#it's particularly funny to imagine both Aang and Zuko being THE BIGGEST stans of each other

[seyaryminamoto]

Why do you the majority of the atla fandom likes Zuko far more than Aang?

Eeeh... it's probably a mix of profound and shallow reasons all mixed into one very messy bag xD guess I'll start with the shallow reasons and then move on to the deeper ones:

Zuko seems to fit in the "tall, dark and handsome" archetype some people seem to automatically fall in love with when they see it in media. He amassed a lot of fans even early on with his angry ponytail, so I won't pretend that he exclusively had all the fangirls swooning over him when he grew out his hair xD but there's indeed a widespread consensus that he turned into the prettiest boy around when he grew out his hair (evidently I disagree but that's neither here nor there x'D). Meanwhile, Aang is a kid, and even when he grows out his hair he's not a "tall, dark and handsome" type. He's still just a kid, but now with hair xD and even if he's cute, the kind of people who fall in love with Zuko over his looks just aren't likely to feel the same way about Aang. There's also that a lot of the people who loved Zuko's looks were young teens when they watched the show and they weren't quite so likely to feel that way about Aang, who they could've perceived as simply a kid like them, rather than the handsome, tormented young man Zuko feels like.

Zuko comes from "the cool nation". A concept I cannot help but be swept by too because yes, sorry, I do love the Fire Nation even if I absolutely know and acknowledge it needs to be overhauled and changed from top to bottom in just about every possible way :'D but fire as a concept is popularly treated as much cooler than air, ergo, people like the Fire Nation characters quite a bit because of that perception. It doesn't particularly help that Aang's culture is the least relatable of them all, as they don't have family units, to say one thing, lived by being completely split by genders, and the one thing that could've made the internet crowds positively ADORE the Air Nomads was the LOK comic expansion that says they were 100% in on free love and accepted different sexualities when the other nations were squeamish about them or outlawing them... something that is nowhere to be seen in what few flashbacks we get from their culture in ATLA. Therefore, Aang's background as an Air Nomad and airbender can be interesting enough, but not so much as to overcome the "coolness" of Fire Nation aesthetics and worldbuilding -- doesn't help that people have this slightly inflated concept of the "equality between genders" in the Fire Nation based solely on a handful of examples of said equality while blatantly ignoring every example that suggests they're only a couple of steps ahead of other nations in that regard but that men and women are not genuinely equal in the Fire Nation, all around...? So, in short, people are more interested in Zuko the man who will reform the Fire Nation, which is cool as a concept already, than in Aang the Air Nomad whose culture was wiped out and we know very little of, and what we know of it is difficult to relate to, and whose future is just going to be to stop conflict all around the world in order to preserve balance and harmony rather than being a genuine reformer of societies, the way Zuko is perceived to be.

Zuko is a more brooding, tormented soul than Aang, who is often depicted as a fun-loving, cheerful kid. People find him a little more mysterious and intriguing than Aang, who seems to be exactly what we get from the start. Then we find out later that Aang does have his secrets and his darkness, but Zuko basically is the inverse of Aang: Zuko's worst side is constantly on display so the stuff he keeps hidden is actually his better side and that makes people feel they need to dig deeper to find Zuko's true worth as a person. Meanwhile, Aang's darkness, which he keeps hidden, is not so agreeable (his rage, his frustrations, his sadness, his grief). So, in these regards, it's basically that people have the perception that Zuko is a jerk with a heart of gold, whereas Aang can be interpreted as the opposite of that, gold with a heart of jerk? I don't even know how to word it in this case xD it's an unfair perception of Aang in my opinion, because the kid is burdened by soooo many awful things, but I've actually seen people with very stale takes declaring Aang is basically the blueprint of an abusive husband because he contains his rage and he'll explode eventually and hurt people (using accidents from the show like Aang burning Katara to justify this concept)... whereas Zuko apparently is just a pure sweetheart who needs love and cuddling, and all his violent antics and reactions are NOT evidence that he too could be an abusive husband, no, that's something else entirely and he would never treat anyone he cares about that way! -- Insert all his angry rants at Iroh, his not-so-stellar boyfriend behavior with Mai here and the two-faced argument just deflates in ten seconds.

