stop using ai. for fanfics, for artwork, for questions, for therapy. stop. use your brain, seek out answers through books or verifiable sites, TALK TO OTHERS
hey! i'm sure you have a list of modern au college majors for the gaang somewhere on the blog but i've been looking everywhere for it and cannot find it so i figured i would just ask your opinion since i'm trying to make my own list (btw, i checked the link for your faq post in your intro post but it didn't work). specifically i'm thinking about katara and yue. i was thinking maybe katara would be a sustainability studies major (maybe even studying environmental law) but also like how much of her interest in that in the show is just circumstantial idk.. and yue i wasn't sure so i was thinking anthropology (for some reason i was thinking art history. idk why i just get that vibe from her). thanks :)
that post can be found here! I said katara would major in indigenous studies & creative writing bc she cares deeply about preserving her heritage and culture and liberating colonized ppl and at her heart she is a storyteller who sustains herself thru crafting narratives that help her to make sense of the world. her studies would definitely include sustainability & ecology & environmental law, but specifically thru a framework of indigenous ways of knowing and she would want to study primarily with people who share her beliefs and understand and can even teach her more about her culture. as for yue, she is dead at 16 in any conceivable modern au that even somewhat reflects the events of canon, but in my heart she would be a stem girlie… i see her as being into biochem, to complement sokka’s passion for physics & engineering. i know a lot of ppl put her in astronomy (or astrology…. shudder) for obvious aesthetic reasons, but i think her dream would be to be a medical researcher because she loves helping & healing people (stemming from both an innate compassion and her own experience with lifelong illness) (plus waterbending comes from the moon and waterbending is used for healing, so there’s your aesthetic parallel, if you must). i do very much think she would also love literature and art though, and would probably take a lot of classes in those subjects if given the opportunity. but unfortunately . she dead
in any sort of modern schooling, it’s obvious that sokka would occupy the “stem” domain and katara the “humanities” in that arbitrary yet heavily enforced divide, as siblings who are both “gifted” and prodigious in their respective areas. sokka loves logic, solving puzzles, has an undeniable aptitude for physics and engineering, is rigorous and insatiably curious in his pursuit of achieving a scientific understanding of everything he experiences. katara loves stories, cares about world history, would be very passionate about studying political theory and the so-called “social sciences.” she would excel in her literature and history classes due to her passion and brilliance. BUT, it would be folly to assume that because his sister occupies the “gifted in the humanities” position in their family, sokka wouldn’t care about the humanities either. he may be a natural stem bro, but he also loves art and poetry and theatre and history. while he may take a more analytical approach to literature than katara’s natural passion for storytelling, he definitely reads every dense, classic novel and poem and play he can get his hands on. he would love learning as many instruments and languages as possible. he would build little robots only to then paint them to appear as aesthetically pleasing as possible. he paints and he whittles and he draws and he enjoys haikus and weaves a garland of flowers for his girlfriend. he took his vacation in the library. even if still driven by practicality above all else, sokka will always make time to pursue his more creative interests. sokka’s intellect is not only impressive, it is also well-rounded.
Hi I love your thoughts on Aang/Katara so much! I think as I've gotten older I sort of "ship" it more (though even when I was younger it was pretty obvious to me that their relationship was foreshadowed from ep 1, I just wasn't into shipping in general) but I would really love for them to break up for some years and then get back together (idk if you read Jane Austen but I'm reminded of the central romance of Persuasion).
I too really hate the weird nuclear family dynamics they exhibited in LoK, it doesn't even make sense from a character standpoint because Aang was raised in a communal monastery? Speaking as a person from what I guess would be a similar "real-world" background to Aang - I'm asian diaspora and was born/raised in the west, but among my relatives back home near the Himalayas, even monks who have taken vows of celibacy (I know that's not the form of buddhism used in ATLA but) are deeply involved in village life, education of younger children, cultural activities and festivals, etc. and the entire community is involved in raising children. And Aang is a nomad like many steppe/central Asian buddhists, he should have even less reason to imitate any kind of "settled" lifestyle especially when he loves traveling and interacting with different peoples and cultures so much!
