I might be projecting but to me, when I look at Katara, I don’t necessarily see someone who was parentified by her family so much as I do someone who stepped up but then, when she went to step down, no one was willing to take the burden from her.
Kind of like that myth with Hercules and Atlas. Hercules takes Atlas’s burden but when it comes time for Atlas to take it back, he leaves Hercules holding the earth.
Like after her mother’s death, motivated by grief and such to be sure but still— Katara did the noble thing. She stepped up for her family! Cooking, cleaning, chores, responsibility, etc. But then after everything, no one cared to notice or take back the burden.
It’s not so much that they forced her to fill her mother’s role as they left her out to dry. And it’s not like she can just stop cause then no one’s doing what needs to be done and everything falls apart. If she drops the world then it breaks. Then the cycle repeats with her friends and the rest is history.
Maybe I feel so much anger for Katara about this whole situation is that, because she wasn’t “actively” parentified, if she complains about having to do everything then people will just say “no one asked you to do that” or “that doesn’t need to be done anyways”. So not only does she have to hold the world, but no one will acknowledge that she’s holding the world. If they do then they’ll just tell her to drop it but she can’t cause it’s the world.
For that reason, one of the conventions that I like seeing in Zutara fics is that Zuko joins the group and just acknowledges that she’s holding the group together. If you want to talk about fantasies then let’s talk about the female fantasy of someone proactively noticing when something needs to be done and just doing it without being asked.
