>>113570

After I posted this I checked Avatar Spirit's forums, and they are having the exact same theorizing going on. One of them mentioned that the review states that the Mother of Faces grants wishes as well, so maybe Ikem wished that he could see Ursa again. As a spirit, she doesn't really see the world in human morality, so grants it in a way he did not intend: Ikem dies and is reincarnated as Zuko. In the flashback sequence his growing a beard may have not have been just to show how long he'd isolated himself but also to show us he'd stayed in the forest long enough to encounter the MoF after Ursa had gone through the formal wedding, whatever preplanning/customary cultural stuff before hand, and most of her pregnancy for Zuko.

>>113567
>>113570
>>113572
Seriously?

>>113570

Well, Noriko could still be Ursa, but Noren may or may not be Ikem. The trouble with the face swap theory though is that it relies a bit on this idea that the price one has to pay for the face swap is a memory wipe, which hasn't been confirmed, but even if it is true, it seems very possible Noren could still just be Noren. It looked like he remembered who Ursa was and he certainly looks old enough to be able to remember her at least vaguely. He could be Ikem, but I'm not seeing any real evidence that he is at this point. He's probably lying to protect Ursa, but if he has a reason to protect Ursa and his wife is Ursa and he knows it, I think he'd be a little more wary about people coming into town snooping around asking questions about her.

>>113572


Well, the review says Azula steals the wish and demands to know where Ursa is and when the spirit answers, she considers this to be enough fulfillment of the wish.

But Ikem must have met the face chick too since he was at the water pool the wolf spirit was drinking from. He could have asked for a chance to be with Ursa and maybe part of the deal was that he had to reborn or something. Ikem could have accepted whatever the terms were and the reason Zuko's eyes remind Ursa of Ikem and the reason Ursa and her son got along so well is because Zuko is, in essence, Ikem himself with a new "face."

>all this theorizing about Ikem actually being Zuko

Do we really need to add more incestuous overtones to the family?

>>113578

Yes, we do and if Ursa's spirit is inside Azula too, that makes it all the better.

>>113567
>>113570
>>113572

I think you guys have had a bit too much cactus juice. That was clearly a bad batch.

>After I posted this I checked Avatar Spirit's forums, and they are having the exact same theorizing going on

Yeah, but ASN has always been terrible like that.

>>113581

You know it's going to be true, anon.

>>113581

Hey, it's more interesting than Zuko's babydaddy drama, and it'd be way less obvious than Ursa and Ikem as Noriko and Noren. It'd tie into the Guru's teachings to Aang on grief and how old love can be reborn into a new kind of love. Yeah, internet weirdos would be creepy and sexual about it, but weirdos are going to weirdo no matter what you do.

ASN is usually garbage, but every now and then they have a creative thought.

>>113578

Why not? Perhaps Mai's secretly Ozai's half-daughter from an affair with Mai's Mom. (I kid.)

Why don't you guys just come out and admit you want some incest

Everytime Aang takes somebody's bending, although retroactively, Noatak/Amon is proven right.

>>113599
The series has never made it out to where the actions of the Avatar are proven beneficial to anyone but him anyway.

>>113597

>Zuko is Ursa's fiance
>Azula has Ursa's spirit possessing her or some shit
>As a result, they can't help the sexual attraction they feel towards one another

fund it.

>>113600
Troll harder, son.

Oh I'm hoping they don't choose the lazy path and kill/energybend/memorywipe/deface my favorite villain character...

I mean, we all have our favorite characters and "favorite" kind of means "I don't want this to be destroyed".

>>113608

I highly doubt Azula is going to be memory wiped and she's not going to die until we found out what that "destiny" for her is. I wouldn't entirely rule out the possibility of her losing her bending, that seems unlikely.

It's unlikely that anything bad will happen to Azula because at the start Zuko's was upset because his mother was missing, his father was in prison, and his sister was in an asylum; thus from Zuko perspective he's getting a bad ending if his mother is still missing, his father is still in prison, and Azula is now dead/insane/missing. Let's face it without Azula Zuko is unlikely to ever be able to make amends with his father.

