Talk:Azula/@comment-69.181.22.236-20130618011406/@comment-3338975-20130623215719

You seem to be unable to follow the nicieities of debate properly, and failed to follow my line of argument entirely. Mocking words do not an argument make; the "you buffoon" and "hur dur dur" do not make your points any more valid or invalid.

My speculation was never that Ozai intentionally stationed the Kyoshi Warriors where they were so that Azula could make use of them; that would be attributing to him greater conspirational powers than anyone is really capable of, given the circumstances. My point was that the events played out as they did, because of Ozai's attack on Ba Sing Se via the Drill, and this remains true even if I'm wrong about the Kyoshi Warriors keeping tabs on the Fire Nation's secret, which I very well could be. (That was never intended to be a major part of my argument, as I was well aware it was speculation at the time, and I apologize if I did not make that sufficiently clear in my previous post.)

Yes, Azula was surprised when they came across Appa without Aang, which obviously indicated that she thought she was on the trail of the Avatar. Given Azula's perfectionist attitude, it's hard to believe that she wasn't in part trying to make it up to her father for her failure to make sure that the drill project went smoothly by finding the biggest threat (who also happened to be the culprit) and turning it over to him. (Why Azula didn't recognize that Aang probably wouldn't be at the end of that trail of fur, when she met him at Ba Sing Se a few days before, is beyond me. But that's beside the point.) I never claimed that Ozai would send some assasin after her in order to punish her for failing him; that's not the nature of their relationship in the show, and I'm sure he knows that her self-percieved imperfection would be enough to motivate her to not return home before she made it up to him. This doesn't change the fact that she was acting as Ozai's agent the entire time, nor does it change the fact that if Ozai's entrusting the drill project to her was fully deserved that his plan would have been effective in and of itself.

You claim that if Ozai attacked with brute force like Iroh did, he would have been able  to conquer Ba Sing Se like his brother could not. And supposedly this makes Azula more powerful, even though she had to resort to subterfuge as well. Iroh's 600-day siege had reduced the Fire Nation military to sheer exhaustion, and the drill was Ozai's attempt to learn from his brother's previous mistakes: brute force (except when Sozin's Comet is present as a game changer) just doesn't work as a tactic against a city which is essentially its own self-sustaining state, and which was agriculturally self-sufficient enough to last those 600 days. This at least seems to be what Ozai thought, and nothing that Azula did disproves that assumption.

It's entirely irrelevant when we the audience learned of Suki's defeat. The entire reason the Earth King let them in was because Sokka referred to them as allies, and the Earth King felt he needed such help after learning of the war. My point was, Long Feng would have kept a much tighter lid on the situation, because bringing in warriors from outside the capital kind of advertises the fact that the Earth Kingdom was in a state of war, which he didn't want anyone knowing. "Long Feng wasn't arrested after we knew what happened to Suki so you should've known for a fact that Long Feng couldn't stop/prevent the Kyoshi Warriors from entering Ba Sing Se." He wasn't arrested after we knew what happened to Suki, but that still doesn't change the fact that plot-wise he was arrested the very day that the "Kyoshi Warriors" arrived, and that plot-wise Azula had defeated the real warriors in a situation which wasn't to her advantage without Team Avatar's interference - and without the drill project of Ozai's. There were a lot of sheer coincidences involved in Azula's take-over of Ba Sing Se; however, Azula did prove herself to be a master conspirator in the way she handled the situation that she was lucky enough to find herself in due to the work of others. If a combination of luck and powers of manipulation are the sole things that make a good Firebender, then yes, she's a better Firebender than Ozai. But that's not all that Firebending is.

You also seem to fail to understand what a siege is all about. "A  siege is a military blockade of a city or fortress with the intent of conquering via attrition or assult.  Generally speaking, siege warfare is a form of constant, low-intensity conflict characterized by one party holding a strong, static defensive position." Iroh didn't attempt to breach the outer wall until the end of the siege for a good reason; he wished to weaken the city first, but it ended up taking around 600 days for them to get anywhere with this. And even so, he turned out to be wrong about how enfeebled Ba Sing Se was by this siege, as it seems that at least a segement of the inner city was still willing to fight after the general at the outer wall had given up, or his son Lu Ten would not have had a chance to have died in combat. Yes, Ozai could have done what Iroh had done and attempted to lay siege to Ba Sing Se, but obviously he saw this as an unnecessary waste of human resources and instead focused on a more efficient & technologically advanced means of warfare through the drill project. Nothing Azula did disproves this assesment of the wastefulness of laying siege to the city yet again, though of course you are free to disagree with the tactics both of them decided to use regardless.

