#if u must know i am talking about zukka

[nines-09]

i am the kind of person who gets into a fandom to fixate on a single character and then ship one ship with that character only bc anything more than that is too overwhelming for me

[ofherlionheart]

📕📗📘📙📖📚

daaamn okay let’s do this!!

in my head there’s a companion piece to like the sun that’s a mai POV that bops back and forth in time to explore her relationships with ty lee and azula and zuko. also largely abt her sense of sexuality and gender, particularly as 1. someone who meets/exceeds basically every fire nation beauty standard and 2. as the spitting image of her mother (who she does not have a gr8 relationship with). mailee endgame of coooourse

like the sun sequel, wherein zuko becomes izumi’s father. how, u ask? he’s doing his blue spirit thing when he shouldn’t be and he comes across a mother and her newborn (i named her izumi, mama says, because i discovered i was carrying her when visiting the spring at the temple); the mother dies, z can’t save her, but he can’t just leave the baby. how hard can it be to take care of a child, anyway? he brings izumi back to the palace and is like, can i get a wet nurse? and everyone LOSES their shit. ‘fire lord zuko how did u end up in possession of a baby?’ ‘she’s mine,’ he says and refuses to elaborate. the staff finds a wet nurse and gossip starts flying around, all omg the fire lord had a secret baby mama somewhere. when sokka first hears abt izumi he freaks the fck out — not b/c he thinks z had an affair (the thought doesn’t even cross his mind), but b/c he’s like 1. this baby is now a part of z’s life, this is immutable fact 2. i am part of z’s life 3. omfg i’m supposed to be part of the baby’s life?? that’s a degree of commitment and faith in the future that I DONT KNOW HOW TO PROCESS. like a nerd sokka doesn’t tell z any of this. shenanigans and misunderstanding as z embraces fatherhood super enthusiastically and sokka’s brain is short-circuiting and constantly being witness to all these dadko moments

percy/annabeth from pjo boarding school summer-before-senior-year-college-tour-roadtrip au!! bounces between the summer and the journey it took for them to become friends and end up on this roadtrip. annabeth POV, the slow realization that there’s something more to life than, like, grades and good colleges and career success. 

daichi/suga canon divergent haikyuu fic: daichi has always inspired suga to work harder; suga has always inspired daichi to be more adventurous. so daichi applies to a few unis in tokyo (gasp! so far from miyagi!) and is super excited to tell suga abt it (ofc suga applied to tokyo unis, he’s pretty smart and has always talked abt leaving miyagi for university) but suga beats him to the punch … he got the same scholarship as shimizu to go to america for college. daichi is proud of him! anyway college college blah blah one night daichi’s grabbing drinks w/ noya and suga’s instagram comes up, daichi says something abt that american boy who keeps showing up in suga’s posts and noya’s like oh yeah his boyfriend. daichi: ????? noya: yah dude didja not know? anyway suga can’t be super open abt it on social media b/c he’ll lose his scholarship if they find out he’s queer. blah blah daichi goes to visit suga in america during a break at school and he meets the boyfriend and realizes his feelings about his best friend have evolved blah blaaaah idk how this one ends lmfao. i mean ik there would be smooching but that’s the extent of the detail i have in my head

sneak preview to a prompt ask game drabble but yet ANOTHER zukka modern au 🤪 this time z and s meet in brazil while they’re both doing research out of the same university. sorry i keep making z and s absolute nerds?? anyway there’s beach volleyball incredible food amazing music. but all international flings between foreigners must end eventually. no plot here rly just vibes

this one is mostly a joke, buuuuuut haikyuu au wherein oikawa fcks up his knee in HS and has the deepest mope about losing volleyball. accidentally gets really into kdramas while serially moping, becomes proficient in korean thru that. one weekend he’s visiting tokyo with hanamaki and matsukawa and when they’re at a mall oikawa’s pounced on by a scout who’s like, hey wanna be an korean idol? oikawa’s like haha maki didn’t i always tell you i was so beautiful and mastukawa’s like he’s fluent in korean and hanamaki’s like he practices cute expressions in the mirror all the time and duets pretty good with his showerhead. scout leaves his business card, oikawa’s like ‘u guys r so mean for making fun of me like that’ and they’re like lmfao as if u could actual become an idol. oikawa: TARGET. LOCKED. he’s remembered how to work his ass off again. anyway fic would start like, 4 years after his group’s debut, they’re on tour in the united states where iwaizumi is oh-so-conveniently doing college. ‘iwa-chan your skin got so much darker!’ ‘you look fckn translucent’ ‘i’ll risk getting a little tan only for you, iwa-chan’

Put “📓” or some other version of a book emoji into my inbox and I’ll explain the plot of a fanfiction that I haven’t written but daydream about.

