mojave955:

Avatar live action adaptation’s costumes and set designs are gonna be stunning if the original show is any indication. I’ve compared show’s existing designs to their real-life inspirations. If they take some creative liberty, like how Game of Thrones did with its costume designs, I think it’s we’re going to get a visually stunning show, at the very least.

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1) Traditional Korean Crown & Fire Lord Headpiece / Hall of Supreme Harmony Interior & Original Fire Lord’s Throne Room

2) Inuit Clothing & Southern Watertribe Clothing / Korean Winter Headwear & Northern Water Tribe Headwear

3)  Thai Clothing & Fire Nation Clothing worn by Azula & Katara

4) Qing Dynasty Soldier & Earth Kingdom Royal Guard / Qing Dynasty Official & Dai Li

5)  Archetypal East Asian ‘Fairy’ & Moon Spirit Yue / Geisha & Kyoshi Warriors

6) Traditional Chinese Armor & Fire Nation Armor / Forbidden City & Ba Sing Se Palace

7) Tibetan Monks in Traditional Robes & Air Nomad Robe / Bhutanese Buddhist Temple & Air Temple

8) Manchurian Qipao & Ba Sing Se Upper Ring Clothing / Yellow Crane Tower & Fire Temple

Things that make me happy:

silvergryphon:

The realization that somewhere, in-universe, there’s some audio tech who had t design Darth Vader’s voice.

I mean- Palpatine oversaw all the aspects of Vader’s suit development, right? Which naturally includes his voice since Vader’s vocal cords got pretty darn crisped.

So some audio tech not only had to design the new voice for Darth Vader, the Emperor’s terrifying new right hand and enforcer, but probably had to go to planning meetings with and get feedback from Palpatine.

Palpatine: No. Up the bass. I want his voice to rumble through you like a thunderstorm on Kamino. 

Palpatine: Also give him just a bit of a Coruscanti accent. He’s gotta sound cultured and intimidating.

Palpatine: And up all the input. Darth Vader must not sound like he’s mumbling.

Palpatine: And put a shield on the microphone. We can’t have him popping all his plosives, that’s just going to drive me crazy.

A continuation of the Zuko – Toph Arranged Marriage AU wherein Aang awakens after Izumi and Lin are born?

attackfish:

Continued from: [Link] and: [Link]

1. I mentioned in the first installment of this AU that Zuko never went through the kind of transformation of thinking that he did in canon, and so has never been forced to acknowledge what an abusive monster his father was and how the Fire Nation’s war of conquest has hurt the world.  This is a major source of conflict between Zuko and both Toph and Iroh early on.  With Iroh, this is similar to canon, in that after Lu Ten’s death, Iroh took a long hard look at the ideology his son died fighting for and began to believe the conquest was wrong, while with Toph, this is somewhat more complex.  Toph is from the Earth Kingdom, but Gaoling was mostly isolated from the war, and her wealthy family kept her further isolated from the effects of the conquest.  That doesn’t mean that Toph didn’t hear and see some things on the way to the Fire Nation.  She knows the Fire Nation tried to conquer the world.  She knows her country was invaded, and she knows that the Fire Nation lost the war.  The Fire Nation was in the wrong here, obviously.  Meanwhile Zuko is a boy who lost his father, was forced to take the throne as a puppet, and then after he got free from that, forced to marry a thirteen year old girl.  He feels like the wronged party here, thanks.

2. Their early marriage, with Zuko’s long-term affair not yet an official thing, and Toph much too young to consummate any kind of marriage, with both of them feeling like the wronged party, and with Zuko unwilling to acknowledge that the conquest was wrong (and therefore possibly going to restart it once he has some leverage) is near nonstop fighting.  When Toph isn’t running away, she’s running to Iroh, something Zuko bitterly resents.  Iroh is many things to Zuko, the man who tries to convince him that Ozai was not the father Zuko wants to pretend he was, the man who tries to teach Zuko that the war of conquest was wrong and tries to force Zuko to acknowledge painful truths, sure, but also another father for Zuko for the three years of his exile, and Zuko is jealous of their closeness.  It’s an ugly tangle of emotions there for a while.

