#atla salt

[firelxdykatara]

I actually really don't want to hear anything about how 'overcoming misogyny' is a major theme in Avatar: the Last Airbender when "The Fortuneteller" exists and the ultimate thesis of that episode, in the context of the show as a whole, is that if a girl is in unrequited love, it's cringe and kinda pathetic and she should move on cause the boy will never want her; but if a boy is in unrequited love, he just needs to be patient and wait for the girl he wants to come around cause he's a hero and how could she not?

Its secondary thesis is that you need to make your own destiny and not rely on someone else's words to tell you what your life has in store...if you're a BOY; if you're a girl then what the fake psychic told you will actually determine your ENTIRE life even if you are only fourteen years old.

Meng's existence really would have been the final nail in the coffin for Kataang even if the arc of the ship in Book 3 weren't so abhorrent to me personally (sorry but I have higher standards for romantic relationships than 'the girl is completely oblivious to the boy's advances for the entire show, is actively distressed when those advances become more pronounced, and then her feelings are resolved completely off screen between episodes so that the boy can get his prize in the end')--because her relationship with Aang is deliberately paralleled to Aang's relationship with Katara, and yet Meng, the one-off character, learns a lesson which Aang is quite literally told he must learn in the Book 2 finale... but he never ever does.

Aang has an entire season to internalize that lesson and come to terms with it--that maybe she doesn't have feelings for me and that's ok because I still love and care about her and that's enough--but he never even comes close. His possessive attachment to her gets worse, culminates in the EIP kiss, and Katara just capitulates because we're meant to believe that she went through the entire development of her romantic feelings for the love of her life off-screen between the penultimate episode and the four-part finale.

This was misogynistic even in 2008, and the idea that the show truly had anything meaningful to say about sexism/misogyny when uncritical and unchecked misogyny was baked into its very DNA (assuming we're meant to agree with Brychael that Kataang is 'in the DNA of the show) is just laughable to me. When it comes to 'overcoming misogyny' the show doesn't actually say anything more profound than 'girls can fight too!!!!!'

And that wasn't good enough for me then, it certainly isn't good enough for me today.

#atla #k*taang salt #salt for ts #bryke salt #atla salt #really just sick of the notion that atla was actually great about misogyny and it's so terrible if the live action does away with some of i #atla actually kind of sucked about misogyny for anyone who is older than a young child and more capable of reading between the lines #long post

[coccinelle-et-chaton]

sincerely asking the natla haters to tag their salt.

Beyond the fact you literally can just. Not engage with the remake. You are entitled to your own opinion, but don't force-feed your hate to the rest of us who actually want to enjoy it, please.

Most of us watching are tired millennials with soul-draining 9 to 5s who can barely make ends meet. Let. Us. Have. This.

#like the choice of complaining about a literal tv show when WWIII is literally brewing outside is.... bold. to put it gently #please tag your salt. #atla #natla #avatar netflix #netflix atla #avatar the last airbender #aang #zuko #katara #sokka #avatar remake #atla la #live action atla #natla salt #atla netflix salt #atla salt

[yourhighness6]

A lot of anti arguments center around people being like "okay you said this in your post but what you actually mean is..." like no bitch I said what I said

#zutara #atla #anti anti #I think it makes sense that these people can't understand a clearly worded meta #maybe speaks to their media literacy a bit lol #fandom salt #atla salt

[nono-bunny]

One thing I love and appreciate about the Zutara fandom is that a lot of us also refuse to leave the one GOOD canon couple out to dry like canon did. Sokka is already Katara's brother, and thus it's so easy plot-wise when weaving a Zutara story to just! Make him and Suki get married, either off screen or make a big thing of it... Which like, either is a grace and peacefulness canon just fucking REFUSED (and seemingly continue to) give to these two

#avatar the last airbender #atla #zutara #anti bryke #atla salt #atla critical #sukki #sukka

[femme-malewife]

I was rewatching the Southern Raiders so I can re-evaluate how I can write Zuko and Katara’s dynamic and honestly, I forgot how angry this episode makes me. I forgot how angry I get when I remember how people genuinely wished harm upon Katara as a character because of her rightful frustration.

