dual wield good, quadruple wield better

Zuko is never the main villain. Katara is never the main character. People have pointed out that they always end up together in the finale of each season. The main villain of season one is Zhao, so what is Katara going to do? She fights Zuko. The main villain of season two is Azula, so what will Katara do? Bond with and experience heart-breaking betrayal from Zuko. Aang fights Ozai in the finale, so what should Katara do? You guessed it, she's helping Zuko fight Azula!

trauma can be incredibly alienating — let alone the trauma of something incredibly specific like losing a parent to imperialist aggression — and so it’s no wonder that the narrative of finding someone who knows what you went through, who reminds you that you aren’t alone, immediately lends itself to emotional intimacy. and it’s also easy to see why that could be extrapolated to romance, but that doesn’t make the act of connection sinister or unhealthy on its own.

zuko and katara being able to openly discuss their grief and trauma with each other is actually a hell of a lot healthier than whatever the show does with kat.aang, where anything mildly unsavoury or unpleasant in their relationship, especially in regards to katara’s more “negative” emotions, is promptly and neatly swept under the rug, never to be taken out again.

and i suspect that’s also where this dichotomy of kat.aang as wholesome and zutara as dark and toxic comes from, because seeing the raw, unadulterated reality of survivors actually reckoning with their trauma, rather than just repressing it with a smile, is much more discomfiting to audiences that have been conditioned to see the latter as the morally superior means of coping.

If you think "children should not be allowed in this space," you HAVE TO reckon with the fact that you are now excluding parents (and very often women specifically) who don't have access to childcare. You are isolating people who are poor, or rural, or single parents, or any number of other factors that might prevent someone from having on-demand childcare. You are cutting them off from being able to exist in public. You are denying parents and children the ability to fully participate in society.

My mom spent several years only leaving the house to buy groceries or take me to school, and even then, people would still come up to her to complain TO HER FACE about how she shouldn't bring a crying toddler to Walmart. Entitled strangers would literally try and demand that my mom leave and come back without the kids.

"Why can't your husband watch them?" Because he was at work, usually working extreme amounts of overtime so we didn't get evicted, because landlords don't like it when you stop paying rent.

"Why can't you send them to daycare?" Because that costs money.

"Why can't your teenager stay home with them and babysit?" Because I also deserved to be able to leave the house for something other than school, and taking me to the grocery store was how my mom taught me to manage a household budget, shop sales, and meal plan.

"Don't bring your kid in public if you can't CONTROL them and make them stop crying!" Kids cry when they're upset, and being dragged around a store is upsetting! Don't be an asshole! Children are human beings who are still learning how the world works, and they don't have a lot of agency. You'd cry, too.

"Spank them until they learn to stop crying!" That's just straight-up child abuse, Jesus Christ.

I have blocked multiple people who went on tirades about how I'm a "horrible breeder" who is "contributing to overpopulation" and how I and my "spawn" deserve to be trapped at home. (I am infertile and my foster kid is an adult now, so I don't know what breeding and spawn they think they're talking about.)

One person asked if I was posting ragebait for fun because "this isn't a real issue." Several have asked if this "really happens" and told me that my "experience isn't universal." (There are multiple parents in the comments who have agreed with me and talked about how hard it is to navigate the world with their kids.)

Children are an oppressed class who are treated like absolute vermin. Parents are given absolutely no support in caring for them. Good parents are set at a disadvantage even when they have all the best intentions, struggling parents aren't given resources to improve their situation or get community assistance, and blatantly abusive parents don't get caught because hitting and screaming and controlling are considered perfectly normal ways to treat a child. Communities would rather shut kids away where they can be ignored and forgotten and mistreated, all for the sin of "being annoying in public."

Youth liberation is vital, regardless of whether you, personally, like kids. You cannot ban children from public. You cannot shut children away in isolation and expect them to grow into happy, healthy, well-adjusted adults who can function in our society. You do not get to demand children be removed from every corner of public life all for your personal comfort.

In general the life that Zuko has been living (and him being a survivor of child abuse) has left him constantly on guard and looking out for threats around every corner, hypervigilant. Kid has PTSD, unquestionably.