Regarding Azula's destiny as there's a statue of both Zuko and Aang in Republic City but no mention of Azula it seems that her destiny doesn't have anything to do with fixing the problems caused by the war. As Zuko remains Fire Lord it doesn't have anything to do with ruling the Fire Nation (unless Azula helps Zuko in some way). The fact that Ikki talks to Katara about the story where they search for "Zuko's mother" also isn't encouraging.

>>113619
Honestly, from the way they treat actual information on Toph, I think they deliberately avoided referencing Azula in any way because they knew Yang would be doing the comics featuring both of them.

>>113619
>Let's face it without Azula Zuko is unlikely to ever be able to make amends with his father.

Why should he even TRY to make amends with Ozai? The man flat-out tried to kill him, among other things. We've seen how much Zuko screwed up just by attempting to take his advice, and even that was a terrible idea. Bad Decision Lord or not, Zuko shouldn't be THAT stupid, but from the way Yang writes him, you'd be hard-pressed to realize it.

>The fact that Ikki talks to Katara about the story where they search for "Zuko's mother" also isn't encouraging.

That was just the creators trolling the fans for a laugh. And Katara started to explain what happened, but Ikki (you got her and Jinora confused) interrupted.

>>113632
Making amends with Ozai is about as smart as making amends with Azula, and yet everyone seems to think that's a grand idea.

And frankly, I'm still not seeing what was so bad about the advice that Ozai gave Zuko in The Promise. It's the same piece of advice you hear repeated over and over again when it comes to leadership - the leader has to be certain in his course of action. And that's ignoring the fact that all Zuko wanted advice on was how to cope with the tress of being a Fire Lord.

>>113633
The problem is, unlike Azula Ozai has never shown to have a softer side or that he wants to make amends with Zuko (which neither has Azula but we know for sure she's a victim of her upbringing and she "deserves" a second chance, but we don't know anything about Ozai) -- the whole thing with the letters and Azula is just a scheme to get the throne back. He gave good advice, big whoop, that doesn't mean we should pat the guy on the back and apologize for misjudging him. HE doesn't want to make amends -- and likely nothing Zuko or Azula could do could get him to change his mind on that.

I don't even really know WHY Zuko wants to fix his relationship with the man who burned his face and kicked him out of the country for three years, Ozai deserves to rot imo. Maybe The Search is actually about Zuko realizing his family is hopeless and he should look to the future or something cheesy like that.

>>113635
>I don't even really know WHY Zuko wants to fix his relationship with the man

Does he?

I mean, I can't really think of anything that Zuko's really done to reach out to Ozai - quite the opposite, really, since Zuko appears to ignore him until he becomes useful.

>>113637
>I can't really think of anything that Zuko's really done to reach out to Ozai
Him setting up that meeting between Ozai and Azula? He even left them tea and stuff.

>>113638
Which Zuko only did because he wants to know where his mother is, not out of any desire to reconcile with his father.

>>113639
I thought it was (besides that) also because he realized he had tossed two of his family members in prisons and had basically been ignoring them for over a year and that guy's quote made him rethink his actions.

>>113635
Azula did seem to like Zuko when they were children (in some flashbacks they're shown playing together). Azula also was shown working with Zuko in Book 3 (until Zuko left and rejoined the Avatar). So Azula has shown a softer side.

Ozai hasn't really shown a softer side, mainly because he's always been disappointed with Zuko and possibly because he thought Zuko was illegitimate. Though he did praise Zuko for killing the Avatar and delay a meeting until Zuko arrived.

One final thing is that Zuko spent 3 years trying to find the Avatar to restore his honour and win back his father's respect. So for most of the series he has been trying to fix his relationship with his father.

>>113667
And there's those painting style flashbacks in The Storm where Ozai's shown resting a hand on Zuko's shoulder, and there's that other one of three figures running in the hills (two children, and an adult). So the entire family was happy at some point - IIRC, Byke once said before The Search that Ursa and Ozai genuinely loved each other at one point in the past, though that's clearly been retconned.

To be honest, the family's implied collapse was one of the things that made me find it so interesting.

