ATLA Meta

first, despite popular insistence to the contrary, ATLA is extremely well-researched when it comes to the elements of asian spirituality and cultural aesthetics used to worldbuild the four nations and the concept of the avatar. there are concrete references, themes, symbols and ideas that resonate with folkore and fables from pan-asian history. emphasis on pan-asian. fandom insisting the show is bad actually because it’s helmed by two white men, using absurd comparisons to cultural appropriation to dunk on the worldbuilding, and reducing every single character to a racist caricature, is wildly off-base and self-serving. while these analyses are well-meaning, they’re fundamentally wrong, and lacking information and historical, political context. furthermore, it’s wildly insulting to the asian and other people of color who did work on the show, whose cultures and fables are woven into the fabric of the show, to argue that ATLA is ultimately a story “by and for white people.” please decenter the white gaze and whiteness/ western frames from your outlook. i promise you it’s much freer on the other side.

it’s also self-serving, because if we convince ourselves the show is bad, faulty, incomplete and racist, it lets us off the hook. suddenly we’re no longer required to seriously engage its themes and ideas, or the histories it’s drawing from, because it’s all bad, so let’s just ignore everything about canon and indulge in AUs where the “war never happened” or “the water tribe started the war” or “aang died and my favorite character is the avatar” or “zuko is the real hero” or “sokka is a spiritual leader actually.” it’s fine to indulge in escapist fantasy now and again, but OWN THAT. don’t let your desire for fantasy and escapism warp your judgement of a show that’s actually cogent, well-researched and well-executed, and then insist you’re correct. take ownership for your point of view, your motives and biases, your desires, when engaging this text.

1 - Zero surprises, I've been telling you guys these people haven't watched the show in years, if ever, and will latch onto obviously false, easily disprovable claims about Aang being abusive to prop up their own ship.

I think it's really important to keep in mind the context surrounding both shows and how they were handled differently based on media at the time. Yes, a diversified voice cast would have been a better choice to embody the Pan-Asian world that ATLA was based on, but it was also made in 2005 when there was less awareness and lobbying surrounding representation. LOK was made in 2012, a full seven years after ATLA - a full seven years in which the show-runners and producers had likely heard feedback and criticisms about including more Asian and indigenous peoples in the cast. And yet the LOK voice actors are comprised mostly of white people, many of whom are more recognizable names and voices that arguably weren't chosen as the best fit for the characters but, rather, for their notoriety (unlike ATLA's cast).

All that being said, the article's focus is less on the 'inescapable whiteness' of the players behind the scenes, and more of the themes and plotlines and settings woven into fabric of LOK. Obviously Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko headed both projects, but ATLA was a heavily researched and meticulously crafted show with far more input from people of color in both collaborative and technical aspects.

All of this screams closeted xenophobia too. Like you think anything “non western” just means things that are explicitly never seen in America or American culture. As someone who has been to several countries across 5 continents, there’s tons of overlap. People aren’t confined to one way of acting, and especially importantly, they don’t all look as stereotyped as a lot of these Anti-Bryke, Anti-Post-ATLA people think they should. Which this all doesn’t even really matter, because again, this is a fantasy show that is merely influenced by things and not a documentary.

And then it’s Katara ending up with the boy who worships the ground she walks on, thinks she can do no wrong, gave up God mode for her, helped her commit environmental terrorism, cheered her on when she was beating misogyny out of an old man, was ready to take her to the other side of the world to find her a teacher when he’d just met her, constantly says he believes in her, that she’s amazing, that she inspires people and he’s proud of her.

She freaking ended the war, she’s one of the strongest benders in the world and your wierd ass fandom goes out of its way to make her some kind of damsel in distress who needs to be saved by Zuko. And I’M misogynistic?

The ship I support is not the dynamic for feminism? But shipping her with a man who tied her to a tree, threatened to burn down her village, blackmailed her, attacked her multiple times, betrayed her trust, sent an assassin after them is peak feminism?! Just admit you’re in it for the aesthetics and don’t bring feminism into it, because you’re just embarrassing yourself.

your only rebuttal is that aang is significantly younger for her, but he’s not. the age difference between katara and aang is the exact same as katara and zuko. according to you, katara and aang are in no way equal to one another, that she’s just a maternal figure to him; except you had just confused everything that aang canonically did for katara as what zuko does for her. and under your mistaken beliefs, you seemed quite content with accepting those actions as declarations of love, as qualities that katara deserved in a partner. it’s too bad for you then that zuko doesn’t exemplify nearly half of these actions or tells katara any of these things.

