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#yon rha
comradekatara · 2 months
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Which is worse? Forgetting your own [mother’s] face, or being forced to witness it every day?
little comic that didn't take long at all to draw hahahaha (i love pain)
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stardust948 · 2 months
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The face of the enemy
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I was looking up references for Yon Rha and realized his helmet looked like Zuko's scar.
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Which makes this scene even more powerful when Katara sees Zuko as a person much like herself and not just the pain and trauma the Fire Nation has caused.
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Reblog for a bigger sample size.
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fanfic-lover-girl · 6 months
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Christian Take on the Southern Raiders
As a Christian, I wanted to examine Katara's desire to pursue her mother's killer in the Southern Raiders episode. Especially the topic of forgiveness and justice.
Was Aang right about forgiveness?
Aang claims Katara has a second choice: forgiveness. Zuko claims forgiveness is the same as doing nothing. Aang responds:
"It's easy to do nothing. It's hard to forgive"
Aang is 100% right. Forgiveness is hard. Even when the slight is minor, forgiveness can be hard. Aang is also right about revenge. Revenge can poison someone beyond repair. Forgiveness is meant for the victim, not the perpetrator. As Christians, we can not be forgiven by God if we can't forgive others. In secular terms, forgiveness sets you free from the shackles to your tormentor. So as a friend, Aang is right for pointing this out as an option.
HOWEVER, how he goes about it is insulting and condescending. Comparing the death of Katara's mom to losing Appa temporality. I know Appa is one of his last links to his culture but Appa is an animal and comparing him to a mother is disrespectful! And comparing her to Jet. Another issue here is that Aang presents confrontation as mutually exclusive from forgiveness. At least initially. For me, I struggle to truly forgive unless I confront the person who hurt me first. He did validate her need to confront Yon Rha though when he confronted her and Zuko at night. So right idea but poor execution, Aang.
I think Aang may be a bit too demonized in this episode by Zu/Katara fans.
Justice vs revenge
So justice and revenge both involve addressing wrongs. However, Christians should not carry out revenge. We should leave punishment to God and the law. Justice is also tied to forgiveness. Any Christian who says that we should just forgive criminals and let them off the hook from the law is speaking nonsense. Shame on the Christian press who bashed Rachel Denhollander in her sexual assault case.
Zuko called Katara's desire justice. Aang called it revenge. Who's right?
What was Katara going to do?
What's interesting is that Katara does not explicitly specify what she will do when she confronts Yon Rha. Aang is the one who brought up seeking revenge. But even then no one outright says murder. Maybe because it's a kid's show or maybe Katara did not know herself. It's not until she goes for the kill that it is explicit that she wants to actually kill him. Although her wanting to kill him was heavily implied or could be inferred from the tone of the episode.
Is it revenge or justice to kill Yon Rha?
Technically, yes it is revenge. Justice is meant to be carried out by an impartial party (eg. the law) and/or someone with absolute higher power (God). It is an eye for an eye, but it is still revenge.
HOWEVER, Katara has no avenue for proper justice in the Avatar world! And Christianity does not exist in ATLA obviously lol.
ATLA has spirits but the spirits are indifferent to human problems. Tui and La or Agni will not avenge Katara like God promises to do for Christians.
There is a war going on and there is no law that will condemn Yon Rha. He was doing his duty as a fire nation soldier so he is not guilty under fire nation law. Katara could THEORETICALLY get justice by waiting for Zuko to be crowned and letting the new regime prosecute Yon Rha. But then it poses another problem! Zuko would be forced to prosecute who knows how many FN soldiers! Would all retired military leaders be sent to prison?? What if there was some super old guy who participated in the air nomad genocide and was on his deathbed, on the verge of croaking? Should he be carted off to jail?? And you can't (or shouldn't) lawfully prosecute someone for doing something that was not illegal at the time of the action.
If the WT captured him and held him accountable for murder under their law that could work.
Thankfully, Katara made what I believe to be the right choice for herself. Killing Yon Rha would not bring her mom back and probably would not bring her the closure she needed. There are things worse than death after all.
