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Arsonist's Lullaby: An Azula Timeloop Quest

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Some thoughts:
1.
Mother Nyx said:
Okay so hey. I know this is a narrative quest and that my husband can't really answer this but it seems like the powers that be in this quest, whatever force is controlling the rewinds is trying to get Azula to essentially give up on the throne and give it to Zuko. And, I don't really vibe with that. Hoping there is more to the lesson she's supposed to be learning, lmao.
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I agree here. If there's one thing which stands out about Azula's canon familial relationships is that she does all the work and gets little or nothing in return. She does all the work in her relationship with her father and dedicates her whole life to serving him, she is arguably still trying to be Ursa dutiful daughter years after Ursa left and many years after Ursa emotionally abandoned her, and she even does all the work to try to reconcile with her brother in Book 3 and gets nothing but betrayal in return. In this quest, she's been doing all the work to try to avoid conflict with her brother, one way or another, only to have it fail again and again. The idea that she needs to try even harder and give up even more to avoid her brother trying to duel her doesn't sit right to me.

2. A lot of people in this thread seem giddy about the idea of Azula fighting an Agni Kai against Ozai. I think that's a terrible idea. One consistent thing about Azula in this quest is that she's been trying to avoid dueling and fighting her brother, with her family. It's one of the most positive parts of her character. And now everyone wants her to fight and possibly kill yet another family member, someone who had a far greater effect on her character than Ozai? People want a 14 year old girl to fight her own father, who was her only parental figure for half of her life? It would not be a good experience for her at all, and it wouldn't even solve half her problems if she won, because she'd still have to deal with Zuko and/or Iroh wanting the throne and not trusting her, not to mention the Gaang having it out for her.

Another thing to consider about the Ozai-Azula relationship is that Ozai was a terrible, abusive father, but he's also the only reason Azula ever got to be Azula. The Fire Nation is a patriarchal society, and we don't exactly see many (or any, aside from Azula) women in political or military leadership positions.* We in fact don't see any female Fire Nation soldiers in the Earth Kingdom at all. From what we know of Ursa, and of Mai's life, the expectation for elite women seems to be that they should focus on serving their families, fathers, and husbands and on raising the children.** Part of the conflict between Ursa and Azula was probably over Azula not wanting to do that. The only reason Azula seems to have been allowed to develop who she was, for better or worse, into potentially "the greatest leader in Fire Nation history," to quote her aspirations, is because Ozai was willing to effectively treat her as his son and heir. Ozai was critical to Azula becoming who she became, and without him, she might have something like Mai's life, at best. Again, he's still an abusive asshole who really screwed her up, but he also opened up a real possibilities for her. For Azula to duel him would be very traumatic for her.

*Mai and Ty Lee seem to have partially be exceptions, but that's only because they're Azula's favorites.
**Arguably one of the reasons Ty Lee ran away to the circus is that she was running away from this.
 
The Laurent said:
I think people mistake that higher number is inherently good. The higher the first number is, the more someone relies on it as the first, last, and only resort.

...which, to be fair, Toph is probably a 4/5 for Earthbending, but she sometimes has this problem where it's the only thing she's really good at or cares about.
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I think it's less that we believe the higher number is inherently better, so much as the numbers in general are indicative of a certain scale of significance to Azula's perception of the world. Azula alone for instance is on the lower end at 2/2 but our choices have made it a distinct focus of the quest and changed it multiple times.
Magery said:
Certainty is the breadth of the Truth: the range of situations in which it matters. If Azula's Truth were at Certainty 1, it would rarely matter. While she could still firebend, she couldn't expect anyone else to really care, and she would have a very narrow set of tricks. Very few benders are at this level for their bending Truth, and most of those are just learning their craft. On the other hand, if her Truth were at Certainty 5, she could reasonably expect that merely the knowledge of her bending would be enough to shift any given situation in a way that favoured her, whether her aim was intimidation or violence or even performance and beauty.

