#me putting my entire heart and soul between the lines of taob: damn why does a literal fanfiction drain me so much. a mystery really

[hella1975]

So I finished TAOB to the latest update and man. It’s…I genuinely can’t find the proper words to describe how much I love it, how clever your writing is, how incredible the subtleties and nuances are. The little things you include that make it so /real/. My personal experiences are much different than zuko’s of course, but it helped me (see: forced me) to confront my own trauma and healing. You wrote the words I’ve never been able to find. The feeling of knowing you need to heal, but not knowing how to start, not knowing how to /want/ to heal. My experiences may be different, but I can still see myself in Zuko. The line “to be able to look at the ugliest parts of yourself and still decide you aren’t finished” was like a punch to the gut bc it’s what I’ve needed to hear for years. So thank you for writing this masterpiece. It’s touched and helped a lot of people, even in ways they didn’t know they needed.

god i want to just squish all of you into a jar like playdough

it's just like. like the fact taob (while obviously i also have different experiences to zuko i dont remember the part of my character arc where i got locked up by earthbenders but anyway) is inspired directly from my own healing journey and how everything everything in that story is written around how i feel and how i felt and what im trying so hard to do and ive literally written into taob how lonely that feels and how daunting and then to almost break fourth wall by this outpouring of so many of you that relate and understand and how we're all just here for each other. it's insanity im so normal about it