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cobra-diamond · 4 years

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Mirror & Misdirection - The Distortions of the Mirror Scene

How excessive, myopic emphasis on the Mirror Scene distorted both the fandoms and Brykes’ understanding of Azula, and what the Finale actually says about Avatar’s most controversial villain.

Executive Summary

To understand any fictional character, you have to understand their Goals, Motivations and Conflicts. This applies to Princess Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Ever since Azula was humanized in the Finale, arguments have raged over whether or not she has the capacity for meaningful growth and change like any other character, or any other human being.

At the core of these arguments has been the infamous Mirror Scene where, while talking to an hallucination of her mother, Azula expresses doubt, regret and tear-stricken grief. As a thoroughly established villain who had never before shown such feelings, this scene was taken as character-defining.

However, the Mirror Scene alone does not reveal all of Azula’s Goals, Motivations, and Conflicts. Instead, the Mirror Scene, when taken by itself, is only a Conflict. As a result, the Mirror Scene has distorted both the fandoms and Brykes’ perception of Azula by assuming she is entirely the work of complex, vague and puzzling psychological phenomena surrounding her mother, versus a variety of well-defined Goals and Motivations.

In actuality, the Finale gives us two other scenes that, combined with the Mirror Scene, give us everything we need to understand Azula’s Goals, Motivations and Conflicts.

In this article, I will provide an alternative explanation of Azula’s character that relates directly to the source material and which does not rely on psychological theory.

First, I will summarize the “Azula Debate” to provide proper context for this subject.

Next, I will explain the character-building concepts of Goal, Motivation and Conflict and why they are especially critical to devising a workable understanding of Azula.

After that, I will explain how the Finale yields Azula’s Goals, Motivations, and Conflicts, and I will provide an alternative explanation of the Mirror Scene as it relates to them.

I will then explain why the fandom incorrectly fixated on the Mirror Scene and how this distorted both the fandoms and Brykes’ understanding of their most controversial villain.

And finally, using these Finale-revealed Goals, Motivations and Conflicts, I will suggest a “path forward” for Azula’s further involvement in the Franchise.

The “Azula Debate”

When the Finale aired in 2008, one of the most striking and controversial developments was the rapid humanization of Azula. For the first time, we saw the fearsome and always-winning Princess scared, paranoid, emotionally fragile and crying. It was a radical shift from our previous image of Avatar’s most hated villain. Nothing like it had yet happened in the Franchise.

The topic of Azula’s newly-revealed humanity was so compelling that even Mike and Bryan were asked about it in the Sozin’s Comet novelization. While their answers were vague and disjointed, the fact they had an affirmative answer shows that Azula’s humanity wasn’t an accident; it was intended.

And the fans saw this: they saw an Azula that was more complex than what they had been previously shown, or lead to believe existed.

While Azula’s breakdown in the finale was well-animated, scored and voice acted, and the show wrapped up nicely overall, the Finale created more questions than answers for the Fire Princess, most of which still have not been answered to this day.

What is Ursa and Azula’s relationship? What is Azula’s moral compass? What does she value? What is the extent of her empathy? What lines will she not cross? Why does she use fear to control people? Does she enjoy hurting people? Can she feel love? What does she want in life? Why did she throw bread at turtle ducks? Is she a sociopath? Will she reconcile with Ursa? Is she mentally ill? Will she ever rise from the ashes of her shame and humiliation? What happens to her next?

These were the sorts of questions fans were asking in the aftermath of the Finale, and which fans are still asking.

Unfortunately, the fandom did not approach this topic with unity.

What began after the Finale was an endless back and forth about morality and affective empathy; psychology and personality disorders; juvenile delinquency and abuse dynamics; Dracos in Leather Pants and Freudian Excuses, with one side arguing that there wasn’t anything inside Azula worth exploring, while the other side desperately clung to the hope that there was potential for compelling growth in Azula. You could term the “anti” side the “Azula Haters” and the “pro” side the “Azula Fans”.

The “Azula Fans” are a diverse group that cannot be generalized. In summary, they found Azula compelling for a variety of reasons, they had questions they wanted answered and they desired to see Azula fleshed out fully.

The “Azula Haters” are equally a diverse group and so cannot be generalized. Overall, their motivations are primarily to relate Azula to real-world bullies and abusers, thereby preserving her as a platform to talk about escaping domestic abuse situations and how to give up on toxic family members. Relating Azula to the real-world in this way is not to develop the world of Avatar and its characters, but to express their own anger, cynicism and heartache over what’s occurred in their own and other’s lives, and teach lessons about it.

The key point is this: the purpose of the Azula Debate was not to discover the truth about Azula and determine how to tell a story about her. It was to either admonish “Azula Fans” for being misguided and ignorant in their understanding of Azula, or to prevent the “Haters” from discouraging their last, major interest in Avatar.

In the twelve years that have followed since the Finale, neither side has “prevailed”.

Aaron Ehasz has spoken about the potential for a Post-Finale Azula arc whereas Mike and Bryan have said little, or nothing. Wheras the fandom can all agree about their love for the heroes, Azula is like talking politics at a family gathering; it will not be pretty and passions will be inflamed.

While Azula was brought back in The Search and Smoke and Shadow comics, these works yielded few, if any, answers to her developments in the Finale, and she remains a divisive character. In fact, much of her complexities established in the Finale were ignored in The Search and erased entirely in Smoke and Shadow.

It can be argued that the Azula from the show did not actually make it into the comics and still remains “in an asylum off the coast”, waiting to be further developed. As a result, both Azula Fans and Haters argue to this day with no end in sight.

Driving these debates is the fact that nobody, not even the Creators, have provided a comprehensive, question-answering, Franchise-consistent explanation for Azula that combines her wickedness with her humanity.

To Haters, Azula is the embodiment of all things awful and terrifying that must be removed from society. To Fans, she is the potential for another compelling character-driven story utilizing the original cast.

A word frequently used to describe these “compelling” additional stories about Azula is “redemption”. This is a vague word with multiple meanings. Typically, both Avatar fans and the Creators interpret this as a character who is morally good on the inside realizing their mistakes and atoning for them; these characters are not truly bad people; as long as we don’t think they have crossed any moral “lines in the sand”, they can be accepted into the circle of “good people”.

This is what has caused debates surrounding Azula to be focused on questions of morality, affective empathy and psychological disorders instead of her Goals, Motivations and Conflicts; if “Haters” can prove that Azula is genetically bad, then there is no potential for a story about her because it is impossible for her to change and grow, and stories require their characters to change and grow. On the other hand, if “Fans” can prove she is “human”, then she does have the capacity to change and grow, and the themes of the Franchise can be applied to her.

Unfortunately for Azula Fans, there are two seasons of wickedness, smirking and bedeviling Zuko to back up the Haters’ position.

But Azula Haters also have to contend with the Finale. It demonstrated the existence of Azula’s humanity and was an intentional decision by the Creators; Fans are not “reading into” it. Even Katara felt Azula’s humanity.

So who is correct?

Well, the Haters are, for the most part.

The show spent a lot of time portraying Azula as unnecessarily cruel without a shred of self-doubt, suggesting her villainy is not just a matter of her upbringing and choices, but intractable psychological defects. Even the Creators wanted Azula to reflect a “deeply rooted malevolence.” To counter this, Azula Fans point to the Finale, and more specifically, to the infamous Mirror Scene.

The Mirror Scene shows Azula expressing doubt, remorse, hurt and even tear-stricken grief. The Mirror Scene has been used by Azula Fans to explain all of Azula’s humanity, sort of as a Rosetta Stone of her innerworkings. Even the Creators seem to think this way, as shown by their answers to the Sozin’s Comet interview, and their choice to make Azula’s relationship with her mother in The Search take center stage, and drastically so.

THIS. IS ALL. WRONG.

In order to understand a character, you have to understand their Goals, Motivations, and Conflicts. Any character, especially Azula.

The Mirror Scene and her relationship with her mother are not what’s vital to understanding who Azula is, what she wants and how she fits into the Avatar world. This is not an attempt to be “edgy” or “different” or “contrarian”. You will never, ever find your answers in The Beach or in the Mirror Scene alone, no matter how hard you try. This is because the Mirror Scene is only one of three scenes from the Finale that must be taken together to understand Azula on a fundamental level.

The Mirror Scene is not enough. It has not answered the fandom’s questions about Azula’s Goals, Motivations and Conflicts. It has not provided a compelling argument against the evidence that she is a monster whose villainy was only limited by the censors and, most importantly, the Mirror Scene is not Azula’s most defining moment.

These three, together, are:

And I will explain why.

Understanding Characters: Goals, Motivations, & Conflicts

This section gets into some of the “nuts and bolts” of storytelling, but it is necessary for understanding Azula; she is too complicated and the source material too thin on her. Stick with this and you should learn something.

In order to understand a character, you have to have a clear understanding of their Goals, Motivations, and Conflicts. Other writers have different terms for these concepts (Need, Want, Desire, Obstacle, etc.), but they are universal to storytelling.

Stories are not meant to be exact replicas of real life. Yes, they can say something about life, but ultimately, stories are about characters having problems to solve and their journeys to solve them. It is not enough for a character to just “feel”. They have to want things, need things, do things, and something has to prevent them from getting what they want and need.

Conflicts are what prevent characters from achieving their goals (their wants and needs). Motivations are what drive characters to pursue their Goals, and Goals are what characters strive to physically achieve.

Goals are physical; they can be touched, held, acquired. They can be a person, a place, or a thing. They are not emotional or psychological. “Love” is not a Goal. Being in the arms of someone or waking up in bed next to them, however, is a goal. Goals are what enable characters to be active in the story, to move through the world, exert force on their surroundings. Sitting on the sofa, or ruminating in a prison cell are not Goals; getting up to join the protest or hatching an escape plan are. At the same time, “wanting power” is not a goal, but “becoming president” is.

For some Avatar examples, “Capture the Avatar” is a Goal. “Master all four elements” is a Goal. “Liberate Ba Sing Se” is a Goal, but “My mother thought I was a monster” is not.

Goals, however, do not exist by themselves. They are the result of Motivations.

Motivations are internal. They are abstract. They cannot be touched or acquired. They derive from the thoughts, feelings, philosophies and psychologies of the characters. Some motivations can be caused by external forces, such as fear of breaking the law, a military commander giving an order to a soldier, or the threat of dying from starvation, but those external forces are not Motivations: fear of imprisonment, commitment to one’s leaders, and the will to survive are because they are emotional, philosophical, psychological.

Motivations are where characters encounter those moral “lines they won’t cross”. It’s where they doubt themselves and wonder if they are willing to go “all the way” to stop the villain. Motivations are what drive a character to question if they should kill the man who murdered their mother, if they should kill the Fire Lord and ignore their culture, or betray their uncle to return home. Without Motivations, characters are robots. With Motivations, characters become people.

But a story where characters face no opposition is not a story. This is were Conflicts arrive.

Conflicts prevent characters from achieving their Goals. They can come from a variety of sources: internal or external; emotional or religious; psychological or philosophical, or combinations thereof. Conflicts can stem from Motivations (for example, somebody violating their moral code), but they are not themselves Motivations. For example, if a character is motivated to carry on the cultural values of their lost people, but their duty requires them to violate that culture, their struggle to reconcile the two is a Conflict. Or, if a character is motivated to be the image of the son his father wants, but finds out that image is completely against everything he stands for, his struggle to remain at his father’s side or leave is a Conflict.

The type of Conflicts that “build character” are the ones that result from Motivations, not merely external forces. A character simply climbing over a fallen tree is not as compelling as a character who must decide if they should cut down the tree when there’s a nest of endangered owls living in it. Characters must decide for themselves. They must struggle with their feelings and values.

However, Goals, Motivations and Conflicts are not the end-all-be-all of character. Characters can have secondary goals and motivations. They can have quirks, flaws and personality traits that give them depth and round them out, but their Goals, Motivations and Conflicts are what creates a story about them. They’re why Zuko being willing to burn down Kyoshi Island does not tell us the full story of Zuko, but it tells us something about him. They’re why Azula hanging Ty Lee over a burning net does not tell us the full story of Azula, but it tells us something about her. And they’re why Aang killing a buzzard wasp in cold-blood does not tell us the story of Aang, but tells us something about what he’s going through and what will make him ignore his values.

In short, we have to know a character’s Goals, Motivations, & Conflicts in order understand them, only then can a character be fully fleshed out in a story that makes them overcome diversity, change and grow.

The Goals, Motivations & Conflicts of Princess Azula

In order to answer the lingering questions about Azula, including how to tell a story about her in the Post-Finale world, you have to understand what she wants, why she wants it and why she is unable to have it. In other words, you have to understand her Goals, Motivations & Conflicts.

As it turns out, the Finale gave us all of this. Now, keep in mind, the Finale doesn’t tell us everything about the Fire Princess, just like how the show doesn’t tell us everything about General Iroh prior to Lu Ten’s death, but the Finale tells us enough in order to develop a workable explanation of her character. This explanation of her character was revealed in three scenes, starting with the one in The Phoenix King where she is speaking to her father on the platform, followed by the scene in Into the Inferno when she is talking to Lo and Li in the throne room, and, finally, the Mirror Scene.

Not everything is explicitly stated and neither does it explain her bullying, teasing, smirking and smugness, but it doesn’t have to. Those are flaws, quirks and other personality traits. These three scenes in the Finale give us the big stuff; the information that’s needed to tie her into the franchise at large and make her a product of the Avatar world versus a mere set of villainous qualities.

And it begins with The Phoenix King.

Pivotal Azula Scene #1: The Phoenix King

I’m sure you can picture it: Azula racing to join her father on the platform, getting told she’s being left behind, frightened because she thought they were going to burn the Earth Kingdom together, snapping at her father for treating her like Zuko, desperately insisting she deserves to be by his side, and, finally, flinching as she gets yelled at.

That’s some big, heavy stuff, huh? She’s been afraid of being treated like Zuko all this time? Burning down the Earth Kingdom is some child-like, emotionally needy ploy to be with her father?? She feels she deserves to be by his side?!? Azula has problems?!?!?

This scene reveals a portion of Azula’s Goals, Motivations and Conflicts.

Before I begin, I must warn you: I’m not going to spend a lot of time using clever words and metaphors to convince you. If you ever have the urge to shout “But wait! I disagree with that and here’s all the reasons why!!” I encourage you to slow down, approach this with an open mind and try to ignore your existing ideas about Azula. Forget about her smirking and smugness, her throwing bread at turtle ducks, her tormenting of Zuko and especially the psychological disorders that people have tried to tie her to. We are focusing on her Goals, Motivations & Conflicts as revealed by the Finale, not essays and fan interpretations. We are applying time-honored storytelling principles to Azula as if we were trying to tell a professional story about her.

Azula’s Goal #1: Be With Her Father

In the Phoenix King scene, Azula said she wanted to “do this together.” She said she deserves to “be by his side.” She doesn’t want to stay behind. These are physical, tangible things. They comprise a Goal.

Why does she have this Goal? Don’t worry about that right now; we’ll get to that later, but right now, the Phoenix King shows and tells that Azula wants to be in the presence of her father. She wants to stand next to him. She wants to do things with him, and she is willing to snap at him over it. This scene also reveals her Motivations.

Hold on. Wait. Stop. I know you’re doing it; you’re thinking, “”But they’re both predators feeding off each other! ‘Be with her father’ must actually mean something sinister and her real goal is to extract power and influence off of him!”

Stop.

Relax.

Forget all of that. We are exploring what the Finale shows and tells us. Ignore fan theories. We are in unexplored territory right now.

Azula’s Motivation #1: Not Be Treated Like Zuko

Not being “treated like Zuko” is abstract. Being “treated like Zuko” means being openly disrespected, thought of as irrelevant, viewed as a disappointment, not being wanted, sent on fool’s errands, belittled and cast aside.

Being challenged to an Agni Kai isn’t being treated like Zuko as the Agni Kai is a standard Fire Nation practice; child Zuko was perfectly willing to fight the general over his mere “disrespect”. If the General had burned him, would the General have been treating Zuko “like Zuko”? Neither is the act of being physically punished being “treated like Zuko”; lots of kids in the Avatar world probably get physically hurt by their parents. Terrible, but not unique.

It’s not the physical abuse that makes someone be “treated like Zuko”, but the emotional. In a society where Agni Kais are commonplace and soldiers are expected to be tough and aggressive, being “treated like Zuko” is a state of mind; it is emotional, philosophical, psychological. Think of it this way: if Azula had been challenged to an Agni Kai, fought with aggression, and Ozai “merely” burned is favorite on the arm somewhere to end the fight because it had served its purpose, and later expressed pride to her because of her aggression, would that physical harm be treating her “like Zuko”? The Fire Nation’s leadership is supposed to have a warrior culture.

In the Phoenix King scene, the Motivation behind Azula’s Goal of “being with her father” is not merely to avoid the physical harm of an Agni Kai, but her fear of being “treated like Zuko” and everything that means. This isn’t the entire message of the Finale, but it’s what this particular scene is saying, and Ozai’s response to Azula’s fear reveals one of Azula’s Conflicts.

Azula’s Conflict #1: Her Father Doesn’t Want Her

Imagine if Ozai had taken Azula with him and they drank tea, played Pai Sho while and, together, lost to the Avatar. She’d probably be far less distraught than she was at the end of her Agni Kai with Zuko. Certainly her hair wouldn’t have been disheveled and she wouldn’t have been screaming and crying.

What prevents Azula from achieving her Goal of “being with her father” is that her father doesn’t want to be with her.

Look at that sequence closely, in particular the change in Ozai’s expression after Azula arrives. Is that the face of a man who wants his supposed favorite around?

Wait. Stop. I know you’re doing it again: you’re thinking about Ozai’s capacity or lack thereof for love, why Azula feels this way or what her ulterior motive is or what psychological disorder is driving her to cling to him like a parasite.

