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comradekatara · 1 month

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I’m curious if you have any thoughts about Ty Lee and Mai re: their reasons for and willingness to follow Azula during the course of the show? Their introductions — with Ty Lee initially reluctant and joining out of fear, whereas Mai was all in the moment she showed up in Omashu — contrasted with their endings — Mai growing resentful and eventually betraying Azula, and Ty Lee staying close to her right up to the moment she spots an opening — are so fascinating and emblemic of their characters

yes, exactly. ty lee has to be coerced whereas mai doesn't need to be told twice. more specifically, ty lee had the initiative to run away at some point (it's also far easier to leave your home when you have six identical sisters) and has settled in an environment that she actually enjoys, whereas mai is trapped with her family and takes up azula's offer specifically as a means of escape. that doesn't mean she particularly enjoys the prospect of hunting down the boy she used to like, but she gets to see the world and use her knife skills and hang out with her besties. it's not perfect, but it's still a far better deal than being stuck under the thumb of her controlling mother and scheming father in a foreign city that is essentially a ghost town (now that its entire native population is literally living underground). mai doesn't like being bossed around by azula – or being bossed around by anyone, for that matter – but she knows better than to question the commands of her princess, so she sticks to side-eyeing her as she complies, and only ever denying her requests when azula is too far away to notice ("she can shoot all the lightning at me she wants, i am not going in that wall sludge juice." "just take the bear." etc etc).

ty lee, however, doesn't just comply with azula's commands, she comports herself into the very image of obedience, she forces herself to embody exactly what it is azula wants in a loyal servant, but also in a best friend, and in a beautiful girl. because, like, the thing about mai is that she is really very normal. she uses apathy and sarcasm to mask her true emotions, whether they be fear, rage, or a combination thereof, but she's also quite sincere and blunt and kind. mai adapts to her environment in the sense that she knows to comply with the demands of her family and azula, she knows how to play the part of fire nation noblewoman, but she's not closed off from her feelings, she just presents that way. ty lee, however, is a complete and utter chameleon, to the point that she's somehow the one who seems more sincere out of the pair, even though nary an honest word comes out of her mouth throughout the entire show.

mai expresses her disagreements with azula when she knows that the moment allows for it, and she expresses her irritation, her vulnerability (to an extent), and her emotions when she can. but even when ty lee could choose to be honest, it's like she doesn't actually know how. the most honest ty lee ever actually gets before her betrayal is when she insults mai's makeup, and she's still putting mai down in azula's presence as to establish a hierarchy of affection. even when she's lovingly teasing mai by demonstrating how their friendship is genuine enough that she can insult her instead of vapidly praising her like she does with all those shallow, stupid boys and a certain princess, she's still strategically positioning herself in azula's favor. she operates in a coded language, simultaneously communicating to mai the sincerity of her affection and communicating to azula that they are in fact a pair, teaming up to put down and bully mai as they have been doing since they were children. in the beautiful words of shiv roy, ty lee has never eaten a grapefruit without an agenda.

even though ty lee does seem more loyal to azula despite having to be coerced into joining her, whereas mai seemingly agrees immediately, ty lee is an acrobat and a circus performer; contorting herself to suit the needs of others and appear a certain way to certain people is literally her wheelhouse. whereas mai is a thoughtful yet impulsive, apathetic yet sincere teenage girl. and the cracks in mai's agreeability begin to show as early as in her introductory episode, when azula decides to sacrifice tom-tom to keep bumi, and mai has no choice but to comply with her princess despite obviously wanting to save her baby brother.

mai's loyalty was always on a razor's edge; it was never an ideal situation for her, she just never found a better option. mai lived her whole life in an extremely stifling gilded cage, and she craves enrichment in her enclosure. but then she sees potential beyond the bars, as demonstrated by zuko, and she takes a stand for something she believes in. ty lee doesn't do that, because ty lee does not truly have beliefs beyond her own immediate survival. you can say she values entertainment, laughter, violence that doesn't kill, but i think she'd become anything the world demanded of her without a moment's hesitation. and in this moment, the world demands that she choose. choose between the girl she loved to put down and ostracize within their little trio so as to better curry azula's favor, or the girl who threatened to burn her alive if she did not comply with her every demand. and it should be so obvious, shouldn't it? of course ty lee would choose mai over azula, it's so clear in hindsight. but it shocks azula, and it shocks mai, and it even sort of shocks ty lee herself. because she has done such a good job of hiding her personhood so far beneath her facade that even mai, the one person she cares about more than her own survival, doesn't actually know it.

"anything to get me out of this place," is mai's response to azula's offer. mai was always looking for a better situation, striving for the best possible scenario within a very limited array of options. but ty lee knows what she wants, and she knows she cannot have it, and so she denies herself. denies her own agency, her affections, her desires, her personality, her intelligence, her values. she would do anything to survive, even if it means killing every single true part of herself. mai's betrayal against azula is decidedly a declaration of love, not only for zuko, but also for herself. but ty lee's betrayal is the greatest declaration of love there is. her willingness to throw away her so deliberately, carefully cultivated, precarious security and safety for the sake of someone who doesn't even know that ty lee loves her is such a resounding confession that it actually shocks mai into perfect stillness. mai, who is always so quick to act and react, frozen to the floor by the cosmic weight of this revelation, this paradigm shift. mai had always assumed that she was the discarded, neglected, bullied friend of the trio, the one who would always be second best to azula (and keep in mind ty lee never actually says that azula had to coerce her into joining, she simply says "azula called a little louder," because she is always making mai read between the lines). but here, ty lee proves that there is one she values over her own life and everything she has done to keep it, and it is mai.

