MG Reads Embers: Chapter Nineteen
Dec. 26th, 2023 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
masterghandalfWarning: This chapter contains a brief allusion to potential sexual assault of a teenager.
Chapter Nineteen
We open with a brief author note. A/N: Again, don't own episode dialogue, especially from "Lake Laogai." The chapter proper begins with Shirong, meditating in a palace garden the Dai Li have taken over as he tries to recover from the battle with the spirit. Sunlight seems to help, but also makes him think of Zuko and the favor he means to ask him. No sooner has he thought so than Zuko himself shows up; he wonders how Shirong makes sitting on rocks look so comfortable, and Shirong admits that being near the earth helps him heal. Amaya is with him, and also starting to feel better. Zuko examines Shirong a bit with his healing and then does… something to him, which seems to concern Amaya. Zuko was just trying to fix the damage the spirit did, but Amaya thinks he overdid it. Shirong tells them he’s made sure they’re alone, for now, though Quan will be by later, and Amay takes the opportunity to give a bit more information on what exactly Zuko did. Shirong takes a moment to consider, then asks to speak to Zuko in private. He’s not trying to recruit him right now – this is a personal favor, though he privately doubts Long Feng would think of it that way. Still, he thinks to himself that this is what the city needs from him right now. He takes a moment to consider Zuko and how young he is, then thinks to himself that the Avatar and his friends are even younger – at least Zuko has some sense, at least when he stops to think. Which reminds him of Temul, the firebender from Kyoshi’s time he read about, who was apparently similar. Finally, Shirong admits to Zuko that he needs his help, but not with a spirit- the Avatar’s bison is being held under Lake Laogai. The Blue Spirit once saved the Avatar from Pohuai Stronghold; whatever his personal feelings for the Avatar are after the North Pole, he could infiltrate Lake Laogai and maybe by releasing the bison protect the people of Ba Sing Se from more feral spirits.
Zuko doesn’t understand what he means, so Shirong explains about what he read about the connections between Avatars and their animals, and that bad things can happen if that connection is severed. Zuko takes the hint, but Shirong has worse news. Apparently, he also found a recent report from General Fong about his attempts to induce the Avatar State and that he found that it can be done if you threaten someone the Avatar cares about. Shirong worries that Long Feng and General Fong may be planning something together, and Zuko is rightly horrified. Shirong says he can’t risk what might happen to Ba Sing Se if their plan goes awry; Zuko tells him that he’s in no state to do this himself, but that he’ll do it. After all, Zuko broke into the North Pole by himself. Shirong thinks he needs to hear that story someday. Zuko’s seen Aang in the Avatar State and thinks that General Fong must be crazy if he thinks he can control him when he’s like that; Shirong is relieved to see that Zuko at least seems committed to the mission. Zuko has no desire to help Aang, but he also doesn’t think the plan will work – Zhao got caught flat-footed, but the Fire Nation won’t let that happen again, and Azula’s smarter than Zhao. If anyone can figure out how to kill the Avatar, it’s her. Shirong wonders exactly how Zuko is so familiar with the royal family and just how high up Iroh might have been. Meanwhile, Zuko has one condition – Shirong will tell the Dai Li that Zuko isn’t a suitable recruit. If Shirong goes down this path, he may have to work against the Dai Li again – while Zuko lost his honor long ago, he doesn’t want to drag Shirong down with him. This reminds Shirong of the seven core principles of the Fire Nation that he read about several chapters ago, which Kyoshi apparently wrote down when she was learning firebending. He’d thought the Fire Nation as she knew it was destroyed, but maybe its principles are still there. He warns Zuko to tell his uncle to keep his head down – Shirong knows he’s a firebender, and other people might figure it out, too. Zuko says he’s not, but Shirong thinks he’s a terrible liar. He's seen them both fight, and he recognizes firebending principles when he sees them.
Shirong promises not to turn them in, though – if nothing else, he owes it to Amaya, who’s saved his life in the past. For now, he has something else he wants to tell Zuko about – Temul. Shirong explains that she was a firebender centuries ago who did something similar to what Zuko has done in trying to apply waterbending principles to firebending. Apparently, this didn’t make Kyoshi very happy – from what Shirong read, Kyoshi enforced the separation of the nations with an iron hand, and what she’d say about Zuko, a person Shirong believes to be of mixed Fire Nation and Water Tribe heritage, wouldn’t bear repeating in polite company. Iroh might have heard of her and might know something that could help. Meanwhile, the biggest obstacle is going to be the lake itself. We cut to Zuko later as he’s heading to the Wens’, quietly panicking to himself as he thinks about what the implications of Appa being in Ba Sing Se are. Zuko thinks to himself that the Avatar can’t be here, he hasn’t had enough time to plan anything yet, and finally manages to bring himself back under control. He considers talking with Iroh about it but can’t pull him from his job in the middle of the day. Besides, he realizes that if he is still being watched and doesn’t show up at the Wens’, the Dai Li might get suspicious, and might connect things back to Shirong. Finally, he arrives at the Wens’, where Suyin asks if something’s wrong. Zuko admits he’s had better days and gives a brief rundown of rescuing Amaya from the spirit. He’s not in the mood to teach Suyin or Jinhai anything new today and instead just focuses on reviewing the basics. He worries that if things go wrong, he might never teach them again, which convinces him further that his people need him here. After they’re done, Zuko tells them a bit more about the spirit, though he spares the worst details – he wonders if haima-jiao are why the Water Tribes prefer to live near the poles, and wonders why Katara, with all the violence she’s seen or been part of, hasn’t drawn one – he realizes it must be because she’s traveling with the avatar, and a haima-jiao wouldn’t be stupid enough to pick that fight. It all makes Suyin think of the Water Tribe boy her sister encountered, and she remembers that his name was Sokka.
