#it is the worst form of 'woe is me' dudebro entitlement

[ultranos]

Gender politics of East Asian cultures is not my lane but it's my understanding that a strong preference for boys over girls was A Thing, historically speaking. To what extent do you imagine this is true of the Fire Nation, and how would that impact the dynamic between Zuko (capable but not prodigious, yet oldest and a boy) and Azula (actual prodigy but younger and a girl)?

This is the cultural nuances being signposted by the aesthetics of the Fire Nation, by the bits of culture chosen to be borrowed. So let's bring that to Zuko, the firstborn son, and Azula, prodigy and girl. so incredibly difficult on some levels to see Zuko as sympathetic in that line as he's supposed to be once you realize this context.

s1 of AtLA aired when China still had the One Child policy in effect. This was a policy that lasted from 1979-2015 to control the population size. The modifications in the late 1980s allowed a second child if the first child was a daughter. After a son or two children were born, birth limits were enforced with use of contraception, abortion, and sterilization. This is now seen in the population statistics, where China has somewhere between 32-36 million more men than women due to the policy (despite the fact that sex-selective abortions are illegal in China, there is a very strong preference for a son over a daughter).

The utter tone-deafness of that line lies in the fact that based on actual, real world polices at the time, based on the cultures the show was drawing on? Azula would never have been born. Based on the actual reality of life at the time for a lot of people, she is the one who is lucky to be born at all.

And that's just China. In Japan, while there was no restrictions on birth, there was a major issue facing the Imperial family and Diet, because the Japanese Constitution states that only males in the direct line of succession can inherit. And at the time, neither of Emperor Akihito's sons had a son, meaning that there was a brewing crisis and fierce debate on if a woman could inherit. As it is now, Prince Hisahito was born in 2006, which means he'll inherit while his elder sisters (11 and 15 years his senior) will, by law, lose their titles when they marry.

Yes, that is not historical. That is the actual state of affairs. Today. In 2021.

But that's the real world. Thing is, the cultural preference for sons is not new and it is extremely deeply rooted. The entire theory of government in Dynastic China, which influenced the rest of East Asia, was based on the relationships between fathers and sons (Confucianism).

This is the cultural nuances being signposted by the aethetics of the Fire Nation, by the bits of culture chosen to be borrowed. So let's bring that to Zuko, the firstborn son, and Azula, prodigy and girl.

Do you know what Zuko's rant says to me, as a girl who grew up keeping her head down, letting her male cousin swagger around and talk down to her so as not to "cause problems", because the second it turned out that I performed better than him (that I had dared inadvertently challenge for "grandfather's pride"), my aunt and uncle literally forgot my name?

His rant says to me "I am the one people, that my father, should be looking at, because it's my right. I am the son. I am the firstborn son. How dare my younger sister be so much better that she takes any of his attention, because that attention is rightfully mine. How dare my younger sister make me work."

Zuko isn't supposed to be saying that. Zuko isn't supposed to be drowning in a sense of entitlement deeper than the Marianas Trench. We're supposed to hear that and understand that Zuko is scrappy and never gives up and was ignored because he couldn't meet an impossible standard.

But the fucking framework around it, the cultural clues that scream in the background, doesn't let that message happen. The framework makes Zuko sound like an entitled idiot at best and a complete hypocritical asshole at worst.

Because Zuko is the firstborn son. He's lucky to be born into a position of absolute privilege, the child that society favors and smooths the way for. Azula was born lucky, because she needed to be born a literal prodigy to compete with Zuko at all.