Writing An Olympic Kataang Au Rn And I Swear Im Putting Way Too Much Rock Climber Lingo In It But This

˗ˏˋ the teenager in the iceberg- ch. nine ˎˊ˗

˗ˏˋ fic summary: ˎˊ˗

i feel like a lot of people have wondered how different atla as a whole would be if aang had been older, so in this au, aang was frozen at age 16! naturally, i just had to flip aang being after katara from day one to katara now having a crush on aang from the very beginning. essentially, to recap. ATLA aang aged up AU fic. kataang. where she falls first, and he falls harder. also, cmon. i just had to write a new version of the scene where zuko and aang meet. zuko: you? you’re just a teenager! aang: s-…so are you…?

˗ˏˋ sneak peak: ˎˊ˗

In the middle of a field of lavender-lilies, possibly the most sleep-inducing meadow in all of the continent, surrounded by two soundly snoring siblings, the last Airbender found himself entirely and utterly awake. Worse still, rather than snatching scraps of rest from the unforgiving night, he found himself contemplating whether he had the basic common sense to even call himself worthy of the title of Avatar.  

On second thought, Aang mused, the sleep deprivation might definitely be making me a bit dramatic.

Aang hadn’t necessarily ever considered himself to be the brightest in the trio of travellers- that title almost certainly went to either Katara or Sokka, both brilliant in their own respective rights, and yet, he couldn’t help but think himself utterly stupid as he flashed back to the moments in which Madame Wu had given him his fortune. He told himself that he wasn’t sure why he had asked about a girl in his reading, but he was at least bright enough to know that that wasn’t exactly the truth either. 

Katara. Each time he drifted off into sleep for a few precious moments, he saw her there, stark against the dying embers of the volcano’s rage, as if the flames that had lined her silhouette had emblazoned her image directly onto his eyelids in that instant. Katara. He let his head roll to the side a bit, just enough so that Katara’s sleeping form drifted into his peripheral vision. A soft breeze passed between the two, carrying with it her scent of sea salt, linen, and snowberries.

He blushed when, through his sleepless haze, he registered that his own hands had called the wind.

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

♥ the rest of the (ongoing) fic can be found here!! ->

˗ˏˋ the teenager in the iceberg ˎˊ˗

˗ˏˋ an author's note: ˎˊ˗

hi lovelies:))) to tide you over, here's a little snippet from the next chapter of TTITI<3 i know that it's been ages, but life gets in the way, you know? i won't make any promises, because i don't want to disappoint anyone, but i do want to get better at making space for the things i love doing this year, and writing is absolutely one of those things for me:)

Would love to see your take on kataang in their late teens or early twenties just being adorable!

Here's a speedy doodle of them all a little older with some mild kataang, if that suits you, anon c:

The gaang is teaching Zuko how to have friends!!!

atla tumblr, i need help! (poll 2/2)

i'm working on a summer olympics atla au oneshot, and while i have picked some of the gaang's sports, i'm struggling a little extra with choosing sports for katara and zuko.

for reference, aang & toph are both rock climbers (for reasons that will be clear upon reading), sokka is a fencer (and yes, sokka calls his fencing sword a "space sword"), mai competes in the shooting event (because c'mon, mai with a gun just makes sense), suki does judo, and azula does volleyball (very competitively, think back to the beach episode).

!link to katara's poll here

ugh they INVENTED love and no i will not be taking critiques on this opinion bcos its not an opinion its a fact 🙄

katara being the first thing aang sees when he opens his eyes after being stuck in an iceberg for 100 years then him never wanting to ever look away

i absolutely agree with everything said before me! as an atla fic writer, i find it difficult to take these incredible three dimensional characters and transfer them to new scenarios while preserving that original dynamic and personality. i end up re-reading the interactions i write over and over, trying to make sure that i'm keeping the heart of the original characters instead of just inserting quotes that vaguely sound like something they'd say.

interestingly enough, i tend to find zuko the most difficult for me to write, at least personally! its very easy to take him at face value and write him as very closed off, typical surly teen, and i often have to go back and remind myself of the moments of softness that are just as much a part of zuko's character as his rough exterior.

