#something something aang at the center of zuko's redemption

[my-cabbages-gorl]

@zukaangweek Day 4: Free Day

[evilkitten3]

i love good sibling-evil sibling roleswap fics bc they can be extremely interesting but almost all of them end in reconciliation and happiness and whatnot, and while that's fine, it always seems to have the "evil" sibling coming back to the good guys' side after the good guys, y'know, talk to them, and very often doesn't seem to notice that the reason that didn't happen to the canon evil sibling is bc they didn't do that. it's the same in thor-loki swap fics as it is in zuko-azula swap fics (although the dynamics are somewhat different since the parental favoritism in atla is given to the "evil" sibling)

i keep thinking, if azulon had ordered ozai to kill azula instead, would she even bother to tell anyone? she certainly wouldn't tell zuko. if she told ursa, would she even believe her? would ursa take the same risk in killing azulon for her daughter's sake? bc i'm not sure that she would.

or, if azula somehow got banished (the circumstances would have to be different; there is no way azula would be that reckless in a meeting she wasn't supposed to be in, even if she managed to talk someone (definitely not iroh) into letting her in), would her mission be the same? would someone go with her, or would she be by herself? and if zuko never went looking for the avatar, how would that change him?

atla au fics very often have zuko end up on the good guys' side regardless of circumstance, and i feel like, intentionally or not, it's bc there's a belief that there's some sort of inherent quality he has that would make him have the opinions we in the real world would consider to be the morally right one, which i feel is sorta unfair to zuko as a character.

zuko's redemption arc is often portrayed as "he saw the effects of the war on the rest of the world and realized it was wrong", which is somewhat baffling to me bc every instance of zuko seeing the impact of the war occurs before the finale of book 2, meaning that seeing the damage the war had done wasn't enough to stop him from wanting to go home. zuko's redemption arc was deeply personal– it wasn't about other people. i don't think that's even really a bad thing, frankly - he's sixteen, and people are complicated. from the get-go, zuko's character arc has been self-centered, and i don't mean that in a bad way, it's not at all a bad thing. he wanted to capture aang so he could go home. he betrayed ozai bc he realized that ozai treated him horribly and he would never be able to be himself there. when he confronts ozai, he acknowledges that the war is and always has been wrong, but the thing is: he knew that already. he'd known that for a while by then. the knowledge that the war was wrong wasn't enough.

and to be clear, i think that's a good thing! i think that's good writing, that it makes zuko more complex and interesting. zuko knows right and wrong; even when he's an antagonist, he intervenes in situations where the fire nation soldiers are doing something he views as dishonorable. he's willing to stand up for what's right on a small scale, but it takes him a really long time to decide that what he should actually be doing is confronting the much bigger problem, and that's something he only becomes able to do once he realizes how bad the war and the fire nation have been for him.

zuko's redemption works bc it's an active decision he made (several active decisions, technically) that depended on him staying true to himself and abandoning conforming to the people who had power over him. a redemption arc for azula can't work like that bc they're not at all the same. for starters, while azula is also selfish, her character goals for most of the series aren't. they're still bad, bc she's an antagonist, but where zuko was acting to restore his own honor, azula's initial goals are to serve her nation (which is an evil nation, but that's not the point).

i think fics where zuko tries to get azula redeemed are quite interesting, but they often miss a key factor: one of the areas where azula and zuko are very similar is that they both absolutely despise feeling weak in any way. when iroh tries pressuring zuko into doing something he doesn't want to do, he tends to lash out– zuko doesn't like being controlled, and iroh eventually realized that zuko was going to have to come to the not-evil side on his own bc dragging him there forcibly just made him want to rebel. at the end of book 2, zuko chooses azula over iroh bc azula realized that it had to be zuko's choice, made for himself. iroh tried to push zuko to redemption before he was ready, but azula gave him a choice. ironically, iroh verbally acknowledges that zuko needs to choose, but he still opts to try and force his hand. both azula and iroh are being manipulative here, but the difference is that azula frames her argument as a choice zuko is not obligated to make, and iroh doesn't. zuko chooses to return, just as he later chooses to leave again.

forcing azula to try and gain "redemption" won't work for the same reason it didn't work for zuko. it would have the same effect– she would just lash out, only unlike zuko, as demonstrated here, azula is significantly more dangerous (and, depending on your interpretation of her breakdown, significantly less stable).

the reason a lot of attempts at azula redemption fall flat to me is that a) azula is often the only character who seems to need redemption, while mai and ty lee seem to have been declared good guys by the powers-that-be offscreen despite having never shown anything but full support for the war and being just as involved in the fall of ba sing se as azula, b) her redemption often being framed as something necessary not for any specific thing that she did but instead for simply being in the first place– pre-14yo azula didn't need redemption; her only crime was being kind of a dick to her brother (note that all of the pre-series being a dick to zuko occurred when azula was 11 or younger, bc zuko was gone for three years), and c) iroh is almost always in his little tea shop in ba sing se and everyone's completely fine with that.

i've rambled much more than i meant to so i'll finish up with one final thing i haven't been able to stop thinking about: it's been a while since i watched the show, so i may be misremembering, but i'm fairly certain azula never even implied wanting to be the fire lord until ozai told her he was passing the title to her.

Azula has already done this. Azula can breathe fire from her mouth like everyone else in her family. I know it’s not a big deal, but it always makes me laugh how people are so quick to remember Zuko’s fire vortex but forget that Azula has enough abilities to name her best fire bender just on paper via the same comics.

[hello-nichya-here]

If there’s one thing that I’ll never understand about some Zutara shippers is the need they have to show Zuko and Katara’s dynamic with each other, as well as their personalities, as literally anything except what it actually is.

They say shit like “Opposites attract” because of the whole Sun/Moon, Fire/Water thing, and completely ignore that Zuko and Katara are actually very similar when it comes to their personalities, temperament and regarding their emotiosn - both wear their hearts on their sleeves. “Symbolism” that completely disregards the characters that are supposedly being represented by it doesn’t actually symbolize anything.

There’s also stuff like acting like Katara was constantly forced by the rest of the Gaang to do everything by herself, never got thanked for it, and that kind, loving, Karl Zuko Marx showed up one day and helped her revolt, even though we see Katara fighting back whenever she feels disrespected in any way, Sokka literally has a schedule of the chores ALL OF THEM have, and the whole “Zuko is the only one who actually helps her” bullshit comes from the fact that he served everyone tea twice because he wanted to be nice to his friends and spent sometime having a job that he EXPLICITLY did not like and immediatelly dropped the second he had the chance to.

You also see people claiming they had such a strong connection even before Zuko joined the Gaang, and always secretly cared for each other, even though Katara was willing to leave him to die in the North Pole, explicitly told him that for a long time she saw his face as the face of the enemy, threatened him after she DID start seeing him as more than just the enemy only to immediately be betrayed by him, and  the only person in the Gaang that we see Zuko ever thinking about before his redemption is Aang (aka the actual first person to trust Zuko and give him a chance - the show fucked up big time by adding the ascended fanon of “Katara always knew there was good iin him”). They genuinely disliked each other and eventually developed a good friendship, which some people could want to see become more - why is that seen as less valid than “There was ALWAYS something there”?

We can also not forget how they tend to make Katara a typical doormat romantic lead that just lets the “sexy bad boy” get away with everything and is always trying to fix him, even though that is just not who she is at all - and as a bonus, that is also not at all the kind of girl Zuko is attracted to.

And finally we have the Southern Raiders. The episode that had Zuko’s entitlement rearing it’s ugly head, making him be frustrated and confused at the fact that Katara doesn’t like him despite having every reason to feel that way, using her trauma as a way to deal with that inconvenience only to then feel genuine empathy for her and even respect for her deceased mother, which leads to Katara forgiving him - while they both see that, while Aang was wrong to assume that she HAD to forgive her mother’s killer to be able to heal, he was right when he said violence wouldn’t fix things, even though the guy deserved it. This amazing, complicated, genuinely compelling episode centered around these two amazing characters, as well as the theme of struggling to process grieft, trauma, and the ugly side of it, get watered down to being about how heartless, selfish Aang didn’t care about Katara’s emotional needs, and how Zuko is totally the superior choice in this love triangle that is pure fanon that was only ever even sort of recognized (JOKINGLY) in canon because the non-canon ship ended up becoming super popular.

Somebody PLEASE tell me what is the point of claiming to ship Zutara when what these people actually ship are two OCs that have nearly nothing to do with the real Zuko and Katara?

[army-of-mai-lovers]

in which I get progressively angrier at the various tropes of atla fandom misogyny

tbh I think it would serve all of us to have a larger conversation about the specific ways misogyny manifests in this fandom, because I’ve seen a lot of people who characterize themselves as feminists, many of whom are women themselves, discuss the female characters of atla/lok in misogynistic ways, and people don’t talk about it enough. 

disclaimer before I start: I’m not a woman, I’m an afab nonbinary person who is semi-closeted and thus often read as a woman. I’m speaking to things that I’ve seen that have made me uncomfy, but if any women (esp women existing along other axes of oppression, e.g. trans women, women of color, disabled women, etc) want to add onto this post, please do!

“This female character is a total badass but I’m not even a little bit interested in exploring her as a human being.” 

I’ve seen a lot of people say of various female characters in atla/lok, “I love her! She’s such a badass!” now, this statement on its own isn’t misogynistic, but it represents a pretty pervasive form of misogyny that I’ve seen leveled in large part toward the canon female love interests of one or both of the members of a popular gay ship (*cough* zukka *cough*) I’m going to use Suki as an example of this because I see it with her most often, but it can honestly be applied to nearly every female character in atla/lok. Basically, people will say that they stan Suki, but when it comes time to engage with her as an actual character, they refuse to do it. I’ve seen meta after meta about Zuko’s redemption arc, but I so rarely see people engage with Suki on any level beyond “look at this cool fight scene!” and yeah, I love a cool Suki fight scene as much as anybody else, but I’m also interested in meta and headcanons and fics about who she is as a person, when she isn’t an accessory to Sokka’s development or doing something cool. of course, the material for this kind of engagement with Suki is scant considering she doesn’t have a canon backstory (yet) (don’t let me down Faith Erin Hicks counting on you girl) but with the way I’ve seen people in this fandom expand upon canon to flesh out male characters, I know y’all have it in you to do more with Suki, and with all the female characters, than you currently do. frankly, the most engagement I’ve seen with Suki in mainstream fandom is justifying either zukki (which again, is characterizing her in relation to male characters, one of whom she barely interacts with in canon) or one of the Suki wlw pairings. which brings me to--

“I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!” 

now, I will admit, two of my favorite atla ships are yueki and mailee, and so I totally understand being interested in these characters’ dynamics, even if, as is the case with yueki, they’ve never interacted canonically. however, it becomes a problem for me when these ships are always in the background of a zukka fic. at some point, it becomes obvious that you like this ship because it gets either Zuko or Sokka’s female love interests out of the way, not because you actually think the characters would mesh well together. It’s bad form to dislike a female character because she gets in the way of your gay ship, so instead, you find another girl to pair her off with and call it a day. to be clear, I’m not saying that everybody who ships either mailee or yueki (or tysuki or maisuki or yumai or whatever other wlw rarepair involving Zuko or Sokka’s canon love interests) is nefariously trying to sideline a female character while acting publicly as if she’s is one of their faves--far from it--but it is noteworthy to me how difficult it is to find content that centers wlw ships, while it’s incredibly easy to find content that centers zukka in which mailee and/or yueki plays a background role. 

also, notice how little traction wlw Katara ships gain in this fandom. when’s the last time you saw yuetara on your dash? there’s no reason for wlw Katara ships to gain traction in a fandom that is so focused on Zuko and Sokka getting together, bc she doesn’t present an immediate obstacle to that goal (at least, not an obstacle that can be overcome by pairing her up with a woman). if you are primarily interested in Zuko and Sokka’s relationship, and your queer readings of other female characters are motivated by a desire to get them out of the way for zukka, then Katara’s canon m/f relationship isn’t a threat to you, and thus, there’s no reason to read her as potentially queer. Or even, really, to think about her at all. 

