Entry tags:
application
PLAYER NAME: Chel
CONTACT: pm or plurk
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: I go here.
CHARACTER: Zuko
CANON: Avatar: The Last Airbender
CANON POINT: Season 3, Episode 13 The Firebending Masters, taken directly after the flames from this receed.
BACKGROUND: Up to the end of the first paragraph under 'Summer 100 AG'
ABILITIES | POWERS:
Firebending: Firebenders utilize the power of the breath and the energy inside themselves to create fire. As a firebending master, Zuko can exact complete control over the size, intensity, shape, and direction of both the fire he can create and any fire that already exists. In addition to the manipulation of fire, Zuko can keep himself warm through his breathing, redirect lightning, and heat things by touch. For an incredibly deep dive on Firebending, check here.
Combat: Zuko is an accomplished swordsman, training from childhood until the time of his banishment with one of his world's most established masters. He is highly versed in bladed weapons, particularly his dual Dao broadswords. With the movements of Firebending being based on Northern Shaolin, even without his bending he is a proficient martial artist and has demonstrated possessing the strength to throw people, and break chains and tables with ease.
Stealth & Acrobatics: In canon, Zuko demonstrates a tremendous aptitude for getting around while escaping detection. He has used these skills to infiltrate numerous secure locations as well as move through entire cities without drawing notice. He is quick and light on his feet, able to run along the sides of walls, and scale buildings with relative ease.
PERSONALITY:
The inner conflict that would become the governing force in Zuko’s life began about as soon as he could walk and talk. From the beginning, Zuko was taught to believe that the Fire Nation was the most advanced civilization in the world and that the war they had been fighting for the last century was their way of sharing that greatness with everyone else.
As the son of Fire Lord Ozai and the heir to the throne, Zuko rarely saw evidence to suggest that this seemingly fundamental truth he had heard since birth was false. His father, who had become Fire Lord when Zuko was a child, was the embodiment of the wrathful, cunning brutality valued in a Fire Nation leader during a time of seemingly endless war and conquest. Ozai’s taste for power was not a quality that he saw in his son, and while Zuko wanted nothing more than to please him, his father saw the compassionate part of his son’s nature as weakness. In his father’s eyes, Zuko would always come up short.
His sister, however, was his father’s favorite from the very start. Even as a child Azula was gleeful in her mercilessness, something that aligned perfectly with her father’s warlike ambitions and callousness; that she was a firebending prodigy only cemented her as Ozai’s favorite. Zuko’s relationship with his sister is as complicated as his relationship with nearly everyone he has grown close to. As a child, she was his greatest rival, and her manipulative, inflammatory nature always got the better of him in some way. Her superior skill as a bender, and the ease with which she epitomized the ideals of Fire Nation culture only made him try harder to please his father.
These two powerful personalities held tremendous influence over Zuko as he grew up, tempered only by the presence of his mother. Ursa was a contrast to Ozai; while the Fire Lord thought the empathy Zuko displayed was undesirable, she nurtured that part of him. When his bending was slow to flourish, Azula leaving him behind in the dust with her natural ability, Ursa praised his willingness to go on and not give up. She was compassionate where his father was distant, a bright spot of caring in a militarized and coldly grand existence where strength was the only thing that seemed to matter. Her disappearance affected him profoundly, forcing him to grow up in a hurry as he was left behind to weather the disdain of his father and the consistent subtle antagonization of his sister, putting up walls where he could and becoming quick to anger when he failed.
In the end, it was the compassion he worked to ignore inside himself that got him banished. The part of him his mother once supported was what ruined the effort to lead the life he had been born to have. Speaking out of turn in defense of soldiers who were going to be used as a sacrifice unknowingly saw him burned by his father in a duel he refused to fight, and sent away to never return unless he found the Avatar.
The rage and the shame from this incident were what fueled Zuko for a long time. He had been given definitive proof that he was not the sort of son his father wanted, and he channeled the hurt from that horrible rejection into trying to do the impossible and find someone who had been missing for a hundred years. Even after being humiliated and disfigured, Zuko was not interested in the possibility of failure, all he wanted was to restore his honor and return home.
Though he had never been so disconnected from the life he was used to leading, his Uncle, a retired (disgraced) general had elected to accompany him. Growing up he had mostly only known Iroh from his letters sent from the various battles he waged and the occasional family holiday, and while the man’s presence was an annoyance at first, Iroh proved to be the teacher Zuko was too angry to realize he needed.
