ecoterrorist-katara - Tumblr blog

[ecoterrorist-katara]

no need to be rude here. Obviously I knew what you were getting at as a general point, and I would never say that ZKs as a group never do bad things. But a pattern I’ve noticed is KA shippers being like “you said something bad about Aang so I will say something bad to/about you” as a way to justify the harassment of real-life ZK shippers, and I wanted to clarify that this would be an escalation of the ship war as opposed to merely retaliation.

And can you share the names of the ZK shippers who made fun of settler colonialism and genocide? I have no interest in platforming folks with those opinions and I’d like to be aware. I’m sure many other ZKs would too.

ship wars are always insane but ship wars in the atla fandom are worse. people be taking ss of accs that ship zutara to make fun of them when they talk ab jin. z/ks saying shit ab aang being a bad person in posts ab kataang like. UNPROVOKED.

[ecoterrorist-katara]

:)

[ecoterrorist-katara]

Oh Lin Beifong now Im down bad 💚

I'm having a hard time shipping her with Kya as I ship her with Me 😂😭

[ecoterrorist-katara]

Part 1 of my modern avatar au, the fire nation

[ecoterrorist-katara]

“Unlike Kataang shippers, Zutara shippers like media geared towards adults” is…kind of a self-own sorry

the kataang to lumity pipeline, the z*tara to b*llyconrad pipeline and the zukka to klance/renga pipeline are all very real and documented phenomena.

kataangs gravitate towards children's shows with deep messages, z*taras gravitate towards serious media with horribly written "romances" (asoiaf, hotd, tvd, star wars, tsitp) and zukkas gravitate towards eastern media/anime (with prominent fanon mlm ships).

i know i sound terminally online explaining this but i promise i'm not LMFAO i just find shipping demographics really interesting .

x

[ecoterrorist-katara]

blutara x that one petermj panel

aka spiderman!zuko au from my ao3 fic the blue spider 🕷️💙

+ fic playlist!

[ecoterrorist-katara]

it’s bad to go into a tag and talk shit about the tagged content. I hate it when anyone does it. BUT

having an unwelcome opinion about a fictional character is not the same as taking screenshots of real people’s accounts and making fun of them! That’s a false equivalence. Aang doesn’t have feelings and can’t hear what you’re saying about him, but all shippers are real people with feelings! being mean to real people to defend a fictional character is crossing a line.

ship wars are always insane but ship wars in the atla fandom are worse. people be taking ss of accs that ship zutara to make fun of them when they talk ab jin. z/ks saying shit ab aang being a bad person in posts ab kataang like. UNPROVOKED.

[ecoterrorist-katara]

I saw you worked things out with your ~girlfriend~

[ecoterrorist-katara]

platonic modern au kaatang, platonic kaatang painting eachothers nails, platonic kaatang watching romantic comedies, platonic kaatang gossiping and talking about their crushes.

that's it. that's the post.

[ecoterrorist-katara]

(via Hug meme)

[ecoterrorist-katara]

2, 19, and 20 for the fandom asks!

heyyyy thanks for the ask!

2. My favorite fic from the fandom that I’ve read

I LOVE SO MANY!!! let’s narrow it to three…I’m a huge fan of crushinator’s Half Asleep and eleventy7’s Once Around the Sun, but if I had an icicle to my head and had to pick just one, I’d say colourwhirled’s Southern Lights. All three fics rival published books to me, but Southern Lights embodies a lot of things I love about fanfiction as a literary tradition (distinct from original fiction). It’s very, very long, which means we have plenty of time to dive into how different characters grow in a way that’s very difficult outside of long series. Katara’s journey is at the centre of Southern Lights, obviously, but we see a lot from Zuko, Sokka, Azula, Toph, Aang…I’ve compared it to A Song of Ice and Fire before for this reason. Because it’s a full AU, it also takes advantage of our knowledge of canon and works it into something very different, so there’s plenty of “ohhhhh so this is where x happens” and you get that delight of both familiarity and newness. Also the themes of colonialism, trauma, reconciliation, and oppression from your enemies vs oppression from your own people are done in a super mature way. There are no easy answers in Southern Lights, but I feel like the author trusts the reader to grapple with those complexities.

19. Favorite headcanon

Momtara and Dadko for the Gaang! I love the idea that Zuko helps her with chores in the Western Air Temple as a way of regaining her favour, and then he just keeps doing it. We love an equitable distribution of domestic labour.

