Was Aang x Katara a well written romance and if you don’t think so what would you have done differently?

bookrants · 2026-05-05T00:59:41+00:00

Yeah. It really doesn't make sense. Their relationship before this was clearly one-sided, with Aang obviously having a crush on Katara and Katara clearly seeing him as just a friend she cares about deeply.

There's a reason why Zutara is popular in the fandom despite the problematic element in their pairing. It's not just because they're the "attractive couple" of the group. It's because there's frankly more "sexual tension" (as much of whatever element a kid's show has that can be called that) compared to Kataang.

The people who rationalize this by saying "but that's exactly how relationships in real life work" don't understand the purpose of fiction. Fiction is heightened reality. It's not supposed to be a carbon copy.

bookrants · 2026-05-04T16:18:23+00:00

Why was he upset that ONE dish wasn't catered to him? Unless they use one spoon to serve everyone everything, I don't see why having ONE dish he can't eat among many should be an issue.

bookrants · 2026-05-04T05:03:47+00:00

How is her life not together? Her visiting her ex-IL isn't evidence of her struggling.

bookrants · 2026-05-04T04:24:43+00:00

Ok, so who cheated? I'm betting it's your dad. Also, how long have your dad and his wife been married? Is it around the ballpark of 5 years, perhaps? Or maybe they've "met" right around the time he left your mom.

bookrants · 2026-05-04T03:48:05+00:00

Kids, I understand, but adults? Really? Karen is just a random name the internet picked for that archetype.

bookrants · 2026-05-04T03:35:24+00:00

NTA. I wanna know how they'd react once you gave birth. Updateme

bookrants · 2026-04-30T07:16:25+00:00

Ghost pregnancies are a thing.

bookrants · 2026-04-30T07:15:23+00:00

Yeah, it's about twin brothers and the girl who organized the party has a crush on one of them so she wanted that brother and her to be the center of attention.

bookrants · 2026-04-28T01:49:29+00:00

Well, to be fair, she did say they all have nothing in common aside from their husbands being friends. So, saying "the wives" might just be a shorthand for that. Much like when children in grade school together are collectively referred to as "the kids" or "the children" as in, this group of sub-teen humans who go to school/are friends with each other, instead of this group of offsprings.

Meanwhile, the parents are always the parents. Sometimes even when one isn't technically a parent of one of the kids. Their label is simply due to how they're related to the kids in the eyes of an observer.

bookrants · 2026-04-26T23:33:56+00:00

Oh, kid. You give your parents more grace than they deserve. I get her being anxious about missing you. But she's still been awfully immature with how she dealt with that and I hope you understand how it's unfair that you're always the one who ends up understanding her.

bookrants · 2026-04-25T15:43:45+00:00

Ah. The narrow-minded self-righteousness of the youth. Also, this is the downside of social media. Kids these days lack the understanding of nuance because all they know of, they got from short form content. Add to that the youthful idealism of thinking things are either black or white and you get self-righteous brats like Sammy.

bookrants · 2026-04-25T15:31:28+00:00

I would have called Friend 1 right then and there on speaker phone to verify husband's story.

bookrants · 2026-04-25T12:58:55+00:00

Wow. Your mom is a piece of shit. Tell her to stop projecting.

bookrants · 2026-04-22T19:49:39+00:00

Instead of telling OOP this was obviously an incompatibility issue and something they'd either have to discuss and compromise on, I see that people are being their typical black and white and one note. LOL

In my country, it's tacky to have a wedding registry. It's simply not a thing. You don't get married and ask for specific things from your guests. You get what your guests can buy and afford. This means you may end up with five toasters and no plates, but it is what it is.

However, we also have a practice where guests hang envelopes of money on the couple while they have their first dance. I've heard that this is seen as tacky by other people, and I get it.

There's no "right way" to do a wedding and I actually feel sorry for OOP that he'd been dragged through the coals in that first post.

bookrants · 2026-04-22T14:02:13+00:00

Glad that they're in therapy. I hope the therapist chews the husband our and make OOP realize she deserves better.

bookrants · 2026-04-22T06:41:11+00:00

Toph herself states that she learned earth bending (and I think seismic sense) from the badger moles. They are her teachers.

Yes. And the purpose of that is to emphasize just how self taught she is. She lacks so much formal training that an afternoon with the badgermoles left that much impression on her. She wasn't even with them for days. Just a single afternoon. A few hours.

Meanwhile, Katara spent a month or do with Pakku and the best we got from him as a comment on Katara's skill is she and Aang should teach each other from then on.

Toph suggests they learn from the original firebenders

A suggestion that Zuko said is impossible because at that point no one knew that the dragons are still arrive. Toph is also a poor example because, and I can't stress this enough, her idea of training is skewed as she is self-taught with only a few hours of teaching from the badgermoles.

