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Deep Red (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

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Abyssinian said:
There's really no reason to ever attack the GM.
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No, there isn't. But some choice individuals decided that it was necessary and proper to do so, and now here we are. I'll be frank, I don't want there to be a retcon, but I'm shaking my head over all this salt. I understand that people are pissed that the votes didn't go their way, but it's no excuse for what they did. From the railroading accusations to the personal attacks, it was all BS.

Basically, we stooped low and took the bait, and proceeded to try and tear each other and the GM apart. Considering what happened, Kosm would be in the right to never post anything here or there ever again and I'd understand it. Regretfully, yes, but I would understand completely.

However, I should take the time here to congratulate Kosm. Ultimately, the vast majority of us are so invested in the character that we just want what's best for her, because Kosm's done such a fantastic job of making Akane human. Moments like this hurt us more than we'd care to admit, because we invested so much time and effort and passion into this. So, for what it's worth @kosm , thanks for the ride so far. It's been rough and rowdy, but I've loved every moment of it.
 
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Dr Heaven M.D. said:
Why did no one else take the 'run away with Mitsuko option'?!
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Think about it. Ozai was going to kill Iroh on the mere chance he might be a rival in the future.

If the Crown Princess Akane ran away, it would spark the largest man hunt in recent memory. Not to mention it's an island nation, so if Akane wanted to disappear to the Earth Kingdom, she would have to sneak onto a boat, and good luck with that with the manhunt.

Or she could disappear and attempt to find the Sun Warriors, but again, massive manhunt.
 
I don't think skipping town was a realistic option.

The only thing I see that might have worked, be acceptable to Ozai and might be spoofed in some way to prevent our will from breaking was an agni kai with Iroh instead of Zuko. He's perceptive and might have been willing to play the part and cook up a scheme.
 
kosm said:
You search for the words, but nothing comes.

"I'm sorry, Zuko," you whisper.

He screams as you do it. You hear it as if from miles away. The noise lingers. You have to hold your hand in place for a long time to give him the proper wound.

The only flames that seem to come to you are a low, deep red.
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[You search for the words, but nothing comes.

"I'm sorry, Zuko," you whisper. "I've failed you in more ways than one."

There's confusion and fear on his face. "What are you doing?"

Your hand presses down on his chest.

"Safe travels, Zuko."

He screams as you do it. You hear it as if from miles away. The noise lingers. You have to hold your hand in place for a long time to give him the proper wound.

The only flames that seem to come to you are a low, deep red.] -kosm fiction.live

Did anyone else point out these are different?
 
Okay, so, I think that my writing didn't live up to my intention and that there were serious flaws in my QMing, but I don't know if another retcon is worth it. I could go back and edit things to flesh them out just to make it read better as a story, but I know that doesn't fix the flaws the writing had in the moment while people were making decisions. I don't know what I'm going to do. But I'll be taking a break for a week or two in any case.

To address people's questions and concerns, I thought I might offer some idk OOC information about my thought process when writing all this and when planning the future. I'm going to put things in spoiler tags so you can decide how much OOC information you want to have. I'm sorry these things got really rambly, I've just been jotting things down for a while and then crammed it all in here.

First, about Akane's character arc and the future of the quest if I continue from here:


I have been attempting to foreshadow Akane's brittleness for most of the story, especially since Azulon's death and even more so after Ursa disappeared. Akane might not directly says in the narration that she is a child scared of her father. But in almost every scene she has with him, she does make some mental comment about killing the last Fire Lord or about what she'll do if her father attacks her and she has to fight him to the death then and there. I don't want to be presumptuous, but I think that chat has been taking it for granted for so long that Akane is going to kill Ozai that no one has really stopped to reflect on the fact that the first thing Akane thought after her father's coronation was that she might have to kill him - she doesn't brush off her fears of him as just her imagination, she doesn't say to herself "Lol what was I thinking, of course my father wouldn't have killed me just for witnessing Azulon's death", she says she's afraid she's going to have to kill him next. To questers, sure, that's taken for granted as part of the premise. But Akane is a young teenager who went through a bone-breaking no-holds-barred desperate fight to the death with a vicious, insane relative a few years ago, and who has been quietly expecting that to happen again with her own father someday. And when it seemed like the moment was finally there and all she had to do to avoid it was turn against the sibling she resents - the one who got Ursa and Iroh's love without ever having to work for it, and who doesn't even seem to be getting punished by Ozai for it - she cracked.

