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I promised more the nwanyi spirit and the woman who bent blood excerpts and here it is!
Suki, Toph, and Katara are a team of bounty hunters known as The Runaways in this AU and they were “recruited” by the mysterious White Lotus and offered work with them. Iroh makes them an offer they can’t refuse…
(NSFW: sweary words)
Suki’s smirk remained, plastered into place, but she tilted her head towards her friends and pitched her voice low. ‘The old man’s job offer. Thoughts?’
‘Oh, we’re taking the veiled threats as a serious offer, are we?’ Katara drawled around a mouthful of food. The spoon rubbed against her bandages which in turn were rubbing against her wound but despite the discomfort, the hot meal was doing wonders for her spirits.
‘I take all and every opportunity seriously, you know that.’
‘You really believe the White Lotus, a group whose members we’ve personally hunted down and delivered to the authorities more than once, is interesting in partnering up?’
Suki studied her carefully from behind the mask she wore. ‘I take it you don’t.’
‘Hm, you think?’
Toph poked at her dinner, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. ‘They’re alright,’ she muttered. ‘Silvertongue and Jun and the others we met on the road. They’re cool.’
‘Alright, are they?’ Katara asked stiffly. ‘The people who essentially forced us to come meet their boss because he had a humble offer for us?’ She lowered her voice when Suki widened her eyes in warning. Katara leaned in closer. ‘They’re firebenders, Toph. Zuko definitely is, his uncle and cousin might be too. We don’t know how many more there could be. I don’t trust them.’
‘Well none of us trusts them,’ Toph said as though Katara had pointed out that two badgermoles plus two badgermoles equals a whole lot of trouble. ‘No one trusts anyone in this business, we all know that.’
‘You trust Jun,’ Katara accused in a hushed tone.
Toph frowned, her lip popping free of her teeth. ‘I want to fuck Jun, I don’t trust her, Madame Fussy Britches. Big difference.’
Suki cleared her throat, moving her stir fry from one side of her bowl to the other. ‘I want to take him up on it. Iroh. I think we should take it.’
‘Are you insan—’
Toph elbowed Katara so hard in her ribs that she nearly spat her rice halfway across the table. ‘You sure are light on your feet, fire boy,’ Toph acknowledged, turning to face Zuko. The man stood behind them, his eyes narrowed and calculating. ‘Sneaky little firebender, aren’t you?’
‘Only because you can’t see, Toph,’ Suki said, grinning up at Zuko. ‘He’s actually quite tall. Impressive ninja skills for a man of your… size.’
Zuko went from irate to a blushing mess in little under ten seconds. ‘I’m not— That’s not even—’ he spluttered, dropping his bowl onto the table beside Katara. ‘The waterbender left her herbs at the serving table!’
Katara arched a brow, still rubbing her side. Suki always knew how to exploit a person’s weakness to her advantage; Katara would have high fived her success if the firebender hadn’t been spluttering so close to them.
Instead, she glanced at Zuko. ‘How thoughtful,’ she simpered. Then, after a meaningful look from Suki, begrudgingly added, ‘Thank you.’
The firebender, his cheeks red as flames, slammed down a bubbling cup of tea with the now familiar scent of comfrey, centella, Hei Bai’s wort, and marigold. ‘Don’t mention it.’
Katara lifted the cup and swilled the liquid around. ‘You’ve definitely overcooked the herbs.’
But the firebender bent over his food and ate without any sign of having heard her.
Toph was snickering into her own bowl— something about touchy firebenders— but Suki took pity on him. ‘So, Zuko,’ she began, nibbling at a piece of broccoli. ‘How did the White Lotus end up running a boarding house?’
The firebender chewed awhile, glaring straight ahead even as he answered. ‘The White Lotus is more than you think it is. We provide shelter to those who need it. This boarding house is for wives who need a safe place from dishonourable husbands, refugees who need somewhere to stay while the state allocates them a permanent home, students who can’t afford to live at the university.’ Zuko jabbed his finger across the table, gesturing to the far side of the room. ‘See that old guy in the shabby robes? He’s a cabbage merchant whose never sold enough cabbages to afford a place to live. Used to live under his cabbage cart before someone smashed it. So now he lives here.’
