#Azula: last time I was in Ba Sing Se I killed you

[katydoodles]

🍃Wind chimes swings in the background 🎐🍃

Idk I wanted to draw them in a modern setting.

I’ve seen a lot of ppl draw Azula in edgy e-girl clothes but i think she would wear really mature clothes to intimidate those around her and show off her status.

Aang would totally wear traditional clothes, he would feel more comfortable. Lol but he would love to dress in modern clothes and let Sokka dress him up.

[jettingtothemoon]

Daughter of the Spirits; chapter 12

➳ pairing: zuko x f!reader ➳ genre: a retelling of the show from season 2 onwards with a heavy focus and expansion on zuko’s story (canon divergent) ➳ warnings: violence, swearing, smut (underaged if your age of consent is above 16), spoilers for anyone who hasn’t seen the show ➳ word count: 3570 ➳ rating: 18+ ➳ summary: In which y/n comes across the fire nation prince during her stay in Ba Sing Se. ➳ tags: @harmlessoffering, @lammello (i’m sorry if i’m forgetting anyone, lmk if i am or if you want to be added)

Chapters: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13,

A New Start

The western air temple, that is where Zuko was sure the avatar would go. It was the nearest place for them to regroup and recuperate. They would be safe there. Well, as safe as they could be. So, the western air temple was where you went.

“We should be careful. They, uh, they probably won’t be very happy to see me,” Zuko stated as he prepared the ropes, making sure they were tight enough for you to safely climb down into the temple.

“You’ve been chasing after them for the better half of a year now, but they haven’t seen you since Ba Sing Se. It was Azula who tried to kill the avatar, not you. I’m sure they’ll be able to find it in their hearts to give you a second chance.”

“Well,” his tone was almost high in guilt as he awkwardly scratched the back of his neck, “I might have hired an assassin to hunt him down when I found out he was still alive.”

“Zuko!” you yelled, scowling at him.

He hushed you, clearly afraid that someone nearby might hear you, and avoided your angry gaze. “I know, I know. It was a bad idea but it was before I… before I decided to be good.”

You sucked in a deep breath, held it for a few moments and dispelled your anger with a long exhale. A was a trick your mother had taught you when you were young, one that always helped you keep a cool head. It was a teaching Zuko could certainly learn from as well.

Zuko was quick to descend into the temple after that, tugging on the rope when he reached the bottom to let you know it was safe for you to follow. He seemed lost in thought when you landed beside him, the sound of your feet hitting the floor hadn’t even caused him to glance your way.

Then came the sound of a beast, a sound the both of you recognised all too well. Zuko grabbed you and jumped back, making sure to conceal you both as the avatar’s bison flew overhead. He narrowed his eyes before gesturing to a staircase behind you both. “Come on, up here.”

It didn’t take you long to realise that Zuko had been here before, likely on his search for the avatar, which meant the last time he had visited this temple was with his uncle by his side. You could only imagine how strange it must have felt for him to have been here now, still in search of the avatar but this time as a friend.

Zuko insisted you took a moment to rest before seeking out the avatar and his friends. He joked and said the two of you would need all your energy if they turned hostile and chased you away but you knew what was really troubling him.

He, Prince Zuko, was nervous. Nervous of how they were going to react when they found him. Nervous of how he would speak to them. He wasn’t the most sociable person, as you both knew, and he wanted it to be perfect. He wanted to be sure he wouldn’t say the wrong thing, especially when he knew that he was the last person any of them would want to see.

When he was ready and had finished practising his introduction to a nearby toad — much to your own amusement — he took a deep breath and slumped to the ground.

With a soft smile, you sat down in front of him. “It’ll be fine. Just speak from the heart, tell them that you want to help — that we want to help. He’ll need someone to teach him firebending and I doubt he’s got too many options. They’ll come around.”

“Yeah, okay. Speak from the heart. I can do that.” He smiled back at you and pulled himself to his feet with a newfound determination. At the very least, having you by his side helped boost his confidence.

You approached the flying bison as it came to land, frowning just a little when the two of you had gone unnoticed and the avatar and his friends began to climb off on the other side.

“Oh, and you’re gonna love the all-day echo chamber!” the avatar exclaimed, clearly excited to show his friends around one of his people’s temples.

Just hearing his voice almost made you excited too but the looming fear that the conversation you were about to have wouldn’t go well was weighing too heavily on your chest. Zuko only wanted to help, you only hoped they would understand that. At least they had no reason to doubt you, other than the fact that you were once again approaching them by Zuko’s side, but you had tried to help them back in Ba Sing Se. Surely they would remember that.

“I think that’ll have to wait,” the young girl whom you remembered to be called Toph spoke, clearly noticing your presence with her earthbending.

The bison moved aside, revealing both you and Zuko, who raised his hand with a smile. “Hello, Zuko here.”

All four of the group adopted a defensive stance with angry scowls on their faces, clearly expecting you and Zuko to attack. To try and show them you came in peace, you both stood at their mercy, neither of you raising your arms to fight.

“Hey, we heard you guys flying around down there so we just thought we’d wait for you here.”

The bison was the only one to move, roaring loudly before licking Zuko from his feet to the top of his head.

You chuckled as you watched the creature’s clear display of affection. “Looks like someone remembers you.”

When the bison licked his face again, the avatar finally lowered his staff with wide eyes. Not that you could blame them for their confusion since there was no way they could have known it was Zuko who had freed the bison back at Lake Laogai..

Zuko rubbed the slobber from his face as he spoke, “I know you must be surprised to see me here.”

The watertribe boy, Sokka, frowned. “Not really since you followed us all over the world.”

Awkwardly, Zuko looked away. “Right… Well, uh, anyway, what I wanted to tell you about is that I’ve changed… and I, uh, I’m good now and well, I think I should join your group,” he looked at you and corrected himself, “we should join your group. Oh, and I can teach firebending… to you.”

The four of them only grew more confused, their eyes flicking between you and Zuko. They seemed to be thinking but they had still not let down their guard. Getting them to trust either of you, especially Zuko, was going to be no easy task.

“See… I, uh—”

“You wanna what now?” Toph cut him off with far too much anger residing in her soft features, her jaw almost clenching as she made it clear she thought what Zuko was saying to be crazy.

“You can’t possibly think that any of us would trust you, can you? I mean how stupid do you think we are?” Katara snapped before turning her attention to you, “And you? You may have tried to help us back in Ba Sing Se but even now you’re still with him? Don’t you remember all the things he’s done?”

Sokka chimed in next, he too wishing to say his peace, “Yeah, all he’s ever done is try to hunt us down and capture Aang!”

“I’ve done some good things!” Zuko cut in, trying his hardest to defend himself, “I mean, I could have stolen your bison in Ba Sing Se, but I set him free. That’s something.”

The bison licked him once again, proving to them all that he at least approved of Zuko being there.

“Appa does seem to like him,” Toph concluded and finally began to let down her guard.

“He probably just covered himself in honey or something so that Appa would lick him,” Sokka shrugged, “I’m not buying it!”

You went to speak, hoping that you would be able to sway them, but Zuko beat you to it.

“I can understand why you wouldn’t trust me and I know I’ve made some mistakes in the past—”

“Like when you attacked our village?”

“Or when you stole my mother’s necklace and used it to track us down and capture us?”

The watertribe siblings both stepped forward as they hurled their accusations at him. Zuko had told you that he had hurt them and that they would not be likely to trust him but he hadn’t given all the details. Hearing directly from them some of the horrible things he had done somehow didn’t surprise you but it still hurt to think that he was capable of such things before. He wasn’t that person anymore though and you knew that, you just needed to convince the rest of them of that too.

“Look, I admit I’ve done some awful things,” he confessed and pushed a frustrated hand through his hair, “I was wrong to try and capture you and I’m sorry that I attacked the Water Tribe… and I never should have sent that Fire Nation assassin after you…”

You seemed to realise it before he had because Zuko kept rambling about how he had wronged them and was trying to make things right but all four of them had grown angry once again. They clearly didn’t know that he was the one who sent the assassin after them, not until now.

“Wait!” Sokka cut in again, reaching for his boomerang, “You sent combustion man after us?”

Zuko seemed startled as he realised he had only made things worse but knew that all he could do now was come clean and hope they would eventually come around to the idea of him helping them.

“Well, that’s not his name but—”

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to insult your friend!” Sokka remarked with a roll of his eyes, looking about ready to pounce.

“He’s not my friend!” Zuko snapped, clearly growing frustrated that they were still being so hostile toward him when he was all but wearing his heart on his sleeve. Not that you could blame them, in their shoes you would have felt the same.

Toph pointed an accusing finger at him with a scowl. “That guy locked me and Katara in jail and tried to blow us all up!”

Seeming to notice that the avatar was the only one not shouting at him, Zuko sighed and asked, “Why aren’t you saying anything? You once said you thought we could be friends. You know I have good in me.”

Without a word, Aang looked at his friends who all shook their heads with a frown. Then, he cast his eyes to you, someone he himself had seen as an ally once. You pleaded with him without words, silently begging him to give the two of you a chance.

Finally, he spoke, “There’s no way we can trust you after everything you’ve done. We’ll never let you join us!”

