#you can't teach someone kindness by enabling their cruelty

[spacecasehobbit]

Thinking some Azula thoughts today, in particular about her mindset during that final Agni Kai with Zuko and why it wouldn't have been a positive thing for her recovery if Zuko had refused to fight just because she was in a bad mental place.

When Zuko and Katara arrive at the palace, the audience knows that Azula is in the midst of a paranoid breakdown because she is feeling betrayed an abandoned by the people she trusted. We also know that the reason she trusted people like Mai and Ty Lee to stick by her side, the reason she expected people like her ship crew at the start of s2 or her servants in the palace to obey her commands and be loyal to her, is because they fear her.

She expects people to fear her because she's a prodigy who has been treated by Ozai as the golden child who can do no wrong all her life. She expects that fear to motivate loyalty and obedience because she's also been taught by Ozai that strength and power and the use of those things to instill fear are the only way to prove one's value; she's bought into Ozai's view that life can only ever have winners and losers, that the winners deserve absolutely loyalty, that the losers deserve to be hurt and used and tossed aside whenever they're no longer of use, and that up until recently she has unquestionably been a winner.

And now she's seriously questioning that view of herself for the first time.

She brought Zuko home to the palace and Ozai with the belief that she knew how to control him, that she could treat him however she wanted because she was stronger and smarter and better than him. Instead, he kept secrets of his own from her, revealed to Ozai that she'd brought him home on a lie, and ran away to join the Avatar. Then Mai and Ty Lee turned against and refused to let fear keep them loyal to her anymore when she demanded things they weren't willing to do.

Then she tried to go with Ozai to burn the EK down, and he effective tossed her aside the way that losers can be thrown aside and forgotten.

By the time Zuko arrives, Azula is in desperate need of someone she can use to reaffirm her own value by proving the lack of theirs. She's lost, she's spiraling, she's questioning her strength and her intelligence and her right to be treated as better than the people around her because of those things. Then along comes Zuko, the scapegoat, the weak and silly and stupid child, the one who would never catch up to her or earn their father's approval and respect like her.

The one who she could always count on to fail and make her look better in comparison.

To her, this Agni Kai with Zuko is "the showdown that was always meant to be," because it's the showdown that she was never meant to lose. If there was one thing Ozai taught her that she could always count on growing up, it was that she was strong and Zuko was weak. And maybe Zuko surprised her once when he ran off to join the Avatar instead of staying under her thumb at the palace where she wanted him, but that also wasn't a direct fight. If her recent 'failures' to keep people obedient to her through fear can be flukes, moments of weakness that don't make her weak, then Zuko's recent surprising behavior can be a fluke too. They can be moments of unexpected cleverness that still don't make him strong.

Or, more importantly, that don't make him stronger than Azula.

Refusing to fight wouldn't challenge any of this, for Azula. She could write off any reasoning Zuko gave about her mental state or concern for her wellbeing as Zuko trying to cover up his fear, and she could tell herself that she would have won, if Zuko hadn't been too afraid to fight. Not only that, but she was always taught that Zuko's compassion was what made him weak. Refusing to fight out of compassion for Azula would only confirm that view, in her mind.

On Zuko's side, refusing to fight out of concern for Azula would have been putting compassion for one person - one person who had repeatedly shown themselves to lack compassion and empathy for others, one person who had repeatedly shown themselves willing to use violence as a means to control and dominate those around them - above the needs of the rest of the world (including the rest of the FN) to have a Fire Lord who would be committed to peace with the other nations.

If Zuko can stop Azula and secure the crown for himself through an Agni Kai, then he only has to defeat one person before he can get on with the work of committing the FN to peace, instead of fighting his way through however many guards Azula can throw at him and Katara and still likely wind up fighting Azula afterwards anyway.

He knows that Azula backing down peacefully isn't an option he can reasonably expect or hope for, because he knows Azula. He grew up with Azula, he went through his own phase of trying desperately to mimic the lessons about strength and power that Azula had already been mimicking from Ozai when they were kids. And he knows very well that no matter how much love and compassion and empathy is shown to a hurting, frightened kid who is choosing violence and threats and fear to prove their own value to themself, that kindness alone won't stop that kid from lashing out at those who don't deserve it.

And Azula won't be ready to learn that her value doesn't rest on being 'better' than anyone and everyone else around her, that she can be loved without being feared, until she is forced to face the fact that she isn't strong enough to make the whole world bow to her without ever losing a fight.

