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#its a disservice to my bestie Katara
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Look, i love Katara, i really do. She's one of my faves, which is why it pains me when season 3 fics make her out to be a complete bitch. Yes she hated Zuko, yes she was mean to him, but y'all take it too far.
I especially hate in the "the gaang learns how Zuko got his scar" fics when the whole story of Zukos scar comes out bc Katara goaded him. Zuko does not owe them that. Zuko went 3 years on a boat with never mentioning how he got his scar. He never tells anyone in canon about it and only talks about his scar in season 3 to people who already knew. The audience only knows about his scar because IROH told the story. Zuko is not telling to story unless it's pried out of him (the exception being the "I assumed you already knew" trope in the fics because i love that and that is a valid assumption that Zuko would make).
But making Katara unnecessarily cruel and then having Zuko tell the story of his scar as a gotcha moment is leagues out of character for him. And Katara. The og gaang does kinda deserve to know why Zuko was chasing them, but at the same time Zuko does not owe them his traumatic backstory. The story of his scar is not something that he's telling the everyone with ears about.
Katara glares at Zuko, threatens him in private, doesn't like to accept his help (the keeping rocks from crushing you), and makes snide comments (mainly after Azula attacks them). But she still let Aang go alone with Zuko to the temple of the sun warriors. She threatened Zuko, but was the one to catch him when he was falling in the western air temple. She's grumpy and butter in the Southern Raiders but them forgives him and hugs him. Then Zuko and Katara are basically inseparable after that. She can't be too cruel towards him. Lowkey Zuko would probably accept bad treatment bc that boy has insecurities but Katara would never act like that and she wouldn't forgive herself for it because her main character trait is compassion.
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goldrushzukka · 3 years
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1, 2, 7, 8, 9. (Sorry, i know that's like...all of them)
1. what themes would you like to write about that you feel don’t get explored very often?
i love writing coming out storylines. it’s not really that they’re uncommon, i just find a lot of catharsis in them. 
2. what are some common elements of stories you are tired of seeing? what would you avoid writing about?
i tend to avoid writing sibling dynamics bc i’m an only child and therefore not really. qualified. i love reading it though!! 
7. favourite description in your WIP?
it was really hard to pick one so i have a few answers for this bc i love to talk about myself so. (under the cut bc JESUS this got long but spoilers for and i’ll do anything you say (read it here!) ahead!!!)
- from chapter 2:
Sokka looks at him, a fantasy come to life, and takes off his stupid sweatpants.
He throws them at Zuko’s head, and earns himself a short burst of that real laugh, shocked and unguarded.
“You asshole,” Zuko says. He sits up and grabs Sokka’s hand, pulling him down on top of him. Something comes alive under Sokka’s skin where Zuko’s fingers graze his wrist. He calls it lust and ignores the fact that it feels nothing like it.
Zuko kisses him, his mouth still in the shape of laughter, and the alive thing screams for his attention. Sokka buries it and hopes it won’t deafen him before they’re done.
im very fond of this whole chapter (i think it’s probably my favourite? it was definitely the easiest to write) but i really love looking back on this part particularly now that we’re in the angsty part of the story bc this is where it all started. yes technically it started in chapter 1 but this is when sokka starts to fall for zuko. this is the beginning of all those pesky non-casual feelings that he’s going to pretend don’t exist until someone else calls him out on them.
- also from chapter 2:
He’s forty-five minutes late already, and when he knocks, a woman made of pursed lips and sharp angles answers the door. She looks elegant and expensive the same way a skyscraper does. Or a cache of medieval weaponry.
“Oh,” Sokka says, digging into his pocket to find the map on his phone. “I must have the wrong place, sorry -”
She looks him up and down, her eyes narrowed in a way that feels violent and practiced, and her smirk turns distasteful. Sokka risks a glance down at himself, at his torn up jeans - not distressed, just torn - and the Madonna t-shirt he’s pretty sure actually belongs to Katara, and thinks she might have a point. The bag in his hand feels heavier when her eyes land on it.
“Zuzu,” the woman calls into the apartment, “your dinner’s here.”
“I didn’t order -” Zuko appears in the doorway, bitter frustration in his expression as he looks at the woman.
His eyes fall on Sokka, though, and his face clears into a light-pollution smile.
this is technically two so i will start with: i love azula. i haven’t found any room to bring her back yet but believe me i am LOOKING. she’s hot and mean and gay and i LOVE HER. oh also insider scoop but suki’s date from earlier in this chapter.......WAS azula. they probably won’t see each other again because once azula met sokka and connected his face to the Best Friends Forever picture frame on suki’s desk she stopped answering the phone.
pt 2: i’ve had a couple of comments mention the “light-pollution smile” line specifically and i am always so happy to read them bc yeah. YEAH. i’ll admit it. that line HITS. 
- from chapter 4:
He sets his phone down - only, he doesn’t. He misses the table by a mile, and in his scramble to catch his phone before it breaks on the hardwood floor and wakes Momo on the cushion beside him, his hand finds the lip of his cereal bowl, and then that’s falling, too. He manages to catch the phone, but something in his head gets lost in translation on its way down his arms, and he ends up with a boxers-only lap full of soggy Cheerios.
