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SIR....THIS IS A WENDYS

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miss alecto i am free tonight

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if my kids were like “i cant draw. i’m just gonna make ai art” i would be like shut the fuck up and pick up the pencil u are gna draw some one eyed anime bitches with their hands behind their backs

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Hey Twinkles!!!

How does Sokka make Toph's Mother's Day special?

Hey Ronin!!

I'm a few days late here, but it surely counts haha. And gosh I love thinking about this.

But okay, I imagine him doing the most because we all know Sokka lol. He wakes up nice and early to get breakfast going. And if the girls are asleep, he'll wake them so they can lend a hand and keep out of Mama's hair and let her rest up for a bit while everything's cooking. It's just really important to him that the girls are involved—they're the ones who made Toph a mama in the first place.

Prior to the day-of, Sokka's been preparing a meaningful gift for the longest time lol. Something simple, but something that he knows will strike a cord within Toph. I can see him carving gifts for her out of stone as best as he can, perhaps with the girls' dates of birth, or maybe carving something, such as the girls' initials out of their birthstones, etc. He's also capable of enlisting Aang's help with some kind of sculpture that would be meaningful to Toph in relation to Lin and Su. And that's his little gift to her <3

Apart from the breakfast with the girls and the gifts, he lends Lin and Su a hand in creating a little homemade gift from them. The first thing that comes to mind is like, a textured drawing of some sort, maybe a memory book that's filled with fabrics from the girls' first onesies, the pieces of earth they first bent, etc.

Toph feels quite emotional when he gives these gifts to her. It means so much to her to know that he knows just how much she loves her girls. And knowing that she's so affected by it, despite her trying to not let it show (he knows she loves it anyway), makes him so beyond happy. I'm so—

Sokka makes sure they spend the day as a family. They go for a walk outside, have a little picnic in a private section of the park that very few people know about. They watch the girls play, Toph is happy, and that's all he can ask for.

(There are lots of shows of affection in the privacy of their own home later on after the girls have succumbed to their exhaustion at the end of a long, fun Mother's Day, of course.)

But yeh! That is pretty much all I've got for this one! I loved this question and I'm so painfully emotional right now. I just love them so so much I—

Anyway, thanks for this one, Ronin!! Always love seeing you in my inbox <3

--

Send me questions about Tokka! Or anything involving ATLA! (or anything else, really!)

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i call this the headcanon chart. see my vision

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Ofc why would I mind? I'm no authority, the more the better. Link me up when it's done!

why is there no jetara playlist. outrage, atrocity, transgression (put more angry dramatic words here before posting). Rest assured that after my exams I'll make one

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the comfort in a freak4freak friendship is knowing that you won't be judged for being a freak

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Feel free to add any recs.

why is there no jetara playlist. outrage, atrocity, transgression (put more angry dramatic words here before posting). Rest assured that after my exams I'll make one

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貼貼

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Inupiaq Books

This post was inspired by learning about and daydreaming about visiting Birchbark Books, a Native-owned bookstore in Minneapolis, so there will be some links to buy the books they have on this list.

Starting Things Off with Two Inupiaq Poets

Joan Naviyuk Kane, whose available collections include:

Hyperboreal

Black Milk Carbon

The Cormorant Hunter's Wife

She also wrote Dark Traffic, but this site doesn't seem to carry any copies

Dg Nanouk Okpik, whose available collections include

Blood Snow

Corpse Whale

Fictionalized Accounts of Historical Events

A Line of Driftwood: the Ada Blackjack Story by Diane Glancy, also available at Birchwood Books, is a fictionalized account of Ada Blackjack's experience surviving the explorers she was working with on Wrangel Island, based on historical records and Blackjack's own diary.

Goodbye, My Island by Rie Muñoz is a historical fiction aimed at younger readers with little knowledge of the Inupiat about a little girl living on King Island. Reads a lot like an American Girl book in case anyone wants to relive that nostalgia

Blessing's Bead by Debby Dahl Edwardson is a Young Adult historical fiction novel about hardships faced by two generations of girls in the same family, 70 years apart. One reviewer pointed out that the second part of the book, set in the 1980s, is written in Village English, so that might be a new experience for some of you

Photography

Menadelook: and Inupiaq Teacher's Photographs of Alaska Village Life, 1907-1932 edited by Eileen Norbert is, exactly as the title suggests, a collection of documentary photographs depicting village life in early 20th century Alaska.

