not gonna blorbify it on the actual post but this post about someone's current partner ganging up on them with their dead wife is 100% bato and kya. hakoda starts a sentence like "kya would've - " and then shuts his mouth and bato's like "she would've agreed with me right" and hakoda's like "...yeah..." hakoda gets injured going animal riding with aang and bato just looks up at the sky like "kya your husband is being an idiot again"

i'm okay with bato not having his own page in the upcoming avatar character encyclopedia not JUST bc he is happy with his role as hakoda's sidekick but also bc that means there's not really much else to include for a character bio. like their bios are both just. born in the southern water tribe. met their best friend and did shenanigans with him. met their other best friend. parented sokka and katara. lost the other best friend. went off to war. reconnected with the kids. day of black sun prison end of the war. just mention him in hakoda's bio as his best friend and maybe add a sidebar about the events of "bato of the water tribe" and that's it you've covered everything about bato

the thing about bato is that going from "he's a minor character who's only an extension of hakoda" to "he thinks of himself as a minor character who's only an extension of hakoda" suddenly creates a very compelling character. like this utter devotion and loyalty, dedicating your entire life to another person, sense of self so intertwined with your best friend you might as well not be your own person. bato is hakoda's right hand man, the instrument of his will, whatever hakoda needs him to be. commanding hakoda's troops and parenting hakoda's kids, stepping into his shoes to speak with his voice. "your dad would be proud of you" not "i'm proud of you". and all of this disguised by the kind of friendship that allows for gentle ribbing, unconditional devotion under a thin veneer of long-suffering irritation

i could joke that bato isn't in the post-canon comics bc it would be too gay but the reason he was omitted is in fact the same reason that the bakoda dynamic comes off as gay, which is that narratively he only exists to be water tribe bonus dad for one episode's plot and the rest of the time he's just There hanging out with hakoda. kind of a redundant character bc we already have a dad but also having Two Dads is what makes it come off as gay

as much as i enjoy the zukka bait what i Actually want is for sokka or katara to offhandedly reference visiting "dad and bato" in the southern water tribe

Had a dream that I was reading bakoda smut to my parents because there was one part that was really funny but then I thought "Oh no, how do I get around the part where they wanna fuck each other? 😰"