So I'm nearing the end of Chapter 5 and looking at the remaining reading material. Considering this is a 140K ongoing story, I feel like this is a good point to raise some concerns and determine if I should stop before I waste more of my time or if the issue(s) I'm faced with have been resolved.
Frankly, Akane is unlikeable. Yes, she's internalized a truckload of terrible thought patterns and emotional mismanagement from her environment (and voters). Yes, she is nice to Azula and Zuko just like every single fanfiction OC ever. Yes, she's "pragmatic" in that pretentious masturbatory way that voters like to think they are when they're just being douchy Hard (Wo)Men. No, I do not think that's unfair, because I've seen the fiction.live's idea of thought and commentary and it may as well be a 4chan board. Moreover, I've seen this same story done before in countless fanfictions by writers of exactly the same mind as these players.
All of these elements are understood. But there is a very clear dileniation between "understandable" characters and "characters that invite me to empathize with them." Shockingly, I don't much get off on reading or voting for a protagonist whose controllers feel the need to exercise petty power over fictional abuse victims by telling them they have less value than their escapist fantasy, then trying to justify it in the forum as Akane being "not evil or good, just a flawed character" like every first semester philosopher who thinks they've escaped all considerations of morality. The excuse of "playing to the character" is equally disingenuous and cowardly, because the character's personality is only semi-solid, responding to new input: that's called being a character, not a slice of cardboard. Akane is being a shallow edgelord fantasy because that's what the players want her to be. Period.
And evidently, the QM doesn't either, because the narrative all but breaks its spine bending over backward and then around the waist to tell the reader how shitty the protagonist's behavior is through the reactions of other characters while simultaneously not doing it too ungently so as not to upset the players invested in being shitty to the point they'll rationalize it however they can.
And don't even get me started on the nonsense that is the Ursa debacle. Somehow, Ursa went from being a flawed mother who made the understandable but ultimately unjust decision to favor Zuko over a child she deemed violently unstable and lost (which, by the way, was not a wrong assessment - Azula was an obvious psychopath) into...whatever the fuck she's become here. Nothing screams "fanfiction cliche" to me more than the Evil Mom Who The OC Hates go-to, and boy did the votes decide to run with it. If we're arguing that events need to happen as they do because of characters being established as who they are, there's no evidence to justify Ursa being this bizarre dichotomous split of "constant fuck-up of a mother who is not evil but is just terrible and deserves scorn" and "Narcissistic and self-centered liar."
I know narcissists. I've lived with them. I've been abused by them. I know the checklist for spotting them. And I know when characters are being twisted into something they're not, with vague handwaves of Zuko's biased perspective that justify nothing. So this complete assassination of a character aggravates me. Deeply. And that's without getting into the fact that there is zero evidence in the A:TLA setting that homophobia is an issue unless we consult out-of-series materials - and no, Imperial Japan coding is not the same as evidence, if we're assuming this is a more western influenced Imperial Japan that would give a fuck - so Ursa being painted as a homophobe purely for the sake of artificially creating tension for the (fetish-driven) gay protagonist between her and her EEEEVIL STUPID MOM reads like I'm consuming a fucking middle schooler's secret diary instead of a real address of homophobia or complicated paternal-child relationships.
I enjoy the QM's writing, no doubt. They're terribly good at running a quest despite active self-sabotage by the players. But my investment in seeing Akane succeed ends when it becomes clear she's just another Hard Man fantasy instead of a realized character with range. Does that change, or should I simply move on?
EDIT: As an additional note to the QM - you've done very well, for the most part, and hopefully this critique will not discourage you overmuch. Clearly you've enjoyed writing the quest up to the point it's reached, and I don't desire to take that from you.
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