I'm not easy to get rid of

Autistic brazilian, bisexual cis woman, 26 years old, PROSHIP, best friend of @dragomer

[hello-nichya-still-here]

The Zucest Never Ends

Tumblr terminated my goddamn account after I reported a bot. Until they fix that shit, the degeneracy lives on here.

Support this currently unemployed, banned freak with 5 or 10 dollars to buy her a tasty meal and pay the internet bills

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[hello-nichya-still-here]

I hope you’re okay after that tornado! the news sounds so horrible

I am, electricity and internet connection finally seem stable again, town is still a mess with all the trees, parts of roofs, and broken concrete shit blocking certain roads, though at least there's far less wires loose from the poles.

Am enjoying the memes (because Brazil's gonna Brazil) but am VERY annoyed at some news reports going "Oh, it wasn't a tornado, it was just REALLY strong winds."

My guy. My pal. My brother in Christ. It was a HELLISH wind that was sending people, motorcycles, trees and parts of houses flying, killed someone, scared the shit out of people that are more than used to Rio's harsh winds, threw the entire state into utter chaos, happened after a sudden spike in temperature, had weathermen warning everyone "shit's about to get serious, take shelter", and in pretty much every decent video make of it you can see that shit spinning across the state. This shit is known as a TORNADO!!!!!

[hello-nichya-still-here]

God, me having tornados as one of my special interests was NOT a prayer for one to actually hit Rio De Janeiro, wreck our shit, and make me go to cousin's house to assure people I'm alive, just without internet or power. Do better next time.

[hello-nichya-still-here]

If they don't restore your account, I'm burning down Tumblr headquaters. I've got them under a gun point, Nichya, don't worry, I gotchu. <3

Thank you, friend. The worst part is the wait, I am NOT a patient person and I get anxious over anything, so knowing "The earliest I'll get a response from an actual human is two to three weeks" is making me scream internally every 15 minutes XD

[hello-nichya-still-here]

NOOO they nuked you!!?? They really hate to see a girlboss with correct opinions winning 💔 Glad you're back, friend 🫶❤️‍🔥 Keep being awesome and zucestuous

Thank yoouuuuuu, am still waiting on a response from tumblr, in the meantime am trying to find back my mutuals and archiving old posts I can find through reblogs since tumblr makes finding posts from deactiveted accounts really difficult.

And the zucest will live on, don't worry!

[b5ffy]

incestuous discourse as a swiftian thematic concern

[hylialeia]

everyone who doesn't include the full quote when mocking GRRM's "what was Aragorn's tax policy" rhetorical question owes me $200

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

#we as a society need to move past this 'lotr is above criticism' mindset #'grrm totally missed the point of lotr!!' no YOU missed the point of that quote and also asoiaf #how does no one include the 'what did they do with the rest of the orcs? did they kill the little baby ones too?' part? #the point isn't dismissive of tolkien it's critical of modern fantasy's tendency to avoid these questions #and opt instead for a black and white conflict that doesn't examine the humanity on either side #grrm has gone on about how he admires tolkien. taking a quote that expresses his desire for fantasy to expand and explore #and claiming it's some sort of faux intellectualism just because it makes you uncomfortable #is incredibly small minded and harmful actually and I'm sick of pretending it's not

[hylialeia]

and y'know what, for the hell of it and because none of y'all can use Google, let's drop the full quote right here:

"Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?"

ah yes clearly the words of some hack who just Doesn't Get It the way I do. get a load of Faux Intellectual GRRM daring to suggest that people in power face difficult choices and are vulnerable to basic individual flaws that may have consequences for the people they're ruling. curse him and his grimdark nihilism where characters are unreliable and have conflicts and live in harmful systems which surely are just there to be Grimdark and not to encourage me to analyze or engage with the text in any way. him and those Game of Thrones books (that I never read all the way through if at all but I saw some of the show, which must make me an expert just like watching the LotR movies did) singlehandedly ruined my Good Pure Fantasy where the good guys are pretty elves and the bad guys are all irredeemable and darker skinned but don't think about that part too deeply it was a different time :( man don't you miss the good old days when fantasy was Pure and Happy

[dragomer]

Literally all of that except the taxes bit is answered by Tolkien and LOTR lore and even stuff said in LOTR BEFORE anything is concluded.

