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#and ppl who claim to love sokka but only like that he’s funny
comradekatara · 2 years
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ugh okay i get that toph is a) extremely powerful and b) rejects traditional gender roles but she is NOT a brute. her whole deal is that her earthbending technique isn’t like the mainstream approach of using sheer force to attack. the reason she beats the boulder so easily isn’t because she’s physically stronger than him (she very obviously is not!) but because she waits and she listens. that’s the whole reason aang decides to recruit her as his teacher. because she is uniquely creative, perceptive, thoughtful, patient, and intelligent. she enjoys fighting and she’s really, really good at it, she’s sassy, she’s forthright, and she delights in being kind of disgusting in a way she wasn’t allowed to be growing up, but she’s also empathetic, understanding, and vulnerable. by ignoring that you are doing a huge disservice to what makes her character so incredible in the first place. thank you
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firelxdykatara · 3 years
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Came across a post that claimed for Zutara "a romantic relationship would undermine Zuko’s redemption arc & undermine the found family aspect of Zutara's friendship" & I'm so annoyed now. So, becoming romantically involved w someone means your redemption arc is no longer valid? & what exactly is wrong with becoming friends w someone, choosing them as your family & then falling in love w them? If anything, K@taang undermines the found family aspect of K@taang's friendship.
People who claim that romance undermines found family relationships must have a very odd view of like, families in general......like are two people who are in love and have kids w each other not each other’s family now???? It’s just really bizarre to me lmfao like, familial relationships aren’t inherently platonic bc I’ll tell you what, I wouldn’t be able to genuinely fall in love with someone I didn’t consider to be family, or close to it!
Anyway, this idea that found families must Stay Platonic otherwise their bonds are being undermined is just so fucking boring. Like, you know what the absolute best found family dynamic in television in the early 2010s was? Leverage. And guess what! Nate and Sophie fell in love and John Rogers himself said that the ot3 was made canon in the finale, a poly relationship that comprises the other three of the family. That doesn’t make them any less a found family, though???? Like, they chose each other. They found each other and then they chose each other and they kept choosing each other, and that isn’t somehow Less just because romantic love became involved in some of their relationships.
Found family is all about choosing the people you love. Choosing the people you want in your life, choosing the people you want to be around. Romantic love can be part of that, and often is! Zuko and Katara falling in love doesn’t undermine the found family of the gaang any more than Suki being part of it because she’s Sokka’s girlfriend does--because that may be where her connection to the gaang began, but not where it ended. (Or, rather, didn’t have to be where it ended--one of my gripes with the show is how little Suki is given to do with the rest of the gaang, especially Katara. They should have had a friendship on screen and I’m a little annoyed they didn’t.)
And as far as it undermining Zuko’s redemption goes, that’s actually really funny when you consider that Katara and Aang getting together in the finale actually did undermine Aang’s character arc--in a way that Zutara getting together wouldn’t have for Zuko, because his redemption itself didn’t actually hinge on his relationship with Katara. (His redemption was complete before he joined the gaang at the Western Air Temple--those life changing fieldtrips were about Zuko earning forgiveness for the things he’d done before he made the choice to do and be better, but he still would have been redeemed even if the others hadn’t chosen to forgive him.) On the other hand, Aang’s growth--and, indeed, his ability to become a fully realized avatar--explicitly hinged on his attachment to Katara. This is made explicit in the book 2 finale, where Aang is forced to make a show of ‘letting go’ of Katara in order to unblock his final chakra and enter the avatar state--and then it is promptly thrown out in book 3, where he’s allowed to double down on his possessive attachment and unlock the avatar state and defeat the firelord and get the girl at the end of it all.
Aang needed to let go of his selfish attachment to Katara--not actually his love for her, but, for example, the expectation that his romantic love needed to be returned, which is a huge part of the problem with his actions and overall arc in book 3--in order to achieve enlightenment master the avatar state, but this is completely undermined when, later on, he is... selfishly attached to Katara and practically demands she return his feelings, and then gets the avatar state back anyway, and is able to master it in order to defeat the firelord nonlethally. Aang getting absolutely everything he wanted just handed to him on a silver platter in the eleventh hour, without having to sacrifice a single thing--not even his selfish entitlement to another person’s feelings--is the definition of undermining a character arc tbh.
Meanwhile, two characters falling in love after helping each other complete their respective arcs--Zuko helped Katara finally achieve closure for her trauma and begin to heal, and Katara helped Zuko accept himself and gain the courage to face his uncle and beg forgiveness (forgiveness he never really needed, because as Iroh says, he was never angry--he was sad that his beloved nephew had lost his way, and this is something I think Katara understood even without knowing exactly what had happened between them)--would be building on and enhancing their journeys, rather than undermining them.
So yeah, I just.... do not understand that argument (except insofar as it comes from ppl with a vested interest in delegitimizing zutara, usually because they’re mad that it’s more popular or has more support than their preferred ship), because it completely misses the point of not only found family, but redemption arcs--Zuko’s in particular. (And I don’t even have an issue with redemption via romantic love--as with anything, it depends on how it’s handled--but Zuko’s very clearly wasn’t, and the fact that he was redeemed before seeking out Katara’s forgiveness means that if she did fall in love with him post-canon, it wouldn’t be undermining anything at all.)
