Our Impavid Heroine

On the surface that seems a weird take to have, seeing as OG Zuko's path to redemption is a see-saw full of regression. One step forward and two steps back. Like, this kid fucking goes through it and his path to redemption is never once in a straight line.

BUT.

I don't think my take was ever that Zuko was a good guy deep down despite what he may or may not have done; I mean you could say that about anybody, really. All of us were innocent babies at one time, including serial killers. My take on OG Zuko in Season One was that he was a kid who was hurt and betrayed and that Iroh wasn't doing much of anything to mitigate that for either Zuko or others.

This is not slander on Iroh, by the way. (Iroh is my favorite character in ATLA, in fact, with Zuko running a very hot second.) Season One Iroh is also deeply, deeply traumatized - this is a man who not only lost his beloved only child but also gave up his crown, who went from embracing war to becoming a pacifist (which is one fuck of a turnaround in a pretty short time). But also, in his mind? By losing his son and giving up his crown he also gave up on the Fire Nation itself, a nation he had once had a chance to help redeem through his own leadership and the eventual leadership of his son.

Pre-show Iroh lets his brother burn his thirteen-year-old nephew while his nephew begs and does nothing but sit and watch. Season 3 Iroh would have never allowed it. He might not have been able to stop it - no guarantee of that - but he wouldn't have been sitting back and doing nothing, and fuck Fire Nation law and culture.

In Season One Iroh is so gentle and loath to do anything to haul Zuko back into line - and possibly lose him, as well - that he lets Zuko get away with a lot. Too much. And everyone pays the price for that.

(I personally have never found much meta/fanwank over Iroh and how his loss and grief impacts himself, Zuko, and the fate of the Fire Nation, but I think that's mostly because the show was watched by kids who were focusing on the kids in the show, and that just continued as the those self-same kids grew up. As someone who first watched the show as an adult with kids, I absolutely took note of how shattered and broken Iroh is in Season One. Iroh's redemption is not all accomplished offscreen. Him lying about the extinction of the dragons and joining the White Lotus is pre-show and offscreen, yes. He's not finished growing, however. His is also a redemption story. It's just a more subtle, adult one.)

I think the real issue with NATLA Zuko is that by condensing the first and second seasons into 15 episodes from the original 40, there's simply no way to keep Zuko's redemption story anything close to what it was in the original. There's no time. The writers of ATLA took their time with Zuko, and they had plenty of time to do it. This is why his redemption is so seemingly out of touch and inconsistent in NATLA. It's not just a matter of comparing minutes of actual running time; it's also how ATLA allowed each new episode (with a few two-parter exceptions) to...well, be something new. We were able to be shown the growth, instead of being told it happened.

ATLA's episode Zuko Alone is such a turning point for Zuko, but also for Iroh. After the two of them reunite (and Iroh is injured) and start to head to Ba Sing Se Iroh takes a much more active role to step up and actually act like Zuko's father instead of his caretaker. It's a marked difference, and it is certainly written that way. Iroh having Zuko serve people tea in Ba Sing Se is ABSOLUTELY meant to teach Zuko what it is to be a leader who serves his people. (And something, might I add, that you probably wouldn't learn cleaning stables by yourself. Just thought I'd point that out.) Iroh knows what he's doing. He's parenting. He's teaching by example. He's showing this boy how much he loves him, even when that boy is being difficult to love. (Note when Iroh stops calling him Prince Zuko and starts calling him Zuko, instead. That's a very deliberately written change.)

Iroh's growth in Season Two and how that impacts Zuko sets up Zuko's self-redemption in Season Three, when Iroh is gone and Zuko has to redeem himself. Iroh telling Zuko that he was never angry, he was just afraid Zuko had lost his way, is not a throwaway line. Iroh has been sitting in that jail cell desperately hoping that he did enough for Zuko, that he didn't let down his son and the Fire Nation yet once again.

Did we get any of that in NATLA? Ah...nope. The writers chose to focus on other things than character development. They were so busy trying to condense the show that they dropped the plot when it came to character development, which is why all of the kid characters have become so one-note. It's not just a Zuko thing. It's all of the main characters, and I do include Iroh in that.

