#bryke hate women

[fanfic-lover-girl]

I wish I loved Korra and Hermione

I want to pause my negativity for a bit and be a bit more open about my feelings about Korra and Hermione. I know I rag on these 2 characters but part of me genuinely does want to like them. I really do because I see myself a lot in both of them. Which is why the handling of their characters frustrates me.

Like Hermione, studying and school was my main source of self-worth. I was the brightest girl in highschool. This is why when I went to college, I found it hard to cope with being around peers so much "better" than me. For a while, I felt worthless. Like Hermione, I am not very girly. It's only recently that I have begun wearing dresses to weddings and such. I don't like makeup and I find it hard to care much about my hair. Like Hermione, I found it hard to make friends in school and usually had a small circle.

Same points with Korra. I was very sheltered growing up. I was a good student in STEM but struggled in subjects like the humanities and hated them because of it (like Korra with airbending). I was naive about the world in many ways. I never had big crushes but it is disappointing to find yourself liking a guy only to find out he has a girlfriend or sees you like a sister. I could not relate to Aang but I could relate to Korra's louder personality and tougher nature. And I am black so there's the skin factor too.

Like both, I was kind of violent towards boys growing up, especially in primary school. I remember chasing boys with sticks and even hitting a classmate over the head with a book. I was an emotional kid for real. Thank God no one ever hit me back. And this is why I am against female violence against guys being treated as a joke in media.

I find Krum's interest in Hermione very inspiring. This famous senior likes her even though she's average. While Ron can be a jerk, mostly due to teenage boy immaturity, for the most part, Ron is very caring towards her. Sometimes I feel self-conscious because the only guys who have ever had interest in me have been random guys off the street in Jamaica. The friendly newspaper guy calling me 'princess'. A grown man with yellowing teeth who insisted on walking with me. A highschool dropout guy who also insisted on walking with me. In the US, another grown, sloppy black man trying to get to know me on the bus. Ugh. I wonder if any guy in my circle would ever find me desirable and Hermione is a nice representation of hope.

I just hate how Hermione and Korra's flaws are hardly acknowledged by the narrative. I don't like how they treat their love interests. I don't like how them being jerks to the people around them makes them badasses or girlbosses.

I wish we could have gotten an arc for Hermione where she discovered that she did not need to get top grades to prove herself. Because Hermione deserved better than 'oh you're smart, Neville is dumb so you're ok for a muggleborne' from Hagrid. Hermione should not have to be smart to be worthy of her magic. All Hagrid did in that scene was justify pureblood supremacy logic. I wish we had seen more of her relationship with her parents. It's sad how she obliviated her parents and it's treated as inconsequential dialogue. I wish she had more female friends. Hermione acts like a 'pick me' type and I dislike how JKR used her and Ginny to demonize other types of girls. Maybe she could have had an arc where she learns that there is more to being smart besides being booksmart. A lot of her brightness is really due to memorization. So many possibilities with a Hermione and Luna friendship. Just imagine!

As for Korra...sigh. I wish everything was not handed to her. I wish we could have seen more of her struggling with airbending and her spirituality. I know Bryke had issues with pacing due to how LOK was produced at Nick but still. I wish she was called out for her bad decisions and she took responsibility. Now that I think about it, it would have been so cool to see Korra have to use her wits instead of her fists against a spirit foe like Koh after she left the portals open (dying from wasted potential!). I wish she went on a real Avatar journey so that through her we could learn how the cultures outside the water tribe have changed. I wish Korra did not perpetuate the stereotype of the angry/obnoxious black woman. Korra had the potential to be a way more interesting avatar than Aang and have a healthier romantic relationship but Bryke blew it. The relationship drama with Asami and Mako was disgusting and I hate Bryke's torture porn fetish with Korra. They treated Ozai with more dignity than Korra! The worst Ozai got was a drooling scene while the Gaang cracked jokes while Korra literally thanked her enemy for her trauma!!! The injustice! Bryke really hates women!

I am just rambling but I realized there are almost no female characters that I resonate with that are like me in the media I know. I wish Korra and Hermione had better writers :(

[melu-lis]

sometimes i wonder if bryke understands the characters they created because of they did, they would've understood the appeal of zutara better instead of simplifying it to "people just believe that the bad boy should get the girl over the nice guy".

