Thunder sings her name across the battle field.

Kirari’s everyday wardrobe is loose and has a rebellious edge, a little punk and hip-hop. Mesh, DIY, fishnet, torn denim, oversized hoodies, cropped muscle tops, lots of stud accessories, prefers backpacks over handbags, much of it thrifted. She wears baggy pants that sit below her hips, with the boxer's waistband peeking out. Septum piercing decorates her nose and her ears are decked, too: lobe, helix, industrial, daith, conch, tragus. There is a little downward bounce in her step because most of the time she moves around with headphones and some trap, old school hip-hop, or hardcore punk track in her ears, and some bass rumbling through her bones.

When Nehelenia seeks recognition from the person and order that defined her as corruption and outsider, Serenity responds with uncompromising boundary enforcement. That is contact and repel at once. Desire and denial. Exposure and recoil. Balance denied in favor of purity. Usually (and nothing is usual when it comes to anything spawning from Queen Serenity's rule; the cosmos constantly bends around her and her legitimate daughter's actions to accommodate their decisions; that is just canon), a Sailor Crystal co-develops with a celestial body; Sailor Aurora, technically, co-develops with the sealing event or, rather, dependently originates from the conditions of the event. This, Sailor Aurora, is because that is. And "that" includes the fact that Light and Dark, as Nehelenia rightfully insists, are a reciprocal pair: "Light and Dark call upon each other.

In non-dual terms, Light and Dark are not opposites; they condition each other. “I” cannot exist without a non-I. In turn, the non-I depends on that existence, too. Eliminating Dark is eliminating the condition of Light. The two are not pre-existing substances that clash; one exists because the other exists.

This, aka Dark, is, because that, aka Light, is. If this, aka Dark, ceases, that, Light, also ceases.

That is what interdependence means: remove just one element and all existence vanishes. Queen Serenity may merely intend to banish a rival, but she is using the Silver Crystal to violently deny a plea for balance and reciprocity. That is an attack on the condition of existence itself. To execute the sealing spell, the Silver Crystal must violate the principle of interdependence. Thus, the cosmology/metaphysics reaches a limit. The prior architecture is planet/guardian, inside/outside, purity/corruption, bounded essence/protective defense. However, it can no longer adequately sustain coherence after Serenity’s act. It generates pressures and tensions exceeding this original binary logic.

However, rather than the fabric of existence unraveling, it expands to metabolize the contradiction. The cosmos responds by generating more protection. Sailor Aurora's guardianship emerges because the prior system cannot process the conditions of threat it produces. The Guardian of Emptiness and Emergence arises to protect the absence of fixed, separate essences as the openness in which boundaries that give form, differentiation, and individuality to anything at all can be made and unmade, transform, grow, become, and change. No form exists by itself, no purity protects itself without producing an outside, no boundary can be innocent when it pretends not to depend on what it excludes. Sailor Aurora guards relationality.

Her story in the Silver Millennium is already outlined and written, part of the fic project for which I've already published two Sailor Neptune-centric worldbuilding vignettes. Y'all can check these out here and here. I'm still tinkering a little with how to integrate her into a post-Galaxia plot because there are still too many variables left undecided. But I'm open to follow-up questions if anyone fancies more.

Last, but not least, the theme track I chose for Sailor Aurora is Emergence by Sleep Token. Like, these lyrics specificly just do it:

I've got solar flares for your dead gods, space dust for your fuel rods Dark days for your solstice, dancing through the depths of Hellfire, on the winds that started from within My blood beats so alive, might tear right through my skin So tell me what you meant by "living past your half-life" In lockstep with the universe, and you're well-versed in the afterlife You know that I'm sanctified by what's below

That is tailor-made anti-Zuko propaganda material. You don't even have to lie; just strategically omit a few details.

