#but occasionally he forces toph to be the responsible one which she hates

[xxxcertifiednerdxxx]

is there any fanart, fanfic, or other fanworks about Bumi and Toph hanging out? Bc two incredibly powerful earth bending chaos gremlins being even 30 feet close to each other is a recipe for disaster that we should be exploring

[longing-for-rain]

Katara and the “Mom Friend” Trope

Both in-universe and among fans, Katara has always been identified as the “mom friend.” While often used as a joke, the trope does reveal a deeper and more tragic aspect of Katara’s character: the way the war has forced her to grow up quickly and take on a parental role at a young age.

This is a frequently misunderstood part of Katara’s character, despite it being central to her arc. Since the show first aired, Katara has been the butt of many jokes and has always been one of the most hated characters by fans. From tasteless jokes about how she talks about the loss of her mother too much to accusations of being too emotional and bossy, Katara’s character has always been under attack by fans.

In past years, and still in certain parts of the internet, this behavior was blatant, but lately I’ve noticed a more subtle spin on this. As it becomes slightly less socially acceptable to say blatantly misogynistic things about female characters—particularly here on tumblr—I’ve noticed fans express the same negative sentiments about Katara, but dressed up to appear more progressive. The most common way I see this sentiment expressed is fans downplaying Katara’s role as “team mom” and trying to make it seem as if Katara is less mature and responsible than she really is.

Of course, these individuals would have you believe that their reasoning for these opinions is that they really care so much about Katara and want to “let her be a kid.” But in reality, when you ignore the way that Katara is forced into a parental role in canon, you also ignore and disregard the context for many of her character traits, leading into the accusations of her being bossy and overly emotional that I mentioned earlier. It erases, and therefore minimizes, a huge source of stress and trauma that weighs on Katara throughout the series.

The idea that Katara fans created the concept of her being a “mom friend” is ridiculous. This is mentioned so much in canon that it’s practically a running joke. Toph accuses Katara of acting like everyone’s mom in The Chase. A similar conflict arises again in The Runaway, when Sokka even admits that he thinks of Katara as a mother figure, despite him being her older brother.

Katara seems pretty hurt by this too, and it’s still never properly addressed again.

In The Headband, Katara actually pretends to be Aang’s mother.

And looking at everything we know about Katara, it’s very clear how she assumed this role. Think about what she says in the exposition of the entire show:

Katara: Ever since mom died, I've been doing all the work around camp while you've been off playing soldier! I even wash all the clothes! Have you ever smelled your dirty socks?

The moment Katara is introduced, the audience is given a critical piece of information about Katara—that she’s lost her mother and essentially assumed her role. While Sokka is more or less playing and occasionally hunting (we hardly ever see him do this in canon by the way), Katara is doing the overlooked, underappreciated labor that keeps everything moving. There is a great post here by @theotterpenguin that details this and the inherent misogyny in devaluing the kind of work Katara does, and how many fans tend to do this.

This trend continues throughout the course of the show. Katara is always the voice of reason who keeps things moving. She reigns in Sokka and Aang, who are constantly getting themselves into trouble.

There are countless examples, but to name a few:

As early as The Warriors of Kyoshi, she’s trying to get Aang to behave and not endanger himself to look cool. And having him mouth off when she gently suggests that he help with a minor chore.

In The Storm, Katara warns Sokka not to take a risky job, which he ignores and nearly gets himself killed.

In The Blue Spirit, Katara is trying the whole time to do something productive via Momo, remaining vigilant despite the sickness wearing her down.

In The Chase, being the one to politely ask Toph to help out, and honestly doing a pretty good job of keeping her cool as long as she did.

The entirety of The Desert episode. While everyone else was drugged up, hopeless, and even outright hostile, Katara kept everything moving and saved everyone’s lives.

Whenever Aang goes into the Avatar State, it’s always Katara tasked with calming him down, despite how dangerous and volatile the Avatar State is when not properly controlled.

Additionally, there are so many small details that add to this picture. Katara is always the one we see getting food, preparing food, doing chores, everything of that nature. Everyone else would be completely lost without her.

