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seyaryminamoto · 7 years

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I am curious about what's your opinion on how Katara is treated in the comics vs in the show (both ATLA and LOK). Maybe a better question is, what do you think the dynamics between Katara and Aang have with each other and to the kids should have been like?

God I had written up a huge response and the browser shut down so I lost it *sobs*

But alright, I’ll try to be brief this time.

I think Katara is not written well in the comics. You can see it clearly not only because of her flawlessness (I’m not saying this as a compliment), but because some elements of her character have been as good as wiped out for no reason. There’s no sign of the sass she had in spades in Book 1, and that she still had to some degree during Book 2 (can’t really remember much of it in Book 3, that was mostly just passive-aggressiveness towards Zuko). She’s not really the same character we knew from the show, and that’s obviously not her fault, since the one I hold responsible for this is Yang.

Katara is her own character in the show, but in the comics she’s mostly coded as “Aang’s girlfriend”. There’s not a lot of material for her as a character, which is a lot of what happens to Asami in LOK - her agency in the story is relegated to her relationships with other people. Sometimes Katara’s relevance, like in The Search, is in relation to her sibling relationship with Sokka (which is then used as a parallel to Azula and Zuko’s), but most times it’s in relation to Aang. And that’s not how her character worked in the show at all. Granted she was Aang’s friend, but she could get important subplots where you could see what her character really was made of. Her subplots in the comics (up until North and South) are so few, so lacking, and do nothing for her character overall. Sokka gets subplots in nearly every single trilogy (subplots that also do nothing for his character, because it’s usually just Sokka being a goof all the time), Katara is mostly in them right next to Aang, to kiss him or support him and curiously, seldom do we see it the other way around (I guess North and South may have changed that at last, but I haven’t read part 2 so I can’t say for sure).

In LOK, I absolutely understand Katara being an old woman who doesn’t do a lot in the plot (if anything what ticks me off is Zuko and Toph being brought back to fight while Katara isn’t, in my frank opinion none of them should’ve been brought back for action if LOK was supposed to be a story of “late teens and adults”, unlike ATLA which was the “kids and old people show”). But it’s certainly annoying that we don’t know nearly enough about what Katara did in her adult life, and that the only news we have is that she got bloodbending banned (when technically that sort of bending could have done wonders for medicinal purposes of different sorts, but I guess that never crossed her mind…). Outside of that, there’s not a lot of news on what Katara was up to, and it’s not too surprising that there’s not, since LOK and the comics were written with the same idea of Katara in mind: she seldom gets to do anything important, mostly just helps and supports whoever needs it.

Granted, part of her character was about being the “mom-friend”, but that’s PART of it. It’s not 100% of what comprised Katara. Her more aggressive sides, the sass, the stubbornness, most of that is gone in the comics, and in what little we saw of her in LOK. It’s not something I can understand, really.

Lastly, regarding how her children were raised, I’m actually pretty bothered by that topic. Not only do I fail to understand how Aang could be such a mess of a father, but I don’t like that it’s implied that Katara did nothing about it. I’m not here to toot Zutara’s horn or anything, but I THINK they like the idea of Katara calling out Zuko when he needs it. Zuko will make mistakes all the time, that’s just what he’s like, and whoever he marries should be able to make him rethink whatever he does wrong. Of course, Katara is no paragon of perfect morality, but on most regards she’s better with morals than Zuko.

Now, I guess the problem is that we’re told Aang is perfect in regards of morality (… which is not entirely true), and ever since they got together, Katara somehow thinks he’s always right? Which is why she swallows her jealousy in The Promise and ends up thinking she’s the selfish one for not being a fan of Aang’s fan club (tbh that was one of the lousiest things that trilogy did). And it’s also why she hasn’t really defied him at all throughout the entire comics’ run. I can’t remember any defiance at all, actually. Not even a “Hey, why the hell did you forget to invite ME to your fancy lunch but you didn’t forget to invite Toph?!” in The Rift. Nothing. And… that’s another thing that makes Katara feel weird in the comics. She just seems to turn a blind eye to any mistakes Aang makes, regardless of the magnitude of those mistakes (and in the Rift it actually pisses me off a lot, because Aang literally forgets about Katara for an entire volume of the comic, and only remembers her when Sokka tells him she’s stuck in a cave-in, and so far I think I’m the only person who’s claimed to be bothered by it). I know we’re expected to think Aang is a better human being than everyone else in general, but he makes mistakes: and Katara is PERFECT for calling them out. She’s born for that, calls out everyone else’s already!

