#shes buryat if you even care

[flekh]

gulag miku btw... what did she do 😔

[irithnova]

Sakha headcanon post - courtesy of my conversations with @topipaku !! Thank you 🙏

Huge huge film bro he loves discussing films and makes his own

I headcanon that he is very much like a lawyer when it comes to business stuff but this somewhat "strong headed/argumentative" mentality also extends to how he critiques certain films or goes about explaining them

His favorite type of film is comedy/horror and a lot of his own projects involves someone dying in some shape or form

You can blame his love of everything morbid on Even, Evenk and Yukaghir, who often (when he was younger) tell him some pretty spooky stories (such as the Even folk tale of a mother turning into a cuckoo because her children would not give her a helping hand)

In all honesty they probably told him those stories to try and scare him into behaving - well now he's just a huge horror fan

Sakha has told many of these same spooky stories to Dolgan when she was younger

Speaking of Dolgan - whilst she's grateful for the hand Sakha had in raising her, she wants her own identity outside of him. Often Dolgan people are just labelled as being Sakha

Really good friends with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan because they are #Turkic but also because they like sharing their films/writing together - they screen each other's films in cinemas and in Kazakhstan, operas based on the Sakha "Olonkho" myth are being held.

Writers from Kazakhstan and Sakha signed a co operation agreement, and in Kyrgyzstan there is a monument dedicated to the Sakha politician and writer Maxim Kirovich

However - despite their love of sharing each other's writing, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are quite surprised at how often Sakha's stories end in death !

Kazakhstan often jokes to Sakha that he should become independent

I definitely think these three share a groupchat together

He has an inside joke with Buryatia about the both of them being Japanese or secretly being Japanese. This is because both Sakha and Buryat intelligentsia were accused of being spies for the Japanese Empire (by Russia) at the time

Needless to say, Japan is definitely shooting them questionable looks when he overhears them make that joke

I think these days he has a bit of friendly competition with Buryatia over who is the most popular/more relevant group in Siberia

Really likes rap music !!

His relationship with Mongolia is very funny - in Sakha there is something of a myth that the most powerful faction of Genghis Khan's army was comprised of Sakha soldiers.

In reality, Sakha was most likely a child during this time and the Sakha people were most definitely not a part of the Mongol army

I think Sakha and Mongolia are friendly but Sakha has a little bit of a fascination with Mongolia. There are Sakha artists such as Afanasy Osipov who paints scenes of Mongols, and there is a film called "The secret of Genghis Khan", and apparently the Republic of Sakha was the initiator of the filming process ?

Very big into wrestling - in fact he enjoys challenging Mongolia even if Mongolia doesn't really reciprocate. He doesn't care that Mongolia is technically an elder to him, he'll do it regardless !

He is good friends with Chechnya because of their shared love of wrestling

Good relationship with both North and South Korea, though these days he's closer to South Korea

A lot of North Koreans were sent to Sakha under the USSR and mined gold , with some staying to teach farming to the Sakha

There is a Sakha-Korean school in Sakha and there are people in Sakha who refer to themselves as being "Sakha-Koreans" - presumably from the North Koreans who were sent to Sakha

South Korea indulges Sakha on his love for films. There was an exhibition of Sakha films that were held in South Korea, and South Korea was the first to make an article about Sakha films

For a while, there were even direct flights from Yakutsk to a city in South Korea !

Sad that his films aren't really taken seriously on a more global scale :(

I'd say he's also good friends with Tuva as similar to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan - both are Turkic and Sakha likes talking to people he relates to, especially as Siberia doesn't really have many Turkic groups

[kuusipeura]

uhh made my SCP OCs in the Makowka picrew. they are main focus characters of the tale cycle im writing, the ТЕХНОТЕОЛОГИЯ. which will, eventually, appear at the scp russian branch. eventually... when the time comes...

this is Evgenia Khramova. she's 36. she does not sleep enough and drinks a little too much. she dissects and studies pieces of CotBG tech, she prefers using the word "dissecting" even when the piece never was a human to begin with

this is Kammara Aneela. she's a feather in Saint Maxwell's wings. she does not really look like that anymore, as she has no body. she prefers it that way. this is Kammara Sandevi. she really cares for her sister. she also cared for maxwellist servers in Bangalore up until GOC took her away.