“Katara’s here but she’s not actually going to do anything, because deep down, I’m not interested in her as a person.” 

the show has an enormous amount of textual evidence to support the claim that Sokka and Katara are integral parts of each other’s lives. so, she typically makes some kind of appearance in zukka content. sometimes, her presence in the story is as an actual character with layers and nuance, someone whom Sokka cares about and who cares about Sokka in return, but also has her own life and goals outside of her brother (or other male characters, for that matter.) sometimes, however, she’s just there because halfway through writing the author remembered that Sokka actually has a sister who’s a huge part of the show they’re writing fanfiction for, and then they proceed to show her having a meetcute with Aang or helping Sokka through an emotional problem, without expressing wants or desires outside of those characters. I’m honestly really surprised that I haven’t seen more people calling out the fact that so much of Katara’s personality in fanon revolves around her connections to men? she’s Aang’s girlfriend, she’s Sokka’s sister, she’s Zuko’s bestie. never mind that in canon she spends an enormous amount of time fighting against (anachronistic, Westernized) sexism to establish herself as a person in her own right, outside of these connections. and that in canon she has such interesting complex relationships with other female characters (e.g. Toph, Kanna, Hama, Korra if you want to write lok content) or that there are a plethora of characters with whom she could have interesting relationships with in fanon (Mai, Suki, Ty Lee, Yue, Smellerbee, and if you want to write lok content, Kya II, Lin, Asami, Senna, etc). to me, the lack of fandom material exploring Katara’s relationships with other women or with herself speak to a profound indifference to Katara as a character. I’m not saying you have to like Katara or include her in everything you write, but I am asking you to consider why you don’t find her interesting outside of her relationships with men.

“I hate Katara because she talks about her mother dying too often.” 

this is something I’ve seen addressed by people far more qualified than I to address it, but I want to mention it here in part because when I asked people which fandom tropes they wanted me to talk about, this came up often, but also because I find it really disgusting that this is a thing that needs to be addressed at all. Y’all see a little girl who watched her mother be killed by the forces of an imperialist nation and say that she talks about it too much??? That is a formational, foundational event in a child’s life. Of course she’s going to talk about it. I’ve seen people say that she doesn’t talk about it that often, or that she only talks about it to connect with other victims of fn imperialism e.g. Jet and Haru, but frankly, she could speak about it every episode for no plot-significant reason whatsoever and I would still be angry to see people say she talks about it too much. And before you even bring up the Sokka comparison, people deal with grief in different ways. Sokka  repressed a lot of his grief/channeled it into being the “man” of his village because he knew that they would come for Katara next if he gave them the opportunity. he probably would talk about his mother more if a) he didn’t feel massive guilt at not being able to remember what she looked like, and b) he was allowed to be a child processing the loss of his mother instead of having to become a tiny adult when Hakoda had to leave to help fight the fn. And this gets into an intersection with fandom racism, in that white fans (esp white American fans) are incapable of relating to the structural trauma that both Sokka and Katara experience and thus can’t see the ways in which structural trauma colors every single aspect of both of their characters, leading them to flatten nuance and to have some really bad takes. And you know what, speaking of bad fandom takes--   

“Shitting on Mai because she gets in the way of my favorite Zuko ship is actually totally okay because she’s ~abusive~” 

y’all WHAT. 

ok listen, I get not liking maiko. I didn’t like it when I first got into fandom, and later I realized that while bryke cannot write romance to save their lives, fans who like maiko sure can, so I changed my tune. but if you still don’t like it, that’s fine. no skin off my back. 

what IS skin off my back is taking instances in which Mai had justified anger toward Zuko, and turning it into “Mai abused Zuko.” do you not realize how ridiculous you sound? this is another thing where I get so angry about it that I don’t know how useful my analysis is actually going to be, but I’ll do my best. numerous people have noted how analysis of Mai and Zuko’s breakup in “The Beach” or Mai being justifiably angry with him at Boiling Rock or her asking for FUCKING FRUIT in “Nightmares and Daydreams” that says that all of these events were her trying to gain control over him is....ahhh...lacking in reading comprehension, but I’d like to go a step further and talk about why y’all are so intent on taking down a girl who doesn’t show emotion in normative ways. obviously, there’s a “Zuko can do no wrong” aspect to Mai criticism (which is super weird considering how his whole arc is about how he can do lots of wrong and he has to atone for the wrong that he’s done--but that’s a separate post.) But I also see slandering Mai for not expressing her emotions normatively and not putting up with Zuko’s shit and slandering Katara for “talking about her mother too often” as two sides of the same coin. In both cases, a female character expresses emotions that make you, the viewer, uncomfortable, and so instead of attempting to understand where those emotions may have come from and why they might be manifesting the way they are, y’all just throw the whole character away. this is another instance of people in the fandom being fundamentally disinterested in engaging with the female characters of atla in a real way, except instead of shallowly “stanning” Mai, y’all hate her. so we get to this point where female characters are flattened into one of two things: perfect queens who can do no wrong, or bitches. and that’s not who they are. that’s not who anyone is. but while we as a fandom are pretty good at understanding b1 Zuko’s actions as layered and multifaceted even though he’s essentially an asshole then, few are willing to lend the same grace to any female character, least of all Mai. 

and what’s funny is sometimes this trope will intersect with “I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!”, so you’ll have someone actively calling Mai toxic/problematic/abusive, and at the same time ship her with Ty Lee? make it make sense! but then again, maybe that’s happening because y’all are fundamentally disinterested in Ty Lee as a character too. 

“I love Ty Lee so much that I’m going to treat her like an infantilized hypersexual airhead!” 

there are so many things happening in y’alls characterization of Ty Lee that I struggled to synthesize it into one quippy section header. on one hand, you have the hypersexualization, and on the other hand, you have the infantilization, which just makes the hypersexualization that much worse. 

(of course, sexualizing or hypersexualizing ANY atla character is really not the move, considering that these are child characters in a children’s show, but then again, that’s a separate post.) 

now, I understand how, from a very, very surface reading of the text, you could come to the conclusion that Ty Lee is an uncomplicated bimbo. if you grew up on Western media the way I did, you’ll know that Ty Lee has a lot of the character traits we associate with bimbos: the form-fitting pink crop top, the general conventional attractiveness, the ditzy dialogue. but if you think about it for more than three seconds, you’ll understand that Ty Lee has spent her whole life walking a tightrope, trying to please Azula and the rest of the royal family while also staying true to herself. Ty Lee and Azula’s relationship is a really complex and interesting topic that I don’t really have time to explore at the moment given how long this post is, but I’d argue that Ty Lee’s constant, vocal  adulation is at least partially a product of learning to survive at court at an early age. Like Mai, she has been forced to regulate her emotions as a member of fn nobility, but unlike Mai, she also has six sisters who look exactly like her, so she has a motivation to be more peppy and more affectionate to stand out. 

fandom does not do the work to understand Ty Lee. as is a theme with this post, fandom is actively disinterested in investigating female characters beyond a very surface level reading of them. Thus, fandom takes Ty Lee’s surface level qualities--her love of the color pink, her revealing standard outfit, and the fact that once she found a boy attractive and also once a lot of boys found her attractive--and they stretch this into “Ty Lee is basically Karen Smith from Mean Girls.” thus, Ty Lee is painted as a bimbo, or more specifically, as not smart, uncritically adoring of Azula (did y’all forget all the non-zukka bits of Boiling Rock?), and attractive to the point of hypersexualization. I saw somebody make a post that was like “I wish mailee was more popular but I’m also glad it isn’t because otherwise people would write it as Mai having to put up with her dumb gf” and honestly I have to agree!! this is one instance in which I’m glad that fandom doesn’t discuss one of my favorite characters that often because I hate the fanon interpretation of Ty Lee, I think it’s rooted in misogyny (particularly misogyny against East Asian women, which often takes the form of fetishizing them and viewing them only through a Western white male gaze)  

(side note: here at army-of-mai-lovers, we stan bimbos. bimbos are fucking awesome. I personally don’t read Ty Lee as a bimbo, but if that’s you, that’s fucking awesome. keep doing what you’re doing, queen <3 or king or monarch, it’s 2021, anyone can be a bimbo, bitches <3)

“Toph can and will destroy everyone here with her bare hands because she’s a meathead who likes to murder people and that’s it!”  

Toph is, and always has been, one of my favorite ATLA characters. My very first fic in fandom was about her, and she appears prominently in a lot of my other work as well. One thing that I am always struck by with Toph is how big a heart she has. She’s independent, yes, snarky, yes, but she cares about people--even the family that forced her to make herself smaller because they didn’t believe that their blind daughter could be powerful and strong. Her storyline is powerful and emotionally resonant, her bending is cool precisely because it’s based in a “wait and listen” approach instead of just smashing things indiscriminately, she’s great disabled rep, and overall one of the best characters in the show. 

And in fandom, she gets flattened into “snarky murder child.” 

So where does this come from? Well, as we all know, Toph was originally conceived of as a male character, and retained a lot of androgyny (or as the kids call it, Gender) when she was rewritten as a female character. There are a lot of cultural ideas about androgynous/butch women being violent, and people in fandom seem to connect that larger cultural narrative with some of Toph’s more violent moments in the show to create the meathead murder child trope, erasing her canon emotionality, softness, heart, and femininity in the process. 

This is not to say that you shouldn’t write or characterize Toph as being violent or snarky at all ever, because yeah, Toph definitely did do Earth Rumbles a lot before joining the gaang, and yeah, Toph is definitely a sarcastic person who makes fun of her friends a lot. What I am saying is that people take these traits, sans the emotional logic, marry them to their conception of androgynous/butch women as violent/unemotional/uncaring, and thus create a caricature of Toph that is not at all up to snuff. When I see Toph as a side character in a fic (because yeah, Toph never gets to be a main character, because why would a fandom obsessed with one male character in particular ever make Toph a protagonist in her own right?) she’s making fun of people, killing people, pranking people, etc, etc. She’s never talking to people about her emotions, or palling around with her found family, or showing that she cares about her friends. Everything about her relationship with her parents, her disability, her relationship to Gender, and her love of her friends is shoved aside to focus on a version of Toph that is mean and uncaring because people have gotten it into their heads that androgynous/butch women are mean and uncaring. 

again, we see a female character who does not emote normatively or in a way that makes you, the viewer, comfortable, and so you warp her character until she’s completely unrecognizable and flat. and for what? 