Maybe their kids would travel with Aang as they got older while Katara would be out revolutionizing medical technology with Sokka or whatever she'd do in the future, so they'd be raised + educated not just by their parents but also their parents' friends from various nations and maybe even natural creatures and spirits like the lion turtle, as Aang was :') Considering how ATLA took the time to depict different ways of life I'm disappointed that LOK was so narrow-minded... and if you criticize it, you're accused of wanting these characters to be "perfect" or "flawless" or something. No, it's just out of character ;_;
yes i very much agree....... especially to your last point about it being out of character, i do personally think the aang & katara relationship would be quite messy as they grow into adulthood together, but in a completely opposite way as to how lok portrays it. i am also partial to the idea that they would break up and then get back together (maybe more than once, like it even becomes a running joke in their friend group that no one can keep track of whether they're "officially dating" or "taking a break" or "hooking up but just as friends" or "coparenting a child together but just as best friends who are in eternally bonded love but in a totally casual way, no it's not weird to phrase it like that, toph") but really what matters more to them than their relationship status is that they always remain best friends. like, i hateee that moment in the comics where katara is like "ahem" and aang corrects to be like "this is my girlfriend, katara" when really i think the title katara is most proud of in relation to aang is "best friend," not girlfriend or wife. before they are anything else, they are best friends!!!!!
and i also don't think they'd get married (monogamous nuclear family three kids white picket fence etc etc) but maybe they would and i'm just projecting my own biases onto them because i love them too much.... shrug idk... i just prefer the idea of them taking a more communal approach as you said... and the way lok handles their children's cultural identities and the idea of mixed heritage is super weird in general, but lok fumbles a lot, we know this.. for me, the thing with kataang is really just that i recognize that they're in love, i acknowledge their relationship in the text (of atla, lok is... dicier), i am not against it and have no counter-agenda to promote that requires denouncing what is established in canon, but i don't really ship them per se... idk if it's because they're just so young throughout the show, or whether because i think the thing that makes their relationship so meaningful & impactful is their friendship and not really their romance. and obviously their romance stems from their friendship, and their profound emotional intimacy can't be separated into distinct categories so neatly, but that's also why i think taking such a conventional approach to their relationship is such a wasted opportunity, because their love for each other is so much deeper and more complex than the typical patriarchal romance narrative allows for... and it doesn't actually make sense for aang to navigate their relationship in that way, because that's not even his cultural reference point for such things! oh well. alas
Katara is way more gracious to Pakku than I would be tbh. Idk how she manages to just be like a hardworking respectful student after he agrees to train her I would absolutely harbor a grudge over all that.
And then she becomes like, one of his favorite students at the time, it seems. Katara truly a delight to have in class. That has to be embarrassing, right? I would lay awake thinking about that if I were Pakku. Ah yes the legendary katara, last southern water bender, exceptional prodigy and companion of the avatar: I almost didnt train her.
NO FR pakku is actually such an embarrassment but he also lacks the self-awareness to realize how disgraceful he truly is..... honestly even if katara wasn't a delight to have in class, even if she fucking sucked at waterbending, he's still an embarrassment. imagine telling a young girl who traversed the entire globe to learn waterbending from you because her entire culture was eradicated while you (you personally!) did nothing to help them, and you tell her that the patriarchal traditions of your people are more important than preserving the cultural traditions of her people while have been subjected to genocide.... have some fucking tact, my god!!!! why are you bullying a fourteen year old genocide survivor, you myopic old man!!!!
but i also think katara can't really be bothered to hold a grudge because she's just so excited about finally getting to realize her lifelong dream that she doesn't really care that her instructor sucks as a person as long as he can help her achieve her greatest goal. it helps that he's also a lot nicer to her once he agrees to take her on as his pupil. plus, she's actually pretty quick to forgive people who have offended her (see also: toph in "the chase", zuko in the catacombs) provided they didn't deceive her (see: jet, zuko post-crossroads betrayal) and she's inclined to be respectful towards elders, so it's in character for her to be nice to him. even though he definitely doesn't deserve it. i hope when he dies his gravestone reads "instructor to the legendary master katara – for a couple of weeks, at least, before she went on to surpass him in every possible way." he should feel honored to have been in her presence.
