ATLA-verse appreciation side blog

A COMMON BOND by T. M. KUTA

Construction Project Manager Carneline has a lot of her plate at the family business. The last thing she needs is romance. But Josie, the skilled superintendent, is complicating things one iced coffee at a time.

✅️ Contemporary Lesbian Romance (Author Debut!) ✅️ Small Town Romance (in the queerest small town ever) ✅️ Salvadoran MC/POV character ✅️ Butch/Femme ✅️ Colleagues To Lovers ✅️ One Night Stand ✅️ Cringe-y Yet Loveable Sidekick ✅️ 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️/🍋🍋🍋🍋 (spicy!)

Well y'all after many fits and starts and life chaos later, my debut lesbian romance novella A COMMON BOND is finally here! We battled 3 family deaths, covered two separate maternity leaves at work, and rewrote this puppy twice, but it is HERE!

A Common Bond is my love letter to my day job in historic reconstruction and all of it's quirks, cliques, and capricious capers. Also... y'know, being a giant raging queer in construction. ;) It is an honor to publish a Clover Hill Romance book, and I hope you fall in love with Josie, Carneline, and Clover Hill the way I did while writing them!

PRE-ORDER NOW!

Dropping November 7, 2023!

How are you? 😃

Do you maybe have some kyalin hc? 🥺

thank you, anon! I'm doing okay

here's a few HCs:

they love being able to enjoy each other's presence in silence - sitting together reading different books and sipping tea type of thing

i think they would love taking trips to middle-of-nowhere type places, where they aren't so instantly recognizable and can just exist as a couple without people gawking

So I noticed in A:TLA, and it’s carried over in LoK, that Airbenders always seem to have an advantage in a fight. And at first, it felt like plot armour, particularly in A:TLA.

But when Aang fought Bumi, he lost most of that advantage. And I realised that this wasn’t just plot armour. Someone had sat and worked it out: nobody has had to fight Airbenders for generations. 

None of the other nations have had to train to face them, or practised sparring with them, or anything. Apart from Bumi, no bender in the show has ever even met an airbender before Aang comes along. And in LoK, for the most part people still haven’t. We never see fights between those who have (for e.g. we never see Tenzin and Lin fight); when Korra and Tenzin use airbending, its a unique fighting style that people aren’t trained to manage.

It’s a really small detail, and it fundamentally works to give the heroes an advantage (and make up for Aang’s young age and lack of combat experience), but I love how it’s an advantage in combat for completely logical reasons.

aang straight up says to the fire nation guards on zuko’s ship “you’ve probably never fought an airbender before”, because he in-universe figures out that, if what everyone around him is saying is true, and airbenders have been extinct for a century (or at least have gone to ground enough to make people think that) then he is a totally unknown figure in anyone’s calculations

this has been brought up before but it’s also one of the reasons why hama is so thrown in her fight with katara - waterbending is about energy exchange, keeping things flowing, throwing your opponent’s power back at them and we see katara and hama do this in their fight. however, when katara is faced with a powerful blast from hama, she stands her ground and blows it apart:

[image ID: a gif of katara in the puppetmaster. she is a teenage girl with dark skin and hair and blue eyes, wearing a red outfit. she turns and throws her hand out, stopping a blast of water and turning it into a huge shield. the background is a dark forest. end image ID]

why do i bring this up?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again but this is like a multi-step answer so bear with me:

1. I think the writers did a fucky wucky in making Pema 35 in book 1. I know why they did it, it’s so she could be pregnant again, and so the airkids could be fairly young.

2. Rohan’s birth is honestly super unnecessary to the overall plot as it’s just there for added drama in the attack on ATI and they could have easily made him a toddler to the same effect with the airkids all being a few years older than they are. That wouldn’t have affected the central plot or any of their arcs much.

3. To make all of those adjusted ages make sense and not be gross, Pema should have been a decade older than she is. 5 years younger than Lin vs 15. Much less creepy. Hell, it’s not impossible to have a baby at 45, you could even leave the airkids as they are.

4. But, back in canon land, all signs point to Pema initiating the relationship. Tenzin, however, should have used the braincells his mother gifted him to realize that Pema was far too young for him at the time and put a pin in that discussion. Something like a, “Hey, you’re barely an adult and still figuring yourself out, if you still feel this way in maybe five years and I am single, let’s see if something works then.” But no, this did not happen, unfortunately.

5. The only canon information we really have is that Pema became an acolyte as a teenager and Tenzin was obviously the (second to) last airbender. It’s never stated when they met or became friends so you could go either way on them meeting when Pema was a minor (which makes Tenzin extremely creepy) or as an adult (which makes him less creepy, but still creepy).

Odds are you are now that author’s favourite reader and they have you specifically in mind when they write because they’re looking forward to your reaction to it :D

She speculates about what Favorite Commenter will think of things in the new chapter, if they’ll guess new twists coming up in the plot, if they’ll like how she works in a new character or a rarepair in the b plot of the story.  She talks about her hopes that Favorite Commenter will enjoy a new story she’s working on.  She says things like ‘Favorite Commenter was said something about Y and it’s not actually where I’m going, but it’s given me a new idea…’  Every comment from a favorite commenter is an inspiration, and they are writing for you.

And honestly, from my experience, having a favorite commenter can keep you writing even when you don’t have the emotional wherewithal to write for yourself.  A lot of people advise authors to write for themselves and to heck with anyone else, but there are times you can’t.  For years, I didn’t write for myself–I wrote for my favorite commenter.  It meant that was the only person who saw a lot of my writing.  But it also meant that I didn’t stop.  

for those of you who enjoyed chapter 6 of we’ve got chemistry, please enjoy my terrible terrible pun illustrated by the wonderful @reigncorps. 

what’s your favorite way to dress?

if you could change anything about yourself, what would it be?

what movie/game/etc. helps you calm down?

what does your room smell like?

do you like to organize?

what kind of music would you listen to if you could only choose one?

what song is your aesthetic?

what color do you think goes best with your personality?

do you believe in auras?

what do you wish you hated, but actually like?

vague about your crush(es)

is there someone you have mixed feelings towards?

talk about an au or story you came up with

do you like makeup?

do you prefer space or the ocean?

if you could pick any planet besides earth, where would you live?

what form of government do you like the most? (capitalism, socialism, etc.)

what animal would you keep as a pet, if you could?

what do you think our purpose is in the universe?

do you believe in god(s)?

is there a song you can’t handle listening to, even though you like it?

what ex do you miss the most, if you have one?

do you like soft, fluffy blankets or rough/smooth blankets?

what is your favorite thing to learn about?

what country’s history do you find the most interesting?

what do you think about genderbent ____ (insert someone here)

what breakup was the hardest, if you had one?

do you have someone where you can’t decide if you like them romantically or just as a friend?

what do you think about tumblr discourse?

what instrument do you wish you could master?

how easy is it for you to be honest?

do you have any strange interests?

do you have any strange fears?

what food do you binge on when you’re lazy?

when you get angry, how do you show it?

do you have any impulsive movements? (twitches, ticks, flapping, etc.)

what do you listen to music on?

are you left brained or right brained?

earbuds or headphones?