#tldr katara loves grown ups & grown ups love her & we love her for it

[airteacher]

✶ korra

//tldr: Meeting Korra for the first time brought life back to Tenzin. She rekindled the motivation to achieve his life goals that he had lost sight of.

Now let's dive deep into this.

Things to consider about Tenzin's situation during this between avatars time:

-his father has died, and he had unprocessed grief about it -he has no children to continue the Air Nomad legacy, and even if he eventually does, Aang won't be there to see them. He probably feels he left his father hanging with hope that he didn't deliver on. -he's in a dead end relationship with a woman he loves but is probably never around bc they're both busy with their work, and even if she was, she's not exactly the emotional support he needs and she's not interested in kids -his meditation "isn't working" despite the amount of time and effort he has put into it, for a very very long time

All of this in mind, I think it's fair to say that Tenzin would at least feel like a failure and a disappointment if not legitimately depressed and apathetic towards life at this time.

Once Korra is revealed to be the avatar, I envision Senna and Katara presenting toddler Korra to meet this shell of a man, Tenzin. He just stares at her blankly because he's forgotten what emotion is like, and nothing could replace his father anyways, he thinks. Korra doesn't like the staring. She thinks he's a creepy old man and sneers at him.

Tenzin's in this chair zoning out and just watching Korra play while Senna and Katara get the idea to give Tenzin and Korra some alone time. Tenzin was too late in noticing what they were doing to protest about it. Don't leave me with this child! And he's frozen. Not sure how to interact with a kid. How do childcare?

Then Korra gets frustrated over something small not going her way. She screams and earthbends a crack in the floor. Tenzin reaches out like "No, no, don't do that!" And still creeped out by him, she throws all her bending at him. "GO! A! WAY!" Tenzin dodges the earth, takes a hit of water, but when he sees she's about to give him a fist full of fire, he counters it with a palm of air, simultaneously catching her fist in his hand and extinguishing the fire before it could cause some serious damage.

"Korra, no," he says, sternly. All of a sudden Tenzin takes on this parental role he didn't know he had in him. "We don't attack defenseless people like that. And we don't bend indoors."

Korra, not hearing one word of his scolding, is infatuated by the airbending he just did. "Wow! You can airbend???"

"Well. Yes, I can." He was in fact the only person who could airbend, but he wasn't going to point that out to her. The thought stung a little.

Korra's like, "I can't airbend. :C..."

"I'm sure you will in time."

"When?"

"I don't know. But you are the Avatar. Therefore, you are an Airbender."

"I want to airbend now." She throws a few punches in attempt to do it.

"You'll have to be patient. You have a lot to learn before I can teach you airbending."

She grabs his hand with her two small hands and tugs at him. "Teach me nowwww."

Giving in, Tenzin says, "Well, if we're going to do any bending, it has to be outside."

She pulls him along by the hand, into the snow. We see Senna and Katara smiling while Tenzin does some small airbending tricks to amuse Korra. Maybe even lift her up into the air like she's flying if Korra can convince him.

And, like that. Tenzin's reminded of his desire to have a family. Only now, it isn't because he feels pressured into it, but because he wants wants it. Not for his people's sake, but for Tenzin's sake... well, yes, for his people's sake but mostly the latter.

Thanks to Korra, his goals that had grown stale -- creating the next generation of airbenders, and teaching the next avatar -- became new again.

@warpaiint

#ooc #hc #Tenzin #Korra #legend of korra #i could ramble about Tenzin all day

[dragynkeep]

Katara’s fire nation outfit, in comparison to everyone else’s, feels too sexualized and it makes me uncomfortable (also the oogling from everyone was weird to me). Like she’s what, 14? They couldn’t design anything that looked like her old outfit?

while i do believe the show has an issue sexualizing katara for the benefit of her "love interest", which i'll get into in a minute, i don't think this outfit is really an example of it?

when you compare katara to the rest of the gaang, specifically the two girls toph & suki, she really isn't showing much more skin than suki & toph will obviously dress differently to both of them because she's not much of an outwardly feminine girl. she doesn't even seem to be wearing much less than sokka, only baring her midriff which we've seen katara do when she's also done things like surfing.

but as we can see from the beach episode & ty lee's general attire, the clothes both katara & suki are wearing seem to be in line with what fire nation girls would wear; something that allows the skin to breathe while being roomy enough to move. mai is covered up in the screenshot much like toph is because this is just who they are as people; there's probably also a class difference in how people are expected to dress which you can see with azula's main outfit versus the more revealing one she chose to wear to a party to "fit in", taking note from ty lee.

