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Aang would more likely go "you know what would be great? The complete set. Nonbender, waterbender and airbender. Hey wouldn't it be funny if that was the exact order they came out in and it'd be like with sokka you and me" and the universe heard the avatar and said "bet"

I really do hate the idea that Aang was having kids JUST to repopulate the air nomads. The idea that Tenzin was a third time’s the charm situation, that Aang kept “trying” for an airbender and was disappointed with Kya and Bumi

I honest to god think Aang was not thinking “I hope this kid’s an airbender!” Each time. I don’t think the thought would even cross his mind until someone else suggested it. He’d be typed up thinking about how he’ll balance his new child in his life, Katara’s health, how to even be a father having no parents himself. All of those take priority in his mind

I honestly think Aang would be super appalled by the suggestion that “repopulating” was his goal with his family. What it says how about he thinks of his wife.

If anyone is going to have the thought “I hope it’s an airbender” I’d bet it was Katara. It’s still not why. But she knows and loves Aang and has seen how hard he’s struggled without the airbenders, how lonely he’s gotten, I could see Katara having the thought “For Aang’s sake I hope you’re an airbender” before Aang ever thinks “I hope you’re an airbender”

I don’t know man. This idea is just so gross to me, and I hate how it’s thrown around by the fans like it must be the case, with no room for questions, why ELSE would Aang be having kids?

Rubs me the wrong way. Really does

#atla

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did people calm down about john mulaney's divorce? nope they're on the internet saying shit like "olivia's cancer is karma hahaha" and "weird that olivia announced she had cancer just when anna's book is about to come out"

like can you all stop being freak weirdos

#john mulaney #tw cancer mention #tw cancer #olivia munn #ewwww keep those thoughts to yourselves if you really can't help being pieces of crap

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Not killing, not getting killed, but a secret third thing (energybending)

#atla #aang #avatar the last airbender #this has to have been done before

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Going off from this post of mine–I would say the reason Aang is an unhinged feral child is because he's an airbender. I imagine being able to jump from roofs and giant flying bisons mid air and climb buildings in two jumps and run fast enough to cause whirlwinds while being born and raised in a community of people who serenely do all that every day because it's normal for them would indeed cause crazy ass neural pathways in the brain

if I could simply open a glider and clear Ba Sing Se's walls in ten seconds and then jump from them with no aid whatsoever except my ability to slow and cushion the fall with nothing but air I imagine my expectations of safety would be kind of different too

#it's a very good thing for the Avatar world that the Air Nomads are chill and pacifist as a culture #add to it the fact he can pull the Avatar card in terms of authority and abilities #aang #atla #avatar the last airbender

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Here is a comics list. For outright queer Loki, start from Agent of Asgard (subtler until the end). Actual Lady Loki appears in Thor #5 2007 (psa: Lady Loki is just a moniker for when Loki took over Lady Sif's body. Besides that, Loki is always Loki). If you want to really understand Agent of Asgard and onward, the common advice is to start from the Dark Reign arc.

Ok, I have one issue with everyone (understandably) clowning on the Loki Series.

Where are the alternatives?!

Where’s the ‘Yeah, it sucks…but here’s some actually good Queer Loki rep:’ ?

If we’re gonna clown on Disney, for the sake of other Loki fans, give them something else to obsess over.

A comic, online series, fan made vids, ect.

#loki comics

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Korracrat requested Mai

Mai is the most strong, beautiful and amazing ATLA girl (she and Toph would share this title 50/50, actually) and I'll die on this hill.

