MG Reads Embers: Chapter Seventy-Six
Feb. 21st, 2024 04:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
masterghandalfChapter Seventy-Six
We open with Azula on an island, unable to feel safe even with her Dai Li and onmitsu on patrol, as she says that her father wants her dead. She doesn’t know why, since she doesn’t think he has a backup heir, and Mai agrees that as far as she’s been able to tell Ozai’s never even looked at another woman since Ursa vanished. Ty Lee hasn’t heard anything about an heir, but she did hear that one of the onmitsu reported having seen Ozai meet with a strange woman in the palace gardens on the night of a full moon, before that agent disappeared. They did report that Ozai called the stranger “grandmother.” Azula doesn’t know who that could be, since Ta Min is dead and Tejina vanished immediately after Sozin died – and suddenly, Azula starts to piece everything together. She thinks about Zuko and Shidan and remembers how her own madness seemed worse on the nights of the full moon – and the full moon and the new moon are both nights of power, if you believe such things. Ursa believed in them… and she also believed Azula was a monster. And she was right. Out loud, Azula thinks that it must have been Tejina who Ozai met, and they already know what she looks like – except when she met them, she was calling herself Nawahime. Ty Lee realizes that means Azula’s great grandmother is a dragon, which means she’s not human – Azula says that according to the Earth Kingdom, no one of Sozin’s line is human. Ty Lee had always thought all of that was just stories and nobody really believed in it; Azula thinks Sozin went to great lengths to make sure of it. Everyone had heard the old stories, but no one lived them except Iroh, and everyone knew he was odd, and they blamed it on him losing his son. Lu Ten was the perfect heir, unlike Zuko or Azula – just like Azulon planned. Ty Lee thinks Zuko loved Lu Ten, but Azula thinks Zuko never paid enough attention to court gossip. Everyone knows the reason Azulon didn’t marry Ozai off until Lu Ten was almost grown was so that his children wouldn’t surpass the heir – but Azula thinks she would have surpassed him, had he lived. Azulon wouldn’t have liked that. Iroh wouldn’t have gone after them, but it would have been easy for certain factions at court to arrange an “accident” and then spread the rumor that Azula was a dark dragon afterwards.
Mai thinks about the stories of how dangerous dark dragons are, and how the Fire Lord couldn’t allow someone like that to live. But Mai thinks Azula isn’t like that anymore; Shidan would have killed her if she was, but he didn’t. And even if worst had come to worst, Mai doesn’t think Zuko would have let someone kill Azula – he has a knack for messing up peoples’ plans. The possibilities of that intrigue Azula, but her thoughts keep circling back to her mother and she finally asks Ty Lee if she thinks she’s a monster. Ty Lee thinks that Azula’s done horrible things, and Zuko fought her because he was afraid of her and what she might do. But Ty Lee thinks that Azula might hurt individual people, but she’ll never hurt the Fire Nation. And there are some people out there who are worse than Azula, who deserve to be hurt. But she also thinks Azula can defeat people without hurting him – she knocked Aang out of his Way with just words! Azula wants more of an explanation for what she means, and Ty Lee explains that Azula showed Aang he hasn’t been honest with himself. In the long run, Aang will be better for it, and that will save a lot of people. Mai is baffled, and Ty Lee quotes that sometimes your enemies can teach you what your friends can’t, and so what Azula did wasn’t nice, but it was necessary. She’s scary, but she’s not a monster. Azula looks back and forth between Mai and Ty Lee, certain of nothing but that her people need her, wondering if that’s what Zuko felt when he was banished. She thinks about what her father’s planning, and how Zuko believes in her and fought for their people when he was all alone, and how he can mess up anyone’s plans – she wonders how to make that work for them.
We cut to Sokka going over some of Zuko’s maps, while Katara tries to make dinner and Toph throws rocks at Aang. Zuko was banned from making tea after Katara choked on it, Katara’s been banned from gathering ingredients for tea after she picked some flowers from the Air Temple gardens that didn’t turn out well. Sokka’s mostly been stuck trying to keep everyone from killing each other when they’re all together on Appa’s saddle. Now they’re back at the Western Air Temple, and Sokka isn’t reassured to know there’s a ghost still hanging around here somewhere. Sokka tells Zuko that Katara wasn’t trying to kill him – she probably has no idea what those flowers were and wouldn’t have considered that Air Nuns would have a poisonous plant in their gardens. Zuko doubts Katara would poison everyone’s tea just to kill him – she’d rip his throat out, like an honest fighter. Sokka is bothered that Zuko thinks Katara wants to kill him at all, but Zuko says Katara does want to kill him. Sokka’s weirded out that Zuko’s so calm about it and wishes he’d act like a regular human being, but Zuko says people have been trying to kill him since he was born and he’s gotten used to it – besides, he’s got experience with people picking weird plans. He wants to know how Sokka knows about the suruzran flower, and Sokka finally starts telling him about Temul. Zuko’s amazed Aang met Temul and lived; Sokka says they promised her something else but won’t elaborate. Zuko addresses him in High Court, and when Sokka reflexively responds in the same language, he figures it out. Zuko apologizes – he knows what it’s like to have spirits drag you into something you don’t want.
