Tag: ask

A couple people that I follow in the ATLA fandom believe that Azula “was not as heartless as Zuko made her out to be” or that “she only verbally went after him” or that “Zuko is not a reliable source for determining who Azula was as a person.” I don’t know how I feel about that because, while I’m all here for recognizing that Azula is a three dimensional character that is not just some psychopath, it feels toolike people are woobifying her and ignoring the abuse she inflicted on Zuko

Umm Zuko is FAR from the only source on Azula being abusive to those around her. If these fans you mention are talking about the flashback scenes in “Zuko Alone” being Zuko’s memories, where’s this purported distortion from Zuko when Ty Lee was threatened into leaving the circus and joining Azula’s mission instead? When Mai was forced to choose between getting her brother back and obeying Azula? Zuko was not the viewpoint character in these scenes, and was nowhere near these events in fact.

I don’t subscribe to the idea that Azula is a one dimensional character or some poorly defined and often ableist stereotype of a “psychopath.” She was herself abused by Ozai and has a complex psychological profile. She was also controlling and hurtful to the people closest to her in a maladaptive attempt to deal with the abuse. (For the best discussion on this, see @attackfish ’s Three Pillars Theory of Azula).

Azula is brilliant, badass, inpiring and funny. She is, in her way, a patriot. She is a daughter and a sister. She is a whole person with history, traumas, relationships, and life. And yes, she is an abuser. She is not a one-dimensional caricature–she is frequently sympathetic and has many redeeming characteristics, including the possibility, if slim, to change. That’s the way abusers often are in life. None of her human qualities makes her actions less bad, because it’s real human beings, fully realized people who you might love and have complex feelings for, who do evil things.

“She did evil things” and “She is a three-dimensional person” are not mutually exclusive statements. I struggled my entire life to reconcile these statements and I will always speak against the harmful idea that the two are mutually exclusive. We can recognize an abuser’s humanity and her evil at the same time, and we have to.

can I just say it’s nice to see an older sw fan who doesn’t support damer*y! I’m sick of all the fandom moms obsessed with it, writing meta about it and ignoring criticism UGH

One reason I decided to put my age and parental status on my header is because I know a lot of fans in my cohort are totally lacking in any self-awareness or receptiveness to criticism, and are trying to pass that off as maturity. WELL IT’S NOT. Obviously they can like what they like even if I find it gross, it’s not like I can stop anyone. What i find unbearable is the way they get condescending about it like their creepy ship is the epitome of intelligence and sophistication. And like I can’t see how some fans seem to think a ship that looks like it was created from two names grabbed out of a hat is better than Finnrey? Honestly fans my age are some of the worst parts of fandom and I’m heartily sorry about it.

Nakia’s bae and all, but I find it a little unfair when she gets compared with Killmonger, bcuz I think Nakia has had it easier than him? Yeah she witnesses the suffering in the world, but she’s always had the freedom to retreat whenever to Wakanda too, y’know? Meanwhile, Killmonger was left an orphaned black boy in America forever traumatized by his father’s murder. Like, he got seriously fucked over. So I do wonder, would Nakia still be so good a person if she’d had Killmonger’s life instead?

Yes, Nakia has had a better life than Killmonger no doubt, and it’s all the more reason to argue that children should be brought up in safe and loving circumstances so that more of them will experience and therefore model compassion.

At the same time–and please tell me if I’m out of line here because I know Killmonger’s rage is specific to his background as a Black person in a deeply racist society–I think Killmonger could not choose his childhood circumstances but chose how to respond to them.

He responded in part with hard work and excellence, and it’s often overlooked that the man is a fuckin’ prodigy and genius who graduated early from Annapolis, went to M.I.T. for grad work, and became the most elite of elite soldiers. I’m guessing genius runs in the family, if Shuri is any indication.

He also responded by choosing to kill innocent people in pursuit of vengeance. I sympathize with his rage, knowing that I cannot share it in full, but his rage itself did not make him a murderer. His decisions did. Neither he nor any child should never have been exposed to such deprivation and abandonment and his anger at the injustice is legitimate, but he still had a choice what to do with his anger.

So yes, I think it’s still a legitimate comparison because both Nakia and Erik made choices in response to their circumstances. Just as Nakia, born an elite of Wakanda, chose not to adopt the complacency of her peers, Erik, thrust into terrible circumstances through no fault of her own, chose to respond with destructive revenge unlike many others in similar circumstances who choose to respond with kindness and positive change.

The wakandan crown can be won through a fist fight, which is archaic (if this were Europe, you’d call it “medieval”), and the tradition backfired in these wakanda people’s faces. A trial by combat is no civilized way to elect your country’s leader. It’s not the audience’s fault for noticing such an obvious self-destructive problem of wakanda. Sad that the idea of elections is too advanced for wakanda to comprehend.

Yeah, because elections are guaranteed such fine consequences and never backfire, right?

