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army-of-mai-lovers · 3 years

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in which I get progressively angrier at the various tropes of atla fandom misogyny

tbh I think it would serve all of us to have a larger conversation about the specific ways misogyny manifests in this fandom, because I’ve seen a lot of people who characterize themselves as feminists, many of whom are women themselves, discuss the female characters of atla/lok in misogynistic ways, and people don’t talk about it enough.

disclaimer before I start: I’m not a woman, I’m an afab nonbinary person who is semi-closeted and thus often read as a woman. I’m speaking to things that I’ve seen that have made me uncomfy, but if any women (esp women existing along other axes of oppression, e.g. trans women, women of color, disabled women, etc) want to add onto this post, please do!

“This female character is a total badass but I’m not even a little bit interested in exploring her as a human being.”

I’ve seen a lot of people say of various female characters in atla/lok, “I love her! She’s such a badass!” now, this statement on its own isn’t misogynistic, but it represents a pretty pervasive form of misogyny that I’ve seen leveled in large part toward the canon female love interests of one or both of the members of a popular gay ship (*cough* zukka *cough*) I’m going to use Suki as an example of this because I see it with her most often, but it can honestly be applied to nearly every female character in atla/lok. Basically, people will say that they stan Suki, but when it comes time to engage with her as an actual character, they refuse to do it. I’ve seen meta after meta about Zuko’s redemption arc, but I so rarely see people engage with Suki on any level beyond “look at this cool fight scene!” and yeah, I love a cool Suki fight scene as much as anybody else, but I’m also interested in meta and headcanons and fics about who she is as a person, when she isn’t an accessory to Sokka’s development or doing something cool. of course, the material for this kind of engagement with Suki is scant considering she doesn’t have a canon backstory (yet) (don’t let me down Faith Erin Hicks counting on you girl) but with the way I’ve seen people in this fandom expand upon canon to flesh out male characters, I know y’all have it in you to do more with Suki, and with all the female characters, than you currently do. frankly, the most engagement I’ve seen with Suki in mainstream fandom is justifying either zukki (which again, is characterizing her in relation to male characters, one of whom she barely interacts with in canon) or one of the Suki wlw pairings. which brings me to--

“I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!”

now, I will admit, two of my favorite atla ships are yueki and mailee, and so I totally understand being interested in these characters’ dynamics, even if, as is the case with yueki, they’ve never interacted canonically. however, it becomes a problem for me when these ships are always in the background of a zukka fic. at some point, it becomes obvious that you like this ship because it gets either Zuko or Sokka’s female love interests out of the way, not because you actually think the characters would mesh well together. It’s bad form to dislike a female character because she gets in the way of your gay ship, so instead, you find another girl to pair her off with and call it a day. to be clear, I’m not saying that everybody who ships either mailee or yueki (or tysuki or maisuki or yumai or whatever other wlw rarepair involving Zuko or Sokka’s canon love interests) is nefariously trying to sideline a female character while acting publicly as if she’s is one of their faves--far from it--but it is noteworthy to me how difficult it is to find content that centers wlw ships, while it’s incredibly easy to find content that centers zukka in which mailee and/or yueki plays a background role.

also, notice how little traction wlw Katara ships gain in this fandom. when’s the last time you saw yuetara on your dash? there’s no reason for wlw Katara ships to gain traction in a fandom that is so focused on Zuko and Sokka getting together, bc she doesn’t present an immediate obstacle to that goal (at least, not an obstacle that can be overcome by pairing her up with a woman). if you are primarily interested in Zuko and Sokka’s relationship, and your queer readings of other female characters are motivated by a desire to get them out of the way for zukka, then Katara’s canon m/f relationship isn’t a threat to you, and thus, there’s no reason to read her as potentially queer. Or even, really, to think about her at all.

“Katara’s here but she’s not actually going to do anything, because deep down, I’m not interested in her as a person.”

the show has an enormous amount of textual evidence to support the claim that Sokka and Katara are integral parts of each other’s lives. so, she typically makes some kind of appearance in zukka content. sometimes, her presence in the story is as an actual character with layers and nuance, someone whom Sokka cares about and who cares about Sokka in return, but also has her own life and goals outside of her brother (or other male characters, for that matter.) sometimes, however, she’s just there because halfway through writing the author remembered that Sokka actually has a sister who’s a huge part of the show they’re writing fanfiction for, and then they proceed to show her having a meetcute with Aang or helping Sokka through an emotional problem, without expressing wants or desires outside of those characters. I’m honestly really surprised that I haven’t seen more people calling out the fact that so much of Katara’s personality in fanon revolves around her connections to men? she’s Aang’s girlfriend, she’s Sokka’s sister, she’s Zuko’s bestie. never mind that in canon she spends an enormous amount of time fighting against (anachronistic, Westernized) sexism to establish herself as a person in her own right, outside of these connections. and that in canon she has such interesting complex relationships with other female characters (e.g. Toph, Kanna, Hama, Korra if you want to write lok content) or that there are a plethora of characters with whom she could have interesting relationships with in fanon (Mai, Suki, Ty Lee, Yue, Smellerbee, and if you want to write lok content, Kya II, Lin, Asami, Senna, etc). to me, the lack of fandom material exploring Katara’s relationships with other women or with herself speak to a profound indifference to Katara as a character. I’m not saying you have to like Katara or include her in everything you write, but I am asking you to consider why you don’t find her interesting outside of her relationships with men.

“I hate Katara because she talks about her mother dying too often.”

this is something I’ve seen addressed by people far more qualified than I to address it, but I want to mention it here in part because when I asked people which fandom tropes they wanted me to talk about, this came up often, but also because I find it really disgusting that this is a thing that needs to be addressed at all. Y’all see a little girl who watched her mother be killed by the forces of an imperialist nation and say that she talks about it too much??? That is a formational, foundational event in a child’s life. Of course she’s going to talk about it. I’ve seen people say that she doesn’t talk about it that often, or that she only talks about it to connect with other victims of fn imperialism e.g. Jet and Haru, but frankly, she could speak about it every episode for no plot-significant reason whatsoever and I would still be angry to see people say she talks about it too much. And before you even bring up the Sokka comparison, people deal with grief in different ways. Sokka repressed a lot of his grief/channeled it into being the “man” of his village because he knew that they would come for Katara next if he gave them the opportunity. he probably would talk about his mother more if a) he didn’t feel massive guilt at not being able to remember what she looked like, and b) he was allowed to be a child processing the loss of his mother instead of having to become a tiny adult when Hakoda had to leave to help fight the fn. And this gets into an intersection with fandom racism, in that white fans (esp white American fans) are incapable of relating to the structural trauma that both Sokka and Katara experience and thus can’t see the ways in which structural trauma colors every single aspect of both of their characters, leading them to flatten nuance and to have some really bad takes. And you know what, speaking of bad fandom takes--

“Shitting on Mai because she gets in the way of my favorite Zuko ship is actually totally okay because she’s ~abusive~”

y’all WHAT.

ok listen, I get not liking maiko. I didn’t like it when I first got into fandom, and later I realized that while bryke cannot write romance to save their lives, fans who like maiko sure can, so I changed my tune. but if you still don’t like it, that’s fine. no skin off my back.

what IS skin off my back is taking instances in which Mai had justified anger toward Zuko, and turning it into “Mai abused Zuko.” do you not realize how ridiculous you sound? this is another thing where I get so angry about it that I don’t know how useful my analysis is actually going to be, but I’ll do my best. numerous people have noted how analysis of Mai and Zuko’s breakup in “The Beach” or Mai being justifiably angry with him at Boiling Rock or her asking for FUCKING FRUIT in “Nightmares and Daydreams” that says that all of these events were her trying to gain control over him is....ahhh...lacking in reading comprehension, but I’d like to go a step further and talk about why y’all are so intent on taking down a girl who doesn’t show emotion in normative ways. obviously, there’s a “Zuko can do no wrong” aspect to Mai criticism (which is super weird considering how his whole arc is about how he can do lots of wrong and he has to atone for the wrong that he’s done--but that’s a separate post.) But I also see slandering Mai for not expressing her emotions normatively and not putting up with Zuko’s shit and slandering Katara for “talking about her mother too often” as two sides of the same coin. In both cases, a female character expresses emotions that make you, the viewer, uncomfortable, and so instead of attempting to understand where those emotions may have come from and why they might be manifesting the way they are, y’all just throw the whole character away. this is another instance of people in the fandom being fundamentally disinterested in engaging with the female characters of atla in a real way, except instead of shallowly “stanning” Mai, y’all hate her. so we get to this point where female characters are flattened into one of two things: perfect queens who can do no wrong, or bitches. and that’s not who they are. that’s not who anyone is. but while we as a fandom are pretty good at understanding b1 Zuko’s actions as layered and multifaceted even though he’s essentially an asshole then, few are willing to lend the same grace to any female character, least of all Mai.

and what’s funny is sometimes this trope will intersect with “I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!”, so you’ll have someone actively calling Mai toxic/problematic/abusive, and at the same time ship her with Ty Lee? make it make sense! but then again, maybe that’s happening because y’all are fundamentally disinterested in Ty Lee as a character too.

“I love Ty Lee so much that I’m going to treat her like an infantilized hypersexual airhead!”

there are so many things happening in y’alls characterization of Ty Lee that I struggled to synthesize it into one quippy section header. on one hand, you have the hypersexualization, and on the other hand, you have the infantilization, which just makes the hypersexualization that much worse.

(of course, sexualizing or hypersexualizing ANY atla character is really not the move, considering that these are child characters in a children’s show, but then again, that’s a separate post.)

now, I understand how, from a very, very surface reading of the text, you could come to the conclusion that Ty Lee is an uncomplicated bimbo. if you grew up on Western media the way I did, you’ll know that Ty Lee has a lot of the character traits we associate with bimbos: the form-fitting pink crop top, the general conventional attractiveness, the ditzy dialogue. but if you think about it for more than three seconds, you’ll understand that Ty Lee has spent her whole life walking a tightrope, trying to please Azula and the rest of the royal family while also staying true to herself. Ty Lee and Azula’s relationship is a really complex and interesting topic that I don’t really have time to explore at the moment given how long this post is, but I’d argue that Ty Lee’s constant, vocal adulation is at least partially a product of learning to survive at court at an early age. Like Mai, she has been forced to regulate her emotions as a member of fn nobility, but unlike Mai, she also has six sisters who look exactly like her, so she has a motivation to be more peppy and more affectionate to stand out.

fandom does not do the work to understand Ty Lee. as is a theme with this post, fandom is actively disinterested in investigating female characters beyond a very surface level reading of them. Thus, fandom takes Ty Lee’s surface level qualities--her love of the color pink, her revealing standard outfit, and the fact that once she found a boy attractive and also once a lot of boys found her attractive--and they stretch this into “Ty Lee is basically Karen Smith from Mean Girls.” thus, Ty Lee is painted as a bimbo, or more specifically, as not smart, uncritically adoring of Azula (did y’all forget all the non-zukka bits of Boiling Rock?), and attractive to the point of hypersexualization. I saw somebody make a post that was like “I wish mailee was more popular but I’m also glad it isn’t because otherwise people would write it as Mai having to put up with her dumb gf” and honestly I have to agree!! this is one instance in which I’m glad that fandom doesn’t discuss one of my favorite characters that often because I hate the fanon interpretation of Ty Lee, I think it’s rooted in misogyny (particularly misogyny against East Asian women, which often takes the form of fetishizing them and viewing them only through a Western white male gaze)

(side note: here at army-of-mai-lovers, we stan bimbos. bimbos are fucking awesome. I personally don’t read Ty Lee as a bimbo, but if that’s you, that’s fucking awesome. keep doing what you’re doing, queen <3 or king or monarch, it’s 2021, anyone can be a bimbo, bitches <3)

“Toph can and will destroy everyone here with her bare hands because she’s a meathead who likes to murder people and that’s it!”

Toph is, and always has been, one of my favorite ATLA characters. My very first fic in fandom was about her, and she appears prominently in a lot of my other work as well. One thing that I am always struck by with Toph is how big a heart she has. She’s independent, yes, snarky, yes, but she cares about people--even the family that forced her to make herself smaller because they didn’t believe that their blind daughter could be powerful and strong. Her storyline is powerful and emotionally resonant, her bending is cool precisely because it’s based in a “wait and listen” approach instead of just smashing things indiscriminately, she’s great disabled rep, and overall one of the best characters in the show.

And in fandom, she gets flattened into “snarky murder child.”

So where does this come from? Well, as we all know, Toph was originally conceived of as a male character, and retained a lot of androgyny (or as the kids call it, Gender) when she was rewritten as a female character. There are a lot of cultural ideas about androgynous/butch women being violent, and people in fandom seem to connect that larger cultural narrative with some of Toph’s more violent moments in the show to create the meathead murder child trope, erasing her canon emotionality, softness, heart, and femininity in the process.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t write or characterize Toph as being violent or snarky at all ever, because yeah, Toph definitely did do Earth Rumbles a lot before joining the gaang, and yeah, Toph is definitely a sarcastic person who makes fun of her friends a lot. What I am saying is that people take these traits, sans the emotional logic, marry them to their conception of androgynous/butch women as violent/unemotional/uncaring, and thus create a caricature of Toph that is not at all up to snuff. When I see Toph as a side character in a fic (because yeah, Toph never gets to be a main character, because why would a fandom obsessed with one male character in particular ever make Toph a protagonist in her own right?) she’s making fun of people, killing people, pranking people, etc, etc. She’s never talking to people about her emotions, or palling around with her found family, or showing that she cares about her friends. Everything about her relationship with her parents, her disability, her relationship to Gender, and her love of her friends is shoved aside to focus on a version of Toph that is mean and uncaring because people have gotten it into their heads that androgynous/butch women are mean and uncaring.

again, we see a female character who does not emote normatively or in a way that makes you, the viewer, comfortable, and so you warp her character until she’s completely unrecognizable and flat. and for what?

Azula

no, I didn’t come up with a snappy name for this section, mainly because fanon interpretations of Azula and my own feelings toward the character are...complicated. I know there were some people who wanted me to write about Azula and the intersection of misogyny and ableism in fanon interpretations of her character, but I don’t think I can deliver on that because I personally am in a period of transition with how I see Azula. that is to say, while I still like her and believe that she can be redeemed, there is a lot of merit to disliking her. the whole point of this post is that the female characters of ATLA are complex people whom the fandom flattens into stereotypes that don’t hold up to scrutiny, or dislike for reasons that don’t make sense. Azula, however, is a different case. the rise of Azula defenders and Azula stans has led to this sentiment that Azula is a 14 y/o abuse victim who shouldn’t be held accountable for her actions. it seems to me that people are reacting to a long, horrible legacy of male ATLA fans armchair diagnosing Azula with various personality disorders (and suggesting that people with those personality disorders are inherently monstrous and unlovable which ahhhh....yikes) and then saying that those personality disorders make her unlovable, which is quite obviously bad. and hey, I get loving a character that everyone else hates and maybe getting so swept up in that love that you forget that your fave is complicated and has made some unsavory choices. it sucks that fanon takes these well-written, complex villains/antiheroes and turns them into monsters with no critical thought whatsoever. but the attitude among Azula stans that her redemption shouldn’t be hard, that her being a child excuses all of the bad things that she’s done, that she is owed redemption....all of that rubs me the wrong way. I might make another post about this in the future that discusses this in more depth, but as it stands now: while I understand that there is a legacy of misogynistic, ableist, unnuanced takes on Azula, the backlash to that does not take into account the people she hurt or the fact that in ATLA she does not make the choice to pursue redemption. and yes, Zuko had help in making that choice that Azula didn’t, and yes, Azula is a victim of abuse, but in a show about children who have gone through untold horrors and still work to better the lives of the people around them, that is not enough for me to uncritically stan her.

