Headscratchers / How I Became Yours

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• Why would someone decide to piece a letter back together if it was torn to pieces? Hell, why didn't Mai throw the pieces/letters out, or, hell, burn them, instead of just apparently keeping them in her room somewhere?
  • Apparently Mai was keeping letters that were mandated by Fire Nation law to go through to Zuko, so it makes some sense that Iroh would go to the trouble to put them back together. Why Mai didn't burn the letters, no clue at all.
  • She didn't burn the letter because, otherwise, the plot would not happen.
  • They were love confessions written by Zuko, saying the words that she had always wanted to hear. They're the closest she'll ever get to hearing Zuko say "I love you." To burn them might be the smart thing, but it would mean stripping away one of the delusional comforts left to her in the cold sham of a political marriage.
• Something that just bugs me about the sequel: If the author's intent was to create a Fix Fic to hook up Zuko and Katara, Azula and Sokka, and Toph and Aang—all while making Mai as evil as possible—then why would she have said pairings killed off in the sequel? Unless she plans on some epic twist where it turns out they're actually alive, or just hiding as some sort of test of courage for their children, or their children bring them back from the spirit world like how Azula was brought back...there's something about this that just doesn't bode.
  • Maybe it's following what the Legend of Korra is doing.
  • But she started writing this before Legend of Korra was announced...
  • There's a difference between making a Time Skip so large that virtually all of the original cast except for Katara has died of old age, if not other causes, and killing off the pairings before they reach middle age.
  • Either she thought it would be suitably dramatic, or she had planned on some sort of Deus ex Machina way to bring them back, presumably after the kids killed Mai and Sho.
• Something about the sequel has been nagging at me (perhaps a separate JBM page is in order?): If the boy of Zutara is aiming to be fire lord, why is he a waterbender?
• Does anyone know where this comic can be found? Anywhere at all?
  • Yeah, it's over here.
  • There's another version here.
• Why was Sho in only one chapter? I mean, here's this badass villain, complete with muscles out the wazoo, awesome ninja skillz that allow him to do a flip when Sokka was only allowed to stand en guarde, and the ability to pull off Villain Teleportation...and she doesn't use him again until the sequel. Come on! This guy needs a sympathetic backstory and more Draco in Leather Pants than you can shake a leg at! And Diaz calls herself an ''Avatar'' fan...
  • Ensemble Dark Horse, my friend. The author didn't care about him enough to feature him more. Hopefully, he'll play a bigger role in the sequel.
• So Mai causes Katara to miscarry by sending her poisoned fruit. Ron the Death Eater treatment aside, how exactly is that supposed to work? I can buy Azula nearly dying from a poisoned-laced knife, but how exactly would she accomplish poisoning fruit to induce a miscarriage? And Katara was what, five or six months along when it happened? Would it somehow trigger premature labour or placental abruption, or...or...I don't know, something?
  • Was it explicitly poison that caused the miscarriage? In the real world, some drugs are known to be linked to increased likelihood of miscarriage. There are probably some that are strong enough to guarantee miscarriage, as long as you're not overly concerned about the health of the mother. The author might have gotten the name of the poison wrong, but it's not an unbelievable scenario.
  • Even if we could buy that, would that kind of poison be found or discovered at that point in the source material's setting and for that particular purpose? And in a kid's show, they certainly wouldn't be bringing up THAT.
    • Women have been using various herbs to induce abortions for centuries, for the exact same reasons why women have abortions today. Hell, there's evidence that the silphium plant went extinct because of sheer overuse of its contraceptive properties. All Mai had to do was find a plant with said properties, lace the fruit with it, and there you go.
    • It's not as common as miscarrying during the early months but it is possible for a woman to miscarry at six months (actually because the baby would've been mostly developed by six months, Katara had a stillbirth not a miscarriage) and can be caused by several things including the mother ingesting certain drugs or being exposed to certain toxins (I actually stumbled upon a news blurb about a doctor who tried to secretly give his mistress a miscarriage by spiking her drinks with crushed up methotrexate, a drug used for treating cancer and rheumatoid arthritis) so it's not that far fetched. Okay Katara miscarrying immediately after taking one bite is but at least the symptoms (pain and vaginal bleeding) were correct.
• How can Azula feel remorse for crimes she doesn't even remember? As far as she knows, Sokka is just a lunatic screaming at random bystanders.
