terminally_underwhelmed

Five years ago, I realized something might be up with my gender. A couple months later, I came out as nonbinary.

A year or so ago, my mom asked if I wanted her to edit her old dw posts and correct the pronouns she used for me, and I said, "I dunno, that sounds like a lot of work, I don't mind either way."

Two hours ago I ended up backreading some of her posts, and found out that at some point she had decided the effort was worth it. 

And now I don't quite know what I'm feeling, but I can't breathe with it. It's like walking through a room that is crowded and totally silent, so you know for a fact everyone can hear you and everyone knows you're there--but good. It's the primitive and absolute knowledge that you are being seen. 

It started so subtly that what I noticed was the lack of friction. I'm used to looking at my old self and finding just a tiny split between me and the girl they looked like, just a record-skip, just a rock-in-the-shoe amount of discomfort that I can sidle past. And it wasn't there. These weren't stories about a girl-child who did the same things as me, they were stories about me! I was in them! I don't just remember seeing through those eyes, operating that body, watching those thoughts tick past. I remember being that person. It burns below my ribs like I'm inhaling into long-disused parts of my lungs, this sense that I am coherent and complete, backwards and forwards through time. That I, me, this person I am, didn't just spring fully-formed out of someone else's childhood a few weeks before my sixteenth birthday. 

I didn't think I cared that the pronouns were wrong! I didn't think it mattered! I'm gonna start queuing up these old posts for when I need a hollowpoint of visceral right-ness straight between the eyes!!

I think I want to keep this. I don't know how. It's unbelievably hard to find things I wrote, things I said, things other people said about me, let alone pictures of me, where the terrible wrongness of all the years trying to be the wrong thing isn't the first thing I see. But I don't want to pretend that the Wrongness was all that existed, or that the Child Doing the Wrongness wasn't me or wasn't real or was just a cocoon waiting to be discarded. I want to belong to my past. I want to always have been myself. 

I want to go to sleep, and to have grand emotional revelations during the sunlit hours sometimes. I'm not even sure why I'm making this into a post, except that I want it out of me and into the world somehow. 

I was gonna make a different post today, but I don't remember what it was. So, since my parents and I just started watching ATLA together on the weekends (first time for my dad, second for my mom, fourth for me), and since I'm getting unhealthily attached to that show all over again, I present instead:

ATLA Headcanons (Many for Modern AUs) About Which I Care Too Much, in No Particular Order.

Aang & Zuko, Platonic Soulmates. I have a lot of feelings about these two, okay. 

Katara & Zuko, Platonic Saltmates. So I don't much like them as a relationship (gasp), but I love them as each other's reality-check friend. The one you go to when you want to be straight-up told you're being a moron. Maybe you don't get along too well in day-to-day life, you're just so different, but in a crisis, they're the first person you call. 

Suki, survivor of an abusive childhood. Wiki says the Kyoshi Warriors protect abuse victims and punish abusers, and also says that Suki joined when she was 8. How else would a kid that young end up devoting her life to something like the Kyoshi Warriors?

Appa, one of those huge dignified sheepdogs that's the most civilized dog you've ever met but sometimes tries to herd children. The kind with all the hair in its face, you know. 

Momo, one of those big-eared skinny tabby-point cats that looks like one of its ancestors got cozy with a weasel. 

Sokka, engineering major. Hey, this is some quality rope!

Azula, both redeemable and a jackass. Most takes on Azula skimp on either the redeemability or the jackassery. Maybe I've just been writing Draco Malfoy for too long? She can be part of the team-Avatar family without losing her pointy bits. 

Latina Suki. There's a certain point in Avatar fandom where making anyone white starts feeling like admitting defeat. 

Aang & Katara, the Childhood Sweethearts Forced to Separate by Circumstance, Reunited Years Later as Adults and Oh Shit They're Hotter Now romcom plot. I have...thoughts about this pairing. Mostly because I think it could work. Sure, Katara's canonical "type" is Jet, the charismatic leader sweeping her away with visions of a bigger, better world, which isn't Aang--yet. But I think that's the kind of person Aang will grow up to be! All that needs to happen for that relationship to work is for them to have to grow up apart, and spend enough time apart that they have to kind of start from zero when they meet again. 

