comradekatara - Tumblr blog

[comradekatara]

Well--

[comradekatara]

trivial question, but: do you think ty lee can see auras? i'm torn between a. yes but they're not actually "auras", she just calls it that to be more cryptic to azula. i like her having a parallel skill to toph, but i don't like theosophy being grouped with legitimate east asian cultural influences in canon lore. or b. no, she came up with that lie when azula drilled her on how she was able to know info she shouldn't, and just leaned into it. or c. she's just being a quirky teenager

lmfao I don’t think this is a “trivial question” at all! I think ty lee’s invocation of auras and the context in which she deploys it is actually very crucial to understanding her character. everyone (azula, mai, zuko) responds to her aura talk in the same immediately dismissive way. it’s a ridiculous notion on its face, even in a universe wherein spirituality is respected (it’s less respected in the fire nation of course, but they nonetheless tie a great deal of value to their overvalorization of firebending, which is fundamentally a spiritual practice). ty lee is uniquely trivialized for her discussion of auras, in a similar way to how I, for example, dismiss any conversation about astrology as simply being a load of bullshit. and similar to astrology, there’s a gendered element to that dismissal; it’s viewed as a silly and frivolous interest for girls.

ty lee is a girl who deliberately plays up her femininity to an almost parodic degree. she (ostensibly) loves the color pink, and makeup, and boys, and she squeals at pretty shells, and emphasizes the importance of having clear skin, and she talks like she’s always just sucked in helium. now, there’s nothing wrong with being a stereotypically feminine girl, but that’s not actually what ty lee is. ty lee is a carefully crafted lie. she is a performer, and a gifted acrobat at that. when she plays this role, it is with the intention of being dismissed so as to be underestimated. she deliberately plays up these feminine qualities, performs her gender in such a way that she courts misogynistic reception to her presentation. mai claims that only stupid girls would be flattered upon being given beach trash, that only stupid girls crave male attention, that only stupid girls care about auras. azula claims that ty lee’s technique for attracting guys is “shallow and stupid” (despite it working perfectly on her for however many years they’ve been….friends). ty lee does these things specifically because she wants to be seen as a stupid girl.

she is a better manipulator than azula, and in many ways, far more powerful. think of the scene where azula pushes her out of jealousy because ty lee is better at cartwheeling as a microcosm for their entire relationship. ty lee knows exactly how dangerous she is, and so she knows that to not be seen as a threat to azula’s uncontested authority, she must present herself as someone stupid and naive for her own safety. and it works perfectly, because she is a teenage girl, and no one close to her is wise enough to see past her facade. when the conversation veers into territory that is threatening to her, she can steer it back onto safer ground by bringing up auras, or something equally frivolous. she knows full well that it makes her sound dumb, and that’s why she says it; she knows exactly how she is received at all times. meanwhile everyone around her believes that she’s hopelessly naive for being such an unrepentant happy-go-lucky frivolous weirdo. and so does a not insignificant number of people in the audience, too. because she’s genuinely just that subtle, and brilliant, and terrifying.

[comradekatara]

jinora is one of my very most favorite characters in lok and i should definitely draw her more

[comradekatara]

[comradekatara]

okay okay but: tiny asami (idk like 5? 6? years old [maybe older if we say sokka didn’t die in the red lotus attack thingy majig]) stumbles* upon sokka’s little tech lab (he’s literally responsible for the atla/lok industrial revolution. he has a Lair. a manly mancave for tinkering & planning.) and decides that she’s now sokka’s apprentice.

maybe pokes around an unfinished project & figures it out - fully dismantles it and sokka’s like 🤨😧😰 but then asami puts it back together and he’s like 😯😮‍💨😅 ‘welcome aboard, Sokka the Squeakuel.’

*wandering around all Roald Dahl’s Matilda style, obvi

sokka:

*hiroshi

[comradekatara]

TOFFEEEEE (and her best friend sock)

[comradekatara]

world's funniest siblings telling zuko to kill himself

[comradekatara]

no because in “the firebending masters” sokka literally tells zuko to jump in a volcano and zuko’s like “that’s not funny” (sokka wasn’t joking) but then literally an episode later he insists on joining sokka on his suicide mission to the boiling rock, and guess where that’s located. oh right. zuko literally jumped into a volcano for sokka.

the thing that zucc shippers don’t understand is that zucchini is about sokka being like “hey zuko you should kill yourself” and zuko being like “anything for you my king”

[comradekatara]

the thing that zucc shippers don’t understand is that zucchini is about sokka being like “hey zuko you should kill yourself” and zuko being like “anything for you my king”

[comradekatara]

[comradekatara]

???

[comradekatara]

old favourite, took the time to revise/edit/update it for a friend and wanted to share :D

[comradekatara]

hello milf nation may I interest you in an atuat

[comradekatara]

I can't believe that atla tumblr is ruining my enjoyment for this series. Wtf people mean when they said that aang doesn't move forward the plot and the final battle and many of his scenes are just cuttable without breaking up the narrative...

and why these stupid posts are always in the main tags....

thankfully I have not seen this post, and tend to avoid the larger fandom in general at this point, but that it’s such a blatantly ridiculous thing to say it’s actually kind of hilarious??? who do they think is the avatar: the last airbender in question here?? who do they think embodies the central themes of asserting one’s value and preserving cultural heritage in the face of genocidal imperialist violence as a mode of resistance that refuses to succumb to the logic and dogmas of war?? zuko???? is it zuko???? is zuko the last airbender??