Even though Katara claimed she did not forgive Yon Rha, she did in a sense. By confronting him, she let go of his hold over her. She no longer fears him. She is able to move on and let go of her anger. She does not demand any payment from him by sparing his life because she sees him as a pathetic waste of space already. She found closure. The difference with her forgiveness of Zuko is that she chooses to put her animosity in the past and give him another chance. Reconcile with him. Unlike with Yon Rha. Not that there is anything to reconcile with him anyway...
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die-auster · 6 months
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I think Yon Rha is one of the best-written villains of the show. As a person he is nothing good but he is great as a character.
If you feel like it you can support me on my Ko-fi.
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ap-kinda-lit · 1 year
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Aang: Don't you think you're taking this too far? Katara: Excuse me?? Aang: I don't know what he did, but- Katara: Exactly! You have no idea what he’s done! If you did, you would think I was being a goddamn saint for how I've been handling it! So keep your self-righteous crap to yourself and get out of my face!
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drachenfalter · 2 months
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So, I know the doylist reason that the retired Yon Rha is portrayed as a pathetic loser living in misery is because it's a children's cartoon and they couldn't let K & Z actually kill him.
But in world, this is a really bizarre outcome. Because from what we've seen otherwise, the Fire Nation rewards ruthless men like Yon Rha.
Like, you would expect him to be a decorated war hero for the war crimes he committed, for "defeating" the last southern waterbender and removing the "southern threat". You'd expect him to retire comfortably with enough wealth to hire someone else to take care of his old mother if he does not want to do it (and he didn't seem like the compassionate type).
Like, what happened for him to end up where he is?
Did he somehow personally piss off Ozai enough to get stripped of his titles, but not enough to get killed?
Did someone else claim the glory while he ended up with empty hands?
Did the FN somehow keep the whole thing secret from its people, meaning Yon Rha "accomplishments" had to stay secret too?
(Except they're not hiding that the FN is at war and the Southern Raiders are still active when Zuko and Katara go after him.)
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Having atla thoughts:
I think requiring Jet to forgive Iroh in order to call him healed, is like requiring Katara to forgive her mum's murderer. Iroh commanded the rough rhinos who burned Jet's village and he's so wise and jolly that it's easy to forget him being responsible for many deaths in the past .
And no one in the right mind would suggest that Katara should befriend Yon Rha, yet all this takes about Jet working at the jasmin dragon tea shop, and so being redeemed, are treated like some mercy to his character.
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akiizayoi4869 · 2 years
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I really would like to know who it was that let it slip about Katara being the last waterbender of the southern water tribe. As well as why did they do it. This is something that should have been explored more in the comics, or even in another episode. Of course this would require on someone picking up on this line and realizing the implications of it. Kinda wonder if the writers realized what they were implying here🤔.
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sokkastyles · 1 year
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Hi,
Hope you are doing well. I have another question regarding The Southern Raiders.
On the TVTropes page of the episode, it is states that Zuko's actions are a " Broken Aesop", because he is helping Katara enact vengeance on someone else in the hopes that she would forgive him. I am confused, because while Zuko does want Katara to see that he has changed, I don't think he was expecting her forgiveness fully.
I would like your thoughts on this.
First of all, TVTropes is a hot mess. Viewing the editing history of the pages there is akin to stumbling into the worst tumblr drama. "Broken Aesop," in particular, is one of the most misused by people whose idea of media analysis is of the "Cinema Sins" variety, who tend to think something is a broken aesop when really, they just completely misunderstood what the story's themes were from the beginning.
If we were really meant to think that Katara forgave Zuko because Zuko helped her enact vengeance on Ron Yha, then she would have gotten vengeance on Yon Rha. She didn't, though, and forgave Zuko despite that.
