#female aang

[commehter]

In Blue and White - Avatar the Last Airbender Fanfic

Rating: 16+ Genre: Coming of Age, Awkward Romcom(?) Pairings: (One-sided?) Zuko/Fem!Aang Characters: Zuko, Aang Summary: Aang is born female. It doesn't change all that much, until it does. What twelve-year-old girl wouldn't instantly develop a crush on the masked dual-sword-wielding bad boy that busted her out of Avatar jail?

Zuko's dignity suffers.

~.~.~.~.~

A story in which Aang accidentally humanizes herself to Zuko far earlier than her canon counterpart by the simple virtue of being a girl with an awkward crush. Well, Aang is the one with the crush. The awkward part is all Zuko.

~.~.~.~.~

Chapter 1: A Girl Named Aang, Part 1

Zuko awakes with a groan and refuses to open his eyes.

What happened?

It feels like his entire skull is threatening to split in two.

A gentle hand touches his cheek. "Are you awake?" asks a high, childish voice.

That definitely isn't Uncle or one of the crew.

Zuko's eyes fly open and he finds himself staring up at the Avatar.

What? The last thing he remembers is...

Zhao.

Pohuai.

Yuyan.

...It isn't night anymore, judging by the sunlight shining through the branches and leaves filling out his vision past the Avatar's head. They must be somewhere in the forest that surrounds the stronghold now.

How did they get out?

"Zuko?" the Avatar says with an upside-down frown.

Belatedly, Zuko realizes he's resting in the girl's lap. With his face completely revealed. He freezes.

When he doesn't say anything, the girl carries on chattering, "I don't really know if I'm doing this right. Most of the bruising cleared up but I think there might be a fracture beneath it." The hand cupping his cheek firms and water flows slowly across his forehead.

It tingles oddly but some of the pain ebbs away.

Zuko catches the wrist of the hand at his cheek and makes a blind fumble for the one above his head. 

"Hey!" The Avatar manages to elude one out of two grabs, left hand held high and sheathed in a strange mitten of glowing water.

"Avatar," he rasps, "what are you doing?"

"Healing," she answers, "Or trying to. I haven't done this before, but I really think it's working!"

"No, what are you doing?" Zuko growls, "We're enemies."

"Oh." The girl deflates. She really shouldn't need a reminder. "Well... You saved me. It didn't seem fair to leave you behind. And then you weren't waking up and I got worried. There wasn't anyone else to ask for help, so I tried meditating to talk with the past Avatars.

"Kyoshi said -- something not very nice, but Yangchen gave me some memories that helped when I couldn't understand what she was trying to te--"

Zuko covers the Avatar's mouth with his free hand. She glares at him and retaliates by slapping her water-mitted-hand back on his forehead. Zuko flinches as spots bloom across his vision. They clear as the tingling feeling resumes and more of the lingering pain fades.

The Avatar is still glaring at him.

Good.

That's how an enemy should look.

Now if only she'd stop muddying the waters by trying to fix his head injury, maybe the world would stop spinning in ways he doesn't know how to compensate for. He can deal with a concussion. He doesn't have the first clue what to do with an enemy set on healing him.

"I wasn't saving you."

The Avatar rolls her gray eyes and fingers tap along his jaw.

Zuko scowls back at her. "I'm serious. I was capturing you for myself."

The girl shakes her head free of his hand. Zuko allows it. "I had figured that out," the Avatar snaps, "I'm not stupid. But you still helped me get away from Zhao, so helping you was fair."

It's irritating because, from a certain, stupid angle, the Avatar's words make sense.

Water drips and then streams past his temples, soaking into the orange skirts still pillowing his head. The girl's hand doesn't move. Either of them. When was the last time he let someone touch his face, never mind as long as the Avatar has been? Zuko drops his remaining hold on the girl. The Avatar fails to withdraw.

Zuko snarls. He pushes himself up and away from the Avatar to sit on the forest floor. He doesn't turn to look at her. She won't attack him now, not with how much work she must have put in to get him away from Zhao in one piece.