>>113668
Ozai's hand? I always assumed that was Iroh's hand.

>>113669
Always struck me as being too tall for Iroh, and to me it makes more sense for it be Ozai since the flashbacks are supposed to be Zuko looking back on happier times, and he doesn't have any reason to reminisce about his relationship with Iroh.

>>113669
>>113670
It's Ozai's hand. Iroh isn't left out of the flashbacks, but the one with his hand on Zuko's shoulder is always Ozai. You can see it again here in the royal family portrait at the beach house.

To me, this is the biggest and most obvious hint that Ozai really did love Zuko at one point, and that somewhere down the road, that love began to fade. Who knows what caused it, but my guess was that it started after Ursa was banished. Ozai may have regretted trading his wife, essentially, for a son that was becoming a huge disappointment in his eyes. He loved Ursa, and the fact that she had to be sent away in order to get him the throne and spare Zuko's life must have bothered him on some level. Zuko, with his gentle nature and desire to do the right thing instead of following Ozai's teachings, must have been a constant reminder of Ursa and her influence on the boy too.

That's a great deal of speculation on my part, but it makes sense, doesn't it? A lot more sense than this stupid retcon of Ozai being a total dick right from the very beginning, separating Ursa from her family and being cruel to her, and hating Zuko because he thinks he's someone else's child. None of this fits with what we've seen on the show or what the creators have told us about before. I hate stupid out of character changes like this.

>but my guess was that it started after Ursa was banished. Ozai may have regretted trading his wife, essentially, for a son that was becoming a huge disappointment in his eyes.
Lolwut
He was ready to kill Zuko for the stupidest reason, I'd say there wasn't much love left. Also he was already a dick to his son according to the flashbacks in Zuko Alone.

>and hating Zuko because he thinks he's someone else's child.
We're entering spoiler territory but that's not what the search part 3 says.

>>114986
>He was ready to kill Zuko for the stupidest reason, I'd say there wasn't much love left. Also he was already a dick to his son according to the flashbacks in Zuko Alone.

You may have a point there, but I always assumed the reason why he was going along with the whole "kill your son" thing was mostly due to Asian notions of duty, family honor, etc. He couldn't outright refuse an order from his father, the Fire Lord. But it was also clear that he didn't care about Zuko very much at that point, so you're right. I think if Azulon hadn't given that order, though, he still might look down on Zuko, but not really wish him any specific harm.

Ozai told Zuko he was lucky to be born before the banishment. I think his feelings of love probably faded somewhere around when Azula started firebending.

I always liked the idea that Ozai hated Zuko because Zuko reminded him of himself - the impulsiveness, short temper, and inability to plan ahead - mixed with the "weakness" of Ursa's compassion. And that he favored Azula because her manipulative qualities, strategic talent, and prodigious firebending reminded him of Iroh who he always envied, but without Iroh's "weakness" of compassion. I also always liked the idea that Iroh favored Zuko over Azula because Azula reminded him of all the bad things he didn't like about himself whereas Zuko had the good qualities, and maybe the same for Ursa.

>>115095
Too bad Ursa has no real good qualities to speak of.

>>116975
Just goes to show that she fits in with the rest of the family, then.

>>116975
>people think Ursa is a legitimately horrible person

>>116977
I'm sorry, but yeah. She ain't great.

Discarding the memory of your son like an old dish rag doesn't exactly qualify you for mom of the year material.

>>116975
People don't exist at absolutes.

>>116978
She has her flaws but just writing her off as being terrible because she chose to erase her memories of her kids is like, really simplifying her situation and intentionally leaving out information that could, God forbid, make her look sympathetic.

>>116980
Being an okay mom to one of her kids was practically the only thing she had going for her.

What she did just wasn't right, by any measure. You can't excuse it.

>>116981
Yes, how wrong it was of Ursa to want to be happy after being told that she'd never see her children again and having nothing to make her believe otherwise and going back to a home she hadn't been to in years to find her parents had died and her ex-fiance had been missing for as long as she'd been gone. She clearly should have become a nun and been miserable for the rest of her life instead of taking an opportunity to be happy.

Didn't we just have this same exact conversation in another thread?