So yes, those are the exact words of a hack who didn't get it and you're not adding nuance by missing the entire context and history of discourse that led to the mockery being shortened to the 'tax policy' bit, you're just being long winded and repeating a settled argument.

[ackermental]

As much as I love asoiaf and am forever cursed with sharing fandom with football watchers for whom got, hotd and kotsk shows were created, grrm made absolutely no sense with the quote above and completely ignored the fucking genre he was talking about.

It's not just lotr that is "above criticism", it's most of classic fantasy books, because people look at them in the context of genre and times they were written in. Which is the basic rule of studying any literature.

We're not years later grilling Le Guin about Gont vs Roke economy rate. We're not dragging Andre Norton from her grave to ask her about the exact industrialization of Gorm and how the hell is it working with the rest of the Witchworld. Nobody asks if Gordon R. Dickinson made exact calculations on how much food is needed to keep dragons alive or if small harpies were also evil.

And that's because all of them were busy with other, more important and crucial plotlines in their stories. Author is not capable of putting all of the worldbuilding details into their books, nor should they even try, because with that mindset they would never finish their story. I actually think this is why grrm is stuck with wow and why his publisher should've sued him years ago.

Mind you, just because they're not putting that information in their books doesn't mean that they don't have those things covered. Which Tolkien very much did, so Martin's mumbling nonesense is falling on many fronts.

The other side of this argument is the infamous "it wasn't important for Bella's story" from Stephanie Meyer, who cut out all of the more interesting characters and their stories from Twilight, so they would not overshadow her protagonist and did it to a point where you were absolutely done with the character at times.

Tbh, if I were to choose, I would pick Stephanie Fucking Meyer's philosophy over GRRM's, if only because it makes more coherent story for the reader.

You put too much "ummm akshually" into mythical or fantasy setting and you end up with Nolan's Odyssey slop or Villainhuehue Dune Brutalism fuckery.

GRRM is a hack, who can contradict himself in the same interview. (vietnamflashbacks to his stans comming to my askbox with "bbbut martin said hotd is the official, canon version" when i dropped it after five episodes and said hbo absolutely butchered the books, only for him to change his tune a few months later and start whining about the same company fucking up his story again, who would have thought???? not to mention him going from "well, directors would go crazy if they didn't change anything in adaptations and sequels idk why fans are so angry are you even a fan if you don't like it??? " to "if you change even a small detail, everything goes to shit", oh yeah, the writing authority of our times, truly)

[dragomer]

Let's not forget that GRR himself is falling WAY short of his own standards. We know basically nothing of the Seven Kingdoms' economy, let alone their taxation policy and the Lannisters are rich cause they have infinite gold, without any care for how that would massively devalue gold, especially in a society that doesn't need it as a conductor.

Or the North, we know nothing of their economy or how they even survive their climate and years long Winters, IIRC GRR even had to handwave it with a magical 'winter wheat' that just keep growing even in a climate that make Siberia look warm and Ned is considered a just and skilled ruler who made it so women were safe even to travel long distances alone but no mention is made to his policy to accomplish that.

[hello-nichya-still-here]

heyyyy bestie 🥺 1000% feel free to ignore this. I am asking something HUGE & it would be fair to say “do your own research” or even just not answer.

I am always trying to explain to people that I have done the research & I feel the evidence that Michael Jackson is a pedophile is minimal & while I support victims as a rule I feel this case is more complex than people make it.

Consistently I am told I am not listening to victims blah blah blah.

Are there a handful of easy sources I can quote or arguments I can make to minimize how difficult this topic is??? I am so so so tired of defending MJ everytime this topic is breached.

Believe it or not, what I'm about to describe to you is the SHORT explanation of how Michael being innocent is the only logical conclusion and why the people who argue against it are the ones who are ignoring CONFIRMED survivors of abuse *cracks knuckles*

What People Don't Want You To Know

1 - Evan Chandler, the father of Jordan Chandler, the first boy to ever claim to have been abused by Michael was recorded admiting on a call that he didn't care about his son's well-being at all, would ruin Michael by getting the nastiest legal team that would "get him everything he wanted" (which was a movie deal that he flat out tried to blackmail Michael for), and was going to punish his ex-wife, June Chandler, for not siding with him by making sure she never got to see their son again.