Actually now that im thinking about pakku, he really contrasts sokka in his misogyny. Because Pakku sees and acknowledges that katara is an prodigious waterbender with great potential, and still refuses to train her. Meanwhile, sokka's misogynistic ideas are let go as soon as they are disproven. Its like the difference between believing something is true about the world based on misinformation vs. Orthodoxy for its own sake. Scientific vs. Dogmatic mindset.
yeah, i've said this before. one time someone replied to a post i made about sokka's sexism with "well you're not this forgiving regarding pakku" as if that was some trenchant gotcha and not the dumbest shit you could ever possibly say. pakku is a misogynist who adheres to patriarchal dogma because the entrenched traditions of his culture benefit him both materially and psychologically. this is pretty much the case for all misogynistic men (which is also the vast majority of men in the world, fyi). pakku is not really anomalous in his misogyny, he just also happens to have a really bad personality on top of that, and these factors combined with his position of authority in his society makes him especially heinous, but certainly not unique. pakku is an elderly man with access to myriad resources, who is part of an elite order with connections all over the world. if pakku's belief that women should not fight genuinely stemmed from ignorance, then his mind would have been changed from seeing katara fight, not from realizing that she's kanna's granddaughter. he changes his mind because it occurs to him in that moment, after however many decades he's spent surely wondering why she would ever abandon him (him, a god among men!) that actually his personality sucks and his vibes are rancid. he makes an effort to be a better person specifically because he's still desperate to bang katara's grandma. like oh my goddd he suuuucks.
conversely, sokka is a perfect angel. the end.
okay no, but seriously. i've discussed at length in the past why sokka has a sexist mindset, but really, it's as you say. he is a kid with very limited access to resources, and the moment he is able to receive new information that disconfirms his previously held beliefs, he immediately adjusts his worldview accordingly. sokka's belief that women can't fight is genuinely based in empirical ignorance, unlike pakku. it's why i bristle at people calling sokka a misogynist like it's a defining character trait, because while his worldview was shaped by patriarchy (as was pretty much everyone's in the world. because we live. in a patriarchal society), positioning him as uniquely misogynistic feels disingenuous. and i'd probably be more receptive to this character criticism if more people actually addressed his patriarchal mindset as it informs his protector-provider-martyr complex and his valorization of dying on the battlefield, but pretty much no one is actually addressing the complexities of colonized masculinity when they say this; instead, they're referring to the fact that he ragebaits his sister sometimes (which is, god forbid, the worst crime a teenager could ever possibly commit. zuko said he was sorry for burning down suki's village though!!! so it's okay!!! he's just a little uwu cutie <333)
in fact, sokka is actually remarkably not misogynistic for someone who was raised under his conditions, and it's because he is able to receive and process information and adapt to it at uniquely fast speeds. this is true for every facet of his worldly education because he is a prodigy and a genius across so many disciplines. that he doesn't stubbornly cling to misogynistic ideals (such as pakku does, and pretty much every other man) upon learning the truth, despite the fact that benefitting from patriarchy is obviously a very enticing bargain, is because sokka prioritizes logic over feeling––and even if he didn't, he doesn't have enough of an ego in the first place to want to soothe it by claiming inherent superiority over and entitlement to half the population. like, he literally doesn't have an ego. his trauma obliterated [his perception of] his selfhood; he only sees himself in relation to others – as a shield – not an individual person in his own right. pakku's form of misogyny is specifically an exercise in egotism, and i'd bet anything that kanna leaving him only made him even more misogynistic than he was previously as a way of overcompensating for his insecurity (incel ideology just being a more distilled example of this very prevalent phenomenon). i'm sure most men are aware on some level that women are human beings, but it's far more convenient to align oneself with the status quo that renders you subjects and others objects. but sokka doesn't actually do this. and why would he, when he doesn't even materially benefit from patriarchy in the first place? all being assigned as male has ever done for him is instill in him the notion that his social function is to lay down his life fighting for his people. okay, his sister washes his socks....... while he spends every day of his adolescence physically and mentally preparing for ultimate martyrdom. well, sure, no one likes doing laundry, but i wouldn't exactly call that a bargain that benefits him.
