#atla rewatch

when i was younger i barely paid attention to her. like she was just kind of... there. and honestly at the time sokka and yue made so much more sense to me emotionally because we actually saw that relationship develop, we saw sokka fall for her, we saw the sacrifice, we felt it. whereas with suki it was kind of like she disappeared for a whole chunk of the show and then suddenly came back and was his girlfriend? like when did that happen exactly. it always felt off to me and i think part of why is that it genuinely reads like a coping mechanism on sokka's part after yue. which is very human and real actually, but the show never examined that. it just presented it as a straightforward romance and expected us to be on board.

And the thing is suki's introduction is SO good. she's a leader. she runs the kyoshi warriors, she has a whole philosophy, a discipline, a community she's responsible for. and she makes sokka earn her respect which was genuinely great to watch. but then the show... repositioned her as his girlfriend for the rest of the series. that was it.

Like what do you mean you created this incredible warrior character with her own identity and legacy and the conclusion you came to was "sokka's girlfriend"

She held serpent's pass. she survived the boiling rock essentially on her own terms. she led her warriors through a fire nation prison. this woman is operating at a level the show kept refusing to fully acknowledge because it was always filtered through her relationship with sokka. she only showed up when he showed up. she only got to be relevant in relation to him. and that is such a waste i genuinely cannot get over it

she could have been so much more than that. she could have been this recurring presence in the world, someone who operates independently, who shows up when the avatar team can't be everywhere at once, who has her own missions and her own story running alongside theirs, because she ultimately they would run into each other and support. they just didn't bother.

The kyoshi warrior prison story is genuinely the best suki content that exists because for once she has a story that has nothing to do with sokka at all. she's leading her team through captivity, holding people together, making hard decisions. you finally learn more about her, but even in the comics it's inconsistent.

And i'll be honest, i started genuinely appreciating her character when i saw her interact with people other than sokka. particularly zuko. because suddenly she felt like someone with her own perspective and her own presence rather than someone who exists to be in a relationship. they have this mutual respect that isn't romantic or dependent, it's just two people recognising each other as capable and serious. and that dynamic made me realise how starved her character was for interactions that didn't revolve around one person.

Also can we talk about the clothes because it bothers me more than it probably should. why is she still in fire nation clothes after the war. nobody explains it, it's just accepted. and it's such an easy detail that could have added so much to her character. does she feel more connected to the fire nation after everything she went through there? is red just her colour now? instead we just get nothing, like the writers forgot she had a whole cultural identity before she became sokka's girlfriend

and look i don't hate sokka and suki as a concept. i understand why people love them. but realistically these are two people who bonded in wartime under extreme circumstances, with no chance to learn about each other. Sokka is always doing his own things while we hardly learn more about her through him (Just one time when we find out Suki loves a band)

She deserved to be more than someone's girlfriend who also happens to be good at fighting

Whoever wrote that looked at all the Iroh worship that the comics and other material from the animated show gave us over the last few years and took personal issue with that and I love them for it.

Someone saw Azula and especially Ozai get billed as just evil from birth while the rest of the family never did anything bad ever and decided to address that by expanding on everyone’s experiences.