Narratively, this is the lowest point in the story. As strong as she always thought she was, she still has to confront the reality that these two people - Ozai and Ursa - have shaped her until now. Akane has betrayed herself. Everything she thought she was has been stripped away, and now she has to decide who she really is. Because of all this, the next arc of the story will, instead of being a power fantasy gathering support and glory in the military, be about Akane clawing her way up out of the pit. In the Earth Kingdom, she'll come face to face with the reality of war and with people on both sides who are much more willing to risk everything they have than she was. She will have to cultivate and use all the cunning and resilience she can to compensate for the fact she no longer has the easy, cheap firebending power that she's always been able to rely on before. She will have to seek out spiritual strength and wisdom wherever she can, because she no longer has the luxury of focusing on changing the world while taking her own personal strength and foundations for granted.

If I continue with the story as it is, the next arc will be intensely personal for Akane. It will be difficult and maybe unrewarding at times because there won't always be clear answers or clear victories, so I don't know if it's even a good idea to do in a quest. Personally, I think it could be really cool, but it could just as easily end up feeling cringey and angsty and pointless. But the idea is that by the time canon rolls around and Akane confronts the Avatar over the fate of the world, she'll do so as an adult. She'll have had her coming-of-age arc. She'll have proven that she's not just who she is because everything was always easy for her. She'll have questioned and fought for everything she has and is. Whatever the result, she'll have unquestionably earned it. I think that could be rewarding, if I can manage to pull it off as a writer. I don't necessarily know if I can.

And second, about other ways this could have gone:

There were a few major points of divergence that I was mulling over and getting ready for.

Getting Iroh out of the picture was always an objective for Ozai. Sending him chasing after Zuko on a mission was always going to be an option offered to Akane. Perversely, though, if you had chosen to follow up more on the book Iroh gave you, you could have gotten involved with the Order of the White Lotus - you would just know it as a social club for Fire Nation philosophers - and could have actually told Ozai that he should keep Iroh close so you could continue infiltrating his social circle and find evidence that he was trying to build a power base among Fire Nation intellectuals. If you had failed to deliver on 'evidence' that could get Iroh exiled or jailed, though, Ozai would have punished you severely and tried to have Iroh killed. You also would have been penalized for focusing on the White Lotus book lead rather than the merchant houses lead, though, and would have been on extremely shaky footing if you hadn't solidly betrayed (or seemed to betray) Iroh.

Without following the White Lotus lead, the chain of events leading up to scarring Zuko could still have been stopped at three points before it reached a head. If you hadn't gotten caught with Iroh after voting to learn the Dancing Dragon, Ozai wouldn't have asked you to burn Azula. If you had been willing to give Azula a burn, it wouldn't have happened. If you hadn't insulted Ozai and threatened to attack him while refusing to burn Azula, he would not have threatened your life to make you go along with scarring Zuko - it would have been more of a situation of him telling you to scar Zuko if you want to prove your resolve to him, and Ozai stripping you of privileges in disgust and shifting his favor to Azula if/when you refused. The choice to insult Ozai and threaten him to his face was the biggest factor in making the ultimatum as extreme as it was.

Once the chain of events reached the ultimatum, you could have chosen to lie to Ozai and go to Iroh for support. Ozai's admonition after the vote tied wasn't intended as OOC confirmation that it was a bad end, but I know it came off that way and I recognize it was a mistake.

Working with Iroh, it's unlikely you could have succeeded in a coup on such short notice. The most likely outcome was being forced to flee the country. This could have involved solitary exile with Uncle and Mitsuko, eventually defecting to the Earth Kingdom, or trying to start a civil war to take the throne by exposing Ozai's assassination of Azulon.

I might have allowed a 'golden ending' here if you made some specific choices. You would have needed to agree with Iroh to try to make Ozai back down rather than attempt to kill him. Using your destruction of Ursa's letter and some bluffing with Iroh's help, you would attempt to convince Ozai that you've essentially forced him into a situation where he'll ruin the entire country with civil war if he keeps pushing you. In the 'golden ending' you would have managed to finally talk Ozai into cutting his losses and backing down from his demand, and would not have had to scar Zuko or go into exile. You would have become his most hated child in the process, and Ozai would have retaliated soon after by attempting to have Mitsuko killed unless you voted to tell her to flee the country before confronting him. Akane would have worried IC that Ozai would retaliate against her, so you would have some warning. But even in the 'golden ending' the best case would be that Mitsuko and her father went safely into exile.

