dreaming away your life

Katara got literally everything she wanted and then some be ffr. She mastered waterbending, she removed societal constraints for women in the NWT, she had political power to outlaw a form of bending, she helped create republic city, she played an integral role in ending the war, she rebuilt the SWT, she trained 2 avatars in waterbending, she was a world renowned healer and waterbending master, she was a member of the white lotus, she got to have 3 healthy children and marry her best friend AND not only is he a literal demigod but he’s also hot as an adult lmfaooo oh nooo her steak is too juicy and her lobster is too buttery!!!

We see ACTUAL instances where Katara “mothers” characters in the group like Sokka and Toph. She orders them around, she’s bossy, she yells at them etc. She does not “coddle” them and she is not physically affectionate when she is acting “motherly”, she acts like an authority figure.

Compare that to how she behaves with Aang:

This is definitely not “motherly” affection lmao, if any mother out there is looking at her son like this ^ call the fucking cops idk

And she doesn’t treat Aang like a brother either. Katara’s actual brother Sokka is there the entire show and we can clearly see she does not treat Aang and Sokka the same at all.

Katara regularly teases Sokka, laughs at him, bickers with him etc. She never laughs at Aang, she never teases Aang, and she definitely doesn’t do sibling banter with him either. The only male character Katara canonically starts to treat like Sokka is actually Zuko once she has forgiven him. She teases him and laughs at him and consoles him like Sokka.

The only other character Katara ever had canonical romantic interest in was Jet for like a few days, and we get a window into how Katara shows romantic love via this episode. She makes him a hat (which Aang ends up wearing btw lol, did she give him it?), she praises him for his leadership (and right before she met Jet she said Aang should be the leader of their group), and she admires that he helps people which is what she believes him to be. Aang helps people, Katara literally says he’s done nothing but help people and save lives since she met him in ep 12. Every quality she is attracted to with Jet (real or perceived) is a quality Aang actually possesses.

She even feels relation to Jet having lost his parents, which is something she repeatedly relates to Aang about from the very start of the show, because Aang lost not only his father figure Gyatso but his entire people/culture.

From the very beginning of the show, Katara’s behavior toward Aang is not entirely platonic and this is consistently depicted and built up throughout every season until they start making out at the end. We have an entire episode where she obsesses over having kids and over the man she will marry only to end that very episode with her realizing it could be Aang, who is shown numerous times to be great with kids younger than himself (particularly babies), and who later in book 2 affirms he sees with her a future like what the new parents they saved and helped have. Something that makes her cry out of pure happiness because she has grown to feel the same way.