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it-begins-with-rain · 5 years ago

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Asian TV Recommendations: Masterpost

I’ve decided to consolidate my Asian TV Recommendations to a single post!

*Updated 10/04/2020: Dance of the Phoenix, The Lost Tomb, Reunion: The Sound of the Providence

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A Love So Beautiful

Language: Mandarin Chinese

Can the pure love of 17-year-olds endure through all the challenges of college and adulthood?

Chen Xiao Xi and Jiang Chen are high school friends and neighbors who grew up together. Xiao Xi is happy-go-lucky and doesn’t like to study much but she has a talent for drawing. Jiang Chen is popular for his good looks and high grades, but is cold and indifferent to other people.

Their friends include swimmer Wu Bo Song, who will do anything for XiaoXi, the dorky and over-confident gamer Lu Yang, and Lin Jing Xiao, the most beautiful girl in school (who Lu Yang is hopelessly in love with).

How will the realities of life shape the friendships and love lives of these young adults?

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Abyss (Netflix Original)

Language: Korean

Abyss is a spherical orb that has the power to raise the dead- with a kick: If you were a good person, you are resurrected younger and more attractive. If you were a bad person, your body could change into any form (generally you are at least decades older).

This is all well and good, until kind-hearted (yet unattractive) Cha Min is resurrected as a young hottie and given the Abyss. He finds an old man dead in the road and uses it to save him- unwittingly resurrecting a violent serial killer on his way to murder Cha Min’s best friend and lifelong crush, Criminal Prosecutor Se Yeon.

Cha Min resurrects the vain and petty Se Yeon (who returns to a body identical to her professional rival) and together they must hunt down the murderer- whatever his new face may be.

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Arang and the Magistrate // The Tale of Arang

Language: Korean

The foolhardy ghost of a young woman seeks to discover the truth behind her unjust death and meets a magistrate named Eun-oh, who has the ability to see ghosts.

She is in possession of a distinct hairpin given to Eun-Oh’s missing mother- meaning Arang was holding it when she died. Eun-Oh and Arang’s search for her memories and his mother will become the focus of gods and ghouls alike.

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Ashes of Love // Heavy Sweetness, Ash-Like Frost

Language: Mandarin Chinese

Jin Mi is the secret lovechild of the Flower Deity and the Water Immortal, conceived before the Flower Deity suffers a fatal wound.

The deity gives birth to a baby girl (Jin Mi) on her deathbed, and foresees the infant will face a terrible trial by her 10,000th year. To save her from her fate, the Flower Deity gives Jin Mi a pill that makes it impossible for her to ever feel romantic love. Upon her death, she forbids anyone in the Flower Kingdom from revealing the fact that she had a child.

Several thousand years later, Jin Mi is a bumbling little fairy trapped in The Water Mirror- a gilded prison where low-level fairies can live in peace. Jin Mi believes she is a small Grape Fairy, and lives a happy (if not dull) life within the Mirror with her friends.

When a charred bird falls from the heavens into the Water Mirror, Jin Mi decides to eat save the poor little ‘crow’-- who in reality is Xu Feng, the mighty phoenix son of the Heavenly Emperor. Her decision to not eat save the Fire God will put them at the heart of plots and schemes, romances and adventures spanning the Flower Kingdom, Heavenly Realm, Demon Kingdom, and the Realm of Mortals.

**Trigger Warning: Contains reference to off-camera sexual assault.**

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Because This is My First Life

Language: Korean

Nam Se-Hee is a single man in his early 30's. A highly logical and anti-social man, he is constantly pressured by his family to find a woman and marry her- something he has no interest in whatsoever. The only things that matter in Se-Hee’s life are his cat and working so that he can pay off the mortgage on his house in 30 years.

Yoon Ji-Ho is a single woman in her early 30's. An assistant drama writer, she has lofty dreams and barely two pennies to rub together. The home she and her brother live in is cramped and small- doubly so once she finds out her brother has been living with a wife he never told her about. Ji-Ho is forced out of her home and- due to her financial situation- moves in with a “young woman” she’s only met via text- Nam Se-Hee.

Events unfold that will force Ji-Ho and Se-Hee into a corner from which they can only find one way out:: Enter into a strictly contracted marriage, absent love, romance, or sex, and keep up their ruse around family and friends for a period of two years.

But as time goes on, the cold and robotic Se-Hee and hopeless Ji-Ho begin to develop feelings for one another beyond that of a Landlord and a Tenant. It is only too easy for them to slip into the roles of Husband and Wife.

**Trigger Warning: On-Camera attempted rape, numerous instances of sexual harassment and non-rape assault (ie, groping)**

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Cunning Single Lady

Language: Korean

Na Aera, a woman left with crippling debt after divorcing her husband, learns her ex has become a millionaire off a mobile app she inspired during their time together. She forms a plot to seduce her ex husband, re-marry him, and then take him for half his new net-worth. Her ex is well aware of this plot, and has been waiting for a chance to get some closure of his own for their abrupt split.

There are two questions the pair must find the answer together: How do you scheme against someone if you accidentally fall in love with them again? And why did Na Aera really decide to leave her husband in the first place?

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Dance of the Phoenix

Language: Mandarin Chinese

Feng Wu, a former genius girl in the Junwu Continent, was attacked by her old enemy Zuo Qingluan. In the attack, she lost not only her memories and abilities, but her “phoenix blood” which made her powerful.

In order to save Feng Wu her secret tutor, Master Mu Jiuzhou (a hero thought long dead whose soul is bound inside a ring Feng Wu wears around her neck), exhausted his vitality and fell into a deep coma.

The forces Master Mu Jiuzhou were trying to keep at bay are roiling again, readying for war unless Feng Wu can recover her memories, her power, and survive long enough to release him from the ring.

But if Feng Wu at full power couldn’t stop the evil Zhuo Qingluan’s attack and save herself, what chance does “normal person” Feng Wu have?

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Dear Judge // Your Honor

Language: Korean

Han Soo-Ho and Han Kang-Ho were born as identical twins, but live totally different lives.

Han Soo-Ho is a seemingly righteous judge, respected by all and beloved by his mother no matter how cold and dismissive he is. He is corrupt to his core and sells desired sentences to major corporations, no matter who gets hurt in the crossfire.

Han Kang-Ho, raised in his brother’s shadow, is a petty criminal with 5 separate prison terms under his belt. He flaunts the law and lives an angry and miserable life as the nobody his mother tells him he is.

When Han Soo-Ho is abducted by people intent on getting their own brand of justice, it coincides with Kang-Ho needing somewhere to hide. He secretly takes his brother’s place as a judge. He intends to just cut and run, but begins to fall for judicial intern Song So-Eun, whose blind faith in the justice system is both misguided and infectious.

Han Kang-Ho, once considered trash by his own family, suddenly finds himself highly respected and admired. As a veteran of the criminal justice system he knows every trick and trap, but will he use his knowledge to rake in the dough like his corrupt brother, or will he wield his newfound power to bring mercy to the law?

**Trigger Warning: Contains partially on-camera rape, references to rape, assault, and themes of assault-related PTSD**

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Fairyland Lovers

Language: Mandarin Chinese

Bai Qi is a “spiritual doctor” who travels the world to rid spirits of their obsessions and stop them from becoming monsters. Eons ago he himself was at the threshold of becoming an Evil Spirit, and was saved by a Divine Warrior who helped him find a way to move past his darkness before tragically losing her life.

Isolated from the world and alone with a sprig of his lost love’s peach tree, Bai Qi meets the sunny but hapless actress Lin Xia. Not only does the tree come to life in her presence- and not only can she use the tools left behind by his lost lover- she also has the same face.

Curious, Bai Qi enters into a co-habitation agreement with Lin Xia and she helps him cleanse souls before they can turn into Evil Spirits. As their lives intersect, a memory that Bai Qi sealed away for over ten thousand years begins to surface.

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Flower of Evil

Language: Korean

Baek Hee-Sung seems like the perfect husband.

A craftsman, his hard work allowed his metal-working studio to flourish and he provides a good life for his wife, Detective Cha Ji-Won, and their young daughter. But behind his perfectly sculpted mask hides a dark secret that even his wife does not know:

Baek Hee-Sung is really Do Min-Soo, a boy believed to have aided his father in a series of grizzly serial-murders 18 years ago.

Unfortunately, secrets have a way of coming out, and as a homicide detective, it is Cha Ji-Won’s job to uncover as many of them as she can. A murderer strikes, leaving behind all the hallmarks of the murders committed by Do Min-Soo’s father. Ji-Won finds herself on a dark path that could destroy the very foundations of her happy life.

Who is Baek Hee-Sung? What really happened eighteen years ago? And what will Cha Ji-Won do once she realizes just who she is married to?

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Guardian

Language: Chinese

Super-Detective Zhao Yunlan meets university professor (and powerful supernatural being) Shen Wei and the two men are instantly drawn together by a past one cannot forget and a future the other cannot guess. As they grow closer, they find themselves at the heart of a high-stakes supernatural battle between unknown enemies.

Will the heroic duo’s unique talents- and special bond- be enough to help them outwit the forces of darkness?

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Handsome Siblings (2020 Netflix Edition)

Language: Mandarin Chinese

Hua Wuque is a pillar of righteousness and virtue, the only male disciple of the powerful Yihua Palace cultivation clan. An orphan, he was taken in by the clan leader and her sister and raised with only one goal in life: to find and kill Jiang Xiaoyu, a mighty villain and enemy of Yihua Palace.

So who is Jiang Xiaoyu? Also known as Xiaoyu’er, Jiang Xiaoyu is an orphan himself- the same age as Hua Wuque in fact- raised by the five most feared and hated villains in the world within the confines of the Wicked Canyon. Into Jiang Xiaoyu the villains poured their knowledge, tricks, and ruthlessness, seeking to create the ultimate villain. There is only one problem: As he was raised in the Wicked Canyon and surrounded by nothing but villains, Jiang Xiaoyu mostly uses his abilities to… harm villains and protect the weak.

When Jiang Xiaoyu comes of age and leaves the Wicked Canyon (or rather, becomes too much of a trickster for the villains to handle anymore), Hua Wuque is unleashed to venture from Yihua Palace and hunt down his enemy.

But how could someone kept confined in the Wicked Canyon for the first 18 years of his life be a threat to Yihua Palace? And why must Hua Wuque be the one to kill him (under direction that Jiang Xiaoyu cannot die naturally, be killed by someone else, or kill himself)?

There is a piece of the story Jiang Xiaoyu and Hua Wuque do not know: they are orphans of the same tragedy, in which the divine hero Jiang Feng spurned the love of both leaders of Yihua Palace for a beautiful servant named Hua Yuenu. Hua Yuenu was forced to commit suicide and Jiang Feng killed himself rather than submit to the Ladies of Yihua–

Leaving behind newborn (non-identical) twin sons.

Yihua Palace’s plot is a simple (if OTT) act of vengeance against Jiang Feng’s memory:: Force one brother to murder the other, then reveal to Hua Wuque the sin he has committed and let it drive the boy insane.

Will the truth come out before Wuque finds and kills Xiaoyu, or will the evil Ladies of Yihua Palace finally have the vengeance they have waited for for over 18 years? As Wuque and Xiaoyu’s paths cross more and more they strike up an unlikely friendship, even knowing there is no escaping their dark fate.

**Trigger Warning: Later episodes include off-camera sexual assault and on-camera depictions of near-rape.**

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Hello, My Twenties

Language: Korean

With different personalities, life goals, and taste in men, five female college students become housemates in a shared residence called Belle Epoque.

Trigger Warning: Season 1 contains scenes of abuse and forced confinement; Season 2 deals with severe PTSD.

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Hi My Sweetheart

Language: Taiwanese-Mandarin

Xue Hai is a kindhearted (and extremely wealthy) but naïve man who has been sheltered by his big sisters his entire life. He decides to go to college in China- where no one knows him- under the name Da Lang and with the image of a poor scholarship student. There Xue Hai meets the dominant, friendless, and rebellious Bao Zhu. Naturally the two fall in love, but after 4 years together, just as he’s going to reveal his identity and propose, Bao Zhu viciously dumps him.

Fast forward three more years. Xue Hai has transformed himself into a handsome but ruthless playboy who treats women as nothing more than toys to be used and cast aside. When he chances across Bao Zhu once more, he decides to launch a campaign to destroy her heart as thoroughly and mercilessly as she did his.

Except Xue Hai is missing one important piece of their love story: Bao Zhu only left him to protect him from her domineering mother, and she has been searching for her beloved Da Lang ever since.

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Hit the Top // The Best Hit

Language: Korean

A free-spirited idol vanishes in the early 90s and reappears in 2017 where he is given a second chance to mend his previous relationships, form a bond with a son he never knew existed, and perhaps solve his own suspected murder before fate throws him back where he belongs.

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Hotel Del Luna

Language: Korean

Nestled deep in the heart of Seoul’s thriving downtown sits a mysterious hotel, the likes of which no one has ever seen before. Old beyond measure, the building has stood for millennia, an ever-present testament to the fact that things are not always what they seem.

The Hotel Del Luna is the final place on this earth lost souls pass through before they move on to the other side. For centuries the hotel has been under the control of Man Wol- a greedy and suspicious immortal.

When the multi-faced goddess of Fate plants a human in her path to take over as Manager of the hotel, she gives him a task: discover the truth of Man Wol’s grudge and heal her weary soul before Man Wol succumbs to past hatreds and destroys herself forever.

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The King’s Avatar

Language: Mandarin Chinese

In the online multiplayer game Glory, Ye Xiu is well known as the undisputed master of professional sports- though no one outside of the professional teams actually knows what he looks like as he hides his face from media and fans. A player since he was a child- and raised largely in professional player training camps- Ye Xiu has no understanding of the outside world.

