#idk I think wanting to torture Aang’s character is kind of fucked up of people in this fanbase
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It still baffles me...
...that the writers of a kid's show who were willing to blatantly address various heavy topics on-screen such as revenge, war, torture, racism, famine, sexism, ableism, child abuse, abandonment, and fucking GENOCIDE, with gravity and aplomb...
...still somehow thought that "literal 12-year-old doesn't end up with his first crush" would be a deal-breaker. Like...?
Okay. First, a disclaimer. I am a die-hard Zutara shipper. I'm also really fond of MaiLee and Taang, independent of that, and really don't care for Maiko, but that's topic for a different post. None of the points I’m going to go over have anything to do with those pairings.
But EVEN IF I didn't feel that there were far better canon characters for Katara and Aang to end up with respectively...
Kataang, as it is written in canon, is sad and weird and uncomfortable to me, and here's why:
The Dynamic
Maybe if the characters had been, say, 16 and 18 when they first met, this wouldn't be a problem. But Aang is 12 and Katara's 14. And their maturity gap is far larger than a mere two years.
Aang, despite being well traveled and the burden of Avatarhood on his shoulders, is also a very *young* 12. Remember, up until the iceberg, he's lived a pretty idyllic, mostly responsibilty free life. He's only known he was the Avatar for like, a month, tops, before that. Sure, the other monk children don't play with him after this reveal, but it's well established he has friends all over the globe; he's a prodigy, yes, with all the pressure that can bring, but it doesn't appear he was pushed to master air so fast? He just very much enjoys airbending. And Gyatso is a loving guardian.
Which is why he runs away at the first sign of something difficult in his life--the possibility of losing Gyatso.
Compare this to Katara, who was born in a hostile landscape amongst a struggling people. She is, as far as she knows, the last of her kind, with no teacher to guide her. She suffers a traumatic loss young, and it is *explicitly stated in the show* that she stepped up to fill her mother's shoes at what, 7? 8? While her family grieved. Her father leaves, possibly to never return, when she is 11. She is laden with responsibility beyond her years. Her time and energy are not for her to spend on herself--she has too much to do. *She is not a child*
So of *course* she starts mothering this wide-eyed cheerful boy, who got taken away by the same people who murdered her mother within a day of meeting him. He's the Avatar but he's also an innocent kid in need of protection and care.
Now, does that mean she never acts immature? No--she *is* still a teenager, and prone to occasional bouts of typical teenager dumbassery. (see: waterbending scroll). But she does most of the chores and nags the others about their misbehavior and tries to console them when when they're down. She literally poses as Aang's mother at a PTA meeting. For fucks sake, at the end of Season 2, when she's holding a dead Aang sprawled in her arms and looking pleadingly at the sky, there is NO WAY you can convince me all those art students storyboarding that scene WEREN'T making an intentional reference to *La Pieta*--You know, that super famous statue where Mary is cradling her dead Savior son (before he gets resurrected) and that is widely considered one of the most poignant examples of MOTHERLY LOVE AND GRIEF in the whole WORLD.
And I don't know about you... but it's really, really creepy to me for a *romantic* relationship to result from something with that much mother/son energy deliberately coded into the show.
The Lack Of Development
At what point does Katara reciprocate the crush? It's very well established that Aang has a crush, of course. But we've got 61 episodes and basically no definitive evidence that Katara feels anything for Aang beyond platonic affection. There's the time a fortune teller says she'll marry a powerful bender and she's like, 'huh' (let's ignore the fact that Aang at the time is like the only powerful bender she really knows). There's the time she (almost?) kisses Aang in a cave because, you know, she thinks they might stay lost forever and starve to death if she doesn't (romantic!)
The other two times Aang kisses her--she's just kind of shocked after the first one, and gets mad after the second one because she *had just expressed a desire to not do so seconds before* And the fourth kiss is in the literal last 30 seconds of the show, with no dialogue, no lead-up, just a fade to black "welp this is happening, aaaand, SCENE." It very, very much has the feeling of "hero gets the prize/girl" instead of "two people who have been mutually longing for each other come together", and that's really, really gross to me. It does such a disservice to both their characters, but Katara's especially. It feels like she had no agency in this result, that they got together because Aang wanted it so much, but it matters so little what she wanted that we don’t even need to bother showing her wanting it.
