#this is more anti zuko than anything

[usernamesuggestionsarefunny]

My avatar tla hot take ACTUALLY UNPOPULAR and not just minority opinion is that Azula is a terrible addition to the series. On her own? Oh, her character was great, complex, etc. She is a queen, a great diva, wonderful villain, interesting, deserved a great redemption too (She is 14! A baby!) etc. She just would have suited a magic girl show, a horror movie (in the typical scary, powerful little girl fashion), or a darker, more mature show with more characters like her, meaning child prodigies, better.

Combined with the rest of the atlab story? Kinda makes me laugh. She is such a ridiculous addition that makes it obvious this is a kids’ show. When I first watched the show, Zuko's father and the fact he had branded him was such a serious “oh shit” moment. Like, that is a father whose expectations are truly ridiculously high. It was scary. I mean who could meet them?

Zuko, whether a villain or an anti-hero, was a special, unique character the first few episodes because he was intimately acquainted with the scary main villain in a way no one was.

Then comes Azula. Come at me to debunk me (I may not even try to argue because this is such a weird opinion in the fandom, for real I haven't heard it) but she feels like a writer self-insert. Not a little kid’s writer self-insert, mind you, she feels like a well-written, dark, and complex self-insert or oc written by a talented fic writer in her 30s with years of experience that may become an original writer someday, but an oc nonetheless.

Azula feels like “oh, Zuko could never live up to his evil father’s ideals? Oh here comes my oc Azula, despite being 2 years younger she is soo much better at firebending and does everything better, even being evil, she is the main villain’s golden child and sidekick! And the sister of the main antagonist who interacts with him constantly!” (oh isn't that so cool?) “oh shit wait she needs flaws otherwise she is a villain Sue, let's see.… perfectionism! Perfect flaw! and at the very end after needing a 2 against 1 setting to be defeated she has a mental breakdown, perfect!”

“But gifted children and prodigies exist!!” you may say. Yesss I knowww. She is both too dark of a concept and too corny for atla. I see the flaws and contradictions in the ~vibes~ Azula gives me, thank you anyway. But regardless of rationally being aware of this, the reveal that this powerful character that comes to replace Zuko in causing the gaang trouble (Because let's face it, the beginning of Zuko's redemption arc and needing an even bigger bad to replace him and shock the viewers by how much more dangerous/powerful they are is the whole reason for Azula’s existence) is his 14-year-old LITTLE sister is so… dorky and laughable for me personally. And not only because of her gender in case you come to attack me from that angle. Zuko's prodigy little brother would perhaps have been an even worse and more ridiculous big bad replacement (Girls being shorter is understandable, but with a little brother we would visually see how much Zuko would be able to beat him if this weren't a kids’ show with magic, it would be even harder to suspend my disbelief to). Like, I am sure the reasons I hate the concept are the very same reasons some others love it, but you are telling me that the one capable of fulfilling the evil child burner father's expectations is… simply some rando younger child? It is not that Ozai was a freak who wanted the impossible, it is just that Zuko wasn't it. It is corny, it is dumb. It is so obviously meant for kids. Thanks, I hate it.

Azula also combines in a very weird and bizarre way with Zuko's tragic origin story (Also it is just another source of angst that is completely unnecessary, that distracts from what his father did to him and never living up to his expectations or being too compassionate for his own good, now there is a little sibling in the way being better than him at everything). Call me crazy, but Zuko as an only child, or at least a child without crazy op YOUNGER siblings would have had a MUCH more interesting relationship with his father. Perhaps an even ANGSTIER and more complex relationship where his approval is just within reach but also not quite there. Where it seems conceivable and yet out of reach. Where Ozai is the type of abuser who gives him praise when he does something right just to tear him down mercilessly when he doesn't.

What Zuko has in canon with Ozai and Azula is also interesting, painful, and angsty, but it is “never be able to be this other random younger child who happens to be a prodigy so what is even the point of trying when dad always reminds me of how meh I am compared to her” instead of “never be able to be like my father who is putting all his hopes and that of his empire on me, who at times seems to care so much”. That last one is much more compelling for me personally for a character that ends up being the opposite of his father and learns being like him is not a good thing, it also gives Zuko a good, believable reason to keep trying to please his father: there is actually a chance, there is no one there who has already won the race. Oh my, his search for the Avatar would have made so much more sense without Azula why does Azuka exist in this universe whyy 😭

Don't get me wrong, the sibling rivalry and abusers putting children against each other, having a golden child and a scapegoat, is realistic in many families, but from a storytelling perspective I find it VERY whatever, MEH. Like, the moment Ozai burns Zuko would have been a much greater instance of utter betrayal and shock if Ozai actually acted at times like he had some hope in his son instead of being constantly comparing him to his sister. Now everytime I am made aware of what Ozai did to Zuko I am like “duh” what were you expecting, Zuko, baby? It is still evil as fuck, but no longer shocking or a wtf moment, it is just the boring, edgy and predictable culmination of Ozai already having a “better” child he prefers to succeed him, a total overkill, and in fact, knowing Ozai, he should have done so earlier or straight up had Zuko killed, it makes no sense he is still alive when Azula is a much better successor from his perspective. It means nothing and Zuko should of fing course be traumatized and emotionally and physically distraught by the damage done to him by his own father, but he should not longer logically be that shocked or struck dumb. From a fictional, storytelling perspective, for me personally, the moment loses a tiny bit of its power, at least from the betrayal-someone-who-should-care-for-you—hurting-you—instead aspect.

If I had been there to write the ~big worse bad before Ozai~ meant to replace Zuko as he begins his journey of redemption, I would have chosen something much more serious (I get “abused child soldier” is serious, duh, I just mean serious in a way that makes me fear for the gaang being faced not with a peer but with someone bigger and much more experienced, and not just distract myself with how horrible it is that a “father” makes a 14-year-old girl into a soldier for an invading army). I would have chosen an equally or even more powerful, ADULT, right-hand man (or woman) of Ozai. If it really had to be a sibling of Zuko, it would have been a brother or sister 5 years OLDER, and that is AT THE VERY LEAST, perhaps the son or daughter of a minor wife or concubine (To fix the issue of why they are not the heir and why Zuko could be jealous of their much better skills while at the same time still having a good reason to keep trying to earn their father's approval, which is that there is still time to learn and improve as the younger party, this could have also made Ursa more sympathetic since the “evil” sibling is no longer a child of hers that she emotionally neglected). This could also give the character depth in the sense that they hate the fact they have no claim to the throne despite being older and “better”. They could still care for Zuko while having a love hate relationship with them, a sibling rivalry, Ozai turning them against each other, same as Azula, without taking away from Zuko's interesting relationship with Ozai (I just want his urge to overpower his better sibling to come from a place of his father actually expecting him to do it and be mad he doesn't instead of just Ozai putting all his hopes on the other sibling and Zuko for some plot related reasons still wanting his father's impossible approval despite never being able to earn it because Azula is there, better at a younger age, is that too much to ask? Like at this point Zuko should be smart enough to see that firebending skills are inborn and related to ~fantasy-version-of-genetics~, he should logically have seen it is not his fault and stopped trying to be Ozai or Azula MUCH earlier).

