#atla reversed roles

[midnightanxietytm]

Between the walls of Ba Sing Se

Contents: Role-swap AU, verbal fights (on Zuko's part at least), Katara angst, lots of introspection, tension so thick you could cut it, mentions of the Painted Lady, Pre-relationship Zutara, Katara is mid-redemption arc, She's working in a teashop with her gran-gran.

A/N: This is an extra set in the same universe of this fic, I wanted to explore the characters more before making the decision of actually writing zutara into the fic. I appreciate constructive criticism, you can send me an ask if you want to discuss anything abt this fic.

“Playing pretend, Princess?” It hurts because he's saying it, because they both know it has truth to it, because somehow, he knows her.

Word count: 881

It's a long long way

To Ba Sing Se

But the girls in the city

They look so pretty

It’s weirdly peaceful, cathartic even, or at least as peaceful as customer service can get. Still, Katara finds herself content with this existence, this life she and her grandmother had made for themselves. She likes the tea, likes their house, likes the pai-sho, and if she ever needs a little more adrenaline, she has The Painted Lady.

But then he comes along, rattles her peace, shakes her to her very core; that ruthless reminder of her every mistake.

And she’s so unlucky, because out of all the Avatar's friends, Zuko is the one who isn’t afraid to go toe to toe with her. Sure, his sister had the raw power, but he had the technique, the balance, and the knowledge of… well her. 

“Playing pretend, Princess?” It hurts because he's saying it, because they both know it has truth to it, because somehow, he knows her. And she doesn’t know how to answer, not anymore. She looks away, outside the alleyway behind the shop, upwards towards the sky, anywhere but his amber eyes.

“I'm not a princess anymore.” She says, only because she realizes he's waiting for her answer, sizing her up, determining If she’s a threat to be dealt with. She glances at the Dao on his back and wishes she had the courage to learn something like that, she wonders where he did.

“Oh? What are you, then?” There’s so much venom in his words, so much hatred, and she’s just starting to realize that she does deserve that, she has caused him nothing but suffering… And once again she can’t answer him, because of his hate, or was it her own hate? It poisons her veins, clogs her throat. And because she doesn’t know it just yet. Who is she if not Princess Katara of the Southern Tribe? Who was she then? Who is she now?

She leans further into the shadows of the alley, hoping they engulf her, wanting to run, but unable to run from his burning embers. “I don’t know…” She admits in a whisper, hoping he doesn’t hear it, hoping he leaves.

“Really? Because I could have sworn someone called you by Kya today, is that a new trick of yours?” And that she can’t stand. She steps forward, fists curling and posture changing so fast that Zuko, despite himself, is taken aback, and raises a hand to his sword hilt.

“Don’t say that name like that!” She bites. “You can spit my name with as much poison as you want, but not that one! Don’t come again. Leave me alone!” She’s back inside the teashop, fast as a tidal wave.

Zuko stands there, hand firmly gripping his dao, for a good few seconds before his body finally allows itself to relax; he exhales slowly and leaves the alleyway, and he ignores his shaky hands, ignores how the girl he’s used to focus all his hate on had looked so… fragile.

He can handle her being a threat, he can handle all the scars and scratches she’s given him, that he’s given her, but he can’t handle the hurt in her eyes, he can’t afford to let his empathy get the best of him, not during war. He can’t let his guard down.

And yet… Once he finds his way back to the upper ring he finds himself slipping into the brooding and introspective manners he often does whenever he's shaken by something. 

So he trains.

This is a newer habit, one that came after they started their journey. Now he trains every time he has a particularly harsh dilemma, and during those training sessions he makes sure that the moon is his only companion. In this particular situation though, the moonlight distracts him, because it also reminds him of her.

She’s stronger under the veil of the night, every waterbender is, but she especially is a fearsome thing to behold. He wondered how long it’s been since she could bend in the open, he wondered how it would feel to have to hide such an integral part of oneself. 

Zuko has always been a little jealous of her when it came to bending; she had training, experience, she was a fully realized master. All he had was the partial teachings of his uncle, who was often busy running their village and a week of class back when they stayed with Hama, everything else was him improvising, adapting, and pushing forward because he had to. His bending was solely for survival, hers was for fighting, that he had managed to hold his own against her so many times before was a miracle.

And to see such foe so utterly lost, it moved something deep within him, something he couldn’t quite place. He echoed her confusion with each fiery punch and kick of his own, then with each swing of his swords.

Zuko trained until his muscles were sore and his mind was somewhat clear. It was well past one in the morning when he finally sat down near a water fountain, breathing heavily. He didn’t really have a conclusion for his dilemmas.

But he thought he could really go for some tea in the morning.

[midnightanxietytm]

Making this cannon in my swap au

we were girls together

[mfelewzi]

From Avatar Studios. I guess, I have read that they have maden these.

