#implied zutara maybe

[bblackthing]

Ambassador Katara at her Fire Nation room

While back, I was searching for references for Fire Nation room, and of course some AIsh*t images appeared, and one of them was Katara in the room, so I kind of decided to redraw it.

I don't think I'm great at design rooms and clothes, but I tried

Here is comparing with this sh*t AI, if anyone is interested to see \/

[acidicsketches]

Felt like doing headshots

[miss-sweetea-pie]

Listen I don’t like k.ataang and m.aiko because the narrative structure strongly implies for them to not end up together.

The abandoned plot line for Aang’s arc (want vs need) learn to let her go. Aang wants to be with katara but he needs to be the avatar.

And Aang having plenty of time to come around to the possibility that maybe it’s not meant to be.

Similar to Zuko and Mai in boiling rock. Zuko was still holding onto Mai while talking to Sokka. Zuko didn’t want to drag her into this. but by the end of the episode

Zuko: this isn’t about you this is about the fire nation,I’m doing this to save my country 

Mai: save it your betraying your country.

This was definitely the moment where Zuko realized that there ideology was too different, and the relationship wouldn’t work, which is why he didn’t even bother asking her to come with him. Sure maybe she would’ve gone with him but not for the right reasons. 

Zutara was just a lovely little treat and would have tied up everything in a lovely bow. But it didn’t need to happen. But m.aiko and k.ataang happening really hurt the arcs of the characters and the narrative flow.

[sokkastyles]

The thing about what Bryan says that's so ??? is that he talks like zutara dated for a while and then broke up. How in the world did Zuko and Katara "teach each other what they really needed" (implying that what they needed was Mai and Aang? This would make more sense if Zuko and Katara had even a platonic arc where they discovered they weren't good together. But their arc is about forming an instant bond, experiencing a betrayal, and then coming together again stronger than before. If anything it showed how good they are together, especially when there are so many scenes that highlight how well they meet each other's needs better than their canon partners.

"Come on, kids!" Orrrr, maybe you shouldn't be so condescending to your audience.

A few days ago I made a post about the recent rash of zutara antis trying to bring back the idea that zutara is wrong because of "the children," but here Bryan is actively insulting kids for shipping zutara. While also repeating the bizarre claim that zutara is just too "dark and intriguing." Again, which kids are we protecting here?

[eponastory]

I've seen some fans against Zutara once use Zuko and Mai's endgame kiss as evidence that Zuko is better with Mai than Katara. A Maiko fan once said that Zuko made sure to let Mai out of prison, which "proves their love," but I just laugh because that's not even what happened. Zuko was surprised to see Mai out of prison and even literally asked, "Mai! They let you out of prison?". This implies that Zuko did NOT let her ass out of prison. Otherwise, he would know she's even out, LOL. Unless he thought the Boiling Rock wouldn't let her out, why was he surprised to see Mai free? Maybe I'm sleep deprived, but when Zuko is shocked that Mai got let out of prison, it almost looks like he forgot that she was even in there, LOL

Then there was the, "but don't EVER break up with me again!". God Zuko looked so uncomfortable lol. At least when Katara threatened Zuko's life, she had a laundry list of reasons to not trust him and they weren't even friends. Mai is Zuko's girlfriend and she talks to him like *that*, LOL

Maiko is not a good ship for said reasons.

If my 'boyfriend' left me in prison and then forgot about me, I'd never want to see his face again. But that's besides the point.

As I've said before, Mai is a shoehorn for Zuko. I still believe she was always meant to be a supporting character for Azula and I'll die on that hill because that's where she fits in. Her relationship with Zuko isn't cute nor is it great. Actually, they bring out the worst in each other. Which is ironically what all the Anti-Zutara peeps keep saying that's what Zuko and Katara do...

Anyway, I hate that Mai and Zuko were just thrown together like 'hey, we need to give him a girlfriend so the Zutara people will shutup' without any previous setup. It's just awkward in that 'oh you two just hooked up because why? Oh... you both like angst... okay cool' when Zuko isn't even a bad boy. He's just an awkward teenager and it shows.

