oh I’m gonna cry…all of this.

Like I feel like the show is more blatant in the “Katara had to grow up too young after the murder of her mother” but…Sokka’s loss of innocence is also present in the show in shit like this, and his discussions with Piandao where we see this contradiction between the kid and the warrior and that need to protect his family and his diminished self-worth

Like how many times do you think he mimicked dad’s warpaint, knowing one day it would be him donning that? 

How many nights has he spent going over the worst possible scenarios and planning for how he’d keep the people he loved safe?

Like. He’s able to apply warpaint but not draw because he too lost his chance at living a normal childhood and just. dude all the kids in this show have so much trauma it’s unreal

And as we see in the flashback to when his father left…

It’s unlikely that his father helped him apply that. Sokka’s been perfecting his warpaint since he was thirteen (at most). 

And he’s been doing it on his own. One of the most poignant things about the scene above in which he’s preparing for battle is how alone he is. (This is reinforced by the scene’s juxtaposition with Zuko not having to lift a finger while his men deck him out in armor–highlighting the differences in these boys’ backgrounds and resources.) Sokka has no mentor or support system as he takes on this role that someone his age should never have to shoulder, and he’s having to figure it out all by himself. As (understandably) awkward as his early attempts to be a warrior are, it never occurs to him to do any less than take this responsibility seriously. His father and the other men aren’t there, so he basically has to stand in for all of them. Alone. At age thirteen.

Ok, THIS tho.

Like all of it, and yes, this makes it clear sokka has practiced his warpaint before, since before even his father left.

That’s the part that makes me a little sad about how much fans make fun of Sokka’s drawing abilities.

In his village, I find it very unlikely Sokka would have regular access to paper or anything to draw on for fun, I suspect after he leaves the south pole that the drawings we see are him drawing seriously for the first time at 15.

Like we know both Katara and Sokka read and write so they had practice with writing but I doubt there were as many chances to draw, and it also isn’t something Sokka would have considered worth his time, because he was concerned with doing everything he could to protect his village as the only warrior left. He didn’t care about fun activities growing up, obviously he’s still a kid but we can see with how seriously he takes himself when he’s in the south pole that’s not something he would have valued enough to spend his time on even if he had the chance, and I doubt he did.

I think Sokka is actually an incredible artist, in exactly the same way he’s an incredible swordsman, not that he’s instantly good at it. But that he has the creativity and the passion and the dedication that makes him amazing.

Sokka puts so much of himself into his art, sometimes very literally, with stamping his own face on the page. But he puts his heart into it, he adds rainbows where they weren’t before and lets Suki firebend and he doesn’t give up just because people, or even himself, will think he’s no good at it.

I think as Sokka gets more and more chances to practice his art through his life he’ll certainly refine his technical skill, as everyone does. But Sokka’s true artistic merit is in the way he sees the world and makes it his own.