#fantasticanimefan

[daily-zuko]

Hi,I heard there are some Avatar The Last Airbender fans bashed Katara for being hostile towards Zuko when she has a valid reason to do so given what he did in Crossroads of destiny,do you validate Katara’s grudge and animosity towards Zuko?

Hello, Daily-Zuko here! 

Though I’m not sure what answer you’re looking for, I suppose I’ll do my best to respond in a nonjudgmental manner. You’ll have to forgive me – as a Zuko blog, my focus in this breakdown skews towards him, though I have tried to give sufficient attention to Katara as well. As this turned rather lengthy, the majority of the content lies under the cut. Thank you for the question.

I think my favorite part about Avatar: The Last Airbender is its nuance in exploring complicated character dynamics. There is no black & white morality; each character’s feelings are treated with as much delicacy and respect as they deserve. Every individual’s story is weaved together seamlessly to create a greater whole, and Katara and Zuko are no exception. Their character arcs run parallel in many ways during the show, finally colliding in the Season 2 finale. They have both struggled with grudges, rage, and resentment holding them back throughout the course of the series, and this culminates in the climactic turning point in The Crossroads of Destiny. 

Katara, after carrying the pain of losing her mother for so long, seemingly finds a kindred spirit in Zuko, and let’s go of her anger to extend a hand in trust. This is her attempting to move beyond her childhood trauma to start healing. Zuko’s rejection of her is a rejection of his own inner turmoil, but it unfortunately cements Katara’s toxic mindset of revenge. Regrettably, Zuko is not ready to accept a change of heart; this occurs just as he’s evaluating his own moral stance. This finale subjects both of them to their lowest point moving forward. 

To answer your question, I believe that the actions they both take in The Crossroads of Destiny – and beyond – are valid.

At the point in the narrative where Zuko attempts to join Team Avatar, Katara’s potential growth has been stunted from their previously aborted connection. Zuko’s mental scars from his mother were not a central theme to his character development, unlike Katara, so he was able to complete his metamorphosis and advance. Though to all appearances they share the same childhood experiences, in terms of character, they do not share the same Ghost. 

In the book Creating Character Arcs, by K.M. Weiland, the author outlines four distinct things to establish in order to successfully create a Positive Change Arc: a character’s Want, Need, Lie, and Ghost. Zuko’s want versus his need is rather obvious. The lie he believes is that his worth is tied to his father and his title. By capturing the Avatar, he will return home and become intrinsically complete. The ghost, in this instance, does not refer to any literal ghost; rather, the ghost is the incidental wound within a character’s past that causes the character to believe in the lie in the first place; in other words, the Agni Kai.

In contrast, Katara’s ghost is literal – the death of her mother. It haunts her and prevents her from understanding her truth: that continuing the cycle of war will not remedy her grief. This creates an opposing force for their conflict in The Crossroads of Destiny, as while Katara has yet to confront her own lie, she is presenting Zuko with his truth, and rushing him into the next phase of his archetypal growth. 

Zuko’s choice in this scene is necessary. His reaction to Katara’s unexpected offer of reconciliation is instinctive – primal. Though he has come to the point where he can question his way in life, he is not yet ready to have this outlook thrust upon him in this split second decision. He cannot confront his lie. Therefore, he rejects the truth, relapsing based on what all previous experiences tell him is correct. Only once he fulfills his want in succeeding does he realize that it is not what he wanted in the first place. 

Additionally, Katara is somewhat of an unfortunate bystander in Zuko’s next step on “The Hero’s Journey.” The Positive Change Arc quite commonly coincides with the much earlier interpretation of character development defined by Joseph Campbell in The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Though this path is generally a commentary on the main character’s quest, this is only because other characters are not usually as fleshed out. Zuko, as the deuteragonist, is an exception. In this stage, referred to as “Challenges and Temptations”, “Road of Trials”, “The Descent to the Abyss,” etc, Zuko needs to fall to the absolute bottom in order to die and be born anew, and he drags Katara with him. 

In this vein, Katara’s obsession with rage and revenge simmers within her, and is not addressed in detail until The Southern Raiders. It is something that was magnified by the perceived betrayal of someone she had faith in, but it was an underlying issue that colored several actions she took. This was, of course, exacerbated by the duplicity demonstrated by others throughout the series. 

During their stay at the Western Air Temple, Zuko doing all he can to show Katara his changed self even though she continually rebukes him is his only meaningful way to absolve and prove himself to her in spite of his previous violation of her trust. His acceptance into the party does not erase his past mistakes. Katara needed to shun him just as Zuko needed to show her, with his actions, that she is allowed to forgive and finally complete her own journey. It is a fragile balancing act the writers have coined in order to give these two the catharsis they deserve, and it is executed flawlessly.

