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shamelessliarkickapow · 3 months

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Arrvatarr! The Last Arrbender!

Just a little WIP

Zutara pirate AU inspired by THIS FUN ART by singswan-springswan and also THIS SWEET PIECE from the Zutara coloring book by fabdante

I have this whole story outlined at about 8 chapters. (*desperate promises to self* This definitely won't be another 100k word story, definitely. I'm aiming for 40k this time. Max.) I'm gonna try a new thing and post parts of chapters here as I go - no backward glances. Chapters will go on AO3 and ffn as they're completed.

Rating: M for violence and sexual content

Summary:

Set four years later than the show in an AU where the Avatar never returned. Instead of finding Aang, Katara and Sokka went looking for Hakoda and had lots of adventures. Fast forward to now, they’ve gathered a few motley friends into their life of piracy. Hey, it’s a living! After seven years circling the globe in search of the Avatar, Prince Zuko finds himself beset by weird pirates. They mean to ransom him, but the waterbender is distracting and Uncle Iroh seems to have some kind of plan so, if Zuko's lucky, this could all turn out okay... But when is Zuko ever lucky? A silly but pretty grown-up story with real swears and some sex stuff. Here be knavish pirate jokes and most ignoble puns - avast ye bilge-rat-vipers! yarrr

Chapter 1, part 1/3:

It was a junky little steamer, but beggars couldn’t be choosers and pirates loved junk.

They struck when the fat waning moon was still high, sparkling off the sea. Katara brought their little ship up from the depths alongside and raised it up on a mighty platform of ice to put their decks at a level for boarding. The wave of their emergence shook the steamer like a can of bees - but that hardly mattered when Sokka swung aboard and Toph dropped off his back. All the soldiers who came running half-dressed onto the deck wound up trapped, bound with strips of steel torn from the very vessel they sought to defend.

“Surrender, ya scabby seal-dogs!” Toph cried, striking a pose and really hamming up the drama. “Or I’ll paint this tub with yer stinkin’ guts before I sink ‘er!”

Most of the time, as soon as Toph broke out the metalbending, the fight was pretty much over. Suki was quick, so she could usually knock out a couple of soldiers before they realized how incredibly out-classed they were. Sokka had drawn his sword and found himself without an opponent so many times now that he usually just posed with it while he demanded surrender. Which was a shame - because it was such a nice sword.

Katara, always watching everybody’s backs, locked the ships together with thick bonds of ice and boarded last to come down hard on any remaining resistance. Tonight, though, she was still on the deck of their vessel, reassuring their new swab that nobody was going to get seriously hurt.

“She doesn’t mean it about the guts, Aang,” she said with a shrug and a crooked smile. “Toph just misses those earthbender tournaments she was telling you about. Remember, we do this to feed our villages through the winter. The Fire Nation can afford to be plundered a little after everything they’ve taken from us.”

This last she said with the faintest measure more steel. But the little monk didn’t notice. He only smiled trustingly up at her, his lemur clinging to his head with a grip on his bandanna.

“Aye aye, Cap’n,” he growled, a kid fully sold on the game.

“And what’s the rule?”

“No airbending - yarr!”

Katara grinned. “Great, now let’s go loot the boots off these guys.”

She took a few running steps and surfed the short distance up to the other ship’s deck, landing in a ready crouch with a tight stream of water looped through the air around her. There was no sound as Aang alighted behind her, but even if there had been, she would not have noticed.

Most of the time, these fights ended quickly. Firebenders weren’t at their best at night to start with. Soldiers rushed out, found themselves overwhelmed, and surrendered. The captain made an appearance and perhaps fought briefly, perhaps tried to rally his subordinates, but ultimately admitted defeat and gave up the goods.

But tonight was apparently a special night, because when Katara landed aboard the steamer, there was one firebender shouting and persistently unleashing all manner of fury in a three-on-one match against her friends.

He didn’t wear a uniform or even a shirt, just a pair of loose sleep pants as if he’d fallen from his bed into battle. And he seemed entirely ready for that battle, based on the way he spun and leapt and kicked unrelentingly in the air, dodging a chunk of metal from Toph even as he kept Suki and Sokka back with athletic moves and bright crests of flame.

Katara noticed at once that he didn’t look like a regular Fire Nation officer. His bared torso was all taut muscle - not that that was unusual, as many officers maintained their conditioning, it was more just… interesting. Drew the eye. No, it was his hair that marked him as peculiar. It was grown long past his shoulders and it fell loose and very straight around his scarred, snarling face. Most officers only kept their hair long enough for their military topknot. It might have occurred to Katara to wonder just what kind of captain this was, but presently, she was more interested in putting a stop to him.

Her water whip cut the air with only a chilling hiss for warning.

Zuko woke when he flopped hard off the edge of his bed onto the floor. A floor, he quickly realized through the fading disorientation of sleep, that was still swaying from some massive disturbance. He scrambled to his feet and craned his head to get a look out the wide, high window.

On the deck below, something was going on in the dark - but the strange ice that jutted up around his ship shone brilliant and deadly in the moonlight.

“Uncle!” he shouted as he slammed through his door into the hallway. “Uncle Iroh! We’re under attack!”

The old man was already emerging from his quarters, rubbing his bleary eyes. “What, did we hit something?”

“They have a waterbender,” Zuko snarled on his way to the stairs. “It must be pirates.”

“Pirates!” Iroh exclaimed, following at a sedate trot. “How terribly exciting!”

Zuko had leapt far enough down the stairs that he could pretend not to hear that last bit. Uncle had grown increasingly… whiny in recent years. He complained largely of the boredom of their life at sea, constantly trying to get Zuko to do something - anything else.

Hey, maybe we take a little break from searching for the Avatar and visit the colonies! I know a most pleasant spa where the masseuses could work the tension out of a stone. I think it might really change your perspective on things, my nephew. A man needs to release his tension every now and then, you know?

It was insufferable and uncomfortable and Zuko always dismissed the notion and stormed off to scan the horizon… but the old man had a point about the tedium. Zuko had circled the globe in his hunt for the Avatar - and then did it again, and again, until what he was doing was less hunting for the Avatar and more hunting for any kind of purpose or meaning in his life.

Because the Avatar was never going to return. That much had become obvious over the course of seven years spent searching ruins and sniffing out half-baked stories. What had not become obvious was what Zuko could possibly do instead, what other path to honor might remain open to him.

He was confident, however, that such a path would not be found in some thinly-veiled whorehouse in the colonies.

In truth, Zuko was no longer entirely sure he wanted to capture the Avatar even if one did appear. The chance to return home to his scheming, ruthless family no longer inspired in him the driving desperation he had felt when his banishment began. His sister was set to inherit the crown, presumably in half a century when Ozai succumbed to the inevitable fate of the terminally evil-and-wealthy and died peacefully in his sleep.

Meanwhile, Zuko had grown into a man in exile. A bitter and angry yet philosophical man deeply schooled in the arts of firebending, Pai Sho, and longing. Because what else was there to do?

Except, thankfully, finally, thrash a pack of pirates?

The only warning Zuko had about what awaited him on the deck was Lieutenant Jee, hanging by a strap of steel that had certainly not been affixed to the exterior door last night. “Prince Zuko,” he gasped against the pressure of the band, “it’s a metalbender.”

“Impossible,” Zuko managed - but the evidence was there before his eyes.

Beyond the open door, a girlish voice was cackling.

Zuko hurriedly kicked the restraint off his Lieutenant so the man fell free to the deck, then sent him off to rally the rest of the crew. “And get my uncle down here. Now!”

Then, bold and furious, Prince Zuko leapt out the door and reignited the lost fight.

The cackler turned out to be the metalbender, a muscular but petite girl - a teenager - whose smirk and hard postures bespoke unshakable confidence. At the instant of his appearance - almost as if she had sensed him coming and was waiting to do it - she moved through a sequence and ripped a sheet of the deck out from under Zuko’s bare feet. Or she would have, if he hadn’t hurled himself forward into a flip and come down in a roaring kick that crashed down a huge gout of flames. The metalbender blocked with another chunk of the deck.

“Stop tearing holes in my ship!” Zuko shouted, punching more blasts at her to try and flush her out of her shelter. While she was under cover, he blasted the restraints off a couple of his firebenders, then quickly went back on the offensive to cover their rise and return to combat.

“Get a real ship!” the little brat shouted from behind her shield. She shot a chunk of steel at him and he was forced to dodge even though she couldn’t possibly have seen him to aim. “This clunker’s more rust and barnacles than metal anyways!”

“Rrah!”

“Finally!” A lean man with a sword darted in to beset one of the freed firebenders. Zuko didn’t see the fight, but he saw the moment his soldier toppled over the gunwale with a cry. The swordsman grinned and shouted back toward the rigging of the pirate vessel Zuko only then realized was locked in alongside - that’s what all the ice was for. “Katara, you’re missing it! Captain’s out-! Woah!”

He went staggering back from the low arc of flame Zuko kicked in his direction. Zuko turned his whole attention back to bearing down with a sustained blaze on his first opponent. The metalbender was strong, but her technique was a little slow and, if Zuko hit her shield with enough heat, he suspected she might-

“Ow!” She tumbled out of the way, holding one hand close to her chest. “Why you bilge-sucking biscuit-burner! I’m gonna mash you good for that one!”

It happened as if in slow motion. Zuko had drawn back for a knock-out blow and was initiating the punch, but from the corner of his eye, he saw a golden flash and another figure moving rapidly toward him. He redirected his punch but was too late to do more than block the fan that had been about to strike him in the side of the head. The pale, painted face of a Kyoshi Warrior was suddenly there, looming like a specter out of the night.

She was much faster than the metalbender, and came at him with a lightning-quick sequence of jabs and slashes with her fans. For a moment, Zuko was hard-pressed to evade her attacks. She drove him a few steps until he stumbled over one of the torn places in the deck and went sprawling on his back. The warrior darted in-

-but Zuko wheeled his legs around in a dazzling circle of fire that sent her leaping back, blocking with those fans. He rode the kick to his feet and took the offensive, laying down a hard, quick series of blasts that had her backing up toward the pirate vessel, where the metalbender was one-handedly locking the last of his firebenders back down.

Zuko might have been annoyed, had he not been so busy almost getting skewered. The lean guy with the sword came up from his flank. If he had led with a stab, he might have ended the fight right there, but he tried to brain his enemy with the flat of his blade instead.

Zuko didn’t give it much thought as he ducked, darted in close to grab the guy’s sword-hand, and, with a grip on the front of his vaguely Water Tribey pirate jacket, pitched him bodily at the warrior. She was charging him with her fans out to either side and barely managed to dodge out of the way as the lean guy came hurtling past.

“Waugh-!”

Zuko kicked fire to keep her diverted and simultaneously ducked out of the way of another chunk of his ship that came hurtling toward him. He was about to press the advantage when a hissing sound cut the air, he felt a hard jolt of impact, and pain bloomed from his left pectoral like he’d been stung by a buzzard-wasp. He fell a couple steps back and took in this new opponent.

“The waterbender,” he growled, momentarily stunned.

TBC

#zutara fanfiction #WIP

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havntngs · 1 year

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[ christopher briney, cismale, he/him ] - was that LAWRENCE ‘LAURIE’ CAMPBELL i saw by the lighthouse today? i heard that the TWENTY-FIVE year old who has been in nightrest for THEIR WHOLE LIFE and works as a/an CERTIFIED NURSE ASSISTANT has a reputation of being LOYAL, but also SELF-DESTRUCTIVE. they reside in ASHMORE & people in town usually associate them with late night games that stretch to 3 a.m. best friends, cigarette smoke out an open window, ripped jeans and baggy t-shirts of musicians you love, anger and grief often masked as cold and uncaring, a feeling of love that you don’t know what to do with or how to say, a love for your sisters that you don’t know where to put, and trying to find the better version of yourself that people need you to be. let’s hope the killer doesn’t go after them next.

full name — lawrence 'laurie' campbell nickname(s) — laurie name meaning — god has helped age — twenty-five date of birth — august 31st place of birth — salem, massachusetts star sign — virgo sun, aqaurius moon, virgo rising current location — salem, massachusetts gender — cis-male pronouns — he/him sexual orientation — bisexual ( repressed ) religion — atheist occupation — certified nurse assistant education level — cna school family — ted campbell ( father ), karen campbell ( father ), tracy campbell ( sister ), holly campbell ( sister, deceased ) finances — upperclass / personal finances: help spoken languages — english, spanish

character inspos: lip gallagher ( shameless ), zuko (avatar: the last airbender), eve polastri (killing eve), cristina yang (greys anatomy), kaz brekker (shadow & bone), kat stratford (10 things i hate about you), will hunting (good will hunting), mike wheeler ( stranger things ), elliot alderson (mr. robot), scott summers (x-men), chandler bing (friends), rosa diaz (b99), jess mariano ( gilmore girls )

tw: absent parents, deceased sister, grief & mourning

if life were a movie then laurie would be the background character that says one funny line before absolutely ruining the scene. in fact, he’d say that his lines were probably cut because they just weren’t good enough. born from an upper class family laurie is unoriginal and there’s nothing that really screams, brilliance. if he were to give that title it would have been to his eldest sister, tracy, but the star that shined in their lives would have been holly.

he’s young when holly was born, young and had no idea the kind of weight that she would place on the family–and holly died too young to understand that she had been the thing to keep the entire family together. she was the glue. all of the words that he could say but it would never be enough.

it hadn’t been an easy run up of affairs. laurie was the perfect example of the middle child, too volatile to handle on best days, had his head devouring books on any piece of science that he could get his hands on. when he was asked as a kid what he wanted to be he said things like a doctor, and then an astronaut. he liked physics, quantum science, engineering. he liked knowing that there were things that could be definite, how a problem could always be fixed if he just had the right amount of calculations and even better hypotheses.

he was the captain of the science club all throughout high school, went to science camp once before he asked his mom to come and pick him up, he had a group of best friends that he loved, who came over on weekends to play games in his basement, he liked making science experiments in his backyard, he tried to be on the track team once before finding that he was better in a classroom than out in the field. his father took him hunting but gave him when he noticed his song reading a book. laurie was good at a lot of things academically, but never much so when it came to talking to other people outside of his bubble.

he liked a boy growing up but never said anything and by the time the moment came where he should he didn’t. for most of laurie’s life he always felt different from his family and what he was supposed to be. he could have been anyone, surely he was never the smartest in the room but he knew things, he could have dated people if he had just said something, he could have had more opportunities if it wasn’t his own self-preservation getting in the way. being different was dangerous—people say things, and it hurts, and it’s worse because they always mean them. it’s easy being different and hiding in the shadows than being brave and getting your heart broken.

by senior year his sister went missing, and then she died. laurie stopped caring after that. when he was a freshmen he had already planned on going to m.i.t, it was the dream school to get the dream job. he could be all the things he said he would be. but by then it didn’t matter. laurie started getting in fights, and headed down a path where he never thought he’d go. he thinks the worst part is that his parents hadn’t noticed. they only cared by the time that laurie got suspended, and acted as if laurie had become a different person overnight. when he got that m.i.t letter holly was long gone and he said that he never got accepted in the first place.

the past couple of years have been hard, and laurie has gotten all kinds of odd jobs until his mom got tired of laurie just laying around and doing nothing with his life. he thinks that it’s the first time that his mother has tried to be a mother to him. he knows that its the bare minimum, but for the moment it was nice, as if she was doing a kindness to him instead of acting out of embarrassment.

over the course of seven years he always thinks that he sees his sister somewhere. he didn’t feel the snap of her being gone, as if she were a tether to him in some way on his heart. that first year he kept telling people that she was still around, he would have felt it, to anyone that believed him. it seems unfair that his sister was here one day and then just disappeared. he remembers the way that people looked at him, when he tried to do his own investigation of her disappearance, and how sometimes he looks throughout his town still for remnants of her.

his family might have been fractured, but it just didn’t seem fair that their glue, and the one of the only people that listened to laurie and his hopes and dreams just didn’t exist anymore. he would have felt it. and the worst part, he thinks, she would be disappointed in the choices that he made after she was gone.

life goes on. laurie’s life is repetition. he doesn’t really dream anymore.

more fun stuff:

listen ,, he might be smart but he is also very Bad when it comes to people he is my cringefail son -- if you were ever friends with him he has never said i love you. not once.

honestly i'd label him as a burn out but like he's a cna but he's also like. a burn out. he could be doing more he just doesn't. and he doesn't see the point.

looking for a weed dealer :// ( it makes him anxious but that doesnt stop him sdkfnsd idiot )

honestly looking for his old bffs that he let go Due to being a Bad Friend ( not intentionally he just... doesnt deal with Things Well sighs )

still v sad abt m.i.t ngl asdkflnds he thinks abt his life as Before and After and thinks where he could have been , always assumed he'd move out of this state and Be Someone. with all the recent deaths he's Going Through It

#nightrest:intro #━━ ❛❛ // LAURIE CAMPBELL ! ¦ i’m not afraid to disappear i know the end is near . 「 about ! 」

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nightcoremoon · 7 months

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my experience in the Harry Potter fandom (before we all realized Rowling was a talentless hack, an attention whore, and a spiteful bitch) from ages 6 to 12 was blind adoration, until the last book came out and was a steaming pile of shit thus killing my interest in the series and turning me into the most jaded of teenagers you’ve ever met in your entire life.

i still read the odd fic here and there, but ages 13-16 I was way more into avatar the last airbender, avengers, pokemon, jak & daxter, warcraft, inheritance, death note, invader zim, and all of my contemporaries were into HP and twilight and thus by extension so was I. and I still occasionally was like okay yeah the books are mediocre schlock at best but hey they helped destigmatize the occult in the mainstream eye, and the movies did the best job they could with what they were given, and the books COULD have been good if only you’d just changed like 90% of them. the fandom wasn’t about the books themselves, it was all about the culture that the books had created. because nobody really read any of the books more than once because everybody just watched the movies (DON’T EVEN LIE AND SAY THATS NOT TRUE).

