soopersara

[soopersara]

A Tale of Ice and Smoke

Chapter 43: The Fun Friend

With the lessons and the battles of the North Pole behind them, Katara and Zuko set off on separate journeys across the Earth Kingdom. While Katara pursues her next element, Zuko flees the nation and family that tried to destroy him. Though their paths promise new friendships and new challenges for them both, destiny seems determined to bring them back together someday.

This time:

As the others continue their training efforts, Aang enacts his plan to make their journey as fun as possible.

Read it on AO3

[soopersara]

A Tale of Ice and Smoke

Chapter 43: The Fun Friend

With the lessons and the battles of the North Pole behind them, Katara and Zuko set off on separate journeys across the Earth Kingdom. While Katara pursues her next element, Zuko flees the nation and family that tried to destroy him. Though their paths promise new friendships and new challenges for them both, destiny seems determined to bring them back together someday.

This time:

As the others continue their training efforts, Aang enacts his plan to make their journey as fun as possible.

Read it on AO3

[soopersara]

A Tale of Ice and Smoke

Chapter 43: The Fun Friend

With the lessons and the battles of the North Pole behind them, Katara and Zuko set off on separate journeys across the Earth Kingdom. While Katara pursues her next element, Zuko flees the nation and family that tried to destroy him. Though their paths promise new friendships and new challenges for them both, destiny seems determined to bring them back together someday.

This time:

As the others continue their training efforts, Aang enacts his plan to make their journey as fun as possible.

Read it on AO3

[soopersara]

A Tale of Ice and Smoke

Chapter 42: Fitting In

With the lessons and the battles of the North Pole behind them, Katara and Zuko set off on separate journeys across the Earth Kingdom. While Katara pursues her next element, Zuko flees the nation and family that tried to destroy him. Though their paths promise new friendships and new challenges for them both, destiny seems determined to bring them back together someday.

This time:

As Zuko begins settling in with the group, Aang grapples with his changing friendships.

Read it on AO3

[soopersara]

A Tale of Ice and Smoke

Chapter 42: Fitting In

With the lessons and the battles of the North Pole behind them, Katara and Zuko set off on separate journeys across the Earth Kingdom. While Katara pursues her next element, Zuko flees the nation and family that tried to destroy him. Though their paths promise new friendships and new challenges for them both, destiny seems determined to bring them back together someday.

This time:

As Zuko begins settling in with the group, Aang grapples with his changing friendships.

Read it on AO3

[soopersara]

A Tale of Ice and Smoke

Chapter 42: Fitting In

With the lessons and the battles of the North Pole behind them, Katara and Zuko set off on separate journeys across the Earth Kingdom. While Katara pursues her next element, Zuko flees the nation and family that tried to destroy him. Though their paths promise new friendships and new challenges for them both, destiny seems determined to bring them back together someday.

This time:

As Zuko begins settling in with the group, Aang grapples with his changing friendships.

Read it on AO3

[soopersara]

There's also the factor of like... learning from experience? Katara (justifiably) took back a cultural artifact from the pirates, and she ended up having to fight those same pirates (plus Zuko) about it. Her action had a consequence, and she weighed the consequences of the group's actions more carefully afterward. Was she supposed to just stop considering the risks because Toph thought it was fun scamming people for money the Gaang didn't need?

Katara didn't have any place coming down on Toph for those scams, at least not as hard as she did. She almost got the whole Gaang done in when she stole that Waterbending scroll, lol

[soopersara]

A Tale of Ice and Smoke

Chapter 41: Extra Lessons

With the lessons and the battles of the North Pole behind them, Katara and Zuko set off on separate journeys across the Earth Kingdom. While Katara pursues her next element, Zuko flees the nation and family that tried to destroy him. Though their paths promise new friendships and new challenges for them both, destiny seems determined to bring them back together someday.

This time:

Katara and Toph both take steps to prepare for dangers that may lie ahead.

Read it on AO3

[soopersara]

A Tale of Ice and Smoke

Chapter 41: Extra Lessons

With the lessons and the battles of the North Pole behind them, Katara and Zuko set off on separate journeys across the Earth Kingdom. While Katara pursues her next element, Zuko flees the nation and family that tried to destroy him. Though their paths promise new friendships and new challenges for them both, destiny seems determined to bring them back together someday.

This time:

Katara and Toph both take steps to prepare for dangers that may lie ahead.

Read it on AO3

[soopersara]

A Tale of Ice and Smoke

Chapter 41: Extra Lessons

With the lessons and the battles of the North Pole behind them, Katara and Zuko set off on separate journeys across the Earth Kingdom. While Katara pursues her next element, Zuko flees the nation and family that tried to destroy him. Though their paths promise new friendships and new challenges for them both, destiny seems determined to bring them back together someday.

