#i mean. amon and tarrlok on the same side in any scenario is hilariously op as a concept

[anghraine]

I don't know why, but I've been thinking about my f!Tarrlok fic this afternoon. It's very much more about Noatak and, iirc, told entirely from his POV.

One paragraph summation: it's about Noatak's evolution from sweet kid to Amon, mediated by his shifting dynamic with his sister Taraka over the years. The first fic is a version of their childhood influenced by Taraka's gender, but ending the same. The second skims over the years between Noatak leaving and his arrival in Republic City, then goes over his rise as Amon alongside Taraka's as councilwoman and his unwitting enemy. I drifted into other fandom obsessions shortly after he takes Taraka prisoner per the canon scenario.

It turned out quite differently than I'd planned originally, in fact.

[much longer rambles below the cut]

I meant the B1 storyline to go much further off the rails. But I couldn't really justify it with no other changes than Tarrlok -> Taraka. I mean, I definitely thought that Yakone's fury over Tarrlok's "weakness" as a son would be still worse with a daughter, esp in the Northern Water Tribe of 30+ years earlier. That's the premise of the fic, basically. Their dynamic as children is a bit different, because Yakone's amped-up hostility reinforces Noatak's view of himself as Taraka's only protector, even as bloodbending changes them and Noatak grows more remote and calculating.

I could see this Noatak being slower to turn his back on her after Yakone tries to make them bloodbend each other. Noatak might even try to convince Taraka to leave with him, which under pressure, I could actually see her doing. But that wasn't the story I wanted to tell, and I could see the canon separation happening just as easily. So he still ditches her in the end, and it fundamentally breaks his sense of himself as her protector; it breaks him on a level he can't really process.

And he spends over 20 years trying to get away from his past, but he's unable to ever really move on. He subconsciously tries to "make it right" by saving people the way he couldn't or didn't save Taraka. He does genuinely think non-benders are profoundly oppressed and he cares a lot about that. But part of the reason it's so important to be this outsized glamorized protector figure to them, while calling them his brothers and sisters, is that it (sort of) fills the "Taraka" space in his psyche with a narrative of heroism and self-glorification that distances him from the messier and nastier story of being abused.

That's one thing, but it gets far more emotionally complicated when the real Taraka shows up in the city and turns out to be—well, Tarrlok. My original idea was that the story would swerve here because the childhood dynamic was different, and protecting her was more essential to his self-image. I'd meant him to gradually maneuver things in order to recruit her as a stealth Equalist (a scenario I'd briefly written but never explored, and which I still really like the idea of).

But in this scenario, I couldn't believe it would happen, not without something else to push them. Even given the changes in their dynamic, I couldn't see him as self-aware enough to consciously try and make things right with her, much less to put in the work that would honestly be required to subvert Tarrlok of all people, especially after such a long separation.

Instead, his plan is what I assume his canon plan was—capture her, keep her safely imprisoned until the city is under control, talk at her until she sees the light of revolution, and then they can be a family again. This is basically what he advises Hiroshi to do with Asami, while holding Tarrlok captive, so... yeah, I've always headcanoned that it was his ideal (detached from reality) scenario for how things would go.

But I did not write that much (especially of the story following their somewhat altered childhood) to just kill them off at the end. So while the major chance for changing the narrative would have been to have them leave together and be on the same side all along, I also thought it possible that what he tells Taraka might not be identical to what he presumably has said to Tarrlok in canon.

Tarrlok is very sure that Noatak is a true believer in his cause, which has always inclined me to think that they've talked (or at least that Noatak has) since his capture. I could totally see Noatak doing Amon monologues at Tarrlok to justify what he's done, which would be all the more psychologically urgent IMO when faced directly with the real Tarrlok (the only person Noatak seems to regret de-bending, or indeed, to regret harming at all). And I could also see those monologues differing somewhat between Tarrlok and Taraka since the dynamic was that bit different—just enough that she doesn't ultimately conclude that they're hopeless cases and too dangerous to live.

But actually writing those monologues, well. >_>