we all rolled our eyes at rowling jingling her keys to make us talk about it again and again but it’s like, ok so dumbledore is gay but you didn’t fucking show it and you made the actual gay character lupin die offscreen, ok so snape was apparently a good person underneath being a toxic shitlord but you didn’t fucking show it and you made the actual only good person hagrid a complete non-entity, ok so Anthony Goldstein was apparently your jewish representation but you didn’t fucking even say his goddamn name once in the entire series and the only black characters were racebent for the movies because you didn’t fucking even mention they were black because we know full fuckin well that every single character was white except for CHO. GODDAMN. CHANG.

all you really had to do was say, okay yeah in my youthful ignorance I accidentally made a contribution to problematic media and so I will now strive to fix my mistakes and write a new series that shows how I have grown as an author. except she didn’t do that. she just greenlit the cursed child and accepted royalties for fantastic beasts. and if it weren’t for eddie redmayne and the fact that it’s part of a licensed franchise, the movie would have totally flopped. it was not very good. and jude law and johnny depp did their best but the script was awful and it suffered from prequelitis (which so far only Star Wars has avoided and even then only very narrowly due to saturation). rowling didn’t even have any fucking writing credits on the movie but she made a fat stack of cash anyway. that’s a trend you’ll notice.

every single way I ever found enjoyment in the fandom was in reading people on here suggesting ways to improve it, or to parody it. like desi harry and black hermione, a very potter musical, potter puppet pals, a billion different rewrites that were all way better than the source materials. i even read my immortal, AND YES IT IS REALLY REALLY BAD not even in an ironic so bad it’s good kind of way, I mean that it was just absolutely godawful in every conceivable way, and was only a highlight of how not to write a fanfic. it was so bad that I reread the original books as a palate cleanser. and let me tell you this, harry potter and the sorcerer’s stone is one of the clumsiest books I’d ever read as a teenager. it’s completely amateur in every way, and it made me understand just why it was so popular with the 13-16 year old crowd. it was written at their reading level. the passages from the actual HP books are all virtually indistinguishable from fanfictions I read over a decade ago made by people who are in their early 20s now. in fact there are plenty of fanfictions written by teenagers that are better written than even the least shitty HP book which is defaulted to half blood prince if only because for once there’s actually some narrative cohesion that isn’t a complete and total ass pull and because if you’ve written five full length books then you goddamn well better understand the basics. engaging with the source material was not fun at all and the only way to milk any fun from it was to make fun of it. and by age 16 I was sick and tired of the cynicism. and around that age is when I joined the my little pony fandom.

and they were the two best years of my life at the time. it was nice to be engaging with wholesome content while also making memes that poked fun at its occasional harmless flaws. I watched other fandoms from a distance but MLP was my primary and honestly it still is, I just haven’t been as heavily involved with it these days beyond listening to the music and rebubbling fanart and even on occasion dabbling in the fanfic realm. but it was integral to me figuring out that hey wait a second I’m not a boy after all haha oops. so when I was 18 and finally transed my gender everything was… fine. ten years later I’m more into games that end with craft lmao

and then everything changed when the terf nation attacked.

by the time the queer parts of the Harry Potter fanbase (who weren’t abject pieces of garbage) were shocked & appalled by the betrayal I was the old coot in my rocking chair holding back the urge to say I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO. when people went back and were like, hey actually wow the books were full of racism and antisemitism, all of the black brown jewish etc parts of the former fandom did not hold back the urge to say we fucking told you so. but as a whole white trans people didn’t really seem to care about its problematic natures until it affected them. which is not a good enough reason to bully harass and suicidebait them especially since they were like 12. thankfully that seems to have done wonders in having the collective media literacy of white trans teenagers increase somewhat. that was a few years ago now and I’ll freely admit that I’m somewhat out of touch with the youth right now, I don’t have a tiktok, I don’t use twitter or instagram, I barely use tumblr. i couldn’t tell you the name of one single popular singer these days, and if I did it would be someone that the kids would roll their eyes at and call me a boomer because I said rihanna or beyonce or nicki minaj or something from the 00s and/or 10s. my favorite musicians all started in the 90s. if I asked out somebody who was only 20 it would be weird and creepy. i know where I stand in society these days and that’s fine. but I don’t exactly know where things stand as far as where most teenagers are at. i hope they’re doing fine. i hope they escaped the clutches of the damage HP did. oh wait I forgot about the blood libel game, gOD DAMN IT-

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helpistolethesecharacters · 3 years

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Love Conquers All

Zuko x Male Reader

Word Count: 1856

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Y/n could understand where Zuko was coming from, but he knew he wouldn't be surprised if it didn't go as well as he had perhaps envisioned.

It was all very well and good that he had finally found his way, but he had hurt the Avatars group a fair bit before finding his way. Y/n also knew that as someone who had been a part of Zuko's attempts to hurt them, he had no leg to stand on in helping smooth the situation over. He hadn't been as single-minded in his focus on capturing the Avatar, but he had only cared because Zuko cared.

He didn't think that would matter to them, but then, Y/n didn't particularly care one way or the other how they felt about him. The only person who mattered to him was Zuko. Well, and Iroh, but that was a given of anyone who had met the calm old man.

When they made it to the kids campsite Y/n hung back, staying by the exit. It wasn't that he didn't trust them not to ambush him and Zuko, oh wait, it was that. Never mind.

Y/n watched the exchange carefully. He could feel it in the air mere seconds before she struck.

Faster than their eyes could follow, Y/n moved. By the time that everyone had caught up with the events, Y/n was standing in front of Zuko, sheathing his sword after having deflected Katara's water whip.

Silence reigned for a single heartbeat. Then Katara shrieked in outrage.

"How dare you!"

Y/n was sure she was still speaking, but he had a habit of being selectively deaf when it most benefited him.

And then, with almost no warning she was throwing water at him with increasingly wild movements.

It was no match for Y/n's technique.

It wasn't common knowledge, in fact, he had hidden it for most of his life, but Y/n was an airbender.

Yeah, literally the biggest lie in their world was that there were no more airbenders. The Air Nomads had had the practice of removing non-benders from their society and giving them to the other kingdoms.

What they didn't know was that all it took was for the right circumstances to happen and suddenly you had airbenders in the descendants of those non-benders.

It didn't change much ultimately, they were so few that they wouldn't ever be considered a threat to anyone, not that the Air Nomads had been when the Fire Nation had attacked them a hundred years ago.

What it all came down to, was a confused child suddenly developing powers that no one was able to control anymore.

Luckily for Y/n, the only person who had been around the first time he had bended was Zuko. As secrets tend to do, it had bound the two closer together than anyone would have thought ever since that day.

It was a loyalty that had seen Y/n stowing away on the ship Zuko had been banished on, and one that had been returned by Zuko had never once considered that the apparently Fire Nation child could be the reborn Avatar.

What it came down to, was that Katara was having no luck besting Y/n. Much as he wanted to put her in her place properly, Y/n knew that what they were trying to accomplish here would be hurt by that. From the looks of things though, they might have lost that chance.

Y/n stayed on the defensive, letting her tire herself out instead of outright attacking. He was worried about the look the Avatar was giving him though. That wide eyed expression couldn't mean anything good for his secret. He had always known that it would come out eventually, but he had hoped it would last longer than this dammit!

"Katara stop!"

The kid was trying to get in between then now, but the water tribe girl was apparently past the point of caring. She was just not backing down.

"Wait, I wanna talk to him!"

"No! They need to get out of here and never come back!"

Y/n was sure that her words might have been more intimidating if she weren't so clearly out of her league. He decided to ignore the voice in the back of his head that whispered that if he had used even half of his abilities properly before this they might have caught the Avatar long ago.

The element of surprise couldn't be taken for granted after all, and judging from the kid's reaction just now, all they would have had to do was show him Y/n's powers and he probably would have stayed on the ship that first day.

Y/n pulled himself out of his thoughts with a shrug. It was a bit late for that right now.

The Avatar had managed to get between Y/n and Katara, and seemed to be trying to talk her down from her rage. Y/n watched, only mildly interested. This wasn't how he had thought today would go.

He turned to Zuko, who was still standing behind him.

"Are you okay?"

He just looked Y/n over, head to toe looking for injuries.

"I'm fine, but are you sure it was a good idea to show them that? I could have taken a few hits. I've had worse before, you know that."

Y/n clenched his jaw at the reminder.

"I know. I'm sorry. You know how I feel about you willingly putting yourself in danger though. You didn't even try to defend yourself. Don't think I didn't spot that."

Y/n leveled a flat stare at Zuko.

He at least had the good grace to blush in shame and hide behind his fringe.

Y/n turned back to the group of kids gathered in front of them.

He gave them his best blank stare. He had nothing more to say to them, this was about Zuko teaching the Avatar firebending after all.

Besides, he was sure that anything he said would be twisted around and spat back at him by the water tribe girl.

"You're an airbender!"

Y/n refused to give up his secret that easily.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

The little blind girl perked up.

"You're lying. You are an airbender? I thought they were all wiped out."

Y/n stubbornly refused to respond. He could see the water tribe girl's eye narrow at his silence. She was just about to explode on him again when Y/n felt a shift in the air. Less than a second later he felt Zuko's hand on his shoulder.

He slumped slightly. Damn Zuko's soft heart.

"Yes. I can bend air."

The shout of pure joy that the Avatar let out was enough to make Y/n feel slightly guilty about keeping it from him the whole time he had been after him.

"I'm not alone! There must be more, right? Some of the monks survived and hid right? Please tell me!"

Man, this kid was excitable, and as happy as he was, Y/n didn't want to be the one to tell him that he was wrong. He couldn't take the soft option of letting Zuko tell him though, they would probably turn on the both of them and Zuko wouldn't be able to fulfill his destiny.

"No."

"No you're not going to tell him?"

That girl was really starting to get on Y/n's nerves.

"No, they didn't survive."

That shut her up.

It also made the kid tear up, but there was no point building a lie just to make him feel better in this moment. That would be more cruel than the truth.

"The only reason that I exist right now is because of your ancestors though. Your people had a practice of testing their babies for airbending potential."

The Avatar was nodding along. Good, this wouldn't be a surprise to him.

"Well, when they showed to be non-benders your people gave them away. They were sent off to the other kingdoms, not welcome in, nor considered to be, a part of the Air Nomads."

"Air Nomads are airbenders, so if they aren't airbenders they aren't Air Nomads. That's just the way things are."

Y/n grit his teeth. It was an old hurt, but it still stung. He pulled in a deep breath and the only thing that stopped him from screaming about the injustice of it all was Zuko's hand that was still on his shoulder lending him the strength to continue.

"Your people were wrong. Occasionally their methods would be wrong, and they would let a bender slip away into another kingdom. But more than that, its in our blood, in the thing that makes us who we are. When enough of your ancestors were born from the Air Nomads, no matter whether they could bend themselves or not, you have the possibility to end up as a bender."

The Avatar's jaw was hanging open as he stared in horror at Y/n.

"But, they couldn't possibly have known that! If they had, maybe they wouldn't have done what they did."

Y/n's eyes shone with a dark light. This was something he would ultimately have to give up, but it was worth planting the seed if he could.

"So your saying that the only possible use non-benders have is the possibility of benders being born from them?"

The Avatar stopped cold and stared at Y/n in horror.

"What? No! Of course not!"

"Then what? You had no problem with the idea that they would be thrown away like yesterday's garbage up until now. The only thing that's changed is this piece of information."

Y/n pulled back as he saw the tears form in the Avatar's eyes.

"Think on that for a while. You have a non-bender in your group. Do you consider him to be useless?"

The kids all looked like they had been hit over the head.

Y/n was sure that this would be the end of their interaction for the day.

"We'll come back tomorrow. Maybe then we can talk without resorting to violence."

He turned back to Katara who looked like she was getting ready to unleash whatever thoughts had been happening in that head of hers.

"Before you put your foot in it, consider this. We have two things you want. One you desperately need, the other, something you desperately want. Have a good night."

Zuko turned and walked back the way they had come, with Y/n bringing up the rear. He didn't trust them not to attack them from behind.

Y/n hoped that with the reminder that they needed Zuko to teach the Avatar firebending, they would be more open to meeting the next day. If that weren't enough, then there was the added bonus of Y/n being the only other airbender that they knew. He was sure that the Avatar wouldn't be able to resist the pull to be around someone who was like him for long.

Either way, they still had a long way to go to convince them that they didn't want to hurt them and that this wasn't a trap.

'Oh well,' Y/n thought as he lay sleepily beside their fire, 'things always look better in the morning.'

#Zuko x Male Reader #Atla #avatar the last airbender #male reader

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dancingazaleas · 3 years

Text

zeke yeager | pta meeting

i literally don’t know how to shut up about him

also this is all because i saw a drabble of dilf!zeke and it’s been on my mind nonstop

warnings/notes: dilf!zeke, fem!reader, cursing, eventual smut, zeke is a divorced/widowed dad(at 33), reader is 21, cursing, zeke has a mean daughter and a sweet daughter, breeding kink, overstimulation, brief choking, slight degradation, shit one shot i’m sorry

you swear to the lord that zeke’s 11 year old daughter is a menace to society.

she’s brutally honest, just like zeke, and mean. she’s oddly mature for her age, and you think it might have something to do with her late mother. she looks almost nothing like zeke, but she certainly inherited her personality from him. she’s got curly dark brown hair that ends at her armpits and zeke’s grey eyes. she has a button nose along with rosy cheeks, something else she inherited from her mother.

“y’know my daddy only dates you cause you take care of me and aloisia,” isolde says to you as she slips on her school shoes.

you feel your eye twitch as you turn to zeke’s other daughter, aloisia, who’s seven and looks exactly like zeke. she’s got his nose, his hair color, and even eye shape. she’s got hazel eyes and a slim face. she’s as bubbly as they come, always greeting people she passes by on the street, always making friends at the park.

“i’m ready,” she holds up her small hand to you, a silent request for you to hold her hand.

“same,” isolde stands up after she swings her back pack onto her back, brushing off the nonexistent dirt on her navy blue skirt.

“zeke, the girls are ready!!” you shout out, taking aloisia into your arms.

zeke comes stumbling out of his bedroom, a white sleep shirt covering his torso and grey sweatpants.

“you’re going in that,” you raise an eyebrow at his attire, “we’re going to a parent-teacher meeting, not the gym.”

“yeah daddy, my teachers are gonna think you’re a bum or something,” isolde snickers.

“i’ll help your dad, go watch tv for a little bit longer,” you chuckle at zeke’s pout and put down aloisia, who runs to the couch.

isolde takes off her backpack and joins her sister on the couch, putting her feet on the coffee table as aloisia puts on avatar: the last airbender.

“i thought the dress code was casual,” zeke furrows his brows as you take his hand and lead him back into his bedroom.

“it is. sweatpants are not casual, they’re lounge wear,” you snicker as he flops onto the bed while you close the door and go into the closet.

you know zeke’s rolling his eyes at you, judging from his silence. you grab ahold of a white button up with light grey vertical stripes on it, trying to picture your boyfriend in the shirt. you shake your head and put it back on the rack, deciding that the default outfit would be best for now. you take a white button up off the hanger and grab a pair of black dress pants from his dresser. you hand him a pair of black loafers to go along with it and some long black socks that would cover up his ankles, you’re so glad you reminded him that they exist. you throw a black belt next to him as well.

“this is boring.”

“zeke, this is a pta meeting, the whole thing will be boring,” you watch him rid himself of his shirt.

“should i wear a tie?”

“no, you’ll look better with one button undone,” you smile as he struggles to balance correctly when he puts on his pants.

he tucks the shirt inside his pants and slips on the belt with ease. he unbuttons a button before he slips on his socks.

“i thought today was my day off,” he smirks at you while you roll up his cuffs a bit.

you roll your eyes and he slips on his shoes. he doesn’t need to do his hair, it’s just effortlessly neat.

“time to go,” you scurry to the front door with the girls following behind you.

“he doesn’t look homeless anymore,” isolde notes when zeke follows you all out of the door.

“not funny,” he huffs while he locks the door behind him and the girls get into the black SUV zeke drives.

you help aloisia buckle herself up in the car seat and then slip into the passenger’s seat next to zeke. he’s grumbling something about ‘uncle eren’ and ‘getting the girls’ as he turns the car on.

————

you try to ignore the women ogling zeke as you all walk down the school hallway. you send isolde off to her class since her meeting is after aloisia’s.

“i hope you’ve been good,” you say to aloisia, who’s holding both your’s and zeke’s hands.

“i have! ms greene says i’m one of the best,” she gloats, and you hope for zeke’s sake that ms greene isn’t bluffing.

you three walk into the second grade classroom, which is empty because you reserved the appointment, only to find the teacher isn’t in there. it only seems to make aloisia more excited as she tugs you and zeke towards the class wall with a bunch of pictures of it.

“look, look!!” she jumps as she points at her’s, “they said to draw our family and she said i did a good job!!”

the picture is a messily drawn family portrait of zeke, isolde, and aloisia.

“you drew (name) very pretty,” zeke smiles at you when you snap your head back to look at the picture in closer detail.

there you are, stick figure holding hands with zeke’s and aloisia with isolde on zeke’s other side. you never expected to be on aloisia’s family portrait, you’d barely been in her life for two years and weren’t exactly motherly. you’re a struggling college student that she occasionally sees crying at the kitchen table with zeke comforting you from behind. she, on very rare occasions, sees you come home, absolutely plastered, with a sober zeke leading you to his room. you’re the woman that wakes her up when you cry on the couch late at night. you were, admittedly, okay with not being seen as their mom.

it wasn’t your place, for so many reasons. one, you didn’t exactly act as a role model. two, you could never replace her mother and would never try. three, zeke never referred to you as such. you’d only ever act like their mother whenever you were in certain situations. but that didn’t mean you didn’t want them to see you as a maternal figure.

it made you want to cry, but luckily you didn’t. you just smile at the picture and pat aloisia’s head in approval.

“you did do a very good job,” you smile down at her and before you can give her a hug, you notice a woman walking into the room.

