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#so does Katara
pineapple-frenzy · 24 days
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Book 2 au: sparring sessions and short hair katara
They like to have sparring sessions in order to keep their bending skills sharp. They allow themselves to go all out and not hold back at all cause they know if anyone got hurt, Katara could just heal them
But anyways, wouldn't it be kinda funny if Zuko accidentally burned Katara's hair tho? Aofkqldkkajfjd
The "I think we can save the hairloops" line is from @linnoya-writes thank you for that!! :>>
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zukosdualdao · 1 month
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everytime i see antis imply that katara somehow secretly still hates zuko by the end of the show, i'm like
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... "yup. that's exactly how i look at people i hate."
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comradekatara · 1 month
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i feel like the reason aang isn’t as adored and beloved as he should be is because he’s the protagonist but he’s also not an archetypal western classical hero. i don’t agree with the entirety of that “avatar aang: feminist icon” essay because i think the role of patriarchy and gender in atla is more complex than what that essay posits, but he definitely complicates the masculine ideal of heroism and generally does not conform to patriarchal notions of masculinity. which is very deliberate, especially as contrasted with sokka and zuko’s explicit struggles with the imperialist/colonial standards of an aggressive, militaristic, and chauvinistic masculinity. aang is subversive because he represents an absence of war in a world ravaged by it. through his link to a (somewhat more) peaceful and harmonious past, he represents a better possible future. as katara would say, he brings people hope.
but people don’t like that he’s not visibly edgy or tormented like zuko is (even though he’s a far more tragic character than zuko is, just fyi), that he isn’t “cool” (even though he’s literally the coolest kid ever, just fyi), that he “gets the girl” (even though if anything, she gets him) despite being twelve and bald and nice (the horror!). katara is the more classical hero of the narrative, as its narrator and its catalyst, the adventurous revolutionary who gradually learns to control and use her powers and eventually becoming a force to be reckoned with. zuko is the classical anti-hero of the narrative, his “redemption arc” constantly hailed as one of the greatest character arcs in television. so people expect katara and zuko, as very obvious narrative foils who parallel each other every step of the way, to be the obvious couple, because based on every romance narrative we’ve been inundated with throughout our lives, within our patriarchal society, they “just make sense together.”
but as much as katara is a protagonist in her own right, aang is the show. the title quite literally represents the central thematic tension of the entire narrative, the colon illustrating the implicit divide between his duties to this brave new world in desperate need of justice and balance, or his duties to his extirpated culture as the last true voice among them. aang is the central figure because this tension represents the crucial ideological battle happening across the entire show. aang is the avatar because he is the only person in the entire world whose values have not been shaped by war.
people constantly laud zuko, in particular, for being the most interesting, complex character in avatar. but i personally don’t even think that’s true. which isn’t to say that zuko isn’t fascinating in his own right, of course, but rather that he’s certainly not the only complex character this show has to offer. he just happens to monologue about his anguish constantly. but aang wasn’t raised as an imperial prince, and so he approaches the world, and his own pain, in a very different manner. the reason he immediately goes to ride giant koi on kyoshi island, mailchutes in omashu, and otherwise goofs around after learning of the shocking ramifications of his people’s genocide is because that’s how he copes with his pain. unlike zuko, who never stops talking about his aches and yearnings, aang represses his trauma and hides his tears behind a mask of upbeat cheerful goofy twelve year old antics.
until he can’t anymore. until he snaps. both katara and zuko wear their hearts on their sleeves, and that includes their rage. but aang’s rage is dangerous specifically because it represents that he has been pushed past his limits, that the conditions of this world in which he is a perpetual stranger, temporally displaced and dispossessed, are intolerable. that peaceful reconciliation is impossible. and the fact that he persists beyond that breaking point, over and over again, to firmly and resoundingly establish his ideals even as they conflict with everything he has learned about this world, a world that is not his own even as he can never return to the world he once knew, is what makes him so unique, so powerful, so beautiful.
i know that aang isn’t the typical hero, neither narratively nor aesthetically, but really, that’s the entire point. the world, our world, needs something other than what we have now. we need someone who will not succumb to the ideals of domination and victory through violence to assert themselves. we need someone who stands firm in refusing to kill the firelord, even as everyone he knows tells him otherwise. we need someone who knows that darkness cannot be vanquished through more darkness, but can only truly yield to purifying light.
