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[sokkastyles]

i saw a post of yours that said zukka is just zutara without most of the relationship development and i have to say you are 100% correct and idk how people don't get this. i mean, i guess it's because they're blinded by their own shipping goggles and obsession with zukka fanfic. and imo there's nothing wrong with shipping zukka on its own... but someone told me they think zutara is just "straight zukka" so i told them that i think zukka is kinda just zutara with less development and they went "uhhh, agree to disagree!". but like?? that's honestly just a fact of the show?? you are free to do anything you want with zukka in fanfic, you can make them bond over losing their mothers if you want but that was what zuko and katara did In The Show. you can write a fanfic where zuko has to work hard to earn sokka's forgiveness after betraying him if you want but that's the arc zuko and katara had in the show. zukka in my opinion is about the potential they might've had if their relationship was more focused on, while zutara is about... if the fully developed enemies-to-friends relationship they literally already have in the show led to romance. it's kind of like if i shipped aang and azula and tried to claim they have more screentime/development together than katara and aang, that wouldn't be something you could agree to disagree on, i would just be wrong.

It'd be like shipping Aang and Azula and arguing that they had more development than Aang and Zuko. Or shipping Azula and Katara and arguing that they had more development than Katara and Zuko. Katara and Zuko actually have the relationship development that other ships wish they had. They're the kind of ship that most enemies to lovers ships aspire to be, the kind where the enemies actually resolve their differences and become genuinely close, and have personal development with each other and make each other better as a result.

[riinezha]

I fear the whole crux of enemies to lovers is that their love forms in inappropriate (and sometimes unhealthy) situations.

[sokkastyles]

This reminds me of that post about how the only healthy and nonproblematic conflict is two people in the grocery store fighting over a banana.

But even so, zutara is like, the healthiest version of enemies to lovers where the person in the wrong actually changes and becomes a better person before they can have a relationship.

Like, I'm genuinely curious about which enemies to lovers ships this person loves if they can't handle the version made for eight year olds.

[agas-loves-art]

Probably relationship between HS bully and their victim. Or relationship between a Nerd and a Jock. Or between teens from rival schools. Aka. literally coffee shop AU of Enemies to Lovers.

(thought I personally see relationship between bully and victim as more "problematic" than standard E2L, since E2L are at least build on equal power dynamic between both sides, even if said equal power is "trying to kill each other". Still love it, so that's not criticizm.)

[sokkastyles]

Victim/bully is only problematic if the bully never realizes that what they did was wrong. And since this specific dynamic is about kids, it's very common for a bully to grow up and realize that they were a bully and stop doing that.

Which is the crux of the issue, isn't it? As OP said, enemies to lovers runs on the relationship being inappropriate, but if one party is in the moral wrong but then changes and does better, that part actually ceases to become a problem. That's actually the most ideal outcome for this type of relationship. If Zuko being one of the oppressors is the problem, then him joining the fight against the oppressors on the side of the oppressed is the best outcome and what people who say zutara is oppressor/oppressed should WANT to happen.

This is how you know that this isn't about oppression, though. It's about defending Aang and insisting that Katara belongs to him. I don't believe for one second that enemies to lovers is the problem.

[mayskalih]

one happy cabbage

[ninsarchive]

Misogyny that’s all there is here.

This is a great example of misogyny.

I wanna mention misogyny in every time I write so yeah misogyny misogyny misogyny misogyny.

Idk how to say this but I also feel like the person who wrote this is projecting.

How dare Pinterest gave me this.

[sokkastyles]

The American stereotype of Japan as the enemy of freedom is about a hundred years old and a cartoon designed for eight year olds is not "ahead of the curve," and neither are you for pretending shipping zutara is somehow oppression lmfao.

[konggodzuko]

Also, the Fire Nation's parallels with Imperial Japan are, uh, pretty loose beyond being both Asian/Asian-inspired industrial imperial powers. To speak very broadly (as it would be wayyyyy too long of a post to get in-depth) the Japan of WWII was the result of a military backlash against the liberalization of politics, and was in many ways a military dictatorship that the Emperor played a key role in, but was not the real political leader of. The Fire Nation is an absolute monarchy very firmly under the control of the Fire Lord.

For another point, while the Fire Nation definitely has misogyny, it's largely portrayed as being at least somewhat better on women's rights than the other countries (even if it's in a "more 👏 female 👏 prison 👏 guards" sense). Imperial Japan, meanwhile, was extremely misogynistic as fascism is heavily driven by a hatred and subjugation of women. It's partly why a lot of prominent leftists in Japan in the pre-war period were women.

[All of this is why I generally avoid calling the Fire Nation "fascist" as fascism is a misogynist reactionary movement that emerges from within and ultimately kills democracies, and that's just not what the Fire Nation is. And that's not downplaying them, there have been plenty of horrific imperial powers that weren't definitionally fascist. The British Empire, for example. Sure, one might say that the tools of imperialism are similar to fascism, and they'd be right, but fascism is, in a sense, the tools of imperialism turned inwards against the population. Read Aimé Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism for more on that]

But even more importantly, Imperial Japan did REAL CRIMES against REAL PEOPLE, so to pretend that this cartoon fantasy show is in any way an adequate "unpacking" of Japan's problems is wildly inappropriate.