"why?" asks azula. "why would you do it? you knew the consequences." i think that mai would gladly throw her worthless life away if it meant dying for something real, something true within a world of masks and lies and manipulations. she knows the consequences, but they no longer matter, now that she has sight of something that she truly, actually cares about. but ty lee is different. ty lee excels in the world of masks, lies, and manipulations, thrives in it to the point that azula, so-called "people person," doesn't even realize that the girl she loves is nothing more than a carefully cultivated phantasm. ty lee truly cares, far more than mai, about the consequences. and yet, when it comes down to it, when she weighs all her options, she not only hurts azula to save mai, but she stays by mai's side through it all. the girl who could effortlessly subdue every guard holding her in place and jump up onto the gondola cord and run across its length to the other side of the volcano within minutes stays next to mai with no resistance, merely sheds her mask to finally glare at azula with her true face. so it is not entirely accurate to say that ty lee's values are conditional and fabricated. there is, in fact, one thing ty lee values above all else, but only when it is true.

#flashhwing #asks #mai #ty lee #maixtylee #azula #analysis #azula&tylee #azula&mai #ohhhh you got me talking abt the atla ship i have been obsessed with since i was a baby who simply liked their contrasting aesthetics #you got me RAMBLING ABOUT MAI AND TY LEE 😭😭#i love them so much......#mai my babygirl my everything. ty lee my insanegirl also my everything #ppl who dont like the boiling rock are so crazy. dyke drama truly does not get better than this!!!!!!!!

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comradekatara · 6 days

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do you have a masterpost of "ty lee comes from crypto-air nomad" posts? I'm fascinated by this idea and want to read everything I can but I can't find where it started 😭

i feel like this is a question better posed to @kyoshi-lesbians, who, at least in my book, is the leading expert in ty lee studies (among other things). that said, i can definitely synthesize the argument (and why i find it cogent and persuasive), even if i don't actually know from where the theory originated (but i'm sure that if you look up "ty lee air nomad you'll immediately be directed to an old reddit page or fan forum from years ago; it's a "theory" that goes way back).

firstly, ty lee's appearance is distinctly "air nomadic" in a way no one else's is. save for aang, of course. she and aang do bear an uncanny resemblance. everyone else in the fire nation has yellowish brown eyes, for example, while ty lee, like aang, has charcoal greyish brown eyes. and they also have similar (round and cute) facial features, similar expressions, similar vibes. similar dispositions...

ty lee does not "have the personality" of a ruthless fire nation soldier, despite acting as the princess's right hand who takes out more opponents than pretty much everyone else put together. ty lee acts like an airbender, flirty and flighty. her relentless optimism and goodwill and cheer is decidedly a mask, but it is a mask she adopts adeptly. even if she is performing, she nonetheless performs the "aang" function of her respective group.

ty lee presents herself as more spiritually attuned than other people in the fire nation, who outright disrespect the spirits and spirituality. her constant talk of auras is likely a calculated move on her part, as nearly everything is, to make her seem silly and trivial, because she thrives best when she goes underestimated. but her talk of auras also has to come from somewhere, and seeing as literally no one else mentions auras once throughout the entire show, ty lee's sources are clearly scarce.

ty lee also fights like an airbender. despite generally taking the offensive, ty lee nonetheless exhibits a graceful, acrobatic quality when in combat. she never kills anyone either, merely incapacitates them momentarily. and when she is faced with stronger than typical opponents, she usually relies on her skills as an acrobat by taking the aerial advantage. note her ability to jump incredibly high, such as in "the chase," or her ability to run along a moving cable wire in "the boiling rock." ty lee's skills go beyond merely being a good acrobat. she's incredible. and perhaps even exhibiting some latent airbending skills she inherited from her ancestors.

ty lee's air nomad ancestry coheres really well with her arc as a character. imagining that her family of genocide survivors hid in the heart of the fire nation and assimilated into the imperialist culture that sought to exterminate them makes her own role that much more impactful. there's already a beautiful parallelism to the fact that ty lee is an acrobat and performer who contorts herself to suit the desires of others and performs obsequious loyalty for her own survival, but an extra layer of depth is added if she's also assimilating into the royal court by reducing herself and hiding her true feelings and motivations, just as her family did.

i see ty lee's ancestors as having assimilated into the imperial core out of fear, but over the generations, genuinely being subsumed into fire nation culture, with the desire to social climb a natural extension of their patriotism. but there are also still facets of ty lee's ancestry, whether genetic or otherwise, that have remained in traces. the generational trauma, for example, definitely reflects why her parents had so many children. and the fact that she's constantly torn between two worlds, as a genocide survivor who also directly serves the imperialists who murdered her ancestors, represents her internal struggle as someone who desires freedom of expression and the choice to assert her individuality, but is also forced through circumstance into lying and deflecting and manipulating (which, to be honest, is also the air nomad way) for the sake of survival.