Mai is without a doubt not a good character in the way that she is written. Like she is the girlfriend that comes back to haunt you because she made you think you did something wrong. Actually, there is quite a bit of dismissiveness and gaslighting from her. Yet people think that's perfectly fine. It's not. But okay.

To be fair, Zuko isn't good at relationships. Actually, I don't think he's had a relationship with anyone before his banishment and during the three years at sea. He really never had friends, to be honest. So that explains his social awkwardness and frustration as well.

Poor kid is just love sick and starved of companionship other than Iroh. That's absolutely miserable as a teenager.

That's where the writing works on Zuko's part. But not with Mai.

[zukosdualdao]

ashes of yesterday / rise of tomorrow

zutara month, day four: ashes, @zutaramonth

summary: the night aang blows up at them, before they’re set to leave, katara finds zuko sitting alone on the pier. he is burning a leaf, and he wants to be alone. one of these things is true.

warnings: implied/referenced abuse and many implied complicated feelings. not terribly explicit, but there is a reference to ozai trying to kill zuko in the day of black sun.

Zuko is the shadow of a lonely figure set against the growing night, his back turned as Katara walks the length of the boardwalk. She’s discovered a love of watching summer sunsets in the Fire Nation, the way the glowy orange morphs into a dark umber just before fading into a color like that of charcoal and then finally into deep black. 

She’s been coming out here sometimes, later in the night, just to get a moment to breathe, to watch the sunset. Faintly, she wonders if she’s been stealing Zuko’s spot.

“What are you doing?” Katara asks as she approaches, standing as he sits with his legs hanging off the pier's edge. She squints to see what he’s holding—and finds that it's a leaf that he’s burning slowly from the inside out, that singes as he twists the stem in his hands. Glowing red and deepening black overtake it, the hole that results growing steadily wider.

He shrugs his shoulders. “I don't know. Thinking, I guess."

Katara tilts her head and watches. His control is impressive.

With Aang blowing up and storming off, things have been tense all day. Tomorrow, they begin their journey to the Fire Nation Royal Palace. They will either win, or else the world may burn.

She finds she's not so surprised that maybe Zuko needed a little space to breathe, too.

Ozai has to die for them to win. Zuko knows this. Zuko has said this. She tries to think what that might be like for him. Even as he advocates for it, even as he insists upon it, Ozai is his father.

The Firelord is not a good man. Katara knows this. She doesn't think he can be much of a father either—she still remembers the unpleasant roll of her stomach as he told them about redirecting Ozai's lightning—but he is still Zuko's father. That will never not be true.

Sitting down beside him, she swings her left leg over the edge of the pier, and then pulls the other under her, her body angled so that she can take in his face.

“What’s wrong?” she asks softly.

A lot is wrong, of course. It could be any number of things.

“I want to be alone,” Zuko says stiffly, instead of answering with one of them. Katara tilts her head, watching as he looks straight ahead, his eyes on the line of the horizon. Though he’s not yelling and his eyes are mostly blank, numb, the look of him, his forlorn posture, reminds her of the boy that batted fire to scare them away in that abandoned Earth Kingdom village, the boy that seemed so lost and alone in the catacombs of Ba Sing Se.

Katara couldn’t recognize it then, but she can now. Now, she knows him. It was like he was once holding the world and all the people in at a distance so that he would not be hurt. It's like that again now.

Katara does not want to hurt him.

“I don’t think that’s true,” she counters softly, with a slight shake of her head, catching the way he pinches both eyes closed, his lips pursing. “But if it is, tell me again, and I’ll go.”

Zuko says nothing. Katara inches ever-slightly closer to where he sits, erasing the gap between them, and turning forward to watch the sky with him.

After a long pause, Zuko takes a shaky inhale and leans over to rest his head on Katara’s shoulder. Her heart skips a beat. She leans into it, too.

They watch together as the final remnants of the leaf fade, dark ashes falling away from Zuko’s tight fist and into the still, dark, shimmering sea beneath them.

