#but i didn´t want to include zuko smiling because of ozai

[homuraakemis]

Zuko + smiling at Mai/smiling because of Mai

Comics bonus:

[jaredstrout]

Turtleducks - How to make a monster

“I don´t want to feed the damn turtleducks!” 

Azula crossed her arms and turned away from the bread her mother tried to hand over to her daughter. Her mother´s eyes narrowed. “Azula!” she said sternly, while her daughter only turned her back completley on her, while Zuko, another bread in his hand grinned at the scene.

“Zula, are you afraid the little ducklings will bite you?” he teased his siter, what got the desired reaction from her. “I afraid of them? I´ll show you who´s afraid!” Azula hissed at Zuko and without turning around grabbed the bread from her mother´s hand, who looked at the girl storming off towards the royal gardens with concern. Zuko flashed a smile at his mother, then ran behind his siter, while Ursa shook her head and calmed herself with the knowledge, that Zuko would have an eye on the little devil.

At the pond Azula waited for Zuzu with a smirk. “So...you wanna see me feed these useless little creatures?” she asked him and before he got the chance to even think of an answer Azula threw her bread with all force into the pond, spalshing water all around, what made the turtleducks flee in panic. With a satisfied glare at the ducklings and then her brother Azula strode towards the training chambers, to practice her bending, while the ducklings had calmed down and started to pick on the bread, that took some time till it was soaked enough by hte water for them to get eaten. Zuko watched them work at the slowly sinking bread with fascination, till he finally heard his mother´s footstpes behind him.

This is a little idea, how the turtleduck pond scene could have started. What follows then is what we know, but there´s some subtly. Someone once wrote of the scene´s script that says ‘Zuko throws the bread into the water and hits a duckling’ So when he imitated Azula, he didn´t aim for the ducks.

But what most people, me included, saw was how Azula harmed little animals. This did not only leave an impact on the viewer, Ursa seems shocked by Zuko´s behavior and therefore by what she thinks is Azula´s behavior. So when Azula makes her famous ‘My own mother thought I was a monster’ quote, I wonder if that was the day this idea was implanted in her mind. 

Think of the lovely little talk Azula would have with her mom afterwards. Ursa scolding Azula for something she really didn´t do, she trying to defend herself, only to be called a lying little monster by her fed up mother, maybe even getting slapped by her, to then run away and hide somewhere in the palace, hurt and finally certain, that her mother hates her and that Zuko made up thie lie to hurt her. If the death of Lu Ten was pretty much a few days later, the memory of her mother calling her a monster would be one of the last she had of her, so a difficult and even painful mother/daughter relationship then has no chance to get better and in fact turns toxic in Azula´s memory. She more and more convinces herself, that her mother had hated her and perhaps even disappeared because of her, no matter how much Azula actually knows about her grandfather´s death. And Ozai may actually have worked to confirm his daughter in this believe, to bind her closer to him and cut her off from the rest of the family, so the tregedy could reach its peak in the Final Agni Kai, where all the lies and pain of the children´s ruined childhood explodes between the victims of Ozai.

I think the music in that fight really fits.