I just watched Avatar for the first time all the way through, and yeah, it’s great, but the one thing that surprised me was how different Katara was compared to the fandom interpretation I’d seen and internalized before watching.

Like, before you watch Avatar, you’ve seen all these memes about Katara and her mom, and based on those memes, you assume it’s one of those lines you have to get used to hearing at least once every episode. But then you watch the show and realize that she only talks about her mom maybe five or six times per season and you also realize she only brings her up when she’s trying to comfort someone or empathize with them because that’s how she processes her grief and that’s one way she connects with people.

Or you hear the infamous line, “then you didn’t love [our mother] the way I did” and you prepare yourself for one of the worst character assassinations ever only to see the scene after nearly three seasons worth of context and realize she was kinda right. She’s been the mother, the nurturer, the comforter. She’s been patient, gentle, and accommodating where everyone else has gotten to be insensible and reckless and childish, and the one moment where she allows herself to feel her grief, suddenly she’s this evil bitch and not, y’know, a 14 year old girl whose been thrusted into adulthood in a way no other character has. A 14 year old girl who should be allowed immaturity and raw emotion and anger instead of the patience and grace she’s been forced to extend to every character without even the smallest amount of gratitude or even consideration in return.

Or you see all of the clips where Katara puts Aang in the “friendzone” and you expect to have this wishy washy back and forth where Aang is putting his feelings out there only to have Katara neither commit nor express any clear reciprocation or rejection. Then you watch and realize that, as cute as the ship is initially, that there’s never a point where Aang returns any comfort or grace to Katara despite her always doing this for him to the point of coddling. That for as much as Aang says he loves her, he never seems to outgrow his perception of her so he can recognize her as someone who feels grief, anger, and pain as much as she expresses love, kindness, and maturity. And instead of having moments where he learns to see her beyond her strength or compassion, you’re instead given moments where Aang forces his feelings onto her, both romantic and non-romantic, and Katara is expected to just…shoulder those feelings the way she shoulders everyone else’s.

Katara is the most misunderstood character in the show. As much as people recognize the complexities of Zuko, Sokka, and Azula, they struggle to do the same for Katara because they see her struggles as somehow lesser, and therefore, less deserving of sympathy. They can handle her so long as she’s being endlessly patient and loving and kind, but the moment her endless love, patience, and kindness runs out, she’s suddenly this annoying bitch who can’t shut up about her mother or reciprocate Aang’s feelings. But Katara’s trauma does matter as much as anyone else’s. No, she wasn’t banished from her kingdom. No, she didn’t lose her entire community, and no, she isn’t the only one who lost her mother. But the difference between her and everyone else whose experienced loss because of the Fire Nation is that she’s never given time to process her trauma. Aang gets to lean on Katara constantly. Toph gets to express her feelings to Katara, and yeah, Sokka also lost their mother, but unlike Katara, he isn’t put in the position of being a substitute for everyone’s parent. He even admits that he sees his sister as a mother. The only characters who ever comfort Katara or allow her to vent is Zuko and her father and that’s, like, three scenes in a show where the other characters are consistently given opportunities to seek out Katara for unconditional support.

The fandom interpretation of Katara has been so bastardized that even those who haven’t watched the show know her for this fanon version and not for who she is. She’s such an interesting character beyond her fandom limitations, though. She’s brave, hot-headed, and hopeful as well as gentle and caring. She wishes to learn waterbending, not only because she wants to fight in the war, but because she wants to continue her culture’s practices because, and people often forget this, she also lost an entire subculture within her already fractured tribe. And she wants to defeat the Fire Nation both because of her deep love and empathy for other people, but also because she wants to avenge her mother. But because some of the fans have reduced Katara to a bitch who constantly whines about her mother and friendzones Aang, you wouldn’t know any of this, and it sucks because she’s the only character whose been dumbed down to such an extent.

Heck I realized another thing thanks to that weird post about Aang’s arc

It’s that Aang’s arc should really be everyone’s ideal arc in real life. To be raised with good and sane principles and while we get confronted by the hostility in the world we never abandon the good core that we were raised with and makes us good people. Meaning we were as lucky as to grow up in a kind, loving, accepting environment that taught us to be like that, and no matter what shit we get thrown at by life, we stay kind and loving and accepting and we never stop caring or extending a hand in friendship where it’s needed.

And the fact that too many people don’t resonate with Aang and don’t recognize his character for the beacon it is meant to be really speaks volumes

Ah fuck I can’t believe I’m getting into this but that’s not the fucking point of @sirenalpha​‘s posts. I love Aang! I have a lot of sympathy for him.  I think Aang subverts a lot of expectations of what a young male protagonist of children’s media should be. I want to tuck him in bed and tell him he’s not wrong to have the convictions he has.

But I also want to tell Bryke to fuck off for how they destroyed Aang’s character development. Aang works best when he’s allowed to be Aang–the Aang you describe–and not Bryke’s uncritical self-insert that flings lava at a girl when she doesn’t reciprocate his feelings without consequence because the narrative bails him out on warped incel logic. People aren’t mad because they hate Aang–they’re mad because Bryke undid all of his character development from Season 2 in Season 3 and then further problematized him in the comics. But let’s not get into the comics which are completely out of character BS because the show’s best writers are gone. 

