Learn It!

Attack her until she becomes your girlfriend

…

was watching this tiktok earlier today about why the op felt katara and aang were incompatible (here) and it remind me of something.

in the tiktok, op points out that katara suppresses her negative emotions because she has a subconscious desire to emotionally shield aang. she references the waterbending scroll where katara tells aang to shut his air hole and how his reaction (wide eyed and tearful) makes katara immediately remorseful about her words. after that point, she pretty much never gets angry at aang, even in moments where it would be reasonable to do so (i.e. in the desert episode where she is yelled at).

it made me think of the episode where aang "learns" to firebend from jeong jeong, and accidentally burns katara. canonically, katara is decentered from that experience almost immediately, when she has to reassure aang that she's okay. additionally, she doesn't have any residual thoughts about it at any point in the series after that episode. we are meant to empathize with aang in this scene - how apologetic he is and how sad it is that he is being thrown to the ground by sokka. it becomes this penance that aang fans praise him for, and even find it romantic that he refuses to firebend again -- despite the fact that katara doesn't agree.

over the years, i've seen disturbing comments from people including blaming katara for "not getting out of the way" or "using waterbending to block." arguments like this (as well as overemphasis of the context/how aang feels after) always come from a compulsatory need to protect aang from criticism. which is why i find it ironic that aang/ka fans cannot fathom the idea of katara pedestaling aang when they do it in fandom constantly. Compared to when zuko accidentally burns toph, the emphasis was on toph's feelings (the impact) and not the intentions. Aang asks her directly how she feels about zuko joining the gaang, and toph says it'll give her time to get back at him for burning her feet (lol).

i also agree with a point in the tiktok where she describes that it is not nearly emphasized enough that katara is the last SWT waterbender and she did not get to grow up with masters surrounding her in the way that aang did for 12 years. within canon and even within the fandom, aang's experience as the last airbender is meant to be heavily centered to wash away any critiques. If not, you're being insensitive and (for some reason) antis start to conflate irl and assume that you can't possibly be pro-Palestine.

Bro confused about Zutara and canon, I guess! Or, it's just sarcasm for canon?

Talking about Katara's agency and personality wiped in Zutara, when canon don't care about her at all in The Legend of Korra!

Talking about Zuko's fault that he already fixed and he helped her facing her trauma and get over it, like Aang never did something wrong to her (the non-consensual kiss, the way he shouted at her when he frustrated) and never said sorry.

Talking about Zuko was already in love with Mai, when he literally let her get imprisoned because of him and didn't even think to release her after he got the throne.

Talking about how awkward they were when someone else shipped them, while not wondering why people in the show shipped them, it can't be out of nowhere, right?

Talking about chemistry and build-up, when Katara and Aang's dynamic is just like a babysitter and little brother (even Bryke said it themselves) Eww!!!

It's simultaneously the case that Zuko's wariness of Azula is conditioned by years of abuse. And though this can be ultimately traced to their father, it was often delivered via the proxy of his sister. If Azula ought to have received grace as someone too young to see further than the horizons her father set for her, then Zuko is scarcely better positioned to see beyond his own myriad traumas. These are both characters who have been failed by the adults in their lives—and this includes Iroh's at-bottom misogyny when he reduces Azula to a hollow thrall of evil.

Iroh's continuous affection and care for Zuko is, for the bulk of the story, in spite of his commitment to his father's project, and in spite of his relentless pursuit of the Avatar. Iroh is supportive of Zuko throughout all of this, always willing to stay patient and have faith (even tho Zuko himself does not give us much reason to have faith until the second season), and in the scene we all adore, he emphasizes that he was only ever worried that Zuko had lost his way.

Iroh is one of the most strongly characterized figures in the show, in that due to a combination of the lines he's given and Mako's (RIP) delivery of them, we come to see him as a fountain of wisdom.

So then why, when Zuko tries to concede that he should get along with Azula (not something false, mind you, just not feasible at the moment), does Iroh not give the sort of nuanced advice he is so often in the habit of giving? Why does he not say "maybe some day, but not today," or "it is for her to decide, there is nothing more you can do right now to reconcile", etc? Why, in particular, does he call her crazy? Why not just that she has to go down?

Because craziness invokes a psychiatric boundary (one I don't personally agree with), doesn't it? It's not just that Azula is, at that moment, the enemy: it's that she's on the other side of an insurmountable divide, because she's irrational and cannot be reasoned with. She is, in no uncertain terms here, being described as hysterical. Iroh could have used any phrasing here, but the writers had him call her crazy. Zuko's sister who, by dint of never having been exiled, has spent her life drowning in the proximal abuse that Zuko was at least given some breathing room from, is relegated in Iroh's phrasing to insanity. I just think that's brutally uncharitable.

I don't disagree that Azula is an obstacle to her own redemption (tho I'm not fond of this sort of moral calculus—tastes too much like paying off debts), but to say that she's the biggest obstacle... I don't know. She saw Ozai burn almost half of Zuko's face. The depiction of her glee there is something else we could write entire essays about, but my point is that there's a bigger obstacle looming a full head and shoulders over her. He's trained her from birth not to think any other way, in a way that we have to distinguish from the rejection Zuko has repeatedly experienced.

Well, the simple answer is that she is trying to kill them. It is NOT for her to decide, because what happened previously (twice!) was that she pretended she wanted to get along in order to try and harm them, and the second time she actually did seriously harm Iroh. They are way past the point of "letting her decide" here.

As for the use of the word "crazy," I would say it's the kind of casual ableism that ideally should not be there, but to equate it to him saying that Azula is a hysterical woman is wrong. It's more like if I were at the store and someone came in and started shooting, I might say that person was crazy, because a crazy thing just happened to me. And since Azula is the aggressor here, I think it's heavily manipulative to try and police Iroh's rhetoric about someone who just tried to kill him. The theoretical person who shoots up the store probably has a lot going on, but that's not my problem, my first priority is survival. If, like Iroh, I have a child under my care, my other priority is that child.

