Firenation citizen under Ozai's rule

LMAOO unfortunately this fandom sees Azula as a 14 year old grown woman and Zuko as a 16 year old baby

because here’s the thing. i’ve harped before on how fucking dumb it is to take the character whose central line in the og show was “no matter how things may seem to change, never forget who you are” and have them immediately afterwards 1. actually somehow just not leave the country they were banished from, and 2. deliberately and knowingly choose to have their own memories wiped. like ???????!!?

and yeah, that then leaves the question, when it’s revealed in late s3 that she was banished and is possibly still alive: why didn’t she ever come back for her kids? why didn’t she at least seek out zuko, who was also banished and therefore at least theoretically accessible to her? why didn’t she try to intervene when she presumably learned about the agni kai and her son’s disfigurement? and if she never learned of it, how could that be without her either deliberately forgetting she had kids or choosing to actively ignore any opportunity to get information about them?

and my friends, this is where the silliest part of the whole kerfuffle is. because there was ALREADY a built-in, solid, well-explored piece of worldbuilding that could very easily have answered all of those questions in a way that wouldn’t fundamentally violate the basic foundations of her character’s nature. that piece of worldbuilding? the city of ba sing se.

As a writer, this solves so many of your problems. If Ursa ends up in ba sing se (which there’s decent reason for her to do, given that it’s entirely reasonable that she’d be worried about ozai changing his mind and deciding he needs to tie up loose ends, and that the city just repelled iroh, making it about the most secure location she could get) then once she makes it inside the walls she discovers there is no war in ba sing se. suddenly, trying to get information about anything to do with the fire nation, let alone the royal family, becomes extremely difficult and dangerous. she has a plausible reason not to know, or have very little and extremely delayed awareness of what’s happening to her children.

also, the city is fucking massive and packed to the brim with refugees. even with zuko and iroh getting all about the lower and upper ring, it’s completely plausible for her to have even still been there without amnesia and just. never happened to cross paths. big cities are like that. you could see a million people in a day that you’ll never see again and they’ll only be a tiny fraction of all the people there that you’ll never catch a glimpse of. plus, once you’re lucky enough to get in as a refugee, it’s probably not so easy to leave again, especially if you want to have a chance of being able to come back.

if you really want the amnesia plot, the dai li/joo dee worldbuilding is already set up there too! all you have to do is have ursa keep trying to find out about her kids, maybe even discover zuko’s banishment and try to either reach out or leave the city in response, and have the dai li catch her in a sting to crack down on citizens promoting awareness of the war.

badabing, badaboom, ursa gets joo dee’d and now you have an amnesia plotline without ursa deliberately abandoning even the memory of her kids.

open na noor

Aang moves his arm in a circular motion causing water to wrap itself around Ozai's leg and up to his outstretched arm, whipping him around, before slamming him on top of a pillar. Aang flies forward and earthbends Ozai's hands and feet to the ground, trapping him. Helpless, Ozai watches fearfully as Aang hovers over him, his voice echoing with the fury of his predecessors. Aang: [With the voices of all previous Avatars.] Fire Lord Ozai, you and your forefathers have devastated the balance of this world, and now you shall pay the ultimate price! [Aang, under control of his past lives, combines all four elements together for his final attack. At the last second, however, he manages to regain control; he comes out of the Avatar State, lets his attack die out, and floats to the ground, freeing Ozai in the process. He now speaks in his normal voice.] No. I'm not gonna end it like this.

Aang moves his arm in a circular motion causing water to wrap itself around Ozai's leg and up to his outstretched arm, whipping him around, before slamming him on top of a pillar. Aang flies forward and earthbends Ozai's hands and feet to the ground, trapping him. Helpless, Ozai watches fearfully as Aang hovers over him, his voice echoing with the fury of his predecessors. Aang: [With the voices of all previous Avatars.] Fire Lord Ozai, you and your forefathers have devastated the balance of this world, and now you shall pay the ultimate price! [Aang, under control of his past lives, combines all four elements together for his final attack. At the last second, however, he manages to regain control; he comes out of the Avatar State, lets his attack die out, and floats to the ground, freeing Ozai in the process. He now speaks in his normal voice.] No. I'm not gonna end it like this.

azula and zuko's relationship is arguably the richest piece of unfinished character material in avatar. two siblings who spent their entire childhood being weaponized against each other finally having to exist as equals would've hit so hard. have azula confront zuko over how he treated her in the asylum. let zuko acknowledge that he failed her. let iroh admit that he gave up on her too quickly. then have the siblings actually work through their history while investigating the murders of ran and shaw and an attempt on iroh's life. zuko and azula could’ve been the heroes of their own story. that's the kind of avatar movie i want. not another nostalgia tour.

Aang moves his arm in a circular motion causing water to wrap itself around Ozai's leg and up to his outstretched arm, whipping him around, before slamming him on top of a pillar. Aang flies forward and earthbends Ozai's hands and feet to the ground, trapping him. Helpless, Ozai watches fearfully as Aang hovers over him, his voice echoing with the fury of his predecessors. Aang: [With the voices of all previous Avatars.] Fire Lord Ozai, you and your forefathers have devastated the balance of this world, and now you shall pay the ultimate price! [Aang, under control of his past lives, combines all four elements together for his final attack. At the last second, however, he manages to regain control; he comes out of the Avatar State, lets his attack die out, and floats to the ground, freeing Ozai in the process. He now speaks in his normal voice.] No. I'm not gonna end it like this.

now, instead of maintaining a comprehensive, nuanced, and human-maintained encyclopedia by which to check your document, they have switched to an AI that just compares what you’ve written to what other people write in, say, Google Docs, and use the most commonly used iteration.

ever have it change something like “all intents and purposes” to “all intensive purposes” or “should’ve” to “should of”? that’s why!