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I completed Act I of Flashpoint in order to post it during Zutara Month 2025 (October). I am currently in the process of finishing Act II and hope to post it in October 2026. Like Act I, I will post the whole thing over the course of the month.
Canon timeline and character ages
I have stretched the canon timeline out to take place over the course of seven years (everyone was born a little bit earlier than in canon, Aang would have woken up in 93AG and the comet was in 100AG), and this story is set three years after the end of the war, making Katara 24 and Zuko 26.
This is done for multiple reasons. One is because Katara and Aang mastering waterbending in the span of a few months (and then Katara also…somehow…mastering healing at the same time) is unrealistic to me. And then Aang goes on to master two other forms of bending in similarly short spans of time. Stretching it out over seven years gives them some breathing room.
Secondly, I’m uninterested in writing about teenagers at this point in my life. Writing about teenagers when I was a teenager (or even in my twenties), fine. But now I’m (supposedly) an actual adult with bills and a day job. I am far less interested in writing about teenagers fumbling basic personal interactions and like to give my characters at least a little more emotional maturity and life experience.
Healing and Bloodbending
I like bloodbending. I don’t see it as inherently evil. If you see it as completely evil and a terrible, terrible thing that should never ever be used, close this fic, it ain’t for you, and you will not have a good time here. Also, leave any ‘oh but you can only bloodbend during the full moon’ nonsense at the door. Hama could only bloodbend during the full moon—she was also well past her physical prime. Katara was never shown to try bloodbending outside of a full moon. Doesn’t mean she couldn’t do it, she just never tried.
I tweak how healing works just a smidge to make it feel a little more ‘right’ to me and more fleshed out. Katara supposedly becoming a fully-fledged healer in the same span of time that she learned combat bending is just…meh to me. Particularly given that she had a “I’m not like other girls, I don’t want to heal,” phase (she grows out of it, and we have the full ‘I’m not like other girls’ to ‘I’m exactly like other girls,’ pipeline in this fic #charactergrowth).
I have it set up that most healers can only heal superficial wounds—burns, lacerations, bruises, that sort of thing. Your average healer simply accelerates the natural healing process (unless they have spirit water).
Master healers are a different kettle of fish. Gold star if you can guess what you need to be able to do in order to become a master healer.
Also, water-based healing cannot heal broken bones. This is dumb to me. Earthbenders however, they could probably heal broken bones.
Trauma and PTSD
Katara and Zuko have both survived multiple incredibly traumatic events. They have PTSD. The ‘get them both a Xanax and my shrink’s number stat’ kind of PTSD. They sometimes make bad or illogical choices because of said PTSD in this story.
I write to work through my own shit. This story’s got funny bits, it’s got happy bits, it’s got intriguing bits…and it’s also got some uncomfortable bits that may be upsetting to some people, and more than one chapter has “writing is cheaper than therapy” vibes. Read the tags. Take the tags seriously. If realistic depictions of gaslighting, abuse, disassociation, panic attacks, and the ugly bits of trauma recovery give you the ick, either pass on this story or approach it with caution and your healthy coping mechanism of choice.
The first, idk…60% of the fic is pretty tame (tame-ish…depends on your definition of tame), but roundabouts Chapter 32, shit hits the fan and there are some scenes that are just Katara disassociating the whole time.
Also, Katara cries in this. A lot. She’s a badass and very brave and does some really cool shit, but she’s a crier by nature and I highly doubt most people could get through some of the things towards the latter end of this act without breaking down into tears a few times. If seeing her have weak moments and ugly crying several times isn’t your cuppa, you will not enjoy Flashpoint.
I see Katara as someone who is able to work through and process many of her emotions in real time, this allows her to be strong, resilient, and very emotionally intelligent, but can initially come off as very ‘tearbender-y’. Zuko on the other hand…he’s very rarely able to process his emotions in real time, it takes him ages to figure out what he’s feeling and why (which is, tragically, how I work).
