Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Cast of OCs. Meaning of names and more information about them will be included in the chapter of the work of their first appearance. Roughly sorted in order of first mention and will be updated as new OCs come and some reappear:

Lin, Cheng, and Meiling: the three who are responsible for delivering Zuko to the front on the orders of Fire Lord Azulon. he/him; he/him; she/her respectively. Present in: if i’m old enough to die for your mistakes (then let's go) . 

Captain Lau (prev. Lao): the captain of the company that Zuko was first brought to, and was supposed to carrying letters for. He was supposed to report Zuko’s death, and though Zuko didn’t die, Lau still stated that he did. He has an unnamed nephew that's younger than Zuko. Present in: if i’m old enough to die for your mistakes (then let's go).

Li of Hira’a and Li of Jang Hui: two soldiers in Captain Lau’s company. both he/him. Present in: if i’m old enough to die for your mistakes (then let's go).

Hafeeza: Earth Kingdom resident in the Lower Ring of Ba Sing Se. She saved Lu Ten (who goes by the alias of Sasrutha). Attends Ba Sing Se University through the help of her friend, Yuvan. Present in: covered in all my friends (i still think of the bombs they build)

Noor: Hafeeza’s younger sister. Present in: covered in all my friends (i still think of the bombs they build)

Yuvan: Earth Kingdom resident in the Middle Ring of Ba Sing Se. Provided a place for Lu Ten to live as Hafeeza didn’t have the space or resources to take care of him. Present in: covered in all my friends (i still think of the bombs they build)

Asha: Yuvan’s mother, extreme lover of pai sho. Present in: covered in all my friends (i still think of the bombs they build)

Achala: Lu Ten’s mother. Had a younger brother, Sasrutha, from where Lu Ten gets his alias. Lu Ten remarked that she's gone, but she's not dead. Mentioned in: covered in all my friends (i still think of the bombs they build)

Parvaneh: a teacher aide in Hafeeza's class. She's the one who amputates Lu Ten's legs. Mentioned in: covered in all my friends (i still think of the bombs they build)

Smiles: a Dai Li agent that Lu Ten regularly plays pai sho with. "Smiles" is what Lu Ten calls them in his brain. they/them pronouns since Lu Ten doesn't know their gender. Present in: covered in all my friends (i still think of the bombs they build)

Green: Smiles’s partner. "Green" is what Lu Ten calls them in his brain. they/them pronouns since Lu Ten doesn't know their gender.  Present in: covered in all my friends (i still think of the bombs they build)

Kuzon of Shu Jing: a soldier in the 41st Division. He died. Present in: we lit the fire (and it's burning bright)

Akio: one of the medics that takes care of Zuko. he had two younger cousins who idolized him and were in the 41st Division (and were killed). Present in: we lit the fire (and it's burning bright)

Mio: another medic that takes care of Zuko. she/her. Present in: we lit the fire (and it's burning bright)

Asa: a Head Courier. In charge of the dorm that Zuko lives in. they/them. Present in: we lit the fire (and it's burning bright)

Kuzon of Kaijin: a courier in Zuko’s dorm and part of the Courier Li fan club. he/him. Present in: we lit the fire (and it's burning bright)

Akari of Kaijin: Kuzon's older sister who's in the military. She doesn't appear in person, but she is referenced. Referenced in: we lit the fire (and it's burning bright)

Kukrit: a courier in Zuko’s dorm and unofficial president of the Courier Li fan club. he/him. Present in: we lit the fire (and it's burning bright)

Chiyo: a courier in Zuko’s dorm and part of the Courier Li fan club. she/her. Present in: we lit the fire (and it's burning bright)

Amastan: airbender from a Si Wong tribe. he/him. Present in: we lit the fire (and it's burning bright)

Abenanka: Mio's girlfriend. Present in: we lit the fire (and it's burning bright)

General information about the set up of this world:

One of the problems with ATLA is how it cherrypicks cultures and experiences for its nations. I’m not sure if there’s really a good way to do this, then, but here is how I am going to approaching it:

The Fire Nation will have more influences from Japan than China. From what I gather, the Fire Nation was supposed to be more based on Japan, but at the last minute, they changed to the inspiration being China. You can see both of these, because the Fire Nations being islands that end up being united under one Fire Lord is reminiscent of Japan’s history. Also, considering the Earth Kingdom has quite a few cultural influences from China, that could also be a callback to when Japan occupied China. There are a lot of Chinese cultural elements in the Fire Nation (and elements from various South East Asian (SEA) countries, I’ve noticed. @atlaculture on tumblr marks down a lot of these) and historical references. For example, the genocide of the Air Nomads by the Fire Nation, which, I’m pretty sure, is a direct reference to the genocide of the Tibetan people by China (especially since the Air Nomads are a stereotype of Tibetan Buddhists); Dai Li was a real person, and he was the head of Chiang Kai-shek's secret service during the second World War; laogai is a prison system that uses penal labor and prison farms (though this is current as well as historical).

