Star-Crossed Eyes & Vibes

This is an updated version of a drawing I made some years ago when I was first getting heavy into Zutara fanart. It was always a favorite, so I wanted to add the print to my shop, but realized I had improved a tad bit since I first drew it and it needed some love.

I always loved how Zuko and Katara switched colors when they were their masked identities! <3

(16/365) Zutara Week 2025 Day 2- Eclipse

Hehehe...Zutara as the sun and the 🌙☀️

🚫do not use, repost, edit my artworks, thx!

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Progress on the Blue Spirit flirting with the Painted Lady 👀🔥🌊

I don’t people realize just how important Korra’s arc in Book 4 was.

“It was racist/misogynistic/sexist!”

Shut up. Shut the fuck up. Sit down. Take several seats. Clear out your ears. Listen.

Korra’s arc will have a lasting impact on so many people. Female people. People of colour. Queer people. Mentally-ill people. People who fall into all four categories. People who fall into some. People who fall into none.

Korra’s arc and the deftness and grace with which it was handled will result in an entire generation, did you hear me, generation of people who will understand that people of colour can be powerful, that women can be powerful, that queer people can be powerful, that mentally-ill people can be powerful?

An entire generation that will understand that women are to be respected and cherished and acknowledged as people with their own agency, not objects or there for male use and benefit.

An entire generation will understand that people of colour are to be treated with respect and basic human decency, that they have their own culture and traditions, that people can live and celebrate harmoniously with each other, paying respect to the past and tradition while also forging ahead a new path for themselves and future generations.

An entire generation will understand that queer people can find love and do exist and can be someone’s entire world, multiple people’s entire worlds, and save their worlds and their own. That queer people exist and bisexual/biromantic people are real. 

An entire generation will understand that mentally-ill people do exist, that mental illnesses are real, that you can work through it and come to a better place and become happy and have meaningful relationships.

An entire generation will learn this, internalize this, find validity in their identities because of the representation on this show and the friends they’ve made who identify similarly and differently that come from all walks of life, and then do the best possible thing they can do.

An entire generation will teach the next generation these important values and ideals and essential notions and teach and enlighten and better the chances for the future generation’s self-esteem and self-worth and basic human decency and capacity to be a good person.

God forbid a mentally-ill queer woman of colour, the protagonist of her own series, experiences traumas in a line of work that by definition includes facing these threats and jeopardizing herself for the well-being of others.

Where were the lynch mobs when Aang found meaning in his suffering, after he lost his entire people and culture and way of life? Where where the lynch mobs when Katara turned her sorrow and loss into compassion? Where were the lynch mobs when Zuko found meaning in his abuse and mistreatment by his father, instead believing his struggling made him strong, and made him who he was?

Well? What? Silence? That’s what I fucking thought.

They were praised for their resilience, praised for making something out of the shit hand they were dealt, and chose to find some good and improve themselves for it. There’s a reason that they’re venerated in the fandom: Aang is a pure, beautiful cinnamon roll; Katara is the mother and goddess of our hearts; and Zuko is our precious baby, too flawless and good for this world.

But somehow Korra isn’t?

Don’t you ever, ever fucking say that Book 4 was the weakest, that Book 4 was written badly and that Bryke are problematic because they gave hope to so many people and acknowledge problems that exist that most people ignore or don’t talk about.

Don’t tell me this isn’t about a pairing not becoming canon because it is and you’re not only lying to us, you’re lying to yourself.

I hope you all look back on this one day, on the finale, and you feel such second-hand embarrassment for the closet (or proud) bigot that you are. 

An entire generation will be better off for this ending, but you want to twist it around into something ugly and nasty because God knows something has to match your personalities.

One, you are not understanding why we are upset with the conclusion of Korra’s recovery arc as presented in the show.

“Beyond the Wilds” was a wonderful conclusion to that arc. It left off with a Korra who wasn’t fully healed but had fully accepted what happened and begun to move on mentally and spiritually. That was fine.

