I'm very serious when I say that Zutara antis in their blazing fits of righteousness often end up perpetuating far more dangerous and disgusting ideas about colonialism, race and eugenics than the supposed "problematic" ZK fans do. You cannot pick and choose aspects of postcolonial theory when it suits your narrative of Zuko and Katara being a horrible toxic imperialist ship and discard the rest– aka counterarguments that are posited by actual poc and people from marginalized communities (including colonized cultures)– because you have already assumed you have the moral high ground. If you have to criticize ATLA or its fandom, you have to look within your own circles too instead of stirring shit up where you are not welcome (in ZK fanart, fanfic, ship events etc).

And btw making joke assumptions about race, sexuality, political beliefs and "fetishes" for clickbait over cartoon shipping wars will never not be pinnacle immaturity. Get help. See a therapist. Talk to someone. Maybe gardening or crocheting will cause less despair. Weirdos.

'Guru goody goody'Zuko,you're literally talking about the culture and people that your DIRECT ANCESTORS commited genocide against TO THE SOLE SURVIVOR OF IT.I love you man but what the actual fuck

Okay so I feel very conflicted over the ATLALA Katara and how they wrote her..it may be the dialogue, the directing, the storyline, or the pacing but the way Katara seems stripped of all her flaws/qualities - motivations to give them to other characters (sokka aang suki ahem ahem... even though don't get me wrong I loved Aang - he may even be one of my fav character from the Netflix serie weirdly) for example her motherly traits seemed to have completely disappeared to instead make her more...childish, immature kid ( 'stop treating me like a little girl Sokka')....and Sokka taking all of that 'responsible' side, 'I have to take care of everything and everyone' traits...anyway just wanted to put that out there lol I binged watch the whole show today and I really disliked some of Katara character decision changes..the upper paragraph is just one of too many things I disliked in the show.

i also think that while we're critiquing natla, we should keep in mind that the og cartoon is no way perfect and still has its flaws. bryke has writing credits on a few episodes of natla, they were right behind shyamalan for the 2010 movie, and they wrote the centrist propaganda that is legend of korra. at the end of the day these were two white men attempting to emulate the experiences of those of the asian and indigenous races

Hmm you got a controversial take to share?

Controversial takes I'm not sure of, because the community I'm in now may agree, but the larger fandom might not. Thing is about ATLA is that I think every take has its share of supporters, so there's not really much I can say that would be controversial. I'll try, anyway.

Besides the tragedy of Azula's downfall and the Fire Siblings making my heart hurt (and the stunning music and visuals ofc), the Final Agni Kai isn't actually that interesting as a fight. Which, yes, in terms of the narrative it's great. But the fight itself is just kind of underwhelming in terms of what happens. Unlike Aang vs Ozai, which kept throwing twists and turns, set pieces and involved both of them interacting with the environment around them, Azula and Zuko just throw big fire blasts at each other.

From the moment Azula is first mentioned, we're clearly building up to a fight between her and Zuko in the finale. And hell, every time we see either of them fighting (whether against each other or other characters), they're some of the best fights in the series! But like, you get to the final fight, and it just feels underwhelming. Especially the Katara part. I love Katara, but. Like. She deserved a better fight against Azula than just running away from her until the grate scene.

Honestly I think having it be an Agni Kai was a mistake. If the fight had been Zuko & Katara vs Azula, that would've made for a much more interesting battle, and also fit with the character growth they'd been building. Azula's lost everyone in her life, and all she has left is her strength and power. Zuko's gained friends, companionship and understanding, and has grown stronger because of it. Katara has grown as a bender and a person that she can stand toe-to-toe with Azula during Sozin's Comet, and shows the trust that her and Zuko have in each other now. Then, when Z&K win, it would be because they worked together, not because Azula had a breakdown.

In The Southern Raiders, when Zuko said “That's cute, but this isn't air temple preschool. It's the real world,“ and when Zuko said, “Okay, we'll be sure to do that, guru goody-goody,” to Aang, that was legitimately racist and I can't believe almost no one talks about it.

Like, I'm very much a Zuko girlie, this isn't meant to start anything, and I do think it makes sense for his character, especially at that point, to still be making microaggressive comments without realizing it, but it is actually racist.

Firstly, he's saying their entire cultural philosophy of nonviolence and pacifism is wrong right out of the bat—and goes even further, calling to the concepts of forgiveness and Maitrī (loving-kindness) childish, by saying it's something Aang would learn in preschool. It's belittling to an actual, legitimate belief and practice, and one that Aang genuinely believes is helpful and suggesting to Katara because he really wants to help her (even if he was also tone policing her, and even if he was misguided in the way he went about it, he wasn't trying to control her, just help her). It's especially stupid because Katara was holding her own pretty well; Zuko stepping in is nice, sure, but not the way he was doing it.

Secondly, the “guru goody goody” comment is just taking a word from Aang's culture that he clearly only superficially understands and throwing it back at him as an insult, is is wrong, harmful and, again, only serves to belittle Aang's culture.

I don't really care who you think is right or wrong on the case of Revenge v Forgiveness, but what Zuko said was definitely racist. I'll get more into it if necessary, but I really just wanted to say something about it.

