#post southern raiders

[sevrinve]

forgiveness 🌧

[dyingroses]

Some Avatar: The Last Airbender + AO3 tags

[snogards]

Headcanon that Zuko isn't just a master swordsman, but just really proficient with weaponry in general.

Swords, bows, spears, axes, knives, war hammers, crossbows, you name a weapon, and he probably knows how to use it well enough to teach you how to use it and then master it yourself.

He prefers his dual Dao because he's most proficient with them, but odds are that someone can just hand him a random weapon, and he can use it near perfectly.

When Zuko was younger and his bending still hadn't presented, Iroh used his connections to find him teachers like he did with Piandao in canon, because he didnt want Zuko to feel lesser (it majorly backfired but hey now he's got skills). For example, his archery teacher was a former member of the Yuyan Archers.

And then when Zuko’s fire-bending finally presented itself, he just kinda...kept up with it? Because he just learned how to use all these weapons freakishly well and weirdly fast, so why give it up after putting so much effort in? And now he's a prodigy in weaponry? Like yeah, that doesn't hold much weight in the royal family, but hey, it counts for something, right? He thinks to himself that his skill is gonna be useful at some point, right? Right, Uncle? This will be useful someday? RIGHT?

[theweeklydiscourse]

What’s with the ATLA fandom’s bizarre tendency to discuss Aang as if he’s a real-life kid? It’s gotten to the point where if you criticize the messaging of the show or certain writing decisions that are conveyed through Aang, people act like you’re picking on a real person with real feelings. Furthermore, he’s also not a paragon of wisdom, yet people talk about him as though he is based on his fictional circumstances in the narrative. These two issues are connected somehow, both claims ignore the fiction of the show and blur the lines between fictional dilemmas and real-life moral dilemmas. Ultimately, Aang is a vehicle for the morals that Bryke wish to communicate and consequently, their shortcomings, blindspots and biases surface in his character.

[stardust948]

Water/Fire ships doodle based off these poses from Pinterest

[zukosdualdao]

i've been seeing the take recently that what aang is actually encouraging katara to do is to forgive herself and that he’s not explicitly encouraging or expecting her to forgive yon rha.

the ironic thing is that i do think part of what katara needed from the experience of confronting yon rha was to let go of the guilt she held for her mother sacrificing herself for katara. i find this especially evident in the scene where she recounts the story to zuko and remarks that she's "not the helpless little girl" she was when they came, and how enraged she becomes when yon rha asks who kya was protecting. but though she ultimately chooses not to take revenge, katara facing yon rha and realizing what he did is about him and what kind of person he is and was never her fault is ultimately a good thing. it’s not an easy or fun experience, but i do think it was a very necessary one.

i might be somewhat less critical of aang in this episode if that actually was what he was saying (though if he went about it in the exact same way, i would still find it condescending and not a productive way of reaching out to her.)

but that’s just… literally not what he’s saying.

Zuko: Sokka told me the story of what happened. I know who did it and I know how to find him. Aang: Um ... and what exactly do you think this will accomplish? Katara [Shakes her head in dismay.] Ugh, I knew you wouldn't understand. [Begins to walk away.] Aang: Wait! Stop! I do understand. You're feeling unbelievable pain and rage. How do you think I felt about the sandbenders when they stole Appa? How do you think I felt about the Fire Nation when I found out what happened to my people? Zuko: She needs this, Aang. This is about getting closure and justice. Aang: I don't think so. I think it's about getting revenge. Katara [Angrily.] Fine, maybe it is! Maybe that's what I need! Maybe that's what he deserves! Aang: Katara, you sound like Jet.

i think this is the one interaction between aang and katara in which you could maybe argue that he wants her to forgive herself, as he brings up something he's expressed guilt about before, in the storm, (running away before the fire nation killed the air nomads), and she comforted him there and encouraged him not to feel guilty.

but the thing is, he doesn't say anything about how she shouldn't feel guilty. he tries to acknowledge what she's feeling, which is good, but if he was honestly trying to encourage her to forgive herself, i think he would remind her of how she comforted him when he expressed his own guilt. i'm not even totally sure how in tune he is with her guilt. it's not something he mentions when expressing he knows how she feels. (and this isn't me saying he's awful to not know that; it's not something he can necessarily know unless she's expressed it to him, which we haven't seen. but we have seen her try to connect with him over her mother’s death to empathize with him in the southern air temple, and he doesn’t really acknowledge it. so, i do think it shows he has an overly simplistic understanding of her emotions, and that he's not thinking about this in the framework of forgiving oneself.)

