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Deep Red (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

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I think the important thing is that we as players have to consider the possible consequences of our actions, we're akane, not people who break the fourth wall to see the future.
 
ay29156 said:
A possible thing you could do to make voting less contentious and bandwagoning more difficult would be to do something I've seen in another quest on fiction.live, Promises of Power. Instead of having a few options people vote for, you instead have a readers post section where people could post what they want to happen and you could then just skim/read the posts and take and pick the comments you like or believe represent what the readers want. The QM of of, Promises of Power did this after a series of contentious votes and reader frustration and it seems to have worked. I think adopting this approach might give you more control over how the story proceeds while at the same time making voting less contentious as bandwagoning becomes more difficult and might further separate Akane and the voters so that voters are less frustrated after Akane suffers a setback.
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This... sounds as it actually could work well, solving a lot of problems with voting over there.
 
zachol said:
Okay, I guess in general I'm not sure what people like Ozai expect to have happen with children they treat like this. It makes brief sense as Akane being a largely broken minion he can point at a few issues over the next decade. It doesn't make sense as a long-term heir and the next Empress of the Fire Nation once he finally dies.
Unless he literally doesn't care what happens after he's gone? Like otherwise what the fuck.
The betrothal to whatshisface is similar, what the hell does Ozai think is going to happen once he dismembers the merchant families and his heir is stuck with a resentful consort? Again, so much only makes sense with Akane as a chess piece he's intending to discard at some point.
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One thing you have to understand with abusive people like that, they only see children in the sense of "how can they benefit me". The child is a tool, and defiance is walking out of line with their purpose.

And I think you kind of misinterpreted what I meant a bit.

I didn't mean to imply that he wanted her broken and weak forever. He wanted her broken and weak temporarily so he could build her up to become like him. Break then rebuild in his image.

She'd ideally end up just as powerful or more powerful than before but her will would become his will. The force that fuels her firebending would be the same type of will that fuels his.

His ideal for Akane after his death would be for her to be enough like him to make all the same decisions he would make, and mold her children to be the same.

His Will would outlive his death through his children.

And their children. And their children. Ad infinium.
 
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tenchifew said:
The main problem I see is the "anon" culture over there. If only registered users with actual names could vote, a lot of problems like fake votes and people feeling completely free to do whatever without consequences could be avoided.
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Bit late, but that's what the stars are in the vote tally. Star votes come from a registered user with a confirmed email, which cuts down a bit on ballot stuffing.

It's kinda unpopular to ignore a popular vote because it has less stars, though. Never seen a QM do it unless the ratio was really awful and it was obvious someone was doing something.
 
kosm said:
A lot of the reason why I need a break from this quest is because no matter what I say or do to try to clarify things, within five minutes everyone seems to have convinced each other that I said something completely different and horrible that's going to ruin the quest. At this point I feel like I have no way to communicate with my readers. I understand that that must be my own fault or something like that but I really don't know how to fix it. I made that massive post outlining future plans and people on fiction.live's chat immediately came to the conclusion that I was saying Akane could never become a strong or powerful character, all the potential for future success was gone, things like the 'sun goddess' route were completely cut off, and the rest of the quest would be nothing more than her struggling to get back to where she was, as though my goal for her character development was just a closed circle. I must have somehow implied all of that but I really don't know how.
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It might be worth making a WOG post you later delete, but ultimately at this point the players are just processing their salt at the huge loss. You'd probably have people making entirely unfounded accusations no matter how this was delivered, because the GM is the easy target. I wasn't in the chat, but there were probably some extreme levels of salt aimed at everyone who voted to fold too, because they're the other easy target here. It sounds silly, but they're basically going through the stages-of-grief in miniature.
 
kosm said:
I don't want to be rude, but to be honest it feels like you are not reporting an accurate version of events.

The players did not at any point vote to work with Iroh against Ozai. The vote tied and stayed tied for several minutes, in large part because it seemed like someone or multiple people were keeping it that way on purpose. The run-off happened because of that tie, not because I wanted to push one option over another. If I had wanted to push one option, I literally could have just cast a tiebreaker vote. I understand it was a mistake to choose to have that tie represented in story by Akane hesitating and Ozai trying to intimidate her further, and I apologize for that.

