bi-babe-y

Latest Posts by bi-babe-y

The groups at the finale

I'm to this day very confused why the groupings of the Gaang where what they were at the end of the series.

It's time for the ending Avatar, and the Gaang has almost always split up for the season finales. It would not have been surprising if in this case they did not, and this was even teased with the idea that the entire Gaang would roll up and defeat Ozai together. Then they split apart even more so than before. Aang departs (in his sleep lol), they remainder go together only to split apart to have each of their own big moments in their separate groups.

But, I'm left wondering, why are Katara and Zuko practically attached to the hip during this? From the southern raiders onwards, those two are practically always next to each other, and interacting. Ember Island they sit together, from the moment Aang walks away and Zuko holds Katara back they're together including sleeping next to each other (while Sokka and Suki sleep next to each other a bit away) and share their story climax together. This kind of closeness and consistency in being together must be taken as a sign of them having a close relationship as otherwise its unclear why they would be together so consistently. Zuko interacts with the others, but the majority of his emotional conversations and support, from his end and hers are with Katara.

So, why do the writers go so far to establish a close relationship like this between Katara and Zuko? They did not really need to, and in fact with regards to the pairings at the end of the series it even comes across weirdly. It all comes down to the age-old question. Why was it Katara that Zuko dramatically chanced sacrificing everything for? I think even if it's not shipped, Zutara very much has presence in the original work in the sense that once these two characters get along, they very much connect deeply and would spend a lot of time together when they can.

not to sound like a clown but i really thought they were building up to the lesson that aang’s love for katara was a selfish love which is why he needed to let her go………….only for them to literally let katara be his prize for saving the world at the end of it like thanks i hate it??? 

I got back into ATLA, and I've gotta talk about how Aang may have wanted Katara, but he needed Toph.

Aang needed someone who would challenge him, not someone who would be his "safe haven". While Katara often coddled/mothered Aang, Toph was always his equal. The two of them could have fun together without the mother-son/big sister-little brother undertones Kataang had. Katara always sheltered Aang, which is why he never grew and developed as a character, not even as an adult. If Toph saw Aang emotionally neglect two of their three kids because only one was an Airbender, she would have, 100%, put him back in his place because she never sugar-coated ANYTHING and faced problems head-on.

THIS is who I wanted Aang to end up with. Toph might not have been the one he wanted, but she was the one he needed.

These two were made for each other, just like Zuko and Katara (the two characters with the strongest emotional connection in the entire show, who understood one another like no one else + let's not forget all the romantic coding, thematic significance and symbolism that their dynamic is full of)

zuko staying up all night outside katara's tent is genuinely one of the tenderest moments in the whole show to me because it's so clear that zuko didn't have to do that. whenever we've seen zuko do this before it's usually for a purpose (hunting aang), out of necessity (catching sokka sneaking off to boiling rock so he didn't go into danger by himself), or because someone he loved was in danger (iroh being injured by azula's lightning).

with katara, there's no such urgency. there's nothing stopping zuko from getting a good night's sleep and finding katara the next morning to tell her about the southern raiders. it would hardly have delayed the trip by more than an hour or two, if that. it's likely zuko would've woken up before katara anyway (mr. rise with the sun after all) so he probably could've met her at the same time he did in the show without having to lose sleep and wait outside her tent.

but he doesn't, because he knows that katara would want to know about the southern raiders right away -- that this is information given already six years too late, and which he has no right to keep from her for even a second longer than he has to. i think too that zuko saw some part of himself in katara here; the little boy who ran to find the person responsible for his mother's disappearance the moment he learned she was gone and the teenager who had to live an almost equal amount of time never knowing for sure who had taken her away and why, would surely relate better than anyone to katara's desire for closure, for answers so long denied.

(which is also why i can't take it seriously when people paint zuko's actions in this episode as self-serving. of course he wants to earn her forgiveness -- which, by the way, he should want-- but not once does zuko let his desires take precedence over katara's. if he was going to do that, he would probably have started by not pulling an all-nighter on an uncomfortable ass rock for no logical reason.)

so he stays. he waits. he puts his needs second to hers -- as he will do for the rest of the episode, as he will do when he leaps in front of lightning for her -- not only because he cares enough to try, to figure out what she needs, but because he understands her.

and if that's not love, idk what is.