if the writers wanted to showcase him encouraging her to forgive herself, they could have had aang say something like, "i know how badly losing your mother must have hurt, but it wasn't your fault, and i'm worried that confronting the man who killed her won't help you."

instead, he immediately makes an argument about moral corruption - he thinks it is about revenge and expresses she sounds like jet because of it. that... is not encouraging her to forgive herself. it's a judgment based on morality. you can argue about whether aang's right or not (i, personally, find his stance reductive in context, but to each their own), but he is absolutely being judgmental here.

this is when the concept of forgiveness comes up:

Katara: Now that I know he's out there ... now that I know we can find him, I feel like I have no choice. Aang: Katara, you do have a choice: forgiveness. Zuko: That's the same as doing nothing! Aang: No, it's not. It's easy to do nothing, but it's hard to forgive. Katara: It's not just hard, it's impossible. [Cuts to overhead shot of the field as she walks away, Zuko following behind.]

in it, aang encourages forgiveness directly after katara expresses she feels she has no choice but to confront her mother’s killer. even if aang does mean forgiveness for herself, katara does not hear it that way, as is made evident by the fact she insists forgiveness would be impossible here, and if he does mean forgiveness for herself, i don't know why he wouldn't try to correct that misunderstanding.

Aang: So you were just gonna take Appa anyway? Katara: Yes. Aang: It's okay, because I forgive you. [Pauses.] That give you any ideas?

this might actually be my least favorite part of the episode. while it is generally not nice to take a friend's sky bison without permission, it is so genuinely condescending and a false equivalence to even try to compare that to the murder of her mother, particularly because of how smug aang is about his example of forgiving her for it.

also, aang is trying to "give [her] ideas" about what she should do, and it's clear he doesn't blame himself for katara taking appa. he is not forgiving himself here and telling her that’s what she should do. his point is that he's forgiving her and thinks she should do the same. (for the man. who murdered. her mother. and, while we're at it, would have murdered katara herself if he knew the truth. it is just... not the same situation at all.)

Katara: Don't try to stop us. Aang: I wasn't planning to. This is a journey you need to take. You need to face this man. [Katara situates herself on Appa's head.] But when you do, please don't choose revenge. Let your anger out, and then let it go. Forgive him.

aaaand there we have it.

aang 100% wants and tells katara to forgive her mother's killer. even if you think he also wants her to find healing (which i actually agree he does want for her, but i don't think he expresses it well/in a way that is likely to reach her, and the show acts like he is wise for this regardless) and forgive herself (if he does realize katara needs this, it's not something he expresses), he also very much does absolutely tell katara to forgive her mother's murderer, and that she won't find healing without doing so.

you can agree or disagree with his stance, but that is absolutely the argument he is making, and it’s weird to try to act like it’s not.

and, as i said before, i personally find it reductive. there are things in this world that we should be angry at. there are things people find impossible to forgive. those things may be different for everyone, but they do exist, and that's completely morally neutral. i find the idea that katara has to forgive the man who killed her mother in an act of imperalist violence in order to find healing and inner peace disturbing. no, actually, she doesn't!

this ideology is also very commonly weaponized against abuse survivors in particular, which is a big part of why it is significant that zuko goes with katara on this journey and defends her right not to forgive yon rha, even as he later also respects her decision not to kill him, which shatters the whole false dichotomy of forgiveness vs revenge being presented by aang’s role in the episode.

we don't actually see the talk in which zuko tells aang about what happened, but based on his perspective the whole episode, i very much doubt he framed it as "katara decided to forgive yon rha."

Aang: Zuko told me what you did. Or what you didn't do, I guess. I'm proud of you. Katara: I wanted to do it. I wanted to take out all my anger at him, but I couldn't. I don't know if it's because I'm too weak to do it or because I'm strong enough not to. Aang: You did the right thing. Forgiveness is the first step you have to take to begin healing. Katara [Rises from boardwalk.]: But I didn't forgive him. I'll never forgive him.

aang hears about what happened and assumes that because katara didn't kill yon rha, she forgave him, and katara corrects him. she (quite angrily) tells aang that she didn’t forgive yon rha, and she never will. katara knows exactly what aang was telling her to do, and even at the end of the episode, it’s clear she resents it and resents aang being “proud of her” for his assumption.

