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dirtytransmasc · 1 month ago

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ATLA! Avatar au ramblings, cause I need them out of my skull:

[Disclaimer: this is basically just Avatar, but if there were benders. there are no rules. god is dead. I wear his crown. we go by my rules now, even if they break atla canon. canon is a suggestion now]

each clean tends to be made up of benders from two of the elements, people from the clan can carry both traits, even if one is dormant.

for example, the Omatikaya are made up of earth and airbenders. both Mo'at and Eytukan were airbenders, yet their daughter Neytiri was an earth bender, and Sylwanin was also an air bender.

Humans are rarely benders, at least compared to the Na'vi, as the destruction of Earth led to the loss of benders, but when they are benders, they have only been fire benders. this includes avatars. the RDA specifically targets and recruits fire benders.

Fire benders are rare on Pandora. very few clans produce fire benders. and with the destruction the humans and the RDA have caused, fire benders are almost taboo, especially in the forest clans that faced the brunt of their efforts.

Jake is a fire bender, he is heavily disconnected from the idea of spirit, fluidity, or nature within his bending. it gets better as he lives with the Omatikaya, but old habits die hard, so he'll ways be a messy fire user, and his fighting style is messy, MMA like, the reckless assault of a soldier and not an art. he doesn't truly incorporate his bending into his day to day life either, it's like a gun to him, not a part of his spirit and being.

Neytiri is an earth bender (and in my world, they can bend plants, because fuck you). while she is known for her combat on Ikran back, she is just as deadly in face to face combat, as she is a heavily offensive fighter, and she will punch you in the throat with a dagger she pulled from the earth. but in a more casual day to day, she uses it to get around the forest, to weave and craft, to cook even. she makes something solid like stone and wood look as fluid as air, and something as delicate as plant life look deadly and jagged. and as a healer she uses it not only to cultivate and refine healing plants, and even bone bend.

a fire bender and an earth bender, have 3 kids:

Neteyam is an earth bender, he presented quite young, maybe 5 or 7, and he takes after his mommy, with the added aggression of Jake's fire bending attitude. he inherited less of his mother's likeness to plant bending, but can magma bend extremely well for his age, keeping that same fluidity. but as much of his life is taken up by combat and training, he's also a crafter and has plenty of little siblings bringing him rocks and asking him to make them beads, so he's also doing a lot of that. (he has attempted to bend a tree fort into existence and fell through it and on his ass, trust, I was there)

Tuk is an air bender. she's only presented around 7, and only in little gusts, so she hasn't cultivated an exact style, she can only really play with little gusts of air, or go gliding about on her glider, but only when a sibling is with her, in case she falls. she's also just an agile little thing.

Lo'ak (for angst value) doesn't present for a long while, he makes it to nearly 13 before presenting, and he ends up being a fire bender.... which did not help his self image, in any manner. not only is he the demon blooded son, the one that never lives up to Jake and Neteyam, who looks like a freak, but now he's a fire bender too? just shoot him now.

Kiri, the child of Grace, who was not a bender, and Eywa, is an air bender (she's already Pandora Jesus, I'm not putting her through being the Avatar as well). she presented at 5, it never seemed like a big thing to her. Neytiri found her floating and that was that. she is heavily connected to her spirit, so she can astral project, and her world, which makes her very hyper sensitive to her surroundings. she uses her air bending to carry stuff, be more spry (in the comics she tends to fall behind her siblings, even Spider, who is much smaller than her. her air bending gives her the leg up to help her keep up). even after she gains an ikran, she tends to go gliding or just. floating. for funsies.

that leaves my son, my baby boy, Spider:

I'm making him the fucking avatar because I can.

[more bullshit below, this is just very long and I'd feel bad posting this behemoth and clogging people's feeds]

he is Eywa's first Sky child, her golden boy, and he is the bridge between humans and Na'vi— he is Na'vi in all but body, and human in all but soul —so she knows if anyone can soothe the tensions ripping her world apart, it will be him.

he starts out as a fire bender.

no one is shocked, even though he gave off his first sparks as a toddler. his parents had both been fire benders— Quaritch had mastered combustion, and Paz was known to give off smoke when pissed —this gets him even more ostracized than he was in canon from the get go. no one wants much to do with the fire bending son of Quaritch. no one can truly trust him, even as a child.

who's to say when he will become the wildfire everyone assumes he will become? who's to say he's not dangerous, even as a child? especially without the help of a fire bending master to aid him (could Jake do it? yes. do I think Jake would commit to that long term? absolutely not).

