How I Became Yours / YMMV

Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Upon realizing what position Azula is in at the end, many have posited that she doesn't actually have amnesia, and it's all really a ploy to get in good with the Water Tribe royalty so she can dismantle the entire civilization from the inside—or at least rule it. This would require her to be an Unreliable Narrator... but that could be in-character for her, too.
- Zuko's characterization can be read as a downplayed example of In the Blood, in that he is inadvertently becoming more like his father Ozai (i.e., proud, ruthless and autocratic) now that he is the reigning Fire Lord, despite all his good intentions to reform and enlighten the country when he ascended to the throne. While still not a villain, it is possible to read him as an Anti-Hero.
- In the same vein as Designated Villain below, it's not uncommon for Mai to be depicted as an Only Sane Man in a crowd of emotional, lovesick teenagers.
Angst Dissonance: The constant weeping, the gloomy dialogue that gets copy-and-pasted as much as the art, and the really stupid spelling mistakes tend to ruin the drama for most readers.
Ass Pull: Ursa's return; we never get any explanation about where she's been or why Iroh waited until that moment to bring her around and no one seems to address it in story at all.
Bile Fascination: This is probably one of the reasons why the comic gets attention at all.
Canon Defilement: The names are misspelled, the mechanics of bending are all wrong, the characters are unrecognizable, and somehow we've translocated to the Theme Park Version of 18th century France if costume and architecture are anything to go by.
Cliché Storm: It's essentially Soap Opera meets Romance Novel meets Lifetime Movie of the Week with magic kung fu.
Designated Hero:
- Katara. She's presented as vain ("I'm sure that Kuzon will come out quite charming, with me as his mom."), self-absorbed ("[Kuzon] died years ago, a day before my birthday..." emphasis not added), and murderous (do we even really need to mention Mai's horrifying death again?). Yet she's somehow always right and no one ever questions her.
- The same could be said for Zuko. Cheats on his wife, fathers a baby with the designated heroine mentioned above, smacks Mai when she confronts him, leaves his kingdom to go to Katara... and yet we're supposed to sympathize with him?
Designated Villain: Mai. She gets mad at her husband—with whom she's genuinely in love—for having an affair, whereupon he strikes her. Not only that, but the fact she hid the letters telling Zuko about his child 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. Particularly when Katara had every intention of hiding the child from Zuko anyway, and the only reason the letter came anywhere close to Mai or Zuko is a clerical error. While it later turns out she did commit a genuinely villainous act in deliberately causing Katara to miscarry via sending her poisoned fruit, it doesn't help that the revelation comes very late into the story and she was treated like a villain by the main characters even before they (or the readers) knew what she did.
Diagnosed by the Audience: Sho's perfectionism, macabre philosophical speculations, formal and somewhat idiosyncratic speech patterns, and Lack of Empathy combined imply he may be autistic.
Die for Our Ship: Mai is evil because if she wasn't, then Zuko wouldn't be justified in leaving her for a girl he met a few years ago.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Sho, to an extent. Probably because (a) he's an original character, and therefore does not bastardize any Avatar characters simply by his presence, (b) his "evil" alignment means he's generally trying to kill off said bastardizations of Avatar characters, and (c) he's pretty much the only badass and good-looking character in the comic.
Evil Is Cool: Sho actually manages to pull this off. He comes in out of basically nowhere, nonchalantly tossing around a knife like Mai. Then, he fights Sokka singlehandedly, slyly trash-talking with arguably the most cleverly-written dialogue in the entire comic (not that that's saying much). He almost manages to defeat him, too, until Toph steps in. And then he escapes with a badass firebending move that nobody has seen before.
Fan Nickname: Lobozula (Lobotomized Azula) for the comic's version of Azula.
Fetish Retardant: The sex scenes, which largely consist of the couple in a single pose that's flipped and rotated several times between panels, and are always accompanied by a Wall of Text describing how the deed makes them feel. Special mention goes to the Sokka and Azula one, which has the two of them staring wide-eyed at each other while kissing deeply, an unknown tongue between them, and Azula describing herself as "dead."
Harsher in Hindsight:
- Toph, after hearing that Sokka revealed Kuzon's existence by sending a letter to Zuko, says "Katara is going to kill you... I can only imagine what Mai will do to Zuko...". A demonized, Out of Character, Yandere Mai poisons Katara, causing her to miscarry ^note, and later tries to kill her herself.
- It's astonishing how similar Zuko confronting Mai about hiding the existence of his love child with Katara by hiding her letters until a servant showed them to him is to Ozai confronting Ursa in a flashback in The Search over her pretending Zuko was Ikem's son rather than Ozai's, something he learned by the servant Ursa entrusted to deliver her letters betraying her and giving them to Ozai. Zuko may be turning out more like Ozai than he thought here.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Bloodbending is performed without requiring the full moon, which became canon in The Legend of Korra.