If we were meant to think that Zuko was mistaken in taking her there, because he wrongly thought she needed to enact vengeance on her mother's killer in order to forgive him, then we would have seen that happen. We would have seen Zuko encouraging Katara to take out Yon Rha, or asking her why she didn't. If the real point were to teach Zuko that he was wrong, then that would have been addressed by the show. Katara might have, for example, told him that she realized that vengeance wasn't what she needed. She might even have been angry at Zuko for encouraging it. Instead, Katara's choice about Yon Rha is left ambiguous, she says she doesn't know if she did the right thing, but firmly says she will never forgive her mother's killer, but that she IS ready to forgive Zuko, and hugs him eagerly. There's no hesitation or sense that she thought he did something wrong, or moment when he learns he was wrong. Even when he tells Aang that he's "right about what Katara needed," that's contradicted by Katara herself telling Aang he is wrong and Zuko contradicting Aang's response about how violence is always wrong. And noticeably, Zuko never says HE was wrong, just that Aang was right. About what, I'm not sure, since Aang is proven wrong about both the violence issue by Zuko and the forgiveness issue by Katara.
I also agree with you that I don't think Zuko was really expecting that Katara would forgive him in exchange for taking her to see Yon Rha. Nor do I think Katara's forgiveness of him was due to that alone. Because she doesn't just offer him forgiveness, she embraces him like a true friend. She says she's READY to forgive him, which implies that she had already known that she had to forgive him eventually. There's a certain point where holding a grudge against a person who was already doing everything to atone for their previous actions and was now their close ally would have become ridiculous, and the situation had already reached that point at the beginning of the episode, which is why Katara separated herself from the rest of the group, angry at them for accepting Zuko when she couldn't make herself do the same.
And the thing is, Katara is stubborn. She's passionate, but that means she feels things strongly, and she holds onto those feelings of betrayal because she feels things so deeply and cares so much about people. What Zuko does is offer her a cathartic outlet for those feelings, and a way to regain some control over them. That's why she forgives him, because purging those feelings by confronting Yon Rha helped her to feel like she could trust Zuko again, to disconnect her feelings of betrayal towards him from her feelings of hurt towards the man who murdered her mother.
Now, do I think Zuko planned this out all along? Not exactly, anymore than I think he was planning on encouraging Katara to commit murder. I think that regardless of Katara's feelings, Zuko, once he joined the gaang, would have been obligated to reveal information that he knew regarding the whereabouts of people who were still out there committing atrocities anyway, because it's the right thing to do. And because he feels connected to Katara through the shared loss of their mothers - remember that HE is the one who makes that connection in the catacombs, and says they have that in common - he feels obligated to share the information he has as soon as he realizes that Katara's hurt feelings towards him are connected to her trauma about the loss of her mother.
What Katara told him at the beginning of the episode, bitterly telling him that he could bring her mother back to "make it up to her," was kind of like her throwing back at him the apology he gave her under Ba Sing Se, when he said that they had the loss of their mothers in common. It's a harsh reminder to Zuko that empathizing with her pain doesn't mean anything if his actions aren't going to match. And what action can Zuko do? He can't bring her mother back, but he can tell her who killed her, and where to find him. That's a pretty big piece of information, and I think Zuko would have felt obligated to share it with her regardless of whether he wanted forgiveness, and the episode goes out of its way to let Katara choose what to do with that information. Zuko's in a position to consider how he would feel if someone he knew had information about what happened to his mother, so that's probably also a motivation for him.
It's an interesting parallel, actually. Zuko learns that his mother is still alive only a few episodes previously, but has no idea where to find her. Katara's mother is gone and isn't coming back, but Zuko suddenly realizes he does know where to find her killer. Insert vigilante shenanigans!
You could say that this episode is Katara's own Crossroads of Destiny, and Zuko is there to witness it, like Katara was there for him. Only they get to end it on good terms this time. I think an underrated aspect of this episode, and Katara's decision to forgive Zuko, is knowing what it feels like to be faced with her own moral crisis, and knowing a little bit of what Zuko felt when he faced the crossroads. And Zuko was there with her the whole time, and didn't once judge her for what she was feeling, even when she was confused. Which I think allowed her to let go of her judgment for him, knowing that his heart was now in the right place.
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wingsfreedom · 2 years
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Kya dead because Hama escaped is a headcanon and theory. There's nothing truly confirms that the FN indeed was looking for Hama.
After all, Hama escaped when her hair isn't white yet:
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She's around Kanna's age as far as we can tell, both are old women while Kya was a young woman.