This is the last straw, and Zuko is so completely overwhelmed by emotion that he can barely speak or think clearly and is only just restraining himself from lashing out uncontrollably. He can hear Meixiang warning her children to get back, telling them that sometimes this happens to the great names, and quietly prays that he not be given a target to vent his distress on. Meixiang approaches slowly, kneeling, and addressing Zuko as her lord while offering a knife in homage reciting what sounds like an oath of fealty; this manages to pull Zuko back to himself and he tells her to get up – he’s not her lord. She says that he is and is pleased that he’s enough in control of himself to understand and respond to her. She explains that she knows this happens to some firebenders; dragons aren’t born with the ability to speak and have to learn it later in life – some firebenders, when overwhelmed with rage or other emotions, end up reverting to a state where they can’t speak or understand words either. Sometimes the submission of a follower is the only thing that can calm the inner dragon down. Meixiang wonders that Iroh has never told Zuko about this; Zuko says it doesn’t happen to Iroh in the same way, and wonders about the connection between firebenders and dragons and why it’s seemingly so strong in him. Meixiang is confused, since that means Zuko doesn’t get dragon’s blood from his uncle’s side of the family, and then remembers that he said his mother was a healer. Zuko snaps he doesn’t know why it happens, just that sometimes he gets so angry he can’t communicate - Meixiang assures him it’s not his or Ursa’s fault, just part of their heritage. She asks if Sokka is Zuko’s enemy; Zuko thinks to himself that Sokka’s only fifteen, but Azula’s only fourteen, so maybe it doesn’t matter. Zuko explains that he’s an ally of the Avatar, who is an enemy of the Fire Nation, and Meixiang is amazed that Zuko seems to think he can take someone like that on alone. She makes Zuko – with all due respect – sit down and demands to know exactly what he promised the Fire Lord to do. Zuko admits he never spoke to Ozai after the Agni Kai – Azula delivered the terms. But he was charged with capturing the Avatar and ending his threat to the Fire Nation. Meixiang asks who she, her children, and Huojin and his family are to him, and Zuko says that they’re his people – she asks if he’s going to talk to Iroh, but Zuko says there’s more to it than she knows and starts rambling about Appa and Lake Laogai. Meixiang goes and gets Suyin and tells her to go with Zuko, whispering an explanation in her ear. She then makes Zuko promise that Suyin will be safe with him, and when he does, she tells him that they need him more than he realizes.
We cut to Pao’s tea shop, where Pao himself protests that Iroh isn’t here – he quit when a noble offered him his own tea shop in the upper ring! Suyin watches Zuko as he takes in the news and thinks about how her mother told her to make sure he came back alive, and that she’d explain more later. Pao tries to convince Zuko to talk to his uncle, but Zuko knows that if he left, he’s not coming back. Zuko and Suyin leave; Suyin tells him he could have been nicer, but Zuko thinks that it’s probably best for Pao if they’re not there. Suyin wants an explanation, but Zuko tells her he was supposed to find Iroh and then get her home, and he’s not thinking very well right now. At last, they find Iroh at the clinic, having tea with Amaya. Zuko tells Iroh that Appa’s at Lake Laogai and Suyin knows something about Sokka. Meanwhile, he’s going out to the garden to practice. Over the sound of Zuko breaking ice, Suyin explains to Iroh what her sister told her about Sokka and how badly Zuko reacted when he heard. Iroh wants to know exactly what happened. We cut to Zuko practicing out in the garden, thinking to himself about how Aang and his friends are here in Ba Sing Se, and he has to do something, but if he’s not careful a lot of people could get hurt. Zuko is torn between his duty to the Fire Nation and his duty to the people he’s befriended in the city. On the verge of panicking again, he sits down and tries to think things through logically, as Iroh taught him. He decides he needs information, and a way to keep his people safe. Maybe he could do that by capturing the Avatar – but he doubts he’d win that fight if it happened in his current state. And there’s other factors to worry about to – the Dai Li want to maintain order, and there’s Azula, who Zuko thinks could capture the Avatar but might not be able to hold him, which means she might decide to kill him instead. Overwhelmed, he tries to hold back tears, wondering if this is going to be the North Pole all over again. Finally, out of nowhere, a flyer falls from the sky; Zuko picks it up to find a picture of Appa on it and curses the spirits.
We cut to Amaya and Iroh making their way towards the inner ring; Amaya wonders if Zuko will stay put, and Iroh thinks he will, if only because he’s busy thinking. Amaya wonders why Iroh doesn’t just order him to wait, and Iroh admits he can’t – Zuko’s the crown prince, so even though Iroh’s his uncle, Zuko technically outranks him. But that’s part of why Iroh always liked it when they were able to go ashore and be away from prying eyes, where they could actually be uncle and nephew and not just general and prince – and that connection was something Iroh knew Zuko needed. Amaya still thinks that as Zuko’s uncle and his teacher, Iroh should be able to tell him not to do this, but Iroh won’t – not with both Zuko’s honor and Ba Sing Se as a whole at stake. Aside from attracting more dangerous spirits, the Avatar’s presence in the city will make the Fire Nation all the more determined to conquer it – or destroy it. Sozin and his armies wiped out the Air Temples in a single day, and Ozai will do the same to Ba Sing Se if that’s what it takes to get at Aang. Anyway, under these circumstances Iroh will advise Zuko but won’t tell him to do nothing. Amaya thinks Iroh has a lot of faith in Zuko – Iroh thinks that there’s a lot of Ozai in his nephew, more than he wants to admit, but also a lot of Ursa, and Iroh has tried to teach him to balance both sides and make them into something constructive. At last, they reach the house whose address is on the flyer; Iroh explains that he and Zuko have met Aang many times, but Aang has always slipped through their fingers. He thinks the spirits seem to want Zuko to chase Aang, but never catch him – and if he meets whichever spirit wanted to put his nephew through that, they’ll have words. Amaya hopes that what they’re planning works – Zuko’s been a good apprentice, and she wants him back. Iroh hopes that Toph will be able to convince the rest of her friends to see reason and knocks on the side of the house with a rock. We cut to Toph herself, inside, as she hears the sound and wonders what it is. Aang then distracts her by bursting in, excitedly exclaiming that he’s dropped off all the leaflets and wants to know if there’s any news about Appa yet, which annoys Toph and makes her want to beat her head against something hard. She thinks that Aang has a lot of raw talent for bending, but never seems to take the time to do things the right way. She gets that he’s under a deadline, but thinks he has no real understanding of how to train hard. She’s tried to teach him, but every time she does, Katara steps in; like right now, when she tells Aang to just be patient, to Toph’s exasperation.