And sadly, this is something never properly addressed by the narrative nor acknowledged by fans. There is a great post here by @ecoterrorist-katara explaining the tragedy in this. Katara is constantly burdened with the responsibility of keeping everything moving and doing the invisible labor that is never appreciated but keeps everyone moving, which is the reason why she’s viewed as being in a maternal role. Because that’s what she very clearly is to her friends.

This really wasn’t meant to be a ship related post, but it is kind of the elephant in the room here. I know a lot of the motivation in downplaying Katara’s “mom friend” role stems from shipping discourse, in particular, the hatred of the idea of Katara and Zuko acting as team parents. Some people associate Momtara as a Zutara trope and as a result, relentlessly bash it as they do anything even tangentially related to Zutara. But did you ever consider why it’s a Zutara trope? Because a lot of fans recognize everything I mentioned previously, and enjoy the idea of someone helping to share that responsibility. Sokka, Aang, and Toph clearly didn’t, so that leaves…guess who.

Zuko: You should get some rest. We'll be there in a few hours. You'll need all your strength.

It’s tiring seeing this trend from people who clearly don’t care about Katara or her character. Sure, you might try to act like you’re downplaying Katara’s maternal role and how a huge part of her canon character was the war forcing her to assume that role out of “wanting her to be a kid” but you really aren’t that different from more blatantly misogynistic fans who call her immature and annoying. You don’t recognize or respect the work she’s constantly putting in to protect those around her, and then you have the audacity to get mad at fans of Katara who actually like the idea of someone taking some of that burden off of her shoulders?

Same Katara hate, different font. She is forced into this material role, and refusing to acknowledge this is disrespectful not just to Katara’s character, but all the real life women and girls forced into similar roles who see themselves in Katara.

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Wan High Weeping (Part 13)

Katara gave a frustrated groan. June had to have given her at least two hours of homework between chemistry and math and she still had a few other classes worth of work, including having to write a page for Kyoshi’s, ‘The Wan High Perspectives’ project. A page a day was becoming so tedious and she hated dwelling on her day. She decided to name her auto-biography, ‘Wan High Weeping’, she had a feeling that by the end of the year there wouldn’t be a dry eye left in the school. But she had to power though these assignments if she was going to visit Sokka that weekend. Yet, thinking of the visit was eating away at her focus. And so it became a cycle of fretting over not having enough time to drop by Sokka and then stressing over the amount of work she had instead of actually doing it.

She tapped her pencil against her chin as she forced herself to work out one of the equations. All the while her phone was blowing up, she had to fight the urge to answer any of the calls or texts. She kept telling herself that most of them were probably Jet and his friends, they always seemed to find work arounds to her blocking their numbers.

“Uggh, this is so irritating…” She wanted to throw her pencil down. She didn’t have time to think about Jet and pals, but it was so easy to think about that when her homework was so painfully uninteresting.

 She didn’t spare her phone a glance until she got all of her math work out of the way. After tucking that neatly into its designated folder, she picked up her cell. As expected, many of the messages were from Jet and his crew. All of them were of the same variety, the same tactless insults. She couldn’t tell if it was a good or a bad thing that she was growing numb to being accused of being a slut. She sighed and deleted them all, blocking the numbers one by one, until she finally came to something more pleasant. Aang’s number appeared on her screen.

 It would seem as though things were not as pleasant as she suspected after all. The message concerned Toph. ‘Poppy called me earlier. She said to tell coach that Toph is in the hospital.’ He added a frown emoji and a sick emoji.

 Katara bit her cheek and quickly texted him back. ‘So sorry it took so long to reply, math with June is horrible. What happened to Toph? Is she okay?’ It makes her stomach turn to think that something has happened to Toph of all people. Truly a hospital visit is the last thing the BeiFong’s needed.

 She scrolled to the next message.

Suki.

She was almost afraid to open it.

Her finger hovered above the screen for some time before she finally decided to just go ahead and see what Suki had to say. It was simple and to the point, ‘you better give him a good talk.’ She didn’t need context and she didn’t know how to reply. It has been so long since she had seen Sokka and she didn’t want to open their first conversation with Suki’s pregnancy. So she sent a quick, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

 .oOo.

