Appa Enthusiast

everyone always writes jet as super suave and zuko getting all blushy and easily flustered and thats great but have you considered; jet tries laying on the charm and saying the lines. three quarters of the time zuko has no idea what he's talking abt and misses the insinuation entirely, sometimes throwing a 'none of that bullshit' look bc when he has no idea what ur saying he assumes hes being proverb'd on. the other quarter of the time is him just blinking confusedly in response and being like 'oh. uh. thanks?' and giving a sweet little smile. zuko, due to being an unsocialised gremlin boy, sometimes just says sorta romantic things in a super intense way seemingly out of nowhere - like 'you know, i think could stare into your eyes for hours and never get bored' - with literally zero shame or impulse control. every time, without fail, jet goes super wide eyed and stumbles over his feet and words, attempting to respond in the charismatic way but sounding so choked up and flustered that he butchers it every time (zuko thinks those attempts at suaveness are the cutest things hes ever seen and goes to hold jet's hand every time he gets like that)

ok but it’s like in season 1 when they’re penguin sledding and katara says “i haven’t done this since i was a kid!” and aang goes “you still ARE a kid!” and zuko tells him “you’re the avatar? but you’re just a child!” and aang responds “well you’re just a teenager” and then in season 3 aang is like “there were plenty of dragons when i was a kid” referring to one hundred years ago before the genocide of his people and now apparently the dragons because he not only is no longer a child in his own mind but in the last few months alone has come to feel the weight of the past hundred years and everything he still blames himself for and this is just another way he has failed the world and the world has failed him, failed to match up to his memory of it

today i’m sad about that one line from the creator’s commetary about how zuko is a tsungi horn prodigy and the little letter zuko, aged 7, sends iroh in “legacy of the fire nation” where he very politely requests that iroh come home and teach him pai sho tricks, because that casts such a different light on their interactions in book one.  it was never iroh trying to push his own favorite things - pai sho and music night - on an uninterested zuko, it was iroh desperately trying to reconnect with zuko by recreating the activities he knows zuko used to enjoy.  zuko, aged 7, once begged iroh to come home and play board games with him and now zuko wants nothing to do with him and you know that eats iroh up alive

NO THANK YOU. THIS IS TOO SAD FOR A FRIDAY MORNING.