nsei123fkr

[nsei123fkr]

i keep seeing well-meaning posts about tagging on ao3 claiming that 'no archive warnings apply' means a fic is fluffy and wholesome and maybe smutty but can be trusted contain nothing upsetting. and from the bottom of my heart, please, this is so wrong. like, even aside from the fact that 'upsetting' is a very personal definition, it literally just means that none of the big four archive warnings apply, and i promise you it's very possible to write a DEEPLY upsetting fic that contains none of those things.

[nsei123fkr]

supervillain whose go-to evil plan of Kidnapping The Hero's Romantic Interest is foiled after the hero goes through a bad breakup and shows no interest in dating. hence the villain finds themself in the unusual position of playing secret scheming matchmaker to their own archnemesis...

[nsei123fkr]

i hate viruses so fucking much. literally getting attacked by a fucking shape. a concept. consumes no energy. responds to no stimuli. its only existence is to fuck with you. like fuck offf

[nsei123fkr]

as we march towards a shining era of more people calling their friends "babe" and "sweetheart" platonically, let us also strive towards a brighter tomorrow wherein more couples call each other "bruh" and "my dude" as a term of romantic endearment

[nsei123fkr]

A haunted doll mistaking a creepy android to be a bigger, stronger, haunted doll, and the creepy android mistaking the haunted doll as a smaller, sassier android.

Android: [gets hit with rain water and short circuits] Haunted Doll: H̷O̷L̴Y̷ ̶W̵A̷T̸E̷R̶ ̵W̴A̵T̴C̵H̴ ̶O̶U̷T̴

Haunted Doll, dying: N̶E̵E̸D̷ ̷S̸O̵U̵L̸S̷ Android: [opens the haunted doll’s back and replaces the batteries] Haunted Doll: A̶C̶C̷E̷P̸T̶A̷B̸L̵E̴ ̷S̴U̴B̸S̵T̸I̷T̷U̴T̵E̴

Android: [transfers their data into a better body] Haunted Doll: A̸ ̵F̴L̸A̷W̵L̷E̴S̵S̷ ̷B̶O̸D̶Y̵ ̷P̶O̵S̶S̵E̷S̶S̵I̷O̷N̴

[nsei123fkr]

ok note to self i gotta leave the house regularly so that i dont feel like im slowly transforming into an evil fucking shadow clone of myself

[nsei123fkr]

Finally,,,,,yurimeshi

[nsei123fkr]

Ty Lee deserves to find friends that actually appreciate her.

Azula is the only person in th3 show that actually like, spends quality time with Ty Lee alone and apologises to her. Mai was too busy with Zuko and Zuko doesn't seem to like ty lee at all really

[nsei123fkr]

Zuko: Ranking my friends by how much they´ve slept with my sister Zuko: Katara, 10 of 10. Has never slept with my sister Zuko: Mai, 9 of 10. She´s come close, but has never slept with my sister Zuko: TY LEE, YOU SON OF A B-

[nsei123fkr]

Sort of falling in love with the AU of a fire nation/ozai victory that's immediately undercut by Azula actually getting to look at the books and immediately realising that her father is an awful leader and doesn't know what an ecomony is and she has to go find the avatar because if Ozai stays in power the Fire Nation economy will completely crash and she'll catch the blame because the idea of an 'inherited economy' is like 300 years away

[nsei123fkr]

AU where Azula, realising she has no one left in the Fire Nation, decides to join Aang's new Air Nation he's trying to rebuild (she did not ask his opinion on this) and, being a history junkie and being one of the only like 3 people in the world who knows the real Air Nomad history, starts restoring the Air Temples to how they were before the war with shocking accuracy

[nsei123fkr]

AU idea

It would be kind of interesting if Zuko accidentally got Mai pregnant (hey turns out no one was teaching teenagers about safe sex!) before he took off during the DoBS. Three main possibilities arise:

Mai (and Azula and Ty Lee) find out before Boiling Rock.

Mai finds out after Boiling Rock, and then Azula, who is keeping an eye on her former friends, finds out too and has a "situation" to deal with.

Mai and Zuko find out after Zuko's coronation.

[nsei123fkr]

Who would be a threat to Azula, post-canon?

I'm writing this because the ATLA fandom has created a set of tropes about who would want Azula controlled, imprisoned, or even killed after canon, a set of tropes which I find questionable.

Let's work our way down the list of possible suspects:

(1) The Gaang in general: A lot of people think they would absolutely hate or at the least strongly dislike Azula, and other people think that they would be strongly sympathetic to her. I think both takes are wrong. They simply don't know much about her and don't have strong reasons to hate her or care about her. She's just another enemy to them; sure, she was a particularly dangerous enemy, but there isn't anything personal in it. Plenty of people have tried to defeat the Gaang; Azula is far from alone there. Why should they focus on her at all? Azula's existence has dynastic implications, but the Gaang are mostly from non-dynastic societies, so they're unlikely to pay close attention to those. The Gaang as a whole is unlikely to pressure Zuko to treat Azula harshly or to treat her with compassion. It's simply none of their business.

