J-drawings - J Drawings

Circular Reasoning

INTP: *hears something that goes against values* INTP: *climbs on top of soapbox* INTP: *raises finger* INTP: *states opinion* INTP: “Actually-” INTP: “Wait-” INTP: “Unless, of course-” INTP: “But then again-” INTP: *realizes they don’t know what they believe* INTP: *stands on soapbox for the next 20 years in an existential crisis*

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j-drawings

4 years ago

This is so true: airnomadwannabe,tumblr,com/post/625266561858650112/a-probably-not-comprehensive-list-of-kataras

Ok, but the problem with this post by @airnomadwannabe is that our argument has never been that Katara didn’t, canonically, accomplish anything with her life.

It’s that virtually none of these accomplishments matter in the context of LoK. Very little that Katara did during or after the war is so much as referenced, and even the things that are referenced matter very little. Katara never talks about her life except as it pertains to Aang, or her children. She doesn’t get to do anything during the series either, despite there being multiple things that--were it not for her entire personality being vacuumed out with almost surgical precision--she should have done if she were being kept true to character, or if she, like, cared about her family and people at all. (Things like, oh, attending her own granddaughter’s Air Master ceremony, or lifting finger one to save her family when they were in danger, or lifting finger one to step in when her people were getting thrown into a whole ass civil war........but more on that later.)

I always go back to @araeph‘s Consumed by Destiny series (and I’m sorry I keep tagging you, I love your metas and reference them frequently, and incidentally, everyone should go read through araeph’s meta posts and analysis, they’re quite thorough and enjoyable to read), because it throws Katara’s treatment in LoK into incredibly sharp relief, especially once you compare it to her character arc in AtLA towards the end of the meta series.

To illustrate what I mean, I’ll go through the examples listed in the post anon sent me:

finished her work as Avatar Aang’s waterbending master

This is vaguely referenced, but honestly, you wouldn’t have any real idea about Katara’s waterbending prowess and her journey with Aang unless you watched AtLA first. Katara’s own experiences are almost never talked about, she makes a vague reference to her own trauma one (1) time and goes into much more detail about Aang’s pain, rather than her own. But she never talks about her experiences as his teacher, and someone who only watched LoK and knew nothing about AtLA would be justifiably confused at anyone who talks about Katara like she was important, even integral, to his journey.

played a major role in mediation of political conflict and land disputes following the war in both the Earth Kingdom and Southern Water Tribe

You wouldn’t know this at all unless you read the comics or looked it up on the wiki. It’s never so much as vaguely referenced, and considering the comics are a whole other kettle of badly-written fish, that may be just as well. But the fact is that this particular accomplishment may as well never have happened, as far as LoK is concerned. (And, actually, considering what happened in North & South and the civil war in LoK book 2, this is particularly galling. Why wasn’t Katara more active [or active at all] during that arc???? Did she stop giving a shit about her people and their sovereignty at some point in the last sixty years?)

helped to recover Ursa, the lost Fire Lady

Again, a comics-only plotline, which has no effect on anything in LoK and is never referenced. Furthermore, Katara isn’t allowed to share a single scene with Zuko--not even her own granddaughter’s Air Master ceremony.

revived the near extinct Southern Style waterbending and became the master to the Southern Tribe’s first new waterbenders in generations

This is something we can assume from conjecture, but so far as I know it isn’t actually stated in canon, even in the comics. Hama talks about teaching Katara Southern Waterbending, but the only technique she actually teaches her is bloodbending, which was outlawed by the time of LoK (which may seem like an accomplishment of Katara’s, but we’ll get there later). It’s entirely possible that Katara discovered Southern Waterbending techniques (my personal headcanon is that Zuko found and returned a whole boatload of waterbending scrolls from the Fire Nation Library archives, from which she was able to bring the Southern style of bending back), but this isn’t explored anywhere in canon. Even North & South doesn’t touch much on it, outside of the two kids Katara tries to help teach some basics (and who are promptly forgotten about), probably because it’s more about the South getting recolonized by the North and Katara being painted as unreasonable for resisting, but that’s another rant entirely.

became a noted human rights activist by leading the movement to outlaw bloodbending

This almost counts. Katara did nearly single-handedly get bloodbending outlawed, and this is even explicitly stated in the text of LoK! Finally, an accomplishment of Katara’s that was actually important to the sequel series! Except........where was Katara during Yakone’s trial?