Your heart sank in your chest but you were nowhere near as crushed as Zuko. It was his actions that had brought him to this point. All his mistakes and bad decisions leading up to yet another rejection. It only hurt more this time because for once, he really was trying to do the right thing.

“You need to get out of here. Both of you.” Katara glowered at the both of you, her eyes two steely daggers.

Somewhat ready to admit defeat, you moved to place a hand on Zuko’s shoulder to urge him to leave. The two of you would be able to make a difference elsewhere, you were sure of it. Even if the avatar was refusing your help. Before your gentle touch could reach him, however, he burst again and began moving forwards as he flung his frustrated arms in the air.

“I’m trying to explain that I’m not that person anymore!” he cried out, trying one last time to convince them of his sincerity.

The four of them readied themselves once again, clearly taking his frustration as a sign of aggression. Once again, you couldn’t blame them. His notorious temper was getting the better of him again — a temper they had only seen before a fight.

“Either you leave, or we attack,” Sokka exclaimed, once again threatening Zuko.

The prince bowed his head before kneeling before them. “If you won’t accept me as a friend, then maybe you’ll take me as a prisoner.”

“Zuko…” you spoke with a soft breath, worried but also warmed by what he was willing to give up to help them.

“No! We won’t!” With a swing of her arm, Katara sent a force of water flying towards Zuko, knocking him back.

You ran to his side, kneeling in the puddle to help the drenched prince up.

“Get out of here and don’t come back!And if we ever see you again, well, we better not see you again!”

Dejected, he let you help him to his feet and shrugged you off, bowing his head as he walked away.

Before following him, you looked at the four of them, your eyes finally falling on the avatar as you spoke, “I know it might be hard to believe but he really is just trying to help.”

They didn’t utter a word as you followed after him, walking in silence as you left the western air temple.

You couldn’t blame them for their lack of trust in him, or you for that matter, but it still hurt to see Zuko so downtrodden. Finally, he decided to do what is right only to be ridiculed and chased away.

“Ugh, I can’t believe how stupid I am!” he began as he paced up and down, speaking more to himself than you, “I mean, what was I thinking? Telling them I sent an assassin after them? Why didn’t I just say Azula did that? They would have believed that! Stupid!” He groaned again and fell to his knees with a thud.

“You told them the truth, Zuko. That’s all you could have done. You tried and that’s better than not trying at all,” you tried to reassure him but he only flopped down onto his back, letting his hair spill out across the ground.

You sighed and moved to lay beside him, both of you watching the leaves sway in the canopy above. “Your uncle would be proud, you know.”

He turned his head towards you and waited until his eyes met yours before speaking, “You think so?”

With a tender smile tugging at the corners of your lips, you reached up to cup his cheek, smoothing your thumb across his skin. “I know so.”

He smiled back and pressed his forehead to yours, sinking into the warmth of your touch.

“I just… I don’t know what to do now. I can’t go home, not that I want to, and I can’t face my father alone. Not when it’s Aang’s destiny to stop him.”

You pulled back and sat up, stretching your limbs before rising to your feet. “We’ll find those that we’ve lost. We’ll find your uncle and then go search for my parents. If we can help anyone suffering at the hands of the Fire Nation along the way then we will. We don’t have to confront your father head on to make a difference.”

Zuko hummed and closed his eyes only for them to jolt back open when you lightly kicked his side.

“Well, come on then. If we’re going to be fighting firebenders I should at least know some basic moves.”

He crossed his brows and began to sit up, looking at you questioningly. “You want me to teach you?”

You only grinned. “Well, who else is going to?”

“Hmm, since you already know how to hold a flame I think we can start off with some basic techniques.” He returned your smile and stood before you, adopting a stance you had seen him use time and time again.

Standing opposite him, you tried your best to mimic his stance. He circled you, eyes scanning for any flaws, and nudged your knee forward, forcing you into a slightly lower squat. When he came back into sight again, he crossed his arms and hummed in approval.

“Good. Now, take a deep breath in. It is this breath that becomes the energy you need to extend from your body, creating fire.” He returned to his position and demonstrated, taking in a deep breath before punching a fist out in front of him. With a burst, flames shot from his fist, flickering around his knuckles and flew through the air beside you.

You steeled your expression and strengthened your stance, determined to learn at least some control over the element you feared most. As Zuko had done before you, you sucked in a deep breath, focusing on how it felt as it travelled through you. It was similar to the breath you had taken earlier to dispel your anger and you could feel the energy tingle under your skin as you focused it into your fist which curled at your side.

The prince watched on intently, moving to the side as you closed your eyes. When they opened again, you pushed your fist forward through the air with great force and, to your surprise, nailed the move first time.

Zuko clapped, applauding you as he stated, “You’re a natural.”

As the hours passed by, you were relieved to have managed to provide a good distraction for Zuko as he taught you move after move, honing your firebending skills. By the time the sun began to set and the cold night air closed in, you felt much more confident that you would be able to divert attacks from other firebenders by using their own flames against them.

You found some food for the night and made a small fire to keep you warm before cuddling up under a makeshift tent. Although you were worried Zuko would find it hard to sleep with so much still on his mind, you were relieved to find that teaching you had worn him out. His soft breaths hit your ear as he slept with one arm slung around you, holding you close.

The two of you slept for a while before you felt Zuko stirring beside you, sitting up slightly as he called out, “Who’s there?”

You sat up beside him, eyes peering through the darkness to see who or what was out amongst the trees. Before you could do anything though, Zuko pulled you behind him and sprung into action, conjuring a flame as he yelled, “Stay back!”

“It’s me!” a voice you recognised called out only just too late as the girl bended a wall in front of her to block Zuko’s attack.

Both yours and Zuko’s eyes widened when she stumbled back with a yelp, falling to the ground. “You burned my feet!”

Zuko was up before you. “I’m sorry, it was a mistake,” he protested as he began rushing towards her.

Toph backed up, crawling across the ground as she hurled boulders at Zuko. “Get away from me!”

“Let me help you! I’m sorry!” He tried again but the young earthbender only continued to flee.

You were finally on your feet as she yelled at him to get off of her and with one final move of offence, raised a pillar from the ground, sending Zuko flying. You were at his side in a second, already noticing he was hurt as he continued to yell after the girl.

“I didn’t know it was you!” he winced and grabbed his likely already bruising side, “Come back!”

With a cry of anguish he fell to his back and yelled at the world, “Why am I so bad at being good?”

You hushed him and pulled his head into your lap, already running your fingers through his hair. “It’s okay, she’ll be okay. Katara is a healer like me, she’ll be able to help Toph.”

He groaned and sat back up, holding in a sob of pain as he clutched again at his side. “I know, it’s just all I ever seem to do is make things worse.”

You squeezed his shoulder and moved to untie his shirt, reaching over for your waterskin as you pulled it open. The bruise was about as bad as you had expected from such a forceful impact. His skin was turning a dark shade of purple and was littered with painful scrapes and scratches. He sucked in a breath as you placed your hands against his skin, water already swirling around your fingers.

“Shhh,” you hushed him and smiled slightly as he visibly relaxed while the pain began to subside. It had been a while since you had been able to use your healing, what with having been in the Fire Nation for so long, but it felt good to be doing something to help someone again. You couldn’t relieve all of Zuko’s pain, but you could at least heal his physical wounds.

When you finished and whisked the water back into your waterskin, he pulled your hands back to him, placing them on his skin once again, and leaned forward until his head rested against your shoulder.

“They hate me,” he mumbled.

“They just don’t know you. Not the way I do.”

You smiled softly when he looked back up again, his amber eyes searching for refuge in your own. You were the only person who had ever looked at him like that, he realised. The only person to look at him with such tenderness in their eyes — such pure, unbridled love.

Chapters: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13,

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

i just read your ask about how zutaras think airbenders are racist, sexist, ect. and i'm like?? aren't air nomads canonically the most accepting of the 4 nations??? i don't know how accurate the avatar universe wiki is (it's one of the most expansive wikis i've ever seen for a fandom), but it says it there.

Even if we don't take the wiki or anything except the show itself into account - nothing in the show itself indicates they were racist, sexist, etc.

But you know what nation is confirmed to be very fucking racist, and there's hints of it being a least a little sexist? The Fire Nation. The one that commited genocide towards both the air-nomads and Southern Water Tribe.

Zutarians are constantly going on and on about how their ship is more "complext and adult", yet lots of them are TERRIFIED to engage with aspects that would make it a complex, adult, very messy dynamic - aka the fact that Zuko is not only a direct descendent of the guy that started the war (Sozin), of the guy that was responsible for the raids on Katara's tribe (Azulon), and of the guy that order her best friend's capture/death (Ozai) but he also took A LONG time to realize "Holy shit, what my family is doing is terrible" and was in fact constantly putting Katara and her friends in danger, helped Azula get the upper hand in Ba Sing Se and thus kill Aang, then sent an assassin after them to finish/repeat the job later.

There's also the fact that, due to their immaturity, they think they HAVE to hate Aang just because they don't him and Katara together, and it can make them look really bad to hate on the sole survivor of a genocide while praising the prince that was trying to help his nation get rid of said last survivor.

They could deal with that by doing stuff like making modern AUs to avoid the war thing, or actually addressing the complexity of the situation, or being mature enough to say "I dislike Kataang/Aang as a character, but obviously Zuko was an objectively worse person back when he was supporting literal genocide."