[mahiiragi]

How I imagine Zuko and Azula look like in @concernedbrownbread's fire siblings role reversal fic Lily White, Poppy Red because, once again, I love fire siblings role reversal fics.

My little undead murderous dog (affectionate) and underground resistance rebellion leader <3

I realized clothing is never really described, so I decided to make something up for when I imagine scenes while reading... and re-reading... I believe Zuko wears darker clothes since he hides and feels safe in shadows and, on the other hand, Azula in the colonies tries to look as royal as possible to show that, even if she is a traitor and is oficially dead, she is still a princess by birthright.

[whoevenknowsdude]

Sokka’s heart broke when his sister came into his workshop crying.

He immediately dropped the tools that he was holding, going over to her. The delicate machinery clattered on the wooden table, but he ignored it. He caught her arms just before she collapsed onto the ground.

“Katara, what is it?” He asked worriedly, looking her over for signs of injury.

In her desperation to raise the status of the Southern Water Tribe, Hama had been pushing her to the brink. There were times that Katara returned shivering or bleeding from harsh training. There was nobody else to take the pressure off her; she was the only water bender of her generation. It left Sokka helpless to do anything but hold her as she shakily healed herself. She was only eleven. She shouldn’t be the only one forced to represent their tribe in the ongoing war.

She looked up at him, eyes streaming tears.

“The Northern Masters came to watch me today,” she wailed.

He shook his head. He had been there, watching from the sidelines where nobody spared him a glance. She had performed wonderfully, her bending far outdoing any of the boys that were brought from the North. He had watched the Masters whisper amongst themselves, nodding and sharing looks of approval and concern. He was so proud of her.

“You did amazing, Katara,” he told her. “I watched, you did better than any of the boys there.”

“I know!” She hit his chest, and he didn’t flinch back. “They want me to go find the Avatar now!”

His eyes went wide. “What? Why?”

She shook her head, the tears becoming uncontrollable. He had to wrap her in a warm fur blanket and sit with her for several long moments before she got anywhere close to coherent again. He could always settle her panic. It was his job. He was nothing to the tribe, but he was her big brother.

As he comforted her, his mind raced through the situation rapidly. There was no reason to send a child off in search of the Avatar, especially one with such talent like Katara. They were supposed to give her more training, give her a chance to stand with the rest of the waterbenders and prove that the Southern Tribe held just as much power.

But that was the problem.

Realization made his heart sink. They knew that Katara was the most powerful waterbender in generations. There were whispers that she could be the next Avatar, that the last airbender was finally dead. The only reason to send her away would be to remove her as an obstacle altogether, to ensure that nobody from the South had a chance of overpowering the North. She was being sent on a death mission.

Finally the tears subsided into hiccups, and Sokka was able to kneel on the icy ground in front of Katara. He held her hands, looking her in the eye. Her breathing had steadied, and when her eyes fixed on his face, determined and calm at once, she seemed to relax, trusting whatever solution he would come up with. His plans always worked out– eventually.

“I’ll take care of this, Katara,” he told her firmly. “I promise. You don’t have to be the only one keeping our tribe afloat. I can help.”

The next day, when the Northern Masters came to their ship to send Katara on her journey, they found that someone else had taken her place. He was standing on the ship with no waterbenders, but a strange contraption strapped to the back. He had been trying to find a way to steer ships without waterbenders or sails, and there was no better time to test the new machine than now. After explaining his plan to Katara, he talked her into staying in his workshop until he set sail. That way, there was no way they could force her from her home.

“I am Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe!” He announced to the Northern Masters. “I am Hakoda’s eldest child. It’s my birthright to find the Avatar, and I won’t give up until I find him!”

[codeearth]

Little scene for an AU I have (role reversal with the Water Tribes starting the war and Toph being the Avatar). It’s the equivalent of the Southern Air Temple episode.

The colours aren’t right but they were the only ones I had on hand.

I’m never gonna write a full fic for it since I have so little concrete ideas, just little scenes here and there and ideas for characters arcs, but I still like the concept! Idk, maybe I’ll write a one shot or something

[the-badger-mole]

I like thinking about a role reversal, with Zuko on the right side from the start and Katara needing to switch sides. Some people don't like setting up the SWT as the bad guys, though. Any thoughts you could share on Sokka and Katara as the Fire Nation prince and princess and Zuko and Azula as SWT peasants?

It's not for me. I usually don't like saying never, but I'm never going to write this. I also have a lot of hesitation about setting up the Native coded characters up as the bad guys in place of the ones coded as historically imperialist colonizers. That said, White Man's Burden is a movie that exists, so you're not alone in wanting to see those kinds of "what if" stories. If that's the story you want, I encourage you to write it. I know there's an AU fan comic floating around with that premise. I've only read a few pages, but it looks interesting, and you might like it. I can't remember the name, but I'm sure someone knows what I'm talking about.

