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Language is a River

@storiesintheashes / storiesintheashes.tumblr.com

Sing--and singing--remember, your song dies and changes; and is not here to-morrow, any more than the wind blowing ten thousand years ago.
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Reblogged foxfireflamequeen
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Anonymous asked:

Why do you treat Zuko like he's somehow more of a man than Aang is? Aang constantly helped, supported, and saved both his friends/loved ones and other people in need and stood up for his morals and beliefs even when others insulted and patronized him for it and was the first to forgive the teenager that tried to hunt him and kill him for the majority of the show, while Zuko spent most of this show the exact opposite, yet his struggle is somehow more than the boy who lost his entire culture?

themakeupfeminist answered:

I’ve had this ask in my inbox for months because I honestly forgot about it, but I have some time to reply properly.

GET READY FOR THE ESSAY NOBODY ASKED FOR

Aang is a wonderful character that is generous and loving and protective and basically the moral compass for the show for at least the first two seasons, and that’s good. I like Aang as a character, but he just doesn’t develop past square one. I  think it was a huge mistake to write him the way Bryke did throughout all of season three. They missed just a huge opportunity to develop him into a complex character who has dealt with loss and genocide and a huge, impossible burden, but instead they made him out into the nice guy.

You are, however, grossly underselling Zuko as the guy who spent the show hunting Aang. They started out even in their journeys, both young boys who had a complicated and tragic past coupled with an epic journey. But somewhere along the way, they went in different directions. 

The fact is, it’s unrealistic and unfair to expect Aang to not change throughout his journey. He can’t end the series as the same person he was in the beginning, because there is no way that an actual person wouldn’t change after going through everything that Aang did. The funny thing is, every single time Aang had a chance for growth, Bryke stunted it by placing a Katara-esque band-aid on the wound.

Aang never learns to really control the Avatar state. Every time he freaks out and loses control, Bryke throws Katara at him as a solution. Aang should have dealt with the fact that he massacred the Fire Nation at the North Pole. He should have dealt with how violent he was when Appa was stolen. He should have dealt with his defeat at Ba Sing Se. He should have dealt with the failed invasion on the Day of Black Sun. He should have dealt with the fact that he can’t kill Ozai.

But he doesn’t.

Aang’s MO is unfair for his character, but it repeats itself throughout the entire show. Obstacle, tantrum, solution. Obstacle, tantrum, solution. He lashes out at people when they try to help him, like a child, and usually does whatever he wants anyway. Look at how he responds to Katara when they’re stuck in the desert by the Library. Look at how he ignores her and Sokka when they try to regroup after the invasion. He’s acting like a child when, as unfair as it sounds, he needs to grow up.

If you apply that same standard to Zuko, you get completely different reactions.

I won’t say that one of them has more tragedy in their past than the other, because I think they have suffered in vastly different yet somewhat equal ways. Aang has never had to deal with being rejected or unloved. Zuko has grown up being belittled, abused, and kicked down. He’s been indoctrinated with very violent and harmful views, brutalized for resisting them, and then sent from home at like, FOURTEEN.

It’s hard for Zuko to change and he throws the same tantrums that Aang does, but then he grows up.

I’d put his growth starting point somewhere between his battle with Zhao and the attempted murder by the pirates. 

You see Zuko change. He abandons everything he’s ever known and is left with nothing, physically and metaphorically. He has to rebuild his identity from the ground up, and he makes mistakes along the way. He steals. He lies. He resents the loss of his luxury. 

But he’s also kind and selfless.

There’s a running joke that “No one had a crush on Book One Zuko” 

That should give you an idea of how drastic his character development is compared to Aang’s, even within the span of one season. Zuko ends the series a completely different person, having made amends with those that were initially his enemies, and taking on the responsibility of rebuilding the country that once shunned him. It’s a beautiful redemption arc the likes of which I don’t think I’ve ever seen. 

