#another day

i’m taking a widdle break while i celebrate 10 years with my partner. be back in a little bit and happy slay month

the fact that nsync’s bye bye bye was my favourite song as a kid probably should have been a big giveaway

akiizayoi4869:

eshusplayground:

mystic-majestic:

One thing that I think people miss when they say “Azula deserves a redemption arc too!” is that no one in Avatar that got their redemption arc deserved it.

Redemption isn’t something deserved, it’s something earned through constant hard work. You have to chooseto do good, and then keep choosing it even when it’s tough; when the person you are and the person you want to become are going to war in your mind.

Zuko and Iroh chose to redeem themselves. Zuko, specifically, chooses it and then fails at it, learns from his mistakes, and does better. Redeeming yourself to people is hard. Throwing off years of indoctrination is terrifying. He chooses it anyway.

And what’s more important is that in his desire to seek forgiveness from the people he’s hurt, the people he wants to become close to, he doesn’t expect it. He puts everything he’s got into his apology, then lays it at the feet of the Gaang and tells them to do what they want with it. He accepts his mistakes and never tries to shrug off the blame.

Azula has put in none of the work to earn a redemption arc. At the end of the story, she is still considered a villain. Defeated, yes, but still villainous.

Whilst yes you can make the very good argument that Azula is also an indoctrinated child - AND SHE IS - she has also done a lot of wrong in her life. An incredible amount of harm to others. Not once was she ever apologetic about it.

The beginning of redemption is always being sorry. The middle is choosing to do good. And there’s never an end to it because you’ve got to keep making that choice.

I can understand fanfics that give Azula a redemption arc. But in the context of the story, it’s very plain to see why she never got one.

I see posts like this every so often, whether it’s about Azula or some other character, and it’s always frustrating because they treat characters as real people and narratives as real human experiences, and…they’re not.

When fans say that Azula deserves a redemption arc, they’re not saying anything about her as a moral agent. They’re talking about the kind of narrative they’d like to see her in. As it stands, the narrative of ATLA gives her a raw deal by both making it clear that how she turns out is a direct result of her environment andcondemning her for miraculously not rising above it without any kind of real support or guidance. On a show that explicitly talks about nobody being born bad, the importance of friendship, and everyone deserving a real chance to do better, Azula remains a strange outlier to all those messages.

A redemption arc for Azula—and how people talk about redemption in fandom has particular baggage in itself (TBH, I’d prefer a liberation arc for her)—at least in my case, is about ATLA following through with its own core themes and messages. Excluding Azula from the possibility of healing and improving herself, alone of all the other traumatized children on the show, is a betrayal of those core themes and messages.

“Some people are just rotten by nature and aren’t worth trying to help” is a horrible mindset to inflict upon ATLA’s intended audience of seven- to ten-year-old children. The stance that she doesn’t “deserve” a chance to do and be better despite being a child constrained by some deeply messed up circumstances is morally repugnant.

Do people not understand that she was never even given the CHANCE to redeem herself to begin with by the writers?

“An incredible amount of harm to others. Not once was she ever apologetic about it.” You missed the entire point of the mirror scene and also you missed the part when Iroh ever apologized to anyone other than Lu Ten’s dead body. Also, you missed how the Gaang have to remind Zuko of the harm he caused since he obviously forgot about it and somehow plot conveniencely Zuko’s role in Yue’s death was kept out of the long list that the Gaang cited.