#IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ZUKO!!!!!!

[fancysmudges]

long hair zuko lives in my head rent free

[nemkero]

nobody will know that this is atla fanart

[diornies]

the worst friends in the world.

[your-royal-momoness]

Zuko: well, if I was the blue spirit

Zuko: AND I’M NOT

Sokka: *suspiciously and reluctantly crosses out Zuko’s name on his list of possible blue spirit suspects*

[petricorah]

quick zukka <3333 [id in fanart]

[seasideoranges]

the blue spirit spotted with a kyoshi warrior! i wonder what they're up to? (part 1?)

[cyanorhis]

kya and lee my beloveds

from @nerdylizj delicious amazing wonderful fic “forgetting is a kind of mercy”

[turtleducsk]

kinda missing my family rn (lee zuko and kya katara with their baby akio from @nerdylizj's fic!! check out forgetting is a kind of mercy if u haven't yet 🥰)

[shihoerusu]

“you rise with the moon. I rise with the sun”

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Eternally grateful for my best gal @oceanview15 for all her amazing ideas and support

[late-draft]

Hello, Dema here!

First off—I have fallen desperately in love with your artworks. You have a very particular style, strong and fluid all the same, and I can't help but admire the way you draw and how you approach character design.

And talking about character design...

I saw your post about Zuko's bold design in S1 when compared to what we got in S3 and—as much as I love S3-Zuko—I completely agree with you. Something I've always loved about Zuko in S1 is just how striking he was, how much of a presence he had, even when he was being tossed around by a twelve-year-old. That being said, I love Zuko, I love him in armor and pointy shoes and with a ponytail, and I loved your alternative design for him.

What do you think about his S2 character design? How does it flow with the story beats and his overall character arc? Much has been said about the Hair-Growth-Means-Character-Growth (and I find it interesting, also, that he cut his hair again before joining the Gaang), but I'd like to know your opinion on how that translates to character design and how the decisions made in the show could be either good or bad in that regard.

Sorry about the long ask! I've just been thinking about this a lot, lately, and would like to know what you think. Hope you have a good day ❤️

AAAA Dema hii!!! I'm so happy I got a message from you, I didn't expect it!!

I'm super glad to hear, I'll wear it as a badge of honour and I must tell you that I also love your art, you wonderfully do volume and the shading done through a contrast of sharp and soft areas! Super solid anatomy too and I'd be lying if I said I didn't look up to your art!

Yess the character designs in the show actually are rather strong, I like a good balance between memorable and functional. Zuko is just *chef kiss* but, considering just how many appearance changes he goes through, some are bound to be weaker than the starting one. That said, I'm gonna go through a few of his S2 looks and make this reply long, ha!

The starting one when he ends up huddling with uncle Iroh with other poor refugees, fits extremely well for the narrative at the moment. It's actually one of my least liked looks for him, and that's great!! It's precisely how it should be, because he's also arguably at one of his two lowest moral points in the story - he basically lost almost all hope, no clear goal, nothing to fight for, he's desperate precisely because of the lack of orientation and thus his morals degrade and sink veeery low. He gets on my nerves so goddamn much in this period LMAO I want to beat him up, he looks like a recovering drug addict... annoying, entitled whiny jerk stealing food and anything shiny for his uncle, but even then he just does not cross the moral event horizon. Excellent characterization. He just looks atrocious and it's great because it fits this low point.

Next he gets the standard boyish square of a hair, no notes here...

But theeeen, he arrives at one of my favourite looks of his, and it's not just because the clothes fit him very nicely (I've seen fandom say they look too big for him which, maybe?? But it doesn't look like he's swimming in them to me) And a thing I've noticed which, maybe it was just an accident on design part but I'm not sure considering they colour coded the entire cave scene; in this part his clothes match the shape of Katara's, first one in bottom then the one in top. The collar is the same haf-circle design but I don't know, maybe there was a limited pool of clothes designs guide which they cycled through. Or, he really is meant to come close but miss Katara by a beat, like sine and cosine chasing each other.

