#antiaang

was watching this tiktok earlier today about why the op felt katara and aang were incompatible (here) and it remind me of something.

in the tiktok, op points out that katara suppresses her negative emotions because she has a subconscious desire to emotionally shield aang. she references the waterbending scroll where katara tells aang to shut his air hole and how his reaction (wide eyed and tearful) makes katara immediately remorseful about her words. after that point, she pretty much never gets angry at aang, even in moments where it would be reasonable to do so (i.e. in the desert episode where she is yelled at).

it made me think of the episode where aang "learns" to firebend from jeong jeong, and accidentally burns katara. canonically, katara is decentered from that experience almost immediately, when she has to reassure aang that she's okay. additionally, she doesn't have any residual thoughts about it at any point in the series after that episode. we are meant to empathize with aang in this scene - how apologetic he is and how sad it is that he is being thrown to the ground by sokka. it becomes this penance that aang fans praise him for, and even find it romantic that he refuses to firebend again -- despite the fact that katara doesn't agree.

over the years, i've seen disturbing comments from people including blaming katara for "not getting out of the way" or "using waterbending to block." arguments like this (as well as overemphasis of the context/how aang feels after) always come from a compulsatory need to protect aang from criticism. which is why i find it ironic that aang/ka fans cannot fathom the idea of katara pedestaling aang when they do it in fandom constantly. Compared to when zuko accidentally burns toph, the emphasis was on toph's feelings (the impact) and not the intentions. Aang asks her directly how she feels about zuko joining the gaang, and toph says it'll give her time to get back at him for burning her feet (lol).

i also agree with a point in the tiktok where she describes that it is not nearly emphasized enough that katara is the last SWT waterbender and she did not get to grow up with masters surrounding her in the way that aang did for 12 years. within canon and even within the fandom, aang's experience as the last airbender is meant to be heavily centered to wash away any critiques. If not, you're being insensitive and (for some reason) antis start to conflate irl and assume that you can't possibly be pro-Palestine.

Please don’t misunderstand this. I really really love Zutara and at one point, I don’t like Kataang at all and i had this bad judgement regarding Kataang. But is Kataang not a good ship ?

Short answer but no, because Aang is not real and he was written to be the way he was, and the issue with his character was that the writers saw nothing wrong with his purposefully screen-boarded actions. I actually don't mind Aang as a concept but I dislike what he became and I feel like a lot of other people would agree with that. The execution there was iffy, at best.

Aang's actions were sold to the audience to be the right thing when they were not, necessarily, and that is my problem with him. He made a bunch of mistakes in ATLA and the narrative refused to let him grow from them, past him being twelve. It rewarded him for not letting go of Katara, for aggressively pursuing her, for not being open to the idea of her revenge in The Southern Raiders... and that's just with Katara.

I also feel like it's important to note that being a Zutara shipper and Anti K/ataang are not the same thing. I ship Zutara because I like Zutara and I have criticisms with K/ataang but they're unrelated to Zutara mostly. I mean yes I do think Zutara was overall the better narrative choice but K/ataang could have been canon without a nonconsensual kiss. There is a universe in which it could have been canon and I would not have minded.

We don't "make up" a version of Aang, we criticize the way he was canonically shown to be. There's nothing wrong or harsh with that, if media exists with questionable themes it will be criticized. And I would argue some of Aang's actions particularly in the comics are not great messages for an audience of young children to be reading, at least in my opinion.

For example his being a shitty father.

No one is really saying "oh he didn't care about his nonairbender children. In fact he probably resented them for being Failures! Aang consciously emotionally abused them, and Katara because he couldn't live with his own failure!"

No.

People who dislike Aang know he didn't think about his actions, because he never thought about his actions, or what their consequences would be.

He neglected his two older children and Katara because he believed he needed to focus all his energy on raising Tenzin in the way of his people. Ignoring that Kya or Bumi may ALSO wish to live as the airnomads did. Ignoring that there is philosophy and spirit that go with being Airnomads. Things that lifelong nomads Bumi and Kya clearly had in spades. Bumi was known for being a wildman, and kya literally just wandered the whole goddamn planet on her own. Meanwhile Tenzin acted like his mother with his fathers emotional intelligence.

Whether you believe it justified it or not he did neglect his older two children. They did have lasting trauma related to it.

Aang acted unthinkingly. He had little to no self control and entirely too much self love. He didn't reflect on his actions almost at all.

I just think that the show establishes Aang running off from fear and misunderstood duty as a fatal flaw. And how Aang walks into the water after the Lion Turtle holds some similarity to him getting stuck in the ice.

Or perhaps less controversially, Aang waking up from the ice with no desire to understand this new situation he’s in or who he’s left behind, holds similarity to him waking up on the turtle.

I just... think... that Aang leaving for the Lion Turtle had a consequence. His friends were scared and ran around looking for him on two continents. And if Appa didn’t get plot berries to make him move fast, the effects could have been dire.

It seems to me, that Aang’s character arc was either unfinished or just ignored because going to that Lion Turtle and not even trying to escape or send a message back conveys regression, if anything.

Perhaps in the live action, they shouldn’t pull the Lion Turtle out of their ass and instead establish it earlier so Aang has a chance to react around the news in character without just passively accepting the exposition.