June testified that she did not believe Michael ever touched her son. Jordan, got emancipated from his father, acccused him of TRYING TO MURDER HIM, and has largely disappeared from the public eye (aside from the odd, quickly deleted tweet praising Michael and/or lamenting his death), with people who were in his life and agreed to speak to the media at all only ever saying "Jordan is okay and he does not believe Michael ever abused anyone." It's always "believe the victims!" until the victims don't say what they wanna hear.

As for Evan Chandler, the bastard did everyone a favor and killed himself mere months after Michael's death.

2 - Michael was FORCED into settling the Jordan Chandler CIVIL case (not a CRIMINAL one, like people who love saying he "bought victims' silence" claim, Jordan and everyone associated with him was free to testify in court, it just so happened that the only one willing to do so DEFENDED Michael) for several reasons.

He was in the middle of a tour (and the people who would make money off of it went as far as trying to settle with Evan Chandler WITHOUT MICHAEL'S PERMISSION), he had just gone to rehab for his addiction to painkillers, and, most importantly, in a violation of his rights, the civil trial would happen without need for a criminal one, meaning that, if Evan tried to sue again, his team would know his entire defense and have months or even years to work around it, skyrocketing the chance of a guilty veredict regardless of evidence, and Michael wasn't going to risk being sent to prison unfairly.

All the "evidence" (except one that will be adressed in the former topic) that would be used in the Jordan case was allowed to be looked at in the Arvizo case a decade later, and the prosecutor of both, Tom Sneddon, was bragging about how he'd "get Michael" twice over... only to be laughed out of court.

3 - There was a body-search the prosecution forced Michael to agree to, in which he would have several photos taken of his body, focusing on the genitals. This was deeply traumatic for a man known for having been a victim of sexual harrassment and physical abuse since he was a child, on top of a history of self-image issues that led to him covering mirrors and developing an eating disorder... yet Michael was not the one who tried to prevent these from being used as evidence in court, Evan Chandler was the one who made that move.

Why? Because the pictures did not match his son's descriptions (which had eggregious claims like Michael being circumscized when the photos proved he wasn't) proving that, despite claiming he had been forced do to several sexual acts with Michael for months, Jordan had clearly never seen the man naked.

4 - The book "Michael Jackson was my LOVER", written by Victor Gutierrez, a proud, confessed pedophile associated with the evil organization that is NAMBLA, claims to be based on Jordan Chandler's "secret diary." Jordan has repeatedly stated this is false, and even his acusations don't match what's described in the book - which is nothing but the disgusting fantasies of Gutierrez, who made up things like a "secret wedding, with rings and vows" in an attempt to portray that kind of thing as ROMANTIC, hence the "LOVER" part of the title.

Gutierrez also claimed to have video proof of Michael having sex with his nephew, Taj Jackson (who defends his uncle to this day), as well as lover letters he had sent to children. Gutierrez was sued for his claims, failed to hand over all of this supposed damning evidence, lost the trial, and fled the country to avoid facing consequences. 90% of all the more outlandish claims against Michael come from him, since before fleeing, he went to every sensationalist TV show ever, to give plenty of lengthy interviews about all the "proof" he supposedly had, yet none of it ever materialized, because it was all bullshit from a delusional creep that had the explicit intention of making people think pedophilia was GOOD.

5 - The Arvizos (the family of the 2003 case) were proven to be scammers, with them having already confessed to falsely accusing a security guard at a store they had been shoplifting at of sexually assaulting the mother. Their claims against Michael included being forced to sell their home and all their belongings to go live with him (which was easily disproved) and that he was trying to kidnap them all to Brazil VIA HOT-AIR BALOON.

Their nonsense is often backed by garbage-with-legs, Martin Bashir, a """journalist""", who was behind the slanderous """documentary" Living With Michael Jackson, in which footage was maliciously edited to make Michael look bad (which was proven by Michael's team releasing the real thing in "The Footage You Were Never Meant To See"). Bashir was also exposed repeatedly for things such as forging documents to manipulate and gain access to other powerful people he had access to, including princess Diana, whose family has denounced him repeatedly.

