Fire Nation people are idiots. And they smell bad. They suck.

/me sticks tongue out at Cappadocian.

 

Aang was either lying in the final episodes, or just conveniently changed his mind to fit the plot.
He killed several people in The Northern Air Temple(sent them flying off the mountain), and he killed the desert wasp in "The Desert".


And for any claims the Author says this isn't an AU? Vathara said this is indeed AU- it snowballed into it.

He actually only said she got called out on it.


She did. Not justly called out, but still called out.

Oh, and Aang never asked forgiveness or thanked her. She could just as well have taken off. I wrote a long post on another forum about how badly Aang treated Toph during her early episodes.

 

My review: 2/5. Style is fine, characterisation and plotting...less so.

My extremely long rant about the interaction of canon and an AU:

One of the things I try to keep in mind when reading fan fiction (particularly summaries, before I decide whether to try the story itself) is that (almost) no divergence from or addition to canon is inherently bad. If Harry Potter becomes a lumberjack, that can work. If McGonagall retires from teaching and becomes a practicing vet in Tokyo-3, that can work. If Harry Potter travels to the United States and becomes the target of a serial killer who is being hunted by Special Agent Veronica Mars, that can work. Characters and worlds can do anything the author pleases, as long as it makes sense to the reader. What determines the worth of the story is how well-written it is, and in the case of an AU how well it works with its central point of difference.


I would suggest that there are two ways we can think about an AU: point of divergence, and base-fact alteration. Initially, Embers was the former. Zuko didn't steal that ostrich-horse, he and his uncle banish an angry spirit, and the plot of Embers begins to move away from what happened in canon. I would suggest that The Lie I've Lived is another example of a point of divergence AU: Harry gets his father's memories and skills, and this causes the plot to move away from canon. All well and good.


However, as Embers progressed, it became different from canon in ways that could not be explained by the initial change, and the author has admitted that the story has become more AU than originally intended. Not only are under-used parts of canon emphasised (spirits and their relationship with mortals), but we are told things about the world that were never even hinted at in the show. The story became a base-fact AU, such as Shezza's Denarian series (where the base facts are altered by crossover). Alright. That can work.


But the changes in base facts that Embers makes are not consistent. The cosmology, history and spirituality of Embers are at the very least major additions to what was shown in canon, and I would argue a complete revision of it. Fine. That can work. But the story also keeps the events of the whole first season and most of the second season the same in its world, and that does not work. If bending is capable of mind control, then the plot events - indeed the structure of societies - should be completely different. But it isn't. If the Fire Nation has such developed laws and customs of war, then how do all the cruel things we see in canon (which still happened in this AU) make sense?


Moreover, the world the story posits is pretty crappy and unrelatable. Bending is no longer an ability, it seems predominantly a curse (Jeong Jeong was right!). The spirits aren't just eldritch and amoral, they seem actively out to get everyone. And the author seems to go out of their way to remove the ability to make meaningful moral choices: Fire Nation soldiers can't disobey, because it will make them die in agony. To what extent can we call them human, if they are merely extensions of another's will?


I also agree with what I remember someone else in this thread describing as the 'Culture Conflict Ball'. Aang can't understand family because of facts about the Air Nomads that have been added by the author. All of Aang's decisions are seen as wrong by others because of cultural facts that have been added by the author. All of Zuko's decisions are explained and seem to be legitimised by cultural facts that have been added by the author. Katara (for some reason) becomes a controlling and semi-crazy bitch because of stuff about bending that has been added by the author.




Case Study
Let's avoid Koizilla, and go back to the first couple of episodes, when Aang goes with Zuko to stop him doing villainy things to the Water Tribe. In Embers, this event is referenced much later in the plot when Zuko and Aang meet (I think they're on a beach with a bunch of other characters) and Zuko is incensed that Aang lied when he gave his Avatar-style parole, and takes it as a serious blow against the ability of anyone to trust the Avatar. Personal honour is presented as more important than either personal or general goods, and this cannot be argued against in-world because of (say it with me) a) cultural facts the author added, and b) things that author added about what bending is.



When Zuko made that judgement, I stopped reading the fic. Not because the character made that judgement, but because the world of the AU had stopped being interesting or relatable. It had devolved into a weird form of determinism, where personal right and wrong were set by initial culture and no cross-cultural dialogue or ethical conversation was really possible. Well fuck that.


Also, the fic needed more Toph. Every Avatar fic needs more Toph, even the ones that are just the word 'Toph' written a thousand times.

 

"Katara (for some reason) becomes a controlling and semi-crazy bitch because of stuff about bending that has been added by the author."

Though she was a controlling bitch in the series as well. Not to the degree she is in this story, but she was.

 

Um...no she wasn't?

I mean, she made mistakes from time to time, but the closest she ever came to controlling was looking after the younger Aang who, by the way, had just been throw into a strange new world. And even then, still no.

 

Ok, wrong term. Bossy. Not controlling. Bossy.

But I'm not going back on the bitch part.

 

Reminds me of Hermione, actually (with regards to bossiness).

I don't think Katara's really a bitch, though. Earlier in the show I thought she was close to a bitch, but as we learned more about her and her motivations I was able empathize with her more.

 

In what way, exactly?

 

There wasn't any post for while, but hell, I don't care. :awesome

(5/5)
Personally, I love Embers with it's not-canon existence. It's best ATLA fan fic I read... um, given that it has it's own history and stuff, it's still ATLA.
But I get people who hate it. It's typical love/hate story. Either one or other, never in-between. So I find it funny how everyone argue about this and that.

About Aang and Katara. It's not like they're horrible people in story. But Aang is naive 12 years old boy and everyone wants him to be savior of world! I would run away too... Imagine, up to his 12 years he was normal airbender taught to be free and stuff. Then BOOM and he was supposed to save world. :/ And hello, his friends he's supposed to learn about current world are from rural tiny village in middle of nowhere!
As for Katara. Her mother was killed before her eyes! (nearly) How else she should act than in anger and hater toward those who caused it! And she never had that episode with Zuko under Ba Sing Se... but she's still Katara. With more realistic setup.
They getting better.

Truth to be told, when I firsth looked at Embers it was loooooong and... different. But if you read it, it's also funny. In sarcastic, ironic way. With lots of swearing.
But it's not from ATLA world... it just isn't. So if-IF you want to enjoy it, you also have to stuff out ATLA world little. Or much. Just have to accept that Embers is world on it own. Then it's interesting.

P.S. Katara is bossy-est(?) person I ever seen...

 

Bossiest.

/10char

 

Updated with the final chapter.

Last couple of chapters felt a little rushed to me, and the ending a bit abrupt, but I still liked it overall.

 

I liked the ending. I loved the fic, even with the slightly rushed ending. It really nails a lot of consequences of Avatar, and I love the world it built.

 

An enjoyable tale of an imaginative world.

4/5

 

The biggest probelm with this story is throughout, instead of characters reacting to events based on their perception of the world, characters were repeatedly surprised and disbelieving about base facts of the AU that should have been known to all characters, and indeed frequently are known to all characters except the one in question. Ang has been all over the world and had friends in every nation but knows literally nothing about any of those nations, and is incapable of learning things.
Far be it from me to tell an author far better then I will ever be how to write, the story is worth reading and I read it till the end. Only read if you like AUs and expect to be thoroughly disappointed at the slow pacing and lack of character development that actually sticks, but also expect to be impressed with the action scenes when the story gets around to actually having any. Everything added about culture and the affects of bending on the mind confused and infuriated me, but the interactions with the spirit world were delightful and well thought out.
4/5