surviving is ty lee's number one priority, in a way it just isn't for mai. mai and ty lee both come from social climbing families (although i've always assumed that mai's family is far wealthier than ty lee's) but mai is also depressed and frustrated and bored out of her mind. and even though she was raised in a family that forced her to don a mask and reduce herself and perform a passive model of femininity, she also has no problem stating aloud how she's feeling and what her limits are (with the exception of when azula gives her a veiled command as a test, and mai has no choice but to obey).

mai has the privilege of knowing that the stakes don't really matter, which she all but states when she claims that she grew up in luxury and opulence, and always had everything handed to her. which isn't to say that she led a perfect, easy life. she wouldn't be as depressed and repressed as she is if there weren't factors actively harming her, but she still chooses to join azula by choice, even if it's really only the illusion of choice between two awful options, whereas ty lee has to be coerced through violence.

mai kind of has a "fuck it we ball" attitude and doesn't really seem to care about her own safety (if anything, she's more concerned with comfort), whereas ty lee would do anything to ensure her survival. and that kind of mentality illustrates how she differs from most of the fire nation elites, who were inculcated into imperial privilege and never really considered what prioritizing survival even entails (zuko learns that lesson the hard way). ty really exhibits the mentality of the genocide victim/colonized subject through her prioritization of survival in the face of what to mai is a problem, but to ty lee is an existential threat.

whether or not ty lee even recognizes that her desperate desire to live comes from a place of generational grief and trauma is another story, but i do think there is something to be said for the fact that descendants of genocide survivors can feel that grief as it has been passed down to them. i think ty lee feels it, and i think that it motivates her to do whatever it takes to live, because above all, she is a survivor. and even if she has to assimilate and manipulate and cut away every part of herself that's real and authentic and true, she will do it (until she doesn't). and that's also, incidentally, what makes her such a great foil to aang.

#i hope this answers your question!#anachronornis #asks #analysis #ty lee #maixtylee #aang&tylee #aang #mai #air nomad ty lee #i should make that a tag....#also river if u have anything add please feel free #i love ty lee she is the specialest insane girl she is everything

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comradekatara · 8 months

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society if mai got to escape her gilded cage and act on her desires

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comradekatara · 1 year

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hiiiiiiii

#id in alt text #avatar the last airbender #atla #mailee #maileeweek2023 #omg i did not even realize it was mailee week #how serendipitous #ty lee #maixtylee #mai #art #mart #girls who say hiiiiii AND girls who say bruh #theyre in love

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comradekatara · 5 months

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so i read azula in the spirit temple. i actually quite liked it! it helps that she looks absolutely gorgeous in wartman's art style. it's so much easier to digest this new batch of hicks comics, not only because they're actually being written by someone who understands the themes and characters of atla, but because they're so much more aesthetically pleasing than the former art style, which didn't do any characters any favors.

now, i'm gonna venture into spoiler territory as i discuss specific panels, so if that's something to wish to avoid for now, i've put the rest of this post under a readmore. also, send me an ask if you want the link for the full comic, and thank you to @samtamdan for providing me with it!

i. thesis.

first of all, the idea that azula could have found "redemption" in the temple was teleologically illusory, due to the fundamental premise of how such "redemption" was being facilitated. that said, i don't think it was her "crossroads of destiny" moment (a potential for change wherein zuko chose wrong), but rather the leadup to "crossroads of destiny," which is to say, his metamorphic fever dream. like zuko, she's seeing visions of her loved ones manifested from her subconscious giving her conflicting accounts as to who she is and what she should do. so while the seeds are being planted, her growth is still to come.

but genuine growth cannot be facilitated in this manner. how can azula embrace "growth" she knows to be an illusion? she's definitely not being overly paranoid here by refusing to "just accept what is offered," especially considering she has experienced psychosis in the past. while i think that this spirit does accurately acknowledge the root of azula's core issue, which is that she was raised in an environment where she was denied unconditional love in such a way that she convinced herself she was fundamentally unlovable and undeserving of care (thus motivating her to overcompensate through avenues she could excel in), the visions the spirit offers don't actually provide azula with unconditional love. they list her accomplishments and state how she is a credit to her nation, but that won't allow for azula to recognize that what she truly craves is a love that transcends stipulations and is not facilitated through fear. she can't have any sort of emotional breakthrough when she is being praised for aspects of herself that were valued and fostered by her abuser who indoctrinated her into an imperialist ideology, and so the promise of "redemption" (in this particular instance) was hollow from the start, and i think that she was right to ultimately reject it.

however, her moments of genuine vulnerability wherein she voices her repressed subconscious fears may lead to her eventually arriving at a greater self-awareness and emotional clarity on her own somewhere down the line.

ii. manifestations.

a small detail i loved was when ty lee appeared to her, i could immediately tell that she was an illusion, because she was acting how azula sees her. the beginning of the comic even foreshadows this "reveal" (i mean, i think it would have been more shocking had she actually been real, but you get what i mean) by showing us a glimpse of ty lee acting more authentically now that she's no longer under azula's thumb. and it's particularly amusing to me that in azula's mind, ty lee is a perky airhead and mai is a massive cunt.