Suddenly, someone knocks on the door; it turns out to be a Water Tribe woman, who says she’d heard there were some other Water Tribe people living here and thought she’d like to meet them. Katara expresses disbelief that the woman might want to meet Sokka – then realizes she’s from the Northern Tribe and wonders what she’s doing in the city. Amaya explains she’s a healer… and then Toph loses the thread of the conversation as she picks up the knocking sound again and realizes it’s the opening music from the Earth Rumble tournament, which means someone is doing this on purpose and probably wants to talk to her, specifically. She sneaks out back and finds Iroh; she’s surprised to see him here, and he explains it’s a long story. But, while Amaya is distracting Katara and Sokka, he’d like to talk to her. He says Amaya’s a good friend, and Toph is amused to pick up hinds she’s rather more than that… but Toph gets that he wants to talk to her without the others knowing, since Katara’s still upset about that time Zuko tied her to a tree and all. Iroh admits Zuko did do that, but it at least kept Katara restrained and under their sight, and out of the hands of the pirates she’d stolen from – and people who steal from pirates often don’t survive, and those who do survive, especially young women, often regret it. Toph thinks Katara left out that part and wants to know what Iroh wants to talk about. Iroh explains about Appa, and how he thinks he’ll need an earthbender’s help to rescue him - and Toph, as it happens, is the one ally of Aang’s who might give them a fair hearing. Toph can tell from his voice and stance that they’re in trouble, and Toph at least agrees to listen to Zuko, though she makes Iroh promise that neither of them intends to hurt Aang. Toph says she’ll tell them she needs to see Luli again to talk more about jade – Iroh recognizes Luli as Huojin’s wife and suggests her shop as a meeting place. Toph agrees, since she wants to hear from Zuko, and goes back inside to tell the others she’s leaving – only for Joo Dee to suddenly appear at the door. We go through the show’s scene of the Gaang’s conversation with her, with Toph thinking to herself that Joo Dee’s confused reaction to the other woman also calling herself Joo Dee is a danger sign. Joo Dee explains that dropping fliers is forbidden, making Toph wonder why they’re bothering to stay in the city and if Aang just literally can’t live without Appa. Finally, Aang loses his temper and yells that he doesn’t care about the rules, to which Toph is both amused and pleased. Aang slams the door in Joo Dee’s face, and shortly after, Amaya comes back from where she’d been lurking out of sight. She explains that the Dai Li have a system – it may take a while for this Joo Dee’s report to be put through, but since she’s been assigned to the Avatar, she’ll probably be given priority. Katara is stunned to learn there’s more than one Joo Dee – Amaya assures her there are probably hundreds of them.
Aang is confused – he can imagine there being two women with the same name who work for the Dai Li, but hundreds? Amaya is exasperated – they are naïve. She asks if it ever occurred to Katara to try and treat the Joo Dees, and Katara thinks they’re weird, but there’s nothing wrong with them. Amaya says Yugoda should have covered mental trauma in the second week of training, and Sokka and Aang both jump in with the story of Katara training with Pakku and how she forced him to take her on. Amaya is stunned that Katara isn’t a fully trained healer – she’d assumed she must be, since she’s wearing Pakku’s necklace. She’d hoped Katara had already figured out what was going on and was only biding her time trying to find a way to escape – not that many people do escape from Long Feng’s grasp. Katara explains that she got the necklace from her grandmother, and Amaya realizes that Long Feng probably does think Katara is a fully qualified healer, and it’s the only thing keeping him from trying to brainwash them – none of them are Fire Nation, so it would take. Katara is stunned that Amaya has anything good to say about the Fire Nation, who tried to kill the Moon Spirit. Amaya says it’s only their wills that are stronger – they’ll not bend to what Long Feng will try to do to them, but they will break eventually. If Aang won’t understand that, he’ll never become a firebender, and the world will suffer. Aang insists that he’ll never learn firebending and won’t need it to defeat the Fire Lord. Amaya sadly decides there’s nothing more she can do, and wishes them all luck – Sokka says she’s Water Tribe, she knows the Dai Li are evil, why won’t she help them? Amaya says that she’s the last of the Water Tribe in the city, aside from her apprentice – all the other waterbenders who were here are dead now, because of a dangerous spirit, and Aang, who’s supposed to deal with that sort of thing, sensed nothing. Aang protests that nobody told him, and Amaya says that Long Feng wants him kept quiet and contained until he’s ready to use him. Toph thinks she’s guessing – but she’s pretty sure. Besides, Amaya says that Aang should be able to sense a hostile spirit without people telling him, but he didn’t – and so the Dai Li, who he calls evil, put their lives on the line to defeat it and protect the people it was preying on, including her. For a century, they’ve been all that stands between Ba Sing Se and destruction. So, Amaya wants Aang to find his bison and leave, and she slams the door behind her as she goes.
Katara thinks Amaya was weirder than the Joo Dees, but Toph says she was telling the truth and didn’t feel like the Joo Dees, who just sound blank. Aang protests that he would have felt a spirit if it had been there, though he admits he doesn’t know how that works, and Sokka adds that he didn’t realize the koi fish were the Moon and Ocean Spirits until it was almost too late. Sokka says he’ll never forgive Zuko for what happened to Yue, but he’s also realizing how much he doesn’t know about what’s going on in Ba Sing Se. Aang can’t believe that he sounds like he’s saying they should stay put, and Sokka says he’s not – Aang is happy, and from now on doesn’t care what he has to do in order to find Appa. Toph wants to invade the palace, bury the Dai Li, maybe kidnap the Earth King, and is disappointed that Aang just wants to put up the rest of the posters. They end up heading off into the city to do exactly that, and Toph strikes out on her own so she can go meet with Zuko. She thinks that Iroh seems like a good guy, but knows that Zuko is honor-bound to capture Aang and this might be a trap – but on the other hand, he did help the out against Azula, and she wants to know how he’s pulling off pretending to be a waterbender’s apprentice. She wishes the others didn’t blame Yue’s death on him, though she can’t figure out why – she thinks it sounds like Zhao was responsible for that, and while Zuko was tied up during the events, Iroh tried to stop him. She thinks to herself that the others’ morality seems to just be “Fire Nation bad, Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes good” and nothing more. As far as she can tell, Zuko’s only interest is chasing Aang, not anything else, and she can’t figure out why the others hate him so much. She thinks he deserves someone to hear him out. And if it doesn’t work out – if Katara can take Zuko, Toph definitely can.