Nuvuk, the Northernmost: Altered Land, Altered Lives in Barrow, Alaska by David James Inulak Lume is another collection of documentary photographs published in 2013, with a focus on the wildlife and negative effects of climate change

Guidebooks (i only found one specifically Inupiaq)

Plants That We Eat/Nauriat Niģiñaqtuat: from the Traditional Wisdom of Iñupiat Elders of Northwest Alaska by Anore Jones is a guide to Alaskan vegetation that in Inupiat have subsisted on for generations upon generations with info on how to identify them and how they were traditionally used.

Anthropology

Kuuvangmiut Subsistence: Traditional Eskimo Life in the Latter Twentieth Century by Douglas B. Anderson et al details traditional lifestyles and subsistance customs of the Kobuk River Inupiat

Life at the Swift Water Place: Northwest Alaska at the Threshold of European Contact by Douglas D. Anderson and Wanni W. Anderson: a multidisciplinary study of a specific Kobuk River group, the Amilgaqtau Yaagmiut, at the very beginning of European and Asian trade.

Upside Down: Seasons Among the Nunamiut by Margaret B. Blackman is a collection of essays reflecting on almost 20 years of anthropological fieldwork focused on the Nunamiut of Anuktuvuk Pass: the traditional culture and the adaption to new technology.

Nonfiction

Firecracker Boys: H-Bombs, Inupiat Eskimos, and the Roots of the Environmental Movement by Dan O'Neill is about Project Chariot. In an attempt to find peaceful uses of wartime technology, Edward Teller planned to drop six nukes on the Inupiaq village of Point Hope, officially to build a harbor but it can't be ignored that the US government wanted to know the effects radiation had on humans and animals. The scope is wider than the Inupiat people involved and their resistance to the project, but as it is no small part of this lesser discussed moment of history, it only feels right to include this

Fifty Miles From Tomorrow: a Memoir of Alaska and the Real People by William L. Iģģiaģruk Hensley is an autobiography following the author's tradition upbringing, pursuit of an education, and his part in the Alaska Native Settlement Claims Act, where he and other Alaska Native activists had to teach themselves United States Law to best lobby the government for land and financial compensation as reparations for colonization.

Sadie Bower Neakok: An Iñupiaq Woman by Margaret B. Blackman is a biography of the titular Sadie Bower Neakok, a beloved public figure of Utqiagvik, former Barrow. Neakok grew up one of ten children of an Inupiaq woman named Asianggataq, and the first white settler to live in Utqiagvik/Barrow, Charles Bower. She used the out-of-state college education she received to aid her community as a teacher, a wellfare worker, and advocate who won the right for Native languages to be used in court when defendants couldn't speak English, and more.

Folktales and Oral Histories

Folktales of the Riverine and Costal Iñupiat/Unipchallu Uqaqtuallu Kuungmiuñļu Taģiuģmiuñļu edited by Wanni W. Anderson and Ruth Tatqaviñ Sampson, transcribed by Angeline Ipiiļik Newlin and translated by Michael Qakiq Atorak is a collection of eleven Inupiaq folktales in English and the original Inupiaq.

The Dall Sheep Dinner Guest: Iñupiaq Narratives of Northwest Alaska by Wanni W. Anderson is a collection of Kobuk River Inupiaq folktales and oral histories collected from Inupiat storytellers and accompanied by Anderson's own essays explaining cultural context. Unlike the other two collections of traditional stories mentioned on this list, this one is only written in English.

Ugiuvangmiut Quliapyuit/King Island Tales: Eskimo Historu and Legends from Bering Strait compiled and edited by Lawrence D. Kaplan, collected by Gertrude Analoak, Margaret Seeganna, and Mary Alexander, and translated and transcribed by Gertrude Analoak and Margaret Seeganna is another collection of folktales and oral history. Focusing on the Ugiuvangmiut, this one also contains introductions to provide cultural context and stories written in both english and the original Inupiaq.

The Winter Walk by Loretta Outwater Cox is an oral history about a pregnant widow journeying home with her two children having to survive the harsh winter the entire way. This is often recommended with a similar book detailing Athabascan survival called Two Old Women.

Dictionaries and Language Books

Iñupiat Eskimo Dictionary by Donald H. Webster and Wilfred Zibell, with illustrations by Thelma A. Webster, is an older Inupiaq to English dictionary. It predates the standardization of Inupiaq spelling, uses some outdated and even offensive language that was considered correct at the time of its publication, and the free pdf provided by UAF seems to be missing some pages. In spite of this it is still a useful resource. The words are organized by subject matter rather than alphabetically, each entry indicating if it's specific to any one dialect, and the illustrations are quite charming.