and sure, aang is a child, and often acts childishly. sure, he’s not conventionally handsome and alluring. but one thing i will never understand is how that somehow negates his appeal to the masses. because even if you don’t appreciate how crucial he is to the themes of this narrative you all seem to love so much, how can you not love his adorable little face? his precious little laugh, his zest for life, the infinite well of love and kindness he holds in his heart? people who hate aang are crazy to me. because you are, quite literally, hating the world’s most precious baby boy.
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hanadoesstuffwrong · 7 months
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muffinlance · 3 months
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EDIT: The switchover from "Wani" to "Wanyi" has begun! Salvage should be switched; if anyone's re-reading, let me know if I missed any or accidentally borked any formatting during the change.
All crew names will be left the same, because they are Real People Names and I already had different personalities.
Thanks to everyone who helped me decide!
---Ye original post:---
Debating removing the various hat-tips to Embers in my fics due to attempting to re-read that story and finding it far less enamoring than when it was the second fic I'd ever read.
So anyways now soliciting potential new names for the Wani (Zuko's ship), Crewman Teruko, and Helmsman Kyo.
Update: Seems people (at least on this blog) associate those characters with my stories, not Embers. And the personalities are different, and they're legit real world names... So I'll likely leave those two alone.
Still tempted to change the Wani's name, though. My current top contender is Wanyi, which was @tuktukpodfics 's adorable change when they were podficcing Salvage, which I shall just quote here:
Wànyī (萬一): One in ten thousand, Perchance. I realize now that MuffinLance got the name Wani for Zuko’s ship from the author Vathara and it means "alligator" in another language. But when I was reading Salvage, I always imagined it was "wànyī," which literally means "one in ten thousand" and is used grammatically to mean "what if" or "just in case." I think a ship called "The Perchance" is perfect for a boy clinging to false hope.
I think that is a lot cooler and more meaningful than "Alligator". <3
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lovegrowsart · 2 months
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it's pretty wild to me that people don't see that aang running off to save katara in CoD is his luke in empire strikes back moment, where he runs headlong into his want and attachment and he's narratively punished for doing so and not learning his lesson - aang runs after katara despite guru pathik's warning, like luke runs after leia and han from yoda on dagobah despite yoda's warning; similarly, as a result, things go to hell in ba sing se like they do on bespin - aang enters the avatar state before he's ready and gets killed, and ba sing se falls to the fire nation, luke fights vader before he's ready, loses a hand, and symbolically commits suicide after vader tells him he's luke's father.
the difference between their character arcs is that george lucas and co. actually went thru with luke's hero's journey and understood the fundamental difference between attachment and love, whereas I don't think bryke understood this difference and then dropped this from aang's arc pretty much completely and replaced it with aang digging in his heels into his want and attachment and he gets rewarded with energy bending from a lion turtle, the avatar state from a random pointy rock, and his forever girl from the self-indulgent white men that couldn't bring themselves to give their hero a compelling character arc that meant he might not have gotten everything he wanted at the end.
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ecoterrorist-katara · 18 days
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I love fics where the Gaang finds out about the story behind Zuko’s scar. That said, I still think Zuko and Katara’s interaction in Crossroads of Destiny is the most powerful scar scene possible, precisely because Katara does not get his backstory, yet treats him with compassion anyway.
From The Storm onwards, Zuko’s scar becomes a symbol to the audience. Zuko’s scar is inextricable from his inherent goodness, which is constantly warring with his desire to please his cruel father. I think that’s why fans are so eager to see the Gaang find out the story behind his scar — so that the Gaang can see Zuko the way we’ve seen Zuko since season 1, so that they can understand the full tragedy of his story, and so that Zuko can get the comfort he really, really needs and deserves.
But Katara doesn’t offer to heal his scar because he’s good, or because she’s appalled that his father was abusive and awful. She offers to heal his scar because she sees that he’s hurting, and she wants to make that hurt go away. Knowing his backstory would not have made her act any differently, because she had already offered the full extent of her compassion. Katara knows firsthand what he’s capable of. She’s seen him at his very lowest. Yet she chooses to comfort him anyway.