this is Dolgor Khozyaeva. she does boxing, other than that, she's a very normal schoolgirl. she has some shit going on in her life, mainly the girl on the right. she's a ghost, she doesnt do much but the fact she's here at all really concerns Dolgor. her uncle said ghosts go away if you help them remember their name, but there doesn't seem to be any mutual understanding, as the girl doesn't seem to speak Russian or Buryat. she just stares back with a look of disapproving

this is Lıye, she/they. when talking about herself they only use plural, calling themself "we", because once upon a time her sense of self and identity utterly broke only to be healed and regrown anew. she's my poor little meow meow. trying to live the best live they can while being a teenage life prisoner robbed of childhood.

[sadstonewrites]

Colossus Childhood HC’s

 I got a request from @apep40​ to do some headcanons about Colossus and his childhood, and how could I possibly say no? I’ll just preface this by saying that these are just my ideas, some of it backed up by the source material but not entirely, yada yada yada. So, without further ado...

So, first off, I have a headcanon that his mother is either part or fully Buryat, and that’s where Piotr and his brother Mikhail get most of their looks from (dark hair and skin tone) except Piotr has his father’s blue eyes. Ilyana got the blue eyes/blonde hair combo from their father’s side, and was always a little jealous that she didn’t look more like her brothers or her mother. 

I think that growing up on the farm was both a blessing and a curse for the Rasputin children; on the one hand, they pretty much grew up being able to run and roam around in the pastures being surrounded by plants and animals and this wide open space that was awesome to grow up in - but on the other, growing up on a farm is work. Chores need to be done every day, and it’s a lot of hard labor. Planting, harvesting, taking care of animals, making sure farm equipment isn’t breaking down, and just trying to eek out a living from a land that could be harsh and incredibly unforgiving, and dangerous if you didn’t know what you were doing. 

Piotr loved working with the cows as a kid; he was bigger than most his age, and wasn’t afraid of being pushed down by the larger animals. Some of his earliest drawings were of the cows on his family’s farm. Animals just sort of naturally gravitated towards him - stray dogs and cats, rabbits, even the chickens seemed to favor him over his siblings. 

Piotr and his siblings grew up strong and fast, they had responsibilities and were put to work as soon as they were old enough to walk. As a result, they became very self-sufficient at an early age with things like cooking and cleaning and taking care of each other. This led to a bit of an attitude problem for Mikhail, who saw himself as an adult from early on and was always getting into trouble for pushing boundaries and being a general pain in the ass for everyone around; he got in trouble a lot, and usually had a habit of dragging little Piotr along for the ride. Piotr admired his older brother so much and wanted to be just like him, but also wanted to be a better example for his baby sister and keep her safe as long as he could. That’s what big brothers are supposed to do, right?

Mother and Father Rasputin were caring but firm, not a whole lot of coddling but a lot of love for their children. Ilyana was the baby, so of course she got away with a lot that both Piotr and Mikhail would have never gotten away with. Candy before dinner? Unheard of before Ilyana came along. Their father could never say no to her. 

After Mikhail left, Piotr and his mother became incredibly close - he learned a lot about cooking and baking by following her around the kitchen and reading her old family cookbooks. He could never fill the void of her first son, but he tried his best to make her happy just by being there for her and helping out around the farm as much as he could. His relationship with his father was a little bit more strained after that, as his father couldn’t help but blame himself for driving Mikhail away from the farm, but it eventually grew to a sort of understanding once Piotr started to grow into a young man. 

The family was really tight knit and followed a lot of traditions that Piotr continues to follow; birthday cakes are always homemade, respect your elders, and do no harm but take no shit. His father would tell them folklore stories of the domovoy and Baba Yaga, sitting in front of their fireplace while smoking a pipe. His mother hated when he smoked in the house, but not enough to do anything other than chastise him for it. The smell of tobacco smoke always reminds Piotr of his father, and baking bread reminds him of his mother. 

Out of all of his siblings, Piotr was probably the closest to his parents. With Ilyana’s time/dimension displacement and Mikhail’s frequent deaths/disappearances, Piotr was the one who really was there for his parents. They saw him as a constant, and that made leaving the farm all the more difficult when Xavier approached him to join the school

[goreverine-archive1]

send 💔 for a story about exes victims people he’s been with @fiddlingonthetympanic​​ 💔 

They’re on rocky terms, earlier on in Krakoa. That antagonism is still there, in the slow process of eroding through time, companionship, a few disasters here and there, shared purpose, Daken actually following laws...

