#and their stans stomp all over people’s boundaries while acting like some shallow cutesy language will hide what they’re doing

[longing-for-rain]

“I don’t mean to hijack your post, but…”

*proceeds to hijack post with obnoxious, disorganized rant that you didn’t bother to capitalize*

I understand that Aang stannery and boundaries aren’t concepts that mesh well, but come on. You can be as cutesy as you want, but you still got so pissy that not everyone worships your pookie that you felt the compulsion to vomit your half-baked, unsolicited opinions everywhere. But I digress.

I think it’s pretty clear from the anon that this is in reference to Book 3 specifically. Nobody is denying that Zuko had difficulty accepting help from others in the past (not just from Aang; from other characters like Iroh and Katara too). That’s a central part of his arc.

What gets me is the juxtaposition of these two scenarios, given how close together they occur in the timeline of the show:

a) a clearly desperate and repentant Zuko on his knees, begging to be taken prisoner if it means helping stop the war after betraying his father and nearly dying in the process, and

b) Aang defending Ozai to Zuko, the son he horrifically abused and tried to murder, after learning he intended to genocide an entire continent with zero remorse.

Sorry but that’s just a little bit worse than anything Zuko even dreamed of doing. It’s just interesting, the priorities here.

And come to think of it, what is even more interesting is this:

After all the yapping about a genocidal maniac’s humanity, Aang agrees to kill his supposed friend who is clearly mentally suffering from the burden of the throne and borderline suicidal? Seriously?

A lot of people think this doesn’t make sense, but it makes perfect sense to me. Aang is a child. Children lack perspective; they don’t have solid moral backbones and does what feels good to them in the moment. This is really all that Aang does. Sure, he likes the idea of love and compassion for all, but it’s shallow. He only does this insofar as it makes him feel good about himself. He sticks to the values he was raised with because it makes him feel good. He isn’t willing to challenge them. He agrees with Zuko because it feels good in the moment, to appease Zuko. He doesn’t really challenge it. He doesn’t meaningfully challenge anything, which is why his character arc is weak. You can’t write a character with childishness as a central character trait and then not have that character ever meaningfully challenge their values. Aang could have been a solid character if these flaws were ever meaningfully addressed. They were not.

I’m sorry, I like Aang when I was like, 10, but as I get older, I just increasingly see a child who never matured. He gets what he wants without having to change. The narrative bends to suit him rather than him having to face reality. It gets tiresome.

You don’t have to agree, but if you didn’t want to argue with me about it, you should have made your own post. Not everyone is going to bend to your worldview like canon does to Aang. If you want a mindless Aang worship circlejerk, trust me, they are easy to find. There is no reason to come to someone who clearly isn’t interested.

Aang (regarding Zuko): How can we trust you after all you’ve done? We’ll never extend an olive branch towards you.

Aang (regarding Ozai): Maybe Ozai’s not that bad. Sure, he’s done lots of terrible things, but maybe we’ll be able to trust him if we extend an olive branch towards him and show him his baby pictures.

I have to say, I know there was a lot of plot crammed into the second half of Book 3, but I felt like they really downplayed Zuko’s abuse by Ozai. They never even showed Zuko revealing that Ozai burned him. Zuko says his father is a terrible person but doesn’t really elaborate. That really should have come up, especially with Aang trying to humanize Ozai to his actual son who he abused horrifically.

Idk if it was just a plot hole or if they know that would make Aang look bad if they actually addressed it on screen.