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Arsonist's Lullaby: An Azula Timeloop Quest

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...and I really just want Azula to start getting accustomed to having positive interactions with Zuko and make further inroads into being able to see things from another perspective.

Sure, he's not going to remember any of it in future loops, but I don't think it helps how she still sees him as a kind of obstacle at the end of each loop.
 
JuliusClonkus said:
...and I really just want Azula to start getting accustomed to having positive interactions with Zuko and make further inroads into being able to see things from another perspective.

Sure, he's not going to remember any of it in future loops, but I don't think it helps how she still sees him as a kind of obstacle at the end of each loop.
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Indeed. It would be better for everyone if Azula went back to seeing Zuzu entirely as a helpless turtleduckling in need of a minder(Mai) rather than a turtleduckling obstacle.
 
So, to clarify where I think I see some difficulties in the discussion:

Imrix, I think we can all agree with your idea that Azula is Fire Enfleshed. As you have mentioned, it's the only personal truth that hasn't changed. When you say Firebending, you're saying Azula; when you say Azula, you're saying Firebending.

Another unassailable truth: Azula does not know herself. If she knew who she was, she wouldn't be in a time loop where she spent most of her time in an emotional and mental breakdown, and have this entire story focused on breaking down every wrong thing she thought she knew. Azula does not know herself, and therefore she does not know firebending.

The properties of this statement also work in reverse, then. Azula has more to learn about firebending, about what fire is and what it means to control fire, create fire, be fire. Zuko knows something about firebending that she doesn't, I think that's also clear. So, to teach firebending to Zuko, she reveals herself to him, and of course self-revelation is the core of a relationship. Zuko can also teach something about firebending to her, which also teaches her something about herself.
 
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Honestly there is a lot of value in Azula getting into the headspace to see herself as an artist anything other than a solider with fire.

Magery said:
(2/3) Monster?

There is a lonely path in the palace. At the end of that lonely path is a room. And in that room is a girl called monster. Her name is Azula, and she understands neither friends nor does not understand feelings. She hardly even understands family. All that is left to her is what she has learned been taught: and what she has learned been taught is to want, to take, and to not care if the taking hurts. She might just end the world if you let her. But it does.
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The Fire Dancing at the Festival did Azula a lot of good.

Also - she specifically kept her grandmas (well grand aunts) as her instructors because they share a similar view of Fire Bending.

Magery said:
But that, you think, is actually Lo and Li's secret. Their knowledge is solely theoretical. When they envisage firebending, they probably see characters before they see flame—whether the ancient, curling scripts of the times before Fire became Nation, or the sharper, simplified strokes that would have recorded the likes of Sozin. They can only recognise your form by how far it strays from diagrammatic perfection.

It makes them useful in ways your old instructors never could be. You don't need some mediocre 'master' telling you to shift your left foot a half-inch back in the fifth movement of the thirty-first imperial kata. You already know what you're doing wrong, and you already know how to fix it. What you need are the sorts of eyes that know when a single hair is out of place—the sorts of eyes that see firebending as a millennial history of refinements towards a more perfect art.

The sorts of eyes that may be the only others in the world to recognise what you see in the fascination of an open flame.
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An art form in and of itself - which given that as Azula points out that they aren't Firebenders - the brutal realities of the form for warfare isn't something they learned. Also old enough to remember a time where the Fire Nation wasn't proverbially as lost in the sauce.

Azula can't imagine life without firebending. She's also brought up in a world where it's near exclusively for combat and Ozai presumably really hammered on any attempts to encroach fire dancing which is the only example of non combat/threat fire bending we've ever seen from Azula.

We do need to decouple fire bending from a combat only status. This helps that
 
Nicholas Brooks said:
You don't think Azula having no idea that another form of firebending is possible may be one of the contributors to her fucked up mindset? Because I do
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Azula is already aware that there are other ways to firebend she just thinks they sucks compared to the way she is proficient in. She mentioned people developing their own half-assed ineffective but showy styles while criticizing firedancers during one of the loops. Also there are probably historic records left of ancient bending styles but they just considered outdated and much worse compared to current standart at least that is government stance.

