it’s quite obvious that katara and aang are the driving force of the show (and how they parallel zuko and his arc is why the three of them are the thematic core) yet the most meaningful aspect of their friendship for me is just how they are truly the only ones who See™ each other. right away in “the boy in the iceberg” when aang asks katara if she wants to go penguin sledding, an activity that she —and i quote— “hasn’t done since she was a child” (what a fucking hearbreaking line btw) it quickly becomes clear just how important aang’s presence is in her life. he shows her the joys in having fun in a world that so desperately wants to strip her of her youth. in the same light, katara is the air nomad’s love for the world reborn. she is what grounds him (literally) and maintains his values and hope in the world and consequently possesses him to never stop caring even when it’s incredibly painful to do so. their friendship and how they parallel each other, both being victims of genocide who are the last bastions of their respective cultures tasked to end an imperialistic war before they’re even able to enter high school, holds a lot of thematic weight in the show yet at the end of the day they are fundamentally just each other’s first and best friend who inspire one another to never back down in the face of war and adversity. there’s no one on earth that can truly empathize with the burdens they carry, even those they love deeply, and it means everything to me that they met one another and just..... got to enjoy being kids with one another even if it was just for a little while.