 Shu Jing University was much nicer than Wan High could ever hope to be. It certainly lived up to its prestigious hype. It was a collection of tiered buildings with orange and goal roof tiling. It’s campus seem to go on for miles, and some of the frat houses were sprinkled into the town itself. Her journey to Sokka’s dorm building was lush with trees, most of them shedding their leaves. The breeze smelled of the season, a warm perfume of cider, caramel, and hot-cakes. She assumed that the cafeteria was the source, it tickled her nose most pleasantly and she longed to study there instead of her own school. Students in uniform—bright red unisex dress pants and vests with the school logo—traipsed down the sidewalk carrying on eloquent, erudite conversations. Where they would meet up for study sessions and what was on the menu in the café and an occasional comment on the weather. Everyone seemed so serious, driven, and generally well-put together. She never envied Sokka more. Everything was so fancy, even the walkway which was made of shining cobblestone.

Trapped in the romanticized image of college life, for a moment she forgot about her troubles. She spied a group of students lounging in the grass on picnic tables, reading and soaking up the last of the moderately warm weather.

With any luck, Sokka would take her for a latte in the café.

 She hustled the rest of the way to his dorm area, where he was waiting for her outside with his hands stuffed into his pockets and a skateboard in the other. His hair was wet and he smelled like shampoo. He wasn’t in uniform, but instead a white t-shirt and blue flannel pajama pants. He cast his skateboard aside and pulled her into a hug. “It’s about time you stopped by! I haven’t heard from you since your first day of school! How is everything?”

 Katara sighed, her eyes already welling up, “it isn’t good, Sokka.” She gave herself a moment. “Toph is sick and they won’t leave me alone.”

 Sokka’s brows knit. “Here let’s go inside.”

 She followed him into the dorm, it smelled much less pleasant—it was definitely the boys’ dorm, alright. It reeked of stale pizza and body odor. “How do you stand the smell?” She couldn’t help but ask.

 “Eh, ya get used to it.” He chuckled. “I probably contribute to it.”

 “Ew! Sokka, that’s gross!” She missed him so, so much. It was almost like nothing changed at all. She could almost pretend that he wasn’t dodging responsibilities.

 “Anyways, who won’t leave you alone?”

 “Jet.” She mumbled.

 “Him again? I thought you broke it off with him?”

 “Yeah, that’s why he’s calling me a whore. He handles rejection worse than Zuko!”

 “Am I going to have to have a talk with him.” He cracked his knuckles, “ya know, this kind of talk.”

 Katara laughed. “That would be nice, but I don’t want you to lose all of this.” She gestured around the dorm. “He’s a minor and you’re an adult now, you could get in serious trouble. Even if you didn’t, his friends would keep it up.”

 “Which ones? Chan and Azula?”

 She could give him a whole list. “Yeah, Chan. And Chan’s friend, Chu-Leng. Sometimes the rest of the volleyball team. But it’s mostly Jet, Smellerbee, Pipsqueak, and Duke. Azula…that’s kind of a long story but her friend, Usha…” That woman always had the worst things to say on her social media pages.

 “It seems like the whole school is after you.” Sokka sighed.

 “Yeah, it kind of does. And none of the staff can do anything about it because it’s ‘just name calling’. I don’t know what to do. I wish you were still there, they weren’t this bad when you were there with me.”

 “I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to be at Wan High right now…” he trailed off.

 And she couldn’t help herself. “Why? Because it would be harder for you to avoid Suki? She needs help you know!? I know you’re my brother and that I should be on your side but…” She took a breath. “But you both…had sex. You’re a dad and you have to deal with that!” She had risen her voice much louder than she had intended.

 “Not so loud please, the guys…”

 “Don’t need to know?” She filled in. “That’s the great thing about being a guy isn’t it? You can keep it hushed. Suki? Every knows! It’s kind of hard to hide an entire baby bump.” Katara didn’t realize how furious the situation was making her until she finally put it out there.

 Sokka flushed.

