Behold, the florist

Katara:

Mischaracterizing her, complaining of her having traits they love in male characters, straight up ignoring her, villainizing her for getting in the way of M/M ships, blatant racism… Katara has seen it all.

She’s literally the last bender in her tribe… put some fucking respect on her name.

Within the fandom, she is frequently relegated to her relationships with male characters. Also, many people simply "do not like" her. I've seen people call her a bitch! I don't think she was ever bitchy. There is an added layer of racism; many people read her as first nations. Native women and girls are always seen as more aggressive by racists.

She is a badass

she's probably in here already but i gotta make sure she makes it. she better win this entire goddamn thing. people act like her being mean sometimes makes her an irredeemable bitch. Jesus christ like she's fourteen and her mom is dead and a war is going on. god forbid she processes trauma differently from sokka and zuko. Like Hello.

Reduced her to the Zutara (fake news) vs Kataang ship war, reducing her to the "mom friend," ignoring her complexity, refusing to let her character exist outside of her relationships with men and eroding it within her relationships with men, ragging on her for being traumatized by her mom's murder, flattening her character as much as possible.

This poor girl gets brutally flattened into either "mom friend takes care of everyone :)))" or "miserable spoilsport who is mean to the boys and always yelling :((("

Literally one of the most nuanced characters in all of tv, she WILL be recognized for her fantastic portrayal of complicated trauma and parentification!

shes a teen girl who has never had space to process her trauma and the one time she let herself be angry everyone decided shes a bitch

Is reduced to one of three things. Either "the mom", "the nag" or "flawless perfect angel" when being bounced back and forth in other people's shipping drama.

Katara is a character with so much complexity. Her kindness underpinned by a trauma, her caring instinct born from being placed into the role of adulthood WAY too early. Having to struggle to be seen as a fighter despite being one of the, if not THE< strongest bender in the group for huge chunks of the show. She has anger, she has bravery, she has purpose and she cares because she CHOOSES to and then has to struggle with the parts of that caring that hurt. Or simply don't come naturally to her. She doesn't grin while cleaning up the boys' messes, she dumps the half empty cooking pot directly on their head and tells them if they're gonna leave it yucky, THEY should wash it (metaphorical but something along those lines) She is more than just Aang's "prize", Zuko's "anchor" or Sokka's "babysitter".

Kate Austen:

people love to tag her in posts about how annoying they find her, and often in the context of how she’s not good enough for [either guy she dates on the show]. both of whom treated her a lot worse than she did them :|