.

.

.

tl;dr: Yes, Katara is valid, so is Zuko, this show is more complicated than that and implying that one character (on either side) is in the wrong somehow for their feelings does a disservice to the show’s excellent writing. 

Additional youtube content from people who articulate much better than I do:

The Importance of Mistakes, by Make Stuff

A four-part show analysis, from The Weight of Cinema

The Cycle of War, by Hello Future Me

And finally, thank you to my lovely beta @tmariea for constantly helping me put my thoughts in order.

[firelxdykatara]

If Zutara were to canon,who will be their children?

I love thinking about Zuko and Katara’s family. I’m sure every shipper’s list of zutara kids differs somewhat, but I actually have a family tree drawn out so I could figure out who the Gaang kids and grandkids are and what their relationships are for my (eventual) LoK rewrite.

(This got… longer than I was expecting. I have a lot of thoughts ok ;~;)

Izumi is their oldest. She takes most after her father, with black hair, golden eyes and his sharp features (as well as being a firebender), though her skin is several shades darker (I never liked how, in canon, literally anyone else on the planet could’ve been Tenzin’s mom, partly because he was just as pale as Aang), and she grew up preferring to wear her hair in Water Tribe styles, which continued even after she was crowned Fire Lord. (Speaking of which, Izumi ascended the throne around the age of forty-nine,  several years after Aang died–Katara was devoting her time and resources, as well as her physical presence, to leading the White Lotus and training Korra, the next Avatar, and Zuko wanted to join her, so he made sure his daughter was ready to rule and stepped down.)

Three years after Izumi, the Legacy Twins were born–Kya and Lu Ten. They both took more after Katara, including her blue eyes, despite Lu Ten being a firebender (though Kya is a waterbender), and the night before they both were born, Zuko and Katara had the same dream–a pair of spirits blessing the birth. It differed in that in Katara’s dream, she thought one of the spirits was her mother, and in Zuko’s, he was sure he recognized one as his cousin. When they realized they had a boy and a girl, the names came to them almost simultaneously.

Kya and Lu Ten were unholy terrors growing up–that one comic by biorn21 where Katara is like “Zuko, where are the twins?” “They were just-” -BOOM- “…here….”?? That’s them. Like her mother, Kya turned out to be a powerhouse of a bender, as well as an excellent healer–Lu Ten, on the other hand, wasn’t particularly talented, and he spent a long time struggling with feelings of inferiority and uselessness, especially compared to his older sister and his twin, both of whom were exceptionally skilled and had a lot of raw power to boot. That was where a lot of Lu Ten’s disastrous antics came from (and Kya was always up for mischief, so she usually sided with him), though he eventually learned to appreciate the talents and skills he did have. It helped that Zuko would regale him with stories of his own sub-par bending, and how even after he learned from the dragons he wasn’t nearly as skilled as his own younger sister.

(By this point in their lives, Azula had undergone her own redemption, and had an odd sort of friendship with Katara no one really expected. She ended up spending a lot of time with Lu Ten in particular, teaching him how he could be viciously lethal without any bending at all. She told him (and Kya, who was never far behind–the two were pretty much attached at the hip until well into their teens) stories about how she and her two nonbender allies had managed to take over Ba Sing Se in a single day, just by infiltrating the walls in disguise and getting to the King himself. Her visits were always the twins’ favorite.)

(And, just as a note, Kya and Lin dated quite a bit through their late teens and early twenties. At some point they broke up, for reasons I haven’t quite ironed out, but during Korra’s time in Republic City they reconnect and eventually get married. Lu Ten dated Suyin for a few years but that eventually fell apart when he realized he was mostly dating her because he was jealous that his twin sister was head over heels for Lin and he wanted to feel something like that, to make up for the sudden absence of his twin in his life. Turns out he’s aroace and perfectly happy to stay single.)

About ten years after the twins were born, Katara and Zuko had a surprise in the form of Iara, their fourth and final child. She was unexpected, and the birth was difficult, but she was well worth it. She is heterochromic–one blue eye, one gold–with features like her mother and a build like her father. She is a nonbender (“Finally, someone normal,” Sokka joked when it was determined she was unlikely to exhibit any bending ability. He gave her a boomerang of her own for her twelfth birthday, taught her to use it, and it became one of her most prized possessions) though, unlike her brother, she didn’t have any real complex about it growing up, despite all her siblings and her parents being benders. (Perhaps in part because her siblings and parents all absolutely doted on her, she was definitely the baby of the family and it showed, and anyone who made her cry in school would get very unpleasant visits from the twins.)