This is progress. He followed Tess to the Broken Baths steaming on the cliffs with all their teal fluorescence, shed his clothes and got right in. She hasn’t yelled at him or left on her own accord, so while she gives him a quarter of a death stare he doesn’t think she wants him to go.

Maybe she needs a little more, tonight.

He fills the silence. “You know too much about the women I’ve...” Oh, that look increases to a good fifty percent. “Hurt. Manipulated. Abused. Killed.”

There. He can say it. He can own up to it.

“I was twenty-two, roaming around with fake identity documents in Irkutsk. I didn’t stick out too much in the crowd; not like the average slavic worker can discern half-Japanese from central Asian very well, though obviously I couldn’t pass off among Buryat. Anyway...“

“I was young, allowed to leave the nest for once. Get away from him. So, when I met a man there...” he inhales, exhales through his nose. “Much older. A hydraulic engineer, working on setting some things up on the Baikal before environmentalists started pitching a fit. I didn’t know or care about the details at the time. Big man. Handsome. Hairy. Warm smile.”

He lifts his hand here, up to the air. “Yeah, yeah. I know you can guess the dynamic. He treated me kindly. Fed me, clothed me, shared literature with me, gave me a place to sleep. Slept with me.” A little shrug. “It’s alright, I wanted it.”

“I spent two months with him. At that stage of my life, that was a lot of time. So, when I came home one day to find him shot and slouching in the dining chair that I’d sit next to in the evenings...”

He leans back here, head tilted towards the sky. as steam rises up his face. “One of the many times that I learned that Romulus would always be watching, through his many eyes.”

[mnogorgannik]

2 10 n 11 :)

this is basically an essay im so sorry. watch how hard i can infodump (ill put this under a cut hopefully it works bc sometimes tumblr decimates the keep reading things if theyre in asks)

2. Who’s your favorite of the Bound? What do you think of the different ideologies they have? Which of the factions are you most aligned with?

WE ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER I AM A PETER LOVER THROUGH AND THROUGH!!!!!! oh baby i love that morally questionable architect. pretty early on in getting into pathologic (it’s coming up on a year now...) i thought about peter stamatin too hard and now i’m here. but really i find him to be such a fascinating character!

the thing about pathologic that i love is how almost every character can be as complex as you want. pathologic does an excellent job of implying a lot of character traits while only exploring some in further detail, which in some games is frustrating but patho does it so well! it consistently hints at traits and lets you fill in the details yourself. peter’s character is extremely interesting to me... and maybe a little more relatable at times than i want to admit lol.

i think i’ll talk about both stamatins though! their dynamic hurts me a lot. i’ll start with andrey bc i’ve been thinking about him lately. although i’ll bounce back and forth between both stamatins.

i’ve said this before but i’ll say it again.... andrey’s role as a protector who inadvertently hurts the people he cares about really gets to me. he is not a shield but, in his own words, a battering ram. and the problem is that battering ram has a recoil.

i have to wonder how that mentality of his came about, anyways. the implication is that it’s always just been him and peter, so did he take on that role because there wasn’t anyone else to do it?

in his efforts to protect peter from... military, i believe, he kills four people. which leads to daniil getting mistaken for andrey, which leads to daniil getting shot. and almost dying. he protects peter but to a smothering extent, peter even says he’s been suffering for ten years bc of andrey which is a LOADED line. he protects on a physical level but he kinda fucks up on the emotional.

there’s a horrible irony in peter and eva being the people he cares about the most and both attempting suicide. with eva once she’s missing he immediately goes running off trying to look for her, and . ahh i can’t remember right off hand what exactly he thought happened. but ik he was probably expecting a fight. with peter he says that after that he’ll never let peter leave his side, at least “as far as his knife can fly”... it sounds cheesy but the one thing he can’t save anyone from is themself.

and god the way andrey bases his ENTIRE sense of self worth on peter fucking hurts. they’re not peter and andrey, the architects. they’re Peter And Andrey, The Architect. (thinking about “one architect, two brothers” here.) andrey thinks he’s larger than life and all but he’s constantly living in peter’s shadow. their theatre of death positions come to mind here, with peter standing up, looking down at andrey. but andrey is on his knees in front of peter, arms limp to his sides.... separated by a wooden beam...

