I Have To Be Honest: If Katara Had Gotten The Same Treatment Toph Did In ATLA, People Would Like Her

current fan creation landscape is kinda like if you went to a party with a homemade cake and everyone takes a slice and silently thumbs up at you with no attempt to start a conversation except for occasionally some guy sits in the corner with a tape recorder critiquing the cake as though he was a restaurant critic and another guy is handing the cake to an uber driver like "yeah i need you to find a restaurant that makes cake like this so i can have more of it" and the only person that's talked to you in 30 minutes is a very sweet little guy who was like "hey i liked your cake" and then ran away apologizing for bothering you the moment you said thank you.

"They [stuffed animals] can offer a truly harmless comfort - and there are very few things in the world that can do that."

from a reddit thread about stuffed animals

Okay so my sister just ended her 2 (?) Year long situationship and I thought why not post about it bc the details are kinda intriguing and also the situation doesn't make sense I think??? Tw: horrible descriptions of the situation bc there only sm information my brain can retain.

Basically this is about a younger (!) Guy in her class bc they started out as friends I think but tn she went out for drinks with her friends and he was there bc it was a class thing, except they didn't talk for over a month previously bc she left him on delivered deliberately bc they had a fight (I completely forgot what it was about).

So this night was the first time in weeks they talk and he's mad at her for ghosting him and they start to get vulnerable (bc drinks.) Mind you throughout their friendship they had this weird thing where it seemed like he flirted with her but then went on to go on dates with other girls? I think that was the thing? (Actually Im terrible at recounting events bc they had multiple arguments if I'm not mistaken, she's had multiple tantrums over him, ranting to me while drunk whenever she would go out with her friends).

Anyways they talk about their feelings and he basically recounts when they met for the first time at a party in the first semester of their first year and how he chugged a bottle and he noticed she looked at him and he thought smth like: yeah we could have a thing.

And from her pov it was actually a: never have I ever done x thing. So she was like judging him. But then at one point throughout the first year she develops feelings and she even tells him this night that she liked him at one point.

At one point during this night he even tried to kiss her on the mouth and she retracts. She also tells him she's seeing some1 atm (she's talking to another guy so she tries to commit to one guy at a time).

And then their argument leads to this exchange that was smth like:

Her: just tell me you don't like me.

Him: fine, I don't like you.

And now she's pissed at him for agreeing, she's not sure why, but we both suspect it's bc either A. She wanted him to disagree and say he likes her so she could reject him and retain her ego ig?? Or B. She wanted him to disagree bc part of her still likes him?

And after letting it out she kept repeating "I hate him, I hate him, I hate him." And then it lead: "I don't feel anything for him." And then: "I'm gonna fuck the other guy." And now she's trying to finish writing her paper for school bc who got time for hoes when you have homework to do.

STOP SELLING BOUND FANFICTION

I cannot blame them for pulling their works, in fact I'm proud of them for doing so. Fanfiction is a community of gifting. As authors we write fics and share our works for free. Fanfiction is a weird, fragile, liminal space that can crumble at any time. This fragility needs to be respected.

If you want fanfiction to be around for you to enjoy, then the rules need to be respected!

You can bind fics. You can gift bound fics. DO NOT SELL BOUND FICS!!

Or soon we won't have fanfiction anymore and the world will be much darker for it.

hi!! i keep seeing posts/tiktoks about the fact that katara and azula are narrative foils and that katara is the sister that zuko never had, and that’s why zutara shouldn’t be shipped. I don’t know if this makes sense but like…I know it’s wrong (the premise isn’t but the conclusion is) I just can’t put it into words why it is. Does anyone have any metas about it? lmao

This quote specifically from Aaron Ehasz did smth to my psyche.

Have you noted that no one from Azula's family was shown to express love and affection towards her?

That is mostly true. Ozai's affection is clearly conditional (and full on manipulation at worse, like we see in the finale), Ursa canonically favors Zuko to the point that we never see her spending any alone time with Azula like she did with Zuko, and while Iroh gave her a toy like he did to Zuko the toy in question was so OBVIOUSLY wrong for a kid like Azula that it's comical AND show's he did not really know his niece at all.

But there is a constant exception.