Once again… Relax. We’ll get to that. Just focus on what the Finale is telling us here: Azula wants to be with her father (a Goal), she is scared of being treated like Zuko (a Motivation), and her father is not giving her what she wants (a Conflict).

Does Ozai assure her that he isn’t treating her like Zuko? Does he put his hands on Azula’s shoulders and tell her that that isn’t what’s happening?

No!

He buys her an expensive car to get her to shut up. Azula hasn’t been given what she wants in this scene. “Fire Lord Azula” is not being at her father’s side. Being coronated is not “doing this together”, in fact, it’s leaving her alone. It can be argued that Ozai manipulated Azula in this scene by giving her something she wanted, so how was he able to manipulate her?

By understanding her Goals and Motivations, next of which are revealed in the Throne Room Scene.

Pivotal Azula Scene #2: The Throne Room

Ever hear the phrase “show don’t tell” in storytelling? Show the reader what the characters feel and what they want? Show what a character is willing to do to achieve their goals? Well, sometimes you do need to tell a reader what a character is thinking in order to make it starkly clear to them, and in the Throne Room scene, we get just that: a clear statement by Azula of what her Goal is, and it is a whopper.

In fact, this stated Goal by Azula is so monumental that it can be considered character-defining. It ties her royalty into her relationship with her father into her being a prodigy into her high standards (“almost isn’t good enough”), even into her struggles to be a “normal” teenager in The Beach. It makes the “Princess” in Princess Azula actually mean something. It makes “Princess of the Fire Nation” actually relate to the Fire Nation.

Azula’s second Goal, as stated explicitly in the Finale, is to be the greatest leader in Fire Nation history. Those are her exact words.

Be something; a physical condition. It requires her to take action, to be active, to accomplish things. It is a Goal.

Azula’s Goal #2: Be the Greatest Leader in Fire Nation History

In the Throne Room scene of the Finale, Azula says that she will be the greatest leader in Fire Nation history. She says it. This is not an interpretation or “reading into” things. The Finale has told the viewer what the Princess component of Princess Azula wants to be when she grows up: the greatest leader in Fire Nation history. This is a Goal; something that can be physically achieved. While it is true that what constitutes “greatest” can be subjective, certainly it involves a combination of reputation and physical accomplishments, especially given the goals of the Fire Nation at the time: conquering other nations and advancing the country’s wealth and power.

That this scene has flown under the radar for so long is mind-boggling. It is akin to asking a child what they want to be when they grow up, only this is a flame-throwing, feudal-era teenager who is being raised to command armies. Look at it this way:

“Little Jimmy, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“An astronaut!”

“Little Susy, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“A doctor!”

“Little Princess Azula, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“The greatest leader in Fire Nation history!”

Azula told us what she wants to be when she grows: the greatest leader in her country’s history. That is a pretty lofty goal that has been tempered by age or experience, something a young person could easily think they could achieve, but then again, maybe it wasn’t so unreasonable for her: she captured Ba Sing Se, defended the Capital from invasion and can bend blue fire and lightning at a young age.

So, why would a princess strive to be the greatest leader of her country versus just lounging around all day? That is for her Motivation to explain.

Azula’s Motivation #2: Her Father’s Expectations + Pride & Belief in Her Royal Title

This Motivation is really multifaceted, but in order to simplify things, it is being tied to her royalty in order to emphasize its connection to the Throne Room scene.

If “being the greatest leader” is a Goal, then the reason why she wants to be the greatest leader is her Motivation.

This is where some speculation becomes necessary. Even though the Throne Room scene stated this Goal very clearly, it doesn’t say much about why she desires this. You have two ways you can approach this question. First, you can cynically assume that Azula is motivated by nothing honorable or relatable, therefore she is closer to a parasite feeding off of the Royal Family, or second, you can assume she is a product of the world she lives in and so is motivated by things that can tell us about the Royal Family, the Fire Nation, and life under her father. Because the former results in no room for growth and change, and is entirely based on psychological theory, this article will assume the latter.

Because there are no clear answers for why she has this Goal in the Finale, I am simply going to list a variety of potential Motivations. Most likely, the answer is a combination of these at the same time:

· Ambition to achieve (like a great athlete striving for excellence);

· Enjoys challenging herself;

· Desires to be someone (famous, notable);

· Internalizes her role as Princess and sees herself as nothing else;

· Enjoys fighting, firebending and military subjects;

· Enjoys politics, ruling and statecraft;

· Excels at her royal role, so enjoys being good at it;

· Believes in the purpose of the Imperial Government;

· Takes pride in Fire Nation history and wants to contribute to it;

· Enjoys having power over people;

· Seeks praise;

· It’s what her father expects of her;

· Believes her father is a great leader and so wants to be like him;

· It’s what’s expected of a Fire Nation Princess;

· Wants to maintain the legitimacy of her family and “prove her worth”;

· If there’s any sort of sexism in the Fire Nation, maybe she feels she needs to work “twice as hard to get half as far”;

· Following the sexism angle, maybe she wants to distance herself from any “limiting” feminine roles;

· And others.

In the Throne Room scene, we are given a hint as to what might be one of Azula’s motivations for wanting to be the greatest leader in Fire Nation history: not being treated like Zuko (i.e. living up to her father’s expectations).

Right before she gives the aforementioned line in the Throne Room scene, she says to Lo and Li that her father doesn’t think she “can handle the responsibility of being Fire Lord”. Perhaps one of the reasons for pushing herself toward ever greater achievements and abilities is to prove to her father that she truly does deserve to be “by his side” and not “treated like Zuko”.

But Azula is also a princess. That is extremely important.

Azula is a member of the Royal Family and is a military and authoritarian leader by default. The Throne Room scene is the chance to inject the Fire Nation into Azula’s character, not just emotional disfunction and psychological dependency. Remember what kind of country Azula lives in: it is full of walking flamethrowers who must be kept in line.

Remember all the warfare in ancient Japan? No? Then take a look at this article, The East Asian Origins of Fire Nation and Its Villains, for an idea as to why the Imperial Government exists and why the Royal Family is very concerned about being successful, and using force and intimidation to do so.

“I want to be the greatest leader in Fire Nation history” is the chance to use Azula to convey broader subjects about the Fire Nation’s politics, history, culture and how they effect someone who is either too young or unable to be what is expected of them: a feared military ruler in a militarized society at 14 years old.

Also note that her goal of being the “greatest leader” was stated after she learned she would be Fire Lord. This means the Goal was not accomplished; the Motivation didn’t go away. Being Fire Lord is not being a great leader; it is simply being Fire Lord. To her, wanting to be the “greatest leader” comes from a much deeper source and, in fact, could be argued as a character-defining Motivation. Along these lines, Azula is not merely Azula; she is Princess Azula at all times, everywhere. To her, there is no “Azula”, but only “Princess Azula”. Her title is her identity.

You might have to apply some artistic license here, but you can do so in a way that is both faithful to the source material and builds upon it. For example, while the show was active, there was a description of Azula from the viewpoint of the Fire Nation on Nickelodeon’s website. Note that it sounds very similar to what Zuko said about his sister in Siege of the North: Part 2. This heavily suggests that not only is Azula what her father wants, but also what the Fire Nation and Imperial Government want in a princess.

To summarize, Azula’s second Goal is to be the greatest leader in her country’s history and her Motivation for this Goal is a combination of wanting to meet the expectations of her father and flat-out believing and taking pride in her role as Princess. But what about her Conflicts as a result of this Goal? Well, as the Finale demonstrates, she isn’t the greatest leader yet. Once more, some reasonable speculation is required.

Azula’s Conflict #2: She Struggles to Be a Great Leader

Azula felt she had to compel the Captain into taking the ship through the tides right now in order to exert her dominance (this is explained in the Tale of Azula novel). She relies entirely on fear instead of using a combination of trust and fear, like someone who read Machiavelli but wasn’t old enough to actually understand what it was saying; she failed to understand Zuko’s motivations and so he turned against the family; she failed to understand that people are willing to sacrifice their lives for loved ones, or even make stupid mistakes, so she felt personally wounded by Mai; she didn’t know how to handle both Mai and Ty Lee’s betrayal and so lost all faith in her subject’s loyalty; and she banished all of her servants and guards instead of figuring out how to act differently.

If Azula’s father is her “measuring stick” for success, then being at his side and doing things with him is not only protection against “being treated like Zuko” but also a sign that she is doing everything right as a leader in training. Remember that her Goal of being the greatest leader didn’t go away when Ozai gave her the crown; the Goal is coming from someplace deeper.

But Azula begins to doubt herself in the Finale. She begins to feel paranoid and she doesn’t have the life experience and knowledge to tell her why Mai and Ty Lee betrayed her, how to adjust accordingly and what to do differently. She’s never failed before. She’s unsure of what the future will be and she doesn’t have her father to measure herself against. She is not yet a great leader.

She wants to be the greatest leader in Fire Nation history, but how will she become that if she keeps failing and her father left her behind? She wants to be by her father’s side, but how can she be if she’s back in the Fire Nation struggling to have the loyalty of her closest subjects (guards and servants)?

If Azula’s second Goal is to be the greatest leader in her country’s history and the Motivation behind it is a combination of her father’s expectations and pride and belief in her royal title, then her second Conflict is that she doesn’t know how to be a great leader or live up to her father’s standards. In the Finale, she is trying and failing and she doesn’t know what to do.

This leads to the third and final pivotal Azula scene: the famous Mirror Scene.

Pivotal Azula Scene #3: The Mirror Scene

If there were any key emotions during Azula’s breakdown, they were paranoia, fear, anxiety, grief, uncertainty and doubt.

It’s been established by the Phoenix King scene that she wants to be with her father to avoid being “treated like Zuko”. Knowing what happened to Zuko, that must create a hell of a ton of fear, anxiety, stress and doubt within her.

It has also been established that she wants to be the greatest leader in her country’s history. That must also create a ton of fear, anxiety, stress and doubt: will she be the greatest leader? Will she fail? Does she even have what it takes? What if she doesn’t? What if Zuko is better than her? What will her father think of her? What will her country think of her?

During the Finale, she is paranoid about the consequences of disobedient, vengeful subjects who might assassinate her.

She doesn’t know what to do or what the future holds.

She is doubting herself, she is afraid she might fail.

She feels grief, but about what exactly?

There is a pattern emerging from the Phoenix King and Throne Room scenes. You have a teenage girl (remember, that is what Azula is) who is anxious and panicky about being left behind and mistreated by her father; you have a young, military ruler-in-training who has very high standards for herself and is failing to live up to those standards; and you have a member of royalty who is alone, afraid and doesn’t know how to deal with failure or handle what she is feeling.

Remember what I said earlier about ignoring your existing conceptions and feelings about Azula? Well, you also have to ignore the 30-year old voice actress and general appearance of being older. You need to think about the franchise at large.

What were the ages of the main characters: 12? 14? 16? 17 at most? Kids and teenagers, essentially. That is a unique selling point of the franchise—young people going through adversity—and it makes it easier to feel sympathy for them, just as the youth of the characters in the Hunger Games made it more relatable to kids and teens, and allowed adults to feel sympathy as well (adults are the ones who take care of kids and teens).

In fact, the characters of Avatar being kids was an important part of the story: themes of family were critical to Katara, Sokka, Toph, Zuko, Mai, Ty Lee and even Azula (in the end). Therefore, you have to keep in mind the importance of youth to the main cast and franchise at large.

How old is Azula? 14-15?

Do you now see the pattern?

Who do kids and teenagers rely on when they are in trouble?

Who helps them understand their feelings?

Who is supposed to have all the answers?

Who tells them they’ll be okay, they’ll figure it out, they’re not alone?

Parents.

What is Ozai to Azula? A parent. A terrible one by our eyes, but still a parent. Is he there for her during her time of need in the Finale? No. Does he help her understand the myriad of feelings that are causing her to unravel? No. Does he provide guidance as to why Mai and Ty Lee betrayed her and how to learn from it? No. Does he tell her she’ll be okay, to not worry, that she’ll figure it out and she’s not alone? No. Could he have done these things? Yes, because he’s a parent of Azula. Did he? No.

Would it have helped her to have a parent who could walk her through her struggles? You’re damn right it would have. She would have still had a platoon of Dai Lee and Imperial Firebenders to protect her and she’d have been Fire Lord.

But she didn’t have Ozai, either physically or emotionally. She didn’t have a parent to help her. Teenage girl, military-leader-in training Azula couldn’t handle the tidal wave of adversity that struck her, and so she drowned. Lo and Li weren’t parents; they were advisors; subjects. Her servants weren’t her parents; is she going to expose her weaknesses to the people she doesn’t trust and whose respect she must command? Neither were her Dai Lee or Imperial Firebenders (her guards). But she wanted a parent to help her… And she has two.

One of them, her father, not only wasn’t physically present, but also made it clear, in subtle ways, that he wasn’t ever going to be there for her “in that way”; she didn’t jump to the “you can’t treat me like Zuko” conclusion if it wasn’t clear to her that that’s exactly what was happening.

So who is the only other person in the world who can say the things a parent can to Azula? Who is literally her only other parent?

Her mother.

Ursa is not Azula’s conscience speaking to her. Ursa is not a Freudian Excuse. Ursa is not a Shakespearean metaphor for god knows what. Ursa isn’t even a spirit talking to her through the Spirit World. Ursa is, in Azula’s mind, her parent and this reveals Azula’s third Goal.

Azula’s Goal #3: Have a Parent Who Can Help Her

Remember what Avatar is based on: kids and teenagers going through adversity. Ask yourself this: do you believe that all of Avatar was a “lie” and that the “real” Avatar is full of nudity, torture, rape, grotesque violence, “grimdark” themes and the cast is really 18+? I don’t. Work with the source material; it’s what we have, it’s what was made.

Azula is a teenager at the top of a feudal, military government who has extremely high expectations for herself, a father who has her living in fear of being spurned and abused, and who has certain proclivities (i.e. flaws) that are causing her harm. As a result, she is full of fear, anxiety, stress and doubt as a result of her struggle to achieve her Goals. She wants a parent to say and do the things that parents can: sooth their children’s fears, teach them life lessons and help them understand why they’re wrong and how to set them straight.

Azula’s third Goal is to have a parent who can help her, physically be there for her, do and say the things that parents are supposed to in order to make her fears, anxieties, stress and doubts go away.

You always had such beautiful hair?

I wouldn’t miss my daughter’s coronation?

I think you’re confused?

I love you?

Who the hell says those things to someone like Azula?

A parent, or at least Azula thinks a parent would. She might not be able to put this combination of Goal-and-Motivation into precise words, but the teenage girl in her feels it. Her Motivation to achieve this Goal is her feelings.

Azula’s Motivation #3: Alleviate the Stress Caused by Her Goals

Is having a parent the only way for Azula to alleviate her fears? No. She can achieve great things for her country, make marked progress in firebending, be praised by her father, be with her father, have friends to hang out with and, most importantly, she can alleviate her stress by making sure she never fails. If she works hard enough to never experience failure (“almost isn’t good enough”), then eventually she’ll come to believe that she can’t failure, and so won’t be burdened by it. It’s simply impossible… Like an inexperienced person would believe. There is certainly no shortage of highly talented young people in the real world who are both very confident and afraid of failure.

No one wants to live with fear or anxiety or stress; it’s painful and draining. Same for Azula. In her time of great adversity during the Finale, these feelings were not unknown to her; she was already afraid of failure; she was already full of stress over meeting her father’s expectations and becoming the greatest leader; she was already guided by very high expectations. She already lived with fear, anxiety, stress and doubt and it was kept in check by being naturally talented, working exceptionally hard, having the personality for the environment she lived in and never failing. But in the Finale, she was struck by a tidal wave of failure and did not have the knowledge, or support, for staying afloat, like a teenager.

In the Mirror Scene, Azula wants a parent—Ursa, Ozai—to help her with her problems, with her feelings, because she can’t handle them. She is motivated by the fears, anxieties, stresses and doubts of a flawed, inexperienced teenage girl who was raised to be a feudal, military dictator in a rapidly changing world, and is failing.

But as we know, she didn’t find a way to alleviate her feelings in the Finale. Why? Because of her third and final Conflict.

Azula’s Conflict #3: She Doesn’t Have a Parent Who Can Help Her

Could Ozai have helped her? In theory, yes. He knows how to rule through the same manner that Azula is emulating and he’s a 40-50 year old man with the experience, emotional maturity and, most importantly, respect of his daughter. Does he help her? We know he doesn’t. So during the Mirror Scene, Azula retreats to the other parent who could help: her mother, the one who, while not a military leader who rules through fear, can still tell her the sweet, soothing things that mothers are known to say, and say it with the authority of a parent.

But Ursa is not physically present to say those things. Not only this, but Azula doesn’t even believe her mother would say those things, let alone mean them if she did. Why is her relationship with her mother this bad? We don’t know; the show or comics never showed or told us.

However, “my mother thought I was a monster” is not a revelation of Azula’s Goals or Motivations. It is a statement that reveals one of her Conflicts: she doesn’t have a parent who can help her. Either she literally doesn’t have parents who are physically and emotionally present (Ozai), or she doesn’t believe she has parents who are (Ursa).

To repeat, we do not have an explanation for “my mother thought I was a monster”, but ask yourself this: if the “Bear Mother” had actually been standing there during the Mirror Scene, would her words have sounded so haunted, shallow and detached-from-the-moment as if an inexperienced, confused teenager was saying them? Hell no. We’d have gotten the earth-shattering Mother-Daughter heart-to-heart that has eluded the franchise for 12 years (and which likely will never occur).

In the end, Azula did not get the parental support she needed and she didn’t accomplish any of her Goals. She got swallowed by the tidal wave of failure, bashed against the rocks, swirled in the mud and dragged off to an asylum where she will wallow in her misery for all time, never to rise from ashes of her shame and humiliation. Her motivations did not leave her, though; they will burn inside her until the end of her days…

Unless her story is advanced.