____________________

See more of my art here: leantailean_art

Follow me on Twitter:   @Alesha_Dima  

#mai

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I would highlight the sick burns part too, I remember at least two ("Hey Roku it's the girl that didn't even know you were alive" and "apparently jokes don't run in the family") from book three

also thanks @itsachristastrophe for this gem explanation

I'm tired of people defining Aang as this boring little vanilla guy. Aang helped Katara destroy a factory. He participated in Toph's scams. He shrugged off Katara's theft of the waterbending scroll and heartily laughed at her jokes about it. He was delighted by the Painted Lady ruse. He mastered airbending at twelve and the avatar state at thirteen. He snooped around the old ship after Katara said it was booby trapped and dared her to follow and stepped up to take the blame when it went badly and then surrendered himself to protect the village because he knew he could hand everyone on that ship their asses and escape. He outright lied to two communities that had been bickering for a century to get them to stop. He egged on Katara when she decided to throw hands with Pakku. He wants to ride every big animal in the world ("they don't like being ridden but that's what makes it fun" -unhinged take). He has sick burns for everyone which are doubly funny because they're almost always unintended as such. He threw a clandestine dance party in the nation that banned dancing and thought he was dead and wanted him dead. Before that he corrected and argued with teachers, beat a bully without lifting a finger and then brought his teenage friends to pose as his parents. The whole Bonzu Pippipadaleopsicopolis the Third thing. The being idiots with Sokka in Ba Sing Se thing with the bowing and the busboys disguises. He rightfully asked "what's cosmic power compared to a girl". Let's add all the badass stuff he does as a bender and as the Avatar up to and including energybending and the conversation with Koh the Face Stealer. That time in The Chase when he finished the fur trail and then decided to just sit down, sleep deprived, to wait and face whoever it was chasing them. Aang is one of the funniest and coolest characters I've ever seen and he deserves more respect. Absolutely unhinged kid with immense powers and the world is lucky he's goofy and has a good heart.

#like what the fuck even #i leave for a few days and

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I'm tired of people defining Aang as this boring little vanilla guy. Aang helped Katara destroy a factory. He participated in Toph's scams. He shrugged off Katara's theft of the waterbending scroll and heartily laughed at her jokes about it. He was delighted by the Painted Lady ruse. He mastered airbending at twelve and the avatar state at thirteen. He snooped around the old ship after Katara said it was booby trapped and dared her to follow and stepped up to take the blame when it went badly and then surrendered himself to protect the village because he knew he could hand everyone on that ship their asses and escape. He outright lied to two communities that had been bickering for a century to get them to stop. He egged on Katara when she decided to throw hands with Pakku. He wants to ride every big animal in the world ("they don't like being ridden but that's what makes it fun" -unhinged take). He has sick burns for everyone which are doubly funny because they're almost always unintended as such. He threw a clandestine dance party in the nation that banned dancing and thought he was dead and wanted him dead. Before that he corrected and argued with teachers, beat a bully without lifting a finger and then brought his teenage friends to pose as his parents. The whole Bonzu Pippipadaleopsicopolis the Third thing. The being idiots with Sokka in Ba Sing Se thing with the bowing and the busboys disguises. He rightfully asked "what's cosmic power compared to a girl". Let's add all the badass stuff he does as a bender and as the Avatar up to and including energybending and the conversation with Koh the Face Stealer. That time in The Chase when he finished the fur trail and then decided to just sit down, sleep deprived, to wait and face whoever it was chasing them. Aang is one of the funniest and coolest characters I've ever seen and he deserves more respect. Absolutely unhinged kid with immense powers and the world is lucky he's goofy and has a good heart.

#aang #atla #avatar the last airbender #imagine snarky dark aang #aang defense squad #pro aang

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Season 1 Episode 18

A summary

#lmfao #atla

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It had to be surreal for a while, seeing their children flying on a bison. It's like seeing little Aang and Katara and Sokka waving from Appa.

avatarthelastairbender #atla #aang #katara #kataang

Children pick up their parents and take them home💖💖💖

#aang #katara #kataang

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That has to be a badly made parody post because I can't believe someone would write down all that for real

if i've ever needed more proof that those people just say shit. because WHAT is this lmfao

#right down to saying 'poor katara :( anyway she's a cheater'

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Amazing how this outright implies that Katara is the pedo in canon-

And for the first two panels I thought this was a parody comic of stupid arguments. Because they're literally stupid, no other adjective needed.