That’s all to say that how this will manifest is that the Fire Nation isles around Caldera are more noticeably one culture and the other isles had their own cultures as well, though through expansion and over time, they were suppressed. A similar situation happened with people in the Colonies. So, the situation in the Fire Nation isles is that, in order to present a homogenous image, most other cultures were stamped out, even if aspects (such as clothing and architecture) were incorporated), as is the case in a number of places in real life. 

Additionally, while the Earth Kingdom is very much Chinese-inspired, I’m going to try and incorporate other Asian cultures there, as the Earth Kingdom is very, very large and has the space to have other ethnicity coded people. Specifically with the Si Wong Tribes, I’ll be making them more inspired from Middle Eastern/North African cultures in the sense that some of the Si Wong Tribes will be MENA-coded. Not all of them (most may be Central Asian and such), and there will be MENA-coded characters who are not from the Si Wong Tribes. I am intending to add more South Asian/West Asian inspired characters. 

Other changes from canon:

Eye color : I very much like brown eyes, and the majority of the characters in ATLA do not have brown eyes. Obviously, people of color do not always have brown eyes and indicating that the only right color for a person of color’s eyes to be is brown is wrong, but it’s a trend in fiction for people of color to have eurocentric traits including (usually) blue eyes and I’ve seen it a lot. 

So my response to this is that the majority of people do have brown eyes, but benders’ eyes change color when they bend (firebender, gold; waterbender, blue; earthbender, green; airbender, gray). Attitudes towards non-brown eyed folks differ from region to region but they’re generally seen as spirit-touched/spirit-blessed. If you’re wondering which characters retain their eye color and which get turned brown, just know that those with an alternate eye color will get that mentioned. If there’s no mention of a color other than brown eye color, then assume that that character has brown eyes. 

Lu Ten: I saw this picture of Lu Ten, and for a brief moment, I wondered if Lu Ten was brown, which then jumped to me wondering if he was biracial. Looking back, it doesn’t seem to be an entirely accurate picture in terms of skin tone, since when we see Lu Ten as a child, he’s a bit fairer. But still, for the purposes of this story, Lu Ten has 1) a mother whose family originally hailed from the Earth Kingdom, 2) skin around the same pigmentation in the linked picture.

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Has yet to be released :P

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Meaning of names (take all of these with grains of salt because while I think they’re close enough to the meaning & I try to corroborate the names with other sources, it’s really very possible that I’ve made a mistake):

Meiling: Chinese first name that means “beautiful” and or “delicate” 

Lin: Chinese surname (though this is the Mandarin romanization). Fun fact that I might use in the future: the characters used to denote Lin (林) also denotes a surname in Japan, though that surname is Hayashi. It means “forest.”

Lau (originally Lao): So "Lao" came from somewhere but I couldn't find exactly where. the closest I found was it either being a Cantonese or Min Nan Chinese transliteration of the surname that's commonly spelled as Liu. But that was also iffy because according to Wikipedia (yes I know), the spelling of Lao comes from an "Other" transliteration source/authority/idk what they're called, one that's not Jyutping, according to the Hong Kong's gov standards, or Peh-oe-ji. So I decided to change it to Lau, which is the more official Cantonese transliteration.  Written as 劉 in traditional Chinese characters, it'd mean "kill" but it's only used as a surname today.

The following names have yet to be added:

Cheng:

Li:

Summary:

Instead of Ursa killing Azulon and that whole shebang, Zuko is sent to the front as mail courier Li. He’s not meant to survive the errand, and despite the fact that he does, he’s still marked as dead.

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Names and their meanings :

Noor: name of Arabic origin. Means “light.”

Hafeeza: Urdu name that is of Arabic origin. Means “protector.” 

Sasrutha: Lu Ten’s alias; it seems to be a Sinhalese name that means “truth.” 

Yuvan Das:  Yuvan is derived from Sanskrit, meaning “young/youth”. Also seems to refer to strong/adult. Das is a surname that means “servant” and is commonly among Hindu/Sikhs. 

Achala: name refers to a deity prominent in Vajrayana Buddhism (but is also more commonly spelled as Acala). That fact is unrelated to why I chose the name. It apparently means "the immovable" in Sanskrit. (Sinhala shows heavy Sanskrit influence) I also realized that I misread when I chose this name. The source I read at first just talked about East Asian and South East Asian Buddhism, and I read those as the same thing, even though they’re not (Vajrayana Buddhism is practiced more commonly among some East Asian countries and Theravada Buddhism among some South East Asian countries). Achala, since she’s coded Sinhalese, would have practiced the equivalent of Theravada Buddhism, not Vajrayana Buddhism. 

