she wasn’t haunting me. i was haunting her.

Katara's whole arc is about empowerment. She begins as a more-or-less helpless girl, who was powerless to stop her mother from being killed or her father sailing away, who's a waterbender but completely untrained.

And over the course of the story, she becomes a top-tier fighter, a master waterbender, she learns healing and bloodbending, she confronts her abandonment issues with her father, she confronts her mother's killer, she blows up a factory and helps start a prison insurrection. She was powerless to stop her mother's sacrifice before the story started, but by the end she's powerful enough to save Zuko's life after he sacrificed himself for her. She retreads the path of her worst trauma, and comes out the other side victorious this time.

Everything about her arc is her sticking her nose where it doesn't belong, deciding to act, seeing something she wants to accomplish and going for it...she's very active in crafting her destiny.

One of their takes against zutara is that, "Zuko and Katara getting together is unrealistic because it caters to female fantasy!"

If we're talking about realism here, when, I mean when have you actually seen, a teenage girl, who is an eldest daughter, who, has to take the role of a mother to her siblings, who, has matured earlier than she's supposed to, chase after a guy clearly less mature than her? And it's not even about the age, it's the maturity.

When did you ever see a strong, independent woman fantasize about a guy who can be considered a "manchild"?

There could be examples. And when there is, the mother-son dynamic is very evident and those relationships mostly don't last and if they do, well, they aren't the best example of a "healthy" relationship.

You know what's realistic though? The strong independent woman, if ever she's interested on finding a partner, often looks for someone who is atleast, on the same level of maturity as her.

You could literally determine which relationships are written by a man or a woman.

ZUTARA + PARALLELS PART TWO:

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

“Gale is my friend. We hunt together. He’s cool ig.”

He did a wonderful job, but as he was returning my plant to my custody, he explained "I watered her every other day, I gave her new dirt, moved her into the sunshine, prayed the rosary-"

"What?"

He looked at me, confused. "Isn't she a plant you pray with?"

"No," I said slowly. "She's a prayer plant. That's the... colloquial name of the plant."

Upon seeing his stricken face, I realized something went wrong. Turns out, this entire time, he's been including my plant in on his prayers and leaving her near icons.