Azula

no, I didn’t come up with a snappy name for this section, mainly because fanon interpretations of Azula and my own feelings toward the character are...complicated. I know there were some people who wanted me to write about Azula and the intersection of misogyny and ableism in fanon interpretations of her character, but I don’t think I can deliver on that because I personally am in a period of transition with how I see Azula. that is to say, while I still like her and believe that she can be redeemed, there is a lot of merit to disliking her. the whole point of this post is that the female characters of ATLA are complex people whom the fandom flattens into stereotypes that don’t hold up to scrutiny, or dislike for reasons that don’t make sense. Azula, however, is a different case. the rise of Azula defenders and Azula stans has led to this sentiment that Azula is a 14 y/o abuse victim who shouldn’t be held accountable for her actions. it seems to me that people are reacting to a long, horrible legacy of male ATLA fans armchair diagnosing Azula with various personality disorders (and suggesting that people with those personality disorders are inherently monstrous and unlovable which ahhhh....yikes) and then saying that those personality disorders make her unlovable, which is quite obviously bad. and hey, I get loving a character that everyone else hates and maybe getting so swept up in that love that you forget that your fave is complicated and has made some unsavory choices. it sucks that fanon takes these well-written, complex villains/antiheroes and turns them into monsters with no critical thought whatsoever. but the attitude among Azula stans that her redemption shouldn’t be hard, that her being a child excuses all of the bad things that she’s done, that she is owed redemption....all of that rubs me the wrong way. I might make another post about this in the future that discusses this in more depth, but as it stands now: while I understand that there is a legacy of misogynistic, ableist, unnuanced takes on Azula, the backlash to that does not take into account the people she hurt or the fact that in ATLA she does not make the choice to pursue redemption. and yes, Zuko had help in making that choice that Azula didn’t, and yes, Azula is a victim of abuse, but in a show about children who have gone through untold horrors and still work to better the lives of the people around them, that is not enough for me to uncritically stan her. 

Conclusion    

misogyny in this fandom runs rampant. while there are some tropes of fandom misogyny that are well-documented and have been debunked numerous times, there are other, subtler forms of misogyny that as far as I know have gone completely unchecked. 

what I find so interesting about misogyny in atla fandom is that it’s clear that it’s perpetrated by people who are aware of fandom misogyny who are actively trying not to be misogynistic. when I first joined atla fandom last summer, memes about how zukka fandom was better than every other fandom because they didn’t hate the female characters who got in the way of their gay ship were extremely prevalent, and there was this sense that *this* fandom was going to model respectful, fun, feminist online fandom. not all of the topes I’ve outlined are exclusive to or even largely utilized in zukka fandom, but a lot of them are. I’ve been in and out of fandom since I was eleven years old, and most of the fandom spaces I’ve been in have been majority-female, and all of them have been incredibly misogynistic. and I always want to know why. why, in these communities created in large part by women, in large part for women, does misogyny run wild? what I realize now is that there’s never going to be a one-size fits all answer to that question. what’s true for 1D fandom on Wattpad in 2012 is absolutely not true for atla fandom on tumblr in 2021. the answers that I’ve cobbled together for previous fandoms don’t work here. 

so, why is atla fandom like this? why did the dream of a feminist fandom almost entirely focused on the romantic relationship between two male characters fall apart? honestly, I think the notion that zukka fandom ever was this way was horrifically ignorant to begin with. from my very first moment in the fandom, I was seeing racism, widespread sexualization of minors, and yes, misogyny. these aspects of the fandom weren’t talked about as much as the crocverse or other, much more fun aspects. further, atla (specifically zukka) fandom misogyny often doesn’t look like the fandom misogyny we’ve become familiar with from like, Sherlock fandom or what have you. for the most part, people don’t actively hate Suki, they just “stan” without actually caring about her. they hate Mai because they believe in treating male victims of abuse equally. they’re not characterizing Toph poorly, they’re writing her as a “strong woman.” in short, people are misogynistic, and then invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of feminist theory to shield themselves from accusations of misogyny. it’s not unlike the way some people will invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of critical race theory to shield themselves from accusations of racism, or how they’ll talk about “freedom of speech” and “the suppression of women’s sexuality” to justify sexualizing minors. the performance of feminism and antiracism is what’s important, not the actual practice. 

if you’ve made it this far, first off, hi, thanks so much for reading, I know this was a lot. second, I would seriously encourage you to be aware of these fandom tropes and to call them out when you see them. elevate the voices of fans who do the work of bringing the female characters of atla to life. invest in the wlw ships in this fandom. drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic (please, drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic). read some yuetara. let’s all be honest about where we are now, and try to do better in the future. I believe in us. 

[sokkastyles]

I was sent this screenshot by someone telling me that the author of this post was using it as “evidence” that Zuko is selfish and disloyal to the Fire Nation, while Azula is selfless because of her loyalty to the FN, and was asked to answer the question: is Zuko selfish?

And I just have to say that this post is written in phenomenally bad faith, especially if it’s supposed to be proof of Zuko’s supposed selfishness.

So let’s get into it.

Zuko’s quest to capture the Avatar is certainly selfish, because his motives are based around what he thinks it will gain him (his father’s acceptance), but hardly for the reason this person seems to think it is.

As Katara says to him in Ba Sing Se, the fact that Zuko is willing to destroy the world’s last hope for peace if it means he achieves his goal is selfish, but pitting him against the Fire Nation “cause” hardly proves Zuko selfish, since destroying the world for its own gain is literally the Fire Nation’s goal.

That’s the first point that needs to be made. Loyalty to a regime that is built on selfishness and hate cannot be said to be selfless in any sense of the word. So the idea that Zuko is selfish for being disloyal and Azula is selfless for being loyal to a fascist regime where she exists in the top %1 is completely backwards.

Second, although Zuko’s motivation for trying to capture Aang before Zhao is selfish from a worldly perspective, it’s also pretty backwards to label him as self-interested and disloyal to the Fire Nation because the reason he wants to capture Aang before Zhao is because this is literally the mission he was given by his father, the Fire Lord. Ozai gave Zuko this mission as a punishment for what he saw as disloyalty, and convinced Zuko that it was the only way to redeem his honor.

Zuko is motivated entirely by proving his loyalty to the Fire Lord. And since the Fire Lord has total authority over his nation, loyalty to the Fire Lord is loyalty to the Fire Nation. Moreover, Zuko is convinced that this is the only way that he can be loyal to his nation, because in all other ways, he is considered by his father to be a failure.

Zuko isn’t motivated by personal glory here, he’s motivated by a desperate need to prove that he’s not a failure to his country and his father, and he believes this because this is what Ozai’s abuse conditioned him to believe.

Zhao accuses Zuko of disloyalty but he isn’t calling Zuko out on anything. Zhao believes Zuko is disloyal because that’s what Ozai said Zuko was, and he also knows that this is a trigger point for Zuko and he wants to push his buttons. Zhao himself is being pretty hypocritical here because he dismissed Zuko’s quest for the Avatar as foolishness until he realized that Zuko had actually found something.

And this is where we get to the cognitive dissonance that is characteristic of both abusive people and fascist regimes. “Disloyalty” as defined by Ozai is not obeying and being a failure, so Zuko has to bring back the Avatar. “Disloyalty” as defined by Zhao is Zuko holding back information so he can achieve the mission Ozai sent for him. Ozai most likely sent Zuko on this mission in the first place on the assumption that it would not be achievable, and Zhao also thinks this until he realizes that Zuko has actually discovered something.

I’m sure that if Ozai found out that Zuko tried to impede Zhao from capturing Aang he would brand it as disloyalty, but I think Ozai also purposefully sent Zuko on an unwinnable mission AND was prepared to punish him for “disloyalty” for not succeeding even though that was exactly what he expected him to do. It was only luck that Zuko ended up finding Aang in the first place, and that’s one of the reasons why Ozai restoring Zuko’s honor feels empty in book three.

And here’s the thing, which I’ve said before in response to these bizarre Ozai/Fire Nation apologist takes. You don’t owe any loyalty to anyone who doesn’t have any loyalty or respect for you.

That’s what Zuko eventually realizes, and it’s what he’s beginning to realize as early as here, in the third episode, as seen in his outburst at Zhao calling his father a fool if he thinks the world will follow him willingly. If he thinks people will fall in line by being subjugated by terror and violence.

Zuko knows on some level that he’s stuck in an unwinnable situation and that his father and the FN are wrong, even if he can’t really articulate it yet. Kids are smart, and they know when adults are putting them in unwinnable situations. They also know right from wrong. Kids become frustrated when they can’t do the right thing, and when they can’t please an unpleasable adult that has authority over them, and this is very much what Zuko is doing here. The harder he tries to beat Zhao, the more “disloyal” he is to the Fire Nation; the more Zhao is able to best him, the farther he is from proving his loyalty to his father.

This is actually one of the ways the show sets the groundwork early on for Zuko’s redemption by

1) showing us that the Fire Nation is not worthy of Zuko’s loyalty

2) Showing Zuko being put into increasingly impossible and contradictory situations due to his attempts to remain loyal to the Fire Nation; eventually “screw this I’m out” starts to look more and more like a better idea.

Zuko already knew this, of course, even before the series began, but he buries it deep because of the need for his father’s love. It’s why he stood up in a war room full of adults and demanded to know how the leader of his country could knowingly send loyal soldiers to their deaths. What happened to those soldiers is entirely a parallel to what Ozai did to Zuko.

It’s amazing but also terribly ironic that so many Azula “fans” don’t seem to understand this, either, and try to prop up Azula by showing how loyal she is to a cause that, in the end, destroyed her, as it would have done to Zuko if he hadn’t gotten out.

Zuko is loyal to Iroh because he knows on some level even at the start of the series that Iroh is the one person who isn’t going to gaslight him or manipulate him or hurt him while telling him it’s for his own good. The one person who doesn’t feed him the fascist lie of personal glory and destructive nationalism and instead offers him truth, love and acceptance.

Azula I guess is “selfless” if you consider that her entire sense of self is tied up with pleasing her father, as Zuko’s was at the beginning, but that’s not an admirable trait, that’s just being abused. 

As far as being selfless in her loyalty to the Fire Nation, again, she’s in the top %1 and considers herself as having the right to rule and the right to conquer other nations in the name of the Fire Nation. So loyalty to the Fire Nation is about what she gains and what she believes is her right. From a personal standpoint she is entirely self-centered, as she is cruel and manipulative towards others and sees them in terms of how she can use them. That’s the main difference between her and Zuko, that Zuko actually cares about others, although he tries to shove this impulse down at the beginning of the series, whereas Azula’s cruelty and disregard for those around her that she exhibited in childhood grew as Ozai fostered it.

[seyaryminamoto]

As someone, who's favourite character is Zuko, let me just say that your analysis about the Southern Raiders is spot on. Something about that episode (especially the way Zuko acted) always felt a little... off to me. And I could never figure out what it was exactly and considering the fact that discussion about this episode centered around the Kataang vs Zutara, I thought I was the only one who felt that way. So, I guess thanks for putting my thoughts into words.

Oh, I really feel ya, anon. If you actually don't look at the episode from a shipping point of view, which seems to be the focus of most the fandom, a lot of unpleasant things really start sticking out. I'm personally neutral to the Kataang vs. Zutara debate, I see good points and drawbacks to both ships, and no one's going to convince me that this episode proved the superiority of either pairing, especially when the shipping interpretations have never been important to me when analyzing this episode. People can say Aang is right in the end, they can say Zuko understands Katara's plight better (which, considering Aang has lost even more people he loved than Zuko has, he certainly should have understood Katara's suffering quite well too), but focusing on whether Zuko or Aang are the angel or the devil on Katara's shoulders practically blinds everyone to the very glaring and mindboggling flaws in this episode's writing, imo.

In general, the concept of Zuko's life-changing field trips with the three Gaang members he'd wronged the most is fine and fun for most people, but from the first time I watched the show it felt like the production team knew they were pressed for time and needed some veeeery quick and effective solution for Zuko to gain acceptance in the Gaang ASAP despite all the bad blood there. I can imagine a lot of people love these episodes, but admittedly I wouldn't rank any of them among my favorites because, as interesting as some of their concepts could be, if executed right, my immersion certainly wasn't as strong as with the rest of the show due to the nagging feeling that this was all for the sake of redeeming Zuko in the eyes of each Gaang member... and not necessarily in the eyes of the audience.