6 - Tom Sneddon, the prosecutor in both the 1993 and 2003 cases, was repeatedly accused of racism by Michael. He responded to these accusations by yelling racist insults at him outside of court and giving interviews saying he'd never listen to "his kind" of music.

He also tried to "prove" Michael gave Gavin Arvizo pornographic material for them to look at and masturbate together by... taking a porn magazine out of a protective case, making Gavin hold it IN FRONT OF THE JUDGE AND JURY, putting it back on the case, and tell brag that he knew the boys fingertips would be in it.

People were not impressed by this. Much like they weren't impressed by his attempt to label all the lesbian porn found Michael's computer as "gay (male) porn" and thus proof he was interested in little boys. Am still surprised he at least he knew better than to claim Michael repeatedly looking up porn of women who were OLDER than him meant he liked kids.

8 - The so-called "eye witnesses" against Michael, that went to TV or to court against him, were former employees that had been fired for things like stealing from his homes, made claims that contradict even the accusers (a woman claimed to have seen Michael abuse Jordan in one of the showers at Neverland, but Jordan claimed he was abused ON TOUR IN EUROPE, not at Michael's ranch in the USA), and most of them admited to having been PAID by sensationalist media to just validate whatever crazy stories they made up. Understandably, their testimonies were considered useless and unreliable.

9 - LaToya Jackson, Michael's sister, was forced by her husband (who had been abusing her verbally, physically and sexually) to claim she had "proof" her brother was a pedophile. Guilters love using "his own sister said it" as proof, conveniently ignoring that, the second LaToya was freed from her abuser (after he tried to murder her, no less) she came clean about it all being lies she had been forced to say at gun-point.

Paris Jackson, Michael's daughter, is also often pointed at by stupid people as "hinting at something" for not defending her father publically more often (because she DOES do it on occasion, despite what these liars claim), despite the fact that she has repeatedly said that the reason for it is how triggering and painful it is to hear someone she loved so much, and lost so young, be talked about in such a vile context, especially when she's been a victim of sexual abuse herself.

Again "believe survivors" until what they say is not convenient.

10 - Taj Jackson, Brett Barners and Macauley Culkin are three names frequently thrown around as potential/confirmed victims of Michael, despite the fact that all three defend him to this day and have gone as far as taking legal action against people over misrepresenting their dynamics with Michael.

11 - The FBI began investigating Michael since the very first accusation, and it went on for over a decade. Random raids of all his properties for years, every phone call being recorded, every device monitored, and even cutting into mattresses in case something was hidden inside. Nothing was ever found, and these files have been public since his death in 2009. Despite this, nonsense narratives of him threatening victims over the phone or owning any kind of CSAM or having any connection to criminals like Diddy or Epstein (whose victims have accused literal presidents of every crime imaginable yet insist Michael had nothing to do with anything) are pushed as fact against all evidence.

12 - James Safechuck and Wade Robson, accused Michael of abuse in the 2014 """documentary""" Leaving Neverland... when the former was broke and the latter had just lost his job at the Cirque Du Solei homage show to Michael. They've full on used Victor Gutierrez's book as inspiration for their false accusations, down to the secret wedding shit, which I remind you, is literally pro-pedophilia propaganda.

The """documentary""" has been caught in several lies, including editing pictures and videos to make it seem like Michael was alone with them when he wasn't or admired Hitler and thus was "obsessed with white children" (nooooothing racist about this MJ witchhunt, oh no, no, no), claiming they were molested in places that did not yet exist during the entire people in which they were supposedly "romanctically involved with Michael" (like the Neverland Train Station), stating Michael never let them meet each other as kids to keep them from finding out they weren't the only ones "dating" him despite footage of them together during that time, or in towns Michael never went to, or Wade claiming Michael spent years "training" him to be disgusted by women when the truth is Michael set him up with his niece whom Wade dated for SEVEN WHOLE YEARS!

The director is also a fame-hungry weirdo that keeps going "The SECOND part of the documentary will reveal all the evidence! Just give me 3 more years! There! Second part is out! Oh, you're still not convinced? That's because the THIRD part will be the one I'll reveal all the evidence in! Trust me, guys!"

