Tag: katara

original here. dated 2012-02-01 

[A/N: Please note that this was before The Legend of Korra so… yeah]

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Partly has to do with how much I would totally LOVE being a waterbender/bloodbender/healer like Katara and how she is kind of the most important character of Avatar The Last Airbender even if she doesn’t have the super awesome legacy like Aang and Zuko seem to. So I guess there’s three ways this assassin Katara could come about:

1) Simply by continuing the series. We know Aang and Zuko are all about being publicly good and whatnot, but there are always darker sides to politics and such that the two of them seem to be unable or unwilling to deal with. Enter their better halves Mai and Katara. A lot of this would be Mai and Katara learning how to get along and learning things from each other, both of them being the shadow/hidden power behind the thrones. Toph apparently goes back to Ba Sing Se to teach metalbending to the eventual police force, Mai’s closest friends are crazy prisoners or all the way at Kiyoshi Island with new friends of her own, so Katara and Mai would drift together. But because of their mutual awesomeness and distrust of each other, their friendship wouldn’t just click because Mai has to learn to not just obey orders and Katara needs to find a purpose beyond being ‘team mom’. So they’re both trying to find themselves and along the way they become besties. It’s probably somewhat darker than just two girls becoming women and friends–because lets face it, the series has put teenagers in charge of the entire world and they can’t really trust the older generation. So it’s a bit like, as Aang and Zuko travel around showing people that the war is finally over and whatevers, Katara and Mai also travel with them and get shit done.

2) A Katara raised by Fire Nation and being a pirate. She’s an assassin pirate. Something along the lines of her being kidnapped by the Sea Ravens maybe, because the Sea Raven’s mission to the South Pole was kind of weird to begin with. First off, how did they even know there was a waterbender in the Southern Tribe? There was only like… 50 people max in the village and who would tell? Unless they thought that Hama (and that’s what leads to universe 3) had gone back to the Southern Tribe, but that was AGES ago. Also, Katara was only maybe 4 years old, she wouldn’t have been much of a threat. I’m assuming that the Sea Raven captain only killed Katara and Sokka’s mom because if she HAD been the waterbender then she would have been a major threat. Also, they only go into the village to kill one person? They had the manpower to do some serious damage if the simply wanted to remove the threat. My guess, which is what this universe would be based off of, is that they wanted the waterbender as either a type of tool or a research subject or because they thought maybe the Avatar was somewhere in the water tribes and they couldn’t easily get to the North Pole. Seeing that Katara was only 4, the Sea Ravens would kidnap her instead. Maybe incapacitating or killing her mom, but Katara would be raised by Fire Nation as a super badass waterbender. While I doubt she would have interacted with the fire nobles, I’d like to think that Katara and Azula have some kind of rivalry in this universe. Maybe Katara turns on the Sea Ravens and becomes a mercenary, gets temporarily mentored by Jin. (She maybe stays a while in the fishing village on the river and becomes The Painted Lady during her identity crisis)

3) Hama escapes from prison and goes back home to the South Pole. She changes a lot of the South Pole’s history. Helps rebuild it, protect it, etc. But she’s far more cutthroat than Kanna prefers and so there’s this tension between the two of them as the eldest and thus most influential members of the tribe. It doesn’t help matters when Katara is revealed to be a waterbender and starts taking lessons from Hama who teaches her everything she knows. I’m thinking that in Hama’s travels back to the South Pole she meets the swamp benders and gets some ideas about multiple water tribes. Not just those stuck at the poles. At some point I would like for Katara and Hama to go to the North Pole and be all your misogynistic tendencies are stupid to Pakku. This one is more scheming than badass Katara. In this universe, it’s not just Fire versus Earth with Air being extinct and Water being very close to that, It’s Fire versus Earth with Water on the rise to being it’s own contender in the fight. And there are some repercussions beyond that–obviously, Earth Kingdom wouldn’t like Water Tribes taking official Earth Kingdom land, even if it is swamplands. And Fire Nation would definitely hate their natural enemies of Water gaining power.

TL;DR:
1) Katara and Mai become the badass power behind Aang and Zuko’s “thrones.” They do what’s necessary to help rebuild the war-torn world and protect their partners have become. They become friends while changing from girls into women.
2) The Sea Ravens kidnap Katara instead of (or along with) killing her mother. Katara is raised to be mercenary and mistrusting; possibly turning on them when she’s old enough, having a rivalry with the Fire Nation nobles or a mentorship from Jin.
3) After escaping from prison, Hama increases the power of the Water Tribes–restoring the South Pole, riling the North Pole, and establishing the swamplands as Water territory. Neither Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom are happy. Katara is her heir apparent.