#for real tho that artist awakened something in me that has never went away

[minkufu]

That’s basically me too! I can watch the stupidest shit unfold and be invested in the show as long as I love the characters, like no offense but khr has some bad plot points but I love the characters and their chemistry with each other so much that I stay for it lol. (That isn’t to say that I think khr is well written tho it’s a hot mess ajdkks)

Oh yeah LOL Khr is my fav series because the characters are so fun, and seeing people, especially on twitter be like "Why isn't khr more popular? Why don't more people like it???" Always kills me cause like...it's not that good. That's why lmao. Also it didn't get an English dub, which people like to say is a good thing, but you cant complain about the series being underappreciated while praising it for not being accessible. I GOT ADHD YALL I CANT SIT HERE AND READ SUBS ALL DAY!! I don't have much hope of the series ever getting a reboot because it's pacing is so fucked up, so I'd gladly settle with just getting a dub to make it more accessible.

BUT YEAH, you're right it is a mess. the plot is shaky in a lot of places, it's humor is incredibly dated, the writing for the girl characters is exceptionally bad, and even if the daily life arc has great character moments, for the average person looking to get into the series, that shit is a slog to get through. I have to WARN people I suggest the series to that its probably gonna be boring and cringey for the first 20 or so episodes. It is a very hard sell.

You know what made me interested in khr? Fanart of Bel. I saw him and immediately jumped right into the series, barely knowing anything about him. 90 chapters into the manga. 35 episodes into the anime. My short attention span persevered through the bullshit just for him. The Varia on their own carry that entire series for me.

Oh, the fanart in question btw, when I can't remember the name of the artist, I literally just have to type this...

And there he is lol. The artist I believe went by Misteor. They had tons of fanart of Bel in that super pretty style and I was obsessed with it.

[darkstarnight02]

Why the Akuma Class Doesn’t Trusts Lila Rossi

Nino

This dude is a loyal friend

Like, he’s also a loyal boyfriend, so it’s hard when his girlfriend is siding with Lila

But he’s the one who’s like

“Dudes, we’ve known Mari for years there’s no way she would do the stuff this new girl we’ve known for five minutes says she did.”

He and Kim and Mari were besties since preschool, I think we all know that.  

Adrien

I hate it when people say he tries to defend her with the high road crap

When he sees her hurting people, especially Marinette

Because lets be honest, he cares about her alot

He’s less forgiven

Like do y’all remember the “BeCaUsE We’Re FrIeNdS, aReN’t We?”

So he’s not going to try and make her life miserable

But he is going to try to get her to stop

Chloé

Let’s be honest, she never liked Lila in the first place.  

So Imma give y’all bonus “how she figured out everyone’s identities”

So once she became friends with Marinette

Cause they formed a “we hate Lie-la” alliance

(tho since Mari’s still friends with the others its kinda awkward)

Chloe’s pretty smart.  

Like, she totally could have figured it out before they became friends

But she would never have believed back then that Mari-trash was Ladybug, her idol (and lesbian awakening, lesbihonest)

But now that she’s friends with her, it’s way too obvious

And she definitely already knew about Adrien because these guys are besties

And, dudes, she never had a crush on him, she was just an overprotective best friend

And a very touchy one

To her, it’s all pretty obvious.  

She thinks that its just whatever magic thats blinding everyone of the obvious, its immune to (like low-key Rachel Dare here)

But Sabine, Tom, and Jagged probably know to because they’re all Kings and Queens.  

So Chloe figures everyone out pretty quickly.  

Sabrina

She trust Chloe more than anyone.  

But I’m not just gonna use that because its kinda boring.  

Tho Chloe is her bi crush so that definitely helps secure loyalties

Its only when Marinette becomes MDC that she realizes

and yes, Sabrina probably knows because Chloe and she also recognizes the designs from some stuff she has in her own closet.  

So anyway, she realizes Mari is MDC and she’s some famous designer and Lila is not

And Mari also knows Jagged and Clara and a whole bunch of other famous people

And she never brags about it but there’s proof that she knows them

while Lila always brags about it but she’s never been mentioned and no one knows her.  

Alya

I hate it when people say she totally sides with Lila.  

This girl knows that her bestie never lies(or at least thinks)

and some things with Lila don’t add up.  

