attackfish

So in less than twenty four hours, new Legend of Korra episodes will be on the actual TV for what may be the last time in forever.  Unlike a fair bit of this fandom, I don't think even a massive raise in ratings for these last two episodes will change Nickelodeon's mind about moving to an all digital release.  I think that the Nick execs made up their mind that Korra couldn't succeed, and so provided it with none of the tools necessary to make it succeed, and I also think that at this point, they would be able to talk themselves out of recognizing even massive success.  So I am not going to plead with my followers to watch, but I for one would kind of like this franchise's TV run to end with a bang rather than a whimper.

Also, I'm jealous, because I'm stuck at home finishing up the summer semester, instead of at Comic Con with all the cool kids.

One of the things I loved best about Avatar: the Last Airbender is that it faced head on issues that few other shows, for adults or children, were willing to touch.  Stories are how we learn to shape our own views of the world, and Avatar: the last Airbender did this with such a frankness, emotional honesty, and critical imagination that I ate it up with a spoon as eagerly as any child in the intended audience.  This is why I was so disappointed with  the first two books of The Legend of Korra, and also why I am so hopeful after seeing the premier of Book Three: Change.

( Cut for All The Spoilers, and I'm also starting to think I need a Jewish tag )

So after Book One, and it's frustrating habit of almost going to cool places, and Book Two, and the way it seriously angered me, and went nowere near any of the interesting stuff from the first book, and was fuzzy on villain motive, and had unacknowledged abuse and assault issues, and yeah, Book Three, if the premier is anything to go by is shaping up to be awesome.  I mean really!  It's going good places so far!  Who knew?  And it's a good thing, because I still really care about these characters.  My emotions, people!

But it serves me right  for watching it on livestream.  Some creepy 4chan types put homemade Korra/Amon rape porn over the commercials, and I had to find a new stream right in the middle, because fuck no.

Comments should be presumed spoilery.

Between iTunes’s very strange download schedule for this season of Legend of Korra, registering for classes, and a minor pumpkin related incident (I have pumpkin related incidents about once or twice every year it seems, and they always sound like they should be funny or story worthy, or something, but no.  This time, for example, my brother was going to roast pumpkin seeds, but they went bad, so he threw them out, but he forgot to take out the trash before I came over for my nephews’ birthday party, so I had a seizure in the bathroom and went home after my meds kicked in to sleep it off), I only just got to watch the two hour long second season finale today, and I just can’t!  I can’t even!  In the newfangled internet speak, I am unable to can.

However, in a herculean fannish effort, I rewatched the finale and managed to put some thoughts together here for all of you.  What follows is obviously highly spoilery.

( Things I didn’t like: If you’re just here for the squee, feel free to skip this part )

( Everything else (don't worry, this list is much longer) )

Well this season has certainly played holy havoc with my spirit and spirit world canons, that’s for sure. *faints with exhaustion.*

Disclaimer: The music for this vid is Natalie Merchant's "Build a Levee", as performed live in San Diago on March 30, 2002. The footage in this vid comes from Avatar: the Last Airbender, and The Legend of Korra, which belong to Nickelodeon, as well as to Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.

Summary: To bloodbend is to take back control.

Warning: Spoilers for all of Korra, Book 1, and all of Airbender Book 3.  Also *Spoiler, highlight to read* canon violence, canon murder-suicide, canon child abuse, canon animal cruelty, bloodbenders bending blood, just general creepiness.

Creator Commentary: Happy Halloween!  And happy early birthday to me!


Bloodbenders Build a Levee

I wrote these drabbles for rounds 76-100 of avatar_500 which has now come to the end of it's natural life.



( 76: Space - Cavernous (200) Asami, It's easier to pretend he still takes care of her. )

( 77: Lotus - Flowers in the Snow (350) Korra and her White Lotus guards, She's a little girl alone. )

( 78: Truce - The Sun Sets Burning (300) Ursa and Iroh, he understands why she had to do it. Part of the Zenith and Nadir verse. )

( 79: Tomb - Morning (200) Zuko and the Fire Sages, To his son, his death is like the sunrise. )

( 80: Tryst - A Maiden's Dishonor (200) Yue, Yue is free and unmoored. Part of the Zenith and Nadir verse )

( 81: Kind - What Comes Unforeseen (200) Yue and Pakku, It's the natural conclusion of what he had begun. )