“oh, you must be zeke yeager, aloisia’s dad! i’m ms greene,” her face flushes while she holds out her hand for him to shake.

“yea, that’s me. it’s nice to meet you,” he shakes her hand.

she turns to you, “oh my goodness, i didn’t know aloisia and isolde had an older sister!”

“no, she’s my girlfriend of two years,” zeke chuckles uncomfortably.

“i’m (name), nice to meet you,” you wave your hand, “i’m just here to keep an eye on aloisia while you two talk.”

zeke and her go to a table in the corner of the room and aloisia drags you towards a bookshelf.

thirty minutes of aloisia rambling about her favorite book go by seemingly quick, and you watch as she cheers when her classmates walk into the room. zeke’s walking towards you, holding a thumbs up with a cocky smile, for whatever reason.

you kiss aloisia goodbye, who doesn’t seem too fazed, and head towards isolde’s classroom. you hold hands with zeke while swinging them back and forth while he repeats everything the teacher’s said to him.

“i can’t believe my little girl’s at a third grade reading level,” he exclaims, “that vocabulary studying did wonders!!”

“you should thank me since i was the one who studied with her cause she asked about my assignments for class,” you taunt and laugh when zeke pulls you closer by the shoulder.

that’s how the two of you walk into isolde’s classroom. she’s sitting at a table with her teacher, miss dunst, and fidgeting with her thumbs anxiously. she’s covering half of her face with her hair. with the one eye you can see it looks puffy and her cheeks are red, as if she’d been crying.

it has both you and zeke rushing to sit down on both side of her, zeke asking miss dunst what happened while you tend to isolde.

“hey, why are you crying,” you’re squatting by her chair and you reach to brush the hair out of her face.

when you see her other eye, you gasp out at the black eye starting to form on her eye.

“oh my god, zeke, look at her face!!”

“that is what i wanted to speak about with you. isolde has been getting bullied by some of her classmates. today, a little girl hit her after isolde defended herself while they argued,” the poor woman looks sad watching you and zeke check isolde for more wounds.

“why has she been bullied? she’s not mentioned this to me or (name),” zeke asks while examining her eye more closely.

“well, during the first day of school, isolde introduced herself and told the class about her family. she mentioned you, mr yeager, and her sister. the kids asked about her mother before i could stop them and she was honest with them and said that she had passed. she then said that she still, in a way, had a mother. your girlfriend, mr yeager.

“i asked her occupation, to which isolde said a college student. the kids got loud but i managed to quiet them down, and i thought it was the end of that. after that, her classmates started to pick on her verbally about your age gap and her late mother. i didn’t find out about it until this morning when isolde was hit,” miss dunst frowns as she explains.

before zeke could open his mouth, you speak up, “i’m the girlfriend, (name). i am hoping that these children will be punished accordingly and that their parents be notified. if this has really been going on all year like you say, then at this point their parents should be involved.”

“of course! i’m giving all of their parents a call after classes today. the little girl who hit her is sitting down with the principal right now, so she should be safe if you two would like her to stay at school.”

“give us a moment,” you smile kindly, which she returns, and walks to her desk to give you ‘privacy’.

“isolde, why didn’t you tell your daddy or i about what was going on,” you ask while she hugs zeke.

she peeks her head out of his chest, “didn’t want to seem weak.”

“why would you be worried about that,” zeke asks.

“after mom died, you were always so sad and stressed. i thought that if i was strong, you would be happier,” she explains shakily.

“isolde, look at me,” you put a hand on her knee, “you were six years old when your mommy died. six year olds shouldn’t know how to accurately take care of themselves, it’s why your daddy was there. i’m sure your daddy appreciated the effort, but i promise you that all he wanted you to be was his happy little girl. you don’t need to be strong at 11 years old, and you don’t need to be strong all the time. like you said, your daddy was sad when your mom died. it didn’t make him weak, it made him a person. and that’s what you are; a person. a little person.”

she sniffles and nods at you, “people can’t do everything by themselves. i’m sorry if we made it feel like you couldn’t tell us, and it’s totally understandable that you felt that way.”

zeke hums in agreement, “we love you, baby. so much.”

“love you too,” she mumbles with a small smile.

“do you want to stay at school,” zeke asks, he didn’t want to force her into a situation where she didn’t want to be.

“i have a math test later, don’t wanna miss it,” she sighs, now looking up at you.

“(name)...?”

you tilt your head while you wait for her answer.

“i’m sorry i’ve been so mean to you. everyone was making fun of me and called it weird, so i guess i wanted to believe that too,” your heart warms whenever she looks away shyly.

great, now zeke’s horny from seeing you act motherly.

————

ever since you and zeke had stepped off school campus, one of his hands was always touching you. it didn’t matter where, zeke was shameless.

even as you unlock the door to the his house, he has his chest pressed against your back and his arms wrapped around your waist. his lips are kissing softly at your neck and his hands are shamelessly groping at your boobs.

“zeke, what is up with you,” you laugh whenever you open the door, kicking off your shoes immediately.

“horny,” he admits, swiftly following after you and locking the door behind himself.

“what about this morning made you horny,” you ask shyly while you sit on the couch.

zeke’s buttons are halfway undone and his belt is somewhere on the floor. he squeezes in behind you, once again pressing his chest against your back.

“acting maternal, i guess,” his beard tickles the back of your neck as he kisses it.

“is this why you told isolde it was okay if she wanted to stay at school,” you snicker at his fingers pulling your shirt over your head.

“why else,” he scoffs, “my only day off in a while and i’m horny. sounds like a deal.”

you whimper whenever he starts biting at your neck and when his large hands slip under your bra.

“zeke, if we’re gonna do it on the couch, can i at least lay on my back,” you ask while zeke unclips your bra.

without a word, he’s thrown you onto the couch on your back and climbing on top of you seconds later. your hands quickly unbutton the rest of his shirt, pushing it halfway off of his body.

zeke throws the shirt onto the floor and kisses you, hands running up and down your torso. he pulls away to kiss and suck at your neck while his hands grope at your tits. you’re stuck between laughing and moaning at zeke’s beard dragging against your neck.

his mouth trails down to your tits, mouth attaching to your left tit while he continues to grope your right one. you let out a moan whenever he tweaks your nipple with his right hand and bites softly at your left nipple.

he pulls away from your chest, tugging off your pants and panties in frustration. it leaves you laughing and assisting him. whenever your pants do come off, he throws them to the ground and spreads your legs.

“zeke, they’re not opening too far, we’re on a couch,” you note, but soon stand corrected as zeke grabs your ankle and puts it on the back of the couch.

“nevermind,” you snicker at his cocky smirk, as if he’d done something amazing.

your other leg hangs off the couch, leaving you spread open for zeke. zeke spreads open your glistening folds with thumbs and gives a mindful lick up to your clit. after realizing that his beard is not rubbing against you uncomfortably, he dives in like it’s a pool, which he thinks it is because of how wet you are.

his mouth his sucking on your clit vigorously, as if he were a man starved. you’re moaning wantonly as he suddenly ups the speed. how did he even go that fast, you have no clue, but either way you enjoy it. your back in arching off of the couch and your toes are curling as zeke starts bringing you closer to an orgasm.

“zeke!! i’m... i’m gonna come,” you tug at his hair as your legs start to convulse and close around his head.

he only goes faster, and you wonder to yourself if zeke is powered by batteries or something. but the thought is quickly shut off whenever you finally orgasm, moaning out in ecstasy and throwing your head back against the couch cushions.

zeke slows down his pace, helping you ride through your orgasm. he pulls away whenever you’ve calmed down, fingers immediately pressing at your tight entrance.

“zeke... i-i’m too sensitive,” your complaint goes ignored as two of zeke’s fingers are suddenly inside of you.

“don’t care, deal with it,” he huffs as his fingers stretch you out.

with his other hand, his thumb is rubbing at your puffy clit at the same time of his fingers curling inside of you. your hips buck up with a mewl and zeke chuckles at the sight. unlike last time, he’s moving his tantalizingly slow.

his fingers curl once more, rubbing against the spongy part inside of you sweetly. you buck your hips up again at the contact and curl your toes whenever zeke starts abusing that spot with overwhelming speed. curling his fingers against the spot each time he pistons his fingers in and out of you.

“zeke!!” you come again while moaning his name and he can feel his cock twitch in his pants.

zeke chuckles when he pulls his fingers out, spreading them apart to watch your juices stick together in strings. he plops the fingers in his own mouth, rubbing his other hand up and down your quivering thigh as he pulls away from your sloppy cunt.

he pulls his fingers out of his mouth with an obnoxious ‘pop’ and pulls off his pants and boxers at the same time. he groans at his cock hitting against his lower stomach.

you stare at zeke’s cock. the tip is flushed with a bashful pink and his hair is trimmed nicely against his groin. he’s more girth than he is length, a whopping 6.5 inches, which is something he absolutely gets arrogant about.

“hurry,” you huff while watching zeke fist his cock.

“nah, you gotta beg for it, baby,” the corner of his mouth tugs upwards as he watches you wipe away your tears from the previous orgasm.

“zeke,” you whine and wiggle your hips, “please please please give me your cock. need it so bad.”

he hums thoughtfully, and it already gives you his answer.

“please... i want it so bad, need to be fucked by you,” you pout but perk up at his dismissive shrugging.

“since you want it so bad,” he’s laughing while he puts his right hand on your pelvis and his other on his shaft to enter you.

you gasp at the feeling of him pushing inside of you, grabbing for his, now, free hand. when you catch his hand, you guide it to your bruised neck for him to grasp on. he’s chuckling once again, fingers lightly squeezing against your throat as he continues to push himself in.

he groans whenever he bottoms out, letting go of your neck to grab at your plush thighs. he pushes the towards your chest and thrusts into you shallowly after he spits on his cock buried in your pussy. he hits you deeper than he would’ve before, that much is obvious by your moans raising octaves when he starts to thrust roughly.

your hands reach up to grab the back of his thighs to pull him closer to you than before. he’s groaning at the feeling of your pussy squeezing onto him each time he pulls out and thrusts back into you.

“fuck... zeke!!” you cry and throat your head back.

“fuck,” he grunts, “you’re so fuckin’ tight. even after how much i fuck this pretty little cunt each week.”

his words make you whimper and squeeze your grip on his thighs, making crescent moons into the skin.

“i’m gonna come... i’m gonna come again,” you pant out, back already starting to arch, “come with me please..!”

he speeds up his thrusts, the sound of his balls slapping against your ass getting increasingly louder as he does so.

“you wanna come with me so badly,” he asks tauntingly while you nod.

“god, zeke, please,” you try to ignore the saliva and tears on your face as you continue to scream out for zeke.

“i’ll give my sweet girl my cum since she asked so nicely,” he’s biting his lip whenever he feels his orgasm getting closer.

“yes! yes! please,” you sound so desperate as your orgasm gets closer, “zeke, please, fuck a baby into me, please..!”

zeke almost comes right then at your pleas, but ends up stilling and adjusting his stance to thrust into you more efficiently. the sudden stop makes you whine but it’s soon interrupted with a gasp as he jackhammers into you harder and faster than before.

“fuckin’ whore, wanting me to fuck a baby into you. to make you a mom. since you asked so nicely, i’ll oblige,” he berates.

“you me to fuck a baby into you? make you a mom?” it has you nodding frantically.

zeke continues to degrade you as you’re orgasm comes rushing towards you, fingers now clawing at his thighs as a signal.

zeke thrusts into you two more times before the two of you manage to orgasm simultaneously. his jackhammering slows into a grind, helping the two of you ride out the euphoria you’ve both just went through.

you whimper whenever he pulls out, uncomfortable at the sudden emptiness in you. he watches his cum start to dribble out of you, telling you to keep your legs up. he scurries off to find a paper towel or something to wipe it up with before it falls onto the couch. you shiver whenever you feel a wet cloth wipe away the dribbling cum.

he’s wiping down your chest and neck as well with a clean side of it after you put your legs down. he carries you off into his bathroom, sitting you on the counter while he readies the shower.

“i can’t believe you said that,” he raises a questioning eyebrow at you while he checks the water’s temperature.

“i wouldn’t mind having your kid,” you shrug and watch him put two towels on the counter next to you.

“i might just give you one, don’t say that,” he jokes as he starts to hug you.

“‘m okay with that,” you sigh and lean into his touch, enjoying his warmth.

“you’re stupid,” he snorts and kisses at your shoulder.

“only for you,” you snuggle your head into his neck with a giggle.

“i love you,” he sighs.

“i love you. enough to have your kids.”

maybe in a few hours when you weren’t bathing in the afterglow, zeke would bring it up to you.

#attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #snk #aot fanfiction #snk fanfiction #zeke yeager #zeke x you #shingeki no kyojin zeke #zeke yeager x reader #zeke x reader #zeke jaeger #attack on titan zeke #zeke smut #zeke aot #tw: breeding

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whentheynameyoujoy · 3 years

Text

The Airbender Extermination Is Dumbo and I Refuse to Accept It

So I’ve been thinking about re-watching and finally finishing The Legend of Korra, weighing the pros and cons of subjecting myself to that frustrating jumble of half-baked ideas all over again. And while I was doing that, I remembered the precise moment when I went “no, you know what, fuck it, you people lied to me, the show in fact doesn’t get better, it’s doing the exact same thing it’s always done and I’m fucking tired of it.”

“Oh, why would you ever say the protagonist is a static reactive disaster who never learns or progresses or stops being jostled around by the actions of others while the narrative keeps praising her as a wise empathetic person who eventually makes the right decisions? BTW, the last decision Korra made with no thinking whatsoever was a doomsday level of apocalyptically bad but it did bring airbenders back, somehow, outside of anyone’s control or intentions. I mean, it’s not like this was ever on the table and Korra had to purposefully think about whether to bring back airbenders in exchange for infesting the world with uncontrollable spirits, or keep it as was, with no spirits and only three elemental nations. But in case you were wondering how in the hell can airbenders returning be chalked up to Korra being a good Avatar and not a monumental fuck-up, here’s Tenzin praising her for the umpteenth time!”

And as I was rage-quitting the show, I kept thinking, “Man, they really screwed themselves over with the worldbuilding all the way back in ATLA if this was the only way they could think of to bring airbenders back.”

Because while the majority of ATLA’s problems is rooted in the developments of Book 3, there’d been some questionable stuff baked into the show’s fabric right from the beginning.

Like the idea that there having been a complete extermination of Air Nomads bar Aang is totally plausible and shouldn’t be treated by viewers as a red herring for an eventual revelation there’ve been pockets of them hiding around the world the whole time.

So let’s run down the list of things which needed to happen in order for the notion to be even remotely acceptable, shall we?

1) The nation of nomads had to be mono-cultural and mono-racial

I’ve touched upon it once before here where I briefly mentioned how the idea that the four nations flat out didn’t mingle and mixed babies weren’t a thing until Aang founded the city of Let the Fandom Forever Argue Whether a Massive Ethnic Cleansing Would Have Been the Moral Narrative Choice just isn’t sustainable, especially in the case of the Air Nomads. I’d like to correct myself: it’s not sustainable if you want to portray Air Nomads as morally unproblematic good guys.

Why is it natural to assume the existence of mixed and multi-bending families? Because mixing is how humans work. There have always been relationships between people from different villages, different tribes, different cultures, different religions, different countries, regardless of their war or peace status. The notion of peace = sexual separation is at best ahistorical bullshit and at worst racist twaddle. For as long as we have been separated by borders, there have been people having sex right on it, even in times when those relationships were explicitly forbidden. It’s just human nature.

And the show acknowledges this.

You might, might get away with portraying the nations of Avatarverse as mono-cultural in the case of the Fire Nation and Water Tribes, seeing how they’re island countries without an established history as trading hubs (already too much to ask but we’re devil’s advocating this baby). But you can’t tell me there aren’t scores of tiny airbenders being born to Earth Kingdom women left and right or that female Air Nomads aren’t having little Boulders every once in a while. Because unless Air Nomads adopted the British mode of travel and refuse to interact with locals, period, they’re meeting lots of people over the course of their nomadic lives and spending a lot of time with them while outside their own community.

There’s no way this doesn’t result in sex and thus in babies sooner or later.

Unless you’re ready to knock the Air Nomads from their Bryke-provided pedestal, that is.

By all accounts, there should be airbending citizens of the Earth Kingdom and earthbending members of the Air Nomads. Moreover, there should be swaths of non-benders being born to Air Nomads, forming entire acolyte-like communities. But there aren’t. And the only way this makes any kind of Watsonian sense is if the Air Nomads are ordered to be celibate when around outsiders.

This is about to get rather yikes.

Not to put a too fine point on it: in their quest to portray the Air Nomads as the bestest wisest spiritualistest tribest tribe of them all, Bryke made them extremely plausible to interpret as hardcore into racial purity. Because see, it’s established in canon that every single Air Nomad in existence was an airbender. Every. Single. One. The reason why they don’t produce any non-benders is, to quote the Avatar wiki, a “high level of spirituality of their people”.

This, to put it the most politely I can, is complete and utter horseshit. To accept this as an explanation, you’d have to ignore everything about genetics and accept there is a connection between spirituality and one’s ability to produce a bender, something debunked by canon multiple times. Moreover, you’d have to accept bending as a higher form of being.

See these people? None of them are shown as individually spiritual or occupying a spiritual role in their culture. With the exception of Ozai they’re non-benders yet all produced exceptionally talented benders. And vice versa, you have spiritual people in the show who nonetheless have a non-bending child. Why’s not Yue a waterbender when her parents trusted in spirits enough to let them save her as a newborn? Is genetics applicable only to non-airbenders? What, is Water Tribe spirituality not enough?

(Doylist speaking, it actually isn’t as it’s well-established that Bryke don’t recognise different kinds of spirituality as equal and valid and instead interpret the very concept as a pyramid where airbenders occupy the top floor, sorry.)

