A take about not Zutara, but about Zuko, that I think just might anger you;
https://www.tumblr.com/avatar-legends-confessionblog/809551645431218176/what-what-the-fuck-how-the-fuck-did-we-circle?source=share
*sighs eternally* Let's address this point by point.
1 - Zuko isn't perfect, before or post redemption. He's also not as bad as Azula stans keep pretending he was (in the show at least, Comics!Zuko can fuck off and die), and while Azula does not get enough credit, in universe or outside of it, for her attempts of being a good sister towards him, said attempts don't erase the several exemples of her being absolutely TERRIBLE to him.
Neither of them is saint, neither of them was that great of a sibling, and much like Azula wouldn't be obligated to forgive Zuko's mistakes if he helped her recover from her breakdown, he was not obligated to forgive her mistakes just because she had moments in which she stopped throwing him under the bus and helped him out for a change.
If you're going to ackowledge Zuko not noticing his sister was being groomed by their dad into being a perfect weapon, you have to acknowledge that Azula didn't realize that Zuko was abused when their dad burned his face. And if you're going to acknowledge Azula could be verbally abusive to Zuko, which he had every right to be mad about, you also have to acknowledge that he never made any effort to salvage their relationship, while she did.
2 - Both Zuko and Azula have very inconsistent levels of empathy (as in "I can recognize what you're feeling") AND compassion towards others, not as a consequence of neurodivergency, but because THEY WERE RAISED BY IMPERIALISTIC ABUSERS THAT ACTIVELY TOLD THEM "OTHER PEOPLE DON'T MATTER."
Neither of them is a perfect victim that never internalized any of the bullshit they were indoctrinated to believe in since birth and then used said bullshit to justify screwing someone else over. You can't accurately analize either character while ignoring the massive Fire-Lord-Ozai-shaped-elephant in the room.
Zuko doesn't consider that Azula could be more complex than the evil, selfish, pathological liar he sees her as, because he's used to being the one that is seen as "too soft, too stupid, too weak" while she is the ruthless one that always comes out on top because she doesn't let anything stand in her way. He doesn't see any good thing she does as genuine, it's always a trap or self-serving in some way - and she encourages that perception because she was taught to believe that is a good thing.
Azula doesn't consider that maybe Zuko is right to be mad at the way Ozai (and her) treat him. She doesn't see that "I brought you home and am looking out for you" would be received a lot better/taken as the genuine kindness it is if she'd stop throwing him under the bus whenever it was convenient/he did something that pissed her off. And she doesn't see that because, again, she was taught being like that it's just what she's supposed to do and the entire nation agrees, so naturally Zuko MUST be the problem.
They grew up in an unsafe, unstable, toxic home, at the mercy of abusers that held absolute power over them and their entire country, and that fucked up their understanding of the world way more than any diagnosis either of them could have. That being said...
3 - You give me one hour to ramble nonstop and I'll convince you both of these bitches are on the spectrum. Azula got Gifted-Kid-Who-Wasted-All-Her-Potential Autism, Zuko got Gotta-Scream-My-Feelings-Or-I-Die Autism.
Regardless of diagnosis they both had a severe case of "Can't read the room to save my fucking life" which did have a negative impact on their already limited ability to see things from any point of view outside their own.
They're both also VERY literal, hence Iroh's words of wisdom constantly sounding like giberish to Zuko due to being delivered in the form of proverbs. OF COURSE that boy would struggle to grasp "Your sister says she hates you, acts like hates you, and even thinks she hates you, but she actually does have a soft spot for you and you rank only bellow your dad on her list of important people." It IS confusing, hence Azula herself not getting it.
4 - There's a world of difference between "This difficulty in comunication, that is a direct result of the way they raised and traumatized and was made worse by potential neurodivergency, might lead to them being dickheads without meaning to" and "They didn't mean it, therefore it doesn't matter." Losing control of your car and crashing against someone else's can do the same level of damage as a delibarate hit - but people are way more forgiving of disasters that didn't have active MALICE as one of it's causes.
Zuko didn't mean to be a neglectful brother, Azula didn't mean to be a secondary abuser. It still happened, they both need to do some self-reflecting, the key difference is...
5 - Zuko's fuck ups when it came to Azula were (mostly) unintentional on Bryke's part, which is really bad and is how we ended up with the Yang comics, which dialed it all up to eleven. But regardless of the reason why, Show!Zuko's is merely neglectful/aloof, not downright abusive - and the tragic tone of the Last Agni Kai makes it clear that the demise of this relationship MEANS something. It hurts him. Hurts them. Even in the flawed writing, there's still complexity.
And Bryke weren't the only writers. I've said it a million times, I'll say it again, the lead writer, Aaron Ehasz, the same guy who humanized Azula's character a whole lot, explicitly said he had been laying the groundwork for Zuko to step in as Azula's Iroh figure if the show got a fourth season.
It's dishonest to treat Ehasz's vision and work as equally as valid, canonical and reflective of the character's complexities as the stuff Bryke was responsible for when said vision and work say "Azula isn't that bad", then turn around and pretend it doesn't exist when it fixes the Zuko problem in a way that makes hating him unjustified. They are literally the same story, from two different POVs. Acknowledging only one half of it is a biased reading of the situation made in absolute bad faith.
"Oh, but Zuko didn't reach that redeeming point in which he fixes his behavior towards her in the actual text!" Neither did Azula, towards not just Zuko but ANYTHING or ANYONE. Her regret and growth were planned, but canon only has reach the "sympathetic villain" status, in which she's too deep in denial to change.
Either disregard both on the basis of "planned is not the same as written canon, the future for their dynamic is, at best, open-ended, and at worst clearly spelled out as doomed to be antagonistic/non-existent" or take both into account on the basis of "the clues are all over the text of the show, hence people asking the writers what all that was about, so the future in which they reconcile is at least subtext/implied."
Or at the very least say "my reading of Azula is the same as Ehasz's, but my take on Zuko is completely different", and acknowledge that this means people are allowed to disagree with your take as it went fully into subjective stuff, not objective moments people can point to in the canon (and said canon includes both Azula's kindness and abusive tendencies towards her brother).
