#anti atla

[lunaathorne]

I'm very serious when I say that Zutara antis in their blazing fits of righteousness often end up perpetuating far more dangerous and disgusting ideas about colonialism, race and eugenics than the supposed "problematic" ZK fans do. You cannot pick and choose aspects of postcolonial theory when it suits your narrative of Zuko and Katara being a horrible toxic imperialist ship and discard the rest– aka counterarguments that are posited by actual poc and people from marginalized communities (including colonized cultures)– because you have already assumed you have the moral high ground. If you have to criticize ATLA or its fandom, you have to look within your own circles too instead of stirring shit up where you are not welcome (in ZK fanart, fanfic, ship events etc).

And btw making joke assumptions about race, sexuality, political beliefs and "fetishes" for clickbait over cartoon shipping wars will never not be pinnacle immaturity. Get help. See a therapist. Talk to someone. Maybe gardening or crocheting will cause less despair. Weirdos.

#zutara #zuko #katara #zuko x katara #atla crit #anti atla

[chaosandstardust]

What? The cartoon to live action cash grab created to capitalize on your nostalgia is LAZY and BAD? Who could've seen that coming??? No WAY!!

#this is sarcasm if thats not clear #avatar the last airbender #remakes #disney remakes #disney live action remakes #this cycle is annoying and exhausting #netflix #hulu #netflix atla #atla #anti atla #anti atla live action

[zauncomeon]

Let’s get one thing very straight. Genocide will always be horrible, impactful, and damaging. To minimize it or act like it has no effect would be obtuse, and I’m not here to debate on whether colonization or genocide is worse than the other, especially since often those things intertwine, but even alone, they are evil.

All that being said, the Water Tribes were never colonized. Genocide was definitely enacted by the fire nation onto them, but colonization never happened. Genocide alone still impacted the water tribes heavily, and you can see for yourself when you look at how the Southern Water Tribe looked before the genocides have taken place. Not only that, genocide leaves damaging effects psychologically, as evidenced by how the people at the SWT seem so visibly emotionally exhausted, and a bit hopeless. But of course losing family members due to it only makes it more difficult and heartbreaking

I’m going to say now, even if the fire nation colonized the water tribes, I’d still ship zutara. So this isn’t a defense of any kind, but this is only an answer to seeing fellow zutarians misuse the word, and I think it’s important to know the difference so we can talk about it properly

#had to delete the other post because I don’t think it expressed how genocide was still bad #and also I don’t care about these ship wars in regards to this topic #I’m not bothered by people who claim zutara is colonizer/colonized #zutara #zutara discourse #atla critical #atla criticism #anti atla #atla zuko #atla katara #zuko #katara #atla zutara #anti kataang #anti maiko

[ludiharambasha]

While I am not against the idea of Aang not killing The Firelord, and instead imparting justice for the genocide of his people on his own terms and in accordance with his culture per se, something about that narrative thread and how it was explored in the series rubs me the wrong way. It was apparent that AtLA was a rather neolib narrative from the get-go, and this choice is one that is br a culmination of this twisted mindset.

The thing is, killing The Firelord was always meant to be a symbolic action rather than a literal one. The Fire Nation started its military campaigns and conquest long before Ozai was even born. Killing The Current Firelord is not an immediate band-aid fix to a hundred years of oppreasion the other nations suffered through. While yes, The Firelords stand for the Fire Nation's imperialism, the people of the Fire Nation directly attributed to these campaigns. Ozai didn't kill the Waterbenders of the Southern Water tribe, nor the Airbenders, and neither did Sozin. People of the Fire Nation and its soldiers did.

And killing Ozai would have been a fine narrative choice, as Ozai is nothing more than a symbol of the Fire Nation, and his death would symbolize the death of the Fire Nation itself, and its ideology. One could argue that that would have been a rather simplistic choice, but a completely fine and appropriate one for a children's cartoon. After all, children's media rests upon these personified or metonymic representations of abstract things, substituting them with something concrete. While it would have been an obersimplification of the conflict, it would have been narratively more effective than what the series actually offered.