She arrives at Luli’s shop to find Iroh trying out tea shop names with Zuko; Huojin lets them know Toph’s here and is amused to see they’ve all already met. Toph can tell from Zuko’s stance that he really is Amaya’s apprentice, and it makes her think he feels more like a dragon than he did before. They all sit down to talk about negotiating a temporary alliance. Zuko calls Toph a master earthbender and a worthy opponent, but she’s still not hearing a reason he wanted to talk. If he could find Appa, they can too – Zuko says he wants them out of Ba Sing Se as soon as possible. He asks if she knows anything about what happened at the North Pole, and that it sounds like the people in charge of the city want to make something like that happen again. Toph remembers the others telling her about the North Pole, and then about General Fong’s experiments, and protests that Aang doesn’t want anything like that to happen again. Zuko says he doesn’t either, which is why he’s helping – besides, he can’t capture the Avatar in Ba Sing Se without revealing himself, which will only get him killed or captured by the Dai Li. Then not only will he die, he’ll die as a failure. So, the best thing for everyone involved is to reunite Aang with Appa and get them out of the city. Huojin wonders if he, a guard, should even be party to this – Iroh says the Dai Li don’t officially have Appa, and what they don’t have can’t be stolen from them. Huojin thinks there’s something wrong with that logic but just asks if Toph really wants to go along with this. Zuko passes her some papers with things he’s found out about the city, for Toph to give to Sokka to convince him to go if nothing else works. It’s anonymous, so they won’t know it’s from him. Toph knows Zuko is asking for her help alone, not any of the others, which they all agree would end badly. Toph wants to know the plan, but first, Zuko wants to know why she believes him. Toph explains that her family deals with Fire Nation merchants, and she knows Fire Nationals never talk about disputes between family members with outsiders – but Zuko warned them about Azula, which meant he was treating them with honor to repay Katara for helping him, even though she was Water Tribe. Which means Zuko also has honor – and that means Toph is in.
We end with another author note. A/N: Written at least partly because in canon, Toph never got her life-changing field trip.
The bit between Zuko and Meixiang is in part based on the scene where Roku is revealed as the next Avatar, and everybody hits the ground; even the prince kneeling. Proper signals of dominance and submission are very important to large, heavily-armed predators.
It's also in part based on what we see from Fang, Ran, and Sho. Dragons communicate through (apparent) telepathic images, and movement. Words, they're not so good at.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
MG’s Thoughts
Okay, let’s get the Lion Turtle in the room out of the way first – this is the chapter where Vathara really starts letting us know what she feels about the Gaang in general (that they’re all, with the exception of Toph, a bunch of naïve kids who don’t know what they’re doing) and Katara in particular (that she’s an awful selfish hypocrite who doesn’t know nearly as much as she thinks she does and is actively bad for Aang). I think we see a lot of the phenomenon I mentioned earlier where Vathara stacks the deck against the Gaang, whether by introducing elements they couldn’t have known about in canon and blaming them for not knowing, or by retconning them to be ignorant of things they’d clearly figured out in canon but maybe didn’t explicitly come out and say clearly enough for her. In the case of the former, they’re made to not know the Dai Li aren’t evil (when nothing in their interactions with them has suggested otherwise), that the Joo Dees can be healed (Katara was able to do a little with Jet in canon but not get rid of his brainwashing entirely, and there’s certainly no reason to think she’d be able to just sense it if she wasn’t already working on the person) or that there was a spirit attacking the city (when there wasn’t in canon; even in the fic, we’re explicitly told that the spirit was keeping a low profile so as to not attract the Avatar’s attention, and that the Dai Li were deliberately keeping Aang in the dark). In the case of the latter, the show!Gaang clearly knew there was something up with the Joo Dees and they weren’t just women who happened to have the same name, they just didn’t know what. On a related note, Zuko chased the Gaang across the whole world, attacked them multiple times, and repeatedly tried to capture Aang – I think they have plenty of reason to think he’s the bad buy, even if they’ve also met worse people. Having all of this being delivered by Amaya, Vathara’s waterbender, just seems to rub more salt in the wound, tbh. With Katara specifically, you also have the implication that she was wrong and immature to want to learn from Pakku and it would have been more use to her friends if she’d just swallowed her pride and learned healing like a good girl (blegh – also, Yugoda’s students start as little kids much younger than Katara; we see this explicitly. Are we supposed to believe she teaches them mental healing in their second week? Somehow, I don’t think giving little kids the ability to alter peoples’ brain chemistry is a good idea!) and even when she does something Toph seemed to agree with – trying to teach Aang to be patient – Toph still pooh-poohs it in her internal monologue… for some reason.
And, uh, I guess the subtext we're supposed to take away is that Zuko probably saved Katara from being raped by those pirates, guys. Because clearly that's what A:TLA needed.
On a note I’m more torn about – we have more dragon stuff this chapter. On the one hand, it makes sense that dragons don’t think like humans. On the other hand, there are a couple of ways it rubs me wrong. First off, it (and there’s more coming in this vein) reminds me a lot of certain werewolf tropes I really don’t like, where the person’s “animal nature” (which is usually based on outdated ideas of wolf behavior, even when the characters are something other than wolves) seems to be the reason why they do everything and is often used to excuse jerkish or unpleasant behavior. I know a lot of people seem to be into that sort of thing, but it’s always been a turn off for me. On a more personal note, the way it’s framed here seems a lot like how someone on the autism spectrum can experience a meltdown and need to decompress if overloaded with too much stuff to deal with at once; as an autistic person myself, to have it specifically attributed to Zuko’s nonhuman heritage… I really don’t know what to think about that (and it’s entirely possible Vathara didn’t intend the comparison at all and I’m just reading into it based on my own experiences). In context, it also feels like more of emphasizing how “special” firebenders in general and the Fire nobility specifically are (especially since the solution is apparently… for someone to offer fealty?). As for the bit in the author note – yeah, everyone bowing to Roku doesn’t feel like it needs any explanation other than “in a deeply hierarchical, formal society, it’s very important to recognize and acknowledge who outranks who, and to what degree,” no dragons required.
On an unrelated note – this is the first time we really get it spelled out that the fic’s version of Kyoshi was, in fact, really, really racist and kind of a reactionary. Now, I know there’s no way Vathara could have known this, because the books only started coming out when Embers had been done for five years, but it’s still kind of hilarious in hindsight when the novels revealed that canon’s Kyoshi is not only herself biracial (Earth Kingdom father, Air Nomad mother), but was in love with a Fire Nation girl. Ironic, no? Not to mention, in general I have no idea if FC Yee (who wrote the Kyoshi novels) ever read Embers, but if someone told me he set out to do a point-by-point refutation of the fic’s version of Kyoshi and its Fire Nation backstory… I wouldn’t be surprised (more on this as it’s relevant). Come to think, if I ever do a full sporking of this thing, I’d seriously consider using Kyoshi and Rangi as guest sporkers for at least part of it, if only for the sheer WTH their reactions would no doubt be.
On one last note, I do apologize for how long these posts are – alas, the fic has a lot of detail and very long chapters, and a lot of it is important for what it’s doing and where it’s going. I’ll try to tighten things up a bit going forward but, fair warning, we’re to the point where these chapters aren’t getting any shorter.
