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ljwritesOpen Review: The Azula Trilogy by MasterGhandalf
Part 1: Story, Inside and Out
Welcome to the first installment of Open Review, where I review Avatar: The Last Airbender fan fiction that I found particularly good and/or thought-provoking. As a rule the reviews will be on completed stories, whether long or short, so I can give a complete opinion. They can get quite spoilerific by necessity, so don't read past the cut if you don't want to know parts of the story in advance.
The first Open Reviewed story is actually a trilogy of stories, Heart of Fire, Path of Fire, and Soul of Fire by MasterGhandalf. Collectively called the Azula Trilogy, the stories deal with Princess Azula after the end of the war in a thrilling tale of adventure, growth, and good old world-saving. Fast-paced and well-plotted, they are written in a style reminiscent of good young adult fiction and are very much in keeping with the atmosphere and theme of the series they were based on.
I first found this story through the TV Tropes fic rec page, which I have found to be a mixed bag but useful as well. (And I can't denigrate it in good conscience, seeing how others have found my own humble tale thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amanda_violet's kind recommendation there.) Some stories that I found through the page simply did not catch my interest, but some I found excellent. The Azula Trilogy is one of the latter cases.
Azula, I think, is something of a conundrum for the fandom; or at least, she has been one for me. On the one hand she is one of the most powerful and interesting female characters to come along in years--enormously intelligent, unrelentingly disciplined, terrifyingly strong. On the other hand, this paragon of girl power just so happens to be a fascinating study of evil and amorality who has no concept of--or chooses to disregard--right or wrong, appears incapable of empathizing with people, and controls people through fear. It's no wonder she's right up there with the many examples of Girl Power Corrupts.
There have accordingly been attempts to rehabilitate the character, stories that tried to read her actions in a more sympathetic light or came up with theories about why she became the way she was. (Abuse by Ozai is a popular one.) The problem is, none of the ones I saw really worked for me. They either didn't mesh that well with the canon, or smacked of making excuses for her actions. (It's all Ozai's faaaullllllt...) And if I'm disturbed by the idea that a girl can't be powerful without becoming evil/crazy/both, I'm even more disturbed by the implication that a girl doesn't have the agency to be evil without its being some man's fault. I mean, Zuko was all sorts of messed up by his family situation, but the point of his character arc is that he took responsibility and made the right choices instead of sitting around lamenting how mean his dad was. A true Azula rehabilitation fic, in my mind, had to be an Azula redemption story, not an Azula excuses story.
That theme of responsibility is where the Azula Trilogy truly shines. The series has other strengths that I'll get to, but first and foremost the author doesn't shy away from the fact that Azula must take responsibility for her actions and future. The roots of her amorality are blamed on Ozai's teachings, but I can live with that; it's a given that a father would have tremendous influence--one way or the other--over his children. What's important is that the character acknowledge her own choices, her own agency and do something about her life. The entire trilogy delivers splendidly on this point. The whole series at its heart is Azula's journey of redemption, how she comes to terms with the evil in her life and goes in a different direction.
The series' other great strength is that it accomplishes this story of redemption in a way that weaves the external adventure story and the internal moral story together. Ursula Le Guin once wrote that (I can't find the quote online, reconstructing from memory) she got very bored with some science fiction stories because the more was going outside, the less seemed to be going on inside. I understand this to mean that when the outer action is divorced with the internal movements of emotions and morality, it's easy to get a story that is bursting with action and adventure and color and gimmicks and yet strangely hollow. A story can have all the distracting trappings it likes, but If there is no human concern in it, if it has no meaningful statement about the human condition, then the the whole thing will have been for nought and it will have failed as a story.
While this is far from a failure unique to genre fiction such as fantasy or science fiction, it is something of a temptation in those kinds of stories because it's easy to get gimmicky with the trappings of the genre. But when that temptation is overcome and the external and internal flow together, when the external trappings of story and genre support and shape the internal story, and vice versa--that's when story blossoms to its full potential to move and shake the reader with its power, clarity, and authority. Avatar: The Last Airbender is this kind of story, and the Azula Trilogy is another.
But how is that harmony achieved? How does one weave the external story with the internal so that the trappings and theme go together and create that synergy of a story well told? More to the subject matter of the review, how did the Azula Trilogy do it?
I see two main answers to this question. The first is that it is done by having the externals of the story bring the character to a point where she must make a meaningful choice--a meaningful choice being one that shows her essence, revealing what she values, what motivates her, her strength or lack thereof, and more. A meaningful choice, in other words, reveals a part of the character's soul. Every good story must, at its heart, be about choice, and meaningful choice at that. The external story, the realm of action and words and events, creates situations where character must make a choice, and each choice will in turn create new situations. And so the external and internal parts of a story interact with and reinforce each other.