The Stunting/Regression of Character Growth
What does Aang sacrifice? The answer? Nothing. 'Now, wait a minute', I can hear you say, 'he lost his entire people and culture! How can you say he's lost nothing!' I didn't say he's never suffered *loss*. But having something taken away from you and giving something up for another's sake are two entirely different things. Aang, in the end, gets everything he wanted--the girl he wanted, his pacifist morals intact and unchallenged, his culture eventually restored. Hell, he even somehow gets the Avatar State, despite never explaining how he manages it when it was EXPLICITLY STATED he couldn't do so without letting go of certain attachments. Wow, guess it turns out he never needed to sort out all of his emotional trauma to acheive inner peace and enlightenment after all--just needed a good acupressure session to get those chakras flowin'! One quick magic whack to the back!
I don't think 'the hero is always right' is a good message. The theme of 'just because you want something doesn't necessarily mean it's what's good for you, or others' is a pretty recurring theme throughout the rest of the show, and having the universe warp itself to accomodate the beliefs of the protagonist (lookin' at you, deus-ex-machina turtle) so he is always right, no matter what, means that he never has to reevaluate his beliefs, never really has to *grow* as a character.
Kya, Ursa, Yue, Iroh, Hakoda, Katara, Sokka, Zuko--hell, even Toph, who makes the decision to let Appa get taken so she can save her friends...
Over and over it's shown that Love is Sacrifice, and I think Aang should have been shown making some personal sacrifices for the sake of the world, instead of showing that the power of clinging to his absolutist morals is enough to solve all his problems.
I understand why the writers, despite showing many characters die off-screen, hesitated to show Aang killing someone, even someone unredeemably evil, because there would be no way to do it OFF screen, and it IS still a kid's show. (On that note: couldn’t they have just somehow...idk, trapped Ozai in the Spirit World or something? Have him literally sent to not-hell?)
BUT, that doesn't mean they couldn't have shown Aang doing something that made him realize that, as the Avatar, even if a necessary action went against his personal beliefs or wasn't what he wanted, his needs are superceded by the needs of the world he claims to love. He ignores this in S2 and nearly pays the ultimate price... but it's never properly addressed again. And thus, because that never happens, I honestly don't consider 13-yr-old Aang all that much more mature than 12-yr-old Aang, and I think that's a waste of potential.
And as for character regression...
Katara? Master Waterbender and war-hero? Who grabbed onto the first opportunity to explore the world beyond her tiny home, who fought for every scrap of skill and recognition she had--against a world determined to see her as lesser because of her race, her gender, her age? Who never backed down from what she thought was right, even when her own family and friends didn't support her? You're telling me that, according to canon, *that same Katara* was perfectly content to retreat to the South Pole and do nothing of note for the next 70 years except for being a good little housewife and healer? Get the fuck out of here with that misogynistic horseshit.
IN CONCLUSION
I could go on. I could talk about the unequal division of emotional labor between the two--with Katara constantly having to be mindful of not upsetting Aang too much lest he fly away and/or have an Avatar State tantrum. With Katara constantly reassuring Aang, but Aang, for instance, offering unsolicited advice about revenge instead of trying to understand what she needed, or kissing her without asking--twice!--and expecting them to be together without him ever even asking if that's what she wanted. I could talk about Katara not taking Aang to task for things he does wrong and Aang not being willing to see that Katara isn't perfect--how he puts her on a pedastal and Katara is afraid to leave it and break his illusions by being her real self.
But ultimately, what it boils down to, it that the most unrealistic thing about AtLA was not the magic, or the spirits, or the hybrid animals.
No, the most unbelievable thing about this show is that the ending was ruined just because more than creating a consistent thematic and emotional throughline, a couple of white dudes wanted to vicariously live out all of their "hot-for-babysitter" childhood fantasies.
And that's all I have to say about that.
#avatar: the last airbender#atla#meta#critical#anti-kataang#don't like don't read#a decade's worth of salt#and i might as well tag#zutara
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For the ask thing :3:
Top 5 animals? Top 5 fav/comfort movies? Top 5 fav cartoons/shows?
I’m honestly glad to know theres other people including you who actually like Pakku and his character :3 Yes he was a completely asshole at the start but he did change, it’s just that it was so subtle that not everyone saw it
Also random song associations with characters:
Fighter by Jack Stauber reminds me very well of Piandao, Pakku, and Jeong Jeong as their younger selves during the war.
Why do I associate Grace by Lewis Capaldi with Bumi? (the music video tho would give more context to why it might make sense)
Oh Klahoma by Jack Stauber reminds me of Piandao and his overall anxieties for his partners.
