izzie. 24. she/they. queer. latina. @paintedko on twitter. pfp by @smmushii. “tell me the story about how the sun loved the moon so much he died every night to let her breath”
What if I said the sudden hate and vitriol towards zutara in recent years is linked to the rise in conservatism… stay with me now… I can’t help but notice it because of the arguments I see such as “Water Tribe & Fire Nation can never be together… it’s way better that Mai & Zuko are married as they are both Fire Nation” or “It’s fine that Katara is a stay at home mom & healer… it doesn’t matter that she doesn’t play a pivotal role, go on to do anything great after the war…”
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missing The Character is a strange thing because yea there's always the option to go back to their source material or looking at art or reading fics but it's also like i can't just call them up like i would a friend to see how they're doing and that's the frustrating part of it
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the thing about media literacy is that understanding why the author chose to specify that the curtains are blue is the same skill set as understanding that the way the author characterizes all black characters as angry or all chinese characters as meek and silent is racist. it is the same skill set as being able to identify when a news source is biased or when someone is feeding you propaganda. the ability to ask "why did this person choose to present this premise in this specific way?" is a critical skill in a world full of misinformation. why are the curtains blue? maybe it's a characterization detail. maybe it's extraneous worldbuilding. why is this character written as being right all the time? maybe you're intended to disagree with them. maybe it doesn't matter. maybe you should still ask why.
Dema, you've drawn a lot of Zuko. I can't 'see' Zuko in the images I've seen from the upcoming movie. Other than the scar, he looks like a new character to me.
Can you explain what are some of the main visual elements of a Zuko? I'm wondering if the bangs are making his face shape look different, or if I'm being thrown off by the insane muscles.
I...might have gone a bit overload.
Extra Zukos + character design comparison between ATLA Zuko and Movie Zuko + long ramble about the danger of beauty conventions under the cut!
So, a little rant to complement...whatever this is.
I genuinely think that, out of all members of the Gaang, Zuko's the one who resembles himself the most in the new movie. Aside from the Ozai-bulk (which, yes, it does serve to distract you from everything else—except for his lack of lightning scar whereisthelightningscar); Movie Zuko looks like an adult Zuko would.
Compare his new design to, I don't know, Katara's (which I'm SO salty about), and you'll quickly notice which character is more identifiable as themselves.
(I'm adding my reference board for Zuko + a comparison between ATLA Katara and Movie Katara. You know. For evidence.)
See what I'm talking about? The sheer difference is asinine, but the explanation behind the change in design is both fairly simple and insultingly predictable:
Attractiveness.
Or, rather, what is believed to be found attractive by certain audiences.
Listen, I'm not saying anything new. Certainly nothing that a thousand other people haven't already explained far better than my uneducated self ever could. But it goes like this: the new art style draws a lot from westernized anime, not only in the animation itself (which is awestriking), but also in the character design. But that influence carries its own vices.
In other words: the new Avatar movie, gorgeous as it is, has been infected with Same Face Syndrome.
Why? Because, in anime-inspired art styles, the less identifiable facial features your MC has, the more attractive they seem. Wide noses, thick lips, or small eyes are a big no-no, especially if you're the female deuteragonist in a coming-of-age story written for male audiences. Or any kind of audiences, really—it has less to do with open misogyny than it does with artistic conventions.
Make an experiment. Remove all openly identifiable characteristics from each Gaang member (I'm talking hair, scars, skin tone, etc) and compare them to one another. Would you be able to differentiate Aang from Sokka? Toph from Katara?
The erasure of distinct facial features comes from a place of "beauty equals perfection", and what is perfection if not the lack of flaws? What is a wide nose or full cheeks if not a flaw?
Now, I don't mean to come across as snippy or judgemental—these are just my observations on what this kind of art style entails given its characteristics, and the effect it has on the facial design of characters so widely known and loved. Especially characters with identifiable ethnicities.
The new style affects characters like Katara, Sokka, and Aang more than it does others in the series because some of their features simply don't fit with what's considered attractive here. That's the reason they look so alien and out of place—because what made their design so organic has been watered down or erased to fit a beautiful mold.
