#anti fire nation

[punkeropercyjackson]

See,here's what not clicking for Atla fans who believe and i quote 'No girl would choose Aang over Zuko':Zuko is society's ideal boyfriend.Aang is KATARA'S ideal boyfriend.It was kinda a big thing of hers,remember?Her wanting to not conform to gender expections and be a girl in her own way?Also all the anarchism and direct action and activism and anti-imperialist eco-terrorism?That Aang helped her out on on a regular basis and thought was attractive?Am i ringing any bells yet or are you still busy dressing up Katara in her colonizer nation's wardrobe from season 3 over half the time while accusing Aang of making her assimilate and writing Iroh as their wingman inbetween your metas on how Katara was forced to be with Aang.It's fine,i was gonna tune out your awnser while listening to the Avatar's Love Lo-Fi cover anyway

[survivalove]

Seriously gonna need certain people in the atla fandom to stop talking about colonialism with this singular definition of going somewhere, planting a flag and living there when there are so many different measures colonizers used (and still use tbh) to subdue and erase a people’s culture before “officially claiming” a country as their own, not even gonna get into those shady official means.

The 2 most common ways western media depict settler colonialism:

1. ethnic cleansing - wiping out the inhabitants and their culture by any means necessary: violence, disease, forced migration etc.

2. disrupting cultural traditions and economic advancement - imposing your way of life on the inhabitants making it impossible for them to survive on their own.

[P.S. This isn’t meant to be an all inclusive definition of colonialism as I’m sure there’s a lot of different ways you can talk about this that I’m probably leaving out from what I was taught growing up in a newly former colony myself.]

Frankly, I’m just tired of this fandom acting like the South Pole was not directly and indirectly affected by the Fire Nation’s colonial practices when:

1. ethnic cleansing:

Hama: They came again and again, each time rounding up more of our waterbenders and taking them captive. The Puppetmaster, Avatar the Last Airbender.

The Fire Nation literally tried to wipe them out continuously. They came back over and over until every single waterbender was captured and if another one was born (Katara) they came immediately back to keep the Southerners in their place.

As said by Katara and Sokka, waterbending was not just a means of fighting but an “ancient art unique to their culture”. The Fire Nation didn’t just physically subdue the South by taking away all their benders but literally wiped out an integral part of their culture which so much of functioning water tribe society depends on, which will be expanded on in part 2.

The Fire Nation also did this in the Earth Kingdom colonies as seen in Imprisoned, the only difference being the soldiers actually stayed in these places, but this did not stop the Fire Nation from coming back to the South and enforcing the same colonial practices they used in the Earth Kingdom over and over.

2. cultural and economic disruption:

I don’t know how much clearer the difference in the South Pole before and after the Fire Nation raids could have been made. The fact that they make it explicitly clear by including this frame in Hama’s story is just another example of how the raids affected the South’s overall development. With the genocide, they lost a huge part of their population to build, hunt and most importantly defend themselves. Like we see in the North Pole, the South had their own ice structures obviously built by waterbenders that people lived in, now living mostly in tents with the village being a much smaller size in general. Katara and Sokka are left to find food for their whole tribe with their benders (and other warriors) gone, and of course when the Fire Nation shows up yet again, they are extremely defenseless and would have been burnt to a crisp if Aang wasn’t there.

Of course, the war meant they also couldn’t celebrate a lot of their cultural and spiritual traditions with their warriors being gone, more an indirect consequence of Fire Nation colonialism since Hakoda made the choice to take the men to fight on his own. The consequences of this are first highlighted in the Bato episode and brought up again in Legend of Korra season 2 by Unalaq.

After 100 years of war, the Fire Nation literally managed to turn the South Pole into a colony in everything but name where they could go and enforce their will on the inhabitants any time they wanted, without having to physically live there in the cold which was least optimal for their living conditions anyway.

I’m tired of people acting as if the Fire Nation couldn’t go and “plant a flag” in the South if they wanted to, when in fact, they didn’t want to and they didn’t have to. They literally already subdued the South by removing them as a threat and was trying to do the same to the North in the Book 1 finale.

Anyways, I’m not an expert on colonialism and I’m not claiming these to be the only ways to define colonialism in real life or atla. This is just a rant based on my personal understanding of settler colonialism and just… my annoyance at how this fandom constantly downplays the already watered down depiction of colonialism in the show.

