ZUKO LOOKS MORE LIKE URSA, NOT LIKE OZAI

I saw this tumblr post and HAD to draw it, please accept my humble A:TLA offering.

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

Doodles of Zue au

Artist Zuko really is one of the best things in the world!!😍

HE IS!! I love the idea of it being therapeutic for him (hence his characterization in All the Lights are Shining). I also love the idea of him just being super casual about it. I headcanon that it was something he had to learn as part of his formal education like all of the other noble kids, but he just became exceptional at it. His mother encouraged him (of course) and Iroh continued to do so once Zuko was in his care. So Zuko is just like, “Yeah. This is a skill I was required to learn, but it’s also one of my favorite hobbies and it helps me work through all of my emotions and trauma. And I guess I’m kind of decent at it?”

Also, when the Gaang finds out he can draw, Suki and Toph mercilessly tease Sokka about how much better an artist Zuko is than him. And Katara and Aang want Zuko to teach them how to draw. They keep asking him and he finally relents. It turns out Aang is pretty decent, but Katara is just as bad as Sokka. Zuko is just perplexed by that because Katara excels at so many things, so how is she so bad at this?

(I just have a lot of ideas surrounding artist!Zuko. 🥰)

Okay I’ve seen aus with Jet going to the Boiling Rock after Ba Sing Se and aus where Zuko fights Azula and gets sent to the Boiling Rock, but, consider, both

They both get arrested and Zuko has to explain to Jet that yes, he’s a firebender, and yes he’s the prince of the fire nation, and yes he hunted the avatar across the whole world, but he’s totally good now and Jet has to process that he tried to recruit the literal fire prince into his gang

Zuko gets thrown into the cooler very regularly, almost as much as Jet gets put in solitary, because they rarely last more than ten minutes in the same room before Jet tries to start a brawl. After a while he’s not even angry, it’s just kinda boring in prison and Zuko fights good

Suki recognises Zuko immediately, but after she hears why he’s in prison and watches Jet almost throw him off a ledge several times, she decides to forgive him

Thus starts the weirdest friendship trio ever

They actually work really well together, because Suki supplies the group brain cell, Jet gives them terrible ideas, and Zuko carries them out

The other prisoners and some of the guards quickly recognise that the three most dangerous inmates are teenagers, and now that they’re working together, all they can do is pray. They all end up teaching each other fighting forms they know, and Suki discovers Zuko is a total avatar nerd and thinks Kyoshi was the best avatar since Wan (she approves of his assessment)

Suki plays the ‘you burned down my village’ card exactly once. Jet uses ‘you burned down Suki’s village’ almost daily to get Zuko to do things

Sokka arrives looking for his dad and spots Suki in the yard distracting a guard while Jet keeps watch and Zuko steals his keys. He thinks they’re actually planning a break out, but no, Jet just wanted to fuck with the guards and see if Zuko could melt metal

(They’ve tried escaping, but Suki usually stops them because Jet suggests tying all their blankets together, stealing a messenger hawk and training it to tie the rope to a rock across the boiling lake and climbing across that. Zuko, who has never had a plan beyond ‘break into the maximum security stronghold and go from there’, is 100% on board)

When Hakoda arrives and the other inmates warn him not to piss off the three teenage prisoners, he thinks they’re joking. They’re not. He reevaluates when he sees Jet start a riot in less than ten seconds, Suki kidnap the warden, and Zuko break the gondola lever and jump across a boiling lake

Sokka comes back from his fishing trip with four missing people and no fish

Bonus: Suki: “this is my boyfriend Sokka and his boyfriend Zuko and his boyfriend Jet”

this was funnier in my head 😭

cant stop thinking about this

Zukka neighbors AU, enemies to lovers 100k+

while it's not the same story i got the idea from @kurisu-80's neighbors AU comic, which i definitely recommend checking out, i think about it a lot

what is wrong with him