Ozai's faction (they don't even have to want Ozai back; the most dangerous opponents are those who think Ozai was disastrous but also think Zuko is unacceptable) can spread the narrative that Prince Zuko abandoned his people during wartime, joined the enemy coalition, trained and assisted the Avatar, fed them the classified battle plan for the Comet (at least I remember that Team Avatar briefly decided to not rush it and defeat Ozai on the day of the Comet but after when he's more vulnerable and that's when Zuko told them what his father was going to do), returned to the capital alongside a Water Tribe operative, helped overthrow the legitimate royal government, and then accepted the crown after foreign fighters neutralized both other members of the immediate ruling family. That's a lot. Especially since you can reasonably make the point that Zuko ensured the defeat of his own people. How would that inspire loyalty and admiration among soldiers or their families? The audience loves Zuko; his people have no reason to. They weren't there for the character development! Fire Nation citizens do not have privileged access to Zuko's character arc. They just know they lost the war because of Zuko. He's not their hero.

The Agni Kai itself is politically extremely awkward. Like, I assume the broader political function of the final Agni Kai inside the story is that Zuko intended to settle the succession according to a recognizable Fire Nation institution. If he challenges Azula and defeats her directly in sacred ritual combat, that's incredibly useful for Team Avatar. Whatever people may think about his treason, he could at least say, “I faced the sitting Fire Lord according to our own martial tradition and won.” It would be a lawful way to dethrone Azula.

It's just not what happened, and it's enough to challenge his right to the throne.

Azula broke the terms by attacking Katara, certainly, and that is the detail the propagandist would have to omit and downplay, but since Katara's the one who subdued Azula while Zuko wouldn't even have survived the duel without her healing, Zuko's right to claim the throne depends on the Avatar's preference and makes the claim plausible that Zuko is merely a powerless puppet, an opportunist who betrayed the Fire Nation's victory to profit personally. Even internationally, it can raise significant concerns over sovereignty: if you allow the Avatar to remove and install rulers in this life, what precedent are you creating for future incarnations?

His personal relationship with Katara could be weaponized spectacularly, independently of its actual nature. He was willing to die protecting the daughter of a foreign military leader from his own sister during the struggle for the throne.

Both technologies hijack the body, and both bypass will and consent to invade and control another's body. I would argue that energybending is much more ethically explosive because the intervention is permanent and irreversible (at least as far as anyone can reasonably assume at this point in-universe history). Additionally, as the Hama episode itself demonstrates, a bloodbender can stop another bloodbender if the technology is abused. Countering bloodbending is teachable. If you interrupt the bloodbending, you are interrupting the assault and harm. For all we know, Hama's bloodbending itself doesn't leave bodies permanently altered or incapacitated beyond the immediate bending event. That doesn't apply to energybending. As I said, at this point in the franchise and in-universe history, everyone has to assume the consequences of energybending are permanent and irreversible, and I don't think anyone could stop Aang's energybending if he abused the power.

I would also want to point out that Aang didn't learn energybending, like Hama developed bloodbending under conditions of ongoing abuse, torture, and existential threat. Aang didn't even learn energybending like he himself learned airbending, waterbending, earthbending, and firebending. A de facto deus ex machina equipped him with a weapon that gave him an "ethical" alternative to execute Ozai. Although I think the ethics are a technicality. At this point, the show itself repeatedly made the argument that bending is spiritually significant, and by the show's own logic, "taking someone's bending" and "taking away someone's life" are almost treated interchangeably. Taking bending is de facto killing/eliminating a part of what makes this person human. Not everyone is born with bending capacity in this universe (because it's essentialist as fuck), but for those who are, bending isn't an extra. It's their way of being-human in this world. To sever bending from a bender is severing them from how they are humans, by the internal logic of the show, because the show over and over and over again shows that the Fire Nations' oppression of other bending technologies is dehumanizing against benders, while non-benders just aren't vulnerable to this kind of violence and alteration. I don't know if anyone noticed, but we never learn what energybending could do to a non-bender. But Ty Lee, for example, can incapacitate benders and non-benders by attacking the energy flow in bodies. So, it's reasonable that a non-bender can be harmed by energybending, too. Ty Lee's attacks might give us an idea of what is potentially possible. In my books, if you find energybending in principle acceptable, you should find bloodbending acceptable in principle, too. If you find bloodbending in principle unacceptable, you should also find energybending unacceptable in principle, too, because energybending is far more severe. We need to be consistent if we insist on comparing.