[five-flavor-soup]

Why the endgame couples in A:TLA weren’t necessary: a frustrated ramble

Listen I’m a Zutara shipper through and through (developed after my second rewatch in 2013) but by Tui Agni and La am I glad that it never happened in canon?? Like Kataang and Maiko themselves already felt so rushed and almost out-of-nowhere and their canonisation added like nothing to the plot. Aang’s crush on Katara is a plot device; Zuko’s relationship with Mai at the start of S3 is a plot device. I can barely fathom how Zutara would’ve turned out and I also kinda don’t want to. Imagine Zuko and Katara kissing at the end of the series: it feels completely out of left field, doesn’t it? Knowing that who-ends-up-with-who was an argument in the writer’s room for almost all three seasons means that it could’ve happened.

It shouldn’t have. I don’t think the Kataang kiss or the Maiko romance-reunion should’ve happened either. It’s unnecessary to add—there’s just no need for it, and my nagging here isn’t because I like Zutara and I don’t like how Maiko and Kataang turned out. It’s because the ships and couples and whatever the fuck else are NOT, and should not, be the point of A:TLA—and the ‘couple gets together in the very last scene and all is well :)’ shot suggests that it is.

A:TLA, to me, tried to show the horrifying nature of war and all its victims: the harrowing poverty, the deep-rooted trauma, the bloody violence. I interpreted the most prominent message of A:TLA to be that what was happening during those 100 years is wrong, that war is wrong—it affects the humanity within people, affects what point we offer empathy and kindness, because horrific trauma and needless violence muddies it all up. Why would you hold out a hand for someone who would’ve murdered you if they had the chance? Why would you physically support someone who hurt you and those you care about deeply? Those of the other nations can barely scrounge up empathy for someone from the Fire Nation, because those of the Fire Nation present themselves as inhuman. Those of the Fire Nation can barely scrounge up empathy for someone from any of the other nations, because the Fire Nation presents them as inhuman. And A:TLA shows that all these people are human, good and bad and all of that in between, because that’s just what humanity is. Varied and morally grey.

THAT’S what the GAang learns. That’s what the people around them learn. It’s what Iroh, a war criminal in his own right, tries to teach every child and teen who he interacts with: not in a preachy way, but in a vague way that implies he’d rather have them figure it out themselves lest they interpret his direct teachings wrong. He got indoctrinated into this terrorising, imperialist regime from the day he was born and onwards and it took a personal loss — the death of his son during a siege Iroh himself was leading, a siege in which Iroh and Lu Ten were the aggressors — for him to start thinking that maybe it’s all wrong. Maybe what he was taught is wrong. And he doesn’t want these children to take as long as he did.

The GAang and their (teenage) enemies and small antagonists have all been touched by war, almost to the point of no return. None of the need for violence, the calm in the face of battle and death, the willingness to sacrifice innocents for a sliver of retribution, the extensive knowledge of How To Fight A Battle And Win—none these qualities that these children (!!) may or may not portray are ‘normal’ teenage behaviours. They simply have to have them, or they die or freeze. Their childhoods were stopped in their tracks early because of experiences no child should ever experience. Such is the reality of war. And yet, in spite of the hurt and harm, the GAang is still capable of kindness and empathy. That’s what it’s about.

To end the series with explicit romance — Sokka/Suki doesn’t count, their relationship is not as in-your-face as The Scenes — just feels wrong. Maybe with another season of development it could’ve worked far better (and less unexpected, especially since the previous one-on-one Kataang interaction was Katara getting cross with Aang for kissing her when she was confused; and the previous one-on-one Maiko interaction was Zuko locking Mai in a cell/out of the way and then leaving without looking back). But with the three seasons that we got, it feels odd that the romance is highlighted at the end—especially when Zuko was miserable with Mai (with her being the human representation of ‘close your eyes and pretend everything’s fine’), and there ALSO was a perfectly good ending scene with the GAang bickering right there. Right before the ending kiss.

Why end it like that, when the series isn’t about romance, but about familial and platonic love and love for humanity instead? Why not just hint towards getting (back) together? What’s the point of these confirmations other than ‘the hero gets the girl’ in both instances?

[biconickyoshi]

If the ember island players episode ever happens, will you include the original play narrative, one where they perceive Zutara but instead, Aang gets jealous of Katara. Maybe worse, Jet and Zuko. Considering whilst Zuko wasn’t exactly smitten, he did take somewhat of an interest in him. He did think he was handsome.