Impact is the extent to which the Truth defines the situation. At Impact 1, Azula's Truth could only bend the arc of the story: an enemy might flee, but likely only to link back up with their reinforcements, or the information they divulge is only of minimal importance. A Truth that has Impact 5—like this one—is, on the other hand, strong enough to dramatically alter the story. When Azula killed Aang with her firebending, it took a singular, unrepeatable miracle to bring him back to life, and he still had to pay a spiritual and physical price in the aftermath.
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Yet, for all we've changed Azula Alone, Azula needs to apply leverage and act in a certain way for it to have more notable reaching consequences. Azula's bending impact is only a point higher, which allows to leverage it a bit more, but her certainty is so high that it's a near constant background element of the story. Just a fundamental part of being Azula.

Thus, the numbers are more a complex narrative impacting equation than certain to impact the direction and focus of the story. Increasing or decreasing them will shift the narrative in a variety of ways, but does not neccessarily shift Azula's chances of breaking the loop meaningfully.
ShozanM said:
I'd like that, as long as everyone sees her no-diffing Ozai. I just want a scene where everyone gasps at how insanely strong Azula is now.
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Well the idea is that the last person Ozai is seen in the presence of is Azula and then she and her secret earth bender police disappear the same time Ozai does right after she spares a nominal confessed traitor. So while there won't be many witnesses, Azula is almost certainly spooking the entire nation.
 
Mother Nyx said:
Okay so hey. I know this is a narrative quest and that my husband can't really answer this but it seems like the powers that be in this quest, whatever force is controlling the rewinds is trying to get Azula to essentially give up on the throne and give it to Zuko. And, I don't really vibe with that. Hoping there is more to the lesson she's supposed to be learning, lmao.
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We don't actually know what the goal is in quest. Azula treats it like it's about being fire lord(because what under agni isn't?) And some of the readers are a bit focused on the idea of an Ozai vs Azula throw down for a variety of reasons, but their is nothing in particular demonstrating that either of these are all that uniquely important to resolving the loop. It could have more to do with preventing Aang from learning energy bending for example, or some manner of Vaatu shenanigans, ect.
 
Edison_Trent said:
Nope, I can't take that line seriously.
That's like saying an abusive girlfriend does all the work to get her guy back and "fix" their relationship and is "betrayed" when the guy realizes what's been happening and leaves.
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Azula was not a good sister at all and she mostly obeyed her absolute monarch father's orders to capture Zuko (until she didn't, and in fact subverted the purpose of those orders), but she was not abusive toward him. She is not his abuser.

And Zuko was absolutely right to leave Ozai and join with the Gaang. However, in canon he also showed about zero compassion for his sister ever, never shows her the slightest kindness, and spent most of the series pursuing violent conflict with her in an attempt to "put her in her place," with only the slightest of regrets about that.

Yes, it's true that it was good for Zuko to get out of Ozai's clutches, and good for the world that he did so. It's also true that Azula, despite her flaws, showed him a lot of personal kindness in bringing him back home as a Prince rather than a prisoner, convincing Ozai to accept and be proud of Zuko, and surrendering her own status as heir to the throne to him. It wasn't good for Zuko, but Azula didn't know that, and within the confines of her life and value system, I can hardly think of a bigger gift she could give him, and she followed it up by trying to be personally kind to him in an effort to mend their relationship.

Zuko never acknowledged the slightest bit of this kindness in canon, and he ended repaying it by taking everything from her, without any regret or mixed feelings for doing so. It's a complicated situation, but it does fit with the general pattern of Azula trying to serve the other members of her family and getting little or nothing for it. Her continuing to try to conciliate Zuko isn't bad, but it is a continuation of something which worked out quite poorly for her in canon.

To be fair, Quest! Zuko has already been considerably nicer to Azula than canon! Zuko ever was in the series, so Azula is getting some results.
 
veteranMortal said:
wow i wonder who wrote that

cool people i bet
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:V

a-10warthog said:
…, and within the confines of her life and value system, I can hardly think of a bigger gift she could give him, and she followed it up by trying to be personally kind to him in an effort to mend their relationship.

