On The Topic Of Sokka And Failure And Suicide: I Think That It Is Probably Rooted In The Possibility

On the topic of Sokka and failure and suicide: I think that it is probably rooted in the possibility that his failures, as a hunter and as a protector, COULD (and maybe did???) lead to deaths in his village. If he failed to bring home food or furs then people died, if HE failed to properly train the toddlers or watch over them properly during training then they could also get hurt or die, or themselves fail to bring home food or keep their people safe (which is to him obviously his fault as their trainer) and HE was the one who was meant to lead and protect and keep everyone safe.... It's so easy to see how that could spiral out into his severe deterioration after real failures during ATLA. Like, he is unique among the early Gaang that he is intimately familiar with the link between his actions and death, whether it's of people he cares about, animals, or eventually enemies. He's so painfully aware of it.

And speculatively, those toddlers would've all been born within a year of the men leaving! Which also means Sokka The Protector and Provider would've had no men (BC he wouldn't believe anyone else, they'd just be trying to make him feel better about being a failure) to reassure him that any pregnancies or newborns who didn't make it WEREN'T his fault and that he DID provide enough to keep mother and babe healthy. Or worse, he actually didn't do a good enough job and it did lead to close calls or difficult pregnancies or deaths. Either scenario would've fucked him up So Deeply.

yeah i talked about sokka’s perfectionist complex recently and also the fact that sokka is very much implied to be a good hunter, so like. yes. the stakes for any kind of failure are very high due to the nature of his responsibilities and what he believes he must excel in. he considers himself a provider and protector above all else. if he fails to provide for others, people starve. if he fails to protect others, people die. to fail to fulfill that role in any way is to be culpable for causing harm. and sokka never once considers whether putting that burden on a 13 year old was kind of unfair, actually, because he’s always been capable of excelling and thus it’s squarely his fault if he falls short in any way. but presumably, he doesn’t fail??

like, we really have no way of knowing, because so much of their childhoods and life before finding aang is framed exclusively from katara’s pov (she’s the narrator), but even what we do see is sokka holding the lantern for katara, sokka and kanna functioning as a unit when making decisions for the village, kanna trusting sokka more and telling katara to listen to her brother, sokka preparing to die a martyr. even the kind of “goofier” stuff, like katara soaking sokka with her “magic water,” or sokka trying to train a bunch of toddlers, or sokka’s watchtower getting destroyed, are all indicative of who sokka is and how he sees the world, in really fascinating ways.

obviously sokka’s reaction to katara waterbending is a complex one that we cannot fully understand when the show begins because we don’t actually know why and how waterbenders were targeted, so it reads as simple disrespect for something sokka doesn’t understand. and maybe it’s also jealousy, because i think literally anyone would be jealous if their little sibling had magic powers and you didn’t. but there’s definitely also fear there, fear that whoever informed the fire nation of there being one last waterbender left is still out there, that katara is still a target. it’s a fear informed by trauma, by sokka’s need to protect katara, to “keep his promise to dad.” it’s never outright spoken (unless you’re live action shein go girl give us nothing katara, of course), but it’s pretty obvious in retrospect.

there’s also the fact that katara is there with him in the first place. there’s never any indication one way or another whether katara and sokka going fishing together is a common occurrence, but i tend towards thinking it’s uncommon simply because sokka seems particularly pissed off by her presence, like she’s disrupting his peace. and i bet kanna is just sitting at home like “maybe i shouldn’t have let katara go fishing…” and then of course she comes home with a ghost and his flying bison, and kanna’s just like “goddammit. i knew this would happen. …..sort of.”

and sokka trying to train a bunch of toddlers seems funny at first, but is actually incredibly tragic, because sokka never actually questions the idea that the notion of childhood innocence does not exist, that from the moment you are born you must be prepared to die. it looks silly because he’s wrong, but it’s also heartbreaking because it’s all he knows. that scene is very explicitly establishing him as a foil to aang, setting up that deeper tension that underpins their relationship. katara immediately aligns herself with aang, recognizes the value of fun and the value of retaining one’s childhood, while sokka is positioned in opposition to this values from the get go. and sokka does eventually come around and embraces the value of fun, but he also embodies the burden (both material and psychological) that aang carries, and he functions as a sort of warning to aang to maintain his values, untouched by war, before it is too late. before aang lets his own burden overtake him and becomes what sokka already is.

and his watchtower is something i think about a lot too. it’s literally his only enrichment in his enclosure… sokka only lets himself practice what he thinks is useful, despite his love for all different forms of art and knowledge. so he can perfectly apply warpaint without so much as a mirror, and he can build a fucking functioning watchtower out of snow, but only because it serves a practical function. like, katara calls it “playing soldier,” because there is something sort of aesthetically childish about sokka building a watchtower out of snow like a glorified snowman and thinking that this makes him some kind of hardened general (we all start somewhere i suppose), but also, he is doing the best he has with the tools at his disposal, and he is in a war, and he is right to constantly be preparing for existential threats to his people, even if it does admittedly make him look kinda pathetic simply because his resources are so limited and he lacks the necessary experience to actually be successful in his mission. but also, that fact in itself is deeply tragic. this is what their once flourishing tribe has been reduced to; this child who thinks himself an adult is the first and last line of defense in their tiny, decimated village.

he thinks his purpose on this planet is so protect his people and his sister from a genocidal empire with basically no support and no resources at his disposal, and then he feels actively guilty when that situation is understandably difficult for him. so he probably always has been a proficient hunter (even as a 13 year old?? maybe he had help, but idk) because his reaction to that kind of failure (to protect & to provide) is so catastrophic during the show whenever it happens (most notably in the boiling rock arc) that there’s no way he has any sort of prior experience with that kind of consequentially devastating failure.

and not for nothing, but i do think the reason katara assumes that he’s fucking around and not doing real work is because unlike katara, he never actually complains about it, doesn’t struggle to do it, and in fact takes pride in it, is even a little smug about it. to the point that katara is like “why do i have to be stuck here doing tedious domestic labor while sokka gets to have fun hunting and fishing???” even though obviously sokka has never had fun a day in his life and deep down katara also clearly knows that.

but like, he really enjoys hunting because it’s the most literal realization of his role as provider. he loves being “the meat guy” because it’s a symbol of how he is able to embody this ideal of manliness through a practice he is actually good at (unlike a lot of other standards of masculinity he otherwise struggles to embody). he likes being the provider, caring for others in concrete, tangible ways, protecting the people he cares about. “oh sokka you really do have a heart,” katara exclaims, meanwhile his heart is and has always been the thing that defines his entire identity at the deepest, most fundamental level: his desire to put other people before himself every time, his need to be needed, the love he has for humanity that is so different from katara’s but in no way less significant. sokka will care for people, or die trying.