Ron Swanson’s Assistant

I actually don't see the screenshot saying Aang's the devil.

What I see is:

1) Implying he will go into the Avatar State if a girl doesn't return his affections (already implied by the show)

Kataang shippers will bring up the first scene as a way to prove that Aang “reminds” Katara to be a kid and have fun, but I think it really just serves to show Katara that Aang needs to be protected. He doesn’t understand what she’s been through because he hasn’t experienced anything remotely similar to what she has and so that’s why he’s saying “you’re still a kid!” even when functionally, she’s been taking on the role of an adult for a very long time. Further, as a teenage girl, she doesn’t need to be reminded to act like a child Aang’s age, she acts like a teenage girl all by herself.

It was his country, the military that he was heir to, that murdered her mother for genocidal purposes. Taking her to confront Yon Rha was his way of showing through his actions and not just his words that he hates what his country has done just as much as the rest of them, that he sees their crimes for what they are and gives them the weight that they deserve. It's not his place to tell her what Yon Rha deserves or what she needs to do to heal. His actions tell her "I understand the irreparable trauma and injustice my country has caused you, I understand that I carry that legacy, and to show you how seriously I take the crimes committed by my country, and that I am not aligned with them ideologically, I will give you the power to exact justice however you deem fit, even if it means implicating myself in the murder of one of my countrymen."

Getting all "but he's still a human being 👉🏻👈🏻" on Katara would have been an actual regression, a show of tribalistic attachment just because he's from the same country as the guy, it would tell Katara that he still feels a sense of loyalty and duty to his country's war criminals and doesn't take the Fire Nation's crimes with the seriousness they deserve.

What tf do you call forcefully kissing someone who just said no to you?? What do you call telling someone you'd go into an out-of-control murderous time bomb state over the idea that they might not like you back?? Would you feel safe telling someone who literally holds the fate of the world in their hands no right after they told you that??

If you feel obligated to protect someone's feelings and don't feel comfortable directly saying no to them because they threaten or assault you, or idk, might run away and cause the end of the world, that's a form of coercion.

But 1) They didn't even have the decency to include her liking it as a "yeah, but" and instead had her be visibly upset after- making the wrongness of it blatantly obvious and uncomfortable (but then doing nothing with that and retroactively acting like that was a symptom of her being "confused about her feelings" blech), and 2) Just because the writers force a character to be okay with something that happened to them, does not make what happened to them okay.

It's also just completely unromantic. Because the way it's set up isn't some grand buildup of feelings between them culminating in a gesture. It's Aang imposing his crush onto her without any conversation or warning or consideration of her feelings. It gets even worse when he uses his forced kiss as essentially his claim on her, his reason he's mad that she isn't just with him now in EIP when she never got a choice in the matter.

And when she says she's confused he tries to force it again when her guard is down and she's obviously unable to react. Which is a symptom of the idea that women just play games and secretly want it and to keep pressuring them, which is made worse by the fact that they reward this belief by having her end up with him anyway and never show his entitlement to her as wrong. It literally backs up the idea that all her negative reactions to his advances, her general disinterest, and her avoidant body language don't need to be considered because she, again, just secretly wanted him all along or wasn't important because she'd learn to love him.

And the idea that Aang is too good to be abusive to the point that the idea is preposterous mirrors so well the whole "I know my boy, he wouldn't do that" denial/excuse used to shut down women talking about abuse. You don't have to be evil to be abusive in a relationship. No one is mad because they think he's evil; he just should have had to learn from his poor behavior. Every abusive person I know means well and is thought of by everyone who knows them as a good person. The 'nicest' person I know around others, considered to be the perfect prince any girl would be grateful to be with, was an actual villain in his last relationship. Not out of ill intent, but just by not considering the shitty positions he was putting his gf in and only worrying about what he wanted (sound familiar?).

"But he's only 12! He's not allowed to make mistakes?" -> Then he's not ready for a relationship and shouldn't be in one. This is not a punishment because no one is owed a relationship with another person. -> Then he's definitely old enough to know better than to put hands on people, and definitely old enough to learn his lesson about respecting others' boundaries- unless you think it's harsher for boys to hear stern words than girls to be violated. -> It's not a 'mistake' if it is never acknowledged as one and continues to persist. It's just a character flaw. One people are allowed to criticize when it goes unresolved. -> We have no reason to believe he'd grow out of this behavior because it was never addressed and was in fact rewarded, and Katara has no obligation to put up with this behavior before it is fixed, or even after it has been fixed. She should not be expected to be with someone on the basis that in the future they might rise to the bare minimum standard of respect for his significant other.

There is no "well what would you have wanted him to do?" argument because the events that happen and Aang's response to them are all crafted as part of a narrative.

