#the atlas 6

[belle-keys]

callum vs parisa sparring: tragic, ironic, poetic cinema, shot in 4k with a gothic rainy london background, ramin djawadi soundtrack, slow motion scenes, riveting and terrible and inevitable, corrupt academic magicians fighting mind battles and wielding mutual trauma, wins 4 emmys and a tony, many tears were shed

callum vs tristan face-off: bitch on bitch violence, brutal but sam levinson directs it, depeche mode plays in the background, tristan is doing parkour, callum is drunk, there's an extended scene where they're just pointing at each other's faces, libby chained to a wall says "you're not even hitting each other you're just slut-dropping", nico has his phone out but he's not calling 911 he's just streaming it on twitch

[reeve-in-a-suit]

Btw was I the only one who got mixed up in the images by how the look in the first book? Like, Libby, Parisa, and Reina was fairly obvious but then it came over to the boys and I fr thought Nico was Callum, Callum was Tristan, and Tristan was Nico like fr

I haven't finished the book yet though so don't judge me too hard lol

[thegurlwhoisntthere]

Okay, so this isn’t really related to the larger parts of the season, but-

Can I just say I absolutely love how they introduced Callum’s dad?

Like, there are so many theories about him, that he was an elf, that he was a warrior who died, that he just up and left them, but in actuality? He was a poet. He was a poet with a sickness from birth and he died from that when Callum was young. He was kind and Sarai loved him. Harrow even respected him and I genuinely love that.

It also makes more sense that it would’ve been harder for Callum to connect with Harrow in the face of that. His dad wasn’t some warrior who died before he knew him, he wasn’t some elf that he never knew, or some deadbeat who left his mom. He was a kind heart poet who was born with a sickness that couldn’t be cured.

That’s extraordinarily tragic, but I love it.

[ranilla-bean]

✨ The Mercy of Magpies 《喜鵲之恩》 ✨

3...2...1... takeoff! 🚀 @ash-and-starlight & @ranilla-bean here to launch our project for @zukkabigbang2024 🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛

Rating: M Fandom: Avatar the Last Airbender Pairing: Sokka/Zuko Chapters: 4/15 Beta: @faux-fires

Tags: Alternate Universe - Space, Space Opera, Depictions of Violence, Minor Character Death, Dilf Zukka, War, Han solarpunk, loosely inspired by Red Cliff (dir. John Woo), Decolonisation, Ghosts, the narrative is haunted, Getting Together, Slow Burn, eventual sexual content (i prommy), BBL Ozzy, thematically relevant magpies, interplanetary old man yaoi saves the galaxy

Summary:

In the XXXth span of the galactic war against the Phoenix King, the Avatar, Master of the Four Elements, summoned his trusted advisor to his side… Avatar Aang, prosecutor of the long war against the Fire Nation, tasks General Sokka with the recruitment of a secret friend hidden on his old home planet Emptiness II, razed a century ago. There, Sokka finds an impossible community, where peoples from all quadrants of the galaxy have taken root—headed by the Phoenix King’s own son Zuko. As he comes to trust them, Sokka becomes invested in the community. But war is barrelling towards them, and he must harness the spark between himself and Zuko to save Emptiness II… and the rest of the galaxy.

check out the rest of the chapter 1 art here!

[demaparbat-hp]

Blinking back tears, she turned her gaze to Zuko. He hadn’t moved an inch. “Did you plan this?” She asked with awe. His jaw dropped agape, and his mouth widened when he whispered in the same tone as her. “Katara…Look.”

It's a surprise, really—one that she'll remember for the rest of their lives.

.

This is my first (and only!) entry for Zutara Week 2024, with the prompt Festive. A collab with the incredibly talented @geothewriter!

Somewhere In My Memory is a beautiful, wholesome ball of fluff. A truly soft and sweet fic I believe you will all enjoy. Go give it some love!

Read Somewhere In My Memory here!

[jellystreet]

zutara week 2024 | #6 festive

a lifetime of love and peace calls for celebration

—

ZK pose for a postcard to their kids while on vacation for their 60th anniversary.

[bemnie]

ATLA POLYWEB!!! OH YEA

[the-badger-mole]

Katara and Zuko are that couple that takes forever to realize they're in love, but then get married within a year of that realization. And that is something that is so special to my heart 😭

[slyandthefamilybook]

gays need to get new names. every day I see posts about Steve x Bucky, Buck x Eddie, and Eddie x Steve and I'm only now realizing they're all different people

[maranoahs]

lesbian reina mori confirmed??11!!

I'm just popping in here to say how I absolutely love Reina/Callum friendship it literally has me in tears and this is how i see them hahahha (the one pointing at them would probably be Nico since he's a little dense but we love him)

hahahahaha. oh no no that's more likely tristan doing the pointing, nico's not nearly as dense as you think he is (who started that rumor?? callum??? libby???????)

