#while azula is very much not dealing well with having just played god against her father

[sporksaber]

So I've mentioned before how I headcanon controlling fire with your breathing to be a mark of a master firebender, but last time it was to push Zuko's inherent talent equal to azula's.

Atla au where Zuko's agni kai against Ozai goes differently. Azula, all of eleven years old, is sitting in the audience grinning. But internally she is panicking.

She had never taken to uncle's lesson's on meditation and breathing techniques. But in that moment her breathes were carefully counted out and expertly pushed through. Her breathing and the fact that she knows what her father's about to do and doesn't want it to happen is all she is focused on.

And then Ozai's fire stops, along with all the torches also stilling. Everyone holds their breath when they see it. Zuko is unburned.

Osso loses his absolute shit, obviously. Iroh has to step in to stop him from setting the entire room on fire as soon as the torches started flickering again. He's immidiently accused of doing somthing, but iroh launches into a speech about the origins and meaning of the agni kai.

Zuko is still kneeling. Azula is no longer grinning. She felt the flame pull with her breath and knows this wasn't the work of agni.

She also now knows at least some of uncle's senile old man speeches held truth.

(Meanwhile, all who witnessed the agni kai and all they tell know that agni is not on the fire lord's side)

[saiilorstars]

Ch.3: Memories

Chapter summary: The next Shadow Sailor Guardian has awakened and is determined to find her princess no matter what, leaving Azula, Mamoru and Meroko scrambling for numbers and a good plan against her.

Fandom: Sailor Moon (Crystal)  – – [Rewrite of season 2, AU-ish in that there’s new OCs and the fusion of plots from the manga, crystal and the og series]

Pairings: Eventual OFC x OMC, Usagi x Mamoru

Taglist: @ocfairygodmother @anotherunreadblog @maaaaarveeeeel @stareyedplanet @perfectlystiles 

{If you’d like to be added to this OC’s taglist, let me know!}

// Story Masterlist //

~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~

Sailor Hemera and Prince Endymion walked alongside each other along the dry field.

"My people were originally from the Sun," Sailor Hemera gestured to the setting sun in the sky. "But then it became uninhabitable and we had to move. We found a home in Shadow and merged with its people. They procreated and now here I am."

"But you're not...exactly like the people from...Shadow?" Endymion gestured to where the supposed Shadow kingdom was. He was still tempted to try and go through the invisible barrier but he was also interested in this Sailor Scout before him. Up until this morning he believed there were only Sailor Scouts belonging to Silver Millennium.

"No," Sailor Hemera shook her head. "With each new generation we began to lose our Sun abilities and now they've become almost scarce. The powers of the light on Shadow are truly rare nowadays. I have been gifted with these powers and I believe they were given to me to use them for a higher purpose."

"And what would that be exactly?"

"To protect my Kingdom, my Queen, and my Princess."

  Mamoru woke up from his sleep with a terrible pit in his stomach. He had been dreaming about that Sailor Hemera ever since she first appeared on the street. But not only was he dreaming about her, now he was getting brief compilations of other people. There were other men - generals, he believed - and then there were girls who had strange powers. What got him worse was the repeating girl with a golden crescent moon on her forehead he kept seeing. It frustrated him that her face was never clear.

He felt like he had done this before, but that was all a dream.

But then he saw another girl, with flaming red hair that he knew he had seen somewhere…

He was going to lose his mind, he was sure.

~ 0 ~

Azula ran her hands through her bright red hair for the tenth time and released a big, tired sigh. She rubbed her forehead and reached for the keypad in front of her. "I've gone through every facial recognition here, done the algorithms too, but this Sailor Hemera could be anyone, Luna," Azula dropped her hand from her forehead and gazed up at the large computer screen in front of them.

She and Luna were back in the base under the arcade trying to figure out who Sailor Hemera was. It had been days since the woman's first appearance and since then she had been flickering in and out saving those who fell under 'Senka's' path.

"Can't you, I don't know, go to the Moon again and do something magical there?" Azula gave Luna a weary glance. It had been days sleeping in late and waking up early for school because of this research.

"Usagi left it meaning everything there doesn't work," Luna reminded. Usagi had chosen to continue living as a regular human, without her memories, and so everything on the Moon would soon again perish from disuse.

"I swear to God one day I'm going to make a big ole supercomputer that can find me anything," Azula let her head drop on the keyboard much like Usagi would have done in that situation.

"I think you should get some rest, Azula. You've been working very hard since Sailor Hemera appeared," Luna truly appreciated how much the girl committed to taking care of the city and the memory-less scouts. "I can call Artemis in while you're out."

"That's great," Azula raised herself up and took a big breath in. She felt her stomach grumble and decided maybe taking a break wouldn't be so bad. She grabbed her purse on the floor and promised Luna she would be back later.

When she was out on the street she buttoned up her coat and did her best to fight against the cold. It had been getting mysteriously colder with each day. She walked into the Fruits Crown Parlor and ordered some nice, steaming coffee. That'll keep her awake for the day.

"Azula?" Minako called from her booth.

Azula, unsurprised, turned sideways to see Minako and Makoto sharing the booth while having lunch. Since Sailor Hemera's appearance, the two girls apparently had gotten to know each other better now. They had also been talking to Azula more now and it worried Azula that it would trigger their memories. Fortunately, nothing of the sort was happening yet.

"Unazuki, bring the order here," Minako called to the waitress. "Azula, you'll be having lunch with us, right?"

"Sure," Azula smiled weakly and went over to the two. "How are you guys?"

"Oh, you know, battling exams," Minako pretended to shiver.

"It would help if you studied," Makoto giggled but Minako rolled her eyes.

"I wanted to try out for the volleyball team!"

"And did you make it?" asked Azula curiously. She remembered that before everything happened with the Dark Kingdom, Minako desired nothing more than to join the volleyball team at her school.

"Yes!" cheered the blonde.

"The problem is-" Makoto began, earning herself a small glare from Minako for ruining the moment, "-that now her practices are getting in the way of her studying."

"It's not my fault! I mean, seriously, who can be expected to remember everything Haruna says?" Minako dramatically sighed. "I wish I was like that genius Mizuno Ami. She could probably remember everything just by looking at it."

Azula smiled to herself at the thought of Ami. She rarely saw Ami now. Like Rei, Ami barely left her home without her old friends. Azula figured the girl would probably spend her afternoons studying on her own. At least Azula could catch Rei sometimes at the nearby mall but it was really rare.

"Azula, you seem tired," Makoto remarked after catching Azula languidly blinking into space.

Minako reached for her soda can and glanced at Azula. "High school must be very difficult."

Azula didn't want to discourage them from their future. She smiled through her tiredness and shook her head. "It's the best. You guys will love it when you get there. I've just been having some rough nights."

"Probably trauma from that weird cloud thing calling herself Senka," Makoto offered, making Minako nearly choke on her soda.

"Don't remind me!" went the blonde.

Azula found it hard to believe this was the famous Sailor V, now scared of the mere mention of a cloud-shadow thing. Memories of that particular Sailor Guardian had also been erased, and thoroughly.

"You guys hear of the other attacks?" Makoto lowered her voice when she asked. "This Senka thing really wants to find that Shadow Crystal at all costs."

"What even is that?" Minako made a face.

"Wish I knew," Azula said with a small sigh. Because she, Luna and Artemis had been trying to figure that out ever since the first appearance.

The cats speculated Sailor Hemera and Senka were from another civilization among the galaxies. It was just hard to figure out which one. No matter how impressive those of the Silver Millennium are, their minds are not infinite to hold every information of every civilization in the universe. It was a long job to do, which explained the tiredness Azula carried.

After lunch was over, Azula figured she should get home to take a well needed nap. She had come down the stairs of the cafe when she spotted a familiar blonde stepping out of the arcade with ginger-haired girl.

"Oh hi, Azula," Usagi greeted her kindly and cheerfully. "You remember Naru?" she gestured to the girl beside her.

"Yeah," Azula nodded.

"I should go," Naru said, backing away, "We have that test tomorrow, Usagi. You can't forget!"

"I won't!" Usagi exclaimed but Azula knew damn well she would.

"Did you win at the Sailor V game today?" Azula asked after Naru was gone.

Usagi's face fell. "No," she muttered. "That game has to be rigged!"

"Impossible, I played it yesterday and I won," Azula said proudly but it just ticked Usagi off even more.

"I'm going to win one day-"

"Mhm…"

"I will!"

Azula laughed and stepped back, bumping into someone in the process. "Sorry!" she quickly said but began to stammer when she saw it was Mamoru. He turned sideways and stared her with a new look in his eyes, nothing like before. "S-sorry...I-I didn't mean…"

  "You can't be serious," Mamoru put down a photograph on the table. His face was contorted into utter irritation.

Azula sat across him wearing a devious smirk. "I did the math, rose boy. It has to be you." Mamoru was not amused and Azula knew it. She laughed at it honestly. "You are Tuxedo Mask and there is nothing you can do to make me think otherwise. Your disappearances from school coincide with every public appearance Tuxedo Mask made, and Sailor Moon's for that matter. It's you."

"Why are you doing this?"

"Because I got bored."

"You're crazy," Mamoru let a little laugh out, but it was a shaky one. "I'm not him."

"Won't matter if I open my mouth," Azula leaned back on her chair. "All I have to do is point out your odd absences, your odd fashion choices, lack of coherent thoughts, and radical distancing...that should do the job. Doubt is very easy to implant in people who got nothing better to do."

"What do you want, then? Money?"

"My Dad owns the Crown arcade and the Fruits Crown Parlor shop. Money I got."

"Then what?"

Azula's smirk was wide as could be. "I want to meet Sailor Moon."

  Mamoru blinked fast and rubbed the side of his head. Azula was staring in concern but didn't say anything. "Y-your name is Azula, right?" he finally spoke.

"Yeah…" the red-haired confirmed. There was something in his eyes that was flickering and Azula dreaded it. This was something she had seen in Usagi herself before truly discovering her identity.

Mamoru took an unexpected quick leave. Azula thought it was for the better, honestly.

"Wooooow," Usagi giggled beside her.

Azula noticed the blush on Usagi's cheeks and groaned. "You have got to be kidding me. You couldn't have had more than 30 seconds to look at him!"