Third and fourth are just lack of awareness. Both would've been easily avoided if the maker had noticed Katara's body language and behavior through the entire three seasons, but that's just one of the main problems of this guy's valiant analysis–apparent inability to notice anything that isn't outright said and shown on screen (and lack of self awareness with that first panel lol).

FiFtH aNd mOsT iMpOrTanT is the usual zvtar@ arguments of too-young and family-bonds, which shows this guy hasn't noticed Aang's mental and emotional maturity (so his entire character and background) and also seems to think people stay 13 and 15 forever

"I'm not saying you have to stop, I'm just making comics to say what you enjoy is lame and forced, and that you're the one who needs to grow up and get a life while I'm being wrong about a children cartoon's romance and making a comic about it"

I just found this old post from 2011 smh…

And they say “it was never controversial, it’s literally canon”

This is one of the most idiotic posts I’ve ever seen

#like this is not all that complicated #it's amazing how people need to find ways to complicate obvious text subtext and behavious #and then call you lame for the crime of *check notes* understanding obvious things on screen #also i don't believe for one second that the maker of this acid trip isn't a zutara shipper #azutara fanart? yeah good side hobby for an excuse #these are still regurgitated zutara delusions up to promising ones about maiko #so pardon my suspicions #if you're not a zk shipper and still believe this bullshit then wow you got a different problem but still a big one

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It is also mind-boggling to me that they wanted something about time travel in a series about Loki, and no one knew that Loki (in the comics) can time travel. Can step outside of the narrative or whatever technique he’s using that once, and just. Time travel. Nope, what they got from the comics was the TVA (so just how much brainwork did waldron and co. actually have to do, to notice and adapt something that already existed?). Like these people managed to notice the TVA from the comics but not Loki’s ability to time travel. Because nobody in there actually gave a fuck about Loki, the titular character. One of the most dynamic, narratively powerful characters that can already time travel in one universe and had all the bases to learn to do so in the mcu one. While, perhaps, exploring his past from before Thor 2011 to Avengers 2012 and the time in-between. But that would have required an awareness and sensibility no one in disney and mcu wants to have.

i literally don't understand the mcu script writes who've bragged about never having seen the previous movies, like bro??? how do you expect that script to be consistent with the rest of the canon?????????

normally I'd laugh and be like Yeah, anon, these guys are insane, but you have bypassed Mental Breakdown part of my brain and now I am deeply, deeply curious.

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Why is it that mcu script writers are so proud to be arrogant?

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Warning for minor language.

So anyway, the person I thought of specifically as being Generally Terrible to the Franchise Lately was Michael Waldron, who wrote Loki, Dr. Strange 2, AND is currently working on Avengers: Secret Wars. (Yay)

So I did a lot of research about where this guy CAME from and how he's impacted everything because I swear to God I'd never heard of him before Loki. And now I see him everywhere, but usually only in loathing.

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Michael Waldron, according to Wikipedia, is currently 35 as of 2022 and graduated from some Film School i haven't heard of and can't be bothered to remember. He is unmarried(?) and has been active in the film industry since 2014. (8 years, for those of you counting.) He started work on Loki in 2020(? unconfirmed).

The thing that struck me the most was how incredibly short his project list is.

My man has six (6) completed projects. He had three before he started on Loki. And while this doesn't necessarily mean that he's bad, it does show a level of inexperience that baffles me personally.

For comparison, Kenneth Brangah, one of four screenwriters for Thor 1's list is this:

And again, it's not like Brangah's list is enormous, but I do see a lot more experience under their belt before they were approached by MCU rather than Waldron, who had done three projects. Brangah had 20 years in sceenwriting when he went to work for Thor. Waldron had six.

And the amazing thing to me is that even the shows Waldron's executive producer on, he wrote like, two episodes for it? Then he handed it off to other writers. So he doesn't, as far as I can tell and I found, seem to have a lot of experience actually working the writing process, just supervising it.

(I could be wrong)

But here is his latest series Heels, for reference.

the section says "Written by" above the names, I cropped it weirdly.

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So we have a man who has, at this point, worked six years in the industry. He has worked on three shows. He was the assistant for one show, he did not write in the other one, and he has written for ONE show, total. Produced one show, was the executive producer for ONE show.