Another question

You can answer based on your experience writing fanfiction, what you've noticed from reading fanfics, or just based on what you think based on your understanding of the character.

I would love to see some explanations comments and tags about how and why.

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ᴅᴇᴄᴇᴍʙᴇʀ, ɪɴ ᴀ ᴍᴇᴛɪᴄᴜʟᴏᴜꜱʟʏ ᴏʀɢᴀɴɪᴢᴇᴅ ᴏꜰꜰɪᴄᴇ 

ʙᴇʟᴏɴɢɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ ᴏɴᴇ ᴀᴅᴀᴍ ᴄᴀʀʟꜱᴇɴ

⊹  ࣪ ⚛︎ ˖  ⌬ ⋆   ༘ ⚛︎ ⊹ ࣪ ⚛︎ ˖

“You don’t understand,” Jack huffed, his endless pacing threatening to wear out the already vintage carpet that lay underfoot. His crisp leather bag was haphazardly hanging off of the perfectly polished spruce wood chair that sat opposite to Adam’s similarly pristine desk, one that had now been covered in a stack of books and papers that had been angrily tossed by Jack only seconds before he began his most recent tirade.

“The issue here is not a lack of understanding on my part,” Adam cut in smoothly, his evidently increasing irritation clearly warring with his typically neutral expression. “The issue here is instead why, exactly, you booked a slot in my office hours just to complain about a colleague that you were on casual-dancing terms with at the Halloween party a mere month ago.” Jack, to Adam’s dismay, did not seem to possess the self-awareness to emit even a modicum of embarrassment for his utter disregard for Adam’s time. “How did you even find my Google Calendar to schedule this?”

Jack waved his hand in the air as if attempting to swat away Adam’s concerns like virgin lab flies. “The issue is absolutely a lack of understanding. The only reason you aren’t offering to join me at her door with a pitchfork is because you don’t understand how frustrating she-”

“And you are picturing yourself at her door…because…?” Adam trailed off, leaning back in his chair as he raised his dark eyebrows a fraction of an inch.

Jack leveled an equivalent glare right back. “I thought you were supposed to be the silent type.”

Adam shrugged. “I contain multitudes.”

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-ch5, quantum entanglement, by quillthrills on ao3

notes: i've been working on writing more dialogue and this is from my draft of the next quantum entanglement chapter and i really liked how it's turning out so far!!!🤭 stem romance is the genre that i'd love to one day write a proper book in, since it's pretty much a perfect intersection of all of my interests, so writng this fic has been such a dream. i would really love to do a continuation with adam & olive but for now i'm letting jack and elsie stay in the spotlight 🤭🫶

sooo.... anyone else ever wondered how different ATLA would have been if aang had been frozen at age 16 instead of age 12?

yeah... me too 😌 my new fanfic "the teenager in the iceberg" follows the events of the show, but with only aang aged up, while everyone else remains their canon age.

also...cmon....how funny is it to switch zuko and aang's iconic dialogue to "you're just a teenager!" "...so are you?"

this idea was originally inspired by the talented @allgremlinart's aged up aang drawings, so please go show them some love!!:)<3

enjoy the excerpts from chapters one and two!

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

Aang chuckled, pushing himself up with his hands on his knees. He was… taller than Katara had realised, taller than Sokka. He rubbed a hand on the back of his neck, turning to look over his shoulder at the remains of the boulder-sized chunk of ice he had just been blasted out of.  “Aang. My name’s Aang.” He hesitated, momentarily seeming to puzzle something over. “And honestly? No clue. Don’t remember how me and…Appa!” He yelped, suddenly scrambling back over the hill of ice and snow. Katara followed him without thinking, and Sokka, grumbling under his breath, followed moments later. 