You mention that Aang sticks up for his beliefs, and I’ll agree that that is good. However, Aang never challenges himself. He never has a moral quandary. He never stops and wonders if what he believes is actually the best option. He just keeps doing it anyway. 

Something that has always bothered me is that he never tells the Gaang that he has failed to control the avatar state (before the  battle in the crystal catacombs). He picks up Sokka and lies about something that affects all of them. He lies time and time again to the people that have given up their lives to help him accomplish his goal. He patronizes Katara countless times when all she’s trying to do is keep them going. 

And that will be my final point as to why I value Zuko as a character more than Aang. Their treatment of Katara.

Shipping aside, Aang never once treats Katara like his equal, in a romantic sense. He applies the same childish hard headedness to their “relationship” as he does to his problem-solving. It’s very one sided, and it’s very selfish. When he first kisses her, it’s out of the blue. I personally consider it to verge on an unwanted advance, but I realize it could be just an innocent gesture. 

But the fact remains that after he kisses her, Katara doesn’t ever talk about it. She never confronts him or approaches him to tell him she feels the same way. Instead, when he gets jealous over a play, she tells him that she’s confused. He says he thought they were going to be together forever. After ONE kiss. THEN, after she’s said she’s confused, that they’re fighting a war, that she can’t think about anything like that right now, he kisses her. Again.

This time, it’s very clearly portrayed as unwanted. Katara storms off and Aang is left to throw a tantrum one last time.

The next time they have some actual alone time is after the battle, if I’m not mistaken. And I’m supposed to believe that she’s overcome whatever confusion she had and throws herself at Aang? #trophy

Then you get Zuko, who from day one has treated Katara as an equal. By day one, I mean the first time he ever really sees her. Not “I’ll save you from the pirates” not the shirshiu chase, but the battle on the North Pole. 

He fights her like an equal, and every encounter since has them evenly matched. 

I could say a million things about their dynamic, but I’ll narrow it down to The Southern Raiders, because I think that episode does a wonderful job at contrasting the differences between the way she relates to Aang and Zuko.

When Katara confronts Aang with the idea of going after the man that killed her mother, she doesn’t get a friend, she doesn’t get a lover, she gets a lecturer. Aang is so detached from the situation that he can’t understand how Katara feels. He is, first and foremost, a pacifist monk. That doesn’t mean he’s a bad person, but it does mean he’s bad at relating to people. He can’t understand why “letting go” isn’t an option for Katara because he can’t understand Katara. He knows what he thinks she should do, so he tells her that. He judges her for wanting revenge. He lets her go with a patronizing farewell. He’s been traveling with this girl for almost three years and he can’t figure her out.

Zuko gets her almost instantly. He sees through her anger at him and you know what he does? He tries to find out how to help. When did you EVER see Aang trying to find out more about Katara and Sokka’s mom? When did he EVER try to get to know Katara’s pain? How SICK is it that we went two and a half seasons with NO ONE asking these two kids how their mother died. But Zuko does. And once he finds out, he tries to help her get closure.

Even better, Zuko trusts her to make her own journey because he KNOWS WHAT IT’S LIKE TO STUMBLE ON THE WAY TO THE RIGHT CHOICE. Aang expects Katara to automatically choose peace and forgiveness. Zuko understands that, in reality, that doesn’t happen. He respects Katara enough to let her have her own path to closure. 

He lets her stumble. He lets her bloodbend and intimidate and get so close to ending the man’s life, but she doesn’t. And I think if she had, Zuko would’ve helped her with the body and never said anything to a living soul ever.

The people who come at my bb Katara going off about how awful it was for Zuko to let her or encourage her to bloodbend or seek revenge are just being dicks. Either you’ve never lost a parent or you just don’t understand that particular journey, but it comes down to the same thing Aang couldn’t do:

It’s not your journey, so you don’t decide how she takes it.

Katara is a master at this point. She has grown up more than the majority of the gaang (with the exception of Zuko probably), and she has a right to her own agency in her story.

