It’s About Making Personal Sacrifices For The Sake Of Duty, The Responsibility To One’s People, And

to celebrate 1300 followers, a bit of detail on my sokka owns a knick knack store au, first mentioned here:

sokka does a portrait of the month series. every month he’ll paint a different “historical figure” and sell prints

the first one he does is zuko, newly crowned fire lord after fire lord iroh abdicates. zuko sighs and complains more and more as he’s sitting for his portrait because he has work to do sokka, not that you would know anything about that, running a silly store instead of focusing on your actual job—

sokka just stares at zuko silently until zuko realizes he’s messed up.

zuko sits very quietly and stays still for the rest of his portrait session. he also pays for production of the first set of prints.

zuko’s portrait ends up being him looking directly at the viewer, eyebrows furrowed like he’s going to scold them, but mouth open in laughter. sokka hangs it up next to the cashier’s area.

the second portrait sokka does is aang cause avatar, duh. before sokka starts painting, aang is a ball of energy, all over the place, but once sokka starts aang channels all that energy into talking. he sits perfectly still, but his mouth is going a mile a minute.

the end result is stunning. aang’s body is facing slightly off to one side, with his head turned over his shoulder closest to the viewer. he’s glancing off into the distance, one eyebrow raised, gleefully smiling.

the third ‘portrait’ sokka does is toph, as she’s the only one in town at the moment (and also a badass in her own right). instead of doing a formal portrait that toph wouldn’t be able to see, sokka works for weeks on making his own little statue of toph from the shoulders up.

toph definitely doesn’t tear up when she holds it for the first time.

sokka’s arms hurt, both from sculpting so many copies and from toph’s punch after she doesn’t cry over the statue.

the fourth portrait sokka does is suki. he does the initial portrait in one go while she’s practicing her forms, a powerful image of suki with her kyoshi makeup and her fans, mid pose. he does the formal portrait from memory of all the times they’ve fought and practiced alongside each other.

the suki portrait is amazing, although people seem to think sokka was trying to do kyoshi herself. suki isn’t offended, she just takes it as a compliment.

the fifth portrait is of katara. this one is done entirely while katara is practicing her bending. the first draft gets dowsed with katara’s water when kya startles her by being pushed off a wall by bumi.

the final portrait is an image of katara with two orbs of water circling her head, joy clear on her face. the light shining through the water makes her face look like it’s glowing. (sokka sneaks kya and bumi into the background, falling off one of the garden walls)

the sixth portrait was supposed to be of iroh, but the old man cancels the meeting so many times that aang convinces sokka to do a self portrait. sokka does a caricature of himself for his part.

however, aang thinks it’s unfair that sokka will do amazing portraits of everyone but himself. he rifles through sokka’s works until he finds a self portrait sokka did. he’s in front of the shop with little kids surrounding him, laughing his head off with a toy in his hands. aang sneaks around, buys a bunch of copies of this painting, and replaces the caricature with his choice

sokka is embarrassed and angry and refuses to speak to aang

...but then his self portrait sells out the fastest of them all

and now people know he owns the knick knack store ugh aang this is all your fault

once again, sokka has aang to thank for his store’s success. aang is unbearably smug about it.

iroh has all five portraits and one statue (as well as the eventual portraits of mai, azula, and ty lee) in the same small room where he keeps his memorial to lu ten, his wife, and the others he has lost. they remind him of the joy he has found in life as it is now.

my friend: what’s one of your favourite characters?

me: regulus black

friend: the guy whose only source of screen time was through a picture?

me: r.a.b

friend: now that i’m thinking about it, did we even see him on screen?

me: regulus. arcturus. black.

friend: why are you like this

me: regulus!!!!!

rough animation of this x

Us: lol Gary is Little Cato's Dad

Final Space: lol yeah

Us:

There’s nothing wrong with being scared, Norman, so long as you don’t let it change who you are.

tbh, i never thought lars and sadie were going to end up together. 

like. the writing was always on the wall that they don’t work, even if they care about each other / want the other to be happy. they’re better as friends. sadie was never what it took (nor should be made responsible) to push lars in a better direction. even when they were together, lars didn’t become the emotionally open person sadie needed. and i never got the sense that you should just mash them together once lars had grown a bit. that’s not who they are now.