As it pertains to the show proper, people are mad because Aang doesn’t earn his desired outcomes. He is saved by two deux ex machinae: first, deux ex pointy rock, and second, deux ex lion turtle. This is incredibly unsatisfying and infuriating from a narrative perspective for viewers who’ve followed his journey for three long seasons. Does that mean we hate Aang? No! It means Bryke wasted Aang’s potential because they set up an uncritical and impossible to resolve conflict within the confines of kids’ media–uncritical because there is no rumination on it since the first time this conflict happened (mass firebender graves at the bottom of the Northern Water Tribe ocean anyone?) and impossible to resolve because they rushed season 3 with poorly written filler episodes (like Combustion Man) instead of having Aang actively work towards reconciling his Air Nomad beliefs (which he cherrypicks several times over the course of the series, by the way…) with his responsibility as the Avatar and truly crafting a third path on his own by exploring energybending.

By the end of the show, I was super super confused as to why Aang was the hero aside from being a superpowered spirit host. Zuko came off as more of a protagonist than Aang because of his fantastic best-in-TV-history redemption arc. The narrative holds Zuko accountable at every turn. Contrast this with Aang: the narrative rarely holds him accountable for his actions or beliefs. In fact, it gives him a way out from having to justify them, unlike other main characters. And what happens when the narrative hands you things? You stop growing as a character. Your achievements don’t feel earned. And if you don’t earn your achievements, then they are not your achievements–you lucked out. Same thing with Aang. Before the final battle, Aang lucked out with deux ex lion turtle. During the final battle, Aang lucked out with deux ex pointy rock. And after the final battle, Aang lucks out with the Girl ™ (because that is what Katara is reduced to in the comics), especially since said Girl goes on to later serve the narrative function of uncritically adopting and supporting all of Aang’s ideals and beliefs. 

Whatever happens, the narrative proves Aang right. But Aang does nothing to prove himself right. He never has to sacrifice anything to achieve his desired outcomes nor does he face consequences for his choices. The narrative is ever-there, ever-present, to bail him out, rendering his choices immaterial to the actual outcome. So when people who don’t see Aang’s character as the “beacon” you say it is, it’s not because they hate Aang. It’s because the extremely convenient saved-by-the-plot writing makes it ring hollow.

And that’s bad for Aang as a character because he’s never allowed to fail.  A hero who is never allowed to fail, by extension, is never allowed to grow. If it were any other character that is not the main protagonist, it’s like–whatever, there’s no character growth but that’s ok. But with the main protagonist, there must be meaningful character growth. It is writing 101. This does not mean Aang has to shed all of his Air Nomad beliefs and become a ruthless all-powerful arbiter of divine justice. It just means he must be self-critical. He must reflect. Otherwise what the narrative is saying is that all of a twelve year old’s preconceived notions are right and right in every situation. So you have a character with the unexamined uncritical sophomoric beliefs of a twelve-year old for the rest of his life. And that’s bad and unrealistic.

At the end of it all, Aang–sweet traumatized fun-loving conflicted flighty precious lovable Aang who could have truly become a beacon of wisdom, hope, and healing for the new world–becomes a bastard lovechild of Peter Pan who never has to grow up and fantasy self-insert male protagonist who gets everything he wants with no effort. It’s not hard to gander a guess as to why so many fans are dissatisfied with his canon character arc.

So you’re right. Aang’s arc should really be everyone’s ideal arc in real life. But it won’t be for a lot of people because Aang doesn’t actually show us how to earn it. And there’s no deux ex narrative IRL to bail us out.

Reblogging this response because:

THIS is what is missing from Aang’s arc. This is what Zuko does. This is what Katara does. But Aang never gets a chance to, and just like with Katara’s choice in TSR, choosing a third option does NOT mean Aang should have chosen to kill Ozai or forsake his Air Nomad beliefs. His arc leading up to season three was all about reconciling his identity as an Air Nomad and his identity as an Avatar, but then it was just…dropped. And I see that in the reblogs we’re yelling about how criticizing Aang’s arc is racist, but I give you: the reason Aang never gets to reconcile these parts of his identity is because the white people who appropriated Tibetan culture to create the Air Nomads didn’t care enough to develop them as a culture. There are so many things about the Air Nomads that doesn’t make sense, and Bryke seemed to be like “oh, well, they’re dead, so we don’t have to develop them.” And the pity is that this could have been done with only a few tweaks. If Aang’s conflict is about being an Air Nomad vs being the Avatar, you know how this conflict SHOULD have been resolved? By showing that it doesn’t have to be a conflict, that he can be both. The Avatar is supposed to be a representation of all four nations, and that poses a problem for Aang because he needs to hold on to his dying culture. The way I would solve this is, instead of having Aang insist upon following Air Nomad teachings even to the point of patronizing his friends, have him learn that Air Nomad culture was actually multicultural. Because, you know, they’re nomads. Why are we never shown them being nomadic? Especially since this idea fits so nicely with the motif of air (the temples literally represent the four winds) and what the Avatar is supposed to be. Have Aang discover, possibly by discovering that there were Air Nomads that survived because the fact that they were nomadic should have made it impossible to wipe them all out completely, that the Air Nomads have always worked closely with the Avatar, that part of Air Nomad philosophy was not just insular beliefs, but that they had a philosophy similar to Iroh’s (which is not opposed to Buddhism at all, Iroh is pretty much a Zen Buddhist) that it is important to take wisdom from many sources. That’s what the Avatar should be.