They get away with it, of course, because by this point in time, the audience is 100% conditioned to love the Gaang and Zuko, and if you see them getting along, you should be rejoicing in their team-up... but if you put some emotional distance between yourself as a viewer and the events of these episodes, their writing leaves a lot to be desired, especially in the concept of giving Zuko a quick whitewashing in the eyes of Aang, Sokka and Katara, one after the other, so they can genuinely accept him as a teammate and friend. If we'd seen similar trips frequently or occasionally in the rest of the show, with two specific members of the team taking off on an adventure by themselves, it might not be so glaringly obvious (and even... artificial? I guess?) that they're trying to quick-redeem him for each of them here, but on top of it happening thrice, it's literally happening one after the other, too. There's no episodes in-between, it's just literally a four-parter arc of "let's help Zuko become friends with these three".

The plotlines to be dealt with in these episodes are basically catered to each Gaang member, tailor-made life-changing field trips based on whatever they'll value the most, all of it conveniently possible and doable in the span of time they have between Zuko's joining of their group and the show's finale. Aang needs to learn firebending, Sokka needs to save his dad, Katara is permanently grieving for her mother's death. And so, Zuko to the rescue! If he helps them with their personal character quests, he gets 50+ approval points! :'D Honestly, I'm absolutely not against the notion of Zuko befriending them, obviously not, but the methods through which they chose to make it happen simply might not be the finest...?

Zuko loses his ability to bend because he "lost his rage", but he's still angry pretty often, the show even spoofs its own writing by showing him losing his patience at Sokka... while at the same time trying to sell that Zuko "isn't angry" anymore? Zuko helps break out random prisoners from the Boiling Rock without taking a single moment to actually learn who they are, why they were locked up, and without pondering if they deserve to be helped or if perhaps they're genuinely dangerous? Zuko gives Katara every possible tool and information she needs to take revenge on Yon Rha, because, loosely quoting his own words, he "cares what she thinks of him"...?

How about if we'd seen Zuko trying to connect with Fire Nation people, to help his fellow Fire Nation citizens, especially the ones who were living in dreadful conditions, like the ones in the Jang Hui river village? How about if we'd seen Zuko saving lives rather than threatening to take them? How about if we'd seen Zuko actually reasoning with his anger, and either working his way out of it, or repurposing it consciously, or making legitimate, personal efforts to find a new source of strength for his firebending through self-reflection, above all else?

We didn't really need sudden one-on-one field trips to teach Aang, Katara and Sokka to trust Zuko: we needed Zuko to prove himself worthy of that trust, to show how much he has changed, to literally contrast his new behavior with the old, to actually see that the guy no longer jumps into violence-mode 24/7, that he's willing to listen to other people's opinions or wisdom, that he wants to learn better when he knows he's misguided or misunderstanding something or another. Would he have become BFFs with any of them in four episodes if this had happened? Well, it definitely would have happened with Aang, the other two would have been trickier, but they definitely would have been more willing to accept him if they actually got to SEE that the changes in Zuko weren't skin-deep. Katara can be as thick-headed and stubborn as she may want to be, but I have no doubts she wouldn't have been able to hate Zuko as much as she used to if she'd seen him helping people, much like she often wants their group to do. But instead, they don't get to see the actual changes and growth... they just get their biggest goals and wishes satisfied, and that's enough to decide Zuko's trustworthy, no matter whatever sketchy behavior he displays in later episodes.

I absolutely appreciate the worldbuilding context we gain for the raids on the Water Tribe through The Southern Raiders, but I don't think this was an organic way to tell the story of how Zuko became friends with the Gaang. If pressed, I'd even say that Zuko's overt desperation to be their friend is OOC, to a degree: if this guy actually knows how dangerous his father's plans are (and he's supposed to :'D), how isn't he focusing on that side of things, when he's always been such a go-getter? It's not like he grew out of this sort of ends-justify-the-means behavior, seeing as he's absolutely obsessed with stopping his father ASAP, by any means possible, in the finale, when there was no such urgency to be found ever since he joined the Gaang. How isn't he more worried about stopping Ozai than about becoming best friends with the Gaang? Immediately sharing everything he's learned about Ozai's intentions of destroying the whole world might not make them friends instantaneously, but it would certainly get someone like Sokka to take his information seriously and immediately begin strategizing how to counter Ozai's plans. Instead, Zuko spent all those weeks, over a month, even, teaching Aang firebending, going on field trips and hanging out with his new friends in Ember Island. Once you have all the cards on deck and you actually look at all of them at once, doesn't it feel like there were so many more ways to achieve what the show was going for, far more effective ways than through the "let's be friends with Zuko" arc?

Ultimately, there's very little display of growth, in my opinion, in this small arc, on Zuko's side, despite the most obvious and reasonable way to earn the trust of the Gaang would be by outright showing them how much he's grown. I won't deny I appreciate that the writers respected his personality and didn't just warp him into the perfect good softboi the way the fandom apparently interprets him, but even if Zuko was going to be cranky and speak one-liners like "I'm never happy", it wasn't impossible to write better situations for him to connect with the Gaang's members and gain their trust. Even if the writers were set on having these episodes happen exactly as they did, they absolutely could have been written in a much better way, to create an explicit and direct contrast between Zuko's early behavior and the new Zuko's behavior when it comes to things that matter (most the parallels I've seen the fandom drawing are things like "oh look he hated tea before but now he brews it for his friends! So much growth!"... would've been nice to see the growth when it came to a lot of other things, too, if the growth really was there? Am I rite...?).

I may just be influenced by other redemption arcs that focus mainly on characters having common goals and working together to achieve them, then becoming friends in the process... but I really don't see how Zuko's character benefited from these episodes. Yes, bridges were built... but they absolutely could have been built in a more organic way that didn't make people like myself (and a few others) question if Zuko had learned or grown at all, considering the way he behaves isn't all that distant from the Zuko we've seen and known throughout the rest of the show. And the fact that he really seems to have learned nothing in The Southern Raiders once you reach the show's finale... you're basically asked to take for granted Zuko did learn a lot of lessons because he says he did, to assume he's going to put them into practice sometime in the future despite he has chances to do it during the show itself but never does, simply because they drop the ball upon every opportunity to show how much he's changed.

I really don't blame his character at all, when it comes to these shortcomings... it's seriously, genuinely, a problem with the writing department. Take a look through the fandom and you'll see thousands of people who claim Zuko's character arc is the most touching, complex and beautiful writing they ever have seen... and why? Because we're in the face of tell-don't-show :'D most people's perception of Zuko's character are based not so much on HOW Zuko displays his growth, it's strongly based on him stating he made progress, even if there's too many instances where the growth simply seems to have fallen to the wayside or gone forgotten for the sake of a plotline or another. Zuko absolutely could have been written far better than this, he could absolutely have the redemption arc his fans are sure he does have, but for me... there's way too many gaps in logic, too many missed opportunities, to truly think his growth was as extraordinary as a lot of people are hung up on saying it was.

[lesbianarmin]

alright since some shit is going down in the avatar fandom because of the absolute bullshit that is netflix's live action series, i gotta throw in my two cents on something a bit controversial:

katara and zuko would not work. sorry, i had to say it.

katara's character is centered around not only her strength and determination, but her loyalty and strong principles, especially when it comes to those she loves, and her culture. she is incredibly practical. part of her development is letting go of some of the pain her past has caused her, and learning to be a kid again. she's already gone for the "broken bad boy redeemed" with jet, and i don't think she would do that again with zuko.

while i love zuko, and believe he had an incredible redemption arc, and that he's nothing like this family, he still hurt katara. there were many instances where they faced each other in battle, and his family destroyed her family and most of her culture. that's not the kind of trauma you just get over. being with him would remind her of so mang things she has tried to let go of.

while i do believe that zuko and katara would be great friends, and that katara would forgive zuko, i don't think she would fall in love with him. instead, i believe she would fall in love with the person who brought the fun back in to her life. the one who she regularly risked her life for without a second thought. she'd go for the person that has always made her laugh, and taught her how to be a kid again. katara and aang are soulmates.

tl;dr: zutara would not make any sense given their character development and family history, and katara and aang make sense and have the development to support their relationship.

[posaja]

Sooooo I've been thinking a lot about this and I've decided that I want to write a season 4 for Avatar. I even have an idea for first episode. But I honestly I think that can't do this by myself, so if you're interested in writing it with me dm.

But here are somethings I would like to say before anything:

It would totally ignore the actual canon, what I mean is that it would ignore every single post-Canon comic, and also every single background stories that comes out of them, like ursa's or ozai's or any other, and LoK. Being our only source the actual series.

It would take a lot of ideas from the rumor book 4 by Aaron.

It would center around family and finding it, so it would center around Zuko's search for his mother, Aang searching for Air Nomads and Toph's reconciliation with her parents.

Would also have an arc for Azula's healing, and if we can figure it out maybe even a redemption.

This one is very important, every canon relationship would be broken up at the beginning, except maybe Sukka. Yes my OTP is zutara, but this doesn't mean that I'm not willing to explore other relationships, and this is why I want them all to be broken up, so we can explore better every single characters feelings towards each other and develop their romantic relationships better. We will let the natural interactions of the characters built the relationships.

This one is also very important, this is fan work, and for fun, so we will not be making any profit out of it.

I would even compromise myself to do some storyboards for it, I'm not a professional but is something that I really enjoy doing and I've been doing it almost for two years, I'm even actually working on one right now.

[theemptyskies]

As I'm working though my first draft of a longer project, I find my mind wandering to both other projects I've started in the past and new ideas. Naturally they all center around my favorite ship, Azutara. So I figured I'd post some of them here and see which ones people would be most interested in reading.

Old Idea: Katara was the one to defeat Azula during the final Agni Kai. The Fire Sages being aware of this, begrudgingly inform her that she's the rightful Fire Lord. While her technical royal heritage does smooth things over with some, she still has no knowledge of how to navigate a political landscape. So, feeling overwhelmed, she turns to Azula, offering her a chance at redemption in exchange for being an advisor. Azula doesn't care about the redemption side but does care about her nation, so she agrees. Thusly they grow closer over time. The struggles they run into are obvious. I'm admittedly not very familiar with politics, especially within a monocratic society, but I do think this could be fleshed out to be something incredibly interesting, perhaps ending with a royal wedding.

New Idea: Toph misses the days if her Earth Rumble career. So after working out the rules with Sokka, they create the sport known as Pro-bending. Katara was called in as thier teams waterbender. What she wasn't prepared for was the Fire Nation Princess being volunteered to be the team's Firebender. Zuko thought the sport would be a good outlet for Azula's competitive nature while also giving her a place to use her bending. Can these two learn to work together? Will Toph be able to maintain her sanity as her teammates are constantly at eachother's throats? Perhaps there will be a conflict with the rising Gangs trying to pay money to influence the matches. This idea isn't fleshed out at all but I think it could be interesting.

Past idea: Katara is kidnapped on the day the Southern Raiders attacked the SWT when she's 5. She's purchased as a servant by Hama who raises her to Waterbend, bloodbend and hate Firebenders. She's sold to the palace to be a Servant, Hama intending for her to one-day attack the royal family. However, Hama didn't account for her growing close to the younger royal sibling within the palace. This is as far as I ever got with the idea. I'd like to flesh it out more one day, having Katara become part of Azula's team and eventually leading to her joining the Gaang. I think playing around with a morally gray Katara would be very interesting.

Past Idea: Azulon knew Ozai favored his younger child. So, instead of ordering Zuko's death, he chooses Azula instead. Ursa overhears Azula telling Zuko and with the help of Iroh, has her sent to the NWT. During the journey, Iroh imparts a bit of wisdom. She's raised by Pakku and eventually meets Katara when the Gaang reaches the North. Azula leaves with the Gaang, deciding to be Aang's firebending teacher and intending to take the throne when Ozai is defeated. This one I would personally have a hard time writing but I think it sounds interesting.

