animation-cartoon-fan-writings

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Canon/Headcanon likelihood chart

So I've been thinking about @macdenlover 's "levels of headcanon" chart (about how heavily a HC is influenced by canon), so I decided to make my own scale about how likely a HC is to be true (including different levels of canon) using queer cartoon characters as examples :)

I just spent an hour making this because I was bored. Enjoy. Image description under the cut.

Inspiration:

ID courtesy of @hatreds-og-imagedescriptions (thank you!!)

[ID: a chart going from 10 to 1, with explanations of the ratings on the left and images of characters with queer flags and descriptions of said characters on the right.

10: "Explicit canon. Clearly stated in the original media." Trans Barney from Dead end Paranormal Park. "Barney says "I'm transgender"".

9: "Implicit canon. Never explicitly stated, but 100% canon in the original media". Nonbinary Raine from The Owl House. "Raine never says "I'm nonbinary," but uses they/them and is never referred to as a man/woman (also, confirmed by Dana)".

8: "Creator confirmation. Never stated in the original media, but confirmed canon by the media's creator". Aroace Lilith from The Owl House. "While never mentioned/implied in TOH, Dana has confirmed that Lilith is aroace".

7: "Heavily implied. Never confirmed, but likely true (either by canon evidence or creator implication)". Genderfluid Nimona from Nimona. ""Aaand now you're a boy" "I am today" (anyway, the whole movie has trans/GNC themes)".

6: "Possibly implied. Hinted at in the original media, but could be explained as something else". Trans Doofenschmirtz from Phineas and Ferb. "Doof COULD be transmasc, or the whole "raised as a girl" thing could just be for the bit".

5: "Fanon. Never confirmed, but generally accepted by the fandom". Aromantic Alastor from Hazbin Hotel. "While only confirmed to be ace, most of the fandom also sees Alastor as aromantic".

4: "HC with evidence. Headcanons supported by a dedicated fan's detective work". Bisexual Mabel from Gravity Falls. "People have noticed bi flag stickers hidden on Mabel's scrapbooks".

3: "Canon neutrality. Could be true, could be false, but overall makes sense and doesn't contradict the original media". Genderqueer Pleakley from Lilo and Stitch. "Maybe Pleakley is genderqueer, maybe he just wanted to crossdress for the mission, who knows? That's why it's a headcanon."

2: "I made it the fuck up. Based on vibes, has absolutely nothing to do with canon". Bisexual Megamind from Megamind. "No evidence, no explanation, he just has Disaster Bi™ vibes".

1: "Um? No? But go off. Directly contradicts canon (but who cares, that's why it's fun)". Trans Stanley Pines from Gravity Falls. "Even though flashback scenes prove Stan is AMAB, some people HC him as transmasc." End of ID.]

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In Kataang, we never get to see Katara hint that she might return Aang's romantic feelings if there isn’t some external factor pushing her to consider him as a potential partner.

Katara only recognizes Aang as a 'powerful bender' after Sokka explicitly mentions it.

Katara only suggests that she and Aang kiss because that's what they must do to escape the cave. And, since this scene and the cave scene between Zuko and Katara are clearly parallels, I've gotta say something I noticed: after she and Aang (probably) kiss, Katara runs off without looking back, but after she and Zuko share that intimate moment, she looks back over her shoulder (which is clear romance coding)

It's Aang who insists that the two of them dance.

In the final scene, Katara is proudly presented to Aang as his prize for saving the world thanks to good ol' deus ex machina.

The two of them don't have a single conversation, Katara never mentions WHY she still chose Aang despite his previous toxic behaviors and unhealthy attachment/possessiveness. In TSR, Aang forced his own ideology onto Katara even though she needed to explore her dark side and find closure (which Zuko understood perfectly, and some people think ZK is "toxic"... sigh). I get that Aang had good intentions, but he never took the time to understand Katara.

Maiko also has this problem; Mai does care about Zuko, but she’s never been on the same page as him. Even if you care about someone, that doesn't mean you fit together romantically.

Mai never cared about doing the right thing, Zuko grew into a person who did.