Conclusion

misogyny in this fandom runs rampant. while there are some tropes of fandom misogyny that are well-documented and have been debunked numerous times, there are other, subtler forms of misogyny that as far as I know have gone completely unchecked.

what I find so interesting about misogyny in atla fandom is that it’s clear that it’s perpetrated by people who are aware of fandom misogyny who are actively trying not to be misogynistic. when I first joined atla fandom last summer, memes about how zukka fandom was better than every other fandom because they didn’t hate the female characters who got in the way of their gay ship were extremely prevalent, and there was this sense that *this* fandom was going to model respectful, fun, feminist online fandom. not all of the topes I’ve outlined are exclusive to or even largely utilized in zukka fandom, but a lot of them are. I’ve been in and out of fandom since I was eleven years old, and most of the fandom spaces I’ve been in have been majority-female, and all of them have been incredibly misogynistic. and I always want to know why. why, in these communities created in large part by women, in large part for women, does misogyny run wild? what I realize now is that there’s never going to be a one-size fits all answer to that question. what’s true for 1D fandom on Wattpad in 2012 is absolutely not true for atla fandom on tumblr in 2021. the answers that I’ve cobbled together for previous fandoms don’t work here.

so, why is atla fandom like this? why did the dream of a feminist fandom almost entirely focused on the romantic relationship between two male characters fall apart? honestly, I think the notion that zukka fandom ever was this way was horrifically ignorant to begin with. from my very first moment in the fandom, I was seeing racism, widespread sexualization of minors, and yes, misogyny. these aspects of the fandom weren’t talked about as much as the crocverse or other, much more fun aspects. further, atla (specifically zukka) fandom misogyny often doesn’t look like the fandom misogyny we’ve become familiar with from like, Sherlock fandom or what have you. for the most part, people don’t actively hate Suki, they just “stan” without actually caring about her. they hate Mai because they believe in treating male victims of abuse equally. they’re not characterizing Toph poorly, they’re writing her as a “strong woman.” in short, people are misogynistic, and then invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of feminist theory to shield themselves from accusations of misogyny. it’s not unlike the way some people will invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of critical race theory to shield themselves from accusations of racism, or how they’ll talk about “freedom of speech” and “the suppression of women’s sexuality” to justify sexualizing minors. the performance of feminism and antiracism is what’s important, not the actual practice.

if you’ve made it this far, first off, hi, thanks so much for reading, I know this was a lot. second, I would seriously encourage you to be aware of these fandom tropes and to call them out when you see them. elevate the voices of fans who do the work of bringing the female characters of atla to life. invest in the wlw ships in this fandom. drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic (please, drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic). read some yuetara. let’s all be honest about where we are now, and try to do better in the future. I believe in us.

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sagscrib · 2 years

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Your Turn To Die is a Game About Love

(Disclaimer: I don’t mean romantic love! The game has a very strong and clear focus on platonic love- romance very frequently takes a back seat if it has a seat at all.)

I’m sure this isn’t particularly original, but I really wanted to compile my thoughts. Spoilers below the cut.

The game isn’t about love from the beginning- the first solid chunk of it, in fact, is much more focused on dread and setting the tone, which it does well. This makes sense- it’s a death game, people die, stakes are high from the beginning. The love in this game is always going to be tied to sacrifice.

There are dashes of trust and genuine care thrown in throughout chapter one, but the first time I can really say for certain that an action was taken entirely out of love is at Mishima’s death. He made sure that he would be killed in order to keep Nao safe, though we wouldn’t know that until the first main game.

In fact, the first main game is when the game really starts being about love. As the game progresses, this is most of the reveals- Mishima loved Nao so much that he’d die for her, Sara loved Joe so much that even in these circumstances, his death led to her crumbling entirely, and Kai loved Sara so much that he was willing to go against the wishes of his own family for hers.

(Q-taro tackling Miley, I think, wasn’t love, but the product of two lonelinesses reaching out to each other, which is similar, and it’s echoed later on, but I’ll get to that)

Then there’s chapter 2, where love starts to be evident outside of the main game. Alice, for example, loves Reko, and has spent a long time agonizing over how to make things right with her. He ends up giving her (or the doll version of her) a gift that meant a lot to her a long time ago. And when she breaks it, he tries to put it back together on his own.

I believe Gin loves Sara by the time the token trading starts, evidenced by the fact that he’s willing to spend his tokens just to spend time with her (and we know that he loves her by the third chapter- he says as much when they’re going through his memories). This ends up having a sacrifice attached as well, though there’s no way Gin could have known at the time.

Then, naturally, there’s Shin’s love of Kanna. Whether he knows she’s his biological sister for sure at this point isn’t clear, but he very obviously feels brotherly towards her, and he’s willing to do what it takes to keep her safe. There’s the phone from her first trial room that Shin edits the message on (which ends up revealing her as the instigator of the final trade), as well as, of course, their fight over who to kill in the main game. Either Shin dies because he loved Kanna, or Kanna dies because she loved everyone too much to drag them down.

Alice and Reko’s deaths shake out similarly- either Alice dies because he loved Reko, or Reko dies because Nao loved her. They never get to reconcile or make things better.

In the main game, it’s revealed that the 4 non-contender participants were only pulled into the death game because they loved their respective person. They were handicaps, because their love was seen as a weakness. And, for the most part, it was, in that it made them more susceptible to loving the other people around them.

(Kai, arguably, wasn’t a handicap at all, but was just being punished for the crime of daring to love another person. The fact that Gashu is the second floor master seems to imply that Kai was never going to make it past the first floor, anyway. I digress.)

The first death to be entirely divorced from love is Gashu’s. His death is procedural, done to continue the death game, and while it lacks any real semblance of connection, it is very much a sacrifice. He is a disposable asset, and he knows it- which leads into chapter 3, and the dummies.

The dummies don’t seem to have a heartfelt connection to each other like the main cast does- which makes sense, it seems like they were created, then made to lie in the coffins until the main cast showed up, which doesn’t leave time for bonding. I don’t believe there’s any two dummies that would be willing to die for each other like the main cast is.

The dummies, as a stark contrast to the main cast, are entirely unloved, and entirely on their own. The only closeness they get is being driven by similar goals (with varying willingness to go through with them, it seems) and that they all have that same emptiness, which seems to reach out for each other as for their partners. Throughout the game, they all seem to grow closer to their partners (and, in Kurumada’s case especially, each other), culminating in either the banquet or the death of the remaining Yabusame, depending on the route- which is certainly something in and of itself.

In Ranmaru, this pseudo connection is most evident, as we see it with Sara. His emptiness reached out toward her, but she had no reason to reciprocate or even recognize it. This is a game about love, and she’s the protagonist- she has so much love, it almost destroys her. There’s probably a few reasons why their attitudes toward each other are so different as the game goes on, but the biggest is that they just don’t click like Ranmaru wants them to. He wants them to so bad, in fact, that he was willing to replace himself with Joe- someone he knew she loves- because the emptiness in him is that enormous.

Or, alternatively, he’s willing to kill for her, because love means sacrifice, and sometimes that sacrifice is your sense of self and every other person that either of them have a connection to.

(The dummies love all come in the form of a question- most of them are “could you,” but Ranmaru’s is a desperate “please”.)

Then, of course, throughout the chapter, there’s Q-Taro, who is unique in the fact that he says his death isn’t about love, but, rather, the fact that he just lost the will to keep fighting. He’s struggled with this for a long time- through his lantern dialogue with Keiji, we see him talk about his time in the hospital, and how he lost it there, too.

Familial love specifically has always been Q-Taro’s kryptonite. It’s Gin asking for his parents that gets him to take the shot of poison for him in the end, and it’s the kind of familial loneliness that him and Kai share that leads to him defending him to the ends of the Earth- even when he should, by all accounts, believe that he betrayed them all, and it’s wanting to reach his parents and make the people at the orphanage that made him a baseball player in the first place.

It’s that search for unconditional familial love that dictated his life until the end, and when he found it, I’m not entirely sure he was able to recognize it. The love he got from his friends wasn’t admiration for his celebrity status or appreciation for his skill- it was just love, for him as a person. He didn’t die for love, but he died because of it- because these were people worth fighting for.

Keiji, as it turns out, never killed for love. He killed out of fear, and then out of genuine, seething hatred. Both of these, however, were direct consequences of the love he did have- the last love he might have experienced, in fact. Outside of the death game, Keiji has no friends, according to dialogue in Your Time to Shine. This is the first time in a very long time that Keiji has been loved, and so it’s no surprise that he acts the way he does.

Midori, similarly, isn’t loved- he’s manipulative, offering a shoulder to cry on and a deal that’s too good to be true to people that are so desperate that they’d be stupid to refuse. He uses love as a weapon, not only in the death game, but outside of it, as well. He isn’t loved, and has no desire to be, but he knows good and well what other people are willing to do for it.

With that, we arrive at the place the game leaves off at- the final Main Game. Sara has Gin, Keiji, one or none of the Yabusames, and either Kanna or Shin with her. I don’t have any predictions for the final main game (other than that it’s going to hurt), but I’m willing to bet it’s going to be just as much about love as the rest of the game has been.

#yttd #your turn to die #sag speaks #idk if there’s an official yttd analysis tag but. it’s that #sorry it’s so long djfjfj i have. thoughts

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strawberryjamsara · 3 years

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Idea for a yttd no death game au that I may or may not write

-Joe is dying and Sara is frantically pushing at the button trying to stop him from succumbing. Everything seems bleak. Then she wakes up with the reveal it was a dream. Gin is shaking her awake yelling that Kai made chocolate chip pancakes and to go downstairs.

-Keiji is also down there, looking like he just woke up. Sara makes a snide comment about his eyebags, and he retorts that she doesn’t have much room to talk after she just refused to go to bed last night. Kai just serves breakfast with several one liners and Gin makes a comment about how he’s glad Kai is around because Mr Policeman and Muscle Gorilla can’t cook. Keiji takes offense to this and offers to try and make a side dish and about ten seconds in cuts himself on the knife. He gets the shit roasted out of him. Qtaro comes down looking pretty good and proceeds to see all the food is gone and gets roasted. All is well and good but something is bothering Sara.

-She meets up on the school path with Joe, Ranmaru and Anzu and they all begin teasing Ranmaru and pointing out his crush on Sara. At one point Anzu and Joe walk ahead and Ranmaru asks Sara if he can talk to her in private some time soon. Sara agrees then goes up to Joe and Anzu to loudly tell them that Ranmaru is gonna confess. Ranmaru protests loudly.

-She has a good day at school. Professor Mishima has always been her favorite teacher. However he says the old assignment Sara was working on got lost so she’ll have to start again. Sara agrees and accepts his apology, as well as his offer for an extension, and begins trying to recreate her old painting but comes to the realization she doesn’t remember what her last painting was.

-To amend this, she tries calling up Nao after school, since she remembers doing a lot of the piece with her. But strangely, Nao doesn’t seem to remember either. Nao offers to come up with a new painting if Sara comes over though, and Sara agrees. But before that her meeting with Ranmaru.

-She meets Ranmaru behind the school where he asks if she had a weird dream last night. She’s surprised and is about to say yes, but a sinking feeling arrives in her stomach at the idea of acknowledging it. She tells him no. So he says okay and tells her she can leave.

-She comes to Nao’s house and finds the usual scene. Reko is keeping to herself, Alice is lounging around before loudly announcing her presence when she comes in, and Nao is excited to see her! When coming up with a theme they toss ideas back and forth before Sara just suggests… a button pressing. She doesn’t know why. She just wants to. Nao doesn’t see a problem. Sara goes to give Reko a wave out before she leaves but she seems to be in a crabby mood. Alice explains it’s because of Samurai Yaibas concert getting cancelled due to an unexpected meltdown whatever that means. Sara offers to go shopping downtown with them on the promised day to make up for it. They agree and Sara is on her way.

-Sara is trying to go to sleep at night but the lights down the hall are still on so she storms to Keiji’s room to tell him to go the fuck to sleep it’s 1 in the morning. Good night Keiji.

-The next day, her and Joe are being sent together to babysit Kanna and Hinako after school. During school, Anzu asks Sara about her confession from Ranmaru and Sara just informs her of the conversation from yesterday. Anzu gasps and makes cries of Ranmaru playing with Sara’s heart, and Ranmaru tells her to calm down and more shenanigans ensue as they make a bigger and bigger scene.

-Joe is sent to pick up Hinako while Sara is out in charge of going to the Tsukimi’s and waiting on Kanna. Shin is pretty much already halfway out the door trying to get to work when she gets there, and she makes a few jokes at his expense but then feels a need to back off at how hard he recoils- usually he claps back twice as hard. Maybe she caught him on a bad day- and Joe comes in with Hinako who seems to have a new habit of writing everything that happens down. They watch She ra and play pretend well into the night and Shin comes back, thanks Sara and Joe profusely, and they even play a quick game of Mario Kart together, Sara taking note of how squeamish Shin is.

-Sara wakes up to see the lights are on again. She stomps to Keiji’s room again but this time she sees him hurriedly putting away a theory board when she comes in. She doesn’t know and she’s too tired to care. Goodnight Keiji.

-Ranmaru is absent from school the next day. Anzu and Joe are complaining loudly, but Sara for some reason feels a deep pit of dread in her stomach. She excuses herself trying to call him but gets no response. So she pulls Joe aside and tells him she had a dream he died and the last one on one conversation she had with Ranmaru was him asking her if she had a weird dream. Joe agrees that’s kinda weird and they decide to go around looking for answers.

-But first Reko Alice and Sara hangout! They go shopping downtown, and eventually stop at Mai’s bakery to sit down and eat. Throughout the trip Sara notices Reko being uncharacteristically mean to people they run into. Sara questions this before Alice replies that she’s always been like this and Sara must be remembering wrong. Sara can’t help but feel like she’s had this conversation before. On the bright side, Samurai Yaiba got rescheduled and Sara is invited. She gets 4 tickets, one for her, one for Anzu, one for Joe, and one for Ranmaru. She goes back home and tries to speculate on the personality shifts between Reko and Shin.

-It’s Sunday and time for Sara and Joe’s investigation! They meet up at her house, where they play with Gin and chat with Qtaro and Kai, then go off looking for leads, starting with Ranmaru’s apartment which is completely vacant. They track a few leads that go nowhere the final being that they know he would sometimes try to go and start shit with Kurumada so they go ask him and see him talking with Shin and Kanna, so they ask him and Shin for information. They don’t really have anything, and Shin actually says he’s looking for Hinako since she got a little far from him in a crowd. They agree and track her down writing notes again, and explain the situation, but Sara picks up one of the notes. “‘The case for Ranmaru Kageyama’? ‘A non-termination request’? What is thi-“ then she feels a shock at her back and falls over. “Sorry Sara senpai. I’m doing what I can.”

-Sara wakes up back in her room the next day. Was that a dream? She eats breakfast again tuning everything out, remembering how the scene went last week and then she remembers what bothered her so much about last weeks breakfast.

-Keiji didn’t bleed when he cut himself.

-Ranmaru is back in class the next day. Sara runs up to him trying to get answers out of him only to realize he hardly knows her and thinks she’s just a random classmate he’s never talked too. She yells to Joe and Anzu to snap him out of it but they seem to share a similar sentiment. She’s totally lost.

-She goes up to Mishima and asks what her previous art piece she was working on was. He says he doesn’t remember. That’s between her Nao and her own teacher not remembering. What is going on? How could they just forget? Did someone just erase it? Mishima asks if she’d like to see the nurse and she agrees.

-Until she sees the nurse. It’s her. She looks meek and quiet but the second Sara sees her her stomach drops to her shoes. She has to get out of there.

-She runs home- Keiji- Keiji had that theory board, he was saying something about her refusing to go to bed for some reason, and he went cooking to show her he didn’t bleed- he must know something-

-She finds the house empty. She calls for Kai and Gin and Qtaro and Keiji but nobody comes. The theory board- she runs to Keiji’s room and finds it- dolls- AIs- wait what? Everyone here was dolls and AIs? Was she…? She takes a pin from the board and pricks herself but she bleeds… so was everyone else… was this a box meant for her? Why?

-Then suddenly it slams into her brain like a freight train. She remembers what the previous version of the painting was.

-A sea of death. A pool of crimson with her standing above it, like she was somehow walking on top of it.

-“Ah… that’s another attempt miserably failed.”

-She turns around. She sees him. She doesn’t know him and yet she despises this person like mad. “Midori!”

-“You winning the game wasn’t supposed to be so much of a pain. Putting you in this glorified simulation for therapy is so much more trouble than it’s worth, but you were so hysterical otherwise we didn’t have a choice! And Hinako insisting we keep in people who keep cracking the code… we might have to do something about her too… but that’s nothing for you to worry about! Now go to sleep Ms Sara! When you wake up, everything will be fine again.”

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our-happygirl500-fan · 3 years

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My theory on what everyone’s roles will be in the Final Main Game:

Logic/Shin Route:

Sara: Sage

Shin: Key-Master

Keiji: Sacrifice

Gin: Commoner

Emotions/Kanna Route:

Sara: Sage

Kanna: Key-Master

Keiji: Sacrifice

Gin: Commoner

Alice/Reko: Commoner

My reasoning for the roles under the cut

I don’t think the roles will really differ between routes so Kanna & Shin have the same card.

I think Sara will be the Sage because that is the only role we haven’t really seen her in, I think Keiji will be the Sacrifice because this time around the Sacrifice is the most powerful card to have with its two votes & I think Keiji will probably want that, plus I think Keiji would more effectively be able to use the power the Sacrifice has now than Gin would.

Shin being the Key-Master would be like coming full circle from the First Main Game where he pretended to be the Key-Master, to actually being the Key-Master in the Final Main Game, plus if Shin is the Key-Master he could try to kill everyone by getting them to vote for him since the only other people left are the people who voted for Kanna & Sara being the Sage means she would know what he was doing. Shin is also the only person who wouldn’t work with Sara if he got the Sacrifice & I don’t really think the game is going to just take away the option of Sara teaming up with the Sacrifice.