I don't disagree that Azula is an obstacle to her own redemption (tho I'm not fond of this sort of moral calculus—tastes too much like paying off debts)

I think that's a misrepresentation of what I said, since I said nothing about paying off debts or punishment or forgiveness. She's an obstacle to her own redemption because she simply does not want it and has never, ever, showed any inclination whatsoever towards stopping doing harm, and would have continued to do harm if she had been allowed to. That is what I meant. And if you have a distaste for moral calculus, I'm not sure why you are so happy to engage in it with Iroh. If Iroh is brutally uncharitable about Azula, it's because of what I just said, that Azula has never, ever showed any inclination that she would stop trying to cause harm given the chance, and in fact, at this point in the narrative has taken two opportunities to pretend that she'll stop causing harm and used those to cause greater harm, something we also see Azula do as a child and then later in the series. If Iroh is uncharitable to Azula, it's because of her own actions.

but to say that she's the biggest obstacle... I don't know. She saw Ozai burn almost half of Zuko's face. The depiction of her glee there is something else we could write entire essays about, but my point is that there's a bigger obstacle looming a full head and shoulders over her. He's trained her from birth not to think any other way, in a way that we have to distinguish from the rejection Zuko has repeatedly experienced.

I don't think Ozai's rejection of Zuko makes him especially poised for redemption. In fact, I think Ozai's treatment of Zuko made him, in a lot of ways, the worst version of himself that we see at the beginning of the series, and when he's at his hardest trying to emulate his father and sister's cruelty. Zuko and Azula have different circumstances, sure, and they are different people, but I don't think that Ozai is a bigger obstacle in Azula's theoretical redemption than he was in Zuko's, just in a different way. One of the things that made redemption uniquely difficult for Zuko was that Ozai conditioned him to think that his value hinged on loyalty to Ozai. Azula, by contrast, is allowed into the halls of power by Ozai, which makes her conditioning harder to break in a different way, but she also has more freedom to act within that structure because she's assured of Ozai's approval, which is why she bends his orders frequently, for example. If I wanted to write an Azula redemption, I might start there. But then you have to reckon with the question of whether Azula wants redemption, so we're right back there, because that is what it all comes down to.

A last disclaimer: I made this whole post because I saw someone berating Zuko's characterization in fanon to a degree I thought was really extreme, so I hope I'm not coming off as dismissive of Zuko by comparison here. I'm kinda obsessed with him.

It does come across as dismissive and I think even these attempts to be "less extreme" in defense of Azula come across as victim blaming nonsense. I think the proper way to deal with that sort of rhetoric is exactly the way Iroh does, to shut it down with extreme prejudice.

It also is not true that Iroh is supportive and patient with Zuko when he is acting his worst. Iroh frequently dresses down Zuko, especially in the first season, and in all three seasons is willing to act on his own, even opposed to Zuko, at the North Pole, in the catacombs, and during the Day of Black Sun. But it's also true that Zuko was shown to be a kinder child and more empathetic than Azula. I think it is extremely disingenuous to pretend that Iroh should not make that distinction between them or that the only reason he would is because of misogyny.

I simply wouldn't use crazy in that way; but, more to the point, I have to insist that this is about what the writers chose to have Iroh say about his own niece, who is not a stranger, but his niece, who he knows to have been the target of over a decade of abuse. I'm not in the business of policing language—people will say what they say—but nor am I in the business of ignoring the implications of the writers arranging their world in this way

I didn't say you said anything about paying off debts. My comment was about the concept of "redemption" in general. I was noting that it bears the connotations of this sort of calculus: that redemption entails the existence of a debt one has to repay. What I was saying has less to do with any claim you specifically made, and was more a parenthetical conveying how I feel about "redemption" as a moral concept. I was just saying that it doesn't interest me (what I find so juicy about Zuko's arc is more complex than what I feel "redemption" captures).

I'm not doing any sort of moral calculus with Iroh! I'm just saying that it's telling how this particular sequence of events and the attendant dialogue is written. I'm not putting him on trial.

I'm not going to mirror the language of redemption here for the reasons I mentioned above; what I will say is that Zuko's status as a fallen angel of sorts means that he simply has less to lose (not nothing—he loses plenty!) than the prodigal child.

Insofar as victim-blaming picks out a structural phenomenon wherein someone blames someone else for inviting structural violence onto themselves, it simply doesn't apply to what I'm saying about Iroh.

I would emphasize that even when Iroh is scolding (or ignoring) Zuko, he is doing this from a place of love, and the resolution to each of these conflicts emphasizes that fact.

Just like I think everyone is perfectly aware of what would happen if Iroh were "more charitable" to Azula.

I post into the void reflecting on the fan treatment of Azula vs. Zuko, within which I make a comment on a writing choice in one of Iroh's lines

You raise some objections to what I wrote, quoting terms in ways that I did not mean, and making claims I didn't actually disagree with, which is the sort of thing that just happens in discussions

I try to honestly lay out my reasoning in some more depth and clarify what I meant, while disclaiming my own position as a Zutara-obsessed fic writer

I'm accused of lying and compared to "weirdos online" while being further misunderstood

In an attempt to control the growing sense of upset I have at being misunderstood and maligned, I acknowledge that there's probably nothing I can do to change your mind and try to close off the thread because I would prefer not to escalate

I'm told that this is condescending and disingenuous!

"it's simply true....even though he's saying it about someone in the clutches of an Ur-patriarch." This does not address the fact that Iroh said it about someone who is doing harm on the orders of said Ur-patriarch and happy to do it. It simplifies the context in a way that is flippant and disingenuous.

"The sort of parternalistic superiority that doctors used when they called women hysterical" disingenuous attempt to attribute this to misogyny when what we're talking about is a character who tried to kill people. Most women who were victimized this way by doctors were themselves victims, and not the way Azula is a victim turned villain, either. This is a disingenuous, and frankly offensive, argument from the get go

"Zuko is given the permission to make mistakes and recover from them." Disingenuous and vague comparison, whataboutism

"ossified pearl of evil"

"Iroh's at bottom misogyny when he reduces Azula to a hollow thrall of evil." This is over a joke line that is not meant to be a comment on how Iroh feels about Azula, remember?

"the solution...to extend the same charity to Azula." The obvious implication is that this joke line is supposed to be a reflection of how Iroh sees Azula as an "ossified pearl of evil," because he called her crazy that one time after she repeatedly tried to kill him and Zuko.