Halfway through the season, the money-hungry company behind his team, Excellency Era, forces him out and replaces him with an undisciplined hot-shot. Penniless and with nowhere to go, Ye Xiu crosses the street and enters the Happy Internet Cafe. The owner is a diehard fan of the mysterious Ye Xiu, and hires Ye Qiu as an IT manager not for his experience, but for his shared love of the game.

When Glory launches their tenth server, Ye Qiu throws himself into the game once more. Equipped with ten years of gaming experience, memories of an unfinished pledge to a dead friend, and an incomplete self-made weapon, Ye Qiu will rise from the ashes, forge a new team, and take back his crown.

**This drama sees actor Yang-Yang once again assume the role of Legendary Gamer, as he played previously in ‘Love O2O’ (Recommended below)

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The Lost Tomb**

Language: Mandarin Chinese

50 years ago, a group of Changsha grave robbers known as the “Mystic Nine” dug out manuscripts of the location of treasures from the Warring States period, but soon after almost the entire group was hunted down and slaughtered.

In the present, the young grandchild of the sole survivor, Wu Xie, discovers a secret within his grandfather's notes as well as half of a silk manuscript that may reveal the location of the lost tomb. But there is one problem- the other half of the manuscript is held by a shady organization of tomb raiders eager to break in and steal whatever cultural relics are inside the tomb.

Wu Xie has a "National Treasure” moment and decides that in order to stop the objects in the tomb from vanishing into the black market he will break in first and recover whatever is inside (’I’m going to steal the Declaration of Independence...’).

Wu Xie is helped on his journey by his beloved “Third Uncle” Wu Sanxing, his uncle’s right hand man Panzi, and the mysterious Xiao Ge - a tomb raider who seems to know of traps before they are sprung and whose hand has been mutilated in a way not seen among tomb robbing families in over a century.

They expected to find a lost tomb, perhaps chase away some thieves, and learn about an exciting piece of lost history. What they did not expect was for the tomb to strike back, the dead to rise, and the past to fight and keep what secrets it holds.

Who exactly are this alternate group of tomb robbers? What are they searching for? What exactly is protecting the tomb? Whose side is Xiao Ge truly on? And- most crucially- can Wu Xie survive long enough to find the answers?

** This recommendation is part of a broader series of shows and movies, all adapted from “The Gravedigger’s Notebook” and its sequels::

The Lost Tomb (2015)

The Lost Tomb 2: Explore With the Note (2016)

Time Raiders (2016 movie)

The Mystic Nine (2016)

Tomb of the Sea (2018)

Reunion: The Sound of the Providence (which gets its own recommendation below; 2019-2020)

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Love O2O

Language: Mandarin Chinese

** O = letter, not number

Wei-Wei has both beauty and brains. A computer goddess, she aspires to be an online game developer. In her spare time, she plays her favorite online game ‘A Chinese Ghost Story’- where she has made a name for herself as the top female player on the entire server.

After her online husband dumps her, she gets a message from legendary player Yixiao Naihe- asking to become her online husband (marriages in-game offer certain benefits and quest lines single players cannot achieve).

Little does Wei-Wei know that Yixiao Naihe is also her college senior and the most desired man on campus, Xiao Nai.

Will their online chemistry lead to a real-life romance? Yes. Of course it will. It’s in the title.

** Can’t get enough of Xiao Nai (Yang-Yang) as the Legendary Gamer? Check out his new show ‘The King’s Avatar’ (Recommended above).

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My Roommate is a Detective

Language: Mandarin Chinese

Shanghai in 1925 is caught between gang leaders and the European powers colonizing China.

A resourceful young police officer named Qiao Chu Sheng is on the trail of a brutal but devious killer. Realizing that the police force will need some extra help with this difficult case, he decides to form an elite crime-busting detective team. He reaches out Lu Yao, a Cambridge graduate a slick con-man.

Qiao Chu Sheng has learned that Lu Yao has remarkable powers of deduction and a brilliant mind – and believes he can help crack this difficult case. To round off the team, he enlists the help of Bai You Ning, a focused young female reporter for a daily newspaper. A free-thinking, independent young woman, she has a strong sense of justice – and pledges to help catch the killer.

The trio form a small detective squad that specializes in solving strange and unsettling murder mysteries.

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Mystic Pop-Up Bar

Language: Korean

Mystic Pop-up Bar tells the story of a mysterious outdoor drinking establishment run by an ill-tempered woman named Wol Joo, an innocent part-time employee named Han Kang Bae, and a former afterlife detective known as Chief Gwi who visit customers in their dreams to help resolve their problems.

To atone for a devastating mistake in her past life, Wol-Joo must aleviate the suffering of 100,000 individuals. After 500 years the counter stands at 99,990, but the impatient judges of the afterlife are tired of Wol-Joo’s bad attitude and increasing hatred of humanity.

She now has just one month to save 10 people, or else her soul will be destroyed forever.

**It’s worth noting the heavy similarities between Mystic Pop-Up Bar and Hotel Del Luna, though it should be said that Mystic Pop Up Bar’s script was finished first while Hotel Del Luna was made more quickly. The similarities between the two shows appears to be coincidental.

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Oh My Emperor

Language: Mandarin Chinese

Fei-Fei, a young doctor, is wounded in an accident and finds herself trapped in the ancient and mystical nation of Huang Dao. The people of Huang Dao are ruled by a king born of the stars- the physical embodiment of one of the twelve zodiac constellations. To keep discord from arising among the people, the Twelve Zodiac Masters govern together to keep the peace.

But a thirteenth sign has been forcibly subjugated, it’s Lord executed, and its people scattered to the wind. The lost sign- Ophiuchus- is rising once more- and Fei-Fei is its (unwilling) Master.

It only complicates matters slightly that Fei-Fei finds herself between the handsome and charming Master of Aquarius and his nephew- the cold Master of Capricorn (who is also the Emperor). Can Fei-Fei keep her identity secret long enough to solve the mystery of the Ophiuchus purge- or is Huang Dao doomed to destruction?

**This drama is a showpiece for members of the Chinese pop group X-Nine, do not judge it by the same standards as a traditional drama. Showpiece dramas tend to be a bit silly.

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Oh My Ghost

Language: Korean

Soon-Ae is the ghost of a woman who died a virgin. Believing getting laid is her only chance to move on before she becomes an evil spirit, she possesses the body of Bong Sun- an introvert with extremely low self esteem.

Acknowledging it isn’t an ideal arrangement, Soon-Ae decides help Bong Sun and focuses her seductive attentions on the man Bong Sun is secretly in love with. Bong Sun reluctantly agrees, hoping Soon-Ae’s influence will make her more outgoing and self-assured.

There are two problems with the girls’ plan once it goes into motion: Bong Sun’s colleagues worry she has had a mental breakdown and refuse to take advantage of her; and the longer Soon-Ae is in Bong Sun’s body the more she remembers of her own brutal assault and murder.

Soon-Ae’s unfinished business might have more to do with justice than tapping a hot chef, but can she solve her murder without putting Bong Sun in danger?

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Psychopath’s Diary

Language: Korean

In the wrong place at the wrong time, kind-hearted and timid Dong Shik plays witness to a gruesome murder. As if that weren’t bad enough, he stumbles across the killer’s diary-a horrible record of his heinous crimes and the psychotic ramblings of a narcissistic sociopath.

Chased by the killer, Dong Shik runs into traffic and is hit by a police officer. After waking up from a brief coma, Dong Shik is left with 2 things: total amnesia, and the murderer’s diary. Dong Shik mistakes himself for the serial killer, and his personality begins to twist.

Can a timid man become a monster? What of the actual serial killer? With no diary to ground him, it’s only a matter of time before the killer loses what little control he once had.

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Reunion: The Sound of the Providence**

Language: Mandarin Chinese

Wu Xie, “Fatty” Wang Pangzi, and the quasi-immortal tomb raider Xiao Ge (AKA Zheng Qiling, Kylin, and “Poker Face”) have faced many dangerous tombs together over the past twelve years.

Now, it is time for them to go on their last great adventure as the so-called “Iron Triangle” before Wu Xie sets off on the journey all must eventually make: death. He always thought his end would come in a dangerous tomb, but instead it will be lung cancer that claims his life. With only 3-4 months left to live, Wu Xie hides the truth of his illness from his friends and family, revealing the truth only to Xiao Ge.

Once upon a time, Wu Xie was told that when a man meets his death he must do so with a clear conscience. But something has been weighing on Wu Xie- his Third Uncle’s disappearance at the end of their first adventure. Right on time, a message from his long lost uncle appears, setting Wu Xie on a desperate mission to find him before the cancer eating away at his body destroys him at last.

This will most likely be Wu Xie’s final journey, but he will do anything in his power to make sure his friends and family will be safe long after his time is up. In the final 3-4 months of Wu Xie’s life he will seek to unravel the mystery of the “Thunder City”- starting with the most dangerous tomb he’s ever explored, The South Sea King’s Tomb.

The sound of thunder hides a secret men have killed for, but is there really a way to hear the words of gods within it? Someone clearly thought so, but who? Is Uncle Sanxing still alive, or is someone in the shadows guiding Wu Xie to them?

Wu Xie’s enemies thought he was dangerous before, but now he is a dying man with a mission. There is no telling what lengths he will go to in order to achieve his goals. He might just manage to die in a tomb after all...

** This recommendation is just the latest installment in an entire series of stories adapted from “The Gravedigger’s Notebook” and related novels::

The Lost Tomb (2015)

The Lost Tomb 2: Explore With the Note (2016)

Time Raiders (2016 movie)

The Mystic Nine (2016)

Tomb of the Sea (2018)

Reunion: The Sound of the Providence (2019-2020)

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The Romance of Tiger and Rose

Language: Mandarin Chinese

Chen Xiao Qian has dedicated her life to making her dream of becoming a well-respected screenwriter come true. Standing on the production set of sweeping dramas she penned through endless blood, sweat, and tears, Xiao Qian can hardly believe what she is seeing: her work, come to life!

Except it isn’t a set. And her work truly has come to life.

Her script is a simple one: the heirs of two rival cities who seek to destroy one another enter into a doomed romance that will lead to endless betrayals and a war that will kill the male lead, Han Shuo.

There is just one problem- Xiao Qian wakes in the body of Han Shuo’s first wife on the day he will murder her! The only way for Xiao Qian to return to this world is to survive the story, but in keeping herself alive longer the script begins to change, and Han Shuo begins to fall in love with the wrong person.

At first it is easy for Xiao Qian to keep herself alive- just go along with the script! But the story wants to return to the original plot, which means characters who should be friends become enemies, enemies become friends, and Xiao Qian might not live long enough to find her way home.

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Secret Healer // Mirror of the Witch

Language: Korean

Once upon a time an evil shaman helped the Crown Princess conceive twins- but into the Princess’ womb she also cast a dark curse capable of destroying the nation. Her plans were thwarted by her former mentor- who at the command of the Princess consolidated the curse from two twins into just one- the female child. The world believes the shaman destroyed the princess, burning the baby in holy flame to purge the curse- but instead he decides to raise her and try to help her break the curse upon her.

If she dies before the curse is lifted, it will unleash hell and destroy the nation. To break the curse she must fulfill wishes- but the evil shaman’s life is bound to the curse she cast so long ago. As the curse starts to break, she realizes the child is not as dead as she was lead to believe and begins a campaign to root her out and destroy her.

The princess forms a bond with a young scholar who becomes entangled in the princess’ curse and will stop at nothing to help free her. Her curse carries a catch though: Anyone she loves will die... and anyone who loves her will also perish.

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Strong Woman Do Bong Soon

Language: Korean

A freakishly strong- but totally sweet- woman is caught between the love of her arrogant but handsome boss and her disinterested lifelong crush.

Her boss wants her to embrace her supernatural strength and use it proudly, but she loves that her crush treats her like someone weak and in need of protection. Bong Soon will have to chose for herself if she will suppress her strength for her childhood crush or unleash herself to protect those she loves.

A murderer prowling the streets might make that decision for her though...

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The Untamed

Language: Mandarin Chinese

On the cliffs of the Nightless City, upon defeating his enemies in a bloody slaughter, the cruel and vicious Yiling Patriarch- Wei Wuxian- threw himself to his death.

Sixteen years later, he is resurrected by a madman and given a second chance to right what went so terribly wrong long ago. Wei Wuxian reunites with the honorable, righteous, and stern Lan Wangji- his confidant, soulmate, and best friend.

How can someone as upstanding as Lan Wangji befriend the monstrous and hated Yiling Patriarch? What turned the happy and popular Wei Wuxian into the man who slaughtered thousands at Nightless by weaponizing the souls of the dead?

And what terrible secret was Wuxian resurrected to unearth?

The past is not always what it seems, and there is no clean line between right and wrong.

**This story is told in two sections: Episode 2 enters a 30-episode flashback sequence showing Wei Wuxian’s path from popular youth to the monster upon the Cliffs of Nightless, with the first 1.5 episodes, and the last 20, dealing with the “present”. Don’t worry if you’re lost when the show starts, that is by design.

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You’re Beautiful

Language: Korean

Go Mi Nyeo has only one goal in life: To take her final vows and become a nun. Her twin brother, Go Mi Nam, desires nothing more than the life of an idol so that he can use his fame to find their missing mother.

Go Mi Nam’s dream is in jeopardy after a botched surgery and his twin must put her life on hold to quite literally step into his shoes and cover for her brother.

She joins the band A.N.JELL and quickly ends up on the bad side of their more devil-like leader. Can Go Mi Nyeo hide her true identity from her band-mates long enough for her brother to return?

