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Ty Lee, Azula and Mai visualized

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tired: katara’s painted lady and zuko’s blue spirit are parallels because they’re both disguises that involve face coverings

wired: katara’s painted lady and aang’s kuzon are parallels because they are disguises used to help fire nation citizens in need. ultimately broadening their understanding of the fire nation, the affects of war, and what is important in order to heal the world. accordingly, zuko’s blue spirit and toph’s blind bandit are parallels because they are disguises used by the children of nobility to escape the watchful eyes of their caretakers and anonymously accomplish things for themselves.

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been doing my mandatory yearly rewatch of avatar and you know what I realised?

toph was never really affected by the war.

in the episode where zuko shows up to try and join the gaang, sokka katara and aang are all extremely opposed to this option, but toph is willing to give zuko a chance - and she says it herself, that there isn’t any other option and the judgement of katara and the others is clouded by their personal grudges, and she’s right. but the thing that I realised much later is that not only does toph not hold a grudge against zuko because she’s not had any real experiences with him/is more forgiving than the others, but also because toph never really had any real stakes in the war in the first place.

sure, she’s an earth kingdom citizen and an earthbender, but her wealth would have protected her if the Fire Nation reached Gaoling and having been raised in such an isolated manner wherein she has (apparently) no lower class friends whose fathers and brothers would’ve been sent off to fight, she doesn’t know anyone who is directly affected by the war. I bet her parents also kept her completely away from any news of the war in order to “protect” her, and so unlike katara, sokka, suki and aang toph never actually was affected by the war on a personal level, which makes it so easy for her to forgive zuko and allow him in to the group. It’s easy to see katara and sokka as overeacting to her suggestion to let zuko train aang, but the only time the fire nation actively affected her family or her living situation was when azula wouldn’t let them sleep that one week. I don’t think toph was actually ever aware of the full extent of the damage the fire nation had inflicted on the world - I think if she had been, her demeanor would have been much angrier than how she was portrayed. because of the above, there never was any real reason for toph to hate zuko without having ever met him, and for the same reasons she is not really affected by the others’ horror at iroh having approached them to save zuko.

It’s just interesting how the avatar universe portrays privilege in this particular situation and how it affects the opinions and decisions that toph has/makes.

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"Sozin and Roku were in love" false Sozin was clearly desperately in love with Roku and Roku was 100% heterosexual and 200% oblivious

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*eyes snap open at 3 am*

danny ZUKO??? greased LIGHTNING???

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*eyes snap open at 3 am*

danny ZUKO??? greased LIGHTNING???

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The Painted Lady

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Sketches of a slightly older Katara

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 Another thing I hate is how people also hate on katara for saying sokka didn’t love their mother which she never did. People are all like “Katara is denying Sokka his trauma” and she isn’t. what she told him then was “then you didn’t love her the way I did”. and the context was—Katara wanted to get revenge for their mother—her death drove Katara through the series. And when she was finally able to get closure for it, Sokka told her no. Sokka attempted to deny her that healing knowing how much it affected her.

The whole “you didn’t love her the same way I did”, isnt’ saying that he doesn’t love her as much as Ktara. It’s saying that he doesn’t love her in a way where he would risk death to avenge her. and is that a bad thing, no. because some things Sokka would do for closure (i.e go to boiling rock to save suki, and eventually stay to save their father) Katara wouldn’t do, because those are not her personal traumas. Sokka’s father was his trauma, and whenever it came to healing from that and eventually growing past that—in any way he could—no one ever stopped him, least of all not Katara.

Katara’s mother was her personal trauma, avenging her and finding closure was her form of healing. What Katara saw was Sokka and Aang attempting to deny her that closure which they were. Was it harsh what she said—of course. But it was true. She loved her mother in a different way than Sokka, while Sokka obviously loved their father in a different way. Again the same people who hate Katara for that one line are the same people who stan Azula and pre-redeemed Zuko so it’s hella suspicious to me. I love Sokka and Katara, but there is clearly a standard in the way people hold her accountable for things to the point of stretching one of  her quotes to make it something she never said.

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miel pops ZuzuZuzuzuzuzuZuZuzuzuZU

avatar the last airbender where everything is the same except it’s zuko who calls azula ‘zuzu’ or ‘azuzu’

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some white people really are just regurgitating things they’ve heard poc say without the context and the actual perspective on it. 

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bro the way Aang is always building up Katara’s confidence and endlessly believing in and supporting her from the very moment they met until the very end of the show? the way he repeatedly goes against her abandonment issues by always coming back to her? the way Katara always believed the Avatar would come back to save the world and then he did because of her? because she was the one who found him? because had Katara and Aang never met, there would be no story but there would also be no world? everyone shut up!!!! many kataang thoughts head full!!!!!!!!!