There's more, but the "I want this to be true" in response to me in particular does not communicate a tone of a friendly discussion. And if you read my response to you as calling you a liar, it's because of that specific wording, instead of something more neutral and less invalidating, like "I disagree."

"it's simply true….even though he's saying it about someone in the clutches of an Ur-patriarch." This does not address the fact that Iroh said it about someone who is doing harm on the orders of said Ur-patriarch and happy to do it. It simplifies the context in a way that is flippant and disingenuous.

I've argued that I don't think this is good reason for him to say that. So we disagree, which is fine! But that doesn't mean I'm being flippant, when I've taken pains to explain myself, nor that I'm disingenuous, because then you're suggesting that I don't mean what I say. But I've thought about this a lot!

"The sort of parternalistic superiority that doctors used when they called women hysterical" disingenuous attempt to attribute this to misogyny when what we're talking about is a character who tried to kill people. Most women who were victimized this way by doctors were themselves victims, and not the way Azula is a victim turned villain, either. This is a disingenuous, and frankly offensive, argument from the get go

We can disagree here, but I've been saying that the way the writers have positioned Azula is reminiscent of the attribution of hysteria to women. I mean it sincerely, so it cannot be disingenuous, and as a woman who has had these accusations levied against me, I don't see how it's offensive either.

"Zuko is given the permission to make mistakes and recover from them." Disingenuous and vague comparison, whataboutism

I don't know why everything I say is ostensibly disingenuous when it's just me saying what I'm thinking. In this case, I'm just observing something about Zuko, not trying to engage in the sort of deflection that "whataboutism" characterizes

"ossified pearl of evil"

I wrote a phrase, and it's fine if you don't like it, but that doesn't license the accusation that I was being disingenuous or acting in bad faith. I like to write.

"Iroh's at bottom misogyny when he reduces Azula to a hollow thrall of evil." This is over a joke line that is not meant to be a comment on how Iroh feels about Azula, remember?

I'm not sure what the contradiction here is. I took my time to argue how the use of "crazy" is reductive in this way. You can disagree, but that doesn't mean I'm acting in bad faith.

"the solution…to extend the same charity to Azula." The obvious implication is that this joke line is supposed to be a reflection of how Iroh sees Azula as an "ossified pearl of evil," because he called her crazy that one time after she repeatedly tried to kill him and Zuko.

I was here referring to the way people discuss Azula and making my suggestion. I'm confused why my observation that one of Iroh's comments has a certain implication has to be taken to mean he always thinks of her that way. Why does it have to be blown out of proportion like this?

And if you read my response to you as calling you a liar, it's because of that specific wording, instead of something more neutral and less invalidating, like "I disagree."

I'm sorry that wording came off as invalidating, sincerely; I wrote it because I wanted to emphasize that I understand your view, but it clearly didn't come off that way and that's my bad. I read your response as calling me a liar, however, because you explicitly said that you do not believe me.

You then increasingly devolved into blaming me for disagreeing with you, even though, again, you began from a place of not actually wanting to consider another opinion.

I'm genuinely confused where I blamed you. Everything I've written (until the previous post) has been a clarification of my position, and not about you! I was taking great pains not to impute anything to you at all, in fact, and just to try and explain myself. I was responsive to your claims and explained where they matched and where they differed from my own. If anything, I've felt as though I'm not being listened to at all.

used to silence female victims of abuse in the same way that Azula stans often direct blame towards Zuko, Iroh, and Ursa for not allowing Azula to continue to cause harm.

I think the analogy here just doesn't work when Zuko and Iroh aren't women

If you are confused by how we got here, then you probably should not have led with such wording.

This is the same reason why your comparisons to hysteria are offensive. Azula is not an innocent victim, she is a victim who herself has become an abuser and someone who is capable of and has caused great harm. Comparing her to victims of incest and marital rape in order to say that Iroh is being unfair and sexist is victim blaming because it tries to claim that he's discriminating against her in a similar way, when she tried to kill him and Zuko. Iroh is the victim and Azula is the aggressor. Azula is also a victim of Ozai, but she is a victim who went on to victimize others. She is not being discriminated against in the way you are trying to claim by making this comparison. Please do not say you are not trying to make that comparison, because otherwise you would not have brought it up in the first place. And the comparison with Zuko and Iroh is not that they are women, it's that they, like the women you are trying to compare Azula to, are victims of violence being blamed for speaking out against that violence.

You also do not understand how your use of extreme language, like claiming that Iroh views Azula as a "hollow thrall of evil" is reductive? When did Iroh say this about Azula? When did the narrative portray Azula, who we have both agreed is a complex character, as an ossified pearl of evil? Just because she doesn't get a redemption arc?

And "war crime" doesn't cover whether the war was justified or the age or rank of the person involved, unless we're talking about things like generals ordering those of lesser rank to commit war crimes.

I think it's a fairly useless modifier when talking about atla anyway, since it's a legal definition that does not exist in that world, but I gave the exact context up above on what I meant already.

It's simultaneously the case that Zuko's wariness of Azula is conditioned by years of abuse. And though this can be ultimately traced to their father, it was often delivered via the proxy of his sister. If Azula ought to have received grace as someone too young to see further than the horizons her father set for her, then Zuko is scarcely better positioned to see beyond his own myriad traumas. These are both characters who have been failed by the adults in their lives—and this includes Iroh's at-bottom misogyny when he reduces Azula to a hollow thrall of evil.

Iroh's continuous affection and care for Zuko is, for the bulk of the story, in spite of his commitment to his father's project, and in spite of his relentless pursuit of the Avatar. Iroh is supportive of Zuko throughout all of this, always willing to stay patient and have faith (even tho Zuko himself does not give us much reason to have faith until the second season), and in the scene we all adore, he emphasizes that he was only ever worried that Zuko had lost his way.

Iroh is one of the most strongly characterized figures in the show, in that due to a combination of the lines he's given and Mako's (RIP) delivery of them, we come to see him as a fountain of wisdom.

So then why, when Zuko tries to concede that he should get along with Azula (not something false, mind you, just not feasible at the moment), does Iroh not give the sort of nuanced advice he is so often in the habit of giving? Why does he not say "maybe some day, but not today," or "it is for her to decide, there is nothing more you can do right now to reconcile", etc? Why, in particular, does he call her crazy? Why not just that she has to go down?