Mai's apathy clashes with Zuko's passion and emotion. She doesn't understand him or know how to comfort him, unlike Katara.

Kataang and Maiko shouldn't have been endgame

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Noticed this…

Girlfriends

Siblings

Siblings in law

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kat.aang fails as a friends to lovers dynamic for multiple reasons, but one of the most egregious is that katara’s friendship alone is never once valued by either the narrative or aang.

a good friends to lovers romance bases the will-they-won’t-they on the potential consequences of rejection. what if confessing ruins your friendship? what if by trying to be something different you lose what you already have? not only is this a relatable and interesting conflict that maintains romantic tension without making it seem contrived, it also does something more important: it denotes the importance and meaning of the characters’ existing bond, thus making it a worthwhile, believable framework upon which to build a romance.

but this is never the case in kat.aang. not once does aang worry about what confessing his feelings might do to his friendship with katara, or even entertain the possibility that their relationship could be strained or ruined as a result. rather, the romantic tension in kat.aang is driven by the fear of rejection itself: the worst outcome of this situation is not the loss of aang’s supposedly close friendship with katara, but the dreaded confirmation that friendship is all that will ever exist between them.

katara and aang don’t work as a friends to lovers ship because their platonic/familial relationship is framed as an obstacle to their romance, not a stepping stone. this is made most evident in the ember island players, when actress katara’s re-affirmation of her sisterly feelings for aang (coupled with her interest in zuko) is the catalyst for aang’s confrontation and subsequent violation of katara. katara’s platonic love here is a source of frustration to aang, not comfort; a reminder of what he does not yet have instead of what he stands to lose.

aang wanting “more” than friendship is not inherently bad, and his desire for a romance with katara does not, on its own, invalidate their relationship. but you cannot predicate a romance on friendship all while disparaging the continuation of said friendship in its current state as the worst thing that could happen to the dynamic of these two characters! doing so not only cheapens kat.aang’s platonic bond, it also reinforces the idea that the only type of relationship worth having with women is a romantic one; that friendship is nothing more than a poor consolation prize for the romance women rightfully owe their male friends. it’s a leaf taken right out of the good old Nice Guy misogyny and amatonormativity playbook.

and if even the narrative can’t be bothered to respect or buy into kat.aang’s friendship as the foundation of their romance, why exactly should i or anyone else be expected to do so?

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Just saw my favorite hazbin hotel fanfic “Love in Bounds” by QueenofShadows1987 on a03 has been deleted.

The author’s page is still up (they updated a harry potter fanfic today). But I can’t find any other social media they have.

I’m confused.

WTH happened????

[animation-cartoon-fan-writings]

Something I find interesting is that even though Bryke reduced Katara to a mom and a healer, they couldn't even do that right.

Katara is a mom. What was her relationship like with her kids? How did her kids feel about her? Was she a good mom? Who knows? Bryke didn't care enough to address it. Everything about her kids revolves around Aang and his bad parenting. What about her grandkids? Well she has no relationship with them. They barely know her.

Katara is a great healer (instead of great waterbender). Are we shown how great her skills have gotten? Nope! She fails every time she tries to heal someone on-screen just to show how bad the affliction is.

So Katara was there to serve as a trophy wife and baby machine for Aang, and once she served that purpose, Bryke didn't give a damn about her. She has no known accomplishments in her adult life (banning bloodblending doesn't count because it didn't accomplish anything). And after Aang dies, she's just a sad, lonely widow.

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People say “I don’t ship Zutara because if Zuko and Katara got married, Katara would end up like this” and then they describe exactly how Katara ended up after she married Aang

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There is something so Zutara about Zuko being a good swimmer and loving the beach and the ocean, and Katara liking campfires and sharing warmth with a community. Fire and water finding comfort and joy in each other's element.

[animation-cartoon-fan-writings]

Katara's Story Is A Tragedy and It's Not An Accident

I was a teenaged girl when Avatar: The Last Airbender aired on Nickelodeon—the group that the show’s creators unintentionally hit while they were aiming for the younger, maler demographic. Nevermind that we’re the reason the show’s popularity caught fire and has endured for two decades; we weren’t the audience Mike and Bryan wanted. And by golly, were they going to make sure we knew it. They’ve been making sure we know it with every snide comment and addendum they’ve made to the story for the last twenty years.