However, note how violently the storytelling and characterizations around bloodbending and energybending diverge. Bloodbending, for one, is introduced as identity-threatening against Katara, whom I deem a main character since ATAL is very much an ensemble piece (much more so than LOK); energybending is introduced as identity-protecting because it allows Aang to remain "someone who doesn't take lives; he doesn't even eat meat." (I mean, I get why you can't really show one of the main characters executing someone on screen in s show for 12-year olds. I'm not really objecting to this writing decision; I just find it a little ridiculous that meta should treat energybending as inherently and exclusively just and bloodbending as inherently and exclusively invasive, as, mechanically, energybending is MORE invasive!!!)

All arguments that can be raised for Aang in relation to energybending and against Hama in relation to bloodbending are different writing decisions. The most glaring difference is letting Hama attack civilians and harm and coerce Katara (for which they don't give us any reason whatsoever; the writing just expects us to accept it and provide the cognitive and emotional labor to explain the decision of one genocide survivor violating another with the very tool that was developed to protect from the genocider), while Aang is not written to make any ambiguous use of energybending. If it's admirable that Aang uses a dehumanizing technology against his oppressor, why is it not admirable for Hama to use it against hers (because the entire motivation to invent bloodbending is protection against the oppression killing her in slow-motion)? Why is it not admirable for Katara to use it against the murderer who proudly and gleefully completes the genocide against the waterbenders of the Southern Water Tribe? The burden of proof to justify Aang as worthy of admiration and Hama as unworthy is on the one making that claim.

If the concern is genuinely "positive examples," investigating "negative examples" is the same operation because the analysis is just incomplete without examining and revising the "negative" examples, especially if all the cognitive labor is "attacking civilians is bad." Yes, congratulations! I mean, it's not an achievement to identify that. However, I wouldn't even accept the premise that "positive" and "negative" examples are a relevant analytical cut to begin with. Why start there? Why end there? What obligations emerge for the analyst if they ask this question? What other questions and approaches does this exclude and avoid? The instruction “admire positive examples of genocide survivors like Aang” depends on assumptions that should themselves be treated as objects of analysis rather than premises everyone is required to accept.

Why not ask instead if Hama's actions, like attacking civilians, or her other genocide survivors (e.g., Katara, Sokka, Aang), make sense for the character within the story (spoiler: they don't at all, as I demonstrate in detail) as written? Why not examine alternative arcs and writing decisions that reconfigure Hama (as is easily possible with Example A for the scope of a single episode arc and Example B for a more extensive arc)? Why not instead take her and the episode as a prompt to explore, for example, solidarity?

The first thing we need to do is to get rid of the kidnapping subplot, without replacement. There are no kidnappings in this version of the episode. Period. It is entirely unnecessary and literally in the way. This way, not only do we free ourselves from around 95% of the contrivances that make both Hama and the plot incoherent, but we also clean up about half the episode for screentime we can actually spend on Katara, her choice, motivation, conflicts, etc. Passing on knowledge generated under duress, oppression, and for protection and liberation are such significant ways of resisting Empire and erasure. The episode puts the entire focus on the corruption of that knowledge by using it against innocent civilians, and I think that is an unwise narrative decision because, instead of allowing the people who created this knowledge to painstakingly figure out what this technology means, bloodbending is exclusively measured through the anxieties and risks for the oppressor. Thus, as a third effect of just scratching the abduction-and-detective subplot, we avoid inviting the audience to judge the knowledge of the oppressed by the anxieties of the oppressors.

