ATLA: The Search Part Three

[tripodeca113]

"In 2008, I watched the very last episode of Avatar:The Last Airbender with the eagerness of a true fan. Zuko asks Ozai what happened to his mom... and then the screen cuts. I yelled curse words at my TV.

Three years later,I'm working with Mike Dimartino and Bryan Konietzko on the story that explains what happened to Zuko's mom.

Sometime, life is weird. Weird in a good way"

Gene Yang


(24 pages out of 72)
​
​
​
​
But the fight is interrupted by the arrival of the Mother of Faces.
​
​


​

​

In the present Zuko is willing to let Misu ask the spirit to heal her brother when...
​

Azula runs off to Norens house with, Zuko and Sokka going after her. The others stay behind to try coax the spirit back.

​
He went to Forgetful Valley to try and escape his past,eventually meeting the Mother of Faces. He was able to get a new face and identity. He thinks they should try the same with Ursa, so they can be together again.

​

​


Aang tries to get the Mother of Faces to come back and help them.

​

She summons the forest's creatures to drive them away.

​

​

Finally the Mother of Faces appears.

​

​

​

​

​

Zuko and Sokka reach Noren's house. They seem to have made it there before Azula. Zuko goes inside to be with his family, while Sokka keeps watch.

​

​

​

Back at the forest, the group are fighting off the animals.

​

​

​

​

​

​

Suddenly their interrupted by sounds on the roof, when suddenly it breaks with Sokka and Azula falling into the house.


​

Sokka is able to get Noren and Kiyi to safety while Zuko and Azula fight.

​

​

​

With that Azula flees, dropping Ursa's letter.

Then the Mother of Faces appears. She offers to return Ursa's face and memories to her. Zuko tells her she doesn't have to, and she shouldn't leave her life here. Still Ursa accepts.

The next day. Azula has escaped, Team Avatar wonders if she left the letter behind deliberately or accidentally.

​

​

​

Ursa admits that the letter is a lie.

She wrote it to see if to see if Ozai was monitoring her letters, and as a bit of wishful thinking on her part. Ozai was never fooled and chides her for think he'd believe such an obvious lie (they don't say it outright as its a kid comic, but the reason is that Ursa was a virgin when she married Ozai).

​

Ursa always wanted to tell her children about her life, but was never able to before now.
​

The closing dialogue loops into the opening narration, as we learn that the flashbacks were Ursa explaining her past to Zuko.

Comments

[shadur]

Ozai was just the actual fucking worst, wasn't he?

[tripodeca113]

Pretty much yeah.

[mastermahan]

Ursa also sucks for her brilliant plan of "let's see if Ozai is reading my letters by tricking the abuser into targeting my son." Mother of the year, Ursa. She doesn't suck as badly as Ozai, but that's like saying something isn't as cold as absolute zero.

How the hell did someone as wise, empathic, and emotionally healthy as Iroh come out of that family?

[icon_uk]

Except Ozai knew it wasn't true anyway. The fact he chose to single Zuko out is entirely on Ozai, not Ursa.

[janegray]

I very, very, very strongly disagree.

Ursa was barely out of her teens when she was kidnapped by the guy who threatened to murder her family and friends if she didn't spend her entire life as, for all intents and purposes, his servant, and then she had to spend every night in his bed subjected to spousal rape.

Tl;dr: Ursa was massively traumatised. So she lashed out in the only way that was left to her: her fantasies. And she constructed a fake reality where the children she loved did not come from her abuser.

You are making it sound like it was a thought-out strategy, rather than a drowning person clinging to whatever she could to stay afloat.

She also did this knowing deep down that there was no actual reason Ozai would really believe the letters because she was a virgin when he kidnapped her. And, as soon as he confronted her about it, she immediately came clean about it and confessed that she made up the whole thing.

She had no reason to think that Ozai would still target Zuko despite knowing that he was really his son. Even knowing that he was a piece of shit, throwing away his own first-born heir over a whim was still out of left field.

[supercapo16]

Keep in mind that Iroh wasn't always a stand up guy. He was leading the Fire Nation offensive and sending dolls from conquered peoples back for amusement.

It wasn't until his son died that Iroh turned himself around and became the guy we knew in the show.

[thediiem]

Yeah, he's like the creators asked what kind of leader villain you'd end up with who is the end result of 100 years of intentional manipulation of a nation of builders and artists and corrupted its core philosophies to run on anger, hate, and conquest, and then rounded up to make him a every bit the sadistic psychopath on top of it.

[janegray]

Every day I am thankful they beat the shit out of him and threw him into a crappy box for life.

[mister_terrific]

Actually, my wife and I came up with a story that went one step further. I won't go into details--never published it--but Katara, Suki, Ty Lee and Mai slip Ozai a painful, paralytic poison...and then the Melon Lord sends him on an express trip to the Underworld.

We found that very satisfying.

[remial]

and took away his magic that made him think he was better than everyone else.

[t209]

Or give him Emperor Valerian treatment, at least by Roman sources on his capture by Persians.
- Beat him with sticks
- Use him as a footstool for mount.
- Definitely won't involve flaying him or pouring molten gold into his throat.

[freezer]

His father, Azulon, was no prize, either.

[scorntx]

Totally thought the answer to "what happened to Ursa" was that she got her memory erased.
[/sarcasm]

It's an... odd route to take, rather than just her living in exile somewhere super, super quiet.
But then there wouldn't be any drama, just quiet character moments.
(though it would explain why Azula never tried dangling their mom's location over Zuko's head, because there's no way she never checked...)

One day, there's going to be a spirit in the Avatarverse who is not a wad, and someone is going to die of shock.


also azula's expression in that panel is just heartbreaking.

[tripodeca113]

There was that little leaf spirit that helped Korra, but then it's up against all the other spirits to appear in that show.

[leahandillyana]

So, what do you guys think of the opinion forming on the internet that Zuko should have died to atone for his actions when he was still following his father and that he absolutely shoulddn't be a love interest of any of the girls? It's a view that's becoming more and more prevalent among fans of Avatar franchise, particularly the new wave that came to the fandom after the disastrous ending of VLD. She-Ra's Catra is gaining similar sentiment, it seems.

[tripodeca113]

I'm glad I managed to avoid that.

[janegray]

The Purity Brigade is the worst thing that could ever happen to fandom. It kills me that so many of them are queer. If they had their way, queer content would be forcibly purged from fandom, because when host providers target "obscene" content they always always always target first and foremost gay/trans stuff (alongside feminist and anti-racist stuff). Censors will always find excuses to justify what straight men like, but they froth at the mouth over two boys holding hands.

[lego_joker]

What I think is that if they're going down that route, Iroh ought to die a thousand deaths of atonement before Zuko (who IIRC had a body count of zero while he was chasing Aang) ever does.