Neurodivergence
I am not a neurotypical human (shocker, a history nerd who eats the same breakfast every single day with a near 20-year Special Interest in ATLA isn’t neurotypical? Groundbreaking. Truly.). I, like many people in the fandom, headcanon Zuko as having autism and portray him as such in my writing. In Act 1, that doesn’t explicitly come into play all that much beyond how he interprets/reads people’s emotions, but it definitely impacts things more in Act 2. Meanwhile, I also personally headcanon Katara as having ADHD. Is there really a ton of evidence for this in canon? No. Do I care? Also no.
The New Ozai Society is now the Phoenix Vanguard
Why? Because the New Ozai Society is a dumbass name. This entire story started out as me looking at the comics and nearly universally going ‘I hate these’ and deciding to write my own take on a post-war world whilst pulling from the comics (though, admittedly, Act 1 went a little off the rails and has little to do with the comics at all lol).
The Fire Nation Capital
Alrighty, I have a gripe with the original design of the FN capital. By and large, I love it and it’s super cool, but Capital Bay makes my heart HURT. The crescent/U-shaped bay has nothing beyond the (barren) docks, recessed battlements, and parade route, it’s totally empty. While I realize this was likely done to make the animator’s jobs easier, it is the most impractical stupid design ever.
Having dedicated parade spaces is totally a thing that happened historically. HOWEVER. Their ENTIRE bay is dedicated to it, which is NOT A THING. That bay is the single easy access point to the water for the capital geographically (everywhere else nearby is cliff face) and they are an island nation! There MUST be infrastructure there in order for the city to be functional.
So I have replaced the barren strip of land running along the water/docks with a neighborhood called Dockside. Essentially, the parade route stays, however the “arms” of the bay to the left and right are fully occupied. The first row, maybe two, of infrastructure closest to the water is largely pretty, it would be grand walls (containing those recessed battlements) and/or beautiful markets designed to look impressive to ships sailing into the harbor.
I’m imagining a little bit of Valletta, Malta and Dubrovnik, Croatia, meets Japanese architecture. Immediately behind said markets and walls, hidden from view, would be the highest population density of the capital with the poorest slums.
Sexuality and Gender in ATLA
Below is a (completely unnecessary) rant about sexuality, gender, marriage, and worldbuilding in ATLA. It’s not at all necessary to read in order to read my writing, but if you’re curious about why I’ve made some of the worldbuilding choices I’ve made, the below rant may give you some insight.
Despite completely shredding some aspects of the franchise, I swear I love the show, and it has a beloved place in my heart (I’ve literally spent thousands of hours writing fanfiction for it lol).
Southern Water Tribe
Many of the Zutara stories that I’ve read portray the SWT as far less sexist (or even straight up feminist) in comparison to the NWT and sometimes the other nations. While I find this take refreshing (and enjoy it!) and think it’s a much better representation of incorporating actual Inuit traditions, it doesn’t quite jive with the content of the show for me. Sokka’s sexism in the beginning of Book 1 had to come from somewhere.
That shit is learned; he didn’t just wake up one day and decide to be misogynistic. The most likely place that he learned it was from his father and the other men in the SWT, therefore it follows that the SWT must be only marginally less sexist than the NWT and I portray it as such. On a related note, I also don't make Hakoda the perfect dad or chief; I think in canon, he was largely portrayed as a good father to be a narrative foil to Ozai but, especially in a world with a sexist SWT, he's got a lot of ingrained misogyny. That doesn't mean he doesn't love Katara and can't learn, but he is a product of his culture.
I tend to think that originally the tribes were much more equitable; however, after a certain historical event in the ATLA world (described in chapters 4 and 5), they spiraled into conservative ideology. In my writing, the Water Tribes are the most patriarchal, sexist, and reserved of the four nations (though they are also socialist leaning in other ways, like medical care).
They would be likely to highly value ‘purity’ in women. Virginity has far, far more weight in heavily patriarchal societies. Ancient Egypt, for example (less patriarchal on the whole when compared to, say, ancient Greece), didn’t even have a direct word for virginity (I think the one translation I’ve read that talked about virginity referred to it as ‘a woman who hadn’t given herself to a man yet’).