3. Ozai and Azula are both dead at the hands of the Earth Kingdom, which makes it much harder for Zuko to find Ursa.  In a desperate bid to try to make Zuko see some sense about his father, Iroh tries to find out what he can about Ursa’s disappearance.  He discovers that she is banished, and her marriage to Ozai severed, but she was never executed.  He gives this information to Zuko, and Zuko takes Mai to find her.  They do find her, and Ursa is able to get her memory back, and she is able to tell Zuko exactly what Ozai was willing to do to get power, and just how little he loved his son.  This breaks through some of Zuko’s denial.  The war is harder for Zuko to come to terms with, since it ended so badly for him personally, but slowly, ruling the Fire Nation and seeing the damage the war did just to the Fire Nation, and how the promise of helping the Earth Kingdom came to nothing, and how this was all to bring the world under the control of men like his father and grandfather, Zuko slowly comes around.

4. One of the real barriers to Zuko acknowledging the Fire Nation’s fault for the war is just how terrible his year as a puppet was.  His father was killed, he was captured, he was dragged home as a prisoner, and surrounded by Dai Li and Northern Water Tribe soldiers, he was crowned and kept imprisoned in the Firelord’s rooms, hauled out and placed on display whenever something needed to be signed or any kind of official function was held.  When his sister tried for the crown, he had to watch her be killed in front of him, before he had to escape his own palace to find his uncle and fight his way back in with the support of the surviving remnants of the Fire Nation army.  None of this is an experience that inclines Zuko to listen to anyone.

5. The end of the war did not involve the Southern Water Tribe.  Hakoda was
left out of the invasion, so the puppet government was entirely run by
the Earth Kingdom and the Northern Water Tribe.  The Southern Water
Tribe has languished since in a state of isolation and poverty. 

But the Avatar is about to awaken…

Could you do 5 headcanons on Toph’s relationship with Mai and the children in the Zuko-Toph arranged marriage AU, please?

attackfish:

1. Toph is, much to Zuko and Mai’s utter chagrin, the Fun Parent/Step-Parent to all of their combined children, and by this I mean she is one of those irresponsible adults that all the other adults tell kids don’t count as adult, and it doesn’t matter if she gives permission. Why Toph, why do you have to be this way, Zuko and Mai (and every single servant in the palace) ask after she helps Izumi and Lin build a mud slip and slide in the hall with the Firelords’ portraits.

2. She adores her daughter and step-daughter, and when the girls are young, the feeling is mutual.  But as Lin and Izumi grow up… They are very different from Toph, and both feel the pressure of their position acutely.  Lin is the Firelord’s oldest legitimate child, and Izumi… Izumi is the heir presumptive, and being groomed to take the throne.  Both on some level bitterly resent Toph’s refusal to act the part that the Firelady should, as both of them have been forced, along with Mai, to take on that role themselves because of it.

3. Suyin is much younger than her sisters (or step-sister in Izumi’s case, but she is supposed to be Izumi’s sister) and both too little and too much like them.  She is stubborn and willful, like both her sisters and her mother, but also defiant and enjoys breaking the rules, like her mother, but not like her sisters.  And then, unlike any of them, she is sneakier and charming.  It drives Lin especially up a wall.

And Toph… Toph thinks it’s funny.

4. The fact that Toph isn’t very good with Lin and Izumi doesn’t change the fact that she loves them and they love her.  It just makes it much much more difficult.

5. Aside from the woes of mutual parenting, Mai and Toph get along very well.  They bond over their similarly awful families, and anyway they’ve known each other since Toph was thirteen.  Mai is the older, cooler sister figure that Toph both loves and is jealous of.

au + 5 hc- Toph and Zuko marry for political reasons, and now their children have to deal with the political consenquences

attackfish:

1. The avatar did not awaken.  Instead, the Earth Kingdom army and the Northern Water Tribe invaded on the Day of Black Sun and overthrew Ozai.  Zuko’s ship was captured soon after, and Iroh put in prison.  Zuko was put on the throne as a puppet monarch.  Zuko has not had his redemption/recovery arc, so he is still a hostile snarly, anxious unhappy twerp, only now Ozai is dead, and Zuko is free to lionize him without having to face the reality of who Ozai really was.  Also Iroh is in prison in the Earth Kingdom awaiting execution, and Azula is running around making everything about a hundred times more difficult.

2. Azula makes a bid for the throne, persuading a group of Dai Li and disgruntled Fire nobles to back her.  At the same time, Iroh escapes and makes his way home.  Somehow this ends with Zuko still on the throne, Iroh safe, and the Dai Li at least out of Zuko’s court.  But the other upshot is that Zuko needs to marry an Earth Kingdom noble in order to prevent another invasion.  The Bei Fongs manage to luck out as the family to garner the most backers in he Earth Kingdom, so their thirteen-year-old daughter is escorted to the Fire Nation by her mother and several regiments of the Earth Kingdom army.