Her words flew over Usagi's head. "Do you know him? Does he go to your school?"

"You're not kidding," Azula concluded. She didn't know much about love but she figured this had to be something about that cosmic, star-crossed love story of theirs. It appeared she wouldn't be getting her nap because Usagi was dead set on asking and asking about Mamoru.

~0~

Sailor Hemera was not used to working alone. Sure, she had guarded the sacred barrier between the Shadow Kingdom and the Earth Kingdom for countless years, but at the end of the day she would always come home to the palace where she would see her fellow guardians, Princess and Queen. Working alone had never been a part of her. She wasn't built like that...and yet here she was, awakened in a future where she knew no one. Humans surrounded her by the thousands.

"I must find my sister," she set herself for one goal at a time.

She understood that being awoken meant something was going to happen that would endanger her Princess. The problem was, she barely remembered herself what had happened centuries ago. Her mind wasn't completely awake yet. She was just sure that her Princess had been reborn, not awoken like she had, but truly reborn and reincarnated. Being that the case, it also implied that the Princess knew nothing of her real self and much less that she was in danger. Senka was on her way to find her and Sailor Hemera needed all the help she could get.

"Asteria, where are you?" Sailor Hemera whispered in the lonely, abandoned factory she had turned into her temporary home.

There were no leads so far on any of her people. They were probably still sleeping - well, Asteria was probably on her way to waking up judging by that coldness that never seemed to leave the air now.

"But what if I'm not entirely alone?" Sailor Hemera got to thinking about the only other person she'd managed to remember besides her Guardian comrades, Princess and Queen. "That Earth Prince had to have been reborn too. It's law that every planet have a protector."

So maybe she could start her search with him first. After all, he had powers too and any help towards finding Princess Reign was good.

  "Your world is fascinating, Prince, but humans are humans. They have no power," Sailor Hemera had said so calmly and kind. She did not mean any offence but was merely pointing out a fact.

"No, but that does not mean we are any less brave," Prince Endymion said, sure of himself.

Sailor Hemera gave him a sharp look. "Your highness, Queen Nyx informed my comrades and I that the royal human family did hold several unique powers. I know for a fact you have powers."

"Your Queen seems very informed despite living behind this…" he gestured to the invisible barrier beside them, "...wall."

"Well, she held a close relationship to your family."

"But not with me."

"She knew that you were young and still learning. But she has gotten ill, you must understand."

"Must I prove myself to meet with her?"

"No, you-"

But Endymion did not wait for the answer. He was growing impatient not being able to see this Queen Nyx who had settled herself onto his planet. He stared at Sailor Hemera with a new look, a powerful one too. Before she could figure out what he was doing, she heard his voice in her mind.

'I have a right to see Queen Nyx and discuss her stay on my world. If I cannot see her, I demand to see the next in line.'

Sailor Hemera was in utter shock. "You can...you can go into my mind!?"

The prince simply smirked. "And the best part is, due to your linkage with your Guardian comrades, they have heard the warning too."

  "Oh he will definitely help me," Sailor Hemera nodded to herself.

He owed Princess Reign, after all.

[ragdollrory]

The players

In Athena's opinion, human life had always been most interesting. The way they moved through their time on earth as if there were no tomorrow, as if everything began with the rise of the sun and ended with the glow of the moon, its white halo bathing the night sky, and all trapped between Helios and Selene was either to be perfect, or not to be at all. The spark with which they followed their dreams, their ideals, their leaders.

And maybe they truly did not have a tomorrow, at least not all of them did. Humans- their lives- were fickle at best; only in their flesh bodies for a limited amount of time, and even then, growing old much too quickly, going to war between one another far too easily. Their need for greatness often pushed into the wrong direction, pursuing their names in history books by means of brawn rather than brain; often thinking on their feet, tempers flaring at the first strike, hands quick to clutch at their swords.

Athena knew much of it was cause of Gods, some of it even to her. Many men had idolized her throughout worlds, throughout eons, and once men loved, they did it so passionately that they were hardly ever pulled from the source of their infatuation. It often happened to Gods, that they fell prey to men’s love; many of her siblings were evidence of that, many more than she cared to account for. And as such, it often happened to Gods that they fell prey to human ambition, too. Much was the case of one of her brothers, one she’d given chase to throughout many a world, hoping for a better end to the human lives Ares consumed in his quest for power.

And so she followed him into this world as well, her thirst for knowledge, experience; her intentions to protect the men of this world from Ares a convenient excuse.

The awakening was usually slow- conscience and memory coming to her in small bouts of color and feeling. Human events helped it through sometimes, triggering the millennia of experiences with something as soft as a hug from her new brother, and the discovery that in this world she could wield a lively element such as fire; the horror of abandonment tearing at her chest late one night.

It was never easy to come to terms with facts that went beyond her powers, that came with the life one took. The rules of this new board she was playing on.

Athena learned early in this human life that she was born to a coin she’d not forged, and that coin had two of the most devastating faces she’d experienced while on earthly planes so far. 

That she was both to be worshipped and terrorized by the man who gave her life. And that she’d been a monster in the eyes of the woman who birthed her as well, no matter how much Athena yearned for her affections. 

That winning in some fields did not mean she could win in all, no matter how hard she tried- how desperately she tried- to hold onto some things. Nothing was fair in love and war, and so it seemed, when you were good in one, you were bound to fail in the other.

That jealousy was as lethal as a dagger, and that she both felt it and incited it in others, and that she couldn’t stop it. It was addictive, it was an easy game, with dangerous outcomes, such as her once loving brother.

She learned perfection was something that was expected of her, in higher form than ever before, even in time spent as a Goddess. And she became addicted to it as well; searching, researching, and working so hard to please, to be perfect. Addicted to praise.

Athena learned she too had fallen prey of humanity, and in her greatest quest to stop Ares, she’d taken quite a few detours, not all of them benign. For her, or for others. But so was human nature, the same imperfections she’d always found fascinating.

It wasn’t long after she’d been stripped of all she’d once felt was close to her heart when a crusade was laid out in front of her, an opportunity to put her out in the world, and thus, closer to Ares.

But how many times could she get away with failing her father’s mission? Have her underlings and friends make mistakes, have her flames purposely miss her intended enemies without harm? How many times could she watch them escape until she was brought back into the Lord’s side and lost her chance at her real enemy?

And how much harm was she inflicting into her human life? What would the consequences be? Those were the questions that often kept her awake while her friends slept.

The city was grand by human standards, grandiose even, with a story of standing in proud victory over her nation’s attempts against it. Her own uncle had lost what he loved most to the city’s walls. Rings of towering stone separated people based on their monetary status, isolating brothers and sisters, fathers and children, flesh and blood, because of something as frivolous as metal. 

And she knew he was here. She could smell him; putrid, like the stench of a battlefield the morning after. Fear and blood and bile; everything that made him proud, and her stomach revolt.

Azula walked past the walls of Ba Sing Se as if she were not the Princess of the enemy nation. Under the guise of greens and golds, no one batted an eye at her and her friends as they were led to see the King. She had to keep herself from shaking her head, so very like her to slip right under Ares’ nose, and so very him to underestimate humans. To underestimate her.

The plan had not been hard to devise, not with her loyal companions, not with how much of a fool this particular son of Zeus was. And soon enough she’d been imprisoned, interrogated, her facade stripped, and Azula could only smirk her way through it all. 

And then he really discovered her. Came marching to her, thin lips twisted in an inhuman smirk, as he ordered his faithful Dai Li away. And her true smile showed, pulling at the corner of her mouth with the joy that came with a new, unexpected challenge. What a fun little twist in her plans.

“Athena.” His voice lost the inflection he’d been using so far, turned deeper, raspier, the voice of a God who boasted over his fearsome war cries that made humans tremble. Idiot, humans trembled over the touch of a woman as well, there was no need to raise one’s voice.

“Ares, brother of mine.” Athena kept the smile etched on her features, she quite liked her appearance in this reality, she liked the energy of this youth. Her eyes swept over Ares, from his arms hidden behind his back- where she knew he kept his stone gloves- to the ridiculous braid growing from his otherwise bald head. “I see Aphrodite wasn’t so charitable to you this time around.” Athena sneered, a hand waving about in the air between them. Was it childish? Probably. She had the appearance of a child, so she’d still enjoy it.

“You think so highly of yourself, Athena.” He circled her, the room around them grand and empty, the columns, the flooring, the very particles of gold embedded in the walls his very element in this world. Still, she didn’t flinch, allowing Ares his inspection. 

Ares was a God of little thought, and quick to action, and her small frame gave her the advantage this time. Her body’s age would have him forget she was actually his equal, that she’d beaten him in this game many times before.

“This time I’ll win.” Finally he spoke again, his voice carried by the echo in the throne room placed him much too close to her, and her back tensed imperceptibly. “I’ve been here longer, Athena, I know how these men think, how this world works. I know how to play them. This city has been mine for decades now, and I won’t let you take it away from me.”

Her laughter filled the space, loud and musical. Athena turned to face her brother, unable to believe his ambition could have ended in the possession of just this one city. Either he was trying to hide a much bigger plan, or he was truly bored when he came here. Regardless, she was amused, and knew exactly how to take him down without breaking a sweat.

“Oh, but little brother… how you entertain me.” Feeling the boldness of her fire within, Athena placed a hand on the man’s shoulder, a much-too-sweet smile setting on her lips, his nostrils flaring, and jaw tightening, but still he stayed put. “And here I was, thinking we could strike a deal, but it seems your new life has come with a dwindling of your aspirations. What a shame, really.

“See, I’m not sure if you’re aware, but I’m a Princess this time around.” It was her turn to circle him now, ignoring the analysis of his being, and inspecting the intricately carved features of the columns around them instead, the detailing of the roof. She knew how he behaved, how he stood, how he attacked. It never changed no matter the reality. “A very powerful one at that.

“My father, Fire Lord Ozai, is slowly but inevitably taking over the world.” She turned to him with a condescending tip of her head. “But I’m sure you knew about that already.”

Throughout the years, and their many encounters, human plane or not, Athena had learned Ares was very much a God rash men wanted; quick to anger when one poked at his overinflated ego. And so that was what she intended to do.