Hers and Sokka’s mother was killed, and it’s only Katara who wants closure. Because Sokka, many episodes ago (”The Runaway”), stated that whenever he thinks about his mother, he can’t remember her face, he can only think of Katara’s. This means that he was able to get over her death, because he had someone who was there who took on all of their mother’s responsibilities.

Katara, meanwhile, had no one. She, an 8 year old girl, took on the cooking, cleaning, sewing, acting as a mother to her older brother, and always looked out for everyone in the gaang by the age of 14. And when does she ever get a “thank you” or anything? Hell, in the episode “The Desert”, she’s the only one who focuses on getting everyone out. Aang is sulking (and she’s still supportive of him), Toph can’t “see” properly and is down, and Sokka is drunk off of cactus juice.

Yet Katara was treated like shit in the episode. She not once got onto Aang for taking his frustration out on anyone, yet he screamed at her “What are you doing?!” when he yelled that he was doing his best.

Also, Water Tribes have major gender roles, and it shows us explicitly that Sokka is closer to their dad than Katara is (not to say Katara doesn’t love him of course, but Katara even lets Sokka go see Hakoda while she stayed behind in Ba Sing Se) and Katara was obviously closer with her mother.

So, pray tell, why no one except Zuko supported Katara? Why did Aang compare losing an animal and losing his culture to Katara losing her mother? None of these are the same. For one, Appa was still alive, and two, a mother is something irreplaceable. Katara losing her mother is what shaped her into who she is today, and Aang got over the loss of his culture because the plot needed him to.

For all that Katara has done for the group, one would assume that they would support her. But no- Sokka told her “she was my mother too, but Aang might be right” (which, again, I point out that Sokka was able to process and get over his grief, while Katara never had a true outlet for hers. She was able to talk about it, but that’s not the same as processing grief), and Aang got all preachy, showing he didn’t trust her not to kill him, despite supposedly “loving her” and being her “best friend”.

The lack of empathy and sympathy from Aang and Sokka is honestly infuriating. And the fandom is only worse.

Did yall also forget Katara is literally 14 years old? Can you seriously tell me that you would be emotionally stable if you were 8, lost a parent you were close with, and found out you can get closure by finding that parent’s killer after they literally reshaped your entire childhood? Everyone processes trauma differently, and it’s especially hard on a teenager.

People literally have more sympathy for Sokka losing Yue, a girl he knew for, what, two days max? Than Katara losing her mother.

The Katara lost her mother memes were never funny. And the hatred for Katara specifically for this episode is really old, tiring, and hypocritical.

#zutara #atla salt

[dragynkeep]

i don't really understand the argument that aang should've killed ozai. n1. from a realistic pov, its a kids show, it's not gonna be game of thrones. but from a writing perspective he is the last air nomad, not just the last airbender. being a nomad is different to being an airbender as its the cultural aspect of it- aang carries the weight of being the last of both. he doesn't want to kill ozai because the monks believe all life is sacred, and by killing ozai, there will be no nomads left, as he felt he would've abandoned his culture.

i don't know what would've happened if he hadn't discovered a way to remove ozais bending, but i do know that it literally doesn't matter if he killed him or not. ozai loses either way, he suffers either way. the people of the other nations, including the ones from the air temples who were murdered, still get their justice because he is still being held to what he did and punished. arguably, being stripped of his bending and locked in a cell to rot is more of a punishment than death. and also, then zuko becomes fire lord. meaning if he wants, he could have ozai executed and nobody could do anything about it. the end circumstances were the same either way. aang not killing ozai was not bad, the people still got their justice, arguably more because ozai was sentenced to suffer like he inflicted on them.

the entire issue with this is twofold in that aang is not only responsible for himself & without the magical lion turtles, the earth kingdom would've been destroyed.