Once you threatened the Fire Lord to his face, you wrote a check you couldn't cash and got locked into a scenario with no especially happy ending. There was going to be some kind of loss in retaliation.
 
And to think all of these could've been manageable had the questers not voted to threaten Ozai by table assassination haha! Although in a narrative standpoint without the players and questers and all that, I loved to see that scene as well as the last chapter.

I would also love a personal arc just for Akane. I want it raw, and I think it'd be great to explore the psyche and her mental hang-ups and abuse she experienced in that abusive household, as well as having her experience the realities of war.

Thanks for giving the explanation, kosm! It's always great to know how the stories could've alternately turned out if we made this one decision or not. Have a good break! (Also please don't retcon the latest chapter :o )
 
kosm said:
Okay, so, I think that my writing didn't live up to my intention and that there were serious flaws in my QMing, but I don't know if another retcon is worth it. I could go back and edit things to flesh them out just to make it read better as a story, but I know that doesn't fix the flaws the writing had in the moment while people were making decisions. I don't know what I'm going to do. But I'll be taking a break for a week or two in any case.

To address people's questions and concerns, I thought I might offer some idk OOC information about my thought process when writing all this and when planning the future. I'm going to put things in spoiler tags so you can decide how much OOC information you want to have. I'm sorry these things got really rambly, I've just been jotting things down for a while and then crammed it all in here.

First, about Akane's character arc and the future of the quest if I continue from here:


I have been attempting to foreshadow Akane's brittleness for most of the story, especially since Azulon's death and even more so after Ursa disappeared. Akane might not directly says in the narration that she is a child scared of her father. But in almost every scene she has with him, she does make some mental comment about killing the last Fire Lord or about what she'll do if her father attacks her and she has to fight him to the death then and there. I don't want to be presumptuous, but I think that chat has been taking it for granted for so long that Akane is going to kill Ozai that no one has really stopped to reflect on the fact that the first thing Akane thought after her father's coronation was that she might have to kill him - she doesn't brush off her fears of him as just her imagination, she doesn't say to herself "Lol what was I thinking, of course my father wouldn't have killed me just for witnessing Azulon's death", she says she's afraid she's going to have to kill him next. To questers, sure, that's taken for granted as part of the premise. But Akane is a young teenager who went through a bone-breaking no-holds-barred desperate fight to the death with a vicious, insane relative a few years ago, and who has been quietly expecting that to happen again with her own father someday. And when it seemed like the moment was finally there and all she had to do to avoid it was turn against the sibling she resents - the one who got Ursa and Iroh's love without ever having to work for it, and who doesn't even seem to be getting punished by Ozai for it - she cracked.

Narratively, this is the lowest point in the story. As strong as she always thought she was, she still has to confront the reality that these two people - Ozai and Ursa - have shaped her until now. Akane has betrayed herself. Everything she thought she was has been stripped away, and now she has to decide who she really is. Because of all this, the next arc of the story will, instead of being a power fantasy gathering support and glory in the military, be about Akane clawing her way up out of the pit. In the Earth Kingdom, she'll come face to face with the reality of war and with people on both sides who are much more willing to risk everything they have than she was. She will have to cultivate and use all the cunning and resilience she can to compensate for the fact she no longer has the easy, cheap firebending power that she's always been able to rely on before. She will have to seek out spiritual strength and wisdom wherever she can, because she no longer has the luxury of focusing on changing the world while taking her own personal strength and foundations for granted.

If I continue with the story as it is, the next arc will be intensely personal for Akane. It will be difficult and maybe unrewarding at times because there won't always be clear answers or clear victories, so I don't know if it's even a good idea to do in a quest. Personally, I think it could be really cool, but it could just as easily end up feeling cringey and angsty and pointless. But the idea is that by the time canon rolls around and Akane confronts the Avatar over the fate of the world, she'll do so as an adult. She'll have had her coming-of-age arc. She'll have proven that she's not just who she is because everything was always easy for her. She'll have questioned and fought for everything she has and is. Whatever the result, she'll have unquestionably earned it. I think that could be rewarding, if I can manage to pull it off as a writer. I don't necessarily know if I can.