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comradekatara · 5 months
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an ask for u! what side of tumblr do you think each character would be on? (for your selection of characters lol)
characters who would not use tumblr: aang is too busy touching grass; katara is terminally online but primarily in a twitter way, she thinks tumblr is for deranged gays and has never ventured to confirm or deny that suspicion; sokka would probably love tumblr if he knew what it was but he thinks it’s a social media platform (which is only partially true) so he avoids it at all costs because he’s paranoid; toph occasionally tweets but is otherwise too cool for social media; azula thinks tumblr is a cesspit of liberal social marxist postmodern blue haired pronouns, she would much rather stay on reddit thank you very much; ty lee is too busy making bank off of being an influencer, and since tumblr is not a particularly lucrative platform, sees no point in exploring it.
suki would use tumblr but in the most well-adjusted way possible. she just reblogs aesthetically pleasing pictures, pictures of hot girls, music she likes, quotes from books she is reading, occasionally will post her own pictures from a hike or a concert or of something she cooked, or make brief, innocuous textposts about her life that are charmingly humorous. her tumblr presence is entirely unobjectionable.
zuko would use tumblr in the more typical, unhinged way. he gets into fights and receives anon hate constantly (but he won’t turn anon off because he secretly craves the attention). he’s constantly changing his political views, and even though it comes from a place of earnest internal struggle, everyone calls him a hypocrite for it and makes lengthy callout posts with receipts, or claim that he’s probably a russian bot. besides making contentious personal posts that are basically just lengthy monologues about how confused and frustrated he feels, he also reblogs a lot of pictures of cats, frogs, horses, rustic scenery, quotes from giovanni’s room, sad gay poetry, mitski songs, and then the occasional picture of like, a motorcycle with flame decals on it or a sexy picture of a hot girl, just to like, reaffirm his masculinity with the most blatant posturing possible. i mean who is this even for. his tumblr presence is radioactive and anyone who does make the mistake of following him often regrets it within the week.
mai has been on tumblr since puberty but she would deny even knowing what it is to anyone who asked (including zuko, but that’s mostly because she’s seen his blog and couldn’t stand to be mutuals with him out of friendly obligation). her blog has really gone through phases and grown and changed as she’s matured. she definitely went through a superwholock phase and has a lot of opinions on shows like house md and succession too. her blog is mostly a repository for her private thoughts, her favorite video games, tv shows, movies, and music, but she’s amassed a lot of followers through making many funny textposts that get tens of thousands of notes each. she’s constantly getting asks that are all like “thoughts on [X]?” but because she can’t usually be bothered to take them seriously she’ll just reply with a funny quip, which also gets a lot of notes. she used to take her blog more seriously but now it’s just a funny little website for her, and she’s thriving.
yue is putting in so many hours of backbreaking labor at the webweaving factory. her url is probably something like “[noun]motif” (probably moon, water, or angel) and her blog title is a line from louise glück. she mostly posts poetry, both reblogging others’ as well as her own, but she also talks about tv shows she’s watching and books she’s reading. she’s somehow managed to get into drama because ppl will call her out for enjoying and talking about media that supposedly “supports incest” or “supports cannibalism” or whatever but she’s too busy minding her own business to really notice. no one really knows anything about her life because her blog is exclusively centered around her artistic and poetic inclinations, but everyone assumes she’s an english major (no one would ever guess that she’s actually a #womaninstem). years after she dies her mutuals will still make posts like “i miss moonmotif i hope she’s doing okay and that she abandoned her blog for a good reason.” perhaps it’s better that they don’t know.
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comradekatara · 3 years
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ok what are suki’s opinions on mitski. also have u done how would the gaang act at a mitski concert yet
oh u know suki stans!!! "cop car" is her anthem. she has a great time at the concert, obviously, as she is the exact demographic who would most enjoy herself at a mitski concert
aang doesn't really understand the vibe, like, at all, but he loves concerts and thinks her music is good. he feels a bit alienated, but he's having fun
zuko understands the vibe perfectly. he leans against a wall the entire time, just taking tiny sips of water as he tries not to cry. the next day everyone's asking him "u good? cuz u seemed kinda miserable yesterday at the concert..." and zuko's just like "that was the best night of my life."
every time she plays one of her Louder songs, toph is just like YEAH!!!!! YEAH!!!!!!! FUCK YEAH!!!!!!!!! and starts moshing so hard ppl are required to give her a wide berth. everyone's like "who tf brought their kid sister to this mitski concert"
sokka refused to go to the mitski concert if toph didn't come with them. toph was like "i don't wanna go to a concert there's too many people packed into a room it's gross" and sokka was like "pweeease??? for me????" and he was right, watching her freak out to her favorite songs made the whole night worth it.
katara really wants to get it. she wants to understand why every lesbian and bi girl she knows (and zuko) is obsessed with this mitski person. like, she likes her fine and all, but she suspects she's not repressed enough to truly Get it. she spends most of the concert worried about zuko, because when she asked him how he was doing, he yelled back at her "I WANT TO DIE!" she would only later go on to learn that this was apparently meant "in a good way."
in a moment of audacious daring, mai reaches out and grab's ty lee's hand during "come into the water," and ty lee doesn't let go for the entirety of the song. later, when zuko claims it was "the best night of [his] life," mai shrugs and agrees, "it was all right."
ty lee sees aang and katara struggling to get the vibe, and while she finds it kind of funny how out of place they look, she also takes pity on them. so she goes over to them and is like "this chick is kinda depressing, huh?" graciously bequeathing them the opportunity to explain why "saying that is so reductive, actually," letting them convince themselves that they are connoisseurs of indie music and that they totally get it. katara spends like 20 minutes explaining The Genius of Mitski to ty lee, and feels a lot better about herself afterwards. it's thankless work, that selfless service ty lee provides, but if she doesn't do it, then who will?
please, like azula would ever be caught dead at a m*tski concert. those places are crawling with lesbians. and besides, nothing her idiot brother likes that much can possibly be good. and also, no one invited her.
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