not gonna lie, the fact that this is how azula sees mai made me laugh.

of course, ty lee does always feign oblivious cheer around azula, and mai is blunt and honest to the point that she can sometimes seem mean, but it also speaks to the fact that as much as azula clearly cares so much about them, she's never truly understood them. that said, azula's last clear memory of mai is her choosing to say the exact words that she knew would hurt azula most ("you miscalculated, i love zuko more than i fear you") so it makes sense that her subconscious would now manifest a version of mai who voices azula's innermost fears.

furthermore, the fact that mai would manifest to azula as an extension/double of ty lee instead of as her own person, wearing the kyoshi uniform even though mai herself is not a kyoshi warrior, is such an interesting choice to me. i think it signifies how azula views mai and ty lee as a cohesive unit; they are inextricably linked in her mind due to the fact that they chose each other over her. while zuko does appear later as a manifestation out of the same figure, he is wearing his firelord robes, indicating that azula's memory of mai in kyoshi warrior garb back in book 2 is significant to her. i think it can be read as a clever allusion to that very subtle moment of foreshadowing in book 2, but it primarily indicates how azula sees mai and ty lee as two faces of the same body, donning the garb they once wore as a disguise – only now it indicates that their dual loyalties were also in opposition to azula.

ty lee, on the other hand, can only be a bitch to azula obliviously, when she appears ignorant of how much her words have the capacity to hurt her. considering this is a continuation of the yang established canon, the fact that (azula's vision of) ty lee would so casually suggest azula seek help from a psychiatric institution would read as condescending mockery and is clearly incredibly triggering for her, but her phrasing allows for an ambiguity of intention that azula has come to associate with ty lee's discursive affect.

of course, we as the audience know that ty lee was always perfectly conscious of how to veil her insults towards azula with enough plausible deniability that azula didn't even register them as deliberate insults at all. however, i wonder whether time away from ty lee with the hindsight of her betrayal allowed azula to reframe the nature of their relationship. and while she does still see ty lee as enduringly cheerful, that also makes sense considering she never truly witnessed ty lee drop her mask.

these nuances are the kinds of subtle distinctions only someone who truly understands their characters could write, which is why i'm so grateful they ditched yang and hired hicks.

iii. love and friendship.

i also love these panels in particular as they speak to azula's feelings for mai and ty lee. despite her... less than stellar treatment of them, it's always been clear that azula does love her friends. the reason their betrayal hit her so hard is because she wanted them to care about her as much as she cared about them, and she rationalized that hurt after the fact by claiming that she was actually upset because they betrayed "their nation." this rationalization is a pattern for her, psychologically. azula uses her status as a means of elevate herself, while simultaneously debasing her personhood/humanity (not only viewing herself as a vessel/weapon, but fearing that she is in fact a "monster") as she fears that she is uniquely unworthy of love. the irony there is that her status as the prodigious fire nation princess was what led to her dehumanization, and (like zuko and iroh before her) deconstructing her imperialist ideology would be a necessary step in her ability to uninternalize the way she sees herself stemming from ozai's abuse.

i also found it interesting that azula calls zuko a "stupid boy who didn't even want her." there are so many layers to that claim. first of all, zuko isn't just a random boy (although he might be stupid). he's her brother, and as much as she may deny it, she cares about him deeply. but here, the fact that zuko is a boy takes precedent over the fact that he's her brother, which screams teenage lesbian logic to me. azula cannot understand why her friends would choose a boy over the close female friendship that meant so much to her because her attempt to inhabit mai's perspective, as a girl who has romantic feelings for a boy, is genuinely impossible to her. i know this interpretation may seem like a stretch, but i really don't think that azula would say "she broke up our team for a stupid boy" and not "for my stupid brother" otherwise, considering that azula does have an established precedent of feeling specifically hurt by her loved ones choosing zuko over her. her wording is distinctly gay here.

furthermore, azula claims that zuko "didn't even want her." i've talked before about how azula is hoisted by her own petard regarding mai's betrayal, since she initially set zuko and mai up (there is a comic that establishes this, but since i don't consider the comics canon, i will also say that this reading is heavily implied in "the awakening"), whether to control both of them through each other, or as an incentive to keep zuko on her side, or out of a genuine altruistic desire to matchmake, or a combination of the above, or otherwise, and that choice to bring them together ended up backfiring spectacularly. but i think the fact that azula had to pull the strings to get them together also led her to assume that any care they might have had for each other wasn't genuine, and while i think that to a degree she is correct, because their relationship was largely a hollow facade, she could not have expected that their relationship would lead to their breakup which led to their conversation in the boiling rock that motivated mai to take a stand. (and of course there's also the fact that the wording of the latter clause, azula claiming that zuko didn't want mai, is equally as gay as the former. she may as well have called zuko a slur here.)