despite this, the Sully kids are his siblings, from the moment they meet. he's their big brother, watching out for them, promising his flames as their shield, forever and ever. no one will ever hurt them. that they don't need to be scared of him, because he'd burn himself to a crisp before burning them. and his will is so strong, he's never accidentally burned them like he has others. his spirit knows better. it's strong enough to render the heat to nothing.

so the second Spider can leave the confines of Hellsgate and go out into Eywa's jungle, he is more than pleased to do so. he isn't judged there. the animals don't flinch away from him or stare at him like they're seeing secrets from the future.

he bends in secret, first with fire, just dancing a flame over his hands, slowly gaining trust in himself and his control, and developing his own style of bending, one similar to the airbenders of the clan, as that's the closest thing he has to go off of.

and if he has dreams of Toruk like creatures, showing him the art of fire, when he falls asleep in the grassy clearings of Eywa's world, he won't question it.

and when he hears whispers of 'try it' when he thinks of attempting to bend a different element, even just pretending, child's play, he listens, because he trusts the soft voice in his ear.

he bends air first. while not rare, those who bend air are considered special, connect to the spirit of Eywa. it's a sign. well, it would be had anyone paid enough mind to the boy to see it.

air bending comes naturally. he'd been watching those around him air bend for years. he'd mimicked their movements while playing with his siblings. it feels right. like it was what he was destined for (Eywa just needed time to manipulate his soul). it keeps him alive in the jungle, not only cause it allows him to take riskier paths and such, but also because it allows him without an exopack.

earth comes next. again. he'd watched earth benders for years. longed to manipulate the forest like them. to create instead of destroy. wanted to heal instead of heal. wanted to use brute forced over his flames, because his flames were looked at with fear, while the other boys trained their bending and were cheered on. he can work plants as if it was as easy as breathing. weaving them together into forts and hide outs and supplies.

water is last, and seeing as it's the opposite of his birth element, he has no mentor, and not even a faint clue on how it works, it is his weakest. but he has an affinity for healing, even if it only works on little cuts and scrapes, maybe a bruise if he's lucky.

by twelve he is mostly living on his own in the woods. it's near impossible to keep him in the compound anymore. he's not interested.

no one has any idea what he is. Spider can't even fully believe it himself and all's down spirals of thinking he's giving into his human greed, somehow (don't blame him, he's just a little guy, a dumb little guy who doesn't know maths, and grew up around people who all but hated him. let him have a dumb dumb complex).

the only people who have a slight idea are his siblings; he bends too much on instinct. he reached out to catch his siblings, shifting the ground beneath them just a tad, or shooting a vine around their ankle or using a swift puff of wind to stop their descent. he heals small cuts while thumbing over them, rolling a little bead of water on the broken or bruised skin. he brings them up into elaborate tree forts.

his siblings only keep from saying something because of the look of pure terror he gets on his face when he catches himself.

as time goes on, he becomes more open with them. by 15 it's common knowledge amongst them who and what Spider is, but he still won't let them tell the clan. but he has Kiri and Neteyam to help him with his air and earth bending, as they can regurgitate their own lessons back to him, which makes him stronger over all, even if he continues to use his own methods.

Jake and Neytiri only find out the night he was taken; when he gave his all to protect his baby siblings from the recoms, all fire benders, and exposed the level of power he held... and was subsequently taken for.

and then he gets adventures with his papa and the squad. that he is so so so so so happy about (kill him).

bonus info that doesn't fit into the vaguely timeline coherent ramblings above:

Spider is a healer by nature, it's in his heart and soul. so while he trains himself for combat, it's simply natural for him to want to fix things, to help people, to give himself and his power over if it means he can soothe one ache in his people. so Spider learns all of the healing arts he can. he develops his own even. refines bone and blood bending to heal people. uses the scientific understanding of things that he picked up as a human to make better medicines, etc.

speaking of blood/bonebending. my boy is going to snap at some point during his captivity and fuck some people up with that, because he knows the dogs of the RDA deserve it. perhaps it's after Neteyam's death that triggers it. or maybe the Tulkun hunt/attack on the Ta'unui. it's something, something that has him going in a carnage spree.

he will train with Mo'at and Ronal when they find out about him. Mo'at will knowingly pass him over — she knew early in he was special, but knew, in terms of his learning, the forest was not his place, for there was too much pain. but she would watch out for him as she had his whole life, in her own ways — while Ronal will become one of his footholds in life. a place where he will always feel like he can drift back to.

~~~

that's all I have for now. it's a shit ton. I have maladaptive daydreamed part this point, but I'll probably be back on my bullshit eventually. I'll have more on Q and the water tribe and what not.