#zukka crit

[confusedgoldenflower]

I’m so glad we’re starting to call out fandom misogyny (and racism etc) out more often, love to see it, hate to see internalised issues be perpetuated through fandoms.

Wanted to add—since I’m in 2024 now, that a different misogyny is also seen a lot on the live action side. It’s like people demand cartoonish, over the top expressions from female (/femme) characters because “she’s so bland, what even is this acting.” Even though when men (/masc) do it, “oh, they’re so good,” “he’s so hot with his focused eyes.”

No, the CHILD actors in the Atla LA weren’t the best of the best, but chill, damnit, understand and accept even if it makes you uncomfortable, that not EVERYONE (and a considerable population with tysms etc) fucking emote like in a children’s book.

This is seen especially with Bella in Twilight—it’s a good example since that’s the main thing everyone harped on, no I don’t think she’s a good character (or that it’s a good series)—when there were better things to pick apart.

It also perpetuates this harm on ND kids and people, specially afab/femme, that you HAVE to animate, and masking IS harmful to people. It actually is.

And all that over the top smiling dancers (from ballet to contemporary groups) have to do is absolute bullshit. I’ve never seen where male performers have to do that.

Afabs/women/femmes have just as much range and lack there of as male/masc/amabs, and should be allowed it.

Just—fuck, you’re choosing to bother about a character/actor over their FACE!? Really? Not their character arc? Not if it fully missed the mark—which it shouldn’t because directors etc? Not the plot?

Ok rant over

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!

Keep reading

[shrinkthisviolet]

Gotta love that the ATLA fandom collectively shifted from Zuko/Katara to Zuko/Sokka during the 2020 renaissance due to a growing appreciation for Kataang…

…but Maiko still gets paid absolute dust 🫠 what, y’all can finally appreciate Kataang (about mf time), but Mai has to either be abusive, cold, or the stereotypical “mean lesbian”? And the most she’s allowed to contribute now is to give birth to Izumi and then not even be her mom (on the rare occasions that Zuko/Sokka fic writers even let Mai be Izumi’s birth mom)? Very progressive…

[zukoshotleafjuice]

Katara and Aang’s devotion and commitment to one another is the reason why we ship them romantically. Kataang shippers are the only ones writing content that highlights their bond while everyone else ignores it in favor of other ships. Just because YOU prefer it platonically and want to analyze their scenes as a friendship (which you can? No one is stopping you?) doesn’t mean you can control how others interpret their scenes. If shipping is about harmless fun why are you upset that people view all their scenes through a romantic light? That’s literally what shipping is? Everyone in the fandom does it with their ships and all of the major ships are overwhelmingly viewed through a romantic context, canon or not. It seems like you’re just upset that the show went a romantic direction with Kataang because you prefer them platonically. Naturally it makes sense that two people who are each other’s person would eventually explore this bond romantically (though they should’ve been older).

First of all, take a deep breath. My post was fundamentally an appreciation of Katara and Aang's relationship, so frankly I fail to understand the level of defensiveness I'm reading in this ask.

Yes, my post contained minor critique of shipping culture and the way that their relationship was written in the show. I can elaborate below if you require me to clarify.

When I said the romance detracts from the relationship, it was a criticism of fandom engagement with all the ATLA and specifically the way stans of every ship use ship-wars as an excuse to hate on and detract from their very real connection. I think Kataang's romantic scenes in the show were not compellingly written. They did not give them enough time in the second half of S3 to properly engage with and discuss their relationship. I agree they should've been older, and I think their relationship makes a lot of sense as they age up. However, the writers of this show were more interested in resolving the shipping clashes and creating 'canon' endings than anything else, so they rushed the story in the show itself.

Due to this, the ship-wars only intensified. This has led to incredibly bad-faith interpretations of key scenes in the show. For example, I have seen people engage the Southern Raiders (an episode fundamentally about Katara and Katara's trauma) solely to further one ship over another. This bothers me because it is simply poor media analysis.

My post was more of a critique of the Zvt*ra (censored only so that it doesn't clog the tags) side of the fanbase, and not yours, actually. But frankly, your defensive response is why it's so incredibly difficult to engage with this fandom. Assuming I'm 'hating' and just 'upset that people view their scenes in a romantic light' is, once again, detracting from the fact that my post was ultimately to highlight the incredibly beautiful and interesting relationship between these two characters.