Also, the idea that everyone’s “ideal arc” should be starting out inherently good and never having to change or grow in any way is absolutely antithetical to both the nature of stories (no, this is not about western literature, the tropes which you refer to as “western” originated in the east, from which most of our modern epics take inspiration) and real life. What the original post actually reads like is what I’ve seen a lot on tumblr in purity circles, and it’s no coincidence that purity culture flocks to these kinds of characters in every fandom, because purity culture is all about how nobody is allowed to change or grow, we should just start out good and stay that way, and if we ever step a toe out of line for the rest of our lives, well, we’d better not. This is not how stories work, though, and it is not how real life works. It is especially awful to compare this to Zuko’s arc, because Zuko is not someone who had the luxury to start out believing he was inherently good, he grew up abused and taught that there was something wrong with him. Purity culture would say that because Zuko did not start out with a belief in his own inherent goodness, he can never change, can never become better. This is also why people who think this way hate characters like Iroh, who works hard to change himself and then translates that to helping others, but love Azula, who has no desire to change but can be sympathized with as a victim. Purity culture says you start out one way and never have to change. This is also why these kinds of people want Azula to be redeemed but don’t want her to realize she was wrong, they want other people in her life to be blamed, like her brother, or her mother.

But here’s the secret: good people do not believe that they were born with inherent goodness and therefore they have no need to examine their own behavior. Good people do not start out with the belief that they are always right and everyone else is wrong, and they just have to stick to their convictions. In fact, a lot of very bad people believe that they are good and just and right and do not have to examine themselves ever. If you want to grow as a person, and this is true in real life and for fictional characters, we MUST examine our behavior. That does not mean we need to abandon all our beliefs or that everything we know is wrong, or that it’s bad to stick to your morals, but it is important to at least understand why we believe something, otherwise, do we really believe it at all?

And that’s not a view that is opposed to spirituality, it is the very foundation of spirituality. It is all that stuff about balance and harmony which is a major theme of ATLA. That’s why people don’t resonate as much with Aang and that’s where his arc falls short, and that’s why Zuko’s arc recieves such high praise, because it does fit more within the themes of the show and good storytelling in general.

Part of what is so incredibly frustrating about Aang’s arc in book 3 (or lack thereof) is the fact that his culture–despite being ostensibly wiped from the face of the planet, and we’ll set aside for the moment how little sense that makes in general, nevermind from a narrative standpoint–has hints of depth that are never explored. @inkmyname touched on it when pointing out that Aang is very selective about which parts of his own culture he interacts with and attempts to preserve

Because while it is absolutely true that AN culture is horrifically underdeveloped, part of that is because the single solitary living Air Nomad is never allowed to actually engage with, question, learn about, and understand his own culture. This is where Guru Pathik never appearing again after Aang leaves in book 2 (to ignore his own culture’s teachings and attempt to hold on to a selfish attachment he was told he would need to willingly give up in order to achieve true enlightenment and master the Avatar State, I might add) becomes a serious issue–because here was an actual, living, breathing adult with an adult’s understanding of an extinct culture, and he just… vanished from the narrative completely, the moment Aang decided that his feelings for Katara were more important than the adhering to the teachings of his people.

Which means that, yet again, what we were left with was a child’s very basic understanding of his own people. He could parrot aphorisms and wise proverbs he was taught by the monks, but he could exhibit no true understanding of them. He could maintain a vegetarian diet (at great strain to Katara, who had to make sure to cook things Aang would be willing to eat, despite having grown up in a climate where not eating meat would mean starving to death) and profess that he cherished all living creatures, but he could not examine when pacifism may not be the right choice–he could not acknowledge that even his precious monks would take lives if they had to. If other lives were on the line. (See: the fact that he never once seems to realize that Monk Gyatso’s corpse being surrounded by a bunch of skeletons in Fire Nation armor means that Monk Gyatso killed living breathing human beings in an attempt to defend his own people. I do not think he would have hesitated if an entire city-state were directly in the line of fire, no pun intended.)

If you took any twelve-year-old and froze them in a time capsule and woke them up a century later, they may be able to remember some proverbs, a verse or two from some religious text, a few general rules governing social behavior… but they would not be able to reconstruct their entire culture based only on their fallible childhood memories and a few recovered artifacts.

And it is explicit, in the text of the show, that Aang is perfectly willing to discard the teachings of his people when they conflict with something he wants. His people’s teachings say that he should release his attachment to the girl he likes–he evidently misinterprets this to mean he must forgo all connection to her (which is never so much as implied, and if the tenets of Buddhism were to actually be adhered to, giving up his attachment to her wouldn’t even mean that he couldn’t still love her and that a relationship would be out of the question if she loved him in return–merely that his selfish attachment to her needed to go, because he was not entitled to her feelings. this was a lesson he desperately needed to learn, rather than being rewarded for his selfish behavior by having Katara realize at the literal last second that oh, yeah, she really DID have feelings for him), and refuses on the grounds that… he wanted to date this girl who had never once shown romantic interest in him. Because that’s certainly worth throwing his own people’s teachings about spirituality and enlightenment right in the trash.