This made me bust out laughing

good things will happen 🧿

things that are meant to be will fall into place 🧿

People say “I don’t ship Zutara because if Zuko and Katara got married, Katara would end up like this” and then they describe exactly how Katara ended up after she married Aang

i think we are all forgetting something when we talk about how toxic patrick, tashi, and art are — or when we decide one is “worse” than the other. they all have moments of seeing right through it, seeing each other’s toxic behavior for what it is, and STILL want and need each other in this possessive, envious, visceral way.

1. in the way beginning, tashi is clearly flirting more with art than patrick, and patrick is visibly annoyed. art sees right through it and even challenges him like “okay, let’s leave”, and has this little smirk on his face because he knows patrick won’t give up on tashi.

2. tashi immediately sees the visible tension and love between art and patrick, and literally orchestrates their first kiss. she sees right through their repression, and even calls herself a “home-wrecker” but still entangles herself with them, especially patrick because he’s clearly the better tennis player at that point and that is tash’s ONLY true love. tennis. that’s what she desires most in him, and patrick knows that. he even calls her out on it in the dorm room scene. but they have this mirroring fire in each other that neither of them can give up, not until patrick breaks the balance and bails — tashi’s injury is literally a metaphor for the balance shattering between all three of them when patrick leaves her.

3. before this, patrick sees right through art trying to break them up, and even admires that quality — maybe even feels smug and flattered because art is jealous and feels left out from both tashi and patrick. patrick has known this all along, we saw it in the “tick-serve” scene, where he even swears to tashi he won’t tell anyone but he still tells art, who is desperate to feel a part of them and patrick wants that, too — even keeps that close intimacy with art that we see in the churro scene (swoon swoon swoon).

4. haven’t you noticed that arts desire to be great is only ever tied up in patrick and tashi? how he needs to beat patrick to win tashis affection, how he needs to win in tennis so that tashi can live through him, how he lives up to his potential in the ending only because tashi and patrick push him to it, in their little fucked up ways? he knows this — he even admits that he’s playing for tashi, that he knows she’s living through him. he even admits he’s playing a fucked up little game with patrick when they’re in the sauna. yet he still does it. again, he knows what’s happening, sees right through them — still does it, still loves them.

5. when tashi calls patrick to come pick her up he knows it’s not just to tell him to throw the match — and despite how she battles him about it, they still have sex in the car, because he already knows. he’s so fully aware of her and her game and he’s so willing to be caught up in it, the same as art.

just some examples of how they all have moments of clarity and agency and yet they still choose to be entangled in one another because they’re all fucked up in their own, individual ways, and they’re all living through each other for their own specific needs. arts is to be seen as worthy, as great, but only through their gaze. tashis is to have the career that was stolen from her. patricks is truly to be in love and in lust with both of them, because we even see that from the beginning that tashis love alone will never satiate him; it has to be arts love, too. that scene in the sauna when he thinks he’s lost it from art is the most sad and fucked up we ever even see patrick. on top of tashi asking him to throw the game — he’s so defensive of arts feelings.

in short this is an actual love triangle (and i would go as far as to see it as a polyship). you can’t erase one without the whole thing unraveling, and you can’t say one character was the “worst” without picking apart the motivations and pointing to the fact that their bad behavior was never a secret or left unchecked.

even at the end, patrick signals to art that he slept with tashi — art knows and they still have that intimate completion at the end, all three of them. art living up to his potential and embracing patrick fully (id argue this could even be a metaphor for embracing his bisexuality), patrick having both tashi and arts affection again, and tashi playing a phenomenal tennis match through her little white boys — in such a visceral, emotional way that she cries out like she did in the beginning and the last frame is her smiling.

in a fucked up way, they all get what they wanted out of each other.

One of the things I love about the Ember Island Players is that by trying to make fun of the possibility of romance between Zuko and Katara in the play-within-a-play, the show actually introduces Zutara as text into the world of the show, particularly in Fire Nation pop culture.

