Murglor

Some others that I like:

the Lightning Strikes Twice series by WinterSnufkin

blue fire on my skin (sorry for my sins) by cinnaroot

Suki: a plot device which exists to complicate Sokka's understanding of gender.

Katara: I don't know if or how much the character thought about this herself, and honestly she lacks an arc post Book 1 anyways, but Katara is very much meant as an expression of an ideal vision of femininity from the early 2000s. And her actual character arc, such that it is, cumulates with her challenging Pakku.

Yue: everything about the character is about social norms for upper class NWT women and how she relates to them.

Toph: the entire point of the character is that she's everything a 12 year old elite girl is not supposed to be (particularly a blind one), and that she performs rebellion by transgressing on gender norms and acting like a "tomboy."

Zuko: he failed to perform masculinity correctly (particularly by refusing to fight the Agni Kai), and fundamentally he's trying regain his manhood in the eyes of Ozai (and later Iroh). Honor and especially honor duels are something fundamentally tied up with manhood, and it's not coincidence that one of the first things he does in the series is fighting another Agni Kai.

Azula: Not only is Azula trying to both perform femininity and masculinity at the same time because she must all at once be a son, a daughter, a sister, and a brother, and not only is her behavior deeply influenced by what she understands her duties as a daughter/sister to be, but also the way other characters and the audience react to her is fundamentally gendered.

Ty Lee: she doesn't have an arc, but as a character she is extremely gendered in the eyes of an audience, and her relationships with Azula and Mai are dependent on her gender. Moreover, her experience as an upper class Fire Nation girl is extremely gender dependent, and she appears to deliberately embrace low class, "slutty" femininity as much as possible.

Mai: her entire relationship with her family and Azula is based around her hating performing the gender expectations for elite Fire Nation girls.

Smellerbee: need I say more? Although she is kind of irrelevant.

Suki: What gender complication does she add to Sokka's understanding of gender in the Boiling Rock episode and every other episode afterward? None? Okay. Her serving a point in ONE episode does not make it her whole arc, let alone fundamentally.

Katara: Her being meant as an ideal girl does not make her arc fundamentally about gender, it just mean that's the type of character she is. Having your arc FUNDAMENTALLY about gender does not mean 'You're a certain type of woman', that's a character archetype, not an arc. And no, Katara didn't suddenly become a blank slate after fighting Pakku, she has an arc about each of her missing parents all the way to book 3 FFS.

Yue: We're just gonna ignore she's also a literal resurected chosen one of the moon spirit and her relationship with Sokka is based on finding him funny to be around? Okay.

Toph: It's so her entire point she was planned to be a boy for most of pre-production. Her 'rebellion' wasn't against gender norms, her rebellion was against her parents' obsession with her safety and inability to trust her due to being blind and thus 'helpless'. Toph as a tiny 12 year old boy would have been treated the same and was literally PLANNED that way to begin with. Again, not only not 'fundamental' but entirely irrelevant.

Zuko: No, this headcanon needs to die, Ozai wasn't gonna go 'Well done, son' if Zuko tried to fight him at the Agni Kai, he'd have gotten mad, beat the shit out of him, burned him and banished him. That's why it's abuse, there was no winning the moment Ozai decided Zuko fucked up and needed to be taught a lesson. And no, honor isn't manhood nor are honor duels, you mention Zuko's first Agni Kai while ignoring his last AGAINST A WOMAN, which NOBODY BATS AN EYE about and the lore tell us the Girl's Academy has Agni Kais all the time.

Azula: No, she's not, she's playing the role of the perfect princess and that's it. And no, nobody particularly react to Azula as a girl. And none of that make her arc fundamentally about gender.

Ty Lee: So by your own admission her arc isn't about gender at all, everything else you said is irrelevant and doesn't make her arc fundamentally about gender. Also she does have an arc, it just mostly get resolved offscreen cause she's a tertiary character, her getting over her 'matched set' worries and joining the Kyoshi Warriors is her arc's conclusion.

Mai: Except it's not? At all? For a single second? There's no line saying that in the entire franchise. Her arc is about being mad she can get whatever she wants and DO whatever she wants as long as she stays out of the way. It's about neglect and can (and does) happen the exact same to a boy, not about 'muh gender roles'.

Smellerbee: Yes, you do have to make an argument for your point. A character being mistaken for a boy as a running gag doesn't make it their arc, it make it their running gag. Smellerbee's (very minor) arc is about being a follower of Jet, going from an unthinking yes-woman to someone genuinely supporting Jet in the aftermath of their mistake to someone who now need to make their own way cause their leader died trying to make things right.