Let's Learn Eskimo by Donald H. Webster with illustrations by Thelma A. Webster makes a great companion to the Iñupiat Eskimo Dictionary, going over grammar and sentence structure rather than translations. The tables of pronouns are especially helpful in my opinion.

Ilisaqativut.org also has some helpful tools and materials and recommendations for learning the Inupiat language with links to buy physical books, download free pdfs, and look through searchable online versions

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Do you guys ever wonder if Jin and Jet crossed paths like specifically when she went into the tea shop and he was skulking around the corner, looking all piss-and-vinegar, peering inside with hate and betrayal all over his face?

And she asks if she could buy him anything and he says he doesn't want anything from some shop with such a nasty infestation. She doesn't ask and knows it's one of the cleanest shops in the Lower Ring but doesn't argue.

She takes his hand and slips some coins in it. Before he can tell her he doesn't need her alms she says to put some food in his belly before he starves, and that if he stands up straight and doesn't look so mean he'll have girls lining up to buy him dinner. Maybe she pats his cheek or ruffles his hair before going inside.

And he's just kind of stunned because he was always the one looking out for everyone else. He never let anyone help or make things easier on him because it was his burden. Smellerbee cried once because he wouldn't let her help. And this stranger saw fit to be sweet to him? For no reason? She wanted to feed him because that was the nice thing to do and not because she was hoping to get anything out of it?

Do you ever wonder if that happened? Because I do.

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Tokka #1 for the five word prompt?

Hi there! Thanks so much for sending this one. You probably expected angst or h/c, but I made it quite fluffy, flirty, and humorous <3 lol

I hope you enjoy! I have no idea what this is quite frankly but here she is :)

............

Five-word prompts -> Tokka - "I feel so lost without you."

The grandfather clock leaning against the wall in her room chimed, indicating that it was four hours to midnight. Immediately after, the radio a few feet away from her bed crackled to life, and a smile came to her face without her even realizing it was doing so.

“You there?” she heard Sokka’s voice come through the speakers. “Or am I just talking to myself again?”

She shook her head, sliding off her bed and dragging her feet up to the receiver. “I’m here. And you talking to yourself doesn’t really sound like it’s a rarity, so what are you complaining about?”

“Oh thank the spirits, it’s you. I don’t think you understand how lonely it becomes when you get silence on every line you try to make contact with.” He sighed. “Well, I spoke to this one gentleman while I was trying to tune into our frequency… he wasn’t very gentle.”

Snorting, she slides her back down the wall behind her, sits on the ground, and tucks her legs beneath her, finding a comfortable position. “How hard it is to tune into a radio frequency if a blind woman can do it?”

“You’re not just any blind woman, though, so that doesn’t really count, does it?”

“Guess not.” Toph bit down on her lip to keep herself from beaming, busying herself by messing around with the meteorite at her wrist, molding it into different shapes absentmindedly. “What are you up to?”

“I feel,” Sokka said dramatically, “so lost without you.”

“Oh, can it, Meathead.”

“What? It’s true! I’ve done nothing but—but mope while you’ve been gone and I feel like I’m incapable of, I don’t know, doing life.”

Toph rolled her eyes at this. She’d only been out of town for about a week so far because of this thing her parents needed her to attend. Their recently mended relationship was something Toph wanted to hold onto, and if what they were asking wasn’t completely unreasonable, she would do her best to show up for them. Luckily, it was some kind of summit where her father’s work in the engineering realm was being honored. She knew how much the work meant to him, and she knew that it was an endeavor that he cared about even more since she’d gotten involved. Plus, her mother, after leaving him, returned when she found out that Toph and Lao had begun to work on their relationship.

Her parents actually seemed happy now, and they’ve laid off her quite a lot, too. They were finally becoming attuned to who she was and that meant more to her than she was willing to admit. So who was she to say no to their request for her to come to this thing?

It was odd being back home after so many years. The familiar feeling of the Beifong house’s layout didn’t bring back the most pleasant childhood memories, but she didn’t hate it. She was no longer the person she was when she ran away, nor were her parents the same people, either. But it was still a strange feeling to be here and know that she had the freedom to do as she pleased when all this house represented to her once upon a time was confinement.

Her room hadn’t changed much. She noticed the bed had been moved closer to the window and that her closet had been filled with more adult garments that she would surely not wear out of her own volition. The textures intrigued her, though, so perhaps she wouldn’t mind wearing one of the hanfus hanging in there to the event tomorrow night.

