#My logic as I made my original post was 'I love Azula's character but I want to address the recent discourse that surfaced'

[firelxdykatara]

I too ship Zutara and think they should have been canon. Although for me it's important to know how such a rewrite would go down. I tried to think, and I'm lost.

After Mai betrayed Azula for him, will he just go "sorry, not interested"? He isn't obligated to date her because of this, but her redemption hinges on Zuko and I don't see it being satisfying if he ends up rejecting her after this.

I thought the solution would be to rewrite her arc in boiling rock to make her have a moral realization, but then the problem with Maiko is practically solved. Their relationship wasn't salvaged by her redemption because last time they talked, Mai still didn't understand what's wrong with the Fire Nation and only changed because she loved Zuko. So how do you make it both satisfying & logical?

With Kataang the problem is the Chakras. The problem with the original (in my opinion) is that after he opened his chakra, letting go of his attachment to Katara, he's still attached (forcing a kiss on eip). Should TCoD get rewritten so that Azula shoots him before he opens it? Then why wouldn't he just open it later? Maybe the chakra would be locked so he feels as though he doesn't need to overcome his attachment just yet. In that situation, how would his chakra even unlock? The stone thing felt like nonsense, so how would I do it?

So yeah I have no idea how to approach this. How would you? (Thanks)

I've been rotating this ask in the back of my head like a rotisserie chicken for a few days--it's interesting because I don't generally stop to think like, how would I write them out of these relationships, I either ignore the relationships completely (which isn't hard, they were barely footnotes in the cartoon) or play a little bit with jealous exes or something. Thinking about like, In A Perfect World where Bryke wasn't in charge of ATLA post-canon (because if zutara had been canon, you can be sure they would've made us regret it) is interesting, and I do have thoughts on how I'd handle their relationships in a rewrite.

(this got long, so the rest is beneath the cut)

Assuming you mostly want to keep canon intact, I think maiko would be the easiest to work around, given how little relevance their relationship has in canon. The problem with maiko as an endgame ship is that it was not set up that way--if it had been, it would not have begun entirely off-screen and their whole relationship would not have been a study in misery and utter inability to connect emotionally. His relationship with Mai was there to showcase just how much he had changed and how little he fit into the life he had been so sure he wanted more than anything since his banishment. It worked very well to highlight Zuko's growth--how that contrasted to Mai's lack of it and why she could not understand him even at his most open and vulnerable--and did not work nearly so well when she was shoved back with him in the epilogue, after he'd quite literally forgotten her existence (he never mentions her again after Boiling Rock, not even to say a word of mourning, considering he'd have every reason to believe she was killed for defying his sister).

I don't think you can fix this by giving Mai some moral realization, because there simply is no room for it. As @araeph says in the essay I linked:

As a character, Mai is very useful to the story during Zuko’s return, because she represents everything that Zuko gains by sticking by his father. A girl who cares about him; the ability to indulge her; the authority he has over others at the palace; we see it all in his interactions with Mai. But this makes Mai a tether to a life he has long outgrown. Her function is not to advance Zuko’s character development, but to obstruct it, which also unfortunately means that Mai gaining a full understanding of Zuko’s trials would be disadvantageous to the story. If she knew everything about him and still wanted him to stay, it would give Zuko more cause than he should have to remain in the Fire Nation, but if she knew and encouraged him to leave and join the Avatar, it would rob Zuko of the triumph of making this decision on his own. In other words, there are good narrative reasons for keeping Mai in the dark; it just doesn’t make their relationship any stronger.

The seeds of a genuine redemption arc (one that includes some sort of moral realization and change to her moral framework) for Mai would have to have been planted far earlier than five episodes from the end of the series, but doing so would have of necessity detracted from Zuko's own character arc and the realizations that he makes despite his attachment to Mai (or more specifically to their relationship, which I feel like he was clinging to more out of a sense of abject loneliness he couldn't shake rather than genuine feelings and emotional connection).

So, in my mind, since we're tackling this with an eye towards getting rid of maiko with the fewest ripples to the overall story anyway, the easiest way to do this would be make one slight change to the end of the Boiling Rock two-parter--have Ty Lee (who had always been the least gung-ho of the trio about bowing to Azula's whims and had to be textually threatened into joining her in the first place) save Zuko's life, and then have Mai (who showed the most genuine affection for Ty Lee anyway) save Ty Lee. I love Zuko more than I fear you always fell flat for me as some epic declaration of love, anyway, since a) Zuko is not around to hear it, and b) unlike Ty Lee, she never showed much fear of Azula to begin with, so it wasn't a very high bar to clear. It was a cool line that was entirely unearned, and I don't think it would be missed, there would be some cute mailee crumbs this way, and a throwaway line of getting them released from the prison after the war ended could wrap up their presence in the story pretty nicely.

Now, kataang is a little trickier, if only because the last leg of Aang's character arc is almost completely derailed by his refusal to let go of his possessive attachment to Katara, to the point where he never naturally reopens his chakras, he has to have the Rock of Destiny hit him in just the right place, and the deus ex lionturtle there to give him a way out of having to make a hard moral choice. (I've maintained for years that if you work the final act of your main character's overall arc in such a way that it could have been solved by one good session with a chiropractor, something got fucked along the way.)

The thing about Aang's chakras is that, narratively, his whole thing with Guru Pathik and leaving his training early to save his friends was basically his version of Luke running away from his training with Yoda on Degobah because of his Force vision, only to find out that his friends were in the process of rescuing themselves and then losing his hand because he hadn't completed the most crucial part of his training. What's missing, therefore, from the last act of Aang's character arc, is the return.

See, in Star Wars, Luke pretty explicitly makes the wrong choice when he chooses to prioritize saving his friends over attaining enlightenment and fully mastering the Force. It was the only choice he could have made, but it was still the wrong one--because, like Aang, his friends did not actually need him to save them, he actually almost makes it harder for them to get away by requiring them to save him because, like Aang, he loses a battle in a very critical way. This was a lesson he desperately needed to learn, and it is clear he has learned it by the time he makes it back to Degobah and witnesses the end of Yoda's life, his own enlightenment having already been reached.

But Aang never goes back to the Guru.

And the text refuses to allow us to sit with the fact that he made the wrong choice in prioritizing his attachment to Katara over his ability to master the Avatar State. He is actually narratively vindicated about it, because the plot bends itself into a pretzel so that he doesn't have to spend any time during the last book trying to reopen his chakras and regain access to the Avatar State, handed both in the final battle with no excess effort on his part, and handed the girl into the bargain. (The girl who never even wanted him, so far as we can tell from all the lack of cues she gave him that she actually returned his feelings.)

And I think this could have been solved with a few scattered scenes. Let Katara actually have some agency in her own romantic relationship (or lack thereof), insofar as noticing Aang's advances and clueing the audience in to how she actually feels. Let Aang struggle with the fact that he can't reach the Avatar State, that his mastery of the elements is in limbo because he can't access his full power, rather than ignoring all of this until the end of the show. If we're trying to keep the shape of the last season roughly the same, let Katara confront Aang about the invasion kiss.

This would have been the perfect time to establish that Katara actually does feel some type of way about Aang prior to the epilogue, and it could have saved us from the exceedingly cringey EIP kiss that Aang never apologized for. How it comes across now, of course, is that Katara basically pretends it never even happened, to the point where she doesn't even know what Aang is talking about during EIP until he reminds her--the death knell for any shot their relationship had at looking requited, because I can tell you, as someone who's been a teenage girl, if someone I had conflicted but burgeoning romantic feelings for had kissed me, I would not have completely forgotten about it only a few weeks later--and we never get any indication as to what she actually felt about the kiss (which was not mutual, despite what Aang's dialogue in the EIP scene implies) except for the fact that she looked away and frowned afterwards. (A change mandated by Bryke, who wanted to leave her feelings completely ambiguous; the original storyboards had her smiling to herself.)

So, with an eye towards wrapping up Aang's puppy love crush and establishing Katara's distinct lack of romantic feelings for him, have her talk to him about the kiss. A good frame of reference for this would be Meng's conversation with Aang in "The Fortuneteller", where she finally realizes that he doesn't like her in the same way she likes him. Katara and Aang's conversation about the invasion kiss could be a callback to this, with Aang having some important realizations--that just because Katara doesn't share his feelings doesn't mean she loves him any less, and just because he can't have her the way he wanted doesn't mean he has to love her any less, that she doesn't belong to him but that's ok, because she's still his family and they'll always have each other's backs. Which could have functioned well in helping him take another step towards unblocking his chakras. Going back to the Guru directly may not have worked, since by this point in the story we're hurtling towards the final confrontation and Sozin's Comet, but let Aang reflect on what the Guru told him with new understanding granted him by his experiences throughout the first half of the season.

To keep the stakes high and up the suspense, obviously, he shouldn't have fully unlocked his chakras and the AS before the final fight, but the seeds could be planted--little moments like a talk with Katara about the invasion kiss, maybe a little more empathy and understanding from him about why Katara needs closure in TSR, etc--and then, during the final fight, rather than hand him all the answers on a silver platter, have him almost lose. He still can't go full Avatar, he's out of time, he still doesn't know exactly what to do about Ozai given his own pacifism and desire to preserve that part of his culture--he tries to fight but he's pretty quickly overpowered. Idk how I would've animated this, and maybe it wouldn't have looked as cool for the final fight, but the true climax of the finale was the Zuko and Azula agni kai anyway, so it hardly matters--I'm picturing him doing the rock-shield thing and going into a brief meditative state, where he finally achieves the enlightenment necessary to unlock the AS on his own, no rock of chiropracty necessary. And at this point, I'd give Ozai a Disney Death, since leaving him alive causes more problems than it solves and it's not necessary for Aang to kill him for him to die--they're fighting on a mountain ffs--but if you don't want to change that part then him figuring out energy bending as part of becoming a fully realized Avatar would at least feel more earned than the lionturtle just handing it to him. (And that could've been foreshadowed better by seeding the idea for it earlier in the season.)

After all of that, particularly if you up the emotions during the agni kai and have Zuko and Katara kiss there (or something less explicitly romantic but still tender, like a brief forehead touch), it'd feel pretty natural to have a just friends ending for Aang and Katara. Maybe a brief, slightly awkward but ultimately amiable conversation if Zuko and Katara had a ~thing at their final fight, and then the final shot of the series could be the gaang all together, maybe zutara holding hands or Katara resting her head on his shoulder or something, but since they already kissed there wouldn't feel like a need to end the whole show on romance, something which I've always felt missed the point of the series.

And then, y'know, after that, the world's your oyster! This is how I'd do it if I were trying to keep the bulk of the final season intact. Of course, breaking it all down to its component pieces and rebuilding from the ground up is also an option, but that'd probably be a longer post lol.

[childofaura]

Okay, I’m still trying to sort through all the responses on both posts. Just like with the other person, I’ll address your points as best as I can under a “read more”.