Virginity is a social construct; it only has value if a society gives it value—and by and large the more patriarchal a society is, the more they value it (if I had a dollar for every time a man has argued with me about this, I would be a rich human). In a sexist version of the Water Tribes, a woman’s chastity before marriage would likely be everything. Perhaps not quite Bridgerton levels of ‘oh no I’ve been seen alone with a man, my reputation is in tatters!’ but pretty damn close (which is in total opposition to many Inuit cultures and traditions that I’m aware of…sometimes I think the creators just googled ‘Inuit culture’ and saw ‘arranged marriages’ and ‘wife sharing’ and just automatically went ‘okay, so we’re making the Water Tribes hella misogynistic, right?’).
Additionally, like most sexist societies, it’s highly unlikely that they would be accepting of queer relationships, and, no, ancient Greece and Rome do not count as being ‘accepting’. I will fight someone in a Denny’s parking lot if they try to say that...not actually, don’t come for me, I’m horribly nonconfrontational (then again I've also been making efforts to regrown my spine so there is a non-zero chance I would write a small, scathing thesis complete with sources debunking that take...and then promptly regret wasting that much of my time on an internet rando).
I know that in canon the tribes are supposedly fine with it, but this worldbuilding is inconsistent with observed human behavior and traditions in highly patriarchal societies. I suppose one could use their cannon acceptance of queer folks as an example of them being more ‘feminist’ leaning, however (for me) in choosing between Sokka’s misogyny (which is a huge part of his, very beloved, character arc) and disjointed mentions of queer relationships in Korra and later in fringe canon content (the comics), I pick a world that allows for Sokka’s character arc.
Fire Nation
Conversely it makes far, far less sense to me that the Fire Nation would have banned homosexuality and I feel like this was done solely as a ‘Fire Nation Bad’ tactic rather than solid worldbuilding (I reconcile this by having the official, public facing reason being to ‘increase birth rates’ but pretending it was really because Sozin wanted to stick it to his sister and also he was gay for Roku and threw a hissy fit when Roku got married, and no I do not care that this is ridiculous).
Firstly, fire as an element is all about power and passion and love and life, etc etc (granted a lot of that got lost during the war other than power, but still). As a culture, I tend to think they would be the nation most open to sex and sexuality, second only to the Air Nomads. Premarital sex would not be seen as strange, maybe even encouraged, and I think sex work would be normalized and regulated (being a sex worker might still be considered ‘lesser’ or maybe more accurately ‘less desirable’ but visiting a sex worker, totally normal and fine). I also think sex work would be an insanely lucrative position. If you’ve ever heard the phrase ‘prostitutes built the west,’ I feel like that’s applicable to the Fire Nation; sex workers bankroll half the country.
Secondly, I believe that the Fire Nation was primarily inspired by Japan in the Tokugawa Period (and the Edo Period) and Qing Dynasty China. In the former, prostitution, bisexuality, and polyamory were openly acknowledged in society (with some caveats), and the latter, though more conservative, still didn’t really have laws banning homosexuality, though Confucian ideals prioritized lineage and filial duty (having said all that, I’m hardly an expert in Asian history, so take that with a grain of salt).
Thirdly, I believe the Fire Nation is more…I hesitate to use the word feminist, but I portray them as more equitable than the Water Tribes and Earth Kingdom. While warfare tends to be more of a patriarchal thing, warfare can also very much be an ‘equalizer’ in terms of gender roles (I’m sure societies with more matriarchal structures can wage war, but in general, they place value on different things so I can’t think of many examples historically). But especially in a setting where you have benders, there is going to be more gender equality if they’re the ones waging war; the FN isn’t going to turn down cannon fodder/soldiers that can shoot fire from their hands just because they have vaginas and we do have examples of women in militaristic roles in the show (Iroh’s prison guard is the first one that comes to mind).