[haytsun]

How do you think the Gaang would react if Iroh was forced to face a tribunal for his actions during the war, particularly his actions during the Siege of Ba Sing Se?

gonna see who is handling the tribunal, if it was the gaang:

since canon showing like they have knew what iroh did, i think they would help iroh to defends because he had suffer and doing good things this and that, and he have zuko the best “son” the fire lord helping him, some thing like kuvira‘s ending, which saying the iroh redemption last piece is done

but for me i wish iroh suffer the hate from those family who lost their son from the bbs war to broke the hypocrisy-ego he had build form his son death, the gaang have no right saying anything to help iroh when those family speech the pain and hate, even zuko the fire lord cant help with that, because the people still not even happy the traitor being fire lord even the backstab fire nation for a good reason, and the rest of the gaang idk what to think, they might just stand up for zuko, bcuz people are to many, the rage they cant stop, what they can do is using their title to deter at the meantime, they deley iroh tribunal until they think something out, azula in the alyssum just laugh around what they have done

personally i wish the gaang be like iroh should paid what he have done, its not their right to help people forgive him, zuko being my uncle had done everything, he help restore the peace blahblabla, its gonna be a huge argue, because zuko knew if he not defends his uncle his own hypocrisy-ego also hard to handle being a “good” person

[queen-morgana91]

Avatar the Last Airbender beautifully told the story of how imperialists lie and have to be called on it and yet somehow certain people missed that message and turned into fire nation apologists

[survivalove]

they always wanna focus on the ‘she wants to help anyone that needs her��� part and not how the town actually reacts to her helping them lol

So one fandom trope I've never liked at all for reasons that in this case aren't related to shipping is 'Katara marries into the Fire Nation royal family and becomes a badass fire lady', and there's a lot of reasons why

the glamorizing of dynasty power, the mischaracterization of Katara as someone who would WANT that, no one ever suggesting that Zuko (in this ship) ever surrender all political power to live the rest of his life in a happier life in the South Pole, the way a LOT of writers who fixate on this trope have a very strong pro-Fire Nation stance that becomes outright apologism, there's many reasons to dislike it. And due to the nature of fan content, it can be difficult to find ways to point out its flaws, and I abruptly realized a pretty solid one.

One common element of this trope is the idea of the Fire Nation loving and revering Katara as the most powerful and cool Fire Lady EVER. Besides the fact that there's no canonical indication that being Fire Lady grants you any power (given that very few of any historical Fire Lord's wives have been named at all in canon, let alone shown to accomplish anything, this is very unlikely), there's plenty to criticize in the common people of a conquering nation respecting a woman from a nation they explicitly regard as inferior to them.

This brings us to The Painted Lady. This is an important episode for Katara, and I think fully establishes the compassion and heroic will at the heart of her character. Her statement of "I will never turn my back on the people who need me!" even if they are her enemies, is a core one for her character. However, this episode also gives us a good example of how the average Fire Nation citizen responds to her, a woman of the Southern Water Tribe and a waterbender, being a hero to them and in a position of power to them.

Namely, they immediately turn on her.

Even after Katara and Aang sabotage the nearby factory polluting their river and slowly killing them (and likely weakening the local spirit, the Painted Lady herself), while they become friendlier, the best they manage is "you're not so bad, for a waterbender" which reads a LOT as a bowlderized shorthand for saying she's not so bad for a Water Tribe woman; this is a deeply loaded remark and indicates that even though she's done nothing but help them, they're still biased against her in a way that sounds about expected for a supremacist nation that views itself as superior to the people it conquers.

And this is just a humble fishing village; imagine how much worse it gets in centers of military power and presence.

So needless to say, I think that this episode does indicate how the Fire Nation would feel about it overall, and 'making her life constant misery and filled with micro aggressions and outright racism' would probably be the absolute most minimum thing you could realistically expect.

[mal3vol3nt]

saying the information we got on the fire nation and air nomads from any of the chronicles of the avatar novels is “the result of out of touch white guys” is so fucking funny considering both of the authors we’ve had are poc….. like ribay is filipino and a lot of filipino characteristics/themes/and culture was written into the reckoning of roku…. including the way the fire nation was represented coming from a filipino’s perspective

can yall be for real?? 😭 just cause you’re mad your favs and their nation are canonical colonizers doesn’t mean you get to call everything that doesn’t make them look good racist or out-of-touch. the call might be coming from inside the house