The primary antagonist of Book 1 is revealed to be a bloodbender. His father taught him how to bloodbend, and cited Katara as the reason for bloodbending being outlawed. He had a personal grudge against her which he carried to his grave! And yet... she’s nowhere to be found during the flashback in which we see this notorious bloodbender being tried for a crime she was responsible for criminalizing in the first place. She isn’t mentioned even once during that flashback. Aang is there as the Avatar, and Toph is there in her capacity as police chief, and even Sokka is there--where the fuck is Katara? Wouldn’t you think they’d want an insanely powerful waterbender who also knew how to bloodbend on hand in case things went wrong and the bloodbender tried to escape? Especially once you remember that Katara, at fourteen years old, was able to break a master bloodbender’s hold on her body.

But she was nowhere to be found.

Hm.

was an internationally respected master waterbender and healer, even canonically called the greatest of her time in LoK

I will admit, lipservice is paid to Master Katara’s bending abilities. She’s called a master, and she’s allegedly the best healer in the world. The issue here is, we never see any evidence of this in the series. She’s a master waterbender, but we never see her fight--not even to protect her family, when her children and grandchildren were held hostage and threatened with death. (And before you bring up her age, Toph is only two years younger and gets to kick ass on screen to protect her family, and that’s not even mentioning the old ass men in the White Lotus who got to kick ass all over the place onscreen during AtLA.) She’s the greatest healer in the world, but we never see her heal a single significant injury on-screen--not even those caused by bloodbending (when Amon blocked benders from their bending)--and while she does coax Korra through physical therapy, she never once tries to heal her mind (despite this having some success on Jet, who was brainwashed by the Dai Li, back in AtLA). Katara’s healing abilities only get pulled out during LoK when the show has an injury she can’t heal, so they can say ‘look at this horrific injury that even the greatest healer in the world can’t do anything about!’

The Worf Effect comes to mind, but even Worf got to throw down and kick ass sometimes on screen.

demonstrated skill in non-bending forms of medicine such as midwifery and physiotherapy

I’ll give you this one! I don’t recall if Katara’s skills as a midwife are ever referenced in LoK, but she spent the entire series chained to the healing huts, so I’ll accept this on a technical.

became the waterbending master for a second Avatar in her lifetime by teaching Korra both combat waterbending and healing

Again, this is something the series paid lipservice to, but it’s never shown on screen. Korra had already mastered waterbending, earthbending, and was taking her firebending mastery test when we officially meet her current self in LoK, and we don’t see any flashbacks to her training with Katara in the series at all. There may be some in the comics, but again, a whole other kettle of badly written fish. (Sorry, I just really enjoyed that metaphor.)

was obviously a beloved and respected elder of the Southern Water Tribe

Was she? Was she really?

I’m just saying, for a ‘beloved and respected elder of the Southern Water Tribe’, she didn’t seem to have any political sway at all. Unless she just didn’t care about the North trying to take over the South (again!!!!! lest we forget lmfao) and her people plunging themselves into a full-blown civil war. You’d think that someone so beloved and respected, who helped to save the world by ending a war that had lasted for a century, who trained two avatars and was one of the most powerful waterbenders on the planet, would have had some pull with her own people.

LoK implies she is a member of the White Lotus

Considering everything else that is talked about or vaguely mentioned but not shown, this... doesn’t mean much. Especially since, by the time of Korra, the White Lotus had become a group entirely dedicated to training the avatar and were otherwise completely ineffectual.

They certainly weren’t around to help when the Red Lotus were causing problems.

until Book 3 of LoK, is the matriarch of the only existing airbenders and thus is a historical figure related to the revival of an entire culture following a catastrophic genocide

Who she does nothing to try to save when all of the existing (natural-born) airbenders, who make up two generations of Katara’s family, are captured by the Red Lotus and held hostage, threatened with death.