Like, there's this widely-advertised production that shows the Fire Prince and the Southern waterbending master falling in love. Then, probably the next thing the gen pop hears about their future Fire Lord is that he's jumped in front of his sister's lightning to save this same girl's life, doing absolutely nothing to beat those allegations.

There's just no way the gossip mill isn't churning. It's too juicy.

I’ve decided to make a second post about Aang’s parental neglect because the first one was hijacked by people accusing me of being delusional.

The more I think about Aang’s attitude, the less I understand it. In my post, I said that it would be understandable (but still questionable) for Aang to leave Bumi and Kya behind if he’s going to places made for airbenders- I take it back. Not only because it’s parenting 101 that even if you believe that your child won’t enjoy a vacation, you still take them, but because I’ve come to realize that there is no such thing as airbender-only places. They don’t exist.

Think about it, what is airbender culture? Is it being vegetarian? Kya and Bumi could do that. Is it believing in absolute pacifism? Kya and Bumi could do that. Is it meditating and being spiritual? Kya and Bumi could do that. Is it being bonded with an air bison? Kya and Bumi could do that.

The only thing that is exclusive to Aang and Tenzin is bending air and even that isn’t unreachable for Kya and Bumi. Remember in ATLA when we learned that you can learn techniques from one form of bending and use them for another form of bending? Iroh famously learned a waterbending technique and used it to create lightning redirection and we saw Zuko using techniques from all 4 forms of bending in his agni kai- So why couldn’t Aang teach Kya airbending techniques and have her use them for waterbending? It would’ve been perfectly possible. Even Bumi could’ve used the same technology that Teo and Katara used to fly- Aang acknowledges that Teo is essentially an airbender, so why couldn’t Bumi do the same?

What TLOK is presenting is an immense regression for the character of Aang. Are we supposed to believe that the same Aang who saw Teo flying and exclaimed “Even though Teo is not an airbender, he really does have the spirit of one!” would look at his own children and say “Nope, you’re not an airbender and could never be one”?

If I didn’t know anything about Bryke, I would assume that they hate Aang and that this writing choice is their personal vendetta against the character- But I do know about them and I know that they love Aang more than anything, so what the fuck is this? Is it a power fantasy about being so famous and powerful that you can get away with neglecting your children?

I can’t believe that Aang stans flooded my mentions. If I were a devoted Aang stan, I would track down the showrunners and key their cars.

The way Azulon ordered the execution of both Zuko and Katara — while they were both children — is actually insane. The endless parallels between these two are so good it’s a literary crime they didn’t wind up together

the reason why i'll never take the argument that "fire lady katara disempowers katara" seriously is because in canon she is reduced to being aang's wife and the mother of his children and has no achievements of her own which actively disempowers her and a lot of the fics i've read with the fire lady katara headcanon have her being involved in politics which demonstrates that for the most part, zutara shippers care more about empowering katara than -GUNSHOTS.

"Pen ruined Eloises reputation" no the fuck she didnt. Eloise faced no consequences for going to see a man of lowerclass unchaperoned (Pen wrote she was seeing political radicals), got a new friend, and was still able to hang out with the debutantes and have her reputation in tact meanwhile Eloise blabbing about polins lessons caused Pen to be shamed and have to write about herself cause everyone was making fun of her

No Question

Every time I think about Zuko and Katara doing the fake dating trope in canon. I always laugh because no one would question it. In fact, it would be the most believable thing in the world. The only question people would have is, “What took you so long?”

But Zuko and Katara are so oblivious to each other's feelings that they don’t recognize that the only ones acting weird are themselves. They constantly try to overcompensate and make things more “believable.”

~0~

Zuko holding Katara’s hand: Does this look authentic? Oh, Agni, we must look so awkward. She’s so pretty, and she’s so out of my league. This is never going to work. Dont panic. Dont panic…

Katara: His hands are so warm. Don’t blush—wait, maybe that would be a good thing. It would make things more believable. But what if he figures out my feelings?

Meanwhile

Iroh: I knew they were soulmates when he sacrificed himself and took a lightning bolt directly to his heart for her.

