roxanneritchi: They were tags, but now, by popular request (one person), IT IS A POST: OK, HERE IS...

roxanneritchi:

They were tags, but now, by popular request (one person), IT IS A POST:

OK, HERE IS MY HEADCANON FOR PEMA AND TENZIN. Pema is from the Fire Nation and she grew up in a loud, noisy family with six older siblings and some (a lot of) cousins; her mother and father and grandparents and uncles and aunts all lived together in the same large (but too small) house. She loved her family, but she also wanted to just run away sometimes on account of she was the littlest and no one ever listened to her. (None of them were benders, btw, except for her maternal grandmother who liked to use her firebending to cook.) And the only thing she really excelled at was school, specifically in literature, and then one day when she was old enough, she got invited to attend Republic City University, and everyone in her family was so proud of her! So happy for her! They all knew Pema could do it! She was always the smartest one and the best read. And Pema realized she didn’t really want to go away at all, but she had to and she did want to go to the university.

So she went. And she missed her big, noisy, rude family so, so much, but she was AWESOME at the university! Always so eager to read new things! To learn! To question her teachers! And then one day she attended a lecture presented by TENZIN, on the subject of Air Nomad religious oral literary traditions (preserved by Aang, ofc). And everyone else in attendance was very quiet and respectful and had no questions at all, but Pema kept sticking her hand up in the air wanting clarification or to debate the subject, like, OK, what distinguished Air Nomad oral literary traditions from Fire Nation oral literary traditions? Was it simply the religious and spiritual subject matter or were there distinctions in the form?

And the lecture devolved into her and this airbender ten years her elder getting into a real spirited debate about various oral literary forms and the necessity of preserving them in an age of written words. And the thing that made Pema want to talk to him after the lecture wasn’t just his broad shoulders or his little beard, or the sound of his voice or how it carried through the whole of the chamber without aid of a microphone, but rather just the fact that he listened to her and talked with her. And Pema has always loved to argue and to debate so she did go to him after the lecture, and Tenzin was startled but pleased, and they talked some more; they talked a LOT. And at the end of it, he offered to allow her into the Airbending Temple at the island, because Pema wanted to know MORE. And Pema agreed. And then two months later, they got married.

Pema graduated from Republic City University with honors and Jinora four months along in her belly. And now she is super happy! She publishes papers every now and then about literature, and she and Jinora read a lot together, and she reads a lot to Ikki and Meelo, and she has a big, noisy, rude family of her own, and she loves it even tho she doesn’t really know how to deal with having so many benders in the house. And she and Tenzin still like to argue about books and they compose their own oral literature blending the two forms, and she’s happy. She’s happy. She’s happy. (But she wishes her kids would settle the fuck down sometimes.) (Whenever she gets to see her mother now, which isn’t as often as she wants, she’s like HOLY SHIT HOW DID YOU DO IT???) (And her mother’s like, Well, none of my children were airbenders, Pema. KANYESHRUG.) (V helpful, Mom, thx.)