[herbluefire]

this fandom doesn't deserve them

[kibutsulove]

Azulon’s mom design ‼️

love her so much. There’s like zero content of her

[sokkastyles]

I read the recent post about why Bryke hate Zutara, and why they wanted Kataang to be endgame. I know they're never going to understand this, but a lot of the arguments against Zutara that Bryke and some antis tend to make always seem to imply that there's an appropriate way for Katara to experience romantic or sexual attraction (being attracted to Aang) versus an inappropriate way to experience that attraction (being attracted to Zuko or Jet or anyone who wasn't Aang in Bryke's head). I just really dislike the way Bryke always seem to push the idea that if Katara, and women in general, are attracted to someone who ends up being a terrible person, it's somehow their fault for being attracted to that person rather than that person's fault for being a horrible person. It's really slut shamey honestly. Even Bryke saying that people who ship Zutara will end up having terrible relationships and saying that Zutara would have never last because it was just dark and intriguing is so weird to me. It all just reeks of the same misogynistic idea that women don't know or understand what they want but they'll come around eventually. I just, I don't like the fact that girls and women's desires and perspectives are never taken seriously when it comes to romance.

Yep. That's why these types of antis backtrack on Zuko's redemption arc when a relationship with Katara is in question, why this isn't really about Zuko or about protecting Katara from the "colonizer" like they claim it is. It's not about those things at all. It's about the Nice Guy belief that women don't actually know what they want and aren't capable of choosing a romantic partner for themselves.

In reality, relationships like this that are built on a total dismissal of and lack of respect for one half of the pairing are MUCH more likely to be toxic or abusive. Which is why the claim that KA is "so wholesome" in comparison to zutara is an immediate red flag for me.

[allnewalldifferentwildspider]

Why are they like this?

They keep retconning everything to make the Fire Nation look worse and the Air Nomads look better.

And that's because in the show there was NO evidence of sexism in the Fire Nation. We saw women guards and service people all the time. It wasn't weird. Ozai made Azula into the Fire Lord and nobody made a big deal out of it (except Azula). No one was like, "Oh but Ozai, a GIRL can't be Fire LORD." Clearly it's a unisex term in the Fire Nation because they didn't call her anything else. She called herself Fire Lord Azula.

The Air Nomads were said by the Avatar Trivia AND DVD commentary AND the writers that the temples were separated by sex, but now they're separated by gender identities? Isn't that fucking convenient?

Is it a way to make zutara look worse? On its own, probably not. But given Bryke's past actions and how petty they are, odds are high that it is. Discredit Zuko by making the Fire Nation look worse, and embellish Aang by making the Air Nomads look better.

And of course they do it years after the fact. God, I'm gonna hate the movies.

[geegers22]

I’ve seen lots of conversation on here about Zutara shippers opinions on aang and mai and i thought I’d give my point of view.

I want to start by saying that I think there should be more of a distinction between disliking a character because they are a bad person and disliking a character because they are written badly. With that being said, I can confidently say that, with the material of the main ATLA show, I dislike Aang and Mai because they are badly written characters. Meaning, if their arcs were properly finished, I would have no problems with them. This brings me to another topic of how I don’t really ‘hate’ characters who are bad people if they’re well written but that’s a conversation for another post.

I need to point out that I didn’t start disliking Aang and Mai until they had their arcs undermined when Kataang and Maiko became canon. With the arcs they were going on, they had so much potential to be really interesting and I enjoyed their personalities.

When it comes to Aang, I had no problem with him as a character until season 3 part 2 when I started to realize that his world view (which is flawed based solely on the fact that he is young and there is no way he’s going to have a nuanced pov) was not going to be challenged. Aang should have had to give up katara. Aang should not have just had everything handed to him with the lion turtle and the pointy rock.

Then there’s the southern raiders which I would argue, if Aang’s arc had been completed, would not illicit as many conversations and arguments about it as it currently has. Because his actions in that episode make sense (Sokkas don’t really but again-that’s another story) because he’s a kid. This episode should have been a big decider of his change in worldview. The problem is that the creators decided his flaws didn’t exist and that he was perfect. (At 12 years old?!?!?)

Then there’s Mai. She’s a much smaller character but that doesn’t mean she deserves less of an arc. Mai is a character whose personality I love! (I’m all for gloomy depressed women!) There’s two ways Mai’s character could have developed, and I think both options are great, the problem is that Bryke decided to go in neither direction.

On the one hand, Mai could have been a representation of unlearning the propaganda she was taught in the fire nation throughout her whole life. I think this direction would make Maiko more believable, although I still don’t think they are a good couple because their personalities create a toxic dynamic and Mai’s story with Zuko is meant to represent that toxicity.

