zuko in the last couple episodes of season 2 is basically like when u wake up one day and you’re like “you know what!!!!!! i’m getting my life under control!!!!! i’m doing my laundry! i’m hydrating!!!!!! depression who????” and then like 3 hours later ur back to being a piece of shit
When I worked in a tea shop, I actually got a few people coming in requesting jasmine tea. Why jasmine? Because that’s what Uncle Iroh would drink on Avatar: The Last Airbender.
So here’s something to think about:
Even though he was royalty, Uncle Iroh was a master of preparing his own tea– even after he left with Zuko, he could always be seen preparing it on his own, eventually opening a successful tea shop when the one he worked at turned out to be awful.
For a firebender, heating a pot of water wouldn’t be difficult– a few seconds of rage and you’d have it at a rolling boil– but a rolling boil would ruin the tea.
The secret to a good cup of tea is often in the temperature of water that you use.
Jasmine, green and white tea tends to need between 160-180* F (71-82*C)– go any higher than that, and you’ll scald the leaves and wind up with bitter tea. Let it steep for too long, and it’ll scald anyway. So you can’t just boil the hell out of it and walk away; to be really good, a cup of tea needs a lower temperature and a softer flame. It needs patience and attention. And that’s where Uncle Iroh excelled.
It was such a wonderful character detail, and I love it so.
…I…wait…I just…b…
*Gags* “This tea is nothing more than hot leaf juice!”
“Uncle…that’s what all tea is.”
“How could a member of my own family say something so horrible?”
DO YOU MEAN THAT ZUKO NEVER PREPARED A GOOD CUP OF TEA BEFORE BECAUSE HE WAS TOO IMPATIENT TO PROPERLY HEAT IT AND THAT IROH PUT TWO AND TWO TOGETHER RIGHT THEN AND THERE?
“We’ll have to make some major changes around here!” — His next line which he says firmly, grabbing the teapot and looking at Zuko as he turns.
Like literally after this the main plotpoint between these two is Iroh teaching Zuko how to be more patient/kind/open-minded while also teaching him how to properly work in the tea shop and I just…do you mean to tell me those two were actually not just random meshing plotpoints but were a direct correlation?
I wonder if Ozai heard that the Avatar was back and was just like, Shit! Now there’s potential for my son to complete that impossible task I assigned him
Zuko literally is that idiot in a fairy tale who doesn’t realize the task he’s been handed is supposed to be impossible, so he just goes out and fucking does it.
hey… do you guys think… that the blue spirit became kinda like a criptid/myth in the ATLA verse? like Zuko never told the public about it obviously. and we know from the ember Island players episode that the blue spirit was “The scourge of the fire nation” so do like… do you think people are out there… looking for the blue spirit like bigfoot… and Zuko is sitting in his palace like “I wonder what I did with that old mask”