So, you may ask, what's the deal with Zuko?
Why has no one complained about his design (other than the missing lightning scar)? Why does he resemble himself the most? Why—characterization problems aside—does he still feel like Zuko?
The answer is...pretty simple, actually. A bit dumb, if you will.
The new over-beautification of the Gaang doesn't affect Zuko as much because he was already designed to be conventionally attractive.
Yes, I said it. And I'll say it again.
Zuko, Azula, Ozai, Ursa—they were all, canonically, gorgeous people. The Royal Family was intentionally designed to fit traditional East Asian beauty conventions. The long faces, the delicate, narrow features... It's a perfect, immaculate beauty, dutifully in line with the perfect, immaculate image royalty is meant to project.
So.
So.
All of this to say that:
A) most of the misgivings we have with the Gaang's adult designs can be blamed on the new art style/direction.
B) ethnic erasure for the sake of abiding by westernized beauty conventions is not alright. Nor does it work, so just. Stop it.
C) having distinctive features is awesome, actually. Plastic-perfect "attractiveness" can go check the #BanTheSameFaceSyndrome tag and learn a thing or two.
And ultimately:
D) Zuko has always been, canonically, the poster boy for Conventional Beauty. So we have permission to draw him as gorgeous as we damn well please.
Yon Rha was the one who murdered Katara's mother. It was Yon Rha's glare that Katara remembered in such vivid detail. Yon Rha was the real monster, the real enemy.
So why Zuko?
What was it about him that overshadowed the memory of Yon Rha? What was so striking about Zuko that he remained the face of the enemy even after Azula came around? Zuko is the Prince of the Fire Nation, sure, but that couldn't have been enough. Was it because he's a firebender, a predator? Was it because he's wrathful and relentless and...and...
...and scarred.
But his scar wasn't a reason. Katara didn't even think about it until Zuko pointed it out in the Crystal Catacombs. It was just part of who he is. Part of the enemy. Desperate and frantic and hurt.
Some part of me wants to believe that Katara was so quick to offer healing and forgiveness under Ba Sing Se because she needed it. She needed to see the enemy as something flawed, human, fixable. Someone she could empathise with and understand, not some monster who only took and took and took—
And then Aang arrived, and she left, and Zuko betrayed her.
(But did he, really? Or did she betray herself by considering for just a second that the enemy could be human? That the enemy could be something other than a monster?)
And then he came back, right after his Nation took her people during the Day of the Black Sun and took her father away from her again and took and took and took—
And Zuko gave. Even when the wrathful and desperate enemy became her.
Perhaps, in Katara's eyes, Yon Rha was the face of the enemy. He always had been, but she didn't know until she faced him.
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time loop with two people in it but one person refuses to acknowledge the loop and pretends to be looping with everyone else. meanwhile the other person is freaking out
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long answer: the atla comics are poorly-written, poorly-characterized, poorly-developed pieces of trash that should have been scrapped if anyone with a lick of sense had worked on them, and prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was the writing team of atla, not bryke, that made the show the masterpiece it is.
the comics lack any and all understanding of how to tackle either the characters or the issues involved with nuance and sensitivity, resulting in: characters that feel extremely OOC (aang agreeing to kill zuko), complex topics being covered with all the subtlety and delicacy of a hammer to the face (katara "learning" to accept the annexation of the swt by the nwt), drama manufactured just for the sake of plot (aang and zuko fighting and aang proposing anti-miscegenation as a valid solution to international problems) and the further destruction of relationships that were already terrible to begin with (kat.aang and mai.ko).
i've heard the suki, kyoshi and yangchen comics are fairly decent so i might give those a chance someday. but the ones involving the gaang add so little and ruin so much that as far as i'm concerned... there are no atla comics in ba sing se.
