Wait, what’s going on with Embers???? That fic has been on my read later list since 2021, what’s happened with it???
Brief overview, then I'm likely never touching this topic again, because this is not a Drama Blog:
Context: Embers is a super old AtLA fic that was written during the early fandom days, read widely at the time, and was the origin of the widely-used fanon name of "Wani" for Zuko's ship (kind of by default that it was one of the first popular fics to give his ship a name, I think?), even though most fic writers don't seem to realize it's from there anymore.
"What's Going On": I used to include a link in all my stories to it, because I believe in crediting other writers for borrowed elements, and I was using "Wani" in all my fics. But BOY did I not want to be sending readers that way anymore, so I've adopted a new name for Zuko's ship, and removed all Embers links.
None of the criticisms about Embers itself are new; I'm assuming they date back to when the fic was being written, because this isn't an "it aged badly" thing, this is an "actually yeah this gets worse the longer you think about it and I shouldn't have ignored my bad feelings just because some of the worldbuilding was interesting" thing.
An Incomplete List of Why I Made the Change:
I don't actually like the story that much anymore, and don't want to rec it
I tried to re-read it recently to see if some things were as bad as I remembered and it turns out they were So Much Worse Oh Yikes. More specifically, the treatment of Katara and Aang and their respective cultures has... rather a lot going on. One example: The Fire Nation and Air Nomads are both given multiple backstory elements in an attempt to make the average Fire Nation soldier's participation in the genocide/war in large part the fault of the Avatar and the Air Nomads themselves, and also fully justified from the Fire Nation perspective. And I do mean fully. One of its core tenants is "People from the Fire Nation (and only people from the Fire Nation) who don't follow orders Literally Die, therefore murdering pacifists and babies and continuing the war (and their regularly scheduled war crimes) is the only thing it is physically possible for them to do". I cannot emphasize enough how literal that is.
Also the name "Wani" means "Alligator" and is... objectively a pretty lame name for Zuko's ship? Where's the personality, where's the deeper meaning, where's the resonance with Zuko's themes? @tuktukpodfics initially thought I was calling the ship "Wanyi", and that's what I've switched to, because it is Objectively So Much Better. In their words: “Wànyī (萬一): Literally ‘one in ten thousand,’ ‘perchance.’ Used grammatically in Chinese to mean ‘what if’ or ‘just in case.’ I think a ship called ‘The Perchance’ is perfect for a boy clinging to false hope.”
TL:DR; I don't rec Embers anymore, because I don't actually like the story anymore, and there are things about it that get worse the more I think on them. I've removed links to it and renamed Zuko's ship to "Wanyi" ("The Perchance") because our boy deserves a ship name that reflects his character arc.
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Prompt 237
“Wait, so, Captain Marvel is like, three?”
Said hero pauses as he nearly passes by a cracked door, creeping slightly closer despite it being more than a little rude to eavesdrop. All of the gods were insistent, which he could say no to, but Billy was giving him the equivalent of puppy eyes, which they all knew he was weak to.
He? They? Marvel was technically an amalgamation of the past champions, currently split between six beings, though nowhere near equally. Billy was and would be the chosen champion- pure of heart to be able to resist the Gods’ bullshit- but he had chosen a team himself, which honestly Marvel approved.
“What the fuck do you mean by that, Hal?”
He didn’t move from the corner, head tilting slightly at Green Lantern’s and Green Arrow’s words. Billy, not physically there, not really, wiggled down from his shoulder, passing through the wall like a ghost invisible to all but him.
Well, him and the Gods, but Mercury’s words were muffled, nearly silenced by Solomon at the moment, so he was probably attempting to wax poetic about Flash again in a way that little ears shouldn’t hear.
“I mean, Marvel mentioned he was created three years ago, right?”
Ah. Marvel had meant that the newest Champion had been chosen, but well, he supposed that the team didn’t have all the information, as Solomon pointed out. And he was pretty sure that Billy was mostly in control at that point- it could get confusing with the hive-mind but not-hive-mind. It was hard to explain to those not apart of it.
But they had to go now, Fawcett called, and it wasn’t like Billy could leave it for long. Chances were nothing would come from this anyway.
…
Why does this feel like the intervention videos Billy showed them all.
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