Without the kidnapping B-plot, there is also no need to delay the revelation of bloodbending. When Sokka asks Hama how she managed to escape this prison, she just tells the kids. Why wouldn't she? Bloodbending participated just as much in her imprisonment as dehydration, abuse, cages, and guards. etc. That leaves room for the psychological aspects of studying the bodies of the rats and the influence of the moon. The hope that this can be her way out of this hell is obvious, but it also gave her something to do and kept her sane. She can look forward to each full moon. She can keep track of time. Between full moons she can contemplate what the last experiments taught her, and what she wants to test next. I argue introducing bloodbending like this and with transparency rather than obscurity, which invites shame and fear, immediately changes the moral and emotional terms of the technology.

Now, there is some room for the other characters to respond which the kidnapping plot forecloses entirely.

I see Aang react with shock and concern. I just think that's in character and respects his commitment to Air Nomad morality. He's the Avatar, after all, and it would not be unreasonable for him, as the idealist he is, to sincerely worry about the spiritual implications for the art of waterbending. Especially because of his affection for Katara, whose courage and compassion he deeply admires and associates with the ideal of waterbending I decided, he points out that flow and healing are the core of waterbending. To use these principles to invade the body instead and violently colonize the nervous system to force it into submission.

Hama is well in the place to counter that this isn't what she did. She didn't invent waterbending to conquer. She didn't do it for fun. She didn't do it because she craved domination. She wasn't the one initiating invasion, violence, incarceration, or overwriting bodies. She wasn't the aggressor; she was the victim.

Sokka, I actually see siding with Hama. I know, but hear me out! Remember, Sokka is the strategist and warrior of the team. Remember that he's the head behind the invasion plan. Remember that he lied to Wan Shi Tong, who is basically a God of Knowledge, to search the Library of Wan Shi Tong for a strategic edge against the Fire Nation. He is the one who came up with the plan to weaponize a cosmic phenomenon against the enemy. If he's comfortable, even enthusiastic, with exploiting the eclipse that incapacitates the bodies of firebenders at scale, why would he be scandalized that Hama did something parallel, at a much smaller scale, through the Moon? Additionally, the Fire Nation raids are not abstract for him. He lived through them and knows what it means when black snow falls. I think he's entitled to have some emotional investment and respond to Hama as a fellow warrior of the Southern Water Tribe with the same strategic acumen and wit he deployed to develop the plan for the invasion. I also think, as a non-bender, he might deem it a little hypocritical to think bloodbending is more dangerous than any other bending. The show never really goes there, but he is constantly fighting with and against individuals who weaponize the environment. He is well aware that his sister could bend water into his nose and down his lungs to drown him on dry ground. Aang could suck the air out of his lungs. Toph could bury him alive and crush his body at will. Just because they don't do it doesn't mean that he doesn't constantly think about all the ways he would be defenseless. He's smart, sure, but as a non-bender, he's well aware of the asymmetries that stake against him in every battle. He might even question if Aang's discomfort is less philosophical and more unfamiliarity with such asymmetries in vulnerability. (Sorry, I just started to think of reasons why Sokka specifically would back Hama, and more than I expected kept emerging. He is from the Southern Water Tribe, too. He has skin in the game.)

I don't know if Toph would have a strong opinion (again, we scratched the kidnapping), but I deem it plausible that she can respect the craft, maybe even feel solidarity, right? The technical ingenuinty would undoubtedly impress her. She, too, developed metal bending when capturers put her into a cage designed to incapacitate her body. As if she wasn't terrified under the fury. As if she didn't dread that her parents would keep her in metal clad rooms once she's delivered back home, forever trapped in a coffin. Not even by enemies but by people who love her. Toph loves her freedom and literally broke the taxonomy of earthbending to keep it. How can she truly judge another woman for doing the same after years of deprivation, isolation and abuse?

See how much character work we can do if we are not preoccupied with boring and incoherent kidnapping mysteries?