sidenote: while i could definitely spend ample time dissecting this entire panel, for now i'm just going to address the fact that the boy azula sees in her initial dream sequence isn't even chan (the guy she kissed) but ruon-jian. obviously azula in this moment knows that her hair looks like shit (although i think the overgrown uneven bangs are a really cute look on her tbh) and she's stinky from running around in the woods for however long she has, but the fact that the voice presenting that compliment to her isn't even coming from the boy she ostensibly "liked" makes it even more evident that she cares about validation from boys insofar as she believes that she is supposed to, but doesn't actually care enough about them as individuals to distinguish between them. chan and ruon-jian are interchangeable symbols to her that function to affirm her (heterosexual) femininity, but she still cannot fathom why anyone would forsake their cherished female friends out of genuine feeling for "a stupid boy." azula is such a baby lesbian.

and finally, the fact that this entire plot is incited by her replacement girl group choosing one of their own over her command illustrates how much mai and ty lee's betrayal still resonates. she is attempting to cling to an idealized past via recreating their friend group, but she still hasn't learned her lesson that she cannot make genuine friends by being controlling and ruling through fear, and so history repeats itself, and they, too, leave her. hopefully her next endeavor to find a friend group of likeminded girls will be tempered by newfound knowledge that love and mutual support creates stronger bonds than fear, but since she has yet to be shown genuine care from anyone in her life, that has yet to be seen.

iv. parents.

one quibble i do have is that because hicks has to adhere to the precedent set by the yang comics, despite navigating and adapting to those precedents deftly, some choices simply fall flat. for the most prominent example, the retcon that ursa is still alive necessitates that azula's understanding of her mother's absence is slightly muddied, but that's always gonna be a choice i disagree with, so i can't exactly single out this particular comic when it nonetheless does such a great job of attempting to mitigate prior issues, mostly by focusing entirely on its role as a psychological character study rather than attempting to deal with the mess of a plot that yang established.

that said, i do think that this panel is really poignant, and the fact that azula is even able to speak to her fear of ozai is a really big step for her. i think that azula acknowledging that she legitimately didn't have a choice is actually a really important milestone on her path to healing. her cognitive dissonance regarding her denial that ozai's abuse dictated her actions through fear is a matter she needs to address and articulate fully if she is ever to find peace. it's understandably difficult for her to reconcile her lack of agency and how terrifying the circumstances of her childhood were, and she even oscillates here between acknowledging that she was terrified of ozai and claiming that ozai is the only family she has left who hasn't betrayed her. i think that azula almost wants to be a monster who drives everyone away because that means that she nonetheless has enough control to be responsible for her fate, and actually facing the extent to which ozai's abuse shaped her is really scary. moreover, it's still difficult for azula to recognize how much harm ozai has caused her because she has no other form of material support, and without the hollow approval of her abuser, she is truly and utterly alone. which, incidentally, is exactly why he isolated her in the first place.

v. conclusion.

while, i know that some people may be disappointed that the telos seemed like a net zero, i think that the push towards isolated character studies that don't affect the plot since hicks was hired actually works really really well considering she understands each character well enough to write these compelling little character studies that largely serve to reinforce the themes of the show via placing a single character under a microscope. and while i think the toph and katara standalone comics were cute but unmemorable, the suki and azula comics were really good because they are both characters who can benefit from having their perspectives foregrounded, whereas we already get plenty of foregrounded pov from toph and (especially) katara in the show itself. azula is a character whose inner life is largely relegated to subtext, so seeing her literal subconscious battle itself upon her spiritually-manifested psychological landscape was a really cool way of communicating her latent internal struggle that has compelled me for so long. despite it being a relatively short comic, there was so much to unpack here that i could really only choose so many key panels to discuss, but that depth and richness to the text is something i appreciate greatly. azula is one of my favorite characters to analyze, so this comic was really like a field day for me.

and here are just some panels i found particularly amusing:

gotta find a way to take potshots at zuzu even when she's completely alone. she's such a little sister sometimes.

tl;dr: overall, i really enjoyed this aesthetically pleasing character study of azula's shattered psyche, and although i only unpack a handful of my favorite panels in this post, i am happy to discuss any further thoughts you guys may have regarding other facets of this comic in my inbox!

#id in alt text #this got really long lmao #analysis #azula in the spirit temple #azula #mai #ty lee #azula&mai #azula&tylee #maixtylee #azula&zuko #mai&zuko #azula&ursa #azula&ozai #<– THERE'S A LOT HERE OKAY #good comic 👍🏼

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comradekatara · 2 months

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the only way in which the atla fandom has genuinely improved over the past decade is that im no longer one of the only people who ships mai/ty lee. i used to be one of like five amidst a sea of tyzulies, but now im like one of….. maybe even twenty. a marginal improvement, granted, but an improvement nonetheless.