The persistence his mother commended him for was channeled into restoring him to his rightful place as heir to the throne. Though he failed to realize the value of it at the time, his uncle was equally as tenacious when it came to trying to mentor the young prince. The beginning of their journey across the world in pursuit of the Avatar was marked by little spats between the two - Iroh encouraging calm and rest, and Zuko rebuffing him, too consumed by the pursuit to think of the pleasant cups of tea Iroh always seemed to be encouraging him to have. His anger at his disgrace caused Zuko to be reckless during these early days, often putting not only himself but those around him in danger. He wanted to be the ruthless man his father sought in a son and heir, and his desperation to finally become the person who would fill that role made him volatile and diminutive to everyone around him, his uncle most of all.
It wasn’t until Zuko and Iroh became fugitives of the Fire Nation, and were forced to live as refugees in the Earth Kingdom, that things began to change for Zuko. After his sister’s reemergence in his life and unsurprising subsequent betrayal, he and his uncle had no choice but to abandon the lives they’d been leading and take to the road.
The experience of traveling without any of the comforts afforded to a Fire Nation royal was eye-opening. Life as a refugee, going weeks at a time without eating, and begging for coins in the streets were things that Iroh bore without any of the lashing out his nephew did so much of. Humility was a lesson Zuko learned more vividly than he could have ever imagined in his life as the prince. His lack of means derailing his hunt for the Avatar, he was made to confront the reality of the war his homeland waged on the rest of the world.
While living as one of many people whose lives had been derailed by the war he saw that the lifelong hatred others had for the Fire Nation was justified. This war had thrown the world out of balance and cost thousands of lives. The Fire Nation's victory allowed them to occupy foreign lands and throw dissenters and other benders in prison. They had destroyed whole cultures in their hunger for power, cutting a path of destruction that was felt on a global scale, all in the name of dominance and conquest.
Instead of the anger that had fueled the years following his banishment, this forced change of life was greeted with dismay and encroaching despair. Despite Iroh’s unwavering support and mentorship, Zuko decided that he was holding him back, and struck out on his own in a show of shortsightedness and resentment. Thrust into another situation where he would be rejected if the truth about him came out, Zuko lived as a drifter, becoming an empathetic witness to the rawness and hurt of the world.
When Iroh and Zuko were brought back together again (ironically, also the work of Azula) Zuko surprised his uncle with how receptive he was, at last to the things that Iroh had to teach him. For so long Zuko rejected the way that Iroh was trying to teach him how to bend, using the same anger and hunger for power that galvanized nearly every bender in the Fire Nation. Now, after seeing it firsthand, he was willing to listen as Iroh explained to him that drawing understanding from all the elements, and people from all nations, was vital if he was ever going to be able to face his sister, and become a firebending master.
Living among regular people for the first time was eye-opening to Zuko, and filled him with a kind of humble peace. In the city of Ba Sing Se, his life could not have been further than the destiny he believed he had been born for. Though working in a tea shop did very little for his people skills, Zuko got to experience something close to peace for the first time and enjoy his uncle’s success instead of diminishing it because it did not do anything to bring them closer to the Avatar.
When given the chance to pick up the trail of the Avatar again, Zuko was quick to take it, despite a lack of resources, and options. Standing on the brink of rekindling his obsession with restoring his honor in the eyes of his father, Iroh’s pleas that he look inside himself and ask who he was, and what he wanted pulled him back from going down that road again.
During his time as a refugee, Zuko had been forced to question what his place in this broken world was, hearing Iroh voice aloud the very things he was trying not to ask himself rattled Zuko and made him step away from reigniting his former cause. The inner rift this caused manifested itself physically, leaving him feverish for several days. Zuko drifted in and out of dreams where he was forced to confront the two directions he was being pulled in, urged to fight through it by the sound of his uncle’s voice. When the fever broke, it seemed as though Zuko had managed to work through some of the things haunting him.
He was almost cheerful, perhaps for the first time since his mother left Zuko was outwardly kind, supporting his uncle enthusiastically when Iroh was given the chance to realize a dream and open a tea shop of his own. After years of relentless pursuit, determined to capture the Avatar and restore his place in the Fire Nation, Zuko appeared to have let it go - and in a lot of ways he had, though that he and his uncle would always have to hide who they were never sat well with him.
Azula wasn’t done being Zuko’s foil, and after becoming her prisoner he came closer than he ever had been to turn against his family and the Fire Nation. Again, his uncle pleaded with him, but when confronted with these crossroads Zuko chose to follow the familiar road he had always walked, believing it to be the path he was meant for.
At last, with the world believing the Avatar was dead while he remained unsure, he could return home, like he wanted.
