Ancient Scholar
Amateur Editor/Beta
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- United States
So no comments on the omake I did? Its taking forever for kosm to reply.
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Deep Red (Avatar: The Last Airbender)
- Thread starter kosm
- Start date
Another alternative that the chat (probably jokingly, but I can never tell) likes to consider is for Akane to become the immortal god empress and thus not need a heir, for her rule shall be eternal.
Velvet gloves for the Iron Fist. Just constantly increasing oppression doesn't really work.
It's not dictatorship, it's absolute monarchy. The difference is that one has tradition.Knowing the author, I really doubt we're going to get an ending that implies a dictatorship can even be functional. Akane is more likely to run away from home when she's outed and join the Gaang than that.
But seriously though, yeah, general cultural perception between absolute monarchies and dictatorships are very different, even if they are politically near the same.Although I suppose that absolute monarchies came up as an evolution of a feudal system with a king that managed to concentrate power and was, in fact an improvement over the previous state of affairs, while dictatorships generally are modern enough that the previous state of affairs, or at least the theoretical "how things are supposed to be" state, is generally better than dictatorship, at least as far as most people believe.
Interestingly enough, he's also probably getting alienated from the anti-Fire Nation resistance in the colonies and the
Kinruush
Who?
- Location
- USA
It's only been a few hours.
This is running on Anon kun right ?limits?, well as long as Kosm is willing to strike the winning votes if she doesn't like them it will probably be fine.
Captain_Savage
I believe in you, YOU CAN DO THE THING.
- Location
- United States
Can't wait for the next chapter of "The adventures of princess Akane, the useless lesbian"
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
- Location
- madison
it's a very in character omake, to the point where I would not be surprised to see something like that in a main update. It does good work bringing up her fears about her mother and the fact that akane is seriously conflicted about her sexuality. That said, it fits neatly into a bottle which is a nice bit of work, but means there is not much to talk about. akanes flames turning blue was a nice touch, driving home how much she was freaking out.
- Location
- USA
Reading some of the previous comments, the thought of unifying the 4 nations into a cohesive whole taking the best parts of each culture to improve the rest is something I can actually see Aang getting behind. Especially since that's pretty much what happened with Republic City in Korra.
Terran Imperium
[French]
- Location
- Southern France
Everyone can agree on that.
It's just that Aang may prefer a Republic than a Monarchy. I mean from his point of view, he's pretty justified in not trusting the Fire Lords into ruling. Why would Akane be different? She certainly shows the usual characteristics. She is ruthless and imperialistic but if Aang were to get behind Akane. He'll have to get to know her better, deeper than her outer-shell to trust her into ruling the world.
It's really interesting. I don't think Akane and the Gaang would ever mix well but I'm pretty hyped to see them interact.
Ancient Scholar
Amateur Editor/Beta
- Location
- United States
Yeah but the profile says she is online on the thread. So I have no idea what's going on.
Poliamida
(Verified Heavy Molecule)
- Location
- Beyond the Stars
Many people leave their PCs on and leave to do something else. I do that often, mostly when I'm downloading stuff.
Ancient Scholar
Amateur Editor/Beta
- Location
- United States
Thank you. Though I wouldn't say freaking out but rather how angry and focused she was that turned her flame blue.
Is their any way to improve our fire bending even more? 2 ideas I have is to find a way to bend Napalm or to create a heat ray. Something like that.
- Location
- Leeds
Or they forget to close a tab. I think the important thing is that I don't remember seeing kosm in the users viewing this thread since the omake was posted.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
Kosm addressed this on the live forums.
E: Reposting from the "Long Term Plans" section on fiction.live:
Article: Alright, so.
Whatever our future goals for Akane are, it's safe to say that having more personal power will help in achieving those goals. Beyond that, reading about someone progressively improving a skill is just plain *fun*.
Akane is already a firebending master. She's mastered all the forms through which firebending is taught, and has shown the ability to harness lightning. That isn't to say that no further improvements in firebending are possible, of course - she can strive for individual feats currently beyond her reach, such as Ozai's level of speed with lighting, or (future) Azula's blue flames (or her own unique speculative red flames) - but by any reasonable metric, she has a solid grasp of the core philosophy of firebending.
