attackfish | The Avatar_500 Jump Start Posting And Comments Meme

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The Avatar_500 Jump Start Posting And Comments Meme

Alright, I'm unwilling to let

avatar_500 go without a fight, so I am going to incentivize participation. Write and post a fic for Round 65 - Air, and I'll fill a drabble request of yours. Comment on all of the fics in the round (everybody said they wanted more comments), and at the end of the round, link me to all of the comments and I'll fill a request for you. Do both, and I will fulfill three requests for commentfic.

The rules for posting to

avatar_500 can be found here.

You don't have to belong to

avatar_500 or have ever participated in it before to earn a request for commenting, and if you do want to join to post a fic for the round, all you have to do is click the "join the community" button, and you're in, easy.

About which I will not write (so don't request):

Ty Zula
NC-17
Incest
Ships where one party is much older or younger than the other(s)
Rape
Other people's OCs

Other than that, everything is fair game.

The deadline to post fic is Saturday December 1st at 11:00 PM EST. The deadline to post comments is Saturday December 8th at 11:00 PM EST.

Fics in The Round So Far:

Marking Boundaries by

attackfish
The Need to be Seen by

lalunatique
Playtime at Air Temple Island by

wolfs_lament
What Are the Odds? by

c3childs
Wrong by

chordatesrock
Four Element - Air- Third Stanza by

clockwerkchaos
How Tenzin Met Pema by

lavanyasix

Fills:

For

wolfs_lament:
For a story: Hufflepuff Zuko, Secret Tunnel

For

chordatesrock:
   For a story: Holding This Breath: the Aftermath of Kidnapping Aang
   For commenting on everyone's fics: Quiet Shadowed Places: the Cooler
   Bonus: Zuko/Toph, all grown up and surviving state dinners

For

lalunatique:
For commenting on everyone's fics: Ty Lee and Suki - Sake

For

somariel:
For commenting on everyone's fics: The Grand Lotus puts out a call

For:

c3childs:
   For a story: Hama - Katara wasn't her first pupil *Warning for violence and death*
   For commenting on everyone's fics: Amon - the vigilante of Republic City
   Bonus: Yakone - he owns Republic City

For

lavanyasix:
   For a story: Lin Realizes Toph is a dirty cop
   For commenting on everyone's fics: Pre-series - Korra encounters prejudice due to being half Northern and half Southern
   Bonus: Ozai marries his son off into an insultingly low-ranked colonial noble family. Zuko/Kori

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Apologies. I was fine-tuning my prompts when my wifi went down for a good long while.

1. Lin realizes that her mother, never one for rules, is actually a dirty cop.
2. Pre-series, Korra encounters prejudice due to being half-NWT/half-SWT.
3. Ozai decides that allowing Zuko free reign to travel the world is a good way to muster an empire-wide conspiracy, so instead of a snipe hunt he marries the boy off to an insultingly low-ranked colonial noble family. Zuko/Kori (Zuori? Koko?).

I love you and hate you in equal measure right now.

The iron door crunched off its hinges and swung around until it hit the wall before sagging to the floor. Captain Lin Bei Fong stalked in like she didn't even notice the damage, and Toph had to suppress a grin. The resemblance between them wasn't usually so obvious. "Linnie! How're you doing?"

Instead of answering, Lin slammed one of the canvas evidence bags with a knife inside down on her mother's stone table. "I read the evidence report! We did not find this at Peng Li's apartment. One of my officers found it in a gutter a block away from where we found the body!"

Toph's secretary, who had done the actual ink and paper writing of the report in question edged out of the room, and Toph felt her daughter's hands twitch with the impulse to bend the door closed to stop him. "Maybe you just aren't remembering it right."

"Mom!"

"Wow," Toph whispered. "You haven't called me that in a loooong time, Linnie."

"This is serious, Mother." Lin clenched her teeth. "Did you falsify evidence?"

"He was lying." Toph stood up and swept around to the other side of the table, to stand before her daughter. "I felt it. He butchered his pregnant wife and left her in a ditch."