What I am seeing here, is, from what I can see, a lack of experience. And it shows. Badly.

So why did Marvel hire him?

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According to an interview Waldron did, where I'm drawing a great deal of this information, he has always wanted to work for the Big Leagues. He wanted to work on Star Wars mostly, from what I could see, but he didn't think that Marvel would be bad either. When he approached his agent about how to get working for Marvel his agent told him he needed to have written a movie.

Now you're probably wondering. I DID look at that list of projects he's been involved in, and there wasn't a movie.

You are correct!

Waldron wrote a movie called The Worst Guy of All Time and the Girl Who Came to Kill Him. It's on The Black List and was never filmed, to my understanding. But he sure did write that script. And that script, I believe, is where a lot of issues in Loki start to come to light, but we'll get to that in a minute.

"At some point the script made its way to Marvel as they were meeting people for Loki and that got him in the door to pitch and that pitch got him the job."

When Kevin Feige was hiring directors, Waldron walked in and "I thought I was going to get it, but that's my attitude, I guess, hopefully as unarrogantly as that can sound, but I think you got to be confident" (Waldron). Feige was apparently impressed and hired him on.

Which again, a bold choice that COULD have been great, to give a small name the chance to work on a project like this?? Incredible. Just not in this context.

I feel immensely confused that MCU, which is a multi-billion dollar industry, did NOT actually hire someone with years and years of experience like they did for Thor 1. Instead, they went with someone who, personally to me, didn't have enough experience to seem like he knew what he was doing.

So now Waldron is working in MCU. Things are going great for him. He has TWENTY WEEKS to come up with the plot, the scripts, and the story for the entire Loki series.

TWENTY. I cannot emphasize this enough. That is no time at all. They went from blank slate NO IDEAS to a full script in TWENTY. WEEKS.

So HOW then, did Waldron get approached to do Dr. Strange 2?

Apparently, Waldron and Owen Wilson were talking one day and Waldron got asked to do Dr. Strange 2 because it was just as chaotic as Loki was.

WALDRON: Yeah. By that time, I had been able to build the trust. We'd written Loki. Loki was in good shape at that point. It was headed into production. I was getting ready to go to Atlanta. Fortunately, the scripts were in good shape. One of our writers, a close friend of mine, Eric Martin, took my place and went and was the writer on set, which you've got to have, and he did amazing work carrying the show across the finish line, from a writing standpoint. And yeah, it was just, "All right. You did Loki. That was crazy. Come do Dr. Strange. This is going to be crazy, too." That was really fun.

And guess what! This is the instructions he was given FOR Dr. Strange 2.

WALDRON: It is purely, 100%, "Make the most kick ass Dr. Strange movie you can possibly make." There was no, "You got to get here. It's got to fit here."

Which, by the way, Feige stated that he had no plans for the Loki series beyond time travel, and Waldron was instructed to do whatever he felt like. A 100% most kick-ass time travel series, you might say.

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Okay. So now that we have some background, I'm going to get onto my soapbox and explain why this man was a horrible, horrible directing choice and shows 0 understanding of the characters. This is going to go over Loki and Dr. Strange 2, for reference.

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LOKI:

The biggest disaster I see with Loki is that the FIRST -- and I emphasize this, the FIRST -- thing that Waldron says about Loki in the interview is this:

Waldron: And I'd written a time travel movie about a character who was kind of a villain, and kind of a sh*thead, like Loki.

I think that the problem that Waldron suffered from the most in Loki is that Waldron didn't want to make a TV series about Loki. He doesn't like the character very much from what I can tell. Obviously, he calls him a sh*thead, but he never has anything nice to say about Loki as a whole either. He doesn't want to talk about Loki as a person, or Loki's story, Waldron wants to talk about the TVA. I seriously cannot emphasize this enough. Not once in the interview did Loki as a person come up. Loki didn't even seem to be a character to him.