Ares beady eyes narrowed on her. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, sister. You think I’m an idiot, but I’m ahead of you this time, and my plan is in the works already.” Athena merely rolled her eyes at him, what even was the point of this conversation? They’d been here before, they’d be here again. But, if he wished to believe he had some upper hand, then so be it. “I know who Ozai is, and I know about your scarred brother, too. He’s living here, did you know?”

That she didn’t know, and she found worry stir in her chest, a flicker of emotions developed for the boy who was flesh of her flesh this time around, but she pushed it aside for the moment being. She’d find Zuko later, and have him return home with her, where he belonged.

“I care not for the boy, Ares, you should know that already.” She lied through her teeth, something that came to her as easy as breathing and wielding blue flames. “But I’m intrigued at this master plan of yours, of course, although if you’d like to hear mine, then we might come to an agreement. 

“You see, I’ve learned so much this time, brother. The man- my father- has taught me a lot, and he’d be pleased if I can bring him someone like you, Ares. He’d reward me, and I- in turn- would reward you.” Athena’s voice softened, she cooed at the man, eyes widening to convey the illusion that her words carried. “You’d have a place close to him, and you could rise so much more quickly from there. We could rule this world together, just you and I. Just imagine what we could do, little brother.”

His stance relaxed ever so slightly, but enough for her to pick up, his left eyebrow twitched in interest, and Athena knew she’d at least caught his attention. That would do for now. She didn’t bother to add anything else before leaving him there, pondering over her words, as she returned to her friends. He would go to her before the day ended, ambition was what drove him after all.

And in the end, ambition was what brought him down. He always thought too big for his brain, and hurried to fights when he was all but blind to his opponent. She knew it, she’d seen it, and this time around was no different, not at all.

It was with Princess Azula on the King’s throne, and Long Feng betrayed by his own men, that this particular chapter in the battle of Ares and Athena ended. His face, as he realized he’d been played yet again by his sister had been delightful to watch; the knowledge that in this world he’d been defeated by a child, made for a bigger smirk on the Princess’ lips. And the fact that he’d thought- he’d genuinely thought, up until the very end- that he’d stood a chance, was a small victory on its own.

“You were never even a player, little brother.” Athena whispered by Ares’ ear as she ended his life in this mortal world, wondering where they’d meet again next, and going to find the boy with the scar on his face. Her new brother needed guidance, and she’d missed him.

[seyaryminamoto]

Seeing as you've already given your opinion on who are the most overrated characters of atla, who do you think are the most underrated?

Heh, well…

I wasn’t sure whether to feature Sokka as #1 or #2 but alas, I love him so he gets #1. He’s terribly underrated and it angers me. There was a time when my blog wasn’t an exclusively Sokkla blog with a few things on the side, I used to reblog general Avatar things (yes, that was A LONG time ago xD), and yet every single time I saw “Team Avatar” posts without Sokka I would literally scroll past them as if they didn’t exist. Because ffs, I don’t care if he’s not a bender, if the other four are the perfect symbolization of the four elements in harmony, HE’S PART OF TEAM AVATAR TOO!… so yes. Sokka. The guy who gets simplified, as I recently said, as “he was sexist and now he’s not” by posts of 100K notes, or even shrugged off by some people as “the funny one”, even gets hated by some people with terrible taste who think he’s useless just because he can’t bend. Yep, those who hate him because of this aren’t even worth talking to, in my experience. Clear as day they can’t see the true worth of anything even if it’s right in front of their eyes.Alas, Sokka, the boy who grew up into a man by putting other people’s needs ahead of his own, who stood his moral code even in the worst circumstances (such as shown in Jet), who opened his mind to new experiences and became a remarkable warrior because of this. He’s humble, but his heart is stronger than that of any other character in the franchise. He has seen so much tragedy and such darkness weighs inside him, but he doesn’t allow those tragedies to shape him. His strength is seriously admirable.… And I’d dare say half the fandom, if not more, just think he’s the funny guy. He’s the definition of an underrated character.

Ironically, I think Aang is very underrated. Yes, he’s not my favorite character either, but the strength this boy showed in the face of his many tragedies, and the evolution from fleeing from his problems to being able to face his responsibilities was pretty great. Also, Aang, unlike some other characters, usually faced consequences when he did something wrong.Perhaps the only exception I can think for that is his emo phase during Book 2, which is justified plenty, but the show doesn’t try to make you think he’s being nice. It’s shown that he’s very affected by the loss of his bison, but his treatment of his friends isn’t sweetened. The others show a lot of strength and understanding, knowing Aang can’t be his usual self when this is weighing on him. It was a bad time for everyone, yet I feel it was handled well enough as something that was hurting Aang really badly, one last straw for him after he had undergone so much pain already.Other than that specific part of the show, Aang often was forced to grow and change whenever he made mistakes, and had to face many uncomfortable truths about his past lives and the world he lived in. He showed a lot of integrity and human qualities and never degenerated into a tropey shonen anime protagonist, for instance. So while I’m not a huge Aang fan, I figured the rest of the fandom would appreciate him more. No doubt he has his fans, but a ton of the hate he gets is undeserved and often hypocritical, not to mention it’s mostly done to simplify his character when he was pretty great, as a character and hero, as he was.

Ahahahahaaa… Ozai! Yes, I don’t blame most people for underestimating and despising Ozai: let’s be fair, this man was supposed to be the final boss and he was built from the start to be the kind of villain people hated. He wasn’t meant to be relatable or nice or emotional or anything of the sort, even if a handful of people did grow to like him. But the show clearly wanted him to be a bad guy, THE bad guy, and he played his part well enough.But the thing that bugs me with Ozai is: for one thing, so many people underestimate his bending skills. No lie, we only saw him fighting in Sozin’s Comet, but even so, the kind of mad skills he showed there were off the charts. The legion of people claiming Iroh is stronger than Ozai and that he would’ve handed his ass to him is honestly laughable, considering that IROH HIMSELF SAYS HE DOESN’T KNOW THAT HE CAN GO UP AGAINST HIS BROTHER. Ozai is the strongest firebender in ATLA, PERIOD. He did things no other firebenders were shown doing. He was supposed to be that powerful BECAUSE he’s the final boss. Yes, the fight between him and Aang falls short compared to the Last Agni Kai because the emotional investment and conflict isn’t as strong here as it was over there, but for people to actually claim Ozai was weak at all? That he wasn’t that big a deal? Excuse you, but that’s just spite talking. I love Azula with all my heart, and even I can see she still wasn’t on the same power level scale as her father during the finale. And that’s fact. (I think she has the potential to surpass him, yes, but she hadn’t done it by the time of the finale).And then there’s the other reason why Ozai is underrated: yes, he wasn’t developed, he wasn’t explored, he fell flat many times. But honest to gods, it’s not that hard to draw the parallels between him and Zuko when you consider: 1. Ozai was designed to look like an older version of Zuko 2. Ozai is stated to have traveled looking for the Avatar, just like Zuko 3. Ozai gets passed over by his father and punished beyond proportion for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Seriously, can we not see these parallels, right there? And that’s without getting into the similarity of Zuko and Ozai’s personalities, because both of them seemed to feel entitled to the throne that, originally, wasn’t supposed to be theirs (as a reminder, if we go by what the Wikia says, Zuko is 11 when Lu Ten dies, which means he spent 11 years of his life without being a Crown Prince or expecting to take the throne because, by all logic, it should have been Lu Ten’s... yet he slides into the “that throne will be mine” mentality within a few years). Both of them are brash, hot-headed and impulsive. Both of them have bad tempers, both of them spent years trying to please fathers who could never be pleased at all.Point being? OZAI IS A MIRROR FOR ZUKO. OZAI IS “BAD ENDING ZUKO”. OZAI IS WHAT ZUKO COULD HAVE BEEN IF AANG NEVER SHOWED UP, IF IROH WASN’T AROUND TO GUIDE HIM. And that, my friends, adds a fuckton of complexity to Ozai that the majority of the fandom is happy to overlook. Hate him all you want, he’s supposed to be hated. But this guy is waaaaay more than what meets the eye if you only stop for ten minutes to ponder his character, his possible motivations and his relationships. It’s especially clear that he’s very much complex when you factor in the resemblance with Zuko.

And this time I guess I’ll cut it short at 3 because I can’t think of anyone else who’s underrated or even criticized relentlessly without much basis. While there’s some people who undermine characters like Suki, she also has a fairly big and solid group of fans who are very much devoted to bringing up her character and who will always begrudge Bryke for not revealing anything about her future, so she’s not THAT underrated...?

Welp, I feel the fandom is a little more balanced with the rest of the characters, there’s enough love and hate to go for everyone. So I guess I’ll keep it as a top 3 this time, if you don’t mind, Anon.

[theironweasel]

Code Geass: With Characters Quantity does not equal Quality.

Spoilers for both this and Avatar: The Last Airbender!

I don’t think I’ve ever been quite as conflicted about a piece of fiction than I have after finishing Code Geass. First, before I get into all my issues with the show I want to share an experience I had watching it. Midway through the first episode I almost stopped watching it because I was getting sick of the racism in-show. Don’t get me wrong I’m totally willing to have racism as an issue discussed in a show, however, it didn’t come across as realistic. It just came across as undeserved smug superiority in the villains which is something I can’t stand and there was a lot of it in the first episode, I’ll also address this attitude of the Villains. It was toned down after the first episode, but part of me wishes I had given up because Code Geass is a very flawed show and I’m not sure the time investment was worth it.

The Humor: This is probably the worst aspect of the show, as the humor is really silly and lame and usually results from situations no sane person would create or be involved in, mostly involving idiotic stuff at the school. And for a show this serious, it could have benefited from some quality dark humor which would have fit the tone better.

The Music: There were a number of great tracks in this show lending to the emotional and epic moments, though I wish the editing was a bit better so the tracks could really take over the scenes.

Recap: I never thought that you could make a recap pretentious but Code Geass manages to do it. Some of what the narration says applies to what's going on but it feels less like it’s trying to say something interesting and more like it's just trying to SOUND deep.

The Fights: While there was some cool factor in the fights I found the different mechs to be rather generic. While there were different designs and powers, I never felt they were distinct enough or had enough personality to make most of the fight scenes very engaging.

The Pacing: This is probably the strongest aspect of the series as it is pretty good about building up tension and having events lead into each other pretty well. I will say the season 2 reset kinda hurt things but it did manage to get things back on track pretty fast.