and as a dedicated yue overanalyzer, i also find it really interesting how sokka responds to yue's betrothal. he is accepting of her rejection and agrees to "just be friends" because he thinks that her engagement was a choice she made (when it clearly wasn't. i don't even think she knew she was to be betrothed the night of her birthday celebration; she was informed by her father sometime in between talking to sokka the following morning and going to see him that night) but once he realizes that yue had no agency in that decision and clearly dislikes her fiancé (before even meeting hahn and realizing just how truly loathsome he is) he laments the unfairness of her situation. again, not because he wants to be with her, but because as her friend, he is concerned for her wellbeing. and it would have been really easy to write sokka as objecting to her betrothal because he wants to be with her and he's jealous, but if you pay attention to those scenes where they discuss the matter, envy is really ancillary to the sympathy he feels for yue. once it becomes evident that yue is miserable in her engagement for reasons that go beyond simply having a crush on somebody else, sokka tries to convince her to fight for her happiness. yes, fighting for her happiness would also inevitably increase his happiness, but i really do think he would have been just as satisfied had yue rejected the engagement to hahn and chosen someone more compatible and respectful towards her, even if that person wasn't him. and that last part is just speculation, of course, but i really don't think it's a coincidence that this is how sokka navigates his relationship with the character in the show who most acutely experiences patriarchal oppression. at the very least, it demonstrates that sokka is nothing like pakku.
moreover, there are so many other atla characters who promote and benefit from misogyny – besides pakku, we've also got zuko, iroh, ozai, hahn, arnook, did i mention zuko.... and that's only covering the characters who are explicitly misogynistic onscreen, although arguably every male character in atla belongs on that list. and that's not even mentioning the women and girls who also parrot internalized patriarchal notions, including toph and katara! because everyone who was raised in a patriarchal society will inevitably internalize patriarchal logic. so yes, of course sokka does. but he also makes the conscious choice to examine his entrenched beliefs once presented with new information, he treats women like human beings and respects their autonomy, and he opposes misogyny. so make of that what you will.
You seem to have a pretty good grasp on Katara's characterization and wanted to know if you have any thoughts on why Katara cries in the Runaway? Specifically when Sokka confesses that he sort of relies on Katara's "maternal nature" to Toph, while Toph cosigns. I feel like the answer should be obvious but the previous episodes don't portray her as having some type of complex about it, which got me thinking about what the angle there was. Even with more contex given in the jail cell between her and Toph, without watching every episode before this one I imagine the average viewer would think she may have been bullied or ostracized because of her needing to mature faster and her personality being altered as a result? But she's quite evidently the oldest girl in the village and likely had no peers to push her into any designated outgroup so what gives?
Also it's a bit off topic but I'm a bit curious on your opinions on Zuko likening the disappearance of his mother to the explicit death of Katara's mother. I knkw you spoke on this a while ago while talking about TSR, pointing out how he does a lot of projecting in that episode, but I've always just chalked that up to him just generally being self centered when he's around women so it's really just a knee jerk reaction (I am being so serious I don't recall him ever making an effort in acknowledging the inner world of the girls he meets in the show at least in the way he eventually does for boys.) Please feel free to respond to this privately too if it's an ask you don't feel like replying to on your page :)
I’ll answer your ask in two parts, since each paragraph is distinct in character:
1. firstly, I think the assumptions you’re making as to the “obvious” reasons for katara’s weeping rely on premises that aren’t actually established in the text, while ignoring the more overt (sub)textual cues here. something really crucial I think most people dismiss when discussing katara’s characterization in “the runaway” is that the reason she disapproves of toph’s scams isn’t actually because she’s more mature and rational and level-headed than the rest of the group; it’s because toph excluded her, and aang and sokka let her. she masks her hurt with disapproval over their schemes because that’s a normal human instinct to feeling left out: “it’s fine that you didn’t invite me; I didn’t want to come anyway, and in fact, I’m actually better than you for staying home, even though you didn’t actually give me a choice in the matter.” katara is a fourteen year old girl and a well-written character. the episode never explicitly spells out that she’s mad at toph for this reason, but it shouldn’t have to.