#maixtylee #okay i actually have grown fonder of the ty lee azula dynamic over the years #bc when divorced from how shippers portray it #they have such a fascinating relationship #but yeah. mailee4ever

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comradekatara · 1 year

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two-faced bitches never lie, and therefore i never lie

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comradekatara · 10 months

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happy pride 2 mai & ty lee

#id in alt text #avatar the last airbender #atla #mai #ty lee #mailee #maixtylee #art #mart #modern au #rly enjoyed how this one turned out! it was fun to paint #and i just realized it looks like the lesbian flag. that wasnt even intentional lol i just like sunsets

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comradekatara · 3 months

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for tbe atla people who has had in-universe fanfiction written about them (along the lines of tina belcher who came from bobs burger belcher)

your asks are always so strange (both in content and wording) that I end up having to read them like 5 times before I can begin to parse them. anyway I love that you cite tina belcher instead of just. rpf. like the literal terminology for this phenomenon that we do very much have at our disposals. so I even can’t tell if you’re asking “who would have rpf written about them” (which also presumably differs from historical fiction about past avatars or smth like that) and “who would write freaky friend fiction (like tina)?” i’m gonna go with the latter bc it’s way funnier.

i think that girl meng would definitely have written some….things…..about aang, iykwim. zombie apocalypse au, enemies to lovers, there was only one bed, etc etc.

i can also just kind of see jin doing this (abt lee from the tea shop or otherwise) i can’t explain it she just has fujoshi vibes. like, whenever ppl talk about how jin, zuko, and jet should have all been friends in ba sing se, i’m usually like “uhh… why tho….” but now i see why. it’s so that she could write jetko rpf about them.

for therapeutic purposes mai probably writes a lot of really cathartic short stories about her entire family, the entire royal family, and ty lee all falling into a sinkhole. but then mai saves ty lee from drowning at the last minute, which teaches ty lee to appreciate her instead of that stupid sinkhole bitch azula (this is all pre boiling rock, obviously).

at one point mai and sokka find a notebook of really angsty fanfiction about the blue spirit and they’re like, “oh my god this is amazing we gotta show this to zuko, he’ll get a kick out of this,” not realizing that zuko actually wrote it himself as a way to work through his identity crisis. he’s just like, “yeah….wow….so cringey, right? but also, kind of incredible how this writer articulates the struggle of the bisected self in extremis so beautifully……right? you guys think so too?” and sokka and mai just look at each other and silently go, “okay…. we may have made a mistake…..”

when katara was a child she would make up stories in her head about finding the avatar and befriending him and having him fall in love with her due to her courage and beauty and (hopefully, someday) waterbending talent and they would defeat the firelord together and live happily ever after. but thankfully she never wrote any of this down, because paper is a very scarce commodity in the southern water tribe and even she knows better than to invoke gran gran’s wrath on that. she never tells aang. although at some point (in sworn secrecy) she does end up telling zuko (assuming that he’d understand considering he also devised fantasies of finding the avatar to cope with his miserable existence), and he laughs for hours.

during their time together in the nwt, yue’s diary gets filled with all kinds of lurid fantasies of sokka killing hahn (in increasingly brutal ways) and sneaking her out of the palace so that she can join team avatar and they can be together forever. of course, whenever they talk about it, she’s just like “yes I love hahn he is great and I love my people and I would never leave my home” so sokka’s just like “okay girl you do you.” but then during the siege, yue actually sees sokka kill a man, and she’s suddenly so conflicted because all her self-indulgent fantasies were a bit too real (and in reality, he’s way more efficient about killing people than he was in her fantasies, almost like he’s done it before….) and she has no clue how to feel about it. anyway, thankfully, yue has learned how to hide her diary really well at this point, because if arnook ever found those particular pages he would’ve tracked down sokka and killed him without hesitation.

ok bonus follow up to the fujoshi jin writing jetko rpf au: eventually they find it (or maybe she’s bold enough to just straight up give it to them. you know what, she might be) and read it. jet’s like, “uhhh…. jin….. i’m not gay. you know that, right?” (he’s actually been hitting on her for… a while now…) and zuko’s like, “okay well i might be. BUT NOT FOR HIM!!!”

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comradekatara · 2 months

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This is not really a ship ask per se just the sokka/suki/mai/ty-lee polycule how do you think it would work? I think their dates are mix of sharp objects, sparring and sparkling conversation. The relationship equivalent of a heist movie (and I guess zukos at kiddie table or something. Guy in the polycule who is just there)

LMFAOOO zuko is like eric andre banging at the gates yelling LET ME INNNN but alas he lacks the spirit and charm to join. he doesn’t even really want to be a part of it either (beautiful women do not actually interest him), he just feels excluded and resentful because it’s unfair that sokka (his favorite special guy) is closer to mai and ty lee (his only peers he ever spoke to until he was 17 years of age) than he is, and also he just generally refuses to understand why suki gets nice things (ie, sokka) and he doesn’t. unfortunately he has just enough self-knowledge to acknowledge that it’s a flaw he possesses rather than projecting that resentment outwards, so he is kind of just sitting there pathetically. alas. many such cases.

as for the group dynamic itself, i think that sokka and suki are a concrete couple, and mai and ty lee are also a discrete coupling, but then suki and ty lee are also together, and occasionally suki and mai also hook up, and sometimes suki mai and ty lee are just a throuple, but then sometimes sokka is also involved, but he’s also usually off doing his own thing so he’s not as present, but don’t get it twisted, he IS there and he’s in this relationship. he’s in this relationship.