"we don't know what would've happened if he hadn't discovered a way to remove ozai's bending" but we do, ozai was in the process of it. ozai would've razed the earth kingdom to the ground in pursuit of his new world & continued further on with mass genocides & oppressions of non fire nation folk as he blatantly said on screen. he was doing this while aang was still quibbling with his nonviolence ethos.

& the nonviolence isn't even reflective of the air nomads in the show: we literally see in the first book that monk gyatso murked at least 20 - 30 fire nation soldiers in order to preserve his own life & the life of other air nomads fleeing.

& monk gyatso isn't the only airbender nomad to choose violence as a defensive measure, avatar yangchen also does. she straight up tells aang that while he has these cultural ethos, he isn't just responsible for himself anymore. he is responsible for the entire world & with that comes having to make hard choices even if he doesn't personally agree with them because that's his job.

here we see aang being confronted with the fact that his idealized caricature of his own culture is not the truthful representation through both monk gyatso & yangchen setting it straight: the air nomads were not devoted, peaceful spirits willing to follow a non violence ethos straight to their death, they would protect themselves. aang is responsible for protecting the world, even when he's confronted with that he accepts it.

it's only through sheer bullshittery that we get the lion turtles who show him the ability to remove bending — which then came with it's own host of ethical issues further in the series so it's not like this is a null harm issue — & even then it took a specific plot rock to the back to get him to put this into action. aang was losing, he was going to die & it's delusional to think that him following his non violence ethos to his death at the expense of a kingdom dependent on him is the "correct" choice.

especially because we've also seen aang kill before in self defense. while in the avatar spirit yes but what was to stop him from doing the same to ozai while in that same avatar spirit state. this whole devotion to a bastardization of a marginalized culture irl written by white men who have never had to face a racialized violence as the basis of aang's decision "not to kill" is borderline insulting.

also in respect to "this isn't game of thrones": people have died on screen. even as early as book 1 we were featuring on screen deaths & if a child affected by the brutality of war like jet can die violently on screen, then so can the imperialistic, genocidal dictator hellbent on again, burning an entire kingdom & not stopping there.

this whole argument hinges on the plot saving aang's ass by not letting him make that hard decision, instead offering up a last moment's holy grace which was never foreshadowed & ended up only hurting aang as a character. especially when not killing ozai only left the world in further instability as cults & secret factions devoted to wanting him to return as fire lord sprung up in the wake of zuko's coronation & put the fire nation in further turmoil when it was incredibly sensitive post war. so aang didn't even help in that regard & only caused further harm instead of helping.

#atla #atla critical #atla salt #aang #aang critical #aang salt #ais.txt #answered

[late-draft]

I'm browsing the fandom now from time to time and I see that sometimes there's discourse about what the narrative was actually telling us.

The narrative in ATLA isn't consistent though! It has at least 2 parallel intentions in many areas and its messages are contradictory. Accidentally picking arguments from 2 opposing parts cannot be used to justify a single point! Possibly because there were 2 groups in the writing team, if what I've read is true. It was a tug of war.

Most clear examples are in shipping. Mai was introduced as a plot device, a negative image of an aspect of the Fire Nation. Then in the end she ends in a positively depicted canon relationship, without going through any character growth to become a better person. There's nothing in the previous writing that can be pulled to explain her finish-line, because the previous writing isn't leading up to the finish she received!

Then we look at the Guru: what was his point? He was included and then it looked like he was leading towards something, showing the problem of not letting go of earthly attachments means chakras can't be opened. Yet the writing ends with a random rock unlocking the chakras anyway.

It's not easy, but it's important to be perceptive enough to notice where the 2 writings split!

#the discourse #atla salt #analysis #mai critical

[bloodmoonbabel]

ATLA tumblr is vastly superior to ATLA twitter because colonised peoples can talk about the show's flaws without some dodo coming in and being like "YEAH, BUT!!!!"

