In headcanons outlining a mutual respect and affinity between Katara and Zuko after the war a lot of us do revel in that dynamic presenting itself through a big family. Not only because being a wife and mother isn't a bad thing, but because we know that it can be a great thing when she has a partner who will support her like Zuko would.
What he doesn't do usually do in headcanons and fanfiction, is demand an heir. Rarely, if ever, is Zuko the one insisting that she's the only person available to him as a vessel for his kingly line.
This is not an argument we make in the fandom.
This is not a factor for us.
Zuko could give fuck all about his "line" and never is it her job to fulfill that for him.
Aang stans on the other hand...
And there's a very good reason why they often revert to that mindset: it's all over canon.
It's repeatedly held up by the creators and their favorite poster child for unrequited babysitter fantasies as his right and her responsibility.
They're just so blinded by UwU Aang that they can't see how broken that argument is.
It's so like "Mr. Burns trying to be good but winding up more evil as a result." It's like an alien from outer space heard about feminism once and only had a vague idea of what it was.
The claim that Katara having Zuko's babies is worse for her because they aren't deemed NECESSARY is exactly WHY Kataang shippers get that criticism (also not getting away from the conservative allegations). Katara having children with someone she loves is beautiful, but in no world does she NEED to give some man a child just so they can have their heir, and it's not more important for Katara to have Aang's babies than Zuko's, or anyone else's, because it's Katara's body, first and foremost.
Just for this, I'm headcanoning that Katara gets her tubes tied so she can have lots of recreational non-procreative sex with Zuko.
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I'm not saying Aαng should have killed Ozai, I'm just saying Aαng and Katara don't share the same values.
Katara seems to think that losing one's bending as a punishment is worse than death, so actually, Aαng could be right about taking away Ozai's bending (that's not the subject of this post though).
However, I think this difference in principles and morals is way to important to not point out. Maybe it could work if none of them ever acted on these values, but Aαng already did. I don't think you can be a happy healthy married couple if you disagree on this topic.
Aαng values life (as being not dead) and not killing above living, as Katara thinks, as who you truly are. And I don't think Aαng understands her, he never had to hide being a bender like she did most of her life, or Haru when his town was controlled by the Fire Nation, or Zuko as a refugee in Ba Sing Se. And he doesn't know what it feels like to know you can bend but you actually can't because you never had the chance to learn (Katara) or because you lost it (Zuko).
Actually, we already knew about Katara's opinion on the importance of bending as being part of one's identity, as early as Book 1 Episode 6.
And we know that Katara doesn't have a no kill rule.
I think it's interesting to have Aang not consider this because Aang does consider his airbending as a part of his identity. He never had to hide it - and this is another way the narrative contrives to shield him, because he was magically frozen before he had to live in a world where airbenders were hunted - but he sure does sneer at Teo and the others initially for not being real airbenders.
The difference in these two perspectives is that Katara looks at it from a place of empathy, even for someone she doesn't like. Aang looks at it from a perspective of what would most preserve his own values.
I agree. I don't think either of them is right or wrong, I understand both of them. I'm just pointing out that that's a major difference in values to have in a couple.
I'd just add that it's pretty bold of Aang to accuse his closest friends of not understanding him when he himself doesn't seem to know how to put himself in other people's shoes. Even bolder of him to agree to kill Zuko when he wouldn't kill Ozai (but that is another topic of its own).
Yeah, I agree. I actually am less sympathetic to Aang here, because it makes his pacifism less about actually wanting peace and more about keeping his hands clean. Katara is the one who cares deeply about other people. I was being critical of Aang when I said he is not looking at things from a place of empathy, because he cares about his own bending but doesn't seem to consider that other people care about theirs. And I think empathy is essential to someone who claims to be a pacifist.
I think his values aren't bad in and of themselves. But Aang never questions them and wants to stick to them no matter what's at stake. As a result, his intentions aren't always focused on doing good, not really. They are focused on making sure he follows his values.