Second, this synergy is achieved by making the external story, its trappings and gimmicks and whatnot, reflect the internal issues. Genre literature, for all its danger of failing as a story, actually has great strength in this regard if done right. Fantasy, the genre most relevant to this review, works best when its world and metaphysics have a symbolic relation to the theme. "Power corrupts" is an abstract idea, but a story like The Lord of the Rings brings that idea to life as a story by showing how characters and a world change and react in the face of absolute power made concrete, the One Ring. If the fantasy author keeps a firm understanding of what the trappings actually mean in the story instead of being dazzled by the trappings themselves, fantasy can be a ringing statement about life and the world like no other.
The Azula Trilogy does both of these things, and so achieves a happy marriage of fun and meaning without degenerating into a pointless gimmicky story or beating the reader over the head with The Point. (Well, maybe a little beating over the head. More on that later.) First, the events of each story drive the protagonist to a point where she must make a choice between power and principle. The final choice is made at the climax, and with that choice the story is resolved with the expected flurry of martial action and bending power. But at heart it is the moral choice that drives and changes both the story and the character, and so makes the trappings of action and adventure meaningful.
Second, the metaphysical and physical threats in all three stories mirror and amplify the theme of the story. This is particularly true of the central villain Zhan Zheng, the spirit of war who was born from Sozin's worldwide war. Zhan Zheng is the ultimate symbol of power through violence, the desire to gloat in one's superiority and crush lesser creatures beneath one's heel, forever. Sound like anyone else we know? Yeah. The spirit itself makes the connection between itself and Azula explicit:
On a lesser scale, in Heart of Fire, the first of the trilogy, another villain obsessed with war and conquest both reflects Azula's own issues and presents her with a temptation to power. Azun was a Fire Nation general and a true believer in the war who planned to depose Zuko and install Azula on the throne so the war will continue. He turns out to have been a pawn of Zhan Zheng as well, presenting a beginning threat that steadily escalates until the appearance of the spirit itself.
The choice offered to Azula is the same in its contours if not in scale: Azun in the first story offers to make Azula the Firelord so she can conquer the world. Zhan Zheng in the third offers to merge with Azula to make her a living goddess, to rule the world in eternity. In both cases Azula is not only offered but almost forced, at threat of life, limb, and soul, to take the very power that she so wanted. Will she take the offer, and return to her old ways?
What I particularly like about the series, character-wise, is that Azula does make the right choices but in a way that is in character for her at the time. When she turns down General Azun's offer, her reasons are thoroughly pragmatic: she doesn't think Azun can overthrow her brother when the Avatar is on Zuko's side, and she has no interest in being on the losing side. Also, she doesn't want to lose control of herself again the way she did in her madness, and has realized she must go a different way if she is to retain her sanity. It is only near the very end of the trilogy, especially after something of a moral epiphany at the end of the second story, Path of Fire, that she rejects Zhan Zheng's offer of godhood for moral reasons.
This is preceded by a deliciously ironic exchange where Azula taunts Zhan Zheng for its surprise at her betrayal, that of course she betrayed it: "It's what I do best." It's just another way in which the story is true to Azula's character. It shows her progression in a believable way while keeping the core of her character, her cold intelligence, iron discipline, and inscrutable mystery. To the end, when she helps save the world and makes peace with her old enemies and family, Azula is never soft or squishy. She remains no-nonsense and a little distant, at peace with herself but in no way warm or fuzzy. It is one of the many strengths of the trilogy that it doesn't sacrifice Azula's uniqueness as a character for the sake of making her into a more socially acceptable version of herself.
I have called Azula a sociopath in notes for my short story The Alternative, and there were huge fan discussions on this issue, too. The Azula trilogy, for all it redeems her, could very well be consistent with this view of her, and could be read as as a story of a sociopath made good. She may not relate to people very well and have no independent conception of right and wrong, but came to see that it's in her best interest not to seek total domination over others if she a) doesn't want to get the tar kicked out of her and b) doesn't want to tear her own mind apart. Which may be a bittersweet way to read the story, but doesn't it make morality all the more powerful, in a way, if it can be phrased as simple good sense, the only real way to live a fulfilling life?
tl; dr version: The Azula Trilogy redeems the central character without making excuses for her, and it weaves the external action and internal change together in a meaningful way. Even better, it's fully in character! Next I discuss the writing and execution of the story.
Links:
MasterGhandalf's ff.n profile
The Azula Trilogy:
Heart of Fire
Path of Fire
Soul of Fire
TV Tropes fanfic recommendation page (under "General Fics")
The Azula Trilogy Tropes Page
Part 1: Story, Inside and Out
Welcome to the first installment of Open Review, where I review Avatar: The Last Airbender fan fiction that I found particularly good and/or thought-provoking. As a rule the reviews will be on completed stories, whether long or short, so I can give a complete opinion. They can get quite spoilerific by necessity, so don't read past the cut if you don't want to know parts of the story in advance.