Good news is yes, I definitely am planning on adapting the Ember Island Players episode! However, while with most chapters that are a ways off I usually have a vague idea about what I want to stay the same and what I want to change, this chapter is one that has been more vague than others in my mind. This is because there’s so much plot I haven’t covered yet and I don’t know how differently all of that will affect the EIP plot.

I’ve definitely thought about leaving the Zutara implication scenes in, but again, there’s so much else that I have not covered yet in the overall story that I don’t know if it would make sense to include it as part of the play in this AU. There definitely still is an opportunity for jealousy there, especially with Zuko and Katara’s Southern Raider revenge spree happening not long before this (which results in them getting closer).

In regards to the Players adapting anything Jetko-related, initially, I was gonna say that I don’t know for certain if I would include that simply because the Fire Nation is so homophobic during this time period. However, now that I think about it, this could honestly be an interesting thing to explore - like maybe the play heavily queercodes both Zuko and Aang without stating it outright (kind of like Hays Code-era villains in real world media), and the audience knows clearly what’s being implied and laughs at it (bc homophobia). And maybe there’s some dramatic moment where actor!Aang and actor!Zuko are tragically killed off in front of each other (Bury Your Gays trope). I think that this portrayal would seriously shake both Aang and Zuko and make them even more anxious about the future than they already were.

I won’t say anything else because I am now thinking of a lot of interesting ideas on where to go with my adaptation of this ep that I had not previously considered, and I want to save them for when I get to writing the chapter itself :) Thanks for getting the wheels in my brain turning, anon!

[beifong-brainrot]

I know i said this in dms but jesus CHRIST L-F-R is so out of pocket and such a bigot like why'd she immediately jump to trans.phobia because you said Dadko isn't a Zutara thing😭😭😭😭???????That's so messed up on so many levels,so Zuko's not a man because he's not with Katara💀?'uwu helpless baby mpreg omega Zuko' 'alpha genius Sokka' People in real life:Hey man how's it going

Honestly the weird thing is is that my og post barely even mentioned Sokka and it never implied Zukka, since I'm kinda lukewarm on the ship lol. It's just so weird that unless Zuko fits into their strict view of him, he's weak and gnc (which is apparently bad lol).

Like damn, bitch, maybe I just don't think we should assign strict familial roles to these teenagers and children lol.

Also what if Katara gets Zuko pregnant what then Zutaras, huh? What then?

[nightrae13]

NaruSaku is to Klaybarra as Zutara is to MaMie, prove me wrong. First set of pairs is between the male and female protagonists, implied in the story to be the planned endgame as evident with their developments and moments together (albeit some moments were subtle), and having main character B be the first love of main character A. Even so, despite all that, they got shoved aside because most of the viewers deemed the pairing "controversial" and preferred the main character to be with the supporting character who gained popularity . Second set is between the main female character and the 2nd male character, those who were never intended to be endgame, but their chemistry and potential are all over the place in the story. However, despite also gaining a fanbase, rivaling and being even bigger than the expected ship at some points in time, the writers stuck to the originally planned endgame with the main character.

It's funny that these pairs, intended to be endgame or not, all broke my heart and couldn't let me catch a break lmao. Maybe I just have a tendency to root for the one that will not be canon regardless of their original fate and popularity haha

[arcanareads]

What about Zutara and Kaang?

The cards and I thank you for your questions!

A potential Zutara relationship: the fool, ace of wands, ace of cups

A Kataang relationship: the hierophant reversed, 3 of swords reversed, 2 of wands, judgment reversed

(Younger me was obsessed with Avatar, and I was always torn between these two ships because I thought Kataang was the sweetest thing, but Zutara had that glorious enemies to lovers energy)

The fool: this cards reminds you to have faith in the universe and encourages you to live fearlessly. It is also a reminder that you will make it through the storm, so long as you allow hope to replace fear

Ace of wands: a sign that you are on the right path and a representation of new beginnings

Ace of cups: this card denotes the beginning of a beautiful and loving relationship full of both spiritual and physical fulfillment. You are being drawn to those who are on a similar spiritual path in order to create more positive relationships

The hierophant reversed: this card implies a need to be less restrictive in your thought process and creative thinking

