#zuko made mistakes

[marchlione]

another bone i have to pick with atla fic writers, writing katara in a way that makes her out to be a totally unreasonable bitch who goes out of her way to hurt zuko or refusing to treat him is completely ooc. katara, no matter how much she hates someone, always tries to help, it is the core of her character, no matter how angry she is, no matter how much she can hate, she always, always, chooses compassion and forgiveness. This is a choice she makes even when confronting her mother's murderer. She could have killed him or done any number of things to him, but she didn't. In her own words, Katara will never, ever turn her back on someone in need. That is Katara's greatest strength and what makes her my favourite character.

In the beginning she, like Sokka, is helpless to the dangers her tribe faces. When she, Aang and Sokka travel to the North Pole, she is yet untrained, and if caught or attacked, she doesn't have much in the ways of defending herself, but despite this, she goes out of her way to try and help other victims of the war in any way she can. After being trained, she has the power to defend herself and others. She even gains the ability to blood bend. With all this power that she didn't have before, she could have gone the way of Jet and exacted her revenge in anyway she could, without considering how it hurt innocents. She could have done a lot with her bloodbending. But she didn't. She draws a line in the sand, she chooses "good", she chooses to be compassionate, even when it would be so much easier to hate, and hurt, even when it would make far more sense to turn someone away. Katara is the first person to give Zuko a chance, despite the fact that he has been chasing them from the moment Aang came out of that iceberg. Zuko had been pursuing the gaang the way Azula hunted them for far longer, even if he didn't deprive them of sleep. He at one point caught her and tied her to a tree. Katara had so many legitimate reasons to hate him and turn him away and not trust him. And we know she is capable of hate, we know she is capable of hurting. But she doesn't. That's the point. That is who she is.

So making her a petty bitch going out of her way to cause bodily harm to poor baby zuzu, is extremely disingenuous. We, as the audience, know Zuko's arc, we've seen his journey, we've watched him realize the harm the fire nation causes, the atrocities they've committed and resolve to no longer be a part of that and eventually accept that he has to actively make the world a better place. We know that his betrayal under Ba Sing Se was him backsliding, and was ultimately what sealed the deal in terms of him coming to realize the full extent of the fire nation's corruption. But their world didn't sit around "waiting for him to switch sides, and had to plan for a future where he didn’t" (quote from 'There Within' by Avataraccount on ao3). And a direct consequence of Zuko's betrayal was Aang's near death and destruction of the Avatar cycle. Katara was the one who worked tirelessly to keep Aang alive, to keep the world's last hope alive. She was the one who had to directly face the devastating consequence of her choice to trust Zuko in the caves. So when Zuko comes back and reiterates the spiel he gave her (albeit with stronger and firmer conviction but that makes no difference to someone who has heard a version of it before and watched him go back on it), Katara is well within her rights to not trust him. Making her distrust seem like it is childish or selfish is ridiculous. As is trying to justify it as her "character flaw". Katara is learning from what she deems as her mistake from before. In fact, she's making the smart decision!

[demaparbat-hp]

That infamous prison escape.

[perfectlypanda]

But I'm a fire and I'll keep your brittle heart warm If your cascade ocean wave blues come Peace/ Taylor Swift

♥ Please do not repost. If you like it and want to show people, share a link to this page instead. Thank you!

[mfelewzi]

Ehi @ironinkpen , somebody had made some screenshots of your post about Uncle Jasmine Dragon! And here, some interesting comments by r/TheLastAirbender!

Ehi, @akiizayoi4869 and @stardust948 , some ideas for your stories! Especially if you will make some jokes about this Mad and Crazy level of Lucky!

If you want, obviously.

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

s5 and the trivialisation of catra's crimes

i couldn't be the only who noticed the language that s5 used whenever it came to talking about catra's actions.

(i probably missed a bunch of other instances, so feel free to reblog and add more!)

“hurt people” = huge understatement.

you also abuse them, try to control them, emotionally manipulate them, gaslight them, and attempt to murder them.

“for everything” = again, vague.

what's everything? we see later that catra still holds adora accountable for “abandoning her”, she still acts like adora is dumb and weak and easily manipulated, she still shows no remorse for the way she treated adora. what did she mean by everything then?

“tried to kill me a bunch of times” = only touching the surface.

she also physically and emotionally abused you, scarred you, kidnapped your friends, mind controlled you, kidnapped you, drugged you, and almost ended the entire universe just to spite you.

“stubborn brat” = huge understatement 2.0

she was acting like an abusive bitch person. stubborn brat makes it sound like catra is a pre-teen throwing a temper tantrum (which is exactly what she acts like, to her credit).

“i thought things would be different”, “fixing things” = vague terms + trivializing the situation.

adora is speaking as if the only problem here was a rough patch in a relationship or a bad breakup and not, you know, dealing with a literal war criminal and abuser.

“it's a long story” = vague and refusing to explain further.

said long story being that catra only sided with you because she had no choice and is still actively abusing you.

we're talking about a war criminal here. we're talking about someone who put the safety of the entire universe at jeopardy.

why is s5 using such vague terms and trivializing everything that catra did? why is it acting like the only problem with catra's character was that she had some relationship issues with adora?

oh wait, i know why. it's because the creators were hoping that we don't remember what happened in the previous seasons or sweep everything under the rug. and luckily for them, 90% of the fandom fell for it.