Iara had an independent spirit and, as she grew up, an air of confidence in herself that no one could really seem to breach no matter what they said about her (though one of the ways to trigger her temper was to insult her family). She spent a great deal of time with her Aunt Suki and the Kyoshi Warriors, even joining them for a time while she traveled the world in search of a purpose in life. Eventually, though, she left their ranks, and when she finally settled down it was in the nearly-complete Republic City. She opened up a non-bending martial arts academy–students who could bend were accepted, but only if they agreed to not use their bending within the school’s walls, placing them on equal footing with the nonbenders–where anyone who wished could learn how to fight and defend themselves.

(Many years later, it would come out that Amon, leader of the Equalists, had gone through Iara’s Academy, and, in fact, had been one of the best students she’d ever trained. If I ever get around to writing this damn thing, their fight will be one of the best scenes in it. In my head at least.)

If you’re curious, Tenzin and Bumi still exist, but they’re Aang’s kids with someone else. (I couldn’t justify Katara naming one of her kids Bumi, but in this verse Aang doesn’t ignore his nonbending kid and Bumi doesn’t grow up with a complex regarding his lack of bending. Nor does he gain airbending randomly later in life [there is no harmonic convergence, the airbenders began to return during Book 4 of atla], and he never had any reason to doubt his father loved him.)

[ponytailzuko]

Hi,I heard there are some Avatar The Last Airbender fans bashed Katara for being hostile towards Zuko when she has a valid reason to do so given what he did in Crossroads of destiny,do you validate Katara’s grudge and animosity towards Zuko?

while it is painful to watch katara’s hatred towards zuko in the later eps of s3, that’s ultimately because the audience has watched zuko grow throughout the entire series as he usually has the b plot. katara is not the audience and hasn’t seen that growth at all. and even if she did, she never owed him forgiveness or friendship when he did things like tie her to a tree or side with azula (the thing that got aang killed). its one of my favorite things about atla, that they let katara be angry- that they let everyone be angry. zuko would of taught aang firebending and done all those things even if no one on team avatar forgave him because its the right thing to do. so yeah, i think katara’s grudge towards zuko is valid.

[teaandcrowns]

Hi,I heard there are some Avatar The Last Airbender fans bashed Katara for being hostile towards Zuko when she has a valid reason to do so given what he did in Crossroads of destiny,do you validate Katara’s grudge and animosity towards Zuko?

Given that I’ve seen you ask this of at least three other people in the fandom, I took a peek at your blog, and you seem to hold a lot of animosity toward Zuko yourself, so I’m not entirely sure what kind of answer you’re looking for–or fishing for–here.

Let me be clear: Katara has every right to be angry at Zuko–he was their antagonist for quite some time, after all–but she is also transferring her greater anger toward Yon Rha and the Fire Nation as a whole solely on Zuko himself. She feels more greatly and personally betrayed by him after CoD, though that doesn’t mean that he actually betrayed her. They were not on the same side then–in Crossroads of Destiny, Zuko was not on any side. He wasn’t hunting the Avatar anymore, he wasn’t trying to get back to the Fire Nation, but he wasn’t trying to join the Avatar’s cause, either. He connected to someone, with whom he’d fought previously, over their (surprisingly, to them) similar hurts caused by the Fire Nation.

Katara doesn’t hold a grudge against Zuko, she holds a grudge against the Fire Nation and the man that killed her mother. She was angry at Zuko for chasing and haranguing them for so long, but that’s not where the bulk of her anger came from. If anything, she viewed Zuko as a rival of equal strength, considering their tête-à-tête at the North Pole being as even and back and forth as it was.

This is why, after Zuko provided her with the opportunity and help in locating her mother’s murderer in order to confront him, she was able to let go of that animosity she was holding and the anger she was transferring onto Zuko, and they were on the same wavelength immediately following through the end of the series.

This is also why Zuko is so confused that Katara is so angry at him–he wasn’t on their side, ever, during Book 2, so how could he betray someone who wasn’t even his ally to begin with? They shared a moment of connection in the crystal catacombs, but they didn’t forge an alliance. They didn’t make a pact of friendship or brotherhood-in-arms. The person Zuko betrayed during the Crossroads of Destiny was Iroh.

Consequently, the person who helped Zuko muster the courage to face Iroh after this betrayal nearly an entire season’s worth of episodes later, is Katara.

