Spacecasehobbit - Space

herrrrrrr 🥺

Azula’s Earth Kingdom Doll

In the Avatar: the Last Airbender season two episode, “Zuko Alone”, Zuko flashes back to a time when he and Azula were both young children. In one of these flashbacks, he recalls Iroh, then a general in the Fire Nation army sending home an Earth Kingdom knife for him and an Earth Kingdom doll for his younger sister, Azula.

Azula scorns the doll, sticking her tongue out and setting it on fire. Much has been made of this reaction in fandom, mostly by Azula apologists who seek to make Azula look better by alleging Iroh didn’t care about her or was sexist and cruel to her because of it. I’m not particularly interested in addressing this argument, here, as I have already addressed it in fic form, but suffice it to say it might or might not show some latent sexism on Iroh’s part that he assumed Azula might like a doll, but it’s not exactly surprising that a man who hasn’t seen his niece for two years, possibly more, wouldn’t be well-versed in her interests, and it’s only very lucky that he hit on something Zuko liked. It’s entirely possible Azula at six loved the dolls she had no interest in at eight.

However, it’s another, much more bizarre assertion I have seen floated around by Azula apologists that I find fascinating, because of how it relates to a troubling historical truth: the idea that Iroh got Azula an Earth Kingdom doll because he wished to demean her by giving her a doll representing a people he viewed as lesser.

Historically speaking children of imperial powers often had dolls representing the peoples their forebears sought to subjugate. These dolls gave the children of an empire symbolic ownership over the people their dolls represented, enculturating them into the project of empire-building and into the entire notion of having power over the people their dolls represented, just as they had power over their dolls. It wasn’t long ago that racist caricatures in doll form such as the gollywog doll [Link] were popular throughout the English-speaking world. Far from demeaning her, sending Azula an Earth Kingdom doll just as her family was on the cusp of conquering the Earth Kingdom very much fits into this pattern. The doll serves the same purpose as sending Zuko a piece of war spoils in the form of a knife.

What these gifts show us, more than anything about Zuko or Azula or their relationship to their uncle, is how Iroh viewed empire. He gave these gifts to his niece and nephew at the height of his imperial ambitions and belief in the rightness of those ambitions, and they show his comfort with empire and a desire to perpetuate it. This will soon change, and Iroh will become the man we know from the show’s timeframe, disgusted by empire, fighting for its demolition and for the freedom of the people he once sought to conquer. But the gifts he chose to give his niece and nephew give a tantalizing glimpse into who Iroh used to be, and what he used to believe in.

I wanna do something nice.. say something you appreciate about the person you reblogged this from!! even if it's smth as small as their profile photo :)

Fandom PSAs

Dont’ Like, Don’t Read

or DL; DR

You are responsible for curating your own online experience.

If something upsets you, makes you angry or queasy or triggers you, stop reading/looking at it. Avoid things that might make you feel that way.

Learn to use the Sort and Filter function on AO3, especially the Exclude tools.

On social media, block and mute accounts / tags / words when necessary.

If you hated something, you don’t need to tell that to the creator or start pointing fingers at them publicly.

The Back button is free. Use it.

Addendum:

Yes, for this to work, creators need to tag their works accordingly, so that people know what sort of content they are about to engage with and can nope out if necessary.

I will probably make another PSA about the importance of proper tagging later.

Ship And Let Ship

or SALS

You are allowed to ship whatever you want.

Everyone else is also allowed to ship whatever they want.

You are entitled to dislike or even hate a ship. If you want to do this online, in public, don’t use the ship tags for hate posts.

If you see someone posting about a ship they like and you don’t, there is no need for you to start arguing with them in their replies / comments / QRTs / reblogs. Don’t throw your hate in their face.

Do not harass fan creators or fans for shipping something you disapprove.

All of this also applies to liking / disliking an individual character.

Addendum:

”I agree with this, except when…”

No, then you are NOT agreeing with this.

Let me make this VERY clear. There are NO exceptions. None.

You don’t EVER harass real people over pixels.

If you disagree with this, kindly block and move on.

Your Kink Is Not My Kink

or YKINMK / YKINMKATO

The longer version is ”Your Kink Is Not My Kink And That’s Okay”.

People have different tastes. Not everything is for everybody.

Even if you don’t like a specific kink, other people are still allowed to use it in their creations.

You are entitled to dislike kinky content and think that it’s ”weird”.

Don’t kink shame or judge people based on their kinks.

This goes both ways: your kink is not someone else’s kink, so don’t push it onto those who are not into it.

Be Kind

or Don’t Be An Asshole

Focus on the things you like instead of the things you hate.

Create and unite instead of destroying and dividing.

Don’t harass real people over fictional things.

Stop stirring up petty drama just to get some attention on social media.

Stop trying to ”win”. Fandom is not a competition.

Remember that your own experiences aren’t universally shared. Your perception of things can differ from someone else’s, but that doesn’t mean either of you is necessarily wrong.