Consider some of these songs as sorta song recs? Idk but still :3
1. Giraffes!! the reason why their tongues look like That is cause of extra melanin and to prevent sunburn!!
2. Seals!! there are 33 different kinds of pinnipeds and there over 50 extinct pinnipeds
3. Dogs!! they can only see in shades of blue and yellow, so bright red roses look yellowish brown and lively green grass look dehydrated and dead
4. Crows!! a group of them are called a murder
5. Cows!! they’re actually colorblind, they can’t see red specifically, so male cows, bulls aren’t getting mad at the color, they’re getting angry at the movement
1. The Losers movie from 2010, it’s a action mystery movie about Clay and his team that are a part of an elite US Special Forces Unit and are approached by a mysterious woman to exact revenge on their handler, Max, who betrayed them and just,,,the characters, CHRIS EVANS, jake jensen and all of his kinda weird glory, THE ELEVATOR SCENE, also cougar!!
2. Captain America and The Winter Soldier movie, it’s a action movie, which makes me realize that a lot of my faves are prolly gonna be action something, but anyways, it’s about Steve Rogers, who now lives in the nation's capital as he tries to adjust to modern times. An attack on a S.H.I.E.L.D. colleague throws Rogers into a web of intrigue that places the whole world at risk. Joining forces with the Black Widow, Natasha Romanov, and a new ally, Sam Wilson, Steve struggles to expose an ever-widening conspiracy, but he and his team soon come up against an unexpected enemy. oh my god,,,just,,,the fight scenes, the running scene at the beginning of the movie, steve meeting sam that way, just everything!! this was also my introduction to marvel so in my mind no other marvel movie can live up to this (other than spiderman away from home)
3. Spiderman Far from Home, again, it’s a action movie, i’m not gonna explain this cause the post is getting long, but!! mj and peter!! just,,,all of their scenes!! also jake gyllenhaal!! the fight scenes!! the soundtrack!! everything about it is amazing!!
4. Thunderforce, again, i’m not gonna explain, it’s an action adventure and comedy movie (ofc it is look at the other 3 🙄 /s), the relationship between lydia and emily!! the relationship between lydia and emily’s daughter!! the humor!! the fight scenes!! the soundtrack!!,,,,just everything about is good despite the bad ratings
that’s more like a top 4 than a top 5 but that’s like,,,,all the movies i genuinely like and will rewatch if given the chance and for that where’s a honorable mention: Hamilton (the movie version on disney+ that came out i think nearly a year ago), the soundtrack is amazing, the characters are better, got some funny moments and is mostly historically accurate, like yeah angelica did forget her name cause at the time of her meeting alex ham, she was married to a man named john church (or something church idk) so her last name was church but she introduced herself to alexander as angelica schuyler, not angelica church, so in satisfied she was telling the truth about forgetting her own name, but in the same song she said that her father had no sons even though the real angelica had 3 brothers.
1. Avatar the last Airbender, ofc or else i would have a blog (mostly) centered around it and it’s sequel /s but fr though?? it’s such a good show!! zuko’s redemption arc, iroh’s redemption arc (even though his more subtle than zuko’s) , aang!! love him and his character so much, especially when he gets to be a sassy little shit, sokka and his shit humor and brains, katara, toph, hakoda and HIS shit humor, the fight scene with hakoda (he fights kinda like a waterbender, using his opponent’s momentum against them), bato and his lovely, lovely voice, piandao, aang going ‘how about he get on YOUR back and you can fly us to the south pole’ or something like that to sokka after he complained about appa not flying higher, the boiling rock episodes, hakoda apparently being a good dad but a shitty prison riot starter (love that for him), just!! atla is such a good ass show, im not changing my mind. also!! i like the way they introduced ozai, not showing his face but still presenting him as not only a shit dad, but a shit person as well, like up until book three, we only saw him like, the neck down and in like, a flashback or two (i don’t really remember how many flashbacks ozai was in actually cause it’s nearly been a full year since i last watched it) and that’s it, so it made seeing his face for the first time all the more better cause you was already like ‘what the hell does this shitbag look like’ and then you see him and now ur like ‘oh!! THATS what he looks like!!’