So how do you get a nation full of benders? Simple: by policing who can procreate when with whom. And how do you get a nation full of airbenders? By forbidding Air Nomads to have sex with non-airbenders. And I’m being kind by assuming nonbender babies aren’t born anyway and the Air Nomads don’t bash their heads in with a rock to keep the bloodlines pure, even though it would clarify how come the Fire Nation was able to run through the Air Temples during the roughly thirty minutes of supercharging provided to them by Sozin’s Comet.

This, btw, explains everything about Pathik. He grew up with Gyatso and is a well of knowledge of Air Nomad spirituality while not having much to add in regard to the other nations so clearly, airbenders were his primary source. He’s also the only Air Nomad-adjacent nonbender we know of, yet the philosophical outlook he teaches Aang revolves around the unity of people, not separation, which is Avatar, not Air Nomad stuff (unless of course you want to go the Bryke route of pretending there’s no difference).

Look, you might try persuading me Pathik isn’t the result of a fling between an Air Nomad and an Earth Kingdom peasant or that his mother didn’t hide him so that some helpful monk wouldn’t drop him on the head or that he didn’t develop his philosophy in response to being made to feel lesser throughout his childhood, but I’m telling you right now I don’t believe you.

The story of this guy must be fascinating. And by fascinating I mean full of child abuse.

So there you have it: The only way an extermination of the Air Nomads is possible is if there isn’t any airbending DNA outside their group which is only possible if they have rules against sex with outsiders and strictly manage their procreation and the only way you’d have that is if the Air Nomads are a nation of fucking supremacists.

Enjoy the next rewatch, I guess.

2) The nation of nomads had to have all its mono-cultural mono-racial nomadic members stationed at four locations at the exact same time

Fine, so Air Nomads are structurally racist and avoid relations with members of the other nations even though there’s no connection between spirituality and ability to bend, so the only reason they’d ever be doing this is if they were mighty concerned about the purity of their bloodlines.

Interestingly, this is presented as the marriage motivator of the main bad guy.

So far so logic.

What’s very much not logic is that the narrative asks you to take it as a given that the entirety of the nation found itself at the temples at the exact moment when Sozin was in the mood to commit some heavy genociding. And by entirety I mean every single member, even the babies just born to a nomad half the world away. Because unless you’re leaving the door open for there being some wayward airbending DNA which would eventually produce an airbender, making Aaang not the last one and thus disqualifying the genocide from being an extermination, then every nomad had to nomad their way to the temples at a single point in time.

Except for my boy, another proof of him being a pariah, as if I needed another.

This is too much to assume of a non-nomadic people, let alone a nomadic one. There are just two explanations I can come up with as to how this is possible. One, Air Nomads aren’t actually all that hot and bothered about nomading and the Temples are more of a Jonestown scenario where few ever leave. Or more plausibly two, living as a nomad for months on end, quite possibly on your own and with no sexual outlet, would be hard even on the most committed celibate. If the instruction which prevents an airbender from having sex with members of the other cultures isn’t regularly reinforced, accidents are bound to happen.

Case in point

You’d need to brush up on the celibacy programming sooner or later for it to remain in effect. Additionally, airbenders practice strict gender segregation, with half the temples being assigned to men and half to women. This strongly implies ritualised procreation even at times when you are allowed to have sex.

Ergo, behold! The Annual Airbending Fuckfest, held annually every year at the temples, gathering every airbender from all over the world for them to get their rocks off, produce racially approved babies, and for Sozin to easily discover when the Air Nomads would be at their most vulnerable.

I like to imagine him striking in the middle of a nation-wide orgy but that’s just me.

3) The Fire Nation had to be able to attack the temples at the same time

OK, so we established the Airbender Regional Conference, full on with swingers parties and obligatory lectures on the evils of race-mixing. Very nineteen thirties Germany, don’t know how it could pass a preliminary discussion on worldbuilding but let’s roll with it.

Wanna know what I’m not going to roll with? This.

You might have noticed something about the Air Temples. Like that they’re spaced pretty far away from each other. As in “North, South, West, and East” far away from each other. Meanwhile, the Fire Nation is placed on the far left edge of the map, the “western” edge if you will. Meaning, Sozin couldn’t benefit from a central position and needed different amounts of time to move his armies, getting everyone in position for a highly coordinated attack on the Air Temples to take place.

And he needed to do this without anyone in the world noticing, otherwise he’d blow his moment of surprise. Which gets pretty tricky when it comes to reaching the Northern and Eastern Air Temples, seeing how there’s something called the Southern Water Tribe and Western / Southern Air Temple blocking the way.

But Joy! you might be saying. Don’t be silly, the Avatar world is round! Couldn’t Sozin use little-known routes to mount a surreptitious attack and not risk his plans getting out?

First of all, while “the world is round” may or may not be common knowledge in the Avatarverse (and I sure hope it is because how else do you explain Wan Shi Tong’s planetarium), no one acts like it. The conquering of the Earth Kingdom progresses from West to East, with no indication of there being both an eastern and western front. Ba Sing Se is seen throughout the war as an impregnable jewel of the campaign which it wouldn’t have been if Sozin had realized the city was literally in his back yard and a naval attack was very much a possibility. And up to the final episode the characters travel as though they think of their destinations as points on a flat surface. The age of discovery doesn’t seem to have occurred. For all we know, the people of Avatarverse are operating on a notion there’s a Unagi-infested ocean west from the Fire Nation, impossible to cross.

But all right, let’s pretend there was a Magalhães who discovered a direct route from Caldera City to Ba Sing Se for Sozin to clinch the Air Temples from all sides at roughly the same time. Cool. Slight problem, though. Sozin also waged simultaneous attacks on the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribes. I don’t care how strong the comet makes you, at some point there’s just no way you have enough people to man your ships, let alone launch a victorious attack on every single country on the planet.

Moreover, remember—Sozin needed to attack simultaneously to make full use of the comet, i.e. the whole reason why he was launching a mass assault in the first place. And he was on an especially tight schedule because in the Avatarverse, Sozin’s Comet lasts some thirty minutes. Which implies a need for some next-level coordination. Yet somehow I don’t feel all the Hawkies in the world were going to hack this. And that’s assuming perfect weather, with no ships sinking and nobody noticing huge navies moving all over.

It’s impossible no matter how you look at it. Either the plan would leak out and the Air Nomads would hide or mount a defence, or the Fire Nation forces would run out of time and have to fight without the benefit of the comet, especially in the harder-to-reach locations.

But you know what? I’m going to be nice for once. I’m going to steelman the hell out of this. Because remember those four Air Temples? Only one of them bears any visible marks of Fire Nation soldiers ever coming there before the show starts proper.

Additionally, if you think about it, organizing the Aerial Swingers Party at four otherwise gender-segregated locations sounds like a logistical nightmare. So let’s assume the Southern Air Temple was the lucky one stocking up on lube in 0 AG, with the rest being completely abandoned and everyone travelling south. This means that Sozin needed to attack a single Air Temple, along with the Southern Water Tribe and Yu Dao, all located more or less within the same general unobstructed area. Seems rather doable, no?

So now for the final reason why the notion of airbenders being exterminated is still utterly coconuts.

4) The flying nation of flying people with flying pets had to forget how to fucking fly

All right, summing up: for the extermination to have any chance at success, Air Nomads must have practiced strict genetic purity which explains why there aren’t any outside enclaves which could have or produce airbenders. All Air Nomads must have been present at a single location at the same time. No one with the exception of Pathik’s mum had ever sex with outsiders, meaning no new group of airbenders was produced and the Southern Air Temple held the entirety of Air Nomads when the genocide happened.

Cool? Cool.

So what you’re asking me to accept here is that the offensive Fire Nation force which didn’t learn how to use aircraft until after one hundred years when the Mechanist invented it was able to come and in the thirty minutes afforded to it by the comet exterminate however many hundreds or thousands of people who had the distinct advantage of being on their home turf on the top of a mountain, complete with impenetrable hiding places, and were

Fucking

AIRBORNE!

The temple stuffed chock full of airbending masters, a single one of whom managed to kill dozens of soldiers before dying, was no match for the army of slow-moving tanks or a couple of rocketbenders and had no choice but to lie down and croak.

No way. No fucking way. I can deal with the implied racial supremacy and enforced celibacy and annual boinkfests and Pathik being ostracized for having the wrong sperm donor but I refuse to accept that when the fight went south no airbender was able to slope off through the little thing known as the fucking sky, on their own or using one of those huge furballs they’re bonded to for life and which are portrayed throughout the show as essentially impossible to shoot down.

Forget Game of Thrones, try getting this baby

I don’t give a shit how OP Sozin’s Comet makes you, this is just not happening. Even assuming the best conditions for the genocide as I have been throughout this meta, someone would have escaped. You’re telling me no one loaded the kids onto the sky bison, at least? There’d be dozens of people forced to go into hiding and give up their culture and roleplay as Arya driving Nymeria away, sure. Maybe some would seek help in the Earth Kindom and be given over to the Fire Nation. Perhaps there’d be skirmishes erupting over the next few years which would further decimate the population. But some would survive.

A factual extermination of Air Nomads, however you slice it, is logically and logistically impossible and only makes sense as a) a Watsonian exercise in Fire Nation propaganda, and b) a Doylist sleight of hand. Regardless of whether you prefer surviving Air Nomads to hide in complete seclusion and not reveal themselves until after Ozai is defeated, or assimilate with the other nations, it makes no sense for there not to be people who can eventually produce airbenders.

Well what do you know. Looks like eighty-sixing season four in favour of that stupid movie wasn’t a good idea after all was it.

#atla #Avatar The Last Airbender #anti bryke #anti lok #anti korra #atla critical

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firespirited · 3 years

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I finished Steven Universe and movie (but not the SU future yet which I feel is much needed to wrap up emotional loose ends). okay here’s where i say some stuff about how it felt and people get very angry right?

The queer readings are obvious: subtext, text, let’s sing whole songs about it. Not just gender and sex but ways of life, ways of belief and body positivity.

I can see some interesting takes on caste systems* and assigned social roles. Gem on Gem eugenics, Gem on Gem biological weapons/warcrimes.

*this would be coming from my own knowledge of the invisible systemic caste system of the UK: wealth, occupation, family history, business ties, alumni ties. World history and friends from caste/status by birth countries.

TL;DR for the next part: The diamonds and gem worlds are too flat to read them as commentary on anything substantial. Diamond discourse would have to make a bunch of suppositions by placing complex human history on a sketchy outline.

The space hitler/space british empire take? Not supported by the flimsy amount of exposition given. I have watched and read so much sci fi: 30 years of cramming whatever stories in whatever format into this thirsty brain... and hot take coming up: this cartoon is fantasy. The gems are wizards/magic creatures not metaphors for the english. Using the world colony and empire isn’t enough. TO BE CLEAR: I consume regular criticism of empire: the real life ones... and a whole bunch of metaphorical ones. Avatar the last airbender has a decent surface critique of recent colonisation. Watership Down has some interesting points if we’re sticking to cartoons. (Please let’s not stick to cartoons)

I got the impression that earth was an anomaly for a colony in having sapient lifeforms and the Gems simply weren’t prepared for the possibility of other sentient life (the probability of life being out there is high, the probability of it being intelligent and remotely on our level is not great). They were also biased to think we were just animals given our state of tech upon discovery and comparatively short lifespan. If it was stated that they’ve destroyed other sentient beings’ planets it didn’t register in my dazed watchthrough of a lot of gem history condensed into about a total of 30 minutes combined exposition.

I’m unable to map the history of my country’s colonising (which started with our own brothers) on this cartoon story where 6000 years is a few days to these Gem aliens. I’m afraid the diamonds seemed too alien, 2 dimensional and unrelatable to project human motives onto them. The three diamonds read more like management AI that got a few feelings than sentient beings. Maybe it’s different when you’re not binge watching and have time to dissect the details?

I also felt like the diamonds ‘as family’ felt too cartoony to be commentary on family dynamics: not when there are multiple family-like units explored in depth elsewhere.

Are the pearls slaves? if they are, it’s written with lower than house elf levels of nuance.

My main take is that this show is about queerness and it’s good at that. It made an effort at racial/ethnic inclusion and a basic understanding of gem castes. Extrapolating to a human level beyond the basic “everyone deserves a chance to choose their own life”, well this is the wrong story for that. The worldbuilding is a framework to examine gender, love and personality. If you want to analyse power dynamics on the galactic level, uh... even the muslim ripoff shroom-trip that is Dune does it better.

one final galaxy brain take: dune would make a great anime.

#saf #steven universe #steven universe spoilers

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aitarose · 4 years

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SUNSHINE | MAKO

PAIRING: Mako x Kya’s Daughter!Reader [fem]

PLOT: Mako’s always had a little crush on Y/N. After all, who wouldn’t? But admitting it to himself? Yeah, no. Just the thought of admitting it to her? Even bigger no. He’d never consider confessing..right? based on these requests by anons

WARNINGS: fluff, mutual pining, friends to lovers

WORD COUNT: 2.3k

A/N: i love mako sm like you guys don’t even know. this man OWNS me fdjafdlsjk. also i got a little carried away with these requests and i took them to the next level so please enjoy :)

MY MASTERLIST

Mako was living his absolute worst nightmare.

Stuck aboard an airship with his two exes, his brother, his boss, and his boss’ ex with no opening window to jump out of?

The day was definitely not in his favor.

Every hour seemed to be the same.

Radio a call..hear about a new airbender..find the map..use the map..go to the town..get kicked out of the town..return to the beginning.

While Mako did love having a routine—he was bored of this one.

The only thing that made his day even slightly interesting was Y/N.

It wasn’t long ago when he had met the water tribe girl. They’d first spoken during the Glacier Spirits Festival in the Southern Water Tribe.

He had been introduced to her mother, Kya, through Bolin. His younger brother was so starstruck by Avatar Aang’s only daughter, that he couldn’t help but drag along her own daughter with him for the entirety of the festival.

Bolin spent the rest of the night proudly walking alongside the teenage girl, who had to have been at least two to three years older than him.

He went around and showed her off to all of their friends from Republic City, even if they already knew her.

“Don’t make a show of it, but I know the Avatar’s granddaughter. You don’t need to be wowed or anything, it’s no big deal.”

“Bolin, I’m literally her uncle.”

Mako was one of the very last people to meet the infamous Y/N.

It was right after his argument with Korra about the situation between her father and Unalaq. His emotions were all over the place, confusion and annoyance dominated his mood.

But all of his anger dissolved with one look at her smile.

It was at that moment when Mako decided that Y/N had a gift.

She could lift someone’s spirit with a single glance. Her eyes always glowed with positivity and her soul was the purest one he had ever come across.

Y/N could be compared to the rising sun. Just by existing, she radiated more light and goodness than the greatest man on Earth could ever achieve.

It had been a very brief introduction.

“Mako, my man!” Bolin slapped his palm over the firebender’s shoulder, a cheesy side smile pointed at the teenage girl standing next to him.

“This is my good friend, Y/N. Y/N meet my big bro!”

Y/N beamed, her teeth sparkling under the moonlight. She held out her hand in a friendly manner and looked straight into Mako’s eyes, unafraid of making eye contact.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mako.” She spoke whilst shaking his hand. “I’ve only known Bolin for an hour and I feel like I already know everything about you.”

Mako groaned in embarrassment. He was always flattered by how much Bolin looked up to him, but sometimes his little brother went a little too far.

“You had an hour? Let me guess..” Mako pointedly looked at Bolin, shaking his head in amusement. “He must’ve told you our entire life story by now.”

When she laughed at his blunt attempt at a joke, Mako’s heart soared right then and there.

It was like the fire inside of him had been ignited with gasoline. but instead of her water smothering his flames..they made the grow. Made them stronger.

Though Mako hadn’t realized these lurching feelings at the time. He did have a girlfriend after all, and he liked to think he would never intentionally cheat on her.

That didn’t stop him from admiring her from afar.

Platonically of course.

There weren’t many moments after the festival where Mako found himself alone with Y/N.

He had chosen to follow Korra to open the spirit portals and Y/N went off to tour the air temples with her extended family—and if he was being honest, he hadn’t had much time to think about her between fighting off evil spirits and breaking up with his girlfriend.

It wasn’t until after Team Avatar defeated Unalaq and Vaatu, that Mako’s mind returned to his unresolved and unrealized feelings.

With the spirit portals open, the world was new again.

Thousands of people were traveling, discovering places they never knew existed, and migrating to different nations.

Luckily for Mako, Y/N had been one of those people.

It had taken her about a week to move into her apartment in Republic City.

Her flat was quaint but cosy. It had views overlooking the busy downtown and bustling people, and she had easy access to stores and shops in the neighborhood.

There was nothing wrong with her new home, but it wasn’t like the South. In fact, it was nothing like the South.

Y/N missed her friends and colleagues. She missed the chilly wind that would slice through the air and freeze her cheekbones. She missed the animals and the overall energy that the South had.

But she was open to new beginnings and new friends—and her open mindset was exactly what led her to join her family and Team Avatar on the search for new airbenders.

Which is right where Mako had left off.

The airship was dreadful, dreary, and just plain boring.

His main source of entertainment was watching a cloud disappear from his view, and then preceding to find another one for his eyes to chase.

Luckily for him, Y/N was also bored out of her mind. She had no one to talk to on the ship.

Korra? Tempting, but intimidating.

Asami? Sure if Y/N was less hippy and more business mogul.

Bolin? Yeah, she didn’t want to go down that path again.

Lin? No way.

Her actual family members? Good option—but Tenzin was boring and all Jinora did was read old scrolls.

Y/N was at a loss, and the only person that seemed remotely interesting was the brooding firebender staring out of the window.

When she approached him, Mako was at a loss for words.

He had been thinking about this moment for awhile now, and had a pun filled pick-up line ready to go, but when it came down to crunch time, he stalled.

“Hey,” Y/N smiled, gesturing to the seat next to Mako on the iron bench. “Mind if I sit?”

Mako’s mouth opened to respond, but no words came out of his mouth. He sat there like a fish out of water, nodding his head silently.