"Fine! I got you away from Zhao. You got me away from Zhao. All debts repaid. We're even. The next time I see you, I will capture you," he warns.

"Fine! Even!" The Avatar stomps around to put herself directly in front of him. "In that case, I have two messages for you before everything goes back to normal!

"First, Roku says 'hello.' Do you know why?"

"I -- What? No!" Zuko retorts, "Why would any of your past lives have anything to say to me? They all lived over a hundred years ago!"

The Avatar leans close, examining his face with narrowed eyes. Finally, the girl sighs and relents. "I don't know, but Kyoshi and Roku aren't subtle and you're what they argue over most. Not that either will explain why." She looks away and tucks a too-short lock of hair behind her ear only for it to slip forward again.

He doesn't know what to do with the information that two dead Avatars are wasting their afterlives arguing about him. "What's the second Avatar message?" he asks.

"Oh, well, it's just from me, but I guess that counts as an 'Avatar message'?"

"Avatar," Zuko growls in warning as his patience frays, "what is the message?"

"Sorry," the girl says with a little self-conscious shrug, "I know I talk a lot." It's the only warning she gives him before foreign lips brush his own. She withdraws before he can process what's happening, cheeks flushed. "Thanks for saving me, Zuko."

And then the Avatar flees, jumping through the forest canopy like she was made to live amongst the treetops. Zuko stares after her dumbly until she disappears from sight.

A twelve-year-old just kissed him.

It was barely a kiss.

The Avatar just kissed him.

What is he supposed to do with that?

...

That doesn't count as his first kiss, does it?

No. Innocent, childish infatuation can't count. He refuses to think it ever could.

The Avatar is a foolish little girl that saves her enemies.

It definitely doesn't count.

For either of them.

He doesn't notice the Air Nomad bracelet she'd slipped on his wrist at some point until he tries to change back into his uniform.

~.~.~.~.~

The bracelet is a loop of beads made out of various seeds and nuts along with two small tassels, one orange and the other yellow. He's noticed it wrapped several times around the Avatar's skinny wrist before, but on Zuko it is only long enough to complete four circuits before it becomes too tight to slip over his hand for a fifth.

It's called a lineage tie, typically given to monks by nuns during the spring dances of the Air Nomads' yearly fertility festivals, but sometimes exchanged among Air Nomads too young to participate as a pact for the future. If the Air Nomads had practiced lifelong monogamy like all the other nations, it would be the equivalent of initiating negotiations for a marriage proposal.

Practically speaking, it's an honest to spirits proposition.

From a twelve-year-old.

Zuko restrains himself from setting the scroll in his hands on fire.

So much for innocent.

At least the Water Tribe betrothal necklace locked away in the same drawer hadn't been given to him with equal intention. If anything, he's not convinced the waterbender knows that she wears an engagement gift. That, or she's just decided that its value as an heirloom is more important than any of the traditions tied to it. Either way, picking up lost jewelry on a prison barge has been proven preferable to unwittingly accepting gifts from the Avatar.

~.~.~.~.~

The bounty hunter has a beast that can literally sniff out the Avatar.

Zuko has the airbender's bracelet in hand and is almost back out the door of his quarters when a terrible, horrifying thought occurs to him. What if Uncle asks how he got possession of the Avatar's bracelet? Worse, what if Uncle somehow recognizes the lineage tie for what it is? It would be just his luck if Uncle Iroh knew what the collection of strung seeds and nuts represents, and Zuko doesn't trust his lying skills to be sufficient in shutting down the nosy old man's curiosity.

Worst of all, he can't be sure how Uncle would react to the situation. The only thing more awful than Uncle Iroh's disapproval would be his active and far too enthusiastic approval. Uncle's marriage had been fully negotiated and arranged by the time he was eight years old. Father had only been six, though that initial engagement was broken before the wedding could take place for reasons Zuko has never learned, and Father had instead wed Mother a year later. Zuko's own match had been arranged by Mother when he was all of nine years. ...Mai's parents probably dissolved the arrangement after he got himself banished.