And yet everyone you named didn't have their arc fundamentally about gender at all and you could say the exact same stuff you said about the other characters about Aang and Jet (Aang wouldn't even have been raised by Gyatso nor lived in that part of the world if he was a girl and Jet is literally a classic manly man suave Robin Hood leader type, which wouldn't work if he was a woman).

Yes, yes, I won the argument so you have to retreat to nitpicking about the etymology of the word I used while praising all the Gods in the world that I didn't just say 'royalty' or 'royal heir' cause otherwise you'd have nothing left to say.

'Intersectional' Lmao, the title is older than that concept by a few millennia, buddy.

'Y-y-you were right b-b-but I a-a-added boy!!! Take that!!!' Weird how it's KATARA that Azula calls a peasant a lot. Almost like it has meaning and that words don't work like you insist they do, which is why stuff like 'royalty' or 'royal heir' are acknowledged synonymes for 'princess' despite having none of the gender brainrot you're insisting on (Almost like context is extremely important for words, with the context here being that Azula tries to be the perfect princess in the sense of the perfect royalty in opposition to non-royals instead of in opposition to other royals of other sexes).

"Weird how it's KATARA that Azula calls a peasant a lot."

Azula calls Katara a "filthy peasant" during her breakdown in Sozin's Comet. I challenge you to find a second instance of Azula calling Katara (or anyone else) a peasant. Because I don't think there is one.

It's so funny how you're desperate to bury the actual claim you're desperately trying to defend by going 'has to do with gender' when the ACTUAL claim is 'All their arcs are FUNDAMENTALY about gender'.

I clearly understand better than you so you're forced to hide behind bullshit and trying to nudge the ridiculous claim into a form less patently wrong.

Don't worry, I understand your cope of 'That's not what I meant by 'gender'! I meant a bunch of mental gymnastics that didn't exist back in 2005 and thus had 0 chance of being part of the show!', I just find it sad and laughable.

We're gonna pretend she doesn't roast Long Feng for not being royalty or nobility? We're at that level of cope?

Glad you put the text in quotes cause there's no such text in ATLA and it's all purely on your random discourse posts and random fanfics.

You mean actual understanding like I have or your 'understanding' where it's just fanfiction where you think Mai's problem with her parents is they want her to act feminine when we literally see and hear exactly what her problem is and it's completely different?

You can't use the word 'reductive' when defending the claim of 'Every single character is purely about their genitals', man. It does not work.

Suki: a plot device which exists to complicate Sokka's understanding of gender.

Katara: I don't know if or how much the character thought about this herself, and honestly she lacks an arc post Book 1 anyways, but Katara is very much meant as an expression of an ideal vision of femininity from the early 2000s. And her actual character arc, such that it is, cumulates with her challenging Pakku.

Yue: everything about the character is about social norms for upper class NWT women and how she relates to them.

Toph: the entire point of the character is that she's everything a 12 year old elite girl is not supposed to be (particularly a blind one), and that she performs rebellion by transgressing on gender norms and acting like a "tomboy."

Zuko: he failed to perform masculinity correctly (particularly by refusing to fight the Agni Kai), and fundamentally he's trying regain his manhood in the eyes of Ozai (and later Iroh). Honor and especially honor duels are something fundamentally tied up with manhood, and it's not coincidence that one of the first things he does in the series is fighting another Agni Kai.

Azula: Not only is Azula trying to both perform femininity and masculinity at the same time because she must all at once be a son, a daughter, a sister, and a brother, and not only is her behavior deeply influenced by what she understands her duties as a daughter/sister to be, but also the way other characters and the audience react to her is fundamentally gendered.

Ty Lee: she doesn't have an arc, but as a character she is extremely gendered in the eyes of an audience, and her relationships with Azula and Mai are dependent on her gender. Moreover, her experience as an upper class Fire Nation girl is extremely gender dependent, and she appears to deliberately embrace low class, "slutty" femininity as much as possible.

Mai: her entire relationship with her family and Azula is based around her hating performing the gender expectations for elite Fire Nation girls.

Smellerbee: need I say more? Although she is kind of irrelevant.

Suki: What gender complication does she add to Sokka's understanding of gender in the Boiling Rock episode and every other episode afterward? None? Okay. Her serving a point in ONE episode does not make it her whole arc, let alone fundamentally.

Katara: Her being meant as an ideal girl does not make her arc fundamentally about gender, it just mean that's the type of character she is. Having your arc FUNDAMENTALLY about gender does not mean 'You're a certain type of woman', that's a character archetype, not an arc. And no, Katara didn't suddenly become a blank slate after fighting Pakku, she has an arc about each of her missing parents all the way to book 3 FFS.

Yue: We're just gonna ignore she's also a literal resurected chosen one of the moon spirit and her relationship with Sokka is based on finding him funny to be around? Okay.