So in summary, believe it or not, I like Azula. I like the whole child prodigy golden child psychologically groomed and abused by evil father angle and I would love a redemption arc for her. I just don't like her AS an atla character. I feel like she does a disservice to Zuko by even existing due to how complex and interesting yet overpowered she is, actually. She ruins his motivations imo. Ironically enough, Zuko does not do a disservice to her, he makes her more interesting because he is a warning of what could happen to her if she is not perfect, he makes her vulnerable. But here is the deal, this would work better if she was the protagonist.

Edit: I just realized it is not just Azula who does a disservice to Zuko's story, it is the whole “Ozai straight up hated the little fucker since birth and tried to kill him before as a child therefore what he did to him was not a consequence of Zuko being compassionate as fuck, Ozai might as well have been looking for an excuse”. It just cheapens it immensely.

Zuko caring for those soldiers still counts just as much (of fucking course), but it would have been more poignant story-wise for his suffering to have also be a direct consequence of his first signs of goodness + his father being an abuser pshyco and not just the latter + Ozai always hated him because Zuko is the good guy and his father’s empire is evil so we need a way to make the children see Zuko is good and not like the rest from the beginning in a painfully simple way by making Ozai inherently hate him or smt because abusers “loving” their children in fucked up ways is too complicated

[liliesforeveryfandom]

I don’t get people who say Katara was the sister Zuko needed/never had. When did Zuko ever express a need for sisterly figure? His character really only warranted the need of a healthy paternal influence, aka Iroh. If this were true, then you could replace all Zutara scenes with Sokka. You’re telling me the lightning scene wouldn’t have been cringey as frick if it was Sokka saving Katara?

[comradekatara]

i feel like the reason aang isn’t as adored and beloved as he should be is because he’s the protagonist but he’s also not an archetypal western classical hero. i don’t agree with the entirety of that “avatar aang: feminist icon” essay because i think the role of patriarchy and gender in atla is more complex than what that essay posits, but he definitely complicates the masculine ideal of heroism and generally does not conform to patriarchal notions of masculinity. which is very deliberate, especially as contrasted with sokka and zuko’s explicit struggles with the imperialist/colonial standards of an aggressive, militaristic, and chauvinistic masculinity. aang is subversive because he represents an absence of war in a world ravaged by it. through his link to a (somewhat more) peaceful and harmonious past, he represents a better possible future. as katara would say, he brings people hope.

but people don’t like that he’s not visibly edgy or tormented like zuko is (even though he’s a far more tragic character than zuko is, just fyi), that he isn’t “cool” (even though he’s literally the coolest kid ever, just fyi), that he “gets the girl” (even though if anything, she gets him) despite being twelve and bald and nice (the horror!). katara is the more classical hero of the narrative, as its narrator and its catalyst, the adventurous revolutionary who gradually learns to control and use her powers and eventually becoming a force to be reckoned with. zuko is the classical anti-hero of the narrative, his “redemption arc” constantly hailed as one of the greatest character arcs in television. so people expect katara and zuko, as very obvious narrative foils who parallel each other every step of the way, to be the obvious couple, because based on every romance narrative we’ve been inundated with throughout our lives, within our patriarchal society, they “just make sense together.”

but as much as katara is a protagonist in her own right, aang is the show. the title quite literally represents the central thematic tension of the entire narrative, the colon illustrating the implicit divide between his duties to this brave new world in desperate need of justice and balance, or his duties to his extirpated culture as the last true voice among them. aang is the central figure because this tension represents the crucial ideological battle happening across the entire show. aang is the avatar because he is the only person in the entire world whose values have not been shaped by war.

people constantly laud zuko, in particular, for being the most interesting, complex character in avatar. but i personally don’t even think that’s true. which isn’t to say that zuko isn’t fascinating in his own right, of course, but rather that he’s certainly not the only complex character this show has to offer. he just happens to monologue about his anguish constantly. but aang wasn’t raised as an imperial prince, and so he approaches the world, and his own pain, in a very different manner. the reason he immediately goes to ride giant koi on kyoshi island, mailchutes in omashu, and otherwise goofs around after learning of the shocking ramifications of his people’s genocide is because that’s how he copes with his pain. unlike zuko, who never stops talking about his aches and yearnings, aang represses his trauma and hides his tears behind a mask of upbeat cheerful goofy twelve year old antics.

until he can’t anymore. until he snaps. both katara and zuko wear their hearts on their sleeves, and that includes their rage. but aang’s rage is dangerous specifically because it represents that he has been pushed past his limits, that the conditions of this world in which he is a perpetual stranger, temporally displaced and dispossessed, are intolerable. that peaceful reconciliation is impossible. and the fact that he persists beyond that breaking point, over and over again, to firmly and resoundingly establish his ideals even as they conflict with everything he has learned about this world, a world that is not his own even as he can never return to the world he once knew, is what makes him so unique, so powerful, so beautiful.

i know that aang isn’t the typical hero, neither narratively nor aesthetically, but really, that’s the entire point. the world, our world, needs something other than what we have now. we need someone who will not succumb to the ideals of domination and victory through violence to assert themselves. we need someone who stands firm in refusing to kill the firelord, even as everyone he knows tells him otherwise. we need someone who knows that darkness cannot be vanquished through more darkness, but can only truly yield to purifying light.

and sure, aang is a child, and often acts childishly. sure, he’s not conventionally handsome and alluring. but one thing i will never understand is how that somehow negates his appeal to the masses. because even if you don’t appreciate how crucial he is to the themes of this narrative you all seem to love so much, how can you not love his adorable little face? his precious little laugh, his zest for life, the infinite well of love and kindness he holds in his heart? people who hate aang are crazy to me. because you are, quite literally, hating the world’s most precious baby boy.

