I'm so looking forward to iroh and zuko properly talking and seeing irohs reaction to zuko being gay.
Like we all know he doesn't agree with the fire nation rn but how will he react?
Will he not support him cause sokkas a guy? Will he not support him because it's SOKKA? Will he accept him? Will he reveal he's known for years zuko was gay?
Especially with everything that happened with zhao, regarding to what jee said to bato on their date. (Which is a very understandable perspective, zuko just got out of this very sexually traumatising situation and almost immediately starts a relationship (his first relationship) with sokka, but then again it is a very unique situation)
One thing I love about some atla fics is how they portray the FNs thoughts on queerness, cause on one hand they were one of the only country's (I think) that treated men and women the same but then again it's also the fucking fire nation.
And I also think zukos whole canon arc can be very comparative to queerness,
His dads an asshole and after speaking out against him he throws him out, and zuko try's for 3 years to regain his father's love and acceptance, and then faced with the opportunity of regaining it takes it immediately regardless of who or what he may hurt (iroh, his own morals etc) but once he makes it back home realises how fucked up everything is and eventually confronts his dad and openly tells him he doesn't agree with him then runs aways.
I also wonder if iroh secretly knows jee is queer it doesn't seem that likely to me but it also is iroh so who knows.
<3
I do think Iroh’s reaction will be a big moment for not only the story but for Zuko’s character development. Right now, Zuko’s technically still a prisoner, holding himself there by assuming Iroh will not understand or judge him when in reality he’ll never know what his uncle is thinking until they TALK ABOUT IT. (Which the FN royal family is just sooo good at healthy communication I don’t understand why this is so hard for them lol?!)
I do agree that the suddenness of the relationship combined with the intensity from both zuko and Sokka is very alarming for people looking at it from the outside (I mean we all totally get it cause we were there but others are like uhhhh hmmmm ok this might be concerning) so I get them gossiping and wondering if this is truly real or what the fucks going on with those boys.
I love Zukos canon arc because there’s just so much about zukos story that can be relatable no matter who you are and I think that’s why he is a fan favorite (it doesn’t explain why we torture him the way we do but ehhhh it’s fine haha)
Hmmmmmm does iroh know Jees gay? Depends on how saucy those music nights got ;)
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hiii so!! here’s a little write up about the docmartyn mermaid/marine biologist enemies-to-lovers au i mentioned here, significantly later but also much longer than i intended it to be. written in collaboration with @daisycraft and @kingtheghast thank u both for letting me steal your very good thoughts and words <3
au contains themes of dehumanization and mentions of violence/injury. the tone gets a little dark at certain points, so just be warned!
— — —
the only thing really known about mer is that they’re sneaky, scarce, and very dangerous. a siren song will lure an unsuspecting ship into rocks and a crew into the water, where teeth and claws and cold, crushing depths await them. so when there’s reports of what might be a mer spotted a few miles off the coast, a team is sent out to deal with it before it causes any casualties.
it’s rare to have one this close to land. it’s even rarer still that its successfully netted, and successfully sedated. several of the crew members are heavily wounded in the process, but no one dies. and, in an unheard-of turn of events, that also includes the mer.
and you see, up until now, mer have only ever existed in vague sightings: pieces of dead ones caught in fishing nets, grainy phone camera footage, strange findings of scales and old dwellings left behind in the ocean, and the wild tales of shipwreck survivors. so this whole thing is kind of a Big Deal. for the first time ever, a live, healthy mer specimen has been found, captured, and brought in to a facility for observation and study. and the honor of leading this unprecedented study goes to doc.
(the role would be a much bigger honor if the mer wasn’t an annoying, stubborn, spiteful little bitch.)
so doc gets transferred over to the marine biology department, where a huge tank has been retrofitted into one of the bigger labs, and brought on to the study of specimen 9201223—which is a terrible name that doc isn’t going to remember, so he starts calling it “martyn” after a childhood pet fish of his.
but yeah, once it settles in and stops hiding all the time? it turns out that “martyn” is a bastard of a specimen. the lab keeps it semi-sedated as part of the safety protocol (they feed it fish laced with a numbing drug that limits its ability to vocalize, so it can’t lure any of the staff into drowning themselves or breaking it out; the sedation is a side effect) and yet it still finds the energy to cause Problems for the research team. it’s tearing up the kelp and gravel along the bottom and stuffing it into the water filters. it’s slamming into the side of the tank, scaring the shit out of the scientists. it’s trying to bite the interns fingers off during feeding time. it’s eating the rubber ball they gave it for enrichment and getting sick. it’s ruined at least three laptops and countless lab reports by splashing the personnel at every opportunity. and it seems like it’s actively trying to be uncooperative with every test they run.
