Because I'm not very good at thinking about this stuff, and I need to do it more

[esmenet]

Name a character I've written about, and I will tell you three (or five) things that I think are essential to keep in mind when writing that character.

*cough* Characters I may have been thinking about writing are also fine.

Comments

[esmenet]

1. Azula is strong. She's not a rising star, she's a rising sun, burning hot with anger and power. And fear, too, because if someone is better than her then she has failed. (Thanks a bunch, Ozai.) But her goal isn't to win fights; she wants to live, to flourish, to burn bright and strong. She is a great person, who knows that if she wants to stay great she needs to do great things.

2. Like Zuko, she's not very good at understanding other people's rules. Unlike Zuko, she knows what levers to push on people to make them do what she wants, so she's never needed to learn what goes on underneath that. That's why Mai and Ty Lee betrayed her in the end; Azula did what she'd always done, but to Mai and Ty Lee there were more important things than fearing Azula. Pushing people's levers always does something, but if you don't stop to consider that it won't do the same thing every time, you're going to mess up badly at some point.

And she never had to think about it, so she didn't.

3. She is fire, more so than any of the other firebenders we see. She is bright and blazing and hungry for the world; I would love to see her when she's learned how to burn low and quiet as well as leaping and brilliant.

I've always been a little sad that it was Zuko and Aang who learned the Ancient Sekrit Meso-American Firebending Art, because I want to see what Ran and Xiao (Shao?) would have thought of her. If anyone is a child of Agni, a dragons' daughter, then it is Azula.