AFS: Love at First Sight
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This page was last updated: June 4th, 2007
This page is linked from: The Aang/Katara Portal
Behind the cuts: Aang/Katara in The Boy in the Iceberg and The Avatar Returns.
Aang/Katara in the First Two Episodes
debacul writes in this essay: They meet by chance. Katara and Sokka are out fishing in a canoe and get stuck in a current; Katara, angry, accidentally cracks open a massive iceberg, which allows the underwater portion that contains Aang, stuck in a state of suspended animation, to bob to the surface. After Katara breaks open the iceberg, Aang falls into her arms and wakes up.
Within moments of meeting her, Aang appears to already be developing a crush on Katara. He stares at her with a smile while giving them a ride on Appa; when she asks him why he was smiling at her, he reacts as if he hadn't been doing it on purpose. On Katara's end, she is fascinated with him and his foreign ways and airbending powers, openly gawking at him more than once within the first two episodes (my friends and I joke that she thinks his tattoos are hot). Later, she even is willing to leave her entire world behind to go with Aang when the village rejects him.
At this stage of the game, I do believe that Aang's feelings are nothing more complex than a schoolboy crush, sure. She rescued him from the iceberg, trusts him, is pretty, thinks he's funny, etc; a crush is natural in that situation. That doesn't mean it can't develop into something deeper (which it clearly does). If nothing else, Katara and Aang click immediately.
And they never look back.
Katara and Aang spend a lot of time together during his day in the village; they go penguin sledding and Aang offers to take her to the North Pole to learn waterbending from a master. After realizing that Aang has probably been stuck in the iceberg for a hundred years, Katara comforts him, already taking the role of his rock/protector, and Aang decides that the bright side to this is that he "did get to meet [Katara]".
I am not denying these are just the initial stages of their relationship; Aang is crushing on a pretty girl, Katara is acting on her natural inclination to mother everything around her. However, they do mutually care for each other, despite only knowing each other for a couple days, and their relationship is already beneficial to both of them--Aang teaches Katara how to have fun, and that it's okay to act your age; Katara is there for Aang when he wakes up in a completely different world than he fell asleep in. They're laying the foundations for what will become a huge and epic relationship that is integral to the show itself.
Someone posits: Though what I interpreted from Hwangsta was that he was incased in an iceberg for 100 years without any knowledge as to what was happening in the outside world. The first person he laid eyes on was Katara-like a chick hatching and being attached to the 1st person it encounters or it could be love at first sight, which is usually blind love.
rawles replies, writing after "The Swamp:" That might be a workable theory but Aang had no concept of the passage of time while he was in the iceberg. So coming out of it, in his mind, it wasn't as though Katara was the first person he had seen in 100 years. She was just the first person he'd seen since he fell asleep, which, as far as he knew could have been the day before.
Though, I'd probably agree with the "love at first sight" reading, since I think that the way it was shot supports that that was what was being communicated. That doesn't however necessarily mean that the relationship, if it should ever be met, won't last. In fact, the fact that it was the very first thing established about Aang probably better supports the idea that they will end up as THE pairing of the series.
Rawles, writing after "City of Walls and Secrets:" The major thing (besides the romantic moments that they've had, which cannot be viewed in a vacuum) that makes me scoff at Katara as Aang's maternal figure is the fact that theirs is a relationship of equality. The key thing that makes someone a parental figure is that they are in authority and the way that Katara relates to Aang is never from a position of authority. In fact, she defers to him more often than not; and to take it a step further, throughout the series it's made obvious that she admires him (in the sense of looking up to him).
It's there from the very first episode when she brings him back to the camp and gushes to her grandmother about how special he is and how she just knows that he has great wisdom* and her general fangirling of him continues throughout. Off of the top of my head: she wants him to be the leader in Jet, she goes on about how he's so brave in The Storm, in various instances throughout various episodes even when she's unsure about something she defers to him anyway because he's the freaking Avatar. When it comes time for her offer Aang advice or counsel she approaches him as a respectful peer and that's how he entertains her. They've had petty arguments, they get irritated with each other, they make up, and none of this is in the manner of a mother relating to a child.
I understand how on paper (or even visually since she's always clutching him to her bosom; not that that's never been used as a romantic image since it has) Katara/Aang as Mother/Child seems to make sense, but when you actually look at their interactions and way that they relate to each other it's not there. The vibe is just entirely different which is why, for me, it's so easy to delineate between Katara having motherly qualities in general and just being particularly affectionate towards Aang and Katara acting as Aang's mother figure/de facto mother.
* I love the way that this little situation alludes to the idea of a girl bringing home some new guy with whom she's just completely taken and her parents trying to reel her in like, "Okay, honey, you barely know him. Don't invest so much in him so soon." And that allusion becomes even stronger when Katara wants to leave the village with Aang.