Like she doesn’t check directly if what Lila says is true

But she’ll be doing research for something else and see’s that it contradicts something that Lila said.  

So she’ll do more research and try to figure more stuff out

And she’s like holy f*ck nothing Lila says is true.

Or, alternatively, for those of you who have watched season 4

She immediately realizes Lila’s a liar right after Marinette tells her she’s Ladybug.  

Marinette

No explanation needed.  

Mylène

Mylene notices when Lila insults one of her classmates one day.  

Even if its subtle, or just piping on the edge of her blaming Marinette for something, she notices it.  

And a good person wouldn’t say something like that,  

Like Chloe, they all expect something like that from

No one every really liked Chloe in the first place

And Mari never says anything rude

Sure, she gets angry at Chloe and Lila sometimes, and she tries to prove what they say is wrong, but she never directly attacks someone.  

I don’t know who Lila was being a bitch to this time, but it cost her a follower.  

Alix

This girl is probably one of the most Gen Z kids in the Akuma Class, which is pretty sad because they’re all supposed to be Gen Z. 

She can smell bullcrap from a mile away

Not to mention the little hints older Bunnyx drops whenever she visits.  

With the mix of her being the future miraculous holder of time and being the daughter of a historian, she’s very aware of history and timelines and cause and effects and chain reactions

So when Marinette starts ‘acting up’ she tries to find when her personality switched over

And even if she seems more like a background character, this aro/ace queen always seems to know your secrets. 

So even before she knew Lila was a phony, she knew that Mari was MDC and that Jagged Stone was Juleka and Luka’s dad

So she definitely figured some stuff out that way

Honestly, next to Chloe, Alix was probably one of the first people to figgure out Mari’s identity.  

She’s a detective to rival batman

Ivan

I think Lila would make some sort of rift between him and Mylene.  

He loves her so much and it would be so hard

And mari and her friends would help him out

and he would see the truth

They wouldn’t like break up or anything

But he can just tell immediately when someone’s being a bad person.  

Kim

Probably something similar to Nino

But I think it’d be a bit more like he’s totally a die-hard fan of some of Marinette’s connections or some of Marinette’s work itself

And when he puts the pieces together its like everything makes sense in the world.  

He really feels super stupid afterwards.  

Ondine probably slaps him for not trusting his childhood best friend before some bitchy new girl.  

Max

This is the smartest dude in class

He made a f*cking robot with emotions you can’t tell me he doesn’t figure Lila out.  

A part of me believes that in the first episode with Lila when they were all waiting on her hand and foot they were probably aware that she was kind of delusional, but were giving into it the way you give into the tales of a six year old.  

Like ‘yeah, okay sweetie.  Sure’.  

I mean, at least that’s why Max went along with the napkin thing, because there’s no other excuse for that whole incident.  

Nathaniel

I don’t totally know how he figured her out, but I love the idea of her saying that she can introduce him to the creator of the Ladybug Comics.  

They actually sit next to each other in class, so he definitely is more aware of her weird behavior than others.

And since he’s an artist he’s very observant, always noticing things like her facial expressions and what seems more exaggerated than real.  

And we all know how kwami-damned done Nathaniel is with the class, so he probably knew all along.  

Not to mention that since the rest of the school is less submissive to Lila’s lies, Marc probably pointed it out to him at some point.  

There’s also the idea that since Nathaniel is pretty much never mentioned anymore, the class forgets about him and he ends up having to spend some time with Marinette and the other outcasts

In which he realizes that they are actually good people.  

Honestly, Nathaniel probably knew all along but he’s just not a drama queen about it so Lila never bothered him.  

Rose

Girls besties with Prince Ali, one of the key components of Lila’s lies

She definitely does not want to believe that someone is capable of so much evil, and she definitely gets Akumatized when she figures it out

She goes through a lot of denial but is eventually convinced.  

Juleka

Her dad is Jagged Stone, also another key component of Lila’s lies.  

After becoming Tigris Pourpre, the holder of the tiger miraculous (that’s canon in the future), she gets a little bit more invested in cat culture

And omfg I just realized that both of our models are kittens and I just wanna DIE because that’s so cute.  

And honestly now that I’m thinking about it if she was a celebrity she would totally take after Jagged and have an emotional support tiger like Princess Jasmine. 

ANYWAY, I’m kinda getting off topic here.  

