#zhao the moonslayer

[attackfish]

5hc for an Ocean Spirit Katara AU? (Like in the same sense that yue was blessed by the moon spirit?) I can’t remember if you have one for that or not, but it’s a favorite premise of mine

I don't. The closest I have is a Katara-Yue role swap, where Katara becomea the moon. So you get a whole new AU.

1. Katara is born silent, eyes closed, not crying. Her chest barely rises and falls. This happens. Some babes are born only to die. There is nothing to be done. It has happened as long as children have been born. Nothing to be done? hisses Kanna as her son and his wife weep, caught between the exhaustion of birth, and the grief of losing a child they will never get to know? Nothing to be done? She takes the baby from her son's wife and carries her to the frigid ocean. She dips her in the water and begs. There is no oasis here, no koi, but surely the Ocean Spirit is in the ocean. Ocean, give her granddaughter the strength to live.

2. Katara's eyes open, and her mouth opens to wail. Her dark brown hair turns a bright watery blue. Kanna wraps her granddaughter up tight, and holds ber close to keep her warm, and carries her back to her parents.

3. Little Katara grows up, bright, strong, and a waterbender, the only waterbender at the south pole. She is in all ways a normal little girl, and a loving sister and daughter, but to the people of her village, she is a miracle child, saved by the spirits themselves, and marked by them too. Sokka, in the face of this, struggles fo be seen, to be noticed, not by his parents, but by everyone else. It galls, to be known as Katara's brother, when Katara is just his annoying little sister with weird water powers and weird blue hair. Sorry Sokka, your sister is an anime protagonist, and you got to learn to live with it.

4. Then their mother dies, ans their father leaves and they find the Avatar, and leave on adventure, and it's all big and new, and Katara has to cover her hair to keep it from being noticed, and they're chased by Zhao and Zuko, and they make all the way north, and Katara has to fight to learn waterbending, but finally, finally they make it, and she gets to learn.

5. And then Zhao attacks the Northern Water Tribe fortress, and marches to the Spirit Oasis to kill the moon, and he... kills the wrong fish. The ocean draws back as if there is about to be a tsunami, but the water just keeps drawing back, exposing the deep dark parts of the sea that have never seen the sun, and Katara, blessed by the ocean itself, knows what she has to do.

[horse-ff]

Got some art prompts~~~!

Modern au: Azula and Yue visiting a haunted house. Idk why, since it's nowhere close to spooky season, but this has been weirdly on my mind recently lmao

Alternatively, Spy/secret agent au... no real thoughts on this, except I think they'd make a hilarious but weirdly effective duo in these circumstances (or some really interesting adversaries)

Or, more accurately to how the pair of them would probably end up and more plausible to the canon world, old baba yaga-adjacent women living in a cottage deep in the woods, widely regarded by all the surrounding villages as sorceresses whose hut is to be marked and avoided (Azula's fault. Yue is generally well-liked, when she comes to the market by herself).

Anyway, I can't wait to see whatever art you post next, on the list or no! Always love seeing it on my dash 👍🏻

These were all such great ideas! How well I managed to portray them... That's up to you, LOL. The spy one makes me laugh way too hard, it was the first thing to come to mind, and after that, I couldn't for the life of me think of anything else!

Extra little joke and some yapping under the cut

Typically, I would've swapped the costumes. But, I really wanted to see Yue dressed up as Howl... of course, you end up not able to see her the whole time! Also, I wanted to do an extra little sketch at the end of the "Zhao" here saying "You don't know Zhao the Moonslayer? Have you been living under a rock? He's only the greatest character since the Jok-" or something ridiculous like that, but then I got lazy.

Also, unrelated to doodles and such, I've got too many WIP fics for these two going... There are at least 5. My latest idea is hands down my favorite, it's so ridiculous. I imagine that if I can figure out an ending for it, I'll be able to start uploading it within less than two weeks!

Anyways, I hope you like these ridiculous sketches!

[splosh-crime]

Gaang in the Iceberg AU

Apocalypse AU. Fire Nation Wins AU.

What if when Aang saved Katara, Sokka, Appa, Momo, and that old fisherman from drowning in the Storm, he froze them all for another hundred years.