peter’s side of this dynamic is fascinating too. his dependency on andrey is. ow. leaving all practical matters and decision making to him... there’s this resentment (That’s Fine I’ve Been Suffering For Ten Years Because Of Him) and lack of communication that especially shows through for him.

while in p2 andrey completely crumbles if peter dies, peter doesn’t seem to care...... at all....?? which hopefully is elaborated upon in p2. he’s willing to talk to aspity about worrying if andrey is angry with him but he can’t bring it up with andrey himself. when he asks how andrey is doing he stops and says andrey is a “tough man” and can handle anything. in general, while it’s definitely there for andrey, themes of dependency are really glaringly obvious for peter.

one of my favorite peter things i’ve talked about before is still his ego!!! peter has a gigantic ego!!! he really does think that even though he’s hit the ceiling and can’t go any further he is still “a true architect” and “the rock upon which is built the stairway to tomorrow”. he has a blunt edge to him and he doesn’t ever tell you more than he thinks he needs to which i love. if he doesn’t want to tell you something he isn’t gonna do it. this is a character trait i think ppl miss which is sad because it’s so good and adds another layer of depth to him!

it really does hurt me how he’s valued for his mind alone (AHEM AHEM AHEM. GEORGIY) but it’s the thing nobody understands about him. i’m nowhere near as smart as peter lol but i do know that pain of feeling like none of your ideas can be understood because you just can’t express them the way you’d like, and then feeling like you’ll never be able to make it happen.

also, here’s a little thing  i’ve picked up on. this connection probably doesn’t exist but i’m making it because the stamatins make me lose my mind and start becoming one of those people who looks for connections in everything i guess. peter standing in the theatre of death, andrey below him. peter’s loft being at a high point in the town, the broken heart being underground. peter’s loft is also higher north on the map but the broken heart is lower south. just smth interesting

i have more thoughts on them of course! but this is all getting awfully long. i feel like i’ve only just gotten to the tip of the iceberg  even though i’ve written so much skfjskfjs this just feels quite surface level or. at least what is surface level for me who thinks about the stamatins so hard.

anyways i’ll keep my answers to the other two parts of this question quick! peter and andrey’s more creative vs practical mindsets are rly neat. especially because i would actually argue peter is a little more grounded in reality in certain aspects. not all, but certain ones...... their take on the utopian ideology is interesting. hot take: peter’s version of utopianism leans a tad towards humility. and andrey /does/ feel “straightforward utopian” but i think in certain regards? this man has a bit of a termite streak..... (hi al if you’re reading this). but i won’t get into that right now i’ve already gone on so long. saving that for later.

i think all of the factions kinda suck in their own way sometimes, honestly? although all of them are well written and have their pros and cons. were i in pathologic and i had to choose one i’d probably be a termite but everyone around me seems to think i’m a utopian. is it bc i love peter so much

10. What would you be like as a Pathologic character?

this question is a hard one! i did make a self insert once, mile-a-minute, but they’ve become their own oc by now. i think i’d be very...... very afraid...... probably isolating myself why does every pathologic character break quarantine???? also you could trade beetles with me :) thats about all i’ve got sorry this is real short

11. What is something you would change, writing-wise, about either game?

UGH i’ve been gushing about pathologic because. obviously i love this game so much. but the way it handles racism & such (in both games!) leaves much to be desired :/

i see a lot of the points it’s trying to make but i think the way they’re handled can be very messy. there are moments that work very well but. a lot that don’t. (i am aware that dybowski writes partially from his own experiences)

all too often the game “validates” the kin’s oppression and... at times paints them as oddly antagonistic? i don’t like how often as artemy you’re able to be like “i’m not one of those beasts” and i think there are better ways to touch on his internalized racism. in general the constant comparisons to animals is weird. you get big vlad who is obviously explicitly racist comparing them to animals, but then sometimes it’s like “ACTUALLY calling them animals is fine :)”

i think the herb brides are kind of. Hm. in their portrayal. also using parts of the buryat alphabet to denote an accent is weird. making odongh and herb brides inhuman is weird. connecting the kin to Magic is weird.