[burst-of-iridescent]

No, Shipping Zutara Is Not Supporting Amatonormativity (Please Use Some Fucking Braincells For Once)

- a treatise by a severely pissed off aroace zutara shipper

since words don’t mean anything anymore (if they ever did on the esteemed piss-on-the-poor website), let’s start with a definition.

amatonormativity: the set of social assumptions that everyone prospers with a romantic relationship, thereby positioning marriage as a universal goal of adult life. amatonormativity forms the basis of several institutional structures that are built to cater to romantic bonds over all others, also manifesting in social pressure on individuals to find a romantic partner by pushing the false narrative that those who do not experience romance are automatically lonely, unhappy and unfulfilled. it is usually characterized by the prioritization of romantic love over other forms of love, particularly platonic.

the anti-zutara argument based on this is as follows: wanting zutara to happen is amatonormative because it a) devalues zuko and katara’s platonic bond b) pushes the idea that men and women can’t be friends and c) doesn’t align with the themes of the show, as romantic love was never the point of atla.

i would like to take the time today to tell you that this is some fucking bullshit, for the following reasons:

one, this may come as a shock to some of you, but zutara shippers did not invent the concept of romantic love in avatar: the last airbender. you are more than welcome to criticize the pairings of suki/sokka, katara/aang, mai/zuko, yue/sokka, jin/zuko, jet/katara, and even kanna/pakku for perpetuating amatonormativity through their unnecessary romantic subplots. and if you don’t have anything to say about any of those pairings, then here’s a word for you: hypocrite.

zk shippers are not introducing the taint of romantic love into some kind of wholesome platonic utopia where it never existed. when we say zutara should have been canon, it is a statement that ends with the implicit instead of kat.aang and mai.ko tacked on at the back because if we were going to get a romantic relationship anyway, it might as well have been one that was well-developed, narratively impactful, and thematically relevant.

two, saying zutara is amatonormative is fucking rich when the main “romance” of atla is a three season long struggle to get out of the friendzone. aang’s desire to be in a romantic relationship with katara is one of his primary motivations throughout the show, and not once does either he or the narrative ever entertain the thought that just being katara’s friend might be enough. to the contrary, aang’s crush and the potential of its reciprocation is a fundamental part of how the story gets its audience to invest in both his character and the kat.aang relationship. they want you to want him to get the girl, and that’s the driving force of the ship’s development from start to finish.

you can see the influence of this in the way people defend why kat.aang had to happen: “aang would be crushed!” “it would break aang’s heart!” “aang deserves to be happy!” and that in and of itself is more amatonormative than any version of romantic zutara, as if this idea that aang is somehow doomed to a life of misery and loneliness just because he can’t be with the girl he likes isn’t inherently based on the assumption that platonic love can’t be as meaningful and satisfying as romantic love.

three, let’s be so fucking fr: a show written by cishet men in the early 2000s was not “subverting amatonormativity” by not making zutara happen, especially not when they went for the fucking olympic gold of romantic cliches — the hero gets the girl trope — instead. otherwise, why did the entire show end with an uncomfortably long liplock? if romance would’ve devalued zuko and katara’s platonic bond, then what the everloving fuck happened to their friendship in the comics and the legend of korra?

it is blatantly false to say that zutara shippers are the ones devaluing their platonic bond when the creators did it first. they evidently don’t view zutara’s platonic bond as equal to kat.aang’s romantic one, judging by their treatment of both relationships in the comics and LOK and the fact that they talked about kat.aang “winning” the ship war in the first place. because if the two relationships were of equivalent standing, why would there be a winner and a loser at all?

amatonormativity is baked into the DNA of atla, and while some people choose to reject this framework entirely (zk friendship >>> ka romance anyday), it is also not wrong for zk shippers to be annoyed at the treatment zutara received within the context of said framework. since the creators clearly thought a romantic relationship was better than a platonic one, they could at least have picked the couple that actually made sense instead of adding insult to injury by making that romance kat.aang. it is not amatonormative to acknowledge that zutara was not afforded the distinction it should have been in the eyes of those who wrote it, because it’s obvious that the decision to keep zuko and katara’s relationship platonic wasn’t to respect their friendship, but to position them as inferior to kat.aang.

four, detractors of romantic zutara often argue that their platonic relationship is inherently better & i’ve discussed before why that isn’t the case, but i also hate this argument because it’s perpetuating the very thing that aromantic people are trying to get rid of in the first place: the hierarchization of love. it is not the “gotcha!” you think it is to genuinely state that platonic love is better than romantic love, because it’s still buying into the idea that there’s some kind of order to categorizing human relationships. the solution to amatonormativity isn’t changing what form of love gets to be at the top of the list — it’s doing away with the hierarchy entirely.

i ship zuko and katara because canon already gave me their friendship. i already know what their platonic relationship looks like and that gives me more room for imagination in developing their romantic one because it’s a place canon didn’t go.

at the end of the day, friendship and romance are just different avenues of exploring intimacy. neither is inherently more valuable than the other, and neither is inherently more problematic. and if you truly believe in dismantling amatonormative beliefs, you would recognize that making a distinction between the two is only perpetuating the problem, not challenging it.

[fanfic-lover-girl]

Demonization of the Enemies to Lovers Trope

I find it very disingenuous when Zutara antis compare or lump Zutara with problematic ships like Reylo and Dramione. Anyone who makes a claim like this should have not any opinions about ATLA respected. Because they obviously did not watch the show.

There are major differences that set Zutara apart from Reylo and Dramione.

Zutara vs Dramione - Friendship

Zuko and Katara reconciled and became very close friends in season 3. Draco and Hermione disliked each other in canon and the best of their relationship was civility. Dramione could have served the same narrative function as Zutara by representing union after war but Dramione lacked the canon building blocks that Zutara had.

Zutara vs Reylo - Redemption

Zuko has a powerful redemption arc. But even when Zuko was an antagonist, he was never truly evil. And Zuko's actions towards Katara (eg tying her to a tree) were not completely monstrous. Zuko and Katara never crossed any boundaries while enemies. When Katara starts showing compassion to Zuko, it is in season 2 when Zuko is no longer an active threat (eg. offering to heal Iroh and their emotional moment in the catacombs). Compare this to Reylo where there are all these romantic undertones while Reylo and Kylo are still enemies. Kylo also has a worse record than Zuko: murdering his dad, oppressing countless people, killing civilians, and maiming people. And Rey for some reason, before Kylo does anything to deserve it, begins to feel sorry for him. Unlike Zuko, we don't see Kylo truly atone for what he did to Rey. Not to mention the abusive elements in their relationship such as Kylo calling Rey worthless.

The point is that people need to stop demonizing enemies to lovers ships. And stop lumping healthy ships like Zutara with more toxic ships like Dramione and Reylo. It's not a fair comparison.

[sokkastyles]

The thing about what Bryan says that's so ??? is that he talks like zutara dated for a while and then broke up. How in the world did Zuko and Katara "teach each other what they really needed" (implying that what they needed was Mai and Aang? This would make more sense if Zuko and Katara had even a platonic arc where they discovered they weren't good together. But their arc is about forming an instant bond, experiencing a betrayal, and then coming together again stronger than before. If anything it showed how good they are together, especially when there are so many scenes that highlight how well they meet each other's needs better than their canon partners.

"Come on, kids!" Orrrr, maybe you shouldn't be so condescending to your audience.

A few days ago I made a post about the recent rash of zutara antis trying to bring back the idea that zutara is wrong because of "the children," but here Bryan is actively insulting kids for shipping zutara. While also repeating the bizarre claim that zutara is just too "dark and intriguing." Again, which kids are we protecting here?