Because craziness invokes a psychiatric boundary (one I don't personally agree with), doesn't it? It's not just that Azula is, at that moment, the enemy: it's that she's on the other side of an insurmountable divide, because she's irrational and cannot be reasoned with. She is, in no uncertain terms here, being described as hysterical. Iroh could have used any phrasing here, but the writers had him call her crazy. Zuko's sister who, by dint of never having been exiled, has spent her life drowning in the proximal abuse that Zuko was at least given some breathing room from, is relegated in Iroh's phrasing to insanity. I just think that's brutally uncharitable.

I don't disagree that Azula is an obstacle to her own redemption (tho I'm not fond of this sort of moral calculus—tastes too much like paying off debts), but to say that she's the biggest obstacle... I don't know. She saw Ozai burn almost half of Zuko's face. The depiction of her glee there is something else we could write entire essays about, but my point is that there's a bigger obstacle looming a full head and shoulders over her. He's trained her from birth not to think any other way, in a way that we have to distinguish from the rejection Zuko has repeatedly experienced.

Well, the simple answer is that she is trying to kill them. It is NOT for her to decide, because what happened previously (twice!) was that she pretended she wanted to get along in order to try and harm them, and the second time she actually did seriously harm Iroh. They are way past the point of "letting her decide" here.

As for the use of the word "crazy," I would say it's the kind of casual ableism that ideally should not be there, but to equate it to him saying that Azula is a hysterical woman is wrong. It's more like if I were at the store and someone came in and started shooting, I might say that person was crazy, because a crazy thing just happened to me. And since Azula is the aggressor here, I think it's heavily manipulative to try and police Iroh's rhetoric about someone who just tried to kill him. The theoretical person who shoots up the store probably has a lot going on, but that's not my problem, my first priority is survival. If, like Iroh, I have a child under my care, my other priority is that child.

I don't disagree that Azula is an obstacle to her own redemption (tho I'm not fond of this sort of moral calculus—tastes too much like paying off debts)

I think that's a misrepresentation of what I said, since I said nothing about paying off debts or punishment or forgiveness. She's an obstacle to her own redemption because she simply does not want it and has never, ever, showed any inclination whatsoever towards stopping doing harm, and would have continued to do harm if she had been allowed to. That is what I meant. And if you have a distaste for moral calculus, I'm not sure why you are so happy to engage in it with Iroh. If Iroh is brutally uncharitable about Azula, it's because of what I just said, that Azula has never, ever showed any inclination that she would stop trying to cause harm given the chance, and in fact, at this point in the narrative has taken two opportunities to pretend that she'll stop causing harm and used those to cause greater harm, something we also see Azula do as a child and then later in the series. If Iroh is uncharitable to Azula, it's because of her own actions.

but to say that she's the biggest obstacle... I don't know. She saw Ozai burn almost half of Zuko's face. The depiction of her glee there is something else we could write entire essays about, but my point is that there's a bigger obstacle looming a full head and shoulders over her. He's trained her from birth not to think any other way, in a way that we have to distinguish from the rejection Zuko has repeatedly experienced.

I don't think Ozai's rejection of Zuko makes him especially poised for redemption. In fact, I think Ozai's treatment of Zuko made him, in a lot of ways, the worst version of himself that we see at the beginning of the series, and when he's at his hardest trying to emulate his father and sister's cruelty. Zuko and Azula have different circumstances, sure, and they are different people, but I don't think that Ozai is a bigger obstacle in Azula's theoretical redemption than he was in Zuko's, just in a different way. One of the things that made redemption uniquely difficult for Zuko was that Ozai conditioned him to think that his value hinged on loyalty to Ozai. Azula, by contrast, is allowed into the halls of power by Ozai, which makes her conditioning harder to break in a different way, but she also has more freedom to act within that structure because she's assured of Ozai's approval, which is why she bends his orders frequently, for example. If I wanted to write an Azula redemption, I might start there. But then you have to reckon with the question of whether Azula wants redemption, so we're right back there, because that is what it all comes down to.

A last disclaimer: I made this whole post because I saw someone berating Zuko's characterization in fanon to a degree I thought was really extreme, so I hope I'm not coming off as dismissive of Zuko by comparison here. I'm kinda obsessed with him.

It does come across as dismissive and I think even these attempts to be "less extreme" in defense of Azula come across as victim blaming nonsense. I think the proper way to deal with that sort of rhetoric is exactly the way Iroh does, to shut it down with extreme prejudice.

It also is not true that Iroh is supportive and patient with Zuko when he is acting his worst. Iroh frequently dresses down Zuko, especially in the first season, and in all three seasons is willing to act on his own, even opposed to Zuko, at the North Pole, in the catacombs, and during the Day of Black Sun. But it's also true that Zuko was shown to be a kinder child and more empathetic than Azula. I think it is extremely disingenuous to pretend that Iroh should not make that distinction between them or that the only reason he would is because of misogyny.

I simply wouldn't use crazy in that way; but, more to the point, I have to insist that this is about what the writers chose to have Iroh say about his own niece, who is not a stranger, but his niece, who he knows to have been the target of over a decade of abuse. I'm not in the business of policing language—people will say what they say—but nor am I in the business of ignoring the implications of the writers arranging their world in this way

I didn't say you said anything about paying off debts. My comment was about the concept of "redemption" in general. I was noting that it bears the connotations of this sort of calculus: that redemption entails the existence of a debt one has to repay. What I was saying has less to do with any claim you specifically made, and was more a parenthetical conveying how I feel about "redemption" as a moral concept. I was just saying that it doesn't interest me (what I find so juicy about Zuko's arc is more complex than what I feel "redemption" captures).

I'm not doing any sort of moral calculus with Iroh! I'm just saying that it's telling how this particular sequence of events and the attendant dialogue is written. I'm not putting him on trial.

I'm not going to mirror the language of redemption here for the reasons I mentioned above; what I will say is that Zuko's status as a fallen angel of sorts means that he simply has less to lose (not nothing—he loses plenty!) than the prodigal child.

Insofar as victim-blaming picks out a structural phenomenon wherein someone blames someone else for inviting structural violence onto themselves, it simply doesn't apply to what I'm saying about Iroh.

