#zuko

[suitablysarcasstic998]

WHEEZE

Zuko: well, if I was the blue spirit

Zuko: AND I’M NOT

Sokka: *suspiciously and reluctantly crosses out Zuko’s name on his list of possible blue spirit suspects*

[jasminedragonart]

more college au with the camper they live in from year 2 onwards.

it’s basically their version of appa

[zukosdualdao]

the argument that zutara could never be healthy together because they’re both ‘too emotional/angry’ and would have explosive fights

is kinda of uncomfortable rhetoric about a) a character who is an abuse victim whose abusers try to use the fact that he is ‘too emotional’ and ‘unreasonable’ against him and b) and a character who turns out not to be a one dimensional well-spring of hope and love and has the people in her life, most notably her main LI, treat any emotion that veers outside of the box as her not being ‘true to herself’. and also ‘unreasonable’. (not necessarily said about either of them but VERY OFTEN implied.)

katara and zuko both tend to get angry when they feel (often based on actual evidence, though in zuko’s case in particular he’s sometimes projecting this onto iroh due to abuse he’s endured from ozai and azula) their emotions aren’t being taken seriously.

and the funny thing is… once they start bonding, they actually take each other’s emotions very seriously.

zuko has no real reason to think katara will do anything about yell some more when he says he’s sorry about his mother and extends his empathy, but he does anyway, because he understands what it was like to lose his own mother.

katara could very easily and understandably get angry and lash out when this guy who’s been chasing them around the world starts talking about his problems in the crystal catacombs, but instead she shows him compassion.

when zuko hears katara tell him why she hasn’t been able to forgive him, he understands and tries so earnestly to figure out how to make it up to her. once he realizes how much she’s still hurting (and always has been!! the whole show!) over kya’s murder, he spends the whole episode trying to help her get closure.

when katara sees zuko is worried about reuniting with iroh, she lends an ear and reassures him without minimizing what he’s feeling.

like… i don’t know man, i think they are actually pretty deeply in tune with each other’s feelings and careful not to minimize or make light of them. i’m not saying they’d be a perfect couple ((because that doesn’t exist)) but that their canon relationship actually shows a lot of healthy development on the emotional communication front, and i don’t see why that wouldn’t extend to a potential romance as well.

[icrowler]

Play Girlfriend by Avril Lavigne pls...

[suitablysarcasstic998]

SHE IS QUEEN! DO NOT DISRESPECT. ALWAYS PRAISE

I love zukka but I will not stand for the erasure of my girl

[dustbunny31]

It’s dangerous to go alone, take this. Hope you enjoy this wip!

[fanartfromafan]

Fanart of @muffinlance 's story, "Case 1: A Dark Night at the University" chapter 5!

(“No,” said the prince, tugging his head back out, giving Ryo a look a lot like his least favorite instructors had. “I wear a mask.”

For just a moment, there was a blur of something white and blue and altogether toothy over the teenager’s face.)

Mask-less version under the cut.

Look at our boy's handsome, little face! Don't you just wanna squish his cheeks!

[cyanorhis]

[zukosmosis]

katara putting braids in zuko's hair will always make me weak in the knees and if i had talent i'd draw it

[xxxtanzanitaxxx]

[sokkastyles]

You can't convince me that Katara wouldn't give Zuko the same words about how the gaang is his family that she gave to Aang when he mourned the loss of Monk Gyatso.

No, that doesn't mean you can't ship zutara. The above can be platonic or not, but I had to include this disclaimer because some of you think found family can somehow become found incest, and that isn't what incest is, smh.

[maddiethefashionista]

Yessss read that bitch for filth!!

Ozai is so pathetic, like that “take his bending away haha he’s harmless now” trick would never have worked on Zuko, if you took his bending away he’d just grab his swords and come at you twice as hard, Azula doesn’t have swords or anything but she’s pretty good at hand to hand and amazing at talking her way out of problems, Iroh bust himself out of prison with no bending at all, meanwhile Ozai? Gets his bending taken away and then just collapses, doesn’t even try anymore, then just sits in prison and tries to get into Zuko’s head some more, he could have trained up and tried to break out too! But no! Bet he can’t break steel bars with his bare hands. Bet he can’t kick a steel lever in two. Bet he can’t even do a flip.

Also we never really see him do any really impressive firebending apart from when he has magic comet power, I guesss he shoots some lightning at Zuko, but that’s it and Azula is still better at the lightning thing. Azula has blue flames. Zuko can do firebreakdancing and bend with his swords. Does Ozai, who is not 14 years old, have blue flames? No he doesn’t.

He didn’t even do his coup himself, Ursa had to kill Azulon for him! Could have just challenged Iroh to an Agni Kai for the throne but he didn’t bc he knew he’d lose.