3. Zuko takes one look at her and marries her just to get her away from the people who are willing to marry her off at thirteen.  Consummation of this marriage is not going to happen for a looooong time.  But Toph might be a frightened child, but she would never let that show.  She keeps running away.  Not back to her parents as might be expected, just away, to the wilds of the Fire Nation, to the inner city, anywhere she can get to.  She bends the glass out of her windows, she tears up Zuko’s mother’s garden, the only person who can really get her to do anything is Iroh, and now he has two intractable, bad tempered teens to look after, and Zuko is now even less willing to listen to him now that he’s got a crown.

4. Eventually, the two of them settle into a siblingish relationship, and Toph eventually grows up to realize no body here really has a choice, so she’s going to have to just deal.  She still absolutely despises everything involved with being Firelady.  Also Zuko resurrected the prewar custom of official concubinage when Mai accidentally got pregnant, and Toph is careful only to take firebenders as lovers.

5. Doesn’t matter.  Both her children are earthbenders, even Lin, who is actually Zuko’s.  Izumi, his acknowledged bastard, has to take the throne.  The mess that is the royal inheritance at this time very nearly touches off a civil war, and a couple of islands do break away and declare Lin their queen.  Lin has to go down there to knock some sense into them.

AU where Katara was too late to save Zuko and he died during agni kai?

attackfish:

focusas:

attackfish:

Rip my heart out why don’t you.

1. Katara would kill Azula.  Katara’s anger burns very close to the surface, and not only does she tried to kill Katara, and succeeds in killing Zuko, which itself is an emotional blow, but she has done so that brings to mind how she killed Aang.  Besides this, she has just proven how dangerous she is again.  I think Katara would kill her.  When she freezes her, she just leaves Azula that way to suffocate.

2. I go back and forth over whether Iroh would take the throne if Zuko were unavailable.  In this case, I think he would, because he would want someone he knew very well leading his home country, now that two of their royals died so close together.  So he would take the throne, devastated at the lost of his second child, and of his niece.

3. Because Iroh is an old childless widower, he would have to either appoint an heir from within his family, and right now family is thin on the ground, or remarry a younger woman and try to have children with her.  This leads to a search for a suitable woman.  He might settle on Mai, who would be mourning Zuko as well, so at least they share that, but I think he would try to look for an older woman, by which I mean older than Mai, in her twenties or thirties , who has been known for her political opposition to Ozai.

4. Iroh ascending the throne would be diplomatically very tricky, because not only is he in mourning again, but also, he is a war criminal and a boogy man to the Earth Kingdom.  Aang and the rest would have to work hard at smoothing this over and pushing the changed man view of The Dragon of the West.

5. Because Aang was able to spare Ozai and Katara killed Azula, Aang would probably feel a certain level of disapproval of Katara’s actions.  Their differing morals with regards to killing would be something they would have to work through.  I think they could though.

I don’t think Katara would have guts to end Azula. She most likely
would injure her to the point that she make Azula disabled, but not kill
her. If she spared man that killed her mother she would spare Azula
too, but at that point Azula most likely would have her arms and legs
broken. If she kill her she most likely would have serious emotional
trauma. It would hinder greatly her relations with Aang.

I
also don’t think Iroh would take Mai (its your fan fantasies) as her
wife after Zuko’s death. She is too young for him, also her father is
known Ozai supporter. So in fear that Ozai could return to power he
would choose something else.

Being unable to go through with a premeditated revenge murder is not the same as being unable or unwilling to kill in the heat of battle someone who has already proven to be an extreme danger, and who has just killed a friend of yours in front of you.  Those are very different things that require very different mental capabilities.  Actually disabling someone the way you describe takes more planning and forethought, and more calculation.  If anything, Katara might find that harder in the moment.  Afterwards, killing Azula may well be extremely traumatic for Katara, and would definitely stress her relationship with Aang.  Dealing with that side of herself might be very difficult.  That doesn’t mean I don’t think that in the moment she would do it.