[burst-of-iridescent]

antis will hate on zutara for being a colonizer/colonized ship and then turn around and ship zuko with mai — the girl who was at best indifferent to her country’s imperialism while enjoying the privileges of being a high-ranking member of the colonizing state, and at worst actively complicit in said colonization, without ever undergoing any growth or showing any signs of disagreement with the ruling regime, even till the very end — and expect people to take them seriously lmfaooo

[katerina-q]

Atla fandom is the only fandom where the oppressor characters get more sympathy and empathy than the oppressed characters

I'm sorry, you deserve better

[survivalove]

this is why i don’t want a *szeto or roku book lol

yeah the yangchen book is definetley an improvement of the water tribes as despicted in the kyoshi books. i think on the kyoshi blooks FC Yee just hyperfocused too much on making the fire nation look good by making everyone look just so much more poor and corrupt to make them look cooler IG. I think we just need to step away a bit from Fire Nation favoritism in general tbh. I think Korra made the right step in not featuring it at all.

Honestly i take focusing primarily on the Fire Nation as a red flag. I don't think any of it comes from a place of outward, self-aware malice, but it so often it reveals some deeply racist shit. Like the amount of tags i'd have to block because i was so disenheartened with how many people clearly didn't see people like me as a human being or their cultural equal and it was seriously affecting my mental health and manifesting as those stomachaches you get when other kids point at you and laugh in elementary school, it's ridiculous.

There's something about fixating on the Fire Nation and characters from it that just brings that shit to the forefront and discourages any deeper analysis in why they make these assumptions. I don't care for it.

[emrys-merlin]

I just not vibe with people in atla fandom, sorry

Reading some posts and.... it looks like you wanted Aang to be punished for being an air nomad, a good kid and a pacifist. Like some of you are acting like if this kid who did lose everything and everyone didn't suffer enough. You all are acting like he had it easy, that he didn't have trauma because he had the audacity to have fun (pretending to be experts of trauma, like shut up people), that he didn't have survivor's guilt, that he didn't have any conflict....

Y'all are acting as if the genocide survivor of the series was "rewarded by the narrative" and that’s disgusting

It's just so...weird

[kidcaroline]

Aang being simultaneously universally loved and heavily despised by certain demographics just like in canon is so iconic like he’s so king

[punkeropercyjackson]

The Atla fandom is a really good example of how persecuted people who fight back vs their oppressors are treated.Aang lived a happy peaceful life with other tibetan monks-nomads until the Fire Nation saw them as a 'threat' for no actual reason so the Air Nomad genocide happened and after being unfrozen,Aang had to face the harsh reality of the whole world and did a lot of good for it by doing tons of damage to the FN and other corrupted groups and gave tons of kindness to those he was trying to protect and save from them out of the goodness of his heart but he has a belief from his culture that's not inherently bad but goes against western ones and he said a few bad things out of non-malicious ignorance and his young age so he's branded a bigot,an 'apologist' and even a fascist

Zuko's the son of an imperialist king that gave him every privilege under the stars bar his love and taught him legitemate toxic masculinity and racist ideologies that he weaponized in his search of Avatar which in of itself is an act of racial violence because it was a hunt to down a survivor of etchnic cleansing BECAUSE of their heritage to kill them and even after Zuko's redemption arc,he still dosen't let go of his bigotry and dosen't try to or even get called out on it!Suki and Sokka LAUGHED at him mocking Aang's dead people and Aang didn't even get mad at him for his significant amount of other anti-Air Nomad jokes and in a meta sense,he's treated better by the narrative than Azula because he's male.There are zero redeemed female villains and he never got oversexualized like she did and you cannot remove her japanese/east asian-coding and her gender in this context considering what irl underaged easian girls are seen like and treated as

Zuko did damage and he did make up for it too but only to the Gaang and Aang never did any damage to begin with,he was entierly Zuko's victim pre-season 3 and a victim of his people as a whole.But 'Zuko was never truly evil' because it was how he was raised and AANG is worse than him by virtue of not being conventionally attractive and openly nice instead of a brooding emotionally constipated dickbag with anger issues and unrestrained violent tendencies.The Fire Nation are the REAL good guys and the Air Nomads had it coming because they were different

You think i'm taking things too far?Japan WAS historically an imperialist nation,Tibetans ARE victims of genocide and the Atla crew choose that specific coding on purpose from their research.And you missed every message they told us with Aang and Zuko,including Aang's friendship being why Zuko was able to see how shitty of a person he was and unlearn propaganda and fucking DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT instead of wallowing in his own pity as if he wasn't active persecutor beforehand and THAT'S why his redemption arc was perfect.Aang is every victim of our fucked up society that's bitten the hand that maimed him and you think he's the REAL monster for it because he won't conform or whitewash himself.You're a genuinely disgusting person if you hate him and you should be embarrased that you do it over Zuko as if you're anything like him

