liliesforeveryfandom:sokkastyles:andorjyny:sokkastyles: spicyswordlady:inkmyname: zuzusexytiems: the

liliesforeveryfandom:sokkastyles:andorjyny:sokkastyles: spicyswordlady:inkmyname: zuzusexytiems: thegirlinthefandom: hearts-and-lies: thegirlinthefandom: the-evil-twin: I just want to point out that in The Promise, Katara is the first person to actually understand the difficult position that Zuko is in, and is literally the ONLY person in the gaang who actually has his back - all the while, poor Zuko is *desperate* for someone to confide in about these new responsibilities he has (let alone the six attempts on his life that happened over the course of only a single year after taking the throne) - - to the point that he had a nervous breakdown on the battlefield after narrowly avoiding another full-blown war that leaves him in a coma for four days. Like. If Katara had to be paired off with someone, then someone please explain to me already why she wasn’t just paired with *Zuko* and serving as ambassador for the Fire Nation / Southern Water Tribe????? All of their chemistry aside, you can CLEARLY see how much ass she would have kicked, not to mention how extremely beneficial that would have been for the dangerously overwhelmed 17-year-old Fire Lord. And the thing is, if Zutara had been endgame in the show, there actually isn’t a whole lot of the political part of the plot in The Promise that would even have to change, really - except Katara’s role would have been much more important as an ambassador, and the decision to merge the two nations together in a former fire nation colony would have been personal in addition to political. Imo, it would have *enriched* the plot and made it more engaging. And although a Zutara pairing would have satisfied the majority of fans (MUCH more), another thing is that it still wouldn’t have had a cheesy “happy ever after” feel to it unlike Kataang. It still would have been interesting. While Zuko and Katara would have been imo perfectly matched as a pair, this would have added conflict between Aang (who would still need to learn to let Katara go, for real) and Zuko, and even a little between Aang and Katara, since I can definitely see Aang’s personal hurt feelings keeping him from listening impartially to Katara, and thinking (wrongly) for a while that Zuko is turning Katara against him / bad. It also would have further explained and made much more sense why Zuko (and Katara) would have been SO adamant on the two nations learning to live together, and why Aang very much wasn’t. It also would have been a much greater moment of truth when Aang decides whether or not to save Zuko’s life on the battlefield in part three. And of course, them having a heart-to-heart in the Jasmine Dragon would have also carried more weight, since all of this heavy personal shit would have also been in the way. All that having been said, how much more meaningful would this conversation have been if it was taking place between Katara and Zuko, or at least be Katara talking to Aang *about* her and Zuko (do I need to give more reasons why?????? - because I can): Not to mention uhhhhh If it was so necessary for him to have a trophy girl after being the hero in the series finale then uhhhh why again was it necessary for it to be Katara?????? tl;dr I will never ever ever ever ever understand why Zutara wasn’t endgame. That is some PRIME golden characterization that they just… uugghh… It’s not even just about a Zuko x Katara romance, I mean ALL THE WAY AROUND it would have just made SO MUCH MORE SENSE. Instead, we get Aang and Katara making out in every other panel. All of this. We should just make our own comic the way it should’ve been. So down *heavy sigh* The comics are OOC BS. There, I said it. I don’t care about the shipping. The bigger problem is, I can’t believe half the things that these characters are saying or doing, especially Aang and Zuko. It’s like 3 seasons of character development just didn’t happen. The comic characters are just talking heads who look like the show characters we came to know and love.Also, romance is literally ATLA’s weakest point when they try to shoehorn it in without putting in the hard work to actually develop a romance (ATLA’s idea of romance is let’s forcefully kiss the female lead twice without consent and never follow up on it on screen!). Like, please gtfo with making a 15yo brown indigenous-coded girl fantasize about having a family with a 12/13yo. It cheapens Katara’s character to go from being observant about other people’s struggles just because she’s so damn compassionate and will never, ever turn her back on anyone who needs her (iconic, truly, we do not deserve her) to “oh shit this whole BS segregationist ideology might affect me personally but I guess I’ll be a passive participant in whatever Aang decides because my function as a character has been reduced to supporting and validating his feelings.” Please stop making her a trophy and then invalidate her feelings and punish her when she feels sad about being a trophy. Also, Aang spouting problematic BS about miscegenation like he isn’t literally the physical manifestation of all four elements living together in harmony and like the Air Nomads weren’t canonically, you know, nomadic and the most accepting of differences (in Rise of Kyoshi and Legend of Korra) and like he didn’t have friends from all over the world and like he didn’t have an entire character development episode about rigidly holding on to Air Nomad orthodoxy vs identifying the spirit of Air Nomad philosophy as what’s important. Nope, that totally didn’t happen!And Zuko! Like Zuko Alone never happened and Earth Kingdom colonials never told him, justifiedly, to fuck off just because he was the literal spawn of the imperialist nutjob responsible for their suffering . Like he didn’t live as a poor starving working class refugee for a whole damn season in one of the last strongholds of the Earth Kingdom that was free from colonial influence. Like he never stood up to his father against Fire Nation imperialism and propaganda only to get shot with lightning for his troubles. Like yeah, he’s making a good point in the comics about forced family separation but the way he does it comes off as imperialistic like yes there’s massive socioeconomic inequality between the colonizers and the colonized but at least they are better off than they were 100+ years ago! There’s like no nuance, the kind you’d expect from Zuko post-Ba Sing Se and post-Invasion. Not like Zuko didn’t experience socioeconomic inequality in a ship full of refugees eating food unfit for the lowest lifeforms. Not like he didn’t work a shitty customer service job with nothing to live for except the drudgery of