and, listen, i’d really like to not be playing Artemy Burakh Experiences a Microaggression Simulator every time i’m playing the haruspex route. hate that you either can’t call ppl out on their shit or if you can it ends the conversation/bars you from getting necessary information. glad you at least get to drag the vlads, i guess?

i also was talking about this but wrt peter specifically, and this issue is present throughout the game but it’s especially visible with peter, i don’t like how often you can mock him for his addiction.

he’s obviously in an extremely rough patch! being able to be just so plain cruel to him about the dependency on alcohol (and iirc in p1 hallucinogens, bc aglaya mentions it) he’s formed to cope with his mental illness & trauma just feels bad. especially because yes it is not a healthy coping mechanism at all but... it still is a coping mechanism, if that makes sense?

the way you’re able to constantly rub it in his face feels awful. peter is fully aware that it isn’t good for him and shows a desire to quit. even if he didn’t it would still be awful to say because. it’s just insensitive. like you don’t just go up to someone and keep being like HEY YOU DRINK A LOT YOU SHOULD STOP DOING THAT DO YOU KNOW WHAT WATER IS? feels really bad to keep harping on something that causes him pain and that he struggles with every single day.

however peter does have moments where he tells you Not to say that, or if you pry into why he drinks he’ll outright say he doesn’t remember you being his friend, which is better than nothing.

in p1 moreso than p2 i hate how you can be like oh he’s craaaazy he’s off his rocker he’s delusional!!!! that “why, i never... an architect of schizophrenia!” comment sticks in my mind because it’s just... so genuinely mean. especially because if i remember correctly that line is from when he’s planning on LITERALLY FUCKING BURNING HIMSELF ALIVE

i think if they were going to have all of this they should have gone more in depth on how it’s really. not good that he’s treated so poorly. and i do believe that’s what they were going for, a la the art book w/ the whole “not to be made into a drunken clown, this is a tragic character”, etc. but it just doesn’t land. i’m holding out for the bachelor and changeling routes in p2 to see if they expand upon any of it but i highly doubt i’ll be satisfied in this regard.

i stand by the One time it was really fucking funny to clown on peter being the time you can tell him little girls eat raspberries and earthworms and he just believes you

[dylanaz]

Since we are talking about real life issues, I am going to talk about mine.

First of all, I think I have to address that I'm a woc. And my country was under rule of Manchurians for nearly 300 years. (It was split in many parts and we are still not united 😒)

Do I hate Manchurians? I do dislike how much destruction they caused us. They are the reason why Inner Mongols, Buryats, Oirats and (today's) Mongolians aren't united now. They are the reason why now China is playing cultural genocide card on Inner Mongolia. They are the reason why Buryats are losing their language. And it was even before I was born and I still am salty about the things that are happening to us. How the damage they caused are still here.

But, despite their appearance in ATLA (Dai Lee, Earth King and nobles), Manchurians are gone. It is only the history that they left us. Don't get me wrong. I know how much it took us to have the independence we have now.

Still, I find it unfair to hate on people just based on their ethnicity. It is like a racism, but it is inside their own race. I don't know how to put it in words.

One of the biggest dislikes now I have is China. What can I say? Tibet, Uighur, Inner Mongolia and many more are suffering. And it's all because of China!!!

I would never like the bad things China does, but does it give me the right to hate every single person in China? Nope. It doesn't.

Long time ago I came to the conclusion that if I had to hate something about a country, I have to hate specifically.

That was especially required when I made friends with a Chinese girl. (She is great!!!!!! Can't say a bad word about her because she's one of the most beautiful and kind people I know. And she is more than just my friend. She's my younger sister) Yes, I love her and that love is no different than the love I have for my own brother or my friends from my own country.

She is from a country that hurt people I care about. But she isn't the reason why the people are suffering. She doesn't maim my people.

She did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG. And I realized that it was the government that I hated. I hate Chinese government and I am very vocal about my hate.

You might argue that I am not in love with her and stuff. (Which is true, I am not in love with her. I am an adult whereas she's a minor. But there's definitely adoration for her that is the same that I have for my younger cousins.)

If you're telling me that my love for her shouldn't exist or something, I am going to smack you with common sense stick (gently, tho), because I love her. There's no taking back.

