you were never even a player

natla discourse is reminding me how stupid it was for natla to not just have zuko fight back against ozai in the agni kai, but to also have him be able to compete with him and iroh try to intervene. zuko was not supposed to fight back and one of iroh’s biggest regrets is just standing there and letting his brother burn his nephew. and if zuko (who is not supposed to be a strong bender) can compete with ozai, literally what even is the point of aang needing to be the one to face him?

now i know people arent saying that aang’s refusal to kill ozai is a failure of aang’s morality and making it about zuko. need i remind anyone who thinks that the fact that zuko was only still alive because of aang’s morality, like when aang saved him in the blue spirit or at the northern water tribe when aang wouldve been well within his rights to leave zuko to die.

its actually so nasty the way people talk about aang and his emotional outbursts, especially when the few outbursts aang has are tied to his trauma from being a genocide survivor; like finding gyatso’s body and realising that he was the last of his kind, his reaction to loosing appa; his last connection to his people, and then in sozin’s comet when hes trying to honour his people’s beliefs while saving the world. people talk about aang like he was blowing a fuse just about every episode (when thats more applicable to a certain character) when you could just about count the amount of times aang let his emotions get the better of him on one hand.

zks really will say anything cause wdym those delusional mfs are saying aang didnt support katara’s waterbending when he literally offered to take her to the north pole, encouraged her when she was feeling insecure about her abilities, cheered her on when she challenged pakku after saying he wouldnt learn from him if he was gonna be a misogynist, and called her sifu after she said he didnt call her that.

natla has really got people out there misunderstanding what filler episodes actually are and giving them unnecessary disrespect. the universally agreed upon definition is that a filler episode is an episode that doesnt advance the overall story as a whole, but that doesnt mean that every filler episode in existence is a waste of time. the painted lady does fit the definition of a filler episode, as it doesnt add to the overall plot, but filler episodes can aslo be used to enhance character development, and that is what the painted lady does for katara.