Hi Guys! :)

A day off.

"you know... zuko is in his early 20. and he began around 17 to end the 100-year war his father and grandfather and great grandfather started. which is not easy, but three years passed, and we are getting somewhere. Not complaining! it's a honourable job! very important, likes doing it. working most days of the week till late in the night. began to nap during meditation in the morning just to safe time you know? but... why do people care so much about what zuko wears??? or if he doesn't brush his hair? zuko is fire lord! zuko is dismantling the military damn it! no mor need for heavy armour and stuffy shoulder collars to show dumb stuff like "dominance" and send the message of "fear me". we are advertising peace here! the only people complaining are some old stuffy council men. and most of the time they don't even say anything. like hello?! Zuko’s eyes are up here! On second thought... maybe they are looking at the lightning scar? why does it matter when the robes are a bit loose, and not proper and not very formal? what is wrong with sitting over eight hours a day on a chair wearing comfy clothing? the teashop uniform were scratch and later heavy. but they were at least comfy! and it is easier to run form one meeting to the next one in comfy clothing. Zuko has a easier time to climb form one floor to the next one or slide down the cloth banners. why are no elevator in the palace? there should be elevators int he palace! also the fire nation is HOT! it’s the fire nation of course it’s hot, and humid, and summer has random monsoon. and sometimes the volcano make some smaller earthquakes. so why do people care when zuko shows a bit more skin? you know... you are right! zuko deserves to dress a bit slutty as a treat!"

I don’t even know the proper reaction or gif to give you because I am completely floored right now...

What an amazing piece of art you have created and I’m just honored that you like my story enough to make something this wonderfully-angsty.

Now excuse me while I stare at this for the next hour or so...

If you wanna read it well, just heed the tags my friends, but here you go... LIAB <3

in most languages the word for ‘mother’ usually starts with an M, because phonetically [m] is one of the easiest sounds for a newborn to make when they start babbling, and mothers tend to be the one most around the child. so in my mind that crosses M off the list, because it’s automatically associated with a feminine figure

similarly, ‘father’ tends to start with D, T, P, or B. (phonetically these sounds are very close together; [p, b] and [d, t] are all only different because of being voiced or unvoiced.) these are also phonetically easy letters and ones kids pick up on earlier.

now the hard sounds for kids are the following: [ɹ, d͡ʒ, tʃ, θ, ð] or in normal speak: the English R, the “j” or “dge” sound in “judge,” the “th” sound in “thigh” and the “th” sound in “the.” and we don’t want kids unable to say their parent’s name for years, so those are also off the list.

additionally, it’s easiest for young kids to just repeat the same sound twice rather than figuring out the tongue gymnastics of putting different sounds together, which is why kids will say Ma-Ma or Da-Da and not Ma-Mo or Da-Po. and we’ll want to stick with low back vowels like “ah” and avoid ones like the hard “i” or “ee.”

so what does that leave us? when we want a sound kids can learn easily and early but don’t want to just put a funky spin on “mama” or “dada”?

my suggestions: G, K, W, L. i personally lean towards W and L. they’re called liquids, since they’re the consonants that kind of aren’t consonants, and kids (and ESL learners) will tend to swap out the English R for a W or L until they can learn the R.

if i ever have a child, they’ll start calling me Wawa. then when they get older, they’ll call me Wala, or maybe even Wally.

and then, once they’re finally phonetically developed, they can call me by my true title as their nonbinary guardian for their 18+ years:

In most stories and the like that feature him they focus on his strength, or his heroism, or his fame/ glory, and while that’s all well and good there’s one thing that never really seems to get talked about (or if it is it’s mentioned briefly and then glossed over)…

The fact that he went completely mad via divine intervention and murdered his family. Which is the part of his story I’m actually kinda fascinated by.

Like imagine, you’re a guy whose semi famous in your home town, you’ve done one or two impressive things, the King likes you and lets you marry his daughter, you have (at least) two kids, life is good.

Then one day you black out, and when you come two, you are informed that you went into a homicidal rage and murdered your wife and children with your own two hands.

What does that do to a person?

We know that afterwords he went to the Oracle of Delphi and she Eurystheus to do penance, but what kind of emotional state was he in when it happened? what kind of emotional state was he in when he started the Labors? The Labors took a few years to complete, so how did he feel by the end of them? In the middle?

How long did he take to figure out it was Hera that drove him mad? Did he ever find out? Did he just live his whole life thinking “This is just a thing that can happen to me at any time. At random, I could just go mad and kill someone I care about”.

It wouldn’t be too hard to believe. After all, IT HAPPENED AGAIN.

He made a friend named Iphitus, and Hera drove Heracles into a homicidal rage AGAIN.

And he had to go on a quest for penance.

AGAIN.

Do you think that had an effect on his ability to connect with people? Do you think he started to form a mindset of “If I stick around one person too long, I could just one day kill them without ever really knowing why”.