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

“So, you’ve brought a monster to invade the village, then? You’re some incognito Fire Nation soldier sent in as an undercover scout? Well, I’ll have you know that I’m the village’s strongest warrior, a-”

“The only warrior,” Katara chimed in, lightly elbowing Sokka’s side, earning herself a responding glare. 

“The strongest warrior.” Sokka reiterated. “And I don’t much like firebenders.” He added the words pointedly.

“Ah.” Aang titled his head. “That’s a shame. Some of my closest friends are Fire Nation.”

“Of course they are,” Sokka glared, hunching over into a defensive position and adjusting his fishing spear until it pointed directly at Aang.

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

Katara still wasn’t quite sure what to make of Aang. The Water Tribe boys had always been all flashy muscles, seal-jerky breath, and overconfidence, so Katara had never seen someone move, carry themself, the way Aang did. 

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

Katara had admittedly forgotten how much fun penguin sledding was. “Spirits, I haven’t done this since I was a kid!” she called to Aang as he raced past her, surprisingly skilled considering that he’d never even seen a penguin until half an hour before. 

“You still are a kid!” He called back over his shoulder. “A kid who’s losing this race, badly !”

Katara’s competitive streak reared its head, her eyes narrowing as Aang stuck out his tongue. She sat up slightly, no longer gripping the penguin’s fur as tightly. “You wish!” She shouted back the words as she raised her hands, breathing deeply. Her hands moved through the positions she had practised from the few bending scrolls the tribe still held on to, and before Aang knew it, the snow in front of Katara turned to ice, and she shot past him as his own ice trail suddenly became dry snow with too much friction to slide on. 

She made it to the bottom of the hill, beaming, breathing heavily. The wind had whipped her hair out of her bun, and she knew without checking that her hair must have looked like a lion-turtle’s mane. She watched as Aang made a show of drying himself off with a gust of wind that he then redirected at her, messing up her curls even more. 

“You’re a cheater !” Aang gasped, mockingly clutching imaginary pearls at his throat. “I demand a rematch.”

Katara strode past him, only turning her head to cast him a smug smirk. “Maybe you’re just not as good of a penguin sledder as you thought .”

“Oh, not so fast!” Aang grabbed her wrist, tugging her back towards him, and she internally questioned why the momentary brush of their skin made her heart flip. He tried to trip her, she tried to flip him, and they both ended up on their backs in the snow, giggling, cheeks and noses bright pink from the cold. 

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

“Trouble sleeping too, huh?” Aang cocked a grin, tilting his head to Katara. She kept her eyes fixed upwards, trained on the moon and the stars, worried that if she looked away, she’d end up staring into his eyes like a weirdo. 

“I always feel so awake with the moon’s light on me. Sleeping under the stars has never really been a thing that works. It’s too energising, too… too much. It’s hard to explain.”

“No, no… I get it. I feel the same way in a windstorm, all those breezes and gusts of wind, it feels… exhilarating.” She watched through her peripheral vision as he looked up at the moon. “In times of war, I think we all tend to forget how spiritual bending is at its core. I’d say it’s a good thing that you’re in touch enough with the origins of your abilities to feel the moon’s pull tug at you just as much as it does on the ocean.” 

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

Aang smiled back. “Now is our time to try to make up for that. I can’t bring back everyone who was hurt in this war, and you can’t bring back your mother, but together, the two-, three of us can make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

“I’d like that,” Katara exhaled, her breath calming down and tears dissipating. The two spent hours talking back and forth, exchanging the stories of their respective childhoods. Katara learned that Aang had invented several new bending moves and had been a big fan of fruit pies, while Aang learned that Katara had always been the bossier one between her and Sokka and that she had almost chipped a tooth on seal jerky when she was six. They continued talking back and forth in increasingly hushed tones until the world faded away under the cover of clouds and sleep.

Katara awoke to the loud shout of her brother. 