...

He hasn't thought about Mai in years. He wonders if he should feel bad about that.

All he can picture at the thought of his once-intended is the sullen eleven-year-old girl he'd last seen before his banishment. He doesn't have the first clue how she might have grown and changed over the intervening three years. Is she still being dragged around by his psychotic little sister and bored with life in general?

...He'd never actually asked her opinion on their engagement. Had she been as apathetic about him and their future marriage as she was about everything else?

Not that he would expect her to still want the match, even if she had before his banishment, but...

The idea of being someone's undesired intended is somehow even less appealing than the Avatar's inappropriate proposition.

At least with the Avatar, he can be sure the girl involved favors the match.

He can't imagine why, but he knows that she does.

Zuko scowls and pushes the unwanted thoughts away. He's wasting time!

Without any winding the lineage tie is just long enough that he can pull it over his head and wear it as a long necklace. Zuko tucks the string beneath his armor and allows it to slide out of view as he doubles back for the waterbender's betrothal necklace. If the shirshu picks up on both scents, so much the better, but one piece of jewelry is clearly safer for open display than the other.

Uncle's meddling as a match-maker is the last thing he needs during his hunt for the Avatar.

~.~.~.~.~

It's just as well the Avatar stole back her friend's necklace. It hadn't worked as a bribe and the shirshu debacle isn't one he's looking to repeat. Ever. Zuko has had enough of the beasts to last a lifetime.

Any frustration he feels is only because the Avatar has eluded capture. Again.

...

Girls make no sense no matter what nation they hail from.

~.~.~.~.~

You can read the rest of the story on AO3.

3 Chapters (WIP)

5K Words (and counting)

Posted 06/08/2024

Happy reading!

[longing-for-rain]

Actually I thought of one (1) context I could ship kataang in. Female Aang. Lesbian kataang. I would also give Aang more of an arc but her being female would automatically get rid of some of the biggest issues

[caramel-ribbons]

I just watched Avatar for the first time all the way through, and yeah, it’s great, but the one thing that surprised me was how different Katara was compared to the fandom interpretation I’d seen and internalized before watching.

Like, before you watch Avatar, you’ve seen all these memes about Katara and her mom, and based on those memes, you assume it’s one of those lines you have to get used to hearing at least once every episode. But then you watch the show and realize that she only talks about her mom maybe five or six times per season and you also realize she only brings her up when she’s trying to comfort someone or empathize with them because that’s how she processes her grief and that’s one way she connects with people.

Or you hear the infamous line, “then you didn’t love [our mother] the way I did” and you prepare yourself for one of the worst character assassinations ever only to see the scene after nearly three seasons worth of context and realize she was kinda right. She’s been the mother, the nurturer, the comforter. She’s been patient, gentle, and accommodating where everyone else has gotten to be insensible and reckless and childish, and the one moment where she allows herself to feel her grief, suddenly she’s this evil bitch and not, y’know, a 14 year old girl whose been thrusted into adulthood in a way no other character has. A 14 year old girl who should be allowed immaturity and raw emotion and anger instead of the patience and grace she’s been forced to extend to every character without even the smallest amount of gratitude or even consideration in return.

Or you see all of the clips where Katara puts Aang in the “friendzone” and you expect to have this wishy washy back and forth where Aang is putting his feelings out there only to have Katara neither commit nor express any clear reciprocation or rejection. Then you watch and realize that, as cute as the ship is initially, that there’s never a point where Aang returns any comfort or grace to Katara despite her always doing this for him to the point of coddling. That for as much as Aang says he loves her, he never seems to outgrow his perception of her so he can recognize her as someone who feels grief, anger, and pain as much as she expresses love, kindness, and maturity. And instead of having moments where he learns to see her beyond her strength or compassion, you’re instead given moments where Aang forces his feelings onto her, both romantic and non-romantic, and Katara is expected to just…shoulder those feelings the way she shoulders everyone else’s.

