masterghandalf

Uh, I always got the impression that Iroh blames himself for Lu Ten's death, that if he'd been a better man his son wouldn't have lost his life in such a senseless matter.


Me, too.

Having brought that up, it's rather odd that Vathara completely omits Iroh's canonical vision from Embers, particularly here where it's incredibly relevant. 'Turning the darkest day in his life into a hoped-for triumph'? He besieged Ba Sing Se for nearly two years because he thought he was destined to capture it! The reversal of his darkest day is to fulfill his true destiny and see Zuko come into his own, and this just...


Technically, Iroh's vision comes up briefly earlier in the fic - Azula and Ty Lee discuss it, and how apparently at the time Iroh was being advised by some Fire Sage who Ty Lee thought sounded a lot like Xiangchen. Then that never came up again. Really, this re-read has really hit me with the realization that this fic is full of those sorts of dead-ends, and that it's really clear Vathara put a lot more balls in the air than she was capable of effectively juggling.

I don't know - well I sort of do know. Iroh gets set up to fail at everything he truly cares about - his nephew, his destiny, even the world, and for what? Trying to be a good uncle? Trying to eke out a measure of peace? Trying to be a good man? Hardly a fate worthy of him.


I don't get it either, especially since for the first half of the fic it felt like she liked Iroh and did the Iroh-Zuko dynamic better than almost anything else. And then somehow all of this ends up happening.