And then he only ruled for like 6 years! He lost a war that had been going on for 100 years bc of a bunch of kids.

Loserlord indeed

[arttsuka]

🏳️‍🌈?

[storm-and-starlight]

I've always been under the impression that the major culprit behind Zuko's "weakness" as a firebender is his own frustration and impatience: when he gets angry, he's prone to slipping up and forgetting the basic foundational skills that would actually let him become a master (partially due to his own character flaws, partially due to Ozai Fuckery)

Even just in s1ep1 The Boy in the Iceberg, where Iroh is training him in firebending he notes that Zuko's issues are a matter of impatience, not necessarily true lack of skill.

ZUKO: Enough! I've been drilling this sequence all day. Teach me the next set! I'm more than ready! IROH: No, you are impatient. You have yet to master your basics. Drill it again!

Zuko has "yet to master his basics", which is kind of strange to me given that he's 16 and has clearly been training in firebending since at least 10-11, as seen in the flashback sequences in s1ep7 Zuko Alone - but in those same flashbacks, we get this scene.

OZAI: Now, would you show Grandfather the new moves you demonstrated to me? (Azula demonstrates) She's a true prodigy! Just like her grandfather for whom she's named. YOUNG AZULA: (to Zuko) You'll never catch up... YOUNG ZUKO: I'd like to demonstrate what I've been learning.

Azula, as the prodigy, performs a presumably quite complicated firebending sequence and then goads Zuko into trying to do it, even though he's clearly not ready. It's not a question of power or fire generation ability - even in the opening "salute" section of the sequence, he's much shakier than she is on the forms, but he tries anyways and doesn't make it. This is probably where that tendency came from. He was clearly pushed as a kid to keep up with a sister he couldn't possibly keep up with, but never had the patience to actually drill the basics of firebending enough to actually learn, so he pushed too hard and too fast and ended up doing significantly worse for it.

In the Agni Kai with Zhao, we see the consequences of this - he's losing pretty badly up until Iroh reminds him of the importance of his basic stance.

IROH: Basics, Zuko! Break his root!

And right from that moment, the camera focuses not on Zuko's firebending, but on the movement of his feet and the strength of his stance, which allows him to drive Zhao back and eventually win -- and which gets mirrored beautifully in the Agni Kai with Azula, with that same grounded stance as seen in OPs gif, but also in another close up of his "root" during the first set of attacks, where he's slipping backwards until he takes a stronger stance.

to

I think that this is a cool callback between the two Agni Kai's, but also a cool callback to the things Zuko's learned from Iroh - patience, focus, and not to get so frustrated that you end up becoming your own worst enemy (because pre-s3 Zuko does that A Lot).

I think about Azula shooters often and their common refrain of "if Azula hadn't had a mental breakdown, she would've won" and I'm here to tell you that no, she wouldn't have.

There is no universe in which Azula was winning that fight with Zuko (or Katara, for that matter).

Azula spent so much of Book 2 being built up as this deadly terrifying force against whom the heroes are badly outmatched that it can be difficult to catch exactly how quickly Zuko is advancing.

Back up a bit to Book One. For the fearsome exiled crown prince of the Fire Nation, Zuko's not that impressive a firebender. He's not bad by any stretch, and he's able to lay the untrained Sokka and Katara flat pretty easily. Then he gets in the ring with Aang, who is an airbending master, and the difference between a regular bender and a master becomes apparent when Aang literally puts his ass to bed:

People have attributed this to the fact that no one's fought an airbender in 100 years, but I think it's also worth noting that Aang (a 12 year old from a pacifist nation) has probably never fought anyone before. Like, ever. And yet the second Aang thinks "okay, I'll attack back", the fight's over.

Zuko's got the same genetic predisposition for firebending talent that Azula does, yet it never seems to manifest because of his mental blocks. At the beginning of the series, he's already so beat down that all he really has is conviction, pride, and anger, so even with training from Iroh (the firebending master, thank you very much), he struggles. Yet throughout Book 2, when he has no time to train because he's on the run, he actually seems to advance faster. The fact that his bending is literally tied to his character arc (as his morals become tangled and he has to fight off aforementioned mental blocks) is pretty brilliant. Like, by the time of the Crossroads of Destiny, Zuko getting his ass handed to him by Aang is a pretty consistent feature of the show--he just can't match wits with him.

Hell, at the beginning of the series, he and Iroh (again: the actual firebending master) launch a combined power surface-to-air attack...which Aang casually swats away into a nearby ice wall. Come the Crossroads of Destiny, however, and Zuko by himself launches this bigass fireball that blows through Aang's defenses.

Zuko advances so quickly that it's scary. That prodigious talent is in him even if it doesn't come through as cleanly as with Azula. Who, by the way, was busy about to get flattened by Katara some few dozen feet away, until Zuko took over and then effectively stalemated her himself.

