Grassland Sailor

Kyoshi’s first reaction to Lao Ge’s teachings is disgust. She immediately compares the pursuit of immortality to Jianzhu’s obsession with control. To her, trying to escape death feels unnatural, like believing you’re more important than everyone else. Lao Ge’s response is interesting because he completely reframes what “immortality” even means and makes her question her world view.

He explains aging as entropy: the body slowly falls into disorder. His technique is simply keeping the body “clean, neat, and tidy”, not frozen, just continually repaired by bending.

Then Kyoshi points out what seems like the obvious flaw:

“You’d have to decide what version of yourself you’d be stuck as, forever.”

And Lao Ge basically says: Exactly. That’s why you can’t. Then says:

“Those who grow, live and die. The stagnant pool is immortal, while the clear flowing river dies an uncountable number of deaths.”

He’s arguing that the worst kind of immortality isn’t endless life. It is refusing to change. A stagnant pool never changes. It is “immortal” because nothing about it dies. But it’s also lifeless. A river is constantly losing its old water. It “dies” thousands of times every day, yet it’s alive because it never stops changing.

So Lao Ge’s philosophy isn’t “live forever”. It’s: If you’re going to live forever, you’d better become a different person over and over again.

Ie: Your body stays ordered. Your soul never stays the same.

That’s why I don’t think Kyoshi suddenly wakes up one day and decides, “Actually, immortality sounds great.” I think she eventually realises that longevity doesn’t have to mean clinging to life. It can mean having more time to change not just the world but yourself. It’s more time to learn and more time to fix mistakes. More time to protect people.

Ironically, the Avatar is already someone who experiences this on a cosmic scale. Every Avatar is literally a continuation of the previous one, but none of them are the same person. The Avatar Spirit survives because it is always becoming someone new.

Kyoshi’s longevity almost feels like an extension of that idea. She doesn’t remain the same Avatar for two centuries. She becomes someone else again and again. The Kyoshi who dies at 230 is not the same Kyoshi who met Lao Ge. Which is exactly Lao Ge’s point.

Maybe immortality isn’t about refusing death. Maybe it’s about allowing parts of yourself to die so that the person who continues living is wiser than the one who came before. That’s a philosophy Kyoshi could accept later in life. Not because she feared dying but because she refused to stop growing.

And honestly, I think the fact that she eventually chose to end her life makes sense. Lao Ge was trying to teach her: immortality is only meaningful while you remain like the river.

And the tragedy of Kyoshi is that by the end of her life, she had carried the world’s burdens for so long that she may have felt herself becoming something harder and less human than the girl who first met Lao Ge. Not just hardened, but desensitised, so repeatedly exposed to death and violence that the weight of it stopped effecting her like it once did. She was more…stagnant.

And if that’s true, then choosing to let go wasn’t a rejection of his philosophy but the opposite. It was a recognition that when even death no longer moves you, when it ceases to feel like something sacred, then you risk drifting into a stillness far more dangerous than mortality itself. And stepping away becomes an act of reclaiming the humanity that “immortality” had gradually worn down.

Fym he favored Iroh to inherit the throne so much

That when Ozai asked him that he could take the throne himself and rule better instead of Iroh

Azulon says "in one condition, sacrifice one of your children for speaking such a thing when your brother Iroh is still mourning over his son. So you can feel what it like to lose a child"

Thing is Ozai dgaf about his kids

Hed gladly do it for the throne

Fucked up if you think about how Azulon is for Ozai to be like that

Azulon what is the thought process here

I thought you know your sons

Or maybe hes also doesn't care for his grandchildren at all

Unless they act as heirs

He simply operating on his own whim

Empathy exercise

Horrible non pacifist method

Given to someone who would do it without remorse

Theres something deeply wrong with Azulon too

Im simply fascinated

Im not saying Ozai isnt culpable

And Azulon takes the blame

Azulon is just uncomfortably fascinating

This discussion aint about emding it to "Theyre awful"

Im just curious how he is to Iroh and Ozai back then

And we barely knew how Iroh really was like back then growing up with Ozai

All ive heard was golden child

Sure but ive never seen depiction of him explicitly showing traits hes also indoctrinated

Hes always shown not do different in countenance

Even when he laughed writing a letter that Ba Sing Se should burn by now

Thet never wrote him sounding differently

He sounded more like himself even after Lu Ten died

He sounded like he normalized war and that life rather than openly act hateful. Successful war general, still affectionate of family that all can exist at thr same time.

Im not romanticizing him for that . in fact im also wondering if he had any side of him that matched the hatefulness and indoctrination. But no, we dont have enough flashbacks to know.

He literally sought the dragons whos philosophy is fire isn't meant to harm.got blessed but then still continued causinh atrocities after such a live changing encounter.