[kitkatopinions]

When people talk about how "rwde is mad that RWBY subverts expectations" I wonder how much of what's considered subverting expectations is actually ignoring set up, doing things out of nowhere, and actually doing a popular and very much so expected thing.

Like don't get me wrong, I do think sometimes people have ideas for what RWBY should've been and then think that it was more set up then it actually was. Like, people who took Blake saying she grew up outside the kingdoms and had to learn to fight to mean "I am an orphan and spent my whole life on the streets" that then got mad when Blake had pretty big house and parents. I might agree that RWBY perhaps shouldn't have given Blake the privileges they gave her specifically because of how they decided to use her to tell the other Faunus to stop being mean to their oppressors (though I'd sooner throw that part out than get rid of Blake being the daughter of a leader with a big house,) but I don't think it was pulling the rug out from under people the way some people do.

However, then you have things like Adam, where some people in RWDE are saying "he was set up as this interesting character who would be an ideological foil for Blake that cared about the cause and his people, and it felt like he'd be used as a way to talk about the injustice in the world of Remnant and then was reduced to nothing but a girl-obsessed hate sink two dimensional incel" and some anti-rwde people are hitting back with "you're just upset that the edgy bad-boy isn't getting redeemed, you just wanted Adam to be Zuko, but RWBY subverted your expectations by not redeeming him and instead giving Ilia the redemption arc, and giving Blake and Yang the sympathy."

And there's a lot to unpack, there. Including the fact that redemption arcs and sympathy aren't a zero-sum game in fiction and as someone who loves both redemption arcs and when characters get justified sympathy, it's frustrating when people act like there isn't enough redemption to go around as if it's a pie and Adam getting a piece of it means Ilia doesn't get any.

But more to the point, A. I at least have zero interest in Adam being a Zuko, because so much of Zuko's redemption arc hinged on Zuko confronting his and his people's role in oppression. Adam is oppressed. Zuko was scarred by an abusive father and banished from home, Adam was branded like cattle by a supremacist who he was working for as a child laborer. Although both are incredibly sympathetic, they're incredibly different. Whether or not the writers were trying to harken back to Zuko (which I believe they were,) they seemed to completely miss the differences between the two characters, and also deciding to 'subvert expectations' when the circumstances they themselves wrote were so different is a bad look at best. As if they couldn't have 'subverted expectations' with a different character like Cardin or Jacques or even Roman Torchwick, that wasn't a member of their in-universe oppressed minority group.

B. A member of an oppressed people group that's been hurt by the oppressors of the world and yet spends their time committing horrible cruel acts that force the heroes to stand against them is not some never before heard of thing. In fact, it's very common. A revolutionary supposedly fighting for equality that's actually hurting the people he's supposedly fighting for is a pretty regular every day thing. People have literally been criticizing how it's misused and usually racist propaganda (usually written by white people) since long before RWBY was even concepted. Adam isn't a proper subversion of anything, in my opinion, because you can't do the common thing and then say you subverted expectations by not doing the less common thing. Which in this case, the less common thing would actually be to make the oppressed person who had been branded and was shown fighting for the rights of his people to actually be a nuanced and complicated character who does deserve sympathy and could be redeemed.

C. It might just be me, but if you're going to 'subvert expectations' then the thing you write instead of the expectation had better be pretty freaking good. Because sometimes the expectation is there because it just works well. Like in a group of heroes, you expect them to develop a friendship. If people want to subvert expectations by instead having them hate each other, the story better be golden because the reason people tend to expect friendship is that it's usually much easier to connect to character dynamics when they actually like each other. If you're going to write a story where hope is a central theme, but you want to subvert expectations by making a sympathetic and cool character with a personal connection to the mains look like they're gonna get redeemed but then instead make them just the worst person imaginable, then you better do it super well and make him instead a great well-rounded nuanced and fun to hate villain. So not only do we have to pay attention to why the writers shouldn't have gone that route for Adam, we gotta look at the quality of what they did with it, and... Nope. It sucked. Adam was paper thin and horribly voice acted and honestly if he'd never attacked in V6 nothing would've really changed because it had no real consequences that couldn't have been better achieved in a different way, and introducing his branding scar in the same scene he got stabbed was purely for shock value, and nothing came of his character, and idk if Ruby ever even learned his name on screen or Weiss knew anything about him, and it was so badly done. If you're going to 'subvert expectations,' you gotta do it well, or people are always going to want the thing they expected in the beginning instead. Unfortunately, the RWBY writers didn't write Adam well at all. So I for one can't blame anyone for saying 'honestly, I wish they'd gone with the other thing.'

D. Back to 'sometimes when people say subverting expectations, they really mean ignored set up.' With Adam in particular, I do believe that he was always meant to be a bad guy who did bad cruel things from the very first trailer he appeared in, but that doesn't at all mean that set up wasn't ignored. From Blake talking about him as a mentor, to her crediting him with the Grimm masks, to the ideological differences, to Cinder literally having to threaten and coerce him into working with her on screen, the set up indicated that at the very least, this would be a complicated and nuanced 'villain with a point' and that point was going to matter and be addressed. The set up was that Cinder's coercion was going to be addressed and would matter. The set up was that Blake's complicated feelings about Adam and her desire to help her people and her later established care and compassion for Ilia (who may I remind people is at least just as bad as seasons 1-3 Adam in at least attempt if not execution,) would lead somewhere when it came to Adam. The set up was that seeing a child laborer literally branded on the face with the logo of WEISS'S COMPANY would lead to big discussions and some sort of recognition of just how bad the current system is and how bad the SDC itself as always been. And instead Weiss as far as we know never even heard about it and continued on being angry that she wasn't set to be CEO and calling her grandfather a hero and Blake was completely disinterested in attending a rally against Jacques Schnee and teased Weiss about her family owning half of Atlas. Like ???

E. Doing things out of nowhere is also not subverting expectations. In regards to Adam, this looks like randomly making him totally obsessed with Blake enough that he stalks her for weeks when he literally let her go repeatedly before that. Doing things out of nowhere is making Adam not care an ounce about his people in order to do whatever Salem says when we saw him reject Cinder outright and need to be coerced with threats to his people. Those aren't subverting expectations, that's just doing one thing and then retconning the character to do something out of character.

This post turned out to be mostly about Adam, but there's tons of examples of this, like people saying RWDE are mad that the writers 'subverted expectations' by making Ironwood turn evil when we were sitting there like 'the fact that he wasn't evil was subverting expectations in the first place! And they had to throw V3 out the window to get where they were in V8! And it was super badly done!' People just throw around 'subverting expectations' when it comes to RWBY because it sounds a lot better than 'flying by the seats of their pants doing whatever pops into their heads with no care or consideration towards set-up or emotional pay off' but that's it, that's what the RWBY writers seem to do. When I expect something to happen in RWBY, it's because it's the natural thing that makes sense to happen, and in their supposed effort to 'subvert expectations,' the writers instead made a show with no consequences where you can't expect the writers to make anything that happens matter and you can't trust what's in the show because the writers might say sike and retcon it. It's endlessly frustrating to be like 'hey was any of what was in the show going to matter' and then have people say 'you're just mad because RWBY subverted your expectations.' RWBY subverted my expectation that the show would be good, how about that?

