"but i am ready to forgive you."

25, she/they, atla meta and edits

[bumbleboa]

recently I got back into atla

[sugarcookielatte22]

You know how they say it’s actually dangerous for the victim to go to therapy with their abuser because the abuser will just use that to twist things and turn things around on them and manipulate and hurt them even further and in new ways?

That’s the best way I can think to explain why Zuko can’t be an Iroh to Azula and try to redeem her. All the things Iroh did during the show to continually be reaching out to Zuko and trying help him see the light and act as a support system for Zuko would NOT work on someone like Azula. She would only use those efforts to further hurt and manipulate him. It puts Zuko in a dangerous situation, a kind of situation that Iroh was NOT in when he was helping Zuko.

[sokkastyles]

Yep. But honestly, I think it would be dangerous for Iroh and Ursa, too, given that most discussions I've seen center around how they need to "realize" how they hurt Azula. Mostly by not wanting to be killed by her.

[gods-of-your-bluest-days]

These takes are literally insane. While I agree that yes, it is unfair to expect Zuko to act as Azula’s ‘Iroh’, you guys gotta calm down. She is a child. Ursa and Iroh are grown adults who should have been responsible for her and they both let her down.

Furthermore, there’s on a mission/around Ozai Azula and there’s beach episode Azula. If you take away the toxic competitive environment Ozai created, you see the other Azula peak through. The one who follows her brother back to their old home to check on him. The one who tries to help him understand what he’s going through. The one who is obviously still not over what her mother thinks of her. That Azula can and should be redeemed. And while I think Zuko should help, I definitely don’t imagine him doing it alone.

[sokkastyles]

Nope, but you are doing literally what OP said by calling us "insane," and then twisting situations where Azula acts cruel and violent and manipulative into it being other people's fault.

How did Iroh let Azula down? By getting her a gift she didn't like? By not letting her kill Zuko? By not letting her kill him?

How did Ursa let her down? By not letting her hurt Zuko? By telling her not to wish death on people?

Also, Azula in the Beach is not free from the toxic competitive environment. She is still acting toxic and competitive there. And it doesn't really make sense to think that this environment is free from Ozai's influence, since Ozai is the one who sent him there. This is shown in the conversation they have in the beginning of the episode where Zuko is anxious about being sent away, but Azula is confident because she is assured that she is still in her father's good graces. It's literally a microcosm of how Ozai has treated them the whole time, and it influences everything that happens in the episode.

Azula followed her brother back to their old home and then told him to come down to the beach with her because the beach house was "depressing." Because the beach house represents a place where she doesn't have control. And then back down on the beach, she's back to calling Zuko pathetic. To say that she's trying to understand what he's going through is not only wrong, it's grossly insensitive, and further proves OP's point. That manipulative people will continue to manipulate, but pretend that that isn't what they're doing.

Of course she's not over what her mother thinks of her! Her mother was the one person in her life who told her that abusing people wasn't okay. Azula cannot STAND that, because abusers can't stand being confronted with their abuse.

And since all you've done is insist that Azula's bad actions were not bad and try to make them other people's fault, I have to ask what you think Azula should be redeemed for? According to you, she just wanted to help her brother with what he was going through and was abandoned by everyone around her for no reason.

How can Azula get redemption if we can't even admit what she did wrong.

Again, this is why OP is right, because it is very very hard for an abuser to admit that what they did was even wrong. That's why Azula can't get redemption, and you're proving that point. Get out of here with that nonsense and take your insults and your fake concern for children and your abuse apologism somewhere else.

[truemetis]

Showing how non-toxically competitive you are by getting into a volleyball match with the local teens during which you destroy their equipment and villain monologue about how you destroyed them for all time when you win.

If you take away Ozai's toxic competitive environment she'll just make her own. Whether it be sports or trauma.

[sokkastyles]

Or dating. Or being the most popular girl at the party. Is there anything in the Beach episode that Azula doesn't try to make into a toxic competition?