‘For free?’ Toph asked.
Zuko shrugged. ‘Sometimes.’
‘How can your uncle possibly afford to house people for free?’ Katara demanded, before a wry smile claimed her face. ‘Oh, that’s right. His hands aren’t as clean as all that. He’s like us. Trades lives for money.’
‘My uncle does not trade lives for money,’ the firebender snarled with such ferocity that a prickle of trepidation ghosted its way down Katara’s spine. ‘You don’t know anything about us, waterbender.’
So this morning I woke up with a cough and a headache, and I won myself a COVID swab and a day off work. Did I spend the unexpected free time doing revision for the exams that I was lamenting only yesterday?
You bet your sweet arse I didn’t.
Well, okay, yes, I did. But only in part.
The other part I spent working my way through a tub of Ben and Jerry’s (health promotion at its finest, I’m a very responsible member of the medical community), watching Brooklyn-99, and writing Zutara fluff.
Can we say ‘fucking solid sick-day’? I think so.
The fluff needs a wee bit of sprucing, but until I post it later on tonight I thought why not a wee peek?
SO without further ado…
Zuko falls silent, and Katara presses her focus into that point on his chest where his scarred, stubborn heart beats, and as its pace starts to calm a little in the quiet of the hallway-
She feels a catch in her throat, the words drifting from her lips more breath than voice.
Something that always bothered me when I first saw the Southern Raiders was how the episode seemed to go out of its way to show how Zuko is this character who is very cold, vengeful and unforgiving, as opposed to Aang, who is just this perfect saint of forgiveness. So recently I found out that Elizabeth Ehasz, who wrote the Southern Raiders, had to rewrite the episode multiple times to demonstrate that Zuko was a very toxic influence on Katara. The original episode had them showing just a bit “too much chemistry”. It was like a lightbulb went off for me. Immediately it made perfect sense of everything I had thought was weird when I first saw the episode.
Aang has always been a very merciful and forgiving person. But he was never so…preachy and trite about it. We see this when he chooses to spare Zuko’s life many times. During the Siege of the North, the characters are left with a choice to either leave him to die, or to take him with them. Sokka has no problem leaving him. He is an enemy who has tried to do them harm, so Sokka’s suggestion is not unreasonable. Aang doesn’t want to do this, but he never judges Sokka, or lectures him about the value of life. He simply decides to follow his heart. But he never displayed a tendency to push his beliefs onto others in a judgmental way. His attitude to Katara in TSR made him seem quite insensitive, which is pretty out of character; especially towards the girl he claims to love.
The same can be said of his preaching about forgiveness. We know Aang is not above having his anger get the best of him at times. We also know that Aang puts Katara on a pedestal, and does not like to see her display any negativity. Yet, her anger and reluctance to forgive Jet do not cause Aang to lecture her about forgiveness. Sure, Jet is someone Katara liked at one point, but Aang never seemed to be so petty as to treat Jet any differently than anyone else, just out of jealousy. In fact, Aang’s possessiveness toward Katara seemed to come about only in Book 3 as well (maybe that’s a post for another time). Suffice to say, I found Aang to be uncharacteristically moralistic in TSR. The episode seemed to sacrifice the nuance of Aang’s character for the purpose of beating you over the head with a black-and-white morality message about Aang being “good” and Zuko being “bad”. I didn’t like this because Avatar is usually so good with handling mature subject matter with shades of grey and leaving the audience to come to their own conclusions.
