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sev-rh · 1 month ago

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Postscriptum: Analysis

This was initially posted as chapter 49 of my longfic Marked for Life on AO3. The actual last chapter, 48, was inundated with upset comments; this is the response. Archived here on Tumblr as well now.

Story spoilers ahead!

After getting a truckload of comments about how the last chapter [of Marked for Life] is disappointing, came out of nowhere, feels like a plot twist for twist's sake, undercuts all prior chapters, etc., I'm getting tired of typing out explanations over and over, so here's the abridged version (detailed ones in the comments of said chapter):

This was always how it was meant to end: unhappily. I wrote this ending, nearly word for word as it is now, very early during the writing process (the earliest version I can find is December 28) and revised it very little after. I've been working towards this ending throughout the entire story and in my opinion, it is the logical escalation of the pair's relationship. They were never headed for "and they lived happily ever after"; I tried to set them up for failure as clearly as possible. Their entire relationship throughout the story has been shaped by conflict, by anger, abuse, and a disastrous lack of good coping skills.

They spend the first two years of this story hating each others' guts. They try to kill each other several times, they torture each other. It takes them two years just to get to a point of being able to work together. Just to re-emphasise, this is a relationship between a sadistic, genocidal imperialist and monarch, and her "common", tortured slave. I get it, we all love to see redemption and happy endings and overcoming challenges, but this is not such a story. If you feel misled, I must point out I specifically didn't tag Azula Redemption, Happy Ending, or anything of the sorts, and I pointed out the violent and complicated nature of their relationship from the start.

I ask you, if you hated the ending, to re-examine it under the following aspects.

Both of them are headstrong and assertive, steadfast in their belief in their own moral superiority and that of their belief system. Even when they get along, even when they get together, when Azula gets over her idea that Katara is a savage who needs taming, cultural and class differences still stand between them. Katara's disgust at the Fire Nation führerkult worship of the Fire Lord, at the rich people sport of hunting for pleasure, and her self-loathing at the realisation she has gotten used to servants; Azula's belittling of what she sees as Katara's naivety and her insistence that she will rule as she sees fit. Azula maintains that she is making peace not due to some ethical change of heart, but out of necessity. Under different circumstances, she would have campaigned until the world lay in ruins. She is making peace because it is the best way to ensure her survival and that of her nation, not because she suddenly sees how wrong the war is. In the same vein, she makes it clear that while she regrets torturing Katara, it's because she has since developed feelings for her, and her continued use of these methods, like incarcerating every associate – aide, family member, servants – of suspected traitors, or convicting innocent suspects to make sure they don't harbour resentment over their arrest, makes it very clear that her moral compass hasn't suddenly spun around. She remains fully convinced in her birthright to the throne, in the absolute nature of her authority, etc., and Katara takes extreme issue with that.

They put those differences aside for the more important cause of peace, but it's only natural that they would resurface once the external pressure of having to save their lives by making peace is no longer a concern. Imagine if they had married – a Fire Lady who calls into question the legitimacy of her Fire Lord? Who undermines the Fire Lord's authority, who rejects the culture of worship that she and her wife are entitled to? Conflict was always in their future.

Civilising Katara, Azula’s project. Bettering Azula, Katara’s project. Destined for friction, for collisions.

That is exactly what I meant. Azula would try to integrate Katara into her culture and class, whether outright and directly, or whether simply indirectly by taking issue with Katara's not fitting in, and Katara would try the same in reverse, trying to get Azula to let go of these traditions and political system. Because, in the end, can any of you imagine "I will never ignore people who need help"-Katara not trying to intervene in what she sees as an oppressive, indoctrinating system? And can any of you imagine born-to-rule-Azula just throwing 100s of years of Fire Nation culture out the window to reform it into a democracy with due process and civil rights?

But that's only one half. Because the other is the relationship between them, their emotional balance if you will.

I started them out quite violent. They both try to kill each other several times, they both get physically abusive towards each other. Azula burning Katara for fun and torturing her for information, Katara massacring half the palace in her escape attempts. The eventually reach an equilibrium of mutually assured death, but once they get together, that changes again. They're no longer looking to kill each other, but their conflicts get much more personal now, because while there's still the captor/monarch–prisoner imbalance between them, they ostensibly speak eye to eye, or at least closer to eye level, with each other. And here, they actually get more violent again. Katara slaps Azula, they beat each other up, etc. When two people who are in a romantic relationship take their conflicts out with violence, we tend to call that "domestic violence" and we consider that a bad thing.

But later, that happens less. They get in shouting matches, have from the start, but it lessens. When Katara speaks with Zuko, a clearly displeased Azula just says she doesn't want to fight about it. And a lot of readers took that as a good sign, as a sign of progress in their relationship. And it is, but it isn't solely good. Avoiding violence is great, yes, but what we have here is conflict avoidance. And that's not great. Because conflict is a thing that happens; even the most happy couple will disagree on something at some point. And the solution to that is to talk it out. Communication. Avoiding that instead simply leaves the conflict unresolved, or resolved to the dissatisfaction of one party. And that breeds resentment.

What will happen to them if this keeps happening? Azula will, time and time again, choose to drop a disagreement, rather than risk fighting about it. And she will be dissatisfied and angry each time. Over time, she will come to dread conflict, get pre-emptively angry at the prospect of disagreements, because she'll know it will end with her giving up to avoid a fight. And eventually, as they continue to disagree (like on any of the subjects listed above), she will come to hate or dread speaking to Katara entirely. Ask me how I know.

