🤓 : "Literally no one hates Aang ya'll are just making things up to be mad about."

'Aang bashing' is literally a tag on ao3 😐

The lack of self-awareness game in Zutara shippers is crazy as shit,Katara and Zuko were obsessed with Aang the whole show while thinking the other was the biggest loser in existense and Katara said 1613948 times she hates having to act like a mom and wants to be a real kid and rizzed up Aang like almost every episode starting from The Boy In The Iceberg and Zuko's redemption arc only worked because he was actually willing to unpack his baggage and improve as a person and rid himself of his bigoted ways and selfish treatment of others because he didn't deserve to be babied after all he did to the Gaang and it's hammered into our heads in-text and so's that Aang and him are platonic cosmic soulmates by choice against the universe trying to keep them apart and Katara is Litte Miss Punk Tactics(reclaiming femininity against traditionalism and cisheteronormatovity and fucking eco-terrorism at 14 as her lifestyles??????Damn okay slay babygirl)and YET,

Okay i can't even list off everything Zutaras gentrify in the fandom because the list is longer than Iroh's beard but i will say that Katara ending up with Zuko is about as dark richer storytelling than Kataang + Dadko as telling Bob The Builder 'No we can't',about as feminist as Rick Riordan and about as positive rep for woc as The Hunchback of Notre Dame

loml by taylor swift is a zukaangst song, especially if you look at this line:

"who's gonna stop us from waltzing back into rekindled flames if we know the steps anyway?"

with roku/sozin in mind.

I'm tired of people defining Aang as this boring little vanilla guy. Aang helped Katara destroy a factory. He participated in Toph's scams. He shrugged off Katara's theft of the waterbending scroll and heartily laughed at her jokes about it. He was delighted by the Painted Lady ruse. He mastered airbending at twelve and the avatar state at thirteen. He snooped around the old ship after Katara said it was booby trapped and dared her to follow and stepped up to take the blame when it went badly and then surrendered himself to protect the village because he knew he could hand everyone on that ship their asses and escape. He outright lied to two communities that had been bickering for a century to get them to stop. He egged on Katara when she decided to throw hands with Pakku. He wants to ride every big animal in the world ("they don't like being ridden but that's what makes it fun" -unhinged take). He has sick burns for everyone which are doubly funny because they're almost always unintended as such. He threw a clandestine dance party in the nation that banned dancing and thought he was dead and wanted him dead. Before that he corrected and argued with teachers, beat a bully without lifting a finger and then brought his teenage friends to pose as his parents. The whole Bonzu Pippipadaleopsicopolis the Third thing. The being idiots with Sokka in Ba Sing Se thing with the bowing and the busboys disguises. He rightfully asked "what's cosmic power compared to a girl". Let's add all the badass stuff he does as a bender and as the Avatar up to and including energybending and the conversation with Koh the Face Stealer. That time in The Chase when he finished the fur trail and then decided to just sit down, sleep deprived, to wait and face whoever it was chasing them. Aang is one of the funniest and coolest characters I've ever seen and he deserves more respect. Absolutely unhinged kid with immense powers and the world is lucky he's goofy and has a good heart.

rip aang you wouldve loved fidget spinners and an adhd + autism diagnosis

“can’t we just respect each other??” stop calling Aang an abuser toward his wife and kids by using his status as the sole survivor of a genocide to do so and then maybe we will consider it 🗿🍷 but until that happens I think not, because I don’t have to respect someone like that <3 hope this helps

I believe Aang was right to end the war by sparing Ozai. But the only (imho) valid reason some people say he should have done it is because they wanted Aang to realize that pacifism is flawed.

I'm gonna disagree with you here, because a lot of the flaws fans talk about pacism and how ATLA in particular handles it as a concept are 99%:

1 - People being ignorant/racist and not knowing the difference between pacifist monks and "make love, not war" hippies.

2 - People being ignorant/racist and refusing to understand that there are different kinds of pacifism, even within the same cultures/people groups.

Aang is very clearly not the type of pacifist to go "You can NEVER react with ANY kind of violence towards someone else, even if it's to defend yourself/someone else" (which does exist, both IRL and in the show, just look at the owl spirit in "The Library").

We see him fight, and even be quite aggressive in said fights, in a lot of episodes. We also see he has no issues with invading the Fire Nation. More importantly, for the longest time the Avatar State was a result of him being pissed off enough at some kind of injustice that it makes him lose control, meaning he is very clearly affected by the horrors of war to the point of RAGE.

What makes him a pacifist is the way in which he doesn't WANT to lose control, doens't WANT go from aggressive to full on cruel, and, yes, wants to defeat his enemies, but not kill them.