[vietzuko]

if we used to share a discord server, this post is for you!

hello! i am going to try to do this as anonymously and non-confrontationally as possible. i do not want this to be a spectacle or call out post, but i will say that i am quite disturbed by the way situations have transpired on the server. 

in case you didn’t notice, i left! when i left, i wrote a little goodbye post in #general, which has since been deleted. either the mods deleted my goodbye or they banned me from the server (which automatically would delete my message). in case you didn’t see it, here was my goodbye message:

hi everyone, i’m leaving the server. if you’re a POC who is interested in joining an ATLA server where POC can talk about ATLA and critically discuss race, feel free to PM me for a link! otherwise, this is goodbye. see you all around.

i won’t rehash everything that happened in the events leading to this, nor will i name names in this post. if you were on the server, you probably saw what happened publicly or you can message me personally, either here or on discord. if we know each other through the server and you want some clarity over names/events in this post, please PM me. 

if you are a POC in the ATLA fandom who is concerned by the events of this post and you would like me to clarify which server i’m talking about, please PM me.

i just wanted to share the very long message that i sent to the mods (on their prompting!) because i feel that it shows my perspective on what transpired.  unfortunately, this message did not result in any meaningful change, except for me getting banned/my messages removed from the server. i suppose that’s a type of meaning! haha. 

anyway. here’s the message. cw for racism, yellowface

hi MOD 1 (and presumably the other mods who will read this message)! thanks for reaching out. i’ve had some time to dwell on the situation and discuss it with other people in the server who witnessed it and reached out to me personally. this is going to be an unbelievably long message, so i apologize in advance and thank you for your time in reading it.

i think the first thing i’d like to do is give some context for the incident and to give my perspective on why i said the things i said.

i have PMed a mod about a racist incident in the server exactly once. it was when i first joined, and i saw a picture of a white person in yellowface in the cosplay channel. i didn’t know any of you personally yet (and this was before some of you even joined on as mods). i have since told SERVER MEMBER 1 about this incident and i’m pretty sure they mentioned it to you because i noticed you’ve changed the yellowface rule. but i think that the context of me pinging a mod about a racist incident and then witnessing another (although less egregious) instance of racism by the mods might explain why i am, in general, hesitant about talking to mods about racism on the server. i am just trying to live my life and experience as few micro-aggressions as possible.

i also think the fact that i regularly educate and push back against white people’s racially harmful messages in the server is also important context. i realize none of you likely know this, but about every two weeks i receive an unsolicited PM from a different white person apologizing/asking for forgiveness/asking for reassurance/asking further questions about their racism on the server. i’m glad people are learning from me, but this is a huge amount of emotional labor that i put into the server and its members because of course i have to reply and explain things and tell them not to worry and thank them for apologizing, etc. i know that these messages aren’t your fault, nor am i asking you to do anything about this. but it feels important that you know the price that i (and perhaps other poc in the server, although i can’t speak to that) pay in order to share space with you.

MOD 2 has even messaged me personally to thank me for educating people in the server and responding to racist messages, saying: “really appreciate how much effort you put in and everything, i was trying to type something up but floundering badly.” it was a nice message, and i appreciated it a lot! it also led me to believe that the mods would prefer if i engage with racist messages myself, rather than ping them, because it felt like i was just going to be more able/willing to articulate a response anyway.

so when SERVER MEMBER 2 messaged the zukka channel “thought that lives in my head rent free: Sokka's hairstyle in canon is just a warrior's hairstyle and has meaning because of that. Sokka wearing the same hairstyle in a modern AU is undisputably queer-coded” and nobody replied for a while, i assumed that it was because they had seen what i had seen-- a racially insensitive message that totally ignores sokka’s indigenous heritage and the history behind indigenous hair-- so i decided to step in with what i thought was a balanced response. 

SERVER MEMBER 2 then replied with a cheery “Fair enough! I will defer to your greater knowledge,” which i couldn’t tell was sarcastic or not, but i decided to be generous and to believe they were genuinely thankful for my reply, so i responded with a “you too can have great knowledge. i only know things because i read things. anyone can read things and learn,” which is something i firmly believe and also a way to divert the conversation away from SERVER MEMBER 2’s mistake, which i felt was the most dignified solution for them. i suppose this message could be read as aggressive because i didn’t use exclamation marks? but that feels unfair and ungenerous because i genuinely did not mean this message in a harsh way.

then SERVER MEMBER 3 jumped in and asked a few questions, which i read as a request for clarification, so i tried to continue to explain my point. it felt like SERVER MEMBER 3 wasn’t understanding what i was trying to explain, or at least i wasn’t able to articulate myself well enough, which was making me a little tired and stressy (and i was also thinking about my own race and queerness in stressful and triggering ways), so i decided to tap out of the conversation. 

me: dude i love u and i respect u and i truly believe that u are trying very hard to understand, but this conversation is making me kinda heated

SERVER MEMBER 3: I’m gonna step back from it because it’s not my conversation to insert myself into, which is what I did initially and apologize for

me: i think it's so important to engage + ask questions & i appreciate that u respect my opinions on these things, but i think i'm just. i have said what i need to say and now must sleep. much love to all.

to me, this felt like me expressing that i was feeling tired and upset and leaving the conversation, while still attempting to reassure SERVER MEMBER 3 that i still admired him as a friend. i felt like the conversation had ended peacefully!

i hope this helps explain why MOD 3’s message came as such a surprise. 