There was only one vote that was actually deleted and redone last night - the military vote. It was deleted and redone because it was unclear what the vote was actually about. It had nothing to do with Zuko. People have been claiming since then that multiple other votes were deleted and redone and "everyone saw it", no matter how many people tell them that didn't happen. And there's honestly just nothing I can do at this point to counter those assertions.

I have done everything I can to try to explain when voters could have made things go differently and how. I just made a big post here outlining all the ways you could have avoided being in this situation to begin with. I warned people in chat multiple times over the past few weeks that pissing Ozai off would actually have consequences for them and that they could avoid pissing him off by doing simple things he very clearly told them to do in story, like not buddy up to the brother he thinks is after his throne. At this point, I don't know what else I can do.

A lot of the reason why I need a break from this quest is because no matter what I say or do to try to clarify things, within five minutes everyone seems to have convinced each other that I said something completely different and horrible that's going to ruin the quest. At this point I feel like I have no way to communicate with my readers. I understand that that must be my own fault or something like that but I really don't know how to fix it. I made that massive post outlining future plans and people on fiction.live's chat immediately came to the conclusion that I was saying Akane could never become a strong or powerful character, all the potential for future success was gone, things like the 'sun goddess' route were completely cut off, and the rest of the quest would be nothing more than her struggling to get back to where she was, as though my goal for her character development was just a closed circle. I must have somehow implied all of that but I really don't know how.

I feel like I could make the next arc of the quest into something good, but judging from people's feedback I don't know if the audience feels the same way. I don't know what I'm going to do, and I don't feel like any of my communication with the audience ever actually works to clarify things. I'm just going to take a break.

I really appreciate everyone's feedback and support and I'm sorry for all the trouble.
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For what its worth, I was actually really excited by your ideas for the next arc and it struck me as something that could be really compelling.
 
zachol said:
Okay, I guess in general I'm not sure what people like Ozai expect to have happen with children they treat like this. It makes brief sense as Akane being a largely broken minion he can point at a few issues over the next decade. It doesn't make sense as a long-term heir and the next Empress of the Fire Nation once he finally dies.
Unless he literally doesn't care what happens after he's gone? Like otherwise what the fuck.
The betrothal to whatshisface is similar, what the hell does Ozai think is going to happen once he dismembers the merchant families and his heir is stuck with a resentful consort? Again, so much only makes sense with Akane as a chess piece he's intending to discard at some point.
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As much as Akane might think otherwise, I rather suspect Ozai doesn't actually consider her his heir.

In fact, I rather suspect that Ozai's actual plan is to use his current crop of children as fodder for politics and the war, then, once that's over, marry a less willful woman and produce an actual heir he can raise "right" from start to finish.

Well, assuming his plan doesn't involve some sort of immortal spirit deal or something like that.
 
Yeah just take a rest. Stress is high on all sides so its better to take some time off.

Its just that one worry present is that our choices wont really have payoff-if they dont make things a whole lot worse..somehow. Since our freedom would be highly limited there, our firebending is fucked. We have all those Ozai spies and Akane is in such a horrible place rn. There's a risk of the players lacking agency through that planned arc you know? and if there's no visible progress or improvement or triumphs then it would just be stressing to go through all of that.

Specially with how vicious the takedowns and reprimands in-story are. It would be really tricky to balance what you have planned with the interactivity and desires of the chat to have the agency to affect stuff as a quest.
 
See the issue is that people keep acting like Ozai is any way a reasonable being. He isn't our ally. He's our enemy. There was never going to be a way to satisfy him. The entire premise of the quest is that eventually we'll have to kill him.

So, with that in mind... Why are people acting like this wasn't a foregone conclusion? Even Ozai's final speech cemented to nearly everyone that Ozai didn't give a fuck if we burned Zuko or not as long as he was able to slap us down.

If we didn't burn Zuko we were disobeying a direct order for the Fire Lord. If we burned Zuko we were betraying our ideals.

I mean, it's obvious which one I would pick, but again the voter base seems to have this opinion that Ozai could be reasoned with.

'It was our fault for going to Iroh.' You guys realize if it wasn't Iroh, he would have gotten rid of us via some other method. We were neeeeever going to get through this unscathed. Kosm's own WoG's show that.
 
