Yes, I Think These Are Some Really Good Points, Too! As A Child, Zuko Is Outright Told By Ozai That He

Yes, I think these are some really good points, too! As a child, Zuko is outright told by Ozai that he will learn through suffering, right before Ozai burns him in that sham of an Agni Kai. Zuko responds to this act of cruelty by spending the next three years desperately trying to please his father and become the sort of man his father apparently wants in a child, all so that he can return home to a man who abuses him. He has been told that the Fire Nation are the good guys who want what is best for the world, lead by his father the Fire Lord who wants what is best for his children, too. From the perspective of the Zuko who believes in this propaganda, he is doing everything in his power to "earn" the right to return to the Fire Nation. At the same time, the other nations are fighting against becoming a part of the Fire Nation. For the Zuko who believes that he brought Ozai's cruelty on himself through his bad behavior and can't imagine anything worse than never getting to go home, it would be baffling to see anyone else not just refusing to join the Fire Nation but outright fighting against being colonized by them.

Zuko had to unlearn the lie of his own accountability in the case of his father's cruelty towards him, before he could be ready to let himself learn what he and his nation should be held accountable for in perpetuating the war.

My thoughts on Iroh tend to be a bit fuzzier, in part because it did seem like the writers occasionally added new aspects to his character (such as the White Lotus involvement) without fully considering how those things might hang together with previous actions we'd seen from him. That makes it bit hard to get a fully coherent analysis of his character, and easier to read thoughtless or even outright sinister intent into some of his character beats. However, I do tend to lean towards agreeing with you, that Iroh was a complex character placed in a difficult situation in charge of a deeply traumatized teenage boy who still bought into his father's dangerous ideology, and that he did his best to love and support Zuko from within the boundaries of the situation and his own abilities as a teacher. I think he didn't always know how to connect with Zuko, but I also think he wanted that connection even when he wasn't sure how to say so in a way that Zuko might be able/willing to hear.

Every so often I see the argument that Zuko's journey through the Earth Kingdom was necessary in Season 2, because he had to learn empathy (or empathy for the Earth Kingdom, at least). I have to disagree with this argument.

Zuko didn't lack empathy, before or after being burned. He lacked:

Emotional intelligence (very much not helped by the fact that he was an abused kid who was slow at picking up social skills, and then a very traumatized kid tossed onto a tiny boat with a fresh burn, a crew of adults who didn't respect him, and an uncle who didn't know how to communicate with him, and given a quest that was meant to be impossible by the father who had burned him and claimed it was for his own good)

Acceptance that his father didn't love him, but this was not Zuko's fault nor his responsibility to 'correct' by fulfilling an impossible quest/making himself less compassionate/magically becoming a more powerful firebender/etc (I feel like this one should speak for itself)

Accurate understanding of how his nation was treating the rest of the world (very much due to growing up surrounded by propaganda about how great his country was, and then banished with a crew of Fire Nation soldiers who had grown up with the same propaganda, and his Uncle - the Fire Nation Prince and former General who had led armies in the Fire Nation's war - who seemed to communicate with Zuko primarily through vague philosophical ideas, proverbs that Zuko consistently made clear he did not understand, and questions about Zuko's motives - generally asked in such a way as to make it clear that Iroh thought he already knew the 'right' answer before he asked the question)

Zuko didn't need to learn empathy. He needed to learn that his country was the aggressor in a war against people who primarily wanted to defend their own homes and families from the violence brought by his nation, and he needed to learn that Ozai was wrong for treating empathy and compassion like bad things.

Every so often I see the argument that Zuko's journey through the Earth Kingdom was necessary in Season 2, because he had to learn empathy (or empathy for the Earth Kingdom, at least). I have to disagree with this argument.

Zuko didn't lack empathy, before or after being burned. He lacked:

Emotional intelligence (very much not helped by the fact that he was an abused kid who was slow at picking up social skills, and then a very traumatized kid tossed onto a tiny boat with a fresh burn, a crew of adults who didn't respect him, and an uncle who didn't know how to communicate with him, and given a quest that was meant to be impossible by the father who had burned him and claimed it was for his own good)

Acceptance that his father didn't love him, but this was not Zuko's fault nor his responsibility to 'correct' by fulfilling an impossible quest/making himself less compassionate/magically becoming a more powerful firebender/etc (I feel like this one should speak for itself)

Accurate understanding of how his nation was treating the rest of the world (very much due to growing up surrounded by propaganda about how great his country was, and then banished with a crew of Fire Nation soldiers who had grown up with the same propaganda, and his Uncle - the Fire Nation Prince and former General who had led armies in the Fire Nation's war - who seemed to communicate with Zuko primarily through vague philosophical ideas, proverbs that Zuko consistently made clear he did not understand, and questions about Zuko's motives - generally asked in such a way as to make it clear that Iroh thought he already knew the 'right' answer before he asked the question)

Zuko didn't need to learn empathy. He needed to learn that his country was the aggressor in a war against people who primarily wanted to defend their own homes and families from the violence brought by his nation, and he needed to learn that Ozai was wrong for treating empathy and compassion like bad things.

PICK YOUR BATTLES! SOME BATTLES AREN'T YOURS! SO PUT THEM BACK!

Aang and Parenthood and The Ongoing Work of Growing Up

Having some thoughts about Aang and fatherhood, and the way a lot of fandom seems to feel that LoK cast him as a neglectful/potentially abusive father based (it seems) on the statements given by Aang's kids that Aang favored his airbender child over the others. And it makes me wonder what space we give parents to be people as well as fathers/mothers, and whether there's any way for Aang to be 'good' in the construct he's presented in?