The slew of new shoes that were in her wardrobe were not up for debate, however. They had no place on her feet.

Scoffing into the receiver, she told Sokka, “I’m sure you’re fine.”

“I might be fine,” he responded immediately. “But I miss you, okay? There. I said it.”

“Did that take a lot for you to admit, you sap?”

“I didn’t because I, for one, am in touch with my emotions.”

Toph laughed, throwing her head back and bending her meteorite back into a bracelet before sliding it back onto her bicep. Sometimes, she hated taking it off, even if she knew that she’d put it right back on. It was such a part of her at this point in her life that the idea of her not wearing it made her uncomfortable. “You might be too in touch with them,” she replied. “I’ve been gone for a few days; you’ll live.”

Sokka’s chuckle resonated through the receiver, a sound that always managed to bring a smile to Toph's face. She wanted to kick herself for how grin-y she’d been this evening—all because of him. “You’re right,” he said. “I’ll live. Somehow, I guess… But seriously, how’s it going over there? Are your parents driving you nuts yet?”

She shrugged, though she knew he couldn’t see it. “Surprisingly, no. They’ve actually been... nice. It’s weird, but not bad.”

“Nice? Wow, that is weird,” Sokka teased, but there was a note of genuine happiness in his voice. “I’m glad to hear that, though. You deserve it.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” she responded, though she couldn’t help but feel a warmth spread through her chest at his words. “How’s Katara?”

“Busy. You know her, always finding something to keep herself occupied. I think she’s planning some big feast when you get back, so prepare yourself for a mountain of food.”

Toph laughed. “Of course she is. You people are acting like I’ll be over here for an entire year. I’ll be gone for just two more days!”

“Just two more days, she says, as though it’s not agonizing to not have one’s best friend by one’s side,” he moaned.

“Please.” Toph breathed out another laugh. She understood the sentiment; she’d had half a mind to ask him to come with her for this thing, knowing she’d need someone she knew and loved and was just as prankish as she was at her side to keep her sane. She decided against it despite knowing that he would’ve packed a bag in no time, even if he did harbor some fear for Lao Beifong. “Two more days,” she said. “I needed the break from your ass at the very least.”

“You wound me with your lies,” he replied. There was a brief pause, and then he added, more softly, “I really do miss you, Toph.”

It’d literally been five days since they said their goodbyes: what was there to miss? Even so, she understood, and she did miss him too because if she were home, in the developing United Republic of Nations, she would be opening her apartment door to him right about now. They’d be hanging out, drinking, talking, listening to the radio, stuffing their faces, skirting around their feelings—the usual.

Her cheeks heated up at the thought and his comment, grateful that Sokka couldn’t see her blushing. She cleared her throat. “Ditto. But, uh, I’ll be back before you know it. Try not to get into too much trouble without me, okay?”

“No promises,” Sokka replied with a grin in his voice. “I can always show up there by tomorrow night, you know. I clean up nice; your parents and those nobles won’t know what hit them.”

She snickered. “Don’t tempt me, Snoozles.”

“What if that’s exactly what I’m trying to do: tempt you?” His tone was serious, any jovialness or anything of the sort gone. “If you want me there, I’ll be there. Simple as that.”

Tempted, she was, and that was a fact. But as much as she would’ve liked for him to turn up, for them to be attached at the hip, it was a weekend for her to support her parents, and frankly, she wasn’t ready to deal with whatever this was with Sokka just yet… as intriguing as it was.

Her voice was soft when she said, “Maybe next time.”

“Can’t blame a guy for trying,” Sokka said with a little laugh. “Offer stands if you reconsider. And also if you ever need anything. I’ll be on the line, waiting for you to remember I exist.”

Toph barked a laugh. “Needy, needy.”

“I can’t help it when it’s you involved, Beifong.” He sighed theatrically. Meanwhile, the heat in her cheeks intensified because he always said things like these. Usually, she would respond with a punch or something of the sort, but now, she just pathetically scoffed.

“Goodnight, Sokka,” she said finally.

His chuckle rumbled through the phone. “Night, T.”

Toph hung up the receiver, a small smile lingering on her lips. She leaned her head back against the wall. Oma and Shu, she hated him.

Or at least she wished she did. It would be a million times easier than whatever it was she was feeling now.

--

Send me prompts and a ship from this list!

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Lil Nas X should not be allowed to be this funny

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btw. your search for the most morally upright and ethical piece of media that has the most correct “representation” will destroy your ability to find the most profound and beautiful and human of stories. and may even destroy the stories themselves before they are created. if you even care.