#and giving ozai a personality is definitely a choice

[rosered12]

While there's quite a few changes in the live action atla that I have thoughts and opinions on, good and bad, one that's very simple but makes me very confused is why Katara's necklace isn't mentioned at all the whole season???

Like it's definitely a part of a bigger issue of taking away Katara's anger about her mother's death and making her more mellow, but still. It would have only taken her mentioning it like once or twice and then Paku talking about it and I would've been ok, but they don't? Even though it's a kinda of a big deal in the original season but it's, relatively speaking, a small detail, I don't understand why they would leave out.

[hadesisqueer]

Just fully read Azula In The Spirit Temple, and I gotta say, it definitely is an improvement from her characterization in The Search and Smoke and Shadow trilogies; this comic understands her character more than those trilogies combined.

There is something I don't believe I fully like, which is the notion that she 'rejected redemption' from the spirit. That thing seemed to be overall a Lotus Eater Machine rather than something that actually was trying to help her Zuko gets Iroh and Azula gets a giant centipede disguised as an old woman that makes her have hallucinations —something she struggled with in the past— and give her 'redemption' through fake dreams and fantasies and lies. I doubt that thing had any good intentions at all, but anyway.

I do love things about the comic: there were some parts that reminded me a bit of Zuko before his redemption arc, and that while the comic doesn't redeem her and doesn't say she'll be redeemed, she's not approached as an unredeemable person either.

One of the things I loved was that flashback of Azula firebending for the first time and being seen by Ozai and Ursa doing so, and the implications later. Ozai was seemingly excited, Ursa wasn't. Take into consideration that Azulon arranged the marriage between them was to make a powerful line of benders. Azula and Zuko were children of the second son and they weren't originally born to rule, they were born to be weapons.

So Ursa looking serious and afraid —and young Azula looking confused, probably thinking her mother was scared of her— while Ozai is elated upon realizing that his daughter is a firebending prodigy and the implications is great, most of all when the spirit later shows Azula a warped version of the memory where Ursa looks actually happy and proud. Azula was like 'no, that wasn't how it went, my mother wasn't proud, she was scared of me, scared for me.' Because Azula herself realizes that her mother was scared of the path her father was going to make her take.

And then we have a few moments later Azula talking to her mother again, and her telling her mother that. That deep down she resented Ursa not just because she thought she loved Zuko more than she loved her, but because she thought she protected Zuko over her as well, that she saved him from being killed-- and then left. Azula tells Ursa that she abandoned her, that she wasn't there to protect her from Ozai and prevent him from turning her into his weapon, that she didn't have a choice and that if Ursa had been there to protect, she wouldn't have turned out-- like that.

Of course, I feel sympathy for Ursa, and Azula is hypocritical and refuses to take responsibility for her actions several times, blaming others for them or for leaving her. But in this comic we see for the first time something that's been obvious for many of us but wasn't acknowledged yet, and Azula acknowledges it herself: that she was an abused child. That Zuko wasn't the only victim of Ozai, she was his victim as well. That she felt neglected by her mother, and that while Zuko had had both Ursa and then Iroh to support him, Azula didn't have anyone to protect her from Ozai shaping her into his firebending weapon. And it's confirmed that Azula doesn't like being a monster, she hates it, and wishes someone had helped her. Azula wishes her mother had been there to help her and protect her from Ozai the way she felt she protected Zuko.

And it is shown, too, that Azula doesn't really hate Zuko, either. Or even Iroh. Otherwise, neither of them would have appeared in the dream the spirit gave her of the perfect scenario from her—her whole family happy and together, and proud of her and loving her. Zuko doesn't even have his scar; in her perfect world, she has a good relationship with her brother and he was never burnt by their father.

Even later, when she's shown fighting and arguing with an hallucinated version of Ty Lee, Azula doesn't even actively try hurting her; she manages to knock Ty Lee out and when the spirit asks her 'are you going to kill her?', Azula is startled by that suggestion and says 'why would I do that?', which shows that deep down she does care about Ty Lee. And Mai, in a way. Messed up, but she wouldn't want to actually hurt either of them, and it was already obvious in the show how much their betrayal affected her. Despite her messed up approach at it, it was clear and continues to be clear that Azula cared about them and did think of them as her friends. In her messed up way, again. And even now, she doesn't even entertain the idea of truly hurting Ty Lee.

And while she does reject 'redemption' (I still think that thing didn't truly want to redeem her tbh), she also-- kind of does choose it? Instead of attacking the Fire Warriors for betraying her, when she finds them-- she just looks at them being happy together, and instead turns around and leaves. She chooses to let them go and go on her own way, in a similar way Zuko let Appa go.

The comic did well with Azula's characterization of being a person who's hurt many people and done awful things while also acknowledging that she is also a kid, an abused one, that she wasn't born a monster and she dislikes being one and that she wishes someone had helped her, or acknowledge that she was hurt, too. It's shown that while she doesn't acknowledge this, she still really needs help.

It was good reading it, really. I don't think it necessarily means Azula will be redeemed in the future, but I don't think it means she won't be, either. Yeah, she messes up her chance at 'redemption', but Zuko had to be dragged crying and wailing by Iroh into doing the right thing several times, and he himself rejected his own redemption and betrayed his uncle in The Crossroads of Destiny. So Azula rejecting redemption now doesn't mean that in a future she couldn't still be redeemed. Zuko did get worse before he got it right.

Again, Azula in this comic reminded me a bit of pre-redemption Zuko several times and I find a few parallels between them. Honestly, while not perfect, I feel like this comic could be kind of read as Azula's equivalent to Zuko Alone in some way.

[cienie-isengardu]

Iroh's "I looked away"

“The Storm” [s01e12] provided us a great insight into Zuko’s character, one that undoubtedly helps to understand his motives and anger but also how Ozai’s physical and psychological abuse influenced the banished prince. There are plenty of things to talk about, many little details that build layers of a complicated relationship between Zuko and his father, uncle, or even his crew and how perception of Zuko changes once we learn the truth behind the scar. But the episode also shows us a great deal of insight into Iroh’s character and though I do love how “The Storm” challenged our perception of those characters, rewatching ALTA makes Iroh’s “I looked away” much more devastating to me. 

Because it is not just about his guilt over abuse Zuko was forced to endure. A guilt that won’t disappear no matter if he could or couldn’t do anything to prevent it, but… Iroh truly looked away from Fire Nation as a whole, didn’t he? Understandably, he was grief-struck after Lu Ten’s death and he did not fight back Ozai for the throne, as I suspect he either did not care anymore for it or did not want a civil war to destroy Fire Nation from inside. But he still was The Dragon of West, a very respected general and powerful political figure that others weren’t willing to openly challenge, including Ozai himself.

And no, I’m not wondering why Iroh did not interference with Agni Kai before Zuko’s face was burned to “teach him respect” but about the fact that he did not say anything at all against using the division of new recruits as a bait - and from the episode alone, we know he agreed with Zuko on that matter. It wasn't the right strategy - even if it has merit from a military standpoint, it definitely wasn’t moral or good for Fire Nation’s wellbeing. Beside Zuko, who openly challenged the strategy and called it betrayal, the only person that questioned it at all was an old unnamed general (“But the 41st is entirely new recruits. How do you expect them to defeat a powerful Earth Kingdom battalion?) while Iroh simply kept quiet and this detail makes me think the “I looked away” is as much about Iroh looking away from Ozai’s cruel abuse toward Zuko as about Iroh’s passivity during the war meeting, and in greater scheme, Fire Nation’s politics. I doubt Iroh could change Ozai’s mind and sure, I do not have an idea how the relationship between Fire Lord and ex-Crown Prince looked like, but the point is, Iroh did not even try to question the strategy and choose to sit quietly and dunno, it makes me wonder, did Iroh give up at this point of his life? Was he so afraid of the consequences for speaking his mind that he allowed Ozai and Fire Lord’s court to subdue him so much? Because if he did, his words to Zuko “[...] But you must promise not to speak. Those old folks are a bit sensitive, you know?” is as much warning to Zuko as to himself. 

Iroh said to the crew that Zuko was right but it wasn’t his place to criticize the strategy, but who else was supposed to speak against this plan, if Iroh himself chose to stay quiet on the matter? If all generals - then and three years later - didn’t have any respect for life, whatever for their own subjects or civilians of other nations? And I think this is what truly kills me about this situation, that 13 years old boy had courage to speak against this dehumanization of Fire Nation’s citizens when Iroh, our good uncle Iroh, kept quiet and looked away again and again from what was happening until he couldn’t do that anymore because too great damage was already done.

(And isn’t it ironic that Iroh gave little Zuko a knife with the description never give up without a fight - words Zuko adapted as his life motto - but Iroh himself gave up? First at Ba Sing Sai, after Lu Ten’s death, now here during a war meeting and maybe, just maybe it is Zuko that unexpectedly pushed him back on the right track to actually do something, to make a choice and fight for what he believed was right instead of passively watching all the abuse done to an innocent child and young soldiers serving loyalty to their country. Was Iroh already a White Lotus then or did the travel with Zuko give him an opportunity to join it because he couldn’t anymore look away from how messed up Fire Nation became?)

[atla-recluse]

Throne-Stealing Where?

It's always hilarious to me when I see/hear someone calling Azula anything along the lines of "power-hungry despot".

Hungry for power? More like hungry for family/relationship harmony and rules. If anything, she gives power away to others! She helped Zuko get back the throne and (conditional) fatherly appreciation that he so desired, with her only request being that he side with her and their nation (that's not asking for very much, from her POV, mind you)! She gave Mai a higher position than even her noble parents had and a chance to become a Fire Royal Consort through marriage to her long-time crush, Azula's brother, Prince Zuko! She (albeit after first forcefully taking her away from her preferred surroundings) gave Ty Lee another, more exciting way (based on how much fun we see Ty Lee having) to feel different/special and like "her own person"! She never used more force than was necessary when fighting her adversaries and only went "too far" when the situation seemed to call for it due to the risk to her person if she did nothing! (Which may have been a soul-destroying choice for everyone that was there [except Zuko]. Even Azula is implied to have felt like a monster for killing Aang, during that conversation they had on Ember Island!) A 14 year old felt forced to kill, people! That affects the one doing it, too! Why does next to no one ever ask what Aang was even planning on doing once in the avatar state while they were in the catacombs? Especially from the POV if one of his enemies? Play hopscotch and do super gymnastics? Doubt it!

Now, please correct me if I'm wrong but, wouldn't a despot be preoccupied with looking for ways to change the surrounding cultures that they come into contact with? Instead, after she leaves Ba Sing Se, for example, she keeps it exactly as she found it; with the only change being the new Earth Kingdom-originated ruler she places in charge. The people of the EK didn't have anything change for them for better or worse, as far as I can recall. Yes, we do see her trying to break through the wall of Ba Sing Se with that more advanced technology and she is imperialistic (which is something wrong in itself and which can be very brutal). But that's not automatically the same as being a dictator or snatching up bits of power from others in any way she can. And in the end she conquered it by instead using the true, least offensive (in multiple ways) means possible.

As for that period just before the final agni kai we see in show, where she was going to be crowned? She was granted that title by the current Fire Lord aka her father, after her back-on-the-clock brother defected (so willingly left).

u·surp

/yo͞oˈsərp/

verb

take (a position of power or importance) illegally or by force. "Richard usurped the throne"

Based on that dictionary definition, how can she be usurping Zuko's position if, again, the FL himself is giving it to her and if Zuko gave it up? She's literally getting it "legally" (the FL is the law) and without using any force!

Now of course there's a rabbit hole argument that some may try and use by saying that because Ozai himself took his brother's throne without Iroh's consent (was it without his consent? Iroh seems to never be in a rush to be FL), that Azula getting the throne is therefore usurpation. Ummm, I hate to nip that point in the bud so soon but, Zuko is Ozai's son, not Iroh's. That means that (assuming the child of the by-birth king/queen is the only one that should gain the throne next if the king/queen is unable or unwilling) based on that logic, neither teenager should be allowed to sit on the throne.

Kinda hard to usurp a title from someone who "legally" shouldn't have it either, right? Oh Iroh, if only you'd just done your damn job.

All that being said, literally all this girl was doing is finding ways to handle her job and fulfill the tasks of it that she's been given at such an inappropriate age, while amassing the least amount of damage possible. And along the way she tried to extend a hand to her family and friends too, almost as a sort of "sorry for the inconveniences/thank you for your cooperation and loyalty". (She may have even learned some things about herself and others along the way—or could have, if she had been allowed just one more minute of screen time and the writing choice of change that the other Fire Nation kids got.)

Yet somehow many people come away from this show with the idea that she's trying to purposely take control of or harm as many people as possible in every way possible without any care at all for others' wants. I know at least two characters that that partly or fully applies to, and neither of them are Azula.

[mdhwrites]

Considering you've criticized Owl House for trying to give Amity and Hunter abusive homelives for explaining their antagonistic behaviors initially and praise Amphibia for not trying to give Sasha having bad parents for her behavior, what do you think of how Zuko's redemption on Avatar the Last Airbender? Considering they also do the redeemed person had a terrible homelife with him having an abusive father in Ozai, what did you think of how they did Zuko?

Zuko is AMAZING. The big difference between TOH and Avatar with this arc is easy too: Avatar doesn't use it as an excuse and they don't brush it off. It's merely where everything began for Zuko and changing from that point is HARD.

Zuko always had a choice. He could always give up the quest for the Avatar and live a peaceful life. Even Iroh is pushing this from literally episode 1. It is Zuko's choice to chase the concept of honor that his father and his culture pushed on him. We feel that scar on his face by his determination. We feel the priorities of the fire nation by him constantly trying to prove himself. By trying to go alone to prove he's strong or do what he thinks will bring him honor.

It takes an ENTIRE BOOK for Zuko to start even questioning this stuff. We understand the weight of his decision to cut his hair and try to just live peacefully with Iroh because we saw the struggle he had to even consider giving up the warpath. It's not even easy for him then as he still wants to resort to the old ways and constantly has it reinforced what those old ways cost. The fear it put in people. The pain his culture has brought. It constantly reinforces the question that Zuko eventually has to answer: Is the Fire Nation's definition, and by extension his father's, of honor actually honorable? Is it the definition he wants to live by.