In my vision, Katara is initially overwhelmed by the flood of information, her compassion for Hama, and the conflicting flickers in her chest because she wants to agree with all three of her friends, but it's just a lot. I would not underestimate how scary it must be for Katara to know what might happen to her if she was ever captured and incarcerated. I mean, remember the episode in Book One where she lets herself be arrested on purpose to help Haru after he got in trouble because she encouraged him to not hide his earthbending. She notices how that prison was far less scary to her because it was an iron construction surrounded by water. She was arrested as an earthbender, not a waterbender. Now she knows what waits for her when she's ever locked away.

This gives us an entirely different argument for Katara to consider when Hama offers to teach her bloodbending. It need not be framed through domination, coercion, and transgression. The appeal can actually focus on what bloodbending did for Hama: protect her. "You may never need to use this, but this form of waterbending may save your life and freedom if the Fire Nation ever captures you. I spent years developing it to walk free again. You wouldn't have to, because I can arm you with the knowledge and capacity that no one, Fire Nation or otherwise, can ever hurt another waterbender like they hurt my comrades and me. My suffering can spare yours."

Again, without kidnapping plots interfering, we have time. Katara doesn't have to decide right away, but the full moon is tomorrow, so she has about a day to make up her mind. The kids are on a schedule, and if they move on, they won't be able to or have time to come back in a month.

In this version of the episode, we can structure it a little like "Zuko Alone," focusing on Katara's interiority and her trauma, and sprinkle in some flashbacks to give it more texture. We can have her cook with Hama, and after sharing so much about how Hama was harmed and violated, she can also tell Katara about the Water Tribe of her childhood. I mean, Kanna isn't native to the South Pole, and we don't get a clear timeline on when she arrived and settled in as far as I'm aware. Hama isn't only a witness of the annihilation and aggression of the Fire Nation, but also a witness of the before. We can show how meeting Katara gives her reason to hope: for the end of the war and for returning home. Hama would love to see home again, maybe teach some young waterbenders before her time comes. Katara won't have to bear the burden of keeping their lineage alive alone. They don't even talk about bloodbending to really make clear to the kids' audience that this is Katara's choice, not Hama's curse.

Aang may discourage Katara, or at least implore her to really think about what carrying on this technique means, what obligations she'll have, and how it might change her relations to others once she has the power to control others. For whatever purposes. (Look, Aang is written to set the moral standards. This version is less what I would find cool and more about staying as close to the source material as possible to show another version was available within the scope and characterizations.)

However, I don't think I would make Aang central (at least as input) in her contemplations. I think this version of the episode has a lot of potential for some intimate and vulnerable moments between Sokka and Katara. He encourages her to learn from Hama. At this point, we established that it's plausible for Sokka to actually see Hama's point, and her words really got to him: What if Katara is captured by the Fire Nation? Ever since Hama told her story, Sokka can't stop seeing Katara in one of the cages she described. He can't stop seeing her tied up by her hands and feet just to drink. His motivation to encourage Katara is simply because he wants his little sister to be safe. They are moving through Fire Nation territory; currently, Katara is more vulnerable than ever before. Of course, they all are, but with Hama's story in mind, he wants Katara to have a way out of this situation because he's not satisfied with leaving it up to chance. (I think it's so wild that Sokka's most vulnerable moment related to his sister is when he talks to Toph and Katara merely overhears it coincidentally. I think the siblings would've deserved such a moment where they really talk about how losing each other would break them.)

It's a controversial choice Katara is about to make, so I think it's valuable to let several characters counsel her because they love her so much they cannot not care and leave her to herself with the contemplation. However, I think Katara (I mentioned "Zuko Alone" style flashback storytelling) has been through so much that we have so much material to let her make her own considerations. Besides maybe some moments with her mother, where she subtly shares little waterbending lessons Katara didn't understand when she was a little child, I think Zuko's betrayal and moments when she feared for Aang's life for weeks. How powerless she felt. How she agonized that all her skill and knowledge wouldn't be enough to save him after the damage was done. She remembers how little healing could do once Azula's lightning struck and penetrated Aang's body.