we know from prior episodes that scamming jerks is the kind of thing katara would find righteous and thrilling (she and toph literally once drowned three girls in a river for mocking their makeup, lest we forget). she loves getting into all sorts of dangerous shenanigans! we know from later in the episode that her idea of making up with toph isn’t talking things out, but rather, trying to include herself in the fun. the thing is, while toph did knowingly exclude katara from their scams, i don’t think it was deliberate, at least not at first. she didn’t actually go into town with the plan to outcheat that street scammer; it just sort of happened. but when your only friends go out for groceries and come back bonded over a delightful experience you didn’t take part in, it’s instinctual to get defensive.
when katara feels hurt, her first instinct is to lash out, get hostile. she often gets angry and positions herself as morally superior, even when she’s not actually in the right. a lot of people who don’t understand katara don’t seem to understand that just because katara is frequently displaying righteous anger doesn’t mean she’s actually always right. unfortunately, a lot of people who don’t like katara do seem to understand this, but they draw conclusions regarding her flaws that I simply do not agree with (such as, that they make her unlikable, unsympathetic, or a bad character; when in fact, they make her more likable, more sympathetic, and the best character ever). in this instance, katara’s hurt over being excluded is completely understandable, and she is correct that their behavior is imprudent, but that’s not actually why she’s admonishing them, and if it was, she’d be a massive hypocrite, because as we’ve already established, that’s exactly the kind of rash behavior she is constantly initiating.
moreover, katara’s clash with toph in “the chase” is similarly not a matter of katara being mature and maternal while toph is an irresponsible slacker. katara may act morally outraged by toph’s behavior, and therefore in her mind she is justified to scream at her and mock her blindness and such, but really, katara is the one being unreasonable and petulant and failing to understand toph’s side of things. while toph was in the wrong in “the runaway” for excluding katara from her fun (but not for pulling those scams, she’s awesome for that), katara is in the wrong in “the chase,” which is even explicitly stated in the text when sokka (acting as audience surrogate) tells her that she was being a jerk. which she was! and generally speaking, katara is not more mature than toph. they both possess mature and immature qualities—and toph is mature, wise, emotionally sensitive, thoughtful, and nuanced in her worldview in ways katara, with her stringent black and white dogmatic thinking, often lacks.
when toph mocks katara for being motherly, it’s not because she thinks katara acts too adult for her age; it’s because she thinks katara is too prissy and feminine. toph wants to be “one of the boys,” and so she excludes katara from their initial excursion because she is deliberately aligning herself with sokka and aang—the lads, if you will— instead of madame fussybritches, who thinks toph needs to spend less time rolling around in the dirt and more time at the fancy lady day spa, just like her stupid mom. for the record, toph’s internalized misogyny is one of her immature qualities, but it also stems from a genuine fear of having the kind of restrictive femininity her mother performs imposed on her. she associates femininity with lack of freedom, autonomy, authenticity, and fun because the femininity imposed on her by patriarchy growing up was characterized in this way. she’s wrong to project that onto katara, who values freedom, autonomy, authenticity, and fun just as much if not more than she values her own femininity, but for a kid who was raised in the stifling, ableist conditions she was, I can’t help but sympathize with her reasoning, as misguided as it is in this instance.
when toph says that katara sees the real her and supports her unlike her parents, she’s thus acknowledging that aligning katara with her oppressive parents (and in particularly, her restrictive, hyper-feminine mother) is unfair to her. just because katara is feminine, does not mean that she adheres to the values of poppy beifong (she actually couldn’t be more different from poppy beifong in every single one of her values), and she’s acknowledging what sokka is telling her, that projecting her own baggage with her mother onto katara is especially hurtful because it’s insensitive towards katara’s baggage with her mother. toph doesn’t actually know that, though, which is why sokka tells her katara’s side of things. because he knows that once he does tell her, she’s the kind of person who is mature and thoughtful enough to understand the sentiment he is communicating, realize she’s gone too far in their pointless beef, and want to make amends.
