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Deep Red (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

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Yeah. We need get our mental state back in order. The weakened bending is by far the "worst" punishment here.

I mean.
  • The crumbling of Akane's prefect facade had to happen at some point.
  • The "banishment" to the front was hurts for those who wanted to do something else.
  • The increased surveillance sucks all around, especially since we were so close to more freedom.
  • Destroying our relation with Zuko and Iroh hurts less than the others, and depending on Akane's soulsearching and Zuko's "exile" it might be repaired at some point.
However, a large part of our personal influence was built around being a genius firebender. If her newfound status is found out at the front or even by Azula during a training match before leaving, that would be bad. So hopefully Mitsuko hugs and soul searching next session.

I did like Ozai pointing out that Akane is just like her mother though.
 
tenchifew said:
More than it is weakened now!?
Her fire bending is utterly wrecked due to her Will being in tatters!

"My Will is my sun!" And then folding like a wet paper towel! What a bad joke!
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Like i said in my post, my guess is something would have happened with Mitsuko.

Dead or crippled Mitsuko would have been equally bad for Akane.

Firebending can be fixed, no doubt. so don't worry too much about it.
 
Basically, Ozai demands complete and absolute obedience from his children, to the point that he can order them to fight each other to the death, and the only thing that prevents them from actually killing each other is him saying "stop" before the last blow lands.
 
That felt so much like railroading.
It's more frustrating than tragic when Ozai's point was explicitly brought up in chat the day before as to why burning Zuko would be OOC and shouldn't be pursued for drama. I'm upset that I missed the session because I didn't see a timer, but I probably would've just been angrier if I participated.

It would've been better if Akane had Mitsuko sent a message to Iroh to show up for the Agni Kai instead of Zuko. Have him be burned and Ozai believed he interfered with his bullshit "lesson" to protect Zuko because he could see what Ozai was trying to do. Yes, i know it was all dichotomy votes with no write-ins allowed, but still.
 
To be perfectly honest I'm kind of pissed at how Ozai is acting like a fucking clown. For a while it seemed like he was being clever and twisty, but now he's being smug about obviously crippling his daughter. He had to have anticipated this with her fire.
Like this only makes sense if he's been deliberately trying to cripple Akane, or replace her with Azula.

It's fucking irritating because he's acting like a clown, in this nonsensical contrived way. It makes it hard to predict him, and the last update especially underlines it. It's not hard to interpret Akane's flailing and confusion as the chat's, and Ozai being smug as the QM being smug and unfair.
Like I don't think that's the intention, I hope that's not the intention, but it feels like an easy way to interpret it.
If I could directly feed into the quest I'd have Akane point blank accuse Ozai of undermining her--"Iroh isn't my political rival"--and ask if he's actually planning for Akane's future. Because right now it seems like he's purely thinking in terms of threats to him, favoring Azula because she's weaker and more malleable, deliberately crippling Akane's will, etc. Again, like some weird cartoon villain, it doesn't make sense.

I mean unless the point is that Akane's previous sense of will was fragile, like bravado, and the entire point is to break her now and have her rebuild her sense of self while she's still young? Feels like a reach, kind of.
 
I just hope this doesn't become another 'Essence of Silver and Steel.'
 
Eh...I dunno.

On one hand it feels kind of manipulative, because questers were apparently told OOC flat-out that if we tried to go against Ozai he'd murder the bajeezus out of us.

But then they get punished for being scared? Yes, the actions in the most recent vote were hypocritical and self-effacing, but there's an understandable rationale behind it - at least to some extent, though that hate-boners against Zuko make this seem hella stupid.

I suppose this is the final straw in actually making Akane realize she can't ever trust Ozai anymore and needs to go through several training montages to power up and overthrow him, but.....it feels kinda wonky.

My main other 'issue' is that despite Akane being present, this feels a bit too on the nose for repeating stations of canon - yes, Azula is maybe slightly less off her rocker, but things will likely go the same with Ozai having her to himself. Zuko is scarred, Iroh likely goes with him, and all Akane has now is a broken will and Mitsuko.

It's for sure a tough call, especially if you want the quest to have meaningful consequences....

Whatever you decide, best of luck, Kosm!

zachol said:
Like this only makes sense if he's been deliberately trying to cripple Akane, or replace her with Azula.
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I mean....he kinda is. He wants a malleable heir, which is why he is going out of his way to break Akane down - in order to re-mold her in his image alone, rather than whatever else she's been taught.

That, and he doesn't want to risk Akane dropping a table on him.
 
Tnoz said:
That felt so much like railroading.
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That's negative consequences of your actions. It feels like railroading because you are not in control and you don't like the outcome.

zachol said:
or a while it seemed like he was being clever and twisty, but now he's being smug about obviously crippling his daughter. He had to have anticipated this with her fire.
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Well, yes. Said daughter challenge him and his lifestyle after all. And then she fucked up in way that proved all his points.

I mean how hard is it to predict that threatening the Hitler of ATLA who is stronger than you politically and physically without a plan is a bad idea?
 
Honestly I'm just going to delete this again and then not come back to this quest for a couple weeks. At this point I don't know what I'm doing anymore and the pressure is getting to me. Thank you to everyone supporting me. I'm very sorry for the trouble.
 
kosm said:
Honestly I'm just going to delete this again and then not come back to this quest for a couple weeks. At this point I don't know what I'm doing anymore and the pressure is getting to me. Thank you to everyone supporting me. I'm very sorry for the trouble.
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I honestly think it was a brilliant piece of work, even if all my choices lost, and think it deserves to stay.