[angee1011]

The thing is , ATLA live action is like…an approximation of what the story is actually supposed to be.

There are elements that good, even really good, but it leaves you feeling hollow because it’s missing the heart of what ATLA is about. It’s a delicate balancing act between tragedy and comedy, underscored with hope.

The live action is sort of reminiscent of Ember Island players because it’s trying to be as -real- as it can be but doesn’t delve into deeper meaning.

To me, it felt like they wrote the story with thinking about the end too much. They were too wrapped up in how these characters end up, how the story ends. They overlooked how raw, how unpolished it was at the beginning.

[blorboazula]

so one specific scene for a "the Water Tribes attacked instead AU" wasn't getting out of my head...

I'm making Katara the sadistic serial killer people think Azula is in this one 👍 (and perhaps don't mess with Azula after slowly killing her brother in front of her, uh?)

[midnightanxietytm]

Zutara Role swap AU?

Hi besties! So, I have a Zutara drabble that's set on a future point of this AU (probably because I haven't decided the main ships in it yet) and I wannna know if yall want to see it. Right now it won't be cannon to the fic but like... who knows!? To give a "summary"; It's a look into the time Katara and Zuko meet in the tea shop in Ba Sing Se, exept it's a role swap AU so Katara is the banished princess of a colonizer nation and Zuko is the boy who's trying to take the avatar to take down said nation

Edit: I'll post it today! Stay tuned ;)

[twilight-skies]

Haven’t even finished the series but here’s my first official ATLA headcanon: when the state of world has reached modern times, like another seventy-hundred years after TLOK, there is a widely critically-acclaimed musical theater production known as “Aang: The Last Airbender” a historical drama retelling of the journeys of the Avatar and companions that ended the Hundred Year War. Idk I just really love the idea of people in the far future retelling this absolutely surreal part of history with the same themes of “the world turned upside down” “history has its eyes on (us)” “the narrative/the story they will write some day”and “who live who dies who tells your story”

[aoife-arianrhod]

‘i won, where you couldn’t even catch a child. how embarrassing of you.” she drawled, slightly smirking. azula heard the slap before feeling it;

azula thought that she understood her mother a little bit more, her fiance took her face into his hands examining the damage.

the guards in the room made no attempt to stop him.

stroking the cheek with his thumb, ‘captain lee, fetch the medic, the avatar attacked the princess.’

-

the guards in the room of that night no longer looked at her face, cowards, she thought, they were ashamed for either not stopping her fiance or not stopping her from fighting the avatar but either way she wore the bruise as badge of honor.

her fiance raged but he could not strike her again, his fear of the fire lord streghten even more after the strike has kept him away, for she was ozai’s property daughter and he never forgave those who touched things that belonged to him. though that never stopped him hurting his wife or children, she thought bitterly.

[kitsune024]

Avatar: The Last Airbender Fanfiction

Loyalty Is Acquired Through Time by code_earth

Bookmark Series 1-13

In this world, Zuko is the prodigy and Azula is the banished princess that chases the Avatar to return home. Of course, things are a little different from canon than simply copying and pasting one character onto another's story.

Starting with the fact that they love each other deeply and want to be reunited for good.

But communication is for losers, so it might take a while.

[hiya-im-mary]

So I think the Garchomp I caught in Pokémon Violet might become a pet f/o??

It’s kinda funny cuz now I’ll have another shark f/o!! Captain Fishook from LM3 is already one of my two parental f/o’s!!! And he kinda kicked off my love for all thinks shark related!! He’s the reason I have a Blåhaj!!!! :0

The love spreads on!!

[angstandhappiness]

NEAT

Can you do team WTCH in Atlas clothes?

All of them braced for the weather….except Cinder who insists her maiden powers keep her warm and Tyrian, who is absolutely unequipped for the cold, can’t stand it.

[ecoterrorist-katara]

The tragedy of Katara’s parentification

Sokka and Katara were both parentified, and it’s a profoundly life-changing thing for both of them. One of the saddest things in ATLA, though, is how Sokka sort of got to outgrow parentification, but Katara never did.

Sokka’s told to be the man. The provider, the protector. He’s not so good at the former (his hunting failures are a consistent source of comic relief), and he takes failures of the latter very, very hard. He doesn’t manage to save Yue, and that wrecks him. After Yue, he becomes extremely protective of Suki in a way that’s borderline offensive to her. He’s willing to do anything to protect his friends and his family, including something as irresponsible as breaking into the Boiling Rock. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Sokka is the only one of the Gaang who unambiguously kills. The rest of them may technically have clean hands because of cartoon logic, but Combustion Man is very dead, and Sokka is the one who killed him. We don’t know how he feels about it, because the show never goes there, but I have a pet theory that Sokka is so uncharacteristically (remember he was team “leave Zuko to freeze to death”) against Katara confronting Yon Rha in The Southern Raiders because he’s the only who knows what killing feels like and wants to protect Katara from it.