2. The Legend of Korra, again, ofc or else i wouldn’t have a blog (mostly) centered around it and it’s prequel, just,,,,korra’s arc from being hot headed to calm is fantastic but also sad considering the way she went from that to this, korra’s book 1 character!! for whatever reason i really like b1 korra, just,,her design, her hair style (even though she had it for nearly the entire series) just!!! book 1 korra <3, also the entirety of book 1!! just amon posing as a anti bender nonbender despite being a waterbender himself, the scene where tenzin and his kids nearly lost their bending, which would’ve meant that, if tenzin did lose his bending but his kids didn’t, that would’ve meant the strongest airbender would’ve been his 11 year old daughter, the gruesome way to end the season finale episode by doing a murder suicide which was dark as fuck for what?? a kids show??, also the villains in this show!! their good as hell!! the backstory of the red lotus and how and why they were created?? amon and his anti bending?? kuvira and her plan to basically rule the earth kingdom (idk i haven’t finished book 4), unalaq and his spiritual stuff and wanting to become a dark avatar and fusing with vaatu?? also!! the other disturbing scene of korra basically getting tortured near the end of book 3, i mean?? it deadass left her hella traumatized and unable to walk, again hella dark for a fucking kids show
3. The Walking Dead, even though i haven’t finished it or watched in like, 4-5 months, i just,,,the way the presented negan!! practically foreshadowing him the entirety of season 6!! him appearing at the very end of the season 6 finale and pretty much having an entire episode dedicated to him in the very beginning of season 7 (which is why some fans argue he was introduced in s7 not s6 cause of the fact that he didn’t show up until the very end of the s6 finale but had an entire episode with him in it in s7, while others say vice versa cause the very the first time we see him was in s6 not s7), the fact that the walking dead logo was getting progressively more and more decayed as the series go on?? the fact that the WALKERS (the zombies) are getting more and more decayed as the series go on?? dale’s death scene?? shane’s death scene?? negan’s relationship with rick’s daughter?? the fact that this show also has what?? 11, 12 seasons?? which reminds me that i’m still on season 9 of twd
4. Sabrina the Teenage Witch, just,,,salem and his sarcasm?? sabrina’s aunts?? sabrina herself?? just!! everyone is just so fucking funny in this show it’s unreal, specially salem!! a lot of my favorite scenes have salem in them, the ‘are you on a women’s chat room again?’ (or something like that) and salem saying ‘i like the attention’ in response, that one harvey and salem scene that i don’t know how to describe without turning this into a giant paragraph like the ones before this one
5. blue’s clues, it was my favorite childhood show and i love the reboot of it so much!! especially p for pride moment in that song i don’t remember the name of, blue themself!! steve leaving which was sad but getting an equally amazing host in the process?? amazing!! the scene where salt and pepper introduced their baby, paprika?? just,,,it’s such good show and i loved it when i was younger and i still love it now!!
#asks#moots#piandao was in what? two episodes?#but do i still love him? i do no doubt#oof i really need to catch up on twd#long post#this got long as shit oof
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in an ideal fic, what ships would there be and how would they interact? gm ☀️☀️
goodmorning! well, it’s 3pm now, but i love the sunshine emojis 🌞
obligatory disclaimer that i have mixed feelings about fanfiction as a medium. i much prefer reading paradise lost to the bible, but pride & prejudice & zombies does nothing for me. i think it’s similar to how when staging a play that’s been done a million times before, changing the setting must reframe the text on a thematic level for that staging to be necessary, and thus, good.
a lot of fanfiction, to me, whether published or lost to the archives of the internet, attempts to reframe the text without actually understanding the text. i realize that not all fanfiction exists to explore the text in the first place. sometimes it just works as good shorthand to explore one’s (often sexual) fantasies. you already know these characters––oh, and now they’re fucking.
so in that regard, i can’t exactly fault these authors for not understanding the text. i can fault them for other things, certainly, but thematic relevance was clearly not a goal in the first place. it’s the difference between a ship existing in a work of fanfiction to further the themes, and a fanfiction written for the sole purpose of exploring a ship.
with all that in mind, here’s a bullet-pointed list of fanfictions i would read should they exist and be well-written, but definitely do not exist and are not well-written because i have the appropriate amount of faith in the fanfic community (and that is... very little)...
a really long story from mai’s pov elapsing from her childhood to at least a year into zuko’s reign. the climax of the story is the turning point at the boiling rock wherein ty lee betrays azula. the first act is the buildup to all of that, and the second act is the fallout. the main ship being mai/ty lee, obviously. oh and at one point towards the end, mai and sokka play pai sho together. that is of the utmost importance.