The Flaws, Quirks and Personality Traits of Azula

Before this article explains how and why the fandom and Creators misunderstood the Mirror Scene, I want to spend some time exploring Azula’s Flaws, Quirks and Personality Traits.

These are general terms for the variety of additional features that add “depth” to a character. Flaws, quirks and personality traits are separate from Goals, Motivations and Conflicts, but they can cause Motivations and create Conflicts.

For example, if a character wants love (a Motivation) but they struggle with feelings of jealousy (the result of a flaw, quirk, or personality trait), then their Conflict becomes their struggle to overcome this part of their personality when dating their romantic interest. This is a rudimentary example.

Another example would be a husband enjoying watching and hearing his wife scream when she finds fake spiders in the bed (YouTube can reveal lots of example of family members playing pranks on each other). Scaring his wife is not his Goal or Motivation in life; he simply enjoys doing it, and if he is trying to maintain a happy marriage with his wife, this flaw, quirk or personality traits creates a Conflict.

This is how you have to approach Azula’s wickedness in the series. Remember how I said earlier not to think about all of that? Well, now you can.

Smirking triumphantly while Zuko is burned for refusing to fight? Threatening the Ship Captain over a reasonable concern in order to exert her dominance? Throwing loaves of bread at turtle ducks as an 8 year old and still having turtle ducks swim away from her when she’s 14? Shoving Ty Lee to the ground and laughing at her because she upstaged her? Tormenting Zuko over something as awful as his father being ordered to kill him and enjoying it? Smugly hanging Ty Lee over a burning net to make a point? Enjoying teasing and inflaming Zuko? Smirking deviously? Has little respect for others perceived as beneath her? Makes flippant, dismissive comments? Can’t separate herself from her title? Doesn’t appreciate the “softer” sides of leadership (trust, loyalty, love, etc.)? What are these things?

They are Flaws, Quirks and Personality Traits.

Azula’s primary Goals, Motivations and Conflicts are independent from whether or not she feeds turtle ducks by hand or throws the entire loaf at them, or smirks while bullying Ty Lee to establish her dominance, or enjoys teasing Zuko for his perceived weaknesses; Ty Lee would remain a subject to the Crown and Zuko’s problems with his father would not go away.

Azula’s smirking, smug, nasty, sassy, Hyeena-woman persona is what makes her distinct. They are her flaws that create additional Conflicts and exacerbate existing ones. They are the quirks that make Azula a warm body and not simply a set of villainous specifications moving around on screen. They make her feel “alive”. They are the personality traits that separate her from all others in the show.

Remember what Azula’s Goals are: be with her father, be the greatest leader in Fire Nation history, and have a parent to help her. For two of those, her wickedness will both help and hinder her.

Not being concerned for peoples’ feelings and having no tolerance for weakness? Makes her able to manipulate corrupt, militant organizations like the Dai Lee. Pushing Mai and Ty Lee too hard and making them resent her? It got her their cooperation, for a time, but it ended up creating the chain reaction of fear, anxiety, stress and doubt that eventually ruined her. Embracing her father’s treatment of Zuko and doing everything necessary to avoid the same? Well, she never really got “treated like Zuko”, did she?

Not having appreciation for trust and love and focusing solely on leading through fear? Makes her able to thrive in the current Imperial Government, but also incapable of adapting to failure. Teasing Zuko? Tormenting him? Perhaps her acting in “evil” ways strained her mother’s relationship with her and lead to the “monster” impression. Now that would be quite the flaw.

Azula’s wickedness both helps and hinders her, and in the case of the Finale, contributed to her downfall. Her wickedness is a flaw. It harmed her. It prevented her from achieving her Goals.

Flaws, Quirks and Personality Traits only tell half the story of a character, and in the case of Azula, they’re not enough to understand who she is and what she wants, and more specifically, they’re not enough to advance her story in the Post-Finale world.

The Distortions of the Mirror Scene

By not paying attention to the two other pivotal Azula scenes in the Finale, the Fandom and Bryke developed a distorted, myopic understanding of the Fire Princess where mental illness, unexplained issues with her mother and violent action against hallucinations comprised the sum total of her complexity.

As a result, just about every piece of the Mirror Scene, from physical actions to key words, along with Azula’s Flaws, Quirks and Personality Traits ended up becoming stand-ins for her Goals, Motivations and Conflicts in official franchise content: The Search and Smoke and Shadow.

By focusing on Azula’s feelings and feelings alone, the Mirror Scene wound up becoming perceived as the pivotal scene for exploring her depth and even became the source of Bryke’s understanding of her when they wrote the comics. Take a look at these panels from The Promise and The Search to see what this means:

Where are her unresolved feelings concerning her father?

Where is her relationship with her country?

Where is her connection to the “Princess” in her name?

This is not to say that Azula’s time in the asylum couldn’t have resulted in her developing such extreme feelings for her mother. In fact, it does make a certain amount of sense: if she is spending her days racked by endless, gut-wrenching shame, humiliation and hopelessness, then the idea of her temporary psychosis from the Finale getting worse is reasonable; it becomes a Conflict for her to overcome.

However, this is not portrayed as what has happened to her. Instead of the Azula from the Finale getting worse, we get the Azula from the Mirror Scene falling off the cliff; all of her complexities from the Finale are absent. Once more, it isn’t that Azula couldn’t have gotten worse, she definitely could have, it’s that Azula’s relationship with her mother alone does not explain the depth of her complexity established in the Finale, which includes her father and country. If she really is suffering from gut-wrenching shame, humiliation and hopeless, leading her to succumb to wacko delusions about her mother, those feelings have to be coming from something already established: her father and country.

If you think I’m cherry-picking, go back through The Search. Scenes like the above happen over, and over and over again with zero mention of anything close to her Goals and Motivations from the Finale. Remember, feelings are not Goals or Motivations; crying about “destiny” and having “proof” in a dream sequence are not enough, especially when the Finale already established the myriad of things she wants, why she wants them and why she can’t have them.

In The Search, Azula is not shown to be motivated by a sense off shame or humiliation over her defeat in the Finale, or sense of responsibility for failing to stop Zuko’s take over of the country. You would expect that someone who wanted to be “the greatest leader in Fire Nation history” would not be dismissive of what their failure resulted in, whether or not her enemies had outside help or not. The closest The Search comes to giving Azula Goals and Motivations separate from her mother is wanting to claim the throne from Zuko over arbitrary reasons of “destiny”. Never in the Finale did Azula espouse “destiny” or a desire to be Fire Lord just for the sake of being Fire Lord; it was tied to her desire to be the greatest leader and please her father. Instead, Azula spends the entirety of The Search lashing out at hallucinations of her mother and wanting to make the voices stop. Not once is her father or country mentioned as Motivation.

Azula does not get portrayed like this unless “love” and “hallucinations” and “being confused” and “my mother thought I was a monster” are taken as the full extent of her Goals, Motivations and Conflicts. You do not portray Azula like this if you properly understand the Mirror Scene as depicting a troubled teenager believing their parent is lying to them (”Don’t pretend to act proud. I know what you really think of me...”) versus her conscience trying to “weaken” her with “love” (”Same as always, Zuzu. Even when you’re strong, you’re weak). In The Search, Ursa is not Azula’s parent in any capacity, past or present, and we are not shown how she has come to feel this way.

You do not make Azula’s relationship with her mother this drastic unless you fully believe that everything about Azula can be acquired from the Mirror Scene and the Mirror Scene alone, and it appears this is precisely what Bryke believed.

In a way, the Azula in The Search is an answers to the macabre question: “How much further out of her mind can Azula go if she believes her mother is the source of all of her problems and every key word and emotion from the Mirror Scene is carried forward?”

To further this point, here are some key lines from the interview in the Sozin’s Comet novelization where Bryke discussed Azula’s “evil”, with commentary added:

“As The Beach and Sozin’s Comet showed, she has a lot of unresolved issues with her mother.”

Yes, it appears she does. Where do they come from?

“She really feels that her mother didn’t lover her as much as Zuko, and this drives her crazy, literally.”

Wait, what? She was already falling apart by the time the hallucination occurred. What about Mai and Ty Lee, her father and her role as Princess?

“There are some truly evil people in the world, but in the case of Azula, her repressed emotions and jealousies corroded her spirit and made her become that way.”

Made her become what way? She’s the Fire Princess; she enjoys being mean and powerful, and she just had a mental breakdown and fell flat on her ass in front of her nation’s capital. What “corroded spirit”?

“And who knows, she might have a chance to heal.”

Heal from what, her villainy? Her personality? Her breakdown? She wouldn’t be Azula anymore?? What are you referring to??

By itself, the Mirror Scene does not reveal Azula’s Goals, Motivations and Conflicts. By itself, it only shows examples of things that give Azula grief and confusion and clearly recognizable human emotions that the viewer can relate to. In other words, feelings.

Feelings are not Goals. Feelings by themselves are not even Motivations; they have to be in the context of wanting, needing, desiring something in order for them to become Motivations.

“My mother thought I was a monster” is not a want or a need or a desire. It is a statement of a Conflict and nothing more, whereas, “My mother thought I was a monster (Conflict) and this eats at my soul (Motivation) because I want my mother in my life helping me (Goal)” is getting somewhere.

Using the mirror scene as a sole reference is how Azula’s throwing of the hair brush in the Finale turns into shooting lightning at water, or her gripping her hair and screaming to reject the words of “love” from the hallucination, or her desiring to literally murder the physical embodiment of the hallucination; it’s because the writers are trying to wring every drop of meaning from this out-of-context interpretation of the Mirror Scene.

It’s how her want for the throne is based on vague, brand new notions of destiny instead of duty to her country. It’s how you get not a single word from Azula about wanting to correct her image in the eyes of her father... Because the Mirror Scene didn’t say any of this; it was all about her mother, love and confusion.

And don’t think this myopic, excessive emphasis on the Mirror Scene and Azula’s feelings was limited to Bryke. Oh no. Nobody is getting off easy.

Take Aaron Ehasz’s comments about his brain bugs for a Post-Finale Azula arc in a hypothetical Season 4, which many fans have found inspiring and also devisive:

He focuses on “pain”, “love”, “feelings”, “change”, even uses the magic word “redemption”. These are all abstract. Where are Azula’s Goals, especially those revealed in the Finale? Where is “I will be the greatest leader in Fire Nation history?” What does she want to accomplish in this Season 4? What will she be doing? Feelings are not enough. Motivations are not enough. There have to be Goals attached to them.

“Azula is in the depths of her abyss” is not a Goal, whereas “Azula is in the depths of her abyss (Conflict) because she wakes up every day with gut-wrenching feelings of shame and humiliation that she wants to go away (Motivation), so she wants her normal life back (Goal)” is, once more, getting somewhere. And better yet: “she will do whatever it takes to end her misery” is the beginnings of a story.

Now take a look at what author Gene Yang wrote when he was asked by a fan if it is possible for Azula to have “happy closure.” What does “happy closure” mean? Well, as someone who now understands Goals, Motivations and Conflicts, you know that it means a character achieving their Goals and no longer having any Conflicts, but what is Gene Yang’s answer?

He says it’s not even possible.

Of course it’s possible for Azula to have “happy closure”. Any character can. It’s a matter of them achieving their Goals or losing the Motivation for them. She’s not a robot.

But hold on! Wasn’t Gene Yang just being vague? Wasn’t he only trying to make a point to get the fan to think for themselves? Maybe even hide the plot of Smoke and Shadow?

You could have thought that at the time, but as we now know from Smoke and Shadow, Gene Yang wasn’t making a vague, thought-inducing comment to that fan. He was stating that Azula can’t achieve her Goals or change her Motivations. Remember what her Goals and Motivations were from the Finale: be with her father, be the greatest leader in Fire Nation history, and have a parent who can help her. None of those Goals and none of the Motivations behind them were resolved at the end of the Finale, or by the end of The Search; they were ongoing. We didn’t even find out if they had changed between the Finale and The Search. Now take a look at these two scenes from Smoke and Shadow:

Not even Azula’s mother and brother know what she wants, and in fact, neither do Gene Yang, Bryke, and for the longest time, the majority of the Fandom.

Why can this conclusion be made about the Creators? Because Azula’s Goals, Motivations and Conflicts established in the Finale, and which had not been resolved by the end of The Search, disappeared entirely in Smoke and Shadow.

Without hallucinations, without her mother’s voice giving her haunting assurances of love, without feelings directly attached to the Mirror Scene, there is nothing else inside Azula in the minds of the Creators. Once she runs away into the forest at the end of The Search, after hearing hollow platitudes from her brother, she becomes “weightless… free”.

There are no unresolved issues with her father. There is no goal to be the greatest leader in her country’s history. There is no desire to absolve herself of her failures to prevent the old regime from falling. There is no sense of personal responsibility for failing to stop Zuko and thereby prevent the destruction of the colonies. There isn’t even a relationship with her mother if it can’t be tied to hallucinations.

By placing all emphasis on the Mirror Scene in the comics, everything about Azula became searching for “love” and feeling “confused” because those were the key words used by the hallucination in the Mirror Scene. “Love” becomes just a word she needs to hear (“I love you, Azula” from the hallucination, “You’re still my sister” from Zuko) without regard to who it comes from (supposed to be from her parents) or whether it is actually meant (there is no reason for Azula to believe Zuko, or even seek it from him; he’s not a parent and he’s a mortal enemy responsible for her ills).

There was nothing about one’s duty to their country as a Princess; there was nothing about living up to her parents’ standards, both parents’ standards; there was nothing about becoming the greatest leader in Fire Nation history, and becoming Fire Lord (either via the letter or vicariously in Smoke and Shadow) is not becoming the “greatest leader” to Azula. It simply means being Fire Lord. This is what was revealed in the Finale when she still wasn’t satisfied despite being on the verge of being crowned. And finally, there was nothing about resolving her feelings of fear, anxiety, stress and doubt that resulted from her failures to achieve her Goals during the Finale.

So why did this happen?

On the Creators’ side, it’s impossible to speak for them, but judging by the interview in the Sozin’s Comet novelization, not even Bryke paid attention to the Phoenix King and Throne Room scenes. They became myopic about Azula’s relationship with her mother too, and forgot all about her other relationships and motivations, namely those involving her father, country and self. As a result, their understanding of their “favorite villain”, as they described her in the Art of the Animated Series, became a vacuous, distorted mirage (literally a ghost in Smoke and Shadow) of her former self and her Arc that was begun in the Finale was abandoned entirely.

On the Fandoms’ side, it’s a combination of things:

1) The Fandom had not been “primed” to have their view of Azula challenged, so the “subtleties” of her relationship with her father and country got overshadowed by Ozai donning a ridiculous outfit, Azula banishing people in a blue-colored throne room and “Oh my god, Ursa!!”;

2) The Mirror Scene was “sexy”; it was eye-opening, jaw-dropping; it made you go, “Holy crap!” The eerie violin score was haunting, the voice acting was top notch and it had big, bad Azula on her knees sobbing like a wimp. Naturally, it stood out in peoples’ minds whereas the Phoenix King and Throne Room scenes fell behind the desk, and thirdly;

3) Azula’s relationship with her mom is primarily about feelings. A show as visually stunning and well-voice acted as Avatar is, first and foremost, about inspiring feelings in the viewer. In fact, all stories are about inspiring feelings. The Fandom did not go into the Finale looking to learn about Azula’s complexities, so The Phoenix King and Throne Room developments did not receive the same amount of intense, emotional attachment as the Mirror Scene. Simply put, the hallucination of a mother telling her teenage daughter that she loves her, and that same teenage daughter collapsing into tears over it, is much more heart wrenching and relatable to kids and teenagers than the pressures of ruling a military feudal dictatorship in the image of the Big Bad.

Summary

To understand a fictional character, you have to know their Goals, Motivations and Conflicts. Next, you have to identify their Flaws, Quirks and Personality Traits, which add distinction and depth and provide internal sources of Motivation and Conflict.

Azula’s Goals, as revealed in the Finale, are as follows:

Be With Her Father;

Be the Greatest Leader in Fire Nation History;

Have a Parent Who Can Help Her;

Azula’s Motivations, as revealed in the Finale, are as follows:

Not Be Treated Like Zuko;

Pride & Belief in Her Royal Duties;

Alleviate the Stress Caused by Her Goals;

Azula’s Conflicts, as revealed in the Finale, are as follows:

Her Father Doesn’t Want Her;

She Struggles to Be a Great Leader;

She Doesn’t Have a Parent Who Can Help Her;

The Mirror Scene and Azula’s relationship with her mother are not enough to reveal her Goals, Motivations and Conflicts. The Mirror Scene, by itself, is only a Conflict, whereas the two additional scenes in the Finale—the Phoenix King and Throne Room scenes—provide her other Goals, Motivations and Conflicts that make the meaning of the Mirror Scene clear: a teenager looking for the support of a parent.

Excessive emphasis on the Mirror Scene and, by extension, Azula’s relationship with her mother, have created a distorted view of Azula that has harmed her portrayal in the comics and stymied explorations of her value to the Franchise. Instead of Azula being a feudal military leader-in-training who struggles with both her feelings and Goals, she has been reduced to both a myopic interpretation of the Mirror Scene and is limited to her Flaws, Quirks and Personality Traits, none of which are enough to advance her story in the Post-Finale world.

Closing Remarks: How to Move Forward with Azula

For those fans of Avatar who are curious about what to do with Azula’s Goals, Motivations and Conflicts, and makes use of her Flaws, Quirks and Personality Traits, you have to ask this question: what value can more Azula bring to Avatar?

No individual character will be more popular than the franchise itself, especially a hated villain who might have the ability to change and grow. Below is a screenshot from Google Trends showing the relative popularities between Azula, Zuko and Avatar: The Last Airbender search results. It demonstrates that secondary characters like Azula are nowhere near as popular as the franchise they are a part of.