Y/N shrugged her shoulders and happily sat next to the nineteen year old.

With her being so close in proximity, Mako’s brain flashed exe.error messages through his thoughts.

They sat in a comfortable, yet also awkward silence for a long time.

Every time Mako tried to get a word out, he stumbled. His nerves overcame his speech, preventing him from sounding the least bit cool.

Scratch that. They prevented him from sounding like an actual person and not a toddler that just learned how to speak.

After what felt like generations, Mako was saved by none other than his ex-girlfriends.

“We just landed,” Korra said, waving to the former probender and his companion. A confused look flashed across her face at the sight of them so close yet so uncomfortable.

Asami then poked her head around the corner, coming into view. “Are you guys going to come out or what?”

Y/N was the first to jump up, nodding her head enthusiastically.

She nearly sprinted to the exit—not because she wanted to get away from her encounter with Mako, she was just really excited to meet new people.

Mako heaved a deep sigh when she was completely out the door and out of earshot. It felt like he could finally breathe again without the stress of being in her presence.

“You like her?” Korra crossed her arms over one another, leaning against the wall as Asami stood by her side.

“What?” Mako stuttered, his face flooding with hues of red and pink.

“Why would you say that?”

“No Way!”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about!”

Korra and Asami loudly laughed at Mako’s rambling, while they had both been hurt by his actions in the past, they had come to forgive him—and they wanted nothing more than for him to find his special someone.

“Okay, then.” Korra shrugged, pulling Asami out of the room with her, “Whatever you say, Mako.”

Mako dropped his face into his hands, pulling at his hair as he mentally beat himself up.

“But if it matters,” he looked up to see Korra still standing at the door. A genuine smile shown on her face.

“I think you two would be perfect together.”

As Korra finally left him to himself, Mako couldn’t help but think about how lucky he was to have a friend like her.

She was everything he didn’t need in a relationship, but everything he could’ve ever wanted in a friendship.

Eventually, Mako did manage to force himself off of the airship. He helped with the little show the airbenders put on to influence others to join the nomads and even fought a few bad guys while he was at it.

He was finally having a good day, until the little punk tried to steal his wallet.

“Wait,” he ordered, pulling Kai back by the neck of his shirt. Mako held out his hand expectantly and gave the younger boy a hard look.

“I think you might have something of mine.”

Kai smiled sheepishly before pulling out the firebender’s stolen goods.

“It must’ve fallen into my pocket, my bad.”

Mako glared at the new airbender. The stare he was giving Kai was so cold, it could intimidate a pack of polar bear dogs.

“Now listen here,” he bent down to Kai’s level. His tangerine eyes meeting Kai’s green ones. “I know your game. I used to be the master at it, actually—and let me tell you that it gets you absolutely nowhere.”

Mako sighed, he already saw so much of himself in the kid that he didn’t want him to go down the same hard path that he did.

“All I want is the best for you, kid.” He patted Kai on the shoulder before sending him off to join Jinora on the ship. “Don’t mess up this opportunity.”

There were times where Mako enjoyed being the big bad cop or the authoritarian figure, but this was not one of those times.

He just wanted Kai to have the best life he possibly could.

The life he had always wanted for himself.

Unbeknownst to Mako, his secret crush had witnessed the whole ordeal.

His pure-hearted intentions touched Y/N. Acts of kindness and wellbeing always found their way into her heart, and his act of good caught her attention in a very positive way.

It caught her attention enough, that she found herself standing right behind him.

“That was really sweet what you said back there.” She told Mako, who jumped in surprise at her soft voice.

“Yeah, I tried. I’ve been where he is before. I know how it ends.”

Mako felt much more comfortable now that Y/N had started the conversation. He wasn’t afraid to give his thoughts knowing that she was the one who wanted to talk to him.

Y/N let out a low breath. Her hair willowed in the breeze, her eyes shining under the sunlight. She looked like a lost spirit.

A beautiful lost spirit, Mako thought.

“I try, too.” She whispered to him. Mako could barely hear her voice, it was so faint.

“Sometimes being there for everyone else has its downfall.” Y/N’s sparkling eyes turned dim, sadness drowned her usually uplifting features.

“I spend all my energy making sure that everyone I love is happy, but then there’s never anyone looking out for me, you know?”

Mako did know.

He knew exactly how she was feeling. He’d raised Bolin since they were children.

If anyone knew the pressures of holding onto another person’s burdens, it was Mako.

“I’ve noticed that,” Mako said, stepping closer to the girl. He could see that her eyes were welling with tears, all he wanted to do was wrap his arms around her and make all the negative energy go away.

So that’s exactly what he did.

Y/N melted into Mako’s embrace. She felt his body radiate heat, he warmed not only her body, but her heart in an instant.

“I see you, with Tenzin’s kids.” Mako ran his hand down her back, comforting Y/N as best he could. “They look up to you more than they do anyone else. You’re really amazing, Y/N. I’m surprised you don’t hear it more often.”

Right then and there, Y/N realized exactly what she needed in her life—and it was Mako.

If she was being honest with herself, he hadn’t exactly caught her eye before.

She thought he was somewhat bland at the Glacier Spirits Festival and the whole double girlfriend situation definitely didn’t spark her interest in the firebender, but now here she was..

Crying in his arms, confessing her insecurities, and feeling heard.

She had never felt heard before.

“I think you’re really amazing.” Mako blurted out.

He cringed at his confession, hoping that she didn’t take it the wrong way. If there even was a wrong way to take it.

Mako felt Y/N grow still in his arms. His heart pounded in anticipation for what her next words would be.

To his surprise she pulled away..

Before pressing a deep kiss to his lips.

Mako immediately responded. His mouth moved languidly with hers, connecting in the most perfect way, as if they were meant to be.

His entire body nearly combusted. Her bright spirit combining with his fiery one.

Mako felt like sunshine was running through his veins.

She pulled away, giving him one last chaste kiss.

“I think you’re amazing, too.”

i love feedback pls give me some

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roselevesque · 3 years

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No, but people using the Northern Water Tribe situation and cases of Aang blowing people away to justify the idea that he should have killed Ozai since he was already a killer drive me nuts.

To enforce this, you first need to step over the typical cartoon logic that does apply ATLA too in certain instances ( high risk actions that would definitely injure or kill someone in real life don't unless we are explicitly shown the fact ). Only in Aang's case, however. If you want to be realistic, then every main character's decisions could have resulted in people dying or being severily injured. Think of the Kyoshi Island burnings started by Zuko. Yet, the narrative doesn't bring up actual human victims, not even by Suki herself who'd know best, so it's safe to say that there weren't any.

The Siege of Northern Water Tribe is the big moment brought up in this argument, but it is precisely this moment that undermines Aang's Avatar status as the Avatar when used in such a context. If previous episodes have established the Avatar's spiritual side and ties, the Season 1 finale is the first time we see Aang act as a true bridge for a spirit that isn't his past life.

The audience is already familiar with the concept of Aang's body being taken over as it happened on multiple occassions: entering the Avatar State, the first discussion with Jeong Jeong and the Winter Solstice. It has never happened without Roku or the Avatar State in the picture and definitely not at the same scale as La's possession. Aang, by entering the Oasis, gives his self over and through him the Ocean Spirit exerts their will upon the material world. Aang is essentially not in charge anymore as he serves as a vessel.

The Avatar is humanity's hope and the spirits' greatest connection to the physical realm. The Siege is more important than mere proof that "Aang is a hypocritical baby that doesn't understand the real world!". It is a confirmation of the Avatar's role on a material and cosmic level unprecedented in the series.

Aang's duty goes in two large directions: duty as the Last Airbender and duty as the Avatar. The latter further splits into duty to the people and duty to the spirits. His Avatar status and Last Airbender status can butt heads ( the show's ending revolves around this very notion at its core ), however they don't always call for each other's detriment and trying to blur the lines between them where it isn't necessary reduces the value of moments like the Siege.

#aanglove #avatar aang #atla #avatar the last airbender #atla meta #avatar the legend of aang #northern water tribe #siege of the north #tui and la #atla fandom

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softluci · 4 years

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atla hcs

i’ve been thinking about this for a minute, and i wanna do a set of headcanons for how i think the brothers (and eventually the undateables) would feel about certain avatar: the last airbender characters, or something along those lines. i actually just wanted to talk about lucifer and azula, so everything else here is a bonus. this doesn’t matter, but for what it’s worth: wherever the mc pops up, they will be gn, enjoy!

also: this kinda goes without saying, but there are most definitely spoilers in here. for which seasons? i don’t remember, i watched this show when i was nine, but proceed with caution if you have yet to watch it.

lucifer

if it’s one thing you are not gonna play with him about, it is princess azula. this man is an azula supremacist, and while he might not say those words exactly, anyone would be able to tell that’s the case if they talked to him about the show for longer than two minutes. he actually wasn’t even interested in the show until azula showed up, and he will readily admit this to anyone who inquires about it. what makes it funny is the fact that her first appearance is literally, like, ten seconds, so that means he saw her and immediately knew she was the best, which, like—real recognize real. is he projecting? am i projecting? yes, no. in that order. shut up.

he actually almost couldn’t hide how proud he was when azula almost killed aang, this man is deranged. the same way he takes her wins personally, he takes every loss of hers personally as well, so when she lost that agni kai? 🚶‍♂️

the average azula enjoyer believes azula should get a redemption arc, lucifer believes azula should simply get whatever she wants, and the difference between those two things is striking.

average azula enjoyer: i believe azula deserves to heal and redeem herself. it isn’t fair that she was left with her tyrannical, abusive father during formative years of her childhood, with no one to help her or show her what it means to be good. she cannot be blamed for the way she turned out. it especially isn’t fair that she gets no redemption for evil things she did at age fourteen, for a year, while the entire show is iroh’s redemption arc, and he was doing evil for decades—he is literally called “the dragon of the west” because of it. additionally—

lucifer morningstar, resident azula supremacist: everything azula did, she was right to do, because i would’ve done the same. there was never a point at which she was wrong, it’s just unfortunate that nobody could keep up with her, her father included. the only reason why she ended up losing, ultimately, is because this is a children’s show, and good is supposed to win out. it was plot armor. if this were realistic, she would’ve beaten everyone—at the very least, she would’ve beaten zuko in the final agni kai, it’s just that he broke the rules and brought backup. at the time of the agni kai, she was literally the strongest firebender in the show. that’s actually the only part of this lucifer is right about, but you can’t tell him that.

if you ask him what his favorite quote in the show is, he’ll immediately say, “i can see your whole history in your eyes. you were born with nothing, so you’ve had to struggle, and connive, and claw your way to power. but true power? the divine right to rule? is something you’re born with.” and he will do it so well that it’ll give you the chills.

in actuality, his favorite quote is, “i’d really rather our family physician look after little zuzu, if you don’t mind.” it’s just that it doesn’t have the same chilling effect as the first one.

does he like any other characters? does he even care about any other characters? he has a deep fondness for sokka because he reminds him of mammon. yes, and they are katara and suki, with honorable mention to avatar kyoshi.

does he hate any characters? no, but if you mention avatar kuruk or uncle iroh to him, he might get annoyed. is mildly frustrated by aang, but has the sense to cut him some slack for being twelve and the last of his kind. never speak of ozai.

mammon

toph supremacist. frequent user of the phrase, “toph is just fucking class.” knows for a fact that toph is the best and strongest bender in the entire show, and no one has ever managed to convince him otherwise. mainly because nobody really disagrees. like, have you ever even seen toph slander?

just like lucifer with azula, he wasn’t invested in the show until toph showed up, which, once again, is funny, because technically her very first appearance is only a few seconds long, so that means he saw her for a literal second and just knew. you can’t even be mad at that, real recognize real.

no one will ever see him more proud than when he’s talking about one toph beifong. he can’t get over her raw, unbridled talent, and he really never should. if you let him (so, if you’re levi), he will spend so much time analyzing her character and every single one of her strengths, from the fact that she’s the only one who knows when azula is lying, all the way down to the fact that even though she projects a tough persona, she can still be vulnerable, AND—

not only is she strong, but her personality is simply untouchable. this girl grows on literally everyone; like, even lucifer likes her, even though he’ll die before saying it out loud.

he gets so smug whenever someone asks him who his favorite is and it’s because he knows his taste is top tier, and what makes it worse is that no one can even disagree because toph is just that good.

will never admit it, but he was shaking and crying during the scene where it looked like toph and sokka were literally gonna die. was also gonna cry when toph almost drowned. basically: he is eternally grateful to suki.

his favorite line in the entire show is, “i am the greatest earthbender in the world! don’t you two dunderheads ever forget it.” it’s just fucking class.

does he like any other characters? he sees himself in sokka, he’ll tell you that much. he also knows that satan and lucifer like sokka because of him, and he found out because he heard them talking about it. to their joint dismay, they turned to see him standing behind them, grinning like an idiot, and they couldn’t even scare him into leaving them alone when he hugged both of them at the same time because, one, they didn’t really want to, and two, they couldn’t turn off their fondness for him fast enough ^_^. did they reciprocate his hug? did they stay like that for a little bit? did lucifer kiss the tops of their heads? maybe so🤨

does he hate any characters? not really, but he doesn’t particularly like azula because she scares him and makes him sad, like lucifer and doesn’t see her appeal. once tried to make a case for why she shouldn’t have a redemption arc and felt painfully human from the way he almost died. do not mention toph’s parents to him. the name ozai should also never be on your tongue.

levi

resident sokka enjoyer and suki appreciator. do not ever call sokka dumb in front of this man unless you want a proper lecture. unlike a few of his brothers, he doesn’t like sokka just because of his similarities to mammon. he also likes sokka because he relates to him on a personal level.

levi absolutely knows what it’s like to feel inadequate and outshined by people younger than you. he absolutely knows what it’s like to feel like your competence is overlooked. while he might be unfamiliar with how it feels to strategize for a war and lose a battle, but it is one of his biggest fears and it absolutely crushed him to see sokka go through that.

on a lighter note, levi has a deep appreciation for sokka’s comedic value, despite the fact that it can overshadow his intelligence. levi would actually venture to say that he likes sokka’s funnier side because it overshadows his intelligence to the point that it throws the opposition for a loop. this is the aspect of sokka that reminds him of mammon.

it also seriously warmed his heart to see how everyone missed sokka while he was away for sword training; he especially liked that episode because it was just an affirmation of the fact that sokka is an integral part of team avatar, which he really needed to see.

you know who else is an integral part of team avatar who needs to be recognized as such more often? suki. do you know how much pain levi is in every time he thinks about the lack of suki screentime . it’s a lot . suki is just too good for the amount of screentime she has, he’s sorry, but it’s true. this is evidenced by the scene of her literally running across prisoners’ heads to apprehend the warden of boiling rock. that scene speaks for itself—she and the other kyoshi warriors end up as zuko’s body guards for a reason.

he will never let anyone forget that if it weren’t for suki, sokka would still be a misogynist. she was an essential element to sokka’s growth as a character and everyone had better remember it or so help him. also , he is a firm believer in the fact that suki was the best love interest for sokka, with zuko as a close second. don’t ask questions. rip yue but argue with the wall.

his favorite line in the series?

“zuko’s gone crazy! i made a sand sculpture of suki, and he destroyed it! oh, and he’s attacking aang.”

it’s not profound or cool or anything like that, but it makes him smile and giggle every time he thinks of it ^_^.

does he like any other characters? he has a lot of love for toph and azula for the sole fact that the series improved exponentially after both of their introductions; he thinks both of them are in leagues of their own and seeing them in action just puts a smile on his face. he’s also inexplicably fond of king bumi.

does he hate any characters? not particularly, actually! he pretty much respects and appreciates everyone, except the guy who mutilated his thirteen year old son for speaking out of turn.

satan

just pick a girl. any girl. and from the way he talks about them, you’ll think they’re his favorite. he can and will go on about the girls of atla for the rest of eternity.

but since we’re being specific:

katara appreciator. azula enjoyer. basically, between him and lucifer, no tongue raised against azula shall prosper. he has a deep respect for each of their wraths. he also really must have a thing for angst because both of these characters just break his heart.

if you let him (in other words, if you’re levi), he will go on about how it’s not fair that people call katara annoying when, in reality, she just hasn’t healed from the trauma of seeing her mother’s corpse at age eight, followed by having to take care of her village, meaning she got literally no time to grieve properly, and—

call katara annoying in front of him and you might actually have to meet god for your shallow views of such a deep, complex character.

he will also go on and on about how katara would be the best bender in the show, if it weren’t for toph, who is untouchable. instead, he’ll talk about how katara almost killed pakku for being misogynistic and how she single handedly beat azula during sozin’s comet. you will frequently hear this man say, “katara aang’s master for a reason,” and he’s right.

similar to if you call katara annoying, if you call azula scary in front of satan, he’s bullying you. he’s sorry, but it has to happen. no way you’re scared of a traumatized fourteen year old, what are you, eight? or do you have no understanding of azula’s depth? both are unacceptable.

satan is the average azula enjoyer, times about seven. you simply won’t get away with speaking poorly of azula in front of this man, so if you’re like mammon and don’t like her, you better tread very carefully.

one time mammon tried to be like, “azula is too far gone to deserve redemption anyways,” and satan literally reverted to his demon form as he said: “if i were abandoned with my terrible father as a child, with literally no one to help me, and then my friends betrayed me, and then, as i was about to be crowned ruler of my country, my dumb fucking idiot brother showed up with his dumb peasant friend for backup, which isn’t even allowed, i might be mad forever too, actually—” and then he threw the nearest chair at mammon for his criminally bad take.

another reason why satan loves azula so much is because he’s convinced she’s a lesbian and satan is the most “let’s go lesbians!!!” person you will ever meet. you actually can’t convince him that she isn’t a lesbian. forget chan. nobody gives a fuck about chan.

what’s his favorite line in the entire series?