Gin, Reko & Alice have held the Commoner role in all the previous main games & I don’t really see why that would suddenly change now for them plus Gin being the Commoner would result in lining up most with the memorandum.

The people mentioned in the memorandum parallel the participants of the current game:

The high-school girl paralleling Sara

Her best friend paralleling Joe

The boy even younger than her paralleling Gin

The man whose views most aligned with her own paralleling Keiji

The author of the memorandum paralleling Shin

Many events in the memorandum have already happened in the current game Shin ‘killed’ his true identity (which is similar to the author stating that he killed someone) & then decided he wouldn't trust anyone. He never participated in the Russian Roulette & was shocked with Sara’s ability to earn trust & then Joe died.

The biggest thing that hasn’t happened yet is Keiji & Gin dying & if they go through with the main game in the logic route Sara is either going to have to accept her own death or let Gin die.

If Shin is the Key-Master he CAN’T be voted for or they all die & if Keiji is the Sacrifice he can only escape with one person if chosen so Sara has to either choose dying so Gin can escape with Keiji or leaving Gin to die & escaping with Keiji herself.

If Sara decides not to escape with Keiji, Sara is either going to have to let Gin be voted for or let herself be voted for & if she chooses the former it will be just like the memorandum with Keiji & Gin dying.

So if they go through with the Final Main Game Sara’s options for living are either escape with Keiji or survive with Shin ironically choosing Shin has more likelihood for Sara living than choosing Keiji does as Keiji can always just choose to escape with Gin instead if chosen he’s likely to pick Sara but that is not a complete certainty. Plus I don’t really think the game would /let/ Sara go with Keiji as we’ve already seen Sara choose to escape with the Sacrifice in the Nao Ending, escaping with the Sacrifice again is just retreading old ground.

Also Maple mentioned “The Final Round Rule” which happens when all but two people die, “the two survivors live together for a while & then pledge an oath that one will be a human & one will be a doll. They decide through a discussion & end the ritual” the fact that this rule was mentioned makes me think there will be at least one ending where this happens & it honestly sounds like the final BAD END of the game & many people theorise that the Shin/Logic Route is the Bad End route because of its less hopeful nature so it makes sense that it would lead into this particular Bad End.

Of course this is all even assuming that the Final Main Game even takes place, escaping through the ‘exit on the sixth floor’ is still a possibility but I kind of think that will only happen in the Kanna/Emotions Route because that sounds like the best/ True Ending & many people theorise that the Kanna/ Emotions route is the True Route because of its hopeful nature so it makes sense that it would be the only route that allows you to escape the Final Main Game & get the best/ True Ending.

#your turn to die #yttd spoilers #sara chidouin #shin tsukimi #keiji shinogi #gin ibushi #kanna kizuchi #reko yabusame #alice yabusame #kime ga shine #yttd

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miss-steelmind · 3 years

Note

HELLO hello You Wanted that analysis? i may be completely random but this is something i myself have noticed and thought about before, so, if you will!!!!

shin’s personality during the death game isn’t that much like midori ater all. there’s a lot of differences and yet i can see why he considers it ‘becoming‘ midori

letsseeeee, the differences

- midori is... midori is just so Social, you know? shin only appears when he thinks he needs to, and otherwise hangs out with the few allyships he‘s made, or does things alone. as made obvious by gin’s little nicknames. midori is Not like that at all

- the way they act when feeling negative emotions. while they both do tend to get lost when in a big panic during the times where they get caught on their mistakes, as well as focusing on one set goal to the point they lose track of other things they couldve done and frget any mistakes, this is not something shin could’ve copied. we barely even see midori in such situations and there is no way for shin (before the death game, the timid friendly teenager, mind you) to know what midori is like when in panic. midori just wouldnt ever show him that. i dont believe it

anyway! onto the other part i wanted to explan in this. their negative feelings. midori is completely insistent on acting happy and joyful during the majority of the chapter. while i understand this may partially be the excitement it gives him, i believe he also hides his negative emotions to many lengths unless he’s caught. his fear of death is what causes him to show those bad feelings because it’s just so.... frightening. to him. i think he has had this fear of death before the chapter, even, because even when midori jokes about his own death he has also been shown to struggle with imagining himself in situations he isnt in at that moment. this may be related to his empathy - he cant put himself in others shoes so neither can he in other situations than the ones he goes through atm (not to say low empathy is bad, but midori has it and it explains his behavior). its why he goes all ‘hahaha im dead!!!!!’ when speaking to the cast about it but breaks into a panic when he’s actually about to die. sorry for the midori analysis here haha, but anyway point being here midori hides his negative feelings so much while shin puts in less effort for such

- that reminds me! the next point! the way they care about others (if they even do). midori does NOT understand caring, obviously, and deals with it unhealthily. shin cares SO MUCH sometimes, to the point he lets lose of all else to save the one he cares about so much, kanna. he also shows little aspects that shows he wants kanna to be alright (and this part is about compassion, not empathy, because midori does not want the others to be okay. shin does. shin feels compassion, midori does not).

- the way they stand in situations! by this i mean, midori‘s possessiveness. midori Really wants to control the situations he is in and will do anything to have control of the others. it’s also a part of the reason he broke into a panic. he not only had to face death, he also lost control of what was going on and couldnt do Anything about that. when he begged for sara to let him live at the end of 3b, it shows that his fear of death is greater than anything else, because he even lost his controlling little shenanigans in order to find a way to survive. shin drops all else when the ones he cares about get in danger, midori loses it when he fears this fear.

- not a very important, yet very obvious point however: midori comes off as energetic, and shin is moreso ‘calm’

this leads me to a certain conclusion! shin did Not want to copy midori’s personality. he wanted to copy his idea of him. shin knows midori is strong however a bad person, and reminds himself if he becomes the biggest asshole there can be, he can be strong, like midori. thats just the way shin thinks. he believes the strong aren’t kind, so in that he copied the fact that midori is bad, not midori as a person.

wowowaha this got long hahaahahhxz, thank you for reading <3

IM SORRY THIS IS OLD i wanted to wait until i can collect my thoughts but you worded is so perfectly i don't think i can add much more at this point :0 ty so much for this russell, it was really cool to read!!

i will just say i completely agree, especially with the last part. shin's idea of a "strong person" is faulted from the very beginning and he has a hard time understanding that you don't need to be evil to be strong because that's what he saw, what he learnt from midori. (this also explains a lot about his relationship with sara – he's convinced that only a cruel person would be able to win, therefore sara must be a bad person. i guess that's quite obvious but felt like mentioning it anyway hdkdjd)

i've always found it a bit weird how sara and some other characters say that midori is so much like shin, because honestly, i think shin did a terrible job copying him (which is, you know, understandable). i guess it makes sense, unlike the player they only saw his worst moments, still, like you've already explained in great detail there are some MAJOR differences between the two

you know, their relationship kind of reminds me of when someone tries to copy a famous person who seemingly has it all together and attempt to become that idealized version of them they created in their head. does that make sense?

anyways,, again, thank you for taking the time to write this, it was super interesting!!<3

#yttd #shin tsukimi #sou hiyori #ask #nine's turn to die

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ayuuria · 3 years

Text

Inuyasha Translation: Animage Magazine February 2010 Issue

Please do not repost this translation without my consent! This includes screenshots of any type and amount. If you wish to share this translation, simply link to this post.

For more information regarding the use of my translations, click here.

This was a translation request from @officialinuyasha. This article was published back when “Inuyasha the Final Act” was still airing.

Proof of the Successor

Tenseiga was a sword that was cut off from Tessaiga along with Meidōzangetsuha. Then is Inuyasha worthy of wielding the Tessaiga? Sesshōmaru has finally gone into serious mode. The unprecedented brother showdown is about to begin!

Sesshōmaru in “Inuyasha The Final Act” gave off the impression that he developed a compassionate heart in comparison to before. Not only did he have a soft gaze when he attended Kagura’s death but he also put himself at risk to save Rin who fell into the underworld.

However, on the one hand, he continued to hold a heart that stoically yearned for insatiable power. The one offensive technique that Tenseiga, “The sword of healing”, obtained: “Meidōzangetsuha”. At first, it could only open a small meidō in the shape of a crescent moon, but after several ordeals, it matures to the point that it can open a gigantic meidō close to the shape of a circle. All of this came about from Sesshōmaru’s ability.

However, no matter how much of a powerful sword Tenseiga becomes, Sesshōmaru was unable to throw away his obsession with Tessaiga. It was then that he learned through his battle with Shishinki that Tenseiga was a sword that was cut off from Tessaiga. Did his father give him Tessaiga’s unneeded aspect? Sesshōmaru, whose pride has been hurt, purposely goes along with Naraku’s trap.

Inuyasha vs Sesshōmaru. The not so long-ago clash between the brothers over Tessaiga is about to begin. Who is the rightful successor!?

Brothers with the Same Father

A full-fledged demon and half-demon but the two resemble each other somehow.

While they both have the same father, there’s a big difference in ability and thought process towards humans between Sesshōmaru, a full-fledged demon, and Inuyasha, a half-demon with a human mother. Inuyasha previously loved Kikyō and desperately protects Kagome. Sesshōmaru on the other hand, had no interest in humans. However, Rin’s existence has brought about change within his heart. Just as his mother said, did Sesshōmaru perhaps inherit his attachment to humans from his father?

A Strengthened Tessaiga

From numerous past battles, Tessaiga has become the most powerful weapon.

Tessaiga was originally a fang of Inuyasha’s greater demon father. Tōtōsai forged it into a sword and it became Inuyasha’s weapon. Afterwards, Inuyasha mastered various techniques such as the Wind Scar, Backlash Wave, and Adamant Barrage. In addition, Tessaiga has the ability to transform itself as well as becoming the barrier breaking red Tessaiga and the demon vortex cutting dragon-scaled Tessaiga. Furthermore, from the clash with Sesshōmaru, Tessaiga will climb to new heights.

Tessaiga and Tenseiga

The powerful weapon Tessaiga and the dead reviving Tenseiga

Inuyasha’s father entrusted him with Tessaiga. Meanwhile, Sesshōmaru was entrusted with “Tenseiga”, a sword that can revive the dead. Sesshōmaru exasperates dissatisfaction with Tenseiga as it cannot be used in battle. However, from obtaining Meidōzangetsuha, Tenseiga has become a powerful weapon. Sesshōmaru raised Tensaiga from only being able to open a small, crescent moon shaped meidō at the beginning, to being able to open a gigantic meidō in the shape of a near circle. However…

The Truth Behind Meidōzangetsuha

In order to strengthen Tessiaga, father used Sesshōmaru and Tenseiga?

Meidōzangetsuha was technique that their father stole from Shishinki. According to Shishinki, their father did not know what to do with Meidōzangetsuha and thus had Tenseiga created in order to cast it off of Tessaiga. Perhaps their father entrusted Sesshōmaru with Tenseiga in order to complete Meidōzangetsuha which a half-demon like Inuyasha couldn’t handle and then have (the technique) entrusted to Inuyasha someday? This gave birth to doubt within Sesshōmaru.

Naraku’s Trap

While realizing it is a trap set up by Naraku, Sesshōmaru purposely goes along with it.

Through Shishinki’s words, Sesshōmaru’s attachment to Tessaiga strengthened. There was no way Naraku would overlook the movement in his heart. The mirror fragment that Kanna (who died) left behind. While it was only a small piece, it did not lose the ability to take and duplicate an enemy’s technique. Sesshōmaru, who receives the fragment from Byakuya of the Mirage, puts it on Tenseiga while knowing it’s one of Naraku’s traps and challenges Inuyasha to a battle.

The Role of Sesshōmaru, Narita Ken

— Episode 15 “The Rightful Successor” depicts a fierce battle with Inuyasha. What were your thoughts when you enacted (that episode)?

Narita: I felt very tense through the whole thing and it was as though the content was reminding me of the movie. (translator’s note: He’s referring to the 3rd Inuyasha movie, Swords of the Honorable Ruler)

— Sesshōmaru says to Inuyasha “Show me Inuyasha. Proof that you are Tessaiga’s successor and not I.” and commences battle with him. Narita-san, how do you comprehend his feelings towards his father regarding Tenseiga and his anger towards Inuyasha?

Narita: I believe all of it is hatred. Only one with power should have a perfect sword. I think that natural thought is the sole source of his anger towards Inuyasha.

— In episode 15, do you think Sesshōmaru was truly trying to kill Inuyasha? Or was he merely testing him?

Narita: I believe it was both. Those without power die. There is no love or sympathy in that.

— In a previous conversation with Yamaguchi-san, he stated that Inuyasha and Sesshōmaru are jealous of each other. Having acted in “The Final Act” up to the midway point, how do you once again perceive Sesshōmaru’s relationship to Inuyasha?

Narita: I think there was jealousy at the beginning. However now, it’s not something that petty but rather, who’s stronger. I think it’s this single point.

— Sesshōmaru relinquishes Meidōzangetsuha. What do you think this will bring about for him?

Narita: Growth. More strength.

— I would like to ask regarding the two in Sesshōmaru’s team. What sort of feelings do you think Sesshōmaru has for Rin?

Narita: A part within his heart. Like a nostalgic part that he lacks.

— In episode 9, Sesshōmaru saved Rin who had fallen into the underworld. In that episode, which scene left an impression on you?

Narita: The last scene where Sesshōmaru says, “You’re alright now”

— In addition, in episode 9, Sesshōmaru’s mother appears. What is your impression of her? What do you think mother and son have in common and what in way are they different?

Narita: That coldness. Indifference. She also had a comical aspect which I did not expect.

— Regarding the fussy Jaken, what do you think is the reason Sesshōmaru moves with him despite everything?

Narita: I think it’s because it can’t be helped. Like someday he might be useful for something.

— Jaken has a lot of funny lines. If there is a line that left a lasting impression on you, please tell us.

Narita: There’s so many that I can’t say just one.

— The amount of people that Sesshōmaru has connections with is gradually increasing. What sort of growth do you think he will achieve going foward?

Narita: I wish that Sesshōmaru himself never changes. I want him to maintain his sublime aloofness.

— In addition to giving the fans a message, please tell us how you will prepare to act Sesshōmaru in the second half of the series.

Narita: Thank you for always supporting me. In my mind, he has not changed. Any sort of love or kindness has nothing to do with his solitary world. Even if he becomes able to understand the hearts of humans, his heart will never be like the others. Please continue to watch over us.

Our Beloved Lord Sesshōmaru!?

From the point of view of Inuyasha’s party, Sesshōmaru is unsociable and completely does his own thing. But to Jaken and Rin, his existence is precious. Here we have a special feature regarding the two’s “love” for Lord Sesshōmaru!

The very powerful Lord Sesshōmaru. Why someone like him who has lived his life without relying on anyone, purposely moving together with Jaken and Rin? If you were to say it, I think it’s because the two of them are very cute. At first glance, Jaken is a middle-aged small demon with an underhanded personality that makes unnecessary comments and lies. However, you truly cannot hate that sense of restlessness. Rin, on the other hand, is a genuinely cute girl. Sesshōmaru listens to their arguments without the slightest change of expression but in reality, could he perhaps be biting down that amusement in his heart?

Finally, the best part about the two of them is their overflowing “love” for Lord Sesshōmaru. Sesshōmaru is of the strongest class within the “Inuyasha” world but when you see the two of them getting close to him, you can’t help but think the 3 of them are having fun in spite of it all.

Character Bios

Sesshōmaru As an aloof existence, Sesshōmaru has lived his life as he pleases. However, the existence of Tessaiga and Tensaiga leads his heart astray. And now to the brother’s showdown!

Jaken A small demon who serves as Sesshōmaru’s servant. While he makes blatant lies, he’s an existence that one can’t hate. He does not intend to lose to anyone when it comes to loyalty to Lord Sesshōmaru.

Rin A girl who lost her life after being attacked by man-eating wolves but was revived by Sesshōmaru’s “Healing Tenseiga”. Innocent and cheerful, she bares a carefree personality. Her special trait is her severe jabs at Jaken’s remarks.

The One in Charge of Reactions

The extremely cool Sesshōmaru does not break his facial expression easily, no matter what kind of enemy appears or what the enemy says to him. It is there that Jaken fulfills that important role. It is when Jaken is surprised and talks back to the enemy that the (conversational) exchange between Sesshōmaru’s party and the enemy begins to proceed. In other words, Jaken is in charge of reactions within Sesshōmaru’s party. There are times where he unintentionally goes overboard though…

The Life That Was Saved Twice

In episode 9, Rin is kidnapped and taken into the underworld. Sesshōmaru struggles hard to save Rin but Tenseiga can only revive a person once. Without the aid of Sesshōmaru’s mother, Rin would have remained dead. Sesshōmaru looks at Rin softly as she slowly opens her eyes. It was a scene that made you wonder what Sesshōmaru would do when Rin grows up.

