đ° cake slice, đ± seedling and đ rainbow!
đ° CAKE SLICE - favourite cake flavour? are they specific about types of cakes?
i don't think this is a flavour, but my first thought was fruit cakes. i don't mean like the british fruitcake that's for christmas & is dry & terrible but more like...the cakes with real fruit & glazed on top, like strawberry or raspberry. something like this ( ignore the fact that this style is not her at all with all the flowers ): Â
of course, i donât think they have these cakes in a.tla, so going by what exists there, i think her favourite would be mochi. a little detail from the comic that i didnât hate was the fact that mochi was a special treat theyâd take to her grandmother for her birthday, so i think m.ai inherently associates it with special occasions & itâs something that she looked forward to, as it was the best part about those visits.
đ± SEEDLING - what is their most vivid memory from childhood?
this is a toss up between some of the most traumatic memories honestly, which is really sad, but i think those really stuck because some were just so traumatic.Â
some of the things that had the biggest impact were z.uko's mom disappearing & z.uko's banishment.Â
z.uko's mom disappearing was traumatic because it was so sudden, without warning, & everything changed afterward. she's there one day, a buffer between them & a.zula, & is also generally quite nice & approachable in an otherwise intimidating household, & the next day she's gone for no reason. no one seems to talk about it, &, of course, o.zai takes the throne from that point on & a.zula's emboldened. it's a turning point, & as a kid whose parents also used fear to discipline her, scaring the living daylights out of her with stories of spirits that would steal her away if she was bad ( another detail from the comic iâm willing to keep ), i feel like this fanned a lot of her fears. i think for awhile after this she had a hard time falling asleep wondering if anyone else around her was going to disappear without a trace when she woke up.Â
( also, there was no place to talk about any of this. she couldnât talk to her parents, no one was forthcoming about what had happened that night, & in her friends circle, how do you tell a.zula or z.uko that your mom leaving impacts me, too, when they have it so much worse? i think this incident taught her a lot how to force down her own emotions & just figure it out & find a way to deal. )
& then, of course, z.uko, the boy she likes, getting scarred & sent away. that also happens in a flash, after one wrong slip in a meeting. the a.gni k.ai had a lot of spectators, & iâm divided over whether m.ai saw it or not. on the one hand, sheâs a child, why would her parents take her to that ? on the other hand, if attendance was expected or mandated, then she probably wouldâve had to. the audience seems to be adults, though, so i lean toward the former but, either way, itâs traumatic. if she did see the fight, thatâs probably the last time she saw him ( as no one saw him & his uncle leave, & they were banished & disgraced at that point ). if she wasnât at the fight, then he basically disappears in the same way as u.rsa, there one moment & gone the next, except this time she vaguely knows what happened.
i think the a.gni k.ai also really created a culture of fear internally among those in the f.ire n.ation, & really established the tone of o.zaiâs rule. after all, this was his kid, his own flesh & blood, & iâm sure most people who didnât live at the palace & see how unfavoured z.uko was, well, were shocked by the display, wondering if he could do this to his son, what would he do to them?  not that the overall tone of leadership is what m.ai remembers, but, again, it was a big, traumatic moment to live with & marked another big turning point in the world around her ( also one of the times she can remember crying a lot alone in her room :â) ). i also firmly believe that this fed into her detachment as a coping mechanism by reinforcing the idea that anything can happen at any time ( that safety & stability are an illusion ) & that she has no real control.
( just as a sidenote : it makes so much sense that we see these events through the lens of z.uko & a.zula as they were the ones primarily affected, & the show doesnât really show the ramifications of these events on anyone else. but i think itâs fair to say this left an impact on m.ai & ty l.ee too, with how close they were & how they knew the family, & it helped them to internalise some really scary stuff. did they have it as bad ? of course not. but, then, i think the â we donât have it as bad â mentality & the fact that their only friends were the ones going through this - & a.zula, based on her reactions, was probably scarily cavalier about it, anyway - meant they didnât have a place to process any of these events, either, or how it kept them just as on-edge. & even into adulthood; z.uko & a.zula bear very real, obvious scars [no pun intended] from this trauma, to the point where, again, this â we didnât have it as bad â mentality is still very pervasive. & feeling like they have no real space to complain. even though itâs something that had a ripple effect outward & had an effect & is still heartbreaking when you consider it from their lens. just because they didnât have it as bad doesnât mean they didnât still have it bad in many ways. i just have a lot of emotions about this okay. )
a less depressing & equally strong memory is also just her hanging out in her room or an unoccupied part of the mansion, everything dead silent, while she experiments with twirling her knives or throwing them at makeshift targets. this is actually a lot of her childhood kind of stitched together into one memory, but it happened so often that it both feels like a single defining memory, even though itâs more like a montage.
đ RAINBOW - what advice would they give to their younger self
akljdfsl no for real i guess it depends on what age her younger self is. because, like, if she hadn't met a.zula at school, it would definitely be avoid her, but if m.ai was already in the friend group & stuck, i guess it would be something like you can trust ty l.ee. i think the knowledge that she's not suffering through that completely alone & that ty l.ee has her back completely & totally would've helped a lot, & wouldâve meant that she could open up to someone rather than be totally cut off. who knows, if both girls realised they could trust each other more rather than feeling somewhat isolated from each other, maybe they couldâve found a way to leave or distance themselves sooner.Â
another possibility is an explanation for everything: that the f.ire n.ation ideology is crap & that whatâs been going on is bullying & wrong & not part of some great plan or shining vision for the future. to know that sheâs valid for feeling scared, & should, because there isnât any good thatâs coming from the war & itâs hurting everyone. Â
because sheâs still parroting that same drivel to z.uko at the b.oiling rock & i donât think itâs until that conversation they have that she really begins to deconstruct it. i think, in some ways, itâs easier to believe that all these insane things happened for a reason & to believe, like, my traumas made me stronger. i have a whole meta on this, but to shorten it, we also have to remember that she didnât see nearly the same hostility as z.uko did in his travels which allowed him to deconstruct this ideology, because she was travelling with a.zula & in relative luxury, in tanks & drills & largely removed from the people. the only time she really sees society is in b.a s.ing se which is a fucked up place, so she never really had to pick apart what she learned growing up in the same way as z.uko did, such as after z.uko alone when confronted with the ( justified ) loathing of the e.arth k.ingdom village when he reveals heâs everything theyâre fighting against & have come to fear. Â
after the confrontation at the b.oiling rock, i think she realises she has a lot to unlearn &, of course, after befriending the ga.ang post show & the revelations keep on coming after she ( presumably ) learns that, for example, everything in history class about the a.ir n.omads was a lie ( probably about the decimation of the south.ern w.ater t.ribe too ). itâs a lot to unlearn, & itâs much easier to start early & be presented with a different narrative in your formative years. it probably wouldnât have fixed everything, but i think it wouldâve helped her from justifying her loyalty for so long. i think she wouldâve benefitted a lot from hearing something like â take everything with a grain of salt, a lot of what youâre learning is just propaganda â.Â
but honestly this one is tricky, & depends.
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