#atla salt #bloodmoonbabel

[avatar-the-last-jerkbender]

trying to find smut in the mailee tag: a tragedy

okay! so i go into the mailee tag trying to find fics to read bc i was feeling the vibes. i look and-

840 works is a lot! i have hope! i’m seeing a lot of fics with a different ship first, but i think i can find some things. after a while of scrolling aimlessly though, i decide to do ‘otp: true’ and see what’s left because i don’t really want to read about them as a sideship in this moment.

this is. mildly alarming. 19.88% of mailee fics are JUST about the two of them. in contrast, zutara had 3929/6343 = 61.94% of fics remaining, and zukka had 2708/5571 = 48.61%. kataang had 766/3865 = 19.82%, but keep in mind even for fics with multiple ship tags, kataang is usually first, and doing ‘otp: true’ doesn’t take that into consideration, something that applies to zutara and zukka as well.

so fine! there’s not MUCH content to work with but it isn’t even the most popular wlw ship in the tag! i’ll live. but if someone hypothetically wanted to read smut (i am confirming nothing)-

there are

7

explicit

mailee fics

if you do

otp: true

what

the

HECK???

you may argue, “but nook!!! just don’t do otp: true!!!! i’m sure you can find smut!!!” MAILEE IS NEVER THE FIRST SHIP ITS ALWAYS SOMEONE ELSE :(

i am in mourning

PROPORTION OF FICS THAT ARE SMUT IF YOU DO OTP: TRUE

zutara: 424/6343 = 6.68%

zukka: 385/5571 = 6.92%

kataang: 78/3865 = 2.02%

MAILEE: 7/840 = 0.83%

i’m not really sure where i was going with this. maybe i’ll do a similar analysis w tyzula or other wlw atla ships, but PLEASE TAG YOUR SHIT PROPERLY ON AO3!!!! OTHERWISE PPL GET SAD BC THEY LOOK FOR FICS OF SHIPS THEY ENJOY AND INSTEAD FIND A DESERT FULL OF TUMBLEWEEDS!!!!

#atla #mailee #atla salt #atla fandom salt #avatar: the last airbender

[sparkles-and-trash]

I fucking hate this 🙂

I literally could not care less about the whole «gaang as young adults» movie, I hated every single one of their canon endings in Korra, I know I hated almost all of them in the comics and/of Korra (except Sokka and Katara), I don’t need to see it happen lol

Give me Kyoshi and expand the lore of this amazing universe without taking the original and squeeze it dry please

#if I see Azula in a straightjacket animated I will SCREAM #TOPH AS A FUCKING COP #just no to everything #avatar #avatar studios #atla #atla salt

[writebecauseyoucannotbreathe]

#azulaang #im tired of seeing shiphate in the tag #take your untoasted bread and go #aangzula #aang x azula #atla salt

[cobraonthecob]

a rant about the kyoshi novels because i just heard about the shit that happened and i’m very close to meeting someone in a parking lot

1. why were there no sensitivity readers for the books????

2. a bunch of us did not go through school to be told that our food was disgusting only to do the same thing to another group of people. 

3. stop treating other people’s diet/food as disgusting, and stop demonizing hunting practices. all of you are starting to sound like Those Vegans™️

#nightfalcon posts #atla critical #atla salt #a:tla critical #a:tla salt

[coccinelle-et-chaton]

If seeing people be negative is enough to drown out your own positivity about it, maybe you should ask yourself why and either A. Stop deluding yourself, or B. Accept that it's not what some people wanted and that that's fine and you can still enjoy it anyways.

You're confusing 'drowning in negativity' with it just being plain annoying and unnecessary. It is simply a matter of courtesy.

The tagging system in fandom has always been the backbone of self-curating, which not only is a quintessential part of the fandom experience, but it is paramount in a time when we're having algorithms force-fed to us.