working with the damn thing makes doc want to tear his hair out, but he’s also stubborn as hell so it becomes a rivalry, a battle of wills; doc hates this fucking fish, and he’s pretty sure it hates him right back.
it doesn’t particularly like anyone, of course, but he’s convinced it targets him on purpose. it starts to sit at the front of the tank by his desk whenever he’s in, swimming back and forth, staring with those freaky blue eyes, rapping on the glass when it gets too quiet just to see him jump. it hides whenever other researchers swing by, but when it’s just martyn and doc in the lab, during his late evenings working overtime? god, can’t get rid of it. can barely get any work done with it bothering him.
and then. it’s one of those late, frustrating evenings when martyn is being particularly bothersome while doc is just trying to get some paperwork done, and he’s sick of it. he’s so frustrated with martyn’s constant tapping on the tank that he rips out a page from his notebook, balls it up and whips it across the lab… and then watches as martyn darts off, going as far as his tank will let him go after the ball of paper before he eventually turns and goes back to doc. and that’s the moment doc realizes, ohhh my god it’s going stir crazy. oh my god. it just wants to play.
suddenly, doc has a new perspective on his relationship with the mer, and a lot of things start making a lot more sense. martyn’s not just banging on the glass to annoy him when he plays music, he’s trying to get him to change the song to one he prefers. the haphazard woven band of seaweed around his head might not be some sort of stress response from running into the glass too much, but an accessory, a form of personal identity. the way he stares during observations, the way his freaky eyes follow doc’s hand down the page as he writes his notes—maybe he’s observing doc and his behavior right back, trying to make sense of him.
and, yeah, martyn’s still uncooperative and bitey and impossible to deal with as ever, but doc starts feeling less like he’s working with an animal, and more like he’s working with a very stubborn person. it’s a lot to wrap his head around, and the more he notices it, the harder it becomes to ignore.
still, he and his team run their tests, gather their data, publish their findings. and the media eats that shit up… at least during the first year, when the captive mer is still novel and sensational. after a while, public interest wanes, the studies get more niche, and funding starts to slow down.
that’s when some of the faculty board members approach him with a proposal.
you see. the care and upkeep of a live mer is extraordinarily expensive. the personnel, the food, the medicine, the aquarium chemicals, the water and electricity bills, etc etc etc., it’s all getting to be a bit… much. and, frankly, they’ve already gotten plenty of research done as is. so they were considering that, well, it might be time to retire the mer program and do some final reports, and then perhaps they can move on to some other, less costly studies.
doc doesn’t realize exactly what’s being suggested until the words euthanasia and dissection are dropped. he starts protesting, stammering about the— the ethics department, and— and species preservation, and— and they can’t just—
and he’s told, quite plainly, that the thing's going to die anyways, or have you forgotten, doctor, that we don't know how to keep a species like this yet?
this tank isn't enough for it to live healthily, or very long.
we don’t even know how old they’re supposed to get in the wild.
better to get something out of it before it gets sick enough to be spoilt.
doc takes a deep breath, and tells them to get out of his lab. the board members exchange glances, and tell him they’ll give him time to think on it. doc tells them, louder, to get the fuck out of his lab.
…sitting there in that empty room, lit by the blue glow of the tank, doc feels cornered. because yes, sure, martyn is uncooperative and annoying, but also—good lord. he’s smart enough to be uncooperative. he’s smart enough to annoy him. those luminous blue eyes that stare at him through the thick glass are freaky and inhuman, but they’re intelligent. and they just want to—
he could go to the ethics board, sure. he could go plead his case and show them all the evidence, look, look, he’s not just a monster, he’s not just an animal. just spend some time with him, you’ll see. but there’s a lot of people who won’t be happy with that. a lot of very influential and rich people, people whose surnames are carved into plaques outside the building or have their companies attached to big research grant funds. and if they stop paying, doc doesn’t really have a say in what happens to martyn.
he can continue his research quietly for now, but it feels like the rest of the facility is breathing down his neck with expectations and deadlines. doesn’t help at all that the mer still doesn't want to be any sort of cooperative, either, because it’s just delaying an inevitable end that it doesn't even know is coming. the thought that he’s the only person able to protect martyn right now is fucking terrifying.
doc sets his paw on the glass tank, and the mer on the other side smiles a big, sharp smile, and mirrors him with a webbed hand.