Zuko never acknowledged the slightest bit of this kindness in canon, and he ended repaying it by taking everything from her, without any regret or mixed feelings for doing so. It's a complicated situation, but it does fit with the general pattern of Azula trying to serve the other members of her family and getting little or nothing for it. Her continuing to try to conciliate Zuko isn't bad, but it is a continuation of something which worked out quite poorly for her in canon.

To be fair, Quest! Zuko has already been considerably nicer to Azula than canon! Zuko ever was in the series, so Azula is getting some results.
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And we're about to see what Azula's upcoming gesture of …good will? will yield from the Zuzumeister.
 
Randino Treviani said:
Azula's bending impact is only a point higher, which allows to leverage it a bit more, but her certainty is so high that it's a near constant background element of the story. Just a fundamental part of being Azula.
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Indeed, my thought is that Azula is still somehow gaslit into believing that the relative abilities of her and her family have remained static. Critically, her belief that she's still inferior to Ozai means that she's still subordinating her ethos and perspective on Fire to him since Azula believes rather fundamentally in his might-makes-right philosophy. She's not happy about it, but she still thinks she doesn't have a choice.

Freeing her perspective on Fire would be a strong step I feel in freeing the rest of her perspective, If Ozai can be wrong about one thing perhaps he can be wrong about others...
 
a-10warthog said:
Some thoughts:
1.

I agree here. If there's one thing which stands out about Azula's canon familial relationships is that she does all the work and gets little or nothing in return. She does all the work in her relationship with her father and dedicates her whole life to serving him, she is arguably still trying to be Ursa dutiful daughter years after Ursa left and many years after Ursa emotionally abandoned her, and she even does all the work to try to reconcile with her brother in Book 3 and gets nothing but betrayal in return. In this quest, she's been doing all the work to try to avoid conflict with her brother, one way or another, only to have it fail again and again. The idea that she needs to try even harder and give up even more to avoid her brother trying to duel her doesn't sit right to me.
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Let me correct that: she started her attempts to avoid conflict only after a huge number of loops in which she focused on basically killing everyone in the Gaang, as well as Mai and Ty Lee, only to discover at some point that perhaps the condition to get out of the cycle wasn't to kill someone.
The Azula that we're seeing here is not an Azula that is in her fourth loop. It's an Azula in her potentially 1004 loop and she's only stated to spare the life of Mai and Ty Lee very recently.
And I'm certainly not buying for a second that the Azula in the show brought Zuko back in the Fire Nation because she wanted to do something good for him lol, she was absolutely delighted at all the opportunities that having him at home would bring to screw him up even further (including lying about him killing the Avatar when she apparently knew, or heavily suspected, that Aang would survive and surface again, destroying Zuko's reputation once again).

a-10warthog said:
2. A lot of people in this thread seem giddy about the idea of Azula fighting an Agni Kai against Ozai. I think that's a terrible idea. One consistent thing about Azula in this quest is that she's been trying to avoid dueling and fighting her brother, with her family. It's one of the most positive parts of her character. And now everyone wants her to fight and possibly kill yet another family member, someone who had a far greater effect on her character than Ozai? People want a 14 year old girl to fight her own father, who was her only parental figure for half of her life? It would not be a good experience for her at all, and it wouldn't even solve half her problems if she won, because she'd still have to deal with Zuko and/or Iroh wanting the throne and not trusting her, not to mention the Gaang having it out for her.
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Azula is not 14 anymore. We don't know how many loops she's been through already but it has been heavily hinted at several times that she's MUCH much older than Mai and Ty Lee now. She's a grown up woman mind in a 14 years old body.
Also, I absolutely want Azula to fight Ozai and I think it will be a major and mandatory step for her, but not to kill him. Azula is such a firebender now that she can probably take down anyone without killing them.
When I imagine this Azula fighting Ozai, I'm not imagining her getting traumatized or anything like that. I imagine her finally realizing how small Ozai really is. He's not that big, scary, all-encompassing shadow before whom you instantly kneel and shut your mouth. He's just a mad, pathetic little man that was given too much power and now not only lacks the intelligence to back up that kind of responsibility (because Ozai is, and there is no other word, a dumbass whose whole legitimaty is only based on strength and terror, not anything remotely close to competency) but also the power, because his daughter is now able to low-diff in a fight.