And second, about other ways this could have gone:

There were a few major points of divergence that I was mulling over and getting ready for.

Getting Iroh out of the picture was always an objective for Ozai. Sending him chasing after Zuko on a mission was always going to be an option offered to Akane. Perversely, though, if you had chosen to follow up more on the book Iroh gave you, you could have gotten involved with the Order of the White Lotus - you would just know it as a social club for Fire Nation philosophers - and could have actually told Ozai that he should keep Iroh close so you could continue infiltrating his social circle and find evidence that he was trying to build a power base among Fire Nation intellectuals. If you had failed to deliver on 'evidence' that could get Iroh exiled or jailed, though, Ozai would have punished you severely and tried to have Iroh killed. You also would have been penalized for focusing on the White Lotus book lead rather than the merchant houses lead, though, and would have been on extremely shaky footing if you hadn't solidly betrayed (or seemed to betray) Iroh.

Without following the White Lotus lead, the chain of events leading up to scarring Zuko could still have been stopped at three points before it reached a head. If you hadn't gotten caught with Iroh after voting to learn the Dancing Dragon, Ozai wouldn't have asked you to burn Azula. If you had been willing to give Azula a burn, it wouldn't have happened. If you hadn't insulted Ozai and threatened to attack him while refusing to burn Azula, he would not have threatened your life to make you go along with scarring Zuko - it would have been more of a situation of him telling you to scar Zuko if you want to prove your resolve to him, and Ozai stripping you of privileges in disgust and shifting his favor to Azula if/when you refused. The choice to insult Ozai and threaten him to his face was the biggest factor in making the ultimatum as extreme as it was.

Once the chain of events reached the ultimatum, you could have chosen to lie to Ozai and go to Iroh for support. Ozai's admonition after the vote tied wasn't intended as OOC confirmation that it was a bad end, but I know it came off that way and I recognize it was a mistake.

Working with Iroh, it's unlikely you could have succeeded in a coup on such short notice. The most likely outcome was being forced to flee the country. This could have involved solitary exile with Uncle and Mitsuko, eventually defecting to the Earth Kingdom, or trying to start a civil war to take the throne by exposing Ozai's assassination of Azulon.

I might have allowed a 'golden ending' here if you made some specific choices. You would have needed to agree with Iroh to try to make Ozai back down rather than attempt to kill him. Using your destruction of Ursa's letter and some bluffing with Iroh's help, you would attempt to convince Ozai that you've essentially forced him into a situation where he'll ruin the entire country with civil war if he keeps pushing you. In the 'golden ending' you would have managed to finally talk Ozai into cutting his losses and backing down from his demand, and would not have had to scar Zuko or go into exile. You would have become his most hated child in the process, and Ozai would have retaliated soon after by attempting to have Mitsuko killed unless you voted to tell her to flee the country before confronting him. Akane would have worried IC that Ozai would retaliate against her, so you would have some warning. But even in the 'golden ending' the best case would be that Mitsuko and her father went safely into exile.

Once you threatened the Fire Lord to his face, you wrote a check you couldn't cash and got locked into a scenario with no especially happy ending. There was going to be some kind of loss in retaliation.
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Hey Kosm, just want to let you know that you're awesome and your writing is beautiful. Whatever you decide on this quest the only reason there's so much feedback is because your writing is so good at getting us to empathize with your characters. There's always room for improvement, but what amazing work's you've already created. Both Akane and Mary are characters that I am going to remember 10 years from now.
 
I love this story but the players decisions are honestly aggravating. Don't warp the story you want to tell to fit a quest at the cost of what you want your tale to tell. You take a break, and you do you.
 
So just confirming if I get it right, the entire two years until canon would be spent trying to just get back what we once had as 15 year old Akane, maybe not even reaching that?
 
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I can imagine people getting salty over seemingly losing all they've worked for but it sounds like a really interesting tale to tell. I'd personally prefer to see a recuperating Akane independently work her way to glory than see her coast on family resources with her father breathing down her neck. I'd miss Azula but it'd just make for a more intense and interesting reunion.
 