Instead they decide to make the air-nomads look like "asshole victims" to reduce sympathy for them and Aang, pretend the SWT and the NWT are exactly the same to make it look like Katara felt oppressed by her own family and culture instead of being traumatized by their death, and pretend the Fire Nation is not only the "feminst nation" but also that said feminism would TOTALLY extend to the girl they were taught to see as being part of an inferior race just because there's a new guy in charge.

Zutarians tend to only acknowledge the elephant in the room when it's for the sake of a fetish or extra drama (see the non-con fics or "Slave/Concubine Katara" fics), or when they are genuinely fucking clueless/racist and think "Oh, it wasn't so bad" and say as much openly.

[comradekatara]

for tbe atla people who has had in-universe fanfiction written about them (along the lines of tina belcher who came from bobs burger belcher)

your asks are always so strange (both in content and wording) that I end up having to read them like 5 times before I can begin to parse them. anyway I love that you cite tina belcher instead of just. rpf. like the literal terminology for this phenomenon that we do very much have at our disposals. so I even can’t tell if you’re asking “who would have rpf written about them” (which also presumably differs from historical fiction about past avatars or smth like that) and “who would write freaky friend fiction (like tina)?” i’m gonna go with the latter bc it’s way funnier.

i think that girl meng would definitely have written some….things…..about aang, iykwim. zombie apocalypse au, enemies to lovers, there was only one bed, etc etc.

i can also just kind of see jin doing this (abt lee from the tea shop or otherwise) i can’t explain it she just has fujoshi vibes. like, whenever ppl talk about how jin, zuko, and jet should have all been friends in ba sing se, i’m usually like “uhh… why tho….” but now i see why. it’s so that she could write jetko rpf about them.

for therapeutic purposes mai probably writes a lot of really cathartic short stories about her entire family, the entire royal family, and ty lee all falling into a sinkhole. but then mai saves ty lee from drowning at the last minute, which teaches ty lee to appreciate her instead of that stupid sinkhole bitch azula (this is all pre boiling rock, obviously).

at one point mai and sokka find a notebook of really angsty fanfiction about the blue spirit and they’re like, “oh my god this is amazing we gotta show this to zuko, he’ll get a kick out of this,” not realizing that zuko actually wrote it himself as a way to work through his identity crisis. he’s just like, “yeah….wow….so cringey, right? but also, kind of incredible how this writer articulates the struggle of the bisected self in extremis so beautifully……right? you guys think so too?” and sokka and mai just look at each other and silently go, “okay…. we may have made a mistake…..”

when katara was a child she would make up stories in her head about finding the avatar and befriending him and having him fall in love with her due to her courage and beauty and (hopefully, someday) waterbending talent and they would defeat the firelord together and live happily ever after. but thankfully she never wrote any of this down, because paper is a very scarce commodity in the southern water tribe and even she knows better than to invoke gran gran’s wrath on that. she never tells aang. although at some point (in sworn secrecy) she does end up telling zuko (assuming that he’d understand considering he also devised fantasies of finding the avatar to cope with his miserable existence), and he laughs for hours.

during their time together in the nwt, yue’s diary gets filled with all kinds of lurid fantasies of sokka killing hahn (in increasingly brutal ways) and sneaking her out of the palace so that she can join team avatar and they can be together forever. of course, whenever they talk about it, she’s just like “yes I love hahn he is great and I love my people and I would never leave my home” so sokka’s just like “okay girl you do you.” but then during the siege, yue actually sees sokka kill a man, and she’s suddenly so conflicted because all her self-indulgent fantasies were a bit too real (and in reality, he’s way more efficient about killing people than he was in her fantasies, almost like he’s done it before….) and she has no clue how to feel about it. anyway, thankfully, yue has learned how to hide her diary really well at this point, because if arnook ever found those particular pages he would’ve tracked down sokka and killed him without hesitation.

ok bonus follow up to the fujoshi jin writing jetko rpf au: eventually they find it (or maybe she’s bold enough to just straight up give it to them. you know what, she might be) and read it. jet’s like, “uhhh…. jin….. i’m not gay. you know that, right?” (he’s actually been hitting on her for… a while now…) and zuko’s like, “okay well i might be. BUT NOT FOR HIM!!!”

[balanceoflightanddark]

What if this happened?

Azula and Zuko manage to capture the avatar right after Katara quickly healed him while still in Ba Sing Se. The gaang were forced to leave without Aang, altering the day of black sun plan into a rescue mission.

Until the end of "Day of black sun pt 2", Aang is stuck as Azula's prisoner. As the main character, Aang would still have the most screen time but it gets shared with Azula and he spends the most time with her.

What do you think will happen between them? What could "The Beach" episode look like with Aang in it?

Well, this is an interesting ask.

The first most definite thing I can say is whether or not Azula and Zuko know that Aang is alive. I would wager they would capture his body which might not necessarily be conscious to show that the Avatar is indeed dead. Naturally, this could lead to a nightmarish scenario like at the start of Book 3 where Aang wakes up on a Fire Nation ship, only for it to be under the control of the Fire Nation instead of being captured.

Course, I wouldn't imagine Aang's initial escape attempt being too successful given that he just recovered from being shot in the back. Azula and Zuko would still be able to hold him till he gets to the Fire Nation where Ozai...I doubt Aang is going to be kept in good condition since killing him would just cause the Avatar to reincarnate. Therefore, I could see Ozai keeping him in torturous conditions not unlike what Zhao put him through in Book 1. Alive, but unable to do anything. Might even give Azula the "honor" of watching him since Zuko has returned to become the Crown Prince.

But let's assume that Aang is able to try and make an escape attempt a few times. I mean let's face it, he's not exactly someone who's easy to keep down. I could see Azula wanting to keep his escape attempts under wraps so Ozai's wrath would not directed towards her. Now here's where things get interesting. She starts noticing that Aang is avoiding killing anyone, isn't going into the Avatar State, and overall isn't acting like what the Avatar is expected to act like by the Fire Nation (which we can get some interesting worldbuilding by seeing how they view the Avatar from their perspective).

If we go down this avenue of thought, Azula might assume that putting the Avatar in torturous conditions isn't working since he keeps trying to break out. What she might feel work better is if he was broken mentally so he simply wouldn't have the will to fight. To this end, she might give him better conditions that are less torturous, but she'll try to break him by passing stories about his friends dying or being captured or something. Make it clear that he can escape, but break his will to fight. Maybe have daily "chats" taunting him.

Now here's where things get interesting: Aang won't break. He knows Azula's lying to break him...but in the process, she inadvertently starts letting him know about her upbringing by divulging what her worldview is. Maybe even starts to feel a bit sorry for her than anything. I mean he did feel bad for Zuko even when the latter was trying to kill him, so it's completely in the realm of possibility. Which in turn befuddles Azula since everything she does to break him doesn't work, and she knows he's sympathizing with her.

Which leads to the Ember Island. This could be Azula's last chance at breaking Aang, showing how pathetic he is for sympathizing with a monster and not even attempting to escape when he has a chance. It backfires since Aang knows enough that Azula is NOT a monster, and tells her this. And the reason he doesn't want to escape is because he's afraid that Ozai's going to come after her for letting him escape (which isn't out of the question since Ozai is becoming more and more frustrated with Azula's lack of progress). As badly as he wants to escape, he doesn't want anyone else to suffer on his hands. Not even Azula.

Now here you can go a few routes. For me, Aang would eventually escape once he realizes that Azula won't budge. But he times it during a time where her back is turned, like the Day of the Black Sun so there's a reason for why her security is lax. Or he comes into contact with the rest of the Gaang and he escapes during the Black Sun Invasion so as to make it look like a rescue instead of incompetence on Azula's part. Either way, I do feel that Aang would advocate for mercy on behalf for Azula or at least make sure she doesn't rot someplace after Sozin's Comet. Azula would obviously assume that Aang abandoned her like everyone else, but Aang coming back and telling her the truth would give her a bit of a mental safety net and possibly lead to the road for recovery.

All in all, this was a good ask. You can do a lot with this, either go Azulaang, worldbuild for the Fire Nation, humanize Azula to Aang, maybe cause Aang to form a rift with Zuko or Iroh due to their differing opinions on Azula. You can do something with this given the ideas I just pointed out.

[kawaiichibiart]

You voted for it, let's develop my Kya Lives AU

For those who haven't read through it, my Kya Lives AU explores the idea of Kya being kept alive in the FN as Ursa's servant, rather than in prison. While she could have been locked away, they didn't want to give her that luxury. It was also because they wanted her be around when the real last SWT waterbender was found. They'd be killed and Kya would be forced to watch as they die. That way she'd see her failure before she, too, was ultimately killed. This is also why, when they find out she isn't the real last SWT waterbender, she isn't killed on the spot.

From there, she Ursa develop a mutual companionship, which turns into a cautious friendship, neither woman wanting to lower their guards at first. After all, while both are nonbenders, both must have skills elsewhere that should be taken seriously.

Time goes on and the search for the last SWT waterbender becomes an afterthought. The FN has a war to win, chances are they might have killed the last waterbender from the South Pole and not known. Kya's living on edge, careful when she speaks of her family and home to Prince Zuko who has taken an interest in it.