I would emphasize that even when Iroh is scolding (or ignoring) Zuko, he is doing this from a place of love, and the resolution to each of these conflicts emphasizes that fact.

Just like I think everyone is perfectly aware of what would happen if Iroh were "more charitable" to Azula.

I post into the void reflecting on the fan treatment of Azula vs. Zuko, within which I make a comment on a writing choice in one of Iroh's lines

You raise some objections to what I wrote, quoting terms in ways that I did not mean, and making claims I didn't actually disagree with, which is the sort of thing that just happens in discussions

I try to honestly lay out my reasoning in some more depth and clarify what I meant, while disclaiming my own position as a Zutara-obsessed fic writer

I'm accused of lying and compared to "weirdos online" while being further misunderstood

In an attempt to control the growing sense of upset I have at being misunderstood and maligned, I acknowledge that there's probably nothing I can do to change your mind and try to close off the thread because I would prefer not to escalate

I'm told that this is condescending and disingenuous!

"it's simply true....even though he's saying it about someone in the clutches of an Ur-patriarch." This does not address the fact that Iroh said it about someone who is doing harm on the orders of said Ur-patriarch and happy to do it. It simplifies the context in a way that is flippant and disingenuous.

"The sort of parternalistic superiority that doctors used when they called women hysterical" disingenuous attempt to attribute this to misogyny when what we're talking about is a character who tried to kill people. Most women who were victimized this way by doctors were themselves victims, and not the way Azula is a victim turned villain, either. This is a disingenuous, and frankly offensive, argument from the get go

"Zuko is given the permission to make mistakes and recover from them." Disingenuous and vague comparison, whataboutism

"ossified pearl of evil"

"Iroh's at bottom misogyny when he reduces Azula to a hollow thrall of evil." This is over a joke line that is not meant to be a comment on how Iroh feels about Azula, remember?

"the solution...to extend the same charity to Azula." The obvious implication is that this joke line is supposed to be a reflection of how Iroh sees Azula as an "ossified pearl of evil," because he called her crazy that one time after she repeatedly tried to kill him and Zuko.

There's more, but the "I want this to be true" in response to me in particular does not communicate a tone of a friendly discussion. And if you read my response to you as calling you a liar, it's because of that specific wording, instead of something more neutral and less invalidating, like "I disagree."

It's simultaneously the case that Zuko's wariness of Azula is conditioned by years of abuse. And though this can be ultimately traced to their father, it was often delivered via the proxy of his sister. If Azula ought to have received grace as someone too young to see further than the horizons her father set for her, then Zuko is scarcely better positioned to see beyond his own myriad traumas. These are both characters who have been failed by the adults in their lives—and this includes Iroh's at-bottom misogyny when he reduces Azula to a hollow thrall of evil.

Iroh's continuous affection and care for Zuko is, for the bulk of the story, in spite of his commitment to his father's project, and in spite of his relentless pursuit of the Avatar. Iroh is supportive of Zuko throughout all of this, always willing to stay patient and have faith (even tho Zuko himself does not give us much reason to have faith until the second season), and in the scene we all adore, he emphasizes that he was only ever worried that Zuko had lost his way.

Iroh is one of the most strongly characterized figures in the show, in that due to a combination of the lines he's given and Mako's (RIP) delivery of them, we come to see him as a fountain of wisdom.

So then why, when Zuko tries to concede that he should get along with Azula (not something false, mind you, just not feasible at the moment), does Iroh not give the sort of nuanced advice he is so often in the habit of giving? Why does he not say "maybe some day, but not today," or "it is for her to decide, there is nothing more you can do right now to reconcile", etc? Why, in particular, does he call her crazy? Why not just that she has to go down?

Because craziness invokes a psychiatric boundary (one I don't personally agree with), doesn't it? It's not just that Azula is, at that moment, the enemy: it's that she's on the other side of an insurmountable divide, because she's irrational and cannot be reasoned with. She is, in no uncertain terms here, being described as hysterical. Iroh could have used any phrasing here, but the writers had him call her crazy. Zuko's sister who, by dint of never having been exiled, has spent her life drowning in the proximal abuse that Zuko was at least given some breathing room from, is relegated in Iroh's phrasing to insanity. I just think that's brutally uncharitable.

I don't disagree that Azula is an obstacle to her own redemption (tho I'm not fond of this sort of moral calculus—tastes too much like paying off debts), but to say that she's the biggest obstacle... I don't know. She saw Ozai burn almost half of Zuko's face. The depiction of her glee there is something else we could write entire essays about, but my point is that there's a bigger obstacle looming a full head and shoulders over her. He's trained her from birth not to think any other way, in a way that we have to distinguish from the rejection Zuko has repeatedly experienced.

Well, the simple answer is that she is trying to kill them. It is NOT for her to decide, because what happened previously (twice!) was that she pretended she wanted to get along in order to try and harm them, and the second time she actually did seriously harm Iroh. They are way past the point of "letting her decide" here.

As for the use of the word "crazy," I would say it's the kind of casual ableism that ideally should not be there, but to equate it to him saying that Azula is a hysterical woman is wrong. It's more like if I were at the store and someone came in and started shooting, I might say that person was crazy, because a crazy thing just happened to me. And since Azula is the aggressor here, I think it's heavily manipulative to try and police Iroh's rhetoric about someone who just tried to kill him. The theoretical person who shoots up the store probably has a lot going on, but that's not my problem, my first priority is survival. If, like Iroh, I have a child under my care, my other priority is that child.

I don't disagree that Azula is an obstacle to her own redemption (tho I'm not fond of this sort of moral calculus—tastes too much like paying off debts)

I think that's a misrepresentation of what I said, since I said nothing about paying off debts or punishment or forgiveness. She's an obstacle to her own redemption because she simply does not want it and has never, ever, showed any inclination whatsoever towards stopping doing harm, and would have continued to do harm if she had been allowed to. That is what I meant. And if you have a distaste for moral calculus, I'm not sure why you are so happy to engage in it with Iroh. If Iroh is brutally uncharitable about Azula, it's because of what I just said, that Azula has never, ever showed any inclination that she would stop trying to cause harm given the chance, and in fact, at this point in the narrative has taken two opportunities to pretend that she'll stop causing harm and used those to cause greater harm, something we also see Azula do as a child and then later in the series. If Iroh is uncharitable to Azula, it's because of her own actions.

but to say that she's the biggest obstacle... I don't know. She saw Ozai burn almost half of Zuko's face. The depiction of her glee there is something else we could write entire essays about, but my point is that there's a bigger obstacle looming a full head and shoulders over her. He's trained her from birth not to think any other way, in a way that we have to distinguish from the rejection Zuko has repeatedly experienced.

