#the atlas sister

[the-atlas-sister]

Y/n: *just trying to throw away her dang banana peel*

Lo’ak: *smack and does a little dance*

Y/n: *stares confused into the abyss*

Lo’ak: WAIT- I SHOULD HAVE STEPPED ON IT-

[bakedbeanchan]

Drawing from a mini comic where the timeline is reset but Zuko still has all his memories

Minicomic here

[babybluemohito]

I just feel like he blushes a lot

[orobeori]

When the realization hits that you’ve finally captured the Avatar 💥💥💥

Continuation of my NATLA x ATLA photo-booth series that I hope to make more of, esp of Iroh and Ozai 💪, you can find the first one I did of Aang and Katara here‼️

Been trying to experiment more with how I draw them, and the process for this one in particular was very fun :’] Still not too sure on how I did the lighting lol, i need to study more on how light works 💀

Any duo/trio/group you'd like to see in particular?

[thatonedudeinthecorner]

Dude I can’t believe that the avatar is bald he’s bald oh my god he’s fucking bald he’s so aerodynamic it’s crazy he’s bald ohhh nooo baaaald

[bunthebreadboy]

redeemed!azula au where she and katara are absolutely fed up by their brothers when they’re all staying at the fire nation palace

zuko & sokka: *literally just holding hands*

katara: spirits, they’re disgusting

azula: absolutely vile

katara: so much pda

azula: they need to get a room

katara: you’re so right

azula: besides, we’d be cuter than them anyways and we could destroy the world

katara: i hope you mean that hypothetically

azula: us being cuter than them?

katara: no, destroying the world

azula: …oh, yeah, that was a joke

katara: good! so…wanna go prove we can be cuter than them

azula: don’t have to ask me twice

katara & azula: *making out somewhere*

toph, seeing them via earth vibrations despite being half way across the palace, looking straight into the camera like she’s on an episode of the office: yknow, i didn’t think it was possible to be more dramatic than zuko and sokka. i was WRONG.

[muzsmoux]

What I love about Toph the most (besides being arguably the funniest cutest bamf on the show) is she's the best at what she does because she's blind, NOT despite it.

There's this narrative in real life of "overcoming your disability!" and "not letting it stop you!" that irks me, because people's disabilities DO stop them sometimes. Being on sand, swimming, and flying are disorienting and awful for her.

But being blind helps her be connected to the earth in ways people with average vision can't be, like the badgermoles who originated the art and taught her directly. Her blindness is part of why she's the greatest earthbender of her generation, if not the greatest ever.

And that just makes me happy.

[thenadnerb02]

Ty "Lee"

We all remember that Ty Lee has six identical sisters and joined the circus so she wouldn't be part of a matched set forever, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone talk about one specific sentence in that moment (I certainly hadn't thought about it before today)

And then I realized.

It's well-established that Lee is the most common, generic name anyone can have in the Avatar Universe. The perfect no-effort name to dump on a child you weren't expecting to have because no one expects to birth 7 babies in one go.

6 though? That's a sensible number. The rest of 'em can have more meaningful given names.

Thus, Ty Lee had the double burden of being part of a matched set and being the singled-out runt of said set.

That's why "Circus Freak" is a compliment. Not because she preferred the circus, but because it's a more creative name.

Ouch.

[fanfic-gremlin-ft-trauma]

They’re about to go commit tax fraud

[muffinlance]

Sokka is captured aboard Zuko's ship. At some point during Tea & Interrogation with Iroh and Zuko, he lets slip that he's the son of Chief Hakoda.

“Chief Hakoda?” the Prince of the Kill It With Fire Nation repeats, like his brain is as stupid as his face. Or like he just realized he’s taken a high-value hostage, redeemable for one (1) ransom against an enemy leader.

“Did I say Chief Hakoda?” Sokka laughs, nervously. “I meant, ah—”

“Shut up, peasant,” the prince shouts. And then sort of… chokes on his own words, getting redder and redder.

---

“Perhaps a break, Prince Zuko?” says Uncle, like this is… like this is the tea-time social he’s set the table for. 

Zuko is in the hallway with the door slammed behind him before he can think. Thinking. Thinking is a thing he needs to do, and Uncle’s proverbs only ever leave his thoughts feeling twisted around, and—

And that is not a peasant that sacrificed himself, to give the Avatar a chance to flee. That’s a fellow prince, or whatever the Water Tribe would call him.

---

“So,” Sokka says, spinning the teacup between his cuffed hands contemplatively. “How much poison would you say is in here? And what kind?”

The old man is sputtering indignantly, but Sokka is very seriously considering taking his first sip. If it’s laced with something to loosen his tongue, well, can’t get much worse there. It’s not like he knows where his dad is. Or anything useful. Certainly not more useful than handing the Fire Nation the son of their fleet’s leader. And if it’s something deadly, well...

He doesn’t know what his dad would do or give to get him back. But it wouldn’t be good, for the war or the world or their tribe.

He figured he’d die, when he’d shouted at Katara to go, take him and go. He hadn’t realized how much worse this could get. Was getting. Because the son and heir of Fire Lord Burn Them All was out in the hallway, thinking. 

---

Zuko thinks. About what his own father would do, if he were to receive a ransom letter. The disappointment. The… repercussions. 

---

“You’re what?” Sokka asks. 

“I am releasing you,” His Shoutiness repeats, through clenched and grinding teeth.

“Huh,” Sokka says, and takes another sip from his cup, because oh, this is hallucinogenic tea. Good stuff. “Care to explain that?”

---

No, Zuko wants to shout. But this is the fellow son of a world leader. Zuko hasn’t had many friends, and he’s not looking to add the Water Prince to that atrophied number, but. 

But he could understand.