What do you all think? Which one sounds the most interesting to you?

[the-badger-mole]

I know you answered q10- I was expecting sth from the show tbh. But anyway, I agree with that perfectly too. So much that I will have to write a whole book about Ursa being found (Ugh). I also read ur post about Mai "turning" and wow that's exactly what I thought. It made zero sense. Anyway a couple of more qs then: What do you think of Sokkla or any other rarepair ships? I dig sukka, but ever once in a blue moon, I will get crazy sokkla moments, hehe. Do you prefer fluff or angst in Zutara?

Sometimes you have to say a little more, especially if I've already responded to a question. Just saying. But to answer your question, my least favorite arcs in the series are pretty much anything centering Aang's lack of development. Any time Aang does something stupid or selfish or judgmental with no consequences or lessons to be learned, just assume I'm in some dark corner losing my lunch.

Mai's turn at The Boiling Rock was so out of left field, I don't think it's even fair to call it an arc, frankly. But if I were to say what failed in her arc, it's that the writers didn't let her be a complete hedonist with no real skin in the game except her own comfort and pleasure. Give me that version of Mai. We deserve Maleficent.

I am not a fan of Sokkla. I am firmly team "Ship What You Want", but honestly, I don't get the appeal. I have seen some really talented writers broach the ship, but it makes no sense to me- especially in-universe. Sokka is a lot quicker to forgive than Katara, but I don't see either sibling having an especially warm relationship with Azula. I've given my opinion on what I think Azula's redemption would look like, and I don't think she would work very hard to become friends with any of Zuko's found family, much less fall for one of them. I guess there's a version of this ship that I could see happening in an AU, but I really don't think either of them would be each other's type if they're in character.

Also, I love Sukka. I think it's the only ship that canon got right, so they hold a special place in my heart. That said, I'm fine with Yukka (although I'm not sure just how rare that pair is?)

I've talked myself into ToRu (Toph and Haru) completely by accident. I wrote one platonic interaction between them in one of my fics, and my brain just kind of ran with it. But now that it's in my brain, I think they would be adorable together- you know, when they're older. It starts out as pure admiration of Toph's skill on Haru's end, and Toph finds his brand of chill endearing.

The rarest pair I ship is probably Jun/The Boulder. It's not even something I've put that much thought into, I just think they'd get along.

As far as the types of Zutara fic I like, I prefer stories with a happy ending for them. Angst is fine, but sparingly, like salt. It hurts my heart when they don't get together in the end. I mean, I've written two fics where they don't get to be together, but we won't discuss those here.

[muertawrites]

Two Halves - Chapter Twelve (Zuko x Reader)

Part 11

Word Count: 3,000

Author’s Note: Let’s talk about Azula. I know a lot of people really want a redemption arc for her, and it’s something that’s written a lot in the fanfic community, but (like everything else) I have an unpopular opinion about her - I don’t think she deserves a redemption arc. This doesn’t mean I think she’s a bad character. I actually think exactly the opposite - she’s so perfectly written that I feel changing her to make her any less problematic would ruin her. 

Characters can be great without ever redeeming themselves, and Azula is a perfect example of one of A:TLA’s major themes - that there’s no such thing as absolute good or bad - in that she’s clearly vindictive, manipulative, egotistical, and sociopathic, but the way the series leaves her convinces the watcher to feel sympathetic towards her. It’s such a beautiful destruction of preconceived notions in fiction that I don’t think it needs to be touched. Azula is evil, but I love her that way. 

~ Muerta

Appa’s feet don't touch sand until late evening, by which time it feels like you've been flying for weeks.

A group of about twenty guards is waiting when you land, each of them wrapped from head to toe in white gauze; the woman at the front of the group removes her face covering and introduces herself as the warden of the compound, her expression hard and motionless behind sun-darkened skin. She leads you through a maze of buildings enclosed by high, interlocking stone walls, to an empty store room that’s been converted into a bedroom for your stay. 

“We only have what we need out here,” she explains. “The guards’ bunks are all filled, and we don't typically have guests. I'm sorry we couldn't give you more appropriate lodging.” 

“It's alright,” Aang assures her. “We’re used to sleeping rough.” 

Dinner is composed of a combination of dried meat and pickled vegetables, paired with water from a well in the center of the surrounding block of buildings; you're advised only to use it for drinking and not to bathe, saving it for the guards stationed at the compound. Even after the sun sets, the air feels arid and scorched, the sweat dripping down the back of your neck doing nothing to cool you. 

“It's awful out here,” you remark as you settle into your bed roll for the night. “I can see why Sokka went insane.” 

“Sokka went insane because of hallucinogenic cactus juice,” Katara corrects you, smirking at the memory.

“I can't believe I missed most of that,” Aang laments. “He must've been a handful.” 

“You had more important things to worry about,” Katara softly reminds him. She wraps her arms around his shoulders, placing a tender kiss atop the crest of his head; you look away, your stomach churning uneasily at the intimate display. 

You lay and attempt to sleep for the next few hours, finding yourself unable. The ground is too hard beneath you, your thin blankets too heavy and hot. You toss and turn over and over again, trying to find a comfortable position that seems not to exist. Your mind races and refuses to slow down. 

Despite your guilt over doing so, you go out to the well and fill a small basin, splashing your face with warm water in the hopes it'll make you feel better. Katara joins you a moment or two later, having noticed your unrest. She dips her hands into the water and runs them comfortingly through your hair to cool you off. 

“What's wrong?” she asks. 

You sigh as you lower yourself onto the base of the well, holding your knees to your chest. 

“I'm worried,” you admit in a murmur. 

Katara sits down beside you and rests her hand on your arm. 

“Aang and I won't leave until after you speak with Azula,” she promises. “And even then, we’ll be right outside the room the entire time. You're not doing this alone.” 

You shake your head, afraid to look her in the eye. 

“That's not it. When you go to the Northern Air Temple… they're going to expect me to get pregnant, too. But I'm not ready to have a baby, and I don't know if I'll ever be.” 

Katara curls her arms around you, pulling you into her lap in the motherly way she used to do when you were kids. She strokes your hair, and you nestle into the fabric of her night gown.

“What does it feel like?” you wonder. Your voice is nothing but a breath. “To… have sex?” 

Katara’s hands pause their ministrations. She sits absolutely still for a moment, gazing off as she mulls the question over. 

“... It hurts,” she says after a while, “but only at first. Then it feels exciting. It's sort of like getting hit by lightning, but gently, over and over again. You feel it in your whole body; it's unlike anything else. The best part is being so close to someone you love in a way that nobody else will ever be close to you. It’s like magic.” 

“But I don't love Zuko,” you reply. “I didn't choose him like you chose Aang. How could it be the same for me?” 

“You did choose Zuko,” Katara contests. “Do you think Dad would have forced you into marrying him if you fought hard enough against it? You might not have chosen him because you love him, but there's a reason you're together. I think you will love him. There's something about the two of you that just… fits. I've never been very good with intuition and even I could feel it the first time I saw you together. You will love each other; and we both know Zuko cares about you too much to force you into anything before you're ready. Trust him. Follow what you feel for him.” 

You sigh, shutting your eyes tightly as the weight of the desert heat squeezes down on you; nonetheless, Katara’s hands are chilled as they begin to rework the braid knotted down your back.

“I know he’ll protect me,” you say. “That's all he's done since we met. But I don't know if I want to be protected.” 

“You don't have to be,” Katara tells you. Her voice is soft and serious. “You've never let anyone tell you what to do; not even now.” 

“Keeping that up is dangerous though,” you whisper. “Doing the wrong thing could get me killed - it could get Zuko killed, or you, or any number of people I care about. And I've been really stupid about it up until now.” 

“Has Zuko ever talked to you about redirecting lighting?” Katara asks. 

You shake your head. 

“It's a water bending technique,” she explains. “The idea is that you take your opponent’s force and turn it back against them, but you have to keep your own energy steady to be able to do it.” 

She takes one of your hands between both of hers, pressing it tightly between her palms.

“Keep doing what you're doing,” she urges. “If one of us gets hurt, you can't let the loss break you; you have to use it to fight back. Anyone who wants to destroy you needs your permission to do so.” 

You sit up so you can look her in the eye; her expression is resolute, brows drawn together with  agency and concern. Your arms fall around her, pulling her into a tight embrace; she holds you close as you bury your face in her hair. 

“It'll be okay,” she promises. “You'll survive; it’s what we do.” 

The next morning, you meet with Azula’s psychological counselor before going to see her. 

The center of the compound is devoted entirely to the disgraced princess and her keepers, each of them living within the bounds of a large wall lined with guards every few feet. Her counselor’s home is divided from the main house by an ornate fence, painted red and black and gilded with gold detail; guard houses stand at either side of the gate. 

“This part of the compound is designed to look like a Fire Nation neighborhood,” the counselor explains. “We don't live luxuriously by any means, but a homey atmosphere is important to Azula’s rehabilitation.” 

“How has she improved?” Katara asks. 

You remember her retellings of what would've been Azula’s coronation, how she lost her mind with power and corruption. Thinking back on them, you almost pity her. 

“She's much more stable than she used to be,” the counselor states. “We know her vindictive behavior will never go away and that her condition prohibits her from understanding or feeling empathy, but she's learned not to act on those tendencies. She's also greatly overcome the anger her father instilled in her.” 

“I need something I can use as leverage,” you say. “Zuko’s told me that everything she does is a negotiation, and I need something to trade for her insight.” 

The counselor nods, tapping her fingers against the table you're seated around in thought. 

“The information alone won’t be enough incentive for her,” she concludes. “She’s seemingly lost interest in the outside world or trying to get out of the compound in the past few years, but I have a feeling she’ll use that to try and get more out of you. Perhaps offering her a chance to see her father will hold useful.” 

“She still wants to see him?” Aang gasps, incredulous. “After everything he did?” 

“She blames him for the breakdown she suffered at the end of the war,” the counselor elaborates. “She’s expressed a desire to confront him for years, and I’d like to help her find the catharsis in it without setting her back in her rehabilitation.” 

“We’ve spoken about the possible need for execution,” you say; your voice is meek, the shame making it difficult to meet the counselor’s eye. “Would the threat do anything? As a last resort?” 

“... I don’t know,” the counselor admits. “It truly depends on her mood. She swings between bouts of stability and episodes of deep, manic depression; were she depressed, the threat wouldn’t do much. She unfortunately is always on the brink of an episode, and I don’t think death is much of a fear to her.” 

You nod, unable to respond any other way. 

“Be civil,” the counselor advises, “but don’t let your guard down. She’s improved greatly, but she’s still extremely dangerous.” 

Azula’s home is quaint, consisting of only four rooms, but is every bit the palace she grew up in compared to the rest of the compound. The walls are painted deep, warm crimson, every inch decorated in elaborate murals; in the dining room where you meet, images of giant salamanders curl around pillars of forest and flame - they're terrifying, but as beautiful as any more traditional work of art. 

When Azula enters the room, she smirks at you. You're stricken by the fact that she looks nothing like her brother, her features much softer and rounder, save for her eyes and brow bones which are drawn downward in a permanent scowl; it occurs to you that while Zuko closely resembles  their father (something you've learned he resents), she’s almost a perfect mirror of their mother. Her clothes are simple - a shapeless dress over loose trousers - and her hair is knotted messily behind her head, loose tendrils falling carelessly around her face. Her cheeks are gaunt, years of living on only what the compound can provide clearly having taken their toll. 