The Plot: This is a bit of a mixed bag as many aspects of the plot are pretty strong but some really don’t work. The weakest of these was probably the Princess Massacre. I get the thematic implication of power corrupting a person, however, it was an accident and not a bad calculated decision, so it just feels contrived, especially since it was so close to being an ending. I feel this was done a lot better with the first F.L.E.I.J.A explosion because it was caused by the command Lelouch gave to Suzaku as he didn’t fully think through the consequences of this command into the future and his murder of Euphemia. There was also the season 1 cliffhanger which I would imagine annoyed the shit out of people at the time. This is something Avatar never did so the best comparison I can make is to the famous Star Trek TNG Best of Both Worlds cliffhanger, which I felt worked better for two reasons. One, it was a conclusion in some sense as it answered one of the big questions of the first episode of whether Riker could handle the responsibilities of Captain. Two, when the next season came out the story immediately continued instead of leading into a soft reset of the status quo. Also, there was the whole Ragnarok Connection (Which by the way, whenever someone said it made me think of the Rainbow Connection, so that took some of the drama out of things.) I’ll just say it right here, it made no goddamn sense. So God is the unconscious mind of humanity and killing it will somehow stagnate humanity, bring back the dead, and end lying maybe? Seriously even the wiki doesn’t really seem to understand it, the best I could get is that it would combine humanity into a single will, but I still don’t get how any of these things have to do with each other. In the end, the whole thing comes off as rather confusing and pretentious with all the metaphysical crap and the moralizing. This is unfortunate because it was a major plot point that the whole show was leading up to and leads into the final arc of the series.

The Villains: Ok I’m just going to come out and say it, the villains suck! One of the problems is CG’s rather fluid nature regarding its villains as a good number of the characters have done something awful and a number of villains don’t really seem to be villains anymore by the end. I appreciate the ability to turn villainous characters into gray or even good characters, but given the lack of character development for even some of the more central characters, it doesn’t work out well as often the villains are no longer villains because plot. Then there is Schneizel who at first seems like a charismatic and even somewhat reasonable villain who is willing to work with his enemies if it serves his interests. I even would have been fine if it had just been a part of a larger chess game to gain power, but then it went that extra step to make him a genocidal maniac who wants to kill billions of people to achieve world peace? Seriously, this makes Koko from Jormungand look sane by comparison. The best comparison I can make is between Princess Cornelia and Princess Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Both are skilled, arrogant, self-assured soldiers who believe not only in their own superiority but in the superiority of their nation. While there are some significant differences such as Cornelia having a soft spot for her sister whereas Azula is almost a sociopath and cares nothing for her brother and whose only weakness is her absolute belief in the power of fear. (Yeah the 14-year-old from the kid’s show is the far more hardcore villain, while Cornelia is willing to kill people in battle, Azula is willing to straight up murder people.) Cornelia only wins against Lelouch when the men under his command refused to listen to him, and the battle is rather minor in the grand scheme of the story. Azula is able to conquer Ba Sing Se, the world's greatest city, kill the Avatar and defeat his friends all by manipulating the city’s own secret police into following her. But I think one of the best examples I can make is between their introduction scenes. While each of these characters has a brief scene or two where we see them before we get a proper introduction to them, the real intro scenes are where they show how serious they are about their jobs and how they deal with what they view as incompetence. Cornelia greets her sister but reminds her to refer to her by her title, which shows that she is serious about her job but is otherwise unremarkable. Then she points her rather stupid looking gun at some bureaucrat and scolds him for being corrupt and incompetent then screams at him to capture Zero. Azula enters by telling her royal guard that they are going to capture Zuko and Iroh and that she understands if they have mixed feelings about it but if they hesitate she will kill them. This establishes how serious she is about the job and it’s unnerving given how young she is. Then when she is told by the captain that the tides would not allow their ship to land when they want she responds with a couple of questions. “I'm sorry, Captain, but I do not know much about the tides. Can you explain something to me? Do the tides command this ship? You said the tides would not allow us to bring the ship in. Do the tides command this ship? And if I were to have you thrown overboard, would the tides think twice about smashing you against the rocky shore? Well, then, maybe you should worry less about the tides who've already made up their mind about killing you and worry more about me, who's still mulling it over.” Throughout the whole scene she never raises her voice or takes aggressive action and for most of her talk with the captain she is not even facing him and even plays with her hair a bit. Hell up to this point the only indication of how dangerous she is was a line about her being a firebending prodigy at the end of the last season. But one thing tells us how dangerous she truly is when she turns to face the captain and when she glares at him beating a hasty retreat it's with what Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood referred to as “The Eyes of a Killer.” She doesn’t need to shout or take violent action in order to intimidate those around her. In fact, it’s scarier because she doesn’t need to do it, she is so confident in herself that all she needs to do is put a thought in someone's head and they will do it because they know the cost of defying her. I think this is something anime generally tends to struggle with: Subtlety. From humor to characters to dialogue it's something the genre doesn’t always handle well. Not always obviously, The Devil Works Part Time had humor that was rather subtle compared to other anime, Cowboy Bebop had great subtle atmospheric touches, and Trigun was capable of having characters with subtle nuances and emotions. Code Geass was not that great at subtlety in really any capacity outside of some character aspects for Lelouch and a few others. Though I will give Cornelia the credit for throwing a knife into V.V.’s head mid-sentence which was both smart and funny.

Characters: Ok this is the weakest aspect of the show, the vast majority of characters in this show range from boring and shallow to insufferably stupid and annoying and there are WAY TOO MANY! I’ve stated how the anime I’ve seen often has a problem with too many characters such as both Fullmetal Alchemist series, Drifters and a few others. But Code Geass is by far the worst in this regard both in quantity and quality. To be honest I can’t remember at least half of their names which is not something that should happen after a 50 episode series. We range from completely forgettable characters like Ohgi whose connection to Kallen was barely looked into and whose love arc makes all the impact of a wet towel. Then you have annoying people like that whiny loudmouth rebel whose name I can’t even bother to look up. Rival and the council president are almost completely forgettable other than the president's habit of doing ridiculous shit that no one in their right mind would do or put up with. Then there’s Nina, the perverted, psychotic, genius, moron. Yeah, talk about someone whose characterization is all over the place. Compare: Robert Oppenheimer, after witnessing the result of the Atomic Bomb he had helped create thought of the line from the Hindu text The Bhagavad-Gita “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Not only as a reflection on the awesome horror that he had unleashed onto the world but also questioning the meaning of that text as an argument for doing one’s duty and detaching oneself from the consequences which he found he could no longer do, that even if he believed it was ultimately the right thing to do he would have to live with the consequences of what he had done. Nina: “I didn’t realize how many people would die!” I get that she is supposed to be seriously unhinged, the creepy table masturbation scene made that abundantly clear, but that's not insane, it's just stupid. Then there are characters with aborted arcs like the Chinese pilot who is supposed to be dying but never does. Even some of the better characters are mostly better just because of the VAs like Lloyd who is mostly amusing because the Voice Actor is great at sounding condescending and aloof in an amazingly camp way. Or Tohdoh simply because he’s voiced by Steve Blum, who also seems to have a barely there arc with Suzaku that goes nowhere. Kallen is probably the best of the characters aside from Lelouch and Suzaku as they at least have an episode where they look into her character, and while it isn’t done that amazingly I’ll give them props for trying on that one. There’s also a trend of weird moments where characters have a reaction or do something that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Such as Kallen’s reaction to discovering Zero’s identity, I could understand a large amount of shock, but she collapses and then runs away, which I never really understood. Or Charles who insists that he really cared for his son despite treating him like dirt which totally wound up biting him in the ass in the end. There is also the problem with Shirley, who for a while just comes off as the boring love interest until her dad dies and suddenly she becomes much more interesting because she has an important connection to Lelouch that affects both their characters, though it would have been nice if they had established her relationship with her father beforehand. Then her memory gets erased returning her to boring status and would have been picked up on immediately if the school characters weren’t rock stupid. But they are so I can actually buy it. And then when she gets her memory back, making her interesting she almost immediately gets killed. It’s like Rollo killed her because she was threatening to become more interesting than him. When I was discussing the problem of too many characters with my dad he offered an explanation I had surprisingly not considered: Filler. While I was used to pointless scenes or plot points being used to kill time. I had never considered a character let alone many characters being used simply to fill up time and that's exactly what many of these characters feel like, just ways to generate plots that can fill a few minutes per episode and this sadly rings true to me given how little impact many of these characters had on the main plot or the main characters yet are present for so much of the story. Hell, there was one character in season 2 who was the son of another character who Zero killed in the first season who we only see twice and the second time is for like 5 seconds as he dies proclaiming he failed to avenge his father. WTF was that? At least Hahn from Avatar: The Last Airbender was an important plot device as Princess Yue’s fiancee and the show comically acknowledged how useless a character he was by making the weakest villain of the show only have to do half a second of tai chi to dispose of him before continuing with his monologue like nothing happened.

Suzaku: While I often got annoyed at how dense he seemed to be about how the system was never really going to change from the inside, he did work well off of Lelouch and his ultimate fate was very well done. I just wish he had more tolerance for Zero as the necessary evil to pressure the system to change from the outside.

Lelouch: This is probably the strongest element of the show as he was a pretty interesting character to start with and by the end of the show he had made a believable descent into basically being a villain. It hit me how well the show had done this when Schneizel reveals everything Lelouch had done to the black knights and at first I was with Diethard in that his actions were more important, but looking at all the people he had manipulated and killed some of whom were even close to different people it hit me how screwed up Lelouch had become.

So I said I was conflicted about the show but I’ve been for the most part pointing out negatives so where does the real positivity come in?

