The official blog for Baatar Jr. Appreciation Week, where Baatar Jr.'s presence in the TLOK fandom is celebrated semiannually. All are welcome to participate.
BAATAR JR APPRECIATION WEEK IS BACK FOR ONE FINAL ROUND!!!
It's been a while but we are back in business Baatar Jr Fam!!
It's unfortunate that we must announce this, but due to the amount of waning support we've had with the last set of submissions, this will be the final baatarjrweek that we will be hosting.
So, if you would like to be a part of this last-ditch effort to give Baatar Jr some love in the TLOK fandom, please consider sending in submissions from April 23rd thru April 29th :}
You can post work early or late, all submissions are accepted > be sure to use #baatarjrweek in your tags. Late submissions will be accepted until May 5th.
Here are the topics:
Day 1: New Beginnings
Day 2: Patience
Day 3: Regret
Day 4: Family Ties
Day 5: Five Years Later...
Day 6: Puppy Love
Day 7: One Last Time
*As always, NFSW content is allowed (just be sure not to tag the work as NFSW)
Thank you to those who submitted works for the final Baatar Jr Appreciation Week ever!!
We wish that we could continue this but sadly we've been waning on the amount of submissions with this appreciation week and the last. We acknowledge and are grateful for all the artists and writers who have submitted work for all the appreciation weeks.
This blog will still stay active as an archive for all the works pertaining to Baatar Jr. and we hope those who support him in the TLOK fandom will continue to show support as long as the fandom reigns on.
Works for this Baatar Jr. Appreciation Week will still be accepted and added to the archives until May 6th - so please contribute if you haven't already.
Finally, we would like to thank @bolin-san, who created this blog and facilitated Baatar Jr. Appreciation Week. This venture wouldn't have been possible without their perseverance.
Chronicles of the Avatar: The Legacy of Yangchen by F. C. Yee hits shelves this summer on July 18th, 2023!
This is the second Yangchen novel after last year’s The Dawn of Yangchen, and the fourth Chronicles of the Avatar novel after The Rise of Kyoshi and The Shadow of Kyoshi!
Check out the cover reveal above the the official description below:
“Common enemies make for strange friends …
Avatar Yangchen has succeeded in bringing a measure of stability to Bin-Er, but her successes have been limited to a single city, and rumors concerning Unanimity—a weapon capable of total obliteration—have led to increasing tensions among the Four Nations.
Desperate to restore diplomacy, Yangchen attempts to de-escalate hostilities between heads of state. But in the wake of a brutal assassination and the freeing of Unanimity, Yangchen is forced to bring Kavik—the trusted former companion whose betrayal crushed her—back into her fold.
As the Four Nations teeter on the brink of conflict and she begins to unravel the power-hungry Zongdu Chaisee’s true agenda, Yangchen is forced to measure the worth of humanity, and how much can be sacrificed in the name of balance.
This taut and provocative fourth installment in the Chronicles of the Avatar series follows Avatar Yangchen as she charts the course of her legacy, finally making peace with her choices and facing Avatarhood with the courage it demands.”
We want to extend our gratitude to all the artists and writers who helped to make our 3rd Baatar Jr. Week possible. Because we've received so many awesome submissions within the past few days, we have decided to continue this blog and host yet another Baatar Jr. Appreciation Week, which will happen this coming spring.
Keep an eye out for a future post from us for this next event :)
We hope you all continue to show support for our favorite engineer and thank you all again so much for your efforts!
*Hopefully Bryke will grace us with more of Baatar and Kuvira in the future comics :D
When Tai was born, Toph had planted her feet in his general direction and declared him an earthbender, though his powers didn’t manifest until four years later. When Avani learned to crawl, she bore labyrinthine tunnels through the gardens and it took Kuvira’s seismic sense to find her in them, always caked in dirt and with moonflowers enmeshed in her hair. And when Priya’s peals of laughter split the air, his wife’s steel bracelets rattled like wind chimes, the metal singing in response to their infant daughter’s jubilation.
When Baatar’s mother called them thrice blessed with prodigies, Kuvira’s face glowed with pride—while Baatar suppressed an eye roll—and when she fell pregnant again, the matriarch made no secret of her wish for a fourth earthbending grandchild.
But Jae’s infancy came and went without any sign of a capacity for bending revealing itself. “Wait and see,” Kuvira had said, and “Give it time,” his mother advised, but years passed, and despite the family’s unceasing interventions, Jae was never able to make so much as a pebble move.
“He’s at it again,” Baatar said as he glanced out a window, watching his six-year-old son run through a sequence of earthbending stances his older sisters had drilled into him.
Kuvira drifted to his side and gazed out at the training field. “His form is flawless,” she said, shaking her head slightly. Baatar tried not to chafe at the hint of regret in her voice. “Maybe we can find him a master in the nonbending martial arts.”
“I don’t know if that helps.” Baatar sighed. “He doesn’t want to fight; he wants to earthbend. Anything short of that just winds up disappointing. Trust me, I would know.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Kuvira said. “I’ll try talking to him again.”
Baatar rested a hand on her shoulder, stopping her. “Let me go this time.”
She nodded and he slipped out the back door to make his way to the training field. He watched his son go through the stances again, his face set in hard determination—much like Kuvira’s when she was focused on a task— before intervening.
“Jae, would you like to come up to the workshop with me?” he asked. “I’ve been working on some new designs, and I could use your help.”
“Maybe later, dad,” he said. “I need to keep working on these moves so I’m ready when my earthbending comes in.”
Baatar took a deep breath, preparing himself to give a variation of the talk his father once had with him. To be a Beifong born without the power of earthbending felt in many ways like being a bird without a song. That had been Baatar’s reality for years, decades, before he came to terms with his own skills and limitations. But it would not be his son’s if he had any say in the matter.
“It’s true, you could develop earthbending in a few months or a few years.” He took a seat on a pile of earth discs. “But you could also be a nonbender, like me.”
“But probably not, though, right? Tai and Avani and Priya can all earthbend, so why would I be the only one who can’t?”
Baatar forced himself not to look away from the pleading look in his son’s green eyes. “No one can really say why some people have bending abilities and others don’t. There are geneticists who’ve dedicated their entire careers to the question.”
“Dad, what’s a geneticist?”
“A scientist who studies heredity and the variation of organisms and…and that isn’t really important now,” he said. “The point is, bender or nonbender, your mother and I love you and will always be proud of you.”
“Does being a nonbender mean I’ll have to become an engineer?”
“Of course not,” Baatar said, “but I’m here if you ever want to learn.”
Jae seemed to think this over for a moment. “Can we design a super fast car?”
Baatar smiled. “The fastest.”
“Really? Then let’s go!”
As he jogged to match his son’s pace back to the house, up to his workshop, he hoped the powers he could offer—of innovation and design—would be enough to fill an earth-shaped void.
Please continue to keep posting for Baatar Jr. Appreciation Week. We will continue to accept submissions and add them to our archive until October 11th.
Lastly, this may be the final Baatar Jr Appreciation Week we will be hosting, due to dwindling support. If we get at least 5 more submissions by October 11th, then we may consider continuing this semi-annual celebration of Baatar Jr. So please reach out to your mutuals and spread the word, and get your fanarts and fanfics in while you can!!