And then arguably we get the most important part of his arc... His 'victory'. He gets that parade back home. He gets everything he has wanted for so long. The only price he has to pay is that he will never have any other definition of honor than the Fire Nation's. And that is no longer a definition he desires and so despite having love, family, stability, etc. like that, he leaves to do good, even if he himself knows that it will be hard because he is so trained and used to being bad.

The length, dedication, questioning and cost of his arc are all deeply compelling. The show doesn't hold back on the fact that he was genuinely a member of the fire nation and what that meant.

Besides their first appearances... When do Amity or Hunter feel like a product of the Isles or their parents? Amity admittedly gets ONE more with Covention but that's it. Both of them very, VERY quickly give up on even the concept of being villains (Hunter at the START of his second major appearance, before anything has coerced him to think otherwise, is already rebelling against Belos teaching by looking into wild magic) and what is the price and actual arc of turning good for them? How difficult is it for them to actually get away from the lessons instilled upon them?

I already mentioned Hunter but Amity first brings up her parents in Understanding Willow where she talks about them controlling her friends and the like... And then immediately embraces Willow back into her fold as if her parents won't care. Two episodes later, she will destroy her ENTIRE friend group that her parents put onto her. Then, her NEXT APPEARANCE after that has her parents make their first proper appearance and... Then Amity, in an episode she's barely in, rejects them outright because Luz is pretty. It's not that she condemns their morals, how they look upon life, etc. like that. It's just "Hey, I'm being selfish too because I want my own friends." Which with how she entirely ignores actually trying to reconnect with Willow for half a season comes across much more like it's purely because Luz was going to die. Either Gus or Willow and she wouldn't give a damn. She'd get to console Luz then! Because Luz is all it took for Amity to change, it came easily, and it's all she cares about afterwards.

She NEVER loses it like Zuko does during the first part of Avatar's finale because Zuko actually cares about something. He is going to push back on them because he didn't change for Aang or Katara, he changed for himself. He is still the same person with that diehard fire in him that isn't gone just because he's a good guy now.

Hunter has a lot similar complaints but with much more of the severe need to address his moral issues. After all... How many witches did Hunter murder as the Golden Guard? Or led to their execution? It makes Amity's active choice to bully Willow for YEARS when she didn't need to seem almost quaint but both facts are swept under the rug just as easily. It's why one could claim the Golden Guard is not the same character as Hunter because they both require severely contexts to FUNCTION.

But we cannot do that. Hunter did take away people's rights. He did hunt them down. He was a member of the Emperor's Coven. He held its beliefs as fact... And we never see them question those beliefs. The closest is Hollow Mind where he spends the entire time telling Luz she's wrong, even as facts are presented in his face until proof that Belos will kill him is presented to him. At which point, the decision isn't "I don't believe in your ideals and regime, I'm going to rebel" like Zuko's but instead "Oh fuck, I'm going to DIE if I don't turn good." In fact, it's the opposite case for Zuko because the boy was effectively guaranteed to live a cushy life if he DIDN'T turn good.

And so once again, we have another turn to good that happens too easily, too quickly and mostly selfishly AT BEST. Even when Hunter fights of Belos' possession, it's all about how it's nice to have friends and have fun rather than, you know, it being wrong to persecute an entire class of people just because you don't like them. In neither case do the characters act like they've actually changed or learned anything. They were just flipped to good and that's that.

I also might not be so butthurt about it if not for the amount of TIME this stuff takes and how TOH itself takes itself so seriously so often. It obviously wants to have these arcs be a good deal and is willing to spend an exorbitant amount of time on them, to the point where they start causing Luz to not have time to spend with characters like King or Eda, and yet they're also not exploring anything. They're not saying anything. It's just... There. On the most shallow level.

So yeah, if I haven't made it clear: I don't dislike the trope of bad parents leading to bad children who are eventually redeemed (in general, I think there are VERY few tropes that are inherently bad). There's a lot that can be done with it and it is a good explanation for how a young person can be so angry. You just, you know, actually have to do something with it instead of using only the surface level elements and expecting to be rewarded for it. Worse yet if you try to pretend that it took literally agency from the character when they clearly weren't actually that indoctrinated to have a lack of free will or so much fear as to not consider any other option.

And no, I don't blame the shortening. By Eclipse Lake for Hunter, and WELL before S1 even finished for Amity, both characters were obviously already 80% of the way to good people, if not already there for Amity. The show just had no patience and no willingness to explore its own concept and that ALWAYS sucks. It's the worst part of the writing for My Adventures With Superman too. *sigh*

So yeah, don't scapegoat, actually explore your concepts and don't erase your characters during their redemptions. Then maybe you can try to claim to have a character as good as Zuko.

======+++++======

Grain of salt here: Some of this is second hand because honestly, a rewatch of Avatar doesn't sound like a bad idea. It's been a while to put it mildly BUT just the structure of Zuko's arc is infinitely better than how most people do redemption arcs honestly so I think the thoughts still stand despite that.

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[writing-nothing-but-spilled-ink]

An au if batman characters including the bat family were in the avatar universe

Jason would be like jet most likelubsteal from the rich give to the poor and would fight against the fire nation would also probably be a mercenary and a nonbender, would have knowledge of how to chi block and would be unofficially a dual sword master and great with hand to hand combat as well as have deadly precision with throwing stars/blades like mai

Dick would be the male version of tai Lee he'd be a master chi blocker light on his feet wouldn't kill definitely would make life for fire nation soldiers difficult if he sees them harassing people of weaker means he'll do something about it with a smile he'd also be your worst nightmare trying to take him in hand to hand combat even if your a bender

Damians weapon of choice would be a katana he'd be quick and deadly you'd think you have him then surprise you don't when he attacks it would feel like it came from the shadows you wouldn't have time to think he'd have deadly precision and hed be light on his feet hed be able to go toe to toe with benders like its nothing and would know how to use there strengths against them hed also have short blades to throw and an array of poisons on hand jusy in case hed have a shit ton of contingency plans

okay Bruce obviously nonbender he'd probably know a bunch of techniques he'd be similar to iroh in terms of knowledge minus the spiritual aspects and the kindness portion as well he'd be similar to asamis dad hirashi sato he'd have all the advanced technology even during aangs time only he wouldn't rely only on thr technology and inventions hed also be a sword master, know how to chi block and how to counter most bending techniques remember how iroh swung those boulders with his chains with just shear strength and howw zuko smashed them with his foot yeah that would be bruce minus the fire bending, he'd also have bombs similar to sokkas stink bombs only they'd knock u out...

Swamp thing would definitely be a water bender like the swamp water benders but way more powerful and he'd love in the same swamp the gang visits and finds out they need to seek out toph I also feel like he'd be an incredibly powerful blood bender

Poison ivy would also be a water bender I actually feel like she'd be similar to swamp thing but also very different she wouldn't live in the swamp but off the grid she'd travel all over the world of Avatar just studying medicine and poisons she wouldnt really feel a need to truly interfere with the war unless someone outright makes it her problem or goes after her personally or her home

Harley would be a non bender similar to Dick but like way worse because she's incredibly unpredictable she'd also use blasting jelly at any given moment and God help you if u underestimate her because she's not a bender I feel like she'd have knowledge of a bunch of different weapons as well as an intimate knowledge of explosives she would be a bit of an anti hero in the avatar universe she wouldn't necessarily support ozai but I don't think she'd feel any need to truly go out and attack fire nation soldiers unless she sees them attacking kids or women or forcing themselves onto someone shss huge on consent

Joker are u insane I'm not giving him bending absolutely not no thank you lmaoo y'all really thought I'd give an actual thought for the joker nope but feel free to comment if u like

The flash would be an air bender not monk gyatso level air bending but still powerful

Wonder woman I can see her as being a bender but also a kyoshi warrior and definitely against the fire nation and would oppose them at every turn I feel like she'd be a metal bender and the way she'd metal bend would be similar to how Lynn does in legend of Korra but more powerful then lynn

[waterfire1848]

I think Azulon being adopted makes sense given how old Sozin is though it's a coin lip whether Azulon would figure it out. Personally Azulon would sort of realize given Sozin is old enough to be his grandfather though I imagine Azulon isn't stupid enough to toss away the only life he knows and his chance at the throne so he just kind of stays quiet, somewhat resentful Sozin kind of ruined his life by stealing what chance he had at normalcy away but too deep to really give up.

Personally I imagine Azulon tries to avoid the topic of his parentage and even Iroh probably isn't safe from a death stare if asked. Granted it'd be a disaster if it came out Azulon technically isn't even royalty so it'd be everyone's best interests if stays that way.

Hello, @deadlyangelofpurity !!!

Interesting. I can definitely see Azulon just going along with this life because he’s accustomed to it and because Sozin, despite whatever Azulon may have discovered, is still the only father he ever had. The palace, being Prince, ruling the Fire Nation, he can’t give all that up even if he learned the entire truth.

I can see little Iroh and Ozai asking why all their friends have grandparents but they don’t and Azulon either glares at them or yells at them (them being Ozai) for asking such questions. Azulon both doesn’t want to think about the fact that he might not technically be royalty and he doesn’t want it to be revealed so it’s best that Iroh and Ozai don’t question why Sozin had him so late in life.

Also, this would be a very interesting AU where it somehow was revealed that the Royal Family wasn’t really the Royal Family. After Azulon dies or something, it gets out that he wasn’t even Sozin’s son so Iroh and Ozai’s claim to the throne is gone and the remaining Fire family is forced to flee (probably would just be Zuko and Azula at that point because Ozai doesn’t seem like someone who would run away even when it was the best choice).

[peregrinvs]

Taking only the show into account, do you think Azula would have ever been released from the asylum, even if her mental health recovered?

Because Azula falling into madness provided the Gaang an awfully convenient way of dealing with Azula without having to de-bend her or jail her life, something that imo would have been liable to spark an outcry in the Fire Nation, and (further) resistance to Zuko's rule, considering her age and the fact that she was (likely) upheld as the model Fire Nation child.

And since it doesn't seem like Fire Nation asylums would be equipped to de-Sozinize people, I think the Gaang, or if not them, the White Lotus, wouldn't want arguably the most dangerous person to Zuko's rule/world peace to be able to roam free, able to potentially spark an uprising.

I agree with your interpretation. The asylum isn't really here to give mental health treatment. It's simply a convenient way to get rid of someone who could have been a highly dnagerous opponent.

Azula can still bend, she was a high ranking memeber of Ozai's regime and pretty luch his designated heir. She's the obvious choice for loyalists. So Zuko needs to ruin her credibility as an alternative. Put Azula in jail and you make her a martyr. Brand her a madwoman and it makes it much harder for a cause to rally around her.

Fwiw i don't think azula was supposed to go fully, irrevocably mad. She had a nervous breakdown, easily explained by the highly stressful situation she was in and the series of upheavals she experienced. (I'm not saying she was 100% a victim, nor at all, but the fact remain that losing trust in her brother, father àd friends all in quick succession is going to mess up anyone). She would definitely have got better in time.

But the Asylum probably isn't there to help her heal and get de-radicalised. Unless someone intervenes on humane grounds on her behalf it's very likely Zuko's regime will keep her locked up.

That said it is a kid's story at heart so maybe she'll get an optimistic conclusion. They've tried to steer clear of some of the grittier political implications in the past. Maybe even just to make Zuko look good.

[deathbycoldopen]

I finished the first season of the live action ATLA, and I have to say my reaction is… mixed.

I went into it determined to have an open mind, and there was definitely a good chunk that I enjoyed! For one thing, I love what they did with both Suki and Yue, taking advantage of the longer episode lengths to give them both lives and motivations beyond just “pretty girl that Sokka crushes on” (Suki obviously gets more depth in the og show during seasons 2 & 3, but Yue has always struck me as a rather one-dimensional character).

The best (if traumatizing) choice was to actually show the Fire Nation attack on the airbenders. Doing so gave a real emotional heft to Aang being displaced a hundred years with the weight of failing to prevent a past genocide, and the pressure of having to stop another without any idea how. Not only that, but it did a great job of indicating, right at the start of the show, that this was an adaptation indenting to transform what was fundamentally a kids’ show with complex themes into an adult series with the ability to really expand on that depth and complexity.

…and then it didn’t.

Oh, the show pokes at the repercussions of Iroh having waged a long and deadly siege agains Ba Sing Se, and it does a decent job at deepening the fuckery that is Zuko’s backstory. But so much of the more ambiguous or complex parts of the original have been flattened in this adaptation—and not in ways that can be explained by the compressed narrative. Instead, it feels like the sanitized story and characters are a direct result of a purity culture that demands all things black and white, never shades of gray.

Let’s look at Zuko, the villain-turned-hero with an iconic but bumpy redemption arc in the original series. Part of what makes Zuko’s story so goddamn compelling in the original is that he begins as a true villain, who does some horrible things and is led astray more often than not by his explosive temper; and yet his horrifying backstory and desperation for a loving family that never actually existed compel us to view him with some sympathy, even as he acts against our protagonists.

Yet in the adaptation, Zuko is consistently painted in a softer, kinder light than he was in the original. He has no hand in burning down the village on Kyoshi Island; he hears Aang out and even seems to consider Aang’s offer of friendship rather than immediately lashing out after the Blue Spirit reveal; he is notably more respectful to Iroh and loses his temper much less frequently and violently.

Even the change of Zuko fighting back against Ozai in the agni kai can be construed as him recognizing that Ozai is the bad guy, especially when it means that in order for his exile to make sense he has to defy his father again after he’s already been burned.

This is a pattern that is repeated with nearly all of the characters with any degree of ambiguity. Pakku is depicted as kind of a decent person who’s just being held back by his deference to tradition, rather than being pretty much an asshole regardless of whether he’s following tradition or not. Hahn is a nice guy who is in love with Yue but accepts her decision not to marry him, instead of a dick that sees her as a trophy and is more than happy to marry her despite her disinterest.

Sokka is a huge victim of this flattening of flaws. His early-show misogyny is entirely absent, making his stumbling with Suki a little odd and ungrounded, and his dismissal of Katara’s skills even more so. The narrative doesn’t allow him to be anywhere close to as boneheaded and stubborn as he is in the original—this version of Sokka would never angrily slash through the swamp despite the warning signs, or blatantly lie to Won Shi Ton and then even more blatantly steal from him.

Sokka isn’t even allowed the most understandable tactical mistake from the original show: using the air ship in the fight at the Northern Air Temple, and inadvertently delivering the Fire Nation’s greatest asset. That honor is given to a generalized “spies” that are distanced even from Sai himself.