a-10warthog said:
Another thing to consider about the Ozai-Azula relationship is that Ozai was a terrible, abusive father, but he's also the only reason Azula ever got to be Azula. The Fire Nation is a patriarchal society, and we don't exactly see many (or any, aside from Azula) women in political or military leadership positions.* We in fact don't see any female Fire Nation soldiers in the Earth Kingdom at all. From what we know of Ursa, and of Mai's life, the expectation for elite women seems to be that they should focus on serving their families, fathers, and husbands and on raising the children.** Part of the conflict between Ursa and Azula was probably over Azula not wanting to do that. The only reason Azula seems to have been allowed to develop who she was, for better or worse, into potentially "the greatest leader in Fire Nation history," to quote her aspirations, is because Ozai was willing to effectively treat her as his son and heir. Ozai was critical to Azula becoming who she became, and without him, she might have something like Mai's life, at best. Again, he's still an abusive asshole who really screwed her up, but he also opened up a real possibilities for her. For Azula to duel him would be very traumatic for her.

*Mai and Ty Lee seem to have partially be exceptions, but that's only because they're Azula's favorites.
**Arguably one of the reasons Ty Lee ran away to the circus is that she was running away from this.
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Very good point. Doesn't change the fact that I want Azula to take down Ozai.

a-10warthog said:
Zuko never acknowledged the slightest bit of this kindness in canon, and he ended repaying it by taking everything from her, without any regret or mixed feelings for doing so. It's a complicated situation, but it does fit with the general pattern of Azula trying to serve the other members of her family and getting little or nothing for it. Her continuing to try to conciliate Zuko isn't bad, but it is a continuation of something which worked out quite poorly for her in canon.

To be fair, Quest! Zuko has already been considerably nicer to Azula than canon! Zuko ever was in the series, so Azula is getting some results.
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Oh please, not that.
There is a time and place to show someone kidness. When said person is running at you with a knife while laughing demonically, this is NOT the time and place.
First, you take down Azula. Then you put her in a room where she's not at risk of hurting herself and others. THEN, you start working on a therapy for her to get better. Not in any other order.
Azula in the show is a person that would need a LOT of love, hugs and talking before she gets in a mindset that is remotely close to healthy, and meanwhile, she would just continue to brutalize, kill and overal, support her father tyrannical rule. Sure, there is a point where you've drown her under so much love she finally become a good person again. At the cost of the death of countless people that would still be alive if you had put the priority on first kicking her ass and only then starting the whole "lots of brotherly hugs and stuff".

Once again, the Azula we're reading about is a MUCH older Azula than in the show, and she likely has hundreds if not thousands of loops under her belt already, and it took her THAT long to get to the point she is in the first loop we've read about.

And one more thing; When you're a victim of bullies, it is NOT your responsibility to be the bigger person and show compassion. You're the victim. You have NO responsibility to forgive the person that brutalized you and made you suffer so much. Zuko has ZERO duty to show love or any form of compassion to Azula after she's tried to kill him, was just horrible with him during their childhood, etc. Zuko is a good person at heart, so he would have definitely done so, but it is absolutely not on him to do that.
 
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a-10warthog said:
but she was not abusive toward him. She is not his abuser.
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Excusing abusive behavior because someone else, even her father, demonstrated and encouraged that behaviour is NOT cool. Trying to re-write her motivations for deceiving her brother (Ozai totally misses you and loves you Zuko, no really! And yeah, you can totally be responsible for "killing" the Avatar and all the consequences of that!) and trying to frame him isn't either. Next you'll tell me she didn't really set fire to Ty Lee's safety net at the circus, that was just a magical illusion and Ty Lee wasn't scared for her life, she knew it was fake the whole time.