We've already noted that incorporating the other elements' philosophies into Akane's studies is a key way of improving her bending. Our focus on the detachment of Air is clearly what lead to Akane harnessing lightning at such a young age, and it's obvious that understanding Water is the key to being able to redirect lightning.
Akane's been continually bombarded with a huge number of foreign bending texts from a fairly young age - less so recently, but it still informs a key part of her character. That said, this kind of slapdash approach isn't necessarily the optimal one when it comes to growth - both in terms of philosophies and in terms of advancing our prowess.
The key, I think, is this:
The elements in Avatar are in a cycle, each building on the teachings of the previous in a cycle. In that respect, we're quite lucky that we voted for our secondary affinity to be in Air - it's the natural progression after Firebending.
When the Avatar learns about the elements, his goal is to attain mastery in each element in the cycle in turn, on both a practical and philosophical level, until the turn of the wheel is complete. For fairly obvious reasons, Akane can't truly master any of the other elements on a practical level, but aiming for philosophical mastery is a practical goal.
As such, I'm going to make a bold claim: For the greatest possible results, Akane should seek to master the philosophy of Airbending, Waterbending, and Earthbending - *in that specific order*. A shaky foundation will do us no favors - not truly understanding the Air mindset will limit our ability to learn from Water, just as Akane *explicitly calls out* that attempting to learn the stability of Earth without the adaptability of Water seems likely to be far more difficult, or even impossible.
I do not believe that Akane has mastered the philosophy of Air yet - as such, I think that shoring up that deficiency is key, before we should move on to spending a significant amount of time thinking about Water and its flows.
There aren't likely to be many Air Nomad texts accessible to Akane, either, given how thoroughly Sozin tried to burn them out of history - Iroh likely has access to a few remaining ones through the White Lotus, and if there's a future vote on which elements texts we request from him, I *strongly* urge people to vote for Air, since that's likely to be a semi-unique opportunity, compared to the relative number of Water and Earth texts we can access in other ways.
Luckily, there's more to philosophies then texts. Akane may not have mastered Air yet, but there's some encouraging signs that she's on the right track. For one, she clearly has a pretty good grasp on some of the core ideals, and she's already heavily incorporating the style into her movement and combat - the moment where she circled around and got behind her assassins was classic Airbending.
(Here's a relevant video on bending styles and their real world inspirations: )
For another thing, she's in a relationship with Mitsuko now, so she has a strong incentive to keep looking into Air nomad philosophies - unfortunately, likely from a "how did this deviance infect me" perspective for now, but hopefully shifting a bit to "what was the Air nomads perspective on this" in the future.
And then the sticky wicket - pacifism. Akane pretty obviously isn't a pacifist, and she's not likely to become one in the future either. That said, looking at past Avatars, it seems clear that embracing pacifism isn't a necessary component of "mastering" Air. I suspect that instead, the key to mastery on that front would be understanding the intrinsic value of all life.
There's some good news and some bad news on that front: On the positive side, Akane clearly puts value on the wellbeing of all her subjects, including the downtrodden and those with Earth Kingdom ancestry. She'd likely be appalled if she saw the true conditions of those "reform schools" she was talking about with Durjaya. On the negative side... that empathy takes a steep nosedive when it comes to her enemies. She didn't feel anything when she killed the enemy assassins, and that lack of empathy may well be a severe roadblock when it comes to any kind of future growth - without Air, she can't truly master Water or Earth.
At least in the abstract, Akane values the lives of Earth Kingdom citizens - they're her future subjects, after all. And she strove to understand Durjaya's perspective during the interrogation. Ultimately, a lot of Akane's numbness comes from the lingering mental impact of Azulon's death - with the tension with Mitsuko (hopefully) heading towards release and potentially some advice from Iroh on handling things, we might be able to get past this.
In any case, I think we should push towards an Air epiphany, and I think we'll recognize it when we see it. Some amount of study of other elements can happen too, of course - bits and pieces of knowledge that can fall into place once we have the framework ready for them - but I'd strongly advise against a major push into Water or Earth before the foundation in Air is ready.
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- Location
- Somewhere with a Thousand Watchful Eyes
- Pronouns
- They/Them
You know, my country, Argentina, was under a political government in the 70's. A lot of people got 'disappeared' for 'joining subversive groups'.
This hits close to home, for me.