No. No she cannot. By the end of the first day all but one- the goofy and loving Jeremy- know that she is no man... But they let her think she’s fooled them. It’s funnier that way.

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W: Two Worlds

Language: Korean

Is it possible to live in the same place at the same time, but in a completely different dimension?

Yeon Joo is a second-year cardiothoracic resident doctor. Her father, creator of the world famous web series ‘W’ suddenly disappears one day. While searching for him Yeon Joo finds a strange man covered in blood and only barely manages to resuscitate him before the words “To Be Continued” flash across her vision and he disappears.

When she returns, there is a new chapter of her father’s blockbuster series available online- one that features a doctor with her exact name and clothing saving a man covered in blood...

Where is Yeon Joo’s father? How is the story updating itself? As she is dragged into the world of ‘W’ with increasing frequency Yeon Joo and the story’s leading man, Kang Chul, must answer the most important question of all:

Is it possible something from that world escaped into this one?

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Well Intended Love (Season 1: Drama Version)

Language: Mandarin Chinese

Seasons 1 and 2 of “Well Intended Love” feature the same stars playing the same characters, but the storylines are alternate-universes of one another telling the story from a different genre. Each season is its own wholly contained entity that does not impact- and is not impacted by- the other season in any way.

A third-rate actress with leukemia becomes entangled with the handsome but cold CEO Ling.

In order to receive a bone marrow transplant and contniue her career as an actress, Xia Lin enters into a secret marriage with Ling Yi Zhou. Despite the conspiracies and misunderstandings they encounter, the two begin to find true love.

But one question nags at Xia Lin’s mind:: Why did the cold, controlling, and distant Ling YiZhou need her to play the role of wife?

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Well Intended Love (Season 2: Rom-Com Version)

Language: Mandarin Chinese

Rising TV superstar Xia Lin finds herself embroiled in scandal after a run-in with business mogul Ling Yizhou at a party. To clear up any misunderstandings the two prepare a joint press conference-- where Xia Lin is stunned by Ling Yizhou’s statement that the two are- in fact- an engaged couple.

Ling Yizhou convinces Xia Lin to play fiancee for a period of one year, after which they can go their separate ways. To save face in front of her fans, Xia Lin agrees. She gradually begins to fall for the lovable and doting Ling Yizhou.

Someone works in the shadows to destroy everything Ling Yizhou holds dear- and the closer he gets to the heart of the conspiracy, the more he realizes Xia Lin may have a target on her back as well.

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What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim

Language: Korean

Can you be so self-absorbed that you have no idea what’s truly going on around you? Yeong Joon is Vice President of his family-owned company, Yoomyung Group. He is so narcissistic that he doesn’t pay attention to what his trusty secretary Kim Mi So is trying to tell him most of the time.

After nine years of making Yeong Joon look good and stroking his very large ego, Mi So decides to quit her job, citing a desire for a life outside of work and the chance to fall in love. Yeong Joon does not take the disruption of his routine well, and decides the only logical course of action is to make Mi So fall in love with him, thus guaranteeing she will stay by his side.

A dark secret from Yeong Joon’s past may hold the key to why he can’t let her go, but will Mi So stick around long enough to discover the truth?

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arthurjdrake · 4 years ago

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[meta] What, if any, games, movies, books, tv shows, etc. have you drawn influence from for your character?

Hooooo boy, you opened a can of worms here. There’s a lot, mostly because the way I tend to build muses and characters is by taking facets of different and interesting medias concepts and then amalgamate them into one and even then they’re evolving based on situations.

1. Floki - Vikings

I knew from the outset when designing Aren/Arthur that I wanted his heritage and origins to be of Viking descent as it’s an area I’ve wanted to build into a character for such a long time and never had a chance to lean into that. I love to toy and play with history when building characters like this; weaving things into their narrative to explain certain nuances and aspects of their current persona.

Floki is one of the most fascinating characters on the show Vikings imo, his primary goal is to find out his meaning/place in life, what his purpose is and how best he can serve his people/Ragnar during his lifetime. He’s an idealist and a perfectionist who drives himself hard in the goals he does set for himself. Aren/Arthur as a character is very similar in this regard - flexible and laid-back, until one of his values is violated - when their value system is under threat both characters become aggressive and stout defenders, fighting passionately for their cause even when neither is truly a seasoned or very proficient fighter. Both are highly intuitive about people. They rely heavily on their intuitions to guide them, and use their discoveries to constantly search for value, meaning and context in life. They are on a continuous mission to find the truth and meaning underlying things. Every encounter and every piece of knowledge gained gets sifted through their value system, and is evaluated to see if it has any potential to help them define or refine their own path in life.

2. Professor Layton

While Aren’s heritage and origins are Danish, in this particular lifetime he was born and raised in England. Sherlock is very well known and seemed a bit on the nose as a choice so it got me thinking about other things that influence the choices I made and as a professor as well... There was no other character except Layton that exhibits the same degree of intrigue with mercurial mysteries. Calm and polite to most people, quiet and reserved in his emotions they both apply strong analytical and logical skills to situations they find themselves in. They both think through their approaches before enacting them and Arthur has gained these skills from lifetimes spent researching and studying in academia as both a scientist and a scholar.

3. General Iroh / The Dragon of the West

Iroh is the epitome of ‘No one is inherently good or inherently evil.’ Another facet I lean into with Arthur; who has done some terrible things (namely murder and torture in the course of seeking revenge) and justified them in his mind as an answer to wrongs done unto him by others. It doesn’t mean they were right or that he condones the things he did but at the time it made sense and was justified to him. He lives with the guilt of those acts, and it’s guilt he will always carry. While this is mostly speculation from the countless times I’ve watched the show prior to Lu Ten’s death, Iroh imo acted largely out of what he believed his duty to be. He was the Crown Prince to the Fire Nation. He had a duty to honour his family and his country with victories. He fought in the war and battled so long and hard at Ba Sing Se because he believed that was his duty to his nation and to his people. He believed their cause to be justified in making the world better for everyone. A view that was dramatically altered, however, by his experience at the city of Ba Sing Se - confronted with what the Fire Nation had done to the world. He could see how and why the people feared them. A fact that didn’t hit home until Lu Ten was killed at which point Iroh was forced to reconcile his duty to his nation with his duty to his family, and having failed to protect his son, he could not. Iroh forsake his duty to his country. At least, his duty to be a praised military leader. In its place, Iroh picked up his duty to his family, seeking to raise Zuko in a way that would bestow balance and honour upon the Fire Nation, once again. Iroh was never inherently evil, nor was he inherently good. Instead, Iroh’s motivations were driven by what he saw as his duty. In his younger years, this duty was to the Fire Nation, to the honour of his family. In his later years, when tempered by Lu Ten’s death, his duty became to the world, which he fulfilled through Zuko’s proper rearing, his service to the White Lotus, and his kind spirit that saw no divisions between the elemental nations.

4. Lee Scoresby - His Dark Materials both the novel and the show.

Chapter 18 is perhaps one of the most pivotal moments and discussions Lee has. Lee Scoresby is symbol of free will, independence, and individual choice. Lee elaborates on this POV in his dialogue with the witch Serafina Pekkala: "I'm a simple aeronaut, and I'd like to end my days in comfort. Buy a little farm, a few head of cattle, some horses... Nothing grand, you notice. No palace or slaves or heaps of gold. Just the evening wind over the sage, and a ceegar, and a glass of bourbon whisky." While he appears as a bit of a mercenary, Lee's desires have to do with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. While Serafina argues about the important role of fate in the conflict unfolding, Lee takes the other side of the debate. He insists that individuals should and do have a choice in what happens to them. "Seems to me a man should have a choice whether to take up arms or not." "We have no more choice in that than in whether or not to be born." "Oh, I like choice, though," he said. "I like choosing the jobs I take and the places I go and the food I eat and the companions I sit and yarn with. Don't you wish for a choice once in a while?" That’s a stance Arthur tends to take quite a lot when discussion the repercussions of decisions. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The ramifications of those choices are every person’s own responsibility to step up and bare no matter how difficult that hardship might be.

Not to mention Lee “go dad or go home” Scoresby full on adopting Lyra and I live for it. In the same way that’s happened with Evelyn and DEFINITELY with Nadia.

5. Jamie Fraser - Outlander

Amiable, intelligent, and stubborn. Jamie’s sense of duty and honour is strong, and he has never backed down from a fight or refused to do something he thought was his responsibility. In the face of many things, when Arthur’s made his mind up in a similar way getting this man to budge from where he’s planted himself is nigh on impossible.

Despite the years and trials they’ve been through, both still remain and choose to be kind and merciful unless given absolutely no other choice.

That said, when unchallenged both have a good sense of humour and social awareness and both are extremely loyal to family and loved ones going above and beyond when they are threatened or in perilous situations.

TL;DR so yeah there’s a lot of different and similar things I’ve drawn in. There are probably plenty more but these are the main ones I’ve really keyed into with writing and portraying Arthur.

#wickedsanon #answered #// attempt dos #meta #cd #hc

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wiseabsol · 6 years ago

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WA Reviews “Dominion” by Aurelia le, Chapter 7: Redirecting Lightning

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6383825/7/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 7!

CHAPTER 7: REDIRECTING LIGHTNING

Alright, this is it. I have hit chapter seven. I have hit the first benchmark chapter in this story; the one that makes or breaks “Dominion” for readers. Because this is the chapter where Zuko rapes Azula. And I am going to stand by and defend that interpretation, because regardless of how ambiguous the situation seemed to Zuko, I think the authorial intent here is clear if the reader is paying attention. So expect this to be a lengthy review, because I plan to go into depth with that. As for the rating of this story—you upped it to an M rating a long time ago, which I think was appropriate, given that “Dominion,” due to what it’s exploring, really is more of a story for adults than for young teenagers. And you’re completely right about the decision to depict what happens in this chapter, rather than tell us what happened later. No one would have believed it otherwise. Also, I’m curious, but what tropes specifically are you deconstructing where Azula redemption fics are concerned? I haven’t read enough of them to be knowledgeable about that. But onwards with the chapter itself. So Zuko and Azula are facing each other after four years of separation. Zuko notices that Azula has grown up to look like Ursa, which I love, even though this passage is incredibly creepy: “It was that resemblance that struck him most, to see Azula standing there in his mother’s robe. He recognized the elegant swirls embroidered at the neck, the hem she was too short to keep from dragging in the dust. And even if she inherited their father’s sharp chin and slanted eyes, she had Ursa’s hair and painted mouth, and lined her eyes with kohl. It barely occurred to him to wonder where she found cosmetics, when Azula hadn’t stayed here since she was a little girl. His mother’s robe, his mother’s paints…. How in eight years had he never noticed, that she tinted her lips the very same shade?” Let’s unpack that. So the least creepy interpretation of Azula using the same makeup as her mother is that their hair/skin/eye colors are the same, so Ursa’s paints are the ideal shades for Azula to use as well. However, this is clearly meant to unsettle readers, so I do have to wonder if Azula was encouraged to use the same makeup as Ursa by Ozai (or perhaps by Lo and Li) to make her a mini-Ursa in appearance. That or Azula did it unconsciously to emulate her mother/to appeal to her father’s tastes (gags). On the flip side of this, Zuko’s…interest…in Azula looking like Ursa feels Oedipal, which makes something already disturbing even worse. “‘You…came to see me?’ she spoke slower, almost tentatively. ‘Why?’”—Oh baby you’re so hopeful that Zuko came to visit you because he cares about you. “‘I hardly think that /matters/ now, after what you’ve /done/!’ Zuko reproached her, angry not just at her escape anymore, but something he couldn’t even name….”—I don’t know, is it maybe because she grew up to look like your mom and you’re weirdly turned on by that? “‘It matters to me,’ she said simply. And looked sincere as she always did, when she lied.”—Maybe because she’s not lying to you, dumdum. They argue about whether he was helping her or not by putting her into the asylum (he wasn’t), and she definitely wouldn’t have left there if not for her own cunning. Zuko liked having her under his control too much. Zuko then starts patronizing her, telling her she’s dangerous to herself and to other people, which he really isn’t in any position to be saying, since he didn’t see her for years and has no idea what kind of progress she’s made. “He blinked once at her defiance, reminded uncomfortably of another confrontation, one he stood on the other side of.”—You’re more like Ozai than you know, Zuko. Okay, it’s amazing that Azula “banished” her hallucinations. I love how you borrow dialogue from the show and use the repetition for effect like this. I noticed it in “The Road” and in the most recent chapter of “Dominion,” too, where Iroh was concerned. “And suddenly, her letters made a little more sense. Not much, but a little more. ‘You really think,’ he said slowly [ . . . ] ‘I’d keep her from you?’”—You’ve given her no evidence to the contrary, Zuko. “‘You’ll see what you want to see. You always have.’”—Azula’s got your measure, Zuko. Then Azula reveals that she wants to find Ursa, because she thinks that will help her get better (there are strategic reasons for this, too, which we’ll learn later), to which Zuko thinks in response, “And [he] had to make a conscious effort to crush the hope that surged like fire in his veins. The tiny voice of truth that said if anyone could do the impossible, it was Azula.”—Just let her go, Zuko. What do you have to lose from this plan besides Azula? Oh wait. “‘You /hated/ her! You didn’t even /care/ when Dad sent her away!’”—Zuko, did you ever ask how your sister felt about your missing mom? Or did you get so caught up in your own grief that you didn’t? I’d bet money that the latter option is what happened. “Zuko advanced on her in growing anger, but she held her ground. ‘You’re in no position to make demands!’ he reminded her, with a sweep of his hand for added emphasis. ‘A /disgraced/ princess with nothing but an /empty/ title to her name! No money, no power, no friends—’”—Be more of an ass, Zuko, why don’t you? Also Ty Lee exists, in case you’ve forgotten. Azula has a friend in her, even if she has nothing else. “‘It doesn’t /work/ like that anymore!’ he said hotly, fists clenched to match her own. Zuko was nearly close enough to lay hands on her now, and two steps away from trying it. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, /I’m/ not the one who landed in an /asylum/!”—Zuko’s hostility is starting to edge uncomfortably close to violence, in part because he feels like he’s losing his control over the situation. “But the thought of apologizing to Azula was as foreign to him as bending water. He didn’t owe her anything.”—Given later events, this may be the crux of Zuko’s character development: learning to tell Azula that he’s sorry for how he’s treated her and thanking her for the things she’s done for him over the years. Because she has helped him, at risk to herself. “‘So much better to be cruel than crazy, isn’t it?’ she whispered, close enough that Zuko could just glimpse something sad and secret behind her eyes. ‘I should know.’”—Oh baby, you need so many hugs from Ty Lee. So Azula makes a break for it and Zuko thinks, “He made a promise to Mai. And he was a father now, he forced himself to recall.”—It’s interesting to me how detached Zuko is from Lu Ten emotionally at points, while he later desires to have a certain child with him. It occurs to me that his feelings aren’t dissimilar to Ozai’s in that respect. “‘That’s not what you came here for,’ she chided, a familiar promise written in the arch of her brows.”—Well that’s not creepy at all. “‘You never should have turned you back on me.”—Channel Scar more, Azula, why don’t you? Also, I think Zuko misinterprets what she said here—he takes it as more of a threat than it probably is. Azula then asks him why he’s here. “‘To bring you to justice,’ Zuko replied automatically, because he’d said it to himself and other people enough times that that must make it true.”—That’s not how the truth works, Zuko. “‘You need to be tried for your crimes in the war,’ he insisted, ignoring how her teeth ground at the suggestion that what she’d done was wrong. ‘And as soon as you’re sane, you will be.’” Alright, so I looked up what our society defines as war crimes for this. Azula has done the following: “Depriving a prisoner of war of a fair trial,” “Unlawful deportation, confinement or transfer,” and “taking hostages” where the Kyoshi Warriors and the head of Dai Li are concerned. Now here’s what Zuko has done: “Unlawful wanton destruction or appropriation of property,” “directing attacks against civilians,” and “taking hostages.” Azula’s crimes probably wouldn’t be considered unlawful during the time that ATLA takes place—capturing and imprisoning enemy combatants happened on both sides of the war. In addition to this, none of her victims died (presumably the Kyoshi Warriors were hurt, but that happened in combat). Zuko, on the other hand, destroyed peoples’ homes and probably did hurt civilians in the process. It’s little wonder that Azula grits her teeth when Zuko suggests that what she did was worse than what he did. “‘Well if /that/ isn’t an incentive to recover, I don’t know what is.’”—I laughed. “‘Our nation owes it to the world to hold people like /you/ to account.’ ‘People like me….’”—Yeah, I’d be disappointed in my brother, too, if I was Azula. “her voice low and silky”—Azula, this is what people mean about you talking to men in an inappropriate way. I realize you don’t know any better, but this is dangerous for you to be doing, especially to someone who is being aggressive towards you. “And Azula smiled. It was not a nice smile. ‘Five points for good parenting, Zuzu,’ she condescended, turning quite casually to leave. ‘Kids are scared enough of imaginary monsters at that age.’ Her voice fell as she moved off down the hall. ‘How soundly would he sleep, if he knew about /me/?”—So I think she actually felt hurt that Zuko hadn’t told Lu Ten about her yet. His decision to do so probably makes her feel even more isolated from their family. Her trotting out the comparison of herself to a monster is also something Azula tends to do when she’s having moments of insecurity and self-hatred. “her back to him like an invitation”—An invitation to what? Hit her? You’re so gross, Zuko. “‘So why don’t we make a deal? [ . . . ] Leave me alone to find Mother, and I will have nothing more to do with you. Or yours.’”—Take that deal, Zuko. It’s the best offer from her you’re going to get, and at this point, it’s probably the healthiest option for both of you psychologically.