All of this in retrospect makes it abundantly clear why Zuko's firebending seemed to skyrocket so much when he learned true firebending from the Sun Warriors: it was really the only thing left. He's hard a hard road learning how to fight waterbenders, earthbenders, and airbenders, and even if unconsciously, he's applying the philosophy Iroh taught him about augmenting his bending style with aspects of other styles (see also, the waterbending-like fire whips he uses in the above gif). Once he actually understands fire and how it works, he's got it mastered. Hence why any gap between him and Azula effectively disappears as soon as their next fight--before her friends have betrayed her and her stability goes out the window. There's no real sense of urgency to their fight at the Boiling Rock prison. True, Sokka's presence with the sword helps, but Zuko doesn't look remotely worried and he counters Azula's every attack perfectly.

All her life, Azula only ever learned fire. She was taught by the best people the fire nation can employ, so she knows all the cool tricks, but she's still poisoned by the corrupted firebending practiced in the modern ATLA timeline. Unlike Zuko, who managed to get the basics if nothing else from Iroh (fire comes from the breath, and can be used to survive as much as to kill), Azula has always used fire as a weapon and a means to hurt others. She has no true knowledge of the craft, meaning she's got the same weaknesses as Zhao, she's just better disciplined to the point she can make up for it.

Zuko's victory was a given considering Azula's complete loss of control by the time of Sozin's comet, but even had she been in a perfect mental state, she'd have lost, because in many ways Zuko is simply the better firebender.

And that's the truth of it.

[zuko-always-lies]

What makes a villain's fate "deserved" in the context of ATLA

Aang: [Cut to Katara, Toph and Sokka from the behind, as Aang speaks.] Roku was just as much Fire Nation as Sozin was, right? If anything, their story proves anyone's capable of great good and great evil. [Cut to an aerial shot of the hardened lava wave.] Everyone, even the Fire Lord and the Fire Nation have to be treated like they're worth giving a chance. [Shot cuts to a close-up of Aang's face.] And I also think it was about friendships.

There's little more common in fiction than villains suffering deserved, karmic fates. However, ATLA is a show which heavily focusses on the themes of redemption, which argues that everyone deserves being given a chance to do better. In this context, a villain's fate can only be truly karmic if they were given a chance to do better and rejected it. We can see this play out in the series.

Zhao

Zhao wants to kill the moon to become a legend. The heroes and Iroh explain to Zhao why this is a very bad idea, and nearly convince him, but ultimately he kills Tui anyways. Thus, when the Ocean Spirit kills him in retaliation, it feels appropriate and karmic.

Zhao is even given a second chance, if he's willing to put aside his hatred of Zuko, but he refuses to. That makes his fate even more appropiate

Long Feng

Long Feng fits this idea less well, but it's still there. When he explains that he's really in charge of the Earth Kingdom, the Gaang tries to tell him about the eclipse, but he refuses to listen, leading to their continued efforts to contact the Earth King personally. If he had just put aside him "no war in Ba Sing Se" rule for five seconds and promised to help them, he never would have faced his downfall. And, of course, he responds to losing power by allying with Azula, a sworn enemy of his nation, before trying to backstab her. His end is appropriate but perhaps not fully karmic.

Zuko

Zuko is someone who manages to avoid a bad fate in canon. However, given how many chances at redemption he gets that he rejects, how many chances the heroes give him, if he had rejected redemption yet again and suffered a very sad, tragic fate because of it, it would have felt very appropriate and karmic within the confines of the story.

Combustion Man

He's basically not a character, so this concept doesn't apply to him.

Edit: As @boomerangguy has pointed out, even Combustion Man has someone try to reason with him.

Ozai

Even though Ozai is the big bad of the series, the concept still applies to him. It's important that Aang gives him a chance, and it's important that Ozai rejects that chance. After that, Ozai's fate feels fully appropriate.

Azula

Azula faces one of the saddest fates in canon, but it doesn't really work within the themes of ATLA. Azula is a bad person who does some really bad things, but she's mostly just doing what she's supposed to. She's serving her father, her Firelord, her family, and her nation and following the path a young Fire Nation royal is supposed to. She lacks the sheer egomania of Zhao or the selfish corruption of Long Feng.

But she is never given a chance, never given a choice, either by the narrative or by the heroes. She is never shown kindness by the heroes. She never has her life saved by them. No one ever tries to reason with her or tell her she can pick a different path. No one ever tells her they don't want to fight her or that they wish they could be friends with her. She, through her actions, tells her brother she doesn't want to fight him, but he never really reciprocates.

In the end, she tells one of the heroes, her own brother, that she wishes things could be different, and he tells her to get fucked, instead of offering his hand the way he did for Zhao.

This is why Azula's fate can't be karmic, in the context of ATLA. She was never given a chance to chose otherwise.