and for the record, sokka isn’t saying he relies on katara’s maternal nature. it’s certainly an extrapolation one could make from his monologue, but it’s not actually what he says. he calls her a pain, says she’s been annoying him her whole life, she always needs to be right about everything, but also, he acknowledges that her constant presence throughout their lives is something he relies on, because she’s always been there. he says she took on so much responsibility and had so much strength after kya died. he says that he can no longer picture his mother’s face, and when he tries to, he sees katara’s instead. it’s easy to thus assume that sokka is explicitly saying that in his mind, katara has replaced his mother, that he sees her as his mom ever since their mother died. but he doesn’t. not really.
he’s communicating something rather dark and unsettling here, but it’s not that his younger sister has been made into his surrogate mother. if he felt that way, certainly there would be even a single scene in the show that demonstrates that sokka thinks of her as a maternal figure in any way. but he primarily treats her as a reckless, overbold, impulsive, naive child who refuses to listen to reason. considering he hero-worships his dad and implicitly agrees with everything his grandmother says, I doubt that’s how he treated his mother when she was alive! no, he’s not saying “katara is just like kya and we have some kind of twisted mother-son dynamic,” because they don’t, and she’s not! katara is a kid, and she acts like a kid, and sokka is more aware of this fact than anyone. he often wishes she’d “grow up,” which, at least in his estimation, means being less trusting towards con-artists preying on her open and trusting nature, and suchlike. he does rely on her, but it’s not so much that he needs or even wants her to take care of him the way kya did, but rather, that without her, he would have no reason to exist.
of course, this notion is really only true in sokka’s mind. katara sees sokka as a whole, individual person, as does everyone else who loves him. sokka, however, does not, cannot. sokka defines his existence in relation to [protecting and providing for] others, primarily katara. hakoda ordained as much before he left for war (however inadvertently). “the southern raiders” depicts sokka with his hair down more than any other episode in the show, and it’s also the only episode where kya’s face is depicted—the symbolic language being communicated feels pretty overt. for an acknowledged genius with a practically photographic memory, sokka not being able to remember his mother’s face is not an indicator of carelessness, lack of love or grief, or forgetfulness: it is a deliberate repression. kya’s face—his own face—has been erased from his mind, and katara replaces it.
when katara replaces gyatso in the vision wherein aang is confronting his grief, the implication there isn’t that she and gyatso have the same relationship with aang, but that his grief over the loved ones he’s lost can take the form of new love, and that new love renews his sense of purpose as a human being. when katara replaces kya’s face in sokka’s mind’s eye, it is his love for her instilling him with a sense of purpose after the crushing grief and depression he experienced upon kya’s death. but, of course, there is also the added symbolic layer that his own face (his selfhood) has been negated this process. sokka is, at the very least, passively suicidal. katara’s love for her family gave him a reason to keep living at the lowest point in his life. their mother, whose face he inherited, died to protect katara. katara is the person he loves the most. his purpose in life is to protect her. her continued existence gives him a reason to live. her continued existence is why he has vowed to die. for her.
so. well. personally, I think that’s much more compelling than mischaracterizing their entire dynamic for the sake of simplicity. it complicates their codependency in a way “katara is my mom maybe????” simply doesn’t. “is my sister my mom????” is trite, boring, played out, passé (I say this as someone who raised her brother. snooze!). “is my sister’s existence my primary raison d’être and my destiny is to die for her the way our mother did so my personhood must be erased in service of being her protector???” well. NOW we’re fucking talking, baby!!!
which is all to say, the reason katara cries upon hearing this conversation is actually very simple: this is the first time she’s ever heard sokka talk about any of this. this is the closest katara has ever gotten to hearing sokka express his feelings on their formative grief that defined their lives, and he’s not even saying it to her. he’s saying it to toph. he would die for her but he would also rather die than have an actual conversation with her.