They definitely see themselves as being morally superior in comparison to the WTs and the EK when it comes to gender equality (colonialism and propaganda will do that lol)…but there are still some underlying sexist norms. The majority, if not all, of the depicted high-ranking military officials are men for instance.
Along a similar ‘the FN has some underlying sexist norms’ vein, I would imagine that towards the end of the war, there would have been a big push for women to have more children, like we’re talking Nazi Germany levels of encouragement for babymaking.
The military industrial complex is ever demanding of more sacrifices and after a century of war, they would be running low on bodies. The working class people would likely be feeling weary even with all the propaganda, particularly after the Siege of the North (I did the math and it’s highly likely that 75,000-100,000 soldiers would have died from Koizilla which, with the military numbers I’ve set up, equates to about a third of their navy globally; it was a big hit).
The TL;DR is, the Fire Nation in my writing has more gender equality than the WTs and the EK…but not nearly as much as they think they do.
Air Nomads
I both love the Air Nomads and also have all sorts of issues with them worldbuilding wise (not the least of which is they lean uncomfortably close to the western infantilization of Tibetan peoples, but I digress).
So the air temples were segregated by gender, but that doesn’t automatically mean sexual repression. They highly prized freedom, spiritual openness, detachment, and all that good stuff. I think they would see sex as something natural, beautiful, and spiritual; a meeting of souls rather than bodies. They would be totally cool with basically any configuration of partners that you can imagine and would be the most accepting of all the nations, full stop.
I also do not think it makes any sense at all for them to practice marriage. Zero. None. Nada.
Based on the philosophies established in canon, they should see marriage as inherently possessive and something that is diametrically opposed to their belief system and principles of detachment. Plus, the temples are segregated by gender. Where are you gonna stick married couples? Are we really saying that they just did long distance marriages for everyone?
I could see them maybe having some sort of bracelet or cord to indicate that they are temporarily partnered with someone. That partnership may last an entire lifetime, but it would, by its nature, be open, flexible, and breakable without consequence.
This is also one of the reasons I dislike Katara/Aang. Aang is so big on his culture and yet he marries Katara when it makes absolutely no sense for the Air Nomads to practice marriage (meanwhile, Katara would very much want to get married, she is a marriage and babies kind of gal…this is also why I like Toph/Aang, because while Katara is a marriage and babies kind of gal, you know who isn’t? Toph.).
I honestly feel like part of the reason the Katara/Aang relationship was done was because the writers could only conceptualize a happy ending for Aang as marriage and saw anything other than marriage as sad (a very western sentiment) even though it’s antithetical to the world they built.
Realistically, given the established belief systems and geographical limitations outlined in the show, it makes far more sense that the Air Nomads reproduced via a yearly fertility festival when all the temples would come together and…bang it out for a few days. Nine months later, the babies are sent to their respective temples. Of course, reproduction via fertility festival orgy is like…not Nickelodeon approved lol. But it is what makes the most sense to me with the societal values and geography outlined in canon.
Foggy Swamp
Okay, I take it back, I feel like if I’m doing a ‘most equitable’ to ‘least equitable’ in terms of gender I would put it at Air Nomads-->Foggy Swamp-->Fire Nation-->Earth Kingdom-->Water Tribes. My version of the Foggy Swamp is a matriarchy. Is there literally any canon evidence for this? No. No there is not. In fact there is evidence for the opposite. I don’t care. They’re a matriarchy because I want one, it feels fitting to me, and I read a fic with a matriarchal Foggy Swamp years ago and it lives rent free in my head.
Without writing a massive essay on what does and does not constitute a matriarchy because I absolutely do not have time for that, I am operating under the premise that a matriarchy is not the inverse of a patriarchy. It doesn’t mean that men are second class citizens, and on the whole the society is more egalitarian. There would probably still be traditional gender roles given that they seem to lean more towards hunter/gatherer lifestyles, but they’re not rigid.
