Fantasmagorical

I, however don't understand what they mean by this. They say not to reduce it to "ship wars" but that was what caused this to begin with, correct?

The Zutaraanti and their friend wanted to come up with Zuko slander and their friend came up with the Zukkko joke. The Zutaraanti then proceeded to make several posts on Tumblr using that tag.

You literally cannot remove the shipping aspect of this situation because the shipping aspect is what caused this to begin with.

Nothing was off limits when it was about the Holocaust but NOW we're drawing the line here? Antisemitism was cool as long as it was used to aid you in ship wars, right?

My theory as to why they're trying to remove the shipping discourse and zero in on the anti exclusively is simple.

They don't want to acknowledge that they helped create the environment that breeded the Zutaraanti. They don't want to ruin their perfect image as the "hopeless victims that were harmed by the evil Zutarians back in the old days."

They don't want this situation to break outside of X and possibly reach broader fandoms. Because that'll reveal how much they let slide until now.

That's why instead of condemning them, they say "you're making us look just as bad as them."

That's why instead of sympathizing with Zks, they say "Zutarians are annoying but this is too far!"

That's why instead of accountability, they say "Both sides were in the wrong."

They have dehumanized us so bad that even when they're "defending us" they need to simultaneously insult us as well. Almost like to signal to other KA's that they're not one of "ours", that they're still on their team.

What more could they possibly want from us?

The main ATLA reddit blog is very hostile to Zutarians. Twitter/X speaks for itself. Pinterest Zutara content is flooded by antis throwing shade or outright hostility. Facebook is apparently bad for Zutarians too. KA's on Tiktok claim they'd rather be chased by Diddy than be in a room with us. Tumblr is one of our ONLY safe spaces and even THEN they can't let us have this.

They don't want a future where we all live happily ever after or simply tolerate one another. They want to chase us out of the main fandom spaces AND our own spaces as well.

A lot of these accounts are minors, meaning they weren't even around when the show initially aired. They're trying to enact revenge on the behalf of people that either already left the fandom or don't even trip about it anymore.

TW: violence, slavery, lynching

i recently had an interaction that made me reflect on what it is like to be Black in ATLA (or any) fandom. In the exchange, it was presumed that because I live in America, i don't get to speak. While I don't particularly enjoy attempts to be silenced, and have experienced it numerous times throughout my life, it is incredibly harmful to invalidate the Black experience in America.

My people were violently stolen from their countries, sold and dehumanized in unspeakable ways over centuries. The cruelty of slavery is unfathomable and has been getting erased/swept under the rug for decades as "that was so long ago." Even after slavery ended, the brutal nature of Jim Crow laws and sundown towns continued. Picnics were a place of public lynchings where a whole family, including the children, were brought to watch, take photos, and souvenirs. there are likely families to this day that have white hoods passed down through generations. lynching was not made a federal crime until 2022. Since then, Black individuals have continued to be found hanging from trees, including Juliana Nzita in Charlotte NC.

i think everyone should pick up a fucking book or visit an African-American history museum. Everyone likes to remember the peaceful nature of the Civil Rights Movement, but no one likes to discuss the brutality those non-violent activists faced--dog attacks and being hosed down so forcefully that they flew back several yards with their skin seared off. Activists being explicitly targeted by the police and the government. Murders like Emmett Till, with mounds of evidence, have all charges dropped. Black people creating their own towns and having them burnt down because their oppressors didn't want them to have NOTHING. We were (and are still) openly discriminated against systematically in every aspect of living. When i was 5, my sister's best friend told her that she couldn't be friends anymore because "her mom doesn't like Black people."

As a Black person today, anti-Blackness still affects interactions that i have. i am terrified to drive to or through certain states in the U.S. as a medical student, i have been treated differently than my peers; i've had a nursing manager report me for being "rude and offending her" despite complying with her wishes. Her words were superior to mine because, subsequently, my course director wrote this in my evaluation as "lacking interdisciplinary professionalism" despite the fact that he did not witness the interaction. He checked on the nursing manager's feelings weeks later and not mine -- despite the fact that I left the meeting with him in tears. He wrote a 4 paged letter of every "insult" he thought of me including that I didn't knock on his open office door before entering, despite that I verbally asked if i could come in. Through all of this, i was told that it was not a microaggression and did not receive support. These circumstances could have derailed my entire future (and still might affect my future bc i have not matched into residency yet). Once i match into residency, statistics like Black residents being 4x as likely to be dismissed from programs, await me.

I really want people, especially Kataang fans, to understand that zutaranti's behavior is not a one-off. It's not new. There have always been people like her in the Kataang fandom. People that made me, a woman of color, feel unwelcome, even when I still shipped Kataang. Because it was bad enough for them to bully people, but on top of that, even if they weren't harassing me specifically, they were harassing people like me, and over cartoon characters. They were calling people slurs, calling them race traitors, and telling them that they deserved terrible things to happen to them, because they didn't ship Kataang, or worse yet, shipped Zutara.

Or using terrible things that I, and my family, and my ancestors experienced to score internet points and use as gotcha moments to defend Kataang and fight Zutara, without understanding or caring about the real life context, and the real life people they were "defending" from Zutara.

Shippers like her didn't make me stop shipping Kataang, but they did push me out of the Kataang fandom. No one should be surprised by her, because this is the way things have been for a long time now.

Odysseus: *wakes up at the dead of night drenched in cold sweat*

Penelope: Love? What's wrong?

Odysseus: That prophet son of a bitch- IT WAS ME!

Penelope: What??

Odysseus: I WAS THE MAN WHO WAS HAUNTING ALL ALONG!!

Penelope: *pulling him down and hugging him* ok dear just go back to sleep.

*meanwhile in the Underworld*

don't argue with them, starve them.

don't respond to their shit. don't give them air. don't argue with them, even when their arguments are infuriating bullshit. ignore them, block them. if they send you hate or send their friends to attack you, delete the messages and comments and block them. free blocklist. they don't "win" if they get you to block them, they win if you engage.

don't feed the trolls.

trolling like that is not a thing that, like, okay people do. it's either someone who is genuinely just an asshole looking to hurt people or someone who is going through some shit and making it everyone else's problem, and either way, arguing with them accomplishes nothing. just ignore them. block them. delete the comments, the asks. block the people who reblog the post with their shit. it's not your problem. they're the ones being the assholes here, but engaging with them - even when you're making good points - just gives them more air to set fire to.

Like, imagine they're like "hahaha you can't escape! There is no earth here for you to bend!" And this little 12yo blind girl starts laughing her ass off in their faces and then she just makes a fucking hole in the ground and falls through it.