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Poliamida
(Verified Heavy Molecule)
- Location
- Beyond the Stars
I want to say something here about airbending and how I think Akane could use their philosophy. The way I see them, Airbenders were heavy on the 'live and let live' philosophy, this led to their pacifism but we must not forget another core theme of the show: balance. 'Live and let live' doesn't mean you won't stop an assassin from killing an entire town just because you don't feel any personal attachment for any of the concern parties, it means you try to understand the point of view of all those involved before doing what you believe is good. And here is what I think will serve Akane the most: to find the good in the bad and the bad in the good. She has to realize that, if her enemies keep turning people to their side, then that means there's something in their philosophy and culture that works, that is attractive. The same way, she must never top looking inwards in search of things that might push her people away from her. This is what she needs, she doesn't need to be pacifist because I don't think the core of Airbender philosophy was that, she needs to let go of her prejudices and find the worth in everything, even in what opposes her, so she can learn from it.
Hello felow Argentinian.
Terran Imperium
[French]
- Location
- Southern France
You must be pretty old then to have lived in that time and get through it. My respects.
I like it, thank you! I always love omakes
Akane has a lot of internalized homophobia, and anxiety related to that might be a big deal in the future, depending on how players shape her reactions. I'll see if I can draw on your idea for a scene I have planned soon!I'm open to writing Akane as a conqueror, but players should just be aware that the more violent the path you pursue the darker the story might get. The Avatar and his friends might have the luxury of experiencing the war as a reasonably light-hearted children's show, but someone who wants to do whatever it takes to conquer the world won't be quite so blessed.
Akane doesn't necessarily have to completely master each element before studying the next - having a foundation in the philosophy of one element can be enough to let you develop a foundation in the next. Sort of like the difference between Aang's training and Roku's. Aang seemed to just get the basics of one element after another and then developed them all together from there, while Roku just spend like a decade or so mastering each element one at a time. Either approach can work for Akane's studies.
- Location
- sweden
Very good nightmare sequence, you should feel good about it.
Semi related thought I had for some reason; I wonder if we will be able to explore more esoteric forms of bending. Given how good we are in air bending principles maybe we could unlock something like plasma bending or conflagration abilities.
Ancient Scholar
Amateur Editor/Beta
- Location
- United States
Use it as a base or just take it wholesale, feel free to do whatever. Just threadmark the omake and leave a mention in the chapter if you use it.I like it, thank you! I always love omakes
- Location
- Somewhere with a Thousand Watchful Eyes
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Buenas!
-Are completely undeserved. I said it hits close to home because the effects of that particular problem can still be felt in my nation, and because of the horror stories from my parents.
There's a lot of books about the military goverment, the "disappeared" people, and so on. Most Argentinan Rock has at least one song with an anti-military theme or something.
Ancient Scholar
Amateur Editor/Beta
- Location
- United States
Akane x Mitsuko
Anyway I think we should take Azula's suggestion and have Mitsuko as a consort while we have a husband to have a child.
- Location
- California
I believe that was an reader who suggested that and not Azula. Also, no men. Also I don't believe we can rely on azula for that either because I remember Kosm stating in akun chat that she headcanons Azula being gay as well.
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Terran Imperium
[French]
- Location
- Southern France
No, I think it was an off-handed comment/suggestion from Azula that she didn't think Akane would take seriously nor consider. And some reader here developed that idea. Not sure about that.
Wait, uh, Azula being gay? Seriously? Wasn't she too warrior-like to think about any of that? I would classify her more on the 'I don't care' category more than anything. That's the vibe I got from her at least when watching the show.
If you're that worried about perpetuating the line guys. Don't. There is no need to worry when canon itself found a solution. Zuko was the one to perpetuate the line and I don't see any need in changing that considering that Azula would probably not care nor want to and Akane herself likes Mitsuko rather than take any male partner.
- Location
- UK
I'm curious: is Akane lesbian, or is she perhaps bisexual? Assuming she is a lesbian, how in future could this be handled? Would the Fire Nation accept a 'Virgin Queen', perhaps in the vein of Elizabeth I, or would Akane be forced to accept an unhappy marriage in order to placate her subjects? Going further, in the event that Akane never produces an heir, how does the Fire Nation regard adoption? Is the notion of kingship or royalty linked to a kind of 'divine bloodline', or is it instead tied to the office?