#chiyou (/neg)

[radio-ghost-cooks]

oc lore: bickering (Some Gremlins)

Chiyo and Andy: gods they can't just bicker, oh no. these two full on ARGUE. like, five seconds away from a fistfight (same goes for Chiyo and Hajime). they largely avoid each other, so it doesn't happen often, but gods help the poor soul who's stuck with them when it happens.

Chiyo and Mila: poor Mila baby. girl u need a backbone. we get it ur down bad for Chiyo but they're so fucking toxic. there's a reason Tarou broke up with them. so yeah they don't bicker at all.

Andy and Mila: they bicker every once and a while. normally it just starts as the two of them having equal and opposite takes and then it turns into a small argument. but they're both on the debate team so it checks out. they just see it as good practice and don't hold onto it for very long

[sokkastyles]

Now that I've had time to let my thoughts on Azula in the Spirit Temple matriculate, I want to say something about what the comic has to say about forgiveness regarding the Fire Warriors subplot.

I've seen a lot of opinions, both positive and negative, on the idea the comic presents that you have to give forgiveness to get it. The comic acknowledges both that Azula wants forgiveness from the people that she feels wronged her (and, failing that, vengeance), and that she needs to seek (and deep down, wants) forgiveness from the people who love her that she has hurt.

The thing is that both groups of people (people Azula wants to seek her forgiveness vs people she needs to forgive her) are really the same, and what Azula realizes, albeit subconsciously, that makes her forego seeking vengeance on the fire warriors specifically for abandoning her is not that she forgives them, because she does not. But I think part of her realizes that she is the one who has wronged them, and that's why she ends her plan for vengeance.

She hasn't yet reached the point where she's able to admit this out loud, and her statement that she can just find new followers shows that she isn't really prepared to be accountable for how she's treated people. But there is some realization forming in that shot where she's watching them all together, the joyous welcome when Chiyou is rescued, that gets to how lonely Azula's existence really is, and Azula has realized on some level that she is the cause of this loneliness.

Because we see Azula use and mistreat these women. We also see that she doesn't really care about them as people, when Zirin tries to argue that they should go back when Chiyou is captured. Azula even uses one of the common Azula apologist talking points about women in asylums to try and convince these women that they owe her loyalty, while basically treating them like subjects she can order around.

The thing is, that there is a long history of women being mistreated in asylums, but Azula is using this argument to control these women and also reaffirm that they basically have no choice but to follow her (until they decide to revolt, and honestly good for them.) What Azula says has a lot in common with cult and fascist rhetoric, appealing to these women's sense of victimization to recruit them and then manipulating them into buying in. But Azula didn't count on these women forming bonds with each other that would override their loyalty to whatever cause Azula wants to manipulate them into supporting.

The conclusion is that although Azula is good at manipulating people into following her, she still isn't going to get the real human connection she is craving as long as she continues to treat people like objects she can control who should be subservient to her. Her quest for vengeance against these women is ultimately pointless because she has no right to claim it. They weren't the ones who wronged her, she wronged them.