#The entire point of the storylines of the Fire Nation Royal family is about why Ozai's ideology and worldview needs to be rejected

[a-s-fischer]

Not to be back on my Avatar: the Last Airbender bullshit, but somebody who is not me needs to write an essay about how Ozai is an expression of, and refutation of, idealized fascist manhood.

[kyrievali]

I've been reading your posts and in one of them you mentioned that Iroh in fact is very shady and Azula has every right to hate him, may you explain why?

Sure, I’ll go into it. 

Let me start off by saying that I actually really like Iroh as a character. I think he’s great and well-written. I think the fandom tends to gloss over his flaws and label him as “perfect”, which is not true. One of his greatest failings (aside from making two teenage siblings fight each other for the throne...or really not intervening at all where Ozai is concerned) is his treatment of Azula, and him saying “No, she’s crazy and needs to go down” and essentially writing her off when, if you compare Azula’s personality with Season 1 Zuko, they’re really not all that different. Azula, people tend to forget, is a 14 year old girl who was as much a subject of abuse as her brother. Zuko and Azula were essentially pitted against one another to both gain Ozai’s affection and, more importantly, avoid punishment. The only difference is that she was rewarded and praised by Ozai for her power and cruelty, while Zuko was punished for his “shortcomings”. Zuko’s entire storyline proved how important it is to have a good, guiding parental figure in one’s life, and it’s tragic that Azula didn’t have that.

Now, let’s talk about why Azula probably hated her Uncle.

1. She thinks he’s a failure and, worse than that, weak

And I don’t mean weakness in terms of his firebending skills. Let me explain - Fire Nation citizens are ingrained with Nationalistic pride and complete loyalty to the Fire Lord from a very young age. Iroh, once upon a time, was the heir to the Fire Nation’s throne and the favored son of the notoriously cruel Azulon. He laid a 600 day siege against Ba Sing Se during which his son, Lu Ten, was killed. This tragic event caused him to withdraw his troops, despite having breached the outer wall.   

Upon his return home, his father dies under mysterious circumstances and decrees that Ozai will be the heir to the throne. Instead of contesting it, Iroh leaves the Fire Nation and ostensibly spends his time traveling the world, meeting with the Dragons, and getting in tune with the Spirit World. Doing so gives him the knowledge and wisdom to see the error of his ways, at which point he returns to the Fire Nation and serves as a General in the army. 

Let’s look at this from the perspective of Azula, or really any other citizen of the Fire Nation. Their country waged a nearly 2-year long siege against the Earth Kingdom - and right when they make progress by breaking through the first wall, the Crown Prince gives up because his son died. Countless Fire Nation lives and resources were spent on this 600 day campaign, and they end up with nothing to show for it. If you look at the philosophy of Sozin, Azulon, and Ozai, they likely would have used the death of Lu Ten to galvanize the troops and double their efforts, in an attempt to exact revenge against the Earth Kingdom for daring to spill royal blood - and so that their sacrifices thus far would not have been in vain.

And then, not only does Iroh withdraw from Ba Sing Se, he also abandons his duties and his country completely. Iroh had a reputation as a fearsome Firebender and cunning strategist - and he just leaves. So now not only is he a failure, but he’s also a deserter, one who abandons his nation while it’s reeling from a humiliating defeat and the loss of its Sovereign, Azulon (who, by the way, ruled for about 80 years).

In Azula’s eyes, all of this amounts to weakness, and as we all know from how she was raised by Ozai, weakness is unacceptable. 

2. She is parroting her father’s feelings of resentment

Given that Azula was the favored child of Ozai, it’s likely that she idolized her father and thought he was superior to her uncle, the Crown Prince (for the first few years of her life, at least, Iroh WAS the Crown Prince) and should have been the true heir to Azulon. We don’t see a whole lot of Ozai or his backstory/characterization, but it’s not unreasonable to assume that he, being many years younger than Iroh (it’s never officially stated, but Ozai is around 45 at the time of the show and Iroh appears to be in his late 60’s/early 70’s) had an inferiority complex growing up, and probably some form of sibling rivalry. After all, Iroh is already an adult by the time Ozai is born, and the Crown Prince, who has been groomed from birth to be Azulon’s heir. Ozai is an afterthought; an insurance policy, who at the very moment of Lu Ten’s birth, is outranked by an infant. 