When Aang refuses to kill Ozai, it brings forth all kinds of complications into the narrative, by completely shattering that symbolic aspect of the entire ordeal. The entire series hinged on Aang going against the Firelord, and the audience's engagement was based on this suspension of disbeleif that killing the Firelord is in essence, killing the Fore Nation.

Now, when you decide to take this route you have to engage with the literal implication of their fight. Killing the Firelord isn't the end, as the people who actively upheld that system are still alive and did not answer for any of their crimes against humanity. So naturally, defeating the Firelord would only be the first step in that direction-but the writers of the series did not engage with that choice, not really. The series did pretty much end with Aang defeating the Firelord and taking away his bending, and reinstating Zuko as the new Firelord. The people that up until yesterday murdered or fully supported the murder and annihilation of the other nations, just magically start supporting and accepting peace, and aside from Azula and Ozai, no one answers for anything.

Nevermind that Iroh was also a military commander and killed many innocents, nevermind what Zuko did, nevermind that people that tortured Hama and their ascendants are walking scott free, never mind that we never see what happened to the police officers in the Boiling Rock or the Fire Nation's soldiers that didn't die during Sozin's comet. Noone ever pays for murdering Jet's family.

I truly don't understand this choice. You either make the narrative more simple, or you dabble in the more complex implications of it, you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

The people of the other Nations are supposed to just make peace with the people that butchered their loved ones for an entire century.

#anti atla #atla critical #anti iroh #anti zuko #jet #hama

[evilprincesss]

i think something white people will never REALLY understand--and maybe it's not just white people, maybe it's people who aren't asian in general because even though indigenous people are also hurt by it, it is at its core more racist against asian people than it is racist against indigenous people--is that atla is fundamentally bad. like it is one of the only pieces of media that you can't TRULY fix without the outcome being an entirely different piece of media. it is orientalist to its core. its heart is orientalism. it is fundamentally racist. like i know i'm actively writing a "fix it" fic to try and untangle some of that racism and make a better effort than bryke ever did, but even that doesn't actually fix it; it just takes the characters i like and puts them in a narrative i actually like. it's still racist inherently; i just feel that i as an asian and indigenous person am morally fine to create content around it in an attempt to make it enjoyable for myself

#anti atla #anti bryke

[mcrmaidlesbian]

WAIT NOOO YALL NO ONE TOLD ME ZUKO HAD A DAUGHTER WITH MAI OMG NOOOOOOO WHAT?????????

AND THEY NAMED HER AFTER THAT STUPID ASS MOMENT WHERE THEY FELL INTO A FOUNTAIN???????

#distraught and mad and just feeling all types of ways #Mai would make a horrible ass mom who in the fuck made that decision WHO???? #also now both sides of the zutara ship is tied down and with people who don’t deserve them #zutara #atla #atla zutara #atla zuko #atla katara #avatar the last airbender #anti maiko #anti kataang #zuko #katara #atla critical #anti atla #anti bryke #pro zutara

[proxissima]

I'm sorry, but there's only so many ATLA posts on my feed that I can handle at a time

#I'm already oversaturated and I don't want to get re-exposed to the enraging discourse and mindnumbingly dumb takes #being in the atla fandom is like standing next to an unshielded reactor and I'm certain I've already contracted a life-limiting dose #the number of posts on my feed from friends that are fading out of the fandom is almost too much already #thoughts #anti atla

[lunaathorne]

Me: the so called "atla renaissance" is just people taking various digs at katara, but more importantly being in constant fear that katara is the female character who canonically has the deepest and most meaningful relationship with the fan fave male character. thus in retaliation, these atla "purists" have decided that zuko is gay and in love with katara's brother, thus effectively removing the brown, feminine woman from being the object of the star male character's desire but also, under the guise of being cool and gay and above ship wars, erasing katara and mai as possible threats to their gay ship, by a) making homophobic jokes about katara or ALWAYS making her the token straight of the group and b) hamfistedly shoving mai into ty lee's arms like yesss lesbians even though if you search for mailee on ao3 they are about 90% a side ship in z*kka fics. apparently the coloniser colonised power imbalance is only valid when the colonised subject is the feminine brown woman. :)))))

