#azula and zuko and Ursa

[demaparbat-hp]

Arsonist's Lullaby

[goldenvulpine]

I want to clear up a mistake people make with Azula and Ursa.

Ursa didn’t play favorites.

Ursa didn’t think Azula was a monster.

Ursa simply, unequivocally, just didn’t enable Azula’s worst traits like Ozai did.

Ozai’s favorite child was Azula, but Ursa still loved her more.

Because enabling isn’t love.

What did Ozai’s enabling do? It made Azula into the type of person to never have any loyal friends. It made the type of person that Mai and Tai Lee would betray at the risk of their own lives.

Ursa pushed Azula to be with her friends. To be with Zuko. Ozai pushed Ursa away, and both kids suffered for it. Azula became a sadist, enjoying seeing her brother get burned—while Zuko was pushed away because he cared for his people.

Azula thought her mom hated her because her mom was the only one who cared enough to tell her no.

[deprivedmusicaljunkie]

so my friend had the most insane take today

edit: to anyone who wants to further pick my beautiful companion’s brain, please refer to i still worship the flame by @sketchbonked on ao3, a zukka retelling of atla if zuko joined team avatar from the very beginning.

[late-draft]

I sketched out the Fire Nation royal family, it's curious to follow who resembles whom physically and which traits got passed

[charlesoberonn]

[bluespiritshonour]

how zuko trying to help azula would go like

[kirbsto]

It feels almost blasphemous to post a video on tumblr but whatever.

*throws ATLA Royal family angst at you like it’s gasoline and lighting a match menacingly*

[raul103]

We all have a friend like Azula, someone who says the most unhinged things, but we have to love them because they're pretty much family at this point 😂

[lesbianspacebaby]

🥀ursa with her kiddos !!

i might have drawn zuko too big, i forgot what 2 year olds look like </3

i often wonder just how young was when ursa was taken to the palace...

[thebxghag]

Firelord Ursa au -- Ursa and Azula argue at a family get together while the newly coronated Fire Lord Zuko listens miserably from the steps, and his soon-to-be wife sits in the shadows.

Ty Lee, Azula's closest companion, tries very ineffectually to get Azula to simmer down.

--

I just think they're neat. :3

ko-fi | comms | inprnt | bsky | cara

[demaparbat-hp]

Is it the lightning that scares you? Or the voices masking the thunder?

Another one from Arsonist's Lullaby.

[cultofthewyrm]

Fire Nation Royal Family by Denver Balbaboco

[ionesyapping]

Notes about this single panel from her 'dream reality':

The guy: He is the guy who in the beach episode invited Azula, Zuko, Mai and Ty Lee at the party. At the balcony scene, Azula tries to flirt with one of the guys (though I don't remember which one and she doesn't seem to remember either) but the guy gets scared (his loss) and refuses her. With him being there it means she has a good reputation and social life.

Uncle Iroh: You can see he is present as well, we didn't see a bond between him and Azula but now we can see Azula wanted him in her life. Iroh is complimenting her, calling her "The conquer of Ba Sing Se" meaning in this reality she did conquer Ba Sing Se as in the canon, thing that Iroh couldn't do. Iroh was also the one who gave her dolls as a gift, nothing wrong in that if he didn't gave Zuko weapons, very inappropriate but it shown how he saw Azula and Zuko.

Ozai and Ursa: Both of them are sitting together, this means they have a good relationship, this means Ursa was never abused or had to leave the castle. In Azula's dream reality her parents are loving each other.

Zuko: There is a lot about him. He doesn't have a scar, meaning he never had an agni kai with his dad, the scene where Azula seemed so happy... she wished it never existed and her brother remained with her. Zuko says AZULA killed the avatar SINGLE HANDILY, again, Zuko was never thrown away so he never had to "Regain his honor". He, as everyone else seem genuinely happy for her.

Ursa: Beside the fact that in this reality she has a good relationship with Ozai, she is also loudly complimenting Azula, she genuinely looks proud of her.

There is a lot more going on but I think you got the idea

[beifong-brainrot]

I think my main 'issue' with Azula's portrayal in the Ashes of the Academy isn't that it's completely implausible that she was your stereotypical cruel, mean girl, but rather the fact that it's the most straightforward, uninovative thing you can do with her character.

