God I Love Fallible Characters, But Specifically Zuko In The Catacombs. Choosing His Sister Over His

god i love fallible characters, but specifically zuko in the catacombs. choosing his sister over his uncle just to get to sleep in his childhood bed again. earning katara's kindness and empathy and stripping it all away in minutes because he ached for the familiar. fighting on the wrong side of history just to see his father smile with pride. knowing he could have done the right thing, but what is being good when you could be terrible but loved.

various On Our Backs personals spanning 1986-1990

Here's to the people who weren't abused by their parents, but whose parents sucked anyways. Here's to people whose parents fucked up raising you out of ignorance and not malice. Here's to the kids whose parents didn't know what to do with you so they did nothing at all. Here's to people whose parents are getting better and growing as people but still hurt you. Here's to every mean comment that wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't come from your mom; here's to awkward family dinners because you're all trying to forget;

here's to you, survivor of a thousand 'not as bad as it could have been' hurts. I see you. You aren't alone.

Growing together.

I love the "came back wrong" trope but from the opposite side.

Imagine you are dead. And then you are RIPPED from the embrace of decay into the world of the living again. Your memories are hazy and you don't recognize any of these people, but they act like they're close to you? Like they love you? So you try to get your memories back, to act like you belong here, but everybody tries to forget you died. And you can't. It is omnipresent. And just trying to grapple with that fact pushes the people who "love" you away, and they're incapable of understanding, and they're so confused, what's wrong N̶̄̀O̶͛͗T̷̉́ ̷͋͝Y̴̎̌Ȍ̴̈U̸̓R NÄM̴̃͑E̵̾̇? And you just need them to understand, you aren't that person! You aren't! You don't know who that person is! You don't know why any of this is happening, but they're unwilling to bend, they keep insisting you are that person, your memories will come back, everything will be normal again, and you want to scream and cry and claw yourself open to show them you're different. Your existence as a being wholly separate from whoever you "used to be" is a sin unto itself. All you can do is scrabble for life and to them, you're killing whoever they loved to do it.

just. lots of fun in that concept, you know?