Azula
Forgive me a moment while I go on a rant. (who am I kidding? No one reads my blog.)
But I've been thinking a lot about Azula lately and how canon treats her. Hell, how fandom treats her and talks about her and why, exactly, it just rubs me the wrong way.
I've read maybe one depiction of Azula that addressed her mental illness in a somewhat realistic/respectful way? Everything else either writes her off or just kind of hand waves her issues away and it bothers me.
Putting that aside though, and just looking at Azula in canon there's a very specific issue that rubs me the wrong way when it comes to how Bryke treats Azula as a character- and it's similar to how other stories treat villains. Where they just write them as 'evil and crazy' and don't give a reason beyond 'well they were born as a sociopath/without a soul/they're just a psycho'.
And that's offensive. It is, and I'm not really one to get offended about things but this kind of writing when it comes to legitimate mental illness is very offensive.
Don't get me wrong ATLA is a work of art, and intentional or not the depiction of Azula's trauma and mental breakdown was really well done. It's specific scenes of her as a child in the show and the comics (god I hate the comics, don't even get me started) that just give me the ick becuase it feels like they're retroactively attempting to write her as having ASPD, or Antisocial Personality Disorder which is a very specific disorder.
So for context, I work in Behavioral Health. I worked as a crisis youth peer counselor and I currently work in Advocacy specifically for people in psychiatric institutions. Behavioral health, mental illness, these aren't vague things for me. They're not just 'crazy' there's something specific going on and it can't just be written off as 'well their dad was abusive so now they're crazy'.
What's worse though is that in canon they give us very specific behaviors with Azula that point to a very specific kind of mental illness and trauma.
On the surface level, yes, ASPD could fit her; she's aggressive and manipulative and seemingly lacks all empathy. And if you took her out of context then yeah, that would fit an ASPD diagnosis. But you can't take Azula out of context. Her behaviors are specific to her culture and trauma and background.
We're shown that growing up she was specifically rewarded for using her firebending in destructive ways. Hurting things/people/places, displaying power over others was how she gained her father's love/approval. It was probably the first lesson she ever learned. And given the family dynamic of Ozai exerting power and influence over others, their mother specifically, Azula rightfully identified Ozai as the more powerful parent and the one who's approval she needed to earn. So she did in the only way available to her; hurting people/places/things, hurting her brother. It probably hurt and confused her a great deal that her mother was so horrified by this behavior. Behavior she specifically engaged in because her father had shown her that this was the Correct Way to Be. Zuko was the stupid one who didn't seem to get it.
I won't even get into how harmful it must have been that Ursa showed such obvious preference and affection towards Zuko. And yes that was likely a machination on Ozai's part, but Azula wouldn't have understood that at the time.
Looking at her behavior later shows us a very specific and alarming pattern. Azula hurts her dolls. In extreme and disturbing ways; she cuts their hair off, their heads off, burns them, pulls them apart.
Even later than that we're shown that Azula doesn't like looking at herself in the mirror. She explicitly avoids it at all times, and then during her breakdown when she attacks her own hair...I mean that alone is such a raw, visceral display of her internal world. Her desire for her mother's approval, but deeper than that her desire to be saved.
She doesn't have language for it. She doesn't know how to ask. But Azula is a character who craves connection, who craves safety and belonging but has no context for how to go about it. So she uses fear. She uses the tools her father gave her. Control, possess, dominate.
The Beach episode is such an important episode when it comes to Azula's characterization. We see that she does care. She cares about her friends. She cares about her brother. She cares how she is seen and percieved by others. She cares that her mother didn't love her.
I'm not a therapist so I'm not going to try and diagnose her but from what we see in canon Azula is a character who was a victim of CSA, and I can and do say that with confidence as a victim of CSA. She's also, looking at that Beach episode, probably some flavor of neurodivergent. She struggles to relate to others, and she uses scripts in all her interactions. She plans out everything meticulously, her appearance, her speeches, how people should react. And when people don't react the way she anticipated she crashes out. Hard.
Azula deserved a redemption arc. She deserved a soft landing and room to heal in the narrative. The line that Iroh gives when he's like 'no, she's crazy and she needs to go down' was always so odd to me. Iroh, the character who is so wise and caring and empathetic...is writing off his own neice. She's fourteen. She's destructive and dangerous yes, but she's obviously not okay and Iroh more than anyone should have seen that.
I personally headcanon that Iroh is a very calculating character. He's a pai sho master, he manipulates people a lot. Perhaps for altruistic goals, sure. But I think it's deeper than that. He see's in Zuko a reflection of his own failure to save his son - and further to save his brother Ozai before Ozai was twisted by Azulon. Azula though, Iroh see's himself at his very worst. All his worst mistakes, his worst qualities reflected back at him.
I think people forget a lot that Iroh was Ozai's older brother. He was the heir to the Fire Nation, he was the Conqueror of Ba Sing Se. He was not a good guy. He became a good guy, sure, later. We meet him as a dotty old man, someone who manipulates his nephew out of love and regret. Someone who takes advantage of his circumstances at every single opportunity. He's a deeply flawed man and that makes him so, so interesting at a character. I'm so disappointed we never got more of him and Azula interacting with one another.
tl;dr - I'm probably going to write an Azula redemption. Cause she deserves it. Also; Azulaang deserves more representation as a ship because there is So Much Potential There.
