conuly | *thinks*

Everybody's posting Avatar fanfic lately and I just... if Azula is the younger sibling, and Zuko is only about 15 - 16 during the events of the show, then she can't be any older than 14.

Wow, she suddenly seems 1000% more sympathetic, which is amazing because she's awful.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

lightbird

Yep, Azula is 14 in the show and Zuko is 16. He's the oldest of all the kids.

From:

conuly

Oh, god. Eva's 14. I now feel really bad for Azula, and I don't wanna.

From:

alexseanchai

rumor has it that a fourth season of the show would have involved Zuko being to Azula what Iroh was to Zuko

I really wish we'd gotten to see that

but the writers who were for this (who are also the ones who gave Zuko, like, personality, to say nothing of a character arc) are also the ones who left-or-got-fired when they lost the Zutara vs Kataang ship war in the writers' room…

From:

conuly

rumor has it that a fourth season of the show would have involved Zuko being to Azula what Iroh was to Zuko

I really wish we'd gotten to see that

Ugh, is there fanfic of that premise at least?

but the writers who were for this (who are also the ones who gave Zuko, like, personality, to say nothing of a character arc) are also the ones who left-or-got-fired when they lost the Zutara vs Kataang ship war in the writers' room

Both those ships are wrong anyway.

From:

jack

Yeah, I always had difficulty seeing the main characters as children, but Azula in particular. I mean, someone who's like that at 50 probably should have had some chance to change. If you're 14, precocious, and raised by Ozai... that's exactly what you'll be like.

I think some of the Avatar people helped create Dragon Prince, which, to be fair, I thought the flavour and characters were AMAZING but the worldbuilding and arc were less impressive, so maybe Avatar really needed both halves.

From:

gingicat

Yes indeed. And she got positive attention from Ozai for tormenting her brother.

(deleted comment)

From:

isis

Me also.

From:

mindstalk

Show was pretty explicit about their relative ages.

From:

nrgburst

Hmmm, yup totes agree. And I wrote an Azula redemption fic for everywoman exchange too, because it really annoyed me that Iroh was so universally empathetic to Zuko/Toph/random people in the Earth Kingdom but he just wrote Azula off as crazy from the get-go. When she was also a kid being raised by Ozai.

From:

conuly

Just because Ozai clearly favored her that doesn't mean she wasn't harmed by his abusive parenting. Even if he never, ever directed that abuse at her! (Edit: But what do you want to bet that Iroh and Ozai also suffered from abuse as kids? Iroh is an adult, but still a person with a backstory.)

Edited Date: 2020-08-09 07:31 am (UTC)

From:

nrgburst

Yes, exactly! Being the favored child doesn't mean you don't come out just as emotionally screwed up.

From:

conuly

Also, I'd love to be linked to your fic.

Edit: NVM, found it, loved it.

Edited Date: 2020-08-09 09:33 am (UTC)

From:

nrgburst

:DDD

From:

lightbird

it really annoyed me that Iroh was so universally empathetic to Zuko/Toph/random people in the Earth Kingdom but he just wrote Azula off as crazy from the get-go

This. I mean, yeah, she did terrible things that shouldn't be excused and she needed to atone and make amends for those things, but we can see where she was coming from and it's sad that Iroh (the one adult around that might've been able to help steer her on the right path) didn't even try.

We even see the difference when Zuko and Azula are little, in the backstory part in Zuko Alone, with the gifts that Iroh sends from Ba Sing Se. Not only are his gift choices sexist (a knife for Zuko, a doll for Azula), but there's a cluelessness/obliviousness to Azula's gift. Zuko's gift has a little bit of a personal touch (there's an inscription on it that Iroh directs him to read in the letter, and it has meaning), whereas Azula's gift is just a generic 'this is what a girl would like' gift, and Iroh in his letter just says "she is wearing the latest Earth Kingdom fashion". Which, like, is so generic and do we think Azula would even care? Does it even matter to Iroh whether she would care about it or not? It doesn't seem like it.

I just found your fic and I'm looking forward to reading it.

From:

nrgburst

Yes, absolutely. Iroh favored Zuko from the get-go- probably giving a lifeline to the underdog that he saw getting kicked, but how he didn't even try to understand or know Azula really shows too.

I hope you like it! :D

From:

mindstalk

I thought the show leaned heavily toward Azula being a born sociopath. Sadistic and manipulative from a young age, with even her mother baffled by her.

From:

siderea

Not an atla follower, but: that just raises very deep questions, doesn't it? Like, even if someone is, what do we owe a child like that? Do we pity them for what they are? Are they entitled to our sympathy? If they're abused or their sociopathic impulses exploited by the adults in whose care they are, do we consider that justice, or it is also wrong and bad?

From:

mindstalk

Azula at 14 is already a gleeful killer, and as a precocious firebending master, permanently armed and dangerous. The only way of keeping her prisoner safely is in a full-time straitjacket, and I'm not sure even that renders her harmless e.g. to her guards or the walls of a prison cell; her uncle could breathe fire while bound.

The first duty is to keep everyone else safe *from* her.

Ideally one could try to tell whether she's actually a congenital sociopath or just acting that way because of her father/upbringing. And I think her uncle just said "she's crazy and needs to go down", which can be taken as "capture and treat if you can" not "kill" -- as a kid's show, Avatar tends to avoid committing to deaths. But it's risky, a la imprisoning the Joker, if the Joker could throw fire and lightning at will, and could be a royal-blooded focus of rebellion.

From:

siderea

The first duty is to keep everyone else safe from her.