“trust me, zuko—it’s not going to be much of a match.”

like, come on. katara is just too good.

does he like any other characters (other than the girls of atla)? he’ll never admit it, but he has a lot of respect for sokka and a soft spot for him because he reminds him of mammon. he also has a lot of respect for aang because he reminds him of beel of how well he handled literally everything despite being twelve.

does he hate any—yes. never speak of avatar roku. or iroh. or ozai. for good measure, don’t mention general zhao either.

asmo

what lucifer is to azula, asmo is to ty lee. like do i even have to say anything else. but for what it’s worth, he also love, love, loves azula because she reminds him of lucifer, from her strength and class, all the way down to her descent into madness. and even though she breaks his heart just as much as she does satan’s. he may or may not have cried over azula in satan’s room while they were talking about her. unlike lucifer and satan, he can respect it if you don’t like her, but it’ll make him so sad.

but enough about azula. ty lee is where it’s at for him. her subtle strength and unwavering love is something to die for, and he will defend it against anyone, up to and including lucifer, and he’ll win too. asmo is not to be trifled with and neither is ty lee; he can make a strong argument as to why ty lee is the strongest character in the show, and you will have a very hard time trying to refute his points. (the main point being: it’ll be really hard to win a fight against someone who can paralyze you in a few seconds, bender or not.)

the fact that ty lee ran away from home because she was tired of the fact that nobody ever saw her as her own person is just something that tugs at asmo’s heartstrings. he thinks ty lee’s bravery is just something that can be so personal.

also—he has a massive appreciation for the fact that, even though there’s a war going on and ty lee is in near-constant danger, she still has the sense to maintain her appearance and worry about the skincare of not just herself, but also people she’s close to. that is a detail he will never let anyone forget.

never mentions it in front of lucifer but one of his favorite scenes is when she paralyzes azula to save mai. once again: ty lee’s bravery is just something that can be so personal.

he doesn’t have a favorite line in the series, but his favorite exchange of dialogue is between ty lee and azula, wherein ty lee is trying to teach azula how to flirt. he thinks it’s the cutest thing in the world.

does he like any other characters? of course! he likes everyone ^_^ . you’d actually be hard pressed to find someone he hates. ozai. it’s ozai. he has a real soft spot for mai because she reminds him of belphie. something about their shared aversion to affection is just so cute to him!

beel

aang supremacist, will hold steadfast to the fact that aang is the best character in the show and you will struggle to figure out how to convince him otherwise.

if you ask him why aang is his favorite, the first thing he will do is gesture to a picture of him and say, “look at the material,” like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, before diving into a ten minute in depth character analysis for this boy.

come on. he shouldn’t even have to explain himself. not only is aang one of the strongest, most competent avatars to exist, ever, he also mastered all four elements in a year, when he was twelve—he’s literally a different breed. and he managed to beat ozai in his own way, without killing him, as a means of staying true to a culture that could have literally died with him at any point in the show. aang is just fucking class.

he also admires aang for his near unwavering kindness and lighthearted nature. and for never going berserk and killing everyone he sees, especially after finding out his people were killed while he was in ice.

you have no idea how much pain beel was in when he found out that the air nomads were just gone. seeing a child find out that not only their family is gone, but also the entirety of their people and culture, just absolutely broke his heart. and that guilt aang was feeling? hit way too close to home for him.

he also thinks it’s really nice that aang was so quick to forgive zuko after everything, and the two of them ended up being really good friends. it just puts a smile on his face.

after some reflection with levi, he would’ve liked to see the full scope of an airbender’s power in the series; as in, he would’ve liked to see someone suffocated, but it’s okay, because aang wasn’t like that. and he heard it happens in the next series over.

anyway, beel’s favorite quote in the show...well, it isn’t really a quote, as much as it’s a dialogue between two characters. it’s the scene where toph asks, “do you really think friendships can last more than one lifetime?” and aang says, “i don’t see why not.” it could bring a tears to his eyes just thinking about it; and in the next series over when it’s proven to be true, he absolutely cried.

does he like any other characters? he’s actually really fond of zuko and mai because they both remind him of belphie. he also likes sokka for the same reason lucifer and satan like sokka. he has a deep appreciation for katara because aang would literally be dead without if it weren’t for her.

does he hate any characters? well, he doesn’t really like azula. he feels bad for her, but he doesn’t like her. but as for who he hates? take a wild guess.

belphie

zuko makes him sob is his number one. yes zuko is his favorite because of his redemption arc, yes he sees himself in zuko, no he will not explain any further than that, what’s your point🤨

in actuality, he will never be able to properly articulate how important it is for him to see that redemption is, indeed, attainable, if you put the work in. in a similar vein, he will also never be able to give words to how important it is for him to see that forgiveness is also attainable. it means the world to him. that is why it makes him cry. the feeling is overwhelming. i’m gonna cry if i think about it for too long.

he will cling to the fact that zuko is the best character in the show, and he will cling to it even when zuko embarrasses him by saying stupid shit like, “no lightning today?” and even when zuko is so awkward it causes him physical pain. that’s his number one and he’s not changing on it!

firm zukka supporter. will not argue. that’s all.

what’s his favorite line in the entire series? it’s one of the two you’re thinking of. make that decision for yourself.

does he like any other characters? he positively adores aang and will readily admit that it’s because he reminds him of beel. bonus points for aang because he also loves the dynamic between him and zuko. toph is a distant third, mainly because he just really likes her attitude. he looks at her and thinks, now this is someone who would not hesitate to kick lucifer’s ass.

does he hate any characters? you better believe it. he hates iroh because he reminds him of dia. he can’t really bring himself to like azula because she makes him a different kind of sad. and if you know what’s good for you, you will never mention ozai.

#can you tell i am also an azula enjoyer #doesn't matter because i'm correct but still #worth mentioning i suppose #obey me #obey me!#obey me headcanons #obey me imagines #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me levi #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmo #obey me beel #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphie #obey me belphegor

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runrundoyourstuff · 3 years

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Redirection

(Avatar: the Last Airbender one-shot, rated: T, 2,015 words)

cn: for implied/referenced child abuse

He’s not explicitly invited to the Agni Kai, but no one attempts to hide it from him—though in retrospect, long after, once he finally has time to process, this fact will strike him as odd. Wouldn’t someone have expected him to protest, had he known? But then only Azula knew the depths of his ambivalence in Ba Sing Se, and had apparently elected to keep it hidden in her sleeves like so many of her plots, no doubt to brandish as a secret weapon should the need present itself.

In any case, when Zuko does hear of the duel, he must convince himself to attend. All the royals—(all the free royals)—will be there, after all. It’s an honor. The nobles in his father’s court would be suspicious if he weren’t present. And besides, though he hasn’t seen the inside of the arena since before his banishment, since he was a child, since...since he—since his father…since the day he got his scar, it’s not as though he’ll be fighting this time. (For that matter, he doesn’t yet know who is involved in this Agni Kai—just that one or both of the combatants is notable enough within Court for this to be an event.)

He manages to calm his trembling knees in time to enter the arena before the proceedings began, but just barely. Zuko wafts in, hands clenched at his sides, trying and failing not to think about what it looks like, how his uncle’s reputation for tardiness might have rubbed off on him—all the times Uncle had lingered behind at a port-of-call, delaying Zuko’s carefully crafted schedules, (you worry too much Prince Zuko, you should rest, a man needs his rest). But when he finds his seat in the section designated for the royal family, only Azula is there waiting for him.

“Where’s Father?”

Azula smirks. “Well, hello to you too, Zuzu. Here for the show?”

“Where is he?!”

Azula steadily moves her gaze to the platform in the center of the arena, and when Zuko follows it there, his hand finds the branded skin on his face, stomach tumbling out from within him, blood flushing like he imagines it would if the sun were to disappear from the sky.

Ozai stands there, elevated, ceremonial Agni Kai garnet draped around his bare shoulders, just as it had been three years ago.

Zuko inhales. “Who…?”

“Just watch, Dum-dum.”

But he doesn’t have to watch long. After a moment, two members of the Royal Guard appear, dragging a lump of a third person up onto the stage. They drop him there, bare-chested, clad only in ragged dueling pants because the Agni Kai sash falls from his shoulders as he hits the tile floor, and though he’s conscious, he doesn’t seem to have the strength to readjust his position.

Zuko cries out, leaping to his feet. “What’d they do to him?!”

“Really, Zuko, you’re causing a scene.”

If anyone turns toward him at his outburst, Zuko doesn’t see it. His focus is singularly on the platform. The guards seem to laugh as they retreat from the stage and leave the man there—Zuko can tell even beneath their masks, people have been looking at him that body language for years: the way their chests rise and fall, how they tilt their heads back like they don’t have a care in the Agni-forsaken world. They’re looking at him and laughing, like they don’t care that this is what’s become of the Dragon of the West, who used to be their Crown Prince, their general, their hero, like they think it’s funny...

“Azula!” he demands.

“Perhaps he was simply always feebler than you remember.”

“He was not! The only reason he didn’t destroy us in Ba Sing Se is because he wanted to give the Avatar time to get away—”

Azula raises an eyebrow. “I thought the Avatar was dead.”

“—they did something to him! Drugged him, or beat him, or something—don’t you care?!”

She shrugs. “He’s a traitor.”

“He’s our uncle!”

“I guess I’m just not as sentimental as you are, Zuzu.”

“But why—” On the stage below, Ozai looms over his brother, burying him in a dark shadow. “Why is he...Is Father going to duel him?”

“It’s not going to be much of a duel, if you ask me.” A pause, and then she continues. “You didn’t think Father would let treachery like Uncle’s go unpunished, did you?”

“But…” But he’s his brother. The words die on Zuko’s lips. Yes, Uncle’s his brother. And Ursa was his wife, and what did that matter? And…

Blood rushes to his face, and it burns—it burns—like it’s on fire.

Uncle is on his knees, and it looks almost like a prostration.

And I was his son.

Ozai doesn’t even bother moving to the starting position, just shrugs the ceremonial garnet off his shoulders to signal his intent to begin. “Well, brother,” he smirks in a voice loud enough for the entire arena to hear. “You have betrayed your Nation and your Fire Lord. Will you fight for your honor?”

Uncle just barely manages to lift his head. If he says anything, it’s too faint for Zuko to hear.

“Sad,” Ozai continues, projecting, raising his hands with his voice. “That this is what has become of the famed Dragon of the West. And to think that this country once thought that you would be their ruler.”

Something in Zuko’s chest lurches, like it’s trying to escape, to run from the fire it knows is coming, that lives in its muscle memory. Family sticks together, Uncle had told Zuko once, had shown him patiently, over-and over-again every day for three long years, even when Zuko screamed that he didn’t want to see it.

Family sticks together. Family does not raise hands to each other with the sort of glint that is currently in his father’s eyes and speak gleefully about it. Family does not orchestrate public duels and give whatever orders are necessary to ensure that those duels are just for show.

This is wrong. Even if—if—Uncle is a traitor, this is wrong. Uncle is Father’s brother. Uncle is on his knees. This is Uncle. And Ozai looms over him, flames growing in his palms, and Zuko’s fingers clench in his lap, his head, his chest buzz...This is wrong.

(And if this is wrong…)

(Zuko had been on his knees once. Ozai had towered, fire growing in his hands…)

(If this is wrong…)

“My Nation is fortunate,” Ozai smiles, angling his hands toward his brother. “That I am here to purge it of such weakness.”

And then whatever it is that had been screaming in Zuko’s chest bursts forth, mingles with all the lingering doubts that have been living in his mind the past several weeks since his return home. And Zuko doesn’t know what he is about to do until he does it, springs to his feet in the most honored seats of the arena, and yells in a voice as loud as Ozai’s so that there is no one in the entire stadium who will not be able to hear: “Stop!”

This time, when all eyes turn to him, Zuko feels them. But he doesn’t move his own gaze from his father—who has turned toward him, smile fading from his face, flames flaring in his hands—and it’s just enough to make the man hesitate. But the flame is still growing, and Ozai has a history of venting his red-hot anger onto any in the vicinity. (Not anyonein the vicinity, Zuko will think later—much later, after he has time to process, not only this moment but everything else too—Ozai has a history of unleashing his anger on the most vulnerable target. Once, that was Zuko. Now, it’s Iroh.)

In the present, Zuko doesn’t waste the opportunity. He propels himself forward into the air and toward the stage with Firebending, and it’s not until he’s halfway there that he feels the fear sink in his stomach, not until he lands in front of Uncle that he feels the tremble behind his knees. But he remains upright, and whatever he feels, he wills his face to be the same level of impassive as it was behind the Blue Spirit mask before he’d cast it away.

“Zuko...no…” Uncle’s voice is a murmur behind him, but there are resonances of a moment of when it was much stronger. You never think these things through!

And it’s true, he knows now, no matter what he’d yelled under that lake. But sometimes you can’t think things through, or you’ll be paralyzed, and sometimes there’s no time, you just have to act…

He clenches his fist.

“Why does it not come as a surprise that you’re a traitor too?” Ozai snarls. “I should have killed you three years ago and spared myself the embarrassment!”

“Maybe,” Zuko hears himself say, and to his surprise his voice is steady. “But you didn’t.” A pause, and then: “Leave my uncle alone.”

“Treachery must be punished. He will fight for his honor!”

“This isn't a fight! It's a show! You know you can’t beat him for real, so you staged this whole thing just so the country will think you look stronger than you are!”

“Zuko…” Uncle’s whispers grow desperate, but Zuko doesn’t turn.

Ozai’s nostrils flare. “How dare—”

“It’s just another lie! Like all the lies you told us about how the Fire Nation is the greatest civilization in the world! Like the lies you were willing to tell to all those young soldiers you’ve sent to die…”

“Zuko…”

“You will pay for this insolence—”

“But the truth is that we’re not the greatest country in the world! And the truth is that Uncle Iroh is better than you are! He’s stronger, he’s a better father, and he would have been a better Fire Lord!”

It’s not a surprise when the lightning comes barreling toward him from his father’s fingers. And even though Zuko knows the technique in theory, executing it in practice brings him precariously close to reckoning with his own mortality. He catches the blast with his fingers, and it pushes him backward. He just manages to dig his heels into the floor and stop himself before he ploughs into Uncle and spills the electricity onto him—which would defeat the entire purpose of this whole charade—but it festers in his own arm, like it’s singeing it from the inside, and it’s going to kill him, it’s going to kill him, Agni, he’s going to die, and he didn’t think he’d care, or that that would scare him, not after everything, but he...he doesn’t want…

“Breathe...Zuko.”

Uncle’s voice is nothing more than a rasp, but it grounds him nonetheless. Zuko inhales, then releases, lightning still festering at his fingertips.

“Focus...your...energy. In...Down...Up…Out.”

Another breath, and then Zuko obeys, just like Uncle taught him in the ruins of forgotten that Earth Kingdom town, a lifetime ago now, it seems. And when he lets the lightning fly out of his other arm, he angles it upward, toward the roof of the arena, where it explodes on contact in a fiery burst.

Later, Zuko will think with a wry irony that he ought to make an offering in gratitude to Agni that things always seem to blow up in his face, because it’s that fact that ultimately seems to save him. The center of the ceiling of the stadium collapses as it detonates, and for the second time in minutes, Zuko doesn’t waste the opportunity that presents itself. In the chaos that ensues as chunks of tile and plaster falls to the stage between him and Ozai, as all the Royal Guard is occupied with protecting their monarch from falling debris, Zuko hauls Uncle onto his shoulders and flees.

It’s not until they’re well beyond not only the palace, but indeed the very walls of the city itself that he brings himself to look back.

[ao3]

#my fic #zuko #iroh #ozai #atla #child abuse tw

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ruffboijuliaburnsides · 4 years

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OKAY so last night i said something in tags about “ask me about my thoughts on atla post-canon polyamory” 99% because I had typed a bunch of shit in the tags and then accidentally CLOSED THE TAB thus losing said tags, so that was a bummer, BUT like 3 different people reached out wanting to hear about it so HERE GOES. (thanks to @taibhsearachd for rambling this out with me last night)

SO. this started bc we got somehow on the topic of how much we really disliked the whole Aang/Katara kiss at the end of the show. Not because we’re against them kissing (Aang had to already have turned 13 by then, an innocent kiss is perfectly reasonable for a 13yo in my opinion), but because the placement of the kiss made it so... CENTRAL. We were talking about how we would’ve liked the kiss to have been earlier, preferably before the big finale, and then like... they still could’ve had a soft romantic moment on the balcony but it could’ve been like. Hand holding or sitting together with Katara’s head on his shoulder.

And Birdie mentioned she’d always liked Zutara back in Ye Olde Tymes because the whole “Aang and Katara get together when they’re barely 13 and 15″ thing just seemed... really untenable if we’re going with endgame, AND it made a lot of sense to get Katara and Zuko together politically, especially since there’s nooooo princess up north anymore since she turned into the moon and all. But the resurgence of the fandom (thank you for once Netflix!) has opened our eyes to ZUKO AND SOKKA and that’s fuckin amazing but now we’re back to square one in re: Aang and Katara. But then I realized that we can fix all of this with a) allowing for healthy breakups of relationships that don’t work yet but might work when the people involved have grown/processed things, and b) extensive polyamory.

And so here’s my thought:

Aang and Katara break up for a while probably not long after the end of book 3. They’re fucking kids, they’re traumatized kids no less, and they both have a lot of shit they need to deal with both personally and in the world that isn’t really conducive to “baby’s first serious relationship”. They’re still friends, they view it as “well... let’s maybe try again in a few years if we’re both still interested”. All their friends are aware of this and supportive and in the end it’s healthy for both of them bc their traumas and coping mechanisms didn’t always play nice with each other even BEFORE all the fallout from the finale and having to take on more responsibility in the world and such.

Zuko properly gets with Sokka and Suki during this time, though there’s no talk of like. Marriage or anything. Yes, Sokka’s politically got the same sort of appeal as Katara, but the thing about politically advantageous marriages at that level is there’s sort of the assumption that you’ll be, y’know, having heirs, so Sokka’s not really cut out for that and Suki flat out refused to be official Fire Lady or whatever.

