#It feels like we only go backwards

[quathxr]

I read It Feels Like We Only Go Backwards (on ao3) yesterday. AND I HURT. WHY DID I READ THAT IT WAS SO GOOOOOOD *sob*

[tony-blair-erotica]

“It’s weird for me, having started my political career in a public discourse dominated by gay equality, having thought that was all done and put to bed, now leaving after 27 years and it’s come back. It’s a different moral panic, but with similar traits: trans people are presented as a danger to women and children. You know, I was considered a danger to children: ‘It’s a social contagion.’ We were thought to make people gay – that’s what section 28 was about. The level of fixation, all the same tropes: we are getting that now about trans people. It’s very distressing, but it’s much more distressing if you’re trans.”

- Ben Bradshaw, interviewed in the Guardian by Zoe Williams, 29th April 2024

[oldpotatoe]

feels like we only go backwards - Chapter 25

[solanumstarss]

little flwogb doodle :) @oldpotatoe

[ecoterrorist-katara]

love love love ur parentification analysis on sokka and katara especially katara’s section! it puzzles me so when KA’s say ZK’s do not understand the show nor katara when to me it’s so obvious we do 😭

thank you so much anon! I’m so happy that my post resonated with you!

A while back I saw a Tumblr survey about favourite characters and ships. It basically showed that for people whose favourite character is Katara, Zutara is the most popular ship. Obviously the Venn diagram between Zutara shippers and Katara fans isn’t a circle, but I think the overlap contributes to why so many ZKs are passionate about Katara. Also, ZKs who are Katara fans tend to be pretty flexible with Katara ships: many people like Harutara / Jiangtara / Yuetara / Sukitara / Azutara (though most shippers of Azutara tend to be Azula stans first and Katara stans second). What’s really funny and a little sad to me is that non-ZK Katara fans who dislike her canon arc get accused of being ZKs by antis (this happens weirdly often to @sapphic-agent). It’s like some antis can’t comprehend the idea that people might just love Katara without the ship war.

I generally like reading POVs from Katara fans of all ships, but I recently discovered that I tend to disagree with POVs from Zukka shippers. They often try to defend Katara’s “childhood” by pointing out that Katara sometimes goofs off and Sokka also takes responsibility, so she’s not just the “mom friend.” To be clear I’m not disagreeing with those points, but I don’t think downplaying her parentification trauma is defending her childhood, especially since goofing off & being impulsive make her parentification more realistic, not less. It feels kind of disingenuous to accuse the fandom of being the ones to parentify her when The Runaway exists, especially since they downplay Katara’s parentification in order to play up Sokka’s parentification. There’s nothing feminist about ignoring the invisible labour performed by a woman in a cartoon, not when brave women IRL have been agitating to recognize care work for literal decades. I wrote my undergrad thesis on invisible labour performed by women, especially women of colour, in radical activist spaces…so I feel really strongly about this.

I think it’s interesting that a lot of ATLA fans claim Katara shouldn’t be with Zuko on the grounds of her colonial trauma, but refuse to entertain the notion that maybe she shouldn’t be with Aang (a kid who evades responsibility) because of her parentification trauma. The murder of her mother stems from imperialist violence, but her subsequent parentification stems from patriarchal gender norms around divisions of labour and assignations of responsibility. The patriarchy is a thing in ATLA, and it’s canonically something that Katara hates almost as much as the Fire Nation (incidentally, reason 27363729 why the fic Southern Lights is so special to me is how it deftly explores both anger at a colonial apparatus & anger at your own people for their patriarchal oppression).

[iknow53953139]

You’re telling me that famous Zukka fic was named after a tame impala song and it took me this fucking long to put it together

[akdjsjjw]

Done!!

Credit to https://www.tumblr.com/ash-and-starlight/685514113694187520/zukka-week-day-7-free-space-the-prince-and?source=share

For inspo and reference

[3cosmicfrogs]

"Memory loss is such a boring and over-done trope" <- people who clearly haven't read Feels Like We Only Go Backwards

[priarity]

do you ever read fanfiction that’s so traumatising that you need to read other fanfic just to cope

[justbusterkeaton]

Backwards

Music: Feels Like We Only Go Backwards by Tame Impala

[stolen-glass-bottle]

ZUKKA NATION HOW WE FUCKING FEELING????

[bisexuallsokka]

real scared about this election i might do something dangerous (reread flwogb)

[haveyoureadthisfanfic]

Summary: The Zukka Amnesia Fic

Author: @oldpotatoe

Note from submitter: fire lily?

[oldpotatoe]

happy holidays <3

[brown-little-robin]

just had an extraordinarily vivid dream that my family (with the exception of me) decided to go to Japan for the summer/fall with their closest friends, and they left me alone in charge of our empty house without even asking if I wanted to go too, and

[pansexybitch]

Holy shit, no way!