In order to make a character like Azula worth exploring in detail, they have to be made important to both the Main Cast and the Franchise at large. It’s not enough to just have “a” story about Azula; her Goals, Motivations and Conflicts have to be valuable to the Heroes and world of Avatar. There are no hard and fast answers as to how to achieve this, and the franchise has clearly moved on from Azula, but with Avatar being rebooted in live action form, here are some ways to begin approaching this in case the live action version moves into Post-Finale territory.

Azula’s Unique Selling Points

These are the things that make a character fun, interesting and enjoyable to have on screen. In other words, likable. Toph’s cheekiness, for example, is a Unique Selling Point. Aang’s free-spiritedness is a Unique Selling Point. These can also be called the “fun and games” of a character. They are what viewers want to see, hear and feel when these characters appear on screen. For example, if Toph and Azula are going to appear on screen together after Azula is taken out of the asylum, there better be sass, like in Day of Black Sun.

Azula: Um, right. I think your friend just said that genius. And since you can't see, I should tell you I'm rolling my eyes.

Toph: I'll roll your whole head!

So what are some of Azula’s Unique Selling Points?

Blue fire;

Lightning;

Skilled martial artist and firebender;

Royalty;

Intelligent;

Snarky and smug;

Smooth-talking;

Confident;

Female in a militarized society, but who does not eschew femininity;

Makes “princess” associated with power and aggression, not passivity;

Dark subject matter surrounding her (e.g. the unresolved emotions in the Finale);

Determination;

Emotional fragility;

Youth (the kid/teenager themes of the show).

Azula’s Value to the Franchise

This is what makes a character more than just a background character or plot device. It’s what makes them create new fans of the Franchise, add interest, sell product. In other words, add value.

Haru, for example, adds little value to the Franchise because he’s just a regular Earthbender with no Unique Selling Points and his relevance to the plot and characters is over. Iroh, on the other hand, is absolutely full of Unique Selling Points and provides insights into the Avatar world and its characters. His perspective adds value. His abilities add value. His importance to the Heroes adds value.

So what makes Azula relevant to the franchise beyond just being a villain?

She can teach us about firebending through her blue fire and lightning;

She can provide an aggressive firebending female, which ATLA does not have;

She can teach us about the Fire Nation through the eyes of someone who doesn’t appreciate Zuko’s transformative policies;

She can teach us about what it means to be a girl/woman in the Fire Nation;

She can teach us about the Fire Nation’s military, government and history;

She can represent the “old” Fire Nation that Zuko must reform.

Azula’s Critical Relevance to the Heroes

Since any story is ultimately about its characters, Azula not only has to be relevant to the Heroes, but critically relevant to justify deeper exploration. So to which characters is Azula critically relevant?

Ursa, Zuko, and to a lesser extent, Iroh.

As Azula’s mother, Ursa will be implicitly concerned with her daughter’s well-being regardless of how us fans feel; as a young member of the Royal Family who can firebend, she is relevant to the Royal Family’s continuation, and by extension, Zuko’s legacy; and as the sister of Zuko, she is Iroh’s niece, in other words, family.

Essentially, if there is any drama surrounding the Royal Family in the Post-Finale world (and how could there not?), Azula is a fundamental part of it. I call this the “Royal Family Drama Triangle”.

Azula’s Critical Importance to the Plot

Azula must also be essential to both resolving the Primary Conflict of the story. This forces the viewer or reader to implicitly care about Azula’s Goals, Motivations and Conflicts since she impacts the fate of the Heroes directly.

What are some of the problems that Azula can be critically necessary in solving? To begin answering this question, you have to sit down and think about what kind of problems the Heroes would face in the Post-Finale world. This article series, How to Develop Avatar’s Season 4, provides one such scenario.

One way to answer this question is to look at the unchanging aspects of Azula’s character, the thing’s that don’t go away whether she is a villain or not, and these are: 1) she is a young, firebending member of the Royal Family; 2) she is a member of the old regime that Zuko must reform; and 3) she is Ursa’s daughter. This suggests that the type of plot that Azula can take a major role in is one where the Fire Nation and Royal Family are at the center. Princess Azula of the Fire Nation might not care about the rest of the world like Zuko, but certainly she will care about the Fire Nation and its Imperial Government.

Some of the specific problems in the Post-Finale world that Azula can help solve:

Quelling unrest in the Fire Nation over Zuko’s policies;

Stopping a rebellion against Zuko and the Imperial Government;

Saving the Royal Family from assassination/coup (i.e. eradication);

And others if you can come up with them.

How to Develop an Arc for Azula

Finally, how do you go about developing an Arc for Azula in the Post-Finale world? Remember that to understand a character you need to identify their Goals, Motivations and Conflicts. This also applies to creating a character, but when it comes to creating an Arc, you have to add in the Epiphany.

A character’s Epiphany is simple to describe, but difficult to execute: it’s how they grow and change in order to either achieve their Goals, or lose their Motivations and move on in life. The Epiphany is the result of the character’s journey to achieve their Goals combined with their Motivations, Conflicts, Flaws, Quirks and Personality Traits. It is, in essence, what the story is all about. For example, Zuko did not arrive at his Epiphany easy and his decision to betray Iroh in Crossroads of Destiny was not a random step backwards: it was the result of everything about him. An Epiphany for Azula would undoubtedly be complicated and multi-layered, probably much, much more so than Zuko’s.

To begin developing an Arc for Azula, you first have to identify what remains of her Goals, Motivations and Conflicts from the Finale when the story picks up with her in this new Post-Finale story. Remember that she suffered a mental breakdown, was humiliated in the eyes of her nation and has been locked away in an asylum for some length of time.

Next you have to devise a new Central Conflict that drives both her and the Main Cast through the story, something that requires all of their actions to solve. Then you have to establish her new Goals, Motivations and Conflicts in relation to that Central Conflict and the Post-Finale situation she faces, and finally, you have to put her in situations that test her, make her think, challenge her values, that make her change and grow. How you do this is up to you, but her are some pointers:

Always think about her Unique Selling Points. Blue fire? Make her ability to produce blue fire important to the story and not just a thematic decision. For an idea as to how to tie blue fire into the Avatar world at large, see the article, The Science and In-World Reason for Azula’s Blue Flames.

Azula was locked in an asylum? Make it have lasting effects on her that she struggles with. She is royalty? It better be more than just a title, but responsibility and a part of her personal code. Snarky, confident, intelligent and brave? There’s a lot you can do with someone who doesn’t shy away from danger and enjoys infuriating people, especially when they have the literal firepower to back it up.

Always strive to make her add value to the Franchise. She is a female firebender, something that ATLA has a dearth of. This is good; make her femaleness mean something. Along these lines, she is a great opportunity for a “Female Power Fantasy”. Just ask R.F. Kuang about it. She is also not the victim of circumstance or the actions of others as many characters in Avatar are. This gives her a different type of change and growth story compared to Zuko’s.

Use her to talk about the Fire Nation’s militarized culture, the same culture that “pure heart and unquestionable honor” Zuko somehow has to change. Use her to reveal the Fire Nation’s history and politics as it pertains to Zuko’s rule without going into “Info Dumps” since, as a princess, Azula would naturally be concerned with those subjects. Also use her to help advance Avatar’s East Asian themes. The fact that Azula is a feudal leader-in-training and female can give you a lot of material to work with (east Asian origins article).

Maker her critically relevant to the heroes. Find legitimate reasons for why Zuko, Ursa, Iroh and even members of the Gaang would care about Azula’s thoughts and feelings; if they care we care. Don’t think this is possible? It is definitely possible.

And finally, make Azula critically important to the plot. She cannot be a side character; she is too loathed and hated and has too much bad blood with the Gaang for her presence to be tolerated without some pressing need for her to be around. Whatever role she takes, it has to be big. It has to be obvious that Azula’s involvement is required. The Gaang has to think, “Well, damn, we need Azula’s help.” Zuko has to think, “I hope she makes the right decision and helps me. I know she can.” Iroh has to think, “I hope my niece isn’t killed.” Ursa has to think, “I want the love of my daughter. I want my daughter back.”

In short, you have to make Azula important.

Remember: her Arc in the Finale was not finished. It still can.

#Avatar The Last Airbender #atla meta #avatar comics #Azula #azula meta

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dreamerwriternstargazer · 4 years

Text

In Defence of Team Purple Lion

Voltron: Legendary Defender and its final season remains as one of the most poorly received children’s shows in the past decade. The show was a reboot from DreamWorks of the popular Voltron franchise owned by WEP LLC (World Event Productions) who were responsible for the first version of the show Voltron: Defender Of The Universe (1984), an adaptation of the anime show GoLion by Toei Animation. It initially started strong when released in 2016, with a premise that of a typical mech-centric kids’ show; 5 pilots of 5 robot lions coming together to form one big robot (Voltron) to fight against a big bad alien villain in space, however despite the formulaic appearance it proved to be a captivating watch with detailed and beautiful animation as well as surprisingly deep subject matter. The themes and messages of the show touched on darker topics such as racism and genocide with the backdrop of a complex portayal of war while still balancing it with the light-hearted and goofy dynamics of the diverse main characters, played by a diverse cast. Produced by Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim Dos Santos, both of whom had worked on the acclaimed Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend Of Korra, the story set up promised an equally deep and intricate story for VLD as had been the case for ATLA and LoK, as a result the show attracted a large and varied fan base beyond just children, many fans adults eager to see how the story and darker themes would be resolved as well as how the minority representations would be treated.

The final season released on Dec 14th 2018 came as a great shock to fans, not only were they intensely dissatisfied with the ending, virtually no one from any area or sub fandom was happy with the season as a whole and at the time of this article’s writing it has lower than a 6% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The show and its producers faced massive criticism over insensitive representations of minorities, an unsympathetic and condemning end for an abuse victim despite redemption for their abusers and a disempowering arc for the main woman of colour character in which she was sidelined and dismissed by her male counterparts up until her sacrifice. The core themes and messages of love, forgiveness and acceptance regardless of race were completely subverted, instead conveying to an impressionable Y-7 and above audience the opposite; heritage and race define a person rather than their own actions. As well as fans, many parents of kids who watched the show expressed unhappiness with the final season due to the toxic and regressive messages it sent. Soon after the season dropped a petition emerged to “free the original season 8 of Voltron” due to the belief that the final season was in fact an edited product of what the creators originally planned. This belief was sparked by visual inconsistencies in the season itself, the audio description not lining up with the action on screen (now fixed), one character not being played by her voice actor but her voice actually another character’s with the pitch turned up as well as comments from the cast and animators, now deleted. The strongest claims of edits were made by Tumblr user Leaking Hate in her initial meta Chasing The Ghosts Of Season 8 and the follow up, a more detailed breakdown, Seek Truth In Darkness in which she presented an alternative story that had been edited and cut down for reasons then unknown, with narrative and visual evidence from the season itself to support her argument. She and a few other fans officially came together in February 2019 to form Team Purple Lion, a team of analysts dedicated to finding the truth behind the disaster of the final season. However, since the fandom had had a poor history of harassing the show’s creators over ships (romantic relationships between characters) most attributed the poor story and resolve to an attempt to keep things neutral romantically between characters in a poor bid to please everyone. As a result the petition and campaign were merely linked to lack of shipping satisfaction for the fandom and dismissed as more toxic fandom behaviour that had been displayed previously by many fans.

Petitions and campaigns like these are not uncommon after a show or film’s ending, similar situations might be the HIMYM backlash in which fans were so unhappy with the ending of the show that there was a petition for an alternative ending, as well as the petition to Warner Bros regarding the Snyder Cut of Justice League. Both of these have actually succeeded with the Snyder cut of Justice League set to release in 2021 and the HIMYM DVD box sets containing the alternative ending, however what makes the Free VLD s8 campaign now led by Team Purple Lion unique is its claim that there’s an original finished product that the creators intended for release but was edited after completion to produce the poor final season that was released on Netflix. Often corporate meddling in creative works is common but it has not been documented before as a post production occurrence changing the finished work, it’s always taken place pre-production as was the case with Disney and Colin Trevorrow’s original script for ep. IX or during production, in the case of Justice League and Zak Snyder.

Since the start of the campaign in Dec 2018 there’s been continuous investigation and action taken by TPL to provide proof for their claims and the movement has evolved into a fight for creators’ rights, still active now a year and a half on. Their investigation early on resulted in discovering the IP holder (those who own the trademark) WEP as the ones with control over the show and therefore responsible for the released edited season 8. They’ve since defended DreamWorks and the showrunners from criticism in favour of requesting WEP and specifically President Robert Koplar, self proclaimed “steward of the property” for the original season 8 by the showrunners that was not released. There’s also been strong advocation from TPL to keep the protest against WEP’s interference with the creative team’s work peaceful to avoid dismissal and belittlement due to prior instances of the VLD fandom’s toxic behaviour that often included harassment of showrunners and toxic fan behaviour ranging from abusive remarks online to death threats, after the final season rumours were flying and the EPs faced abuse from upset fans so there was an active effort to stay civil on TPL’s part.

TPL and the #FreeVLDS8 movement has continuously faced criticism and backlash since its start regardless, the response from fellow fans ranging from supportive to downright disbelief and even the showrunners stating publicly [March 28th 2019 Let’s Voltron podcast] that there’s no “alternate cut of Voltron” branding the idea as a “conspiracy theory”. Claims of harassment have been attributed to TPL and the legitimacy of their allegations questioned, one fan questioning the possibility of the edits’ execution as well as others categorizing them as fans creating a theory based on shipping fulfillment. The controversy and consistent campaign a year and a half on interested me greatly, therefore after being led back to the movement by the very comments discrediting them I approached Team Purple Lion for comment on the aforementioned claims as well as conducting my own research and investigation into them. 3 members of the team, Crystal Rebellion, Dragon Of Yang and Leaking Hate spoke to me openly about their campaign and my own research produced some interesting results as well.

The basis of their argument is set on the show’s final season being an edited product, when I asked about what pushed her to this conclusion and writing her initial meta Leaking Hate explained that a mutual friend of Crystal and her’s drew their attention to it through the story saying:

“It’s interesting, nearly ALL of the episodes had a moment or two in them where Lotor [male villain] COULD have reappeared, and didn’t. Do you think he was written in to be the savior all along, and it was the higher ups that said no, good boy Lance [one of the main characters]? It seems like, given the narrative, and even given this season, it should have been Lotura [Lotor and Allura ship name], and all that wasn’t just feels… off. And not as a Lotura stan, I mean in general.”

“And YES I had. There was a narrative gap where Lotor should have fit, but for some reason wasn’t.” Hate said, “The initial conclusion we jumped to was that Lotor had been removed in the writing stage.”

It wasn’t until another friend mentioned a key scene out of place in the story and she went back to view it that she started to suspect the season had been changed from its original state. The scene in question was one in which Lotor says “Follow me!” at the end of Allura’s dream sequence in s8 ep8 Clear Day, despite his death being established before and after this point in the story. “There was no reason for that Follow Me shot to be there,” Hate explained, “unless the action of the viewer following Lotor had been removed.” Having studied a Fine Art degree and therefore well versed in animation and visual art she was able to recognise scenes that had been edited unusually throughout the season once she actively searched for other visual evidence. The Follow Me scene as well as others she found are displayed in her Ghosts meta, all indicating a different story from the one told in the show, along with the evidence Leaking Hate presented some initial ideas on what the story was (a redemption arc for Lotor and several sub arcs for the main characters that resolved their stories and previously set up story beats).

[Image Description: A close up of Prince Lotor’s face from season 8 on Netflix, staring directly out of the picture at the viewer. There are subtitles showing his speech at the bottom of the image, saying “Follow me!” End ID]

After Team Purple Lion’s formation Leaking Hate went on to publish a part two to her initial Ghosts meta, a 21k word meta entitled Seek Truth In Darkness which contained all visual evidence of edits found in the season as well as an extrapolation of the initial story indicated by said edits. The original story appeared to resolve unfinished narratives and arcs that the released s8 dismissed and the treatment of the representations in the show better, from respect towards minorities to an empowering arc for Allura, the main female character. Despite the original season having a more positive story, negative feedback from fans has been more common than positive. When I questioned the team members on it Leaking Hate mentioned “most people who believe we’re wrong tend to think we’re wrong in our premise” Dragon of Yang confirming that “it’s usually the premise of “VLD was edited after completion” that people disagree with”. However the screenshots they present as visual evidence hint at some truth in their argument, the first screen cap shown below indicative of some poor edits made to the animation since 3 characters are essentially cropped out of the picture.

Likewise this screen cap shows a split screen visually unbalanced with 2 characters at the bottom partially cropped out as well as the character on the left side with a much larger screen space than the other characters.

[Image description: A split screen from season 8 on Netflix, featuring from left to right: top left Shiro, below him is Keith in a larger section and Allura in a small triangular section below and to the right of Keith’s section. In the middle is a section showing Honerva’s mech stabbing the Voltron-Atlas mech with purple lightning shooting out. On the top right is Hunk, below him is Pidge, and below her the top half of Lance’s face. End ID]

Seasons prior to the final had always had visually balanced split screens with each character centred in their frames appropriately, indicating these and other s8 shots like them as an anomaly.