3 of swords reversed: a sign that dispite the passage of time, you are struggling to let go of a painful situation or maybe holding onto an old grudge. This is the time to take stock of your emotions and figure out which ones are holding you back from loving or living

2 of wands: a sign of opportunities for travel and the need to make life-changing decisions. This card encourages you to get out of your comfort zone because your destiny is waiting

Judgment reversed: reversed, this card implies that you are not the one in control of your own decisions or that you have given up power. It can also imply a time of being over-judgmental and missing opportunities because of it

[waterfire1848]

Got 5 questions from your ask game

1. What’s your wildest headcanon?

2. What’s your ideal writing setup?

3. Any WIPs you would be willing to share?

4. What’s your favorite fic?

5. What tags do you search when looking for fics to read?

Thanks for the ask!!

1. I don’t know if it’s the wildest but I have a headcanon that Azula tries cactus juice after the war and wakes up on a ship heading to the South Pole. It takes her a month to figure out what happened.

2. My desk. It’s the only place I can actually focus😂.

3. I do have a new Sokkla and Zutara fic coming out soon called “Honey, I Shrunk the Child Soldiers.” I got my inspiration from @stardust948 and @a-todd-illustration Here’s a little bit of it.

“The trail goes this way.”

36 hours.

That’s how long Azula had gone without sleep and it was starting to show. Maybe if she had gotten a little extra sleep she would have gone after the bison fur and sent Mai and Ty Lee in the direction of the broken tree branches. Maybe if she had this whole situation could have been avoided. Yet, she didn’t make that choice. Instead, she told Mai and Ty Lee to follow the fur while she went in the direction of the broken tree tops.

After a few minutes, she came across the bison with the Water Tribe siblings on it. Not the Avatar, but they would make good hostages. She could threaten their safety and the Avatar would surrender to her in seconds.

“Katara!” She heard the boy yell.

If Mai and Ty Lee were correct, the boy was a nonbender and the girl was a waterbender. Both of them were probably forces to watch out for, but it was good to know who was a bender and who wasn’t.

“How did she find us?”

Their bison did make it across the river and the siblings hugged, believing they had gotten away from Azula.

“Idiots.” Azula whispered as her lizard walked across the lake.

The waterbender acted first, sending a wave straight at Azula and forcing her to jump off. She was able to use her firebending to send her straight onto the shore where the warrior attacked her with a machete. It was two against one but Azula was the better fighter. She had them both until another firebender entered the fight.

4. Favorite fic? I don’t know if I could pick a favorite, but one of my favorites is “We Protect Each Other. Always.” It’s a Zuko & Azula fic that’s just so sweet and cute.

5. Humor, canon divergence, hurt/comfort, implied/reference child abuse (only for ATLA) (need some of that angst).

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

https://www.tumblr.com/im-a-hoping-beetch/726657931160043520/many-people-seem-to-get-genuinely-confused thoughts on this!

"Kataang was rushed" I, a Kataang shiper, agree. In fact this was why it took some time for the ship to grow on me. Maybe this post has potential after all!

"These moments in which Katara is clearly showing interest in Aang are totally not valid because *bullshit reason*" Aaaaand, you lost me.

"Cave Of Two Lovers was a life or death situation!" Yes, but Katara also clearly WANTED to kiss Aang, just like he wanted to kiss her - in fact, we see her get mad when he implied he did NOT want that kiss. Not to mention, even if neither of them had ever demonstrated feelings towards each other before then and had kissed solely to get out of the cave, the end of the episode showes us very clearly that they both clearly ENJOYED the kiss, so it still absolutely counts.

"The Headband had both the Kataang romantic dance and Katara pretending to be Aang's mom!" like I said in a different post, if you take Katara pretending to be his mom in a funny scene as proof of how she felt truly felt about him, you're also gonna have to take her dressing up as Sokka's HEAVILY PREGNANT WIFE as proof that she secretly wants to marry and have kids with her own sibling. Blowing a joke way out of proportion to ignore the very obvious romantic tension between Katara and Aang is ridiculous.

Zutarians LOVE making the weirdest, most obviously bad faith claims ever, then complain that they are called bitter people that will say literally ANYTHING to pretend the canon pairings were way worse than they actually were. Just say "I don't like this ship, and prefer Zutara", it's fine!