- Sho's use of firebending to make a disappearing act is also highly similar to something Zaheer did in season 3 of Korra, only he did it with air, a far more transparent element, making Sho's move suddenly all the more plausible.
Humor Dissonance: Some might consider the following joke amusing; to others, it's fairly pointless.
Aang: Guys, I have great news! I finally did it!
Zuko: What, you lost your virginity?
Sokka: MKKKFFF, good one.
I Knew It!: Daytime bloodbending is canon now. Yakone, Amon, and Tarrlok pulled it off in The Legend of Korra not only without a full moon, but Yakone did it at every point in time without a full moon.
Informed Wrongness:
- Mai hides letters from Katara to Zuko telling him that she's pregnant. When confronted by Zuko, she gives a reason that does make sense◊: She wants to prevent a possible civil war coming from all the succession problems that the existence of a bastard child of the Fire Lord would bring. (And, well, Zuko impregnated Katara when he already was married to Mai). However, since this is Mai and she is Katara's love rival for Zuko, she's presented as a petty and clingy Designated Villain who does this only out of bitterness and jealousy... and we're supposed to side with Zuko when, in response to her rant, he humiliates and beats her before abandoning his war-torn nation to run away with his babymama. Interestingly enough, Katara herself, who is not a strawman, has similar reasons for not telling Zuko.
- Sokka brings an injured Azula into Toph's house, not knowing who she is. It turns out that she has Easy Amnesia, and she wanders around the estate. When Sokka finds her and recognizes her, he immediately interrogates her about what she's doing at swordpoint. Azula is freaked out by the seemingly unprovoked attack, and Toph tells Sokka off for attacking her before she even did anything. Thing is, canon!Azula was a Manipulative Bitch who was extremely good at deception, so Sokka comes off as being reasonably cautious that Azula was using a Wounded Gazelle Gambit to get herself trusted by Team Avatar before she betrays them (like she did to the Earth King by having herself, Mai, and Ty Lee replace the Kyoshi Warriors after the latter were captured), and suspicious of anything she says because as she'd proven in Day of Black Sun, Azula can fool Toph.
Jerkass Dissonance: Mai gets a lot of sympathy, probably because she tends to be right when it comes to the important details of the comic.
Karmic Overkill: The fic gained infamy for the scene where a demonized Mai, who forced Katara to miscarry Zuko's child, gets gruesomely Bloodbended to death by Katara. Even quite some Zutarians ended being more disgusted by the designated heroine.
Les Yay:
- There's only so many cuddly, affectionate scenes Azula and Katara can share before you start to wonder what the real OTP of this comic is.
  - Katara's dialogue with Azula when she is braiding her hair. They're talking about her and Sokka, but it'd be quite easy to edit it to mean something else.
  Katara: Where you come from or who you were doesn't matter when it comes to love. (...) It wouldn't be wrong. You're a beautiful woman, and I'm glad I know you as such now ...
  - In the same conversation, she (Katara) thinks Sokka would have to be crazy not to be attracted to her (Azula), given how gorgeous she is, and spends several speech bubbles giving a detailed description, from her figure to her beautiful eyes. All while affectionately clasping her shoulders.
  - What seemingly drives Katara to finally bloodbend Mai to death is not the revelation that she murdered her and Zuko's child, but that she (appears to have) killed Azula.
- There's a bit of Toph/Katara Les Yay early on. Katara has been staying with Toph in her estate ever since her miscarriage, and Toph's first on-screen act is to warmly embrace Katara and offer to take her to tea later^note. In the first two chapters, the two of them talk about how much they've relied on one another, Toph goes all-out in planning Katara's birthday and later coronation balls, and finally tells Katara "Even though I cannot see you, you are a goddess in my eyes."
- Hana also has a bit with an amnesiac Azula, telling her how beautiful she is several times in the conversation, brushing her hair while the latter is in nothing but her underwear, and also Hana apparently knows what Fire Nation women's' underwear looks like... The last point has caused many a reader to wonder how often she's seen Fire Nation undergarments.
- There's this line from Zuko and Katara's reunion, which can be read this way if one wants to:
  Katara: Nights spent without you in the Earth Kingdom with Toph, I'd find myself thinking about you, wondering if you were happy in the Fire Nation. I hoped that you were ...
Memetic Mutation:
- CHARD MONSTER!!!
- Mai: Oh bitch best believe it is Hammertime. Wanananana
- The darkly named "Abortion Orange".