The TVA is where Waldron seems like most of his time was spent, because that was, after all, what MCU wanted to do. I honestly, genuinely do not believe this man would have taken the job for Loki if it wasn't about time travel. Because Waldron could focus on the TVA and not Loki. Loki was an irritant he had to occasionally do something with.

And now we get to his script that was pitched to MCU.

Waldron: I sat down and I wrote a script that was a time travel action rom-com, is how I would describe it...because they [Marvel] wanted to make a time travel show. And I'd written a time travel movie about a character who was kind of a villain, and kind of a shithead, like Loki.

And the thing is, to me, sounds a lot like the TV series. A romcom, with time travel, and a sh*thead kind-of villain. That's the series we got. I do wonder how much of this pitch made it into the final series, because this is what Waldron had as a reference. (The director wanted to make a romance from what I understand, that was her vision of the series was this long-winding romance, and it doesn't look like anyone sat down in the writer's room and explained to them that the last thing that would fuel Loki's story forward was romance.)

And the thing is, Waldron doesn't seem to understand Loki as a character at all, if Loki is "kind of a villain and a sh*thead" because yeah, sure, Loki can be considered that, but that's not WHO Loki is. That's what people SEE him as.

Waldron at no point references having read the scripts for the Avengers, Thor 1 or the Dark World inside this interview. This doesn't mean he hasn't seen the movies or read the screenplay, as I often hear said about him, but it is strange to me that he makes so little mention of Loki.

This man is so focused on the TVA. Despite how much of a disaster the TVA ended up being. Here's some notable quotes:

WALDRON: What did I learn? Don't write one about time travel, because it's a pain in the ass.

WALDRON: ...A foundation of what constitutes a broken time law and what doesn't, so that we could then just, which is about Loki breaking a time law, and then you have to move all that stuff as far to the background as humanly possible, because you don't want the audience focusing on the rules of time travel during your show.

I love how "Loki breaking a time law" is supposed to be the center of it all and comes off as an afterthought.

And.

"don't want the audience focusing on the rules of time travel in your show" YEAH. CAUSE IT'S GARBAGE. Maybe if he and the others had had more than a weekend (exaggeration, untrue statement) to work on how time travel works, we'd have something that didn't make me want to scream into a pillow for ten years.

WALDRON:  All over our writer's room, our white boards were just covered in timelines. And it's just, "No, time travel works this way," "No, time travel works that way." That was the great challenge of our show, it was because the Time Variance Authority is an organization that literally manages and polices all of time, we had to define what time is to them and what time is in the MCU. 

I think we can blame this disaster on the Russo brothers. ^

WALDRON: Those are all questions we had to ask and define for ourselves. I think that what's fun about the TVA is it takes something remarkable, like time travel, and really packages it in a very soulless, sort of bureaucratic way. That's what was exciting to me, as a writer, was to take something so magical and just make it utterly soulless. -- So what we have is a writer's room so focused on the TVA that Loki becomes a secondary concern and the lens from which we VIEW the TVA, and then it stops becoming Loki's series and starts to become the TVA's.

But no one seemed to realize this.

And also "That's what was exciting to me...was to take something so magical and make it utterly soulless" is a GREAT way to go about time travel. I also think he applies this to everything and it shows.

So again. Writer focused on the TVA. Appears to me to not care about Loki. Spends a majority of the interview discussing ANYTHING but the main lead of his show. Does not want to talk about growth or character or WHERE LOKI CAME FROM? WHY ARE YOU NOT TALKING ABOUT YOUR LEAD?

But that's okay. Because we all know that the TVA was the main character of Loki, don't we?

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Another interesting point, I thought, was how Waldron writes relationships. I watched a review of his TV series Heels, where the reviewer came to this conclusion about the main characters:

"...And that's just what made this show so fascinating, is that…all these characters, that in some way, treat each other horribly, but in other sense do care about each other, and they're all so entwined with trying to make this thing work."

and that sounded extremely familiar. Because this is the cast of Loki. Waldron seems to have discovered his Character Formula.

Thanks. I hate it.