This time:

Katara and Toph both take steps to prepare for dangers that may lie ahead.

Read it on AO3

[soopersara]

So... stealing people's voices as well as stealing and profiting off of fanworks? Say whatever bullshit you want about how you want to someday build a model for ethical compensation for voice actors, but the fact of the matter is that right now, YOUR APP IS STEALING VOICES. You do not have permission from the actors/voice actors that users can upload to this app, and without permission from those actors, there's no possible way you will ever be able to compensate them for the theft that is ongoing right now.

I am a fanfiction writer, a podficcer, and a voice actress. This app has the potential to steal my written works and my actual, human voice. I don't want some vague promise of future compensation in return for my words and my voice being stolen by some tech bro trying to get rich off of a stupid AI text-to-speech app. I want my stuff to not be stolen in the first place.

Never let someone else take Jimin & Jungkook away from you. AO3’s down again. If there’s a fic you’ve been meaning to get to, LyricWinter lets you convert it to multi-character audio and download it in advance.

No Wi-Fi? Still works. AO3 down? Still works. Your favorites, their voices, offline.

[soopersara]

Listen. Maybe you find it realistic because life is grim and powerful women don't always get to hold onto their power and their identities in the real world. That's fine. You can have that opinion.

The problem is that ATLA and LOK are fictional stories featuring fictional characters. And when a fictional character like Katara is introduced to the story as a girl who fights for what's right and pushes back against abusive systems at all costs, it's just bad writing to reintroduce her later as a sad old woman who doesn't care and can no longer make a difference in the world. Katara is one person in ATLA, and a completely different person in LOK. And while people and characters can change DRASTICALLY, writers who fail to write the journey in between two different extremes shouldn't get credit for their story being well-crafted or believable. You and your headcanon bridged that gap, not the writers, so why give them credit for the work they haven't done?

i think its interesting that in the kataang storyline katara is given grief for her endgame being mother, wife, healer A N D not being an active member of the world stage

but in most of the zutara content katara is wife, mother and in quite a few stories embraces her healing abilities because it goes great with zuko being the burn victim

now, i have not read every zutara creation in existence but i have immersed myself in a lot of zutara content for many years since the original show aired and do not mistake my point here, i enjoy zutara, i'm not anti any ship, i'm a multi shipper. this post is a matter of an observation and recent conversations on here over the topic of the katara we see in The Legend of Korra

a lot of zutara works amount to katara and zuko happily married, of course with plenty of drama on the way because it would not be a proper zutara story without all the flair and drama, and naturally, their steam babies

a big difference i see, politically speaking. politically. is katara is a monarch in one story and not in the other

in many zutara stories katara and zuko have the envied romance, beautiful, steam babies and katara is almost always heavily involved in the politics of the fire nation (zuko's court)

and this is the point where i want to offer a perspective change. maybe lok was following a more realistic approach which reality is grim and injust whereas the fantasy that katara is a leader in politics in the fire nation is less likely to be based in reality. and that's fine, it's fanfiction.

we hope and dream as writers and readers

but there is this idea that katara by marrying zuko has more political say and knowledge and influence by simply being his wife and they re-write the entire culture of the royal family, its duties, the family structure of the nation, it's wonderful! but those things do not happen overnight, it is fantasy if it does, it takes generations, centuries to sometimes see that kind of change

unfortunately, The Legend of Korra is grim

there have been a lot of great people who pushed back against abusive systems who were well-known in that bubble of a moment but history washed them away

so the writers "stripped katara's power" maybe the writers were expressing what has happened to women like katara and i know it pisses people off and it is understandable that it does

i do not deny a writer can let their ego get in their writing and just decide they do not want to care about a character and do not want to invest in said character because they no longer care about what the character cares about

all of these things are plausible and the fact that some people do not accept that all are plausible is the definition of close-minded

until bryke says: hey, this is what happened to katara, it is widely left open and let's be honest, no matter what bryke confirms about katara in those years between a:tla and what we see of her in lok, not everyone is going to be happy and that's okay too

[soopersara]

Thank you so much again! I really don't know what else to say aside from the fact that I've come back to read this whole post at least five times since I noticed it in the tag this morning. You made my day!

I hope you'll enjoy Book 2 when you dig into it! And I promise that a podfic is coming too (... someday. When the writing is done and I have enough wiggle room in my recording schedule to guarantee weekly updates 😅)!

I need to put this out there now or else I’ll never put it to words. A month or so back, I gave my recommendation for A Tale Of Ice And Smoke by SooperSara while I was in the middle of reading it. Back then I was on Chapter Twenty-Something and at this point I’ve finished it and

OH MY GOSH THIS FIC IS AMAAAAZIIIIIING!!!