And then they had to go ruin it with the last ten minutes of the show. Korra’s BS “I had to suffer so I could learn compassion and connect with people like Kuvira” line not only completely erases the entire point of Korra’s recovery arc but also trivializes and erases the incredible compassion she’s shown throughout the series (to Mako, to Asami, to Tarrlok, to the nonbenders, to her people in the Southern Tribe, to Eska and Desna, and during the entirety of Book 3).

She was already compassionate. She was already understanding. She was hot-headed and naive, but these do not negate the fact that those traits are simply youth that underscores her incredible compassionate and willpower to help those in need. She didn’t need to go through that incredibly traumatic event to learn compassion.

“Where were the lynch mobs when Aang found meaning in his suffering, after he lost his entire people and culture and way of life? Where where the lynch mobs when Katara turned her sorrow and loss into compassion? Where were the lynch mobs when Zuko found meaning in his abuse and mistreatment by his father, instead believing his struggling made him strong, and made him who he was?”

Repeat after me: finding meaning in suffering is not the same thing as believing you needed to undergo said suffering to become a better person. Not one of the Gaang ever had a line like that that undermined their own arcs, not like Korra.

Each of them had something terrible happen to them, and each of them moved past that into a better place. Since the progress Korra made in “Beyond the Wilds” is undermined by Korra’s “suffering for compassion” line five minutes before the entire end of the series, we are never shown any evidence that Korra has moved into that better place.

Aang didn’t spout off the idea that he had to undergo suffering, that he needed to lose his entire race to gain personal growth and a sense of compassion for those who have lost people they love. Neither did Katara, and Zuko sure as hell didn’t. Zuko in particular is a case I think you’re trying to parallel, and there are so many reasons why it doesn’t work, starting with the fact that Zuko never even attempts to say he deserved what happened to him or that it needed to happen.

“My father says she was born lucky. He says I was lucky to be born. I don’t need luck, though. I’ve always had to struggle and fight, and that’s made me strong. It made me who I am.”

Zuko: You, my father, who banished me just for talking out of turn. My father, who challenged me, a thirteen-year-old boy, to an Agni Kai. How could you possibly justify a duel with a child? Ozai: It was to teach you respect! Zuko: It was cruel! And it was wrong. Ozai: Then you have learned nothing! Zuko: No, I’ve learned everything! And I’ve had to learn it on my own!

“It was cruel! And it was wrong.” And there’s the difference. Zuko finding meaning in his suffering and believing that it made him stronger is very different from believing that the trauma he went through was something that needed to happen to him. Compare to Korra’s line:

But I finally understand why I had to go through all that. I needed to understand what true suffering was so I could be more compassionate to others, even to people like Kuvira.

Fuck that line. Damn it all to hell.

Do you see the drastic differences now? Zuko saying his struggles have made him stronger is very different from Korra saying that she needed to understand what true suffering was so that she could become more compassionate. It legitimizes what Zaheer did to her. It basically states “What Zaheer did to me is okay becasue it taught me compassion.” Yeah, fuck that. Not only does it contradict everything we know about Korra and what we’ve seen over the previous three seasons, it both undermines her entire recovery arc and legitimizes the abuse inflicted on her.

The racism and sexism complaints are about the undercurrents and implications of how the show handled Korra’s recovery: due to the aforementioned legitimization of abuse, it paints a terrible picture for how abuse victims (particularly women, and particularly non-white women) should view and respond to their suffering: as something that is justified becasue they need to be taught something, becasue they were not good enough before the trauma and abuse occured/started occuring. It normalizes and provides a justification for abuse and mental trauma. And that, my dear friend, is not something that people will look back on as “empowering” for an entire generation of people, including non-white people, women, and abuse victims.

Compare that line with Korra’s line in “Beyond the Wilds”:

Mako: Do you think you’re finally able to forget about what Zaheer did to you? Korra: No. But I am finally able to accept what happened and I think that’s gonna make me stronger.

That was Korra accepting what she went through and beginning to move on.That is Korra echoing Zuko’s arc. Not the compassion line in the finale.

And actually, you trying to parallel Zuko with Korra makes me laugh, and you know why? Because you sound like Ozai, that’s why. 

