I like Livejournal as a platform much better than tumblr too, but all the cool kids moved there! The really obnoxious thing about tumblr when it comes to things like Azula apologists is that people who otherwise have never given any indication that they are Azula apologists reblog their posts, so all of a sudden, they are all over your dash. Ew. And tumblr kids are just strange too. I'm taking to one person right now who says that because her friend who identifies with Ty Lee hates Mai, Ty Lee must actually hate Mai too. What? No really what?
Dreamwidth is where it's at for me. For the foreseeable future, that's still going to be my base.
I also see some signs of Iroh being benevolently sexist in canon, certainly the way he flirts shows this. There's also a fair amount of indication that in this he is behind the times within the Fire Nation. But I still stand by the fact that an uncle giving his young niece who he hasn't seen since she was six a toy that is unsuited to her interests is evidence of very little. That he managed to hit on something Zuko liked is just good luck.
I also saw the argument that giving Azula the doll itself was abuse, because it was an Earth Kingdom doll, and by giving Azula a doll dressed like one of a people he is trying to conquer, he was showing her that he thought of her the same way, and that really is a WTF argument. Lots of conquering peoples in modern times, many colonial empires, for example, have given their children toys from and dolls of conquered people. It's a way of commodifying conquered colonized people. It's a way to give children their own model of a colonized person to playact ownership of, and to put words into their mouths. It's not him telling Azula he values her as little as an Earth Kingdom citizen, it's him enculturating her into being royalty in a colonialist empire.
For the most part, I very carefully avoided using actual diagnostic terms in the above essay response thing, but I think you are right. Azula is both a born psychopath, and a raised narcissist, and I think this is possible because of Zuko, and having him there as an example of a child who has fallen from Ozai's favor. So much of her fear is because she is terrified that someday Ozai might treat her that way, and in that, I can feel very sorry indeed for her, though not as bad as I feel for Zuko, and not bad enough to think she deserves the chance to use and abuse people into making her feel less afraid, like her apologists do.
It also means that she is so dangerous because she's both. She has all that fear as you said as her motivation, as her driving force, and no stops at all. And she's smart. And she has an imperial army behind her. Actually, Azula is straight up one of the most terrifying villains ever written.
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.
This is the fundamental truth I wish everyone understood about Azula's breakdown. That, right there.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2015-04-11 03:37 pm (UTC)Dreamwidth is where it's at for me. For the foreseeable future, that's still going to be my base.
I also see some signs of Iroh being benevolently sexist in canon, certainly the way he flirts shows this. There's also a fair amount of indication that in this he is behind the times within the Fire Nation. But I still stand by the fact that an uncle giving his young niece who he hasn't seen since she was six a toy that is unsuited to her interests is evidence of very little. That he managed to hit on something Zuko liked is just good luck.
I also saw the argument that giving Azula the doll itself was abuse, because it was an Earth Kingdom doll, and by giving Azula a doll dressed like one of a people he is trying to conquer, he was showing her that he thought of her the same way, and that really is a WTF argument. Lots of conquering peoples in modern times, many colonial empires, for example, have given their children toys from and dolls of conquered people. It's a way of commodifying conquered colonized people. It's a way to give children their own model of a colonized person to playact ownership of, and to put words into their mouths. It's not him telling Azula he values her as little as an Earth Kingdom citizen, it's him enculturating her into being royalty in a colonialist empire.
For the most part, I very carefully avoided using actual diagnostic terms in the above essay response thing, but I think you are right. Azula is both a born psychopath, and a raised narcissist, and I think this is possible because of Zuko, and having him there as an example of a child who has fallen from Ozai's favor. So much of her fear is because she is terrified that someday Ozai might treat her that way, and in that, I can feel very sorry indeed for her, though not as bad as I feel for Zuko, and not bad enough to think she deserves the chance to use and abuse people into making her feel less afraid, like her apologists do.
It also means that she is so dangerous because she's both. She has all that fear as you said as her motivation, as her driving force, and no stops at all. And she's smart. And she has an imperial army behind her. Actually, Azula is straight up one of the most terrifying villains ever written.
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.
This is the fundamental truth I wish everyone understood about Azula's breakdown. That, right there.