And if you're going to insult me and speak over me about this post?Congratulations,proving my exact point

[survivalove]

i’ve finally realized why people think saying that the southern water tribe wasn’t actually colonized (true) is a good defense against saying that the fire nation x water tribe is a colonizer-colonized ship (also true) and yes obviously i’m talking about a certain ship involving a certain character born in a certain family of a certain time. pls don’t bring up korrasami or whatever the like let’s not be obtuse

it has a lot to do with semantics and tropes

yes, the southern water tribe was never officially made a colony by the fire nation at any point in time. that doesn’t change the fact that the fire nation:

invaded the swt continuously

stripped them of their resources

reduced them to a shell of their culture, making them unable to be self-sufficient

enforced the same order on a foreign body like they did with their actual earth kingdom colonies. like i really think y’all like playing dumb

and that when people talk about a trope, they’re talking about a certain dynamic as it is portrayed in the show. the canonical power dynamic between the fire nation and the southern water tribe. the canonical history between the two nations. the canonical consequences of the fire nation waging war on the world, specifically the southern water tribe.

and the fact is, this all is akin to a colonizer x colonized ship

and my thing is, y’all know that too yet continue to play semantics to defend your ship. i mean should we start calling it genocider x genocided? is that better? again, stop being obtuse because you know exactly what people mean

[longing-for-rain]

I’ve been thinking about The Promise again, and it’s really interesting to me how the narrative tries to frame Zuko as the “dark” character once again, despite the fact that Aang was the one considering banning interracial relationships and supporting the Earth Kingdom in invading Yu Dao (which most of the people living there did not want).

In canon, Aang only changed his stance on interracial relationships after realizing it would affect him personally. But consider this—what if Katara wasn’t interested in Aang at that point. What if she was with someone else?

It would be interesting to explore how that would change the plot.

[queen-morgana91]

The way this fanbase is trying so HARD to make Aang and the Air Nomads look bad because they want to defend Zuko (the guy who was a colonizer for two seasons and OPENLY racist with Katara, Sokka and Aang, but they do not care) and the Fire Nation, aka the GENOCIDAL COLONIZERS nation it's.....insane. just insane

They are calling Aang and the Air Nomads "jerks" and "morally superior".....the characters who were GENOCIDED by the people they are stanning so badly

Mind you, everything Gyatso said about the Fire Nation and Roku is the truth. Literally everything. And Aang had worn fur and animal hats before and he had no problem with it Imao he's one of the most respectful characters in the series GOD FORBID if he made "harsh" comments about dead animals, he's the only character who can't have "flaws" in this series. Fake nice guy :(

it is 2024. its about time zutaras got their heads out of their asses and stopped talking nonsense about a piece of media they've distorted so much in their minds that any kind of contribution they make to the conversation is about a whole fanfiction that has nothing to do with atla

It's getting ridiculous

[waywardbananawolf]

According to fandom, the Fire Nation must love Zuko because... he an awkward turtle duck? But really, why would the Fire Nation love Zuko? In the first place, when I refer to the Fire Nation, I mean to everyone, from the civilian population to the nobility, why would the nobility want Zuko? Most of the power connections that the nobility would have would be between Ozai's government and therefore his heir Azula, in addition to losing business and benefits from the colonies, why would the army support Zuko? If we consider that Zuko's honor is totally stained thanks to the fact that he betrays his father and therefore his Nation and organizes and carries out an overthrow with foreign forces stepping on Fire Nation territory, why would they trust someone who practically made them lose a war won by making the death of thousands of soldiers worthless?, why would the civilian classes support Zuko if he is just a name known mostly for his cowardice and betrayal?, why would they support Zuko if he caused a mass exodus of migrants from the colonies expelled from lands that had belonged to them for 100 years?, why all classes would be happy to pay compensation to other nations if we consider that the economy would be in ruins since it was adapted to permanent war and the extraction of resources of the colonies?, in addition to a refugee crisis and the return of hundreds of thousands of soldiers who could not enter the labor market due to overpopulation and limited resources.

and they only tell me that there was a small and stupid organization that wanted him out when if we look at it critically there could be at least 5 organizations against Zuko's government