So the argument that killing Ozai would have killed the last remnants of his culture, and so he needed to find a pacifistic solution in order to preserve them, already doesn’t hold water–because Aang showed very little concern for preserving his people’s beliefs, or anyone else’s (he’s actually… pretty disrespectful of other cultural practices at numerous points in the show and is never really taken to task for it, by the narrative or any of the characters), at any other point in the show. And something that this particular segment of the fandom always loves to claim is that in saying that I’m saying that I wanted a kid to murk a dude on screen in a Y7 show–but that isn’t it at all. None of this is to say that Aang should have killed Ozai (although whether he was allowed to remain alive should have been up to a tribunal of EK and WT citizens, not just the Avatar, but that’s another discussion entirely)–but it is to say that Aang being able to take a third option was not handled well, either from a story perspective or a character one.

What we should have gotten–and what Book 3 seemed to be primed for–is a season long arc of Aang finally mastering the Avatar State and completing his character arc. The foundation was there, the potential beats were lined up, the earlier hints (such as an entire episode dedicated to showing both Aang and the audience that sometimes the object of your affections doesn’t like you back, and that’s ok, because if you love them you should want them to be happy, and if we just ignore the last twenty seconds that completely undermines the entire message [particularly in light of the epilogue] then we’re golden) there to provide some structure for the remainder of his arc.

Instead, what we wound up with were a bunch of useless filler episodes leading up to the failed invasion (which had some gems, like The Puppetmaster and Sokka’s Master, but when weighed against episodes like The Headband and Nightmares and Daydreams, it’s hard to say if they were worth the cost), and then Zuko’s journey into the gaang’s good graces crammed into the last few episodes before the finale. It isn’t until the episode before the finale that Aang even admits to anyone that he can’t enter the Avatar State, and it isn’t until the finale that this is actually ‘resolved’–by a pointy rock showing up at the exact right place to, i guess, jar his chakras loose. Because that’s how it works.

The result is a season that has some of the best single episodes in the series, while having the most disjointed plot, the worst pacing, and the least satisfying finale out of all three seasons. In HP fandom vernacular with which I remain intimately familiar, AtLA may have won the game, but season three absolutely did not catch the snitch. And I haven’t even gotten into the fact that Aang’s moral dilemma over needing to kill Ozai should have come up much earlier in the narrative–prior to the eclipse invasion at least, if not even sooner than that, but I still cannot fathom what Aang planned to do to the man if he actually got to him before the eclipse ended and he was powerless–because this post is already long enough.

The upshot of it all is, though, that Aang’s arc is deeply unsatisfying for a lot of people because it relies on contrivances in order for him to even survive the battle he was supposedly training the entire series for. And he was handed every victory he actually achieved, particularly in that final battle, rather than earning them via his own choices.

He didn’t choose to seek out the lionturtle–it kidnapped him. He didn’t choose to regain the Avatar State–he was thrown against a well-placed rock and it was reactivated automatically. (I know I frequently engage in percussive maintenance myself, but come on.) He did choose to ignore Katara’s words and body language and kiss her anyway–and he was then rewarded with a relationship without so much as apologizing to her for his actions. (And, notably, Katara was given no space on screen to work through her own feelings–it was just assumed that they were there, and she had them for Aang, and it was just a matter of him being persistent enough that she realized it. Which is very much not the message we should be sending the children to whom this show was aimed and marketed.)

I really can’t find anything in Aang’s arc, as presented in the show (rather than the idealized version a lot of Aang stans seem to have constructed for themselves), that is meant to be some sort of ‘ideal’, either from an irl perspective or from a story one. And it remains a constant source of frustration, because all the tools were there, all the potential was there–it’s just that none of it was ever realized by the narrative.

I tried to give justice to the effort you put in this but my eyes rolled back into my skull at “great strain for Katara” to watch my braincells chant every single Latin word I know in an effort to summon whatever will answer and take me to a different kind of hell, so you’ll all have to excuse me for reblogging yet another response just to say it sucks because I hated Latin in high school and being reminded of it might very well turn me into the something that will drag you to hell

Also the fact that one of the reblogger’s tags is “kataang salt” really tells me it’s not worth trying again

That sure is a lot of words for ‘I have no real argument and this post was not created in good faith to begin with so I’m gonna devolve into petty insults bc I have nothing constructive to add’, lmfao. But sure, think what you like, remain convinced of your own superiority and completely ignore things like narrative construction and character arcs if that’s what makes you happy!

Those indeed were a lot of words for “I hated you since the very beginning but I hate my lack of arguments and my inferiority complex even more, so I’m just going to word vomit about a language that doesn’t even have anything to do with this argument to seem important”.

What was the episode that made you say “mmm might be diverging from canon here, fellas”

It was The Desert for me. I have... too much to say about it

@lunafreyalucil Of course! I am.. so sorry for how long this got.

If you meant the original question I posed, what I was going for was saying “when did you know the canon relationships weren’t for you?” When the show was first released, there weren’t a ton of cartoons I watched with more than “the token girl” character, so with ATLA (even though they did a ton for female representation) I had assumed from the beginning that the hero with a crush would “get the girl,” you know? I mean, a love interest having a story outside of the protagonist was already unheard of, right? I usually just accepted canon couples and went on with my life.

The Desert was the first episode where I said “.... um, I don’t accept.”

Here is my elaboration on The Desert part of the original post. Again, I’m sorry it’s so long. Aang is going through a tremendous loss. Appa is his best friend and one of the last living parts of his culture (that he knows of until LOK). Of course he’s upset. He lashes out at his friends and abandons them (but returns!). The whole time this is happening, Katara steps up. She’s alone with three children and a lemur and she steps the f up. She cuts Sokka off cactus juice when she sees it’s not safe, she spots the cloud and has the brilliant idea to collect water, and she used the map to chart the stars. This episode highlights so many of Katara’s greatest strengths: compassion, perception, wisdom, and determination.

