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Just kick me out of my first real fandom now
[Vague Avatar: The Last Airbender spoilers are vague, but possibly not vague enough]
My love of women with disabilities being awesome and interdependent together is officially out of the realm of all that is good and holy. Because, Internet, I have seen Avatar: The Last Airbender, and I want the impossible: something post-canon in which Toph and Azula have a scam-tastic
After 24 hours of thinking, I could see this working if and only if all these conditions (and those I haven't thought of) are met:
1) They're both under MAJOR threat from (probably) the same ableist asshat(s)--like someone/a group of someones who will bring them back to where they can be looked after 24/7. Which would mean that Zuko is a jerkass and the fangirls will cry Toph's parents have learned nothing. They're clueless, but not that clueless.
2) Azula doesn't/can't just fix #1 by killing it (and Toph) with fire.
3) Each of them has skills the other doesn't, which are necessary for dealing with #1.
4) Each of them realizes (and admits) the other has skills that she doesn't and that those skills are necessary for dealing with #1 in a "Without them I am screwed" sort of way.
5) Both of them can put aside their do-it-myselfness long enough to do #4 at all, let alone think of team-uppery. (Toph has a hard enough time doing that with people who haven't tried to kill her for two seasons).
6) They would need to see each other as equals. And Azula...well, no.
7) Before 3-6 can happen, they would need lots of time to ignore each other/do horrible things to each other/ try to sell each other out to #1.
8) It doesn't end up looking like a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
9) It has a plot.
Which is, of course, beyond ridiculous. (Doing blasphemous things to canon? I've never done that.) And yet, I will probably definitely keep thinking about this because I want it WITH ALL MY HEART. Sigh.
If it's okay to intrude
I have actually been having vague thoughts about the disparity between how incredibly good Azula is at manipulating people when it comes to power, fear, or a specific thing she knows they want, and how incredibly bad at it she is when those aren't in the picture, and why it's the wedge between the two that eventually tips her into mental illness.
Because in some ways, she's too socially inept to be a good sociopath! *g* I mean, true sociopaths can seem utterly charming and adorable and have everyone convinced that they're the real woobie -- Azula never looks like anything other than what she is, and she never really bothers to try to seem like a nice person.
(Whether there's a smidge of neuroatypical stuff in the mix to begin with, or whether it's purely that growing up in that family means you get really fucked-up socialization -- and she never has the mitigating bond with Ursa and Iroh that Zuko gets -- I don't know.)
But she thinks she's a "people person." She thinks that power/fear/goal manipulation is all there is to it.
And that's why Mai's betrayal (and Ty Lee's) starts things cracking, because apparently there's this whole other emotional factor that's turned out to be hugely important and that she can't understand or predict or cope with.
And once she knows that's there -- anyone could betray you. Anyone could be plotting, anyone could be motivated by things you can't understand or control. So everyone/everything is a danger to her.
And that paranoia's already kicking in when her father starts changing the rules on her, too ("You can't treat me like Zuko!"), and okay, he's giving with one hand, but taking away with the other, and she has to be perfect and she can feel herself slipping --
And then Katara defeats her and that cannot happen, that cannot have happened, somehow she's ended up in the wrong reality and all she can do is scream and scream as if she can somehow tear herself out of this world into the reality she's supposed to have.
Ahem. Not that I am bringing my recentish experiences with mental illness to this or anything. *coughs*
But that final scene with her chained to the grate hurt to watch.
Re: If it's okay to intrude
she's too socially inept to be a good sociopath
Yes, she really, really isn’t a Talented Mr (or Ms) Ripley, is she. Although I think a lot of this might come from the fact that she’s royalty, as well: I mean, it’s ok to abase yourself when you’re in a specific disguise on a specific mission bringing down a city ... but when you’re just trying to conquer a party because conquering is what you do, there’s not nearly enough reason to even try to lower yourself to anyone’s level.
Incidentally, I’ve always seen the whole going incognito thing as a competition in itself – she knows, of course, that Zuko managed it in the Earth Kingdom without the help of face paint, and she wants to prove she’s no less capable.
(Whether there's a smidge of neuroatypical stuff in the mix to begin with, or whether it's purely that growing up in that family means you get really fucked-up socialization -- and she never has the mitigating bond with Ursa and Iroh that Zuko gets -- I don't know.)