there was never a strong throughline of sadie obsessing over lars in space, because it wasn’t about her or their relationship - it was about his growth. sadie needed to try to move on and live her own damn life (even if that made lars initially upset). her growing separately, into someone who is primarily concerned with what she wants & needs, always felt like the right move. and from there… they’re friends, yeah, but they don’t have the basis for a real relationship. sadie should never be lars’ prize for his growth. 

there may have been a time she was happy to put herself in that position - always waiting for him, passively hoping for him to get better… but going off on a tour of self-discovery, with new interests and a new partner? that seems to be a much better message - she deserves a life not dependent on his growth. agency in her own story. all without making lars a shallow ex-boyfriend stereotype, who can’t accept change. once? yes. but not now. he’s got his own life. of course he’s going back to space, that’s where he found himself. he’s got every incentive to go - and sadie has every incentive to stay on earth. 

so having her always be looking up, waiting for him to return, maybe even growing old like that… felt wrong. acknowledging that “growing apart” can sometimes be a good thing for both parties seems, to me, like a much more mature conclusion. it respects the characters they’ve become. they aren’t right for each other, without that being either’s loss. 

and of course, steven feels like that’s another instance of him failing to fix something… but this was never his to fix. it’s about them, not him. it’s private.

Day 31: petrichor (a day late)

Another attempt at pixel art

Mikey is just too cute

idk if youre still doing these but 🔥 sokka? im watching atla for the very first time rn and im loving your takes on it

not too late for these, especially for one about sokka

i love sokka

my main controversial opinion is that he’s really smart. I don’t really think that’s a controversial opinion though (anymore), and the show gives us plenty of evidence, especially in s3 (but as early as s1 and 2 too), that sokka is the brains of the operation, that he’s the voice of reason and rationality, and has all the strategic/tactical nous. i think he just largely uses humour to cope with his situation and all the pressure that’s on his shoulders as he’s the elder brother and the oldest (and only) warrior left defending the village & the last southern waterbender (and later that changes to the avatar and the last southern waterbender). i think he also tends towards a more scientific outlook probably because he’s a non-bender with a powerful bender for a sister, surrounded by other benders, who have connections to mystical creatures and the spirit world and so on.

i think sokka also acts in the way he does largely because he’s trying to imitate his father - who is both a skilled warrior and a clever tactician - & wants his father to be proud of him, as well. like there is a lot of ‘boy trying to be a man’ in sokka that is equally funny and sad. i think this idealism helps him avoid the pain of his father & all the adult men in his village leaving him and the others behind.

i think when he grows up, after the war has ended, I definitely think he might have more mixed feelings about it all. sokka spends a lot of time trying to be the best possible warrior and tactician, and takes it fairly seriously as well (consider how in s3 he’s always telling the gaang they’re running out of time), because he wants to be his dad, and assumes he’s going to be doing the same thing his dad is doing, and i think in five years time or so it might dawn on him that actually, after all his travelling with the avatar and co, and because they’re in an era of peace now, that absolutely isn’t going to be the case, it’s a whole new world, and he spent a lot of time trying to fit a mould that isn’t needed anymore.

& maybe, just maybe, he might feel a little bit of bitterness about how back then he felt like he was supposed to be responsible for everyone, at the age of 15, when he was still a kid himself.

(sokka probably has a “quarter-life” crisis about this at the age of 23 or something. painfully relatable, if i’m honest.)

i can honestly imagine sokka doing anything in the future except becoming the chief of his tribe. not because he neglects the responsibility - on the contrary he’s always risen to that responsibility, but more because he realises that isn’t where he’s most useful, and that’s not the role for him anymore.

(tbh my own headcanon is that katara becomes chief instead)

EDIT: just wanted to add that i don't really blame hakoda for all of this, like it was a difficult choice to decide to leave his kids behind & it was one imposed by years of fire nation raids and imperialist policies.

i also wanted to add that while i love the fire nation sibs (zuko & azula) to pieces i think something that is very very overlooked with sokka and katara is that while on the surface they're far more functional, they have an equal amount of depth and are also dealing with a lot of trauma. the loss of their mother, the absence of their father, & the effect that fire nation imperialism has on them and how it has hurt their tribe has a very profound effect and the way sokka acts, the way he throws himself into a position of responsibility at such a young age, is a product of this.

Just my fav heros- kind and empathetic ☺️ agile freaks of nature 🤩 Linchpins of their franchise 🥰🥹💜

Now I just need to find a hero who fits the bill and happens to be a middle child

Day 29: dragon

“Maybe we can control hothead! Then he can make us pizzas, play video games with me, and even clean my room!!” Season 5 ep 3