[sokkastyles]

The stereotypes used to code the FN's villainy don't really distinguish between Japan and other east Asian countries that function as a collective boogeyman in American culture. It's why you see references to the cultural revolution and nazism and North Korea all mixed in in book 3.

It's why I roll my eyes whenever people say that the FN is meant to be America. No it's not. It's meant to be every red scare / yellow peril stereotype that Americans use to build up their own mythology as the caretakers of liberty.

[konggodzuko]

Yeah, and this ends up rolling forwards into LOK (and beyond). The main villains don't really have ideologies, so much as impressions of ideologies that are hodgepodges of things that scare Americans. Amon is an evil civil rights leader with vaguely communist iconography but is also allied with one of the richest people in the world. Unalaq something of a religious hardliner and colonialist but actually he just worships The Devil. Zaheer is an "anarchist" but more in a Joker-like way where he wants to see the world burn rather than any kind of actual political anarchism, and he also worships/ed The Devil. Kuvira is a big ol' mishmash of fascist and communist tropes that are so incoherent that one can make solid arguments for her either being a caricature of a left-wing nationalist or just being a straight-up Nazi.

[nimp048]

Quadrille

But we all know Zuko is a breakdancer at heart...)

[ideksams]

modern eden college twiyor au 🍎🤍

[haniyart]

Marichat

[bewbin]

dude honestly shout out to my guards i told them to seize this guy and before i could even finish my sentence they soze him. My goats

[opheliaaesque]

zutara never die

[frogdisco2021]

If Kata.ang was a concept that the creators were confident in then they wouldn't have to nuke and retcon the canonical very close friendship of Katara and Zuko, but they do because they fear the interpersonal chemistry of these characters so much that they have to pretend like they weren't canonically very close to each other and shared a deep emotional bond.

Like people will ask why Zutara has to be romantic when platonic relationships are just as significant and yeah, you're right, I would be less pissed if they had let Katara and Zuko remain the best friends that they are by the end of the series, the problem is that they don't even let Katara and Zuko stay friends, because it's pretty undeniable which of them was the better friend to Katara and had a more mutualistic and choice-based relationship with her.

If romantic Kata.ang could survive being juxtaposed by platonic Zutara (the friendship they had in the show that they then ruined and acted like didn't exist in the comics and movie) then they wouldn't need to keep them ten feet apart at all times and pretend like they never had a significant emotional bond in the post-series materials.

If Katara having Zuko as her best friend or very close friend creates too much tension and confusion because people might continue to get the vibe that they're in love with each other, maybe there's a reason people keep coming to that conclusion. It's not necessarily that Katara and Zuko have better romantic chemistry than Katara and A.ang do, it's that Katara and Zuko have better platonic chemistry than Katara and A.ang do, and platonic chemistry is what romantic chemistry is built off of.

The fact that Katara and A.ang are friends for longer is not a replacement for chemistry between them. Fundamentally, they became friends because Katara feels a sense of duty and obligation to nurture and raise him so that he can become a fully realized Avatar and end the war, and Aan.g formed an attachment to Katara as the first person he saw when he woke up from the ice like a duckling imprinting on the first living being it sees and idolized her for being in a caretaker role over him. I don't hate their friendship, I think it actually had a lot of room to drive the positive development of both characters, just not in ways that would have ended up with them together romantically. Maybe I'll make a post on that and how I'd fix ATLA in my own image idk.

Zuko and Katara are friends entirely by choice. Zuko worked to earn back her trust and friendship, not because he needed her friendship but because he wanted it, and Katara forgave him not because she had a sense of duty or obligation to him but because she wanted to. It doesn't matter that they were friends for less time because Zuko shows more respect for Katara's agency, gives her darker emotions the significance they deserve, and shows her more emotional support in 8 episodes than Aa.ng does in 3 seasons.

[opheliaaesque]

you guys cannot talk or bully me out of shipping zutara. i was literally a jelsa warrior at age 7

[demaparbat-hp]

Zuko calls her name again. Katara smiles.

She wants to tell him he doesn't need to worry—she'll never hide her scars from him. The very idea is ridiculous. He's always let her see all of him. Why wouldn't she return the favor?

Zuko is smart. Zuko is protective. Zuko knows the pain of a burn. He'll help her heal. She knows this as surely as she knows her own name.

The burns settle in The Block's first chapter: Love is Wild (read here!). Healing comes in many ways.

[slappapow]

if they didn't want us to think about them as a couple then why make them so compatible in comparison to their canon counterparts....

[swkod-art]

[frogdisco2021]

Watching ATLA with my dad who knows nothing and we're on the fortune teller episode and he goes "She's gonna marry Zuko though right? I don't know why but I feel like she's gonna marry Zuko, right?" And I'm short circuiting.

[frogdisco2021]

Should I accuse my 62 year old father of self-inserting onto Katara because he thinks Zuko is hot?

[frogdisco2021]

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.

[sokkastyles]

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.