“So Zuzu’s got himself a wife,” Azula chirps, sitting down across the table from you. “I suppose that's all you Southern women are good for - selling off to more powerful nations so you don't get yourselves pummeled.” 

You ignore her harsh words, bowing your head respectfully in greeting. 

“Zuko and I have actually known each other since we were teenagers,” you tell her. It isn't exactly a lie, but you decide that forfeiting her game is the best way to defend yourself. “It's an honor to finally meet you, Azula.” 

If she's put off by your deflection, she doesn't show it. She leans forward on her elbows, leering at you over the table like some sort of heinous, bloodthirsty predator; you stare back unfazed, reminding yourself that there's nothing she can do to you if you remain stoic. 

“To what do I owe the pleasure of my dear sister-in-law’s visit?” Azula wonders, grinning. “I doubt this is a family reunion given Zuzu’s absence.” 

“We need your help,” you tell her. “We’re facing serious problems with outside opposition and our advisors have failed us; Zuko suggested I come to you because of your intelligence in these matters.” 

Azula scoffs, her sickening smile disappearing as she leans back and crosses her arms over her chest. 

“I may be captive, but that doesn't mean I have to help you,” she spits. “I no longer hold any loyalty to the Fire Nation.” 

“We don't want to force you,” you reply. “Zuko and I are willing to offer something in return for your expertise.” 

“There's nothing you can give me that will convince me,” Azula states. “My brother lost any sympathy I had for him when he locked me up here.” 

“We both know you never had any sympathy for him.” 

Azula’s eyes shoot upward, meeting yours in a chilling glare. 

“He's the eldest,” you continue. “Despite your talent, he was still in your way - if he hadn't been banished, he’d have taken your father’s place. You hated him for that. You hated him for earning your mother’s affection. You hated him for things neither of you had any control over, and all you've ever wanted to do is have control. He defied that. So you took matters into your own hands and tried to kill him.” 

Azula glowers at you, her eyes icy as her face sets into stone. She's not used to being on the other end of this sort of needling; behind her muted, immobile shock, you know she's calculating her next move. 

“It wasn't fair,” you go on. “I've heard what people in the Fire Nation say about you - that you shaped the odds of the war while your father took all the credit. That's why we need you. Zuko himself admitted that he can't do it. This is your chance to show him once and for all who the true heir to your family name is.” 

Your sister-in-law studies you for a moment before tilting her head, the nasty smile she entered the room with returning. 

“Thanks to my shrinks, I'm no longer motivated by personal vindication,” she drawls. “And besides, what good would it do me for Zuko to take all the glory like Father did? He always liked to believe he took after Mother. He's wrong - he's just as cruel and underhanded as the rest of us.” 

At this point, you decide that bargaining is going to get you nowhere. Instead you turn your attention to the murals, standing so you can run your fingers over the scales of the nearest giant salamander; they're so realistic that even their grooves have texture, delicately carved between layers of thick paint. 

“These paintings are stunning,” you comment. “Are they yours?” 

Azula nods, though her expression remains shuttered and somewhat threatening. 

“Since that little brat took my bending, I had to find a new hobby,” she hisses. “When I run out of space on the walls, I'll start tattooing myself.” 

You smirk at her joke, but she doesn't reciprocate. Her eyes narrow, and though she doesn't move from her position at the table, she seems to prowl closer to you, caging you in with the sheer power of her presence. 

“I know why Zuzu married you,” she claims; her tone is matter-of-fact, her golden irises cutting through you. “You remind him of that Southern wretch he used to chase around during his banishment. He was enamored with her. But of course she chose the Avatar over him, since she wanted the alliance for your puny little nation, so it seems he rebounded with the next best thing. He's always been weak that way - falling for anyone dumb enough to buy into that kicked kitten act and let him use them for sympathy.” 

For a split second, her words bite you in a way you don't expect them to. Just last night, you told Katara you didn't love Zuko - now, at the thought that his affections could lie with anyone else, that you could mean nothing more than a placeholder to appease the ache of an unrequited love, your ribs feel as though they've caved in and are crushing your lungs. You do your best to keep your expression void, but the corners of your lips flinch with the ghost of a frown, your eyes fogging with a shadow of fear before you can stop them. Azula grins - she knows she found a weak spot. 

“I heard she's knocked up,” she spits. “Tell me, does Zuzu even bother to fuck you? Or is it just too painful, knowing you’ll never be the woman he loves?” 

The sting in your chest subsides the moment she speaks, the rest of her scathing going unheard as you look her dead in the eye, suddenly unmoved by the attack.

“How do you know that?” you murmur. 

Azula’s face falls. She doesn’t avert her gaze, but instead locks it with yours, frozen as if debating whether or not to admit defeat. It doesn’t matter if she does or not - she’s stabbed herself in the gut.

“How do you know Katara is pregnant?” you ask again. 

You pace forward, pushing back on the way she attempted to close you in with her criticism. Her poisonous grin once again makes a comeback, this time accompanied by a cackle as sharp as a spearhead. 

“You’re in far too deep, little girl,” she lilts. “All of you are. None of you can see the danger that’s been in front of you all your lives.” 

“Tell me what you know,” you command. “If you do, we might be persuaded not to execute you.” 

Azula huffs, tossing her head back as her laughter continues. By this point, the guards standing in the room’s corners have converged on her, taking her by the arms to hold her still; she doesn’t fight, instead leaning into their grip as if the touch is welcoming. 

“Zuzu could never bring himself to kill me,” she jeers. “Sniveling little cad he is. The world isn’t perfect because the war is over, and you’re a fool if you think that my grandfathers were the only men to ever destroy for the sake of their hate. Everyone has evil in them - some of us are just smart enough to embrace it.” 

As she growls out her last words, the guards drag her from the room, her laughter subsiding but her hideous, manic grin remaining splattered across her cheeks. The door slams as she's carried away, and you’re left with nothing but the looming silence of terror and dread. 

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[loopy777]

Atla has potential to be Harry Potter/Star wars level franchise if they have proper planning.If they made proper season four with Azula redemption in line with the themes of the show the franchise would become even more popular and unique because Azula is one of the most unique characters in any media. Don't know why creators are unable to see her potential! There is so much exploration of atla culture and history that can be done but is being completely wasted.*Le sigh*

Well, I agree and I disagree. I think the franchises you’re comparing Avatar to are good examples of the heights it could achieve, but their more modern entries are also good examples of what not to do. I mean, Harry Potter is pretty much on life-support at this point, with its latest movies being duds as far as blockbusters are considered. Star Wars movies were seeing steadily lowering return on investment, combined with everyone pretty much hating Solo and RoS, killing its own movie potential in favor of safer and blander TV entries. And how was that accomplished?

Well, yes, bad writing is the primary culprit.

(Some people might even say that lack of proper planning also played a part, but that’s never been necessary, IMO; George Lucas made up classic Star Wars as he went along, to the point where the first few drafts of ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ didn’t even have Darth Vader as Luke’s father. Planning is over-rated. The key, though, is if you’re not going to create a detailed plan, you have to have storytellers who are good at improvising.)

But I think what hastened the dreaded onset of Bad Writing for both Harry Potter and Star Wars is the same thing you’re talking about doing with Avatar- making the focus into one set of characters/bloodlines. Star Wars and Harry Potter wowed audiences, in their beginnings, by implying the existence of massive, fascinating settings. It felt like we could step into those worlds and live there, find new corners to explore where we could both bring our own lives into the fantasy but also experience something new.

Yet Star Wars keeps making movies about the same people, explaining where characters with full and satisfying arcs came from and where they go after the  arcs are done. I’ve only even seen the first Harry Potter movie and didn’t read any of the books, so I can’t speak from experience, but from what I’ve heard, the new movies have been slammed for throwing away their more unique aspects to become Wiki entries masquerading as prequels to the original storyline.

So would an Azula-centered sequel be cool if it was well-written? Sure.

But would it do much to expand the popularity of the franchise? Eh, probably not.

Anyone who would be impressed with a good story about Azula is probably already impressed by the first three seasons of Avatar, so this would just be more of the same. And there’s no guarantee that a continuation of Azula’s story would be good. I can’t help but notice that Aaron Ehasz has only spoken in the most general terms about his ideas for such a plotline, and he hasn’t connected it to any content for the main cast of AtLA. So a fourth season sounds more like a cash-in than something likely to be good.

What would expand Avatar into a powerhouse franchise, IMO? Exactly what they did with the Kyoshi novels- really expand the setting by taking advantage of its massive world and timeline. It’s made the notion of each Avatar having to deal with the fallout of the previous Avatar’s mistakes into a recurring theme that can drive all kinds of stories. And those books were told by a new storyteller to the franchise who brings a new -- but fitting -- style and perspective. But, of course, no one reads books, so they should do this with television and/or movies with great production values.

I mean, I can’t help but notice that Gene Yang, whose original graphic novels I love, can’t produce anything even halfway decent when he has to come up with ways to keep telling stories about Aang and Zuko. Maybe he’s just really bad at operating in settings he didn’t create, but I think he’s also crumbling under the pressure of trying to write authorized fanfic about characters whose story has already been told in full, expanded detail.

So yes, I think Avatar can be big. But I’d rather save the Azula Sequel for a smaller project, without the weight of the franchise riding on it, where a suitable author can scale things to what’s appropriate to the story and character. And there’s no need to rush it, either. I can wait for a few blockbuster animated movies to make Avatar into a prestige franchise that will have a better chance of attracting the right talent.

[army-of-mai-lovers]

Comparing ATLA’s Jet to Cowboy Bebop’s Spike

(this is so late, but. Happy birthday @the-hot-zone​, hope you had an amazing day) 

In my opinion, Cowboy Bebop is one of the greatest shows ever created. It hits a lot of my personal favorite attributes in a TV show: cowboys, fantastic music, absolutely spectacular animation, really deep themes and characters with rich inner lives, worldbuilding that’s thought out. Simply put, it’s a masterpiece. 

I started watching Bebop this summer, at the height of the ATLA Renaissance, and the first thing I noticed about protagonist Spike Spiegel is that he looked a hell of a lot like Jet from ATLA. And it wasn’t just the looks either: like Jet, Spike is the leader of a ragtag group of misfits living on the fringes of society. Like Jet, Spike is a smooth talker. Like Jet, Spike is compassionate and cares for other people, and like Jet, the world has hardened Spike to the point where his virtues can still lead him down the wrong path. And while Jet isn’t named for Spike, there’s a character in Bebop named Jet (he sort of plays the right hand person role that Smellerbee plays for Jet in ATLA.) They’re not completely similar--Spike isn’t fighting for anybody’s liberation, whereas for Jet that’s a core aspect of his character--but it was enough to make me wonder about how Jet was designed and how much influence Bebop had on his character design and on ATLA as a whole, and whether looking at Spike can illuminate some of the conversations we’ve been having about Jet. 

A little about the inspiration and process of ATLA: Bryan and Michael were working on shows like Family Guy when they decided they wanted to make something more sincere and more cinematic. They were both really inspired by anime. Bryan said “Back in the late '90s I was getting pretty disillusioned with working on sitcoms -- then I saw Princess Mononoke and I was emboldened. My heart was so much closer to that kind of story, those kinds of characters and that type of tone. After that, Cowboy Bebop really inspired us in terms of being a great example of an epic series that had a wide breadth of tones. Then FLCL came along and rewrote the rules for everything, as far as I'm concerned!” I haven’t seen FLCL, I’ll admit, but having seen both Bebop and Princess Mononoke--yeah, I get that. Both are incredible pieces of art that, for me personally, make me want to push myself as an artist, and I cannot recommend both enough if you haven’t seen them already. 