I agree. I meant the values he were taught and is trying to follow aren't bad. And I think he thinks he is doing good by following them. But there is a difference between I do good and I do it by following my values, and I would do good because I follow my values, which are good. And I think Aang does the latter.
my last comment on this subject but it’s truly despicable that the host of kataraweek and friends would lie about people’s actions like this. just stand on the fact that you blocked ppl bc they were zks.
my twitter page has NEVER posted either of these “excuses” and it’s disgusting to even imply that i as a BIPOC, have done so. equally disappointed in people’s ability to believe lies like this so easily, and spread misinformation. none of my social media is ever a safe space to speak ill on BIPOC. i have ALWAYS held the opinion that BIPOC opinions are valid; even for those who are uncomfortable with zk. this is beyond reproachable.
From what I saw, they blocked people who "associated" with people who allegedly did those things, which means people who reblogged from popular zutara creators.
Like when they say people call Katara a human incubator, they mean people who say that canon treated her like a human incubator. There's an obvious difference that they're ignoring because they are anti zutara.
And when they say people who cracked anti indigenous jokes, they mean people who mocked zutara antis who sent harassment to zutara shippers over just shipping zutara. They specifically referred to blocking people who reblogged Dema's art, which is a lot of the zutara fandom because she's very popular, because Dema responded to people calling her racist FOR SHIPPING ZUTARA with a joke using the same words that were used against her, and kataang shippers decided that there are rules for thee and not for me, and weaponized the genocide of indigenous Americans against her for that.
It's all based around shipping discourse and very obviously a hate campaign against zutara shippers, while trying to claim it's about Katara when it's not.
In general, though, from what I can see this person should not be running a fandom event even without the obvious shipping bias, because they also are anti proship and are trying to police depictions of the character on a wider scale as well. When I see the word pedophilia thrown around it's an obvious red flag that this person does not know what the fuck they are doing.
I'm not saying Aαng should have killed Ozai, I'm just saying Aαng and Katara don't share the same values.
Katara seems to think that losing one's bending as a punishment is worse than death, so actually, Aαng could be right about taking away Ozai's bending (that's not the subject of this post though).
However, I think this difference in principles and morals is way to important to not point out. Maybe it could work if none of them ever acted on these values, but Aαng already did. I don't think you can be a happy healthy married couple if you disagree on this topic.
Aαng values life (as being not dead) and not killing above living, as Katara thinks, as who you truly are. And I don't think Aαng understands her, he never had to hide being a bender like she did most of her life, or Haru when his town was controlled by the Fire Nation, or Zuko as a refugee in Ba Sing Se. And he doesn't know what it feels like to know you can bend but you actually can't because you never had the chance to learn (Katara) or because you lost it (Zuko).
Actually, we already knew about Katara's opinion on the importance of bending as being part of one's identity, as early as Book 1 Episode 6.
And we know that Katara doesn't have a no kill rule.
I think it's interesting to have Aang not consider this because Aang does consider his airbending as a part of his identity. He never had to hide it - and this is another way the narrative contrives to shield him, because he was magically frozen before he had to live in a world where airbenders were hunted - but he sure does sneer at Teo and the others initially for not being real airbenders.
The difference in these two perspectives is that Katara looks at it from a place of empathy, even for someone she doesn't like. Aang looks at it from a perspective of what would most preserve his own values.
I agree. I don't think either of them is right or wrong, I understand both of them. I'm just pointing out that that's a major difference in values to have in a couple.
I'd just add that it's pretty bold of Aang to accuse his closest friends of not understanding him when he himself doesn't seem to know how to put himself in other people's shoes. Even bolder of him to agree to kill Zuko when he wouldn't kill Ozai (but that is another topic of its own).