“so you just say that they ruin everything without giving any real criticism”Â
my criticism:Â
characters that feel extremely OOC
aang, the pacifist monk who believes all life is sacred, agreeing to kill his close friend when he couldn’t even kill the genocidal maniac who was on the precipice of burning down an entire country
katara, who is also close friends with zuko, who saw him sacrifice himself for her and fought to save his life, agreeing with aang’s decision
aang, the avatar, who is supposed to be the embodiment of balance and harmony, who has friends from all four nations and a girlfriend from another nation, proposing anti miscegenation as a solution
complex topics being covered with all the subtlety and delicacy of a hammer to the faceÂ
katara being the one who has to “learn” to accept the annexation and "progress” of the southern water tribe under the northern water tribe, even though she’s expressing valid concerns regarding the cost of, and need for, this “development”
the hamfisted handling of azula’s mental breakdown, as well as the depiction of mental illness and psychiatric facilitiesÂ
drama manufactured just for the sake of plotÂ
aang and zuko fighting over the colonies, and the aforementioned promise, instead of just... oh, idk, communicating?Â
ursa randomly erasing her memories and choosing to forget her children, even though she was willing to commit murder to protect zuko and knows she’s leaving them in the care of a sociopathic abuser. not only is this OOC, it’s clearly just a plot device to make the events of the search happenÂ
the further destruction of relationships (kat.aang and mai.ko) that were already terrible to begin withÂ
aang exploding a lava fissure in katara’s face because she doesn’t want to discuss their kiss at the invasionÂ
katara feeling sidelined and forgotten while aang entertains his fan club, only for the lesson to be that SHE needs to come around and let aang be happyÂ
katara being reduced to aang’s trophy girlfriendÂ
katara putting herself in danger to pull aang out of the avatar state YET AGAIN
mai allowing her own father, who nearly killed her boyfriend, to escape and hiding information about the people trying to assassinate him from zukoÂ
mai throwing knives at zuko’s head and encouraging jin to do the same (and this is the comic where they get together, go figure)Â
mai using kei lo to make zuko jealousÂ
i hope that’s clear enough for you, since you clearly didn’t read my (properly tagged) post before jumping to conclusions. next time, work on your own reading comprehension first before you try lecturing anybody else about it.Â
If you are getting your information from wiki plot summaries or other angry tumblr posts from people who have the reading comprehension of a 2x4, then you’re missing all the context. There are plenty of things that are “bad writing” and “OOC” in the show so long as you just remove any and all context surrounding them.
Not to mention as well that all of your criticisms are either moot, completely in-character, make sense in the story, or are from one-off comics shoved into the back of Nick magazine and just released as bonus content not meant to be serious.
i'm sorry, i know i usually don't bother engaging with the biggest clown-nose honker in this fandom because it's an exercise in futility, and it's not even all that engaging because he never has a genuine argument--just ad hominem attacks and screaming about how canon is brilliant actually and we're all just meanies who can't understand or appreciate bryke's creative genius--but for those watching at home, this one interaction perfectly encapsulates why this blog is so widely known as the atla fandom's butt-monkey.
ana laid out in fairly broad strokes her overall issues with the atla comics, complete with several direct examples. the original post was tagged correctly, so it's pretty clear that the self-appointed atla cop right here chose to go looking for posts espousing opinions he doesn't like so he could go fight them, but rather than actually engaging with any of the points made in the original post, his response was simply 'you didn't read them, so NYEH'. mind you, nowhere does ana say she hasn't read the comics she has opinions on, so the clear implication here is that the only reason to dislike them is if you haven't read them.
(i can tell you up front that this is bunk. i read them. the post-canon ones sucked, and the during-canon ones were very hit-or-miss. 'katara and the pirate's silver' was great, some of the lost adventures were decent, that's the best i can really say for them.)
despite the fact that it's clear mister atla cop here (and i cannot express enough how much disdain i hold for this person and his choice of moniker) was not engaging in good faith, ana still broke down in exhaustive detail the elements of canon in the comics that she dislikes.
his only response was to yell CONTEXT in her face like he's ross gellar in the stairwell with a couch, and then act like that's a reasonable means of refuting her arguments, despite the fact that he failed to elaborate on how 'context' makes anything remotely better. (because it doesn't, and i suspect afp knows this, otherwise he might have actually tried to formulate a coherent argument rather than acting like a little troll whose only goal is to get a rise out of people he allegedly despises.
i say 'allegedly' because he is clearly so very desperate for our attention. one wonders if he isn't actually a fan in disguise.)
