Happy Zutara Month Everyone :)

This quote specifically from Aaron Ehasz did smth to my psyche.

Have you noted that no one from Azula's family was shown to express love and affection towards her?

That is mostly true. Ozai's affection is clearly conditional (and full on manipulation at worse, like we see in the finale), Ursa canonically favors Zuko to the point that we never see her spending any alone time with Azula like she did with Zuko, and while Iroh gave her a toy like he did to Zuko the toy in question was so OBVIOUSLY wrong for a kid like Azula that it's comical AND show's he did not really know his niece at all.

But there is a constant exception.

Zuko's relationship with Azula is complicated. He clearly admires her strength and power, but he hates how she uses it. She lied to him many times, was seen apparently cheering Ozai on during the Agni Kai, tried to have him imprisoned and even said she'd celebrate being an only child - and then allows him to come home as a hero after Ba Sing Se, even though SHE had the control of the Dai Li and was not yet aware Aang could have survived, meaning she had nothing to gain from it.

And when she lets him know that if he's caught talking to Iroh people might think he is a traitor too, and explicitly says "Believe it or not, I'm actually looking out for you" Zuko drops his innitial suspicion that she wanted something and that's why she was helping him.

On The Beach, he just follows her when she say their old family home is depressing and they shouldn't waste their time there. When she's asking him who she is angry at, she mentions herself and Zuko explicitly says that is not the case.

He doesn't trust her and know she has a tendency to mock or full on lie to him... yet when he wants to know about Fire Lord Sozin he asks her about it, and lets it slide when she mocks him by saying he should make sure the royal painter got his good side - for a character as quick to anger as Zuko, that is a big deal. In Nightmares and Daydreams he also goes to her to find out if he'll be allowed at the war meeting.

More importantly:

1 - Iroh's infamous "She's crazy and needs to go down" line was only said because ZUKO, without anyone putting that idea in his head before, suddenly went "I know what you're going to say. She's my sister and I should be trying to get along with her"

2 - Zuko only jumped into the fight in Ba Sing Se when Azula was being cornered by Aang and Katara.

3 - Zuko looked genuinely shocked and even distressed when she was falling off that cliff. He just sounded so shaken saying "She's... not gonna make it..."

4 - In the writer's own words, Zuko felt no hate but only pity when seeing her breakdown. Katara tried to comfort him because, canonically, even though Zuko and Azula are enemies, this was never what he wanted because he still sees her as family. That's why the Last Agni Kai's music is not the epic you'd expect from a battle, but a tragic one.

5 - Aaron Ehasz, the lead writter for the show, probably the person with the most influence after Bryke, has REPEATEDLY said that he always felt Azula should have gotten a redemption arc, Zuko being an Iroh figure to give her advice and be the only one still by her side when all else was seemingly lost to her forever.

Even the comics (most of which I HATE, mainly because Azula's storyline checks nearly every box for "the mentally ill are inherently evil/less human, so it's fine if literally every other person on the planet mistreats them") didn't fully abandon their complex dynamic.

Zuko is not a perfect sibling, and for a long chunk of the story he seemed too focused on his own issues for Azula to ever be a factor in his mind (aside from the moments in which she was a potential/explict threat), but he DOES still feel a sense of obligation towards her, to the point that it made him do something no one else in their family had done before or since - actually look at Azula. Not the prodigious daughter/perfect weapon, or the problem child that is difficult to handle, or the pontentially deadly enemy that was in the way, but Azula.

His 14-year-old sister that got on his nerves a lot, was far from the kindest person alive, and that he had a ton of issues with, but that he could never fully hate or even be indifferent to. Because she's family. Because he remembers a happier time in which the gap between them didn't seem so big. Because if things had been slightly different he could have been her. Because he went from wanting to be her to seeing just how miserable her life ended up being - especially compared to the one he now had - and feeling deeply sorry for her.

Now if you guys excuse me, I'm gonna go cry in the corner. Have some wholesome/bittersweet fanart if you wanna cry too.

“War ate a girl and spat out a woman.”

— Excerpt from Myth Untold // L.H.Z

love is stored in the fictional couple i’ve gotten overly invested in

I wanna drink your words like wine

Also as a side note, shonen fans make me laugh because they will have serious power scaling discussions as if shonen writers don't just give their favourite characters ridiculous asspull power ups and rig fights in their favour all of the time.

Female characters are often used as jobbers/ are made to intentionally lose fights for the development of male characters, or to make other characters look stronger.

I need a female character in a shonen to be given an unbelievable asspull and only then will I believe that gender equality has been achieved in the genre.

This may be a broken take, but take the fuckign Shibuya arc.

Itadori- is getting his ass beat by Choso when choso has some spaghetti flashback.

Megumi- Is getting his ass kicked by Toji but then Toji takes possession of his body and offs himself. Megumi summons Mahoraga and then Sukuna shows up to kill Mahoraga so Megumi doesn't die. Also Megumi has hand to hand combat training but fundamentally he is a summoner, so his CT is actually not that useful in direct one on one hand to hand combat and he gets his ass kicked a lot by the likes of Toudou and a lot of other characters.

Meanwhile:

Nobara- Yeah she has the shit fight against Haruto but Nobara Is doing well against Mahito's clone, Mahito calls her his natural born predator and she has some good strategic moments before dying in the most low down dirty disrespectful way possible when actually it would have been interesting if her CT was his demise and Gege should have let the whole "natural born enemy" thing play out so Nobara had a serious W.

As a side note, many people say she wouldn't have survived the culling games.

JUST GIVE HER AN ASSPULL-- like every other shonen character gets. The whole genre is built off of asspulls. Black flashes in JJK effectively exist as a plot convenience-- I am tired of us having serious conversations about a genre that basically just is hype moments and aura farming.

Also I REALLY hate that the writers decided to use the most lazy trope possible, the trope I hate with my whole heart

When we have a big war between two sides that was becoming worse and worse for so many years

And instead of actually resolving it, the writers just add another, BIG ONE enemy to unite those two sides

And now they don't need to think about how to resolve SUCH COMPLICATED conflict that was lasting for decades. No, now they suddenly have a peace bc "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". THAT'S SO FUCKING LAZY

I wanted to see how Zaun and Piltover resolve their conflict so bad and all I've seen was a fight against Ambessa and Viktor?? Seriously?? That's a such disappointment

Also the same thing happened in spop and I really hoped Arcane isn't gonna do it...and they did...

Like imagine if in ATLA instead of Aang stopping the fire nation, all 4 nations just united against spirits

That's actually insane

What does the dead dove tag mean?

Wonderful question!

“Dead Dove” comes from this scene in Arrested Development wherein the character Michel Bluth opens a brown paper bag that reads: DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT. He looks inside and sees what is in fact, a dead dove. The then says: “Well, I don’t know what I expected.”

In fandom, the tag has come to mean: “pay extra attention to the tags!” And/or “this fic is what it says on the tin!”.

So if, for example, a fic includes the tags: Body Horror, Gore, and Violence along with the Dead Dove: Do Not Eat tag, the author is saying “Hey I’m not joking about these tags! Read at your own discretion!”

The tag acts as an honest intensifier to whatever tags are already in the work, as the author using it wants to give a double warning for their content, that it may be triggering and that the reader should proceed with caution.

One fic tagged with Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, also includes the tags: Seriously, this fic deals with some serious and disturbing content matter, mind the tags

Thanks for asking and happy reading!