( 82: Greed - Deserving (275) Zuko, Back then, love had seemed like a fever dream. )

( 83: Loyalty - If We Never Meet Again (450) Mai and Ty Lee, It feels like the end. )

( 84: Hide - Corridor of Ghosts (200) Mai and Azula, A children's game. )

( 85: Creep - Sacred Duty (200) Aang, It's too late to avoid killing. )

( 86: Mood - Daring One (250) Mai, her mother, and Azula, Mai can only push so far. )

( 87: Lie - At Home (150) Asami, The lies in our own mind become worn and comfortable. )

( 88: Circle - A Sweet Sound (120) Zuko and Lin, To him, the word means family. )

( 89: Look - Open to the Possibilities (275) Aang and the second Bumi, Aang isn't going to stop looking. )

( 90: Find - Examples (200) Mai and Ozai, She has all the bad examples she needs. )

( 91: Character - Live With It (200) Aang and Ozai, Power is a cold thing. )

( 92: Stare - Flower Chains and Teapots (150) Zuko, Zuko has lost. )

( 93: Glass - Fire Snipe Hunt (300) Zuko and his crew, If they had ever had the opportunity to read Lewis Caroll, they would tell you they had gone through the looking glass. )

( 94: Weak - Pure Ideals (150) OCs, Hisa listens when others speak. )

( 95: Knock - Like Tears in the Sun (350) Katara, Toph, and Zuko, They go to each other. )

( 96: Run - Like the Wind (350) Korra and Tenzin, How do you teach a girl who has been locked away her whole life about freedom? )

( 97: Truth - Cold Dark Clouds Wrapped Around (250) Ty Lee and Azula, Ty Lee has always known she was safest when the lies she tells herself match the ones Azula tells her. )

( 98: Whisper - Circus (200) Ty Lee, No one told her her leaving was the easy part. )

( 99: Wise - Poking at Her (175) Katara, Somehow Katara became the wise old woman others look to. )

( 100: Betray - Friend (250) Azula, Ty Lee, Mai, and Zuko, That word doesn't mean the same thing to Azula that it means to everyone else. )

A while back, I ran a drabble meme for the victims of the April 2011 tornadoes in Northern Alabama.  Back then, $2.99 vgifts, the proceeds of which went to the relief effort.  I would like to run something similar how, however, there is no such vgift.  Instead, please send me screenshots of your receipts from the Red Cross.  Three dollars buys you a 100 word drabble.  Six dollars buys you either a 200 word drabble, or two 100 word drabbles, your choice.  Nine dollars buys you a 300 word drabble, or a 200 word drabble, and a 100 word drabble, or three 100 word drabbles.  And so on.  I will write as many drabbles as you give money tot he Red Cross.  There is no limit to how much you all can get me to write through this meme.  I will write for Avatar: the Last Airbender/Legend of Korra, Harry Potter, or White Collar, and all of my previously established AUs are open.

How to make a request:

Comment here with a link to a screenshot of your donation receipt. and how much you donated.
Give me a breakdown of how you want your drabbles divided, including word length and prompt.
Requests should include the character or characters you want to see, any ships you want, and a one word prompt.  If you want the story set in any of my established AUs, please make a note.

Example Request:

Receipt: http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/af149/attackfishscales/flowerpots.gif (we'll all pretend that this isn't a gif of Zuko and Iroh hiding in flowerpots for this example, okay?) I donated $9.
Prompts: 200 words - Mai/Katara - Knives, and 100 words -Hufflepuff Zuko AU, Toph - justified.

Rules:

As ever, no Ty Zula, NC-17, incest, ships where one party is much older or younger than the other(s), rape, or other people's OCs

Come on, it hit an elementary school and a hospital.  We've got to do something.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #73, Revolt.

Summary: Even when Sokka says the right thing, it becomes the wrong one.

Small and Afraid

He used to joke about it.  He told the kids the story a couple of times, shaking his head and smiling.  It isn't a funny joke anymore, not with the Equalists saying that that's what all benders really think, and how they treat anybody who can't bend.  Tenzin sometimes tells the story, with a tight, unhappy look.

She asked her uncle Sokka once, about it, when she was fourteen and gawky, and taller than her mother already; he was the one who kept telling the story anyway.  She remembers folding herself up on a bench in a back room of her mother's school, and watching him attempt some new fighting move.  "You want to help me practice?" He asked her.