“Wakey wakey, lovebirds!” he yelped, chucking a rock-hard stick of seal jerky at both of them. 

“Ouch, Sokka !” Katara snapped at him, rubbing her head at the spot where she had been hit, before realising that she was leaning against Aang and immediately jumping away, blushing furiously. 

♥ check out the two chapters of this (ongoing) fic & my ao3 here! ->

⚛︎ ˖⌬ an excerpt from quantum entanglement, ch4: ⊹ ࣪ ⚛︎

Jack was somewhat preoccupied with glaring daggers at Elsie Hannaway, who he had barely been able to look away from since the moment she had walked in on those teetering tall heels, strung between the arms of Olive and another girl Jack didn’t recognize. He had been in the middle of a conversation when the three had walked in, and Jack had immediately gone to tease Adam upon seeing that he had accidentally matched costumes with Olive, only for the words to die on his tongue the moment that his gaze drifted to the girl on her right.

Elsie. With tall heels, and long legs, and a tiny little short black shift dress, and cat ears. Elsie. With drawn-on sleek, feline features on one side and drawn-on neon bubbles on the other. Elsie. With a softly blooming smile on her face that died and withered and darkened as her gaze passed over him. 

Dressed as Schrödinger's Cat, famously both dead and alive, all at once.. How fitting. She was, after all, simultaneously the most agreeable girl in the entire Physics department and the bane of Jack’s entire existence. 

This party was meant to be an escape, a refuge from Elsie, and yet, she found him even here. Jack took another long sip of ice water, eying the shot Adam held in his hand and wishing desperately that his own drink was made of pure vodka.

“Yes?” Adam asked distractedly, and only then did Jack recall that he had just addressed him moments before. The taller man lifted a bulky black glove to his Kylo mask, adjusting it as if his matching Rey across the room could see right through him.

“ Talk to her.” His words were blunt, but Jack’s tone was nothing but sympathetic. He owed at least that much to Adam, considering that Holden Rodrigez, the one who would usually talk some sense into the two of them, was off in a corner making out with who knows who. “Even if she doesn’t remember you.”

“And if she doesn’t?” Adam’s tone was nervous, uncharacteristically unsure for the man who had one of the most formidable academic records in the school’s recent history. 

“Then you start fresh.” Jack’s gaze drifted over Elsie, yet again , against his own free will. “Trust me, history is a hell of a lot harder to deal with than the lack of one.” 

Across the room, as if she’d heard him, Elsie leaned over to the friend Jack didn’t know, whispering something before stalking across the room, straight for him. And yes, Jack meant stalking . Something about the way her strappy heels cut through the crowd made him feel the heat of her focus more than he ever had. Beside him, Jack was vaguely aware of Adam throwing back a shot and clapping him on the back in an uncharacteristically frat-boy-ish manner as he strode past him, his own path mirroring that of Elsie’s. 

Jack stayed rooted in place. He wasn’t sure he could have moved even if he wanted to. Elsie’s gaze had him pinned. Still, her gait seemed increasingly off as she got closer and closer. Her last few steps seemed to jumble together, and all at once, she was in his arms. Warm, and real. A bit too drunk, the scent of sickly sugary fruity cocktails mixed with the sweet honey and old-paper scent that had haunted him over the last handful of months. 

Jack wrinkled his nose at the syrupy scent as it assaulted his senses.

“Were the cocktails good enough to justify the hyperglycemia, at least?” He watched as Elsie’s glare only grew at his casual mention of her diabetes. It had been her best kept secret up until she had passed out late at night a handful of weeks before in the library. Jack had only found her in time because she’d intentionally taken his typical study spot just to get under his skin, a particularly evil habit of hers that he was suddenly grateful for as he helped her adjust her insulin levels until she had recovered enough to hate him for it. 

“For your information, as an adult, and a very capable scientist, I am more than capable of adjusting my insulin accordingly.” She turned up her whisker-painted nose haughtily. 