For many of us girls who were raised in the nineties and aughts, Katara was a breath of fresh air—a rare opportunity in a media market saturated with boys having grand adventures to see a young woman having her own adventure and expressing the same fears and frustrations we were often made to feel. 

We were told that we could be anything we wanted to be. That we were strong and smart and brimming with potential. That we were just as capable as the boys. That we were our brothers’ equals. But we were also told to wash dishes and fold laundry and tidy around the house while our brothers played outside. We were ignored when our male classmates picked teams for kickball and told to go play with the girls on the swings—the same girls we were taught to deride if we wanted to be taken seriously. We were lectured for the same immaturity that was expected of boys our age and older, and we were told to do better while also being told, “Boys will be boys.” Despite all the platitudes about equality and power, we saw our mothers straining under the weight of carrying both full-time careers and unequally divided family responsibilities. We sensed that we were being groomed for the same future. 

And we saw ourselves in Katara. 

Katara begins as a parentified teenaged girl: forced to take on responsibility for the daily care of people around her—including male figures who are capable of looking after themselves but are allowed to be immature enough to foist such labor onto her. She does thankless work for people who take her contributions for granted. She’s belittled by people who love her, but don’t understand her. She’s isolated from the world and denied opportunities to improve her talents. She's told what emotions she's allowed to feel and when to feel them. In essence, she was living our real-world fear: being trapped in someone else’s narrow, stultifying definition of femininity and motherhood. 

Then we watched Katara go through an incredible journey of self-determination and empowerment. Katara goes from being a powerless, fearful victim to being a protector, healer, advocate, and liberator to others who can’t do those things for themselves (a much truer and more fulfilling definition of nurturing and motherhood). It’s necessary in Katara’s growth cycle that she does this for others first because that is the realm she knows. She is given increasingly significant opportunities to speak up and fight on behalf of others, and that allows her to build those advocacy muscles gradually. But she still holds back her own emotional pain because everyone that she attempts to express such things to proves they either don't want to deal with it or they only want to manipulate her feelings for their own purposes. 

Katara continues to do much of the work we think of as traditionally maternal on behalf of her friends and family over the course of the story, but we do see that scale gradually shift. Sokka takes on more responsibility for managing the group’s supplies, and everyone helps around camp, but Katara continues to be the manager of everyone else’s emotions while simultaneously punching down her own. The scales finally seem to tip when Zuko joins the group. With Zuko, we see someone working alongside Katara doing the same tasks she is doing around camp for the first time. Zuko is also the only person who never expects anything of her and whose emotions she never has to manage because he’s actually more emotionally stable and mature than she is by that point. And then, Katara’s arc culminates in her finally getting the chance to fully seize her power, rewrite the story of the traumatic event that cast her into the role of parentified child, be her own protector, and freely express everything she’s kept locked away for the sake of letting everyone else feel comfortable around her. Then she fights alongside an equal partner she knows she can trust and depend on through the story's climax. And for the first time since her mother’s death, the girl who gives and gives and gives while getting nothing back watches someone sacrifice everything for her. But this time, she’s able to change the ending because her power is fully realized. The cycle was officially broken.

Katara’s character arc was catharsis at every step. If Katara could break the mold and recreate the ideas of womanhood and motherhood in her own image, so could we. We could be powerful. We could care for ourselves AND others when they need us—instead of caring for everyone all the time at our own expense. We could have balanced partnerships with give and take going both ways (“Tui and La, push and pull”), rather than the, “I give, they take,” model we were conditioned to expect. We could fight for and determine our own destiny—after all, wasn’t destiny a core theme of the story?

Yes. Destiny was the theme. But the lesson was that Katara didn’t get to determine hers. 

After Katara achieves her victory and completes her arc, the narrative steps in and smacks her back down to where she started. For reasons that are never explained or justified, Katara rewards the hero by giving into his romantic advances even though he has invalidated her emotions, violated her boundaries, lashed out at her for slights against him she never committed, idealized a false idol of her then browbeat her when she deviated from his narrative, and forced her to carry his emotions and put herself in danger when he willingly fails to control himself—even though he never apologizes, never learns his lesson, and never shows any inclination to do better. 