When she tells Hama at last that she wants to learn bloodbending and is ready for the lesson, she shares her reasoning under four eyes with her; waterbender to waterbender: She thought about what Aang said about healing, and that he's right; her waterbending heals. She values that. However, healing is reactive; it means people have already been hurt. Violence has already succeeded, already harmed, already killed. Bloodbending, though, can interrupt the harm and violence. It can prevent the body from performing the form to make lightning, the guard from locking the door, the soldier from killing when their knees buckle under them. Depending on how much Kataang the writers would've wanted, they could've adjusted the intensity, but Aang's severe injury after Zuko's betrayal, when Katara truly believed that he might've changed, is the catalyst for her choice to seek and embrace the knowledge and skill of bloodbending. She's tired of waiting for violence to hurt first and for her to heal after the damage is done.

I think that's the way to give Katara agency in learning bloodbending in a way that keeps compassion and care the driving forces of her desire to learn the technique. When you establish this as her motivation, I think her later usage of bloodbending for revenge hits harder, actually, and also intensifies her agecy and responsibilities when she first uses bloodbending to avange her mother, but then stand back.

Last but not least, we have time and opportunity to apprach the actual teaching session with Hama under the full moon as teaching, instead of predatory coercion. In the original episode, Hama forces Katara into bloodbending (without any instructions because even when the episode earlier went out of its way to establish that it took Hama years to develop the technique, you actually just have to terrify peope into skill and that's all the teaching depiction of Southern Waterbending we got... I mean, come on) by forcing Aang and Sokka to attck each other and the only way to safe them is to interrupt Hama through bloodbending (see, didn't even change the "mechanism" through which Katara learns bloodbending: interruption of harm, but in this version, bloodbending as inerruption of harm is insight Katara gaind from her own painful experiences and her desire to protect people from violence). In this revised version, it can be consensual.

One of the many questions I keep asking myself is, why now? Why does Hama start now to abduct civilians? If I remember, it's quite directly stated that the disappearances started recently, a few months ago. However, even if it wasn't stated, anything else creates considerable timeline issues. If Hama had been doing this for years, there should be many more victims, bodies, searches, rumors, patrols, or investigations. Keep in mind: Sokka suspects and investigates her immediately. I know he's a smart young man, but I don't see why no one else in the area would've come up with a similar idea.

For an antagonist, if you insist on making Hama one to impress and register as evil and dangerous, they have to work for their crimes. If she has been doing this for years without any friction because people are that easy to fool, I am not buying the threat. Since all context clues imply that she has been committing these abductions for a few months, the episode owes us an inciting event. What changed? What is the causal bridge between survivor and refugee Hama and kidnapper and predator Hama? The episode doesn't bother to answer this question beyond "They deserve the same." Again, I said it before; it's funny that the story actually thinks that what Hama went through as a prisoner of war and a genocide survivor is symmetrical to the kidnappings she does.

But why did Hama go through all the trouble to build a life at all? Do you, writers, know how much labor hospitality is? Do you, writers, care at all how much work it is to take care of such a big house with multiple guest rooms, apparently, alone? Have you, writers, considered for a moment how Hama managed to OWN PROPERTY and START A BUSINESS?! The paper trail? Hello? Did you not show me repeatedly how bureaucratic the Fire Nation is? What about a title deed? You need documentation for that. And, well, money. Taxes? Inspectations? Travelers? Suppliers (since Hama is stocked well enough to feed four children for several days)? An inn is pretty much the least anonymous business imaginable, and Hama has every fucking reason to stay as anonymous as possible.

Let me remind you of the fucking background story the writers conjured for her with meticulous detail: A high-profile waterbender escapes a purpose-built detention facility by controlling guards from inside their bodies. As far as we know, Hama is the only waterbender who ever escaped, and HOW she did it should make her THE most explosive and terrifying fugitive the Fire Nation has ever seen. You cannot tell me that this happened and the Fire Nation just shrugged and called it a day. No way, people. I don't buy it. You cannot come up with this escape story and expect me to think that this is the end of it.