[captain-spider99]

are people really forgetting that people have personalities and aren't just their identities? a black woman is more than just a black woman, she can have likes and dislikes, she can have little quirks, she can have people she likes and people she hates, she can have her little hobbies and she can have her problems too, on top of the culture she has grown up in and learned from and been hated for. this applies to basically *everyone* bc who is just their identities? the people who try to flatten themselves down like that, for whatever reason, even though they're more than that, and that should not be projected onto another person, and sometimes in this case, fictional characters. I could argue that with the way some people see fictional characters the way we treat them should be somewhat similar to people we treat in real life when it comes to this type of thing, bc there's some boundaries that we just shouldn't cross.

correct me if I'm wrong it's not the issue if a single person does it but if a bunch of people do it and they're all stemming from the same source, which is based on racial and gender stereotypes?

but did we really forget that zuko is the one who suffered under the fire lord for so long, had to search for the avatar for three years just to please his father, the fire lord, before taking over an entire nation which was not stable at all, since they had just gotten *out* of a war at the age of 16? the fact that he did that yells strength to me. that yells not toxic masculinity, the way he figured out his own faults and tried to apologize for his actions in book three, and later on to the entire nation/world. that yells positive masculinity to me. his hair, which is linked to his culture and beliefs, is not a marker of gender and identity, it is a marker of racial and social identity. just from the way we saw him cut it off in book 2, that symbolized something big, and the way that it has grown out since also symbolizes something big and it is not connected to gender roles. the length of someone's hair, which can be as symbolic as it can be arbitrary, can be masculine, can be feminine, can be androgynous. that should not matter.

I like zukka as a ship but I cannot go into the tags for content about it. why is everyone so insistent on making zuko a little femboy. so many people just see a long haired man regardless of culture/time period and call him femme. And they make sokka hypermasculine like hello????? he’s so fucking flamboyant ?? he wrote poetry, loved arts and crafts, wore a gay little purse, and did DRAG. in CANON. In a modern setting sokka would fix your car and then say SLAYYY do a death drop

[eternalwormdevouringconneticut]

gym bro zuko where

[theolddivorcedzukka]

I’m not a massive zukka shipper, and I thought it was a fine ship like I’m okay with it but not madly into it. And I always resented for example ships like zvtara because I obviously for one, see nothing to it other than a strict friendship, but the shippers...they are something else. Honestly made me despise the ship because of how much they push to prove that it was meant to happen and tear down other ships and characters and get mixed up with what’s canon and fanon. But with Zukka I saw more of an appeal to it and the shippers seemed chill and really nice so that made it better but saw your post there about the bad zukka fandom and I’m kinda shocked because i never see that happen but yet I’m not really in the fandom. But if you’re up to it can you dig a small bit deeper into what you were saying in your other post? Like what exactly do some of them do like you mentioned the wlw ships, ext.

i am going to create a reply that is so incoherent and all over the place. sorry about taking so long

once again, i am hiding this under the “read more” because i am shy and don’t want this to end in the tag

i mean, i get your point. the fandom does seem really chill at first

and then you unlock lore.

and like i did say the fandom was horrible in that ask but it’s really just about finding the right people to follow because like yeah every fandom is going to have some shitty people and the best you can do is just avoid ig

anyway, so the thing i mentioned with the wlw ships is that they’re mostly put in the background of zukka fics and like okay yeah it’s nice to have background relationships in fics to add a little bit of spice but sometimes (and i don’t know if this makes sense at all) those relationships don’t even feel like. you know. relationships??? like you wouldn’t even notice that they’re a couple until it’s explicitly mentioned and that just :/

and if you want to find a mailee or yueki fic, you have to dig so fucking deep bestie because my god. please tag correctly. begging.

okay now about the tropes…bestie the most popular trope on the atla ao3 tag is “zuko is an awkward turtleduck” which is like TOTALLY INCORRECT and then sokka is written as suave and stupid (my boy? stupid? shut up forever)

and uhh i don’t remember what else i wrote in the post but i did mention the fandom is…the fandom is definitely a fandom. you know that one post that is like “you know a fandom is bad when it has leaders”??? yeah exactly. no i don’t want to elaborate because i may be stupid but i am also a coward :)

god this got long and all over the place, i’m sorry anon. i hope this is at least a bit comprehensible

[iloveallmyfandomsequally]

If you're mlm why do you ship Z*tara over Zukka which is gay rep when Z*Tara is misogynistic in comparison.