[sleepynegress]

Dave Chappelle is the exact kind of man that abused me. He's the man that "slaps the queer out of you" and laughs and laughs, except a grown man just hit a kid. He's someone who'll scream homophobic abuse in your face, but if you try and ask to be treated right, suddenly you "can't take a joke". He's the man who threatens your mother because "boys don't need soft shit." I think a lot of people are very familiar with men like him.

Okay. This may be a long response...But I have been thinking a lot about the dichotomy of a black man, who can be considered a thinker, who literally ran away to Africa because he felt so much discomfort at the idea of his white audiences laughing *at* him and black people, vs. him...SAYING and believing, and worst -proliferating and enabling others to feel normal inflicting violence upon queer people. So. Here are the conclusions I've come to about this entire thing (bulleted because ADHD and I'd be here all day w/o it)

● Chappelle is an old "Unc-ish" black man who thinks he's still being edgy by reciting his old black man fears and insecurites to an audience who (he thinks) is shocked by it in a way that makes him "brave" for "telling the truth of what many feel" vs. being one of many very common and typical people, who age w/o growth w/ the social changes in society... i.e. those you see fold their arms and complain about "new words" like agender, them/they, et al, instead of just learning how to use new words.

● You see... Here's a secret of aging that no one tells you. Everything you knew "back in the day" even if you were empathetic and loving enough, strong enough to see and combat regressive hatred back then/go against the grain.... Will shift for new generations. And lately, so much for the good of marginalized people... i.e. undoing the normalized harassment, dismissal and hatred of marginalized queer folks back in specifically Dave Chappelle's day. The simple truth of it is this: Many people age and lament the loss of normalized cruelty. And many (thankfully, these are the elders you see w/o 'the old man yells at cloud' vibes...) simply change w/ the evolving norms.

● Dave. Refuses to grow. Point blank. His fame and privilege and his personal sense of thinking he's being "old school black and honest" helps w/ that.

● There are also many toxic specifically 'black' masculine traits that he has swallowed hook-line-and-sinker; rooted in ancestral trauma/memory. Specifically in black men, hat has caused many to adopt many of the thought processes of yt masculinity, i.e. misogynoir, and homophobia, while pretending it's some kind of super-black man b.s.

tl:dr Many black men flex extra hard in toxic ways to compensate for all the racial humilations they've dealt w/ in history and day-to-day. I've seen many an angry black male elder who went through Jim Crow, pass that ish; that righteous anger in sadly toxic ways, to their male children. And I've seen many elder black woman spoil their black sons (i.e. not teach them to respect queer people because the bible) to "make-up" for the hardships black men would experience in life.

● I guarantee Dave grew-up w/ that. A specific black male youth experience, in his day of listening to homophobic and misogynistic music and chatter from friend-groups trying to "date" i.e. mistreat as many black girls as possible to puff up a deflated sense of masculine self in dealing w/ cops pulling him over for nothing but melanin. ...A certain kind of black male "cool" that acts as a shield for those normalized racial traumas.

● Dave still traffics in and peddles the old style of "cool" that has evolved past him (shout-out to Lil' Nas, the entire cast of POSE, etc.), to the point where all that remains are dull, baggy eyes and a voice ruffened by all the weed smoke over the years. He is an old man standing still, in the singular "black" good old days...that doesn't know or want to know shit about the black queer community that also had to carve out an existence in those days.

● That is where his stubborn transmisogyny comes from. And why he can seperate the fact that he literally ran from people laughing past the joke because he realized it was at black people's expense...from throwing trans woman (many of whom are also black...intersection what??) under the bus of all the violence inflicted upon them, with that TERF head-ass bullshit.

● And one more thing... because I am also on twitter and it disgusted me to witness... So many transphobic black people on that platfrom were wiping their brows in relief at being able to parlay that into a misdirect at "anger" at yt trans woman co-showrunner of Dear YT White People for it's lacking show quality and *successfully* squashed the transmisogyny at the heart of the discussion around Dave. ...That shit irked me to no end. So, queer community. I hear you, I see you all. I love you. ....Especially my trans black brothers and sisters. I'm a demi elder black woman who feels incredibily fortunate to have had the life experiences and perspectives necessary to still *see* people and grow in that seeing every year I exist on this earth. That is *not* an experience everyone gets or WANTS to get, sadly. There is a certain kind of stubborn safety in aging and staying in what is already known to you, while crossing your arms and scoffing at all the "changes". My message of wisdom, is DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN to NOT do/be that.