I will state this immediately: My original posts DID NOT properly elaborate on my actual position because I worded it poorly, being that my original position was “Azula cannot have a successful redemption the way Zuko did, because the writers gave her such a strictly fleshed out character that any kind of redemption arc performed while taking every part of her canon into account would feel janky and unnatural.” I didn’t mean to word it as “Azula is a psychopath and therefore she cannot be redeemed”. On that, yes I’m sorry. Now I’ll address everything else underneath as further analysis on Azula’s character.

> ”psychopaths display all of those traits, yes, but they also tend to display impulsivity. it’s a hallmark of psychopathy. azula doesn’t display impulsivity. her actions are precise and calculated, and thought through.”

Azula’s a tactical genius, undeniably, but she STILL has impulsive outbursts. Her first instinct when Ty Lee was excited that boys were paying attention to her was to lash out and and insult her. When Ozai told her she wouldn’t be invading the Earth Kingdom, she explodes at him and says he’s treating her like Zuko (which she considers an insult).

>“besides, azula doesn’t really display much egotism? anything that can be attributed as egotism when talking about her usually comes from outside sources, mostly from ty lee. literally all she does is accept it, and it’s not even like she asked for it.”

The way Azula carries herself constantly showcases how she sees everyone else as beneath her. When Long Feng admitted defeat, she insults him by saying he was never even considered a viable threat to her. Regardless of where the praise comes from, her personality still displays her as a narcissist who is very hardly capable of being humble unless it’s for manipulation or personal gain.

>”also? low empathy is a hallmark of autism, and many other traits she shows prove that she could be neurodivergent in some way (socially awkward, persistent obsessive interest (that being war), etc. all of this is in the beach episode btw). you attributing that to psychopathy and psychopathy exclusively? ahem, YIKES.”

I didn’t attribute low empathy exclusively to psychopathy. My post detailed every aspect that was listed for psychopathy in the official definition, and low empathy was one of them. Please don’t take what I said out of context.

>”also, the point about her wanting to kill a servant for leaving a pit in her cherry? uh…when did she say she wanted to kill the servant? i legitimately dont remember her saying she wanted to kill her. this is literally all during her psychotic episode btw, where she shows MANY symptoms of a psychotic disorder. you attributing that to psychopathy is, yet again, ableist.”

During her coronation day preparation, she threatens the servant girl by saying “then you understand the severity of your crime” after the girl says Azula could have choked on the cherry pit. Her reaction to the girl asking for forgiveness is showing mercy by “banishment”. The original crime would have been death. You keep saying I’m trying to specifically assign small specific moments of her lowest point with psychopathy, when I tried to explain throughout her character arc she’s shown to behave like that, even during her peaks.

> ”her manipulative tendencies came from ozai, by the way!! he did that shit to her first. he deliberately groomed her into becoming a war machine. i was groomed as well, so i think i should know this??? it’s all so fucking obvious did you even watch the same show. is every copy of atla personalised or am i just losing my mind.”

 And I never said that they didn’t come from him, and I’ve specifically mentioned in my original post that Azula was groomed and manipulated by Ozai. I never denied that. Years ago when I commented on Erhasz’s declaration that Azula was gonna have a redemption arc, I specifically mentioned that Azula was just as much a victim of psychological abuse as Zuko and a lot of people at the time forgot about that.

To address everything overall, absolutely NO WHERE was I demonizing psychopathy as a whole. I was talking about a FICTIONAL CHARACTER; my views and standards for fictional characters is NOT the same as they are for real people. Coming onto my post and calling me ableist while A) not observing Azula’s character personality B) Not knowing what me or my family’s mental health history is, as someone personally with a disorder and someone whose family suffers from issues ranging from alcoholism, PTSD, and schizophrenia, and judging me for my analysis of fiction, is very hostile.

What you went through wasn’t deserved at all, and I hope you defy your abuser by living, growing, and thriving because fuck whoever hurt you. But you don’t get to judge who I am based on how I analyze a character who doesn’t exist. You don’t know me just as much as I don’t know you.

Edit: Forgot to mention, I’m absolutely all ears if you want to tell me what a more accurate mental diagnosis would be for Azula.

Azula's a 14 year old in need of therapy, people saying a child soldier is too far gone to get help is one of the real world reasons that child soldiers, especially girls, have dreadfully low rehabilitation rates, and can you not use psychopath when you obviously don't even know what that means.

I’m gonna apologize for coming off as rude, anon, but let me state this:

Me stating that a fictional character is written in a way that doesn’t allow for her to have much in the way of a successful redemption arc, that doesn’t feel incredibly janky and helter-skelter, has absolutely NO correlation to how I would feel about a real-life situation, and that’s not even what I was talking about in my post. I didn’t bring up real life child soldiers AT ALL.

>“and can you not use psychopath when you obviously don’t even know what that means”.

“Psychopathy, sometimes considered synonymous with sociopathy, is traditionally a personality disorder characterized by persistent anti-social behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits.”

Tell me exactly where I used that in the wrong context, because I used that word KNOWING what it means. Azula is ALL of those things. She has impaired empathy and remorse (She doesn’t care that she constantly puts her “friends” Mai and Ty Lee in danger, or that she manipulates Zuko’s crippling need for his father’s approval, or that she hurts people to get what she wants. SHE WANTED TO KILL A SERVANT FOR NOT DE-PITTING THE CHERRIES SHE WAS EATING FOR FUCK’S SAKE), she narcissistically prides herself in being able to manipulate people and being the crown princess of the Fire Nation and didn’t get why some beach boy didn’t think she was the total catch she thought she was, she willingly puts her own life in danger all to please her father (bold and disinhibited), and drives everyone away either purposely or non-purposely.

Azula is a psychopath whose character doesn’t allow for a successful redemption arc the way Zuko’s did.

[cobra-diamond]

Hicks and Yang on Azula Fans

Cult.

Upset.

Scary.

Aggressive.

During the 2019 San Diego Comic Con, an Avatar Q&A was held including Michael Dante DiMartino, Gene Yang and Faith Erin Hicks.

One fan asked about the franchise’s plans for Azula. Here is a summarized transcript of the exchange, with my own commentary:

Fan: “Hi, so the comics have shed light on characters who have a lot more of their story to be told after the Finale. I has wondering if you might be able to, if you have any plans for, expanding on a character you’d mentioned before: Azula.”

I can hear the trepidation in this fan’s voice; they can’t just come right out and say it. I know the feeling: should I feel interested in Azula? Will others understand why? Will they accuse me of minimizing her evil and villainy? Am I minimizing her awfulness in the show? Am I even right to want more Azula?

Yang’s answer:

Yang: “I have to say, in my experience with Azula Fans, it has been almost like a cult [crowd erupts in laughter]. Not saying you are!”

Well, actually, Yang, you kind of are.

And you didn’t answer the question.

You know what’s also a cult following? The Princess Bride movie. But was Yang referring to that kind of cult? No, because nobody would think twice about insulting Princess Bride fans by referring to that movie as having a “cult-like” following.

No, Yang was referring to that kind of cult, the one where if you accuse someone of being a member, you are insulting their intelligence and accusing them of borderline nefarious obsession. Yang was referring to the spooky, deranged kind that believes aliens seeded the Earth with Human life and built the pyramids. Only in the case of Azula fans, the original show seeded Azula with humanity and left the door open for a deep, compelling change-and-growth story in the Post-Finale setting.

Hicks’s answer:

Hicks: “I have to say, for the most part, Avatar fans have been just absolutely lovely to me, but I got this scary e-mail from someone who was an Azula fan and was very upset and aggressively demanding that I write her a certain way. I actually had to shut down my e-mail because it unnerved me so much. And it was a little weird because Azula is one of my favorite characters as well, but it made be scared off, perhaps, from writing her in the future.”

God dammit. Hyper-sensitive and impassioned fans are everywhere. This most certainly occurred. Even Bryke have spoken about getting hate mail from jilted fans. At any rate, to anyone reading this, don’t do this. Clearly Hicks doesn’t have the intestinal fortitude to put up with it, neither will it change hers or anyone else’s minds.

Azula’s place in the franchise isn’t where it is because fans haven’t been loud enough; she’s a secondary character and a villain. If they were ever going to expand her non-villain role in the franchise it would have happened a long time ago. As the articles “She’s Completely Crazy!” and Mirror & Misdirection explain, the piss poor handling of her character comes from a much deeper, unchangeable source in the Creators’ minds.

But the first thing that jumps to Hicks’ mind is one instance of hate mail? Telling this fan she is grouped in with someone who is scary, upset and aggressive? And that is enough to scare her off?? Holy shit. Hooooly shit. She better not be tasked with salvaging, or even writing, anything regarding Azula. Someone tasked with writing Azula, I mean really writing Azula, especially after the mess of Smoke & Shadow, needs far more guts than this. She is far too spooked by fans, and the current canon and lack-of-vision of Bryke is only going to infuriate more.

Hicks’s answer continued:

Hicks: “So please be kind to creators. We’re working very hard on licensed properties. I know none of you guys [the crowd] would do this [send hate mail; crowd erupts in laughter]. Um, I love Azula. I think she’s great. I would like to write her. I would like to write more stories. Gene actually left her place in the world very open-ended. I actually loved the way Gene wrote her. I liked Smoke and Shadow a lot. I think that story and where Azula’s journey went was really fascinating to me. So yeah, I would like to write Azula stories. As of right now, I’m writing new Avatar stories, not necessarily about Azula, but maybe someday in the future. Azula fans, please be nice to me. I’m trying my best.”

First of all, nobody cares about Smoke and Shadow. Yes, nobody. Its popularity on Goodreads nose-dived compared to The Promise and The Search. There are parts of it that are okay and likable, but not the work itself. I will give Hicks the benefit of the doubt that she is just going, “Yes, my Emperor! Your clothes are beautiful!” to her naked overlords. Smoke and Shadow was a mess for more than just Azula and an utter train-wreck for Azula. Don’t read much into that comment by her.

She is scared off from writing Azula, but still wants to writer her. Wants to. Whether we get more Azula shouldn’t come from her wanting to, she should have to if that is the plan for the franchise. More evidence that the franchise has no overarching plan for telling compelling stories about these characters. It doesn’t matter if fans know that Azula is destined to become Zuko’s closest advisor. It doesn’t matter if fans know Zuko and Azula reconcile, as implied by generous interpretations of Smoke and Shadow.

Well, duh!!

Of course that’s going to happen. It’s the only logical outcome that is consistent with the themes of the show. Fans don’t want to be told what happens; they already know what has to happen. What fans want is to see HOW it happens. They want to see the journey, and right now the journey is crap, and the franchise doesn’t even appear to know what they even want the destination to be.

This Post-Finale setting, while containing some nuggets of gold when taken out of context, are an unplanned, butchered mess that does far more telling than showing, and the telling it does is half-baked and confusing.