Earth Kingdom
Eh…I honestly care the least about the Earth Kingdom and don’t have a ton of thoughts on it. I think they would be better than the Water Tribes in terms of sexism, gender equality, and acceptance, but still fairly far below the Fire Nation and Air Nomads. Like the nobility would care deeply about chastity in their daughters, probably also people in small rural towns. But in Ba Sing Se? Omashu? The average person would likely have premarital sex, prostitution would exist (though be stigmatized and dangerous), queer relationships would exist (though maybe be hidden), etc.
Planet Size and Modes of Transportation
Planet Size
There have been many, many metas written trying to figure out the physical constraints of the world of ATLA. I am using a Mars sized planet (approx. 4,000 miles in diameter) with no axial tilt. As far as I’m aware, an axial tilt is something that is fairly essential for the development of complex life (seasonal variation forces biodiversity), however in the show, the seasons seem fairly uniform globally and I didn’t want to try and do hemispheric season math (doing moon math is already annoying enough).
So I’m handwaving this with bad physics and saying that the orbit of the planet around its sun is an exaggerated elliptical and the entire globe experiences the same seasons at the same time. Is that physically possible? I have no clue; I’m not a physicist and I’m not gonna think about it too hard. If you’re a physicist reading this and it gives you heartburn, pretend that the seasons are uniform because the spirits stabilize them or something lol.
Transportation
Below is my (only partially filled in) breakdown of modes of transportation in ATLA.
|
Mode of Transportation |
# of Passengers |
Slow |
Average |
Fast |
Notes/Inspiration |
|
Appa |
10 (crowded) 5 (comfortable)
|
5mph (his usual pace) |
15mph (‘I’m hungry and willing to hustle a little faster’) |
40mph (‘Aang/the plot needs me’) |
Modeled after horse speeds…sort of |
|
1st Generation FN Steamships (pre-war) |
100 |
< 8kn (9mph) |
8kn (9mph) |
9kn (10mph) |
Modeled after the Aaron Manby (British, 1821) |
|
2nd Generation FN Steamships (Old Cruisers/Zuko’s ship) |
500 (Zuko gets 200) |
< 8kn (9mph) |
8-10kn (9-12mph)
|
13kn (15mph) |
Modeled after the HMS Rattler (1843) |
|
3rd Generation FN Steamships (Cruisers) |
1k |
< 14kn (16mph) |
14kn (16mph) |
15.5kn (18mph) |
Modeled after the HMS Alexandria (British, 1877) |
|
4th Generation FN Steamships (Dreadnoughts) |
2k |
|
21kn (24mph) |
|
|
|
4th Generation FN Steamships (Empire Class Battleships) |
5k |
|
30kn (35mph) |
|
|
|
War Balloon |
5 |
|
|
|
|
|
Airship (troop/supply transport) |
Varies, up to 1k |
|
|
|
|
|
Royal Airship (flagship) |
500 |
|
30kn (35mph) |
|
Filled with fantasy helium on steroids to achieve enough lift |
Population Numbers
Much like the planet size, there have also been many metas on population numbers for ATLA. Mine are based on a combination of these along with a few adjustments. Below is a table I’ve put together for my population numbers.
|
Nation |
Total Pop. |
Capital Pop. |
Bender Birthrate |
|
Northern Water Tribe |
350k |
150k (Agna Qel’a) |
50% (stable) |
|
Southern Water Tribe |
100k |
25k (Wolf Cove post-war) |
>1% (50% pre-war) |
|
Foggy Swamp |
50k |
Decentralized Clans |
50% (stable) |
|
Earth Kingdom |
10M |
3M (Ba Sing Se) |
15% (stable) |
|
Fire Nation |
5M |
500k (Hari Bulkan) |
15% (25% pre-war) |
|
Air Nomads |
5k (100k pre-war) |
Decentralized Refugees |
95% |
Notes on Water Tribe Populations
I know that in the show, the tribe that Sokka and Katara are from is miniscule, we’re talking less than a hundred people. I imagine this was probably done to both minimize the work for the animators while also emphasizing how badly the war impacted them. Having said that, Wolf Cove is later shown to be of reasonable size in the comics—the people that populate the city didn’t just pop out of the womb as fully formed adults, they had to come from somewhere. So I work under the assumption that during the war, Wolf Cove split into multiple smaller tribes and scattered, essentially becoming decentralized as a survival technique. Even 100k feels like it’s pushing it based on what we saw in the show, but it’s what I settled on.