the dynamics that women choose to enjoy in fictional contexts are not reflective of how they perform and engage in feminism in real world applications. do you enjoy the “i’ll save you from the pirates scene” - a scene in which katara is kidnapped, tied up to a tree and humiliated, her mother’s necklace (the very last connection she has to her dead mother) dangled up in front of her for extortion? should i call you a faux feminist for defending that scene, as there is nothing empowering of a 16-17 year old prince of the colonialist nation tying an indigenous 14 year old up to a tree? shall i discuss further the power imbalance and the implications of such a scene like that glorified in fandom, especially during a time when the number of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls is at a record high? what about the “i rise with the sun, you rise with the moon,” quote, with it’s inspiration taken directly from imperialist japan’s rising sun flag? we’re all aware of how the fire nation’s imperialism and colonialism is based off of japan’s imperialism. should your fandom truly be glorifying such a quote, portraying it in a romantic light, when the context of the scene is zuko boldly declaring it to katara after he put her in a concussion? where are the feminist implications of that scene, as i fail to comprehend it.

This meme was made for Zukka

Aang did not persistently go after Katara until she finally agreed to go out with him. He only reveals his feelings to her TWICE in the show. That's it. And when she very plainly yells at him and rejects him (being very explicit about the fact that her rejection did not stem from her not having feelings for him, but because they were at war), he does not bring it up again. So where's the persistence? Where is he continually disrespecting her boundaries? Where is her constant rejection of him that he ignores? Is it not there? Because I'm 100% positive it's not there.

Also, this post is in response to some bs I saw in the Kataang tag (please stop fucking tagging zk shit in this tag for the love of god), so I will also be addressing some of the bs I saw in that post that ties into this. But who else in the show tells Katara to be with Aang? I'm waiting... oh, wait, nobody does. Where tf are we pulling this idea that not only Aang, but other people pressured Katara into being with him?? "She repeatedly has to be told to love him until eventually she feels obligated to return his feelings just because everyone thinks he deserves compensation for saving the world." So we're just blatantly making shit up, I see.

The only time anyone talks about Katara and Aang being in a relationship is Sokka in season 1, where he jokingly calls Aang her boyfriend; that is it. Literally no one in the rest of the show ever brings up Katara and Aang as a couple. No one champions him to her. No one forces her to love him. No one brings it up, period.

I want to add that this take doesn't just pull shit out of thin air and make up events that never happened, but it wildly mischaracterizes every single character. Aang is not some abuser who can't take no for an answer. The only reason he even kissed Katara a second time, or felt that she returned his feelings, is that she kissed him back the first time (and had also kissed him before and shown him physical affection on numerous occasions). Should he have been more receptive to her when she said she was confused? Absolutely, but the second she lays that hard boundary, he backs off. The second kiss wasn't right, but to act as if that moment was more than a single instance is stupid and willfully ignorant. Katara is also not the kind of person to be forced into literally anything. She has always been a person who stands her ground, and she does so, even against Aang. Sokka would never force his sister to be with someone she doesn't want to be with, and I'm sorry, but the rest of the gaang does not care enough to consistently try to get Katara to be with Aang.

None of these things happened, and I am sick of seeing people act like they did. If you want to see a relationship where a girl is forced to be with an abuser who consistently oversteps her boundaries and everyone else around her has to convince her of why she's in love with him, go watch TVD, but ATLA is not that show. Katara is not a damsel in distress, nor is she a prize. Zuko is not her white knight — which is ironic in and of itself that I even have to say that because the dynamic they want to give zk has Zuko being her "savior" and her being with him because of that, but I digress. And Aang is not her abuser.

This is why I will always have a problem with people who try to play both sides, "just ship and let ship". This has nothing to do with the fact that people ship zk, but rather that zk and anti-Kataang are very hand-in-hand in a diabolical way. That side of the fandom has, for 20 years, done nothing but make up false narratives about the show and Kataang in order to prop up their own ship because they can't handle that zk is something that only ever had potential and not canonical evidence. So they have to manufacture that evidence. If all people did was prefer zk, but let Kataang live, it wouldn't be an issue, but that isn't what they do.

aang, throughout most of the show, does not outright confess his feelings to katara. he gets close, on two occasions, but when he’s interrupted by others, he doesn’t even try again for an extended period of time. he’s had the opportunity to directly confess his dream to katara in nightmares and daydreams, but he still doesn’t do it. it’s not until he genuinely believes he’ll never survive in the day of black sun does he finally kiss her (which felt more like a “do or die” trope being fulfilled by the writers but that’s besides the point).

you want to know who katara was actually pushed to by multiple people? the boy that she was told repeatedly that she must have secret feelings for? zuko. if anything, her choosing to pursue a relationship with aang (instead of zuko) breaks those expectations set by their imperialist society. we see in the series that colonialist propaganda spends a significant amount of time pushing the notion that katara must view aang as a younger brother - instead of a romantic potential - because he isn’t “masculine” enough for her, not in the ways that zuko is.