Which brings me to Zuko. I also found his sudden propensity for vengeance to be surprising. This kid has a lot of flaws, but I did not remember Zuko to be especially vengeful. He was devoted to his “duty” as a Fire Nation soldier and Prince to capture the Avatar, someone who his country has falsely made out to be an evil tyrant who started the 100 year war, yes. I am not saying that Zuko would not feel contempt for Yon Rha, or believe that he didn’t “deserve” Katara’s wrath. But I found his glibness and vocal support of revenge to be unusual, especially toward someone who had just recently forgiven him. The episode also seemed to suggest that Zuko was pushing Katara for revenge as well, something Bryke imply in the commentary on the DVD. So what’s going on here? Is Zuko really so vengeful?
This is Zuko after his Uncle tells him that his sister is “crazy and needs to go down.” The last two times Zuko saw Azula, she tried to murder him in cold blood, and then tried to murder his Uncle right in front of him. Yet Zuko, apparently so used to abuse, does not see this as a reason to hate his sister. In his family, such behavior is “normal”. He has a look of anguish on his face. In spite of it all, Zuko loves his sister and the thought of taking her out causes him a lot of pain. One could argue that Azula is his family and his feelings toward her are not representative of his views on revenge in general. Ok, so let’s get to another non-family member, then.
Here we have Zuko in his Agni Kai with Zhao. Zuko has been disrespected by Zhao and wants to prove himself against him. Throughout the fight, Zhao displays dangerous levels of force against Zuko. Zuko comes very close to losing, and is clearly triggered at one point, remembering the last time he fought an Agni Kai and suffered unimaginably. Yet Zuko is victorious. In Fire Nation imperial culture, strength is valued above all else, and Zuko would be expected to demonstrate his victory by burning Zhao. Zuko has been insulted by Zhao, and as a Prince, this is a great dishonor. As a Prince, Zuko would be expected to uphold the values of his culture and family, and burning Zhao would be seen as a sign of strength; as a man, as a soldier, and as a royal. Yet Zuko is unable to bring himself to do this, despite the fact that it would single him out as being labelled weak. He is simply unable to bring himself to enact that level of violence on another person; the same violence that he has suffered. Zhao showed Zuko no such consideration. He is a man who was visibly happy when Zuko received his scar, after all. This is not a man that Zuko has any type of bond with.
But that’s not even all. Later in the series, Zhao hires pirates to assassinate Zuko, and he nearly succeeds. Zuko barely survives to confront Zhao. They fight and Zhao makes every attempt at finishing the job the pirates failed at, before Zhao is grabbed by the Ocean Spirit. As he is being dragged away to a guaranteed death, Zuko responds. Even after trying to murder him, Zuko is moved with pity and reaches out his hand in an attempt to save Zhao. Clearly the actions of a very vengeful person, wouldn’t you say? I’m sure Zuko just wanted to finish Zhao off himself. Yep.
Has anyone else tried to kill Zuko? Oh yeah, there was. When Jet discovered “Lee” and his Uncle were firebenders, he attacked in a very vicious way that could have easily killed him. When Jet is finally taken away by the Dai Li, we would expect Zuko to be very happy, right? Well, here is his reaction. He and his Unlce aren’t celebrating. They look rather solemn, they entire ordeal being sad and unfortunate. So we see that Zuko is not particularly vengeful when people harm him. I suppose some would argue that his attitude is more tied to his mother. Sure, Zuko being harmed is one thing, but his mother? Surely that’s why he’s so vengeful, right? He wanted to live out his revenge for his mother through Katara, right?
Well, Zuko does actually get to confront the person who took his mother away. Zuko learns everything. His own father was not only was responsible for his mother’s disappearance, he planned to have him killed as a little boy. A little boy who wanted nothing more than to get his father’s approval and love. His immediate reaction to hearing this news? Not rage or violence. He is overcome with emotion that his mother may be alive, and that her loss was a result of her love for him. Zuko’s father is helpless during the eclipse. Zuko probably could have taken him out in the little time left, if he wanted to. But he does not. He only redirects the lightning in self-defense after Ozai attempts to kill him.
