Honestly how horny are the crowns? Out of curiosity.
It's probably impossible to tell because their "minds" are so incomprehensible that whatever they may perceive as a "sex thing" would go right over our heads.
i hate that social media apps have decided it's their job to scroll for you and autoplay the next video in a desperate attempt to get you to stay. like genuinely nothing you do will make me stay and watch that video after you force it onto the screen in front of me. the minute you auto scroll from what i was watching to your stupid distraction technique, i close the app and you fail. fuck you
I bring a “Undyne’s violence against the player being treated more sympathetically then the players violence against Undyne or the other monsters is good and on purpose” vibe to the UT fandom that people who don’t want to analyze what UT has to say about power, responsibility, and oppression REALLY don’t like.
“But self defense” What are you defending yourself against friend? You can’t die, cant get permanently injured or harmed, you are literally the most powerful person in the underground due to being human. You have nothing to lose when fighting Undyne other than progress.
Meanwhile Undyne is the “hero of monsterkind” fighting to free her people from the collective punishment that she had been forced her entire life to live under to spite having nothing to do with the initial human-monster war. What Undyne does to you is wrong, and is presented as such, but it’s also presented as an understandable reaction to a legitimate grievence against the actions of an oppressor that you (as a human) have the power to mend.
Which is why when you DONT either by killing monsters before meeting Undyne or by killing Undyne herself the game calls you out and guilt trips you for it. Either with Undynes dialogue
(You did it because it was easy, because it was fun)
Or via Undynes extended death sequence. Which is in my opinion one of the saddest deaths in the entire game. FR watch Undynes neural death scene on YouTube it’s harrowing.
“But dying over and over is traumatizing” cool fanfic idea! But it’s not supported by the original text. The only times Frisk is implied to be particularly shaken up about dying is during the Asgore fight and during the Flowey fight. Even then the former is just them losing count while fighting Asgore, while the latter seemed to make them more pissed and stubborn then sad and afraid. There are instances in Undertale where Frisk is shown BEING SCARED (like when they first meet Undyne in Waterfall) but dying itself specifically has not really shown to be a point of ptsd driven angst for Frisk.
UT IS NOT STARS IN TIME. The way it explores the effects of resets and reloads as an in world mechanic is much more about how having that much POWER the POWER to treat the world like a game and TRAP YOURSELF IN THE PAST FOREVER, hurts and CORRUPTS you. Less about how dying and resetting sucks and gives you ptsd.
This is in part because, outside of the end of pacifist and very specific scenes, Frisk is not a very well defined character. So at many points in the game “Frisk” is used as a vessel to talk about YOU on a meta narrative level. About the power you AS THE PLAYER have over the world.
People calling UTs treatment of violence “hypocritical” and complaining about how Frisk or the previous fallen humans dont get enough sympathy from the narrative are missing the point. The philosophy UT takes to the players/Frisks violence can best be summarized by this quote from Sans of you kill Papyrus on a neutral run.
“this is an odd thing to say, but...
if you have some sort of special power...
isn't it your responsibility to do the right thing?”
The answer UT gives to this question, over and over again, is a resounding YES. That you as a human in the underground (and on a meta level as a player in a video game) have all the power and thus all the responsibility.
You can disagree with this sentiment for one reason or another and think it’s unfair to Frisk but it IS a deliberate thematic and creative choice, not some accidental oopsy by Toby Fox.
i don’t know how risky of a move it will turn out, it being the writing of a probably controversial fandom opinion when my blog isn’t even a thimble years old. i’ll try to be good about it in the tags so people outside Intended Audience don’t find it, although... ironic, that. i think the people i’ll be trying to keep out are the ones who need to hear all this.
whatever, i’ll not muck about. i’m writing this for my own peace of mind, and because i am consistently tired of illiterate discourse--especially from people who live in countries that can very well afford good education.
zutara is a problem upon Avatar: The Last Airbender. or, rather, the way some fans engage with this dynamic is quite a problem.
k, let’s unpack this bitch.
ever since becoming more politically engaged, i have resented invoking Identity Politics frequently or flippantly, seeing as arguments must stand on their own legs no matter who argues them. in this particular instance, however, my identity as an indigenous person could prove useful. we are not a monolith, of course, but there is this thing i’d like to call the unprocessed colonised mindset. i’m sure qualified folks have done research on that, and officially it must be called something much better. i’m bringing this up because i used to be a zutara fan myself, and that Mindset is my theory as to why.