I just...this man can't have been a bad writer in just Loki right, and this has to be a consistent theme across all his work? And honestly, he's worked on so little that I don't know. I can't have an honest opinion of him. From what he has worked on, terrible character chemistry seems to be the general vibe. Waldron does not seem to know how to write characters that you understand why they like each other.

Hence, Loki being abused by every figure of authority in Loki, and Slyive treating him horribly, but somehow they all like each other in the end.

Because that's Loki. The TVA series, Loki on the side, getting beat up. Because he's bad.

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DR. STRANGE 2:

Dr. Strange 2 has a similar set of problems. It was written in a rushed time frame, there was no overarching idea for a plot and where the story needed to go, Waldron was just told to do what he wanted, and Waldron didn't seem to be too focused on character arcs.

Wanda, obviously, takes a devastating hit as far as arcs go, but I wouldn't say that Dr. Strange was spared, either. The two of them go through rapid flipflopping in terms of the growth they've incurred throughout the entire MCU, and it shows. Badly.

One thing that Waldron did say that absolutely baffled me was this:

WALDRON: I became good friends with Jac Schaeffer, head writer of WandaVision, while I was writing Loki. Her and I became good pals, because we were kind of in it together and everything...So, I had the benefit of just being able to call Jac and talk to her about Wanda's character and everything, because it was really important to me that I do right by her with what she did with Wanda as a character. And also, with Lizzie, who's a friend of mine. I really worked with her and made sure, "Okay, you guys just did this incredibly intimate show about this character that grew her so much. Let's make sure that we're doing that justice and telling a fulfilling next chapter of that story."

I am so confused. Waldron honestly appears to want to do right by Wanda, but Wanda's growth from WandaVision was destroyed in Dr Strange 2 (and I want to emphasize here that Waldron made no such comment about talking to Tom Hid. or previous directors of Thor movies) so then how did Wanda end up going through such a downward spiral? Waldron wanted to do right by her, and yet???

I think the biggest problem is that Waldron doesn't have to think long term. He's almost not supposed to. He said this:

WALDRON: Well, I think one of the joys of being a writer in the Marvel world is getting to make terrible messes and leave them for your predecessors

WALDRON: For instance, you write the Loki show and then you end up writing Dr. Strange 2, having to clean up your own mess and that can be a lot of fun.

WALDRON: And it will naturally connect to the MCU and it will naturally get the MCU to where it's supposed to go, in some ways that we expect and ways that sometimes you don't expect, and I think that's part of the fun.

Waldron was given the explicit instruction to write a good Dr. Strange movie, but not a good MCU movie. Part of the reason that Phase 4 feels like a bunch of puzzle pieces from different puzzles is that it was designed to be that way. Feige is just going with the flow to see what will happen rather than having any sort of idea of where to take the series.

"It will naturally get MCU to where it's supposed to go" is one of the most hilarious statements I've ever heard, by the way. As someone who has done original writing, and planned out a series, my 200+ page document of planning, background, and worldbuilding laughs at you. (And I still don't have it all finished, because I've had MONTHS to work on this). Maybe. Maybe they want to try and not publish the first draft of phase 4?

Waldron wasn't told to make a movie about Wanda, or how to progress Wanda's character in a way that made sense post her growth. And any problems that were there they blamed on the Darkhold, because it's someone else's problem to clean up. Very neat. Very good planning.

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So overall, I don't think that MCU writers are proud of their ignorance, I just don't think that they see a problem with it. Writers are told to do what they want to, without there being any plans for character growth or plot advancement, so they do. They put whatever they want out on the sandbox and wait for someone else to clean it up.

Feige seems fully onboard with this plan. So the real problem, I think, is the fact that MCU is expecting writers to come up with complex, interconnected plots in twenty weeks, and the writer's don't have the time to write consistent character arcs, they just tell a flashy story because at least you get something out there.

I honestly don't imagine Secret Wars will be any different. Waldron has shown that he really really enjoys writing stories, but not characters. This is not to say that we should blame all of this on Waldron, because I don't think it's really his fault. I think it's more the fact that he's the byproduct of a system set to fail.