[zukosdualdao]

the thing is, that i keep thinking about more and more, ursa actually does try to help azula. her trying to teach azula moral guidance by not allowing her to wish death on a family member and not allowing her to continue mocking zuko with the threat that their father will kill him, for instance, IS her trying to help azula, because those are things are a reasonable parent should try to do. one of the last things we see ursa do in the show is try to be a good parent to both zuko and azula. people just often don’t clock it that way because ursa isn’t coddling or letting her get away with everything. (and it’s notable that when azula actually imagines her mother, she literally imagines ursa telling her she loves her and breaks the mirror because she can’t accept that it was true because she sees love and being loved as weakness.)

but the dynamic of their home is set up in such a way that trying to help azula doesn’t work because ozai has influenced her to such a degree that she does not feel beholden to ursa’s parental authority.

and the thing is, when people talk about parental favoritism (which is a big part of what people imply or outright say when they’re talking about ursa not helping her), what they’re describing…. is not favoritism. and don’t get me wrong, parental favoritism does exist! but sometimes (not just within this fandom, but certainly within it), if you suggest it’s at all possible that different children need different things from/approaches to parenting based on how they respond to it and their personalities, people treat that like apologism for favoritism but… that’s just a material reality, and also not what favoritism is.

both azula and zuko need moral and emotional guidance as kids, but zuko is more receptive to it, so naturally the way ursa tries to teach him is going to be different than how she tries to teach azula.

and then she’s not around to help or teach either of them anything because the situation forces her hand and she has to leave so that zuko doesn’t die. so, she did try to help azula before, and she’s not in a position to help her after. no, it is not a particularly fair situation to either of her children - or to her, but the onus of that unfairness will always be on ozai, and to suggest otherwise willl never not be victimblaming.

[katara]

[sokkastyles]

Azula stans are so obsessed with who should be "held accountable" (anyone but Azula) that they forget that the main reason Azula ended the series tied to a sewer grate wasn't so much to hold her accountable as it was to stop her from hurting people.

That's why Zuko and Iroh don't get punished at the end of the series, because they actually stopped hurting others and are no longer a danger to the world, and have actually become a force for good by the end. This should be obvious, I'm afraid.

[anonavatarfan]

There is so much wrong with this.

Azula's likely to be a dark empath then just empathetic. She understands why but she doesn't feel the pain

Zuko is opposite, feeling the emotion but perhaps not always understanding why.

[sokkastyles]

I take issue with the term dark empath because empathy is feeling other people's pain. Understanding something on an intellectual level but not actually feeling it IS a lack of empathy.

Although I agree that the definition the internet is giving me for the term is how I would describe Azula. She's able to analyze her friends very keenly but she does not feel their pain. She does not empathize with them. She does not try and make them feel better. Her response to Ty Lee voicing her trauma is a sarcastic "here we go." Her response to Zuko is to call him pathetic. Her response to Mai is "well, that's it then," followed by coldly analyzing her. Then she says "I don't have sob stories like all of you." She is not, in any way, sympathetic to her friends or her brother. She's rude and dismissive. And while she's pretty good at armchair analysis, she actually fails pretty strongly at the deep emotional stuff. That moment of her psychoanalyzing Mai is pretty strongly contrasted with Mai telling her later that she doesn't know people as well as she thinks she does, because Azula thinks she has Mai pegged. Azula assumes that Mai's fear of expressing herself will keep her loyal to her forever. Until it doesn't. She thinks that she can control Zuko by making him feel inferior. Until she can't. She thinks Ty Lee will go along with whatever she says and never stand up to her. Until she does.

Azula understands people on a surface level, but she doesn't really understand them. She certainly does not empathize with them.

Also, the reason she never attacks anyone is because that would contradict the veneer of being above it all that she cultivates in this episode. Of course, she's lying to herself, but that's why she suggests burning the house down. Not to make everyone feel better, but to make herself feel better and put everyone back on terms she is comfortable with. It's a way to take back control because everyone sharing their feelings means they're getting too close to realizing they don't need to be controlled by her anymore. Not to mention Azula wanting to avoid facing her own insecurities.

Zuko actually is highly empathic, but he's an empath who's been gaslit his whole life. That's why at the beginning of the series, he's an emotional mess. He's told that the things he feels are wrong, even when they're right. Once he learns to trust his own instincts, he's shockingly good at reading other people, which is why he's able to know exactly what each member of the gaang needs once he joins them. But even before that, his entire character wound is about being the only one who spoke out in defense of soldiers that were being sacrificed. He specifically tries to appeal to Azula's empathy as a child when she wishes death on Iroh by saying "how would you like it if Lu Ten wanted Dad to die?"

Which is also ironic because Zuko's dad actually wished death on him.

The other thing that's funny when people want to play this game is that Zuko felt more empathy for his sister while she was trying to murder him than she ever felt for him, to the point where he felt guilty for protecting himself from her. He tries to appeal to her empathy again when he is hurt that she lied to him, and what is her response? She laughs.

Zuko, baby, you're way too good for these people.

[zukosdualdao]

“tsr makes it clear aang is the one who understands her”

aang “i knew you forgave him!” or what the fuck ever

katara “but i didn’t forgive him. i’ll never forgive him.”

is the understanding her in the room with us?