to colonise is to subjugate an indigenous population to a metropole’s will, with metropole being the coloniser country, otherwise known as the imperial core (for any of you possibly american zutaras already seething at my post--america is an imperial core. shut the fuck up). means of colonisation range from outwardly violent, especially in the settler variety of colonialism that necessitates the full extinction of the native population, to something cosmetically peaceful and thus more covertly sinister, like welcoming a subjugated group into the imperial economic structures with the purpose of neutering resistance. example: black people, or any minority of colour, in the us who serve in their country’s military in order to chew off their government-given privileges on that basis, all the while killing/aiding the killing of brown individuals overseas.
those not on board with these concepts and definitions, go read a book. moving on.
psychological warfare is an essential component of oppression. the ash makers (yup, i’m calling them an anti-coloniser slur because Role-playing is Fun) in the ATLA narrative bent to their will these countries and peoples:
the earth kingdom via attempts at siege and the eventual seizing of power by azula;
the water tribes via constant raids and the heinous history of bender extermination (more so the southern tribe, since their northern sister is a little more well-protected, yet nonetheless affected by terror and anxiety).
of course, the air nomad population was fully annihilated bar one individual. there was no populace to bend.
to the point. i mentioned the Colonised Mindset because it is a direct consequence of historical pillaging and the above-described psychological warfare. subjugated, raped, dispossessed groups begin to adapt to their circumstances by becoming a little bit (or very deeply) blind to the realities of imperialism. which is why i--and perhaps many others amongst my indigenous brothers and sisters both in the past and present--was completely shut off from material analysis as recently as three or four years ago. there is no shame in this admission, and thus no compensatory ego right now in my writing this post. it is a scary reality to recognise and deal with, and so the road to realising one’s position in this colonial world (i ain’t calling it post-colonial, not a chance) is difficult. that much is self-evident.
of course, it is extremely easy, and to a point understandable, to divorce zutara from heavy consideration and the sort of scrutiny that accounts for the historical context in ATLA itself. oh!!! enemy-lover!! red-blue!! wow!! oma and shu?????? WOW!!!!!!! (the comparisons between zutara and oma&shu are quite lobotomised, to be honest, but i will not be discussing that at length.)
my question would be, though, what for would anyone engage in a piece of media that portrays the reality of genocide in its very first few episodes, only then to transform the obvious, and narratively important, circumstances into something palatable? what is ever the point of diluting the tangible complexities of zutara? to be unproductive and defensive, to harp on about how zutara is the true canon and absolutely not a Coloniser Ship Situation?
by standing on defence like brainless jock dudebros, part of the zutara fandom rob themselves of meaningful analysis and deep interaction with the source material. you cannot possibly ship the Crown Prince of a murderous imperial power and the Daughter of the current indigenous Chief, and not address/admit the tensions that are simply there on the surface.
what happens instead is internet slap-fighting between uneducated five-year-olds who are willing to turn off critical thinking for the sake of a ship, to protect it against the sort of analysis ATLA as a show blatantly encourages and at times facilitates, though with fluctuating degrees of accuracy. ( to clarify, when i say encourage/facilitate, i mean the inclusion of poignant subject matter in specific episodes, like Appa Alone or Zuko Alone (which, respectively, deal with 1. the devastation and loneliness appa experiences as the last of his kind -> directly a lament upon colonisation and genocide; 2. the self-reflection zuko must begin in order to atone for what has been done under his nation’s flag -> an attempt at an ego-less admission of his origins and customs, what he has been taught as part of ash maker brainwashing) )
is the central argument here that one must not ship zutara? no. i’m not brain-dead, and i vastly do not give a shite. the argument is: if one does ship it, let one use one’s intelligence as ordained. analyse material. allow yourself the sad pondering about zuko’s stolen childhood, while very much saying that he grew up a privileged weapon of the regime. a weapon bent and broken, but a weapon nonetheless.
with that in mind, just to get everyone up to speed. a crown-adorned soldier prince does dubious things in serving a Genocidal Fatherland before redeeming himself fundamentally, and then... goes on to date--sometimes marry--a waterbender woman whose mother was tactically annihilated by that ash maker Fatherland, and part of the zutara fanbase will die on the hill of ‘not colonial suck a dick!!!!!’?
i began writing all this while enraged, but now i’m left with uncharitable mocking in my mind. described step-by-step, the behaviour is nothing if not childish.
to be clear, i have not constructed a straw man. i need not even go that deeply into tumblr to find the echo chamber filled not only with uncritical, bland zutara praise, but also with vehement vitriol for kataang. this, again, comes back to Defence Mode. what are y’all compensating for? what are you fighting? in fact, position a mirror where you will always see it. you prefer a Crown Prince of Genocide Central to a heroic survivor of crimes against humanity. in itself, that ain’t my business. it becomes an object of attention when coupled with shouting that zuko’s roots aren’t fundamentally evil and colonial and imperial, and do not, in someone’s uninformed opinion, deserve to be processed as such within the confines of his character. he would not give himself this sort of leeway, but i constantly see some zutaras shoot themselves in the brains and never reflect on their thinking patterns.
