amar

Kyoshi on her way to join a criminal gang?? Sign Rangi tf up she’s going too

Aang needs to go incognito and make up a random identity??? Katara’s already made up her own character and plays the role perfectly

Korra has to find a way to help rebuild the Air Nation??? Never fear, Asami is here ditch the company she JUST saved from bankruptcy to supply a big ass airship for free

when it comes to non-canon ships there are very very few i actually fuck with or can even see the vision behind. i guess to put it simply, if i can’t see it happening in canon then i can’t find it in me to ship them, and even for the ships where i can see it happening, i don’t actively seek out content for them

non-canon ships i like

katara x jiang -> katara likes em bald and pretty idk what else to tell yall. i am fully convinced they had a lil thing for each other but there was a heist going on so they didn’t have time to worry about that

kuzaang -> i can totally see pre-iceberg aang and kuzon having an innocent early childhood crush on each other. the kind where holding hands is like legendary stuff

tyzula -> azula just gives off repressed lesbian energy and i can’t help but interpret their lil conversation in the beach episode as two gay girls who kinda like each other but dont realize it’s romantic and who also don’t wanna pass off their flirting as flirting so it’s all disguised as straight girl talk. “omg you’re like soooo pretty” and “omg you should totally ask him (me) out! you could be with anybody in this room cause you’re soooo pretty (i’m including me in that).” not to mention the way ty lee getting so much male attention hits azula close to home. i think two things can be true at once where azula is both perplexed she hasn’t had the same luck and is upset that ty lee specifically is getting attention (cause lesbian)

teoaang -> more so in the sense i could see teo maybe having a lil crush on aang

non-canon ships i don’t like (other than zutara)

(also i’m talking explicitly about how i feel about the ships, not the shippers. i don’t care if you ship them)

azutara -> just no please

sokka x azula -> i have to look away

azulaang -> it’s getting painful (really good fan art tho i must admit)

zukka -> this one doesn’t bother me as much and i can consume fanfics where they are a background pair, but i mean very very background. like they’re only ever mentioned and they contribute nothing to the story 😭

zukaang -> i made a joke once about how this ship has potential in a tier list, so this may seem hypocritical, but i made that tier list (along with every tier list posted on this acc) with an irl who got really into atla after the netflix version came out, and we died laughing putting zukaang in a tier of their own. idk it was funny as fuck in the moment and we were kinda greening out, so every time i look back at that list i giggle a lil bit. and i kind of have this ship to thank for that memory so i can’t bring myself to hate it hate it just because it makes me laugh so much and reminisce on that moment. also, great fan art. there’s this one artist who drew aang and zuko so adorably for their au and it is admittedly one of my favorite atla fanarts. but, overall, i don’t ship them together like at all

taang -> the most sibling coded pair to ever sibling code. i absolutely can’t with this one. like this is genuinely in the top worst atla ships of all time

in my opinion, azulaang is nothing like kataang other than the fact that they’re both prodigy x prodigy ships. now, katara and azula are character foils of each other so perhaps that’s where the similarities are, but even that falls flat to me when analyzing their actual relationships rather than just what they narratively represent

katara and aang are both genocide survivors who are the very last of their people (katara being the last southern waterbender—until we meet hama ofc—and aang being the last airbender). they initially connect because of this unique similarity

aang gives katara hope and joy whereas katara makes aang feel seen, included, and loved

they are friends before they are lovers

their relationship is symbolically represented in tui and la and the legend of oma and shu. they are often depicted together in the form of tui and la, as seen when they fight the serpent in the serpent’s pass and when they combine their native elements to create clouds

their native elements are complimentary of each other

katara is a healer and uses her skill set to save aang. the period when he was in a coma is canonically one of the darkest of her life

they both work to help fire nationals up close and personal in “the headband” and “the painted lady,” and are eager to help each other do so (katara and aang dancing in the cave, and aang helping her scare off the fire generals with airbending)

aang cares for her so much that he went into the avatar state simply because she was in danger, swore off an entire element after accidentally hurting her, and turned away from cosmic energy if it meant loving her any less

katara cares for aang so much that she threatened to kill zuko if he gave her one reason to think he might hurt him, and spent days at his bedside when he was in a coma

i, personally, struggle to see how azulaang could be similar

aang is a genocide victim whereas azula is a colonizer. so colonized x colonizer

azula clearly subscribed to the racist propaganda spread by her family (seen in how she calls katara a peasant), and although that is not her fault and she was groomed into being who she was, i highly doubt she ever thought highly of aang being an air nomad as a result

