I Wouldn’t Call Myself Quirky But There Is Definitely Something Wrong With Me

Abusive parents can say “I love you”

Abusive parents can give their kids an allowance, gifts, toys and nice things sometimes.

Abusive parents can seem like parent of the year to outsiders.

Abusive parents can defend their children from outside threats and get them in all the best schools and programs and deal with school bullies.

Abusive parents are still abusive, regardless of the things they get right or the nice things they sometimes do.

I swear 90% of anti Zutara posts are just Kat-aang fans projecting their own dislike about their canon ship onto Zutara.

Zuko brings out the worst in her? Aang refused to acknowledge her pain and grief, and constantly encouraged her to suppress any negative emotions.

Katara would be a powerless if she marred Zuko? She spent her entire adult life confined to Air Temple island, away from her tribe, rarely venturing like 20 minutes into Republic City to help people (unless you count banning blood bending, a technique with a lot of practical value, and doing nothing to enforce that ban, but that's another story).

Katara would be Zuko's trophy wife? The series ends with Aang and Katara kissing, because Katara's affection toward Aang are him being rewarded for being the Avatar.

They'd fight too much? Zuko and Katara reconcile after they fight and work together as an amazing team. Meanwhile, Katara and Aang have serious problems at the end of the series that end in explosive fights and they never get resolved.

Zutara is too physical? They hug once. Kat-aang kisses four times (two of which were non consensual, one of which was under duress), Aang checks her out multiple times in the series and fantasizes about kissing her, but they almost never have intimate conversations where Katara gets to open up, unless she is sharing her grief for his benefit.

Zutara fans only like it because Zuko is hot? Aang looks like a small child, especially when compared to Katara.

Zutara fans just like the bad boy/good girl trope? Katara is "darker" then Aang (and Kat-aang fans, apparently) want to admit. Her strong sense of justice, i.e. the thing that makes her "good," is just as rooted in anger as it is empathy.

They'd bring out the worst in each other? Aang is entitled, angry and irresponsible when it comes to Katara, and Katara is a pushover and shortsighted when it comes to Aang.

Zutara would be abusive? Aang lashes out at Katara when he gets angry or jealous, even when that jealousy comes from actors in a shitty play she had no control over.

It's a colonizer/colonized relationship? Aang has no respect for Katara's culture: he mocks her food, her beliefs, he tries to impose his cultural values on her, and post-A:tLA he rejects their waterbending child and denies their airbending access to his watertribe heritage, and Katara stays away from her people for nearly their entire relationship.

Zutara fans are delusional and deny canon? You can acknowledge something and not like it, criticize it and create fanon content that differs from it. That's not denial, that's critical thinking and creativity. But if Kat-aang fans are so in love with all aspects of canon, they are welcome to embrace at "The Ember Island Players" and "Love is a Battlefield."

Zutara would be toxic? Look at Kat-aang.

LADIES MEME: [3/3] non-warriors > maeve wiley

Never forget what this scene did for us. I could never. …

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.

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

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.

Just saw a TikTok where this bi woman was like,

‘I’m a woman-leaning bisexual and you know what pisses me off? The fact that I’m dating a skinny white man and I love him and I’m happy, like what the fuck.’

And I just have to say. What pisses me off as a bisexual woman is that TikTok.

This is the Woke version of ‘my wife is the ol’ ball and chain, doesn’t it suck to be married,’ jokes. It’s not funny. Your queerness is not negated or tarnished by opposite-gender attraction, dating men isn’t inherently worse than dating women.

Love your partner.

Cherish them.

For fucks sake.

#LateStageCapitalism