June: I knew they were perfect together when I saw how he wore her necklace on his wrist. It was obvious he was holding a torch for her.

Sokka: I knew they were meant to be when they teased each other during the Elember Island players' performance. Everyone knows playful teasing is an act of love.

Toph who can feel their heartbeats: These bitches dumb.

truly the wildest thing about all the Bridgerton discourse about "is Nicola Coughlan too FAT to be a convincing love interest???" is that in many ways she actually looks better in the period costumes than her thinner counterparts because she has the figure to really fill them out. those dresses are incredibly flattering on larger bodies because they emphasise the bust and cleavage whilst creating a very elegant silhouette. there's something unintentionally hilarious about hearing pearl-clutching in the distance over "idk is this FAT WOMAN sexy enough to be believable as an object of lust??" whilst Penelope Featherington's majestic heaving bosoms are almost spilling out of her dress in a category 5 titty event. if anything she's too sexy. they had to spend the first two seasons putting her in ugly dresses in a desperate attempt to conceal the fact that she's serving more cunt than the entire itty bitty titty committee combined

say what you want about bridgerton I know it's not a Good Show or whatever but nicola coughlan insisting on being 'as naked as possible' in this series as a 'fuck you' to everyone saying she's too fat to be a romantic lead and because 'when I'm 60 I wanna watch it and remember how fucking hot I was' is ICONIC BEHAVIOR

No, Shipping Zutara Is Not Supporting Amatonormativity (Please Use Some Fucking Braincells For Once)

- a treatise by a severely pissed off aroace zutara shipper

since words don’t mean anything anymore (if they ever did on the esteemed piss-on-the-poor website), let’s start with a definition.

amatonormativity: the set of social assumptions that everyone prospers with a romantic relationship, thereby positioning marriage as a universal goal of adult life. amatonormativity forms the basis of several institutional structures that are built to cater to romantic bonds over all others, also manifesting in social pressure on individuals to find a romantic partner by pushing the false narrative that those who do not experience romance are automatically lonely, unhappy and unfulfilled. it is usually characterized by the prioritization of romantic love over other forms of love, particularly platonic.

the anti-zutara argument based on this is as follows: wanting zutara to happen is amatonormative because it a) devalues zuko and katara’s platonic bond b) pushes the idea that men and women can’t be friends and c) doesn’t align with the themes of the show, as romantic love was never the point of atla.

i would like to take the time today to tell you that this is some fucking bullshit, for the following reasons:

one, this may come as a shock to some of you, but zutara shippers did not invent the concept of romantic love in avatar: the last airbender. you are more than welcome to criticize the pairings of suki/sokka, katara/aang, mai/zuko, yue/sokka, jin/zuko, jet/katara, and even kanna/pakku for perpetuating amatonormativity through their unnecessary romantic subplots. and if you don’t have anything to say about any of those pairings, then here’s a word for you: hypocrite.

zk shippers are not introducing the taint of romantic love into some kind of wholesome platonic utopia where it never existed. when we say zutara should have been canon, it is a statement that ends with the implicit instead of kat.aang and mai.ko tacked on at the back because if we were going to get a romantic relationship anyway, it might as well have been one that was well-developed, narratively impactful, and thematically relevant.

two, saying zutara is amatonormative is fucking rich when the main “romance” of atla is a three season long struggle to get out of the friendzone. aang’s desire to be in a romantic relationship with katara is one of his primary motivations throughout the show, and not once does either he or the narrative ever entertain the thought that just being katara’s friend might be enough. to the contrary, aang’s crush and the potential of its reciprocation is a fundamental part of how the story gets its audience to invest in both his character and the kat.aang relationship. they want you to want him to get the girl, and that’s the driving force of the ship’s development from start to finish.

you can see the influence of this in the way people defend why kat.aang had to happen: “aang would be crushed!” “it would break aang’s heart!” “aang deserves to be happy!” and that in and of itself is more amatonormative than any version of romantic zutara, as if this idea that aang is somehow doomed to a life of misery and loneliness just because he can’t be with the girl he likes isn’t inherently based on the assumption that platonic love can’t be as meaningful and satisfying as romantic love.