I don't think Ozai's rejection of Zuko makes him especially poised for redemption. In fact, I think Ozai's treatment of Zuko made him, in a lot of ways, the worst version of himself that we see at the beginning of the series, and when he's at his hardest trying to emulate his father and sister's cruelty. Zuko and Azula have different circumstances, sure, and they are different people, but I don't think that Ozai is a bigger obstacle in Azula's theoretical redemption than he was in Zuko's, just in a different way. One of the things that made redemption uniquely difficult for Zuko was that Ozai conditioned him to think that his value hinged on loyalty to Ozai. Azula, by contrast, is allowed into the halls of power by Ozai, which makes her conditioning harder to break in a different way, but she also has more freedom to act within that structure because she's assured of Ozai's approval, which is why she bends his orders frequently, for example. If I wanted to write an Azula redemption, I might start there. But then you have to reckon with the question of whether Azula wants redemption, so we're right back there, because that is what it all comes down to.

A last disclaimer: I made this whole post because I saw someone berating Zuko's characterization in fanon to a degree I thought was really extreme, so I hope I'm not coming off as dismissive of Zuko by comparison here. I'm kinda obsessed with him.

It does come across as dismissive and I think even these attempts to be "less extreme" in defense of Azula come across as victim blaming nonsense. I think the proper way to deal with that sort of rhetoric is exactly the way Iroh does, to shut it down with extreme prejudice.

It also is not true that Iroh is supportive and patient with Zuko when he is acting his worst. Iroh frequently dresses down Zuko, especially in the first season, and in all three seasons is willing to act on his own, even opposed to Zuko, at the North Pole, in the catacombs, and during the Day of Black Sun. But it's also true that Zuko was shown to be a kinder child and more empathetic than Azula. I think it is extremely disingenuous to pretend that Iroh should not make that distinction between them or that the only reason he would is because of misogyny.

I simply wouldn't use crazy in that way; but, more to the point, I have to insist that this is about what the writers chose to have Iroh say about his own niece, who is not a stranger, but his niece, who he knows to have been the target of over a decade of abuse. I'm not in the business of policing language—people will say what they say—but nor am I in the business of ignoring the implications of the writers arranging their world in this way

I didn't say you said anything about paying off debts. My comment was about the concept of "redemption" in general. I was noting that it bears the connotations of this sort of calculus: that redemption entails the existence of a debt one has to repay. What I was saying has less to do with any claim you specifically made, and was more a parenthetical conveying how I feel about "redemption" as a moral concept. I was just saying that it doesn't interest me (what I find so juicy about Zuko's arc is more complex than what I feel "redemption" captures).

I'm not doing any sort of moral calculus with Iroh! I'm just saying that it's telling how this particular sequence of events and the attendant dialogue is written. I'm not putting him on trial.

I'm not going to mirror the language of redemption here for the reasons I mentioned above; what I will say is that Zuko's status as a fallen angel of sorts means that he simply has less to lose (not nothing—he loses plenty!) than the prodigal child.

Insofar as victim-blaming picks out a structural phenomenon wherein someone blames someone else for inviting structural violence onto themselves, it simply doesn't apply to what I'm saying about Iroh.

I would emphasize that even when Iroh is scolding (or ignoring) Zuko, he is doing this from a place of love, and the resolution to each of these conflicts emphasizes that fact.

Just like I think everyone is perfectly aware of what would happen if Iroh were "more charitable" to Azula.

It's simultaneously the case that Zuko's wariness of Azula is conditioned by years of abuse. And though this can be ultimately traced to their father, it was often delivered via the proxy of his sister. If Azula ought to have received grace as someone too young to see further than the horizons her father set for her, then Zuko is scarcely better positioned to see beyond his own myriad traumas. These are both characters who have been failed by the adults in their lives—and this includes Iroh's at-bottom misogyny when he reduces Azula to a hollow thrall of evil.

Iroh's continuous affection and care for Zuko is, for the bulk of the story, in spite of his commitment to his father's project, and in spite of his relentless pursuit of the Avatar. Iroh is supportive of Zuko throughout all of this, always willing to stay patient and have faith (even tho Zuko himself does not give us much reason to have faith until the second season), and in the scene we all adore, he emphasizes that he was only ever worried that Zuko had lost his way.

Iroh is one of the most strongly characterized figures in the show, in that due to a combination of the lines he's given and Mako's (RIP) delivery of them, we come to see him as a fountain of wisdom.

So then why, when Zuko tries to concede that he should get along with Azula (not something false, mind you, just not feasible at the moment), does Iroh not give the sort of nuanced advice he is so often in the habit of giving? Why does he not say "maybe some day, but not today," or "it is for her to decide, there is nothing more you can do right now to reconcile", etc? Why, in particular, does he call her crazy? Why not just that she has to go down?

Because craziness invokes a psychiatric boundary (one I don't personally agree with), doesn't it? It's not just that Azula is, at that moment, the enemy: it's that she's on the other side of an insurmountable divide, because she's irrational and cannot be reasoned with. She is, in no uncertain terms here, being described as hysterical. Iroh could have used any phrasing here, but the writers had him call her crazy. Zuko's sister who, by dint of never having been exiled, has spent her life drowning in the proximal abuse that Zuko was at least given some breathing room from, is relegated in Iroh's phrasing to insanity. I just think that's brutally uncharitable.

I don't disagree that Azula is an obstacle to her own redemption (tho I'm not fond of this sort of moral calculus—tastes too much like paying off debts), but to say that she's the biggest obstacle... I don't know. She saw Ozai burn almost half of Zuko's face. The depiction of her glee there is something else we could write entire essays about, but my point is that there's a bigger obstacle looming a full head and shoulders over her. He's trained her from birth not to think any other way, in a way that we have to distinguish from the rejection Zuko has repeatedly experienced.