Ozai probably resented Iroh his entire life, so it is not unlikely that Azula would probably feel the same way. 

3. He’s a traitor to the Fire Nation

Azula is a Nationalist and Ozai’s most loyal enforcer. Iroh’s a traitor, and as far as she knows, a corrupting influence to her brother, Zuko. She also probably thinks that he’s committing treason because (she doesn’t know any better) Iroh wants to be the rightful Fire Lord, and she is not going to stand for that. 

4. He reminds her of her mother

Azula is used to being the golden child - a prodigious Firebender, the favored daughter of her father, representative of everything the model Fire Nation child should be. And yet, her own mother does not appear to love her. Her Uncle has stated distaste for her. She thinks she’s doing everything right - because according to Sozin and Ozai’s philosophies and the emphasis of power and loyalty to the Fire Nation - she is; so why do two of her own family members prefer Zuko, the “screw-up” of the family - to her? 

It’s clear that Azula craves the love and adoration of others, but she doesn’t really understand it. I think as she grew older and saw more of the world and how people behaved toward her, she understood on some level that she was considered a “monster” and that people were afraid of her; but that’s how she was raised. Fear was power, and power was everything. And growing up, she was only ever positively reinforced for her ruthlessness and cunning by her father (of whom she is very much afraid, by the way...that is made perfectly clear in her attempts to bring Zuko home and also give him credit for allegedly killing the Avatar. Part of it is actually probably due to some level of affection she has for him, but part of it is definitely motivated by having someone else take the heat off of her in an abusive household) and she witnessed firsthand how perceived weakness was punished - so she did everything she could to achieve the ideal of perfection that Ozai, Azulon, and Sozin had proliferated. So she probably never really understood why her own mother and Iroh didn’t like her. And the fact that they both seemed to prefer Zuko, who she’s been taught to think she’s better than, would only further that resentment.

She thinks she can earn people’s affection by being a perfect Fire Nation soldier, because that’s what works with her father - and when it doesn’t work with Ursa or Iroh, two important adult family figures in her life - she doesn’t understand why and, even worse than that, it makes her feel inferior to Zuko. 

5. My final point is purely speculative, but...He didn’t do anything to directly stop Ozai’s rise to power

In the years after the war, after recovering from her mental break and maybe rehabilitating to become an advisor to Zuko (let’s be totally honest, a Nation whose entire economy for the past 100 years has been built on war and imperialization is not going to have an easy transition into peace, especially when they are expected to give up their colonies and play nice with an equally corrupt government that was controlled by the Secret Police force which has no qualms about brainwashing its own citizens...also the new Fire Lord is a banished Prince who is the apprentice of the Disgraced Prince and who returned to defeat the pride of the Nation, Princess Azula, Ozai’s Chosen Heir and the Conqueror of Ba Sing Se), Azula’s going to be pretty pissed that her supposedly wise and worldly uncle did not intervene in her megalomaniacal and abusive father’s rise to power. 

If my uncle, who never liked me, lost countless Fire Nation lives and resources in a battle that ended with him retreating, abandoned the Crown to go on a sightseeing tour of the world, returned and became a traitor to the nation by foiling the Admiral’s conquest of the Northern Water Tribe resulting in the loss of more Fire Nation lives, escaped from you multiple times and went on to become a tourist and small business owner in an enemy nation, turned your brother against you, did nothing to stop his own brother whom he knew was deeply abusive even after he came back after gaining all this supposed wisdom, and THEN also left you alone with your abusive father while taking your inferior brother under his wing and helping him become an extremely powerful bender who eventually defeats you with the help of a Water Tribe peasant...yeah, I’d be pretty pissed at him, too. 

To be fair, she probably never would have willingly gone with them because they were basically just sent on a wild goose chase at that point...but he never even tried to help her.

Anyway, that’s why I think Azula hates Iroh and honestly, she has every right to hate him. He abandoned her Nation and wrote her off completely, so there’s no reason she wouldn’t do the same.

[miss-nerd-alert]

Why Does Zuko’s Character Arc Work So Well?