1) We don't have hard and fast ages for Aang's kids, but based on the pic snapped of Aang's family, Aang had Bumi young (early 20s) and there's probably ~10 years between Bumi and Tenzin. You do a LOT of growing and learning not just between Kid 1 and Kid 3, but also in who you are as a person from your early 20s to your early 30s.

The idea that maybe Aang got *better* at parenting by the time Tenzin came around? And that Bumi and Kya might (understandably) resent that they were not afforded the same level of parenting skill? It doesn't feel outside the realm of possibility to me, and it also doesn't feel like a reason to cast Aang as an awful parent for not getting it right on the first try.

2) There's also the element where Tenzin is the baby of the family - which does have the potential to carry certain dynamics that aren't always healthy in terms of the youngest being spoiled or having markedly different behavioral standards. But if Bumi is 10ish years older, it's not hard for me to see him forming opinions about the care and attention given to a young sibling that he isn't getting, opinions that might not be shared by external adult observers. This is the perceptions of the kids on their own childhood, after all, and we know from Zuko that children in the ATLA universe aren't necessarily accurate interpreters of parental behavior.

3) Aang also died young. The kid would have been in their 40s to earlier 30s. And speaking from personal experience, the process of navigating your relationship with your parents as you transition from childhood to adulthood is not easy. It's not always intuitive, weird things suddenly become the source of tension, boundaries you didn't think you needed suddenly have to be defined.

And it goes along with the growing ability to suddenly articulate the casual things and offhand comments your parents never had a second thought about that messed you up. Not in a cruel way, but in a 'once your dad used the phrase 'watch your girlish figure' in a joke and 22 years later you still think about it every time you feel like your clothes don't fit you right' way. Is your dad a bad person for saying that? No. Did something he did without thought impact you beyond what you could articulate at the time or he could have predicted? Yeah. And now you have feelings about it.

You were a tiny person who didn't have the language or context to fully articulate your needs or responses or feelings to the things that bothered you, and now you do (or are working on it), and sometimes that means you're trying to navigate and process things that happened years ago in order to define how you want to be treated by your parents now.

And Aang died in the middle of that process for his kids.

And I think we do a disserve in underestimating the impact of that feeling of never getting to engage with a parent the way you wish they saw you, of never being able to find that stable place where you could interact as equals the way you wanted to be interacted with, of feeling like you got stuck in this place that wasn't reflective of how you wished they saw you. And of it happening because you ran out of time, and now you can't ever do what you wanted to do. (Aang died at 66 when prior Avatars lived to be 100+ years old. Why would they have expected to have so little time to spend on hard conversations?)

4) That kind of regret and frustration can meld into grief in a very complicated way, and can linger even when the sharpness of grief fades. Which isn't to say that Bumi and Kya's feelings of not being favored, or being second-fiddle, aren't valid. But Aang's kids are still processing a relationship that they're never going to get to work on anymore. And the fact that they need to process it doesnt mean Aang was a bad parent. It means he was a human parenting other humans.

5) The apparent expectation that Aang meet everyone's ideal definitions of parenthood, which so often feel based around modern western nuclear family-centric ideals, or else be cast as a Bad Parent and therefore Bad Human feels deeply unfair to the concept of growth, to the idea that people can try hard and maybe not get it right but still be good people trying to figure it out, to the idea that parenting is work.

And you can want to be a good parent and still mess it up, because you're human as well as a parent, and perfection is not an attainable goal or standard, and because tiny humans are complicated and complex, and because your ideas of what being a good parent is might not match what your children want or need from you.

And I don't know that we have evidence that Aang never tried to do better, that he wasn't willing to put in that work and make that effort. We know he, functionally, had a very demanding and busy job, and one that impacted his relationship with his children in different ways. We know Bumi and Kya felt excluded and Tenzin felt included. And maybe that was favoritism, or maybe that was him learning that he couldn't let work get in the way of his relationship with his kids and trying something different the third time around.

6) But it strikes me that if the ask we have of Aang to consider him a Good Parent is that he always prioritized his children over his duties and responsibilities as the Avatar, then there'd be just as many people clamoring about his selfishness (already a popular topic!), and his willingness to risk world peace for his own individual needs and concerns and wants, and his inability to accept his responsibilities and grow up.

It strikes me that the entire construct that Good Parent = Good Human and Bad Parent = Bad Human just puts Aang (and everyone) in a trap with no way to win.

It just clicked for me why I find a lot of the fandom discourse these days so distasteful from fans who dislike popular male characters, the sort of discourse that sounds a lot like -

"I'm not like all those other fans who just like the conventionally pretty boys with the sad backstories. That boring, terrible character is only popular because those fans think he's hot! I pick my favorite characters for meaningful and smart reasons, not just because I want to sleep with them."

It's just the, "I'm not like those other girls," narrative, but dressed up in a fandom hat.

Advocating for more diverse characters and stories is great! Talking about the way that popular reception to certain characters/ships can be rooted in misogyny (or racism or other discriminatory social narratives) is great! Being a dick about real people because they like a popular character that you don't like, on the other hand, is Not Great.

Anyways, people should love whatever stories and characters they want. No one else has the right to tell you how meaningful or important your reasons are for liking something, and no one has the right to shame you for liking (or disliking!) a fictional story or a fictional character. Even if your reasons are completely shallow and based entirely on finding that character attractive, that's still valid, your choices are still valid, and the only ones who should feel bad about their choices are the people who choose to be a dick to real people based on what type of fiction they enjoy.

Credit: vago_xd on insta