Tl;dr: 

Zuko grows up into an understanding human being and Aang remains a petulant child.

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#Zuko#Aang#Katara#AtLA.#meta#interesting
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Reblogged fullmetalpotterhead
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this is one of my favorite episodes, you know why? Because Sokka’s moment of weakness is not trivialized, is not cast aside. Sokka feels like he doesn’t matter and his sister- a girl with enormous power, wants to reassure him that it is genuinely not the case and Sokka matters. She then proceeds to indulge Sokka in one of his interests that is not normally portrayed as something manly but that SHE KNOWS HE WILL LIKE, because she cares and she knows Sokka. Then the entire rest of the episode focuses on Sokka’s talents being unconventional but USEFUL while the Gaang feels acutely his lack of presence. Without Sokka they fall apart, no plans, no morale. He is more effective than he realizes and it is because of him being so much more than just a ‘regular’ guy.

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agentrescue
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potatorooteverdeen

And another thing - even though Katara reassures Sokka that he does matter, she also validates his feelings by saying “I’m sorry you’re feeling so down.” That is so important to me!! She doesn’t say “well you shouldn’t feel that way because your reasoning is false!” Nope - she acknowledges that his feelings are valid, and then tries her best to make him feel better by reminding him that they all care about it, and then helping him recover via distraction. Now that is a healthy sibling relationship, folks.

#atla#sokka#katara
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Reblogged queertoonqueertoons
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Katara: It’s not magic. It’s waterbending, and it’s- Sokka: Yeah, yeah, an ancient art unique to our culture, blah blah blah. Look, I’m just saying that if I had weird powers, I’d keep my weirdness to myself. 

So I wanted to talk a little about Katara, because I think we often focus on her grief for her mother, and forget her relationship to her culture, and her experience of the Southern Water Tribe genocide (unlike the Air Nomads genocide, which was for the greater part over after four big terrifyingly effective simultaneous strikes, this one took place over a long length of time - more than 40 years? 50? - and it wasn’t total, but it definitely was one. genocide = the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group, fwiw)

(Kanna’s village - before and after)

All of the Southern water benders were exterminated or taken away to rot in prison (where they all died eventually except for Hama). Katara was born the only bender left in the whole South Pole. Then when she was eight years old, she survived a raid that was meant to kill her, but took her mother instead (she probably was too young to realize that, to her it must have been a question mark up until she met Yon Rha - gratuitous cruelty? Why her mother in particular? They took nothing else!).

So Katara from a young age had a double burden to bear: that of her mother, and the legacy of her bending (and she was shown as painfully aware of her situation and what it meant on both front). But here’s the thing: Katara could be a mother, she was naturally good at it, and her grandmother could teach her what she didn’t already knew. Her family and tribe demanded that of her, they needed her to be that for them (especially after her father and the rest of the men basically abandoned them). However, there was no one left to teach her how to waterbend - she had almost no hope of ever becoming a master without formal training, her brother thought it was silly and weird and let her know, her grandmother thought it was a waste of time. But she kept practicing, because she knew how important it was, to her and to her tribe, that she kept trying (as the only one left who could).

(…an ancient art unique to our culture, blah blah blah…)

(Of course she would obsess over that waterbending scroll)

When she gets to the North Pole, she meets Pakku, and with him the opportunity of finally becoming a true master. But because she is a girl, he judges her unworthy. He judges her, the only remaining southern waterbender, unworthy of carrying on their culture. The Fire Nation didn’t care about the gender of their prisoners, men and women - they all fought side by side for their freedom in the South, and they were all taken away to the last one, and killed to the last one. In the South, the women had the choice to learn how to fight, or be defenseless. And privileged master Pakku couldn’t possible realize the extend of what he was denying her in that moment.

Katara had to prove herself, she had to earn her right to these teachings. And if she had been less good or less stubborn or not Kanna’s granddaughter - well the North would have refused their sister-tribe the power to use their common cultural heritage to fight back against the nation that destroyed them.