[blondegeekerella]

i can’t explain it, but something about soren consistently calling ezran “king ezran” gives me the same feeling as uncle iroh calling zuko “prince zuko” to remind him who he is

[belle-keys]

The Six, done by picl.ha on Instagram

[reeve-in-a-suit]

EXCUSE ME BUT WHAT THE FUCK? YESTERDAY, I'M IDLY THINKING ABOUT THAT ONE TIME RICK RIODAN SAYS SOMETHING ABOUT THINKING ABOUT A NICO AND WILL BOOK AND THEN TODAY?! I FIND OUT THAT IT'S APPARNTLY OUT BECAUSE SOME MOTHERFUCKER COMPARES SOME OF THE QUOTES IN THERE TO SOME FROM "THE ATLAS SIX" ?!

[downadura]

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Hey um, what if the Overblot boys told each other their backstories?

Mmm… Well firstly, I think it would take a lot of effort to arrive at a point where all of the OB boys would even feel comfortable being that emotionally intimate with the others. Many of the OB boys are highly guarded and resistant to putting themselves in compromising positions. For example, I can easily see Azul being paranoid that the others would use his background as blackmail; he would not risk having his own vulnerabilities becoming public knowledge. Would Leona really be okay with being sentimental in front of various people he dislikes, especially Malleus and Vil? Would Idia feel safe unpacking his trauma and grief in front of his peers? Etc, etc, etc.

Secondly, I think that even if the OB boys were hypothetically at the point where they were okay sharing their backstories with the others, it wouldn’t change much about their immediate circumstances?? The OB boys generally don’t strike me as particularly… empathetic? At least not automatically empathetic. It’s something they would need to put effort into and actively work on. I imagine that they’d otherwise just pull a Zuko-style “That’s rough, buddy” or potentially even say something tactless that rubs their peers the wrong way (for example, not fully understanding the situation or even downplaying one another’s trauma). Riddle (someone with very little to no experience with social media and entertainment mediums) might not get how being a celebrity influences Vil’s life, Leona might insult Malleus (someone whom he has a bone to pick with), everyone might still be upset with Malleus for what he did to them in book 7. etc. Each OB boy only has their own experiences as the lens through which they see and interact with the world, and it’s not that easy for just anyone to put themselves in the shoes of another person.

Hearing a (for lack of a better term) traumadump doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll connect with it or understand just how grueling it was for the person who experienced said trauma. It would usually take a significant amount of time and reflection (ideally facilitated by a licensed mediator or professional) to digest those stories in group therapy and to make sure that everyone actually understands one another. A surface-level story retelling alone in most cases isn’t (again, for lack of a better term) “enough”, especially with how self-centered, emotionally immature, and different many of the OB boys are.

Think of empathy like a skill or a muscle. It isn’t innate. You need to develop it and train it, and not putting it to use can lead to atrophy. And given how arrogant and independent your usual NRC student is… yeah, it’s definitely going to be something for them all to work on.

If you want to think of it another way, it’s like how different players will react differently to reading the OB boys’s backstories. Someone who experienced bullying similar to Azul could more easily empathize with him while also not fully “getting” the full scope of other stories they hear. Maybe they can’t understand why Riddle still cares about the mother who mistreated him. Maybe they don’t see why Jamil sacrifices so much for his family. It doesn’t make the player a bad person for not understanding all the stories, it simply means they have a limited perspective. The same is true of the TWST characters; they, too, have incomplete perspectives and rely predominantly on their own points of views to make sense of the world.

Maybe knowing their backstories in advance would change some scenes in small ways (such as book 6, when they split up and then butt heads with each other). They’d know where the other boys were coming from, and how that informs how they act in present day. However, I maintain that I think not much would change from the original. In a stressful situation like book 6, they could easily slip up and say something insensitive/make assumptions about their behavior based on their background/overlook or not even consider their background in the first place since they’re so focused on the current task. For example, Azul, feeling insulted that Riddle is underestimating him, could make a snide remark that just because his mother was a control freak doesn’t mean Riddle also has to be. Jamil could still see Leona as a spoiled prince because, despite being treated like an outcast, he still grew up in immense privilege as royalty. They can so easily fixate on their own interpretations of events that it colors how they perceive others, rather than how they can relate to others no matter how similar or dissimilar their experiences were.

In other ways, I think the OB boys sharing their backstories with one another stifles potentially meaningful development. Character growth in TWST isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon, and we’re here for the long haul. What does depositing all the backstories in their laps achieve for the OB boys? It artificially puts them in a situation to “better know” their peers rather than let it happen organically or allowing them to grow closer through their own efforts. Let’s look at the Deuce-Epel beach scene from book 5. Do you think it would have been as impactful of a scene if Epel explained his life in the countryside and how he got his traditional views on gender norms to Deuce? Personally, I don’t think so. The scene we currently have has them bonding and connecting through a shared activity (shouting at the sea), then having a heart-to-heart without a heavy backstory exposition. It’s through that, not explicit backstory sharing, that the two form an attachment and become genuine friends.

Those are all my thoughts!! ^^

[crowlion]