You know, if the show actually was interested in subverting expectations, Jaune wouldn't be in the show nearly as much and he'd be more gender-non-conforming and be a support healer role instead of the man now with like twenty years of experience on the mains who always has his trauma get plenty of focus and gets away with screaming in Ruby's face that she's responsible for all bad things while he mourns the three different women that were shoved in the fridge for the sake of his character development. They could've started with making the white straight cis able-bodied not-faunus man actually not be a basic underdog-protagonist turned Michael-Scarn-esque tragic hero that Weiss lusts after, but whoops. Like what am I supposed to think, that they're super interested in subverting expectations for the sake of women when Jaune is right there guzzling up screen time? Nah babes.

(Before someone comes in here talking about Adam-obsessed fan boys, I do not even like Adam, canon Adam is not only gross but far too two-dimensional for me to even enjoy, and my own ideas for rewrites involve me boiling Adam down to a concept and building him up again as if he was a different character as much 'Adam' as Ruby is Red Riding Hood. Nobody accuse me of being an Adam-obsessed dudebro or I will lose it. Because that's another thing that a lot of anti-RWDE people seem to do, is decide that the only reason anyone would ever talk about problems with Adam is because they're an obsessed incel man. And meanwhile I'm over here as a bi-women who dislikes Adam partially because he reminds me of my controlling 'my happiness is your responsibility' ex-boyfriend who we - long story - thought might've stabbed someone with a sword once. So yeah, not an Adam fanboy lol.)

[princessmotif]

to me, zuko’s relationship with toph is so antagonistic on his behalf because she’s the one member of the gaang (outside of suki who he simply doesn’t consider to be in the gaang tbh) who he least empathizes with, at large and in relation to her trauma. the reason for this is that unlike aang’s, katara’s, and sokka’s traumas which he sympathizes with + connects his trauma to in various ways of arguable aptness, zuko is uncomfortable with the striking closeness of toph’s trauma to his because of how class and privilege factor into their both of their trauma. aang, katara, and sokka are not privileged in any real way, esp not one that reminds him at all of his situation re status and privilege.

zuko finds aang, katara, and sokka's trauma relatable on a level that makes him feel equally victim of the fire nation; that's why he draws lines between kya being murdered in an ongoing genocide to protect katara and ursa, who was certainly not anti imperialism from anything we've seen of her, disappearing to protect him from his abusive father and grandfather. both situations are unpleasant and involve maternal sacrifice, but one is a domestic ordeal while the other is an act of racial violence and genocide. the connection exists, but the context is radically different. still, zuko likes that he can draw those parallels between his trauma and katara's. it allows him more room to feel like a better victim and arguably a bigger one in the context of the war, despite the fact that his status means he did in many ways benefit from his family and country being the perpetrators of it and his own personal role in it throughout books 1, 2, and 3.

i will give the obligatory disclaimer that zuko is a child soldier and he does side with the oppressed in the end, but he himself is not oppressed by the fire nation's genocidal war as a fire nation prince, let alone when he is the fire nation crown prince. he is someone who directly benefited from this war. yes, his father was abusive, yes, he was exiled for 2 and a half years, but he was still afforded many privileges because of the war. that does not negate his domestic suffering or his political exile, but those privileges still came about because of the suffering of others, including the gaang.

this is a nuanced situation. it is extremely complex and hard to accept the simultaneous truths at play here, even for adults, let alone for an extremely traumatized, black and white thinking 16 year old boy. zuko needs to be a victim in the context of the war as well as his family to alleviate his guilt about his participation in it prior to joining the gaang. he needs to relate his trauma to theirs. i will say that he doesn't ever seem to attempt this with suki nor does she offer her trauma to him, but that's more about both the writers and zuko not caring much if at all for her as a person.

but toph receives clear rejection from zuko when she tries to relate to him. her attempts to endear herself to him and to open up to him are shot down. why? surely toph suffered because of the war too. she's from the earth kingdom. but she never suffered a personal loss that zuko respected or related to. toph is not given any dead relatives. she was abused but not in a way zuko would understand, and her abuse did not negate that she lived a relatively comfortable life for being in the earth kingdom during the war. she was rich, she was cared for, she was shielded by privilege in many ways. while zuko is of course far richer than toph, he doesn't want to confront that reality. he doesn't want her privilege to make his obvious. he needs to focus on his suffering, his abusive father, his struggling to fit in as heir, and his time in exile and poverty. he can't accept the idea of those struggles coexisting with his privilege, so he can't accept the idea of toph's either. she has to just be whining about nothing. she has to be a nuisance not to be taken seriously. otherwise, he has to turn and face things about himself he doesn't want to be true.

could he grow to care about her and face his own privilege in the future? sure. but he doesn't in canon.

[longing-for-rain]

you know what i noticed about kataang shippers is that, they have made multiple blogs (even titled in the url) fully dedicated to bashing zutara. like whole blogs full of nothing but hating zutara and everyone who ships it.

i don't see the reverse. yes, there are zutara blogs with lots of aang/kataang critical posts. but these blogs also have content that's focused on zutara (posting about the ship you actually do like! imagine that!) and most are content creators as well. i can't think of any blogs that are purely anti-kataang or even mostly anti-kataang.

idk to me it just seems like zutara shippers are better about staying in our lane and enjoying what we like instead of devoting *that* much energy to hating ✌️

Oh definitely, I think in the past few years I’ve seen two blogs called something along the lines of “Zutara isn’t canon” and post nothing but angry anons whining about people shipping Zutara. And of course, the “fandom police” guy who is very obviously a right winger poorly applying social justice concepts in an attempt to win ship discourse, and who thinks anything non-canon is stupid.

It’s funny because how do you miss the point of fandom this badly? It’s transformative. There are only so many ways to tell the exact same story. There is a reason why it’s very common for non-canon ships to be more popular among fans than canon. It taps into the creative aspect that so many of us enjoy.

And for Zutara specifically, I’m actually glad it isn’t canon. I like that it’s open-ended and that I’m free to write it however I want, because to be completely honest, I think the creators would have completely botched it if it was canon. I mean, I actually like Maiko quite a bit too but I don’t like how rushed their ending felt. I don’t like how it felt like Mai reappeared to be Zuko’s prize. And given the straight up creepy things I’ve heard the creators say about Zutara over the years, I have no doubt they would have made me hate it via poor writing.