 “I can’t believe you, Sokka!” She sputtered. “You’d come all the way to Wan High to beat people up for me, but you’re afraid to go help Suki out every once in a while.”

 “She broke up with me, Kat!”

 “Because you ignored her any time she mentioned the baby.”

 “I don’t know how to be a father.” Sokka confessed softly.

 “You can learn. Just like every new dad.”

 “I have to study, this is tough stuff…”

 “Suki has to study. She still wants to go to college too.” Katara argued. “But she can’t just avoid things like you are. She doesn’t have a choice at this point.” She shoved her phone at him. “Call her, Sokka. And tell her that you’re going to help her with the baby. You can start by helping her pick a name.”

 “Can we go back to talking about bullies? I can handle those.”

 “Sure, after you call Suki.” She replied. “Trust me, I need advice. But Suki needs support more right now.”

 “Okay, you win, Kat.” Sokka lifted his hands. “I’ll call and then you let me help you out.”

[magicalpeachconnection]

I feel the same way. I can handle a platinum relationship, but the series end just made me feel like they cheapened the relationship they spent 3 seasons developing.

I would also argue that if you WANT to go with the "family replacement"theory, Katara feels WAAAY more like a replacement family for Aang than Zuko. Like, she had SOOOOO many mothering moments with Aang, and Sokka, and even Toph, and she never has to do that with Zuko. They always felt more like equals. If we're assigning family roles to the Gaang, Katara is canonically the mom of the group, to the extent that she and Toph have a whole episode about it, and even Sokka said that he kinda looks at her as a mom more than a sister sometimes. Who else is the responsible one in the group? Sokka? Eh, kinda, but big brother responsible. Responsible enough to babysit, but maybe not to actually have authority long term. Probably still needs to be able to have the "or I'll tell Mom" card. (It fades as the show comes to a close, but still has serious big brother energy.) Suki? She definitely feels like brother's girlfriend who never leaves and just gets absorbed into the family (which I really hate, and would have loved to see more about her integrating and creating her own space in the group, separate from Sokka. Difficult with her dating him, but not impossible. Another rant for another day.) Aang feels like the middle child, used to being the carefree youngest, but being forced to step up to handle the responsibility of now saving the world having a younger sibling. Toph has serious only youngest child energy. She's used to getting her way, even if it might occasionally require a fake tear like she uses on her actual parents, the tough exterior from being used to keeping up with the older ones and always feeling like she's never going to compare, because whatever she does, the older one did it first.

Zuko, though? Zuko is the one who falls into the "dad" role pretty easily. Aside from being the oldest in the group (except MAYBE Sokka? I don't remember, I think they might have been the same age). Zuko never really gets into irresponsible shenanigans like the others do. And when he does, it's for a reason, for their growth and development. It's technically irresponsible, but it's a trip there group needed to make. For example, Katara NEEDED to face the guy who killed her mom. She needed that growth, and him going with her was definitely way more responsible than her going alone. Same with Sokka. He felt too wracked by guilt to step up and lead in the way the group needed him to, so Zuko helped. That's like when the kid gets in trouble at school, so the dad takes them to get ice cream. Technically? Yeah he should punish the kid for getting suspended for being in a fight. Realistically? It's more important to sit down and find out WHY the kid felt a need to fight and if it was justified, and talk over why that was the right or wrong choice.

That break down went waaaay longer than I planned, but TL;DR, if Katara is replacement family for anyone, it's Aang, and that's why I can't ship Kataang.

Zuko lost Azula in the end of the series but reconciled with Кatara, this means that relationship between him and her sibling and not romantic. people should finally learn to distinguish between platonic and romantic relationships and not ignore the obvious romantic development of Kataang

I’m sorry. I’ve read this ask 3 times and I don’t understand really what this is about?

Zuko’s relationship with Azula was always quite bad and distant, full of distrust even when he came home at the beginning of Book 3. So yeah, the Agni Kai probably broke it further, but Azula remained Zuko’s responsibility and there could be scenarios where they reconcile (I obviously don’t talk about the comics).

I don’t know what this has to do with Kataang though? 🤷🏼‍♀️