So she asks Jagged about his cat, and he’s like 

“wtf I’ve never had a cat why would I have a cat I have FANG my CROCODILE”

And she’s like but your cat...

And he’s like “Jules, darling, I wrote a song about how I replaced my family with a guitar and I have three instagrams for Fang, why would I have a feline animal?”

And she’s just like

....

And honestly she probably already knew some sh*t was up before that

Because Luka obviously, despite only having met Lila, like, once, probably, dislikes Lila severely

And also Juleka is more of an observer than a do-er so she probably saw that some stuff was up.  

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

This is a bit random but if characters from your fics lived in the Atla universe what element would they bend? Personally I think Lily would still have all her powers which would result in people thinking she's the avatar even though she's not, Obito would be a firebender, Minato an airbender and Lenin dearest would be a waterbender/bloodbender/maybe the avatar?. This is just the vibe I get tho-

Who needs bullet points when we can do a far too thought out AU that spans multiple fandoms/recursive works that will never happen? 

More to the point, elements in AtLA is a mix of personality (we see earth benders as often brash and stubborn, water benders as adaptive, etc.) but also simply genetics. So, while I get that’s kind of the point of this post, it’s a bit weird to me to assign an element solely on personality. 

So with that, let’s get started.

The Setting

Just to make things fun let’s make our AU take place sometime between Sozin’s first comet and Roku’s death and Aang awakening from that iceberg. The air benders have been wiped out, seemingly with no survivors, the South Pole has been invaded and the water benders from there captured and brought back to the Fire Nation, many of the colonies in the Earth Kingdom have been established, but the North Pole and great cities in the Earth Kingdom still stand.

The Avatar hasn’t been missing for one-hundred years yet, but he’s been missing for decades and people are coming around to the idea that maybe he’s really not going to show up. 

Wizard Lenin/Tom Riddle

In this AU we’ll give Tom Riddle a slightly more traditional shitty background. Since we can’t really have a Tom in the AtLA universe he’s going to have the AtLA generic equivalent name that canon even jokes about: Lee. Lee is the mixed heritage son of a Fire Nation lord and a water bender from the south pole who grows up in a Fire Nation orphanage. And yes, this does happen in the absolute worst way you can possibly imagine, one of the imprisoned water benders from the south pole is raped.

As for Tom (Lee, you get the idea) arriving at an orphanage instead of being imprisoned/taken in as a son, well I’ll leave that to imagination but we can imagine a relatively compassionate guard, a dash of luck, or perhaps someone being an idiot and thinking “oh just dump it in an orphanage, there’s no way it will turn into a water bender too”

So, Tom grows up in an orphanage and looks just a bit... different from everyone else and is clearly not purely from the fire nation. I’m imagining much darker skin (and POC Tom Riddle is the weirdest thing in the world to contemplate, but here we are) and the pale blue eyes.

Tom grows up, dreaming probably of entering the military and winning himself glory, prestige, honor, and clawing out of this impoverished life he was born into. He undoubtedly desperately hopes he’s a fire bender, as not only is it cool but they have the best chance of making it in the world, and probably stays up late for many nights fruitlessly attempting to shoot fire out of his hands.

Unfortunately for Tom, sometime when he’s probably around eight or so, turns out he’s actually a water bender. Naturally, Tom has a huge meltdown and existential crisis as this means something’s terribly terribly wrong. More, all his hopes are ruined, as while a non-bender can make it a bender who is not a fire bender is a foreigner and traitor to the state.

Tom runs away and being a precocious child is able to make it on his own and about the country probably pulling off Toph-like scams. Eventually he runs into a much younger Hama who has just escaped prison and not yet started on her scary old lady adventures of imprisoning random villagers in caves. Hama goes, “of course, yes my child, I knew your mother” and gives Tom the whole horrible rape tale along with “I will teach you everything I know including my scary blood bending”. So Tom learns scary blood bending, probably stays with Hama a few years, and then realizes Hama isn’t going anywhere.

Hama’s content kidnapping random people into caves. At this point, angry and suddenly very pro-water bender Tom wants to murder the Fire Lord and his entire goddamn family and put himself in charge. Go big or go home, am I right?