And then Prince Lu Ten dies. The Siege of Ba Sing Se fails and Prince Iroh goes "missing" after he pulls back his men. Ozai goes to present his children to Azulon, and we know how the rest goes. Azula overhears Azulon tell Ozai that he has to feel the pain of losing a firstborn son by losing his own, she tells Zuko Ozai is going to kill him, Ursa intervenes and kills Azulon after making a deal with Ozai so he can become Firelord. Not the best retelling of what happened, but you get the idea.

This where we once again, leave canon behind. Because they're sorta friends now, Ursa tells Kya about what she plans to do and offers to make a deal with her. Help her get her children out of the FN, and she'll help her go home. It's risky, but Kya jumps at the chance to go home. She gets Zuko, Ursa gets Azula, and they get the fuck out as fast as they can.

At first, things are tense. Azula is fully blaming Zuko for what happened, fighting with her mom, demanding to be returned home, and snapping at Kya whenever she tries to intervene. She's upset she got dragged along, because had she been asked, she would have preferred to stay in the FN with her father.

Zuko is also blaming himself, knowing, whether his father was actually going to kill him or not, he should have just not let Azula get to him. They're on the run because of him. For once Azula has to be right, right?

Ursa and Kya are just trying to get by. They'll separate the two kids whenever their fights get bad, and will take turns watching them as one of them goes gets supplies. It isn't an ideal situation for either of them, honestly why they hadn't split paths earlier is lost to them. Would they split once they find a ship? Would Ursa and her kids literally follow Kya to the South Pole and see to it she reunites with her family? (yes)

Both women have wanted posters up. Posters that paint Kya as a witch, a savage who caused Ursa to kidnap the Crown Prince and Princess. Posters that paint Ursa as an usurper. Since she took the kids, the deal she made with Ozai is essentially void. Her murdering Azulon soon becomes public knowledge and Ozai "worries" she plans to kill his "heirs" as well. This makes traveling more difficult, as know all four of them need to be heavily disguised.

And because they have to be so careful now, a journey that, at longest (like extremely long) it should have been roughly half a year to a year. And it takes them longer. They're doing what they can to get by, but they have several points in time where they have to stop and lay low.

The three FN Royals use fake names (Noriko (obviously), Lee (again obviously), and I haven't chosen one for Azula yet, but part of me really wants to choose Loh for the irony). Kya ends up going by Mera.

As time passes their relationship evolves. Azula and Zuko still fight, but Azula no longer blames him for what happened (he hasn't stopped blaming himself yet). Their fights are moreso petty (not the word I was looking for but whatever, I can't think of the right one) fights (one called the other a name, one was being annoying, one kept making faces at the other, etc.). Kya and Ursa have settled into their friendship. Their journey to the SWT has slowed significantly, and they've lived in several places temporarily, but they do, eventually, reach the South Pole.

Once there, they have to track down Kya's tribe, which in itself is, thankfully, an easier journey. It takes them about a day to find someone who recognizes Kya. And, while weary of the 3 people with her, they lead all 4 of them to the tribe.

Kanna is overjoyed at Kya's return, and upon being asked where Sokka and Katara are, tells her about the Avatar. How he returned and was found by her children. That they left with him to stop the war. And Kya's heard the rumors. But she didn't want to consider the Avatar was traveling with her kids. She'd hoped they were home, safe.

But they were gone, they left to help the Avatar, and as proud as she should (and later would) feel, worry takes a front seat in her mind. Her children were the one thing she hoped to see when she arrived. And they weren't there. She ends up sitting with Kanna, listening as she tells her about what had happened while they were gone. The men had left to help fight the war, something she'd suspected would happen. She knew there a chance Hakoda wouldn't be around when she returned. She'd hoped her family was waiting for her, that Hakoda, Sokka, Katara and Kanna would all welcome her home. That, maybe only her husband would be absent. But only Kanna was there. And while, yes, the rest of the tribe welcomed her home, it's not the same thing. Kanna does her best to reassure her that things will work out. That she'll see all of them again.

If you're wondering about Ursa, Zuko and Azula, yeah they're just sorta...standing there. They don't know what to do. Or rather, Ursa and Azula don't know what to do. Zuko thinks he has the solution.

While some Kya and Kanna go about helping the FN ex-royals settle in, Zuko takes note of where the canoes are. That night, he leaves a note, takes a canoe, and leaves in hope of finding Sokka and Katara. And maybe the Avatar. Maybe. (Queue another mother becoming worried sick, because what the fuck?)

Through his random, whatever the fuck you wanna call it, luck, Zuko manages to survive and arrive in the Earth Kingdom. And we enter the second half of the AU which focuses on Zuko looking for, and eventually joining, the Gaang. The first one he finds is Sokka and that's by pure chance. Sheer luck. And Sokka becomes the first between him and Katara to learn Kya is still alive. That she's home. And he's learning this through this boy, this FN boy who spent a few years living with his mom. This boy who had heard stories about him and his sister. Heard his mom speak about them with so much love and decided he had to meet them. It's a bit overwhelming but...mom's home. Waiting. Waiting for him. For Katara. Maybe even for this weird boy.

Katara, takes this revelation differently. Since Zuko isn't their enemy here (that role belongs to Zhao), her animosity towards him isn't because he's chased them around. It's because, all this time, all these years she's spent blaming herself. Believing she'd gotten her mother killed, that her mom died protecting her. Her mom had been alive this entire time. Telling a FN boy, no, the FN Prince, all about her and Sokka. And while she knows chances are Kya couldn't leave without being hunted or being followed, she hates that she apparently bonded with members of the Royal Family. It wasn't fair. It's not fair. He has no right talking so fondly of her mother. He has no right saying her hugs were comforting. That she told the best stories. He had no right being close to her mom.

Katara is hurting, so a lot of what she says comes out because of that. Things she doesn't mean. Things she knows aren't important or will matter in the end. But she watched as her mother was taken away. As her betrothal necklace was ripped off her neck and tossed in front her crying daughter. Told she might as well have a last reminder of her mother. Her mom was gone and it was all her fault. If only she hadn't been a bender. If only the NWT actually helped them. If she'd just been born earlier or never at all. She doesn't mean what she says.

She knows her mother loves sharing stories, of course she'd tell a little boy if he asked for one. She knows her mom's hugs are comforting, she's been held in one every time she hurt herself, like when she pricked her finger on a needle, or when she got scared, such as the time she accidentally broke the ice under Sokka's feet and he fell through. Her hugs were warm and loving.

She can't help but feel hurt. And it takes her time to apologize, not for how she feels, never because of how she feels, but because of how she let those emotions made her act. For the things she said out of anger. Not just to Zuko, but to her brother, to Aang and Toph.

But she spent 6 years blaming herself and she still blames herself. And she can't help but just feel afraid. She's scared Kya blames her as much as she blames herself. That, when they go home, her mom will look at her in disdain. With nothing but hatred, any love she had for her daughter gone. It's so, stupid, but...

And Katara does eventually become friends with Zuko. The two take to talking, listening as the other vents. She thinks he's a moron for deciding to look for them via a fucking canoe (and now understands her brother's constant prayers to Yue to help him deal with this, he wasn't asking for more crazy benders even if they were cute, and wow was that a way to find out her brother liked boys). But it's also kinda nice, that it was solely because of Kya's stories and worry for them that he decided to look for them.

Not like she can get rid of him, they all got attached.

I've written a lot, so the rest will be in bullet points, feel free to ask about this AU, relationships (the only one I was sure I had planned was Zukka or Zukki):

Kya definitely wanted to leave earlier but wasn't sure how to go about doing so

Because they left the night Azulon left, Zuko doesn't have his scar

That being said, he gets captured in Ba Sing Se with Iroh and upon arriving home, gets one chance to reveal where his mom, sister and Kya are at. When he refuses to say, Ozai burns his face and ships him off the Boiling Rock, which is where he meets Suki for the first time.

Katara's guilt is something she's been hiding for a while. So when Sokka shows up with Zuko and says their mom is alive, that he was told by the FN boy next to him, her emotions slowly begin to break through the wall she built until it broke and she let everything out on everyone. She was hurting and wanted everyone else to feel hurt so she used her words to do that. And while she knows she was wrong to speak to them in the way she did, she was not going to apologize for how she felt.

That also being said, she's genuinely afraid of reuniting with her mom, because she can't help but think of it going wrong. She keeps imagining what her mom will say. How she'd look at her. And when the day comes she can finally see her mom again, she's the last one to do so.

Azula does, eventually, track down her dumdum brother's new friends. She'd hoped he was with them and was more than a little pissed when she learned he got captured by Zhao (I can't remember it correctly, but I think originally I had her catch up with all of them, so prior to Zuko being caught, but I like this more).

Zhao just barely made it out alive. First was his escape from the NWT and his failed siege. The next was when Ozai gave him one last chance to redeem himself. Now he's on his last chance. And he was sure he redeemed himself. He killed the Avatar, he caught the traitor Iroh and brought Prince Zuko home, who then revealed himself as another traitor. His last task? Find Ursa and Azula and the savage woman. Hopefully before the two women corrupted her as they did the Prince.

That's all I'll be sharing for now. A lot of it is things I've written before, some of it is changes I've made and some of it's new. This AU will still go through changes and I do want to go over the relationship between characters, so feel free to ask for certain ones!!