And a victim not loving, or even fighting back against, their abuser is not wrong. Yeah, no duh Zuko didn't care for Azula after, once again, being deceived and emotionally manipulated by her, despite how many times he had tried to get back into the good graces of his abusive family.

This is starting to feel like talking about some sort of mirror world/Embers version of Azula...
 
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a-10warthog said:
Another thing to consider about the Ozai-Azula relationship is that Ozai was a terrible, abusive father, but he's also the only reason Azula ever got to be Azula. The Fire Nation is a patriarchal society, and we don't exactly see many (or any, aside from Azula) women in political or military leadership positions.* We in fact don't see any female Fire Nation soldiers in the Earth Kingdom at all. From what we know of Ursa, and of Mai's life, the expectation for elite women seems to be that they should focus on serving their families, fathers, and husbands and on raising the children.** Part of the conflict between Ursa and Azula was probably over Azula not wanting to do that. The only reason Azula seems to have been allowed to develop who she was, for better or worse, into potentially "the greatest leader in Fire Nation history," to quote her aspirations, is because Ozai was willing to effectively treat her as his son and heir. Ozai was critical to Azula becoming who she became, and without him, she might have something like Mai's life, at best. Again, he's still an abusive asshole who really screwed her up, but he also opened up a real possibilities for her. For Azula to duel him would be very traumatic for her.
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I don't think this is entirely accurate. To begin with, Royal Fire Academy for Girls is explicitly a prestigious military academy exclusively for girls. That implies a strong tradition of women in military roles, beyond just Azula and her friends. So, while milatary women do appear to be a minority by the time of Ozai, they do still exist and their absence is likely largely Ozai's fault.
 
As this quest noted in a previous loop, Azula had no advantage in bringing back Zuko, in fact it would had been even more advantageous for her to let him and Iroh live in total anonymity in Ba Sing Se, yet she still did it, and in the comics it's shown that she even prepared Mai and Zuko's date so they would get together.
So I think that she genuinely did all that because deeeeeep down, she actually enjoys having her dumb big brother around.

Her lying to Ozai by saying that Zuko was the one who single-handedly slayed the Avatar was her back at the usual palace-scheming, because Zuko inadvertently revealed to her that there might be a way that Aang survived (there's even a zoom on her face frowning when Zuko hesitated to tell him that there's no way that he could had survived), and Ozai was the kind of guy who torched down a third of his son's face for daring to be worried about troops being sent to a suicide mission before exiling him to do an impossible quest, she didn't took her chances and put all the glory (and blame if Aang turns out to be alive) at Zuko's feet.
 
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ShozanM said:
Let me correct that: she started her attempts to avoid conflict only after a huge number of loops in which she focused on basically killing everyone in the Gaang, as well as Mai and Ty Lee, only to discover at some point that perhaps the condition to get out of the cycle wasn't to kill someone.
The Azula that we're seeing here is not an Azula that is in her fourth loop. It's an Azula in her potentially 1004 loop and she's only stated to spare the life of Mai and Ty Lee very recently.
And I'm certainly not buying for a second that the Azula in the show brought Zuko back in the Fire Nation because she wanted to do something good for him lol, she was absolutely delighted at all the opportunities that having him at home would bring to screw him up even further (including lying about him killing the Avatar when she apparently knew, or heavily suspected, that Aang would survive and surface again, destroying Zuko's reputation once again).



Azula is not 14 anymore. We don't know how many loops she's been through already but it has been heavily hinted at several times that she's MUCH much older than Mai and Ty Lee now. She's a grown up woman mind in a 14 years old body.
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While I largely agree with your assessment, I have argued in an earlier post that Azula is (at most) only about 17 mentally. While I may be forgetting something that skews her older, I think this reasoning still broadly applies.
 
Edison_Trent said:
you can totally be responsible for "killing" the Avatar and all the consequences of that!
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Where is idea that Azula anticipated Avatar surviving is coming from? She had no idea her lightning strike was survivable or that Katara had super magic healing water on her.