And Zuko — Zuko, for whom pain is about as natural as breathing, who doesn’t care if he lives or dies, whose list of “people who have seen the worst of him and care about him anyway” starts and ends with his uncle, who knows full well that Katara travels with both the literal hope of the world and her own brother…no wonder he lets her touch his scar. No wonder he wants her forgiveness so badly. No wonder he jumps in front of lightning for her and reaches for her while he’s literally dying. Because Katara didn’t see the good in him: she saw the human in him. Because to a girl defined by her compassion, they were the same thing. And to a boy who had been desperately trying to bury his own humanity, it was everything.
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xan-from-space · 2 months
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Damn, the Ember Island Players were actually kind of radical, weren't they? The more I think about it, the more it feels like the only way it makes sense in-universe is if being Fire Nation propaganda wasn't the point of their play at all. Aside from a barely tacked on ending where Ozai kills Aang, the play is remarkably sympathetic to the Avatar and a bunch of enemies of the Fire Nation, even framing them as being heroes. Even at points in the story where theyre literally killing Fire Nation soldiers, the narrative still seems to be on their side; they're the underdogs, the relatable ones. Its true that the Fire Nation values strength, but still, you'd expect that in a propaganda play they would be portrayed as at least a little bit more sympathetic... And sure, to some extent the gaang's characters could be seen as defamatory caricutures (the slander on Iroh specifically was probably intentional), but that also might be due to the Players getting a lot of their information from the cabbage man, someone who actively hates the gaang and only ever really sees the worst of them. (And notably, that also means that the Players had worked with an Earth Kingdom merchant to produce the play.)
Mocking the gaang is also just clearly not the point of the play or what people are there for. Sokka's actor says that he's constantly being approached by fans; people genuinely love these characters. The gaang have built entire dedicated fanbases in the Fire Nation because of this play. Honestly, the fact that they're on a remote island is probably the only reason they're able to perform the play the way it is. I imagine it would get shut down pretty quickly on the mainland. Considering all the propaganda in the Fire Nation that we've seen so far, I wouldn't be surprised if the ending was only written that way because it's illegal to write a story where the Fire Lord doesnt win. The play reads less like propaganda and more like 'we're doing the bare minimum to get this story past the censors.'
I'm really curious about what it's like behind the scenes for the Ember Island Players. Are their shows just simple, shlocky entertainment, or could they also be deliberate political commentary? With no recording technology, a play is easier to slip under the radar than something like a book: it's impermanent, stays in one theatre, and performances can be easily tweaked if, say, Fire Nation royalty happens to come by. It's interesting to me that Ursa seemed to like them, while young Zuko had a disdain for them, saying they 'butchered' the story of Love Amongst the Dragons; in all likelihood the version of the story Zuko grew up with in the palace was heavily propaganda-filtered itself. Although, to be fair, they're arguably just not very good playwrights. When it comes to the characterization, I do think some of it only seems bad because we know what the actual characters are like, but a lot of it is just bad writing clearly meant for cheap entertainment. For example, they sexualize Katara quite a bit (and there's other, better analysis out there I've seen that examines how they fetishize her as a Water Tribe girl). And, of course, all of the characters are reduced to shallow and stereotypical comedy.
Still, I think they're worth commending for doing their research and telling a story about enemies of the state that's both sympathetic and surprisingly accurate to actual events, if not the characters' personalities, amidst the Fire Nation's rampant propaganda and misinformation. From the little amount of information about them we can extract from the show, they seem like honestly very interesting people. They're walking this tightrope line between being very close to the heart of the Fire Nation but also separate from it; between being cheap, inconsequential entertainment and being a source of actual news for Ember Island citizens; between telling the underdog story about a ragtag group of children and still trying to make it look like Fire Nation propaganda. I'm not trying to make any big argument on whether they were 'actually good people' or whatever, I just want to know more about them. I kind of wish we could see their production of Love Amongst the Dragons now...maybe I'll write something about them someday
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gurinpotte · 1 month
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Please more buff aang I'm thirsty 🏃🏽‍♀️🏃🏽‍♀️
well i hope these will quench ya....