So once Katara and Aang are older, like Aang’s 17 and Katara’s 19 and Zuko’s sitting over here at 21, and his advisors are all “ok but seriously Fire Lord Zuko, we really should look into at least a BETROTHAL of some sort” and he just sighs, and they’re bringing up all these Fire Nation ladies and he’s like “no it’s gotta be more diplomatic than that, she shouldn’t be Fire Nation” and so one of them’s like “well, uh, that water tribe lady you’re friends with, she’s set to be a pretty strong leader as she gets older, that would be a good way to do it. Or that blind Earth Kingdom--” “NOT TOPH.” “ok but seriously, tho, think about it your majesty”

So Zuko’s torn because he really does like Katara, and she’d be an amazing Fire Lady in addition to being an amazing... whatever her title would be down in the Southern Water Tribe (I definitely picture her and Sokka basically being the leaders of the pan-tribal council - he handles military and adjacent stuff and she handles the rest). But Katara’s with Aang again FINALLY not that they’ve made a big deal of it outside their friends. BUT he knows that y’know... people can be with more than one person. Hell, look at him and Sokka and Suki, right?

So he goes to talk to Aang like “I want to make sure I run this past you so she doesn’t have to try and do it, because I’m the one even bringing it up, and it’s obviously up to her, BUT here’s the sitch”.

And see, the thing about the Air Nomads is it really doesn’t make sense to me that they’d have the same kind of ideas about like. Monogamy and parenthood and relationships as other nations, ‘cause like.... the kids are clearly raised communally. Like, I vote ‘you probably know who your parents are but really all the adults are your parents, maybe you get an extra cake from them on your birthday but that’s about it’ for the most part. And y’know being with who you want to be with sort of thing. Sure you’ll have people you might be more committed to, but by and large the general consensus is “love who you love, whoever and however many people that is!”

So Zuko’s all prepared to angst for even ASKING if Aang would mind playing technical second fiddle in an heir-producing/marriage/inheritance/etc sense to HIM, ugh what if Aang hates him for even thinking it? and Aang’s just like “oh yeah that’s cool dude, if she’s down go for it! You wanna talk to her together? I don’t mind being there to reassure her it’s ok, and that you weren’t asking me permission to ask her so much as you were making sure it wouldn’t upset me if you did, and all that” and Zuko’s like “...what. I. Ok sure?”

And Katara does like Zuko, she just y’know, also liked Aang and didn’t want to GIVE UP Aang, but Zuko’s like “it’ll be good for our people, and I’d never make you stay in the fire nation full time you have your own responsibilities and also you don’t have to stop being with Aang or even like hide it or anything, it’s not like people don’t know I’m with Sokka and stuff, it’s just, y’know, OFFICIAL HEIRS and stuff” and so she’s like “Oh! Oh, yeah, that’s good, we can have a couple kids and stuff”

But ofc they end up a lot closer than “just a couple kids” but it’s sweet! She has kids with Zuko and kids with Aang and really as long as one of them turns out a firebender (can the avatar have a kid of any bending type? NO ONE KNOWS but Zuko’s advisors are prepared to accept it at this point) so long as they end up with A VIABLE HEIR that Zuko will claim etc etc.

And of course Zuko and Sokka and Suki have a couple kids whose parentage is uncertain not that they really CARE, and Suki and Aang aren’t really into each other romantically but when they’re a bit older they discuss it and decide to have a kid just so they can have a shot at a potential airbender baby, because heck yeah rebuilding the airbenders, might as well get some extra genetics up in this ish.

And these kids are all largely raised together in this big pack of like 10 kids of varying ages who move between 2 or 3 different homes, and Zuko rules the Fire Nation and Sokka and Katara lead the southern water tribes, and Aang does his Avatar thing, and they all spend as much time together as possible with the kids and Suki and some of her girls from Kyoshi Island are the main people ALWAYS THERE for the kids.

And there’s at least one kind of each bender in the group (bc you can’t tell me it’s 100% you have to have a bending parent, considering neither Katara’s mother or father were benders, so one of Suki’s kids is DEFFO an earthbender) and they’re a chaotic bunch and sometimes the Gaang forgets which one of them provided the genetics for which kid but really it doesn’t matter bc they’re ALL the kids’s parents, and all the kids are ALL their kids, and it’s a big happy messy disaster of a polycule that the Fire Nation nobility and advisors despair over, but they can’t deny that it seems to be working out pretty well and that the Fire Lord is good at his job and pretty damn happy, so they don’t bitch too much about it.

...Also at some point Sokka and Toph discuss dating and end up sort of doing it for a while but then going back to being friends, but she does ABSOLUTELY get him to father one of her kids, which she then declares firmly she made out of a rock and bended to life, and most people are preeeeetty sure she’s full of shit but can’t fully discount the possibility and only the Gaang knows the truth.

so yeah that’s my avatar polyamory thoughts, it is not canon-compliant with legend of korra but who cares this is my imagination and headcanon and LoK doesn’t play into it at all. *nod*

#also toph doesn't become the founder of any sort of police force bc WHAT?#that never made sense to me #they just wanted metalbender cops i think #but it was imo a bad character choice #atla #polycule of doom!!!!#or win #or both!#taibhsearachd

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free-pancakes · 4 years

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A Fire in the Shadows

LeviHan - Avatar the Last Airbender AU

Characters: Levi, Hange, Erwin, Mike, Nanaba, Moblit, Kenny, Zeke, Sasha, Jean

Summary: Levi, the nephew of a fire nation captain, stumbles upon a ragtag group of 5 known as the Scouts, formidably known for foiling the plans of local fire nation control, living in the forests a few miles north of Ba Sing Se.

Chapter 2: Trust Chapter 1: The Scouts

(crossposted to ao3) this is definitely a set-up kind of chapter, so i’m sorry if it’s a bit boring! i had a lot of fun writing the scenes tho, especially the first one. hope u like it!

CHAPTER 2: TRUST

“No, I won’t!” Levi cried out. He woke up suddenly, his heart thumping wildly against his chest. He sat up, rubbing his eyes. Nightmares have plagued Levi nearly every night since he officially became a soldier, but he rarely remembered the details of his dreams. He would simply jolt awake, beads of sweat forming on his brow—like tiny droplets of fear and regret lingering on his skin.

“Hey Levi, are you okay? Did you have another bad dream?” Hange squinted at him from the other corner of the small room. His startled yell must have woken her up, he thought. She was clearly half-asleep, eyes ridden with exhaustion, hints of drool hugging the corner of her mouth, glasses balanced crookedly on the tip of her nose.

“It’s okay, Hange. Go back to sleep,” Levi said quietly.

“Alrighty,” Hange yawned. She laid back down next to Moblit who was cuddled up next to her, and soon the sound of her snores filled the room again. Levi quietly crawled towards Hange, carefully slid her glasses off of her face, and set them down beside her. He then slipped out from the room and stepped outside of the little hut.

Hange was kind enough to let him share a room with her and Moblit for the last 5 days, as there wasn’t a spare room in their refuge in the trees. Levi still could not believe that he was actually up here, sleeping in a literal treehouse for the past few nights, at least 70 feet above the ground.

He continued along the narrow path outside the hut and peered over the edge of the rails. Looking down at the countless sets of branches and leaves under him, his eyes glimmered in awe over how the Scouts managed to figure out how to live here. He looked ahead, his gaze following the extensive sets of rope bridges connecting huts from tree to tree, each holding either one of the Scout’s quarters, or acting as storage space for food, weapons, supplies, medications, and other materials they needed for their activities. They had animal traps and pulley systems stretching throughout many areas of the vast forest.

Levi limped across the nearest bridge towards a ladder leading up to a looking post that extended above the trees. His leg wasn’t fully healed yet, but he managed to make his way up the ladder, albeit slowly.

The view was simply breathtaking from up there, dawn hurling shades of lilac and orange over the edge of the horizon. Levi closed his eyes as the cool morning breeze gently pushed strands of hair out of his face, and with that, memories of his mother spilled into his thoughts.

On the night before she died, he remembered her hands softly pushing his hair back and tucking it around his ears, her lips planting a small kiss on his forehead. “Levi, someday you might find yourself having to making difficult choices and I won’t be there by your side to help you. The fire nation is not the peaceful land it used to be. So, being born into this world with firepower at your fingertips at this day in age might be a burden to carry, but don’t forget that the most powerful thing about you, Levi, is right here.” She gently placed her finger on his chest, right over his heart. She smiled warmly and took his hand, dropping her good luck charm in his palm. She closed his fingers around it.

Levi opened his eyes and looked down at the charm in his hand, a small metal keychain embossed with the fire nation emblem, and gripped it tightly in his fist. He wondered why these memories decided to flood his mind—why now?

Suddenly, he felt something hit his head. He watched a small pinecone drop and roll away in front of him. He spun around to find Moblit peeping his head through the small opening in the floor. “Tch,” Levi sputtered. He tossed the pinecone back at Moblit, bonking him on the head. Moblit giggled, and climbed up into the deck, a small satchel hung around his arm. He dumped its contents onto the floor. He slid half the food towards Levi, as well as a small jar of ointment. “You forgot to put this on your leg before you came up here,” Moblit said shyly. Levi nodded silently, and started applying it onto his skin, inhaling sharply at the slight burning sensation. Moblit quietly munched on an apple while carefully observing Levi.

After he was finished tending to his leg, he reached for his sandwich, and right before he could take a bite, he was interrupted with a question.

“Why did you come here?”

He looked up at Moblit, whose head was cocked questioningly to the side.

“To get away from your sister’s loud ass snoring,” Levi sighed. Moblit laughed, “No no, why did you come here that night? To this forest?”

Levi chose his words carefully. “I was running away from home.” “Well those burns, did you escape from…” Moblit lowered his voice to a whisper, “…firebenders?”

“…Yes. And that’s enough questions for now,” Levi said with a tinge of annoyance in his voice. He was just like his older sister, asking way too many questions, but least he was much more polite about it than Hange. He exercised patience when it came to Moblit because other than Hange, he was the only Scout who at least started to warm up to him over the past few days.

“Hm, okay,” Moblit pouted. “Thanks for answering my questions. You’re pretty nice, yknow?”

Levi scoffed. “What makes you think that?”

“Hmmm well…” Moblit put his apple down and hugged his knees to his chest. “You don’t say anything when Erwin or Mike are rude towards you. And you try to help my sister carry her supplies even though it’s hard to keep up with her with your leg like that. Oh! And I notice you trying to wipe down dusty surfaces, which frankly is kinda weird…”

“Clearly, none of you can manage to keep things clean,” Levi retorted softly.

Moblit laughed. “You’re not wrong.” He then looked down and said bashfully, “And you take off Hange’s glasses when she falls asleep with them on. I think that’s nice.”

Levi blushed—embarrassed, he quickly turned to look out over the trees away from Moblit. This kid was quite observant, Levi thought. Which meant that he should continue to be careful with his words and actions—he couldn’t let him figure out who he really was, because who knows what Erwin, Mike, and Nanaba might do to him. They weren’t benders, but outnumbering him with their level of skill could be problematic, and he wasn’t sure if Hange or Moblit would defend him if they discovered his secret.

If anything, Levi was thankful that Moblit developed a small liking towards him. He thought that Hange probably convinced Moblit to be nicer to him, but it seems he came to this decision all on his own. With that in mind, Levi figured this might be his chance to inquire more about the Scouts.

“Hey Moblit, can I ask you something?” Moblit looked into Levi’s eyes with an intense curiosity. “Why are you all so opposed for me to possibly join your group?”

“Because Erwin doesn’t like you!” He exclaimed matter-of-factly. Levi was caught aback—kids really are just brutally honest sometimes, he thought. “Why?”

“Well, I’m not completely sure, we don’t really talk too much, just the two of us. Buuuut my guess is that they don’t trust you because that’s sort of their default? We’ve had some potential members join our squad in the past and they ended up betraying us.” Sadness fell over his face. “We almost lost Nanaba that one time…“

“Hey you two!” Unintentionally interrupting their conversation, Hange jumped up onto the deck with a goofy smile spread across her face. “I’ve been looking all over for you both! Moblit—Nana wanted you to help her set up the animal traps.”

“Okay, Hange!” He stood up quickly, grabbed his satchel, and hurried towards the ladder. He looked back at Levi and gave him a small wave before heading down to help Nanaba.

Hange bent down to check on Levi’s leg, inspecting the burn wounds. “They’re healing quite nicely, Levi! Hey, if you’re up for it, would you like to come assist me with tending to the wounded in a nearby village?” Hange leaned a bit closer to Levi in excitement. “We just received word of it, and I just know I have some healing salves I’ve been working on that would be of great help!” She looked up towards the sky with a warm smile on her face, her eyes aflame with determination and excitement. The sunrise shrouded the outline of her frame with a warm glow, while her fiery passion to help anyone in need burned brightly inside of her. She was simply a ball of sunshine, radiating light inside and out, and he was utterly mesmerized. Levi had lost his sense of determination since his mother died, and didn’t have much driving him forward or really any goals in his mind to to pursue, other than wanting to defy his uncle, or General Zeke. He felt he had no purpose, but here was this woman, a force of nature living with all the purpose in the world. He was simply entranced by all of her. He’s known her for less than a week and there have been multiple moments like this one, and where he simply could not look away. However, Levi felt that there was something more about her that he felt drawn towards, but he just couldn’t put a finger on it.

“Levi? Hellooooo!” She waved her hand in from of his face with no reaction. “Levi? …HEY SHORTY!” She yelled into his face. Levi finally looked up and locked eyes with hers. He was completely lost in his thoughts, but he was now suddenly aware of how close she was to him, peering into his eyes. Startled, Levi broke out of his trance and he shifted, his knee accidentally bumping into Hange’s back, causing her to yelp out in surprise and topple over right on top of him.

For a fleeting moment, they laid in each others arms, both of them suddenly feeling oddly comfortable being so close to each other. Quickly, the moment fizzled and Hange nervously scrambled to stand up. Levi blushed as he swiftly scooted himself from underneath her.

“Levi, I’m so sorry, is your leg okay??” Hange asked with worry written all over her face. He waved her off, and stood up.

“Yes, don’t worry, it’s okay. And to answer your question, I’ll come with you to help.”

“Oh Levi, thank you!” she smiled brightly. “It’s a large village just northeast of here! There were many casualties among the people there, so a lot of injured people to look after!’

Levi froze.

...What?

Flashbacks of the night he escaped flooded his mind. “…You said a village n-northeast of here?”

“Yes!” Hange exclaimed. “They were attacked by fire nation soldiers just a few days ago, sadly enough.”

Levi broke a sweat, panic quickly taking over his mind. He desperately thought of a way to avoid going back to that village. Why of all places did it have to be that village? He did not need to be reminded of how he sustained his current injuries, but more importantly, he did not want to risk someone recognizing him from that night and blow his cover.

“Oh, actually... maybe I shouldn’t go. I might be a burden to you with my injury and all…”

“Nonsense! You’ll be a great help, Levi. Our intel shows that the fire nation troops that were there are long gone for now and don’t show any hint of movement currently, so we’ll be safe! Plus, you might be able to meet some earthbender friends of mine—I believe one or two may have been in the village during the incident, so they should be there!” She grabbed Levi by the hand and they started towards the ladder.

He considered standing firm in his opposition, but he weighed the pros and cons, concluding that his denial might make the Scouts suspicious. Levi gulped—he did not like where this was going.

———————————

They mounted the backs of two ostrich-horses, and made their way out of the forest towards the village, the early morning sun lighting their path.

After about an hour of Hange babbling on about her ideas on new animal trap designs, the two shared a few moments of peace and quiet, other than the soft sounds of the ostrich-horses feet sliding against the dirt as they continued forward.

“I didn’t realize the Scouts did more than infiltrate fire nation activity,” Levi said, breaking the silence.

“Well yes, we do all sorts of things! I mean that’s primarily what we do, but I mean, there’s so much more things for us to do to help around here,” Hange said excitedly. “Whether that’s bringing food surplus, or aiding to wounded and sick, we try to aid the Earth Kingdom civilians. They’re all really good people, yknow? They don’t deserve this.”

“Well, even if you take part in ways to help like this, what do you hope to do about the fire nation ultimately? Do you have a plan? And…do you think the world could ever change back to how it used to be?” Levi asked.

Levi wondered—was there a way the Scouts thought they could defeat fire nation troops? Because Levi knew it would be impossible to win. At this point, all seemed hopeless, and the Firelord will continue to make moves to take over this world and hurt all these innocent people. He may have made the hard decision to leave his nation behind, but beyond that, figuring out his next move almost felt pointless. How was Hange so optimistic and filled with purpose? Levi desperately needed to hear her answer.

“Wow, Levi,” she teasingly punched his shoulder. “Why are you so talkative all of a sudden? Have you finally decided to break your gloomy silence?”

“Just answer the question, four-eyes,” Levi huffed.

“Aw okay,” Hange pouted. “Well…” Her expression changed ever so slightly, into one of seriousness, hints of sadness in her eyes. “There is no plan.”

“What do you mean there’s no plan? I thought the infamous Scouts would have some kind of plan to overthrow the northern fire nation troops. I mean, I’ve heard you’ve all infiltrated and ruined their raids plenty of times.”

“You’re right, Levi. But in the end, defeating the fire nation is not our role.”

“What do you mean?” “I mean, that it’s the Avatar’s job to do that, silly!” She said matter-of-factly.

“What, you believe in that crap? It’s been almost 100 years since the Avatar went missing.”

“There are rumors that he will come back someday to restore the peace that used to be, but anyway…” She balled her right hand into a fist and softly tapped Levi’s chest with it. “You can believe what you want to believe, Levi! But in the end, we’re just simply a side-story to something bigger. But just because we’re a side role, doesn’t mean we aren’t significant!” Levi looked down at Hange’s hand, and he remembered his mother’s words, her finger lying over his heart. Hange grinned at him, “As Scouts, we decided that our role is to protect those within our reach. And maybe once you’re all healed up, I really hope you decide to join us.”