Yeah, I agree. I actually am less sympathetic to Aang here, because it makes his pacifism less about actually wanting peace and more about keeping his hands clean. Katara is the one who cares deeply about other people. I was being critical of Aang when I said he is not looking at things from a place of empathy, because he cares about his own bending but doesn't seem to consider that other people care about theirs. And I think empathy is essential to someone who claims to be a pacifist.
I think his values aren't bad in and of themselves. But Aang never questions them and wants to stick to them no matter what's at stake. As a result, his intentions aren't always focused on doing good, not really. They are focused on making sure he follows his values.
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I'm not saying Aαng should have killed Ozai, I'm just saying Aαng and Katara don't share the same values.
Katara seems to think that losing one's bending as a punishment is worse than death, so actually, Aαng could be right about taking away Ozai's bending (that's not the subject of this post though).
However, I think this difference in principles and morals is way to important to not point out. Maybe it could work if none of them ever acted on these values, but Aαng already did. I don't think you can be a happy healthy married couple if you disagree on this topic.
Aαng values life (as being not dead) and not killing above living, as Katara thinks, as who you truly are. And I don't think Aαng understands her, he never had to hide being a bender like she did most of her life, or Haru when his town was controlled by the Fire Nation, or Zuko as a refugee in Ba Sing Se. And he doesn't know what it feels like to know you can bend but you actually can't because you never had the chance to learn (Katara) or because you lost it (Zuko).
Actually, we already knew about Katara's opinion on the importance of bending as being part of one's identity, as early as Book 1 Episode 6.
And we know that Katara doesn't have a no kill rule.
I think it's interesting to have Aang not consider this because Aang does consider his airbending as a part of his identity. He never had to hide it - and this is another way the narrative contrives to shield him, because he was magically frozen before he had to live in a world where airbenders were hunted - but he sure does sneer at Teo and the others initially for not being real airbenders.
The difference in these two perspectives is that Katara looks at it from a place of empathy, even for someone she doesn't like. Aang looks at it from a perspective of what would most preserve his own values.
I agree. I don't think either of them is right or wrong, I understand both of them. I'm just pointing out that that's a major difference in values to have in a couple.
I'd just add that it's pretty bold of Aang to accuse his closest friends of not understanding him when he himself doesn't seem to know how to put himself in other people's shoes. Even bolder of him to agree to kill Zuko when he wouldn't kill Ozai (but that is another topic of its own).
Yeah, I agree. I actually am less sympathetic to Aang here, because it makes his pacifism less about actually wanting peace and more about keeping his hands clean. Katara is the one who cares deeply about other people. I was being critical of Aang when I said he is not looking at things from a place of empathy, because he cares about his own bending but doesn't seem to consider that other people care about theirs. And I think empathy is essential to someone who claims to be a pacifist.
It may just be me, but I think Iroh's lore drop that he invented how to redirect lightning when he "studied waterbenders" is astonishingly neglected... The conflict and motivation for Katara's arc in Book One are driven by the lack of teachers who can pass on waterbending, as the Fire Nation systematically attacked the Southern Water Tribe, imprisoned waterbenders, and deprived the culture of the embodied knowledge and practitioners needed to keep waterbending alive. Hama gives us a brutal testimony of how the Fire Nation treated waterbenders. So, while Katara is severed from waterbenders and their knowledge, Iroh, the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation, somehow has access to waterbenders to extract the knowledge and insight from studying them to develop one of the most sophisticated firebending techniques in canon.
When he lectures Zuko on the elements and speaks of the waterbenders he "studied," he does so primarily to teach his nephew what they gain from appropriating knowledge of peoples that his family has been oppressing and annihilating for several generations. In other words, Iroh approached waterbenders and their knowledge as a resource for him to advance firebending. It's wild that ATLA (including when Zuko instructs Aang who cheerfully points out how this technique reminds him of waterbending) frames this piece of Iroh lore as a reason to admire him, because the moment you ask, "Okay, and how did he study waterbenders when his country has been actively at war with them and hunting the waterbenders of the South down for a whole generation...?"
