My response to this is probably going to be shorter and significantly less coherent than normal. I have bronchitis and a fever, and my brain isn't really on board. Sorry about that.
I'm sure there have been people like these tumblr denizens since time immemorial. I have a few in my own family over 70. But tumblr culture and the reblogging system makes it easier for them to blend in. It was still one of the oddest conversations I ever had.
Somehow I wasn't following you there either. Fixed.
Yeah, the doll argument is when I really know there is no convincing some people.
Yeahhh, because obviously other people are just tools to make woobie widdle Zula feel safe and happy, no matter that the feeling of safety is a temporary illusion, no matter how this treatment fucks with her victims' boundaries and sense of self.
This is what abuse apologia really boils down to. You exist for your abuser. You don't matter. Your abuser matters. Your pain, your being violated, and used, and forced to salve someone else's wounds doesn't matter. Their wounds do, and you are horrible for not giving every ounce of yourself, and allowing them to inflict all kinds of wounds on you to fix them, even though it never works, and never fixes them, and just leaves you in pieces. Their pain is real and important, and yours isn't. Their way of seeing the world is understandable, an yours is just an excuse. You exist for your abuser.
There's a part of me that is really grateful that Ozai is a boring villain, because the way to make him more interesting would have been to explore his psychological state, and sine I'm pretty sure he's a narcissist with a miserable childhood who uses his children and empire to cope with his subconsciously low self-image, and since he is good looking, I have a feeling if those issues had been explored, I have a feeling we would have a lot more Ozai apologists running around and annoying me too.
And even if Azula weren't a psychopath and felt truly hurt by Ty Lee and Mai defying her, I don't think it should matter. Even if she felt betrayed, that doesn't mean she was
Oh yes. What I mean by the fundamental truth I want them to understand is that Azula didn't have a breakdown because she loved them oh so much. She had a breakdown because she no longer could use (her control over) them psychologically. Even if she had loved them or felt betrayed by them leaving, she didn't break down because of that love.
I do feel sorry for her that she was so twisted up by genetics and upbringing that she experienced other people's personhood as a wrong against herself, but I certainly don't feel sorry for her that Mai and Ty Lee stood up to her abuse. Any betrayal she might have felt is only indicative of her outsized entitlement, not of any wrong done to her.
QFT
I'm also a little ticked that fireroyals equated psychopathy with pure evil
Me too, and I think you're right about why they were so against calling Azula one. Most psychopaths figure out how to live in society relatively well, and the scariest people, the people closest to being evil that I can think of, genocidal dictators, at least to me exhibit far more narcissistic behaviors than psychopathic ones. It's not "This mental disorder makes you evil" it's "this mental trait makes you not feel affective empathy and not respond to danger, or other people and their emotions the same way." Now I have had enough of being around psychopaths for a lffetime, thanks, because I had to deal with two particularly nasty ones, but not all of them are corrosive to all joy and happiness like my two stalkers, because most psychopaths aren't, you know, sadists.
With Azula, I think it's less about missed opportunities than it is about opportunities taken... by Ozai. But it certainly wasn't monstrous destiny, or the inevitable result of being a born psychopath that made Azula who she is.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2015-04-12 05:10 pm (UTC)I'm sure there have been people like these tumblr denizens since time immemorial. I have a few in my own family over 70. But tumblr culture and the reblogging system makes it easier for them to blend in. It was still one of the oddest conversations I ever had.
Somehow I wasn't following you there either. Fixed.
Yeah, the doll argument is when I really know there is no convincing some people.
Yeahhh, because obviously other people are just tools to make woobie widdle Zula feel safe and happy, no matter that the feeling of safety is a temporary illusion, no matter how this treatment fucks with her victims' boundaries and sense of self.
This is what abuse apologia really boils down to. You exist for your abuser. You don't matter. Your abuser matters. Your pain, your being violated, and used, and forced to salve someone else's wounds doesn't matter. Their wounds do, and you are horrible for not giving every ounce of yourself, and allowing them to inflict all kinds of wounds on you to fix them, even though it never works, and never fixes them, and just leaves you in pieces. Their pain is real and important, and yours isn't. Their way of seeing the world is understandable, an yours is just an excuse. You exist for your abuser.
There's a part of me that is really grateful that Ozai is a boring villain, because the way to make him more interesting would have been to explore his psychological state, and sine I'm pretty sure he's a narcissist with a miserable childhood who uses his children and empire to cope with his subconsciously low self-image, and since he is good looking, I have a feeling if those issues had been explored, I have a feeling we would have a lot more Ozai apologists running around and annoying me too.
And even if Azula weren't a psychopath and felt truly hurt by Ty Lee and Mai defying her, I don't think it should matter. Even if she felt betrayed, that doesn't mean she was
Oh yes. What I mean by the fundamental truth I want them to understand is that Azula didn't have a breakdown because she loved them oh so much. She had a breakdown because she no longer could use (her control over) them psychologically. Even if she had loved them or felt betrayed by them leaving, she didn't break down because of that love.
I do feel sorry for her that she was so twisted up by genetics and upbringing that she experienced other people's personhood as a wrong against herself, but I certainly don't feel sorry for her that Mai and Ty Lee stood up to her abuse. Any betrayal she might have felt is only indicative of her outsized entitlement, not of any wrong done to her.
QFT
I'm also a little ticked that fireroyals equated psychopathy with pure evil
Me too, and I think you're right about why they were so against calling Azula one. Most psychopaths figure out how to live in society relatively well, and the scariest people, the people closest to being evil that I can think of, genocidal dictators, at least to me exhibit far more narcissistic behaviors than psychopathic ones. It's not "This mental disorder makes you evil" it's "this mental trait makes you not feel affective empathy and not respond to danger, or other people and their emotions the same way." Now I have had enough of being around psychopaths for a lffetime, thanks, because I had to deal with two particularly nasty ones, but not all of them are corrosive to all joy and happiness like my two stalkers, because most psychopaths aren't, you know, sadists.
With Azula, I think it's less about missed opportunities than it is about opportunities taken... by Ozai. But it certainly wasn't monstrous destiny, or the inevitable result of being a born psychopath that made Azula who she is.