[legendofaang]

Hello,do you validate Katara’s grudge and animosity towards Zuko given that he betrayed her in Crossroads Of destiny and do you think Zuko deserves Katara ‘s hostility ever since he betrayed her in Crossroads Of destiny?

easily put, yes. katara placed her trust in zuko and yet he easily betrayed her the first chance he got. seeing him suddenly being accepted into the group doesn't warrant him katara's approval especially since she was the first one to put her trust in him. zuko did something wrong and it wasn't enough that he earned everyone else's. yes he apologised but katara isn't obliged to forgive him until she feels that he actually deserves it. he needed to prove and show to katara that he's worthy of her forgiveness and that's exactly what he did, which is something that i deeply respect.

[ineffable-raccoon]

What do you think of the fans who bash Katara for being hostile to Zuko in Book 3?

They are wrong? 

Also, I kinda feel like anyone who is spending time “bashing” characters rather than like...I dunno, analyzing their role in the story and how their actions connect to themes, whether or not they are effective in their role in the story or not, etc, is kind of missing the point of fiction? But maybe that’s just me being a snooty English Teacher. 

[ziseviolet]

Why do modern Han Chinese couples nowadays wear Manchurian style wedding attires instead of supposedly Han Chinese?

For the same reason that modern Chinese people are more likely to wear Manchu-inspired Qipao/Tangzhuang rather than Hanfu as traditional attire - because Hanfu disappeared from mainstream fashion for over three centuries, and is only recently making a comeback. Nowadays, due to the Hanfu revival movement, more and more couples are choosing to wear Hanfu for their wedding. For comparison:

- Modern wedding attire based on Qing dynasty/Manchu fashion:

- Modern wedding attire based on Ming dynasty Hanfu:

(Photos via 临溪摄影)

[incandescentsims]

Hello,may I ask you a question,is Witchtober a 2019 trend or annual?

Hey @fantasticanimefan,

Witchtober is annual, it’s mainly a drawing challenge (like inktober). 

This is the first year I have participated and I decided instead of drawing I would use the prompts created by juanjoltaire to create witchy sim edits.

[firelxdykatara]

If Zutara were to be canon,thanks to Aaron Ehasz,how will this affect Legend Of Korra?

This is a difficult question to answer, mostly because it would of necessity rely on a whole lot of assumptions and biases, and without asking Aaron himself (in private, where he wouldn’t have to worry about kicking off another fandom war), it’s impossible to answer with any degree of certainty.

Now, I can talk about how I, personally, think things would have been different if Zutara had been canon–which, for me, means that the epilogue of book 3 was just the tea shop scene, and we got a book 4 where, as Aaron briefly mentioned on twitter and in various interviews, the consequences of energy-bending were explored, the lost Air Nomads were found, Azula had her redemption arc (which would probably have tied into the search for Ursa, which I would’ve loved to see Aaron’s take on in book 4, especially considering the crap the comics handed to us), and Zuko and Katara grew closer and entered into a relationship by the end of the season.

(Before I start exploring this in more depth, I want to head off ‘delusional Zutarian’ arguments at the pass–I’m not saying it’s 100% confirmed that Aaron was planning to make ZK canon in book 4. I am saying (as I’ve said before) that, given the set up and development in canon, and the way Aaron himself has talked about how he develops characters and relationships, I believe he (and other writers/artists/crew members) was leaning heavily towards that particular relationship and would have explored it further in book 4 had he been allowed to.)

Putting the rest under a read more cause this got long.

We know some of what Aaron had plans for–Azula’s redemption, the consequences of energybending, the lost Air Nomads–but nothing super concrete. Going from that, then, I believe that in Book 4, the Gaang would have split up for a good chunk of it. (Please note that most of the rest of this is pure speculation.) There’s a lot of ground Book 4 would’ve had to cover–the Gaang in the beginning would’ve split off to head to their respective homes (Sokka and Katara to the SWT, Suki to Kyoshi Island, Toph… ok, Toph probably just stuck around Caldera and this would’ve been a great time to have the Toph&Zuko life-changing-field-trip episode we were denied in canon) to touch base with the families and friends they’d left behind to go on their save-the-world tour.

For his part, Aang would’ve returned to Guru Pathik. While he got a last-second Hail Mary (in the form of a conveniently placed rock, which still boggles my mind, but whatever) when fighting Ozai, he still was not a fully realized Avatar, and since I’m bitter that the Guru Pathik/chakras plot was almost entirely dropped after the book 2 finale, I’m saying he’d have gone back to finally finish that training because it makes sense and because I can. Anyway, he returns to the Guru, and by this point he has accepted that Katara doesn’t return his feelings the way he’d like her to (a call back to The Fortuneteller, which should have been foreshadowing for Aang’s emotional growth, barring the last twenty seconds of the episode).