Yep. I don't see this working as a quest over the next arc. It's going to be very delicate and I don't trust people enough to make the right choices.

Reading kosm's notes, it's really really good we came down this path. There's a lot of payoff down the line here while the other two scenario planned has us deadlocked into miserable routes. I would've liked to see where the Earth Kingdom defection would've lead but I reckon that needed perfect choices to happen.

As of this moment, the White Lotus isn't really closed off to us due to Piandao's presence through Mitsuko. Reconciliation with Iroh* might be possible if he realizes that Ozai forced us to burn Zuko. Akane would know that war, by being in the thick of it, isn't a good idea. The conflict that happens during these might even make the confrontation with the Avatar down the line calmly instead, there was no way we're agreeing with Aang with all the Fire Nation and Ozai' influence on our heads. Azula's character during all these choices would be beneficial for us on the long run because she knows that we'll never betray her against anyone if it comes down to it.

Oh man. I'm really looking forward to the next arc.

*Akane did apologize to Zuko before burning him. Iroh's smart, he'll figure it out. I hope.
 
How would Akane be losing everything she's worked for, though? We've really only worked hard for three things:
  • Bending skill,
  • Mitsuko,
  • Azula.
Getting taken from Azula doesn't end that, it just gives time apart. Her bending skill can return as she recovers. Mitsuko will be with her.

Akane's position has never been all that solid, despite being the crown princess.
 
kosm said:
Okay, so, I think that my writing didn't live up to my intention and that there were serious flaws in my QMing, but I don't know if another retcon is worth it. I could go back and edit things to flesh them out just to make it read better as a story, but I know that doesn't fix the flaws the writing had in the moment while people were making decisions. I don't know what I'm going to do. But I'll be taking a break for a week or two in any case.

To address people's questions and concerns, I thought I might offer some idk OOC information about my thought process when writing all this and when planning the future. I'm going to put things in spoiler tags so you can decide how much OOC information you want to have. I'm sorry these things got really rambly, I've just been jotting things down for a while and then crammed it all in here.

First, about Akane's character arc and the future of the quest if I continue from here:


I have been attempting to foreshadow Akane's brittleness for most of the story, especially since Azulon's death and even more so after Ursa disappeared. Akane might not directly says in the narration that she is a child scared of her father. But in almost every scene she has with him, she does make some mental comment about killing the last Fire Lord or about what she'll do if her father attacks her and she has to fight him to the death then and there. I don't want to be presumptuous, but I think that chat has been taking it for granted for so long that Akane is going to kill Ozai that no one has really stopped to reflect on the fact that the first thing Akane thought after her father's coronation was that she might have to kill him - she doesn't brush off her fears of him as just her imagination, she doesn't say to herself "Lol what was I thinking, of course my father wouldn't have killed me just for witnessing Azulon's death", she says she's afraid she's going to have to kill him next. To questers, sure, that's taken for granted as part of the premise. But Akane is a young teenager who went through a bone-breaking no-holds-barred desperate fight to the death with a vicious, insane relative a few years ago, and who has been quietly expecting that to happen again with her own father someday. And when it seemed like the moment was finally there and all she had to do to avoid it was turn against the sibling she resents - the one who got Ursa and Iroh's love without ever having to work for it, and who doesn't even seem to be getting punished by Ozai for it - she cracked.

Narratively, this is the lowest point in the story. As strong as she always thought she was, she still has to confront the reality that these two people - Ozai and Ursa - have shaped her until now. Akane has betrayed herself. Everything she thought she was has been stripped away, and now she has to decide who she really is. Because of all this, the next arc of the story will, instead of being a power fantasy gathering support and glory in the military, be about Akane clawing her way up out of the pit. In the Earth Kingdom, she'll come face to face with the reality of war and with people on both sides who are much more willing to risk everything they have than she was. She will have to cultivate and use all the cunning and resilience she can to compensate for the fact she no longer has the easy, cheap firebending power that she's always been able to rely on before. She will have to seek out spiritual strength and wisdom wherever she can, because she no longer has the luxury of focusing on changing the world while taking her own personal strength and foundations for granted.