Zuko's relationship with Azula is complicated. He clearly admires her strength and power, but he hates how she uses it. She lied to him many times, was seen apparently cheering Ozai on during the Agni Kai, tried to have him imprisoned and even said she'd celebrate being an only child - and then allows him to come home as a hero after Ba Sing Se, even though SHE had the control of the Dai Li and was not yet aware Aang could have survived, meaning she had nothing to gain from it.

And when she lets him know that if he's caught talking to Iroh people might think he is a traitor too, and explicitly says "Believe it or not, I'm actually looking out for you" Zuko drops his innitial suspicion that she wanted something and that's why she was helping him.

On The Beach, he just follows her when she say their old family home is depressing and they shouldn't waste their time there. When she's asking him who she is angry at, she mentions herself and Zuko explicitly says that is not the case.

He doesn't trust her and know she has a tendency to mock or full on lie to him... yet when he wants to know about Fire Lord Sozin he asks her about it, and lets it slide when she mocks him by saying he should make sure the royal painter got his good side - for a character as quick to anger as Zuko, that is a big deal. In Nightmares and Daydreams he also goes to her to find out if he'll be allowed at the war meeting.

More importantly:

1 - Iroh's infamous "She's crazy and needs to go down" line was only said because ZUKO, without anyone putting that idea in his head before, suddenly went "I know what you're going to say. She's my sister and I should be trying to get along with her"

2 - Zuko only jumped into the fight in Ba Sing Se when Azula was being cornered by Aang and Katara.

3 - Zuko looked genuinely shocked and even distressed when she was falling off that cliff. He just sounded so shaken saying "She's... not gonna make it..."

4 - In the writer's own words, Zuko felt no hate but only pity when seeing her breakdown. Katara tried to comfort him because, canonically, even though Zuko and Azula are enemies, this was never what he wanted because he still sees her as family. That's why the Last Agni Kai's music is not the epic you'd expect from a battle, but a tragic one.

5 - Aaron Ehasz, the lead writter for the show, probably the person with the most influence after Bryke, has REPEATEDLY said that he always felt Azula should have gotten a redemption arc, Zuko being an Iroh figure to give her advice and be the only one still by her side when all else was seemingly lost to her forever.

Even the comics (most of which I HATE, mainly because Azula's storyline checks nearly every box for "the mentally ill are inherently evil/less human, so it's fine if literally every other person on the planet mistreats them") didn't fully abandon their complex dynamic.

Zuko is not a perfect sibling, and for a long chunk of the story he seemed too focused on his own issues for Azula to ever be a factor in his mind (aside from the moments in which she was a potential/explict threat), but he DOES still feel a sense of obligation towards her, to the point that it made him do something no one else in their family had done before or since - actually look at Azula. Not the prodigious daughter/perfect weapon, or the problem child that is difficult to handle, or the pontentially deadly enemy that was in the way, but Azula.

His 14-year-old sister that got on his nerves a lot, was far from the kindest person alive, and that he had a ton of issues with, but that he could never fully hate or even be indifferent to. Because she's family. Because he remembers a happier time in which the gap between them didn't seem so big. Because if things had been slightly different he could have been her. Because he went from wanting to be her to seeing just how miserable her life ended up being - especially compared to the one he now had - and feeling deeply sorry for her.

Now if you guys excuse me, I'm gonna go cry in the corner. Have some wholesome/bittersweet fanart if you wanna cry too.

i will always hate that katara never came to terms with her bloodbending. especially given that it’s a symbolic representation of her own “darker” side, the fact that she was never able to find the good in it and accept it as just another aspect of her element, instead outlawing and demonizing it forever, makes me so sad because it perfectly encapsulates the person she herself ended up as: the shallow, shining trophy wife on aang’s arm, locking away everything he didn’t want and was never able to understand to become his perfect, flawless forever girl for the rest of her days.

and it’s so much more frustrating knowing that zuko — who knows exactly what it feels like to wield an element that can be destructive and violent, whose own arc about the duality of fire would have made him the perfect person to help katara understand that there is no such thing as inherently good or evil bending, only the bender who makes it so — was right there! yet instead of letting them have even one conversation about it, we got bloodbending being villainized till the heat death of the fucking universe and katara left forever unable to accept the complexity of her bending (and metaphorically, the complexity within herself) even though she had the exact person she needed right at hand to help and support her through the process… god it just drives me mad

Can’t believe they put whatever hiccup and Astrid had going on in race to the edge in a kids show