That is a bit exaggerated honestly, she claims to care about him and then proceeds to rarely do anything or even think about him positively. Hell, even with Iroh she complained about being complemented being "A way to compliment Zuko." Akane says she cares about him and then shows that she doesn't consistently.
Ultimately, I think she is
jealous of Zuko.
Zuko had a mother who loved him. Neither of her parents loved
her.
He gets away performing only adequately (though "barely adequate" to Akane's estimation is probably good to great to others). Whereas her getting a
compliment by an outsider (Osamu), leads her to being run to exhaustion, having to fight like that against Azula + 2 imperial firebenders,
winning and still being told she wasn't good enough.
She is unable to spend time with her Uncle, who she had thought was dead but Zuko is allowed to as much as he wants. Iroh freely spends time with Zuko, and had only spent very little time with us, and those few times before this live being guarded.
She finally gets to spend time with Iroh, Ozai breaks it up the minute he enters the scene.
and frankly "proceeds to rarely do anything" with him, is a complicated matter. She certainly did less with him than Azula, but she
tried spending time with him before Yu Dao.
Akane almost repaired the relationship between her and Zuko, and if she had fought to get him on the trip instead of folded to Ozai, she might just have done it:
"For a little bit, I thought maybe you actually did care," he bites out. "I thought I was being stupid when I yelled at you, and you at least tried to be there, and I should say something to you."
He... "Zuko, I -"
"Now I'm glad I didn't," he snaps. "Because you're just leaving me behind. At least when Mom left it wasn't because she wanted to."
You hold yourself still and keep your expression neutral. Is that what he thinks of you? He thinks you're as bad as Mother, or worse? Mother lied through her teeth to you all your life, she put you in danger, she left you alone to spend time with the child she actually cared about -
You are nothing like her. You are nothing like her and you never will be. You will never -
"You're nothing like Mom," Zuko spits. "And you never will be."
Your mouth opens slightly.
"I hope you have fun with Azula on your trip," he snaps.
If we could have found a way to get Zuko to come with us on the trip, we would have repaired that relationship. We didn't get the chance.
Of course then, he compares us to
Mother, and then looks at us disfavourably to her, which is a bigger insult then he knows, from Akane's perspective.
Finally the avoidance after Yu Dao is actually on Zuko's side at least partially:
Apparently Zuko's performance in everything important is holding steady at its usual standard of 'barely adequate'. You wouldn't know. He avoids you constantly; he has ever since you returned from Yu Dao.
He's avoiding us, here, not the other way around. Giving him those two swords was probably seen as a consolation prize at best, a bad attempt at an apology at worst.
So he has a loving parent, gets to spend time with Uncle, who we see as loving him more than us, and he actively avoids us.
On the other hand we are the big sister who gets Father's respect in a way he never could, who favors Azula over him, who is better than him at everything seemingly effortlessly,who abandoned him, and who didn't really interact with him all that much until mother died.
They are both jealous of each other, and both resent each other, and… neither is in the right mindframe to correct that.
Now to move on for a bit:
Iroh willingly teaching Akane the dancing dragon form is… incredible, nearly unbelievable considering that he never taught canon Zuko that despite being with him for so much longer.
Honestly I think that the reason is born from two things, Akane bringing up Lu Ten, making him especially sentimental, and:
"The Water Tribes' philosophy emphasizes the importance of adaptability and community to endure change," you answer. "They hold trust in one's friends and allies to be as important as strength and wisdom in determining one's worthiness as a warrior or simply as an adult. In combat, waterbending focuses on combining attack with defense by turning an opponent's energy against them. On a spiritual level, the Water Tribes believe in a sort of metaphysical balance between push and pull, good and evil, and destruction and creation. They believe that these opposites always exist together."
Her description of the Water Tribes' philosophy.
This isn't propaganda, it doesn't look down on the water tribe, or misunderstand things. It doesn't make any attempts to show the fire nation's philosophy is superior.
This isn't after having spent a large amount of time with them, Akane isn't caught up between deciding between two sides.
She just honestly grasps the water tribes' philosophy with minimal bias.
Someone who respects the philosophy of the other nations, is exactly the type of person he would like on the throne. That plus the speech she made at Yu Dao, where she shows she respects the people in the colonies and thinks of them
all as citizens of the fire nation, not just the ones whose ancestry hails from there, a speech that I am almost certain he knows about (but I could be wrong, if people at the palace intentionally keep info away from Iroh, which is depressingly possible), and well, Akane being Fire Lord eventually is the type of thing that is in the best interests of all going forward.
Now to deviate again:
People who remark on the votes made need to keep in mind one thing:
Fiction.Live isn't SV and isn't structured like SV.
This isn't meant to be an insult on either side but how quests are run is
different.
Many of these votes are open for what? ten minutes? Less?
This works there because it is "live". People are notified when the quest is going to be live and so know to go there at the expected time. People stay on the page and chat while it is being written, if they open up a new tab, to do something else, there is an audible ping when the next part is submitted.
This gives the QM more opportunities to get reader input, give players more control over their character, and allows the quest to move at a quicker pace.
If it was on SV, each vote option would be a new vote, it would be open for often at
least a day.
This means that the story takes longer, there is often less player input, but that we have time to distance ourselves and discuss things where that isn't the case over there.
So SV has time to cool down from the harsh events going down, and make what they think are the best decisions if they want to. We can make long effort posts to try to get people on side, discuss the vote options for hours, not that we always do, but we can.
Fiction.Live can't. You don't have time to cool down from the emotion of the moment, what is going on
consumes you, you must make a decision quickly or suddenly the vote is closed.
There are no hours long moratoriums for players to think things through.
The time it takes to write
this post is several times longer than the vote is open for.
And you know what? Sure they get caught up in the moment, but it makes it more authentic in a way. The character has little time to react and must decide. The character cannot just wait for a day or longer to make most of their decisions.
It is in the moment, they feel what the main character feels, and make a decision in the moment.
That is the birth of things like the Azulon comment.
Not having much time to discuss and make long back and forth's during the vote itself is the cause of things like picking to hang out with Iroh more, because he's one of your favourite characters, and is offering you a new form after just giving you one that players has long decided was needed (lightning redirection).
Or simply because they want to learn every scrape of bending knowledge they could.
Not that those are the only arguments for that decision, but it is a decision that is a gut instinct based off the moment.
And I can certainly respect that way of questing.
It doesn't always result in the best decisions, but no one in life makes the best decisions all the time, and certainly even with much more time SV doesn't always make better decisions
.
