hi spec!! sorry im so late to the wip thing, but if you want to talk about “reach out, go on” i would absolutely love to hear about it! i know it’s based on personal experiences so 100% okay if not. there’s just so much raw emotion in that story; it’s beautiful and gives me goosebumps when i read even a small section from it (side note i know ive read it a couple times but i guess i never left kudos -_- my bad!!) anyway no pressure of course, im glad i can take this as an opportunity to say you’re an incredible writer ❤️
ahh thank u so so so much beck i didnt know youd read reach out go on!! ;-; im glad it connected w you & i will give u some snippets of my writing process
first, much of what sokka goes through here is directly lifted from my own experience. losing a grandparent in the midst of the pandemic (i lost both of mine within months of each other), not seeing the house you grew up in for the last time before it's sold, not rmbring almost anything about the moment you were told about what had occurred, the way no one said "i'm sorry for your loss" and even though id grown up reading books that said that's not what ppl who truly understand you would say i still resented not hearing it. some memories of kanna are slightly altered versions of my memories of my own grandmother.
second, what wasnt directly lifted from my life, especially wrt sokka being yup'ik in alb!verse and the traditions surrounding the death of an elder therein, i researched as best i could but i'm still worried i fucked something up or stated something incorrectly. i also entirely omitted writing about sokka and katara going into the mashpee wampanoag museum--didnt even form a draft of it or really consider writing their experience--bc as much as i want to do justice to sokka's character here, i have never experienced anything close to being an indigenous person going to the museum of another indigenous people's culture and history (i havent even gone to any kind of asian museum as an asian american person) so i felt it wasn't within my wheelhouse of what i could believably write about. i also think that even if i did have some kind of experience w that sort of thing, it seems too intimate to share thru the lens of the larger story i wanted to tell with reach out, go on, which is inevitably distilled through a fandom context due to who reads it when i post it on ao3. so idk if anyone felt like that scene was lacking from the story, but i very intentionally chose to not disclose any specifics of what that trip ultimately held for katara and sokka.
third, something i did lift culturally from my own experience w the loss of a grandparent: sokka refers to hakoda using the yup'ik word for dad almost exclusively (at least within his own thoughts and when directly speaking to him) even though he mostly uses dad in english in alb/prior alb works. this is smthn i did as well when i lost my grandma (who, i will say, i have been editing out the urge to call her pawpaw this entire time bc most ppl misinterpret that as meaning my grandfather. that is my gonggong! and i do not like explaining this v much, so i also left them as 'my grandmother'&'my grandfather' when referring to them in the endnotes even tho i never called them that) and spoke to my mom. i refer to my mom interchangeably as mom and mama and a-ma, but in my head and aloud when her parents died i shifted more to mama and a-ma. i don't entirely wish to disclose the emotional particulars for why i did this, but some of it does have to do with how i wanted to be more connected to my culture when my grandparents died & adapted my language to do this. i think sokka would do the same thing, so i gave it to him narratively.
thank you so much for reading and asking abt reach out go on!! i really appreciate it ♡♡♡
send me a # 1-6 & i'll talk about a wip/past work!