three, let’s be so fucking fr: a show written by cishet men in the early 2000s was not “subverting amatonormativity” by not making zutara happen, especially not when they went for the fucking olympic gold of romantic cliches — the hero gets the girl trope — instead. otherwise, why did the entire show end with an uncomfortably long liplock? if romance would’ve devalued zuko and katara’s platonic bond, then what the everloving fuck happened to their friendship in the comics and the legend of korra?

it is blatantly false to say that zutara shippers are the ones devaluing their platonic bond when the creators did it first. they evidently don’t view zutara’s platonic bond as equal to kat.aang’s romantic one, judging by their treatment of both relationships in the comics and LOK and the fact that they talked about kat.aang “winning” the ship war in the first place. because if the two relationships were of equivalent standing, why would there be a winner and a loser at all?

amatonormativity is baked into the DNA of atla, and while some people choose to reject this framework entirely (zk friendship >>> ka romance anyday), it is also not wrong for zk shippers to be annoyed at the treatment zutara received within the context of said framework. since the creators clearly thought a romantic relationship was better than a platonic one, they could at least have picked the couple that actually made sense instead of adding insult to injury by making that romance kat.aang. it is not amatonormative to acknowledge that zutara was not afforded the distinction it should have been in the eyes of those who wrote it, because it’s obvious that the decision to keep zuko and katara’s relationship platonic wasn’t to respect their friendship, but to position them as inferior to kat.aang.

four, detractors of romantic zutara often argue that their platonic relationship is inherently better & i’ve discussed before why that isn’t the case, but i also hate this argument because it’s perpetuating the very thing that aromantic people are trying to get rid of in the first place: the hierarchization of love. it is not the “gotcha!” you think it is to genuinely state that platonic love is better than romantic love, because it’s still buying into the idea that there’s some kind of order to categorizing human relationships. the solution to amatonormativity isn’t changing what form of love gets to be at the top of the list — it’s doing away with the hierarchy entirely.

i ship zuko and katara because canon already gave me their friendship. i already know what their platonic relationship looks like and that gives me more room for imagination in developing their romantic one because it’s a place canon didn’t go.

at the end of the day, friendship and romance are just different avenues of exploring intimacy. neither is inherently more valuable than the other, and neither is inherently more problematic. and if you truly believe in dismantling amatonormative beliefs, you would recognize that making a distinction between the two is only perpetuating the problem, not challenging it.

Zuko finds out Katara was parentified from the age of eight and was a single mom friend of three until he stumbled into the position of gaang dad friend. So when she visits the Fire Nation Zuko dotes on her, making sure her every need is anticipated and catered to. He even goes as far as - to the horror of his council - kneeling to remove her shoes.

Because of this she earns the nickname Lady Katara among the palace staff which she finds amusing but a little confusing. So one day over tea she asks Iroh why they call her that and he explains:

"They're just practicing."

"Why would you need to practice a nickname?"

"Well my dear, they expect that within a few years Fire will preceed it."

And that's about when Katara chokes on her tea.

I’ve seen a few K@taang fans say that Aang telling Katara to forgive Yon Rha in The Southern Raiders is a parallel to Katara helping Aang leave the Avatar State. I really don’t like this take, for a simple reason:

The Avatar State is a supernatural uncontrollable rage. Katara’s anger is not.

On multiple occasions, Aang states that he regrets his actions while in the Avatar state, and he doesn’t like feeling out of control in that way. We even see his rational spirit’s reaction to the Avatar State when it detaches from Aang’s body to speak to Roku in “The Avatar State”.

Aang wants to be stopped when he is in this state. When Katara reaches out to him, she is not trying to change his mind, she is trying to allow his rational mind to regain control. She is giving him agency, not denying him agency.

By contrast, while Katara is angry in The Southern Raiders, we’re never told that her rational faculties aren’t still operational. She’s determined. Not possessed.

At no point does Katara say that she regrets acting in anger. Instead, we see her exercise judgement and mercy even when face to face with the man she saw kill her mother.

This is not someone who is out of control.

(Not that she necessarily would have been out of control if she did kill him.)