They nearly committed a second Air Nomad genocide (remembering that while airbending had been back, the airbenders who were given that power from the harmonic convergence weren’t actually Air Nomads themselves), and Katara didn’t lift a single finger to stop them, or even try, despite the fact that said genocide was going to involve the murder of her entire family.

raised* ** three amazing children who did incredible work for the world in their own right

The issues with the cloud family could fill an entire book. Yes, they all grew up to do great things, but less great is the fact that Aang blatantly favored one child over the other two to the point where they were bitter about it well into their fifties and sixties is....really not a good look. Add to that the fact that Katara let it happen? That’s a whole lot of yikes.

(And not to belabor the point too much, but before anyone tries to say ‘but they were exaggerating’ or ‘but they were a happy family’: Kya and Bumi having Nice Feelings over a family photo where Tenzin was a literal infant doesn’t compare to the fact that the Air Acolytes, who literally worshiped Aang, had no idea that he had other children. Bumi had to speak to a statue, hoping that his father would finally be proud of him--not for anything he did, but because he was finally an airbender, because that was the only thing he believed his father valued. These are events that occur in the text, and they say more about Aang as a father than anything else does. And Katara as a mother, since she never actually gets to talk about her experiences as such in the show.)

As for this bit:

**you can’t convince me, after spending her youth fighting for the greater good, Katara -gentle-hearted, empathetic, mom-friend extraordinaire, for whom family was everything- wasn’t perfectly happy to spend the rest of her life living peacefully as a teacher, wife, mother, and grandmother, and if that is what made her happy then she deserves it, and we don’t get to judge.

If family was everything to Katara, why didn’t she go to Jinora’s Air Master ceremony, quite literally the most important moment in an airbender’s life? And why was she ready to stand by and let them all be murdered? If she loved her people so much, why didn’t she say a word when they were plunging themselves into a needless civil war? Why does her deciding to spend her life living peacefully mean that she’s never allowed to do anything to protect the people she loves so much? Why didn’t she step in when Aang was blatantly favoring Tenzin and abandoning her at home to raise his other two kids?

Yes, Katara is empathetic and loving, a mom-friend extraordinaire, but honestly? No, she was not gentle-hearted--her heart was fierce, from a very young age. One of her most iconic lines is “No! I will never, ever turn my back on people who need me!”

But isn’t that exactly what she did, when first her people, and then her entire family, needed her the most in LoK?

That is why we think the creators made Katara nothing more than a trophy wife in LoK--because the only things she was that were important at all to the narrative of LoK were the Avatar’s wife, and the mother and grandmother of the new generations of airbenders. Nothing she did or accomplished during AtLA means a damn thing in LoK, and there’s no trace of her fierce heart, her bravery and courage, her daring nature, her talent for lifting spirits of a group of people and inspiring them to act.

No, LoK wasn’t about the gaang, but AtLA wasn’t about the White Lotus either, and those old men got to do shit and accomplish shit on screen! Why was Katara sent to languish in the healing huts when she wasn’t even going to be allowed to accomplish anything as a healer for the entirety of the series? Particularly when Zuko, Toph, and even Aang and Sokka were given some focus, allowed to fight to save their family (or at least mention going to protect his daughter, in Zuko’s case), given statues to commemorate their accomplishments, allowed to visibly take part in Republic City politics.....but Katara wasn’t.

The only member of the gaang who got less focus in LoK was Suki, and I would argue that she got the better end of the deal--she, at least, was allowed the dignity of disappearing completely, leaving fans to entirely headcanon her life post-war. We get to see Katara, she’s just... a shell of her former self.

And it’s incredibly disheartening to see people continue to bend over backwards to justify it with ‘but she did all of these things!!!!’ as if that actually has anything to do with how she was treated in the show itself.

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j-drawings

4 years ago

an author i love just tweeted about how “big joy and small joy are the same” and how she was just as content the other night eating chocolate and cuddling her dog as she was on her Big Trip to new york and honestly. i think that’s it. this morning i was listening to an audiobook while baking shortbread in my joggers and i realised i really didn’t care what Big Things happened in my future as long as i could keep baking and reading at the weekend and maybe that is the kind of bar we have to set to guard ourselves against disappointment. just appreciate and cherish the mundane stuff and see everything else as a bonus.

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j-drawings

5 years ago

Some words to use when writing things:

winking

clenching

pulsing

fluttering

contracting

twitching

sucking

quivering