[ SECRET POST #5497 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5497 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 33 secrets from Secret Submission Post #787.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

01. https://i.imgur.com/SqweODH.png

[(Anonymous)]

Now that's a secret

[(Anonymous)]

Well the fire nation is an allegory for the Industrial revolution isn't it? So to see it win you just have to look at the planet right now. ....Yeah that's not a great ending, OP.

[(Anonymous)]

you seem very confused about how storytelling works

[(Anonymous)]

Right? We already know what the world looks like when the Fire Nation wins--it was like that for 100 years. Not a complete and total victory, sure, but a devastating one. Ozai was just going to finish the job. And then what could possibly have happened afterward?

[(Anonymous)]

lol

[(Anonymous)]

Why do you think this, OP?

[(Anonymous)]

OP and it was a scenario I RPed a long time ago. The Avatar was dead and everyone had to adjust to life as part of the new empire.

I had a lot of fun with it and didn't think it was that deep. Clearly I was wrong lmao

[(Anonymous)]

I’m glad you had fun with the scenario in your RP, and it would make for a good fanfic. But the reason you’re getting pushback for saying you think it would have been interesting or better for it to happen in the show, as well as saying Zuko was better as a “bad guy”, is because it shows a bit of a lack of understanding and perspective regarding the show. As others have said, the Fire Nation was more or less winning the war enough to be the dominant power throughout the majority of the show. So it’s not hard to see how it would be if they won. More of the same that we already saw, minus the civilizations, cultures, and most importantly the people Ozai was going to snuff out as a show of power as the Phoenix King. It wouldn’t really make for a more interesting story, just depressing and grimdark for the sake of being that way, which is usually the opposite of a good story. And again, as others have said, real life already shows what the Fire Nation “winning” would look like.

And the Zuko things is also a little silly. He was never a bad guy, and his attempts to tow the line and do right by his father were when he was at his weakest as a character. And that’s because he had to start that way to make his character development work. Zuko is not Zuko without the redemption arc, it’s baked into his character. It would be a narrative dead end if he didn’t give in to his good nature in the end. He would have to be rewritten from the ground up to make him stay a bad guy, and not have it be a phenomenal betrayal, and honestly waste, of his character.

Most people aren’t dragging you when they explain all this to you. And the ones who are are being unnecessarily rude, and shouldn’t be insulting you for expressing your opinion. But your points of view don’t go with the canon, storytelling or proper narratives for the show itself, and that’s why the reaction your secret got was overall negative but informative. But if your opinion was solely on the idea for RPs and fics, the reception probably wouldn’t be that way, because deviation from canon is what those are for.

[(Anonymous)]

so daring and yet so very, very wrong.

no one actually won or lost the war, the Fire Nation ended up with someone in charge - Fire Lord Zuko - who chose to end it. No one was defeated except Ozai and well that's sort of an internal matter, isn't it? The Avatar may have won in single combat but that didn't end the war in anyone's favor. The Order of the White Lotus prevented the fall of Ba Sing Se but did that end the war? It did not. Zuko had to make a pact to end the war once he was in control. The war was much more than just Ozai and his kids vs the Avatar, it was neither won nor lost and no one incident or person was responsible for that.

had the story not gone balls-to-the-wall with Phoenix Lord Ozai needing to be taken down hard, you might have a point, but they crossed a point of no return, fairly requiring a standard good vs evil fight that ends with him being defeated. But that, I maintain, was not the end of the war. And the overarching war was something that the Fire Nation could not win, not without becoming obviously WWII and nobody wanted that much real world in their children's cartoon.

[(Anonymous)]

But I mean... The war did end. It literally did. You can say it wouldn't have in real life or a more realistic story, but Avatar is neither of those. It can't be your "opinion" that something that happened in canon didn't really happen just because you don't think it would have happened that way had canon been realistic.

[(Anonymous)]

They didn’t say the war didn’t end, they said it didn’t end the moment Ozai was defeated. Because it didn’t, and that is clearly shown in canon. And not just in the follow up comics, even though those are canon, because I know some people prefer to ignore them. The show itself established that Zuko ended the war after taking the throne, and calling off the rest of the Fire Nation attacks that were planned independent of Ozai’s direct attacks. This is what AYRT said happened, and you’re not correcting anything they actually said. You’re attempting to correct a bunch of things they didn’t say, that you seem to have pulled from nowhere. The war was more than just Ozai, and it didn’t cease to exist when he was debended.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for making my secret and for choosing such pretty artwork!

[meadowphoenix]

At what point in the narrative? There are three seasons in which the fire nation is doing pretty well with some minor but not insurmountable losses, until the last episode. When is this winning supposed to provide an alternative story?

Honestly, I actually find Zuko most conflicted when he's anti-avatar because the emphasis on honor burns a hole through his whole ass mission, which I gather is the point. There's only so much internal conflict you can take in a character before you want them to choose a side imo. Do you actually want Zuko with internal conflict, or do you want him to choose his father's side?

[(Anonymous)]

As far as unpopular opinions go, you certainly picked a doozy, I'll give you points for that.

[(Anonymous)]

Zuko was never a "bad" character in the traditional villain sense and his redemption arc was set up from the very beginning. To take him an any other direction would require rewriting so hard he'd be a completely different character. Zuko was a young man who had been hurt and misled and, like many from the Fire Nation, just doing want he'd been taught to do. But the entire time, even when he was still "bad" you see the cracks in the foundation growing and growing. Uncle Iroh is VERY OBVIOUSLY trying to get him to stray from that path his evil ass dad laid out for him the ENTIRE TIME.

This isn't to say anything wrong he did is less wrong because he wasn't really super evil deep inside. This is more about a kid going down a wrong path to try and get his father's love and approval and earn his place in the family in a way he's been force fed is the only right one. And the decisions he makes once he gets past that.

And as other's have stated: the Fire Nation did/was winning for, like, a long ass time! That's less an alternate ending and more just the entirety of canon before the heroes get their win against poo poo king.

[(Anonymous)]

Found the imperialist and colonizer.

[(Anonymous)]

No you haven’t lol

[(Anonymous)]

I have never met anyone who wanted the Fire Nation to stamp out the cultures of everywhere else, complete with destruction of land (what we see happening in ATLA), who wasn't a white supremacist. A world ruled by the Fire Nation isn't "more interesting." It's just more of what we already see. We KNOW what the world looks like. And unless you're fucking stupid as a sack of bricks, you're going to know that and catch that because we see SO MUCH of the world ruled by the Fire Nation. Nothing would really change it would just be More Of What We See.

[(Anonymous)]

Ah yes. The Fire Nation. White.

[(Anonymous)]

This is the stupidest comment I've read today.

[(Anonymous)]

So it’s the first comment you read today.

[(Anonymous)]

Having fun there reaching so deep buddy?

[(Anonymous)]

Go watch "The Man in the High Tower" then

[(Anonymous)]

No comment on whether or not a bad outcome would make the story more interesting as clearly that's a matter of taste, but that Zuko take is, like, *so bad*.