So Tom leaves, Hama probably saying, “Come back any time, my beautiful murder child” and probably goes exploring the world in search of how the hell he’s going to bring down the Fire Lord. He also probably murders his entire father’s family and steals all his money, but that’s a different story. I imagine he goes to the North Pole where he learns that, as much of a water bender as he is, that he’s the son of someone from the Fire Nation closes pretty much every door to him. He’ll always be an outsider and the North Pole is very frosty towards him.

According to Hama, the South Pole is in shambles, so Tom probably doesn’t even bother going. 

So Tom probably goes and bums around the Earth Kingdom, loitering in Ba Sing Se and Omashu, looking for that damned Spirit Library in the desert, etc. for a good number of years as he works to perfect his water bending and make himself an instrument of death.

And then he meets an alien and everything changes.

Lily

Tom probably manages to wander around the spirit world at one point in his late teens and probably almost gets eaten by something terrifying. While he learns much it’s not really anything useful and is more in the “too cosmic horror for Tom” variety. More than that though, something follows him back out.

When he comes to back in the real world there’s this thing sitting next to him that looks enough like a person but also like someone told a gifted artist what humans look like and they got it mostly right but also went a little nuts. It’s a girl, a few years younger than him, who has flaming red hair, absurdly green eyes, pale skin, and facial features he can’t recognize for the life of him (Lily still looking western in this to up the ante of ‘she’s an alien folks’).

Tom sacrifices his dinner to it and hopes it doesn’t eat him.

It explains that it’s a tourist from another dimension, beyond even the Spirit World, and that it’s come to see what the mortal world is all about. Tom is naturally very weirded out but at this point decides to roll with it.

Except it doesn’t leave and clearly expects Tom to play tour guide.

He does, reluctantly, because he doesn’t want to be eaten but he also sort of gets used to the thing. Then, one day, it starts bending multiple elements with utter ease and Tom is at first flabbergasted and horrified (only to remember that spirits can do what they want and aren’t like lowly mortals who can only bend one element) and then he gets the idea.

The Avatar, lazy bastard that he is (and Tom might be a little more than slightly bitter that he himself is not the Avatar), appears to be MIA and not coming back any time soon. The entire world it seems is waiting for the Avatar to come and save them. But, Tom says to himself, who needs the Avatar when you can just have an Avatar. An Avatar and, of course, her water bending master.

Thus, the scheme is set, Tom will teach this weird alien thing how to a) act like a goddamn human in public and b) water bending and together they will pretend she’s the Avatar and got lost in the spirit world a few decades ago (which accounts for the youthful age and the weird appearance) and use this to gain allies, topple the Fire Nation, and eventually give the throne to Tom.

Lily, who doesn’t know the difference between being a tourist and taking over a nation, goes along but is basically this story’s answer to Uncle Iroh always getting distracted by Pai Sho.

Haru/Dead Last

Given that they’re in the Earth Kingdom, and that Lee picks up water bending insultingly quickly which makes Tom fume in rage, they go to pick up an earth bending master/spread the word that the Avatar has returned from her multiple decades long vacation. 

Along the way they probably run into Haru, who is the world’s most useless excuse for an Earth Bender. As always, he’s so average looking you can barely remember what he looks like beyond “generic earth bender”. 

They probably watch him for two seconds, Lily asks if this is it, and Tom Riddle says, “what a joke”. 

Minato Namikaze

Given that all the air benders are dead we’re going to make Minato a very talented earth bender (it is also very weird to imagine a dark haired/dark eyed Minato, but I suppose we’re going to roll with it). This also, to me, does fit his personality a little better as while he is a leaf on the wind kind of guy he also does dig his heels in and get very stubborn now and then.

Minato’s young, younger than Tom (Lee), but he’s incredibly talented and clever. To keep his shinobi background mostly in tact I imagine that Minato is a swiftly rising member of the Dai Li, stationed in Ba Sing Se, but who occasionally goes on intelligence missions to the other feudal powers in the Earth Kingdom.

So I imagine Lily and Tom run into him unnervingly frequently, probably first meeting him off duty in Omashu where he does his “extremely polite and friendly local guide” routine to show the pair the city (never mind that Tom insists he’s been to Omashu plenty of times goddammit). Despite this, Lily and Minato become friends, Lily easily confessing she’s the Avatar (which Minato at first thinks is a joke, even if she looks strange, then goes ‘oh my god, it’s not a joke). 

