Zuko-Always-Lies

Black and white pieces are $60 and Color pieces are $85!

One interesting thing about gondola escape in The Boiling Rock Part II is that the scene seems to be almost designed to insulate Azula from moral responsibility for the Warden attempting to have the gondola dropped into the Boiling Lake. Consider:

Azula could have ordered the lines cut at the beginning and saved herself a lot of trouble, but instead she risked her own life (and Ty Lee's) in a risky attempt to apparently capture the escapees alive.

When the Warden orders the lines cut, Azula and Ty Lee are so focused on their fights that they don't notice. It's not until the gondola is stopped and swaying that Ty Lee notices what exactly is going on and points it out to Azula.

Azula's first priority at this point is, quite reasonably, to get herself and Ty Lee to safety.

At this point, Azula and Ty Lee are so far away from the guards (hundreds of yards, although it's impossible to calculate) that it seems extremely unlikely that Azula could communicate an order to stop, even if she wanted to. Frankly, it's a miracle that the guards even understood the Warden's order to cut the line in the first place; I imagine they could only understand it because they knew the Warden so well. Since then, the Gondala has moved even further away from the guards.

The guards literally decided to dump the Gondala in the lake even though Azula was still on it, so it seems questionable how receptive they would be to her orders, such as an order to stop, at least until she can get close and personal enough to personally intimidate them. They're not exactly doing a good job respecting the royal personage.

By the time Azula gets close enough to potentially personally intervene, Mai has "resolved" the situation.

Timestamps I marked because I noticed a couple things:

1:38: I know Fire Nation guards and soldiers are frequently portrayed as anger driven and ineffective but what in the Stormtrooper ass fuck was that aim?

2:48: Azula used a low spin kick whilst firebending as her first move. A move usually associated with Zuko. Well played.

3:06: If we are to assume Ty Lee and Suki are fighting on one half of the gondola, it's kind of odd they animated Azula's flame nearly hitting Ty Lee when Zuko's been busy parting most of her attacks. Unless she was aiming for Suki but... that was a very miscalculated blast. Probably just a minor animation detail added in to keep things tense without focusing on the positioning of the fight. (Or it'd been originally intended to be Zuko's?)

3:23 - 3:28: I like to imagine Zuko and Sokka had a momentary pause here in sheer awe of her planking like that. In those five to six seconds they could've easily driven her off the gondola. Especially with how violently they were trying to drive her back just seconds before.

3:39 - 3:48: Them prioritizing someone below the rank of royalty's orders over the lives of both their possible throne heirs is likely a writing oversight. But, let's be honest, Ozai wouldn't be above allowing for this to happen.

4:07 - 4:36: Zuko and Sokka tenderly holding hands or something for half a minute, for some inexplicable reason.

4:12: Azula's momentary loss of balance.

4:13: Just a good line read for Ty Lee's panic. Oh, and Azula being in disbelief and having to see for herself if it's true.

4:21: Azula's genuine panic.

5:53 - 6:00: I don't know why this part is always so amusing to me. The gondola spits out Suki, Sokka, Zuko, Hakoda and lastly, Chit Sang, who brings the warden out with him... then Hakoda just points back to the gondola and the warden gets thrown back in. The little point always gets me.

6:35 onward: Now for the good stuff. Azula's dialogue is as follows:

"Leave us alone." To the gaurds.

Then directly to Mai: "I never expected this from you. The thing I don't understand is why. Why would you do it? You knew the consequences."

None of this was threatening or aggressive. Her tone and expression are tight, sure, but not hostile. She even softened/faltered for a moment when asking Mai why she did it. She wants to understand. So what if it's treason? She's willing to hear Mai out here.

Mai tells her in response: "I guess you just don't know people as well as you think you do."

Azula remains calm and patient. She's not even offended by nor challenging this claim.

Then, the knife to her heart:

"You miscalculated. I love Zuko more than I fear you."

Here's our competitors:

Going Home Again

The Ember Island Arcade

The Promise, Parts 1/2

Rebound

Smoke & Shadow, Parts 1-3

Ashes of the Academy

That's not a lot (despite the Maiko Breakup Subplot going on for 14 years at this point), so we can discuss them individually and even rank them if we want.

Going Home Again is a solid depiction of Mai, as expected by something made by the actual show creators. It's a very nice showcase of how she starts her relationship with Zuko, capturing her personality and showing us a fun side with the encounter with Jin. It also solidifies her lack of jealousy, something implied by 'The Beach' but easy to miss given how passive a character she usually is. However, I do have one complaint: there's a line of dialogue that says Mai used to throw mud at Zuko as an expression of her crush. That feels stereotypical and out of character for Mai, at least to me, who is at her most expressive in the entire franchise when getting the heebie-jeebies at the sight of Ty Lee jumping into slurry. But it's a minor point.

The Ember Island Arcade barely has any Mai in it, but the depiction is fine. Her snark is a highlight of this thing.

The Promise isn't actually a bad depiction of her. In fact, she might be the best, most in-character player in the entire trilogy. Sadly, she doesn't get a lot to do here. She worries about Zuko when he's looking unhealthy and gets upset when she learns that he's hiding his entire life from her, both perfectly reasonable reactions to how badly Zuko is being written. She solves the security problem with the help of her Kyoshi Warrior friends in what might be the most triumphant moment of the entire trilogy (and yes, I'm including when the stupid war is stupidly averted in the stupid final comic and stupid Aang and Zuko become stupid friends again). Then she leaves when she finds out that Zuko is still being written stupidly (which is very different than being written as stupid) in an excellent display of self-respect. Mai is effectively the only character being written with a brain, so of course she has to barely appear or she might solve all the problems in the first comic.

