Y/n: WANDS! TASHA! *runs Into The Common Room*

something that really bugs me about people invalidating katara’s grief because “[insert male character here] had it so much worse and she was such a b*tch to him >:(” is that KATARA IS ALSO A SURVIVOR OF GENOCIDE.

genocide usually isn’t all at once. it’s much more common for it to take place over years or even decades. katara is the LAST southern waterbender. everyone else was thrown into internment camps to die, and only hama survived long enough to escape. yon rha was there specifically to kill her, an eight year old child, for being a waterbender. the only reason she survived at all is because her mother died in her place. katara BLAMES HERSELF for kya’s death, to the point that she forces herself to take on the mantle of an adult mother to her OWN FATHER AND OLDER BROTHER, who should have been the ones comforting her instead of the other way around. katara is literally the only reason why sokka isn’t traumatized and scarred by kya’s loss the way she clearly is. every time she talks about her mom, uses her own grief to soothe and comfort others, she is pressing on a wound that NEVER HEALED because she’s expected to heal everyone else’s pain, and no one has done the same for her. katara’s loss literally shapes her life and who she is as a person. her motherly and caring attitude come from the loss of her mom, and her obsessive need to learn waterbending comes from her being the only one left, with no one to guide her and teach her, under constant risk of death if the fire nation finds out she survived. she can’t even defend herself because anyone who could have taught her was taken away and died in an internment camp.

and then she learns that she’s not the last one! there’s another, just like her, who can teach her! and then hama turns on her, tries to kill her friends and family, takes the result of all the grief and pain of the genocide only they survived and forces it onto katara via bloodbending. bloodbending is pretty obviously representative of that generational trauma, which katara is forced to inherit from her elders because she is the only one left able to carry that burden and fight for justice. the only time she uses it again is when she is confronted with the man who killed her mother (and wanted to kill her), yon rha, and the organization responsible for the southern waterbender genocide, the southern raiders. the metaphor is crystal clear!!!

but katara’s grief isn’t important enough. katara’s grief is annoying. katara’s grief is selfish and b*tchy and an overreaction. katara is too loud, too aggressive, too demanding. she should just keep doing everyone else’s chores and everyone else’s emotional labor. how DARE she stick up for herself when compared to jet. how DARE she vocalize the pain and grief and rage that sokka and aang and toph have been ignoring. why can’t she just shut up and keep being everyone else’s mommymaid?!

Avatar thoughts: Avatars being fit for their times, Aang

This isn’t as long as my thoughts on Kyoshi being fit for her times.  I’ve read a few places about Aang being what was needed because air is the element of freedom.  And I don’t disagree with that.  But I think it’s actually more complicated.

It’s useless to play the what if game of if he hadn’t gotten frozen in an iceberg and faced the invasion of the fire nation when it happened.  Liklihood is he would have died.

But after 100 years of strife, he had something no one else in that world had.  He knew a world without war.  He knew peace.  

Any Avatar we know of could have stopped Ozai, several would have killed him.  But what then? You’ve ended a war.  But what’s next.  Aang was what the world needed then.  Someone who knew peace, and knew how to communicate and compromise.  

Fighting is easy when it’s all you’ve known.  That’s why Aang was fit for his times, so he could lead them down a new path.  

Mirror mirror. From RWBY would be a good song for Isabela