“You will learn respect and suffering will be your teacher!” Ozai burned and abused Zuko in order to teach him respect, in order to teach him a lesson. Zuko grew up and came back with “It was cruel, and it was wrong, and I learned nothing from you.” Meanwhile, over in Korra-land, Korra looks at the abuse she suffered at Zaheer’s hands and goes “Nah, it’s okay. I understand that I needed to learn compassion.” It’s the equivalent of Zuko telling Ozai that he understands why Ozai abused him, burned his face, and exiled him and that it was something he needed to go through in order to become a better person. But that didn’t happen to Zuko. Instead we get, “It was cruel. And it was wrong.” If you want to get a little deeper, you could look at why Bryke felt Zuko’s trauma and abuse could be flat-out stated to be cruel, wrong, and unneeded while they felt the need to justify Korra’s suffering with false reasoning. Justifying suffering is not the same as finding meaning in suffering.

Bryke having Korra finding meaning in suffering is her statement in “Beyond the Wilds.” Bryke having Korra justify suffering is that final conversation with Tenzin. And that’s a terrible place to leave your main character at the end of the freaking show. For more on that, see here. Korra didn’t need to be ‘taught’ compassion, and she sure as hell didn’t need to undergo the trauma she did to be taught it. She’d already been through “true suffering” (unless you don’t count the removal of her bending and the trauma she went through during Harmonic Convergence as “true suffering”).

She basically underwent the exact same arc twice: first in Book 1 with the removal of her bending and then in Book 4. And yes, the resolution of that arc in Book 1 was rushed and executed within the space of half an episode. But that resolution left off in a much healthier and much more satisfying place that Book 4′s long and protracted recovery arc did. Book 4 handled the execution of a recovery arc better. Books 1 and 2 handled the resolution of those recovery arcs far better. Just look at “Endgame” and “Light in the Dark” if you don’t believe me.

And your whole laundry list of reasons people will look back on this show as empowering forgets one very important detail: with the exception of “mentally ill,” every single thing on your list was true of the show before Book 4 and applied to Korra before her trauma. Every. single. one. Korra was already subversive and revolutionary and inspiring before Book 4. Her recovery arc did not magically make her any of these things.

And you’re still not listening to our complaints. As I discussed back in Book 1 after Korra’s bending was removed, crap happens to protagonists, and Korra should not be excused from this rule just because she is a woman. It’s not the trauma we’re concerned with: it’s how they handled the aftermath. The arc is not the problem; the resolution of that arc is. Bryke went ¾ of the way and nearly got there with “Beyond the Wilds” only to undermine the whole damn arc in the last ten minutes of the show.

I love Korra. She is a wonderful and complex character, all passion and fire and compassion and so much heart. And that’s why I’m so outraged, months later, over the crappy hand she (and by extension, the audience) were dealt: yes, I will call Book 4 crappily and sloppily written. There were high points (Korra Alone, Beyond the Wilds, bits and pieces in between), but there were so many low points I can’t even begin to put them all into words. Several character arcs were rushed and sloppily handled, several important characters were sidelined–again (hello Asami. Hello Jinora, hello Kai, hello Airbabies and the Kataang children), unimportant comic relief characters were elevated to b-plot status (Wu) or got an inordinate amount of lines for their relative importance (Meelo, Varrick), there were plot points and entire arcs that made little to no sense, and there were several other pacing and writing issues, including the complete non-presence of proper romantic development for Korra and Asami. Stop erasing the sloppiness of Book 4′s execution, and stop glorifying Bryke and dismissing their mistakes.

Yes: how Bryke handled Korra’s recovery is extremely problematic, because they ended up doing so by justifying and legitimizing the trauma she went through and erasing her actions and characterization during the first three books and the progress she made during “Korra Alone” and “Beyond the Wilds.” An entire generation will not be “better off” with this ending; an entire generation would be “better off” if the “compassion” line didn’t exist (or was clarified and edited to erase the dangerous implications) and if Korra’s characterization hadn’t been so terribly undermined during those last ten minutes.

Bryan and Mike’s sexism in Legend of Korra really jumps out a lot at you in hindsight, and their radically dissonant treatment of Zuko’s trauma and Korra’s trauma is one of those glaringly obvious examples.

