I can’t get over how unfair it is from a narrative perspective that Katara has to give birth to an “adequate” child—by her husband’s standards— or else an entire race of people goes extinct. And then she has to grin and bear her husband’s shit parenting because “he has trauma” and “has to focus on bringing his culture back”. How unfair is that? Why is the weight of the world on her shoulders (and womb)?
And this is why I can’t accept the claim that Katara’s arc is about how “she was adultified and Aаng reminded her how to be a kid again”. Does this sound like a happy and child-like adulthood?
Yep. People also tend to defend it with "welp, that's just how the story is" as if atla is a nonfiction book and the story is set in stone and was beamed into the writers' heads via divine intervention.
I am begging people to think about WHY this story was written the way it was.
On that topic, I think people need to analyze why they're so resistant to the idea that there could be other airbenders out there. Why the show romanticizes the idea of Aang as the last. And the new movie with the one other surviving airbender being evil makes this even worse.
It will never not be preposterous to me that when they made Legend of Korra they decided to double-down on Aang being The Last Airbender, especially since it didn't take them long to realize "oh wait, that's stupid" so we get airbenders back in season 3.
Even the worldbuilding of it aside (i.e., the idea that the Fire Nation somehow 100% wiped out a super-dispersed, nomadic people is absurd), it's hacky and self-limiting from a creative standpoint. The most interesting thing to do with Aang is have him find new airbenders, something they clearly understood since that's the premise of the movie, but unless they suddenly decide to de-canonize LOK, they can't undo him being The Last One in any real way, and I doubt they'd want to, since I have a gut feeling that the reason Aang was The Last Airbender in the firstplace was because it made him extra special. It's why his trauma isn't as discussed or delved into nearly as much as Katara or Zuko's, because it's incidental to his character, which is supposed to be Happy-Go-Lucky.
And then Katara is just a victim in this desperation to keep Aang as the special boy. 12 year old Aang gets to date his babysitter, he gets all the love and support from her without having to be even half as supportive back, she bears his children until he finally gets the one he really wanted and leaves the older two with her and travels around the world with his favorite.
#they wanted a Luke Skywalker and failed miserably #-- hold on hold on cos actually #thats exactly who he should have been #because as the last jedi (who also happens to be a pacifist archetype who starts off happy go lucky despite colossal trauma) #his responsibility is to pass down his culture/ teachings not his genes