Well, the simple answer is that she is trying to kill them. It is NOT for her to decide, because what happened previously (twice!) was that she pretended she wanted to get along in order to try and harm them, and the second time she actually did seriously harm Iroh. They are way past the point of "letting her decide" here.

As for the use of the word "crazy," I would say it's the kind of casual ableism that ideally should not be there, but to equate it to him saying that Azula is a hysterical woman is wrong. It's more like if I were at the store and someone came in and started shooting, I might say that person was crazy, because a crazy thing just happened to me. And since Azula is the aggressor here, I think it's heavily manipulative to try and police Iroh's rhetoric about someone who just tried to kill him. The theoretical person who shoots up the store probably has a lot going on, but that's not my problem, my first priority is survival. If, like Iroh, I have a child under my care, my other priority is that child.

I don't disagree that Azula is an obstacle to her own redemption (tho I'm not fond of this sort of moral calculus—tastes too much like paying off debts)

I think that's a misrepresentation of what I said, since I said nothing about paying off debts or punishment or forgiveness. She's an obstacle to her own redemption because she simply does not want it and has never, ever, showed any inclination whatsoever towards stopping doing harm, and would have continued to do harm if she had been allowed to. That is what I meant. And if you have a distaste for moral calculus, I'm not sure why you are so happy to engage in it with Iroh. If Iroh is brutally uncharitable about Azula, it's because of what I just said, that Azula has never, ever showed any inclination that she would stop trying to cause harm given the chance, and in fact, at this point in the narrative has taken two opportunities to pretend that she'll stop causing harm and used those to cause greater harm, something we also see Azula do as a child and then later in the series. If Iroh is uncharitable to Azula, it's because of her own actions.

but to say that she's the biggest obstacle... I don't know. She saw Ozai burn almost half of Zuko's face. The depiction of her glee there is something else we could write entire essays about, but my point is that there's a bigger obstacle looming a full head and shoulders over her. He's trained her from birth not to think any other way, in a way that we have to distinguish from the rejection Zuko has repeatedly experienced.

I don't think Ozai's rejection of Zuko makes him especially poised for redemption. In fact, I think Ozai's treatment of Zuko made him, in a lot of ways, the worst version of himself that we see at the beginning of the series, and when he's at his hardest trying to emulate his father and sister's cruelty. Zuko and Azula have different circumstances, sure, and they are different people, but I don't think that Ozai is a bigger obstacle in Azula's theoretical redemption than he was in Zuko's, just in a different way. One of the things that made redemption uniquely difficult for Zuko was that Ozai conditioned him to think that his value hinged on loyalty to Ozai. Azula, by contrast, is allowed into the halls of power by Ozai, which makes her conditioning harder to break in a different way, but she also has more freedom to act within that structure because she's assured of Ozai's approval, which is why she bends his orders frequently, for example. If I wanted to write an Azula redemption, I might start there. But then you have to reckon with the question of whether Azula wants redemption, so we're right back there, because that is what it all comes down to.

A last disclaimer: I made this whole post because I saw someone berating Zuko's characterization in fanon to a degree I thought was really extreme, so I hope I'm not coming off as dismissive of Zuko by comparison here. I'm kinda obsessed with him.

It does come across as dismissive and I think even these attempts to be "less extreme" in defense of Azula come across as victim blaming nonsense. I think the proper way to deal with that sort of rhetoric is exactly the way Iroh does, to shut it down with extreme prejudice.

It also is not true that Iroh is supportive and patient with Zuko when he is acting his worst. Iroh frequently dresses down Zuko, especially in the first season, and in all three seasons is willing to act on his own, even opposed to Zuko, at the North Pole, in the catacombs, and during the Day of Black Sun. But it's also true that Zuko was shown to be a kinder child and more empathetic than Azula. I think it is extremely disingenuous to pretend that Iroh should not make that distinction between them or that the only reason he would is because of misogyny.

So then why, when Zuko tries to concede that he should get along with Azula (not something false, mind you, just not feasible at the moment), does Iroh not give the sort of nuanced advice he is so often in the habit of giving?

The thing about what Zuko says that I don't think gets mentioned enough is the way it echoes what Azula says in the flashback to her mother when she is trying to manipulate Zuko, and she successfully manipulates her mother using the same rhetoric of "we're brother and sister so we should get along" to get around Zuko's wariness of her.

The thing is, I'm not sure that it IS feasible for them to get along. Perhaps it might be some day, but I think it's dangerous for an abuse victim to hold onto that hope. This is why many abuse victims choose to cut off those relationships instead of trying to rehabilitate them, and that's a big reason also why I think Iroh does not try to open things up for a "maybe some day."

It's simultaneously the case that Zuko's wariness of Azula is conditioned by years of abuse. And though this can be ultimately traced to their father, it was often delivered via the proxy of his sister. If Azula ought to have received grace as someone too young to see further than the horizons her father set for her, then Zuko is scarcely better positioned to see beyond his own myriad traumas. These are both characters who have been failed by the adults in their lives—and this includes Iroh's at-bottom misogyny when he reduces Azula to a hollow thrall of evil.

Iroh's continuous affection and care for Zuko is, for the bulk of the story, in spite of his commitment to his father's project, and in spite of his relentless pursuit of the Avatar. Iroh is supportive of Zuko throughout all of this, always willing to stay patient and have faith (even tho Zuko himself does not give us much reason to have faith until the second season), and in the scene we all adore, he emphasizes that he was only ever worried that Zuko had lost his way.

Iroh is one of the most strongly characterized figures in the show, in that due to a combination of the lines he's given and Mako's (RIP) delivery of them, we come to see him as a fountain of wisdom.

So then why, when Zuko tries to concede that he should get along with Azula (not something false, mind you, just not feasible at the moment), does Iroh not give the sort of nuanced advice he is so often in the habit of giving? Why does he not say "maybe some day, but not today," or "it is for her to decide, there is nothing more you can do right now to reconcile", etc? Why, in particular, does he call her crazy? Why not just that she has to go down?