So, Bryan and Michael decide they want to make something inspired by shows like Bebop and movies like Princess Mononoke, they get a pilot order from Nickelodeon and, as is custom at the time, they start reaching out to East Asian animation studios to help them with the animation. This video is a great source for how ATLA in particular interacted in this environment, but suffice to say that Bryan built a relationship with the studio that did a lot of work for ATLA, JM Animation, and gave them a lot of creative freedom in making the visuals of the show. This included designing Jet and the rest of the Freedom Fighters. 

[ID: An image of Jet from ATLA from the shoulders up against a sky background fading from blue at the top to white at the bottom. He had dark skin, shaggy black hair, black eyes, eyebrows turned way up, a smirk on his face, and some wheat in his mouth. He is wearing a red jacket with a gray popped collar. End ID] 

[ID: An image of Spike from Cowboy Bebop from the shoulders up against a sky blue background with trees behind him. He has shaggy dark brown hair that has a slight bit more curl in it than Jet’s, dark brown eyes, light skin, and a closed mouth smile on his face. He is wearing a blue suit with a yellow shirt that has a popped collar, and a skinny black tie/ End ID] 

So, let’s look at the character design. Both Spike and Jet have these long, angular faces, shaggy dark hair, long necks, broad shoulders, dark eyes, some popped collar element to their attire, etc. While both characters are pretty tall and lanky, Spike’s height is more immediately obvious than Jet’s--in fact, I wouldn’t think of Jet as a tall character had I not seen some fandom height comparisons. The most obvious and immediate differences between how the characters physically look are their clothes, which are very different (likely due to the setting--ATLA is set in a proto-industrial war-torn society and Jet in particular has had to scavenge his clothes from Fire Nation troops, while Bebop is a space epic set in the far future), the lack of mouth wheat for Spike, Spike’s incredibly normal looking eyebrows versus Jet’s adorable long division eyebrows, and, of course, their skin tones. Colorism is something that people bring up a lot when talking about Jet’s character, and I have to wonder why Jet, a character that was so clearly inspired by this light-skinned character who was morally ambiguous in Bebop, was made darker-skinned when explicitly coded as a “villain” in ATLA. 

In fact, colorism is a super important aspect of how Jet and Spike’s stories are told. To its credit, ATLA has two MCs (Sokka and Katara) with dark skin (not that the fanartists who whitewash them notice) while Bebop has just one (Ed). However, it’s important to note that Sokka and Katara are each portrayed in ways that Aang or other lighter-skinned characters in the show simply aren’t. For example, despite both characters being literal teenagers, they are sexualized within the text of the show. Another example of the colorism in ATLA is, of course, Jet, a Brown boy leading a resistance against oppressive colonialist imperialist forces, being so unambiguously vilified. Yes, within the text, Jet has some sense of complexity, especially in Book 2, but even that is undermined by his death at the hands of the Dai Li. Jet is never given the subjectivity of a character like Zuko. In fact, it’s pretty clear that Jet’s redemption and subsequent death happens when it does to demonstrate what Zuko is capable of if he makes the right choice. Whether or not this is a good decision writing-wise is another discussion, but the fact of the matter is that in using Jet to further Zuko’s arc, bryke used a Brown teenage boy/victim of imperialist violence to prop up the narrative of a light-skinned prince/perpetrator of imperial violence. This is not to say that Zuko shouldn’t have been redeemed or that Jet shouldn’t have died or that the narrative shouldn’t have dedicated time and attention to Zuko’s story, but it is to say that ultimately, the writers of the show decided that Jet’s subjectivity was a tool to further Zuko’s actualization. 

Contrast this to Spike. Bebop is about a lot of things, but a core part of it is exploring Spike’s backstory and way of looking at the world. It’s part of what makes the show the show. It’s the thing that keeps you liking the guy even when he says or does something absolutely unconscionable. Nothing in the show is more important than Spike’s subjectivity. The show may have individual episodes that focus on the other main characters, but it’s pretty clear that it’s really *about* Spike. Where does Spike come from? What is his obsession with the past? Why do all these people want to kill him? Who is Julia? These are all prescient questions that I had as a viewer of Bebop, and these were questions that were not only important to understanding Spike Spiegel, but to understanding the narrative that the writers, director, and animators are telling. Bebop is nothing without Spike’s subjectivity, and the people behind the show invest in his narrative even though he does some pretty horrible things! (kills many people, is part of a crime syndicate at one point, says some pretty misogynistic crap, hell, the whole concept of the show is that he and his buddies hunt people down for money.) As I said before, Spike is morally ambiguous, an antihero, and the people behind Bebop run with that, because that is an integral part of the story that they’re telling. 

You could certainly argue that ATLA, being a show for children, needs clear heroes and villains, to be unambiguous in its depiction of right and wrong. And to an extent that would be correct. But let’s not forget that ATLA is not shy in its depiction of morally ambiguous characters. That’s an integral part of what the show is. Characters like Zuko, Iroh, Mai, Azula, and Ty Lee are beloved despite (or perhaps because of) their complex moral frameworks. Zuko, Mai, and Ty Lee in particular move between designations of villain, victim, and hero pretty fluidly (Iroh and Azula are two other conversations in themselves.) I personally am okay, and in fact delighted, to have Zuko, Mai, Azula, and Ty Lee in the show because I think their stories and the ways that they move between evil, good, and morally gray are incredibly compelling. We know why they act the way they do, and we can condemn or validate their actions while always knowing exactly where they’re coming from. 

But then I see Jet. Jet, whose village was burned down by the Fire Nation. Jet, who survived by himself and helped 5 other people survive along the way, while leading an organized resistance against the Fire Nation on wits alone. Jet, who somehow ended up in Ba Sing Se, his new family cut in half, wanting to start over. So much of him is a blank slate. Where Spike in Bebop, or Zuko, Iroh, Mai, Azula, and Ty Lee in ATLA, get fleshed out, have the writers convey specific information that helps the audience understand their actions and motivations, even if they’re wrong, Jet never gets that sort of care in his narrative. Jet never gets to be the center of ATLA, even for a moment, even in his own death. There’s always something more pressing, something more meaningful, than Jet. You could argue (I certainly would) that the show would be better if we spent more time with him, if the writers cared to understand him, but unlike Bebop and Spike, the show doesn’t revolve around the audience understanding Jet. The story is coherent without him. In book 3, despite the fact that Jet sacrificed his life for them, the Gaang only brings up Jet once, and that’s to condemn him. Jet’s story is a tragedy, an important one, but only insofar as it props up other pieces of the narrative. And that’s the most tragic part of it. 

[sokkastyles]

Because I’ve seen lots of meta on Zuko’s scar and what it means, and also seen some analysis that has the scar representing Zuko’s “bad” or villainous side, here’s some images where I would argue that the scar takes on a positive meaning.

I've always had to struggle and fight and that's made me strong. It's made me who I am.

While this is book 1 Zuko being...book 1 Zuko, and not a particularly sympathetic moment since he has Aang captured, it’s also a scene where we get a key insight into Zuko’s character and how he sees himself. Zuko has had to fight to survive, and as he says this we get a good shot of his bruised-up face, but of course the scar is the most prominent injury, large and a central part of the frame. The scar is an obvious representation of Zuko’s trauma, the biggest physical manifestation of his struggles, but instead of struggle being a bad thing here, Zuko embraces it as part of his identity. Yeah, he’s using it to justify some very unheroic actions, but what he says here helps to make him sympathetic to the audience, to humanize him, and it’s also something that allows for the opportunity for growth. Zuko’s view of himself as a survivor, someone who fights, will keep him going through his journey and into his redemption. Forming an identity based on struggling and surviving made Zuko strong because in the end, it allowed him to grow into the best version of himself, and to see that he could turn his life around and survive rather than giving in to despair and hatred or feeling sorry for himself, and that’s a great disability-friendly message. Rather than marking him as evil or pitiable, his scars mark him as strong and as a survivor.

I’ve seen this one talked about in a very negative context. Here Azula is lying to Zuko in order to lure him into a trap, and he does end up believing it, but you can see the doubt and indecision on his face. In the above still the focus is on Azula, and then when she leaves the focus shifts to a clear shot of Zuko’s scarred side.

This is actually almost an identical image to the one in “The Siege of the North,” with a close up on Zuko’s left side, the scar very noticeable in the frame, and Zuko with his head slightly bowed and his eyes closed, mouth tilted into a frown. He looks deep in thought. I’ve seen people say that the scar here represents his trauma and desperate desire to get back home, which blinds him to the truth of the situation, and that is true, but I’d also say that the scar itself is representative of the truth, which is plain to the audience as it is written on Zuko’s face. Zuko may not be able to see it clearly but we, the viewers, are in a privileged position, able to see the reality.

Actually a LOT of the scenes with Azula follow this pattern, because Azula often represents to Zuko the lie that he can regain what he’s lost if only he tries hard enough. The beauty of the scar’s symbolism is that while Zuko often views it as a mark of shame, it is so clearly not Zuko’s fault, but a mark of Ozai’s, and by extension the Fire Nation’s, cruelty even towards his son. Therefore it’s an easy visual way for the show to tell us that we can’t trust Azula or Ozai.

Notice also that in the above scene Azula is on the right, while Zuko is on the left side of the frame while the shot focuses on the left side of his face.

This is replicated in the fever dream Zuko has in “The Earth King,” with Azula, represented by the blue dragon, on the right, and Iroh, represented by the red dragon, on his left side.

The shot focuses on the left side of Zuko’s face in the left side of the frame, but this time Zuko doesn’t have a scar. This is a vision of what could be, and what can never be. Here the absence of the scar represents lies and danger. When Zuko wakes up from his fever, the first thing he does is touch his scar to make sure that he is still himself.

We also see Zuko laying on his right side, with the scarred side visible, while Iroh tenderly touches the scarred side of his face.

You are going through a metamorphosis, my nephew. It will not be a pleasant experience, but when you come out of it, you will be the beautiful prince you were always meant to be.

Just like in “The Siege of the North,” the focus here is on struggle, a metamorphosis, a word that emphasizes change, but not without hardship. However, Iroh emphasizes that this is a good change, and that, in contrast to the sinister dream Zuko has of being on the fire throne but without the scar, when he wakes up he will be the prince that he was “meant to be.”

Then, of course, a few episodes later, in the book 2 finale, we have another scene of someone touching Zuko’s scar for healing purposes.

Again we have the shot of Zuko, head tilted down, eyes closed, the scar centered in the frame, but this time the scar is a point of empathy between him and Katara. 

It’s not so much the healing that is important here - because the physical scar wasn’t what needed to be healed - but the empathy, and Zuko’s realization that, not only are other people hurting, too, but that his scar does not determine his destiny.

I used to think this scar marked me. The mark of the banished prince, cursed to chase the Avatar forever. But lately, I've realized I'm free to determine my own destiny, even if I'll never be free of my mark.

There’s a lot of focus on Zuko’s scar in the caves. But probably the most prominent is these two shots in succession:

This is a really effective scene because it almost looks like two different people. The unscarred profile looks determined, while the scarred profile image looks sad and mournful.

And I’ve seen interpretations of this scene as having the unscarred side representing the right choice, and the scarred side as representing the wrong. However, I’ve previously established that right and unscarred are associated with Azula, whereas left and scarred are associated with Katara and Iroh, so why then would the scarred side represent the bad choice? I’d argue that it’s the opposite, and that the unscarred side represents Zuko’s desire to go back to the Fire Nation, to do anything to gain his father’s love and his honor, to go back to the way things were before his scarring. On the left side, however, is truth, that things can never go back to the way they were, and that Zuko shouldn’t want them to.