How does Aang thank her? He yanks the water skin out of her hand then throws it back at her. He shoves his staff in her face and yells at her about what she’s doing to help the situation (when she’s doing.. everything). Regardless of how small those moments might have seemed, they are acts of aggression Aang made towards Katara.

By the end of the episode, I’m expecting Aang to apologize to her; like the way Katara continually apologized when she yelled at Aang in The Waterbending Scroll. But, that moment never came. Instead, the episode ends with Katara swallowing all of Aang’s mistakes and calming him down. She knows he’s upset, understands, and takes care of him regardless of the horrible way he treated her.

That’s not a romantic partner to me. That’s not an equal. We can assume that there was an offscreen apology, but why do Katara’s apologies to Aang have to be onscreen? How come we don’t get to see people worship her as the hero she is for saving them in the desert?

I was taught it was “a woman’s job” to take care of a boy and look the other way when he acts up and that lesson leaves me with a giant hole of despair in my chest. I feel that same hole when I watch The Desert. Season 1 and parts of season 2 could have had me supporting Katng, but... everything in me that thought they might have been cute together died the moment he pointed his staff at her.

Ahh! This really got out of hand. Not many people ask for my opinion, so I just kinda blah’d it all out haha. I hope this answers your question and that you will tell me your thoughts as well! Thank you!

“The Avatar’s girl”

“My forever girl”

These titles aren’t really put on Katara for her own attributes or accomplishments. Only as an object or possession, as she pertains to Aang. Nor does she choose them for herself, they come from other’s expectations and assumptions, not anything she’s agreed to.

You can see why zutarian fanon likes to see her in the role of Southern Watertribe Ambassador or as Firelady. These are titles that give her authority and power that she absolutely is capable of wielding. She would get the chance to take on those titles herself, no commitments she’s not agreeing to herself.

Sometimes I feel like people don't understand why Aang not letting go of Katara was incredibly selfish. The guru never asked aang to let go of his love or even katara herself, he asked him to let go of his attachment to her. Attachment is viewed as selfish, something which is clearly not reciprocated in a romantic context, because it's a hindrance for aang as the avatar but also as a good friend.

We see this very clearly in TSR when Aang is putting the attachment to his morals and his idealistic perception of Katara over her actual feelings. If aang was less to attached the IDEA of her and cared more about her as a person and his friend, he could've seen that she really just wanted closure and wasn't a revenge hungry bitch. Instead, he compared her to an actual revenge hungry Jet, who put innocent lives on line for his personal agenda, something katara wasn't doing anyway and would never do. He brought up appa and the other air nomads but forgot that he did get to mourn them. He was so angry and devastated that we went into the avatar state, destroying everything around him and was ready to almost kill the sandbenders. He let out his anger and sadness and was readily supported by his friends, especially katara. All she's asking for is an opportunity to do the same, but instead of supporting her, he's making her seem immoral and wrong.

A better idea would've been to make aang realize that he was wrong, make him learn about the grey areas of morality, especially in the war-torn world where the heroes themselves have to do some pretty horrible things. Book 3 should've been aang's real spiritual journey to connect not to the spirits but rather to the people. His duty as the avatar is first and foremost to all people, not to his culture or teachings. As yangchen said, he has to put away his personal beliefs in order to do what the world needs. Letting go of his attachment to his perfect version of Katara and his black and white morality should've helped him unlock the final Chakra (and not that stupid rock of destiny because it wasn't a physical block).

Also to clarify, I don't think aang should've killed ozai. That would've been more bloodshed in the world that desperately needs peace and kindness. Becoming a fully realized avatar who is ready to do what is needed for the people would've strengthened his spirit and made it unbendable, so he should've been able to energy bend. Sparing ozai's life should've been a choice for the people so that ozai, now powerless, could stand trial and receive punishment for his crimes. The lion turtle should've been introduced earlier and energy bending should've had a bigger consequence but the idea itself was great.

Book 3 should've been a huge journey of change, morality, and learning for aang. Instead we spent unnecessary time on a stupid forced romance which ruined so much character development. I just wanted better for my babes y'all.

Remember when Zuko’s voice actor Dante Basco said that Zuko & Katara were soulmates? And remember when Katara’s voice actor Mae Whitman said that Zutara were in love but just didn’t realize it yet? And remember when they said both of these things after the show ended and the supposed endgames were already established? I’m just saying… someone won and it wasn’t Kataang.

all i have to say about the kataang vs zutara discourse is that katara should really have been on the avatar ancestors’ payroll for raising aang & being his surrogate mother throughout all three books. i’ve said it once and i’ll say it again: kataang reinforces this idea that has been sold to girls for years that romance is when a girl raises a boy as his caregiver & dedicates her life to making sure he succeeds. katara never prioritizes herself while she travels with the gaang; everything is about saving aang, teaching aang what is right from wrong and protecting aang. katara never gets to be selfish in a setting where aang is involved because she feels responsible for him. the most we see katara prioritize herself is during her conversation with zuko in ba sing se and when katara chooses not to forgive zuko immediately after he rejoins them. she is allowed to be angry/resentful/vulnerable/grateful/wistful with zuko whereas with aang, she’s consistently sidelined as a part of his destiny.

okay tin foil hat conspiracy theory time

I’ve always wondered why the AtLA writing team bothered to set up Aang’s attachment to Katara as the thing that was holding him back from the Avatar State in the book two finale if they weren’t ever going to do anything with that narratively. Like I know some people say “well he only had to let go of her temporarily and he did that in Ba Sing Se” but that is just weak storytelling. And like…is it really letting go if it’s temporary? Sounds like a massive copout.