Hate reconstructed both screencaps based on what she believed they were originally:

[Image description: A split-screen from season 8 on Netflix, featuring from left to right: an Altean pilot, Merla, Keith, Hunk’s shoulder, Pidge, the top half of Allura’s face, and the top half of Lance’s face. On the top, right, and bottom of this screencap is dark pink background with the black lines of the split-screen extending to the edges of the colors, marking out where the rest of Hunk, Allura, and Lance should be visible if the view had not been cropped. With the lines extending out, Keith’s portion of the screen is also extended, leaving a completely removed section of the split-screen remaining, which is highlighted purple in this image. End ID]

[Image description: A split-screen from season 8 on Netflix, featuring from left to right: top left Shiro, below him is Keith, below and to the right of Keith is Allura in a small triangle section, the bottom of her face slightly cut off. In the middle is a section showing Honerva’s mech stabbing the Voltron-Atlas mech with purple lightning shooting out. On the top right is Hunk, below him is Pidge, and below her the top half of Lance’s face. On the left, right and bottom of the screencap is a dark pink background with the black lines of the split-screen extending to the edge of the colours, marking out where the rest of Lance and Allura should be visible if the view had not been cropped. Keith’s portion of the screen is smaller and a small dark pink section to the right separates his portion from the middle. Below him where his portion originally extended to is a section coloured dark purple that extends a little further to the left of Allura’s portion. End ID]

Other noticeable examples include scenes with the female lead Allura where her proportions do not match with any prior drawings of herself indicating that she was another character redrawn, Leaking Hate suggested Lotor as his proportions fit each instance.

[Image description: 2 pictures of Allura in the Blue Lion from a front and centre angle side by side. On the left Allura has her eyes closed and her arms stretched out holding onto the controls, the entire cockpit is glowing blue. On the right Allura’s eyes are open with a determined look on her face, she’s slightly hunched with her arms gripping the controls, the cockpit is coloured normally. End ID]

The image on the left is of Allura from s8 ep13 and the one on the right from the same episode a few minutes later, scaled so the interiors (which are unchanging 3D models) are the same size. She is notably taller in the one on the right with her head reaching above the seat and her frame bigger, with wider shoulders and thighs.

These are just a few out of the many examples of edits made that Leaking Hate presents in her metas along with her reconstruction of the original season based on what each edit indicates. While the reconstruction is to some point subjective, the visual inconsistencies are clear and can be easily checked by watching the show at each point said to be edited.

The timeframe and possibility for the edits’ execution, called into question by a fan on a twitter thread (now deleted) stating “it’s not physically possible to make that many edits in 2 months and with leftover budget”, was also addressed by the team and their work. Leaking Hate clarified that “it wasn’t 2 months” that they took place in, “it was 6. The edits began in mid July”, a fact determined by voice actor Jeremy Shada mentioning in an interview released on July 23rd that he had gone in to record new lines at the time. Hate also said, “It’s less of a question of would they have time than it is, well. They did do it. It was nearly impossible. But the fact that it is done shows that they did.” She went on, “I think people misunderstand when we claim it was ‘edited’. They hear “it was reanimated”, but it wasn’t reanimated. There is NO new animation in the edited s8 at all. As far as I can tell, 99% of the edits are composed of tracing, clever cuts and sleight of hand.” This is backed up by all the visual evidence they present as well as their work, claiming absence of animation (making the story disjointed and incoherent in places) rather than new, additional animation changing it.

Crystal Rebellion added, “One thing that strikes us (I feel pretty confident speaking for everyone in this case) is that Studio Mir [responsible for animating the show] is impeccably flawless with their work. Their previous work before Voltron: Legendary Defender, and even Seasons 1-6 and most of 7 are beautifully animated. Stunning. Season 8... is not. Studio Mir also had a viewing party for VLD: S8 - and they reported that they loved the final product; so the animators saw Season 8 after it was completed. The season, however, that aired, was really shoddy animation, rough transitions, music mistakes, and what appear to be alterations to still images - it isn't their usual quality of work, and moreover, the animators have stated that they don't recognize what aired. Often we've been asked something like 'Maybe they just didn't know what scenes they were animating' or 'Didn't know the intended finished product' but in this case, it is documented that they saw the final season and that it's different from what was aired. The poor workmanship in what we see from S8 - all the edits Hate goes through to find and explain, coupled with Mir's disbelief, is indicative that the animation studio had no idea this happened. That means it 1) Happened post-production and 2) It wasn't the Studio that changed anything. Dos Santos mentions in an interview [March 4th ABTV] that they were cut and pasting mouths and moving frames around - no time, no budget, and no staff left. It was all them, after it had been completed - after Mir had seen the original rendition and loved it, that all this happened. The parallel point to that to further support it is, had this been written in the script from the beginning, we would've seen a flawlessly animated season with a painful storyline. We don't see that.”

Although Mir’s reaction to the season they viewed in October (before its official drop) has since been deleted, one animator’s response to the season 8 that was released on Netflix is still online, comparing the show to a house and stating that “every single brick of the last season is very upsetting” but “everything else is good” (translation can be found here), making it clear he was not pleased with the final product. Joaquim Dos Santos does also mention in the interview Crystal references that changes were made to season 8 after season 7 dropped, stating, “You can probably see it in the animation. If you really pay attention it’s like, it’s literally our editor cutting out mouths and puppeting different dialogue.” It’s documented that the epilogue was added to s8 late after s7 dropped however it does not have any dialogue, this statement paired with Shada’s about “still recording on Voltron” begs the question, what change was made besides the epilogue? Hate shows in her Darkness meta that Shada’s character Lance was used to replace Lotor as well as Allura in key scenes, if Shada was still recording lines (unusual since audio recording is done very early in animation production) then it would have been for these moments.

Not all criticism has been based on the editing premise however; the story they present as the original has garnered negative comments as well since it featured Lotor, a divisive character due to his moral ambiguity and previous condemnation as a killer, and predominantly focused on his redemption as well as relationship with Allura. The narrative makes it clear that Lance, the blue paladin and one of the main characters popular with fans, would not have been the focus as he was in the released season and would have been replaced by Lotor as Allura’s partner. When I brought up the claims of bias in their reconstruction Leaking Hate pondered on it.

“Do I love the story because it is Lotura, or do I love Lotura because the story makes me love it?” she mused, “I think it's all the same. I was able to pick out the original story because of my bias in favour of Lotor, Allura, and Lotura. Had I not been invested in those characters, and that ship, I would have had no reason to look. I am not reconstructing based on wish fulfillment, or what I want to see,” she asserted, “but the story I am finding happens to be a story that I love.” In regards to Lance and her analysis on him she stated bluntly, “I HATE Lance. Were I reconstructing based on wish fulfillment I would have him alone and miserable. But that is not a good story. The real story of OGS8 has Lance coming to love himself and to learn to accept Allura's friendship as equally worthy as her romantic affection. It has him grow into a good man, and it has him become Allura's right hand when he helps her save the man she loves. It is an uplifting and wholesome message for little boys and grown men alike. And I think it is equally important that we save S8 for Lance as it is that we save it for Lotor and Allura.” When I mentioned that some would find her dislike of Lance an argument against her she also added that “they are right to.”

“I would not trust someone claiming to have found the 'real' story if I knew they hated Lotor or Allura.” However she admitted, “I don't hate him all the time. I think, if the Lance we get in OGS8 is the Lance I believe is there, then I will find him tolerable, if irritating.”

While it’s true that Hate is critical of Lance and his character, the reconstructed story she presents in Seek Truth does reflect her words, giving him an empowering and sympathetic arc growing from his previous immature and womanising character into a selfless, respectful friend. The team have also put their efforts into creating and realising the story in their reconstruction of the original s8, Rise and Atone, and so far it has stayed true to what they’ve promised, addressing characters and their arcs, the only deviation made being a romance free conclusion in a bid to stay ship-neutral. Dragon of Yang explained the narrative decisions they made with R&A stating clearly, “If this was wish fulfillment, we would have stopped at one detail or another. Every character’s arc was halted and destroyed beyond reconciliation or catharsis. Every character deserves their story to be done justice, and open-endings give that catharsis VLD originally had while remaining respectful to everyone’s shipping preferences. VLD is a story of hope and growth, to deny that a character has grown since day 1 is to deny that there is a story there to be told, and that in turn denies a person out there - who likely identifies with that character - the feeling of being seen. The best thing we can do as scholars and as activists,” she concluded, “is try to recreate the vision the staff had originally made and do so with care and attention to the work they put into every line.”

As for the harassment claims attributed to Team Purple Lion by both fans and The Voltron Store on twitter, there’s not much to support them, and in fact a great deal to disprove them. The team has maintained a level of professionalism in both their work and in their conduct online, consistently citing sources and providing proof for claims as well as campaigning respectfully. Hate commented, “they seem to be conflating our protest with the general hatred being thrown around in the fandom. We've made a point to emphasize polite but firm protest and advocate reaching out through official channels.” While there is a lot of anger and hate from fans towards the show and the producers, none of it has been from Team Purple Lion. Their protest has continuously avoided and often defended the producers and voice actors, who have been regularly attacked by other fans during the show’s airing and since due to the poor conclusion, all of whom TPL have made clear are under NDAs and cannot comment freely (although it’s worth noting, they stopped actively promoting the show on their social media after the season 8 release). Instead their questioning has focused on WEP, the company who own the Voltron trademark, after discovering through a meta analysis of a VLD episode signs that they were meddling with the creators’ vision of the show and ordered them to change it against the producers’ wishes. While it was only a speculative piece, WEP’s quick reaction to the release of said meta by claiming through their Voltron Store twitter that they “do not have any influence over the creative direction of the show” despite ignoring fans for months after the season release suggests some truth to it. Twitter user Eros compiled all evidence of their involvement since then in a Twitter thread and the majority of it is damning, their denial directly contradicting statements from the voice actors and producers prior to and after s8 that confirmed they were the controlling party and had creative input, as well as the creators’ desire to tell a progressive and empowering story however not being able to because of “other controlling parties” outside of DreamWorks. WEP have also made contradictory statements to fans about the season, saying that “nothing was edited” yet agreeing with a fan that a lot was left out and a director’s cut would sell well, as well as mocking another who left a Facebook review (March 16th 2019) complaining of being hung up on, replying to them that an “imposter” answered their phones:

[Image description: A facebook review of The Voltron Store. Text from the top reads as:

Reviewer (name coloured out) doesn’t recommend The Voltron Store.

Review reads: Terrible customer service. They literally hung up on me mid sentence and it was clearly not a case of a call accidentally being dropped. Extremely disappointed by the lack of professionalism!

The Voltron Store’s reply to the reviewer: if you actually talked to us you would find we are very nice people! And we never hang up on anybody EVER - unless they make outrageous claims like Power Rangers is better than Voltron!

The reviewer’s reply: The Voltron Store I did speak to a woman who identified herself Stephanie briefly, but I will never speak to your company again. Thank you for the response but I don't appreciate being called a liar. Please see the attached screenshot for proof of my abruptly ended call back in January. I desire to have no further communication with your company now, I simply decided finally other people deserved to know my personal experience.

Below is a screenshot showing the reviewer called The Voltron Store’s number.

The Voltron Store replied: We do not have a Stephanie here. That must be the issue: you dealt with an imposter! We would review the security cam footage but it does not go back 2 months. End ID.]

In stark contrast to WEP, Team Purple Lion has responded to criticism and addressed it, as well as reaching out to media outlets to clarify and correct poorly sourced claims, however have been faced with no response. Their questioning of WEP and their requests for the original season 8 on social media have been civil; their replies to the Voltron Store posts on Twitter containing no insults or cruel remarks, the harshest only critiques on the company’s lack of tact promoting a show and its merchandise that many considered offensive and toxic due to the last season. “At no point did we set out as some kind of campaign to “attack WEP” or “demand a new season”,” Crystal Rebellion said. “We were a handful of people looking at what amounted to, to use a metaphor, a puzzle that had technically been assembled but most of the pieces didn’t match up properly. We eventually decided to take the pieces that didn’t line up and look at what the picture was supposed to be. There was no ulterior motive - we just wanted the truth. When we realised the truth and it became obvious early on that Mir had seen the original season, we became convinced there was an unedited s8, perhaps in Mir’s backup drives. People saw it, which means it was a completed product, so it became a campaign to ask for it, it’s what the fandom wants, it’s what is profitable.”

In the face of all the negative response and disbelief, Team Purple Lion have gathered an overwhelming amount of evidence to support their case, not only from the show itself but also corroborating statements from the production team and cast as well as WEP’s conduct in response to the campaign. As a result TPL have gained a great amount of support and followers from the Voltron fandom, and are still gaining more a year and a half later. “I gotta give a shout out to Cosmic Royalty,” Leaking Hate said, “a group of Russian fans who reached out to us asking if they could do translations of our work. We host their translations on our website now and there’s apparently a group 500 strong on the Russian social media site VK that supports the work we do together!” Violet Howler on Tumblr has also been a big supporter as well as new fans, recently revealing themselves in the wake of good news, the fight to get the original season seemingly won as Leaking Hate displayed in her most recent meta. In it Hate outlines evidence for the franchise’s ownership changing hands from WEP to DreamWorks and therefore the release of the original season, based on the recent repromotion of the show through articles, new merchandise from the store and the new store designs that all suggest the release, since there would be no other reason to promote a show that was a PR disaster, so universally hated. Regardless of all the opposition and discredit they have faced, confirmation of the truth of Voltron’s original season 8’s fate is expected this summer before the official art book is made available, in the form of the season’s release itself. Whether the fans will be happy with it is another story, however Leaking Hate emphasised firmly that fan satisfaction was not the point, or at least not entirely. “Nothing is perfect, and nothing will please everyone. Especially a show like VLD, with almost 35 years of legacy and fans behind it. There are people who will not like the original season, there are even some who will prefer the edited one - I’m sure the WEP executives are some of them. But it will be the season it was supposed to be, the one that was a labour of love. There is so much love and care poured into every frame of VLD, this was a story that the people working on it wanted to tell; it was more than just a job to them. It was created with love, and it was with love that we fought for it, and when it comes down to it that’s what VLD’s meta narrative was about: love.”

#articles #fandom #fandom culture #team purple lion #voltron #voltron legendary defender #vld fandom #freevlds8 #dreamworks

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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Idk guys, could people maybe just try taking me at my word every now and again? I mean, what exactly is it that people think I get out of these posts?

Is it popularity? Do you think I make these posts to be popular? Because I took several months upon moving into Batfandom a year or two ago before actually making these kinds of posts more than once in a blue moon, and I was waaaaaaaaaaay more popular initially than I am now. I lost literal scores of followers once people realized this is a Thing for me, and could probably get most of them back if I just....stopped. Given the number of people who seem to follow and unfollow me regularly, as if just to see if I’m ‘done yet.’

So.....no, its not about popularity.

Is it about note counts? Do you think I make these posts to get notes, by being controversial, or with ‘the anti’s’? Because if you look through my archives you’d see that without variation, I consistently get FAR less notes on these posts that I do compared to like....literally ANY other content I post. When I write a Batfandom meta indepth, its rare for me not to get hundreds of notes on it. When I write a post like the last one examining survivor-related topics in depth, its rare for me to get up to even fifty notes.

So......no, its not about note counts.

Is it about garnering sympathy/pity? I do rely on donation posts sometimes, and I might see gains there due to people having sympathy or pity for me that they’re afraid to tangibly express online due to the controversial nature of many of my posts, but that might show up there, right? Well, sure, except for the fact that....my sob story is in no way reliant on these more controversial posts to exist, and in fact would be a hell of a lot more compelling when it comes to attaining donations if I DIDN’T add in all these other posts that are blatantly alienating to a lot of the people who were like “you had me at abuse/incest/rape survivor who needs major surgery as an end result of his gay bashing way back in college but then you lost me when you said I am a literal rapist for reading and writing specific fics like wtf dude?”

So.....no, its not about garnering sympathy/pity or even donations.

Is it about just being interesting or standing out or getting attention? Do you think I make these posts like a broken record because I have nothing else to talk about? Because uh, I have my pet topics but I can literally write essays on pretty much ANYTHING and everything about Dick Grayson or Scott McCall or Bobby Drake or plenty of other characters. And again, like I mentioned above, consistently get WAY more attention and engagement from people on any of those. I don’t need even my survivor status to be interesting, thanks, and I don’t even actually care all that much about it at the end of the day, because anyone who’s followed me for any length of time knows I would be perfectly happy to talk for a week straight about my OCs or original content even, as long as I have even just one or two people engaging with it, lol.

So....no, its not about being interesting or getting attention.

Is it about being a know-it-all, regarded as having certain expertise or being an authority on a certain topic? If so, that’d be a weird choice given how often I talk about how being a survivor is NOT a monolithic experience, and the fact that I center myself in my posts on the subject is not because I’m presuming I speak for everyone, but rather specifically to keep my views and experiences tailored specifically to ME and my own experiences entirely....the only viewpoint from which I AM qualified to speak with authority. I don’t post what I post the way I post to be viewed as the be-all and end-all of surivor views, and I don’t make it about myself and my experiences to wave my survivor credentials around and shut down opposition - if I did, it’d be blatantly ineffective given the amount of anon hate I get and derailing my posts experience, most of the time using information I’ve freely offered up in my own posts in an attempt to trigger or silence me. I post the way I post in these posts for one reason only, usually to my own detriment - I’m simply trying to humanize a topic that far too many people IMO deliberately try to view as abstract and hypothetical in order to distance themselves from the real issues. Not to mention like, I know a great deal about a lot of things? There aren’t many other former stuntmen or actors posting in this part of the internet that I’ve seen, I could focus on my own expertise there, or in any number of academic topics I’ve explored a lot just out of personal interest. Hell, I’ve been called a ‘Dick Grayson expert’ more than once, and could easily just focus on my knowledge and insight of his character, if I weren’t so often alienating half his fandom with these posts, right?

So.....no, its not about being a know-it-all or regarded as having certain expertise or being an authority on a certain topic.

So really, when it comes right down to it, there’s only two things it could possibly be, wouldn’t you agree? Either I’m speaking from a place of honesty as to very real reactions and views I have on this subject, born of my own experiences and knowledge.....or I’m just speaking out my ass from a place of wanting to feel morally superior about something.