katara is someone who cries easily: she cries when she’s frustrated, she cries when she’s angry, she cries when she’s happy, she cries when she’s relieved, and of course, she cries when she’s sad. so why wouldn’t she cry upon hearing her infuriatingly closed-off brother actually admit that their mother’s death devastated him, that it was the hardest time in his life, that katara’s inner strength and constant presence got him through that darkness, that he needs her and couldn’t live without her, that his grief over losing his mother was only manageable because her presence and their love for each other guided him through it and gave him a sense of purpose beyond his own suffering? why wouldn’t katara cry upon hearing her friend who excluded her from her fun admit that she was projecting and she actually feels incredibly grateful for katara’s friendship? why wouldn’t she cry knowing that sokka and toph are confiding in each other in a way they never would with her (toph literally threatens sokka never to tell katara any of what she said), and not only that, but talking about her so lovingly and kindly, in a way they rarely do to her face?? it’s a lot to take in. wouldn’t you be emotionally overwhelmed by such a revelation??
katara is a very emotionally honest and sensitive person, and her easily accessible depth of feeling frequently engenders her volatile passions, often leading to outbursts, tirades, impulsive choices. but here, she lacks an audience. she cannot reveal herself, even if her eavesdropping was merely accidental. her reaction can only be that of subdued tears.
2. as for zuko, I completely agree with your point that he never once considers the inner lives of women and girls, and I have enumerated in the past that he truly is an incorrigible misogynist. his disrespect for katara does, in part, stem from his disrespect towards all girls, and his refusal to actually entertain her point of view because of that. ironically, the traits which he finds offputting in her—her brashness, her impetuousness, her loud and unabashed anger—are traits which define him far more than her. but it’s fine when men are angry of course. zuko has valid reasons to angry, of course. never mind that he invaded her home, tracked her across the world, tied her to a tree and extorted her, shot fire at her countless times, captured her best friend and the last hope for humanity, and was directly responsible for his near-death (which would have been permanent had she not had the good fortune of saving her spirit water for a better cause out of sheer luck), and emotionally manipulated her (even if that wasn’t his intention) by relating to her over her mother’s death—that waterbender is just being a hysterical little girl.
so yes, he is behaving in a self-centered manner in “the southern raiders.” he isn’t sacrificing himself to aid her the way he does with sokka at the boiling rock, and he’s not even making himself materially useful to her the way her does as aang’s firebending instructor when they go to visit the sun warriors. his plan to earn back her trust stems from his misguided notion that the reason katara resents him is because she’s conflating her mother’s death with her anger towards him, as if he doesn’t have myriad crimes to atone for that he himself actually committed. yes, she does bring up her mother’s death as one of his sins, but it’s not because she thinks he personally killed kya, it’s because he identified that commonality between them and got her to sympathize with him, and now she’s not only furious at him but also at herself for falling for his display of vulnerability in a moment where trusting him cost her everything. moreover, he had previously taunted her with her mother’s necklace, which is an incredibly important heirloom to her. no, zuko did not directly murder kya, but he does have a track record of exploiting her grief over her death, and she is right to resent him for it.
anyway. zuko understands exactly none of this, because he is an obtuse, misogynistic, myopic teenage boy, and so his brilliant plan for winning back her trust is essentially the equivalent of when a cat brings dead vermin into your bed, except the vermin is intel regarding the whereabouts of her mother’s killer. fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on whom you’re asking), this plan actually does work out really well for him, because zuko’s (lack of) strategy of just doing for/to katara whatever he thinks is best succeeds due to the fact that zuko and katara are too similar for their own good, and so he actually provides her with the opportunity for the vengeance quest she’s clearly been itching to enact since childhood. by complete accident, zuko did actually happen to understand katara’s desires (unlike sokka and aang, who are just so rational and mellow, ugh! gross!! disgusting!!!!) but only because he desires the exact same thing.
so yes, he is projecting. like katara, his mother sacrificed herself to save him (and I will forever maintain that she died for real and the comics are utter bullshit . because otherwise what was the fucking point of that) and he feels this confluence of guilt and grief and rage over losing his favorite person in the world to a violent, egotistical man who only wanted power. he can actually empathize with katara over this tragedy, even if the motives and conditions behind them differed in various ways. and it’s that sincerity, that commonality, that emotional volatility and earnestness and depth of feeling, that shared catharsis, that bonds them. it doesn’t matter that zuko is wrong and that katara is right. in that moment when they confront yon rha, they understand each other perfectly. and it’s that instance of true empathy which lays the foundation for their genuinely caring and profound friendship going forward.
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