Right. But that's immaterial to the issue.

Ideally one could try to tell whether she's actually a congenital sociopath or just acting that way because of her father/upbringing.

Why's that?

From:

mindstalk

You're asking me why one would try to tell whether someone is untreatable or not?

From:

siderea

Ah, so you're assuming that the one is treatable and the other isn't.

From:

conuly

The only way of keeping her prisoner safely is in a full-time straitjacket

So let's assume that this is comics canon and, much like the HP epilogue, we might not all agree that comics canon = show canon.

From:

mindstalk

The post-show comic (Search) had her being kept in such a straitjacket, until released for plot reasons. I just checked. [Edit: I hadn't checked far enough. She *escapes the straitjacket*. Granted via an unexpected interaction, but still.]

IIRC Korra also showed a firebender criminal (Red Lotus) being kept very tightly, but it's been a while.

Fire and airbenders make difficult prisoners, since they can't be separated from their element. Water must be hard too, you have to give them water periodically to keep them alive. Especially when they're at the level where head or foot movements can move the element.

Edited Date: 2020-08-09 11:49 pm (UTC)

From:

conuly

So, again, I'm sure not everybody agrees that the comics are canon canon.

But even if we do, whatever, just because everybody around her has decided that this is the appropriate treatment for that doesn't mean that everybody around her is right.

IRL, the people in charge of prisoners and the mentally ill screw up all the time due to all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they do it for kicks.

From:

nrgburst

Maybe the show did, but I don't think having her coddle Zuko and wonder aloud what was wrong with Azula would have helped matters. Also, does that make Azula irredeemable and therefore disposable? Is it impossible to rehabilitate her the way Zuko was? I tend not to think of people, especially bratty teenagers, in such absolute black and white. There's still plasticity there. There even is in adults.
Children are assholes-they kill ants/caterpillars/beetles just cause they can. They scratch and pinch and bite with little thought or care about how it hurts the other person. Does that make them so sociopathic that they deserve death?
Now let's look at Azula: praised and favored for being ruthless and vicious. Her father's coup making her a princess. Wouldn't that naturally fan "being a nasty bully" into "being utterly sure of her supremacy over others"? Are the glimpses of her as a person with regrets and feelings in The Beach episode mere blips in her evil persona? Or are they glimpses of who she could have been under the right guidance? What happens when she's shown incontrovertible evidence that she was wrong? Like, I can't look at the last bit of her arc, where she's losing her mind because she realizes she can trust NOBODY, where she obviously sees that she's been doubling down on the wrong path but doesn't feel like she can swerve anymore, with anything but a kind of sadness.

Edited Date: 2020-08-10 01:35 am (UTC)

From:

lightbird

Maybe the show did, but I don't think having her coddle Zuko and wonder aloud what was wrong with Azula would have helped matters.

This. And, listen, I love Zuko as a character, as does everybody. And we see in various flashbacks that Zuko did have a kind heart from the start. But he could've easily turned out like Azula if Iroh - a changed Iroh - hadn't been guiding him in another direction. When their mother reads the letter from Iroh in Ba Sing Se to both Zuko and Azula, all three of them are laughing at the line he wrote about burning Ba Sing Se to the ground. In 'The Waterbending Scroll' episode, Zuko taunts Katara with her mother's necklace and uses it to try to manipulate her into giving up Aang. He's acting just like Azula and Ozai in that moment. Being raised in and a product of the imperialistic and genocidal Fire Nation, especially as royalty, he had that potential in him too. But he also had Uncle Iroh, who suffered and learned and changed, trying to show him that the Fire Nation is wrong and push him on a better path.

There's also a scene in 'Zuko Alone' (just rewatched it recently so it's fresh in my mind) where Zuko and Azula are laughing and chasing each other around in the garden. No manipulation, no taunting, no cruelty. Just two siblings having fun with each other. So Azula had the potential to be something else, but that side wasn't nurtured.

From:

conuly

IRL, we know that trauma and upbringing have an effect on the probability that you'll end up like that as an adult. Though - and somebody please correct me if I'm wrong - there also seems to be a genetic component.

Which is to say, Ursa's parenting may have been well-intentioned, unlike Ozai's, but it wasn't necessarily helpful for her own child's particular needs, and we can't know for sure how much of Azula's personality as a young child was due to her genes and how much was due to her family situation.

From:

lightbird

This is a short, sweet Azula-redemption arc fic: they who learn to heal. It says Chapter 1/?, so I don't know if the author is planning to add to this, but the one chapter is pretty much standalone and doesn't need more.

From:

mindstalk

It's pretty much "she magically gets better", isn't it?

From:

lightbird

Not exactly.

From:

greghousesgf

a racist creep goes out of his way to be an asshole to a 3 year old girl. eurgh.

From:

conuly

Yo, at first I thought this was on the ATLA thread and was a bit shocked at your vehemence.

From:

greghousesgf

heh, if that was in ATLA the 3 year old girl would do some bending and knock him on his ass....

From:

siderea

The Police Tried to Make Me Medically Examine a Man Against His Will

Thank you for this.

From:

conuly

I'd rather not have posted it because nothing like this ever happens. I hate all this.

From:

nodrog

I had read years ago that just as you cannot sue the police for failing to protect you from crime - they're not bodyguards, tho’ politicians often use them as such - so police are allowed to lie to you. The example used was telling the defendant that they already have compelling evidence of his guilt, so he'd do better to “cooperate” and confess “freely.”

I am very glad that I have never had any serious run-ins with those people, and I plan to keep it that way.