Plus you’re right, at the end of the day, fandom is about enjoying what you want to enjoy. Making entire blogs dedicated to telling people they’re stupid because they don’t adhere to canon as if it’s a religious doctrine doesn’t seem like you’re enjoying yourself too much. Sure, I’ve made posts critical of tropes, characters, relationships, etc. that I don’t like, but ultimately I spend my energy on what I actually do like.

[redbayly]

Had to do another rambling because some Antis got their panties in a twist.

After posting my very clearly tagged Zutara headcanons last night, I saw a post in the Zutara tag this morning where some Antis were ranting about their usual nonsense.

I would've just blocked and moved on, but something caught my attention about the post. I realized what they were talking about was very likely a reference to my post from last night.

I don't remember all the details (I did end up blocking them), but the crux of their complaint was that Zutara shippers steal Kataang dynamics or something. Specifically, they were calling out a recent post about Katara and Zuko traveling around helping people (which I talked a lot about in my post, so that's why I think it was me they were calling out) and that that is exclusively a Kataang thing that I stole and applied to Zutara. Also, someone in the comments had added that, if Zuko ever did go around helping people it would only be with Mai.

There was also a lot of whining about seeing Zutara stuff when they were looking for Kataang. As if I hadn't clearly tagged my post as Zutara and even used the word within the first few sentences to let the reader know what the post was about.

(For pity's sake, moderate your tags or skip over something with a tag you don't like! It's not difficult!).

But back to the main argument that Zuko and Katara wouldn't travel around helping people together and that that is exclusive to Kataang.

That is absolute bullshit.

First off, it was a headcanon of mine and I can headcanon what I damn well please (as can everybody else).

Secondly, what even is that argument they were making? Did they completely ignore the fact that both Zuko and Katara are good-hearted, helpful people who are trying to make the world a better place? We see numerous instances in canon of them helping others for the sole reason that it's just their nature to do so. In fact, if anything, they are more likely to seek out people to help out of pure altruism than Aang, who usually just sort of stumbles across people in trouble and helps because it's his job as Avatar.

(I'm not insulting Aang. I'm just saying that he's more likely to goof off and avoid getting involved in something if he thinks it's not serious enough, whereas Katara and Zuko are more likely to leap at opportunities to be helpful).

A third reason this is ridiculous is that Aang doesn't own a monopoly on doing good or helping the world. Zuko was already planning to make changes to heal the damage the Fire Nation caused. He's an "idealist with a pure heart and unquestionable honor." Do the Antis really think he would sit around on his ass while there are orphans to feed and towns to rebuild and justice to be restored? Also, why would Katara not be out there doing her all to help the world regardless of whether Aang is involved or not? Katara "never turns her back on people who need [her]" so I doubt she'd let anyone decide for her whether she travels around to fix people's problems.

I could go on and on about why this Anti-Zutara argument was stupid, but I've addressed the main points.

So, I'll say this one last time. If you dislike Zutara, read the damn tags and avoid the post you don't want to see. Don't whine about it and make up nonsensical arguments for your faux outrage. Leave Zutara shippers alone and let us have our headcanons.

You already got your ship in Bryke's canon. Just let us enjoy our headcanons in peace.

[victimsofyaoipoll]

Round 2

Propaganda Under Cut

Elizabeth Midford

She started as just a cutie fiancée trying her best, turns out she's also a swordfighting genius, very under pressure to perform feminity in the Victorian Rose type of way. Fandom crucifies her bc she's Ciel's fiancée and they want him to be with his butler, Sebastian, the demon he sold his soul to for revenge

anime was a shitty canon divergent adaptation that butchered her character down to her "cutesy silly girly" persona, which obviously made the 2008 anime fans hate her with a passion (nothing wrong w being girly I'm just saying the adaptation made her super one dimensional) anyways fujoshis used to treat her as a villain because she's the fiance of Ciel,, who as u might know already was HEAVILY shipped with his butler, Sebastian back then (now it's kinda looked badly upon, nice tbh that ship sucks ass xD) She's a bit similar to Misa Amane from death note in the way she was treated. (Like an obstacle the yaoi ship must overcome rather than a person)

she's my silly little rabbit! i could gush about her character but i'll keep it short and just say that she's really well written and one of the best characters in the series. anyways she's ciel's fiance and she's like, rightfully annoying as any other 13 yr old girl would be but the fanbase fucking crucified her for even existing. she gets demonized for being 'annoying', but then ciel gets yaoishipped with an even more annoying guy. there is 100% an argument that lizzie/ciel is weird bc they're cousins (i personally don't ship it) but that falls flat when her detractors then ship the 13 yr old ciel with an eons old demon who Canonically looks like his father. the anime also never reached her main character development until years after its peak and that was only in a movie, so she really got the bad end of the stick here. not me though i had a giant crush on her when i was 12

Katara

Katara is constantly mistreated by the fans in favor of the Zukka ship (Zuko × Sokka.) They make her out to be mean, homophobic, and completely out of character just to add drama to the Zukka ship. In reality, Katara is very compassionate, and would never act that way toward anyone. 

Zutara was a popular ship but when zukka got popular over covid during the atla renaissance there were a million posts about how zutara was problematic while zukka was perfect usually for racist reasons. Meanwhile katara and sokka are siblings so it didn't even make sense. They did not have to be so illogically rude to her to ship zukka and it was weird

Katara is FANTASTIC I fucking love her to pieces she is so cool and yet the entirety of the ATLA fandom treats her like garbage because she “talks about her mom dying too much” (even though she BARELY does & also was parentified from a young age due to her mother’s death) and, of course, because she’s a more feminine women when compared to her counterparts. Even in the show itself she’s mistreated: she’s ALWAYS shown cooking for the rest of the gaang, doing their laundry, any ‘womanly’ task. She ends up with the guy who kissed her twice without her consent & who she never showed any real attraction to and apparently (despite being a badass warrior-doctor!!!) after the show ended she just… settled down in the South Pole and had a bunch of kids and never did anything else. She didn’t even get a statue :( Anyways during the ATLA renaissance, despite Zutara actually not being canon, people felt that Katara threatened the sanctity of the new almost entirely baseless yaoi ship, Zukka. Unfortunately for them, due to the fact that Katara and Sokka are siblings, the usual anti-Zutara arguments didn’t work as well. So they resorted to just… slaughtering her character. If she was lucky, they’d just make Katara a background character, wingwoman, &or throw her together with her canon love interest. If she was unlucky they’d do anything from make her homophobic (??) to killing her off! Fuck’s sake, she never even got a token spare-the-pairs wlw ship! Sorry for getting so heated, that whole debacle made me FUMING MAD.

