#electra complex

Would’ve killed him too if not for fact he knew the world needed the Avatar to fight the battle.

As an expert in Official Freudian Bullshit and someone who prioritizes fairness/accuracy over dunking on zutarians, I say we just cannot take this specific shitty anti-aang/anti-kataang argument and go "NO U" at zutara fans because it'd make as much sense as "Kataang is Oedipus Complex" aka no sense at all.

There is a BIG difference between an OBJECTIVE "My mom is great to me, my dad thinks I'm a living punching bag and is abusive to mom too, so I don't want him anywhere near us" and Oedipus Complex.

Oedipus bullshit requires actual enmeshment/emotional incest (aka a dysnfunctional dynamic that is not necessarily sexual, but can turn into that) between the son and mother, which then either fully creates or merely worsens tensions with the father, who can be anything from just an innocent person caught in a mess to a vile monster that actively contribuites to the mess by being abusive, and thus making the son more codependent with the mother by validating the "Us VS The World" mentality she's teaching him (out of deliberate malice or just poor parenting, doesn't matter).

What Zuko had towards Ursa was a very understandable "you're the parent that is not abusive to me, so I feel safer around you and don't get scared to show/ask for affection that my father denies me and mocks me for wanting" type of closeness. The more "saintly" image he has of her comes from the fact that HE THINKS SHE'S DEAD. He has fond memories of her, but she comes up in 4 episodes out of 61, and only influences his decision making in three scenes. She's not haunting his every thought and choice.

There's a reason why, when confronting Ozai, Zuko lists all the way he sucked as a parent and ruler - but not as a husband, because URSA HAD NOTHING TO DO WHY ZUKO GREW TO DISLIKE HIS DAD!

And lets not act like Zuko hated Ozai from day one. He loved the fucker so much he came back to be his right hand despite believing not only that Ursa was likely murdered, but that Ozai had something to do with it, or at least with the cover up of it. He genuinely believed "my father had every right to disfigure and banish me" for the longest time. He was constantly mad at Azula for being better than him, but not once got mad at Ozai for making this kids compete against each other. He became verbally abusive to Iroh for daring to say "Your father wouldn't change his mind and say he was sorry, he doesn't care about you."

Ozai was, objectively, the villain of Zuko's story, but Zuko was in denial about it. His complex towards Ozai puts the bastard up in a PEDESTAL, not in the role of antagonist he needs to defeat. Zuko loved his mom, but the parent he WORSHIPED, struggled to form a separate identity from, and had a completely unhealthy attachment to was his father - which is why Zuko temporary turns into a clone of Iroh in the Ba Sing Se arc when he thinks there's genuinely no way back to Ozai. He projected all those complexes onto the availiable PATERNAL, not just parental, figure.

Boy is WAAAAAAY more of an Electra (dad is the center of my world) than Oedipus (mom is the center of my world), let's be fucking real - and again, it's not one-to-one because he doesn't hate his mother at all and his father manipulates him through LACK of closeness. Keeping his kids at arm's length, and using the hurt this distance causes to his advantage, is Ozai's whole deal.

Also Zuko is Fire Lord, he has full legal authority to execute Ozai whenever he wants, Aang's opinion, or anyone's opinion really, be damned now that it is purely "Fire Nation business" not "Avatar business". He didn't do it because he came to genuinely accept/believe Aang was right to spare his father - if he didn't, he'd have just demanded to know where Ursa was when speaking to Ozai and said nothing else.

There is no universe in which Zuko EVER tells ANYONE , especially his abuser that he was now aware was indeed abusive, "I believe you can still change and become a better person" if he didn't mean it. That's just not how Zuko works.

Zuko doesn't want Ozai in his life anymore. He also has zero intention of killing him, or doing anything to hurt/control him, that is not 100% necessary. He's a victim drawing a boundary with his abuser to protect himself (and others), not a son with an irrational, potentially undeserved hatred towards his father, rooted in "You were the villain between me and mom/the villain I had to save mom from."

FAIR WARNING: IM NOT LEARNED IN PSYCHOLOGY, PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THESE THEORIES… JUST HEARD ABOUT THE BASICS OF THEM AND WANTED TO SHARE MY IDEAS…

guys, i don’t know if this is crazy to say but i kinda get sigmund freud’s oedipus complex and carl jung’s electra complex… however if you think of it how i do (im not incestuous gangggg here me outtt)

first of all to anyone who doesn’t know these theories:

“Oedipus complex, in psychoanalytic theory, a desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex and a concomitant sense of rivalry with the parent of the same sex; a crucial stage in the normal developmental process.” (source)

”The Electra complex is a psychoanalytic term that describes a girl's sense of competition with her mother for her father's affection. It is comparable to the Oedipus complex in males.” (source)

ok for this, im going to speak about the electra complex since i’m a girl myself but technically it’s literally the opposite of the oedipus complex.

so with these theories in mind and how they correlate with children aged 3-6, in my opinion, thinking about the future and us as adults, and also singling out the sexual attraction part of these theories…

i believe, with our parents (if they are good partners to each other) we see them care for each other, love each other, and support each other through sickness and health. we see our dad hold our mum through everything and be by her side. this type of relationship that we experience secondhand, could possible be something that we look out for in our future partners. essentially we don’t feel jealous of our mums; we just want someone similar. this type of longing and slight envy could be interpreted as jealousy whilst it’s not. whether our future partner is a male or vice versa, we all want that other half that treats us right and if we see that in our dad, we will obviously crave that love.

