Seeing, “Zuko is canonically bad at firebending,” takes on my dash, so…
Zuko is canonically not bad at firebending. He may not be the natural prodigy that Azula or Iroh are, but skills don’t work on a basis of either “extreme prodigy” or “not good at all.”
Zuko works hard throughout the series to grow and improve in his firebending, and he does.
He defeats Zhao, an adult firebending master, in an Agni Kai when he’s 16 and ostensibly still stuck on the basics, because mastering the fundamentals is a huge part of getting “good” at any skill.
He learns lightning redirection in about a day and later successfully uses it against Ozai, who is meant to be an extremely powerful firebender.
He learns to understand and appreciate his fire on a fundamental level from the dragons, who were the original firebenders, and in so doing he becomes a firebending master just as much as Katara (who had a few days/weeks at most of formal training) or Toph (who declared herself an earthbending master after learning from badgermoles) are masters of their elements.
And then he took everything he had learned about fire and put it together to help Aang master firebending over the course of a few weeks.
None of that says, “canonically bad firebender.” It says that Zuko didn’t start out as a major natural prodigy like his sister, but he worked hard, never stopped learning and growing, and developed into a very strong and capable firebending master in his own right by the end of the show.
Zuko takes prudence over flash and style.
He focuses on the basics because:
He has to.
Iroh wants him to.
He doesn’t have a natural affinity for it, but because he focuses on learning it, he’s able to do things that few other fire benders can actually do.
And this is an absolutely fantastic life lesson for people watching the show, both young and old.
Just because you don’t naturally excel at everything you touch doesn’t mean you can’t learn to master things that matter to you. Not everyone is a prodigy, but that hardly matters in the end. An amateur who breaks their back learning and pushing themselves will exceed a natural prodigy in time. That’s why Zuko is able to beat firebenders who are far more talented than he is… because he isn’t talented, he’s skilled.
Elon Musk was once known as an innovative billionaire who was paving the way in the STEM field for space travel. Now he’s just the dumb fuck that is rapidly crashing Twitter’s market value and losing an online battle with a shitposter. It’s nice to see his public image finally match up with his person.
ive had this photo from r/stupiddovenests open in a tab for like 3 days because it inspires such hope and joy in me that im afraid to close it in case i never find another source of those emotions as potent as this