"So you framed him?" Lin demanded, eyes wide, hands shaking.

"Yeah, I framed a man who is guilty," Toph spat. "You know he's guilty, I know he's guilty, and I'm not going to let him get away with it."

"You broke the law."

"Don't tell me you're going to report this." Toph folded her arms. "Let him walk out of prison, get married again, and do this to some other girl."

"No, I won't." Toph could feel the unhappiness radiating off her daughter, and everything in her wanted to reach out a hand to her, but Lin stepped back, out of her reach. She turned around and walked out of the room, and Toph didn't call her back.

I could see how this would feed into Lin becoming the rule-bound, no-privileges sort of person we see in the present day. After all, if Toph's lie detecting doesn't work on the likes of Azula, false positives should also be in the realm of possibility. That'd seem the sort of thing to nag at Lin, even if she thought the suspect in this particular case was guilty.

The bit about Toph having a secretary to write her reports raises a good (and obvious) point. Her position would involve a lot of paperwork, so Toph would need to dictate her reports to someone. That could be an interesting relationship.

I've sometimes fanwanked the idea that metalbending could allow Toph to learn to read and write, if she put iron salts in her ink, but on reflection I wonder if she'd actually be that interested in learning either skill. She wouldn't need them until she becomes a police officer, and that's probably into her twenties. Between her police work and training metalbenders, and possible a marriage as well, that wouldn't leave a terrible amount of time for her to become literate.

She doesn't even necessarily need a false positive on a lie to accidentally frame an innocent person for murder. What if next time, somebody's lying about their alibi, because their real alibi was that they were with a lover? This must terrify Lin, that her mother is so confident in her own infallibility that she would do something like that.

It would have to be an incredibly intimate relationship and I can't imagine Toph would be an easy boss to work for, especially in a relationship that intense.

On Toph writing, I'm sure she could find a way if she wanted to, but speaking as somebody who has disabilities, a lot of it is about picking battles, and I'm totally okay with Toph looking at reading and writing as something she doesn't care about enough to figure out the workarounds.

Korra tugged against her mother's hand. "But it's got candy!"

"I don't care, Korra," her mother said tiredly. "We're not going there."

As Korra pulled, the hard, compacted snow melted and refroze under her mother's feet, turning into a glassy sheet of perfect, slick ice. Senna slid on the ice as if wheels had been attached to her feet, as if she wore freshly sharpened ice skates. And no matter how many times her mother shouted "Korra, no!" Korra kept dragging her behind her in her small, relentless wake.

Korra, blithely unaware of her newest show of waterbending, in pursuit of the booth with candy, as she had been unaware of all of them previously, sauntered under the booth canopy, and favored the woman behind the table with a wide, guileless smile. The woman behind the table frowned forebodingly down at her, and Korra's smile faltered.

"My, Senna, your girl strong," one of the women shopping chuckled, the lines on her face softening into a smile. Her gnarled fingers plucked one of the strings of fruit flavored sugar lumps from a hook on one of the poles that held up the booth's canvas roof. They shimmered like ice in the light that filtered down through the canvas. Korra popped one of the candy beads in her mouth, It was lemonberry. Her favorite.

"Those are imported!" the shopkeeper gasped furiously. "You can't just-"

"Oh calm down Nigaq." The old woman clucked her tongue and patted Korra on the back. "You know I'm good for it. Such a strong child."

"Well I heard that happens when they're mixed," the shopkeeper growled. Korra didn't think she liked her very much.

"Don't be nasty," the old woman scolded. "Besides, it's an old wives' tale, and both her parents are Water Tribe anyway."

"Okay," Senna cut in quickly. "You've had your candy, Korra, thank the nice ladies so we can leave."

Korra stuck her lip out stubbornly and pointed at the shopkeeper. "She's not a nice lady."

The shopkeeper's mouth dropped open. "Well I never!"

"Korra!" Senna grabbed her daughter's arm.