She geniunly just gave her brother his status back and even lied to Ozai for it to stick. She only got suspicious after Zuko hesitated to confirm that Avatar was surely dead.
 
Any argument that Azula was covering her ass about whether Aang survived falls apart by her reaction to the suggestion that he might have survived. It doesn't matter who was given credit for killing him, it's still a success turned failure and Ozai isn't discriminatory in his punishments.

It's also touch weird to think Mai would simply go along with a scheme to capture Zuko and return to Caldera to face Ozai's judgement. Azula always intended to orchestrate her brothers redemption.
 
Randino Treviani said:
It's also touch weird to think Mai would simply go along with a scheme to capture Zuko and return to Caldera to face Ozai's judgement.
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Is it? By that point they hadn't seen each other in years, and Mai doesn't strike me like someone who would betray her friends for someone she had a crush on as a child. I don't think she would have turned on Azula for him without the time they spent together rekindling their relationship.
 
Randino Treviani said:
Any argument that Azula was covering her ass about whether Aang survived falls apart by her reaction to the suggestion that he might have survived. It doesn't matter who was given credit for killing him, it's still a success turned failure and Ozai isn't discriminatory in his punishments.

It's also touch weird to think Mai would simply go along with a scheme to capture Zuko and return to Caldera to face Ozai's judgement. Azula always intended to orchestrate her brothers redemption.
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For the first point you may have a solid interpretation... but what are you talking about with the second? First off, Mai said she wanted to see Zuko again, so it was likely largely motivated by that desire to reconnect with him and see how the past 3 years treated him, without intending to actually allow Azula to drag him back to the Fire Nation in bonds. Second off, considering Azula's willingness to play dirty, it wouldn't have done her any good to try and push back on the princess' planned girls trip. Third off, if Azula wanted to "orchestrate her brother's redemption" at that point, why did she immediately try to imprison Zuko and Iroh instead of finding something that would justify their fugitive status being revoked first? It's not like she had any leverage whatsoever at the time, so an immediate trip back home would have been a death sentence.
 
Nicholas Brooks said:
For the first point you may have a solid interpretation... but what are you talking about with the second? First off, Mai said she wanted to see Zuko again, so it was likely largely motivated by that desire to reconnect with him and see how the past 3 years treated him, without intending to actually allow Azula to drag him back to the Fire Nation in bonds. Second off, considering Azula's willingness to play dirty, it wouldn't have done her any good to try and push back on the princess' planned girls trip. Third off, if Azula wanted to "orchestrate her brother's redemption" at that point, why did she immediately try to imprison Zuko and Iroh instead of finding something that would justify their fugitive status being revoked first? It's not like she had any leverage whatsoever at the time, so an immediate trip back home would have been a death sentence.
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Who said she was going to send him strait home. She had Ba sing se in the palm of her hands. Assuming her plan was in fact redemption then we have to assume she intended to lock Zuko up, capture the avatar, and then arrange for him to escape and participate in the avatars capture. It's kind of weird otherwise for Zuko to allude the Dai Li of all things by wandering underground passages.

We've seen how Azula is foremost a planner and rarely makes decisions on whims. The idea that she decided in the heat of the moment to redeem Zuko and give all that up, with weeks to plan ahead once she has the Dai Li in hand, is a bit more far stretched in my opinion.
 
Nicholas Brooks said:
For the first point you may have a solid interpretation... but what are you talking about with the second? First off, Mai said she wanted to see Zuko again, so it was likely largely motivated by that desire to reconnect with him and see how the past 3 years treated him, without intending to actually allow Azula to drag him back to the Fire Nation in bonds. Second off, considering Azula's willingness to play dirty, it wouldn't have done her any good to try and push back on the princess' planned girls trip. Third off, if Azula wanted to "orchestrate her brother's redemption" at that point, why did she immediately try to imprison Zuko and Iroh instead of finding something that would justify their fugitive status being revoked first? It's not like she had any leverage whatsoever at the time, so an immediate trip back home would have been a death sentence.
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I am not sure that exactly awaited Zuko if Azula managed to capture him like she was supposed to but I doubt it would have been death, Iroh would probably fare much worse tho. And Mai was willing to let Zuko be in jail on the Boiling Rock and only intervened after Zuko and the gang attempted to escape when his life was threatened by her uncle ordering to cut the cables. So yeah I was under the impression that while she was obviously against killing Zuko, she had little objections with helping to capture him, maybe she hoped she'll somehow manage to persuade Azula to somehow help Zuko avoid punishment but Azula decided to redeem Zuko anyway so there was no need.