[atla-confessions]

white zutara shippers love to act like we’re crazy for talking about the harmful tropes they promote in their fics then turn around and whine about how reading about zuko rape katara is “empowering” because its their “kink” ma’am please take that colonizer shit tf out of here we all see what you’re doing

I'm not even a zutara shipper but like, this is unhinged.

1. Bringing up race like white people are the only ones who write or enjoy dark fic.

2. Implying that the 'problematic tropes' you find aren't things like, you know, unintentional racism or sexism, and instead simply the existance of, again, dark fic.

3. Oh boy are you not ready to hear about the relation of rape fantasies with actual victims of sa.

4. You,,,,, are aware there is noncon content for every big ship,,,,, right? Kataang included.

5. So we're just throwing the word 'colonizer' into things willy nilly now? Are- are you implying that women with kinks are colonizers? Because I don't think that's what you intended, but that is what your phrasing implies, which is hilarious.

6. Actively admitting to harassing zutara writers, or at least watching other people do this and agreeing with them. Guess what. You don't need to comment on the fic other people write for their ship. Why are you reading their fics anyway? Why are zutara shippers ever in a position where they feel they need to justify their right to write darker fic themes? This would only happen if they were, you know, being harassed about it.

As someone who is very very sick of the zutara fandom, can we maybe focus on the actual problematic behaviors, like harassment, instead of generalizing race and kinkshaming perhaps? Just perhaps. Especially since harassing them back is just doing the equivalent of martyring someone. It just makes eveyone more angry and makes them feel like their own bad behavior is justified.

X

[sokkastyles]

Zutara Month Day 26: Drunk

CW for alcohol abuse (kinda implied already, but underage so), mentions of physical abuse.

He's the absolute last person in the world she'd expected to be on her doorstep on a rainy Saturday night, soaked through and shivering and emanating a distinct sour odor.

"Are you drunk?"

He looks down at his muddy shoes, sways unsteadily.

"My dad kicked me out. I didn't know where else to go."

Katara wants to ask him why. He hadn't been at her house since the fourth grade, and now he shows up here like this? Why was she the first person he had thought of?

But it's raining buckets and he can't just stand on her porch forever, and he looks like he's about to fall over, and if she stands here too long with the door open, her dad will hear and wonder what's going on, and she doesn't want to make him worry any more than he already does about their family. So instead, she wordlessly shepherds Zuko into the house, holding his arm as he shakily steps out of his shoes, then she grabs a towel from the downstairs bathroom to wrap him in so he doesn't drip water all over the carpet as she brings him up to her bedroom.

"Thank you," he rasps quietly, pulling the towel around him. He looks awful and leans on her so heavily, Katara is worried that they both might topple over.

She grabs a pair of Sokka's sweatpants that she'd been in the process of mending, and an oversized t-shirt, and passes the clothing to him through the cracked open bathroom door, assiduously not looking as he stands in his boxer shorts and socks. She tells him to put his wet clothes in the bathtub, and hopes he doesn't slip and fall while changing.

She's glad that Sokka isn't home and dad is busy with tribal council stuff, otherwise she'd have to come up with some reason why a drunk disheveled boy who she barely knew is changing in her bathroom.

After several long minutes, when he doesn't come out, she nervously raps on the door as light as she dares. He doesn't answer. The last thing she needs is for Zuko to fall and hit his head in her bathroom, so, preparing herself for whatever sight might lay beyond, she gathers her courage and opens the door.

He's sitting with his back against the sink, kinda slumped over, in the clothes she gave him. The wet things he was wearing are wadded up in the bathtub, like she'd asked. And Zuko is not moving.

She crouches down next to him, imagining the possibilities. How much had he drunk? Quickly, she feels for a pulse at his wrist, and as she does, Zuko yanks his arm away from her with a cry.

Not before she'd noticed the pretty nasty bruise encircling his wrist. That was why he'd cried out. At least he was awake now. "Come on," she says, helping him up off the bathroom floor, careful in case there are any more bruises hidden under his clothing. The way he stiffens as she puts a hand under his ribs answers that question. He hisses but doesn't pull away from her, letting her guide him to the bed.

