Fire Lord Zuko Being Just A Bit Ferrel . And His Music Taste Is No Different

Jet graduates from food theft to swiping angsty tea servers

Rare Pair Month 2021 day 5: disguise

Zuko, your bf knows it’s you under there, you cannot hide from him😤😤 I love jetko so much🥺🥰

Once Ellie learns what a sleepover is, she regularly bullies Tommy into having them with her (he goes willingly but he makes her work for it nevertheless).

He's not only the cool Uncle tm but also the person she can talk to about stuff she doesn't always want to talk to Joel about, either because it would make him worry a lot or because it would be an incredibly awkward conversation she has no intention of having with him. Tommy knows how to keep a secret and he would never betray Ellie's trust.

They maneuver mattresses onto the living room floor and eat enough sugar to kill a small toddler. Most of the time, their nights consist of Ellie doing weird shit to his hair and painful face masks that she discovers in old magazines, watching movies Joel either deeply dislikes or doesn't want her to watch (trying to protect the last of her innocence, sweet attempt but futile, since nothing of that is left anyway), and gossiping; Tommy is GREAT at gossip.

Joel is a bit jealous that he isn't invited, but when he comes to pick her up in the mornings and sees her curled up with Tommy the exact same way he and Sarah would when he made his brother babysit, the bittersweet surge of affection is worth the comparably lonely night in his bed.

Ellie deserves every bit of family she can get.

MAI used WITTICISM.

It doesn’t affect enemy ZUKO!

I want a scene, post Azula reconciliation, where there's a quiet moment between her and Zuko and Iroh on Lu Ten's birthday when she starts laughing. She looks at Zuko and is like 'do you remember when Uncle and Lu Ten came back from Lu Ten's military training and we decided to jump him to test him?"

Iroh, who has not heard this story, is curious and confused as Zuko digs for the memory.

'Oh yeah! It was so late and we'd stayed up for hours! Mom sent us to bed but we wanted to stay up because' he looks at Iroh 'you were in your gift-giving phase and we wanted to see what you were going to bring us'

Azula continues the explanation to Iroh. 'We snuck into Lu Ten's room, we waited for HOURS.'

Iroh, bewildered but intrigued, nods. 'We had been delayed on our way home'.

'Right,' Azula continues. 'So we're almost asleep hiding behind Lu Ten's curtains and he FINALLY gets there. So we wait and then...'

Azula's giggles are punctured with a snort as Zuko continues the memory, looking at his sister as though it had been her idea, but he had been far too eager to see his cousin and play again.

'You charged and grabbed him; he screamed so loud. Then I tried to follow, but I had been tying knots in the curtain cords and got caught up and tore the whole thing off of the wall. We were all covered and couldn't see anything and you were still trying to fight him under the curtain-'

'While you were both screaming!!' Azula howls in laughter.

Iroh listens happily; beaming and very happy to hear an unheard tale.

Azula continues. 'He picked us up by our collars like it was nothing. I was still trying to fight. He puts us on the floor and says 'So help me Agni if you do that again I'll make sure Dad never has to buy gifts while on tour ever again.'

Iroh laughs at Azula's spot-on imitation if his late son.

Zuko laughs as well. 'But then we hugged him.'

'Oh he MELTED,' Azula adds. 'He hugged us back so tight. I... I think that had been the first hug we'd had in a while. We dogpiled in his bed and he told us stories until we passed out.'

'Which wasn't long.' Zuko says.

Iroh looks at the siblings as they reminisce; he wipes a tear and hugs them, hoping to emulate Lu Ten's hug that had once given them comfort they didn't know they needed.

'Thank you.' He says. 'He never shared that with me.'

'It... might not have seemed important.' Azula says, still getting used to hugs from her uncle. She awkwardly pats his arm as they part.

Iroh laughs. 'Or maybe he didn't want to admit to his father that he had been ambushed by children. But... often the things that may not seem important, in time, become the most special.'

The ghost of Lue Ten haunts the halls of the fire nation capital,

Ozai was not one who miscalculated often.

He had ordered the death of his nephew in the hopes of destroying his brother’s claim to the throne. It had worked, somewhat but what his wife then did, cemented the success. His nephew was dead, his father was dead, his brother was too emotionally destroyed to take the throne, which left Ozai to take it.

He shouldn’t have underestimated how annoying his nephew could be.

He had assumed he was imagining things the first time he looked out into the garden and saw a soldier with blood rolling down the side of his head, sitting with his son by the turtle duck pond. He blinked and the image was gone. It had meant nothing.

Until the image returned two weeks later practicing cartwheels with Azula and her acrobatic friend. That time the soldier had looked dead at him and smiled. It wasn’t a kind smile and Ozai shivered as the image disappeared.