survival, making sure he had a roof over his head, clothes on his back, and food in his belly. Yeah, that didn’t happen at all! Why in the world would you ever reference that in the comics! :)))It’s much more important to artificially manufacture conflict by making our characters OOC and ignoring all of their past characterization so we can have like a bigass but ultimately pointless battle or something, IDK. :)))Can y'all tell I hate the comics yet? Haven’t read The Promise in years and definitely will not again, but holy shit I forgot how horribly Zuko was treated in this.We talk so much (rightfully so) about how badly the comics treat Katara, but holy shit Zuko…I forgot he canonically had six attempts on his life in a year, but nobody is around to help? Not his uncle, not his friends?I will never forgive this comic for having Zuko seek out his abusive father for advice and frame it as “ohh is Zuko turning bad??” instead of “this 17 year old kid is under so much stress from trying to lead a nation post war that the only person he felt he could ask for help is his abusive father because he’s basically abandoned by his close friends and family” I blame this post for forcing me to read these panels and I’m trying to comment on it but the writing is just…so bad. Like, that is just some awful dialogue there. It’s hard to even understand what they were going for because it’s…so bad.I could even buy Zuko arguing that the people in the colonies are better off than they were before, and that’s a problematic statement, but it’s more along the lines of something a seventeen year old kid who’s been indoctrinated for most of his life and is still unlearning things would say, not “is this character turning evil?”And it’s also understandable that Zuko would be concerned about his people, and when he tells Aang “I know you defeated the Fire Nation…” I think it’s clear that he’s feeling like he has to act from a defensive position as someone who is leader of a country that is in a greatly diminished position. And when Aang says “WE defeated the Fire LORD” it’s clear that Aang doesn’t see it that way or understand Zuko’s position, and that’s a good setup for a conflict, but I’m not sure how they got from that to screaming at each other, like I reread it several times because I was convinced I had missed a panel. The only person who has any braincells here is Katara, and Aang’s statement about how the only way to achieve balance is if the four nations are separate and then segueing right from that to talking about Fire Nation occupation as if those are the only two options just doesn’t make sense for the character at all. As other people said, Aang is from a nomadic people, he should understand what multiculturalism is. But then, that’s always been a problem with the show’s portrayal of the Air Nomads. I agree with people when they say the problem here is that the characters are driven by the plot rather than it being the other way around. The plot needs these characters to argue in order for it to work, but the problem is that the solution is obvious to the readers. And Zuko collapsing because he was right all along just highlights that.I do like Zuko’s concern for the people of the colonies being motivated by seeing a happy interracial family and the contrast with his own family, who were obsessed with Fire Nation superiority but just abused each other. Also,*puts on Zutara hat*Both Zuko and Katara looking at a happy, loving family and saying “I want that.” I want to rage about so much of this but aang’s borderline segregationist characterization is so offputting it is no wonder fandom has such a weird opinion on people from other nations dating fire nation people. like idk if bryke realizes this but land back doesn’t mean literally all the settlers go back to the home country lol, but land back is a very hard thing for beneficiaries of colonialism (like me) to understand (because we are conditioned to view land as something to be owned). Yeah this comic’s existence sheds a light on where the “Zutara is colonizer/colonized” argument comes from. It’s still nonsensical racist bullshit, though. I don’t know get why bryke and other writers handled the fire nation colonies in such a aloof and nonchalant manner. While I do disagree with aang here regarding the separation of the 4 nations, I also don’t like how they just made zuko overlook all of the other major problems within the colony. Throughout the show, we can see that zuko is someone who always stands up to injustice and fights for those who have had injustice conflicted upon them. So, I find it kinda OOC for zuko to keep the colony but then not do anything to fix the disparities that were caused by the fire nation.Throughout the show, zuko also realizes the wrongs of the fire nation & how his country harmed the other nations through force and violence. He takes accountability for his own actions plus for what his forefathers did. This, on top of zuko calling ppl out on their unfairness, would make him very active in trying to break down systemic issues such as earth kingdom natives being treated like second-class citizens on their own land. I feel like aang should also be inclined to do something similar to what zuko is doing. Like someone else else pointed out, aang is a nomad, so he had friends in other nations and he vsisted other nations. On top of that he is the literal avatar, so to me it just seems so odd to why aang would be so adamant on restoring the separation of the 4 nations when the fn and ek in the colony have been living together for a century. Sure he can dismantle the colony, but that won’t rlly make up for or alleviate the damage that has already been done. I’m not saying the colony should been kept (I’d say just give it back to the ek and let the ppl of fn descent stay) but I don’t necessarily agree with aang’s solution either. The writers should’ve handled this comic with more care bc the writing is very messy. Not only that, but the writing forces the character to act out of character bc you just know that show!aang & show!Zuko would have much more complex feelings surrounding the colonies. Overall, this comic gets a big yikes from me. I would like to take this moment to point out that Gene Luen Yang – the writer of ATLA’s “The Promise” – actually ships Zutara.  But he had to write the comics as KA.It was Bryke that told Gene how to set up the story/conflict and what sort of character development would be seen with Zuko, Aang, Katara, etc. And when KA fans realized Gene shipped Zutara, they did not handle it well.No surprise that Gene didn’t really talk about shipping when he marketed these comics. :( -- source link

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