So I was re-reading the first two parts of Avatar: The Search in preparation for the last part coming out next week, and, well, spoilers, I guess? (And also some bad language.)

'Cause I was reminded...

... at its heart this is an unbelievably fucking creepy story.

Actually all Avatar stories are surprisingly creepy, now that I think about it, but The Search in particular is just... nnh. Not even because of the freaky shit going on in the Spirit World, or the "Azula is even more batshit than you remember her" subplot. What it has to say about her origins, before she even began to do Evil Things (which was what, at the age of four?), is so flesh-crawl-worthy I wonder at it even appearing in a comic that's not labeled for mature readers.

It seems so unnecessary on some level, too. I mean, we already knew Ozai needs to go down with the Titanic. (Saying these particular characters should die in a fire seems a bit off somehow.) He was already well-established as a vicious genocidal maniac without the faintest semblance of basic human decency. Did they really need to go the extra mile and revel in the spectacle of him as a droit du seigneur-invoking rapist as well? He was already Stalin, now it turns out he's also Lavrenti Beria - cruising the streets of Moscow in his ZIL, snatching likely-looking girls off the streets, and having his goons murder their boyfriends if they're rash enough to object. The only functional difference is that Ozai threw a nice party, which is actually more disgusting. At least Beria had the decency to hide.

It's all just spectacularly distasteful. The book makes me feel complicit in Ozai's vileness for simply having read about it. I guess that's a sign of artistic success? I don't know. I do know it's not a feeling I particularly expected or wanted out of an Avatar: The Last Airbender comic.

Gonna be honest, I went into this series hoping it would ultimately yield the justification I need to develop an older, possibly wiser, or at least mellower Azula as a Tolerably Human Person, à la the UF version of Kyouichi Saionji (which is why these musings are even here and not over in private-mail or something); but now that I know where she came from, I'm left wondering if that's even possible. Maybe it's like Toph said, and these fucking people are just born bad.

--G.
By the way, Aang, thanks once again for not killing the one person in the world at that time who genuinely needed it, and instead establishing a much, much more questionable precedent. Good call, your holiness! At least your principles are intact.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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