The first Open Reviewed story is actually a trilogy of stories, Heart of Fire, Path of Fire, and Soul of Fire by MasterGhandalf. Collectively called the Azula Trilogy, the stories deal with Princess Azula after the end of the war in a thrilling tale of adventure, growth, and good old world-saving. Fast-paced and well-plotted, they are written in a style reminiscent of good young adult fiction and are very much in keeping with the atmosphere and theme of the series they were based on.
I first found this story through the TV Tropes fic rec page, which I have found to be a mixed bag but useful as well. (And I can't denigrate it in good conscience, seeing how others have found my own humble tale thanks to
amanda_violet's kind recommendation there.) Some stories that I found through the page simply did not catch my interest, but some I found excellent. The Azula Trilogy is one of the latter cases.Azula, I think, is something of a conundrum for the fandom; or at least, she has been one for me. On the one hand she is one of the most powerful and interesting female characters to come along in years--enormously intelligent, unrelentingly disciplined, terrifyingly strong. On the other hand, this paragon of girl power just so happens to be a fascinating study of evil and amorality who has no concept of--or chooses to disregard--right or wrong, appears incapable of empathizing with people, and controls people through fear. It's no wonder she's right up there with the many examples of Girl Power Corrupts.
There have accordingly been attempts to rehabilitate the character, stories that tried to read her actions in a more sympathetic light or came up with theories about why she became the way she was. (Abuse by Ozai is a popular one.) The problem is, none of the ones I saw really worked for me. They either didn't mesh that well with the canon, or smacked of making excuses for her actions. (It's all Ozai's faaaullllllt...) And if I'm disturbed by the idea that a girl can't be powerful without becoming evil/crazy/both, I'm even more disturbed by the implication that a girl doesn't have the agency to be evil without its being some man's fault. I mean, Zuko was all sorts of messed up by his family situation, but the point of his character arc is that he took responsibility and made the right choices instead of sitting around lamenting how mean his dad was. A true Azula rehabilitation fic, in my mind, had to be an Azula redemption story, not an Azula excuses story.
That theme of responsibility is where the Azula Trilogy truly shines. The series has other strengths that I'll get to, but first and foremost the author doesn't shy away from the fact that Azula must take responsibility for her actions and future. The roots of her amorality are blamed on Ozai's teachings, but I can live with that; it's a given that a father would have tremendous influence--one way or the other--over his children. What's important is that the character acknowledge her own choices, her own agency and do something about her life. The entire trilogy delivers splendidly on this point. The whole series at its heart is Azula's journey of redemption, how she comes to terms with the evil in her life and goes in a different direction.
The series' other great strength is that it accomplishes this story of redemption in a way that weaves the external adventure story and the internal moral story together. Ursula Le Guin once wrote that (I can't find the quote online, reconstructing from memory) she got very bored with some science fiction stories because the more was going outside, the less seemed to be going on inside. I understand this to mean that when the outer action is divorced with the internal movements of emotions and morality, it's easy to get a story that is bursting with action and adventure and color and gimmicks and yet strangely hollow. A story can have all the distracting trappings it likes, but If there is no human concern in it, if it has no meaningful statement about the human condition, then the the whole thing will have been for nought and it will have failed as a story.
While this is far from a failure unique to genre fiction such as fantasy or science fiction, it is something of a temptation in those kinds of stories because it's easy to get gimmicky with the trappings of the genre. But when that temptation is overcome and the external and internal flow together, when the external trappings of story and genre support and shape the internal story, and vice versa--that's when story blossoms to its full potential to move and shake the reader with its power, clarity, and authority. Avatar: The Last Airbender is this kind of story, and the Azula Trilogy is another.
But how is that harmony achieved? How does one weave the external story with the internal so that the trappings and theme go together and create that synergy of a story well told? More to the subject matter of the review, how did the Azula Trilogy do it?
I see two main answers to this question. The first is that it is done by having the externals of the story bring the character to a point where she must make a meaningful choice--a meaningful choice being one that shows her essence, revealing what she values, what motivates her, her strength or lack thereof, and more. A meaningful choice, in other words, reveals a part of the character's soul. Every good story must, at its heart, be about choice, and meaningful choice at that. The external story, the realm of action and words and events, creates situations where character must make a choice, and each choice will in turn create new situations. And so the external and internal parts of a story interact with and reinforce each other.
Second, this synergy is achieved by making the external story, its trappings and gimmicks and whatnot, reflect the internal issues. Genre literature, for all its danger of failing as a story, actually has great strength in this regard if done right. Fantasy, the genre most relevant to this review, works best when its world and metaphysics have a symbolic relation to the theme. "Power corrupts" is an abstract idea, but a story like The Lord of the Rings brings that idea to life as a story by showing how characters and a world change and react in the face of absolute power made concrete, the One Ring. If the fantasy author keeps a firm understanding of what the trappings actually mean in the story instead of being dazzled by the trappings themselves, fantasy can be a ringing statement about life and the world like no other.