The old woman snorted. "She has you pegged, Nigaq."

"Your daughter is a miserable little brat," the shopkeeper sneered, hauling herself up to her feet to loom menacingly over her table. "I hope you're happy with her, Senna. Serves you right for not settling down with a nice Southern boy."

"I hope you have a lovely day, Nigaq," Korra's mother retorted. She turned to the old woman who had given Korra the candy and took her daughter's arm. "That was very sweet of you, Kirima thank you. Come on, Korra, let's go."

Korra watched the women as her mother let her out of the shop, sucking on the lump of candy uncertainly.

I'll admit, despite being the one to request this one, I was hesitant when the email notice popped up in my inbox. I dreaded seeing what kid!Korra would be subjected to. Like what's behind a closed door, what you haven't seen yet is infinitely more horrible than whatever is there when you open the door, so I'm glad Korra didn't suffer overly much here.

I'm a puzzled by what the old wives' tale is supposed to be. Is it that the stereotype of a north/south kid is physically strong or just a strong bender?

Honestly, most of it went right over little Korra's head. *pets her*.

The old wives' tale is that kids whose parents are from two different elements are stronger, and our sour shopkeeper was applying it to Korra, even though bother her parents are Water Tribe. I hear tell some people have the headcanon that no one is actually a nonbender. They just aren't born into the nation of the element they would be bending. So kids with parents of two elements would have double the chance of being born into the right nation for their element. Eh, just go with it. I was tired when I wrote it.

Yu Dao gleamed like a gold coin that had been polished until the markings had started to wear away, but Zuko barely noticed it. The bandage on his face stuck to the burn underneath, rubbing painfully against it with every move he made. He could barely feel it. He could barely feel the ship's gangway underneath his feet, or his own nails biting into the flesh of his palms.

In the breeze, the banners waved, and ribbons and garlands hung from windows and doors. The soldiers his father had sent with him to escort him, or guard him, or confine him and make sure he went where his father wanted him to, or look impressive behind him as he walked into this colonial backwater, filed out of the ship behind him, shattering his momentary impulse to run back into the ship and somehow force the helmsman away from the wheel and sail them all away from here. The town mayor stood with his wife in front of the small crowd, a hand on his daughter's shoulder. Zuko swallowed and marched up to her.

The mayor, his soon to be father in law, bowed to him as his wife and daughter watched Zuko speculatively. "You honor us with your presence, Prince Zuko."

Don't make fun of me, Zuko wanted to say, not that saying that had ever worked. His father wasn't honoring them. He was disgracing Zuko. And everybody knew it. "Thank you," he said awkwardly, instead.

The mayor's daughter, Zuko's bride, looked at him like she was trying to decide just how stupid he was. Zuko turned back to her, glowering a challenge at her out of his good eye. Her hands balled into fists.

She was an earthbender. His father was making him marry an earthbender.

Instead of Mai. Zuko's foul temper deepened.

The crowd, the whole town probably, he thought, with a horrified jolt, stilled. The mayor's wife pasted on a smile. "Come, Prince Zuko, you must be tired from your long journey." She put a hand on his shoulder, and Zuko went rigid with the effort of not shaking it off.

"Yes, um, thank you," He mumbled, trying to remember if anybody had told him these people's names, except for the girl he was supposed to marry, Kori Morishita. He was going to need to learn their names, Zuko realized with dread, if he was going to marry their daughter. "Yeah, I'm... I guess I'm tired."

He would be married, the morning after tomorrow, at dawn. His father had decreed it, and as late as the ship that brought him was, he was lucky it wasn't later. He would be married to a gawky earthbending girl with a hard mouth and angry eyes in a little colony town. There was going to be a ceremony. It wasn't going to be any more than a peasant festival.

He should probably wonder what his bride-to-be felt about him, but he couldn't make himself care.

"I'm very tired," he whispered.