“Licensed properties” is an important key word, however. It reveals the reality that Faith Erin Hicks has guard rails put on her, whereas for us fans, our imaginations are the limit and is not constrained by canon, deadlines or the commercial realities of Avatar.

“Licensed properties” also implies the Creators. While we can think of all the great ways a novelist or a competent manga author could create a sweeping epic about both Azula, the Fire Nation and her ultimate place in the Avatar world, the commercial realities of Avatar might just not allow it: Zuko and Aang are the faces of the franchise, followed by Katara. Everyone else are just secondary characters. As a result, Azula becomes a razor thin eggshell painted to look like a person but is not actually a person because the Creators have neither the time nor inclination to turn her into one.

And lastly, “I’m trying my best” is not a very assuring statement. Once again, more evidence that there is no plan or even “faith” in what they are doing. If these authors have to “try” then they don’t know either their market or their product. They’re hoping fans will like what they come up with versus buckling down and actually figuring out how to tell Avatar stories worthy of Avatar’s reputation.

So remember Azula Fans, or Avatar Fans, if Azula Fans are even counted as Avatar fans, your desire to see a competent, well-written, compelling and emotionally-gripping Azula story makes you part of a:

Upset,

Scary,

Aggressive,

CULT.

Well, they certainly got the first one right.

P.S. Don’t harass Faith Erin Hicks. The situation with the comics and Azula are way above her pay grade. At best, we can learn why.

[wiseabsol]

WA Reviews “Dominion” by Aurelia le, Chapter 15: Lost

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6383825/15/Dominion

Summary: For the Fire Nation royal siblings, love has always warred with hate. But neither the outward accomplishment of peace nor Azula’s defeat have brought the respite Zuko expected. Will his sister’s plans answer this, or only destroy them both?

Content Warnings: This story contains discussions and depictions of child abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and incest. This story also explores the idea that Zuko’s redemption arc (and his unlearning of abuse) is not as complete as the show suggested, and that Azula is not a sociopath (with the story having a lot of sympathy for her). If that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, I would strongly recommend steering clear of this story and my reviews of it.

Note: Because these were originally posted as chapter reviews/commentaries, I will often be talking to the author in them (though sometimes I will also snarkily address the characters). While I’ve also tried not to spoil later events in the story in these reviews, I would strongly recommend reading through chapter 28 before reading these, just to be safe.

Now on to chapter 15!

CHAPTER 15: LOST

 Alright, I’m a little late on this one, so let’s just dive into the ugly sadness of “Chapter 15: Lost,” shall we?

 The A/N mentions that Toph, Suki, and Sokka will be back in five or six chapters, and a part of me can’t help but think, “Good, you three are distracting us from the Surround Sound Stereo Angst for the Royal Fire Family.” Joking aside, I am looking forward to Toph’s character development later on, because even though I know some of what is going to happen in future chapters of “Dominion,” I legitimately don’t think that Aurelia and I have discussed Toph’s arc yet. It’s a blind spot for me, but I’m okay with that, since I want to have some surprises in the wings, rather than just enjoying how X and Y parts are executed. Both ways of reading this story are fun, but the former is more enjoyable for reader in me, rather than the editor.

 If the outline mentioned in chapter fifteen is still accurate, then that means that we have seven chapters left of “Dominion” at present, before we move on to “Thrones.” That number might be off, though, because Aurelia tends to be more verbose than she expects and has to split the chapters into multiple parts.

 On to the chapter itself. Ty Lee and Mai are meeting in a sitting room. Ty Lee is nervous and Mai wonders if Ty Lee thinks that she’s mad at her, but Ty Lee hastens to reassure her. Mai’s aura indicates that she’s anxious and struggling to maintain control during this conversation. Mai is upset about “Zuko’s mistake,” but she doesn’t blame Ty Lee for it—she knows who to blame (Azula, probably, but maybe both her and Zuko). Mai doesn’t think that it was a bad idea for Zuko to team up with June, because the bounty hunter will track Azula down in short order and have her back in custody.

 Ty Lee is not enthused about this idea. Despite knowing that Mai isn’t going to like it, she tells Mai that Azula shouldn’t be put back into the asylum. As trash of a human being as J. K. Rowling is, I can’t help but think of the quote, “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends.” Ty Lee, you are the overlooked and unsung hero of this story. There should be shrines in your honor.

 Mai never likes it when Ty Lee brings up Azula, and usually deflects the conversation. Ty Lee also sees Mai less than she sees Azula, so they don’t get much of a chance to talk anyway. “Ty Lee still felt a little guilty about that, but Mai was always so busy, and Mai and Zuko would never even talk about Azula when she was the one who brought them all together in the first place….”

 A few things here. Ty Lee and Mai are maybe a little like Ty Lee and Zuko, in that they call each other friends, but it doesn’t seem like anyone is putting in the effort to be friends. Mai could be making more time for Ty Lee. Mai could be trying to empathize with Ty Lee over the Azula issue. At the same time, I think Mai has been trying to set a boundary with Ty Lee about Azula, but either Mai hasn’t made it clear enough to Ty Lee that this is a boundary, or Ty Lee isn’t able to respect it because Azula is so important to her. It seems like there are competing needs at work here, and the feelings on both sides are valid.

 At the same time, this situation has been festering for years. It’s clear that Mai has never been at peace with her feelings towards Azula, and that this is hurting her as much as it’s going to hurt Azula. I think Mai’s hatred for Azula is founded on the love she once had for her. While a large part of her might think that Azula deserved her fate, and even found it satisfying to see Azula brought low, there might also be a small part of her that wonders if that fall was partially her fault (it was, since Mai accidentally slammed down on Azula’s triggers), and feels guilty for it and for feeling that satisfaction. Also, from the way she’s been behaving, Mai might very well have been just as toxic and false a friend to Azula as she accuses Azula of being to her. She didn’t communicate her needs or desires to Azula, but instead let herself boil alive with resentment. She might blame Azula for how things went down, but she’s ignoring the role she played in it.

 As the conversation continues, Ty Lee dances around why it would be bad to send Azula back to the asylum (because Azula is pregnant), and Mai says, “‘She tell you they abused her? And here I thought it was her dad.’”

 Which brings another layer into this. I’m going to discuss this in more detail later, but Mai has now been confronted with the idea that Azula was an abused child—just as abused as Zuko was. And besides this recontextualizing Azula’s behavior, now Mai is left to wonder, “How did I never notice?” I think there’s a tiny part of her, one that she denies, that is appalled over what happened to Azula.

 Ty Lee, who loves Azula whole-heartedly, is HORRIFIED by this revelation. She feels like the ground is “rushing up to hit her” and remembers how Ozai treated her, the last night she spent in the castle as a kid. And then she…well: “But Azula was so strong, she wouldn’t let anyone do that to her, would she? At least she would have told Ty Lee, they were best friends!” Oh Ty Lee, honey. That’s not how abuse works. Azula wouldn’t have told anyone, both because she was ordered not to by her abuser, but also because that would have meant being vulnerable around someone else. Does that sound like something Azula would do?

 Mai says that Azula must have been lying about the abuse, but the thing is, Azula didn’t tell Mai about it. Zuko did. And even Mai doesn’t really believe it is a lie, if Ty Lee’s aura-reading is accurate. Mai’s just trying really hard to believe in her own lie. Mai argues that Ty Lee only ever sees the good in people—which isn’t true, since Ty Lee can see the flaws in people, but is more forgiving of them than the other characters are (except for Aang). Mai wonders if Ty Lee has convinced herself that there’s goodness in Azula where there is none.

 And that’s…a lot. Because there’s a mix of good and bad in everyone. Some people lean more towards one end of the spectrum than the other, but if you look hard enough, you’ll always find something that humanizes even the most saintly or heinous of people. My stepmother, who was emotionally and psychologically abusive, wasn’t pure evil. She made my father happy. She was fiercely protective of those she loved. She made the best oatmeal cookies in the world and shared my passion for sappy romances. I’ve progressed enough in my healing that I can see these things, and see her as a troubled person who made mistakes and never got the help she needed. But Mai…she hasn’t healed the way I have. She hasn’t forgiven Azula. She might never be able to do that, either, given recent events (and she doesn’t have to—that’s her choice to make). And as long as that’s the case, it’s so much easier for her to demonize Azula, because if Azula is a demon, then Mai doesn’t have to grapple with the messy reality of Azula as a person, or grapple with how Ozai’s, Zuko’s, and Mai’s own choices damaged her.

 Then we get this passage, which I’m going to quote in full, because it’s a slap in the face to absolutist thinking where Azula is concerned:

 “‘I know she did some bad things, some awful things even, but that was four years ago and she was just a kid! We all were!’ [Ty Lee] argued [ . . . ] ‘And most of that stuff she did on her dad’s orders, and who knows what he would’ve done if she refused—’

 ‘Oh yes, poor helpless little victim,’ Mai interrupted coldly, rising to her feet with more grace than Ty Lee. ‘It’s not like she ever had a choice.’

 ‘She had a choice, but this stuff makes a difference, Mai!’ Ty Lee insisted, desperate to make her see it. ‘It makes a difference how we judge what she did! And we know now she was crazy!’ Ty Lee seized on the horrible truth with more enthusiasm than she would ever have guessed, spreading her hands to offer explanation. ‘Doesn’t that make a difference to you?’”

 Context. Matters. It matters so much when you’re judging someone’s behavior. If someone is under duress, or isn’t fully in their right mind, or if they have no good choices, can we really blame them from making bad ones? And in Azula’s case, she was a child. Should she really have been written off by anyone, let alone our heroes?

 Mai doesn’t believe that Azula was mentally ill, though. That was just a part of Azula’s scheme, you see. Ty Lee is rightly appalled by this. “‘Even if—you thought she just made it up—to avoid prison or something,’ she grasped at the logic only loosely, because it was disgusting, ‘you can’t deny what it did to her! She starved herself almost to death, she almost died!’” I really appreciate that Ty Lee is disgusted by Mai’s reasoning here. You go, Ty Lee! Four for you, Ty Lee! You’re the only reasonable person from the Fire Nation in this cast, I swear.

 Ty Lee reminds Mai that there were witnesses to Azula’s deteriorating mental state, but realizes that Mai is in denial about this: “Realization leaked through cold and creeping as the egg Ty Lin broke over her head that one time. ‘Or maybe you can deny it,’ she whispered, horrified, and took a swift step back with hands raised before her when Mai lifted her head.” Yeah, I’m fully in agreement with Ty Lee’s horror. She’s looking at a friend who is so twisted up by resentment that she has lost sight of reality, in favor of believing a comfortable lie—namely, that Azula is irredeemable and so Mai doesn’t need to care about what happens to her. Even though Mai does need to care about this, because Zuko and Ty Lee will be gutted if Azula dies, and the Fire Nation will probably go to war over it.

