live wesley reaction

TW: There’s a brief mention of weight loss in this post, so just a heads up for anyone who might need it.

Whenever it comes to shipping discourse in regards to The Southern Raiders, the main topic of a lot of the discussions is whether or not A.ang’s philosophy was right or Zuko’s. But frankly, I actually don’t think it really matters all that much in the grander scheme of what Katara needed from the people around her in that episode.

The same guys gratuitously pushing for the Kataang romance were the same guys who saw Katara as nothing more than a one-dimensional love interest (and were planning on writing her that way even outside the romance until other writers stepped in) and the same guys who only cared about Aang and making him look good and get everything he wants regardless of how he acts (self-insert). Aang feels entitled to Katara and doesn't consider her feelings because they believe Aang is entitled to Katara and don't consider her perspective important because they're good old-fashioned misogynists.

Love is supposed to be selfless. You consider how your partner feels above your own selfish need to be right, to impose your beliefs, to act callously out of frustration with them. To be loved is to be considered, and who considered Katara's needs and feelings and selflessly considered them to be greater than his own comfort and feelings? Zuko.

And Zuko had no reason to. He was moved entirely by love (care for another person above himself). He could have gotten everything he wanted without helping her, without validating her. Aang, however, had every reason to: this is supposedly the girl he's possessively claimed as his future wife, and she is also first and foremost his friend. He owes her him caring about her feelings, or else he is a bad friend, and she'd be well justified to distance herself from him after showing such rude disregard for her pain over the death of her mother. And lack of trust in her and her actions, which speaks to how he really sees her: he does not respect Katara. I saw someone mention how he agrees with her mockingly inaccurate portrayal in the play, which again, shows how little respect he has for her as a person.

One of the first things you're supposed to do in a conflict in order to make the other person feel seen and heard is validate their feelings. Show them you understand first before anything else. It's the most important step to healthily resolving things. Aang doesn't do this as a consequence of not caring about her feelings and it's the first reason I saw them and thought they'd be a toxic couple. There was no understanding between them there. If I was in Katara's position, bringing up the worst thing that ever happened to me, and I was met with nothing but sanctimony and judgement, immediate hostility meant to shut me down, I would feel incredibly lonely and like I couldn't tell this person anything. I'd have to make myself small and not be myself- step on eggshells to keep the peace. Healthy relationships you should be able to trust them with your feelings and tell them anything, even if it's bad, because healthy relationships have the tools to handle conflict.

Just to recap, though, Katara canonically:

1. Likes Aang better with hair

"All women who ship Zutara are shallow floozies thirsting for Zuko and only care about looks"

But also

"You really think any girl would ever be attracted to Zuko??? With his disgusting disfigured face?? Your claims are truly beyond the pale"

WAIT THIS REMINDS ME I got a comment from one of them (who I didn't realize was the head honcho themself at the time) with this exact contradiction in the same sentence (if it can even be called that).

-> Says people only ship it because of a shallow attraction to Zuko -> Says people ship it when Zuko is conventionally unattractive, getting mad that people aren't only caring about his looks

Aang shaving his head is a CHOICE. Zuko's scar was not. Nor, while we are at it, was it his choice to wear a hairstyle that represents dishonor. It was his father's abuse that imposed that on him. So trying to do a reverse uno here just makes you look like an asshole.

And I've actually seen plenty of people ship zutara with ponytail Zuko, because

Also yeah, I was thinkin that, too. Getting a permanent burn scar (especially in the face, I can't even imagine) is a traumatic event regardless of the circumstance, and choosing to be bald is not lol

Just to recap, though, Katara canonically:

1. Likes Aang better with hair

"All women who ship Zutara are shallow floozies thirsting for Zuko and only care about looks"

But also

"You really think any girl would ever be attracted to Zuko??? With his disgusting disfigured face?? Your claims are truly beyond the pale"

WAIT THIS REMINDS ME I got a comment from one of them (who I didn't realize was the head honcho themself at the time) with this exact contradiction in the same sentence (if it can even be called that).

-> Says people only ship it because of a shallow attraction to Zuko -> Says people ship it when Zuko is conventionally unattractive, getting mad that people aren't only caring about his looks

Wasn't Jet's entire family murdered by the fire nation?????

It's time to admit that you just hate women.

It's clear in the way they're incredibly similar characters: they both are passionate about ending the war, they both take care of others in a parental role, they both are fighters and leaders, and they both are characters defined by justifiable anger at the atrocities they've witnessed and a need to do something about it (a big reason why they're so passionate).

The reason he hated Zuko the second he saw he was a firebender is because they took everything from him to the point of obsessive rage-fueled paranoia. It's why he's a tragic character, unable to get away from the horrors that happened to him until it's too late, still fighting ghosts. Because at this point, he doesn't have proof Zuko is even from the Fire Nation or a spy- just a firebender. And we know Zuko is only there trying to live his life, not anything nefarious like Jet thinks, but Jet just can't let it go. Can you imagine Katara, a character we spend much more time with who we all care about and who cares about so many others, being so torn down that she sees no other option than that kind of zealotry? That'd be incredibly sad.

I agree, though, that Jet's experience with colonization is not the same as Katara's. Katara never experienced colonization, her home being occupied by the people who killed her loved ones, or helplessly watching everyone she loves die and having to raise herself as a young child alone. She lost her mother, and her father's presence to the war, but she had Sokka and her grandmother and her village. Which is why she's not another Jet.

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.

Me, I watched the series as an adult and was old enough to be immune to the guilt trip and know that most anti zutara arguments are complete bullshit dressed up in a pretense of progressivism, so it doesn't work on me.

And it only takes three seconds of critical thinking to realize how surface level all their arguments are: they have to resort to making broad negative assumptions about real people because they don't have good arguments for why the ship is so bad because the actual text of the show doesn't support what they're saying. They have to focus on Aang being the hero and Zuko starting off as a bad guy and their respective aesthetics to explain why they think one is wholesome and the other is toxic. Neither of which hold up under any amount of scrutiny because if you judge them by their actual behavior there's literally nothing to argue about anymore.

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.

These people just wanna thought police; they're allowed to engage in the fandom discussions they want but other people who disagree with them aren't. The age of the show only matters selectively to them. Didn't know there was a fandom expiration date!