If I continue with the story as it is, the next arc will be intensely personal for Akane. It will be difficult and maybe unrewarding at times because there won't always be clear answers or clear victories, so I don't know if it's even a good idea to do in a quest. Personally, I think it could be really cool, but it could just as easily end up feeling cringey and angsty and pointless. But the idea is that by the time canon rolls around and Akane confronts the Avatar over the fate of the world, she'll do so as an adult. She'll have had her coming-of-age arc. She'll have proven that she's not just who she is because everything was always easy for her. She'll have questioned and fought for everything she has and is. Whatever the result, she'll have unquestionably earned it. I think that could be rewarding, if I can manage to pull it off as a writer. I don't necessarily know if I can.

And second, about other ways this could have gone:

There were a few major points of divergence that I was mulling over and getting ready for.

Getting Iroh out of the picture was always an objective for Ozai. Sending him chasing after Zuko on a mission was always going to be an option offered to Akane. Perversely, though, if you had chosen to follow up more on the book Iroh gave you, you could have gotten involved with the Order of the White Lotus - you would just know it as a social club for Fire Nation philosophers - and could have actually told Ozai that he should keep Iroh close so you could continue infiltrating his social circle and find evidence that he was trying to build a power base among Fire Nation intellectuals. If you had failed to deliver on 'evidence' that could get Iroh exiled or jailed, though, Ozai would have punished you severely and tried to have Iroh killed. You also would have been penalized for focusing on the White Lotus book lead rather than the merchant houses lead, though, and would have been on extremely shaky footing if you hadn't solidly betrayed (or seemed to betray) Iroh.

Without following the White Lotus lead, the chain of events leading up to scarring Zuko could still have been stopped at three points before it reached a head. If you hadn't gotten caught with Iroh after voting to learn the Dancing Dragon, Ozai wouldn't have asked you to burn Azula. If you had been willing to give Azula a burn, it wouldn't have happened. If you hadn't insulted Ozai and threatened to attack him while refusing to burn Azula, he would not have threatened your life to make you go along with scarring Zuko - it would have been more of a situation of him telling you to scar Zuko if you want to prove your resolve to him, and Ozai stripping you of privileges in disgust and shifting his favor to Azula if/when you refused. The choice to insult Ozai and threaten him to his face was the biggest factor in making the ultimatum as extreme as it was.

Once the chain of events reached the ultimatum, you could have chosen to lie to Ozai and go to Iroh for support. Ozai's admonition after the vote tied wasn't intended as OOC confirmation that it was a bad end, but I know it came off that way and I recognize it was a mistake.

Working with Iroh, it's unlikely you could have succeeded in a coup on such short notice. The most likely outcome was being forced to flee the country. This could have involved solitary exile with Uncle and Mitsuko, eventually defecting to the Earth Kingdom, or trying to start a civil war to take the throne by exposing Ozai's assassination of Azulon.

I might have allowed a 'golden ending' here if you made some specific choices. You would have needed to agree with Iroh to try to make Ozai back down rather than attempt to kill him. Using your destruction of Ursa's letter and some bluffing with Iroh's help, you would attempt to convince Ozai that you've essentially forced him into a situation where he'll ruin the entire country with civil war if he keeps pushing you. In the 'golden ending' you would have managed to finally talk Ozai into cutting his losses and backing down from his demand, and would not have had to scar Zuko or go into exile. You would have become his most hated child in the process, and Ozai would have retaliated soon after by attempting to have Mitsuko killed unless you voted to tell her to flee the country before confronting him. Akane would have worried IC that Ozai would retaliate against her, so you would have some warning. But even in the 'golden ending' the best case would be that Mitsuko and her father went safely into exile.

Once you threatened the Fire Lord to his face, you wrote a check you couldn't cash and got locked into a scenario with no especially happy ending. There was going to be some kind of loss in retaliation.
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I still want an answer as to why the voting time is so short though. Then I'll completely and utterly let it go. Or otherwise make a serious attempt and think happy thoughts.

Also, what would've happened if Akane took the fall in the duel with Zuko?
 
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I think that things got to this point as the result of a myopia that is all too common in questers. Oftentimes, the desire to always optimally 'win' every confrontation will lead to a continuous refusal to except small losses, even when doing so is strategic and functional. This inevitably puts the quest's character into a difficult spot, because (obviously) they won't have the power to back up their goals or actions.

I mean, I understand the desire to say "fuck the world" and to refuse to bend even an iota from your primary course. I think that it's seductive to have the option to safely explore those kinds of decisions, especially when real life is often filled with compromise and disappointment. And it's laudable to try to play a character who tries to have it all.