Sokka can’t imagine it’s as bad as what Temul did to him, but when he thinks through about how he’d heard “Lee” was a waterbender and how he’d encountered the Moon Spirit, and they now know yaoren can bend two elements after they’ve had an encounter with a spirit…. He thinks about Zuko bending the fire ice, then asks what happens if he tosses a cup of water at him. When Zuko doesn’t say anything, he takes it as confirmation and they both agree not to tell Katara. After looking around to make sure no one’s eavesdropping, Sokka tells Zuko about Ham, ending with how Shidan killed her. Zuko admits Kuzon knew Hama, and he’d heard her escape tied up the Home Guard for months. Anyway, fighting another waterbender messed Katara up in ways she doesn’t want to admit, and none of the others know how to help her. It made her hate a part of her bending, something she’s always loved, and if she found out about Zuko, it might make things worse. Zuko agrees not to say anything, and that he doesn’t advertise it anyway. He knows what the spirits and Aang want from him by making him yaoren, and he thinks the only way to make a spoiled brat give up on something is to tell them no – maybe they could have avoided this whole mess if someone had just told Koh “no.” But since Sokka figured it out on his own, Zuko can share part of his plan with him. As a high-profile prisoner, odds are Shiyu’s in the Boiling Rock – which is in a caldera, and when Sokka says keeping firebenders in a caldera is like keeping earthbenders in a quarry, Zuko explains that it’s surrounded by a boiling lake. Sokka thinks about how Zuko can bend boiling water and gets a sense of his plan and can’t wait to see the looks on everyone’s faces.
We cut to Zuko, thinking it’s good to laugh with someone, especially someone who doesn’t just assume the spirits will make everything right. He loves Iroh, but he thinks putting your faith in the spirits is like putting it in the ocean – just because something is bigger, older and more powerful than you are doesn’t mean it cares. Sokka knows that. Zuko thinks every marine knows you should respect the sea but not trust it and wonders why Iroh hasn’t figured it out – but of course, Iroh was in the army. And part of him has to believe that there is a purpose to everything, or else Lu Ten died for nothing. He hopes Iroh will have more to live for soon – Amaya, and something else that Zuko doesn’t want to think about and doesn’t want Katara to know about. He just hopes Iroh stops asking the spirits for help; Zuko doesn’t want Dragons’ Wings to be in their debt. They have enough to deal with just trying to channel Asagitatsu’s eruption safely. Zuko also knows that as a yaoren, when spirits want debts paid, they’ll come to him, regardless of whether he had anything to do with it to begin with. That means when Iroh runs up debts, it will probably be Zuko and anyone else around him who ends up paying. Iroh can put his faith in the spirits if he wants, but Zuko doesn’t want him dragging other people into it too. Before he left, he and Iroh argued – Iroh tried to say how proud he was of Zuko as a yaoren helping the Avatar, and Zuko had said stopping Koh and helping the Avatar weren’t the same thing, and it had collapsed into arguing until Iroh left to drink some tea and Zuko broke a lot of ice in practice. Zuko also had to convince his troops that he didn’t need a bodyguard – around Team Avatar that would do more harm than good, and it would risk the spirits’ anger if they brought a firebender with them who was going against the Fire Lord. The only person exempt from that was Zuko himself. He’s left thinking about what to do about Iroh, and how Iroh has always ended up undermining people when trying to help them. Even when they were hunting Aang, all the rumors they followed always seemed to end up working to Iroh’s advantage somehow. He wants to find a way out of this mess and hopes that hunting Shiyu will give him time to think. And there’s something else he wants to tell Sokka, too – some of the waterbenders in Azulon’s prisons died, but others survived.