The second option would be to have her views not change, like we see in the show, and have her not get back together with Zuko. This is the more interesting path in my opinion because it’s more realistic. I don’t think the problem with Mai’s arc lies with her personal views of the fire nation, more so with her relationship with Zuko. As we have it in the show, Mai’s views don’t change. Therefor, it doesn’t make sense for her character or for Zuko’s for them to get back together like nothing ever happened.

When it comes down to it. Both Aang and Mai had their arcs sabotaged because the creators rejected Zutara. Even without Zuko and Katara getting together these were the wrong decisions. Both characters had potential to be well written, but in the end, the creators chose the path didn’t allow that to happen because they just couldn’t kill their darling. (Kataang)

Sorry for rambling, this is kind of just my take on the whole “Zutara shippers hate Aang and Mai” take.

[longing-for-rain]

Saw that hateful inbox you got from that one user, so I went through their blog and caught sight of this:

So apparently, Zutara shippers are disrespectful to real-life, living, breathing indigenous people, and need to start dropping names? In one post of mine, I already addressed how calling Zutara a "colonizer with a colonized" can be offensive but not in the way that zutara-haters would think is a "gotcha". Also, didn't Bryke say that the water tribe is only BASED on inuits and indigenous americans? Water Tribe people are still their own race, it's a cartoon with its own logic and evolution LOL. Lastly, let's say that we do personally know indigenous people and can drop their names. Okay, what happens next? Let's say that some Zutara-shippers and likers actually are indingenous or part indingenous. What happens then? Is this user really so terminally-online that they didn't think to consider that some indingenous/mixed race people themselves can like and support Zutara? Like holy shit, is this bitch serious? I wanna ask that user if they can name any species of plant, because they need to be like Toph and touch some grass right now ☘️

Yikes, that’s… what 💀

Honestly, that’s just a terminally online and borderline fetishistic take? Do you really think an indigenous person would appreciate it if some random person went up to them, asked their opinion about a cartoon, then said “oh look here’s one!” um??? That would be such a weird thing to do. I actually live in a region with a significant indigenous population and this would be just… such an inappropriate thing to do.

This might be surprising to people who never leave the internet, but believe it or not, you can generally find people of all races, sexes, ethnicities, etc. that like a certain show or character. That’s the beauty of media. It can appeal to a diverse range of people. Acting like absolutely no person of a certain ethnicity would like a character or relationship is just stupid.

Oh and about Zutara specifically, I’ve known many indigenous women who enjoy it. I’ve known women of all races who enjoy it. I’ve even seen women of color talk about how they especially enjoy Zutara because they like the power it gives to Katara as an indigenous female character.

But that user is known for atrocious, unhinged takes about pretty much every character and ship so this kind of patronizing, creepy logic is pretty on brand for her.

[mal3vol3nt]

I honestly think Bryke are ridiculously overhated. Like they’ve said and done somethings I disagree with, but Z (y’all know who) Ks take things way to far and act like a couple of misogynists who owed it to cave in and make their non-canon ship canon. They act like they hated Katara even though A:TLA and even LOK show that they clearly value Katara to a degree, they speak highly of her in behind the scenes interviews. And I am so tired of the nice-guy self insert argument when that was literally proven to be false.

now yall will never catch me defending white men for nothing LMAO

as much as i love atla, it’s not free of its criticisms, especially in how they write the oppressed characters. aang’s anger as a genocide survivor is often written as irrational (the northern air temple episode), and katara and sokka’s grief surrounding the fact that they are also genocide survivors is often overshadowed by their parental trauma—which is a valid aspect of their story to show but is not all their story should be. even azula is treated like an incurable monster by the narrative while the men around her are given redemption arcs and iroh’s history of and complacency in colonization is never actually given any consequences or addressed appropriately. so while i love atla and do believe it has pretty good writing, it is far far FAR from perfect as it is very obvious the writers are WHITE. this isn’t even including the cultural aspects that were misrepresented or plain out wrong or maybe even disrespectful

and they did do katara (and the rest of the gaang, mind you) dirty in tlok—just not in the ways zutaras claim—so i don’t think they are undeserving of their katara-related lashing either

what i will say is the whole “self-insert” allegations regarding aang are ridiculous because in what way are white men being represented in aang. aang falling in love with katara and having her return those feelings isn’t a “self-insert” because, what sounds more like a self-insert for western white men to yall:

a pacifistic 12-year-old monk whose people—of whom he is the only one left—have been genocided by a racist colonial regime entering a mutually reciprocated relationship with a brown indigenous girl who is also a genocide victim of said racist colonial regime OR

a powerful colonizing agent of a racist colonial regime entering a relationship with a brown indigenous girl who is a genocide victim of said racist colonial regime after he went through a hero’s journey of self-discovery

answer honestly. which version would a white man most likely see himself in or want to see in the media he consumes? if you’re confused, look to history and pay attention to how nations with colonial pasts (and presents) treat and portray oppressed women of color and get back to me