Eventually Minato is stationed to spy on them under the guise of teaching Lily earth bending. So he joins the gang. Tom, who knows exactly what’s going on, is not amused while Lily is just happy to collect another friend who will actually play Pai Sho with her. 

Kushina Uzumaki

Kushina is a earth bender, hands down. I debated making her a water bender (because whirlpool) but that personality is just pure earth bender material. Besides, I can just picture her so easily coming from Kyoshi. 

So Kushina’s an earth bending Kyoshi warrior, who while ten times as powerful as Minato, also lacks any of his control or cleverness. Kushina has undoubtedly left Kyoshi, abandoning their neutrality, to join the war and kick some fire bender ass.

She does this but along the way frequently runs into the gang where she annoys the ever loving shit out of Minato (her new rival) and claims that Avatar Lily is her new idol.

Rabbit

Rabbit is a mysterious spirit from Lily’s past that she refuses to talk about except in the darkest of terms promising doom and destruction the likes of which the world has never seen.

No one knows how to react to this. Or what a plain old ‘rabbit’ even is.

Tobirama Senju

Because no story’s not complete without Tobirama, I imagine he’s a stuffy waterbender and scholar from the North Pole who Tom is miffed at as the man refused to teach him even more water bending. Tobirama naturally feels that the day he teaches a blatant spy is the day he goes and drowns himself. 

Later, when Tom has picked up the Avatar and Tom rubs it in his face, Tobirama probably reluctantly spends a day or so teaching them something/fighting off the hordes of Fire Nation soldiers on their tale (it’s not Avatar if the gang isn’t constantly chased by fire benders).

Obito Uchiha

Obito is the answer to a fire bending instructor. Obito’s a firebender and the youngest son of a wealthy Fire Nation lord. However, Obito’s the black sheep of the family that everyone hates, a late bloomer when it comes to his bending, and is seen as bringing dishonor on the family.

Itching to prove himself, Obito becomes a soldier and goes to the Earth Kingdom, and eventually decides the best way to earn recognition and restore his honor is to capture the newly resurrected Avatar. Congratulations, Obito, you’re this story’s Zuko. 

Obito, while not the most talented fire bender at first (though as he gets older he gets dangerously good at it) is extremely clever and becomes the largest threat to the gang. 

That said, Obito actually does grow to like Lily quite a bit and begins to realize honor doesn’t actually mean that much to him and he doesn’t even really like his family. He doesn’t even dislike the concept of the Avatar and thinks the world probably does need one right about now.

So after a whole bunch of chasing them around the globe, thinking about his family, and being forced to almost kill the Avatar now and then he eventually defects and volunteers himself as fire bending instructor.

This is met with suspicion on all sides but he and Lily are bros so he wins.

Avatar Roku

Needing to pick up air bending, Lily probably fakes it until she makes it for a while, but eventually runs into Avatar Roku’s wandering spirit taking vacation from an ice cube.

He’s alarmed, but Aang’s trapped in ice, so if someone’s going to substitute then great.

To everyone else it just looks like Lily’s constantly talking to herself, playing Pai Sho with herself, and miraculously picks up air bending out of absolutely nowhere.

Also anyone close to Lee probably figures out she’s not really human/the avatar at this point, but they’ll take what they can get.

And This All Results In

Lily learns all the elements, there’s probably some big battle, then Lily gives some ridiculous speech about world peace that has nothing to do with anything and while the Fire Nation is defeated, Tom is not in fact made Fire Lord and remains merely the Avatar’s humble water bending instructor.

Instead, if he’s alive at this point, the crown goes to Iroh and he’s given a council of angry Earth Kingdom people who tell him to behave or else. We can give Iroh niceish things sometimes. That, or, hilariously, Obito becomes hokage/Fire Lord being distantly in line for the throne and doesn’t even know how that happened or what his life even is right now.

The colonies are the same mess in canon so something like Republic City probably eventually comes about.

Still, there’s peace, and probably statues to the gang all over the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes (while the Fire Nation grumbles and remembers the good old days when they controlled the world). 

And then Aang eventually wakes up extremely confused and confronts Avatar Lily noting, “Hey, I’m the actual Avatar” and Lily after a suspiciously blank pause explains, “I said an Avatar, never said I was the Avatar”

So, that’s that. If anyone wants other specific characters added into this mess feel free to comment.