First of all, Book 1 of the series is complete and has been adapted into an audiobook narrated by the author herself. Barring a few overlaps in the voice clips (;P), it’s incredibly well put together and the author represents and distinguishes the cast incredibly. If you’re interested and willing, please, please, PLEASE give it a listen.

Imma start talking about the plot itself now, so spoilers if you wanna check the fic out yourself.

So, a friend of mine introduced the concept of podfics to me a little over a year ago, and decided to check a decently sized one out to explore the genre. I chose ATOIAS because, one, it was a fandom I was familiar with, and two, it was my favorite subgenre of fics, that being girlboss roleswap AUs. (my beloved) To put it very simply, it’s basically ‘what if Katara was the Avatar?’. The story revolves around her perspective and her experience as the Avatar throughout all of Book 1, and makes damn well sure to differentiate what this role means to her from Aang. Who is also in the fic, to be clear. And also the Avatar. 

EH!? TWO AVATARS!? EHHHHHH!? So basically Aang died in the iceberg after 84 years and Katara became the Avatar, and then she encountered him in the North, and accidentally used some Avatar mumbo jumbo to bring him back to life. It was an interesting, and admittedly off-putting idea. I originally felt it detracted from the main premise, but SooperSara makes sure to both take full advantage of this plot point and ensure that this story is still very much Katara’s. It’s important to remember that a very important part of a good fic that readapts the original’s plot is to make the bits distinguishable enough to truly make their story their own, and as — especially as — the plot progresses, the author does that very well.

Let’s talk about Zuko. Zuko, Zuko, Zuko. The author ships Zutara HARD. Don’t blame her, it’s peak. Katara/Zuko was a relationship mentioned in the tags, and I was totally fine with it, but little did I know at the time, the fun girlboss roleswap AU fic was just a poorly disguised Zutara fic! To be clear, there is NOTHING wrong with that. At all. I don’t usually go for slow burn fics  barring a handful of ships I fixate on. Zutara is not one of them. That didn’t stop me from growing addicted to the relationship. 🫠 

For starters, Katara’s role as the Avatar is unknown to most of the population, as most people think it’s just Aang. The only ones who know it outside the Gaang and a couple of characters who catch her in the act, are Zuko and Iroh. So Zuko now has to both capture Aang AND Katara to complete his mission and return his honor and yadda yadda yadda and he has to do all of this without stirring suspicion lest a certain Zhao spread the news and try to take over his mission. So Zuko immediately has a strong and unique connection to Katara compared to canon which is the real basis behind the butterfly that leads to the growing relationship. He focuses his pursuits on her and her responses are muuuuuch different than Aang’s, usually by giving him an earful or the occasional fistful whilst the latter would usually attempt to disengage. That’s another thing. SooperSara really knows how to make the cast feel like the kids they are. The squabbles, sputters and scowls (:P) by all of the Gaang make them all feel so natural and in character and it really strengthens their character, especially in Katara and Zuko’s sense. The former is petty and the latter is grumpy and the dynamic between the two of them is just so, SO endearing. Anyway, Zuko ends up being as much of a protagonist as Katara as the perspective constantly changes to his and much of the most important emotional beats involve his time with the reader. Aang and Sokka also get some focus, and their characters are certainly not ignored, but Zuko and Katara are the backbone of what makes this fic so good.

The first quarter of the fic is a retelling of the first half of Book 1, while taking some creative liberties to alter certain plot points, and that was all fine and dandy and exactly what I expected, but the plot takes a BIG change during the adaptation of Episode 15 where Aang and the group have their falling out over the map to Hakoda except Zuko and June actually succeed in their mission to catch the Avatar mainly because the fight with Aang has increased meaning for Katara and Katara is actually Zuko’s primary target. The augmented drama ends up with Katara stuck on a Fire Nation ship for… quite a while. Like… for weeks. Like… the second quarter of the 80-chapter fic is in this boat, mainly in this cell. It’s a very small, tight setting. And I was initially very impatient as to when this chunk would be over, wanting to go back to ‘episodes of avatar but katara is the mc’. What I didn’t realize was how this new setting would be the perfect place for the relationship between Zuko and Katara, as well as Iroh and Katara for that matter. The way she’s so self-defeatingly and dangerously defensive in the beginning and the efforts Zuko went to make sure she didn’t end up killing herself in the cell — by keeping her in Iroh’s company — were admirable. And Katara slowly comes to realize that Zuko, despite himself and his own feelings, is, at the very least, a very decent and complicated person. And Zuko is constantly conflicted by how much he finds he cares about not only his prisoner, but the other people around him as Katara constantly calls him out and gets on his nerves in their verbal skirmishes while still showing each other respect. In the end, they’re both kids, and they were thankfully raised on good morals despite their actions. Katara’s animosity between him for his actions, calling him just as bad as Zhao, remains until he ends up saving her life when Zhao blows up Zuko’s ship. I was initially a little detached from this change, constantly wondering which chapter would be the end of this tangent, but the growing bond between these two seemingly incompatible kids had somehow snared me sometime within. The chapter where Zuko returns Katara’s necklace was the first time I have EVER cried during a fanfic, and that was only enhanced by listening to the audiobook. (Another reason to go listen to it >:[)