The Ending: This may be one of the most interesting and brilliant endings I have ever seen. I’ll start by saying when I got to the end of episode 21 of season 2 I almost wanted the show to just end with Lelouch and Suzaku seizing the throne because the whole mood was great with the crowd chanting “All Hail Lelouch!” and the implication that both have just straight up become villains, while I’m glad it didn’t and I’m sure it would have pissed off people more invested in the series, I still think it would have been a decent ending. However, that was overshadowed by the real ending of the show which was amazing! It perfectly wraps up the arcs of both Lelouch and Suzaku, condemning them both to the fates they and the world deserve. Lelouch the ultimate rebel must die as the ultimate dictator and Suzaku the Paladin must forever be his own worst enemy. It absolutely fits the themes of the show and gives us Lelouch’s ultimate scheme. While there may be logical problems with all this, from an emotional, thematic and character perspective it all works wonderfully! I wish they had given us fewer hints so that we truly thought that Lelouch and Suzaku had become evil and believed taking over the world was the right thing to do, as it would have made the end even more effective, but there were way too many hints that made it clear they had some sort of plan. I thought they were somehow going to use the Sword of Akasha to make it so Geass never existed but this worked way better. I just wish this ending was for a better show because Code Geass has too many faults to make this one of the greatest endings of all time, which it could have been in my opinion. We often see stories where it is great up until it bungles the ending. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a story with a fantastic ending undercut by the rest of it. However, despite everything, nothing could take away that ending from Code Geass… EXCEPT ANOTHER SEASON!!!!!! WHY!!!?? Ok, I get that the show is popular but why would you ruin that ending by making another season almost a decade later? For people who like the show a lot more than me that ending has to be the best of all time so it would be even worse for them. Unless they have a damn good story to tell with Lelouch of the Resurrection and they somehow make all the characters super interesting I don’t see a point to this asides from filling a demand from fans. Seriously how could it get any more epic or poignant than what we got at the end of season 2? I will probably watch the last season unless I hear it’s total crap but if I was a fan I would imagine I would refuse to watch it unless I heard it somehow gave us a better ending than season 2 did because that ending was near perfect. And please don’t tell me that there was always a plan for this, it’s almost a decade later and any lingering plot threads by the end of season 2 were pretty damn minor, hell Avatar: The Last Airbender’s penultimate scene was massive sequel bait and that just got resolved in the follow-up comic series.

In my opinion Code Geass is a flawed anime with a few very strong elements but it ultimately wasted a lot of its potential by giving us mountains of filler characters, unremarkable villains, awful attempts at comedy and fumbling a few important plot points. If there were an anime that could be totally remade from the ground up I think Code Geass would be an excellent candidate because the basic story and main characters are excellent but redoing the other aspects right could make one of the best Animes and stories of all time.

[raisindeatre]

ok but Picture This: a zutara musical lead au or tbh any type of acting

FIRST OF ALL: thank you so much for this prompt, anon! (if it was indeed a prompt. Maybe you were just telling me to picture this? I don’t know.) Second of all: I am so, sorry how long it took me to get around to this. Finally: I am 124% sure this was not what you were looking for (it really became more of a childhood friend thing than anything else?) and so I’M SO SORRY BUT I HOPE YOU LIKE IT ANYWAY (also this got… so long i’m SORRY)

love amongst the dragons

“I cannot believe,” Zuko grumbles as he puts his tray down, “that Bumi is directing this year’s school play. After what he did with The Boy in the Iceberg last year? A travesty!”

“The Boy in the Iceberg was pretty terrible,” Sokka says, reaching over to grab a handful of fries from Zuko’s tray and stuffing them into his mouth. “But at least the effects were decent.”

“Who cares about the effects?” Zuko replies indignantly, swatting Sokka’s hand away as the other boy reaches for more. “He absolutely butchered the story - if you guys had bothered to read the original, you would’ve known that the Blind Bandit was originally a girl -”

“I like Bumi,” Aang says absent-mindedly, and Katara smiles and bumps his shoulder with hers.

“You would,” she says affectionately, and Zuko has to turn away a little at the sight, his stomach clenching uncomfortably. Ridiculous. She and Aang were just friends. She and Zuko were just friends. What was his problem? “I swear, Aang,” she continues, “You guys are so close it’s like the two of you were friends in a past life or something.”

“Best friends, more like,” Aang says cheerily, and Zuko clears his throat.

“Are any of you listening to me?” he says. “I’m telling you, he’s going to mess this year’s play up just like he did last year! And Love Amongst the Dragons is completely different from The Boy in the Iceberg, it’s going to be much harder to direct -”

“How so?” Suki asks.

“Well,” he says. “The characters are different. The hero, for one. Roku. He’s a really difficult character to play, okay? Trust me. He has to be smart and brave and daring and - oh God, Bumi’s going to want to play him himself, isn’t he?”

“Lighten up, Sparky,” Toph says. “What’s the big deal?”

“It’s a big deal,” he says sharply, and he knows he’s gone too far. They’re all looking at him in surprise; even Toph has tilted her head at him, sightless eyes fixed unerringly on his face. The silence stretches out between them, awkward. “Look,” Zuko continues, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m sorry, okay? It just. This play means a lot to me. I don’t want him ruining it. I don’t.”

For a moment he thinks they’ll ask him why he cares so much. But he forgets, sometimes, that they are his friends, first and foremost. That they have each other’s backs, no matter what. That they will be with each other until the end of the line.  

“Then you should audition,” Suki says thoughtfully, and for a moment all Zuko can do is blink at her.

“What? Me? I can’t -”

“That’s actually a really good idea!” Sokka jumps in. “You obviously know all about this play, Zuko, and you know how the main character should be portrayed - and listen, if you were part of the play I’m sure Bumi would let you have some input into how it should be directed! It’s perfect!”

“No, it’s not!” Zuko protests. “I don’t know anything about being in a play! I can’t act!”

“Please,” Toph says. “You’re the world’s biggest drama queen, Zuko. You were practically made for the stage. I gotta say, I’m liking this idea more and more.” She nods sanctimoniously, crossing her arms. “Toph approves.”

“Well, Zuko doesn’t -”

“You can do it, Zuko,” Katara says, and he turns to look at her. For a moment, the world narrows to her, this girl sitting across the table. His chest twinges, something that’s been happening more and more lately. Her eyes are very blue in the sunlight streaming over them, and for a moment,he experiences double vision: Katara grinning down at him as they climb a tree, six years old; Katara blowing pink bubbles and laughing when they burst on her lips, ten years old; Katara stretching her arms over her head and diving gracefully into the local swimming pool. How long he has known her, known all of them. Where have all the years gone?

“How do you know?” he says softly, and she smiles at him, just a little.

“When have you ever not?” she says. “You always do what you put your mind to, Zuko. You don’t ever give up.”

Uncertainty flits across her face, then, and she clears her throat awkwardly. It’s only then that Zuko is aware of the rest of their friends at their table, listening. Katara’s smile turns into a grin, playful. “And even if you can’t do it, you have to. It’s like you said. If you don’t play the hero, Bumi will - and we know that if he does he’s going to want to do it shirtless.”

“NO!” everyone at the table groans. Sokka goes so far as to make the sign of the cross.

Aang pipes up, “I heard Bumi has an 8-pack. That Bumi is shredded -”

“NO!” everyone at the table shouts again, and by now Zuko is laughing. The tense feeling in his stomach has evaporated, replaced by the sight of Katara looking at him, eyes bright.

“You have to do it, Zuko,” she says, laughing. “Be heroic. Don’t subject us to that!”

“Do it, Zuko,” the rest of them chirp, like baby birds. “Do it, do it, do it! Do it, Zuko -”

“Oh, my God,” he says, and so he does.

“Bumi really creeps me out,” he says to Sokka later as they make their way down the hallways, clutching the script to his chest. Auditions are in two weeks, and when the thought crosses his mind he abruptly shoves it away. His friends have made him do any number of stupid things in all the years he’s known them, but this really has to take the cake. “Have you noticed that one of his eyes is bigger than the other?”

“You’re one to talk,” Sokka says, laughing, and promptly dodges the half-hearted punch Zuko aims at his shoulder.

“I hope laughing at my scar is still funny when you’re in hell!” he says, mock-irritably, but Sokka just grins at him.

“Hey, for what it’s worth, it’s not like looking like the Phantom of the Opera has cramped your style. Katara was just telling me the other day -” Sokka breaks off. “Ah, forget it.”

What? “What? What did she tell you?”

“Look, if I tell you I’m worried your head won’t fit through the classroom door, and frankly I can’t have that -”

“Sokka. What did she tell you?”

Sokka sighs, world-weary. “Apparently, her class voted you the hottest senior in school. But she said that to me after I drank the last of her orange juice, so she could’ve just been saying that to get me back. In fact, I’m almost positive that’s what it was. You were probably second place, buddy.”

“I’m sure.” Her class. Not her. “Was it her whole class? Do you know?”

“Look at you, fishing for compliments. Is that a blush I see?”

“Oh, forget it.”

They walk on in silence for a while, until Sokka says thoughtfully, “You know what? They probably thought I was a sophomore. That’s what it is. I bet they voted me the hottest sophomore in school.”

Zuko turns his head away to hide his smile. “I’m sure, Sokka. I’m sure.”

“I heard you signed up for the play auditions,” Azula says to him later, almost causing him to jump out of his skin.

“God, Azula,” he says, and she raises an eyebrow at him from where she is leaning against his doorway. “Haven’t you ever heard of knocking?”

“People out of the way? Sure. So. You’re auditioning for the play.”

“Did Ty Lee tell you that? How did she even find that out? That girl’s nose for gossip is terrifying. You need better friends.”

“Sokka has been going around school wearing a shirt that says ‘If you’re reading this I’m a senior’, and you think I need better friends?”

“Point taken. Was there anything you wanted, Azula?”

“I know why you’re doing it,” she says, and he shrugs at her, weakly.

“To pad out my college application?”

She smiles at him, and it’s cruel, but then all of Azula’s smiles are cruel. Even dressed in a tank top and pyjama shorts, everything about her manages to scream predator, but then her eyes slide to the framed picture by his bed, and something about her - well, not softens, exactly, but it’s like she’s sheathed her claws. She straightens up.

“Mum would be proud,” she says softly, and she turns to leave before he can reply.

His friends jump into helping him practice for the auditions with an enthusiasm that Zuko knows can’t be completely attributed to not wanting to see Bumi shirtless, and he is accordingly grateful.

“You know,” Suki says, “You don’t have to memorise the whole script, Zuko. I’m pretty sure for auditions you just have to read out a page or two.”

“If I’m going to do this,” he replies, “I’m going to do it right.” It’s not like it’ll be that hard to memorise the script, anyway - to his immense surprise, Bumi has thus far managed to stay loyal to the original material, and Zuko - well, Zuko knows the play like the back of his hand. He can recite half the lines in it from memory.