 “‘I didn’t see her because she treated me like shit,’ Mai spoke deliberately.” Mai is right that she doesn’t have to have Azula in her life if she doesn’t want Azula there. You don’t have to have anyone in your life who has hurt you. But that isn’t all that’s going on here. Mai is still smoldering with anger four years later, and her inability to let that anger go has been eating her alive. It’s making her lash out at Zuko and Ty Lee when they try to broach the subject of Azula. This isn’t healthy for her or anyone else. This is just a continuation of the behavior that plagued her as a teenager—suppressing all of her negative emotions until they explode outwards, rather than allowing herself to feel them, accept them, learn from them, and move on.

 When Mai points out that she doesn’t owe Azula anything, Ty Lee replies that she wouldn’t have met or fallen in love with Zuko if she hadn’t been Azula’s friend. This stings for Mai, given that the siblings have had sex: “‘She gives, and she takes away….’”

 Ty Lee, being more perceptive than anyone gives her credit for, figures out that something must have happened. She’s very sympathetic, asking if Mai wants to talk about it. Mai panics and has another angry outburst, thinking that Azula must have told Ty Lee about what Zuko did. “[Ty Lee] was reminded uncannily of how Azula reacted to Mai’s rejection at the Boiling Rock, and found it hard to fathom how Mai hadn’t run for the hills on receiving such a look.” This is interesting, because it suggests that part of the reason why Mai loathes Azula so much is because of the similarities between them. There is nothing more unsettling than seeing a dark mirror of yourself in someone else.

 Ty Lee doesn’t know what Mai is talking about, and then kicks herself for revealing that to Mai: “Azula would have known enough to pretend she already knew, so Mai would tell her.” Mai shuts down at this point and tells Captain Tadao to take Ty Lee to her rooms, because they’ve “embarrassed each other enough for one day” and that they’ll talk later.

 Ty Lee knows that’s bullshit. “They wouldn’t because Mai never wanted to talk about Azula, and was extra unlikely to want to talk about Azula when she had problems of her own with Zuko.” I’m sure that Mai was reluctant to talk about Azula with Ty Lee because she didn’t think that Ty Lee would let her vent about her anger towards Azula, or understand it and not make excuses for Azula. Which is fair, but Mai should have found someone else to vent to to get the poison out, and then circled back to seeing Azula as a human being who fucked up.

 Actually, you know what Mai probably needs? She needs to confront Azula about what happened between them, because she hasn’t seen Azula since the Boiling Rock. Yeah, Mai had a cool line about loving Zuko more than fearing Azula, but that didn’t get into her specific grievances, or allow Azula to address or apologize for them to give Mai closure. And we know that Azula feels bad about what she did, because it was what haunted her the most when she was having her breakdown. If Azula really was a monster, then she wouldn’t feel that remorse.

 “Ty Lee felt bad about that, and she wanted to help Mai, she really did”—Ty Lee is too good for this sinful Earth—“but Mai wouldn’t tell her anything, and even though her problems seemed bad, Azula’s could get her killed—” Yeah, the most reasonable one of the bunch, our Ty Lee.

 Ty Lee begs Mai to do something to help Azula, because she’ll die if the Earth Kingdom catches her. Ty Lee has this heart-wrenching speech: “‘I know you guys had problems, and—maybe you think she was never your friend [ . . . ] But she thought of you as a friend, Mai, she told me so! She fought so hard to get better, she’s a better person now, and she deserves a second chance! But she’ll never get that chance unless we help her.’” Carve my heart out and eat it, why don’t you?

 And Mai…is unmoved by this. And condescending about it. “‘I hoped your actions might prove you were ready to cut ties with her too. But clearly you can’t be trusted to know what’s best for you” She’s referring here to Ty Lee seemingly choosing the Kyoshi Warriors over Azula. But also, it’s gross that Mai assumes that she knows what is best for Ty Lee. Fuck off with that, Mai.

 Mai doubles down on the whole, “Azula’s awful, I don’t owe her anything, and don’t come crying to me when she hurts you” schtick. If she’d met the adult version of Azula and seen that version of her hurt someone, such as Ty Lee, then this reaction would make sense. What this is instead is Mai holding onto a grudge that is years old and using it as a weapon. She’s clinging to the idea that Azula can never change…even though that’s not how people work. Especially not people in the formative years of their lives, which they all still qualify as.

 Aaaand Ty Lee, panicking now, reveals that Azula is pregnant as a last-ditch effort to get Mai to get her head out of her black-clad butt and see reason. Mai goes into despairing shock at this news and accidentally cuts herself with her own knife, much to Ty Lee’s and Captain Tadao’s alarm. One of the guards tries to grab Ty Lee, but Ty Lee chi-blocks him and he collapses. The next one manages to grab her. Mai orders them to remove Ty Lee from the room, and instead of putting Ty Lee in her guest bedroom, they stick her in a study.

 We learn that Ty Lee actually likes Tadao, because he works hard and doesn’t dismiss Ty Lee’s suggestions on how to improve palace security. He’s the one who comes to see Ty Lee instead of Mai. He tells her that Mai is going to be fine. She might have a scar on her hand, but she’ll still be able to use it. When Ty Lee wonders why she got so upset, Tadao points out that since Mai and Azula are sisters-in-law, Azula’s condition will have an impact on Mai. This is also “the latest in a recent line of insults.” To put it another way, Mai is bitter at Azula for having sex with Zuko and throwing that wrench into her marriage (namely, by revealing that Zuko is not the person she thought he was). Then there are the political considerations, given that Azula’s kid could have a place in the line of succession, if the kid gets legitimized someday. Which then puts little Lu Ten’s claim at risk.

 This also reveals that Captain Tadao knows what happened between Azula and Zuko. For a second, I thought that he was Mai’s uncle, and so the ugly secret was just between them and the Fire siblings. But no, more people know about it, and that is NOT GOOD. But Captain Tadao seems like a good guy (sidebar, but was he the guy who escorted baby Ty Lee out of the palace during the abortion episode? It would be a sweet connection if so), and when Ty Lee asks why Mai won’t confide in her about what is going on between her and Zuko, Tadao is gentle when he tells her, “‘I think you know the answer to that question.’” Ty Lee’s love for Azula and Mai’s hatred of her is something they cannot reconcile, and given how important Azula is in their lives, it’s a potential dealbreaker for them, at least as far as having a close emotional, trusting relationship goes. A casual friendship is still possible, but probably not if Mai or Ty Lee keep pushing each other.

 Mai has decided to pack Ty Lee off to Kyoshi Island, and has gotten her a ticket and an escort to the harbor. Ty Lee has written Mai a letter to continue their conversation. I’m struck by how fast Mai is pushing Ty Lee out of the Fire Nation. What if Ty Lee wanted to visit her family? What if she wanted to enjoy some spicy homecooked Fire Nation food? What if she, god forbid, decided to visit Ozai for a nice shouting match (well, shouting at his comatose body, more like)? Alas, the plot beckons us forward!

 We find ourselves back with Zuko and June. Hooray? I put a question mark there because Zuko doesn’t appearing to be having a good time with the bounty hunter. He is, in fact, puking his guts out. Traveling with June has the feeling of a boot camp to Zuko, because she keeps trying to “toughen him up”: “It reminded Zuko uncomfortably of his father’s early tutelage, before Ozai gave up shaping him into an unfeeling weapon of war, and turned his sights to Azula instead.” Oh Zuko, if you knew what Ozai was trying to shape YOU into, then why blame Azula for—at least in your eyes—becoming it?

 June puts all of the gross chores of their journey onto him, and tries to steal his food to see if he’s cunning enough to get it back. I’m sure she finds this amusing, but I remember how hard Zuko’s journey apart from Iroh was, and I think she might have an overly inflated opinion of her teaching skills.

 In any case, they find the Dai Li agent hiding in a cave and June forces Zuko to interrogate him. It sounds like June is doing the heavy-lifting where torturing the man is concerned, though. June keeps telling Zuko to burn the man, and reminds him that Azula will be tortured if she’s captured. Eventually, the man begs Zuko to kill him, and Zuko has a flashback to when he was burned by Ozai: “he could only think of a hand wreathed in flame, reaching for him.” It’s at this point that Zuko throws up. He tries to argue that the man deserves this: “He would have blackmailed me, hunted my sister down like an animal. He wouldn’t flinch from torturing her, even killing her if he was ordered.” This line of reasoning doesn’t give him any comfort, though.

 I do want to point out that torture, despite what fiction would like us to believe, is an ineffective tool for getting reliable information out of someone. Oftentimes it’s bribery that works better, such as, “You know we can’t let you go, but if you tell us what we want to know, we can make sure that no harm comes to your loved ones.” People in pain will say anything to make it stop, so gentler methods are more effective. However, it’s become ingrained in our cultural consciousness that torture works, despite what studies have shown. And since hurting the villain can be cathartic to an audience, and a hero hurting the villain can tell us something about them as a person, it comes up a LOT in action stories. And while I am exhausted by it being used in this way (torture as a tool of the villains tracks better, since there is no shortage of people who find satisfaction in making other people feel pain), I do see why it is used here. It’s only recently that the ineffectiveness of torture has become more generally known, whereas Zuko lives in a time period analogous to…probably the late 1800s?

 I do wish that the torture here hadn’t yielded the information that it had, or that this information turned out to be bunk upon investigating it. As if it, the Dai Li agent is mostly filling in non-vital information: that he worked as an orderly at the asylum and had a partner there, hence how he got to the beach house on Ember Island so fast. So the partner needs to be taken care of at some point soon. Zuko better remember to send that letter!

 Then we get this chilling thought from Zuko: “Zuko considered for the first time what might have happened, if she had not run from the asylum. If the Earth Kingdom grew impatient [ . . . ] it would have been appallingly easy to make her death look like a suicide, an accident overdose, a bad reaction to her medication….” Yeah, she was definitely a sitting duck there.

 “He wondered if Azula knew, or suspected, that she was in the care of her enemies when she decided to run [ . . . ] She had an instinct for these things. The only time she hadn’t seen it coming was when her friend betrayed her. And when Zuko left to join Aang in ending the war, if her converse [sic] with absent fathers was to be believed—" I don’t know if Azula ever knew that there were Dai Li agents lurking about, but even Zuko is starting to see why Azula has such bad trust issues.

 It looks like June continued with the torture and got the location of her dad out of her victim. I really wish she’d gotten a fake location, but I understand that the plot necessitates a swift end to this subplot. June hopes that Zuko is less squeamish about violence when someone is out to kill him, but I’m sure he would be fine in that situation, because that would be a fair fight, rather than causing someone who is helpless and incapacitated a useless amount of pain. June killed the agent in the end, and when Zuko argues that torturing him wasn’t right, and she replies with, “‘It was necessary. You head one of the most powerful nations in the world, don’t you know what that is?’”

 And…(sigh)…yes, leaders need to make tough calls sometimes. But if they choose to do something this ugly, they really shouldn’t be fine with it afterwards. They should acknowledge that it was evil, but that they couldn’t see another way to accomplish their goal. That route accepts more responsibility than hiding behind the idea that it was for “the greater good” and that no one else could have thought of a better path forward. When June says that the torture was necessary, that doesn’t make it not evil. It just means that she didn’t see another way to get what she needed.

