seriousfic

Honestly, Zuko's character arc in Avatar: The Last Airbender is the most accurate portrayal I've seen of my own experiences. Not what the abuse was like, necessarily, but the long term effects and recovery. A lot of Zuko's story is his growing understanding that his father doesn't love him, his father is incapable of loving him, and that means there's something wrong with his father, not him. That's a hard lesson to learn and a hard one for a lot of people to understand needing to learn.