a story told almost like an epic poem (perhaps with the structure of one, but still in prose) about suki’s adventures throughout the show’s chronology and then spanning afterwards as well. we learn about her backstory, what she got up to in the months in between seeing sokka. it’s usually quite bleak, as she is mostly helping refugees before getting kidnapped by azula, tortured for information, and then thrown into a horrific maximum security prison! but it’s not all bad. and seeing as suki is the protagonist, it would never make for a bad read, either. the main ships are sokka/suki and suki/ty lee. because duh.
azula, in the years spanning the depths of her recovery, going on hikes with toph. basically each segment is just the next hike with toph, in chronological order, and it tracks her development just through how much she is willing to divulge, and what toph would say in response. she grows a lot. unsurprisingly, toph makes for a great therapist. no romantic shipping of any sort, but azula & toph would share a really fascinating bond.
sokka and iroh playing pai sho. sokka and asami playing pai sho. (AU?? or are they in the spirit world?? idk lol) i suppose korra/asami would be present because korra’s all “kick his ass babe” and sokka/zuko would be as well because wherever sokka and iroh are together, zuko must be too. and of course, he is very invested in the outcome of this game, even if he does fall asleep at one point. i guess you’d have to make up the rules of pai sho, at least vaguely, seeing as there are no official rules, but isn’t it a lovely idea?
chell’s AU wherein azula and zuko run away together as children and join the gaang. just gonna link to it here. (read it if you know what’s good for you.) i don’t think there are really any ships, other than azula’s one-sided crush on suki, because azula does not have time to care about other people’s love lives (and it’s from her pov) but sokka/zuko is alluded to, if i remember correctly.
my AU that simply exists as an excuse to have sokka be a lightningbender. here.
a whole fucking novel of an AU wherein instead of being tasked to capture the avatar, zuko was simply left to die in the southern water tribe. he expects to either freeze to death or be eaten by wolves or, if he’s lucky, be killed instantly by the people there, but instead, sokka and katara take him in and he grows up in the swt, and goes with them when they find aang three years later. then of course shit goes down once azula shows up, and it’s all a whole thing! since it’s from zuko’s pov, the primary ship is sokka/zuko, obviously.
epistolary between firelord zuko and chief katara of the southern water tribe. none of their letters are remotely diplomatic, and mainly serve as gossip with only the occasional reminder that they are, in fact, world leaders. no ships.
sokka’s life postwar that kind of just details all the cool shit he did. shrug.
idk whether this counts as atla or lok, but i would read a chronicle of kya/izumi dyke drama in a heartbeat and am not ashamed to admit that.
ty lee and azula’s very complicated dynamic from alternating povs. i just think their respective feelings towards each other are super interesting. especially the night at the beach and the turning point at the boiling rock, though all the moments leading up to that are just as important. the ‘ship, though, would be mai/ty lee. (y’all know theyre my favs, right)
the katara cinematic universe is its whole own post, so i’m not even gonna discuss that here.
and then of course, our somehow very in-depth highschool AU (i don’t know how we got here, either) that could be its own series of young adult novels if written by someone with that kind of patience and focus (so to be clear, not me). hopefully, it would be imbursed with that painfully authentic sensibility american vandal (rip legend) had, while also being a bit too earnest, the way all coming of age stories are––but charmingly so. it might even be a series of vignettes, short stories from various povs that all come together in a painfully hilarious tapestry. azula begins studying for the SATs freshman year. mai sarcastically quips at anyone who deigns to speak to her. also she’s dating zuko, so that’s great comedy fodder of course. katara runs for student body president against azula. sokka and zuko land themselves in detention and they find a way to escape. toph joins the science club just because sokka runs the science club; things explode. stuff like that.
i used to say i’d want a kyoshi backstory, but now we have one, and i simply have yet to read it. oops.
oh and this is lok, but i’ve always wanted more on mako & lin’s dynamic. i just think they’re really cute together. (to be clear, not romantically. ew)
i think the avatar universe is also just rife with fascinating lore, though, and you could pretty much write anything, set in any time period, that complies with canon and– hopefully– enhances it. for example, i would love to read a story that incorporates the physics of their universe into its thematic framework. i really liked the stuff with the lionturtles, for example.
oh, and of course, a sokka/zuko vignette that’s just them going to see a production of king lear and then discussing it afterwards. that fanfiction exists for an audience of one, but you did ask me, so...
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