Lin stood up reluctantly, shoulders hunched.  "Okay."

"Your mom riding you hard?"

She shrugged.

He waved her close.  "She does that to everybody, don't worry about it.  You know what she said to me first time we fought together."

Lin rolled her eyes.  "Yeah.  You only told us all the story a million times.  Why she say that anyway?  You can fight as well as anyone."

Grimacing, Sokka rested his hand on her arm.  "I think when she was a kid, she hated the way people pitied her, and assumed she was helpless because she was blind, and that for a little while she believed it."

"What does that have to do with anything?"  She stood back and slipped into a guard stance, waiting for him to do the same.

Sokka didn't move.  "What I mean is, and I don't think your mom's got any idea she's doing this, she decided that we're the ones who should be pitied everybody who isn't Toph Bei Fong.  She has these amazing powers, and she feels like that's all she's got, so she has to think that's the most important thing, or she'll feel small and afraid again."  He sighed and copied Lin's stance.  "She used to say she felt bad for everybody who can't see with their feet, the same way people felt bad for her because she couldn't see with her eyes."

"But I can see with my eyes and with my feet," Lin pointed out.

"And nobody will ever pity you," Sokka assured her.  "Now, I want you to block this punch, and I'll try to get around the block."

Lin snorted weakly, aping her mother's bravado.  "Yeah, you'll try."

Written for the white_lotus, Lunar New Year Exchange, as treats for such_heights, eruthros, and jack_of_none respectively.

( Maiden Voyage: Lin and Tenzin - They're ten years old, and they're really not supposed to go to the rock garden by themselves, even when Lin isn't grounded. )

( Sink like a Stone: Katara and Toph - Toph's in charge. Have fun. )

( Knowledge Becomes Spirals: Professor Zei - There is no place for a human in the library of Wan Shi Tong. )

Written for avatar_500 prompt #70, Chakra.

Summary: There is no Avatar that has not felt the icy touch of failure.

The Shadow of Inaction

The hand that held the paintbrush didn't shake, as steady as the earth beneath her.  Kyoshi's mirror was a rock in her hand.  The face she painted onto herself was still as stone.

Three days ago she had changed the very shape of the earth itself.  She had made an island, a new born land torn from the edge of another.  She had felt down to the depths of the earth and touched the fires that burned within.  She had seen the slabs of stone that fit over the earth's brightly burning core like a child's puzzle and ripped out a new piece.  In her very body, she had felt the slow shift of the earth, and forced the earth to roar.  The fires of the earth had bubbled up.  She had quenched them.  The ground had quaked.  She had quelled it.  There was a man who had fallen to his death at the bottom of the new-made cliff, and she had done nothing about that.

The black line of coal she painted over her eyebrow sat above the red like a shadow.  There was a man who had died who should have died a long time ago before his shadow had spread over the Earth Kingdom.  It was the Avatar's duty to care about the whole world, not only her home.  She could remake the world.  She had.  She just hadn't bothered before.

No matter how hard she looked, her eyes didn't glow, and the shame that clenched at her made her wonder, afraid, if she had so failed her duty that the universe itself had taken it away.

She couldn't feel the world around her, only the earth under her feet, the air she breathed, the sunlight from the window, and the water in the ocean beside her.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #67, World.

Summary: She's starting to think she never should have left home.

Bright Lights, Big City

Korra hugged her knees and stared out the window, listening to the wind hissing through the tree branches.  The radio sat off on a shelf above her, silent and foreboding.  It seemed like every time she turned it on, Amon's voice billowed out.

She was starting to wish she had never left the South Pole.  Growing up there, nothing had ever scared her, not like this.  She had never doubted that someday, she was going to be the Avatar the world needed, one of the greats, as great as Aang or greater.

And now, even Tenzin was starting to notice, and Tarrlok was throwing a party in her honor.  There was no getting away from it, and all she wanted was the ice and isolation of home, the simplicity of training with the Order of the White Lotus, and her old confidence in herself.

She had still seen so little of the world, just one city in one country.  There could be more little wars, and more Amons all over the world, and she wouldn't know it yet.  If Republic City was too much for her to handle, how was she ever going to keep the whole world in balance?

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 byclockwerkchaos
How Tenzin Met Pema by lavanyasix


Fills:

Forwolfs_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

Written for avatar_500 prompt #62, Anonymous.

Summary: Other people worked hard to put him where he is.