The third time he saw the spirit, as Ozai had no other explanation for the apparition of his dead nephew, he was following behind Iroh, as he always did.

Iroh unknowingly walked the halls of the palace, with his son at his heals. That’s where Lu Ten decided to stay, until the night of the Agni Kai.

As Ozai burned his hand print into his son’s face, he made the mistake of looking up. Lu Ten stood over him, his eyes burning with fury even as blood slid down his forehead into them.

Ozai stumbled back, having never seen his nephew’s spirit up so close before. The men he had paid to kill him had apparently tried to crush his head, if the slightly deformed skull was anything to go by.

Ozai shook himself and left the arena.

Lu Ten was in his office. Ozai left.

Lu Ten was in his throne room. Ozai left.

Lu Ten was in his bedroom and Ozai realized he was now the one his nephew was following. Iroh and Zuko were gone and now Lu Ten was following him.

Ozai caved after a week of his new spirit stalker.

“What do you want?” Ozai finally asked, looking up at the corner Lu Ten stood in staring at him.

Lu Ten moved closer to him and Ozai backed up. Lu Ten was only interested in the paper and writing utensils on his desk.

The truth to be known.

“I can’t do that,” Ozai said.

Then get use to me.

Lu Ten faded from view again and Ozai sighed in relief before feeling something cold on his back. He reached behind him and his hand came back with blood. He turned around only to fall from his chair as Lu Ten, more corporeal then ever before, laughed at his fear.

---

He’s there for revenge, but also to watch over his cousins and take care of his dad.

I don’t think anyone has fully considered the potential of a feral zuko au.

Like, Ozai tries to kill him when he’s 10, but zuko escapes with a scar, Ozai claims he was killed by an assassin and Azula gets a redemption arc early.

Meanwhile zuko is off completely changing the corse of history by, in no particular order:

-Making Hama realize that not all fire benders are bad cause the child she just told about how she was in prison immediately his to instigate a jail break

-is emotionally adopted by hakoda along with most of the crew

-finds wan shi tong’s library

-befriends/is adopted by June the bounty hunter

-discovers a herd of flying bison

-joins a traveling acting troupe for a while cause he’s a theater nerd

-visits omashu and is forcibly befriended by bumi, who decides that zuko is now his grandson and no one can stop him

-discovers the white lotus, decides that they don’t do shit, and starts a hobby of breaking into their safe houses and wrecking them until they get off their asses and help with the war

-meets toph when some fire nation soldiers chase him to gaoling and she stops them, and her parents see her, but zuko does this little speech about how proud they must be of their daughter and how much they must trust and respect her since she’s such a powerful earth bender, and basically guilt trips them into letting toph continue to fight and practice bending

-gets a dragon tattoo 

-wanders into the swamp at some point

-drinks a bit more than he probably should, but he can hold it shockingly well

-figures out lightning bending in the middle of a thunderstorm 

-goes to ba sing se, gets arrested by the Dai li, breaks out, and starts a one man war with them, which basically is just zuko par core-ing around the city till he finds some Dai li, then rather beats the shit out of them, or just kill them. 

-He does it all with out fire bending though, just his swords. 

-After like a week the Dai li are basically gone, and the earth king finds out about the war, and makes zuko a part of the army, some fancy title and a medal or something, zuko is officially recognized as the dragon of the east, and proceeds to duck off to the North Pole to try and convince them to help in the war

-they don’t want to, but he befriends yue and they talk about politics and zuko helps her get out of the arranged marriage 

-zuko called Paku a sexist bitch and is surprised yet delighted to inform him that blood bending was invented by a woman

-invents lightning redirection

-the north joins the war thanks to yue 

-zuko meets the mechanist at the northern air temple at some point

-meets and joins the freedom fighters, makes out with jet, uses fire bending to save jets like, then jet tries to kill him

-the other kids understand that zuko is still good even though he’s a fire bender, but zuko leaves, even though every single kid adopted zuko as their older brother

-becomes known as the greatest swords man to ever live

-it’s actually true, and when piandao, who has Ali adopted zuko, hears that he is very proud and brags about it to everyone he meets

-basically zuko gets adopted by almost every adult he meets

-gets really good at cooking, hunting, reading maps, finding water, pick pocketing, stowing away on beats, sewing, and pretty much every other skill you would need to live on your own. 