What you are too simple-minded to comprehend, troll, is that the Wakandan rules of succession have accountability built into them. You may have noticed that the tribes in T’Challa’s coronation declined to challenge because they were more or less satisfied with him. And if only one of them had challenged him, sure, the challenger would probably have lost. (Other than Nakia, because T’Challa would have frozen. Or just given up and given the throne to her, because that is how one does with Lupita and if he lays a finger on her in violence we’re all jumping him together.) But if it’s two of them? Three of them? All of them, when he doesn’t have the power of the Black Panther? If the royal successor doesn’t have the backing of the tribes, then the succession is a no-go.

The same is true of the royal claimants’ continuing right to challenge. If it turns out the king was a bad choice, the tribes can rally behind an alternative. Under normal circumstances a royal claimant won’t try unless they have the political backing to rule, because if not… then, well, what happened to Erik would happen to them. And that’s the last line of defense for Wakanda, that its people would rise up and fight against an unjust leader. What did Western democracies do to stop their governments from misusing their technology and military to become enslaving, colonizing powers? Oh yeah, Jack Schitt, that’s what!

White girls bashing Asgard to defend Loki is one thing, white people at large (fanboys, fangirls, casual fans, movie critics, people who won’t even watch the movie but wanna get in on the conversation anyway, right-wing fake news assholes, etc) pulling out all the stops just to destroy the fantasy of Wakanda is another thing entirely. So many takes on Wakanda’s “problems” springing up fucking everywhere, it’s so gross. It’s an ugly reminder how divided america still is, 2016 flashbacks and all.

Strange, because I saw in Wakanda an orderly and prosperous society, one that has accountability built into its political system, where even the king is subject to the law (and a lot of friendly ribbing), where there is an active and healthy debate over the direction the country should take, where women are respected and cherished, where modernization and tradition coexist, and where shared moral values and a firm sense of self provide a self-correcting force when the system does break down. It’s a place anyone would be proud to call home. I wonder why some people are so invested in tearing it down. It’s almost like this vision of African self-sufficiency and excellence is a threat to them.

Fellow MCU fan anon, I hear you! I’ve come across “””fans””” too, who, for example, mock Wakanda’s monarchy for enabling Killmonger’s ascension, but have never once had a problem with Loki usurping the Asgardian throne in the first Thor movie. I wonder why????(except not really)

Right. Right. Also their vaunted Western democracies are flawless systems that never allowed actual fascists to rise in power, and were not in fact racist, imperialistic, genocidal shitfires for their entire histories, I’m sure. Never mind that Wakanda was never a mass-murdering empire and the moment a couple of assholes tried to take it in that direction, the rest of the country rallied to take them down. It’s a monarchy so it must by definition be repressive! Asgard? We don’t know her.

What did you think of W’Kabi? I got why he sided with Erik over T’Challa, but him being okay with Wakanda taking on the entire world and becoming an imperialist nation? That’s a heck of a leap. Was there a scene that implied he’s had these feelings for a while that I missed?

On my second viewing, I definitely caught a hint of his expansionist leanings early on when he just casually told T’Challa he and the Border Tribe would be happy to “clean up” outside if T’Challa ordered it. I think he’s seen a lot of things at the border, interacting with the outside world, and he’s come to see preemptive Wakandan intervention as the answer to both outside threats and outside disorder.

He probably faced a lot of condescension from the outside world, too, as the contrived face of a “poor” nation, and may well have been burning at the indignities he got from people who didn’t have a tenth of his power. I didn’t get the sense he shared in Erik’s rhetoric of racial justice, but rather found it suited his own vision for Wakanda’s future.

What’s more, I think Erik’s actions for the first half of the movie, helping and then rescuing Klaue to make T’Challa look weak and then turning on Klaue to take his corpse to the border, were entirely about turning W’Kabi to his side and convincing him that Erik would be the better king. The wily bastard’s been trained for this sort of thing, after all, exploiting and worsening internal dissensions to take over. W’Kabi was a pawn but a willing one, and I find his worldview and decisions fascinating from even the brief hints in the movie.

I can’t fuck with Killmonger criticisms that say “he’s completely and irredeemably evil” from the exact same people who glamorize Loki and other one-dimensional MCU villains for the same reasons. To me, it’s very transparent that Killmonger is vilified for the same traits praised in the likes of Kyle Ron and Loki.

They’re not even the same traits. Killmonger experienced genuine loss and grief, and went through a deprived childhood that he clawed his way out of. He came out of it with a sympathetic motivation to help a brutally oppressed group he was part of. When he was talking at the end about his ancestors who had jumped out of slave ships, that was his mother’s folk he was talking about. He is a descendant of people who were kidnapped and enslaved. The means he meant to use for his ends were terrible and destructive, which was why he was a villain and the main characters rallied to stop him, but I don’t trust people who say his motivations were not relatable or that he had no redeemable characteristics.

Loki? Look, I like the amoral little shit and find him entertaining as hell, but he is just that–an amoral little shit. All he had by way of motivation was that he was… adopted? And that his dad (also an amoral shit) lied about it? Like, fuck outta here. It’s not even comparable.