Kait

Well, for starters, I think it's because they see themselves as victims, period. Victims of the canon. Victims of Bryke. Victims of the fandom. They have so thoroughly convinced themselves that "they were robbed" of something that no one actually owed them in the first place. Do I recognize that Nickelodeon was baiting shippers when the show was airing? Yeah. But regardless of promotional material or whatever else led Zutara shippers to think that they were in any way in the running, they never were. It doesn't matter if there were writers on the team who wanted it. It doesn't matter if there were voice actors who wanted it. You know who didn't want it? The people actually creating and directing the show.

But, they have taken that victim complex and associated it with every aspect of being a Zutara shipper. They have crafted a narrative in which everything Bryke ever does is meant to spite Zutara shippers. Every post against Zutara from other shippers is just us being bitter or hating for no reason. When the reality is that, for most of us, we actually have no problem with Zuko and Katara's canon dynamic. The problem has always been with their shippers and their absolutely vile behavior.

Now, I fully recognize that there are plenty of people who ship Kataang who can be just as vile/problematic. I also do not condone/support that behavior. I don't think any of us need to be in the wrong tags or be bigots or anything else. I will be the first to acknowledge that fandoms always have a toxic side (and it usually involves ship discourse), and, once again, I am not naive enough to think that Kataang stans haven't been exhibiting the same behaviors since the fandom's inception. But the reality of being in this fandom for most of its "life" is that Zutara stans have been acting like that since the show aired. So, this revisionist take on what it's like to be in the Atla fandom has been truly coocoo bananas to witness.

People are as nasty as they are about Zutara because of its shippers and the constant harassment most of us have faced from them. I've said it multiple times on this blog, but I truly enjoy Zuko and Katara's canon dynamic. Am I a diehard Kataang? 100%. Would I still side-eye someone for shipping Zutara over Kataang? Most definitely. But if all it ever was was a preference for one over the other without all the disrespect, I would just think that they are wrong and move on. However, we all know that isn't the case.

The cave scene? Yeah, he only remembers it because of the healing water and it's relevance to Aang. Outside of that they truly NEVER think about the other in any meaningful way when they aren't together. I can't even think of a single thing they have in canon that is not shared with one of the other dynamics in the show. Saw some good in him? Aang did that first. Enemies to friends? Sokka and Aang also have that dynamic with him. Red and blue? Zukka is there, too. Fire and water? Sure, I guess in the way that Katara is a bender, but Sokka is also a member of the water tribe who was affected by the war just as much as Katara. Going on a field trip with Zuko? Yeah, Aang and Sokka did that, too. Losing their moms? Yeah...Sokka and Azula are right there. You have her helping him fight Azula, which I agree is stooped in symbolism, but it's actually mostly because of the Azula/Katara foil (and obviously Zuko and Azula's relationship).

Do we know what haunting the narrative means? Zuko isn't subconsciously driving Katara to be a different person, and she isn't doing that for him, either. You know who is, though? AANG. (And even then, that's also not what haunting the narrative means).

https://www.tumblr.com/iwillpunchyouinthenose/817559328047398912/all-zutaras-are-damn-weird-and-acting-like-aang

Listen I don’t like ZK either, but can we not put anti posts in that ship tag? We hate it when they post anti posts in the Kataang tag, so we shouldn’t do that ourselves.

In my personal opinion, it's Sokkaang. But I also believe that, with the exceptions of Toph (simply because I think that she has an equal relationship with Sokka, Aang, and Katara) and Suki, every member of the gaang's closest relationship is with Aang (and obviously Sokka and Katara have a close relationship as well, because duh).

So, at first, I was also confused and a bit disappointed that Zuko didn't have a scar. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that (and please correct me if I am wrong) there is no canon material that depicts him as having one. To the best of my knowledge, the only time we see Zuko with a chest scar is in fan art. The wound he has directly after redirecting the lightning is not actually a scar; it's a wound.

And honestly, it makes perfect sense to me that he wouldn't have one. Katara doesn't have scars on her hands from where Aang accidentally burned her, because she healed them. "But Kait, Katara healed Aang, and he still has a scar!" Yeah, because Azula straight up killed him. Aang was directly shot with lightning in the back; Zuko was not. He redirected Azula's lightning; he was also just a beat too late to fully control it, which is why it injured him. It was never a direct hit; it was a burn (from the inside?) that was healed very soon after he acquired it. And I know that we still see that it isn't fully healed by the end of the episode, but once again (as far as I can remember), there is no canon confirmation that there was a permanent mark there. Over time, it very well could have fully healed over and left no trace.