If the heroes aren’t allowed to have flaws, the villains are even worse off, without anything that might make them sympathetic. Jet, who in the original sits in a similar in-between place as Zuko, is pushed firmly on the side of villain over the course of his two-episode arc. Instead of Jet fighting dirty against Fire Nation colonists who are nevertheless civilians, he bombs buildings in Omashu; it’s easier to denounce him when he’s hurting Earth Kingdom civilians with his tactics, rather than people who may or may not be complicit in the war. He’s even labeled a terrorist, an easy buzzword for a largely usamerican audience to point to and say “ah yes, that’s a bad guy.”

The main villains— Ozai, Zhao, and even the brief scene of Sozin— are ironically even more cartoonishly evil than in the animated show. Ozai and Sozin both declare their evil plans— out loud, with villainous aplomb— to use one major military movement as a distraction for another, even bigger movement. (Sozin’s plan at least made sense, in that the distraction was “leaked” intelligence rather than an actual deployment of troops. How the hell did Ozai have enough troops and a decent supply line to attack both the Northern Water Tribe and Omashu at the same time? And it’s not like the distraction actually served any purpose, since it’s explicitly stated several times that the separate nations don’t send aid to each other anymore.)

Ozai’s treatment of Zuko is even more abusive than in the original, especially with the aforementioned change where Zuko actually does fight back as ordered. His choice to burn Zuko and then later banish him then must be explained by Zuko showing compassion, a much more typically “evil” motivation than the more complex (though no less abusive) notion of Zuko dishonoring himself.

Zhao gets an even worse character lobotomy, which is impressive given that his original character is pretty unabashedly villainous. But rather than a devious, powerful, and ambitious commander looming over everything Zuko or Team Avatar does, this version of Zhao is cartoonishly incompetent. (It doesn’t help that the only thing I’ve seen Ken Leung in is Person of Interest, where he plays a similarly buffoonish character constantly in need of rescue. When held up against Jason Isaacs’ mesmerizing but intimidating voice in the original, there’s no comparison.)

Zhao is no longer a respected military leader but a backwoods commander who barely passed the exam to become an officer; his rise through the ranks isn’t due to military successes or a commanding presence but because Azula finds him easy to manipulate; cutting Jeong Jeong means that we don’t see Aang get the better of Zhao by playing on his temper and lack of control; even discovering the secret of the moon and ocean spirits seems more like blundering luck than actual determination and intelligence. You can’t take Zhao seriously as a threat in this adaptation, even when he’s killing the moon spirit and destroying the balance of the world— he’s a nuisance at best, with Azula as the real looming danger.

Disliking Zhao’s character changes might just come down to a matter of taste, of course. I’m always going to be more interested in intelligent, competent characters, whether they are heroes or villains. But it forms part of this pattern of flattening characters and plots and arcs, and brings me back to the fundamental question that kept hitting me over the head while watching the series.

Why?

Why make an adaptation? This is a question that comes up whenever an adaptation of anything is made: what does the adaptation bring to the table that the original did not? Often the answer to this question is money, but there’s usually an attempt to point to a different answer, if only to distract from the greed.

Sometimes the answer is simple— a translation, for example, is an adaptation made to reach a wider audience. Sometimes the answer is more complicated— changing Lord of the Rings from books to movies, as another example, took advantage of the music, acting, and visuals to pack more emotional punch than the books did.

I would argue, as I began to at the start of this post, that the benefit of adapting ATLA from an animated kids show to a live action series is the bucking of those “kids show” limitations. ATLA deals with a lot of serious, heavy topics that don’t get fully explored because they are too complicated and intense to be greenlit in a network show aimed at 10 year olds. In addition, ATLA (and particularly Legend of Korra after it) faced an uphill battle to portray some more sticky topics such as queerness, in part due to the time period when they were produced.

A live action show produced by Netflix seems to bypass all those hurdles, allowing for a darker and more socially progressive show than what the original was able to accomplish. But despite showing onscreen the destruction of the Air Nomads, the adaptation of ATLA seems more sanitized than the original, playing to the lowest common denominator in a way that the original never did, despite the latter being a kids show and the former ostensibly being for adults.

I came away from the new series with a bad taste in my mouth, even with some things that I really enjoyed, and I think this is the crux of why. The adaptation didn’t update the original; it stripped it of anything that might be deemed problematic and replaced it with a black and white worldview that is, in fact, antithetical to the themes of the original show.

After all, the creators seem to have reasoned, who would root for Zuko’s redemption if he actually needed redemption in the first place?

[burst-of-iridescent]

Oh, thank you, my day is good, but after your message it got even better! I really found solace on Tumblr, which I could not find either in these terrible comics or in LOTR. To be honest, I hardly mastered the latter at all, literally forcing myself to watch series after series, searching in vain for the former depth of characters and conflict. In my opinion, LOTR is a complete failure on all fronts, with the exception of high-quality drawing. If it's about comics, it's an illogical development of events, which, unfortunately, is laid down in the last series. I wanted to ask you -how do you feel about Ursa's line? I was offended by her decision to leave the children (of course, it happened against her will, but still -to change her face and personality, forget about her beloved son and lead a happy life with an old lover?! Don't get it wrong, a woman should suffer for the rest of her days because of a failed marriage, she should not give up happiness if fate sends. But in the context of this story, in your opinion, does it not look like a betrayal, first of all of herself (Ursa?), and of course her children. She couldn't help but understand what kind of hell they got into, first of all the son, after her disappearance. And if you also disagree with this "canon", what would you see the fate of Zuko and Azula's mother? (sorry for such a long letter!)

hi again! thank you, you're so sweet!

i 100% feel you on both LOK (i'm guessing LOTR is a typo?) and the comics. it's so disappointing because both the show and the comics have some great conceptual ideas, and in the hands of competent writers, could've been excellent continuations of ATLA and worthwhile successors... but instead we got a flaming pile of garbage that deserves to be at the bottom of the sea.

the search isn't the worst atla comic imo (that honour goes to the promise) but it's definitely doing its damn best to earn that spot. i hate so many things about that comic: the outdated, insulting depictions of mental illness and mental healthcare in azula's story, zuko getting a "replacement sister" in kiyi as a fix-it bandaid, the fact that it becomes a whole gaang adventure when the correct narrative choice would've been for zuko and katara (and maybe azula at most) to take this trip together as a full circle from the southern raiders, katara and sokka's only role in the story being to foil zuko and azula and nothing else, and of course... the complete annihilation of everything ursa's character was set up to be in atla.

i agree with you that it is very much a betrayal of ursa's character for her to willingly lose her memories. she knows she's leaving her children in the hands of a dangerous abuser, one who's already molding her daughter into a lethal weapon and was fully ready to murder her son, who has proven his willingness to sacrifice his children without hesitation if it benefits him. but despite this, despite the fact that she committed murder, accepted exile and even risked her life (for she had no way of knowing if ozai would simply let her leave peacefully) to protect her child... suddenly she's willing to throw all of that away and fuck off with her childhood lover at the first opportunity?

it baffles me why bryke didn't at least make ursa's memory loss an accident, which would've both explained her absence and why she never went to look for her children without committing character assassination in the process - but that's probably expecting too much logical writing from those two.

i'm actually planning a post-canon book 4 zutara fic that would include a rewrite of the search, where ursa didn't just fuck off to do nothing, but actually had a redemption arc very similar to zuko's after secretly fleeing to live in the earth kingdom and seeing the damage the war had done. she takes it upon herself to right the fire nation's wrongs, and grows particularly invested in air nomad culture, seeing it as her duty to try and bring back some of what the genocide had destroyed. shortly before zuko's banishment she sets out to find the remnants of a people long believed to be gone - and finds that maybe they're not entirely gone after all.

i won't spoil the rest, but i think it'll both explain why ursa never went back for zuko and azula while still giving her a meaningful story that didn't involve just swapping one family for another. if only we'd gotten something similar in the comics but alas... bryke gonna bryke.

thanks for the ask! no worries about it being long, i thoroughly enjoy reading your thoughts <3

[the-genius-az]

About Mai's love for Azula: this is basically a defense of Mai.

Mai and Ty Lee are the only people that love Azula unconditionally (and Azula loves them, Zuko, Ozai and Ursa unconditionally, perhaps she loved Lu Ten too). Azula can burn the world down, Mai won't stop loving her.

But Mai is 15. She's 15 and spent the last year or so away from Azula, and Azula acted the same way, Mai didn't see what changed (what broke) in Azula in this period of time when Azula was all alone with Ozai. She's 15 and not an alpha, she doesn't understand how deeply, how intensely everything is for Azula. And she doesn't have the same experience with abandonment, with insecurity, she doesn't have the emotional maturity to see that she and Ty Lee are the people that can break what was left of Azula at that point.

Even if she did, her choice was between potentially breaking something in their relationship and definitely breaking Azula. She chose potential ("you miscalculated", and Azula was right. There's a chance the consequences of killing Zuko would lead to less trauma, less pain than fully breaking Azula's lack).

Loving someone doesn't mean you'll never hurt then. For all of Mai's love for Azula, she has so much power over Azula that it's almost impossible for Mai to not hurt her.

It's because Mai loves her that after the war, Mai's the second person to start constantly visiting her. (Aang's the first, he's the first to forgive her, and the first to listen to her, Aang's the first to see Azula the hurt child instead of Azula the "crazy" firebender.)

It's because Mai's love is unconditional that she keeps coming, and that she gives Azula space when it's too much. Mai's willing to take whatever Azula gives her, even if it's a "I don't want you in my life".

It's all a painful process. Mai's healing too (and with we go with an AU where there's a pup involved, Mai's also taking care of a child without her alpha. The Gaang helps, but none of them is what she needs – and as much as she wants to find a way of breaking Azula out and running away, she knows it'll only hurt Azula even more).

So, yes, Mai loves Azula. She's just another kid in the middle of a war making impossible choices.

- Ash 🔥🍌

About Mai's love for Azula: this is basically a defense of Mai.

Continue...☕

Mai and Ty Lee are the only people that love Azula unconditionally.

It's sad how the only people who love Azula unconditionally leave her, it's kind of... ironic.

Azula has consequences while Zuko doesn't.

(if we ignore the scar).

she doesn't have the emotional maturity to see that she and Ty Lee are the people that can break what was left of Azula at that point.

No one is mature enough not to break someone who was about to break.

Loving someone doesn't mean you'll never hurt then. For all of Mai's love for Azula, she has so much power over Azula that it's almost impossible for Mai to not hurt her.

You're so mature, Ash. 🚬

Having someone like Azula at your feet, who could literally burn the world down... is very dangerous, for the world or for her.

It's because Mai's love is unconditional that she keeps coming, and that she gives Azula space when it's too much.

What is it like when Mai visits you for the first time? I would like to read that.

Mai's also taking care of a child without her alpha.

Did you have your baby without your Alpha around? That must have been devastating, especially since she was so young (Regardless of the fact that she is...eighteen?), Mai must have felt very sad for Azula, especially since she has no idea what will happen to her puppy.

I bet Azula fell deeper into her depression when she had the instinct/thought that her cub was born, she thought she would never meet him...

and as much as she wants to find a way of breaking Azula out and running away, she knows it'll only hurt Azula even more.

What would have happened if I had? Run away with your Alpha and cub away from everyone.

I know that would ruin Azula because she needs medical help, and Mai just did a desperate thing and didn't think it through, and ran away with her family.

So, yes, Mai loves Azula. She's just another kid in the middle of a war making impossible choices.

Thanks, Ash.

Now I want to post something happy where Azula accidentally gets Mai pregnant and they live HAPPY, do you understand that, Ash? "Happiness" is a human thing, do you want me to explain it to you so you can stop putting a noose around my neck?

[applecherry108]

Hmmm…. Okay. One last post. My final verdict of Netflix atla is:

7/10, it’s not bad. It’s best viewed as supplementary to the original, not your first introduction to the series.

Did it make some questionable choices? Yes. Was it a one-to-one adaptation? Obviously not. But ffs, it’s not the end of the world. After going off the rails about Yue last night, I’m giving y’all a readmore this time bc I actually know it’ll be long.

I’m going to try to split this up into categories, so here we go.

The pros

Casting. Excellent casting. 10/10 no* notes. Everyone sounded the part, which, when adapting an iconic animated series imo, is the most important aspect. Think of the tmnt. Different cast each time, but the vibe of each turtle’s performance/voice remains consistent.

Costuming & set pieces. Again, fantastic visuals with just the right amount of realism.

Consolidation choices. I’ll say it. I thought they did an excellent job of condescending 20 22-minute episodes into 8 ~55-minute episodes. I thought centering so many different plots in Omashu was insanely clever and worked really well.

Azula. I liked the choice to have the audience meet Azula early. Letting us get a sneak peak into Ozai’s manipulation of her, as well as the overt reference to the Mother of Faces makes me think we might get Azula’s redemption shown on screen.

Children. Those Are Children. Those are children witnessing the horrors of war, which can be easily forgotten watching animated characters, but holy fuck those are CHILDREN.

Death. We’re straight up killing people on scream. Burning them alive even.

Iroh. I specifically want to shoutout Paul Sun-Hyung Lee. Mako made the role of Iroh legendary, a performance that’s difficult to follow and harder to capture correctly, but I think Lee absolutely crushed it. He wasn’t trying to perfectly imitate Mako, but that was the correct choice imo. He made it his own and successfully captured the essence of the character.

The mids/“that doesn’t make sense”

Bumi. Why’d they make him so cynical? Like, he was the opposite of how he should be. It’s not supposed to be up to Aang to teach Bumi that hopes still exists, it’s Bumi’s job to teach him that! Like that is the whole point of him being the one (1) person still alive that Aang knew.

Secret tunnel. An interesting enough solution to get Katara and Sokka to Aang, but at the same time…did that not move the tunnels into Omashu? Like it’s not a way in, it’s now a way into the heart of the dungeons? And sure, having it be a sibling bonding moment for Sokka and Katara was nice, but also…fuck you? The crystals ARE the answers. Iirc the badger moles didn’t sense emotions, they vibed to the music. I know I’m a kataang fan but even I cringed at the lights out kiss. But lights out should’ve still been the answer.