13 - THE PARENTS WERE ALWAYS AROUND! All claims that parents weren't allowed in Michael's room, or in the house, when their kids were there, are absolutely false. Michael's room was ridiculously huge exactly because he wanted to accomodate all his guests there with him. It wasn't "Michael fully alone with two or three kids all night, and only they know what truly happened" like people say, it was "Michael with two or three ENTIRE FAMILIES, aka plenty of adults that could quickly identify any suspicious behavior and not only put a stop to it, but call the police." This is part of why the 2003 Chandler/Arvizo trial ended with Michael being declared innocent in record time and why no court has accepted the Robson/Safechuck lawsuits against the MJ Estate. There were literal dozens of eye-witnesses that could, and did, testify in Michael's defense.

14 - While Neverland, the ranch, was visited by children brought on by charities like Make A Wish, Michael's actual home inside it was off limits when he wasn't around - which was quite often considering his busy schedule of recoring and touring (on top of the fact he mostly stayed at the properties of Lisa Marie Presley while they were married from 1994-1996). Speaking of Lisa...

15 - Michael and Lisa's short-lived marriage is often dismissed as a mere PR stunt by people who either don't know, or don't want you to know, that they were actually together for almost decade. Lisa and Michael became friends in 1992, began an emotional (and perhaps de facto) affair at some point between late 1993-early 1994 while she was still married to her first husband, their relationship became official when they got married in May, and the divorce in 1996 wasn't the end for them, as they were on and off from 1997-2001. Everyone close to Michael said he loved Lisa until his death, which wrecked her with grief, and Lisa repeatedly said that, if people hadn't meddled, the two of them would have been together until the end. Lisa is also a survivor of CSA, as her mother allowed one of her ex-boyfriends to abuse her, and has always said that Michael never, ever behaved inappropriately with any kids.

16 - The recent accusers, the Cascios, got in serious trouble with the Jackson family, as well as MJ fans, all the way back in 2010 for selling "MJ songs" (that were clearly not sang by him at all) to the estate to be added to the posthumous album "Michael", which led to a lawsuit and the removal of the songs from the tracklist. They've also written books about being Michael's "saviors", and have joined tons of vultures in having unauthorized access to his possessitions (such as letters, jewels, clothes and even underwear) in the chaos after his death, flat out stealing it all and selling it to collectors and tabloids. They have zero credibility and are just gross scammers trying to make more money off of a dead man whose memory they have already disrespected in every way imaginable for over a decade.

Hope this helps you out, friend! Now, if you'll excuse me *collapses onto the floor in exhaustion*

[vieneri]

THE BORGIAS | 3.09: The Gunpowder Plot HOLLIDAY GRAINGER as LUCREZIA BORGIA FRANÇOIS ARNAUD as CESARE BORGIA

[buffysummers]

Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia in season two of The Borgias (2011-2013)

[dailyborgia]

DAILYBORGIA 2K EVENT: FAVORITE EPISODES PER SEASON ACCORDING TO OUR FOLLOWERS ↳ [EPISODE 9] (Season1) | by fish (@fishalthor)

[hello-nichya-here]

Hello, Nichya. My question is probably very inappropriate, so I apologize in advance. I saw some Americans claiming, that Spanish & Portuguese are colonizer languages. However, these are the most spoken languages in latin countries. Again, I don't agree with such statements, just curious what real Latinos & Latinas would say to it.

Ah, the irony of americans, who speak ENGLISH because they were colonized by ENGLAND, and who made american-english become so wide-spread in the entire world through both imperialism cultural imperialism and invading other countries and placing military basis and/or overthrowing their governments over and over, realizing "Wait, latin america speaks spanish and portuguese (as well as french and dutch in some places) because europe colonized them, that's problematic."

Now, obviously spanish and portuguese were brought to latin america as "colonizer languages", aka to further erase the native languages, and cultures. However you'd be surprised at how complex a topic can become after over 500 years.

Languages are living things, and no two places have the exact same relationship to it. That's how accents, slang, dialects, and eventually new languages, come to be. I have a much easier time understanding modern spanish, italian or french than I do understanding OLD portuguese, despite being brazilian. To me it just looks like a language Tolkien made up. It's too different.

