No, Zuko, the book failed YOU! *Again*

[terajk]

Okay. So I don't expect anything I read on sibling relationships and mental illness to be like: "So, you're 16 and head of state, have to help rebuild the world and also, your sister could kill you and take your job at any time (okay, well, she won't, but she doesn't want you to know that)."

But can I read one thing--just one thing--that doesn't assume a family structure where the parents are the heads of the family? And that the siblings' relationship isn't through this prism of the parents, with problems over who gets more attention from the parents (in the present, not in their childhood) and whatnot? Something that assumes siblings can be the closest thing to a primary caregiver--or at least, you know, that the parents aren't involved at all? (The last I knew, local Iroh was unhappy with Zuko for not putting Azula in prison--even though his reasons were complicated and also some of them were mine, to make writing easier for me.)

I should probably just stop reading books to Zuko--not least of all because, while his sister can't resist a "The reason(s) this book sucks" speech, unhelpful books make him shut down entirely.

Comments

[lizbee]

I personally am boggling at a post reblogged by Racebending on Tumblr that suggests Azula cannot be mentally ill because she's an abuse survivor. I mean, if one negates the other, I'm a fucking unicorn.

[terajk]

I personally am boggling at a post reblogged by Racebending on Tumblr that suggests Azula cannot be mentally ill because she's an abuse survivor.

HOW DOES THAT EVEN MAKE SENSE? *brain asplode*

Although, while Zuko didn't fail the book (which is about borderline personality), Azula may have, as it talks about seeming totally fine to people who don't know the person very well. But thanks to her understanding of people, Azula is almost the other way around: she's better at trying (or, often in her case, pretending) to seem nice or trustworthy with people she's related to (Zuko, asking her mother to make Zuko play with her), or to King Kuei, who lives a totally sheltered life and is also a terrible judge of people. But with people she doesn't know EXTREMELY well, she's always pretty fucking scary and, as rydra_wong once said, "always looks like what she is." And even with Zuko and Ursa, they *also* know she is pretty fucking scary. So it's not like she's charmed them successfully.

Therefore, Azula is a unicorn dragon. (I'd say "sky bison," but not even I am that mean.)

[recessional]

I . . . . would not tag Zuko as borderline. /understatement.

(Granted, I wouldn't tag Azula as such, either - if you're going to hit her with a personality disorder, she's far more NarcissisticPD, going by canon.)

[staranise]

Yes, this.

To be a borderline, you kind of have to want a close emotional relationship with someone.

I'd go straight to Antisocial myself, but the woooonderful thing about personality disorders is that they're pften like potato chips: you can't have just one!

[terajk]

I'd go straight to Antisocial myself, but the woooonderful thing about personality disorders is that they're pften like potato chips: you can't have just one!

Agreed on all counts. I'm mostly reading this book to see if something in it would be helpful to me somehow, no matter how small (even in the "this is not at all the same thing, but if I pipe it through I get...something helpful" sense), and also because it seemed like the kind of thing Azula would hate. Reading fictional people books they hate is, like, REALLY helpful for me. (I wish Zuko hated more books.)

[terajk]

I . . . . would not tag Zuko as borderline. /understatement.

Oh, me, neither! But the book is actually for family members, so there is a lot of "Siblings respond by [narrow list of things, which is always the same 'siblings respond to mental illness like this' list."] He...doesn't do anything in the list.

[lizbee]

Oh, BPD is rubbish. Both the having of it, and the finding of literature about it that doesn't frame it as a problem for parents or partners. My best friend of 10 years, with whom I live, has BPD, and while a lot of the partner-centred literature applies to us, much of it doesn't.

And sometimes I just want a nice, easy solution. Like, "My best friend is being paranoid and driving people away. Is this BPD, depression, or are our friends actually deliberately excluding us from their lives? AND WHAT DO I DO?"

TW: abuse apologism (also contains ridiculous thinking out loud)

[terajk]

Oh, BPD is rubbish. Both the having of it, and the finding of literature about it that doesn't frame it as a problem for parents or partners.

*nods* I think this book is trying to correct that, but sometimes goes too far the other way and glosses over abusive behavior (saying "she developed batttered wife symptoms" instead of "he was abusing his wife," for instance. And actually, since Azula actually *is* a terrible, abusive person, Zuko HAS MADE PROGRESS in arguing with books! ("Instead of thinking of your loved one as an evil manipulator..." "Bullshit.")

Zuko's feelings about Azula are just...I don't have a lot of words to hang them on, even to explain to myself things that Zuko-in-my-head is doing. [My brain is weird.] But I just got some, which are: "Zuko decided to let Azula live in the palace instead of prison because that's no fun for me and also I couldn't break her out of my own bedroom, although he hasn't forgiven her and knows what she is capable of, 1) WHAT THE FUCK MY SISTER IS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE BREAKDOWNS I AM FIRELORD FIX THIS NOW (this is not a thing he can put into words, and I'm not even sure I did a good enough job), 1a) This is easier to fix in the palace than on some island in the middle of a lava lake, because we have all the best physicians, I can at least oversee it (note: um, actually, since Zuko knows Azula better than anyone else does, he can tell that she's not doing nearly as well by his standards as they say, which may lead to mass firings and thus, Azula's own amusement) 1b) being in prison is incompatible with a lot of her treatment, which involves fresh air and exercise, for instance , 1c) she is EVEN CRAZIER in prison than she is in the palace, even when I'm not there (Mai and possibly Katara are like: "So if it gets fixed, *then* can we put her in prison?"), b) speaking of, I don't actually have to live with her in the palace (watch me rebuild the world over here!) and if I want I can always write her a letter. [TBH, maybe writing them an epistolary fic would be helpful.] c) although *we* won't put her in prison, I can't speak for anyone in the Poles or the Earth Kingdom, and if she gets caught on their soil in violation of the treaty I am not going to stand in their way. (Maybe this is partly why Mai and possibly Katara send her to do spy-things, in hopes she *will* get caught. And Azula does the spy-things because she is bored and at least those fools assume she is *competent.* And maybe one of her missions is to lure/capture/kill Ozai loyalists, as she is the best bait and has no interest in killing Zuko because ABANDONMENT and none in them, as all they want is a puppet.)