Chapter Nineteen
We open with a brief author note. A/N: Again, don't own episode dialogue, especially from "Lake Laogai." The chapter proper begins with Shirong, meditating in a palace garden the Dai Li have taken over as he tries to recover from the battle with the spirit. Sunlight seems to help, but also makes him think of Zuko and the favor he means to ask him. No sooner has he thought so than Zuko himself shows up; he wonders how Shirong makes sitting on rocks look so comfortable, and Shirong admits that being near the earth helps him heal. Amaya is with him, and also starting to feel better. Zuko examines Shirong a bit with his healing and then does… something to him, which seems to concern Amaya. Zuko was just trying to fix the damage the spirit did, but Amaya thinks he overdid it. Shirong tells them he’s made sure they’re alone, for now, though Quan will be by later, and Amay takes the opportunity to give a bit more information on what exactly Zuko did. Shirong takes a moment to consider, then asks to speak to Zuko in private. He’s not trying to recruit him right now – this is a personal favor, though he privately doubts Long Feng would think of it that way. Still, he thinks to himself that this is what the city needs from him right now. He takes a moment to consider Zuko and how young he is, then thinks to himself that the Avatar and his friends are even younger – at least Zuko has some sense, at least when he stops to think. Which reminds him of Temul, the firebender from Kyoshi’s time he read about, who was apparently similar. Finally, Shirong admits to Zuko that he needs his help, but not with a spirit- the Avatar’s bison is being held under Lake Laogai. The Blue Spirit once saved the Avatar from Pohuai Stronghold; whatever his personal feelings for the Avatar are after the North Pole, he could infiltrate Lake Laogai and maybe by releasing the bison protect the people of Ba Sing Se from more feral spirits.
Zuko doesn’t understand what he means, so Shirong explains about what he read about the connections between Avatars and their animals, and that bad things can happen if that connection is severed. Zuko takes the hint, but Shirong has worse news. Apparently, he also found a recent report from General Fong about his attempts to induce the Avatar State and that he found that it can be done if you threaten someone the Avatar cares about. Shirong worries that Long Feng and General Fong may be planning something together, and Zuko is rightly horrified. Shirong says he can’t risk what might happen to Ba Sing Se if their plan goes awry; Zuko tells him that he’s in no state to do this himself, but that he’ll do it. After all, Zuko broke into the North Pole by himself. Shirong thinks he needs to hear that story someday. Zuko’s seen Aang in the Avatar State and thinks that General Fong must be crazy if he thinks he can control him when he’s like that; Shirong is relieved to see that Zuko at least seems committed to the mission. Zuko has no desire to help Aang, but he also doesn’t think the plan will work – Zhao got caught flat-footed, but the Fire Nation won’t let that happen again, and Azula’s smarter than Zhao. If anyone can figure out how to kill the Avatar, it’s her. Shirong wonders exactly how Zuko is so familiar with the royal family and just how high up Iroh might have been. Meanwhile, Zuko has one condition – Shirong will tell the Dai Li that Zuko isn’t a suitable recruit. If Shirong goes down this path, he may have to work against the Dai Li again – while Zuko lost his honor long ago, he doesn’t want to drag Shirong down with him. This reminds Shirong of the seven core principles of the Fire Nation that he read about several chapters ago, which Kyoshi apparently wrote down when she was learning firebending. He’d thought the Fire Nation as she knew it was destroyed, but maybe its principles are still there. He warns Zuko to tell his uncle to keep his head down – Shirong knows he’s a firebender, and other people might figure it out, too. Zuko says he’s not, but Shirong thinks he’s a terrible liar. He's seen them both fight, and he recognizes firebending principles when he sees them.
Shirong promises not to turn them in, though – if nothing else, he owes it to Amaya, who’s saved his life in the past. For now, he has something else he wants to tell Zuko about – Temul. Shirong explains that she was a firebender centuries ago who did something similar to what Zuko has done in trying to apply waterbending principles to firebending. Apparently, this didn’t make Kyoshi very happy – from what Shirong read, Kyoshi enforced the separation of the nations with an iron hand, and what she’d say about Zuko, a person Shirong believes to be of mixed Fire Nation and Water Tribe heritage, wouldn’t bear repeating in polite company. Iroh might have heard of her and might know something that could help. Meanwhile, the biggest obstacle is going to be the lake itself. We cut to Zuko later as he’s heading to the Wens’, quietly panicking to himself as he thinks about what the implications of Appa being in Ba Sing Se are. Zuko thinks to himself that the Avatar can’t be here, he hasn’t had enough time to plan anything yet, and finally manages to bring himself back under control. He considers talking with Iroh about it but can’t pull him from his job in the middle of the day. Besides, he realizes that if he is still being watched and doesn’t show up at the Wens’, the Dai Li might get suspicious, and might connect things back to Shirong. Finally, he arrives at the Wens’, where Suyin asks if something’s wrong. Zuko admits he’s had better days and gives a brief rundown of rescuing Amaya from the spirit. He’s not in the mood to teach Suyin or Jinhai anything new today and instead just focuses on reviewing the basics. He worries that if things go wrong, he might never teach them again, which convinces him further that his people need him here. After they’re done, Zuko tells them a bit more about the spirit, though he spares the worst details – he wonders if haima-jiao are why the Water Tribes prefer to live near the poles, and wonders why Katara, with all the violence she’s seen or been part of, hasn’t drawn one – he realizes it must be because she’s traveling with the avatar, and a haima-jiao wouldn’t be stupid enough to pick that fight. It all makes Suyin think of the Water Tribe boy her sister encountered, and she remembers that his name was Sokka.
