#but both current-day deeply traumatized Ursa

[seyaryminamoto]

Happy Valentine’s Day! I just read chapter 282, and you definitely are a master at pulling at the heartstrings. It was beautifully executed and I cannot wait till the real deal! Ursa was a big surprise but I am so excited! Glad you are not sticking to the comics with her, (I was not a fan of her story.) what her thoughts are on Sokka & Azulas relationship. What kind of role will she play in the near future for them? What does she know about the fate of her children? Fantastic work as always!

Happy belated Valentine's day for you too, Anon! Thank you very much for letting me know I brought on the feels like I meant to with 282, haha xD

Yeah, I've thought to drop another author's note in the next chapter to remind everyone, for the millionth time, that her backstory in Gladiator is 100% different from what the comics did. I don't even think it's all that necessary to say it anymore, but I feel like I should clarify it at least one more time, haha xD

As for those questions... answers will arrive relatively soon inside the story. But if you really must know... :'D

Well, first off, her thoughts on their relationship are somewhat complicated to explain as things are riiiight now. As you may recall, Ursa's current status is... a little bit chaotic. She's got some severe trauma she hasn't dealt with in any positive way, and her mind is not as clear as it could be. Therefore, as she is right now in 282, Ursa continues to be in denial of everything that suggests time has passed, that her children have grown up, and that she hasn't been part of their lives at all, just as she was in 207. Therefore, anything that implies her daughter has had a life she has missed out on is basically something she shuts the door on, harshly, because she refuses to accept this is possible...

... but that won't be her state forevermore :'D

Once Ursa comes around and accepts reality, which is big progress for her, she'll have a very long and thorough conversation with Sokka. It's a veeeery important, complicated and difficult conversation for them both. Part of why she wants it to happen, though, is the fact that Sokka is a wholly new person she has never really had a connection with before. Unlike how it is with Zuko or Azula, where she's in conflict and denial of who they are now as she clings to the past... it's easier to talk to Sokka and understand what's going on with him because he's someone new. Naturally, learning about Sokka and Azula's bond wasn't the easiest thing for her (though technically she, uh, doesn't learn about it from Sokka...), but the main thing she will concern herself with is...

... Azula's happiness! :'D

She wants to be sure that Sokka loved her and cared about her, first of all, and once she grows to believe that, she actually becomes a major supporter of their relationship. It's very much something that Sokka doesn't expect to happen... but this woman's full of surprises :'D she has changed a lot, really, and she even will acknowledge that, if she hadn't wound up where she is in life, if she had stayed with Ozai all along, she really might have been the nightmare mother Azula thought she'd be, shutting her down and refusing to accept that Azula could love someone so inappropriate for one of her station... but that's not the person Ursa is anymore. She has had some veeeery rude awakenings in life, and that means she grows to value Sokka very very quickly, for she can tell how much he cares about Azula and that their relationship was something wonderful for her daughter, even if Ursa can't quite confirm that with Azula just yet...

How much does she know about her kids... well, she knows more than she lets on, but like I said, she's mostly in denial about it all. So, in part, she kinda knows everything that's public knowledge, but in order to cope with reality she just loses herself in the past and refuses to acknowledge what's going on. So she's not reeeeally lost about everything, but it's only after she accepts reality properly that she can acknowledge her... knowledge? :'D

Her role going forward will be... mysterious (?) Okay, she's going to be a very big help for the group, and she'll be a major supporter of their cause going forward. She'll come and go sometimes, because unfortunately she's not really someone who should be involved in a lot of the dangerous stuff Sokka and his friends will get up to :'D in my sort-of-defense, I've tried to keep her around as often as possible x'D but yeah, can't really excuse it in some situations, so we won't have her around all the time. But one of her roles will also be... to serve us some flashbacks like Ozai does :'D we'll get a few flashbacks from her point of view, the first of which will be in the final chapter of the arc that begins this week. And yeah, when I said she'd be mysterious, I also mean because I'll keep a few things about her in the dark because... I really don't want to reveal EVERYTHING about Ursa to the readers until Azula is ready to learn about the core of it too :'D and as you may imagine... that's going to take A WHILE. So. Yeah.

Ursa isn't going to be a problem going forward, though, she's not going to have an antagonistic role towards our main characters... she's a complicated person who's gone through some reeeeally rough times, who starts trying to do better and be better in order to do right by her children, but who deep down is terribly scarred by the things she's been through (... and the things she's done), to the point where it sometimes paralyzes her and even throws her into downwards spirals. We won't see a lot of those... but we will certainly see that her flashbacks mean something very different than Ozai's do, for in her case, she's basically spent years living in her own memories and trying to build herself a safe place within her mind through those memories, out of fear and rejection of everything that changes around her...

Welp! There goes that explanation :'D I won't lie, I'm eternally shocked by how much I've grown to appreciate her character by writing her... she's always been one of the inclusions of Part 3 that I most looked forward to working with, and I'm really happy to feel that her presence in the story feels so powerful whenever I write her. I hope you guys will be thrilled to see more of her too! Like I said... she's complicated, but that makes her insanely compelling for me to explore as a character xD may it be fun for you guys to see those explorations, once we get there!