#sorryyyyy this one maybe got a bit harsh I do promise I am not vagueing anyone lol

[erisenyo]

9, 13, 16, 25 🫡 godspeed

9. worst part of canon

The Great Divide lol? Jk, I generally like canon a lot, actually! I think it is such an amazing framework to play around in. But I do wish they had grounded the Southern and Northern Water Tribes in research/real-life cultural roots to the same degree as they did for the other nations. From what I've seen from circumpolar fans, it seems like it's more of a stereotypical and surface-level referencing vs the attention to detail given to the Fire and Earth and Air cultures. I wish canon had built that out more fully and deeply (or at least, built the North out if there was a theme being threaded around cultural loss due to the impacts of war).

13. worst blorboficiation

I feel like awkward turtleduck Zuko is the easy answer here...so I'm going to say Katara. I really like her, for her anger and her heart and her sense of justice and her sense of care and her dorkiness and hunger to learn. It feels like a lot of times she's boiled down to 'group mom' with no other layers, or to a girl boss/girl power fantasy that doesn't actually engage with her trauma and responses to it, or her ssensse of justice. She's a really great, complex, human character and I hate to see her filed down to just the one facet that lets her slot into the background of someone else's story.

(Which is maybe like the opposite of blorboification, to be put into the background lol? De-blorbified haha?)

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

I see a lot of headcanons/characterizations of Zuko as incredibly anxious, frequently to the point of paralysis and distress and needing rescue, and it's one of those things that feels totally divorced from his actual canon characterization to me. He is all action in canon. He throws himself at every problem face-first and he'll figure it out on the way. He has a big emotionally painful revelation that he was raised with lies and he goes to yell at his dad and point swords at him about it. He has an identity crisis so he does some vigilante stuff. A more experienced, older firebender gets in his face so he challenges him to a duel--three times.

He is not paralyzed by anxiety. He is a perpetual motion machine. He broods, he doesn't ruminate, and there is a difference.

25. common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

Oh man lol. Ignoring all the purity wank stuff (which. what a big thing to ignore.), how about when we complain about how other shippers are rude and mischaracterize us and come at the Zukkas, when we don't come for them. Which just goes to show how uniquely terrible and rude and awful and wicked and ignorant and mean those other shippers are, and how they don't know anything about canon either, and also their ship is stupid and racist and phobic and--

But don't worry, we don't come at other shippers.

(For the choose violence ask game!)