Sometimes I Just Get A Lot Of Feelings

Shipping Stats

I’ll do this first since i know that’s what a lot of you are here for, lol!! To no one’s surprise, zutara and zukka dominated the charts in every way. They just can’t leave people’s minds.

Zutaras were quite uniform in this survey. If you like zutara, there is a strong chance you identify as female, specifically an 82% chance (big chance!). The most common age range is 24-30 years old, but 18-23 is close behind. There is a significant number of people between 31-40. The most common sexualities are split almost halfway between bisexual and straight. There is also an even split between favorite characters of Zuko and Katara. The majority are happy with sukka as a canon pairing, but not kataang or maiko. As everyone and their mothers expected, the most disliked pairing is kataang. The majority only accept the original show as being canon.

Kataang shipper’s stats were similar to zutaras, and yet so different. It’s only slightly younger, the majority being 18-23, but only a slightly larger number of teenagers. The majority identify as female, but was a more significant number of male and non-binary respondents than zutaras. Their favorite character is largely Aang and least favorite is largely Azula. A staggering amount are (understandably) happy with the show’s canon pairings. Taking up the mantle of zutara’s long-run rival, zutara is their least favorite pairing. The majority of them accept any material overseen by bryke to be canon.

Where zutaras and kataangs had very consistent stats, zukka shippers are much more of a mixed bag. This is a young fanbase, with the majority being 18-23, but a large amount also indicated they are under 18. The majority of zukka shippers are LGBT+. Zuko was largely the most popular character, with Sokka only receiving half the votes that Zuko did. The majority of them are happy with all three canon pairings. Zukkas don’t like problematic ships, with zucest being the most disliked pairing, and zukaang being the third most disliked. The second most disliked was the rival ship zutara. The majority of them take all ATLA-verse material as canon.

Zukaang shippers are like zukkas in that they are also a mixed bag in terms of demographics. The majority are LGBT+. Another young fanbase, lot of them are young adults, with the majority being 18-23. Aang once again gets a spotlight as the favorite character. An equal amount dislike zukka and zutara respectively. The majority only take the original ATLA show as being canon.

Sukka shippers are so diverse that I barely have anything to say. That is what I have to say. The only ones that stand out is that the majority of respondents are female and between 18-24. There is the one other person that’s 51-60 in this bunch! The majority like Sokka the most. A lot dislike Jet, but Zhao is still the king of least favorites here.

Maiko shippers are only united in some areas. The age ranges wildly, with the majority being 24-30, but there is a good number of other age ranges, including the sole respondent that is 51-60. A staggering majority identify as female and/or straight, but bisexual maiko shippers are not far behind. Maikos love Mai, with the majority choosing her as a favorite, but a lot of them don’t like Jet. Just like kataangs, most are happy with the canon pairings. Zutara is the least favorite, but zukka is not far behind. The fan base is split in what they consider to be canon.

Some more popular pairings were tyzula, tokka, sokkla, jetko, and mailee. None had enough responses to get solid metrics, but here are some stats that stand out. Tyzula respondents were mostly lesbians!! 🎉 🎉🎉 Most jetko respondents were non-binary. Sokkla respondents really don’t like Iroh and had higher than average male respondents.

The majority of people who selected “I don’t ship” identified as male and/or straight. Toph and Iroh are the most popular in this bunch, while there is no shared ground on a least favorite. The majority don’t have a least favorite ship, but zutara was not far behind. They are mostly happy with the show’s canon pairings and writing, and take anything overseen by bryke as canon.

Character Stats

I’m so glad I let people insert options for their least favorite characters. Some honorable mentions: The old man who snitched on Haru, Haru’s mustache, the mayor in Avatar Day, Aunt Wu, the circus master that abused Appa, Hahn, Sparky Sparky Boom Man, Kiyi, the two tribes in The Great Divide, Kei Lo, and Meng. Some of the responses had very lavish insults attached to them.

The demographics of Zuko fans are similar to that of the overall survey, likely due to the fact that there were so many respondents that chose him as their favorite, with one exception being that there were more respondents than average that identify as asexual. Zuko fans, understandably, really don’t like Zhao and Ozai. Most shippers that have Zuko as one half of their pairing select Zuko as their favorite rather than the other half, such as Mai or Sokka.

I don’t have anything interesting to say about Katara fans as they were essentially a 1:1 reflection of the zutara stats.

Sokka fans are young, a large majority of them being under 18. The majority are also, unsurprisingly, zukka shippers, and the stats reflect as such. More respondents than average selected Jet as their least favorite character.

Toph fans were largely diverse in demographics, reflecting the stats of the overall survey, but with significantly more respondents that are under 18. The favorite pairings was close between zukka, tokka, kataang, and people that don’t ship. Toph fans are generally happy with the overall franchise.

Other observations:

One of my mini hypotheses was confirmed: A whole lot more people picked zucest as their least favorite pairing instead of zukaang after I added it to the list of options, despite there always being an option to type it in. I’m talking a staggering number.

At around 230 responses, I added zucest to the list of options. My personal theory on that is that anyone that doesn’t have a strong personal opinion about one specific ship will instead choose the most “problematic” of the bunch, zukaang because of the age gap and zucest because of the, well, ‘cest. That’s not to say that there weren’t people that didn’t pick zukaang after zucest was added and vice versa, but the difference in numbers was immediate.

A similar thing added to Ozai: a whole lot more people voted for the local Phoenix King after I included him into the list of options. Whatever was on the list of options was crucial to what the final number will be, and I’ll keep this in mind next time I do this.

I did put a lot of the question answers on shuffle, so that the listed answers are always in a random order. Hopefully that mitigated whatever tf that one thing I learned about in my research class where people have a bias to select the first option. Something-bias.

A few people admitted to not having seen the show and were only relying on information they got from fandom. Not judging, but that did make me curious about how common that is…

Final Notes

By this time next year, the new live action show will likely have already started to release. The movie will be on its way, and new graphic novels are coming along quickly. Old fans and new watchers of the original series will still be around. Needless to say, this fandom is NOT going anywhere.