How I Became Yours is a Troll Fic.
Jackie Diaz is fully aware of what she is doing, and having fun with it. However, she is a bit more clever than most trolls: While the argument could be risen that she is not a troll because she friends-locked the comic on her My Space page, and a troll would want as many people to see their horrible creation as possible...that is the point. It's all to cause more people to be interested in reading her creation, go looking for it on the internet, and ultimately find a PhotoBucket account with the pictures that she knew one of her fans would be bound to keep.- Also, about her entry on the main page under Small Name, Big Ego, two words: Tara Gillesbie. Troll fic authors create Small Name, Big Ego personas to attract more attention to their works. Most authors don't respond to criticism with "If you hate my story go shoot yourself". The more outrageous the reaction to criticism, the more people that will be attracted to her story. If you read between the lines, it seems more like a subtle confession that yes, she does trace her drawings, and yes, she IS looking for more people to read her comic (like the author's note in Light and Dark The Adventures of Dark Yagami saying they don't know what a "troll" is but they might do a "goblin").
How I Became Yours is not necessarily a troll fic, but it is a Stealth Parody.
HIBY is intended to be a stealth parody of poorly-done Zutara fics, and Lifetime movies in general. We're just taking it too seriously. When she realized her own fanbase also took it too seriously, she either decided to just run with it for their sake, or became the mask. Mai was pregnant when Zuko left her.
It had just happened shortly before Zuko confronted her, so she wasn't far along enough to know. Her subsequent actions are the result Mama Bear syndrome at the fact that her child's father would never have anything to do with them.- That might explain her whole Unexplained Recovery trick in the sequel, too. She had a daughter with Generation Xerox and Dead Guy Junior syndrome, who decided to avenge her mother's death on her bum father and his babymamma. The daughter would probably be more willing to kill her father than Mai One would, having been raised without him in her life by her uncle.
"Azula" was literally not Azula.
It was some poor fire nation girl who just happened to bear an uncanny resemblence to Azula. Because of what everyone else has been saying about the things Azula did, she is accidentally psychologically tortured into thinking of everything she did as "Azula".- She's not just some random girl either. The reason for her looking so similar to Azula is because she was meant to be a "decoy:" any would-be assassins would kill the fake queen instead of the real one. The decoy just hated Mai and tried to blackmail her; Mai believed the decoy to be the real Azula, and the rest is history.
- Alternatively, The real Azula knew Mai will poison her after she tried blackmail her so she hired a decoy that look like her. After the decoy is poisoned and stabbed by Sho who mistook her for Azula, Azula quickly went into a hiding.
"Mai" is actually Mai's crazy Yandere twin sister.
She was the shame of the family, so her parents kept her in hiding. When she saw Mai with Zuko, she began to grow jealous and envisioned herself in Zuko's arms. So on their wedding day, she locked Mai up in the attic she used to live in and married Zuko in her place. Zuko realized this, but there was nothing he could do at that point. Mai had Azula lobotomized.
It was part of her plan to avoid being blackmailed—just in case the poison-laced stabbing failed, she would alter Azula's thinking in a way that would cause her to grow a conscience, realize the horrors of what she had done, and never even think of blackmailing anyone. Hey, Mai was already derailed by that point; would you put it past HIBY Mai to perform a lobotomy just for good measure? Sho lied about Mai poisoning Azula.
Instead, he stabbed her, on Mai's orders. Because Mai was shown to be in the Fire Nation on the very day Azula was found in an alley, and Azula's wound had already been open a while. Mai wouldn't be able to pull that off within a few hours outside of Zuko's knowledge without being able to teleport. Sho, however, did not need to go back to the Fire Nation immediately, no one could presumably trace him to Mai since he wouldn't have charged her to kill somebody, and, in the event that he did need a quick exit, he can teleport. His confession to Sokka that Mai poisoned Azula was just him saying "Mai commissioned the murder." HIBY is an Ember Island Players production.
Wouldn't that make perfect sense? For further insult, it's done by the literal Ember Island Players, hence why it's so bad. Zuko already stated they ruined his mother's favorite play, and they did so poorly, despite The Boy in the Iceberg being Propaganda, with the series itself, so it just tends to figure.- It is canon that the Ember Island Players are Zutara shippers. Though one would think they'd be a little more careful about ticking off the Fire Lady that way...
Mai had nothing to do with killing Katara's baby.
Article One: Katara's letter to Zuko was found in Mai's room, in pieces, exactly three years after the baby died. Mai's not the kind of person to keep a torn letter like that around for years. It's more likely that she had only found the letter that day, ripped it to shreds, and then went to get her hair done to calm herself down, so that she could better plan Zuko's untimely demise. After all, what could possibly happen? Have a maid come snooping around, and then blab to Uncle Iroh? Even a cool head like Mai wouldn't think of that possibility when significantly pissed.Article Two: Since typwriters probably had not yet been invented in the Avatar World, Mai could not have written out a letter and passed it off as her husband's note on a birthday gift. Something like that would be handwritten, and not entrusted to a palace scribe, so that no rumors of adultery would get out. Mai would have to either be a really good forger (somewhat plausible) or hire one (also plausible, but more dangerous since it would include another witness...and keeping a possible informant quiet is just as hard as covering a possible informant's murder).
