Post-canon Azula fic for a deadline=EEP, as per usual

[terajk]

The Dangerous Ladies have told me I think my queer_fest fic will need to be a Proper Damn Story. (My words, not synecdochic’s). By which I mean, it will have to be about more than one thing.

I have no clue how to write one of those.

My prompt is, basically, “Azula doesn’t like the mind-healers, but trying to ‘fix’ her attraction to women is going much too far.” Naturally, this has exploded in a very scary fashion, because I/the people involved want many, many things:

1) Complicated post-canon dangerous ladies! Mai says she is ready to be Involved. (Eep!)

1a) Mai is also lying. While she tells me that she is done with Azula forever--she will speak to her if spoken to, but doesn’t seek her out and is impossible to manipulate--I reminded her that what she is describing is her behavior and not her feelings. Then she shouted: “Saotome Ultimate Technique!” and ran away, because Ranma is the worst influence ever. But Mai is right in that she would really like to have nothing to do with Azula altogether, except for the fact that I put them in the same place because Tera is horrible to imaginary people. When Zuko asked her what he should do about Azula (Word of God be damned, because it is historically inaccurate and more importantly, boring), she said, “Prison.” Katara also either said or would have said “prison”--everyone is unclear about whether she was actually asked. But if she were asked, perhaps it was what started her thinking that maybe Mai was kinda trustworthy, sort of. Maybe. And then they and Zuko became my OT3, which is a feat since

1a.i) Katara has not insisted that she be in the story, THANK GOODNESS.

1a.ii) Sokka has said that maybe, if it’s okay, he would like to be in the story to go “Gleep!” and run away. Then Toph said that if Sokka gleeps, she will too, because her gleeping is ten million times more badass. (They do this sort of thing). Actually, Azula’s, um, “relationship” with the not-Zuko members of Team Avatar is the most unchanged, since they all still fear her properly 100 percent of the time.

1a.iii) Relatedly, the people most likely to accommodate Azula’s impairments (which she is conflicted about/annoyed with, her understanding of strength and weakness being what it is), and who are least likely to wonder or care: “Is this Teh Crazy?” are...Mai and Ty Lee (cf. Tera is horrible to imaginary people). In Mai’s case, part of why she is able to live in the palace is because she can put her feelings about Azula in separate boxes, so that “I do not like you, really” and “It is better to sit next to you rather than across from you” are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps Katara has been an influence (”You are a horrible person, and it is horrible what just happened to you”)--or perhaps I’m reading too much of Katara into Mai. And both for both Mai and Ty Lee, understanding Azula’s nuances is a survival skill that they can’t just turn off.

1b) Ty Lee is trying to keep everyone happy. Sometimes it looks like she’s thinking: “Is this Teh Crazy?” but what she’s actually thinking is: “If I do this, will I make Azula/Mai/Zuko mad?” I really need to figure out how to open the channels of communication between us, by which I mean “make her hate me more.” Mai hates me plenty, which is why she is more talkative than Ty Lee. Oh, dear: this story HAS ALREADY FAILED.

2) People not Team Avatar/Mai/Ty Lee have their own ideas about which of Azula’s impairments are Important, and they do not always (or even often) match up with hers. Since I am me, this has become an important part of the plot which doesn’t yet exist. It is also sort-of-related to the actual prompt.

3) When the servants/Azula’s staff tell Zuko that Azula is “better” when he’s home, I strongly suspect they mean “easier to control.” Unfortunately, I have no idea what they mean by THAT. All I can think is that she and Mai and Ty Lee have lesbian orgies when he’s away, but that doesn’t go with Mai not giving a damn. Or maybe Mai enlists her help in doing political things like...scaring towns into paying their taxes? (Hey, I don’t write Proper Stories, okay?)

4) I still want messy stuff about power. Azula vs. systemic ableism is tasty stuff, indeed, especially because of the very basic thing about power she doesn’t get: that power shifts, and that people give it and take it away--cf. her “divine right to rule” speech to Long Feng, and how she disparages him for “clawing your way to power.” (Um, that’s...because power is fickle like that? Sort of like how the tides actually do command the ship). Ozai knew that his children are the way they are because he made them that way (”Azula was born lucky. [Zuko] was lucky to be born”). I’m thinking also of what 

lizbee  says about Mai here--that she's “the only character to overtly refer to bending ability or lack thereof as a mark of status/capability/power.” I wonder if part of why Mai became friends with Azula was to ally herself with a type of power/status she didn't have--which would mean that Mai understands this, too. Azula missed it, I think, because it is the unpredictable human element again, even in her very favorite thing ever, which she cannot fathom at all.

5) Speaking of, my Azula never gets to do anything awesome because I keep forcing her to Relate to Human Beings. This is partly because I like watching people relate to each other, and partly because I am terrible at all the things she is awesome at, other than cruelty to imaginary people. Yet I keep wanting to write Azula stories. WHY??????

6) I want All the Things. I am too scared/confused/stuck/lazy to write All the Things. I have no idea how to jump from writing a tiny story to a proper short story, which is an entirely different structure but if I ever did figure it out, it would be way easier to write more types of things--like, oh, the Toph-Azula thing. What do I do? EEP.

7) Have I told you that this story HAS ALREADY FAILED? Because it totally has.