Zuko dragged Azula out of a mental institution to a situation that was probably very triggering just so he could use her to get information from Ozai and everyone expected for her to end the trip like:

like make it make sense pleasee😭😭 they did her so wrong😭

Because I feel like some of you are Suffering, I come bearing gifts, because @raksha-the-demon and I made a thing.

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the mental illness and trauma leaving Azula's body after the writers made Zuko put her through triggering situations as their idea of giving her a "second chance":

i dont think ill ever be comfortable with how azula is presented to seem older than she actually is

whats ur take on azula bringing zuko back to the fire nation? do u think she was happy to have him back?

i think in a weird conflicted way she was. she clearly never really hated him and always the aggression btwn them was about their father. like she’s the one who offered to let him come back at the end of s2 u know like her father didnt tell her to do that and in the beach she wasn’t mean to him she was actually kind of nice. when their father wasn’t forcing her to choose btwn her own safety and treating zuko well she made the choice to treat him well and do what she thought was best for him. every move she ever made against him was bc she was afraid of what their dad would do to her if she didnt

i see a lot of posts talking abt how azula actually cared abt zuko and tried to look out for him in her own azula-type of way once he was back in the fire nation and all it makes me think of how azula must have felt when zuko left the fire nation again

zuko gets all of your sympathy, IROH gets all your sympathy, and what does azula get? your disrespect.

azula’s biggest crimes: she nearly killed aang and took over ba sing se.

zuko: sent an assassin after aang, almost destroyed kyoshi island, attacked the southern water tribe, and played a major role in aang’s injury.

iroh: nearly burned ba sing se to the ground.

but because azula’s an abused and broken girl, not part of your fetishized zukka or ungodly love for zutara, she gets squat. in fact, y’all continue to perpetuate the idea that she’s a villain, despite the fact that her abuse growing up was just as bad, if not worse than zuko, because while zuko had iroh to guide him to love and redemption once more, she had nothing, and on top of all of that, azula is FOURTEEN. zuko is sixteen, and he gets off scot-free? but iroh gets no backlash for all the shit he’s done, too, and just gets written off as a lovable sage?? azula was abandoned by the only man whose respect she tried so hard to earn. azula was put through more torture than even most fire nation citizens can imagine.

i love how y’all don’t even try to hide your hate of women of color, of women in fandom.

especially this part

im not a huge taylor swift fan personally but wow mad woman is a very azula song 

im not a huge taylor swift fan personally but wow mad woman is a very azula song 

am i the only one who never sees azula fans "excusing" azulas behavior or being abuse apologists yet i constantly see ppl in the azula tag talking abt how theyre so sick of ppl doing those things ...?

"stories need villians"

is such a bullshit excuse for azula not having a redemption arc. azula being the antagonist post-agni kai a year after the war ended was lazy and bad writing. there is no reason the 14 year old abused child soldier with mental health issues should CONTINUE to be a villian in a post-war environment. if anything those things about her should be even more of a reason for her to *have* a redemption arc!? I would have preferred they didnt include azula in the comics at all than see bullshit straitjackets and "mentally ill people do evil things" tropes

i like kuvira a lot, shes one of my fave lok villains, but im forever bitter that even she got a redemption arc before azula

Unpopular opinion: Both Azula and Hama were done dirty because of the writers’ blind spots.

Yes, they did a fantastic job creating the Avatarverse, but they’re still white American dudes, and it shows in the way the clumsy way they handle some things that require more nuance. 

In particular, I want to draw attention to the way the narrative demonizes and pathologizes Hama and Azula.

I’ve repeatedly talked about why demonizing and pathologizing Azula sends ugly messages about women and girls of color, so I’m not going to rehash that here.

Making Hama a deranged old woman who kidnaps Fire Nation civilians out of some twisted notion of revenge is more a reflection of white American fears about violent retribution by BIPOC than on what the vast majority of BIPOC in a similar situation actually did. This anxiety has the insidious effect of justifying keeping BIPOC from attaining collective power.

I’d say more, but I’m tired.

TL;DR: Some of ATLA’s writing is white nonsense, and it shows.

Zuko and Azula have the exact same realization throughout the show: they will never be enough for Ozai no matter what they do. But Zuko has Iroh to make sure he doesn’t internalize that and therefore Zuko learns that that’s on Ozai, not him. Azula has no one to tell her that and therefore internalizes it. It’s her fault that she’s not enough. They both spend the first 2.5 seasons trying to gain their father’s love, but while Zuko learns that his inability to do so is Ozai’s fault, Azula believes it’s her own fault.

i’ve heard a lot of polarizing things about azula as of late and one thing that’s stuck with me over the years, that both informs and is a product of her actions in this series, is that at some point in early childhood, azula was labeled as a bad kid.

in real life, such a mindset towards any child implies:

that this supposed “badness” is an inherent quality, rather than a reflection of the choices that child makes and how they play into the larger context of the environment in which that child is being raised

that that child should be monitored closely and corrected (read: punished) often to mitigate that inherent “badness”

now: azula makes a lot of terrible choices in this series, that both directly and implicitly harm not only the people she fights against, but also the people to whom she wants to be close. ty lee and mai turning on her is expected, a logical consequence of how she’s treated them in the time we’ve seen the three together. we know that, at heart, her behavior and overall demeanor, both before and during her breakdown, is the result of deep-rooted issues born from her upbringing, as well as historical evidence of what harm could befall her, should she be seen as anything less than perfect in her father’s eyes.

but one scene, in one of zuko’s flashbacks, comes to mind: zuko throws rocks at the turtleducks, and ursa immediately chastises him for it before gently correcting him; when azula does the same, or something similar, ursa’s response is: “i don’t know what’s wrong with that child.” this could very well be the latest in a long pattern of such behavior from azula, but ursa’s response implies that she’s given up on her, to a degree that she otherwise wouldn’t want to admit. (similarly, iroh later says about her, to zuko, “she’s crazy and she needs to go down,” which comes across very much the same.)

when i say that azula was let down by every adult in her life, this is what i mean: ozai is terrible and abusive, though the abuse azula faces looks a lot different than what zuko faces; ursa gives up on azula, evidenced by the two very different parenting approaches she takes with her respective children; iroh gives up on azula, refusing to grant to her the same benefit of the doubt that he does to zuko over and over again.

you could make an argument that azula personally exacerbates this perception of her that they have, simply by behaving as antagonistically as she does — but at no point should a child ever have to prove to the adults in their life that they are deserving of love and worthy of being nurtured and cared for. that’s not on them.

it should never have been on azula to prove to ursa that she was deserving of the same love and care granted to zuko. it should never have been on azula to prove to iroh that she was deserving of the same attention and mentorship that guided zuko to a better path.

and what happened instead is very much a tragedy: azula was never able to leave ozai’s orbit, forever measuring herself by his standards. this is a girl that will do whatever her father tells her to do, but it’s disingenuous to suggest that it’s because his ideals align wholly with her own — not when she’s been shown, throughout her life, repeated examples of what could happen to her should she refuse to follow his every word — not when the other adults that might have been able to shield her from him had willingly abandoned her to his mercy.

and so she crashed. her undoing, while a consequence of the way she’s treated her friends and enemies alike, is also symptomatic of the way she herself has been treated by the people who were in a position to help her, but deliberately turned away.

[id: the first image is a post from tumblr user wizardjpeg that reads “you all only hate me because you do not like me and i am mean to you. grow up”. the second image is of princess azula from avatar: the last airbender, shown from the waist up with her hands on her hips, smiling smugly. /end id]

Grey DeLisle and Dante Basco should log off