~*~

Yu Dao gleamed like a gold coin that had been polished until the markings had started to wear away, but Zuko barely noticed it. Azula, he knew, was noticing it, and noticing the newly scrubbed windows and fresh coats of paint on all of the buildings, and somewhere in the back of her mind, she was calculating exactly how long it would take for the shine to wear off.

Wearing his best clothes and the gold flame hairpiece he was still entitled to as a Fire Nation prince, and standing next to his wife, in front of the town, he felt just a little...

A small, cold smirk played on her lips as she stepped off the boat. "Hello, Brother."

"Hello, Azula," he replied dully, dutifully.

"And Princess Kori." Azula turned to her, and Kori tensed. "Sister. It's wonderful to meet you."

Kori bowed. "Princess Azula. Welcome. We're so honored you came." And as quickly as Kori had caught Azula's interest, she lost it. Zuko envied her.

"You look good, Zuko," Azula appraised him, eyes lidded, and Zuko waited for her to finish. "Marriage and fatherhood must agree with you. Or maybe it's being out here in a more natural environment for you."

Zuko gritted his teeth. "Yeah, it's great. You should try it some time. It would do you so much good."

"Princess Azula," Mayor Morishita anxiously cut in with a bow. "I know you must be tired from travelling. We have dinner waiting for you inside my home, if you will follow me."

Azula glanced at him. "Alright, if you insist." She walked confidently at the crowd, and it parted for her, as she must have known it would, the men, women and children of Yu Dao forming a corridor of bowed heads. And Azula passed through, and Zuko, Kori, and her parents had to scramble to catch up. "You know, Zuko, I'm surprised you didn't start building your little family sooner," she said as he fell in behind her. "It had been what? Almost three years before you had Hyo? We were starting to get worried."

Zuko flinched, stupidly, and Kori grabbed his arm to pat it. It wasn't even a good taunt. If he was old enough to sit on a War Council, and challenge someone to an Agni Kai (to show shameful cowardice in combat) their father had said, he was old enough to marry. The Firelord had decreed it. But nobody was really worried that a thirteen year old boy hadn't gotten a fourteen year old girl pregnant. Kori had been Azula's age back then. "What are you doing here, Azula?"

He could feel Kori, next to him, waiting, wondering when Azula turn into the terrifying creature he had told her about, but Zuko could already feel her laying traps.

"I thought I'd catch the circus when it comes to town tomorrow." Azula didn't bother to look back at him. "And then I'm going to Omashu to see Mai. You remember Mai, don't you?"

Agghhh... that first part! "The feels," as they say. Poor broken Zuko. And I wonder what's going on in Kori's head. Probably something about however could the Fire Lord punish her loyalist family like this.

The second part was interesting for what it didn't say: namely, about Zuko and Kori's relationship. They seem to know each other's tells, and they do have a kid now, but beyond that it's hard to tell whether theirs is a "going along to get along" sort of marriage or something with real affection. Azula clearly thinks its the latter, given how she goes straight for Zuko's Mai button.

Azula's mostly just throwing things at the wall and hoping something will stick.

Kori and Zuko actually bonded over their mutual unhappiness at being married. They get along well enough, and they're starting to build more... If Azula doesn't manage to manipulate Zuko into going Avatar hunting with her and the Dangerous Ladies.

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The Avatar_500 Jump Start Posting And Comments Meme

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Lin Realizes Toph is Dirty

Re: Lin Realizes Toph is Dirty

Re: Lin Realizes Toph is Dirty

Korra encounters prejudice due to being half Northern and half Southern

Re: Korra encounters prejudice due to being half Northern and half Southern

Re: Korra encounters prejudice due to being half Northern and half Southern

Ozai marries his son off into an insultingly low-ranked colonial noble family. Zuko/Kori Pt 1/2

Ozai marries his son off into an insultingly low-ranked colonial noble family. Zuko/Kori Pt 2/2

Re: Ozai marries his son off into an insultingly low-ranked colonial noble family. Zuko/Kori Pt 2/2

Re: Ozai marries his son off into an insultingly low-ranked colonial noble family. Zuko/Kori Pt 2/2