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Arsonist's Lullaby: An Azula Timeloop Quest

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[X] To ignore your brother. You're not actually interested in him. You want the waterbender. She won't let you refuse Zuko's challenge on the day of the Comet, and if you kill her someone always kills you, so there's only one solution left: you'll remove her from the board, and ransom her back for the opportunity to negotiate with Zuko and the Avatar. They'll never see it coming.
 
[X] To ignore your brother. You're not actually interested in him. You want the waterbender. She won't let you refuse Zuko's challenge on the day of the Comet, and if you kill her someone always kills you, so there's only one solution left: you'll remove her from the board, and ransom her back for the opportunity to negotiate with Zuko and the Avatar. They'll never see it coming.
 
[X] To ignore your brother. You're not actually interested in him. You want the waterbender. She won't let you refuse Zuko's challenge on the day of the Comet, and if you kill her someone always kills you, so there's only one solution left: you'll remove her from the board, and ransom her back for the opportunity to negotiate with Zuko and the Avatar. They'll never see it coming.
 
[X] To abduct your brother. With your Father's attention fixed on Sozin's Comet and the plan to scour the Earth Kingdom to ash, you're sure you can find a suitable hole to toss Zuko in without him knowing. There you can interrogate him at your leisure, and find out what drives him to a stupidity as relentless as the loops that confine you. For all you know, the two are related. He does seem to be their most recurring feature.
 
[X] To ignore your brother. You're not actually interested in him. You want the waterbender. She won't let you refuse Zuko's challenge on the day of the Comet, and if you kill her someone always kills you, so there's only one solution left: you'll remove her from the board, and ransom her back for the opportunity to negotiate with Zuko and the Avatar. They'll never see it coming.

It's either this or abducting Zuko. "Test" doesn't seem likely to get anywhere.

Kidnapping people can solve a lot of problems!
 
Magery said:
"The point…" you muse, tapping your chin with a finger in a mockery of thought. "Yes, I suppose I must have had one of those, mustn't I? That's why I'm different from you. That's why I'm the monster. Because when I look at the world, I don't see people, do I? Just levers. So when one refuses to be pulled, the only thing I know how to do is to break it."

Your smile is a masterpiece. It falls crooked across your jaw, like you're trying to keep an amusement on your face that you're struggling to feel—like you're lying to yourself about how well you're lying to everyone else.

(It's a smile that has your eyes focusing anywhere else but the glint of the knife poking out of Mai's sleeve, lest you see yourself in it.)

"Tell me, Mai." You lean forward across the table, pressing your palms into the surface until your knuckles whiten. "How broken are you feeling right now?"

Ty Lee gets it first, you think. Her arm twitches over Mai's, like she's thinking about reaching out to you instead; her cheeks pale and her lips open. Mai, by contrast, takes a little longer—and then it hits her and her eyes narrow even as her frown softens ever-so-slightly.

"Not enough to believe you," she says, but with an edge that bruises instead of cuts. "Nice try, though."

"You're such a softie, Azula!" Ty Lee says, which is the first and hopefully last time the universe has ever heard that sequence of words in that order. She's smiling at you, now, like she did when you crossed to her for the spike at the volleyball game; like she does when you've done something she's proud of.
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Maybe I'm just being dumb, but what was Azula even saying here?
 
[X] To test your brother. Sometimes, when you fight across the airships, you taunt him about Mai, but it only makes him stronger. How will he react instead when he learns she's safe, and sound, and waiting somewhere far from your impending coronation? Will conflicting loyalties split his party, or will he finally prove as ruthless as a royal ought to be? Either way, he'll be more off-balance when the Comet comes, and maybe you'll finally be able to talk to him.

i didn't follow this quest to talk to emotionally well adjusted waterbenders. the path is clear.
 
[X] To test your brother.

since Mai is alive, Zuko shouldnt be spitting mad so hopefully they can actually just talk
 
[X] To ignore your brother. You're not actually interested in him. You want the waterbender. She won't let you refuse Zuko's challenge on the day of the Comet, and if you kill her someone always kills you, so there's only one solution left: you'll remove her from the board, and ransom her back for the opportunity to negotiate with Zuko and the Avatar. They'll never see it coming.
 
[X] To ignore your brother. You're not actually interested in him. You want the waterbender. She won't let you refuse Zuko's challenge on the day of the Comet, and if you kill her someone always kills you, so there's only one solution left: you'll remove her from the board, and ransom her back for the opportunity to negotiate with Zuko and the Avatar. They'll never see it coming.
 
Silently Watches said:
Maybe I'm just being dumb, but what was Azula even saying here?
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She is pretending to be trying to say she isn't imprisoning them because there useful. It's a double bluff. The first bluff is "I kept you around because I think I can use you and if I didn't i'd break you" and it's meant to weak and easy to see through for people who know her well, and come off as her lying to herself more than them. The second bluff is "I'm doing this because I care about you, which I'm not comfortable with saying or thinking about, so I'm lying by making it about you being useful." Which is meant to be taken as the truth so they'll react a certain way. Essentially, it's the complex form of the lie we voted to tell them.
Potato Anarchy said:
i didn't follow this quest to talk to emotionally well adjusted waterbenders. the path is clear.
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Talk? Who said anything about talking? Katara is bait for Zuko and the Avatar. A worm on a hook. Bait doesn't talk, especially not once you gag it too keep it from warning the big fish about any preparations you may have made that the bait might be aware of. This is about talking to Ange, maybe Zuko. nah. Just say "Zuzu, I don't actually think you have anything productive to say, It's just convenient to have you where I can watch you and discourage you from trying something stupid."
 