It is an unique opportunity for Akane to grow.

This said, do what you think is right, and take as much time as you need.
 
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kosm said:
Honestly I'm just going to delete this again and then not come back to this quest for a couple weeks. At this point I don't know what I'm doing anymore and the pressure is getting to me. Thank you to everyone supporting me. I'm very sorry for the trouble.
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Well, I enjoyed it. But I enjoyed the whine of chat even more.

My only complain about this quest is that the vote itself is too short. Not nearly enough time to reach consensus. I remember that one vote ended in 10 min but we were still arguing for like 5 hours after it.
 
Awesome chapter.

Akane has been brought low.

I can see how questors might feel manipulated, but as a reader it was great to see how all of Akane's psychological walls were torn away.

I mean Azula burning her face was a one-two punch. Akane's obsessed with appearances and she fully expected reciprocity from Azula.
All of her teenage courage has been stripped away. Akane doesn't feel secure and she is left three days to stew and doubt over what she said in the heat of the moment. Then Ozai shows up and, well he was right. Pre-scarring Akane probably gone to Iroh, for Azula. Post-scarring Akane might have still gone. But for Zuko, all it took was verbal pressure.
I'm not out and out blaming Akane for this. She's a teenager. She's just been injured by the person she trusts second in the whole world and has had no opportunity to see her and clear the air. Then the greatest authority figure in her life bar none shows up and starts laying out her punishments and threatening her. While Ozai has never hurt her himself, he is a man who orders his children to scar each other and approaches everything as a zero-sum game.

There wasn't going to be a way out of this. The point was to beat some humility and subservience into Akane. (Ozai, here and in canon, comes across to me as Sith-like in his approach to his heirs).
The lesson was showing Akane where she would bend and break from her professed principles.
It's a really fucked up lesson and an even more fucked up way to go about it. But, hey villain.

I mean just imagine when the AU audience finally sees the Akane flashback episode.
 
medved847 said:
My only complain about this quest is that the vote itself is too short. Not nearly enough time to reach consensus. I remember that one vote ended in 10 min but we were still arguing for like 5 hours after it.
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This is honestly the thing that seals it as railroady. 2-5 minutes of panic voting and no meaningful discussions, and then being told "but you chose this". It's really cheap.
 
Please don't delete it, we can make it work and the tension is stunning. Doing it again won't fix it but just make people annoyed, let us push through and climb back from this.
 
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At this point, no matter what you choose, letting thing cool off for a couple of weeks seems wise.
 
Ultimately, it's important to remember that the salt only comes because people are so invested.

Tnoz said:
This is honestly the thing that seals it as railroady. 2-5 minutes of panic voting and no meaningful discussions, and then being told "but you chose this". It's really cheap.
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I don't think it's railroading so much as an honest mistake - short votes like that are absolutely correct in less high-stakes votes, to keep things moving. Unfortunately I missed the vote, and I would totally have voted to defy him, if only because I kind of wanted to get kicked out of the heir position/sent away and given a chance to grow. (Which has sort of been accomplished anyway, but... at the cost of our sun :()
 
kosm said:
Honestly I'm just going to delete this again and then not come back to this quest for a couple weeks. At this point I don't know what I'm doing anymore and the pressure is getting to me. Thank you to everyone supporting me. I'm very sorry for the trouble.
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No trouble, you've given everyone days and days of compelling entertainment. You've created a character and a story that everyone cares deeply about, people wouldn't have gotten upset otherwise.

Part of the problem serial writing has is that when you get to the hard depressing parts the readers and the author don't have the ability to keep reading and see where it goes and get past it. They just have to stew in that darkness until the next part is written. Lots of people, myself included, don't handle it that well.

Take as long as you need, even if it is forever, because the number one rule for something like this is that it should be more rewarding than it is taxing.
 
It's a game and for many players games should be fun to play, and to the same players, being deprived of agency for lengthy periods of time isn't fun. That's the issue with such arcs, some players will absolutely enjoy those arcs, and others will just endure them with the hope of a more enjoyable game later.

If the player base is self-selected, it's going to a recurring issue, and games may end up with people who just say "fuck it". And those players are a Damocles sword, in a story, readers are reasonably sure that the author will strive to provide a pay off (even for tragedies, it's just that the pay off is going to be tragic) but in a player-driven quest, there's no such thing.

There are external factors that come into play for players beyond voting for what they think is best or in character for Akane.

That is to say, that you can't rely on any random player base to take a quest or a story in a direction you feel comfortable and interested to write. I feel that the often mentioned comparison that being a quest master is like herding a band of cats is accurate.
 
Sorry to hear you're having issues with this. I thought you handled the chapter well, given the votes. Crazy bloodthirsty people in Fiction.live, though ^^'. At the end of the day, I doubt people here would blame you for taking a break or rewriting stuff. You're the one putting in the work, after all.
 
RadiantPhoenix said:
He's not actually right about that last line, but wow, the hard men making hard decisions brigade got played hard.
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More like goddamn questers not tickling the Dragon, you cannot assume there are no narrative consuquences for opposing a character all the time. The narrative had been super lenient after all, and only after repeat offence did it finally reach a critical point where the author felt they had to add consuquence for the continued defiance.
 
kosm said:
For all I know, I may end up deleting all this and redoing it again.
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Considering how good the current version is, it would truly be amazing if you managed to make it even better!

Regarding feedback and taking breaks... we came here for your story, not the audience's story. Please do take a break if you feel tired. Please ignore the audience, if you think they're steering you in a direction you don't want to go. You are the highest priority item in this system!
 
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