And the very last close up of Zuko’s face is one of my favorites:

Just the happiness and contentment, and ease with himself in this scene. This isn’t “Fire Lord Zuko” or “heroic Zuko” or even “my father’s in jail and I’m gonna make him tell me where my mom is” Zuko, it’s the last scene in the series and it’s such a quiet, peaceful moment. A moment of humility and service to others, but no longer shameful or full of hardship. Of course Zuko will have to struggle as the new Fire Lord, and he’ll always bear the scars of his struggle on his face, but he doesn’t have to be ashamed of it anymore. There’s a nice symmetry when you compare this to the first shot I mentioned up above, in the book one finale, which has Zuko alone and trapped in a cave surrounded by a blizzard, whereas here, he is surrounded by friends and at peace.

[rllymilerlly]

Okay so this is for my (And essentially @toph-beifcng too because omg they have helped develop this a ton) Avatar Band AU.

Now these are the Songs I think would be on The GAangs Album “Water Earth Fire Air” (I know very little about music terminology and such so please excuse my lack of knowledge)

This Album is one of their only albums that tell a story from start to finish. It’s a story about love, loss, found families and growing up.

-The Avatar: This Song is almost purely instrumental and uses a lot of motifs from the actual show. There is only a little Narration throughout it and is done by Katara (and it kind of is similar to the shows in a way)

-The Boy in the Iceberg: This Song starts off with a very dramatic chord but then Aang enters in and is very bubbly and light. It focuses mainly on Aang with vocal accompaniments by Kat and Sokka. But as the song progresses it gets a little more desperate and you realize it’s about this kid in denial about the horrors that have happened to him. And Zuko is playing these underlying tones that just make it feel like there is this impending doom. And it ends with Aang solemnly saying “I never wanted to be-“

-Kyoshi Warrior: This follows along with the tone Zuko started in the previous song and focuses on Suki. This is about the obstacles she has had to overcome especially being a woman. And it’s a very empowering almost angry song. Sokka has lil harmonies with her too in this song which is pretty cute. Katara has a keytar solo in this too dont @ me

-Imprisoned/Jet: I’m debating putting this song in but I want an early Katara feature so I just might. This one would be about her dealing with her not so great relationships in the past. And kind of a not so subtle fuck you to Jet

-The Blue Spirit: This would follow up with Katara’s slower vibes and start out kind of eerie. It’s a Zuko and Aang duet (Mainly Zuko though). It’s about Zuko’s internal struggles and moral dilemmas. Aang in the song represents the goodness he knows he has in him. But Zuko keeps pushing that away for the time being. And it gets more and more harsh. And it practically ends with Zuko scream/sobbing

-The Siege of the North: This features practically everyone vocally. This one is dedicated to their passed friend (Girlfriend in Sokka’s case) Yue. And it starts off angry and sad and it just hits everyone. Then it does end on a solo from Sokka that’s wow so emotional.

-The Avatar State: A 15 minute masterpiece that puts all their styles of music together. And cannot decide if I want this as just an instrumental or not. But fun fact for the fans: Aang actually originally composed and recorded the whole thing by himself as sort of a dedication to all of his pals. But in performance and the soundtrack it’s all of the Gaang playing

-The Cave of Two Lovers: Essentially it’s mostly Katara and Aang singing a funny little tune as they try to just laugh off the insanity of their life. They’d even include a nod to “Secret Tunnel”. It’s a simple tune that contrasts great with the complexity of the Avatar State before. It’s a sign of hope of a brighter future. (Also during the performances of this everyone is on stage and sings a little part of the song. Except Toph who’d be getting ready backstage)

-The Swamp: This is just a Ethereal experience. It stars Sokka Katara and Aang. And is about strange ‘visions’ in a swamp. It Starts off with Sokka accepting Yue’s gone and Katara accepting her mother’s death. And finally it ends with Aang, he feels hopeless and alone but he keeps hearing this voice calling to him. And at live performances this is where Toph comes up from below stage as the fog machines pour out everywhere making it this insane mystic vibe. And the two of them are harmonizing together as the song builds up. (I imagine it sounding kind of similar to this song). And when they finally come together Toph saying something totally just Toph Like and that ends the song. (Also towards the end of the song they are singing this fun harmony and at the end take it up an octave (kind of like in the end of ‘show yourself’ from Frozen 2) and fans think while listening to the soundtrack that it’s Toph who hits this super high note but low and behold at the live performance it’s revealed it’s Aang in his wild falsetto)

-The Blind Bandit: It’s a 4 minute Drum Solo that’s just Toph center stage fucking killing it (LIKE PLEASE WATCH THIS VIDEO FOR REFERENCE OF HOW ACTUALLY INSANELY HARD SHE GOES. THEY TURN HER UPSIDE DOWN) Toph doesn’t need words to express her emotions. Okay enough said.

-City of Walls and Secrets: The Whole Gaang features in this one vocally at some point. And it’s about society keeping things away from the people. Because the Gaang really says fuck Authority.

-The Crossroads of Destiny: A Zuko and Katara duet. Their styles blend perfectly and create this somber piece about hope of redemption. And how they both lost their mother in a way.

-The Painted Lady: A mystical Katara Solo. That has everyone shaking. I’m not sure quite what it’s about but this is the song that made fans gay for Katara that’s all imma say.

-The Runaway: Look this is about to be the 3rd Katara feature in a row but I’m not mad. This would be a duet with Toph. And it’s a head banger and is about unlikely friendships okaY

-Nightmares and Day Dreams: An Aang solo. This one is just straight up wild. It’s a similar vibe to Boy in the Iceberg. Where a lot of it is Aang in denial of his problems and wanting to avoid responsibilities but it’s causing him insomnia. He wrote this when he didn’t sleep for over 72 hours and the weirdness it has definitely shows that.

-The Swords Masters: THE SOKKA SOLO WE DESERVE. In this album Sokka takes a way more serious vibe to his music, But this one does have a little more fun. It’s very energetic and shows off Sokka’s guitar skills.

-The Boiling Rock: The Zukki Song we have all been waiting for. It’s just straight up a good time. And is about finding love and accepting ones flaws. And it’a just iconic. This is where Suki hits a Whistle note in the album. They also each get an instrumental solo. This is one of the best headbangers in the album.

-Agni Kai (Lightning Strikes): @toph-beifcng is APPARENTLY WRITING THIS SO I DONT WANT TO SAY ANYTHING BC I DUNNONWHAT THEY WRITING BUT I KNOW ITLL BE STRAIGHT FIRE. I’m ASSUMING IT’S A ZUKO FEATURE THO.

-Sozins Comet: The final song in the album. It’s theme consist of a brighter future with their new found family and acceptance of the past. Overall it’s a straight jam. But in the end of the song it ends with the ‘Avatars Love’ Motif at the end.

BONUS TRACKS:

-Tales of Ba Sing Se:

Features fun little melodies from the Gaang that didn’t make full fledge songs. This also includes ‘Leaves from the Vine’ sung by Iroh still that Zuko plays with him. In memory of Lu Ten.

Please feel free to add on or suggest anything! Or send me an ask if you would rather do that :^)

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

Finished Legend of Korra, which means I got to see hilarious 4th season asshole Prince Wu, seen here getting shoved out of a Team Avatar group hug:

Performative womanizing aside, he’s clearly got a massive crush on Mako. 

Also appreciated:

Bolin and Varrick bro-ing around.

Asami burying the hatchet with her father.

Asami continuing to be practically perfect in every way, I love her for the exact opposite reasons I love Wu. 

That hand-holding scene.  You know the one.

Varrick developing a conscience and Zhu Li developing a spine, and together they will “do the thing” for the rest of their lives.

Wu turning out to be a decent guy whose voice can tame badgerrmoles.

The flashback episode was a waste of time, but it was slightly redeemed by Wu and Mako’s family completely roasting Mako and his all life decisions.  Also Varrick’s completely inaccurate recounting of the series.

Korra actually being severely hurt, both mentally and physically, by all the crap she’s been through in the last three seasons, and needing time to recover, and struggling to regain her sense of self.

Did I mention Korra and Asami?  YES!

Why does Asami even hang out with Team Avatar so much when she’s got a business to run?  I assume the answer is that she’s an extremely nice angel of a person, and also in love with Korra.

Overall, I think LoK Season 1 was pretty good, Season 2 was a significant drop in quality, Seasons 3 and 4 are the best.  Season 2 wasn’t completely terrible, it just had a fairly bland villain compared to the other seasons, and I have mixed feelings about the history of the Avatar, which seems to reduce it down to a pure “good vs evil” thing.

Generally, I think Korra’s main problem was the creators not knowing how many seasons they would get and therefore being unable to plan ahead.  The first season was pretty good and wrapped things up well because it was originally supposed to be a mini-series.  Amon and Tarrlock were interesting, complex villains, and probably had the potential to do more in the overall LoK story, but since it was supposed to end at Season 1, they are done away with, and Amon’s whole movement comes to nothing.  Season 2 feels like the writers are shaking their heads going, “okay, what now?” and we wind up with a meandering season and a really under-developed villain, and then an epic final battle that, again, felt like it was meant to end the series.  Season 2 had it’s good points, like Varrick, and getting to know Tenzin’s siblings, but it felt largely disconnected from Season 1.  Just taking the same characters and moving them on to the next adventure.

It isn’t until Season 3 that we really get a sense of continuity in the series, since the end of Season 2 has basically changed the world in ways that the characters have to deal with, and Season 3 leads right into Season 4.  It still follows the model of one villain per season, but the last two seasons have a much better sense of an overarching plot.  Meanwhile, original Avatar had the advantage of telling one story over three seasons, so it could really set up plots properly and play the long game with character development.  Things like Zuko’s redemption (which is seeded early in the first season) unfold slowly, so that it really pays off and feels significant when it finally happens.  The heroes are following one basic plotline - Aang has to master the four elements to defeat Fire-Lord Ozai, and by the end, that’s exactly what he does, as opposed to Korra defeating a different big-bad every season. 

I thought Korra was a great show, but it could have been better if the creators had been able to plan properly and not faced the uncertainty of not knowing when the show would actually end.  They could have set up certain plotlines earlier, or expanded on others.  And a more coherent over-arching plot would have better allowed the writers to use all the characters, rather than sometimes appearing to scramble to find something for Mako, Bolin or Asami to do.  (Although I have to admit, I liked Bolin’s movie star plotline.)  They could have introduced characters sooner. or kept others around longer.  Prince Wu, for example, was hilarious, and he got a bit of development, but it was all kind of rushed since he only popped up in the 4th season. 

I genuinely liked that the series dug into more complex issues.  Avatar had it’s fair share of complexity, but was still centered around the goal of “stop the Fire Nation.”  Korra is dealing with an anti-bending revolt, and civil war, and a dictator stepping in to fill a power vacuum left when a ruler dies.  I also liked Korra herself.  She definitely wasn’t Aang.  She was far more confident and aggressive, but I like that, I didn’t want an Avatar who would be exactly like Aang.  Korra’s problem was never mastering the elements (which Aang had to do over the course of the series), it was learning to tap into her spiritual side, and be more thoughtful, and not make rash, stupid decisions, which she often did.  Also liked that the series got a little more bloodthirsty.  Avatar just vaguely hinted that a couple of minor characters died, LoK was like, “Okay, this character gets murdered by having the air sucked out of their lungs and we’re gonna show you, right on screen!”  But I’m also glad that it didn’t go too far in that direction.  I like Avatar remaining a basically happy, feel-good show, even if it means people unrealistically surviving things they really shouldn’t.

Thus concludes my “too many thoughts about Korra.”