Calling something my fan fantasies is insulting in the extreme, which I’m sure you know.  I mentioned it as a possibility, not because either Iroh or Mai would care for the idea, but because it might be the most politically savvy option.  Mai has court connections through her parents, through Azula, and through her own time spent at court as a companion of the princess.  She is a noble, and she has been to prison for opposing Azula, which can be spun as protesting the conquest.  Also, Iroh is old and has to face the very real possibility that he could die before a child of his is old enough to take the throne.  So he has to look for a spouse who isn’t just a suitable wife, politically speaking.  A much bigger consideration for Iroh is would she make a suitable regent while any child they had was under age.  He would, in short, be looking for a successor much more than a wife.  Mai is a possibility for this.  However, as I said in my initial headcanon, I think it’s more likely he would pick someone else with similar political pluses, but whom Iroh has a better idea of their views.  He may even be looking among other nobly born political prisoners for his spouse, i.e. someone in Mai’s situation who is not Mai, who is older, who he is more certain of, and who doesn’t have the connection to Zuko.  Again, calling something my fan fantasies is a lovely way of denying I have thought about it any more than necessary to decide it appeals to my id, which it doesn’t, as it happens.  It’s insulting and dismissive. 

au + 5 hc -genderbent Maiko. The Earth King marries Fire Princess Zuko

attackfish:

Genderswap AUs, AKA the many many many possibilities for girl!Zuko’s name. Today we are going with Kazuko.

1. When Kazuko is thirteen, her uncle helps her sneak into a war meeting, and she speaks out in defense of newly recruited Fire Nation soldiers being used to bait a trap for the Earth Kingdom. She is told she must fight an Agni Kai for the insult, and when the opponent turns out to be her own father, the kneels down and refuses to fight. He burns her for the disgrace.

Instead of banishing her, he takes advantage of the customs of the enemy. He tells her thst if she loves the Earth Kingdom so much, she can marry into it. The fact that she was defending Fire Nation soldiers goes unnoticed, and as soon as she is reasonably healed, she is packed in a boat and sent to the Earth King.

2. She is of course much too young for Kuei, and their marriage is never consumated. It was expected that it would be when she was older, but instead, for three years she lives the cloistered life of a queen in Ba Sing Se, and if she thought her mother’s life was restrictive, it’s got nothing on this. She figures out pretty quickly it’s Long Feng who is really in charge, and she isn’t sure her husband, who she sees only rarely, actually understands why he married a scarred child other than the vague word “politics”. She doesn’t think he understands the treaty he signed, or why she is here, or any of the things that even as Ozai’s despised and disregarded daughter, she knows.

3. The treaty Kazuko’s father signed with the Earth King (or more accurately with Long Feng) is that the Fire Nation will leave Ba Sing Se and its surrounding territories alone and instead continue their campaigns of conquest in Earth territory not within the Earth King’s dominion, and Ba Sing Se’s forces will not be used to defend those territories. This suits Ozai fine. He has no intention of tackling Ba Sing Se just yet, and in the meantime, he can scoop up some suddenly much easier conquests. It is however a treaty he intends to break, and Kazuko walks into her marriage knowing this. The only question is what is she supposed to do when the Fire Nation does attack. Is she to be killed as a useless hostage, will she die at the hands of her father’s forces? Does he expect her to be a double agent for him? In the end, she keeps Azula’s presence secret for her and sides with her to conquer the city. For her pains, she is named governor of Ba Sing Se.

It’s there in the city that Mai and Kazuko kindle their child crushes into romance, and Mai chooses to stay behind with her in Ba Sing Se. Azula, who has suffered far fewer defeats without an interfering sibling around, says okay.

4. Governing Ba Sing Se is no easy task. Azula may see it as a suitable job for an idiot unwanted sister, but it actually takes a lot of skill and hard work to disentangle th Dai Li, keep the peace, and cement the Fire Nation conquest. And then there is managing the occupation. Kazuko, who has spent the last three years banging her head against the brick wall that is Long Feng and the Dai Li does not appreciate the Fire Nation officers and officials who try to treat her and her city the same way. She and Mai work hard, long hours trying to make it work. But they are women from a conquering empire, and they are not well loved. Much of the underground critisism is extremely misogynistic in nature, and some of the writers even manage to guess the nature of her and Mai’s relationship, or at least post lurid accusations to that effect. It’s lots of fun.

5. It’s Iroh who teaches the Avatar how to firebend, Iroh who warns them what Ozai intends to use the comet for, and Katara and Toph who go to take Azula on together. Iroh goes to liberate Ba Sing Se and also his neice, who he hasn’t seen in more than three years. He has a crown princessship to offer her if she wants it. Kuei, who shows up not long after the White Lotus retake the city is like, “You can’t go? We’re married? In the Earth Kingdom we don’t do divorce?” and Kazuko is like, “In the Fire Nation, we totally do, get fucked, Kuei, our marriage wasn’t consumated anyway.” She leaves it to Mai and Iroh to put this in more diplomatic language.