-hears that Zhao has captured the avatar and casually breaks Aang out of prison

-refuses to be his firebending teacher and leaves

-stops at a village to tell them that the volcano next to them is about to explode, and he knows this cause he grew up in the fire nation which has a lot of volcanos

-they don’t believe him cause the fortune teller never said anything about it, zuko gets pissed and starts yelling at them

-this is the exact moment Aang Katara and sokka show up

-zuko thinks Aang is following him and tries to leave, but sokka recognizes him as the dragon of the east from a wanted poster

-they basically follow zuko around trying to convince him to help them, and he is this close to just beating them up when Katara mentions they are going to the northern water tribe to learn bending

-zuko agrees to go with them just so he can see Katara kick paku’s ass 

-obviously zuko and sokka get together at some point

-when the gaang finds joung joung zuko makes fun of him cause zuko was there when he broke up with piandao cause he was afraid of being found out (cause being gay was illegal) and piandao kicked his ass even though he’s a non bender

Meanwhile Azula thinks she could have prevented zukos death somehow, maybe helped him with his fire bending or hadn’t bullied him so much or something. 

Ozai kind of focused on her more and started to look down on her a lot more cause he couldn’t compare her to zuko. He put a lot more pressure on her and it drove her away from him, she started seeking his approval less and less, instead growing closer to her mom and uncle. Her mom was constantly worried she would screw up and Azula would die too, but she was Ali scared of making her think she was trying to replace zuko. But by being rather open with Azula about that it never really became an issue. 

Azula took up sword fighting and trained with piandao and she got a lot of character growth from that, cause she wasn’t naturally good at it and really had to work hard. Piandao was not someone she could bully or manipulate, so she had to struggle with earning someone’s approval. 

Piandao told her at some point that sword fighting was not something that came naturally to anyone, and you had to work hard your whole life to be really good. He also said zuko was the fastest learner and best student he had ever taught. Piandao believed that zuko could have easily surpassed piandao himself within a few years.

Azula gets to go to the war meeting that zuko got banished at in the show, she also says the plan is wrong, but in a much more eloquent way that doesn’t dishonor the fire lord but does dishonor the general. She fights an Agni Kai against the general and wins.

The plan is done anyway, (zuko finds that message and is able to warn both the earth kingdom troops and the squad of fire nation soldiers that where going to die, it starts the rumor that the dragon of the east is actually prince zuko and it spreads, some solders start to rebel against their commanders in the name of the prince) Azula finds out about it much later and raises all kinds of hell over it, calling Ozai an “honorless coward who betrays his people, unworthy of the throne” to his face in front of a bunch of people.

Azula gets banished for it, Iroh comes with her and she’s now basically zuko from the show, but tasked with finding and capturing the dragon of the east to prove her loyalty instead of the avatar. At this point she does not know that it’s zuko.

She finds zuko didn’t recognize him and fights him, but he’s better than her, and then she sees the knife that Iroh have zuko just before he “died” and puts two and two together and comes up with seven. She thinks the dragon of the east is the assassin that killed her brother.  It kind of makes sense, if the assassination was his first act of rebellion, cause a string of jail breaks followed. 

I’m not really sure where the story could go after that but there’s a lot of potential for an invasion, since zuko knows so many people. Imagine them all showing up to help and they’re all like “oh hey zuko” and the gaang turns to zuko and ask how he knows them and he’s just like “that’s my mom/dad” and it just makes them more confused.

favorite atla fics are the ones where the gaang finds out roku is zukos great grandfather and aang’s immediate reaction is to start hollering “GREAT GRANDSON!!!” at zuko like. aang’s 12 but is canonically the embodiment of embarrassing grandpa it’s perfect

I just remembered my second Pride, where I made different flag themed daisy chain bracelets/necklaces to hand out. I need folks to understand something:

They were free.

They were fucking free.

They were maybe ¢60 of acrylic yarn each at the most, and the whole ziploc bag of them took 2 hours max.

Three people gave me sad eyes until I took their money.

Someone who was clearly the mom friend of their group made me take a $5 and gave a 10 minute pep talk.

At least four more people insisted on getting change to pay for the, once again, free bracelets.

In spite of all these shenanigans, the absolute best was this one person who I can only describe as, “queer surfer dude who looks like a boyfriend who looks like a girlfriend.” I can remember nothing of the outfit, only the impeccable vibes. I did the same thing I did with everyone else, explaining the bracelets were free, and they nodded along as they took the last 6 strand rainbow bracelet. As soon as they had it on their wrist, they pointed at something over my shoulder and, like a fool, I looked.

Next thing I know, they’re running off cackling, yelling, “YOU’LL NEVER CATCH ME!” and I’m holding a fucking $20. I had to stop at least two people from chasing them, cause they thought the person stole something, and then they tried to give me money cause they thought it was funny seeing me flail over people being Too Nice.

That was the year I got reverse-robbed at Pride. I hope everyone out there is having a good time and, in particular, that queer surfer dude is out there still causing benevolent chaos.