"'If the best I can expect from you is /neglect/'"—It's telling that Azula uses the word "if" here, because it suggests that she would be open to having a better relationship with him, if he was willing to be a better brother to her. "'the best you can expect from me is neglect. Not quite as nice as having me under your /thumb/, to be sure [ . . . ] but don't pretend you wouldn't rather I was gone.'"—She both understands his desires here and doesn't. Zuko wants her close, but he wants her close on his terms. Zuko, in any case, shuts this conversation down by calling her crazy and rejecting her offer, which sets off the fighting between them. "Zuko had the advantage here. And the black look Azula gave him said she knew that he knew."—Let's keep this in mind as we get farther into this altercation. "Azula tumbled painfully end over end through the dust, her short, sharp cries punctuated by the dull thuds of her repeatedly striking the gray stone floor."—And Zuko claims that he doesn't want to hurt her? You'd think the pained noises she's making would pull him up short if that was the case. "'Of course you do'"—See, Azula agrees with me. "'You just don't want to admit that you /can't/!'"—Azula, I get that you're trying to get him to slip up, but if you goad him like this, he could seriously hurt you. "She wanted to knock him unconscious? he considered."—Her plans don't work if you're dead, Zuko. And I don't think she actually wants you dead, either. "Could she mean to take him hostage? [ . . . ] She had to know he would never go along with that."—Because hostages totally get a say in their captivity. Zuko thinks that Azula has a "near-perfect memory," which may be true when she's lucid, but I can't imagine it's true when she's not. "[He] thought back to that one time he'd searched her room"—for hints to where their mother had gone? Then they collide. This is where their fight starts to go off the rails. First, we get the "hug" that isn't a hug, keying us into the fact that something isn't right about the physical contact between them. Then it keeps buildings: "lifting her head so the tip of her nose just brushed his chin." "He stiffened at her closeness. Her body was pressed right against him, leaving little to the imagination. He was probably about to die. So he really should be thinking of anything other than how very thin her robe was." "Her voice was low and almost seductive, her breath hot in his ear."—In short, Zuko is very turned on by this. Random note: Azula is left-handed. I love it. "And Zuko struck her hard across the face."*—Remember when I said I had a theory I was going to get into in this chapter? This is a part of it. Also, Zuko, you are a terrible human being. "Zuko stared in horror first at her and then at the hand he still held before him, as if he suspected it of acting against his will. He hadn't meant to do—How could he—/Why couldn't she just be/ normal? the old resentment drowned out his shock."—Zuko deflects the blame for his violence towards Azula onto her, with the implication being that she deserves this for not being exactly what he wants her to be. This is classic victim-blaming from the abuser. "Zuko grabbed her wrist to jerk her back, and didn't know he burned her until he felt the heat beneath his fingers [ . . . ] and Azula fell against him with a sharp cry that choked off too quickly, as if she were afraid to make a sound."*—We're starting to get hints here at how Azula has been conditioned to respond to abuse. "He barely had time to register this, his hand still gripped her hot and blistered skin"—OUCH!—"when Azula pressed a soft kiss against the side of his neck"*—(Horrified moan.) "His stomach lurched like he stepped off the edge of a precipice, fallen into the gap between who he was before she did this, and now."—Great line. "He still stood in that attitude when her free hand slid under the crossed collar of his crimson shirt. Her fingertips on his skin were electric, and Zuko exhaled a shuddering breath when he remembered to breathe again. She was—Why was she—/What/? [ . . . ] he leaned into her next kiss, and her teeth pulled at the soft skin where his neck joined his shoulder. Her nails began to scratch, he could feel her tense against him…."—She's being physically intimate with him, but her body is tense and she isn't making any verbal indications that she wants this. "/No./ The word cut like morning light through the fog that settled on his mind. He gripped her arms hard to throw her off."—Zuko could have asked her what she was doing here. He doesn't. "If he could catch her gaze, he would know why—He would know what to do. But her eyes were tightly closed as a child's who pretends to be invisible, just because she cannot see. Tears struggled at the corners of them, and she turned her face away when Zuko brought his mouth too close to hers."—SHE IS NOT INTO THIS. SHE IS IN DISTRESS. STOP! But Zuko doesn't stop. "/Such a fucking tease,/ the ugly thought burst into his mind like a damn breaking."—Please excuse me while I throw up at how disgusting that is. "There was nothing she could hide from him, whatever she thought."—Zuko thinks this as he strips her, and I can't help but think that he's never sounded more like Ozai. "Her fingers grasped his collar, and she pressed closer, as if to hide herself against him"*—Again, she's not into this. She's scared. "But Zuko refused her, tore the shirt impatiently from his shoulders and cast it to the gray stone floor, like throwing down a gauntlet."—Another great line. Zuko demands that she look at him (probably like his father has) and this happens: "But Zuko stopped at the face she showed him. Her dark brows drew low over amber eyes that were impenetrable as two stones. The curve of her mouth was as fixed as a painted smile on a porcelain face. She didn't feel anything. /She never did/."—Azula is deep into a dissociative episode at this point. Instead of realizing that something is wrong with her mental state, though, Zuko persists in his belief that something is fundamentally wrong with Azula /as a person/, which dehumanizes her. His lack of empathy for her contributes to what he does next. "Zuko hated that smirk at once, wanted nothing so much as to see it gone. It was wrong, as wrong as everything about her. That was the only motive he could think of to explain why he pressed his mouth to hers."—No. You're doing it because you're turned on. "But the only thought that broke through his haste was that she tasted like blood."—This adds to the association of violence with their intimacy. "He grabbed her arm reflexively and pulled her along, vowing she would not escape him."—We see possessiveness on Zuko's part again. When they actually start to have sex, we also get Zuko's creepy line, "to hold so much power in his hands…," which adds to that feeling of possessiveness and to his objectification of Azula. "He felt her whole body tense up around him, her arms closed about his neck to pull him into the closest thing to a hug they'd shared since there were children."—First, this body language is still screaming that she's not okay with this. Second, that is so, /so wrong/! "Something coiled in his chest and threatened to break, when her breath came so hard and fast he thought she might be having a panic attack."—It's interesting to me that while you noticed this, Zuko, you still didn't STOP OR SAY ANYTHING TO HER! You could have done both of those things, and probably would if you were with anyone but Azula.

"Azula looked over his shoulder, her face turned into the headboard so he couldn't see the awful concentration in it, her breathing strictly controlled. As if she were performing some complicated kata. Her eyes were closed, her mouth set in a pained grimace."—Ugh, "performing some complicated kata" is right. That /is/ how she would think of it. But again, what we're getting here is a conditioned response from her, rather than something she genuinely wants to be doing. Also, as far as her…"performance"…goes, I feel like most people would realize that she's forcing herself through this. She's not acting like she's enjoying it, which I feel would be necessary for Ozai's "honeypot" plan to work. I'm surprised he wouldn't have been more critical of her lack of "passion"…or maybe he was. Azula does think that he was "demanding" in their "training," so maybe he was trying to make her more convincing in the act. That definitely isn't coming across here, though, since she's clearly in pain. "He thought he saw his own anguish in her mouth drawn tight."—What are you talking about, "your anguish," Zuko? "They were the same. They were the same…."—No you are fucking not, Zuko! "'Now you've taken everything from me,' she whispered harshly. 'Is it enough? Will it ever be?'"—So she's snapped out the disassociation for the time being. "'Never,' Zuko breathed."—God, he's such a terrible person. They start struggling again, and we get this incredibly telling passage: "He moved hastily to pin her down, grabbing her arms to restrain her [ . . . ] Without time even for conscious thought, he crushed his mouth against hers, and stole her breath before she could ignite. Azula jolted with surprise and a frantic noise of protest that died in her throat, without voice. Zuko only deepened the kiss, and she wrenched in his grasp, arched beneath him in a last desperate attempt at escape. But he clamped an arm around her waist and gripped the damp hair at the nape of her neck, holding her so tightly against him he left her no room to move."—She's protesting and trying to get away from him. He won't let her. "As if this had been a signal*, she shuddered once and went still, without explanation. If felt enough like surrender that Zuko broke from her, breathing hard, and laid his head against hers, his harsh exhalations stirring dust from the faded covers. He could feel her heart beat much too fast behind her ribs, like a bird breaking itself on the bars of its cage. Zuko wondered, distantly, if there was even more wrong with her than he knew."—First, yes, there is something very wrong with Azula that you aren't aware of at this point, Zuko. Second and much more importantly, /this is where Zuko could have stopped/. Azula is no longer fighting. He could have pulled back and tried to assess the situation. He could have tried to say something to her or tied her up, to capture her like he'd intended. I could almost forgive him for the first rape (you know, despite the fact that he knows what a healthy sexual relationship looks like and should have realized that something was wrong with how Azula was acting), but then this happens: "It was the last coherent thought he managed, before he found himself again in her midst." He rapes her a second time. And he realizes that that what's he's doing, too, even if he doesn't call it rape: "She cried out once, and his stomach twisted with guilt"—he knows what he's doing is wrong—"but he didn't stop, couldn't make out what she screamed before she strangled the sound in her throat, as if she were scared of getting caught."—He keeps going anyway. "She didn't speak again and only held tighter, as certain as Zuko, it seemed, that letting go would mean her death…."*—That has to be one of the most depressing things I've ever read. She felt that way about Ozai too, didn't she? "Her eyes were empty of recognition. Her lips moved silently, forming the same word over and over again. But he couldn't read it."—We know from future chapters that she's saying "father" here. "A deep and visceral horror filled him. She was never this bad before. He did this, he /did/ this…."—Yeah, people don't tend to respond well to being raped, Zuko. So this next section is arguably where Azula rapes Zuko: "Her vacant gaze lit with a predatory gleam, a look he'd seen her wear before, but one he caught more often from his father." "'Aaah-ah! Ngh…' was all the objection Zuko could manage, when she thrust herself aggressively against him. It was too much. He had nothing left to give, and she was hurting him."—He's not into this anymore. He's in physical pain. At the same time, though, I don't think Azula has any control over what she's doing. Her dialogue heavily suggests that she's in another dissociative episode and reliving an encounter she had with Ozai: "'You're mine. You'll /stay/ mine,' she breathed, and her voice sent a shiver down his spine. She didn't even sound like herself. 'You will /bend/ for me, you will /obey/ me.' She punctuated each command with a thrust of her hips, and Zuko's hands on them did little to deter her. 'You'll never tell. /You'll never tell./ And even if you tried,' she faltered here, and had to choke out, 'who would believe you?' Her tears fell on his chest, so hot they almost scalded, when she whispered haltingly, 'Azula always lies. /Azula always/—lies…'"* I'm going to get back to this dialogue in a minute. I'm going to cover the rest of this chapter before I discuss my theory about this. "Frozen with the shock of realization, she looked down on him as if she'd just woken from a nightmare, to find it followed her into the waking world. 'No…' she whispered brokenly, her voice edged with panic."—Yeah, she absolutely wasn't in control of herself the third time they had sex. "But she tore [her hands] from his fingers, her teeth clenched in disgust." "The rest of her trembled with rage."—So here's the thing. While Zucest happens in "Dominion," I don't think that Azula feels any sexual or romantic desire for Zuko. I don't even think that Zuko feels romantic desire for her either (sexual desire, though, absolutely). What they've done obviously disgusts Azula, and Zuko even acknowledges later that what they did was an act of hate. It was also an act of dominance, with both of them, but mostly Zuko, taking the dominant role at different points. But Zuko—who wasn't drugged and who wasn't disassociating—bears more of the responsibility for what happened. Azula wasn't cognizant of her behavior. Zuko was. Which isn't to dismiss the trauma Zuko will feel from this incident later, but I am much less inclined to sympathize with him than with Azula, given the above. And as far as the blame for this encounter goes…while it ultimately leads back to Ozai's abuse of both of his children, I don't feel comfortable saying Zuko that had no agency in this. He made choices here—and one of them was the choice to have sex with his sister when the opportunity arose. And since Azula didn't want him when it happened, that makes Zuko a rapist. "'I missed you,' he offered weakly, too exhausted to realize this was the first time he had admitted it to anyone. Even himself."—That might be one of the saddest things I've ever read.

