#im also coming from the perspective of a hp btvs ac etc fan. which will again warp things

[cescalr]

For the ship asks! If we're talking Avatar, what about Mei and Zuko?

I'll be honest, I'm not fond of it. I don't really like mei in the first place - apathy never sits well with me, and she never actually changed her mind? Mei at the start is mei at the end. She didn't think what the fire nation was doing was wrong, and she only sided against Azula to stay with Zuko, which would be sweet if she... actually liked him? And I don't think she does? She was happy with Zuko during his time back at the fire nation when he was acting the part of Ozai's favoured son, and its just... eeh. They give me bad vibes, I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised if she threw a knife at him properly one of these days.

Plus, Mei doesn't have much of a character outside Zuko. I'd rather shew her development than her stagnation, and keeping her with Zuko keeps her the same. In the end, mostly, me*ko just bores me, which is the nail in the coffin for any ship. At least if I hated it I'd feel something, yk? I prefer meilee or even meizula and... really any other zuko ship (aside from aang >-< yike) over meiko, but... I wouldn't, like, absolutely hate it if a good fic had meiko in it, you know? I just don't like them in canon. Much like I've said before, I'm willing to give things their fair shot. It's just that Mei herself is a hard sell for me as a focal character. It's not even that she's a 'bad' person - I read Azula and Jet-centric fics, and even memorably one Ozai centred fic (time travel, it was interesting start but still a wip though so going to see where it leads) - it's more that I just don't know what to do with her. She's kind of a meh girlfriend and kind of a whatever person, to me.

In comparison, Zuko is literally The redemption arc guy. He's the character people want to replicate the success of. Zuko is such a person that he's iconic and Mei is kinda... there. For the record, I didn't even know she existed until I watched the show. Zukka and Zutara and Zuko's character arc were well known to me, but Mei was not. I ended up only liking zukka platonically, not minding and sometimes supporting zutara, shipping jetko for the angst and the parallelism, even giving some really au zuko stuff like that one toph arranged marriage series or his leadership/friendship/family dynamics with his crew a go, jin/zuko, song/zuko - loads of things! On the other hand, Mei didn't have much going for her in my estimation to begin with, and her portrayal by competing ship fans probably didn't help. There was one where she tried to kill him after the war ended, lmao. That was silly. But still. Bias is easy to build, even without meaning to.

So, would I say I like meiko? No. Would I say I hate it? Depends on the portrayal. Much like ronmione, I don't think it would take a lot of tweaking to make her abusive, specifically also without being OOC, which worries me. So I just don't poke that sleeping dragon and hang out in the other ship spaces.

In the end, I think they just didn't understand each other on a fundamental level. (Also important; Zuko never seemed to know what to do with her, the things shed like or appreciate, and never seemed to take her own expressions - mild as they were - of affection as well as one would expect were he actually in love with her, which is itself important to note, though of course also just my own interpretation of what we were given; a lot of their scenes were cut off at some of the most important parts, which doesnt quite sit right with me.) And I need something to dig my teeth into that just wasn't present for their relationship, except in ways I couldn't interpret positively. A shame, but oh well. We can't all like everything :).