Canon doesn't care (and I deem it very likely that the writers didn't think about the implications), but I do. Since I'm currently rewriting Hama's story anyway, I'll take this piece of Iroh lore as a prompt to overhaul the worldbuilding more extensively: Iroh is not uniquely enlightened for studying waterbenders, but for the raids on the Southern Water Tribe and the systematic abduction of the waterbenders aimed at studying them. That was the strategic objective of the relentless raids over years.
As far as we know, the four nations "lived in harmony" before the Fire Nation declared war. The army may genuinely not know at first how to engage waterbenders systematically in an environment that gives them a significant strategic advantage against the navy, because waterbenders can mobilize the ocean. They don't fight with ammunition; they fight with the battlefield against the Fire Nation's ammunition. That's terrifying.
Instead of sending a fleet, the initial raids and abductions aim to learn how to wage war against waterbenders who are surrounded by water, ice, and snow at any given moment. Fire is quite vulnerable to water, after all, because water extinguishes fire.
So, the Fire Nation collects data from every raid, documents and analyzes exploitable weaknesses, and tests different strategies and timing to tailor warfare and training in iterations accordingly. The abducted waterbenders become vital because they are turned into living training material for the soldiers. In the version canon gives us through Hama's testimony, waterbenders are held in cages and kept from bending under all circumstances. The question is why? Why go to such lengths? The construction, maintenance, and staffing of these prisons (which apparently hold the entire waterbender population of the South Pole) must be expensive. The Fire Nation isn't shy about eliminating an entire nation in one campaign, as they demonstrated with the Air Nomads. So, why keep waterbenders alive?
For my Hama AU, I decided to integrate the prison into the compounds of military academies. Hama and her comrades are held under conditions that prevent all waterbending, but the guards regularly transfer them in rotation to a training arena, where they have to waterbend to survive fighting soldiers in training.
In the Boiling Rock episode, we see that the Fire Nation controls firebending prisoners by literally cooling them down, strongly indicating that lower temperatures weaken firebenders. I think it's reasonable that this cooling technique is quite old because before the war, the only benders the Fire Nation would've needed to imprison were firebenders. The training arenas are equipped with the same mechanisms that allow instructors to adjust the temperature: at first, the temperatures are comfortable, even favorable for the firebenders, so they can focus on studying how waterbenders fight. The better the firebenders get, the more the instructors lower the temperatures to push their bodies to generate heat and mobilize energy under conditions that weaken them while strengthening their opponents, simulating combat conditions at the South Pole. The Fire Nation forces the abducted waterbenders to teach its soldiers how to fight them better. Analysts observe and record the sessions in detail to catalog waterbending forms, adjust training doctrines for the drills, update manuals, and design firebending techniques specifically to counter commonly observed waterbending forms, test those inventions in subsequent combat simulation sessions, and refine them through iterations. The arenas are a training ground and a highly methodical firebending military laboratory.
At first, the purpose of the abducted waterbenders from the South is limited to optimizing warfare against the Water Tribes. However, after a few years, the instructors notice that waterbenders make firebenders better firebenders. They are invaluable assets.
As Iroh explains, water is the element of change. Even after years, the analysts notice that these waterbender subjects never seem to run out of new ideas. Their capacity to improvise is genuinely admired among officers and relentlessly exploited: since the waterbenders keep adapting, they, too, can keep innovating. Their primary interests shift from optimizing waterbending specifically to advancing military firebending in general, as the war increasingly produces its own branch of firebending.
To train as many soldiers as fast and as efficiently as possible, masters started to radically standardize and simplify forms. The pro was reduced training time and higher accessibility; art and style were sacrificed in favor of aggression and speed. The con was far less flexibility and a narrower range of attacks; the more automated the muscle memory, the lower the responsiveness and capacity to improvise, because highly standardized training focused on repeating sequences rather than learning to combine isolated forms and figures.