[tragedykery]

hitting y’all upside the head relationships can “not work out” without being abusive! there doesn’t have to be one person who is to blame for everything! what the fuck!

[allgremlinart]

"I hate the kinds of parents they made Toph and Aang in tlok :/" <- good litmus test for how boring someone is

[bigquestionmark]

the way people treat ozai and ursa is so similar to how people treat jiang fengmian and yu ziyuan

[ghostly-squid]

Time travel fix-it? No. Time travel worse-it.

[hel-phoenyx]

I see people using Zuko as an example of a redemption arc beautifully done every other morning and while I do agree with that I don't see a lot of people touching what is really interesting for me about it : The progression of his character is different from the progression of his acts

Like Zuko's character act is very much not linear. He learns, he make mistakes, he goes back to his old ways when he is offered his initial goal, honor and redemption, his path is like climbing a hill, rolling down the path on the other side and climbing a second hill again this time successfully

But when he does go back to the fire nation he's already a changed man and that is not a turn back in any way. What he saw in the Earth Kingdom is still there. What Aang told him about being friends in another life is still there. He's not the thirteen year-old that left obsessed with chasing the Avatar, or even the sixteen year-old with the same, three-year-old obsession. And he's aware of that.

Even though he returned back to his old ways and did so against everyone's advice, causing a bump in his arc, his character progressed linearly. He needed that comeback at his old home to realise it was anything but the safe place he remembered. The troubled teen that left didn't come back, a man did. And he didn't fit.

Hos relationship to Maï didn't fit, and the awkwardness is probably due to Zuko having a whole new bagage and seeing his childhood crush grow up without him : The fact that they do come back together at the end of the show is a proof that this time, they entered the relationship not as the teens that remembered what the other was like, but as adults that are aware of who the other is. His relationship to Azula didn't fit, even though still with the same tension ; it is less build on sibling rivalry and more on the awareness of both of their abuse (the beach scene is probably a catalyst for Zuko's pained expression at the end of their final battle. Like he knows she's as broken as he is, in different ways). His relationship to his father didn't fit as it is not one of admiration, but one of distrust and fear.

Even his relationship to his uncle didn't fit. Because now Iroh is a traitor and he's a prince and they created a rift from the core of their very values.

And realizing that he didn't fit the old life he came back to is exactly what prompted him to follow his own path.

Zuko did not just go backwards just to find his own redemption. Zuko went back to an old environment with knowledge of the outside world, relationships and doubts and realised he already grew past his childhood and dreams and had to find new ones, ones that align more with the views he gained and upheld. And he needed to see that his home was not what he remembered to realise that.

The acts seem to make him go backward, but the character himself evolved in a very forward way, looking back only to see how much he changed.

[clonehub]

like i implied in the tags and also said in another post. im over fascist forgiveness plot lines. idc how sorry you are atp i feel like when writers go down the "this violent white man participated in, supported, or otherwise justified genocide and destruction but he feels bad now" that's just white writers not actually understanding the level of depravity needed to support that ideology. the level of dehumanization. oh, he feels bad? he regrets his decision? and every single person around him is more than glad to bring him back and wrap their arms around him and pet his head and put his "terrible mistake" behind him? how many of his victims did you name, if any at all?

[edgyandoverzealous]

I'm a Zokka shipper, I am in fandom purely for fun, as I am under the impression that everyone is.

[gh0st-city]

Thinking about Azula again...

[scattered-winter]

ok I'm gonna say something that might be controversial. I can't stand how in the atla fandom people are condemning iroh for being a Horrible Person, Actually, when one of the central themes of the show is like. growing and changing as a person. despite past mistakes. especially for the fire nation, who have caused so much pain and destruction, and especially for the fire nation royal family (like zuko). and like yeah zuko was a traumatized teenager who was manipulated and abused his entire life but iroh was a grown man when he was a general, but idk. I don't think there should be an age limit for growth

[julietwiskey1]

To be fair the narrative framing of Azula makes sense when you realize the show is from Zukos perspective. From his view Azula has always been his personal villain more than Ozai because he was trying to gain Ozais favor for most of the series. However the series should have made it clear after Zuko turned on Ozai that Azula is also a victim and it kind of tried to do that in the end but ran out of time.

That is true. That’s why I don’t have issue with how Azula was written as the main villian of book two. From both Zuko’s and the Gaangs perspective she is the one now hunting them.

The issue is that in Book three they never spent much time refuting that perspective. They had the time and opportunity to do so. With the time they had it wouldn’t take a lot of work to have Zuko realize that Azula is in the same position as him.

But when the writers should have been shifting focus from Azula onto the series main big bad, Ozai, they instead treated every encounter between them as if Azula was still the series big bad. Not as if she were a mean little sister she was actually being.

And if they wanted to have Zuko maintain his stance that Azula is the main bad guy not Ozai than they could have written something to show Zuko wrong. But they never did. A narrative can show that a main character we are supposed to root for is wrong.

But because the narrative never tried to show that Zuko was wrong in this regard or that Ozai was the big bad not Azula the fandom still treats Azula horribly. And they doubled down on their treatment in the comics. So I��m not letting them off the hook on this because Azula was mostly seen from Zuko’s POV.

[hauntingblue]

Jee and zuko reconciliation episode I guess