Moral Event Horizon: Mai killing Katara's unborn baby via poisoned fruit is meant to be this.
Narm: Has its own page.
Nausea Fuel: Mai's horrifically bloody death might make readers want to grab a bucket.
Rooting for the Empire: Since many of the comic's detractors feel that the heroes are hardly very heroic, it's no surprise that most of them root for Mai and Sho due to Mai being a lot more sympathetic than Katara and Sho being a badass.
Signature Scene
- Zuko confronting Mai about her actions regarding his love child with Katara. It's memorable partly because it's a good indicator of the comic's sense of morality (the "hero" cheats on his devoted wife and sires a bastard, his wife secretly has the child aborted to avoid any backlash from the scandal, and her husband physically assaults her for it), and writing (two words: "chard monster").
- Katara bloodbending Mai to death, is fairly well remembered, given that it's not only highly morally questionable, it's also a blatant violation of canon and an accurate look into the future.
So Bad, It's Good: The art is blatantly traced, and often seems completely unbelievable for the situation. The characters are ludicrously Out of Character, and the dialogue is terribly written, but there's quite a few unintentionally funny moments and lines.
Strangled by the Red String: All three of the couples, though Aang and Toph suffer slightly less than the other two (likely due to a lack of face time and over the top drama).
Theiss Titillation Theory:
- How on earth has Azula's epilogue dress not suffered some kind of catastrophic malfunction?
- The dress Katara is wearing during the fight with Mai. Despite her doing cartwheels and generally being active in it, and its seeming about ready to slip off anyway, it never does.
- During Katara's birthday party, Toph's dress is just barely high enough to cover her nipples.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Sho is far and away the best thing about this story. Unfortunately, he barely appears in it.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- Just about everything that goes on in the background could have made a more interesting story than the actual story. Aang finding an underground temple of surviving Air Nomads? Glossed over in the prologue. Azula's adventures, which somehow involved her blackmailing Mai to get a seat in the new Fire Senate while simultaneously dressing like a ninja? Never elaborated upon. Sho's existence? Nope. We get to focus almost exclusively on Team Avatar's increasingly convoluted romance stories.
- For those who like the grand politics of Korra and the sequel comics, the machinations surrounding the proposed Zuko-Katara and Sokka-Azula weddings could have made for a satisfying plot. However, most of this is completely glossed over. Which is especially annoying because the published comic strongly hinted at a lot of this, then suddenly cut to an "Everybody's happy ever after" stock ending years later without delivering on it.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: Mai is supposed to be the straight villain, and does some pretty nasty things, but the comic makes it very clear that everything Mai did is because she is in love with Zuko. Despite everybody else's love being so important to the series, the series itself never treats Mai's feelings as important.
Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Virtually everybody, due to the very blatantly traced artwork. Specific examples include:
- Aang. Good lord, Aang. He's usually drawn with a preteen's head, an adult's body, and grotesquely extended limbs.
- Katara, due to her skinny limbs, creepy uwu eyes and weird fish lips. Not helping is the fact that she keeps that same exact face for about 90 percent of the comic.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
- Katara is supposed to be seen as the torn heroine who has to fight to be with the man she loves even with the stigma. However, the story portrays her as being very shallow and self-centered,who does not care about the fact that she is a homewrecker whose actions could affect an entire nation. Her miscarriage was supposed to give her sympathy, but all it showed that she would make even her dead child all about her.
- Zuko is supposed to be the romantic male lead that is torn between duty and the love of his life. However, his actions could be seen as a philanderer who puts his heart before his country and his hitting Mai when he found she hid the letters about his child with Katara showed that he doesn't give a damn about his wife, who he cheated on.
- The fact that the "stigma" and "duties" are taken care of by a few choice words by Zuko, also detracts from this as it renders all points that were supposed to garner sympathy meaningless.
The Un-Twist: The fruit Katara ate was what caused her miscarriage. Despite this being shown in the beginning of Chapter 2, albeit as a flashback-dream, Katara is convinced that it was her longing for Zuko that caused it. It isn't until Mai flat out tells her that she gave her poisoned fruit that made her miscarry, that Katara even realizes it.
Wangst:
- Most of the couples, particularly Aang and Toph, wangst over how they can't be with the one their love, despite having no real reason why they can't.
- While Katara's angst over losing her unborn son is understandable, mourning for three years and building a giant tombstone for him is a bit extreme. Even worse, Katara somehow makes it all about her. "Kuzon" died a day before her birthday, after all. The dead child is treated as just an extension of Katara's derailed personality and a plot device to have her murdering Mai in the worst way possible.

YMMV / How I Became Yours

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