Zuko goes to stand over by the temple harbor; he thinks about how here, Katara has the whole ocean on her side, and he thinks the easiest way to make sure she doesn’t try to kill him is to let her think she can kill him any time she wants to. He thinks that if he looked this weak around Azula she’d have killed him, but for now he just needs to stick around until they find Shiyu, then he can leave. He debates whether to tell Sokka about the waterbender survivors and where they are. He knows some of them still feel shamed by Hama, both how she invented bloodbending, and how she left them behind. They felt she was of their tribe, and their responsibility, and they failed – some of them died, and some left to vanish in the Earth Kingdom, but some remained in the Fire Nation, and if Ozai ever found out the truth of a certain fishing village, it would be a disaster. Zuko wants to tell Sokka, but if they’re captured, the onmitsu can make anyone talk – not to mention the southern waterbenders might think Katara had been corrupted by Hama, and Katara probably wouldn’t approve of their choices, either. Finally, he decides that Sokka deserves to know something and tells him that after the war, he should send a message to Byakko and find Ursa’s sister Karasu. She deals in things involving the sea- Zuko assures Sokka this is important. But he should only tell Katara if things actually get that far. Sokka sees Zuko watching the tides and wonders if there’s something down there – he knows there’s a swordsman ghost hanging around here somewhere. Zuko admits he knows Shih, who saved his life the last time he was here. Zuko describes the encounter; it reminds Sokka a bit of a story Hakoda told him about meeting his grandfather’s ghost, and he thinks Shih sounds like a good guy, even if he is dead. Sokka then starts musing about Shih; how he was an onmitsu who didn’t want to fight anymore, how he fell in love with Gyate, how they saved some of the children from Sozin… but he left a ghost behind. Zuko knows that Shih and Gyate did get away – Shidan knew them, and they lived long, happy lives. Sometimes ghosts just stick around because there are things they need to do. Sokka wonders what that might be, and Zuko thinks Sokka wants to help him. Sokka thinks that if Zuko can help them work together to help a ghost rest, maybe that will convince Katara Zuko’s a good guy. Zuko says he’s not – he’s just trying to save his people. Sokka thinks saving the world will save his people, and Zuko’s doing more than a lot of people they’ve met. Now, Sokka wants to know how to find Shih.
We cut to Katara, watching them from a distance and thinking about how wrong it is for Sokka and Zuko to be laughing together. Toph trusts Zuko, and Aang is too busy trying to figure out his own path as the Avatar to worry about him. Katara thinks Aang is the Avatar and nothing can change that. She’d trusted Sokka to deal with Zuko, though grudgingly she’s forced to admit Zuko seems like he’s really trying to help. She does think looking for Shiyu is a good idea. Zuko always has an ulterior motive, but Shiyu just wanted to help. Right now, Zuko’s motive is to keep Aang away from Dragons’ Wings and stop Koh. Katara can understand that, and part of her does think having another boy close to his own age to talk to is good for Sokka. Katara just wishes they could have gotten help from Piandao or even Shidan instead – at least with Shidan, he admitted he wasn’t human. Zuko is a mix of things, and who knows what he might do? Toph and Sokka seem to trust him, and Katara trusts them – and Aang wants to believe in Zuko. Katara thinks someone has to keep an eye on him, and that’s her. So far, he hasn’t done anything, but if he does… the ocean’s right there. Right where she can kill him any time she wants… Katara shakes the thought away, and watches the sunlight gleaming on the water…
We end with an author note. A/N: Suzuran - lily-of-the-valley. Very pretty. Very, very toxic. People have been killed by ingesting the water from a vase the cut flowers were standing in. (No, I don't know why they did that either.) Yes, Jee's ship was named that on purpose.
Knowing how to use plants available near the Arctic does not tell you what plants are safe in the temperate or tropical zones. Seriously, it's no wonder Sokka and Katara had trouble hunting and gathering.
Yes, I slammed the movie. "Earthbenders! You are surrounded by earth!" Shyalaman? That was embarrassing.
MG’s Thoughts
Not as much going on here as last time, thankfully, but there are still some things that bother me that I’d like to touch on. The first is with Azula, and the fact that I can’t help but feel like we’ve missed some crucial steps in her character development. While we’ve seen a bit of Azula developing to be less bloodthirsty and more pragmatic, the sudden deep loyalty to the Fire Nation as a whole, for itself and not just as a means to gain power, that she feels here doesn’t feel like it’s been properly set up. And ultimately, we come back to the fact that the initial catalyst for Azula’s development was Amaya healing her, rather than any sort of major development Azula herself had… which just makes it feel like Azula was evil because she was mentally ill and needed to be “fixed,” and now that she has she’s fine and normal and not a “dark dragon” anymore, which is gross. Like, I think I see what Vathara is trying to do with the character, but I don’t think it’s executed that well. And I’m not sure how much of the tangled political scenario Azula imagines we’re supposed to take at face value, and how much is just Azula’s own instinct to assume the worst of people.