Did…did Aang never placate the forest spirit? Sure he planted the acorn but that didn’t like…do, the same thing this time. Speaking of spirits, they didn’t make Aang all that spiritual. He mentions having spiritual training with the monks plenty of times but he’s not actually like, attuned to them

Homeboy did not learn an OUNCE of water bending. Didn’t even try. I know he’s not on a time crunch (yet) but jfc practice with Katara at least??

Everything about Yue. I already went off on this, and it’s not really that bad, but it’s definitely mid. From her wonky wig, to her nonexistent ethereal moon eyes, to all the small changes that take the wind out of her tragedy—I’m a huge Yue fan. And while these changes are nicer for her, they’re a detriment to the overall narrative.

Wan Shi Tong. Having him just sorta…be there, and making it so only Aang can understand him is one hell of a choice, and does not fill me with faith that they’ll include the library in season 2, which is like…so pivotal on so many front, it’s truly the lynch pin of everything in book 2.

Ty Lee and Mai. They should not have been there. It’s one thing to show Azula getting manipulated by her dad, but legit why are the girlies here? Is it super funny to see these literal children and know they’re just a middle school mean girl clique? Absolutely. But the narrative purpose of Ty Lee and Mai is that they’re NOT there to support Azula.

The fucking… War tactics? Make no sense. You can’t “distract” from Omashu by laying siege to the North. These things are not connected or even associated. They are not allies. Forces were not diverted. Your logic isn’t logicing.

The cons (I’m super mad about)

None of the characters are angry enough. They nerfed Katara’s rage at being denied being taught by Paku. They striped Aang’s righteous spiritual fury (and placed it all on the ocean spirit? Hello??), and ohhh my godddd how did they take out most if not all of Zuko’s anger?? Where’s the brashness? The hotheadedness? The getting so worked up he stops thinking? He’s too fucking mellow. Did I enjoy him getting to be soft with Iroh? Yes. But god, at what cost? I know we as the fandom like to flanderize him as a soft autistic king, but that’s at least post book 3! Book 1 Zuko is a mess and a tragedy!

Speaking of Zuko, holy fuck they fucked up the Agni Kai so bad. I know I went off about this in a previous post but it bears so much repeating. He’s supposed to grovel for his father’s forgiveness, not be given and take the opportunity to fight back. So much of Iroh’s guilt is meant to come from not stepping in to stop his brother, not making a halfhearted attempt. OZAI IS NOT MEANT TO SHOW EVEN AN IOTA OF REMORSE. NEXT POINT—

OZAI. Let me just say, perfect casting. I love Daniel Dad Kim and I think he was the perfect choice, but it’s not his fault how Ozai was written/directed. WHY DOES HE LOOK REMORSEFUL SO MUCH? WHY DOES HE ACT LIKE HE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT ZUKO? WHY ON GODS GREEN EARTH DID THEY TRY TO HUMANIZE THE NARCISSISTIC MACHIAVELLIAN GOD COMPLEX VILLAIN! Part of what makes his downfall so perfect is that he’s shown mercy! That Aang DOESNT kill him! That he’s so thoroughly and remorselessly evil that literally everyone is saying “he needs to fucking die” and Aang spares him. He does not get to go out in a blaze of glory, he goes slowly, with a whimper! And all the poetic justice of that decision gets sucked out of you allow him even an INCH to show regret. A character willing to burn his son’s face off for being disrespectful is not a character that would regret that decision.

The gaang are barely coworkers. The heart of this show is the bonds between the core cast, and I never once felt like Aang and Katara/Sokka truly meant the world to each other. They say it. A lot of but they don’t show it. That chemistry is not there. It’s like watching goddamn Voltron and getting to the final season and thinking “this found family doesn’t even like each other.” The show spends so much time reinforcing the peripheral bonds of Aang and Zuko, and Katara and Sokka, that it drops the entire ball of Aang/Sokka/Katara.

*gestures vaguely to making everything about the moon spirit so fucking convoluted*It didn’t have to be a series of conveniences. You’re allowed to just fire punch a fish to death.

That’s all I can think of for now. I know there’s some HUGE cons but the worst of them are spread out. This is by far not the worst adaptation Netflix has ever put out. It’s certainly not OPLA (*chef’s kiss*), but it’s not Death Note either. It’s fine, really. It’s a pretty good watch. I do hope they finish out the series so we can finally, FINALLY have a live action Toph, but also because I’m so curious how the changes will compound. How differently these choice will go, and what new plots we could get from that. I could even see how we could get to fucking zukka from here, and while I absolutely do not think they’ll do that, it’s a fascinating possibility that’d be totally plausible from where we are. I want them to divert even further if they continue. I want this version to justify its existence in some significant way, even if it’s just “actually let’s redeem Azula during the conflict.”

But not Ozai. Fuck that. If they redeem Ozai, we riot.

[zuko-always-lies]

Zuko Centric-Morality and the Fire Nation

Often times it seems within ATLA’s narrative whether Fire Nation characters are “good people” is determined by how nice they are to Zuko or how nice they are to people who are nice to Zuko, not by any of their other actions.  This is definitely true with respect to fanon and within the the fanbase.

There are four Fire Nation characters which violate this rule, notably with three of them being from Book 1. These are clearly good people, and are presented as such, without having a real connection to Zuko or Iroh.  They are Piandao, Jeong Jeong, Shyu, and Chey.

However, beyond that a certain pattern becomes clear.  Iroh inflicted decades of imperial violence upon the world and isn’t being very proactive about stopping imperial violence in the present(he even gives Zhao good military advice during Zhao’s attempt to conquer the Northern Water Tribe!). He’s nice to Zuko, so from the beginning(long before his White Lotus connections were added) he was always presented as a “good” person, and the fanbase thinks of him as perfect.

Lt. Jee and Zuko’s crew become respectful and nice to Zuko once they find out about Zuko’s backstory, so they’re presented sympathetically and as “good people” from that point onward, and Lt. Jee tends to be positively depicted in the fanfics where he shows up.  Never mind that helping Zuko at that point involved inflicting imperial violence on world...

Zuko and Iroh loved Lu Ten, and I believe we’re supposed to believe that Lu Ten loved Iroh and Zuko back and was kind to them.  Lu Ten is framed entirely sympathetically, and in fanfiction he’s almost always presented as “a good person.” Never mind that he was an adult soldier who died fighting in an imperial war of aggression.

Ursa laughs at the thought of Ba Sing Se burning to the ground, and if we look at her original intended backstory, it becomes clear that she must have supported the war. The decision she made to murder Azulo and support Ozai coup is also responsible for the Big Bad of the series being in power, although she didn’t exactly have good choices there. Yet, because she was a good mother to Zuko, she’s almost always considered a good person by the fanbase, and the narrative frames her as angelic.

Ming, the guard who was nice to Iroh, is almost always presented positively in the few fanfics she shows up in(maybe one of the reasons she’s so kind to him is because she thinks very positively of his achievements as Dragon of the West? That would be an interesting take).

Mai commits treason to save Zuko’s life and is generally kind to him, so she’s “a good person” and not a morally grey character according to the narrative and fanbase, even though she voluntary joined up with Azula for her own enjoyment and regarded engaging in imperial conquest as an enjoyable hobby.  Definitely there are very few fanfics which grapple with what she did during the war and why she did it.

Ty Lee is always nice to Zuko, at least in their two canon interactions in the present. More importantly, she commits treason to protect Mai, who committed treason to protect Zuko. That marks her as “a good person” in the eyes of the narrative and fanbase, even though Ty Lee was clearly shown as having a blast helping Azula engage in imperial conquest.  Like with Mai, there are very few fanfics which grapple with what she did during the war and why she did it. Remember, the Dangerous Ladies conquered Ba Sing Se together(and with Zuko’s help, of course).

On the other side, we have Ozai and Zhao, who are mean and awful to Zuko and are painted as evil for it. In fact, the thing what really confirms their awfulness in the eyes of audience is how mean they are to Zuko, not any of the other heinous stuff they did.  We also have Azula, a younger sister who made the unforgivable mistake of being nearly as mean to her older brother as he was to her.

It’s funny, though. On one hand we have Zuko, Piandao, Jeong Jeong, Shyu, and Chey. These are people who had to fully come to terms with how awful the Fire Nation actions are and how their own actions aided the Fire Nation’s war of conquest as part of the process of becoming good people. If I’m generous, I might throw Iroh into this pile.

On the other hand, we have Lt. Jee, Lu Ten, Ursa, Ming, Mai, and Ty Lee.  These are “good people,” according to the narrative and particularly the fandom, because they were nice to Zuko or Iroh, even though they played their own roles in perpetuating the Fire Nation’s imperial war and never came to terms with it.

Dare I mention that many Azula “redemption” fanfics center entirely on her becoming a better sister to Zuko? Dare I mention that the head writer of ATLA’s ideas for an Azula redemption arc seems to center around Azula becoming a better sister to Zuko and a nicer person, not with her coming to terms with the Fire Nation’s imperialism?

It seems like ATLA’s narrative and fandom suffers from a case of deuteragonist-centered morality. Which is funny, because for the first two and a half seasons Zuko was a villain and “being nice to him” or “being kind to him” would frequently involve helping him do bad things, or at least allowing him to bad things.

[electronswrites]

@spocksbedsidemanner and I came up with some great headcannons about the dark!Lu Ten verse, and I thought they were too good not to share. With her permission, below I have transcribed our conversation, because I am too lazy to rewrite it into a cohesive narrative. I'm E, and she is S.

E: I've got this headcannon that in Fire Nation culture children are seen as extensions of their parents. Parents get the praise of their children's accomplishments, and children pay the price of parent's mistakes.

S: Yes, yes, yes, I think that makes total sense for them, given their characterization they seem very about their legacy and lineage, esp Ozai w/ usurping the throne, and when he declares himself the phoenix king w/ Azula as just an extension of himself as firelord. He doesn't really think of her as her own person. Probs didn't think of Lu Ten as more than a solid claim for Iroh for the throne.

E: Exactly! When Lu Ten died, a piece of Iroh died, making him "weaker" and "less worthy."

S: Children of the royal family? Having their own drive and humanity separate of their parents' legacy? In MY Fire Nation? It's more likely than you think 👀

Yesss exactly, I think that's why the fire nation was so readily accepting of Ozai's story that Azulon toootally revoked Iroh's title and bestowed it on Ozai, before kicking the bucket. Definitely totally happened exactly like that, don't question it, it's not like he had a son or a wife for his legacy anymore, shhhh… Like, it can't all just be fear of Ozai right? It must have made sense to the people somehow.

E: Pretty much. The line must continue. Iroh lost his son and the siege. Ozai has two children. It makes just enough sense to quiet dissenters. I imagine there's a famous play in the Fire Nation about a man who commits treason and his entire family is killed, even his newborn baby. Zuko tells the GAang about the play to explain why Iroh won't have a choice but to kill him.

S: Oooh yes, that'd make sense too. It's just the logical next step, it's a natural consequence of his father's treason being brought to justice, of course his uncle must eliminate him if he finds him, it's how it has to be. He would feel bad for his sister i bet, even if she did shoot him with lightning in that 'what if' you posted Poor Zuko 💜💜

E: "Yeah. Once the war is over my uncle will have to execute me publicly. It's tradition." *Shrug.* "Who wants tea?"

S: Omg lol. Yep. So straightforward.

Well, since it's inevitable, why spend unnecessary time struggling with it? Let's go train, he needs to give the Avatar as much time training in firebending as he can before they go defeat Ozai and his own execution afterwards. It was nice spending as much time as he gets with them in their group 💛

E: Katara: Thank you fellow members of Operation: Save Zuko From His Horrible Family. Today we'll be going over a few options.

Sokka: Option one, take him to the South Pole and keep him forever.

Toph: Option two, take him to the Earth Kingdom where it isn't so COLD and keep him forever.

Aang: Option three, keep him on Appa forever.

Katara: We have many good options.

S: What excellent options i am sure kidnapping Zuko to protect him will go entirely smoothly and have zero mishaps. I'm personally voting for Appa, the Goodest Boy. If he just lives on Appa forever he can get closer to the SUN which is a thing that he needs, isn't that wonderful?

E: Literally that's Aang's argument to him.

"But honor demands I be executed!"

"Fuck. Your. Honor."

"Did Aang just... curse?"

S: Aaaaaaaa yesssss!! I feel for the gaang, it'd take a lot to get him to not feel that he MUST be executed for justice to be served, he's so ready to blame himself as a failure already bc of Ozai's abuse >_<

E: Now I'm imagining them actually smuggling him to the South Pole after the battle before Iroh can arrive to apologize to/reassure him. Maybe they tell Iroh he died to keep him safe. Zuko goes hunting with Sokka, bending practice with Katara, penguin sledding with Aang. It's so fun and wholesome. Eventually the truth gets out and Iroh feels SO MUCH relief & guilt. He wonders whether it's better for Zuko to go find him and apologize or let him go so he can feel safe. 😭😭

S: Yes! They have no way of knowing that Iroh would never hurt Zuko, just Zuko's word on how things are in the Fire Nation, so it's just safer to somehow get information to Iroh that Zuko died in the battle. Wholesome found family hijinks ensue 💜💜

Either way once Iroh finds out i bet he would want to see him, if only from a distance, just to see him alive and happy playing in the snow with his friends! Could be the catalyst for some progressive new policies, and protections put in place to protect the lives of children and families of criminals. Never let there be a kid like Zuko again, thinking that they have to die bc of their terrible dad.

E: 🥺🥺 Now I'm imagining Iroh standing on top of a snow hill, just watching the village. Zuko is sitting with Katara and Sokka's family (Gran-Gran forgave him immediately) eating some octocaribou he helped kill. Aang is munching on the vegetarian sides while telling a story that's making Zuko laugh. His cheeks are rosy and full. He looks so comfortable and at peace.

Iroh remembers how tense Zuko was in Ba Sing Se, how his shoulders were always hunched up to his ears. Iroh's eyes fill with tears. His guilt chokes him.

He goes home and immediately starts drafting new laws. He also commissions a talented playwright to create a new version of that stupid play that pushes the moral of mercy and kindness.