“the escalation to defensiveness and accusation regarding the original (relatively benign) statement was unnecessary and exaggerated. There’s an atmosphere of purity policing that’s been growing, which is why I took away the squick channel, as I assumed that a space that encouraged no repercussions was facilitating irresponsibility aggressive arguments. “

i truly didn’t believe i was being defensive. i was very careful not to accuse anyone of anything. in fact, i tried as far as i could to coat my language in “i” statements-- “i would personally not choose…”, “i would just. stay away from…” in order to avoid “accusations.” i was also trying very hard not to be aggressive, and i (and other poc that i have spoken to about this) believe that the idea that my messages were aggressive is racialized. just because a poc is upset about racism, it doesn’t mean they’re attacking you personally! 

i feel so hurt that my messages were wilfully interpreted in this way, instead of being read generously and from a more compassionate perspective, especially since i voiced my own upset and discomfort during the conversation. it distresses me to think that me expressing negative emotions is seen as aggressive, rather than a cause for empathy or care, and i do believe that this is because of my race.

if a mod had asked me to take the messages to the DMs or to squick or even just let me know that someone was interpreting my messages as aggressive, i would have changed my behavior. (like i said earlier, i spend a HUGE amount of energy coddling white people on this server. i am very used to it.) 

instead, i got the shock of 45 minutes after the fact, being publicly chastised and labeled as aggressive and being told that my conversation was “something nasty or unwanted.” 

the idea that SERVER MEMBER 3 was de-escalating a “clearly escalating situation” feels untrue to me. i was ready to move on after i sent my message to SERVER MEMBER 2, but he kept engaging me on the subject! (no hate to SERVER MEMBER 3 on this.)

i think one of the most painful parts of this whole situation is the implication that i was attempting to “purity police,” as though i am a person who picks fights just because i want to feel good about picking fights?? or to act holier-than-thou???? i do not do this. if you have witnessed ANY interaction i’ve had with a racially insensitive white person on the server, you will know this. 

i am simply a person of color trying to live my life. i do not want to fight about racism. i want to chill out and watch my cartoons. unfortunately, sometimes, someone will say something that i consider racially insensitive and i will do my best to engage and explain why i find this insensitive. that is all. (it is important to note that most of the time, when i see racially insensitive things on the server, i do not say anything because i am tired and it is a lot of effort to engage. i truly only engaged this time because nobody had replied to the message and i was just like, oh, fine, i guess i’ll educate, since no one else has!)

this whole incident has honestly made me really hurt and disrespected. i have enjoyed my time on the server and i have made some good friends there. however, it feels clearer and clearer to me that the server is a space where white feelings of safety (not being criticized for their racist content) are prioritized over poc’s feelings of safety (not having to witness and experience racist content). i sincerely considered myself to be an active and enthusiastic member of the server, maybe even friends with some of you, but it feels to me that all of our previous positive interactions have been displaced by this idea of me as an aggressive, overzealous purity cop who calls things racist for fun. 

i don’t even know how to repair my relationship with the server after this because i really do feel horrible and sick about the whole thing. i have spoken to other poc who also expressed their concerns about the way the mods handled the situation, even if these other poc weren’t directly involved, and some of us are considering leaving the server, if we haven’t already. (i would also like to note that these people reached out to me, unprompted, to make sure i was doing okay after what they and i interpreted as a micro-aggression by the mods. like, we independently read the situation in this way.)

(also, not sure if this matters, but i talked to SERVER MEMBER 3 the morning after the incident because i wanted to make sure he was okay, and we both ended up apologizing to each other and having a really good and productive talk.)

thanks again for reading this. i hope that you’ll be able to better understand my perspective on what occurred. i truly appreciate the work that you put into the server (especially as someone who also puts work into the server lol), and i know it’s difficult to mod a large server (i also mod an atla server!), but i continue to feel hurt about this. i know it’s hard to read tone over server messages, but i really wish that my (and SERVER MEMBER 4′s and SERVER MEMBER 5′s ) server messages had been read with greater compassion. 

...

and that’s all folks! i’m going to be remaking my blog soon, partially because this whole experience has exhausted me and partially because i have been meaning to anonymize my internet presence for some time.