She still wants to ask him why, of all the places he could have thought to go, the first place he thought of was his science partner from elementary school. It's not like they were even friends. Katara didn't even know who Zuko considered friends these days. Maybe he really didn't have anywhere else. She tried to picture who Zuko normally hung out with at school, and realized she almost always saw him alone, if it wasn't with his sister and her insipid friends. Zuko didn't seem to fit in with them at all.

And what he'd said about his dad...

She manages to sit him down on the bed while she thinks about what to do. With the way he was guarding the bruises under his clothes, he might be more hurt than he was letting on, and it's hard to tell with how drunk he is, but the way he had reacted to her touch made Katara feel like he probably wouldn't let her mess with him too much.

But he had come to her for help, for whatever reason. And Katara would never turn her back on someone who needed her.

She looks back at him and sees that he had shifted on the bed, curled up with his knees pulled up under his arms, shivering.

"I'm fine," he mutters defensively, as if reading her mind.

With only a small amount of protest, she makes him drink several glasses of water, satisfied at least that he wouldn't be sick, before fishing in her closet for an extra blanket, and when she looks back he's curled up on his side at the foot of her bed, asleep. Gently, she tucks the blanket around him, making sure his head is positioned correctly. Then she curls up at the head of her bed, looking up every so often from her book to glance at Zuko's sleeping form, the gentle rise and fall of his chest. After a while, she switches the lamp off and tucks herself under the covers.

She'd have to explain things to her dad and brother in the morning. Surely they would understand, and maybe dad would know what to do about the bruises and what Zuko had said about his dad.

But when she wakes up in the morning, Zuko is gone, and so are his clothes from the night before, the clothes she had given him last night folded neatly on the sink.

She sees him in the hall at school on Monday between classes, hidden behind a large hoodie and wearing the same mud-splattered sneakers from the other night. He locks eyes with her for a brief moment before closing his locker and walking off in the opposite direction.

[teaandcrowns]

This is not fully fleshed out or formed particularly well, but I, of course, had More Thoughts as I do my annual "it's turning toward spring, therefore AtLA" rewatch and re-obsession. Maybe I could eventually be bothered to come back to thing and put in proper context/references, but for now all I got are thoughts.

So, I watched the Ember Island Players episode earlier this evening and had some more thoughts on the play and what it tells us about Fire Nation views on Zuko. Obviously it's made clear that they're supposed to not like him, as the audience in the episode applauds when he is killed by Azula, but even before that we can see the setup of this dislike for him, namely in the rendition the Players do of the crystal catacombs of Ba Sing Se. We see Katara and Zuko's characters in the catacombs sharing a moment, where it's then "revealed" that Katara has "always had a thing" for Zuko, and then they are implied to hook up.

What's interesting to me, with my Literature Degree™️ lens and what I learned in my theory class about the positioning of Nature in relation to Man in Western philosophy (which really reached its epoch during the Enlightenment) makes the subtext here really fascinating. Hooking Zuko up with Katara serves to undermine him to the FN audience with their implicit biases against not only anyone who isn't FN, but against people of the SWT in particular: people who they consider peasants and savages. We see this in our own world with indigenous people, or "less civilized" people like Africans, because they are "closer to nature" and therefore "sub-human" in a way, being positioned closer to animals. (This way of thinking also is applied to women in our world through this Western philosophy, but I don't think that vector actually applies to the FN perspective because of all the nations they are actually shown (in the show) to be the most equal between the genders.)

So by putting their "civilized" prince with the "uncivilized savage" who is not deemed anywhere near the level of even the lowliest FN citizen (and perhaps considered even lesser as a waterbender than a nonbender would be, but that's pure conjecture), the play is subtly setting up and prepping their audience to be more and more okay with the "betrayal" of Zuko first when he joins the Avatar's team, and then finally when he is killed near the end of the play. He's already been "tainted" by the less civilized Katara in the second act.

If the writers of the episode were worth their salt, they would have realized that's also what they were doing when they put that in, beyond it being "hur hur zutara" (according to the creators, it was ostensibly supposed to make fun of the zutara shippers, though in my, and many others', opinion it…… really failed to do that), but I'm not entirely sure they would have, considering that it's very on par with the implicit biases that plague us in the Western world today