One Small Moment I Always Loved In ATLA, Is When Sokka Asks If Mai Is The Gloomy Girl Whos Always Sighing

One small moment I always loved in ATLA, is when Sokka asks if Mai is the gloomy girl who’s always sighing and Zuko says, “yeah” all softly with a smile; like he genuinely finds that to be a truly endearing and lovely trait of hers.

I don’t know - I just always found that moment to be super cute and sweet.

Mai may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but she certainly is Zuko’s and that’s what love is all about.

once zuko gets pouty because mai doesn't use pet names towards him. he sees that katara and aang refer to each other as "sweetie", and sokka and suki are gushing over each other with cute pet names, but what's upsetting him most that's the fact mai called kei lo 'babe'. so, kei lo, that jerk, was her babe (zuko knows it for sure, thanks to ty lee!!), when zuko is just zuko - usually it dropped monotonously and without any warmth in mai's voice. as a true drama queen, zuko decides that mai doesn't feel the same he feels to her.

so, zuko becomes pouty and grumbling, and when mai asks him what's wrong he snaps nothing, but eventually he breaks and blurts out everything.

mai just snorts and laughs a little.

it doesn't help. it takes a whole evening to assure zuko that she loves him and that she called kei lo babe exactly because of that, because she never loved kei lo as she loves zuko.

after this mai starts to call zuko "love", sometimes, when she's in a mood for nauseously sweet interaction.

Ren could have cleared it up, but he just decided not to. I'll never forgive him for that.

Takumi can't handle his and Nana's break up (1x28)

what i hate most about the way shipping culture has warped the discourse surrounding atla is that it lends to fundamental misinterpretations of the characters, interpretations which are crucial to the core themes of the show. i do feel like the show itself encouraged this by trying to present romance as an option among the characters of aang, katara, and zuko. i think that romance worked in atla when it was presented as “main character has some kind of romantic involvement with side character who only appears in a handful of episodes,” such as sokka with yue and suki, or katara with jet and haru. yue, suki, jet, haru, jin, chan, on ji, and even meng are all characters who exist to develop and further the main characters’ arcs, and romance acts as the vehicle to explore that development. and all those characters work, because the “teen romance” aspect is only a means to an end. 

yue isn’t just sokka’s love interest; her noble sacrifice reinforces his trauma & guilt-complex, informing his arc throughout the rest of the show. jet certainly isn’t just katara’s love interest, as to say that would be as reductive as calling hama just katara’s mentor. hama and jet both inform katara’s character in crucial ways, and while katara’s attachment to jet stems from her attraction to sad hot boy, katara’s attachment to hama as a potential role model and cultural elder is just as important to katara, if not more so. but where romance fails is when it tries to take center stage in the narrative, among principal players. even though i get what the writers were going for, because their love is obviously deeply, incredibly strong, i think that aang and katara’s romance falls kinda flat because it’s predicated on those same romantic tropes that simply don’t work when two characters hold the same level of thematic significance. characters such as yue and suki, as wonderful and compelling as they are in their own right, exist for the sake of furthering sokka’s character. but to claim that katara exists to further aang’s character is fallacious. 

katara and aang are equally important as each other, and zuko is equally as important as either of them, because they are three sides of the same triangle. katara and zuko believe in aang so hard that he saves the world. aang guides katara and zuko through their grief. katara and zuko need aang just as much as aang needs katara and zuko. none of these characters are as powerful on their own as they are when informed by the other two sides of the triangle. they are all foils who parallel one another and inform one another thematically. so to contrive a “ship war” in which any of these characters are pitted against each other arbitrarily for the sake of arguing “who has more romantic chemistry” is thus a misunderstanding of the themes of the show, themes that all three of their characters exist to represent. to act as if any one of these main characters is superior to the other, and especially to analyze this show through the lens of shipping, is fundamentally flawed. 

I just saw an interesting maiko post. I didn’t want to comment or reblog because I figured that person didn’t want to have a discord considering the tags and some times tumblr recommended things to you. I probably wasn’t meant to see it honestly, But now I want to talk about it.

It was about how Zuko and Mai are just teenagers who don’t understand each other sometimes and then fail to communicate.

Also about how Mai’s emotionless trait collides with Zuko’s need for emotional validation and Zuko’s controlling possessiveness collides with Mai’s need for freedom. But they care for each other that doesn’t make them a bad couple, and Mai is not a bad girlfriend.