Speaking of Mai, ships now :'D the canon relationships for Aang and Zuko aren't universally loved by the general fandom, though the people who do love them are veeeery passionate and adamant that they're perfect just as they are. But basically, Aang and Mai come off as the characters who are pining somewhat hopelessly over someone else, which produces a sensation of inequality in their relationships. Katara, in my opinion, shows plenty of appreciation and affection towards Aang especially in the first season, but it's completely possible to interpret it as platonic rather than romantic affection, and as Katara's very few instances of displaying romantic interest in Aang feel a little odd and aren't really developed and fleshed out, people can just assume (and they do) that Katara wasn't in love with Aang but Aang is openly, clearly, blatantly in love with Katara since day one. Same is true for Mai: Zuko never even TALKS about Mai until we see them on scenes together, whereas Mai's strongest motivation in joining Azula is seeing Zuko again. Next thing we know? Mai and Zuko are together and the lead-up for it is in a comic most people didn't even read. The glimpses we get of Mai and Zuko together are not at all displays of a perfect, beautiful relationship with no flaws... just as the glimpses we get of Aang and Katara advancing their relationship typically are more on Aang's side than Katara's, and feature Aang taking the initiative while Katara doesn't show that much interest. Again, it can be chalked down to a problem of writing, and their relationship could be so much better... but the fact of the matter is, people in the fandom seem to think Zuko would be better off with someone who awakens stronger passions in him than Mai seems to, ergo, they ship him with just about every character you can think of other than her... whereas Aang, instead, is the one in Mai's position: I, personally, find Aang's love for Katara is so deeply connected to his identity as a character that it would take a LOT of work in order to really convince me he could have feelings for anyone else. But it's really not that hard for me to fathom Katara could fall in love with anyone other than Aang (I mean... she outright has a huge crush on Jet back in Book 1, so canon outright proves she can), and Mai, like Aang, is difficult to imagine with someone else if you don't thoroughly work her out of her Zuko-dependency, which the writers weaved into her character to a point of excess while never giving Zuko an attachment to Mai remotely as strong as hers. Long story short... Zuko being the object of someone's pining, and Aang being a character who pines (and whose love can be interpreted as one-sided by someone who doesn't see him that way, for the most part), makes Zuko a little easier to work with as far as shipping outside the canon box is concerned, whereas the same is not true with Aang.

Still on that topic, Aang is so young that some people think Aang can't be or shouldn't be shipped with other characters. I've seen people outright citing their sole reason to ship Taang is "they're the same age" (not every Taang shipper is like that, of course, and I've seen good arguments for the ship, it's only that it has always weirded me out that this was the main reason people brought up to say why they shipped this ship back when I first entered the fandom). This means that some people find Aang to be too much of a child to be a compelling character to, for instance, write fanfiction about :'D whereas that's not at all the case with Zuko. So, starting from there, Zuko is a character people are far more willing to interact with on a fandom level, and it's not just because Aang is too young... it's because virtually every ship you want to write Zuko into requires a lot more work than the most popular Aang ships do. If you write Zuko in a relationship with Mai, unless you're actively trying to present them as a perfect match in a propagandistic sort of "Maiko supremacy" way, it means they'll clash and have problems, much as they did in canon. If you write Zuko in a relationship with Katara, you have to resolve a lot of issues and you have the whole "enemies to lovers, he proved himself and she forgave him!" vibe that people dig a lot with redeemed antagonists in relationships with protagonists. Same concept is true for people who ship him with Sokka, to the letter. Hell, shipping Zuko with Jet brings up a ton more issues than even those two ships do, since Jet wasn't even aware of Zuko being a prince, liked him fairly well when he thought he wasn't a firebender and then went off the rails because of that, and that sort of complicated set-up requires soooo much work to make it happen... and if you do make it happen? It can be more rewarding for the average fic writer than "Aang and Katara got together in canon, so have a sequel of how much they love each other!", I suspect (THOUGH I WILL SAY... writing stories about people in love with next to no internal conflict IS completely valid and rewarding, but fandom will be fandom and not everyone is ready for wholesome romance, apparently). It can also be more rewarding than "Aang and Toph are already great friends, worked out their lingering issues and got together eventually". I think the only ship with Aang I can think of that would require a ton of work is Aangzula (which tbh explains why it has some passionate supporters), and it might be the only one that really would put Aang's character to the test remotely as much as fanfics about Zuko growing into a better person through his relationship with *insert literally any character here* do. I'm not saying Zuko is OBJECTIVELY a more interesting character to write about than Aang, I have honestly had a surprisingly good time writing both of them over the past months/year, so I really think it's a matter of how you go about it... but I can absolutely see some people getting bored by writing Aang-centric stories and preferring Zuko-centric stories because they feel they have more content to flesh out than they do with Aang.

