[QUOTE="rawles"] ...Zuko Is Highly Disinclined to Fall in Love with Katara, Thank You Very Much 1) She is not Mai. 2) She hates his guts. 3) She threatened to kill him over another guy. 4) She probably would. 5) Contrary to what bad anime, romcoms, and/or soapy romance melodrama would have you believe, the previous three items are not actually attractive. 6) She's self-righteous and judgmental. 7) She's also really bossy and overbearing. Contary to what Avatar's aggressively nonsensical fandom would have you believe, the previous two sets of traits neither mesh well with or are liable to be appreciated by someone both proud and oversensitive like Zuko. 9) Zuko, while not the sharpest tool in the shed, is not actually stupid enough not to understand how trying to mack on the Avatar's One True Love would be really detrimental to his training and befriending the Avatar. You know, his repeatedly stated DESTINY that it brought him peace and joy to finally fulfill? Until #3 happened anyway... 9a) Relatedly...she's kind of a buzzkill. 10) She's still not Mai. This gets to be here twice because it is clearly the greatest failing any girl can have when it comes to winning Zuko's affections and, ironically, the one most ignored!

Quite expectedly, in the wake of The Western Air Temple, Zutarians around the internets rejoiced! For Zuko and Katara were finally in proximity to each other and that was certainly much more satisfactory than the first half of the season, during which Zuko's most frequent location was "on top of Mai."

Of course, as is the wont of this fandom, this resulted in people getting carried away, slapping on those good old Opposite Glasses and deciding that Zuko and Katara being in a scene together, no matter the actual content of the scene, means that THEY WILL INEVITABLY FALL IN LOVE 4EVA.

In response to this, various people began to list once more all the many and varied reasons that Katara will never fall for Zuko. This is totally valid. Katara certainly will never fall for Zuko. But there was something missing from this conversation. Just as I had, in my long sordid history in Avatar fandom debate and discussion, noticed it being missing before.

Zutara-detractors tend to go on and on and on about all the reasons Katara would never be into Zuko, but everyone ignores the other half of the story. People tend to just take for granted in these hypothetical discussions that Zuko would be into Katara, which is a supposition just as inexplicable (if not more so!) than the opposite.

While many fans (myself included) love Katara, and Aang is certainly all over that, she is by no means a universally irresistible catch. So, I felt, in the interest of fairness, it was time for an exploration (albeit brief, sardonic, and in list format) of why Zuko is not at all in the market for a piece of 14-year-old Water Tribe ass. ("Katara would totes NEVER put out," almost made the list, but I like round numbers.)

(cont)
And so... yeah. Zuko's not into Katara. Zuko will never be into her.

Then there's Katara. Just to be even, let's talk about 10 reasons why Katara will never, ever fall in love with Zuko: 1) He is not Aang. 2) He is an angry jerk. 3) He is an insecure dweeb with no social skills, and certainly no game. 4) He has too many flaws, too many ways in which he needs to grow. Katara is a judgmental, unrelenting idealist. "Jet" showed that she can be attracted to the dashing, heroic type, and she believed the best in him, but the minute he showed darkness in his soul, showing that he was not the dashing, heroic type but the bad boy type instead, she felt intensely betrayed. He was not actually the guy she got a crush on, but a monster in her eyes. Bye-bye romantic feelings! He failed and she held a grudge against him that she may have never quite completely let go. That kind of unrelenting idealism is just one reason why Aang is so good for her: his ridiculously pure soul is just about the only one good enough for her ridiculously high standards. 5) He is too thin-skinned and proud to handle her bossy, overbearing motherliness. Result: resistance, frustration, temper. 6) He's emo and mopes around and scowls a lot. 7) He takes everything so seriously. He just doesn't have any characteristics she would find attractive in a guy. Who do you think she is, Mai?! Mai loves him incredibly much, but she's drawn to a different kind of guy than Katara is. 9) In a relationship, he's a jealous, insecure, possessive freak. 10) He's still not Aang.

And again, that list is far from being exhaustive. There is no reason to think she would ever, ever be attracted to him, even if she wasn't attracted to the Avatar.

I seriously can't hardly think of two main or secondary characters that would be less likely to be romantically attracted to each other than Zuko and Katara... even if they didn't have their actual love interests.

great points spacerac, that rawles is a genius!

the one thing i never understood about zutara, from the moment i first heard about it from that youtube vid title 'zutara-zuko and katara, two lovers' is why people think zuko and katara should get together.

What do you think the chances are that Toph's parents will accept her as is by the end of the series?