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look, his fighting skills are s-tier, and he would actually do better at combat in a world without bending than with, but forming alliances (and knowing when to break them)? charming the capitol? the off-chance of having to hunt and forage for his own food? not to mention Zuko, despite it running contrary to his upbringing as a citizen of the Fire Nation and a son of Ozai, is at his core a kind, compassionate boy who held out his hand to save a man who very recently tried to kill him. there have been winners who got to be the last child standing without having to kill others, but it's rare.

“Dadko is out of character” Ok then explain this:

Imagine watching Zuko break into several highly secure locations, hold his own in hand-to-hand combat despite being a bender, and being a firebender skilled enough to train the Avatar, and being braindead enough to call him incompetent.

Imagine watching Zuko being the only character with the sense to try and get people to train when Sozin’s comet is a matter of days away and thinking it’s unreasonable to call him the dad friend.

And yes, I ship him with Katara. I think she fits the mom friend role too—and this is so obvious that other characters acknowledge it verbatim in canon. Big surprise, a lot of people happen to ship the two characters who display the most emotional maturity together.

I get the whole thing about how it’s unfair to put that responsibility on kids, but that’s just how it was in canon. If you don’t like it, be angry at the writers for writing it that way, not at me for pointing it out.

You know what, I'll give it to you, Zuko is a very capable martial artist and pretty damn good at espionage. This is, as we all know, an invaluable part of every single dad's skillset. He's shit at like taking care of himself and lacks any self preservation, has no idea how to socialise, but hey, I'd love to have him as a rogue in my DnD campaign.

And you would even have a but of a point on the Sozin's Comet thing, if it weren't for the fact that he withheld crucial information from the group. Like, I still am not quite sure if he thought the squad just. Telepathically knew about the ins and outs of a top secret war meeting but ok.

Mf said "assumed" lmao

This is once again, a symptom of Zuko's lapses in judgement, his inability to communicate properly. All things that can be explained by his lack of emotional maturity.

I will however say that you are overestimating Katara and Zuko's emotional maturity. Now, I'd argue that both Zuko and Katara have huge difficulty managing their emotions, since they had to prioritise other things when growing up.

Katara prioritises others, while neglecting her own emotional stability. While Zuko prioritises his honour lol with the same drawbacks.

This is not emotional maturity. This is two kids trying to be grownups and failing at it because they're kids who aren't ready for this.

I'd almost enjoy Zutara if it was these two being kids together lol. But, no, this is the big boy ship.

I just find it so tragic how Katara is being labelled the mom friend when she had expressed discomfort at it multiple times in show. Like how can you not see the horror of this girls parentification. Did we watch the same show, that episode was agonising to watch.

Also when most of the "mom accusations " come from Toph, who is clearly projecting her own issues.

The show gives us this horrific portrayal of children having to pick up the slack after adults and all you can do with it is shove it into your weird little dad/mom dynamic?

HHHELP uwu helpless baby mpreg omega Zuko and Alpha Genius Sokka is arguably the funniest thing I've heard this week lmao.

Also yes I can't imagine why Sokka, the eldest of the group while stranded in a desert with no food or water, would taste and eat whatever he could find that could possibly provide sustenance for his younger comrades if proven safe to eat. I cannot imagine.

You have to remember that Sokka spent a good chunk of his teenage years being the sole provider for his village. While the desert is very far off from the frozen tundra, he is improvising.

He also formed a schedule for the group while they were in the Fire Nation and is shown to forage for food for the group.