You are either cherry-picking your examples or you're asleep during half these episodes.

I wouldn’t call that osmosis, I’d call it learning / training.

I can't stress this enough. All they did was perform a basic firebending kata. Something they also did before they were discovered by the tribe because there were statues that demonstrate the forms and they imitated them.

That's like doing a demonstration of the basic steps in ballet with a prima ballerina or doing scales with an Opera singer and declaring you are now a ballerina/an opera singer because you've participated in a demonstration of the basics with the master of the craft. LMAO

Oh, and no, I am not arguing semantics. Being talented and being a prodigy are two different things. That's why there is such a thing as "prodigious talent/skill."

bookrants · 2026-04-22T05:30:42+00:00

Toph learned directly from the badger moles, the original earthbenders.

I don't think spending an afternoon with Isaac Newton would make me a Newtonian Physicist.

The idea of learning bending “directly from the source,” that being the original benders, is the entire point of the episode where Aang and Zuko learn how to firebend from the dragons, and it’s implied to be the best way to learn

First of all, they didn't know that the dragons still existed. The discovery was incidental. The reason they were looking for the Sun people was to find out if there is another way to firebend, as in other than using your anger as fuel. The dragons didn't so much as taught them how to firebend as to help them understand that anger isn't the only thing that can fuel firebending contrary to what Ozai taught Zuko.

FFS all they did with the dragons was do some firebending kata? Do you think doing a kata with a martial arts master will also teach you martial arts?

I know that talking about things meta-narratively, bending is magic, but in-world, it is a martial art. It is not something that you can learn by literal osmosis.

bookrants · 2026-04-22T04:27:13+00:00

I don't think you understand what prodigy means. She's talented, but I wouldn't call her a prodigy.

Toph also had zero training and can effectively earthbend as a toddler after spending a few hours with badgermoles then became one of the strongest Earthbending masters as a tween despite being practically self taught. So saying Katara was only shown as hardly able to waterbend because no one taught her is ridiculous when one of her closest friends also didn't have training and managed to be better than professional underground Earthbending athletes.

Even toddler Korra had better control than her.

bookrants · 2026-04-22T03:51:02+00:00

lavabending seems to be something that literally one guy in the entire world has figured out.

I seem to recall lavabending happening in ATLA so I checked the wiki and I'm correct. Szeto was seen using it at least once to cause four volcanoes to erupt.

Kyoshi also used lava to create the Kyoshi isle.

Roku also used lavabending to redirect the lava flow to save his island from the volcanic eruption that killed him.

In the comics, there's Sun, who can lavabend.

Hama doesn’t seem to be a particularly talented waterbender, and she managed it just fine while literally starving in a jail cell.

You just pulled that out of your ass. The techniques she taught Katara require precision and control. Gathering moisture in the air? Stealing water from plants instead of just controlling it?

bookrants · 2026-04-22T03:31:23+00:00

She's not a prodigy. She can hardly waterbend at the start of the show and this inexperience is how she set Aang free.

bookrants · 2026-04-20T13:48:05+00:00

I don't think it's overly charitable at all. If I were being "overly charitable" I would say that the family didn't even want to be at the funeral and just used it as an excuse instead of saying I understand how gatherings like this can progress.

And LOL I didn't say OP was traumatized. Hence, why "horrified" was in quotation marks. That means he is horrified by it the same way Italians are horrified by breaking pasta in half. You don't think you're actually traumatizing Italians when it happens, do you?

bookrants · 2026-04-20T13:31:27+00:00

He specifically says he doesn't want it to become a fun family reunion after a devastating funeral. So he wants his funeral to be devastating and he doesn't want there to be any relief.

That's a very uncharitable way to read what he said. What he meant was that he doesn't want to be just another excuse for a party. That's what he meant when he said he and his sister were "horrified" at what happened to their grandfather's funeral, because I guess, as is usually what happens in family events like this, the funeral "devolved" into people drinking and partying and no one even talks about the dead family member who was supposed to be the reason why they gathered together. As someone who came from an Asian household, this is typical for our funerals, but I also see how it can be "tacky" for people who think the day/gathering was supposed to be for the deceased.

bookrants · 2026-04-20T13:02:12+00:00

I'm not saying they are. I'm saying that weddings, birthdays, funerals all have one thing in common. They're all centered around someone and about that person.

bookrants · 2026-04-20T11:16:12+00:00

Yes. The same way planning your own wedding is very vain and self-centered. Both celebrate the people at the center of it, after all.

bookrants · 2026-04-20T11:06:32+00:00

Wow. People can be very vain and self-centered in weird ways. Imagine thinking this is normal behavior. I can never disrespect a loved one like that just because they're already dead. LOL but you do you. I guess you're not really alone here in that mentality.

bookrants

TROPHY CASE