Biggest casualties of season 1:

“I think this guy might be the Avatar” ~ Secret Tunnel minstrels (about Sokka)

“Do you wanna…do an activity together?” ~ Sokka to Yue

“You rise with the moon, I rise with the sun” ~ Zuko to Katara

“No, no, if it were a choice between kissing you and dying” ~ Aang to Katara

“You’re just a child” ~ Zuko. “Well you’re just a teenager” ~ Aang

“Come back, I wanna eat you!” ~ Sokka to Momo

Sokka in Kyoshi-warrior getup

The off-key and very stoned secret tunnel singing

Aang dressed as Avatar Kyoshi

Aang dressed as an old man

Katara freeing Aang through a feminist rant

Iroh. Just… Iroh

see the problem w adaptations is that they get too confident. if you're changing something, it needs to be better than the original. it needs to add something. every. single. change. if you start changing everything bc u want to or bc you can, you start losing the things that made the original story good and unique.

lok was truly so crazy for being like yeah the season 1 villain is an allegory for maoism?? except he’s literally not a communist in any meaningful way bc he never once even mentions the issue of uh. class. and season 2’s villain is ostensibly a theocrat who exploits his religious/spiritual authority to exert neocolonial control over a recently independent territory/people but all he really wants is to fuse with the personification of chaos and plunge the world into darkness for ten thousand years. and season 3’s villains are an anarchist terror cell who do have clearly defined goals and advocate for proletarian rule but also they’re fucked up little sadist freaks who love chaos and torturing teenagers. and season 4’s villain is a fascist ethnonationalist dictator and she’s gonna be the ONLY character in the entire show to mention that the ostensibly independent city state where most of the show’s plot has taken place is literally a fire nation neocolony proxy state on stolen earth kingdom land. the famously anarchist character who values independent personal freedom and hates nothing more than being told what to do and telling people what to do is now the agent of said neocolonial state in the form of being the literal chief of police. who gives a shit about her arc as an abused disabled girl who fights to assert her power and autonomy while also learning to accept her own vulnerability around the people she loves, and how that narrative might be personally meaningful to many disabled people. she’s a cop now. oh, and the firstborn son of the pacifist monk who had to fight tooth and nail to assert his values as the sole survivor of the genocide against his people is now a military general, again, for the army of said neocolonial proxy state. the kid who was orphaned as a child and grew up on the street fighting to survive another day is helplessly stupid and naive and his only purpose is to chew the scenery in increasingly less funny, more obnoxious ways. if you were expecting the even remotely coherent politics of atla, a story fundamentally about the struggle to resist imperialist violence both as a target of it and from within the imperial core while grappling with your identity and the impetus to preserve your cultural heritage in the face of genocide, then you’re shit out of luck, because that show was made in the bush era, back when liberals protesting the iraq war and implicating americans in their role in upholding imperialist agendas was acceptable. but this is the obama era, so of course you can still deport people at staggering records and drone strike civilians and worship at the altar of capitalism, as long as you remember that reinforcing the status quo through implicit violence is good as long as you’re a queer disabled brown woman!!! more woman of color chiefs of police!!! more bisexual woman ceos!!!! more indigenous war profiteers!!!! more hot girl ethnostates!!! absurd fucking show…

Me: the so called "atla renaissance" is just people taking various digs at katara, but more importantly being in constant fear that katara is the female character who canonically has the deepest and most meaningful relationship with the fan fave male character. thus in retaliation, these atla "purists" have decided that zuko is gay and in love with katara's brother, thus effectively removing the brown, feminine woman from being the object of the star male character's desire but also, under the guise of being cool and gay and above ship wars, erasing katara and mai as possible threats to their gay ship, by a) making homophobic jokes about katara or ALWAYS making her the token straight of the group and b) hamfistedly shoving mai into ty lee's arms like yesss lesbians even though if you search for mailee on ao3 they are about 90% a side ship in z*kka fics. apparently the coloniser colonised power imbalance is only valid when the colonised subject is the feminine brown woman. :)))))

Girl at the bar: um I think I see my friends

Sokka being 'taught how to respect women' by Suki is not feminism.It's not the job of girls to 'teach' boys how to treat them like people and the fact that y'all unironically think S*kka was well-written yet have the balls to bash Kataang and Maiko makes me wanna act up(/neg)

ok I’m gonna say it. the obsession in atla works (both canon and fanworks) with portraying water tribe food as ~strange~ and/or gross is weird and racist. cut this shit out

ik it’s been forever in internet time but i’m gonna die mad abt the way the live action atla show got a good amount of backlash and criticism from the fanbase meanwhile the pjo show was THAT horrendous and the fanbase treats critics like they’re out to kill their mother. as someone in both fandoms am i crazy bc i keep fucking seeing people say yes 💀 like!! these shows, whose original series were both about a 12 year old boy born with godlike powers going on quests with his friends to save the world, released in the 2000s, and had a shitty movie adaptation, now reboots released within weeks of each other, both committed nearly identical crimes of character assassination, exposition dumping, dumbing down their source material, sanitizing “problematic” elements (that the characters originally had to overcome), and wasting actor potential (also at least live action atla had good action scenes CANNOT say the same for the pjo show)—and i’m seeing like mainstream(ish) social media coverage of new atla show critique by people with millions of followers all across different sites, but nothing even close to that for the pjo show?? if that coverage exists for the pjo show somebody fucken send it to me bc like!! the pjo series is Not an unpopular series, i get it’s a book series and not a tv series so i didn’t expect the popularity to be exactly the same, but Damn! i feel like i need an hours long video essay comparing the two audience reactions to these series’ first season releases bc they were WIDLY different

oh, a series is getting a TV/movie adaptation? they didn't make it dark and gritty and lifeless with characters who lack their original flaws that define their character arcs, did they?

they didn't make it dark and gritty with "perfect" characters, right?

they didn't make it dark and gritty with "perfect" characters right-

being part of the atla and pjo fandom is such a funny and fucked up experience because you have two live action adaptations that you were secretly hoping would not be anything like the other sanitized live action remakes we've seen before, only to end up with one fandom saying "the original team who created the media dropped out of the project, that's why things have gone to shit" while the other fandom is like "dude, we have the original author working with us and it is still going to shit"