Here are three fantastic metas that dive further into this writing pitfall:

The Chakra Plot Hole

Aang Never Let Go of His Attachment by @soareleandluna

Aang Choosing Katara Over the Avatar State is Not Love by @burst-of-iridescent

A.ang knows that the Fire Nation killed Katara’s mother but he has no idea it was specifically because she was the last southern waterbender, one because he never bothered to ask about the tragedy and two because Katara just never felt compelled or encouraged to tell him. Zuko on the other hand knows all the details about the situation from Sokka, from Katara herself and then from Yon Rha.

Then for some reason Zuko, not A.ang (you know, the guy who’s married to a Southern waterbender), was specially mentioned to have given special attention to rebuilding Katara’s nation and countinues to take special interest in the Southern Watertribe over all the other nations.

They always say “they’re both genocide victims so they understand each other better”

And that would be cute if not for the fact that that little similarity between them completely went over Mike and Bryan’s heads even in this new movie (A.ang telling Katara she doesn’t understand what it’s like to be a genocide survivor). You’d think they’d say her husband was the one who took special interest in her tribe’s welfare since you know, it was affected by genocide and A.ang is supposed to be able to relate to that? But nope, apparently it’s Zuko, you know the guy who supposedly doesn’t care about Katara.

I’m honestly convinced that Bryke might just be dense because about 95% of A.ang’s interactions with Katara’s culture are negative. Him not liking their animal skins and food and being disrespectful about it by telling Toph not to eat it, or him allowing Katara’s culture to become completely sidelined in their family with the only person taking after Katara’s culture being Kya.

The one similarity that could actually make Ka/taang somewhat engaging has Zuko being more positively involved in it than A.ang.

Of course they see her supporting Aang and think, well Aang is supported, look what a supportive relationship this is- Aren't we forgetting someone?

They had many, many, many chances to show the two of them relating over their shared trauma. Each and every time it's brought up (the show AND the movie now), he doesn't acknowledge it or throws it back in her face or is pitted against her (which the fans then also engage in) over who has the bigger trauma. And only his is treated as important. Hers is brought up as an afterthought to support a dynamic that never existed between them. Because no one spares a thought for Katara. If they did, they'd notice how the support never comes back around in her direction from Aang. They are trained to see her as Aang's reward at the end and so when she's just entirely his cheerleader with no consideration in return, they don't see anything wrong with that.

People are also so scared of acknowledging the flaws and sexism in the show's writing it makes it impossible to take any Kataang defense seriously. You're allowed to headcanon a more wholesome dynamic that retcons the weird incel behavior Aang was on in S3. You're allowed to headcanon in new scenes where they support each other equally. Defending the terrible treatment of Katara just to avoid the discomfort of feeling "wrong" or accepting the writing of your ship has flaws and that people are gonna talk about them feels so dishonest and like... regressive.

You don't need to hold so fast to the canon version of the ship, you can see the potential in it and ship that without it being less legitimate because that dynamic isn't 100% accurate to the canon portrayal. (This is where being so obsessive about canon adherence backfires, you feel you need to defend the writing problems like if you admit they're real, you'd be ceding ground and tarnishing the purity of your ship.) But these headcanons being treated as if they absolutely happened to shut down fair criticisms of how Katara was treated... We're talking about apples and you replaced the apple with an unrelated orange and are now saying calling it an apple isn't accurate. We're still talking about the apple whether or not you pretend it was never there. We're criticizing the way it was depicted!!!!! Not your own view of the ship in your head!!! We all deserved better than that mess.

A power that creates fear and pain and only seems to be used for destruction? I can’t think of anyone who would know what that feels like.

But they seem to miss the crucial detail that the Beach episode is meant to be Zuko at his worst, the peak of his identity and morality crisis that has him acting like a jerk. And he IS acting like a jerk in that episode, but we're clearly meant to understand that he's being a jerk and the narrative punishes him for it. Mai breaks up with him after calling him out on his anger issues, and good because someone needed to put their foot down (my fellow Zutarians give too much flack to Mai in this episode often, like she might've been being not the best girlfriend earlier that day, that's debatable, but she was valid for calling him out on acting like an angry lunatic) and give him consequences for his actions.

It's a good thing that Mai was willing to stand up to him and call him out when she knows she's being treated unfairly, and for knowing her worth enough to not take him insulting her. Then they get back together only after he actually opens up about why he's angry and admits that it's himself he's truly angry with.

But again we're meant to see Zuko's behavior as bad in this episode, the whole point is that he's lashing out at everyone around him and is angrier than he's ever been because the guilt of what he did is eating him alive and instead of dealing with it in a healthy way he's taking it out on others.

