#seeing that old Briggsy-related tag made me chuckle

[balsa-margarita]

I posted 9,455 times in 2022

That's 8,402 more posts than 2021!

581 posts created (6%)

8,874 posts reblogged (94%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@lightdancer1

@akiizayoi4869

@zuko-always-lies

@likeadragonfruit

@themadmanandhisbox

I tagged 3,120 of my posts in 2022

#queued art - 931 posts

#asks - 264 posts

#azula - 204 posts

#death-fires danced verse - 137 posts

#balsa says - 105 posts

#sea of thieves - 93 posts

#atla fanfic - 68 posts

#space station 13 - 38 posts

#robust verse - 28 posts

#zuko - 27 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#just really really wants to be left alone but the damn order of souls and people looking for the damn shroudbreaker keep coming after her

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Something that the ATLA fandom sometimes overlooks is the fact that all of the Gaang, most of the major antagonists (Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee, as well as Zuko) and a large number of the side characters (all of the Freedom Fighters) are all child soldiers. Child soldiers who have in many cases committed morally reprehensible acts or fought for morally reprehensible causes.

And the impact of that - and the inherent darkness of anything that involves it - is extremely important to acknowledge.

127 notes - Posted January 28, 2022

#4

If you make a post saying that "Zuko was a good person from the start," then that invalidates whatever argument you intend to base on that idea. Because it's just wrong.

144 notes - Posted October 17, 2022

#3

I just had a very strange realization this morning about the Fire Nation capital - namely, it's built in a caldera. A huge caldera, of a size that suggests at least a VEI 5 eruption, and quite possibly bigger. (For reference, Krakatoa was a VEI 5.) We don't know how long ago this eruption occurred, but it has to have been long enough ago for a sizeable city to be built there - personally, I think it was probably in the pre-Avatar era.

Also, we see literal lava under the Fire Nation Royal Palace, so there's that. Like, lakes of it.

Which raises the question of... well, what the fuck? Someone had to have realized that building one's capital city on top of a highly active volcanic zone was a bad idea, right? Or is the Fire Nation just that foolhardy?

151 notes - Posted October 18, 2022

#2

Since there’s some “Azula gets exiled” AUs floating around here’s something tangential

Well... Azula doesn’t actually get exiled. She escapes before anything in particular can be done to her (other than imprisonment and general bad treatment) - and while she’s certainly angry about it, she also doesn’t really have the energy to care. Her main priority is escaping whatever fate the people who won the Hundred Year war were trying to create for her, and as such she lays low for a while, and quite frankly mellows out a bit. Eventually, after a year or two, she finds a home somewhere (not sure about the circumstances, perhaps with the Sun Warriors?) and settles down, still trying to work through what happened earlier in her life.

Meanwhile, the Gaang are constantly on edge - well, so are all the world’s politicians, and this causes problems. The fact that Azula ran off only makes everyone more harsh towards her, because they have no idea what she’s doing, and as such the common consensus among the White Lotus and the Gaang is that if she is found, she needs to be brought in immediately. And this turns into an echo chamber situation which no one has the nerve to step in and stop (after all, most of the reasonable people probably think she’s dead) and so things go on like this. Until a few of the Gaang run into her while on a trip to the Sun Warriors’ city for some reason or another, and immediately jump Azula and drag her back to the Fire Nation to be tried-

Which, as predicted, goes terribly. The Sun Warriors break into the diplomatic meetings, absolutely enraged at what they see as interfering in Azula’s healing (and the mention of “taking her bending” only increases the heat) and, facing a split with the original precursor civilization of the Fire Nation, Zuko puts everything on hold. This is long enough for various other things to happen, including Aang’s past lives giving him all the advice he should have gotten when he thinks to ask about Azula, and the Gaang quickly decide that they don’t have a choice to reconsider.

By this time, probably unsurprisingly, the Sun Warriors have taken things into their own hands and break Azula out themselves. And then she runs away from them in turn - leaving Zuko and the Gaang with a nasty diplomatic issue, and none of them with any idea what happened. At this point, having been hit in the face with a metaphorical nailbat, they all realize where things went wrong, and are more than willing to try to fix it.

This time, though, Azula has less than zero intention of allowing that. As far as she’s concerned, this whole situation has taught her one thing - as long as any of the people who won the war and made the decision to come after her are in power, she will never be safe. And she doesn’t return to the Sun Warriors, or anywhere else she thinks she can be found. 

And a little while later, the world starts to feel the effects.

(I’m not sure where it goes from here, or even what this idea is. But yeah.)

164 notes - Posted February 27, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Periodic reminder that taking an ATLA character's bending does not allow them to start over, and does not aid in their development as a person. As LoK shows, it is merely extremely traumatizing.

Suffering and erasure of the self does not equal redemption.

173 notes - Posted November 13, 2022

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