[theotterpenguin]

if the southern raiders had been written with a focus on katara and sokka’s relationship with each other and with grief, the conflict would have revolved around whether confronting someone who caused you trauma is necessary to heal or would only end up causing you more pain. both choices would be presented as equally understandable and a personal choice one has to make for themself, rather than manufacturing conflict over the “right” or “wrong” way to deal with grief to uplift one person’s moral philosophy over another’s.

katara, having looked into the eyes of her mother's murderer just before he killed her mother for protecting her, had a uniquely traumatic experience with her mother's death that was different from her brother. especially because katara ended on taking on her mother's role after her death, which is an emotional burden that sokka did not have to bear. sokka's trauma from his mother's death is tied more to the aftermath of losing his mother, and then later his father to the war rather than a personal hatred for the faceless man who killed his mother. this doesn't make his grief lesser, just different.

so it would only make sense that in the southern raiders, sokka would be opposed to katara going after yon rha. not because he doesn't deserve to die - because sokka is not a pacifist, he understands the realities of war. sokka would worry that facing yon rha would hurt katara more than it would ever help her heal. because for him, confronting yon rha would mean putting a face to the war that broke his family apart - a despicable person that he doesn't like to think about, a person that he would never want to see.

but katara is different. she needs this closure, she needs to face the terrible man who took her mother away and not be that scared little girl who ran away all over again. she needs this trip to deal with the survivor's guilt she's been carrying with her for the last six years. and it makes sense that sokka doesn't understand that at first. just as it makes sense that katara doesn't understand why sokka wouldn't want the same.

that's why at the end of the episode, katara is in a better state mentally than she was earlier. even though she is still conflicted over her choice not to kill yon rha, she needed to face the personification of her trauma, the representation of the childhood she lost, and that was what helped her heal - it really wasn't about choosing "peace" or "violence." and the episode should have ended with a conclusion between katara and sokka, in which both come to understand that the pain they experienced over their mother's death was different, and so they each had a different (but equally valid) way of coping with their grief.

(as a side note - this is also why zuko is the perfect person to accompany katara on her journey. they both have very similar experiences with grieving the loss of their mothers who sacrificed themselves for them, and both choose to confront the man who took their mother away from them, which helped them both to heal. zuko understands katara's need to face the person that has caused her trauma, even if sokka and aang do not understand at first because their experiences were different)

[sapphic-agent]

(Sorry for the small text at the bottom)

[nottoofortunatethoughts]

Hello my friends.. I am talking to you with a sad and heavy heart about what is happening to my children. They were deprived of their basic rights to food, drink and education. They need your donations. Please consider them your children. Donate to them. We need $50 a day to ensure the safety of children.😢🙏🏻🍉🇵🇸https://gofund.me/f4012f59

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[fabdante]

like idk if i was katara and i was carrying all that guilt about my moms murder and then some guy is like 'i can help you get some catharsis for that' and then everyone else started arguing with me about it i would get mad about it to asdfghjk i would probably be a little mean also

i would say some harsh things maybe

i would perhaps have a feeling or two

[bluewithpurplepolkadots]

I love Zuko as a character but honestly stans of his who hate Aang don’t seem to realise he would not survive their criticism if they gave him even a tenth of the level of scrutiny and bad faith takes they seem to hurl at Aang. Heck even after he joins the gaang and is basically hurtling towards the end of his redemption arc he’s hardly suddenly perfect in every possible way: and it’s not as if he receives any sizeable ‘consequences’ for the things he says or does either. People don’t even react to it much at all.

If Aang was in Zuko’s position they’d whine that Iroh shouldn’t forgive him at all or that it was ‘too easy for him’ I’m sure. Despite it being touted as the most heart warming moment of the show. He’d be pretty much torn to shreds if he called Zuko names or derided the FNs culture like Zuko did the Air Nomads.

They’d argue Aang ends up with everything he wants (he doesn’t: he’s literally the last airbender) and that he doesn’t deserve any happiness. They’d argue that it’s impossible for anyone to love someone who acts like him or that he doesn’t deserve love. Then again, they do those last parts already.

"Aang has violent destructive tantrums"

Zuko literally had tantrums in the show and threw a guy across the room for talking to Mai :)

Keep setting him up, please

[dyingroses]

Avatar: The Last Airbender + AO3 tags

[ecoterrorist-katara]

Zutara, romance novels, and the female gaze

Okay so I’ve been thinking about the female gaze a LOT so I checked out a subreddit about romance novels, despite never having read one. I came across this meme (which was initially a Tumblr post and then got posted to Instagram and then to Reddit and I’m now bringing back to Tumblr — Internet telephone, pls never change):

And…what is The Southern Raiders, if not a platonic grovel? Katara’s pain is central to the episode. It’s central to Zuko. Zuko asks Katara what he can do to make up for his betrayal; she demands the impossible. He reads between the lines, cockblocks her brother to get the necessary information, and then waits outside her door overnight (which he also did for Iroh, the one person we know for sure he loves). He basically makes himself a receptacle for her rage, and he holds space for her by coming with her on her revenge quest and carrying their bags and not saying a damn thing about what she should and should not do beyond like…asking her to rest. And obviously the grovel works! She forgives him and then they’re thick as thieves, bantering and fighting and saving each other’s lives, etc.