The one potential exception is Katara, since she both saw Azula break down and saw Azula shoot Aang.

(2) Mai and Ty Lee: it's hard for me to imagine these two bearing much fear of Azula or regarding Azula as a personal threat. The reality is that at Boiling Rock, after their betrayal, Azula had them in her absolute power and could have taken any revenge she wanted, and she didn't. After that, I think they wouldn't expect Azula to ever take personal revenge on themselves. Perhaps Mai might be worried about that threat that Azula poses to Zuko, but I can't imagine Ty Lee caring much about that possibility. Azula's relationship with those two was complicated at best, and it's even worse and more complicated after Boiling Rock, but I don't think her friends would be among those clamoring for harsh treatment for her.

(3) The Fire Nation elite: simply put, we're told that Azula was deeply admired among this class of people. They thought she was an ideal royal. Although she's probably made some enemies in her life in the court, as a group they generally like her, way better than they liked Zuko, even before Zuko allied with the Fire Nation's hereditary enemies and usurped the throne. These people are not going to be hating on Azula.

(4) Ordinary Fire Nation people: Again, we see little sign in canon that Azula had any particular negative relationship with ordinary Fire Nation people in general, or at the very least a relationship worse than other royals did. As a commander, she won two massive victories with limited to no casualties, which is noticeably different than the massive casualties (and failures) connected to the initiatives of Iroh, Zhao, and Ozai. Ordinary people might be aware of this. Moreover, within official propaganda, we know Azula is portrayed highly positively. Ordinary people have little reason to hate her or demand her punishment.

(5) The rest of the world: hot take, but I don't think Azula would be particularly signaled out for hate. The Northern Water Tribe and the Southern Water Tribe have little reason to care about her in particular; she has little to no connection to the campaigns against them. Even for the Earth Kingdom, Azula only participated in the last six months or so of a 100 Years long war. Her only notable action in this time regarding the Earth Kingdom was conquering Ba Sing Se. It's a big deal, no doubt, although the real story of what happened is so embarrassing that it might be something that the Ba Sing Se elite would prefer suppressed. More to the point, Azula actually lied about what exactly went down, and very few people would know the real story. In the story she gives, and in the story Fire Nation propaganda would have been sure to spread (until Zuko's defection, at least), she and Zuko played, with the help of their friends, an equal role in the conquest of the city. The EK leadership has little reason to single Azula out as the font of all evil while ignoring Zuko, Mai, and Ty Lee.

Some people think that the EK would hate Azula for her (limited) role in Ozai's plan to burn down the Earth Kingdom. I'm not so sure. Even ignoring the question of how the EK leadership could actually find out the particulars of the planning for Sozin's Comet, Azula's role was actually far less than that of many other people. Equally important, I'm not sure that anyone would particularly care about Ozai's plan. No one (aside from some Fire Nation soldiers) ended up dying, and all he managed to do was burn a couple acres of forest. Compared to the century of brutal Fire Nation warfare complete with endless atrocities in which many people actually died, I'm not sure that anyone would fixate strongly on an attempted atrocity that proved so ineffectual.

Also, it's notably that Azula was only outside the Fire Nation for a few months and did little to make enemies, while Zuko spent three years (violently?) searching for the Avatar. If anyone has made a lot of personal enemies out there, it would be him. He was even indirectly involved in Princess Yue's death!

All of that being said, the NWT and the EK might find Azula's claim to the Fire Nation throne interesting. Given their likely lack of trust for Zuko and his new regime(since the Fire Nation just spent the last 100 years attacking them), it's possible that one or both of them might want Azula as a "hostage," but really so that they control someone with a claim to the throne they can use as a pretender should their relationship with Zuko collapse.

(6) Ozai and any supporters he has: These people may or may not distrust Azula after the war, but they're unlikely to hate her anywhere as much as they hate Zuko.

(7) Iroh: Iroh evidently strongly dislikes and even hates Azula, and has little, if any, compassion for her. Azula's very existence is a threat to the rule of Iroh's golden "child" Zuko, so it's understandable that some people think Iroh would push for the harsh treatment Azula after the war. It's a trope that I've seen used in a few fanfics.

On the other hand, Iroh is quite lazy and irresponsible, and ends up abandoning Zuko at the end of the series to pursue hedonism. Screwing over Azula and being actively malicious to her sounds like work and effort, and this is the dude who couldn't even be bothered to show up at Zuko coronation. If he was actually going to involve himself with Zuko's government after the war, you'd think he would actually bother living in the Fire Nation. Thus, I think the odds of Iroh having much direct effect on Azula's treatment are minimal.