This is the last straw, and Zuko is so completely overwhelmed by emotion that he can barely speak or think clearly and is only just restraining himself from lashing out uncontrollably. He can hear Meixiang warning her children to get back, telling them that sometimes this happens to the great names, and quietly prays that he not be given a target to vent his distress on. Meixiang approaches slowly, kneeling, and addressing Zuko as her lord while offering a knife in homage reciting what sounds like an oath of fealty; this manages to pull Zuko back to himself and he tells her to get up – he’s not her lord. She says that he is and is pleased that he’s enough in control of himself to understand and respond to her. She explains that she knows this happens to some firebenders; dragons aren’t born with the ability to speak and have to learn it later in life – some firebenders, when overwhelmed with rage or other emotions, end up reverting to a state where they can’t speak or understand words either. Sometimes the submission of a follower is the only thing that can calm the inner dragon down. Meixiang wonders that Iroh has never told Zuko about this; Zuko says it doesn’t happen to Iroh in the same way, and wonders about the connection between firebenders and dragons and why it’s seemingly so strong in him. Meixiang is confused, since that means Zuko doesn’t get dragon’s blood from his uncle’s side of the family, and then remembers that he said his mother was a healer. Zuko snaps he doesn’t know why it happens, just that sometimes he gets so angry he can’t communicate - Meixiang assures him it’s not his or Ursa’s fault, just part of their heritage. She asks if Sokka is Zuko’s enemy; Zuko thinks to himself that Sokka’s only fifteen, but Azula’s only fourteen, so maybe it doesn’t matter. Zuko explains that he’s an ally of the Avatar, who is an enemy of the Fire Nation, and Meixiang is amazed that Zuko seems to think he can take someone like that on alone. She makes Zuko – with all due respect – sit down and demands to know exactly what he promised the Fire Lord to do. Zuko admits he never spoke to Ozai after the Agni Kai – Azula delivered the terms. But he was charged with capturing the Avatar and ending his threat to the Fire Nation. Meixiang asks who she, her children, and Huojin and his family are to him, and Zuko says that they’re his people – she asks if he’s going to talk to Iroh, but Zuko says there’s more to it than she knows and starts rambling about Appa and Lake Laogai. Meixiang goes and gets Suyin and tells her to go with Zuko, whispering an explanation in her ear. She then makes Zuko promise that Suyin will be safe with him, and when he does, she tells him that they need him more than he realizes.
We cut to Pao’s tea shop, where Pao himself protests that Iroh isn’t here – he quit when a noble offered him his own tea shop in the upper ring! Suyin watches Zuko as he takes in the news and thinks about how her mother told her to make sure he came back alive, and that she’d explain more later. Pao tries to convince Zuko to talk to his uncle, but Zuko knows that if he left, he’s not coming back. Zuko and Suyin leave; Suyin tells him he could have been nicer, but Zuko thinks that it’s probably best for Pao if they’re not there. Suyin wants an explanation, but Zuko tells her he was supposed to find Iroh and then get her home, and he’s not thinking very well right now. At last, they find Iroh at the clinic, having tea with Amaya. Zuko tells Iroh that Appa’s at Lake Laogai and Suyin knows something about Sokka. Meanwhile, he’s going out to the garden to practice. Over the sound of Zuko breaking ice, Suyin explains to Iroh what her sister told her about Sokka and how badly Zuko reacted when he heard. Iroh wants to know exactly what happened. We cut to Zuko practicing out in the garden, thinking to himself about how Aang and his friends are here in Ba Sing Se, and he has to do something, but if he’s not careful a lot of people could get hurt. Zuko is torn between his duty to the Fire Nation and his duty to the people he’s befriended in the city. On the verge of panicking again, he sits down and tries to think things through logically, as Iroh taught him. He decides he needs information, and a way to keep his people safe. Maybe he could do that by capturing the Avatar – but he doubts he’d win that fight if it happened in his current state. And there’s other factors to worry about to – the Dai Li want to maintain order, and there’s Azula, who Zuko thinks could capture the Avatar but might not be able to hold him, which means she might decide to kill him instead. Overwhelmed, he tries to hold back tears, wondering if this is going to be the North Pole all over again. Finally, out of nowhere, a flyer falls from the sky; Zuko picks it up to find a picture of Appa on it and curses the spirits.
We cut to Amaya and Iroh making their way towards the inner ring; Amaya wonders if Zuko will stay put, and Iroh thinks he will, if only because he’s busy thinking. Amaya wonders why Iroh doesn’t just order him to wait, and Iroh admits he can’t – Zuko’s the crown prince, so even though Iroh’s his uncle, Zuko technically outranks him. But that’s part of why Iroh always liked it when they were able to go ashore and be away from prying eyes, where they could actually be uncle and nephew and not just general and prince – and that connection was something Iroh knew Zuko needed. Amaya still thinks that as Zuko’s uncle and his teacher, Iroh should be able to tell him not to do this, but Iroh won’t – not with both Zuko’s honor and Ba Sing Se as a whole at stake. Aside from attracting more dangerous spirits, the Avatar’s presence in the city will make the Fire Nation all the more determined to conquer it – or destroy it. Sozin and his armies wiped out the Air Temples in a single day, and Ozai will do the same to Ba Sing Se if that’s what it takes to get at Aang. Anyway, under these circumstances Iroh will advise Zuko but won’t tell him to do nothing. Amaya thinks Iroh has a lot of faith in Zuko – Iroh thinks that there’s a lot of Ozai in his nephew, more than he wants to admit, but also a lot of Ursa, and Iroh has tried to teach him to balance both sides and make them into something constructive. At last, they reach the house whose address is on the flyer; Iroh explains that he and Zuko have met Aang many times, but Aang has always slipped through their fingers. He thinks the spirits seem to want Zuko to chase Aang, but never catch him – and if he meets whichever spirit wanted to put his nephew through that, they’ll have words. Amaya hopes that what they’re planning works – Zuko’s been a good apprentice, and she wants him back. Iroh hopes that Toph will be able to convince the rest of her friends to see reason and knocks on the side of the house with a rock. We cut to Toph herself, inside, as she hears the sound and wonders what it is. Aang then distracts her by bursting in, excitedly exclaiming that he’s dropped off all the leaflets and wants to know if there’s any news about Appa yet, which annoys Toph and makes her want to beat her head against something hard. She thinks that Aang has a lot of raw talent for bending, but never seems to take the time to do things the right way. She gets that he’s under a deadline, but thinks he has no real understanding of how to train hard. She’s tried to teach him, but every time she does, Katara steps in; like right now, when she tells Aang to just be patient, to Toph’s exasperation.