 June then points out that Ozai was a helpless prisoner when Zuko burned him, which stings Zuko. I would argue that Zuko is right about it being different—his crime was one of passion, whereas June’s was coldly calculated. But both ultimately led to human suffering, so both of them were wrong to do it.

 Zuko takes a deep breath to keep from lashing out at June, which tells us that he CAN manage his anger when he wants to. He’s struggling, though, because he’s tempted to tell June what Ozai did to Azula to justify burning his dad. He decides not to: “It didn’t feel right somehow, telling anyone else about the abuse. He wondered if this was how Uncle felt when he found out, and why he didn’t say anything. He still should have said something….” Zuko is right—Azula’s trauma isn’t his to share. He also goes from having empathy for Iroh to being angry with him in a split second, which makes sense. He’s conflicted about how his uncle handled the discovery. At the very least, Iroh should have told her doctors, so she could get the care she needed.

 “How many more of [June’s] cruelties would he have to witness or take part in, before this was over?” This is rough and why I am not a fan of characters like June. Azula’s actions in this fic are calculated to minimize harm; June has no such scruples. She’s too much in “the ends justify the means” frame of mind.

 Zuko has two thoughts that suggest that Azula is the devil on his shoulder, as far as his brain is concerned. “You would [burn Ozai] again” and “You could kill [June . . . ] Remove the threat.” He describes the latter thought as being “so alien and disturbing Azula might have suggested it herself.” No, my dude. Just like hallucination!Ursa is a reflection of Azula’s doubts, whispering!Azula is a reflection of Zuko’s darker thoughts and impulses, which he deflects onto her because that is easier for him to do than face the darkness within himself.

 He then has some off-color thoughts about June, besides the idea of murdering her. “Sometimes Zuko thought she was more animal than woman”—Gross!—“and didn’t know whether to be turned on or disgusted by her antics. He had even wondered once in the long hours he spent riding behind her how Mai would look dressed all in black leather like that.” This would be a much lighter story if Zuko and Mai had just embraced his leather kink, rather than him embracing his toxic desire to possess Azula.

 As June taunts him about how he wouldn’t win if he tried to kill her, he figures out that she knows that he slept with Azula. She confirms it: “‘Your secret’s out. I might have forgot to mention our mutual friend let that slip, before the end. He got a message to the others. Looks like we should’ve moved faster.’” This means that Zuko, Azula, Mai, Mai’s uncle, Tadao, June, and now some unnamed Dai Li agents—who will probably pass this information along to their superiors—are in the know. That is very bad! Zuko had better hope that they’ll be able to spin this information as slander against him and his family, because if people believe it, his family is going to have a tough time holding onto the throne.

 June throws in that now she knows why he has problems with women, which Zuko denies. I feel like he’s better about women than Iroh and Ozai, but his treatment of Azula is definitely skeevy. June, in any case, isn’t bothered by this information, because she doesn’t have siblings as far as she knows. She also doesn’t have the same cultural teachings as Zuko, so she doesn’t have the same taboos that he does.

 We switch over to Mai, who is sulking in Zuko’s study. She’s read Ty Lee’s letter a few times by now and is not impressed. She thinks that she’s entitled to be upset, given the situation, and I can’t fault her for that. “That a man so endearingly awkward and painfully sincere would betray her with anyone, let alone his manipulative bitch of a sister, was a permissible source of surprise.” While I don’t like how she describes Azula, I agree with the rest of her sentiment.

 “That Azula would take fullest advantage of his lapse was not.” This is ridiculous, though. What, did Azula plan to escape while she was ovulating so that she would become pregnant when she seduced her brother? Is that how the story is going in your brain, Mai? Why would Azula do something like that? She’d be disgraced if anyone found out, just as much as Zuko (unless she spun it as rape, which IT WAS. But Mai seems to be thinking that Azula would make a false accusation). Azula certainly will be disgraced if she has a bastard. Also, her being pregnant is going to slow her down and make her more vulnerable. That’s such a stupid plan, and when have Azula’s plans ever been stupid?

 “Mai bent her head and gripped her bandaged hand, to draw a deep breath against the grief that welled inside her like an aching void. A void that demanded how he could do this, how he could still defend her, how he could think she didn’t plan this, why—” Mai is struggling because she knows that she was mostly betrayed by Zuko (she no longer trusted Azula, so how could Azula betray her?), but she can’t help but think that Azula had an evil plan. Probably because if Azula did have an evil plan, then maybe Mai could someday forgive Zuko for falling for it.

 Her uncle arrives and she tells him the news. “And Mai felt a rush of ruthless satisfaction, upon seeing the warden back into the desk adjacent to her, revulsion etched in every line of his aging face. It wasn’t just her. Zuko tried to act like this was a terrible but legitimate mistake, like it was at all comparable to anything he’d done wrong before. But her uncle knew. He knew it was an abomination.” Yeah, Zuko and Azula committed a big cultural taboo. It’s unsurprising that other people are reacting this way. Also, I’m sure some of Mai’s satisfaction is that finally, someone is on her side, rather than on Zuko’s or Azula’s.

 Her uncle voices the idea that maybe the child isn’t Zuko’s at all—that Azula is trying to trap him with a lie—but Mai responds that whether it is or isn’t, Zuko will think it is, and that’s what will matter. She then reflects on her own sexual history with Zuko. They were sleeping together before he defected, and they continued to carry on without protection when he returned. It took two years before she became pregnant with Lu Ten, long enough that she’d wondered if Zuko was waiting to marry her until he was sure she could get pregnant. Which even she knows is a silly idea. He probably just didn’t think to make their union official until she got pregnant and he realized that he should do the “honorable” thing and wed her.

 Mai is salty about Azula getting pregnant from one night with him, when it took so much longer for her. When her uncle asks her what she plans to do, she comments that Azula’s medical records have gone missing. Zuko might have them?

 “‘Supposedly she almost died in the asylum,’ Mai explained, her words ringing strangely hollow to her own ears. ‘Her doctors said she would never fully recover. I wanted to know if I could reasonably expect this to kill her.’ She tried to imagine the princess bleeding out, that she might die screaming in the same agony Mai endured when Lu Ten was born—and couldn’t. But there would be time enough to consider why later.” Mai can’t imagine her ex-friend dying. As much as she hates Azula, I don’t think she genuinely wants Azula dead, as convenient as that would be for her.

 She then subtly suggests to her uncle that they could make it look like Azula just bled out like that—a tragic turn of events, but not anyone’s fault. Mai then accuses Zuko of being irrationally protective of Azula and that he’ll set Mai aside if she moves against Azula openly. I’m not sure Zuko would really do that, since he loves Mai deeply, but I don’t think their marriage would ever recover if Mai killed Azula.

 Her uncle notices her hand, and we get this sweet moment: “Mai put her hand in his offered palm without hesitation. A reflex born of the first months she spent training with knives under his tutelage, when he had often [sic] to tend nicks and cuts gained in her practice. When Mai showed no signs of firebending by her fifth birthday, it was her Uncle Tom who first put a blade in her hand, and offered his home for the summer, so she might learn to use it.” When Mai mentioned that her current injury was an accident, her uncle adds, “‘A man like that isn’t worth hurting yourself over.’”

 This is a genuinely sweet relationship, and it makes me wish that he had been the one who raised Mai, instead of her parents. She probably would have learned how to express her emotions in a healthy way, rather than bottling them up. He also doesn’t seem to care that she was a girl and had gender roles to conform to. Really, I’m glad that he’s in her corner. She needs someone to be, because this situation is legitimately awful for her.

 Mai gets a hug from her uncle, which I think she’s needed for a while. She thanks him for being there for her and not saying, “I told you so,” because her uncle never approved of Zuko. They even make a joke about the situation, about how neither of them thought Zuko would cheat on her with his sister, which is some very dark humor.

 Things take a turn when her uncle comments that the Royal family has been corrupt since Sozin, to which Mai replies that he should be careful, because her son is one of them. Tsutomu then suggests that he doesn’t have to be—that if something happened to Zuko, Lu Ten could be raised away from the toxicity of the paternal side of his family. Mai doesn’t like this idea, but her uncle keeps pushing, suggesting that if Zuko has cheated once, maybe he’s done so before and will do so again. Mai shoots this line of reasoning down, because she’s questioned their household about it and knows better, and doesn’t think that Zuko will stray again. Tsutomu keeps suggesting that they could have Zuko killed, and Mai tells him to stop thinking about it. He insists that he would never do anything without her consent. I want to trust him on this, but given later events, I worry that he might have some involvement there. If he does, it will be a case of him thinking that he knows what’s best for her, rather than respecting her wishes.

 We then shift back to Azula, who was being pursued by Fong’s men, but managed to shake them when she entered the swamp. Unfortunately, her mount broke its leg when they were running down the mountain, so Azula had to put it down. What a waste! It would have been cruel to let it suffer, though. Azula wanted to trade her ostrich horse for a different mount, but the sandbenders never showed up. She travelled in the desert for a while, keeping the mountains in sight to avoid getting lost, but she needed more water before long. That was when she was discovered by Fong’s men, and she has a couple of sardonic thoughts about how her “famous luck” hadn’t helped her out.

 She then starts trekking through the standing water in the marsh, and I’m already shuddering at the thought of all of the mosquitos there. Though they’re probably crossed with something like a wasp to make them extra horrible. Azula climbs up a tree to see if she can spot her pursuers, and thinks about how stupid they were to advertise their intentions in a fight. Fair! We also get the interesting tidbit that benders and nonbenders in the Earth Kingdom tend to work together in squads, whereas this team was specifically all earthbenders and was patrolling during peace time. Azula takes this to mean that they were searching for her. We also learn that Azula is heading to an avatar shrine.

 Azula’s pack is waterlogged at this point, and she sighs in a way that reminds her of Mai. This thought leads her to reflect on her ex-friend, much like Mai was doing earlier in the chapter. There is a humous moment where Azula thinks that Mai would have given herself up to avoid stepping into the swamp, and then a bitter one as she thinks, “You never minded getting your hands dirty except in the most literal sense. Yet it was you and not Ty Lee who finally suffered a crisis of conscience—” Meaning that Mai’s betrayal really did come out of nowhere for Azula.

 At this, Azula starts hallucinating Mai. She nearly falls out of the tree in surprise, with her pack opening up and her supplies tumbling into the water. Hallucination!Mai is offended by Azula’s thoughts, reminding Azula that she loved Zuko and didn’t want his blood on her hands. Azula, after a moment, reminds herself that she’s not in the asylum anymore, so what she’s seeing could just be a trick of the light or her imagination…except the Gaang ran into visions in this swamp, so it might be magic at work.

