#sokka with ts but it's only hinted at

[milf-harrington]

Reki hadn't been on the patrol with Suki that had captured the three newcomers, but he had been there to see the smallest of them launch himself several feet into the air before announcing that he was the avatar. Apparently there had been an accompanying trick involving marbles but Reki had dropped his fan so he missed it.

And now he was apparently in charge of keeping them occupied while Suki found them somewhere to stay.

"I'm Katara." The water tribe girl brushed the tips of her fingers along the bottom of her pendant as she spoke, big blue eyes warm with a gentle sort of kindness Reki wasn't used to seeing, before gesturing to the taller boy beside her. "And this is my brother Sokka."

The mildly distrustful and hardened look on Sokka's face was more expected, and despite his feigned disinterest in the conversation Reki could see the way he took in their surroundings with a calculating glint to his eyes.

Reki wondered what the village looked like to him, if he was unfamiliar with the sight of trees and grass, the warmth in the air despite being so far south. He wondered if the twitch in Sokka's eyebrow was because he'd noticed the sparkle of frost still clinging to the leaves of a bush after Langa had been entertaining the children earlier that morning, or if it had something to do with the tension in his shoulders, like he was physically holding himself back from something.

"And I'm Aang!" A bright voice piped up, bringing Reki's attention to the big grey eyes and childish grin of the kid who'd wowed the village after claiming to be Kyoshi in a past life. He clearly wasn't much older than Miya, dressed in the yellow and orange robes of the airbending monks, bright blue tattoos a permanent reminder that the kid was a master in his field.

Ah, the identity thief. Reki nodded, remembering the years they'd spent joking about Miya being the Avatar, despite knowing he wasn't. And then, when the rumour about the real Avatar being back had gotten around, Reki had followed Miya around all day, poking and prodding him about how he felt having his identity stolen.

It took exactly 2 seconds to register the confused and mildly hostile expressions on their faces before realising that he had said the identity thief comment out loud.

Spirits.

"Uh," He laughed nervously, tugging on his fingers and quickly scanning the street for a diversion, feeling relief wash through him when he caught sight of Langa sitting on the steps to his house, scribbling something down on a roll of parchment. Hopefully working on his handwriting, but probably not.

"Oh! Let me introduce you to someone!" He smiled wide, trying to move past the whole 'identity theft' joke as quick as possible. Though he boasted about his talents any chance he got, Miya was a private person around strangers, so it was probably best not to blurt out that he could bend air when there hadn't been a known airbender since the beginning of the war.

Langa was apprehensive but polite, welcoming them to the island before kissing Reki's cheek and promising to meet him at Cherry and Joe's later.

There was something in Sokka's expression when Reki turned back to face them that made him pause, before digging into the history of the island as he lead them further down the street, keeping his eyes peeled for any more of his friends.

The look hadn't been bad, exactly- there had been a questioning sort of hopefulness to it, something Reki remembered feeling the first time he saw Cherry and Joe actually kiss. The realisation that it was possible to love another guy, and wondering if it was something he wanted.

When Miya jogged out of Shadow's flower shop, he took one look at Reki and dropped his skateboard on the ground to make a quick getaway, but Reki was wrapping his arms around the kids waist before he could make it very far, board rolling a few feet when Miya kicked his legs in outrage.

Sokka turned out to be pretty interested in Miya's board, immediately asking what it was and how it worked and where it came from. Reki was more than happy to answer his questions, explaining how Cherry had built one when he was a little kid and spent a few years perfecting it before he started building them for other people.

"A lot of us grew up learning how to ride them." He explained, scratching absently at his glove and blinking three times, before stretching out his hand when he realised he'd been clenching it for awhile. "It's easy once you get the hang of it- Langa pretty much perfected it after a few weeks, but Langa's kind of a freak of nature."

Katara and Aang took over the questioning when they moved past the mechanics of it and into the fun stuff, like tricks and speed, all sparkly eyes and big grins when he told them about one of the cooler beefs between Langa and Miya.

When he caught sight of the old cherry blossom tree, twisting up over a familiar house with ribbons of incense smoke snaking through the air from where they'd been lit and placed on the window, he brightened and bounced on his toes.

"And these are my unofficial dads!" He introduced brightly, finding said unofficial dads in the middle of a bickering match in their front yard.

The ground rumbled beneath them right as the sound of sloshing water reached his ears and he watched in amusement as the ground tripped Cherry so he fell backwards at the same time that Joe was drenched in water from a bucket sitting by the porch. Katara's quiet exclamation of Cherry's waterbending was lost under Aangs concern.

"Are they okay?"

He seemed genuinely worried, eyebrows drawn together and fingers twitching like he wanted to do something to help them.

"Yeah, they're always like this. They love each other really, but for whatever reason this is how they choose to express it." He turned back to the kids, with a smile, suddenly itching to get his makeup off his face.