You See, the Greatest Combination Within “Inuyasha” is the Silliness and Jabs of Jaken x Rin.

Jaken makes exaggerated and underhanded remarks and Rin jabs at them. There are some periodic gags that are sharp within “Inuyasha the Final Act” but the combination of these two is superb. For example, in episode 3

Jaken “Lord Sesshōmaru’s heart is perfect!”

Rin “He’s strong and kind~”

Jaken *teary eyed* “I don’t know anything about kindness.”

After that, there’s episode 14 that made the voice actor for Jaken, Chō-san, roar with laughter.

Jaken “I’m included with the small people?”

Rin “Master Jaken, you’re small in a lot of ways. Your height, heart, and personality.”

I wonder which dialogue between Jaken x Rin made all of you laugh the most?

The Role of Jaken, Chō

— Episode 15 “The Rightful Successor” depicts a fierce battle between Inuyasha and Sesshōmaru. How was the recording?

Chō: It was terrific. Especially Inuyasha’s yelling as there was a high amount of enthusiasm.

— Jaken appears to be the spokesperson for Sesshōmaru’s emotions (sometimes he gets it wrong though). What sort of feelings do you think he has towards Sesshōmaru?

Chō: Love itself. There’s something there that’s not just a master-servant relationship.

— Jaken has many humorous lines but having acted up to episode 15, which scene left an impression on you?

Chō: I love his reaction when Rin told him “Master Jaken, your personality and heart are small”

— There is silliness and jabs with Rin and they make a good combo. What is your impression of the dialogues with Noto-san? What is the fun part about acting?

Chō: Rin makes some pretty sadistic jabs. Jaken, who’s a masochist, is surprisingly happy with them.

— Jaken sometimes makes obvious lies. It is a refreshing level of falsehood but why does he do that?

Chō: He’s childish.

— What do you think is Jaken’s happiness?

Chō: Lord Sesshōmaru’s happiness.

— In addition to giving the fans a message, please tell us how you will prepare to act Jaken in the second half of the series.

Chō: I will play around while focusing!

The Role of Rin, Noto Mamiko

— Episode 15 “The Rightful Successor” depicts a fierce battle between Inuyasha and Sesshōmaru. How was the recording?

Noto: It had quite a tense feeling, and it pulled me deeper into the story.

— In episode 9, Rin fell into the underworld and was saved by Sesshōmaru. How did you feel seeing Sesshōmaru doing his utmost at the time?

Noto: I once again felt that Rin was truly precious to Sesshōmaru.

— Among the Rin scenes up to episode 15, which one left an impression on you?

Noto: I like the scene in episode 9 where after she’s saved by Sesshōmaru and opens her eyes, she says “Lord Sesshōmaru……” with a feeling of relief. There are a lot of other impressionable scenes so it’s hard to narrow it down (laughs).

— There is silliness and jabs with Jaken and they make a good combo. What is your impression of the dialogues with Chō-san? What is the fun part about acting?

Noto: Chō-san’s Jaken is the best!! Just the fact that I can dialogue with him makes me happy! Rin is quite harsh so acting that part is fun (laughs).

— What sort of feelings do you think Rin has for Sesshōmaru? Also, if Rin becomes an adult as is, how do you think those feelings will change?

Noto: It might be a little different from family, but I think she considers him as someone who is irreplaceably precious. When she becomes an adult…… I can’t really imagine it (laughs). It would be wonderful if she comes to (romantically) love him (laughs). However, I have a feeling (her feelings) won’t change. With Rin as she is now.

— What do you think is Rin’s happiness?

Noto: I think it’s being together with Sesshōmaru and Jaken.

— In addition to giving the fans a message, please tell us how you will prepare to act Rin in the second half of the series.

Noto: “Inuyasha the Final Act” is a truly passionate drama!!!! I plan to act with everything I’ve got alongside everyone until the end so please treat me well!!

#Inuyasha #Inuyasha The Final Act #translation

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thebakingqueen5 · 3 years

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KW 2021: Blending Cultures

Day 2 for Kataang Week 2021 hosted by @kataang-week with the prompt Blending Cultures!

Definitely one of my better oneshots this week, mildly inspired by that one tumblr post talking about how the cloudbabies' mixed heritage should've been more highlighted in LoK. Hope I did it justice!

Links: AO3 | FF.net

Summary: Another year, another summer, another week of prompts celebrating our favorite couple. Kataang Week 2021 Day 2: Blending Cultures. Aang and Katara were from two very different cultures, but they made their family work anyways.

Word Count: 2.6K

The Air Nation and the Water Tribes.

Two extremely versatile societies, with rich cultures and very diverse people.

From these two societies came two very special people, who against all odds managed to create a beautiful life together: Avatar Aang from the Southern Air Temple and Master Katara from the Southern Water Tribe.

From the very start, Aang and Katara intertwined their traditions in ways not many believed were possible in the fresh post-war era.

Their wedding, the beginning of their family, had been the grandest event in over a century for both nations given that the war had prevented such festivities during its reign of terror. That day was to be a sign of healing, of peace, and of celebration as their friends and family from all four nations came together at Air Temple Island in honor of love.

Aang had been standing at the marble altar in long flowing robes of the brightest yellows, reds, and oranges. The warm smile on his face complimented the warm hues of his clothing, and a string of engraved wooden beads and thread tassels adorned his neck.

Katara, on the other hand, looked like the night to his day, wearing a deep, dark blue dress passed down from her mother. It had golden thread embroidered on the bodice and skirt to mimic the constellations sailors used to navigate the icy waters surrounding her home, and, in Aang’s opinion, it gave her an absolutely ethereal presence.

Bouquets of ice lilies, pink flowers that grew near the Southern Spirit Oasis, intermingled with the flowers of moon peaches grown at the Air Temples lined the halls of the temple as the bride and groom’s loved ones watched them perform each nation’s respective wedding customs.

As per Air Nomad tradition, the week before the wedding, Aang and Katara had visited the four air temples and meditated in front of each of the eternal tornadoes in hopes that the cardinal wind spirits would guide them in the right direction no matter where life led.

The pair had also gotten complimentary tattoos on their backs, right over their hearts (slightly above in Aang’s case due to his scar): yin for Aang and yang for Katara, to symbolize how they balanced each other and created harmony.

When they stood on the altar, their officiator, Hakoda, had tied three sacred red strings around their ring fingers. They were woven from plants growing around Aang’s original home, the Southern Air Temple, and symbolized the red thread of fate binding them to each other, their soulmates. The strings also stood for the three tenets of a successful marriage: trust, communication, and love, all of which they had plenty of.

The second part of the ceremony incorporated the Southern Water Tribe traditions. Around Katara’s neck rested her mother’s necklace, the symbol for water on one side and the symbol for air on the other, an addition by Aang (with her permission of course) so that she would never have to choose between wearing one pendant or the other.

After their hands had been binded by the threads, their two chosen tribal elders, Pakku and Kanna, stepped up with wooden bowls of navy paint in hand and gave them their marks from ice dodging all those years ago. Katara, once again, received a crescent moon in the center of her forehead, the Mark of the Brave, while Aang was given the Mark of the Trusted, a slightly curved arch that barely touched the tip of his arrow.

“Aang and Katara,” Hakoda began, “Your two marks show that you are the embodiment of bravery and honesty, and these traits will do you well in the years to come. You will always have courage and trust in one another, as those are your natural inclinations, but you must take care to incorporate logic and wisdom into your interactions and decisions with one another to remain as steadfast and stable as the undulations of the great ocean.”

He turned to the enraptured airbender, who was unable to tear his gaze away from his soon-to-be wife.

“Do you, Avatar Aang of the Air Nomads, vow to trust Katara, to accept, learn from, and return her courage and bravery, to love her through wind and hail, through blizzards and storms, in times of plenty and of scarcity, for as long as the moon guides the sea’s waves to shore?”

“I do.”

Hakoda smiled and turned to his daughter.

“And do you, Master Katara of the Southern Water Tribe, vow to have courage for Aang, to accept, learn from, and return his trust and honesty, to love him through wind and hail, through blizzards and storms, in times of plenty and of scarcity, for as long as moon guides the sea’s waves to shore?”

“I do.”

“Then let the spirits of our ancestors, the great Tui and La, and the cardinal wind spirits bear witness to this union and bless it as they have with all those before.”

Hakoda, Pakku, and Kanna all dipped their fingers into a small bowl of water from the Spirit Oasis and sprinkled it over the couple.

“You are now husband and wife. Welcome to the family, son.”

Aang and Katara both smiled widely and pulled each other into a tight embrace.

“We’re married,” the airbender whispered incredulously.

“I know,” she said back. “I was there.”

He laughed and swept her up in a kiss, taking care not to mess up her ornate braids as he closed the distance between them.

“I love you,” he murmured when they finally parted.

“I should hope so, you did just vow to love me no matter what.”

Aang rolled his eyes and pouted. “I’m trying to be sweet here, the least you could do is return the favor.”

Katara gave him an exaggerated sigh and rested her head on his chest, her arms draped around his neck and she closed her eyes in contentment.

“I love you too, Aang. Forever and always.”

“See now that’s more like it!” he grinned, making the waterbender chuckle.

“All that planning, all the months of stress and doing overtime to get the next two weeks off and planning and the wedding invitations and did I mention the planning?” The two shared a short laugh. “All of that and we’re finally here. We’re married. What do we do now? Where do we go from here?”

“Slow down there, Tara. We have the rest of our lives together to figure all that out. Let’s stay in the moment.”

“Rest of our lives. I like the sound of that,” she smiled.

“I did promise you that we would grow old together, did I not? I intend on seeing that through. For now though, the buffet will be starting and I’m famished. Let’s go eat!”

“You sound like Sokka,” she deadpanned, an amused glint in her eyes nevertheless. “Lead the way, my dear husband.”

The airbender gallantly gestured to where the rest of the crowd had already started heading. “But of course, my lovely wife.”

The banquet, like their wedding, was an exquisite culmination of food from all over. There were countless Air Nomad and Water Tribe dishes present, in addition to a few from the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation like bean curd puffs, mochi, and, of course, Aang’s personal favorite, egg custard tarts.

Though Aang had reassured his bride during the wedding planning that she could arrange for as many meat dishes as she liked for her Water Tribe family, Katara had declined, saying that they could go without it for one day.

Instead, the feast had traditional southern foods like kale cookies, five flavor soup, sea prune stew (which Aang took extra care to avoid), and a new dessert that Sokka had been working on: spun sugar in the shape of a ball that he liked to call “cotton candy”.

The guests attending were especially excited for the Air Nomad cuisine present, as such a variety of foods from their culture hadn’t been seen in over a century. Vegetable-filled dumplings and bowls of savory mung bean curry sat on round platforms that rotated in the center of the tables. Golden platters held coconut macaroons, warm steamed buns, and a large variety of fruit pies made from the trees that grew on the mountainside next to the temples. There was also a special syrup made from maple trees that went over a fluffy Earth Kingdom delicacy called “pancakes.”

Everyone had an absolutely grand time, and the event was one talked about for quite some time to come, both with its political significance (the Avatar’s wedding wasn’t something that happened every day) and the symbolism it had for how the nations themselves could work together if they tried to create something beautiful.

The way Aang and Katara’s traditions mixed that very first day of their family was reflected throughout the rest of their life as they blended their cultures for their children.

Aang often took Bumi, Kya, and Tenzin to meditate by the lagoon for some tranquility and peace of mind. He reminded them of the importance of being open to new ideas and to look at things clearly and calmly. He helped them take on life as it came and have faith that they would always be led in the right direction by fate like a leaf being carried by the wind.

Katara also took the three to the lagoon on the southwest tip of the island, not so much to meditate but rather to observe the motion of ripples and the subtle movement of the water. She taught them to always have hope and to not be detached from their emotions. She wanted them to remain present in the moment, making sure they were aware of what they were feeling without being consumed by it- a delicate balance like the ebb and flow of the tides.

Once Bumi, Kya, and Tenzin each turned 14, their parents took them down to the South Pole for ice dodging, a Southern Water Tribe coming-of-age ceremony and rite of passage. As was tradition, their dad, Aang, was to take the three out on a wooden sailboat to navigate the treacherous and iceberg-filled waters of the Antarctic.

Though he wasn’t born in the Water Tribes, the airbender made sure to ask and learn all he could from Hakoda, Sokka, and Pakku so that he could pass on and perform those special father-child rituals.

No one was grinning wider than Aang when he awarded Bumi the Mark of the Brave for preventing the boat from capsizing, his heart had overflowed with joy giving Kya the Mark of the Trusted after she guided them through a narrow glacial pass, and he felt nothing but pure pride painting the Mark of the Wise on Tenzin’s freshly-tattooed arrow after his creative airbending solution to evade an ice blockade.

Despite his young age, Tenzin was an incredibly skilled airbender. Alongside Aang, he was one of the youngest masters in Air Nomad history, having earned his arrows in an extremely tear-filled ceremony a mere month before going ice dodging.

In fact, all of the kids were quite naturally talented at their respective disciplines. Bumi, a nonbender, took up many martial arts forms and combat styles, specifically “aikido” and “anipak.”

Aikido was an Air Nomad self defense technique. Though Aang taught all his children to use any form of fighting only as a last resort, he wanted to make sure they could protect themselves in a precarious situation. Aikido aligned with the Air Nomad beliefs of pacifism by relying on the principle of using your opponent's energy against them rather than being the aggressor.

Anipak, on the other hand, was the name given to the Southern Water Tribe style of combat. Bumi learned the ways of the boomerang and scimitar, a type of sword with a long curved blade, from his uncle Sokka and grandfather, who were delighted to teach him such a vital part of his heritage.

Both fighting techniques served Bumi well during his time in the United Forces and made him known as a great general, soldier, and leader, not just the child of two of the most powerful benders in the world.

As the only girl and spitting image of Katara, Kya learned healing and the Southern Water Tribe style of waterbending from her mother. Despite being a waterbender, she had the heart and spirit of an airbender like her father. She had a natural aptitude towards healing, much like Katara, but didn’t want to learn to fight. It wasn’t until Aang showed her how to incorporate airbending-like movements into her waterbending that she ever opened up to the idea.

Over the years, both parents taught her well, and, true to her nomadic roots, she went on to travel the globe and became a world-renowned healer who could most definitely hold her own in a fight.

Finally, the youngest of the three was Tenzin. With the weight of a whole nation on his shoulders, it was no secret that he held more of a connection to his Air Nomad side, but there was still significant Water Tribe influence.

Tenzin learned airbending from his father, Aang, but after years of watching his mother and sister waterbend, his movements became quite similar. He incorporated more redirection and punchier motions with his acrobatics to create a unique style of airbending that came from both cultures. These gave him an advantage while fighting and led to the thing that would earn him his mastery tattoos: the air wheel, inspired by a similar spinning water move Tenzin had seen Katara do.

The three cloudbabies had truly gotten the best of both worlds, and carried on their parents’ legacies by ushering the world into new eras of unity, peace, and prosperity.

Of course, despite all Aang and Katara’s efforts, there were still moments when Bumi, Kya, and Tenzin felt detached from their heritage. After all, they weren’t fully immersed in either society, having lived at Air Temple Island all their lives. Whether they were visiting their grandpa in the South or sitting in on an Air Acolyte lesson, there would often be a feeling of not quite belonging.

They were from the two rarest cultures in the world, and their combination had never been seen before. No one completely understood what it was like for them, not even each other. All three of them each had different relationships to each part of their culture, whether it was feeling closer to one or not feeling connected to either.

Katara and Aang did their best to assuage any fears or concerns they had, teaching them everything they wanted to know while also telling them that there was no pressure to learn, that they could go on to forge their own path and leave old traditions behind in the past, if that was what they wanted. And sometimes that reassurance helped, but sometimes it didn’t.

No family was perfect, and that held true for them. They had their fair share of problems, but at the end of the day, both Aang and Katara, as well as their children, were proud to be who they were. They were proud of their heritage, of where they came from, and of their unique set of traditions, and they wouldn’t give it up for the world.

So in spite of all the hardships, all the challenges, and all the struggles, with an abundance of love in their hearts for both each other and their children, Aang and Katara, two very different people from two very different nations, managed to create their own culture, a unique mix of Air Nomad and Southern Water Tribe traditions, just as beautiful and blended as their family.

#kataang week #kataang week 2021 #kataang #aang x katara #kataangtag #bc their experience needs to be kNOWN

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zukoscomet · 3 years

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I realised recently that I never actually collated all the ideas I had about my Zutara kids so here, have some steambabies! Idk I just really like the idea of Katara and Zuko having a big family after all they’ve lost when they were young, and as an only child, I guess I kind of romanticise the idea of having siblings.

TW: I hc that Katara would have had a miscarriage, so if that is a trigger for you then maybe don’t read on.

Shameless plug but if you wanna read more about this, my series on AO3 is roots and wings.