 Azula tries to get herself back onto the branch properly, but can’t manage a full crunch. Oh buddy, I feel you. She then does the way more impressive thing by swinging backwards, releasing the branch, and grabbing the vines to stop her fall on the way down. She notices that her pursuers are spreading out around the edge of the swamp, probably to intercept her when she emerges. She figures they’ll wait for reinforcements and might try to flush her out when they have better numbers.

 Azula considers that there might be dangers in the swamp that she’ll have to deal with, such as “deadly beasts or hostile primitives.” (Sigh.) Sometimes, her being from an imperialist society rears its ugly head. She figures that she needs to make her way to the far end of the swamp before her pursuers do. She takes some time to regather her supplies and then starts the wet trek, while being swarmed by mosquitos. She decides to heat the air around her to try to drive them off. I wish I could do that on summer evenings!

 We shift over to Zuko, who is fighting with a team of Dai Li. Looks like he and June have arrived at the hideout! June has coated her whip in shirsu weapon, which works well and makes her match with Nyla. Zuko notes that the Dai Li are trying to use lethal force on him and June, since they aren’t there on official Fire Lord business, so no one will know who killed them. June at one point does a handspring that would have impressed Ty Lee, which is a fun detail, and then Zuko pulls a leaf out of June’s book and makes some fire whips. Once they’ve taken care of the team, they go through the cave and pass by the crystal cells, which June doesn’t bother to check because there are no guards around. Zuko has a sinking feeling that some of the guards must have smuggled June’s dad out and they’ll have to start the search all over again, which means that one of the unconscious men they left behind might get a spot of torture. BUT Nyla knocked out the guards before they could flee on ostrich-horseback, so June’s dad is fine and trying to get his cuffs off.

 June’s father is a balding man with a squarish face and glasses. He teases June for taking so long, and then notices Zuko. There’s an argument about the logistics of the fight, the point of it being that June wasn’t sure if Zuko was going to hold his own, and that if he got caught, she was worried that he would have told them which way June and her father ran. Zuko is insulted at the idea that he would have ratted them out, and asks if they would have left him behind. June says that they wouldn’t have, mostly because it would have come back to bite them if they had. Zuko reminds her that now that her father is free, it’s time for her to fulfill her part of the deal and track down Azula. June asks him if he has a scent sample from Azula on him, because the last one they had is ashes now, and led Nyla to him anyway.

 He thinks there are still things in the house on Ember Island that they could use, and remembers some of what happened that night: “Her lips moved silently, forming the same word over and over again. He knew what word she spoke now, two months too late…. I used her no more kindly than him.” Yikes! That word is father and just…ugh. This twisted family. I was trying to explain the appeal of this fic to a friend last night, and I kept saying, “It’s really dark and heavy, but it’s fascinating from a psychological standpoint!”

 The trio decide to head to Ember Island. If nothing there works as a sample, they’ll go to the palace. I don’t think there would be fresh enough scents there, so the beach house will have to work. Zuko thinks that after they find Azula, he’ll “make amends, the only way he had left.” Presumably he means to Azula, but he could also be talking about Mai, since Mai also wants Azula caught, though his sister’s fate afterwards would probably be darker than what Zuko wants.

 We switch back to Azula, who is being badgered by Hallucination!Mai. I am a little amused about the joke she makes about Azula never lacking direction, though the direction was sometimes the wrong one. If this is Azula’s self-doubt talking, then that’s an acknowledgement that she’s made mistakes and hasn’t always gone down the right path, which flies in the face of her usual self-confidence. There is a suggestion that this hallucination is actually a swamp vision, rather than a symptom of Azula’s mental illness. Unlike her normal hallucinations, this image of Mai vanishes as soon as she looks too closely at it. “Strange that the hallucinations at the asylum never did that.”

 This Mai talks more than the hallucinated version of her did. “‘You ever think maybe I didn’t say much, ‘cause I knew you didn’t care what I had to say?’” this Mai says. Azula, tired and bitter, snaps back sarcastically, pointing out that she asked for Mai’s council many times and trusted her as much as she allowed herself to trust anyone. I suspect part of what’s going on here is that Azula is grappling with her fear about how other people—specifically the people she loved—view her. She fears that they see her as a monster and that they’re right to do so, because of the choices she’s made. It’s one thing to have your family by blood betray you, but another thing to have your chosen family do so.

 Azula admits that she used Mai’s “infatuation” with Zuko for her own self-gain (clearly not realizing the depth of Mai’s love for Zuko), but that she “still expected Mai to be smart enough to act in her own self-interest.” She was secure in that belief, otherwise she wouldn’t have brought Mai to the Boiling Rock or let Mai have the “first crack at Zuko.” From the sound of it, Azula thought that she was giving Mai a chance for revenge over being left behind by Zuko. Except that Mai couldn’t stand by as he was killed….

 Which Azula doesn’t understand. “‘He was a traitor!’ Azula screeched in disbelief, her fist clenched so hard she could feel every bone in her hand. ‘He betrayed you just as much as me! And you still chose him!’ Her voice broke. I was your friend first. He wasn’t anything to you anymore. He ended it in a letter, too much of a coward to tell you to your face. He hadn’t even left her a letter, or any warning of what to expect, the next time she was called before their father….”

 While it was a good thing for the world that Zuko chose to help Aang, these are all solid points. Zuko did betray his Fire Lord and nation, so from their perspective, he is a traitor (who, in addition to defecting, then took the throne from Ozai’s appointed heir). He didn’t break up with Mai in person. He didn’t think about what Ozai might do to Azula afterwards. Zuko could certainly have handled the latter situations better.

 Vision!Mai devalues Azula’s friendship next, saying that it didn’t compare to his love, and that Zuko was the love of Mai’s life, whereas Azula was a monster. It’s playing right into Azula’s deeply held belief that the reason no one loves and chooses her is because there’s something inherently wrong with her—something that isn’t wrong with Zuko (even though Zuko has fucked up in this story real bad).  

 Azula punches a tree in anger and thinks that the hallucinations have said worse to her than this, which is super sad. What’s even sadder is that Azula thinks the same things about herself, even without them around: “didn’t Azula think that about herself every day?” She needs some real therapy, not whatever she was getting in the asylum.

 Azula is lost by this point, and decides that she needs to find a dry place to sleep and recover, rather than continuing to drain herself by wandering around. Once she gets into the hollow of an old tree trunk, she takes off her socks and boots to avoid trench foot. Good plan! Though couldn’t she also dry out both with her bending? Probably for the best to let her feet air out, though. She then tries to eat, but her food has bog-water in it, and the rice apparently looks like maggots. Gross! She gets sicks, which could be from her morning sickness, from a blood-borne disease from the mosquitos, from the contaminated food, or from a combination of the above. After throwing up a second time—the Fire siblings both have delicate stomachs this chapter!—she decides to stick to drinking water instead.

 Azula is getting chills now, which suggests that she’s genuinely sick. She then sees Vision!Mai again, who gives her a nasty Reason You Suck Speech. She accuses Azula of not knowing what love or trust is—excuse me, Ty Lee is proof that that’s not true!—and then adds, “‘You never respected me, or my boundaries, or anything that was mine.’” I’m trying to remember if there was evidence for this in the show, or if this is Azula trying to come up with reasons for why Mai turned on her, and wondering if it was these things? That Azula feels guilty about this, though, shows that she is capable of seeing what she did wrong and learning from it. She can grow as a person…though she needs to be allowed to do so by the people around her. Ty Lee gave her that chance and now their relationship is much healthier. But it’s hard to grow when the people around you keep punishing you for what you did, and never believe that the growth you’ve made is genuine.

 Mai then asks, “‘Why else would you seduce [Zuko]?’” which Azula denies, saying she didn’t mean for it to go that far. Apparently, Azula hoped that the kiss would distract him, and then she’d be able to chi-block him so he couldn’t move. Unfortunately, he reacted by throwing her into a nightstand, and after she twisted her ankle, there was no running away.

 Mai accuses her of lying—that she did it because she saw Zuko’s weakness and was exploiting it. She asks, “‘How did it feel when he did that to you?’” and Azula doesn’t respond. I think this is where, if she’d felt any pleasure or satisfaction from the sex, it would sneak in and provide an extra layer of shame. That it doesn’t suggests that all Azula felt was violation and pain in the act.

 Mai says that this must be why Azula hates her—not because of the betrayal of their friendship, but because she “played the game better than [Azula]. And [Azula] lost.” If I’m parsing this right, Azula thinks that Mai believes that Azula wanted Zuko, and that because Mai won Zuko, Mai got more political power than Azula, beating Azula at the political game. It’s an ugly take, and while I don’t think Mai’s accusations are fair—because we’ve seen from Azula’s perspective what her motives were—this does show that Azula knows Mai quite well, because the real Mai’s thoughts run along similar lines as the vision’s. Real Mai believes that Azula seduced Zuko to blackmail him and continue playing the political game, when in reality, it was a terrible mistake. Azula might have “started it,” thanks to Ozai’s training, but she never would have considered kissing Zuko if Ozai hadn’t done what he did.

 Azula asserts that she hasn’t lost until she’s dead. I don’t think she means “winning Zuko” when she says this. She then puts out the fire and goes to sleep, dreaming about her father. After Zuko was banished, her training went into high gear, with more lessons on statecraft and the like. She was so busy that she didn’t have time to miss Zuko—which is definitely a lie—and he would have spoiled her happiness anyway by sulking and trying to get their dad’s attention. “It had been a source of amusement one, but they were not children anymore.” Oh honey, you both were children during canon. Maybe Zuko and the water siblings came of age during the show, but that age was still below what we would currently consider the age of majority.

 Azula wondered what Zuko would have thought about the sexual training Ozai inflicted on her. Not that she would ever have told Zuko. We then get a series of thoughts that were almost certainly things Ozai told her: “[Azula and Ozai were] willing to do whatever it took to succeed, to survive. [Zuko] would never realize that people will use anything against you, unless they are too afraid of your doing the same.” This is a paranoid way of looking at the world and the people around you, and also self-defeating. If people are afraid of you, they will turn on you the moment they think they can get away with it (and sometimes even before then—Mai knew that she was throwing her life away when she saved Zuko, but she did it regardless). Love and trust, on the other hand, are what makes people will stick by you, even if you’re a walking disaster.

 “[Zuko] never saw his own peril, until it was too late. Sometimes Azula thought he still didn’t see it.”—Foreshadowing!

 Azula then thinks about the training itself. “Her father said it would hurt the first time”—that’s a myth. If you have a vagina and are aroused and lubricated enough, even the first time shouldn’t hurt. “—but it didn’t only hurt the first time. Sometimes it was hard to know what he wanted, and he was as intolerant of failure in this as in her firebending.” This is awful, but also, Ozai sounds like a terrible sexual partner. You’re supposed to communicate what you want and don’t want during sex. You can’t expect your partner to intuitively know that. They’re not psychic!

 “As he should. It made her strong.” Azula, that training didn’t make you strong. It destroyed your boundaries and your ability to approach sex in a healthy way.