So yeah, I find it insulting to Katara, Aang and Zuko’s characters how TSR played out due to Bryke insisting that Aang be the “angel” for Katara and Zuko be “the devil”. They obviously wanted this to be a Kataang episode, where Aang’s statements to Katara stopped her from “going astray”. It reduces Katara’s agency to come to terms with her pain with her own morality. It’s funny how Zuko’s supposed propensity for vengeance conveniently shows up only when he and Katara may have bonded, making him seem like a huge jerk and a totally horrible love interest, right Bryke? And it backfired and made Aang look like even less of a good match for Katara than before. Not to mention seriously lacking in empathy. I would have loved to see the original script for the episode that Elizabeth Ehasz wrote. Even so, I see shades of the original intent even in the final version, and applaud her fantastic writing, as usual.
so I’ve left this post elsetab for a while because I have Thoughts on the matter but always seem to feel that I am tired and not at a good brain time to word good it right. But I have reached a level of tired where I have stopped worrying about word gooding it.
I don’t actually know what Bryke intended to get across with this episode, but I can tell you the way that I’ve always interpreted it.
See, it’s not a matter of “forgive those who have done you wrong” vs “destroy those who have done you wrong”. What it comes down to, ultimately, is that Aang is viewing things from an entirely different perspective than Zuko and Katara.
Aang learns that the Air Nomads have been wiped out in a fairly impersonal way – he was away when it happened, he associates no names or faces with their deaths, and Monk Gyatsu apparently took out a decent number of them when he went out so there’s the off chance that the most personal death avenged itself before he got there. Also it was nearly a century ago so there’s a decent chance that all those directly involved are already dead at this point. So, relatively easy to be zen about.
Zuko? His own father – okay you know Zuko’s backstory. This shit is intensely personal and most certainly has a face. And when the time comes, Zuko faces his father. He overcomes a ton of shit to say he is powerful and worthy of respect and his dad’s a shithead for not seeing it. That he CAN kill the bastard but chooses not to. Then he is able to let go of his hatred enough that it doesn’t weigh on him. It’s like. Instead of hauling a set of emotional baggage everywhere he goes, he checks it somewhere. The baggage isn’t gone but it’s not a burden.
… I admit that it has been a while since I saw this ep so there’s the off chance it’s one of those things where my brain rewrote a scene to be more satisfying.
so anyway. We get to Katara. She saw her mother’s killer; she has a name and a face burned into her mind, the one who killed her mother. Again, hella personal, dude is still alive and kicking, hard to let go when, hell, you don’t know if the guy still plans to take out any waterbender he finds.
Zuko knows that sometimes you need to face your demons to dismiss them instead of staying in your office and mailing them a pink slip. So he helps Katara locate his desk to fire him in person.
I don’t know if that metaphor works my fingers are making clicky noises on the keys.
So Katara faces down the waste of a uniform who killed her mom and tells him that he sucks and failed at his job and she COULD TOTALLY KILL HIM and would totally be justified in killing him. But she chooses not to, and he only lives by her will.
That is what she needed for closure, to frighten the boogeyman of her dreams. He’s not the imposing figure lurking over her; he’s a cowering weakling. It wouldn’t have been possible for her to forgive him in the way Aang wanted.
dunno if this makes sense but they seriously thought this TONED DOWN the Zutara notes? pft, this is one of the shippiest episodes ever. What, did the original have them making out at the end?
I hate it when people call Zutara fans “delusional” when there was so much material released that hinted at the two being a canon ship and the couple was even considered by the production team on multiple occasions. I’m sure there’s plenty of other stuff in addition to this and I’d appreciate contributions. But y'know, haters gonna hate.
Dante Basco confirms that Zuko was in love with Katara
Transcript: “Okay, well: I did fall in love with Katara. And I’ll probably always love her. But in the way you always hold a special place in your heart for your first love. And yeah, I love Mai. I really do. But if the world is really going to end, maybe we can get the old crew back together and save it again.”