And even more importantly, Zuko stopped being angry and belligerent and violent, this was the sort of behavior he left behind when he decided to do the right thing and work on himself.

There is no reason to think that post-redemption arc Zuko would act like this again with a girl, because the only reason he was acting like that in the first place was the inner turmoil he had yet to work through, caused by his betrayal of his uncle and what he knows in his heart to be right.

He actively worked to improve himself and be a better person, and to be less impulsive so that he wouldn't hurt the people he cares about.

Everyone always agrees Zuko's redemption arc is one of the best things about the show and loves how far he's come, until it's about Zutara and then he's actually stuck as the worst version of himself forever.

The difference between how Zuko is in the Beach episode and how A/an/g is in Ember Island Players is that Zuko is punished by the narrative and we're meant to see his behavior in a negative light, he is forced to atone and change. A/a/ng is not forced to atone or change for his bad behavior and it's unclear if we're supposed to condemn him for it or if we're just supposed to feel bad for him for feeling bad.

Comparing pre-redemption Zuko to A/ang at any point is not a fair comparison, if we really want to compare their behavior to assess the kind of person each of them are, we need to look at redeemed Zuko if we're going to compare him to A@ng.

One is that Mai is complicit in Zuko's inner turmoil. She's part of the genocidal regime and aided in bringing him back into it and back under his father's abuse. He isn't right to assume she's flirting with another dude, but he is right to call her out on not feeling anything because she is a person defined by her apathy towards the suffering that Zuko can no longer be a part of. The episode doesn't highlight this but it's a huge part of WHY Zuko is so angry and why I actually think he should have directed more anger at Mai specifically. Of course, none of it is her idea, but it had to have crossed Zuko's mind that if he didn't agree to come back with Azula, he would be a prisoner instead of kissing Mai, and Mai helped put him in that position.

I also think this informs Zuko's jealousy. How can Zuko be sure, given that context, that Mai actually cares about him? Would she have cared if he were imprisoned or killed? Would she care if Ozai hurt him again?

Then she spends the whole episode sneering at him, she belittles his attempts to communicate with her ESPECIALLY about what's wrong. I do think that his violent jealousy and him saying she doesn't care about anything is him saying he feels like she doesn't care about him, and he needs someone to because he's trapped with a man who burned his face and the one person who he knows actually loves him is imprisoned. His behavior reads like a cry for help, to me.

Which doesn't excuse it, but does give context. People do not act in ways they normally would when they're living under abusive conditions, and abusers will use the victims' seemingly irrational behavior to characterize them as the actual aggressors. A dog that bites in self defense when it's been cornered and provoked is not rabid.

The other thing that differentiates Zuko's behavior from Aang's is that Mai is actually Zuko's girlfriend and Katara is not Aang's girlfriend. Not that the EIP kiss would be okay even if they were dating, but Aang specifically gets mad at Katara for not being his girlfriend, whereas Zuko wants more attention from Mai because she is supposed to be his girlfriend, and at least acting like she cares kinda comes with that territory. I actually think both Mai and Aang are similar in that both of them seem to expect relationships without actually doing anything to maintain them.

Exactly. That, to me, is a red flag, but not against Zuko. To use the cornered dog metaphor again, a good rule of thumb is to consider who has the power in that scenario. Mai is the one who breaks up with Zuko, and the one who gets back together with him. Zuko lashes out but nothing actually changes.

And despite what I said, Zuko won't dump her, because he has nowhere to go, and no one else on his side. Literally, no one.

This can be serious... what the hell...

@sokkastyles

But ATLA isn’t for just for adults. it’s a really, really good kids show. A good enough show that it’s still finding new audiences decades later. And a popular kids show is how kids learn about how to manage their romantic relationships.

Kat@ang teaches boys to:

- Not be discouraged by her apparent disinterest. She’ll come around.

- Be possessive of your female friend/crush and get angry when they show an interest in someone else (EIP)

- Kiss them without their consent, even when they’ve just told you they’re not interested in a romantic relationship right now.

None of these behaviours from Aang are discouraged by the show (aside from the Guru’s attempt which is promptly forgotten for the rest of the show) and are in fact rewarded when Katara changes her mind without any positive interactions between the non-consensual kiss and the big ending kiss.

It reminds me of a lot of the boys I was friends with growing up. The ones who questioned me when I got a boyfriend. Who broke off our friendships when it became apparent I was never going to date them.

To be clear, I don’t blame Aang for this. He’s overall not a bad person. He’s 12. He’s allowed to make mistakes in how he approaches his love life. Especially under such pressure.

I blame the writers who decided that the narrative would not treat these actions as mistakes to be learned from, but would simply reward Aang with his forever girl as soon as he had finished the main quest.