"C'mon, I'll introduce you properly! Joe'll probably want to feed you and if Cherry offers you tea you should definitely accept, he makes the best tea."

[firelxdykatara]

gods, ok, apparently i’m not done.

atla fandom? we need to have a chat.

(....ok that made me sound pretentious as fuck. and maybe i am, but this needs to be said, cause i’m getting....real, real tired of a Certain Corner of this fandom and as a result, this is gonna be a discourse-heavy post so feel free to scroll past if that’s not your bag. as always, my salt posts all carry the catch-all #salt for ts tag, which you’re free to blacklist/filter at your leisure. i’m Very Annoyed at the moment, which will probably come through in the following post, so just. yknow. be prepared for that. or ignore it, that’s perfectly valid too.)

under a cut bc i do care for my followers and their sanity i swear lmao

there’s a real serious issue in this fandom with not understanding what queer terminology actually means or implies, especially when applied to a fictional narrative.

i’m specifically talking about ‘coding’, here. (if i were in a more meme-y mood, i might have said ‘the atla fandom found out about the term “gay-coding” and haven’t shut up since’.)

to the people who say ‘zuko is gay-coded’, i have this to say: you keep using that word. i do not think it means what you think it means. because he isn’t. i’m sorry, but he’s not! and the fact that this is such a prevalent claim in this fandom is distressing, bc it says to me that none of y’all know what gay-coding is or when and how to apply it! please, i’m begging you, go and look up these terms and what they mean and when they should be used before actually trying to plug them into your critical analysis, because when you misuse them and then call other people delusional for disagreeing with you it casts a pall over the entire fandom and is, i think, the root of some of the worst toxicity this fandom has to offer.

and the thing is, there are cases where gay-coding would apply--for instance, a couple series that are famous for queerbaiting their audience by coding their main characters as being attracted to one another (sometimes even despite their openly stated sexualities) come to mind, but those shows bare no similarities at all to atla and how zuko was written and portrayed! (and it would be funny, if it weren’t so obnoxious and infuriatingly wide-spread throughout the fandom, because the only queer couple we actually seen on-screen in either show wasn’t even queer-coded in any respect, and they’re canonically bi! [yes, i’m shading korrasami, or more accurately i’m shading bryke for refusing to give ka the build-up and development they deserved].)

this absolutely isn’t to say that headcanoning zuko as gay is a bad thing or invalid in any respect. (although the tendency for zukka shippers to do this specifically to keep zuko away from katara and/or invalidate his canon relationship/attraction to girls is more than a little eyebrow raising. especially since sokka is usually allowed to be bi, bc fans have no problem letting sukka stay in the background bc it’s no real threat, while jetko shippers are happy to have both boys be bi. [possibly bc katara is less a threat to jetko bc jetkotara is every bit as valid as any single ship between the three, but zukka can’t exactly let katara join in, and if the potential exists for zuko to be attracted to her then canon giving them the far deeper emotional bond becomes a threat to zukka’s existence? idk for sure--you be the judge.]) i prefer to hc zuko as bi (and always have, long before the atla renaissance), bc i don’t think zuko being attracted to boys is outside the realm of possibility, and it isn’t a threat to my ship since zuko&katara had a deep and emotional bond in canon that is very easy to develop further into something that becomes explicitly romantic--but the headcanon itself isn’t really the problem (although what it’s often in service to can be).

it’s the strange insistence that this is the only way to read his character, bc he was coded that way and so anyone who doesn’t see it must be too straight to understand--and i really shouldn’t have to say why and how that is so incredibly fucking insulting. (the ‘hetero lenses’ comment wasn’t cute when it came from bryke six years ago, and the same sentiment being repackaged and delivered by zukka shippers ain’t cute now.)

calling zuko gay-coded not only demonstrates ignorance as to what the term actually means, and how to usefully apply it in critical analysis, but also validates the frankly bullshit insertion of institutionalized homophobia in the world of atla where it was neither needed, nor wanted, nor ever hinted at in canon. as a queer woman i’m still infuriated by one fucking comic panel shoving institutionalized and systemic homophobia into a world where it was entirely unnecessary (and doing this in the first installment of the franchise showcasing a queer relationship??? making korra and asami worried about ‘coming out’ when they could have just gone on to have cute adventures together and tell people ‘hey we’re dating’ and have everyone else be ‘that’s awesome =DDD’ [because it is, in fact, possible to just have a world without homophobia i promise!!!!!] double yikes, i’m still pissed at bryke about it), and i doubly hate that ‘zuko is gay coded’ has become so widespread that ‘ozai hates him bc he’s gay’ has become a staple in that part of the fandom.

