Fandoms idea of azula and zuko is usually they did nothing wrong its very boring the worse part is they rarely listen to anyone who doesn't parrot they aren't perfect crowd and label you a child hater for pointing out canon actions I've blocked most of em ad they just talk in circles but I gotta say to me azula fans treating azula as perfect and zuko as worse give off ozai vibes
I wouldn't go that far, necessarily. I get being really attached to characters and your own interpretation of them. I, too, was a rabid fanboy in my youth, and I have seen many a shipping war fought. I was a filthy Homestuck from the heady days of Act 1, and I remember well the discourse surrounding Vriska (the Vriscourse, if you will, and if you won't, then you reeeeeeeeally sh8ld). I've seen the Harry Potter fandom tear itself to pieces over the bad manchildren of Slytherin. We all have our problematic faves, and for some people that fave is Azula. All we can really do is be patient with them, encourage them to use their time and energy creatively, and learn when to disengage. Not every battle is worth fighting.
I despise Azula glorification online because it’s literally the epitome of girlbossing. You’re allowed to like her character, which is complex and rightfully a fan-favorite. You’re allowed to think she’s cool.
Attempting to paint her as some force-of-good (as I often see on Twitter) literally erases half her personality. Yes, she’s been mentally impacted by the expectations/shitty parenting of her father, the rejection she faced from her mother, etc. Yes, she’s young enough for many of us to sympathize, to a degree, with her actions and the motives behind them. Yes, power is all she’s every known.
But, alarmingly, I despise the painting of Azula as good throughout the series because, if you ever placed her in real world context, which is fitting for the show so heavily inspired and reflective of our world, she seems… terrible.
A colonizing monarch, young, but with actions supporting cultural genocide. Doesn’t she attempting to Ba Sing Se’s independence, making it a subject of the Fire Nation by infiltrating the Dai Li? Where have we seen that before in history? … There are countless other examples, but the majority of her actions throughout the show impact the people of the other nations badly.
She’s like… the equivalent of a conquering British king at England’s height of power? Idk, I’m willing to have a discussion if anyone has any other views.
Azula is kind of a hot topic for the avatar fandom, so I’d just like to say—
She is a product of maternal neglect and paternal grooming for war. She didn’t really have any control over the way she turned out.
She was a horrible person at the time of the show. She was cruel, she was manipulative, and she was toxic. She didn’t show any remorse for her actions except for that one time she hurt Ty Lee’s feelings.
These statements can coexist.
She was a product of her upbringing. Her upbringing made her into a bad person.
She isn’t stuck being that way forever. She can break the cycle of abuse and become a better person.
But as we see her in canon, she is a bad person.
At the point in time we see Azula, she is a bad person.
Canon!Azula is a bad person.
But there’s hope.
Which is why I do believe redemption is possible for her. If Zuko could break the cycle, then Azula could too with the right kind of help.
Your age doesn’t determine whether you’re a bad person or not. It’s your intentions and your actions. Someone can be a toxic person at 14 but then grow and change and be a better person at 20.
As we see her in canon, she’s not a good person.
It doesn’t excuse the things she did, but it means there’s time for her to unlearn things and become a better person.
I think I’m gonna try to wrap up the Azula discourse on my blog
That whole post got out of hand and I’m gonna address a few things before I slink back into my cave. Things that need to be stated on either end.
1. In my original post, I typed out (paraphrased, but still directly copied) “ It’s not true that people think a redemption for Azula is bad because she’s a woman... it’s simply because Azula is a psychopath whose stunted emotional range thanks to Ozai’s abuse doesn’t allow her character any room for a redemption” As I mentioned in many reblogs trying to address the people who for some reason got tagged and recruited into responding, I had a LOT of caffeine that night and my body is not used to caffeine (I have not drank a single cup of coffee or tea in my life until that night, and unfortunately it was brewed STRONG). I was in a very screwy mental state. What I had meant to type was “Azula cannot be redeemed due to the standards that the writers had already set up for the character, being that they did not set her up for any kind of redemptive actions in the final episodes of the series.” Which is not connected to her mental state, but the way she was written.
On that subject, I admit that my wording was wrong. It’s not because she’s a psychopath that she can’t be redeemed, but it’s because the writers didn’t give her that important “emotional ascension” that’s usually vital for a redemption. Where things aren’t magically better all of a sudden, but the character is feeling less shitty than they were before. So like for instance, instead of one of the final scenes being Zuko and Ozai, it should have been Zuko and Azula, and there’s some kind of conversation where Azula is feeling less like she’s at the lowest point of her life.
