paintedfirelady
ap-kinda-lit
paintedfirelady
somuttersthesea
Anonymous asked:
araeph answered:
I understand completely why it’s difficult to articulate, because while all four family members have counterparts in the opposite nation, there are as many contrasts as there are comparisons, and subversions of what we might think is a parallel, but isn’t.
Ozai and Hakoda. Ozai rules over his family with an iron fist. He demands respect and longs for total control over everything and everyone in sight. His lust for power consumes him and leaves his family twisted and shattered.
Hakoda is the diametric opposite. Although Water Tribe culture could have led Hakoda to assert authority over his family as the head of his house, he didn’t; instead, he listens to and is proud of Sokka’s ideas, and lets Katara yell at him (quite disrespectfully, I might add) in order to release her pent-up emotions. While Ozai rules through fear, Hakoda commands his warriors through respect. Where Ozai is manipulative, Hakoda is cunning with inventions. And while his family quite easily could have been shattered by Kya’s death, Hakoda’s love for his children and their love for each other kept them united.
Ursa and Kya. These two are the most similar, and occupy virtually the same place in the story and their respective families. They are strong and determined mothers who sacrifice themselves to save their children from harm. After they’re gone, the children who look up to them the most have a difficult time dealing with their loss, and their families suffer greatly. It is important to note that this applies to the A:TLA TV show only, and not the comics. You can’t make the claim that Ursa “sacrificed” for Zuko if she spent all the intervening years in deliberate obliviousness to the suffering around her, living the life she’s always wanted to with the man of her dreams!
Pardon me while I take a moment to let off some steam.
Anyway.
Azula and Sokka.
“But wait a minute, Araeph! Zuko is the older brother, so shouldn’t Zuko and Sokka be paralleled?”
Zuko and Sokka do have similar experiences throughout the show; however, they are not true parallels. Azula is the coldly logical (and yet creatively crafty) one of her family. Sokka is the strategist of the GAang, and the one who can see clearly past Azula’s strategic manipulation (if not her emotional one). Sokka and Azula are also the ones with the most responsibility thrust on their shoulders, as Sokka feels pressure to be the “man of the house”, especially with his father away at war. Meanwhile, Azula faces so much stress for being the only child Ozai considers competent and the heir apparent to the Fire Nation that she develops an insidious strain of perfectionism that eventually tilts her world upside down. However, while Azula’s response to her father’s abuse is to regiment her firebending so that not even a hair gets out of place, Sokka absorbs his father’s ideas and praise like a sponge and gets the chance to stretch his creativity on pursuits other than warfare. As the privileged firstborn son, Sokka could have refused to listen to Katara and Suki or used his position in the tribe to try to gain more power, but he didn’t. He made a conscious choice to become a better person throughout the series, while Azula, despite her exceptional skills, never grew in such a way.
Zuko and Katara. Katara is the person who wields her emotions like a weapon, determined not to let anything stand in her way. Zuko is the same: he goes where his emotions tell him to, regardless of whether it’s the wisest course or whether it affects his personal safety. Both of them are very practical when the need arises but can be blown off course by an event that evokes their childhood trauma or their current state of cultural oppression (Katara) or abuse (Zuko). They are capable of enormous acts of kindness, but they also take their anger out on safe targets—not people with less power, but people who will see them at their worst and accept it (Sokka, Hakoda, Iroh, each other). Katara is the mighty bender of the SWT family, but her fighting style mirrors Zuko’s much more than it does Azula’s. Zuko’s bending is characterized by drive and determination, and one look at Katara trying to freeze the firebenders in Episode 2 alongside Zuko’s duel with Zhao in Episode 3 shows just how similar these two are. But since both of them began their journeys on opposite sides of the war, their challenges are different: Katara has to fight for the rights that she deserves, while Zuko needs to learn that he doesn’t have the right to be spoiled and have everyone bow to him just because of his lineage. Still, they’re alike in one more important way: they successfully learn to see the “enemy” as an ally, even a friend, and despite their childhood experiences or conditioning, they are both willing to embrace an element of change.
paintedfirelady
themomentofdavyprentiss
All right! Team Avatar is back! Air, Water, Earth, Fire… Fan and Sword!
paintedfirelady
marsreds
“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.
paintedfirelady
thegaangg
Anonymous asked:
thegaangg answered:
Ok so according to Google, the definition of a “crack ship” is: “A ship that is highly ridiculous, bizarre, disturbing, and/or unlikely to ever become canon. The characters don’t have any chemistry, never interact, are in different canons or timelines, are different species, one is an inanimate object, etc.”
I don’t know about you but Zutara doesn’t check any of those boxes.
When you click on my blog it says “Zutara” typed out right in front of your face in red, you should’ve known what you were getting yourself into before you followed, that’s not my problem.
Thanks for clarifying that
It bugs me so much when people call zutara a “crack ship”
Which even if it was, why shouldn’t one be free to ship it anyways?
paintedfirelady
nymre
Old drawing I originally made for @matereya :) Poem is by @rufiozuko
*re-uploaded by request.
paintedfirelady
incorrectzutaraquotes
Zuko: we don’t have anything to be nervous about. She’s the chief’s daughter.
Iroh: i know, i know—
Zuko: no, no, you don’t know. I was the boy. In the palace, the one who opened the wall. She’s the real thing, Iroh.
Iroh:…that means our Katara has found her family. We have found the heir to the Southern Water Tribe. And you—
Zuko: will walk out of her life forever
Iroh: but—
Zuko: Princesses don’t marry banished royalty.
I’m NOT CRYING, nope.
paintedfirelady
thegaangg
@zutaraweek | Zutara Week 2016 |
Day 1: Dragons
Started over a month early.. and I’m still late for day one. ^^;;; This is like my.. 4th? 5th Zutara week? It’s just the best thing ever~
ruinedchildhood