Zuko, coffee person. Zuko is mostly made of caffeine, and would inject it directly into his bloodstream if he could. This is the only point of contention between him and Iroh. Zuko's preferred cup of coffee is so strong and so heavily sweetened that it isn't quite a liquid anymore, and tastes like it's trying to digest the inside of your mouth. 

Sokka & Suki, the less-popular Childhood Sweethearts to Long-Distance Relationship to Oh Shit We're Both Bi to Open Relationship to Reunification to Happy Non-Monamory romcom plot (so I can set up the ot3 in the last headcanon).

Suki, first person to take a chance on Azula. Suki is practical and efficient and has many of Azula's strengths, in combination with actually being a good person, and if she had an abusive childhood she might be able to empathize more strongly with Zuko and Azula than anyone else could. I feel like she'd respect Azula's intelligence and skill. Also, judging by how quickly she got friendly with Zuko in canon, she forgives easily when she sees reason to. 

Sokka & Azula, alarmingly good friends. Could literally take over the world together. The only reason they haven't yet is because they're lazy and would rather lie around eating chips and arguing about video games. 

Toph, lesbian. Butch Icon Toph. I feel like I don't even have to explain this one. Even her crush on Sokka fits--he's the perfect example of that post that's like "me before realizing i was a lesbian: well! there is a very inoffensive and non threatening man. i must be in love with him."

Jet, everyone's asshole ex. I don't like Jet. He is a boring character. Sue me. But if he must be included, it should be in the form of Katara and Zuko staring at each other in horror as they realize they've technically indirectly made out. 

Zuko, autistic. I was persuaded of this by this tumblr post. 

Aang, a trans guy. People seem to like trans Zuko more, but making Aang trans adds some complexity to his otherwise-kind-of-juvenile relationship with femininity. Could also interact with the Avatar's reincarnations in an interesting way--he knows he's not a girl because he sort of remembers being a girl and he doesn't feel like that anymore, etc. 

Toph & Azula, the Only Ones Badass Enough for Each Other romcom plot, followed by the Assholes in Love romcom plot. They're both incredibly gifted, but Toph feels empowered by her gifts where Azula feels limited/obligated to perfection by them. They both have fraught relationships with their parents, but Azula's anxiety is that she's not enough, where Toph's is that she's too much. Azula is goal-oriented and efficient to Toph's self-indulgence, and Toph's independence and confidence in herself would be good for Azula as she tries to confront her relationships with her parents and Zuko. 

The Kyoshi Warriors, Suki's weird crunchy-granola liberal sorority. I dunno, I just like the image of Suki and Ty Lee as sorority sisters. 

Mai & Zuko, a completely normal teenage relationship in every way including the breakup. I have a whole half-finished analysis of every major relationship in ATLA that I might get around to finishing someday. The upshot of it is that, in-universe, Mai is the most normal part of Zuko's life, but Zuko doesn't have a normal life. He's obligated to put the whole ruling-a-country thing first. And Mai, who has spent her whole life coming second to politics in the lives of people she loves, deserves better than that. (...Plus, out-of-universe, there are just people I prefer to ship Zuko with.) 

Azula, redeemed. That one's a story I might actually get around to writing. 

Zuko & Sokka & Suki, ot3. Look, just hear me out. They work well together--the Boiling Rock episodes proved that. They have different, but sympathetic, personas and strengths--their weaknesses and anxieties aren't all in the same place. They fit a head/heart/hands model, with Sokka solving problems by thinking, Zuko by feeling, and Suki by doing, so they complement each other well. In-universe, a three-person relationship takes some pressure off Zuko, because he isn't expected to be someone's only main source of emotional support and he can focus that energy on the whole ruling-a-country thing instead. Plus, Sokka's intelligence and Suki's confidence and leadership experience would really help Zuko. And their relationship would be a good start for an alliance between the Fire Nation and Water Tribes and Earth Kingdom. And if Sokka is in the Fire Nation, then Katara becomes chief of the Southern Water Tribe (which she would be great at), and she and Aang have to separate while he's doing Avatar stuff, and their relationship gets fixed too!


Possibly I should just write some fics, but doing this is easier.