But besides this outfit fitting the inconspicuous Earth Kingdom customer service persona, it also (perhaps inadvertently) does this VERY cool thing:

It makes his shape look closed off and guarded, supposedly non-threatening. It's most visible in his fight against Jet, whose shape is open and goes in many directions like an aggressive star. But then look at what Zuko's shape does:

When he attacks, it opens up to reveal the hidden aspect, again the aggressive star shape shows up! The same thing happens in "Zuko alone" episode but I think it's most clearly visible in this fight against Jet because here he has a direct contrast and comparing with Jet. I think this is an example where the outfit, whose similar design exists irl, overlaps with a great visual metaphor and enhances the narrative at that moment in story. He's still that combative firebender but he has to keep that aspect concealed most of the time. Plus it just looks badass as hell!!

Animators really knocked it out of the park with many frames. I think Jun was too early and missed his better hairstyle, but Katara was just in time.

I agree it's super funny how his hair in the Beach is awfully long, covers his face to an uncomfortable degree and then he apparently shortens it before joining the Gaang, insane behaviour Truly an "I'm so angry and depressed I won't show my face nor be capable of seeing anything because there's nothing nice to see in my life" look...

I guess all his appearances in S2 cover his mental states, but only one of them is extremely Extra (the tea server, doesn't even take the apron off and goes to fight) and I don't see any spot where a similar tier design could be shoved in, narratively speaking. So all in all, S2 did as much as S2 could have. More tea server arc please though, the Guru episode really feels like it skipped 800 km of plot and everything that happened in it is so crammed and pretty sus in terms of character behaviour.

[margarethelstone-2]

found and coloured an old zutara mlb au thingy.

because obviously i had combined the two.

[aangarchy]

My little cousin (15) is watching atla for the first time. She's just started season 2. Here are her opinions of the characters so far:

Aang: "bald. Very bald."

Katara: "bad bitches do it so well"

Sokka: "attractive but in an older cousin type of way" (??????)

Zuko: "also bald. Angry and bald. Although he changed his hair now so just angry i guess."

Azula: "i will use my right to remain silent."

Uncle Iroh: "how old is he? Like 80? I'm gonna say 80."

Admiral Zhao: "musty dusty crusty" her exact words.

Yue: "she's coming back right?" Oh sweet summer child.

Jet: "all i remember is that stupid wheat thing in his mouth."

Haru: "who?"

King Bumi: "he looks like his mother got electrocuted when he was in the womb"

Suki and the Kyoshi Warriors: "all power to them bc i would not stand a chance fighting in a heavy dress"

[rennelelorren]

I think soon I`m goind to be unemploed and I kinda dgaf. ANYWAY here`s cover for a comic I don`t have any power no finish.

also here a sketces for a comic under the cut, if you was interested; tho I need to warn you it`s not finished at all.

[sourstiless]

like okay, there are a lot of valid reasons why you may not personally ship zutara, and there are criticisms that you can make of the ship, i won’t try to argue with you, but it’s so frustrating that in the god given year of 2024, we are still having to explain why saying “the only reason girls ship zutara is because they’re projecting onto katara bc they want to be with zuko” is misogynistic.

if your criticisms of something is rooted in making women feel bad for liking something or implying women only like someone/thing bc they’re attracted to that character/person and are incapable of liking the story or development, you are just being misogynistic. that is misogynistic rhetoric, and it’s been used to shame girls and women for liking things, in fandom spaces and in general, for decades. it’s a criticism you never see leveled at men.

if you don’t like the ship, that’s fine, but stop echoing this idea that girls only like it bc they wanna be with zuko and are trying to live out some weird fantasy vicariously through katara. let it fucking die already.

[zuko-always-lies]

It's fascinating how pre-exile Zuko (13 or even 14, according to some sources) is basically implied to act like and be treated like a child, while Azula (14) largely acts like and is treated like an adult by those around her.

[sleepyzukka]

atla tweets?? ft. transfem zukka and hints of azuki bc i have yet to make tweets with them…