But not Aang’s, at least not since the show ended. She won’t do it in the comics, she didn’t do it between the comics and LOK (that is, if we assume she probably stood by and allowed Aang to take Tenzin on vacations while neglecting the rest of their children). It’s not something that can sit well with me. I don’t know why they’ve started writing her this way, but I mostly dislike the way her character has been written in the comics and LOK. It doesn’t look like she was a bad mother, but she still could have been a better mother and wife if the writers had just wanted her to be one.

Now, what do I think Katara should be like in comics and LOK?

First off, I’d scratch all the “sweeties” nonsense. Dear god is it corny and it feels out of place ten times out of nine. I don’t like it, it’s not cute for me, it really feels forced. Terms of endearment aren’t impossible, but I wouldn’t have them refer to each other as sweetie ALL THE TIME. NO. *heavy breathing*

Secondly, I’d want Katara’s subplots to not be only about Aang or on a lesser degree about Sokka. How about seeing her interact with other characters, like Suki, like Toph, like Zuko? Why didn’t she befriend Kiyi too in The Search, for instance? Even Toph gets a weird BFF comic with Ty Lee, but Katara is relegated to mainly interacting with her boyfriend and her brother. Sokka gets to spend time with Toph, with Suki (in Shells exclusively), with Aang, with Zuko, even has a pretty personal one-on-one competition with Azula throughout The Search that Katara did NOT have. But Katara is stuck with Sokka and Aang only. If we wanted to see her character being as it used to be in the show once more? That would need to change. We could have more stories like that one in the Lost Adventures, where she goes out with Toph for a day. We could have stories about her and, I don’t know, Mai! Anything!

Third, in regards of LOK: if we’re going to relegate Katara to the role of the “healer”, which I’m not the biggest fan of, but I figure that’s what Bryke went for… why the hell didn’t she inaugurate Republic City’s Main Hospital or something epic of that sort? That’s the perfect place for her to have a superb statue! It could be a place that employs all sorts of bending healing types, where research is done to find new ways to use bending for healing, or new means to cure people without bending, too. Why didn’t this happen? Beats me. I’m not saying Katara wasn’t allowed to be a housewife, because she is, but it bugs me that as a housewife she apparently doesn’t even get a say upon how Aang plays favorites with their kids. So, if she’s not going to have much of a say in that, why not give her a job? She could handle a job and raising kids at the same time, so could Aang. I really have no doubts about it.

And there’s probably more things I’d add, but those three would be the first steps to giving Katara some of her agency back. If she didn’t want to be a healer she could easily have a waterbending academy too, why not? She really could do lots of things for Republic City and I’m sure she would have been happy to do it. Fact is, it’s just unfair that everyone else gets to make their “mark” on Republic City but Katara doesn’t (and obviously Suki doesn’t either, but let’s just pretend she left her own mark in the Fire Nation instead…). It feels out of place for a character who was the third most important one of ATLA’s franchise, right behind Aang and Zuko. She should have gotten a little bit more recognition, inside the story and out, too. The writers could have done her character justice, and they should have. But well, who knows? Maybe North and South Part 2 gave her some of what her character was sorely lacking…

So, that was a long answer anyways, lots of grumbling and rambling but I hope I answered your question properly!

#profoundlytenaciousgalaxy #whoever expected me to have Katara meta? :'D #well it happened #and now I may have finally figured out the things that bother me about how she's written in the comics #thank you for asking!

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