20. Least favorite headcanon

I like Fire Lady Katara, and I’ve defended it before, but I don’t like the version of the headcanon where the people of the Fire Nation think she’s a savage / peasant and she has to get etiquette lessons and learn to be a FN noblewoman to get respect. I think Katara would sooner pull the “I won the throne so watch your mouth” card than to defer to people who think her culture is inferior, particularly because we don’t have any indication from canon that the Water Tribes are especially looked down upon (more than, say, the Earth Kingdom). And as much as I like Fire Lady Katara, I prefer United Republic Councilwoman Katara or Chief Katara. Both are obviously harder to execute so I understand why fic writers don’t go for them, but I have a serious soft spot for fics that depict her in those ways.

[ecoterrorist-katara]

redeemed!azula becomes zuko’s advisor

based on this post

[ecoterrorist-katara]

Hi do you have a Zutara fic recommendation for someone new to the fandom, I want something that the characters act like their canon counterparts <3

hi anon! I’m a huge fan of the characterization in caroe3725’s refraction (long fic) and cablesscutie’s Katara Alone (shorter fic, start of a series). The personalities of Zuko and Katara are very well fleshed out in these fics and they feel exactly like older versions of themselves. Once Around the Sun by eleventy7 and i’m still here by owedbetter are classics for very good reasons too.

for fics that are more similar in tone to ATLA (more Gaang presence, lighthearted and fun / silly but still emotionally compelling), I love ShamelessLiar’s Simple Misunderstanding (ponytail Zuko kidnaps Katara but it seems like Iroh’s the only one in control here), Boogum’s Zuko’s Tiny Dilemma (ponytail Zuko gets turned into a kid and is adopted by s1 Gaang), Fandomme’s Stormbenders (ZK go on a secret mission), emletish’s The Worst Prisoner (the Gaang accidentally kidnaps ponytail Zuko, note the series is a WIP) and FanPanda13’s Another Word for Alchemy (post war Gaang solves a mystery). I keep my Zutara fic recs in its own tag which I should probably update more. Happy reading!

[ecoterrorist-katara]

Fandom ask game!

Send a fandom and numbers in the ask box, and I’ll answer…

1. My favorite thing about the fandom

2. My favorite fic from the fandom that I’ve read

3. My favorite fic from the fandom that I’ve written myself

4. My favorite fanart from the fandom

5. My favorite fanart from the fandom that I’ve drawn myself

6. My favorite character

7. My least favorite character

8. Is there anything I wish people would write more about in fics? (A dynamic, an exploration of an arc, just a character that doesn’t get much screentime, etc)

9. Is there anything in general I wish more people in the fandom talked about?

10. A fic from the fandom I haven’t read yet, but I want to read

11. The first thing that comes to my mind when thinking about the fandom (note: It can be anything, even if it’s irrelevant - literally the first thing that comes to mind!)

12. How long I have been in the fandom

13. My first impression of the fandom

14. My current impression of the fandom

15. Is there something I wish someone would draw as a fanart?

16. Favorite inside joke the fandom has

17. A fandom take I didn’t think about until I saw it, and I fully agree with

18. A fandom take I don’t really agree with

19. Favorite headcanon

20. Least favorite headcanon

21. An event or a conversation within the fandom I remember vividly

22. How I would describe the fandom to someone who is not in it

[ecoterrorist-katara]

I’ve seen a few K@taang fans say that Aang telling Katara to forgive Yon Rha in The Southern Raiders is a parallel to Katara helping Aang leave the Avatar State. I really don’t like this take, for a simple reason:

The Avatar State is a supernatural uncontrollable rage. Katara’s anger is not.

On multiple occasions, Aang states that he regrets his actions while in the Avatar state, and he doesn’t like feeling out of control in that way. We even see his rational spirit’s reaction to the Avatar State when it detaches from Aang’s body to speak to Roku in “The Avatar State”.

Aang wants to be stopped when he is in this state. When Katara reaches out to him, she is not trying to change his mind, she is trying to allow his rational mind to regain control. She is giving him agency, not denying him agency.

By contrast, while Katara is angry in The Southern Raiders, we’re never told that her rational faculties aren’t still operational. She’s determined. Not possessed.

At no point does Katara say that she regrets acting in anger. Instead, we see her exercise judgement and mercy even when face to face with the man she saw kill her mother.

This is not someone who is out of control.

(Not that she necessarily would have been out of control if she did kill him.)

The fact that Katara wasn’t out of control and didn’t need to be stopped is further reinforced by the fact that, unlike Aang who agonises over his actions in the Avatar State after the fact, Katara doesn’t express regret at her actions or relief that she didn’t kill Yon Rha. Instead she re-states her initial position that she will not forgive him.