Kosm, I just wanted to chime in that your work is incredible and you should just do what you think is best. From a narrative perspective the current status is incredible. I also understand the frustration from a heavily invested participant, and not knowing how to get out of the situation as Akane. Whatever you choose, your mental well-being is the most important.
 
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 don't think you give yourself enough credit.
TeaSpoon said:
I have a few thoughts. If you're open to retcons, make the players earn them. Give retcon coins to good decisions. Earn enough retcon coins and the players get to retcon distastrous decisions. This has multiple benefits:

- The players won't feel they can complain their way to retcons. No, retcons are part of the ruleset and the rules are the rules. Never mind that the QM can change the rules whenever he/she wants.
- Rewarding retcon coins based on "good" decisions will allow the QM to signal to the players what a good decision entails. This allows more QM control over the plot.
- Players feel they have more control over the plot because they have the power to change it if something goes wrong
- Since retcon coins are a limited resource, players tend to allow disastrous decisions to stand in order to hoard retcon coins for crucial moments.

So, instead of saying you'll retcon the Zuko scarring decision, give them 10 retcon coins. Make them decide whether to use those coins or bank them.
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No, no no no.
Systems like these can work, and are often used in modern TRPGs but you've made a massive mistake. You should give OoC rewards for bad decisions as secondary compensation. If you reward good decisions then the only valid choice is to try and redo everything that goes slightly wrong because hopefully you make a good decision the second time which will refund the cost of retrying.
What you're describing would have failed here because the short time between updates means that it can not be clear what the vote that caused the consequences can be blurred.
ay29156 said:
Huh didn't know that. The only questing experience I have is on SB/SV and a few quests on fiction.live which, with the exception of Promises of Power, just use votes.
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I think its fallen out of favour even on the chan boards in favour of actually counting votes.
 
This was a fantastic, albeit painful, update. I hope that you continue this in some fashion, even if you ultimately decide to not continue it as a quest.
 
I like your writing and I don't want to give you any stress or be to harsh but.
Im personally of the opinion that it was an out of character moment she should have refused or tried to get a message to someone not just taken it.

On a technical level it was well written and a good chapter but it broke the character in a way I don't think she should have been broken and felt kinda cliché.

but that's why you write and ask for advice you can take a step back and maybe go a different direction and see which path is better. Just feel out where you want to go. Shoot maybe you want to split it in two stories for a while and see if that helps.
 
A big thing in stories in general is the characters making dumb decisions, no matter how smart the character is, the author will inevitable have them start making dumb and/or non-optimal choices to prove that they aren't perfect or for drama. On the other end of the spectrum the author can have the character make the seemingly best possible choices only for them to lead to disaster and a time travel loop.
 
Redshirt Army said:
Akane attempts to rebel against Ozai with Iroh's help, but they are driven off and must go into hiding in the Earth Kingdom, defeated and hunted.
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That would've been the best option for continuing the quest normally in my opinion. Players could've had Akane travel all over and affect non-fire nation stuff before canon, learn firebending from unusual sources and improve continuously, not deal with Ozai's abuse (just his manhunts, but that honestly sounds preferable), and generally start adventuring. There might've even been some chances later to join the Gaang as the firebending master.

Edit: I'd be lying if I said I didn't want that.

The biggest downside would be that Azula would think Akane left because she burned her. Well, loosing all authority, inheritance, and being a wanted fugitive is also bad, but that would surely be the worst part according to questers.
 
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Welp, I leave for a couple days and this all happened.
@kosm, your writting is amazing, I love the way you write your characters and it sucks that all the salt is getting to you. Do what you believe is best for you, always.
With that said, I... just dont know if I'd keep reading after the most recent developments, I just didn't like the direction the story took.
 
On the point of how the audience is taking what you say in the worst possible way, I'd like to try and shed some light on that without blaming you, alright? In a way, the voterbase like Akane is going through the 5 stages of grief so soon after a disaster, and it can almost physically hurt to see the character you have guided and become invested in for months, that you have spent hours for in chat discussing about motivations, future plans, etc, to see that all collapse in front of your eyes in what feels like an instant.