(It’s sexist and terrible.)

Meh, thankfully, she was that good, stubborn, and Kanna’s granddaughter, and she did get to become a master.

Good.

But, of course, her story doesn’t end here, and wrt her culture, the next chapter is a much more traumatizing experience. In the Fire Nation, she meets another master. This time it’s an old woman from the South like her (“You’re a waterbender! I’ve never met another waterbender from our tribe!”), and she is, ah, more than willing to help her.

Look how happy Katara looks at the idea to learn from her in particular:

Katara: I can’t tell you what it means to meet you. It’s an honor! You’re a hero. Hama: I never thought I’d meet another southern waterbender. I‘d like to teach you what I know so that you can carry on the southern tradition when I’m gone. Katara: Yes! Yes, of course! To learn about my heritage… it would mean everything to me.

But when Hama starts her lesson, the techniques she teaches have been obviously developed with one goal in mind: survival in enemy territory. They can’t possibly have been invented in the South Pole, where water is abundant everywhere. They are deadly and cruel, and the damage they do to the environment leaves Katara sad and uncomfortable, but Hama waves that off as unimportant. It doesn’t matter, she doesn’t have the time to worry about flowers or beauty or nature. To her that peace and beauty is probably just an illusion anyway, a lie: years after her escape she is still living the war, and war is ugly and rotten and messy (her world is ugly and rotten and messy - this is her comfort zone).

The last technique she teaches Katara is bloodbending. She forces Katara to learn something she finds disgusting, repulsive (just like Hama was forced to learn?) by torturing her (Hama was tortured), by overpowering her, invading her, making her lose control over her own body, bending her blood (Hama herself is clinging to the last remain of control she managed to get back after rotting in prison for years), and finally by threatening to have the two people she cares most about in the world kill each other right under her eyes (Hama lost everyone too, she had to say goodbye).

(Katara: But, to reach inside someone and control them? I don’t know if I want that kind of power. Hama: The choice is not yours. The power exists…and it’s your duty to use the gifts you’ve been given to win this war. Katara, they tried to wipe us out, our entire culture… your mother! Katara: I know. Hama: Then you should understand what I’m talking about. We’re the last Waterbenders of the Southern Tribe. We have to fight these people whenever we can. Wherever they are, with any means necessary! Katara: It’s you. You’re the one who’s making people disappear during the full moons. Hama: They threw me in prison to rot, along with my brothers and sisters. They deserve the same. You must carry on my work.)

And this, this, is the only truly southern waterbending Katara is ever going to learn. This is her tribe’s bending heritage, what’s left of it: blood, grief, suffering, hatred, loss of control over both your body and mind (because it’s terrible, but I think that’s what’s implied by the show: bloodbending makes you lose your mind. Hama’s only mean of regaining physical freedom ended up trapping her in another nightmare). Hama gifts her with a power she despises (but will use anyway in her darkest hour when she loses control) and a philosophy of violence and revenge.

Katara chose peace and forgiveness. As an adult, she will have bloodbending outlawed, she will become the greatest healer in the world, and she’ll teach her daughter, the next avatar, probably many others. These choices matter, and we should talk about them with that background in mind. Katara redefined her heritage - or rather she created a new one for herself: she refused the condition that was forced upon her (bloodbender) and ensured nobody could legally do to someone else what Hama did to her (and it’s implied this law is valid anywhere in the world). She transmitted Pakku’s warrior teachings, the ones she fought for, to the next generations (and did a great job of it!), but she also taught them how to heal, refusing to separate the arts as in Northern Water Tribe tradition - and healing was something she discovered by herself, that she felt was always a part of her. At that, she became the universally acknowledged best. Her legacy, despite everything that happened to her, will never be one of violence.

tl;dr: Katara is one of the strongest fictional characters ever created bye

#katara#atla#meta#long post

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