[nono-bunny]

"The Fortuneteller" is such an interesting episode to me because like? Aunt Wu is never wrong in the end, kinda like how in "Jet" Sokka's instincts are always right as well- the show tries to play it off in the end by saying "sometimes they're right and sometimes they're not", but throughout the whole episode his instincts led him to eventually save an entire town! If they never ran into Jet, he WOULD have destroyed that town, not to mention how Jet does eventually change through his experiences with the Gaang, but! This isn't about Jet rn

Aunt Wu not seeing anything about romance for Aang while she DOES see it for Katara is strange to me if we're to assume he's the man she's ought to marry, because like? Wouldnt their fates be intertwined? Which is why it's a good thing I fully don't believe she WAS talking about Aang, and this episode unintentionally serves the anti-Kataang narrative so well its not even funny (well, okay, it's a little funny, seeing Aang get subtly rejected over and over is very healing). Even if we take out the fact that I believe she was talking about Zuko because, c'mon, he's a fantastic bender who already loves Katara a bunch by the end of the show (platonic? romantic? nevertheless they share an incredible bond)... The Avatar isn't the only "great bender" in the world by a long shot, and I'd argue Aang doesn't even qualify because of his poor work ethic and lack of interest in bettering himself, like- Aang is acknowledged by more ATLA fans than just me to be the weakest bender in the group (until he enters the Avatar state, at which point, he's just the weakest Avatar because he has no control of it) and? Yeah being born with the Avatar Spirit is never gonna be enough to become a great bender by itself, which is something even all the other Avatars aside from Aang seem to recognize, y'know?

I forget who it was, but I saw a post saying that in a better written show, this episode that has such a big focus on unreciprocated feelings would be when Aang recognizes his situation for what it is, recognizes seeing his own lack of interest in Meng when looking at Katara and her lack of interest in him, and have him start to accept that and move on, but... Aang ALWAYS shows himself to either be incapable of understanding or just straight up ignoring Katara's nonverbal cues, not to mention how he goes on to ignore her express vocalization of her discomfort with him, so.

This episode also has Bryke use Sokka as a mouthpiece to give a very incel-y feeling pick up artist lesson and? Yeah, what could I have possibly expected? For Sokka to show some consistency? He fr never takes his own "advice" here, it's so weird! He's always been very forthright about his feelings, so him teach Aang to play coy is so ooc for him unless the point they want to end up making is "love makes fools of us all", which. Doubtful

It's yet another episode with a morality lesson about "Destiny", but fr this one feels so weak when compared to Zuko's whole thing later on about CHOOSING his destiny, where we actually see him do it when he defies and upends his harmful legacy in favor of peace, because here? Here everything plays out as foretold, with a "you control destiny" messaging tacked on at the end- the cloud bending was cool, but I hate the implication that Aang legit goes on to twist and bend Katara to a shape he sees fit, right by his side forevermore, but... Yeah, that's fully what he does, so? Thanks a lot, I guess, Aunt Wu! Look what you did! He was the closest he ever comes to giving up in this episode, some tough love would've done the trick!!! But noooo, god forbid Aang has to face and acknowledge any sort of REAL rejection, Katara simply... Doesn't yet understand that her ultimate role in life is to end up as his trophy wife, that's all! God, fuck comics and LOK Katara!!!

[loopy777]

Is Zuko a Gary Stu? A lot more people are becoming anti-Zuko especially after the comics. Thoughts?

Well, it depends how we're defining "Gary Stu." I tend to prefer a strict definition for it and "Mary Sue," that of a self-insert wish-fulfillment character. I also don't personally consider it to necessarily be a negative; one of my favorite fictional characters is George Lucas' Flash Gordon Gary Stu, Luke Skywalker.

But the common internet usages for the term typically translates to "character favored by the narrative and/or storyteller(s) to a degree that harms the story." So I'll address both definitions.

I don't think Zuko is any kind of wish-fulfillment character in the AtLA cartoon, nor do I think the narrative shows him any favoritism. In fact, I'd say the story goes out of its way to make things harder for Zuko than the basic character arc demands. It could've had him switch sides at the end of Book Earth, and I don't think there would have been much complaining. Likewise, the story could have had gAang come around to him a lot sooner in Book Fire, rather than spending entire episodes (and in Sokka's case a two-parter) reconciling him with the gAang one-by-one. I think his character arc is improved and given more impact by the desire to cover this extra rocky ground, although I also think 'The Boiling Rock' didn't need to be a two-parter and all of early Book Fire's filler episodes with the gAang should have been relocated to after Zuko's defection so that they'd have the added interest of showcasing the expanded gAang's new dynamic.

Ah, but then we get to the comics. I'm going to assume we're talking about Gene Yang's comics specifically, since Zuko has not appeared substantially in anything written by anyone else. It's easy to harp on these comics' use and treatment of Zuko, but I want to be clear that they're poorly written on pretty much every level. The dialogue is bad. Major plot threads are abandoned without comment. Everyone is mischaracterized. The humor is more juvenile than anything in the cartoon. What stories are told spin their wheels until they get wrapped up in a rush. There's bad, racist, pro-colonialism messages baked into them all. Etc and so on.

And yes, I do think these comics favor Zuko to their detriment and his. Gene Yang has admitted that Zuko is his favorite character in the cast. But even if he hadn't, we can see in 'The Promise' that the presentation has a lopsided preference for Zuko over Aang, the other main character of the story. Zuko is not portrayed as wrong for pressuring Aang to promise to kill him, despite Aang being uncomfortable with it and the whole idea being against Aang's major beliefs; compare that to the cartoon, where Zuko was portrayed as wrong and bullying in his attitude to try to get Aang to kill Ozai. In the matter of the former Fire Nation colonies, Aang and Zuko have opposing approaches, but rather than the story taking the stance that they need to compromise and mix'n'match their ideas, Zuko gets to utter the line, "I was right all along," while Aang has to be lectured by Katara, admit to being wrong, compromise with the Air Acolytes, and break off his relationship with his ghost mentor.

In 'The Search,' Zuko goes on to find his mother and learn her backstory, something that ends up not troubling or challenging him at all. She gives up her new identity to become his doting mother again and Zuko doesn't have a single doubt about it. He gets an adoring little sister in the form of Kiyi, despite her having a real problem with her mother choosing to become Ursa instead of keeping her familiar form. And his questionable treatment of Azula is not addressed; like Aang in 'The Promise,' she's the one who has to compromise (or in this case refuses to compromise).

You can see the pattern here of Zuko's presentation. This is where we can start to question if Zuko is Gene Yang's self-insert, but to do so, we would have to assume a lot of stuff about Gene Yang. For example, he breaks up Zuko's romance with Mai and then starts hinting at something with him and Suki; does that mean Gene Yang wants to date Suki? Then why bring Mai back so prominently in 'Smoke & Shadow' and then both go easy on her mistakes and break her up from Kei Lo at the end? Maybe Gene Yang wants a harem with both Suki and Mai, but if that's the case, then it's pretty odd that he ends his run on the comics with Zuko dating neither.

