Did you come to love Zutara “organically?”
There was recently some discourse on twitter (yeah, I know) about this. Basically a few antis claimed that Zutara only exists because of the internet and fandom culture. They believe that a new viewer watching the show independently and without knowing anything about it would never get to Zutara.
I… disagree? I watched Avatar in 2019 for the first time as a teenager and I clearly remember getting to the pirates episode of season 1 and thinking “wow Katara and Zuko have some buzz, I wonder if their ship is a thing!”
At some point a friend informed me they were a huge, *huge* thing. But for the entirety of my season 1 viewing, I thought I had invented Zutara💀
The rest is history.
Frankly, I think one of the most annoying characteristics of the anti-zutara crowd is this insistence they “do not see how anyone could ship it”. Calling it a crack ship. Claiming they hate each other. Being *flabbergasted* that viewers liked the watergirl-fireboy pairing with a scene of fireboy throwing his whole body in front of watergirl to protect her from lightning. It’s so dishonest like, please cut the crap.