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terajk[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.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-20 08:53 am (UTC)Long comment is long
Date: 2010-09-20 02:49 pm (UTC)Me too! And if it's a redemption fic, I don't want redemption=cured.
One challenge of thinking about post-canon Azula for me is that she's so invested in power, and her position would drastically shift. How would she respond to having, let's say, less power than the servants who are now support staff? This is the person who said, basically: "I have power because I do. You don't because you don't. Deal with it."
And I'm not even sure she would really have wanted/could deal with being at the very top of a hierarchy, anyway. Because she was always loyal to her father--renaming Omashu after him and not herself genuinely surprised me--and then he just abandoned her. Which was bad enough, but the prospect of becoming Fire Lord seemed an extra layer of bad to me, like: "I've always been #2. WTF do I do now?!"
All of this leads to the other problem: everyone else's place in the hierarchy shifts, too. What would Zuko do/how would their relationship change? (Power relationships involving family caregivers are entangled (and can be subtle) things, even without Fire Nation royal family dysfunction.
Even Toph fitting in to all this would be complicated. According to Word of God is right, Azula has what Toph's parents have threatened her with (being watched 24/7). And how would Toph feel about that? I can see her feeling anything from "Even though I don't like you at all, that is totally unfair" to "People like you are the reason my parents tried to pull that/You make us all look bad." Or, more likely, some combination of the two with lots of other things mixed in.
I want so many things from my post-canon Azula fanfic. SO MANY THINGS.