she literally killed him. ended his life. stopped his breathing. stopped his heart. at 12 years old. aang was dead (had it not been for katara he would’ve never woken up again)

they hardly have any canon interactions, and the ones they do have are of her actively trying to (or successfully) killing him

aang has a permanent scar on his back and foot because of her. the scar on his back will forever disrupt his cultural tattoos

while katara was painstakingly trying to bring him back to life, azula was in the fire nation palace enjoying the luxuries of colonial money while ba sing se fell

the most thought azula gave to aang post-ba sing se was if he had somehow lived (not out of any sort of care but because he’s the fire nation’s biggest threat)

in my opinion, azulaang is exactly like zutara. of course, you’re free to your own opinion and maybe you see the kataang similarities in a way that i just can’t recognize, but these are my thoughts

That being said, this is why I feel there's some similarities between the ships. Note that for Azulaang to work at all, Aang and Azula would have to get to know each other to some extent before they began a romance:

Both Azula and Katara are associated with the color blue

Both of them are powerful female benders from a different nation than Aang and slightly older than him.

Both Katara and Azula were to some degree expected to "take care of" their older brother after losing their mothers.

Both Katara and Azula are young female benders who have to struggle to achieve recognition in patriarchal societies (this is very obvious for Katara but it's also true for Azula. No other Fire Nation leader is female).

Both Katara and Azula grew up with adult-sized responsibilities being placed on them.

Likewise they both feel like they have to act as the "mature" ones

Both of them have left their marks on Aang's body. Azula when she nearly killed him, Katara when she saved him. Obviously it's not the same thing but there is an element of similarity.

Aang represented freedom to Katara, from their very first meeting, even before she knew he was the Avatar. It's easy to imagine him representing the same to Azula, who grew up in such a restrictive environment.

Both Azula and Katara are people who are powerful enough to greatly aid Aang in his Avatar duties. I'm not really sure if I'm a fan of a fic presenting things this way, but plenty of Azulaang fics do.

Water is the element of change and adaptability, but for me Katara represents power and passion rather than change and adaptability. Fire is the element of power and passion, but for me Azula represents adaptability and change rather than power and passion. I guess there's maybe this interesting thematic cross-connection going on here.

So I don't think that Azulaang and Kataang are in any way identical, but it just seems to me like they're the most similar Aang-ships, more similar to each other than stuff like Aang/Toph, Aang/Suki, Aang/Mai, Aang/Ty Lee, Aang/Yue, etc. are to either one.

And again I don't mean to argue with you. I find everything you say to be extremely valid. I just wanted to explain why the ships felt a little similar to me.

Also headcanoning Azula as a lesbian is an especially good reason not to like Azulaang. I headcanon her as lesbian myself.

in my opinion, when you add context to these points, they just sound like something a zutara would use as evidence for their ship having depth. kind of like the comparison of katara and azula “both leaving a mark on aang.” that’s true i guess, but katara never ‘made’ a mark on him technically. all she did was help the actual mark, made by azula when she murdered him, heal. so one character physically ended his life, thus leaving a mark, while the other character is the only reason he is alive even though she was unable to fully get rid said mark. so within that context, this similarity doesn’t make much sense to me

and this isn’t shade to all the azulaang shippers or to you for seeing similarities (again, ship whatever you wanna ship. i’m only sharing my thoughts cause i’ve been asked), but all these supposed comparisons sound like zutara-level reaches of how zuko and katara are just sooooo similar and soooo perfect together. meanwhile it’s all surface level stuff where the context is ignored and comparisons are drawn simply because they really want there to be comparisons

and i hope i don’t sound like a bitch in this cause i truly don’t think there’s an issue with azulaang shippers seeing these similarities, especially since fandom shipping is often about just having fun with two characters and imagining how their relationship could go. i just absolutely can’t see the potential whatsoever and the thought of them being in a relationship makes me deeply uncomfortable, as does most colonizer x colonized ships in media. so perhaps it’s my own bias getting in the way of me being able to resonate with these similarities, but i can’t see them. like at all

when it comes to non-canon ships there are very very few i actually fuck with or can even see the vision behind. i guess to put it simply, if i can’t see it happening in canon then i can’t find it in me to ship them, and even for the ships where i can see it happening, i don’t actively seek out content for them

non-canon ships i like

katara x jiang -> katara likes em bald and pretty idk what else to tell yall. i am fully convinced they had a lil thing for each other but there was a heist going on so they didn’t have time to worry about that