The fact that Katara wasn’t out of control and didn’t need to be stopped is further reinforced by the fact that, unlike Aang who agonises over his actions in the Avatar State after the fact, Katara doesn’t express regret at her actions or relief that she didn’t kill Yon Rha. Instead she re-states her initial position that she will not forgive him.

All of this makes Katara’s anger at Yon Rha very different from the Avatar State. She is in control of her actions and does not want or need to be stopped. Trying to stop her isn’t helping to reassert her own control over her actions, it’s questioning her active decisions. It’s denying her agency instead of enabling it.

An emotional woman is not the same thing as an irrational or out of control one.

Oh besties... we've got a live one on our hands...

*edit* I've actually read this fic myself, and so have others. If you haven't read it but want to, DM me for the link. I want to give this writer as much support as possible. I will be reviewing this fic later because it is good. *

Ehem... so I don't have a problem with people expressing their opinions on something, but this is bullying.

Taking someone's fanfiction and posting it on Tumblr to make fun of the writer is fucking stupid. Someone wrote this with a lot of time and thought, voicing their opinions through their creativity. That's like me going into the kat*ang tag on AO3 and posting someone's hard work just to ridicule them, then completely invalidate their work of FICTION because I don't like the pairing.

I'd never do that because I'm not a fucking bully nor am I an idiot.

But Zutarians are called toxic and delusional. The only delusion is that people believe they have the moral high ground because their pairing is canon. So fucking what?! It's fanfiction created by passionate fans of a beloved show.

Get over yourselves, Kat*anglanders. You aren't perfect. And your morals suck.

At least we don't do shit like this.

Ugh I will always love the concept of Katara using blood bending to revive Zuko after the last agni kai, mostly because it makes no sense to me that Zuko was able to bounce back so easily after being struck by lightning, but also because the way the show treats bloodbending is just odd to me. It was a defense mechanism created by a traumatized victim of some of the most devastating parts of colonization, and although I understand that Hama was supposed to symbolize the "bad parts" of waterbending and was important for Katara's growth in realizing that the world isn't entirely black and white, its still disappointing to me that the show never explored the gray areas of blood bending, especially since that episode was, as I stated above, about understanding the gray areas of the war. Katara using blood bending to revive Zuko would add so much to the last agni kai in demonstrating that she has truly realized that "good" and "evil" are relative concepts, and Zuko being saved by both a defense mechanism of a survivor of colonialism and a type of bending used to terrorize his people would have even added to his arc, as the narrative required him to save and subsequently be saved by the physical embodiment of everything his family sought to annihilate.

It's not that I think Zuko took lightning for Katara because he loved her, or that she healed him because she loved him, but I do think that it's only after the adrenaline fades that they truly realize what it means to care about someone so much that you do the impossible for them. I think they will always have this between them, this understanding that transcends whatever other relationships they may have, romantic or not. Katara's hands still remember what it felt like to hold Zuko's heartbeat between them, and if everything she touches still carries a bit of that heartbeat, bleeding out from her fingertips, she doesn't show it to anyone, but the firelord somehow knows, somehow always finds her hands, catching her fingertips in his warm ones briefly in passing. And if Zuko is always seeing shadows in the thunderstorm, a torrent of memory in the split second before lightning strikes, he is soothed by the silent eyes of the Water Tribe ambassador, watching him from across a crowded room.

everytime i see antis imply that katara somehow secretly still hates zuko by the end of the show, i'm like

... "yup. that's exactly how i look at people i hate."

I don't think I've seen anybody talk about how absolutely insane The Boiling Rock is from Hakoda's perspective.

Imagine getting captured, and your son tells you that you won't be apart for too long. That's sweet, but obviously your son has no resources to spare for organizing a breakout. You hope that the Avatar can defeat the Fire Lord soon - that's the earliest time you could hope to be rescued.

You get put into a temporary holding facility until the guards can sort out who is who. After a while, they put you on a prisoner transport to the Boiling Rock. Your captors try to intimidate you by telling you that it's the highest security prison in the Fire Nation, probably the whole world. It's far away from the capital.

