Imo, atla has a bittersweet ending
Aang is sitting alone and wearing the air nomads clothes, his culture clothes, a necklace similar to GYATSO's necklace. I can't even imagine the emptiness and sadness he was feeling here
There are no airbenders in the crowd
All nation gathered..... except the air nomads.
No one else in the crowd wearing orange or yellow.
Aang won the war, but his people are still gone.
Yes, he has the Gaang, he has Katara, he has Momo and Appa. But he's still the last airbender.
This is so heartbreaking.
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man, all you zutara guys are way better at this shipping thing than me. i read through like ninety different metas about the symbolism of the colors associated between the two, the fact that the two of them are the emotional story arc of ATLA, and how their romance falls more into the canon themes of the franchise.....
and then i'm here like, he took lightning for her and she was aang's mom in an episode. i'm sold.
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aang reading zukos diary like a gossip mag and 10 years later after theyre friends he is still pulling out secret info about zuko no one knew. aang randomly mentions "oh yeah zukos been to this port before he liked the chicken at this one restaurant" and zukos like ? i never told you that. and aangs like um. it was revealed to me in a dream.
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one thing that really makes my eye twitch is when people pretend like suki isn't part of the gaang!! likeee we saw her early on in season 1 for the first time and she was a recurring character until she became a permanent and integral member of team avatar later on!! it's so sad when she's basically reduced to nothing but sokkas gf and ppl don't deem her important enough of a member and just exclude her from the group. and it's so weird bc not only was she already part of the group even before zuko, she also played a huge part in ending the war together with the gaang but people keep disregarding her and everything she's done which pisses me off so bad like omg.
what i'm trying to say is PUT SOME RESPECT ON MY GIRL SUKIS NAME!!!
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“We need more reception arcs like Zuko’s!”
Baby girl, you couldn’t even handle Taigen.
A huge reason why Zuko has been immortalized so fervently is because ATLA came out in the mid 2000s, nearing two decades ago. With the state of basic reading comprehension, much less media literacy, social awareness, and chronically online behaviour that exists nowadays in a way it did not exist fifteen years ago, I would be surprised if the live action ATLA tv adaptation didn’t make Zuko a bit more likeable right off the bat. I’m not saying I agree with it, but if the show-runners are concerned about audiences reactions to Sokka’s (wrong, but relatively mild) sexism that exists in only the first few episodes of the show, then the idea of redeeming Zuko has got to be terrifying them. Tbh I don’t entirely blame them, even though I’m not certain it’s a good idea for the story as an adaptation.
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I rewatched The Avatar and the Fire Lord a few days ago, and god, what a good episode. Revealing that Zuko is a descendant of both Sozin and Roku was a genius move (and that's not even getting into the Zuko/Aang parallels of it all). But there's something the show doesn't seem to think of, and that I haven't seen anyone in the fandom discuss either — the fact that Zuko isn't the only one descendant from both these men. Azula is, too.
The conclusion of this story that Iroh presents to Zuko at the end of the episode is that he alone — because of his lineage from both men the war was started from — is uniquely capable of cleansing the sins of his family and the fire nation and bringing peace to the world. But, the thing is, there's two sides of this conflict, and therefor two sides to its legacy. The external and the personal. The legacy of the external is the war, but the legacy of the personal is the sibling rivalries that kept repeating through generations of the royal family.
Though Roku and Sozin were not actually related, they were childhood friends as close as siblings and fucking shared a birthday, so the symbolism works. We know very little about Azulon's childhood or if he even had any direct sibling rivalries like this at all, but from what I can find on his wiki page, we know that Sozin favoured him over "other family" (I'm assuming his siblings). What we know very well, however, is what happened in the next generation between Iroh and Ozai. We know Azulon favoured Iroh over Ozai, and that this likely is the initial source of their hatred for each other, which resulted in perhaps the worst sibling rivalry of them all (what with the indirect patricide and throne stealing).
Then we go on to Zuko and Azula, whose upbringing kept going in the same patterns, but the key difference is them being the first ones to both be descendant from the men who started it all. If Zuko having this lineage makes him uniquely capable of ending the cycle of war in his country and restoring balance to the world, shouldn't that mean that both he and Azula having this lineage makes them uniquely capable of ending the cycle of brutal sibling rivalries and restoring balance to their family?
This conclusion I've presented seems to fit perfectly with the lesson Aang draws from the same story as well:
"Roku was just as much Fire Nation as Sozin was, right? If anything, their story proves that anyone's capable of great good and great evil. Everyone, even the Fire Lord and the Fire Nation, have to be treated like they're worth giving a chance."
I know this is supposed to be foreshadowing to Aang refusing to kill Ozai later, but I can't help but think it's even more applicable to fourteen year old Azula. It's really so ironic that the show runners thought Azula deserved what she got when their own show seems to be telling them that Zuko mending his relationship with her is what he ultimately should've done.
But, then again... that does sort of make her the perfect tragedy.
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