‘Cause Zukka isn’t gay rep, dumbass. It’s literally thirsty girls fetishizing two teenage boys because they breathed next to each other. Zuko and Sokka don’t show any signs of being gay or liking men period, and I know I headcanon Zuko as bisexual, but realistically the dude only has female love interests throughout canon, and Sokka too. You can cry all you want about “oH tHeY’rE gAy rEpReSeNtation wE’rE bEtTeR tHaN zUtArA wAHHH”, grow up you big baby, Zukka didn’t have a chance the way Zutara did. And Zutara isn’t misogynistic because Zutara shippers actually give Katara a voice and care about her as a character. Zukka ain’t shit compared to Zutara because you guys sure love to make Katara the token straight homophobe and Zuko the uwu I'm baby and Sokka the master chad when NONE OF THAT IS EVEN CLOSE TO THEIR PERSONALITIES! You say Zutara shippers are delusional when y’all pump out the most ridiculous takes and the most grotesque porn on all of A:tLA Ao3! At least most Zutara shippers can respect others, but no you guys have to be the woke white knights and “it’s for the girls and the gays!!!” Listen, the gays don’t want you go back to your fetish hole, roach.

And y’know what, Anon? How dare you use my sexuality as a reason to criticize me of shipping something. How fucking dare you send me this shit trying to make me feel guilty of not “rooting for gay rep”. I can ship whatever the fuck I want, and I choose to ship the ship with actual chemistry rather than the bandwagon fetish ship. If you want some mlm rep, don’t fucking watch Avatar because queer rep IS NOT THERE. Wake the fuck up, it’s not canon, it’s fanon, and you guys do a horrible job of representing it in fanon as well, feeding into hurtful stereotypes for queer men and demonizing women of color. Stop ruining Zuko, Sokka, and Katara’s characters for the sake of your fetishized queer romance.

I bet you’re in cahoots with the same fucker who sent hateful asks to Rose, Sim, and Dee for being women of color and shipping Zutara. Well guess what, Zutara is for woc, LGBT people, and anyone else who loves the chemistry between Zuko and Katara. You can’t get rid of us, bitch. I’d rather ship a het ship that has genuine chemistry than a queer ship solely because it’s gay. Zukka is the unoriginal spin off of Zutara cause Zukkas are as creative as a piece of cardboard. Call me a homophobe and a misogynist all you want, ‘cause at the end of the day I can ship whatever I want, regardless of where my sexuality is. Stay mad.

[lunaathorne]

"Atla renaissance" and it was just fujobait shippers getting mad about a non canon ship (zutara) and trying to prove how their ship was less problematic and less colonizer-colonized because it's two dudes in love (they have never shared any romantic chemistry/tension in canon, ever).

Round 2

Propaganda Under Cut

Elizabeth Midford

She started as just a cutie fiancée trying her best, turns out she's also a swordfighting genius, very under pressure to perform feminity in the Victorian Rose type of way. Fandom crucifies her bc she's Ciel's fiancée and they want him to be with his butler, Sebastian, the demon he sold his soul to for revenge

anime was a shitty canon divergent adaptation that butchered her character down to her "cutesy silly girly" persona, which obviously made the 2008 anime fans hate her with a passion (nothing wrong w being girly I'm just saying the adaptation made her super one dimensional) anyways fujoshis used to treat her as a villain because she's the fiance of Ciel,, who as u might know already was HEAVILY shipped with his butler, Sebastian back then (now it's kinda looked badly upon, nice tbh that ship sucks ass xD) She's a bit similar to Misa Amane from death note in the way she was treated. (Like an obstacle the yaoi ship must overcome rather than a person)

she's my silly little rabbit! i could gush about her character but i'll keep it short and just say that she's really well written and one of the best characters in the series. anyways she's ciel's fiance and she's like, rightfully annoying as any other 13 yr old girl would be but the fanbase fucking crucified her for even existing. she gets demonized for being 'annoying', but then ciel gets yaoishipped with an even more annoying guy. there is 100% an argument that lizzie/ciel is weird bc they're cousins (i personally don't ship it) but that falls flat when her detractors then ship the 13 yr old ciel with an eons old demon who Canonically looks like his father. the anime also never reached her main character development until years after its peak and that was only in a movie, so she really got the bad end of the stick here. not me though i had a giant crush on her when i was 12

Katara

Katara is constantly mistreated by the fans in favor of the Zukka ship (Zuko × Sokka.) They make her out to be mean, homophobic, and completely out of character just to add drama to the Zukka ship. In reality, Katara is very compassionate, and would never act that way toward anyone. 