Idk, I just think it's interesting that this became so popular in fanon that we all just treated it as canon. But once you take a beat to actually think about it, it makes perfect sense as to why Zuko doesn't have a scar there. I think it's easy to try and reduce it into Bryke making a jab at shippers, but I don't think that's what it is at all. I think we all just ran with the headcanon and then got railroaded by the canon.

Yeah, that's a pretty common argument for them that completely ignores what we know about the characters. Listen, I love Zuko, but it's not even subtext that he doesn't understand what Katara wants or needs in that episode.

To start, Katara straight up tells this man why she hates him, and Zuko still goes to Sokka and says, "It's your sister. She hates me, and I don't know why." Yes, he then mentions that Katara keeps bringing up her mother to him, but that doesn't change the fact that he is guessing rather than fully knowing. She JUST told him why she hasn't forgiven him, and it has more to do with than just her mother. Now, I do think this was a trip Katara needed to take (obviously), and it's important that Zuko is the one who goes with her because she is conflating her anger at the FN with her anger at him. However, she still had every reason to distrust him outside of that, considering what happened in Ba Sing Se.

Now, I know that Zuko thought he was helping Katara, but he was just enabling her. They aren't even friends at this point. How is he supposed to know what Katara truly needs? He knows she's upset about her mother's death, so his plan is to help her confront the man. Sure, she needs that, but he is also doing that more for himself than for her. If Katara had forgiven Zuko along with everyone else, he never would have felt the need to take her to find Yon Rah. What Katara doesn't need, however, is to kill someone, but Zuko doesn't see that. He doesn't know who Katara is, so he doesn't know the effect that this will have on her. He just sees a way to earn her forgiveness, so he takes it. Supporting a person does not mean going along with whatever they plan to do when it will hurt them in the long run. That is quite literally enablement. He is taking her to potentially kill a man, and he sees no problem with that. And the reason he sees no problem with that has a lot to do with the environment he was raised in, the things he still believes, and the fact that he doesn't know who Katara is as a person.

Aang, on the other hand, knows who Katara is. He has always stood by her when she has stood up for herself or when she has expressed anger or rage. He cheered her on against Pakku. He committed ecoterrorism with her and helped her drive the FN soldiers out of that village. He has also seen how distraught she gets when she has to hurt people or when she sees others suffering. He held her when she learned how to bloodbend. He watched her be betrayed by Jet (which is also why he tells her that she sounds like him, not because he is trying to invalidate her, but because he is trying to express to her that she is not thinking like herself). It's the same thing Katara has done for him on numerous occasions, most specifically in "The Desert" and "The Serpent's Pass." Aang might have been too idealistic in saying that she needed to forgive Yon Rah, but he never once tried to stop her from facing him. The only thing he was trying to stop her from doing was killing him because he knew that, despite everything that she is feeling and how much she hates this man, Katara is not a killer. Sometimes, supporting someone means telling them the hard truth and standing your ground when you know they are acting out of character.

So, yeah. Aang knew what Katara needed: to express her anger and then let it out. Zuko just knew she was angry, and he wanted to help her confront Yon Rah, but he didn't understand that murder was potentially ruinous for her. Once again, this isn't to say that Zuko sucks or that I hate him; I don't. But the truth is, there is no way for him to truly have understood Katara and what she needed, when a big part of why he was even doing this in the first place was to earn her forgiveness. It was inherently selfish. If he wants to earn her forgiveness, he's just gonna be a "yes, man" because it's what he thinks he needs to do to get on her good side.

Also, another reason we know that Zuko doesn't understand Katara in this episode is that, while he is obviously very surprised to see Katara bloodbend, it is his only reaction. If he truly knew Katara, he would know that that alone was wildly out of character for her, but he doesn't. He wasn't there when she learned how to do it. He doesn't know how much it destroyed her. He just watches her do it, and then still decides she's in a stable enough mind to face Yon Rah, with no hesitation or questions about whether she's sure this is the right thing to do.

1. Everyone is hot

2. Kataang

3. Zukka

4. Zutoph