With his uncle imprisoned for treason, Zuko was left to pick the life he had been waiting to live back up, finally getting the validation from his father he never had. The uncertainty surrounding the Avatar’s fate ate at him, deep down Zuko knew he was alive, and after Ozai was told by Azula it was him who had killed the Avatar the unreset he had been feeling since betraying his uncle began to bloom.
Not for the first time, being handed what he wanted proved to be a false road. His anger at himself ate at him in a way he hadn’t felt since first being banished and thrust out into the world. He frequently visited his uncle’s prison cell to shout and berate the old man for choosing to stand on the opposite side of this conflict, but even as he said those things, he regretted them, well aware of how hollow and wrong they sounded. When, at last, he was included in a meeting in his father’s war room once again, what should have felt like taking his place in the world felt wrong, and the plan he witnessed his father lay down for his generals made his blood run cold in horror.
None of this was right, and for the first time, Zuko stopped trying to ignore that.
Perhaps it was cowardly to wait for an eclipse when firebenders were unable to use their ability without the sun’s energy, but Zuko wanted what he had to say to be heard. Confronting his father for how terrible he had been before laying out his plan - he would beg his uncle for forgiveness, and he would join the Avatar to help defeat Ozai. He had finally seen enough to understand that his honor was never something that his father could take away or restore - that power had always lain with Zuko and he had reached the point where he was ready to use it.
Adjusting to life as one of the good guys has been something new for Zuko, and the journey is not without growing pains. Each of the people traveling with the Avatar has good reason not to trust him. While this has been a source of frustration, Zuko has come to a point where he owns up to the damage he has done - both as a person and as prince of the Fire Nation and accepts that he has a lot left to learn.
On the surface, Zuko is quiet and prickly. Not having grown up around healthy relationships or that many good people, Zuko is very slow to warm to others, and his brusque, short-winded way of interacting tends to keep people at a distance, whether intentionally or otherwise. He doesn't laugh often and is very easily read as perpetually grumpy - even in the presence of the people he cares about most in the world.
Inwardly, Zuko is a principled, honorable person who desperately wants to do the right thing and please those that matter to him. He is someone who understands what it means to make mistakes, and while those mistakes have, at times, threatened to overtake who he is for the sake of getting what it was he believed he needed and wanted, his sense of what’s right is strong enough to pull him off the wrong path.
SAMPLE: On the TDM
INVENTORY: The clothes on his back and his swords.
NOTES: NA
IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Plot heavy
CONTACT: pm or plurk
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: I go here.
CHARACTER: Zuko
CANON: Avatar: The Last Airbender
CANON POINT: Season 3, Episode 13 The Firebending Masters, taken directly after the flames from this receed.
BACKGROUND: Up to the end of the first paragraph under 'Summer 100 AG'
ABILITIES | POWERS:
Firebending: Firebenders utilize the power of the breath and the energy inside themselves to create fire. As a firebending master, Zuko can exact complete control over the size, intensity, shape, and direction of both the fire he can create and any fire that already exists. In addition to the manipulation of fire, Zuko can keep himself warm through his breathing, redirect lightning, and heat things by touch. For an incredibly deep dive on Firebending, check here.
Combat: Zuko is an accomplished swordsman, training from childhood until the time of his banishment with one of his world's most established masters. He is highly versed in bladed weapons, particularly his dual Dao broadswords. With the movements of Firebending being based on Northern Shaolin, even without his bending he is a proficient martial artist and has demonstrated possessing the strength to throw people, and break chains and tables with ease.
Stealth & Acrobatics: In canon, Zuko demonstrates a tremendous aptitude for getting around while escaping detection. He has used these skills to infiltrate numerous secure locations as well as move through entire cities without drawing notice. He is quick and light on his feet, able to run along the sides of walls, and scale buildings with relative ease.
PERSONALITY:
The inner conflict that would become the governing force in Zuko’s life began about as soon as he could walk and talk. From the beginning, Zuko was taught to believe that the Fire Nation was the most advanced civilization in the world and that the war they had been fighting for the last century was their way of sharing that greatness with everyone else.
As the son of Fire Lord Ozai and the heir to the throne, Zuko rarely saw evidence to suggest that this seemingly fundamental truth he had heard since birth was false. His father, who had become Fire Lord when Zuko was a child, was the embodiment of the wrathful, cunning brutality valued in a Fire Nation leader during a time of seemingly endless war and conquest. Ozai’s taste for power was not a quality that he saw in his son, and while Zuko wanted nothing more than to please him, his father saw the compassionate part of his son’s nature as weakness. In his father’s eyes, Zuko would always come up short.