Their firstborn is a boy who they name Kai after Kya. His full name is Kaito but nobody who knows him ever calls him that, not even when he’s in trouble. I’m not going to go into too much context about like the pregnancy bc you can already find that stuff here. He turns out very much like Zuko physically - tall, golden irises, straight black hair, narrow angular face - but he has mixed tawny skin and his eyes are shaped round and wide like Katara. He’s born on the last day of summer in 109 AG, so because of superstition that firebenders are born in peak summer, there’s some uncertainty about what he’ll bend - if at all - but then when he’s three and a half, he makes a flame. Iroh trains him to firebend until he’s about 16, then he goes off to the Sun Warriors for a year to finish off, and he ends up a very spiritual firebender. Kai is like the dream first child - the softest boy ever to live - and when Katara and Zuko go on to have more children, he’s a really great big brother, like wholeheartedly adores his little sibs even if they drive him completely nuts about 95% of the time. He’s quite a conflicted and confused kid growing up. He’s never quite sure of what he wants in life but finally, when he’s 17, he decides that he realises that he doesn’t want to be Fire Lord and passes along the heir status to his sister. After that he joins the Sun Warriors and eventually marries the chief’s daughter, Himari, and they have two firebender girls, Aiko and Sol.

Izumi arrives not long after her brother in 110 AG. Katara and Zuko planned to wait but it ends up that there’s barely a year between Kai and Izumi and it comes as an extra shock as Katara didn’t figure out she was pregnant again till like 18 weeks in. Katara goes into labour early at 35 weeks and Izumi is born really small - she never completely catches up either and it’s hilarious because after successive generations of tall male Fire Lords, they get Izumi who’s barely 5 feet - but she’s otherwise fine. She’s physically a mish-mash so overall she resembles nobody especially - Katara’s hair, complexion and big round eyes, Zuko’s irises, Azula’s heart-shaped face and highly arched brow line, Hakoda’s facial features. The superstition about summer births for firebenders peters out real quick when Izumi, born in the autumn, bends blue fire at two and a half and, taught by Jeong Jeong, she grows into a prodigal master. When she’s young, Izumi is the polar opposite of her brother - feisty, stubborn, determined and whip smart - and she’s a heathen teenager but by about 15 she mellows and matures, and part of Kai’s reasoning for abdicating is that Izumi seems a better fit for Fire Lord. Izumi was always kinda apathetic to kids but at 19, she accidentally gets pregnant and has her son, Kazuo, then her daughter, Kira, eleven years later. Izumi becomes Fire Lord at 37 but she only rules for about 14 years before retiring. Since she had Kaz so young, if she stayed on the throne much longer, Kaz would also be an older man when it came time for him to inherit, so she decides to step aside and Kaz is coronated just after his 33rd birthday.

(Kazuo takes after his Gran Gran in more ways than just his blue eyes; he’s a waterbender so Kaz is the first waterbender Fire Lord)

After a break, Katara and Zuko decide to try for a third addition and Katara gives birth - in the Southern Water Tribe, for the first time - to Bashira, four years after Izumi. Shira looks probably the most like Zuko out of all the children, even more than her elder brother does. They share the same tall and lean physique, the same long black hair, Shira is mixed but still the palest of all the steambabies and their faces are practically identical. They’re characteristically very similar, too - serious, intense and reserved. The only differences is that her hair is curly, her eyes are blue and finally, Katara gets her waterbending child. Both of them suspected that Shira was going to be a waterbender even at the early stages of the pregnancy, but it’s still super exciting when Shira tosses a wave at her elder siblings when she’s two. Katara is teaching her as soon as she possibly can but over time some tension develops between them when Shira turns out to be quite different from her mom in terms of natural bending style. Shira is very fight-oriented, she learns dao swords from Zuko and never shows as much of an interest in the healing arts, but when things blow up and eventually Shira is able to explain that she wants to be able fight like her mom did during the war, things straighten out and Katara guides Shira all the way through to mastery. She eventually moves to the South in her late teens to lead the tribe’s warriors. There, she has three children - waterbender twins Kenzo and Kenji, then a daughter named Kanna who’s a firebender like Grandpa - but the marriage to their father doesn’t last and in her 50s, she ends up in a relationship with Aang and Toph’s daughter, Lin.

Katara gets pregnant for a fourth time - planned - just after Shira turns two, but this time she has a miscarriage. Zuko was overseas when it happened so she went through it alone. Katara is devastated and resents Zuko for not being there. She knows it’s not his fault but she can’t help her emotions and that makes her feel even worse so she just shuts down - stops doing her Fire Lady work, stops spending any more time with Zuko and their children than necessary, won’t let the rest of the family visit them and spends most of the day lying in bed. Zuko doesn’t know how to help her so initially he decides to give her space to grieve however she feels she needs to, but it just deteriorates until one day Zuko suggests that maybe they should both go to therapy or marriage counselling or something because it can’t go on like this. Katara just completely loses it at that and ends up yelling at him all the things that she’d been bottling up over the last couple of months. Katara says some awful things and she’s expecting Zuko to take it poorly, hence why she kept it all inside up till now, but Zuko just accepts every bit of it and after that, she’s finally able to grieve properly and mend.

About six months after they come back together, they decide to try again and Katara eventually falls pregnant. The pregnancy itself goes smoothly but both of them are so stressed about something going wrong like last time and the effect that might have on both of them, then Gran Gran passes away when Katara is in her thirtieth week, so the full ten months were incredibly hard-going.

It’s a big relief when the baby is finally born on Ember Island, three years after Shira in 117 AG. They name her Lili in honour of their recent losses, since lilies can ease scars and Iroh once referred to them as lights in darkness. From the beginning, Lili is the image of Katara in every way physically and characteristically - kind, patient, gentle, but does have quite a temper if she’s pushed too far. She’s also a waterbender, though it takes her a little longer to manifest her abilities than any of her siblings, first gaining control of the water at the age of six. Lili is incredibly endearing, as both a child and an adult, and she becomes so particularly popular with the Fire Nation public that the firebending qualification to be considered an heir to the throne is reversed, so Shira and Lili are inducted into the succession. Born in the same year, Lili had a long-term relationship with Tenzin, Aang and Toph’s thirdborn, but as they grew older, Tenzin was concerned that if he married her, their children would have heritage of all four elements and degrade the chances of Tenzin producing airbenders and continuing the Air Nation. That concern resulted in a kind of on-again-off-again thing but eventually Lili sent him off with an "I don’t want to be with someone that isn’t even sure he wants me" and went travelling the world for a few years. When they’re both in their thirties though, Lili and Tenzin reconnect and get back together, eventually marrying and producing five children - Jinora, Aya, Hiro, Rohan and Kano, the elder four airbenders and the youngest a waterbender.

A few months after Lili is born, Sokka and Suki have a baby girl and when Katara and Zuko go to visit their new niece, they agree that night on a spur-of-the-moment that they want one more child. The morning after, they talk about it properly and decide it’d be better to wait till Lili was a bit older, but Katara found out six weeks later that that one time had been successful. About halfway through, they find out that they’re expecting a boy and Katara is especially excited since their son had always been more closely attached to her whereas their girls were very firmly Daddy’s girls. Sure enough, when Kallik arrives in 118 AG, he’s a big Mama’s boy and remains so his entire life. Apart from his curly black hair, Kallik is the spitting image of his uncle, to the point that Hakoda says that seeing Lili and Kallik together is like seeing young Katara and Sokka. Kallik is the hardest to handle out of their children - loud, playful, mischievous and an exhausting troublemaker. All of the siblings fight like cat and dog but Kallik and Izumi are by far the worst, on the level of one walks into a room and the other is like “And I took that personally” and they never seem to grow out of it even when they’re both old and grey. Kallik is the only nonbender in the family and initially he struggles with this a bit but he spends a lot of time hanging out with Uncle Sokka, learns dao swords with Shira and Zuko, and by the time he hits his teens, he comes to view it more as something that sets him apart from his siblings. When he’s 18, he goes to join the United Forces and he stays in service till his late thirties, when he meets Ren, another serviceman from the Northern Water Tribe. After beginning a relationship with him, the pair settle in Republic City and end up adopting two daughters, Kirima and Alasie.

About a decade after Kallik is born, it seems like things are kind of slowly drawing to a close as the kids are getting older - Kai is 19 and has left home, Izumi is 18 and living away in Republic City while she studies at university, Shira is 14 and already talking about moving South the first chance she gets, Lili is 11 and wanting to go Northern Water Tribe to train with the healers there, and Kallik is 10 and dreaming of being a great military commander like Grandpa Koda and Uncle Sokka - when suddenly Katara starts to get really, really sick. Zuko is absolutely terrified, thinking that there’s something seriously wrong with his wife, but after some deduction, it turns out that Katara is actually pregnant again. The relief at realising she’s not dying is short-lived and the reaction from both of them is basically holy shit holy fuck we are too old for this our other kids are practically all grown up now we are done with babies we can't seriously have six children what are we going to do. There’s a lot of discussion, especially since Katara is 43 by then and the risks for her to be carrying another child are higher, but they ultimately decide to go through with it. Ironically, it’s the easiest of all her pregnancies and when Katara delivers a baby girl in Republic City in 128 AG, there hadn’t been a single complication to speak of. Iroh had passed away two years earlier, devastating the whole family but Zuko in particular, but the baby is born with his irises - a darker gold - so they name her Ilah. Her eyes are big and round like Katara’s but other than that, Ilah resembles her Grandma Ursa most strongly, with her thick chestnut-coloured hair and slight, delicate facial features. Naturally, Katara and Zuko think all their babies were the cutest baby but Ilah is probably objectively the cutest, with her big honey-coloured eyes, chubby cheeks and soft little curls.

Inevitably, since Kai, Shira, Lili and Kallik had all either left home before she was born or did so when she was still a little girl, Ilah gets a lot more concentrated attention from Katara and Zuko. She’s completely spoiled and doted upon by the whole family, including her elder brothers and sisters who visit her as often as they can manage. Since Izumi still lives in the palace permanently as the Crown Princess, she and Ilah are close, but Ilah ultimately ends up being closest with Izumi’s son, Kaz, who is only a year younger than his aunt. Ilah was even in the room when Kaz was born, though it wasn't an intentional move. Zuko was supposed to be watching Ilah when things got intense with Izumi’s labour but things escalated from 0-100 real fast and Katara didn't have time to hand Ilah off, so she stayed tucked in a sling on her mother’s back as Katara helped her eldest daughter to deliver her own baby, somehow sleeping through all the noise and commotion. Ilah and Kaz end up more like a brother and sister or best friends than an aunt and nephew, though Kaz always calls her Auntie Ilah when he’s teasing her. Ilah is perhaps the shyest around strangers of her siblings, uninterested in celebrity and attention, but she’s the most adventurous, determined and creative, interested in science and invention from an early age. Growing up, Ilah felt a little pressured by the renown of her family, especially when her firebending turned out to be just about average in power, but when she’s 12, Ilah figures out that she can combustionbend. From there, she applies her bending abilities to science and when she leaves home for university, she invents the combustion engine at age 20. The rest of her adult life is spent travelling virtually non-stop, working on innovation projects for the different nations. She never has children, on the account that it would be unfair to expect a kid to move around as much as she does and she’s happy enough with her numerous nieces and nephews, but she eventually marries her long-time girlfriend Li-Mei, an Air Nomad tasked with searching the world for new airbenders.

#zutara #katara #zuko #katara x zuko #avatar: the last airbender #steambabies #momtara and dadko

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jjuzoir · 3 years

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request: “hi! i saw reqs are open and you write for yttd so hi! this is my first time requesting but yttd deserves more hype 🥺 can you write about sou/shin who wants cuddles but his s/o (female or gn is fine) is as much as a workaholic as him, so they don’t give in to him and keep coding away on their computer? no pressure at all, thank you ☺️❤️” by

a/n: this was my first yttd request^^ i really like sou/shin as a character ;; (though i did end up saving kanna) his whole 0% chance and the midori/shin/sou twist was so good!! i really want to replay saving him instead of kanna^^

warning: spoilers for chapters 2 and 3 of YTTD;; also; jm sleep deprived and my mental state ?? nonexistent

word count: 1780

- You and Sou had met during the Death Game and had grown closer during the second floor, having spent most of your time trying to help Kanna and, in return, spending more time with Hiyori.

- At first, your relationship had been rocky— you had all woken up in a strange place and tasked with trying to survive, he was rather stubborn and kept you often times at an arm’s length but, with enough work on your part fueled by stubbornness and a desire to get to know the teal-haired man, you soon were able to get to know him better.

- Out of everyone in the game Hiyori and you were the closest, and Kanna of course too, and as much as Sou might’ve wished it didn’t happen, your relationship soon took a romantic turn. He still had moments of doubt, and a selfish part of him wishes he never cared about you, growing to care about anyone in a situation like this wasn’t smart, but he did.

- You were determined to find a way out, much like him, and were willing to pour your all into finding a way to escape the facility and Sou admired that about you, and so he decided he’d work hard to find a way for you two to escape no matter what.

- With both of your missions set out, it wasn’t surprising to say you both weren’t taking care of yourselves much; work, work, and more work needed to be done to find a way to escape and figure this whole thing out.

- Sou was good with computers and, much to his surprise, so were you; so both of you ended up dividing the work between each other. You’d normally work with the monitors near the price exchange stand while your boyfriend would spend most of his time in his room with Kai’s laptop.

- Your work felt endless, lines of code and numbers and letters; all becoming more jumbled as your eyes grew tired but you couldn’t give up; not only was your survival on the line but also of the ones you’d grown to care for, especially Kanna and Sou.

- You had spent hours typing away on the monitors trying to trace back a starting point or figuring out how to access them without having to spend any chips (much to the receptionist doll’s amusement). You knew you probably weren’t making much progress if he hadn’t gotten mad at you yet and that only grew to frustrate you more.

- Your fingers hurt from typing and clicking away in the small, cramped keyboard you’d found in the ruble— the fact Kai didn’t have an AI either only frustrated you more, if he’d had one maybe you could’ve learned more from him. You could only hope his AI was somewhere within the code, if he even had one.

- Determined to crack the code, you simply take the worn down laptop you’d been using and leave; no one had made a move to stop you, the floor master clearly didn’t care enough if you took it with you to bed. And so you do.

- It was getting late, Sou noted as he looked at the clock that hung from the gray walls in his room. You should’ve come by hours ago telling him about what you’d found— that’s what you’d always done at least.

- At the realization you weren’t coming, the teal-eyed man grew slightly concerned, maybe you had found out something Gashu or Ranger didn’t want you to and- no way, if he had come this far then you surely could too… right?

- He doesn’t realize he’s standing up and making his way to your room until he’s knocking on the door.

- He hears a grunt from the other side and takes it as a yes. He knew you well enough to know what you were doing but it still took him by surprise to see your hunched over figure typing away in the small, old laptop you’d found in the monitor room.

- He furrowed his eyebrows but didn’t move from his spot in the doorframe. He stared at your concentrated face and wondered if you’d always had this work ethic or if you were just worried about leaving the facility, were you a good worker before? He thinks of the past for a moment and feels his chest squeeze, if there was one good thing about this hellhole it was having met you, he thinks to himself.

- But still, the thought of a past where suffering wasn’t even imaginable has him wondering how your lives would’ve been, would you two have met? Could you two have been coworkers? Would everything align to make you lovers like it had now?

- At the thought, Sou found himself growing uncharacteristically soft. In the short time you two had been together you never really did anything, well, couple-y at all, due to the circumstances it wasn’t a shocker but he wanted to try changing that… he wanted to try being more affectionate with you.

- You still hadn’t noticed him standing in your door, so he decides to approach you. Quietly making his way near your desk, he places a hand in your shoulder and gives it a squeeze earning a shocked gasp and jump from you.

- “You should go to bed.” Sou mumbles to you from beneath his scarf.

- “Ah, Sou… you scared me!” You laugh off his comment, “I’m working right now but once I’m done I’ll go to sleep, don’t worry.”

- “It’s late, you shouldn’t even be thinking about coding right now.” He insists, if he was correct you’d been working on the laptop for 9 hours straight- as much as he admired your determination you needed to rest.

- You don’t even answer him back this time, busy typing away and scrolling through the seemingly endless rows of numbers and your boyfriend sighs and sits on the edge of your bed. If you continued like this you’d end up knocking yourself out- at least like this you’ll have someone to catch you.

- You don’t give his actions much thought; if he wanted to sit down and you type away on the computer then so be it; as long as he didn’t bother you. But bother he did, if there was one thing Sou could pride himself in other than his computer skills it was how annoying he could be if he really wanted to.

- “[Name]”, he groaned, “come to bed, just seeing you so busy gets me tired. Let’s cuddle, eh?”

- He wasn’t the most affectionate of all guys, you both knew that, it’s not that he didn’t want to be physically close with you but rather… he just didn’t feel like it. Maybe if he tempted you with hugs you’d be shocked and say yes?