Toph: It's so her entire point she was planned to be a boy for most of pre-production. Her 'rebellion' wasn't against gender norms, her rebellion was against her parents' obsession with her safety and inability to trust her due to being blind and thus 'helpless'. Toph as a tiny 12 year old boy would have been treated the same and was literally PLANNED that way to begin with. Again, not only not 'fundamental' but entirely irrelevant.

Zuko: No, this headcanon needs to die, Ozai wasn't gonna go 'Well done, son' if Zuko tried to fight him at the Agni Kai, he'd have gotten mad, beat the shit out of him, burned him and banished him. That's why it's abuse, there was no winning the moment Ozai decided Zuko fucked up and needed to be taught a lesson. And no, honor isn't manhood nor are honor duels, you mention Zuko's first Agni Kai while ignoring his last AGAINST A WOMAN, which NOBODY BATS AN EYE about and the lore tell us the Girl's Academy has Agni Kais all the time.

Azula: No, she's not, she's playing the role of the perfect princess and that's it. And no, nobody particularly react to Azula as a girl. And none of that make her arc fundamentally about gender.

Ty Lee: So by your own admission her arc isn't about gender at all, everything else you said is irrelevant and doesn't make her arc fundamentally about gender. Also she does have an arc, it just mostly get resolved offscreen cause she's a tertiary character, her getting over her 'matched set' worries and joining the Kyoshi Warriors is her arc's conclusion.

Mai: Except it's not? At all? For a single second? There's no line saying that in the entire franchise. Her arc is about being mad she can get whatever she wants and DO whatever she wants as long as she stays out of the way. It's about neglect and can (and does) happen the exact same to a boy, not about 'muh gender roles'.

Smellerbee: Yes, you do have to make an argument for your point. A character being mistaken for a boy as a running gag doesn't make it their arc, it make it their running gag. Smellerbee's (very minor) arc is about being a follower of Jet, going from an unthinking yes-woman to someone genuinely supporting Jet in the aftermath of their mistake to someone who now need to make their own way cause their leader died trying to make things right.

And yet everyone you named didn't have their arc fundamentally about gender at all and you could say the exact same stuff you said about the other characters about Aang and Jet (Aang wouldn't even have been raised by Gyatso nor lived in that part of the world if he was a girl and Jet is literally a classic manly man suave Robin Hood leader type, which wouldn't work if he was a woman).

Yes, yes, I won the argument so you have to retreat to nitpicking about the etymology of the word I used while praising all the Gods in the world that I didn't just say 'royalty' or 'royal heir' cause otherwise you'd have nothing left to say.

'Intersectional' Lmao, the title is older than that concept by a few millennia, buddy.

'Y-y-you were right b-b-but I a-a-added boy!!! Take that!!!' Weird how it's KATARA that Azula calls a peasant a lot. Almost like it has meaning and that words don't work like you insist they do, which is why stuff like 'royalty' or 'royal heir' are acknowledged synonymes for 'princess' despite having none of the gender brainrot you're insisting on (Almost like context is extremely important for words, with the context here being that Azula tries to be the perfect princess in the sense of the perfect royalty in opposition to non-royals instead of in opposition to other royals of other sexes).

"Weird how it's KATARA that Azula calls a peasant a lot."

Azula calls Katara a "filthy peasant" during her breakdown in Sozin's Comet. I challenge you to find a second instance of Azula calling Katara (or anyone else) a peasant. Because I don't think there is one.

Zuko = repeatedly rejects redemption, including after his whole "divided soul" internal conflict after freeing Appa in Ba Sing Se, before eventually and finally flipping sides

I completely agree that Azula would not immediately react to Zuko's death by turning on Ozai. Not least of all because the Fire Nation culture / indoctrination (and the royal family version in particular) appears to normalize and justify absolutely horrific behavior by the Fire Lord. Iroh is the only observer who seems to have had any issue with the Ozai-Zuki agni kai. Zuko needed three years away from Ozai to realize that Ozai burning his face was wrong and reflected badly on Ozai rather than on Zuko.

Not only does Zuko's death escalate the potential consequences of "failing" Ozai (already sky high, given that canon Azula watched him permanently disfigure and banish Zuko), without Zuko to fulfill the scapegoat child role, there isn't a golden child role for Azula to inhabit. Even if she continues to perform "perfection" and mirror Ozai the way she's been trained, success isn't possible; Ozai is going to lash out and Azula is now the only available child target.

What is missing to support your reading -- in the show and, as far as I am aware, even in expanded canon like the comics -- is any evidence that Ursa ever expressed positive parental love towards Azula. "Healthy expressions of parental love" doesn't just mean well-intentioned criticism or scolding to correct bad behavior (though healthy parental love obviously and necessarily includes that), it also means affection regardless of behavior and praise for good behavior.

