In the era of Kyoshi, a scrap of ancient history was discovered. Faded by centuries of dust and neglect, all that could be discerned from the tattered parchment was the words, "Dai Li's agents brought balance to the chaos of Ba Sing Se." It is from this that Kyoshi would find the inspiration to establish a new police force in Ba Sing Se in her era. But what of the original Dai Li? Thousands of years before Kyoshi, Kuruk, and Yangchen--a history all but lost to time--the world teetered on the brink. Nations one incident from all out war, environments destroyed by the greed of man, and spirits angered by the insolence of humanity. The spirits threatened to wipe them all out, unless the humans could make a change. From this chaos, a man named Dai Li attempted to unite the world. With his charismatic aura and strange bending abilities, he all but compelled his followers to complete devotion. His power spread, commanding total submission. His daughter, however, would ruin his plans. After his first fall, Dai Li, thought dead, faded into obscurity, and his daughter, granted a strange power by the last Lion Turtle, rose to fill the void of the absent Avatar. Ten years later, Dai Li would rear his head again, and Juno, knowing humanity under Dai Li's rule would have no humanity at all, sought out her own band of benders to take on her father. With all their differences and flaws, she will have her work cut out for her as they face Dai Li's enigmatic cult, their own demons, and the Avatar of whom no one speaks.

Another teaser of my fic, Avatar: Threads of Power, which I hope to be posting soon! (As in, like, the next couple days, hopefully.) This is Kelsang, the character I played in the original TTRPG on which the fic is based.

Ok so Bumi, Kya, Tenzin. Then I would add two more kids and I am going to pull Yeshe and Sila from Tibetan and inupiat cultures respectively. Bumi, Kya, Tenzin, Sila, and then maybe fraternal twins Yeshe and Yonten. Yeshe (girl) is an airbender but Yonten (boy) is not a bender. I can’t decide if Sila (another boy) is a bender or not. My gut says not a bender at all, but that puts aang and katara at a 50/50 bender/nonbender rate. Making him a waterbender feels like a cop out for some reason but actually that may be the best option. Yeah Bumi and Yonten can be oldest/youngest and also nonbenders, kya and sila are waterbenders, tenzin and Yeshe are airbenders. I don’t love how neatly that works out to 2/2/2 but it mimics the 3 different siblings in canon so I guess it works.

Bumi (katara 21)

Kya (katara 28) (Bumi 7)

Tenzin (katara 32) (Bumi 11, Kya 4)

Sila (katara 34) (Bumi 13, Kya 6, tenzin 2)

Yeshe & yonten (katara 37) (Bumi 16, kya 9, tenzin 5, Sila 3)

Yeshe is much more free-spirited and go with the flow than tenzin, and doesn’t like the idea of settling down and having a family, tho she does want kids to help revive the Air Nomads. She maybe argues with her family a little about making that happen her way but takes a lot of comfort and inspiration from Toph, who also started a family on her own terms. Yonten is pretty spiritual and actually can access the Spirit World better than any of his siblings, I’m thinking some Kelsang energy from him. He def has a family on Air Temple Island.

Sila is just a classic Water Tribe dreamboat. He’s more interested in Water Tribe politics and spends a lot of time with Kanna, Hakoda, and Sokka, maybe even interested in the role of chief. Katara is worried about him being away from her for so long and getting involved in politics when he’s, yknow, the avatar’s son, but sokka points out that the SWT wanted katara as their chief back in the day so there’s precedent.

When Aang died it was Sila who stayed with Katara, not Kya - mostly because he was already there. Yeshe & Yonten also stayed for a while (Yeshe was in and out but Yonten brought his family down so was there a year or so), trying to convince Katara to come live on Air Temple Island, but then Korra gets found as the new avatar and Katara dedicated herself to teaching her. I like to think Sila was Korra’s actual waterbending teacher and Katara sort of observed them both.

Yeshe’s kids (let’s say 3 of em) are raised the traditional Air Nomad way, collectively, which she CONSTANTLY gets into fights about with Tenzin, Kya, and Sila, who think she’s not being responsible enough as their mother. Bumi is the one who usually defends her because he’s closest to the twins since Yonten is the only other nonbender. Kya in particular gets mad because she’s like you CANNOT dump your kids on me I love them but I chose not to become a mother for a reason and Yeshe’s like exactly you’re not a mom so you have the time to help me out and Kya full on blows up at her and peace’s out for like a year after that.