There is no plausible version of that event in which the Fire Nation doesn't set hell in motion to hunt Hama down. Just imagine the witness reports of the guards on this waterbender with a bending ability that bypasses walls, weapons, and will. The officials paniced, I would bet. Hama is a security nightmare and folklore material, haunting the Fire Nation. She should be, at least.

You want me to believe that Hama performs one of the most terrifying forms of bending in the franchise and the Fire Nation just forgets it? Put some respect on this woman's name when you insist on writing her that formisable! No, no, no. There was a bounty on Hama's head; in fact, there still is, I decided, but there is no data to update the picture for decades and age has changed her so much that people don't recognize her anymore.

Multiple versions of her tale are circulating through the Fire Nation because the story travels far, growing a life of its own. How would you coordinate the search if you don't pass on what happened and who's on the run? The authorities have to pass on minimal information, at least, but the event is so horrifying and incredible that details leak anyway. Therefore, the propaganda specialists spin Hama's tale as a ghost story. I headcanon that Zuko and Azula grew up with it because some servant kid told it to Lu Ten when he and his parents spent the summer in some holiday palace of the royal family.

I mean, that is the magnitude her escape story deserves. How did she not become one of the most wanted fugitives across every territory controlled by the Fire Nation? That is one of the basic mechanisms of storytelling: if you make Hama's escape and the skill she developed to achieve it that extraordinary, the consequences of her action have to match the scale and intensity.

Now, as I said, running an inn is one of the least anonymous occupations, and it doesn't really match what Hama can plausibly afford. I mentioned the paper trail that would lead every scout and bounty hunter to her sooner or later. However, the writing insists she achieved it. Granted. That makes her even more formidable.

Decades of successful concealment suggest someone capable of regulating impulses, making long-term calculations, and tolerating intimate proximity to the society that destroyed her people as Hama RUNS AN INN!!! Her field of trade is, therefore, hospitality! Are you, writers, not paying ANY attention whatsoever to the story you are writing? Do you not keep track of the creative decisions you made? She was a prisoner of war, spent years under the worst "living" conditions and then decides to to HOST guests of the Fire Nation (not exclusively, sure, Earth Kingdom travelers may pass through, but see what I mean)? What was the motivation for that? Revenge? Lure guests in and murder them? Why go through the trouble and RISK of buying (or even renting, which is even riskier if you have a landlord or landlady to answer to) and maintaining an inn? She could just move into a little appartment in a big city somewhere, scout the sewer system, bloodbend victims underground, and let them rot there. Or kill them and dispose of them in the sewer water. Get away with it for decades. Much more anonymous. That's not a story I would suggest, but if the writers wanted to make her a scary villain, that's what it would take to convince me. And, again, as elaborated in detail, we have to assume she only recently started abducting people. We know she didn't silence the one man who escaped her. So, what is her masterplan supposed to be? It doesn't compute. The setup makes Hama exceptionally bad at terrorism, actually.

Now, IF the writers insist on making her run an inn..... Here is a sneak preview of my rewrite/AU take on Hama: The White Lotus. She is a member of the White Lotus. Yes, you don't get the villain one-shot (as we established, none of the elements required to achieve the plot, arc, and conclusion of the episode make sense; neither alone nor in isolation), but Hama's story never had to go there to begin with and this decision would resolve multiple issues of Hama's post-escape story (not that the writing consideres these decades part of her character, please keep your attention on the crimes, but don't bother about the timing or an indicing event because the writers didn't either). The White Lotus would have every reason to recruit her after performing the feat of escaping the prison designed specifically to render waterbenders utterly helpless. It would explain how she evaded the Fire Nation for years: the White Lotus can hide her, shelter her, help her recover, and give her a mission and a purpose. Running an inn would still mean she's super exposed, but if the operation runs through the White Lotus, the administration issues are resolved plausibly enough. It would give Hama a meaningful way to resist because, of course, this inn would be an ideal remote operation base. Genuine travelers passing through provide an organic flow of information. Agents can blend in, leave messages, recover from injuries (it's reasonable to assume Hama is a healer), hold meetings, coordinate operations, or store and move resources.

