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sokkastyles · 3 years

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I said that I wanted to make a post as a companion to this one about Azula focusing on Zuko, because both the Fire Nation siblings crave authenticity and I was thinking about this in terms of this conversation:

Zuko: Why didn't you tell those guys who we were?

Azula: I guess I was intrigued. I'm so used to people worshiping us.

Ty Lee: They should.

Azula: Yes, I know, and I love it. But, for once, I just wanted to see how people would treat us if they didn't know who we were.

This is during “The Beach” when Ty Lee and Mai are invited to a party by some FN teens and Azula invites herself and Zuko. The teens hilariously tell them that there will be “important people” at the party, not knowing that Azula and Zuko are the prince and princess of the Fire Nation. Zuko asks Azula why she didn’t tell them the truth and she says she wanted to be treated like a normal teenager, for once. In this episode we see Azula trying, and failing, to be the teenage girl she never got to be.

Although Zuko and Azula both want to be seen and understood for who they really are, to embrace an identity that is authentic and real, and be seen and known by others on a level that is authentic and real, Zuko goes about it in a different way than Azula. Zuko’s search for his authentic self has led him to pursue the identity he’s been trying to get back to for three years, his identity as Prince of the Fire Nation. That’s why Zuko wonders why Azula didn’t just tell the boys who they were. If she did, surely they would want them at the party? They are, after all, the Prince and Princess.

Zuko also has a different relationship to his status as royalty not only because he’s been away from home for three years, but because he’s always been told that he wasn’t good enough, that he had to better, that he had to prove he was worthy of the title he was born with. Of course, it’s all built on a lie, the lie of noble birth, but it’s been so ingrained in Zuko (and Azula, but we’re talking about Zuko now) that at the beginning of the series, he was bitter and angry over what he felt he was entitled to that had been taken from him.

Zuko asking Azula why she didn’t just tell the boys who they really were echoes his revelation of his true name to the Earth Kingdom village in “Zuko Alone.”

Zuko: My name is Zuko. Son of Ursa and Fire Lord Ozai. Prince of the Fire Nation, and heir to the throne.

Old man: Liar! I heard of you! You're not a prince, you're an outcast! His own father burned and disowned him!

Here, Zuko’s announcement of who he is has the opposite effect than what he thought, as he failed to realize that the Earth Kingdom citizens he sought to protect would not look kindly on Fire Nation royalty. This shows Zuko’s desire to get back what he’s lost without a real understanding of his privilege and the crimes his nation has committed against the rest of the world. And the old man’s reaction also has the added bonus of reminding him that even whatever hollow meaning he could have taken from his title is ultimately meaningless, because his father banished him.

And thus, just like Azula, Zuko’s identity is fractured into multiples. The first one is Prince Zuko, heir to the throne. The second one is Zuko the disgraced, scarred, banished, exiled.

There’s also a third which is further broken up into multiples: Blue Spirit, refugee, tea server, that exists in between the two.

Zuko’s narrative is about trying to reconcile these identities into an authentic self, and for much of the series, he is single-mindedly pursuing what he thinks represents his authentic self. That’s why when he finally goes back to the Fire Nation, he tries to be happy with his identity as prince, and embrace it as much as possible. He thinks that telling the guys at the party who he is will impress them (even though it didn’t work the first time), but once he gets there, he feels more out of place than ever.

What’s this? A shot of Zuko’s scar and a mirror, and a guy who represents the kind of guy Zuko could have been if he weren’t who he is? Zuko’s got everything he wanted here. He’s the prince of the Fire Nation, he’s got a girlfriend, his honor restored, and he’s back home, but instead of enjoying himself, he decides to be jealous of this guy. His existential confusion comes out as insecurity over his relationship with Mai, because he can never be sure if he can be himself with Mai, or if Mai even likes his true self. I mean, if he hadn’t agreed to go back to the Fire Nation, if he hadn’t become Prince Zuko again, he would not even have a relationship with her, as he would have been making the journey back as a prisoner.

Zuko’s inability to return to his former identity as prince of the Fire Nation is symbolically represented in his scar. He is permanently marked by the suffering he has undergone, and permanently changed as a result of his experiences. In “The Crossroads of Destiny,” Zuko almost was able to reconcile these two aspects of himself, and to choose for himself which one to embrace. When he meets Katara in the catacombs, he is confronted with what his identity as Prince of the Fire Nation, and the legacy of destruction that goes with it, means to her:

Katara: You're a terrible person! You know that? Always following us! Hunting the Avatar! Trying to capture the world's last hope for peace! But what do you care? You're the Fire Lord's son. Spreading war and violence and hatred is in your blood!

Zuko: You don't know what you're talking about!

Katara: I don't? How dare you! You have no idea what this war has put me through!

Zuko, of course, objects to being characterized this way, and of course his relationship with his identity as the FIre Lord’s son is much more complicated than Katara knows, but she also is right that he has no idea of the suffering that his people have wrought upon the rest of the world. It’s when Katara brings up her personal loss of her mother, though, that he is able to empathize with her.