>>116983
If we did, I wasn't part of it.

The point is it's totally unfair to Ursa to look at everything she had been through and then saying she's a terrible person for in the end choosing what she felt could be the only way she could be happy. Whether or not it's selfish I think is a matter of personal interpretation, but being selfish doesn't automatically make you a horrible person.

>>116982
This entire line of reasoning is so immature and stupid. Something people who have no idea of motherhood will sprout.
If she wanted to start over, fair enough.
But to try to hit the restart button on her life, erase all memories of her so-called loved ones? Especially when they're still out there?
It's abandonment. Plain and simple.
And it speaks of Ursa as a weak person.
I don't begrudge her wanting to be happy again. I begrudge her that she wanted and got an easy way out and she was more than willing to pay the price.

Ursa a shit.

>>116985
>Especially when they're still out there?
When they're still out there and she can't do anything for them, she can't protect them from Ozai and she has practically no hope of seeing them again (Zuko thought she was DEAD and Ozai obviously didn't argue that until the day of the eclipse). She's not royal blood, she doesn't have a kingdom she can run back to so she can raise its banners and she can wage war against Ozai in the name of her children, she can't do ANYTHING and that probably made her more miserable than anything else. Some people can handle that burden, others can't, and it doesn't make them bad because they want to be happy again. Ursa shouldn't have had to sacrifice her happiness on what she felt (and at the time, was) the off chance that she would be able to be with her kids again.

>>116986
It makes her a weak and immature person. And a hypocrite, for she doesn't practice what she preached to her own son.
She signed away her responsibilities, her doubts, her regrets and her memories. The things that make people who they are.
It's not just an insult.

It's the kind of choice a person makes that is ultimately childishly selfish and harmful to himself and others.
You can argue until the cows come home, but we've all seen "Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind"
Feel free to emphasize with her as much as you want. That doesn't make her a good parent or a good person though.

>>116987
>It makes her a weak
There's nothing wrong with that considering how bad her life had become.

> and immature
Debatable.

>She signed away her responsibilities, her doubts, her regrets and her memories. The things that make people who they are.
Well at that point she had no responsibilities so I don't know what you're talking about her, and regardless she was still under no obligation to anyone to stay miserable. No, not even her children. Ursa is a human being who is not solely defined by the fact that she's a mother.

And I'm not saying Ursa is ultimately a good person incapable of fucking up. She did fuck up, but given her situation I can't fault her and label her a terrible human being for doing so. It's not a clear cut black and white situation, which is probably why the comic didn't go, "SEE?! SEE HOW TERRIBLE OF A HUMAN BEING URSA IS?!"

>>116988
Eh, it seems more like we're supposed to emphasize with her in the comic.
Which is bullshit for two reasons.
1. We barely know Ursa and only cared about her ultimate fate for Azula and Zuko's sake.
2. The fact that she's "gotten over" her kids and lived a pleasant, carefree life all this time, while her son was actively worrying for her and her daughter went mad thanks in no small part to her and everyone went to great trouble to find her. There was no reward in doing so. She might as well be dead. Shoot, Ursa is dead. She killed herself.

Actually, I don't really see how anyone can truly like her, seeing as how things went.

>>116989
>We barely know Ursa and only cared about her ultimate fate for Azula and Zuko's sake.
Which is probably why they spent roughly half of the entire comic on flashbacks about Ursa's past, so she would become a bit more than just a symbol to us.

>The fact that she's "gotten over" her kids and lived a pleasant, carefree life all this time, while her son was actively worrying for her and her daughter went mad thanks in no small part to her and everyone went to great trouble to find her. There was no reward in doing so. She might as well be dead. Shoot, Ursa is dead. She killed herself.
I think the fact that she chose to erase her memories actually meant she COULDN'T get over it but at the same time couldn't live with the fact that her kids were being raised by a sociopath and couldn't do anything to help them. Hell, if Avatar were aimed at an older audience she probably WOULD have actually killed herself.

I mean I think the whole point is that Ursa, Zuko and Azula are all tragic characters who have done messed up things as a result of their relationships with Ozai.