[kataraslove]

I just stumbled across your acc and I gotta say, I agree with alotta ur takes

Ur sooo well spoken and I really enjoy reading your thoughts and opinions

Katara is one of my favorite characters and it makes me really happy to see someone appreciate her and her writing

Ngl a lot of atla fans r lowkey braindead so ur acc is pretty refreshing

Thanks for posting!! 🩷

thank you! 🩷 your words are too kind. i appreciate it.

i did mention this before, but this blog stemmed kind of entirely out of spite. i was sick and tired of fandom on here telling me that there was only one way to interpret and enjoy my favourite character, dictating who i could or could not ship her with and how much of a stan that made me. it’s not an experience just unique to the atla fandom, of course. it’s becoming something more apparent nowadays especially, the ways in which multiple readings and interpretations of a character is heavily discouraged by fandom in favour of just one.

it’s baffling how, for so many years, there was a strict binaric interpretation of katara’s character, with 0 being non-canon and 1 being completely in favour of all things canon. either you had to vehemently agree with everything that bryke wrote for katara’s within atla and post-canon, to the point where i have seen people defend the lack of statues of her as “oh, she probably didn’t want one anyway,” (NO!!) or you had to have deep-rooted anger and rejection for all things that were done to her story, in the guise of katara deserving better.

katara does deserve better narratively, but NOT in the ways that the tumblr fandom thinks she should have. not in the ways that she should be ambassador to the fire nation, or become firelady (a racist depiction in fanon and nothing but a decorative title in canon) and live out the rest of her life by zuko’s side, serving and prioritizing zuko’s nation.

“but wouldn’t it be empowering if katara sat on the throne of her oppressors and got to dictate - “ no. it’s not. stop advocating for that type of ending for women from oppressed and marganized groups. stop acting like that is the ideal future that katara wanted this whole time, that ruling as part of a foreign monarchy that decimated your people and your culture is the ultimate threshold for liberation.

i’ve seen people who claim to take a doylist perspective for critique of atla (read: kataang)’s writing completely lose all comprehension when it comes to critically assessing post-canon zutara. by that i mean, if we continue with the writing direction that we saw for all of the female atla characters in the sequel series, a zutara endgame would position katara in a worse outcome than she got narratively. but you tell anyone that and it’s an instant “zuko would have given her 10 statues!!”

but most importantly, nothing has radicalized me more over this year than seeing the “katara deserves better (in the form of zuko)” crowd, the same crowd who is currently dreading any form of fixing or retcons from avatar studios in upcoming content, defend the hell out of natla katara’s writing. the very same people who were praising katara’s arc to the stars, stating that it was nearly complete until the two grown men decided to pair her up with aang and ruined all at the end.

well, what about the group of zutara shippers in the natla writer’s room who handed her everything in the narrative, who removed her flaws, her anger, her compassion, who stripped her down to everything except hope, all in the name so that she wouldn’t appear unlikable to audiences. i mean, that tremendously backfired for them, because now the young actress who plays katara is getting hate spewed at her for failing to portray katara interestingly, when the problem has always been the shit writing.

anyway, i appreciate this message! glad i could be of service and it’s nice that you’re a zuko fan who ships kataang! lots of people who love zuko do.

“a lot of atla fans are braindead” LMAO you can say that again!!!

[atla-confessions]

Zutaras' problem is they treat their opinions as objective when fan takes are subjective. Aang dosen't appeal to them personally so that means he's an incel when plenty of brown/black women had a crush on Aang because of Kataang being a 'fantasy' for us. Z/K appeals to them personally so that means it's a universal female experience when plenty of girls grew up hating it or at least not caring about Zuko, he was not the 'guy every girl had a crush on growing up' even disregarding lesbians and aroace girls. There's also their dislike of Jet when a good chunk of girls perfer him over Zuko(including my little sister actually and she had a crush on Sokka too!), their feminization of Toph so many butches in the fandom have spoken out against, their stanning of Iroh and the hatred for him so many actual asian Atla fans have due to his legit colonizer coddling character and their pick me allegations towards Team Azula as if they're not super popular with autistic/alt/trans/lesbian women and always have been. Zutara shippers are just overly basic girls who wanna feel rebellious and 'special' with the bare minimum and take it out on Kataangers and Katara stans who actually care about her character and not just want she can do to make Zuko look better. Either that or them dudebro 'Bamf Zuko' types that want him to fuck every Avatarverse girl(Dante Basco included and yes i also hate Bryke). Z/Ks,you're about as 'right' as far right