So it's possible that Hama's escape wasn't the reason the FN come looking for her in the WT.
The type of the Waterbender that escaped should be middle-aged/old woman, strong, hostile and has special style of bending. That what the reports must say.
Kya is nothing like Hama deta wise: she's a young woman, unhostile, doesn't bend, acting helplessly against one solider when the escaped Waterbender puppet-master her way out of prison.
The Fire Nation just wanted to wipe out the Waterbenders clean.
Who leaked that information about Katara though is unknown.
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comradekatara · 2 months
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it’s actually really funny that zuko accuses katara of displacing her anger for her mother’s killer onto zuko even though she has so many valid reasons to be genuinely angry at him that he simply refuses to acknowledge, but then later in the same episode he actually displaces his anger for his mother’s killer onto katara’s mother’s killer and insists that she has no choice but to go with him on a revenge quest to achieve his own catharsis. and then it doesn’t even fully work because he still continues to insensitively bully aang over the fact that he, a 12 year old pacifist monk, is hesitating over the decision to kill a man. zuko can perfectly identify and critique all of katara’s flaws while simultaneously remaining completely oblivious to the fact that not only does he share all of her flaws, but that in him they are magnified tenfold.
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stardust948 · 2 months
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Katara faces the horrible realization that she may lose another maternal figure.
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zuko-always-lies · 2 years
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Any association that Katara draws between Yon Rha and Zuko is an entirely reasonable one between two Fire Nation commanders who raided her village and attacked and threatened her family while she was helpless to do anything about it.
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autumnmobile12 · 2 years
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I really don’t like this episode, and there are two reasons why:
Don’t get me wrong.  It’s a good episode, but Katara’s reason for letting the fire bender who killed her mother live seemed really weak to me.  I think a stronger lesson for Katara would have been for her to track down Yon Rha and be right on the verge of ending his life when at the last moment she sees that this monster of her childhood has a granddaughter of his own.  Here she is about to kill the man who took the person she loved most, and right there in front of her is another scared, little girl who doesn’t understand what’s going on.  She doesn’t understand Katara’s anger, she just sees a terrible water bending lady about to murder her grandfather, someone she loves, and she’s going to grow up remembering that, and one day she too is going to seek vengeance on Katara.  Realizing all this, Katara backs down and ends the cycle of hatred.  It still scans with her not forgiving Yon Rha in the end, but the addition of a small child that mirrors her childhood strikes home a little harder.  That, I think, would have been a bigger emotional impact for her character.
Plus, with all the complex and nuanced characters in this series, having Yon Rha be this pathetic, old man seemed a little out of place.  For a series like this, I would have expected him to be more of a sad elder in retirement, showcasing that even the villains of the story can be haunted by the choices they made and the lives they destroyed.  No redemption, no forgiveness, just the acceptance of something terrible that can never be changed.  They kinda touched on this with Iroh but not to the extent they could have gone with Yon Rha.
However, I can understand the writers’ choices.  The version of Katara’s journey above seems more in line with Aang’s warning, and contrasting that with Zuko’s encouragement for vengeance, I can see why it’s important to let Katara as a character find her own way with her own reasons.  What really, really pisses me off about this episode, though, is that she never apologizes to her brother for what she said. “Maybe you didn’t love her as much as I did.”  That is a cruel, thoughtless thing to say to someone who was only trying to help and has been grieving in their own way.  Yes, she was upset and she said it in the heat of a moment, but the fact she never tells Sokka that she’s sorry and she didn’t mean it is where this episode really fails Katara as a character.  Being upset doesn’t excuse you from being nasty to the people around you.  She learned her lesson, yes, but she said something very hurtful to her brother in the process, and the fact this is never addressed has always bugged me.  Even a nonverbal apology, or hug or something, would’ve been better than nothing.
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die-auster · 3 months
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Yes, "The southern raiders" is not in my Top AtlA episodes list. Yes, it's the second time I draw Yon Rha.
The plot is so-so, but the villain is 10/10.
If you feel like it you can support me on Ko-fi.
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