And sibling/friend love is not so different from romantic love, I would argue.

And it applies with Zuko and Katara, too.

Zuko did nothing wrong. He isn't responsible for things his ancestors did. He isn't the person who tried to colonize SWT. He isn't the person who conquered Ba Sing Se. He shouldn't get the hate for what FN government do (did in the past).

And that's why future exists. I would love to see REAL PEOPLE like Uighurs, Tibetans, Inner Mongolians have freedom. WHO THE FUCK WOULDN'T LIKE IT IF CHINA STOPPED BEING A PIECE OF ZEUS TO THEM. AND IF A CHINESE PEOPLE (NEW GENERATION) HELPED TO BRING PEACE TO THE WORLD, WOULD I SAY "NO" BECAUSE "OH THEY WERE SO BAD IN THE PAST"?!?!??!?!

People change. People change for the better. And I believe in people. It doesn't matter which ethnicity they are. All matters to me is ethic.

Thoughts on FLK: On Fandom and the Reduction of Katara’s Agency and Cultural Heritage

Disclaimer: This is a note of discourse I bring from a friend, who is far more knowledgeable about this than I could ever hope to be. This is not intended to be grandstanding, if it is mistaken as such. It is an offered perspective, well-versed in the topic, to broaden the horizon of understanding Katara’s agency and cultural heritage in fandom. You may choose to agree or disagree, and that’s perfectly fine! A discussion is a dance that is happy to share its understanding so long as it is respected, in turn. 

The entire idea of a Fire Lady Katara just…look. It’s gross to me. I’ll be frank. I know there are exceptions out there for other POC and WOC and people from historically colonized ethnic groups who like the FLK headcanons, but as someone who identifies as a person from a historically colonized ethnic group, it’s kind of not great.

Katara of the Southern Water Tribe represents an indigenous nation. Her roots are inspired by indigenous people, who…guess what? Were colonized.

The SWT was heavily affected by FN colonization. They lost their waterbenders. They lost part of their culture. Which you know…is kind of a big deal?

Losing part of a culture is a huge HUGE deal. It ripples throughout time generations after the fact.

While yes, there is forgiveness, and yes there is eventual cultural exchange and happiness and everything like that, these is lingering trauma. The fact of the matter is that there will always be something lost that people cannot find and people will be searching for ways to fill that hole.

I’m sure now people from colonized groups would be open to being with and marrying people that colonized them. But so soon? So fresh right after a century of warfare? Katara would never. She would not hate Zuko, but she wouldn’t love him like she should. To be honest, that’s not fair to either character. They both deserve happiness and love, and to not to feel that kind of invisible rift between them.

Katara would first and foremost want to revive what was lost. While there’s still time. She can’t do that if she’s helping the very nation that colonized and half destroyed hers.

She would prioritize the Water Tribes if anything. And, to say that she would “partially rule” the FN is slander to her character and to her as a WOC from a colonized nation. Sorry. That’s just what I’m saying.

Now, could the FN accept her? Sure. The FN could accept her, but they would probably exoticize her. Again, sorry, but this is most likely what would happen. 

I beg of you to ask the question: What does a colonial nation do? You know…besides colonize? They take. They make a theme park where there should not be. They cater to their own people first. And, sure that’s not inherently awful, but it’s historically what happens. This is just the plain truth.

Take Chinatowns for example. You know how they survived in San Francisco, California (and in the USA in general)? People wanted them out because well…racism. Americans didn’t like Chinese people coming in to “take their jobs”.

After the great earthquake in 1906 the Chinese-Americans realized that California needed them for the economy. What did they do? They called upon white contractors to design a new Chinatown. These contractors designed what they thought a Chinatown should look like. Hence, the iconic pagodas in Chinatowns now. Chinatown survived by making their culture exotic and a tourist attraction. (Source:https://www.pbs.org/kqed/chinatown/resourceguide/story.html and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiX3hTPGoCg) They are resilient in that and the feat is admirable, but it’s kind of messed up that this is what it ultimately came to. To basically see their culture through the home nation’s eyes.

Essentially, that is what Katara would be reduced to. Granted, not in the same way. She would be exotic. The Water Tribe girl who is the wife of the eccentric Fire Lord in the FN. She would have to conform in ways that are uncomfortable in some instances, and maybe even be subject to caricatures of her culture as seen through FN eyes. The FN isn’t bad as a country, but you can’t erase 100 years of colonization and superior thinking.