Zuko was allowed to recognize and indicate that his suffering was not deserved nor was it necessary for him to grow (even as the narrative COULD have gone in that direction by pointing out that his trauma and banishment are what set him on his path of growth). 

He didn’t need to be abused, get half his face burnt off by his father, and get banished for three years to become a good person. His trauma was not necessary for him to “become more compassionate/understanding.” It was incidentally part of the reason WHY he became a better person (because said trauma caused him to interact with people outside of the Fire Nation and realize the realities of the war), but it was still cruel and wrong, and ATLA makes no effort to justify Ozai’s abuse and awfulness. In fact, Zuko explicitly calls out Ozai on this point, saying “How could you possibly justify a duel with a child?“ 

“It was to teach you respect!” Ozai says, to which Zuko responds “It was cruel! And it was wrong!” And it was, because there is nothing that can be said that will justify or excuse what Ozai did to Zuko.

Meanwhile, Korra (who had already gone through three seasons worth of growth and was already incredibly compassionate) was supposed to find “meaning” in her suffering and had the narrative justify putting her through incredibly debilitating, long-lasting physical and mental trauma by implying that she “deserved” what happened to her. That it needed to happen. That she was required to undergo suffering to learn a lesson. 

And I’ve talked about this before (both here and here), back five years ago when it was a lot fresher in my mind, but the compassion line infuriates me because it completely invalidates and trivializes the entire reason she ended up poisoned, suffering, and traumatized in the first place. Her compassion and selflessness were the reason she was in that wheelchair, because she gave up herself to the Red Lotus to save Tenzin, his family, and the airbenders. “Help me save the airbenders, and then you can worry about saving me,” she says one episode before being chained up, tortured, and nearly murdered in three separate ways (the poison, the fight, and Zaheer’s attempted asphyxiation). She was already selfless. She was already compassionate. And she certainly didn’t need to be nearly tortured and murdered to learn how to empathize with other people.

Up until the Book 4 finale, Korra’s recovery arc had been actually fairly well-handled, all things considered. None of the characters blamed her for taking the time she needed to physically and mentally recover, no one blamed her for not being ‘ready’ to come back to Republic City, and no one blamed her for not being the same person she was before Zaheer. There was some resentment at being absent from her friends’ lives (re: Asami in “Reunion”), but her friends and family were generally understanding. 

Meanwhile, Korra’s frustration and anger at not being able to “go back to normal” was also well-handled (again, all things considered). “Korra Alone,” “The Calling,” and “Beyond the Wilds” do a generally excellent job of portraying how convoluted the path of recovery is, and “Beyond the Wilds” even re-tread the lessons taught back in ATLA’s “The Southern Raiders” with regard to how Korra settled her past with Zaheer:

Mako: So … how are you doing? Korra: I feel … whole again. I feel good. Mako: Do you think you’re finally able to forget about what Zaheer did to you? Korra: No. But I am finally able to accept what happened and I think that’s gonna make me stronger.

She doesn’t forgive Zaheer for what he did or forget that it happened, but she was able to accept that it did happen to her and that she has risen above it. And if the recovery arc commentary had stopped there, it would have been great! She felt healed, and there was no justification or rationalization for what she went through. Sometimes life sucks, people hate you, and shit happens; it doesn’t mean that you deserve what happens to you. And as far as “Beyond the Wilds” was concerned, that was the narrative! We were ALMOST at “It was cruel, and it was wrong!” levels.

……….and then the finale happened. 

……….and then the “compassion line” happened.

……….and then Bryke decided to invalidate not only how Korra’s recovery arc had been portrayed up to that point, but also her growth throughout the show AND the lessons imparted to viewers in Avatar: The Last Airbender. 

They decided that showing Korra internalizing her trauma and growing from it only through the perspective of “well I deserved it, because I needed to be taught a lesson” (something women IRL often do, by the way) was preferable to “sometimes bad things happen to you because of the cruelty of others. You don’t deserve it and you are more than what happened to you.” And they just…put that message out there in the last five minutes of the entire show, uncritiqued and un-remarked upon. It’s sickening.