Personal Fanon Taking Articles One and Two into Account: Katara's miscarriage was a miscarriage, and only that. Conversely, it was a result of the fruit itself, which could have been a potent Fire Nation breed that was known for centuries to be dangerous to pregnant women. Zuko, naturally, didn't know Katara was pregnant when he sent her the gift, because Sokka "left it up to fate" when he sent his letter that was supposed to inform Zuko of the baby (meaning he probably put it on the messenger hawk trained to go to the Earth Kingdom, and some random cabbage salesman read "Jerkbender you homewrecking little-sister-f&#%ing bastard, get your flabby backside over here so I can Boomerang your ass!" and asked "Why me, universe?"). Either way, the miscarriage was an unfortunate set of circumstances, but not a murder. All evidence against Mai was completely circumstantial.
Then, some years later, Azula got ahold of the letter (how? Coz she's Azula, dammit! And the cabbage merchant needed a buck), and sent it to Mai a few days before Katara's birthday bash. Azula then told Mai to remove Azula's banishment from the Fire Nation and give her a place on the new Senate, or this little tidbit about the Fire Lord's past would go public. Mai, in a rage, ripped the letter into shreds, sent her own letter informing her badass ninja brother that the Princess had a sizable bounty on her head and was in such and such a city, and then stuffed the letter pieces into a drawer, not trusting herself with the flammable materials required to burn them in her current state of mind. That...wasn't a good idea.
So, why did Mai take credit for killing the baby? Well, simple...she had something to protect that she thought would be better protected if she were considered dead. Like, say, a budding rebellion against Zuko's regime under the name of the Agni Army. She was a convicted (if framed) traitor, and if she were constantly running away from the cops she would put her movement in danger. So, she picked a fight with Katara, and lost...like she was planning to. Therefore, the movement is safe, and they also have a beautiful propaganda piece against the new Fire Lady in that she unnecessarily committed murder. Mai either sacrificed herself heroicly for the cause (thus paving the way for her identical daughter to lead said cause to victory) or gambled with her life, knowing that Sho had some way of dragging her back from the dead that he could pull out of his black-leathered ninja ass....Yeah, Epileptic Trees...But I'm stickin' to it!
- Support for this theory: Katara had barely tasted the fruit when the miscarriage happened. There is no way a poison could work that fast.
Lobozula is the HIBY-verse's equivalent of Rosemary Kennedy.
High-status young woman from high-profile family + potentially embarrassing psychological problems (with a dash of Why Couldn't You Be Different?) + rendered Not Herself somehow... I know this is getting into Dude, Not Funny! territory, and I'm sorry, but the idea wouldn't leave me alone. "Jackie Diaz" is a disgruntled ex-animator from the original show.
This particular animator secretly shipped Zutara from Day One (or since the "I'll save your from the pirates" moment which might as well count as Day One in Zutarian history) and was distraught over being forced to animate scenes for Maiko and Kataang. "Sozin's Comet" was the last straw and so they (for all we know, "Jackie" could actually be a guy) wrote their own scenario for how they had wanted the series to end—in fact, it may have been their original suggestion to Mike and Bryan, but got laughed off. Eventually, they decided to tweak a few details so it would be a post-finale story and posted it as a web comic. The artist is not lying when they say the drawings they "traced" are theirs; they really did draw them when they were an animator for the show and simply re-traced them for the comic. They can't reveal this because, of course, no one would believe them. They use photographed backgrounds to avoid giving away their true identity, lest anyone come close to figuring out the truth.As for the Bleach tracings, "Jackie" is close friends with a Bleach animator, who was also a disgruntled Zutara shipper, and agreed to help them out by sending their own drawings for "Jackie" to trace.
"Jackie Diaz" is Mike and Bryan and the whole comic is one big joke on their fans.
They got sick of fans complaining about the finale and decided to pull off a Stylistic Suck to make fun of the militant shippers. It would explain the daytime bloodbending in Korra... How I Became Yours was done by Stephenie Meyer.
A lame romance is the kind of story that she'd write, complete with broken and backwards values, numerous instances of research failure, the works. The elemental bending also served as the inspiration for the Benjamin character, with his vampire power essentially being the freaking Avatar. There won't be a The Legend of Korra version.
Sho is a real person who somehow invaded HIBY verse to wipe them out.