———————————

They arrived at the entrance way to the village, Hange and Levi staring at the burned ruins and destruction of half the buildings there. Tents were set up all around tending to wounded, and several people were walking around carrying food and supplies. He felt sick to his stomach seeing all the damage done—he felt nothing but shame.

“Hange!” A young, brown haired girl ran up to give Hange a hug. “It’s so good to see you Sasha,” Hange said softly, and pulled her into her embrace. Levi felt the strength of their bond from where he stood, those feelings of strength and solidarity which each other after years of fighting against the shit that his own comrades plagued these lands with. He tried to push his sadness to the deep recesses of his heart, and continued to stayy vigilant.

As Sasha explained to Hange how the wounded were divided up amongst the tents, Levi looked around in worry. He tried to avert his eyes from anyone else’s gaze, lessening the chance anyone could recognize him. There’s was too much chaos that night, and it’s not like he would have known who was there, but there was a higher chance that someone recognized who he was.

“Levi!” He looked up towards Hange. “Come on, I think I’ll have you join one of our trusted comrades to help hand out our sets of bandages we brought.” The three of them walked into the nearest tent.

“Hey, Jean!” Hange said brightly. They walked towards the tall, messy-haired boy. She firmly placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed tightly. “How’s the rebuilding efforts going?”

“Slow, but sure. Mikasa, Eren, Armin, and Connie went on to the next village over to help, but Sasha and I have been working pretty hard here.”

“Great, I’m so proud of you both.” She turned to Levi, “Jean is one of the earthbenders along with Sasha that work with us closely, and use their bending to help construct and rebuild where they to speed up construction for shelter to house all of the surviving civilians who lost their homes. But Jean here is gonna take a break, and help you hand out supplies! Go say hi!” She cheerfully pushed Levi in front of her and towards Jean, while she turned back to Sasha to continue discussing their plans.

Levi crossed his arms, and looked up towards Jean, who stared back at him, his eyes wide, shock written all over his face. And his shock slowly faded into fear. The two stared at each other, paralyzed. After a moment, Levi came to his senses—he couldn’t let Hange and Sasha see Jean’s reaction to their meeting. He took Jean’s shoulder and turned him to face the other way. “Hange, I think Jean and I will start heading towards the other tents,” Levi said quietly.

“Okay!” She squeezed Levi’s hand. “Meet you back here in an hour, alright?”

“Alright,” Levi said quickly. He swept Jean away and swiftly made their way out of the tent. They continued behind the remains of a destroyed building around the corner, away from all the people walking around.

Levi grabbed Jean’s shirt and shoved him back against the rough, brick wall. “Don’t. Say. Anything.” He tightened his hold on Jean’s collar.

“Not to anyone here, not to anyone who was with you that night, and especially not to Hange.”

Jean was amazed at Levi’s strength, but quickly came to his senses and tried to wriggle himself free. “I won’t, I won’t! Please just let me go,” he pleaded. Levi stared at Jean intensely, and then loosened his grip, letting Jean slide down to the floor. Thinking fast, Jean, hit the ground with his heel, causing the rocky earth to jut forward, encasing Levi’s feet under the dirt, subduing him. Levi lost his balance and fell forward onto his knees. He pushed a flame from his right palm in his frustration, but as he saw Jean’s frightened eyes reflect the fire in his hand, he emembered that he was one of the benders he decided to defend that night. Levi put out the flame and sighed, closing his eyes and looking away.

Jean looked at Levi curiously. “So, I take it that your change of heart that night wasn’t just a fluke?”

Levi didn’t answer, and continued to avoid Jean’s gaze. After a few moments of silence, Jean slid his foot across the ground, and the rock around Levi’s feet smoothly disintegrated back down into the rough soil under him.

Levi finally looked up and locked eyes with Jean. “Just… just don’t tell Hange. Or any of the Scouts. Please.” Underneath Levi’s scowl, Jean noticed a small hint of softness in his eyes. Even though his head screamed in defiance and told him not to trust the young man in front of him, Jean knew that his gut feelings and judgment was almost always right—so he decided to follow those feelings instead.

“Don’t worry, Levi. And… your decision to turn on Kenny, did save us that night. So I do owe you my life.” He relaxed a bit, letting his guard down, and leaned against the wall behind him. “But can I ask, why? Why did you suddenly… decide to side with us?”

“I am not siding with you,” Levi muttered. “I’m not siding with anyone. I did what I did because I chose to, on my own accord.”

Levi knew exactly what triggered him to finally stop passively carrying out missions for the fire nation, blindly following whatever propaganda they spewed out to him his whole life, but he didn’t think it was important to share that information with anyone. It was in the past, and he simply had to live with everything he did prior. But what he did feel compelled to share with Jean was what he intended to do with his life from now on—Levi wanted to be honest with someone for once in his life. On top of that, he wanted to gain Hange, Moblit, and the rest of the Scouts’ trust. For the first time, he felt that he might have a shot at finding purpose in his life if he followed them.

And he hated to admit it, but he felt drawn towards the four-eyed weirdo. He might have been surrounded by fire and flame his entire life, but he’s only ever felt cold for a long time. But when she babbled on about her stupid shit around him, he strangely felt... warm.

“My choice... is to work with Hange, and the rest of the Scouts. But in order to do that, I need you to do something for me.”

Levi reached his hand out towards Jean.

Jean looked at the intense determination in Levi’s eyes, and hoped with all of his heart that helping Levi wouldn’t be a mistake.

They shook hands, confirming their pact.

———————————

Night fell upon the forest, and Levi climbed up once again onto the deck of the Scout’s looking post, staring out at the vast evening sky, the leaves shrouded in the glow of the moon, like a glimmering sea stretched out in front of him. He sat in his thoughts leaving his food beside him, untouched. He wasn’t sure if Jean pulled through successfully, and his fate rested on whether or not they believed him. He couldn’t stand thinking about leaving Hange and Moblit behind, let alone them turning on him if Jean broke his promise. Because then, he’d be truly alone and wouldn’t really know what to make of himself anymore.

A rustling of leaves broke his train of thought.

Without turning around, Levi spoke. “Hey Moblit, if you wanted some more food, you could have some of mine. I’m not really hun—“

Erwin cleared his throat. Levi quickly recognized that this definitely wasn’t Moblit and spun around. He craned his neck up to look towards Erwin standing directly behind him, his intense, blue eyes fixated on the view.

“Levi, what do you plan on doing once Hange is finished tending to your injury?”

Levi scowled and looked away, unwilling to answer Erwin.

“I figured you wouldn’t respond to that kind of question, coming from me.”

Suddenly, Levi felt Erwin’s hand on his shoulder and found himself being shoved down onto the floorboards. Erwin laid his foot on Levi’s chest, and pointed his hooked sword at Levi’s face.

“Hange tells me that Jean spoke very highly of you. Did you convince him to say that?”

Levi glared back at Erwin and spoke unphased by the physical threat.

“No. We worked together once about a year ago,” Levi lied.

Erwin knew this information checked out according to what Hange told him, but kept his stance. “Jean is a trusted comrade of ours, but although this has convinced the rest of our team, I’m not thoroughly convinced. You’re gonna have to prove that to me over time, after you’ve spent at least a few months with us as a Scout.”

…As a Scout? Levi wouldn’t ever consider him feeling “joy” even in his happiest moments, but this was probably the closest he’s ever been to that sort of overwhelming emotion. However, he maintained his calm demeanor. No need to let Erwin see him break.

“Before you officially join us, I need you to understand this. The Scouts have my utmost respect and loyalty. But Hange has been by my side since we were kids. She has always been like a little sister to me.” Levi continued to match the intensity of Erwin’s stare, and showed no sign of backing down.

“You two seem to work together very well, and we’ll confirm this when we start training you up to par with how we fight…” Levi internally scoffed—he was only a respected fighter for his age among high fire nation ranks. “…but I only have a gut feeling that you both will be paired on missions together often, based on the synergy of your complementary energies.”

Levi wasn’t surprised that all the Scouts were ridiculously observant people, but Erwin was considerably more calculating.

“And I don’t know why, but she seems to put a lot of faith in you. So Levi, if anything were to happen to Hange on your watch or if you hurt her in any way…”

Erwin pushed his sword against Levi’s neck.

“Levi, promise me that you’ll protect Hange always, at all costs.”

Levi pushed Erwin’s sword out of the way gently, balled his right hand into a fist and laid it over his heart. He thought of Hange’s goofy smile and the beautiful fire present in her eyes when she looked at him.

“I will protect her with my life.”

#levihan #levihan fanfiction #levihan fanfic #levi ackerman #hange zoe #hanji zoe #moblit #erwin smith

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milf-lover42 · 4 years

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Bellatrix and Azula are the same character, change my mind

As most people can tell, Bellatrix Lestrange is my all time favorite character. I might get new favorites every time I watch a new show, and they all share a general similarity (let’s face it… I have a type, and if you’re reading this here on tumblr dot com… you do too, don’t lie). However, no character has ever come close to beating Bellatrix for top spot. And then I watched A:TLA for the first time a few weeks ago. I didn’t watch it as a kid, I was just young enough (2003 babeyy) that I wasn’t watching tv when it was on. Azula is obviously my favorite from this show, and is also the only character to ever come close to Bellatrix’ spot in my heart. But thinking about this and all the headcanons that people have made for the Black family dynamic… it seems like a pretty straightforward connection. Azula is essentially just a young Bellatrix.

Almost all of these Black family headcanons have been taken from fanfictions I have read over the years, and so the credit goes to their respective authors. Many overlap so I cannot pinpoint each author to each one, and it has been a while since reading some of them. Most notable of these would be Glass Silence by Zarrene Moss. There are many more fantastic stories I have drawn from but I couldn’t remember every fanfiction I’ve read to pick out each detail. For all the Azula stuff, I am drawing from Hello Future Me’s video on Youtube “The Psychology of Azula | Avatar: The Last Airbender”. If you want to spend an hour watching that I highly recommend it. Basically none of this is mine, I’m just using the headcanons and research of others to tie Bellatrix to Azula.

Let’s start with their family dynamics. Bellatrix is the oldest of the Black sisters, and has no brother. Although not stated in canon, (because apparently she’s too minor a character to deserve a backstory) it is presumed that all the duties of a male heir fell to her in a way. Marry young and marry a rich pureblood, carry on the family name and power, and secure a high social standing. Pureblood society is extremely archaic, if the treatment of muggle-borns is anything to go by, so we can safely assume that they are a very patriarchal society. Cygnus and Druella Black almost certainly wanted a son to carry on their name, especially given Walburga and Orion had both Sirius and Regulus. We can also assume that they weren’t exactly the kindest parents. At best, Druella was a silent wife subjected to abuse from her husband and ultimately was unable to keep her children safe; at worst she actively joined Cygnus in abusing their children. Each of the sisters have a unique way of dealing with this.

Andromeda handled it by running away, completely rebelling. She fell in love with Ted Tonks, a muggle-born. I doubt this in itself was an act of rebellion, I think she simply realized how stupid blood supremacy was after speaking to him. Once she fell in love it’s clear she wanted to break away from her family so that she could marry him. Clearly her parents knew, and it’s likely she told them herself. Given Ted was a muggleborn I can’t imagine her parents reacting with a simple, “No he is beneath you, we forbid it.” They probably acted harshly in an attempt to make it stick in her head that the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black would not associate with m*dbloods. Either she ran away or was kicked out, but either way she stayed with Ted and didn’t listen to her parents.

Narcissa shut off and blocked all her emotions. Obviously as an adult she actively practices the same beliefs her parents did, but as a teenager I don’t see this as being who she was. As an adult she is very cold and unemotional. The only person she truly cares about is her son, Draco. She cares about Bella still, she just doesn’t show it because she wasn’t allowed to as a child. As for her feelings toward Lucius... it is unclear. Depending on where you stand, she either could have been forced into a marriage with him, or they were in love as teenagers and got lucky enough that their parents arranged for them to marry each other. My personal opinion is they were forced. I think Lucius was supposed to be married to Andy but when she ran away, the Blacks had to hold up their end of the deal with the Malfoy’s and so Narcissa was married off to him. She embodies the whole “Ice Queen” personality. In order to cope with the trauma and her unwanted marriage, she just blocked all emotion to keep herself sane, only showing it for Draco.

And then we come to Bellatrix. Bellatrix, who had too many expectations to live up to, so many roles to fill, and no positive reinforcement from parents who just abused her if she messed up. She felt everything. She was the oldest and cared greatly for her younger sisters, and probably did her best to take any of the abuse that was going to be given to Narcissa or Andromeda. She used herself as their shield because they were the most important thing to her. Even after joining Voldemort and going insane she makes it very clear how she feels about Narcissa. Bellatrix would follow Voldemort's orders to the ends of the Earth, but the second she is asked to trust Snape, she says that Voldemort has made an error in judgement. Cissa wants to go to him and ask him to keep Draco safe, but Bellatrix advises against this. Only when her sister is in potential danger does Bellatrix doubt her master. Even at the height of her insanity her sister is the most important thing to her. We can assume as a child she felt the same for Andy. In fact in my opinion she never really stopped caring about her until Azkaban, I think she pretended to hate her when she came out about Ted Tonks, but only did so so that Andy would run away and live her life with the man she loved. She was safer away from their parents anyway. It didn’t matter if Bellatrix thought negatively about muggle-borns; she just wanted her sister to be safe. After going insane however, she truly seems to hate Ted for being a muggle-born, and she kills their half-blood daughter Nymphadora.

In order to cope with the trauma of her childhood Bellatrix used all of those emotions as fuel for her magic. She is an incredibly powerful witch and is massively intelligent (although why she didn’t just use Legilimens on the Golden Trio will baffle me forever… it would have been so simple…). However because of this coping mechanism, she is driven insane. It’s not instant, in fact it probably took years (probably that stint in Azkaban, lads) for the insanity to fully develop and take hold. All of that exposure to Dementors would have forced her to relive the trauma of her childhood over and over, while taking away the happy memories of her sisters.

Bellatrix was given a support system to break away from her family. Now it’s not a good or healthy one, but it is one nonetheless. After being treated so poorly by her parents, and forced into a marriage with Rodolphus, she needed freedom. When Tom Riddle comes along and praises her skill and offers her a spot as his best lieutenant? Of course she’s going to take that. Finally some recognition, and a good amount of safety. Not to mention missions and tasks given to her and others to her husband that mean she doesn’t have to be around him. Bellatrix was mistreated by her father and mother, but probably always wanted her father’s recognition. Her mother probably preferred Narcissa because she could be groomed into the perfect pureblood wife. Bellatrix latched onto Voldemort to gain recognition, praise, and power. But I can imagine as a teenager, having a complete breakdown at least once, especially after being told she’d be married off to Rodolphus. Demolishing her room with magic, windows breaking, personal items being thrown either by hand or by magic, and screaming and crying at the end. Very similar to Azula’s breakdown in her final scene.

Now we come to Princess Azula. She has an older brother, Zuko, but is always given the limelight. She receives a ceremonial headpiece that she is always seen wearing, but Zuko does not. He might be the boy, but he isn’t expected to take the crown. Azula is even named after her grandfather Azulon, who was Firelord. She was always expected to be the next Firelord over Zuko. Her future was never her own. She is a firebending prodigy, always showing off her skills, whereas Zuko falls behind. She is favored by her father Ozai for sure, but she is never truly praised. She is simply a means to an end to him. She was always expected to be the best. Although it isn’t shown in the TV series, in the A:TLA comics Ursa and Ozia’s relationship is depicted as abusive. He cuts her off from her family saying that he is all she will need.

There are theories as to whether or not Azula has a Machievellian personality type, or ASPD or NPD that could have been a root cause of her diminishing sanity, and after looking into those they seem very plausible. She lacks empathy, she emotionally manipulates everyone, and she has a messed up sense of right and wrong. Altruism just doesn’t make sense to her, and emotions are not genuine, simply stories made to get your way. Ursa rewards empathy, love and trust, which is why she clearly favors Zuko. But Ozai rewards power, cunning, and loyalty. They are complete opposites so it is not possible to please both of them. If she has any of these mental disorders it would be impossible to please her mother, so she focused on making her father proud. But Ozai never really shows any level of praise towards her, so she constantly tries to better herself. If she isn’t perfect, she’s failed.

At the end of A:TLA, Ozai forces her to stay behind in the Fire Nation. He says it’s because they need a Firelord because he will be leaving. Azula is disappointed to not partake in the final battle, but it’s what her father wants, so she obeys. However, he only leaves her so that he can become the supreme leader of everyone, or “Phoenix King”. Azula doesn’t really get a promotion, just a fancy name. In the finale, she is shown as her mental state quickly deteriorates. Her perfect image is gone, her hair is not up, her makeup undone, and she is paranoid that everyone is out to get her. This is the beginning of her breakdown. When she is unable to put her hair up by herself, she cuts her bangs. Her hair is all of a sudden asymmetrical, which is unheard of. She then starts to hallucinate. By the time she fights Zuko and Katara she is extremely unstable, and the fact that she can actually still bend is incredible, because it requires control of your emotions. She instead manages to use her emotions to fuel her bending. At the end when she is defeated, she finally breaks. Her bending is out of control, and she is left screaming and crying.

Azula never had anyone take her under their wing and give her the recognition she craved. Zuko had Iroh. Bellatrix had Voldemort. If Azula had been introduced to someone like Voldemort she would have gone down the same path as Bellatrix. Likewise, if Bellatrix hadn’t been introduced to Voldemort she would have ended up broken just like Azula. Their stories aren’t identical obviously, but there are some strong parallels that place them together, so I can see them as the same person with different outcomes to their story.

Does this stupidly long character analysis have any significant purpose? Nah, not at all. But like… I’m clearly right so… yeah.

#bellatrix black #bellatrix lestrange #azula #princess azula #azula deserved better #A:TLA #A:TLA azula #bellatrix black lestrange #druella black #cygnus black #narcissa malfoy #andromeda tonks #guys im not crazy i swear #i just feel passionately about these characters #bellamione

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