#bc he matures pretty quickly and dramatically over the course of season 1 while katara's journey is a lot slower

[baltears]

also i know this is a hot take but it’s constantly on my mind whenever i read atla discourse. katara does not start out the series emotionally mature. katara starts out the series parentified and traumatized so that she has learned to replicate the behavior of an adult caretaker as closely as she, a child who is NOT an adult, can. there is a very very large distinction between these two things and without realizing that katara is acting from a space of trauma and playing a relatively rigid and simplistic role as a means of coping, you are imo pretty significantly misreading her character and her situation

#she definitely does mature over the course of the series and by the end of the series she's in a much different place #but it drives me up the wall seeing people say katara is the mature one of the group. she literally never has been. #katara is very responsible and very nurturing. those are not the same things as being emotionally mature and having grown into oneself #and there are so so so many instances where it's very clear katara is still a kid. #i think there's even a pretty substantial time in the show where she actually lags behind sokka developmentally #bc he matures pretty quickly and dramatically over the course of season 1 while katara's journey is a lot slower #by the way im Not saying that katara's care for her friends isnt genuine im not saying they dont benefit from her nurturing #and im definitely not saying she's incapable of genuinely acting mature. #what im saying is that you cannot just take these characters at face value &it's important to understand that they all have a lot going on #and i think katara is one of the most misunderstood potentially because people simply don't realize what parentification looks like #and exactly how harmful it is to the child #or how to notice the difference between someone operating in the role of an adult vs someone who genuinely is an adult emotionally #also btw im sorry if the language in this sounds inflammatory i really don't mean it to be. but sometimes atla fandom... is wrong abt things #it's honestly a little hard for me to understand how so many people miss this about her character bc #it's such a huge foundational element to how she behaves basically at all times 😐 #but idk #anyway for reference see sokka literally explaining kataras parentification to toph in the runaway #and being able to express her emotional state and general headspace much more clearly than katara herself can #atla