ATLA fans in the Stranger Things fandom, send me your prompts!
I have a very robust AU percolating in my mind, but I'm having trouble going from sweeping world building to a more bite-size plot. Like, knowing Sauron's motivations doesn't matter if the heroes never step out of the Shire, right? (shh, let me mix my metaphors)
So! I'm trying to kickstart my brain. Send me a character, a plot beat, a location, or even a snippet of dialogue you'd like to see! And I'll respond with anything from a single sentence to a oneshot as the muse wills
Want to see more, but don't have specifics in mind? Send me an emoji and whatever words or characters come to mind
🪨 earth benders
🌊water benders
🔥fire benders
💨air benders
⚔️non-benders
It's going to be Steddie endgame with Buckingham as the plot wills. Everything else is subject to change
Snippet under the cut
Eddie never imagined he could charm Lady Luck. Ladies in particular are not his area of expertise, and he still owes her for convincing Uncle Wayne that he was pathetic and stubborn and secretly lovable enough to take in. That’s a debt he’ll be paying with interest until the day he dies.
So he doesn’t blame her, necessarily, when his entire life goes to shit.
And not abandoning his dreams to work the mines level shit. Or scrabbling up a cliff to escape a sabertooth-moose lion shit. Full on, soldiers closing in, “take our life savings, you’ll need them”, “and here! have some earth shattering family revelations while we’re at it” piles of steaming camelephant dung.
But when it comes to luck and bending, persistence is key, and Eddie is nothing if not a stubborn ass.
Granted, “lucky” isn’t the first word that comes to mind when an ominous snuffle-crunch emanates from the trees, stopping him in his tracks. But he’s self-aware enough to own his desperation, and — lo and behold! — it’s not an open-mawed monster salivating to make a meal of him, but a rideable beast, saddled and grazing in a small patch of brush as if hand-delivered by the Spirits to carry Eddie to the nearest village.
Wherever that is.
And hey, Eddie might not believe in the Spirits, but he does believe in opportunism. And this right here? This is an opportunity so blessed by circumstance that he’ll have to renounce the Munson Doctrine in its entirety if he keeps walking.
Eddie slips off his rucksack, tucking it against the base of a tree where it can’t trip him up if the animal turns aggressive. He creeps forward, staying low to the scraggly brush, eyes trained on his prize. It’s not an animal he knows — large and docile with shaggy brown fur, ears like wolfbat wings, and pale, curved horns — but he’s been walking for days and, at this point? He’s not picky about his beasts of burden.
He eases along the brush until the brush runs out then, with a deep breath and a mental reminder to, “Think of your feet, man,” he steps out into the open.
The animal snorts and looks up, catfish-like whiskers swinging in the breeze. And yeah, okay, it might have big brown eyes and a sweet, dumb expression, but this thing is massive. Like distantly-related-to-a-shirshu massive. Trample-Eddie-before-he-can-bend-himself-to-safety massive.
His heart thunders as he considers that, actually, he’s not cut out for petty theft when the target could render his whole escape plan moot via a gruesome and untimely death.
He’s considering the pros of bending its feet into the earth — less trampling, more teeth — versus fleeing back the way he came when the thing lets out a bored huff and goes back to grazing.
Eddie straightens with a grin.
“Hey there, sweetheart,” he says softly. A little cocky, because he’s not Eddie goop right now and that’s the biggest win he’s had all week. “Looking for someone special to take you for a ride?”
“That depends,” comes a wry voice from behind him. “Are broken ribs a deal-breaker for you?”
Imagine you’re sitting with two of your bros and they’ve both just given you deer-in the-headlights looks when you pointed out that it was brave of the obviously gay figure skater to come to Sochi, and the only reason they could be giving you those looks of course is because they just aren’t as up on social issues like this as you are, so because you’re a nice guy and a good ally you explain to them btw Russia is not safe for queer people to help them out so they don’t embarrass themselves in front of actual queer people some day. Then imagine a few years later one of them comes out as gay on the ice right in front of you and the world and you have to sit with the knowledge that you once straight-splained queerphobia to a gay man. You summon the courage to apologize to him for it and have a laugh over it and you walk away thinking phew that was embarrassing but at least I did what I had to do and he was cool about it and now I never have to retroactively cringe at myself about this again. Then imagine a few more years later the same thing happens with the OTHER guy 😭
grigori rozanov is such a character man just impossible to please and hellbent on making ilya miserable whenever possible. in ep2 he personally pours ilya a drink hands him a drink and then says “i can’t believe you’re drinking at a time like this” like there’s just no way ilya can win. walked right into that one and got snatched up
Do y'all remember being a kid and trying to read in the car while it was dark outside and your parents wouldn’t let you turn on the light so you would try to grab snatches of sentences when you passed by street lights
guy who's having gauzy idealized wife flashbacks for the whole adventure but it turns out she isn't dead or anything he just really misses her and wants to get home
it’s a shame more vampire media doesn’t pull from vampire bat behavior because they’re such sweeties. they can only survive their incredibly specialized diet because bats will share blood with colony members that didn’t find a meal! there’s evidence that suggests the donors sometimes initiate this behavior themselves by approaching hungry bats! the colonies are mostly harems of females with a few males but they’ve been observed letting unrelated males in when it gets cold so they can all stay warm! cute little social critters!
americans are sooo desensitized to guns and sometimes it manifests in ways that affect your media literacy. like remember in the first episode of sherlock when john watson opens up his drawer and you see a gun in there and youre supposed to understand that this is narratively significant and conveys his suicidality as well as his willingness to skirt rules and laws but the first time i watched it i was like oh well theres his desk gun. lots of people have those
I think that if a story ever pulls a line like "You could have destroyed your magic with a stunt like that!" or "Pushing ahead with your magic too quickly can have dangerous consequences!" then the story should be obligated at some point to show me these magically disabled people.
All stories should have more disabled people, honestly, because disability is a basic part of being alive! What am I supposed to think of any given fictional community if I never see any elderly people, any retired people, any injured people, or any disabled people?
But seriously, a lot more fantasy stories specifically could really stand to show people who have been burned by magic to various degrees and are now living with the consequences. I'm too used to the protagonists fainting and sleeping extreme recklessness off without issue.