(8) Zuko: Due to the way that Zuko and Azula were raised, Zuko has been in conflict with Azula for a long time. He has had a very negative relationship with her. Moreover, Firelord Zuko post-canon is in a shaky position post-canon. He usurped the throne after allying with the hereditary enemies of the Fire Nation. There are likely to be many, many people who are unhappy with that, and who view Zuko as an illegitimate ruler. Azula, with her claim to the throne and her popularity, is a massive threat to Zuko and his regime. Even ignoring the strong negative feelings Zuko has for Azula, treating her poorly is quite rational for him. Unfortunately for her, the person most likely to treat her poorly, and the person most interested in doing so, is the person in direct power over her.

A lot of fics play with the idea of having Azula be controlled, imprisoned, abused, threatened with execution, etc. post-canon, but want to have their cake and eat it, too. They want terrible things to happen to Azula, but they want it to not be Zuko's fault. The reality is that Zuko is the one with the motive to treat Azula poorly and with the opportunity to treat her poorly, far more than any other character.

[nsei123fkr]

I really thing that Ty Lee has often slept draped all over Azula, but not necessarily for romantic reasons. Ty Lee just really likes to cuddle, and Azula tolerates it (and Mai never would).

[nsei123fkr]

Really occurs to me, more than ever, that the core tension in the Azula-Mai relationship is that Mai sees herself as Azula's absolute equal, in every way. The issue is that she's not, at least not in the world and society they live in. Mai is smart, very capable, and an incredible fighter, but Azula is smarter, more capable, an even better fighter, and the world's greatest firebending prodigy. Mai is the daughter of a high-ranking noble and is wealthy as hell, but Azula is a princess, is a hell of a lot closer to actually inheriting something significant than Mai ever is, and is taken more seriously by her family, too.

Azula is willing to give Mai 90% of what she wants, but won't, and probably can't, give the other 10%.

Of course, the funny thing is that all of this is not really why the friendship collapses.

[nsei123fkr]

My suspicion is that Ursa didn’t like Mai and Ty Lee much and thought they were bad influences on Azula. Ozai, meanwhile, was beyond caring which little girls his daughter is playing with and still hasn’t learned their first names a decade later.

[nsei123fkr]

Shower thought about homosexuality and the Fire Nation elite

Mind you, this is all entirely speculative and extremely unsupported by the show, but it occurs to me that lesbianism might be tolerated and even accepted among the Fire Nation elite, as long as it doesn't interfere with the patriarchal family structure and the duty of women to get married and give birth to heirs. Lesbian relationships, before marriage or during it, don't threaten impregnation or the birth of bastard or cuckold children, and might not even be perceived as "damaging" female virginity, as the Fire Nation understands it. They might also be perceived as a way to create and shore up alliances, between elite women and even between families.

Kind of the idea here is that lesbian "affairs" are seen as a complimentary and subordinate institution to heterosexual marriage (and "courting"), rather than a competing one. For a woman to engage in a lesbian affair or affairs would not be considered cheating, because the only "real sex," and certainly the only "generative sex," is men sticking their penises in women. Heterosexual marriage is supposed to be monogamous (at least for the women), permanent, and essentially obligatory, while lesbian affairs are not so permanent and are not understood as exclusive, with it being perfectly permissible to engage in multiple affairs at once. Lesbianism, of course, does not excuse you from the duties to marry, have heterosexual sex, and give birth to heirs.

At the very extreme, you could lesbian affairs being culturally encouraged and even expected under certain circumstances, both as a way to solidify familial and personal alliances and (perhaps?) due to a cultural belief that engaging in lesbian sexual activity makes women more fertile.

You could also have similar dynamics attached to male homosexuality, if you really wanted, although I think if you were to go in depth there you would want to make the system significantly different. Also, relatively few societies have historically seen female homosexuality as particularly threatening, while male homosexuality tends to have been seen as more dangerous, or at least as more fraught with dangerous power dynamics.

I guess kind of my broader point is that the ATLA fandom really like writing about gay and lesbian relationships, but it mostly does so by portraying the world of ATLA like it has the cultural norms around those typical of early 21st century America. That's fine, but it's important to understood that those are not the only cultural norms around homosexual sex and romantic activity possible.

Anyways, one story idea I had for the "lesbian affair" social system is one, set a few years after canon, which is Maiko/Maizula. Zuko and Mai are married, and Azula and Mai are engaged in an affair, too (and there's nothing hidden about it, because it's socially accepted). Culturally Zuko isn't supposed to be jealous, and he knows it, too, while pragmatically arguably the affair benefits him, by keeping Azula closely tied to his nuclear family. Yet, despite it all, he is jealous, and that creates problems.