Sokkarem Week 2017

An Avatar the Last Airbender fic

By

EvilFuzzy9

Rating: T

Genre: Romance/Humor

Characters/Pairings: Sokka, Toph, Yue, Suki, Ty Lee; [Sokka x Harem]

Summary: With tongue firmly in cheek, let us celebrate the glory of harems. Sokkarem Week is here again.

Sokka's head ached.

"Uh... Can you repeat that?" he asked.

"Certainly," said Yue, smiling apologetically at her boyfriend. She looked back down at the scroll from which she had been reading, and she cleared her throat.

She began to read.

"In refutation of my esteemed colleague's assertions regarding the metaphysical primacy of potential, I here demonstrate the contrary, and prove it according to reason. There can be no potential without first something actual, for the concept of potentiality is coherent only when referring to actualities: as there is potential in ice to become water, and for water to become ice. Both are actualities of the greater form of elemental water, and in both actual water and actual ice are, respectively, the potentials to freeze and melt, or to boil and sublimate.

"Contrary to my colleague's assertions, any man of clear thought can at once recognize the absurdity of claiming potentiality to precede actuality. One need only attempt to imagine potential ice without any actual water to freeze. One can think they are able to conceive of it, but this is invariably a result of unclear thinking. To think of ice that is not but could be, without any water that is which could be frozen to make this potential a reality, is to think illogically. It is contrary to reason and all human experience.

"As the old philosophers say, 'From nothing, there is nothing'.

"Furthermore, we are told by the sages that the universe is eternal, all things continuing forever in a cycle of cosmic creation and destruction. If this is correct, then all things proceed from something, and there has never been a point where there was truly nothing; and it is reasonable to suppose that this is so, for as we have demonstrated prior, and as we quoted above, it is impossible for 'nothing' to cause a change in 'something', or for nonentity to bring forth entities.

"When ice melts, it is because of a flame or the sun: because of external actualities that effect the realization of a specific potentiality within the substance of ice. When ice becomes water, it is to the exclusion of all other potential states. Likewise for when water becomes ice. One can reason backwards through all eternity, but if they reason logically and do not compromise their conclusions with demonstrably false assumptions, then they will never find a point in the endless cycles of creation and destruction when that which is potential preceded that which is actual.

"A potential state can only be in relation to an actual state; you cannot speak of nothingness melting into water or emptiness freezing into ice. Such statements are patent absurdity. Not only are they illogical, but they are in clear contradiction of all empirical evidence. Therefore they are meaningless."

Yue stopped and looked back up. She saw the blank look on Sokka's face. Toph was dozing off, and Ty Lee had begun to perform bodily contortions out of boredom. Only Suki seemed to exhibit some sign of comprehension, and even then it was clearly only with difficulty.

After a moment, looking to either side of her and seeing that the others appeared more or less lost, Suki sheepishly raised her hand, appearing quite aware of her solitude in having even a partial grasp of what Yue was saying.

"I think I kind of get it," she said. "I mean, I think I understand the point of that. A thing is what it is to start with, and whatever it can be, that only comes after what it is. Right?"

"Huh?" muttered Toph, blinking and stirring from her partial doze. "Who said what, now?"

"Well, that's more or less right," Yue said. "Of course this is only a small part of the broader philosophical discussion, but I think it's important to grasp this concept in order to make any practical sense of the world. Without a distinction between act and potency, you can only come to meaningless and improbably simplistic conclusions like 'the universe is all change and permanence is an illusion' or 'the universe is immutable and change is an illusion'. Until you make a clear distinction between what is, what can be, and what is not, you can't really make any philosophical statement about reality without obviously departing from it."

Ty Lee had her head between her legs and her arms behind her back. She was clearly not paying any more attention to this discussion. Toph blearily stared in Yue's general direction, seeming to fight an urge to overtly yawn. She shifted a little and tapped her fingers on the floor.

Suki frowned thoughtfully, biting her lip.

"Uh..." she said, seeming to be once more out of her depth.