 “It wasn’t always—Sometimes he would stay with her after, and just talk. She liked those times. It made her feel important. It made her feel loved.” She’s shying away from thinking of it as awful, even though she clearly felt that it was. The implication is also that she didn’t feel important or loved during their other interactions. Ozai, you are a TERRIBLE parent!

 Which I think some part of Azula knows, because when she starts to feel the vines from the swamp wrapping around her, she imagines her dad molesting her. Still half-asleep, she lashes out with fire knives to free herself from the vines and runs out of her shelter. It’s daytime—Azula missed rising with the sun—and Azula is sicker now than she was the night before: “Her head pounded, her heart hammered, her joints ached like she took a beating. Her skin burned so hot that steam rose from her body when she hit the water.” This could suggest that she was beaten by Ozai at some point, but then again, all of these characters have been in combat, so that might be what this comparison is referring to.

 The plants keep trying to grab her, which I think indicates that the waterbenders in the swamp are trying to catch her. I seem to remember them being the ones in control of the vines, rather than the vines themselves being predatory. Azula manages to escape, but is winded from it, which means that she won’t be able to bend. She’s also dizzy, nauseous, and shivering uncontrollably. Plus, it’s actually evening now, so she slept through most of the day. Azula realizes that she has no idea where her old shelter is, so her supplies are lost to her. She’s experienced abdominal cramps, too, and wonders if she’s miscarrying.

 “This was what you wanted, she reminded herself pointlessly, though she knew very well what her mother would say. That she deserved this, for wishing her baby dead. Her tears fell on the water when Azula bent forward to hug herself, head bowed as if she could hold the pain inside anymore—” This might be the first time that Azula thinks of the fetus as her baby, which indicates that she might not want to lose it as much as she thinks she does.

 She then hallucinates child!Zuko, which is heartbreaking. He tells her not to cry, “his round face scrunched in the look of unstudied concern their mother loved so well, and which Azula could never recall him directing at her.” Ouch! The dysfunction in their relationship went back really far, didn’t it?

 “Didn’t he know the world would beat him down over and over again so long as he kept that way? That not just Father and Azula, but every person with an ounce of cunning would take advantage of him when he wore his heart on his sleeve like that? She told him so many times, but he never listened until it was too late.” So she acknowledges that she and Ozai took advantage of his naivety. She certainly did when she tried to trick Zuko into coming home early in season two. But also, Azula has a point. There are people in the world who take advantage of emotionally open and giving people. I don’t think that the solution to this is to harden your heart, though. Instead, you need to surround yourself with people who genuinely care about you. Zuko did that with the Gaang, which is part of why he succeeded and Azula failed. I’ll also note that Zuko would have done better with Azula as his ally, since she would have been more discerning about who was allowed in his court, and could have told Zuko about their ulterior motives and told him the unpleasant truths he wouldn’t want to hear. As it is, Mai has taken on that role.

 “Yet in the end, he prevailed. The world bent to him. He got to be himself without condition, but not her. Never her. She didn’t understand….” Zuko allied himself with what wound up being the winning side, due to Aang defeating Ozai. If Aang had fallen, Zuko’s fate would have been much grimmer.

 Zuko made a better choice than Azula did, but it’s important to note that he knew he had a choice. I don’t think Azula realized that leaving was an option for her. Why would she, when she believed that her nation was the best in the world, that their cause was right, and that if she stayed loyal, she would be the ruler of it all in the end? She would have lost everything if she’d left, and gained…what? The Gaang, Iroh, and Zuko hated her, so she couldn’t go to them. Mai and Ty Lee hadn’t defected yet, so she would have been abandoning them. And while she would have escaped Ozai’s abuse, she also saw Ozai as the only person who valued her and loved her for who she was. Even if being around him hurt, it was better than being alone.

 No one except Ozai, at any point, held out their hand to Azula and asked her to join them. So while she is responsible for her own choices, how much can we blame her for what she chose, when none of her alternatives seemed viable?

 Child!Zuko says that they are playing a game of hide-and-seek, which is true in the grand scheme of this story. He claims that he’ll always find her, which Azula says she no longer wants. He’s disappointed, but insists that it’s getting dark out, so he’ll help her find her way. He then lights the tiniest flame in his hand. “Azula’s stomach clenched painfully at the sight, plucked out from her earliest memories and brought freshly to life. How desperately she wanted to bend when Zuko made his first flame, and she saw how their parents explained over him….” This suggests that neither of Azula’s parents paid much attention to her before she first firebent. No wonder she came to believe that their love was conditional, and that she had to excel at what she did to earn it.

 Child!Zuko, seeing her sadness, assures her that she’ll learn how to firebend when she gets older. I think it was mentioned already that she learned when she was three, which is mind-boggling to think about, since she would have been a toddler. He adds that she’ll pick it up in no time, since she’s “smart for a girl.” Ah, that sexism. He could have left it at “you’re smart,” but he had to add that qualifier. While the Fire Nation is less overtly sexist than the EK and the NWT, it’s clear that sexism is still a problem there. That baby Zuko is saying things like this is symptomatic of that.

 “Half of what he said might be condescending bullshit, but this was still more supportive than Azula could ever remember him being.” This is very sad, since it means that Zuko started treating her as an adversary very early on in their childhood, once she proved better at something than him. He was jealous of her for earning their father’s interest, for all the good that did her. He was “resentful” when she survived her fall at the Western Air Temple, which is so ugly. He should have been relieved. She thinks of other moments where his hatred for her was apparent, like during the Agni Kai, at the asylum, aaaaand….

 “The night he raped her.” And there it is. She can’t bring herself to see what Ozai did to her as rape, but she views what Zuko did as such.

 “And she couldn’t reconcile it. How the little boy who stood before her could do—” This is a fascinating parallel to Mai’s thoughts about Zuko earlier in the chapter. Neither of them can understand how he did this. I’m reminded of how shocking it is to find out that someone that you know and care about sexually assaulted someone. What do you do afterwards? The safest option is to cut ties with them, but that doesn’t address the difficulty in doing so when they’re your family, or the grief of doing so when you’ve loved them for so long, only to find out that they weren’t who you thought they were.

 Azula starts to ask him why he did what he did, but I think she knows the answer to that—because Zuko hated her and wanted to punish her that night. So instead, Azula asks where this good, caring version of her brother was when she wanted him—which, in the context of this fic, was from the time she was a toddler until now.

 “‘Dad killed me,’ the hallucination said forlornly. ‘And you laughed.’” Ozai destroyed Zuko’s innocence just as much as he destroyed Azula’s.

 I thought this was a reference to Zuko and Ozai’s Agni Kai, but this seems to actually be referring to when Azulon told Ozai to kill Zuko, and Azula’s teasing about it: “Her chest clutched painfully when she remembered that night, the night her mother left. And Azula thought it was cruelly appropriate that it was not Ursa here with her, at the end.” Ouch!

 “She whispered, ‘I didn’t mean it.’”—I believe her, but unfortunately, the real Zuko never realized that.

 The vision version of him does, though. “Azula felt his presence as clearly as if he sat on the edge of her bed, when she pulled the covers over her head.” At some point, Azula was just a little girl who hid under the covers. “‘I know,’ she dimly heard him speak. And the last thing she felt was him hugging her shoulders, his head laid against hers.” This is heartbreaking. It’s an exchange they should have had in reality years ago, but one that they might never be able to have, now they’ve hurt each other so badly. This is one of the scenes that sticks with me the most, because of how tragic it is and how poignant the imagery is: of the tiny, kind version of Zuko hugging the adult version of his sister, who is being eaten away by sickness, grief, and remorse.

 And on that tearjerking note, we have reached the end of chapter fifteen. As always, thank you for the read, Aurelia. Thank you also to the folks on FFN and Tumblr who have been encouraging me to work on these reviews. Your support has been keeping me going!

 Until next time,

WiseAbsol

[seyaryminamoto]

I've seen A LOT of people thinks Azula is one of the best villains created ever. Can you please list the reasons why? I'm interested.

Well, I’d think it’s kind of obvious, but if you would like to know…

Azula is a really successful character, and that makes her an even better villain. She defies a lot of typical villainous tropes because of many reasons I’ll explain later, but first of all I will insist on one thing: she is a CHARACTER, and not simply a villain. She’s not written merely as a foil in the way of the protagonists, even if she indeed serves as a foil. But she has her own goals, her own strengths and flaws, and as the story progresses you discover the complexities of her character that make her, by far, the best villain in the Avatar franchise. Yes, some people might say she’s not the best villain of all time, I’m not going to force you to agree on that if you like anyone else better, but the reasons why she stands out so much begin right here.

So, first off, she’s a character. She’s not omnipotent, she’s not undefeatable, she’s someone with a mission and who stops at nothing to achieve it (stubbornness of this kind is usually seen as positive traits in main characters, but it’s seen as terrifying in villains). She sets herself up for failure in some ways, as she has unstable and unequal relationships with her friends and everyone else around her, and she has unresolved issues with her mother and her father, not to mention a tumultuous relationship with her brother. So with both her strengths and flaws in mind, Azula feels like a villain who fits in the world we’ve seen so far. Nothing about her is particularly over the top, her bending skills are above and beyond everyone else’s because that makes her a bigger threat, yet Iroh can bend lightning too, for instance. It’s not presented as something unthinkable, even if she is extraordinary for it. She doesn’t really disrupt the rules of the Avatarverse for having blue fire, or for bending lightning, so she’s basically perfectly plausible in this universe.

Azula raises the stakes. Azula gives both Aang and Zuko a brand new villain they both struggle against in their own ways. Azula is out to capture them both, and she will do whatever it takes to succeed, so with her arrival into the show, the characters are somewhat split into three groups in Book 2: the common factor is that she’s always their enemy. A girl who only travels with two other girls can fight and chase both your show’s protagonists and keep them on their toes all along. Have you thought about how awesome that is?

Now, why do I say she defies villainous tropes? Well, I only just reblogged a fun post where they pointed out that Azula strikes Aang down when he’s in the middle of his Avatar State transformation. How many times have you watched shows where this happens? I watched plenty of magical girls shows as a kid, and I am a known Digimon fan: how many times didn’t I joke about how villains should just take out the good guys when they’re wasting 15 seconds of screen time, more or less, by transforming and acquiring all their powers? If you were anything like me, these tropes take you to a point where you have to knowingly suspend your disbelief and simply accept the lack of logic in the matter.

But no, Azula strikes. She sees Aang is floating up there, all extraordinary with his Avatar State mojo, and she decides there’s no point in fighting evenly when he’s in full power. She decides to take out this threat in whatever way she can, regardless of how underhanded and morally wrong it may be. But isn’t that the kind of behaviour you’d expect in a villain? The kind of thing that suits a bad guy, the thing that makes them a serious threat?

