Five headcanons meme: everything is the same except aang sokka and katara are genderswapped

attackfish:

I’m letting Sokka and Katara keep their same names because it appears in the Southern Water Tribe at least, a endings are gender neutral.

1. Sokka is the eldest daughter of a village chief, but she is nothing special. She is one of five other teenage girls, but after her brother, the next oldest boy in the village is six. So she always has it in her mind that someday she will leave the village to find a man. It’s just the way it is. So there’s always that part of her that knows the village won’t be her home forever, but she always thought the South Pole would be. Village life is incredibly stifling for Sokka. After her mother’s death and her father’s going off to war, she has had to shoulder the moose-lion’s share of chores, and while her brother was too young to do it, the hunting as well. It’s exhausting, and neverending, and all anybody tells her is how lucky she is her brother wasn’t old enough to leave yet.

2. Katara meanwhile is the chief’s only son, and the only waterbender in the entire South Pole. He’s a catch. He also witnessed his mother’s murder, all to protect him, and responded to this and the sudden absence of his father by trying to parent his older sister. Sokka jokes that her little brother will make a good wife someday.

3. This is the world into which Aang drops. And it’s into this world that Sokka has to sneak away, because Katara is a boy, and fourteen is old enough really to leave in the eyes of the village, but why is Sokka going with him? But Katara’s glad to have him around.

4. The Kyoshi warriors are a revelation for Sokka. She has always felt miserable that she couldn’t help defend her home, that she couldn’t protect her vulnerable little brother, and here are these nonbending women warriors, who can teach her to fight, and who keep their own homes safe with or without the men. They fascinate her and thrill her, especially their leader, and if she didn’t need to keep her brother safe on the way to the North Pole, she would never leave.

5. In the North, Katara is readily trained by Pakku. It’s Sokka who is forced to come to a reckoning. It’s much easier to recognize what she had felt for Suki now that she’s feeling it for Yue too.