X

[melu-lis]

i'm convinced that the "zutara is a colonizer x colonized ship" argument is often an upfront to find a "reasonable" excuse to hate zutara because you can't say stuff like "you only like zutara bc you see katara as a self-insert and think zuko is a hot bad boy" without rightfully being calling misogynistic and it's very convenient to justify misogyny if you can paint your opposition as a bunch of ignorant white women who don't understand the repercussions of colonialism since many believe that misogyny is acceptable if it's exclusively targeted towards white women. what further leads me to this conclusion is that a great deal of zutara antis ship pairings that can be classified as "colonizer x colonized ships" and they often ignore the pitfalls bryke, two white men with a centrist liberal worldview, had in handling colonialism in their show. that isn't to say that poc can't be uncomfortable with zutara, but as a black woman who does ship zutara, i don't see how policing what i can and can't ship is creating a safe place for poc in the atla fandom.

[ok-boomerang]

What would you say is the dumbest argument people have used against Zutara as a ship that you’ve seen/heard?

I think the dumbest argument has got to be that “the hero gets the girl.”

I shouldn’t even have to say that this is extremely sexist, that just because Aang saved the world he deserves to have his crush like him back. Please note this is an actual argument I’ve heard from an IRL friend (the husband of my best friend), who apparently is ignoring the fact that the Gaang saved the world together and it wasn't just Aang alone. The biggest appeal of Zutara, to me, is that the relationship gives Katara more agency. Katara had a strong emotional connection with Zuko and he treated her like a real person, not like a mother figure or a maid. He respected her strength. The relationship works because of their partnership...but it’s the icing on the cake that with Zuko, Katara becomes one of the most politically powerful women in the world. (Sometimes people say “Well Katara didn’t choose Zuko!” to argue that her choice was Aang and that’s all that matters, but let me remind you that Katara did not choose Aang, because Katara isn’t real, she’s a character who had writers determine her decisions, which is why it feels so out of left field for Katara to kiss Aang during the finale—there was little to no narrative foundation for that "choice.")

But also “the hero gets the girl” implies that the “bad guy” shouldn’t get the girl. (Bryke has said this before, demonstrating a sad misunderstanding of their own show.) It is so, so incredibly important that Zuko is no longer the bad guy at the end of the show. ATLA is popular largely because it has one of the best redemption arcs in media, full stop. Zuko was redeemed—and he wasn’t even bad, he was a kid doing what he thought was good. If we accept Zuko’s redemption as real—and we obviously should—then that shouldn’t rule out romantic relationships with his friends. I hate the argument that Zuko can be friends with Katara but cannot share anything romantic because of his past. That’s a harmful, hierarchical ranking of relationships that we should absolutely reject. Your friendships are not less important than your romantic relationships. I do not have higher standards for my romantic partners than my close friends. if Zuko becomes part of the Gaang, he’s a part of the Gaang without any qualifiers. That’s redemption and forgiveness, themes integral to the show.

[tlaquetzqui]

So you dislike katara and toph for not valuing the women work. Any opinion on azula’s posse? Other than escaping ba sing say

Well, I actually hate the writers for that. I hate Katara and Toph, in themselves, for being obnoxious charisma-voids that we’re simply ordered to find appealing.

Azula, although somewhat entertaining in her psychopathy (though that quickly devolves into one-note Villain Sue), should have died in the Earth King’s throne room, standing in a room made of stone and trying to browbeat like a dozen of the strongest earthbenders alive. They should have played up her feelings about being the talented one who’s expected to be the heir, and come up with ways for her to control the situation other than “we decided the secret police are going to forget they can attack her”. She should also resent Zuko for being the reason she has to be the heir of a totalitarian state.

Mai doesn’t have a personality, and was probably created to try and pretend the writers had not written far more Zutara chemistry than Kataang. (The formless realm of Buddhist cosmology also has far more chemistry than Kataang.) There isn’t much to work with, with her, but they could have had her herself be opposed to Zutara: make her his actual fiancee (“well I guess we should at least ensure heirs to the dynasty, here marry your sister’s friend”), and a yandere who’s certain he’s fallen for some foreign girl.