[attackfish]

Can you do more of the Lu Ten back from the dead AU?

That describes more than one AU of mine, so I have chosen the one where Zuko is brainwashed by the Dai Li, and while under Lake Laogai, finds his cousin. Continued from: [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], and [Link].

Aang wakes up, with, what must be said, is perfect, and perfectly awful, timing. Lu Ten is just about to make his escape, when the Avatar opens his eyes and starts having a freak out about being on a Fire Nation ship, and about how he failed to save Ba Sing Se from being conquered by Azula (Azula? His little cousin, Azula? That Azula? Conquered Ba Sing Se?) So of course Lu Ten does what all good little Fire Princes do, and tries to follow him, because that's the Avatar! He should capture him and take him home to the Fire Nation, and come out of his captivity covered in glory! His father and grandfather will be so proud.

So of course when Aang ends up stuck on some driftwood and washed ashore by the kindly Moon Spirit, Lu Ten ends up washed up, half drowned, on the beach with him. And he's still half drowned and wondering if he really saw the Moon Spirit, or just hallucinated that bit, when the Avatar's friends show up. After the hugs and reassurances, the question quickly becomes what to do with Lu Ten. The problem of course is several fold. 1) he is a danger, because he just tried to pull a Zuko and kidnap Aang. 2) He was pretty useless about it. Zuko could have done better in his sleep. This shows that Lu Ten is still kind if not fully with it, and kind of needs to be taken care of. 3) And Lu Ten's dad is in prison for helping them-

Wait what? His dad is in prison for helping the Avatar and a bunch of teenage enemies of the Fire Nation? His cousin Azula, who last he checked was eight, conquered Ba Sing Se? His cousin Zuko, who is ten, which is, he supposes, not much younger than the twelve year old Avatar, but still ("I'm pretty sure I'm thirteen now, actually, I mean dates are weird with the whole being frozen for a hundred years thing, but...") is not only trying to kidnap the Avatar on the regular, but is apparently doing pretty well at it ("uh, we wouldn't go that far... Also Zuko's sixteen, and Azula's like, fourteen, we think? It's not like she told us.") Oh okay, Zuko is sixteen. He was captive for six years? Six years? Oh. Oh okay. Okay. Wait, who had his dad imprisoned? What do you mean Firelord Ozai? How did Uncle Ozai become firelord if his dad is still alive?

What the Avatar and his companions tell him is confused and disjointed, but what what explaination he does get paints a bleak picture, especially when they tell him that both his father and his cousin said that Ozai, and/or Azula would probably kill him if they found out he was alive. Lu Ten has no idea what to do, and finds himself trailing along after a bunch of teenagers ("Toph's twelve") by default. And when one of those teenagers ends up being dragged off to school, and then getting in trouble at said school, and having to have a parent teacher conference, Lu Ten is the only adult in reach. He works out in his head how much older he would be than his supposed son. If the Avatar is thirteen, and Zuko is sixteen, and Zuko was born when LunTen was ten, he would have been a father at thirteen himself.

Fortunately for everyone involved, six (it's six, right? Wow.) years of captivity have aged Lu Ten beyond what is expected, and he looks far beyond his twenty-six years, old enough to pass as Aang's father. He does his best with stolen clothes and his reflection in a pool of water in the cave they've been hiding in. The Dai Li kept his head shaved, and it's only had a little time to grow out into a spiky fuzz all over his head. He looks like a disgrace, his topknot shorn, the delinquent father of a delinquent son. But it's the best he can do. He isn't exactly surprised when the principal threatens his "son" with being sent to the coal mines. He also doesn't believe a word of it.

After Aang holds his little dance party, amd they all have to run out of town, he finds himself on the road with a pack of children, and is baffled by how many "adventures they find themselves in, impersonating spirits (a Fire Nation town shouldn't be in this kind of squallor!), getting taught by Piandao (who Lu Ten stays well away from, since Piandao could recognize him), dodging assassins, and running into secret waterbending blood witches. That last one was horrifying in so many different ways. She wanted... She tried to kill him. She tried to force the others to kill him. She... Was, at least on some level, a captive like him.

And at the end of it all, when they meet up with the ragtag "army" heading to storm the Fire Nation capital, he hears about the eclipse. And he decides that while the rest of them are trying to take on Ozai, he's going to spring his father. So, he slips away during the fighting and heads for the capital prison tower. Hopefully that's where his father is being kept. And Lu Ten might not have Zuko's ability to break into and out of almost anything, but it hardly matters, because he has barely made it inside when his father, having broken himself out, runs into him, and they leave together.

All this means is that when Zuko (who never did tell anybody about his cousin being alive, which is going to make his tearful reunion with his uncle and cousin a little less awful) shows up to the Western Air Temple, the Gaang is short one Fire Prince. And now they have a new one. Yay! And once he starts to become friends with them, they've got a whole bunch of questions about just what exactly is going on with his family. And yeah, the answers he gives are, well, they are... Wow, Zuko, no wonder you're so messed up!

[hello-nichya-here]

Ozai dies while Zuko is banished, leading to Azula having to lead the nation. What happens? Also, please add Zucest.

"Also, please add Zucest" you say, like there was ever any chance of me keeping this platonic XD

How things will play out depends on when the death and coronation take place in the story.

If it happens before Aang gets out of the iceberg

In that scenario, one of Azula's first moves as Fire Lord will be bringing Zuko home, especially if it happens shortly after his banishment and she's still just 11. She might not care for Iroh, but she won't complain about him inevitably coming along - he was not banished after all - but they're going to butt-heads a lot because Iroh won't like that she's Fire Lord instead of Zuko, and she doesn't care.

I think Zuko would be conflicted at first, because he doesn't get along well with Azula, but she did just bring him back home like he always wanted, and due to Ozai's death she'd be much more emotionally fragile and unstable. It'd officially start his transformation into reluctant, protectve big brother.

The Avatar, obviously, won't be a concern until the events of the winter solstice as everyone thinks he's dead. Azula would send other people to capture Aang, at least at first, because while the matter is urgent, she'd be reluctant to part with the only family she has left. Eventually, she'd have Zuko traveling around with her trying to capture Aang because clearly everyone else is too incompetent to handle this.

If it happens before Ozai sends Azula to capture Zuko and Iroh

She'd give him and Iroh orders keep on trying to capture the Avatar - but this time as a proper mission, not as a condition for Zuko to come back home, and he'd be allowed to show up at the Fire Nation, be treated as a prince, ask for help, share informations about the Avatar, etc. He can quit the mission if he wants, but Azula very deliberately frames it as "admit you're not strong/smart enough to accomplish this" which Zuko doesn't like.

... And fine, maybe he kind of likes impressing the new Fire Lord.

If it happens after Ozai sent Azula to capture Zuko and Iroh, but she did not leave the Fire Nation yet

Mostly the same as the previous scenario, but she'd be a bit harsher and more demanding with Zuko because Ozai would have already considered them not just useless, but shameful to the nation.

Her giving Iroh the same benefit would depend on how weak Azula is to Zuko's puppy eyes - aka, he'll be fine, but she'll make him miserable because one of the last things Ozai would have said to her was "Iroh is a traitor."

If it happens after Ozai sent Azula to capture Zuko and Iroh, and she already confronted them

Azula would reason that it makes no sense (and would make her look weak) to go from treating them like traitors worthy of being imprisoned for life to making friends with them, so she'd still chase them, and eventually offer Zuko, and only Zuko, that chance of redemption in Ba Sing Se.

He'd still accept because he never wanted this simple, quiet life, and Azula would get one of an ego boost since he'd have come home with her without her using "father will forgive and love you" as an argument. Zuko will find that Fire Lord Azula can be VERY generous to those that do what she wants them to.

Bonus: If Ozai dies while she's in Ba Sing Se, but his will makes it clear Azula is to inherit

It'd be one huge mixeed feeling for her - she captured Ba Sing Se, killed the Avatar, and redeemed her brother... yet her father is gone. He died before she accomplished all of that. The person whose validation she craved the most can no longer offer it to her.

She'd be very depressed and thus Zuko would be very worried. One night she'd go to him for "comfort" and he can't bring himself to say no. He knows he should, but come on, she just needs something to cheer her up. That makes it okay, right?

Conclusion

In all versions, Azula inevitably gets pregnant and wants to marry Zuko - and since she's Fire Lord, that proposal is made through a very romantic threat of throwing him in jail forever if he refuses.