S: YES 💜💜💜 *cries*

Aang being the Avatar, i bet they'd have to see each other at some official world peace functions or whatever at some point. Iroh doesn't want to outright say anything in case Zuko hears of it and feels obligated to come back if he doesn't actually want to (if he could ever forgive Iroh...), but he makes some comment to Aang about ~if~ Zuko were still alive, he would wish to tell him how much he loves him and wanted him to be happy, however that happiness would look for him, with Iroh in it or without…

E: *Gif of the tenth Doctor getting all melodramatic about radiation poisoning captioned as "I'm in a glass case of emotion!"* Iroh is in the Earth Kingdom for FL business when he's invited to dine with the prestigious Beifong family. While there he talks to Toph about his nephew. He gives a passionate speech about what a good person Zuko was, how honorable, how kind, ect… He talks about the new laws he passed to protect kids like Zuko. He gets really emotional at one point and starts crying. He feels a hand on his shoulder and looks up to see Zuko. At first he can't believe Zuko is really there. Then he pulls him into a hug and starts sobbing. He begs for forgiveness. Zuko starts crying too. This isn't what he expected. He says he loves his uncle and never blamed him. They hug and cry while the GAang watches.

[azucanela]

OMG I AM OBSESSED WITH YOUR WRITING YOU ARE DEFINITELY ONE OF THE BEST WRITERS ON TUMBLR NO CAP!!! i love ur zuko fics, and i wanted to request some sokka x reader!!! i want u to have complete creative freedom but i love how you write slowburn omg so some enemies to friends to lovers sokka content would be insaneeee! maybe reader is fire nation (zuko’s cousin/iroh’s daughter??) but joins the gaang after crossroads or something?

AFTER | SOKKA X READER

SUMMARY: Sokka didn’t expect the girl who held a knife to his neck to be the same girl he’d fall for. Y/N didn’t really expect to fall either. 

WORD COUNT: 10k

WARNINGS: injuries, implications of death, kisses, bloodbending, threats of bodily harm, death threats

A/N: time to give sokka the attention and hype he is OWED, also im SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONGGG but this is quite possibly my favorite Y/N. writing for sokka is hard tho. im not sure how much i like this tbh but its really long omg. also thank you!!!! i feel honored to be considered the best :D you are too kind

When she was younger, Y/N joined Azula’s little troupe of girls. Though she wasn’t some loyal little soldier for her to order around, no, Y/N never feared Azula. Nor did she follow her blindly. No, it had always been a struggle for power between the two. Even when her father was booted from the throne as the rightful heir. 

Losing her brother made her wonder if giving up like her father had in Ba Sing Se was the easy way out. Perhaps thats why she promised herself she would never give up. Maybe thats why she challenged Azula to... an unofficial duel when she’d heard her comment. Challenged her and won. 

The new Fire Lord’s pride and joy had lost against his niece, a shame. 

Y/N hadn’t thought much of it, but it probably would’ve explained why Fire Lord Ozai was rather pleased when Y/N had came to him and explained her intents to go alongside her father and cousin in banishment. She was, no matter how unlikely, another potential heir to the throne. And unlike Zuko, an actual threat. Sending her on a journey to find someone who’d been missing for a century was the best way to get rid of her. 

If Y/N was honest, she viewed the banishment as more of a vacation. All her life, she had to deal with banquets, politics, war tactics, all at such a young age. It was tiring, and dull, spending day and night in the palace doing such things. Now, she had the opportunity to travel the world, though her grumpy cousin was rushing them throughout each spot, it was still nice. Zuko certainly didn’t think so, given that they hadn’t found the Avatar yet, not that Y/N believed they ever would but, it is what it is.

A sigh escaped her as she sat, on leg propped up against the other on the deck of the ship, they had arrived in the Southern Water Tribe after seeing an odd light in the distance. Maybe it was cruel, but Y/N sincerely hoped they didn’t find the Avatar. She didn’t want her vacation to end, she didn’t want to return to the politics, and she didn’t want to deal with one of the most powerful people on the planet. Aside from her own desires, Y/N couldn’t help but disapprove of Zuko’s need to please his father, the man who’d hurt him beyond forgiveness.

She sincerely doubted her father approved either. Though their relationship had been strained for some time now. Y/N didn’t hate her father, she doubted that was possible, he was a kind man and a good father. Things between them simply felt... off. She liked to think she’d gotten over it, the initial jealously she felt when she discovered her father intended to join Zuko on his hunt for the Avatar.

When she’d found out from Fire Lord Ozai. 

Sometimes she wondered if her father even intended to say goodbye. But she wasn’t a fool, Y/N knew he had recently lost a son, they were both hurting and Zuko needed someone who wasn’t going to hurt him if he did something wrong. Though, Y/N saw him try to save the lives of the soldiers of the so-called great Fire Nation, not do something wrong. Regardless, Zuko needed a father figure, yes. But Y/N needed a father as she grappled with the death of her brother. 

Maybe she was just a little bitter about it. 

“Are you coming?” Zuko asked, his words coming out harshly.

Raising a brow, Y/N shook her head, “no. Don’t get too violent, though.” She warned, looking at him pointedly, “they’re a small tribe that’s going extinct.” 

Zuko rolled his eyes as he exclaimed, “that’s not my fault!”

Sitting up to face him, Y/N smacked him upside the head as she walked past him, “considering the royal family, which you are a part of need I remind you, ordered the genocide of every single Waterbender they had...” She paused, cracking her knuckles before turning to look back at Zuko, “I would say you that everyone here probably blames you for it by assosiation.” Y/N reasoned. She had never liked the history that her ancestors had, much less approved.

Taken aback, Zuko exclaimed, “you’re a part of the royal family too!”  Y/N was well aware of the circumstances surrounding his banishment, he’d tried to save lives, but war was the only thing that mattered to the Fire Nation it appeared. 

His attempt at defense simply earned him a shrug, “perhaps.” Y/N didn’t consider herself a member of the royal family, and she doubted her father did either. And no matter what Zuko thought, though he was royal by blood, his banishment severed his ties to the throne permanently.

Unless they happened to find the Avatar, though that wasn’t very likely, Y/N decided she would rethinking her life choices should the Avatar be here of all places, as she rested her forearms on the side of the ship and watched Zuko march down his soldiers.

She wasn’t going to tell him that the Southern Water Tribe didn’t have a military, much less benders. As previously mentioned, the genocide destroyed the benders, and the most of the soldiers in the village had headed off to fight in the war against the Fire Nation. Though her brow did raise as she watched him yank an old lady from the small crowd of people, Y/N straightened her back, preparing to get involved. 

Of course, a young warrior ended up running at her cousin, war paint and all as he attempted to attack. Key word being attempted. Watching him fall face first into the snow, Y/N realized he wasn’t a warrior, but a boy. The Avatar also happened to be a boy. A very, very young boy. Not a century year old Airbender. 

Y/N supposed it was time to start rethinking her life. 

Sokka didn’t know what he was supposed to do as he helped Princess Yue onto the Sky Bison. They needed to find Aang’s physical body, quickly, otherwise he wouldn’t be returning to the real world, and they happened to be fresh out of Avatars up until recently so that wasn’t really an option. Not when they needed the balance of the world to be restored immediately. 

Sighing, Sokka moved to get onto the Sky Bison, only to be yanked backwards, stumbling before having a knife pressed to his neck. “What the hell!” He exclaimed in shock, garnering the attention of the others that were already on Appa. Katara’s mouth gaping open at the sight of him as Princess Yue cried out in shock.

The knife against his neck is certainly uncomfortable, and he realizes that he probably should’ve stuck around Kyoshi Island long enough to learn how to get out a situation like this. “I’m coming with you. Someone has to make sure Zuko doesn’t do anything else dumb.” Comes a voice from behind him, and Sokka’s brows furrowed in confusion, who was this? And why were they trying to kill him? More importantly, how did they know Prince Zuko, the guy who had been chasing them since Aang had come out of that iceberg. Questions ran rampant through his mind, and he nearly forgot that his life was being threatened.

That was a luxury he couldn’t afford at the moment. 

Though he couldn’t see the person behind him, he could see Katara grimace at her demand, anyone associated with Prince Zuko likely had a similar end goal, to capture the Avatar. This wasn’t something they could allow, and Sokka recognized this as Katara asked, “why should we trust you?” Katara’s eyes soon met Sokka’s and he knew that no matter what he said, she would give into the girl’s demands for his safety. Sokka mentally scolded himself for failing to prevent this situation. 

The girl behind him scoffed, “unlike my dear cousin,” Sokka couldn’t help the shock that flooded him, cousin? As in Zuko is this girl’s cousin? Or did she mean someone else? He was kidding himself, there was no one else it could be. “I like banishment, it’s like a fun little vacation. I could care less about the Avatar.” The knife draws in closer to Sokka’s neck, nearly drawing blood, likely expressing the fact that she could care less if Katara believed her. Though Sokka doubted she didn’t care about the Avatar, he was one of the most important people in the world. 

But Sokka would likely die if she didn’t agree, or at least end up fatally injured. No matter how far Katara had come with her Waterbending, she hadn’t perfected it yet, and healing was only so effective. Sokka sincerely doubted she could beat the speed of this girl and her weapon considering the fact that she’d gotten the jump on them the first time around. Death wasn’t something he wanted, but anyone who knew Zuko couldn’t be trusted, much less someone who shared his blood. If he turned out... like that, Sokka didn’t want to imagine how this stranger ended up.

“Don’t try anything.” Katara warned, eyeing the girl wearily. Though it was an empty threat for the most part, in the air, there was little Katara could do against a foe. Though three, well two if you exclude the princess, against one seemed like favorable odds, this girl seemed talented in combat, even without bending.

She released Sokka, and he turned to see her beaming up at Katara, “happy to be doing business with ya.” Turning to Sokka, she looked him up and down, sizing him up before speaking, “be a gentleman and help me up?” Yeah, she was crazy. The pretty ones are always crazy. That, and she was Zuko’s cousin, it made sense. Though Sokka was fairly sure that she was joking, you could never be too sure.

“Who even are you?!” He exclaimed, exasperated and preparing to whip out his boomerang as he glared at her. He didn’t recognize her, but she’d likely been traveling with Zuko for quite some time now if they were related.

She just shrugged, “you can call me Y/N.” She got onto Appa with ease, Katara on guard a she eyed her, eyes piercing into her soul, Y/N raised a brow upon noticing this, “calm down. I wouldn’t have killed him.”

Katara inhaled deeply, trying to maintain patience as Sokka got into the saddle, “yip, yip.”

Y/N wasn’t really shocked when it turned out Azula was after them. Of course good old Uncle Ozai sent his most valuable asset to bring them back. Though some good at come of it, Zuko cut his ponytail, something Y/N had taken pleasure in bullying him over. Now they were on the run, in the very city that her father had tried to run to the ground all those years ago. 

Irony at its finest.

Tugging at the sleeves of her Earth Kingdom garments, Y/N sighed, walking through the streets of the city. She didn’t know where she was if she was honest, and standing in the beautiful plaza, Y/N wondered if maybe, it would be better if she never returned back to that horrid apartment. Her father was starting over, getting them all jobs at a tea shop, even Zuko had tried to move on, going out on a date with a girl. 

The Earth Kingdom was an odd place, but here, no one knew who she was. It wouldn’t be difficult to restart, alone. Without the expectations she’d been raised with. Fists balling up, Y/N exhaled slowly, turning a corner. There wasn’t graffiti in this part of the city, she realized, staring at the walls. Though there was an odd poster, squinting at it, she moved closer. It was a poorly drawn image of-

A Sky Bison. The same one she’d ridden on back during the Siege of the North, not that any others existed, the Sky Bison were a dying breed. Which could only mean one thing, the Avatar was in Ba Sing Se. 

"Have you seen him?” She heard from behind her. Y/N recognized the voice, it belonged to the boy she’d held at knife point, “the drawing isn’t my best but-”

Turning around she spoke rapidly, “don’t freak out.” This was a problem.

Y/N liked to think she was the least threatening of the Royal Family, aside from her father that is. Though they could both be lethal in their own ways, neither demonstrated the true extents of their power unless it was truly necessary. Maybe that’s why Y/N hoped that the boy, Sokka, she believed his name was, wouldn’t freak out.

Of course, he did. Dropping the posters in his hand, he opened his mouth, likely to scream, only for Y/N to practically tackle him. She slammed his body against the wall, covering his mouth with her hand as she glared at him. Sokka let out a grunt of surprise, immediately beginning to struggle in her hold, “calm down! I don’t have a knife this time around.” Y/N cried out, her voice a hushed whisper. Of course, what she said was a lie, she always had at least three weapons on her. Upon entering the city, she’d knocked that number down to only two weapons, much to her dismay and Iroh’s relief.

She felt him lick her hand, and she quickly removed her hand in disgust, while keeping the other planted on his shoulder, they both exclaimed, “what the hell!”

Sokka’s eyes narrowed at her, “look. I don’t wanna cause a scene, so I’m just gonna go-” He sighed when her hand remained on his shoulder, firmly holding him against the wall as he tried to move away only to be pushed back into the wall. “Or not.” 

“Look, you cannot go back to your little group and tell them that I’m here.” Y/N tried to choose her words carefully, if she didn’t need to, she didn’t want to suggest that her father and Zuko were also in the city. “I’m trying to have a permanent vacation, away from the Fire Nation and my crazy family, in Ba Sing Se.” She explained, slowly removing her hand from his shoulder, “think you can respect that?”

He looked at her wearily, during their last interaction, she’d made no attempts to actually injure them. And when she had the Avatar right in front of her, unlike Zuko, she hadn’t tried to kidnap him. Y/N had been honest last time, and chances were, she was being honest now. That didn’t make him feel any better about trusting her though. 

“How do I know you won’t follow me and kill me in my sleep?”

Y/N looked at him incredulously, “is that a joke?” She’d considered that too though, the possibility that he’d follow her back to her shared apartment and alert his friends of their location. Y/N refused to be the reason that they lost their new lives in Ba Sing Se, and had already decided to check into an inn for the night. 

Raising a brow at her, Sokka gestured for her to give him an answer, and Y/N stared at him momentarily, “well. How do I know you won’t kill me in my sleep?” Y/N retorted.

Sokka rolled his eyes at her, “I’m a good person.” Came his response.

“Debatable.” 

Sokka stared at her in disbelief, “I’m trying to save the world here!” He exclaimed, and Y/N wasn’t shocked by his response, her goal had been to fluster him and she had.

Tilting her head at him, Y/N replied, “sure.” Stretching her arms upwards, she waves to him, “don’t tell your friends I was here, and we’re good.” She began to walk further into the alley, towards the other side, “see you around.” If he was here, his friends were probably around the area as well, meaning she had to leave.