We could do the same for other aspects of Zuko's presentation (Does Yang want a tiny powerful Firebender as a little sister? Does he think all colonizers are awesome? Does he advocate denying first-amendment rights in times of danger? Is his favorite food to eat at winter time extra-spicy fire noodles?) But we'd probably run into similar questions we can't answer, leaving us to either assume way too much that would likely be wrong or admit that it doesn't matter.

Which brings us back to the much simpler idea of the character being favored beyond what is warranted. That helps with examining 'Smoke & Shadow,' where Zuko is actually portrayed as making some wrong choices for once in all of Yang's run of comics, like ordering his people's homes invaded and trashed on a vague hope that he'll find some information about Azula- but before that, he's somehow enlightened enough to make rainbow fire, and afterward, he solves everything with a quick apology to his people.

Usually, the narratives ignore Zuko's flaws and twist themselves into weird shapes to justify things. It's like Gene Yang started with the intentions of having Zuko make mistakes and grow over the course of the various stories, but then chickens out, so we're left with themes that feel incomplete or outright harmful. Zuko doesn't need to grow beyond his desire to have a Fire Nation elite (and their pet Earth Kingdom spouses and servants) rule over the former colonies forever, he gets to say, "I was right all along." He starts by locking Azula away in a straight-jacket, but then doesn't find a way to reconcile with her and treat her more humanely, because she goes fully homicidal and then runs away so he doesn't need to deal with her. But in 'Smoke & Shadow,' we get one example where, probably because Yang doesn't see it as that bad in the first, Zuko is allowed to temporarily be wrong before returning to a state of grace.

I think Gene Yang is trying to tell good Avatar stories. But, among his (many, many, many) mistakes, I think he's letting his favor for Zuko influence the stories he's trying to tell. He's trying to give his favorite character juicy dramatic material that lets him grow into an even more awesome character- but then he shies away from depicting his favorite in too harsh a light, ruining the whole thing.

The stories don't feel like they're going anywhere with him, despite him being a main character.

So if that fits with your definition of "Gary Stu," then yes, Zuko has become one in the comics. But he didn't start as one in the cartoon, and I don't think Gene Yang writes stories out of a desire for his favorite to marry Suki because Sword Girlfriend > Knife Wife.

Perhaps that's he never got Maiko back together; he likes Mai too much to make her the one in the wrong, but then that would mean Zuko needs to learn and grow, and that can't be right. ;)

[anti-spop]

as i said before, i believe that spop got inspired by zuko's redemption arc when they developed catra's. one thing that makes me think that is the "hair arc" both characters go through. or at least that's smth fans love to compare and i wanted to dissect here.

i think with the exception of s5, catra's hair arc is less extreme in the first four seasons. catra took out her hair tufts in s4. i've seen ppl point out that it was bc shadow weaver would touch that specific part of her hair to mess with her, so catra removed it altogether. regardless, her hair is also visibly straightened (and longer?) in s4, unlike it's "wilder" appearance in s1-3.

but then s5 comes around... and catra's hair is forcibly cut. she doesn't have the choice to do that. even then, ppl still compare catra's hair arc to zuko's, likely how the hair looks itself. but let me tell you why they're different.

zuko is always the one who changes his hair.

in book 1, zuko and iroh are forced to hide from the fire nation. zuko is the one who cuts his own hair. it grows throughout book 2, which also indicates zuko's growth as a person. he's starting to realize things. at one point he even starts accepting living in the earth kingdom with his uncle. but then azula comes along and she convinces zuko to return home and restore his honor. while yes, azula manipulated him, zuko still made the choice to go back to the fire nation when he could very well not to. he betrayed uncle iroh and katara (and the gaang overall), and with that he returned home.

in book 3, zuko's hair was mainly tied up, probably indicating the control of the fire nation over him. i vaguely remember his hair being loose whenever he went out and visited his uncle in prison, or when he was with mai (though in some situations with her, his hair was still tied up). finally, zuko lets it free, he faces his father and decides to join the avatar. regardless of influences, because they were there, zuko always had the choice to do differently. that's why his hair arc is so meaningful. in fact, his hair is never the same in all three seasons of atla.

catra's hair arc is not the same. i think it's implied that she cut it even more after being chipped by horde prime, considering it looks even shorter than when she was brainwashed. still, catra didn't have the choice here. and if you headcanon her as a woman of color (which nate somewhat "confirmed"), then this is only more insensitive and not well thought out. they never touch on that specific part of her arc. catra is never shown to be upset about her hair. if anything, it only makes her look "cute" and a "soft uwu baby" (when she rlly isn't). i hate that fans who apparently love the fact catra is a woc never call this out. everyone seems happy with short-haired catra.

the only ppl i've seen that actually criticized this decision are spop crits/antis like myself. i could be wrong, but fans rarely criticize this show overall.

anyway, yeah, i'm tired of everyone trying to tell me catra and zuko are the same. their hair arcs are not at all alike.

[punkeropercyjackson]

Also no Aang anti has enough street cred to be calling him a liberal posering as a freedom fighter.Aang spent the whole show doing anti-imperialist action and helping out those who'd been colonized and doing his best to keep his cleansed culture and PEOPLE alive and none of that is erased by him being a bit confused on things because he was just starting out and y'all are absolute pissbabies with overenflated egos with how you treat him considering there's a 99% chance you never stood up for other kids and called out adults when they were being bigots and unfair and refused to conform to standards like i did and still DO because 'growing up' does not equal selling out and for me it just means i have way more resources and words for what i want to do and what i am.Wanting to bang Zuko isn't activism or 'sticking it to the man'-He IS the man and i bet you don't even know anything about Tibet despite all the shit you talk about it under the guise of 'Air Nomads'.Put some fucking respect to Aang's name,he's worth more than all your corny ass lil #relatable white protagonists

[azulas-daddy-kink]

Zucest 👀

Well, I can't say I ship it but I think it is hella valid and I completely understand where the Zucest shippers are coming from. The bedroom scene like lmao come on, and Grey even admitted she voiced that part seductively on purpose. Plus (and people can deny this all they want) it is canon that Azula loves Zuko more than anyone, aside from their father. It's not hard at all to imagine this crossing from the platonic realm to something else, given how messed up and starved for affection these two kids are.

I've definitely read some Zucest fics that I really enjoyed (some of which are yours of course lol) and am generally not opposed to the ship. It's just not something I'd go out of my way to look for. I do admit the kink potential is super hot though, and I'm in agreement that Zuko would have all the same nasty kinks as his father. It's similar to Ozula in a lot of ways, just without the creepy age gap and huge power imbalance.

Also again, I'm fine with anything that upsets the toxic lesbian Azula "truthers" and the antis, and Zucest kills two birds with one stone.

LONG LIVE THE INCEST QUEENS ALLIANCE!!!!!!