On a different note, I’ve been told that enemies to lovers is one of the biggest tropes in romance novels, similar to YA lit and fanfic. Here’s something else I found in the romance novel discourse:

And…yeah. In TSR, Katara really does show Zuko her worst self, because she doesn’t feel the need to perform for him. She doesn’t feel the need to perform moral perfection OR cold blooded vengeance. She bloodbends in front of him and he just goes with it. She doesn’t kill Yon Rha and he just goes with it. He doesn’t treat her any differently afterwards. Maybe they talk about it off screen, but I kind of like the idea that they don’t, because Katara doesn’t need to explain anything. And it’s so interesting, because some people in the ATLA fandom have a totally different read on TSR. They think Zuko was encouraging Katara to get revenge (by what, keeping his mouth shut?), and that Aang is the one who acts as her moral compass. I believe that either Bryan or Mike said in the DVD commentary that Aang is the angel on her shoulder the entire time. And this interpretation does make sense if you see it from the male gaze, where Katara as an object of affection is acting in an angry, irrational, threatening way. But if you see it from the female gaze, you recognize that actually it’s probably the most emotionally taxing experience Katara has to go through, and she doesn’t owe it to be nice or perfect to anybody. Katara’s formative trauma literally comes to a head, and she has to make a decision — no, a discovery — about who she is in relation to the tragedy that defines her life and even her identity (as a waterbender, as a parentified child who becomes the mom friend, as a genocide victim), and she’s accompanied by someone who trusts her judgement and validates her feelings.

I’m not saying TSR is explicitly romantically coded, but when it conforms so well to romance novel tropes…is it any wonder that so many people thought “yes this is her man?” And then he takes lightning in the heart for her and reaches for her when he’s literally dying, I will never be normal about that either

[queen-morgana91]

Fanon: Katara does all the chores

Katara and the actual canon:

Fanon: 4566545 posts about motherly Katara aka her whole personality it seems

Katara and the actual canon:

(mind you, she acts motherly due to her TRAUMA. She's a child, not the gaangs' mother)

Fanon: Katara see Aang as a brother

Katara and the actual canon:

Fanon: Katara doesn't have feelings for Aang, she was forced to have a relationship with him

Katara and the actual canon:

Fanon: Bloodbending Katara!! ❤ ❤

Katara and the actual canon:

Fanon: Katara doesn't want a family/children/grandchildren

Katara and the actual canon:

Fanon: Katara was reduced to Aang's wife

Katara and the actual canon:

(the most boring headcanon. Yes, Katara's writing in tlok was bad, it has a LOT of flaws and many times she was forgotten (like the rest of the gaang, i have a lot to say about Sokka, Suki, Toph and yes even Aang) but when and how she was reduced to "Aang's wife"? She was never treated as the "avatar's wife" and they didn't have a single scene together in that series. Stop imagining things 🤦‍♂️)

Fanon: Katara hates to be an healer/she has no agency/her desire for vengeance in The Southern Raiders is 'letting her be who she really is'/blah blah blah

Katara and the actual canon:

Just watch properly this fucking show, i'm not gonna bother anymore

[threalcrabbysamantha]

the southern raiders & misplaced anger

Saw people being weird about the Southern Raiders episode again, and I started a long response but it was sooooooo long, I thought I should just make a separate post. 

Here’s the thing: the Southern Raiders episode is about two things - on the surface it’s about Zuko, Katara, and misplaced anger. Thematically, though, this episode is about forgiveness and negotiating where forgiveness fits into the overturning of oppressive regimes. 

I’m just here to talk surface level today. Maybe one day I’ll delve into the thematic stuff (which I think is also so well done). What’s brilliant about this episode is that even the surface level hits more than just the surface - it’s complex, filled with a lot of subtext. Recently I saw someone lament that it’s weird that this episode seems to reinforce the idea that Katara blames Zuko because of her mom’s death - but this reading of the episode really takes things at face value, and I think we need to look deeper than that. 

What always strikes me about this episode is that before it happens, the audience sort of assumes that Katara is angry at Zuko because his actions caused a lot of harm to Aang. But once we get to her confrontation with Zuko, she names the source of her anger as something different: I was the first person to trust you, she says, and you turned around and betrayed me. This is the first thing she says to Zuko that makes an impression on him likely because it feels like the first real thing she says to him about her anger, beyond just aggressively taunting.