[skinnyscottishbloke]

i haven’t seen anybody talk about this but aziraphale’s decision and the end of s02 in general in terms of series arc and character development make a lot more sense if you think about avatar the last airbender and what zuko went through.

zuko’s arc is all about struggling to escape his upbringing, about de-programming himself from the idea that what the fire nation is doing is good and right. (sound familiar?) he goes through several crisis’ of faith, and with the help of his uncle, by the middle of book 2 it seems like he’s making good progress; we see him living in ba sing se, helping run the tea shop, going on dates, being a standard boy. (again, sound familiar?) but then azula (cough cough the metatron) comes. and all those things he thought he’d pushed down/dealt with come screaming back to the surface and he ends up siding with her to conquer the city, betraying his uncle and the gaang in the process. in fact, it looks like azula has killed the avatar and all hope is lost. kind of shocking ending right? what a cliffhanger! so devastating!

in book 3 zuko returns to the fire nation, a conquering hero. HE (azula says) has killed the avatar! he has restored his honor! his father welcomes him with open arms. the entire country celebrates the return of their prince. everything he has been working for since ep 1 is happening. so he should be happy right?? WRONG. he absolutely hates it. he’s angry, he’s bitter, he doesn’t know why but he knows something is off. he gets invited to a war council meeting, sits at his father’s right hand….and realizes being the perfect prince isn’t HIM. Living up to the expectation of who his father wants him to be instead of who he actually is is not his destiny. So he leaves the fire nation (again), this time of his own free will, and goes to help the Avatar. And it’s HIS CHOICE. He was offered everything he thought he ever wanted and has been trained to long for and CHOSE to leave it. which is so much more powerful than doing something because you’ve been forced into it with no other options.

and THIS is what Aziraphale has to do. he’s zuko at the end of book 2. he thought he’d come to terms with being an outcast from heaven (not Fallen like crowley but still in heaven’s bad books thanks to s01), but he hasn’t, not really. there’s still a part of him that believes that all the bad things heaven has done happened because he didn’t have the power to do it the right way. he doesn’t know what crowley knows. so he goes back. and it’s a huge betrayal. but the thing is, he NEEDS to live through getting everything he ever thought he wanted to realize that it’s not actually what he wanted at all. he needs to be able to finally escape heaven and if he doesn’t go back the what ifs will always be hanging over his head. he needs to be the one to tell heaven to fuck off and finally chose crowley in no uncertain terms. without crowley there. without crowley rescuing him. HE needs to do it.

and frankly that’s why I’m EXCITED for s03. because zuko is one of my all time favorite characters and atla is one of my all time favorite shows and if we can get that level of emotion and development from our two ineffable idiots??!!! OMG it’s going to be AMAZING!! bring on bamf! aziraphale. bring on the angst. bring on the big actually romantic kiss and gesture (that kiss we got was incredible and game-changing but so so desperate; we deserve a soft passionate one please and thank). bring on the second coming. neil always said s02 was the lead up to the good omens sequel aka s03. and what a brilliant and devastating lead up it’s been. but it will allll be worth it when our boys are reunited, when az comes to crowley and fully apologizes (we need many many dances), when he finally catches up to where crowley has been in terms of their relationship, when they are truly on equal footing at last. i am so excited to see david and michael play that out with their brilliant brilliant faces. we’re gonna be crying again, but in a good way, I FEEL it. LET’S FUCKING GOOOOOOOO!!!

[sokkastyles]

So, I've been following your blog for a while, which means I've had a front-row seat to your progression from courteous but stern, to just completely losing patience with Azula stans and their bad takes, lol. On the one hand, I would recommend being less combative as that might lead to seeing bad faith where only ignorance is present. On the other hand, I completely understand the frustration with these people who insist on:

looking for anyone but Ozai to blame for the way she turned out;

trying to retcon all the bad things Azula did as having been done with secretly benign motives (no, she was not trying to warn her brother about their dad killing him, she was using it to scare him *facepalm*);

acting like an abuser having a few moments where they're nice to their victim somehow means they're not abusive;

acting like children cannot be abusive (which is why bullying famously never happens in schools /s);

acting like Ursa and Iroh could have just whisked Azula away from Ozai and his abuse- as if he wasn't the most powerful man in the world at the time (they couldn't even save Zuko, who had to be banished in order for Iroh to help him);

acknowledging that Ozai was an abusive narcissist, yet continuing to try to validate his worldview (such as the myth of Azula's inherent superiority);

Etc, etc, etc.

It's also how I feel about some of the anti-Zutara takes I've seen where it really seems like the person hasn't even watched the show (such as insisting that Katara would never date Zuko because she still hates him somehow?)(There is no Southern Raiders hug in Ba Sing Se). They both use the same kind of selective perception and misleading wording in order to obfuscate what they're actually talking about and what actually happened in the show, e.g. referring to Zutara as a "colonizer/colonized" ship à la Pocahontas even when Zuko explicitly denounced his nation's imperialism and fought to dismantle it. Or describing the Last Agni Kai as Zuko "showing up to his little sister's house and exploiting her mental state in order to beat her up" when it was actually him and Katara trying to stop Azula's coronation because she was hellbent on continuing the Fire Nation's genocidal regime. They really love pulling a Ship of Theseus with their wording, lol.

One thing I wish everyone could do in the discourse, though, is to draw a fine line between the series and the comics and make it clear when we're talking about which because the comics have... different interpretations of the characters (*cough* Aang agreeing to kill Zuko *cough*). Looking at the discourse, I often feel like people are having two different conversations because one is basing their analysis on the information the show gave us, while the other is basing their analysis on what the comics gave us- which often contradicts what we saw in the show. So they both end up talking past each other because they can't reconcile the inconsistent characterizations that canon left us with.

Even the places where the comics don't outright contradict what we see in the show still sometimes feel incongruent and lead to bad takes. Like, I personally saw Azula's hallucination of Ursa in the finale as a temporary thing that was caused by the stress of her mental breakdown and her mind searching for reasons for why everything fell apart ("All your life you used fear to control people"), not a biochemical thing; however, the comics decided to go in the direction of giving her a full-on psychotic disorder. While this wasn't wrong per se, I feel like it was poorly handled and not only weakened her character, but also gave her stans yet another way to deflect from criticism via accusations of ableism (as if the misleading accusations of misogyny weren't enough).

I just wish that people would stop with the vague gesturing and word games and be more precise in explaining what they're actually talking about and where they got that information from (such as the idea that Ursa never hugged Azula????), so I understand your desire to just bulldoze through the BS, even if it's worded more harshly than how I would put it lol.

Keep up the good metas!

(Sorry this got way longer than I expected)

I agree with a lot of what you say here, including Azula's hallucinations in the comics. But the problem with this particular argument is not that they are pulling information from multiple sources. The idea that Ursa never hugged Azula doesn't come from anywhere. It cannot be backed up by anything. And people who insist that their bizarro misogynistic abuse apologist headcanons be considered as facts are not making good faith arguments, and nobody owes them politeness. These arguments should be shut down with as much prejudice as possible. They should be laughed out of the fandom.

I do get the impression that some of these stans are just repeating what big name fans have already said, and a lot of these arguments are circle jerks. But they are spreading around information that is actually really harmful, like the idea that people can always prevent abuse if they try hard enough and therefore we should put blame on anyone other than the abuser. Nobody who says that with their whole chest is owed politeness, and it is not my job to educate them. The best respons is to laugh and move on, but these arguments are so prevalent in the fandom that it is incredibly frustrating. I block pretty liberally and still see these arguments come up, hence me losing patience with it.

You're also right that the point of their arguments is to obfuscate the perception of what actually happened on the show, and that's why I keep saying this is abuser logic. It has a lot in common with cult rhetoric, too, the attempt to manipulate events so that what actually happened didn't happen. People who use this kind of rhetoric want you to give them an opening, such as engaging in a "discussion" where there actually is no discussion. We cannot discuss whether Ursa or Iroh are to blame for how Azula turned out because there is no discussion to be had. They just aren't to blame. But people who use manipulative rhetoric tactics will try and engage in that discussion. That's why these people always fly into a rage when I block them and end the discussion, because they have no foothold if you don't engage with them.

You do not need to be polite to manipulative people. You don't owe them an argument or your time.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Do you think Zuko and Katara would work as a couple?

The last time I spoke about Zutara in relation to fandoms at large.

It'd have to be AU.

It's not impossible, I've seen great fics, and the characters do have traits they admire in one another and a lot of screentime alone in canon.

However, given canon, I'm not shocked it didn't work out for a number of reasons.

Canon

In season 1, Zuko's very clearly an antagonist and Katara meets him when he terrorizes her defenseless village in search of the Avatar who is in fact a child himself. He then hounds them across the globe, representing the Evil Empire, trying to snuff out the one last hope for the world for reasons Katara simply cannot understand. Add onto this that he kidnaps her one time, fights her in the North Pole where he kidnaps Aang when he's helpless and takes him into the tundra (where Aang may uh die), and they're not getting off on a good foot.

Katara may have been into Jet, resident bad boy, but she liked him when he was a bad boy for her cause and giving the Fire Nation what for. She was horrified when it turned out he was a tad bit unhinged and planning to massacre civilians.

On Zuko's end, Katara and Sokka are the annoying water tribe peasants who hang around the Avatar. They're useful in that the Avatar clearly cares about them and they're weaker benders/non-benders (making them easier to kidnap and things) but he has his Avatar blinders on so doesn't really care much beyond that.

Season 2, the Gaang is confused when it seems they have a new and more terrifying hunter (Azula) and Zuko and his uncle seem to uh not be on her side maybe. However, Zuko's still fighting Aang at this point which means a big old no from Katara. We then get to Ba Sing Se, when both are kidnapped, and here we have our shining moment. Katara offers to heal Zuko's scar, they talk about their past and Zuko about how he's given up and is redeemed and a fugitive of the Fire Nation, and Katara wants to believe in him.

However, he immediately stabs her in the back, helping his sister to nearly kill Aang, betraying his uncle in front of them, all for the chance to go home and be redeemed.

