I know this is really belated, it has long been jossed by subsequent material, but I wrote a Tyzula fic that attempted to continue the Avatar comics timeline post-Imbalance while also incorporating the other extended universe material.
It focuses on the Fire Nation and talks about, among other things, the effects of Sozin's criminalization of queer folk, the abusive nature of Fire Nation asylums, and Zuko's struggles to de-Sozinize the Fire Nation. However, it gets really dark at times, and not everyone gets a happy ending.
So if you guys have time, I would be honored if you took a look at it. Thanks!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
could you share why ur not participating? I hate to be nosy but maiko week is so boring. But will u ever host maiko week?
Hey anon! I'm gonna share a little drama about maiko fandom, and have a bit of trauma dump, so if there are people here who are not interested, they can just scroll <3
First of all, a little disclaimer: despite running a well-known maiko page and writing headcanons about Mai and Zuko for years, I have never participated in any maiko week. In the past I just never got to it (I always supported maiko creators and reblogged their stuff on my page!).
Last year maiko week was hosted by people from the discord maiko server. I liked the prompts, I was back in the fandom and I planned to participate. I even wrote some things for the late submission (that's how my "observations" fic originally started, a submission for Teacher Mai prompt). Till this day I have these drafts. That maiko week wasn't super active since there hadn't been any leaked movies and maiko renaissance yet.
Somewhere in the middle of it, I had a fallout with some "main" people in the fandom because of their personal takes that they had been continually posting on the server. They weren't fandom takes. But the things that they had said so casually were aggressive and hateful towards certain groups of people/ethnicities. Additionally, those same people were super rude to some of my fandom friends. They shown their ugliness at fullest. I realized that I'm unsafe there, that I don't want to interact with those people. That I don't want to write for them or share my creative ideas because they simply don't deserve it. They're awful unkind people. So, I left the server and never posted anything for #maikoweek2025. I stopped posting on Tumblr as well.
So yeah, part of me leaving the fandom was just me being affected and disturbed by people in charge of the server/main pages.
The second reason that I have against this specific maiko week this year is that the person who is hosting this event has been using other people's arts/posts without asking for permission to post their art on "daily maiko" page on twt (X). I think the majority of the fandom is familiar with the artist called NocturneBlot (or Blot on X). This person (the maiko week host) has been posting NocturneBlot's arts without permission on their maiko page. They used someone else's work for content. When NocturneBlot found out about it and called them out, instead of at least apologizing, this daily maiko page just blocked NocturneBlot (here is the link to NocturneBlot's tweets).
When I see something like this, I wonder why would anyone draw/create for a fandom that doesn't respect its artists and creators? Maiko fandom is already not a big fandom, we've been dragged through the dirt for years. And now the people that claim themselves a part of this group don't even value artists.
Artists, creators and headcanon/fanfic writers create things for free in their free time!!! Those are people with personal life/families/school/jobs. And yet they invest their time and effort to add something to the fandom for others to enjoy. The least that we can do is to support creators, write comments, not repost things, credit artists/authors. This fandom doesn't even do the bare minimum. Creators aren't appreciated at all.
So yeah, I'm super anti this maiko week.
Aaaaand, it's not one of my reasons but prompts this year are boring, indeed. And repetitive. We've already had things like Wedding, Izumi, Reconciliation these last few years. I know the lore, okay? I've been here through everything. This fandom has to move on or show creativity.
And I'm sorry, anon, but I don't plan to host any maiko weeks in the future. Firstly, it's a big responsibility. Secondly, I don't know whether I'll be alive because I live in the war zone (yesterday and this night we had attacks and bombing). So yeah.
I dearly love maiko as a ship and I'll keep writing about them/posting my works here and on ao3.
I'm just not in the fandom for fandom things, plus I have strong opinions about lots of canon and fanon content and I'm disliked because of it as well haha.
I just prefer to stay in my maiko bubble and write my ideas. People who genuinely love maiko, are kind towards other people and respectful to maiko creators are always welcome here on my page/in my inbox.
How Azula’s “temptress” characteristics color our understanding of the Fire Nation princess
This essay was written with the help of korrastorian and queertoonqueertoons.
Azula is a fantastic antagonist. She is ruthless,calculating, and highly gifted. However, often our conversations surrounding the princess confine her to being “evil.” We seem inclined to view Zuko as the sympathetic anti-hero who was fully capable and deserving of his redemption, yet cannot bestow his sister the same courtesy despite the fact that she shares his background. There are many reasons why this may be the case: the fact that Azula’s foil is our lens for the story, that Azula did align herself with the Fire Nation throughout the series, the fact that we saw her cause physical harm to multiple characters in whom we had vested interest. But aside from the lens, wasn’t this also Zuko’s story? Or what about Iroh? If Zuko can burn down Suki’s village and Iroh can lay siege to Ba Sing Se and joke about burning it to the ground, why can they be redeemed while Azula is written off?
Some turn to psych evals, but there’s another factor at play that is often overlooked: Azula’s character as it is presented to us in the narrative is highly sexualized. Moreover, she’s sexualized in a particularly deviant way. This is not to that every viewer necessarily has an inherent unease surrounding exhibited sexuality, but it is a characteristic that allows us to view Azula in a more sinister light. We often forget that she is only fourteen. Her sexualization enables us to see her as a sort of succubus, someone who actively lures her brother to the darkside and erotically toys with her enemies rather than a child soldier who is the product of abuse. It’s not to say the latter cannot commit evil acts, but as a society, we are less inclined to give the former our sympathies.