Zuko falls asleep after this, but Azula does not. This is technically our first scene from Azula's perspective and it is /heartbreaking/: "Azula took five halting steps into the dusty room before she succeeded in tying the sash of her robe with shaking hands, so tightly she could barely breathe. It wasn't nearly tight enough."—She feels violated from what happened. "She had done worse than this, she reminded herself. She had done worse, and lived. She would survive this too."—This makes me wonder just how extensive Ozai's "training" was and I don't think I actually want to know the answer. "Her mouth bent into something resembling a grimace, and her sight blurred with tears. She clenched her hands into fists to forget how Zuko tried to hold them, when she panicked. He was just trying to save his own worthless life, she told herself, bitterly. /It had nothing to do with you. It never did./ Azula had to look down before she realized she had drawn her fists to her chest, as if to shield herself from a blow."—Oh baby I am so, so sorry. I wish I could give you a hug. "The dagger their uncle gave Zuko from his abortive conquest of Ba Sing Se. How much she coveted this once, Azula recalled. But he never meant it for her. And she contemplated putting it to a use he never intended."—I'm pretty sure no jury would convict her if she killed Zuko here. I'm not even sure I would, given the extent of the violence he inflicted on her. But of course, I also know that she won't do it, because, A.) Azula isn't keen on the whole murder thing, B.) The note she wrote was obviously meant for him, and C.) That would end the story too soon. So Zuko gets to keep breathing and I get to keep glaring at him through my computer screen. Alright, so now to get to that theory I've been listing *s for. Here are the specific points again: "And Zuko struck her hard across the face." "Zuko grabbed her wrist to jerk her back, and didn't know he burned her until he felt the heat beneath his fingers [ . . . ] and Azula fell against him with a sharp cry that choked off too quickly, as if she were afraid to make a sound." "He barely has time to register this, his hand still gripped her hot and blistered skin, when Azula pressed a soft kiss against the side of his neck." "Her fingers grasped his collar, and she pressed closer, as if to hide herself against him." "But he clamped an arm around her waist and gripped the damp hair at the nape of her neck, holding her so tightly against him he left her no room to move. As if this had been a signal, she shuddered once and went still, without explanation." "She didn't speak again and only held tighter, as certain as Zuko, it seemed, that letting go would mean her death…." And most importantly: "'You're mine. You'll /stay/ mine,' she breathed, and her voice sent a shiver down his spine. She didn't even sound like herself. 'You will /bend/ for me, you will /obey/ me.' She punctuated each command with a thrust of her hips, and Zuko's hands on them did little to deter her. 'You'll never tell. /You'll never tell./ And even if you tried,' she faltered here, and had to choke out, 'who would believe you?' Her tears fell on his chest, so hot they almost scalded, when she whispered haltingly, 'Azula always lies. /Azula always/—lies….'" I'll start with the dialogue. When I was first reading "Dominion," I thought that this was something that Ozai had said to Azula while he was "training" her. Then I realized just how hostile this dialogue was. "You're mine. You'll /stay/ mine."—This implies that when this was happening, there was a question about whether or not Azula would try to break away from him. Her loyalty, in short, was under question. "You will /bend/ for me, you will /obey/ me."—Azula's obedience was also under question. But what's most telling to me is this: "You'll never tell. /You'll never tell./ And even if you tried, who would believe you?" This, combined with the predatory expression and the aggressive thrusting, gives me the distinct impression that this sexual encounter wasn't "normal" by Ozai and Azula's standards. "You'll never tell" indicates that it's something that Ozai knows Azula will want to do afterwards. As far as the timing goes, this means that there was someone around who she could potentially turn to, which suggests that this happened either before Mai and Ty Lee left originally, or after the trio were reunited. And then there's the /purpose/ behind this—because if Ozai is addressing the possibility that Azula will want to tell someone about what happened afterwards, then he is also acknowledging that what he is doing to her is wrong. Which means that the intent behind this encounter wasn't to "train" Azula—it was to /hurt her./ Why else would he taunt her that there was no one she could go to for help, because no one would believe her? So this is my theory: what we're seeing here isn't a general episode of abuse, but how Ozai punished Azula after Zuko defected. For lying to him, he struck her in the face and split her lip, then burned her. Then the violence turned sexual in nature, though it's unclear who initiated it—it could have been Azula doing it as a defense mechanism, or Ozai doing it to enforce his power/control over her, or a mixture of both. Azula definitely obeyed him, in part due to her conditioning—the grip on the back of her neck is a trigger to get her to comply—and in part due to her genuinely fearing for her life during this encounter. That is what Ozai meant when he said he "made sure [Azula lying to him/disobeying him] would never happen again" and what Azula keeps alluding to when she thinks about the aftermath of Zuko's defection. It also, I suspect, was a contributing factor to the deterioration of her mental state in the last few episodes of the show, because her father not only assaulted her (without any ambiguity about that being was what he was doing, unlike during the other parts of their "training"), but then abandoned her not long afterwards. And here's thing: I only realized the significance of this exchange recently. It's not obvious on the first read through what is happening here, and it's not obvious the fifth time either. Which suggests to me that you, as a writer, were purposefully trying to obscure the contents of Azula's flashback to the readers. The fact that Ozai and Azula alike both avoid going into detail about it later on only adds to this deflection. Which suggests to me that you're planning to reveal the aftermath of Zuko's defection in full later—and that if there is one scene you include that depicts Ozai raping Azula, that scene is going to be it. And why/when would it come up? When Azula is finally being confronted about what Ozai did to her. She will try to defend their "training," but I think this assault will be in the back of her mind, arguing that there was actually something deeply wrong and evil about what Ozai did to her. And as far as your writing style goes, its inclusion would also further your use of "echoing" scenes and dialogue, deepening the impact of chapter seven upon re-read.

Now I'm of mixed feelings where showing Ozai raping Azula is concerned, if it in fact happens. On the one hand, you have never shied away from depicting disturbing material before in "Dominion," and it feels as if not seeing that abuse from Azula's perspective would be a notable absence. On the other hand, showing the aftermath of the abuse is much more important than showing the abuse itself, and showing it risks feeding into reader voyeurism as well. Ultimately, it's up to the writer to decide how much to show or only allude to, but I trust you whichever way you go with this. Now if it turns out I'm wrong about this theory, I'll feel both surprised and embarrassed. I /am/ confident that my interpretations of the sex scenes in this chapter are correct, though. I've been wanting to dissect those scenes for a while now, because there are readers who find the issue of consent in them to be ambiguous (I'm thinking mostly of icewhisker21's discussions of "Dominion," which seem colored by Zucest shipping googles). However, I think it's clear that there was no mutual or positive consent where the sex between Zuko and Azula is concerned, and as such, Azula's later claims that Zuko raped her are completely justified. So that's my lengthy analysis of chapter seven. This will probably be where I leave off until the summer, unless my homework load lightens and I get some time before May. As always, though, thank you for the read! Sincerely, WiseAbsol

#WiseAbsol #Azula #avatar: the last airbender #Dominion by Aurelia le #Fanfiction #Review

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cabiba · 6 years ago

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“Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart,” wrote James Baldwin, “for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.” This observation has been confirmed many times throughout history. However, China’s Cultural Revolution offers perhaps the starkest illustration of just how dangerous the “pure in heart” can be. The ideological justification for the revolution was to purge the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the nation more broadly, of impure elements hidden in its midst: capitalists, counter-revolutionaries, and “representatives of the bourgeoisie.” To that end, Mao Zedong activated China’s youth—unblemished and uncorrupted in heart and mind—to lead the struggle for purity. Christened the “Red Guards,” they were placed at the vanguard of a revolution that was, in truth, a cynical effort by Mao to reassert his waning power in the Party. Nevertheless, it set in motion a self-destructive force of almost unimaginable depravity.

The Cultural Revolution commenced in spirit when Mao published a letter indicting a number of Party leaders on May 16, 1966. But it was a seemingly minor event nine days later that ignited the revolution in effect: a young philosophy professor at Peking University named Nie Yuanzi placed a “big-character poster” (a handwritten propaganda sheet featuring large Chinese characters) on a public bulletin board denouncing the university president and others in the administration as bourgeois revisionists. Mao immediately endorsed her protest, which set off a chain reaction of student revolt that swept through China.

That chain reaction was accelerated by “working groups” of ideologues sent to administer schools. Under their tenure, schools became centers of activism rather than learning. Students were encouraged to create big-character posters exposing their own teachers, officials, and even parents. The accused were humiliated in daily “struggle sessions” in which their students and colleagues interrogated them and demanded confessions. The viciousness of these sessions rapidly intensified. Students beat, spat upon, and tortured—in horrifically creative ways—their often elderly teachers and professors. In one case, students demanded their biology professor stare at the sun with wide open eyes. If he blinked or looked away, they beat him. Even middle and elementary school students participated in the struggle sessions, sometimes beating their teachers to death with sticks and belt buckles.

“Little Red Soldier” (Hong Xiao Bing) by Huang Jinzeng. The text reads “Position of Serious Criticism” (from the Helen May Schneider collection).

Students were also encouraged to turn on their classmates. As the sins of one generation passed to the next, a new hierarchy was born: the children of revolutionaries on top and the children of “landlords,” “capitalists,” and “rightists” at the bottom. These students were labeled “rotten eggs” and were fair game for the same treatment meted out to their parents. The current president of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping, endured this fate. He was only 15 years old when his father, a loyal Maoist and one-time propaganda chief, was purged, his sister executed, and his own mother forced to denounced Xi as a reactionary. Amid the hysteria, teachers, professors, and intellectuals did not dare to stand up to the students or defend their colleagues lest they suffer similar fates. But they could not escape by being bystanders. With every word and action becoming potential evidence of capitalist sympathy, teachers and intellectuals enthusiastically joined their students in the struggle sessions and screaming rallies.

Mao’s decision to use China’s youth as his vanguard was, by fortune or foresight, instrumental to the revolution’s initial success. The young may be pure in heart, but they are also high on emotion and short on life experience. Simply put, they are natural philistines. Still in their identity-forming years, China’s young had few barriers to a complete identification with the Red Guards. Conformity and intolerance of dissent followed naturally. When students were not attending rallies and struggle sessions, they spent endless hours studying and discussing Mao’s Little Red Book. As Lu Li’an, a former Red Guard, explained, “We were taught only about revolution so when we read the works of propaganda literature we really wanted to be at the head, at the vanguard of revolutionary history.” With undeveloped mental immune systems, their soft skulls were fertile ground for Mao’s secular Manichaeism. Manichaeism reduces society, with all the diversity and complexity of human experience, to a blunt dichotomy: light and darkness, good and evil, right and wrong, radical and reactionary. “There is no middle way!” became a popular slogan. Ideologies like these are intellectually and morally vapid, yet their simplicity and certainty are alluring, especially to the young. Thus, Mao’s child revolutionaries could—with youthful exuberance and clarity of purpose—chain a teacher to a radiator and bludgeon him to death with an iron bar, or force a teacher to eat nails and feces, among other tortures.