  • Depending on where in the story we're talking, she gradually gets her memories back over time. But even at first, most people would probably find it distressing if someone who is apparently completely serious and earnest starts passionately accusing them of all manner of horrible crimes—especially if they are amnesiac and confused. She doesn't need to recall everything; it's probably enough that she can't recall anything that would tell her she didn't do those things.
• I know this comic isn't very faithful to canon, but why was Ozai executed? Zuko's last scene with him had the implication that he would be in prison for the rest of his life, and he's still alive in The Promise.
  • Apparently this version of Zuko's a lot more violent than his canon counterpart. He did shove his wife to the floor for the grave sin of hiding letters from his mistress.
  • Given that Aang went through all that trouble to not kill Ozai, having him executed would be a big slap in the face.
  • Because the fancomic was made prior to any of the post-series comics. Also, Diaz probably wanted to show Zuko as being all badass for killing his father.
• Where did Ursa come from? She just kind of pops up out nowhere.
• Who was running the Fire nation while Zuko was hanging around Toph's estate and Mai was off making evil plans?
  • The Fire Nation Senate?
• What's with the stupid insistence that Aang and Toph would not be allowed to be together? There certainly is some truth in that between Katara and Zuko, seeing as they are of two opposing nations that have been told for years that the other is their enemy and Zuko being the Fire Lord would lead to a lot of political trouble, if he were to remain with a Waterbender. But Aang and Toph have no excuse for that. Aang is the freaking Avatar, he can pretty much do whatever he wants, he's lorded as the hero of the world, after all. Nobody would care. The excuse that air and earth are opposing elements is asinine, to say the least. Is it because Diaz honestly had no clue how to give her Beta Couple a drama-hook-up without rehashing the issues of Katara and Zuko's 'forbidden romance'?
  • Technically there's Toph being from a family being so upper class they're practically considered royalty and Aang being a penniless, orphan peasant (Avatar or no, breeding is breeding) which would normally be a massive obstacle for any romance between them. Problem is Toph doesn't give a crap about any of that and happily left her high society life behind so we're back to it just being artificial drama.
• For that matter, why is Katara and Zuko a problem. A lot of people point out that she's water nation and their fire nation and it could cause civil unrest, but traditionally, marrying children from enemy nations is one of the most common actions to seek peace. If Katara were still a peasant it would be a problem, but since she's now Water Tribe royalty, she should be able to marry Zuko as a political alliance.
  • Zuko argues that to the Senators. The counter-argument is that of blood purity, and/or that the Fire Lord must be a firebender. If Zuko's children were to be waterbenders, they could not succeed him, and there would be a political crisis and possibly a civil war. Also, in HIBY at least, the Fire Lord's family traces its origins all the way back to Agni himself, sort of how the Japanese emperors are thought to be descended from the Shinto gods, so introducing foreign races into this sacred bloodline is blasphemy.
• Doesn't Zuko kind of overreact against Mai? The worst thing she did to make him mad at her was hiding the letters telling Zuko about his child, and this is apparently hideous treason. It's not a nice thing to do, sure, but she had good reasons to do so and it's certainly not treason.
  • Depending on how seriously you take the feudalism of the setting (and for HIBY, that would be "very much"), a son who is a potential claimant to the throne can be a very big deal, to the point where it actually would be treason to hide his existence from the monarch. Illegitimate sons, especially with a princess of another state, are just the sort of thing that can easily start wars in a feudal system. Zuko isn't being unreasonable about that, even if he's being a jerk to Mai in a number of other ways.
    • Still, even when taking such considerations into account, Katara is just as guilty as Mai when it comes to hiding the Firelord’s son. Not to mention, every single one of her friends at Toph’s estate is complicit in the matter, seeing that they lied about Katara’s pregnancy a number of times, possibly even to Zuko’s face. And yet none of them get accused of treason or receive any treatment similar to what Mai gets from Zuko...and this is when Mai seems to be the only one who actually thinks about the political implications of the pregnancy.
    • The others aren't Fire Nation citizens, so by definition can't commit treason against the Fire Nation. You'd still expect Zuko to be pretty mad at them, though... which doesn't really happen.
• How does Azula manage to blackmail Mai, (putting her in the Fire Nation capital) get stabbed and poisoned, and then travel all the way to Toph's estate in time to pass out?

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