You arrive at the Boiling Rock. It really is in the middle of a boiling lake. There's only one way in or out, and it's a gondola that takes you above the boiling lake. You meet the warden. They take you to your cell. You settle down to wait for the end of the war.

And 15 minutes later Sokka comes in like "hey dad I'm here I got the prince of the Fire Nation and an Earth Kingdom ninja leader gf ok let's go I'm busting you out"

You know what proves the creators knew nothing about the ATLA fandom? Cause it’s so easy to understand us, truly, if only they tried.

One of the most popular episodes in the fandom, and one of the highest rated, is - Tales of Ba Sing Se. An episode where absolutely nothing happens to progress the story (except Appa’s footprint at the very last second). That episode is nothing but characters. No plot points, no tension, no fight scenes - nothing! Just our favorite characters going about their day.

While the live action is the opposite of that, it’s all plot and no character. So if you really want to make a good adaptation you should listen to your audience, cause it’s not that hard to figure out what we like.

“the live action watered down katara’s character!” yeah and so did the comics and the legend of korra but i don’t remember seeing yall complain about that. or is it only bad when bryke aren’t the ones doing it?

Reblog if you also think Toph shouldn’t have been a cop.

I want to see how “unpopular” this opinion really is outside cop-worshipping Reddit.

the circle of life

Of course Zutara is a self inserting ship. Through Zuko I live my wildest fantasy which is having someone showering Katara with attention and understanding, seeing and accepting her flaws and taking care of her for once instead of her taking care of everyone else.

Katara's Story Is A Tragedy and It's Not An Accident

I was a teenaged girl when Avatar: The Last Airbender aired on Nickelodeon—the group that the show’s creators unintentionally hit while they were aiming for the younger, maler demographic. Nevermind that we’re the reason the show’s popularity caught fire and has endured for two decades; we weren’t the audience Mike and Bryan wanted. And by golly, were they going to make sure we knew it. They’ve been making sure we know it with every snide comment and addendum they’ve made to the story for the last twenty years.

For many of us girls who were raised in the nineties and aughts, Katara was a breath of fresh air—a rare opportunity in a media market saturated with boys having grand adventures to see a young woman having her own adventure and expressing the same fears and frustrations we were often made to feel. 

We were told that we could be anything we wanted to be. That we were strong and smart and brimming with potential. That we were just as capable as the boys. That we were our brothers’ equals. But we were also told to wash dishes and fold laundry and tidy around the house while our brothers played outside. We were ignored when our male classmates picked teams for kickball and told to go play with the girls on the swings—the same girls we were taught to deride if we wanted to be taken seriously. We were lectured for the same immaturity that was expected of boys our age and older, and we were told to do better while also being told, “Boys will be boys.” Despite all the platitudes about equality and power, we saw our mothers straining under the weight of carrying both full-time careers and unequally divided family responsibilities. We sensed that we were being groomed for the same future. 

And we saw ourselves in Katara. 

Katara begins as a parentified teenaged girl: forced to take on responsibility for the daily care of people around her—including male figures who are capable of looking after themselves but are allowed to be immature enough to foist such labor onto her. She does thankless work for people who take her contributions for granted. She’s belittled by people who love her, but don’t understand her. She’s isolated from the world and denied opportunities to improve her talents. She's told what emotions she's allowed to feel and when to feel them. In essence, she was living our real-world fear: being trapped in someone else’s narrow, stultifying definition of femininity and motherhood. 

Then we watched Katara go through an incredible journey of self-determination and empowerment. Katara goes from being a powerless, fearful victim to being a protector, healer, advocate, and liberator to others who can’t do those things for themselves (a much truer and more fulfilling definition of nurturing and motherhood). It’s necessary in Katara’s growth cycle that she does this for others first because that is the realm she knows. She is given increasingly significant opportunities to speak up and fight on behalf of others, and that allows her to build those advocacy muscles gradually. But she still holds back her own emotional pain because everyone that she attempts to express such things to proves they either don't want to deal with it or they only want to manipulate her feelings for their own purposes. 