But does it really make sense for it to be the latter? If I wanted a moral superiority hill to die on in order to feel good about myself or whatever, do you really think this is the only one I could come up with, or come back to this often? Given the number of ways it seems to shoot me in the foot in the process? Oh, I know I have a certain tone when I speak on this subject. I know I ooze the same ‘you sound so dumb right now’ tone I accuse others of when I approach stuff like this, but the thing is.....all of that ALWAYS traces back to like...me REACTING off of something, not just randomly up and deciding hey this is a good week to be hated by bringing up something I know damn well 90% of my followers would be happy to see me never bring up again.

And for a guy who clearly LIKES interacting and engagement on this platform as much as I do, does that make any sort of sense at all? Maybe every now and then, but as often as I do post about this stuff, for as long as I’ve been?

Or could it possibly just be like.....I’m telling the truth, and this shit is really, truly exhausting in a way that I, and any other survivor it exhausts, shouldn’t HAVE to put up with. Its not like I came out of the gate swinging, in fandom at large or even this fandom specifically. It took time to get me just....tired of it. The same bullshit, every day, every week, without fail. And again, it all mirrors the same shit I’ve been hearing from people my whole life, to avoid engaging with the ways they weren’t even complicit in my past traumas, but just....inconvenienced by it. People talk a good game about being there for us, believing us, supporting us, but in my experience, the second something beyond a simple acknowledgment of status is asked for, the second something someone would have to ACT UPON is asked for.....the switch flips.

And that shit. Is. Exhausting.

I don’t make noise on this subject because I in any way actionably or actually benefit from it. I don’t even make noise on it EXPECTING to, at this point. I make noise simply because.....the subject deserves noise, and I deserve to make it if I make that choice, and for too much of my life that just wasn’t a possibility. And all of this bullshit, as a result? Make no mistake, its just bullshit. I don’t ever call it me being bullied or victimized or harassed or martyred, because its none of those things and I don’t regard it as those things. (Well I occasionally refer to that TW anon as harassing, but that’s because their behavior is not just limited to me and very much fits every textbook definition of the word and needs to be regarded as such). But the rest of it? Like, I don’t have a martyr or victim complex because I don’t feel victimized by this shit, lmfao. It really is just exhausting and irritating. It makes me tired and annoyed. Not harmed. Even being genuinely triggered by shit, which happens more than I care to have it happen, is at the end of the day still just an unwanted echo of a shout that I heard years ago, and an echo is never going to hurt me the way that initial shout did or have the same impact. I’ll never quite get how people seem so convinced that their anon hate or triggering effect is going to accomplish what nothing before this actually did or be the TRULY demoralizing impact I can’t move past or whatever, as opposed to just being irritating and frustrating in its hypocrisy, but well. Guess people are projecting about feeling powerless in their own lives, lol, whoops.

But just....the hypocrisy of all this grates. And the only thing I’m really looking for out of it, if I’m even looking for anything at all, is just even a few people over the years saying something as simple as “i never really thought about it like this but I can see it now.” Is it really that hard to just listen to people? My ‘voice of moral superiority/condescension’ in these things comes from the fact that I AM listening, I HAVE been listening, and that’s why I know for a fact that the things being said in opposition are all things I’ve heard MANY MANY times before, and refuted or seen refuted each time. Can some of you say the same thing about yours? Especially when that tone only comes up in posts that repeatedly reaffirm that you’re not actually responding to anything I’ve actually said or written, but merely your own idea of what you THINK I’m saying, or else just a viewpoint you’re comfortable refuting, even if its not actually mine and at best tangential to my own? When you can find something insightful in so many of my posts about a character we both like, and understand even the most rambling of my essays about Dick Grayson just fine, can you truly and with confidence say the disconnect when it comes to hearing and understanding what I say in these posts is all mine? Are you sure it has NOTHING to do with anything you bring into your reading of these posts from a place of defensiveness or preconceptions of your own?

Just....think about it.

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darksaiyangoku · 4 years

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RWBY Fan Concept: The Faunus and the White Fang

I can do this, right?

The Faunus subplot is easily the one of the most controversial topics within the RWBY fandom. Many fans have expressed disappointment in how the topic was addressed in the world of Remnant, calling it the ever so repeated line “wasted potential”. I’ve seen that quote being thrown a lot in this fandom during many discussions and rants within the fandom.

However, I honestly agree with it. I do think the Faunus subplot was wasted potential. Despite being a good subplot in concept, the execution was questionable at best, and outright poor handled at worst. One of the many things that I, and several others, feel went wrong was the fact that the Faunus haven’t really suffered any discrimination. Sure, we’ve told they do, from many characters, news articles but aside from few petty insults, Cardin’s bullying of Velvet and Weiss’s insensitive comments about Sub and the Faunus, we haven’t really felt any of the hard hitting prejudice that they supposedly receive. This debate got even more heated when Miles Luna posted this on his reddit:

I agree that the Faunus subplot was overly ambitious, among other things. But the race of the author isn’t the problem, it was how the subplot was written that was the problem. I feel that a good writer, regardless of race, can write themes of discrimination and prejudice really well.

Now, if you couldn’t tell by the title of this post, this will be addressing how I would write the Faunus and White Fang differently. This isn’t me going “I’m better than Miles and Kerry and I can write RWBY better than they can.” Absolutely NOT! All I’m doing is just giving an alternate scenario about how I would do things. I like writing fanfiction and AUs and giving my favourite stories my own spin. I’ve already done something similar with Cinder’s backstory and the Semblance Weakness Rule, now it’s time for the Faunus.

1.) Influence from the X-Men

Me and my friend, Joe, were discussing various ways we could write/remix the Faunus in our fanfics and this is where The X-Men came into the picture... and it fits perfectly!

The X-Men are a group of gifted individuals saving and protecting the innocent in a world that both fears and hates them and while it does seems a bit too on the nose to take inspiration from the Mutants, I can see enough similarities between the two groups to justify this.

Like the Faunus, the Mutants are subject to discrimination, prejudice and even downright hatred from the general public, which is in stark contrast to the superheroes such as the Avengers or Fantastic Four. One of the best examples of this is Kurt Wagner, A.K.A Nightcrawler.

Here is someone who, despite the fact that he looks like a demon, is a good person with a good heart and is a textbook example of how you should never judge a book by its cover.

Also, unlike the Faunus’s single allegory of racism, the Mutants in the Marvel Universe serve as an allegeory for discrimination as a WHOLE.

Other allusions to the Mutants include the factions of the Brotherhood of Mutants and the White Fang.

Like the Brotherhood, the White Fang are a villainous organisation that seek vengeance and superiority over their enemies (humans). This is further represented by both their leaders;

Sienna serves as the perfect allusion to Magneto. They were initially allies to the founders of a peaceful movement; Charles Xavier

and Ghira Belladonna.

However, they shared very different and conflicting ideological viewpoints. Because of this and the harsh discrimination they faced, they ended up becoming the very monsters humanity deemed them as and threatening war against their kind.

I also want this to extend to their legacies; Blake Belladonna and Adam Taurus.

Blake would carry on the ideals of her father and the original White Fang

while Adam slowly succumbs to the darkness and carry on the vengeful movement that Sienna put in place. Unlike Sienna, who would represent the more older, methodical Magneto, Adam would represent the more bloodlust, violent Magneto. Think of it like Ian Mckellen and Michael Fassbender.

All that said, I’m not going to make the Faunus a complete 1:1 of the Mutants. They serve as an influence, but that’s as far as it goes and I do have some of my own ideas, which I will talk about here.

2.) My own ideas

Some things that I would include that weren’t in the show would be the following:

Showing Faunus Discrimination- While we’re definitely told about the discrimination they face, we aren’t actually shown anything else besides a few bullying scenes. How I would change this would be to add some more background scenes which describe humans’ distrust or hatred of the Faunus. My good friends @ironpines suggested to look at various examples of racism that occurred throughout history, which can better flesh this out instead of limiting myself to just one example. I also had an idea of Faunus Trafficking, where they’re forced to do any labour that the humans won’t risk becaus they’re expendable. The work is either menial, or very dangerous and they’re treated harshly.

Adam/Sienna’s Relationship- I would love to explore their dynamic in my fanfics. I always felt that they would have a mother-son relationship, where Sienna would raise him, train him and even court him to become the new High Leader should she ever fail. In her eyes, Adam is her successor, her heir.

The Peaceful White Fang- In canon, we’ve only ever seen the Fang as a terrorist organisation. Going back to the “show, don’t tell” rule, I want to explore the Fang during their peaceful days in some flashbacks, showing us what they originally stood for before their turn by Sienna. This also leads into my next idea.

Sienna’s changing of the White Fang- I always thought that Sienna was the type to go behind Ghira’s back and train the other members in ways of combat. After many failed attempts at peaceful protests, she decides that a more forceful approach. This would be a defining moment for both Adam and Blake.

Adam’s character- We all knew this was coming. One big aspect I would change for him is his relationship with Blake. Instead of a romantic one, I’d have it as best friends. Aside from Sienna, Adam’s closest relationship is with Blake. Along with my OC, Kenji Kageyama, he trained her and looked after her like an older brother. However, as he succumbs to his inner demons, he begins to manipulate Blake to his cause. This would cause strife between the two as she starts to break free from him, culminating when she finally leaves. Like in canon, he’s understandably hurt by this but instead of an angry ex boyfriend, he’s heartbroken because he sees Blake and her family as traitors. Not just to the White Fang, but to all Faunus.

Other Faunus Villains- Aside from Adam, Ilia, the Albain twins and Sienna, I’d like there to be other Faunus villains too, alluding to the Jungle Book, Journey to the West and the Universal Monster movies.

And there you have it, some ideas I have for the Faunus in my fanfics. Also to @ironpines, I’m really not good at analysis. I tried my best and I even had a lot of thoughts on how I would write this but it kinda got a little chaotic and I lost my original train of thought. You guys are much better at this than I am and if you have anything to add or improve this, it’s greatly appreciated.

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icharchivist · 5 years

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Oh no I agree w/you on not being hard on fans who think differently. One of the reasons I like fan discussions is to read other people's thoughts and try to understand where the ones I disagree w/are coming from. That's just my personal view and reading of the character. I think lately the stress has been getting to Chaoji so he's extra harsh and that's going to be unattractive to Allen's friends. I also think he's wording things the wrong way. It'd be better if he said I'll fight the Noah -

2 instead of I'll fight Allen or telling Allen's friends to forget about him. In this way Chaoji is, whether he means to or not, making it sound like Allen is JUST a Noah. Which.... Is actually a interesting thought. What does the average person think how a Noah works? Does he think Allen is 100% gone now? *shrugs* Either way agree to disagree on some parts. I have no probs w/fans so forgive me if it sounded I was harsh to them. I was just naming of groups I saw and thought it was interesting.

Ahh alright, sorry then for the lecture! it’s fine, don’t worry now that it’s cleared up.

I think i’m getting a little paranoid of some fandom arguments? especially when it starts to involve how some fans react to some controversial events. Bigger fandoms have been so filled with dramas (there had been a lot of push back against people liking not pure uwu characters that i get defensive at the idea of judging how someone may approach a controversial character they may like) i tend to end up having red flags over silly things i would probably have used myself a few years back.

Your argument was fine, and honestly pretty mild in that term, i guess i’ve just had seen enough more virulent argument to be a little.. *alarms bells* upon reading some vague keywords.

So my point is, my bad, i’ve got a little defensive there and judged your ask too harshly. I apologize.

Now back to the topic, yeah agreed on Chaoji. I honestly think Chaoji doesn’t know what details makes a Noah? I mean, the Order didn’t know before Road made her introduction and the Bookmen had to explain to them a few things. No one knows what it is like to turn into a Noah, no one knows about the awakened memories, and hell, the 14th is already a specific sort of Noah (i say it with all the love, but Nea isn’t a Noah Memory like Joyd is, he’s a parasite inside Allen’s body: his own being, not a memory that awoke in Allen, so even that when you know Noah’s development logic, is weird)

Chaoji didn’t become an exorcist until after the Ark’s arc and no one had any reasons too explain to that random crew man who was just helping carrying Lenalee around what little secrets they had learn about the Noah. So I think Chaoji still sees them as “they control the Akuma, they are rotten to the core, and once they turn there’s no come back”, perhaps projecting what he knows of the Akuma (which in which case is true, once an akuma, the only thing you can do is kill them with innocence for salvation - no attempt to really save them. Which makes me think, Chaoji did know Chomesuke- i think he wasn’t developped enough to have a reaction to him, but the fact Chomesuke had to destroy himself bc he couldn’t resist to its nature anymore might have added to this argument that there is no salvation for Dark Matter).

For Chaoji I really don’t think he had the time to know about Noah stuff, and everything we know about how Noah comes to be come from Noah’s POV, so not something the Order may know, let alone a stubborn exorcist who hates them by principle. Allen tends to extend his compassion to non-humans because in a way... if he had seen Mana as non human the moment he would have turned him as an Akuma i think Allen couldn’t have stand it. (also i ended up mixing up with FMA but that reminded me of how Ed refused to kill the armor guys in the Lab 5 even when they kept saying they weren’t human anymore, because if he did so it would just imply that his brother isn’t human either and that it’s his fault that it is like that. I think the same reasoning can be applied to Allen @ the Akuma and extend to the Noah as long as the Noah are on the “side” of the Akuma. Ironically though considering “Mana” ended up becoming a Noah. Well. Always was, but you get my point)

Meanwhile the only strong feeling we’ve seen from an exorcist @ the Noah for being a Noah, was Kanda saying that since they are humans (which Skinn repeated) then they could be killed. Which i personally always took as a reassurance on Kanda’s part of reclaiming his own humanity and Alma’s, since they were denied it as kids and perhaps the only thing that, after all the horrors Alma had done, that made him human was that Kanda could kill him. Kanda asserting the Noah’s humanity in order to convince himself that death is part of humanity would, if i’m correct, be a sort of projection to protect that memory and identity, the same way Allen projects on others.

But for the others, Lenalee had never hesitated around the Noah, even upon meeting Road, she quickly fought back. Lavi has a bad experience with Noah but he’s neutral enough to care more about what Allen wants in the end (when Allen wants to rescue Tyki the whole thing is about “the guys at the Order will look badly at it but if you think it’s important...” and not “why you do want to rescue the guy i wanted to kill a few hours ago”)Then there’s mainly Krory with the twins (and Lenalee to an extend) and I think there was too much irritation going on about them being brats more than them being Noah that went on there.

But from Chaoji’s point of view who knew nothing about them, had spent his life hating the dark matter for taking what he loved, he saw.... Well Tyki playing with Lavi’s grief and threatening Lenalee, before trapping them in the Ark and trying to kill Allen, he’s seen Skinn attack everyone and they then left Kanda behind with him, he’s been here a huge chuck of the Jasdebi fight just to see the Twins being Absolute Disaster Making You Lose Faith In Anything They Ever Represent (And It Happens To Be The Noah This Time) (did i ever mention that i love those stupid twins? I love them. They’re so dumb.), Road destroying Lavi’s mind and torturing Allen into forcing him to destroy Lavi, and finally the Lullubel attack on the Order that killed a huge amount of people. And if we extend the timeline to when he could have caught up his next meeting with the Noah in the Alma arc made him KO, kidnapped Lavi and Bookman who are now thought dead, and Fiidora’s parasites tortured him when he was powerless to save Lavi and Bookman, which might add some feeling of guilt there by the by.

Without understanding of the Noah he just saw... the sheer destruction they brought along with them.

So Allen saying “I might become a Noah and you will have to kill me” - well I think seeing how horrible the Noah had been up to this point was enough for Chaoji to think that if Allen became one, it would override all of the good qualities Allen had. After all he has never seen the Noah before they became Noah.

Tbh It makes me even wonder if being introducted to Tyki in his human form (and Road to her human form as well but it’s more minor than how they befriended Tyki before that) may have made more possible for Allen to want to try to see that humanity. Because he saw this humanity with how Tyki behaved with his friends. More than just... hearing about “Oh apparently he has friends” that Chaoji would have heard from Allen, Lavi and Krory’s reaction upon meeting Tyki again.

In a way, the fact Krory also has this association adding to how much he cares for Allen to relativise the way “becoming a Noah” might affect Allen - in a way Chaoji cannot. Because Krory saw Tyki having seemingly meaningful friendships with humans so, becoming a Noah wouldn’t come out as completely monstruous for him a way someone who just know the Noah might. (that, and also how his love for Eliade was serious and might make him more willing to believe in that humanity, even if Eliade told him in the end that she was just using him. Krory didn’t know she was lying - but he might hold on to that feeling).

So adding to all of Chaoji’s unchecked prejudice, there is this complete unknown over people he had only known as cruel. He has never seen their humanity the way Lavi, Krory, Kanda and Allen has. Then again yeah it doesn’t excuse anything because Miranda and Lenalee for exemple are in the same situation having suffered first hand from tortures from, well, Road for exemple, but trusting Allen above all while just as much in the dark. Even if depending how much the infos Bookman gave came to Miranda and Lenalee before Chaoji joined the Exorcist Group.

So that ended up being a lot of rambling dkjhfd but my point is that therefore, Allen is the one to see the humanity of the Noah the most, Krory and Lavi has reason to at least know personally Tyki’s human side to doubt how the Noah’s cruelty works, Kanda had had how he met with Skinn to approach it, else every exorcists before Chaoji was recruited might have heard a bit from Bookman but that’s it. Any other sort of acknowledging this humanity would come with trusting Allen. Which Chaoji doesn’t.

And no one knows what “becoming a Noah” is like. And while Chaoji wasn’t there and i’m certain Lveille lied, but Allen did have a swift change of behavior and personality at least twice in the Alma’s arc for everyone to see (when talking to the Earl + when Kanda stabbed him). Even Johnny saw that. A second hand retelling could just convince Chaoji “well perhaps he had no control and it doesn’t matter what kind of person he was - once a Noah, you become a monster” and that could be enough.