The Azula Trilogy does both of these things, and so achieves a happy marriage of fun and meaning without degenerating into a pointless gimmicky story or beating the reader over the head with The Point. (Well, maybe a little beating over the head. More on that later.) First, the events of each story drive the protagonist to a point where she must make a choice between power and principle. The final choice is made at the climax, and with that choice the story is resolved with the expected flurry of martial action and bending power. But at heart it is the moral choice that drives and changes both the story and the character, and so makes the trappings of action and adventure meaningful.
Second, the metaphysical and physical threats in all three stories mirror and amplify the theme of the story. This is particularly true of the central villain Zhan Zheng, the spirit of war who was born from Sozin's worldwide war. Zhan Zheng is the ultimate symbol of power through violence, the desire to gloat in one's superiority and crush lesser creatures beneath one's heel, forever. Sound like anyone else we know? Yeah. The spirit itself makes the connection between itself and Azula explicit:
"[Y]ou and I are connected in a way I have been with few mortals. You have cunning, power, charisma; you use them in my cause; you were born of the bloodline whose greatest member also produced me." (Soul of Fire Chapter 22: The Earth Shakes)
On a lesser scale, in Heart of Fire, the first of the trilogy, another villain obsessed with war and conquest both reflects Azula's own issues and presents her with a temptation to power. Azun was a Fire Nation general and a true believer in the war who planned to depose Zuko and install Azula on the throne so the war will continue. He turns out to have been a pawn of Zhan Zheng as well, presenting a beginning threat that steadily escalates until the appearance of the spirit itself.
The choice offered to Azula is the same in its contours if not in scale: Azun in the first story offers to make Azula the Firelord so she can conquer the world. Zhan Zheng in the third offers to merge with Azula to make her a living goddess, to rule the world in eternity. In both cases Azula is not only offered but almost forced, at threat of life, limb, and soul, to take the very power that she so wanted. Will she take the offer, and return to her old ways?
What I particularly like about the series, character-wise, is that Azula does make the right choices but in a way that is in character for her at the time. When she turns down General Azun's offer, her reasons are thoroughly pragmatic: she doesn't think Azun can overthrow her brother when the Avatar is on Zuko's side, and she has no interest in being on the losing side. Also, she doesn't want to lose control of herself again the way she did in her madness, and has realized she must go a different way if she is to retain her sanity. It is only near the very end of the trilogy, especially after something of a moral epiphany at the end of the second story, Path of Fire, that she rejects Zhan Zheng's offer of godhood for moral reasons.
"You are War--an idea incarnate, absolute and unchanging. I'm a human being, for better or worse, and change is what we do. I used to want all those things you offered me, but I don't any more. I've seen their true face--your true face--and I know they lead one place- ruin." Her eyes hardened into golden daggers. "Try your hardest, Zhan Zheng. You can tempt me no longer."
This is preceded by a deliciously ironic exchange where Azula taunts Zhan Zheng for its surprise at her betrayal, that of course she betrayed it: "It's what I do best." It's just another way in which the story is true to Azula's character. It shows her progression in a believable way while keeping the core of her character, her cold intelligence, iron discipline, and inscrutable mystery. To the end, when she helps save the world and makes peace with her old enemies and family, Azula is never soft or squishy. She remains no-nonsense and a little distant, at peace with herself but in no way warm or fuzzy. It is one of the many strengths of the trilogy that it doesn't sacrifice Azula's uniqueness as a character for the sake of making her into a more socially acceptable version of herself.
I have called Azula a sociopath in notes for my short story The Alternative, and there were huge fan discussions on this issue, too. The Azula trilogy, for all it redeems her, could very well be consistent with this view of her, and could be read as as a story of a sociopath made good. She may not relate to people very well and have no independent conception of right and wrong, but came to see that it's in her best interest not to seek total domination over others if she a) doesn't want to get the tar kicked out of her and b) doesn't want to tear her own mind apart. Which may be a bittersweet way to read the story, but doesn't it make morality all the more powerful, in a way, if it can be phrased as simple good sense, the only real way to live a fulfilling life?
tl; dr version: The Azula Trilogy redeems the central character without making excuses for her, and it weaves the external action and internal change together in a meaningful way. Even better, it's fully in character! Next I discuss the writing and execution of the story.
Links:
MasterGhandalf's ff.n profile
The Azula Trilogy:
Heart of Fire
Path of Fire
Soul of Fire
TV Tropes fanfic recommendation page (under "General Fics")
The Azula Trilogy Tropes Page