Iroh. :'D Iroh is another reason why people love Zuko better than Aang. I have a lot more issues with Iroh than I even do with Zuko but that's not really the point here: Iroh is generally loved by the general, casual fandom, he's loved by Zuko's passionate fans, and he can even be outright the most beloved character of the whole franchise. His relationship with Zuko is of course the very lifeforce of his character, and for some people, of the whole show. Aang has no such mentor figure actively by his side throughout his journey. The closest thing he has to that is Monk Gyatso, and as we all know, he's dead. The only few moments we saw of Aang and Gyatso together are flashbacks and while we can see how much Gyatso cared about Aang, we can't see remotely as much of their dynamic, of how Gyatso handled Aang when Aang was being rebellious or unruly, of how Gyatso took care of Aang and protected him as best he could, the way we can with Zuko and Iroh. Thus, Iroh pretty much ends up elevating Zuko's character and arc, and people will declare their very favorite bond in the show is the one between Iroh and Zuko, as it's so very wholesome... and you don't really have anything comparable with Aang.

It also doesn't help that Aang is often shown as having the right morals and ideology whereas Zuko has to give up on his previous set of beliefs and change his mind about the world (whether he did it effectively or not, that's my eternal matter of debate...). A lot of people perceive Aang as just being a goody-two-shoes who's never in the wrong, whereas Zuko is often in the wrong and had to reason with that wrong in order to get things right. It's not a fair perception in my opinion, Aang makes a TON of mistakes, the difference is that the show actually calls him out on most of them (see Bato, where Aang doesn't ever pretend he didn't fuck up with the map and he's ready to accept the consequences of carrying on alone for his mistake; see The Chase, where his outburst at Toph sees him losing his earthbending teacher within a very short time of finding her, and he's shown regretting it right afterwards, even if we don't get an outright scene of apology between them; see Bitter Work, where Aang's entire fighting ideology is put to the test very cruelly by Toph until he finally set aside his ways in order to adapt to hers, and the list goes on), whereas Zuko is typically given justifications (whether because his backstory is very sad or because everyone else is being comedic/stupid and he's the only one with sense) and virtually nobody calls him out on things that he deserves to be called out on (and if they do, the way Katara does in The Western Air Temple, she's being extreme, unreasonable and horrible, and poor Zuzu, he doesn't deserve this!). So it's really funny that the show actually puts Aang through more lessons than it does with Zuko, but they're not the flashiest lessons, they're not a full-blown redemption arc, so all of it is easily dismissed as "that kid who effortlessly does the right thing and is morally perfect just because" when he really isn't that person at all... while Zuko is "that tormented teenager who struggles to distinguish between right and wrong but HIS HEART IS IN THE RIGHT PLACE!!!", and somehow Zuko having such gray and muddled morality makes him more interesting than Aang, whose own morality was pretty questionable at several points in time but nobody seems to find him more interesting for that. Instead, he's hypocritical or just inconsistent whenever he's not being morally perfect, but Zuko's fine exactly as he is :')

Zuko has a tragic backstory that's personal. Aang's tragic backstory is not quite so personal and much harder for certain individuals to connect to it. You don't need to be part of any communities that were victims of genocide to empathize with Aang, but people take his tragedy for granted because we don't have strong ties with Aang's past before the Hundred Year War. Therefore, the weight of his tragedy is mostly implicit and the majority of the people who absolutely prefer Zuko over Aang seem to take Aang's circumstances for granted rather than for the genuine, horrifying tragedy it is. Meanwhile... Zuko's tragic backstory is extremely relatable for anyone who can see their own life story projected onscreen in Zuko. His mother is gone, his father is neglectful at his finest times and outright violent at his worst, his sister makes fun of him and is favored by their father... whatever my opinion of the character may be, his story is so much more relatable for the masses who may or may not have experienced at least one of Zuko's problems personally, be it an absent parent, or a violent one, or an unhealthy competition with their siblings... I, personally, experienced the last thing but the irony is I actually connect with Azula's side of it rather than Zuko's, for reasons well beyond the toxic parent favoring either sibling :'D but that's not the point of this ask anyway xD Aang doesn't have a family, outright. Aang has friends he lost because they lived out their lives without him and died a hundred years ago: who in our day and age has experienced ANYTHING like that? Nobody has. Therefore, Aang's story doesn't really speak of personal experiences the way Zuko's does. Which doesn't mean people cannot empathize with Aang's struggle, but I do think the show dropped the ball quite a bit by not truly featuring Aang grieving over everything he lost. His quickness to adapt to a world a hundred years more advanced than the one he knew may be easily explained outwardly with "there wasn't enough screentime for anything else", but the times when we do see Aang's suffering for what it is are not enough to outweigh the countless times he had no sorrows to show us upon being confronted with a world so different from the one he'd known, upon having lost everyone he used to love, everyone who built him into the person we meet him as in the very first episode.