But by the end of the show, Sokka’s in a place where he can start to let go of his need to protect. Objectively, all his friends are unbelievably powerful and can take care of themselves, including his sister and his girlfriend. Suki is the one who saves him in the final battle, representing not only a reversal of his initial cartoonish misogyny, but also demonstrating that he is worthy of protection. And of course, he and his friends saved the world, so there isn’t really an enemy that he has to protect them from anymore. Sokka’s loved ones create the conditions under which his parentified behaviour is no longer necessary. Sokka would still have to take the first step to stop seeing himself as the one who has to lay his life on the line, but at least it’s possible for him.

But not Katara.

Katara had to take on the mom role after their mother was murdered, which meant she was responsible for domestic labour and emotional support. Sokka says in The Runaway that her role was to keep the family together. Unlike protection, that’s always a full time job regardless of the war. We see Katara spending more screen time than anybody cooking, getting food, mending, and generally doing women’s work. We see Katara giving everyone emotional support, including strangers and her enemy. We see Katara putting aside her own discomfort and her own hurt in The Desert because if she falls apart, they all die. Nobody ever showed her that she doesn’t need to be the only one who cooks, or that somebody else can be responsible for the emotional wellbeing of her friends, or that — god forbid — someone else can actually be responsible for her emotional wellbeing.

That’s why I never cared for the Ka/taang argument of “he teaches her to be a kid again!” Putting aside the fact that Katara ends up taking care of Aang a lot more as the series goes on, the whole tragedy of parentification is that you can never again be a child. That part of your childhood, your god-given right, is robbed from you. It is extremely precious and important to still be able to be a kid, but breaking free of parentification is not about seeing yourself as a kid. It’s about breaking free of being responsible for everyone’s feelings and behaviours.

For Katara, that responsibility is not problem of perception, but of reality. Unlike Sokka, who was told and shown that his loved ones are capable of protecting themselves, Katara has zero reason to believe that her loved ones are able to feed and clothe themselves and not fall apart emotionally. Between Toph and Sokka who emphatically don’t want to do this work, it all falls on Katara. Telling a parentified child that they just need to loosen up is akin to telling an overworked mother that she needs to just relax (“happy Mother’s Day! You get a break from chores, which you will catch up on tomorrow because nobody else is doing them”). It doesn’t accomplish anything if nobody creates the circumstances under which it’s possible to let go of responsibilities. A lot of Zutara fans, spanning all the way back to the early days of the fandom, like the “Momtara and Dadko” trope where Zuko also does chores. Why? Because even without the concept and language of parentification, many fans recognized that Katara’s performance of domestic and emotional labour is inequitable and probably very taxing.

Growing out of parentification is about more than just letting go of old expectations: it’s also about finding a new way to value yourself beyond the role you grew up with. I’ve said this before, but it’s very important to acknowledge that just because a kid is parentified doesn’t mean they’re actually good at being a parent. In fact, it’s probably a given that they’re not, because they’re kids performing roles that are developmentally inappropriate! Sokka remains a shit hunter; he becomes a decent fighter but he’s still miles behind his friends. A big part of healing from his parentification is finding another area — strategy, engineering, project management (what else do you call that schedule) — where he actually excels, to which he can dedicate his time and from which he can derive satisfaction and a sense of identity. For Katara, fighting for the oppressed and combat waterbending give her that. Crucially, however, Katara does not stop being a girl when she becomes a warrior. She’s still responsible for domestic and emotional labour. Unlike Sokka, whose protector duties were more or less relieved as the series went on and he found new ways to contribute to the group, Katara continued to perform her old role in addition to her new one (which is depressingly realistic btw, look up feminist theory around the concept of the second shift). Still, it’s important that she found these new ways to value herself and her contributions…

…which disappear in her adult life. Where’s adult Katara fighting for the oppressed? Where’s adult Katara enjoying her status as a master waterbender? Where’s Mighty Katara? Where’s the Painted Lady? Where’s the person who vanquished a whole Fire Lord?

What do we know about adult Katara? She’s no longer a rabblerouser or an ecoterrorist. She did not translate her desire to help the downtrodden into a political role, like being Chief or on the United Republic Council. She’s not known as the best waterbender in the world, only the best healer, even though her combat abilities are what she took the most pride in. Even as a healer, she established no hospitals, trained no widespread acolytes (except Korra, I guess?), and made no known contributions to the field.

What Katara is known for…is being a wife and a mother. The same role she was forced to take on at age 8. One which she performed for the next 80+ years.