In the same vein, the spanish spoken in Spain today is not the same as the one spoken 500 years ago, and is also not the same as the one spoken in Mexico today - which is also not the same as the one spoken in Argentina, or Venezuela or Chile. And that happens not only due to the distance, but due to what other languages (from bordering countries, immigrants or surviving native tribes) have an influence on the "main" one. I lost count of how many times I was mindblown to discover some random word that I use everyday is NOT portuguese, but rather an old word from languages of brazilian native tribes.

That also ties into two other details that people often forget in that discussion of "you're speaking the language of your opressor and passing on their legacy":

1 - The native tribes were NOT all buddies with each other, and their languages also became dominant for so long because they conquered or killed all their rivals. Like any people group, they had the ones they were allied with, the ones they were neutral on, and the ones they fucking hated. There were groups that tried to isolate themselves as much as possible, others that sought out alliances without any form of merging, and some that went full "I want an empire" mode. The historical tendency of just erasing all that complexity and pretending they were one large homogenous group with a generically peaceful "culture", instead of being as complex and messy as europe, is as racist of a generalization as "They're all a bunch of blood thirsty savages that will kill anything in their path, including each other"

2 - Languages like european portuguese and spanish ALSO were influenced by other languages, often of groups they were at war with or even invaded by, and passed on their legacy too - portuguese has A LOT of arabic influence for exemple. The broad generalization of "Europe colonized the world" is useful in a lot of cases, but also dangerous in others, as it ignores that europe is not magically immune to being influenced by other cultures (sometimes through brutal means).

That last one is also THE main thing that this "these are colonizer languages" discourse misses: it ignores that europeans are not the only ones who can influence others, and that sometimes their tactics backfire.

Portugal conquering a place as large as Brazil, with a HUGE population was itself a power move... but as a consequence, we out-number them to a comical degree. Meaning people are far more likely to learn brazilian portuguese than european portuguese, something a lot of people in Portugal are rather salty about - and that's without taking into consideration that they themselves consume a LOT of brazilian media, but the reverse is not true. It got to the point of there being parents in Portugal freaking the fuck out because their kids could only speak "brazilian" (and we made them even more mad with the "Let's change Portugal's name to Brazilian Guyana" jokes).

That's why latinos tend to get mad at foreigners (especially americans) who assume we somehow don't realize "Oh, we speak these languages because we were colonized." It's condescending and ignores how much of our cultures and identities, by necessity, are built on the basis of us going "Fuck off, this is MINE now, and I'm doing MY thing with it." It crosses the line from a genuine conversation about colonialism to "Let me explain your situation to you since you're too dumb to get it"

[theoneandonlylobster]

I have no idea if you are a linguist or not, Nichya, but if not, this is the most well articulated explanation I've ever seen from someone who isn't, in my professional opinion. So props for that. If you are, well done for explaining it in a way that laypeople can grasp!

[hello-nichya-still-here]

Ah, the first post that got me your attention, @theoneandonlylobster

[hello-nichya-still-here]

The Zucest Never Ends

Tumblr terminated my goddamn account after I reported a bot. Until they fix that shit, the degeneracy lives on here.

Support this currently unemployed, banned freak with 5 or 10 dollars to buy her a tasty meal and pay the internet bills

Support Hello-Nichya-Here

Support Hello-Nichya-Here

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

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.

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

Have you noted how when it comes to Mai & Ty Lee, Azula has no qualms letting them know that in the long run, their voice doesn't matter. She think she knows what's better for them. However when it's Zuko, she also does think she knows what's better for him, that she knows what he wants deep inside, but it matters to her that this choice is not foisted upon him. She wants him to have freedom of choice, she wants the loyalty of the prince of the FN on its side/her brother on her side GENUINELY, not compulsorily. So like, does that mean Azula is classist towards her own friends because they're not royalty? Does she, in a way, have more respect for Zuko than she has for her friends?

While Zuko out-ranking both Mai and Ty Lee in Azula's mind because, instead of just being a noble like them, he is a royal like her, is indeed one of the reasons why she allowed him to choose, but it's not the only one (and even then we have moments like Azula not punishing Mai for explicitly disobeying her in The Drill, something very few people would get away with, nobility/royalty or not).

