head empty

Stop complaining.

Jew: I got called a kike as a kid and classmates threw pennies at me. I wish non-Jews would realize that this is an ongoing problem.

Jew: a guy on my street got beat up because he was dressed as an Orthodox Jew. I wish news of this ever spread beyond Jewish communities.

Jew: someone on my college campus is handing out recruitment flyers for the American Nazi Party, and I got messages in my inbox of graphic Holocaust imagery. I wish people listened when we told them this was happening.

Jew: my synagogue hired an armed guard for my children’s Hebrew school after a terrorist murdered a bunch of Jews at a baby-naming. I wish people treated this as more than just a one-time occurrence, because it’s not an outlier.

Jew: my Polish grandfather’s grave was smashed and graffitied with political slogans that have nothing to do with him. I was kicked out of an LGBT space for displaying a symbol of my religion and culture because projecting a straw-man political identity onto me is an effective way of ridding yourself of Jews while pretending you aren’t racist. This goes on constantly and I never feel safe in any non-Jewish space.

Zuko really believed that Ty Lee didn’t understand who he was at all. He completely bought into the act that she’s just a puppet for Azula, who lives in her “little Ty Lee world where everything’s great all the time”. But the thing is, Ty Lee is one of the most perceptive characters in the show, and she’s excellent at keeping that on the down low, but she sees a lot more of Zuko than he thinks, and a lot of what she sees is very familiar to her.

Overshadowed by prodigious siblings?

Wanting to be acknowledged for the talents you have rather than the talents you don’t?

Kept in line by fear?

Spending your whole life bending over backwards to fit the persona the royal family has set for you?

Azula used blatant intimidation tactics to get Ty Lee to comply, ordering the net to be set on fire and all the animals released (which, for the record, would not only have endangered Ty Lee but the circus creatures themselves–I bet Ty Lee was attached to them, and that would’ve been a double threat in itself). Ty Lee is visibly terrified, but instead of calling her out or letting Azula see that she was intimidated, she says this:

Instead of endangering herself by pointing out that Azula crossed a line, Ty Lee falls back on her talk of “the universe” and “auras,” talk that canonically gets her indulged or dismissed but never taken seriously. 

She knows that Azula’s dangerous. There’s no way she doesn’t know that Azula is threatening her. But if she can keep Azula from realizing she knows that, she’s a little safer. 

Because she’s one of maybe two people Azula never considered as potential enemies–even (especially, but that’s another thread) Ozai is a threat in her mind, but Mai and Ty Lee are the closest thing Azula has to trusted friends, right up until their betrayal. 

Ty Lee’s spent a lifetime cultivating a personality that not only allows her to stands out among her siblings–it protects her from being treated as a threat. When you’re friends with Azula, that is an essential facade to maintain.  and she does it consistently enough that no one ever sees through it.

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