#i have to say the more i learn about prehistoric fashion the more i integrate elements into my own clothes just for funsies

[milkweedman]

My sister is making fun of the tassel i put on my hat bc it 'makes it look like an old timey nightcap' like bro you are disrespecting the rich human history of putting tassels on things for Style and Fashion ... wtf...

[twitchesandstitches]

Timeline Complication

Katara was having a bit of trouble integrating into the new world she had rapidly found herself entangled into, and she felt she was doing her best to accomodate all the new changes.

It was just so... wondrous. The sheer awe of the whole multiverse spreading before was humbling, and frightening, and every day she found herself fighting the temptation to pull back and find a corner to call her own and never move from it.

But she had to. The Southern Water Tribes (now rapidly expanding to millions of tribeswomen, and with a pat of her belly, she considered that it was largely due to her own gravid expansion) were looking to her for inspiration, and she had to be a good role model. If her people were to prosper, she and her friends would have to set a proper image.

It had been like that for a while, of course. Zuko and Mai the ideal leaders in the on-going civil war between the Fire Nation’s factions, Toph exploiting her family’s criminal connections to get the Earth Kingdoms to see a new route from their stagnancy, and even Aang was doing his best to persuade the more militant of his people to find alternatives to endless conquest.

Now, the stage they sat on was... bigger. And so were they. Katara was still getting used to having a bustline larger than her entire upper body, not to mention looking at the ground from over a hundred feet away.

At the moment, she was trying to understand recnt history. It tended to be a bit of a blur for her; most of it was vague dates, an endless series of brief wars, and periodic surges of wild magic that did strange things to reality, and that caused serious distruptions to sensible recordkeeping.

“I understand,” she said to an archivist she was quite friendly with. “That the Cataclysm that damaged the multiverse was some time ago, but how long ago was it?”

The archivist winced. His blue optics shut, and his faceplate bobbed up and down as he tried to find the words. “Ah... how specific do you wish the answer to be? Because that is a much more complicated question than it may seem?”

Katara considered this, and nodded. “Ah, the times are uncertain?”

The archivist, Optimus Prime (who did this sort of thing in his off-time from being a major religious figure; it was fun for him to collate data), nodded. He was a big, broad bot, his kibble incorporating hints of the gorilla, bat and truck modes he so favored, but Katara had grown so large he only came up to her waist. “Yes, but that’s not the primary issue. Records exist, certainly, muddled as they are, but that’s not the frustrating element.”

“Oh?”

Optimus closed his optics, considering the best way to put it. “The Cataclysm occured roughly a thousand or so years ago... and it also happened twenty-six thousand years before that.”

Katara goggled. “What?!”

Optimus continued. “And according to some accounts, it took place thirty-five million years ago, as well.”

“I, I don’t.” Katara’s mind rebelled. “How!?” She paced, wobbling all over the place with gravid belly and massive bustline moving indignantly. “Okay... okay. Was the Cataclysm a long-term event with shockwaves that continued happening all over time, picking up speed and only stopping about a thousand years ago...?”

Optimus sighed, a low and mechanical noise. “Were that but were the case. I wish it was. No, records suggest that it was a fairly brief event, taking place over perhaps twenty years or so, and most of THAT was residual events triggered by the main disaster. No, this is a lot more difficult.” He gave her a steady look. “You understand that the Cataclysm primarily took place upon other realms of reality, yes?”

“I think so.”

“And that those magical realms hold dominance over our own, and things happening there can affect us in very unpredictable ways?”

“Yes.”

“Now consider this; time is a construct largely applying only to our own realms and, to a lesser degree, the elemental planes. So things from the realms the Cataclysm mainly hit did not follow linear time. And when it hit us, time was... damaged.”

“Damaged? How so?”

“It is difficult to say. I once studied with a group that deals with things such as this, the History Monks. Have you heard of them?” Katara shrugged. “Ah, well then. I learned something of this there, that when the Cataclysm struck, it did strange things to time, so that the Cataclysm occured simultaneously throughout the time periods I mentioned before. Or perhaps, it is more likely that time was made uncertain, distorted, and it is only recently that our universes have healed from the damage for time to begin behaving in a linear fashion.

“Regardless, past a certain point, time itself was horribly damaged, and so the Cataclysm occured across several points of time, all at once, and it makes records an absolute difficulty to understand.” He looked apologetic. “I am sorry.” He placed a hand against the tall cranial horn rising from his forehead helm. “Time travel business just gives me such a headache, ever since this time me and some of my closest friends were lost upon a prehistoric planet...”

Katara nodded sympathetically. “I’m sorry. And I think I understand. Time itself was damaged, so its impossible to pinpoint when it happened, only that it did?”

He nodded grimly. “Indeed, my friend.”

(The point of this particular fic is to establish a canon detail: rather than figure out a time frame for the Catacylsm, owing to the metaphysical aspects of what happened, it was so destructive it screwed time itself up, and simultaneously happend all at once across several different points of time.

This allows me to play with both it being fairly recent (creating a chaotic world state that is ideal for D&D style adventure scenarios and new societies appearing) without having to be concerned bout WHY new societies haven’t already filled the appropriate niches, and a very long time ago, for that epic feel of a terrible disaster in the ancient past that left behind many interesting ruins to explore and learn from. So, the time frame is the Cataclysm and its events is best described as ‘its complicated’.

Also, Optimus is explicitly alluding to the events of Beast Wars when he mentions being stuck on a prehistoric planet; he and Optimus Primal are the same person here! I may opt to seperate some of the characters later, but for now, my assumptions are that Optimus landed there with Bumblebee (who in this continuity was originally named Cheetor but forced through morph-reassignment surgery against his will), Rhinox (who is his own character here, not combined with anyone), Elita 1 (who likely turned into a lion), Airazor and Tigertron (who are themselves), Blackarachnia and Silverbolt (same), Rattrap (Arcee’s nephew/son, maybe?) and Grimlock and the Dinobots, who take the role that Dinobot originally had in BW; as Dinobot is a famous hero who died to Decepticon treachery here, Rattrap views Grimlock as a pretender to the name, hence their conflict.

Possibilities include the Decepticons were present, with two distinct factions (one headed by Ravage, acting on behalf of Soundwave), and another by Magmatron, who here fulfills the role of BW Megatron analogue.

This is also intended as confirmation that Katara and the other ATLA/LOK characters are active participants, and are members of the Fleet. Toph, Katara, Mai, Asami, Korra and all the other major heroines are probably Endowed and producing thousansd of their countrymen every year, allowing them to rapidly expand from a single world to being galactic powers in their own right; some of these are with the Coalition, while others are forming the bulk of Fleet’s human population.