Tumblr crosspost (16 November 2019)
Aug. 2nd, 2021 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineBack in February of 2013, steinbecks asked:
Headcanons on the fabulous bloodbending brothers in their early 20s
I replied:
Early 20s:
Okay, so I think that Noatak at fourteen was very little short of Amon, lacking only a cause, but it took A LONG TIME for that to happen, either because he had some decency to shed or it just took him that long to find a cause that resonated with him.
So I think in his early twenties, he’d been wandering around the Earth Kingdom a few years, scraping by on purifying people’s wells and shit, and y'know, he’s proud, it grated on him to be doing that kind of stuff when he’s far more powerful than most benders in positions of power (and more charismatic in a scrubby kind of way). And he’s starting to notice that bender-nonbender conflicts tend to end badly for non-benders, the Kyoshi Warriors should have a training school or something. Also lots of people’s parents seem to have been killed by firebenders, what’s up with that?
Tarrlok: he got a scholarship (or something similar) at Ba Sing Se University in his teens (16-17) and by his early twenties has finished up, and returns home (well, “home” - the big NWT city) with his sparkly legal education, and a reputation as a kickass waterbender, too. He still feels like a bloodbender even though he hasn’t used it since he was eleven, since there’s still some of that residual passive sensing stuff and it gets stronger with the full moon and he’s just ugggggh.
So as he becomes more successful and important, he’s able to ask permission of the young, super-spiritual chief to visit the spirit oasis during the full moons, which (1) wins him points with Unalaq, and (2) lets him hide himself away from bendable folk. And he just sits there and tries to meditate and is all anguished and tortured, and never asks the spirits for help because consciously it never occurs to him that they could, and subconsciously he doesn’t think he’s worthy.
tl;dr - they’re wrecks.
Headcanons on the fabulous bloodbending brothers in their early 20s
I replied:
Early 20s:
Okay, so I think that Noatak at fourteen was very little short of Amon, lacking only a cause, but it took A LONG TIME for that to happen, either because he had some decency to shed or it just took him that long to find a cause that resonated with him.
So I think in his early twenties, he’d been wandering around the Earth Kingdom a few years, scraping by on purifying people’s wells and shit, and y'know, he’s proud, it grated on him to be doing that kind of stuff when he’s far more powerful than most benders in positions of power (and more charismatic in a scrubby kind of way). And he’s starting to notice that bender-nonbender conflicts tend to end badly for non-benders, the Kyoshi Warriors should have a training school or something. Also lots of people’s parents seem to have been killed by firebenders, what’s up with that?
Tarrlok: he got a scholarship (or something similar) at Ba Sing Se University in his teens (16-17) and by his early twenties has finished up, and returns home (well, “home” - the big NWT city) with his sparkly legal education, and a reputation as a kickass waterbender, too. He still feels like a bloodbender even though he hasn’t used it since he was eleven, since there’s still some of that residual passive sensing stuff and it gets stronger with the full moon and he’s just ugggggh.
So as he becomes more successful and important, he’s able to ask permission of the young, super-spiritual chief to visit the spirit oasis during the full moons, which (1) wins him points with Unalaq, and (2) lets him hide himself away from bendable folk. And he just sits there and tries to meditate and is all anguished and tortured, and never asks the spirits for help because consciously it never occurs to him that they could, and subconsciously he doesn’t think he’s worthy.
tl;dr - they’re wrecks.