Red Guards place a placard around a man’s neck, accusing him of being a member of the “black class,” in 1966.

The Red Guards’ purity of mind—their youthful capacity for learning and openness to new ideas—also proved useful to Mao. Their plasticity was well-suited to the project of eradicating what was called “the Four Olds”: old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas. The Red Guards would impose a new symbolic order on an old world without the clutter or caution of life experience. Sometimes the results were comical. Since red symbolized the revolution, and the revolution must not stop, Red Guards demanded that vehicles drive rather than stop at red traffic lights. More often, the results were horrific. Because pet cats, dogs, fish, and even crickets became symbols of “bourgeois decadence,” 1 they were slaughtered in their thousands. Eating human flesh became a macabre proof of loyalty. The Party’s own investigations tell of students in Guangxi province cooking and eatingtheir teachers and principals. In some government cafeterias, the bodies of executed traitors were displayed on meat hooks, while their flesh was served and consumed. The blank slate, it seems, can also be a dark abyss. Indeed, the nature and scale of the harms caused by the Cultural Revolution, which I have only touched on here, almost defy comprehension.

Although educators and intellectuals were primary targets of the revolution, they bore some responsibility, by acts of commission or omission, for creating the conditions of its possibility. In the years prior to the Cultural Revolution, the Party had cultivated an environment of extreme political conformity. Political rallies and self-criticism sessions had become a regular feature of Maoist thought-reform campaigns.2 Ji Xianlin, a professor of languages at Peking, detailed how eagerly the teachers and intellectuals had supported these campaigns. In his memoir, The Cowshed, Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Ji writes with regret of his own “aptitude in crowd behavior.” He had been a true believer in Maoism and willingly persecuted other intellectuals during the Socialist Education Movement in 1957. But his Party loyalty was no defense when the revolution eventually came for him. A year into the Cultural Revolution, he found himself denounced by friends, colleagues, and students. Already in his late fifties, he was imprisoned with other intellectuals in a cowshed with former students as his sadistic prison guards. He was forced to endure constant struggle sessions and beaten and tormented mercilessly by his colleagues and Red Guards.

Eventually, even Mao acknowledged that the situation was spiraling out of control. In 1967, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was ordered to suppress the Red Guards, and they did so with great brutality. Many of the young radicals were killed in clashes with the PLA, while countless others perished in mass executions. But most were sent to labor camps in the countryside (including Nie Yuanzi, the young professor who had hung the first big-character poster at Peking University). After the Red Guards were contained, the intensity of the Cultural Revolution declined. It officially ended with Mao’s death in 1976. All told, the death toll is estimated to have been between 400,000 and several million people. Tens of millions more were injured in acts of extreme cruelty and depravity.

The word “revolution” connotes turning, cycling, revolving. Cycles (and perhaps revolutions) are inescapable in nature, the laws of which command, with unbroken precedent, that the young will succeed the old. The Cultural Revolution, however, was deeply defective. Led by young idealists and animated by the forces of purity and paranoia, the revolution could yield only mayhem. No society, no person, no thing can satisfy the platonic ideal of purity. Hence, its pursuit ensured no end to struggle. More insidiously, the target of purification—the enemy, the disease, the rot—was internal. External threats are visible. They announce themselves by flag, appearance, ethos, and the like. The internal threat is hidden. The enemy is at once nowhere and everywhere. Thus, everyone was suspect: teachers, friends, and even family members. Hidden enemies must be exposed before they can be purified. Therefore, self-criticism, re-education, and public confession are peculiar but necessary practices in the inward war. Show trials, struggle sessions, and inquisitions satisfy the ideology’s existential need for conflict by creating enemies out of comrades. In order to avoid persecution during the Cultural Revolution, many were quick to accuse others, thereby creating a feedback loop of ever intensifying ideological fanaticism and violence. Inevitably, the accusers became the accused, and the torturers became the tortured.

As each confession validated the Red Guards’ paranoia, the revolution mutated into something like an autoimmune disorder that attacks what it is meant to protect. This was, in fact, what the CCP’s Central Committee concluded about the Cultural Revolution in 1981. In a remarkably candid retrospective, the Central Committee acknowledged that “it was we and not the enemy at all who were thrown into disorder by the ‘Cultural Revolution’” which they judged responsible for “the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the Party, the state, and the people since the founding of the People’s Republic.”

The revolution’s descent into anarchy and violence calls to mind the first stanza of W.B. Yeats’ famous poem “The Second Coming,” which begins with the “Turning and turning in the widening gyre.” For the Cultural Revolution it reads like prophecy, a forewarning of what transpires when a people, united around a single unassailable vision, finds its enemies by turning inwards. With no competing visions or ability to self-correct, the turning continues, the gyre widens, and soon:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

Much has been written recently about the excesses of political polarization and the prevalence of an “us versus them” mentality in politics. The Cultural Revolution, however, offers a chilling example of the dangers of an excess of political homogeneity. To be sure, Maoism preached the Manichean gospel of good versus evil. But all were agreed that Maoism was correct, even (sometimes especially) those who were purged. Conflicts were only over who practiced the purest version of the ideology, not over competing doctrines—because there were none. It was this lack of a distinguishable “us” and “them,” that drove the revolution to turn inward in search of enemies and impurities.

In liberal democracies, by contrast, purity politics may occur within factions and parties. But the real competition is between conflicting political values and ideologies, all of which provide the productive tension that drives social progress. Of course, liberal democracy is itself a political ideology, but it is uniquely structured around a conception of pluralism that can accommodate disparate visions of what constitutes the good life. Elections, among other things, act as self-correcting mechanisms: a party that purges its impure elements inevitably strengthens its competition. This limits the potential depravity and destructiveness of purity politics, which was not the case in China.

Nevertheless, the instinct to conform and to be accepted by our peers is strong within us all—especially the young. When the undercurrents of popular culture pull us towards conformity, democracy alone is no cure. Nor is it enough to preach tolerance: there must also exist a multiplicity of views to tolerate. When we tell ourselves and teach our children that “diversity is our strength,” it can sound a lot like dogma. Even so, it is a dogma worth supporting if it is intended to extoll diversity of thought and opinion; a diversity that rewards contrarians who reject the safety of the herd, and those who embody the spirit of dissent, nonconformity, and individualism. Nietzsche once warned that “the surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” It is a warning we should heed.

James David Banker is an attorney and writer. He studied linguistics at Cambridge, law at Stanford, and philosophy in the Special Forces. You can follow him on Twitter @jdbanker1

#china

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firenationskydominion · 7 years ago

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Chapter 2: The Analysis of Ozai

Prisoner Ozai has been moved to a modern house on a distant volcano island, which is not known on Firenation maps as it’s in another dimension. A force field limits exiting the perimeter around the house. Another force field restricts the movements of the prisoner: he can be touched but when he shows aggression the field stuns. The house has advanced electronics to monitor all rooms.

Ozai wakes in the morning, surprised to find himself in a comfy bed in silk sheets instead of his prison cell. He hears beautiful music and birds singing. It’s warm. He thinks: I must be dead, but not reborn. I feel alive, but this is too nice to be hell. A faint beep is heard regularly. It stops when he opens his eyes. He sees a white ceiling, he’s in a wooden bed. Drapes are drawn on one side of the room and a blinking white machine stands beside his bed. A shadow vanishes under the bed. His reflexes kick in. He jumps out of the bed and looks below it. Two blue eyes look back at him. A small animal with blue eyes, a long tail, cream colored with brown paws and snout looks at him. Like a batcat without wings, he thinks. The animal approaches and vocalizes something, then it runs off.

He gets out of his bed and looks at his worn but toned body. He looks into the mirror. He has aged, but he trained in his cell. He is naked and follows the lights on the floor to another room. He remembers entering the pod and then having faded out. And a kiss. He is aroused but feels horribly sick at the same time.

He is startled by a voice coming from a round sphere rolling around on the floor. A digital assistant who greets and welcomes him, shows him the bathroom, his wardrobe and the rooms amenities. Ozai is shocked by the advanced technology and confused, but happy to be free and able to clean up and put on proper Firenation clothing.

Please follow me the sphere says and leads him to a darkened room with a screen in the front. The sphere bids him to sit down and watch. A curtain opens up on the screen and the Fire nation throne room comes up.

Courtroom

Present Firelord Zuko, Avatar Aang, Judge Kanto, Jury members, Timelord Mya in the defense of former Firelord Ozai.

JK: You, Timelord Mya have come forward to demand an inquest into former Firelord Ozais imprisonment. Mya Timelord, would you like to give your opening statement?

M: Firelord Zuko, Avatar Aang, Judge Kanto, dear Jury. I have asked you to join me today to offer you a request. I am a time lord. Whenever I see an imbalance in the time space continuum I come and intervene. In this case I saw that the imprisonment of Ozai will lead to a spiral of violence which will plague your world for centuries and which will ultimately lead to the destruction of your civilization. Furthermore there are legal issues with his imprisonment which I want to elaborate in this court. This is why I have made the decision to intervene. I have a proposition for you. Hand Ozai over to me, as a prisoner. I will remove him from your world for the time being until he is reformed.

JK: In order to judge on your request we need witness accounts. Do you have witnesses?

M: Honourable Judge, I would like to call in Avatar Aang as witness.

JK: Calling in Avatar Aang.

M: Avatar Aang, was Ozai the first Firelord to pursue you?

A: No, Azulon started the quest.

M: Did Ozai start the Hundred Year war?

Aang: No. Sozin started the war. It was then continued with great advances by Azulon and then Ozai took over.

M: So did Ozai kill all the airbenders and the water tribes?

Aang: No Azulon and Sozin did.

M: Was Ozai involved in any military offensives before he took over the reins three years ago?

Aang: No, Iroh led the offensive and siege on Ba Sing Se.

M: So we can only judge three years in which Ozai took over from his father and brother?

Aang: Yes, that’s right.

M: Do you agree that Ozai was not involved in any of the crimes committed by other family members before his reign?

Aang: ....Yes.

M: How about the outer rim of Firenation and the colonies. Is there any cultural exchange or economic exchange between the colonies and the Fire Nation?

Aang: Yes, a few of the cities have really grown in the colonies and are thriving.

M: So I formally object that we blame Ozai for any failings, which were done by any other Firelord and also acknowledge that apart from his later continuation of the ongoing offensive on Ba Sing Se, his main objective was to increase trade exchange.

JK: Objection approved.

M: Then let's see. Ozai planned to scorch the Earth nation, but was defeated by you before he managed to do that.

A: Yes, that's true.

M: Crazy guy, wanting to burn a whole country down, isn't it? Like someone on a rage spree burning down his neighbours house. If he had been a farmer, we'd call him mad for burning down his neighbours crops and give him therapy, maybe lock him up in a mental institution. But it’s his bad luck that he's the Firelord and a powerful fire bending master under the magnifying force of a comet. He clearly had a manic meltdown. So we lock him up in a cold cell without daylight. Do you think opportunity facilitated the crime in this case?

A: I guess so.

JK: No assumptions, please.

M: Fine, my angle here is that we are blaming Ozai for an opportunity he only had because he was pushed into that position. He is manic-depressive. The pressure of the siege led him to experience a manic episode. If we judge him, we must also judge the fire sages and all noble people of the Fire Nation who expected him to do something outrageous, to make his mark as the second born pretty boy son. They nurtured and fed his manic state of mind. But this is not a trial of fire nation society, but of one man. Not a monster, not a demon, just one guy who went on a crazy rampage burning everything because for one moment during Sozins comet he could. A man, who had nothing to his name - except being the second born prince. Who spent his youth not chasing girls but training firebending on Ember island and training his abs. Who - without experience or any formal military role - became the Firelord. A man with a troubled family. A guy who perfected his skills of firebending. The only thing that was left to him after his wife left. A craft, which you ultimately took from him.

A: Yes I did.

M: Firebenders need sunlight. If you lock an earthbender or a waterbender into a cellar, he will still be exposed to his elements several times a day. But a firebender in a cold hole below earth is particularly cruel. He can’t bend fire, but denying him sunlight is torture.

A: ....

M: So why do you all fear him so much still? You have taken all he had. Let me deal with the rest. All I ask from you is to leave him to me. I will take him to another dimension where we will work on his issues. The chances of progress are far better there than here. Furthermore, he won't be able to contact any of his former allies. He’ll be safely locked away.

As second witness I call in Fire Lord Zuko:

M: Firelord, you're the son of Ozai. I understand the pain he has brought on you, like all of us will. But tell me, when you were little, were things different then?

Z: Well, I suppose yes. I remember him as my father. He was always very strict but we also had good times on Ember island on the beach.

M: When did things go sour?

Z: When Lu Ten fell in the war and my father was suddenly pressured by many noble people of the Firenation to become Firelord.

M: How do you mean pressured?

Z: They had all lost family and General Irohs reaction - although very understandable - enraged many of the families who had pulled through similar tragedies.

M: Was your father used to this kind of pressure?

Z: No, I don't think so.

M: Did he have any military role or training?

Z: No, he was a master firebender and was more into expanding that craft. He wanted to be the best and do new innovative stuff.

M: So we have a man who is pushed to a spot, where he has no experience and where his hunger for power ultimately backfired. And he paid a big price for his inquest, didn't he.

Z: Yes, my grandfather, FireLord Azulon asked him to kill me.

M: And yet you are alive!

Z: Yes, my mother found a way to deal with Azulon and went to exile for that.

M: Did you know that your mother had married Ozai on an arranged marriage?

Z: Yes, but on amicable terms.

M: Did you know that she was engaged before and who kept up that relationship even after she became Firelord Ozai's wife?

Z: !!!!!