His mouth gaped open and he stared at her figure as she stalked off, pausing momentarily before groaning and running after her, ending up at her side. “What do you mean, sure?” Sokka asked, confusion laced in his tone. 

Y/N raised a brow at him. “What are you doing?”  She wanted to laugh at his reaction, though he was now following her liked a lovesick puppy, which could prove problematic. 

Crossing his arms he responded, “making sure you don’t do anything bad.” Sokka eyed her suspiciously, “because I am a good person.” He asserted.

“And I’m a bad person?”

She already knew he was going to say, ‘yes, yes you are.’ After all, she was from the Fire Nation, and Y/N had no doubt she’d done terrible things in her life, especially when she’d fallen into a dark place and taken on... less than favorable coping mechanisms. 

And he’s silent for a moment, leaving Y/N to wonder if he suddenly cares about the feelings of the enemy. Only for him to say, “in my experience... good people can do bad things.” 

That wasn’t what she expected. Y/N found herself stunned, speechless as she looked to Sokka, though he simply continued to walk alongside her nonchalantly. Quickly collecting herself, she looks away from him and to the nearby food stand, “that didn’t answer my question.” And as Sokka opened his mouth to likely continue his statement, Y/N realized she didn’t want to know the answer as she spoke, “you want food? I want food. Let’s get food.”

Sighing, Sokka followed her, “as long as you don’t poison me.”

Y/N’s brows furrowed at his comment, looking back at him, “do you-” A small laugh escaped her, “do you think I just carry around poison?” 

Sokka didn’t know why he swelled with pride when he made her laugh, “in case you run into your enemies, absolutely.” It was probably because she was the enemy, and it took real talent to make someone who hated you laugh. 

“How often do you think I run into my enemies and invite them to get food with me?” She asked, picking up a few things from the stand, before heading over to pay.

Frowning, Sokka watches her pay, “I thought we were bonding over,” he paused to take a meat bun from her and shove it into her face dramatically, “meat! Yet, I’m still your enemy.”

Y/N simply shrugged, “this is a one time thing.”

It was not a one time thing. 

Sokka found himself ‘coincidentally’ running into Y/N, more and more often. She’d be walking through the streets of the upper ring about once a week, though she had started walking through the streets of the inner ring of Ba Sing Se far more frequently than normal in recent weeks. He’d been meaning to ask her why, maybe she’d also grown accustomed to their meetings and started to come around more. During their meetups they’d talk, about things other than the war, which was a conversation difficult to come by with the others. Though he cared for his friends, talking to Y/N felt different, a good different. She wasn’t overbearing like Katara, or mean like Toph, but she also wasn’t as passive as Aang. 

It was odd. Knowing someone who had once held a knife to your neck in a more friendly way. Though, if Sokka was honest, he didn’t trust her, and she likely didn’t trust him either. They’d both taken precautions due to the mistrust between them, not that be blamed her. At the end of the day, they were still on opposing sides, kind of. Y/N had never seemed to care about finding the Avatar, but she was certainly loyal to her family above all else.

She’d demonstrated that in the Northern Water Tribe. 

Sokka was the same, if he had saw an inkling of betrayal as a possibility, he wouldn’t hesitate to tell the others. Their safety was his priority at the end of the day, and Y/N didn’t owe him anything, just like he didn’t owe her anything. Maybe that was the beauty of it all. But for now, everything remained peaceful, calming, and simple.

Of course, all good things must come to an end. 

Katara had oddly disappeared after Aang arrived with news of his vision. And then, as though things couldn’t get any weirder, Iroh arrived, Y/N’s apparent Father Iroh. Toph seemed to know him well, which certainly came as a shock to Sokka and Aang. “I need your help, Prince Zuko has been captured.” He explained, opening his mouth to continue only for Sokka to interrupt. He couldn’t help it when his brows furrowed in both confusion and frustration, Y/N had never suggested that the rest of her family was here.

“Are you crazy? You guys were trying to capture Aang not to long ago!” Sokka pointed out, throwing his arms outwards, “why not get Y/N to help?” She was certainly capable of raiding the palace and retrieving her cousin.

At this comment, Iroh’s face darkened, “we were separated in the palace. I’m unsure if they managed to capture her or if she escaped.” Oh. So that’s what he was going to say. 

Sokka couldn’t help it when his face dropped, looking to Iroh he exclaimed, “well- why didn’t you lead with that!” Pushing past Aang who had been prepared to start giving a speech on why they should assist Iroh, only for his mouth to gape open as Sokka headed for the door.

“Why are you so eager?” Toph asked as they began to follow him out the door.

He faltered, quickly trying to think up a good excuse as he replied, “no reason.” 

Toph’s frowned, “I can tell when you’re lying Sokka.” She reminded him. 

“We can discuss this later!” He exclaimed, flustered. “Let’s go.”

Y/N had contemplated killing Zuko before. 

It had never really been serious, as far as she would’ve gone was maybe injuring him badly enough that she got her point across. But at the end of the day, she protected Zuko to the best of her ability, and tried to keep his mind from being poisoned by the Fire Nation ideals that she’d once lived by unquestionably. 

Now she actually wanted him dead. He stood alongside Azula, who had offered Y/N her spot in her little gang hours ago, though she’d rejected the offer much to Azula’s chagrin. But she seemed sure that Y/N would accept some time soon. Perhaps it was because Zuko had betrayed her father and left him to the Dai Li. 

He had betrayed her father, the man who had practically raised both of them. 

Y/N had a violent past, she wouldn’t deny, and she liked to think that she was past all that. But looking at the situation ahead of them, watching the Waterbender, Sokka’s sister, Katara, cry over the body of the Avatar, she realized that maybe violence was the answer. Just this once. 

So, when she hopped in front of them, she had a plan. A violent one. 

“Pull yourself together.” She snapped at Katara, who looked up at her, bloodshot eyes and tears streaming down her confused face, “he’s getting out of here alive. But first, I need you to soak them.” Y/N gestured towards the troops coming towards them, Zuko and Azula accompanying them. Katara opened her mouth, and Y/N didn’t care what she was going to say as she ordered, “now!” 

Katara’s brows drew together as she released the Avatar’s head onto her lap, raising her hands to use the waterfall behind them to successfully drench the soldiers, who groaned at the discomfort but pausing temporarily before they continued towards them. “What did you think that would accomplish? What a pitiful-” Azula’s taunts were paused when she watched as Y/N drew her hands together, inhaling deeply, and Azula stopped her movement. “That’s not possible.” 

Suddenly, lightning was between Y/N’s fingertips, and she extended her hand into the large puddle of water that Katara had created. Y/N had learnt to bend lightning soon after she’d mastered Firebending, from her father, he’d insisted that she only use it when necessary, so she kept her ability to herself. This was necessary, she decided, hand touching the water and sending a shock throughout everyone with it, successfully putting all of the soldiers out of commission. 

Unfortunately, Azula recognized the signs of lightning bending, and withdrew alongside Zuko, and the two were now coming to attack from above at a rapid rate. Y/N whipped her head around to see Katara, mouth gaped open at all the fallen soldiers. “You two need to leave, I’ll hold them off.” She began to move to create another strike of lightning

“No.” Called out another voice, and Y/N whipped her head over to see it was her father, Dai Li agents likely nearby as he moved in front of Y/N. “You all need to leave. Take Y/N with you, she will help the Avatar reach his destiny.” Y/N wanted to laugh at that, how could he be so sure? If the boy did die, then this would all be for nothing

Y/N scoffed, “are you crazy?” She moved closer to her father, “unlike Zuko, I’m not leaving you.” She exclaimed, exasperated. 

Iroh simply smiled at her as he said, “I’m proud of you, Y/N.” 

Sokka knew he seemed dumb. He knew how others perceived him, as the ‘extra’ member of Team Avatar, the useless one, because he lacked bending. At the end of the day, Sokka was the brains of their operations, he was observant, and this helped him develop plans that most people would never even consider.

Not that anyone else knew, but Sokka was the only one that had actually interacted with Y/N prior to what happened in Ba Sing Se. Sure, they’d all met once or twice in the past, but Sokka had a knife to his throat then, so Y/N probably didn’t seem that appealing to the others. And he doubted they understood how odd it was that she was so... apathetic. Normally she’d tease, and joke alongside him but now? 

It was odd, and nobody else could notice the shift in her personality but him, and he was concerned. Y/N had lost her father, and been betrayed by her cousin, and she had yet to talk about it, at all. Sokka liked to think that they were close enough to discuss such things, and he’d tried to get some sort of emotion out of her, the key word being tried. 

Despite her apathetic personality, the others had warmed up to her for the most part. Apparently Toph had met Y/N in the past, during the time she’d run off and encountered Iroh. So, the two got acquainted fairly fast, Aang was happy to have a Firebender, and insisted that once he was back to full strength, and they’d found a better place for practice, he’d learn Firebending from her. Y/N had agreed but it was clear Aang wasn’t as excited as he was acting, Sokka figured he still associated the time he hurt Katara with Firebending.

Katara had been far less weary of Y/N than Sokka had expected, but given what Katara had told him when she’d first joined, that made sense. Y/N was a powerful Firebender who had betrayed her entire nation to help save Aang’s life, and though Katara didn’t approve of everything she’d done in the past, she tolerated her. Which was better than nothing in Sokka’s book.

They were currently camped out in the woods beside a Fire Nation town, everyone had scattered to prepare for the few nights they’d likely stay in the area. Katara had gone to the town with Toph and Aang, in search of supplies and food, while Sokka and Y/N set up the camp and collected wood to help start a fire. Y/N had insisted that she could maintain the fire without any wood, but Sokka viewed this as an excuse to get her alone and force her to discuss her feelings.

“So...” Sokka mumbled, looking to her as she leaned down to pick up another piece of wood, “lovely weather we’re having.”

Y/N turned to him, raising a brow before nodding, “yeah.” It was clear she wasn’t entirely paying attention the nonsense that was coming out of his mouth as he tried to get her to listen to him. 

Sokka grabbed another piece of wood, “how have you been?”

Tilting her head at him in confusion, Y/N brought another piece of wood into her arms, “fine.” Looking up at the dimming sky she frowned, “we should start heading back to that spot we’d found earlier.” Y/N turned to begin walking, and Sokka struggled to match her pace.

His brows furrowed in frustration as he stared at her, the light of the falling sun filtering in between the trees and onto them. Y/N seemed to glow as she maneuvered between the trees, “how have you been sleeping?” Even Sokka sounded confused at the question he asked, but he didn’t know how to broach the topic with Y/N.

She simply paused her movement, turning to him, he stumbled slightly due to the abrupt stop, and met her eyes. “Just ask what you wanna ask, Sokka. Stop dancing around whatever it is.” Y/N sounded tired, looking to him expectantly as she awaited his question. Sokka scolded himself for being so obvious that she’d noticed something was up. 

He sighed, “are you okay?” And she opened her mouth to respond but he continued, “actually? You can say that you are okay, and not mean it. Y/N you lost your dad and were betrayed by your cousin, and you-” Sokka grimaced as he met her eyes, “you haven’t been the same since you joined us.”

Y/N is silent for a moment, then her eyes were piercing into his, “how would you know that I haven’t been the same?” She asked, turning away to continue walking back to the chosen campsite, “it’s not like you know me.” His statement had set her off it appeared, but her response had easily done the same for him. 

“Are you serious? Not like I know you?” He scoffed, jogging to catch up with her, “I know that you do whatever it takes to protect the people you care about. I know that you really like Earth Kingdom food because most of the food within the Fire Nation is on the spicier side.” Y/N didn’t seem to be listening, and the camp was in sight, but Sokka continued, “I know that you get really cold easily unless you regulate your body temperature with your Firebending. And I know that you can’t pick a favorite color because you are very indecisive.” 

Aggressively, Y/N dropped the sticks into the center of the campsite as they arrived, turning to him, “you can stop now.” Her voice was almost taunting as she spoke, sarcastic in a way. 

Sokka simply followed suit, placing the firewood in the center and facing her head on, “and most importantly, I know what it’s like to lose someone.” He takes her hand, and Y/N practically growls at the contact, attempting to yank her hand out of his grasp, she ends up pulling him closer towards her. Sokka clumsily topples onto her, knocking the both of them down into the dirt with a grunt. His forearms preventing him from crushing Y/N under his body weight as he held himself up, his eyes meet hers.

Y/N finds herself glaring daggers at him, while Sokka finishes his little speech with, “you don’t have to deal with this alone.”

And in that moment, he looks at her, really looks at her. And she’s really pretty.

Y/N opens her mouth to say something to him, only for someone else to begin speaking, “are we interrupting something?” Toph. Looking up, Sokka sees the others as well, Aang looks rather smug as he wiggles his eyebrows at Sokka, and Katara gives him a pointed look, likely disappointed that he’d fraternizing with the former enemy. He can’t help it when he feels his cheeks warm, and before he can move to get off Y/N, she’s launched him off of her, and he’s flat on his back on the ground. Toph laughs at the actions, bending a seat of earth for herself and the others before falling backwards into it, the girl seems to wish she had popcorn as she watched the moment unfold.

“No.” Y/N mumbles, bringing herself to her feet and dusting herself off. “I’ll be in my tent if you need me.” She retreats into one of the tents they’d set up earlier, and Sokka groans as he lets his head fall backwards into the ground and runs his hands over his face.

When he removes them, Aang is standing over him, along with Toph, while Katara organizes the firewood. “So... did we interrupt something?” Toph asked.

Sokka just sighs, his plan failed. This time at least. Next time, his goal would be to make her laugh, to make her smile. At least she had expressed some emotion, anger was better than nothing.

Anger seemed to turn to annoyance, since Y/N doesn’t leave her tent until nightfall and Sokka can’t help but wonder what was entertaining enough to keep her in there for all that time. When she does exit, she uses her Firebending to light a fire, and uses the firewood they’d collected earlier to ensure it stays alight. The rest of the group was seated around the center of the campsite, and Sokka wonders if she’s going to go back to her tent when she realizes the only open seat is next to him. 

She doesn’t return to her tent though and he’s grateful. Though she sits as far as possible from him on the bench that Toph had created, half-heartedly listening to the things that the others are saying. Y/N can feel herself getting cold and can’t help the resent that bubbles up in her chest as she recalls what Sokka send earlier. Exhaling deeply, a puff of blue fire escapes her mouth and Y/N feels nauseous at the small reminder of Azula. 