Fighting waterbenders mitigates these downsides, and continuing to study their adaptations keeps firebending adaptive and flexible, which makes it harder for earthbenders to fight the Fire Nation soldiers because the repertoire keeps growing and becoming unpredictable.
As a young Crown Prince, Iroh studies waterbenders in the arenas and in direct combat under controlled conditions, a significant part of his training as a soldier and officer. He perfects his lightning technique in simulation battles with them. He learns to redirect lightning by observing how waterbenders defend themselves against his attacks. Iroh eventually masters a version of lightning redirection that doesn't involve waterbending by appropriating the original defenses his "test subjects" develop to survive him.
I'm not saying Aαng should have killed Ozai, I'm just saying Aαng and Katara don't share the same values.
Katara seems to think that losing one's bending as a punishment is worse than death, so actually, Aαng could be right about taking away Ozai's bending (that's not the subject of this post though).
However, I think this difference in principles and morals is way to important to not point out. Maybe it could work if none of them ever acted on these values, but Aαng already did. I don't think you can be a happy healthy married couple if you disagree on this topic.
Aαng values life (as being not dead) and not killing above living, as Katara thinks, as who you truly are. And I don't think Aαng understands her, he never had to hide being a bender like she did most of her life, or Haru when his town was controlled by the Fire Nation, or Zuko as a refugee in Ba Sing Se. And he doesn't know what it feels like to know you can bend but you actually can't because you never had the chance to learn (Katara) or because you lost it (Zuko).
Actually, we already knew about Katara's opinion on the importance of bending as being part of one's identity, as early as Book 1 Episode 6.
And we know that Katara doesn't have a no kill rule.
I think it's interesting to have Aang not consider this because Aang does consider his airbending as a part of his identity. He never had to hide it - and this is another way the narrative contrives to shield him, because he was magically frozen before he had to live in a world where airbenders were hunted - but he sure does sneer at Teo and the others initially for not being real airbenders.
The difference in these two perspectives is that Katara looks at it from a place of empathy, even for someone she doesn't like. Aang looks at it from a perspective of what would most preserve his own values.
The original organizer of Katara Week 2026 has put out this big nonsensical, out of context, twisting statement "proving" that Zutara shippers were kept out of the space for being "problematic".
Many of these instances are people attacking ZK artists in bad faith, looking for reasons to insist that anything and everything they do is "problematic". Such as an artist drawing a husband and wife on a trip and the husband hogging the blankets as a response back to an anti's hate mail. They are insisting that this was wrong to depict, twisting it into a reference to a real life atrocity, and saying anyone who follows that artist deserves to be barred from the event.
They also pointed out an artist who clearly has always drawn Katara as a WOC, clearly a brown woman, for not having the precise right shade provided by Bryke. They said if you did not call this person out for this that you then, too, are subject to being banned from Katara Week.
It's a bizarre witch hunt with performative activist nonsense to the point of insanity. That's why this space exists. Not once did we claim to make these prompts, but the original organizer did not etiher. The community did, including people now banned for frivolous reasons.
They also said that if you follow someone who "sexualized the natla cast" then you are barred. Mind you, they were thirsting over a 23-year-old Dallas Liu.
They also apparently are banning people if they follow someone who made an "incest joke"… the joke in question? It's quite literally the plot of Star Wars. It's a joke to the story of Luke and Leia.
Some of them are things I do not even understand the context of because they are fandoms I know nothing about, and many others probably also know nothing about. But apparently, if you don't unfollow people because the almighty says they're bad, despite having 0 context, then you, too, by association, must be banned.
Some of them are about punishing people who made earnest mistakes and profusely apologized and vowed to do better, and if you dared to give that person another chance and you still follow them, then you are to be banned.
Some of them are about out of context screenshots from a group chat they weirdly made a fake account to infiltrate. So if you follow these people who talked about a fanfiction and laughed at its absurdity and then it was posted out of context with the insiduous intention from the get-go of creating a smear campaign, then you, too, should be ostracized.