That was a lot of ramble i’m so sorry dkjhfd but yeah. It’s a mess.

And it’s just... there’s no way Chaoji can know. All he could do would be to trust Allen. Even seeking for answers isn’t exactly a position Chaoji is in, even if it would be preferable if he did question what he thought so far (like the others do) rather than just thinking “yup, he’s a goner, i’ll fight him”

if that makes any sense kdjhfd

idk Chaoji’s perspective is kinda fascinating to me. I dislike that he has it and doesn’t question it, but it’s fascinating to see how being emotionally disconnected from every elements we have ended up caring about can make someone like this. It really shows the price of emotional investment for me to see how Chaoji behave. He’s kinda the Counter-audience in that regard. And that’s what makes him fascinating, for as much as i dislike him as a person ahah.

#ichafantalks dgm #Anonymous #ichareply

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lucyreviewcy · 5 years

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An Ode to Taylor Swift’s Approach to Self-Branding

In his book Stars, Richard Dyer discusses the way that movie stars’ personas are built and developed both within and outside of their films. Dyer suggests that the kind of characters that stars play feed into the overall narrative of their career. Taylor Swift isn’t a film star, unless you count a few brief cameos, but her persona is unique in that her personal presentation (Instagram, interviews and anywhere where she is pretending to be herself) and her performance persona (in photoshoots, music videos, live performances and arguably her music) are so nakedly constructed.

While she once may have claimed to have something in common with the girl she plays in the videos for Picture to Burn or Tim McGraw, these days, Swift is no stranger to drawing attention to how her image is created. If you don’t believe me, just look at the video for …Ready for It. She’s literally making a new Taylor.

Whenever T Swizzle releases new music, her fans are chided for combing through the lyrics and accompanying images with a fine toothed comb to find hidden clues or references to other parts of the Swift Mythos. Swift’s music videos are rife with call-backs, her lyrics shot through with veiled (and sometimes…not veiled at all) references to events in her personal life or previous work. As she proved with the Look What You Made Me Do video, you don’t need a cast of thousands of Hollywood stars and decades of comic books to create an extended universe; she did it with one name, one persona, reinvented over and over.

YouTube film academic Lindsay Ellis has pointed out that any text or product exclusively targeted at teenage girls (Ellis refers to the Twilight franchise of books and films) is received by audiences as being universally poor quality and worthy of spades of parodies and mean-spirited hot takes. A lot of media that is cherished by and targeted at young girls is considered extremely low art, and Taylor Swift, despite being a prolific songwriter and a consummate performer, is often dropped into this bucket with a loud, gangly thud. Regularly commenting on how much she loves Tumblr (a site often associated with the obsessive, single-minded fandom (you can read my Timeless reviews on this very blog btw)) as a way of connecting with her fans, Swift makes a big point of trying to connect on a personal level with the hordes of young women who connect with her music.

EM Forster wrote: “Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.” Swift seeks to connect with her fans who connect with her art. She’s attempting to turn a one-sided exchange into a kind of contribution triangle, whereby she’s inspired by her fans who are inspired by her work, and both contribute in the resulting music. By creating this pseudo-give-and-take, Taylor’s music and images become something more than a disparate set of marketing images and tunes, but one mythology – “fragments no longer.”

I think it’s admirable for any star to try and do this. As I mentioned at the start of this article, Swift’s persona is fully constructed. Her desire to connect with fans is extremely marketable and played up in interviews and even the way that she speaks to the literal thousands of audience members at her concerts. However, Swift’s detailed, complex mythos, full of symbolism and self-referential intertextuality is the net result of all that connection. It is a mad and brilliant scheme that ultimately acts as a cultural studies training level for her fans.

It starts when Taylor’s hidden a clue to her album title in her latest music video. Her fans interrogate the text, which is a CGI ridden 4 minutes that is so unreal in its aesthetic that every element has been consciously constructed. They dissect, they discuss, they write about their findings. You know, just like when a big controversial movie comes out. That’s right, I’m saying ME! is the Roma of the Taylor Swift world.

I’m a fan of Swift’s music (eye-roll all you want, she writes good tunes, bite me), but I recognised literally none of the symbolism that fans and super-fans and beleaguered entertainment correspondents across the globe are writing adrenaline-fuelled blog posts about. I’m 25, I work in media and I’m doing a masters in film – did I notice that the seven suitcases represented T Swizzle’s albums or that the whole damn video takes place inside a cocoon? No. I did not.

While the details that fans are going nuts about might not be ground-breaking or important in the oeuvre of film and cultural studies, it is so important that these fans are being encouraged to explore and interrogate these texts. They’re sharpening their teeth for tougher meat. Not every Taylor Swift fan will grow up into a film studies academic (although I would read a sci-fi short story where this bizarre phenomenon happens and somehow brings down society) – but the fans that engage on this level are learning how to explore media as constructed work in the context of its creator. THANK YOU TAYLOR! She’s not the hero that media studies wants, but she’s the hero it deserves…

We live in a media dominated age. Our politicians fight in snarky twitter battles, news breaking across the world is available to us pretty much as it happens, and our sexy looking lunches are tiny headlines broadcast from our social media accounts. Interrogating media is a really important skill in this age. Young women and men reading “too much” (don’t get me started) into Taylor Swift videos are learning three things:

1) Sometimes there is more to a media text than meets the eye, subliminal messaging is a thing.

2) Taylor’s persona is constructed and she’s consciously creating each new incarnation.

3) You can question the media that’s put in front of you, even if it is put there by someone that you like.

The way that people often dump on media studies and related fields as “reading too much into things” and “all bullsh*t” is frustrating. Not only is this argument kind of rude, it suggests that there really isn’t much more to a text than meets the eye. There is! Films, movies and music influence us every moment of every day, having the curiosity to ask how they’re doing that is not a bad thing. You’re not “making it all up” if you say that the way that Harry Potter valorises unrequited love is actually quite dangerous, or if you point out that the 2017 Baywatch manages to gently reinforce all the bad gender politics of the 1980s original (WOAH SHOCK) or if you want to write a gosh-darned 7,000 word essay on the bit where the snake bursts into a cloud of butterflies. That curiosity is empowering and exciting and exploring texts this way is fun.

There are caveats to this. Not everyone likes reading texts this way, and it is important to maintain your love for the movies, music videos and other texts that you explore even while you hit them with some cold hard theory. So here is my message to any Taylor Swift fan and budding media genius, stepping out into this wild world of media. Keep these things in mind:

Not everyone will share your passion, but that doesn’t mean your passion is bad - it just means that you might need to have other topics of conversation up your sleeve for when people just aren’t interested.

Be sensitive to your friends and don’t dump on all their favourite movies and musicians.

Be aware that a lot of people might not share your opinions.

Be quiet in the cinema because shouting “Dutch angle” every time there’s a Dutch angle will make people really mad.

But don’t ever be embarrassed to read into a text and ask questions about how and why it was made. T Swizzle has felt the brunt of a media age that says what it wants and airs your dirty laundry. She writes songs about how it feels to have a reputation you have no control over. Then she says to her fans “Hey, I’ve reinvented myself, come see if you can figure out what I’ve done! Dissect every frame of my video and every lyric of my song, and every damn pixel of my Instagram.” She sets up the media world as a puzzle which can be pieced together, and if not solved, then thoroughly explored.

Taylor Swift actually wants her fans to do this, and so do I.

#taylor swift #me! taylor swift #me! music video #media studies #cultural studies #film studies #LookWhatYouMediaMeDo

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frenemiestolovers1 · 3 years

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Warning against Kirinowa server

So, hello everyone (including the ones who will read this post). So for starters, I want to say that I hope this will be the only time when I will do this because I don't like to stir up trouble and drama but it's needs to be done. Because this is not a topic that it's related to the message this tumblr page was supposed to transmit. So without further delay, let's start. As you, people who have seen this page may know, I'm a multishipper. I like a lot of ships (some of which may seem controversial or problematic for some people). And there are some ships that I hate, don't see their compatibility or can't see in a romantic way (but I never bash those ships... I prefer to ignore them). So up until yesterday, June 3rd, 2021, I was a moderator on the Kirinowa discord server. And also yesterday, I got kicked from the server without any warning whatsoever (and another thing, I never broke any rules of that discord server because I was the one who came up with the rules so it would kinda hypocrite of me to break my own rules). So now I want to talk about how it got to this point and why people shouldn't join Kirinowa discord server. 1) Back in March 2021, I beta-read a one-shot fiction for the admin of the server called Kirinowa. All good to this point. Then she posted that fiction without having the common sense to mention her beta-reader (something that I never do in my own works... I always mention my beta-readers, because this is how you respect, first yourself as a person, then the ones who helped you... one of my values is to acknowledge and recognize in some way the ones who helped you). I didn't say anything about the matter at the time. I thought that maybe that's how her culture it's like... things like that. Though right now I wish I said something back then (even if I told her in DMs on discord about this on June 3rd she just didn’t care). Also, if you want proof to point 1, you can always leave me a message and I will provide you with proof (so my statement, it's not without proofs but I don't like to post them on the internet). 2) You aren't allowed to talk about anything that it's not related to Kirinowa in the general channel on the server. So what I mean by not being allowed, you might ask yourself? So at some point you were indirectly shut up in a conversation if you talked about something else. When it first happened to me, I was talking about Miraculous Ladybug (another series that I like) and the member I was talking to, straight point told me to get back to Kirinowa even if no one was engaged in a conversation about them (I gave her an answer accordingly, that I think makes her think a little bit about about she reacted... or at least I would like to think it did). The second time it happened, it was during a conversation with Kirinowa herself. We were talking about ships from another fandom (I won't give details about the fandom or the ships because I don't want to be attacked by antis Kirinowa but loves those two ships). The respective ships were also one of the ships that Kirinowa likes, but nonetheless, she was the one to shut me up back then, which forced me to become less active in the server because I didn't want to be shut up again. I think it's okay to have a server dedicated to a ship where people are free to talk about the happiness that that ship brings to them, but it's not good to become an obsession and to shut up people when they are talking about other stuff (and now this is pretty hypocrite coming from Kirinowa, because she talked about the Darklina and no one shut her up). I'm a member of many discord servers and in none of the servers people were shut up (only in the ones from which I got kicked where the admin was a toxic person and abused her power as an admin). 3) Baseless accusations So like I mentioned above, I'm a multishipper and I avoid ships that I don't like or have no interest in (but never bashing them or spreading hate about them). So two days ago, Kirinowa made a statement directed to the moderators (alongside other members) where she asked us to not bash other ships because we would be like the antis (this happened due to the fact that someone used bad words while talking about a ship). This was the last straw for me (I already had two nightmarish weeks in real life, I wasn't about to back down from this crap thrown in my direction). And I told her that I'm miffed about her baseless accusations and to show me the proof of those things she said I did. And her answer was that I shouldn't take things personally. Like hell, I wouldn't. So in her statement she mentioned moderators (one of which was I) and then when I ask for proof to back her up, she is telling me that I'm taking things too personally. Then to make things worse another member ganged up on me, and Kirinowa (I feel disgusted at this point using this name to call her as such because she is toxic while the ship is not) didn't have no reaction whatsoever. Then in her specific style, she decided to close off the matter and move on. So she attacks me, I ask her for proof, she tells me that I'm taking things too personally, another member gang up on me, she doesn't have a reaction and then she choose to close the matter. Of course I talked to her in private, but she only gave me the same answer. That I'm taking things too personally and that is not about me. As long as she mentioned moderators (me being one of them) then give me proof of the things you said I did. 4) Breaking rules and making up lies So one of the rules that I came up with for the server was: 1) Be respectful and kind. Do not name call. There is an actual human behind the screen. We come from different backgrounds and many of us are dealing with illnesses or mental health issues. Please refrain from making anyone feel invalidated for their opinion. Politely disagreeing is encouraged. This is a place where you will not be judged for your interests, but please be aware of differences. Moreover, do not bash any authors for any reason. Please refrain from making anyone feel invalidated for their opinion. - that's everything Kirinowa stands against. If someone tells her that her behavior is not okay, that person will be belittled and invalidated. At point 3) my feelings didn't matter. No, I was taking things too personally. And Kirinowa broke her own rule by doing what she did. So due to the shit that happened to me in the last two weeks in real life and the abhorrent crap Kirinowa made me go through made me snap yesterday morning. I told her everything that bothered me regarding her toxic behavior (I called her a toxic person and a cyberbully) and then I blocked her on discord and I left to take care of my own business. Because I hoped that she will meditate about what I said to her and maybe realize that she did wrong. Higher expectations for a person that loves power more than anything. When I checked up discord, I noticed that Kirinowa group wasn't in my list any longer. And I realized that I got kicked. Then I asked another member (who I won't name in this post but who noticed the toxic behavior of Kirinowa, too) what she (here I mean Kirinowa) said about me being kicked. The answer of that member was that Kirinowa said that she won't tolerate being blocked on her own server (the perfect example of abuse of power; I will only kick people if they broke the rules of the server or I realize that they could become a danger to the server... I was none of these). For one, discord and discord servers are too different entities (they are not the same). You can block someone on discord (as in discord in general, not servers) And two, she won't tolerate being blocked, but others need to tolerate being shut up and invalidated, right? And also, according to this member that I talked to, Kirinowa said that if someone believes that environment is toxic they are free to leave. I never said such things. I called her a toxic person, not the environment. But I suppose she wanted to fall on her feet, so to speak. So this was a lie, she spread (possibly in her attempts to make me look like the villain). And what do you know? The member ,who, two days ago ganged up on me got promoted to the admin (alongside others). This is, also according to my source. So the way to get higher in the hierarchy of Kirinowa server is to gang up on others (I only talk about the member who ganged up on me and got promoted, not the others). And I think that other members who asked about why I was kicked were shut up by the cyberbully Kirinowa. I have also a discord server and I always take in consideration two things for an international server: the cultural differences (stuff that isn't sensitive for some culture, could be sensitive to other cultures) and the fact on how you are wording statements in English (due to the people who have English as a second language and the message would be different than to a native). Kirinowa preferred to overlook these two things and to not give a fuck about them. And also Kirinowa choose the easy way to solve problem. As far as I know, you can tag people on your server (even if they blocked you... as long as they still are members in the server, you can do that). But she wasn't up for communication. She was only up for extreme approach. So here it's my advice to you: don't join her discord server. She is very toxic and a cyberbully in her own right. I never shut up people, I admit when I went too far or I did something wrong, I never threw baseless accusations around, I don't make up lies and I always respect my beta-readers. So if you receive an invitation from this twitter account: https://twitter.com/Kirinowa1 or any of its followers, I urge you, do not accept. So I will end my tirade with this: All that's necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing. (Marinette, Miraculous Ladybug).

#Kirinowa #discord server #Yashahime #Kirinmaru #Towa

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ramajmedia · 5 years

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The Most Divisive TV Shows Of The Decade | Screen Rant

These are the most divisive TV shows of the decade. The 2010s has seen some major shifts in the TV landscape, moving from the Golden Age of Television into the Peak TV era, and with that have been changes viewers consume TV, and thus how they react to it as well.

Thanks to social media, there's been an increase in die-hard fandoms around TV shows, such as Rick & Morty, and it's never been easier for fans to express their opinion - and in particular their displeasure - about a certain TV series or specific episode. And while this decade has seen a lot of TV shows both good and bad, there has also been a number that have been controversial and split opinion, whether over their entire run or just in the final few seasons.

Related: The Best TV Series Finales of the Decade

It might be a case that there's a TV show critics hated but audiences clearly loved, or a series disliked by fans but that received great reviews, or otherwise a TV series that absolutely no one could agree on, but everyone argued about. From 2010-2019, these were the TV shows that tore people about and proved extremely divisive.

Aaron Sorkin is rightly revered as one of the all-time great screenwriters, especially when it comes to TV, but he couldn't please everyone with The Newsroom. Airing on HBO from 2012-2014, The Newsroom chronicled life at a fictional cable news channel, and attempted to portray the rapidly-changing world of news long before the term "Fake News" became so ubiquitous. However, despite a great pilot episode, the series continued to divide both critics and fans: there were those who loved its strong political messaging, and others who found Sorkin's decision to tackle whatever topic was on his mind in a way that meant he won the argument. Stirring stuff that spoke to the heart of news and real-life America, or self-satisfied and preachy? When it came to The Newsroom, no one could quite decide.

Hemlock Grove often feels like Netflix's weird, forgotten little show. It was part of its first slate of Original Series, but while both Orange is the New Black and House of Cards went on to have length-run, critical acclaim, and plenty of awards, Hemlock Grove was canceled after three seasons and didn't leave too much of a mark. Produced by Eli Roth, the horror series was unsurprisingly shlocky, and critics were largely put off by the series' tone and gore, with Hemlock Grove's Rotten Tomatoes score at just 38%. At the same time, it developed something of a cult following, with fans enjoying its horror elements, universe building, and characters and performances, holding a much more respectable 64% audience score on RT.

HBO's Girls largely garnered strong reviews over the course of its six-season run, but that didn't stop it from being both divisive and controversial among both critics and viewers alike. Following the lives of four female 20-somethings in New York City, Girls was quickly praised for its humor, fearlessness, and the fact it was so authentic in portraying female relationships. Conversely, it also brought a lot of controversy over its lack of racial representation despite being set in NYC, and there were arguments about Girls' approach to feminism too. A big part of Girls' division was creator and star Lena Dunham herself, who can divide people, and it was often the cast that if you liked Dunham, you probably liked Girls, and vice versa.