Zuko has a redemption arc that I take a thousand issues with, but it's still an arc that resonates with a lot of people who are touched by the message that they can grow and change and that their circumstances and background and toxic influences in life don't define them. People have projected a LOT of different takes and understandings of Zuko's growth, which has practically made him into a thousand different characters from who he really is (especially "softboi Zuko" is a real headscratcher for me), and they're practically doing whatever they want in order to make Zuko the character they need him to be... all of which they don't do with Aang. Why? Because Aang doesn't resonate with people remotely as strongly due to his own growth process being a lot more complicated than Zuko's. Aang is a careless kid, he doesn't want to be the Avatar, he wants to live a life of freedom and fun. Aang is thrust into the role of the Avatar, and yes, he has a lot of fun in his journey, but he has to step up and be the person he wasn't sure he was ready to be, and he goes through a LOT of crazy stuff in the process. Aang goes from being a perfectly silly, happy kid to this stressed-out pre-teen who will lash out at people (Sozin's Comet Part 1, even that Lost Adventures comic where he gets angry at Katara) whether his opinions are right or wrong, who shows us he can be REALLY fiercely protective of his animal companion, to the point of not caring about how he hurts others in his journey to reunite with him (he lashes out at both Katara and Toph in different ways after Appa is taken away). Seeing someone nice showing these sides of himself is all-around unpleasant. Identifying with a character who's cute and wholesome is all good and easy until the darkness of that character manifests itself in a less than agreeable way, and it just... spooks out people, I'd say? While the show doesn't exactly call out Aang for being unfair in his behavior in these instances, it also doesn't justify him treating his friends the way he does. Zuko, instead, gets all the justifications under the sun whenever he acts out :') in short, Aang's journey made him grow into his own as the Avatar, once again a concept that isn't relatable for most people since nobody is really "the chosen one" IRL and in Aang's case that role is a burden that's hardly treated as one by the source material. His story doesn't bring as many "feel good" interpretations as Zuko's does for the general fandom. Aang may be a good kid all-around and he may be fun and cute, but while his story can have the potential to be interpreted as a reeeeally beautiful empowering story of a boy's growth into becoming a man in a very unconventional way (rejecting violence rather than embracing it, finding a new path in order to fulfill his role as the Avatar, changing the world and setting it free from the tyranny of a terrible man and his awful ideology), most people just seem to interpret him as "the kid who can't make the difficult choices that need to be made" (AKA killing Ozai :'D completey missing the point...), "the childish protagonist", "the protagonist with the infinitely more interesting side-characters", and so on and so forth. I do think Aang maaaaay be getting a little more credit these days than he used to, but the general understanding I got from the typical anti-Aang crowds was that they completely, willfully misunderstood his character to vilify him while completely, willfully misunderstanding Zuko's character in order to deify him :')

*sigh* there may be more reasons but that's more or less what I can think of atm. Personally, I think both characters have their good and bad things, and I don't particularly stan either one. I do believe BOTH could have benefited infinitely from better writing, but ultimately, Zuko holds an appeal to the fandom that Aang doesn't. Aang has a lot of passionate fans too, there's no denying that, and I would like to think a fair number of casual viewers love Aang better than Zuko, but casual viewers aren't the ones who generally interact and participate in fandoms. Zuko is widely acclaimed and beloved, he's the confessed favorite character of most the ATLA staff (really, if you haven't watched the documentaries on how ATLA was made, there's a scene where the only one who says he likes Aang best is Michael, everyone else says Zuko), he has the story people find most compelling and most relatable, and he happens to be handsome enough for them to swoon over him too. Thus... *shrug* it is what it is. I really don't love or hate either Zuko or Aang, neither one is or ever has been my favorite character. I admit I am bothered by the one-sided analysis a lot of people make to put down one over the other (and typically with arguments that crumble upon themselves because they both commit similar mistakes and yet it's bad when one does it but not when the other one does it...), and the fandom's general vibe of just taking Aang for granted doesn't particularly sit well with me, no matter if he's not my favorite character. But it is what it is, and I think these are the general reasons for why the fandom has such a different attitude with both characters.