u/Far_Literature_9924

sokka was really going to hijack appa in the dead of night to take him to a fire nation prison surrounded by boiling hot water 😭 and then aang never really gave katara permission to take appa on a trip for who knows how long doing who knows what, and she even admits in the scene she was going to take him anyways. appa is NOT just a means of transportation, people!! so rude 🥲 #JusticeForAppa

ever since i was a kid, i’ve always enjoyed the boiling rock episodes the best. sokka and zuko are a great duo and the pay off at the end of ty lee and mai betraying azula makes this one the best to me.

i really like suki’s character and i think she proves to be very useful throughout the course of the show. for example, she knocked some sense into sexist sokka and shaped who he is now, she helped the gaang cross the serpents’s pass (even saving toph from drowning), she found and healed appa, she was the MVP during the boiling rock episodes, and she saved sokka and toph’s lives in the final battle. i personally like when she’s considered apart of the group. “fan and sword” as sokka said </3

on the other hand, i understand when people say that suki has her own group, the kyoshi warriors, and duties to tend to, so they view her more as a very useful ally to the gaang, but i was wondering what this subreddits take would be on this!

its so cool

maybe i should stop interacting with the fandom on twitter because i see some god awful takes, but this episode is not aang vs zuko or kataang vs zutara. it’s about katara. neither aang nor zuko were right in the situation. aang, who obviously understands katara better, knows revenge won’t do her any good, but urges her to forgive the man who killed her mother. while zuko finds the man, so katara can kill him and then forgive and finally befriend zuko like the rest of the group because he thinks the closure she needs is revenge. in the end, we see that katara doesn’t choose revenge or forgiveness, she chose to not lose herself. no, aang was not “in the wrong” to tell her to forgive him, this was aang trying to give her advice and as a monk that’s his stance on the situation. aang also didn’t hold her back in the episode. he says to her this is a journey she needs to take, but to not choose revenge, let her anger out and then let it go, which is arguable what she did. zuko in the end even says aang was right, that katara didn’t need revenge. zuko was also not wrong, he is new to the group and wasn’t trying to sabotage katara or manipulate her (yes, someone on twitter said this and got 1k likes), he was simply trying to befriend her and thought this was the best course of action, which in the end, it worked. this episode is not about “zutara’s chemistry” or “zuko understands katara, but aang doesn’t” it was a katara focused episode about her dealing with the grief of losing her mother and gaining closure once and for all. making it about ships is a dishonor to the episode and her character.

i put motherly in quotes because i’ve always seen katara as someone responsible, empathetic, organized, and nurturing. i never viewed her as a “mother” of team avatar, afterall, they are ALL kids. i hate when people use these character traits against her to call her overbearing and annoying or to try to call kataang weird because “she’s like aang’s mom”. she is not like aang’s mom. she was caring towards him like she is with anyone else in the gaang, but it never got to the point of being of them having a parent and child dynamic. katara taking on a motherly-like role in the gaang is a trauma response to her losing her mother at a very young age due to the war. in the very first episode, aang reminds her that she is still a kid and deserves to have fun like a child would and this is why aang was so important for her. fans forcing katara into this motherly role in the group is misunderstanding her character and trauma response. we even see her act immaturely throughout the series a few times, like any normal child would. reducing her character to nothing more than “the mom of the group” or thinking it’s weird she’s in a relationship with aang is simply wrong.

is this not a bit odd and out of character for aang? aang, being a monk, has always preached that every life is sacred and has a no killing rule, so i’m just a little shocked he was just going to turn a blind eye to azula possibly falling to her death here 😭 i get she was just attacking them and trying to kill them all, but ozai was a threat to the entire world and he spared his life. even zuko in the beginning seasons was a pretty bit threat to their safety, aang never debated killing him. even when the opportunity presented itself in the s1 finale, leaving zuko in the snow storm, aang was the only one who didn’t.