Furthermore, he’s learned that ‘letting her go’ doesn’t mean he can’t care about her or want her in his life to be the Avatar (after all, previous Avatars have had love and even been married–Kuruk isn’t that great of an example, given that his love life got him killed, but Kyoshi lived over two centuries and had multiple loves over her incredibly long life, and Roku was married and had descendants of his own), it just means letting go of his expectations–letting go of the selfish aspects of his love, the parts that lead him to nod in agreement when actors on a play told fake!Katara ‘I thought you were the Avatar’s girl’, and that lead him to expect her to return his feelings and push against her boundaries when she told him she wasn’t sure and was confused. (He said “We kissed at the invasion and I thought we were gonna be together, but we’re not.” even though a) he kissed her without any warning, she did not kiss him, and she looked away and frowned afterwards, and b) she never once brought up the kiss again or hinted that her feelings towards him had changed and become romantic, so he had no reason to believe they’d ‘be together’.)

Ok that was a bit of a tangent, but the upshot is, Guru Pathik helps Aang fully master the Avatar State. While on that particular journey, Aang has to deal with the consequences of energybending–he pulled Ozai’s energy into himself, and he has to deal with the sudden darkness that was absorbed into his spirit. He also receives some sort of hint, possibly from a dream or meeting with a spirit, that with balance returning to the world, the Air Nomads can start to return, too.

Sokka, Suki, and Toph wind up going with Aang on his journey to figure out just what the spirits meant by that. They discover that the Air Nomads weren’t totally eradicated by Sozin (which would’ve been impossible, since we already know that inter-nation relationships happened in the past [Avatar Kyoshi’s mother was an airbender], and they were, well… nomads), but those who survived (because they weren’t at the temples at the time, or some who hadn’t attained mastery managed to escape) assimilated into the Earth Kingdom and even some in the Fire Nation. Because the world was incredibly out of balance following the decimation of the Air Nomad population, and because many of them were suddenly in a situation where showing they were airbenders was a death sentence, their spirit as a population was almost completely broken, and they stopped being able to airbend. In the present, Aang finds descendants of Air Nomad survivors, including Ty Lee (and, in my HC, Jet, who shows up alive bc I want him to get the healing arc he didn’t get in canon) who are beginning to discover they can airbend.

Meanwhile, Zuko asked Katara to accompany him on his journey to find his mother–it’s a callback to TSR, when he helped her gain closure for her mother’s murder, and since he wants to bring Azula too, he asked for Katara’s help sister-wrangling. They eventually find Ursa (who did not willingly forget her children, and who did not send a letter to her former lover to make Ozai question Zuko’s paternity, because in the show she was not a horrible person and she loved her children more than anything tyvm), as well as Kiyi (the only good thing to come out of that comic), and Azula finally gets the sort of closure she could never have before, and there is a heavy focus on her emotional journey. Zuko is there to support her, and Katara is there to support Zuko. In the process, Katara winds up with an odd sort of mildly antagonistic friendship with Azula, who gets to a point where she can good-naturedly tease Katara about her growing feelings for Zuko.

ANYWAY. I realize you were asking primarily how it would affect LoK, and I went on a whole ass book 4 tangent. So here’s how I see it changing the landscape in LoK.

First of all, Katara is granted the importance she is due. She has a statue in most major cities, including both Caldera and Republic City. Katara married Zuko and became one of the most beloved Fire Ladies in Fire Nation history, partly because she didn’t assimilate and give up her own home and culture, and she never hesitated to speak her mind during council meetings. It put off much of the nobility, especially in the first few years of their marriage, but Zuko had survived many an assassination attempt by then, and he valued his wife’s input above his closest advisors and never made a secret of it. The nobles could either accept it or risk losing their titles, which several of them did because they figured the Fire Lord was bluffing, only to find out he wasn’t in the slightest.

Katara was also active in the White Lotus, which she wound up leading along with Sokka and Zuko (who’d passed the mantle of Fire Lord onto their eldest daughter, Izumi, once they felt she was ready to lead), and when Aang passed away, they immediately began the search for the next Avatar.

Most of Korra’s early life would’ve been the same, Katara and Sokka saved her from the Red Lotus’ kidnapping attempt, and she wound up raised at the White Lotus compound where she learned waterbending, firebending, and earthbending, and was on the cusp of learning airbending from Tenzin (who was Aang’s kid with someone else–given his design, his mother could’ve been literally anyone, Toph or one of the returned Air Nomads or someone else entirely) when he got called back to Republic City, and she followed.