He runs lines with Aang as they walk Appa; Aang, who delights in the old-fashioned dialogue. “Have at thee, coward!” he says, looking very, very unintimidating with his cheerful gray eyes, standing a full six inches shorter than Zuko and breaking into a hasty jog as Appa barks and strains at his leash to chase Momo. (”God,” he says later. “Aren’t old-timey phrases the best? I swear, sometimes I feel like I was born into the wrong century, Zuko.”)

He runs lines with Toph, who only ever wants to be the villain. “Away, you mouldy rogue, away!” she says gleefully, and thumps his shoulder. (”That wasn’t in the script, Toph!” he complains, rubbing it, and she replies, “Sparky, you know I can’t read.”)

In the scenes where the whole cast is involved, he practices with everyone in Sokka and Katara’s living room, the whole gang, Suki’s voice low and steady, Sokka’s good-natured, Aang’s bright, Toph’s dry and Katara’s soft. He looks around at them, stretched out on the floor and crashed out on sofas, scuffling as they fight for the chips and guacamole, speaking through full mouths as he paces around the room and recites his lines, and feels his entire centre soften. How did they get here, him and Sokka hovering on the brink of eighteen, college on the horizon? Where have all the years gone?

But it’s not until Sunday, a few days before the auditions, that he realizes that he has yet to practice any of the love scenes: not a coincidence, but not something he can put off any longer either.

He already knows Toph will refuse flat-out to practice them with him, and Suki, Aang and Sokka are gone for the day, taking Appa to the vet. He briefly, briefly considers asking his uncle to help him, and immediately un-considers it, shuddering inwardly. He can just imagine it, and that is a mental image worse than any shirtless Bumi.

(”I have waited so long, Roku. Kiss me now… She looks deeply into his eyes. Oh, wait, nephew, am I supposed to read that part out?”

“…. No, uncle. You’re not.”)

And besides, maybe a small part of him wants to do this with her. He picks up his phone, and hesitates just for a moment before tapping out a message to Katara. SOS, he writes. Can you come over?

She comes in smelling like rain, all damp clothes and silver-stained cheeks, the ends of her dark hair curling, and when he takes her jacket from her to hang it on the rack, for a minute all he can do is close his eyes. He has a hundred memories of her like this, a thousand - running through the sprinklers together, sliding through mud puddles in the rain, the sight of her gracefully hauling herself out of the community pool from that one summer she worked as a lifeguard. Whenever he thinks of Katara, he thinks of water.

“What’s up?” she says, and he looks down at his feet for a moment.

“I need you to help me practice some scenes for the play,” he says in a rush, and then clears his throat. “The, um. The romance scenes.”

“Ah,” she says thoughtfully. “You know, I was wondering when you would ever get around to doing those.”

His heart stutters in his chest. “You - you were?”

“Yeah,” she shrugs, squeezing the drops of water out of the ends of her hair. “I mean, it’s called Love Amongst the Dragons, right? None of the scenes I saw you practice were particularly. You know. love-y. Romantic.”

“Right,” he says, as she sits down on the couch next to him, tucking her long legs underneath her. “I mean, I wasn’t super keen on them.”

“No, I guess not. You’re not very romantic.”

His head snaps up, affronted. “Hey! I’m plenty romantic.”

“Zuko, I don’t think I ever saw you compliment Mai when you two were together.” His mouth opens, and she says, “And ’I don’t hate you’ doesn’t count!” He closes his mouth, and she smirks at him.

“You want a compliment? I’ll compliment you right now!” he says, casting around. Ah crap. “That shirt you’re wearing. It looks - it looks good on you.”

“Thanks,” she says, genuine surprise in her voice, and of course he has to ruin it by saying, “I mean, I think it’s a little small -”

“Thanks, Zuko.”

“I didn’t mean it like that -”

“Forget it. I need to go iron my muumuu now.”

“Katara!” he says pleadingly, and rolls his eyes when he sees her laughing. “Look, Mr. Smooth,” she says, turning sideways on the couch to face him. “Let’s just get around to practicing, okay?”

And so they do, and it’s… easier than he thought it would be. A big part of it is probably the fact that Katara’s eyes are on the script as she reads out the lines; it’s so much easier to say things like “moon of my life” and “my sun and stars” to her shoulder than it is to her face. He rattles off his lines from memory, and watches the way the sun slants through the windows to illuminate her, so that her hair falls into a thousand rich shades of mahogany and chocolate and at its lightest, a colour that seems almost red, and where have the years gone? The slope of her neck is only inches away from his face, the warm juncture where her throat and her shoulder meet so close to his lips.

And then Katara looks up from the sheets in her hand, her eyes so blue, and says, “Kiss me now,” and he -

- jerks back from her so hard he almost falls off the couch, his heart jackrabbiting in his chest so that for a moment he is almost gasping.

“Zuko?” she says, her voice confused, and he turns his head away from her for a moment.

“You -” he stutters, furious and bewildered, “You broke the rules!”

“I’m allowed to look at the script!” she protests.

I’m not talking about those rules, is what sears across his brain, white-hot and terrible. There were roles the people in his life were supposed to play, a plan he had for high school and what comes next, and she was never supposed to make him feel like this, not Sokka’s little sister who he’s known all his life, not her, no.

“Forget it,” he growls, pushing up from the couch. “This was a stupid idea. I’m gonna go -”

“What is with you?” she says, irritable, rising to her feet to mirror him, and for a minute he is six years old again, ten, twelve. How many times have they done this before, facing off over Capture-the-Flag disputes, over dodgeball squabbles? Where have the years gone? “God, what is the big deal with this play anyway?”

“It’s a big deal -”

“But why?” she says, exasperated, and he snaps.

“Because!” he says, almost shouts. Then the fight goes out of him; his shoulders sag, he reaches back to rub his neck. “It was my mum’s favourite play, okay?”

She doesn’t say anything, but something about her posture softens, the tension bleeding out of her frame even as it does his. Ever his mirror, ever his shadow. He swallows.

“I just want to do right by her,” he says. “I just want to make her proud.”

“Oh, Zuko,” she says, almost sighs. “You already have.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because,” she says, and shrugs at him, a little. “Because. Who wouldn’t be proud of you?”

He rolls his eyes. “Whatever, Katara -”

“I’m serious,” she says, stepping closer to him. “You told us that the hero of this play was smart and brave and kind and determined - you’re already all of that, Zuko. I mean, God!” She shakes her head, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Remember that summer you decided you wanted to learn how to use dao swords? And you actually did! You watched YouTube tutorials and you took out books from the library and you practiced with them every day in your backyard. I was tired just watching you. But it was so inspiring to see, Zuko. You don’t give up. You work for the things that matter.

“And the time Appa got stuck in a tree!” she continues. “Remember? And we were all crowding around at the bottom and Sokka was talking about building some pulley system to get him down and Aang was about to call the fire department and you just - You just rolled your eyes and climbed up there and then - well, you both fell like ten feet -”

“I actually don’t remember that at all. Concussion, remember? But I’ve been assured by many people that it happened.”

“Stop,” she says, her mouth twitching. “That’s what I mean, okay? You’re kind. You’re brave. Your mother would be proud of you, Zuko. Your mother is proud of you. Your mother will always be proud of you. Look at all the tenses I’m using. My English teacher would approve.”

He laughs, just a little, and she tilts her head to smile at him. “Thanks, Katara.”

“You’re going to get this part, Zuko,” she says. “I know it. And even if you don’t, you have to.”

“To save you guys from Bumi. I know.”

“No,” she says. “Because I heard Jet’s trying out for the main role too.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I’m dead serious! Ty Lee told me she heard him practicing his lines with Smellerbee and Longshot during lunch today. Well, with Smellerbee.You know Longshot doesn’t say much.”

“God,” he says. “I really hate that guy, Katara.”

“I know you do.”

“No, I really hate him. He’s the worst.”

“Careful,” she says, laughing. “Keep saying stuff like that and you might be best friends with him in ten years.”

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t that what happened with us?”she says, and for a minute all he can do is think about the word us in her familiar voice, how it makes the breath catch in his throat. “You used to hate me, Zuko. And look at us now.”

“I never hated you,” he protests, and even as he says the words a thousand memories come to mind: raspberries blown across the road, his outrage at seeing his platoon of GI Joes  dressed in bonnets, hair pulled and knees kicked and drawings scribbled on.

“Sure you did,” she says easily. “I was your best friend’s annoying little sister. You used to tell me that all the time. Remember?” She reaches out to jab his stomach, playfully, and like muscle memory his own hand reaches out to grab her wrist, a motion they’ve performed a thousand times over the years. But this feels both strange and familiar.The way his fingers close over her skin is routine. The way his thumb traces circles across her pulse is not. This is the part where she would squeal and push him away. But instead she stands very still, letting him hold her, her pulse unsteady and delicate against his skin.

“Remember?” she asks again, her voice hoarse all of a sudden. She looks away, clears her throat. “When you didn’t used to like me?”

“No,” he admits to her softly. There’s no point in lying, not after all these years. The truth is in the way their skin is pressed together. The truth is in the way her wrist feels in his hand. I will kiss thee, then, is what the script says next, the last lines of the play.  “Not really.”

They wish him good luck before the auditions, all fist-bumps and high-fives, but Katara hugs him, briefly. “Be heroic,” she says, and he remembers the first time she said that to him, sitting in the cafeteria when all of this was just beginning.

And so he does. He marches into the audition room like a general into the battlefield, and he delivers his lines with all the Best Actor panache he’s learned to muster, all the sincerity he’s learned from Aang, all of Sokka’s cheek, all of Suki’s confidence and Toph’s bluntness. All of Katara’s faith.

Bumi gives him the role on the spot. “We’re going to have a lot of fun, young man,” he cackles, and despite the nerves that crackle in his stomach at that, Zuko can’t help feeling… happy.

And it is fun. A girl named Jin is cast as his love interest, and they get on well enough. Jet is the villain, and they get on… less well, but hey. Method acting, right? The days slip by quickly, with all the rehearsals. A lot of Zuko’s time is devoted to trying to restrain Bumi from butchering the play, but somewhere along the way - and he’s not sure where - he finds the outrage he used to be able to summon at the very idea of revamping Love Amongst The Dragons is just… not there anymore. Your mother is proud of you. And he knows, somewhere in the truest part of him, that Ursa would’ve been delighted by all the wacky details Bumi wants to implement.