Yonten is the most easygoing in that Aang-like way of sort of being passive and not getting mad at things even when someone is antagonizing him and all of his siblings except for Bumi absolutely, absolutely fucking hate it. It doesn’t help that he’s the youngest lmao

Uh oh I have just fallen in love with these OCs I just now created this was a mistake

the sexualities of every named avatar we know of

wan: my brain might be failing me but i don’t remember him ever even interacting with a woman during his story episodes. may have possibly had a thing with his friend from the streets before meeting the spirits? v ambiguous, but i’ll settle on pan.

szeto: was married either to his work or to an absolute beefcake of a general of the royal fire nation army. the most functional of everyone in this list.

yangchen: i get aroace vibes from her? like maybe she wasn’t a nun but she was pretty busy with all the peace accords and fucking up the spirit world so probably never gave it a thought.

kuruk: definitely into women but i feel like he experimented either with nyahitha (the fire sage from sok) or an airbender friend of kelsang’s. by the time he met ummi he knew he loved women but still thought guys were hot. ended up dying without completely figuring it out. 

kyoshi: gorgeous bi queen!!! we been KNEW she was into rangi but canonically used to have a thing for yun first. fire nation ladies stay winning!

roku: reverse kuruk. was sozin’s high school sweetheart until raava’s sapphic ass saw that hot af palace girl who wasn’t okay with colonization and said “i want that one actually.” you dodged a bullet there, buddy.

aang: probably bicurious due to the upbringing of the monks, but probably also demi since he’s crushed on katara since the iceberg.

korra: very bi with a specific type (the black and red aesthetic). who can blame her tho

my kyoshi novels opinions may be controversial because they are this: i love kyoshi and rangi and the fact that we get canon queer romance - which is genuinely lovely and well-developed and thoughtful - is truly bonkers insane beautiful. some of the worldbuilding is really compelling too, there are some insanely cool side characters (i wanted more of kelsang, i think fire lord zoryu was very cool, i want more info on kyoshi’s mom), and man the bending was super super cool! but overall like.

the books were not good LOL

plot-wise, story-wise, connection to atla-wise, they were not great. book 1 of kyoshi was just her getting pummeled with trauma, then poorly-developed outlines of potentially cool characters with the flying opera company which ended in a weird false climax. lek dying served no purpose; he was essentially introduced in order to die. plus the whole aborted side plot about how she discovered the secret to immortality is silly! bumi is a spry 112 years old in the og series! we know people can live very long lives! we don’t need an explanation!

the 2nd novel was good, again i LOVE kyoshi’s character, but there felt like so many details and abandoned side plots that we didn’t need. and despite that it was still significantly shorter than the first book. it seemed like that novel wanted to be a kuruk book but had to keep refocusing on kyoshi. and it’s like. let it be about kuruk! kuruk is interesting! and the fact that ummi is not mentioned ONCE in the novels (i think MAYBE once in passing) is truly insane. hei-ran did not need to be a kuruk love interest, that added nothing. the reason we’re interested in kuruk as a character is what little we saw of him in atla. so connect it to atla! don’t introduce his entire arc and life as something where the love of his life being stolen by koh was just a short addendum at the end. plus yun just did not convince me as an antagonist. it was a heel-turn and i get that’s got a lot to do with the betrayal of jianzhu/not being the avatar/possession/torture by spirits, but i did not find that transformation convincing

and to top it all off the writing was.... just not very good. sooooo YA. tho that’s a personal complaint since i think these books are technically YA so it’s perfectly reasonable that they’d have that tone

again, i LOVED both kyoshi and rangi - their characters, their interactions, their relationship. i thought kyoshi moved convincingly throughout the novel, i just thought the plot around her was pretty weak. it’s a shame we didn’t get more to connect us to atla, like even a touch of the establishment of the kyoshi warriors (tho admittedly yes suki alone included that)

i haven’t finished the yangchen novel yet but so far i’m enjoying that. i think that yangchen has a lot more leeway because we know so little about her in canon that she can be interpreted widely rather than like. having an established character like kyoshi or even kuruk