We see Ursa scold Azula and comment negatively on her, but affirmation / affection towards Azula are completely absent from any of Zuko's memories of Ursa interacting with Azula (and his memories are all the information we get). I think the closest we ever get is Ursa ordering Zuko to play with his sister. It's not actually clear from the show that Ursa actually offers "healthy expressions of parental love" to Azula.

In my opinion, it's clear that Faith is above all else set up to fail by her abusive upbringing and traumatic history. Nobody in Sunnydale can possibly be more at fault than Faith's mother, Kakistos, and the Massachusetts DCF.

Of folks in Sunnydale, I'd be inclined to assign something like 90% of the blame to the Council-affiliated adults -- Giles for his abject failures as Faith's "temporary" Watcher, Wesley for trying to have Faith kidnapped and disrupting Angel's attempts to get through to Faith, and Gwendolyn Post for putting Faith at odds with the Scoobies and destroying most of her remaining ability to trust. Giles and Wesley both had a responsibility and an obligation to see to Faith's basic welfare, like housing and food, and appear to have done literally nothing on that front. It's not surprising the Council failed Faith -- they absolutely view and treat Slayers as disposable -- but it remains the biggest factor in her downward spiral.

Although all Potentials of an appropriate age were activated in Chosen, there's no reason that the spell would continue indefinitely, and the "true" Slayer continues through Faith. How do you get a new "one girl in all the world" Slayer to tell a story about? Simple: she's chosen just like every "ordinary" (non-S7E22) Slayer when the prior Slayer dies.

In my experience, Azula fans* who criticize Ozai far more harshly than Azula (i.e., say he's entirely evil and she isn't) are doing so because he an adult rather than a child, and because his on-screen actions and the things he's responsible for ordering are far worse than anything Azula has done or ordered.

The story this is for is set in Book 2 and I can't think of a way to make it believeable

Unless you're really reading between the lines on Season 2, it appears that all of Azula's motivators are vectors pointing in the same direction. Her indoctrination and loyalty to the Fire Nation -> obeying Ozai and succeeding in the tasks he sets for her. Her desire for parental love and approval -> obeying Ozai and succeeding in the tasks he sets for her. Her strained relationship with Zuko, which Ozai encouraged as rivalry / competition between them -> wanting to outdo Zuko at his task (hunting the Avatar) and defeat him. Her competitiveness, perfectionism, and pride -> needing to exceed expectations. All of those things are driving Azula in the same direction of being opposed to Zuko and Aang, wanting to promote the Fire Nation's military goals, and being obedient/loyal to Ozai.

When you start reading between the lines a little more and viewing the events of Season 2 with knowledge of Azula's pitch to Zuko in Crossroads of Destiny, there's a pretty compelling interpretation that Azula is freelancing and deliberately interpreting her orders loosely to pursue an outcome (bringing Zuko home with restored honor / standing) that Ozai doesn't actually desire but will have to go along with. You can read that as Azula feeling safer with Zuko around as a lightning-rod for Ozai's cruelty/abuse and an immediately accessible rival to clown on for Ozai's approval. You can read that as Azula genuinely loving / caring for Zuko. But it shows that maybe Azula is flexible and pragmatic more than simply being slavishly loyal to Ozai.

So the way to "turn" Azula (make her break politically with the FN and with Ozai) is to keep putting pressures on her that make her motivations pull in a different direction instead. Seeing that Ozai is a terrible leader and is bad for the people of the Fire Nation can create tension between Azula's loyalty to him (as Firelord) and her sense of duty to the Fire Nation and its people. Same with exposing the falsehoods of FN propaganda and the justification for the war, and seeing that continuing the war is actually bad for the Fire Nation and others. Getting actual love/affection that isn't contingent on obedience/success can undermine Azula's belief she's fundamentally monstrous/unloveable and will only get love/affection by pleasing Ozai. Non-hostile / zero-sum interactions with Zuko and Iroh can help break down her competitiveness towards him, and thus yet another motivation to succeed in his tasks (defeating Aang) to "beat" him. Pulling her relationship with Mai and Ty Lee back from being their military commander to being their friend (and demonstrating they will spend time with her and support her even without fear) is a counter-balance to only caring about pleasing Ozai and having no value if she doesn't.

Their argument is essentially "You promised us a specific profit margin that is not possible to achieve under this increased public scrutiny of your unethical practices. We only agreed to invest because of those unethical practices. So we demand compensation because you didn't warn us that you'd be behaving more ethically"

this is one of those little details that jumped out and stuck with me since hearing about this.