Okay but imagine a ModernAU!ATLA...
(Not my picture. Kudos to the artist because it looks amazing!)
…where Zuko and Azula are the popular kids with a cruel business man tycoon as they’re dad. Their parents are divorced and their dad won full custody of the kids (there was probably the bribing of a judge in there). Everyone thinks the siblings are just so cool and badass that they don’t even bother to actually talk to them in order to know that Azula and Zuko aren’t alike in any way.
Azula is Miss Queen Bee. She’s a black-belt in her after-school Martial Arts program and is known for never going easy on an opponent, not even beginners. She’s best friends with Cheer Captain Ty Lee and the apathetic Mai who isn’t in any clubs because that’s “too mainstream and boring.” Mai is also “dating” Zuko (a case of a childhood crush becoming a real relationship).
Many girls envy Azula for her money and her beauty. Others hate her for her being a grade A bitch. No one, except for maybe her brother, actually knows that she lacks in social skills. When she was young, she tried to gain her mother’s attention by practicing martial arts vigorously. She had no time for friends. Mai and Ty Lee are the kids of other wealthy business families, so it was only expected that they be friends. Azula is a teenager now. She wants to date but has no skills in talking to others and getting them to like her whatsoever.
Zuko was abused by their dad so he doesn’t bother going home. Instead he lives with his Uncle Iroh and works at the tea shop his uncle owns below their apartment. He complains all the time about working at a tea shop but he would never even consider quitting.
He also practices Martial Arts with his uncle in one of his uncle’s Martial Arts studio for free (“He’s a member of the White Lotus!”). When his uncle is not with him, he practices with dual swords. It all helps him with his anger management and his bad memories.
In school, he doesn’t talk to anyone (basically a Lone Wolf). People automatically associate him with his sister. He wishes they didn’t. He doesn’t do anything out of the required studies. He’s not in any clubs. He doesn’t kiss up to the teachers. He doesn’t hang out with friends. Honestly, he’s lonely but he would never admit it. Just like how he’ll never admit that he actually likes that annoyingly bubbly and hyper underclassman Aang who seems to have made it a ritual to visit Zuko in the library during the elder’s free period to talk to him bug him.
Aang is that underclassman that everyone likes. The cheerleaders keep trying to recruit him to their squad because he’s so bubbly and loud and nice (and he’s seriously considering joining because cheerleading doesn’t sound too bad). He always wears that hooded vest jacket with a blue arrow running down the back and on the hood and it gets on his friend Katara’s nerves because “Do you even wash it?!”
He is best friends with siblings Katara and Sokka, Sokka’s girlfriend Suki, and even Toph, the tough tsundere tomboy in his grade who always gets in trouble with the teachers because she takes off her shoes in the middle of class (“Shoes are weird-feeling!”). He wears a bison necklace around his neck, and if anyone asks about it, he says he’s family’s symbol is a bison and he’s just showing family pride. He has a pet monkey too (nobody bothers to ask why). He lives with his parents but hangs out more with his godfather Gyatso, who is a family friend and a hardcore Buddhist. He wears matching beaded bracelets with Gyatso to showcase their close bond.
Toph is the blind daughter of a wealthy family who wants to treat her as a fragile doll. She hates that, which is probably why she became friends with Aang. Aang was the first person to treat her as a person and not a blind little girl or a rude classmate. She used to have a crush on Sokka but got over it when he started dating Suki because they actually go good together. Instead she settles for teasing the couple to no end. Toph will just randomly show up at her friends’ place because she’s “bored” (usually she actually just doesn’t want to go home to her parents but she’ll never say so). She gets her kicks off of teasing others (no one is safe).
Katara and Sokka come from a middle-low class family but they don’t mind it. They have a great father and grandmother. Their mom died when they were little so Katara wears their mom’s necklace to remember her by.
Sokka is on the soccer team. He thinks he’s just so cool but actually he’s just a dork. His first love was a girl named Yue. Sadly Yue died years ago from cancer. Sokka misses her, sure, but he doesn’t let it keep him from living his life. He was a ladies’ man for a while before meeting his match in the form of Suki, the girls lacrosse team’s Captain. They started dating after a month or two. Since then, they’ve been attached at the hip (that grossly cute couple that everyone is lowkey jealous of).
Katara is the “mom” of their friend group. She’s always worrying about her friends and do things for them even though they tell her not to. She knits them things in her free time. She’s a member of the swim team. She can also be oblivious when it comes to guys. Many of their guy friends like her, including Aang. She only dated one guy, though; Jet. He was a jerk and has basically made her weary of dating anyone else.
At one point, Aang manages to add Zuko into their friend group by bringing (dragging) the elder with him to one of their hang outs. Katara couldn’t believe it because Zuko was the only guy Katara gave a glance to (she kind of thought he was cute). But Katara didn’t bother trying to flirt because Zuko is “dating” Mai (honestly the couple has been growing apart for a while).
The group bothers visits Zuko on his shifts at his Uncle Iroh’s place. Uncle Iroh and Toph become good friends (she now often goes there by herself to talk to Iroh when she doesn’t want to go home). Uncle Iroh and one of the tea shop’s regulars, June, ship Zutara hard. It doesn’t help that the two involved are starting to like each other.
Eventually Zutara does become cannon (like it should have in the show but whatever, not like I’m salty or anything). At first Mai was angry but she got over it. After a while she started dating Ty Lee and revealed to everyone that she was bisexual.
(That’s all I got so far, but can you imagine it?)
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