What the writers in NATLA have done is write the show in shorthand. Character development has clearly been left behind, with the assumption that the viewers will fill in the blanks with their own knowledge from the original.

Which is not working out for them as well as they had hoped, I'm guessing.

People being pissed off at Zuko's character development (or lack thereof) in NATLA are also pissed at Iroh's lack of character development. They probably just don't realize it.

That scene stuck with me especially for some reason. I know plenty of arguments happen in the OG, but this argument and how it was written felt different. Like it put each character (especially imo Aang) in a different light from what I was used to. I don’t know how to feel about it.

I also didn’t know how to feel about the scene Zuko decided to blame Iroh for absolutely everything. I guess blame is a big theme this season.

I also just feel weird about the characterization in general (for most of the characters). Maybe hearing (reading) your thoughts will help me figure out why I find it so jarring.

So one of the things I firmly believe in is that the most important thing you can do as a writer is to know who your characters are. You've got to understand them - their past, their present, their trauma, their joy, their motivations, etc. etc. etc.

That doesn't mean that you necessarily write all of it down - I know plenty of things about my characters that have just never made it into my work, because it isn't pertinent to what is going on in the moment. Nevertheless, I know it. And because I know it, they stay in character, regardless of what's happening in the plot.

It also guides me if I am writing someone doing something out of character for them - something that you want your readers to clock as weird or unsettling or strange, but that feels intentional as opposed to sloppy writing. For example: if you have a character that is very well known to be calm but who loses their temper? It can be done! In fact, it can be extremely impactful! However, it must be done in character. That's what makes it believable.

One of the biggest issues I have with any kind of media - be it print or film or what have you - is when characters do something out of character merely to move the plot along. This happens a lot. In fact, it's one of the reasons that I stopped watching anything done by the Russo brothers after the debacle that was Endgame, because I don't think the Russos give one single shit about the characters whatsoever. It's all bang-bang-bang predictable plot to make money. And if some character assassination is happening, just look at those box office numbers!

Now I'm not making any accusations against the creative team behind NATLA. I have no idea what's going on there. But what I do know is that in both Season One and Two they have made certain choices about the characters that are out of character. And it shows.

I'm not saying you can't expand or dig deeper into a character. So far they've done a great job of that with Ozai. He's still the Ozai we love to hate (although much hotter, Daniel Dae Kim YES), just fleshed out and given a bigger role. Nothing he's done so far, however, has taken him away from the original character.

I'll give another example, outside of ATLA. Faramir in Peter Jackson's LOTR movies. There's a scene where he is WILDLY out of character from the books (in the books he helps Sam and Frodo from the very get go, no questions asked) but there were some changes needed to keep the flow of the films moving. Jackson himself talked about this. But what he and Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens as writers were able to do was to make Faramir suspicious and distrustful in order keep the plot going without assassinating Faramir's book character, making it believable while still keeping him one of the purest, kindest characters in the books. It was masterfully done, and it was because Jackson really, really, really loves those books and loves that character, and he was determined to keep Faramir in character despite the changes made.

That did not happen in NATLA. That arguement scene was not written with care; it was written to move the plot forward without accounting for who the characters are and how they might actually respond to a moment of great stress and anger. And that's why it felt off. They weren't responding in character in that moment.

If you are doing an adaptation and are going to change a character from who and what they were in the original then you better think it all the way through. You essentially need to rebuild the character from the ground all the way up. You need to recreate them, even if you are going to keep some of the original character intact. And that is not being done in NATLA.

This is why Mai feels flat and boring and blah as opposed to Mai who keeps herself so ruthlessly contained that she's essentially strangled herself into not caring.

This is why Azula feels like a mean girl as opposed to Azula who is fighting for her very survival in the only way she knows how.

This is why Iroh feels like a bossy worrywart dispensing unwanted advice instead of a man who has literally risen from the ashes of war and destruction, determined to do right by one of his beloved sons, to do right by the next crown prince (and thus the Fire Nation) after his own son died.

This is why Aang feels like a joyless, angry teenager as opposed to a boy who is so desperate to hold on to his lost culture that he can't move forward into the world as it is after 100 years.

And so on.