From here, well… ok, there’s a lot I would change about LoK just in general. Thinking specifically of how Zutara would have affected things, and with the stipulation that Aaron was still the head writer for LoK, I like to think that Katara wouldn’t have been rendered weak and useless (seriously, a bloodbender locked away Korra’s bending, but Katara–allegedly the most powerful waterbender alive, and the one who single-handedly got bloodbending outlawed–couldn’t undo it with bloodbending???), and would have been allowed to, for example, fight to protect her family (while Tenzin and his children wouldn’t have been her direct relations [unless, instead of Pema, he wound up marrying Zuko and Katara’s youngest daughter??? that’s an idea], they would still have been family, as Aang’s only living descendants) and taken a more active part in the water tribe civil war (which would have been given the narrative arc it was due instead of being a half-assed vehicle for ridiculous spirit world shenanigans). And besides, a gaang reunion episode where Zuko, Katara, Suki (because screw LoK for having her just up and disappear lmfao) and Toph fight the Red Lotus together just like old times??? That would’ve been fucking amazing.

(We got to see old ass men in AtLA fight like they were in their prime, including one who was over a century old. What was LoK’s excuse???)

Since we got the return of the Air Nomads in book 4 of LoK there would be no need for the spirit portals or the ‘harmonic convergence’, and instead Korra’s spiritual journey hinges on her trauma from the end of Book 1. The biggest difference, here, is that I have always been incredibly dissatisfied with the fact that Korra just stared sadly over the edge of a cliff and was suddenly able to unlock the Avatar State and get her bending back. Keeping in mind the way Aaron Ehasz excelled at character journeys in the original show, I think she should have ended book 1 with her bending locked completely. Katara was able to reverse whatever it was Amon did to her (and Amon, by the way, didn’t get killed–the Equalists also didn’t just disappear, and the thread of nonbender oppression carries through the rest of the series, to be revisited and finally resolved in book 4), but it didn’t give Korra her bending back, because the trauma she suffered was just as psychological as it was a physical block to her bending.

Book 2, therefore, would’ve included a narrative thread of Korra needing to go on her own spiritual journey to unlock her chakras and regain her bending, finally able to reac the Avatar State when the civil war between the water tribes reached a head, and she is finally able to broker peace, having learned a great deal about herself and her connection to the past avatars.

I realize that I’ve kind of derailed pretty far off the original point, so I’ll stop here with a general note that while Zutara, as a relationship, doesn’t affect a whole lot of this directly (for the most part it would just affect the parentage of the Gaang kids who showed up, the designs of some, and their relationships with each other and possibly with Korra)–however, with the addition of Book 4 and keeping Aaron’s writing talents for LoK, the landscape of the entire sequel would be altered. I’d like to think that he would’ve preferred writing a coherent narrative that did justice to the characters even if it meant ending the show with unresolved plot threads (especially since they could wrap things up with comics which, in this alternate timeline, are actually good and in character because I want to have my cake and eat it too), so rather than being disconnected plots that didn’t make much sense when each individual villain could’ve served as the entire series Big Bad, much of books 2 and 3 would’ve involved smaller scale plots and villains, with Amon returning for book 4 and everything getting wrapped up far more neatly than it did in canon.

TL;DR: while Zutara itself wouldn’t necessarily change a whole lot (it would affect Book 4 and the post-atla comics more) outside of the different Gaang kids and their dynamics, the show as a whole would’ve been vastly different if the writing team for LoK had been the same–including Aaron as head writer–as the writing team for AtLA.

Bryke were great Big Picture guys, great vision and visual guys, I’ve never disputed that. But they sucked at not missing the forest for the trees. They sucked at romance. And they really sucked at coherent plot and character development, especially in the small scale.

[firelxdykatara]

Do you understand and validate Katara's animosity and grudge towards Zuko?

Have you read any of my pre- and during-tsr meta on zuko and katara’s relationship?

Sorry, I’m trying to imagine the circumstances under which this ask could’ve been sent in good faith, and I’m having a hard time with it. However, in all fairness, tone can be difficult to parse on the internet, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and figure this was an honest question and you just haven’t read a lot of my previous meta.

First of all, Katara’s grudge against Zuko in the back half of book 3 was largely because of what she viewed as his betrayal in the catacombs under Ba Sing Se. Prior to book 3, while Katara was initially distrustful of Zuko and yelled at him, because she’d spent several months on the run from him while he was trying to capture Aang back in book 1, it took approximately five seconds for her to open up and start seeing him in a different light--during CoD, she started crying when she told him the Fire Nation had taken her mother away from her, and when Zuko told her that was something they had in common, she immediately turned around and seemed to realize that this boy was... just a kid. A kid like her. He’d suffered too, and maybe they weren’t so different after all.