M: I am sorry to bring this up. But this was the moment when things went sour for Ozai. She told your father that her former fiancé was your father, but Ozai knew that she was lying. She did it to hurt him. He in turn promised her to treat you like a bastard son, so that you would turn out different than him. He loves her still and he loves you, in a twisted way. This culminated in your scorched face and your exile to get you away from him. He still loves your mother, Firelord. And all he does is a futile attempt to get her back.

Z: No, this can't all be true!!

M: I am the Timelord, I see it clearly. I can play it to you, but I want to spare you the pain. Ozai is a conflicted man, full of doubts and a volatile self-esteem, who easily falters under extreme pressure. He is manic-depressive. The loss of his wife tossed him into a manic-depressive cycle. The phoenix king is his manic side. He was left by all women in his life. His mother died young, his beloved wife played him and does so still now. Locking him up is not going to produce any betterment or results.

JK: I want to see if there is any base to your accusations. We will retreat to the private chamber and adjourn this session in 20 Minutes.

Twenty minutes later back in the courtroom.

JK: I am reopening the session after the break. The accusations of Mya Timelord were accurate. I am sorry, Firelord Zuko.

Z: This cannot be....

M: Things are not always the way they look on the surface. Overcome your own hunger for revenge and take an unbiased view on Ozai.

M: As third witness I want to call in the brother of the accused, Retired General Iroh.

JK: Calling in Retired General Iroh of the Fire Nation.

M: General Iroh, you fought for years for the Fire Nation?

I: Yes...

M: In that function you were responsible for directly slaying hundreds of people during the war. Yet you changed sides after your own son died. It took a personal hit to make you fall, the fate of others never left you unhinged.

I: It was a bloody war on all sides...

M: Yet, If you had not gone travelling in those lands during exile, but stayed in FireNation, do you think you would be this amicable towards the other cultures of this world?

I: No, I don't think I would.

M: So why do you think that Ozai, who in fact has never left FireNation but was brainwashed by all his family to hate and look down on anything other, should be lenient? He is a product of his upbringing and of his surroundings. Do you think that he might have changed if you had become Firelord and he had gone to exile instead?

I: (ponders... ) I don't know. He is very strong willed, power hungry, ambitious and has a loose temper. But he might very well have.

M: So in deed, we have someone who never really had the opportunity to learn other views, who is blinded by his convictions, who has manic episodes and we lock him up in a cell where he simmers in his own soup of prejudice, depression and misanthropy. And we call that progress...?

I: ...

Zuko: We cannot let him go like this. Not after all that he did!

M: We are better than him, aren't we? And dont' forget. He will not be free. He will be in a maximum security facility in another dimension, with me. He will have access to daylight. He will have no contact to other people unless it's in alignment with his parole regulations. So are we better than Firelord Ozai?

Aang: I guess so. In order to create balance we must adjust the scale. Punishment is not productive, I agree on that.

M: A dictator is the sum of function inducing fear, appearance and power. You have taken away the function, the fear and the power, what left is just the guy. Let me deal with the guy. You can then focus on rebuilding this world without his shadow. Let his shadow be my problem.

JK: The Jury will now retreat to consult with the Firelord and the avatar.

They left to consult behind closed doors.

JK: We are concluding our session with my closing statement and verdict. The jury together with the Firelord and the Avatar have listened to all objections and inquests of Mya the Timelord. After weighing in the testimonies and the evidence we comply with Timelord Mya's request, under the condition that we get weekly progress reports on the developments and any change of his parole regulations are defined by this panel. The jury will drink the potion of lost thoughts and will forget all said today. I herewith sign the sentence.

Mya approached the Judge and scanned the sentence with a blue stone.

The film ends and Ozai is utterly confused. What is a time lord? Why Timelord and not Timelady? And why does she take such a great interest in him? He feels exposed and vulnerable. He hates that feeling. He almost wishes to be back in his cell. He sits there clenching his fists, trying to control the anger. Who is she to drag his life into the open like this and his feelings for Ursa, his rage, his sadness, his will to outshine his misery? At least the jury is not going to spill the beans to the public. He gets up, angry and looking for answers.

The sphere offers to show him the house. Ozai follows. The house is modern with wood set in nature. Exotic plants and birds are outside the windows. The sphere takes him through a long corridor to a large living room with a high fireplace and gallery on top lining the room. He imagines the magnificent fire and instinctively poses his hand to ignite. Then he remembers his loss of firebending. The room is decorated with antique Asian and Polynesian artworks. Many dragons, which remind him of home. Wherever he walks the beautiful music follows him. The room smells of jasmine and sandalwood. Two beautiful blue-eyed cats are roaming around and a crow watches him attentively from the gallery. On one side, he sees a door to a dining room and another one to a vast library. He goes into the library and sees that most books are not in Kanji. On the mantle are little pictures of Mya and others in silver frames.

The dining room is empty, but a fruit bowl makes him realize that he’s no longer sick and how hungry he is, so he grabs an apple. The other fruit look unknown to him. He leaves back for the living room which has a french window to the terrace.

Ozai is met on the terrace in front of a infinity pool by Mya. She is wearing a sheer blue and green gown over a bikini. She has flowers in her hair. He gets hard immediately seeing her like that.

M: Welcome to the island, Ozai. Thank you for being my guest.

O: I saw that ridiculous trial. I did not think that you despise me that much... dragging my life out like that. I thought you‘d fight honourably.

M: I don’t despise you, I am trying my best to understand you. I wanted you out, I got you out. Sometimes a good result requires bad methods. I am not an angel. I wanted you to see it. No secrets, full transparency.

O: So what is this all about? What am I doing here?

M: We are here to work on your issues. I did not mean to hurt you. I am sorry.

O: So you think I am a crazy man?

M: You’re an overambitious man who did bet on the wrong horse. You took a plausible path, albeit not the most ... humanitarian one. We have opposing views on a few things. But we can work together.

O: Tell me, what am I doing here? Am I your slave? Who are you to distort my life like this.

M: Your story, dear Ozai, does not end in a dim prison cell. You still have a big role to play - a role which will dwarf being the Phoenix king- and to redeem yourself. I will guide you on your journey.

O: I am leaving...

M: Make no mistake, my love, you are still a prisoner. But in a more agreeable jail. If you try to run a force field will contain you. Same for violence. But you are free to move about in and around the house, if you follow my instructions. Our conversation is recorded for further parole hearings. So consider well, if you prefer the cold dark cell.

Ozai seems to be mad, but then he closes his eyes. When he opens them he’s much calmer. He looks around, sees the vastness of the sea, the mountain rising at the other horizon, the surrounding exotic jungle. His spirits rise. He smiles. There are flocks of birds flying over the sea and the scent of flowers is in the air. And the sun is shining full force. He takes off his cloak, stands in the sunlight, showing off his abs, with his eyes closed and fuels in on the sunlight.

M: Are you enjoying the sun?

O: Yes, I feel the sun on my skin! Finally! I feel much stronger. Much more alive.

M: I am glad to hear that.

O: You call me a madman and yet you kissed me...

M: You looked very... kissable. You’re interesting. I am not afraid of you, although maybe I should be.

O: How did I get here?

M: Sorry, I had to sedate you for transport for this location. You‘re not supposed to know where you are.

O: We are not in Fire Nation territory?

M: No, we’re not. I’ll tell you more in due time. Let‘s just soak in the sun, shall we?

Both lie in the sun on loungers in silence for a while.

M: Do you ever get sunburnt?

O: Never...

M: We should record a session for your dear son.

O: Spare me with requests from my son. I don‘t want to think about him now. I want to feel alive again. I want to look at the sea, at the sky, the sun and at you! I want to feel the energy and feel alive from core to shell.

M: You look quite alive to me. Alive enough to answer my questions.

Ozai felt a short tight squeeze on his chest from the force field. He gasped for air, looked at Mya in anger and then complied.

Session 4:

M: What would you do at home on such a lovely day?

O: We were at war. I did not have the luxury to enjoy sunny days.

M: Before you became Fire Lord?

O: Training outdoors, firebending and Agni Kai against other firebenders. Family. Maybe Ember island.

M: And as Fire Lord? How did a typical day look?

O: I was woken by a servant, prepped and dressed. Then I had breakfast, sometimes with my generals or my daughter. Then strategic meetings. In the evening I’d meet with influential families to gain their support for the war.

M: How did you relax?

O: ???

M: You’re so intense, there must be a way in which you let off steam... Making love to beautiful girls and/or boys?

O: I won’t answer that (embarrassed)

M: You cannot just pile on without letting off some steam...

O: Fire bending... training forms... Agni Kai...probably.

M: Now without your bending powers you must be quite stressed out.

O: I meditate.

M: Do you achieve balance?

O: I feel the rage.

M: Too much energy?

O: I don’t like being confined. I was now confined for two years.

M: Let’s try something. Follow me. Sit down to meditate. Don’t be afraid, it’s nothing to be worried about.

So, are you calm and relaxed?

O: I can’t relax.

M: Give me your hands. We will make a journey in your mind.

O: No, thank you. I have no intention to. Last time it left me shattered when I woke up and had to face the grim reality of my prison cell.

M: Fair enough, then let’s just sit together and enjoy the sun, enjoy being alive and have some good tea.

O: Where is the tea?

M: Would you like some? I have some exquisite Gyokuro tea...worthy for a celebration on your first day with me.

Mya goes, gets the kettle, sets up tea in a tiny Japanese tea set. Ozai watches her and is feeling very hot. But he also feels that he‘s restricted by the force field, which creates an invisible pulsating cage around him.

M: Your tea, Lord Ozai.

O: Now I feel alive.

We drink tea silently. Awkward silence. He looks relaxed and musters something akin to a smile. I feel like kissing him, but I restrain myself.

Then I pour him a cherry blossom tea. He closes his eyes and enjoys the smell. When he opens his eyes I see desire in them.

He slowly drinks tea and watches me with his sly ember eyes, like a fox eyeing his prey. His hands reach forward to touch my breasts. He is surprised that there is no stun. I move towards him and whisper in his ears that I’ve stopped the tape and his cage. His arms grab me and we kiss. He drags me to his bed. He undresses me slowly until I am naked. His lips and tongue are on my neck. I feel his breath on my skin. I feel his tongue in my mouth, the heat from his body. The smell of his body. I feel his possessiveness and the frenzy of a madman, the fire and the danger. I taste the salty taste of his sweaty skin. We make love and I enjoy every bit of him until I lose myself. When he did he had gripped the mattress of the lounger, which was now scorched.

O: This feels so good, you feel so good, I have been waiting for this for so long...

He smelled the burnt linen and opened his eyes.

O: Did I do this?

He looked at the lounger incredulously.

M: Remember, Aang said you can‘t bend fire to harm others. So if you find a new approach to firebending, your powers might come back. Sex might be a first clue. We might call it Firefucking or maybe fuckbending?

O: Then let‘s fuckbend ten times a day... he whispered and grinned ear to ear. For the first time since I knew him, he seemed happy.

He was exhausted and I covered us up with a blanket. I took a shower and then I jumped into the pool and he followed me.

O: the water is warm!

M: Yes, I know you folk don‘t like cold water.

He pinned me against the edge and kissed me. He looked tired.

I was getting aroused again, but I worried about him, so I got out.

M: Prison surely strained you. We’ll do a health check to see if you have any imbalances.

O: What health check?

M: Heart, BP, Blood, the usual.

We went to the medical bay.

M: Are you cold. You look queasy.

O: I am not used to stand around like this, exposed in front of a pretty woman.

M: We’re not being naughty now, sorry. O: My dick thinks otherwise.

M: Don’t worry, the check will be over soon and then we can continue our fuckbending research.

Does medical check.

M: Your body has suffered in jail, but we can patch you up.

Moves to desk, mixes a protein drink.

M: Drink this, it will help you recover your strength. You’ll need all of it for our journey.

O: Is the journey spiritual or are we really going away? I am starting to like it here.

M: For the time being we’re here, but our time together is a journey.

We went to the dining room, both hungry like wolves. The sphere had already served different dishes. I was amused to see that Ozai put huge amounts of hot sauce on everything.

After dinner I pulled him into his bedroom. I kissed him and he took me slowly from behind.

I lay in his arms and he caressed my face.

O: You‘re such a strange girl...

M: No one called me a girl since ages...

O: Why did you really save me?

M: You‘re too hot to rot in jail... and then as I said, the world is in turmoil and I need your help. I‘ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

We went to bed and he fell asleep at once.

Ozai woke up, me in his arms.

O: You‘re still here.

M: Yes, I have been watching you sleep.

O: Why would you do that?

M: In sleep we are unmasked. I see your pain, your fear of abandonment. You still love her, don‘t you?

O: Did I say her name in my dreams?

M: ... She hurt you, left you, married another guy she was dating behind your back. And yet, you love her still. You‘re a good guy, Ozai.

O: (laughing) No one ever called me that before!

M: It‘s true. You‘re hurting. Your whole self esteem came crashing down when she ditched you for a farmer. I feel your sadness.

I kissed his head

M: I mean it. You‘re so loyal, that it breaks you. You got played and everyone needs to suffer because you can‘t punish those who have hurt and abandoned you.

O: Whenever I see my kids, I see her.

M: And in her you see your loving mother who also left you so early. You‘re haunted, you need to let go, move on, build a new life. All the violence in the world will not turn the clock back. I know you feel like destroying everything, but it’s not a solution. We’ll fix your broken heart and your complicated life. We‘ll work on it, here.

O: Is that the journey?

M: Part of it. Remember: you now have the freedom to just be Ozai, without the Firelord burden. People here will like you for who you are, not what crown you wear. You don‘t have to induce fear to be loved and respected.