“It’s a metaphor, Bumi,” he sighs for the millionth time as they’re walking to the auditorium after school, but he finds his heart is no longer in it. “They’re not really dragons.”

“Which is exactly why they should be, in this play!” the old man counters. “It’ll be funny, Zuko. Shake things up! Make things new!”

“I really don’t think we should -”

“Oh, you just don’t want to wear a tail.”

“No! I mean, yes, but also,” Zuko sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “I think there’s merit in staying true to the original material, you know?”

“Maybe,” says Bumi. “But things don’t stay the same forever, Zuko. Times change. Things change. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

Zuko opens his mouth to reply, but a flash of movement catches his eye.He turns his head to see Katara walking out of the school gates with Toph, gesturing with her hands as they talk. Something in him softens.

“No,” he says. “I guess not.”

“Excellent! I’ve already had three tails made, come along to my office and you can choose the one you want -”

“You what?”

The night before the play, Zuko leaves rehearsals nervous and wound-up and - surprised, when he sees Katara leaning against the wall waiting for him.

“What are you doing here?”

“McDonalds?” she says, which is not really an answer to his question, but he falls into step beside her anyway. “Good luck nuggets?”

He smiles at that. “I can’t believe you remember.” They have a longstanding tradition of eating McDonald’s nuggets the night before - well, anything really: piano recitals and Parent-Teacher days and the first day of summer jobs. So much history they have, the two of them. So many lives lived together.

“There are a lot of things I remember,” Katara replies, and she sounds a little wistful, but before he can reply she asks him, “Are you nervous about tomorrow?”

“Are you kidding me?” he says, as they get into his car. “Absolutely. I can’t remember ever being this nervous about anything.”

“You’re going to be fine,” she says, looking out of the window as they slide through the streets. “What do I always tell you?” She smiles; he can see her reflection in the glass as he glances sideways. “Be heroic.” Her voice wavers for a moment. “You’re the bravest person I know, Zuko. You’ll be alright.”

They are quiet for a while, the gentle shhh-ing of the tires across puddles the only sound in the car. He pulls into the McDonald’s parking lot, and that’s when he says softly, “I’m not, though. Brave. There are lots of things I’m afraid of.”

“Like what?” she says. City lights rain down the passenger seat, catching her elegant features in a net of shadow and neon. In the shadows, her eyes look almost silver. “What are you afraid of?”

This. Us. Something more. But instead he says, “Well, Toph, for one. Sometimes when we’re playing pai sho I lose to her on purpose. She has a real right hook, you know.”

She throws her head back and laughs delightedly, and for a moment relief sweeps over him. This is Katara, after all, and for all that she’s seemed like a stranger lately, for all that he’s thought about her in ways that are new and different and exciting, she will also always be familiar to him, just as much home as Uncle Iroh is. “You lose to her on purpose?”

“Katara, I’ve been playing pai sho with Uncle since I was three years old. It’s literally impossible for me to lose to anyone but him.”

“Only you, Zuko,” she says, shaking her head, smiling. “Only you.”

Later, they sit on the bonnet of his car, legs dangling, trading the box of nuggets between them. “God, how long have we been doing this?” she says out of nowhere. “The good-luck nuggets thing, I mean. It feels like forever.”

“Ages,” he agrees, and she hums in assent, tipping her head back to look up at the sky.

“We’ll have to do this again before you leave for college,” she says, and he thinks he can hear sadness in her voice. It’s a sadness he himself is beginning to feel more and more now, as the days slip past and graduation looms on the horizon. And here and now, under these stars, her face is awash in radiance, a face he’s seen hollow out as the baby fat disappears, a face he has seen with eyes sore from crying and bright from laughter and lips split during scuffles in corridors, and he just wants to keep this moment, lose himself in its half-light, because the future could wait, couldn’t it? The future could just stay put, wherever the hell it was. What are you afraid of?

You broke the rules!

But no, he thinks, all of a sudden. Yes, he is afraid, but Katara is right. He has never given up when something mattered to him. And as much as he is afraid of it, he finds that he wants the future, too. And he wants her. And somehow along the way they - this girl and the days that lie before him - have become one and the same.

“Do you ever miss it, Zuko?” she says, and the wistfulness in her tone is evident now. It makes his chest thrum in response. “The good old days?”

No, he wants to say. When I’m with you, I miss the days that haven’t happened yet. The lives we have yet to live. And that’s when he knows, quietly but irrevocably, that he is ready for this, for her. For something more. Be heroic.

“Sometimes,” he says. And then, before he can say anything else, he says in a rush, “Thanks for the nuggets, Katara.”

There is a pause. “Wait, I thought you paid for them.”

And then they’re scrambling off the car and racing to McDonald’s, and Katara is wheezing through her laughter, “Did we just dine and dash?” and Zuko is sniping back at her, “It’s alright for you, you’re not eighteen yet - you’ll be sent to juvenile court, but it’s the big house for me!” and maybe the moment is gone, but this is a moment too, the way they scuffle to get into the restaurant first, all tangled limbs and hands at the door handle and Katara’s breathless laughter, the way Zuko hurls his wallet at the bemused cashier’s face and declares, “The debt is paid!”, and then how he has to trudge across the floor and get his wallet back, undermining the dramatic gesture of it all.

This is a moment too.

And then it’s the day of, and when Zuko steps out into the stage and squints past the spotlight shining on his face, he sees all the faces of the people he knows and loves, all the people that he will have to leave behind this time next year. Or maybe you could put it another way: that they are the people he will always carry with him, no matter where he goes.

Sokka is wearing a shirt that says “Team Zuko,” and Iroh is there, in his apron, loud enough that Zuko can hear the old man say excitedly from the audience, “That’s my nephew, there! The one with the red tail!” Even Azula is there, and the sight of his sister, even with disdain on her face and one eyebrow arched, makes gratitude wash over him. He straightens up, and turns his attention to the play.

It is a success, of course. The lines are memorized, the special effects in place, the audience enraptured. At one point, he says to Jet, “Away, you mouldy rogue, away!” and he makes sure to thump the other boy so hard that Toph can hear it from the audience; when he glances sideways at her, she is grinning so wide he has to bite back his own smile.

But when they stand to take their bow, the roars of the crowd loud in his ears, the applause ringing up to the rafters, no amount of biting his lip can hold back his smile. Jin is smiling at him as he takes her hand, and Sokka is hollering “That’s my boy!” and Jet is growling through his fake smile, “Did you have to hit so hard?” and Bumi explodes onto the stage in a shower of confetti, ever dramatic, to take his director’s bow and this? This is a moment, too.

They make plans to go out for dinner - “My treat!” Iroh says, “Um, as long as we’ll be eating at the Jasmine Dragon, that is,” - and so Zuko waves them off, telling them he’ll meet them there - he has to change out of his costume first. When he sees Katara waiting for him backstage, a flurry of emotions whirl in his chest: nerves and happiness and below all that, wanting.

“I’m so proud of you!” she says, reaching up to hug him, and he holds her tight, resting his face in her hair before she pulls back.

“Did you really like it?” he asks, and she rolls her eyes good-naturedly.

“I loved it,” she says, and some part of him registers that she hasn’t really stepped out of his arms, not really. His hands are resting at the small of her back, just below her hips. Her mouth is inches from his. “But I have to say, I wasn’t super impressed with how Jin delivered that line. I think I did it much better.”

“Oh?” he says. His heart is hammering in his chest, but when he blinks he can see the pulse in her throat is beating just as fast, and that helps to steady him somehow. Where have the years gone? Finally, he has an answer: here. The air between them is full of the things they have been through together. “Which line was that?”

“Kiss me now,” she says, almost whispers, and Zuko looks into her eyes. He knows what to say, the next piece of dialogue, the last lines in the script. So he was graduating. So what? College was a while away yet. And he will always leave a part of himself here. She will always be his way home. Be heroic.

“I will kiss thee, then,” he says, and he does.

[science-fiction-is-real]

“The Search”, it’s problems, and how to fix it.   PART 2, OZAI

Some of us really liked “The Search,” which tell the story of Zuko’s mom and her fate.  Other’s of us.... didn’t.

My writer’s instinct tells me to fix any story I don’t like.  So here it is.

In my last analytical post, I talked about Ursa, and how she’s a total badass in the show, but is completely mishandled in the comics.  I also talked about some changes I would make if I were handed the reigns to rewrite “the search.”

Villains are SUPER important to stories so I have a lot to say about this here in part two.

While “The Search” is Ursa’s story, stories are driven by conflict, and so the villain is often just as important as the main character. When it came to Ozai, Gene and Bryke had an amazing opportunity to create something interesting, dynamic, and intimidating, and boy did they drop the ball.

So here is Ozai in terms of “The Search,” what his problems are, and how I would fix them.

Villains, as the main source of conflict, are the power house of any story, and so they need to be done well.  Watching Avatar and Legend of Korra, Bryke prove themselves to be kings when it comes to their villains. Every single one of the bastards struck a balance between being terrifying and being believably human.  (Except for Unalaq.  Fuck you Unalaq)  Ozai was not necessarily a complex character in the show. This was because he was supposed to be more of a symbol of evil than a character in his own right.  But Even Ozai's humanity is shoved down our throats toward the end.  He sure was cute in that baby picture.

But Ozai can’t be the same thing in the comics than he was in the show.  In “The Search” we see him in a more intimate setting, as Ursa’s husband and Zuko and Azula’s father.  He doesn’t get to be a mere symbolic evil anymore.  Now he has to be a walking breathing human being with an interesting personality.  Can he make the switch?

Spoiler alert, he doesn’t make the switch very well.

I don’t think Bryke and Gene recognized how cool an opportunity they had when dealing with person Ozai as opposed to just symbolic Ozai.  

Think about some of the best villains in fiction/literature:   Satan was once Lucifer, Darth was once Anakin, Frankenstein and Monster both were never predestined for their villainous rivalry.  These characters are interesting and timeless because they are PEOPLE first and villains second.  They became evil not because it was fun but because of decisions they actively made, based on complex emotions, beliefs, and desires.  

