the way atla opens with sokka and katara going fishing makes me so sad. like they are just………………..bored out of their minds huh. all katara thinks about is her mom. all sokka thinks about is the war.
katara yells every day. sokka is so used to it he just rolls his eyes and lets her tire herself out. katara’s surrounded by water but her bending just won’t click. it’s like she’s too consumed by grief and rage and guilt to actually look inside herself, and it’s that knowing who she is, her unshakeable confidence and inner strength that is truly what makes her such a powerful waterbender. she knows what she’s fighting for, and why. at this point, she still doesn’t know. she desperately wants a purpose, to help people, or at the very least, to get revenge, but that catalyst hasn’t arrived. and then they find aang, and she’s immediately entranced because. it’s something new.
sokka keeps trying to build things (a fishing spear, a watchtower) so he can feel like he’s contributing something, like he can make something, and maybe even make a difference. katara accuses him of being “off playing soldier,” but he knows that those ships are coming back someday, and he is the first and last line of defense. he’s entirely self-trained, and as hard as he works, he still knows he won’t actually be able to do anything should that day come. he doesn’t consider himself a child, although of course he is, but in his mind, he is the only person there who isn’t too young or too old to fight. (granted, there are nonbender women there are well, but i guess the sexism of their culture was so deeply ingrained that they never thought to pick up a spear. smh) sokka starts off as a terrible warrior. he’s never had anyone to train him, or with whom to practice (before meeting suki 😍) so there’s literally no way he’s not going to be beaten in hand to hand combat by someone who has literally been doing nothing but working out for the past 3 years (not much to do on a small steamboat i suppose). but, even though he has no idea that this is his greatest strength, that it even is a strength at all, he uses his boomerang against him. zuko’s all like “what’s even a boomerang” and sokka’s like “PHYSICS, BITCH” but this is his third option here. his last resort. he feels useless, simply because his perspective is wrong.
they are in a dull, stale, tired routine. sokka’s greatest strength is the ability to see problems from all angles, and be both receptive to and questioning of new ideas and new ways of thinking. but at the moment, he has nothing but one perspective, one he ultimately grows to disagree with. katara feels trapped in a routine of domesticity; she feels that because her mom died for her, it is her duty to replace her. she yells at sokka for having to do all the cooking and the cleaning, and that’s more than fair, at least in regards to cleaning. that being said, sokka provides them food?? he says, “watch this,” like he’s trying to teach her, and we can assume he’s being condescending and braggadocious, or we can assume he’s genuinely trying to teach her how to fish and she is simply Not Having It. tbh? both options are equally likely. but even if katara is the one doing the cooking, we can see later that she enjoys it; it’s a way for her to practice her waterbending, or “play with her magic water,” as sokka would put it. but she doesn’t want to, because she doesn’t want to be confined to a role, even if she enjoys it. korra calls katara “the best [healer] there is,” and yet, when pakku told her to learn healing, like all the other women, she yelled “i don’t want to heal! i want to fight!” (she eventually did both, often at the same time.) they are both being confined to only one role, and only one worldview..
the element of water is all about change.
upon finding aang, katara is awed, and sokka is suspicious. katara dreams of going on a fantastical adventure with flying beasts and little boys from olden times who can move the wind, wherein she is the hero, and she saves the world. sokka, on the other hand, claims he is “just a guy with a boomerang.” he “didn’t ask for all this flying, and magic.” katara loves magic. to her, aang is magic. sokka hates magic. magic is just science we don’t understand, and there’s nothing that pisses sokka off more than not understanding something. so he approaches it all with skepticism, and his cynicism is earned. he’s jaded for good reason, and it says a lot about how they grew up that katara is still an optimist who believes in hope. he’s the first and last line of defense, and anyone who is a threat to their safety needs to leave. that’s fair. but katara is horrified because how could you say that about this precious child who brings joy and wonderment wherever he goes?? sokka’s like i don’t care how cute he is, he’s gonna get us all killed. then he realizes that aang can help them win the war, and finally, he has a purpose. it’s now his role to make sure that his naive sister and this even more naive bald child don’t, like……die. and it means he has to put up with a lot of shit, but at least he has a purpose. as long as he knows what he’s doing, he’s good. preferably in the form of a color-coded schedule for every single minute of every day.
aang acts as the catalyst for both sokka and katara’s character arcs, but they each join him for different reasons. still, before they stumble upon that call to action, they were absolutely fuckin miserable.
areudirty
dededos
jacobvanloon
yousharknotpass
prguitarman
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
gummygunk
stormborns
romaincrisis
baratheonpilled