Katara: The Fire Nation took my mother away from me.

Zuko: I'm sorry. That's something we have in common.

Speaking of mirrored images, Zuko throughout his journey has had his own self-image held up to him and examined through the mirror of other people, one of them being Song, the Earth Kingdom girl who empathized with him over his burn scar. Katara is another, someone who, like him, lost her mother as a child. There are two things here that are an essential part of Zuko’s journey, 1) experiencing the suffering of others which pulls him out of his own self-centered perception, and 2) having his own suffering validated by seeing and meeting other people who have suffered in the same way. Contrast this to the way Azula treats other people’s suffering as not entirely real, calling her brother and her friend’s revelations about themselves in “The Beach” performances while also denying that she cares about her own damaged relationship with her mother. Zuko’s realization that other people’s suffering is real and something he should care about goes hand in hand with realizing that he did not deserve to suffer in the ways that his family has made him suffer. It is Katara’s pain over her mother’s loss that reaffirms that Zuko’s loss of his mother was also real and causes Zuko to realize that he is free to choose his own identity.

Zuko: I used to think this scar marked me. The mark of the banished prince, cursed to chase the Avatar forever. But lately, I've realized I'm free to determine my own destiny, even if I'll never be free of my mark.

Katara offering to heal the scar, although well-meaning, ironically sets Zuko back, because it reinforces the idea that the scar is a shameful part of his identity, something that marks him as Zuko the banished prince and separates him from becoming who he truly is. Katara connects with Zuko in a way that is authentic and real, but because Zuko cannot yet reconcile the dichotomy within himself, he ends up making the wrong decision underneath Ba Sing Se, and when Katara says during the fight that she thought he had changed, he tells her that he has, having made a decision about which identity to choose, although he still must take the final steps towards becoming whole by reconciling the two parts of himself personified by the “crossroads” in this episode.

But also essential to Zuko reconciling these two parts of himself is the development in season two of an identity that bridges gap between Prince Zuko and Zuko the banished. This is the Zuko that we see serving tea, working the kind of job that we might expect a normal teenager to work, and beginning to form a picture of himself that is surprisingly domestic. And even though he makes it clear to Iroh that this isn’t what he wants, it’s clear that some part of him craves this. Just as with Azula we see her wishful attempt to inhabit the role of normal teenage girl through going to a party and flirting with a boy, we see Zuko at possibly his most vulnerable and most “normal teenagery” when he is on his date with Jin. And even though it’s Iroh who pushes him to accept the date, we see Zuko reluctantly open up and genuinely enjoy himself.

However, Zuko still cannot experience true authenticity with Jin, as he must hide his Fire Nation identity. He does, however, covertly reveal his firebending to Jin, whose silent acceptance moves him ever so slightly towards an acceptance of his true self. This is ultimately too much for him, however, as once he accepts Jin’s acceptance and reciprocates her feelings he is overwhelmed and retreats, in part because he cannot reveal his true self to her for practical reasons and in part because he isn’t ready to do so on an emotional level.

It is also around this time in the narrative that Zuko sees another reflection of himself. His freeing of Appa is a huge blow to his self-perception, and this causes him to go into a fever during which he has several dreams that reveal parts of his identity or how he sees himself. The first is the image of himself on the Fire Lord throne, devoid of the scar but being controlled by two dragons with the voice of Azula and Iroh. And it’s after this dream that he looks in the mirror and sees himself as...

I’ve mostly seen this scene talked about in terms of Zuko and Aang’s narrative parallels and spiritual link, and it is significant for that reason, but it’s also a reflection of the choice Zuko must make about who he will be. If he is not defined by his identity as either Prince of the Fire Nation or his banishment, or his search for the Avatar, then who is he?

Zuko touching the scar upon waking to reaffirm that he is still himself shows us how much the scar has become a part of his identity. At the end of book two, he flirts with the idea of acceptance, and then with the offer of having it removed, and then when he goes back to the Fire Nation in early book three, he attempts to return to a point before the scar existed, before the fracturing of his identity, but finds that he cannot.

Zuko: During the meeting, I was the perfect prince. The son my father wanted. But I wasn't me.

By going to the war meeting, Zuko returns to the place of his original trauma and discovers that he cannot return to who he was before the fracturing of his identity, and that he, in fact, was never the “perfect prince” to begin with, that that person never existed.

What Zuko eventually comes to realize, through all of these experiences, and through returning to the home of his existence before the scar and finding it no longer a home, is that all of these identities are a part of him.

When he confronts his father on the Day of Black Sun, and then when he presents himself to the gaang, this is the first time that Zuko is being true to his authentic self, both by creating a more whole and positive identity and by accepting the trauma and guilt of his past and trying to atone. Therefore he’s able to create a more true identity and accept his place as Fire Lord without the cognitive dissonance that that identity brought him before.

#zuko #atla meta

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mullikinshulamis1996 · 4 years

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Bruxism Tmj Symptoms Portentous Tips

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What Is A Tmj Specialist

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Lexapro Bruxism

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#Bruxism Tmj Symptoms Portentous Tips #What Is Tmj

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