[cw: joking mentions of death, badly drawn gun in third pic]

concept: death insurance, where they ensure your death by just showing up w a baseball bat on your 70th bday and breaking your spine killing u instantly

Designs for background characters in Pixar’s Soul by Yingzong Xin

An attempt at realistic Azula

decolonization in atla

right well i know nobody cares but i think i figured out why i dislike the avatar comics so much. like i already thought that they justified colonialism a hell of a lot (in direct contrast to the themes of atla itself which makes me CRAZY grrrr) but i was finally able to pin down why, exactly, i think that. in this i’m gonna be focusing specifically on the promise and north and south because i hate both of those with a passion!

i think that the way both north and south and the promise handle the process of decolonization and reckoning with a colonial legacy is inherently flawed. in the promise, zuko withdraws his support of the harmony restoration movement because of the new earth/fire national culture that has been created in yu dao. he thinks it would be wrong to take these people away from livelihoods that they’ve created. he also says that economically, they are better off now than they were 100 years ago. 

so like, that’s already yikes. economic justifications of colonialism are the worst ones. always. also, it doesn’t help that as zuko says that, there’s a panel showing a fire nation man getting his shoes shined by an earth national as katara says “it doesn’t look like that wealth was shared equally” or something of that sentiment.

and i know zuko says one of his other reasons for withdrawing from the harmony restoration movement is because the people don’t want to be given back to earth kingdom rule…but uh…which people, exactly, don’t want to be given back to the earth kingdom? who benefited the most from colonial rule in the colonies themselves? (i’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t the earth nationals.)

so although yu dao is now an incredibly wealthy and prosperous place as a direct result of its colonization, the wealth is not spread equally. also, economic prosperity doesn’t mean that yu dao should remain a colony? nor does it mean that the fire nation government should continue to meddle in its affairs by instituting a coalition government and then creating the united republic of nations? they should’ve just given them complete self autonomy and called it a day! but whatever.

in the promise, the process of decolonization (ie giving earth kingdom land back to the earth kingdom itself and repatriating the fire nation citizens) is kind of equated to a direct impediment of Progress™, particularly economic and social Progress™. this is seen again in north and south, when the northern water tribe tries to establish the oil refinery on southern water tribe land. in north and south, many southern water tribe members (and katara herself) take issue with this northern interference, citing that they are just turning the south into a cheap copy of the north in the name of…you guessed it…Progress™. katara and other members of the southern tribe are seen as extremists for wanting to preserve their heritage after one hundred years of war. the oil refinery and other northern interferences are portrayed as a solely good thing, even though they come at the expense of other important traditions. 

and so therein lies my biggest problem with these two atla comics: they assume that decolonization = anti progress, when it very much does not. this is something that’s seen in the real world, time and time again. like, i’m from hawai’i (not native hawaiian tho, which is an important distinction to make!) and the whole struggle to halt the construction of the thirty meter telescope on mauna kea is a good real life example. mauna kea is sacred land to native hawaiians, and construction of the telescope would completely desecrate the land, both culturally and environmentally. yet for some reason, native hawaiians are portrayed as “backwards” and “anti-science” for not wanting the TMT to be built, which isn’t true at all! but they shouldn’t have to sacrifice what they believe in the name of progress defined by someone else’s metric. 

in the atla comics (and legend of korra), Modern Westernization™ is the default. returning yu dao’s land to the earth kingdom and removing fire nation involvement is seen as anti-progress. refusing to build an oil refinery and trying to preserve important cultural practices and traditions is seen as anti-progress. anything that doesn’t lead to…cómo se dice…complete industrialization and what is essentially capitalism is seen as anti-progress. and this is such a western mindset that it hurts, because that’s not what decolonization is. decolonization is supposed to revive, humanize, and modernize important indigenous and traditional aspects of cultures. decolonization, unlike how it’s portrayed in the promise and in north and south, does not mean that we go backwards. instead, we actively reconstruct our perspectives and stop measuring previously aforementioned Progress™ by a western capitalist mindset! that’s why it’s important, and that’s why these comics fall short, because they had an opportunity to build a world that wasn’t modeled after the patterns of the west…and they just didn’t.

Introducing Kiyi while reducing Azula to a generically villainous charicature of herself was really a b**** move on the writers’ part huh

Can you imagine if Azula showed up in s3 of LOK?

Like... Zuko flies over to Ember Island or somewhere after getting his ass kicked @ the North Pole & we get a shot of him over the shoulder of an indistinct figure saying “Retirement is treating you well... but the world needs its greatest firebender”

and we get the ting and a closeup of golden eyes. Then it zooms out & we see her lounging on her porch with a fruity drink. She says something snarky about Zuko not being able to clean up his own messes. Zuko snarks right back. They smile warmly at each other. Azula insists on finishing her drink.

Idk how the rest of the season would play out but World’s Scariest Grandma Azula interacting with the LoK cast would be extremely entertaining. Cranky old fire sibling banter. Bumi & Kya half-jokingly calling her auntie. Azula dryly (but not maliciously) dragging Tenzin. The Bolin-meets-Toph scene but with Mako somehow becoming more awkward than he already is in s3 out of combined fear and hero worship. Vague, nostalgic allusions to adventures, schemes, and heists of unclear moral & political alignment— but genuine regret when/if the Ba Sing Se coup/occupation, killing Aang, the Agni Kai, etc are mentioned.

Also Azula appreciating Asami’s nonbending combat skills (having had highly skilled nonbender friends and having been a nonbender for an unspecified period of time), approving of Korra’s aggressiveness but advising her on how to win battles without throwing a single punch, sniffing out the latent sapphic tension in three seconds flat and making sly remarks that fly over Korra & Asami’s heads...

Just. Redeemed old lady Azula.

Ok this wikipedia article is pissing me off so much 

I just thought of something: during Azula's mental breakdown in front of the mirror, right before she declares fear the only reliable way, she says this:

"Well, what choice do i have?"

and it just occurred to me how much this line alone rings true for her. All her life she's followed the path her father moulded for her, never once trying to seek out her own destiny nor questioning herself.

No wonder she broke down in the end, unable to see any other destiny than ruling and serving her father.

More than that, I think Azula really had little choice than to become who she was. When Zuko was banished, Azula effectively became Ozai's only child in terms of usefulness to him. She had to take on the responsibility of being Ozai's right hand person alone. And what he wanted in a right hand was unemotional intelligence, capability,  ruthlessness, and above all unquestioning loyalty. She never had the same freedom to explore and make mistakes and grow as Zuko did.

Of course Azula's manipulative side existed even when she was very young, but children change. If only she had parents who cared and were willing to help her grow in a better direction, if only she wasn't born as Ozai's prodigy, Azula's story wouldn't have been so tragic.

omg this line-

i don’t think I’m ever going to get over this line

i read this as potatoes shouldn’t turn into riots at first and thought this was about the Irish Potato Famine