Yes, that rant again

[lizbee]

This is some interesting and sympathetic meta about Azula, but my God, I would pay a lot of money to ban the "Ursa didn't love Azula as much as Zuko and that is a FACT" theory from the entire universe.  All we see, in our (highly subjective) glimpses of Ursa is that she recognises Azula's bad behaviour when she sees it, and attempts to discipline her.  I don't know what kind of upbringing you had if that equals emotional abuse in your book, but blaming Ursa when Ozai exists is ... wrongheaded to say the least.  In my opinion.  You know. 

Comments

[unjapanologist]

*nod* I think there's some clear indications that Iroh doesn't (try to) relate to Azula the way he does with Zuko, but we only ever see Ursa though Zuko's eyes. A source of unbiased information, he is not.

[lizbee]

I find the Iroh question quite interesting, because on the one hand he doesn't seem to have known Azula very well -- a doll?! -- but on the other hand, it's very likely he's been away at the front since she was very young. And we don't know that he doesn't try to reach out to her after his return, but she's already set in her belief that he's a failure and all of that, and probably said some quite cruel things at a very vulnerable time. And that's without the separate question of whether she'd have even accepted his support.

OH FAMILY, YOUR DYNAMICS ARE SO SCREWED, THAT'S WHY I LOVE YOU ALL.

[unjapanologist]

Yeah, I can definitely see Iroh not deliberately ignoring Azula, but failing to relate to her from the start because he doesn't know her well as a person. He thinks he knows how boys work, he's got one of his own, so he guesses that Zuko will like a knife for a gift. He's not so sure about what an eight-year-old girl he hasn't even seen in years might like, but his subordinates who have daughters recommend dolls, so he gets her a no doubt very nice and expensive doll. Doll catches fire, etc etc. And he didn't really have a reason to reach out to her immediately after his return. It does sound likely that she may have said some cruel things, and she probably seemed fine on the surface, while Zuko was more sympathetic about Lu Ten and was probably more clearly reeling from the loss of his mother and in need of cuddles.

Perhaps he might have started worrying about her too after a while, when he'd gotten over his own grief a bit and started to realize exactly how poisonous Ozai's relationship to both of his kids was, but it may well have been too late. If Azula had sorted him into the "failures not to be associated with or dad may not approve" corner of her mind before, she definitely wouldn't have changed her mind after all that.

[silverhare]

Women are to blame for everything, donchaknow.

[thedivinegoat]

But lizbee, it's always the Mother's fault. Never the Father's.

(Why would fathers babysit their own children if they weren't solely the mothers responsibility?)

God, it hurt my soul to type that.

[musesfool]

Yeah, I couldn't even make it all the way through the essay.

[terajk]

But...it's because Ursa does love both her children that's a big part of the problem! Azula can understand her father's "love" because "If I do this (and prove I am better than Zuko) it makes you love me" makes sense to her--see: her understanding of people in general, which is very narrow. But here is somebody who doesn't care if she's better than Zuko; who will, in fact, love Zuko for doing things badly. HOW DOES THAT EVEN WORK? And then you add the disciplining in, which is punishment/dislike for all the stuff that her father thinks is good/that she thinks "love" is. It is confusing, and IT IS OZAI'S STUPID FAULT. (And possibly, to a lesser extent, Iroh's fault, since he really does seem to love Zuko more than he loves her.)

When Mai and Ty Lee finally break Azula's way of relating to people entirely, of course her mother appears, because she cracked it, earlier.

Because! When her mother does appear in the mirror, she says "I wouldn't miss my own daughter's coronation!" So, on the one hand, Azula deserves her love, since she's going to be Fire Lord. But on the other, she trusts no one at this point, and she also knows her way of relating to people is broken. (I don't know to what extent Azula would admit/realize that "everything is going wrong," but she does seem to try to hold onto things harder the worse they get.)

So here's her mother saying, "But I really do love you!" (when no one is trustworthy and everything is going to shit), and then everything that's broken breaks AGAIN.

[recessional]

Yeah, I think the most telling thing is that Azula's own hallucination of her mother insists that she loves her.

[lunafana.livejournal.com]

Iroh's non-relationship with Azula definitely has its problematic aspects, and I do think there's an element of sexism to it. I mean, a doll for her when he gave a knife to Zuko? Really, Iroh? Do you even know your niece? But maybe that was the problem, that he didn't know her and had nothing to fall back on but stereotype. In my experience men who have daughters are significantly more open-minded about feminist issues than men who don't, and his son Lu Ten was Iroh's only child. In this context, Azula's continuing attempts to take the knife from Zuko have a sort of pathos, as though she's trying to claim Iroh's recognition as well. (Of course, on a conscious level she probably just wanted it because it's something cool Zuko had.) At the same time I really doubt Iroh or Ursa caused Azula's issues, which I blame on inborn sociopathy + Ozai's screwed up idea of how to raise a child. I agree with teraik's analysis above.

