At this point to me, it seems like pairing wars in naruto have practically hit the point in which avatar the last airbender did for signifying which were the end pairings.
Many people loved zutara but this ship was not only the most fan supported, it was literally one in which the writers absolutely sank it to hell.
Unlike the manga team and Kishi in naruto the avatar writers were both aware and constantly poking fun at all fanbases in short periods for their series. Kishi didn't go out of his way to do this the avatar creators did. Kishi doesn't torment ns, nh, or SS. Avatars writers did torment aangtara, zukmai, and zutara along with others involving mainly sokka. But in the end, it was aangtara and zukmai. Yet most people supported zutara, but it had so many plot holes.
Both were enemies at first, this was the first problem. They would need to get past this critical first stage.
The time it took zuko to go fully good was 5/6th of the entire series, this is literally so late that it rendered zutara with very limited room to grow especially since both aangtara and zukmai already had a lot of their own growth, this is a problem nh faces in having limited time and SS faces having sakura distrust Sasuke.
When zuko went good, katara hated him, it was only until episode 56, she forgave him, but this was 2 episodes from the finale, people honestly expected katara to just sideline everything with aang. Even when zuko and katara worked together in the finale, it didn't make any difference, those past developments could not be sidelined. Some people in the naruto universe expect Sasuke to love sakura out of nowhere or sakura to still love Sasuke despite all the junk he pulled and ignore how she isn't trusting him.
Literally this is why I say nh and SS need to beware zutara, though the ships are of vastly different franchises, if the plot development hadn't followed a path to allow the pairing, then it's only much harder for those pairings to come.
The final result of zutara was an overkill. First came the ember island players episode, then came the DVD extras saying they couldn't follow or stand it, how aang would feel kinda cheated, then came comic con 08 where they grounded the ever living fan love out of it with an fan artwork show, then came the grand finale of overkill, the legend of korra with aangtara having children. Now zutara is literally only living in fanfiction and it's nothing but a scrapped wreck at the bottom of the sea. And people today still argue why zutara should have happened despite the fact the story would not have allowed it or fit well for it.
This is why I feel nh and SS should beware, otherwise it will only be the same sequence again. 631 was only small scale nightmare compared to what these fans felt back during the original avatar series ending.
Edited by Inferno180, 14 December 2013 - 02:59 PM.