Suddenly, someone knocks on the door; it turns out to be a Water Tribe woman, who says she’d heard there were some other Water Tribe people living here and thought she’d like to meet them. Katara expresses disbelief that the woman might want to meet Sokka – then realizes she’s from the Northern Tribe and wonders what she’s doing in the city. Amaya explains she’s a healer… and then Toph loses the thread of the conversation as she picks up the knocking sound again and realizes it’s the opening music from the Earth Rumble tournament, which means someone is doing this on purpose and probably wants to talk to her, specifically. She sneaks out back and finds Iroh; she’s surprised to see him here, and he explains it’s a long story. But, while Amaya is distracting Katara and Sokka, he’d like to talk to her. He says Amaya’s a good friend, and Toph is amused to pick up hinds she’s rather more than that… but Toph gets that he wants to talk to her without the others knowing, since Katara’s still upset about that time Zuko tied her to a tree and all. Iroh admits Zuko did do that, but it at least kept Katara restrained and under their sight, and out of the hands of the pirates she’d stolen from – and people who steal from pirates often don’t survive, and those who do survive, especially young women, often regret it. Toph thinks Katara left out that part and wants to know what Iroh wants to talk about. Iroh explains about Appa, and how he thinks he’ll need an earthbender’s help to rescue him - and Toph, as it happens, is the one ally of Aang’s who might give them a fair hearing. Toph can tell from his voice and stance that they’re in trouble, and Toph at least agrees to listen to Zuko, though she makes Iroh promise that neither of them intends to hurt Aang. Toph says she’ll tell them she needs to see Luli again to talk more about jade – Iroh recognizes Luli as Huojin’s wife and suggests her shop as a meeting place. Toph agrees, since she wants to hear from Zuko, and goes back inside to tell the others she’s leaving – only for Joo Dee to suddenly appear at the door. We go through the show’s scene of the Gaang’s conversation with her, with Toph thinking to herself that Joo Dee’s confused reaction to the other woman also calling herself Joo Dee is a danger sign. Joo Dee explains that dropping fliers is forbidden, making Toph wonder why they’re bothering to stay in the city and if Aang just literally can’t live without Appa. Finally, Aang loses his temper and yells that he doesn’t care about the rules, to which Toph is both amused and pleased. Aang slams the door in Joo Dee’s face, and shortly after, Amaya comes back from where she’d been lurking out of sight. She explains that the Dai Li have a system – it may take a while for this Joo Dee’s report to be put through, but since she’s been assigned to the Avatar, she’ll probably be given priority. Katara is stunned to learn there’s more than one Joo Dee – Amaya assures her there are probably hundreds of them.
Aang is confused – he can imagine there being two women with the same name who work for the Dai Li, but hundreds? Amaya is exasperated – they are naïve. She asks if it ever occurred to Katara to try and treat the Joo Dees, and Katara thinks they’re weird, but there’s nothing wrong with them. Amaya says Yugoda should have covered mental trauma in the second week of training, and Sokka and Aang both jump in with the story of Katara training with Pakku and how she forced him to take her on. Amaya is stunned that Katara isn’t a fully trained healer – she’d assumed she must be, since she’s wearing Pakku’s necklace. She’d hoped Katara had already figured out what was going on and was only biding her time trying to find a way to escape – not that many people do escape from Long Feng’s grasp. Katara explains that she got the necklace from her grandmother, and Amaya realizes that Long Feng probably does think Katara is a fully qualified healer, and it’s the only thing keeping him from trying to brainwash them – none of them are Fire Nation, so it would take. Katara is stunned that Amaya has anything good to say about the Fire Nation, who tried to kill the Moon Spirit. Amaya says it’s only their wills that are stronger – they’ll not bend to what Long Feng will try to do to them, but they will break eventually. If Aang won’t understand that, he’ll never become a firebender, and the world will suffer. Aang insists that he’ll never learn firebending and won’t need it to defeat the Fire Lord. Amaya sadly decides there’s nothing more she can do, and wishes them all luck – Sokka says she’s Water Tribe, she knows the Dai Li are evil, why won’t she help them? Amaya says that she’s the last of the Water Tribe in the city, aside from her apprentice – all the other waterbenders who were here are dead now, because of a dangerous spirit, and Aang, who’s supposed to deal with that sort of thing, sensed nothing. Aang protests that nobody told him, and Amaya says that Long Feng wants him kept quiet and contained until he’s ready to use him. Toph thinks she’s guessing – but she’s pretty sure. Besides, Amaya says that Aang should be able to sense a hostile spirit without people telling him, but he didn’t – and so the Dai Li, who he calls evil, put their lives on the line to defeat it and protect the people it was preying on, including her. For a century, they’ve been all that stands between Ba Sing Se and destruction. So, Amaya wants Aang to find his bison and leave, and she slams the door behind her as she goes.
Katara thinks Amaya was weirder than the Joo Dees, but Toph says she was telling the truth and didn’t feel like the Joo Dees, who just sound blank. Aang protests that he would have felt a spirit if it had been there, though he admits he doesn’t know how that works, and Sokka adds that he didn’t realize the koi fish were the Moon and Ocean Spirits until it was almost too late. Sokka says he’ll never forgive Zuko for what happened to Yue, but he’s also realizing how much he doesn’t know about what’s going on in Ba Sing Se. Aang can’t believe that he sounds like he’s saying they should stay put, and Sokka says he’s not – Aang is happy, and from now on doesn’t care what he has to do in order to find Appa. Toph wants to invade the palace, bury the Dai Li, maybe kidnap the Earth King, and is disappointed that Aang just wants to put up the rest of the posters. They end up heading off into the city to do exactly that, and Toph strikes out on her own so she can go meet with Zuko. She thinks that Iroh seems like a good guy, but knows that Zuko is honor-bound to capture Aang and this might be a trap – but on the other hand, he did help the out against Azula, and she wants to know how he’s pulling off pretending to be a waterbender’s apprentice. She wishes the others didn’t blame Yue’s death on him, though she can’t figure out why – she thinks it sounds like Zhao was responsible for that, and while Zuko was tied up during the events, Iroh tried to stop him. She thinks to herself that the others’ morality seems to just be “Fire Nation bad, Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes good” and nothing more. As far as she can tell, Zuko’s only interest is chasing Aang, not anything else, and she can’t figure out why the others hate him so much. She thinks he deserves someone to hear him out. And if it doesn’t work out – if Katara can take Zuko, Toph definitely can.
She arrives at Luli’s shop to find Iroh trying out tea shop names with Zuko; Huojin lets them know Toph’s here and is amused to see they’ve all already met. Toph can tell from Zuko’s stance that he really is Amaya’s apprentice, and it makes her think he feels more like a dragon than he did before. They all sit down to talk about negotiating a temporary alliance. Zuko calls Toph a master earthbender and a worthy opponent, but she’s still not hearing a reason he wanted to talk. If he could find Appa, they can too – Zuko says he wants them out of Ba Sing Se as soon as possible. He asks if she knows anything about what happened at the North Pole, and that it sounds like the people in charge of the city want to make something like that happen again. Toph remembers the others telling her about the North Pole, and then about General Fong’s experiments, and protests that Aang doesn’t want anything like that to happen again. Zuko says he doesn’t either, which is why he’s helping – besides, he can’t capture the Avatar in Ba Sing Se without revealing himself, which will only get him killed or captured by the Dai Li. Then not only will he die, he’ll die as a failure. So, the best thing for everyone involved is to reunite Aang with Appa and get them out of the city. Huojin wonders if he, a guard, should even be party to this – Iroh says the Dai Li don’t officially have Appa, and what they don’t have can’t be stolen from them. Huojin thinks there’s something wrong with that logic but just asks if Toph really wants to go along with this. Zuko passes her some papers with things he’s found out about the city, for Toph to give to Sokka to convince him to go if nothing else works. It’s anonymous, so they won’t know it’s from him. Toph knows Zuko is asking for her help alone, not any of the others, which they all agree would end badly. Toph wants to know the plan, but first, Zuko wants to know why she believes him. Toph explains that her family deals with Fire Nation merchants, and she knows Fire Nationals never talk about disputes between family members with outsiders – but Zuko warned them about Azula, which meant he was treating them with honor to repay Katara for helping him, even though she was Water Tribe. Which means Zuko also has honor – and that means Toph is in.