And as I keep repeating, the show DOES make him question that last boundary he set for himself. He gets told by a past Avatar, who was also an air-nomad before anything, that, when there is such a large threat to everyone's life, including his own, he has to put aside his own spiritual needs and take a life - provided there isn't another option. But there was, so Aang took that, even after he decided that, yes, if there was no other way, he WOULD kill Ozai.

What people don't like is that Avatar, although questioning some types of pacifism, is far more interested in questioning the way people are WAY too eager to use violence to solve their issues, and, more importantly, expect someone else to get their hands bloody.

Fire Lord Sozin starts the war because he, according to himself at least, wants what's best for everyone and would like to share the Fire Nation's glory and great life with the other nations. He tries to do by invading foreign territories, killing his best friend, and commiting genocide. The fucker even has the dragons, an obvious Fire Nation symbol, to be hunted to extintion.

When Jet is angry at the Gaang for ruining his plan to free a village from the Fire Nation's control by blowing up a dam, Sokka asks "Who would be free? Everyone would be dead."

Zuko is banished because he spoke out against a Fire Nation higher-up's plan to use soldiers as fresh meat to bait the enemy into a more vulnerable position, thus assuring the nation's victory in that battle. He openly says "These men love and defend our nation, how can you betray them?"

When Zhao wants to kill the moon spirit, Iroh tries to stop him by pointing out that the Fire Nation needs the moon too (seriously, if it wasn't for Yue's sacrifice and Zhao's death, the Fire Nation would have had to create a word for "Big-ass wave that wrecks everything and kills people" like Japan did).

When Aang is deliberately trying to trigger the Avatar State because he doesn't want anyone else to die in the war, Katara, who had her life ruined by said war, is against it because while she opposes the Fire Nation, she cares about Aang and, in her own words, seeing him in so much pain and rage hurts her too. When Aang can't force himself to go nuclear, an Earth Kingdom ruler attacks Katara and makes both her and Aang, two very traumatized child soldiers, think he is going to kill her.

More importantly, when Ozai wants to burn down Earth Kingdom cities, he says "A new world will rise from the ashes, and I'll be supreme ruler of everything", to which Zuko concludes that, if they don't save the world before his dad takes over, there won't be a world to save.

And what does he say to Aang when he is about to kill him? "You're weak, just like your people. They didn't deserve to live in world, in my world."

Avatar does questions pacifism, and is critical of it on ocasion (again, watch "The Library"). But it's biggest theme is being critical of VIOLENCE, of resorting to it immediately without considering any other option and acting like it doesn't have long-lasting negative consequences, both to the person suffering it to the person inflicting it (see Azula's breakdown, Zuko's angry outburts only making him more miserable, Jeong Jeong growing to resent being a firebender, Zhao accidentally burning his own ships, etc)

The show is constantly highlighting that, yes, sacrifices need to be made for the greater good - but that CAN'T be normalized because it inevitably leads to a never-ending cicle of cruelty, as well as suffering to the one who has to do the dirty job (because lets not forget there's a big difference in how a soldier that is constantly in battle sees the war and how a king that just gives the orders but never goes into the actual combat sees the war).

The show embraces pacifism, despite knowing some versions of it are flawed, because the narratives themes are:

1 - EVERYONE is capable of great good and great evil

2 - No group has the right to impose it's own lifestyle onto others

3 - If everyone is either dead, mentally (and physically) scarred for life, or preparing to kill someone as revenge, then being killed by someone who wants to avenge that person, who will themselves be killed for revenge later, then the "greater good" you're sacrificing everything for doesn't actually exist because NO ONE will have a good life in a world that is stuck in the cicle of violence.

Aang antis are so corny lol like THIS is the guy you’re choosing to constantly hate on?

DISCLAIMER : I AM NOT INSULTING ANYONE WHO DOESN'T LOOK LIKE THAT OR IN ANY WAY SAYING THIS IS WHAT A "SUPERIOR GUY" LOOKS LIKE. I AM SIMPLY DESCRIBING THE SO CALLED "BEAUTY STANDARD".

"ANTI AANG TAKES" BINGO CARD + Fanfic ver

Well. The ultimate "Anti aang" Takes on a bingo card, go to the tag, see how much can be crossed out

Here's a fanfic version, though I don't have much experience in that section -

Yeahh...

Getting really tired of all the Aang hate/criticism (honestly I can't even call it criticism because it's just that stupid) that I've been seeing on my dash lately. Mainly by people who for some reason, don't think that Aang is an airbending prodigy/master because we are only "told and not shown that he is one". Like....guys. The literal airbending tattoos on his body prove that he is a master:

The only way for an airbender to get his or her tattoos is by becoming a master, as was stated in the show. Not to mention that Aang was also the youngest airbender to have received his. Also, saying that we don't see him practicing his airbending is so dumb. Seriously, why would they show us that, when he literally did that 100 years prior to the show starting, hence the tattoos? Throughout the show we see Aang doing amazing things with his airbending that proves he is indeed a prodigy. Denying this just proves that you didn't watch the show at all, but rather you saw a version that you made up in your head.