“But not capable or adult enough to keep your friends informed on your health?” From the way Elsie flushed red in irritation, Jack knew that his barb had hit the mark- he clearly remained the only person within the radius of their university who was aware of her diagnosis. Her lips parted, itching to retort, but he only raised a finger, tired of fighting her after years of doing nothing but bickering. “Please, Elsie. You’re drunk, and I’m well aware that you hate me. You don’t need to remind me.” His gaze fixed on a point behind her, and Elsie turned to watch alongside him as Adam and Olive danced, the latter looking up with a smile on her face that lit up the entire room. 

Jack could only assume that underneath his mask, Adam wore a corresponding tiny half-grin.

“You’re the one who made it my mission to dislike you,” Elsie huffed, bringing his attention right back to her, “seeing as you hate what I hold dearest in this entire world.”

Jack couldn’t bite back his tongue quickly enough to soften his rebuttal. “What, hiding your feelings from everyone around them and subjecting me to every last one?”

Elsie refused to dignify his words with a direct response. “Besides, you’re as drunk as everyone else here. You must be, considering that you usually never bother saying more than one or two words to me at once.” 

“Hate to burst your bubble, but I’m just as sober as I am every day in the classroom.” He tipped his class of water against her long-stemmed glass, grinning widely at the chance to be right. “So no, I’m not drunk.”

“Are too,” Elsie scowled.

“Now who’s the adult?” Jack crowed, throwing back another sip of water before lightly easing Elsie’s sugar-rimmed margarita out of her hands and setting it on the table behind them. He expected her to fight back, to snatch at the table and run back to her friends so that she could spend the rest of the night cursing his name, but she did none of that.

Instead, Elsie tipped back her head and laughed, the sound like the clinking glass of beakers settling into a wooden storage frame, and Jack was hit by the thought that perhaps she was slightly more drunk than he had accounted for. 

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-quantum entanglement, quillthrills on ao3

this is literally exactly what sokka sounds like in the fortune-teller ep when he's desperately trying to prove that fortune telling isn't real

use of this tweet inspired by this post :)

katara speaks to each member of the gaang individually and finds out that aang has been head over heels with her for years and no one ever bothered telling her. this takes place after the fire lord is defeated, but in my version, they never kissed in the finale:oo katara is basically dumb in terms of love and so is aang and they are peak miscommunication trope and theres too much zutara content and not enough kataang

OR katara interrogates each of her friends (toph, sokka, and zuko) and comes to the conclusion that she has lived for years without the kind of love most people wish for their entire lives

....

Aang liked Katara. Like-likes her, even.

Wow, she thought to herself, I really should’ve grown out of using the phrase “like-like” by now.

She just couldn’t use the other word. That four-letter word that communicated such intense, devoted emotion. As soon as Toph said it, it seemed simultaneously to be the most obvious thing in the world and yet the most fundamentally incorrect thing Katara had ever heard.

“Wh-what,” Katara almost stammered, tripping over her words in a manner uncharacteristic of the Gaang’s most graceful member. “What gave you that impression?”

She was met with a blank stare and a raised eyebrow. “Have you not noticed the way he reacts when you’re in danger? When you’re hurt?” She paused, rolling her eyes incredulously. “For heaven’s sake, Katara, Twinkle-Toes gave up firebending after lightly toasting your hands. He gave up the avatar state for you. To be honest, if it would save you from some impending doom, I think he’d give up being the avatar for you, as long as you’d end up okay.”

“I think that’s taking the assumption a bit far.”

“I say that that doesn’t take it far enough.”

“I, I just- know he doesn’t feel that way about me. In the cave of two lovers, back before you joined the group, we were split from Sokka and when I thought we needed to kiss to get through the cave…” she blushed, remembering the embarrassment that had burned through her body. “He… he made it clear that he wasn’t interested.”

She was met with an eye roll. “Whatever you say, Sugar Queen.”

....

♥ the rest of the (completed) fic can be found here!! ->