Fanfiction Writer (sometimes)

Happy Sunday beautiful zutara people

From x.asterr on ig. Give artist lots of love and encouragement. Artist is being harassed on tiktok (I dont have tiktok).

I might not like the movie but I love their design.

Aang, and a lot of KA shippers, seem to interpret letting Katara go as no longer loving Katara. However, as Aang himself points out “three chakras ago love was a good thing”, so we know that love itself isn’t the problem.

Let’s look at how the guru says that love is a good thing.

When unlocking the 4th chakra, we’re told that this chakra deals with love and is blocked by grief. We’re not told that Aang should not love the Air Nomads. We’re told he needs to let go of his grief about their being gone and see that their love is still in the world. We then see Katara’s face, showing that it is her love for Aang which is helping Aang recover from the grief of his loss.

This perfectly connects to the way we’ve seen Aang lose control of the Avatar state. In The Southern Air Temple, Aang loses control because of his grief at their loss.

We see in that same episode that Aang’s realisation that he still has people who can be part of his family is what helps Aang come out of the Avatar State.

The guru isn’t saying that Aang shouldn’t love the Air Nomads. He’s saying Aang needs to be able to carry on in the face of their loss, and be open to new love.

But the loss of the Air Nomads isn’t the only thing to trigger an emotional Avatar State from Aang. We see this again in The Avatar State when General Fong buries Katara.

In order to be able to control the Avatar State, Aang needs to be able to deal with the potential loss of Katara.

But it’s not only the potential loss of Katara’s life that Aang needs to deal with, it’s also the potential loss of her as a romantic prospect.

In The Ember Island Players, Aang tells Katara that if his chakra wasn’t blocked he’d probably be in the Avatar state because of an on stage depiction of Katara and Zuko in a romantic setting.

We are told in canon that Aang is so attached to the idea of his relationship with Katara that it causes him to be unable to control his emotions, and therefore the Avatar state. That’s not healthy, with or without implications about his ability to save the world.

So, what’s the solution? It’s clearly not that Aang cannot love Katara. We know of multiple previous Avatars who fell in love and had happy relationships.

I think that when the guru tells Aang that he needs to let Katara go, that doesn’t mean he needs to stop loving her. It means, as with the Air Nomads, he needs to be able to find peace with the idea of a life without her. He can want her to live, and fight for that with all his might, but if she dies he needs to be able to keep going. He can want to be with Katara, but he needs to be able to accept it if that’s not what she wants.

We never see the Fire Nation in LoK. I'm blatantly ignoring the comics. There are no comics. Katara's statue is there.

Katara is Zuko's kingmaker. It's horrid Aang decided she didn't need a statue but it's also telling.

Like first of all, in the actual canon it's pretty vague how she manages to heal him and from what exactly (obviously getting struck by lightning but what specific injury was killing him?).

And then secondly, it would be such a perfectly executed, full-circle moment where this form of bending Katara was forced to learn against her will and that she is scared and ashamed of suddenly becomes something she'll be forever grateful for knowing, maybe even feeling some weird form of thankfulness to Hama for having forced her to learn, because without it she would've lost Zuko. It would be a curse that she turned into a gift, a weapon turned into a tool of healing.

It would parallel how Zuko (and Aang) formed a new, more positive relationship with firebending. Both of them saw fire as destruction and hatred, but learned that it is also a source of life and warmth. In the same way, Katara would learn that bloodbending is not just a means to reach into someones body and take control of them, to take away their agency and autonomy, it is also the gift that allowed her to save the life of her best friend after he sacrificed himself for her.

Zutara for me had nothing to do with looks.

At all.

It was how they paralleled themselves.

It was how symbolic they were to each other.

It was how they were two teenagers trying to find a way to make it through what they saw as an impossible situation to live through a war that started before they were born.

The mental and emotional maturity they both had and how they both changed and developed and how in the end they ended up on the same side.

That's why I ship Zutara and will continue to no matter what Bryke idiots throw at me.

He took a lightning bolt to the chest for her. She was crying and running to him. They both came THIS 🤏 close to dying. For God’s sake, they reached for each other! And the “Thank you, Katara” “I should be the one thanking you”?

If THAT isn’t the moment for a Big Damn Kiss™️, I don’t know what is. Like

he's surprised cause he always sees himself as a mess<33 I LIKE THIS IDEA.