Also we have to have some fantasy worldbending in order to make the two capitals work for the tribes. They appear to be largely hunter/gatherers in the show. IRL, I don’t think you can reach a 25k city based on a hunter/gatherer lifestyle much less 150k for Agna Quel’a. I think there are some that could/can hit a few thousand, specifically out in the Pacific Northwest in areas that are resource rich, but not 25k.
I handwave this by making the poles extremely resource rich (massive fish populations, droves of excessively large creatures that can feed hundreds, that sort of thing) and giving, at least the NWT, extensive aquaculture where they cultivate a limited variety of ocean-based veggies like sea prunes. So they’re hunter/gatherers…with some aquaculture. Their food preservation skills would also have to be second to none. They have perfected the art of long-term food storage.
Notes on Air Nomad Populations
Regarding the Air Nomads having a 5k population, I am well aware the show is called Avatar the Last Airbender. I don’t care. A genocide rarely ever gets every last person. You don’t have to kill every last person to destroy a culture. And yes, I know that in the comics they hunted down survivors, and I totally buy the FN sending out death squads to kill the survivors. I still think a few would have escaped because the Air Nomads were, get this, nomadic. There would have been nomads traveling around the world when the FN attacked. All that is to say, I think there would be some survivors that went underground, maybe even lost their bending, but are still of Air Nomad descent and I like to think that Aang and Toph find them.
Notes on the Variation in Bender Birthrate
The bender birthrate is supposedly tied to cultural spirituality (hence nearly all of the Air Nomads being benders). I tend to imagine it more as a combination of the genetic lottery and spirituality. I’ve estimated a bender birthrate for each nation that takes into account my perception of their spirituality and a few other factors.
The Air Nomads (pre-war) are of course the highest at 95%. I know they’re supposedly at 100% but I feel like 95% is just…better, so that’s what I use lol.
The Water Tribes and Foggy Swamp are next, and I put their bender birthrates at 50%. This is done for several reasons. First, all three cultures seem quite spiritual. Secondly, they have a much smaller population than the Fire Nation, so they need some practical advantages to keep the Fire Nation from steamrolling them (obviously they have the climate/terrain but I want to give them something on top of that).
In the South, of course, the FN targeted the benders and killed or captured all the trained adults (Katara was hardly the only waterbender at the time of the show despite what she says, there would have been other, likely very young, children with the ability in the other tribes). The combination of the high bender population, the harsh climate, and the decentralization of the tribes are all what allowed the SWT to survive the continued Fire Nation raids, though without their benders, they likely would have fallen in time. I think post-war it would rapidly increase and be back up to 50% after a few generations.
Meanwhile, the serious defenses, harsh climate, and high bender population is what kept the Fire Nation from directly attacking the NWT until Zhao’s ‘I’m going to murder the moon’ plan. And last but not least…I feel like the FN just didn’t care or know about the Foggy Swamp lol.
In the Fire Nation, I think that over the course of the war, their bender birthrate would have declined from 25% to 15% owing to spiritual/cultural decay (plus combat deaths). The Fire Sages, for example, turned from their original practice to primarily defer to the Fire Lord and I think the rest of the country would have followed suit.
Next, we have the Earth Kingdom which is, apparently, the ‘least spiritual’ of the lot. I tend to put them at around a 15% bender birthrate, though I could be convinced to drop that down to 10%.
Finally, we have the colonies. Given the intermarriage in the colonies, we’ve got two strains of bending to pull from. By the end of the war, I’d put the colonies at maybe a 20% birthrate?
Not that I really pull much from Korra in my writing (I tend to keep the shows almost completely separate in my mind, sacrilege I know, but it’s the only way I can enjoy both shows) but they say that nonbenders outnumber benders five to one. These birthrates equal out to pretty close to that when you add them all together.