2. To cite a previous point in discussion point 1, I got SEVERAL reblogs from different people, and upon finally trying to address the replies, it turns out one person actually tagged a bunch of other people to swarm me with angry replies before I even had a chance to address all their points, especially because A) Everyone tagged completely overlooked the “sexism” argument. B) Everyone tagged made assumptions about how I feel on real life people being rehabilitated, based on my views of a FICTIONAL CHARACTER’S arc. C) Everyone accused me of ableism without knowing a single thing about my own mental history or the mental history of people in my family. Absolutely classless. Talk to me one-on-one instead of feeling the need to round up a posse so you can attack me. If you were trying to get me to delete my posts, congratulations! They’re staying up. And you haven’t even addressed my responses, but you sure were able to tag one more person right after I politely responded to your first reblog.
3. Now that I’ve established what I MEANT to type out (that I had trouble articulating), which was “Azula cannot be redeemed due to the standards that the writers had already set up for the character, being that they did not set her up for any kind of redemptive actions in the final episodes of the series”, I still stand by it and that won’t change. Especially because my viewpoint is making people think I hate Azula for some reason, which my tags in my original post should have disproven. Azula’s character is OUTSTANDING. She’s written to be one of the most terrifying antagonists of Avatar, even more terrifying than her father just because of how capable she is at her age. But all this woobifying of her character takes away the antagonist value she has.
I just reread Imbalance and remembered Mai and Ty Lee’s betrayal of Azula...
Is it possible that Azula was actually suffering from PTSD because of Ty Lee’s sudden betrayal? It was a traumatic experience for Azula, that we can say at least. And if she did actually have PTSD... then Yang rlly did portray it... in literally no way.
If this is true, then we can actually say that Azula wasn’t descending into madness then because her banishment of everyone was just her way to cope with her traumatic experience.
This is a question about free will and moral accountability. Free Will says that you could have made different choices with the knowledge and experiences you had at the time, it doesn't say that you could have made noticeably better moral choices with the knowledge and experiences you had at the time. When people say, "Azula could have acted differently," what they often mean is "Azula could have acted in such a way that is radically and unreasonably contrary to her usual self. She could...
... have done a 180 in 5 minutes!" So I think people are too hard on Azula. I also think people are too hard on Ozai. When people say, "Ozai could have acted differently," what they often mean is "Ozai could have done a 180 in 5 minutes!" Who's to say that people such as Azula and Ozai weren't doing the best they could with the experiences they had at the time? After all, I'm sure Azula and Ozai both went through experiences that are unique only to them.
TW: for abuse talk
I think that it's really complicated; especially in the case of Ozai. I'm not the biggest fan of Ozai at all. However I do believe that Ozai was also a victim of circumstance, environment, and upbringing. He was raised in a very hostile, dog eats dog environment and he became the abuse. That's one of the saddest, most tragic aspects of abuse; the susceptibility of the abused to become the abuser.
Unpopular opinion maybe: I don't think that Ozai is 100% beyond help and redemption. But it would be extraordinarily difficult for him and he would have monumental obstacles to overcome. A lot of people cite age as the reason why he is a lost cause but I disagree with that. Iroh was middle aged when he decided to change. Ozai's problem is that he doesn't think that he has to. He is very set in his ways and he doesn't seem to think that the problem lies with him. And that's why I can't see him being redeemed in canon. But I do feel bad for him because he was raised in a way where he kind of didn't really have a chance. Going back to the free will thing--all he really knew was power and war.
I do think that people are very hard on Azula especially because she is so, so young. I've said it a few times but Azula is young enough to be put back on a better path. She pretty much parrots her father's actions. He's her role model. She was indoctrinated. "Free Will says that you could have made different choices with the knowledge and experiences you had at the time." I very much agree with this. The thing is that I think a lot of people might not realize is that Azula's knowledge and experiences all came from her abusive father and a shitton of wartime propaganda.
She couldn't really make an informed decision so to speak because she was only given one side. She was told that the world worked a certain way and never had the chance to have those views challenged in the ways that Zuko and Iroh did.
Azula is an extremely intelligent girl and so I don't think that it would be far fetched for her to alter her worldview when confronted with facts that challenge it. She is a logically driven person. And she has shown in the past (in working with the Dai Li) that she doesn't really see the other nations as beneath her as someone like Ozai and Zhao did. She had a level of respect for their methods. She's rather adaptable and willing to work with different groups of people.
For that, I think it would actually be pretty easy to get her to unlearn some harmful worldviews. The hard part would be getting her to let down her walls and be vulnerable enough to try.
So going back to the free will thing; yeah she had free will but she did not have enough knowledge and experience to make a morally better decision. Literally all she knew was 'Fire Nation best nation', 'power and fear are everything.'