All of this makes Katara’s anger at Yon Rha very different from the Avatar State. She is in control of her actions and does not want or need to be stopped. Trying to stop her isn’t helping to reassert her own control over her actions, it’s questioning her active decisions. It’s denying her agency instead of enabling it.

An emotional woman is not the same thing as an irrational or out of control one.

[ecoterrorist-katara]

On ur post abt how the promise showed katara flexing her- frankly amazing- diplomatic skills: How do you think they could have handled the Yu Dao story better if they'd ended the show with platonic kata.ang/ future zk endgame in mind??

Just since it's quite an interesting plot to explore, and katara has some good moments, but I think it got drowned by weird (ooc) writing choices. Zuko and Aang get hit by the idiot ball hard. Obviously there's the whole 'promise' drama (as if half the finale wasn't dedicated to aang refusing to kill a firelord under any circumstances), but also kata.ang moments like the Avatar-state talk down + katara's vision; not to mention the bits where they undermine zk's canon friendship (the infamous 'ur hurting me' panel and katara agreeing with /encouraging the promise at all.)

this is a great question and this made me think of one of my favourite ZK fics, Refraction by caroe3725, which has a great re- interpretation of Yu Dao!

I think if Katara was with Zuko even just as a trusted friend, he never would have been going to Ozai, which means the conflict would not have escalated to the extent where Zuko decides to play hardball and Kuei retaliates. Katara would have supported his pov that families shouldn’t be separated, while also being adamant that Earth Kingdom citizens deserve to not be second class citizens in their own home.

the biggest issue with the titular promise is that it puts them all in a situation where they’re fretting about whether to kill their friend, instead of the actual difficult question of how to be fair to the citizens of Yu Dao without forcibly separating families that now don’t belong in either FN or the EK. I imagine Katara still playing a mediator role between Zuko and Aang, but not in a way where she’s like…preventing a brawl. Instead, she would be leading negotiations on how to restructure the town so that the Fire Nation is no longer at the top of the hierarchy. I think it would likely still end with Yu Dao independence, but with a greater emphasis on Katara’s first reaction to Yu Dao (that there’s serious wealth inequality) and how the FN can be responsible for remediating it, probably in the form of reparations for social programs. Certainly that would make it into a boring political comic, but I happen to find that interesting!

[ecoterrorist-katara]

I agree. I would never, ever trust Bryke to write Fire Lady Katara. Based on the milquetoast political allegories of Korra, I have no reason to believe it would be anything but a hot mess. I do think there’s some canonical basis in the idea that Katara would not play second fiddle to Zuko, because she doesn’t idealize him. She respects him, but she’s been mad at him and has seen him at his worst, so she doesn’t inherently believe that his judgement is superior to hers. (If she ended up with Haru, he wouldn’t have overshadowed her, so I think Harutara is the only pairing that would be safe in Bryke’s hands, moustache notwithstanding).

Because she was canonically paired with Aang and that relationship was central to her role in Korra, it’s hard to separate critiques of her arc from critiques of the ship, especially since she had shown some self-effacing tendencies in her relationship with Aang before they got together. I agree none of the women of ATLA got a good deal in their post ATLA arc.

Nothing about Ka/taang precludes Katara being Chief of the SWT…

which is why it pisses me off even more that Katara didn’t get to have a role of any political importance whatsoever. It wouldn’t change anything about LOK’s storyline, and it would be fully in line with her character.

There’s a common anti-Zutara argument that Katara wouldn’t want to be Fire Lady, because she would want to rebuild and lead her own culture. I am sympathetic to that. Based on her canon characteristics, she might want to be a United Republic Councilwoman, Chief of the SWT, or just generally the Waterbending Master / Matriarch of the her tribe, which would be easier (though not impossible) if she weren’t married to the sovereign of another nation — I get that.

but the thing is…she didn’t get to do any of that, even though “wife of the Avatar” doesn’t contradict those roles. All the things that would be difficult for her to do if she were married to Zuko, she still didn’t get to do as Aang’s wife. She didn’t get to have a career the way her husband, or her brother, or her friends did.

so it’s extra hypocritical when Ka/taang shippers are like “but being Fire Lady would disempower Katara!” when Ka/taang canonically disempowered her! And KA fans are fine with that: they bend over backwards to justify why Katara doesn’t have a statue, or why she wasn’t there to protect Korra from the Red Lotus, or why she wasn’t at Yakone’s bloodbending trial. Yeah she got to live in the SWT — eventually, I assume, because in the comics she just follows Aang around — but what else did she get to do? Fucking nothing, apparently. Because to some people, the greatest honour for a woman is to be the hero’s wife.