The writer's ignorance is someone else's problem in MCU, apparently. But don't worry. This will naturally get MCU where it's supposed to go. Just tilt your head and squint a little. Then close one eye. And then the other. Now you can see what brilliance Phase 4 is clearly.

#anti loki show

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I need the mcu to burn to ashes because I don’t know how much longer I can stand searching for comics stuff and getting mcu results. I do not fucking care about the latest article regarding this very awesome useless easter egg referencing another useless movie in this new useless series, I need what I looked for. I wish I could personally punch in the nose whoever first thought of mentioning “616” in the mcu and kick them off a building because when I look up “616 Wanda Maximoff” I DO NOT WANT TO SEE OLSEN STUFF. I DO. NOT.

When i search up "Young Avengers".... IT SHOULD NOT BE ENTIRELY MCU SHIT

#anti mcu

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Everyone forgets about the waterbending scroll episode where Katara straight up stole from pirates and put them all in danger? In the runaway she wasn't against toph's actions just because she was "being a mom", but because she had done the same thing before and it ended badly. It took one conversation about how she can be bossy (the show called it motherly but it was straight up bossy) to convince her to commit fraud too

atla fandom please learn to expand your understanding of katara beyond “she’s the mom friend.” and for the love of god, stop viewing every single interaction she has with the gaang as her being motherly. she’s a child too! credit to chiefesskatara on twitter.

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I used stumbled because it wasn’t a planned or very coordinated move, given he had to act fast. It was intended as Zuko having to adjust his course quickly, basically, and throwing himself forward with an imperfect form that barely spared him

I once again saw that take on AtlA that says Aang’s and Zuko’s lighting scars “parallel” each other because Aang’s on his back because he was running from his duty and Zuko’s on his front because he was running towards it. I once again call bullshit–not only is it factually wrong, because Aang got his scar when he decided to complete his chakras opening by letting go (”I’m sorry, Katara” -cit the show itself) and ascending to cosmic power, quite literally embracing his Avatar duty from the perspective we were given at the time (and that the narrative immediately called wrong by having Aang be shot in the back and chakra blocked for it), but also Zuko wasn’t running anywhere towards his duty as Fire Lord considering he made a split second decision to gravely risk his life to defend someone else. Choosing his duty would’ve been letting Azula disqualify herself by attacking a bystander while keeping himself safe for the throne by calling out a warning to Katara and hoping for the best.

If the scars parallel each other in any way it’s just because they’re both caused by Azula and Katara is involved, but if these two were doing duty running of any kind, it was Aang taking a reluctant leap towards what he thought to be his and Zuko stumbling away from his in a panic.

[linuseer]

do you realize him stopping the circle of abuse (honorable thing) was in fact him prioritizing saving another’s life by risking his (a selfless decision that isn’t all that new considering he defended the platoon’s soldiers’ lives at the council that got him agni-kai-ed) over the safe choice of hands down winning the final agni kai via azula’s self-disqualification, thus perhaps he did not stumble but he did in fact choose honor over duty? So he stepped away from his duty? I hope this is clearer

I once again saw that take on AtlA that says Aang’s and Zuko’s lighting scars “parallel” each other because Aang’s on his back because he was running from his duty and Zuko’s on his front because he was running towards it. I once again call bullshit–not only is it factually wrong, because Aang got his scar when he decided to complete his chakras opening by letting go (”I’m sorry, Katara” -cit the show itself) and ascending to cosmic power, quite literally embracing his Avatar duty from the perspective we were given at the time (and that the narrative immediately called wrong by having Aang be shot in the back and chakra blocked for it), but also Zuko wasn’t running anywhere towards his duty as Fire Lord considering he made a split second decision to gravely risk his life to defend someone else. Choosing his duty would’ve been letting Azula disqualify herself by attacking a bystander while keeping himself safe for the throne by calling out a warning to Katara and hoping for the best.

If the scars parallel each other in any way it’s just because they’re both caused by Azula and Katara is involved, but if these two were doing duty running of any kind, it was Aang taking a reluctant leap towards what he thought to be his and Zuko stumbling away from his in a panic.