Parvaneh: Persian name that means “butterfly.”

Asha: Just learned that it also has Swahili origins, but I was specifically looking at the name derived from Sanskrit, meaning “hope, desire.” The Swahili name seems to be derived from the word/or a name meaning “life.”  

The following names have yet to be inputted. 

Leila: 

Farzana: 

Ahmad:

Rahim:

Mahmud:

Nadim: 

Rahat:

Azhar: 

Iqra:

Sitara:

Yasmin:

Hayat: 

Hira:

Extra Information:

- According to the wikia, Dai Li start training at 13, so that is approximately the age Leila was snatched at.

- Noor and Hafeeza’s full family tree. Parents are Farzana (mother) and Ahmad (father). Eldest brother, who is deceased, was Rahim. Rahim married Hira and they had three children, Sitara (girl), Hayat (boy), and Yasmin (girl). Noor and Hafeeza’s youngest brother, who is missing, is named Mahmud. Farzana had two siblings, Aziz and Irfan. Aziz married Farid, and they had Iqra (girl) and Hanif (deceased, boy). Irfan had Azhar (boy) as a child). Ahmad had one brother, Muhammad, and Muhammad married Sadia. They had Nadim (boy) and Rahat (girl).  

Summary:

Lu Ten is dragged out of the battlefield by a Lower Ring resident (Hafeeza) who thinks that he’s a POW who’s been shoved into armor to serve as cannon fodder. He recovers, but both legs end up being amputated. During his time in recovery, he recognizes that the Fire Nation is at fault, the Dai Li are dangerous, and that he wants to help Ba Sing Se. He ends up joining a resistance in Ba Sing Se against the Dai Li through Hafeeza and Yuvan (Hafeeza’s friend). Lu Ten, who now goes by Sasrutha, involuntarily becomes pai sho partners with a couple of Dai Li agents. He also learns that he is a metalbender. Meanwhile, Hafeeza’s younger sister, Noor, teams up with him to track the Dai Li, something she is interested in because the Dai Li took her friend, Leila. Iroh has fully joined the OWL (he doesn’t know Lu Ten is alive) and is trying to be there for Azula. Achala, Lu Ten’s mother and a Grand Lotus, is grieving and swears to get back at the Fire Nation.

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Meaning of names :

Akio: So there are several kanji combinations for this (昭夫, 昭男, 昭雄, more), but the first character (昭) means “bright/luminous” and the second characters are all variations on man/hero/husband/manly/etc. So basically, Akio is a bright man. Would’ve been more accurate if he was a firebender but oh well. I didn’t choose this name for the meaning. 

Mio: Japanese name that means beautiful cherry blossom/thread. (Thank you behindthename.com; 美桜 and 美緒 are two combinations. 美 is for beautiful, 桜 for cherry blossom, 緒 for thread). 

Asa: name of Hebrew origin. Means “doctor, healer” and wow this is another instance in which I should have looked up what the name actually meant because I could have done a cool connection. 

Akari of Kaijin: Once again, different combinations of kanji lead to slightly different meanings. I like this version the best: 朱里 where 朱 means “vermillion red” and  里 means “village.”

Kukrit: Thai name and I actually did store the meaning of the name somewhere but I lost that and a quick search doesn’t pull it back up for me. 

Chiyo: Same disclaimer about kanji combinations. Was looking at this specific combination 千代 where 千 is “thousand” and 代 “generations.” 

Amastan:  According to behindthename.com “Means "protector, defender" in Tuareg, derived from the Tamazight root esten meaning "to protect, to defend".”

Abenanka: is an Ainu name. No clue what it means, because I was just trying to find a name that is actually Ainu. 

Ao: Zuko’s second alias. Japanese word for the blue-green color spectrum. 

Yun: the name I gave to the Cabbage Merchant. The Korean name means “governor” and the Chinese name might mean fortune.

Extra information:

Sake - alcoholic beverage

Waraji - Japanese footwear that was standard among commoners. From what I read, it was more useful for manual work than other footwear (because it was secured around the ankle rather than solely being like sandals).

Jika-tabi - another form of Japanese footwear. Was and continues to be useful for its grip and flexibility of the soles. 

Kaijin - Japanese word that means ashes, complete destruction, and embers according to the sites I looked at.

Huihuai Stronghold: made this up to be the sister stronghold to Pohuai. Pohuai translates to something close to "to damage/destroy" in Chinese and the site I looked at provided words with similar meanings, one of which was Huihuai.

Tuareg: larger Berber ethnic group that are traditionally pastoral nomads. Amastan is coded as Tuareg. 

Ainu: native people of Hokkaido, Sakhalin and the Kurils. Abenanka is coded as Ainu. 

Summary:

Will be added when work is complete.