A bigger issue is Zuko’s thoughts on Iroh. When the fic started out, the Zuko/Iroh relationship was probably the best thing about it, but I’ve already mentioned that Iroh has been getting sidelined and overshadowed ever since Shidan was introduced, but here we seem to get the idea that Iroh is a hindrance actively holding Zuko back, and that his faith in the spirits is a grieving man’s coping mechanism rather than meaningful, sincere conviction. It just feels like a sudden turn (in hindsight I think it’s been building for a while, though this feels more dramatic than just “Iroh doesn’t understand about yaoren and dragons”) into the wrong direction for the character, like Zuko’s canonical beloved mentor and father figure suddenly isn’t good enough for him anymore, and I don’t know what motivated Vathara to take it, but in any case, I don’t like it. I also can’t shake the feeling that Vathara really doesn’t think Zuko and the Gaang go well together, and this whole arc is dedicated to proving it – though I also have to add Zuko to the list of people who seem weirdly blasé about the whole situation with Sokka and Temul. Katara’s POV section is brief, but it also hints at some issues that are about to come to the fore starting next chapter. I’d say that Vathara’s writing her as unusually homicidal, but, well… it’s not like that’s anything new around here. There is a reason for it this time, though it won’t be apparent until next chapter.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-22 12:05 am (UTC)Also, that bit with Katara has me very worried about what's going to happen to her in the end.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-22 04:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-22 09:11 pm (UTC)I honestly wonder if it's a combination of Shidan being introduced and Vathara thinking that Zuko has just outgrown Iroh (which I think is an issue in and of itself, for various reasons...). I think it's kind of a baffling direction all around, though, because I think in the early parts of the fic, the relationship between the two of them is probably what it does best.
Also, that bit with Katara has me very worried about what's going to happen to her in the end.
Echoing Chessybell, I'd say Katara ends the fic more-or-less fine. As for what happens to her along the way, well... let's just say something's coming in the next chapter (which should be up shortly).
no subject
Date: 2024-02-22 04:06 am (UTC)Look, I get that Zuko didn't particularly like how Iroh's prayers were answered, but the fact remains that they've turned out rather well for him.
Ugh. This whole thing -
Okay. When I was younger I didn't care so much about this, but as I've aged I've gotten more and more tired of authors who just don't get religion. And I don't just mean Catholicism, or Christianity, I mean any religion. (Though it'd be nice if I could find more positive representation. Seriously, it's like there's a double-standard.) Believing your own religion and therefore acting on it does not make you naïve, or stupid, or evil. Quite frankly it's the most sensible way to go about things. So this hits a lot worse now then it did when I was a teen.
That said, this was when first-time-reader-me went 'Uh, that's not Iroh'.
Katara is vindictive, not homocidal. There is in fact a difference.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-22 08:23 am (UTC)GRRM salt?
no subject
Date: 2024-02-22 06:22 pm (UTC)It's rare this days for people to write religion, and especially what's known as established religion, as if it matters. As if one's belief about the nature of the Divine, the proper ordering of the world, right and proper behaviour, and Mankind's rightful relation to the Divine were as consequential as choosing a favourite colour! (In fact, I have seen that exact analogy used to paint teaching your children your religion as problematic!)
And... well. I'm not going to insist that authors accommodate me. What I want, all I want, is for them to write characters who have a religion and act on it without being painted as either stupid or evil and to stop acting like it is somehow okay when the religion being so maligned looks like the Church.
Seriously, we have enough IRL troubles with people claiming that the rosary, AKA the most common Catholic prayer, is being 'co-opted as a symbol of violent extremism' as if talking to your mother was a statement of violence, people seriously suggesting Catholic churches (among others) should lose their tax status as religious establishments just for being solidly orthodox* in regards to LGBT+ issues, and people sticking things like 'Hey, so the Catholic Church is bad actually' 'Don't worry I fixed it' in their fic tags (And yes, these are all part of my lived experience) without fiction painting us as fools, evil, or evil fools.
* 'Orthodox' here meaning 'adhering to Church teaching'.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-22 09:13 pm (UTC)Look, I get that Zuko didn't particularly like how Iroh's prayers were answered, but the fact remains that they've turned out rather well for him.
Ugh. This whole thing -
Okay. When I was younger I didn't care so much about this, but as I've aged I've gotten more and more tired of authors who just don't get religion. And I don't just mean Catholicism, or Christianity, I mean any religion. (Though it'd be nice if I could find more positive representation. Seriously, it's like there's a double-standard.) Believing your own religion and therefore acting on it does not make you naïve, or stupid, or evil. Quite frankly it's the most sensible way to go about things. So this hits a lot worse now then it did when I was a teen.
That said, this was when first-time-reader-me went 'Uh, that's not Iroh'.
*applauds all of this*
Katara is vindictive, not homocidal. There is in fact a difference.
Well, based on what's about to happen in the next chapter, the homicidal thoughts probably aren't entirely Katara even in the fic (though the foreshadowing isn't terribly noticeable because of how OOC Katara's been for most of the fic, imo). Otherwise... yeah.