[comradekatara]

Not to talk about ships but… I started watching a video essay about katara and how she faced misogyny from the narrative in a textual and meta sense… only for it to turn into zutara propaganda like… im not even invested in the shipping side of atla but i hate how some zutaras use katara as a pawn to further their own bullshit ship stuff. I dont have much of an issue with the ship itself but the way some of them act and treat the characters is extremely cringeworthy😭

I mean katara obviously did face misogyny, most notably in the northern water tribe, when she immediately and powerfully resisted it. I can also kind of see the argument for how the way she is sometimes framed through aang’s pov can be limiting, mostly because it’s cliched in a way that rankles me considering she is such a powerful, agentic, heroic character in her own right, and she must always be the author of her own story, which as the literal narrator, she usually is!

I guess you could also claim that the comics and lok reduced her to a more passive role, which I think is true, but also kind of an unfair criticism considering that literally no one in the gaang was rendered charitably or accurately by gene yang or lok either. katara was not uniquely assassinated by the narrative in that regard, even if I do find it blatantly outrageous how we’re supposed to accept that “she didn’t wanna participate in determining the sovereignty of her own tribe she has arthritis!!!!” (also, not for nothing, I’ve seen someone say something along these lines multiple times, and invoking “arthritis” is simply not the hilarious joke you think it is). but my many (many) issues with lok are not actually relevant to this discussion.

I really don’t think that if we just look at atla proper, katara’s agency is ever critically denied or reduced. katara is literally the hero of the story. she is the catalyst for the plot and the narrator of her own journey. whenever katara has a problem with the way someone is treating her, whether it be misogynistically or otherwise, she makes that issue known and immediately pushes back. she has no compunctions asserting herself and declaring her value, which is a beautiful thing. it’s clear that she was largely raised by women, namely her grandmother, and doesn’t feel the need to comport or reduce herself to please men.

even if she is someone who genuinely likes boys and wants them to like her, she never goes about it in a way where she’d pretend to be someone else to attract them. we can see that someone like ty lee, whose desire for male validation is hardly born of genuine attraction, and who knows how to manipulate those around her, vastly differs from katara, who is just a guileless, confident fourteen year old girl. the fact that katara is perfectly content in her own femininity, enjoys typically “girly” activities like fashion and makeup and boys, and is no less loud and assertive and reckless and angry and powerful for it is so impactful and incredible.

she’s such a realistic, multi-dimensional character who is allowed to be so many different things simultaneously, including feminine, angry, flawed, and heroic, often within the same episode. yes she faces misogyny within the narrative, but only so that she can immediately push back on it. I haven’t seen the video in question, but I have seen plenty of arguments that reiterate these talking points, and to me it feels uncharitable to frame katara is a metatextual victim of misogyny (in atla proper) when she is such an iconic and inspiring role model for young girls for the specific reasons I have just delineated here. reducing her impact for the sake of an agenda is just unfortunate.

[comradekatara]

does anyone else think about the devastating implications of hama and kanna's relationship and go crazy or is that just me

[comradekatara]

there’s something so adorable to me about the way sokka and suki both strive to be more like the other. like, when sokka boasts that he’s the best warrior in his village, both he and the audience know that this is only technically true. whereas suki actually is the greatest warrior in her village, and a great warrior period. and sokka, who of course knows that he is inexperienced and wholly untrained, is eager to learn from her and openly admires her. after all, she’s essentially the very embodiment of everything he always wished he could be, as a warrior and as a leader. and the fact that she doesn’t have to be a man to be a great warrior is even more affirming, because this revelation provides him with the opportunity to transcend the fixed roles he has always pressured himself to conform to.

conversely, suki is inspired to expand her reach and explore the world upon meeting sokka. she had always believed that staying in her village and defending her island would forever be her first priority, but then she sees sokka’s willingness to grow and adapt and expand his perspective beyond the limited paradigms within which he has been inculcated, and his open-mindedness rubs off on her; she decides to travel the world, to expand the possibilities of what she knows and better herself through the growth of learning. had sokka been more stubborn, perhaps suki would have simply remained in her village her entire life, convinced that there is no point in expanding one’s horizons. had suki been less skilled, perhaps sokka would have never changed his mind and found the opportunity for freedom in what lies beyond purely patriarchal dogmas.

suki is an incredible warrior and leader, and so sokka takes the opportunity to learn from her so that he may emulate her. sokka is an incredible scientist who is constantly growing as a person through exploration and discovery, and so suki decides to follow in his footsteps so that she may also reach her full potential. and when they find each other again, sokka is already a far better warrior and leader through her instruction, and suki has already helped far more people than she would have by simply sitting around her isolated village for the rest of her life. and they keep finding each other, and learning from each other, and becoming better people individually through their partnership. they are similar enough to speak the same language fluently and intuitively, but just different enough that their respective virtues synergize in a way that makes them a perfect unit. by providing the other with a model to which they can aspire, they help each other grow.