But it’s also…ridiculous. He “betrayed” her?? They had no agreement, no alliance! He chose his sister over some random girl he had one conversation with, an action that, as smart as we’ve seen Katara be, shouldn’t have been all that surprising to her. I think the wording here is very important that she trusted him and he betrayed her, because it should set off some alarm bells in your head, the absurdity of the accusation. And it points to the truth: Katara is directing her anger at Zuko, sure, but who is she really mad at? 

It has to be herself. She trusted Zuko, like an idiot, and then Zuko almost got Aang killed. That’s why, for the first time in the show, her anger spins her so out of control. Because she’s not putting the anger in the right direction, not working through it. Anger has a very interesting role in ATLA because the show never really suggests that anger, at its core, is a bad thing, which is a radical position for a kids show in 2005. Katara is the best evidence of this, since her anger 99% of the time is a life giving force interconnected with her hopefulness; the show celebrates her anger more often than it punishes it. But in TSR, her anger is killing her because it’s different than usual. It’s tied up her guilt, and instead of feeling it and working through it, she’s just pushing it on someone else. 

It’s also telling and important that Katara starts blaming Zuko for her mom’s death. Again, this is misplaced, but it’s no wonder she would be thinking about her mom in the wake of her renewed guilt over what happened to Aang. Her mom, after all, also died because of her. 

This is the crux of the episode: Katara feels intense guilt and anger over her mother, and she places it all on Zuko because let’s be honest - she blames herself for all of this, and it all ends up tied together, her guilt her anger. I have no doubt that the person she’s most angry at is herself, unable to do anything to save her mother. And then years later she turns around and trusts ZUKO, of all people - how stupid was that? I mean just LOOK at the way that Katara had spent years turning herself into a caretaker for everyone around her. At first this just seems like a trauma response to losing her mom at a young age - but once we know that her mom died to protect Katara, died in her PLACE - it becomes clear, to me anyway, that Katara making herself into a caretaker at 14 is wrapped up in her guilt and anger over her mom. It’s a punishment, in many ways; she has to take over her mom’s role because her mom died in her place.

Perhaps the final sort of evidence for me that Katara is actually mad at herself in this episode is that Zuko, king of self-loathing, becomes her mirror, her sounding board in this episode. People like to argue that Zuko takes Katara down a “dark path,” but he seems to me more like a beacon in the midst of her turmoil. Placing him next to her, it’s a poke to the audience. Remember? Zuko said not so many episodes ago that he was mad at himself. By the time he joins the gaang, his anger has clearly been redirected at his father; it’s closer now to the anger that Katara most often feels, that hopeful, life giving anger. And allowing Zuko to guide her through this side quest is a reassurance: Katara will work through her anger too.

At the end of the episode, Katara says she’s ready to forgive Zuko. I think this is why people take at face value that she was genuinely angry with him, that her anger at him was a pure expression of her rage and hurt and not a muddied one. But I’d argue that her verbal forgiveness of him isn’t about his “betrayal,” it’s about the themes of the episode - she’ll probably never forgive Yon Rha, she says, a vow to remember the wrongs done in the past - but by forgiving Zuko, she’s saying that she’s willing to collaborate for a better Fire Nation of the future, a more just world. And now that she’s been able to confront and work through her anger at herself, she’s in a balanced place to do so.

Honestly, I think if the true source of Katara’s l anger about all this really was Zuko, they wouldn’t have the relationship that they do by the end of the show. They clearly really trust each other and care about each other by the end, and I think that if Katara really felt betrayed like she says, she would have held back her heart a little bit, keeping them at allies but never quite friends.

And ya know what? This is one of those episodes of ATLA that refuses to spoon feed you the answers, which I really like. It offers a lot of subtext for good, old fashioned analysis and argument, and it’s why it’s one of my favorite episodes - plus it’s an episode that REALLY brilliantly puts the focus on Katara and complicates her character, and I love that. 

[katerina-q]

The dumb mischaracterization to make a dumb crack ship look better strikes again

Oh sure, killing someone out of anger is EXACTLY what Katara needed. I mean, this is the same empathetic girl who was traumatized that she used bloodbending, but who cares? OC Katara is better

Also ZUKO HIMSELF agreed with Aang in the southern raiders episode ( i know what's the point of this post) because Aang and Sokka knew her well, but who cares? Muh zutara is better

Angry vengeful murderer Katara is the real Katara it seems

Oh look, the canon series

Oh look, the canon series

Some of you should just stop talking about these characters, this is so painful