O: Can you bend time? Make all this go away.

M: I so much wish I could. Doesn’t work that way, sorry.

I hugged him and whispered that I’d stay by his side.

O: Until you leave me too.

M: No, my love, you will leave me eventually, but I will always remember and preserve you in my heart.

Ozai closed his eyes. Then he suddenly grabbed and hugged me, held me and kissed my head, then my lips.

O: Mya, you’re a gift from the gods!

M: Ozai, some people consider me a God.

O: Oh, I just fucked a goddess, my goddess of fuckbending.

Mya left to shower and to get dressed. Ozai let the hot water pour over his body. When he got dressed, Mya was already gone. Ozai went out to find her.

He stood in the living room and saw Mya on the terrace. She was sitting at a table. The cats, a black squirrel and the crow were listening to her attentively. Then he noticed that all the shrubs around her were full of songbirds. The ground was full of spiders. She let the crow fly, it let out a craw and was answered by a thousandfold other crow voices. The cats and squirrel ran, so did the wave of spiders. All songbirds flew out and darkened the sun for a brief moment, before they also flew away.

She turned around.

M: Ozai, you are here.

O: What was this?

M: My messengers flew out. I need to know about the state of the worlds.

Mya smiled and approached him. Ozai felt uneasy. This was a type of magic that he had never seen in his world. He was weary of women with mystic powers, he had been burnt once already...

M: We have had two wonderful days, but now it is time to get to work.

O: What are you talking about?

M: I have to hand in a report with your progress and we need to make quick strides. Follow me!

Mya led Ozai through the garden downhill over stone steps. At the bottom of the path they reached a road and next to it was an arena with stone figures.

M: This is the place where we will rediscover your firebending - without carnal pleasures. You can train here.

O: But my bending is gone.

M: We will see. I want you to be ready to use your craft when your bending powers return. I can also show you some new tricks. Clench a fist, yes, but stronger. Don’t let go!

Mya pointed with one finger and then hit his nerve superfast. His fist sprang open involuntarily.

O: Aah! What was that?!?

M: Speed, element of surprise and detailed knowledge of human anatomy.

O: My hand is still sore!

M: I use this if my opponent has a dagger.

O: Honourable warriors don’t fight like this.

M: Not all foes have honour.

O: ...

M: Show me some forms, I want to learn.

Mya and Ozai spent the day practicing forms. As a Timelord Mya had the unique talent to empathize so greatly with people that she would literally replicate them and their abilities. Ozai was a great firebending teacher and more patient than Mya would have expected. After an hour Ozais hands started to smoke and a small flame showed. He was very excited.

O: My power is returning! But, how?

M: You are using firebending for altruistic reasons: you are teaching and helping me. And you’re a motivated teacher. As the Avatar said: to not use it for evil purposes or against others.

After hours passed, Mya had also managed to produce some smoke and Ozai left again for the house.

In the evening Mya wrote her first report.

Report 1: Week 1

This is an account of prisoner Ozais progress.

Ozai is a deeply conflicted person who has detachment issues and who resorts to rash decisions when under extreme internal or external pressure. He has a manic-depressive disorder. In his manic episodes, he shows megalomaniac tendencies, while his depressive side is more subdued. In those episodes, he tends to make self-harming decisions.

Without the shell of his function as Firelord there are traces of kindness. His empathy needs cultivation.

We have these points, which I want to stress in him:

Detachment and inner balance

Cultivation of empathy

Balance

Coping with stressors to avoid triggers

Developing maturity

Sense of self

Responsible decision-making

The same evening, cozied up in his arms in front of the fireplace, we also recorded another session:

Session 5:

M: So, we’re back on tape. Ozai, how are you?

O: Fine. I feel good.

M: Zuko was worried about your dignity. All intact?

O: You showed me that nasty trick and my hand feels dead... other than that all dignified and good.

M: Anything you want to say?

O: I wish that you could also talk to Azula, but I worry for your safety if you did.

M: With her I would take on another approach, not one that might remind her of her mother.

O: I tried my best when they were small, but being a father and a firelord at war, it is hard not to confuse both roles. One gets used to ... violence.

M: Everything was meant to fail from the beginning. And all parents fail their kids. They’re both alive and fierce.

O: Zuko hates me. I am concerned about Azula. My wife... I should have protected Azula from her scheming. I was totally focused on myself, Firenation and the siege on Ba Sing Se.

M: Are you convinced that Zuko hates you? Does it make you sad?

O: Sad?...

M: He‘s the one pestering me about your dignity and your wellbeing...

O: ... I wasn‘t aware of that. It pleases me to hear that. But that boy is just too soft to stand the hardships of being a Firelord. All those Agni Kais I had to fight against usurping generals to strengthen my position. Some of which I had considered personal friends! All those hours I had to learn tactics, strategy, negotiation skills... only to find out that sometimes brute force was the only viable solution. He hasn’t fought or learnt one of these lessons. His days are numbered.

M: Here, a jasmine tea flower. Let me pour you a cup. Close your eyes, feel it.

O: A symbol of love?

M: Of love and redemption.

O: I guess I could use both...

M: You can get love from me, redemption is yours to make.

Ozai was tired after the recording. I sat next to him and took his hand.

M: Things will improve.

O: There are still people who consider me the real god given Firelord. Zuko should have killed me to take the throne.

M: He cares too much about you to do that. Do you still want to be Firelord?

O: More than anything else.

I caressed his face, those beautiful warm coloured but cold eyes. He closed them. Was he yet revealing too much? He seemed sad. We sat next to each other for a while. Then he looked at me, got up and left. I found him in his room. As I wanted to enter, he bid me to leave.

O: I am your prisoner. I want to be alone. Give me some privacy to meditate.

M: Of course.

I retreated.

He sat down to meditate, but he could not concentrate. He had to think about her all the time. He was falling for her and he did not like much of what she said, although it felt true. He missed her touch, her voice, her body... he thought about her all the time. He was falling in love. His heart was on fire.

#ATLA #Ozai #Azula #avatar #avatar the last airbender #zuko #fire nation #fire lord zuko #uncle iroh #iroh

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zoematherswrites · 6 years ago

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Happy Friday!

This week was a rollERCOASter so I only wrote and edited this blog post last night…but, it is up and here obviously because you are reading it so at least I got it done! Anyways, I really wanted to make another book tag and since I’ve had to read lots of classics lately, and I thought a classic literature tag was the way to go. I hope you enjoy these questions and if you want to do this tag then I tag you! Just make sure you tag me in your post so I can read your answers 🙂

1. Oedipus the King – Pick a Book With An Interesting Family Dynamic

(WARNING: Spoilers for The Mortal Instruments series below)

Oedipus the King is a Greek tragedy written by Sophocles and follows Oedipus, the king of Thebes, who learns the true origins of his past…and it is a little shocking, to say the least. A family like that but in more current literature is the Morgenstern family from The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare. Not only do Clary and Jace fall in love and then think they are siblings, but even when they find out they aren’t we still learn that Clary has kissed her brother because he is a sick and twisted demon baby…yeah, interesting isn’t a strong enough word to describe this family.

2. Macbeth – Pick a Book That Bleeds Murder and Betrayal

(WARNING: Spoilers for the Harry Potter series below)

Macbeth is the well-known Shakespeare play that follows a man (Macbeth) who becomes king after killing the king…and then is basically driven mad with an unquenchable thirst for power. A book with a similar plotline to this that contains lots of murder and betrayal is honestly the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling. I mean, Harry’s parents are killed by Voldemort when he is a baby, Neville’s parents were killed by Bellatrix also when he was a baby, Quirrel betrays everyone by housing Voldy on the back of his head, Dumbledore dies, Snape dies, Mad-Eye Moody dies, Hedwig dies, Fred dies, and honestly, Harry can’t nor doesn’t trust anyone towards the end of the series. Is that enough death and betrayal???

3. The Odyssey – Pick a Character Who Is On a Journey to Get Home

The Odyssey by Homer is one of two epic Greek poems where the main idea is that Odysseus is trying to return home. A character that reminds me of Odysseus and whose series also includes Greek mythology is Apollo from The Trials of Apollo by Rick Riordan! The whole plot for this trilogy is that Zeus casts Apollo down to earth as a mortal with the task of earning his godly powers back by completing tasks. Much like Odysseus, he is struggling to return home and the journey is not easy. I haven’t finished reading this series, but I am hoping to in the near future…however, my TBR list is massive so maybe we will say just sometime in the future for now.

4. Romeo and Juliet – Pick a Romance Book…But That Has a Twist

(WARNING: I spoil Eleanor and Park below so…)

We all know the story, Romeo and Juliet, right? Honestly, I have never read it but I get the gist of it. Two young (very young) people fall in love even though their families hate each other, but they can’t help it! Raging hormones and such…well, you know us teens. Anyways, they love each other so, so much that when one of them fakes their own death, the other one kills themselves because they can’t bear to be parted from their beloved. Crazy, I know. Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell is an amazing contemporary following two characters, Eleanor and Park who develop a strange, but an adorable relationship, however, their story doesn’t tie up with a pretty bow. While neither of them kills themselves, Eleanor just disappears from Park’s life and I don’t think any of us were expecting that. Much like Romeo and Juliet.

5. Pride and Prejudice – Pick a Strong Female Character Who Goes Through Lengths to Prove Herself

Jane Austen wrote many books where the main character was a female struggling in a world of men, and even today we still see women treated unfairly. One character that comes to mind that has had to prove herself a lot during her story is Gwenyth Shepard from Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier. In Ruby Red, Gwen is from a family of time-travellers, however, her cousin, Charlotte is thought to have the gene. When Gwen travels back in time though, she realizes that she’s the one with the gene and is thrust into a world of chaos and time-travel. Since Gwen is unexpectedly the time-traveller of the family, she doesn’t have the training in languages, history, arts, etc that Charlotte does, and because of that, she is constantly undermined by most of the characters in this trilogy. While Gwen is no world-changer of a character, she is just a normal, teenage girl that is trying to weave her way in life and on top of all that, time-travel as well yet is constantly weighed down by the doubt of others…mostly men, to be honest.

6. Lord of the Flies – Pick a Book Where Morals Are Very Grey

Lord of the Flies was not a favourite of mine but I had to include it in this tag. It follows a group of boys on an island when their plane crashes after they flee London which is currently under attack by the Germans. Without any adults, their responsibility and morals are really put to the test when they find themselves battling against nature, and themselves. I think all books need characters who are “morally grey” because that is a reality for a lot of us. Most people are neither good or bad, give or take a few, and that needs to be reflected more in literature. One series that has a quite a few characters like this is the Shatter Me series by Tahereh Mafi. Most of the characters are overall decent people but would do anything for the people they love or even just for themselves. They don’t always make the right or best decisions, and sometimes people have to pay for that.

7. The Hobbit – Pick a Character Who Leaves Everything Behind For An Adventure

I love The Hobbit movies but have yet to read the books…I know, I know, but honestly, I find the books a little hard to read. One character that reminds me of this question, and I am not saying she reminds me of the main character who is a hobbit, but that is Margo from Paper Towns by John Green. Margo literally picks up everything and leaves her family and friends without an answer to go on an adventure doing who knows what and where. She is spontaneous and free-spirited because of that and is always seeking an adventure.

8. The Great Gatsby – Pick a Character Who Strives For the “American Dream”

The Great Gatsby takes place during the Roaring Twenties where there was lots of dancing, flappers, jazz, and the gloriously, wealthy idea of the “American Dream” which is something the main character chases. However, the “American Dream” is kind of unattainable and our main character doesn’t realize this until it’s too late. A character in another book that reminds me of this, as someone who loves the lights, the camera, and the action I guess you could say, is Lola Nolan from Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins. Lola loves dressing up different each day, never wearing the same outfit twice. She also expects to live happily ever after with her boyfriend, Max and have a perfect life…but the reality is a little different than that.

9. The Tempest – Pick a Character Who Is On the Run

Another Shakespeare plays but this one is a little different and weirder than his others in my opinion. In this story, Prospero and his daughter, Miranda are hiding from his evil brother but she doesn’t know. There is love, betrayal, and all that fun Shakespeare stuff. A character who is very much on the run is Day from the Legend trilogy by Marie Lu(or I guess series now, actually) because he is a convicted criminal on the run from the very corrupted government, called the Republic. So yeah, Day!

10. The Secret Garden – Pick a Book That Has a Secret World

Okay, again, I have never read The Secret Garden…but I have seen the movie. I wish I read it when I was younger because I just don’t think I would enjoy it as much now! However, as it says in the title, the main character of this story is a young girl who finds yes, a secret garden. Lots of YA books have secret worlds hidden in them, amongst all the normal, much like Mary finding the secret garden which brings her a lot of good. In The Light Between Worlds by Laura E. Weymouth, our two main characters, Evelyn and Philippa, as well as their brother, discover a secret world amongst the chaos of World War II, called The Woodlands. The Woodlands is a magical world of nature and beauty but much like our characters world back home, a war is upon them. The siblings stay and help out with the war, but once it is over they are sent back despite Evelyn’s protests and have to learn to adjust in the real world. They all needed this world badly for different, reasons, and it helped bring out their true selves in the real world because of it!

Okay! So those were my ten questions for the classic literature book tag, and I hope you enjoyed. Please tag me if you decide to do this tag because I’d love to see your answers! Don’t forget to check out my last blog post, as well as my social media accounts for more bookish and writing related content. Everything is linked below, thanks 🙂

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Classic Literature Book Tag (Original) Happy Friday! This week was a rollERCOASter so I only wrote and edited this blog post last night...but, it is up and here obviously because you are reading it so at least I got it done!

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