On the Building of a Fortune

She sucked in a breath and made the flames as hot as she could.  Metal melted and fused together as each half-finished satocycle passing her got an exhaust pipe welded into place thanks to her firebending.  When the break bell sounded, she grabbed her lunchbox and joined the escaping throng.

~*~

The healer bent the water low, close to the burn on his client's chest.  The water glowed blue as it soothed the pain.  "Try to keep it clean, Mr. Sato," he said with a bow when he had finished.  "That's a nasty burn.  You don't want it to get infected."

~*~

"So, boss," one of the earthbenders said as she bent the rubble into the underground wall.  "Why you been having us clear out this hole under your place?  Wine cellar?  Laboratory?"

Hiroshi's expression slammed closed.  "That really isn't any of your business, is it?"

"Okay," she said.  "Just curious, sheesh!"

~*~

He almost left the arena twice.  It just wasn't right for his kids to see that kind of cheating.  He worked hard, had a good job at the power plant, that was the right example.  But when the Equalists stormed the arena, he felt his own lightning crackling in their gloves.

This looks like I can answer with my cell phone keyboard!  (On a side note, please forgive my more numerous than usual spelling mistakes in this.  I don't have spellcheck on my phone, and my spelling is lamentable at the best of times.)

Ganked fromsholio

Give me a character and I'll tell you a piece of my personal headcanon. Any fandom is welcome here, provided that I am reasonably familiar with it.

This fic will make a lot more sense to the people who have played The Legend of Korra: Last Stand game on Nickelodeon.  I may have gone a little crazy on the token gathering.  As such, this makes no character or plot sense as far as the show itself is concerned, and is just meant to be silly.

To the Rooftops

Noatak's heart pounded as he coiled his legs to spring to the next piece of scaffolding.  That little...  She was fast.  She leapt from balcony to ledge, to scaffold like she was flying, ceaseless and sure-footed, like some kind of machine, never letting him stop, never letting him catch his breath as she chased after him, ready to bring him down.  His face behind the mask was slick with sweat.  He had tried to bloodbend her, but she flitted around, too fast to catch.

She soared into the air.  Noatak fingered the gas canister tucked into his robe, hoping it would distract her for long enough to put a little distance between them...

She flew right over his head. Noatak stared as she climbed higher and higher on the scaffolding, bending over to snatch something up.  "What are you doing?" he demanded, before he could stop himself.

"You would not believe how much money's gotten dropped up here," she called back.  "I mean, I've collected a thousand yuans already!"

"What!"  His eyes bugged.  The only reason she hadn't captured him already was because the Avatar was broke and greedy?

"Hey, I do not get an allowance," she justified sulkily, folding her arms.  "And if I want to go out somewhere nice with my friends for a change, that's none of your business.  And personally, I think Tenzin's just being..."

He sighed as she continued her tirade.  He was going to lose to this... this child, he just knew it.  Pathetic.

That's it, folks, I can't take it.  In the hopes that maybe writing some of what I want to write will get me unblocked on the fic I'm trying to write, I'm giving in and running a commentfic meme for my Avatar!Zuko verse.  Comment with up to five requests, and I’ll guarantee you at least one commentfic.  I’ll probably answer with more, knowing me.  weirdlet , fanficforensics, beboots, and floranna  get seven requests and a guarantee of two fics, because beboots  and floranna  are the best betas ever, and weirdlet and fanficforensics just because.


Also, the 'verse has a title now, Kindle the Wind!


Air, Water, Earth, Fire.

Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished.

A hundred years passed and the new Avatar crashed into the ice sheet that borders our village. Although he is the Fire Nation prince, and it's his family and his nation that have brought this war to the world, I have hope that inside Zuko lies the spark of greatness. In the end, he has to save the world.

Front Cover Illustration

Timeline:

The Turtle-Crab and the Hawk
The first time Zuko struck a Fire Nation soldier in anger
Banner
Meeting Sokka and Katara
The joys of new bending
Zuko surprising himself by being spiritual and philosophical
Gran-Gran criticizing Uncle's parenting skills
Uncle Iroh finds out
Iroh has a talk with his nephew
Agni Kai against Zhao
Laying Aang to rest at the Southern Air Temple
Momo joins the Party
Sokka finds out the women on the ship aren't there to cook (and learns something, maybe)
Act of Providence
The Spinning Gates