- “Mhm, just a sec.” You don’t even look behind you when you speak, much to his dismay.

- “Come on! Don’t you want to be close with your boyfriend? It’ll be our first time sharing a bed! We’ll be close- you could be the small spoon or the big spoon I don’t care!”

- “Sou, please- I love you, but can you please just shut up for a second?”

- “Don’t be so cold!” He groaned, “Don’t you just want to, ya’ know~, spend some time with your boyfriend!”

- “I am spending time with you… now please just be quiet.”

- Sou was starting to get on your nerves with his endless chatter, so in return- you continued typing (quite aggressively).

- He went on for almost an hour, offering you hugs and kisses- basically anything as long as you stopped working and just went to bed. The more he tried convincing you with offers the more needy he grew, damn; he really, really wanted to cuddle you to sleep right now.

- You looked tired, your posture only worsening. Enough is enough, Hiyori thought, so he stood up and walked behind you and tapped your shoulder to get your attention.

- “Sou, I told you-!”

- Your words are cut short by him closing the laptop and grabbing your hand, leading you to bed with him.

- “Stop complaining, you’re going to work yourself to the bone.” He mutters, “and honestly? I don’t feel like dating a skeleton.”

- “Tch! Just let me finish this-!”

- “You said that like half an hour ago.” He says, he looks at you with worried eyes and you halt, “Don’t you know how late it is?” You look at the clock in your room; 2AM. You’d been working nonstop since midday…

- “Take your shoes off, we’re going to sleep- now.” He instructed you and you obliged, slowly blinking trying to adjust to the less intense light from the room as you slip off your shoes and get ready for bed.

- It was late… and your bed was looking more and more appealing. You finished taking your socks off and glance at your laptop. Once you’re done, you look down to meet teal-eyes looking at you expectantly. He pats the mattress, motioning you to lay beside him and, once again, you do. You’d scold him about shutting the laptop tomorrow… geez, had you been this tired a few minutes ago.

- A yawn escapes your mouth and Sou laughs; “I told you- you were tired.”

- He throws an arm around you, pulling you closer to him. Your face is pulled near his chest and he holds you like that for a while.

- You both say nothing as you rest, your head above his heart allowed you to be lulled into an even deeper rest. His hands rest on your back, his finger drumming as if he was typing away and you smile at the nonsensical rhythm.

- “You know, I didn’t really think cuddling with you would be this nice.” He comments, breaking the silence and earning a shove from you.

- “Screw you, Hiyori.” You laugh, “You're not so bad yourself.”

- The room is dark, the lights off, only your breaths can be heard. You take off his beanie, he only grumbles in response, so you could run your fingers through his hair.

- He giggles slightly, earning a tired smile from you. You wonder how different your relationship would be outside of the death game. There were times you forget you’re in constant danger, in moments like these- where you’re alone and calm, with Sou, it’s so easy to let your guard down, to forget about the severity of it all. You yawn once more, damn; you were tired.

- “You can sleep,” Sou mumbles, his voice rough with fatigue, “‘m gonna… sleep too”

- “Good night, Sou,” you peck his cheeks and, even in the dark light, you can see a slight blush glowing from his cheeks.

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beanieman · 2 years

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I Made Some YTTD OC’s And Backstory Because I Was Bored. I Am Cringe, But I Am Free.

Five years after the massacre ending, Sara and Nao finally manage to fully break away from ASU-NARO’s control. It was learnt with the game’s end that Sara was supposed to become heir of the company that destroyed her life, but Nao helped her escape that fate.

Without their heir, the floormasters come up with a plan. A replica death game will take place, and Sara will be replaced by the winner. That lead’s to them kidnapping twelve people, each one meant to replace a role played in the previous death game. However, without having enough time to fully study the participants personalities, and the research department going seriously downhill with Gashu’s death, things get very off track.

With some backstory out of the way, let’s talk about the roles they’re supposed to play vs their actual personality.

The Teenage Girl And Who Is Supposed To Be The Leader - Danuja Tachi is our protagonist’s name. She’s quiet in nature, but has quite a large friend group that she enjoys hanging out with on weekend’s. She tends to get pulled along with their antics considering she hate’s making decision's, which is fine by her. Danuja is the type that would rather observe then participate, and she’s quite the pushover in most areas. However she’s a very empathetic, and good at bringing the group together considering she’s used to being around so many people.

Her Best Friend - Eiko Sugimoto is Danuja’s frenemy. They’ve known each other since childhood, but have fallen into different path’s as time goes onward. Eiko has a loud and stubborn personality, the opposite of the girl she once knew so well. Because of this they clash often, but an underlying care is present in their dynamic.

The Mentor - Ryo Nakamura is the game’s first victim. Dying in the second trial when Amaya (The young grieving girl) votes for him, he hardly gets a chance to know everyone before he goes. The role of mentor he was supposed to play was left empty, and his serious and stoic personality hardly had time to shine. Though he did try to look out for Danuja before his death.

More Undercut

The Antagonist - Naoki Aikawa is the games biggest mistake. Kidnaped to take the place of Shin, the only trait they share is their loner nature. Despite usually enjoying being alone, Naoki is exceptionally brave and doesn’t mind standing up in time’s of danger. He understands the stress everyone is under, and doesn’t want anyone besides himself to carry that burden. Naoki falls into the role of group leader quickly, and lead’s them through the first main game. Of course, this draws the ire of the floormasters who see him as getting in Danuja’s way. Maybe that’s another trait he shares with Shin, his bad luck.

The Young Grieving Girl - Amaya Chinen is fourteen years old, and the biggest handful you’ll ever meet. Her sister died when she was young, and it led to her acting out in many ways. Stealing, graffiti, setting fires, you name it she’s done it. When you first meet her she come’s off a remarkably sweet, but that opinion is quick to change when she steal’s your wallet and calls you dumb for not protecting it better. She’s blunt, rude, and cold. Despite supposing to take over Kanna’s role, she’s actually this game’s antagonist.

The Sports Player - Isamu Kobayashi belive's in teamwork before all else. He belive's the way out of the death game is full cooperation, and is quick to over share about himself because of it. He’s always trying to find allies, and encouraging other’s to do the same. He has a fiery personality and has no intention’s of playing the kidnaper’s game. At least, he belive's in all this until he gets the sacrifice in the first main game.

The Musician - Takara Fueki is this stories loner. She like’s to be by herself so can practice her instrument in peace. She play’s the violin primarily and is a classical musician. She’s always the last to speak up in discussion, and honestly doesn’t know what’s going on with the group most of the time. Though this changes as time goes on. She’s pretty serious, at least in a life or death situation, and is always looking for an escape when she’s not practicing. In the ending’s were they do escape, she’s the main cause. Takara also canonically has autism.

The Artist - Mayumi Fukumoto is still feeling the consequence's of the last game. The game masters aren’t happy about Nao surviving, and it’s taken out on this girl who find’s herself to be quite unlucky. She’s a gloomy and morbid woman, who often paints and talks about subject matters like death. However she’s the kindest person in the death game, and would do anything for anyone if you just ask. She’s very protective, and let’s a few members of the group sleep in her room so she can guard them while they rest. Even the group’s outcasts Amaya and Ikuye (The Murderer) she look’s after.

The Teacher - Tomo Shima is a home economics teacher. He’s taught many years, and has a very blunt attitude because of it. He’ll always tell you how he feels. Regardless if he’s beaming with pride for how well you did, or disappointed because he knows you can do better. He genuinely care’s for anyone younger than him, and he has two children of his own at home. He has the tendency to take kids under his wing, and he end’s up taking the role of Danuja’s mentor when Ryo fails to live up to the task.

The Young Bubbly Boy - Genki Ando will always give you a smile. He’s a playful boy who like’s making friend’s and drawing picture’s on the nearest available surface. He’s very agile, tends to be the one who can dodge traps the easiest. While he was supposed to be taken under the wing of Danuja, he finds himself closer Mayumi who he admires.

The Murderer - Ikuye Kutsuki is a man known for something terrible. He accidentally killed his friend while trying to show off a knife throwing trick. He never saw a day in jail due to his very wealthy family pulling some string’s, and he act’s like it. Coming off as spoiled and entitled, it’s clear that he doesn’t feel much remorse from his crimes as he’s done many talk shows and podcasts about his “experience”. It’s only when he’s put in the death game does he learn to value life, and the length’s he’d go to protect those he grows to care for.

The Stalker - Thankfully, Hiroki Gato isn’t an actual stalker. Turn’s out those are hard to find on short notice. He’s a private detective who specializes in cases of affair’s. Out of everyone in the death game, he’s the most emotional both in personality and the choice’s he make’s. He’s the most likely to see an AI as a person, and to make his emotion’s known. He’s pretty skittish and just wants the game’s to be over. It’s notable that he doesn’t seem able to comprehend the idea of death.

That’s all I have for now! I’m already attached to these guys and may make more content with them in the future!

#YTTD #Your Turn To Die

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routeweek · 2 years

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Route Week Day 3: “The Best Possible Outcome”

(Hate/Love)

A feeling of love clings to the halls of the death game. Broken bodies lay in coffins, and the pungent smell of blood lingers in the air, but hope remains in the group's bonds.

You can see it in the lobby as joy radiates from the remaining six people. Sara and Kanna sit together. Their hands intertwined after the older girl wiped away the bucket girl's tears. Next to them are Alice and Keiji. Both men fight against the heaviness of their eyelids, an easy task as Q-Taro and Gin loudly chat.

Just in the last day, they've felt so much horror. Nao and Shin were lost, but they won't stand on their graves and weep. Instead, they'll be grateful to be so lucky to know them. And push to escape in their honor.

That's what they would want. But what's more important is the allies that can still breathe air into their lungs and feel their hearts beat in their chest. The ones who have made it out alive despite their struggles.

Gin is no longer a little boy that always needs to be saved. He pulls his weight, helping the others make it through with his skills and smile. If they didn't have him, they'd surely be lost. Because of the young boy in the cat hoodie, they can look forward and enjoy a lightened mood. It's enough for even Alice to hum a soft tune.

More Undercut

The prisoner has grown more than anyone. Where he was once an uncooperative man to be feared, he's now someone who cares for his allies. The group saw his vote and witnessed a tenderness that days ago would have been odd. But his showcase of emotion made it easier for everyone to see his heartfelt side. Especially the detective.

Keiji notices more than anyone. How his friends grow, and how their spirits change into something stronger with each passing hour. It makes him feel guilty for wavering before. Especially when soaking in the peaceful moment Sara obtained with her choice. The girl in blue seems to enjoy it as well.

She sits silently with Kanna. No doubt she wishes this day could have ended differently, but her decision doesn't weigh on her. She looks content, releasing her guilt in an emotional burst that helped her find peace. She glances up to Alice, then Kanna, a smile widening on her features. It's because of them that she's okay. If Sara could do anything over again, she wouldn't. She knows that when her eyes land on the girl with a bucket.

For hours after the main game, Kanna cried. Tears of grief and relief ran down her face like a watering can as everyone rallied to her side. They said words of encouragement not to give up and promised to stand behind her. All of them are true, and all seem to give her a reason to push forward. A new light burns within her, a hope that can't be snuffed out. She seems unstoppable, and the others will do a lot to ensure she stays that way. Q-Taro more than anyone.

The baseball player is a man plagued with regret. It burns with regret, but that feeling has begun to erode and be replaced by pride. He didn't give in this time. He stood strong, and the others agreed with his point of view. He can't imagine if Sara chose a second path that would no doubt lead to disaster. The children give everyone hope, a foolish thought to realize only now. But he can see it. And he's ready to protect them at any cost.

That's a thought true to all of them in some way. The strangers they once knew grew into a family worth protecting. Even when they see Tia begin to approach them from the corner of their eyes, they don't relent. Instead, they stand with their heads held high to greet her.

They won't lose anymore. They won't give into despair. They won't kill each other again. They're all going to escape this time. Together as allies.

#YTTD #Your Turn To Die #sara chidouin #keiji shinogi #routeweek2022 #routeweek #q-taro burgerberg #kanna kizuchi #alice yabusame #gin ibushi

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zukalations · 3 years

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Shall we TALK? - Hanafusa Mari and Aran Kei

IMPORTANT - Zukalations will move to a new website at the beginning of next year at which point the tumblr will either no longer be updated or used as a redirect feed.

This cute talk feature between classmates Hanafusa Mari and Aran Kei was published in the February 1997 issue of Kageki. At the time, Hanafusa Mari was Top Musumeyaku of Snow Troupe, and Aran Kei was still an up-and-coming otokoyaku (her first Bow Hall lead show, ICARUS, took place almost exactly a year after this was published).

Shall we TALK? - Hanafusa Mari and Aran Kei

Hanafusa: By this point, me and Touko (Aran) have shown all our good and bad points to each other. We don't have anything to hide.

Aran: Yeah. If I'm worried about something I'll go to Hana (Hanafusa) for advice right away, and Hana will ask me first too.

Hanafusa: It's really reassuring to feel that you'll definitely tell me the truth.

Aran: We can both trust each other.

Hanafusa: While now we're really close like this, and we can share anything with each other, we weren't always like that.

Aran: It's not like we didn't get on, we just didn't interact much.

Hanafusa: When we were in music school, the friend groups we were in were different, so we didn't talk that much. So it feels a little odd to be like this now.

Aran: It must have started when you transferred into Snow Troupe, Hana.

Hanafusa: Right. We became close really suddenly. There's a reason for that, of course, but that's a secret between us (laughs).

Aran: Yes (laughs).

Hanafusa: But I really feel thankful with all my heart that Touko was there.

Aran: Really?

Hanafusa: It's like you understand without my having to say anything, you can figure out what my mental state is just by looking at me. If something good happened you'll figure it out right away.

Aran: I'll even call you with perfect timing (laughs). I've often called you about something totally unrelated and then say 'Oh, was this good timing?', right.

Hanafusa: Right. I'll think, 'Wow, you really knew the right time to call' (laughs).

Aran: I wonder if we have some connection.

Hanafusa: Right.

Aran: I always want to tell Hana things I'm ashamed of since I want you to know them.

Hanafusa: You don't like having things you can't talk about. I'm honestly jealous of you sometimes, Touko.

Aran: I'm jealous of you sometimes too Hana! Your personality!

Hanafusa: (laughs) I'm jealous of your personality too, Touko. You're so pure.

Aran: No, no, let me turn that right back on you (laughs).

Hanafusa: I know I trend towards being pure but if I was going to put it stylishly you're 'pure as the driven snow'.

Aran: (laughs)

Hanafusa: Your heart is clear. So if you get something right you can acknowledge it, but if you get something wrong, you can ask directly why it's wrong. You don't like doubting people, right?

Aran: Yeah, you're right.

Hanafusa: You can come right out with that. You'll say "I don't like being suspicious of someone over a thing like that," without any ill meaning at all. I'm jealous of that side of your personality. But then you're also such a funny person, Touko (laughs).

Aran: I've loved making people laugh since I was little (laughs). When I started going to school, I'd practice while watching TV the night before so I could make people laugh more (laughs). I'd often think things like 'this material will make everyone laugh!' But lately I've calmed down a bit.

Hanafusa: (laughs)

Aran: The part of Hanafusa's personality I'm jealous of is how you're able to completely concentrate when you're set on something. It seems like it might be a little dangerous at times (laughs), but it's an aspect I don't have, so.

Hanafusa: It seems like when I feel in my heart 'This is what I want to do!', I'll keep that feeling no matter who disagrees with me. Although of course I'll consult with someone about it (laughs).

Aran: Right, right. But I feel like I just can't stick with my own conclusions that way. In my case, if someone says something to me I'll think 'oh, that could be right', so I'll keep changing what I think over and over.

Hanafusa: It does seem like once I think something in my heart, I can't really change it.

Aran: I don't think I have that. It's not like I've seen all of your growth, Hana, but thinking of when you first came to Snow Troupe, you've really grown a lot since then. And it's all achievements that you've gained through your own persistence, climbing over mountains in your way, I think. It makes me proud to be your classmate to see you accomplish all this, Hana.

Hanafusa: You're really growing as an otokoyaku too, Touko, so I don't have any worries about you. I keep thinking how nice it would be to watch a Bow Hall show starring Touko.

Aran: It would be nice if I could do that.

Hanafusa: I'll come see the dress rehearsals, promise. No matter where I am I'll come flying in (laughs).

Aran: Heck yeah! (laughs)

Hanafusa: If it's for Touko I'll row my way there.

Aran: (laughs).

Hanafusa: About Takarazuka, naturally I want to have a fully fulfilled life in Takarazuka, and I also want Touko to always be able to smile. I hate seeing Touko sad or hurt. So I hope you can always enjoy it.

Aran: I think you're already approaching the point of completely mastering your craft as a Takarazuka musumeyaku.

Hanafusa: I still have so far to go! I'm always worrying about it so much.