*Waaaaaaaaaaaaaay* off somewhere in a corner is "Azula is a terrible person 99 percent of the time, but the other 1 percent of the time she understands things about our family and about me that no one else does, no matter how nice they are, like that time I was at our old house and she came and got me." But that is, like, tiny.

And then there is my *other* reason for Zuko's decision, which is that now he has a problem that Iroh is no help with whatever.

And speaking of framing things as a problem for parents and partners....

[terajk]

It's always more directly helpful for me to read/watch things by people who have the label in question, and stuff that people with BPD have said is actually more helpful than this book has been, although Azula doesn't fit most of the criteria. (I think there's just one. But there are people who talk about coping with just that one thing.)

Speaking of "oh GAWD this is horrible for partners!" I write someone who canonically is described as "a bit of a narcissist" but histrionic personality makes more sense to think about him in. (This may be a problem translating from the Japanese). For one thing, he doesn't think other people are inferior to him so much as crave their attention all the time; they only time he ever *really* acted superior to everyone else was when he figured out he was in a shoujo harem manga (he is), cast himself as the main love interest (he is--though I like to give the genderqueer main character *all the babes*), and cast the other dudes as "the homosexual supporting cast" (they're not.) But even that was more like: "Then Haruhi's romantic attention is ALL FOR ME."

But unlike Azula, he's not a horrible person. He's helpful and friendly--he brought all the other people out of their shells, somehow--and his friends like him. But all the literature about histrionic personality is like: "These people are HORRIBLE friends and partners!" while his friends think he is annoying and stupid sometimes, but basically a nice guy who goes from PANIC to RAGE to HUDDLING DEPRESSED IN THE CORNER WITH A SPOTLIGHT OF WOE because someone he doesn't even know said he was "obnoxious" to HAAAAAARUHI I LOVE YOU to *I* used to be that girl's favorite host! Why does she LIKE HARUHI BETTER? (No one is so bothered by this that they wouldn't be friends with him.)

[recessional]

. . . . you and every other abuse survivor I know, which is sadly a lot. oO;; What world does this person live in?

(Not that there are not abuse survivors who don't have mental illnesses. I just don't know any personally.)

[lizbee]

I feel like maybe the poster was coming at it from an attitude that PTSD-severe-enough-to-cause-a-psychotic-episode is not a mental illness? Which is a basic premise I can't get down with, not that I'm a mental health professional!

[recessional]

. . . . . this person is from Mars.

I feel this is the only possible explanation.

[staranise]

I've seen the attitude from the abuse community that "Mental illnesses are AWFUL and ICKY! We don't have mental illnesses because we are GOOD and have REAL issues, so we're not just sick and wrong like those mentally ill people!"

I guess this is a reaction to gaslighting/"you think this is abuse because you are crazy"? But as someone who needs triggers on her fiction because of OCD, not trauma, seeing that argument pop up in warnings debates really bugs me.

[recessional]

Oh hey, I hadn't even considered rampant screaming ablism as a reason.

. . . I really should have, I suppose. *sigh*

[(Anonymous)]

While this is indeed a thing that happens, it seemed to me like the OP was actually going for just the opposite this time.

That is, rather than 'crazy=scarybadwrong, (abuse survivors) aren't like those people', it's Azula=scarybad, 'crazy' people aren't like her!

Which doesn't excuse any of the other problems with that post, but it's at least not quite as screamingly bad as a post like this could be.

[staranise]

Anything that requires me to prove I'm a "good" crip/crazyperson and not like Those Other, Bad people--and excludes people from its umbrella for having such severe problems--can go fly a kite. Girl had a psychotic break. That's a mental illness. She's crazy.

(I am not qualified to diagnose as I don't have the hours and exams necessary to licence as a psychologist. But I know more than the person who wrote that post.)

[recessional]

Probably not, because it's honestly a really rare situation in Western Society as-is, particularly with children so close in age. (When there's a much greater disparity, the older sibling tends to fit fairly comfortably in as "parent", so the parent-focused literature applies.) And as persons at the University of British Columbia psych department have pointed out, psychology is hugely weighted to the norms of North American and Western European society.

And in our society, children live a) with parents, b) with parent-figures (aunt, uncle, grandparents, etc), c) with foster-parents, or d) in institutions (which have their own literature). Or, as I said, either the care-taking sibling is old enough that "parent" can be usefully applied (ten years or so age difference), or the care-needing sibling is old enough that the formative issues can still be traced to the parents/lack of parents (a 20yo sibling looking after a 15yo, for example). And that caretaking sibling will always themselves be at LEAST legally adult (I wasn't named my sibs legal guardian in my parents' wills until I was 21).

Cases where, for instance, a 15 year old looks after a 12 year old sibling, or even a 15 year old looks after an eight year old sibling as primary caregiver with no adults around in parent-position at all are extremely rare, and also illegal, and like most very rare things that don't result in Mass Murders or other headline catching events, don't tend to have a body of scientific literature associated with them.