I know you've responded to this post before, but I also saw this reblog of it and I thought you might like to take a crack at it.
I've already addressed a lot of those arguments about the Southern Raiders and the claim the episode was "really" about how Katara and Zuko needed Aang's guidance and how they're so insensitive towards Aang's feelings about Katara's feelings (because Katara's feelings need to be about Aang for some reason?) So I'm not gonna rehash all that, but I do want to address this:
"That's cute, but this isn't air temple pre-school." / "Okay, guru goody-goody..."
"You're weak, just like the rest of your people! ... They don't deserve to live in this world! In my world!"
Because they only sound similar if you are reading Zuko's lines in the most uncharitable light. And yes, there is a difference between Zuko being a redeemed villain and Ozai being the main big bad AND Zuko's abuser who his narrative is about rejecting in every way, especially since this wasn't something Zuko said as a villain, and neither Aang nor Katara act like it was wrong of him to say or think. We already know that Zuko does not believe that the Air Nomads are weak and don't deserve to live in the world. Only a few episodes previously, he told Ozai directly that that was wrong!
It's extremely reductive to compare Zuko disagreeing about whether Katara should forgive her mother's murderer to Ozai advocating for genocide. Like, that's so far from what the argument is about. This is like Christians going around telling victims of abuse that if they don't turn the other cheek they will go to hell, and when someone disagrees with them they act like they were told to go die. Aang is not being victimized by Zuko disagreeing about what he thinks Katara should do about her mom's murder. But Zuko IS an abuse victim who has been told by his abusers that he needs to seek their forgiveness for imagined crimes that were used to hurt him. That's why Zuko disagrees with Aang's take on forgiveness, not because he thinks the Air Nomads are weak.
Also, I and other people have pointed this out already, but rather than what Ozai says about how the Air Nomads did not deserve to live, Zuko says that Aang's statements on forgiveness are more applicable to "Air Temple Preschool" than to the real world. This isn't some nihilistic statement about how the world is cold and hard or advocating for Ozai's darwinist take on "weakness," Zuko is saying that Air Nomad teachings that don't come from lived experience don't have a place in Aang telling Katara what to do about her mother's murder. Aang has experienced immense suffering, but his lines about how the monks say that revenge is a two headed snake don't come from his experiences of suffering - and Aang is never put in the place of having to forgive an unrepentant person, he does not forgive Ozai, and only forgives Zuko because Zuko sought his forgiveness and genuinely changed - they are merely words he was taught that he uses to tell Katara what do about a situatuon he has never been in and will never be put in. The words don't mean anything for Katara's situation, which is about her specific experiences and the man who murdered her mother. That's what Zuko meant when he was talking about the difference between aphorisms one might be taught in school and the real world.
Additionally, although Zuko says to Aang that he was right about violence not being the answer, we already know that Zuko is capable of finding that out on his own, because we saw him reject being goaded into violence by Ozai in Day of Black Sun. We saw him accept Katara sparing Yon Rha without a word. And we saw him in the final agni kai, the actual parallel to Aang's fight with Ozai, defeat his sister without killing her. When Zuko asks Aang how he is going to defeat Ozai, it is not about Zuko thinking violence is the only answer, it is about the fact that currently, they HAVE no answer to the question about what to do about Ozai. Neither Aang nor Zuko know about the lion turtle, and Zuko not knowing about it is not a flaw in his morals. The AUDIENCE doesn't even know about it until the last minute, and the question of what Aang will do about Ozai is answered not by Aang sticking to his morals and proving himself morally superior, but narrative contrivance.
That's why the lion turtle feels like such a cheap win, especially in the context of this argument. The argument seems to be that Zuko should have somehow predicted that pacifism would win the day through an unlikely set of circumstance that conspire to make it happen. If only Zuko, as a thirteen year old, had been able to pull something similar out of his ass to avoid not being burned by Ozai. But alas, clearly the reason he couldn't is because he just didn't believe enough in the power of pacifism, and had to learn it from Aang, who the narrative bends over backwards to accommodate. The real difference here is that Zuko and Katara didn't have the moral luck of the narrative on their side and Aang did. Imagine if Katara's quandary about what do about Yon Rha was solved by her revealing at the last second right before she shoves an ice dagger through Yon Rha's eye that she actually learned how to neutralize him nonviolently in a flashback from a flying hog monkey and then lecturing Zuko for five minutes on the evils of violence.
Even without the deus ex machina, Katara and Zuko still manage to defeat Azula nonviolently in the literal parallel to Aang's fight with Ozai, so like, I don't even know what the point of this comparison is except annoying virtue signaling.
