It’s just interesting to observe the differences in how people treat Zukka vs how they treat Zutara. Because I searched Zutara on TikTok to look for some edits and the comments were filled to the brim with people saying “But Katara belonged with Aang 🥺” or “How can you ship Zuko with her after Mai said such a romantic line?” Or perhaps the most insufferable of all “Maturing is realizing that Zuko would’ve thrown himself in from of lightning for ANYONE” as if that’s some revolutionary reading of the text. It’s so irritating how this kind of behaviour is…accepted by the fandom.

But you don’t get that with Zukka, instead you see people gushing over how sweet they are together, hailing it as a wholesome and unproblematic ship, praising artworks of it with positivity and appreciation. It’s difficult to find much negativity under Zukka posts, you won’t see people saying “But Sokka belongs with Suki 🥺” or boldly going on a tangent about how another ship is SO much better. I saw one person praise Zukka as the most unproblematic ATLA ship because of how little conflict there was about it, that you wouldn’t see the same hostility among that fandom as you might with Zutara.

But there’s a reason for that which has less to do with Zutara shippers themselves, and more to do with the harassment and hostility they face on all sides of the fandom. Fans will go out of their way to antagonize Zutara shippers, they’ll feel brazen enough to leave backhanded or outright hostile comments under Zutara posts and art, they’ll interject their shipping opinions in spaces where nobody asked and condescend Zutara shippers by framing them as shallow or delusional for shipping it.

I think Zukka is admittedly cute, and they definitely have their haters, but the difference between it and Zutara is astounding. It’s incredibly frustrating to watch this phenomenon play out, especially when these shippers carry themselves with a kind of false moral superiority that can only be found in shipping discourse.