Also Zuko seeks out new style only after his normal bending fails him. With Azula chances are she will actually perform worse with a new style than her current one she is proficient with and just dismisses Sun Warriors style as outdated too.
 
Right, but it's important to remember, bending is not just a physical skill, though it is physical. It is a spiritual art, and therefore the outlook and disposition of a person's spirit is an inherent part of the art. Even if modern firebending has physically developed and become technically 'better', the arts of the Sun Warriors express critical philosophical and spiritual realities that appear almost nonexistent in modern firebending.
 
Their paths may be different, but both paths are still made of "firebending is inherently an expression of mental and emotional spiritual energy released through physical actions".

People like to dismiss Ty Lee's aura/chi talk as mumbo jumbo, because it sounds so similar to IRL scammers, but in AtLA she's basically one of the most informed people in the show when it comes to souls and bending.
 
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I do find it fascinating that people are focusing so much on the mechanical side of the equation.

Azula doesn't need to learn how to fight better. Fighting (except so much as it enables her to eventually survive relatively unmaimed after standing up to Ozai) isn't something that helps her solve things.

Her idea of being happy included her and Zuko playing catch with lightning.

You cannot extricate Azula from fire without destroying her. But loop after loop the idea keeps coming back up of it being essentially an art form to Azula.

Ty Lee noting that Azula is strange for not talking about her bending. How Li and Lo continued to be Azula's teachers specifically because they don't bother with the little details she already knows are wrong and how to correct. Fire Dancing in general.

What teaching Zuko fire is honestly less about what Azula learns from him specifically (though given that yeah Azula would probably have a few critiques if only on a purely "this is her passion" level) and more Azula teaching Zuko in general and Azula teaching Zuko in one of the things she loves most.

There's not a lot more against Ozai and how he forced his kids to compete than Azula offering to teach Zuko. Like just imagine the tonal change to their relationship if the backstory had Azula teaching Zuko fire bending when no one was looking as children before he was sent away.

And also consider the importance of Azula teaching fire to anyone? She's an emotionally stunted 14 year old. Just imagine a 14 year old talking about their favorite anime or band.
 
Imrix said:
I... don't. I think interpreting it as dissociation is working backwards to justify the conclusion.
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Considering I first came up with that head canon before reading this fic, and it's based on the similarities between lightning bending, Azula's blue fire, and the fact that no other bender has blue fire, regardless of their skill or power, I'm not sure what I'd be working backwards from.

Imrix said:
And I think it is simply, absurdly wrong to say that Azula does not 'really understand fire itself'. There's an ancient 2009 Avatar fanfic called Object Lesson with the premise of Azula ending up, Somehow, as Aang's firebending tutor, and to teach the outlook she swipes Katara's amulet and poses a question to him - suppose I threw this into a locus of any of the elements? What would happen? If I threw it off a mountain into swirling wind, they would carry the necklace until it fell back to earth, unharmed. If I threw it into crashing waves, it would be tossed by the currents for a while but if you dived down to retrieve it, it would be unharmed. If I threw it into a rockslide, it would tumble and bounce between the rocks but eventually scatter free, in all likelihood unharmed due to being too small and tough to be damaged.

And if I put it into the flame, even only partially, it would be consumed. It doesn't matter what the fire wants or how far into the fire I put the necklace, fire destroys. That is the nature of fire.

This outlook is not wrong. Yes, fire can be nurturing and life-giving, we all understand the value of huddling around a bonfire to ward away the night and the terrors it contains. But that doesn't mean you touch the bonfire. Even as a nurturing force, fire is still a thing that must be controlled and restrained, or it will burn you like any other fuel. Azula knows this, she knows all of this; the festival scene in loop two wasn't a revelation about the nature of fire, she knows it can be beautiful, it's simply knowledge she avoids bringing to her father's attention because it has no bearing on who she can be in his sight. She's an athlete, not a philosopher; she doesn't spend her time ruminating on the spiritual nature of fire, because she's too busy living it.
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This strikes me as a very flawed analogy. If you toss the pendant off a mountain it might be dashed against the cliffs and it will certainly be blown away such that it is lost to you. If you toss it into a rock slide it will be ground to dust. If you toss it into the ocean, you might be able to retrieve it unharmed, if you're quick enough—just like with a fire—but if you aren't it will be swept away, to a distant shore, or buried in the abyss and, if you wait long enough, the waves will rub it smooth because water can wear mountains down to sand and not even fire is that destructive.