“You stood and fought when you could not win, for a cause you believed in,” Zuko says, and he doesn’t know why Uncle suddenly looks so pained. “I will not demand trinkets from your father for your return. If he hears of this, it will not be from me. You will be released at the nearest neutral port.”

---

Like an undersized fish, Sokka does not say. 

“That is… very honorable of you,” Sokka says, and doesn’t know why the prince looks like he’s been gutted.

[jayrynn]

justice for atlas he did nothing wrong

[aangarchy]

So we've established that Zuko just didn't know that Aang was trapped in an iceberg for 100 years and was understandably confused as to how the Avatar is a 12yr old little shit straight from the airtemples and also just never asked anyone bc he didn't want to be rude, right? Yea here's a follow up to that:

Zuko: hey so how long had aang even been hiding out at your village?

Sokka: pardon?

Zuko: before i came in and kinda destroyed the whole place, sorryaboutthatbytheway, how long was he there, like when did he come to you guys?

Sokka: oh he didn't come to us, and katara and i had only found him like a day earlier so

Zuko: you-? you found him?

Sokka: yea

Zuko: what do you mean you just found him?

Sokka: well we got lost on a hunting trip and katara got mad at me and yelled and y'know how when katara yells weird stuff happens like ice starts forming and breaking and stuff? Yea she kinda broke an iceberg and aang happened to be in there

Zuko: you're telling me that you found the avatar

Zuko: after 100 years of him disappearing and the most expert navigators and detectives trying to find him and failing

Zuko: after generations of firelords before hired every hitman they could get and all of them returning empty handed

Zuko: after 3 years of me searching every desolate corner of the world desperately trying to prove myself and losing sleep over it

Zuko: and you did it by accident???

Sokka: pretty much

Zuko:

Sokka:

Zuko:

Zuko: i need to sit down for a minute.

[xan-from-space]

Damn, the Ember Island Players were actually kind of radical, weren't they? The more I think about it, the more it feels like the only way it makes sense in-universe is if being Fire Nation propaganda wasn't the point of their play at all. Aside from a barely tacked on ending where Ozai kills Aang, the play is remarkably sympathetic to the Avatar and a bunch of enemies of the Fire Nation, even framing them as being heroes. Even at points in the story where theyre literally killing Fire Nation soldiers, the narrative still seems to be on their side; they're the underdogs, the relatable ones. Its true that the Fire Nation values strength, but still, you'd expect that in a propaganda play they would be portrayed as at least a little bit more sympathetic... And sure, to some extent the gaang's characters could be seen as defamatory caricutures (the slander on Iroh specifically was probably intentional), but that also might be due to the Players getting a lot of their information from the cabbage man, someone who actively hates the gaang and only ever really sees the worst of them. (And notably, that also means that the Players had worked with an Earth Kingdom merchant to produce the play.)

Mocking the gaang is also just clearly not the point of the play or what people are there for. Sokka's actor says that he's constantly being approached by fans; people genuinely love these characters. The gaang have built entire dedicated fanbases in the Fire Nation because of this play. Honestly, the fact that they're on a remote island is probably the only reason they're able to perform the play the way it is. I imagine it would get shut down pretty quickly on the mainland. Considering all the propaganda in the Fire Nation that we've seen so far, I wouldn't be surprised if the ending was only written that way because it's illegal to write a story where the Fire Lord doesnt win. The play reads less like propaganda and more like 'we're doing the bare minimum to get this story past the censors.'

I'm really curious about what it's like behind the scenes for the Ember Island Players. Are their shows just simple, shlocky entertainment, or could they also be deliberate political commentary? With no recording technology, a play is easier to slip under the radar than something like a book: it's impermanent, stays in one theatre, and performances can be easily tweaked if, say, Fire Nation royalty happens to come by. It's interesting to me that Ursa seemed to like them, while young Zuko had a disdain for them, saying they 'butchered' the story of Love Amongst the Dragons; in all likelihood the version of the story Zuko grew up with in the palace was heavily propaganda-filtered itself. Although, to be fair, they're arguably just not very good playwrights. When it comes to the characterization, I do think some of it only seems bad because we know what the actual characters are like, but a lot of it is just bad writing clearly meant for cheap entertainment. For example, they sexualize Katara quite a bit (and there's other, better analysis out there I've seen that examines how they fetishize her as a Water Tribe girl). And, of course, all of the characters are reduced to shallow and stereotypical comedy.

Still, I think they're worth commending for doing their research and telling a story about enemies of the state that's both sympathetic and surprisingly accurate to actual events, if not the characters' personalities, amidst the Fire Nation's rampant propaganda and misinformation. From the little amount of information about them we can extract from the show, they seem like honestly very interesting people. They're walking this tightrope line between being very close to the heart of the Fire Nation but also separate from it; between being cheap, inconsequential entertainment and being a source of actual news for Ember Island citizens; between telling the underdog story about a ragtag group of children and still trying to make it look like Fire Nation propaganda. I'm not trying to make any big argument on whether they were 'actually good people' or whatever, I just want to know more about them. I kind of wish we could see their production of Love Amongst the Dragons now...maybe I'll write something about them someday

[multifandombullshitbabes]

have we ever thought abt the fact that zuko is literally azula's older brother. like she's his little sister. that's his little sister. throughout a big, big part of atla plot, he was actively running away, scared of his little sister killing him because he KNEW she would/could. can you imagine that? your little sibling, wanting more your father's approval than your companionship to the point of death? every time they fought, zuko was fighting his baby sister. azula was fighting her big brother. this is making me so sick. they were 16 and 14 years old.

[comradekatara]

meanwhile, somewhere in oregon…

[zukosdualdao]

i lost a friend, i lost a friend, i lost my mind