it starts because obviously sokka and suki are already a couple and madly in love, and then they befriend mai and ty lee once the war ends. ty lee of course being a kyoshi warrior, so suki ends up spending a lot of time with her showing her the ropes, and also learning chi-blocking from her. suki is obviously just smitten with ty lee almost immediately because she is so talented and beautiful and charming, but also resents ty lee for this fact because she is too proud to admit that ty lee is a better fighter and smarter than she is, but eventually is able to admit her feelings for ty lee much in the same way that she did with sokka.

so suki gets together with ty lee while they’re on kyoshi island together, and concurrently sokka and mai are getting closer in the fire nation babysitting zuko and they very quickly realize that they actually get along really well because they surprisingly have a lot in common and share a sense of humor and love being miserable little haters together. and even though they both hate being in the fire nation, their newfound friendship becomes a consistent source of joy for each of them, and toph included, they are basically inseparable. everyone kind of assumes they’re dating because they truly do spend every second of the day together, but they’re not. or well, it’s more complicated/weirder than that.

when sokka and mai go to visit suki and ty lee on kyoshi island, or suki and ty lee come back to the fire nation (whichever comes first), sokka is already aware that suki and ty lee have gotten together because suki told him about her feelings before she left and then wrote to him about all their developments as they were occurring. and sokka is supportive, but he also finds it kind of strange because he distinctly remembers ty lee as being someone who was constantly flirting with him, and he wonders how them sharing a girlfriend will change that dynamic. but it doesn’t really. ty lee continues to flirt with him. at first it actually makes him so uncomfortable that he thinks he’s gonna throw up, because he’s being besieged on all sides (ie, suki has joined in the incessant flirting, mai is kind of just sitting there wearing this inscrutable yet distinctly infuriating expression) but eventually he just adjusts to this group dynamic.

sokka and suki are actually the ones to get mai and ty lee to finally get their shit together though. suki persuades ty lee that mai has feelings for her while sokka persuades mai that ty lee has feelings for her. and they feel like very helpful samaritans of the world they are so proud of themselves when mai and ty lee finally do get together. they’ve been dancing around their feelings ever since the boiling rock and kept insisting that it “just isn’t the right time” because mai was figuring out her shit with zuko and ty lee was moving to kyoshi island and blah blah blah. but suki’s just like “ARGH I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!” and smushes their faces together basically.

as for mai and suki, they first bond over being evenly matched in pai sho. ty lee and sokka are both geniuses who win every game effortlessly, and suki and mai (who both pride themselves on being highly intelligent) get fed up with getting their asses kicked so they start their own pai sho tournament, no ty lees and sokkas allowed. (fyi: we do actually see them playing pai sho together in ba sing se in the finale, which I think is very cute.) pai sho can be a very erotic game depending on how you play it (iroh can attest to this) so mai and suki, as well as ty lee and sokka, greatly enjoy these battles of wit, and get closer as a result. (yet another reason why zuko isn’t invited into the polycule; he sucks at pai sho.)

all that said, I do think toph is also heavily involved in this group dynamic, albeit not romantically, but she’s obviously sokka’s best friend and also very important to mai, so she kind of just hangs around because sokka, mai, and toph are also just their own little trio. but when it is just the four of them, it is truly the four scariest nonbenders in the world participating in this vaguely polyamorous dyke squad telling the most fucked up jokes you have ever heard in your life and laughing their asses off, and they are all gorgeous gorgeous girls who seem highly threatening to anyone on the outside looking in, but are actually very silly and goofy and and dedicate way too much of their time to playing board games. beautiful dynamic I think

(also, just as a sidenote for anyone wondering about whether they’re lesbians or what, that reddit post about being “gay both ways” is sokka’s gender. to me)

[ID: Reddit post by rrien in the thread r/bisexual with the title “Anyone “gay both ways”?”

The body reads: “I used to know this he/they bi guy, who presented himself as a pretty androgynous trans dude.

When he dated guys, he was a man getting with a gay man. When he dated women, it was like a lesbian relationship. He was comfortable and perceived as a dude in gay male spaces, and was equally comfortable and perceived as a butch in lesbian spaces. I think about this a lot. Dude was playing 5D chess with gender.

Has anyone else encountered this? As someone who’s uncomfortable in hetero relationship dynamics and who strives for androgyny….I just think it’s neat.” /end ID]

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comradekatara · 2 months

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I keep thinking about Ty Lee in the beach scene, and how much of her personal venting was genuine. She strikes me as the sort of person with like, layered vulnerability, like she can peel back one and keep the others hidden. I wonder how much catharsis she was actually feeling

yes!!! i love when she says "i feel all smoothed" because there is simply no way that's true, i think she just wanted the conversation to be over. like "okay you're all disasters, we get it, please shut up now."

i definitely think that there's a part of her that resents her family for whatever reason, but you're right in that she's definitely strategically only scratching the surface. like to what extent was her running off to join the circus a way to escape from her stifling home life, and not, perhaps, a way to escape the stifling command of a certain princess.

i am always thinking about the fact that they went to that academy together, because obviously azula would be worshipped by the other girls for being their princess, but her social skills are not the best when trying to make small talk with her peers, whereas ty lee is effortlessly talented and smart and sociable and pretty and everyone likes her. so in terms of popularity, azula definitely commands respect, but ty lee simply has the respect of her peers. was their time in school together in any way similar to their time at the beach? obviously the fact that they would all know who azula is (and there are no guys to impress) changes the dynamic, but the student body would still get along with ty lee better. but she can't really befriend them, because she's azula's.