After that, Katara canonically is very clearly done with this man. She vaguely tolerates him when Aang takes him on as a teacher but very clearly doesn't trust him and only slightly thaws after their murder adventure together.

Zuko, for his own part, seems to feel awkward around Katara and then terrified after the murder adventure as uh... he knows he did bad and there isn't an easy way to make them believe he's super good for real this time. Last time didn't count, guys. He's mostly trying to get in her good books and not in a way that will lead to a realtionship.

(And add onto that that Zuko has his thing with Mai, Mai ends up imprisoned because of him, and that Katara has her thing with Aang and it gets very messy).

But it Could Happen

If you diverge early, or have a very AU world, then it might work out. Granted, part of Zuko's character is focusing on restoring his honor, which is mutually exclusive to all of Katara's ideals. It would feel--weird and cheap if Zuko defected early and I think it was a key part of his character that he did get a chance to get his honor restored and realized that it wasn't what he wanted and his family is terrible.

Similarly, if Katara's more understanding of Zuko's position... Well, that's not who she is as a character and from her perspective what's there to be understanding of. Zuko is literally trying to murder the Avatar or else imprison him for life and doom the world: where is the good in that?

So, I can't tell you where, when, and how would be a good point of divergence. However, I don't think as personalities they're unshippable, I think there is a lot there, it's just not inclined to happen given who they are and where they come from.

[foolofatook001]

hello Internet I turn to you in my desperation

does anyone have a download of (or know what happened to) the Avatar: The Last Airbender fic “Book 3: Fire”? I can’t remember the author, but I know for a fact I had it in my favorites on FFN; I don’t think it was ever on ao3 but I could be mistaken. Anyway it has since disappeared, hence this search

Plot description below the cut; it’s been a couple years since I read it last so it might be shaky in parts lol

It was an imagining of how s3 of avatar would go before the actual season 3 came out, so it would’ve been published some time between Dec 2006 and Sep 2007, and I remember author’s notes indicating that there was very quick turnaround on the chapters; I believe the fic was not finished before the show started airing though

The main pairings were Zutara, Taang, and Sukka; I distinctly remember Jin/Jet as part of a Ba Sing Se subplot as well

Iroh and Zuko join the Gaang almost immediately after the fall of Ba Sing Se when Azula turns on Iroh and tries to have Zuko execute him; Zuko refuses and he and Iroh catch up with the gaang, who are escaping Ba Sing Se through underground tunnels with Toph’s help

Iroh initially starts teaching Aang firebending, but is setting up Zuko for the role due to the fact that he knows he’ll have to leave to do White Lotus Things

They realize the surprise portion of the eclipse attack is ruined, but it’s still their best shot so in the meantime they’re going to drum up support in the Earth Kingdom, etc and also foment rebellion in the Fire Nation, setting up Zuko as a challenger for the throne

(Now we get to the vague-memories-and-disjointed-scenes portion of the description lol)

There was a very strong Spirit World subplot with Roku and Kyoshi; the eventual reveal was that Sozin had made a deal with a Spirit of War (definitely had a more “demonic” angle) and his descendants had continued that deal, which was finally coming due after 100 years.

There was also an episode wherein Zuko and Katara were captured by an insane FN governor and had to gladiator-fight a dragon; they ended up freeing it and it killed the governor. That confrontation with the dragon also started positive rumors about Zuko and helped him gain the FN’s respect as their returning prince

The whole fic was a bit darker than the actual show; I remember Azula actually died (still in a fight with Katara), and I believe it was stated that Ozai just straight-up murdered Ursa and lied about her “banishment”

There’s a lot more to it (I’m pretty sure it was at least 20+ chapters and definitely over 100k words) but that’s all I can restate coherently lol

Anyway if anyone knows anything please let me know 👍

[impossiblycolorfulpanda]

Azulaang - Azula joins the gaang early

Azulaang week @ly0nstea

Sokka: Aang, I think we should be making some plans about our future.

Aang: Okay, we can do that while I show you the giant Pai Sho table! Oh, you're gonna love the all-day echo chamber!

Toph: I think that'll have to wait.

Toph points behind herself, and the camera zooms out to show Team Avatar looking at her quizzically. Appa moves out of the way to reveal four sets of shadows, and as the camera pans up, it is revealed to belong to Zuko, Azula, Ty Lee, and Mai. Cut to a close-up of the team as they look at them with shocked expressions, which subsequently turn into anger.

Ty Lee: (In a German accent) Hello, the fearsome foursome here. (Bows)

The gang get ready to attack. Appa growls at him and licks him twice. Cut to a surprised Momo and Aang as he lowers his staff slightly.

Zuko: Hey, I heard you guys flying around down there, so, I just thought I'd wait for you here. I know you must be surprised to see us here.

Sokka: You, Not really, since you've followed us all over the world. but you three? Sort of since we don't see you that often.

Ty Lee: (Normal voice) Good to see you again too...

Sokka: Don't even think about trying to seduce me again lady, Suki is still my girl.

Ty Lee: So I've heard, but not to worry, no seduction needed, we offer our alliance to you.

Azula: And it's about time you learned some firebending.

Toph: Excuse me?!

Katara: You can't possibly think that any of us would trust you, can you? I mean, how stupid do you think we are?!

Sokka: Yeah! (Points to Zuko) all you've ever done is hunt us down and try to capture Aang! (Points to Azula) And you! You straight-up MURDERED Aang! Plus, you used Suki against me!

Zuko: We've done some good things too. I've done some good things! I mean, I could have stolen your bison in Ba Sing Se, but I set him free. That's something! Isn't it?

Toph: (To Azula) Why would you want a join us after literally just foiling our day of black sun plans. Why would you go against the person you've worked hard to protect?

Azula: One last job he had me do before defecting. Nothing personal. The reason for that is, that we four have found out some...disturbing...truths about our father.

Mai: Let's just say that he never had the fire nation's best interests at heart.

Sokka: Your genocidal race war not turning out like you hoped? What a surprise.

Ty Lee: You wouldn't believe us if we told you. We do realize that everything we've ever taught was a lie...

Katara: And what? We should feel sorry for you?

Ty Lee: I knew there was something wrong with our nation, with all the dark and corrupt auras everywhere, and at the center of it all was the fire lord, but I was too scared to speak of it. Not anymore. Everything will revert into chaos and we need to set it all straight.

Zuko: Why aren't you saying anything? You once said you thought we could be friends. You know we have good in us.

Azula: You seem uneasy. Not just because of our presence but at the thought of you learning firebending, is that right? You've tried it before and it back fired. You burned someone you cared for.

Aang's fist were clutching.

Sokka: Don't listen to her Aang, she just trying to get a rise out you!

Azula: No. I'm not. I'm just informing you that we get it. Fire can be very destructive and chaotic. You do need a teacher so that your accident doesn't occur again. Whether you want to admit this or not, you do need all the help you can get. The fire lord taught us everything we know, if you thought we were formidable opponents, you haven't seen anything yet. We are not going anywhere, so if you wanna kill us all, go ahead.

[comradekatara]

i feel like it's worth noting that even though combustion man had every intention of killing the gaang, and therefore, sokka's actions are like, justifiable—there's no way he could've known a boomerang to the head would cause an internal explosion and kill the assassin. or that it would do anything besides knock the guy out so they can escape. like??? people do be wilding out here

also, i'm rewatching the show rn and i was wondering if you had any thoughts on the significance (if any) of zuko not having his scar in his dream after he frees appa?

I mean he didn’t know it would kill him, but I’m sure it’s the most desirable outcome for him, seeing as killing him means ending his pursuit (to quote katara) permanently. sokka has no problem with killing people if they’ve tried to kill him first. he wanted to let zuko die in the north pole. he sliced open melonlord’s head all “there. that’s how it’s done.” granted, he did spare azula on the gondola, but there were a lot of factors at play there. for the most part sokka has no qualms with killing enemy combatants, although he also does seem to want to minimize casualties as much as possible. he can be cold, calculating, and even ruthless, but he is not aggressive or bloodthirsty in the slightest. in that sense I think he and azula are similar, whereas zuko and katara are far more aggressive and out for blood due to their inner rage rather than any innate understanding of the necessary cost of war. they can talk a big game, but ultimately, sokka and azula will do what needs to be done, while katara and zuko talk about getting revenge but are too sensitive to actually take a life when faced with the prospect (and to be clear, I don’t think either approach is wrong or right, it’s simply how they are as people). acknowledging that sokka has a kill count isn’t a bad thing, but treating that fact as if it makes him immoral is also incorrect. he does not kill for the sake of killing. he knows he is in a war, and he kills out of necessity.

and yeah! there’s been a lot of great analysis of that dream sequence, as it’s obviously very symbolic and however you read it, it provides a lot of insight into his character arc. one thing to note is that besides this dream sequence, I don’t think zuko ever looks into a mirror. (and note that when azula does look into a mirror, she breaks it.) I don’t think zuko can stand to look at his own reflection. keep in mind that zuko’s entire dream sequence is a product of his body being unable to process the trauma of performing an act in which he disobeys ozai’s conditioning. iroh forces him to challenge what he thinks he should do versus his deeper instincts, and since he’s spent the past three years ignoring those instincts, burning them away and then snuffing them out with ozai’s lessons taking their place, his body doesn’t know how to process the action of him going against the dogma that has fueled him for years. his body is punishing itself in place of the punishment he feels he must receive after disobeying ozai’s orders. he’s recovering from a wound, only this time, it’s psychological (internal) rather than physical (external). (sidenote: this is why I hate seeing people joke that “zuko did one good thing and then promptly fell ill” like yeah it’s his body’s response to the severe trauma of his abuse haha hilarious!) so this is the context for zuko’s feverish reevalation. he’s undergoing the realization that in ba sing se, ozai cannot actually reach him, and therefore he is safe to be who he wants to be. of course, this isn’t entirely true either. he’s not actually being who he wants to be once he recovers from his fever, he’s being who iroh wants him to be. he’s replacing one father with another. he’s still scared of the consequences of disappointing his patriarch, so he plays the perfect son and pretends to be happy. of course this facade cannot last either, which is foreshadowed by the two dragons in zuko’s dream, iroh and azula. both of them have an agenda for zuko, and here he sits, scarless, at a crossroads.