And do better he does not.

The more we dared to voice our own opinions on a character that was clearly meant to represent us, the more Mike and Bryan punished Katara for it.

Throughout the comics, Katara makes herself smaller and smaller and forfeits all rights to personal actualization and satisfaction in her relationship. She punches her feelings down when her partner neglects her and cries alone as he shows more affection and concern for literally every other girl’s feelings than hers. She becomes cowed by his outbursts and threats of violence. Instead of rising with the moon or resting in the warmth of the sun, she learns to stay in his shadow. She gives up her silly childish dreams of rebuilding her own dying culture’s traditions and advocating for other oppressed groups so that she can fulfill his wishes to rebuild his culture instead—by being his babymaker. Katara gave up everything she cared about and everything she fought to become for the whims of a man-child who never saw her as a person, only a possession.

Then, in her old age, we get to watch the fallout of his neglect—both toward her and her children who did not meet his expectations. By that point, the girl who would never turn her back on anyone who needed her was too far gone to even advocate for her own children in her own home. And even after he’s gone, Katara never dares to define herself again. She remains, for the next twenty-plus years of her life, nothing more than her husband's grieving widow. She was never recognized for her accomplishments, the battles she won, or the people she liberated. Even her own children and grandchildren have all but forgotten her. She ends her story exactly where it began: trapped in someone else’s narrow, stultifying definition of femininity and motherhood.

The story’s theme was destiny, remember? But this story’s target audience was little boys. Zuko gets to determine his own destiny as long as he works hard and earns it. Aang gets his destiny no matter what he does or doesn’t do to earn it. And Katara cannot change the destiny she was assigned by gender at birth, no matter how hard she fights for it or how many times over she earns it. 

Katara is Winston Smith, and the year is 1984. It doesn’t matter how hard you fight or what you accomplish, little girl. Big Brother is too big, too strong, and too powerful. You will never escape. You will never be free. Your victories are meaningless. So stay in your place, do what you’re told, and cry quietly so your tears don’t bother people who matter.

I will never get over it. Because I am Katara. And so are my friends, sisters, daughters, and nieces. But I am not content to live in Bryke's world.

I will never turn my back on people who need me. Including me.

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my friends, it is not illegal to recognize there are problematic elements to the content you enjoy. it’s called critical thinking. you can enjoy something and not turn a blind eye to the shit wrong with it. 

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a lot of the zutara hate is rooted in misogyny and people don't want to admit that.

disliking and hating on a ship are two different things, no one cares if it's not your thing, but a lot of the arguments that people make for hating on the ship are just illogical and boil down to not liking that katara could possibly had the autonomy to end up with someone else. the level of hate for this ship is so disproportionate to the actual things that could be 'wrong' with it.

a lot of antis just cant see katara as an entity outside of a@ng, which sounds pretty misogynistic to me

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The post-ATLA canonical material presents a black-and-white view of morality. Rather than depicting all four nations as equals, with none better than the others, the Air Nomads are now portrayed as socially superior to everyone else. They somehow have total gender equality, no homophobia, and even recognize transgender identities, despite the fact that their temples are sex-segregated.

They have retconned Iroh’s pride in Lu Ten being in the Fire Nation military to him dissuading Lu Ten from enlisting. Iroh feels immense guilt over Lu Ten's death because he encouraged his son to follow in his footsteps. It doesn’t work if Iroh was telling Lu Ten to never join the military from the start.

In the animated series, Ozai and Ursa were written as having been in love in the past, with their marriage breaking down as Ozai became increasingly power-hungry. This was retconned in the comics to depict them as never having loved each other. Ursa's entire backstory was even changed from being born to royalty to being born a peasant.

I think it was more interesting for Ozai to have been an okay person in the past, but he became ambitious and hateful under the influence of his father. Azulon favored Iroh over Ozai, just as Ozai favored Azula over Zuko. Iroh had an epiphany when Lu Ten died, and his influence on his nephew allowed Zuko to break that cycle of abuse instead of becoming like Ozai.