Katara is the most misunderstood character in the show. As much as people recognize the complexities of Zuko, Sokka, and Azula, they struggle to do the same for Katara because they see her struggles as somehow lesser, and therefore, less deserving of sympathy. They can handle her so long as she’s being endlessly patient and loving and kind, but the moment her endless love, patience, and kindness runs out, she’s suddenly this annoying bitch who can’t shut up about her mother or reciprocate Aang’s feelings. But Katara’s trauma does matter as much as anyone else’s. No, she wasn’t banished from her kingdom. No, she didn’t lose her entire community, and no, she isn’t the only one who lost her mother. But the difference between her and everyone else whose experienced loss because of the Fire Nation is that she’s never given time to process her trauma. Aang gets to lean on Katara constantly. Toph gets to express her feelings to Katara, and yeah, Sokka also lost their mother, but unlike Katara, he isn’t put in the position of being a substitute for everyone’s parent. He even admits that he sees his sister as a mother. The only characters who ever comfort Katara or allow her to vent is Zuko and her father and that’s, like, three scenes in a show where the other characters are consistently given opportunities to seek out Katara for unconditional support.

The fandom interpretation of Katara has been so bastardized that even those who haven’t watched the show know her for this fanon version and not for who she is. She’s such an interesting character beyond her fandom limitations, though. She’s brave, hot-headed, and hopeful as well as gentle and caring. She wishes to learn waterbending, not only because she wants to fight in the war, but because she wants to continue her culture’s practices because, and people often forget this, she also lost an entire subculture within her already fractured tribe. And she wants to defeat the Fire Nation both because of her deep love and empathy for other people, but also because she wants to avenge her mother. But because some of the fans have reduced Katara to a bitch who constantly whines about her mother and friendzones Aang, you wouldn’t know any of this, and it sucks because she’s the only character whose been dumbed down to such an extent.

[c0nfessions-of-a-writing-freak]

Scarred Beauty

Pairing: Zuko x Fem!Reader

Word count: 809

Summary: It had almost become a tradition for you and Zuko to talk after the sun had gone down, leaving the both of you wrapped in a blanket of secrecy. But after Zuko falls asleep a little too early, it leaves you to wonder.

Bingo: @eclipsingbingo with 'Tracing Scars'

When you first met Zuko, you honestly thought he was trying to kill you. The way his lip would curl up upon laying his eyes on you, or how he would single you out in a fight so he could make sure he was the only one who had a shot at you, it all made every moment between the two of you dreadful and when he decided to join your 'team' you could only think of the worst case scenario.

But now, now that you've got to know Zuko without the usual heat that came with his arrival or the scornful glare that he had to keep up, he was starting to grow on you.

It hadn't been instant, you, but probably Katara, took the longest to warm up to him. It was hard to look past all the times he had tried to capture you, burn you alive, hunt you down and even sell you out, but once you had tried, you felt your efforts rewarded tenfold as Zuko did his best to get to know you.

His mannerisms have changed a lot since the first time you met him. Instead of the brash, whiny and impatient prince who needed to get his way, you were met with a gentle, intelligent and peaceful warrior who had joined the fight against the Fire Nation.

He had grown more protective, making sure no one got hurt and always seeking you out first to check for injuries. He offered his guidance to both Aang and whoever else would take it, leading to the two of you bending together. Whenever the two of you would, due to your clashing elements, it always put on quite the show for the others as they watched fire try to wash away water.

It was how you believed you ended up here, lying beneath a sea of stars. The two of you were side by side, the others quite a distance away as they slept peacefully, getting ready for a day of adventure. Not the two of you though. You both had grown accustomed to the late-night talks that you weren't sure who had first started them.

It was such a regular occurrence that if one of you noticed the other one waiting out, you would rush the night along, getting into positions like you were currently in. Even the rest of the gang had grown used to this and wouldn't question it if the two of you went off together or when they awoke they found you both laying next to each other somewhere.

