#but Iago being the reason that the villain is defeated even when the villain isn’t Jafar or ABIS MAL would be hilarious in my book

[right-hand-of-the-black-sand]

I know it doesn't make sense chronologically, but what would have happened if Mozenrath had found the magic lamp with Jafar inside?

Okay, this is an interesting concept that could go in so many different ways!

If Mozenrath was the one who found the lamp, then we could probably assume that he did so outside of the Cave of Wonders, since there's no way Aladdin's going back in that cave with the knowledge that Jafar's down there. First, that would mean that Iago already dug his way up the cave and has freed himself but dumped Jafar. I bring that up because I imagine Iago would come into the picture sooner or later while Jafar's with Mozenrath.

So Mozenrath finds a djinni in a lamp (what would Jafar be? Djinni of the Black Lamp?) and is obviously delighted. All these years he's wanted power, and now it's there for him to take with just a few words! Jafar would probably do the same thing that he did in Return of Jafar where he immediately tries to fly away to take revenge on Aladdin, but is stopped by his inability to leave the lamp behind. If this occurs at the same time Return of Jafar would have, then Mozenrath wouldn't know who Aladdin is at that moment. Maybe he'd be interested, but not right away. First, he needs to get his wishes.

This is where I'll throw in my own idea. While Mozenrath isn't the most patient guy around, I like the idea that he uses his first two wishes quickly but has an undisclosed plan for the third. He may even make the wishes right there after fishing out the lamp from the well. …Actually, I bet Xerxes fished out the lamp while trying to get a drink of water.

So Mozenrath's wishes (as he claims) are as follows:

Become the most powerful sorcerer in the world.

Be given the inability to die, perhaps unless he himself specifically wills it. He knows what he's put people through...

Free Jafar from his servitude since Jafar won't stop demanding it.

After making his first two wishes, Mozenrath specifically tells Jafar that he has some things that he wants help with, so he'll free Jafar from the lamp with his third wish after the work is done. …There's no doubt in either of their minds that won't happen if Mozenrath can help it, though.

Here's the reason I think he'd leave the third wish open. From my (limited) research into the subject, when a djinni grants three wishes to one person, they may be released from their servitude, may lose their magical abilities, or may just outright disappear. While I can't think of a djinni disappearing in the Aladdin franchise, the third wishes we've seen have involved Genie being freed, Jafar being imprisoned, and Eden being set as Dhandi's companion. Maybe they wouldn't disappear because Genie was still around after Jafar used his third wish, but that could have been a special circumstance. Anyway, all that is to say that Mozenrath, having likely studied up on magic and djinn and so, probably doesn't want to lose Jafar too quickly. Moze wants to get every bit of use out of having a djinni as he possibly can, and…

…Well, we know what Mozenrath tends to do with djinn.

That's not to say that he plans to immediately drain Jafar of his magic. I think he would have a third wish in mind, and that is to rule the Seven Deserts, or, as he says in The Hunted, the world. He wouldn't go for the wish right away, though, and that's because he wants to try his hand at conquering the Seven Deserts himself before going and wasting a wish on it. Mozenrath wants to keep Jafar around long enough to see if he can conquer a few lands with his newfound power, and if that doesn't work, then he'll figure out a way to drain Jafar of his magic. Maybe he'd do it the quick way and just wish that Jafar's magic belonged to him. That may come with its own risk, considering what happened to Jafar.

Now here's where it could get both fun and messy. Jafar and Mozenrath both wish to be the most powerful creature in the land, and in that case, they would be each other's competition. Iago said that Jafar “steered clear” of Destane while he was around, so Jafar spending a bit of time with Mozenrath and realizing “Crap, this is Destane's brat” would mean that Jafar has quite a bit to lose from these circumstances. That, and him potentially finding Mozenrath's collection of magical items, including the Crystal of Ix, would mean that he has every reason to want to get out of there. He wants revenge on Aladdin, and he can't get revenge on Aladdin if he's dead!

Well, a djinni can't escape from their master without help, and Mozenrath knows that. Maybe he tries to keep Jafar happy by going after Agrabah first. He needs Jafar to be around whether or not his plan works, after all, and Agrabah is a good first place to test his magic.

After all, what could be waiting for him there? A cowardly parrot who has a tendency to randomly lose and gain a conscience and keep switching sides?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

...Again, that's only one scenario and there's so much more that could come from that. I just love the general concept way too much.

What else do y'all think would happen if Moze got the lamp? I had too much fun thinking about this.