If I left the impression that Ozai was rule-bound to stay at the throne room, I can only say that wasn't my intention. I do believe I indicated that the drill project was probably an important enough matter for Ozai to have been there himself, just as arranging a line of powerful successors was on Azulon's part and stopping the assasination attempts from the colonials was for Zuko. "Therefore, Ozai could've done what Iroh did, and lay siege to Ba Sing Se, but succeed. It doesn't matter if Ozai participated in minor battles anyways, because Iroh didn't have to deal with the people Ozai fought in order to conquer Ba Sing Se." Bcause it worked so well for Iroh in the first place, and didn't entirely exhaust and demoralize his troops (as indicated in Winter Solstice Part 1), and because Ozai must be entirely stupid for tying up loose ends (Omashu is a possibility, though we'll probably never know), as the Fire Nation's secret project was still in the process of being built. As indicated before, the drill was his way of learning from Iroh's mistakes, and nothing Azula did proved him wrong on that account. Ozai did make a key mistake in not overseeing the drill project himself, and Azula certianly trumps his prowess on that account; I just don't think the caricature you're making of Ozai in order to make Azula seem the supreme villian is particularly helpful in obtaining a well-rounded view of the show and its characters. And as said before, plot-wise that was impossible for him to do without him stepping out of the role of the hidden political puppetmaster that the creators were setting him up as, so it's probably best to cut him some slack for trusting this project to "the best Firebender" instead arbitrarily using that to lower his points as a leader without doing so for Azula as well. "Dragging Iroh's exploits when it comes to Ozai's Firebending skills helps explain my point that if Ozai was as powerful in Firebending as Iroh was, he would've helped destroy Ba Sing Se. He most likely stayed in the Fire Nation so he could steal Iroh's crown but even still, he had 5 years as Fire Lord to lead his army and destroy Ba Sing Se'''." '''An insecure rule over the home territory indeed might explain his cautiousness in leaving the country, especially if it only lead to the waste of human resources that Iroh's did; again, he really ought to have watched over the take-over of Ba Sing Se via the Drill himself, but that says just as much about his trusted agent's weaknesses as it does his own. (He could have always planned to spear-head a mission into the heart of Ba Sing Se after the drill weakend their resolve, burning their agricultural stores and such, but then again that never came to pass so postive or negative speculations on what he might of done in that situation are largely irrelevant.)

"Ozai is not a better Firebender than Azula because '''she is a prodigy, creates decently sized hotter flames, in addition to having a more cunning mind, and being more agile." 'She also went insane as a direct result as being placed in a position of political power, whatever that tells you about her ability to enforce her will on the world per the basis of Firebending, and about the mental stability and therefore long-term effectiveness of prodigies (it is'' fairly typical for someone like that to go a little crazy). "Ozai's normal Firebending was never seen."Which is why I opted to point to their relative Lightningbending skills instead, as both Azula (in multiple episodes) and Ozai (in "The Day of Black Sun - The Eclipse) were shown doing this under non-Sozin's Comet conditions. I'm not sure how you can ignore the implications of the fact that Ozai was able to charge his lightning with a split second after the sun started coming out of the eclipse, while Azula consistently takes longer to charge her own, unless you're arbitrarily separating Lightningbending prowess from Firebending prowess, which isn't an entirely fair-minded way to argue. "You can say that Azula's flames are blue because she relentlessly pursued perfection." I believe I attributed this not to her pursuit of perfection, but to her preference for precision, which her usual use of two fingers also supports. '''"Ozai who pursued perfection, hated anyone weak, and was intent on killing anyone." 'While this may be so, my point was that he placed much more emphasis on brute force and less on precision than Azula did, opting to over-power his enemies rather than out-wit them (though he's certianly capable of the latter as well, given the way he had Zuko wrapped around his finger on the Day of Black Sun and in The Promise''). "Some of his Fire Streams were just about the same size as Azula's Fire Streams produced during her Agni Kai with Zuko. Even the Firebenders on the airships created Fire Streams just as big as Ozai's by charging it and holding it without interruption." The key word here being "some", which indicates not all Azula's fire streams were comparable in size to Ozai's, explaining why you had to argue that they would be if circumstances allowed them to. And if I remember right, multiple Firebenders on each airship teamed up to create a Fire Stream comparable with their leaders, which is only consistent with the relative power levels the creators usually attributed to the Royal Family (i.e. both Ozai and Azula). So, I fail to see why the idea of a pay-off between relative heat and the size of the flame wouldn't apply to the difference in their largest-shown flame size, especially when this makes good physical sense. This doesn't even make Azula weaker than Ozai; the immediate implication is that they have different approaches to Firebending, and so apply their relatively comparable power levels  in differing ways. That is why I had to ground my justification of the creator's assessment of their relative power level on their relative prowess at the Firebending sub-discipline (Lightningbending), in which they clearly portrayed Ozai as having a superior mastery of.

Given the angry way in which you responded to my comment, I get the feeling I must have written something which offended you, and for that I apologize. I generally know when to step out of an argument before it (or I) gets out of hand, but I must have slipped up in this case. My intention was to simply try and provide a more well-rounded view of Ozai's and Azula's relative power levels than I thought was being given; I was not intentionally being Ozai-biased, and I remain open-minded to the possibility that the creators simply didn't flesh out their original intentions (of Ozai being the greatest firebender) properly and that Azula is superior, should I be provided with substantial evidence that this is so. That being said, I can see that I have little further to provide to this debate without perpetuating a cycle of verbal violence in the process of doing so, so I   will retire from this argument, leaving you to put in the last word if you so desire.