I couldn't get to the end of the essay mostly because of that damned animated gif. Does it have to be set on continual loop, and if so can't it at least scroll off the page? Gah.

[wolfy_writing]

When I was growing up, I had a number of relatives pull the equivalent of "A knife for him, a doll for her" (once both my brothers actually got knives, that is pocket knives, and I got...a bag that my grandmother apparently thought was exceptionally pretty or something). It can definitely be sexist, but it's not always a sign of favoritism or indifference to a particular child. (Or even particularly high levels of sexism. Fairly modest background sexism combined with honest good intentions can lead to "We'll get her that because it's nice and feminine and a better present for a girl!") So there is still a lot of room for interpretation of Iroh and Azula's relationship.

[lunafana.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I definitely put Iroh under the "well-meaning and oblivious" side of sexism. And it's not like Azula was the easiest person to get to know anyway, even as a child. Still, in an upcoming chapter of my political pastfic in progress I'm getting a kick out of Iroh thinking how Azula (then eleven) might be happier if she would stop dressing like a man and take interest in gentler pursuits. This is directly before she blindsides Iroh with a series of vicious political maneuvers, so I take particular joy in the timing. The fic is firmly sympathetic to Zuko, but I love deadly effective villains and good guys with their blind spots.

Now that I've read the essay...

[terajk]

I am...bemused as to why the author concludes that Iroh's relationship with Azula when she was younger is "much more left to the imagination." Especially when, you know, we only see Ursa through the memories/imaginations of her children.

For instance: "There's something wrong with that child" (spoken in a disgusted manner) is an odd way for a loving, non-dysfunctional parent to express that particular concern. It's more like something a sibling would think/remember--OH WAIT. (It's also possible I'm thinking about it too hard; I do that.)

[recessional]

I sort of disagree - I think it's a fairly understandable way for a loving, non-dysfunctional parent to have an outburst of that concern if she is consistently and continually being presented by sociopathic behaviour on the part of that child. Which, if we are accepting anything from Zuko's flashbacks as the truth, she totally was, and that's an utterly utterly terrifying thought for a parent.

(I am . . . more than mildly protective of the parents of children who genuinely behave in those pathological ways. Especially the mothers. Because they are ALWAYS going to be the ones blamed, even when the fault is some fucked up wiring in the kid's head/another parent/something else.)

[terajk]

I sort of disagree - I think it's a fairly understandable way for a loving, non-dysfunctional parent to have an outburst of that concern if she is consistently and continually being presented by sociopathic behaviour on the part of that child.

This actually makes more sense--and certainly doesn't put Ursa in the running for Worst Parent Ever, as you say.

[recessional]

. . . I am not even going to click on that!

[neurona-muerta.livejournal.com]

I am one of those who believe that is a fact that Ursa didn't love her as much as she loved Zuko and played favourites like Ozai did, but while I think Ursa plays the main role into what Azula became, there's no point in denying that Ozai is to blame as well. He played favourites too, but he didn't love Zuko or Azula, even if he favored her over him. Ursa, on the other hand favored Zuko and loved him. We see Ursa behaving with Azula like you described above, but I believe the most important facts about Ursa are stated when Azula speaks of her and how she made her feel. Azula was opening her heart to her brother and friends that night at Ember Island, and although she tried to mask it with her special sense of humor, she said that the "monster" thing did hurt her. Something that Ursa might have told her (and here I am theorizing on the matter, of course) hurt her. I think Ursa told her something (perhaps the monster word) when they rushed out from Zuko's room to have that talk offscreen. I don't know, I can't see Azula making the "my own mother thought I was a monster" out of the blue. Something must have happened, and either it was Ursa directly telling her that, or acting towards that like her daughter was some sort of monster.

That is only my opinion on the subject though. Azula is my favourite character and I've always thought her mum issues where an important fact that made her to be who she was, and it's a pity they didn't dedicate more time to explain them and solve them in the series. What I think about the hallucination is that Azula sees what she would have liked to see her mother say to her, that she loved her. In the Sozin's Comet booklet they made for the finale (I think you can find it easily on Amazon) there's a part told from Azula's point of view, and what she thinks upon seeing her mother in the mirror is "Oh, right. Like after all this time I am supposed to believe that she loves me." Again, like I've said above, I don't think these feelings about her mother are made up by Azula from no where. Ursa made her feel like that.

As sad as it is, we have no canon proof that Ursa loved Azula as much as she loved Zuko. What is clear to everybody though, is that Ozai and Ursa do not deserve the "parent's of the year" award xD