Fire doesn't just destroy. You mentioned how it can ward off darkness and cold, but it can also strengthen, transform, and create. Just look at cooking, tempering steel, or pyrophilic forests. Sure, if you aren't careful it can kill you, but ask anyone from a water tribe what happens if you don't respect water. Hint: you don't walk away with just a few burns.
 
Is Azula one of if not the best firebenders in all of history? Yes. Does that mean she shouldn't learn what Zuko got from the dragons? No. Just because she is already great doesn't mean she should be ignorant of what other insights are out there. Could she be even better by learning more about how to relate to fire? Maybe.
 
Warmachine375 said:
Toph is a prankster who loves getting a rise out of Aang and his friends after all.
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It seems possible, but I don't know how much information she'd have about the situation, how deceptive she might think Azula was being based on how Toph's ability to read Azula is interpreted, whether Azula might be using a technical truth in her wording, etc.
 
Reese said:
It seems possible, but I don't know how much information she'd have about the situation, how deceptive she might think Azula was being based on how Toph's ability to read Azula is interpreted, whether Azula might be using a technical truth in her wording, etc.
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That's fair and Toph might probably find Azula strange after sensing something off from her considering the latter had been through a lot of time loops in this story. Nothing gets past Toph who would want to find out and get her answers.

I mean this is the same Toph who later became Chief Police Officer of Republic City where her sensory abilities really come in handy for various investigations that don't escape her, which she had taught to metalbending police officers and her daughter Lin who succeeded her after retirement.
 
Warmachine375 said:
That's fair and Toph might probably find Azula strange after sensing something off from her considering the latter had been through a lot of time loops in this story. Nothing gets past Toph who would want to find out and get her answers.

I mean this is the same Toph who later became Chief Police Officer of Republic City where her sensory abilities really come in handy for various investigations that don't escape her, which she had taught to metalbending police officers and her daughter Lin who succeeded her after retirement.
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That made me think that Toph might be the bender whose relationship to bending is the closest to Azula's: for Toph, earthbending isn't just about moving rocks and earth, it's literally her whole world, how she perceive and interact with the world around her, and understands it to a point that she managed to do what everyone agreed was impossible: bending metal.
So she might be the one to understand the best Azula's fusional relationship to the Fire.

Seriously, put those two bending nerds alone in a room, and they either kill each other over which bending is the superior one, or become best pals.
 
ElMariachi said:
Seriously, put those two bending nerds alone in a room, and they either kill each other over which bending is the superior one, or become best pals.
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I don't know if I'd call Toph a bending nerd, since that implies a degree of book learning, or at least an academic inclination. While that certainly fits Azula, most of Toph's mastery feels more instinctual and based on trial and error. It's the difference between someone who's good at archery because they spent most of their life studying the art, with all its intricacies, and someone who's good because they've depended on the bow for hunting and survival. Both will have an incredible depth of knowledge about the subject, and probably a lot to share with each other, but they'll also have fundamentally different approaches and understandings.
 
Epsilon Rose said:
I don't know if I'd call Toph a bending nerd, since that implies a degree of book learning, or at least an academic inclination. While that certainly fits Azula, most of Toph's mastery feels more instinctual and based on trial and error. It's the difference between someone who's good at archery because they spent most of their life studying the art, with all its intricacies, and someone who's good because they've depended on the bow for hunting and survival. Both will have an incredible depth of knowledge about the subject, and probably a lot to share with each other, but they'll also have fundamentally different approaches and understandings.
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Honestly, that makes it even better!
Put those two overcompetitive prodigies fundamentally opposite in their approach to bending in a room, and pass the popcorn.
 
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