legendary lovers

Reminding me of the posts I see about how children focused media tend to have really... rabid fanbases, see the bronies...

Yeah, that was pretty prevalent in their ship fandom back then lol. I mean, as if all the zutara rape fanfic and slave fanfic isn’t proof enough. That’s literally how zutara became a ship. They saw the scene of Zuko tying Katara to a tree and sexualized tf out of it. People forget that the majority of ZK shippers back in 2005-2008 were either older teenagers (like 16-18 yrs old) or actual adults. The majority of kataang shippers were younger children

Imo, that’s one of the reasons the ship war was so bad for kataang shippers. We were getting bullied and harassed by people much older than us, and people we weren’t equipped or prepared to defend ourselves against because we were so young and most of us had never even shipped anything or been in a fandom before. I distinctly remember regularly getting sent death threats by ZK shippers that were like 25 years old and I was 10 😭 it was brutal omg

If you aren’t an OG ATLA fan, be grateful tbfh. Be glad you weren’t a part of the fandom back then. Because they literally ran kataang shippers out of our own fandom, and they pretty much held the ATLA fandom as a whole hostage. Like we were actually scared of them lmao, so many kataang shippers from back then have similar experiences to what I had and were afraid to even say they liked kataang because there used to be a time where if you said that online you would be dogpiled for it

But imagine the creators and writers seing people (and a lot at that) sexu@lizing and romanticizing the power-imbalance between a 14 yo indigenous girl and a 16 yo imperialist soldier boy (that still hadn't been redeemed at that time) and go as far as imagine multiple different scenarios of Katara becoming his sl@ve. The writers/creators probably were like 'yeah let's make sure that Mai is from FN's nobility and that's explicitly shown in the episodes, just in case you know?'

Or maybe they simply went like "let's just collectively forget what we witnessed, there's no zk sl@ve fics in Ba Sing Se"

Mmm, no I don’t think so. Bryke gave interviews even while ATLA was airing and stated they added melodrama and romantic subplots into the show because they liked that stuff, not because of fandom pressures or because of what some fans wanted.

Now, the Ember Island Players and the jokes they made about zutara with play!Katara being dressed in a sexualized way and saying she “had eyes for Zuko the day he first captured her” ?? Yeah, that was clearly them commenting on the zutara fandom and calling them out. But Mai and Zuko? Nah. That was likely pre planned long before she was introduced.

Lmao ikr? Somewhere out there in the world there are people that are pissed the fuck off when they see a picture of this lil guy

He’s literally like the embodiment of sunshine and rainbows and kittens lol. They want to headcanon him as the actual spawn of Satan just because his best friend was in love with him and they had a happy and healthy romantic relationship that lasted the test of time 🤣

Bro casually rejects Sokka’s toxic masculinity and says he’s going to save the world and make jewelry at the same time. King 👑 this is literally how Aang’s character is -> 🧡🫧🪷🌈🦋✨🌸💛 we love you Aang 🫶🫶🫶