(I am intentionally being vague about names and specifics here because I do not at all want to further publicize the artists and accounts that will likely soon be subject to harassment because of the original organizer's cruel, yet comical, post.)
A couple are legitimate, concerning issues being raised, but I still think it is bizarre to go through everyone's followers and damn them for association. Not everyone is chronically online as this organizer.
This is puritanical, anti-fandom, anti-creative expression, rigid witch hunt. This person has actively been harassing real people over pixels for many years now. I don't even go on twitter, there's another mod handling twitter because I could not handle that hellhole.
But their list is about 15 tweets long of bizarre accusations and claiming that if you follow people who did this stupid x, y, or z — you're out! As if that's not some insane level of gatekeeping. There is no equal measure for people who ship KA or just hate ZK, either, despite a myriad of questionable things coming from anti ZK camps. Yet, they keep claiming that they did nothing wrong and did not bring shipping into it. Which is comical.
The original organizer of the Katara Week 2026 event on twitter also follows someone who made multiple anti-Black jokes to a real life Black woman. Her mutual mocked this woman's hair, comparing it to ramen noodles, and her mutuals all still try to excuse and defend this behavior. They also made racist comments using slurs towards her and deragatory statements comparing her to a beast.
They also are not barring anyone who was mutuals with a user who made K** jokes and was antisemitic and anti-Black. Many of this person's mutuals have a history of being racist and prejudiced towards real people in the defense of imagined scenarios about ATLA characters. They use blanket statements that shipping ZK period is "racist", so it's justified to harass, demean, and use racist language to these very real people in the pixels' names.
Twitter is a website full of incels, neo Nazis, and an echo chamber from hell. It is no logner the town square. This type of weird, puritanical, policing behavior under a guise of leftism is hackneyed and the antithesis of fandom. The way they behave is extremely right wing, which is why it thrives on "X" and not on tumblr. They use "woke" language to cover it and make absurd claims with a veneer of being morally superior, but it's extreme right wing policies and evangelical attitudes being implemented here.
Folks who have been around the block see through this, but newer fandom people and younger folks do not and are susceptible to it. This was very blatantly exclusionary and done to be mean spirited and hateful. They are now playing victim while saying that this event is doing so, when they are the ones who instigated it all.
Any normal person running a character event, bare minimum, would just make a new account for it, and just reblog all the non-offensive content for the event. This account will always do that. Going out of the way to use your own petty grievances dressed up as activist issues is precisely why this is happening. This was a discourse of your own making.
It is no secret that these prompts are taken from the original event that myself and the co-mod did not organize. This is intentionally a space put together so people who voted on these prompts and submitted them can still partake in the event.
Many Zutara shippers submitted those prompt ideas, so you can stay it's "stolen" from you, but you did not come up with these ideas. These are not YOUR prompts. They are everyone's ideas. So I think everyone should be allowed to use them. Nothing is being "stolen" because none of it is your creative vision. It was a collaborative creative idea by people across the board who like Katara's character. It's unfair to box people out of that when they helped make it and the so-called rationale given is pathetic.
This event will solely focus on Katara and her character. The discourse has unfortunately overshadowed her character because the organizer decided to stoke the flames of shipping wars instead of remaining neutral and allowing everyone to partake. They made up about 25 tyrannical reasons to ban people and they all happen to have to do with Zutara, and nothing to do with any other ship and questionable instances they have had. Yet, they insist it's nothing to do with shipping. The track record says otherwise.
I am not the same person as the twitter/bluesky mod. I do not have a twitter because I value my mental health (no offense, y'all lol). But I do know about the insane harassment and vitriol that antis have created and made twitter an uninhabitable place for anyone who doesn't agree with their exact interpretation of ATLA. If you don't, then you should be harassed. You must perfectly adhere to their vision of the pixels, or they will cherry pick something to accuse you of and burn you at the stake for it. If you're on their team though, what you do to others on the "other side" in the name of pixels is totally fair game.
