Urgh, is everything interesting happening on Tumblr now? But I don't wanna! Also, git off my lawn! *grumblegrumble* Thanks for transporting this to LJ, it's much more readable. Not that LJ is the pinnacle of usability either--I considered jumping ship when they put up their latest proud update announcement that... they are now accepting payment in Bitcoins.
Okay, on to actual content! Whoo, I haven't seen an Azula apologist in a while PROBABLY CAUSE DURNED WHIPPERSNAPPERS ALL MOVED TO TUMBLR and their arguments are as ridiculous as ever!
My views on Azula are very similar to yours, but I never thought of the early-life angle and how it must have affected Azula to see Zuko fall from grace. Good catch there.
Also, the part about Ursa's parental discipline of Azula and Ursa's love of Zuko both coming across as gross injustice to Azula is very insightful--and also scary in that Azula apologists actually think this way, at least about the discipline part. As you rightfully pointed out on Tumblr (gah my eyes--reblog-as-thread needs to die, not users' fault but augh), Ursa should totally have been concerned about Azula's behavior. If anything the scary part is that there are people who see this as some sort of evidence of abuse.
As for Iroh, whom you mentioned on Tumblr but not here, I do play with the idea of him being benevolently sexist in fanfic but I know it's a reading that has only the barest support in canon. And there's certainly no support for the idea that he's an abusive chauvinist who turned Azula evil WHUT.
If [an abuser's] victim tries to leave, [the abuser reacts] with hurt and anger, a "How could you do this to me?" response. This is not how Azula responds, however, and in this she is very different indeed from most abusers. It is this difference that I think points to inborn lack of empathy.
This goes to a point we discussed earlier about whether Azula is narcissistic or psychopathic. You puzzled over Azula having a meltdown at the end more characteristic of a narcissist than psychopath, and I was wondering about that, too. It looks like she got a double whammy of inborn psychopathic tendencies and a core of narcissistic self-loathing due to her upbringing--as you put it so well, "that pit of anxiety and fear [Ozai] built within her as a child."
I now think Azula was narcissistic in motivation and psychopathic in method: Her narcissism created the need to abuse and control people, and in controlling them she showed a distinct lack of empathy and absolute objectification of her victims. Non-psychopathic narcissists do this, too, but they tend to explode rather than stay cool and detached as Azula did, because they do have empathy and need to suppress it by providing themselves with an emotional smokescreen.
In other words: A narcissist who has the capacity for empathy has to turn her victims into bad people in her own mind. A narcissist who doesn't have the capacity to empathize doesn't see her victims as people, period. The latter doesn't need to get upset, because she doesn't need that justification to treat people as means to an end.
I agree with you that Azula's unraveling came from a very different place from being simply "hurt." It wasn't that she felt wounded that they left her control by asserting themselves, it was that she felt the entire basis of her existence was undermined by the fact that she had misread them so badly.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2015-04-11 05:19 am (UTC)Okay, on to actual content! Whoo, I haven't seen an Azula apologist in a while PROBABLY CAUSE DURNED WHIPPERSNAPPERS ALL MOVED TO TUMBLR and their arguments are as ridiculous as ever!
My views on Azula are very similar to yours, but I never thought of the early-life angle and how it must have affected Azula to see Zuko fall from grace. Good catch there.
Also, the part about Ursa's parental discipline of Azula and Ursa's love of Zuko both coming across as gross injustice to Azula is very insightful--and also scary in that Azula apologists actually think this way, at least about the discipline part. As you rightfully pointed out on Tumblr (gah my eyes--reblog-as-thread needs to die, not users' fault but augh), Ursa should totally have been concerned about Azula's behavior. If anything the scary part is that there are people who see this as some sort of evidence of abuse.
As for Iroh, whom you mentioned on Tumblr but not here, I do play with the idea of him being benevolently sexist in fanfic but I know it's a reading that has only the barest support in canon. And there's certainly no support for the idea that he's an abusive chauvinist who turned Azula evil WHUT.
This goes to a point we discussed earlier about whether Azula is narcissistic or psychopathic. You puzzled over Azula having a meltdown at the end more characteristic of a narcissist than psychopath, and I was wondering about that, too. It looks like she got a double whammy of inborn psychopathic tendencies and a core of narcissistic self-loathing due to her upbringing--as you put it so well, "that pit of anxiety and fear [Ozai] built within her as a child."
I now think Azula was narcissistic in motivation and psychopathic in method: Her narcissism created the need to abuse and control people, and in controlling them she showed a distinct lack of empathy and absolute objectification of her victims. Non-psychopathic narcissists do this, too, but they tend to explode rather than stay cool and detached as Azula did, because they do have empathy and need to suppress it by providing themselves with an emotional smokescreen.
In other words: A narcissist who has the capacity for empathy has to turn her victims into bad people in her own mind. A narcissist who doesn't have the capacity to empathize doesn't see her victims as people, period. The latter doesn't need to get upset, because she doesn't need that justification to treat people as means to an end.
I agree with you that Azula's unraveling came from a very different place from being simply "hurt." It wasn't that she felt wounded that they left her control by asserting themselves, it was that she felt the entire basis of her existence was undermined by the fact that she had misread them so badly.