This page was last updated: June 4th, 2007
This page is linked from: The Aang/Katara Portal
Behind the cuts: Aang/Katara in The Boy in the Iceberg and The Avatar Returns.
Aang/Katara in the First Two Episodes
debacul writes in this essay: They meet by chance. Katara and Sokka are out fishing in a canoe and get stuck in a current; Katara, angry, accidentally cracks open a massive iceberg, which allows the underwater portion that contains Aang, stuck in a state of suspended animation, to bob to the surface. After Katara breaks open the iceberg, Aang falls into her arms and wakes up.
Within moments of meeting her, Aang appears to already be developing a crush on Katara. He stares at her with a smile while giving them a ride on Appa; when she asks him why he was smiling at her, he reacts as if he hadn't been doing it on purpose. On Katara's end, she is fascinated with him and his foreign ways and airbending powers, openly gawking at him more than once within the first two episodes (my friends and I joke that she thinks his tattoos are hot). Later, she even is willing to leave her entire world behind to go with Aang when the village rejects him.
At this stage of the game, I do believe that Aang's feelings are nothing more complex than a schoolboy crush, sure. She rescued him from the iceberg, trusts him, is pretty, thinks he's funny, etc; a crush is natural in that situation. That doesn't mean it can't develop into something deeper (which it clearly does). If nothing else, Katara and Aang click immediately.
And they never look back.
Katara and Aang spend a lot of time together during his day in the village; they go penguin sledding and Aang offers to take her to the North Pole to learn waterbending from a master. After realizing that Aang has probably been stuck in the iceberg for a hundred years, Katara comforts him, already taking the role of his rock/protector, and Aang decides that the bright side to this is that he "did get to meet [Katara]".
I am not denying these are just the initial stages of their relationship; Aang is crushing on a pretty girl, Katara is acting on her natural inclination to mother everything around her. However, they do mutually care for each other, despite only knowing each other for a couple days, and their relationship is already beneficial to both of them--Aang teaches Katara how to have fun, and that it's okay to act your age; Katara is there for Aang when he wakes up in a completely different world than he fell asleep in. They're laying the foundations for what will become a huge and epic relationship that is integral to the show itself.
Someone posits: Though what I interpreted from Hwangsta was that he was incased in an iceberg for 100 years without any knowledge as to what was happening in the outside world. The first person he laid eyes on was Katara-like a chick hatching and being attached to the 1st person it encounters or it could be love at first sight, which is usually blind love.
rawles replies, writing after "The Swamp:" That might be a workable theory but Aang had no concept of the passage of time while he was in the iceberg. So coming out of it, in his mind, it wasn't as though Katara was the first person he had seen in 100 years. She was just the first person he'd seen since he fell asleep, which, as far as he knew could have been the day before.
Though, I'd probably agree with the "love at first sight" reading, since I think that the way it was shot supports that that was what was being communicated. That doesn't however necessarily mean that the relationship, if it should ever be met, won't last. In fact, the fact that it was the very first thing established about Aang probably better supports the idea that they will end up as THE pairing of the series.
Rawles, writing after "City of Walls and Secrets:" The major thing (besides the romantic moments that they've had, which cannot be viewed in a vacuum) that makes me scoff at Katara as Aang's maternal figure is the fact that theirs is a relationship of equality. The key thing that makes someone a parental figure is that they are in authority and the way that Katara relates to Aang is never from a position of authority. In fact, she defers to him more often than not; and to take it a step further, throughout the series it's made obvious that she admires him (in the sense of looking up to him).
It's there from the very first episode when she brings him back to the camp and gushes to her grandmother about how special he is and how she just knows that he has great wisdom* and her general fangirling of him continues throughout. Off of the top of my head: she wants him to be the leader in Jet, she goes on about how he's so brave in The Storm, in various instances throughout various episodes even when she's unsure about something she defers to him anyway because he's the freaking Avatar. When it comes time for her offer Aang advice or counsel she approaches him as a respectful peer and that's how he entertains her. They've had petty arguments, they get irritated with each other, they make up, and none of this is in the manner of a mother relating to a child.
I understand how on paper (or even visually since she's always clutching him to her bosom; not that that's never been used as a romantic image since it has) Katara/Aang as Mother/Child seems to make sense, but when you actually look at their interactions and way that they relate to each other it's not there. The vibe is just entirely different which is why, for me, it's so easy to delineate between Katara having motherly qualities in general and just being particularly affectionate towards Aang and Katara acting as Aang's mother figure/de facto mother.
* I love the way that this little situation alludes to the idea of a girl bringing home some new guy with whom she's just completely taken and her parents trying to reel her in like, "Okay, honey, you barely know him. Don't invest so much in him so soon." And that allusion becomes even stronger when Katara wants to leave the village with Aang.