[crystalelemental]

suitsongirls replied to your post: I mean, I can’t exactly fault someone who’s...

See, I agree she definitely should have been a villain, but I think she should have been a semi-recruitable one. Not the first time you meet her, but later, after she’s spared. She turns up again, and you have the option of having Corrin speak to her, and she has the option of joining, but she’s not allowed to kill. Since she’s been defeated, she’s less feared, and all that jazz. But that’s giving the fates writers too much credit.

See, I don’t think she even has enough for that.  That would require redeemable characteristics, which she doesn’t have.

This is an odd equivalence, but given the recency of this exact issue near here, it’s what springs to mind: whenever there’s a school shooting threat or event, the most difficult part is convincing my colleagues that no, this situation isn’t a tragic mental health issue, and the person making the threats doesn’t need help in the sense you’re thinking.  It’s learned behavior.  It’s being part of a gun nut forum that’s constantly othering those not in your group and inciting violence against them.  That’s not a mental health break or something that needs a few sessions of therapy, that’s a behavioral process that’s leading to acts of wanton violence committed by someone who is very in control of their thoughts and actions.  They’re not crazy or mentally unstable, they’re just awful people who have made the conscious decision that this is okay and justified.

That’s Peri.  There is no mental health disorder in Peri.  There’s nothing in Peri but a bratty five-year-old who was always enabled and allowed to do whatever she wanted.

The only time they try to give a reason for her behavior is with Laslow’s supports.  In their A-support, she talks about how, when she was young, she found her mother dead, after one of their family servants had killed her.  After that, she would attack the servants when she was upset with them, and her dad never stopped her.  Her only positive traits is that she cooks really well, something she learned from her mother, and is kind of the memento she carries with her.

So it’s trauma, right?  She experienced something traumatic, and now she’s just reactively violent.  No.  No she is not.  There’s never reactive violence in his behavior.  She kills servants over small mistakes, kills random people for funsies, and throws a tantrum at Benny for bringing her sweet candy when she had initially asked for sweet but changed her mind to sour while he was getting her things, all because she threatened to kill random citizens if he didn’t do it.  There’s no trauma response here.  That’s just a sociopath who thinks killing is okay to get what she wants.

In the field of special education, we had a disability classification area called Significant Emotional Disability.  To qualify under that area, you need to rule out what’s called Social Maladjustment.  The behaviors within the two are similar, but there’s one big distinction.  The student with an emotional disability tends to be reactive, and doesn’t necessarily know the skills to interact with their social environment.  They can have explosive outbursts, but when calm are generally pleasant and can often be remorseful following an outburst, because they don’t really want to have this difficult a time, they just don’t know what the alternative is.  Social Maladjustment is intentional.  It’s saying, I know the social rules and expectations, this is just easier.  It’s that bratty, asshole child that constantly hits people and shows zero emotion over it, and will tell you yeah, they punched that other kid in the eye, they wanted the toy they had and they weren’t giving it to them. Peri is the second.  In theory, you can work with either to develop the skills, but the approach is different.  ED needs to be taught the skills.  SM, on the other hand, needs to be taught that what they want is obtained more easily if they follow rules, which personally I think is a lot harder to deal with.

This isn’t to say that Peri absolutely could not be redeemed.  But it is to say she’s not someone to be pitied.  She’s like this because she started attacking people, and her spineless asshole father let it happen, or worse encouraged it, until she became a violent monster.  She acts purely on her own desires, throws a baby tantrum when she doesn’t get her way, and approaches every problem with the mentality that overwhelming violence is a sensible solution.  She’s awful, and I absolutely hate her presence in the story.  She’s worse than most of the villains!  Hans kills innocent people too, and is treated as the transparent major villain alongside Iago and Garon.  But you know what?  Hans actually has a justification.  He falls back on it a lot, but he’s not wrong: Garon did order him to kill.  Yeah, he gets really into it, but the people he massacres are your direct enemies in war, and people in league with a rebellion against the throne.  He’s wrong for massacring people in this way and inciting the conflict, but he’s got way more justification for his actions than Peri does, and somehow he’s an irredeemable villain while Peri is fine to side with the heroes?  It’s so lazy and shitty.  And again, somehow, Xander, the guy who’s all about peace and order in the realm and keeping people safe, sees Laslow being overly flirtatious as a bigger image concern than Peri killing her servants for giving her a mixed bag of candies with the green ones in it because she doesn’t like the green ones as much.  She’s an active detriment to the story and the characters around her.  She is, unquestionably, the worst playable character in Fire Emblem history.

[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 :’)