Ty Lee is probably the only female character in Avatar who’s worth a damn, other than tea-shop girl and Yue. This is mostly because, as a sidekick, she definitionally doesn’t need to be a girlboss. Come to think of it that makes her the only good female character to appear in more than one arc—GG, Bryke. If I had been in charge of writing her though, I might have had her genuinely treat fighting like a game and have Azula and Mai take steps to keep her from understanding how badly people get hurt (or that they get killed) in their fights.

[ididgettomeetyou]

its wild people want to convince kataang fans that katara is a weak/helpless damsel /emotionally abused by aang/friends until zUKO shows up as if she didn't want to murk the boy off the face of the earth when he arrived.

the idea of her being a halpless damsel is an insult to Katara.

katara breaks aang out of the iceburg/katara saves aang from a giant sea monster/katara brings aang back to life. if anyones the damsel its Aang.

katara being an emotionally abused girl of the group is all just lies. this is the same girl standing up to SOKKA sexism who broke a whole iceburg/freed aang despite sokkas objections. Fought Pakkus sexism/ yelled at Tophs for her lazyness/ didn't listen to Sokka telling her to leave the fn villiage alone/

and people think Aang can tell her what to do that he sucks out all her joy and soul.. and katara submits to aangs evil whims. when she left with zuko to go murk her moms killer... Laughable... no one tells Katara what to do. not sokka not pakku not aang not anyone.

. Katara is a strong women and Aang never tore her down into a submissive needing saved by zuko .. nah the truth is katara walks all over aang/sokka and even zuko cause again.. No one controls Katara.. hama tried and failed..

katara would hate fans idea of her.. esp all the momtara takes. to call her aangs mom is to just purposefully ignore kataras wisehs of not wanting to be viewed as motherly.... Katara canon would roll her eyes at fanon katara. she wants to be seen as a kid ..she ain't a parent until. im guessing early to mid 20s.

katara is not an extension to aang she's her own person... she doesn't exist for aang to be his girl... alone and nothing else.

she exist because bryke had siblings and wanted to represent that with katara/sokka: you can read about that in the art of ATLA..

[nono-bunny]

Literally their entire relationship after Crossroads of Destiny is MEANT to be seen as another thing Zuko feels like he should be happy with, but isn't because it's wrong. Their relationship was entirely presented as "this is bad and they are horrible for each other" and it's truly insane that they just take that back in the finale, only to like? Seemingly remember and try to fix it like three separate times in the comics

The whole thing was a mess and they never should've gotten back together after Zuko left to teach Aang, they were never MEANT to!! It literally goes against the whole narrative purpose of showing them together in the first place- she's "the perfect girl for a prince" but she's 100% wrong for Zuko and it's completely baffling that they just. Ignore it

I actually like Mai, I think she's a fun character and has a lot of potential; whether it's her learning why Zuko was ultimately correct and supporting him outside of their relationship, or dying on the traditionalist hill... She's always been really interesting to watch for me personally, and it's a shame that she too ended up relegated to arm candy status, because that's like. The complete wrong direction to take with her when there's so much unexplored shit going on with her! The whole Ukano thing just makes me feel bad for her as a character- she deserved better than that half assed attempt at being a morally grey figure with mixed priorities

Hi, I just wanted to hear your take on maiko post atla since you read the comics. Thanks!

I have not read Smoke and Shadow, but I know that it's the comic where Mai, after breaking up with Zuko in The Promise because he didn't tell her he was struggling emotionally (or something), gets a new boyfriend for the purpose of making the guy she broke up with jealous. Then gets mad at him when he gets upset at her for intentionally trying to make him upset. The guy she broke up with for struggling emotionally. Then she keeps secret that her dad is trying to murder him - the guy she broke up with for keeping secrets - and when called out on that, throws his own abuse at the hands of his father back in his face as an excuse, instead of actually owning up to her actions. Like, the difference between Zuko and Mai here is that Zuko stopped enabling his horrible father and Mai didn't, and using Zuko's history of abuse against him this way is gross. Also, maybe Zuko didn't share his emotional problems with Mai because their relationship is characterized by Mai exploiting Zuko's emotions. Like, maybe she was jealous of Ozai for exploiting Zuko's emotions because she thinks that's her job? Idk, that was a whole mess.