it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing

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Now that I (technically) have time again, I am doing what I said I would and borrowing makeste's super-excellent meme!

1. My favorite character.
2. ANOTHER favorite character!!
3. My favorite character relationship, and by "relationship" I don't necessarily mean pairing and certainly not OTP, but on the other hand, depending on the fandom MAYBE I DO!
4. The moment/character/THING/WHATEVER that first hooked me on the fandom.
5. One of my favorite moments.
6. A song or track that reminds me of this fandom.
7. One miscellaneous awesome thing about the fandom.
8. One completely random thought I have regarding this fandom.
9. One fic/essay rec, fanart, or fanvid that depending on the fandom I either had lovingly bookmarked or saved onto my hard drive, or only just now found during a two-minute Google search.

Comments

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Mmm, I don't think she would ever be 'nice' in the Aang-and-Katara-and-Zuko sense. I'm not sure she'll ever do something just because it helps people; but she might do it because she needs them to like her. She wouldn't end the war because it was wrong, but I think she would absolutely end it if she thought it was hurting the Fire Nation more than making it great.

I agree with you that she might never be able to understand how other people's brains work, especially since she's used to just finding a spot and pushing till it breaks. But if she can fake feeling the 'right' way, and keep on faking it, I don't know if there's anything really wrong with that. Scary, sure.

(actually my feelings on Azula are just as complicated and difficult to articulate as my feelings on Mai, they're just a bit less close to home)

I don't think being Zuko's age or so would have helped her any, actually. Being Lu Ten's age and going out to serve as an officer in the army might have. —Then again, when they weren't so hard up for soldiers they might have tried to raise her to be more like Ursa, who I'm convinced is nice and motherly and sweet only because she doesn't need to be scary, but her kids don't know that. And I think Azula absolutely hated being pushed into the 'girl' box when she was younger. What does her nice sweet uncle send her wimp of a brother? A knife that says 'never give up'. What does he send her? A fucking doll to play house with. And her mother tells her not to be angry about it (or at least not show that she's angry). She doesn't have a nice badass understanding aunt to bond with; Ozai is the only person of power in her life who tells her it's okay to set shit on fire when you're angry.

So I think that's a lot of why Azula seems to have completely put aside things like 'nice' and 'understanding'. Because back then, to believe in those things would have been letting go of her real self in favor of the nice sweet princess (it seemed like) everyone but her father was trying to make her.

If she was older she might have gotten the chance to talk with someone who understood that being angry and fierce and strong didn't mean throwing away things like compassion and understanding, maybe especially if she'd gotten the chance to go out and fight in the war instead of just tracking down Zuko & Aang.

SO THAT IS MY COUNTER-ARGUMENT, I guess. And I do hope you get the time to read at least 水火, because that is the one fic that kind of totally changed my view of Azula.

[quadruplify]

I'm sorry if I implied that Azula could possibly be "nice" in that way, or that she'd develop what we'd consider good intentions, because I didn't mean to come across that way. I think I was trying to allude more to what you said, about doing what she can to get people to like her and protect the Fire Nation instead of using the more forceful tactics we see her use in the series. You don't have to be "nice" to do what you think is the right thing, but you do have to have some sense of decency and empathy in order to achieve your goals and make your tactics in achieving them work. And I was questioning how capable she is in gaining that sense -- I'm not saying she flat-out can't, but that she might not be able to to the extent that I think you're implying.

But if she can fake feeling the 'right' way, and keep on faking it, I don't know if there's anything really wrong with that.

Because in the end, it doesn't matter if your intentions were pure or not, as long as some "good" was done, right? IDK, on one hand I totally get where you're coming from, but on the other hand I think this can get into some potentially dangerous territory -- it can be twisted into an "ends justify the means" argument, and a what point do the means stop being justifiable? (Of course, part of it too comes from my personal issues with people "faking it," so there's that too. :P)

You're absolutely right about Azula abandoning a lot of the qualities that would've made her a great leader because she saw those things as weaknesses and as qualities that she felt were being imposed on her -- that makes a lot of sense, when you think about it. Especially when she comes to emulate a lot of Ozai's behavior because, as you said, he's the only one in her life who enables her in some way.

Sorry if my thoughts are all over the place, as I haven't been entirely "with it" today. ^_^; A lot of what you said makes sense, but I just don't have as much faith that she would've been able to learn the importance of things like compassion and understanding so that she wouldn't be the "monster" we see in the series, or that the circumstances would've allowed it so that she could learn those things and become much stronger and more powerful (given that the Fire Nation had been subject to propaganda and a Fire Lord-centric personality cult for at least a century, which would make it really difficult, though certainly not impossible).

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I actually thought you might be thinking that I thought that! (Yay for convoluted sentences.) I do think she has some decency, empathy, etc., but she's been choosing not to exercise them for a very, very long time and sort of bypassed that part of her brain; the 'compassionate' pathways of thought are possible, but it would be really hard for her to start using them.

I think she needs to sit down with Mai and Ty Lee and have a big long talk about love, and betrayal, and people's reasons in general for doing things. Because Azula's brain is a scary and complex place, and I don't think she has any experience with connecting other people's reasons and behaviors to her own.

Or something like that. My feelings & thoughts on this are COMPLICATED. I kind of want to say that Azula's not exactly so much 'wrong' or 'a bad person' as she is just different, her brain works on different tracks from those of people like Zuko or Iroh and if she wants to be able to get along in contexts that aren't like the ones of her childhood she's going to have to reroute some of them.

And that is kind of what I mean by 'faking it', because just sitting around and thinking about all that wouldn't magically reconnect those parts of her brain that she's been not using for so long. But following along with the way other people act and thinking why would someone do this? why would I do this? might, and I think she would have to actually go through with something without really feeling it at least once.

On the other side of 'faking it', though, I think if Azula really couldn't make herself feel that stuff then it wouldn't be wrong for her to set some limits and act within them. Even if she doesn't get why it's wrong to tell crying people to shut the hell up, she could get that there is some reason everyone else doesn't.

I actually have some rather strange feelings on people 'faking it'. On the one hand I do think honesty is the most important thing, and on the other hand I have spent many many hours forcing myself to cry quietly instead of shout and rage, because one is more acceptable for girls and also doesn't result in physical violence towards other people. Maybe that doesn't count, I don't know. But I do think Azula could force things to re-route in her head, even if just making 'rage' direct to 'stand very still and not change expression at all'. Damage control is better than no control.

And this kind of leads into my thoughts about Mai, as well, because I think Mai spent a lot of time forcing herself into a little box of 'acceptable'. Or, well, maybe not forcing so much as folding herself up, tucking all the nasty things away inside herself where no one will ever see them. If she used to get very angry or very sad, she doesn't anymore, because she learned how to fake being bored and then she managed to make that real. In some ways she is what Azula was scared of becoming, all the bright fire of her self locked up inside where even she has trouble getting to it most of the time. It's not necessarily a bad thing; it's what I have been unable to do.

At some point tomorrow-ish I will come back to this and talk more about Azula and 'monster'-ness, but right now my brain is kind of not working anymore. I am really enjoying this discussion, though!