Aran: But I think it's good to worry about things; I can tell that you've grown because of how much you worry about things, Hana. I might say 'what if you stopped worrying' but watching you chasing after things and ussing that as your motivation for growth makes me think how much I can rely on you. When I think of the charismatic actress you're going to become it makes me excited to see it.

Hanafusa: (laughs) This is changing the subject a bit, but remember how a while back Ichiro-san (Ichiro Maki) told us "when I see Hana and Touko together it's like watching my past self with Yacchan (Kanna Miho)"? That made me really happy so it stayed in my heart.

Aran: I remember! I'm totally different from Ichiro-san so I said "What, really?" but she didn't mean it that way, I guess the relationship between us right now resembles theirs.

Hanafusa: Somehow those words left a big impression with me. But I'm sure you will do fine, Touko. I hope you'll still let me be with you all the time even when you leave Takarazuka one day.

Aran: Of course.

Hanafusa: I really want you to be happy, Touko. If you can have a happy life that's enough for me (laughs).

Aran: We both want that, right.

Hanafusa: Right?

Aran: I hope we can stick with our decisions and be happy.

Hanafusa: I'm sure that knowing you, Touko, even when you're a little old lady you'll want to talk and laugh about our younger days together.

Aran: Definitely. I'll be sitting on the porch saying "well, back then..." (laughs)

Hanafusa: Right, you'll be just like that (laughs).

Aran: One day, probably (laughs).

#takarazuka #article translation #mag: kageki #sienne: hanafusa mari #sienne: aran kei #troupe: yuki

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shortkingzuko · 4 years

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title: carving out a life together

relationship: bato/hakoda

warnings: mentions of canon injuries and death, non-graphic animal death

summary: Of course, it’s Katara who brings it up, ever the romantic that she is. It’s the evening, with the bulk of the day’s work done, the remainder being tomorrow’s problem, and Hakoda is sitting in front of the fire in his home, enjoying a pleasant conversation with his daughter while they wait for Bato to return from his work, when Katara, suddenly and without preamble asks, “So when are you and Bato getting married?”

(my late submission for the final day of @bakodafleetweek, prompt: wedding [but.. barely lmao])

read under the cut or on AO3 for the full list of tags + notes

After their many years of pining, silent affection, tentative touches, their eventual confessions, Hakoda and Bato found that they didn’t quite know where to go from here. In the two years since the war ended - an impossible fact that never lost its dreamlike quality when Hakoda thinks about it - the two men have fallen into an easy routine, characterized by early mornings and kisses softer than their battle-harden bodies ever thought possible, by meals shared in the comfort of their own home, and by long days coming to an end when they were able to wrap their arms around each other in bed.

Being with Bato, Hakoda often thinks, feels natural and right, like slipping into his favourite parka; it fits so perfectly that he barely thinks about it, until he contemplates wearing anything else, and then he appreciates its' comfort all the more.

He knows that Bato has harboured feelings for him since they were children, no older than Katara was now, and while he never expressed it freely, Hakoda had always known, in some way. The way that Bato would roll his eyes but still laugh at all his jokes early on, the way that Bato would drop everything whenever Hakoda asked, the way that Bato was dedicated, devoted, to him like no one else - bar Kya - gave it away. It wasn’t hard to accept that Bato loved him, as Hakoda knew that if Bato ever loved anyone else, he would feel a sense of loss and sadness, mixed with the joy of seeing his friend being happy and in love.

It had been harder to come to terms with his own feelings, even years after Kya’s death. Hakoda knew there would always be a piece of his heart dedicated just to her, a love that only she had, but as time went on, he (re)discovered his feelings for his friend, falling in love with his dry wit, his deep voice, the way that would smile whenever he caught Hakoda’s eyes.

During the war, it was easy to rationalize his growing desire to be near Bato at all times, to share a tent with him, to be close enough that at any point he could reach over and place a hand on the taller man’s arm. It was safety, Hakoda remembers telling himself before he finally got his shit together, it was for safety and because he wanted to make sure his friend was okay at all times. And yeah, maybe that was a small part of it, but mostly it was because he enjoyed being close to Bato, revelled in feeling his warmth against his side, in being able to hear the rumble from his chest as he spoke, and from being able to link pinkies with him at a moment’s notice.

Bato always seemed to know Hakoda better than he knew himself because he would just look at Hakoda whenever he initiated an unnecessary touch, and smile coyly, before looking away. He never commented on what Hakoda was doing, until one night in their tent he reached across their sleeping rolls, and placed a gentle hand on top of Hakoda’s. When he didn’t pull away, Bato shifted slightly, laced their fingers together, before whispering, “Goodnight, Koda.”

And they had fallen asleep like that, though Hakoda had spent what felt like hours just memorizing the warmth that he felt, the feeling of Bato’s rough skin behind his calloused fingers, how tenderly and gently Bato’s grip was, and how it loosened even more as he fell asleep. During the night, of course, they had both moved and their hands had separated, but the knowledge of the night before was enough for them, and they spent many more nights falling asleep like that. Eventually, under the gist of doing an impromptu patrol, Hakoda and taken Bato outside the camp, and under trees taller than they could have ever imagined, Hakoda reached for Bato's hand in the daylight. He laced their fingers together, before leaning up - and, to his slight embarrassment, Bato had to hunch down - and pressing a kiss against Bato's chapped lips. They had returned to camp soon after, and if they held hands at dinner, then no one mentioned it.

There were bumps that they hit, as one might expect, considering that they were in a war, that Bato was Hakoda’s second-in-command, and considering that Hakoda was entering the relationship as a widower with two children. Though Sokka and Katara both knew Bato well - the man had taken them ice dodging! - and loved him like an uncle, or even as a second dad, they were still confused, shocked, and a little bit hurt when Hakoda had finally sat them down after the comet, and with one hand on each of their knees, Bato sitting stiff as a board next to him, that he and Bato were dating.

In the two years that passed, any apprehension that his children carried has melted away to easy acceptance and happy neutrality at seeing their father sharing his life with a man that made him smile in a way that they hadn’t seen in years. They roll their eyes at the sight of Bato and Hakoda holding hands as they walk around their under-construction village, when they see their father leaning up to press a quick kiss to Bato’s chin, and when they see Bato sporting matching beads in his hair as Hakoda.

The two years since the end of the war seem to fly by, with Hakoda and Bato learning to readjust to life that isn’t constantly under threat. He’s happy to be with Bato, happy that for once, everything is simple and happy that he and his partner can just go with the flow for once.

Of course, it’s Katara who brings it up, ever the romantic that she is. It’s been about a month since Hakoda and Bato’s anniversary, a date which is vague at the best of times and which had no formal celebration, though the dinner that night was more fanciful than usual, that was due to Katara and Sokka’s friends visiting, saying farewell as Katara and Sokka were needed in the village for the upcoming winter months.

It’s the evening, with the bulk of the day’s work done, the remainder being tomorrow’s problem, and Hakoda is sitting in front of the fire in his home, enjoying a pleasant conversation with his daughter while they wait for Bato to return from his work, when Katara, suddenly and without preamble asks, “So when are you and Bato getting married?”

If Hakoda had been drinking anything, he would have spat it out. Instead, he blinks a few times, before asking, “What?”

“When are you getting married?” She repeats. “You guys have been together for a few years now, right? Are you planning on getting married?”

“Uh,” Hakoda is still trying to gather himself from the whiplash that the conversation has given him. “We weren’t… we haven’t talked about it?”

Katara hums, and fiddles with her necklace. It’s not a move that goes unnoticed.

“Do you want us to get married?” Hakoda thinks for a moment then corrects himself. “Would you be okay if we got married? If I got married?”

Hakoda knows that in theory, his daughter wants him to be happy, she wants Bato to be happy. But, he knows Katara still has complicated emotions over Kya, still misses her deeply, and that her wanting them to be happy was different than her feeling comfortable with her dad marrying someone else.

Sokka, Hakoda knows, harbours somewhat similar feelings, though he leans more towards the opinion that Kya would have wanted her two best friends to be happy, would have wanted his dad to find love again, and if nothing else, Sokka has a few more years worth of memories of Bato being around and taking care of them.

Katara lets go of her necklace and sighs. “I don’t know.” She looks a bit surprised at her own honesty. “I guess? I want you to be happy, and I know now that you’ll always love mom and that Bato isn’t trying to replace her, but, it’s just…”

“Weird?” Hakoda offers.

Katara shrugs. “Yeah. It’s a little weird.”

They sit in a silence of understanding for a few moments before Hakoda clears his throat. “Well, as I said, Bato and I haven’t spoken about marriage yet, but if we do then I’ll check with you and Sokka first, okay?” Hakoda waits until Katara meets his gaze again. “I’m not going to do anything that hurts you.”

Katara smiles, a little watery, before leaning over and giving Hakoda a brief hug.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy because, after that conversation with Katara, the topic of marriage keeps appearing in his thoughts. Really, there’s nothing tangible that they can gain from getting married. There are no illusions of virtue that they need to maintain - after all, Hakoda has two children and no one has ever accused Bato of celibacy - and they already live together, Bato not even attempting to rebuild his previously destroyed igloo when they arrived home.

Hakoda thinks of his own engagement to Kya, how he had to humble himself in front of her parents to get their blessing, how he had worked so hard leading up to that point to prove that he would be a good husband, that he could provide for them and make her happy, how he spent so many nights carving designs into whalebone before Kanna eventually gave him her necklace to gift. It had been terrifying, anxiety-inducing and wonderful, the mixture of confidence and worry that he felt every time he looked at his half-finished carving and every time there was a moment with Kya where he thought, “ This is it!”

Bato doesn’t have parents anymore, nor does he have any other family members that Hakoda could ask to give him their blessing. If Bato was interested in marrying Hakoda, they already know that Kanna would give them her blessing easily, even casually. They have nothing to prove to one another; they’ve been to war together, have hunted together for years, and even with Bato’s scarred arm and the slight limp that Hakoda has gained, it’s clear to both of them that they can provide for one another.

Hakoda knows that they would have no issue getting the tribe to acknowledge their marriage, arguably the most important part of the wedding ceremony. Half the children in the village already refer to Bato as ‘Chief’, ignoring the slight smile and correction from Bato and their parents that technically that’s not his title. And considering that no one has even tried to set Bato up with one of the nice Northerners that blush when he makes eye contact with them, and the fact that some of the adults in the village - the ones that remember how long Bato’s been pining after Hakoda, the way that he used to go out of his way to spend time with him and his family, despite his self-proclaimed dislike of babies - have been asking if they’re going to be seeing any tall, dark-haired, strong-jawed children anytime soon, well, it’s pretty obvious that everyone has already written Bato and Hakoda off as a forever thing.

Hakoda is pretty sure that they’re right.

He knows that he should actually talk to Bato about this, instead of just bouncing the thought around in his head, weighing the pros and cons of marriage before he’s even found out if Bato wants to get married. They’re pretty happy as is, Hakoda thinks, as he braids Bato’s hair in the morning, making sure not to pull too tightly as he threads the strands through beads that match his own. Bato has never liked too much fuss, has always been a little more private and withdrawn than Hakoda; maybe he would think that a wedding would just be a waste of time, too many people getting involved in their private business. It’s always a balancing act with Bato, between him wanting to show that he’s in love, that he is loved by the man that he’s been pining after for years, the desire to show slight affection with him in public, and his discomfort of being so open, so obvious to the public eye. It’s a balance that Hakoda isn’t always perfect at maintaining - sometimes pushing Bato too far when he pulls his down to kiss him at the end of council meetings, or when he introduces Bato as ‘his partner’ first, instead of ‘second-in-command’ - but it’s a balance that he’s always ecstatic to try and perfect and maintain.

Finally, weeks after his talk with Katara, as he’s rubbing soothing balm into Bato’s shoulder, he asks, “Bato?”

Bato hums. “Yes, Koda?”

“Ever thought about getting married?”

Bato turns his head to look at Hakoda, eyebrows furrowed. “If this is you asking, this is a terrible proposal, so the answer is no.”

Hakoda laughs and shakes his head. “No, no, not a proposal, I’m just. Wondering, I guess, if you ever thought about marriage or…. Or kids? The future, I guess.”

Children are a touchy subject, he knows, but he might as well get all the awkward conversation out of the way now.

Bato’s answer is immediate. “We are not having any more kids, Sokka and Katara are more than enough and they’re not even mine.”

“You know that’s not totally true,” Hakoda mumbles. Bato smiles a bit at that, reaches across his chest to lay a hand on Hakoda’s forearm.

“Besides, I’m getting old , Hakoda, I don’t even think I could… have a kid,” He levels a look with Hakoda, trying to put the emphasis on the right words so that Hakoda knows what he’s trying to say. It works, and briefly, Hakoda remembers back to Bato’s youth, when his voice dropped, when he got his growth spurt, the way he was so proud when the tribe finally stopped shoving him with the women and let him learn how to hunt and fight. Bato has either ignored or changed so many of the functions that would allow them to have a biological child together for so long, and Hakoda understands his uncertainty. “Besides, the only kids I like are yours, and who knows if you can go three for three.”

“You seem to like Toph pretty good.”

“Toph doesn’t count,” Bato says defensively, but his tone has a slightly frustrated edge to it, showing he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. Hakoda rolls his eyes as they laugh for a moment.

“Okay, fine, she doesn’t count. But, how about marriage?”

Bato sighs. “You know that the only person I’ll ever want to marry is you.” He says it so casually, with such neutrality, as if it’s just a fact of life - like he was telling Hakoda that summer days were long and that the water that surrounded them was cold. It makes Hakoda’s heart feel like bursting, hearing Bato’s declaration of love, even if it's a few years later than Bato wanted it to be. Hakoda leans over from where he’s kneeling on their bed to kiss Bato’s cheek.

“You know, Katara asked me if we were going to get married.”

“Oh?” Bato says as he shifts away to pull on his nightshirt, now that they’ve thoroughly abandoned lotioning his scar.

“Yeah, she said that she would probably be okay with it. You know how much she misses Kya,” Hakoda adds hastily, feeling a bit guilty. Bato nods as he lays down in the furs, watching as Hakoda goes to put out of the candles that are illuminating the room. It’s almost winter, and as the lights flicker out, the room is soon sent into near pitch darkness. Hakoda leaves one candle lit, and when he lays down next to Bato he admires how the light and shadows dance around his face.

They lay in silence for a few minutes, the only sounds being the noise of shifting bodies as they intertwine limbs and get comfortable. Hakoda ends up face pressed against Bato’s strong chest, enjoying the warmth and softness of it as he lightly tosses his own arm across Bato’s waist. He nestles in when he feels the weight of Bato’s scarred arm fall across his shoulder, hand hanging loosely down Hakoda’s back. Bato nuzzles slightly into Hakoda's hair, though he'll never admit it. It’s comfortable and familiar, and Hakoda can’t believe that he gets to feel this safe, this warm, this happy after all the years of war and violence and suffering that they had to live through.

“If the kids are okay with it,” Bato’s chest rumbles as he speaks, tickling Hakoda’s cheek. “Of course I would like to marry you.”

Hakoda smiles into Bato’s chest, feeling giddy like he’s a teenager again. “Okay. We can think about it and talk later.”

Later comes soon than either of them expected, when Hakoda and Sokka end up hiking up a mountain to hunt a polar bear that chased some of the Northern Water Tribe members. Hakoda doesn’t really want to kill it - if the creature wanted the Northerners dead, then they wouldn’t be complaining about the ‘dangerous wilderness’ to Hakoda - but he knows that if the animal ever ends attacking one of the members for real, then he’ll have a crisis on his hands. They take a sled and begin the long trek up the mountain. They’re partway up the mountain when they find one of the caves that mine for engagement stones in, and they decide to take a rest. Hakoda sits down, watching as his son leans his spear against the wall walks deeper into the cave, unsheathing his sword as he goes.

“Don’t go too far, Sokka, we’re not stopping for long.”

“Ugh, I know, dad, I’ll be fine,” Sokka calls back noncommittally. Hakoda sighs and lets him be. He hears some clanging a few minutes later but decides that Sokka is old enough to waste time and energy if he wants. Once he's done resting, Hakoda stands up and is about to call out for Sokka when he comes scurrying back to the entrance. He dashes to one of the cloth bags that sit on the sled, shoves something in it, before going to collect his weapon. Hakoda raises an eyebrow at him and gets a sheepish smile in response.

They find the polar bear a little further up, and after taking it down, load its body onto the sled. They catch a few gopher-hares and collect the few edible plants that have survived so far into the season as they make their way back down. It’s hours later when they finally arrive back in the village, with Sokka needing to run ahead to get more help the lug the bear and the sled across the vast, flat plain of ice that stretched between their village and the base of the mountain. Despite his displeasure in having to hunt the bear, Hakoda looks at it and thinks about how proud he is of his son, how much of an accomplished hunter and provider he’s become, and how this catch will be nice padding for the village’s winter food stock. The fur will make some excellent clothes, and Hakoda is sure that a few of the animal’s claws and teeth will appear on someone’s wrist or neck as jewelry. It’s after they’ve pushed the sled into the village, and various people descend on it and the various bags filled with plants and other animals, that Sokka calls out, “Hey, there’s carving stones in one of those bags, someone give them back to us when you’re done!”