Katara continues to do much of the work we think of as traditionally maternal on behalf of her friends and family over the course of the story, but we do see that scale gradually shift. Sokka takes on more responsibility for managing the group’s supplies, and everyone helps around camp, but Katara continues to be the manager of everyone else’s emotions while simultaneously punching down her own. The scales finally seem to tip when Zuko joins the group. With Zuko, we see someone working alongside Katara doing the same tasks she is doing around camp for the first time. Zuko is also the only person who never expects anything of her and whose emotions she never has to manage because he’s actually more emotionally stable and mature than she is by that point. And then, Katara’s arc culminates in her finally getting the chance to fully seize her power, rewrite the story of the traumatic event that cast her into the role of parentified child, be her own protector, and freely express everything she’s kept locked away for the sake of letting everyone else feel comfortable around her. Then she fights alongside an equal partner she knows she can trust and depend on through the story's climax. And for the first time since her mother’s death, the girl who gives and gives and gives while getting nothing back watches someone sacrifice everything for her. But this time, she’s able to change the ending because her power is fully realized. The cycle was officially broken.

Katara’s character arc was catharsis at every step. If Katara could break the mold and recreate the ideas of womanhood and motherhood in her own image, so could we. We could be powerful. We could care for ourselves AND others when they need us—instead of caring for everyone all the time at our own expense. We could have balanced partnerships with give and take going both ways (“Tui and La, push and pull”), rather than the, “I give, they take,” model we were conditioned to expect. We could fight for and determine our own destiny—after all, wasn’t destiny a core theme of the story?

Yes. Destiny was the theme. But the lesson was that Katara didn’t get to determine hers. 

After Katara achieves her victory and completes her arc, the narrative steps in and smacks her back down to where she started. For reasons that are never explained or justified, Katara rewards the hero by giving into his romantic advances even though he has invalidated her emotions, violated her boundaries, lashed out at her for slights against him she never committed, idealized a false idol of her then browbeat her when she deviated from his narrative, and forced her to carry his emotions and put herself in danger when he willingly fails to control himself—even though he never apologizes, never learns his lesson, and never shows any inclination to do better. 

And do better he does not.

The more we dared to voice our own opinions on a character that was clearly meant to represent us, the more Mike and Bryan punished Katara for it.

Throughout the comics, Katara makes herself smaller and smaller and forfeits all rights to personal actualization and satisfaction in her relationship. She punches her feelings down when her partner neglects her and cries alone as he shows more affection and concern for literally every other girl’s feelings than hers. She becomes cowed by his outbursts and threats of violence. Instead of rising with the moon or resting in the warmth of the sun, she learns to stay in his shadow. She gives up her silly childish dreams of rebuilding her own dying culture’s traditions and advocating for other oppressed groups so that she can fulfill his wishes to rebuild his culture instead—by being his babymaker. Katara gave up everything she cared about and everything she fought to become for the whims of a man-child who never saw her as a person, only a possession.

Then, in her old age, we get to watch the fallout of his neglect—both toward her and her children who did not meet his expectations. By that point, the girl who would never turn her back on anyone who needed her was too far gone to even advocate for her own children in her own home. And even after he’s gone, Katara never dares to define herself again. She remains, for the next twenty-plus years of her life, nothing more than her husband's grieving widow. She was never recognized for her accomplishments, the battles she won, or the people she liberated. Even her own children and grandchildren have all but forgotten her. She ends her story exactly where it began: trapped in someone else’s narrow, stultifying definition of femininity and motherhood.

The story’s theme was destiny, remember? But this story’s target audience was little boys. Zuko gets to determine his own destiny as long as he works hard and earns it. Aang gets his destiny no matter what he does or doesn’t do to earn it. And Katara cannot change the destiny she was assigned by gender at birth, no matter how hard she fights for it or how many times over she earns it. 

Katara is Winston Smith, and the year is 1984. It doesn’t matter how hard you fight or what you accomplish, little girl. Big Brother is too big, too strong, and too powerful. You will never escape. You will never be free. Your victories are meaningless. So stay in your place, do what you’re told, and cry quietly so your tears don’t bother people who matter.

I will never get over it. Because I am Katara. And so are my friends, sisters, daughters, and nieces. But I am not content to live in Bryke's world.

I will never turn my back on people who need me. Including me.