Will Anything Ever Bring Us As Much Joy And Comedic Bliss As The Reveal Of Jason Mendoza? Will I Ever

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.

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.

#whitewomantears

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??? 

The way Maeve/Isaac and Ruby/Otis as pairings helped each of the four characters grow and mature as individuals, with Otis growing more selfless and empathetic, Maeve and Ruby letting their walls down to let people know their ill parents, Isaac owning up to his huge mistake by himself and apologising, only for the writers to fall back into the will they/won't they of Otis/Maeve where the pair can't even communicate....

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.

friendship IS romance : 1. / 2. / 3. fleabag / 4. / 5. / 6. / 7. / 8. a little life, hanya yanagihara  / 9. / 10. 

Zutara, romance novels, and the female gaze

Okay so I’ve been thinking about the female gaze a LOT so I checked out a subreddit about romance novels, despite never having read one. I came across this meme (which was initially a Tumblr post and then got posted to Instagram and then to Reddit and I’m now bringing back to Tumblr — Internet telephone, pls never change):

And…what is The Southern Raiders, if not a platonic grovel? Katara’s pain is central to the episode. It’s central to Zuko. Zuko asks Katara what he can do to make up for his betrayal; she demands the impossible. He reads between the lines, cockblocks her brother to get the necessary information, and then waits outside her door overnight (which he also did for Iroh, the one person we know for sure he loves). He basically makes himself a receptacle for her rage, and he holds space for her by coming with her on her revenge quest and carrying their bags and not saying a damn thing about what she should and should not do beyond like…asking her to rest. And obviously the grovel works! She forgives him and then they’re thick as thieves, bantering and fighting and saving each other’s lives, etc.

On a different note, I’ve been told that enemies to lovers is one of the biggest tropes in romance novels, similar to YA lit and fanfic. Here’s something else I found in the romance novel discourse:

And…yeah. In TSR, Katara really does show Zuko her worst self, because she doesn’t feel the need to perform for him. She doesn’t feel the need to perform moral perfection OR cold blooded vengeance. She bloodbends in front of him and he just goes with it. She doesn’t kill Yon Rha and he just goes with it. He doesn’t treat her any differently afterwards. Maybe they talk about it off screen, but I kind of like the idea that they don’t, because Katara doesn’t need to explain anything. And it’s so interesting, because some people in the ATLA fandom have a totally different read on TSR. They think Zuko was encouraging Katara to get revenge (by what, keeping his mouth shut?), and that Aang is the one who acts as her moral compass. I believe that either Bryan or Mike said in the DVD commentary that Aang is the angel on her shoulder the entire time. And this interpretation does make sense if you see it from the male gaze, where Katara as an object of affection is acting in an angry, irrational, threatening way. But if you see it from the female gaze, you recognize that actually it’s probably the most emotionally taxing experience Katara has to go through, and she doesn’t owe it to be nice or perfect to anybody. Katara’s formative trauma literally comes to a head, and she has to make a decision — no, a discovery — about who she is in relation to the tragedy that defines her life and even her identity (as a waterbender, as a parentified child who becomes the mom friend, as a genocide victim), and she’s accompanied by someone who trusts her judgement and validates her feelings.

I’m not saying TSR is explicitly romantically coded, but when it conforms so well to romance novel tropes…is it any wonder that so many people thought “yes this is her man?” And then he takes lightning in the heart for her and reaches for her when he’s literally dying, I will never be normal about that either

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