#zukara

Just

Katara: "Aang!"

Zuko: "Aang."

Katara: "We need your help settling a dispute."

Aang: "Okay, yeah, what's up?"

Zuko: "Is water wet?"

Aang: "..."

Katara: "..."

Zuko: "..."

Katara: "He keeps trying to tell me it's not like I'm not the waterbender here. I think I'd know what qualities water has!"

Zuko: "It's not about water! This is a linguistic issue! Water cannot be wet!"

Aang, questioning his life choices: "... ice is wet, water isn't."

Katara, considering: "Yeah okay."

Zuko: "I can live with that."

Aang, hoping he can go back to his work: "Great."

Zuko, to Katara: "But you see how water itself can't be wet?"

Katara: "Ice is water. Ice is water itself. Water can be wet. It's literally water."

Zuko: "It's different though, because-"

or should i say, zokara😌

Avatar The Last Airbender

Ok, so in rewatching Atla for the quintillianth time, I've made a point to study it more than usual, and I'm noticing some fantastic stuff. Therefore, as I watch it, I've decided to take notes and leave em here if any yall would like to use them.

So, in the episode Imprisoned:

There's a light motif to katara that's so heavy handed, I can't believe I've never noticed it before. It all started with what I thought was an animation error at first...

But as I watched I noticed it was deliberate af.

This girl just had a full freaking halo over her head. Already we can tell that she's made out to be an angel *spoiler alert*. This happens right after the nameless mother of Haruk reveals what the fire nation has been doing to their poor village, mentioning that her husband was taken by them, and that Haruk could be taken too. Visually, we can already see what's gonna happen.

Welp, after it does happen, katara isn't satisfied with being the messenger anymore. She turns around to face her own halo, and takes responsibility over her influence over Haruk (which resulted in his capture)

Now this is where it gets interesting. The prisoners are looking at katara, whom, up till this point, had the halo, but they don't really listen to her, even though the shadows suggest the light is coming from her. But in reality, the halo has moved to the fire nation fellows on the tippy top of that wall there. THAT'S the message they hear.

The bright a$$ servalence light rings the message loud and clear that rebels will be caught, and will be punnished. Even though the prisoners can't hear katara's small voice right now, she stays stubborn as ever, determined to make her voice heard no matter what. As the servalence light circles around her, giving her that perfect halo again, she works out a way to override the fire nation's influence once n for all.

Last, but not least, at the end of the episode, katara realizes that she lost her necklace in the fight, only to be found by zuko in the coming hours. As he lifts the necklace, the shadows suggest the light is coming from the necklace's direction. Yet another spoiler!???

So! You like a ship, right?

You want that ship to become canon, but it hasn’t yet, or never will.

So what do you do?

You read fanfiction, of course!

In many people’s opinions, fanfiction can often be better than canon. It allows us to explore ships, characters, alternate universes… and sometimes we encounter authors who do it way better than the canon writers do. It’s pretty spectacular, to be honest.

Fanfiction and fandom allows us to explore the what-ifs. The ‘what would happen if this event didn’t happen, or this character didn’t die, or these two characters met who never did in canon’. It provides us an avenue to ‘fix’ what canon screwed up – well, in some people’s minds. In an age where we are only just starting to get LGBT+ representation on the screen, or in books (but only really just now, in any fair way), fanfiction gives slash/femslash/polyamory shippers a place to explore the ships that they wish were on screen – but aren’t yet, unfortunately. I know that fandom is a bastion for me in that regard.

But… have you ever stopped to wonder what would happen if your ship became canon?

In my opinion…

…and in the minds of a few people whom I have spoken to at length on this topic… canon makes the ships less fun.

They’re together. The people we shipped, the people we wrote fics about… they’re together. What more is there to write or read about? Yeah sure, you could still write some fics, especially legacy and alternate universes. But there will be far less interest in it after the fact. Fanfiction is more often than not a place to explore the ‘getting together’ part of a relationship, and once they’re together, besides wrapping up the plot… what fun is there?

Not much, honestly.

Yeah, there’s the whole fandom attitude of ‘winning’ over another ship. And maybe the canon ship breaks up and ends with someone else. That is entirely possible. But I’m talking about those ships that become canon and end the series/movies/books that way. Yep, we can be gleeful that we ‘won’. We can dance and say nananabooboo! and be all happy and whatnot. ‘Winning’ a ship war can be fun.

But do you know what those shippers have that we don’t, after everything is said and done?

… they get to keep writing/reading fanfic, and it’s interesting for them, exciting, and they can ignore the scene/episode/movie/book/epilogue (I’m looking at you, J.K. Rowling) at their leisure. When we get our canon ship… it sort of, I dunno, ends there for a lot of people.