and then they graduate, and she gets to leave. she's happy to see azula, perhaps, but she doesn't want to go back. azula has to coerce her, and not subtly either. so the entire time, they both know that ty lee isn't here by choice, that ty lee would be elsewhere if she could. but not once does she criticize azula. her family, her sisters, mai, even, but never azula. so we know that her performance is feigned. she is an acrobat, an entertainer, a circus freak; she contorts herself to suit her needs, to appease those around her.

never once is she truly, fully honest with azula. the only time she ever actually reveals anything meaningful to azula is when she says "if you want a boy to like you just look at him and smile a lot and laugh at everything he says, even if it's not funny." she's literally telling azula her exact strategy for how she handles her and azula doesn't even realize it. she dismisses it as "shallow and stupid," not getting that appearing shallow and stupid is quite literally the point.

the only time ty lee is truly honest with herself is when she sacrifices herself for mai. and she stays behind. the girl who ran away to join the circus willingly lets herself be thrown in prison in a show of solidarity with her best (and only true) friend. we've seen her take out a platoon of earth kingdom soldiers with a smile, we've seen her run on the cables moving the gondolas over the lake. she had azula incapacitated, she could've easily taken on those guards, run to the top of the volcano before they could stop her, and steal azula's airship. but mai freezes in shock, and so ty lee stays by her side. she runs, she evades, she deflects, she hides behind masks. but here, she stays. she sacrifices her own comfort and her own survival, which until now has been her primary goal, for mai. it's her first truly honest moment in the show. her confession in the beach was devised and feigned. only at the boiling rock does she finally remove her mask.

#pensive-expression #asks #ty lee #analysis #azula&tylee #azula #maixtylee #mai #i would love to know more abt her family tho #especially her father #i just get the feeling that he is..... not a great guy #but i digress

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comradekatara · 3 months

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the gaang+ and their ideal jacket/coat -type wear?

sorry for taking so long to respond to this one it’s such a fun question i love jackets (also assuming modern au obviously)

aang’s favorite jacket would be one of those windbreakers with like. a vivid 80s color scheme (eg, purple and yellow, orange and blue, green and pink, etc etc). no one but him could pull it off (especially in this day and age) but he looks so cool in it. fresh and fly, even

katara loves jackets and is constantly saying in aang’s vicinity “wow what a gorgeous jacket… if only i had a BEST FRIEND in this CRUEL WORLD who TRULY LOVED ME so that i could wear it…..” and aang never picks up on what she is doing and buys it for her as if it was his own idea every time. and every time katara is like “omg aang!!! how did you know that this was literally the exact jacket i wanted!!!” and she’s being sincere btw. like she either just doesn’t remember or never even catches on to what it is she’s doing. so she’s just like “wow aang is an amazing friend…” somehow totally oblivious to her own machinations.

also katara loves wearing really big puffy coats with thick fur linings in winter, and whenever she zips up and puts the hood up on those bad boys she looks like a big puffy purple marshmallow and you only can just see her little face peeking through the fluff of her hood. and she should look kind of stupid but she doesn’t. in fact she looks sooo cute

toph gets really cold in winter so one year katara gets her one of those really fluffy, puffy coats. she loves it so much she even wears it indoors sometimes. and yes she looks adorable in it too

sokka just has one jacket that he wears for every occasion. it was probably hakoda’s, it’s either brown or green, it’s slightly too large on him, it has one million pockets, and it has a wool lining around the collar. he wears it in winter, in summer, rain or shine, and whenever anyone is like “isn’t that jacket not exactly…weather appropriate?” sokka’s like “wym? this is my jacket.” the truth is, he has such an ordered system of what items go in which pockets that he just can’t be bothered to have to move stuff around if he ever got a second jacket. so he doesn’t

zuko fantasizes about being cool enough to pull off a leather jacket, but in reality he is just a freak in a cardigan.

suki has one denim jacket that she has had since forever that she wears with everything. it’s faded, torn, and has one million pins and patches on it. this jacket is basically like a son to her. bisexual hall of fame jacket.

you know azula loves a fitted blazer. with sharp confident shoulders, but not in an obnoxious way. a sensible color and a sensible cut. classy, elegant, stylish, timeless. but sadly, the other kids in her eighth grade debate club think it’s “a bit much.”

mai is one of those girls who LOVES peacoats. she has a million different nearly identical peacoats in slightly different shades of black, navy blue, maroon, and burgundy (which is slightly different from maroon, GOD). she also has a few black leather jackets (she’s rich) that she looks really cool in, if you were wondering (and zuko isn’t jealous at all).

for ty lee’s birthday, mai gives her a jacket that is the exact same cut as her favorite leather jacket but in a really nice shade of pink. she had it custom made (but she doesn’t tell ty lee that). it is ty lee’s favorite item of clothing, and she cherishes it forever.

#homoclothes #asks #the gaang and #modern au #maixtylee #katara&toph #aang&katara #tag yourself im suki sun sokka moon mai rising #(idk astrology)

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