When I first started this fanfic, I rewatched the whole series because it had been a while since I’ve seen the show. But after that and I’m sure I got the general idea of everything, I sort of just start planning and only really rewatch the very important parts in my story. I feel that rewatching parts is a commitment that’s not fully necessary because it’s like the difference of a 90% and a 93%, like they’re both still passing but I find in writing that taking the more tedious/harder road is worth it (usually)

I do agree with it all being practice and up to interpretations, it’s infact one of the pro’s of it. There’s interpretation of characters that I wouldn’t have ever thought of but that make sense (there’s a fic where it takes Azula being a good liar to mean she doesn’t have anything really important to lie about and when she does, she’s bad at it.) and there’s fun stories with parts of their canon personalities but not all of it (idk if I explained it that well). It’s an aspect of fanfic that I haven’t thought about but it’s cool now that I fully have.