paintedfirelady“Zutara never would’ve worked because they’re just too similar!”
“Katara would get angry and shout…”
Katara: “Zuko!”
Katara: “Why did they throw you in here? Oh, wait, let me guess. It’s a trap. So that when Aang shows up to help me, you can finally have him in your little Fire Nation clutches!”
Katara: “You’re a terrible person! You know that? Always following us! Hunting the Avatar! Trying to capture the world’s last hope for peace! But what do you care? You’re the Fire Lord’s son. Spreading war and violence and hatred is in your blood!”
“And Zuko would get angry and shout right back.”
Zuko: ”You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Katara: “I don’t? How dare you! You have no idea what this war has put me through! Me personally! The Fire Nation took my mother away from me.”
“It would just turn into a shouting match where they hurl hurtful things at each other!”
Zuko: ”I’m sorry. That’s something we have in common.”
“Besides they’re both too stubborn to admit when they’re wrong!”
Katara: “I’m sorry I yelled at you before.”
Zuko: “It doesn’t matter.”
“It would jut be a lot of drama where they fight all the time!”
Katara: “It’s just that for so long now, whenever I would imagine the face of the enemy, it was your face.”
Zuko: “My face? I see.”
Katara: “No, no, that’s-that’s not what I mean.”
Zuko: “It’s okay. I used to think this scar marked me. The mark of the banished prince, cursed to chase the Avatar forever. But lately, I’ve realized I’m free to determine my own destiny, even if I’ll never be free of my mark.”
“Not to mention that they only encourage the worst in one another!”
Katara: “Maybe you could be free of it.”
Zuko: “What?”
Katara: “I have healing abilities.”
Zuko: “It’s a scar, it can’t be healed.”
Katara: “This is water from the Spirit Oasis at the North Pole. It has special properties, so I’ve been saving it for something important. I don’t know if it would work, but…”
“They’d only enable each other’s worst traits!”
“They’d never make up! Only fight!”
Anyhow.
What I’m getting at is, we get the model for how a Zutara fight would go, and it’s not “The Southern Raiders”.
Seriously though,
“The Southern Raiders” has some serious OoC moments, like, yeah, ofc the boy whose defining line is: “We’ve created an era of fear in the world. And if we don’t want the world to destroy itself, we need to replace it with an era of peace and kindness.” would totally dismiss Aang with “guru goody-goody”, that’s something that’d totally happen.
And if anyone tries to convince me that the woman who wrote “Zuko Alone” would willingly put it there, I’ll fight you.
Also, to the people who think that Zuko was “enabling Katara’s darkness” do you also think that Iroh was “enabling” Zuko? Bc that’s what was going on there, Zuko’s arc in s3 was about him emulating his fathers, and uuuughh i need to write that out but i’m lazyyy.
And, also, when you take the show’s most emphatic, compassionate characters and couple that with their shared experiences, you get two people who work out their problems pretty damn quick, regardless of temperament.
ruinedchildhood