Momo gets a splash of milk on his back and hisses at Zuko for his crimes, and somehow that’s the worst part of it.
haley @fruitysokka said that this passage reads like an action movie and i think about it all the time. (thank u haley i love u)
- lastly this extended metaphor from chapter 6:
The soup is good, once the heat of it clears him up enough to taste it. It’s thick and warm and there’s enough pepper that Sokka gets a kick from it even in his condition. He feels it all the way down his throat and into his stomach, where it mixes with the prickly nervousness he’s feeling from Zuko’s attention.
He sets the bowl down on the table and asks, eyes stuck on his hands in Momo’s fur where he’s climbed into his lap, “How was the date?”
“It was good, actually,” Zuko says. “Jet seems like a nice guy. He’s very - uh - passionate, I guess you could call it? He’s a climate and human rights activist.”
The spines of Sokka’s nervousness turn to daggers.
...
“I said yes. We’re getting lunch on Sunday.”
The daggers are swords now, and Sokka’s heart sinks down, down, down, right to the hilt.
...
“I’ll text you when I’m home,” Zuko promises, and Sokka’s heart skewers itself on a second sword.
Zuko’s smile when Sokka says, “Thank you for the soup,” is a third.
The door closing behind him is a fourth.
The silence as Sokka shuffles back to bed is every single one that remains.
something something canon swordsmen something pride comes before the fall something chivalry fell on his sword from eden by hozier. you guys get it i dont have to explain myself
8. favourite dialogue in your WIP?
ok so i cant share my actual favourite dialogue bc it's a spoiler for chapter 8 and i technically haven't written it yet (it's in my brain just.....plaguing me) but it's GOOD i SWEAR so. once again i have more than one answer bc actually? i love this fic and im proud of it. deal with it.
- from chapter 1:
“Hey, stranger,” Sokka says, still watching him in the mirror. The corner of Zuko’s mouth ticks up.
“You’re not following me, are you?” Zuko’s tone is seductive, endlessly so, and Sokka wonders while he dries his hands if he has to put it on or if he just sounds like that.
“You give a guy one compliment and he thinks you’re stalking him,” Sokka mutters, and Zuko laughs, low and enticing. Not the genuine, endearing laugh of this morning, but one with an agenda.
Well. Sokka always likes a plan.
“Are you following me? ” Sokka asks. He spies a miraculous dry patch on the sink bank and tries to be casual about the way he hops up to sit on it.
“I might be,” Zuko says, and at Sokka’s raised eyebrow, he continues, “I saw you at the bar and I wanted to talk to you. Sue me.”
“You wanted to talk.”
“Amongst other things.”
as a chronically awkward person i am INSANELY proud of the flirting in this fic. no idea if it would work in a real life situation. excited to never find out bc im not about to use lines from my fanfiction on real women. 
- from chapter 2
“You must be Suki,” Zuko says. He meets her gaze, and his fingers go still under Momo’s chin.
“And you’re Zuko,” Suki replies, her smile all different shades of intimidating. “I’d shake your hand, but I know where it’s just been.”
i wrote this entire scene just so i could have suki say this. im not even joking. suki is my favourite part of this entire fic and its not even ABOUT her.
- from chapter 3:
When Sokka crosses the room and slips under the covers beside him, Zuko says, “I can leave, if you want. I can go home.”
...
He asks, still barely hovering over Zuko, “What if I don’t want that?”
Zuko swallows. “I can stay.”
“So stay,” Sokka says, and lays his head down on Zuko’s chest.
i just think it’s sweet. i like it a lot. makes my heart hurt a little when i think about it. 
- from chapter 4:
[Suki // 15:13] there is a LOT of chmpagrjn
[Suki // 15:13] cahpmhagne
[Suki // 15:13] chsanpghn
[Suki // 15:14] alcohol :)
once again: suki is the best part of this whole fic. i love her so much. she is the reason the word bestie exists. im really proud of the texting in this fic bc it’s my first time actually including it in fic and it’s turned out really well!!
- ok last one bc i just realised this is turning into a novel. from chapter 4:
“How’s my baby?”
Zuko glances down at Momo, batting at the untied laces of his shoes with one determined paw. “He’s doing just fine.”
“And how’s Momo?”
“He’s - what?”
are there better written, more narratively important and emotive lines in this fic? yes. is this the best part of the entire thing? also yes. i invented the jin/yue wedding because i needed a reason for zuko to have a key in what became chapter 6, but sometimes i think the entire fic exists just for this exchange. best dialogue i have ever written.
9. what scene was the hardest for you to write and why?
the start of chapter 6 of aidays was difficult. i kept wanting to skip ahead to the meaty parts - i.e, zuko and his soup - but i didn’t want to do sokka a disservice like that. it was also really hard to maintain the balance of accurately describing the delirium of illness while still being coherent for the reader? so that took me a couple of days to get right.
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