[zukosdualdao]

i have noticed sometimes when i (or anyone) express any KA criticism, people have a tendency to try to ‘explain’ what the creators were trying to do with them in a way that i find… pretty condescending, tbh. i can understand what they were trying to do AND not like the message and/or think it was well-executed.

[zukosdualdao]

i find it funny when people describe the draw of zutara as being ‘opposites attract’ bc like… that’s really only true and a surface-aesthetic-symbology level: in actuality, in many ways, they have similar temperaments (that as i and others have discussed work well together bc they do actually take each other’s emotions quite seriously). + their first REAL moment of bonding is extending empathy to each other in no small part because of the shared core wounds they have pf losing their mothers (in one way or another) to the war.

so like.

[ruletogether]

People who say that believe the wrong western surface level interpretation of the yin ying dichotomy. Yin and Yang is about the opposed but universally bound forces of the universe. Push and pull. Neither can exist without the other. Each contains the other in them. They are not just opposites. They are complementary. They are both necessary. They are both vital to the other.

[oxyintelligent]

Certain sections of the fandom are very blatantly resentful of the fact that, when Zuko joined the Gaang, he never relied on Katara’s domestic labor while he goofed off or relaxed. And this is not a fluke; it’s part of Zuko’s redemption arc to learn the personal cost of service. We see him go hungry and have to work a full-time job to earn a living, and this does not go unremarked by the narrative. In season 3, when Mаi offers to tell the servants to make them a dessert, Zuko is visibly put off — he has been on the other side of the hierarchy now, and it’s changed him.

I just wish this were a lesson that the other members of the Gaang also learned. Yes, Sokka had to work in one episode, and all of them had to perform arduous tasks, but when do we ever see them cooking, cleaning, or sewing? In ‘The Runaway’, an episode that takes place in the final season, the other 3 leave the food with Katara, and go have fun while she cooks. And even though Zuko only spends 9 episodes as a member of the Gaang, he’s the only other person that we see serving the group in season 3.

I don’t want to imply that the other kids are immoral, though. This rant was spurred on by all the posts claiming that Zuko would take advantage of Katara if they were ever closely linked (either romantically, as an ambassador, etc). They have no leg to stand on, so they have to rely on their vindictive headcanons

[sokkastyles]

I see antis say stuff like "sure, Katara forgave Zuko, but that doesn't mean the trauma over her mother's death went away." And I have to think they misunderstood what Katara actually forgave Zuko for.

Katara didn't forgive Zuko for her mother's death, or for the war. In fact, her arc with Zuko was pretty clearly about realizing that he is not responsible for and doesn't represent those things, especially after he joins the gaang. What she forgives him for is his betrayal at Ba Sing Se. Because she had trusted him and gotten hurt. At that point, she's already no longer seeing him as the face of the enemy. Otherwise, why would she need to forgive him in the first place? The reason is because she already had a relationship with him and wanted to be able to trust him again. That was the whole point. That she no longer saw him as a representation of the war, but someone who had been traumatized by it like her who she wanted to trust. And the reason she ultimately does forgive him is because he proves that that trust isn't misplaced. It's not about forgiving the fire nation for the war because Zuko doesn't represent that for her any more, either on a personal level for Katara because she'd already begun to see him differently in the caves, or on a practical level because he's literally helping them fight to end the war.

"Aang represents hope but the fire nation represents fear." Except that the illusion of separation is a big honking theme of the entire show and that's why it ended with Aang and Zuko embracing at the end. Zuko no longer represents fear either from a narrative level or personally for Katara, not just because of the things I mentioned but also because the culmination of Katara's character arc is being saved by Zuko and saving him in turn. You have to seriously misread the show to declare that Zuko "represents fear" to Katara by the end of it.

[sokkastyles]

Also, on the theme of hope: Aang represents hope both for Katara and Zuko, the hope of change. That hope is a pillar of Katara's character, and water represents changeability. And by the end, Zuko has also embodied that hope (and indeed, a key theme in Zuko's narrative is, as Iroh said, that hope is something you give yourself.) Zuko as firelord embodies the hope for a better world, something that culminates in he and Katara sacrificing their lives for each other to make sure that better world comes to fruition.

[braedenhales]

AANG&ZUKO IN AVATAR THE LAST AIRBENDER [2005-2008]

[zukosdualdao]

i find it funny when people describe the draw of zutara as being ‘opposites attract’ bc like… that’s really only true and a surface-aesthetic-symbology level: in actuality, in many ways, they have similar temperaments (that as i and others have discussed work well together bc they do actually take each other’s emotions quite seriously). + their first REAL moment of bonding is extending empathy to each other in no small part because of the shared core wounds they have pf losing their mothers (in one way or another) to the war.

so like.