The topics that you would speak about were vast, never being a copy of the night before. You had spoken about what it had been like growing up and how your childhoods had varied, though you both found comfort in one another for a feeling of isolation. Talk of tradition and training, even gossip that the other would have a hard time following along with. Whatever could be spoken about had been.

Except for the large scar that took up a good chunk of Zuko's face. You had never felt the need to ask, even now, as you had turned away from the stars above to face Zuko, the older boy asleep far too early than he would've liked to be, you couldn't bring yourself to ever ask. If it was something that Zuko would ever want to talk about, then he would bring it up himself. But since that was yet to happen, you kept any topic of conversation far from it.

That didn't stop you from staring at it now. Even in the darkness, it was a large contrast from the rest of his face. For so long you had only ever allowed your eyes to briefly linger on the scar, only ever allowed your eyes to trace the corners of it and take it in. But now, a delicate hand reached forward and with a feather-light tip of your finger, your skin came in contact with his scared.

Where others may have seen brutality or felt disgust and pity at the sight, you couldn't help but wonder how such a large portion of his face seemed to bring so much life to Zuko's being, how though it may hide the beauty that may have once been there, a new beauty bloomed with it.

Only when you were satisfied did you draw your hand away. You had done enough looking for tonight. Instead, you curled in on yourself, trying to store as much heat as you could for the night, not wanting to leave Zuko's side.

And when the others found the two of you wrapped around one another in the morning, they turned a blind eye and allowed the both of you to come to your own senses and figure out the mess you were both slowly creating.

[wollydarner]

Avatar study

[lilith-91]

Atla fandom one day will realize that you can dislike a character or a ship without being weird about it

[punkeropercyjackson]

"They don't know what gender is!!!"Yes the fuck they do,they're full of it and i'm using the general 'they' because nonbinary does not mean they/them exclusively every fuckdamn time like y'all think it does.'He's like a girl to me' and 'She's my boyfriend' but then you don't respect he/him girls and she/her boys and bigender has never entered your vocabulary.Good LORDS

[zukosbangtan]

kataras female rage freeing aang out of the iceberg and therefore essentially being the reason for world peace after a century long war is just very...poetic when u think about it

[not-aurii]

I love how Kiyoshi had absolutely no reason to pop up in the "Avatar Day" episode, she did just to be like:

"HE WAS A CONQUEROR. I HAD TO KEEP MY PEOPLE SAFE SO I KILLED THAT MOTHERFUCKER. HE WAS HORRIBLE AND YALL ARE SUCKERS FOR WORSHIPPING HIM. PEACE OUT."

Cuz this wasn't like the times Roku stepped in and took over Aang's body to 1) save them all from burning alive in a volcano, and 2) convince maybe the one person that could teach Aang firebending (at the time) to teach him.

If she hadn't popped up, Aang, Katara and Sokka would have just... left the Island. Aang would sulk for a couple episodes, then Azula would be a bigger problem for them again.

bUT NO she came back from the dead to admit to it, knowing full well she might've just sentenced Aang to death.

She was Proud™ of it.

300 years and that beef is still going strong

[rhinocio]

[seventeendeer]

after watching ATLA I got curious about whether my constantly negatively comparing its gender politics to the (imo superior) 2003 Teen Titans animated series had any merit or what, so I sat down to watch TT properly for the first time in ~2 decades, prepared for the worst

but you know what literally THE SECOND EPISODE centers one of the female leads and her complex relationship with her sister and features her love interest comforting and supporting her as she works through her insecurities and finally confronts said sister so WHAT THE FUCK WAS ATLA'S EXCUSE FOR ALL OF THAT

[commehter]

Working on the 4th chap for In White and Blue, and I finally realized I'm trying to make fem!Aang way too confrontational. That just isn't in Aang's character. (Guess it was more than just Katara's goals and arc that meant she had to be the member of the gaang to stand up to the Northern council...) I'm going to have to rethink how to get from Point A to Point B with a character that refuses to be assertive. Might be that Point B morphs into Point C instead. We'll find out!