If you want to keep Zuko young/part of the main storyline, just say he fell off his ship and drifted close enough to Aang to be frozen along with them.

Unless you wanna go the Spirit Bullshit route, Toph would have 0 reason to be in the vicinity of that storm and would not remain young with the others of the Gaang. She could easily join up once they reach the Foggy Swamp though since that’s canonically where she went after retiring. Honestly, having these time-traveling teenagers and 112 y/o sassy lady on this quest to save the world sounds kind of hilarious.

This could also easily become a Vigilante AU too, since 100 yrs post-ATLA would technologically be around the early 2000s given that TLOK seemed about 50-ish years post-ATLA and tech advanced to our equivalent 1950s (ish). If you want to see my Vigilante AU ideas, they’re here but they’re not adapted to this specific AU, so if you want help doing that, dm me.

During 100 years (200 in Aang’s case) the Gaang have been gone, the Fire Nation wins the Hundred Year War through use of Sozin’s Comet and rules the Earth Kingdom with an iron fist.

Azula inherits the throne as Phoenix Queen after the passing of Ozai. When Ozai returned from burning the world to see Azula’s violent breakdown, he burned her (similarly to how he’d burned Zuko) in order to ‘snap her out of it.’ She’s still highly unstable but kept it together enough to avoid being burned again, developing a few more unhealthy coping mechanisms as a result.

The Water Tribes would come to little further harm without the Avatar highlighting them as targets. The South Pole provides no strategic advantage and the North Pole is both neutral and heavily guarded. Zhao is unable to justify his need for an army in his quest to become the “Moonslayer” without Aang as a cover target.

Amon probably wasn’t able to get on his bullshit while struggling to survive the Fire Nation’s imperialism, so Amon never started the Equalists. He still might’ve taken enemies’ bending though. Idk how/when he learned to do that in canon.

Harmonic Convergence will have happened 30 yrs before the Gaang reawakens, recreating the Airbenders. Without Aang, they have no one to teach them bending, nomad culture, nor protect them from the Fire Nation’s persecution. The Fire Nation has little motivation to repeat the genocide, believing the Avatar Cycle to be broken/fictional, but Airbenders still face prejudice and a repeat attempt of Earth Queen Hou-Ting’s Airbender Army seems likely, especially considering how easily airbending can power up firebending.

If you didn’t watch Korra, basically, the queen kidnapped/enslaved all the airbenders (including children) and kept them in a dungeon to be forced to brutalize each other as training.

That’s all I’ve got for this AU at the moment but I’d still adore hearing any reactions, additions, or constructive criticism you have for me in the notes. If you want to write this, I’d be beyond honored and would be delighted to receive a link or offer to collaborate in some way (even as just an idea soundboard).

[sweaters-and-vertigo]

zhao, holding some powerless fish in a bag: i am the moonslayer!!!!!!!!!!! i am zhao the conqueror!!!!!!!!!!!!

momo, first in line to kick his ass: you can conquer these hands !! 🤠👊🏼

[juniperhillpatient]

okay so I’m not overly mad about this more just… confused & amused? but why is jee randomly such a purposefully hateable character & enemy to zuko while zhao - the fucking wannabe MOONSLAYER crazy bitch zhao - is now just… the most forgettable side character of all time ever? like whatever. I like zhao as a villain but also this adaptation is just for fun. it’s not like I no longer have og zhao. so I don’t really CARE… it just seems like such a random & bizarre change that I can’t really understand the purpose of?

zuko already has a canon annoyance always undermining & insulting him & in the context of the competition to capture the avatar it makes sense.

jee’s random persistent disrespect of his prince even during a war meeting while turning zhao into Just Some Guy just seems like a bizarre change that I don’t really get lol

[piandaoist]

I had this dream once. Zhao and Piandao emerged from the Fog of Lost Souls. No idea how Piandao got there but they came through the portal in RC.

They didn't have any money except for a few old Fire Nation coins they had in their pockets. They managed to find an apartment to share for dirt cheap in what was obviously a horrible part of town. When they walked inside, there was this tiny blob spirit just shrieking and it wouldn't stop. It was just whaling like a banshee. Zhao yelled at it to shut up and Piandao just looked at the landlord. She was like "It comes with the apartment. Why do you think your rent was so cheap?"