After all, in the finale, three (!!!) of the five revealed members of the White Lotus are from the Fire Nation; I will have you remembered. Two of them were directly responsible for major military campaigns (and I think Iroh's inclusion specifically leaves us with major timeline issues: his siege on Ba Sing Se for almost two years wasn't that long ago; Zuko appears to have been around 12 or 13. If he was already a member, the White Lotus is another Imperial organ because Iroh was also crown prince and Azulon's intended successor. That looks more like infiltration, if you ask me, and maybe you could make an argument that the White Lotus recruited him specifically to get a member on the throne who can stop the war, but then it makes Iroh look like a saboteur if he left the crown to his little brother. Also, I think I remember a line where Iroh even points out that he once came as a conqueror and returns now as a liberator, which implies he took the siege campaign seriously. If Iroh became a member after losing his son and the campaign and the throne, I can see how the White Lotus would recruit an experienced soldier with close proximity to the throne for tactical reasons. Still, Iroh pretty much acts like he is the leader of the campaign to free Ba Sing Se, when Bumi is fucking there, and I don't see how that would be justified given the atrocities he committed). If you can have three (!!!) Fire Nation representatives and all the members are men, exclusively, I don't see why the sole survivor of the Southern Water Tribe benders, who liberated herself from the cruelest conditions, wouldn't be approached and recruited. As I said, it is virtually impossible that Hama's escape didn't break containment. She would've been an ideal candidate, and I think, given the background story and the fact that she is THE ONLY waterbender of the South from before the Fire Nation annihilation IN THE FRANCHISE (more sneak preview: in my rewrite, she isn't) that would've been an appropriate arc. But, no, literally crackling villain it is. Katara was actually manipulated by a predator who stains her with a forbidden technique, not reconnecting with her culture after the Fire Nation annihilated it.

We don't spend any time on what bloodbending meant for Hama because the succession of events structures the reveal entirely through the judgment of the Fire Nation citizens and Katara's guilt. I think Hama deserved more ambiguity (compare it with how much grace and depth the story gives Iroh, who cracked jokes about burning Ba Sing Se to the ground, laid seige on the capital for almost two years straight, which certainly starved the poorest people of the population first, and is still allowed to return as liberator, leading the charge and is the one burning the Fire Nation banner) and Katara deserved to feel more conflicted about bloodbending: both disturbed and mesmerized. Bloodbending is born from the Fire Nation's machinery of extermination, which makes it unquestionably a technology of resistance, power, and dignity.

The narrative never asks what the Fire Nation made, what justice could look like for someone like Hama, or what Katara owes to a survivor from her destroyed tradition. It asks whether Katara can defeat the scary old woman and agonize over learning that skill. When it comes to metalbending or lightningbending, it mostly gets framed as extraordinary achievement. Bloodbending is terrifying and intrusive, yes, but so was what its creator had to endure. The technique is inseparable from the brutality of the Fire Nation's annihilation of the Southern waterbenders. The show should've sat with the immense political and ethical weight it created itself, instead of making it evil and resolving the episode with the abhorrent picture of the elderly prisoner of war being dragged away by the people who destroyed her culture with false moral high ground and pseudo-vindication.

Pakku treats Northern institutions as authoritative over all Water Tribe culture, while showing no reciprocal respect for Southern traditions. Since we meet Hama later in the series, we know that the Southern Water Tribe trained women in combat. Even allowing for the possibility that wartime necessity altered older practices, combat-trained women are part of the South's living historical inheritance. Solidarity would require the North to help Katara recover that inheritance, not demand her submission to Northern gender rules and limit her to healing, while barring her from combat training. Pakku clearly does not consider the South as a distinct culture whose practices deserve preservation. He insists on enforcing his own local standards, fully willing to let Southern traditions perish and the Fire Nation's cultural genocide complete.

Pakku could have regarded Katara as an endangered cultural heir. Instead, he regards her as a badly behaving girl who fails to submit and obey properly.