So, yeah. About that. Preceding The Siege of The North, Zhao dismisses Zuko’s crew and basically destroys his mission to capture the Avatar all in his father’s name, and after attempting to blow the prince up as well as his newfound doubts of his mission via Katara being herself (in the most annoying way possible) Zuko is practically broken. He survives the explosion and stows away on Zhao’s ship with Iroh and when the plans to attack the North become apparent, Zuko, good-natured, guilty, and disillusioned by Katara’s constant questions feels a responsibility to protect and prepare the Avatar for the oncoming invasion. Not necessarily because he likes her or anything… o_o …but because his own conscience, now clearer than ever, recognizes that this attack is wrong and he has to do something about it.

The entire second half of the 80-chapter fic is in the Northern Water Tribe, which I was actually happy with, especially after how my feelings changed after the Fire Nation ship. It meant we’d get to spend more time with Yue and see Katara grow as a waterbender, and it would help strengthen the character and relationships between the rest of the Gaang. It takes a bit for Katara to actually get to train, Pakku being Pakku, but it really feels as if it pays off by the end. And Zuko. Zuko, Zuko, Zuko. He shows up much earlier than in canon to warn Katara, albeit with no real plan past that… because he’s Zuko. So when he’s found, which is thankfully very quickly, Katara drags him by the ear and sticks him in an ice pit for the next twenty chapters. In that time he becomes acquainted with the Gaang and soon gets dismissed as a threat. They talk, they bond, they spar once Zuko is allowed out and the relationships get plenty of time to develop and solidify in ways that never could’ve been possible in 20 minute episodes while still maintaining an enjoyable pace, which is impressive considering this is 40 chapters that represent 2 episodes. Zuko and Katara’s relationship carries the whole thing. Zuko’s awkward, angsty and bad with feelings, and Katara’s ill-tempered, spiteful and wears her emotions on her sleeve. They’re kind of perfect for each other. The perfect people to talk to — read ‘argue with’. Seeing them feel so much responsibility and connection for each other (though, not quite love [yet]) more and more is an addicting feeling.  While I won’t spoil the ending with the Siege, I will say that everything that’s happened wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for Zhao being an asshole. So thank him for the Zutarany goodness.

But seriously, this is one of the best fics I’ve indulged in, and certainly the best one I’ve ever listened to. Author’s in the middle of Book 2 right now, which I have admittedly not begun, but I’m really looking forward to reading it.

tl;dr, came for the girlboss, stayed for the zutara. 

also sokka says fuck. 10/10 would recommend.

[soopersara]

Zutara Week dates are here! This year's fandom celebration will be held August 10th thru August 16th, 2025 here on Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky! We'll be posting official guidelines in the following weeks regarding submissions and how to participate for new folks, but please feel free to send a message to our ask box if you have questions/concerns prior to the event! Also big shoutout to @addictofreading for volunteering their art for this year's icon/prompt menu! Go give them a follow! Discord Server :: http://discord.gg/e24vVT8YeR Mods :: @pugcrumbs @a-rose-by-any-other-doctor @soopersara

[soopersara]

A Tale of Ice and Smoke

Chapter 40: Into the Night

With the lessons and the battles of the North Pole behind them, Katara and Zuko set off on separate journeys across the Earth Kingdom. While Katara pursues her next element, Zuko flees the nation and family that tried to destroy him. Though their paths promise new friendships and new challenges for them both, destiny seems determined to bring them back together someday.

This time:

The Avatars' journey to find and join the Southern Water Tribe fleet begins.

Read it on AO3

[soopersara]

A Tale of Ice and Smoke

Chapter 40: Into the Night

With the lessons and the battles of the North Pole behind them, Katara and Zuko set off on separate journeys across the Earth Kingdom. While Katara pursues her next element, Zuko flees the nation and family that tried to destroy him. Though their paths promise new friendships and new challenges for them both, destiny seems determined to bring them back together someday.

This time:

The Avatars' journey to find and join the Southern Water Tribe fleet begins.

Read it on AO3

[soopersara]

A Tale of Ice and Smoke

Chapter 40: Into the Night

With the lessons and the battles of the North Pole behind them, Katara and Zuko set off on separate journeys across the Earth Kingdom. While Katara pursues her next element, Zuko flees the nation and family that tried to destroy him. Though their paths promise new friendships and new challenges for them both, destiny seems determined to bring them back together someday.

This time:

The Avatars' journey to find and join the Southern Water Tribe fleet begins.

Read it on AO3