Of course, there’s also the question of why Aang’s attachment to Katara is a problem. Avatar Roku was able to control the Avatar State and be happily married so it’s not like Avatars have to be celibate to fulfill their destiny or something. So there has to be something specific about Aang’s feelings for Katara that is getting in his way, beyond just being romantically interested in her.

So what would neatly square this circle, explaining why Aang’s feelings for Katara were something he had to give up, as well as pushing him to really do so in a meaningful way? If Katara didn’t reciprocate. 

If Aang’s feelings are one-sided, and Katara’s not interested in a romantic relationship with him, that’s very different from Roku’s situation. In fact, it’s a good illustration of the difference between authentic love, which is selfless, and attachment, which is selfish. It would be selfish of Aang to hold on to those romantic aspirations towards Katara once it became clear she didn’t share them. It would make it only an attachment, and not really love.

And not only does making Aang’s feelings for Katara a roadblock to fulfilling his destiny in book two seem to set this up, it actually tracks with a lot of how Aang and Katara’s relationship is written in book three as well. Katara does not react positively either time that Aang kisses her - she’s even angry about it the second time. And of course it’s a common complaint that none of this is really resolved - we’re never shown on screen how or why Katara’s feelings apparently change.

What if they were never meant to?

What if, instead of the infamous rock-in-the-back, Aang was originally supposed to clear his last chakra in the finale by actually letting go of his attachment to Katara? What if the twist was not supposed to be that what was established by Guru Pathik in book two didn’t mean what the audience thought it meant, but that Aang had to mature enough to realize that his feelings for Katara didn’t mean what he thought they meant, i.e. that they weren’t actually destined to be together just because he had a crush on her? 

And, bear with me here, what if, hypothetically, there were another character who, as a narrative counterpoint Aang’s immature attachment, actually loved Katara selflessly, to he point that he was willing to lay down his own life for her?

Oh right.

Why was zutara not canon? To me ATLA is literally near perfect. a solid 9.8/10 but there’s this one thing that has bothered me tremendously ever since I was a kid, and that’s… Katara and Aang ending up together….. I remember watching the series w my friends and we all shipped zutara like crazy. Even years after I first watched it I always found it to be weird that Katara ended up with Aang,.. she was very caring and kind towards Aang but like, in a mom kind of way,, and Aang was like her kid. wouldn’t it have been so powerful to have Katara end up with Zuko?? 

I love Katara and I love Aang but I really don’t like Katara-and-Aang

Explain; I’m intrigued now

Kataang is a bad pairing that is detrimental to both characters.

How so?

I’m not sure if my reasons will be the same as the OPs (and feel free to tell me to back off if I’m overstepping) but I live my fandom life perpetually prepared with this essay so here we go.

The thing is, from the very beginning Kataang is an incredibly one-sided pairing. You get to see Aang’s feelings from Katara all the time, but outside of three isolated incidents (in sixty plus episodes, they really had no excuse) you see nothing from Katara that even hints she might reciprocate his feelings, or that her own motherly feelings for Aang ever changed into something different. (She kisses him on the cheek the same way she kisses Tom-Tom, a literal baby, and what is probably one of the most powerful shots of the entire series features Katara holding Aang in the famous Pieta pose. They really should have toned down the motherhood vibes if this was the pairing the intended from the beginning, that’s all I’ll say about that.)

People frequently site The Fortuneteller (or, rather, the last twenty seconds of the episode) as ‘evidence’ for Kataang, or that she was starting to consider him in that light. This would be fine, except for the fact that a) Katara’s actions and feelings towards him do not change after this, and b) the entire rest of the episode seems like it is foreshadowing Aang’s future character arc and explicitly not Kataang. What I mean by this is, the episode itself features a young girl with a crush on Aang that is deliberately and explicitly paralleled to his crush on Katara. Meng has marginally more self-awareness than Aang (for which I’ll given him some leniency, here, because he is twelve and spent a hundred years as an ice cube) and realizes that he doesn’t return her feelings. This is incredibly important because the episode tells us that’s ok–Meng herself realizes that Aang just sees her as a friend and that he has feelings for someone else, and she just wants him to be happy. This is an incredibly important message for any show, especially one aimed at kids, but I can’t help but feel like it’s severely undermined at the end by Sokka’s oddly placed ‘that kid is one powerful bender’ and Katara’s seeming ‘consideration’, because that… really isn’t the lesson that this episode should have ended on.

(But really, I mean, saying the Avatar is a powerful bender is a little like saying water is wet. You know who else is a powerful bender? Toph, the most powerful Earthbender in the entire series. Azula, a firebending prodigy. Zuko, especially after training with the dragons. Not to mention that Aunt Wu was kind of a fraud, and the secondary theme of the episode seemed to be ‘you can’t rely on other people to tell you your own destiny’. Unless you’re Katara, I guess. This makes me mad in particular because Katara is my favorite character, and she was so badly shafted by the way this episode ended and what it represented for the series as a whole.)