kuzaang -> i can totally see pre-iceberg aang and kuzon having an innocent early childhood crush on each other. the kind where holding hands is like legendary stuff

tyzula -> azula just gives off repressed lesbian energy and i can’t help but interpret their lil conversation in the beach episode as two gay girls who kinda like each other but dont realize it’s romantic and who also don’t wanna pass off their flirting as flirting so it’s all disguised as straight girl talk. “omg you’re like soooo pretty” and “omg you should totally ask him (me) out! you could be with anybody in this room cause you’re soooo pretty (i’m including me in that).” not to mention the way ty lee getting so much male attention hits azula close to home. i think two things can be true at once where azula is both perplexed she hasn’t had the same luck and is upset that ty lee specifically is getting attention (cause lesbian)

teoaang -> more so in the sense i could see teo maybe having a lil crush on aang

non-canon ships i don’t like (other than zutara)

(also i’m talking explicitly about how i feel about the ships, not the shippers. i don’t care if you ship them)

azutara -> just no please

sokka x azula -> i have to look away

azulaang -> it’s getting painful (really good fan art tho i must admit)

zukka -> this one doesn’t bother me as much and i can consume fanfics where they are a background pair, but i mean very very background. like they’re only ever mentioned and they contribute nothing to the story 😭

zukaang -> i made a joke once about how this ship has potential in a tier list, so this may seem hypocritical, but i made that tier list (along with every tier list posted on this acc) with an irl who got really into atla after the netflix version came out, and we died laughing putting zukaang in a tier of their own. idk it was funny as fuck in the moment and we were kinda greening out, so every time i look back at that list i giggle a lil bit. and i kind of have this ship to thank for that memory so i can’t bring myself to hate it hate it just because it makes me laugh so much and reminisce on that moment. also, great fan art. there’s this one artist who drew aang and zuko so adorably for their au and it is admittedly one of my favorite atla fanarts. but, overall, i don’t ship them together like at all

taang -> the most sibling coded pair to ever sibling code. i absolutely can’t with this one. like this is genuinely in the top worst atla ships of all time

in my opinion, azulaang is nothing like kataang other than the fact that they’re both prodigy x prodigy ships. now, katara and azula are character foils of each other so perhaps that’s where the similarities are, but even that falls flat to me when analyzing their actual relationships rather than just what they narratively represent

katara and aang are both genocide survivors who are the very last of their people (katara being the last southern waterbender—until we meet hama ofc—and aang being the last airbender). they initially connect because of this unique similarity

aang gives katara hope and joy whereas katara makes aang feel seen, included, and loved

they are friends before they are lovers

their relationship is symbolically represented in tui and la and the legend of oma and shu. they are often depicted together in the form of tui and la, as seen when they fight the serpent in the serpent’s pass and when they combine their native elements to create clouds

their native elements are complimentary of each other

katara is a healer and uses her skill set to save aang. the period when he was in a coma is canonically one of the darkest of her life

they both work to help fire nationals up close and personal in “the headband” and “the painted lady,” and are eager to help each other do so (katara and aang dancing in the cave, and aang helping her scare off the fire generals with airbending)

aang cares for her so much that he went into the avatar state simply because she was in danger, swore off an entire element after accidentally hurting her, and turned away from cosmic energy if it meant loving her any less

katara cares for aang so much that she threatened to kill zuko if he gave her one reason to think he might hurt him, and spent days at his bedside when he was in a coma

i, personally, struggle to see how azulaang could be similar

aang is a genocide victim whereas azula is a colonizer. so colonized x colonizer

azula clearly subscribed to the racist propaganda spread by her family (seen in how she calls katara a peasant), and although that is not her fault and she was groomed into being who she was, i highly doubt she ever thought highly of aang being an air nomad as a result

she literally killed him. ended his life. stopped his breathing. stopped his heart. at 12 years old. aang was dead (had it not been for katara he would’ve never woken up again)

they hardly have any canon interactions, and the ones they do have are of her actively trying to (or successfully) killing him

aang has a permanent scar on his back and foot because of her. the scar on his back will forever disrupt his cultural tattoos

while katara was painstakingly trying to bring him back to life, azula was in the fire nation palace enjoying the luxuries of colonial money while ba sing se fell

the most thought azula gave to aang post-ba sing se was if he had somehow lived (not out of any sort of care but because he’s the fire nation’s biggest threat)

in my opinion, azulaang is exactly like zutara. of course, you’re free to your own opinion and maybe you see the kataang similarities in a way that i just can’t recognize, but these are my thoughts

.. Aang is the Hope of the show . Katara is the Heart.