Yue sighed and looked at Sokka. He helplessly returned her gaze. It was obvious that he was still trying to wrap his head around some rather earlier step in this train of reasoning, and had not yet arrived anywhere near the most recent station. But he was trying, and that was more than could be said for half the group.

"I'm still a little confused about form," Sokka confessed. "What does that mean?"

Yue grimaced.

"Well, I suppose we can go over that again..." she said. "But it isn't that difficult a concept. We haven't touched on anything too esoteric or counterintuitive yet."

"Really?" said Ty Lee. "Doesn't feel that way."

"Yeah," Sokka agreed. "I'm trying to wrap my head around this, but... I feel like I'm tying my brain into knots."

"You would," Toph said, yawning. There was a touch of faux contempt in her voice. She couldn't suppress a cheeky grin. "But if you stopped distracting yourself with dirty thoughts, you could probably get a hang of it."

"You don't seem like you're understanding it any better than I am," Sokka rejoined.

"Right," said Toph. "Because I'm too busy thinking dirty thoughts."

She grinned, and Ty Lee chimed in.

"Yeah! Same here."

She crossed her legs behind her head, cheerfully humming.

Yue looked at Sokka. Her expression was mildly despairing.

He shrugged.

"I don't know. But is this stuff really that important?"

Yue glared. It was a rare sight, and surprisingly formidable.

"It is if you want to justify this preferential treatment," she said, looking askance at the other three women. "If you want to live like you're better than the common person, then you ought to become better. I know you're smart, but you aren't very educated. At least, not by the standards of most... well..."

She trailed off and looked away, a little guilty and unwilling to complete her statement. Sokka's face warmed a little at the implication, but he did not let the immediate emotional response carry him away.

"Fair enough," he said simply.

There was a tangled complex of thoughts and feelings behind this short, unassuming statement. He wanted to make excuses for the state of civilization in his home, and to some extent he knew these excuses were justified. The Fire Nation's constant raiding had essentially crushed the Southern Water Tribe, reducing a once respectable if slightly rustic mirror of the north to an almost Neolithic state, nearly all the products and instruments of progress and prosperity blasted to cinders over a century of consistent and humiliating defeat. But he also knew that a big part of this was caused by considerable disorganization and incompetence during the first couple decades of the war, and the barely defensible positions of the most important cities which led them to be easily sacked and razed.

But he was digressing.

Toph gestured flippantly, kicking up her heels and laying her head in Suki's lap, to the warrior's ineffectual protest.

"In other words," said the earthbender, "Yue wants to fill your head with logic, rhetoric, ethics, history, and all the rest of the humanities, and she won't let the lot of us tie the knot until she's turned you into a proper, stuffy statesman. Poor bastard. You have my sympathy."

She said this, but she sounded fairly amused.

Ty Lee giggled.

Suki looked more genuinely sympathetic.

"Well, I think you have it in you, Sokka," she said. "You're a pretty smart guy. And we're here to help you, if you need it."

Sokka looked from Suki, the leader of a famed militant society founded by a previous avatar, to Ty Lee, the daughter of a minor noble family, to Toph, heiress of one of the world's wealthiest families, to Yue, princess of the ancient and cultured Northern Water Tribe.

He realized that he was probably the least educated person in this room.

His face tingled, and his stomach tied itself in knots.

A/N: I'm not sure if this chapter turned out as well as I hoped. Not that I think it's bad, but its tie to the prompt is a little weak—rather than a single theme or element uniting the piece, it's tied into the prompt only by various statements and certain imagery throughout. Of course, done well and used to craft an enjoyable bit of literature, that could come across as very artful and clever; but there isn't much to it. If I were to do it over I might write something very different. I probably shouldn't be injecting lengthy tangents of amateurishly explained philosophy into short, 1,500 word one shots. It's unfocused, meandering, and only mildly entertaining.

Yet despite all these self-critical remarks, I'm still posting it as is. Either I'm making a statement, or I'm just being lazy.

So obviously I must be making a statement. (lol)

Updated: 9-28-17

TTFN and R&R!

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