It was cruel, and it was wrong, and it shows a baffling lack of basic compassion and empathy on Bryke’s part for their own protagonist that they felt the need to justify putting her through a season and a half of absolute hell with the Korra equivalent of “it was to teach you respect.” It wasn’t to “teach her compassion,” it was just an excuse to break Korra down and do a one-season speedrun of the growth she’d already been through in Books 1-3. 

Because Korra was too “arrogant” and “confident in her own abilities,” she needed to be “humbled” through trauma. And it was something they NEVER would have done to Zuko even if they’d been given the content rating bump that Korra received, despite the fact that Zuko was far more arrogant than Korra ever was (and yet was allowed to grow out of that arrogance organically through personal interaction with the people he and his nation had harmed without further trauma being done to his person). 

south indian wedding zutara

The unintentional parallel of young, teenage villain Zuko talking a bunch of shit about how the safety of his crew doesn't matter but doing the right thing when the time comes and putting the safety of the crew above his goals and years later A.ang as a grown ass man and alleged hero of the story selfishly putting his goals above everyone else's lives and getting them all killed for it.

The unintentional parallel of Zuko selflessly giving his life for Katara and Katara healing him and then years later A.ang's selfishness getting everyone killed but it's okay cause he's got the Katara ex Machina magic healing water plot armor to save him and everyone else from the consequences of his selfish choices. How Katara saved herself, him, and everyone else after he put them all in harms way, while over a decade prior she was saved by Zuko who was acting selflessly, facing his sister alone to prevent Katara from being hurt, and then she saved him after he sacrificed himself.

Zuko protects Katara by facing Azula alone -> Zuko nearly DIES for Katara, sacrificing his own life and the success of their mission so that she can live -> Katara protects Zuko, defeats Azula, and repays his sacrifice by saving his life

Push, pull.

A.ang puts Katara and everyone else in danger by trusting a complete stranger -> A.ang gets everyone including Katara killed by putting his own goals over the lives of his friends -> A.ang gets HIMSELF killed -> it's okay bc Katara resurrects herself and everyone else, repays him for putting them all in danger and getting them all killed by bringing him back to life and no one is even a little bit mad about it.

Push, push, push, push. Take and take and take. No reciprocity.

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

This torches everything. And I do mean everything.

A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):

ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives

allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason

preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies

requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.

What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.

Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:

"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"

This year’s is different. They are now federal REQUIREMENTS, which means there’s no flexibility. As was said previously, the 400 pages are not singularly devoted to being absolute shitheads to trans people. Theres a lot of stuff in there, some of which is the standard dry boring grants stuff, some of which is the horrible ideological warfare outlined above.

This document is issued by the OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, which is currently lead by fucking Russell Vought, the principal architect of Project 2025. This is how they’re going to implement all the horrible shit in there that wasn’t covered by Executive Order. Russell Vought is actively coming for my job, my marriage, and my kid, and most of my friends lost their jobs last year because of him. He is the fucking arch villain behind the heinous shit the current regime is doing.

There's also some broad categories:

which include subtypes for lots of different animals (swan, seal, fox, bear, tiger, deer, insect, etc)

In the ATU it's tale type 400:

And more general 402:

some more selkie-specific ones here on this page, Christiansen's type ML 4080:

Those links don't have all of them but it's a good starting point. And always gotta rec OSP

The thing is, there’s no way to know where these people are coming from. In the before, when fandom was more in the corners we all knew about, you could search LJ or a message board or whatever social bookmarking site we were using. You could join the community and participate.

You could get a little dopamine hit by seeing someone tell their friends why they loved your story.

Anymore, those recs are hidden in discords, or in tiktoks or instagram slideshows that you can’t search for. They’re inaccessible, not discoverable unless you’re already there. You may never know why 27 people left kudos on an old story of yours, what they liked and found in your writing. You just get the thumbs up and a kinda lonely feeling, cause these could be your people. You could like them, maybe. You could be friends.

But you’ll never find out why they stopped by, or what people are saying about you behind your back, and that’s sad.