Also when Azula came to recruit Mai she was pretty into the idea almost begging her with how bored she was staying with her family and it's not like She was hiding that she was fancing Zuko to Azula and Ty Lee.
 
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Randino Treviani said:
Any argument that Azula was covering her ass about whether Aang survived falls apart by her reaction to the suggestion that he might have survived. It doesn't matter who was given credit for killing him, it's still a success turned failure and Ozai isn't discriminatory in his punishments.
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The scene makes it very clear that it was Azula covering her ass: first we have the scene of Azula visiting Zuko in the garden, mentioning that she has an appointment with the Fire Lord to debrief him, then she asks him why he's so gloomy because there's no way the Avatar could had survived, then Zuko has a flash-back of Katara almost trying to cure his scar with the spiritual water and realize that there might be a way that Aang survived (and indeed, that's what happened) but still badly lies to Azula that there's no chance for Aang to had survived, and Azula immediately caught on Zuko's hesitation (we even have the camera zooming on her squinting her eyes).

Cue the next scene where Ozai congratules Zuko for "single-handedly slaying the Avatar" like Azula recounted to him. And the next scene is Zuko confronting Azula about why did she lied to the Fire Lord, with her answering that she did that to make his exploits more impressive and thus more likely for Ozai to declare him redeemed, while adding that of course, if it turns out that the Avatar did survive, the blame would be completely on his feet, but that it won't happen, because as Zuko said, there's no way that Aang could had survived, right? Thus showing that Azula perfectly caught on Zuko's prior hesitation and its implications.
 
ElMariachi said:
The scene makes it very clear that it was Azula covering her ass: first we have the scene of Azula visiting Zuko in the garden, mentioning that she has an appointment with the Fire Lord to debrief him, then she asks him why he's so gloomy because there's no way the Avatar could had survived, then Zuko has a flash-back of Katara almost trying to cure his scar with the spiritual water and realize that there might be a way that Aang survived (and indeed, that's what happened) but still badly lies to Azula that there's no chance for Aang to had survived, and Azula immediately caught on Zuko's hesitation (we even have the camera zooming on her squinting her eyes).

Cue the next scene where Ozai congratules Zuko for "single-handedly slaying the Avatar" like Azula recounted to him. And the next scene is Zuko confronting Azula about why did she lied to the Fire Lord, with her answering that she did that to make his exploits more impressive and thus more likely for Ozai to declare him redeemed, while adding that of course, if it turns out that the Avatar did survive, the blame would be completely on his feet, but that it won't happen, because as Zuko said, there's no way that Aang could had survived, right? Thus showing that Azula perfectly caught on Zuko's prior hesitation and its implications.
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Still runs into the issue of Azula giving Zuko credit in the first place when even just heavily wounding the avatar, recovery likely or not, on top of capturing ba sing se, is more than enough to satisfy Ozai, and is a perfectly acceptable way of saying "I don't have a body so he might still be alive".
 
Randino Treviani said:
Who said she was going to send him strait home. She had Ba sing se in the palm of her hands. Assuming her plan was in fact redemption then we have to assume she intended to lock Zuko up, capture the avatar, and then arrange for him to escape and participate in the avatars capture. It's kind of weird otherwise for Zuko to allude the Dai Li of all things by wandering underground passages.

