#last post 2day folks Good Night

[sokkagatekeeper]

any thoughts or analysis on sukka?

i’ve made a few posts on my general feelings towards sukka. in general they are beloved to me, i think they’re one of (if not the) healthiest relationship in atla, bi4bi iconicness etc etc.

sokka and suki are deeply compatible (which is to be expected as suki is pretty much, as a minor character, molded onto the remnants of sokka’s main character) but not in the way everyone thinks suki grounds sokka and makes him act more responsible which is a bullshit notion, no no. what suki does for sokka is the opposite. she helps him relax and have fun, let go of his neurotic tendencies for a while and feel protected rather than under the obligation to protect unlike all of his other relationships & friendships (excluding maybe zuko). suki gives him that safe space he doesn’t allow himself to have or isn’t given by other people. and it’s not by any means a one-sided relationship; sokka adores suki with his entire being, and they both make an excellent team in action. it’s not all suki and it’s not all sokka, but an actual balance. not only sokka adores suki but despite his fears that she could get hurt, he also profoundly respects her as a warrior and a leader, and recognizes himself in her and her devotion to her duty and her responsibilities to her kyoshi warriors, the same way he saw himself in yue’s devotion to her duty to her people.

meta-ish speaking, sokka’s interaction with suki is the first clue we get to understanding how open-minded sokka is and how his scientific brain works. he has a belief (women can’t be warriors) that he learned from the limited perspective he had throughout his life up until that point. he is presented with evidence of the contrary (suki is a girl, she can fight, and she in fact can fight better than sokka, who is a boy) and he dwells on it for like a day or so. sokka is immediately willing to test this new knowledge that he aquired. he’s immediately willing to be taught better. he’s willing to learn. suki recognizes this change, and starts seeing him and treating him as an equal, lowering the (understandable) defensive stance she had when fighting sokka before. she teases sokka, gets jokingly mad when sokka kicks her ass, they fight side by side. this is part of what gets sokka’s arc of widening his perspective on the world and therefore his perspective on himself and his self-worth beyond the ideal of the role of a man that he grew up believing he should fulfill and seemed utterly unable to.

most of all, sokka and suki get to be just some teens in love when they’re together. in the middle of a war, they both have their own stuff going on, and they are separated from each other on multiple occasions, but they always find their way back to each other somehow. they go on dates, they flirt, they tease each other, they get to love each other and be in a healthy, mutually beneficial, loving relationship despite everything else.