Which brings me to how Kataang, as a ship, is detrimental to Katara, specifically. I try to ignore the existence of the comics, but it’s hard when so much of it is borne out by the way Katara is sidelined in LoK (yes, I know LoK wasn’t about the Gaang, but even the cabbage merchant got a statue, where the hell was Katara’s????? and why wasn’t she present in the Gaang flashback about a bloodbender’s trial, when she was the one who got bloodbending outlawed and would have been the best equipped to contain him? When Aang, Sokka, and Toph were all in that scene?). And in the comics, Katara just… isn’t Katara, anymore. There is one panel in particular that I think kind of perfectly sums up how heartbreaking their relationship is, and it’s the one where Aang is having a great time showing off for his Fanclub, and Katara is…. in the corner. Curled up with her head on her knees, looking forlorn and completely alone.

And she apologizes for it.

Even if you ignore the comics, though (and you really should, they are awful for pretty much every character, especially the gaang),there are a lot of things in the show itself that make it seem like Katara is, at best, settling, in spite of her own true feelings. Again, there’s the fact that their ‘relationship development’ is one-sided, with Aang’s feelings for her explored but not the other way around. There’s also the fact that it’s an incredibly unequal relationship emotionally. Now, Aang may get a pass for some of this because he is twelve years old, but then that becomes part of the problem–an immature twelve-year-old boy really had no business getting into a serious relationship with anyone before some serious growing up, and said twelve-year-old boy with a chronic ‘running away from his problems’ problem should absolutely not have been getting into a relationship with an overly-mature fourteen-year-old girl with serious abandonment issues.

(That last part will be important later.)

Katara takes on herself the responsibility of caregiver, especially for Aang. We really don’t get to see her in a position of not trying to bear everyone’s emotional burdens until Zuko joins the Gaang later and shares that task (you’ll pry Momtara and Dadko from my cold dead fingers, but this isn’t about them), but this is especially prominent with Aang. She is there for him constantly. She helps him deal with everything from the genocide of his people to losing Appa, his friend and last connection to them. And Aang is ‘there’ for her insofar as he’s the Avatar, sure, and her hope for the world–but that’s not specific to Katara. And if they were truly going to commit to this pairing, they should have at least had Aang ask Katara about her mother at some point prior to The Southern Raiders.

Even then, he either cannot or chooses not to understand where Katara is coming from. Part of this is, I think, because his development was hamstringed for pretty much the entirety of book three. He was never allowed to grow past parroting the monks and their advice (rather than doing what Zuko does with Iroh’s advice, which is internalize it and learn from it and then apply it, and even if he can’t quite put it into a neat little soundbyte he shows he understood and adapted to what he was told), which does make sense from a certain perspective (because, again, he’s twelve years old and woke up a hundred years on to find that his entire people were gone)… except that the narrative never tries to say he’s wrong. In fact, this is a serious problem I have with book 3 in particular–Aang’s development was stunted because the narrative would not let him be wrong. Even the framing of TSR tries to bear this out (the commentary for the episode, as I recall, tries to paint Aang and Zuko as the angel and devil on Katara’s shoulders, which is so wrong for so many reasons–thankfully the bulk of the episode, outside a few incongruous one-liners, doesn’t really support that reading), but it only goes to prove that Aang may remember the Monks’ teachings, but he didn’t fully understand them. He couldn’t! He didn’t get a chance to learn! Monk Gyatso was found amidst a slew of Fire Nation corpses, proving that he didn’t just lay down and die but went down fighting to protect his people, and yet Aang never stops with his ‘the monks think all life is sacred’ bit.

And, ok this is a bit of a tangent, but no, I don’t think Aang should have killed Ozai. He was twelve years old, he shouldn’t have been killing anyone. But I believe the show should have given him an actual character arc, rather than tossing a deus ex lionturtle and Rock of Destiny at him so he never had to have his beliefs or idealization of the Air Nomads challenged in any substantial way.

But back to my main point–Aang never helps to share Katara’s emotional burdens. He is also, as I mentioned earlier, someone with a chronic running away problem–this culminates in everyone believing he did just that right before the Big Battle, because he stormed off and Katara had no way of knowing if he’d even come back. (She had faith that he would, but she was concerned, too.) Again, this wouldn’t be a problem if it were a) presented as an issue he would need to work through, and b) not a defining characteristic of the boy who is evidently supposed to be endgame with the girl with severe abandonment issues. (Not to mention how badly both Aang and Katara were presented in LoK–Aang really just fucked off for months or years at a time with his airbending kid, leaving Katara to sit at home raising the other two who would grow up believing their daddy didn’t love them??? And she just let him do it?????? #NotMyKatara)

As to how this relationship is detrimental to Aang (other than the comics and LoK nonsense)? Just take a look at book 2, when he’s trying to learn Earthbending from Toph. Katara constantly coddles him. Much of the time, she’s afraid to be anything other than gentle and understanding with Aang–partly because of her fear that if she pushes him too far, he’ll run away. (Which he does, several times.) But sometimes, what Aang needs to grow is a sharp kick in the slats, which Toph was more than willing to provide–and which worked. Katara was great for teaching Aang to waterbend, but he needed more than that to grow as a person. And he can’t get that while he’s in a relationship with someone who will apologize for getting upset when he was very explicitly neglecting her. (Sorry, it always comes back to that panel for me, it makes me so mad.)