This transition away from physical altercations and towards bad coping strategies was intended to set up this ending and show that their relationship isn't getting all that much healthier, just less overtly abusive. That seems to not have come across quite clearly, because most of the comments celebrated the end of violence and took it as a sign of their improvement, which it really wasn't intended to be. And thus the escalation of that – Fire Lord Azula, later in life, removing herself from the international stage, and turning to isolationism and xenophobia for her people, taking conflict avoidance to the diplomatic extreme – caught many readers unprepared.

And then the last puzzle piece: the evolution of their characters.

One of the key themes of this story is the way Azula gets better while Katara gets worse (as measured by Katara's moral standards). Azula gives up on conquest, loses her lust for world domination; she discovers her own sexuality and in the process makes life better for many persecuted people in her nation. At the same time, Katara learns to manipulate Azula, she takes an incredible amount of lives, she bloodbends several times despite her vow never to. She becomes more comfortable than she'd like giving orders to Fire Nation soldiers, she integrates herself into the court, and she is an accessory to torture and execution. And she loathes herself for it every step of the way, and later hates how comfortable she's become with it all. As she says at the end, those three years have left scars on her. She will never be the same.

And this becomes evident in her fate after the story. She becomes the chieftain of her tribe and leads ambitiously. One could call it ruthless, one could call it driven, goal-minded, and standing her ground. And they point is, all of these are qualities she's possessed before. All I've done is dial them up a little, dial down her inhibitions a little, and infuse her with some things she's learned from Azula. Because Katara has always, throughout the show, been ambitious, never one to take shit from anyone (Pakku showdown), and occasionally morally quite flexible – waterbending scroll, Painted Lady, etc. And, crucially, she is very caring and places great value on kindness, helping others, and taking care of your own. As the comics show, she also cares a great deal about the future of her tribe (such as when she clashes with Sokka over the degree of industrialisation the South should or should not receive). I don't think it's a far reach to imagine her eventually (no, I didn't specify a time frame; no, it doesn't happen immediately after her return five years later) succeeding Hakoda as chief.

She has a chip on her shoulder regarding the Northern Water Tribe's culture of sex segregation and misogynistic oppression, so she doesn't conclude the reunification efforts begun before her ascension to the chieftainship. She feels the SWT is owed something for its destruction and the lack of help it received, so she claims now-unowned former Fire Nation territory for her people, stares the Earth King down over it and wins. She carves out a place for her people – without whom the war would not have been won – in the new world, to provide for them, to get what she sees as justice. She's always been ambitious and tough, and now she's gotten a taste of real power, real authority, from Azula and liked it more than she would have been comfortable with in the past. And perhaps being one half of the couple who made peace, achieved what none did before, has gotten to her head, but either way, she's used to getting what she wants now, she's used to calling the shots now, and she's already once delivered justice in the form of the peace. She's still the teenage girl challenging a sexist teacher to throw hands, she's still the girl who disguised herself to help people in need, and she's still the girl who snaps at her brother who disrespects her people's culture and arts. She's all that, but she's grown up, and the three years with Azula have shaped her.

If you previously disliked the last chapter, I hope at this point you're saying something like, okay, it makes sense like that, but where was all that in the story?

It was there.

I hoped it was quite clear enough; evidently it wasn't. I thought I had foreshadowed it extensively, perhaps not extensively enough. Throughout the story, I made sure to contrast good moments with bad ones. They get together, but not without a screaming match and a huge breakdown. They make out at the dojo, and then Azula goes all wrath-of-god on the servant and triggers Katara into a full-on flashback, and Katara has the realisation that she's been looking at Azula through rose-tinted glasses and that the cruelty is still there. They have a romantic retreat (if not quite voluntarily) to Ember Island, some domestic bliss – and then Azula has a panic attack and they fight. They make up, and then Azula makes it clear she is still who she was, will still govern as she sees fit, disillusions Katara as to her change of heart or lack thereof. They want to make up, they beat each other up when Azula says insensitive things. Katara is reunited with her friends, Azula insults her and calls her loyalty into question. She talks with Zuko and has a lovely afternoon, Azula snaps at her and then refuses to talk about it.

One step forward, two steps back, that was the idea behind writing all of that. The world gets better, in the end, but they've paid a high personal price for it, and every little bit of silver lining for their relationship is bought at the expense of being abusive towards each other, or mistrusting each other, bought with pain, heartbreak, or violence.

I hoped by showing that, and by sowing the seeds of their conflicts early – the class difference, the cultural difference, their wildly differing morals and ideals, and their inability to constructively resolve conlicts –, I would have spelled "doomed by the narrative" all over their relationship.

It appears that at least for some readers, a much more substantial amount than I assumed, it wasn't enough. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the ending, I really am.

But at the end of the day, I've told the story I set out to tell. I never promised a happily ever after. I made the two of them go, as one of you put it, through hell and back, and they've come out as scarred, hurting people. Nobody said going through hell was a guarantee for happiness.

I hope to have sufficiently explained my reasoning. I hate to ruin the lovely chapter count of 48, but I couldn't fit all of this into an author's note, and the stream of disappointed comments compelled me to explaian the matter once and for all, which I have hereby done.

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