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i had wayyyy more fun with this than i should have had. i was giggling and kicking my feet nonny, it's my first time doing quenching drawings like that. i'm not that great with manly muscles so i'm sorry for the messyness and mistakes. thank you sm for this ask my dear thirsty anon! also sorry if the kataang wasn't that you expected but in this house we serve kataang at every chance
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freakurodani · 2 months
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i think katara and her righteous fury is a beautiful beautiful thing
i think she should call out republic city council on some bullshit and aang should be behind her and when the council looks to him like "Avatar pls" he just shrugs
"my most applicable title right now is 'Katara of the Southern Water Tribe's Husband' actually "
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thatssroughbuddy · 6 months
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I’m absolutely obsessed with the parallels in avatar there’s a million of them but rn I’m freaking about how Aang and Zuko have parallel scars from Azula’s lightning strikes AND ALSO how Aang got his right after he chose to let Katara go and Zuko got his saving her life?????????
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burst-of-iridescent · 2 months
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not to beat the "sokka's misogyny" disk horse even further into the ground, but while i agree with the take that sokka being sexist logically doesn't make sense, i would go further to say that the water tribes themselves being sexist is both illogical and thematically contradictory.
the flaws of each nation in atla have always been linked to their element, and specifically what those elements represent. fire is the element of power; power, left unchecked, leads to imperialism and authoritarianism. earth is the element of substance and stability; stability, prioritized too highly, creates and justifies the rigid class system and rampant corruption of ba sing se. air is the element of freedom; freedom, taken too far, becomes irresponsibility and abandonment.
meanwhile, water is the element of change... therefore the water tribes cling to antiquated ideas about gender roles instead of adapting with the times (especially when the times involve a fucking war going on).
not only is this unrealistic, it also breaks the thematic pattern of the nations' flaws being virtues taken to extremes, and how this dovetails into the show's overall message about the importance of balance. if we're keeping with the pattern of virtue and vice being two sides of the same coin, then the flaw of the water tribes has to be related to change. and here is where some of the (badly executed) ideas in the comics and legend of korra could have come into play: change, left uncontrolled, can lead to progress... but at the cost of tradition and spirituality.
(imagine a nwt cut off from the world and forced to rely solely on itself, ingenuity and creativity flourishing out of sheer, desperate need. imagine a nwt where waterbending is nothing more than a tool, used to build and defend and maintain a fortress always at risk, its spiritual origins slowly lost to time. imagine a nwt more military than community, whose architecture and technology far exceed anything the world has ever seen, who look down upon their less advanced sister tribe, and see no need for the avatar - after all, where was he when they had no one but themselves for the last 100 years?
when warned that the fire nation is coming, they show no fear; they have held strong on their own for the last century, bolstered by their weapons and wits, and will continue to do so. you need the spirits, aang implores, and is met with derision, for there is no place for spirits in a society always chasing more, greater, better. the spirits have not helped us before, avatar. why would they now? we are all we need.
when the moon spirit falls, unprotected and forgotten in an abandoned, rundown spirit oasis - so do they.)
not only would this fit better thematically, it would also ensure that the nwt's flaw plays a role in its own downfall. where the fire nation's warmongering resulted in the poverty and suffering of its own people, and the earth kingdom's corruption led - at least in part - to the fall of ba sing se, the misogyny of the water tribes is never shown to negatively impact them in any way. the north isn't defeated by the fire nation because they relegated half the population to healing. the south doesn't suffer raids or lose their waterbenders because they (supposedly) didn't let women fight. this lack of narrative punishment means that - outside of a few girlboss moments for katara - the sexism of the nwt isn't significant to the overall story whatsoever.
furthermore, while the ba sing se arc last almosts half a season, and the fire nation's actions drive the entire show, this supposed systemic oppression of women shows up for one episode in the first season before disappearing entirely. pakku is reminded of his lost love, magically turns into a feminist, and somehow the entire tribe follows suit? no one else protests, not even the other students or the chief?
and yet, though there are still no female waterbenders other than katara, or agency for kanna in her relationship, or any indication that women stopped being forcibly betrothed - the entire issue is simply swept under the rug and never brought up ever again in the show. i understand this was a children's cartoon made in 2005, and that even having female characters openly speak about and challenge misogyny was a radical feat for the time and genre, but the reality of patriarchy is that it's structural, sustained and immensely difficult to resist - if the show was going to depict that resistance, it should have done so with greater depth and nuance, as it did for many of the other difficult topics it tackled.
ultimately, handwaving misogyny away like it never existed is far more disrespectful to katara's character, her fight against injustice, and the girls who saw themselves in her, than simply toning it down or removing it could ever be.