This catches Sokka’s attention, though the others are too enraptured in the story Aang was telling, Sokka turned to her, “cold?” He asked, leaning to the side to grab a blanket from his small pack, he offers it to her.

Y/N knew she wouldn’t be able to regulate her temperature when she fell asleep, but accepting the blanket from Sokka felt like... it felt like accepting him and everything he had said about her. So, when she doesn’t take the blanket from his hands, Sokka sighs, moving to put it back, only for Y/N to snatch the blanket from his hand and wrap it around herself begrudgingly.

This was her way of apologizing, moving closer to Sokka on the small bench she huffed as she pulled the blanket tighter around herself and turned her attention to Aang. She’d been mean, she wouldn’t deny, but what was she supposed to say? Exhaling deeply, Y/N closes her eyes temporarily, allowing drowsiness to consume her for a moment, before looking back to Aang.

It isn’t until Sokka feels a weight fall onto his shoulder midway through his own story that he realizes Y/N has fallen asleep, his mouth gaping open in shock as he pauses his words. He quickly shakes off the shock, cheeks warming as he turns back to the rest of the group, who all regard him curiously. Aang once again wiggles his eyebrows and Sokka ignores the action, continuing his story. Though he’s more weary of his vivid hand movements in fear of awakening Y/N, and noticeably quiets his voice. Sokka finds himself wishing he was Y/N as he listens to Katara’s Water Tribe horror story intently, after all, this is the most peaceful he’s ever seen her. 

It doesn’t last long, because she’s soon startled awake, hand going to her side where she keeps her dagger as she and Toph speak simultaneously, “someone’s coming.”

As an old woman emerges from the shadows, Sokka practically holds Y/N down to keep her from lunging at her and attacking as the woman speaks. And of course, Y/N’s distaste for the woman doesn’t stop there, even when she invites them into her home, though Sokka doesn’t blame her. She’s a suspicious woman. 

It’s not until he and Aang are attacking each other that Sokka regrets preventing Y/N from attacking the old woman when she had the chance. Katara is struggling to move, and Sokka can only hope that Toph and Y/N return from the cave soon as he yelps upon nearly making contact with Aang, the old woman laughing cynically. Sokka watches as she shifts, hand outstretching behind her, “don’t think I forgot you little Firebender.” 

His eyes widen in both shock and fear as Y/N’s body is suddenly thrown onto the ground in front of him. Her body rising almost mechanically, back to a stand, Sokka realizes there’s lightning at her fingertips, the woman manipulating her body to aim for Sokka. “A shame you’ll be the woman to end your friend’s life isn’t it,” She’s making eye contact with Katara who is crying out and begging for her to stop.

Sokka can see the panic in Y/N’s eyes as the her hands aim towards him, “Y/N. It’s okay.” He calls out her, in an attempt at assurance that he doubts does much to soothe her. “It’s okay.” He repeats, squeezing his eyes shut as he prepares for the lightning to hit him. Except it never does, instead, it goes upwards into the sky as Y/N cries out in pain, having moved her body despite the woman blending her blood. 

She had overpowered Hama’s bloodbending, something that clearly came as a shock to the old woman as Y/N turned around sluggishly, staring at the shocked old woman as blue fire left her mouth once more, chest heaving. Sokka could feel the weight on his bones slowly disappear, leaving behind an ache, the woman likely intended to focus her abilities onto Y/N, who was struggling to walk towards her. 

“Scared?” Y/N asked, looking up at the woman, “you should be.”

The next time that Team Avatar feared Y/N. She was face to face with Zuko.

He’d approached them as they sat in the Air Temple. And Y/N had practically jumped out of her seat, preparing for a fight as lightning seemed to dance at her fingertips. Though Sokka knew better than to allow her to attack her cousin, and grabbed her arm. “Can you guys handle this?” He asks the others, maintaining eye contact with Y/N. The others looked to them understanding what would likely occur if Y/N was allowed to be involved.

Zuko wouldn’t walk away from that fight. 

“We got this Sokka.” Katara assured, pure hate in her eyes as she stared Zuko down, and Sokka couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he should remove both of them from the situation. 

Sokka’s hand found Y/N’s, and it was almost burning hot, a sparks seeming to fly between them, he pulls at her hand. Y/N hesitantly allows him to drag her away, though she turns back momentarily to meet Zuko’s eyes. “I’ll kill you later, cousin.” She promises, and her voice is scarily calm. “For my father.” The condescending tone in her voice and the wince Zuko has in response is enough for Sokka to know that her intent was to hurt him emotionally if she couldn’t do it physically, and it was clear she had been successful.

Inhaling deeply, Y/N closes her eyes temporarily as Sokka brings her into one of many abandoned rooms in the temple, sitting her down onto a bed before kneeling down in front of her. “Are you good?” He asks. 

“That’s a stupid question.” Comes her response.

Sokka tilts his head at her, giving her a smile, “well I’m a stupid guy.” 

He’s rubbing gentle circles in her hand as she shakes her head, a small laugh escaping her, “no you’re not.” Her voice cracks and she cringes at the sound so she clears her throat, staring at the wall beside her. Sokka can’t help the way his heart swells at this comment, because for once he doesn’t feel like the comic relief, he doesn’t feel like the side character. Though he appreciates the rest of Team Avatar and loves them all dearly, at times, they didn’t take him seriously. 

Y/N makes him feel important. Though he doesn’t say this as he looks at her, clearly shaken by Zuko’s sudden appearance, she speaks once more, “are you sure I can’t kill him?”

This time Sokka laughs, shaking his head, “I’m sure Katara would love to help you with that, but I doubt Aang would approve.” 

Y/N nods slowly, letting out a shaky breath as a tear escaped her, though she quickly wiped it away and looks to the ground. “You wanna sit with me?” She asks, patting the spot on the bed beside her. 

“Sure.” He replies softly, moving to sit on the bed with her. One he’s situated, Y/N leans her head onto his shoulder, and Sokka finds his hand wrapping around her waist. And they sit like this for several moments. 

Taking a deep breath, Y/N removes her head from his shoulder and looks to him, “thank you.”

Sokka raises a brow, “for what?”

“Being here.” She replies, bringing her hand to move a hair from his face, Sokka watches her actions intently and in awe. “With me.” Her hand remains on his face for longer than necessary, and when she moves to let it fall back into her lap, Sokka’s hand cups hers. 

They’re both silent when Sokka’s hand releases hers, and his other hand leaves her waist, both coming to her face. The look in his eyes tells her enough, and she nods to him. 

The kiss felt like the first breath of fresh air in a while. Maybe it’s because it had been long overdue, but as Y/N brought her hands to his arms to pull him closer, she felt her head empty of all thoughts. 

He pulls away momentarily, their foreheads resting against each others, he can see her eyes are shut, lashes pressed against her cheeks. “I hope,” Sokka pauses, and her eyes flutter open to look at him, he can feel his cheek warm as he continues, “I hope I can always be here, with you.” It’s a confession in its own way, and Sokka understands the weight of his words as he watches her reaction. 

She opens her mouth, likely to reply, be closes it quickly, and Sokka can’t help the panic that floods him. Though this is quickly replaced by the feeling of her lips on his as her hand collides with his chest and pushes him down on the bed, earning a grunt from him. 

“Guys, Zuko is gone-” Y/N throws herself onto the floor as she rolls off Sokka, and he sits up immediately. “Am I interrupting something now?” Aang asked, giving Sokka a look.

Y/N clears her throat, “no.” Sokka couldn’t help it when his brows drew together at this comment, bringing a hand to his temple as he sighed, and Y/N stood, dusting off her thighs as she mumbled, “see you guys later.”

She started avoiding him after that. 

When Zuko joined the group, she’s also made a point to avoid him no matter how hard he tried to apologize to her. And of course, when Sokka first showed him to his room they had a... chat. To put it simply, Sokka had threatened him. 

Just a little. 

“So yeah, here it is, your room.” Gesturing to the room, Sokka gave Zuko a tight lipped smile, watching him wearily. 

Zuko’s back was to him as he placed his stuff down, “thank you.” He said, expecting that to be the end of it, upon hearing the door close he assumed Sokka had left.

When he turned around, Sokka was still very much there. “Let’s have a chat, Prince Zuko.” It didn’t go unnoticed by Sokka how the boy grimaced at the use of his title, though that didn’t stop him from moving forward and placing a hand on Zuko’s shoulder a little too tightly. “Y/N does not want to speak with you.”

“I know,” Came his reply. “Thank you for keeping her from... killing me. The other day. I intend to apologize-”

A small laugh escaped Sokka, “next time. I won’t stop her.” This was for multiple reasons, one of which being that Y/N was avoiding him, and the other being that he wished to respect her and her feeling about Zuko. “And you need to respect her wishes. One of those wishes being, avoiding you. Until she approaches you, leave her be.”

Zuko’s brows furrowed at this comment, “she’s my cousin. You can’t expect-”

“Leave. Her. Be.” 

Zuko became silent, nodding slowly as he looked to Sokka curiously. 

And now, to avoid some of his problems and solve some of them, Sokka ended up running away in a hot air balloon with the person he related to the most at the moment, and the person he threatened rather recently. Zuko. Both of them were being avoided by someone important in their lives, and they both had slightly crazy younger sisters. Though their conversations were certainly... odd.

“My first girlfriend turned into the moon.”

Zuko looked at him for a moment before saying, “that’s rough, buddy.” There was silence after this, a temporary lapse in conversation that Zuko seemed determined to fill. “So...” Zuko mumbled. “You and my cousin huh.” 

It wasn’t a question, Sokka realized this, but he disregarded it as he responded, “what about us?” Playing dumb would hopefully get him to drop the subject. 

Zuko raised his brows at Sokka, “us?” 

Scolding himself, Sokka realized he’d unintentionally dug a deeper hole for himself when he said this as he tried to avoid Zuko’s gaze. “Not really.” Sokka replied, “she’s avoiding me too.” 

Nodding, Zuko gave him a tight lipped smile, “what did you do?”

“I wish I knew.” Sokka could only make assumptions about why Y/N had begun to avoid him, but at the end of the day was confused over it.

He really needed to talk to her. 

As the day of Sozin’s Comet drew closer, Sokka had started trying to talk to Y/N more and more, she’d keep basic conversation but whenever he tried to address... the kiss, Y/N would shut down the conversation. And now, it was the day of Sozin’s Comet, and they established that Zuko and Katara would take on Azula, Aang would take on Ozai, and the rest of them would go after the army that was heading for the Earth Kingdom. 

It seemed that Sokka intended to try to speak with her once more as he approached her while she strapped a dagger to her thigh. “We need to talk.” He said, plopping down onto a rock beside her.

“About battle strategy?” She asked, looking to him, “I had some ideas.”

Play dumb, play dumb, play dumb.

Sokka’s brows furrowed as he shook his head, “about the kiss, Y/N.” Y/N tried to hide her shock at his forwardness, he’d never been this blunt before, during his previous attempts to discuss this with her. Turning to him, she prepared to speak but he silenced her, “you’re going to listen this time.” Grimacing, he looked away, towards the horizon. “I don’t know what’s going to happen today. And if something goes wrong, I need you to know-”

“Nothing is going wrong.” Y/N stated firmly. “Nothing. So, we can have this conversation after.” 

Sokka sat up from his place on the rock, moving in front of her, “there’s no way to guarantee that Y/N.” 

Squeezing her eyes shot, Y/N took a deep breath, “I’ll make sure nothing happens to you guys.” She promised, “and I swear we can talk about this after.” She grabs onto his hands, holding them in hers as she looks away. Y/N knew why she was avoiding it. He was right, it was totally possible for one of them to die, and a relationship in the midst of a war was the worst possible idea. After would be better, or at least that’s what she’d told herself.

The pleading look in his eyes almost burns through her resolve as he asks, “will we?” It almost hurts that he doesn’t believe her, but Y/N can’t blame him.

“We need to go.” Her voice was almost a whisper as she releases his hands. Even if she wanted to continue discussing the subject, they needed to begin the battle soon. 

Sokka frowned though, “if you don’t want this, just tell me and I’ll-” He sighed, bringing a hand to his temple. “I’ll stop bothering you.”

Y/n began to shake her head, “you are never a bother to me I just-” Sighing, she looked into his eyes, “I want this. I do, I’m just scared, and we’re in the middle of a war Sokka!” She exclaimed, the words spilling out of her mouth before she can stop them.

“You think I don’t know that?” Sokka cried out, exasperated. “Y/N I’m so scared that something is going to go wrong, and I’ll never get to tell you that I-”

“Don’t say it.” She interrupts, fear in her veins as she watches him.

So, he didn’t. 

If she didn’t feel like she had something to come back to, maybe that would make it easier. Sacrifices would have to be made to reach victory, and Y/N wouldn’t hesitate to be the one to make them if it meant the others survived. They deserved to see the new world, the world of peace, prosperity, and freedom, the one that came after all this.

Y/N could feel the power flooding her as the comet drew closer, pure and raw power. Though this accompanied by her skill would likely help her in the upcoming battle, dozens of Firebenders with half her skill and the power of the comet was something she was definitely worried about. Overpowering them all was unlikely, and in the best case scenario, Y/N could slow them down. But she wasn’t a fool. In war, there were always casualties, and she was prepared to become one of many. 

Then there were the thoughts in the back of her mind. Though nobody had discussed it, the throne could potentially go to her after all this, and that wasn’t really something Y/n was looking forward to debating. Perhaps it was selfish, but Y/N didn’t really care. Was it wrong of her to dream of escaping the shackles that bound her to the Fire Nation since birth, to leave behind the politics and the lies and the pain of it all?

Maybe. 

Sokka knew Y/N had a lot going on in her mind right now. And he knew she was scared of what was to come, and no matter how much it hurt him, he respected her wishes to wait until this battle was over to discuss whatever it was between them. He knew where he stood. But now that Suki had left them, he found himself beginning to regret it. On the top of the Air Balloon, Toph was practically blind, and Sokka could do little in terms of long distance, aside from his boomerang. Which left Y/N to do her best to defend them from the Firebenders that had begun to swarm them. 

“Go!” She cried out, knocking one of the Firebenders off the balloon. “Take out the rest of the fleet.” Y/N dodged the oncoming flames, intercepting them with her own to prevent the others from getting burned.