I don’t like how people who like FLK headcanons seem to exoticize her and her character even without meaning to. I hate how they put on the façade of prioritizing the SWT when in reality it is beneath the veil of “improving the FN”. You know, getting the Fire Nation to see that the SWT isn’t all that bad, when in reality there is nothing being done by the same nation to help the SWT in the same way they are helping their own people. Racism takes time and effort to scrub out, but trauma takes an eternity.

And while it doesn’t necessarily matter here, I just have to add this: 

Do you know why Katara and Aang work so well besides the fact they are best friends first? It is because they are both from nations torn apart by colonization and they understand that on a deep level. They understand things on levels other people cannot. They both deal with lost cultures. And sure, they can end up with other people and that is ok. But the war is fresh at the end of ATLA, and in terms of healing, marrying someone from the very nation that destroyed yours wouldn’t be great for the people affected. Not only would your own people probably shun you for a while, but you might also feel guilt yourself. The nations in question would look at both of you oddly, and while that isn’t fair, it is what would happen.

It sucks, but it is not something that’s new. This happens historically. Katara and Zuko would get stares and judgement from their own people. Not to mention that it just wouldn’t sit right to Katara herself to marry into a nation that helped to level hers. Not so soon after the fact especially.

I just don’t think FLK headcanons can embrace the entire concept in a manner that is realistic. It is idealistic and seen through the lens of the colonizer, not the colonized.

It just gets me so much when FLK comes up. Sometimes the people that headcanon this don’t try to understand the trauma of lost culture.

In short this is what it is like: It’s feels like you’re looking for a part of yourself generations down the line, trying to understand what was stolen, and never really finding the answer. Add that to a diaspora like if Katara moves to the FN, and basically abandons her people for the colonizer nation, and it’s more trauma. It would be the struggle of fitting in in addition to the hole in her past.

Katara would do anything to find what she can about the SWT and SWT waterbenders. I’m telling you. FLK headcanons reduces her desire of that to absolute 0.

[littleshebear]

tell me about sasha *eyes emoji*

B A S I C S

full name: Alexandra Ivanova Volkova

gender: Female

sexuality: Straight

pronouns: She/Her

O T H E R S

family: She doesn’t remember her biological family very well. It was replaced with an extended family of Takanome rangers and Buryat elders.

birthplace: Ulan-Ude, Buryatia, Old Russia.

job: Takanome Ranger then Guardian.

phobias: Big spiders, wtf is up with those?

guilty pleasures: Pre-Golden age country music.

M O R A L S

morality alignment?: Chaotic good. She’ll do what she thinks is good but she’ll figure out how by herself. 

sins - lust/greed/gluttony/sloth/pride/envy/wrath

virtues - chastity/charity/diligence/humility/kindness/patience/justice

T H I S - O R - T H A T

introvert/extrovert: I’d go with ambivert to be honest. She can spend weeks in the wilds but then she’ll crash a party, sing (badly), dance (badly) then take off again.

organized/disorganized: Organised. She needs that to survive.

close minded/open-minded: Open. You meet a lot of different types of people on the Road.

calm/anxious: Calm. No time for panic on the Road.

disagreeable/agreeable: ...Prickly if you cross her.

cautious/reckless: Reckless. Even for a Ranger.

patient/impatient: Impatient. Do the Thing.

outspoken/reserved: Outspoken.

leader/follower: Leader. to an extent. She’ll hang back to see if anything is getting done, if not she’ll step up.

empathetic/unemphatic: Empathetic. Being a ranger is a hard life, you don’t step up to that unless you care.

optimistic/pessimistic: A mixture? She’s pessimistic for her own chances of survival but she’s optimistic for humanity down to the combined efforts of a few individuals. 

traditional/modern: Traditional in that she loves history, particularly the preservation of her people’s culture, oral histories, language, etc. 

hard-working/lazy: Hardworking but she can sleep standing up as a result.

R E L A T I O N S H I P S

otp: I ship her hard with Zavala. 

ot3: I’ve toyed with Sasha/Zavala/Shaxx because DAMN.

brotp: Her fireteam are her bros.

notp: Asher. Just...Asher.