I don't, actually. It's an aight ship, most people who ship it are really nice and chill so i can fuck with it. Plus the comedic potential is unrivalled. I mostly lean to shipping Zuko with no one other than extensive therapy. He's genuinely not ready to date, look at how he treated Mai. I expect 6 dollars in my bank account by tomorrow btw.

also I may be talking nonsense rn but I feel like. I see katara as younger than how a lot of other fans seem to see her. Like shes canonically 14 but to me shes like a young 14. Maybe that seems crazy pedantic to even say but I feel like theres a "mid teens" brand of 14 and a "early teens" brand of 14 and to me she's the latter but to a lot of people she's the former. Does this make any sense

based on that one trial and error bit. [id in alt]

toph had to be rich and sheltered for her backstory to work because if she lived anywhere in the world that the war had actually touched she would've publicly decimated so many fire nation soldiers by the time the gaang showed up. and then she'd be like "what am i supposed to do? leave my humble village defenceless to join the war???" and they'd already done that arc with like three different characters. i'm bored just thinking about it. making toph unique in a multitude of ways is much more interesting and that novelty is essential to her integration into the group working as well as it does

"Why did Katara choose Aang over Zuko??"

Y'all Zuko wasn't even a player.

Babygirl, Zuko was a player

He was playing for the other team.

Zukka nation, I am knocking on your door. Please let me in.

this is purely for fun and I've certainly been guilty of a few of these things myself in my years of fic writing. don't be weird in the notes and don't use this as an excuse to insult someone's writing.

Final Round

It's an ATLA showdown! Time to decide once and for all who will win the 2024 Better US Election!

zuko is an orange cat but he is also a tiny yappy dog that bites at people’s ankles, sometimes simultaneously. wow…. the duality of man

thinking abt this tweet again

Propaganda why Aang is insufferable:

He has some very bad ideas that the narrative never explores and gets rewarded by the narrative for bad behavior.

Mostly just the way he deals with his crush on Katara and kind of forces it on her. It’s honestly really shitty because she never truly reciprocated his feelings and had plenty of moments where she shows she’s just trying not to hurt his feelings with a straight up rejection, but ends up with him in the end just because that’s what he wanted.

Like we know what it looks like when Katara actually has a crush on someone, she wouldn’t let the situation like the war affect how she feels about demonstrating those feelings when she’s so in touch with them. Like how she was with Jet and Haru. I just wish the writing team did a better job of showing Katara developing feelings for Aang way better than they did lol.

Made a series that was otherwise reasonably tolerable impossible to watch. I hate that all the jokes written for his character target 8-year-olds exclusively. Also his little TV show keeps appearing on my dash no matter how many words I block and I hate it

Propaganda why Gregory is insufferable:

This boy is so poorly written, it hurts. In the gameplay, he just acts annoyed and pissed off the whole time. Then, in the endings, he becomes a whole other character who acts scared and sad, which does not match the previous hours of gameplay AT ALL

But that just annoyed me

What really made me hate him was the GGY and Robot Gregory stuff, because OH NO, Gregory could not just be a normal kid who got into this situation by chance, he has to be a robotic recreation of the Crying Child, despite not acting one bit like CC, or, according to the GGY story in the books, he's responsible for multiple murders and is Afton's/the Mimic's apprentice.

Just let this kid be fucking normal!

(Also, unlike a lot of people, I really enjoy what the Ruin DLC did to his character. And don't try to say that's still the mimic, the mimic recycles dialog from the main game. This Gregory uses completely unique dialog, and unless the mimic was able to form new words in his voice all of a sudden, that's still him. He had to make a tough decision, one life or over hundreds and I can respect that)

Suffers from being made into another one of Matpat's ""is actually a robot theory"". It is annoying as hell, especially if its canon. We do not need robot children theories in a game about possession, child murder and serial killers. Especially not dumb theories about him being a 'recreation' of someone with a completely different personality. It has completely ruined any enjoyment I had in that character because we're just going back to the Afton family again

Someone made a good point about how his personality seems to be reminiscent of a certain trend where a video game protagonist has to be snarky even though it would’ve worked better for the horror atmosphere if he was more scared because it would’ve made the player feel his fear. I recall people being surprised about his personality and expecting him to be more scared, and I assume the developers were just afraid of ppl calling Gregory “whiny”, but it still feels like a missed opportunity

Ooooh the z*tara shipper who wrote that propaganda gonna be so mad when it's confirmed for the 802nd time that nobody outside their circle of delulu hates Aang.