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i will never understand how zuko jumping in front of that lightning can be interpreted as anything other than him being a reckless dumbass who loved his new friends. like, he would’ve taken that thing to the chest for momo at that point, don’t fool yourself.

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This moment in Sozin’s Comet where Toph and Sokka think ‘this is it, we’re going to die, we did everything we could’ is heartbreaking for so many reasons. Because it’s tragic and seems final and they were just kids. Sokka holding on to Toph with all his strength even though his leg is broken and Toph putting all her trust in Sokka because he’s the only thing saving her? Devastating. But can we think about something for a second? 

Can we think about how the last time Toph saw her parents they rejected her and wanted to put her in a box, hide her away from society rather than accept who she was. How she thought she was going to see her mom in Ba Sing Se but got locked in a small cage where she couldn’t bend. How she decided she hated them but deep down actually missed them despite everything. 

How she still wanted to have them in her life and did miss them and took the small step to send them a letter. That was the last time she interacted with her parents and for all we know, she never heard back. Hawky didn’t return. She never got her reply. Toph never got to know if her parents wanted her back. 

She could have died without anything resembling catharsis or closure. She’s crying as Sokka tells her “it looks like this is the end” and she believes him. That was going to be it. After everything they went through, they weren’t going to make it out alive. 

And then Sokka? 

The last time he saw Hakoda was in The Southern Raiders. They barely had time to spend with each other after The Boiling Rock and they didn’t even get a full goodbye. All they got was Hakoda telling them “it’s not forever” and a quick hug in the heat of battle. Sokka was so sure they were going to see each other again because he didn’t know about the plans for the comet and he didn’t know what was going to happen in the coming weeks. 

And right here? He could have died with this being the last time he talked to Hakoda. Sokka could have died with only this fleeting moment as the last time he talked to his dad. That could have been the end of it after years of separation with only a few weeks together in all those years.  

And they were kids.They shouldn’t have had to be the ones to save the world. They shouldn’t have had to invent metalbending or save their father from a high security prison or march into battle without knowing if they would live or die. 

Toph and Sokka were so sure they were going to die in this moment. They were so sure the quick goodbyes and attitudes that ‘it’s not forever’ were all they were going to get to leave behind to their parents. They thought they were going to die and had no idea if Suki or Aang would come out of it okay. They had no way of knowing if Zuko or Katara would live. And they never got the chance to get anything close to resembling closure with their parents. 

They just had this trust in each other. Just this grip. That’s all they were left with in the end. Because the world never protect them the way they protected the world. 

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Everything I’ve done, I’ve done to protect you.

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Katara is bringing it up because someone else has brought up their own suffering and Katara is revealing hers as a way of being vulnerable with the other person, showing that she knows what they’ve been through because she has too. the fire nation has done dreadful things to them all. it connects and allies them. this is exactly what Zuko does when he reveals to Katara that the fire nation even took away his mother too.

the joke about Zuko and honour!! is different because that’s a flaw of his that is part of his character arc and he works through and realises that honour isn’t what he thought it was and he doesn’t need anyone to give it to him. 

But Katara’s loss of her mother isn’t a character flaw. when people die you don’t stop talking about them and pretend they never existed. you talk, you tell stories, it helps you heal. even though Katara realised she didn’t want to kill yon rha after all, she’s still going to mourn her mum her entire life ok it isn’t going to be part of her character development to one day go haha well i’m over that. never talking about her again. so stop mocking her completely reasonable reaction to seeing her mum dieeeee

the thing about Katara talking about her mother to people is, she doesn’t do it as often as people joke.

She tells it to Aang, to Haru, to Zuko, to Jet, and the point is that Katara only brings up her mother as a commonality point to people who have suffered trauma like hers. She talks about it to Aang, who is a genocide survivor and whose people were destroyed like her’s gradually are. To Haru and Jet, who have been oppressed by the Fire Nation and suffered loss as she has. To Zuko, whom at the time she views at the face of the Fire Nation, a living embodiment of everything making the world worse.

She brings it up as a commonality, its not something she brings up ASAP, its an indication of her compassionate nature that even if its a painful thing for her to thing about, she explains it so other people understand that she knows the same kind of pain they feel ,or in Zuko’s case, the pain she feels his family is personally responsible for causing.

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No that’s azure. Zuko is the king of the gods in ancient Greek religion

cut me some slack, i have never watched atla. i don’t know who half these people are. what the hell is a zuko