#azulon

[sailorluna15]

azula + zuko headcanon!

I hc that Azula has shaw (the other dragon) as an emotional support animal/pet along with a phoenix, ball point python and chameleon. I believe that she would lead a dragon preservation project along with Zuko and it is working very well. The dragon population is rising and has tons of law protecting their lives. I hc Azula as a someone who hates animals like dogs, is okay with cats and birds and loves reptiles. She's a reptile girly. Mai is obsessed with azula's reptiles and so are Izumi, Bumi ii, Kya ii, and Kiyi. Ursa + Zuko are scared of the snake and azula always chases and touches them with the animals. They run everytime.

[late-draft]

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

[acerdime]

ATLA AU - Zuko Can See Ghosts

Dead people in ATLA either reincarnate or stay as ghosts until they’re ready to do so. There is no afterlife just as there are no gods. The closest thing to gods ATLA has is spirits but if the Spirit World was the afterlife, I think there would be a lot more humans around when Avatars visit. Iroh’s only there because he went in before he died.

Zuko knows why his mother left because Grandfather Azulon is still there as a ghost to tell him Ursa poisoned him to save Zuko’s life. He was going to haunt Ursa until he realized Zuko could see him and haunted him instead. Surprise, surprise, the guy who ordered the death of his grandson is a dick.

There are many servants dead by Ozai’s wrath in the palace. Their ghosts teach Zuko to stay quiet and fade into the background where it’s safe.

When Lu Ten dies, he regrets that he wasn’t able to save his young cousins from Ozai. Lu Ten stays a ghost and mentors Zuko in combat, bending, and strategy.

When the 41st Division die despite Zuko’s protests, and Zuko himself is burned and banished, the 41st Division find out Zuko defended them and stay ghosts to teach him all they can.

Zuko’s able to escape before the pirates hired by Zhao blow up his ship because the ghosts haunting the pirates warn him. This doesn’t change the plot, but it does save Zuko some pain.

Aang is followed/haunted by Monk Gyatso while Sokka & Katara are followed/haunted by Kya.

[doodlerose]

[comradekatara]

i’ve always kind of assumed that lo and li are azulon’s younger twin sisters and that’s why they were foisted off on azula, because she’s also a younger sister to the crown prince. but the fact that we never actually see them firebend is strange, because it implies either that nonbenders are instructing one of the greatest firebenders in the world, or that they are firebenders who simply do not firebend. and i think that the latter is more interesting, because it reflects how their position as elderly women devalues any firepower they might provide to the empire, passive and subdued even as they train ozai’s favorite weapon.

they are the ones to most overtly illustrate azula’s precarious relationship to femininity, after all. for example, noting the position of her hair after she successfully lightningbends in “the avatar state,” or emphasizing azula’s beauty when they introduce her in “the awakening.” and it’s clear that azula doesn’t really like them, dismisses and avoids them whenever she gets the chance. she can’t even tell them apart. their very existence is almost a humiliation. a reminder to azula that this is who she is destined to become once she lives past her usefulness. not the imperious azulon, her namesake, raised above on a fiery dais, but his sisters, insignificant and functionally powerless.

so of course “almost isn’t good enough,” of course “one hair out of place” is a failure. the only way azula can prove her worth to the empire she has devoted her entire self to in a way that matters is, perhaps, by being perfect, by being better and stronger than the discarded women who came before her. but that, too, is a delusion, that any amount of excellence will reward her in a way that compensates for the erosion of her very humanity. and yet, it’s all she has to cling to. so she gives it her all to excel within a system that will never really care about her because she has deliberately been made incapable of imagining an alternative. of simply recognizing the system for the failure that it is, conceptualizing a world beyond the bars of her gilded cage, and leaving.

[allgremlinart]

Azulon examining a flower in Ursa's family greenhouse, while Ozai watches - The Search, Part One // Ursa using her mother's flowers to make the poison that Ozai will use to kill his father - The Search, Part Three

[kibutsulove]

This fuckass family and their fuckass dynamics.

[mesapies]

the royal family of the fire nation from avatar: the last airbender: legacy of the firenation. They did azula so dirty with that pic

Also how did ursa come out so light?

[sokkastyles]

Is it already a theory that Zhao is Azulon's bastard child? Because this goes nicely with the theory that Lo and Li are Azulon's concubines. It would also explain why Zhao is so weirdly competitive with Zuko. Zhao also doesn't seem to respect Ozai much, either, come to think of it. He takes weird joy in the thought of humiliating Zuko and how it reflects badly on Ozai ("your father raised a coward.") There's an interesting backstory there.

What's also interesting is that Zhao says this about Zuko's inability to finish him off, which is what Ozai would want him to do, but Zuko is following his own instincts, the ones that got him banished by Ozai.