the reason they probably avoided something that looked like her old outfit is because the clothing of the two nations is very different; the swt has to be able to combat the extreme cold temperatures & be taken from the land & animals around them, whereas the fire nation seems to have an abundance of resources & "trade" routes, as well as a much hotter climate. katara would've been a sweaty mess if she tried to dress like she used to in a new climate she's not used to.

however; there are moments when katara is sexualized, even in this new outfit & her older ones alike ... whenever aang & by extension the male gaze audience is looking at her in order to reinforce the "romance."

these are all moments when katara is being framed in a more mature, sexual light to endear the audience that aang has a crush on her & that the writers want to reinforce that. & the outfit where she's sexualized the most, based on her original outfit, is in the ember island players episode where bryke didn't seem to have enough cognisance to allow valid criticism against a dark skinned indigenous girl having her body & culture sexualized by her in universe oppressors to mock her. instead all the outrage went to aang, not because of this sexualization by the way or because he saw katara was angry, but because the play was pushing katara as a love interest for zuko despite her being "the avatar's girl." the only outrage that mattered was his own.

tldr ; there is an issue of katara being sexualized in the show but it's always been in the effort of the grown male bryke trying to push her as a seductive love interest for their nice guy main, not just the existence of katara in clothes that are fitting for the environment & had been seen on other girls her age.

#atla #atla critical #katara #pro katara #katara deserved better #kataang critical #bryke critical #ais.txt #answered #q

[zutaraxkorrasami]

I never understood the decision to make Kataang canon over Zutara. Well, I do in that it’s obvious there was a self-insert with one of the creators in Aang but I mean... they had a golden chance to have all canon couples in a kids cartoon be canon and instead we got something so awful I’m not sure I have the words to express my disdain for.

My issue mostly comes from Aang as a character. He is a childish, selfish person who even when he grows seems to have more flaws than positives. He pushed himself on Katara so often and he acted like he owned her when she never even seemed to care in that way. Not saying she didn’t care, or didn’t see him as a friend, but I think she felt like she needed to be with him. This is the boy who believed the worst of her, tried to guilt her out of following her own instincts to track down the man and get justice and revenge for it. She had the right to want those things and she had the right to get that however she chose. But that wasn’t good enough for Aang. Oh no. Aang had to lay on a guilt trip, had to make it seem like she was turning into the bad guy, and had the nerve to compare what he went through to what she did. The boy never showed any grief outside of two episodes. The boy got over the deaths of his people like they meant nothing and propped up the idea their beliefs were better than everyone else’s.

In S1 alone we have Aang burning Katara and hiding a letter from her that revealed where her father was. He called her jealous because she didn’t like that he was staying because people were fawning all over him instead of realizing he was a hypocrite. Then he goofs off at the North Pole when he should be learning waterbending.

S2 he doesn’t call her Sifu until she’s hurt about it, he insults her when she suggests they kiss, he snaps at her when she’s trying to keep everyone together and he stubbornly refuses to accept the safety of the world has to come before his “love” which let’s be real is a friendly love with a crush attached.

S3 he kisses her without consent, basically calls her a monster, tries to guilt her, gets possessive and jealous when she never said a damn thing, and snapped at her in the finale when she wants to calm him down. Let’s not forget that he also ran away in the opening of the season.

Aang shows time and time again that he will always put himself and his own needs before others. He shows us that he is not a good person. He is not a kind person. He does everything out of selfish motives. He shows us he will never grow to be better or more respectful. We see that he remains the same childish person. That he will bring Katara down when he can (which is evident by her lack of statue in LOK when the others get one). He is a bully. A “nice” bully who smiles and giggles so we all think he’s great, except some of us can see that he’s not so nice.

While Zuko does start out on the wrong path and his relationship with Katara is toxic and not at all good in the beginning, we see a genuine bond form and something more. He keeps her safe, respects her autonomy and even invites her along to the most important fight of his life, because he trusts her and know she is skilled enough. He went out of his way to seek her forgiveness, something Aang never did. And I always felt like they had such amazing chemistry. They were also both very mature in the end which Aang never reached, even as a grown ass man.

I think the worst decision made in ATLA was giving Aang everything in the end and making Kataang canon. It seems like nobody cared that Katara ended up with a shitty, abusive boyfriend. He probably ended up treating her like shit when they were married.

He was the worst characters in terms of actual characteristics and ended up with one of the best characters in the show, instead of the two best characters. It... It sucks quite honestly.

TLDR: Aang is a piece of shit who didn’t deserve Katara. Zuko and Katara deserved each other.

#aang #zuko #katara #kataang #zutara #anti-aang #anti-kataang