It was a huge deal, when Katara offered to use the spirit water she’d been carrying around ever since the end of book 1 on someone who, up until a few minutes before, had been her enemy. Then she touched his scar, and the moment held for a solid thirty seconds while soft, romantic music played over it, and considering the last time a girl his age reached out to touch his scar he grabbed her wrist to prevent it, this was a huge deal on Zuko’s side, too.

While they were talking, Katara told Zuko that recently, any time she’d thought about the Fire Nation, the evil people who’d been destroying the world, it was his face she was picturing. But she was apologetic. She’d been talking to this boy she’d fought on several occasions for a handful of minutes, tops, and already she was empathizing with him and believing she’d misjudged him. She was beginning to think he was different. “I thought you’d changed!” she shouted after he joined Azula and turned on her and his uncle--and this was the real turning point, because she thought that her moment of connection with Zuko meant something, and she was betrayed and hurt when he turned on her.

This, by the way, is a big part of why it took Zuko so long to understand why Katara was so angry with him after he joined the gaang. Because Katara did view it as a betrayal--but Zuko didn’t. He had a moment of connection with this girl, sure, but he hadn’t made any promises. The only person he felt he’d betrayed in the catacombs was his uncle, which was why he was so apprehensive about seeing him again (and why Katara talking to him before-hand was such a beautiful, moving scene). But he hadn’t promised Katara anything, he’d just opened up a little about his tragic backstory, and yeah, it was a nice moment, but she wasn’t his sister. Then Azula showed up, and she was making promises, and she was offering him everything he’d been working his ass off for the last three years to achieve.

Of course he was going to side with her. And his moment of hesitation was about how his uncle would react, not this girl he barely knew and had only really connected with once for a few minutes.

But Katara saw this as confirmation that Zuko was every awful thing she thought about the Fire Nation as a whole. She had no idea what his father had done to him, how he’d gotten banished in the first place, how desperate he was to win back his father’s love. She had no way of knowing that Zuko was siding with Azula not because he agreed with the Fire Nation, but because he just wanted to go home. Zuko was just another Fire Nation footsoldier in her eyes, only worse because he was part of the royal family that was responsible for the war in the first place.

So yes, Katara’s anger and grudge against Zuko before their reconciliation was valid. But it wasn’t about how she really felt about Zuko as a person--she was projecting her intense pain, anger, and trauma caused by his nation onto him, because he was the easiest target, especially after he showed up having the gall to want to join the gaang after turning on her at Ba Sing Se. But if you’re asking me if I think she maintained that grudge in canon, the answer is no. Because TSR exists. Because Katara got closure and catharsis by being able to confront her mother’s murderer, because Zuko helped her to get it. And she made the choice to forgive him. She said as much, in exactly so many words, and the episodes following depicted a very close emotional bond between the two of them.

Considering who Katara is, I believe it’s just as important for the fandom to remember and validate her forgiveness of Zuko in TSR as it is to validate her animosity and grudge against him prior to forgiving him. Because that forgiveness is just as much a part of her character arc, her emotional journey, and her relationship with Zuko.

[firelxdykatara]

The reason why I asked you this question is because I heard some ATLA fans invalidating her grudge and animosity,disapproving her treatment towards Zuko,calling her derogatory names.

hence what do you think of the fans who bash Katara for being hostile to them?

Well, for one thing, Katara is my favorite character in the show (Zuko is a very close second, but if I had to choose with a gun to my head, I’d choose Katara), so I absolutely don’t approve of anyone calling her derogatory names or bashing her for her anger at and grudge towards Zuko. I also don’t really understand it–I understand why Zuko couldn’t figure out why she was so angry with him until it was spelled out, but I don’t understand how fans can look at the whole story, know what each character knows and could potentially know, able to see things from both their perspectives, and then… blame Katara for her reaction to what she very clearly saw as a betrayal by someone who chose the evils of the Fire Nation over the avatar’s life and safety, and over her.

From Katara’s perspective, Zuko did turn on her. No, he hadn’t made any promises–and she didn’t have anything approaching the full story from his perspective–but she thought he had. She reached out a hand in friendship, she offered to heal his scar, she connected with him emotionally and opened up to him, and he turned around and threw it in her face. This was a boy who’d spent several months, the entire span of the first season, relentlessly attacking her and her friends, trying to capture the only hope the world had for peace. He kept saying things about honor but she had no context for why he’d been banished, and then in their few encounters during book 2, he attacked her once for trying to help his uncle, and then she saw him in the tea shop in Ba Sing Se and booked it, so she had no real reason to believe he’d changed, that he was no longer a danger.