Someone makes an affirmative sound as they prepare to butcher the animal, and Sokka nods and turns to walk away. Hakoda follows him and looks at him strangely. “Why did take carving stones?”

“So you have something to carve for Bato,” Sokka says it as a statement, but looks confused at his father’s asking. “I thought you and Katara talked about you guys getting married?”

Hakoda sputters. “Yeah but we weren’t planning on getting married now .”

Sokka shrugs. “That’s why you gotta plan in the carving time, dad! Carving takes a long time! It takes like three weeks if you don’t chip or crack the stone.”

Hakoda can’t bring himself to agree vocally, so he stares ahead for a few seconds until he realizes, “Wait, how do you know how long carving a necklace takes?”

Sokka flushes and starts walking faster.

“Sokka- Sokka, you are WAY too young to be marrying the Firelord! Sokka, get back here!”

In the end, Kallik, one of the younger men that Hakoda led in the war, brings four rocks, all shades of dark blue to grey, already cleaned of dirt and blood and wrapped in leather, a few days later, smiling slyly as he passes the lumpy package over. “Good luck, Chief!”

Hakoda mumbles a thank you, and hastily tucks the parcel under his arm and puts them in his and Bato’s room. He tells himself it’s not technically hiding if a blanket just happens to fall on top of the container that he’s placed them in, and the container happens to be under a shelf that Bato never looks in. He doesn’t care if Bato finds them, he tells himself, as he pushes them box further into the wall.

He knows that he’ll have to talk to Katara and Bato about this more, will have to make sure everyone is fine with it, and then plan the ceremony, all of which will take a while.

But , he tells himself as he fishes out one of the stones, hiding it in one of his pockets before setting out on his canoe to ‘check the traps’, all of that can happen once I’m closer to finishing this carving .

The first step of necklace carving, Hakoda remembers, is to shape the stone down to a circle-ish shape, breaking off any protrusions off and then shaving pieces off, little by little, until it’s the right shape to actually carve. Hakoda cracks the stone on his first attempt - not unlike he did twenty years ago when he was carving Kya’s. Hakoda checks the traps and hauls a couple of urchin-crabs back to the village. He drops the broken rock into the sea.

The next week Hakoda goes out to check the guide rope that surrounds the outer wall of the village. One of the children of the village said that the rope had broke in the last wind storm but couldn’t remember where since they had been going out to find otter penguins and had got distracted, and as tedious as it is to walk the entire perimeter of the continuously expanding city, everyone knows that if the rope is broken, then there’s a chance someone could get lost in a blizzard. Hakoda volunteers, since everyone else is so busy. Bato offers to come with him, but Hakoda waves him off.

“Your arm has been hurting you,” Hakoda says in the doorway to their igloo. Bato rolls his eyes.

“Doesn’t stop me from walking.”

“Just stay here, love.” Hakoda stretches up, Bato leans down automatically, and Hakoda places a kiss on his lips. “I’ll be back soon.”

He finds the break in the rope just a few minutes past the entrance, ties the pieces together, and continues walking around the perimeter, fishing a new stone out of his pocket.

The second step to necklace carving, once the stone is the correct shape and dimensions, is planning. Each necklace is meant to be unique, meant to represent the recipient and the shared love of the couple. But, the design also depends on the stone, on what the medium will allow. Hakoda is trying to gouge out a tall, deep line in the rock, meant to represent the tall trees of the earth kingdom that surrounded them, that Bato was so impressed by, and under which they first admitted their feelings for each other. He presses either too hard or at the wrong angle, and it splinters, a piece of it chipping off. Hakoda sighs and tosses the broken mineral in one of the tiny ice fishing holes that they use to teach children how to dig through the ice. There are no other breaks in the rope.

Bato goes off to help repair some boats - even with an arm that occasionally seizes up, he’s still one of the best boatsmen in the tribe - and once all of Hakoda’s meetings are done for the day, he’s left with an empty igloo and a few more hours until Bato is likely to return. Hakoda pulls out the second to last stone that he has and starts to carve.

The third step in carving a necklace is to create the eye that either the metal or leather bail will go through to connect it to the choker. It’s not particularly hard, but it’s time-consuming, twisting a blade or tool in circles for hours until it breeches the other side.

The fourth step is connecting it to the leather choker. The fifth step is presenting it.

Hakoda finishes step three, looks at his carving and hates it. The tall lines of what is meant to be a forest seem crooked and nonsensical, the swirls at the bottom barely register as waves, and there are knife marks around the eye look intentional instead of accidental and confuse the setting. It looks sloppy and bad, and even if Bato will accept it happily, Hakoda's stomach turns at the thought of presenting something so poorly crafted to him. He groans and throws it to the side of the room.

He doesn’t know if carving Kya’s necklace was easier or if he just repressed how hard it was from his memories. It all seems silly, all the stress when he and Bato are perfectly happy as is. He wonders if he should just forget it, just give it up, let good things stay as they are. Except.

Except he knows that underneath his reasonable tone, and understanding air, Bato wants to marry him. Hakoda doesn’t know what he did in a past life, what spirit he worshiped or what king he saved, but he must have done something because in his life he’s had two great loves and both of them wanted to marry him.

You know the only person I’ll ever want to marry is you.

Bato wants and asks for so little. He wants Hakoda to lay next to him as they sleep, he wants Hakoda to help him rub his shoulder, he wants Hakoda to go fishing with him, he wants Hakoda to not ask about kids or his body or his medication, he wants Hakoda to kiss him in the privacy of their home and hold his hand for a few minutes when they walk outside. Bato wants Hakoda to marry him, and like all the other open secrets about himself, he’ll never tell Hakoda outright, leaving him to put together the clues together until he can find out how to make Bato happy.

Hakoda is pretty sure that’s all he wants, really; to make Bato happy. He deserves it.

He hears Bato stomping the snow off his boots as he walks into their home. Hakoda sighs, and gets up, collects the rock he threw and slips it into his pocket. He goes to greet his lover, wrapping his arms around the taller man’s torso under the gist of ‘warming him up’, even though his parka was plenty warm, and thinks about how he has one more stone left.

He swears that he’s not trying to put it off, but Hakoda figures he should talk to his family before he moves forward. He talks to Katara to make sure she’s still ‘okay’ with the prospect of him marrying Bato. She gives somewhat the same answer, though she concedes, “You guys are pretty much married already, so…”

Sokka is already enthusiastic about it, though Hakoda is pretty sure that’s just because a wedding ceremony is an as good excuse as any to invite all their friends back. Privately, Sokka finally admits to Hakoda that he thinks mom would have wanted her two best friends to be happy, even, or maybe especially if it’s with each other.

He talks to Kanna, even if traditionally that’s meant to be Bato’s job. Hakoda figures Kanna is the closest thing Bato has left to a mother. As expected, Kanna is fine with it, thinks it’s a bit silly that Hakoda seems to stress about what’s clearly a sure thing. Hakoda doesn’t know how to explain to his mom that even if it’s a sure thing, even if Bato will say yes if Hakoda hands him a piece of clay attached to a string, he wants it to be right. He wants Bato to look back at their engagement and feel satisfied and fulfilled.

Hakoda is still nervous about carving but the unbearable pressing of anxiety has lifted some. The last stone left is a dark grey-blue, less glossy than the other prospective stones, and more opaque. Hakoda begins to carve it during the dead of winter when everyone in the village only spends a few hours a day outside, and they only step foot outside the village if completely necessary. This means that much of his secrecy of the matter is gone, but whether Bato is intentionally staying out in the main area of their igloo during the day, or if he’s there because the fire there is warmer than their bedroom, Hakoda doesn’t know. He sits on their bed of furs, trying to keep his swears quiet as he chips and carves away at the stone. The sounds of Bato just a room over, speaking to Katara and Sokka, laughing at their jokes, and going about his day seems to calm Hakoda's nerves and steady his hands.

It takes him less time than his previous attempts. He’s limited the lines of the trees to just two vertical ones, one slightly taller than the other. The waves at the bottom now have mirrored swirls at the top, land sandwiched between sea and sky. Hakoda is more carful carving out the eye of the pendant and is surprised when he actually adores it when it’s finished. He carves some designs into some whale teeth and polar bear claws, knowing that even though the addition of bone will make the necklace more noticeable overall, it’ll draw some of the attention away from the pendant, and he suspects that Bato will appreciate the small amount of privacy and intimacy that will afford him.

Hakoda knows that Bato knows what he’s doing. The way he smiles when he sees Hakoda retreat into their bedroom after he’s done working for the day, the way he sees the new callouses and cuts on Hakoda’s fingers and doesn’t ask where they came from, only presses small kisses onto them because he knows it’ll make Hakoda smile. If Hakoda wasn’t certain before, when he finds a piece of spare leather - raggedy and unusable - but cut to a specific and familiar length, just casually laying on Hakoda’s desk, it’s confirmation.

He gets a new leather band, of course, one that’s just slightly thicker than traditional, soft on the inside and tanned a deep, dark blue. He punches the holes for the bones with Bato leaning over his shoulder, telling him where he wants a tooth and where he wants a claw. Neither of them mentions how the centre of the leather is left blank for now.

Their engagement is nothing like Hakoda and Kya’s was. Hakoda proposed to Kya in the spring and they got married in the summer; he had asked while they were outside, basking in the sun, and with some of Kya’s friends peering around igloos to watch as the scene unfolded. Hakoda had stuttered, had proclaimed his love for Kya, had made her laugh as he helped her place Kanna’s necklace around her neck.

In contrast, winter has only just started to end, the sky only just barely brightening for about an hour or so each day, before it plunges back into darkness. All of their friends are either dead, in the Northern Water tribe, or busy with their own families. Hakoda doesn’t even ask Bato, not really, he just slides the finished necklace across the table, ignoring the way Sokka and Katara gape at it. Bato looks at it and smiles, gingerly picks it up and ties the leather around his neck. He asks Katara to make sure the knot is secure, and Hakoda’s heart soars when she readily gets up, moves Bato’s hair to the side and readjusts it. The necklace sits at the base of his neck, the teeth and claws sprawl across his collarbones in the most delectable way, and the pendant sits flat on his chest, looking so natural and casual, that Hakoda can trick himself into thinking it’s always been there.

Bato looks happy wearing his necklace, he looks comfortable when his hand gets finding its way to the pendant, nails finding all the groves and uneven surfaces that Hakoda couldn’t smooth away.

There are few opportunities for anyone else to see it, with as cold and dark as it is. Even inside some of the newly build halls and offices, most people still wear an outer coat, to fight off any chill that passes through the complex halls, designed to keep the wind from blowing straight in. But the few who do see it get a sly grin on their face, wiggle their eyebrows and give Bato a playful nudge.

“Finally making an honest man out of Hakoda, huh?” Some people joke and even Hakoda can’t help but laugh.

“More honest than you, at least.” Bato sometimes fires back, earning a gasp of fake insult.

They’re busy, Hakoda and Bato, the village, their children, the whole world, and weddings take time. Hakoda asks Sokka and Katara if they have a preference for when the wedding is. They hem and haw for a while, before tentatively asking if it can wait until spring.

“Zuko won’t be able to visit for long if there’s not enough sun,” Sokka mentions shyly. Hakoda shoots him a look that he hopes reads as We Will Be Speaking About You Dating This Firebender Soon But Not Right Now. Sokka dutifully looks away.

Later as Bato is laying down next to Hakoda in bed, Hakoda asks, “Are you okay if we wait until spring?”

Bato shrugs. “I’ve waited for decades, I can wait two more months.”

When they sleep, Hakoda can feel the cool press of bone and stone against his cheek. It’s more comforting than he ever thought it could be.

The sun has returned, and with it brings new chores to do, new game to hunt, new responsibilities, and various children that were born during the winter months. There’s plenty to do, and every second of light brings them one second closer to the winter once again. There are boats to build and repair, there are walls that were damaged by wind and snow, there are stocks that need replenishing, and children that need hunting, singing, dancing, fighting, and history lessons.

Hakoda is pretty sure that everyone should be anxiously anticipating the start of all their work.

Instead, everyone is gathered in the new village square - complete with archways and fountains around the sides, columns that hold up a domed roof, and a ground that doesn’t shift when people walk over the same place too many times - throwing decorations on any available surface. The columns have been covered in swathes of fabric and dyed ropes, various beadwork decor has been hung from the ceiling and archways, carved bones have been placed around the area for luck, and good tidings, and just to make the place look interesting. Hakoda isn’t sure if it’s because no one has been out long enough for their clothes to get overly messy, but he’s pretty sure that everyone is dressed up in their more formal coats and boots.

It throws him off guard. Weddings in the Southern Water tribe truly aren’t that grand of an affair, but he assumes that the influx of Northerners has resulted in their more festive approach gaining some traction.

“Or maybe, they’re excited that their chief is getting married.” Bato offers, smiling at Hakoda when he presents his theory. Hakoda smiles back.

“I think I saw some men weeping when they realized they officially lost their shot with you.”

Bato rolls his eyes. “They never had a chance with me.” It’s a joke, and Hakoda wants to laugh, but Bato places a gentle hand on his shoulder, and Hakoda reads between the lines.

He doesn’t tease Sokka about running off with Zuko - the Firelord bundled up in more red and blue fabric that Hakoda has ever seen on him at once - the minute he steps off his ship. He doesn’t tease Katara about the way she shyly kisses Aang when he slides off Appa, before going to help Toph navigate her way across the ice. Bato is excited to see the young earth bender and starts an easy conversation with her and Suki and he leads them around the village, letting Katara go off to hold hands with Aang away from her father’s watchful eye.

They marry a few hours later, with nearly the whole village pressed against each other to watch as the two of them kneel in front of one of the elders, the old woman standing tall and proud in her furs despite the slight hunch she has in her spine.

She asks Bato if Hakoda has presented him with a betrothal necklace.

“Yes,” He says, voice deep and happy, and so soothing, even as dozens of eyes - including Hakoda’s children and their friends - stare at them. He digs the leather and pendant out from under his clothes, allowing the elder to see the design. The elder nods and smiles.

“Do you have a gift to present to your betrothed?” She asks Bato. He nods and pulls out a cloth gift. He hands it to Hakoda, who has to restrain himself from thanking him as he unwraps the fabric. A small gasp escapes him, when he sees the ivory of carved walrus tusk, carved and sharpened into a knife, the leather around the handle soft and worn but well cared for. It was Bato’s father and had been passed down in his family for generations. For a second, Hakoda almost turns to asks if Bato is certain if he wants to give it to him, before realizing that Bato wants it to be Hakoda’s so that it can go to Sokka. Bato wants to pass his family heirloom onto Hakoda’s children, because, and Hakoda’s heart skips a beat when the realization finally hits him, they’ll be the same family.

“Thank you,” Hakoda says a little watery. The woman in front of them takes that as acceptance of the gift.

“And do both of you intend to provide for each other and your family? Will you work together in the light of the summer, collecting what the Spirits give you, and in the darkness of winter, when only Tui smiles upon us?”

Both of them nod, and they hear an excited titter go through the crowd.

“Do either of you have any qualms or objections to your union.” They both shake their heads hastily and Bato’s necklace clicks and clacks as he moves his head. The excitement in the crowd grows as the elder clears her throat and calls, “And does the tribe accept this marriage?”

The crowd erupts with excitement, Hakoda can just filter out his own children cheering, Aang’s ‘whooping’ and Toph’s cackling at the sound. People clap and shout, and he and Bato can’t help but look at each other and laugh at the commotion. The Northerners have definitely spread their own modified traditions throughout the village. The elder in front of them works to control her own smile as she waits for the noise to settle.

“The tribe has acknowledged this union. Chief Hakoda, Bato, you are now wed.”

The cheering starts up again and Hakoda and Bato stand up, holding each other’s hand tightly. Hakoda surges up and presses a kiss to Bato’s lips, earning more cheers and a few whistles, and an exaggerated gag from Sokka, and grins when Bato blushes and pushes him lightly.

Hakoda can already tell that they’ll have to just write this day off, judging by excited energy that comes and goes through the crowd like waves. Hakoda wouldn’t be surprised if he found some people passing around fermented wine. He barely cares though, when he looks up to Bato and sees him smiling wider than Hakoda has ever seen him before.

He’s still gripping Hakoda’s hand, still blushing from the kiss and all the attention, and Hakoda can’t stop himself from leaning up and kissing him again. Bato doesn’t push him away this time, even though his flush gets darker.

“Worth the wait?” Hakoda asks.

Bato nods. “Yeah. It was pretty worth it.”

#m #bakoda #bakoda fleet week #my fic #hakoda #bato #bakoda fic

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