Failing to use the tagging system speaks of a lack of courtesy for the others. I'm not saying people that like to hate on things should stop. I'm saying their opinion is not above the social agreement within fandom, and they should use the tags so that whoever doesn't share their opinion can opt out of bumping into it constantly in their feed.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but I also think you should give others the chance to curate their online experience in the same way as you have the right to curate your own.

#atla #natla #natla salt #atla salt #avatar netflix #netflix avatar #avatar the last airbender #atla la #atla live action #salt

[nono-bunny]

When Eric Coleman, someone who worked closely on ATLA since its inception, understands that the biggest and most satisfying "hero's journey" of the show isn't even the hero's, I feel like that's kind of a clear indication not only of success with Zuko's character, but of failure with Aang's

I feel like as much as I came to hate Aang, I more than anyone would have been delighted to see him emerge triumphant after facing his issues, addressing them, and using what he learns to move on- but the one who ends up perfectly embodying that spirit of learning and growing from your mistakes is instead Zuko, while Aang sits on his ass, does jack-all, and gets all the credit! Aang NEVER grows as a person, both throughout the course of the show and through everything we know of him after it, and in perfect ironic contrast Zuko is ALWAYS growing, always working hard, always striving to do the right thing...

Like! I LOVE ATLA, I do! But it was NEVER because of Aang, and always because of the people around him. Even in the very beginning, I feel like I'm infinitely more interested in watching Sokka and Katara interact with each other and their tribe than I am with anything to do with him, and that's a problem!

When your main character only ever strives to be comic relief when the narrative needs him to be the hero, and he refuses to answer the call at every turn and has to be strong armed into doing his job both by other characters in universe and by the writers every time they need him to do his job... It's not good!!! He never gets past that!! He always has to have someone shove him towards being the hero, and his "reluctant hero" thing never stops! They previously talked about how sometimes the world needs the "reluctant hero", but that's like? A character archetype they should grow out of, that's the whole thing! They gain experience and confidence in themselves and their abilities, they become invested in the main conflicted and want to help resolve it, but??? Aang literally never does! He gets set up to start changing with Guru Pathik, his flightiness is addressed as an AWFUL thing by the other characters, but all of that flies out the window over and over and over again! He gets handed so many great scenarios where he SHOULD have chosen to step up, SHOULD have chosen to do the right thing, and he always chooses NOT to- because it's easier, because he knows others have grown used to picking up his slack... Because he ultimately doesn't care about anyone other than himself and his own self interests and his public image- those are canonical (even if not outright spoken like his flightiness) character flaws of his, and they're a great starting point for a hero to grow from.... But he never does, even when gives SO many perfect chances to, so he kinda just remains forever stuck as an asshole, entitled, brat.

#avatar the last airbender #atla #braving the elements #anti aang #atla salt

[jet-apologistmybadhomies]

the craziest Thing in the atla fandom is

that ppl forgave zuko for being sexist,racist, classist and burning down a Village

BUT WILL N E V E R get over Katara saying

" then u didn't love her like i did" when she was upset and feeling like she was the only one who still cared and couldnt let go

INSANITY

#stop katara bashing #katara #zuko #i love my pokkie but he gets away with too much #avatar the last airbender #atla #atla fandom salt

[dragynkeep]

azula stans stop framing zuko as if him no longer cowering in fear around azula means she doesn't still inspire that fear in him as someone who's tried to take his & his friends lives multiple times as his abuser challenge failed every goddamn time.

"azula isn't a shark" i know you're invested because you're a d tier va for her in a shit adaptation of even shittier comics but consider: she is an abuser. she has been consistently for zuko throughout the actual show & any fanfiction written by a poor writer won't fix her into your uwu sad girl. consider why you want to defend this behaviour from her so badly while deriding her canonical victim.

#atla #atla critical #atla salt #zuko #azula #azula critical #ais.txt #ya'll are so annoying. shut up