I planned a whole story around this dream but I'm too lazy to write it. Some of the highlights were:

Zhao and Piandao only got along because they had to. They went to look for jobs... There was this shop hiring that specialized in vintage armor and weapons and so on. It was run by these two gays who were way into old Fire Nation stuff and they immediately recognize the guy who looked exactly like Zhao and they got so excited which only served to further piss Zhao off. "YOU LOOK JUST LIKE ADMIRAL ZHAO!" "I AM ZHAO!" XD And then, they looked at Piandao and they were like, "And this guy looks like Zhao's former Master, Jeong Jeong!"

Zhao was stomping around town, demanding to speak to whomever was in charge. Piandao wouldn't even tell people his real name. Zhao kept telling people he was the Moonslayer, blah, blah, blah, and Piandao suggested maybe he should stop telling people that. Plus, Zhao kept telling people who Piandao really was so Piandao denied it and was like "You really gonna believe a guy who calls himself the Moonslayer?" And, of course, they didn't, so Zhao was even more frustrated and angry.

But Zhao was also mad because Piandao was a traitor who should have been brought to justice. Piandao tried to explain to Zhao that he was actually exonerated months after the siege at the North Pole. And also, Ozai was defeated by Aang and Zuko ascended to become the Firelord after he won an Agni Kai against Azula. Zhao didn't believe any of it until he looked at historical documents archived in the (Piandao) library. But he was still an ass.

And then, to make things worse (for Zhao), he found out Piandao was considered one of the Republic's primary founders since he financially backed so many projects during the Republic's founding. Zhao noticed that a bunch of buildings were named after Piandao (a library, an art gallery, a museum, a hospital...) There was a statue of Piandao in the old historic district, in front of the original municipal building that was turned into a museum dedicated to RC's history. Once the president figured out who Piandao was, he tried to give him the keys to the city even after Piandao told him he wasn't interested and didn't want to be bothered. He just didn't even bother to show up to the ceremony.

And if that wasn't the icing on Zhao's shitcake, he was told he'd be extradited to the Northern Water Tribe to stand trail because they figured out who he was (because he wouldn't shut up about it). He was being tried for killing their god.

[supreme-leader-stoat]

I'm assuming that Kya was a casualty of an attempt on Hakoda's life by Fire Nation assassins in an attempt to decapitate the Southern Water Tribe's military command and turn the tide (har har) of the war.

Iroh... I can see Iroh's arc going one of two ways in this. Either he's hailed as a war hero in the Earth Kingdom for helping to break the six hundred day siege of Ba Sing Sei, or he wages a six hundred day siege against the north pole that ultimately fails but still stands as the most successful offensive that has been made against the North to date. Either way, Lu Ten still dies.

They try to hide Katara's status as a water bender (no duh) whiel traveling through the Earth Kingdom. Bumi sees through it no problem.

Zhao's arc remains largely unchanged, with only the perspective and justification shifting. He's a zealot. His side of the war is on the back foot, and they need something drastic to give them an advantage, no matter the cost. And so he still winds up hatching a variant of his Moonslayer plot from canon.

Alternatively, Zhao winds up as something akin to that Earth Kingdom guy... ah, General Fong, trying to use force to bring out the avatar state. His canon arc then gets merged with Hama's; a waterbender soldier who got captured and held as a POW by the Fire Nation before eventually escaping, and the experience turned her into a fanatic. I can't really see her killing the sun, but I can see her trying to track down and kill the two last surviving dragons.

Is Zuko still hunting Aang here, do you think? Do Fire Nation spies see the avatar traveling with the daughter of the Southern Chieftain and make the wrong assumption that he's gone over to the enemy side? Do they think that he's been taken captive and Zuko goes/gets sent on a suicide rescue mission? Is his actual target the Water Tribe siblings, and he's as gobsmacked as everyone else when the weird bald kid tagging along with Katara starts airbending?

ok yes it’s fun to think about atla roleswap AUs where the fire nation is good and the water tribes are bad, but ultimately they wouldn’t really work because if sokka had been on the bad side then the bad guys would have won full stop

[atla-polls]

Best Zhao ship?