He has also not had any normal teenager experiences, at all. He was on that boat since 13 and until 16, he has had no friends and no one his own age to talk to and certainly no girls his own age to interact with for that entire time.

Lastly, Zuko canonically thinks he's unattractive and is insecure about his disfigurement (calling it a scar feels like underselling it tbh) and seems legitimately shocked that a girl is interested in him, like he didn't think it was possible.

Red - Theory without praxis is just a book club.

Green - Ecology without class struggle is just gardening.

Black - Mutual aid without solidarity is just charity.

Yellow - Arming without organizing is just target practice.

Orange - Protest without disruption is just a parade.

Blue - Prepping without community building is just camping.

“Beating” mental illness is actually the norm, not the exception. Most people who have a major depressive episode never have another one. 80% of people who survive their first suicide attempt never make a second attempt. 93% of Borderline Personality Disorder patients achieve remission. Up to 74% of people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder achieve significant clinical improvement in their symptoms, and 20% achieve full remission. Half of Generalized Anxiety Disorder patients achieve remission after the acute phase of treatment. Even disorders with relatively low rates of remission - bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoid personality disorder - generally become milder and easier to manage as you age. Psychiatric symptoms tend to peak in your 20s and generally drop off as you get older, especially if you seek treatment. 

This is why the narratives we use to talk about mental illness matter so much. Right now, the dominant narrative is that mental illness is “an imbalance in the brain” and that it’s largely something that people are born with. There are upsides and downsides to this. The upside is that it promotes the idea that mental illness is not the ill person’s fault, and it helps us understand that mental illness can impact anyone, regardless of their life circumstances. The downside, however, is that it’s sort of given us this idea that mental illness is inborn and unchangeable. People have taken on the idea that “that’s just how my brain is”, when the reality is that, for most people, mental illness is less of a stable trait for them, and more of just a shitty thing that they are going through for a little while. The idea that mental illness is just “in your brain” also erases the very real connection between your life circumstances and your mental health - while it’s very true that a wealthy person in a happy marriage can become depressed, it’s also very true that living in poor conditions and being in an abusive marriage can be the cause of depression, and that improving your life circumstances can lessen or eliminate mental health conditions. 

If you have a mental health condition, it’s very important that you not resign yourself to the idea that you’re going to be like this forever. Chances are, you won’t. Even if you have a mental health condition that is associated with low rates of remission, it is possible to make leaps and bounds in your functioning, and to get to a point where managing your condition becomes second nature to you. Our understanding of mental illness is improving every year, and new therapies and treatments are becoming available all the time. If you seek treatment and do your best to manage your condition, you have every reason to believe that you will make huge improvements. 

So it's fine when she's sequestered to being Aa.ng's tradwife, having her have his children until he gets the one he actually wants, stay home and raise two kids by herself while he travels around with his favorite child and she stays in Republic City away from her homeland and culture and then only goes home after he dies to be a lonely old woman whose grandchildren don't even recognize her and have no connection to their water tribe culture, but it would be totally worse and way more oppressive and trad-wifey in a non-canon scenario you imagined, just because it's Zuko she's with and not A.ang?

We don't know what Zutara's marriage would look like cause it's not canon, the only limit is our imaginations. Saying that it would be oppressive and trad-wifey is due to your own lack of imagination, and then denying that they canonically gave her a diminished trad-wifey position, that it doesn't count because "that's just what people who are in love do," but that the same end with Zuko would somehow be so much worse despite it apparently being "just what happens" when you're married and in love, is so hypocritical I don't even know where to begin.

The thing that happened in canon with A.ang is fine because that's just what happens when you're in love, but if the same exact thing were to happen with Zuko, where she is alienated from her culture and allows him to play favorites with their children and is sequestered to just being the Firelord's wife and mother of his children, it would somehow be worse than the exact same thing happening with A.ang in canon?

A shadowy figure peeks out from behind them and says, grinning, "Don't". The apostrophe in don't is a sparkle.

The first person responds "Well I can't argue with that".