And if you really want to go there with the whole "we aren't really shown how or why Aang got his prodigy status" you wanna know who else fits that bill? Toph and Azula. With Toph, we're given the flashback of her learning from the badger moles when she was lost in the cave.

But outside of this moment? Nothing. We aren't shown her training to hone her skills or anything like that. When we meet Toph in book 2, we are told that she is an earthbending prodigy and the perfect person to teach Aang earthbending. The only reasons we are given for this is that she "waits and listens for the right moment to strike", something that Bumi told Aang was key to mastering earthbending, and because she's blind but can still earthbend and kick ass like it's nobody's business. Same thing with Azula. When we first meet her, we see her bending lightning.

This is quite obviously a powerful technique. But are we given a reason as to when and how she learned and eventually mastered it? No. Azula's firebending is blue, and as we know, she is the only firebender who's fire is this color.

We aren't given an explanation as to why this is in the show, however. Nobody in universe really comments on it, Zuko and Iroh don't bring it up either. Which, considering the fact that in her childhood, her firebending was the same color as every other firebender's, you'd think that would be a conversation at some point.

And yet it isn't. In fact, the only explanation for this, as far as I know? Comes from the art book. Mike and Bryan wanted Azula's firebending to look different from Zuko's in their final fight, which is why they decided to make her firebending blue. Much like with Toph, we aren't shown Azula training throughout the years to perfect her bending, or throughout the present timeline. So this whole stupid argument against Aang does not hold up at all. Stop hating on his character just because you prefer a different ship to the canon pairings, I'm begging you.

Getting reeeeal annoyed when someone posts a "criticism" and "rewrite" of the events of the show and it's very obvious that they just wanna drive aang away from the friend group, get zuko and katara closer, and weaken every bond that is between aang and katara. And then go to hell and back to make it sound like it's what is best for the story. Like ya ain't fooling no one bubba.

This is mostly a Zutara shippers problem(ofc it is,they're the root of everything wrong with the fandom and it's been like this since the 2000s)but i've seen it happen often enough with other shippers and it is replacing Aang's place in Zuko's life with whoever they ship him with.I want you to read this and internalize it:I don't care who you think Zuko is in love with because it dosen't matter no matter what-AANG is his best friend.Not Katara,not Sokka,not Jet,AANG.He's the one who saved him from his own inner darkness and Ozai's clutches,he's the one he looks out for the most,he's the one he has the most positive opinion on,he's the one he has the most fun with,he's the one he trusts the most and he's the one he'd choose over anyone else if it came down to it.Not a single one of these things is romantic for them and that's the point.Zuko's number one is Aang and not because he's his s/o but his brother and you have no right to erase his healing journey that's one of the best in all of western media so you can make it about his dating life instead,as if abuse victims can only get better if they 'settle down'.Fuck outta here with your amatonormative and lowkey ableist too bullshit

hand-holding

so anyways, do you think toph decided to move to the swamp only after aang passed away?

You can definitely tell that Katara is indigenous,that Aang is of a lesser known type of asian descent(tibetan)and that Zuko is east asian.Because the fandom constantly adultifies and sexualizes Katara despite her being 14 and makes fun of her for taking her trauma seriously,calls Aang ugly,erases his positive traits to make him look like a regressive bigot and minimizes the fact that he's a direct victim of race based violence and infantalize Zuko to pretend he dosen't have flaws due to wanting to date him,make him 'the braincell' to an objectively smarter darker skinned character(Sokka)and calls his country feminist even though they're literally colonizers.Sounds about white

It’s actually so funny to me that people devise fanon scenarios where Aang and Zuko seriously fight each other and the outcome is even remotely close.

People, Aang beat Zuko’s ass on the reg literally without trying. Take the abbey duel, for example; while Zuko was huffing and puffing to land a single hit, Aang was just trying to nab Katara’s necklace. And the second he did, he promptly KO’d Zuko as a fucking afterthought.

Want a later example? I give you Zuko’s (wildly irresponsible) attack on Aang when he was frustrated about the gaang’s beach party. Aang humoured him for a few moments, tried to talk him down, then was like, “You know what? I’ve had enough of you.” One move. Game over.

I’m not saying Zuko is a bad fire bender; he’s certainly above average, which is all the more impressive given his lack of innate talent. But the skill/power gap between him and Aang is so wide it’s stupid, and it only gets wider as the story progresses.