Because craziness invokes a psychiatric boundary (one I don't personally agree with), doesn't it? It's not just that Azula is, at that moment, the enemy: it's that she's on the other side of an insurmountable divide, because she's irrational and cannot be reasoned with. She is, in no uncertain terms here, being described as hysterical. Iroh could have used any phrasing here, but the writers had him call her crazy. Zuko's sister who, by dint of never having been exiled, has spent her life drowning in the proximal abuse that Zuko was at least given some breathing room from, is relegated in Iroh's phrasing to insanity. I just think that's brutally uncharitable.

I don't disagree that Azula is an obstacle to her own redemption (tho I'm not fond of this sort of moral calculus—tastes too much like paying off debts), but to say that she's the biggest obstacle... I don't know. She saw Ozai burn almost half of Zuko's face. The depiction of her glee there is something else we could write entire essays about, but my point is that there's a bigger obstacle looming a full head and shoulders over her. He's trained her from birth not to think any other way, in a way that we have to distinguish from the rejection Zuko has repeatedly experienced.

Well, the simple answer is that she is trying to kill them. It is NOT for her to decide, because what happened previously (twice!) was that she pretended she wanted to get along in order to try and harm them, and the second time she actually did seriously harm Iroh. They are way past the point of "letting her decide" here.

As for the use of the word "crazy," I would say it's the kind of casual ableism that ideally should not be there, but to equate it to him saying that Azula is a hysterical woman is wrong. It's more like if I were at the store and someone came in and started shooting, I might say that person was crazy, because a crazy thing just happened to me. And since Azula is the aggressor here, I think it's heavily manipulative to try and police Iroh's rhetoric about someone who just tried to kill him. The theoretical person who shoots up the store probably has a lot going on, but that's not my problem, my first priority is survival. If, like Iroh, I have a child under my care, my other priority is that child.

I don't disagree that Azula is an obstacle to her own redemption (tho I'm not fond of this sort of moral calculus—tastes too much like paying off debts)

I think that's a misrepresentation of what I said, since I said nothing about paying off debts or punishment or forgiveness. She's an obstacle to her own redemption because she simply does not want it and has never, ever, showed any inclination whatsoever towards stopping doing harm, and would have continued to do harm if she had been allowed to. That is what I meant. And if you have a distaste for moral calculus, I'm not sure why you are so happy to engage in it with Iroh. If Iroh is brutally uncharitable about Azula, it's because of what I just said, that Azula has never, ever showed any inclination that she would stop trying to cause harm given the chance, and in fact, at this point in the narrative has taken two opportunities to pretend that she'll stop causing harm and used those to cause greater harm, something we also see Azula do as a child and then later in the series. If Iroh is uncharitable to Azula, it's because of her own actions.

but to say that she's the biggest obstacle... I don't know. She saw Ozai burn almost half of Zuko's face. The depiction of her glee there is something else we could write entire essays about, but my point is that there's a bigger obstacle looming a full head and shoulders over her. He's trained her from birth not to think any other way, in a way that we have to distinguish from the rejection Zuko has repeatedly experienced.

I don't think Ozai's rejection of Zuko makes him especially poised for redemption. In fact, I think Ozai's treatment of Zuko made him, in a lot of ways, the worst version of himself that we see at the beginning of the series, and when he's at his hardest trying to emulate his father and sister's cruelty. Zuko and Azula have different circumstances, sure, and they are different people, but I don't think that Ozai is a bigger obstacle in Azula's theoretical redemption than he was in Zuko's, just in a different way. One of the things that made redemption uniquely difficult for Zuko was that Ozai conditioned him to think that his value hinged on loyalty to Ozai. Azula, by contrast, is allowed into the halls of power by Ozai, which makes her conditioning harder to break in a different way, but she also has more freedom to act within that structure because she's assured of Ozai's approval, which is why she bends his orders frequently, for example. If I wanted to write an Azula redemption, I might start there. But then you have to reckon with the question of whether Azula wants redemption, so we're right back there, because that is what it all comes down to.

A last disclaimer: I made this whole post because I saw someone berating Zuko's characterization in fanon to a degree I thought was really extreme, so I hope I'm not coming off as dismissive of Zuko by comparison here. I'm kinda obsessed with him.

It does come across as dismissive and I think even these attempts to be "less extreme" in defense of Azula come across as victim blaming nonsense. I think the proper way to deal with that sort of rhetoric is exactly the way Iroh does, to shut it down with extreme prejudice.

It also is not true that Iroh is supportive and patient with Zuko when he is acting his worst. Iroh frequently dresses down Zuko, especially in the first season, and in all three seasons is willing to act on his own, even opposed to Zuko, at the North Pole, in the catacombs, and during the Day of Black Sun. But it's also true that Zuko was shown to be a kinder child and more empathetic than Azula. I think it is extremely disingenuous to pretend that Iroh should not make that distinction between them or that the only reason he would is because of misogyny.

It's simultaneously the case that Zuko's wariness of Azula is conditioned by years of abuse. And though this can be ultimately traced to their father, it was often delivered via the proxy of his sister. If Azula ought to have received grace as someone too young to see further than the horizons her father set for her, then Zuko is scarcely better positioned to see beyond his own myriad traumas. These are both characters who have been failed by the adults in their lives—and this includes Iroh's at-bottom misogyny when he reduces Azula to a hollow thrall of evil.

This person is claiming that it's weird of us to use pictures of Dallas and Kiawentiio in interviews for our fan art because "they hate Zutara."

But before I could even type a snarky comment, someone got to it first.

This ZK corrected them and said that the actors don't actually hate Zutara.

This person didn't address the fact that they were wrong and spreading misinformation and doubled down that we are still weird to them.

I decided to step in and reply with this.

Their response is that this is just "their opinion" and we don't have to listen. They're right that we don't HAVE to listen to this random.

What my issue is is that they're back tracking and trying to claim this as an "opinion." It's not. It's quite literally a demand. You're demanding we stop our "weird behavior". That's not how that works bud.

The person called them out for spreading misinformation again.

I called them out for trying to frame their obvious demand as just an opinion.

This person responded by saying "oh shit really?" I'm sorry, did the ZK not initially tell you that the actors don't hate Zutara???

But this is the real kicker!

Bro I wouldn't have found that stupid post if you didn't decide to put it IN THE MAIN TAG!