*thinks*

[conuly]

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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Comments

[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?

[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.

[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?

[mindstalk]

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

[siderea]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.