#but it just .. baffles me when people act like zutara as a ship came out of left field

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

Of all the zvtara favorite stuff “the Sun and the Moon” trope seems pretty harmless compared to the other bullshit, yet it enrages me very much.

Like, try to retell the book 1 finale, except you are not allowed to mention that Yue sacrificed herself to save the Moon Spirit and became one herself. Actually, I would like to suggest this a challenge to all the shippers who likes this trope. You cannot mention Yue becoming the Moon Spirit in any way if you think that Katara is the Moon. Does the narrative still make sense?

If it does not, and if you are okay with that, then, apparently, one Zuko’s “now I have an upper hand in our battle and not you” line outweighs the whole damn actual plot of the show for you. And it sucks.

It’s not “just aesthetics”. It’s straight up telling you actually don’t care about the show without explicitly saying that you don’t care about the show. And I fucking hate this.

Fuck, poor Yue is not even a threat to this ship, my god…

To be fair, the point of that quote is not that they are the actual sun and moon. It is about who has the higher ground at that moment in the battle - Katara, as a waterbender, had the advantage during the nightime, but once the sun came out, Zuko, like any firebender, had the advantage.

And THAT is what kinda baffles me about zutarians acting like this is some crazy foreshadowing/romantic set up for their OTP. It's exclusively about battle, doesn't apply solely to these two characters, and it only comes back on the day of the eclipse, with ALL the heroes using that as a way to try and gain the upper hand against the Fire Nation.

Even the two times we saw Zuko and Katara working as a team, this never became factor - probably because this quote actually means that they are more useful APART, with one acting during the day and the other at night. Sure, in the context of the Gaang it is still team work, but it still highlights that these two are NOT a duo. They wouldn't really get in each other's way, but in the context of battle it means that, unless their group is in a situation in which they need to use every resource they have, making them work SEPARATELY, in a "day shift, night shift" way, would be the ideal, since they'd be saving up energy to go all out when they have the advantage and end a conflict more easily.

Not only is this too impersonal to be special and too "practical/militaristic" to be romantic, it also shows that they are more useful acting alone, or being paired up with other people, than they are playing off of each other. I genuinely don't get how this is a win for Zutara.

Sure, a battle tactic says nothing about how good or bad of a match they'd be romantically, but since the shippers constantly conflate "Awesome battle duo" and "literal soulmates/opposites attract" it is crazy to think that their "evidence" for it is a quote that literally means "Pairing these two up is a waste."

[tea-and-la]

mai’s most character defining moment is related to zuko, but zuko and katara’s most defining moments are relating to each other. it really isn’t that hard to realize why people started shipping zutara. 

[psychopyro813]

Actually I'm still thinking about this because it's such a bizarre angle. Why is the immediate response from KA shippers to automatically assume people who like Zutara 1. See themselves as Katara and 2. Have a crush on Zuko, and that the only reason Zutarians like their dynamic is because they're projecting themselves into the ship? Like. Why is that used as such a "gotcha" argument?

First of all, there is literally nothing wrong with seeing yourself reflected in a character on screen; I don't want to get into why representation matters because that's a whole 'nother conversation that many others before me have made excellent valuable contributions to, except to say that representation goes behind the basics of identity and having fully fleshed out characters that act and react like real humans can absolutely be helpful tools for figuring out your own life.

But beyond that, characters are more enjoyable to watch when they act like more than cardboard cutouts. Katara was given that capability within the context of the show itself, except for when it came to one very specific other person. I'd encourage people to keep in mind that Bryke only made up a portion of the writing team, and that some of the other head writers absolutely exerted influence over the final product, so in the end, their vision was only part of what made this show what it is, and they did have flaws in that vision.

Back to my main point, it just feels like the same energy as people ragging on teen girls for liking literally anything. Pumpkin Spice? Lol so basic. Twilight? Omg you have terrible taste. Zutara? You only like it cause you have a crush on Zuko. Like. It has that same dismissive energy of "girls are too dumb to know what is actually good" which I'd so baffling to me because I know plenty of men and enby people who ALSO like this pairing for it's strong narrative connections. Saying that it's just because they "look good together" or because Zuko is "hot" misses all of the nuance and dynamics and analysis and textual examples of it going beyond that, that people have been literally talking about for nearly two decades. I remember the ORIGINAL shipping wars from the late aughties, and they were never THIS bad.

Anyway. I know I'm shouting into the void but hey, that's what this website is for, right?

Tldr; Zutara is about more than just looks and women and girls (and frankly people in general) should be allowed to like things without being belittled for it