I know this is a lot of discussion in defense of ZK shippers, but this is absolutely not a ZK space or event. It is an anti-harassment, anti-bullying, anti-antis, anti-witch hunt, fully inclusive space so long as no real bigotry is present. This is for Katara fans. That's it. It doesn't matter what you ship or if you ship at all. This is just about celebrating Katara.
This has become riddled with discourse, unfortunately, but there was hardly a way around it with the instigating at the orignal's helm. Hopefully, October's event will be a lot more peaceful and folks from all fandom spaces can actually come together for once without the discourse shipping often causes and just find common ground in the adoration of Katara's character.
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...ok I know I said that I was gonna only do one prompt for @zutaraweek, but turns out I was inspired enough to try and do another one!
I actually had a lot of ideas for the "time" prompt, but where I decided to land on was "time of day", so in this case "nighttime & daytime"; and as we all know she rises with the moon, and he rises with the sun lol
Hi! I was wondering if you had any ideas of a prompt for Zutara that involves the gaang meeting their future selves or vice versa. Older Aang is still not coming to terms that Zuko and Katara are together until he sees an outside perspective of how he was. (A.K.A. Childish!) seeing how much closer Katara and Zuko got towards the end of the war and he has a realization that he was very much her child not her equal in the romance department. I’m too shy to ask as myself so I’ll be asking anonymously.
Taking zutara week as an opportunity to finally answer this ask!
I also copied it because I don't know if you realized it didn't send anonymously.
Zutara Week Day 7: Time
Aang used to think that if they'd had more time, then maybe things would have turned out differently. Katara had told him that she had been confused, that she couldn't make a decision while there was a war going on.
Which seemed true, but...had he really not noticed, back then? He can't remember.
Did he chalk it up to his imagination? He must have noticed something, because he'd confronted her about it. But then he'd felt stupid when Katara told him it was just the stage actress who'd said all those things, and he knew he'd hurt her by blaming her. He knew, because he could see it in her eyes afterwards.
And then after that, even when she kissed him, there was always the shadow of that hurt between them. And the shadow of his doubts, creeping in.
Was it his creeping doubts that had pushed her away, or was it that he'd failed to notice that she was already drifting farther from him?
Now, time is all he has. The spirits of past Avatars, the ability to view all that had come before. He can summon up a memory and see it clearly, like watching himself onstage, like watching her.
He does it sometimes, when he misses her, after she's gone.
And he finds himself looking back more and more on those days, before the end of the war, when she had been so confused.
He sees himself blush when she pecks him on the cheek. He sees her talking to Zuko, sees himself grow red with jealousy and suspicion, and hates himself for blaming her.
And yet, the sound of her voice, clear and bright, when she talks to him.
But it's true, isn't it?
She hadn't been lying when she'd told him that Zuko had never come between them, because she herself didn't know. She couldn't see herself, the way he could now. The way they both looked when they were together.
Aang had confronted Zuko about it, once, years after the war. And Zuko, of course, had denied everything. And Aang had believed him. Zuko was too honorable to have an affair with another man's wife, even if he loved her. He'd rather burn his own hands off.
But it hadn't been hands or mouths or any of the things he had imagined in his mind, when Aang tried to think of what went wrong.
It was only the sound of Katara's voice, her laughter, ringing clearly, while so much war and strife still weighed upon them.
They had all been children, then. None of them knew better. They didn't know what was happening.
They couldn't see it like he can. Not her, not Zuko.
He's already forgiven his friends, for being children. It's harder to forgive himself.
A KA shipper on Twitter made this post expressing their exhaustion with the “Katara Week Discourse.”
If you didn't know, a Katara week event is being hosted by someone who dislikes Zutara and as a result, has blocked MANY Zutara Twitter accounts and hid behind the excuse that it was only the "racists" blocked.