Thank you for submitting your question, i look forward to seeing the results!

[thescarlettempress]

Avatar’s biggest crime was not having Zhao and Azula interact. She would have put him in his place ten times over and it would have been glorious.

[attackfish]

Let's hear your headcanons/ideas for the universe where Baby!Zuko was whisked away through time and popped into Aang's saddle mere moments before they crashed into the Arctic waters and all the consequences that would bring. For starters, I can see the conversation about nature & nurture that happened around TomTom between Sokka and Kataara to happen much earlier because of that.

Contined from the first scenario here: [Link].

I have to wonder how easy it is to tell a Fire Nation royal baby from any other baby. Is he dressed differently? Zuko is roughly two at this point, which means he's old enough for his eyes to have settled into their golden color, but unless you're looking for it, that's kind of hard to tell apart from brown. And he's pale skinned and black haired, but both of those are traits found in abundance in the Earth Kingdom.

So what's left are clothes. Tom-Tom was wearing a white tunic edged in pink, and pinkish grayish loose pants. While Zuko's would undoubtedly be the finest quality, I'm not sure that they would be any different. And the colors and shapes that Tom-Tom is wearing at that age are all ones we have seen in Earth Kingdom dress, for example the shade of pink he's wearing on his tunic is very similar to the one that Song wears.

What I'm saying is, would any of them know, looking at him, just who this random baby who showed up, is?

In the initial post, I had him dressed all in Fire Nation red, and that would of course give them an indication of where he's from, but they still would have no idea that he is a royal baby, or specifically that he is Zuko, the missing prince.

And like, once they've established that Aang is in fact from a hundred years ago, the reasonable assumption is that the baby is from a hundred years ago too.

So they have this random baby from before the war, and sure, Sokka is team evil Fire Nation baby, but not only are Aang and Katara team it's a baby, you jerk, but so is Kanna.

This whole situation lasts for a couple of weeks, until this actual asshole named Commander Zhao shows up, because that's just How the universe is, and this is why we can't have nice things. He is thrilled to find the Avatar, and easily capture him with a little bit of extortion, but he also manages to recognize this strange baby's fancy baby clothes. How the heck did they end up with Prince Zuko's baby clothes, on a baby who looks suspiciously like he could be Prince Zuko, but is weirdly still a baby, Zhao has no idea, but he'll be eaten by a fish if this isn't the best day he's ever had. He's taking these two back to Firelord Ozai. He's getting that promotion.

[madam-melon-meow]

Op tagging this post like they’re trying to win some algorithm game.

Aang x Katara, atla fanart, 70s horror, zuko x katara, and sokka are all tags that do not describe the post.

If they wanted to get more visibility, they could tag this post the dragon of the west, general iroh, prince iroh��. commander Zhao, admiral zhao, zhao the moonslayer, zhao the invincible. You get the idea.

I’m not sure who told them that the best tagging practice was to tag random genres or ships, but it will not endear them in the eyes of tumblr.

The Fire Nation in Netflix's AvatarTheLastAirbender

Daniel Dae Kim — Fire Lord Ozai

Paul Sun-Hyung Lee — Uncle Iroh

Elizabeth Yu — Princess Azula

Dallas Liu — Prince Zuko

[canyourscienceexplainthis]

It’s honestly so satisfying that Zhao was such an incompetent donkey that he wasn’t even included in the ember island players. Like they might have heard stories about him but even playwrites of that absolutely abysmal caliber went “lol what a loser forget this guy.” That, to me, is justice.

[lightdancer1]

Though ironically in retrospect it's the fifth AU I get to and the first where Zuko actually acts like his season 1 self

Zuko starts out as one of the villains hunting the Avatar, under the direct orders of both his parents and in a rivalry with Captain and then Admiral Zhao. He acts like his canon self down to introducing himself trying to sink Katara and Sokka's village, burning Suki's village to the ground in a fit of rage....and then he finds a one-eyed Firebender in green fighting with the Avatar and company on Crescent Island.