For starters, while at first Mai and Ty Lee didn't want to fully cut Azula out of their lives, they wanted to be able to decide how close she could get to them, how much influence she'd have over their lives - they wanted her as their friend, not as the princess they MUST obey. Mai and Ty Lee wanted to be able to leave, even if not permanently. Meanwhile, Zuko wanted to come back. Even after all the horrible things their family put him through, he still wanted to be part of it.

Of course Azula, the control-freak with severe abandonment issues, is going to offer a choice to the person that actively wants to return to their toxic cycle, not to the ones that are trying to break it. Of course she'll be more leanient with the person that is trying to be in her life and more hostile to the ones that are, in her eyes, pushing her away. And we see in the last few episodes that, when Zuko regreted his choice, any sympathy, compassion and respect she ever had for him was suppressed and she went for the "I'm going to celebrate becoming an only child" approach because Azula can't handle rejection.

There's also her loyalty to the Fire Nation, and more importantly to Ozai, to take into account as well. When she's reunited with Mai and Ty Lee in book 2, she's not demanding them to simply keep her company, she's recruiting them for a mission because she genuinely believes they're far more competent for the job than anyone else, and she's right. Ozai is canonically the person Azula loves the most in the whole world, and she takes her role as princess, and possible future Fire Lord, VERY seriously. She might care about her friends in her own way, but they're gonna have to understand that what they want is simply not as as important to her as what Ozai wants and what Azula believes is best for the Fire Nation - and if they want to turn their backs on her when she's doing right their country and Fire Lord, then they are forgetting their place and need to be reminded of it, and in fact should be thankful that is "allowing them to correct their behavior" instead of going labelling them as traitors right away.

And then there's Zuko. The banished prince that is likely never going to be allowed home again. The one that went against Azula for the Avatar - but not to help the Avatar. His intention is not to harm the Fire Nation, but to prove his loyalty to it. Sure, he's doing it by stealing a big opportunity from his sister and princess, but I think we all know Azula would do the same. By doing this he is also showing that he is no longer the "weak" child that cowered before a fight, because let's face it, Azula might understand what the pain of desperately trying to live up to impossible standards feels like, but she is yet to realize that Ozai is in the wrong for imposing said standards on them.

Zuko is not a disobedient ally/subordinate, he's an enemy that is showing he can be VERY useful, provided he is given what he wants. He also cannot and will not be intimidated - literally everytime Azula is posing any kind of threat to him during the entirity of book 2, Zuko ALWAYS goes straight into fight mode. That boy has, through sheer stubborness instead of cunning, put himself in a position in which Azula won't achieve anything by threatening him, and would actually have more to gain by working with him instead of against him.

Not to mention: making a mutually benefitial deal with an enemy and thus bringing them over to your side is a smart move and thus something to be proud of. Offering your enemy deal, having them reject it, and then you crush them like you would have done if the deal had never been offered is still pretty badass and means that, while you didn't win anything new, you didn't lose something you already had either. But failing to control your subordinates? That's humiliating because it proves you're not as scary/powerful as you thought.

And, at last, we have a fact that the lead writer, Aaron Ehasz, made explicit when he was talking about a possible Azula redemption if Avatar had gotten a fourth season: Zuko would have been the one guiding Azula through it because he's the person she loves the most after Ozai.

OF COURSE he gets perks Mai and Ty Lee didn't get. They matter to her, but not as much as Zuko. They're her friends, but he's her family. Considering the seeds for that redemption arc (that we unfortunatelly never got to see be even properly planned in detail), it makes sense that the people she had a more unequal relationship with would be the ones to turn away from her for their own sake, leading to her hitting rock bottom, while the one that was more on her level would eventually be the one that would have stood by her side after it all - giving her a second chance in book 4 in a direct parallel to second chance she gave him in book 2.

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

So did season 3 Zuko genuinely believe Ozai loved Azula? Is that why he was okay with ratting her out to him with no fear of what he might do to her?

Zuko is a 16-year-old boy that was a victim of abuse pretty much his entire life. It took him THREE WHOLE YEARS to realize that their father disfiguring and banishing him for speaking out of turn/against a cruel plan, and refusing to fight him, was, in fact, a deeply horrible thing for Ozai to do and it was all Ozai's fault.