I’ve recently been getting my Dad to watch Avatar: the Last Airbender with me, and I’ve really been focusing on Zuko this time around. The quality of Avatar’s writing is legendary by now, but so many characters in other works are getting redemption arcs-successfully done or otherwise-and I think I’ve finally gotten a solid answer as to why they all pale in comparison to Zuko’s: they laid the foundations for his path from antagonist to hero right from the start, and they built on those foundations throughout the series. Just focusing on Season 1 here, Season 2 will probably get it’s own post.

Right off the bat, Zuko is clearly established as an antagonist; we’ve just gotten past Katara’s opening exposition, and Zuko is very clearly Fire Nation. As the audience has just been told, Fire Nation = Bad Guys. Zuko is Fire Nation, therefore Zuko = Bad Guy. However, also from the get go, it’s established that Zuko’s motives are entirely personal. “Their honor didn’t hinge on the Avatar’s capture; mine does.”

This immediately tells the audience that Zuko personally will suffer consequences if he fails. We don’t know what those consequences are, and Zuko’s backstory hasn’t been established yet, but it’s made clear that something happened to this character to make him hunt the Avatar so zealously, and something worse will happen if he fails. Continuing in Episode 2, the audience is told that Zuko is in fact still a minor.

Zuko has just mentioned that he’s spent years training for this moment, which informs the audience that Zuko has likely had his views on the Avatar drilled into him by others, rather than coming to such a conclusion on his own. Aang’s response builds on that by informing us that Zuko may be older than the trio, but he is still just as much a child as Aang, Katara, and Sokka. This small exchange tells viewers that Zuko has been trained to hate and fight since he was a small child, and that his views have been shaped by those with power over him.

Episode 3 is when the audience is convinced to root for Zuko, at least in his own storyline. We get to see how he interacts with others in the Fire Nation, and how unwelcome he is among his own people. Sure he’s banished, but Zuko and Iroh are still members of the Royal Family, that should earn them some kind of respect, right? Wrong.

From the moment he’s introduced, Zhao is set up as both the season’s main villain and a rival for Zuko. He goes behind Zuko’s back to get information (which Zuko’s own men willingly give, which denotes their lack of respect for him), and as soon as he learns about Aang, Zhao decides to capture him himself. Immediately, many viewers come to the decision that if anyone is going to capture Aang, they DON’T want it to be this guy. The audience is HAPPY for Zuko when he beats Zhao in their agni kai, and pleased when Iroh chides Zhao for lashing out after he loses.

From then on, Zuko becomes a secondary antagonist. Sure, he still causes trouble for the Gaang more often, but Zhao is clearly painted as the bigger threat. Zuko continues to win people over in Episode 7, when he puts tracking Aang on hold to find and rescue his uncle Iroh, who has up to this point been the only person from the Fire Nation that seems nice. Their interactions this episode show that Zuko does reciprocate Iroh’s genuine affection for him (which on its own makes the audience think “the nice old man like this kid, so there must be something good about him”).

Episode 8 ramps up the rivalry between Zuko and Zhao again, with Zhao deciding to capture Zuko, his own countryman, as well as Aang. We also learn that Zuko isn’t even allowed in Fire Nation waters, which reminds the audience that this is a young man who isn’t allowed to go home.

It isn’t until Episode 12 that we get Zuko’s backstory, but it retroactively explains his behavior up to this point. A 13 year old boy-shown to actually care about the wellbeing of his country and its people-is brutalized and exiled by his own father (who we earlier learned was the series main villain) for speaking out against a plan to pointlessly sacrifice their own men.

Furthermore, the only person who seems distressed by this is Iroh, while everyone else seems to relish the sight of a child being abused by their parent. Immediately, we can deduce that Zuko was raised in a highly toxic environment, with only his uncle as an example of a positive role model. We also get a glimpse of not only the kind of person Zuko used to be, but who he could be again, as the episode ends with him unlearning some of what Ozai’s abuse taught him as he saves a crewman from death and lets Aang go for the sake of protecting his men.

Episode 13 introduces the Blue Spirit, and shows that not only will Zuko go against his own countrymen to get to Aang first, but also how good of a team they would actually make if they fought together. Zuko is shown to be a bigger threat to Aang’s enemies than to Aang himself, because if the Avatar dies, they’ll just be reincarnated and he’d have to start his search all over again.