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Kataang shipper: Zutara would get far less hate if the shippers would stop to bash and mischaracterize every single atla character or canon ship to uplift Zuko/Zutara

(I'm getting so much mileage out of this one 😂💀)

Kataang shipper: Zuko's a colonizer who wanted Aang's corpse as a trophy

Kataang shipper: Zuko is racist who was pro genocide

Kataang shipper: Katara is ableist

Kataang shipper: Aang is always even tempererd, spewing lava at Katara for not wanting to talk about a kiss is just OOC and I don't consider it canon

Kataang shipper: Aang is a Tibetan Buddhist monk and any negative thing you say about him is racist!

I hope you guys stretched before you made that reach.

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Do you think Angel Dust is so used to the sexualization and feminization of his body (like people calling him sexy, pretty, hot, beautiful, gorgeous, etc.) that when Husk finally does compliment him and calls him handsome, Angel just fucking melts 🫠💕 Like Angel comes out in a new suit fitted to his androgynous taste with heels and makeup and jewelry and he playfully twirls and asks Husk "How do I look baby?" And without missing a beat, with the goofiest love sick look on his face Husk replies "Very handsome, darling." Angel fully malfunctions, tripping over himself, and bright pink in the face.

Or like he's lounging around in his room in comfy clothes and Husk just looks at him all moony eyes and soft and Angel, a bit self conscious, demands "what the fuck are you starring at?" And Husk just smiles and shrugs and tells him "I don't know, I just...like looking at you. You're really adorable." And Angel has to hold back a squeal or perhaps its a squeak or some other embarrassing noise because nobody has called him "adorable" since he was a child.

Or perhaps they're out running errands for Charlie and suddenly get jumped by some gang; They kick ass obviously. Both coming out a little bruised and bloody but overall victorious, and Husk is looking at him again with that painfully adoring look that Angel still can't get used to. And Angel is pink in the face again, side eyeing the bar cat, asking: "Yeah?" "You're amazing, you know that." Husk said it so casually, so sweetly, so full of love that Angel had no other option but to kiss him.

Because what else was there to do? Like Husk just says shit like this to him and expects him to act normal?! How the hell was Angel supposed to maintain his composure when Husk kept looking at him like he was heaven itself?!!?? What was Angel supposed to do, not kiss the grumpy cat man breathless??? Like come on! 😤💕💕😤

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does anyone ever feel bad about criticizing atla because then you see the creators trying to retcon whatever you criticized but you watch them fail at it so badly that all you can do is point and laugh

i don't feel bad because if you made an oriental smoothie and you made fun of your fans for seeing chemistry between two characters, you deserve all the lashings. if i were that creator, i'd just take the royalties from the og and sequel show and just go to creating another show

but anyways. any criticism of kataang is always going to have the next installment of whatever story they want to tell just randomly retconning whatever was criticized. aang and katara didn't communicate that well during atla? here's a scene where they do talk about SOMETHING in a comic. aang never returned the amount of emotional support katara gave during the entire show and comics run? here's a new comic run where he's finally giving her support!

they're going to see us talking about how aang never tried to act like he was being a dick about his love interest's culture (ah yes, love seeing him hate on the water tribes using fur and skins or even sea prunes, you really sold me on aang loving katara lmfao) and then retcon it in a comic that he actually got past that prejudice. it's too late. you had all of lok to even just prove that you know what the fuck y'all are writing, but now it's far too late and any retcon you do might as well be highlighted in sharpie and neon

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I don't think I'll ever not die a little bit inside when I remember Katara had Bumi at 22

They had no idea what to do with her. You're telling me she wasn't an ambassador, a warrior, anything, before she became a mother?? She was barely an adult before she became a mother.

I know Aang was young too. And I hate that he was so young when they had him, but at least they made Aang have a life outside of that. He did things outside of becoming a father.

She just retired and became a healer??? She's a great woman and I'm not saying I don't like that she had children. I just... She was 22. I wish she did more than just end up caring for everyone around her through every stage of her life.