not only does making zuko gay and implying (or outright stating) that ozai hated and abused him because of it completely undermine zuko’s character arc by making his abuse about his sexuality rather than ozai’s toxic pride and anger at seeing himself reflected in his ‘weak’ son, but it comes very close to outright stating that abuse and trauma are inherently gay experiences, and they aren’t!!! they really aren’t, i promise!!!

abuse and trauma narratives exist outside of ‘my dad hates me because i’m gay’. and, quite frankly, there are MORE THAN ENOUGH queer trauma narratives out in the world. we do not need to start trying to retroactively make them canon in a series where they didn’t exist! if you’re gay and see yourself in zuko and project your own experiences on him, that’s understandable and valid. that does not make zuko gay-coded. and honestly, the insistence that he is makes very little sense to me, because you’re essentially trying to give the show credit for work you put into interpreting the characters! why would you want to do that? why not own your own headcanons and take credit for them, rather than insisting they are canon and everyone else is wrong for not seeing them??? like, i’ve said before that i’ve always headcanoned zuko (and katara) as bi, and even support it with my interpretations of evidence from the show, but the difference between ‘i think zuko is bi’ and ‘zuko is definitely gay-coded’ is that i know that bi zuko is my interpretation of canon, and that it is work i’m putting into the show that wasn’t actually intended by the creators/writers, no matter how much sexual tension i read into the jetko swordfight.

and like, zuko’s character arc doesn’t actually parallel a queer one all that well to begin with. it’s easy enough to do the work and twist it sideways just enough to make the general points fit, but the fact is, zuko’s arc is not one of self-discovery. it’s not one of coming to understand something fundamental about himself that he can’t change, that he was hated for, and coming out to his father in a dramatic confrontation where he shows that he understands himself and doesn’t need his father’s acceptance to be fulfilled.

zuko’s arc is actually one of trauma and healing. and those can (and often are--like i said, there are more than enough queer trauma narratives in the world, atla really doesn’t need to be one of them) be part of queer narratives, for sure! but they aren’t uniquely queer. and zuko’s confrontation with ozai during the eclipse doesn’t read like a ‘coming out’ at all. (yes, i’ve seen that post. yes, i rolled my eyes and moved on, bc unlike some people, i’m capable of not clowning on correctly tagged posts i disagree with.) zuko is specifically confronting ozai over his abuse, because his arc wasn’t about discovering anything fundamental about himself (and therefore realizing that ozai was hating him for something he couldn’t change)--it was about realizing that he was not at fault for the way his father treated him. it was also about realizing that the fire nation was broken and corrupt at its core, and that his father was an aspect of that he needed to break away from so that he could help the world begin to heal.

he says it himself:

Zuko: No, I've learned everything! And I've had to learn it on my own! Growing up, we were taught that the Fire Nation was the greatest civilization in history. And somehow, the War was our way of sharing our greatness with the rest of the world. What an amazing lie that was. The people of the world are terrified by the Fire Nation. They don't see our greatness. They hate us! And we deserve it! We've created an era of fear in the world. And if we don't want the world to destroy itself, we need to replace it with an era of peace and kindness.

making this about zuko being gay and rejecting ozai’s homophobia, rather than zuko learning fundamental truths about the world and about his home and about how there was something deeply wrong with his nation that needed to be fixed in order for the world to heal (and, no, ‘homophobia’ is not the answer to ‘what is wrong with the fire nation’, i’m still fucking pissed at bryke about that), misses the entire point of his character arc. this is the culmination of zuko realizing that he should never have had to earn his father’s love, because that should have been unconditional from the start. this is zuko realizing that he was not at fault for his father’s abuse--that speaking out of turn in a war meeting in no way justified fighting a duel with a child.

is that first realization (that a parent’s love should be unconditional, and if it isn’t, then that is the parent’s fault and not the child’s) something that queer kids in homophobic households/families can relate to? of course it is. but it’s also something that every other abused kid, straight kids and even queer kids who were abused for other reasons before they even knew they were anything other than cishet, can relate to as well. in that respect, it is not a uniquely queer experience, nor is it a uniquely queer story, and zuko not being attracted to girls (which is what a lot of it seems to boil down to, at the end of the day--cutting down zuko’s potential ships so that only zukka and a few far more niche ships are left standing) is not necessary to his character arc. nor does it particularly make sense.

(and before anyone brings up his date with jin--a) he enjoyed it when she kissed him, and b) he was a traumatized, abused child going out on a first date. of course he was fucking awkward. have you ever met a teenage boy????)

anyway, uh, that was a lot of words, so have a tl;dr: zuko is not gay-coded. there is nothing uniquely gay (or even uniquely queer) about his character arc or characterization, and he was certainly not coded gay in an attempt to sneak a queer character past the censors. if anyone involved with atla was gonna try that, it would’ve been in lok, and as established, they didn’t even manage to queer-code the actual queer relationship before the last few minutes of the final episode. headcanoning zuko as gay is absolutely fine (though if it’s only done to keep him away from female characters he may otherwise be attracted to, that smells more like misogyny than anything else), but insisting that this reading is the only one that makes sense, and anyone who doesn’t agree must be straight (hello, queer woman here making this insanely long thinkpiece) is very much not.

ship what you like, but stop trying to invalidate other ships and other interpretations of characters just to make your ship seem more plausible. it’s really not a good look.