As a reaction, a new Katara Week is being hosted by @kataraweeks. A non exclusionary Katara week that welcomes all ships of Katara!
Back to the topic.
This doesn't seem so bad at the surface. It's quite vague but many ZKs took an issue with this tweet. The comments were from frustrated Zks saying that they WANT to appreciate Katara as her own but being excluded from an event dedicated to her made it difficult.
This is what made me raise an eyebrow at her. Many KAs do this thing where they SAY they're calling out their own community but the "calling out" in question is just “both sides are doing it!” That's not calling out your community specifically.
One of the most integral parts of fandom weeks is having your creations pushed on other accounts and reaching a broader audience. Sure, Zutara shippers can participate but their content is going to be pushed and smaller creators will fall into the cracks.
A Zutara shipper ended up pulling screenshots from The Zutaraanti account and showing them to the Original Poster.
Notice how... vulgar she got the minute those screenshots got used? Why is that?
Here's why:
They used to be in conversation with each other. They're like the majority of that KA fandom who used to be friends with/interact with her. They were okay with her harassing people because the Zutara fans deserved it. But once the Tumblr posts Zutaraanti made went on Twitter, they needed to save face 🤷. So they abandoned her and pretended the environment they contributed to never existed.
I barely go to twitter and one of the first things I saw there about this discourse was her giving, as an example of zk shippers supposedly being racist, a couple of incidents where zk shippers had responded specifically to zutaraanti. She brought up that whole "zk shippers make jokes about colonization" thing that was kataang shippers pretending these jokes weren't in response to and about zutaraanti and her friends telling zutara shippers, some of whom were of color, that they supported colonization and sounded white and were race traitors and nazis and klansman, etc etc etc.
It's the same bullshit as the kataang shippers going "how dare you joke about colonization?" When they frequently throw around those terms to use them against us and make racist jokes about it themselves.
If they don't want us to mock them for virtue signalling, then they need to stop doing it.
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It's very telling that in order to explain why Zutara would be impossible in-universe it's most often immutable characteristics that are used as reasons, things that are outside of the characters' control.
That "they can't be together" because of where each of them are from and who their families are and the politics of the world they were born into, not because of their chemistry and personal compatibility.
As though these reasons have ever been hindrances on the plot of a fictional romance. If anything, these have been core themes of the romantic storytelling genre since the beginning of time.
Two lovers, forbidden from one another, a war divides their people, but they find a way to be together. Sound familiar?
These things do not cancel out the possibility of romance like it's a math equation. They build tension, dramatic irony, and facilitate the plot by creating a conflict that must be overcome.
When saying "Zuko and Katara can't be together because of [above reasons]" you're not making the argument you think you're making, you're describing the classic plot to a story of forbidden, star-crossed love.
Declaring that they are not allowed to be together due to immutable characteristics like where they come from and who their families are makes one sound like the authorities in a love story that pry the lovers apart, like the parents that forbid their children from seeing the one they love so the children are forced to sneak away and meet under the cover of night. You sound like the Montagues and Capulets.
It does nothing to dampen the appeal of Zutara, if anything it makes it burn harder, makes it feel even more tragic that they didn't end up together, the fact that they are perfect for each other but forbidden from being together due to things they cannot change. All it does is add fuel to the desire to rewrite the myth so that they can be together, which we have done thousands of times now and will continue to do thousands more.
This person also said they hate when people attack other ships even though they are responding to a zutara shipper complaining about zukka shippers saying zutara is oppressor x oppressed.
I just think it's kinda funny when they're like "oh, no, it's totally different and Sokka was totally more forgiving of Zuko in a way by saying absolutely nothing vs Katara's actual forgiveness which means nothing. Totally."
I also don't know what that has to do with zutara supposedly being oppressor x oppressed, either. Zuko is only Katara and Sokka's oppressor if they don't forgive him? Is that how it works???