And then she talked to him in the catacombs beneath the city. And she thought he had changed. She thought he was someone worth saving. Katara is an incredibly compassionate young girl, and she was willing to give a chance to this boy she’d spent so long fighting just because he sounded sad and had lost his mother too. So when he sided with Azula and betrayed not only her but his own uncle (again, he didn’t see it as a betrayal, but she did, and for good reason), she didn’t just feel betrayed, she felt lied to. It made her question everything he’d said to her in the caves, because he could just as easily have been trying to get her guard down. More, she was angry because it had worked. She’d believed him, and that turned out to be the biggest mistake of her life, because it got Aang killed.

If Zuko hadn’t turned on her, she would’ve beaten Azula, who never would’ve gotten a chance to shot Aang in the back. So I think a lot of that guilt she felt became wrapped up in the rest of her anger and trauma and pain, and when Zuko showed up at the Western Air Temple, it was like he’d painted a gigantic target on his back–she couldn’t direct any of it at Ozai or the Fire Nation army, but she could vent it out on Zuko, who had proven willing to betray her trust in the past.

That’s why Zuko had to work so much harder to win back her trust than anyone else’s. And I think that anyone who chooses to invalidate Katara’s anger at Zuko just because he didn’t see what he’d done as a betrayal is just choosing, at this point, to willfully misunderstand the way that whole scenario looked from her perspective.

She had every reason to be angry, hurt, and distrustful of him. And that’s part of what makes the development of their relationship so beautiful.

[firelxdykatara]

Do you think Sasusaku is worse than Zutara?

In what way? What exact comparison are you drawing between them?

That asked, I’m not sure I could respond accurately anyway, seeing as I never got into Naruto so I don’t know much about Sasuke except he’s the dark-haired emo boy, and Sakura is the pink-haired healer girl??? or something??? I’m not sure if their relationship has anything in common with Zuko and Katara’s, though, as I’ve never read/seen it.

[legendofaang]

What do you think of the fans who bash Katara for being hostile to Zuko in Book 3?

if we’re talking about the fans in particular, i don’t have much of an opinion on them. hating on katara for that feels misogynistic but i haven’t read any full explanation/analysis so i don’t want to make assumptions on them as people. i know they exist, but unless they come for me or i see their posts on my dash, i pretend they don’t exist. simple as that.

as for my opinion on katara’s hostility towards zuko in book 3, i think it was fully warranted and reasonable. you see how in the southern raiders ep that zuko insisted that katara trust him now since “everyone trusts me now” and she is visibly upset because she was the first to trust him (and even offer to heal his scar) in book 2 and yet he betrayed her and aang. redemption and forgiveness isn’t demanded, it’s earned, and after katara verbalised her anger (his betrayal, his association with the fire nation, the trauma with her mother) zuko presented ways for her to get closure and in turn redeem himself in her eyes. 

personally, painting katara as selfish or unreasonable for being hostile towards zuko, a person who has already betrayed her before, does injustice to katara’s character. she was a scarred, war torn teenager who had faced oppression at the hands of zuko’s people. we don’t know how things would’ve played out in ba sing se had zuko taken katara’s side instead of azula’s. but, seeing zuko take the side of the oppressor, seeing said oppressor kill aang, hers and the world’s only hope of freedom, right after it seemed like they understood and got along? right after she offered to heal his scar? i don’t blame katara for being hostile. experiences shape people. 

[ineffable-raccoon]

Hi,I heard there are some Avatar The Last Airbender fans bashed Katara for being hostile towards Zuko when she has a valid reason to do so given what he did in Crossroads of destiny,do you validate Katara’s grudge and animosity towards Zuko?

Yes? Katara’s distrust towards Zuko and her anger at him are pretty damn justified, and, ESPECIALLY given her age and what she’s been through, understandable. 

[firelxdykatara]

Do you know Zutara is canon in American Dragon Jake Long,a Disney Channel show in terms of voice actor and actress?

Yeah, Dante and Mae voiced Jake and Rose respectively on ADJL, although as far as I’m aware that’s where the similarities end, since the characters they played were quite different from Zuko and Katara.

I haven’t seen the show, though, so I could be wrong about that.

[ziseviolet]

Is the Daxiushan restricted to royal ladies only?

Hi, thanks for the question! (Photo Via)

Historically, the Daxiushan/大袖衫 (large-sleeve robe) was most popular among royalty during the Tang dynasty. Because the Daxiushan often only covers half of the chest, it was restricted to women of a certain status, such as princesses and court ladies. However, it was not completely restricted to royal ladies, since Geji/歌姬 (female entertainers/courtesans) were also allowed to wear it. Furthermore, it was mainly worn for special ceremonial occasions. (Source)

Hope this helps!