Anyway, uh, tl;dr: Both Katara and Aang are hampered, narratively speaking, by being placed in such a one-sided and unequal relationship. I didn’t even get into the forced EIP kiss, or how it was not good that the entirety of their relationship development (going from ‘you kissed me and i explicitly did not like it’ to ‘we’re in a relationship now’) happened off-screen (the EIP scene was their last one-on-one scene together before that epilogue, and they proceeded to spend the show’s emotional climax with other people), because this essay was getting long enough. But in short, they are very poorly matched for two people we’re supposed to believe were blissfully happy and never had any problems for seventy years.

I would like to add on that Aang and Katara has a very important friendship. But there are people who are just meant to be that, and not more. If we all take a moment to look back at our lives, I think we all have that one friend we wanted to be with at first, but then ended up realizing that a relationship with them, would just not work, and/or be very detrimental to our growth. And Katara and Aang are just like that. They both have a strong friendship. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be friends or stay out of each other’s lives. I don’t think anyone is saying that. But, romantically, they are just not good for each other.

Aang wants someone who will take care of him and let him be the child he is without questioning his beliefs.

What Aang needs is someone who doesn’t enable his childish behavior, but forces him to grow up and helps him evolve as a person.

What Katara wants is someone who is her equal and will help her grow as a person. She wants someone who will understand her pain and allows her to be herself.

What Katara needs is pretty much the same as her desires, with one final twist. She needs someone who compliments her personality and doesn’t clash on core beliefs. She needs someone who will share the burden with her, not be the burden.

In other words, tere are opposites that compliment each other, and opposites that destroy each other. Katara and Aang, are the opposites that destroy each other.

And the proof is in both the comics and LOK. We see the toll their relationship had on each other. We see Katara as a shadow of who she used to be, before they were in a relationship. And with Aang, we see the effects of not growing up in the way he treats, not only Katara, but his children.

So while, Bryke intended on making Kataang the ship of love and happiness, even their writing couldn’t stop the characters from writing the story itself. And the story of Kataang is a tragic one that should have never been told. Because in the end, it only led to heartbreak and self destruction in the worst of ways.

Katara, the water bender girl who yelled at her father for leaving her and Sokka behind. Katara, the water bender girl who is considered the last of her kind. Katara, the last water bender who has severe abandonment issues so she makes sure she is the one that is relied on the most in a group.

Are you seriously telling me that Aang just leaves her behind while he does his Avatar activities? That he just flies off and leaves her alone when he doesn’t want to confront something that could bring conflict?

Because, that’s not the character we were given in the show. That’s not the character that cried to her father, that’s not the character that grew up cold, alone, by herself and Sokka.

But you know who did take care of her and her emotions, who did talk things out with her, who didn’t run away and faced things head on with her to reach a solution and find an agreeable answer.

You know who did.

So I was rewatching Avatar for the billionth time, and I don’t know why, but this time this scene in the waterbending master stuck out to me more than it usually does.

 Kanna was not a waterbender yet she felt strongly enough about women not being able to waterbend that she ran away from home and an arranged marriage at the age of sixteen to go to the Southern watertribe where women were allowed to waterbend. It’s obvious from Pakku’s status in the Northern watertribe when Katara visits that he was a “good catch” as far as arranged marriages go, and the North was much more established than the South. If all Kanna cared about was getting married, playing wifey to a powerful man, and having children she would have stayed in the North, but she didn’t. She left because she knew one day she might have a daughter or a granddaughter and if they were waterbenders she wanted them to be able to bend.  

There’s no doubt in my mind that that’s where Katara gets a lot of her determination, strong sense of self, and need to bring equality and justice to the oppressed. So how is that later on we get a Katara who is only to happy to be Aang’s trophy wife?  How do we get a Katara who has no political aspirations? How do we get a Katara that is afraid to speak up to her husband when he favors one child over anothers to the point to where they carry the resentment of that neglect well into adulthood? How do we get a Katara who doesn’t want to fight when she gets older? How do we get a Katara who’s only goal is to stay in the healing huts with the other women? Katara did heal people yes, but that’s not what she wanted out of  her life. She even says it herself:

Katara: I don’t want to heal, I want to fight! Master Pakku: I can see that. But our tribe has customs, rules. Katara: Well your rules stink!

Katara is not only the spitting image of Kanna she’s has the same beliefs as Kanna. Katara’s history is literary standing up for herself and standing up to men who oppress women. The fact that she is such a badass waterbender is owed in part to her gran-gran leaving the North pole all of those years ago because she refused to adhere to stupid sexist traditions. Taking away Katara’s agency and turning her into Aang’s silent partner was the biggest disservice not only to Katara but to Kanna and her legacy as well. 

so, i saw this photoset of allura learning about lance’s feelings for her…

and my mind immediately jumped to this………

i’m sure it’s just a coincidence,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

she don’t like you back, my dude

Miraculous shows us how it’s done.

A fourteen-year-old girl on a balcony during a moonlit night, with a guy who likes her but whom she just sees as a friend. Take it away, Avatar and Miraculous!

Step 1: Showing you care about her.

Step 2: Asking about her feelings.

Step 3: Listening patiently to her explanation.

Step 4: Respecting her wishes.

[Full on lip kiss while her eyes are closed]

[Platonic peck on the cheek]

Step 5: Coping with rejection.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how it’s done.