separating actual events from the ballad from the street songs from the didactic text from the novels
IS THIS A WORLD WHERE THE FIRE NATION WON?
ETA: THOUGH THE ABOVE MAKES MUCH MORE SENSE. FACEPALM. BUT DUDE, I STILL CHERISH THE WEIRD AU BELOW:
Is this ... is this Mai, some of the edges rubbed off her by victory, getting right the hell out of being Fire Lady? Because her association with Azula gives her even this much latitude; because her parents presided over the fall of Omashu and not over its recapture; because she isn’t a bender and Zuko can’t afford to take the chance of having a non-bending heir? Because she never really wanted that job, anyway? Because there are other ways of exercising power?
Or is this not Mai at all, and she’s the one still in the centre, in the palace, letting Zuko have his nights off, his little warm segments of domesticity?
though once a while, your mother will get up the whole ceremony and the kneeling and the offering of food when your father needs reminding of his duty towards you
YES. Oh, man, control through subjection, of a sort. A skill it is still expedient for any woman to acquire, in the Fire Nation, for any noble, even. This whole society shot through with the sideways, the conditional, the indirect, even as it trains its children to go straight for the kill. Subversive ballads, propaganda rhymes. Memories of war.
"As if there would be time for that on one of Azula's campaigns,"
INDEED. Hell, who is even fire lord, in this world?
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Date: 2010-09-22 07:04 pm (UTC)separating actual events from the ballad from the street songs from the didactic text from the novels
IS THIS A WORLD WHERE THE FIRE NATION WON?
ETA: THOUGH THE ABOVE MAKES MUCH MORE SENSE. FACEPALM. BUT DUDE, I STILL CHERISH THE WEIRD AU BELOW:
Is this ... is this Mai, some of the edges rubbed off her by victory, getting right the hell out of being Fire Lady? Because her association with Azula gives her even this much latitude; because her parents presided over the fall of Omashu and not over its recapture; because she isn’t a bender and Zuko can’t afford to take the chance of having a non-bending heir? Because she never really wanted that job, anyway? Because there are other ways of exercising power?
Or is this not Mai at all, and she’s the one still in the centre, in the palace, letting Zuko have his nights off, his little warm segments of domesticity?
though once a while, your mother will get up the whole ceremony and the kneeling and the offering of food when your father needs reminding of his duty towards you
YES. Oh, man, control through subjection, of a sort. A skill it is still expedient for any woman to acquire, in the Fire Nation, for any noble, even. This whole society shot through with the sideways, the conditional, the indirect, even as it trains its children to go straight for the kill. Subversive ballads, propaganda rhymes. Memories of war.
"As if there would be time for that on one of Azula's campaigns,"
INDEED. Hell, who is even fire lord, in this world?