[burst-of-iridescent]

it’s really funny seeing people say that zutara would be toxic because they “trauma bonded” when a) insert obligatory inigo montoya you keep using that word. i do not think it means what you think it means and b) relationships predicated on and/or strengthened by a connection over shared trauma are actually a pretty common staple in fiction, and especially in YA/children’s fantasy fiction (see: katniss/peeta, percy/annabeth) because what this trope really comes down to is the need to be seen and understood.

trauma can be incredibly alienating — let alone the trauma of something incredibly specific like losing a parent to imperialist aggression — and so it’s no wonder that the narrative of finding someone who knows what you went through, who reminds you that you aren’t alone, immediately lends itself to emotional intimacy. and it’s also easy to see why that could be extrapolated to romance, but that doesn’t make the act of connection sinister or unhealthy on its own.

zuko and katara being able to openly discuss their grief and trauma with each other is actually a hell of a lot healthier than whatever the show does with kat.aang, where anything mildly unsavoury or unpleasant in their relationship, especially in regards to katara’s more “negative” emotions, is promptly and neatly swept under the rug, never to be taken out again.

and i suspect that’s also where this dichotomy of kat.aang as wholesome and zutara as dark and toxic comes from, because seeing the raw, unadulterated reality of survivors actually reckoning with their trauma, rather than just repressing it with a smile, is much more discomfiting to audiences that have been conditioned to see the latter as the morally superior means of coping.

in being less palatable, however, zutara also gets to be unflinchingly authentic, and it’s this quality that ultimately works in their favour — giving their relationship, even if not explicitly romantic in nature, all the emotional weight and resonance that kat.aang lacks even at its best.

[zukosdualdao]

it’s honestly so funny to me when people call zutara a dark ship. not that dark ships are bad! i can enjoy some fucked up unhealthy ships, even if it’s not my go to dynamic. so i wouldn’t mind saying if it was. but it’s literally not lol

[loveamongdragons]

Not to spread a bad mood, but I now have an idea of how Zuko's visual impairment works, and I want to share.

I think the vision in his left eye is constantly somewhat blurry. I've read that a burn like his could have damaged the cornea, which may cause astigmatism (thus, blurry vision), so at least there is some basis for this assumption. In a world without glasses (at least not those that could correct for astigmatism), Zuko's brain would have to work in overdrive to achieve something that is usually mundane - that is, to merge the images from both eyes into one. When the images are too different (when you have a case of strabismus, for example) it causes headaches because the whole visual system is in a constant state of strain.

I don't know about you, but, unrelated to the visual impairment, I can't imagine an adult Zuko without migraines. Basically, I think poor Zuko would have at least mild headaches on most days because of the impaired left eye. But I also think that those headaches blow up into full-scale migraines sometimes.

So, unsurprisingly, traumatized people often suffer from pain, and I think Zuko would be just the same. During particularly stressful times, his somatic headaches would get exacerbated through psychosomatic mechanisms. And I think that his vision would get more blurry then. Migraines do that. Stress does that. Visual quality can fluctuate. But you know what that means? More blurry vision - even more strain on the eyes and the brain because of mismatched images - even more pain.

It is a nasty vicious cycle.

Makes me wonder if it wouldn't better for him to wear an eye patch... But also: Zuko in a modern AU would absolutely have glasses!

[burst-of-iridescent]

dismissal of katara’s parentification in the big two oh two five as if the show didn’t canonically dedicate an entire episode to making it clear beyond any possible shadow of a doubt that she takes on the role of the gaang’s mother can we please be so serious rn

like are we just ignoring this

or this

how about this

and of course the real mominator 3000

i know these arguments are made in bad faith but it still blows my mind how people can say with their full chest that katara wasn’t the mom of the group or — even worse — that sokka was. like you have to be willfully obtuse or drinking that delulu zu.kka kool-aid if you genuinely believe that when there’s about a thousand examples and one whole episode proving otherwise, and it’s even more annoying when they present this claim with some kind of smug “gotcha!” as if erasing all of katara’s canonical emotional labour and crediting her brother for it is some great feminist victory.

anyone trying to argue this just looks like a moralistic poser or a troll or both, please stop embarrassing yourselves lmfao.

[gingeralewizard]

tbh people don't give zuko enough credit like wtf are you supposed to say when someone hits you with "my girlfriend turned into the moon" like. damn. that is in fact rough buddy