[X] To ignore your brother.

Azula's worldview is tied to her relationships, so the best way to cause shifts in her worldview is to force her to interact with people she doesn't have deeply pre-existing relationship with.
 
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[X] To ignore your brother.

Wonderful quest! I wanna see Azula get pwned by Katara, so I'm gonna vote for this one.
 
Randino Treviani said:
She is pretending to be trying to say she isn't imprisoning them because there useful. It's a double bluff. The first bluff is "I kept you around because I think I can use you and if I didn't i'd break you" and it's meant to weak and easy to see through for people who know her well, and come off as her lying to herself more than them. The second bluff is "I'm doing this because I care about you, which I'm not comfortable with saying or thinking about, so I'm lying by making it about you being useful." Which is meant to be taken as the truth so they'll react a certain way. Essentially, it's the complex form of the lie we voted to tell them.

Talk? Who said anything about talking? Katara is bait for Zuko and the Avatar. A worm on a hook. Bait doesn't talk, especially not once you gag it too keep it from warning the big fish about any preparations you may have made that the bait might be aware of. This is about talking to Ange, maybe Zuko. nah. Just say "Zuzu, I don't actually think you have anything productive to say, It's just convenient to have you where I can watch you and discourage you from trying something stupid."
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...also, in what fucking world is Katara emotionally well-adjusted?
 
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[X] To ignore your brother. You're not actually interested in him. You want the waterbender. She won't let you refuse Zuko's challenge on the day of the Comet, and if you kill her someone always kills you, so there's only one solution left: you'll remove her from the board, and ransom her back for the opportunity to negotiate with Zuko and the Avatar. They'll never see it coming.
 
The Laurent said:
...also, in what fucking world is Katara well emotionally adjusted?
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She's just good at hiding it better.

Katara is funny in the sense that there's a soft-parallel between her and Azula. They're both bending prodigy younger sisters who work hard to get where they are. But the analogies collapse there, because Katara grew up in a family where she knew she had unconditional love, with a brother who she was never really pitted against and was just annoyed with in a normal sibling way, and the loss of her family is due to external events forcing them apart and forcing her to grow up way too early.

There are ways in which you could have seen that if their roles were reversed, while they would never behave exactly the same way, Katara would be much more like Azula, and Azula much more like Katara.
 
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[x] To ignore your brother. You're not actually interested in him. You want the waterbender. She won't let you refuse Zuko's challenge on the day of the Comet, and if you kill her someone always kills you, so there's only one solution left: you'll remove her from the board, and ransom her back for the opportunity to negotiate with Zuko and the Avatar. They'll never see it coming.
 
Silently Watches said:
Maybe I'm just being dumb, but what was Azula even saying here?
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Azula was trying to go for an overly complicated multilayered lie
Where she would pretend to be too sentimental to be willing to hurt her friends, expecting that they wouldn't actually believe it
So that she could then use the unexpected angle to finally interrogate them about why exactly Mai picks Zuko and Ty Lee picks Mai over her
And then lie again and "reveal" the actual reason is because she's just being pragmatic and keeping her enemies where she can see them
Because she expects that's an explanation that they'll be willing to buy, allowing her to end the interaction feeling in control and hidden

This bit specifically
Magery said:
Your smile is a masterpiece. It falls crooked across your jaw, like you're trying to keep an amusement on your face that you're struggling to feel—like you're lying to yourself about how well you're lying to everyone else.
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Was Azula going through the effort of faking being fake
Pretending to have let a crack in the mask slip where Mai and Ty Lee can see that she's trying to manipulate them, because she wants them to call her out on it

Mai was asking her what game she was playing by pretending everything was fine, because Azula is never upfront and always has some other angle she's pushing
And Azula was going "if I'm a monster that just uses people until they stop working for me and then breaks them when they don't then why aren't you broken?"
She's trying to fulfill step one of the plan by implying that she hasn't hurt Mai because she cares about her enough to be unwilling to
And sure enough it's a lie that neither Mai or Ty Lee actually believe in, though Ty Lee is willing to pretend to believe it

And then everything goes off script and off the rails because Mai and Ty Lee end up telling her that they do actually care about her and that isn't mutually exclusive with caring about others
 
[X] To ignore your brother. You're not actually interested in him. You want the waterbender. She won't let you refuse Zuko's challenge on the day of the Comet, and if you kill her someone always kills you, so there's only one solution left: you'll remove her from the board, and ransom her back for the opportunity to negotiate with Zuko and the Avatar. They'll never see it coming.
 
[X] To ignore your brother. You're not actually interested in him. You want the waterbender. She won't let you refuse Zuko's challenge on the day of the Comet, and if you kill her someone always kills you, so there's only one solution left: you'll remove her from the board, and ransom her back for the opportunity to negotiate with Zuko and the Avatar. They'll never see it coming.
 
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