Zutara was a popular ship but when zukka got popular over covid during the atla renaissance there were a million posts about how zutara was problematic while zukka was perfect usually for racist reasons. Meanwhile katara and sokka are siblings so it didn't even make sense. They did not have to be so illogically rude to her to ship zukka and it was weird

Katara is FANTASTIC I fucking love her to pieces she is so cool and yet the entirety of the ATLA fandom treats her like garbage because she “talks about her mom dying too much” (even though she BARELY does & also was parentified from a young age due to her mother’s death) and, of course, because she’s a more feminine women when compared to her counterparts. Even in the show itself she’s mistreated: she’s ALWAYS shown cooking for the rest of the gaang, doing their laundry, any ‘womanly’ task. She ends up with the guy who kissed her twice without her consent & who she never showed any real attraction to and apparently (despite being a badass warrior-doctor!!!) after the show ended she just… settled down in the South Pole and had a bunch of kids and never did anything else. She didn’t even get a statue :( Anyways during the ATLA renaissance, despite Zutara actually not being canon, people felt that Katara threatened the sanctity of the new almost entirely baseless yaoi ship, Zukka. Unfortunately for them, due to the fact that Katara and Sokka are siblings, the usual anti-Zutara arguments didn’t work as well. So they resorted to just… slaughtering her character. If she was lucky, they’d just make Katara a background character, wingwoman, &or throw her together with her canon love interest. If she was unlucky they’d do anything from make her homophobic (??) to killing her off! Fuck’s sake, she never even got a token spare-the-pairs wlw ship! Sorry for getting so heated, that whole debacle made me FUMING MAD.

[i-hate-mayo]

so i love zukka right?? but i also like zutara and other ships that conflict with zukka and something that i've been seeing is a lot of disgusting hatred aimed towards zutara shippers and especially the zutara shippers who are woc...like at the end of the day it's literally a kids tv show where the focus is NOT the romantic relationships, and even beyond that, it's never ok to be racist or homophobic to people?? and to be these things in the name of a ship that involves both moc and lgbt characters is just??? the cognitive disconnect?? literally just live your own life and leave other people alone?? especially when your point of conflict is who you ship cartoon characters with?? like yeah there are problematic interpretations of zutara (which should not be perpetuated) but there are problematic ones of zukka as well?? i just think people get so caught up in their fantasies and fandoms that they don't realize that a fandom is all that it is?? and why of all groups would you attack women of color?? not that you should attack anyone over a ship but like really?? women of color??

[natequarter]

when your fandom starts having dickpunchers? run

[army-of-mai-lovers]

zukka fandom: *pushes out kids uncomfy with nsfw, poc, anybody critical of the way they write women, etc etc until it’s just a bunch of white adults with internalized misogyny and the exact same opinions*

zukka fandom: what I love about this fandom is that there isn’t any drama

[dykejet]

a zukka fic: includes the word exotic in any context

me:

(Id in alt text)

[yuekis]

ATLA fandom stop drawing literal teenagers with awkwardly large muscles challenge

[lunaathorne]

Me: the so called "atla renaissance" is just people taking various digs at katara, but more importantly being in constant fear that katara is the female character who canonically has the deepest and most meaningful relationship with the fan fave male character. thus in retaliation, these atla "purists" have decided that zuko is gay and in love with katara's brother, thus effectively removing the brown, feminine woman from being the object of the star male character's desire but also, under the guise of being cool and gay and above ship wars, erasing katara and mai as possible threats to their gay ship, by a) making homophobic jokes about katara or ALWAYS making her the token straight of the group and b) hamfistedly shoving mai into ty lee's arms like yesss lesbians even though if you search for mailee on ao3 they are about 90% a side ship in z*kka fics. apparently the coloniser colonised power imbalance is only valid when the colonised subject is the feminine brown woman. :)))))

Girl at the bar: um I think I see my friends

[sokkabaddiebender2021]

How do people on here have an atla blog when half of their posts are tagged anti bryke?? 😭😭

[aroace-mako]

[ID: a picture of Bernie Sanders from the “i am once again asking meme” with white bottom text that reads: “i am once again asking you to stop writing jet as zuko’s toxic ex in your zukka fic. END ID]

i’m not even asking u at the point, i’m telling you