But Sokka wasn’t going to let anyone die today. “You still owe me a conversation,” came his response, looking down at the bridges on the Air Balloon. “Jump!” Sokka cried out as another ball of fire rushed towards them, he took Toph by the hand and hoped that Y/N followed. 

Thankfully, she did, he took notice of her as he fell towards the bridges extending from the giant hot air balloon. They were all screaming as they fell, and Y/N grunted in pain as she hit Sokka, tumbling over him and off the edge, yelping as her hands grasped the bridge, with little leverage. Toph similarly went over the side, her screams filling Sokka ears as Y/N released one of her hands from the bridge and caught Toph’s wrist. 

Panic flooded Sokka as he scrambled to the edge of the bridge, Y/N’s hand slipping, “Sokka! Hurry up-” Another scream rips out of her as she loses her grip on the edge.

Nearly falling as he grabbed her hand, his chest heaved. “It’s gonna be okay.” He promised, looking into Y/N’s panicked eyes. “It’s gonna be fine Toph!” He cried out to her.

“Yeah, right!” She called out into the wind, the fear evident in her voice despite the sarcastic nature of the comment. “Y/N I don’t wanna die.” 

Y/N almost can’t hear her, too focused on maintaining her grip on both Sokka and Toph’s hands. She exhales slowly, eyes falling on the soldiers that are beginning to make their way down to them as she replied, “you’re gonna be fine, I promise. I’m gonna get you to Sokka, okay?” 

Sokka was internally panicking, he wouldn’t be able to fight back against the incoming soldiers if both his hands were occupied, but his grip was faltering and he couldn’t pull them both up. Grimacing as he looked down at the two, he nodded in agreement to Y/N signaling that he was ready. It made sense in his mind, she would be able to use her free hand to Firebend, which was far more useful than anything he could provide at the moment. 

Inhaling deeply, Y/N looks to Toph, “Toph, I need you to climb up my body, and grab Sokka’s free hand, okay?”

Toph’s death grip on her hand seems to grow stronger, tears brimming her eyes, “I- I don’t think I can.” 

Y/N shakes her head at these words, “yes, yes you can. Bring your legs up to grab my lower body, and then make your way up, okay? Like a tree.”

Toph shook her head rapidly, “I’ve never climbed a tree!”

Sokka couldn’t help but grow impatient as he exclaimed, “there are soldiers coming, Toph please!” His hand was growing sweaty as he used his free hand to throw his sword at one of the oncoming soldiers, effectively knocking him down. 

Y/N felt her arm swing slightly, and watched as Toph blindly extended her legs, finally managing to wrap them around her legs. She released Y/N’s hand and wrapped both arms around her lower body, slowly inching upwards until her legs were around Y/N’s waist and her arms were on her shoulders. “Good job, now reach up, as far as you can, and Sokka’s gonna grab your hand.” Y/n instructed using her free hand to pat the hand that Toph had wrapped around her.

Y/N could feel the young girl’s tears fall onto her shirt as she extended her hand upwards, Sokka’s freehand moving as far down as possible. The strain on Y/N’s body slowly becoming too much as tears leaked out of her eyes.

Maybe it would be better to just... let go.

She quickly shook off those thoughts, Toph, Toph, Toph, she couldn’t do anything brash until Toph was safe. Y/N watched as Sokka’s hand narrowly missed Toph’s. “Sokka, please.” Y/N whispered, looking to him with pleading eyes.

Maybe it was the desperation he heard in her voice that moment, or maybe it was pure luck, put his fingers grazed Toph’s and he latched on, extending his arm as far as possible and gripping her hand. “Now let go of me, and Sokka’s gonna pull you up, okay?” Y/N explained, looking to Sokka, his eyes meeting hers. Y/N quickly realized he couldn’t lift either of them up. Just like her, this was straining his muscles, and Sokka was struggling to keep both of them up. 

“Sokka.” She said, demanding his attention, his eyes met hers, filled with fear as Toph relieved Y/N’s body of her weight and evened out the distribution on Sokka’s body. “You can’t fight back with both your hands taken.” More tears were streaming down her face as she spoke, “a-and... you can’t pull us both up.” Sokka was crying too now, shaking his head rapidly as Y/N simply pointed out the facts.

Toph’s grip on his hand tightened, “we’re all going to die.” There was resignation in her voice, and it hurt Y/N to hear it.

“We’ll figure it out. We are all going to be okay.” He stated firmly, a shaky breath leaving him as he made an attempt to pull them both upwards, a failed attempt.

Squeezing her eyes shut momentarily, Y/N allowed herself to imagine it, a life with Sokka and the rest of her friends. A life where they were all happy. Where everyone made it out of this war alive, and they helped bring balance to the world.

To give them that world, they had to end this war. And what was war without death?

Opening her eyes, she looked to Sokka, and he was panicked, noticing that far more soldiers had surrounded them and were preparing to mercilessly throw them off the balloon. “Sokka.” She repeated, and he looked to her with a tear streaked face. 

“I love you.” 

Everything seemed to slow as she spoke this words, and Y/N didn’t see the horror on his face for long as the grip of his hand faltered when she released it, he was screaming, crying, begging for her to stop. Toph clearly didn’t understand what was going on as she began to call out Y/N’s name in a panic. 

And then she was falling. 

It appeared there would be no after.

It felt peaceful, she decided. Falling. The stress on her body had dissipated and she caught one final glimpse of Sokka’s mortified face before going through the clouds. The comet was visible from where she was, the horizon, it was a beautiful way to die. But staring at the comet she realized she wanted to know what would come after, she realized that Toph was practically helpless and all Sokka had was a boomerang against dozens of Firebenders.

They would die. So, what was the point of her sacrifice? What was the point of her dying?

No, she wouldn’t be dying today.

Inhaling deeply, Y/N felt the power course through her veins, and she reminded herself that she was Y/N L/N, a force to be reckoned with. Nobody would forget that as fire tore through the soles of her shoes, and extended from her hands, propelling her upwards. 

She was the daughter of the famed Dragon of the West. And she would take on his mantle, she decided, as she flew upwards and through the clouds. 

She could see Sokka had managed to bring Toph upwards and onto the platform alongside him, and they were surrounded by Firebenders. It was clear that they’d seen her when their mouthes gaped open, and a few of the soldiers began to retreat, much to the chagrin of their commanding officer. Y/N found herself ceasing her Firebending and falling towards the platform, she landed in a roll and rose on one knee before opening her mouth and allowing fire to pour outwards.

The Firebenders fell off the bridges beside them one by one, and those who didn’t retreated back inside along with the others at the sight of the Air Balloon that Suki had evidently comandeered.

Closing her mouth, Y/N’s chest heaved, and she felt Toph tackle her from behind, “you’re alive!” She exclaimed, punching Y/N’s arm roughly, “idiot.” She dug her head into Y/N’s shirt.

“Yeah, I am an idiot.” Y/N replied breathlessly, holding the girl tightly.

When Toph finally released her, she gave her a smug look, “I’ll give you and him a minute.” Though this was partially an excuse to head back inside and into the safety of the balloon, maybe even attack some of the remaining Firebenders, it was also because Toph could read the room.

And there stood Sokka, mouth gaping open, tears streaming down his smiling face as he looked at her, before lunging towards her similar to how Toph had. Except his hands came to her cheeks as he brought their lips together, effectively knocking the two onto the ground of the platform, be pulled apart from her with a smile on his face, “I love you too.”

Yeah, after was looking pretty good right about now. 

A/N: i hope you guys liked this SUPER LONG THING WOW, that was an accident. i was super close to like breaking everyones hearts and killing Y/N but then i felt bad so be grateful i was nice ksaljdlahfkj

anyways take care of yourselves!

taglists:

atla:  @bubblebars @jada-cleo @art-flirt @the-deli-meat

[sunandmoongobrrr]

Korra and her Brutalization: A Legend of Korra Meta

In honor of International Womens’ Day, I want to talk a little bit about Legend of Korra and the treatment of Korra (and to a small extent other women) throughout the show. Content warning: there's some disturbing scenes that I show here, but if you've watched all of LoK, you should be fine.

Korra starts off confident; she is a young avatar who is eager to learn and feels suffocated from the isolation she is kept in from a very young age. But that doesn’t stop her, and like the headstrong girl she is, she moves to Republic City to make a difference and step into her role as the avatar.

Korra immediately starts to doubt herself; she becomes unsure of her abilities and frustrated with herself, and through that she learns to become emotionally vulnerable with Tenzin. To me, this was really great. It showed that you can be confident and vulnerable, and that the two aren’t necessarily independent of each other.

(I’m going to be honest, the 2nd season I didn’t really remember much of, so I’m just going to skip over that. Because what I really want to talk about is season 3.)

In season three, Korra faces the Red Lotus, an “anarchist” group that essentially wants to kill her. And they get pretty close. First, I want to talk about how Tenzin is beaten by the Red Lotus. This has been brought up in Lily Orchard’s (in?)famous LOK video, and while I disagree with her on many many topics of the show, I really think she has a point here. When Tenzin is being brutalized by the Red Lotus, the camera pans away. It is SO painful to see him like this, and the directors know it. It’s TOO painful to see it, so they don’t show you it, and the episode ends before we can see him be defeated.

Contrast that with Korra. They show you every detail of this. And I mean every detail.

It’s disgusting, and they refuse to treat her with any sort of decency or respect like they do Tenzin. It’s almost like they want us to enjoy her torturing. It’s genuinely gross.

People will often refute this by saying “LoK is just a darker show! Look at what they did to the Earth Queen!” And while yes, it is marketed towards an older audience, there’s still no point in brutalizing Korra this way. The main difference between Korra and the Earth Queen is that… well, Korra’s the protagonist. We’re supposed to be rooting for her, and while the Earth Queen being suffocated was definitely dark, it wasn’t unprecedented. The audience was never supposed to like the Earth Queen—she exploited and kidnapped her own people, so of course we wouldn’t care THAT much if she died. But we’ve been with Korra since the beginning. We’re supposed to want her to be happy, and why on earth would we want her to be tortured brutally in such a disgusting way that gives her absolutely no dignity? If we want her to succeed?

(here Zaheer uses the same technique used on the Earth Queen to suffocate here on Korra. for some reason)

In Season 4, the main focus is on Korra and her healing from the brutal things the Red Lotus did to her. She is clearly still struggling, and it could have been another great way to show how being physically strong and confident doesn’t mean you can’t be vulnerable. But they make a lot of bad choices in this season.

One of my main gripes is that in order to heal, she has to return to her abuser, Zaheer, and HE has to teach her how to feel better.

I don’t want to compare LoK to ATLA, although it’s very important to mention that a show that’s a direct sequel, uses its old characters, and banks off of references, should be able to be compared to its predecessor. But I think it’s important to compare Korra’s arc here to Zuko. This doesn’t come out of nowhere; Korra has a lot of similarities to Zuko. The chopping of her hair is a significant turning point in her arc, and there’s an episode called “Korra Alone” (which is clearly a direct callback; shown below).

The difference between Zuko and Katara is that, a. Zuko never had to accept his abuser, and b. Zuko started off as a villain.

One of Zuko’s major points is when he confronts his father—his abuser. He does not bow to him and give in, saying that maybe he had a few good points or his heart was in the right place, but he directly says that Ozai was wrong for what he did. This isn’t the case with Korra. For some reason, Korra has to learn to trust her abuser. The person who did this to her:

And she has to hear him out.

This leads me to my second point, and what’s basically the complaint I have; despite being a protagonist, the show treats Korra like a villain. It frames her torture scenes as if we’re supposed to be excited that she’s being brutalized, as if we’re supposed to think she deserves it. And it’s not even handled properly as one of the villains we know so well—Zuko, who was able to overcome his abuse and become a protagonist who we root for. Again, Zuko and Korra aren’t directly the same characters, but there are parallels between the two and the show encourages their comparison. When it comes to Korra, however, we’re supposed to believe that she deserves everything that comes to her; the brutal scenes and the lack of dignity, even if she is a protagonist.

And in the end, that’s what we’re meant to believe; that Korra deserved what happened to her. In the finale, Korra says, “I finally understand why I had to go through all that. I needed to understand what true suffering was, so I could become more compassionate to others.”

This is, to put it short, ridiculous. I hate this so much I can’t even begin to say how much I hate it. No, Korra did not have to go through the torture she went through. She did not have to go through the mercury poisoning. She did not have to go through every hardship she did. This “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is so harmful because Korra’s healing revolved around accepting her abuser and thanking him for the awful things he did to her. Korra wasn’t even that cocky by the end of the first season, so what it’s essentially indirectly teaching girls is that if you’re confident, you’ll pay. It’s disgusting.

Zuko got a banishment to the Earth Kingdom, got to have his ideas and practices challenged, but he never got physically tortured. I truly, truly believe that one of the main reasons why Korra is quite literally villainized by the show is because she was a confident, brown teenage girl. None of the male characters are treated with such disrespect and we never get told that they need to be “humbled” by abuse.

This is not completely resolved to LoK; there are some aspects in ATLA that I think could’ve been fixed had there been more women in the room. I tag her a lot (bc her metas are awesome), but I really recommend you read @araeph 's Katara: Consumed by Destiny series. I also have a meta here about how Katara is treated in ATLA, specifically in “The Fortuneteller.” (I want to emphasize that while I am anti-Kataang, I don’t believe that Katara’s treatment had to do with the ship itself or that kataang is inherently anti-Katara. It’s just a note about how her character is treated in this episode and beyond.)

I’ve heard a lot of people say that they’re ‘glad’ that LoK didn’t feature Suki or Mai or Ty Lee, because they can’t imagine how poorly they’d be represented. And honestly, I can’t blame them.

This isn’t to say that we need to stop watching LOK or even ATLA. I think the internet has this weird problem where we’ve been told that the way to get rid of problematic media is to just stop consuming anything even remotely problematic altogether. But certain aspects of media will always be relatively problematic, since as content creators we sometimes input our biases into the things we create. The solution, then, is not to banish anyone who puts any harmful stereotypes into their content from society, but to actively and healthily criticize it. Bryke are not God, but they’re also not demons put on the earth to suppress woc. They’re white guys that have implicit biases that have worked their way into the content they produce. I think the lesson learned here, is to have women, especially BIWOC, in writing rooms, to prevent atrocious acts from happening to future Korra's.

Happy International Women’s Day, y’all.