Girl at the bar: um I think I see my friends

#atla crit #atla critical #anti zukka #zutara #not exactly but ehhhh #anti atla #anti bryke

[isekai-ed]

hope that new sequel to avatar never gets made and I'll be spared from more headaches

#anti atla #anti tlok

[zauncomeon]

I really hate how orientalist at it’s core the show is. Yes I don’t think anyone should feel bad for liking the show, obviously, but seeing people project their very western takes and opinions onto a show which’s world is a result of two white dude’s picking and choosing aspects from various Asian and indigenous cultures….is just so weird. It’s just a weird thing to see.

#it really is just so sad #people see these cultures as a joke fr fr #anti atla #atla critical #atla criticism #anti kataang #anti bryke #anti natla

[ludiharambasha]

Just saw an AtLA take on tiktok that left me speechless, "despite the Fire nation being an evil empire, they were the only ones to accept women into their armies"... as if that means anything? They let women do some war crimes too-how WOKE!

Neolibs will never cease to amaze me with their stupidity...

#anti AtLA #anti AtLA fandom #the brainrot is real

[kataraslove]

there’s a reason why the entire story of avatar the last airbender begins and ends with katara. there’s a reason why we are introduced to katara first before we are introduced to any other character. there’s a reason why katara is the narrator. there’s a reason why the creators have emphasized over and over again that katara is just as titular to the story as aang - she’s the other main character.

when you water down katara - remove her compassion, her ability to connect with others, her nurturing role, her ANGER and RAGE and DRIVE - you water down the very fundamentals of the story. you drastically and severely alter the core dynamics of the gaang, because katara was so important to the development of every single one of them. she was the rock and glue that held team avatar together.

katara was unlike any other character to ever appear on television; she was a young brown girl who took no shit from anyone, yet at the same time remained kind and compassionate and nurturing. katara was a force of nature; proud of her heritage and culture, burdened by the responsibility of being the last southern water bender of the water tribe, angered over the death of her mother and everything that the fire nation took from her, determined to help every single person in need, determined to change the world, angry and resentful because old men and rules and laws kept telling her what she could or could not do, thus, she was determined to restructure thousands of years of patriarchy that stood against her from accomplishing her goals and dreams.

watering down katara into at most 2-3 tangible characteristics, stripping her away of all her motivation and agency and nuance, telling the audience that she wants to help and change the world only to have her stand in the background with an air of grief, demonstrates that the writers of the live action fundamentally misunderstand the spirit of avatar. and that’s something so unforgivable. no matter how many changes they decide to make, or how much they decide to stay true to the original story in other areas, no matter how many flashy VFX fight scenes we get - if you fail to properly understand katara, you fail to understand the heart and soul of avatar the last airbender, everything that makes avatar such a timeless classic.

#katara #atla #avatar the last airbender #anti atla live action #anti natla

[yourhighness6]

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.

#also just the angst potential #there are so many fics and better metas written about this but I had to throw my two cents in #Bryke's refusal to acknowledge bloodbending as anything but evil incarnate is so fucking annoying #anti bryke #bloodbending #zutara #zuko #katara #final agni kai #atla #avatar the last airbender #atla meta #zutara meta #technically

[mcrmaidlesbian]

It’s been 14 years and y’all still don’t understand why the ending to ATLA is criticized, despite there having been numerous posts explaining why written since then. Embarrassing.

#yes it’s a reference to THAT post #which btw since OP couldn’t “believe people were that stupid I’m just gonna assume they are a complete dumbass #i know people want to act like Avatar was some perfect show but that’s such utter bs #It’s a beautifully written and animated show but it has a lot of flaws #atla critical #obviously I love the show but yes ima put anti atla for this #anti atla #avatar the last airbender #avatar #atla #atla zutara #zutara #pro zutara #atla aang #aang #pro katara #zuko #atla zuko #anti bryke #anti atla comics #anti atla fandom