capability. She is fiercely independent. Yet, a vocal section of the fandom collapses her entire identity into her relationship status, objectifying her beauty and treating her purely as a romantic option rather than a highly competent federal agent who can snap a suspect in half.

10. Mako (The Legend of Korra)

Fandom loves to use Mako as a punching bag, entirely objectifying his role in the narrative. This is a kid who grew up as an orphan on the streets, literally funding his younger brother's life through underground pro-bending and street survival. He is incredibly hard-working and protective. But the fandom strips away all of that context, reducing his entire character down to a "pretty-boy cheating plot device" for a so-called "love triangle".

The Bottom Line:

Characters do not exist solely to look pretty on your screen or to act as mindless puppets for your shipping fantasies. When you strip a character of their trauma, their occupation, their flaws, and their independent moral agency just because you like their design, you aren't engaging with the media—you're just playing with dolls. Start respecting the writing.

[biby-24k]

made this edit with katara's original nose

[detectivehole]

unless its egregious, i'm not embarrassed to be fooled by ai. "oh i got lied to via something made by the Lying Machine the machine we made to Lie really well" like it's gonna happen it's no egg on your face. just be chill about it

[detectivehole]

don't get me wrong. it's always devastating always humbling. no one wants to fall for the lying machine it just sounds bad. but you can't dwell

[allgremlinyaps]

There is literally only one overarching flaw in the writing of tlok book 1, and its an incredibly meta flaw that most people don't even talk about.

So I really don't trust anyone that says the writing in Korra is bad without giving actual examples. Because in what way? In what way? The writing, specifically? Half the time they're either talking about how it's different from atla, which makes it bad, or the love triangle, which, while understandably annoying, isn't written... poorly.

It's actually written very naturalistically. If anything, the realism/awkwardness of the drama is something that takes real talent to write (lol.) I guess that's kind of nit-picky of me to differentiate, you could consider that part of the writing, but really. Give them their tens for consistency in execution.

Now, the REAL flaw in book 1 is in some of the writing surrounding the Equalists. Now, in-universe, the conflict of book 1 is beautifully done. The Equalists are a right wing reactionary group that formed in response to rapid industrialization and scarcity of resources in this new metropolis. A minority group, benders, has sought exclusive control of the government in an assumedly also reactionary move, worsening tensions. Korra has to fight fascist extremism from every angle. She has to learn to examine the intentions of powerful people, no matter how much sense they seem to make, or how good their intentions are. The conflict has perfect internal logic.

But it makes for some sloppy external logic! A muddied message!

There is no way of drawing actual real world equivalents from the non-bender/bender conflict. By nature of bending being AN ACTUAL MAGICAL DIFFERENCE in people, you cannot compare the conflict to racism or real world bigotry without accidentally making inaccurate statements about how humans are actually marginalized, and for what reasons.

Now, I truly do believe the message of book 1 is applicable in a lot of situations - be wary of people trying to divide you from others, trying to stoke up hatred and fear for their own gain, etc etc.

The problem is that this conclusion is not easily reached by the general audience, because they are too busy trying desperately to draw 1:1 parallels to real world situations. And that's not their fault, the show uses a lot of loaded language that would lead people down that path.

Essentially,

[ID: The meme of Hannibal Buress. He is labeled as "Bryke," and is saying: "I was so caught up in the euphoria of writing rich and internally logical worldbuilding, that for like a minute I lived in a world where racism didn't exist." End ID.]

[141n3]

Once I saw someone hating on Azula calling her a horrible person and whatnot and genuinely just saying terrible shit about her and it made me cry because the atla fandom will love and adore an old fart who committed war crimes because he’s funny but treat an unloved mentally ill 14 year old who just lost her only friends/stability in life like she bombed every city in the world

like no ones saying Azula is the most moral character in the show but she’s definitely not the least

it just makes me sad because Azula’s treatment is very much coated in sexism and how women’s mental health is viewed, especially in younger girls in media, like zuko gets to be “complex” “deep” character while Azula is “pure evil”, when Azula is equally complex if not more complex than her brother.

[loveridden1999]

[thoughts-of-a-cypress]

I don't like Ursa's low rank origins. It doesn't make sense and it's only to further victimize her cause women can't be victims enough.