[thebxghag]

@trashfactorysstuff and @sleepyghoststories have infected me with thoughts of Ilah and Azulon. as;lfj;alsf;askjf;lasjf;lsdjf;lasd;fasdf enemies to lovers but they still kind of remained enemies is just... *chef's kiss*

[ilikepjo24]

Here's an interesting detail I just noticed.

Ursa poisoned Azulon with a poison made from the very same flower he was gazing at the day he ruined her life.

The flower is so pretty too, just like the irony.

[waterfire1848]

Avatar AU - Ozai and Ursa fail at killing Azulon. He kills Ozai but Ursa manages to run with her kids. The problem is that Azulon is still after her and she can’t get very far with two kids. She leaves them at an Earth Kingdom port, promising to be right back, but never returns. At the end of the day, Hakoda comes across two sleeping kids next to his boat who say their mom promised she’d come back but it’s been hours. He brings them aboard the ship to wait for her and get food and water. A few days pass and Ursa doesn’t return so Hakoda brings the kids to the South Pole.

[trashfactorysstuff]

Azulon and Azula

[stardust948]

[attackfish]

I had a brain wave tonight. Given how much older Iroh appears than his brother, I have always thought it was very likely that Iroh was either an adult by the time his brother was born, or very close to it. And what we see if Iroh's adult past paints him as a military leader who led from the front, and was not afraid to spend years on end in the field. So it's not improbable that he might have been only rarely present when Ozai was growing up.

Ozai bitterly resents his brother, who Azulon clearly favored, while scorning Ozai. He privately denigrates his brother and later blames him for Zuko turning on him in a way that shows he likes to blame Iroh for things. Ozai's picture of Iroh has much more to do with what it's useful for Ozai to believe about his brother, then it does with who Iroh actually is. This would be much easier for Ozai to do if for most of his life, he were able to project what it was useful for him to believe onto an absent Iroh.

It's a whole lot easier and more comfortable to maintain a psychologically useful image of someone if they aren't there to contradict it. And this has fascinating implicatations for the other two people we see Ozai most eager resent and blame, Ursa and Zuko, both of whom he banishes. And even better, when Ozai banishes Zuko, Iroh goes with him.

This must have been the most mentally comfortable Ozai has ever been in his life, with all of them safely gone and unable to break his useful images of them, but still alive so he could resent and blame them as needed. And this offers a plausible unconscious motive for Ozai to do something as stupid as sending his accomplice in murder and treason, a potential heir to his throne, and an alternate claimant to his throne, who also just happens to be an accomplished military leader, out from under his direct control.

[comradekatara]

there are a lot of bad takes in the atla fandom (like, atla fandom may as well be a bad take generator) but something that has really been pissing me off lately is the assumption that you can categorize the fire nation royal family into good guys and bad guys. first of all, obviously, they're all bad guys. they are imperialists. but the idea that "sozin ozai azula bad" and "iroh lu ten ursa zuko azulon(?!) good" is actually insane.

lu ten died attempting to conquer the earth kingdom. lu ten was there because his father, iroh, was leading the siege. ursa laughed when iroh joked about burning ba sing se to the ground. zuko laughed too, mirroring his dear mother who taught him about the wonders of imperialism. and the fact that some people think that azulon was a good guy because he favored iroh is crazy. he favored iroh because iroh was the better imperialist, was more charming and tactically savvy as he bent the world to his will. people who think that azulon didn't like ozai because ozai was cruel literally have it backwards. ozai was cruel because azulon didn't like him. sozin shaped azulon, and azulon shaped iroh and ozai. azulon reigned for most of the war, and he was responsible for decimating the southern water tribe and colonizing the earth kingdom.

iroh only realizes the error of his ways well into middle age, after spending a majority of his life colonizing the world. he only stops to reconsider once he experiences the adverse effects of war for himself through the loss of his son. likewise, zuko can only gain empathy for the victims of the war by being one himself, as a refugee in the earth kingdom, and bonding with people who have been hurt by the fire nation. azula doesn't get that chance. ozai doesn't get that chance. azulon, lu ten, and ursa are dead, so they will never get that chance. but it's not like there is some ontological moral divide separating azula from zuko. zuko was a sensitive child whereas azula was better at embodying fire nation values of power and cunning. zuko was punished for his outbursts whereas azula knew how to keep her mouth shut. therefore, zuko experienced circumstances that led him to disavow fire nation imperialism.

but that doesn't mean that azula is ontologically evil. azula was the iroh of her generation to zuko's ozai, and iroh (eventually) disavowed conquest as well. there is no inherent divide between good and bad, monster and human. ursa was a warm and loving mother to zuko, just as iroh was a warm and loving father to lu ten, but they both laughed at others' suffering. their values were shaped by their circumstances and experiences. their ideologies do not make them less human, or less capable of change, just as their interpersonal behaviors do not negate their abhorrent ideologies.