i can sympathise if there are victims of colonialism in this part of the fanbase who live out the futile fantasy of being considered human by the Shadowy Oppressor, to the point of becoming shutters-on uncritical, but unto mayonnaise bottles turned homo sapiens i say... do fuck off.
on the topic of zuko as the face of ash maker legacy. let us proceed.
i am a sincerely passionate fan of his character, and especially of his redemption arc. the brightest, most quintessential reason lies in his own words to his genocidal father in the Day of the Black Sun:
The world hates us! And we deserve it!
it is understood by zuko himself within the narrative that he is part of a system that benefits from genocide (both physical and cultural) and constant subjugation.
it is then a baffling development that some fans of the ship ardently try to peddle a whitewashed version of what happened to zuko and how/why his redemption was such a roaring success. it was so because he admitted the material reality and gave no excuses, no caveats. his family’s legacy very much defines him as a person, it very much does dictate his actions; to be different from the fire lords who came before, he needs to realise how and why they were wrong, as well as his own responsibility as a direct descendant of genocidal maniacs. to presume that his final point of redemption is a very naive ‘oh this doesn’t matter, he's a good person!!’ is extremely... lacking, i’d say, and also gives fans/shippers an excuse to ignore anything a nail’s breath complex about zuko’s journey.
he is--at end of ATLA, and in its beginning was born to be--at the top of a violent, pillaging machine. he represents that machine, which is something he has clearly made peace with in the narrative, evidenced by his readiness to try and change ash makers as a nation. whom is this whitewashing for? the softening of it?
16 or not, (this said 14 before redaction! fellow user corrected me!) boy or not, we all do remember he ordered a raid upon katara’s home in s1. these are the actions of a coloniser, of a terrorising entity; he was a child, so his level of independent decision-making needs to be evaluated accordingly, but he was a child taught by figures of authority to enact the same carnage that had been enacted years before. when he dared fight against, quite nobly so, he got a scar for his trouble. in s1, then, he tried very hard to model himself after the sort of behaviour that would earn his father’s approval, which really means the empire’s approval. that can only be gained if a person raised in the oppressor group exhibits everything this group deems standard issue, from casual violence and threatening (s1 raid) to destroying everything that belongs to the Other, the Orient (s2 crossroads where he had to choose what to do with a chained appa--he chose well, but it was nonetheless a real choice in his mind because he’s a product of colonial philosophy).
the least zutaras can do is accept that zutara is the colonised x redeemed coloniser dynamic. which... sure. to each their own.
a very special place in this discussion is reserved for the concept of katara as zuko’s consort/fire lady. oh the gods of old.
a descendant of hitler decides to put a stop to the holocaust/its legacy, to reform the german society, and we over here romanticise a romani/slavic/jewish person whose family have died in that genocide, going as far as to appoint that survivor as second leader to a people who carried out that genocide? are we sure?
is this not asinine? is this not utter disrespect to katara, whose culture is heavily inspired, by the way, by the quite real inuit cultures? a slav/inuit or brit/inuit enemies-to-lovers arc when, folks?
now, why does any of this matter?
i’m not a lily-livered bulshitter, do with your dolls whatever you will, but extend to me--and to other indigenous people--the basic courtesy of not sitting on an illusory fucking high horse that only, and i mean only, serves to protect your nervous systems from ever analysing any material on a level deeper than the kindergarten requirements.
this point matters, this point should be talked about honestly, whether at the expense of people’s Colonial Feelings or not, because katara’s tribe takes from real civilisations for a fucking reason. a substantial one, at that. to ignore this complex aspect of zutara, if you do choose to ship it upon having had a concussion, is to spit in the faces of indigenous folks; not because i think ATLA is end-all-be-all of media activism, that would be laughable, but because the way people consume said media tends very much to bleed into how they think about us--the dispossessed, the forever raped and killed.
if part of a population feels justified enough to die on the hill of ‘Crown Prince of KKK Industries isn’t ever connected to the activities of the KKK!!!’, simply for the sake of shipping their dolls without being uwu uncomfy, how can we ever begin any conversation that centres indigenous voices? some of you cannot stand the most genteel form of critical analysis from us, and we all the Folks Who Walked Before deserve fucking more than that.
much more than that.
we are owed much more than we have been given, and i, for one, will not be polite when demanding the respect i am due within political discourse, wherever it happens. neither should my fellow first nations folks.
as you witness it, this post is about zutara, yes.
but not really. not fundamentally.
_________________
correction courtesy of @0bscvr1ty
thank you for pointing out my factual slip-up :)
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