Roku was best friends with crown prince Sozin, later Fire Lord. He's royalty and royalty moves within their inner circle. Mai is part of their court too just as Ty Lee as the daughter of a nobleman. See, Azula and Zuko as princess & prince only had two friends growing up who were from noble families themselves. They were isolated so much to the point regular teens didn't recognize their own royals - Chan as a fellow son of a higher-up, an admiral. Roku had to be born noble. The girl he crushed on and later married casually walked at the royal family's court so she had to be titled too. Look at their wedding celebrated at the royal palace! Thus it makes no sense for Ursa to be of low status. Let's say Sozin banned all his immediate family from court after his death - two generations aren't enough to erase their sense of belonging especially with how committed the Fire Nation is to honour. If Sozin banned his family after his death it makes even less sense since Roku died old, his child(ren) were adults at that point with his grandchildren probably already born. He lived on his own island as the Avatar. Can't have more privilege than this.

Noble or not, barely think the Fire Nation's prince would risk marrying a no-rank thus risk a bad look. Not to mention his children wouldn't matter that much. He has an older brother by prob a decade. He has a son. The succession continues, best Ozai can do is occupy a high ranking role within the future Fire Lord's circle. Ozai didn't become Fire Lord until Iroh willingly gave up his position and Azulon was old. If he so badly wanted to be Fire Lord he would've attempted assassination long ago. Problem three people need to get off his side - Azulon, Iroh and Lu Ten. As if fate spoke to him, Lu Ten died, Iroh in his grief withdrew and only an old man Azulon remains. By then Ozai already had children. His accession to the throne was pure luck. Why risk his already fragile accession order by marrying someone outside of court, more so force them? It would only prove how desperate & weak he is. Even worse to say he wants to marry the Avatar's granddaughter when the Avatar became the Fire Nation's number one enemy. If Roku's family was banned double trouble. Ursa would need to learn protocol too. It's all too much trouble.

Pretty sure Fire Nation royalty has arranged marriages to make sure their line stays strong. Iroh probably got someone arranged, so did Ozai without (much of) his input by their father. While it was scrapped Azula started out with an arranged marriage. The question of Ursa's origins is easily solved when we accept she was of noble birth arranged with Ozai as nobilities are. More likely her relation to the Avatar was kept quiet cause if he so proudly declared to want to marry the Avatar's granddaughter for possibly strong heirs wouldn't Azula and Zuko have been told of both sides of their true origins? To carry their history with pride. Yet it needed to be Iroh IN PRISON to snap Zuko out of it who reacted with HORROR to the news. Sozin twisted the tale with his old friend Roku on purpose. Surely he wouldn't intend to get Avatar filth inside his bloodline. If anything it's brave of Ozai if he expressed his own desire to marry Ursa, grandchild of the Fire Nation's enemy, otherwise bold move of Azulon to arrange his son with her.

The comics love to blow things out of proportion and took that one comment on Zuko's part that Ursa often took them to the theatre when they were little and blew it up as "she was a low life actress" forced away from her fiancé while they're at it cause Ozai wanted strong heirs. Doesn't make sense. She can be royal and enjoy theatre, that's it.

[dukeofdelirium]

What is this obsession with anti Aang/kataang people fixating on Aang “not apologizing” for The Desert episode? This is a multi episode arc, and Aang does end up talking to Katara at the very end of The Serpent’s Pass episode (the last episode of the arc), where he explains he has been going through a very difficult time but that he loves her, that he is hopeful again, and that he sees in the family they’ve helped a future with her. This whole monologue from Aang makes Katara cry tears of happiness and they embrace, and he then parts from the group to look for Appa only after continuing to specifically thank Katara for all she’s done for him.

Just because he doesn’t say the words “I’m sorry” doesn’t mean he hasn’t made amends. He literally does and she cries over it, because she was upset that he was shutting her out emotionally. I don’t see any of y’all saying Katara was wrong for telling Aang he didn’t understand what she was feeling in The Southern Raiders, or her attempting to steal Appa in the middle of the night without even asking Aang for permission despite the fact she knows very well how important Appa is to him, or the fact that what she says to Sokka in this same episode is genuinely cruel. And Aang (and Sokka too) doesn’t hold any of these things over her head either, because he understands that she is not in her right frame of mind. Just like Katara understood Aang wasn’t in his right frame of mind during those episodes.

Aang does the exact same thing for her in The Southern Raiders that Katara did for him in book 2. These characters are best friends above all else, I don’t get this stupid fandom obsession with trying to insinuate Katara hates Aang. She doesn’t and never will, no matter how much y’all want her to.

[soncee]

Water tribe siblings !!!

[seallieart]