Feat. an AU I came up with while drawing, where Zuko works part-time at some cinema owned by Iroh? and runs into Katara during a blackout… and well, why wouldn’t he show off to a pretty girl ✋✨
Anyone ever think about how the first conversation Zuko has after betraying his uncle and siding with Azula, stepping backwards from his redemption, is with Mai. And then his last conversation before reconciling with his uncle and, through this, completing his redemption, is with Katara.
Both of these characters come over to him when he is by himself and ask after his wellbeing:
Mai: Aren’t you cold?
Katara: Are you okay?
And Zuko responds to this probing in both situations by giving some variation of “not in good headspace right now”
Zuko: I’ve got alot on my mind.
Zuko: No I’m not okay.
He then lays out the external situation.
Zuko: It’s been so long. Over three years since I was home. I wonder what’s changed.
Zuko: My uncle hates me I know it. He loved and supported me in every way he could and I still turned against him.
In the first scene he’s contemplating his step back. In the second he’s contemplating his step forward. He goes on to pose a question to each, wondering if this is a step he’ll even be able to take.
Zuko: I wonder how I’ve changed.
Zuko: How can I even face him?
This is where the scenes diverge. Mai reacts by yawning and voicing her disinterest, effectively shutting him down.
Mai: I just asked if you were cold I didn’t ask for your whole life story. Stop worrying.
Her advice is to ignore this conflict that he’s facing, just as she’s doing. Notably, Zuko doesn’t speak again in this scene after this. Mai also kisses him, meaning to distract him from his problems completely.
Katara has a very different approach:
Katara: Zuko, you’re sorry for what you did, right?
She presses him to actually answer his question. He asked how he can face his uncle. He can face him if he wants to be better, if he’s truly sorry for the things he’s done. So she asks him, is he?
Zuko: More Sorry then I’ve been about anything in my entire life.
Katara: Then he’ll forgive you. He will.
After their conversations, Mai walks away, leaving Zuko alone; Katara stays and watches Zuko enter Iroh’s tent.
These conversations symbolise the difference between Zuko’s old life and his new one. Mai’s words mean forgetting, ignoring your mistakes and staying where you are. Katara’s mean confronting your mistakes and moving on.
And if we needed any more parallels that show this, take note of the almost identical framing, specifically what each girl is seeing when they are looking at him:
Mai is on his right. She’s seeing the unscathed side of his face. The Zuko she’s seeing is the same one she knew in the Fire Nation. She figuratively and literally cannot see the hurt, scarred part of Zuko. The part of him that came as a result of standing up to the Fire Nation in the first place. Mai is talking to the side of him that is on the Fire Nation’s side.
Katara is on his left, facing the scar, the scar which he told her himself represents him being seperate from the Fire Nation, seperate from what they are doing and “free to determine his own destiny”.
Here, Mai represents stepping backwards. Katara represents stepping forwards.
i think about this ALL THE TIME
no hate to mai or m*iko shippers, but that moment was objectively so cringe and sad to me. tbh, i think it was very indicative of how emotionally isolated zuko was about to become in the fire nation post-betrayal. mai wasn’t even acting ooc either (imho), she just really doesn’t seem to naturally handle serious or emotional situations very well—which is totally fine—except that zuko IS FUNDAMENTALLY A SERIOUS AND EMOTIONAL PERSON.
their reunion at the boiling rock is also so sad to me, bc mai absolutely had a right to be angry at zuko for leaving/breaking up with her through a letter—but she also was the one who was emotionally unavailable to him. idk it just seems like the exchange on the boat was teaching zuko/the audience that mai is unwilling or unequipped to emotionally support zuko through such a turbulent time, so it makes sense to me that zuko didn’t trust her enough to tell her his intentions to join the avatar to her face. i don’t think he believed she would understand his perspective, and lowkey, he was right about that.
this whole parallel marked a huge moment for me as a zutara shipper, just bc of how immature the mai and zuko moment was compared to the katara and zuko moment