We had the denial stage of thinking it's not that bad, then we had the anger stage where people were venting their frustration because basically a character they cared about a lot got seemingly crippled and there is nothing they can do about it to help that person at the moment. After that wears off they go into depression and a kind of defeatism when it sinks in just how badly this mess has affected Akane and just like hers, how our plans and hopes for the future may never be realized.

At that point a sense of malaise means they are not exactly in the state of mind to interpret things accurately and will jump to the most negative interpretation. So when for example they read lines like this:

kosm said:
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.
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kosm said:
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.
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kosm said:
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.
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In their mind at the time it feels like "Clawing her way out of the pit means all she will be doing is try to get back to where she was before she fell in, and it will take the entire arc." "She no longer has the firebending she has always been able to rely on, so we won't be getting it back." "She no longer has the luxury to change the world through her strength so we can't make changes because we're so weak."

That's not your fault, but when people are in that mindset basically anything you say will be seen through that lens of "Everything is breaking down and going to shit." Similarly when you state several times that you need a break and voice your own complaints their thoughts go to other quests that go on hiatus and just never wake up, which sadly is not an uncommon occurrence over there, and they start fearing the worst especially when they keep reading about ideas from other people to move the quest, or cut out readers altogether or other things. Not saying you are wrong for voicing your own ideas on this, not at all, but at the time they jump to the worst.

I'm not meaning to sound dismissive but I'm fairly sure and hopeful that after the break people will have calmed down and acceptance has set in and we can continue the quest. Hope this at least gives a peek into the mind of Anon at a time like this, and truthfully what at times went through my own head despite knowing it's not right. It's an insidious thing.
 
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Ulrad said:
hopeful that after the break people will have calmed down and acceptance has set in
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Oh? As I said before, I think we'll start the next arc at "bargaining" (if we do X, surely it will fix Akane) and fall into depression when she repeatedly doesn't show signs of progress. Then again, I didn't read the "next arc" spoiler, so maybe we will see a light at the end of the tunnel?

BTW, thanks for keeping your statements about future events in a spoiler. A lot of the enjoyment in quests comes from experiencing things together with the MC.
 
Players are collectively incompetent, bungling, short-sighted fools who will actively undermine any internal attempts at competence, miss the obvious due to a total lack of reading comprehension, and then complain about obvious results for their actions when the GM applies any sort of logic or telegraphed consequences rather than being able to learn from their mistakes or have any insight or planning worth a damn. And that's before you take into account the sort of players that can wishlist long term goals without any understanding of what sorts of goals fit the story being told, if their approach actually fits those goals, or the characters involved. Expect absolutely nothing from your- any- playerbase and you'll rarely be disappointed.

Don't take complaining too seriously- don't ignore all of it completely, but frankly, players collectively are best treated as a source of very, very loose suggestions for a story's ongoing direction more than anything and I strongly advise against taking player salt at face value in the aftermath of any (perceived) setback.

Forget what the "players" think because anything short of a mindless and consistent power fantasy won't satisfy "them". There'll always be some idiot mouthing off, so just write your excellent story first and apply which option the players want to push the character towards in that story second, as a source of inspiration. Anything else is window dressing at best.
 
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Ozai's gaslighting reminded me a bit of this.

Hope Akane doesn't fall for the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

This quests also reminds me of Now You Feel Like Number None, which is also about a lesbian OC on the antagonist side that realizes their leader is a horrible person that needs to be dealt with.
 
Speaking personally I'd much prefer 'Akane, Mitsuko, and Iroh on the run' to the current trajectory. There's a lot of fun plot points to be had with that, and it wouldn't all be happy fun times what with the manhunts and the possible resentment from her companions over basically uprooting their entire lives.

But it would overall be far less restrictive that the current path, which I feel is very important in quests.
 
ChaosRuneSmith said:
God damn that was some intense shit. Really sells me that you are damn good at storytelling.

Thus, i trust you in whatever you chose to do with the story.

Also, because I can't get this out of my head:
Have you ever seen the death of a sun?
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Bit ooc here but isn't that picture used in worm cyoa v1 for the psychokinetic power?
Also, it seems to be more a black hole than a sun, a black hole being a singularity that PIERCES the heavens with its gravitational rotating DRILL. Unrelenting against the universe for 10e79+ years, outliving everything else in the universe, an unwavering will of sorts.
 
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