We've seen how Azula is foremost a planner and rarely makes decisions on whims. The idea that she decided in the heat of the moment to redeem Zuko and give all that up, with weeks to plan ahead once she has the Dai Li in hand, is a bit more far stretched in my opinion.
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That's because you're forgetting the-
allmightytoaster said:
I think that was referring to the first capture attempt where she just invites Iroh and Zuko onto her ship and that one soldier screws it up by calling them prisoners.

Way before Ba Sing Se.
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...Well this, yeah. Azula didn't have her first reunion with Zuko in Ba Sing Se, the first time they met she immediately tried taking him and Iroh prisoner.
vladeg01 said:
I am not sure that exactly awaited Zuko if Azula managed to capture him like she was supposed to but I doubt it would have been death, Iroh would probably fare much worse tho. And Mai were willing to let Zuko be in jail on the Boiling Rock and only intervened after Zuko and the gang attempted to escape when his life was threatened by her uncle ordering to cut the cables. So yeah I was under the impression that while she was obviously against killing Zuko, she had little objections with helping to capture him, maybe she hoped she'll somehow manage to persuade Azula to somehow help Zuko avoid punishment but Azula decided to redeem Zuko anyway so there was no need.

Also when Azula came to recruit Mai she was pretty into the idea almost begging her with how bored she was staying with her family and it's not like She was hiding that she was fancing Zuko to Azula and Ty Lee.
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Mai was cool with Zuko staying on the Boiling Rock because she was still bitter about how he abandoned her. I don't think that if she's still not got any negative feelings towards him that she'd be on board with him at best rotting in a jail cell for the rest of his life.

Maybe Mai did hope that she could persuade Azula to find a way of getting Zuko off the hook though, that I'll admit easily.
 
A big problem with the whole idea that Azula was trying to redeem Zuko from the get-go is that it really wasn't until season 3 that this appeared to be something the writers even wanted to hint at. When Azula initially had Zuko and Iroh on her boat at the beginning of the season 2 she had no plans for capturing the Avatar or Ba Sing Se herself.

She hadn't even thought of trying to recruit her two girl friends until after Zuko had already escaped her.

It was somewhere about here that she decided since she was already going to be chasing her brother throughout the Earth Kingdom she might as well also chase the Avatar. I forget if it was immediately after Iroh and Zuko escaped or if it was after she encountered the Gaang during her trip to Omashu to recruit Mai.

She's practically bored during the drill, showing that her participating in its use to penetrate the walls of Ba Sing Se was just an opportunity for her since she was already in the area due to her prey making their way to the city. And she certainly didn't plan to infiltrate the city in such a way that would allow her to participate in a coup until after her Kyoshi Warriors disguise got her all the way up to the palace itself.

All this illustrates that most of her war campaign that might have allowed for opportunities to "redeem" Zuko were opportunistic results of her failure to capture Zuko that first time.

We have no indication she was going to delay returning Zuko to Ozai until she's already well on her way of her plan to take down Ba Sing Se and saw that all her goals were piling up on each other. She could have delayed taking down Ba Sing Se to return Zuko to Ozai, but then the Avatar would have caught wind of her plans and tried to derail them. She could have gone after the Avatar alone, but until she knew what to do with Zuko there was always the chance he would interfere. She could have ignored both and stayed on the Ba Sing Se route but then it was certain the Avatar would get involved and who knows what Zuko would have done.

So she whispered poisoned words into Zuko's ear to help make him help with the Avatar so she could have her victory of Ba Sing Se complete.

Then season 3 starts and the writers need a way to bring Zuko to the Fire Nation with the rest of the Gaang so they have Azula buttering up Ozai's opinion on his son.

This makes it hard to argue that Azula always meant to redeem her brother before his capture at Ba Sing Se. With the exception of hunting Zuko down, everything she did before season 3 was entirely an opportunistic result of being in the area anyways. Sure we can argue that she meant to redeem him when originally telling Ozai of his help in Ba Sing Se, but before that we can see that it kinda wasn't her intention. Which creates this question of why is she doing it now and if that was really her goal with telling Ozai the Avatar is dead.
 
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