He's very Genre Savvy, for one. He realizes that these are not the Avatar characters from his universe, and thus found a way into the comic to wipe them out. He quickly fulfilled the role of a real villain, thus keeping out of any love triangles the writer would entangle him in and managed to write himself in as Mai's brother in order to get her knife skills. After witnessing the daytime bloodbending, he realized that the world had become so fond of cliches that he could escape in order to leave room open for a sequel, and thus used realitybending in combination with firebending in order to escape. How I Became Yours was really created to be a tragedy.
Why? Because to be honest, it's a lot more enjoyable in that perspective. Mai is the protagonist: the tragic heroine who takes extreme measures to prevent civil war due to her husband's infidelity, only to fail due to her unrequited love for Zuko.Really, there was no logical reason for her not to burn those letters. Except... except they were love confessions written by Zuko, saying the words that she had always wanted to hear. They weren't meant for her, of course. But sometimes Mai could close her eyes and imagine a world where they were. Yes, they were incriminating evidence, explosive in the wrong hands, but... but 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.
HIBY is such a brutal story. It takes the bland romantic idealism of the typical Zutaran fanfic and shows the collateral damage those fantasies would bring. Mai becomes a child killer to avert civil war, Zuko is an adulterer and a wife beater, and Katara herself turns her back on the morality she displayed in "The Southern Raiders" to execute Mai. And as we know from "Rise of the Agni Army", Mai's fears were well-founded. Then Fire Nation did collapse into civil war over Zuko marrying outside his race, over divorcing Mai herself, whose family were key political supporters of the Zuko regime.
The story is brilliant. It's just mixed up its heroes with its villains.
Azula's change in personality and hair color was all a plot by Yue to put her spirit into a new body.
It may sound weird, but it would explain why Yue is so helpful with everyone's attempt to help the woman who stole her former boyfriend come back to life, why Sokka makes Azula dress like Yue as some form of twisted cosplay and how Azula got a piece of the moon spirit, like Yue did when she was born.
Of course, this means that Sokka will be having spirit threesomes with Azula and Yue from now on.
"Sho" is Ozai.
At a Fire Nation party where Zuko was to announce his engagement to Katara, Ozai got mad and wanted to make Zuko miserable. He escaped prison, cut off his beard to conceal his identity, and slipped a brain-warping poison into the wine glasses of Zuko, Katara, Sokka, Aang, Toph, Mai, Iroh, Ursa and Azula (who was redeemed but still her pompous, fire-loving self). This poison scrambled everyone's memory, and Ozai's mooks scattered the different people everywhere where the story begins. They also planted Kuzon's grave to go with Katara's fake memory of pregnancy.Meanwhile, Ozai, under the assumed name of "Sho," stabbed Azula with a poison dagger. He then teamed up with the brainwashed Mai to kill Katara, just to cause Zuko unhappiness.Fortunately, Katara didn't actually bloodbend Mai. She merely bent the poisoned wine out of her. So in between the last chapter and epilogue, Mai, free of the poison, made an antidote and brought everyone back to normal. She then got together with Ty Lee. Jackie Diaz is Star and Marco's future child.
I couldn't resist. Sho is actually Mai's half-brother
More specifically, he's a child Ukano fathered while he was in a previous relationship. Ukano looks a good deal older than his wife, so it's not impossible that he spent some time sowing his wild oats. One of the women he slept with ended up having a bastard. This would explain why Sho was never seen in the series. It might also explain why he's an assassin: he probably won't inherit anything from his father, so he has to make a living somehow. Since he already lives with the stigma of illegitimacy, it's not like he has his reputation to worry about. And maybe he's working for Mai in exchange for some kind of legitimization.Or maybe he was the son of Ukano's first wife. It's not impossible that Ukano would have had an earlier marriage that never came up. As for why Sho doesn't appear in the series? Maybe he was already an adult living on his own by the time it took place. He might have become an assassin because his father disowned him.
Them having different mothers might also explain why Sho can firebend: maybe his mom was a firebender.
- Why didn't Mai give any indication of knowing Sho existed in the series? Given how much Ukano worried about his public image (which played a big role in Mai's emotional repression), it's not too much of a stretch to imagine he'd keep mum about an illegitimate kid or even a legitimate child from a marriage he'd rather pretend never happened. This would explain why Mai was raised thinking she was their only child for awhile. Heck, it'd even explain why Mai and Sho ended up being on kinda-sorta friendly terms with each other, if they both thought their dad was a jerkass.
- If we go with the "bastard child" explanation, it would add further fuel to why Mai's so against Zuko fathering an illegitimate child. She and Sho would've been through that shit before and seen firsthand how much of a bad impact it can have on both the parents and the kid, even leaving the royal scandal, political implications and her emotional pain out of it.
Katara, Zuko and everyone(except Mai and Sho) are actually brainwashed and given false memories/hallucinations
Someone poisoned their drinks/food that altered their minds and memories. Katara’s memory about gotten pregnant with Zuko and having a miscarriage never happened. The “Ursa” we see was just a hallucination and the real Ursa is still in a hiding.