I suspect the primary reason for it is that Avatar is old enough that most of the people in the age bracket doing most of the ranting about redemption arcs watched it either a) when they were too young to be particularly analytical or b) when it was complete and Zuko's redemption arc was already famous. Not many people watched the first episode and then spent the next unspecified period of time working themselves up into a lather about how terrible the things Zuko did were and what a jerk he was before the next installment came out, so when the story made him more sympathetic they went, "Oh, he's not such a bad guy" instead of "COOL MOTIVE STILL MURDER, AND THE CREATORS ARE IMPERIALIST FASCISTS." ...God, I think about what would happen if the Zutara/Kataang ship wars happened today and I break out in a cold sweat.
let's be real, nowadays the ship wars would be something like "shipping kataang is pedophilia and heteronormative, ship her with a girl instead"
Sometimes I want to show people who do this the Angulimala Sutta. Especially the Japanese variant wherein the two characters we first meet are the murder victims. I know this wouldn't help anything at all. But I just want to see the horror when I reveal that, no, the story was never about the murder victims we met first and that, no, the moral actually isn't 'You shouldn't trust just random strangers! You might get murdered!' Hearing from my one professor that that was a read people could and do take with it fucking baffles me because what the fuck are you not just raised Buddhist How Do You Not Know What The Moral Is.
People who disagree with theories are one thing and I can respect that, but it's rare I run across someone who is genuinely unable to grasp what I consider to be a very simple point like "a member of an oppressed group might pretend to be a member of the oppressors for the purposes of spying" or "theories which have very obvious clues are not on the same level as obvious nonsense". It's extraordinarily aggravating!
When the only wiki for your fandom is run by an anti who can't even get basic canonical facts straight and tries to erase all canon history between two characters just because she doesn't ship them and calls the fandom "racist" for headcanoning a russian character as blonde haired blue eyed and puts this shit on one of the supporting characters page: just put on the clown shoes and perform for the circus, babe!
nooooooooooo suddenly I'm so glad I never went on the bsd wiki because okay what THE FUCK like tumblr is bad but not that bad which Russian are they whining about being blonde and which ship are they bitching about?
Nikolai Gogol us the Russian they're whining about since he doesn't have an official color spread (but he does have light hair and eyes so...??? cmon, he's most likely blonde haired blue eyed) and the ship theyre bitching about CONSTANTLY is dazai/chuuya which... look, I'm annoyed by how popular it is too and how half the fandom can't treat the ship properly, but to attempt to erase any canonical history they do have with each other is just sad
wait wow they're actually bitching about chuuya/ dazai? I assumed since that was the fandom juggernaut no one was going to touch it huh on that note, why is 99.9% of the fic involving chuuya and dazai horribly characterized >:(
yea h they're lit bitching about the most popular ship for DARING to have a canon backstory and relationship of some kind. I'm reeling every day I am forced to be reminded of her existence. (luckily we're in a mutual block on twitter dot hell so its not often that i have to) and RIGHT?! i hate it especially the people who make chuuya some kinda fiesty overly-feminized bitch and dazai the stupid housewife like?? hello?? have you SEEN their canon personalities?? chuuya is a violent little personification of testosterone (ignore the choker, he's just a fashionable bitch too) and dazai is an asshole and a bastard on not enough anti-depressants. im (i used to really like skk before the fandom ruined it for me. now i call myself the token skk anti to my gf who's the token skk stan)
I feel like every character gets fluffed up and turned into a uwu softboi but those two get the absolute worst in general it feels like the problem is that the fandom as a whole doesn't wanna let bastards be bastards which is a problem cuz it means all my bastardous favs get nothing good
exactly! its like they expect their faves to be all 100% morally pure and good, completely ignoring that even the protagonist, the uwu-iest soft boy on the cast, can be a selfish brat sometimes like,,, yall,,, yall,,, this show very much introduced the ADA to us as an organization that operates within a legal (and moral) grey area. the first LN involved fukuzawa telling kunikida to not hesitate to shoot dazai if it came down to it. this is not your everything is happy and fine shounen anime