A huge thing that makes Azula absolutely extraordinary in my eyes, and it makes me think of Iago from Othello often: Azula plans and succeeds, at least in Book 2 and half of Book 3. She works hard, she doesn’t always win, things go wrong at times and yet? At the very moment where it mattered, Azula got what she wanted, just as Iago got what he wanted. No kidding, Iago gets caught, but not before he destroys Othello in the exact way he intended to. And THAT is what makes a villain worthwhile. The villain’s goal can be something as simple as stealing candy from a child, but if he succeeds and gets away with causing exactly the effect he intended to, regardless of what it costed, that villain is miles better than your average “I want to destroy the world because the writers were giving the hero something to fight against” villain.

So, Azula’s biggest scary factor is that she can be successful. And she’s NOT a big hazy bad guy, like her father, or all other Fire Lords: she’s out in the field, fighting her own battles, planning her strategies and making everything fall into place if she can.

As I said before, she CAN fail. She does, lots of times. But the show does something LOK, for instance, never really did: Azula wins in Book 2. In LOK Amon’s cause allegedly helps fix the bending privilege problem, and Unalaq gets to bring the spirits back, and Zaheer nearly makes Korra disappear forever, and Kuvira somehow gets to fix the Earth Kingdom in her own way. But… they’re all defeated. Zaheer and Kuvira end up in jail, Amon and Unalaq even DIE. None of these bad guys got to actually succeed, their causes apparently did, in roundabout ways, but not them as individuals. 

Azula, on the other hand, succeeds in every level. Azula succeeds where so many others failed, even being the only character who ever came remotely close to killing Aang. She takes over Ba Sing Se with a plan that comes into place right in front of the viewer, and if you love her you relish in this (as I did), if you hate her you are horrified by how EVERYTHING IS GOING HER WAY. It’s not merely her cause that succeeds, the show doesn’t try to tell you that Azula’s victory is good in some roundabout way. Azula is portrayed in a bad light, as a villain, as a real threat to the heroes, and to the values the show is presenting. And she doesn’t wait around for others to fulfill her orders: she goes out to take care of things herself, even fighting without her bending if that’s is how she can protect her nation and father.

As a comparison: how many times in Book 1 did any of us ever really think Zuko was going to succeed at capturing Aang? I, personally, never really thought he was going to do it, not only because of spoilers but because Zuko didn’t feel nearly as threatening as Azula did. Was it because of his temper? Was it because of humorous situations written around him? I don’t really know, but Zuko, as annoying and persistent as he was, and as often as he showed up in pursuit of Aang, never seemed likely to get what he wanted. And he didn’t, despite he had a few chances for it. The writing always frustrated his attempts to capture Aang, or to set traps for him… basically, Zuko always failed when it mattered most.

And Azula failed, plenty. But she didn’t simply fail: she changed her tactics, found new ways to handle the problem, and eventually when Book 2′s ending arrives you’re left with the feeling that this girl simply cannot be stopped. She’s not like Zuko, who worked hard but it never paid off. She’s not like Zhao either, who also made his efforts and found new resources but still failed more often than not. She’s not simply a bending powerhouse like Combustion Man, nor was she like Long Feng, who, yes, was successful for most his life but we only get to meet him when things start to go wrong for him. And she’s also not like Ozai, who was indeed the ominous final boss waiting to show himself at the very end of the story.

So, Azula manages to be a character while being a villain, something rare in mainstream media (seriously, this is the problem of every single Marvel film except for the original Thor. This is why none of their villains are truly memorable or meaningful). And she also manages to be a successful villain, rather than another of those “scary” ones who really seemed to be about to succeed but were stopped at the very last minute: no, she gets what she wants, kills the Avatar as far as she knows, captures her uncle, brings her brother home, and takes over Ba Sing Se. She hits the jackpot, pretty much, but it wasn’t a matter of luck: it was a matter of skill, of adapting to the circumstances and working hard for the sake of her mission.

And that’s just Book 2. In Book 3 she keeps up the efficiency until the betrayal, foiling the brilliant Invasion plans and succeeding at stopping the heroes yet again. By the time her breakdown happens, it’s source really goes back to Azula’s own flaws and problems, to character issues that, although present, were yet to be explored. Yes, it’s terribly convenient for Zuko that his sister would lose her mind exactly when he needed her to, but even then, Azula’s downfall serves to enhance her character’s complexity. It could have been handled better, but as it was, it allowed the viewers to see how damaged she truly is, deep down, and that, again, is what makes her a character and not simply a villain.

That’s more or less the gist of it, but there’s other reasons too, no doubt. All the same, Azula sets a hard bar to match for many villains in mainstream media, and only a handful of them have reached it (if they have, I don’t know how many have overcome it). And that would be why saying she’s the greatest villain of all time has become such a popular thing to do as of late :’)

[seyaryminamoto]

Seeing as you've already given your opinion on who are the most overrated characters of atla, who do you think are the most underrated?

Heh, well…

I wasn’t sure whether to feature Sokka as #1 or #2 but alas, I love him so he gets #1. He’s terribly underrated and it angers me. There was a time when my blog wasn’t an exclusively Sokkla blog with a few things on the side, I used to reblog general Avatar things (yes, that was A LONG time ago xD), and yet every single time I saw “Team Avatar” posts without Sokka I would literally scroll past them as if they didn’t exist. Because ffs, I don’t care if he’s not a bender, if the other four are the perfect symbolization of the four elements in harmony, HE’S PART OF TEAM AVATAR TOO!… so yes. Sokka. The guy who gets simplified, as I recently said, as “he was sexist and now he’s not” by posts of 100K notes, or even shrugged off by some people as “the funny one”, even gets hated by some people with terrible taste who think he’s useless just because he can’t bend. Yep, those who hate him because of this aren’t even worth talking to, in my experience. Clear as day they can’t see the true worth of anything even if it’s right in front of their eyes.Alas, Sokka, the boy who grew up into a man by putting other people’s needs ahead of his own, who stood his moral code even in the worst circumstances (such as shown in Jet), who opened his mind to new experiences and became a remarkable warrior because of this. He’s humble, but his heart is stronger than that of any other character in the franchise. He has seen so much tragedy and such darkness weighs inside him, but he doesn’t allow those tragedies to shape him. His strength is seriously admirable.… And I’d dare say half the fandom, if not more, just think he’s the funny guy. He’s the definition of an underrated character.

Ironically, I think Aang is very underrated. Yes, he’s not my favorite character either, but the strength this boy showed in the face of his many tragedies, and the evolution from fleeing from his problems to being able to face his responsibilities was pretty great. Also, Aang, unlike some other characters, usually faced consequences when he did something wrong.Perhaps the only exception I can think for that is his emo phase during Book 2, which is justified plenty, but the show doesn’t try to make you think he’s being nice. It’s shown that he’s very affected by the loss of his bison, but his treatment of his friends isn’t sweetened. The others show a lot of strength and understanding, knowing Aang can’t be his usual self when this is weighing on him. It was a bad time for everyone, yet I feel it was handled well enough as something that was hurting Aang really badly, one last straw for him after he had undergone so much pain already.Other than that specific part of the show, Aang often was forced to grow and change whenever he made mistakes, and had to face many uncomfortable truths about his past lives and the world he lived in. He showed a lot of integrity and human qualities and never degenerated into a tropey shonen anime protagonist, for instance. So while I’m not a huge Aang fan, I figured the rest of the fandom would appreciate him more. No doubt he has his fans, but a ton of the hate he gets is undeserved and often hypocritical, not to mention it’s mostly done to simplify his character when he was pretty great, as a character and hero, as he was.

Ahahahahaaa… Ozai! Yes, I don’t blame most people for underestimating and despising Ozai: let’s be fair, this man was supposed to be the final boss and he was built from the start to be the kind of villain people hated. He wasn’t meant to be relatable or nice or emotional or anything of the sort, even if a handful of people did grow to like him. But the show clearly wanted him to be a bad guy, THE bad guy, and he played his part well enough.But the thing that bugs me with Ozai is: for one thing, so many people underestimate his bending skills. No lie, we only saw him fighting in Sozin’s Comet, but even so, the kind of mad skills he showed there were off the charts. The legion of people claiming Iroh is stronger than Ozai and that he would’ve handed his ass to him is honestly laughable, considering that IROH HIMSELF SAYS HE DOESN’T KNOW THAT HE CAN GO UP AGAINST HIS BROTHER. Ozai is the strongest firebender in ATLA, PERIOD. He did things no other firebenders were shown doing. He was supposed to be that powerful BECAUSE he’s the final boss. Yes, the fight between him and Aang falls short compared to the Last Agni Kai because the emotional investment and conflict isn’t as strong here as it was over there, but for people to actually claim Ozai was weak at all? That he wasn’t that big a deal? Excuse you, but that’s just spite talking. I love Azula with all my heart, and even I can see she still wasn’t on the same power level scale as her father during the finale. And that’s fact. (I think she has the potential to surpass him, yes, but she hadn’t done it by the time of the finale).And then there’s the other reason why Ozai is underrated: yes, he wasn’t developed, he wasn’t explored, he fell flat many times. But honest to gods, it’s not that hard to draw the parallels between him and Zuko when you consider: 1. Ozai was designed to look like an older version of Zuko 2. Ozai is stated to have traveled looking for the Avatar, just like Zuko 3. Ozai gets passed over by his father and punished beyond proportion for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Seriously, can we not see these parallels, right there? And that’s without getting into the similarity of Zuko and Ozai’s personalities, because both of them seemed to feel entitled to the throne that, originally, wasn’t supposed to be theirs (as a reminder, if we go by what the Wikia says, Zuko is 11 when Lu Ten dies, which means he spent 11 years of his life without being a Crown Prince or expecting to take the throne because, by all logic, it should have been Lu Ten’s... yet he slides into the “that throne will be mine” mentality within a few years). Both of them are brash, hot-headed and impulsive. Both of them have bad tempers, both of them spent years trying to please fathers who could never be pleased at all.Point being? OZAI IS A MIRROR FOR ZUKO. OZAI IS “BAD ENDING ZUKO”. OZAI IS WHAT ZUKO COULD HAVE BEEN IF AANG NEVER SHOWED UP, IF IROH WASN’T AROUND TO GUIDE HIM. And that, my friends, adds a fuckton of complexity to Ozai that the majority of the fandom is happy to overlook. Hate him all you want, he’s supposed to be hated. But this guy is waaaaay more than what meets the eye if you only stop for ten minutes to ponder his character, his possible motivations and his relationships. It’s especially clear that he’s very much complex when you factor in the resemblance with Zuko.

And this time I guess I’ll cut it short at 3 because I can’t think of anyone else who’s underrated or even criticized relentlessly without much basis. While there’s some people who undermine characters like Suki, she also has a fairly big and solid group of fans who are very much devoted to bringing up her character and who will always begrudge Bryke for not revealing anything about her future, so she’s not THAT underrated...?

Welp, I feel the fandom is a little more balanced with the rest of the characters, there’s enough love and hate to go for everyone. So I guess I’ll keep it as a top 3 this time, if you don’t mind, Anon.