I’m about midway through season 2. How come Azula is a massive cunt?

It’s official, everyone in the Earth Kingdom and Azula are massive cunts

I’m on The Beach episode now

Azula met a guy and 5 seconds later she kissed him already. What a slut.

You ain't throwing shade at Toph are you?

Quote from: Jono on April 22, 2019, 02:41:27 AM

everyone in the Earth Kingdom and Azula are massive cunts

Toph is literally the only cool Earth Bender while the rest of them are all complete dicks.

azula being a cunt is justified given that she's a villain

what makes her a lame character is her tendency to be sue-ish

Well Azula is terrible at flirting with guys so she's not great at everything

ive been wanting to rewatch avatar

im still mad they removed it from netflix, like, 2 years ago

heeey since theyre gonna be doing a live action remake, they should bring it back

Quote from: Verbatim on April 22, 2019, 09:39:31 PM

azula being a cunt is justified given that she's a villain

what makes her a lame character is her tendency to be sue-ish

How is she sue-ish at all when her character's goal, not the way she's written, is perfection? She's not perfect whatsoever, and that's fucking foreshadowed in the first episode she appears in:


("One hair out of place...")

As Jono mentioned, she's terribly lacking in all social skills (look at Zuko Alone for perfect example of how she uses fear, not genuine social maneuvering, to keep friends - Azula attempts a cartwheel and fails, Ty Lee attempts one and does an amazing one with a flourish at the end, Azula pushes her down and laughs), and lacks a basic grasp of how love, empathy, and paternal affection operate.

If you think she's perfect in any way, you severely missed the point of the writing of the character, and it makes me worry about how many other basic points in the show you also failed to grasp, out of laziness or pure lack of literary skill.

mary sues are not defined exclusively by perfection, so that shows how much you know right there

having just enough "flaws" to make you think she's not a sue actually makes her an even MORE egregious example of one, because it's a significantly less honest and cheap way to go about earning our sympathy, when she doesn't actually earn it at any point whatsoever

so in a way, you're right—she's worse than a sue, because the way she's written in the show, a villain sue played straight would actually make her marginally more likable as a character, because they're not trying to fool the less intelligent viewers into thinking she's sympathetic or relatable in any way that feels realistic or natural for the kind of personality she has

not better than having no sue tendencies at all, of course, but better than pretending that she has none, which is only part of what makes her the biggest blemish on the series (other than all the gross and unnecessary child romance)

grey delisle's VAing is to blame, too, given the overall ham-fistedness of her performance—if she's supposed to be this grounded, nuanced human character, the fact that no effort is made to make her sound like it either means that delisle wasn't given proper direction, she's an incompetent VA, or the character was never meant to be all that sympathetic to begin with, making all the attempts at humanizing her towards the end of the series seem jarring, hackneyed, and rushed (or, all of the above)

whatever the case, she's the worst and most insufferable fucking character in the entire show, because Mike and Bryan just couldn't agree, apparently, on whether to make azula more sympathetically human, or completely monstrous—two concepts that don't mix at all, and never have, but they tried anyway (and, imo, utterly failed)

the true definition of a mary sue is an author insert

nope

sometimes it's a manifestation of a writer's desire to create the coolest possible character that is impossible to dislike or even criticize because of how perfect she is, NOT as a person (because nobody is perfect), NOT as a character (because all good characters have flaws), but as a figment of the narrative

she checks all the prescriptive boxes that a "cool villain" is supposed to arbitrarily check, every single one, which has the effect of making her less cool because they tried too hard, and it shows

this is why it backfires so hard and so often when writers write like this, because they're so afraid of writing actual characters that they resort to leaning on prescriptive notions of what makes a character good, rather than taking risks and being creative

and that's bad

There's no set definition for this type of character,

i was always well-aware of this, and i thought that you were too—the whole idea is that i think my definition is better than yours, because it's much broader and captures the essence of the common tendency for writers to want to write "perfect" characters, whether it be a weak attempt at inserting a projection of themselves into the narrative, or a projection of their innate desire to write a perfect character that everyone will think is cool (which is where azula lies)

sues are characters born from insecurity, or a lack of confidence in one's own writing skills; that is the common denominator

you can like her all you want, but your overzealous appreciation of her has always come across to me as shallow fetishization more than anything else, which has always been extremely off-putting

note that one part:
>her "flaws" are meant to be endearing

yes, i would say that azula's flaws are specifically crafted to endear you to her

normally, well-written character flaws are supposed to make you like the character a little bit less for the purpose of the narrative, or at the very least, put you in a mindset where you hope that they improve themselves over the course of the story

with villains it's tricky because you're not supposed to be on their side, but you're supposed to be able to understand WHY they are the way they are—with zuko, you could do this; with azula, you could not

when zuko was still a villain, it was great because his flaws were sensible and real and gave you the impression that his character is redeemable in some way—maybe not RIGHT at the beginning when he first debuted, but each episode slowly unraveled his (genuinely sympathetic) backstory at a pace that made sense and allowed the viewers to digest his inner motives, on top of giving us a lot of enigmatic things to chew on, like the first blue spirit episode

with azula, it was clear from the beginning that she's irredeemable, which instantly makes her less interesting as a character because there's practically no room for development

azula's only flaws are designed to make you feel bad for her, when she simply doesn't deserve to be felt bad for, and i think expecting me as a viewer to start liking her all of a sudden just because she has this sad little trite backstory which wasn't made clear to us until VERY late into the series is a LOT to ask of me, because it's so contrived and unearned

obviously you don't have to like every character in a story, and writers shouldn't be expected to only write likable characters, that's the opposite of what i want

the problem is that azula is written to be a cool villain and she's not, she's WAY too strong to be an interesting threat and none of her "flaws" matter or make you feel like there's any possibility that she won't find a way out of everything, plus she's such an over-the-top cunt that i just get annoyed with her personality more than i've ever enjoyed any of her dumb one-liners

But these flaws just make us love the character more.

nope

it seems to me that you just like shit characters

LOL dude, I'm far from alone in loving these people. You just have the bleakest outlook in the world, and it certainly extends to how you feel about fictional worlds and the characters within them.

you're also comparing episodic comedies to a serial drama

aku is likable as shit because he's funny and revels in how evil he is, and because of that, i'm willing to embrace it without question

azula can't revel in how evil she is, because she doesn't think she's evil, so i can't embrace her, because TLA takes itself more seriously than samurai jack does

in fact, i think that really pinpoints the issue—azula doesn't THINK she's evil, yet she still possesses the exact same personality that every card-carrying villain does, ie. she still BEHAVES like someone who knows they're evil, but she doesn't; and it's the incongruence of these tropes that puts me off so much

if a villain doesn't think or understand why they're evil, i need the writers to convince me that, in some twisted version of reality, that her raison d'être makes sense—and for me, it just doesn't in azula's case

i actually need to rewatch book 3 i think, my memories of it are very spotty in spite of it getting the most praise

i actually need to rewatch book 3 i think, my memories of it are very spotty in spite of it getting the most praise

Book 3 was fantastic and I enjoyed every single episode except for one where it pretty much was a recap of the entire series up to that point. It was funny and had it's minor moments with the characters, but it felt more like filler.

I also didn't like how Iroh was limited either. The original voice actor had died during Book 2 so I guess the writers had to rewrite a bunch of stuff for Book 3 so that gets a pass I guess. It's hard to replace a voice actor that played a character so well.