Sibling rivalry is often a trite story of one sibling hating the other out of jealousy. On the surface, the Zuko and Azula may look that way. They have no problem blasting fire and lightning at each other and both of their parents had a favorite. But there’s so much more to it.
First of all, I would argue that in spite of many near-fatal encounters, they don’t necessarily hate each other. It’s far more complicated than that. How they view each other is closely tied to how they view themselves.
For most of Zuko’s life, Azula is the standard he’s held to. She’s ambitious, ruthless, and a prodigy. No matter what he does, he can’t earn their father’s approval like she can. And she rubs it in his face constantly. When Azula is cruel to Zuko, Ozai affirms that she’s not wrong to do so. Zuko rarely argues with her because he’s been conditioned to believe she’s right. Zuko has internalized the blame for how his father treats him rather than project it onto Azula, and accepts how she treats him as normal. He has plenty of bitter feeling toward her, but none quite as clear as hate.
Azula’s view of Zuko is even more convoluted. The first time we see Azula, she’s smiling because their father is about to burn him. The next time they meet, she berates him for being a failure of a son. It looks like she enjoys watching him suffer.
But when Zuko helps “kill” the Avatar in Ba Sing Se, we get to see them in a new context. In the rare moments that they aren’t pitted against each other by the ever looming presence of their father… they actually get along fine.
Every time Azula appeared happy to see Zuko suffering, it was at the hands of their father. It wasn’t just that Ozai hurt Zuko, it what that Ozai hurt Zuko and not her. Every time Ozai insulted or injured her brother, it cemented Azula’s position as the favorite child. And she had to stay the favorite child because she’s seen what would happen to her if she wasn’t. Deep down, she knows just how conditional her father’s positive regard is. When Ozai leaves her in the Fire Nation while invading the Earth Kingdom, the first words out of her mouth are “You can’t treat me like Zuko”. Being better than Zuko is part of her identity.
When Zuko defects from the Fire Nation and begins to succeed without meeting, or even trying to meet, the standards set by their father, it throws her priorities into doubt. In her mind, Zuko is supposed to fail. But she isn’t truly unnerved until she’s betrayed by Mai and Ty Li.
She is incapable of understanding why Mai would chose Zuko, and this drags to the surface her inability to understand why her mother preferred Zuko. She believed her mother loved Zuko and not her. Now Mai, her closest friend, loves Zuko and not her.
This conflicts with her entire view of the world. She sees the worth of a person as equal to their quantifiable skills and accomplishments. She has been admired, respected, and feared, but as far as Azula believes, no one has ever loved her. She was a prodigy who did everything right, while Zuko was the family screw up. Yet people loved him and not her.
For years, being better than Zuko was how Azula measured herself. Ozai said Zuko was lucky to be born. That he was worthless, weak, disrespectful, and both his children believed him. When Zuko left, he finally saw that Ozai was wrong about him. When Zuko returns during Sozin’s comet, Azula too is forced to see that her perception is wrong.
Zuko has become the embodiment of everything she lacks. She thought he was weak, but he’s not afraid enough to fight her fairly as an equal. She thought he was dishonorable, but really he was independent enough to break away from their father’s control. She thought he was worthless, but he’s found people who care about him in spite of his flaws.
Azula isn’t just trying to kill him, but everything he represents. And when she can’t, she breaks. Zuko is still standing. She has nothing left.
Word of God (Bryke) confirmed that at the end of the Agni Kai, Zuko felt pity rather than hate for his sister. This continues into the comics as he genuinely tries to help her. He knows that while she may not have been overtly abused like he was, she was raised in the same web of lies, agendas, and violence.
Their past left them both unable to trust people. Azula controlled everyone around her with fear. Zuko shut other people out and tried to do everything on his own. It isn’t until Zuko has left his old life behind that he slowly begins to let people in.
While Azula hangs onto the beliefs of Ozai and the Fire Nation, Zuko can see their situation from the outside. He sees two screwed up teenagers who spent their lives fighting their father’s war, manipulated into a conflict that isn’t their fault, forced to kill each other over choices made a century before they were born. It took Zuko years to figure out the hell that was his home life wasn’t his fault, but only a few minutes to see that it wasn’t Azula’s either.
Fire – sit down and relax. Let pure universal energy enter through the top of your head and let it connect with your own life force. Once it’s connected and working together imagine a small flame spreading from the inside of you. It can start anywhere you’d like, the center of your stomach, your head, your palms, your legs, anywhere that feels comfortable. This is not a fire that destroys and burns, this is a pleasant fire that makes you feel loved and warm. Once you’ve set yourself on fire, once you’ve felt the flame all around and inside your body, slowly let it spread on the inside of your house. This can be done with a slow small flame, or a violent huge one. Just let everything burn, imagine the fires cleansing properties burning away all the nastiness inside your house. Imagine ashes flying everywhere, and all the negativity burning away into nothingness once it’s been touched by the flames.
Water – sit down and relax. Let pure universal energy enter through the top of your head and let it connect with your own life force. Once it’s connected and working together imagine yourself as a fluid body. See and feel the cool refreshing touch of water on your body. Feel the fluidity inside yourself. Then imagine huge water, huge waves, flooding your house, pushing everything it comes in contact with. Let it mess up your house. See this water, running from one door to another, flooding everything, and destroying everything just like a tsunami would. Imagine this pure, clean and clear water gathering all the negativity in itself, taking it away with her. When you’re done, imagine one window or more, or a door open in your house and let the water go away.
Earth –
sit down and relax. Let pure universal energy enter through the top of your head and let it connect with your own life force. Once it’s connected and working together imagine huge roots bursting through your floor, intertwining all around your body. Once they’ve intertwined imagine them giving birth to flowers while all around you. Imagine these intertwined roots going all around the walls, the windows, your mirrors, your table, your bed. Imagine beautiful moist soil pouring out of the holes left by the roots. Imagine this soil filling up your house, gathering in itself all that is no longer needed and negative. Imagine transforming that negativity into something beautiful. Imagine the poisonous bad energies transforming into love and light inside the earth. Once they’ve transformed imagine this earth giving birth to more beautiful light green roots, leaves, and the most beautiful flowers you’ve ever seen. Let your whole house fill up with these beautiful flowers and roots, replenishing everything in your house. Feel the flowery scent all around you. When you’re done imagine all these roots and earth slowly going back into the whole where they came from, leaving everything intact but cleansed and fresh.
Air –
sit down and relax. Let pure universal energy enter through the top of your head and let it connect with your own life force. Once it’s connected and working together imagine violent winds forcing their way in your house through the window.
Imagine these winds entering and bursting through like a hurricane through your house. Even though they are violent, they are here to help and leave everything in a better place.They’re coming straight for you. They start whirling around you, you can feel it’s pleasant coolness on your skin.
You can hear the sounds of the wind.
They are so strong, yet so caring and pleasant. As they whirl harder and stronger around you, they lift you up in the air, whirling even harder than before. Now, imagine them turning to the rest of your house. Imagine them leaving a mess wherever they touch. All of your notebooks are in the air, your tarot cards are flying everywhere, your clothes go all around the place, your crystals fly from one wall to another. Let these fresh and cool winds clean your place. Once you’re done, imagine these winds leaving through the window they came from.
if the avs think for one goddamn minute that hockey fans on tumblr are gonna start stanning them because they started an official tumblr and are shamelessly giving us quality content of the team in order to buy our support they are 100% completely totally correct
HC that during his first NCAA season a sports commentator caustically called Jack “a role model for fuckups everywhere” and ten years later Jack puts it on a shirt and wears it.
“I feel like Jack is so polite the U would be a maple leaf” – @imaginarycircus
All the better for teenagers to be able to wear it aggressively!
Zimmermania: REBEL AGAINST YOUR PARENTS AND F THE POLICE BY achieving excellence in your chosen field and pushing yourself academically NO MATTER WHAT ANYONE ELSE TELLS YOU
since I’ve been drawing cp characters in novelty shirts anyway… i was too late to get the maple leaf 😦 anyway. older jack :
someone: haha you just want to know when you’re off the hook
me: hah
me: (actually i just need to allocate the right expectations and backlog of energy and make sure the rest of my day falls in good accordance with it so that i don’t feel time-crunched and propel myself into a hysteria because if i don’t know how long this thing lasts or when it ends i can’t possibly know when literally anything else starts and my entire life becomes an unraveled realm of anarchy with no rhyme or reason and how is that not terrifying to you)
me: hey how long will this take
someone: oh like twenty minutes
me: ok
*an hour later*
me: *clinging to every learned social skill i can think of with the desperate hope my distress and exhaustion doesn’t show*
someone: hey we’re almost done don’t be so crabby
me: *smiling* *internally screaming at this SENSELESS CHAOS*
just moving along like everyone else 