Presenting villains as humans doesn’t take away their scariness.  The opposite is true.  Seeing humanity in villains disturbs us because it reminds us 1) anyone is capable of evil, and 2) people we hate are human beings too.  Also.  When villains have complex thoughts, feelings, and emotions, this gives them strong motivations, and shows us they are actually DRIVEN to commit evil deeds.

The writers could have done this with Ozai.  But they took that opportunity presented to them by “The Search” and they flushed it down the toilet.

Ozai in the comics certainly LOOKS like a human character.  He does human-ish things, like working out, eating dinner with his family, sharing sexual tension with his wife.  But the writers forget something pretty basic about humans when they delt with Ozai.  Humans have behaviors that are driven by thoughts, desires, and emotions.  Ozai has behaviors, and those behaviors, uhm... sort of.. kind of... add to the plot, But the thoughts, desires, and emotions behind them are self contradictory, poorly explained, or just missing all together.

 Ozai’s actions are so confusing I had to go back to read the comic again just to figure out what the writers were trying to do with him.  I am thoroughly convinced the writers hadn’t the slightest clue what was going on in that evil little noggin, nor did they give the slightest fuck. They spent maybe five minutes on the dude and his dialogue.  The result is neither interesting nor intimidating.

In order to be as unsympathetic as possible, Comics Ozai basically follows the behavior pattern of “handle every situation as badly as I possibly can" regardless if it fits any type of concrete motivation.  In fact Ozai isn’t really allowed to have any thoughts, feelings, or motivations at all.  He is not allowed to show any emotion that doesn’t fall between grumpy and hateful. No other emotions allowed!  Otherwise he might run the risk of being relatable, and God forbid a villain show any of that humanity the show worked so hard to convince us villains have. As a result, his behavior has no consistency.  If this were a Criminal Minds episode, they would profile Ozai as being multiple UnSubs who are not actually working together. 

They can’t get the guy pinned down.  At first they play him off as a jealous and possessive husband.  Of course, Ozai doesn’t show any of the emotions that tend to go along with jealousy and possessiveness.  He shows no sexual or romantic attraction to Ursa.  He suffers no fear of abandonment.  Those are no-no emotions for Ozai.  But he’s jealous anyway.  He reads her mail, he forbids her to contact or talk about her family, he puts a hit out on her old boyfriend.   But then, after spending several pages being jealous and possessive, Ozai suddenly decides to ask Ursa for a quick and amicable divorce right after the plot to kill Azulon is established.  Jealous possessive types usually panic at the thought of separation with their partner, but Ozai actually seems to take glee in the thought of Ursa leaving. Which is it Ozai?  Do you want to control and possess the woman or do you hate her and want her gone?  Make up your fucking mind.

Just as confusing is how he treats Zuko. Abuse by a parent toward a child is always confusing and tragic.  But real dick parents either have no motivation at all for their abuse (other then whatever behavior the victim did to trigger it), or they believe their abuse to be a natural part of parenting.  Ozai actually gives us a more creative reason for his cruelty.  He does it to punish Ursa for her lie about Zuko’s parentage.  We’re supposed to interpret this as Ozai being a sadistic prick.  But if Ozai were really just a sadistic prick, he wouldn’t wait for Ursa to give him an excuse to pick on Zuko.  And if Ursa really was the cause of his abuse, the abuse would stop after Ursa left.  Also why does Ozai take so much glee in Azulon’s order to kill Zuko?  YOU’RE BEING PUNISHED OZAI!  Azulon is telling you to kill Zuko as a PUNISHMENT.  Either its a punishment or it was something you were going to do all along.  It can’t be both. What the hell is going on?

Ozai’s confused motivation means that he isn’t really that intimidating throughout the story.  He’s actually kind of something to laugh at.  A lot of the supposedly scary and evil things he does also fall flat under closer inspection.  When he’s jealous about Ursa’s former boyfriend he doesn’t go after him herself, but instead hires a hit man, who fails.  He tells Ursa not to contact her home town, but he seems to care little about the letters she writes her boyfriend, even though he has been intercepting them for years (until the lie about Zuko’s parentage).  He’s supposed to be seen as conniving and ambitions, but he indicates no interest or plans to seize political power until his wife dictates letter by letter how he can do it.  We don’t even get to see him fight, except against some training dummies.  For such a supposedly dastardly villain he isn’t very ballsy or active in the narrative.  Some of you may disagree with me on that, but I thought he could have done more.

One reason this one-dimensional Ozai bothers me so much is because of how The Search makes a half-hearted effort to have a discussion on abuse and abusive family dynamics.  Ozai is an abuser, but real life abusers aren't dangerous because they happen to be evil for evil's sake, they are dangerous because their cruelty is mixed in with the more human, positive aspects of family life as well.  Abusers use affection and charm to gain control just as much as they use cruelty.  Some times abusers and victims actually have strong, loving feelings for each other, which only further entangles their victims in the cycle.  If “The Search” wants to have a conversation on such a real and pressing topic, it isn't very responsible of them to portray the issue in such a one dimensional and unrealistic way.

Long story short, Bryke had an opportunity to flesh out their best villains they had, and they blew it.  Villains are the source of conflict, and thus driving engines of a story.  Villains are extremely important and need to be done with care.  Bryke blew it.  It makes me want to scream into a pillow.  

SO.... HOW DO WE FIX THIS....?

A good version of the Search could go in one of two different directions.  

One)  They could stick with the story mostly as it is, where Ozai is evil from the beginning and is the unchallenged antagonist throughout the story.  This is more time efficient.

Two) They could really take advantage of the chance to show Ozai as a human being, and give us some backstory on him and the origins of his evil nature.  They could show him as Anakin turning into Darth if you will.

But either of these routes will have some things in common that will need to be fixed.

The Current Search shows an Ozai half-heartedly attempting “schemes” and “plots,” but never in a way that truely convinces us he’s a truely effective antagonist.  The first thing Search 2.0 should do is to show Ozai taking a much more active, if not violent role in the story events.  Ozai’s main character trait it seems is his ambition.  So lets let him be ambitious.  Lets let him grab the royal court by its balls and man handle it to his liking.  Also, its a damn shame we had an action-centered comic where Ozai (one of the best fire benders in the ATLA universe) was the main bad guy, and we didn’t get to see him in a single fight.  Let’s put him in a fight.  Most importantly, in order to convince the reader that Ozai should truely frighten them, his actions need to have very clear and explicit motivations, AND must be successful at least a large part of the time--with consequences to those around him.

Included in this, I want to see Ozai do a much more convincing job playing the abuser.  I want to see him charm and manipulate as well as throw his weight around.  I want to see him actually make the audience feel trapped and claustrophobic as they relate to the family trapped under his thumb.  You may say that is too dark, but must I remind you Show Ozai burned a kid’s face off in the very first season.  We have wiggle room when it comes to darkness.

Next

Ozai needs emotional range.  Every character but him is allowed to show range.  Villains need as much range as the protagonists, including moments of emotional vulnerability and non-threatening emotions.  Emotional vulnerability doesn’t make villains less scary.  It actually does the opposite. Villains are scary when we know their evil deeds have a strong motivation behind them.  And that strong motivation can only come when characters have emotions that drive their actions.   Frankenstein’s monster is a good example of a villain who demonstrates strong, if not over dramatic emotional range.  It’s not the monsters anger or grumpiness that makes him scary, it’s his loneliness, sense of loss, and longing to be loved that do, because we know that THOSE are the emotions that will drive him to fuck a bitch up.

You may also worry that showing an emotionally vulnerable, and dare I say relatable, Ozai would make the reader feel morrally confused.  Good.  Good stories ARE morally confusing.  Tell me you weren’t morally confused when you saw Darth Vader as a ten year old child, or when someone told you FRANKENSTEIN and not the monster might be the bad guy, or when someone told you the devil himself used to work for God, OR WHEN BRYKE SHOWED YOU OZAI’S BABY PICTURE RIGHT BEFORE AANG WAS SUPPOSED TO KILL HIM.  We were morally confused when those things happened, but it made us smarter and wiser because it challenged our perceptions.  If we take the second story option this will be an absolute necessity.

What kind of emotions might those be?  Well, it depends on what type of story line we would decide to go with for Search 2.0. There are some things to work with here.  Ozai is shown having a toxic relationship with his own father.  I could imagine a story line where he attempts to take the pain and hurt from that rejection, and channel it into rising above his station, into unbridled ambition that drives him to destroy his own family while securing his own power.  It is a well established fact that Ozai is ambitious.  We could explore how Ozai feels when asked by his father to kill his own son, in the sense that Ozai takes it as a punishment--torn between protecting his own bloodline vs his compulsive need to please his father.  We could explore what sort of feelings, if any, he has toward Ursa, which is especially important considering this is Ursa’s story.

 If we want to stick as much to canon as possible, let’s recall that Show Ozai reads as a classic narcissist, by the technical definition of the word. His treatment of Zuko and Azula follows typical patterns of Narcissistic abusers, and he also does shit like usurp the throne from his grieving brother and crown himself Phoenix King.  Of course, being a Narcissist does NOT exclude him from being emotionally complex and even in some ways relatable.  Narcisist don’t experience empathy or true love, but they do experience pretty much every other emotion on the table.

Some more plot specific things.. I would get rid of the jealous husband angle.  It seems a little Cliche to me.  I think Ozai would be much too concerned with cementing his own power in the court to worry about who Ursa is writing letters too.

Lets PLEASE get rid of the plot point where Ozai decides to abuse Zuko because he’s trying to get back at Ursa.  It doesn’t make any sense to me.  We can explore why he hates his son if we want.  I have my own theories.  Maybe Azulon hates Zuko, and because Ozai wants to suck up to his dad, he hates Zuko too.  Or maybe Ozai blames Zuko for Azulon’s death and Ursa’s leaving.  Afteral if it hadn’t been to protect Zuko’s life, Ursa would not have killed Azulon and left.  Or maybe Zuko takes after Ozai in many different ways, and Ozai hates himself, and therefore hates Zuko.  Or maybe he’s just a big fat dick who needs a punching bag and learned abusive behavior patterns from his own dad.

Sorry that was so long, pepes, you are treasures for hearing me out.

Please comment if you have any thoughts