KATARA IS KATARA FOREVER

this blog was made in july of 2019 as a place for us to discuss avatar: the last airbender. we had no idea that within the following year, netflix’s upload of the show to their platform would result in a “revival” of the fandom, and if we had, we very likely would have never started this blog. as it is, i still enjoy talking about atla, and continue to run this blog, but i barely, if ever, interact with the rest of the fandom outside of responding to the questions in my inbox.

i post atla art on a frequent basis. check it out! or don’t im not ur mom.

for the record, our old url was lesbians4sokka, but since there is only one person running this blog at this point, the url no longer made sense. i changed it to comradekatara in reference to this comic i drew, and also because it’s just a banger url. that said, anyone else with either of those usernames on other platforms are not me! i have been notified that other people are impersonating me or claiming that i am on other platforms; i am not, and they are mistaken and/or flat-out lying.

the following post will not attempt to explain any of my opinions on the show itself. please read the faq for more on this matter. this post will instead detail a list of guidelines i humbly request you follow when engaging with this blog.

there is an overwhelming & upsetting amount of fan-generated content for this show that is racist and misogynistic in nature. try your very best at all times never to contribute to that culture. make sure that your writing or art supports the humanity of all characters, and avoids tropes that put female characters, indigenous characters, and disabled characters in dehumanizing situations. when you produce content for the fandom, ask yourself what your content does for marginalized people in real life.

when criticizing media – for example, atla – you should always cite the text. i think that multiple interpretations of the same text can be equally compelling and “true” (though i also firmly believe that some interpretations can be more correct than others), but that one’s analysis must be rooted in the text itself to hold any interpretive weight.

please remember to cite your sources. whether it be reposting art without credit, or lifting someone’s else’s ideas verbatim without acknowledging that you are quoting them. i am morally opposed to plagiarism, and find myself increasingly frustrated by how many of my ideas i have seen consistently stolen among this fandom without any acknowledgment of their origin. please give credit to other people’s art, writing, or ideas, both among fan communities, and in general.

instead of assuming one’s values, ask them. instead of playing a game of broken telephone in which you have decided someone holds opinions they have never stated due to assumptions made by others, the most prudent thing to do at all times is to go to the source. putting words in one’s mouth or assuming they hold values one does not believe based on extraneous reasoning is hurtful, as no one enjoys having lies spread about them. if you disagree with the opinions expressed on this blog, that is perfectly fine, but make sure someone actually holds the opinions you claim they do before publicly denouncing something they never actually did or said. that way, any misconceptions can be clarified before they snowball into greater and greater falsehoods.

please stop trying to foster a parasocial relationship with me!!! yes, i have more followers than i know what to do with, but that does not entitle anyone who does not actually know me to information about my life, or the right to freely share information i did not ask for about yours. it makes me deeply uncomfortable when people act too familiar with me when i do not actually know them, and yet they seem to be under the impression that because they follow me on some silly little bloggue, that somehow makes us friends. i am not your friend unless i am your friend. if i do not even follow you, please do not think of me as your friend and act uncomfortably familiar, even if i have been polite and friendly with you in the past. i have no desire to be projected onto or seen as any kind of public figure when to 99% of my followers i am simply an anonymous stranger sharing her thoughts on a tv show.

no anonymous messages. if you have an opinion you want to express, you should stand by that opinion and attach your name to it. anonymous messages tend to be more hostile than messages that are signed, because the freedom that comes with not having to answer for your actions gives users a feeling of immunity that often leads to unkind and/or inappropriate behavior. if you are unwilling to stand by what you want to say, think about why that is.

stop adding unnecessary captions to my posts. no one likes it when strangers reblog posts with an added caption of zero value or substance to someone’s else’s post. before you make an addition to a post you reblog, please heavily consider whether or not your addition could, instead, simply remain in the tags, or whether it even needs to be said at all. this also applies to adding image descriptions to posts that already have an id included in the alt text. (copy pasting from alt text into plain text is fine, but please refrain from editorializing in your id on someone else’s art, especially if there’s already a description there!) despite ever so bravely refraining from adding your completely unnecessary 2 cents to someone else’s post, i promise you’ll live.

dear god, please read. far too often, people on this platform do not bother to actually source or critically consider the information they imbibe and subsequently believe. read posts in full before responding to them. consider differing perspectives, and then try to figure out where you individually stand, instead of simply agreeing with whichever voice best confirms your preexisting biases. read as much as you can, and form your own opinions.

that moment from shadow of kyoshi where she uses her own blood to paint her face but with suki

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.

i don’t think i ever made a post like this but you know me so well because i would…. as ziwe has said before, every interview is different, and she’s reinventing the premise with each guest. aang would be so cute and charming that she kind of doesn’t even really wish to bait him, whereas yangchen would answer all her questions really thoughtfully and diplomatically and it would be both satisfying yet boring to watch, whereas roku would be really uncomfortable to watch because he doesn’t even realize how out of touch he sounds, whereas kuruk is uncomfortable to watch because he keeps trying to hit on her, kyoshi is really a wild card idk, but i think overall korra would be the funniest and most entertaining. and she would also try to hit on ziwe, but she’d do so in a way ziwe would be more receptive to. so yeah the objectively correct answer is korra.

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!!!!!