The Electra Complex suggests that the daughter is competitive against her mother for the possession of her father, basically the feminine version of the Oedipus complex. But myth-wise, Electra doesn't exhibit any non-familial affection for Agamemnon. She simply plotted revenge against her mother because she killed her father, not for any jealousy reason.

However, Myrrha does fall in love with her father, Cinyras, and even lay with him (whether or not this was caused by Aphrodite). There's a passage in Ovid's Metamorphoses that described Myrrha's passion quite similar to the complex:

"Think of the many sacred ties and loved names, you are dragging to the mire: the rival of your mother, will you be the mistress of your father [...]"

you just crack another beer, and pretend that you're still here.

Doing an analysis on Oropo proved to be a messy, disorganised process, not all that different from the actual character's actions themselves.

Every time I have tried doing this, I ended up saying nothing worthwhile and mostly just rumbled for a bit without reaching any meaningful conclusion; but I feel like I've finally found something that's actually important and can help the discussions surrounding the character.

Buckle up cause it's time for me to introduce to you all a little something also known as:

Freud was actually right about literally everything. Look around, you can see more and more how he was right on the internet alone, and it gets worse every year. And I'm tired of people clowning on him and pretending he wasn't.

"Noooo!!1! We don't look for our parents in our partners!!!!!!! Nonsense! What a crank!"

Comrade, you are never happier than when your girlfriend cuddles you, makes you breakfast, cradles you, calls you her sweet little boy/girl/neither/both/inbetween, baby talks you, and you call her mommy. And that doesn't even cover what you do when she fucks you, you little freak.

Same goes for those who call their partner daddy, you are no better off and you're staying down here with me, we are not reaching the Pearly Gates and you are never gonna escape Samsara.

Mommy ASMR is the most popular genre of ASMR and it isn't even close, a shockingly high proportion of gen-z men openly talk about wanting a dommy mommy gf, etc. Calling your partner your parent and treating them like one in normal day to day life or especially in the bedroom has become incredibly normalized.

Also, Oedipus/Electra complex never suggests that you want to actually fuck your parent and kill the other, it suggests that during the phallic stage of psychosexual development (still in early childhood, like 5 years old or so) your libido (which he defined as your drive to live in general, not just reproduce, but because, according to Darwin who we all widely accept, the point of life biologically seems to be reproduction. That's not to say ace people are wrong or something, according to his framework if you just update it to be based on societal conditioning instead of "biological sex" ace people are simply just those who didn't develop the capacity for sexual attraction during the genital stage which is a simply a biological fact of who they are, and a perfectly valid deviation from the "normal person." So if the biological wiring of humans and life in general is a drive towards reproducing alongside living, the two are most likely and are shown to be inextricably linked. Sexuality in those who developed it is simply an extension of your life drive, and so your libido is simply a manifestation of your life drive, not always about fucking specifically) is directed towards trying to get the affection of your favorite parent, and your jealousy of the time your other parent gets with them sometimes incites the child to wish they were dead because kids that age don't usually understand the difference between dying and simply going away for a long time, and in moments of anger, for a child, going away for a long time might be a desire that they have so that they get the favorite parent all to themselves.

Later in life, because the brain's understanding of its own libido now includes sexuality and a proper grasp of the concept of death, people may on rare occasions have nightmares in which they fuck their parent or in which one of their parents dies, and they are distressed about it. This is because the Oedipus wish is simply repressed, and now when the brain draws it back out during sleep, it manifests it in a way that fits within the updated psychosexual framework that includes the drive towards intercourse. And because we are naturally wired to avoid and be disgusted by incest and death, these dreams rightfully cause distress in those who have them.

And it is true that people do have nightmares about this sometimes. And that isn't to say that all dreams about a parent dying have to do with the Oedipus/Electra Complex, just that it can be one explanation.

That's not nearly as crazy as everyone makes it out to be.

So no, Freud did not say you want to actually have sex with your mom and kill your dad, that's a really gross misinterpretation done in bad faith to discredit an otherwise pretty coherent theory within the context of his work, which every person who pushes this idea most certainly has not actually read.

I have, because I'm just that cool and based, and you should too. Freudian theory will be taught in all schools after my glorious rise to world domination, and will be respected as another valid alternative to more modern forms of psychoanalysis. And that's just barely scratching the surface of all the many other things he got right.

Have you ever gone to therapy? Freud invented that shit, regardless of your experience with it, it's helpful to many people, and is fundamentally based on some of his theories.

Also, this quote:

"It may be said that there is no class of ideas which cannot enlisted in the representation of sexual facts and wishes." -Sigmund Freud