His sister, however, was his father’s favorite from the very start. Even as a child Azula was gleeful in her mercilessness, something that aligned perfectly with her father’s warlike ambitions and callousness; that she was a firebending prodigy only cemented her as Ozai’s favorite. Zuko’s relationship with his sister is as complicated as his relationship with nearly everyone he has grown close to. As a child, she was his greatest rival, and her manipulative, inflammatory nature always got the better of him in some way. Her superior skill as a bender, and the ease with which she epitomized the ideals of Fire Nation culture only made him try harder to please his father.
These two powerful personalities held tremendous influence over Zuko as he grew up, tempered only by the presence of his mother. Ursa was a contrast to Ozai; while the Fire Lord thought the empathy Zuko displayed was undesirable, she nurtured that part of him. When his bending was slow to flourish, Azula leaving him behind in the dust with her natural ability, Ursa praised his willingness to go on and not give up. She was compassionate where his father was distant, a bright spot of caring in a militarized and coldly grand existence where strength was the only thing that seemed to matter. Her disappearance affected him profoundly, forcing him to grow up in a hurry as he was left behind to weather the disdain of his father and the consistent subtle antagonization of his sister, putting up walls where he could and becoming quick to anger when he failed.
In the end, it was the compassion he worked to ignore inside himself that got him banished. The part of him his mother once supported was what ruined the effort to lead the life he had been born to have. Speaking out of turn in defense of soldiers who were going to be used as a sacrifice unknowingly saw him burned by his father in a duel he refused to fight, and sent away to never return unless he found the Avatar.
The rage and the shame from this incident were what fueled Zuko for a long time. He had been given definitive proof that he was not the sort of son his father wanted, and he channeled the hurt from that horrible rejection into trying to do the impossible and find someone who had been missing for a hundred years. Even after being humiliated and disfigured, Zuko was not interested in the possibility of failure, all he wanted was to restore his honor and return home.
Though he had never been so disconnected from the life he was used to leading, his Uncle, a retired (disgraced) general had elected to accompany him. Growing up he had mostly only known Iroh from his letters sent from the various battles he waged and the occasional family holiday, and while the man’s presence was an annoyance at first, Iroh proved to be the teacher Zuko was too angry to realize he needed.
The persistence his mother commended him for was channeled into restoring him to his rightful place as heir to the throne. Though he failed to realize the value of it at the time, his uncle was equally as tenacious when it came to trying to mentor the young prince. The beginning of their journey across the world in pursuit of the Avatar was marked by little spats between the two - Iroh encouraging calm and rest, and Zuko rebuffing him, too consumed by the pursuit to think of the pleasant cups of tea Iroh always seemed to be encouraging him to have. His anger at his disgrace caused Zuko to be reckless during these early days, often putting not only himself but those around him in danger. He wanted to be the ruthless man his father sought in a son and heir, and his desperation to finally become the person who would fill that role made him volatile and diminutive to everyone around him, his uncle most of all.
It wasn’t until Zuko and Iroh became fugitives of the Fire Nation, and were forced to live as refugees in the Earth Kingdom, that things began to change for Zuko. After his sister’s reemergence in his life and unsurprising subsequent betrayal, he and his uncle had no choice but to abandon the lives they’d been leading and take to the road.
The experience of traveling without any of the comforts afforded to a Fire Nation royal was eye-opening. Life as a refugee, going weeks at a time without eating, and begging for coins in the streets were things that Iroh bore without any of the lashing out his nephew did so much of. Humility was a lesson Zuko learned more vividly than he could have ever imagined in his life as the prince. His lack of means derailing his hunt for the Avatar, he was made to confront the reality of the war his homeland waged on the rest of the world.
While living as one of many people whose lives had been derailed by the war he saw that the lifelong hatred others had for the Fire Nation was justified. This war had thrown the world out of balance and cost thousands of lives. The Fire Nation's victory allowed them to occupy foreign lands and throw dissenters and other benders in prison. They had destroyed whole cultures in their hunger for power, cutting a path of destruction that was felt on a global scale, all in the name of dominance and conquest.
Instead of the anger that had fueled the years following his banishment, this forced change of life was greeted with dismay and encroaching despair. Despite Iroh’s unwavering support and mentorship, Zuko decided that he was holding him back, and struck out on his own in a show of shortsightedness and resentment. Thrust into another situation where he would be rejected if the truth about him came out, Zuko lived as a drifter, becoming an empathetic witness to the rawness and hurt of the world.
When Iroh and Zuko were brought back together again (ironically, also the work of Azula) Zuko surprised his uncle with how receptive he was, at last to the things that Iroh had to teach him. For so long Zuko rejected the way that Iroh was trying to teach him how to bend, using the same anger and hunger for power that galvanized nearly every bender in the Fire Nation. Now, after seeing it firsthand, he was willing to listen as Iroh explained to him that drawing understanding from all the elements, and people from all nations, was vital if he was ever going to be able to face his sister, and become a firebending master.