Related: The Best Movie Endings Of The Decade

When ABC decided to revive Roseanne, which had been a hit in the 80s and 90s, it at first seemed like a masterstroke: 18 million people watched the Roseanne season 10 premiere, and critics generally approved of it too. It was a return to the classic sitcoms of old, but most seemed content with what it was offering - yet the division came because of Roseanne Barr herself. An outspoken supporter of Donald Trump, Roseanne was already proving divisive because of her political views before she made racist remarks about Valerie Jarrett on Twitter, causing ABC to cancel the series. While many critics and analysts praised the move and condemned Barr, there were plenty of supporters who believed it shouldn't have been canned and that Roseanne instead should've remained on the air, causing more division off-screen than it did on-screen.

The Walking Dead is one of the biggest TV shows of the decade, and with that kind of fanbase - especially when it's a series with beloved source material and a whole lot of violence - is bound to come some division. Despite its huge ratings numbers, The Walking Dead has often been somewhat overlooked by critics and awards bodies, but it's also caused plenty of arguments among its own fans too. There are plenty of moments, from almost all of season 2 to deaths of characters such as Beth, but none better showcase how divisive The Walking Dead can be than the Negan cliffhanger at the end of season 6, and the season 7 premiere that followed. The latter was decried for being needlessly violent, but its defenders will simply tell you that's The Walking Dead, and while the ratings have dropped off now, at its height there were long arguments about whether it was actually any good.

Star Trek: Discovery was the first new Star Trek TV series in over a decade when it debuted back in 2017, so there was already a lot of pressure riding on the series from the outset. Aiming to put its own spin on Star Trek, Discovery was largely praised by critics, but its first season especially was very divisive among Star Trek fans. There were arguments that it "wasn't Star Trek", and some fans disliked new elements such as following a lead character who wasn't the captain, or just the personality of Michael Burnham in general, while others found it to be a fresh, exciting take on what's come before, exemplified by its Rotten Tomatoes scores: its 82% with critics, but just 43% with audiences.

Iron Fist was perhaps the MCU's first true failure, and certainly of Netflix's corner of the Marvel universe, which had looked as bulletproof as Luke Cage. Iron Fist's first season was roundly panned by critics, being savaged unlike anything else in the MCU for its weak fight choreography, poor plotting, and Finn Jones' performance among other things. However, there were still plenty of Marvel fans who enjoyed the series and defended it from the criticism, evidenced by season 1's critics and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes being 20% and 73% respectively, although things did improve slightly in Iron Fist season 2. There are people who'll say Iron Fist is the worst thing the MCU has produced, and others who'll say it's not even the worst of the Netflix shows.

Related: The Best Superhero Movie Performances Of The Decade

Starting off as a Batman series without Batman, Gotham has long received decent-enough reviews from critics, but where it's proved most divisive is amongst DC fans. Despite featuring the vast majority of Batman's key supporting characters and rogues gallery over the years, Gotham played things extremely fast and loose when it came to established Batman canon - or at least, mythology - and fans weren't always receptive to the changes, especially things like messing around with Ivy's character or having Barbara lead the League of Assassins. Other changes, such as Penguin's character, were more warmly received, but there was generally a divide between those who enjoyed Gotham's new twists on Batman lore and those who rejected it changing such core aspects of the character.

How I Met Your Mother was popular with fans and critics for the majority of its run, although things did take a turn in later seasons when the CBS sitcom started to run out of steam and drag out elements of its story. Its final season took that further by being set completely over a weekend, but it was How I Met Your Mother's series finale that made it so truly divisive. By quickly killing off the Mother and having Ted end up with Robin, a lot of fans were furious with the idea that they'd wasted so much time invested in the show only for those last twists. At the same, the HIMYM finale has been defended for its story, being true to life, and nailing its other aspects too, but nonetheless it remains one of the most controversial series endings ever made.

Lost may have only aired one season this decade, but that was enough for it to become one of the most divisive TV shows of the 2010s, because it was one of the most divisive seasons of television of all-time, and that's certainly true of its finale. Even prior to "The End", however, Lost season 6 was polarizing among fans and critics alike, with "Across The Sea" perhaps the most divisive episode of the series' entire run until the finale, hailed as both the best and worst of the show. And then there was the Lost finale itself, which was loved by some fans, despised by others, and spent most of the decade as TV's punching bad and go-to example of a bad finale.

13 Reasons Why is another of those shows that was always going to attract controversy, since it deals with topics such as teen suicide and sexual abuse, but few might've predicted just how divisive it turned out to be, with its first season in particular leading to strong opinions on both sides. Did the depiction of Hannah Baker's suicide go way too far, or was it important to show it? Did the show handle sexual assault delicately, or terribly? Is it sending the right message to its teenage audience, or dangerous for them to watch? Both sides of those debates have, and continue to be, argued by critics, fans, medical professionals, school officials, classification bodies and more, making 13 Reasons Why Netflix's most divisive and controversial series so far.

Related: The Most Divisive Movies Of The Decade

It's tempting to say that all of Game of Thrones' backlash started and ended with season 8, and it's true that the final season was the one where the controversy and division boiled over: where petitions were signed, the internet raged, and many declared the TV show ruined while quieter corners of the internet tried to defend it. But Game of Thrones has long been divisive. Certainly, from season 5 onwards, when it really started moving past George R.R. Martin's books, it's been less universally praised, and even before then there was some division amongst show-watchers and book-readers, alongside controversy and anger over its depiction of sexual assault and lack of diversity. Game of Thrones is the biggest TV show of the last 10 years, so it's not much of a surprise that it's also the most divisive TV series of the decade as well.

More: Game Of Thrones Has Replaced Lost (As TV's Punching Bag)

source https://screenrant.com/divisive-tv-shows-decade-2010s/

#screenrant

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kkatot · 6 years

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Syllabus, Digital Cultures

Sharing is caring, vol 2. This is the syllabus for Digital Cultures (teaching it at Tallinn Uni for MA students starting November 1). I am grateful to everyone, who shared their syllabi with me, and to my guest lecturers for their recommendations. The component-logic of the digital culture experiment is based on an inspired auto-ethnographic exercise and its “building block system” that prof. Annette Markham has developed, and which I’ve had the privilege of implementing in the past couple of years at Aarhus University.

If you’re into PDF’s, this is for you

Digital Culture, BFR7004.FK, Tallinn University

Katrin Tiidenberg, PhD

Course objectives: While an exhaustive overview of what counts as digital culture or how digital culture is researched is impossible to give, this course aims to introduce students to both a cultural studies (digital humanities) and social studies (media and communication research, media ethnography) approach to making sense of digital culture. Active participation in the course should leave the students with an adequate overview of current definitions and relevant concepts of, some excellent recent studies about, relevant scholarly debates regarding and approaches to studying digital culture.

The course consists of lectures, seminars (reading discussion) and workshops (discussion and exercises / experiments). The course is taught by Katrin Tiidenberg and the following guest instructors: Indrek Ibrus, Mikhail Fiadotau, Maarja Ojamaa, Marek Tamm

Learning outcomes: The student, who has passed this course will be able to discuss the following topics in an educated manner, well-situated in extant literature: • What is digital culture, how is it defined, how is it historically situated in the developments of communication technologies, how is it often studied, and what are the central concepts utilized to discuss it in academic debates? • How to make sense of on utilize key concepts in studying digital culture (i.e. intertextuality, remix, bricolage, virality, participation, collaboration, audiences etc)? • What are the implications and relevance of data and datafication on cultural life? • How are meanings made within culture(s) and how can it be studied?

Students will explore how digital culture phenomena (i.e. fandoms, gaming, selfies, influencers) are studied and what is being highlighted about them in relevant academic discussions, and be able to distinguish sensationalist, moral-panic driven interpretations of these phenomena from nuanced, educated ones. The student will analyze how networked communication technologies impact cultural practices, and their own everyday life, interactions and identities, and develop a voice for addressing issues and controversies of digital culture.

Assessment method:

Grades. 30% participation and in-class engagement. 35% digital culture experiment – timely submission of 3 component tasks. 35% final write up of the digital culture experiment

The digital culture experiment is an auto-ethnographic independent experiment with digital culture engaged with for the duration of the class. Timely submission of 3-COMPONNENT TASKS is a pre-requisite to be able to submit the final write-up. The final write up functions as an exam.

COMPONENT TASKS: 1. Create an observation plan. You need to observe your own participation in a particular digital culture phenomenon (i.e. pick a practice, a group, a community, a game, a space that you have pre-existing experience with, or that you are super interested in). Focus on YOUR OWN participation - your own engagement, interactions, reactions, and practices are your research focus. You are your own subject. You will explore and explain this culture from the first-person perspective of a member. a. Create an observation plan – write out a plan of what, where and how you will observe. How often and for how long will you “do observation”? How will you take notes? What is the best field-note taking system for you – do you need to combine notes, screenshots and brief spoken memos you dictate into your phone? Do you need to sometimes film yourself (and your screen) while you are participating? What are the important observations to include? (i.e. location, how you felt, what you were doing, how other people acted, what interactions were had, what you noticed about other people, patterns of use, intentions of participation, unintended consequences of participation etc). If you have never done observation-based, ethnographic research you need to read these pieces. These are in a folder called “Methods texts” on Moodle, within the “Mandatory readings” folder • James Spradley Step 2, Step 3, Step 4 • Nicholas Wolfinger, On writing fieldnotes • Annette Markham, Ethnography in the Digital Internet Era – From fields to flows, descriptions to interventionsb. Observe your chosen digital culture phenomenon for a week. Be honest, be thorough. Try different strategies for gathering data, logging data, taking notes. c. Revise your observation plan based on your weeklong experience – adjust the plan so it serves you better. It is possible you will decide to significantly narrow your focus here. SUBMIT REVISED PLAN via MOODLE ON November 19 (this is component 1). Add brief (~ 200 words) commentary on how you adjusted your plan compared to its first version.

2. Observe your own participation in your chosen digital culture phenomenon for a month (Nov 19 – Dec 19) a. Based on the revised plan observe and track your participation in the digital culture phenomenon during the period of 1 month. If you feel the need to, you can “interview” someone who shares the experience with you, or have them interview you, but your analytical focus should remain on your own experiences. Keep taking detailed field-notes and logging your experience in various ways. b. Write at least three brain dumps during this period. A brain dump is when you set a timer for 15 minutes, turn your ink white in your word processing software and just write whatever comes to mind about your particular experience and observations. When you get stuck hit “enter” twice and keep writing. If you have a hard time starting at the beginning of the 15 minutes, start with “I have to write this braindump, I am not sure what to write, etc until more interesting stuff starts pouring out of your brain. You will use these braindumps as data, you will later code the brain dumps to come up with your arguments. SUBMIT via MOODLE THE THREE BRAIN DUMPS ON DECEMBER 19. This is component # 2.

3. Start analyzing your digital culture experience a. Gather up everything you have so far that can serve as ‘data’. Is it in a format that allows coding (sorting the data to lift out relevant bits)? If it is video or audio, do you need to transcribe it? Organize it so you can code it. If you have never qualitatively coded material/data you need to read Sarah Tracy, Chapter 9 (Data Analysis Basics). It is in the “ Methods texts” subfolder on Moodle. If you need further help with coding, consult Johnny Saldana’s book The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers b. Start coding. Identify any gaps in the early patterns. Do you need to go back to the “fieldsite” to gather stuff to fill those gaps? Do you see any emerging patterns? Does it seem like if you look at these patterns through the lens of the class readings and theoretical or conceptual frameworks you can make an interesting argument? c. Write a short reflection piece (~ 1000 words) – reflect on your process of data collection, coding, thinking, your attempts at making arguments. It is fine if this is messy, you can include snippets of your “thinking” including images if you’ve been mapping, diagramming or coding by hand. SUBMIT via MOODLE ON January 7 2019. This is component # 3 (this is also a dirty draft of the ‘c’ section of your final write up). Final write-up of the experiment (submit via Moodle, due January 17). This should be 8 – 10 pages font 12, 1.5 spaced without Appendixes and Bibliography. Feel free to add illustrator screengrabs, examples of coding, quotes or other snippets of text etc. a. Title, author’s name, b. description of the central topic c. description of the auto-ethnographic process, description of your process of analyzing it d. explanation of your digital culture participation utilizing some concepts and theoretical frameworks covered in class (use at least three assigned or suggested texts here). Describe not only what happened, but also your feelings, shifts in your own perceptions. Include snippets from your braindumps or your field-notes, screengrabs, etc as illustrations e. discussion of your experience, make an argument f. Possible implications of your analysis (what does it contribute to ongoing discussions about digital culture) g. Bibliography h. Appendixes (the more Appendixes the better, add your braindumps, examples of coding, reflections etc).

Course schedule and description, week by week:

WEEK 1, A

Introduction to course and topic (lecture + seminar)

What is culture? What is digital? What is digital culture? How is meaning made in the context of digital culture?

Culture of connectivity, mediatization of culture, visual culture, search culture, algorithmic culture, internet cultures etc

Introduction of the digital culture experiment and the building block system, division into A, B, C, D groups

WEEK 1, B

Digital archival and preservation (lecture + workshop), taught by Mikhail Fiadotau

The class will be structured as a short lecture followed by a workshop. The lecture will outline the key challenges in digital preservation, as exemplified by videogames: technological obsolescence, “bit rot” of storage media, and the logic of instant obscurity in the oversaturated media environment. The lecture will also introduce, and reflect on the work of some archival initiatives, from physical archives such as the National Videogame Arcade in the UK to online resources such as Archive.org’s Wayback Machine. The workshop following the lecture will be a group exercise inviting students to discuss and devise solutions for the archival and preservation of web games for discontinued platforms, with a particular focus on Macromedia/Adobe Flash.

WEEK 2, A

Making sense of digital culture from the perspective of Digital Humanities (seminar + lecture), taught by Indrek Ibrus and Maarja Ojamaa

Introducing concepts: Remix, Bricolage, Intertextuality, Virality, Multimodality, Interactivity, Memory

Introducing cultural studies approaches: media archeology, (new/digital) materialism, software studies

Read: Irvine, M. (2014). REMIX AND THE DIALOGIC ENGINE OF CULTURE, A Model for Generative Combinatoriality.

WEEK 2 B

Historicizing the internet (lecture), taught by Indrek Ibrus

History of the internet and mobile communication. Temporality and materiality of communication technologies and networks. Milestones of computerizing the culture.

WEEK 3 A

Making sense of digital culture from the perspective of communication studies and audience research (lecture)

Introducing concepts: Participation, Collaboration, Audiences, Rules, Community, Belonging, Intimacy

Introducing communication and audience research approaches: ethnography, audience studies, platform and app studies

Introduce situational, relational and concept mapping

WEEK 3 B

Paratextuality and videogames [seminar], taught by Mikhail Fiadotau

The discussion will revolve around paratexts’ propensity for extending digital media, but also subverting their normative significations, both shaping the audience’s experience and offering creative and interpretive agency to fans. Suggested articles also touch upon the issues of materiality, interpretive communities, as well as fan practices and their ethics.

Read: Peters, I.M. (2014) Peril-sensitive sunglasses, superheroes in miniature, and pink polka-dot boxers: Artifact and collectible video game feelies, play, and the paratextual gaming experience. Transformative Works and Cultures, 16. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2014.0509

WEEK 4 A

Form, aesthetics, genre, materiality (lecture), taught by Indrek Ibrus

How can the digital be material? Is the digital culture a material culture? What are the aesthetics, forms and genres of digital cultures? What is remediation? How can archeology help us make sense of the materialities and aesthetics of digital culture.

WEEK 4 B

Collaborative work on your digital culture experiment (discuss what you have, what you are stuck with and what you are confused about with your colleagues in the small A, B, C, D groups. Help each other.

WEEK 5 A

Meaning making, groups, norms and digital objects (lecture + workshop)

How do digital objects gain meaning? What are the socio-cultural functions of digital objects? Online communities, groups, practices and emergent norms. Case: Selfies

WEEK 5 B

What is subculture, what are paralanguages? Identities, identifications and self-presentation (seminar)

Discussion: Antagonistic behavior and ambivalent internet (i.e. the subcultures of trolls and flamers).

Read (in pre-assigned groups, so every person reads one article)

Group A: Coleman, G. (2015). On Trolls, Tricksters, and the Lulz, in Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous. London: Verso books.

Group B: Massanari, A. (2015). "# Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures."New Media & Society.

Group C: Seta, G. de. (2018). Trolling, and Other Problematic Social Media Practices. In J. Burgess, A. Marwick, & T. Poell (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Social Media (pp. 390–411).

Group D: Phillips, W. (2015). Dicks everywhere, in This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press.

WEEK 6 A

Attention, reputation, commodification (lecture + seminar)

How does attention work online? Reputation as capital. Commodification of attention and reputation. Celebrity practices.

Discussion: Internet celebrity, influencers and microcelebrity

Read (in pre-assigned groups, so every person reads one article)

Group A: Abidin, C. 2016. “Visibility labour: Engaging with Influencers’ fashion brands and #OOTD advertorial campaigns on Instagram.” Media International Australia 161, 86-100.

Group B: Senft, T. (2014) Microcelebrity and the Branded Self. Companion to New Media Dynamics. Ed John Hartley, Jean Burgess, Axel Bruns. Blackwell.

Group C: Abidin, C. Communicative Intimacies: Influencers and Perceived Interconnectedness https://adanewmedia.org/2015/11/issue8-abidin/

Group D: Susie Khamis, Lawrence Ang & Raymond Welling (2016): Self- branding, ‘micro-celebrity’ and the rise of Social Media Influencers, Celebrity Studies.

WEEK 6 B

Participation, collaboration, production & consumption (lecture + workshop)

Participation and collaboration within digital cultures. “Spreadable media”. Sharing / collaborative economies. Consumption, production, produsage. Case: fandom

WEEK 7 A

Data and culture, datafied culture, cultural analytics (lecture), taught by Marek Tamm

What are cultural data? What does the datafication of culture and society mean? What is cultural analytics? What is culturomics?

WEEK 7 B

Post-digital, post-internet, post-human culture? The non-human turn. (lecture + workshop)

Imagining a better internet.