This episode is also the first time the writers blatantly signal that Zuko could become a good guy. When Aang offers his friendship, it means he’s actually thinking about befriending an enemy; that he hasn’t bought into the ‘Fire Nation bad’ idea that nearly everyone else in the world has, that Zuko could actually become a hero. And even though Zuko rejects it for now, that idea has already taken root in the minds of viewers.

By Episode 16, Iroh and Jeong Jeong are the only real “good guy” firebenders we see; Zuko’s edging towards it, but he’s not there yet. As a character, Jeong Jeong actually serves a lot of purposes. He’s a foil for his former student Zhao, he and Iroh are the only firebenders we’ve seen who have become disillusioned by the war, and he also reminds viewers that Aang will have to learn how to firebend. His very existence points out that Aang will have to find a firebender who will agree to help him take down the Fire Lord.

Jeong Jeong also serves as a glimpse into Zuko’s future (even if the audience doesn’t realize that yet) as both a Fire Nation citizen who knows their war is wrong, and as Aang’s firebending teacher. Some people watching for the first time might realize this, but many didn’t.

When Zhao hires the pirates to kill Zuko later, we actually worry about him, and are glad to see him alive on Zhao’s ship. When Iroh worries over Zuko going off alone to sneak into the Water Tribe, we’re delighted to see that at least one person actually cares about Zuko and his wellbeing.

We continue to develop sympathy for him during the Siege of the Northern Water Tribe, when Zuko talks to an unconscious Aang about his father’s abusive treatment and blatant favoritism for Zuko’s sister. When the Ocean Spirit grabs Zhao to punish him for killing the Moon Spirit, Zuko actually pulls a hero move by attempting to save his rival, who had long since passed from Total Dick to Irredeemable Asshole.

By the end of Season 1, Zuko and Iroh are on their own, with few supplies, no real plan besides ‘leave enemy territory’, and with an unknown threat about to be unleashed on them, as viewers watch Ozai call Iroh a traitor and Zuko a failure to the newly established villain of Season 2: Zuko’s sister Azula. All of this clues the audience in to the reality that while Zuko was undoubtedly a villain for this season, that may well change in the next one.

[waitingforminjae]

Why the shows treatment of Yin Fen bothers me

*spoilers for if you are not up to date with either the show or infernal devices*

In the show you are introduced to yin fen as if it were any other recreational drug. Izzy gets hooked on it and displays the typical drug addict symptoms: cravings, fever, jitteriness, ect.  She is shown to be addicted to it, she is willing to do anything to get more of it; she is shown to be a very typical, unflatteringly painted, drug addict.

This completely destroys and undermines Jem Carstairs’ entire character arc.

It is immediately established in Clockwork Angel that Jem is not a drug addict in the common sense. Yin fen is not a metaphor for meth or cocaine or any other recreational drug. It is a metaphor for the wasting, cureless diseases of the day, such as consumption or typhoid or something:

A hero […] who was condemned to die young of a fatal demonic illness, no matter how desperate the efforts were to save him, just as in reality victims of consumption sickened and died without penicillin(Forward of Clockwork Princess, pg. 4) 

Clare states it clearly herself, yin fen is not a recreational drug like the show made it to be.

By giving Izzy this plotline, they have ruined any chance of Jem’s arc making any sense at all. People would see that Jem is addicted to yin fen and not be able to understand why he can’t just kick the habit. It wouldn’t make any sense that the drug is killing him, turning his hair and eyes silver and paling his skin, because this very obviously not what happens to Izzy. Izzy isn’t dying, she just feels like she is. 

It is made very clear that Jem hates what yin fen has done to him. He hates that he must rely on it, he despises how it has stolen his life from him. And while he compares it to the Opium in China and himself to the addicts(thus offering a compelling metaphor about colonialism and racism):

The British bring opium into China by the ton. They have made a nation of addicts out of us. In Chinese we call it ‘foreign mud’ or ‘black smoke’. In some ways Shanghai, my city, is built on opium. It wouldn’t exist as it does without it. The city is full of dens where hollow-eyed men starve to death because all they want is the drug, more of the drug. They’ll give anything for it. I used to despise men like that. I couldn’t understand how they were so weak.