Living among regular people for the first time was eye-opening to Zuko, and filled him with a kind of humble peace. In the city of Ba Sing Se, his life could not have been further than the destiny he believed he had been born for. Though working in a tea shop did very little for his people skills, Zuko got to experience something close to peace for the first time and enjoy his uncle’s success instead of diminishing it because it did not do anything to bring them closer to the Avatar.
When given the chance to pick up the trail of the Avatar again, Zuko was quick to take it, despite a lack of resources, and options. Standing on the brink of rekindling his obsession with restoring his honor in the eyes of his father, Iroh’s pleas that he look inside himself and ask who he was, and what he wanted pulled him back from going down that road again.
During his time as a refugee, Zuko had been forced to question what his place in this broken world was, hearing Iroh voice aloud the very things he was trying not to ask himself rattled Zuko and made him step away from reigniting his former cause. The inner rift this caused manifested itself physically, leaving him feverish for several days. Zuko drifted in and out of dreams where he was forced to confront the two directions he was being pulled in, urged to fight through it by the sound of his uncle’s voice. When the fever broke, it seemed as though Zuko had managed to work through some of the things haunting him.
He was almost cheerful, perhaps for the first time since his mother left Zuko was outwardly kind, supporting his uncle enthusiastically when Iroh was given the chance to realize a dream and open a tea shop of his own. After years of relentless pursuit, determined to capture the Avatar and restore his place in the Fire Nation, Zuko appeared to have let it go - and in a lot of ways he had, though that he and his uncle would always have to hide who they were never sat well with him.
Azula wasn’t done being Zuko’s foil, and after becoming her prisoner he came closer than he ever had been to turn against his family and the Fire Nation. Again, his uncle pleaded with him, but when confronted with these crossroads Zuko chose to follow the familiar road he had always walked, believing it to be the path he was meant for.
At last, with the world believing the Avatar was dead while he remained unsure, he could return home, like he wanted.
With his uncle imprisoned for treason, Zuko was left to pick the life he had been waiting to live back up, finally getting the validation from his father he never had. The uncertainty surrounding the Avatar’s fate ate at him, deep down Zuko knew he was alive, and after Ozai was told by Azula it was him who had killed the Avatar the unreset he had been feeling since betraying his uncle began to bloom.
Not for the first time, being handed what he wanted proved to be a false road. His anger at himself ate at him in a way he hadn’t felt since first being banished and thrust out into the world. He frequently visited his uncle’s prison cell to shout and berate the old man for choosing to stand on the opposite side of this conflict, but even as he said those things, he regretted them, well aware of how hollow and wrong they sounded. When, at last, he was included in a meeting in his father’s war room once again, what should have felt like taking his place in the world felt wrong, and the plan he witnessed his father lay down for his generals made his blood run cold in horror.
None of this was right, and for the first time, Zuko stopped trying to ignore that.
Perhaps it was cowardly to wait for an eclipse when firebenders were unable to use their ability without the sun’s energy, but Zuko wanted what he had to say to be heard. Confronting his father for how terrible he had been before laying out his plan - he would beg his uncle for forgiveness, and he would join the Avatar to help defeat Ozai. He had finally seen enough to understand that his honor was never something that his father could take away or restore - that power had always lain with Zuko and he had reached the point where he was ready to use it.
Adjusting to life as one of the good guys has been something new for Zuko, and the journey is not without growing pains. Each of the people traveling with the Avatar has good reason not to trust him. While this has been a source of frustration, Zuko has come to a point where he owns up to the damage he has done - both as a person and as prince of the Fire Nation and accepts that he has a lot left to learn.
On the surface, Zuko is quiet and prickly. Not having grown up around healthy relationships or that many good people, Zuko is very slow to warm to others, and his brusque, short-winded way of interacting tends to keep people at a distance, whether intentionally or otherwise. He doesn't laugh often and is very easily read as perpetually grumpy - even in the presence of the people he cares about most in the world.
Inwardly, Zuko is a principled, honorable person who desperately wants to do the right thing and please those that matter to him. He is someone who understands what it means to make mistakes, and while those mistakes have, at times, threatened to overtake who he is for the sake of getting what it was he believed he needed and wanted, his sense of what’s right is strong enough to pull him off the wrong path.
SAMPLE: On the TDM
INVENTORY: The clothes on his back and his swords.
NOTES: NA
IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Plot heavy