To be honest, I think they left it deliberately open to question? Well, at least, I’m willing to give the Avatar writers a lot of credit in general, and I don’t have the problems with Azula’s final breakdown that some do (in terms of seeing it as a woman cracking up when given power – which, no, almost the opposite?). I mean, she’s obviously already very much damaged at age seven or so in Zuko’s flashback episode, but as I say above I’m very very far from having the knowledge to say whether that means neuroatypicality of whatever sort from the outset or just, as you say, the Fire Nation Royal brand of socialization.
this whole other emotional factor that's turned out to be hugely important and that she can't understand or predict or cope with.
Absolutely. I mean, Azula understands power and fear. Not love. I wonder, indeed, if she set out to understand these things in part because, as a small child, she realised that her mother feared her. And that this gave her power.
And, of course, with Ursa, and later Zuko and Iroh (who would surely both have been moderating influences of a sort, although Iroh seems to have had entirely the wrong idea about his little niece – I mean, a doll? Really?) out of the picture ... yeah. Just straight flat out for perfection through power and fear and dominance.
But that final scene with her chained to the grate hurt to watch.
It’s actually right up there as one of my most disturbing TV-watching experiences. And, I mean, that’s probably largely a matter of context, because I watch all manner of horrifying stuff, but I didn’t expect a kid’s show to hit this hard. Plus, of course the animation and voice acting were both absolutely first rate at the end there. But I can't even begin to imagine how that scene would read with a personal experience of mental illness in the background. As you say, painful.
And, yes, I think the arc you’ve mapped out makes complete sense and that the show did a pretty great job with it, rushed and scattered as it was in parts. Just such a fascinating character.
Not an intrusion at all!
But she thinks she's a "people person." She thinks that power/fear/goal manipulation is all there is to it.
And that's why Mai's betrayal (and Ty Lee's) starts things cracking, because apparently there's this whole other emotional factor that's turned out to be hugely important and that she can't understand or predict or cope with.
YES. And the betrayal proves that Mai and Ty Lee have this emotional connection with each other, and have probably had it for as long as she's known them. They didn't just betray her at the Boiling Rock--they betrayed her AS CHILDREN and she has miscalculated her whole relationship with them.
She wants to understand this factor, wants this power that they've all got--Mai and Ty Lee and even Zuko--and so her mother (who had it, too, with Zuko) comes and says: "I love you, Azula," echoing Mai almost perfectly. And here is a power she wants, wants so, so much but fear is the only reliable way and what choice does she have?
But she tries to use this power the only way she can, because Zuko and Katara have this SAME THING and if Katara is dead Zuko will be destroyed. But this thing is more powerful than her lightning and Zuko redirects them BOTH. But unlike lightning, redirection makes it multiply and Katara uses it to save Zuko as he has saved Katara, and then it's a shield of water to deflect her rage. And to see them--see Zuko--wield this thing so expertly that she can only think of in Mai's words, her mother's voice, that she has handled even worse than Zuko his shitty puffs of flame at the meeting with Grandfather, she--
She is writhing and screaming and spitting fire and Katara looks back at her and hits her with this terrible, wonderful power AGAIN.
Re: Not an intrusion at all!
They didn't just betray her at the Boiling Rock--they betrayed her AS CHILDREN and she has miscalculated her whole relationship with them.
Oh, man, yes. And the fact that Mai articulates it in terms Azula can, despite herself, understand - as a matter of calculation, of weighing up the options and making an informed decision - must just add insult to injury. Because Azula is the best, the best, at making decisions like that. But this one is informed by love, and that's a factor she doesn't know how to weigh.
And ... I realised I was just about to quote your entire last paragraph? But, yes, you're so right: aiming for Katara is entirely an attempt to use this power. But while, when she used it to manipulate Zuko under Ba Sing Se or Sokka on the Day of Black Sun ('my favourite prisoner'), she was triangulating her target from the outside in, here she doesn't have the luxury of that detachment. She's smashed the glass between herself and that part of the world, she's let her mother come back in. But she has no idea how to handle it, no idea at all. And she ends up not so much through the looking glass as caught in it, trapped in Katara's ice.
But unlike lightning, redirection makes it multiply
Man.
And Katara would try, of course, at least, as Azula kneels there.
Re: Not an intrusion at all!
*nods a lot*
I hadn't clicked on that, but it's completely right. And it's the only way she can understand that power -- she gets "X cares about Y", but she can only comprehend it as a way to hurt or bribe someone -- e.g. with Sokka, or by setting up Zuko and Mai. She can only see it as weakening people, making them stupid and easy to manipulate.
Re: Not an intrusion at all!
And the way her perfect-party-planning skills are straight out of a schmoopy romance novel is also telling - she's playing it entirely by the book, because she sees this kind of thing from the outside. Though she does know Mai wouldn't appreciate a pink tablecloth!