god the weirdest shit to me is when I go looking for any sort of...not dark fic exactly, but canon type darkness and EVERYTHING is this bizarre "none of our favs have ever done anything bad in their lives!!!!" funhouse mirror stuff. chuuya is LITERALLY IN THE MAFIA the only character I don't see get stuffed with cotton candy is mori and his characterization is STILL TERRIBLE it's just he's being written as the token villain in ways that like okay he's horrible in canon but that's old saturday morning cartoon villain stupidity
AAAAAAAAAAA dont get me STARTED on fucking mori's characterization in this fandom. i had to suffer through some dumbass meta post the other day that tried to claim his motivation for orchestrating the mimic fight and by extension, oda's death, was to exercise control over dazai and keep him with him and im like... baffled. sure, that whole thing was messed up, as it should have been, but it wasnt some hand rubbing "hahaha i'm going to really get dazai this time" bullshit, he legitimately did it for the continued safety and good of the mafia! there is no way he didn't know that oda dying would make dazai leave! because the effect it'd have on dazai wasn't the point! and maybe thats my bias for mori speaking, i do love him a lot as a character, but oh my gawd if you're gonna hate him at least get the justifications correct. he didn't kill oda just to get at dazai, he hasn't actually abused elise in any way, and he actually gives a shit about the mafia and wants what's best for it's members. he DID orchestrate oda to die, DID shoot someone to get yosano to do what he wanted, DID lie to her again to say fukuzawa said he could have her back as part of their deal, and a million other things im probably forgetting right now. hate him for THOSE reasons!
"our faves are soft and have done nothing wrong in their lives, ever" your faves have killed over 100 people, karen
mori is one of my problematic favs and every time i see another horrible take about how his every action is just because he has a creepy dazai stalker crush also like i really think. he is too practical. to abuse his subordinates in any sort of way that would compromise the functionality of the mafia. SO WHY ON EARTH DO SO MANY FICS HAVE HIM AS SOME CACKLING ABUSER every single character in this show is a Very Bad Person all of them
because he was mean to dazai and chuuya once and has elise so CLEARLY--- in all seriousness i have no idea. like, okay, i will grant that he has abused people. but not to the extent people think he has, and he doesn't just do it for no reason. not that that excuses it when he does, but like... it really is far and in between! yosano is probably the most prominent example, dazai is a close second, and chuuya is a minor third that stopped being targetted after he joined the mafia, because after he did he stopped acting out against mori. i'm just... UGH. i'm frustrated because he's such a well-written character with a lot of depth to him but people seem to just see his relationship with elise and discredit him as a big bad forever. (WHICH BY THE WAY, ELISE IS IN HER 20'S IN BEAST AU, SO IDK WHAT TO TELL YALL BUT I DOUBT HER CURRENT APPEARANCE HAS MUCH IF ANYTHING TO DO WITH "MORI IS ATTRACTED TO LITTLE GIRLS") and those same people go off to stan someone like fyodor who as far as i'm concerned has NO redeeming qualities. stinky rat man (whomst i love)
oh god don't get me started on Fyodor stans I love this terrible rat boy and have Opinions about him but oh dear god STOP WITH THE FLUFF HE IS A TRASHBOY weirdly enough he is the only character where I see better characterization when he gets shipped with dazai
Fyodor LITERALLY crawled out of the sewer and bites his nails till they bleed and is a pathological liar and manipulater and wants to kinda genocide all ability users why are we fluffing him up. why. he's likely going to die before he gets redeemed let him be a trash lord like he is! also god yeah some fyozai stans are real weird. like i got "called out" (translation: subtweeted) for shipping odazai which is apparently pedalfeelia but I guess mutual manipulation and very dubious consent is a-okay! (side note i LOVE fyozai im just sick of getting thrown under the bus for being an odazai stan first person second) just characterize characters accurately, bsd fandom, i am BEGGING you i am so tired. (this also applies to oda "bitch" sakunosuke who is, canonically, a sassy bitch. I know yall want him to be a good man but he's really not, he's TRYING but he has who knows how much blood he has on his hands. he pulled a John wick and killed someone with a pen. a PEN.)