And honestly the plushie burning was just comically over the top. Though she also did Wilhelm Tell her friend with fire in the flashbacks in the og show so who knows.

Which isn't a bad thing, perse. I find it absolutely plausible that Azula was an absolute monster in middle school. Azula was an innocent child that was manupulated by Ozai from a young age. But children are also notoriously assholes, especially if that behaviour was encouraged, which it was in Azula's case.

But I can understand why some people aren't totally jazzed about it. We sympathise with Azula, and many of us see ourselves in her. I see a lot of my child self in her, too. And I, of course, primarily see her as a victim of Ozai and the Fire Nation's ideals. She's very young, and was groomed through her childhood to be Ozai's weapon, which severely damaged her psyche. She's not pure evil, obviously not.

And I think that's why seeing her portrayed as an asshole rubs people the wrong way, especially in flashbacks, because it feels like villainsing a very young, very vulnerable victim.

But I think the older I get, the more ok I am with Azula being mean, cruel, etc. It doesn't erase her status as a victim and doesn't make her any less tragic to me.

I don't care whether Azula was an innocent, sweet kid that suddenly flipped the switch and became daddy's little weapon, or whether she was an absolute nightmare of a child that burned toys and bullied other children. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, tbh, but on either extreme, she is still a victim of an environment that hurt her and groomed her to hurt others and she deserves sympathy for it.

Hell, when I attended a shitty, pretentious, all girl's middle school, I met girls very similar to how Azula was at the time. The comic stresses multiple times that the Academy is an incredibly volatile place that encourages student infighting and rivalry.

And that's some serious rethoric, that of course would do some serious damage to a kid's worldview. And, of course, Azula, who fits into the system well, is rewarded for participating in it, while also seeing others who don't punished, will inernalise this.

While I don't think Ursa "lost" Azula when she entered the Academy, it certainly reinforced the seeds Ozai seemed to have been planting within Azula from when she started firebending. If we want to get technical about it, Ursa "lost" Azula whenever she decided or was forced to let Ozai influence Azula.

This is aggresively on the nose though. It feels vaguely ooc but not Excessively so. Let's chalk it up to emotional vulnerability due to what's happening to her.

And while nothing would make me happier than to see Azula get a redemption arc, I'm also not as set on it as I was a few years ago. I want healing for Azula, and I don't think she's too fargone for one. I don't think the creators do either. While she's still being presented as an antagonist and an overall mean person, especially in the recent comic, I think it's not veered into "irredeemable" territory quite yet.

The hard truth is that Azula truly having a redemption would require her to admit that she was wrong, certain fundamental truths of her life were wrong and she was, and likely still is, a very bad person. A victim, and a person deserving of help, and care, but still bad. Those two aren't mutually exclusive. Which is incredibly difficult for most people, but with the indoctrination Azula would be subjected to as a child, she would have even more resistance to it.

Like, while we do meme on Zuko getting physically sick after doing 1 good thing, it's a very good representation of how difficult it can be to change when you've had certain morals and ideals so rigorously ingrained into you from such a young age.

And Zuko, arguably, had much less incentive to be faithful to the Fire Nation and Ozai than Azula.

I don't think Ashes of the Academy was awful in the way it portrayed Azula. It certainly wasn't the best, and it was, let's be honest, rather lazy and uncreative. But it wasn't some huge blow to her character.

I'll also leave some links to my other metas concerning Azula:

How Azula became isolated from Ursa and opened up to Ozai's grooming

Why Zuko and Kuvira got redemptions and why Azula didn't? Hint: it has nothing to do with morality

[rennelelorren]

Little kittens and their cat mom

[lily-inmyhead]

Recently I've been seeing a lot of people say that during the agni kai when Azula says she's sorry things had to happen like that she really is and that Zuko just isn't. Which in my opinion is just such a grave misinterpretation of his character and what Azula means to him!

Like, we can see in the beach episode that they can actually work really well together and do have a degree of trust and mutual care for eachother when they're not being pitted against each other by the adults around them (sometimes even Iroh) . Zuko is sorry that things had to end this way but acknowledges that Azula can't be saved by mere words anymore. When the day comes when Azula and Zuko can see past their different traumas which we see them come close to in the comics then they can work together, they still obviously care, but that care (and maybe even love) has been tainted by both their parents.