[…]

There was one thing they couldn’t fix, though. I had become addicted to the substance the demon had poisoned me with. My body was dependent on it the way an opium addict’s body is dependent on the drug.

(Clockwork Angel, ch. 15, pg. 339-340)

He also makes it very clear that the drug is more of an bastardized medicine:

After weeks of experimentation they decided that nothing could be done: I could not live without the drug. The drug itself meant a slow death, but to take me off it would mean a very quick one.

The yin fen is what keeps Jem alive, and he despises that. He wants to burn bright like Will does, he wants to live to grow old with Tessa(though not for her but that’s another rant). This why he throws it in the fire in Clockwork Princess, why he was taking less of it. He loathes relying on it. 

This is not the case with Izzy. Izzy, like most drug addicts, craves how good the yin fen makes her feel. She actively wants more of it. It is not a unavoidable and cruel medicine, it is a recreational drug. 

But the worst aspect of this is that it plays right into the negative and degrading view the other Shadowhunters have of Jem and further causes and creates Jem’s greatest fear. 

The books works extremely hard to make it very clear that Jem Carstairs is not a drug addict. It is consistently referred to as his illness, the other characters work hard to combat this kind of thinking in the novels themselves. This plays into the vilification of the Lightwoods especially, with Gabriel constantly saying awful and derogatory things about Jem:

“You’re a decent Shadowhunter, James,” [Gabriel] said, “and a gentleman. You have your–disability, but no one blames you for that.”

(Clockwork Angel, ch. 9, pg. 206)

“I think,” Gabriel said, “that perhaps you might consider whether jokes about opium are either amusing or tasteful, given the…situation of your friend Carstairs.”

Will froze. Still in the same tone of voice, he said, “You mean his disability?

Gabriel blinked. “What?”

“That’s what you called it. Back at the Institute. His ‘disability’.” Will tossed the bloody cloth aside. “And you wonder why we aren’t friends.”

(Clockwork Angel, Ch. 11, pg. 269)

Not only this, but the scenes during and after Jem retrieves Will from the Drug Den, are extremely telling.

When Jem drags Will out of the den, the reader sees him lose his temper for the first time:

“You did not have to come and fetch me like some child. I was having quite a pleasant time.” 

Jem looked back at him. “God damn you,” he said, and hit Will across the face, sending him spinning. Will didn’t lose his footing, but fetched up against the side of the carriage, his hand to his cheek. His mouth was bleeding. He looked at Jem with total astonishment.

(Clockwork Prince, ch. 9, pg. 195)

In this moment, Jem is so blindingly angry at Will, even Tessa observes herself how this was so utterly unlike him, because he feels as if Will is mocking Jem and his addiction by going and getting high on a drug when Jem is literally dependent and dying because of the yin fen.

“There’s no cure,” […] “I will die, and you know it, Tess. Probably within the next year. I am dying, and I have no family in the world, and the one person I trusted more than any other made sport of what is killing me.”

[…]

“He knows what it means to me,” he said. “To see him even toy with what has destroyed my life–”

(Clockwork Angel, ch. 9, pg. 200)

Because Jem has to battle against the label of a drug addict everyday, and his biggest fear is that he is just a addict, that that’s all anyone sees. He hates that label. Which, as seen, is openly talked about in the books. This is such a big deal that Will actually apologizes for it:

“I went to that den because I could not stop thinking about my family, and I wanted–I needed–to stop thinking,” said Will. “It did not cross my mind that it would look like I was making a mockery out of your sickness. I suppose I am asking your forgiveness for my lack of consideration.”

(Clockwork Prince, ch. 11, pg. 247)

Even though Will makes a point to never apologize about anything so that others will hate him. He apologizes to Jem for this thoughtlessness because he realizes how royally he messed up. 

All of this is totally disregarded in Izzy’s storyline. People entering into TID after watching the show will be confused and not understand how Jem is sick and dying and is not really a drug addict at all. In short, they will enter into the novels with a prejudice and misunderstanding of Jem, and see him just like the other Shadowhunter’s do: a weak drug addict.

tl;dr: the show totally ruins and misconstrues and mocks Jem’s character arc by giving Izzy such a typical(and utterly incorrect) recreational drug addict storyline and I am furious about it.