But trying to have it all is only satisfying when you take your lumps for it. And...this is it. here are the lumps. The benefit, of course, being that the next potential arc has some serious potential for deeply satisfying storytelling. Problem being, as others have put it, that the questers who got Akane into this situation may not see it that way, and I think that actually enjoying the arc might require a shift in style of play that the current questers are unlikely to go for.
 
kosm said:
If I continue with the story as it is, the next arc will be intensely personal for Akane. It will be difficult and maybe unrewarding at times because there won't always be clear answers or clear victories, so I don't know if it's even a good idea to do in a quest. Personally, I think it could be really cool, but it could just as easily end up feeling cringey and angsty and pointless. But the idea is that by the time canon rolls around and Akane confronts the Avatar over the fate of the world, she'll do so as an adult. She'll have had her coming-of-age arc. She'll have proven that she's not just who she is because everything was always easy for her. She'll have questioned and fought for everything she has and is. Whatever the result, she'll have unquestionably earned it. I think that could be rewarding, if I can manage to pull it off as a writer. I don't necessarily know if I can.
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That sounds amazing for a story, but sustained losses and failure with no serious victories would be really, really hard for a Quest. The problem is that an invested audience of a story would sympathise and feel bad with Akane, but it wouldn't be a personal feeling - there's a bit of a gap. But as a PC, Akane is a direct stand-in for the players. Any loss she takes is one the players take - your chat has exploded into mountains of salt precisely because as a heavily-invested audience, this massive loss she's just taken is a loss the chat has just taken, and they're feeling similarly defensive/hurt. (It should be noted, this does you great credit as an author.)

My advice for when a Quest takes a big loss is to keep on moving - don't mitigate or undo the loss, but move on with things, and make it clear to the players that while yes something bad has happened, it's not the end of the Quest - they haven't completely lost, and the Quest continues, with the possibility of victory implied by any game (and make no mistake, this is not just a story but a game, with all the benefits and drawbacks that brings.) Your upcoming period of hardship and suffering would be great in a story, but just as your character is going to keep feeling miserable and like the world is ending, the invested players are similarly going to feel miserable and like this loss is unrecoverable - even if the format of a Quest makes that unlikely in truth.

Because that's the double-edged sword of a Quest - your players are more invested in the outcomes because they have a personal stake, and they care more, for good and for ill. A sustained period of failure will eventually lead to burnout and apathy, as a defence mechanism against sustained misery - and whilst that's not unrecoverable, it will likely lead to a period where the players stop caring until your PC starts getting some wins again. (Like in relationships, players who have been hurt before find it hard make themselves vulnerable again :V)

Ultimately, it probably depends a great deal on how sustained your misery is, and how often the players get to triumph, but it's going to be a pretty fine line to walk. Quests just aren't really suited for consistent, serious tragedy - where in a story your audience would feel bad for the characters, in a Quest the audience just feels bad.

Tnoz said:
I still want an answer as to why the voting time is so short though.
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Almost certainly because previously short voting times were the correct way to go, and it's not immediately obvious that high-stakes votes probably need more time to process and discuss until it's been pointed out.
 
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There's a serious reason for short vote times on fiction.live: people can set up dummy accounts for voting really easily, and this becomes a problem in larger more popular quests. The longer a vote is open, the more likely that someone in the losing side will get frustrated and spin up some proxy or cognito mode window and vote a few more times to balance it out, and then you get 200 votes instead of 50.
 
SoothingCoffee said:
Man. I feel like there was not any option where this could have worked well in our favor at all.
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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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Presumably somebody has already said this, but did anybody here really think that there was ever going to be a way to navigate a father as abusive and cruel as Ozai without problems?

There are, were, could be no "right" answers with Ozai. The only "right" answer is to cut off his head, but getting to that point is going to take a lot of effort... and a lot of time stuck with no good paths.
 
I think this could have worked with a good established core playerbase in a less heated enviroment, but man. I dunno.

Nailing right audience that "gets it" is very hard, and while akun's crowd actually doesn't seems to be too bad from the few sessions I was online for, I am not sure they can pull off that kind of cooperative storytelling that arc goes for. It's just plain difficult.
 
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