We end with another author note. A/N: Written at least partly because in canon, Toph never got her life-changing field trip.
The bit between Zuko and Meixiang is in part based on the scene where Roku is revealed as the next Avatar, and everybody hits the ground; even the prince kneeling. Proper signals of dominance and submission are very important to large, heavily-armed predators.
It's also in part based on what we see from Fang, Ran, and Sho. Dragons communicate through (apparent) telepathic images, and movement. Words, they're not so good at.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
MG’s Thoughts
Okay, let’s get the Lion Turtle in the room out of the way first – this is the chapter where Vathara really starts letting us know what she feels about the Gaang in general (that they’re all, with the exception of Toph, a bunch of naïve kids who don’t know what they’re doing) and Katara in particular (that she’s an awful selfish hypocrite who doesn’t know nearly as much as she thinks she does and is actively bad for Aang). I think we see a lot of the phenomenon I mentioned earlier where Vathara stacks the deck against the Gaang, whether by introducing elements they couldn’t have known about in canon and blaming them for not knowing, or by retconning them to be ignorant of things they’d clearly figured out in canon but maybe didn’t explicitly come out and say clearly enough for her. In the case of the former, they’re made to not know the Dai Li aren’t evil (when nothing in their interactions with them has suggested otherwise), that the Joo Dees can be healed (Katara was able to do a little with Jet in canon but not get rid of his brainwashing entirely, and there’s certainly no reason to think she’d be able to just sense it if she wasn’t already working on the person) or that there was a spirit attacking the city (when there wasn’t in canon; even in the fic, we’re explicitly told that the spirit was keeping a low profile so as to not attract the Avatar’s attention, and that the Dai Li were deliberately keeping Aang in the dark). In the case of the latter, the show!Gaang clearly knew there was something up with the Joo Dees and they weren’t just women who happened to have the same name, they just didn’t know what. On a related note, Zuko chased the Gaang across the whole world, attacked them multiple times, and repeatedly tried to capture Aang – I think they have plenty of reason to think he’s the bad buy, even if they’ve also met worse people. Having all of this being delivered by Amaya, Vathara’s waterbender, just seems to rub more salt in the wound, tbh. With Katara specifically, you also have the implication that she was wrong and immature to want to learn from Pakku and it would have been more use to her friends if she’d just swallowed her pride and learned healing like a good girl (blegh – also, Yugoda’s students start as little kids much younger than Katara; we see this explicitly. Are we supposed to believe she teaches them mental healing in their second week? Somehow, I don’t think giving little kids the ability to alter peoples’ brain chemistry is a good idea!) and even when she does something Toph seemed to agree with – trying to teach Aang to be patient – Toph still pooh-poohs it in her internal monologue… for some reason.
And, uh, I guess the subtext we're supposed to take away is that Zuko probably saved Katara from being raped by those pirates, guys. Because clearly that's what A:TLA needed.
On a note I’m more torn about – we have more dragon stuff this chapter. On the one hand, it makes sense that dragons don’t think like humans. On the other hand, there are a couple of ways it rubs me wrong. First off, it (and there’s more coming in this vein) reminds me a lot of certain werewolf tropes I really don’t like, where the person’s “animal nature” (which is usually based on outdated ideas of wolf behavior, even when the characters are something other than wolves) seems to be the reason why they do everything and is often used to excuse jerkish or unpleasant behavior. I know a lot of people seem to be into that sort of thing, but it’s always been a turn off for me. On a more personal note, the way it’s framed here seems a lot like how someone on the autism spectrum can experience a meltdown and need to decompress if overloaded with too much stuff to deal with at once; as an autistic person myself, to have it specifically attributed to Zuko’s nonhuman heritage… I really don’t know what to think about that (and it’s entirely possible Vathara didn’t intend the comparison at all and I’m just reading into it based on my own experiences). In context, it also feels like more of emphasizing how “special” firebenders in general and the Fire nobility specifically are (especially since the solution is apparently… for someone to offer fealty?). As for the bit in the author note – yeah, everyone bowing to Roku doesn’t feel like it needs any explanation other than “in a deeply hierarchical, formal society, it’s very important to recognize and acknowledge who outranks who, and to what degree,” no dragons required.
On an unrelated note – this is the first time we really get it spelled out that the fic’s version of Kyoshi was, in fact, really, really racist and kind of a reactionary. Now, I know there’s no way Vathara could have known this, because the books only started coming out when Embers had been done for five years, but it’s still kind of hilarious in hindsight when the novels revealed that canon’s Kyoshi is not only herself biracial (Earth Kingdom father, Air Nomad mother), but was in love with a Fire Nation girl. Ironic, no? Not to mention, in general I have no idea if FC Yee (who wrote the Kyoshi novels) ever read Embers, but if someone told me he set out to do a point-by-point refutation of the fic’s version of Kyoshi and its Fire Nation backstory… I wouldn’t be surprised (more on this as it’s relevant). Come to think, if I ever do a full sporking of this thing, I’d seriously consider using Kyoshi and Rangi as guest sporkers for at least part of it, if only for the sheer WTH their reactions would no doubt be.
On one last note, I do apologize for how long these posts are – alas, the fic has a lot of detail and very long chapters, and a lot of it is important for what it’s doing and where it’s going. I’ll try to tighten things up a bit going forward but, fair warning, we’re to the point where these chapters aren’t getting any shorter.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-27 03:55 am (UTC)You know, given what we see later logically any bender should be dicey to brainwash - they all have a normally lethal Bond They Must Not Break.
Wait, why are all the Water Tribe expats waterbenders?
'Large, heavily-armed predators', like combat trained humans, say? (Yes, we are predators. Ever noticed how many sports are variations on hunting techniques?)
It's honestly a little embarrassing how many attempts at contrasting human and non-human mentalities rely on inaccurate ideas of what humans are like.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From: