Post by ladyavatar on Nov 18, 2012 11:44:05 GMT -6
I didn't originally plan to start this, but then the most marvelous and amazing new male member of our forum, carcinoGeneticist, made a post in the "Plot Bunnies" subsection that was so magnificent and insightful that it spurred me to action. That post is replicated below, so educate yourselves and join in if you so desire! XD
I physically cannot comprehend the hate that Ozai receives. Not the hate itself, but the type of hate. I fucking hate that douchecanoe beyond all reasonable belief, but at least I hate him for what he actually did, not how he was portrayed in the goddamn story.
Quick question for anyone with enough mental power to focus his eyes on a television: Who were the major protagonists of ATLA? I hope on all that is good and not-brain-dead that the answer is Aang, Katara, and Zuko or some combination/variation thereof. What do all of these characters have in common? Oh right, they hate Ozai. Zuko hates Ozai because he's a hundred fucking percent certain that Ozai caused his mother's disappearance, and because Ozai burned his face. Fine. Aang hates Ozai because Roku and literally everyone else has told him to hate Ozai. And Katara just hated the Fire Nation in general for taking her mother away from her, which is why that whole shit in the crystal catacombs went down. Do you think they're going to step back and view him from an unbiased third perspective? No. Hell no. Hell fucking no.
The story treats Ozai like the hellspawn of death itself with some unyielding evil and destruction thrown in for good measure. Every story needs an obvious villain; a kids' show is no place to explore the grey moral territory of a war to the extent required. Sure, you can have enough anti-heroes and anti-villains to drown a moderately sized city, but you need a villain to be overcome in the end. In LoK, Amon was bastardised, and the Equalist revolution flipped from being a sympathetic civilians' uprising to a full-scale terrorist war, from an area of grey morality - the show itself seemed to whisper silently that perhaps the Equalists were fucking right after all - into "Team Avatar versus the baby-eating, people-murderising faceless mooks". They need a bad guy. Ozai was their bad guy, so they could redeem anyone else they chose to [Zuko, Azula in The Search, Jet, etc. etc.] as long as Team Avatar kicked the bad guy's ass hard enough that his descendants were born with bright red footprints on their asscheeks.
Basically, when you're trying to fucking write a character or figure out his goddamn emotions and motivations, you'd better fucking step back and take your bias off like you just lost five consecutive rounds of strip poker on.
So what the fuck has Ozai done, anyway?
0) Caused Ursa to leave.
1) Burned Zuko's face.
2) Continued a war he inherited.
3) Attempted to use Sozin's Comet to defeat the other nations.
4) Tried to kill Zuko with lightning.
5) Nearly murdered the Avatar.
Well shit, looks like an overwhelming amount of irredeemable awful qualities, right? Sure. I fucking hate him. But let's take a trip into the dirty waters of his perspectives. Keep your arms, legs, and other limbs inside the submarine at all times. Complimentary peanuts will be served at the end of the voyage. No fighting or I swear I will turn this sub around.
Iroh was Azulon's favourite. Iroh's significantly older than Ozai; he was the heir to the throne; and he was an accomplished general. When his descendant died, Iroh was fucking broken up about it to the point where it's implied he committed suicide. Ozai requested to become the heir, and Azulon, instead of merely rejecting the request, decided to order Ozai to kill Zuko. Who the fuck does that? That's like if I went to Taco Bell and ordered tacos while they gave me burritos, so next time that guy came over to the place where I was working and asked for grubcorn, I gave him fucking cyanide. What the actual fuck? And do we ever actually see Ozai agreeing to kill Zuko? Unless my memory is worse than a cuttlefish's, I highly fucking doubt it. We never get anything except that Ursa suddenly does something or other than kills Azulon and causes her to flee. Did she directly kill him? Did Ozai agree to it? Did he even know? Was he planning to kill Zuko? Did Ursa overreact? We don't fucking know. The next morning Ozai's being comforted by a tree - so he did have it in him to care for Ursa, big whoop - and Zuko is a little kid who lost Ursa. Zuko blames Ozai because he's too young to understand anything different, and Ozai subconsciously ties Ursa's departure to Zuko still being there instead of her.
That's pretty fucking sad. Ursa loved Zuko more than she loved Ozai. That's got to fucking sting, jesus.
Anyway, even if it's not a conscious decision, Ozai's mind tells him that the love of his life would still be here if only the shit with Zuko hadn't gone down. This sort of anger broils and roils in him for three years until he burns his son's face and ascends the echeladder of douchebaggery into the vaulted zones of Feminine Hygiene Product of the Year Award-recipient.
In their desperate attempts to hate Ozai with all of their slimy pink guts, people tend to forget that Ozai was only Fire Lord for, what, six fucking years? He inherited a century-long war he hadn't started or asked for. And he couldn't exactly fucking end it. See, there are no good or bad sides in war. If Ozai were to suddenly pull out of the war entirely, the Earth Kingdom would drop a counterattack-revenge on their asses more quickly than I could flip a table. Considering my table-flipping grandninjamasterlotus expertise that's high risk indeed. And that would mean abandoning the colonies, which have been there for nearly a century. What the fuck was he supposed to do? Unless he wanted to dump his own people and leave the entire Fire Nation open to a massive attack, he had no choice but to keep the war going. Zuko got a get-out-of-jail-free card because the Avatar himself showed up, took his hand, and told the world that Zuko was going to be a good Fire Lord. The Avatar told the Earth Kingdom not to fight back. And even so the entire fucking Promise trilogy was about Zuko nearly siccing the Fire Nation army and Kuei shitting himself as he attempted to take over the colonies by force. If literal shitloads of trust and Avatar goodwill did not exist between the leaders, the war would have broken out all over again. Ozai couldn't stop the war early. You want to vomit candy-red rage over someone, do it on Sozin, not Ozai. Not to mention that the entire economy of the Fire Nation for a century had been geared strictly for the purposes of war.
Reminds me of home.
Now Ozai tries to kill Zuko with lightning. Douchenozzle alert, douchenozzle alert. Ozai isn't a good guy. I'm not being sarcastic; he's not a fucking good guy. Now, his perspective. You've attempted to subconsciously forgive your son for being the catalyst that drove the one true love of your life away from you. He has sat by your right hand side and helped you plan the final offensive strike that at last swing the war in your favour permanently and ensure that the Fire Nation people will never be harmed again. Maybe you even believe that a total takeover of the world will bring peace or whatever. Suddenly your son shows up while you are powerless and tells you, straight up, that he is going to rebel against every single fucking thing you've ever told him, that he's going to join forces with the Avatar - whom you probably think of as a beast straight from the Spirit World waiting to rip your throat out with his thunderous tornadoes and superhuman speed - and that he's going to help the Avatar destroy your country. At that point, your choices boil down to:
1) Your family.
2) Your duty to your country, your crown, your people.
If this were a real-world situation and a ruler of any kind picked (1), that ruler would be called a piece of shit and unfit to lead and bluh bluh. If I were the leader of a country and one of my friends abruptly turned traitor on me, I'd at least jail him. Trying to kill him counts against Ozai, sure - see: fucking douchecanoe - but you have to remember he was trying to honour his, you know, fucking duty. And killing the Avatar was the same fucking thing. He's been told his entire life the Avatar is his number one enemy and the biggest threat to the Fire Nation. The rest of Team Avatar advised Aang to kill Ozai back. Don't be a fucking hypocrite about the situation.
But we don't see any of that because it's all from Zuko and Aang's points of views, therefore Ozai is bad guy and everyone can hate him.
I'm going to address the rest of the points later, because my desire to smash my head against the nearest wall is so powerful I can no longer resist its gravitational pull, and I really have to get away from this before my incredulity reaches critical mass and collapses into a black hole to destroy all life in the galaxy. I'm not done yet. The obese female has not yet finished her melody.
And here are your fucking complimentary peanuts. Thank you for flying Con Air.
-carcinoGeneticist
One more thing: Ozai was worse than Vader? Vader force-choked his own wife, killed every fucking "youngling" and "padawan" by hand, and then chops his son's limbs off to teach him a lesson. Ursa left out of necessity; Ozai only killed people from his armchair without every seeing the true consequences of his actions and scarred his son in a way that didn't actively cripple him. If Darth fucking Vader can be redeemed even given all of that shit, then denying Ozai redemption is like sentencing your descendant to execution because he pushed another kid over and you apparently equate that with third-degree murder.
Oh my fucking god, I came onto this thread looking for legitimate plot ideas and instead I found myself stumbling directly into the trenches of a full-blown Ozai hatestorm the size of planet fucking Jupiter. Strap on a helmet, I'm going in guns blazing, anger stretched out to the point of no return, bon-ire so big it could consume a thousand bags of fuel and still have enough left over to act as agent orange in some fucked-up action movie.
I physically cannot comprehend the hate that Ozai receives. Not the hate itself, but the type of hate. I fucking hate that douchecanoe beyond all reasonable belief, but at least I hate him for what he actually did, not how he was portrayed in the goddamn story.
Quick question for anyone with enough mental power to focus his eyes on a television: Who were the major protagonists of ATLA? I hope on all that is good and not-brain-dead that the answer is Aang, Katara, and Zuko or some combination/variation thereof. What do all of these characters have in common? Oh right, they hate Ozai. Zuko hates Ozai because he's a hundred fucking percent certain that Ozai caused his mother's disappearance, and because Ozai burned his face. Fine. Aang hates Ozai because Roku and literally everyone else has told him to hate Ozai. And Katara just hated the Fire Nation in general for taking her mother away from her, which is why that whole shit in the crystal catacombs went down. Do you think they're going to step back and view him from an unbiased third perspective? No. Hell no. Hell fucking no.
The story treats Ozai like the hellspawn of death itself with some unyielding evil and destruction thrown in for good measure. Every story needs an obvious villain; a kids' show is no place to explore the grey moral territory of a war to the extent required. Sure, you can have enough anti-heroes and anti-villains to drown a moderately sized city, but you need a villain to be overcome in the end. In LoK, Amon was bastardised, and the Equalist revolution flipped from being a sympathetic civilians' uprising to a full-scale terrorist war, from an area of grey morality - the show itself seemed to whisper silently that perhaps the Equalists were fucking right after all - into "Team Avatar versus the baby-eating, people-murderising faceless mooks". They need a bad guy. Ozai was their bad guy, so they could redeem anyone else they chose to [Zuko, Azula in The Search, Jet, etc. etc.] as long as Team Avatar kicked the bad guy's ass hard enough that his descendants were born with bright red footprints on their asscheeks.
Basically, when you're trying to fucking write a character or figure out his goddamn emotions and motivations, you'd better fucking step back and take your bias off like you just lost five consecutive rounds of strip poker on.
So what the fuck has Ozai done, anyway?
0) Caused Ursa to leave.
1) Burned Zuko's face.
2) Continued a war he inherited.
3) Attempted to use Sozin's Comet to defeat the other nations.
4) Tried to kill Zuko with lightning.
5) Nearly murdered the Avatar.
Well shit, looks like an overwhelming amount of irredeemable awful qualities, right? Sure. I fucking hate him. But let's take a trip into the dirty waters of his perspectives. Keep your arms, legs, and other limbs inside the submarine at all times. Complimentary peanuts will be served at the end of the voyage. No fighting or I swear I will turn this sub around.
Iroh was Azulon's favourite. Iroh's significantly older than Ozai; he was the heir to the throne; and he was an accomplished general. When his descendant died, Iroh was fucking broken up about it to the point where it's implied he committed suicide. Ozai requested to become the heir, and Azulon, instead of merely rejecting the request, decided to order Ozai to kill Zuko. Who the fuck does that? That's like if I went to Taco Bell and ordered tacos while they gave me burritos, so next time that guy came over to the place where I was working and asked for grubcorn, I gave him fucking cyanide. What the actual fuck? And do we ever actually see Ozai agreeing to kill Zuko? Unless my memory is worse than a cuttlefish's, I highly fucking doubt it. We never get anything except that Ursa suddenly does something or other than kills Azulon and causes her to flee. Did she directly kill him? Did Ozai agree to it? Did he even know? Was he planning to kill Zuko? Did Ursa overreact? We don't fucking know. The next morning Ozai's being comforted by a tree - so he did have it in him to care for Ursa, big whoop - and Zuko is a little kid who lost Ursa. Zuko blames Ozai because he's too young to understand anything different, and Ozai subconsciously ties Ursa's departure to Zuko still being there instead of her.
That's pretty fucking sad. Ursa loved Zuko more than she loved Ozai. That's got to fucking sting, jesus.
Anyway, even if it's not a conscious decision, Ozai's mind tells him that the love of his life would still be here if only the shit with Zuko hadn't gone down. This sort of anger broils and roils in him for three years until he burns his son's face and ascends the echeladder of douchebaggery into the vaulted zones of Feminine Hygiene Product of the Year Award-recipient.
In their desperate attempts to hate Ozai with all of their slimy pink guts, people tend to forget that Ozai was only Fire Lord for, what, six fucking years? He inherited a century-long war he hadn't started or asked for. And he couldn't exactly fucking end it. See, there are no good or bad sides in war. If Ozai were to suddenly pull out of the war entirely, the Earth Kingdom would drop a counterattack-revenge on their asses more quickly than I could flip a table. Considering my table-flipping grandninjamasterlotus expertise that's high risk indeed. And that would mean abandoning the colonies, which have been there for nearly a century. What the fuck was he supposed to do? Unless he wanted to dump his own people and leave the entire Fire Nation open to a massive attack, he had no choice but to keep the war going. Zuko got a get-out-of-jail-free card because the Avatar himself showed up, took his hand, and told the world that Zuko was going to be a good Fire Lord. The Avatar told the Earth Kingdom not to fight back. And even so the entire fucking Promise trilogy was about Zuko nearly siccing the Fire Nation army and Kuei shitting himself as he attempted to take over the colonies by force. If literal shitloads of trust and Avatar goodwill did not exist between the leaders, the war would have broken out all over again. Ozai couldn't stop the war early. You want to vomit candy-red rage over someone, do it on Sozin, not Ozai. Not to mention that the entire economy of the Fire Nation for a century had been geared strictly for the purposes of war.
Reminds me of home.
Now Ozai tries to kill Zuko with lightning. Douchenozzle alert, douchenozzle alert. Ozai isn't a good guy. I'm not being sarcastic; he's not a fucking good guy. Now, his perspective. You've attempted to subconsciously forgive your son for being the catalyst that drove the one true love of your life away from you. He has sat by your right hand side and helped you plan the final offensive strike that at last swing the war in your favour permanently and ensure that the Fire Nation people will never be harmed again. Maybe you even believe that a total takeover of the world will bring peace or whatever. Suddenly your son shows up while you are powerless and tells you, straight up, that he is going to rebel against every single fucking thing you've ever told him, that he's going to join forces with the Avatar - whom you probably think of as a beast straight from the Spirit World waiting to rip your throat out with his thunderous tornadoes and superhuman speed - and that he's going to help the Avatar destroy your country. At that point, your choices boil down to:
1) Your family.
2) Your duty to your country, your crown, your people.
If this were a real-world situation and a ruler of any kind picked (1), that ruler would be called a piece of shit and unfit to lead and bluh bluh. If I were the leader of a country and one of my friends abruptly turned traitor on me, I'd at least jail him. Trying to kill him counts against Ozai, sure - see: fucking douchecanoe - but you have to remember he was trying to honour his, you know, fucking duty. And killing the Avatar was the same fucking thing. He's been told his entire life the Avatar is his number one enemy and the biggest threat to the Fire Nation. The rest of Team Avatar advised Aang to kill Ozai back. Don't be a fucking hypocrite about the situation.
But we don't see any of that because it's all from Zuko and Aang's points of views, therefore Ozai is bad guy and everyone can hate him.
I'm going to address the rest of the points later, because my desire to smash my head against the nearest wall is so powerful I can no longer resist its gravitational pull, and I really have to get away from this before my incredulity reaches critical mass and collapses into a black hole to destroy all life in the galaxy. I'm not done yet. The obese female has not yet finished her melody.
And here are your fucking complimentary peanuts. Thank you for flying Con Air.
-carcinoGeneticist
One more thing: Ozai was worse than Vader? Vader force-choked his own wife, killed every fucking "youngling" and "padawan" by hand, and then chops his son's limbs off to teach him a lesson. Ursa left out of necessity; Ozai only killed people from his armchair without every seeing the true consequences of his actions and scarred his son in a way that didn't actively cripple him. If Darth fucking Vader can be redeemed even given all of that shit, then denying Ozai redemption is like sentencing your descendant to execution because he pushed another kid over and you apparently equate that with third-degree murder.