It kinda sucks.

Actually, it really sucks.

So, you know what? I don’t want my ships to become canon. Or, at the very least, I would love evidence that they’re moving in that direction, at the end of whatever it is, TV/movie/book, that I’m watching or reading. That way I’ve got this pretty strong feeling that they’re going to end up together… but, like… they aren’t actually together.

So then I can write whatever I want, whatever I see as possible for them getting together.

I just don’t want to be spoon-fed.

So… I’m looking at you, Johnlock. I’m looking at you, Hannigram. I’m looking at you, Reylo. I’m looking at you, SSHG. I’m looking at you, Stucky/Stony. 

Basically what I’m trying to say is… that I really enjoy it when my ship becomes canon… but then I lose the fandom love for it. Then it just becomes another aspect of the show/movie/book, and not a way of life, in a way. Because fandom/fanfiction… shipping… it thrives on the unknown. Thrives on the fix-its. Thrives on the getting-together.

Once we have all that. Once we have the known, the fixes, the getting together, the wrapping up… it’s not fun anymore.

But I’m not saying I don’t enjoy when things are pointing in my ship’s favor. :)

So, let’s take a look at a few stats.

I’m not diving deep here, because there are a lot of facts that don’t get taken into account with the numbers. You have to have been part of the fandom to understand the ins and outs, when a fandom was popular, and what effect the decade it was popular in had on a ship or fandom, or the decline of a ship over a certain amount of time, or after it becomes canon (because a ship can still be at the top of the charts, but its fic contributions rapidly declined after it became canon), or if a fandom moved to another website, or was/is more prevalent on another site or whatever, etc. But the numbers are still interesting.

So yeah, this isn’t thoroughly researched empirical data, but… it’s a start.

Red = non-canon, blue = canon (I’m not outlining all of them, just a couple here and there.)

(Edit 9/10/17: Since some people have insinuated some rude things about me, I would like to clarify my stance. I went into it briefly above, but obviously I should have delved more. 

Because writers of books/tv/movies these days are still less likely to write in an LGBT+ romance, the statement that canon ships suck still holds true. As a bisexual and polyamorous woman, I know that it’s very unlikely that I will see the latter, and that it is not something common to see the former, either.

So fanfiction has become something of a safe haven for myself and others in that regard.

HOWEVER, I would be beyond ecstatic if there was a poly relationship, for example, but as long as it was done with respect. I would be beyond ecstatic for a gay or lesbian relationship, that was treated well and respectfully and not fetishized. Not there for shock value. Which is starting to happen more, I’m pleased to note (the ships happening, not the fetishizing).

Take one of my favorite ships: Hannigram. I love it. I ship it on and off screen. On the show and in fanfiction. I mean it practically is canon. I would very likely still read fanfiction even if/when they continue the series and it becomes a reality. Because I’m pretty damn sure that they would show the good and the bad of the relationship and keep it interesting.

And oh my goodness I would be beyond ecstatic if Marvel would follow through on Stucky. I think we all would be. Gah!

And like… if Star Wars would finally give me a polyamorous relationship as part of its main, or near-to, characters… it would warm my soul to feel a part of me recognized in mainstream culture. And you’d be damn sure I’d still be shipping it.

(Game of Thrones had a really good opportunity to make Rhaegar and Elia and Lyanna married, all three of them, but instead they stomped all over poor Elia and her children… my heart!)

As some people have pointed out, a lot of writers don’t know how to write a relationship after they’ve gotten together. This feels true to me. Good examples of the opposite, though, are Bones and Castle and Outlander, and even Shadowhunters with Malec, and Buffy. Usually, though, writers don’t quite know what to do with characters once they’ve gotten them to this point.

This is what I am referencing when I say I have bad experience liking ships after they become canon.

But I am SO here for writers getting better at it. Especially as they start to explore LGBT+ and minority representation. 

(And maybe part of why I don’t like canon ships… is because I am also bored with the het white ships that keep popping up… just a thought that came to me reading comments and reblogs. It’s worth considering.)

I don’t check out if the ship becomes canon. Not at all. I cheer alongside the rest of people.

All I am referencing is that the fanfiction about these canon relationships (something I typically love more than canon) seems to suffer and peter out afterwards.

And here is my response ^ that will now be viewed as “the lady doth protest too much”. But whatever.

Enjoy. xoxo)

Sokkaang and Zutara are such fun pairs to put together. Zutara constantly having to keep Sokkaang's collective idiocy in check and Sokkaang on constant 'keep Zutara from getting themselves arrested' duty jsndnsnd like come on, the potential, it's so good.

And then Toph gets to be an aroace queen who's just there to have a good time and mercilessly mock her friends for suffering alloism.