Honestly it a really good way to frame the relationship. I would also call it incompatible, maybe even toxic? it doesn’t make them bad people, but sometimes people do bring out the worst in you. Technically, this is true for Zuko, considering he went back to the fire nation, and he started dating Mai at the same time. Mai is the first person we see him speaking to after betraying his uncle and the show wants us to know he made the wrong choice. Mai is use as a narrative tool for Zuko’s lack of support in the fire nation,he’s miserable when he goes back home, and the one person, you would think he could connect with, his girlfriend, is cold and emotionally withdrawn. The show used Maiko to explore the the emptiness of being home in the fire nation, the empty promises of fire nation glory he been chasing and it doesn’t resonate with him anymore, also the impossible standard of gaining conditional love. (Sorry but Maiko is Zuko centric so it does makes Mai hard to read at best and abusive at worst)

I don’t deny that they care about each other in someway they’ve known each other since they were children, it’s safe and comfortable. but love is not enough. Honestly most toxic relationship in irl continue because they love each but they are not good for one other. Zuko and Mai they don’t understand each other and it seems like they don’t really want to understand each other. That’s the problem. (Mai mostly).

Maiko is really just a toxic cycle of their needs not being met

This scene where Zuko want to talk about his feeing and open up to her

Mai: *yawn* I just asked if you were cold not for your whole life story.

(Not going to lie, that was funny but it’s still a very dismissive thing to say, especially to your partner.)

Zuko is actually a little bit more sympathetic when she tells her “sob story” he didn’t yawn

Zuko: I like when you express yourself.

(her being off and on with her anger. Is like a metaphor for him being in the fire nation, trying to make something work and it’s not working. Constantly feeling like he said or does the wrong thing)

and It just bubbles over until they finally blew up

Zuko’s possessiveness is a reaction to after he feels like he has done all sorts of stuff to please her. it’s zuko reaching his breaking point. Boy is really insecure in this relationship because the feed back he gets from her is contempt. Sure we could argue and say that doesn’t make mai a bad girl friend maybe this is just her sense of humor or personality. well, it doesn’t mesh well with Zuko therefore, they are incompatible, and a bad couple with each other. 

( also Zuko is not nice here that’s kind of the point he hads regressed  in his character arc so to speak.)

and then they get back together by making out.

Sure she says she cares but why when did she actually show it? Actions speak louder than words! We never get a moment where Mai gets it and really understands him.

Okay, this is going to bother me if I don’t discuss it. Prepare to revoke my Azula fan card as I continue in this Avatar re-watch because we’re only on her first appearance & already I have an unpopular opinion to share. I dislike the fan theory that “Iroh & Zuko’s flashbacks regarding Azula are biased.”

‘The Storm’ is the episode I just re-watched so let’s focus on that.

1. “Azula looks 14 in ‘The Storm’ flashback. This must be is because Iroh is a sexist monster who blames her for Zuko’s abuse.”

Here’s a side by side of Zuko & Azula in “The Storm” flashbacks. Zuko looks about 14 or 15. Azula looks like an 11 year old in makeup. Appearance is subjective but I think y’all are majorly stretching with that argument.

2. “Iroh is an unreliable narrator.”

There’s simply no evidence for this. This is an opinion. You’re allowed to believe this, & I’m allowed to say that it’s a reach. The flash backs in ‘The Storm’ tell the parallel backstories of Aang & Zuko & they’re both told with a bit of a different filter, as flashbacks in shows & movies often are. It has nothing to do with whether or not we’re supposed to believe the flashbacks & there is no indication given that we’re not.

Both flashbacks are presented from a third person perspective, & presented to the audience as canon. If you want to head canon that they happened differently, that’s fine, but it’s a head canon & not canon.

3. “In the comics & later Avatar material-“

You’ve lost me. Do not collect 100 do not pass go.

4. Now I’ve explained why this theory feels implausible to me, I’ll explain why it annoys me personally as an Azula fan.

This theory is part of a larger trend in fandom of softening the edges of interesting characters & explaining away actions that might make the audience uncomfortable rather than exploring them.

Azula smiled as she watched her brother burn. That’s uncomfortable. That’s dark. And that’s a bleak introduction for an ELEVEN year old character. Why on earth would she smile? What was going through her mind? How was she raised to make her believe that this is good? This is the first appearance of the character I love to explore most. So, yeah, it bothers me when people who also like Azula try to say “no, actually, it probably didn’t even happen this way.”

You lose me in any arguments that essentially say “Azula was actually good all along & everyone else sucks.” Azula was a child who was indoctrinated by an imperialist genocidal maniac. She was cruel at times, she didn’t react well at times, she didn’t jump to protect her big brother or react like a perfect little victim AND she deserves redemption & healing ANYWAY.

I dislike erasing erasing Azula’s more uncomfortable canon moments because I think it’s a disservice to her character.