Is it fair or realistic to expect him to understand that, even though Azula managed to live up to Ozai's insane expectations for his children, it was still unfair of him to put so much pressure on her and that it was only a matter of time before she cracked under it? Can we really blame him for not realizing Azula is being psychologically abused when she's in denial about it herself and actively trying to convince everyone around her that everything she does is effortless? And when the adults he actually trusts, aka his mother and uncle, are ALSO not aware of what's going on right in front of their faces?

Can we blame a child who is desperate to get even the slightest bit of approval and affection from his parent, and never achieving it, for thinking their sibling has an easier, enviable life because they ocasionally get some conditional love?

Can we expect someone who just heard their parent say the words "Your sister was born lucky, you were lucky to be born" to just casually ignore that very clear "I wish you were dead, you don't deserve to exist" and focus only on the implications of "Wait, is he dismissing my sibling's life-long attempts, and success, of living up to his expectations as sheer dumb luck, not hard work and genuine talent?"

I've said once, I'll say it again: Zuko's attempts to survive all the trauma he endured are basically the same as someone who is panicking while drowning and trying to pull under the person that is trying to rescue them because they cannot think clearly in such a dire situation.

It's no coincidence that the two main moments in which we see him having compassion for Azula (in The Southern Raiders and then in the finale post Agni Kai) take place AFTER he has turned his back on Ozai and found a group of people who love and support him. He is now watching the situation from the outside, from a safe distance, not while in the middle of all the chaos, unsure if he's gonna make it.

And for the first time, Zuko can actually see his sister. A prodigy, but still someone that is trying to meet impossible standards. A brave, fierce, DANGEROUS warrior, but also a deeply traumatized child.

There's a reason Aaron Ehasz, the head-writter and executive producer of the show, has repeatedly said that, if Avatar had gotten a fourth season, he would have liked Zuko to essentially be Azula's Iroh and help her heal and redeem herself. He is literally the only other person in the world that knows what being Ozai's child is like, even if he was the scapegoat while she was the golden child.

[dragomer]

"Azula & Zuko are to be treated like they're worth rehabilitating/giving a second chance but Ozai isn't because he's adult" argument sounds like ageism to be tbh.

Is Ozai even treated like that? Zuko basically tells him 'Maybe now you can reflect and become a better person' in the show.

Fucking Iroh had his redemption well into adulthood too.

Thanks for the ask ^^

[hello-nichya-here]

In case you see this, anon:

Kids/teens doing horrible things tends to always be in a bit of a grey area because they're not as mature, don't have as much life experience, are far more easily manipulated, could suffer more severely for not doing what's expected of them (see Zuko being disfigured and banished for doing what was right when it wasn't convenient for his father), and there are some decisions that they literally, legally, cannot make for themselves which can limit their options of how to act - and these laws exist in the first place because EVERYONE understands that kids cannot be held to the same standards as adults.

But acknowledging that is NOT the same as saying "But the second you become a legal adult, you're either a great person or an absolute piece of shit, you cannot grow and change, you cannot feel regret or correct your behavior even a littel bit."

Like dragomer said, Ozai is not treated like that. We literally see the show double-down on "Even his life has vallue" and "Even he could change" - they just acknowledge that this will only happen if HE wants to change, even if just a little.

Even when we take into account that Ozai was once an innocent child, likely abused by a parent that played favorites, and that he was born in a family/nation that was already all about war, propaganda and "Obey the Fire Lord or die" - Ozai, the fully grown adult that is the highest authority in his nation, is free to choose. And he repeatedly chooses to continue the war, to continue copying the abusive behavior of Azulon by pitting his own children against each other, to continue making excuses for himself for physically abusing his son, to continue grooming Azula to be nothing but his perfect weapon/soldier, etc.

Maybe he'll choose differently one day, maybe he won't. But that's on him - which is why Zuko does not dismiss that possibility, and even reminds Ozai of it, but clearly has no plan to stick around to see it or be part of it because he doesn't think his father is interested. That's a victim stablishing a boundary/cutting ties with his abuser now that he is finally able to, not the show contradicting itself.

Now, if some FANS dismiss a very clear message, that's a different conversation.