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for the writer ask
💭🚦💛 💌
💭 What inspires you and your writing?
this is a real marketing major-ass answer (from your local marketing major), but i love sharing knowledge and telling stories. writing’s one of those things that’s a bit of a compulsion for me—i’m always writing something. i took a five-year break from fiction writing before i stumbled ass-first into fanfic last year, but even in those years when i was focusing on my career, i was writing guides and trainings and a ton of other stuff—just not anything fun, lol.
writing is also so cathartic. sometimes i set out to tell a specific story, but at other times, a particular emotion gets me in a vice grip and i have to put it to words before it’ll go away. my stories tend to wind up as emotional dumping grounds as a result.
i don’t write things pulled directly from my own life, but there are bits and pieces of myself and things that have happened to me scattered throughout stuff i’ve written, and usually when i’m about 75% of the way through a piece, i’ll realize it’s absolutely related to something i’m currently going through. funny how art works that way, even when you don’t intend for it to.
and occasionally i just have a fire lit under my ass about an issue and i get so hot about it that i gotta compile my thoughts. looking at you, silver snow
🚦 What sort of endings do you prefer to write: ambiguous, bad, happily ever after, etc.?
look, i would love nothing more for them girls (pick whichever girls you please) to have a happy ending where they kiss and are stupid in love for the rest of forever. i love reading those kinds of stories. but in my heart of hearts, i love an ambiguous ending. i like when there are still questions after the story ends. i like thinking about where things could go or how the characters will go on after the events of the story. like, shared space could be read as having a happy ending, but i don’t really think it is. and with the victors; the vestiges, well. you’ll see :0)
come to think of it, i’m not sure i’ve ever written a happily-ever-after, but i don’t think i’ve ever written a 100% bad ending, either. i read too many bury-your-gays stories and watched too many sad european queer coming-of-age films in my youth to ever be happy putting that kinda thing out into the world. i want to write about love with all its ugliness, but not despair or hopelessness. i think what most appeals to me about an ambiguous ending is that lingering feeling of hope. it’s not the same as the kind you get from a happily-ever-after, and something about it speaks to me.
💛 What is the most impactful lesson you’ve learned about writing?
honestly? how to take criticism. i took a creative writing class in high school where we had to read our work out loud and then receive feedback on it from the other writers in the class, and that did a lot for me. going into that class, i’d already been writing for forever and had won some little local writing contests and such, so i was a wee bit of a pretentious douche. but i’d never gotten real critique before beyond, essentially, spelling and grammar checks. it humbled me lol. it made me grow so much as a writer, and i could see where i needed to improve or where my head was wedged way too far up my own ass for others to follow. it also helped me recognize strengths i didn’t know i had, and that was huge. it’s easy to get into a self-doubt spiral when making creative work, and good, constructive criticism can do so much to help avoid that.
to this day i love critique. i like knowing what worked or didn’t work so that i can continue to improve as a writer and do better next time. did my themes land? did something really work, but another part fall flat? i’d love to know!! i try to treat everything i write as practice for the next thing, and frankly that’s helped take some of the pressure off so i don’t go into total Perfectionist Mode.
i know critique is kind of a sensitive topic in fan spaces, but i think that’s because a lot of people have gotten unsolicited criticism that is purely critical and isn’t constructive. but getting good, constructive criticism will do so much to help a person grow as a writer. it’s scary, and sometimes it hurts! writing is very personal for most people, and it stings when things aren’t received the way you think they will be. but i know i’ve grown more from having my failures pointed out (and, very importantly, having the good things about those efforts acknowledged) than anything else.
💌 Is there a favorite trope you like to write?
actually Just answered this in another ask!
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If THG's characters are a fanfic writers/readers, what do you feel would be their AO3/ffn account name and icon?
Also, what would be their preferred read (example : rating = K, T, G, M, E; type = canon, canon-divergent, modern AU etc.) and what kind of comments would they leave on a fic?
You can include as many characters as you can or want.
Thank you so much 😊
@curiousnonny
Okay I’m going to talk about Finnick and Annie since I feel like other people will be talking about Katniss and Peeta.
Finnick: I think Finnick would be really into those types of AUs where it’s canon divergent but really intricately plotted. You know those stories where it isn’t canon but it’s good enough that it could be? I think he’d really like to explore those different scenarios and think them through extensively.
Annie: She’d be the type who likes to put the characters in a ton of different situations, like modern AUs, canon divergence, etc. I feel like she would be very character focused and would read/write stories that kept the integrity of the characters while completely changing their situations. Also, she would look at pretty fanart and try to leave as many comments on art/writing as possible.
This was such an interesting question, thank you!
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