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maniaeofmadness · 19 days
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The thing that makes each of the members of the Gaang so good at their respective element is that they are basically the opposite of their element
Like
Water is about balance and flow, but Katara is filled with rage and anger
Earth is about stability and solidness, but Toph is adaptable and swift
Fire is about strength and anger, but Zuko becomes a better firebender when his power is sources is from passion and love
Air is about freedom, but Aang is destin to learn the other elements and then in turn uses his new knowledge for his airbending
Sokka uses a boomerang, club, and sword which are all weapons of force, opposite to the flowing movements of the water tribe
Suki uses fans and her opponents weight against themselves, being quick and swift unlike those of the earth kingdom
They all embody different aspects of each of the elements, setting them apart from those of their own element and those they fight with
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comradekatara · 1 month
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sorry if you've posted something like this before and i just can't find it, but how & when do you think suki &/ toph learn the full story of what happened to sokka in the north pole?
this is a great question because sokka is truly such a repressed little freak and so his friends (and girlfriend) will probably never learn the full story unless they explicitly dig for it. like, let’s think about what we know:
katara was there in the spirit oasis when yue became the moon spirit. she saw aang go koizilla mode, she saw yue sacrifice herself, she saw yue become the moon and kiss sokka. i doubt she knows about what exactly was going on between yue and sokka before that moment, but after that, she has a pretty clear picture of the nature of their relationship. the only other person who witnessed it in full is iroh.
aang turned into koizilla before yue became the moon. he probably vaguely knows that she’s the moon spirit, but i don’t think he really registers it, or understands why it matters to sokka. he seems downright confused the few times sokka talks about her, so presumably katara never told him about their relationship.
zuko knows that sokka’s first girlfriend turned into the moon. technically, he was also there that night, but i don’t think he was paying attention to anything other than capturing aang and beating zhao’s ass. so he actually has more information than aang does, because he’s actually aware that sokka considered her his girlfriend (although i would contest that claim, if anything sokka was yue’s mistress), so that’s like. something.
suki knows that “something happened at the north pole” and he failed to protect someone he cared about. she does immediately connect the dots and realize that a girl he liked died and he failed to save her. but she doesn’t know that she was the princess or that she became the moon spirit until watching that play on ember island. at which point sokka gets really mad that she dares to tease him about it, and she gets mad that he’s refusing to talk about it (or she playfully pretends to be jealous? unclear). either way sokka clearly thinks he’s opened up enough and has no need to further discuss it with her.
toph just straight up has no clue about any of that. if katara wouldn’t tell aang, she certainly wouldn’t tell toph, and sokka obviously isn’t telling anyone. although perhaps at some point zuko is like “yeah, sokka’s ex girlfriend the moon, everyone knows about her” and toph, aang, and suki are just like WHAT. why did he tell this to YOU of all people 😭😭
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drpoisonoaky · 24 days
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I don’t get why people don’t ship them, look how in love they are
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sokkas-therapist · 11 days
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Chat is it toxic to have thoughts of an arranged marriage au where Katara and Zuko are stuck in a strictly political arranged marriage and have agreed to do their own thing (ie: Zuko will stay in the Fire Nation and be Firelord while Katara stays in the water tribe as the active Chief), but Zuko has been having a secret affair with Sokka since before the arranged marriage? Sokka is an ambassador for the SWT in Caldera so they ended up getting really close (even though Sokka isn’t there 24/7 bc he travels a lot). And now things have gotten really messy and the palace staff has gotten too close to figuring things out and no one knows what to do…this is soap opera level drama but I’m kind of living for it 
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