[balanceoflightanddark]

Well... I don't think that Azula hallucinating Ursa is her first hallucination.

Her reaction is slight initial surprise but then she's immeadiatley just ... annoyed. She isn't shocked or freaked out at all. It's like she's used to it. She talks to the hallucination as if it was just another day. Then she smashes the mirror, like she is fully accquainted with the fact that this isn't real.

That's not the reaction of someone who sees and hears their lost mother for the first time. No way.

(Ofc some people don't like to headcannon in this direction of her having long-lasting mental illness and prefer to think it was just a single breakdown. Which I get and is super fine).

Just thought, objectively looking at the scene, there's no freaking way this was her first hallucination.

It looks like she's been dealing with this for quite some time. And surely alone. She couldn't show weakness to Ozai. And I don't think the royal palace is big on mental health.

;

Headcanon that fits this:

Despite Azula's betrayal of Ozai (lying to him, failing him etc.), he still planned to keep using her because... that's what narcissists do. They use you as long as you can be used. And Azula is super useful! Why would he throw her away after all she did for him? When she is still so desperate for his "love"? When she could still be so very useful to him?

He wanted to keep using her, but when he saw Azula starting to "lose her mind", he decided to ditch her.

Iroh: "She's crazy and she needs to go down"

Ozai: "She's crazy... gotta ditch her. (...) Better give her the throne she never wanted so she doesn't kill me. Lmao if she turns on me im dead this bitch has blue fire, killed the avatar and conquered Ba Sing Se. She different. I still can't read maps and fire only comes out when angry"

...okay. Let me just preface this with saying that Ozai's last sentence is hilarious, is completely in-character, and should be framed.

I should also say that...since we're gonna be going into territory which is a bit of a sore subject for myself, whatever I say is not an attempt to tear you down. I do not believe in that and will try to keep this as levelheaded as possible.

With that said, while I certainly respect your opinion on Azula...I still don't believe that she has a mental illness that results in recurring hallucinations. We only have the one scene and there's only so much we can get from that. And I certainly don't think we should base everything we know of a character over their worst and lowest moment. I know because...I was guilty of that with Zuko.

But I digress.

This masterpost belongs to my dear friend @prying-pandora666 who goes into quite a bit of detail concerning Azula and mental health if you're interested. But the crux of it is, when looking at it from the lens of a professional, we don't have any evidence that Azula was mentally ill. Does that mean she wasn't? No. Of course not. It's just we don't have too much onscreen evidence to make a definitive conclusion.

And even if Azula was mentally ill (I don't think she was and was probably suffering from a mental breakdown), one should be careful to make sure it's not overemphasized to the detriment of her upbringing and Ozai's bullshit. After all, even the best kid wouldn't last too long under his parentage without getting SOME kind of trauma.

As for your headcanon, I don't necessarily believe Ozai was aware of Azula's deteriorating mental state. She didn't show any signs of it initially and he left before things got really bad. In this case though, I'd pin the blame more on Ozai's lack of focus on Book 3. Is it possible he saw the signs? Yeah, and I can believe that. Doesn't make him any less of a scumbag for abandoning her. I'd argue it makes him even worse since he left her when she needed him most after years of presenting himself as the only stable adult figure in her life.

And as a quick aside, can please stop using the "crazy and needs to go down" quote as evidence? Eshasz and Greg Baldwin both said that Iroh was in the wrong there for saying that.

...sorry. I have autism which can be constituted as a mental illness, so I get a little bit tender when discussing this. There's nothing inherently wrong with Azula being mentally ill like so many would say and you're completely within your right to believe she is. My personal advice would be to just...be careful is all. Treat Azula as a person instead of a mental illness, never try to give people the wrong idea about mental illnesses or misdiagnosing characters (especially minors) and you'll be fine.

[akiizayoi4869]

Master Meta post (updating)

The Last Agni Kai

Azula's family does indeed owe her

Zuko at age 13 vs Azula at age 14

Azula fanfics that make her stand trial for war crimes

The most tragic character of the show is Aang, not Zuko

If Kuvira can be redeemed, so can Azula

The dumb letter in The Search

Zuko did not realize that Azula was abused

Zuko only asks Azula what's wrong with her one time in The Search

On the topic of Azula, Ozai, and Abuse

Zuko and Ozai in The Promise

The Search: a story about abuse, abuse apologism, and ableism

Smoke and Shadow: "Trust is for fools! Fear is the only reliable way!" On steroids

Stealing food: Suki Alone vs Smoke and Shadow

Comics! Zuko and Comics! Ursa don't care about Azula

Azula brought Zuko home with her because it's what Ursa would have wanted

Azula redemption circle jerk

Azula and Zuko in the Crystal Catacombs

Azula and Zuko in the first half of Book 3

Azula and Zuko headcanon

Zuko's fever dream

Ursa and Azula: "What is wrong with that child?"

Azula and Ursa: A complicated mother daughter relationship

Commentary from The Search and Smoke and Shadow

The Search commentary

Aang killing Ozai dies send a powerful message

"Azula should be blamed for everything wrong in Zuko's life"

Azula did not think that Zuko would join her in Ba Sing Se

Jet had every right to be suspicious of Zuko and Iroh

My thoughts on Uncle Iroh

Zuko and Mai in Nightmares and Daydreams

Mai and Zuko in The Beach

The Family Portrait

"I just asked if you were cold, not for your whole life story."

Aang hate in fandom

Azula in Nightmares and Daydreams

Who cares if Azula did bad things? She's not real.

Why Azula killing Aang does not mean that she is evil and irredeemable

The Invasion Plan

Zuko and Jin's date

Zuko apologizing to Iroh

Why Zuko's arc falls flat for me

Most horrific Mai and Ty Lee take I've ever heard

Zuko doesn't know what's wrong with Azula in The Search

"She was right, of course, but it still hurt."

Azula did not hold power over Zuko

The bedroom scene

Aang when Appa gets stolen

Zuko needs to forgive Azula in order to move on and let go of the anger and resentment that he has towards her

The Infamous Smirk

The Southern Air Temple

Azula is not irredeemable

Zuko's redemption arc deserved better writing

Unpopular opinion: Aang understood Katara's pain better than Zuko did

Azula in The Storm flashback

King Bumi

Original cover art for The Search

Zuko and Azula both get undeserved hate

Why doesn't Zuko's crew know about his scar

Azula is not a feral animal or a bumbling crazy person

Azula was abused in the asylum

Book 3 should not have been the last season

Azula saying "I am about to celebrate becoming an only child!" to Zuko is not abuse

Little Azula eating mochi

Gene Yang's favorite panel in The Search

Yang forgot all of the bad things Zuko did when he wrote the comics

Azula and the doll

Azula and the sandcastle

Azula in the spirit temple

"I think we should take they're precious hope, and they're land, and burn it all to the ground"

Azula and the mirror scene

Iroh not wanting to fight Ozai

Azula calling Zuko "Zuzu" is not abusive

"Dad's going to kill you."

Tumblr ask: "Why do you think that so much of the ATLA fandom just violently hates Aang?"

Tumblr ask: The WORST Azula take ever(probably)

The Fire Nation and genocide

New(?) Unpopular Takes

Tumblr ask: Would you mind explaining the mirror scene?

Azula is not an irredeemable spawn of Satan

Part 2 of Azula is not an irredeemable spawn of Satan

Azula and war crimes list from villains wiki

Ghost Azula AU idea

Why the theory that Azula brought Zuko home to use him as a scapegoat makes no sense

Azula defeated herself before her agni kai with Zuko happened

Kya and the Southern Raiders

Iroh encouraging the toxic sibling rivalry between Zuko and Azula

Suki Alone

Sokka's trauma

Zuko was a willing participant in the sibling rivalry between him and Azula

Iroh never told Zuko what the "correct way" was

Azula sketch

Stop downplaying Sokka

Azula the mochi thief: wanted dead or alive

DOBS Kataang kiss

Tumblr ask: Azula slept her way to the top🤮

Sokka training the children of the Southern Water Tribe

Azula and Zuko in the Lost Adventures comics

Azula did not force Mai to join her in Omashu

Atla fandumb thinks that Azula should not have told Ursa what she overheard that night