[that-was-anticlimactic]

top five fics of 2020

i was tagged by @zukkaclawthorne to post my five favorite works I made this year.

Rules: it’s time to love yourselves! choose your 5 (ish) favorite works  you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them  below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

so. I have only published five on ao3 because I just worked up the nerve October, so. Bear with me haha!

1. finding the worth that is hiding beneath

This is one that I actually haven’t posted yet (because it’s not done haha), but this is a little snippet from it that I posted! It’s pretty important to me because it’s the first time I wrote Sokka with Tourette’s Syndrome and, if I haven’t mentioned it enough times, I have TS so it’s very personal to me. This was / is just really fun to write in general! It was my first time writing Zukka and has some personal self-projecting moments in it and was the first thing I actually wrote for atla (I think I started it in April but then Dairy Queen overworked me to the point where I barely had time to think about atla unless it was what blizzard the characters’ favorite would be so anyways it’s far from done). It was also my first time trying to write this style for TS (I wrote a oneshot with Jay Ninjago having TS and I wrote that differently). Anyways, I’m rambling! This fic is just really special to me and I can’t wait to finish it so I can share it with friends and others with TS:)

2. threshold of eternity

oh boy did posting this one terrify me! Not only was it my first time writing for Azula, but also my first time writing for Mai, Jin, hints of Jinzula, as well as interactions between certain characters. I actually almost didn’t post it because I was terrified that it would be too ooc, but I guess it wasn’t because people told me they liked it and thought I wrote well for Azula (which made me mentally sob happy tears, so thank you!). I have the tendency to focus on certain characters and I do that with Sokka... a lot... so this was also my first time writing something with minimal Sokka (... he was still... he was still in it though oops) and this was a great opportunity for me to explore other characters as well as their relations! Plus, I love Azula and she deserved better. It was also the first oneshot in a series I’m working on and I wrote it all in three days instead of, ya know, doing homework... I would just sit in a dining hall and writexD

3. Deeper Than Words

have I not talked enough about how much I love Sokka and that I headcanon him having Tourette’s? Yes? I’m sorry, this one is also about that. I wrote this in like five hours one day when I was sad because of my tics and how embarrassing they are (and they aren’t! that’s something I’m still working on), so this was very heavily self-projection but to the extreme because I have never been in a situation entirely like what Sokka was in in this. Again, it’s very personal, I got to show Suki some love, I got to write some Zukka, and I got to give myself the words of affirmation that I desire but don’t have the guts to ask for haha. I’ll keep this one short and sweet! I’m just... rather proud of it:)

4. unruly heart

look. I love the musical The Prom. perhaps and unhealthy amount. but also, this was written from ZUKO’S pov and NOT Sokka’s, which is an accomplishment in itself for me! This one was... really really really hard for me to write. I had one and a half pages sitting in my google docs for, perhaps, two months before I literally said “screw it” and finished it in one day. I’m not sure why this was so darn hard for me to write, maybe it’s because I had to write for Ozai and mmmm wasn’t sure I could do that well. Or maybe it was because it wasn’t from Sokka’s pov or because I have literally never been in a relationship and I don’t know what it’s like. Either way, I knew what I was writing was right and I wanted to write it so badly. It was hard to write, but I won and managed to finish it:) (and go listen to Unruly Heart from the Prom).

5. we say that it’s a brotherhood

okay. this is, perhaps, one of the most abstract things I have ever written. It’s kind of funny, I was talking to Grace about it the other day and even she went “and you only mentioned Sokka a couple of times, I’m proud of you!” (that’s when you know you have a problem lol-- kidding, I was thinking the same thing haha!). I started this when I was sad. Now, I don’t remember why I was sad, but I was very sad so for some reason I decided to make Jet suffer... and then Yue... and then Suki... and then Piandao... Ty Lee... Kanna... Aang... but I’m kind of proud of it? It’s rather different compared to other things I’ve written but I like how it turned out:)

this was excessively long oops

I have so many other atla wips in my google docs that I would probably have finished if I knew how to focus on something lol

anyways, thank you, Grace, for the tag:) this was fun to reflect on!

uhhhhhh I’m not sure who else to tag, so anyone who wants to can and some fellow writers I know are @tikmasjiens and @mcfanely and uhhh Grace and Ellen have already been tagged, so uh, again, anyone else who wants to should do this because we LOVE positivity:)