Its kind of confusing if he already had a peaceful countenance before Lu Tens death or not

most we know of his past he had a son he loved enough to sacrifice his position in the throne.

And all we know young Ozai was the desperate one. Who showed more negative traits

Desperate enough to do anything and lose anything else for himself

Idk what it is about Iroh

Idk what Azulons like as a father to Iroh

But somehow Iroh turned out as Azulons kid whos very full of contradictions throughout his life being a general in Fire Nation

Losing Lu Ten didn't create empathy out of nowhere.

Conversely however, I do feel that a lot of people - i.e. Azula stans - go out of their way to downplay Ozai's influence on her (which I don't consider Azula's fault, btw) in favour of demonizing Ursa for not being a perfect mother. And I'm under the impression that they generally do so because they feel Azula's more "redeemable" if she's the way she is because of an emotionally neglectful mother, as opposed to a toxic and imperialist culture that she was happy to spread and be a part of. And I don't feel it's a coincidence that many of these people scream, shriek and void their bowels over the comics not immediately having her become a better person - similar to Maiko shippers who complain about the comics not having them immediately get back together in an unnatural manner - claiming it's sexist writing and what have you.

https://www.tumblr.com/frellingstarburst/813877598719442944/lets-be-honest-the-reason-because-some-people?source=share

*eye roll and sigh* Being a fan of both Fire Hazards truly is a curse.

1 - Stans that only care about Zuko and Iroh HATE Ehasz's redemption plan for Azula, mainly because it involves ZUKO being the one fully devoting himself to Azula, forgiving her, loving her, standing up for her, not the other way around. They don't want Azula to be cared for by her brother and then feel grateful, they want her to be his punching bag. In what world would you assume these people are the ones interested in this arc?

2 - People like Ehasz's plan for an Azula redemption because he was one of the main people in the writers room pushing for her character to be given any depth and sympathy, and because him being vocal about it is among the reasons why we ever got Spirit Temple, aka the first piece of Avatar media in YEARS to treat Azula with any respect.

3 - Caring about Zuko's DYNAMIC with Azula is not the same as wanting to use her character to prop him up. It's a story. The whole point of it is to see characters playing off of each other. Wanting to see them be a proper HEALED family is not the same as wanting Azula to completely ignore her own ambitions, goals and needs for the sake of Zuko's. Them learning to co-exist and help each other out is the point.

4 - Azula remaining Zuko's antagonist STILL means he is a central figure in her arc (see Spirit Temple). Again, that's how stories work.

5 - I don't agree with Ehasz's take that a redeemed Azula would be overapologetic towards everyone she hurt, but there is a BIG difference between being overapologetic because you're SORRY and because you've "lost your claws." Zuko was overapologetic to Iroh, he was still very much the same person we knew before, anger, pride and all. Azula can easily get the same treatement.

6 - "Azula being an anti hero is an option" nobody said it wasn't, but if someone says "I'd like this character to get a redemption arc" they don't want it to be half-assed. I like my Fire Siblings codependent and with some edge, and depending on the story some moral greyness, but them GENUINELY feeling sorry and letting go of all self-destructive tendencies (which Azula's manipulative nature very much falls into the category of, it is NOT a thing that "empowers" her, it literally ruined her life) can be interesting too, and those conversations shouldn't be derrailed just because "well, they could just not to do that"

Writers choose whose stories get told, who will be shown in a sympathetic light and who will inevitably be redeemed. This doesn’t even have to do with a character’s inherent characteristics—because it will always be up to the writer what this character chooses.

That’s probably why I’m so against the hate for Azula. We got to see little to nothing about who this character actually is and only who she is in relation to others. Iroh is a good example of writers bias—being a literal fire Nation war lord and likely causing the death of so many Earth Kingdom soldiers and Fire Nation soldiers…and he is represented to the audience as a fully redeemed character, utterly incapable of repeating his past because he realised his mistakes?

I guess I just hate how Azula is never given the same courtesy…Ursa wasn’t negligent because she was going through a hard time, Iroh became a good person so his sins are actually forgotten, and Zuko decided to be good obviously!

While, Ursa’s negligence shouldn’t be forgotten just because she was a victim too, Iroh became a good man but that doesn’t remove the past and Zuko was given up to three years before he even considered changing.

Some people in mental hospitals now are crazy. Some of us are psychotic. Some of us are aggressive. Some of us are a danger to ourselves. Some of us are a danger to others. And we are still humans, who deserve human rights, which we legally do not have.

Wah wdym, Jet survived ok? He faked his death and decided to be fugitives with Azula and travel across Earth Kingdom silk road

Also Jet did Azulas undercut for her

Posted these on my twitter

Nobody gaf there😭

Yall if yall love Jetzula, pls see my vision