(I'm lowkey starting to feel like Toph in Bitter Work. C'mon Twinkletoes, grow a backbone and stand up for what you want!)

[longing-for-rain]

I think it’s funny how people point to the existence of female kataang stans as proof that kataang isn’t written for the male gaze when every female kataang stan I’ve interacted with has said something to the effect of “but he’s so nice, he wouldn’t have done something like that” to dismiss his blatant violation of Katara’s boundaries on screen. It is unfortunately not uncommon for women to flock to the defense of male interests.

[allgremlinart]

characters who essentially have nothing change when you genderswap them vs characters for whom genderswapping would make them entirely different people....

[rayes-rain]

Fans who dunk on kataang as a ship because Katara was written flatly post OG series really grind my gears. As if her marrying Aang and having a family with him was the root cause of the LoK writers sidelining her when her peers still got to be way more invloved in the story.

I will be the first to admit that Katara's initial goals and characterization got quite lost post OG series. In a way, she was only reduced to a healer and her accomplishments outside of mothering children with Aang and banning bloodbending are not shared with the audience. For the first season of LoK, I think this is fine. This is not Katara's story anymore and her speech to Korra at the beginning of the season is her passing the torch to the next Avatar to have her own adventures. Katara at that point is basically a nice cameo. We're not supposed to think that this sliver of her life which Korra sees is all that's important about her.

This does not hold water in future seasons when it's revealed that Toph and Zuko are still alive and both have more active roles in the plot, whereas Katara did not have an active role in plot lines she should have been more involved with (water tribe civil war, for example). To some fans, this reduces the little that we do see of Katara's character in LoK to only being those parts, rather than just pieces of a more realized elder from the perspective of someone younger (Korra) who doesn't know her whole story.

The way that people blame her marrying Aang on the way her overall character was handled is so baffling to me. Do these fans honestly think she would have escaped that fate for certain if she had married Zuko or someone else, or stayed single?

[matt0044]

Post like the the "you couldn't even handle [insert infamously hated female character here]" get me thinking about claims like what they quote.

To start with those claiming we need more [blank] female characters will often be the same that agree that there's a cultural stigma against girls who will "step out of line" socially and how that's been leveraged against female characters enmass.

Though it's also interesting to think about the other group this claim will come from. Namely those who carry their unconscious biases against "badly written" female characters but act as if they don't.

See, they can handle evil, comical or even morally grey female characters... in their minds. They love the hypothetical strong female character in their heads. Detached from any narrative context. No other characters, male especially, for them to foil off of. Nothing to "ruin" them as it were.

Korra, the character, had initially been received well at the idea of a female protagonist leading a new Avatar series. However, when applied to an actual story and cast of characters to bounce off of, you better believe that a lot of people busted out the "unlikable" card like it was Exodia's Head.

RWBY's practically the poster child. Each Trailer showed off a dimension of the four leading ladies with a lot of blanks to be filled in later. Whatever one thinks how the series lived up to the hype or not, a lot of the hatedom seems to express that they only wanted the girls to be the basic traits we saw initially.

Ruby, a smol bean of cuteness.

Weiss, a prissy ice queen with a snide aside at the ready.

Blake, a "naturally submissive" goth who totally still loved Adam.

Yang, a party girl of a bimbo and a dumb blonde.

None of these were all the characters were. Not even in the Trailers. Yet those comfy assumptions devoid of the narrative context of a Magic School for Warrior or a Final Fantasy globe-trotting epic appealed to the male geek in our brain.

That's no even getting into how individual taste factors into it. Not to make this reply any longer but if I have to see another godforesaken YouTube video about Mary Sues or "how to write female characters" or how Arcane is somehow this exception from "the rule" in modern animation... I'll do something not very nice.

So... yeah.