Rebound is also a pretty good depiction. The plotline with her father is very rushed and feels like there's a piece of the story missing as a result, but it does a good job at capturing how she believes in what Zuko is doing as Fire Lord apart from their romance. It also has Kei Lo falling in love with her after a single date, so there's a clear understanding from the storytellers that Mai is canonically the character with the most rizz in the entire franchise.

Smoke & Shadow, unfortunately, is where things fall apart. Mai is a starring player, so she can't be depicted as in-character or she'll ruin Gene Yang's latest contrived, under-baked plot. I do not buy the irrationality she displays at Tom-Tom's kidnapping, especially compared to her depiction in 'Return to Omashu', and 'Rebound' makes it seem unlikely that she would have any regard for her father. They put another girl in a Mai wig for this comic and forced her to slander the real Mai.

Ashes of the Academy is, despite its under-baked plot, a great depiction of Mai. I admit, I hadn't seen her as a bug-lover before this, as bugs are found outside and so is mud, but she keeps her bugs in a terrarium in this so there's no attempt to claim she's the outdoorsy type. I have my issues with the depiction of Mai's father here (I think, given what Mai said in 'The Beach,' that he's less likely to tell her to befriend Azula and more likely to tell her to keep her head down and not draw attention to herself), but Lil'Mai make sense as an extrapolation from her older self and what we saw in 'Zuko Alone,' and the adult Mai builds on what we depicted in 'Rebound' to show that she believes in the Fire Nation being built by Zuko, and the comic even successfully connects that to her experiences as a kid. I know there's some quibbling about how Mai doesn't bring her knives to school and whether that's in-character, but I can see her wanting so much to be a good teacher that she eschews her knives despite not being comfortable with it. It's not her getting soft, it's her overcompensating for the difficulties she had with the academy.

So here's our ranking:

Ashes of the Academy

Rebound

The Promise, Parts 1/2

Going Home Again

The Ember Island Arcade

Smoke & Shadow, Parts 1-3

My issue with Pakku ultimately comes down to the "because I have a daughter/sister/mother/wife" mentality which is when men only seem to take up feminist ideals when they have a female they care about and more importantly, instances where this mentality only applies to the females they care about.

When we see Katara finally joining Pakku's class it seems like a big deal because here's this new girl, the first girl to learn waterbending in NWT, sweeping the floor with the boys but...uh, she's the only female there.

I get change is slow but they could have shown Pakku maybe extending his changed behavior to people other than Katara and Kanna who he has personal interest in.

In literary analysis and social discourse, labeling someone a "traditionalist" often functions as a softener for sexism. And even if you wanted to avoid labling him sexist, he and his culture were discriminating against women.

Basically.

-If a character refuses to let Black people learn a skill based on "tradition," we call them racist.

-If a character refuses to let women learn a skill based on "tradition," we should call them sexist (or misogynistic).

The fact that he enforces a rule that specifically targets half the population to keep them in a domestic/subordinate role fits the definition of misogyny (prejudice against women) perfectly.

If the traditions you're trying ro conserve are misogynist (which like unequivocally, they are in the NWT) then you're a misogynist 😭😭

Yes. We have zero reason to think Iroh was a good father, and it would be highly unusual within his family for him to be one. Every Fire Nation royal is an awful parent, so there's no reason to think Iroh had any good role models for fathering. If we can judge Iroh's parenting from how a supposedly older and wiser Iroh treated Zuko, we really get the impression that his parenting of Lu Ten was probably highly flawed, to see the least.

Despite this supposed growth, though, he does not appear to have even considered abandoning his family legacy of blatantly favoring one sibling over the other; being honest to Zuko about Ozai's gaslighting or the possibility of Ozai loving Zuko; helping Zuko to unlearn any aspect of his selfish, imperialist upbringing other than that the war should end; or made even a token effort at preventing Zuko from engaging in acts of theft, property destruction, threats of harm, or actual physical violence against innocent people.

An imperialistic, genocidal monarch and general, who could not even keep to his goals (Ba Sing Se siege) after losing the son he willingly taught these values and brought along for the ride. The Siege was not only horrific in general, but it was a waste of resources and time and, more importantly, pointless bloodshed.

If that wasn't bad enough, Iroh was also a passive figure upon returning to the Fire Nation. As far as we are aware, when he sat amongst the Fire Lord, advisors, generals and commanders, he not once objected to their plans. In fact, Zuko, despite his youth, recognizing the merciless bloodshed of their own countrymen as wrong, was far more heroic and wise than Iroh had ever been prior to his banishment or since.

Iroh 'looking away' from the horror of both Fire Nation society and familial abuse is framed by the narrative as a merciful act, suggesting: "Poor Iroh knows it's wrong; look how concerned he is for Zuko." This portrayal is both poor writing and inexcusable on Iroh's part.

Following the banishment, Iroh is shown to be both supportive of the Fire Nation, and too lenient with his now emotionally guarded nephew. I've already made several posts about his passive parenting and how it affected Zuko, so I won't elaborate on it here.

Additionally, though, he is shown to be complicit in and even supportive of the Fire Nation war movement. He has no qualms directing violence against and allowing the false imprisonment of children, multiple times. He still makes light of his involvement in the war a few times: from his casual remark about developing lightning redirection by studying Waterbenders (the very people his nation is oppressing), to him happily claiming to be a "tourist" when faced with Ba Sing Se's territory once more.

And, of course, his passivity and failure to turn the tide of war. He spent more time snoozing and sipping tea than anything else. His neglect of his birthright and duties is downright cowardly, even if we disregard the implications this had for Zuko.