On top of all of that, despite her upbringing she was, on some level, able to recognize that she might just be in the wrong. That scene on the Beach and the mirror scene said a lot. Azula wouldn't have had this internal debate about using fear to control people, she wouldn't be calling herself a monster if she didn't feel guilty deep down.
And this is what sets her apart from Ozai. At her lowest, when she was breaking she showed signs of recognizing that it was she who got herself to where she was. On some level, she knows that she needs to better herself. And this is why I think that it wouldn't be as hard as some people might think to get her some help and healing.
I think that she'll have a lot of setbacks and regresses because she has so many things ingrained in her. But I do think that getting her on the path to redemption wouldn't be too hard. That's kind of what I'm hoping for with the solo comic; Azula having to confront her own biases and think about them. She needs her world views challenged. She needs to get more knowledge and experience; see the other side of things that Ozai and Fire Nation propaganda didn't show her.
After that she'll have a better chance of making better moral decisions.
And with Ozai not there to whisper in her ear and mold her, I think she has a pretty good chance.
I hope that I understood the point of this ask right xD thanks for stopping by!
This is about moral accountability. If what you mean by free will is, “You could have made different choices with the knowledge and experiences you had at the time.” Then Azula had that. But if what you mean by “free will” is “You could have lived a morally better life with the knowledge and experiences you had at the time” then according to you, Azula didn’t have that, since you say she did not have enough knowledge and experience to make a morally better decision. Is Azula morally...
... accountable for her actions if she didn’t have the “free will” to know any better?
I feel like this is also a bit complicated. I do believe that Azula was old enough to understand, at least to some degree, that what she was doing wasn't morally right. I think that she believed that she was in the right based upon Fire Nation values and her upbringing. I think that she really did think that she was doing right by her people in tracking down Aang and co. But I also think that she understood, on some level that using fear to control her friends and some of her treatment of them wasn't the morally right thing to do. As proof, I point back to the mirror and beach scenes. She has this internal conflict indicating that she knows that there is a degree of wrong/some holes in her beliefs. I think that maybe she knows that she has done something wrong but she doesn't exactly know what that thing is when measured up against what she probably believes is the greater good.
All this to say that I do think that she shouldn't just get a slap on the wrist, because deep down even she knew that some of her decisions weren't the best. So I 100% do believe that she should be held accountable to some extent. In the same way that I believe that (and I speak from experience here) mental illness isn't an excuse to treat others badly, I believe that her upbringing doesn't excuse everything. Azula is still responsible for her own choices and actions at the end of the day. She did hurt people and there should be some consequences.
Where my opinion might differ from the opinions of some people in the fandom is what consequences (or punishment if you'd like to call it that) is warranted.
I see a lot of takes that say that she needs to lose her bending, lose everything, or be imprisoned (be it in an institution or a prison). Heck, I've even seen some people call for physical punishments. I've always believed that 1. these punishments do not fit the crime nor her age (they seem cruel and inhumane especially with the knowledge that they would be applied to a 14 year old) and 2. they just wouldn't do anything even if they did fit the age and punishment.
The whole point of accountability and taking responsibility is a person being able to learn from their actions and grow. Taking her bending, physically hurting her, or imprisoning her won't accomplish ether of those things. At best she would be solidified in her views. At worst it would only make her more hateful and unkind.
To me the punishments above feel less like holding her accountable and more like taking vengeance. And I really can't see the gaang being that malicious. There is a huge difference between justice and vengeance but the line can be perilously thin.
So what do I think that accountability looks like for Azula? I think that a suitable punishment would be something like community service. Will she be happy? No. She's used to being served not doing the serving. Will she be uncomfortable and embarrassed? Probably. But I do feel like that sort of thing is more on par with a fairer punishment.
Community service would be an opportunity for her to learn and grow. If they send her off to the Earth Kingdom (Note: they don't banish her) to help rebuild fallen villages or idk work customer service for like three days (I firmly believe that dealing with customers even for one day is a punishment for anyone) she would have an opportunity to see things from a different point of view.
That's what I think she needs; to be shown what life is like outside of the Fire Nation and the palace. What it's like to be an average citizen/working class person. Sort of like what Zuko got but with more guidance from someone who is willing to be patient with her and explain why she is being punished. Rather than someone who is just there to scold her and make her suffer. She can't learn and grow if she doesn't know why she is being punished and what she is being held accountable for.
TL;DR she should be held accountable just like anyone else. But she needs a fair punishment (that takes her age and circumstances into account) that offers an opportunity for growth not torture. Community service, customer service work, maybe a good lecture or two, etc.
