Re: your tags Im a girl and I prefer kataang, and most kataang shippers are girls. I think while it wasn’t perfectly written, it’s still healthier than a ship with barely any development that involved the guy terrorizing the girl for nearly a year. I shipped zutara for a long time but grew out of it. Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion, but kataang is certainly not just a guy’s self insert ship. Most guys I know who watched atla self inserted into zuko bc they thought he was cool.
not that i’m writing it off as “all kataang shippers are male” or that it was simply a fantasy for male guys, i’m sure there are a lot of female kataang fans too. it was just something i read online hahaha. and really, i used to be a kataang shipper until i watched it again and i became a full-fledged zutara shipper. i shifted because although they had a bad start, zuko was the only one who understood her anger (in terms of their mothers being taken away by the fire nation) and understands that she needed that closure (in the episode of the southern raiders). katara might not have killed that guy, but she was able to let out all that pent-up anger with zuko, who didn’t hold her back, whereas aang, even though his whole race was killed (infinitely more painful than what katara went through) still viewed life as a monk and just. was much better at dealing with his anger than katara and zuko. i think katara needed someone who understood her like zuko could, idk. plus every time i see kataang it reminds me of when justin bieber was like 16 and he had this huge ass obvious crush on selena gomez and selena gomez was just like “oh he’s like a little brother to me”
there’s also my argument that katara grew up hating all fire nation and zuko was hating everyone not fire nation becaues he thought they were inferior and if they’d ended up together it was a way of showing that these characters grew, that they managed to reject the norms taught to them as children to the point of getting married to one, and idk! like i said, i see the merits of both ship, but i really just prefer zutara