And every bit of cognitive dissonance he has about his supposedly dead sister who's alive, well, and kicking ass and having altogether too good a time doing it roars into being with a vengeance. For Zuko, hunting the Avatar is business, hunting his traitor sister who 'went native' is PERSONAL. She more than Aang becomes the Moby Dick to his Captain Ahab.

Ironically this Zuko is still a better person than his Season 1 self or his canonical self overall. His action are motivated by cognitive dissonance souring and turning into RAGE in Angron fashion and having the power to actually set things on fire fueled by RAGE.

[juniperhillpatient]

“They’ll call me Zhao the Moonslayer” bitch they will be calling you “Zhao the insane dumbass who tried to kill the moon” I will never be over how crazy this man really is

[orangepanic]

October 2: Sun and Moon & Trust Issues (Zhao and Yue)

Zhao knew who he was. He knew where he was, too. He was… was… 

“I am Zhao the moonslayer," he muttered. That had meant something, once, in another time and place. Not here. Mist danced around him the push and pull of shadows and flame.

"Zhao the conqueror!" He wasn't sure why he'd shouted or what the words were. There was nobody here, wherever this was. Was there? At times the space felt crowded, but when Zhao looked around there was only fog.

"Are you sorry yet?" One of the shadows had become brighter than the rest, in fact not a shadow at all but the opposite of that, a bright silvery white light. A girl. A light. Both? Neither? Did he know her?

"Moonslayer!" he spat, though he didn't know what that was.

The light-girl glared at him. "I don't know why I come here. Even if you had the mind to be sorry, I could never trust you."

"You come because you must," said Zhao. "You must help me. I am Zhao the conqueror! I must... I have a mission..." He trailed off, unsure how to continue. He hadn't the faintest idea what his mission was.

"You gave everything for your mission," said the light-girl, "as did I. And we will reap the consequences."

31 Days of Whumptloktober

What is Whumptloktober, you ask? Well, nothing, because I made it up through the art of shameless theft. There's a TLOKtober event on twitter/x/elon musk's wanksite that has rules I can't follow, and there's an interesting set of Whumptober prompts this year, so I decided to do my own mashup and create 31 days of absolute nonsense short fics for tumblr. No rules besides having to address both prompts and involving Legend of Korra. Crack encouraged.

To give credit where it's due, the original prompt lists/event pages are here and here.

[balsa-margarita]

An interesting snippet from the upcoming chapter of Death-Fires Danced

So far, Admiral Zhao had been having the best day of his life.

Admiral…

He had received the promotion earlier in the afternoon - a letter from Fire Lord Ozai himself - and had immediately taken advantage of it. Whatever Colonel Shinu’s objection to sending his Yuyan Archers after the Avatar might have been, it could not override a direct order from a naval admiral. Especially not one who possessed the favor of the Fire Lord.

And now, after an almost laughable amount of effort, he had the Avatar in chains. For a supposedly terrifying spirit-human hybrid, the boy had been extremely unimpressive.

All the wind in the world won’t get him out of those manacles… especially once we leave him there for a day or two.

After that…

By that time, though, he would be long gone. His promotion to the rank of admiral had come with a mission - to command a siege of the Northern Water Tribe, using any and all resources at his disposal to lay it low. 

It was time.

“Zhao the Conqueror,” he said, testing the sound of the title. “Zhao the Moonslayer.”

Excellent.

Fate itself had led him to the knowledge that would allow him to destroy waterbending and the Water Tribes forever, and he would use it. For that, his name would go down in history.

Something to add to my victory speech-

A knock on the door snapped him out of his thoughts, and he turned, opening it to see a young Yuyan cadet looking at him nervously. “Sir - Admiral? This letter just arrived for you.” Bowing hurriedly, the boy handed him a light scroll. “I know the title is-”

“Leave me.”

Something about the letter stood out immediately - the seal was a coiled dragon, applied in a level of detail that suggested a Fire Nation noble house, but Zhao had taken pains to memorize the insignia of every important family. This was not one of them.

Maybe it was a trick of the candlelight, but there seemed to be a faint glow trapped within the orange ink. 

What is this?

Unfurling the scroll, Zhao glanced at the carefully written characters. To Commander Zhao…

Fellow bearer of fire.

Perhaps fate had seen fit to bless him once again.